destruction of evidence, and it doesn t absolve trump of the idea that he willfully retained the documents. he knew he had them in 2022, when he turned stuff over to the archives. they told him, hey, there s classified documents in this stuff. they knew he had them over the course of the next year, talking to his lawyers telling him, turn them over. and the fbi kept funding stuff in what you are turning over. it will ultimately not change anything, but quite possibly with the way judge cannon handles things, it could drag it out just a little bit more. just a little bit more. we are now at the first anniversary of the mar-a-lago case, the grand jury and bob dikeman came down on june 8th, 2023. anyone s guess if we get to the second anniversary. bradley moss, thank you, sir, for your time tonight. have a good night. that is our show for this evening. now, it is time for the last word , with jonathan k part. lawrence o donnell come in for jonathan. i would love to see if we get the classified documents case, but who knows? she take, with the number not on the cake, and eat it depending or not, if it happens. if it is sheet cake, let s just eat it, anyway. have a good show. thank you. today, a jury convicted hunter biden, the only surviving son of president joe biden, of three federal gun felonies. after a little less than three hours of deliberations, 12 jurors in president biden s home state of delaware agreed with prosecutors that hunter biden lied on a mandatory gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs at a time when he was. president joe biden responded with this statement. as i said last week, i am the president, but i am also a dad. jill and i love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. i will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter, and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will ever change that. she didn t attack the verdict. he didn t say it was rigged. he didn t attack the judge, the prosecutors, or the jury. no, all the while, an irresponsible reaction to the hunter biden verdict today came from republicans. some of whom have embraced the conspiracy myth that the justice department charged and convicted hunter biden of these felonies to misdirect from other crimes, big-league crimes, unnamed, unspecified, imagined, biden crimes that are much bigger and better than all of the actual crimes donald trump is charged with. x trump adviser, steve miller, posted, the hunter biden verdict is proof that doj is the democrat protection racket. he called the verdict a distraction from the real crimes. one right-wing commentator things hunter biden was prosecuted as cover for the trump prosecution? i don t know if this is fair, you go after donald trump and you go after hunter biden. okay, in republicans defense, you might go a little crazy, too, if you had to defend backing a known fraudster, sexual abuser, and now 34 times convicted felon for president. in a new op-ed, attorney general merrick garland denounced the attacks on the the justice department. they are baseless, personal, and dangerous. today, the doj sent a letter to jim jordan to confirm that there were no emails between any justice department officials and the office of manhattan district attorney, alvin bragg. the department has no control over the district attorney, just as the district attorney has no control over the department. the committee knows this. despite that, district attorney bragg has agreed to testify before the house on july 12th, the day after donald trump s sentencing. a spokesperson for the manhattan d.a.s office said, it undermines the rule of law to spread dangerous misinformation, baseless claims, and conspiracy theories following the jury s return of a full count felony conviction in people be trump. nonetheless, we respect our government institutions and plan to appear voluntarily before the subcommittee after sentencing. joining us now, former acting solicitor general of the united states, who has argued more than 50 cases before the supreme court. he is a professor at georgetown law and msnbc legal analyst and host of the podcast courtside with neil cocktail. neil, thank you much as always for being here. so, now, some republicans are pushing the hunter biden jury verdict as proof of a doj conspiracy. this is some carrie matheson red yarn over a corkboard stuff. eight you have that on your bingo card? it is almost impossible. i mean, jonathan, the verdict today makes these conservative claims look ridiculous. i m i mean, for years, these conservatives have been pulling about a politicized justice department and so on. what happened today, this justice department convicted the president s own son, his only living son. i mean, imagine what that would take. imagine you are the attorney general and the president gave you that job, jonathan, one of the most important jobs in the country, in the world, and you have the power as every attorney general does, as merrick garland does, to end the prosecution with the stroke of a pen and you didn t do it. garland didn t do it. that is what the rule of law is all about, and similarly, the constitution gives the power to the president to pull the plug on any in the constitution, that is article two. so, president biden could have absolutely ended this prosecution once and for all. he didn t do it. that is the test about someone who has convictions in the system. and when it is over, you didn t hear joe biden whining about a trump judge even though the judge here is literally a trump judge appointed by trump, rather you heard the president say, he would accept the outcome of the case. i know no other word for that, but presidential. even went so far as to say he wouldn t pardon his son, that is how much respect he has for the system. so, neal, we saw this with judge merchan, and it seems to be merrick garland s way, too, trying to lower the temperature in the wake of these over the top trump republican attacks. do you think he is responding proportionately to the trump be an all out war on our justice system? i was really glad to see the attorney general s op-ed today in the washington post basically saying, look, what the department does is just apply the rule of law, we do so fairly and impartially. that is the justice department that i saw, jonathan, when i worked there in two different administrations. it is why people respect this country so much. this morning, i had the privilege of speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 150 new citizens from 54 countries, and what did they respect about america? they respect exactly a verdict like this, that even the president s own son can be convicted by the president s justice department and the president s prosecution arm, because this president, as almost every president in our history does, respects the constitution and respects the rule of law, unlike some of these republicans, like stephen miller, who spit on this every chance they can. what do you expect to see when manhattan d.a. alvin bragg testifies before jim jordan subcommittee? do you think you made the right decision? i expect to see a big nothing. i expect to see all sorts of innuendo, akin to the kind of innuendo we are hearing today about how joe biden helped orchestrate the felony conviction of his own son even though it was overseen by trump appointed national council and adjudicated by trump judge i am sure we will hear craig cray like that, but there will be no fax, because as the justice department even said today, literally, there was no communication between the prosecutor, matthew, angelo, the centerpiece of these crazy conspiracy theories, and the justice department, zero, none. so, have the hearing. by all means, of course, that is part of congress responsibilities and oversight. , it would be nice to have some facts in those hearings. yeah, it would be nice to have some. i am not expecting any, though. neal, neal katyal, thank you very much for coming to the last word . thank you. so, here s how you know can pick the convicted felon, trump, knows it can get much, much, much worse for him. you have a deranged individual named jack smith, he is a deranged, john dumb guy, he is a dumb son of a convicted felon, trump, indicted by special prosecutor jack smith on multiple criminal charges for his unsuccessful attempt to overturn the 2020 election, also praised that january 6th writers that attacked the capital calling them warriors. those january 6th warriors, they were warriors, but more than anything else, they were victims of what happened. all they were doing was protesting a rigged election, that is all they were doing. while trump was landing in las vegas sunday, president biden was returning from france after commemorating the 80th anniversary of d-day. the biden campaign has released this ad, featuring three american veterans slamming former president trump for being a draft dodger. a good commander in chief is somebody who gives a [ bleep ]. i registered, i served in the united states marine corps point my name is ed mccabe. i served from the 1990s until 2014. my name is matthew mclaughlin. i was a navy pilot for eight years. it is the first time i m shaking the hands of a president of the united states. it was pretty impactful to me to see an individual that supports troops not just on the battlefield, but when we return home. i see a man in joe biden who accepts accountability and responsibility, and when i see his predecessor, donald trump, i see a man who is only in this for himself. who criticizes veterans, who doesn t see it important to go to the funerals. donald trump has zero accountability in his life. is a draft dodger, simple as that. yesterday, draft dodger donald trump sat for his first probation hearing as a convicted felon, a mandatory requirement before his sentencing on july 11th. meanwhile, president biden held a white house event commemorating juneteenth, a federal holiday he established in 2021 to recognize the emancipation of enslaved african americans after the civil war. in his remarks, president biden reminded the audience why black history is still so important. but, let s be clear, they are all ghosts, and they are trying to take this back. they are taking away your freedoms, making it harder for black people to vote. well, i will have your vote counted. closing doors of opportunity, attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion. if you can believe it, banning books about black experiences, trying to erase and rewrite history. or, this is not just about the past, this is about our present and our future. it is whether or not that future is the future for all of us, not just some of us. folks, black history is american history. black history is american history. joining us now, former democratic leader of the house of representatives, james clyburn of north carolina, he is a co-chair of the biden- harris campaign, congressman clyburn, always good to see you, welcome back to the show. i was at the juneteenth event last night and president biden has touted the inflation reduction act, and lowering drug prices, but listen to how the events host, comedian roy wood junior, talked about that achievement. we have legislation now for cheaper prescription drugs because of this administration. insulin is down to $35, if you are a senior. and i don t know if anybody here has paid for insulin before, but that is like the bottle service of prescription drugs. so, we appreciate that $35 right there. [ laughter ] congressman clyburn, i love the relate ability roy wood jr. used to break it down. it is funny, but it is telling a policy success story. does the campaign need to do more of that? well, thank you very much for having me, jonathan. absolutely. we have got to get this out there. this administration has a record that is unequaled, even cannot be imagined by a lot of people who have thought about these kinds of things as we went into the last election. this administration, with this rescue plan, has brought young children out of poverty with this infrastructure bill. it has put in $65 billion for internet when we had no money for infrastructure in the previous administration. it is chips and signs act, it is packed act, it is inflation reduction act. all of these things people said could not be done, joe biden did them. and i get a little irritated when i hear people telling me, well, he isn t talking loud enough. he isn t showing the kind of energy we want. we are about substance. substance, not style. that is what will move this country forward. that is what we will leave for our children and grandchildren, to be proud of. real substance. you can talk loud, you can misrepresent, you can prance around. but, the question is, what are you doing? i grew up in the prostitute and i used to listen to my dad s sermons. one of the things i learned early, it is their deeds that make them, not their words. and if you get caught up on the words, and don t pay any attention to the deeds, you might believe in donald trump. but, if you are all about deeds, you will be supporting this president, this administration, biden and harris. well, let s talk about so, more deeds, congressman clyburn. today, the biden administration announced that medical get that can no longer be considered in credit scores and president biden has made debt elimination one of his major pitches on the campaign, but new polling shows that voters are split on student loan forgiveness. three out of 10 approve and four out of 10 disapprove. how concerned are you about the polling numbers we see on the screen there? i think it is because people have misrepresented this whole thing about student loan debt elimination. joe biden, if you look at the program, he made it very clear, we are talking about eliminating this compound it is interest and all of the things that have accumulated beyond what the original debt was. i have got a constituent not a black constituent, but still a constituent in north charleston who wrote to the president and copied to me. his original loan was $60,000. over the years, she has paid back nearly $200,000 because of compounded interest, and paying for it for more than 20 years and still owed money. so, when he eliminated that debt, it was on the compounded interest, not the original loan. and people need to look at that. when i hear senator romney saying that this is a bad deal, how can this be a bad deal? the principal is paid back a long, long, long time ago. these people are paying compounded interest that has been put out there about people who are making money when the original principal was paid back a long time ago. so, that is what is going on here. so, nobody is paying anybody s debt. they paid off the debt. it is a compounded interest that people are electing and that is putting people in the poorhouse, as we say down south. congressman, let me get you on one more thing before we have to go in a couple of minutes. let s talk about comments that entertainer, $.50, meanwhile on capitol hill last week. listen to this. what do you think appears as significant to african-american men this election? i see them identify with trump. why do you say that? because they got rico charges. congressman clyburn, your reaction, black men are moving to trump because they ve got rico charges? [ laughter ] look, he should ve been with me last saturday night at the south carolina naacp freedom fund dinner. 100% support for joe biden. not one single person in their, male or female, for donald trump. he should have been with me at greater target memorial miami church on sunday morning, 100% for joe biden. not a single person there for donald trump. i don t know where $.50 is hanging out, but i hang out with naacp. i hang out with the black community, black faith community, and i don t see any support for donald trump. these people aren t worried about rico statutes, they are worried about their children s student loan debt. they are worried about the cost of insulin, when it comes to their healthcare. they are worried about affordable housing. they are worried about broadband deployment. that is what they are getting from this president and they are thinking whatever it is, what they will talk about in rico statutes. the rico statutes down in georgia, that is what donald trump violated. and so, we are upset because he is being called to account for violating the rico statutes? come on, 50 cent. that is worth a dollar to know better. [ laughter ] congressman james clyburn, always great to see you. thanks for coming to the last word . thank you very much for having me. [ laughter ] all right. $.50. we are 11 days into pride month and there is one person i know who is in celebrating justice samuel alito s wife has been caught on tape sharing her exasperation in seeing pride flags from her house. and that is not the only reason we should be worried about what is on those secret recordings. that is next. at is next. that helps treat and prevent, all in one. to those with migraine, i see you. for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of episodic migraine in adults. don t take if allergic to nurtec odt. allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. it s time we all shine. talk to a healthcare provider about nurtec odt from pfizer. summer. it s the hungriest time of year for kids across america. kids whose hardworking families are struggling to make ends meet. whether it s working the crazy hours so you can have enough money for food or, you know, just giving up things for your personal self, and it s just yeah, gotta feed your kids. far too many kids are missing the meals they need this summer. that s why i m here now asking you to join me in helping end child hunger in america for just $0.63 a day. that s only $19 a month. you can help provide healthy meals to power kids through their days. they re growing at this age, and they need the best diet they can have. so please, call now or go online to helpnokidhungry.org right now give $19 a month, only $0.63 a day. and when you use your credit card, you ll get this special team t-shirt to show that you re helping kids build a brighter future for themselves and for the world. we want to ensure that all of our kids have healthy meals every day, and many of our parents and many of our communities are still suffering. it s very difficult to, you know, have a good family setting when we are worrying about having enough food for your family. you can help kids get healthy meals this summer and all year long. please join me in supporting no kid hungry today. for just $0.63 a day, only $19 a month. you can help provide healthy meals to kids across america and in your local community. thank you for giving. thank you for giving. thank you! families are struggling to make ends meet. these are hard times. so please call now or go online to give. my wife is fond of flying flags. that is what supreme court justice samuel alito said when he blamed his wife for flying two different flags at their homes that are associated with the stop the steel movement and carried by writers at the january 6th insurrection. new secret recordings of his wife, martha and alito are revealing more about flying flags. you know what i want? i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flags next month and he is like, please don t put up a flag. and i said, i want to do it because i am referring to you. but, when you are free of this nonsense, i m putting it up and i m going to send them a message every day, maybe every week i will be changing the flags. they will be all kind, this is how i satisfy myself. i made a flag. it s white and it is yellow and orange flames around it and in the middle is the word vergona, which means shame in italian. that is the wife of a supreme court justice being openly hostile to a complete stranger about the pride flag. a symbol of freedom and equality for the lgbtq+ community during pride month. people, like me, being proud of who they are makes her mad. it makes her want to send them a message. it makes her want to fly a flag that says shame. this is not a woman who is unclear about the message of the flags she is fine. and for what it is worth, i don t think anyone would care if they looked across the potomac and saw a jesus flag flying. there are lots of martha-ann s in america who also harbor this kind of grievance. but, this is martha-ann alito. she is not just any random person, she is married to a supreme court justice, for life. one of the most powerful people in the country, who is actively rolling back americans constitutional rights. justice alito authored the majority opinion revoking nearly 50 years of rights for women when the court overturned roe v wade. that laid the foundation for another right-wing justice with a right-wing wife, clarence thomas, to target the lgbtq+ community by saying the supreme court should reconsider two cases that reaffirmed the rights of same-sex, including same-sex marriage. so, martha-ann alito longs for the day when samuel alito is free of all this nonsense. she is thinking about who will replace him on the court. are you? joining me now, kelly robinson, president of the human rights campaign. kelly, thank you for coming back to the last word . your reaction to what we heard from mrs. alito? shocking, and also not shocking in the same sense. what she is saying about flags, it is not about flags, it is a dog whistle to maga bullies across the board. what she wants to do is use the flag as a simple to talk about how they want to erase us from public life, to push us back into the closet. and when i think about what today represents, not only is it pride month, but tomorrow represents eight years since the pulse mass shooting, were 49 members of our communities lives were stolen forever. this type of violent action and political rhetoric leads to real-world outcomes. so, anyone that is listening to her, anyone who is watching what she says should be very, very concerned. not only about her words, but what it means in terms of the actions of the people that are listening to her. this new audio from justice alito tonight, listen. i just wanted to ask you, why do you think the supreme court is so is being so attacked and being so targeted by the media these days? well, 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 are coming up. that s that s the beginning and the end of it. kelly, does the sound often is, given the two abortion cases and two january 6th cases yet to be decided this term? to me, it sounds hypocritical. i mean, i remember when barack obama wore a tan suit and people acted like it was the end of democracy. those lines! right! now, we are talking about a whole supreme court justice whose wife is saying things like this, who is espousing these beliefs that are concerning for someone who is on the highest court of the land. so, i do think anyone who is listening to the words that are coming out of justice alito s mouth, you should be concerned. but, i also know if you are a person of color, if you are an lgbtq+ person, a woman, or someone who is non-binary, we don t have the luxury of letting our concern and fear put us into a state of paralysis. we have to understand that this is why it is more critical than ever that we get out and vote this november. our lives are quite literally at stake. you know, trump is out there giving comfort to antiabortion groups, promising to defend life, while republicans are not voting to protect conception. today, a federal judge struck down a florida ban on transgender care for minors. these all sound like rights this ideological supreme court has no interest in protecting. they don