and ultimately humans and what s really best for society. you headed isabel. it s a threat to their power structure. family faith first. the government is not so important suddenly and neither is politics. as a you getting married it? you are about to get married yourself? i am on june 29th, right around the corner. i think there s a revival toward the things that matter most the things that have enduring importance in our lives. congratulations on that, best wishes. we are going to do a lot longer segment later on. that s it for us tonight. make sure to follow me on social media, thank you for watching. remember it s america now and forever. jesse watters is going to take it from here. jesse: welcome to jesse watters primetime p. are tonight. we have great unity, we have great common sense, we have one thing in mind that s making our country great. reporter: trump back in washington. biden in italy getting lost. i think she should step down. it should the democratic party remove her if she doesn t? i think so. jesse: wearing thin. the first runner-up is. jesse: a man wins ms. miss maryland. plus. are you a manly man? no. jesse: a swing and amaze pure goes of the words about her never wants to hear but at last night s congressional baseball game it s all democrats heard. and a swing and a miss. and a swing and a miss. and a swing and a miss that will end the inning. jesse: republicans roughed up democrats 31-11 the. at the baseball score. maybe a little preview of what s coming in november. if you think about it, baseball is kind of like politics. if you keep striking out you put the other team back at bad. all season democrats have been striking out with hoax after hoax, the dictator on day one, bloodbath and revenge. strike three. jesse: democrats just put the other team back at bat in their own home stadium, washington dc. donald trump back on capitol hill for the first time in almost four years. the former president spent the day meeting with house republicans, senators and businessmen. this was a great meeting. there is tremendous unity in the republican party. we want to see borders, we want to see strong military. we want to see money not wasted all over the world. we have great commonsense, a lot of very smart people in this room. a lot of people that love our country. they love it just beyond all else and the only thing that ab supersedes it is their family and maybe their faith in certain instances and that s very nice but they want this country to be great again and we are going to make a great again. jesse: donald trump is running around dc trying to unite the party in the country because teamwork makes the dream work. and we d never seen the republican party disunited under trump. even gave them a birthday cake. [ inaudible ] [ applause ] jesse: there was so much love and unity in the room it broke adam shifts brain. guilty, guilty, guilty,. jesse: has battle cry was heard by the media and they went to work doing what they do best. apparently the former president made for made reference to hannibal lecter saying he even had a friend over for dinner. we ve seen him praising hannibal lecter. apparently did it again this morning, not sure we fully understand the context of that. jesse: we weren t inside the room but neither was cnn and that s the point. we did what journalists do, we went towards sources who were actually there. did trump really call a flesh eating serial killer a nice guy? no. trump was joking that if he said something about hannibal lecter, the fake news media would say he was praising him. cnn took the bait. and that wasn t the only hoax. i m getting word from my producers we have a new hoax alert. he said as it s gotten a lot of publicity and we broke this that he doesn t like the walkie, it s a horrible city he says. the campaign is pushed back on that. everybody comes out and didn t say it. of course he said it. that is according to almost everybody in the room. jesse: everybody in the room says he didn t say it. as soon as the news broke people inside the room debunked it. a congressman says i was in the meeting, president trump never disparaged milwaukee. another one, i was in the room appear president trump did not say this. another, trump was specifically referring to the crime rate in milwaukee. here s what trump had to say. democrats are also hating you on this comment that you made about milwaukee, the host city for the rnc for the convention and they seem to believe that you said that it was a horrible city. can you nip this in the bud and clarify what you meant. i think it was very clear what i meant. i said we are very concerned with crime. i love milwaukee, i have great friends in milwaukee. the crime numbers are terrible and we have to be very careful. jesse: how is the media directly quoting him if they are not in the room with him. and then telling the people inside of the room that they are wrong. it s what nancy pelosi calls the wrapup smear. you smear your opponent with lies, the press writes about it, that validates it and then the politicians run with it. as soon as the media reported the hoax, the mayor of milwaukee rushed to the camera. donald trump wants to talk about things that he thing so horrible, all of us lived through his presidency so right back at you buddy. joe biden saying i happen to love milwaukee. he didn t write that himself. kamala harris saying milwaukee is a beautiful city and for the record, milwaukee was the third most violent city in the nation, third most. so when primetime goes to the convention, johnny is going to have two bodyguards. democrats are down late in the game, you can t yank them because you have no bullpen. so you just have to keep throwing trash. here s more. the media wants to to thank trump spent every waking second plotting revenge. i m told there s a similar dynamic behind closed doors with advisors or other republicans where he will talk about revenge , sometimes get a look of d. really mean that and he makes it clear he does. this is his retribution, that s the word that s been at the centre of this campaign for a year now. they re not going to be. it s going to be true believers and loyalists. if trump says he wants revenge or i want to target a particular person or institution they are going to do that. jesse: who are these advisors that are leaking this to msnbc? they don t exist. it s made up. trump s people don t talk to this guy. look at him. he s on morning joe. they say trump went to washington to harness the power of congress to go to war against the democrats. really? people inside of the room told us revenge never came up. it was the economy, foreign policy and election strategy. it was forward-looking. a feeling that washington hasn t felt in four years. that s not revenge, that s success and like trump says, success is his revenge. she was in the room with trump today she joins me now. so he did not praise hannibal lecter? much to cnn s despair he did not. he joked about the fact that they were going to report fake news and many of us were there. they don t want to talk about the fact that he has a plan in dealing with our foreign policy debacles that this diminished ration has caused. we are excited about the numbers we are hearing. jesse: what were the policies that he was discussing today behind closed doors with you guys? the number 1 issue that he has is concern for what s happening with russia. there s the media really silencing what s happening with russia. warships off the coast of cuba and also florida. i think more importantly he made sure that the american people would know that what is currently happening in ukraine and israel would ve never happened under him and he does have a plan and solution moving forward and i also want to point out that he understands that world leaders respect him and right now what s coming out of the white house, a lot of people realize that joe biden is likely not going to be the nominee which is from what we are hearing on capitol hill, representative kylie had reported that kamala harris eyeing a run for california governor because of it. jesse: so you are hearing also in dc that joe biden isn t going to be the democrat nominee? correct. it appears that our colleagues are trying to put guardrails on a 2024 presidential election with president trump and also what you are seeing is according to our pulling, you know as well as i do that they have been trying to paint republicans as anti- woman and trying to push an abortion crisis right now with the election and i don t think that s a case. a lot of the american people know that this is a state rights decision so i think that they know that they are losing. jesse: the straight truth from inside the room, didn t need any spin from cnn. thank you so much. we always appreciate you coming on the show. north dakota governor and potential vp candidate joins me now. so you are going to be in milwaukee, it has a crime problem. third worst violent crime last year of any city in the united states. are you used to this so far, they just make things up and then merchandise it? i wish that every american could see what i ve seen the last six months because the opportunity to be with president trump, be in the room, see what s reported whether it s at the trial or at a rally, whether it s at a fundraiser, the thing that i see reported versus. are two different planets just like you described tonight. jesse: when you guys are behind-the-scenes talking policy , personnel, what you mostly focused on? i want to say when president trump. guided over a dozen events between roundtables, rallies and fundraiser things, sometimes 500 people, sometimes a thousand. whether he s in the line getting the photo or at a roundtable with the owners that are job creators, the number 1 thing people don t report is he s curious. he s asking them how are biden s regulations hurting you. what d the things you need to help moving forward. are they being affected affected by inflation? he understands. he was in the hospitality business. he cares about what people are experiencing and then that feeds into his thinking. i looked at that schedule that he had, and joe biden couldn t have done one of those events and he did 14 nonstop 12 hours a day moving between locations. incredible the energy and the stamina. he s got real interest in people. jesse: how unified is the republican party right now? never been more unified. jesse: is out of feeling or can you see numbers to that? everybody is coming together. you are seeing it in the primaries that are happening around the nation right now. everybody is unified and they are unified for two reasons. one is because they know that president trump represents strength whether that s on the world stage or on the economy or the border or it s fighting inflation, he represents that strength. they are also unified because what s the alternative? the alternative is joe biden s weakness which has started wars, it s inviting wars. it s inviting russia to come to cuba. president trump is actually a deterrent. we talked about our defence budget. but that kind the white house and we don t have to raise our defence budget a dime and also we ve got a better deterrent because they know that we ve got strength that we would be willing to use. al raed our economy, diplomacy. jesse: i was looking at the new york times over the weekend, big hit piece. your name keeps coming up as vp. big hit piece, how are you feeling about all of this? a lot of that is a distraction. of the key is the ability to focus on. the key is making sure that we elect president trump because there s never been a politician, a leader like him in history. no one has raised the kind of money that he s been able to raise. no one generates the crowds he s been able to generate and no one has the enthusiasm. you go to a fundraiser and they say there s going to be san francisco or all of these rides riots and protesters and nobody shows up to protest against them but i thousand people are waving their flags and cheering for him. you get down to newport and it s people lined up with boats on the water. i take it back to one thing, the people that show up and are waving the flags along the sidewalks. they are all working, they all have jobs and they all know they were better off under president trump and they are under joe biden and that s where it is. it s working class people that care about america. that s his voting block. jesse: basic economics. thank you very much. johnny hit the streets. it s a tough one right? that s a tough one. s s i was only 23 when i was first diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancer. 40 years later, i ve had almost 20 mohs surgeries. i had just accepted that the pain and the scars were going to be part of my life. but when i was diagnosed with two basal cells on my face, i became determined to find an alternative to surgery. if you, like millions of others, are affected by skin cancer. it s important to know that surgery isn t the only option. there s another choice. gentlecure. it sounded like everything i had been looking for. gentlecure uses low energy x-rays to kill skin cancer cells with a 99% cure rate. plus, there s no cutting, no surgical scarring and no downtime. i m so glad i did it. it was successful in every way. to learn more, call today or go to gentlecure.com jesse: last night we told you biden can t run on his record so they are going to drag him across the finish line and replace him with come all after inauguration. they have to distract you from how old and incompetent he has. the way they do that is to slap those labels on trump. you will hear trump say the most common sense things biden s failed policies. the shower presser regulations making you have a bad hair day. this weak trump said democrats are going to start putting electric batteries not just in cars but in boats. and if you know anything about how heavy these batteries are, that boat is going down. there s a shark 10 yards away from the boat. do i get electrocuted if the boat is sinking and water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do i stay on top of the bow and get electrocuted or do i jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted. jesse: you hear that and you laugh but it makes sense. the media here is it and calls him senile. he s out there talking about wind turbines and sharks in boats and sinking, not talking about issues voters care about. if this was your father you would take him in for a neurological exam. fox news didn t carry them or broadcast them. didn t air them after the fact either. in the words of stephen king, that speech was like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink. jesse: except fox did our that and we aired it monday. biden says cannibals snacked on his uncle and that he started the civil rights movement, that a lightning strike burned his house down and almost killed dr jill and whiskers the cat. and he s a puerto rican truck driving jewish professor who went to a historically black college and captain their undefeated football team and won a lawsuit for a guy who lost a testicle in a construction accident. trump stories relate to real concerns people have about public policy. biden stories, the fantastical lies of an insecure old man desperately trying to relate to people. biden was in europe today at the g7 and wandered alone into an italian field. jesse: people are falling out of the skies and he can t even focus. wise he always going in the wrong direction? and why he is the always moving in such slow-motion. world leaders have to hurt him like a stray sheep. reportedly the main focus in italy has been making sure biden gets his sleep. president biden got a much earlier start than he usually does today. aids typically keep him as close to an east coast schedule even on a trip like this as they possibly can one it s possible but today when you look at the tape he was rolling out of the hotel about 5:11 am eastern. jesse: you can see the cpap creases on his face when he leaves the white house at noon. now joe is trying to turn sleepy joe into an asset. what he s doing at three in the morning i don t know. jesse: today biden signed a ten-year defence agreement with ukraine and confirmed that we expect to see ukraine joined nato in the future. what? do we get a say in that? oh and we ve loosened the rules of engagement allowing american weapons to be fired from ukraine into russia proper. ukraine will be getting f-16s this summer. and those of you in miami may have noticed but the russian navy just held a poor call in cuba 90 miles up the american coast. china s building deep water ports in south america, hello munro doctor npr china selling dual use tech to russia s war machine. china just landed on the moon and saudi arabia just ended its 80 year deal with the united states to sell oil solely in dollars. i think that s enough to worry about. does the man wandering alone into an italian field look like he has everything under control? it s not a shark but it s pretty scary. former sec reof state secretary of state mike pompeo joins me know. you are seeing the president wander around alone away from everybody as people are falling out of the sky. does not give you confidence that he has this world under control? it s good to be with you and thank goodness for prime minister who grabbed him and kept him from walking off completely. it certainly doesn t give any american confidence and the contrast between seeing president biden unable to perform basic functions to keep america safe and we know the policies have failed. i think the american people, it was a bad day for america and one sense. we saw our president failed to be able to lead on the world stage but it was a good day and we got to say there s a sharp contrast as we all consider what s going to happen in november. jesse: we want to win proxy wars. we also want to make peace everywhere donald trump s big message today on foreign policy behind the scenes at sec. was we of these messes in europe, in asia, in the middle east if he were president. it s remarkable to watch the biden administration say we ve done such a good job, everybody s working hand-in-hand. you ve gotten tens of thousands of ukrainians killed. you failed to deter. 