t. they have said the quiet part out loud already. i mean, we have to remember that when roe v wade was overturned, justice clarence thomas concurrence, he said out loud, the next court should revisit lawrence, they should revisit griswold, these are cases that fundamentally asserted our basic rights as lgbtq+ people in this country, and our right to contraception. so, anytime they say that these things aren t on the table, that these rights aren t at risk, look at what they are doing. we should all, again, be very concerned with what we are seeing, but also take it as a call to action, because at the end of the day, we still live in a democracy. our votes still count, and there is something we can do right now about how this course has gotten so far disconnected from this actual mission and our democracy. you know, as i mentioned before, i was at the juneteenth event where i met your beautiful wife last night, but that is not the point why i m bringing that up. i want to play something that vice president harris said last night. watch. across our nation, we witnessed a full on attack on hard-fought, hard won freedoms and rights, including the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body, the freedom to be who you are and love who you love openly and with pride, the freedom from fear of bigotry and hate, the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation s true and full history, and the freedom that unlocks all others the freedom to vote. how important is it to stress to voters that the supreme court is on the ballot in november? what is at stake is more samuel alito, or marco tonya brown jackson? exactly. what i saw from kamala harris right now, that is leadership. and at the end of the day when we think about this election that is coming up, it is not just about two candidates, it is about two fundamentally different visions for our country, two fundamentally different visions for our future, and our children. when you talk to people regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, a lot of our fears are the same, worry that your kids will have a better life than you do today, worries about inflation, making sure schools are good, and welcoming, and safe. but, i want to make sure that whoever we elect, the solutions are about moving us forward and not pulling us back. what the supreme court has shown that they are willing to do from the overturn of roe v wade, to all that they have said and done in the last year, they are willing to roll back the rights, not even the last 10 years or last 40 years, but the last 100. we have got to do something about it, for the sake of all of our communities, and especially for the sake of our kids. kelly robinson, president of the human rights campaign, thank you very much for coming to the last word . thank you. coming up, it is election night in nevada. it is a must win state for joe biden and kamala harris, and a must win seat for democrats if they hope to hold onto the senate. nevada senator jacky rosen joins us next. ins us next. and long-lasting gain scent beads. part of the irresistible scent collection from gain. rising costs. selective coverage. for countless americans, the complex specialty care they need has always felt. just out of reach. at evernorth, we give members unrivaled access to the most complex therapies at the best prices. while providing enhanced support like in home nursing at no additional cost. that s wonder made possible. evernorth health services. hi guys! bill, you look great! now that i have inspire, i m free from struggling with the mask and the hose. inspire? 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well, i can tell you latino voters in nevada, they are the decisive vote. i can also tell you that my team in nevada, so many of them born and raised in nevada, i, myself, lived there for the last 50 years, just about. so, we are in the community all the time, we are listening, we are responding. i can tell you, i sit on the small business and entrepreneurship committee, and when i talk to our latin chamber of congress, we talked to all of our latino small businesses, so many entrepreneurs, we want to be sure that they have all the tools they need to keep their small business and thrive. we talk about affordable healthcare, it is really, really important that we talk about education, our environment, we are connecting with our latino voters every day on the issues that matter to them. kitchen table issues, the same issues that matter to everybody else. senator rosen, the late longtime nevada senator, harry reid, built a famous statewide democratic organization in nevada. is the reid machine still in effect in nevada? well, what senator reid did is really build a coordinated campaign. so, what that means for the nevada state democratic party, all of the candidates, the incumbents and candidates who are running, we work together to be sure we knock on doors, we do our field program, we are talking about the issues, we coordinate. that is really what is the magic. being sure that we are communicating, working together, bringing people together, because nevada families really matter. listening to them and delivering for them really matters, like delivering for our seniors. i can tell you for our veterans, we passed the pact act in northern nevada in reno, we will have that va hospital, they are searching for that 50 acre site now. it will be a game changer for the veterans in northern nevada. whether it is our seniors, our veterans, our students, our tours economy, we are listening, and we are delivering. senator jacky rosen of nevada, thank you very much for coming to the last word . thank you for having me. coming up, biden is beating trump in a new election forecast, and one of the big reasons is biden s strength in the key swing state of wisconsin, and particularly with a group of voters who make up the bulk of the trump base. that is next. that is next. okay everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. yay - woo hoo! ensure, with 27 vitamins and minerals, nutrients for immune health. and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. 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the fundamentals favored biden, and according to 538, biden currently has a better chance of winning pennsylvania and all of the blue wall states of michigan, minnesota, and wisconsin. my newest favorite, the washington post has a new report about president biden s success so far in wisconsin, where republicans will officially renominate a convicted felon donald trump after a national convention next month. particularly, with white, noncollege voters who make up the trump base. the post reports wisconsin democrats attribute part of biden s relative strength with white voters without degrees to a real progressive tradition that has faded but not disappeared and part of it to tenacious organizing, including in rural areas where many of those voters live. biden s campaign is investing in an unprecedented field operation in wisconsin with 47 coordinated campaign offices across the state, more offices than biden has in any other battleground state, and far more than republicans have in wisconsin, staffed by more than 100 full-time campaign workers. even ousted republican governor scott walker admitted to the post, the organization is on the side of the left, so joining us now, ben worker, wisconsin democratic republican chair, and sandy wendy, the greene county democratic party chair. thank you for coming to the last word . you worked tirelessly to defeat the scott walker gop machine in wisconsin, but it must still feel good to have walker praise the democratic organization. it does feel good. it is the result of a huge amount of work by thousands of people in the most rural parts of our state. in suburbs, big towns, small towns, and cities. our motto is we work statewide and year-round. we don t take anyone for granted and we don t write anyone off. that is what it takes to win in a state like wisconsin. you can see the result in the numbers and it is an exciting moment. if we win wisconsin we win the white house. sandy, tell us about the green county voters you are reaching out to. is this 2020 biden voters who might be going software a true undecided voter? what issues do they care about? i think the issues they care about are the real, kitchen table issues that a lot of us have been talking about. affordable care, healthcare. women s reproductive rights. voting rights. saving our democracy. good education and childcare. basically kitchen table issues, that is what we are hearing about. what do you say back to them when you hear about kitchen table economic issues? we talked to them about some of the issues president biden and kamala harris have already put forward. unemployment, the jobs that have been created. money that has come into greene county for various things such as our ymca in our county seat, in the city of munro. we have received funding for that. basic issues like that. we try to point out to people what is being done. on the flipside on the ground, what do you hear from voters about donald trump, if anything? that they really don t want to have him back in office. simple as that. simple as that. so, ben, how do voters how voters get their information has changed, much more in social media or add then newspaper editorials, which breaks my heart as an opinion writer. how has that changed voter outreach? the first thing we have to assume is that there is no silver bullet. you might get something on the evening news that reaches some voters. some voters are reading the weekly newspaper that comes in. maybe they pick it up in the grocery store. we have to really be everywhere. social media platforms. on any screen. billboards, yard signs, door to door organizing, phone calls, text messages. show up at parades. show up at county fairs. we try to build a surroundsound environment so people here from trusted messengers and we assume that just because you say something similar doesn t mean everyone has heard it. on you have to say it over and over and that is what it will take. we have to cut through the noise. trump is trying to confuse people. he s trying to throw people off. we need to bring people s focus back to what affects them directly. their freedom. to make their own decisions about their own body. living in a democracy and who is fighting for them, fighting special interests and bringing down costs. trump promising wealthy voters whatever they want. that contrast does resonate with people, but you have to go where the voters are and not expect them to come to you. you have been nodding in agreement. my last question to you is if president biden were to come to greene county and ask your advice on what he should say to voters, what would you tell him? that is a good question. i guess just to be honest with him and what he plans to do with the voters. listening to them, the most important thing, listening to the voters and what their issues are and being able to address those. i know if president biden were to come to greene county, they would be ecstatic. i can t tell time, so we actually have about 90 seconds l left. same weston to you. what would you say to team biden? what would you say they need to work on or watch out for? we love president biden w coming to our state because he does listen to people and they move toward him. we also have local candidates. 97 out of 99 assembly districts covered with local candidates. we are organizing everywhere. our website, if anyone wants to help us organize, volunteer, chip in. i love what president biden does which is really dig into what he is doing and wants to do. he announced a $3.3 billion investment by microsoft in a community where trump showed up and promised the sun, moon, and stars with a golden shovel and never did anything. that contrast early lands for people wondering what job they will be working over the next 10 years. when president biden does something it clicks. we love the president s visit, we hope they keep coming and we think we can draw a real contrast with trump who talks big, delivers nothing and tries to ward it all for himself instead of serving the people. i think it is guaranteed president biden and vice president harris will be back in wisconsin multiple times before election day. thank you both very time very much for coming to the e last word. we will be right back. when i was diagnosed with h-i-v, i didn t know who i would be. but here i am. being me. keep being you. and ask your healthcare provider about the number one prescribed h-i-v treatment, biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in many people whether you re 18 or 80. with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to undetectable and stay there whether you re just starting or replacing your current treatment. research shows that taking h-i-v treatment as prescribed and getting to and staying undetectable prevents transmitting h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your healthcare provider. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. no matter where life takes you, biktarvy can go with you. talk to your healthcare provider today. citi s industry leading global payments solutions help their clients move money around the world seamlessly in over 180 countries. and help a partner like the world food programme as they provide more than food to people in need. together, citi and the world food programme empower families across the globe. nothing dims my light like a migraine. with nurtec odt, i found relief. the only migraine medication that helps treat and prevent, all in one. to those with migraine, i see you. for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of episodic migraine in adults. don t take if allergic to nurtec odt. allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. it s time we all shine. talk to a healthcare provider about nurtec odt from pfizer. that is tonight s last word. the 11th hour with stephanie ruhle starts now. tonight, hunter bide
greg: thank you emily, michael and the audience. i love you and good night. [applause] trace: good evening. i m trace gallagher and it s 8:00 and los angeles and this is america s fox news at night. [ indiscernable crosstalk ] trace: breaking tonight, brand-new video of anti- protester telling jews they wish hitler was still here. i am confident. trace: hunter biden guilty on all three gun challenges and the president sun facing nine counts of tax in california. if he is convicted in california , his alts were go way up with president biden s pledge to not pardon his son and we will read what you have to say in the nightcap . remember the california medical medical middle school student fallback and now he and his family kicked out of their school altogether. we begin with the very awkward video that has raised a very awkward question, does joe biden have the mental capacity and physical stamina to do the job? live in dc with more on the question everyone is asking. good evening kevin. reporter: depending on your perspective, watching the president appear frozen stiff during yesterday s juneteenth celebration was either an excusable momentary pause or a shocking reminder of the many and growing concerns around his age and acuity. some questioning the wisdom of his continued candidacy at all including nate silver, the famed polling guru recently noted on next if biden still struggling in august, needs to consider stepping aside. there is this from the atlantic as liberal columnist writing biden remains a comprehensively weak weighed down by the same liabilities that burden him from the start beginning with the largest and completely unfixable one. at 81, much too old for run for president but mr biden still has his supporters. the group won t pack down say it will raise $25 million for support among young voters leaning heavily into the student lone forgiveness talking point and fairly popular among some if the husband though shot down by the courts. polling by the ap suggests forcing taxpayers to cover student lone debt approved by someone else is deeply unpopular with the majority of americans. trace: thank you kevin. let s bring it new york post reporter and thank you both for coming on. i want to play this video of joe biden freezing up at the juneteenth event and replaying it because i want to keep the video up and red you what nate silver, he said biden still trailing by three points in the swing states and a pretty big underdog. nanas not to consider alternatives and sometimes all you get to choose from a different type of bananas but biden hit a new all-time low in approval and in this he also said the biden should step down and that was supposed to be on there. the whole context is the confidence of this man lydia, keeps getting lower. james carl s dad said they don t predict elections and that s clearly what they re trying to figure out. the problem is you can t just swap out candidates for another but the country needs a name recognition and a person with experience and there should be a whole courtship period where the presidential candidate tries to win over voters and the chance look at the candidate with gavin newsom and i don t think the american people want to shock on wedding where the groom is shot down at the last minute. one other point is joe biden loves being first lady and really pushing joe biden to keep running so i don t know if it s up to biting biden. maybe the private jet plays a role. trace: he writes the following, two biden keeps trotting out in a barrage of voters and there s still plenty of time left and it is now june . reassurance? he only wants to thwart trump and stay alive. that s the whole thing, what is the message amber? the biden campaign is struggling to figure that out and they see these numbers they say the numbers on top of economy and immigration get worse and trotted out this week immigration executive order can from both progressive base of the democratic party or moderate voters he s trying to bring to his side. even his former press secretary said he should stop running on his accomplishments because arguably there are not any and make the election about donald trump. that s a problem too because now his whole line about trumping a convicted convicted felon is out the window is because so is his child. trace: rachel maddow had this to say. i know it s a cliché but hitler was elected and talking about putting millions of people in camps in the united states. trace: by the way she thinks she s among those place in those camps. the drama here is a very high level. the drama is off the charts. irony is rachel maddow worried about the weaponization of the justice system which is very ironic because thrilled to see the justice system weaponizing against donald trump and now afraid it will happen to her. donald trump talking about migrant camps for those illegal immigrants and a massive immigration problem and the idea she would somehow link that to limiting free-speech ate have to say it s very self-important to assume if he s elected that he s facing wars in a crisis in the southern border and he will prioritize rachel maddow? i don t buy it. trace: we hear all the time and here s a clip from nancy pelosi we think is important to watch. why weren t the national guard there to begin with? that was not a question they don t know and i take responsibility for not having them. trace: nancy taking a little bit of blame for january 6 takes a narrative. 10 seconds for a thought. it turns out everyone was lying when they said donald trump requested national guard troops and nancy pelosi bears responsibility. eight illegal immigrants with ties to isis have been arrested and coordinated sting operation in new york, los angeles and philadelphia. live with more on the national security implications of the southern border crisis. good evening. good evening and this is exactly what people are worried about. a federal source tells fox fox news the eight nationals of tajikistan with suspected ties to isis all arrested by ice and fbi in new york, philadelphia and los angeles. to giga stand a 7000 miles away from the southern border and fox told all eight of the nationals crossed illegally into the u.s. and received for vetting by dhs . we re no derogatory information on them was flagged. with potential ties to terrorism and national security concerns flagged later on after they were apparently released into the u.s. and in a joint statement, fbi and dhs confirmed the arrest as the fbi recently described in public bulletins, u.s. the heightened threat and fbi continue working around-the-clock with our partners to identify, investigate and disrupt potential threats to national security now the fbi and our sources have not said when and where the eight nationals cross the u.s. border but our sources confirmed to us they did cross illegally. trace: a standby bill if you wood for us. trace: commonsense department very pleased to giga s and nationals in custody but common since concerned about what happened before they were in custody because when they cross the southern border illegally from to giga stand the former soviet republic they were said to be fully vetted. really? over the past three months, jihadist from to giga stand involved in eight when usually high of terrorist attacks including the attack on a concert hall that killed a hundred and 45 so when dhs is fully vetted, common since would like to know what that means. where did they cross and why did they come? where did they go? it appears there were zero red flags or zero derogatory information from these eight people until one of them was caught on fbi wire talking about bombs and that s derogatory information. and there in a highly vetted environment and the system is like getting id before entering a bar. dhs will continue working around the clock to disrupt threats to how many got a ways have gotten away? commonsense things the best vetting is letting the sun wedding walk freely into the u.s. along with former fbi agent all of you joining us and nicole, are you surprised these illegal immigrants have ties to isis? unfortunately i m not surprised and sadly this is the tip of the iceberg. this is not shocking. hope for the best but expect the worse. we have no idea who is in our country right now and there millions of people and the fact these individuals happen to be caught, were very lucky for that but this is what keeps fbi agents up at night. i m still in contact and they are drastically concerned because this is a customs issue into the united states but becomes an fbi issue attacked and when you think these countries allowing the individuals to come into our nation to give a heads up with iran, china and russia. where they just say, hey, here s a heads up? that s insane and these individuals are not vetted. trace: it s dangerous and you see these guys talk to them as they come across and we don t know where they re coming from we don t know where they re coming from and it s scary. what comes from my border contacts the most the vetting is inadequate at the border. guys from iran, toshiko stan and syria and there s no database to match these guys even if they get fingerprinted, the only way they know about criminal history if they ve committed a crime in the united states. not sharing database records on syrian citizens so the u.s. still mask cash in release single adult men into the united states and we seen in san diego and the only country on the face of the planet that does this and it s remarkable. trace: most of those down here the cities have any kind of legal recourse against the state of california