1200 israelis dead on your watch. still a war going on in gaza. the failure of the policy isn t that you react after the crisis is taking place it s that you are strong enough and then america s leading sufficiently so you can deter the bad guys. the other folks that watch this today were chairman kim in north korea,. they all watched what happened today in italy and said we think we are right, this may well be the time that we continue to probe and test america because when president biden said he doesn t know what donald trump is doing at three m, i hope we never get that three m call with president biden as commander-in-chief. jesse: he wants to pat himself on the back for reacting but we shouldn t have been in this position in the first place. today fanny willis took us to church. i m so tired of hearing these idiots call my name as fanny in a way to attempt to humiliate me because like silly schoolboys, the name reminds them of a woman s rear. they get mad when i call out their lunacy. you can t pistol on me and tell me it s raining. jesse: we are not trying to humiliate her, we thought her name was. and i we don t feel like going back. nathan wade went on cnn and was asked when did you start sleeping with her. these exact dates are at issue and these dates are i m getting signalled here. jesse: they apparently hadn t prepared him to answer the one question at the centre of the entire case. sohi exit out mid-interview to prep him? it s not like she asked him did you guys ever go to the cabin. did you go to a cabin with ms. miss willis ever? ever? ever. no. jesse: happy dei thursday. why did you stop the ballots? there is video viewed stopping the ballots. do you have anything to say? wanda? what do you want to say to the people of bridgeport? jesse: that was johnny confronting wander the stuff her after she was shoving a legal ballots in a dropbox peer she was arrested along with three other democrats. she was charged with ballot fraud and witness intimidation tied to the 2019 election. tonight we got our hands on the arrest warrant. we learned investigators examined absentee ballots, surveillance video from bridgeport senior housing and use witnessed interviews as evidenced to make the arrest. a voter who did not request an absentee ballot told investigators wanda came to my house and told me only to sign the bottom of the blank application. she went on to say i have done with the done this with wanda over the past ten years. wanda said no. jesse: it was a got punched a democrats peer she s been there ballot wizard for over a decade. wanda has a government job, runs the city s democratic party and is the gatekeeper at the mayor s office. now she s busted and democrats need to answer some questions. reporters have been chasing down connecticut s democratic governor since the arrest. he endorsed the men wanda allegedly stopped for. the governor thinks the mayor had nothing to do with it of course but says wanda should take the fall. i think she should step down. if she won t step down, should the democratic report democratic party remove her? i should thank so. are you going to ask them to do that. i hope they do the right thing. jesse: hours after wanda was arrested, he signed a bill that puts a camera on every dropbox in the state. primetime called for this months ago. it took four arrests to make it happen. it s not enough to end corruption and secure elections but it s a step in the right direction. next let s get rid of the drop boxes altogether. they are ripe for fraud. will have more on wanda soon. we have new details on biden s bad dog. the president watched as commander attacked secret service agents. kevin corke is in dc with the story. an exclusive window into the harrowing circumstances surrounding commander, the president s dog and his numerous attacks on secret service agents which could top three dozen such attacks according to new really newly released records. apparently the president himself was present for at least three of those attacks. now everybody knows commander has been known to bite but there are a lot of examples you may not know about including this one. as i started to walk toward him, him being the president, to see if you needed help, commander ran through his legs and bit my left arm through the front of my jacket. i pulled my arm away and yelled no, potus yelled and then blank. the story went on to say that the dog later jumped up and bit him in the left arm again for a second time. his suit coat had not one, not to but three holes. and that s not it, there are other conversations between secret service officials including this one from september 2023. tmz just reported a dog bite at the white house dog bite at the white house. can we find a way to get this dog muzzled. you will recall former first dog major was also rehoused back in 2021 after apparently attacking a lot of people. secret service members wish each other safe shift as the attacks mounted. that s really damning right there. that tells you plenty. i ve been written by a vicious democrat dog and it hurts. still have a mark on my upper thigh. thank you so much. jesse: so what is a man? why does society want men to act like women. now they are djs and promoters . jesse: happy dei thursday. we re bringing you the best stories about diversity, equity and inclusion. first stop the beauty pageant crowned their winter over the weekend. sorry ladies, the crown went to an asian man. the first runner-up is. trace: jesse: they were born cambodian baby boy before getting a sex change. they say we see bailey s win as a win for everyone who dreamed the impossible dream. impossible. we told you about how biden spent nearly a billion dollars and only built seven ev charging stations. now we are finding out why. white house insiders are blaming dei. the regulations for government contractors are huge roadblocks. construction can t start until the builders prove they are inclusive. they have to host block parties and minority communities with interpreters in case nobody speaks english. and they have to hire minority subcontractors to do all the work. good luck finding a black electrician in maine. mountain view high school was pumped to hear their gay senior gift will be a massive mural of thor representing their thunder mascot. the school s equity office cancelled it because thor is racist. according to one student, the equity office said thor was. and is a white supremacist and the image should be more inclusive. no dei thursday is complete without a primetime victory. transits will merit leah thomas will not be participating in the summer olympics. thomas lost a legal battle that he hoped would overturn a policy that bans athletes who have been through male puberty from competing in the female category. you can try again in four years. let s bring an author of the sad truth about happiness. when you hear how preposterous some of these dei items are, what goes through your mind? of course i live within the ecosystem of academia so none of this surprises me up and warn against this for two decades picked just make you feel better down there in the united states we are even crazier in canada. let me give you a few examples to add to your d. dei thursday lineup. at my university, or five-year strategic plan posits that we must now all indigenous eyes and decolonize our curriculum. it doesn t matter what you are teaching, you to be teaching pure mathematics or neuroscience or shakespeare, you need to decolonize and indigent eyes that. second example, on may 17th you ll be happy to hear that we held a symposium on menstrual equity because it turns out that menstruation is a human rights. i didn t know that women were forbidden to men straight in canada but apparently we need to have a symposium. third quick example, university of waterloo is searching for a professor in artificial intelligence, they have to be either gender fluidity, nonbinary or whatever or to spirit. you haven t reached the level of lunacy that we have in canada. i m enjoying the canadian dei edition on dei thursday very much. menstruation is a human right that i don t need because i can be a little bit of a complainer. when you process some of these things, what do you think the end goal is besides screwing around with everybody else. what you think is really motivating it? postmodernism, i call it the granddaddy of all parasitic ideas because it purports that there are no objective truths. it s a form of intellectual terrorism. operas down, slavery as freedom, men or women. it s a way to liberate ourselves from the pesky shackles of reality. it s grotesque, it needs to end and we need to return to a commitment to reason, logic and science. jesse: it s like modern arts. i don t understand it, it changes all the roles, makes no sense but people thank it s amazing. happy dei thursday to our canadian friends. a new study says men won t call out sick from work because it s not manly. so what does it mean to be a man? johnny went out and found out. define a man. that s not simple. it s a tough one right? it s a tough one. this is hard to. someone who is strong. if that demand, what the manly man? someone who looks good doing it. the firefighter who is at the door in the middle of the night. he drives a harley for no reason. a manly man takes orders from his wife? are you a manly man? no. what is a man have to do to be considered a real man? have a job at. love a man that works out. he s not sitting out here. not giving up [ bleep ] what other people think. why does today s society want men to act like women. they used to go to war now they are djs. masculine characteristics have been demonized. he was complaining to some woman about something that women do. every time i think about trump i get allergic. and want to put men and women sports and the women lose. that s not funny. should men cry? i don t want to see men crying. i cry a lot. i love crying, i think it s so fun. he came to my office, tears in his eyes. mentor saying they are afraid to take a sick day because they don t want to appear weak. they should suck it up at. what if you did have covid and you got the whole office sick. so you are a big believer in . should men be drinking out of straws? yes. do you think that s very manly? yes. father s day is coming up, what is more one important lesson about manhood that your father is taught you. to be financially responsible. they all want one thing and it s inevitable. is joe biden a manly president? he is not as sure of himself. he s doing better than trump i know that. how s the crime? worse every day. how s the border? it s messed up now man. tell me again why biden is better than trump. you have a good point. can men get pregnant? i don t know because i have i m not sure if. i will tell you at the time, i ll keep you in suspense. jesse watters, manly man what you think? he s going to see it. he s a man but he does wear makeup because he s on tv. i think he has cojones man. jesse: the spartan race part two next. sues keep piling up? it may be due to a buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. visit morethannormalaging.com home inspectors, general contractors, roofers; all kinds of pros recommend leaffilter. why? it s engineered for performance. because with leaffilter s patented filter technology, there s no gaps, no openings, no place for debris to get in at all. leaffilter is a permanent solution we install on your existing gutters. you ll never have to climb a ladder to clean out your gutters again. our installation process is simple and easy. just give us a call and set up an appointment today. we ll come out and give you a free gutter inspection. if your gutters are sagging, we ll repair them. if they re broken, we ll replace them. if they re in good shape, our local trusted pros will install leaffilter in as little as a few hours. and the best part? leaffilter comes with a lifetime transferable no-clogs guarantee! you ll never have to worry about costly damage from clogged gutters again! it s peace of mind, and then some. call us today to get started. join millions of satisfied homeowners, schedule your free inspection today! call 833 leaffilter, or visit leaffilter.com my back got injured very bad. i was off work for about a year. i heard about relief factor from my wife. i took it every day, three times a day, for three weeks. .look at her and i said, the pain is gone. and she said, i m glad it helped. i said, no, you don t understand. it s gone. you, too, can feel better every day with relief factor, a daily supplement that fights pain naturally. call or go online now and get 35% off your first order. jesse: the spartan race part geomagnetic time with video. weedeater you up yesterday. this is achille climbing through the mud to make what is this a 5 k? a 5 k got stuck in the mud, had to be rescued, pulled out by gerrit but i can t let them go. now this is a ropes course. this is what they due for f fun. i don t understand these people. these people are crazy! but this is what they due in their free time. look at this. this is just vicious currents, water streaming through their nostrils. other even swimming? what is this? this is going on their barbed wire. running. fire is involved. they want to torture themselves. working for presage jesse watters prime time, they have to do in their free time. we are very proud of a keylock on everyone else on the fox group. talking about tony s. koneh s. will not aquila, obviously. [laughter] let s do some stacks. mark from whitefield, kansas, there s only one thing worse then a broken record, a shifty broken record. i just want to apologize to the audience, that was a terrible shifty soundbite. tyler from kentucky, watch out for that doug burgum fellow, he has great hair. they re here alone will get you on the ticket. greg know we ve got janine from milwaukee, and wisconsin, come to milwaukee, exhibit a city with beautiful people. state downtown, and obraro recap take a picture with the bronze funds. we ll be there in milwaukee the whole week, johnny will be there cutting trouble. johnny from brooklyn, what about men blowing up candles? is that manly? . only on a birthday cake. if you re doing it in a dining room, use the software. always remember, i am watters, this is my world. sean:
hamas in gaza. i can t thank you enough for making time for us. we re all thinking about you and your family. thank you very much. and we pray for the safe return of all of the hostages as soon as possible. this is a humanitarian issue. this is not some political issue, and people trying to make this a political issue, especially, the government trying to make this political. no, this is a humanitarian crisis. and everything should be done to get them back as soon as possible. thank you very much. that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, alex. 250 days, just unbelievable this is where we are. thank you, my friend, as always. so i want to start with a story that in any other universe would have absolutely nothing to do with politics or anything even approximating controversy. the kind of news we all used to read or hear and accept. but in the post-trump era, this kind of news has become a sort of conservative litmus test with potentially disastrous consequences for the health and the well being of thousands and thousands of americans. i am talking about bird flu. i know. stay with me here. if you have been following the news recently, you may have seen that the u.s. is currently dealing with an outbreak of bird flu. bird flu has spread to at least 80 cattle herds across over five states. and because of that outbreak, the fda, the food and drug administration, has issued guidance for how to stay safe and avoid exposure, including warning americans against drinking raw milk. that s because raw milk has the potential to spread animal borne diseases from one species to another. this is pretty straight forward, noncontroversial scientific advice, don t drink raw milk. it s noncontroversial except if you are a conservative who follows the influential, pro-trump youth organization turning points usa. milk is good for you, but here s what the american dairy farmers association or whatever isn t going to tell you is that that pasture rised milk crap, you might as well be drinking water. it does nothing. it s not healthy. ideally, you need to be drinking raw milk. that was alex clark a turning point usa host, and one of the chief proponents of drinking raw milk. miss clark is such a raw milk enthusiast she tells her followers to drink raw milk while pregnant, something that you absolutely not do under any circumstances. and in response to the fda s warning about drinking raw milk during a bird flu outbreak, alex clark told her nearly 200,000 followers on social media, f the fda, legalize raw milk. this issue so animates conservatives that turning point usa is currently selling $35 t-shirts on their website promoting raw milk. now, if this seems like an echo of the anti-vax, anti-fauci, anti-science movement embraced by a ton of conservatives and therefore put a lot of that put a lot of this country at risk, well that is because it is. it is precisely the kind of extreme, own the libs, reality be position that is a hall mark of turning point usa under charlie kirk. charlie kirk and turning point usa have been an influential part of maga land since donald trump was elected in 2016. in recent year, kirk and his organization have become more outspoken about their beliefs, including kirk s embrace of christian nationalism. in addition to running what appears to be a raw milk propaganda outfit, charlie kirk is also a supporter of something known as the seven mountains mandate a philosophy that calls for conservative christians to take over the government. and kirk has started speaking openly about how he wants donald trump to be the champion of that cause. finally, we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence. finally we have a president that understands the significance of standing, yes, i m going to use a term, in solidarity with the grassroots activists of our country. across the republican party, christian conservatives are becoming more and more emboldened about making america a christian nation under trump, even as trump himself continues to exhibit some very unchristian behavior on a near daily basis. this was donald trump a week ago at a campaign event inside a phoenix mega church. so they come up with this order i won t say it because i don t like using the word [ bleep ] in front of these beautiful children, so i won t say it. i will not say it. but this thing allows millions of people bleep [ bleep ] donald trump swearing in a house of god and then getting the crowd to swear with him in front of children. we ve seen the same thing from trump s allies. here was rudy giuliani speaking at the pro-trump christian reawaken tour just last week. i ve got two prosecutors, fani the i m sorry. fani willis. fani. it s not fanny, and i m not calling her fani. i could drop the part if she d quit and go away. classy. all of this is part of trump s unspoken agreement with the christian far right. they let trump and his allies break the rules and be vulgar and be blasphemous with the expectation that they will refashion american life according to their christian values. may not be a bad bet either. here was trump just this week speaking to a conservative christian organization that believes all abortion is, quote, child sacrifice. you re going to make a comeback like just about no other group. i know what s happening. i know where you re coming from and where you re going. and i ll be with you side by side. you re going to make a comeback and i ll be with you side by side. even as donald trump refuses to give straight answers about where he stands on things like a national abortion ban or contraception, conservative christian groups understand what trump will do for them. it s not that much of a mystery. and part of their confidence here that an extreme christian nationalist agenda is within their grasp, part of their confidence is because these groups don t have to rely on just trump alone. they can count on trump s most powerful ally in the fight for christian dominion, the conservative majority of on the united states supreme court. just this week we heard supreme court justice samuel alito tell a progressive activist that he believes we need to return america to a place of godliness. as elizabeth and lisa write in a new analysis for the new york time, while justice alito is hardly openly championing these views, he is embracing language and symbolism that line up with a much broader movement pushing back against the declining power of christianity as a majority religion in america. the movement s rise has been evident across the country since mr. trump lost re-election