and sanctuary policies? this is a high-risk environment and it seems the city and states have zero recourse. if i was a professor and a law school class i would say having the fingers on her pulse and reality in real life i would say who will bring the case? san diego or los angeles or san francisco? naming a city that s irreparably harmed by this unmitigated on surveillance loose emigration which inevitably can lead to a percentage of criminals. find meet one city that will say we will go ahead and go after the biden administration and it s not right. trace: may be someone texas would. nicole and tom former acting ice director said the whole concept is built gnosis better than anybody but they pay extra money because they want to get in and get got away and does that keep you up at night? absolutely and these individuals coming to harm us are being funded and they don t need the benefits from the united states but all they care about is getting here and wreaking havoc we are at high interest levels and we must be alert and aware and the only that that will change is closing the border and this administration proven over and over it s not their priority and you need to remember that on november 5th. trace: why do these people want to disappear into the united states? thus a terrifying question. easier than ever to be caught and released most of them seek a border patrol knowing will be arrested and maybe get a free ticket to new york so why would you go off in the middle of nowhere to sneak into the united states and often times i have a criminal record or maybe something like these guys. trace: these guys made a lot of news. a sheriff in ohio. i m okay with it. i believe if you murder somebody the death penalty. if you molest children or her children, the death penalty. i think terrorism, death penalty sell drugs to someone who dies, death penalty. trace: talking about illegal immigration for the most part and does he have a point there and they say it s unrealistic. everyone has a choice to be proactive and preserve life or be reactive and do your best to repair. what the sheriff is saying is we are done repairing. let s be proactive as nicole parker talked about, the extensive investigations and let s not put in a situation where the only option is to repair families that have been destroyed. trace: great panel and thank you all. hunter biden found guilty and jury returned a verdict earlier today and begs the question will he go to prison? live in wilmington, delaware with more on this. good evening to you and i was in the courtroom and a tense scene as the guilty read three times with the sitting sun now a convicted felon. estimate video of hunter biden leaving a nearby hotel with members of his family just a few hours after that verdict was red and gave a hug to a member of his security detail thinking people after the verdict though clearly this verdict came quicker than they wanted. hunter biden jurors believe he knowingly lied when he said he wasn t addicted to drugs. hunter today after court said the following, i m more grateful for the love and support i experience this last week from my family and friends and community and i m disappointed by the outcome. of recovery is by the grace of god and blessed to experience that gift one day at a time. jurors only to liberated for three hours. before finding him guilty. fox news poker juror number 10 who said this case is not complicated. and no one is above the law so that did not play a factor and was not politically motivated. trace: special counsel prepared to enter a plea deal with hunter biden less than a year ago in delaware and he won and his case was about lying and breaking the law. ultimately this case was not just about addiction but about the illegal choices the defendant made while in the throes of addiction and it was these choices and the combination of guns and drugs that made his conduct. hunter could face up to 25 years but sentencing likely in october but with that the special council was ready for it in california to take hunter biden to trial on those tax crimes although that could end in a plea deal for right now september 5th and los angeles not far from where you are trace, hunter biden going to trial number 2. trace: david life for us in delaware. thank you. let s bring in cash, special council interviewed by choctaw had to say. there is not many countries in the world where the son or daughter of said country would get prosecuted in their judicial system. you have the president of the united states who is living embodiment of the rule of law even with respect to his only living son. trace: he embodies the role of law. what you think? look at the author of that statement he singularly got reversed on monumental cases and he is not receiving any special treatment. this was the one time the system of law had a chance to go through the two-tiered system of justice and adjust the conviction stage. the guilt and sentencing stage is the most important part of the process to complete the repair to the system of justice and we faces a stiff sentence. i handled dozens of these cases as a federal public defender and nine thousands wrought last year and the average sentence for this conviction is 63 months in federal prison? let s see how that shakes out in october. trace: that s my last question. will he go to prison? everyone arguing it s a victory for the justice system needs to go look at at the federal sentencing guidelines. in federal court, regarding sentences for all crimes the dictates of judges what recommended sentence is. every federal judge must review the mandatory guidelines and you must status by statutory obligations and there is a departure up or down. i represented individuals charged with this in every single one of them went to prison for multiple years so hunter biden, we will see. trace: thank you server. coming up anti-semitism on full display with one processor saying he wishes hitler was still here. in the nightcap , president joe biden says he will pardon his son but the question is will he? even if the california case goes against hunter and looking at real jail time, do you think a pardon is still in the mix? yes, no, and why. accent instagram instagram. we re coming right back. choosing a treatment for your chronic migraine - 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more - can be overwhelming. so, ask your doctor about botox®. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they even start. it s the #1 prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment. so far, more than 5 million botox® treatments have been given to over eight hundred and fifty thousand chronic migraine patients. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. don t receive botox® if there s a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. in a survey, 92% of current users said they wish they d talked to their doctor and started botox® sooner. so, ask your doctor if botox® is right for you. learn how abbvie could help you save on botox®. t mobile s 5g network connects a hundred thousand delta employees so they can make every customer feel like they ve arrived before they ve left the ground. this is how business goes further with t mobile for business. trace: breaking news. retired army captain declared the winner overcrowded republican field is a trust endorsement and the 11th hour, face off against the incumbent in november for a critical seat with the balance of power in the senate as we know very close and will keep her eyes on what s going on there in the silver state and bring you breaking news updates as they come into the show. in the meantime anti- israel protesters orchestrating a day of rage for gaza and new york city and the protesters were the ugliest of anti-semitic comments directly said to jewish people. ashley s live with more on this and good evening. those trying to mourn those met with this. [ indiscernable crosstalk ] [ indiscernable crosstalk ] according to the new york post, hateful vitriol spewed by an unidentified protester but not the only incident that caused an alarm as pro- palestinian reportedly waved a banner that said long live october 7th enchanted israel, go to hell. mayor had this to say. there was no room for hate and it doesn t matter if you go to a church or synagogue or a muslim house it s not who we are and what we stand for. trace: clashes broke out on ucla campus between police and pro- palestinian demonstrators that try to set up camp in the original cleared in early may and ucla officials say 27 people arrested late monday and six officers injured in those clashes. trace: live in new york thank you and let s bring in the star of netflix s skin decision pro- israel activist and founder of the ndg hatred movement the project ceo from goldstein and thank you from coming on. i want to play some video our correspondent walking through the music festival in the aftermath describing the horrific scenes in this if we had the sound up go through step-by-step and show how absolutely awful and horrific this was. now i want to cut to the sound of the protesters outside the exhibit in new york and watch. [ chanting ] [ chanting ] trace: do these people know what they are saying is there really that much hate? they absolutely do and they re showing up outside of a memorial for the victims of october the seventh enchanting they want to do it again and again and what was so scary is not only these were pro- hamas but the organization s funding these protests run off campus like american muslims for palestine in their leadership connected to hamas and some of the leaders in amp tied to money laundering to work for the hamas terrorist group and none of this would be possible without the constant media misrepresentation of what s happening in gaza that s normalizing this violence and dehumanizing the victims and humanizing the hamas terrorist group. trace: a very good point and i want to play this. he s talking about hitler. i wish hitler were still here. [ indiscernable crosstalk ] how do you answer that? he does not look like of the aryan race so hitler would ve taken him out. trace: as one of those things where you can t tell these people because they think they know it all and would not tell you what happened to women in palestine in these arab countries because they won t hear that. here s a protester confronting a rabbi a ucla. watch. go back to poland. where are you from? born in la. show your face? trace: going batch to the back to the college campuses and back to new york city and to cities across the country it will be a long summer and you will hear this all summer and people who are jewish will be victimized all summer long. i do think that is true but on the flipside i think the crazier the protesters get, the more patriotic i see our youth get in vocals american get and bring it all out into the light and nothing disinfects like sunlight. trace: here is one more protesters shouting down a vice chancellor at ucla. look. you have to say when ucla trying to negotiate with these people, maybe they made a mistake. it s amazing we re still attempting to negotiate with people who support terrorism and to sheila s point, these people are not progressive but regressive and claim to support human rights and yet they support a society is llama society that hangs gays and murders women and uses its own children as suicide bombers and this movement is orwellian and upside down and pushing their limits and testing the limits to see if a law enforcement what they will do and how much longer they will be on the streets. congress has to take this seriously and investigate what s happening in terms of funding and the have to defund these demonstrations and hold those who are committing crimes really accountable for what they re doing. trace: thank you bulls. coming up, remember the medical middle school student who said he was barred from giving a patriotic school election speech? major update to that story and it s not good for the 13-year-old. you need to hear what the school jested next. still ahead, kids day is made when a transit worker allows him to make a transit announcement and a pair of travelers bug out. the next viral videos next. approval decisions. in fact, if you ve had credit challenges and missed a payment along the way, you re more than five times more likely to get approved for the newday 100 va cash out loan. no one knows veterans like newday usa. choose advil liqui-gels for faster, stronger and longer-lasting relief than tylenol rapid release gels because advil targets pain at the source of inflammation. so for faster pain relief, advil the pain away. trace: an update to a story we brought you a few weeks ago that the california middle school student barred from delivering a patriotic school election speech now says he was expelled for violating the parishes christian code of conduct. let s bring in unified school district president and board certified medical doctor. thank you both for coming on. jimmy was running for commissioner of patriotism and spirit and wanted to have patriotism in his speech and the principal told him this. told me to remove everything regarding patriotism so i immediately knew no, i m not gonna do that because i knew that was wrong. trace: came on the show and said he would fight for his cause and the school wrote him a letter today, a saint bonaventure catholic school, this decision because they kicked him out of school as a result of serious violations of the christian code of conduct and the parent electronic communications policy. take the kid out of school because he disagreed with you? it s absolutely insane and truth is a christian code of conduct and he is a future leader. it s sad that having that bad of retaliation on someone and patriotism is the love of one countries or state and this is exactly what he is doing. i think he s taking a stance and a beautiful representation to adults who won t take the same stance. trace: it wasn t just him. they kicked out the rest of the family ate want to play this because this is fascinating. san francisco sideshows and it s interesting because you see these videos and it s a car on fire down the street spinning and a lot of young people involved and apparently injuries and police having a hard time and yet they go on because they don t have the resources and you can see they don t have the resources to stop them and it s dangerous. a nightly occurrence in san francisco and la and chaos and lawlessness because city leaders refused to prosecute anything and they re telling people to stand down otherwise when you look it s a major tourist hotspot and a place that has hundreds of thousands of people every day and probably should have a large police contingent and where are they? someone told them to stand down and people are getting hurt people getting struck by cars and ejected landing headfirst. this is a public health hazard and it s embarrassing making california as a whole and san francisco look like a lawless third world area and now are being made fun of. trace: it really is crazy. florida had a big hospice situation leak in fort myers the person holding hostages there was a sniper up there and i want to play this video and a little intense because the sniper takes a shot at the guy holding the hostages and watch how this plays out. what concerns do you have? trace: the sheriff got the guy to just talk and keep his head up and shot him through a computer screen and right through the head and save the hostages and no one knows what would ve happened because this guy was not in his right mind and it s one of those things where you wouldn t see this. it s sad and unfortunate but for florida cackles people get to go home to their families and a message sent here we have gavin newsom taking away a prop that s meant to protect us and a catch and release system that they re not allowing our own sheriffs to do their job and it s really unfortunate right now the lawfulness here sheriffs to music hero and i wish california would follow the lead and allow us to protect our citizens. trace: people can t do their jobs because they won t let them. issuing a fiery statement condemning child gender transition a coalition and conservative organizations calling on medical professionals to stop promoting transgender medical treatments for children. this is interesting and based on a large study done by the national service in the uk with single payer health system looking at evidence of harm and they didn t really see any evidence of benefit and found evidence of harm. i am a researcher and one of my jobs and i focus on medical safety and for anything done for children, an extra level of safety required so what happens when you do something irreversible like modifying their anatomy, that is not something you can go back later and regret so the child can t 100 percent know for sure that s what they want then you defer it and wait until they are in adults. trace: that s good advice. appreciate it. trace: first up and tonight s viral videos. attention all passengers in coach 257. maple is our next station. trace: nicely done. the dream came true when a transit worker in toronto made the announcement and the kid did not disappoint to make the announcement was a huge thrill because he often plays transit simulator games and take his routes very seriously. here is what not to do when staying in a hotel in thailand. open for a split second when their room was taken over by moths. in this horror movie like scenario, can be seen covering the entire room and a hotel employee came to sort out the situation with the headlamp and bat in the travelers moved to another room. if you have a viral video, share it. here we go. what helps officials continue to say president biden won t pardon his now convicted son but if he gets time in the slammer, if you think a have a change of heart? let them know we will read your responses coming up next in the custnightcap . and 5g solutions from t-mobile for business. t-mobile connects 100,000 delta airlines employees, powers tractor supply s stores nationwide with reliable 5g business internet, and partners with pga of america on game changing innovation. this is how business goes further with t-mobile for business. [sfx] water lapping. [sfx] water splashing. [sfx] ambient / laughing. trace: we are back with the nightcap . tonight s topic is pardon me. hunter biden convicted in delaware in the meantime facing nine counts of tech tax crimes in california. heavy ruled out a pardon? yes. trace: he keeps saying he will not pardon his son and maybe he won t need to but if hunter gets sentence, he go back on his word? my son is here in the studio tonight for the first time and in such a situation i would pardon him lost a child and a wife and another son to cancer. he s not the guy who would want to see his other son go off to prison and if i were him, i would pardon him. it s no question that he will pardon him no matter what. trace: he s reverse course on a lot of things so why would he not? if the trial happens in california, let s be real because criminals get away from everything here. or they plea bargain this think. i think he won t pardon him because it will be approving the laws the law because if he does, whole inconsistency think which we see a lot of. i agree 100 percent and i think he will lower the sentence whatever it is. trace: not me. pardoned all the way. he s out and that s the end of it. 94 percent. he will deny that he would not pardon him and he will at least lower his sentence which he never promised not to do. what father would not? he is not coherent enough but his handlers will. as a politician he will protect his secrets. absolutely because needs him to bring home the bacon. thank you for joining the nightcap and we will see you back here tomorrow night. look at that! the broccoli was fantastic. that broccoli! i think some of them were six, seven pounds. i am obsessed with olay s retinol body wash. with olay retinol body wash, 95% of women had visibly renewed skin. it makes my skin feel so smooth and moisturized. see the difference with olay. whether dad s vehicle is his prized possession or the family hauler. he needs to protect it. this father s day, give him the gift of weathertech. from laser-measured floorliners and cargo liner to keep his interior pristine. to seat protector to guard against stains and sunshade to block harmful uv rays. the cupfone perfectly secures his phone while driving. order these american made products or a gift card at wt.com. happy father s day! won t necessarily explode under donald trump. neil: we will see. thank you very much. da i m dannaa perino with judges jenny and,e richard fowler, jee watters and greg gutfeld 5:00 in new york city and this is the 5.