in 2020. justice alito and his fellow conservative justices have already delivered for christian right with their dobbs decision, striking down roe v. wade, and soon they will have a chance to do so again. the supreme court is about to rule on two major cases of considerable significance to the christian right. one will determine whether access to the most common form of abortion in this country is significantly restricted or not and another will determine whether doctors in emergency rooms can deny pregnant women medically necessary abortions. how the court rules on these issues could tell us just how much power the christian nationalist movement has gained in this country and how close they are to victory. joining me now are lisa, the national political correspondent for the new york times , she is also the author of the fall of roe: the rise of new america, and with me is mark joseph stern, senior writer who covers the courts and law at slater mag sooeven. thank you both for joining me. lisa, let me start with the piece you have out today in the times. an array of conservative, including anti-abortion activists, church leader, and conservative state legislators has openly embraced the idea that american democracy needs to be grounded in christian values and guarded against the rise of secular culture. i don t think it s an exaggeration to suggest that strain of conservatism now seems to dominate the supreme court as well. do you think that s far off? look, part of what we document in our book, the fall of roe and the rise of a new america, is that latter part of the title, the rise of a new america. what that is about is the radicalization of conservative christians. and we ve seen some of that cooling out of these tapes from the court, but you know, i wanted to draw your viewers attention to another story today, which was that the southern baptist convention, which represents the largest protestant denomination in the country, 13 million church goer, came out and said they oppose ivf. this is a fairly radical statement for that group, and we re seeing this return to these christian conservative cultural values from the churches all the way up to alito s statements at the court. so i do think what we re watching is this shift in american power. we don t know where it s going to go, but we have a template for success for this movement, and that, of course, is the fall of roe. and how that network of conservative christian activists and lawyers were able to take down that legal precedent may be a way that they can then move on to tackle these other things they are opposed to like, as we learned today, ivf. yeah, i mean, i do when we talk about shifting the window, moving the goal post on the field, it feels like the activists on the far right are signalling to the alitos of the world, this is where we re at, see if you get here. mark, i want to talk about alito s evolution here, because he wasn t always either this explicit or radicalized when he joined the court. can you talk about his progression to where he is now? yeah, i think a crude but accurate term to describe alito is maga pilled. during donald trump s rise and presidency, alito really let his christian nationalist flag fly and xan to embrace not only the rhetoric but also the substance of this far right christian supremacy and this idea that christianity is rooted in the constitution, that we are a christian nation, and that courts have some kind of obligation to protect and, indeed, elevate christianity above not just other religions but above secular society. and he went on a little bit of a talking tour earlier this decade where he decried the new moral code of secularism that promoted reproductive freedom and lgbtq equality and said that it was an existential threat to christianity. and all of this is reflected very much in his decisions, decisions like one a few years ago where he tried to let pharmacists deny plan b to patients to whom it was prescribed. not, you know, any kind of actual abortion drug but just plan b. and decisions like hobby lobby where he s allowed corporations to restrict employee s access to birth control. and these abortion cases, most notably dobbs as lisa documented, sam alito was always going to be the man to write that opinion overruling roe v. wade. in the coming days and weeks, we re going to get these decisions on abortion, especially involving the abortion pill. and i think alito is quite likely to stick his neck out in that decision and write about how he believes medication abortion is unlawful under existing federal law, under the comstock act of 1873. this is a radicalized justice, very much maximizing his impact by staking out the positions that activists in the grassroots want him to take, legitimizing them and shifting the window and eventually, he hope, transforming them into the law of the land. yeah, i mean, it s quite obvious that the dna of the christian conservative warrior class has imprinted itself upon the supreme court, but lisa, when we talk about the relationship in politics between, for example, donald trump and his pro-maga coalition and the conservative christian warrior class, i wond every if trumpism hasn t imprinted on them. i m thinking about those two pieces of sound where donald trump is in a church, a big church, and the call and response is the word bs. it s a family program, so i m not going to say the actual word. and rudy giuliani is calling taney willis, the d.a. the fulton county, one of the most vulgar things you can call a woman, with distinct racist undertones. this seems to be a new brand of, i guess, christianity, if you want to call it that, in the age of trump. yeah, look, the church has changed politics. but politics has changed the church too. and church, especially conservative evangelical and catholic church, have grown so much more political. as we show in our book the fall of roe, they made this deal with president trump. he promised them in 2016 in iowa christianity will have power, and conservative christians jumped on the trump train, and it ended up being a bullet train for them. they got three justices on the supreme court, and the deal was set. and now they ve been with him for eight years, and it doesn t for conservative christians, they re with him. he can moderate his tone on abortion, say he wouldn t sign a 15-week federal ban, and they re still probably going to stick with him. they are fully bought in and part of this maga movement, and the two are operating together. now, you know, donald trump is in a different position, because the politics of abortion have changed so radically. he senses the toxicity there, which is why you ve seen him come out and say it should be returned to the state, that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, so that dance has gotten more complicated for him politically, but there s not a sense that he s worried about losing this group that s really become a central core of his movement and his base of support. well, yeah, and i i mean, one wonder where is the guardrails are in any of it. i mean, the republican party has effectively pledged fealty to everything trump represents, christian warrior class and all, and then on the supreme court, mark, how much of a counterweight is someone like john roberts of brett kavanaugh, does the attempt at counterweighing happen on the supreme court? they are a very feeble counterweight when they choose to be one at all. all three of trump s appointees generally vote in lock step with what the republican party wants. trump has, of course, taken over the party, so it is very much his court. and i think it s really disturbing, especially, to look at some of these decisions that do involve extreme circumstances of tragic medical mishaps where wrim in dire of need of abortion, right, this is one of the big cases this term. states are saying these women cannot get abortions that they have to get sepsis, they have to begin hemorrhaging, they have to be dying before they can get abortions. well, republican politicians lined up to agree with those laws and to support those laws of the supreme court you had a ton of republican state attorneys general and republican governors lining up to say we do think woman should be forced to the brink of death before they can get emergency abortions. i think the supreme court will likely agree with them and continue to force these women into these horrible circumstances. and trump is savvy enough not to say anything at it, because he knows he s got his foot soldiers in the judiciary doing the work for him. he s got his guys on the bench who are ready to uphold the most draconian abortion bans imaginable, and he doesn t have to say anything. and just by remaining silent and not speaking out and condemning these ban, he knows he can keep the christian right very much on his side. and that is the whole genius of the strategy behind capturing the courts. you get these justices and judges on the bench for decades, they will do your bidding, they will uphold your extreme law, they will uphold your draconian policies, and most voter, unfortunately, don t draw those lines between the judges and the presidents that appointed them and the parties those presidents belong to, so they get away with this stuff. that s the story of trumpism in the judiciary. a story where there s no accountability. lisa and mark joseph stern, thank you for your time tonight. coming up, the gaslighting continues as republicans vote to hold attorney general merrick garland in contempt of congress. but first, new secret recordings have given us insight into the real thoughts of samuel alito and his wife ma that are ann. i m going to speak to the neighbor at the center of a verbal altercations with the alitos outside her home and made the story about her flags a national scandal. that s next. t her flags national scandal that s next. children are the greatest joy and our best hope for a better future. friends, they are the future. but did you know that millions of kids right here in our own backyard are facing hunger every day without healthy food? it s harder to grow, to thrive, to feel their best. the impact when children don t have enough to eat is tremendous because 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show that you re helping kids build a brighter future for themselves. thank you. families are struggling to make ends meet. these are hard times, but together we can help connect america s kids with meals. so please call now or go online to give. thank you. 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. after the new york times reported that two flags associated with the january 6th insurrection had flown at the homes of supreme court justice samuel alito, the justice defended himself in a letter by putting the blame squarely on his wife, martha-ann alito. i was not familiar with the appeal to heaven flag when my wife flew it. i was not aware of any connection between the historic flag and the stop the steal movement and neither was my wife. she did not fly it to associate herself with that or any other group. but audio of martha-ann alito released this week by undercover progressive activist lauren windsor paints a decidedly different picture of mrs. alito s flag collection and why she flew them. you know what i want. i want a sacred heart of jesus flag, because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. exactly. and he s like, oh, please don t put up flag. i said, i won t do it, because i m deferring 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 ll be changing the flags. they ll be all kinds. i made a flag in my head. this is how i satisfy myself. i made a flag. it s white and has yellow and orange flames around it. and in the mid sl the word vergagna. in italian it means shame. joining me now is emily, the former neighbor of supreme court justice samuel alito. emily, thank you for joining us tonight. i m eager to hear your reaction to this audio that was released. and we played that specific clip there because it really sounds like mrs. alito is intentional when she flies these flags and that there is absolutely a political point of view she is trying to communicate. what did you make of that audio? absolutely. well, fist of all, thank you so much for having me tonight. it s a pleasure to be here. and to hear her talk about the flags in that way just solidifies what we all know is that they re meant to display a particular message. she mentions the being upset by the pride flag and wanting to fly a sacred heart of jesus flag. well, that flag specifically means anti-lgbtq, anti-pride, so it s very clear what she s doing with the flag. and that just proves us all right that in his statement he s lying where he says we didn t have any reasoning behind it. we don t know what it mean, et cetera. yeah, well, she wasn t trying to be part of a movement or group. i think that that s definitely questionable given fact that she s absolutely flying these flags in response to certain groups. yes, yes. emily, i got to ask you, because she s so animated when she talks about this flag she d like to make that says vergogna, which means shame in italian, it brought back to mind your account of the alitos, according to the new york times , when mrs. alito confronted you, you said something like how dare you behave this way. you ve been harassing us over signs. you represent the highest court in the land. shame on you. the concept of shame really seems to animate her, and i wonder if you could talk more about your interaction with her when the word shame and the concept of shame was discussed. yes. well, that so that interaction, the one that happened on february 15th, the one that they re using as an excuse for why they flew the upside down american flag, which we know doesn t make sense because the flag was up weeks before that. what do i make of it? it s just it was such an intense interaction, and it was about the third time that this has happened, each time escalating more and more. and yeah, i meant it, shame on you for behaving this way. because you do represent the highest court in the land. and that was more intended towards him who was there as well and did not step in. can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the alitos, as you saw it. i mean, he was present for some of these interactions, if you want to call that, and i was there s part of the undercover interview or the undercover audio that we heard where martha-ann alito talks about her plan for gaining seeking justice for all that has befallen her and her husband. let s take a listen to that sound. it s okay because if they come back to me, i ll get them. i m going to be liberated, and i m going to get them. what do you mean by get them? there s a five-year defamation statute of limitations. i don t know who you mean. the media. so martha-ann alito has a plan here. she s mapped it out, five-year statute of limitations for defamation. the question is, is that justice alito s plan? and that begs the question, what is the relationship between these two people, to you think what she says is tacitly endorsed by him, or is that overestimating, you know, her import in terms of a family strategy? yes. you know, i don t think it s for me or anybody else to say that or to pass any judgement on their relationship. all i witnessed was her, you know, behaving in that way and him not stepping in. and what i really just want to point out is that there s no way that he didn t know those flags were flying at his house. and in those same recordings, in his own words he is unable to be impartial. he says that there are two sides and one side must win and he s basically saying that he sits on one side and he says that he can t negotiate with the other side. he can t split the difference, as he put it. and that is a giant red flag. and at this point, we ve moved past the idea of him just recusing and we ve reached the point in the general consensus that it must be removal at this point. i think we re a ways from that, but i do, i mean, i have to ask you, because this is a woman who verbally there were verbal confrontations, i believe she spat at your car at one point. yeah. there s a point in this audio where she says i m german from germany, my heritage is german, you come after me, i m going to give it back to you. in the context of these interactions with her, how did you hear that part of the audio? i think as most people who heard it it was absolutely chilling. and terrifying that people in such a high position of power are saying such threatening and scary things. now, i can t presume to know what she meant by that, but i think a lot of people are assuming kind of the same things. and none of it is good. and we really need to do something to hold this court accountable. this is mostly about his inability to be impartial, and that is his bare minimum job description, and he has said on tape that he can t do that. emily baden, at the center of a national controversy, really appreciate you taking the time to join us tonight. thank you. thank you so much. thank you. still to come this evening, a response to the story we did last night about an apparently coordinated effort to spin a negative story about president biden across a vast network of local tv stations. stick around to hear what the network has to say for itself on that. plus, former obama advisor dan pfeiffer has thoughts on how to take on republicans like house speak mike johnson when they try to rewrite reality. that s next. they try to rewrite reality. 