the rachel maddow show starts right now. hi, rachel. hi, yen. thanks very much. much appreciated. thanks to you at home. really happy to have you here. we have an interesting show for you tonight. particularly glad you re here for it. we re going to start a ways back as we sometimes do. when allied soldiers came ashore on the coast of france on the beaches of normandy for the d-day invasion, they opened up a new western front against the nazis in europe. and that of course was a shock to the germans. the operation overlord, the d-day invasion, it relied on the element of surprise. and the germans really were shocked. they had been occupying france for four years at that point. they the installed a collaborationest regime that they assembled from pro-fascist and pro-nazi forces inside france, so the collaborationists and the nazis together were ruling france and they had been for years. there was a french resistance to the nazi rule and the collaborationists, but the nazis and their puppets were definitely in charge. they were actually heading into year five of being in charge. they were really settled in, in france. and then here comes this shock arrival. this invasion. hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions of allied troops landing on the beaches and the cliffs of the northwest of france. and they are clearly planning to take it all back. the d-day invasion, the allied invasion, started on june 6th. now, on this date, on june 10th, 1944, just four days into the d-day invasion, the germans were reacting. they had been, of course, shocked by the initial invasion. but a few days into it, they now realized the scale of what they were up against and had started scrambling their units from all over france, turning all the available german troops in france toward the northwest of that country to try to stop the allied advance. and that included a nazi ss panzer division that had been in the south of franz. that division was ordered to essentially traverse the whole length of the country, head north to where the allies were advancing from the beaches of normandy. and on their way north through france, toward the new allied front lines, the new western front, this panzer division stopped in a village called oradour. pro-nazi french collaborators had told them, they told this panzer unit that the french resistance was active in this town. and they told them that the french resistance in that town had killed a nazi officer. and in response, that panzer unit decided, yes, they were on their way to the north of france to join the new western front and the, you know, the battle for the whole war, to try to shore up the german lines against the big allied invasion, but they decided on their way there, they would stop and do something in oradour. they would destroy that entire village and everyone in it. that panzer unit rounded up every single man, woman, and child in that village. they even rounded up random people who didn t live in the village but were nearby or who had the misfortune to be passing through the village when this nazi unit made this decision. that nazi unit killed every human being in oradour. or everyone they could find. they killed 643 civilians. a vast majority of them women and children. they used machine guns and they burned them alive. they looted the entire village, and then they tore down the village as best they could. they razed it. oradour. this is what it looks like today. still in ruins. the french decided after the war that they would never rebuild. they would leave the ruins, preserve them as they were left at the end of the war, as a memorial to what the nazis did. and we have these photos of what oradour looks like literally today, because this morning, the president of france and the president of germany visited the ruins at oradour to commemorate what they call the martyrdom of that village, to remember what happened in europe, in france, under fascist occupation. now, this is not the first time that french president emmanuel macron has visited oradour. actually, ten days before he was first elected president, he went there. he visited the village just before he was elected president. he visited in the company of the man who was then the last living survivor of that massacre. i said the nazis killed everyone in the village, at least everyone they could find. the nazis did kill over 600 civilians that day, but there were about half a dozen people from the village who, against all odds, in a miracle managed by hook or by crook to survive. the last one of the survivors was in his 90s when he brought emmanuel macron to oradour in 2017. that last survivor has since died. but today, macron went back to the site, to show this place, to germany s president. now, in 1944, about six months after oradour happened, the germans were still hanging on. but thanks in large part to the d-day invasion, they knew by the end of 1944 that they were losing. they were losing to soviet forces in the east, for sure. they were also simultaneously losing to the allied forces coming in from the west. once the allies opened that new western front with the d-day invasion, they started pressing their advantage against the nazis everywhere. not only liberating france, they clearly intend to liberate everywhere the nazis have taken over. they re pressing toward germany itself. hitler knows that his military is on the ropes. it cannot sustain the losses they re taking on both the eastern and western fronts. and so about six months after d-day, about six months after oradour, hitler decides he s going to mount a surprise of his own. he decides he s going to mount a huge german counteroffensive in belgium against the allies. the allies are basically closing in on germany s own borders and when hitler musters hundreds of thousands of men to mount a counteroffensive against them in the forests of belgium, it absolutely is a surprise to the allies. nobody thought germany still had it in them. everybody thought not everybody, but a lot of people thought the war was going to be over by christmas that year. where did the germans muster 400,000, 500,000 men to mount this new counteroffensive, but they did. that german counteroffensive started in mid-december 1944. it began a six-week-long battle that would be the single deadliest battle of the entire war for the u.s. military. aside from just the brutal toll of that battle, that was the battle of the bulge, that battle also came with its own astonishing and unforgettable atrocity. it was another german panzer unit much like the one that killed the entire population of that french village. it was an ss panzer unit in belgium. and they ended up in the very outset of that surprise german counteroffensive, they ended up ambushing a bunch of americans. and the result of it was they took custody of a large group of american prisoners of war, unarmed american p.o.w.s. and these p.o.w.s, again, they had surrendered. they had no weapons. the nazis lined up those americans in a field, the americans have no weapons. they have surrendered. they have their hands above their heads. they re p.o.w.s, but the nazis just massacred them in the field, they mowed them down with machine gun fire. and like at that village of oradour, what is almost as unbelievable as what the nazis did there was the fact there were somehow miraculously some survivors. there were some american gis who had also been lined up in that field, who nevertheless lived. american gis who played dead, who hid under the dead bodies of their comrades, who managed in the end to drag themselves into the woods to get away. and what happened to them? you will not believe me when i tell you this, but it would not be long before a sitting united states senator would vehemently object to those men giving testimony about what they saw. about what they survived, about what happened to their platoon mates, to the other men in that battalion. the other p.o.w.s who were massacred by those nazis. a sitting u.s. senator tried to block the american soldiers who survived that massacre from giving testimony about it in congress. he said the american people shouldn t hear it. he said it would be inflammatory. it would inflame the public against the nazis who killed all of those unarmed american p.o.w.s. i find it absolutely insane to think about, but this became a very strange thing in american domestic politics. i mean, there were unrepentant leftover nazis in germany after the war. they were trying to make the allies and america in particular the bad guys from world war ii and maybe that is understandable when you think about unrepentant nazis who just lost the war, but you would not believe it, the thing that s amazing is not that there were leftover nazis who were trying to do this. the thing you wouldn t believe is they enlisted a lot of americans to help them in that project. including taking a stand against the american soldiers who survived that p.o.w. massacre and demanding that the nazis who did it should be set free. this became a cause celebre in the right wing press at the time. and it helped launch the national career, the rocketship ascendance of arguably the most radical and controversial figure in republican electoral politics in the last 80 years before donald trump. while he was swimming in these very dark waters, darker than what seems possible for something in mainstream american politics he would go on to lead a movement of millions of followers who were increasingly radicalized by his increasingly radical rhetoric and tactics over time. his fellow republicans were both repelled by him, horrified by him, while they also wanted in on some of the massive political energy and fanatical devotion he attracted. they thought very seriously about putting him forward for the presidency, and the reaction among close observers of him and his tactics look so much like what you re seeing in the american press today about the fear of a second trump term, you wouldn t believe that it isn t just a straight up rerun. in his time, the people who stood up against him mostly got mowed down in politics by the strength of his fanatical following. that happened for a very long time. until eventually, ultimately, it stopped happening. and the forces against him prevailed. and i m telling you this for two reasons. number one, this is the thing that i have been working on for the past year. my podcast, rachel maddow presents ultra, now has a season two, and it is out today. episode one is out today. you can get it anywhere you get podcasts. if you don t usually listen to podcasts, if you take out your phone right now, open the camera on your phone, and point it at that weird looking little circular square thing on your screen, you click on the little box that pops up on your phone, it will bring you right there so you can listen to it. you can listen to it for free. it s free to listen to. there are eight episodes of this all together. episode one is out today. i hope you may want to listen. i have been working really hard on it. i m really proud of it, but i hope you like it. i hope you ll check it out. that s one of the easons i m telling you this story. i have been working on this story, i have been working in general on stories about other times in our american history that we have dealt with really terrible threats to the country. where we have confronted really radical people with really radical designs to undo the fundamental things that make us who we are as a country who nevertheless get into political power and attract large followings. this has happened to us before. and the reason i have been working on this for the past couple years, the reason i have been working on these projects is because for me, i feel like i really need to learn this stuff and fast, for me, there is a real urgency to learn these stories now. from when we have contended with terrible challenges before, particularly when we re talking about powerful americans advocating for authoritarianism or just flat out embodying it. particularly when it s about selling factually unhinged conspiratorial lies to the american public and half the public is mortified, mystified by that, but the other half of the public is super energized by it and they not only believe these lies, they kind of become their whole new reason to live. the public gets bifurcated like that into earth one and earth two where some people are based in the reality based community and some people are based in a different place, and that place is emotionally satisfying to them, and radicalizing them, and it takes over their lives. we are living through a moment like that right now with what is ascendant on the american right, but we have lived through it before. and i feel like i m racing to learn these stories about americans who have fought these kinds of fights before us for the simple reason that i feel like i need their ideas about how to fight it. we need their ideas about how to fight these things. we need to see what worked and what didn t when americans faced threats like this before. and it doesn t mean that fighting them always works. sometimes they get away with a lot of this stuff, and sometimes people take on incredible risk and danger to themselves. sometimes people risk their lives or give up their lives to fight these things, but knowing the track record of americans who have stood up against these kinds of dark and authoritarian and anti-democratic forces knowing who else has tried it and what s happened to them is helpful for us calibrating our available responses now. and knowing what to expect when we confront these dark movements. so that is why i have been working on this, and that is why that story is on my mind tonight. but it is also what s on the news right now. i mean, one of the remarkable things about seeing the french president with the german president at the ruins of oradour today in france is that they took that tour of the ruins of that village today, that preserved memorial to what fascism did in europe, they took that tour this morning. just one day after the german far right and the french far right won shockingly large proportions of the vote in the european elections that were held yesterday. in both of those countries, the parties that did so well have ties not only to the old fascist participaties of world war ii era germany and france, they both have current ties, including financial ties, to vladimir putin and russia. when president biden and president macron of france met in france these past few days for the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of d-day, president biden said that he and president macron agreed on a new plan to seize russian assets in the g-7 countries and use those seized russian assets to provide even more support to ukraine. as ukraine continues to struggle against the russian invasion of that country. president biden is just back from france for these d-day commemoration ceremonies and from those meetings with president macron. he s just back but heads back to europe the day after tomorrow to go to the g-sev summit, among other things to rally the other nations to support this new plan, to support ukraine as much as possible including this new plan that he and macron have just agreed to involving seizing russian assets to help ukraine even more. and, you know, in the american aperture here, what s going on in our politics while president biden is trying to, you know, rally the free world, trying to strengthen our alliances as much as possible to lead collective international will against a rogue dictatorship that has invaded one big european country already and has its sights set on more, here at home, literally while president biden and other american leaders were headed off to europe for the 80th anniversary of d-day, while they were heading off to europe for that, what was happening in the american congress? a fifth of the republicans in congress just voted that we should leave our allies altogether. that we should break up the big western alliance, that we should defund nato. and i think nobody really paid attention to this vote because this legislation was put forward by a very fringe member of congress, a member of congress who is known for her publicity stunts and she s therefore she is easy to ignore. but it wasn t just her. 46 republicans voted for this thing. a fifth of the republicans in congress last week voted to defund nato. don t just forget being the leader of the free world, forget the whole idea of there being a free world at all. they saved that for the anniversary of d-day. 46 republicans voting to defund nato. and as radical as that may seem, particularly when you think about where nato came from and why, the wing of the republican party that is pushing for this stuff, i mean, on its face, it seems unlikely they would have such sway. every few days we get a new mugshot of one of their leading lights because so many of them have been charged with crimes. today, it was their presidential candidate s personal lawyer, who has had his law license suspended, who is under indictment, rudy giuliani s mugshot just released today after he was arraigned in arizona. you can put it up on the wall with all of the other maga republican mugshots we have accrued over the past year. their presidential candidate is a convicted felon. today he had to meet with the probation office in new york ahead of his sentences. people at his rallies not only wear tshirts and fly flags that have his mugshot on them, they started carrying signs and wearing shirts that now say they re proudly voting for the convicted felon. at a rally this weekend, their presidential candidate described members of the mob of his supporters who physically attacked congress and injured dozens of police officers, he described them in a speech this weekend as, quote, warriors. his warriors. people who took part in that mob attack on congress. his warriors. while a few days ago, two police officers who were both badly injured fighting hand to hand with that mob to defend congress, to defend the u.s. capitol, those two police officers were jeered and booed by republicans in the pennsylvania state legislature. they jeered them, turned their backs on them and walked out. these are two officers who survived that attack, they were literally injured fighting for their country, defending our seat of government against a violent attack. but the republicans who jeered at them and turned their backs on them and walked out, they want the attackers freed. and they don t want to hear what these survivors of the attack had to say. don t want to hear from the survivors and the witnesses. you want the attackers set free. we are going through some weird stuff right now. but we have gone through weird stuff before. and i do think that we can learn from it and that we urgently need to. that s why i have been working on all these projects. that s why i ve got this new podcast out and i hope you listen. but it s not just the distant past. in the very recent past when we got donald trump in the white house in the first place, you might remember what preceded that shock election result here in the united states in 2016. our shock presidential election result in 2016 was preceded that year by some shocking and surprisingly right wing election results in europe. including the brexit vote in britain which happened just months before trump s surprise presidential victory here. i asked ben rhodes to please join us here tonight in the wake of what is now, again, another round of what seemed to be surprisingly right wing election results in europe this weekend. was it right in 2016 to see right wing election results in europe as a harbinger of what was coming for us in the fall of 2016? as president biden balances his campaign responsibilities right now with back-to-back trips to europe, he just got back from europe, he heads back to europe again on wednesday. do the election results from europe right now, this weekend, have hallmarks that tell us anything about what to expect here and about how weird this is all going to get? president biden clearly sees our connections to europe right now as absolutely key to the future of the world. does what s going on in european politics right now tell us something to expect about the future of our world here? joining us now is ben rhodes. he s former deputy national security adviser to president obama, cohost of the pod save the world podcast. really great to see you. thanks for making time to be here tonight. good to see you. first, let me ask you for some of our viewers who may not have paid close attention to what was happening in the european elections this weekend, let me ask you two questions about them. do you think they re important for us to pay attention to? and can you just give us a rough characterization of what happened in those elections? sure. these were elections for the european parliament. so the european union wide parliament, so the only election that takes place every few years in which all of europe votes. it s a good barometer of where opinion is in europe. the two headlines are the far right made noticeable gains in the two largest countries in europe, france and germany. in france, the national front party, the far right party that used to be on the fringes of french politics, emerged as by far the largest vote getter in this election and to build on what you re saying, this is a party that is not only far right, they have ties to russia. they have gotten a $10 million loan from russia in the past decade. in germany, the afd party, which has ties that go back into the kind of neonazi past of germany, they got over 15% of the vote, not a huge total, but very alarming given the source here. i want to be clear, in other parts of europe, the center did hold. i think the real concerning factor is in the two most important countries, france and germany, we saw these far right gains. do you think that it s right to look back at 2016 and see some of what was going on in politics in europe as a harbinger for the shock election result we got in the fall of 2016 when trump won? do you think these election results should be read as a harbinger of what s coming down the pike for us this year? i absolutely do, rachel. the commonality between the brexit vote, the vote by the uk to leave the european union in 2016 and the trump election was that it was a it was a surprise. people did not think brexit was going to win the campaign and they campaigned on a kind of right wing populist message. the slogan was take back control. they ran against globalists and liberal elites and against immigration and was very trumpy in its message, frankly. it kind of foreshadowed what we ended up dealing with in the fall here. i think the warning in this election, and you ask mead a question when i came on to talk about my book a few years ago about far right parties and their commonalities around the world, you asked what lesson should we learn. i always think about that. the lesson i take from this one is that their incumbent parties in germany and france that have defended essentially the status quo, emmanuel macron has been a defender of the european union. olaf scholz has been a defender of the liberal order. people are not listening to that message right now. you cannot defeat these parties, these populist insurgents be being the defenderoffs the stat status quo, but you have to tap into people s dissatisfaction with globalization, dissatisfaction with inequality. sense that things are slipping out of control. it s not enough to say we re the responsible adults here. you have to kind of get down and have a different message for how things are going to change. i think that s the warning sign that joe biden should hear, not enough to run on status quo here. not enough to defend even the things we think are very important. you have to meet people where they are, and people are frustrated. ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to president obama. ben, thank you for making the time. i feel like when we need to like widen the lens a lot and look at america in the world, you re almost always one of the first people i think of. thank you for being here. thanks, rachel. i can t wait to check out the podcast. i appreciate it. thank you. we have much more ahead here tonight. do stay with us. shop etsy for thoughtful pieces made by real people to bring a little something extra to the ordinary. find items that add wow to walls and make you fall in love with your family room again. when you want one-of-a-kind pieces to refresh your home. etsy has it. sometimes your work shirt needs to be for more than just work. like when it needs to be a big, soft shoulder to cry on. which is why downy does more to make clothes softer, 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( ) ( ) this one will never see the light of day. all right. nitty-gritty here. in the aftermact of the 2020 election, georgia became this kind of benchmark for principled republicans refusing to go along with improper, un-american machinations from president trump. governor brian kemp, brad raffensperger, two very conservative republicans, both nevertheless stood up to personal pressure from trump to overturn president biden s win in georgia. and of course, all that pressure trump brought to bear on georgia republicans and the ways in which those republicans resisted, that formed the basis for fulton county district attorney fani willis filing a huge rico case against trump and 18 of his codefendants in georgia. that s one story of the state of georgia after the 2020 election. republicans standing up, the record of them standing up and what they had to stand up against forming the basis for this sprawling, damning criminal indictment. the other story of georgia since that election is all the work that pro-trump republicans have done to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. to make sure nobody can ever again get in the way of trump seizing georgia s 16 electoral votes, no matter what the votes say. the most obvious thing georgia republicans have done is use every tool at their disposal to derail fani willis prosecution of trump. in the latest development in that three republican appointed judges have just put the whole case on hold while they take their time considering whether fani willis should be disqualified from the case. thus guaranteeing that the georgia prosecution will definitely not go forward against trump before the election. but that s only the start. in georgia s most populous county, fulton county, one republican elections board member last month refused to certify the primary results there. because you know, elections are scary. with the help of lawyers from a pro-trump think tank, she has now filed a lawsuit seeking the power to block the certification of elections which would of course throw november s results in georgia into chaos. which is presumably the point. meanwhile, just north of fulton county, republicans recently started agitating to take over an elections board in cherokee county. now, the board there, like other counties in georgia, has always been evenly split between democrats and republicans, but republicans in cherokee county are no longer okay with that. they wanted a full scale republican takeover, when that was blocked, they comp with an ingenious new plan. they decided they would replace one of the democratic commissioners who had been nominated with their own choice. their own choice for a democrat. a new guy that none of the local democrats have ever heard of. but don t worry, the republicans who run cherokee county swear this guy they picked is definitely a democrat. the atlanta journal constitution reported that the republican cherokee county commission chairman, quote, assured the board that the new member is a democrat, even if the local democratic party is unfamiliar with him. i assure you, he s definitely on your team. i know you have never met and i picked him, but trust me. pinky promise. meanwhile, at the state elections board in georgia, republicans there just started writing a new rule that would allow county elections boards to conduct a, quote, reasonable inquiry before they certify any election results. so instead of signing off on election results as county election boards are now required to do by law, they would be empowered instead to investigate those results as they see fit. the journal constitution notes that, quote, the proposed rule doesn t say what a reasonable inquiry would entail before certifying an election. yeah, why would you specify that? you want every election denying republican county elections board member in georgia just making it up as they go along, calling their own behavior reasonable. while the presidential election potentially hangs in the balance. speaking of that state elections board, one of its republican members was ousted last month, one of its republican members was ousted, after trump reportedly spent months calling georgia republicans insisting that that election board member had to go. because that person was not backing trump s lies about the 2020 election. and so of course, the guy had to go. trump s personal involvement in remaking the georgia state elections board is just one of the revelations in new reporting from rolling stone. their new piece is headlined georgia is our laboratory. inside trump s plan to rig 2024. it details how trump s allies are working to make sure there will not be a straightforward election result in georgia this year, given georgia s swing state status that absolutely could be a deciding factor in how the election is going to go down. what is happening there? what is happening to try to stop what is happening there? one of the reporters on that rolling stone piece joins us next. stay with us. ay with us citi s industry leading global payments solutions help their clients move money around the world seamlessly in over 180 countries. and help a partner like the world food programme as they provide more than food to people in need. together, citi and the world food programme empower families across the globe. we re trying to save the planet with nuggets. empower families across the globe. because we need the planet. and we also need nuggets. impossible. your best defense against erosion and cavitieseat. is strong enamel. nothing beats it. i recommend pronamel active shield because it actively shields the enamel to defend against erosion and cavities. i think that this product is a game changer for my patients. it really works. organic soil from miracle-gro has grown me the best garden i have ever had. good soil, and you get good results. look at that! the broccoli was fantastic. that broccoli! i think some of them were six, seven pounds. love you. have a good day, behave yourself. like she goes to work at three in the afternoon and sometimes gets off at midnight. she works a lot, a whole lot. we don t get to eat in the early morning. we just wait till we get to the school. so, yeah. right now here in america, millions of kids like victoria and andre live with hunger, and the need to help them has never been greater. when you join your friends, neighbors and me to support no kid hungry, you ll help hungry kids get the food they need. if we want to take care of our children, then we have to feed them. your gift of just $0.63 a day, only $19 a month at helpnokidhungry.org right now will help provide healthy meals and hope. we want our children to grow and thrive and to just not have to worry and face themselves with the struggles that we endure. nobody wants that for their children. like if these programs didn t exist me and aj, we wouldn t probably get lunch at all. please call or go online right now with your gift of just $19 a month. and when you use your credit card, you ll receive this limited edition t-shirt to show you re part of the team that s helping feed kids and change lives. if you re coming in hungry, there s no way you can listen to me teach, do this activity, work with this group. so starting their day with breakfast and ending their day with this big, beautiful snack is pretty incredible. whether kids are learning at school or at home, your support will ensure they get the healthy meals they need to thrive. because when you help feed kids, you feed their hopes, their dreams, and futures. kids need you now more than ever. so please call this number right now to join me in helping hungry kids or go online to helpnokidhungry.org and help feed hungry kids today. . the ultimate authority is the voter. the secretary of state was re-elected by the voters of the state by a larger margin than any other excuse me. order. order. by a larger margin than any other state-wide office. the voters order. have demonstrated their faith and therefore i do not believe that at present, we have the authority to oversee or investigate the secretary of state. georgia s board of elections gathered to discuss larging an investigation into georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger who had the chimerty to say no when donald trump insisted he flip the results of the election. the lone democrat spoke out against doing this unprecedented investigation. she was loudly shouted down. in a new article titled georgia is our laboratory, inside trump s plan to rig 2024, rolling stone reports this. quote, the former president and his supporters have been making concrete step by step progress in shaping electoral processes to his benefit. across the state, maga die hards are devoting considerable resources to purging voting rolls, intimidating election officials, employing dirty tricks and ousting appointees who haven t been initiated into the cult of trump. it s the state where the republican party has total control over the levers of power. trump loving elements of the georgia gop have wielded that advantage in a crusade to turn election conspiracy theories into policies. it s an alarmingly anti-democratic experiment that trump planned and much of the republican party hope to take national. joining us now is adam ronsly, the reporter co-by-lines on the sprawling piece. thank you for being here. thanks for having me. so what are some of the steps that trump and his allies have taken to change the electoral process in georgia? so one of the most alarming ones that a source who has discussed this issue with trump told us, a republican attorney, is they re planning to challenge the election result regardless of the result. you know, we think of the threat to elections from trump s behavior in 2020 as only occurring in the event that trump loses. you know, at the current state of polling, trump is ahead in georgia, if you believe the polling, but what republican attorney who discussed this with trump told us is that, quote, you can t let the left get away with this cheating just because it didn t succeed, air quotes around cheating. and the plan is to challenge the result regardless of the outcome. and the intent behind that is essentially a permanent delegitimization of the election process. it s heads, i win, tails you lose. and i think you had mentioned this a little bit in your intro, is that one of the things people should be paying close attention to is that refusal to certify in the fulton county board of elections in the presidential primary. because one of the things that s very, very notable about that is that the attorneys who filed that lawsuit work for america first policies institute, which is a very trumpy organization filled with former trump folks. and what you see in those kinds of processes is the legal january 6th in miniature. essentially you re taking someone who is, you know, acting beyond their brief and trying to essentially insert themselves into the counting and, you know, assessment of vote tallies. adam, is this actually a fight in georgia? you note, i think, importantly, that georgia s a place where republicans control all of the levers of power. we just played the sound of one democratic member of the state elections board getting shouted down when she objected to what they were trying to do in terms of targeting raffensperger. is this fight joint where there is pushback against what they re doing or are they essentially running the table by changing processes to their own benefit? you know, they definitely have quite a built-in advantage. and i think that s why georgia relative to other battleground states is particularly interesting because it is more so than perhaps any other state a fight for the soul of the republican party. particularly when it comes to their faith in free and fair elections. and yeah, even folks like brian kemp, who was an absolute obstacle to trump s attempt to, you know, illegally overturn the election in georgia, brian kemp signed sb-202, a law that allows for a range of, you know, sort of procedural chicanery. joe biden called it jim crow in the 21st century. you know, even folks who have proven themselves to be obstacles to some of the more overt aspects of it sometimes will just go along to get along. and so they definitely do have an advantage. and they are running the table in certain ways, but you do see folks like you mentioned earlier, like ed lindsay, whose resignation letter we obtained in the story. people like that, you still do have these kind of principled republicans who are willing to stand up for what they believe in, but as you saw with the case of ed, you know, he had to resign under a great deal of pressure from not just president trump but from the grassroots of the party who believe in a lot of election conspiracies. yeah, the bare fact that a presidential candidate is personally lobbying to remove individual state elections board members ought to be on the front page of every paper of the country. been reported by adam, reporter at rolling stone. adam, the by-line reporters on the piece, georgia is our laboratory, thank you for helping us understand this. love to have you back. thanks so much for having me, rachel. i appreciate it. we ll be right back. stay with us. time stops. 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( ) gain flings. seriously good scent. let s get the rest of these plants in. organic soil from miracle-gro has grown me the best garden i have ever had. good soil, and you get good results. this soil will blow you away. it s the martha stewart of soil. to give your teeth a dentist clean feeling. start with a round brush head. add power. and you ve got oral-b. round cleans better by surrounding each tooth to remove 100% more plaque. for a superior clean. oral-b. brush like a pro. the promise of america is freedom, equality, but right now, those pillars of our democracy are fragile and our rights are under attack. reproductive rights, voting rights, the right to make your own choices and to have your voice heard. we must act now to restore and protect these freedoms for us and for the future, and we can t do it without you. we are the american civil liberties union. will you join us? call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your gift of just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day, will help ensure that together we can continue to fight for free speech, liberty and justice. your support is more urgently needed than ever. reproductive rights are on the line and we are looking at going backwards. we have got to be here. we ve got to be strong to protect those rights. so please join the aclu now. call or go to my aclu.org and become an aclu guardian of liberty for just $19 a month. when you use your credit card, you ll receive this special we the people t-shirt member card magazine and more to show you re part of a movement to protect the rights of all people. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for everyone to have a voice and equal justice. and we will never stop because we the people, means all of us. so please call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. organic soil from miracle-gro has grown me the best garden i have ever had. good soil, and you get good results. look at that! the broccoli was fantastic. that broccoli! i think some of them were six, seven pounds. could have been the heat, i suppose. temperatures were over 100 degrees at his outdoor campaign rally in las vegas yesterday. so hot, six people had to go to the hospital, and another two dozen had to get medical treatment on site. could have been the heat, i suppose. could also maybe have been that he was nervous about the fact that he was less than 24 hours away from his first meeting with his new york state probation officer. that meeting could be particularly nerve-racking for him because, you know, one of the things a probation officer asks you after you re convicted of felonies is if you have been associating with anyone who has a criminal record. that s worth noting because if he is ultimately sentenced to probation next month while he s on probation, he would not be allowed to associate with anyone with a criminal record. for a lot of people, that wouldn t be a big deal. for him, that s a big deal. that particular restriction eats away at his very close social circle. so maybe that was all distracting him. i don t know. he maybe had a lot i don t know. whatever the reason, he decided to venture into new territory in his campaign speech yesterday, less than five months out from the election. this is an important swing state. he decided with the land locked citizens of las vegas needed to hear about from him in order to be persuaded to vote for him was his fear of boats. heavy boats, boats with batteries near sharks. you know, nevada sharks. i know you have heard it happened. you may have seen a headline or scrolled past it on a social media feed. have you actually watched it? uncut, straight through, watched it unfold? it is very much worth watching. it s astonishing. my favorite part is the people you can see at the rally behind him who are really trying to follow along but who clearly have no earthly idea what uncle ramble standers is on about. just watch this. what would happen if the boat sank from its weight? and you re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there s a shark that s approximately ten yards over there? by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. did you notice that? i watched some guys justifying it today. well, they weren t really that angry. they bit off the young lady s leg because of the fact that they were they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was. these people are crazy. he said there s no problem with sharks. they just didn t really understand a young woman swimming. really got desmaded and a lot of other people. i said 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, the boat is sinking. do i stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do i jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted because he didn t know the answer. he said, nobody has ever asked me that question. i said i think it s a good question. i think there s a lot of electric current coming through the water, but what i would do if there was a sharko you get electrocuted, i would take electrocution every time. i m not getting near the shark. we re going to end it for boats. we re going to end that, we re going to end it for boats. we re going to end it for boats. vote accordingly. call leaffilter today. and never clean out clogged gutters again. leaffilter s technology keeps debris out of your gutters for good. guaranteed. call 833.leaf.filter today, or visit leaffilter.com. 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with absorbine pro, pain won t hold you back from your passions. it s the only solution with two max-strength anesthetics to deliver the strongest numbing pain relief available. so, do your thing like a pro, pain-free. absorbine pro. that does it for me tonight. tonight. much appreciated. thanks to you at home. really happy to have you here. we have an interesting show for you tonight. particularly glad you re here for it. we re going to start a ways back as we sometimes do. when allied soldiers came ashore on the coast of france on the beaches of normandy for the d-day invasion, they opened up a new western front against the nazis in europe. and that of course was a shock to the germans. the operation overlord, the d-day invasion, it relied on the element of surprise. and the germans really were shocked. they had been occupying france for four years at that point. they the installed a collaborationist regime that they assembled from pro-fascist and pro-nazi forces inside france, so the collaborationists and the nazis together were ruling france and they had been for years. there was a french resistance to the nazi rule and the collaborationists, but the nazis and their puppets were definitely in charge. i they were actually heading intoc year five of being in charge. they were really settled in, inf france. and then here comes this shock arrival. this invasion. hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions of allied troops landing on the beaches and the cliffs of the northwest of france. and they are clearly planning to take it all back. the d-day invasion, the allied n invasion, started on june 6th. now, on this date, on june 10th, 1944, just four days into the d-day invasion, the germans were reacting. they had been, of course, shocked by the initial invasion. but a few days into it, they now realized the scale of what they were up against and had started scrambling their units from all over france, turning all the available german troops in france toward the northwest of that country to try to stop the allied advance. and that included a nazi ss panzer division that had been in the south of franz. that division was ordered to essentially traverse the whole length of the country, head north to where the allies were advancing from the beaches of hr normandy. and on their way north through france, toward the new allied front lines, the new western front, this panzer division stopped in a village called oradour. pro-nazi french collaborators had told them, they told this panzer unit that the french resistance was active in this town. and they told them that the french resistance in that town had killed a nazi officer. and in response, that panzer unit decided, yes, they were on their way to the north of france to join the new western front and the, you know, the battle for the whole war, to try to shore up the german lines against the big allied invasion, but they decided on their way e there, they would stop and do something in oradour.g they would destroy that entire village and everyone in it. that panzer unit rounded up every single man, woman, and child in that village. they even rounded up random people who didn t live in the village but were nearby or who had the misfortune to be passing through the village when this nazi unit made this decision.t that nazi unit killed every human being in oradour. or everyone they could find. they killed 643 civilians. a vast majority of them women and children.or they used machine guns and they burned them alive. they looted the entire village, and then they tore down the village as best they could. they razed it. oradour.ed this is what it looks like today. still in ruins. the french decided after the war that they would never rebuild. they would leave the ruins, preserve them as they were left at the end of the war, as a memorial to what the nazis did. and we have these photos of what oradour looks like literally today, because this morning, the president of france and the president of germany visited the ruins at oradour to commemorate what they call the martyrdom of that village, to remember what happened in europe, in france, under fascist occupation. now, this is not the first time that french president emmanuel macron has visited oradour. actually, ten days before he was first elected president, he went there. he visited the village just before he was elected president. he visited in the company of the man who was then the last livini survivor of that massacre.s i said the nazis killed everyone in the village, at least everyone they could find.ge the nazis did kill over 600 civilians that day, but there were about half a dozen people from the village who, against all odds, in a miracle managed by hook or by crook to survive. the last one of the survivors was in his 90s when he brought emmanuel macron to oradour in 2017. that last survivor has since died. but today, macron went back to the site, to show this place, to germany s president. now, in 1944, about six months after oradour happened, the germans were still hanging on. but thanks in large part to the d-day invasion, they knew by the end of 1944 that they were losing. they were losing to soviet forces in the east, for sure. they were also simultaneously losing to the allied forces coming in from the west. once the allies opened that new western front with the d-day invasion, they started pressing their advantage against the nazis everywhere. not only liberating france, they clearly intend to liberate everywhere the nazis have taken over. they re pressing toward germany itself. hitler knows that his military is on the ropes. it cannot sustain the losses they re taking on both the eastern and western fronts. and so about six months after d-day, about six months after oradour, hitler decides he s going to mount a surprise of his own. he decides he s going to mount a huge german counteroffensive in belgium against the allies. the allies are basically closing in on germany s own borders and when hitler musters hundreds of thousands of men to mount a counteroffensive against them in the forests of belgium, it absolutely is a surprise to the allies. nobody thought germany still had it in them. everybody thought not everybody, but a lot of people thought the war was going to be over by christmas that year. where did the germans muster 400,000, 500,000 men to mount this new counteroffensive, but they did. that german counteroffensive started in mid-december 1944. it began a six-week-long battles that would be the single deadliest battle of the entire war for the u.s. military. aside