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given the fact that president biden s own son was convicted yesterday of three gun felony charges brought by the federal government in a case that was heard by a trump-appointed judge and decided upon by a jury of biden s peers, but that didn t stop them. this afternoon house republicans fanned the flame of a weaponized government conspiracy by voting to hold attorney general merrick garland in contempt of congress. the alleged reason for the contempt vote was the justice department s refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena to hand over audio tapes of an interview president biden did with special counsel robert hur. now, to be clear, the justice department has already released a full transcript of that interview, and officials argue that releasing the audio could endanger future investigations. but refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, hmm, republicans managed to be outraged about that despite the fact that multiple republicans, including congressman jim jordan, who is leading the fight here against merrick garland, multiple republicans have literally defied congressional subpoenas themselves. when speaker of the house mike johnson was asked about that hypocrisy today, this was his response. you talk about apples to oranges, there couldn t be a more clear contrast between that and what we re talking about here. hmm, joining me now is dan pfeiffer, former senior advisor to president obama and cohost of pod save america. thank you for being here. i don t know, is it an apples to oranges comparison or an apples to apples comparison. it seems pretty apples to apples to me. you have members of congress, someone refusing to comply with a subpoena from congress, so yeah, it s apples to apples. the reality is that the headline merrick garland held in contempt of congress is a big, juicy headline for republicans to make hay over. and i wonder how you think democrats and people interested in preserving, i don t know, some shred of democracy, can answer that with a fairly nuanced discussion about subpoenas and why the hur audio would not make sense for future prosecutions. i don t think we have to get into the details of that. that s the conversation they want us to have. the conversation they don t want to have is why republican plans would do nothing to lower prices or higher wages. what they are planning on doing is how they can pass a tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. it will add $3 trillion to the deficit. they re trying to distract from the things that matter to people and their own popular agenda. we sdroebt to play that game as democrats. let me follow up on that, that gets to the central question of this entire campaign as it concerns joe biden, which is how much should he be talking about the sort of institutional threats posed by donald trump, institutional threats to our system of justice, to our democracy, to the voting system, and how much should he talk about, what you say, the bread and butter issue, the economy, inflation, et cetera, you seem to be landing quite clearly in camp b, don t focus on the institutional threats, is that fair? there s no such thing as a single-issue campaign for president. right. it s about a lot. now, it is very clear that most voters by pretty large margins say the economy and inflation are the single most important issue that s going to decide their vote. it s also true that three quarters of voters say that the they are unhappy with the economy and that donald trump has a big advantage on the economy. we have to narrow that gap. that doesn t mean we shouldn t talk about abortion and freedom and the threats that donald trump has. because what ties together donald trump s positions where he wants to cut social security, medicare, cut taxes for the wealthy, repeal the affordable care act, repeal abortion, is maga extremism. that s how i think we should frame it. i do wonder where you think the most movable voters are, right? because the economic stuff is plain to see. it s not a mystery, right? inflation is coming down. the joblessness rate, all of it, and it hasn t sunk in. whereas, i m not necessarily arguing for this, but the polling that we got, i think it was this week, an ap/norc poll, approval of donald trump s conviction nationwide, 15% of republicans approve of his conviction. those seem like the ghost of nikki haley s supporters. and i wonder if you think, you know, given freshness of this story and the fact that people are responding to it, whether there s to blunt about it, gold in them there hills for the democrats and the biden campaign. oh, sure. this is the anti-donald trump coalition is the biggest political coalition in america. but it s very diverse, right? you have voters who are biden voters who are upset about the economy. you have people who are biden voters who are upset about what s happening in gaza. you have trump voter who is may be upset former trump voters. so you have a lot of messages to a lot of people. what we know is there is a sufficient group of people who are deeply concerned about the idea i know this sounds crazy but deeply concerned idea that we should not have a convicted felon as president of the united states. i hope the president takes advantage of this during the debate in two weeks and brings it up. we have to make a full throated, proud, unafraid case against donald trump. that s going to talk about raising prices and cutting taxes for rich people, the threat he poses to freedoms like abortion, contraception, and the threat he poses to all of our freedoms because of the way he wants to govern what he did to try to pull the wool over voter s eyes in 2016 whshgs he got caught for and convicted for, tells a story about the kind of president donald trump would be and we shouldn t shy away from that. given the things we talk about, you know donald trump s going to bring up, well, we think he would bring up hunter biden. there s another trial in california, i believe, in september. should biden be talking about that? playbook suggests this is an opportunity to show empathy and connect with people who have faced hardship that in their own lives and families. what do you think about that? well, this is obviously deeply personal and deeply painful situation for the president, right? he had this is it s obvious every time he s ever been forced to talk about it. in all of the reporting you read, this is something that s very hard for him, of course it is. all this tragedy in his family, dealing with addiction, having to witness that. there s no question donald trump s going to bring it up in the debate. he did it in 2020 to try to rattle biden s case. i think if he can talk about this from the perspective of a father who loves his son, much like the statement that he and the first lady put out after the conviction, that hug he gave his son afterwards that he returned home to give, to show that side of joe biden, i think that is powerful. because the essential truth of joe biden is that he is a deeply empathetic person who is running for president because he cares about everyone else. and he can show that in that moment if that comes. and i think that s the way to do it and the way i think he would do it. i mean, his empathy, i think, does distinguish him from the other person who s going to be across the stage from him. dan pfeiffer, my friend, thank you for making the time tonight, buddy. thank you. coming up, some really good news this week. violent crime is way, way down across the country, but you couldn t be faulted for believing the very opposite, especially if you like watching certain local news stations. we re going to have more on that right after the break. on that right after the break. whoa! how d you get your teeth so white? you gotta use the right toothpaste! dr. c?! not all toothpastes whiten the same. crest 3d white removes 100% more stains for a noticeably whiter smile. new personal best. crest. if you have chronic kidney disease you can reduce the risk of kidney failure with farxiga. because there are places you d like to be. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this infection, an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. far-xi-ga ed gutters. an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. 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. so the president wraps his remarks on crime without a single mention of the growing immigrant crime crisis happening in this country right now. you re seeing since joe biden took office crime skyrocket. wouldn t we love to have a statistic where crime is down 67%? ours is only going in one direction. if you listen to donald trump or conservative politicians and conservative media like fox news, you probably think we are in the middle of a massive crime wave. we are not. this week we got new fbi crime statistics showing that in the fist quarter of this year, crime is yet again down across the board. overall violent crime down 15% from last year. murders down 26%. by every national metric, crime is down. regardless of the facts here, fox is still going big on crime. the organization media matters counted 304 reports about crime on fox in just the first two months of this year alone. the last time the fbi released crime data, back in march, crime data that again showed another drop in crime across the board, fox gave that data approximately two minutes of air time in the first two weeks after the data came out. fox only mentioned the declining crime rate seven times in those two week, and one of those mentions was this one. new data from the fbi claims that the u.s. crime rate is dropping. let s look at this graph while i stab you. given how much elected republicans and national conservative media are pushing the narrative of a staggering crime wave despite the facts, it sort of makes sense that republicans believe there is a rise in crime when really there isn t. but the thing is, it s not just republicans who believe that. recent polling from gallup shows that 77% of all americans believe there is more crime in the u.s. today than there was a year ago. despite, again, the opposite being true. crime went down this year and crime went down the year before. we are in the opposite of a crime wave. so what gives? why do so many americans think that crime is up? well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but there is one reason that does not get enough attention, local news. in 2019, one of seattle s local tv news stations, komo news, put out this documentary entitled seattle is dying. it depicts seattle as a city in decline because of rampant crime and homelessness. the seattle times newspaper was quick to refute the documentary s assertion that seattle was dying, pointing out that both property crime and violent crime have been dropping in seattle for decades, and komo news isn t some independent, whacky outlet, it is part of the sinclair broadcast network, a network of nearly 200 local tv stations. as the washington post put it, sinclair s recipe for tv news is crime, homelessness, and illegal drugs. journalist anne nelson told the washington post , sinclair plays up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence. or as david told the post, it s a fox news wannabe. that s their model a political tool rather than a journalistic platform. but unlike what people hear from fox news or donald trump, viewers may not necessarily have their radars up when it comes to information they are getting from the local news stations that give them the weather. s stations that give them the weather sinclair broadcast group. a story about how dozens of their anchors from across the country all read the exact same script and this one was pt questioning president biden s mental fitness. sinclair has since given us their response. we are going to get to that, coming up next. . millions of children are fighting to survive due to inequality, conflict, poverty and the climate crisis. save the children® is working alongside communities to provide a better life for children. and there s a way you can help. please call or go online to give just $10 a month. only $0.33 a day. we urgently need 1000 new monthly donors in the next 30 days to help the children we support around the world. you can help provide food, medicine, care and protection, plus so much more that a child needs by calling right now and giving just $10 a month. all we need are 1000 monthly donors in the next 30 days. please call or go online now with your monthly gift of just $10. thanks to generous government grants, every dollar you give can have up to ten times the impact. and when you call with your credit card, we will send you this save the children® tote bag as a thank you for your support. your small monthly donation of just $10 could be the reason a child in crisis survives. please call or go online to hungerstopsnow.org to help save lives today. we have some new developments in a story we covered last night. the newsletters public notice and popular information first brought to attention anchors at dozens of local tv news stations who have been reading the same controversial script about president joe biden based on a widely criticized wall street journal article. have a listen. the wall street journal calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. as national correspondent matt galka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. the issue could be an election decider. the stations have one thing in common. they are owned by the conservative leading sinclair broadcast group and tonight we have a statement from sinclair denying wrongdoing or bias. here is a quote. the allegation sinclair is deceiving its audience are spreading misinformation is outrageous. our goal is to buy the accurate and timely coverage. any insinuation otherwise is unfounded and undermines the integrity and hard work of our teams. joining me now is the founder and author of the popular information newsletter. he is one of two reporters who broke the story. thank you for joining me. let me first get your response to sinclair s response. well, i think it was interesting that they ignored really the key issue, which is that they are amplifying and requiring dozens of local, trusted local news broadcasts, to amplify this very shoddy story by the wall street journal questioning biden s mental fitness based on really kevin mccarthy, the only on the record source. so they did not really address that. i think they are unhappy with the fact their tactics are being exposed. this is a problem they have had in the past of sending these very biased scripts to all of their affiliates and having them read them verbatim. can you talk about when you say they were forced to read these. sinclair as part of its defense says giving out scripts is common practice to affiliates and basically there is nothing to see here. from your reporting, what you understand about the pressure, if any, these local anchors are given to read this stuff verbatim? this is been well-established that sinclair, which has 186 affiliates it owns or controls, sends must runs segments that are produced out of their national office. actually after trump was elected in 2016 they hired one of his spokespeople, boris epshteyn as their national correspondent and then would have him do commentary which they required all of these stations to run. so it is true, there are affiliates that have relationships with different services. cnn operates one. there are a bunch of different ones. they will send along scripts, but that is something optional for them to do. this is the corporate parent requiring these affiliates which have all sorts of branding, abc, nbc, everybody, locks, and really pushing very hard right content in a way that is not transparent. the owner of sinclair broadcasting is a gentleman named david smith. he also purchased the baltimore sun not that long ago and i want to read for viewers who are unfamiliar with what has happened. the union representing the newspaper sternal essay monday that the articles do not meet standards. including a one-sided story about immigration policies and an op-ed by the co-owner likening the transgender movement to a cancer. in addition journalists say stories under their names have been changed without their permission and they have been reusing reporting from one of the 185 local tv stations owned by the sinclair broadcast group. this is a feedback loop, it sounds like. what do you know if the editorial practices under david smith? i think he has established himself as a right-wing operative. he has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to right- wing groups and famously he met with donald trump in 2016. jared kushner helped cut a deal where they would get access in exchange for not fact checking. david smith himself said we are here to deliver your message, so it is a very partisan operator, but he is really pulling the strings behind local affiliate neck works affiliate networks that unfortunately viewers may not know what is going on. over 185 tv stations, plus the baltimore sun. judd legum, thanks for your time. that is our show for tonight. now it is time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. . good evening, alex. sheldon whitehouse is joining us to talk about the supreme court. alex, i was fascinated to hear your interview with the alito neighbor
the oklahoma justices ruling said the lingering impact of the massacre does not fall within the scope of our state public nuisance statute and they rule the state can continue to profit from tulsa massacre related tourism without compensating survivors. today s dismissal marks an end to the quest to see justice in their life time, something i got to speak to ms. fletcher about last year. what does justice look like to you? well, everything is beautiful and rebuilt and restored. you know, we think it is just time now that we have justice on all of that to where we can live all our life. and that is the reidout . all in with chris hayes starts now. tonight on all in day people are saying to themselves, where we better off four years ago or are we better off now and it wasn t even close. the greatest confidence game ever played. voters believe they were better off during trump s term than biden s. we are not better off today than we were four years ago. tonight, from crime to the economy and beyond how a political party led by a criminal is conning america. then you, you are working for a felon. a felon. the maga scandal machine and today s contempt about for the attorney general. and the senate push to do something about the ethics crisis in the supreme court. the highest court in the land should not and could not have the lowest ethical standards. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i am chris hayes. as we approach the first debate of a presidential election season, earlier than normal between joe biden and donald trump, it is clear that trump and the republican pitch to voters is fundamentally a con job. i mean that in the most literal sense. the term comes from so-called confidence man, fixtures in the late 18th and 19th century who swindled the victims with their confidence. right now that all s bravado is the defining feature of donald trump s attempt to win back the oval office. remember, this is the man who tried to destroy our constitutional republic live on national television and who utterly failed in overseeing the one national crisis he had to guide the nation through the pandemic. and yet trump and his surrogates are constantly telling voters to ask themselves a question, are you better off than you were four years ago? are you better off than you were four years ago? i don t think joe biden can run on the question of are you better off than you were four years ago. that is one question he is praying that he never hears. are you better under four years of joe biden were four years of donald trump. you know, people are saying to themselves are we better off four years ago or are we better off now and it wasn t even close. that, by the way, was all from the past week. we have been running a series on all in responding to that question because the events of four years ago were so shocking, unprecedented, and traumatic. i think a lot of people, i would say most people including myself, have blocked it out. again, i get it. i don t want to think about sitting inside trying to homeschool my kids or attending zuma for my dearly departed uncle or the images of packed hospitals and dying saying goodbye to their loved ones on ipads. of course the fact that most people don t want to think too much about 2020 is an enormous advantage for republicans and the trump campaign who are attempting to pull off this con job. their aim is to kind of magically replace her memory. to distract you from the fact that four years ago we were all living in the midst of disaster. tonight the country has reached another sobering milestone in the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing 2 million cases and this warning sign. hospitalizations are surging in many states. we will start our rallies back up now. we had a tremendous run at rallies. i don t think there has been an empty seat. i think one in texas. we are going to arizona. texas and arizona among nine states reporting a jump in hospitalizations, the best indicator of the viruses toll. we are really doing a financial comeback. the jobs numbers are fantastic. 1.5 million people filed front employment last week, almost 43 million since the pandemic began. i think the economy next year will be maybe the best it has ever been. we are already seeing the stock market going up, because you have a lot of smart people betting on exactly what i m saying. a selloff from wall street amid new concerns about the continuing spread of covid-19. the dow plunging more than 1800 points, its biggest drop in three months. a very important time in our country. a lot of things are happening and i think when it all ends up it is going to end up very good for everybody. there is growing concern tonight that restricting restrictions is causing an increase in covid-19 cases. all lives are precious, not just the people infected by covid, but also the people who are being driven to this because of the lockdown. what is happening in some of those places. that shut down. the poverty rate is going up. what are people going to do if they don t have jobs to go to to earn a living in order to take care of their families? that is the main reason. all of these scare tactics, they don t work this time around. they will not work. i should note one week after herman cain made that appearance on fox news, he attended donald trump s indoor rally. a big, indoor rally in the midst of covid in tulsa, oklahoma and by the end of june he was hospitalized with covid and died on july 30 at the age of 74. naturally every time we do one of these segments i find that looking back at four years ago brings a lot of emotion. most people divide recent history into the before times and the after times, myself included. a lot of us feel nostalgia for the before times and that is exactly what donald trump and his allies are using to build their lie about what really happened. to erase our real memories and implant false ones. that is their project and it has been unnervingly effective so far. four years ago in june, 2020 while we were living through the pandemic donald trump s approval rating was 42%. and when a new poll, 47% of americans say they approve of the job that trump did as president. it is not much, but those five points are basically the margin of the entire election and they are accomplishing that through flat out lies about what is actually happening. take a listen to missouri senator josh hawley doing this today. he s going to run on his record from four years ago versus biden right now. gas under president biden, up 55%. groceries, up 40%. wages down 3%. that is the campaign. that is before we get to crime, before we get to the border. sorry, josh hawley. wages are up. average hourly earnings are actually up 17% from may, 2020 two 2024 in nominal terms, like groceries and stuff. wages have also outpaced inflation for the past 13 months as the washington post pointed out today. crime is way down. look at what has happened with the homicide rate. in 2020 when donald trump was president, he ushered in under his presidency the largest ever one year jump, spiking 30%. by 2023 the homicide rate had tumbled 19% to 5.3 per 100,000 people. new data shows the rate continues to drop dramatically, down another 20 another 26% in the first quarter from the same time period last year. gas prices, are, i will admit, overall higher than they were in the summer of 2020. why were they low then? no one was traveling anywhere. okay? that is why there were cheap gas prices. refrigerator trucks full of cadavers, yeah, the gas prices were low. and they spiked up in the early part of the biden administration with the war in ukraine, but they have been trending in the right direction and continue to fall even as the summer travel season heats up. grocery prices are coming down. not just with inflation which cooled to 3.3% today, but retailers are actually slashing prices on thousands of islands. of items. again, they spiked during the pandemic like they did everywhere in the world, but they are on the right trajectory now and all of this is happening under the incumbent, joe biden. and we are not losing thousands of americans per day to a deadly pandemic. we do not live in a nation in the throes of constant disorder. this time four years ago we were living through the televised murder of george lloyd and the protestant police response that followed while then president trump called for sending in troops. across the country was started as peaceful gatherings protesting the death of george floyd evolved into destruction. from new york, where police and protesters squared off in the streets, to portland where the mayor issued a state of emergency and a city curfew. the nation erupted into scenes of chaos. violence. and widespread destruction into the early morning hours. in some of the nation s biggest cities, the night spiraled out of control early. we had to run rubber bullets. my cameraman has been hit. we have also seen tear gas being used. here we go again. this is exactly what it looks like. oh. whoa. can you hear us? are you okay? reporter: we are surrounded by the police and you saw the way that they dealt with my cameraman. we don t know who they are targeting at the moment. i said you have to dominate the streets. you can t let that happen and we are doing it with compassion, if you think about it. we are dominating the street with compassion. all that happens under the watch of president donald trump. we cannot say or hear that and if he returns to power i am telling you it is a safe bet that we will return to trauma and chaos. she is a democratic strategist who served as an advisor for the 2020 campaign. they both join me now. doug, i wanted to talk to you because in some ways history and recent history is part of what is being contested in this campaign. the legacy of the first trump year, trump term, and particularly 2020, the four years ago in the famous formulation, as a historian and historian and presidential elections, how do you see it? i think january 6 is such a seminal event and for the days after it seemed like trump was toast. everybody was furious that insurrectionists, but lo and behold suddenly mitch mcconnell came back to trump and lindsey graham and they sort of built this coalition and what is it? it is really anti-federal government. that is what trump represents now. that is why we are seeing the american flag hung upside down by conservative justices. and biden is trying to be part of a tradition, presidents club, of all of the other presidents. you saw on june 6, where ronald reagan is. by then saying i represent all of this and trump is sort of the anti-federal government, anger over covid. and that people still feel that their lives became topsy-turvy and they are going to punish whoever the incumbent is. so it is hard for biden to get traction even though as you said, numbers on the economy are good. we are much better off. he has shown great leadership, but communicating that to the people when there is this much frenzy on social media and hatred toward the federal government, it is an uphill battle for biden to get reelected. i was thinking about 2010, the elections in which of course democrats lost. the tea party uprising. a lot of that was something similar was happening. which is people were frustrated with the aftermath of the financial crisis ushered in by the republican party. democrats were the incumbent party and they took it out against the democrats and it was sort of classic like we don t like the status quo because things are bad and they were bad, but the reason they were bad is because what had been passed on. there is something similar here where the things people don t like him a totally understandably, the shocks that came out of covid were not the doing of joe biden. subsequent administrations had to fix that and people still feel frustrated with the pace that is happening. it s interesting that you bring up what happened in 2010 because i think of the history of the democratic party. to clean up the miss of the republican party and as democrats clean up the miss they have to message against republicans who are acting as if they want the party that let estate into it. four years ago donald trump was telling people to drink leach to cure covid while he was having superspreader events. four years ago people were in their homes watching what you just did in a montage, but we were watching that every day for 24 hours, not knowing when we would see our loved ones and then trying to figure out who we were going to vote for when it comes to the president to get us out of this. you know, policy for people to feel it in their pocket books takes a very long time and while you mentioned some great reports for the biden administration, even the global economic report this week that said the global economy is strong because the u.s. economy is getting strong, but people are not feeling that yet. that is not the fault of president biden. that is the unregulated corporations that republicans are blocking anything democrats want to do around this. this debate coming up, president biden will have to figure out how to message that as well as the surrogates and people talking about this between now and election day so people understand how they are not feeling this, even though these historic numbers are bringing us back to a place that the american people really want to be. you know, doug, i think that before times nostalgia is powerful and i think there is another thing in play here and i would like to get your thoughts on it. my view of trump was always that this is a person who is so unsuited to the job above all else that if and when a crisis comes it will be the worst possible response and then covid happened and it was borne out. i think a lot of people think 2020 is a mulligan. it was a meteor that hit earth and they sort of blocked out the degree of insanity in the crisis management that happened that year and i wonder if you think it is possible to remind them or people are so resistant to thinking about it. i think you can and it is going to be imperative that joe biden reminds people, particularly during the upcoming debate with trump. trump has gone through so many legal jeopardy moments and years have gone by and we are running it on television all the time and you have the 34 felony conventions convictions. even when that happens some democrats were saying don t rub it in trump s base. of course you have to rub it in his face. you have to call him a felon. biden has struggled i think with messaging in the sense of this economy that has been building. he called it a transitory pain we were having at one point and then it was bidenomics. instead they have to lay out that our economy is doing well. yes, i feel your pain at milk, groceries, gas, but he has to be the happy warrior like fdr. at times he does that. i felt that when he was in france, talking about freedom and democracy, but other times he gets in a bit of a defensive crouch. you can t be gerald ford with whip inflation now buttons. you can t be jimmy carter, the malaise or crisis of confidence. presidents get reelected with a sense of victory and optimism and better times are yet to come and obama when he ran, he had the killing of osama bin laden which gave him the foreign policy credential that people clearly understood. the revenge of the 9/11 disaster. the sort of past versus future obviously you have two individuals, one is who is 78 and the other is 81. in some ways donald trump is the recent past and i do wonder if because the past four years have been so dramatic and disruptive, people want to go back in time and that is part of the allure. i think people want to go back in time when there was what they felt was more certainty. with covid there was such uncertainty. the racial unrest and then we saw january 6. hindsight is 2020 and for some reason some people as though they people feel as though they were better under donald trump. that wasn t the case. i think we have to make sure that president biden, and i hope his campaign is listening, that he simplifies his message. he has always been the comforter right next to president obama. be that president and then talk about the ways not only has it gotten folks out of this, but he will continue to do so if they give him four more years. along with a congress and senate to keep doing this work. alencia johnson and doug brinkley, thank you both. coming up, the hunter biden narrative backfires on republicans and now they are going after the attorney general instead. that is next. next. impossible. we re solving the meat problem with more meat. for moderate to severe crohn s disease skyrizi is the first il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. 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have the transcript. today they voted to hold the attorney general in contempt. congressman joe neguse of colorado is assistant democratic leader and member of the judiciary committee and joins me now. congressman, what was this all about? good evening and good to be with you, chris. unfortunately it is a sad state of affairs in washington, d.c. as extreme house republicans have once again found a way to weaponize what are very constitutional and serious tools that the congress has at its disposal. in this case, as you articulated, they pursued a baseless contempt resolution against the attorney general. by way of background as many of your viewers already know, the attorney general fully complied with the requests made by the congress. the department of justice produced over 90,000 pages of documents with respect to this inquiry. more by the way, chris, then the entire department of justice provided during the course of the trump administration and also produced the transcript itself of the president s conversation with the special counsel. the contextual reasons house republicans offered for purposes of the audio were clearly a smokescreen for what was a political exercise. they wanted audiotapes to use them for a campaign commercial and the attorney general cited a number of reasons why ultimately that tape could not be provided. the president invoked executive privilege and republicans in the house of course know that to be the case, but they proceeded anyway. unfortunately i think it is shameful and disgraceful and we will have to see what comes next in the clown show that they have perpetrated on the american people right now. you know, two things i want to note. the republican who voted against it said as a former prosecutor i cannot in good conscience support a position to score political points. the american people expect congress to work for them and solve policy problems. enough is enough. second of all i want to make sure that i have the events right. merrick garland appoints a special counsel to investigate the president. the man that he appoints is a republican who is a donald trump appointee in the justice department. this individual asks for an interview which the president voluntarily complies with i think for nine hours despite the fact that donald trump never gave an interview to robert mueller. he then uses parts of that interview to take political shots at him in the opening introduction. they release the transcript and all of this is deemed, what? partisan by the republicans? how far can you possibly go? the answer is nowhere. there is nothing you can do. that is the question and it is an open question. you articulated the timeline well. i would offer two amendments. one, this attorney general produced as you know the special counsel report in full, unredacted. very different compared to attorney general bill burr. i remember as we dealt with subterfuge with respect to the special counsel investigation and in this case the special counsel testified in front of my committee, as did the attorney general as recently as last week. this is a farce. house republicans know that. it is a way for them to up skate their lack of days for them to obfuscate their lack of an agenda. they prefer to spend time on these political games, which is unfortunate. it is not a coincidence the timing between hunter biden s conviction yesterday and this. this is the new york times reporting. mister trump who aggressively attacked hunter biden in the 2020 election has changed his mind about doing so now. trump said republicans needed to be careful not to go overboard because it could elicit sympathy and make people view the president as a caring father. so they spend years chasing this guy to the ends of the earth. they successfully, let s be clear, they basically successfully control this investigation. the prosecution happens and now it is like we ve got to light a new fire because that one has burned out. look, in their view the circus must continue. their message is not resonating with the american people, so as a result they will continue pursuing political retribution at every turn and of course this is not the first time. they pursued seven or eight different impeachment resolutions at various points in the last 18 months against a variety of cabinet officials. they impeached secretary mayorkas. that was dispensed in the senate without a trial. the attempted impeachment of president biden failed. so i have no doubt that unfortunately these games are going to continue for some time. hope springs eternal that perhaps some in the republican caucus will do what representative joyce did today and ultimately speak truth to power and do the right thing and join us in getting back to the business of the house. congressman joe neguse, thank you for your time. up next, what happened in the senate when the democrats tried to introduce ethics to the supreme court. next. . my mental health was better. but 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same rules that guide members of congress and federal employees. in the senate today democrats ask for unanimous consent to pass a binding ethics package for the court. it was blocked by the top republican on the senate judiciary committee, senator lindsey graham. joining me now is senator jeff merkley, one of several democrats who took to the senate floor arguing why the ethics package should pass. senator, it is good to have you on. first, tell me what the act fix what the ethics package, what would it do? it is so straightforward, chris. it says they would have to have a binding code of ethics at least as strong as the house or senate has. what applies to the executive branch, what applies to other judges, what applies to members of the house and senate applies to the supremes as well. that is like what congressman raskin and ocasio- cortez were talking about. you could not do it as a senator. you could not do it as a mid- level engineer at the department of the interior and you could not do it as any other federal judge. chris, it is just phenomenal. think about what this looks like. it is mega yacht trips. indonesia. tuition for family members. luxury rvs. helicopter flights. you name it. $6 million of gifts over the last 20 years. here is the scenario. for an average person hauled into court and somebody sues you and you find out the person suing you has been going on fishing trips to alaska with the judge. would you think you are getting a fair shake? that there is any possibility of justice in that situation? the answer is absolutely not. that is a profoundly corrupt court and that is what we have today. i think, well, i don t know what the logic is but i think republicans say this is all partisan. the reason you are doing this is because you don t like the rulings in the court, you don t like the ideology, so you are trying to attack legitimacy to a road power