from just the brutal toll of that battle, that was the battle of the bulge, that battle also came with its own astonishing and unforgettable atrocity. it was another german panzer unit much like the one that killed the entire population of that french village. it was an ss panzer unit in belgium. and they ended up in the very outset of that surprise german counteroffensive, they ended up ambushing a bunch of americans. and the result of it was they took custody of a large group of american prisoners of war, unarmed american p.o.w.s. and these p.o.w.s, again, they had surrendered. they had no weapons. the nazis lined up those americans in a field, the americans have no weapons. they have surrendered.ve they have their hands above their heads. they re p.o.w.s, but the nazis just massacred them in the field, they mowed them down with machine gun fire. and like at that village of oradour, what is almost as unbelievable as what the nazis did there was the fact there were somehow miraculously some survivors. there were some american gis who had also been lined up in that field, who nevertheless lived. american gis who played dead, who hid under the dead bodies of their comrades, who managed in the end to drag themselves into the woods to get away. and what happened to them? you will not believe me when i tell you this, but it would not be long before a sitting united states senator would vehemently object to those men giving testimony about what they saw. about what they survived, about what happened to their platoon mates, to the other men in that battalion. the other p.o.w.s who were massacred by those nazis.p. a sitting u.s. senator tried to block the american soldiers who. survived that massacre from t giving testimony about it in congress. he said the american people shouldn t hear it.e he said it would be he inflammatory. w it would inflame the public to against the nazis who killed alf of those unarmed american p.o.w.s.na i find it absolutely insane to think about, but this became a very strange thing in american domestic politics. i mean, there were unrepentant r leftover nazis in germany after the war. they were trying to make the allies and america in particular the real bad guys from world war ii, and maybe that is understandable when you think about unrepentant nazis who just lost the war, but you would not believe it, the zi thing that s amazing is not that there were leftover nazis who were trying to do this. the thing you wouldn t believe is they enlisted a lot of americans to help them in that project. including taking a stand against the american soldiers who survived that p.o.w. massacre ha and demanding that the nazis who did it should be set free. this became a cause celebre in the right wing press at the e time. and it helped launch the national career, the rocketship ascendance of arguably the most radical and controversial figure in republican electoral politics in the last 80 years before donald trump. while he was swimming in these very dark waters, darker than what seems possible for something in mainstream american politics he would go on to lead a movement of millions of followers who were increasingly radicalized by his increasingly radical rhetoric and tactics over time. his fellow republicans were both repelled by him, horrified by him, while they also wanted in on some of the massive political energy and fanatical devotion he attracted. they thought very seriously about putting him forward for the presidency, and the reaction among close observers of him and his tactics look so much like what you re seeing in the american press today about the e fear of a second trump term, you wouldn t believe that it isn t just a straight up rerun. in his time, the people who stood up against him mostly got mowed down in politics by the strength of his fanatical following. that happened for a very long time. until eventually, ultimately, it stopped happening.en and the forces against him prevailed. and i m telling you this for two reasons.ll number one, this is the thing that i have been working on for the past year. my podcast, rachel maddow presents ultra, now has a season two, and it is out today. episode one is out today.t you can get it anywhere you get podcasts. if you don t usually listen to podcasts, if you take out your phone right now, open the camera on your phone, and point it at that weird looking little on l circular square thing on your screen, you click on the little box that pops up on your phone, it will bring you right there so you can listen to it. you can listen to it for free. it s free to listen to. there are eight episodes of thio all together.ei episode one is out today. i hope you may want to listen.e i have been working really hard on it.n i m really proud of it, but i hope you like it. i hope you ll check it out. that s one of the easons i m telling you this story. i have been working on this story, i have been working in general on stories about other v times in our american history that we have dealt with really terrible threats to the country. where we have confronted reallyr radical people with really radical designs to undo the fundamental things that make us who we are as a country who nevertheless get into political power and attract large followings. this has happened to us before.p and the reason i have been working on this for the past couple years, the reason i have been working on these projects is because for me, i feel like i really need to learn this stuff and fast, for me, there is a real urgency to learn these stories now.no from when we have contended with terrible challenges before, ha particularly when we re talking about powerful americans advocating for authoritarianism or just flat out embodying it. particularly when it s about selling factually unhinged conspiratorial lies to the american public and half the public is mortified, mystified by that, but the other half of the public is super energized by it and they not only believe these lies, they kind of become their whole new reason to live. the public gets bifurcated like that into earth one and earth two where some people are based in the reality based community and some people are based in a different place, and that place is emotionally satisfying to them, and radicalizing them, and it takes over their lives. we are living through a moment like that right now with what is ascendant on the american righth but we have lived through it before. and i feel like i m racing to learn these stories about americans who have fought these kinds of fights before us for the simple reason that i feel like i need their ideas about how to fight it. we need their ideas about how to fight these things. we need to see what worked and what didn t when americans faced threats like this before. and it doesn t mean that fighting them always works. sometimes they get away with a lot of this stuff, and sometimes people take on incredible risk and danger to themselves. sometimes people risk their lives or give up their lives to fight these things, but knowing the track record of americans who have stood up against these kinds of dark and authoritarian and anti-democratic forces knowing who else has tried it and what s happened to them is helpful for us calibrating our available responses now. and knowing what to expect when we confront these dark movements. so that is why i have been working on this, and that is why that story is on my mind tonight. but it is also what s on the news right now. i mean, one of the remarkable things about seeing the french president with the german president at the ruins of oradour today in france is that they took that tour of the ruins of that village today, that th preserved memorial to what fascism did in europe, they took that tour this morning. just one day after the german far right and the french far right won shockingly large an proportions of the vote in the h european elections that were held yesterday. in both of those countries, the parties that did so well have ties not only to the old fascist parties of old world war ii era germany and france, they both have current ties, including financial ties, to vladimir putin and russia. when president biden and president macron of france met in france these past few days ma for the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of d-day, president biden said that he and president macron agreed on a new plan to seize russian assets inz the g-7 countries and use those seized russian assets to providn even more support to ukraine. as ukraine continues to struggle against the russian invasion of that country. president biden is just back from france for these d-day commemoration ceremonies and from those meetings with e president macron. he s just back but heads back to europe the day after tomorrow to go to the g-sev summit, among other things to rally the other nations to support this new plan, to support ukraine as muc as possible including this new plan that he and macron have just agreed to involving seizing russian assets to help ukraine even more. and, you know, in the american aperture here, what s going on in our politics while president biden is trying to, you know, rally the free world, trying to strengthen our alliances as much as possible to lead collective international will against a rogue dictatorship that has invaded one big european country already and has its sights set on more, here at home, literally while president biden and other american leaders were headed off to europe for the 80th anniversary of d-day, while they were heading off to europe for that, what was happening in the american congress? a fifth of the republicans in congress just voted that we should leave our allies altogether. that we should break up the big western alliance, that we should defund nato. and i think nobody really paid attention to this vote because this legislation was put forward by a very fringe member of congress, a member of congress who is known for her publicity stunts and she s therefore she is easy to ignore. but it wasn t just her.y 46 republicans voted for this thing.ca a fifth of the republicans in congress last week voted to defund nato. don t just forget being the leader of the free world, forget the whole idea of there being a free world at all. they saved that for the anniversary of d-day. 46 republicans voting to defund nato. and as radical as that may seem, particularly when you think about where nato came from and why, the wing of the republican party that is pushing for this stuff, i mean, on its face, it seems unlikely they would have such sway. every few days we get a new mugshot of one of their leading lights because so many of them have been charged with crimes. today, it was their presidential candidate s personal lawyer, wh has had his law license suspended, who is under indictment, rudy giuliani s w mugshot just released today after he was arraigned in arizona. you can put it up on the wall with all of the other maga republican mugshots we have accrued over the past year. their presidential candidate is a convicted felon. today he had to meet with the probation office in new york ahead of his sentences. people at his rallies not only wear tshirts and fly flags that have his mugshot on them, they started carrying signs and wearing shirts that now say rr they re proudly voting for the convicted felon. at a rally this weekend, their presidential candidate described members of the mob of his t supporters who physically w attacked congress and injured dozens of police officers, he described them in a speech this weekend as, quote, warriors. his warriors. people who took part in that mob attack on congress. his warriors. while a few days ago, two police officers who were both badly injured fighting hand to hand with that mob to defend congress, to defend the u.s. capitol, those two police officers were jeered and booed by republicans in the pennsylvania state legislature. they jeered them, turned their backs on them and walked out. these are two officers who survived that attack, they were literally injured fighting for their country, defending our seat of government against a violent attack. but the republicans who jeered at them and turned their backs on them and walked out, they want the attackers freed. and they don t want to hear what these survivors of the attack had to say. don t want to hear from the survivors and the witnesses. you want the attackers set free. we are going through some weird stuff right now. but we have gone through weird stuff before. and i do think that we can learn from it and that we urgently need to. that s why i have been working on all these projects. that s why i ve got this new se podcast out and i hope you listen. but it s not just the distant past. in the very recent past when we got donald trump in the white house in the first place, you might remember what preceded that shock election result here in the united states in 2016. our shock presidential election result in 2016 was preceded that year by some shocking and surprisingly right wing election results in europe. including the brexit vote in e britain which happened just months before trump s surprise presidential victory here. i asked ben rhodes to please join us here tonight in the wake of what is now, again, another round of what seemed to be surprisingly right wing election results in europe this weekend.y was it right in 2016 to see right wing election results in europe as a harbinger of what was coming for us in the fall o 2016? as president biden balances his campaign responsibilities right now with back-to-back trips to europe, he just got back from europe, he heads back to europe again on wednesday. do the election results from europe right now, this weekend, have hallmarks that tell us anything about what to expect here and about how weird this is all going to get?ut president biden clearly sees ouo connections to europe right now as absolutely key to the futureo of the world. does what s going on in european politics right now tell us something to expect about the future of our world here? joining us now is ben rhodes. he s former deputy national security adviser to president obama, cohost of the pod save the world podcast. really great to see you. thanks for making time to be here tonight. good to see you. first, let me ask you for some of our viewers who may not have paid close attention to what was happening in the european elections this weekend, let me ask you two questions about them. do you think they re important for us to pay attention to? and can you just give us a rough characterization of what happened in those elections?za sure. these were elections for the european parliament. e so the european union wide parliament, so the only electiop that takes place every few years in which all of europe votes. it s a good barometer of where opinion is in europe. the two headlines are the far right made noticeable gains in the two largest countries in europe, france and germany.rg in france, the national front party, the far right party that used to be on the fringes of french politics, emerged as by far the largest vote getter in g this election and to build on what you re saying, this is a party that is not only far right, they have ties to russia. they have gotten a $10 million loan from russia in the past decade. in germany, the afd party, which has ties that go back into the kind of neonazi past of germany, they got over 15% of the vote, not a huge total, but very alarming given the source here. i want to be clear, in other parts of europe, the center did hold.ur i think the real concerning factor is in the two most important countries, france and germany, we saw these far right gains. do you think that it s right to look back at 2016 and see some of what was going on in politics in europe as a harbinger for the shock election result we got in the fall of r 2016 when trump won? do you think these election results should be read as a harbinger of what s coming down the pike for us this year? i absolutely do, rachel. the commonality between the brexit vote, the vote by the uk to leave the european union in 2016 and the trump election was that it was a it was a surprise.a people did not think brexit was going to win the campaign and they campaigned on a kind of right wing populist message. the slogan was take back control. they ran against globalists and liberal elites and against immigration and was very trumpy in its message, frankly. it kind of foreshadowed what we ended up dealing with in the fall here. i think the warning in this election, and you ask mead a wa question when i came on to talk about my book a few years ago about far right parties and their commonalities around the world, you asked what lesson should we learn. i always think about that. the lesson i take from this one is that their incumbent parties in germany and france that have defended essentially the status quo, emmanuel macron has been a defender of the european union. olaf scholz has been a defender of the liberal order. people are not listening to that message right now. you cannot defeat these parties, these populist insurgents be being the defenders of the status quo, but you have to tapt into people s dissatisfaction e with globalization, dissatisfaction with inequality. sense that things are slipping out of control. it s not enough to say we re the responsible adults here. you have to kind of get down and have a different message for how things are going to change. g i think that s the warning sign that joe biden should hear, nots enough to run on status quo here. not enough to defend even the things we think are very t important. you have to meet people where they are, and people are frustrated.d ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to president obama.t ben, thank you for making the time. i feel like when we need to like widen the lens a lot and look at america in the world, you re le almost always one of the first people i think of.s thank you for being here. thanks, rachel. i can t wait to check out the r we have much more ahead here tonight.e do stay with us. her uncle s unhappy. i m sensing an underlying issue. it s t-mobile. it started when we tried to get him under a new plan. but they they unexpectedly unraveled their “price lock” guarantee. which has made him, a bit. unruly. you called yourself the “un-carrier”. you sing about “price lock” on those commercials. “the price lock, the price lock.” so, if you could change the price, change the name! it s not a lock, i know a lock. so how can we undo the damage? we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that s uncalled for. so let s get down to the nitty-gritty here. georgia became this kind of bench mark for principled republicans refusing to go along with improper, un-american machinations from president trump. governor brian kemp, brad raffensperger, two very conservative republicans, both nevertheless stood up to personal pressure from trump to overturn president biden s win in georgia. and of course, all that pressure trump brought to bear on georgia republicans and the ways in which those republicans resisted, that formed the basis for fulton county district attorney fani willis filing a huge rico case against trump and 18 of his codefendants in georgia. that s one story of the state of georgia after the 2020 election. republicans standing up, the record of them standing up and what they had to stand up against forming the basis for this sprawling, damning criminal indictment. the other story of georgia since that election is all the work that pro-trump republicans have done to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. to make sure nobody can ever again get in the way of trump seizing georgia s 16 electoral votes, no matter what the votes say. the most obvious thing georgia republicans have done is use every tool at their disposal to derail fani willis prosecution of trump. in the latest development in that three republican appointed judges have just put the whole case on hold while they take their time considering whether fani willis should be disqualified from the case. thus guaranteeing that the georgia prosecution will definitely not go forward against trump before the election. but that s only the start. in georgia s most populous county, fulton county, one republican elections board member last month refused to certify the primary results there. because you know, elections are scary. with the help of lawyers from a pro-trump think tank, she has now filed a lawsuit seeking the power to block the certification of elections which would of course throw november s results in georgia into chaos. which is presumably the point. meanwhile, just north of fulton county, republicans recently started agitating to take over an elections board in cherokee county. now, the board there, like other counties in georgia, has always been evenly split between democrats and republicans, but republicans in cherokee county are no longer okay with that. they wanted a full scale republican takeover, when that was blocked, they comp with an ingenious new plan. they decided they would replace one of the democratic commissioners who had been nominated with their own choice. their own choice for a democrat. a new guy that none of the local democrats have ever heard of. but don t worry, the republicans who run cherokee county swear this guy they picked is definitely a democrat. the atlanta journal constitution reported that the republican cherokee county commission chairman, quote, assured the board that the new member is a democrat, even if the local democratic party is unfamiliar with him. i assure you, he s definitely on your team. i know you have never met and i picked him, but trust me. pinky promise. meanwhile, at the state elections board in georgia, republicans there just started writing a new rule that would allow county elections boards to conduct a, quote, reasonable inquiry before they certify any election results. so instead of signing off on election results as county election boards are now required to do by law, they would be empowered instead to investigate those results as they see fit. the journal constitution notes that, quote, the proposed rule doesn t say what a reasonable inquiry would entail before certifying an election. yeah, why would you specify that? you want every election denying republican county elections board member in georgia just making it up as they go along, calling their own behavior reasonable. while the presidential election potentially hangs in the balance. speaking of that state elections board, one of its republican members was ousted last month, one of its republican members was ousted, after trump reportedly spent months calling georgia republicans insisting that that election board member had to go. because that person was not backing trump s lies about the 2020 election. and so of course, the guy had to go. trump s personal involvement in remaking the georgia state elections board is just one of the revelations in new reporting from rolling stone. their new piece is headlined georgia is our laboratory. inside trump s plan to rig 2024. it details how trump s allies are working to make sure there will not be a straightforward election result in georgia this year, given georgia s swing state status that absolutely could be a deciding factor in how the election is going to go down. what is happening there? what is happening to try to stop what is happening there? one of the reporters on that rolling stone piece joins us next. stay with us. stay with us are you still struggling with your bra? it s time for you to try knix. makers of the world s comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com the ultimate authority is the voter. the secretary of state was re-elected by the voters of the state by a larger margin than any other excuse me. order. order. by a larger margin than any other state-wide office. the voters order. have demonstrated their faith and therefore i do not believe that at present, we have the authority to oversee or investigate the secretary of state. georgia s board of elections gathered to discuss launching an investigation into georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger who had the temerity to say no when donald trump demanded he flip the results of the 2020 election in georgia. the lone democrat on that elections board spoke out against doing this unprecedented investigation of raffensperger. as you heard, she was loudly shouted down. in a new article titled georgia is our laboratory, inside trump s plan to rig 2024, rolling stone reports this. quote, the former president and his supporters have been making concrete step by step progress in shaping electoral processes to his benefit. across the state, maga die hards are devoting considerable resources to purging voting rolls, intimidating election officials, employing legal dirty tricks, and ousting appointees who haven t been initiated into the cult of trump. it s the state where the republican party has total control over the levers of power. over the last four years trump loving elements of the georgia republican party have wielded that advantage in a crusade to turn election conspiracy theories into policies. it s an alarmingly anti-democratic experiment that trump planned and much of the republican party hope to take national. joining us now is adam ronsly, the reporter co bylined on that sprawling piece. thank you for being here. thanks for having me. so what are some of the steps that trump and his allies have taken to change the electoral process in georgia? so one of the most alarming ones that a source who has discussed this issue with trump told us, a republican attorney, is they re planning to challenge the election result regardless of the result. you know, we think of the threat to elections from trump s behavior in 2020 as only occurring in the event that trump loses. you know, at the current state of polling, trump is ahead in georgia, if you believe the polling, but what republican attorney who discussed this with trump told us is that, quote, you can t let the left get away with this cheating just because it didn t succeed, air quotes around cheating. and the plan is to challenge the result regardless of the outcome. and the intent behind that is essentially a permanent delegitimization of the election process. it s heads, i win, tails you lose. and i think you had mentioned this a little bit in your intro, is that one of the things people should be paying close attention to is that refusal to certify in the fulton county board of elections in the presidential primary. because one of the things that s very, very notable about that is that the attorneys who filed that lawsuit work for america first policies institute, which is a very trumpy organization filled with former trump folks. and what you see in those kinds of processes is the legal january 6th in miniature. essentially you re taking someone who is, you know, acting beyond their brief and trying to essentially insert themselves into the counting and, you know, assessment of vote tallies. adam, is this actually a fight in georgia? you note, i think, importantly, that georgia s a place where republicans control all of the levers of power. we just played the sound of one democratic member of the state elections board getting shouted down when she objected to what they were trying to do in terms of targeting raffensperger. is this fight joint where there is pushback against what they re doing or are they essentially running the table by changing processes to their own benefit? you know, they definitely have quite a built-in advantage. and i think that s why georgia relative to other battleground states is particularly interesting because it is more so than perhaps any other state a fight for the soul of the republican party. particularly when it comes to their faith in free and fair elections. and yeah, even folks like brian kemp, who was an absolute obstacle to trump s attempt to, you know, illegally overturn the election in georgia, brian kemp signed sb-202, a law that allows for a range of, you know, sort of procedural chicanery. joe biden called it jim crow in the 21st century. you know, even folks who have proven themselves to be obstacles to some of the more overt aspects of it sometimes will just go along to get along. and so they definitely do have an advantage. and they are running the table in certain ways, but you do see folks like you mentioned earlier, like ed lindsay, whose resignation letter we obtained in the story. people like that, you still do have these kind of principled republicans who are willing to stand up for what they believe in, but as you saw with the case of ed, you know, he had to resign under a great deal of pressure from not just president trump but from the grassroots of the party who believe in a lot of election conspiracies. yeah, the bare fact that a presidential candidate is personally lobbying to remove individual state elections board members ought to be on the front page of every paper of the country. been reported by adam, reporter at rolling stone. adam, the by-line reporters on the piece, georgia is our laboratory, thank you for helping us understand this. thanks for doing this work. would love to have you back. thanks so much for having me, rachel. i appreciate it. we ll be right back. stay with us. stay with us i m gina. i want to talk to you about golo and how it has changed my life and how it can change yours too. like many of you i ve been dieting and failing half my life. and each time i would diet i would quit and my weight and health would get much worse. i had to do something. i saw a golo commercial, i talked to my doctors, and i ordered. like me, the golo success stories are real. give golo a shot. you won t be sorry. could have been the heat, i suppose. temperatures were over 100 degrees at his outdoor campaign rally in las vegas yesterday. so hot, six people had to go to the hospital, and another two dozen had to get medical treatment on site. could have been the heat, i suppose. could also maybe have been that he was nervous about the fact that he was less than 24 hours away from his first meeting with his new york state probation officer. that meeting could be particularly nerve-racking for him because, you know, one of the things a probation officer asks you after you re convicted of felonies is if you have been associating with anyone who has a criminal record. that s worth noting because if he is ultimately sentenced to probation next month while he s on probation, he would not be allowed to associate with anyone with a criminal record. for a lot of people, that wouldn t be a big deal. for him, that s a big deal. that particular restriction eats away at his very close social circle. so maybe that was all distracting him. i don t know. he maybe had a lot i don t know. whatever the reason, he decided to venture into new territory in his campaign speech yesterday, less than five months out from the election. this is an important swing state. he decided with the land locked citizens of las vegas needed to hear about from him in order to be persuaded to vote for him was his fear of boats. heavy boats, boats with batteries near sharks. you know, nevada sharks. i know you have heard it happened. you may have seen a headline or scrolled past it on a social media feed. have you actually watched it? uncut, straight through, watched it unfold? it is very much worth watching. it s astonishing. my favorite part is the people you can see at the rally behind him who are really trying to follow along but who clearly have no earthly idea what uncle ramble standers is on about. just watch this. what would happen if the boat sank from its weight? and you re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there s a shark that s approximately ten yards over there? by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. did you notice that? i watched some guys justifying it today. well, they weren t really that angry. they bit off the young lady s leg because of the fact that they were they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was. these people are crazy. he said there s no problem with sharks. they just didn t really understand a young woman swimming. really got decimated and a lot of other people. i said 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, the boat is sinking. do i stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do i jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted because he didn t know the answer. he said, nobody has ever asked me that question. i said i think it s a good question. i think there s a lot of electric current coming through the water, but what i would do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, i would take electrocution every single time. i m not getting near the shark. so we re going to end that. we re going to end it for boats. we re going to end that, we re going to end it for boats. we re going to end it for boats. vote accordingly. vote accordingly a slow network is no network for business. that s why more choose comcast business. and now, we re introducing ultimate speed for business our fastest plans yet. we re up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds. at no additional cost. it s ultimate speed for ultimate business. don t miss out on our fastest speed plans yet! switch to comcast business and get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. call today! all right, that s going to do it for us tonight. i told you tonight was going to be a show and a half. way too early with jonathan lemire is up next. donald trump has completed his presentencing interview with a new york probation officer after being convicted in his criminal hush money trial. what sources are saying about what happened during that private proceeding. plus authorities release a new mug shot of rudy giuliani as
that is tonight s the last word. the 11th hour with stephanie ruhle starts now. tonight, donald trump met his probation officer. we will look at a key step as sentencing approaches. the fate of hunter biden is in the hands of a delaware jury. nba legend steve kerr is here and why he speaking out about the stakes in the election as the 11th hour gets underway. good evening once again. we are 148 days away from election. today, one of the leading candidates for president met with his probation officer. donald trump brush off his guilty verdict set for a standard presentencing interview this afternoon, there was nothing standard about how this interview was held. trump got special permission to attend virtually from florida and to have his attorney todd blanche present. he s been complaining for months about it two tiered system of justice and he is right. is new public defenders pointed out today, most people do not get to login remotely from a resort in florida to talk to their probation officers. as for is what happens in these interviews, probation officers generally ask about financial resources, mental health, and any links to other convicted criminals. they also have to ask if you feel remorse for the crime you were convicted of. meanwhile, in delaware, the hunter biden firearms case went to the jury after both sides made closing arguments. hunter biden chose not to take the stand. here is ryan nobles with more. reporter: tonight, it s in the hands of the jury. six men and six women deliberating the fate of hunter biden, the first child of a sitting american president to be charged with a crime. many members of the first family in the courtroom throughout the trial. all of this is not evidence. gesturing around the courtroom and in the direction of first lady jill biden in the first row. people sitting in the gallery are not evidence he said adding no one is above the law. the special counsel s office use the president s son of lying on a federal back on check by checking the box claiming he was not an active drug user to purchase a gun. prosecutors used evidence from his laptop and called 10 witnesses, many describing hunter biden s frequent drug use including around the time he filled out the background check in october 2018. hunter biden s ex-wife testified she found drug paraphernalia inside his car in october 2018. his ex-girlfriend who was dating him at the same time singing hunter was smoking crack every 20 minutes or so. the evidence was personal. it was ugly. it was overwhelming he told the jury today. it was also absolutely necessary. defense attorney abbe lowell argued they focus too much on his drug abuse over a four year period and saying no one witnessed actual drug use during the window of time he purchased the gun. with that, let s do smarter with the help of our leadoff panel. pulitzer prize for investigative reporter with the washington post sam stein acerra veteran federal journalist and white house editor for political and a neighbor of carol. former new york prosecutor and civil rights attorney charles coleman jr. is here. you know it s a big night so you get first crack. donald trump met with his probation officer. help us understand the purpose of these interviews and how do they go and what do we know about what was asked in this one? when your probation officer will ask you questions, what they re trying to understand is what your setup is around your life. how do you live. what your financial resources are and what would be the impact of a particular sentence of a judge decides to send you to jail. are there people who depend on you? are you associating with other criminals which we know in the case of donald trump, he is. we could go down the long list. steve bannon, roger stone, michael flynn, the list goes on and on. one of the things a probation officer is looking to ascertain, and you talked about this, is whether you have any understanding and/or appreciation for the crime you re actually committed up. i think donald trump has a difficult tightrope when it comes to everything he said in the public around this persecution rather than what he knows is actually in the prosecution by the das office, and that will be something that will be hard to get around. the probation report is going to be something the judge takes into account when they make their decision around what sentence they ultimate ultimately oppose. they will make the recommendation and trump s attorneys will argue for as lenient of a sentence as possible. sam, donald trump has been arguing for months and months that there s a two cheered data tiered justice system and its benefiting him. he got to meet virtually with his probation officer. his lawyer was there and when he speaks at his rallies he s always saying i am doing this for you. i am standing here for you. but any trump supporters were in his position, they would not get the special privileges. why do they keep buying this? you are right. when you think back to the gag order that was imposed on trump at various points in the criminal case, that was almost done with reluctance compared to what it would ve been for any other person in the justice system. obviously, donald trump is a unique person in the justice system that he s running for president currently. it makes sense that some leeway is given to him. the justice system works in his favor and i would argue the second story, hunter biden s story, it is not a justice system. the presidents own department of justice is bringing a case against his son. if there was a thumb on the scale of the justice system on the part of president biden, one thing he would do it to alleviate the burdens on his son and maybe let it go away and the president sat back and watched this progress to the point where we will probably get a verdict in the next day or so. carol, get it s been a crazy last eight years and people have become desensitized. it is not even remotely normal for the presumptive gop nominee to be meeting with his probation officer. what is your reaction to this extraordinary moment in american history? i ve thought a lot about that and how numb the country has become to everything that we have watched in the last eight years. nobody can forget and yet we almost act like it was no big deal when then republican nominee for president, donald trump, was caught on live tape talking about grabbing women in the using a course word and saying he could get away with it because he was a celebrity. starting then and continuing on, it was like a starting gun of every other week, every other two weeks, revelations about donald trump as candidate and as president that made us all gasp and wonder, can he survive this? donald trump is the republican nominee for president again. he is the front runner in this race by many polls, and he is a felon who has been convicted of 34 counts of crimes in the state of new york. the city and the town, where he once ruled. all of us are like, oh, yeah, that s how it is. that s sort of the standard now for the last eight years. it s important for us all to step back and remember that no president and no former president has ever been charged with a crime and now we have one who has been convicted and is seeking to return to the white house. charles, an appellate lawyer wrote that donald trump s chances of winning an appeal are pretty slim. what do you think? i think so. when you talk about what it is to appeal a jury verdict, the first thing people need to understand its an rare occurrence that the system will look at the decision that is made by our constitution where you get a chance to have your case heard in front of a jury of your peers, which donald trump did, and override that decision absent some extreme miscalculation by the judge or extreme actions by one of the attorneys. judge merchan does not get enough credit for the way he ran this trial. i think he was aware that all eyes needed to be dotted and all his teas needed to be crossed and that s why he did on such a run such a tight ship to make sure there were as few issues for appeal as possible. that doesn t mean donald trump s attorneys won t seek to find an issue but the likelihood of being successful is slim to none. sam, dal bragg says he will testify before the house about the trump case but most likely not until after donald trump gets sentenced. he knows what he is going to face with house republicans. how do you think he will handle this? i mean, we knew the house republicans were going to do this. they signaled they want to protect donald trump and want to go after the prosecution. there has been overtures they want to defund jack smith for instance. bringing alvin bragg to the hill is something we should ve expected a long time ago. i m surprised they didn t push harder prior to this. i would point to the fact that a jury trumps peers made the determination he was guilty of 34 counts. that s the aspect of the american justice system that trump was right to defense and he was given defense. there will be questions about, who was on his team and funding them? what it comes down to is this is how the american justice system is designed to work. trump at his day in court and had his defense. that is that. the decision was made by a jury of 12 and you have to live with it that s what we do. charles, let s shift to what sam was talking about. the hunter biden case. what did you make of both sides, closing arguments, and hunter not taking the stand? it didn t surprise me that hunter biden did not take the stand for a number of reasons. number 1 comments difficult for hunter biden to give testimony in any way that will try to exonerate him or at least defend against those charges without either incriminating him or at least admitting publicly about his substance abuse. i think that is something he wanted to avoid. i think his team wanted to avoid that and if you are looking at this, it s something that would not of been well for the biden administration to have in the headlines. not that that has an impact on hunter s actual case or charges per se, but i think it was part of the calculus here. with respect to what you heard from the prosecution, this was straightforward. many legal experts myself included understand that when the special prosecutor on the case that joe biden allowed to stay on the case brought the charges, that is, if anything that we ve seen recently is a mass political prosecution we have seen. i say that because for these federal charges to be brought, you typically don t see that absent some additional violent events involving the actual handgun or the weapon that is in question. that s not the case here. hunter biden is not charged with that because we don t have those facts. robert hur decided to bring the charges against hunter biden and the case for the prosecution is relatively straightforward. none of this surprises me. what the defense did a closing argument is you work with the facts you have. they don t have gray facts so they have to call into question the time line. i don t know if that will be enough for a jury to either acquit him or result in a mistrial. sam, the president has already said he will not pardon his son. if he is found guilty, he could be taken into custody . how is the administration, campaign, going to react to this? they have been hands-off about a. they are not hiding the fact this is taking an emotional cole, mental pool, on the president. he is a there. when you ask about present enough, they are hands off. there s discomfort in the white house to even talk about the issue with the president himself. he does not want to discuss it. it s not that he doesn t think it s a political fallout but it s too raw for him. the question, will republicans tried to capitalize on a guilty verdict, and if so, what manifestation? we have a debate coming up. it s not beyond the realm that donald trump will not try to use something during the debate and what we ve been surprised to see is how little republicans are talking about the hunter biden trial including trump himself. it doesn t come up that much. it used to be a topic of discussion but not recently. you wonder if that s because they don t want to draw attention to trump s own legal mishaps or tested it out and realize there might be boomerang effect where people are sympathetic or empathetic to joe biden if you go after his son, part of what the issue is, issue of addiction. carol, no topic. your paper, the washington post , has this story out over the weekend about the trump ally with a quote post constitutional vision for a second term. the man s name is russell, what can you tell us about this? beth reinhard on our national investigative team for this great reporting that presages the future and right donald trump presidency. the kinds of people he is entrusting to make the plans for his new administration. he was a deputy omb director and had been in congress as a staffer for a long time and other federal agencies. he knows his way around the legislative and the executive parts of our government. he is using that knowledge to broadly expand the powers of the executive, if trump takes office. to the point of saying he will find a way for the justice department to prosecute and imprison those who he feels is wrongly gone after the president in the past including journalists. that includes political figures think the biden family members. he has said rather he is said to confidantes that he would work very hard to loosen the military s ability to take action at the president s command to stop protests that are against the president. to interfere perhaps in elections. the military would be an entity the president could send it to domestic situations and something we have avoided ever since the horrors of kent state for example. it s a person who believes in the unitarian executive theory but is proposing things behind closed doors. he may end up being the chief of staff for the president. he is proposing things that send a chill up the spine of those who really study democracy and its norms. here s my head scratcher. there s a lot of conservatives who say they do not like trump what they like his policies. these are the same people who are all about small government with limited power. this, this man and this plan. isn t that the complete opposite of small government, limited power? this is big government with ultimate power. well, i think one thing you have highlighted on your program consistently, if i can give you a hat tip, is the idea of the hypocrisy. the republican party for as long as i have been a reporter which i m embarrassed to tell you how long it has been, has always been about criminal justice and serious tough law enforcement. it s been the party of being concerned about foreign adversaries, rough it russia chief among them but that s all out the window now with trump as president. putin is a great guy and the new republican party. he is a fan of donald trump therefore he is awesome. getting tough on criminals? not important anymore because we really want to support certain criminals who have been unfairly, and to use this in quotation marks, unfairly persecuted. that is the line the republican party is pushing. again, this notion of big government as being anathema to the government party is out the window as well. if it suits donald trump. that s the litmus test for republicans who want to stay in power. people can vote how they like but it s our job to shine a light so people understand exactly who and what they are voting for. carol, was great to see you. sam, charles thank you. nine months into the war and five americans are still being held hostage by hamas. why the white house is considering a new strategy for negotiations. after months in a dead heat in the polls with trump, president biden is revving up his engines and maybe even changing lanes. the 11th hour just getting underway on a monday night. da. with absorbine pro, pain won t hold you back from your passions. it s the only solution with two max-strength anesthetics to deliver the strongest numbing pain relief available. so, do your thing like a pro, pain-free. absorbine pro. 