for purely ideological and partisan reasons. certainly if republicans want this court to have the force that comes with integrity and respect of the american people, then they should be the first to step forward to clean up this miss. it is in fact a miss and certainly i believe that these justices on the right who were trained and selected by the federalist society to deliver power on a plate to corporations in america, are deeply, profoundly warping the constitution. in favor of corporations and against consumers and environmental laws and many other things. this issue of accepting massive gifts from people who have issues before the court, that stands on its own. separate from any dispute one might have. i want to redo something that sam alito said last summer in an interview with the wall street journal to a lawyer and a writer there. he said i know this is a controversial view, but i m willing to say it, he says. no provision in the constitution gives congress the authority to regulate the supreme court, period. what do you think of that? it is called legislation and the constitution does give legislation power to the congress. it gives the ability to put a code of ethics on the executive branch. yes a president can veto it, but we can override that veto. certainly there was a sense of while the constitution said little about what the court system would look like, there were massive decisions made by congress to decide how the judiciary would be structured and run. so absolutely that does not pass any sort of common sense or legal examination. final question and quickly. on the question of having the chief justice come before the senate. he has basically blown off an inquiry from the chair of the judiciary committee who reached out to him. samuel alito has written to say i am not recusing myself. basically they are like, you are not the boss of us and we don t have to listen to anything you say. is that a tolerable equilibrium? it is not, because they are basically saying we have the right to be corrupt and you can t do anything about it and that deeply undermines a key institution in our country in which we need to have a sense of respect. a sense that it delivers the balls and strikes, as justice roberts once said in his confirmation hearings. right now we are getting profound conflict of interest and that is really sad to hear. chris, here is the thing. justice roberts, in running this court, he has to recognize that he is failing in his responsibility to run this court in a fashion which delivers fairness and a sense of integrity to the american people. one jeff merkley, inc. s very much. we will be right back. if advanced lung cancer has you searching for possibilities, discover a different first treatment. immunotherapies work with your immune system to attack cancer. but opdivo plus yervoy is the first combination of 2 immunotherapies for adults newly diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer that has spread, tests positive for pd-l1, and does not have an abnormal egfr or alk gene. opdivo plus yervoy is not chemotherapy, 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yervoy. a chance to live longer. right now across the u.s., people are trying to ban books from public schools and public libraries. yes, libraries. we all have a first amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints. that s why every book belongs on the shelf. yet book banning in the u.s. is worse than i ve ever seen. it s people in power who want to control everything. well, i say no to censorship. and i say yes to freedom of speech and expression. if you do too, please join us in supporting the american civil liberties union today. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for your rights and mine. including the right to read all manner of books. so please call or go online to myaclu.org. for just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day. you can become a guardian of liberty and help protect all the rights promised to us by the u.s. constitution. make no mistake, this move to ban books is a coordinated attack on students right to learn. this is a clear violation of free speech. that s why 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trump s closing message railing against pharmaceutical companies and the like and bernie sanders message from the beginning. it has been almost a decade since my brief flirtation with internet immortality. there was even a videogame created out of that. in my defense it had been a very long day covering the new hampshire primary and we were doing my show where we did so many msnbc shows that you re at jds tavern. in that very moment as i was speaking, in my line of sight, howard feynman sitting in a booth about to take a bite from a huge pastrami sandwich. the legendary political journalist was with us at all of those political moments on every primary, convention, everything in between going back more than 20 years. he was a near constant presence on msnbc, sharing reporting and insight from his career spanning four decades and seven presidents. you confess your weak spot up front, but then you turn it into a virtue and make what you hope is a dramatic and winning contest with your opponent. in this case as you say you cannot out flamboyant donald trump. you cannot be more, in many ways, irresponsible than donald trump. howard fineman was more connected in politics than just about any journalist has been. it was a force of nature who knew everybody in washington. i was so saddened to learn that howard died today at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer. i knew him well. i knew him to be exceedingly clever and exceedingly kind. and howard had this bravado that they don t make anymore. our thoughts are with the family tonight including his son nick, who is a senior producer here at msnbc. we are all really going to miss him. i saw how easily it picked up my hair every time i dried it. it only takes a minute. look at that! the heavy duty cloths are extra thick for amazing trap and lock. even for his hair. wow! and for dust i love my heavy duty duster. the fluffy fibers trap dust on contact up high and all around without having to lift a thing. i m so hooked! 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first and foremost, a ceasefire. first and foremost, a ceasefire. this is elementary. this is like when there was a ceasefire, hostages came back. now, they happen here and there, they are not a strategic solution to the problem of 120 people still kept in captivity. you know, during seven months of military operation israel succeeded in releasing seven hostages alive. this is, you know, a pace of one hostage a month. eight months, even. so 120 hostages would take ten years time. the hostages have no time. the sanitary conditions are nonexistent. the health is deteriorating by the day. physical and mental. and we must find a way to bring them back home as soon as possible. these are not, you know, these are not only young people, these are elderly people, grandfathers and parents and uncles and people that were taken from their beds at 7:00 a.m. on a saturday, you know, in their pajamas and barefoot sometimes, yeah. in the u.s., one of the things that people there has been kind of a joining of the notion of the war and the justness of it and doing it on behalf of the hostages. many people feel that the war is on behalf of the hostages, and people think that those, you know, who are calling for ceasefire are betraying them or forgetting about them. and you wrote this open letter that basically argued the opposite. and so for people that are people of good faith across the spectrum on this very contested issue, i want to hear your argument to them as a family member. sure, sure. first, again, a ceasefire. why? the thing that endangers the hostages the most right now, idf bombing. this has been from october 8th ongoing where my 9-year-old cousin s son was asked during an interview after he has spent 49 days in gaza captivity, he was asked what do you feel most about your grandfather still being there? without hesitation he answered the idf bombing. the idf bombing endangers the hostages, and the idf bombing, actually, we know about 14 hostages that were killed either by direct hit by the idf or, you know, as after an idf attack, the attackers needed to evacuate the space. they killed them, so you know, the military operation endangers the hostages. it got seven hostages out, 14, at least, dead, and this the whole military maneuver is not getting it s not for the hostages at all. it s not helping them. on the contrary, it gets them further and further away from the hostage deal, further and further away from getting united with their loved ones. because we know that the conditions for the hostage exchange or the prisoners exchange or whatever you want to call this, getting them back home is first, ceasefire. and by waging this war from day one, the israel government initiatives of this military operation is only keeping us apart, keeping us further and further apart. at the beginning it was only northern gaza, then it was rafah, and before that it was elsewhere, and we re just getting further and further apart from a solution to this problem, because the solution should start with a ceasefire. this is, you know, logical and basic. a spokesperson for the group of hostage, his uncle held by hamas in gaza. i can t thank you enough for making time for us. we re all thinking about you and your family. thank you very much. and we pray for the safe return of all of the hostages as soon as possible. this is a humanitarian issue. this is not some political issue, and people trying to make this a political issue, especially, the government trying to make this political. no, this is a humanitarian crisis. and everything should be done to get them back as soon as possible. thank you very much. that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, alex. 250 days, just unbelievable this is where we are. thank you, my friend, as always. so i want to start with a story that in any other universe would have absolutely nothing to do with politics or anything even approximating controversy. the kind of news we all used to read or hear and accept. but in the post-trump era, this
bars in clark county. you have potential victory is lying in those sales at least for now. i want to i guess is it makes a huge difference night, i step toward voters like elliot carver hall having their voices heard, it felt a little bit of empowerment, a little slow, a little tiny bit sara marie joins us now from las vegas. so this is the first time he s running boost had been used. how did the process go? it went pretty smoothly, although there were voters who showed up to vote and found out they were actually registered in a different county or in some cases, in a different state, which is negating the education gap that still exist for those who are behind bars. there were dozens of folks who wanted to vote from the jail today and we expect that that s going to number is going to be even longer when we get to the general election in november. this was sort of a dry run for the big event coming up, anderson be interesting to do polling and see if they re running for it? sir, maria, thanks so much in news continues. the source of kaitlan collins starts now i m kaitlin collins. welcome to the source tonight. president biden wasn t scheduled to be back home in wilmington or what happened? inside the delaware courtroom earlier, abruptly changed his plants is only surviving son, hunter biden was convicted on all three felony gun charges just that he was facing today. hours later, hunter biden was standing on the tarmac, as you can see here, to greet his father when marine one landed in delaware it was striking to see the two of them embrace for the first time since that guilty verdict came down. in his only comment so far on the matter, president biden said, in part in his statement i am the president, but i am also a dad because he also praised his son for overcoming a battle with drug addiction. but this conviction also comes in the middle of a presidential election. there was also a message tonight and biden statement regarding his role as president he said that he will accept the outcome of this case, that he does accepted and they also respect the judicial process, seeming to reiterate a promise that he made last week that he won t part in. hunter biden but as biden balances both being an english parent and president in-between the verdict and that we re union that you just saw there on the tarmac. he also gave a speech on gun safety in washington it s time once again, do what i did when i was a senator, ban assault weapons before that speech, that was preplanned. i should note before the verdict came down this morning, it was in the delaware courtroom where the jury s decision on hunter biden was unanimous, guilty but notably three jurors told cnn after that they question whether or not these charges should have been brought at all a fourth, that was known to only us as juror number ten, said no politics were at play when they were deliberating their decision pressure, inviting never really even came in to play for me. you kinda put that out of your mind. politics was not even spoken about the first family was not even spoken about. it was all it was all about hunter and of course, as we know it, as far from over for hunter biden, he is facing sentencing on the gun conviction that is going to come at the height of the general presidential election and another potentially even more serious trial on tax charges. this fall. few people know more about the personal toll that this is taken on president biden than my source tonight. evan owls knows is one of the country s foremost biden biographers and a cnn contributor. he is the author of joe biden, their life, the run and what matters now and having joins me now, i mean, there s basically no precedent for what we are seeing right now. a president s a sitting president s immediate family member has never been convicted on any kind of crime while they were in office. and i just wonder what you make of it, what stood out to you have how president biden reacted today? yeah, it is something extraordinary to see. i mean, he is balancing these two distinct roles as father and as president and on some level, this combination of private life and public life has been at the center of his relationship with hunter since hunter was a baby after all you remember, of course, his mother was killed in that car accident when he was a toddler, joe biden at that point was between being elected and being sworn into the senate his hunters entire life has been in some ways straddling the struggles, the privileges, the choices, the risks that come with that. and i think of this tonight is a moment in some ways, it s part of this long arc, this really sort of epic american political story. yeah. i mean, the family seemed surprised when this came down today. it did it happened relatively quickly. hunter biden himself is not even at the courthouse today and you saw them them rushing back in there and including the first lady, jill biden. but after we didn t see any of this anguish or they re real response in front of the cameras. at least we saw the embracing the tarmac what do you think it s like behind closed doors and wilmington tonight? yeah. they ve got abundant experience of tragedy on some level, and tragedy is not to be exculpatory here when nobody and least of all, joe biden is saying that hunter biden didn t make choices that lead to this result. but they have also learned over the years about how you get through this. they turn inward. they have this. it s not a coincidence that they re going to wilmington for this. that s sort of the ancestral homeland and they go there and they meet as a family. they have these traditions of these family meetings and the line that you often hear in politics from biden is that through pain you have to find purpose. it can sound like it s a line, except that for him, it is at the core of how he gets through this. and i can tell you that is no question what he is telling the other members of his family that if we re going to get through this part of our purpose is to demonstrate that nobody is above the law that a president does not interfere in the activity because of the court that a jury can still find its way to a result even in a time of intense partisanship, you ve spent a lot of time with biden. i and his family as you are writing your book, did you ever think that you d see a day like today? i ll be frank. no, i think when i first started interviewing joe biden back in 2014, a decade ago, beau biden was alive. it was actually kind of a hopeful moment in the course of his treatment. they thought that they might have had some good news. and in so many ways, this story, the one we are inhabiting today is the result of beau biden s death in 2015. it was like a bomb that went off in that family and i have to say one of the things we learned from this trial and it really was a revelation even to people who know the family well was the depth to which the impact of addiction rippled all the way through hallie biden, as we heard, of course, also ended up involved with crack cocaine. it was just a a period of his life and i think as as political observers, we study president s not only because it helps us understand the choices they in make the pressures that they re under. but it s also a reflection of ourselves, of our country and our time and what this family was going through between 2015 and 2021 and all toya all the way up to today is in itself a very american story as someone who studies biden. i mean, what is it? what did you take away from? they already had this pre-planned event on gun safety at the white house, which i think a lot of people were thinking to themselves. i mean, the timing here is unbelievable, but he came out, he didn t give the full speech. she actually was going to talk about a new gun restrictions that the doj has enacted what that has resulted in. he did not he spoke about it more broadly. his speech that had been previously planned, but he didn t seem to give anything away. i don t want i saw that speech. yeah, not a word. i think there s a way that he has drawn this bright line between what s happening with the family and what s happening in politics. and it can almost look, i think a little awkward because people are expecting him to talk about this thing in his life. but he is so concerned that it will be turned into a talking point by his opponent that i think he s almost going out of his way not to talk about well, i wonder how, how does a way on him when he hears three jurors who told cnn obviously they voted. this was unanimous. they voted to convict, but they were asking themselves if this would have been brought it all had he not been a hunter biden. that s been a fact for awhile. i mean, joe biden is said to have told people around him that he knows that had he not continued on in politics, that his son might not be facing the charges that must really weigh on it. i think to tap that i think it s a very heavy burden and look the joe biden s decision to be in public life as long as he has has added to the pressure on hunter biden, joe biden has always known for a long time that the gene of addiction, which is in this family is in hunter biden his life and by staying in politics, by being is exposed as they are in some ways, it has put pressures on hunter