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? nbc news has exclusive new reporting on a possible new strategy from the u.s. to negotiate the release of american hostages still held by hamas. it comes as we get new video the moment israeli forces rescued three hostages over the weekend. andrea mitchell has the latest. reporter: tonight, the dramatic moment when three of the four hostages were rescued. you can hear gunfire as officers approach a family home in the middle of a refugee camp. finding the hostages inside of back room. officers asking further names as the hostages answer back. andre, he says. the daytime mission leader resulting in a firefight the idf says as hamas seven fire on the hostages and rescuers as they escape. the high death toll of palestinians potentially complicating delicate cease- fire negotiations with hamas. secretary of state tony blinken in israel dominica must agree to a deal. israel accepted the proposal. the only party that has not accepted and the only one that has not said yes is hamas. that s who everyone is waiting on. reporter: they were taken during the terror attacks at the music festival. 26 years old who became the face of the hostage were. seen on the back of a motorbike being kidnapped. her boyfriend still held captive tonight. hugging her father and reunited with her mother who was terminally ill. a 21-year-old coming home just one day after his father died but arriving before his mother s birthday. i could not stop poking him. tomorrow is my birthday so i got my presence. thank you. a 40-year-old aunt 127. falling to his knees when he was reunited with his mom. while their celebrations in israel, and gaza there is morning. the hamas run gazan health ministry which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian death said 274 palestinians were killed in the rescue mission including 64 children, one woman telling our crew. my house is destroyed. reporter: this is nbc news reporting exclusively the u.s. is discussing a new move if cease-fire talks fail making a unilateral deal with of the most to release the remaining american hostages. negotiating through qatar and without israel. according to ginger current and former senior u.s. officials. my number 1 priority as secretary of state is to ensure the well-being of americans who are in harms way anywhere in the world. reporter: as your top priority, wouldn t indirect talks for the americans at least bring those americans home? the most effective way to achieve that, get them home, is through the proposal on the table. let s see if we get an answer from hamas. for more, peter baker white house chief correspondent for the new york times . is this a sign the white house is frustrated with the pace of negotiations between israel and hamas? obviously, it s been nine months and these american hostages have been there the entire time. the american government has deferred to the israeli government when it comes to dealing with the hostages. they have dual citizenship and israel is on the ground and united states is not. it suggests an in patients with the biden administration that its own hostage, american hostages, remain in limbo while netanyahu and hamas remain at odds over the cease-fire proposal. you heard secretary blank and say that it s hamas that has yet to accept this proposal. i think that s important point they want to make that israel has agreed to this despite the public ambiguity. right now, they re frustrated it s taking so long and seems to not be heading toward a conclusion and they seem to be willing to think of ways to get the americans at this point out if there s a way to do it. president biden is not the only one expressing frustration. benny gantz just resigned from israel s work cabinet saying it s a prime minister and he is standing in the way a real victory. what does that signal to you about the state of the war effort and prospects for new elections over there? it s a big deal and it s been remarkable to work cabinet has hung together as long as it did. benny gantz has run against netanyahu multiple times and the idea they sat together in this work cabinet is a remarkable situation. it s hard to imagine joe biden and donald trump sitting together in a unity government. at this point, he s decided enough is enough and it s not working. the prime minister netanyahu is an obstacle toward a resolution to the conflict rather than a leader. that puts netanyahu in an awkward position but it may require him to rely even more so on his far right-wing coalition to stay in power. he has to appeal to the parts of his coalition that he himself might affect comfortable in order to keep his majority they can avoid further elections. we will have to see where it leads. there s not much chance or at least not a lot of optimism for prime minister netanyahu they could win another election but he s been an enduring figure for a long time and israeli politics. let s stick with the right wing and change locations. you were just in france and when president biden was there, he spent a lot of time trying to reassure nato allies who are nervous about a second trump term. i want to know how his message was received and we keep hearing about our european allies, worried about trump, but there were a bunch of elections that took place last week in europe and they were big winds for the far right. it s not just a u.s. issue but it s happening over there as well. it s not just a u.s. issue. the european elections on sunday were a remarkable shift in power toward the right. you saw macron of france who host a president biden the night before at the state dinner where they held hands and effect in favor of establishment politics, and also rock that he s calling new elections in france himself to see if he cannot win over his own public where he is not very popular re-there. these guys will get together in italy at a g7 meeting and they will talk about these issues like gaza, ukraine, do. president biden has a low approval rating, his at home is higher than some of the other leaders who will be at the summit. there s a time when the establishment politicians of the major industrial powers are on their back heels a little bit amid this right-wing populism we are seeing in europe and the united states. peter, you always make a smarter. thank you for being here. when we come back, stubborn polls and has the biden campaign getting a read data revving up the race in the 11th hour. hour. if you re one of the millions of people with diabetes who suffer from low and high blood sugar, dexcom g7 is one of the easiest ways to take better control of your diabetes. my blood sugar would suddenly spike or really go low out of nowhere. it was really scary. 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(announcer) dexcom g7 helps protect against highs and lows. call now! the biden campaign is making big changes after listening to months of public and private concerns from democrats. their switching up the style and launching major policy initiatives both to lockdown voters already on board while trying to pull new ones in. i want to bring it msnbc contributor brian tyler: and former adviser to george w. bush and john mccain. were not talking one or two small changes. the president is revamping his policy portfolio and will refer to trump is a convicted felon and he sitting for interviews beyond traditional media. you to sit down with vice president harris. what do you make of these changes? i think it is smart. reach people where they are. people are getting their news from less traditional outlets and people are watching the news less frequently anyway and people are checking out. it s smart to reach these people where they are and find them where they are not paying attention to the more traditional issues. the biden campaign recognizes whatever it has to do as we head toward crunch time. this is not just about his base. it s nikki haley voters, independence, and never trumper s. the people who could make or break the election which is currently by a lot of polls in a dead heat while press former president trump is not looking beyond his base. will this work for biden? well, yeah, he has to look beyond the base. that s where the election will be decided. i remember when the bush campaign was in trouble in 2000. we had to do a reset and we got pushed into it. we didn t want to do it and ultimately we decided we needed to because we had to. part of it was making changes but a big part is doing a reset for the press and the larger public to say, we heard the message. we are doing things differently. it makes sense practically speaking and make sense of the speaking that you are sending a message that you heard the message and we are doing things differently. in this campaign, it s so razor thin that biden has to do everything right and this is one of them. this is good. one of the things he needs to do is turn up the volume on the things donald trump is saying. they are seizing on some of the comments that trump made it his nevada rally this weekend. i will share a bit. you feel that? i don t want anybody going we need every vote. i just want your vote. i don t care about you. what i just heard him say, i don t care about you. i just want your vote. did the rally attendees here this? what? did they hear that? they have selective hearing. donald trump can say anything on god s green earth and they will cheer on cue. it s important that americans more broadly here it because that s him giving the game away. he doesn t care about anybody. trump s only goal is to keep himself out of prison. to make prosecutions against them go away. he has brought forward no plans to lower costs. nothing to lower health care costs. nothing to increase the amount of jobs. he has no plans for housing or inflation. his campaign is predicated on keeping himself out of prison, out of the courtrooms, and making the cases go away. and a revenge tour against the people who deign to hold him accountable for his crimes. it s a rare instance, less rare these days because he has a proclivity to see the quiet part out loud. he is saying it. if you want an example of someone who treats supporters with nothing but contempt, it someone like donald trump standing there on that stage and basically telling them what he thinks about them. what i like to hear about is the truth mark and billions of dollars in infrastructure funding has made its way across the country thanks to president biden s massive infrastructure bill now law. suddenly, we are seeing some house republicans taking credit for these jobs that were created but for facts say, the same republicans voted against the bill. to their constituents who might not pay attention to traditional politics or watch the news, do they know the new truth? these guys are taking credit for things they voted against. they are not going to hear the truth. let me make another point on the las vegas speech and the ad. there is another ad i think the biden campaign which is the best of the campaign which is donald trump in his voice talking about veterans. i think they should leave that up through election day. it s spectacularly good and impactful. trump has been complaining about it and we call that as hit dogs barking. you know he s feeling the pain so it is working. as a former ad guy, the most effective thing you can do is not say what you think the person said but let them say what they said themselves. it is great. brian, i want to go back to the infrastructure point. if you the biden campaign are running and local elections, what do you do about the fact that you have some house republicans patting themselves on the back, taking credit for passing things they voted against? i think they done an effective job at exposing these people. biden said it out loud when he was in lauren boebert s district that she tried to take credit for the infrastructure plan. it s getting into these districts and doing the side-by- side. the media has been great about showing side by sides where it s donald trump railing against toilets not flushing and trying to keep himself out of prison and biden talking about $35 inhalers. $35 insulin and $2000 a month health care plans and things that will impact regular people. they been good about that side- by-side but it s getting out there and hammering the message over and over and over again. they often say what is the one thing that a politician did to change your life or help you in some way? you got to show people. thank you both for being here. stay up for this. coach steve kerr when he talks, everybody listens. the nine time nba champion is here next. is being endorsement in the selection and is taking caitlin clark s first month in the pros. pros. switch to shopify so you can build it better, scale it faster and sell more. much more. take your business to the next stage when you switch to shopify. are you still struggling with your bra? it s time for you to try knix. makers of the world s comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com hi, i m jason. i ve lost 228 pounds on golo. and sizes up to a g-cup, changing your habits is the only way that gets you to lose the weight. and golo is the plan that s going to help you do that. just take the first step, go to golo.com. in the last 10 days, we have had elderly black people killed in a supermarket in buffalo. asian churchgoers killed in southern california and now we have children murdered at school. when are we going to do something? ! i am tired. i am so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families out there. i am so tired of the excuse i m sorry, i m tired of the moments of silence. enough. steve kerr is best known as an nba champion player and coach. most sports fans know him as a fantastic communicator and every postgame press conference where he broke through and spoke to america was when he spoke from the heart after the mass shooting in uvalde, texas. last week, steve kerr announced he will be endorsing joe biden for president and we will find out why. he joins us now. it s a pleasure to see you. tell us why this endorsement and why now? it s clear that president biden is interested in implementing gun safety measures. common sense gun violence prevention measures. i have been doing a lot of work the last 10 years with a lot of different gun safety prevention people like brady, giffords, sandy hook promise, march for our lives. i have learned so much and i know we can prevent lives. president biden is adamant that he is going to push for commonsense laws that can do that. i know trump will not do that, and so it s a simple choice for me. are you voting for joe biden against donald trump? i am voting for joe biden. i think the biggest thing for me, everybody needs to vote their conscience. i am voting on a few issues, but this is the main one. i lost my father to gun violence when i was 18 years old so i know how much pain people go through every single day in this country. i know gun violence is the number 1 killer of children in america. i know there is so much we can do about this. i think most people out there agree with me whether you are republican or democrat. 80% of people in this country want universal background checks , doesn t matter your political affiliation. we can do this but we have to steer the cruise ship. it will take time. we need to implement laws that the vast majority of our country want and president biden is willing to do the work to try to get those changes. you have said in the past that before you lost your father, as you said when you were only 18, you felt her life was impenetrable. nothing could get you down and bad things did not happen to you. what do you say to the folks out there who thinks gun violence is a problem but it will not affect their life so they don t make it a voting priority. you just don t know. it s such a common occurrence. the chances are likely that you will not be impacted, but there s a good chance that you will also. that is a scary thought. i have a granddaughter who is 18 months old. i am thinking about when she goes to kindergarten and she will have to go through mass shooting drills, and the trauma the kids all across america go through just from those drills and the possibility of facing that kind of situation. it is so traumatizing, and it s a terrible thought that all our children are feeling this way. again, we know that comm laws save lies. they absolutely do. there s so much we can do and it s my civic project that i like to work on is trying to help get, as i said, the ship moving. it will take a lot of work. it s up to us as private citizens to insist the government take the necessary moves to make that happen. there s a lot of public figures who share your views. many did endorse president biden in 2020, but many are staying quiet now. expressing public views right now is getting more and more difficult. the backlash is real. this is not going to be easy for you and you will get heat by all sorts of people. why did you decide to speak out? it s too important to save lives and it s important to do something that s important for our country. not that i can do anything by myself, but i do have a platform. if i can get the message out there, it is so important for families to talk about this issue. neighbors, friends, this is not an attack on the second amendment. this is about implementing things that can save lives. again, it could be your own child. your own mother or father, could be you. we have to understand the gravity of gun violence in our country and not just pass it off as this is the price of freedom. that s what a lot of people say. we have to have the freedom that the second amendment provides us, but it should be kids able to go to school and not being afraid. there are ways to do this. we can protect the second amendment and protects citizens with simple laws. we just have to get everybody on board. it is such a political hot button but it s not a common thought in our country that this is a controversial issue. it is not. 80% of people want universal background checks. we should have that, and that alone would save hundreds if not thousands of lives every year in america. you said it right there. it s a political hot button but not when you go in people s homes and use it other tables and talk about what matters to them. i do want to talk about something else that matters to you that you know a lot about and that s obviously basketball. you played with michael jordan. you know how this superstar was treated early, and the attention he got. given your first-hand knowledge, what do you think of caitlin clark s treatment so far in the wnba? i think it is a rite of passage for young players whether the wnba or nba. other players will test you. she reminds me a lot of steph curry. a lot of people may not remember this but in his first couple of years he was not a superstar. he is not who he is now. he had to get stronger and had to understand people were coming after him. that is what is happening with caitlin right now . it s all in the name of competition. she is handling herself beautifully. she is an amazing player but like every college player who comes in, it takes time and they ve got to get stronger and more used to the contact, physicality and athleticism. she will be fine and everything she s going through now is part of being a pro. what do you think of the fact she won t be at the olympics? i am so excited. i am sorry that she won t be there but she ll have a great chance in four years. when you put these teams together, all you care about is winning. it s probably going to take caitlin a couple of years to be at the top echelon. the women s team is taking the 12 players they think can help bring home the gold and that s with the men s team did. that is the name of the game so no politics in the olympics. we just want to win. and i sure hope you do this year. nobody remembers when steph curry was not an absolute superstar. it s always great to see you and thank you for joining us tonight. we will have more of the 11th hour. 11th hour. rt working on contact to target tough pain at the source. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. new advil targeted relief. hi, i m jason. i ve lost 228 pounds on golo. for up to 8 hours of powerful relief. i don t ever want to go back to wearing a 4xl shirt or not being able to climb up stairs without taking a break. so i m committed to golo for life. thank you for watching. we were just talking about the summer olympics, it s worth noting, that minutes from now, we will officially be two years out from the 2026 world cup that will take place right here in the u.s. after 30 years, and you can stream all the action live on telemundo and peacock so get your countdown clock started now. on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thank you for staying up late with me. okay, there is a lot going on tonight.