biden, and i do think that weighs on the president. and obviously officers coming in the middle of the election year, we will talk in a second about how republicans are handling this. but how does biden handle this at the debate? i don t think anyone thinks it s gonna have a huge impact on the election, but we ll see, but how does he handle it for the debate trump, who of course, at the last debate brought up a hunter biden. i think in the broader sense, there is a way in which this adds to the psychic load of what he is contending with. i mean, if you think about the middle please do you think about the us and now of course, within his own family, actually though as a pro, as a political matter and in the debate that s actually an area where joe biden knows how to handle this. you remember in 2020 there was a moment when he essentially telegraph very clearly back-off. i love my son and actually, and the data in the campaign was clear about this. that was a moment that americans responded to. i think there is some piece of the public that says we want to see not only that president, but also that dad. yeah. everyone else and it s great to have you on this. thank you for joining us. pleasure. of course, as i mentioned, the fallout from this verdict is already happening in a fast and furious way from capitol hill all the way to mar-a-lago. tonight, joining us here also, andrew mccabe, the former fbi deputy director and cnn senior law enforcement analyst, ashley allison, scene and political commentator and the former coalitions director for the 2020 biden campaign. and also david urban, cnn, senior political commentator and former trump campaign adviser. so we really got the entire gamut here. and andrew mccabe. but let me start with you because we did hear from the special counsel, david weiss today, someone we have not heard from very often in this case, he came out and spoke after the guilty verdict no one in this country is above the law everyone must be accountable for their actions. even this defendant however hunter biden, should be no more accountable than any other citizen convicted of this same conduct obviously, andrew mccabe, a hunter biden s legal team has made clear they re going to challenge this, but this is not the end of the legal exposure. legal troubles front or biden. he s got another case pending this november or this fall yeah katelyn, he s not out of the woods by a long shot. the case that he has coming up in september on the tax charges very serious case, and it s one that on its own brings the threat of much more extensive potential jail time. now, of course, they ll go into that case, having already been convicted of another felony, so he s no longer considered a first-time offender in the resolution of the tax case, which could make his penalties if he s convicted even more intense okay. so you do believe age or became that it would it could impact the outcome of the case potentially yeah, there s no question. he goes into that case now is having been recently convicted of another totally unrelated offense. so that s not a good thing for him. i think it was interesting that weiss made those comments about the fact that hunter biden should not be held more accountable than anybody else there s no question that this the trial was conducted in the way you would expect to see any criminal trial conducted. the prosecutors had an overwhelming amount of evidence. their case went in very smoothly. the defense had a very, very limited range of motion to work with here, trying to get the jury to basically thread the eye of a needle and focus on the fact that hunter allegedly wasn t taking drugs the day he bought the gun that was kind of a hail mary pass and obviously didn t work for them. all of that aside, despite the validity of this jury verdict, i think mr. weiss is going to have some really tough questions to answer in the long run about the broader decisions that he made along this path. why he offered such a favorable plea deal that he then walked away from and wouldn t give back to the defendant once when he asked her that initially. so there s a lot of questions about why hunter biden was held to this standard. maybe prosecuted in a way that most other defendants who might be who were allegedly involved in similar conduct would not have been held to the same standard. those questions are still i think hanging out there for me. yeah, weiss, it we don t often see a case like this broad as we ve noted and looked at the historical context david, can we talk about how the trump campaign responded to this day? because obviously republicans talk about hunter biden a lot, but this i noticed this today with the trump campaign where they first released a version of the state of a statement on what happened criticizing biden, criticizing his family, essentially saying that hunter biden should have been charged with with other things. but at the end, on the initial statement, they said, quote, as for hunter, we wish him well, in his recovery and legal affairs okay. but then they retracted that and put out another one striking that last line and no longer wishing him well and then resending the statement all together. what do you make of that? well well, kaitlan, i like i like the first version better, right? obviously, nobody wants to see anybody languish in an addiction and spiral downward any more than they already have been. and is well chronicled on the laptop and is andrew pointed out correctly, september 5, hunter biden stands trial. again on these tax charges, which is what are much more serious, they re seven charges, i think three felonies and for misdemeanor charges, he is facing for not paying over $1,000,000.5 in taxes over a five-year period on $7,000,000 earned and so he s he s in for, some rough sledding ahead and two, your earlier get to evan s point earlier, it s going to be right in the middle of that campaign, september 5th. and it was kinda right when people are getting ramped up in campaign season. and that s gonna be weighing heavily on joe biden mind, he is not campaigning and it s going to be in the news every day is american goods are contemplating what they re gonna do. i don t think it s going to have a positive impact on who votes for whom, but people republicans are going to point back to the laptop and the 50 plus national security individuals who said the laptop was rushing russian interference camp the pain and it wasn t real. and in this case, the laptop with the fbi said laptop was real. israel could be so it s going to provide a bunch of fodder for the campaigns. for the republican campaign moving forward. yeah. i just wanted to when we ve had any of those officials who ve signed that letter, james clapper, brennan, we ve talked to them about putting their name on that and what not but ashley, in the sense of this of what we re hearing from republicans and then struggling to kind respond to this. some of them are saying that they believe that conviction is kind of dumb in the words of one of them. in other situations they ve been arguing there was this two-tiered system of justice, but, but i mean the president s son was just convicted by his justice department yeah. i mean, it s interesting to see republicans contort themselves in certain moments to make the story work for them. downtown was prosecuted. will the state a state-level charge not joe biden, they blamed joe biden now, hunter hunter biden. joe biden s son is prosecuted by the department of justice, who joe biden are president nominated attorney general, and they still are not satisfied i love i think at the end of the day, i agree with david in terms of there will be another case that hunter biden and involved in. and i do not think that these outcomes of the case particularly related to joe biden, son joe biden, like donald trump, but joe biden s son will be determined them on how voters actually the decide to vote in the fall. but what i do get allows an opportunity to do is to draw a contrast. yet again, on how the two 21 former president, one current president, who both our fathers approach the situation, talk about the situation, handled it with compassion or lack of compassion, handle it with honesty. and i think that will be in there ll be opportunity hey, this fall to see the state contrast how one side handles it versus the other. well, and we heard from the house speaker mike johnson on this listen to what he told manu raju today. david mr. speaker, you ve been saying two-tier system of justice for some time. here s the president sayyed being convicted on three counts as that undercut your it doesn t every case is different and clearly the evidence is overwhelming here i don t think that s the case and the trump trials and all the charges because it had been brought against that have been obviously brought for political purposes. a hunter biden is a separate instance okay. but david, is that really i mean, it does undercut the claims that it s a two tiered system what it does, it look, everyone s saying, look, two things can be true here, right? people are saying, oh, this wouldn t have been brought if hunter biden wasn t joe biden? in sun, but yet nobody is saying that same thing, right? except maybe for fareed zakaria, that nobody would have brought the case against donald trump if you weren t his name work donald trump so possibly both those things are true in this and these both cases, and i think that s what s getting republicans goats here. andrew mccabe, can i just get your thought on this? i mean, you were the deputy director vector of the fbi. how do you view this in the sense of, you the rule of law and justice system overall and how that is. but this new political weapon at the center of everything caitlin, i spent my entire professional life in it. the justice system in this country is not perfect. it s got a lot of flaws, but it is not two tiered. i have also seen that people who have outcomes, they don t like, generally don t like the system. and people who have favorable outcomes, they like it this politics aside, that s basically what shapes people s opinions i guess the speaker believes that his own judgments about the quality of evidence in each individual prosecution, which he admits they re all very different, his own judgment about those things should supersede the decisions of judges and juries. i disagree with that but i guess we ll just have to leave it there and i should note figure johnson was not actually in the courtroom. we were listening to all of that evidence, of course, andrey cave, ashley, i ll send david urban great to have you all talking about this, breaking it down with us tonight. thanks thanks for having me. i head, stop the steal flags and now the wife of the supreme court justice samuel alito is condemning the pride flag and more lots of flag talk. it s all in tape will let you listen to it in a moment also for her republican house speaker unloading on former president donald trump tonight, holding nothing back truly he is a populist. he s not a conservative this populism is untethered to principles presidents, the former under our leadership, the forgotten man and woman, will be forgotten. he no longer the current typography is still a sacred qarrah. there s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world on who will be the next, the most anticipated? they did moment of this election, the weight only cnn can bring it to you moderated by jake tapper and dana bash to cnn presidential debates thursday, june 27, unknown live on cnn and streaming on max start your 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talked about moving no thank you. you could use open door. so your house cleaner, and enjoy a spotless house for $19 filing earth would liev schreiber sunday at night on cnn tonight one of the former leaders of the republican party is unloading on the indisputable current one. and a new interview. the former house speaker, paul ryan called donald trump unfit for office. in squarely blaming him for republican losses up and down the ballot so he s process a lot of seats. i could probably spend some time to come with the numbers he causes senate twice. he causes the house because he has nominated. he is pushing through the primaries. people who cannot win general elections, but who pledged fealty to him. that s not a good way to build and grow a party without relationships still is ic as ever, we re also learning that another relationship may be on the verge of thawing out donald trump and senator mitch mcconnell will share the same air for the first time in nearly four years this week as after mcconnell confirmed to cnn today that he will be at that meeting, trump is having with senate republicans in washington on thursday. now this is so notable because donald trump and mitch mcconnell have not spoken since december of 2020 it was shortly before the january 6 attack on the capitol for which mcconnell, as we all remember, and that floor speech said trump was practically and morally responsible for what happened then of course four years later. and a remarkable turnaround, mcconnell announced in march that he will be voting for donald trump come november by source on all this tonight is former republican congressman adam kinzinger, who served on the january 6 congressional committee and gardens and just first off, what do you make of trump s upcoming meeting with senate republicans, but also the fact we don t know if they ll actually interact. it s not that big of a crown bit, but the donald trump in mitch mcconnell will be around each other for the first time in four years. well obviously the meeting itself isn t surprising. mitch mcconnell meeting with trump really isn t surprising. he s a political animal at his core. i mean, he s a he does some honorable things like the support for ukraine and stuff like that, but he s made it clear from the very beginning that he will support the republican nominee money i wish he wouldn t because, i mean, obviously, he could stay away. he could not say anything at all. and it s pretty obvious he s not going to be there in a number of years. so why not go out with the legacy? so it s too bad, but like i said, i m not surprised at all well, i mean, it s essentially the opposite of what we are hearing from paul ryan. he said is now voting for trump. he s going to write someone and he did that in 2020. so it s not a surprise. but this is what he said to neil cavuto about why he can t bring himself to vote for donald trump i think it really is just character at the another day and the fact that if you re willing to put yourself about the constitution and oath new or swear when you take office in federal office where there s president, remember? for congress, you swear an oath to the constitution. and if we re willing to suborn, it to yourself, i think that makes you unfit for office why do you think that other republicans more republicans who feel the same way, paul ryan does, don t say it i don t know when i wish they did. i mean, i look, there s reality that members of congress and former members of congress, particularly, or ones that are leaving don t want to make the party mad because they can go make a bunch of money lobbying after that. and so a lot of them stay quiet, which is why people asked me how can somebody that s leaving stays quiet? you don t want to tick off the party. i m very proud of paul ryan for saying that because he could have stayed silent. he could have not said anything, but he made a very clear, concise case for why he he s unqualified and on the point about the constitution law, caitlin when i swore in to congress, i did not take enough to my district. i didn t take an oath to the 700,000 people i represented. i took an oath to the constitution of the united states. that is the most important thing more than any issue. we re than any tax rate. the most important thing is, are we going to uphold these basic principles because democracy can t survive if you don t. so i think paul the speaker, made a very compelling case. he did it in front of an audience that didn t want to hear that. and i hope he says it more. it didn t talk about people though who are political animals that are interested in keeping their jobs on capitol hill. i mean, i think they look at this in a cynical way and say, okay, well, if i say what paul brian s out there saying, look at paul ryan, he s no longer in washington. he is no longer the house speaker. he left he s out why would i take that route if that s going to portend my fate? yeah. and let s look, it s true. you will be kicked out. the question is of conscience what is most important to you, a title, an identity. i mean, those are powerful things where you re conscience or your country, or the legacy that you leave. and so these people look at him, they ll look at, you know, liz cheney and i this is what a colt does by the way, it takes a few people that are out of line that don t swear fealty to the leader. they kick him out they politically execute them, and it sends a message to everybody else, don t get out of line. and that s why over the last eight years, we ve seen increasing, not just loyalty to trump but increasingly members of congress, for instance unwilling to go outside, criticized him for anything unwilling to go outside of what other whatever his daily orthodoxy is, which has nothing to do with conservatism and look, it s really just a question of conscience i m glad you said that about conservatism because this is what paul ryan s essential take was on what trump has done to the republican party. obviously, your lifelong republican, this is what he said also today i m a conservative republican. he is a populist. he s not a conservative. i want to see someone who s, who has fidelity to principles. i would prefer a party that is based on principles not personality or populism this populism is untethered to principles, but is that the future of the republican party mean that is the direction it seems to be moving in more and more look it depends how far in the future i think in a year, yet still that party i think if you fast forward ten years, i believe there s not going to be a person on this planet alive that will ever admit they support it and donald trump, because i think look, if he loses, obviously he s a loser once again. and that has a way of basically waking people up in a movement or in a political party, even if he wins, he s president for four years. very few presidents come out of that more popular than they went in america will be exhausted of him. and i i think the republican party will start to eat them up by the end of that. that s my optimistic view. but then somebody else could come along and run that same formula. and so who knows, but this is why people like paul ryan speaking out talking about being a conservative. but now being called a rhino, not because of what he believes but because he s not pledging to leave agents to a man and steady pledges, allegiance to a constitution congressman adam kinzinger. thank you you bet. if tonight there were not enough controversy surrounding the supreme court and won justices in particular, especially justice samuel alito. tonight, thursday, new one to keep up when it s a secret recording that is now been published of his wife or the end talking about flying even more politicized flags will play it for you after a quick break. alder chains is cold, calculating, cynical, and needs the money. not only was the cia compromise heel so was compromised secrets and spies, a nuclear game 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you are at increased risk for pneumococcal pneumonia, prevnar 20 is approved in adults to help prevent infections from 20 strains of the bacteria that caused pneumococcal pneumonia in just one dose, don t get prevnar 20 if you ve had a severe you re allergic reaction to the vaccine or its ingredients adults with weakened immune systems may have a lower response to the vaccine. the most common side effects for pain and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain t headache and joint pain. i want to be able to keep my plans just one dose can help protect me from pneumococcal pneumonia. that s why i chose prevnar 20 ask your doctor dr. or pharmacist about the pfizer vaccine for pneumococcal pneumonia start your day with natureduce urges to urinate, binded at walmart or these retailers, i m kevin lift ttac at the white house. and this is cnn today i d senate democrats are pledging to push through a supreme court sx package this week on the hill comes after the latest scandal to hit the high court, a surreptitious audio recording of the justice samuel alito and his wife, martha. and it was captured by a liberal activists who posed as a sympathetic, sympathetic supporter. and like-minded admirer i want sacred heart of jesus because i had to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. exactly and he s like, oh, please don t put a flag. i can i won t do it because i m deferring to you. but when you are free of this nonsense get up and i m going to send them a message every day this audio of course, coming to light after the new york times first reported on two flags that were flown on alito properties including an upside down american flag, which became the symbol for the stop the steal movement around january 6, justice alito responded to that in a letter to congress saying that the response to that reporting, blaming his wife for putting those flags up tonight, their neighbor in the alitos house, emily baden, said that she believes that everything that has happened, everything new here on this audio proofs are right absolute horror if there s one thing that is the basic job description of a supreme court justice. it is to remain impartial and with the upside-down flag, with the appeal to heaven flag. samuel alito has shown that he is not impartial here tonight. the vernon jordan chair and civil rights at howard university law school. cheryl, an ipl and it s great to have you here. i should note, we ve heard the full recording. this is just what has been posted online that we can hear but from what we did here i wonder what stood out the most to you and all of this audio that is mostly about martha-ann alito, but also we re from justice alito himself as well yeah. katelyn, i am focused as well on the recording involving the justice himself. justice alito and the parts that i found most disturbing, probably the part that i find most concerning is when the reporter says that we need to return this country to godliness. and he says, yes, i agree with you. i find this to be a very shocking statement coming from a supreme court justice in a democracy like hours, which is not a democracy ruled by a particular religion you know, when john kennedy was asked whether as president his allegiance would be to the catholic church or to the constitution. he said, i swear an oath to the constitution. and that is what will guide my, thinking and my work. as president of the united states. i would ve expected justice alito or any justice on the supreme court to say the same and then similarly, i was very alarmed by his endorsement of the idea that it is impossible to compromise around a set of issues that people feel passionately about. the very nature of the judicial function on an appellate court like the supreme court, is to engage in compromise, to engage in conversation, to find a way towards an answer. justice alito is fond of citing brown versus board of education, which is indeed a magician important decision that changed american democracy. but it was born of compromise to get to a unanimous decision striking down separate but equal required months of work and wrangling. but but ultimately, the court created a unanimous decision because they understood the importance of coming before the country as one speaking to such a volatile issue and what justice alito essentially said was that he concedes he gives into the idea that there are simply things he cannot compromise on and that the two, what he calls the two sides cannot compromise on. and his framing of these decisions as well. winners and losers also suggests something that is, that i think is contrary to how we think about the judicial function. what does it say to you that we haven t heard from justice alito since these recordings were published? well, i d say a few things. kaitlan that i think we should be keeping our eye on. first of all, as, you know, senator durban is going to try to move forward. the senate ethics bill that he and senator whitehouse have put together that s obviously going to be a difficult thing to do, but he s determined to do to it. and when he was asked why he s doing this, pushes it because of the recordings. he said it is not because of the recordings and he said it was because of a financial disclosures and ethic statements. and i would remind everyone that justice thomas issued new disclosures, just a few weeks ago revealing trips from 2019. so quite late. and justice alito sought a 90 day extension, which he was granted so there may be other shoe to drop so we don t know. and i think that justice alito is not going to respond to every drip and drop of the revelations that are coming out. i think he responded last week around recusal from the case because that is imminent. yeah. but i don t think he intends to respond to each of these allegations. we saw him respond to that because they were asking him to recuse himself. he said he didn t fill he didn t think that it met the standard here. but cash you something else though because i m curious as we talk about this is i wonder what you would say to people who listen to this recording in their responses. well, i m uncomfortable or i m skeptical of this because it was someone posing as a conservative supporter or a sympathizer of what the alitos deal with. i wonder what you would say two people who raise questions about that when they listen to these audio recordings yeah. i mean if the questions are about the ethics of recording someone pretending that you are sympathetic to their cause. that is one set of questions that i think are actually not the focus of our concern. i think that the focus is that justice alito was speaking in an environment where he felt very comfortable. he was speaking unreservedly. he had a sounded as though he were speaking quite sincerely as did mrs. alito. and what was also interesting was that it confirmed much of the account that was given to us by the neighbor of the very disturbing account about what was happening winning between them in that community. and even that violates at least as i read it, the court s own code of conduct that they released in november last year in response to pressure that they were getting after the revelations of financial disclosures, many of us have criticized that code but that code does say that adjusted should require similar conduct by those subject to the justices control in terms of harassing behavior and conduct, simply saying it was my wife who hung the flag or it was my wife who was engaged in the altercation by their own standards is not enough so we learned a lot from that recording that i think is important, and we ll be watching closely for the disclosure as well. cheryl, an i fold great to have you. thank you thank you. caitlin. and i should note that tonight on laura coates live, you will hear new audio of justice samuel alito. it comes from the person that we were just talking about, those recorded this the liberal activists, lauren windsor, she ll share. new excerpts from her secret recordings. that s tonight at 11:00 p.m. eastern up next here, that when the source it is primary night here in america, it was your monitoring critical races that could sway the balance of power our in washington. one major question is, did ousted house speaker kevin mccarthy and get his revenge? she was seeking tonight a brand new scene and projection right after the break hey, mom, how many should i decorated have ran have blue that s a really tough call. who are you if you look at the latest data, you re probably going to need a lot of those purple sprinkles how this guy, when he knows his stuff i, bought the tape. i ll put it on my chase freedom unlimited call and i m a cashback on a few other things to data with the sound system. from deep step one more thing, the team owner gets five minutes again, because rose i like it. i ll break the clay back like a pro would chase freedom and limits. how do you catch back? jason, 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debate, june 27th, nine live on cnn and streaming on max breaking news as cnn can now project that republican congress amend nancy mace will win her south carolina primary tonight former house speaker kevin mccarthy tried to take her down by supporting one of her challengers after mace and seven other other republicans voted to oust mccarthy from the speakership last year. his revenge tour, not playing out though necessarily as he predicted. if you ve watched her, just her philosophy and the flip-flopping yeah. i don t believe she went through election cnn s senior political data reporter harrington is here as these primary results are coming in, not just in south carolina, but also across the country. and obviously, the mace race was interesting because she had kind of didn t hesitate to criticize trump previously, especially after january 6, that all changed as she was facing this challenge. listen to what she said in her acceptance speech tonight about president trump i also want to give a giant heartfelt thank you to the 45th and 47th president of united states for his support. president trump, south carolina will have your back in november how much of an impact did he have in this race? i didn t hurt. right. i mean, last time around in 2022, nancy mace barely squeaked by in that primary against kt arrington when she was seen as more of the anti-trump candidate. now she has this massive advantage and that kind of lines up with what we ve seen throughout this cycle, which is when trump makes an endorsement in either governor s race those are congressional races. his candidates have always one and 2024, at least before tonight. and the other thing i will note is somebody cares, at least in the republican primary electorate, what kevin mccarthy has to say, he s not the speaker anymore. the idea that he could go on this revenge tour and somehow get revenge against these candidates. these voters care about donald trump. he runs a reply publican party, not kevin mccarthy. yeah, there was some funding that kevin mccarthy helped with with mazes challenger, but but that was pretty much it. but we re also projecting that the republican michael ruling is going to win that that special election in ohio s six congressional district. this obviously matters because right now republicans having teeny tiny majority in the house and heal help with that margin just to teeny tiny bit. yeah. yeah. he ll help in that. but really what s interesting to me there is the margin which is he s not winning by a whole heck of a lot of the margin i last checked around was about ten percentage points. and why that s important, it s trump won that district by nearly 30 points. this is just another example of democrats turning out and high numbers in these special elections democrats are highly engaged and that s the thing they re hoping for come november, right? that this highly engaged electorate that they re seeing in these special elections will translate come november and their voters were turnout and trump s voters perhaps won t. okay, so that s interesting. so he wanted the district by how much in 2020 trump won it by a little less than 30 percentage twice and now you re seeing how close that is in that race is exactly right, and that s something we ve seen throughout the special elections since roe v. wade was overturned as democrats been outperforming their 2020 basin and democrats are hoping that translates to 2024. but of course there ll be a much wider turnout in 2024. the question is, how much larger? well, that turned out, actually, yeah, and highly engaged voters important can i ask you? we re going to talk about a few of the other races were still waiting on some polls so close in nevada, cui talk about what is happening with george santos, your war, the associated press is reporting tonight that the former congressman who has, we know is facing federal fraud charges right now, has just one. this bid from a judge to be able to go and visit the poker nose and pennsylvania yeah from a judge essentially granting his request to be able to leave the state to go to this area. it s restricted as a condition of his release while he awaits trial, but he is going to be at least allowed to go to the poker news, isn t that nice? you know, he can go skiing and the poke anos perhaps that could be my winter vacation come next year, the next time i take a winter vacation, i can go to the polk and maybe still a little bit with george santos and have a good time. i mean, george santos is the gift that keeps on giving. that s really all it is. his comedic relief and a political world in which everything seems to go wrong. and so down he is the comedic relief that actually allows us to smile once in a while when talking about politics, people don t ski in this summer, harry, you know what asking, taken water ski. why don t we go to a water park with george santos? we could do that. skiing s is for all seasons i ll leave that to your arians and i know you re keeping an eye on all these racism. we will to thank you for that. up next and i go to a concerning development that happened as the feds have now arrested eight foreigners who have suspected ties to isis, how they enter the united states according to our cnn sources, that s next to a cnn special event. it s time to celebrate freedom progress and the trailblazers who paved the way this is a festive day for all black americans. we still have a lot of work to do, joins cnn s victor blackwell for a native interviews the performance is by john legend, fatty new bill, smoky robinson, and so much more cnn s vegetable, june, celebrating freedom legacy wednesday, june 19 at ten on cnn kate made progress with her mental health, but her medication caused unintentional movements in her face, hands, and feet called tardive dyskinesia or td so her doctor prescribed us dead oh, xr a once-daily td treatment for adults costello xr significantly reduced katie td movements. 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their realisation hits are going to sell the house don t worry, just selling, buying one move when you start with open door. wow. 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. beta prostate, find it at walmart news night with abby phillip next on cnn closed captioning brought to you by guilt visit guilt.com today for up to 70% off designer brands, it has the designers that get your heart racing had inside a prices new every day, hurry. they ll be gone in a flash designer sales at up to 70%, an sop guilt.com tom today some breaking news for you. this evening as sources are now telling cnn that eight foreigners with the suspected ties to isis have now just been arrested here in the united states. we are told they re rounded up in los angeles, new york, and philadelphia on immigration charges and law enforcement sources tell cnn that they came in through the southern border, the us southern border, and they were screened by us officials, but apparently no red flags at the time investigators later discovered possible links to isis members overseas, which is what triggered this initial federal investigation. here tonight, danielle harvey and the former head of intelligence for the decent dc homeland security department, i mean, how concerning is it that homeland security officials and how worried are they after seeing this about potential terrorists, people with ties to isis exploiting the us southern border to enter the united states well, the good news is that the system worked, right? so let s just everyone take a deep breath. federal officials caught these individuals. they investigated them, they track them down. they have them in custody. so this is exactly how it s supposed to unfold. why didn t catch them when they entered is a whole different conversation. they will have to hear soon as the investigation goes through, it may be because of what we call trade craft. these individuals may have hidden their intention. they may be well coached. there may be a larger conspiracy at play. and if federal officials followed them that look at some of their communication, some of their activities, and deemed that they were a threat. so that s good news. they were caught the bad news is as christopher wray in an april and many cbp customs and border protection high-level officials have told members of congress and the public that they re concerned about terrorist and known as what we call k asts, known suspected terrorists, and people in the no fly list sneaking across the southern border because of the the volume of individuals that are coming and the number of countries are coming from. i mean, this is exactly what we ve heard from republican critics of the southern border and how it s being handled at this moment is a concern that this something like this could happen and the system not working yeah, it s always a concern, especially when we would call them up the gottaways. so if you look at if one in every hundred thousand individuals who get away is a known as suspected terrorists. you can have dozens or hundreds of individuals that could potentially threats and so this is a wake-up call to all
seats of government, the seats of power, and embarks on a campaign, a political intimidation, in order to secure outcomes that personally benefit him. and that at the core is part of the sticks of our democracy that are before us today. because once rule of law goes out the window, it is not something that is easy to get back and it is very much a part of the decision that we have to make before us in the next few months. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, congressman jamie raskin, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight starts now. we have new exclusive audio from the supreme court historical society that lauren winsor has given us and we will be playing that in the hour, so stay tuned. i will pick like i said, exclusive never before heard audio recordings of justice samuel alito speaking to an undercover progressive activist. that is what we have tonight. that is in addition to the bombshell recordings that were released yesterday and we will definitely want to hear these recordings when we play them. if you have been wondering how those secret tapes were made in the very first place, how activists and judges on the highest court in this land, how they came to mingle behind closed doors? the answer to that begins almost 10 years ago to this day when the supreme court handed down a major decision. reporter: supporters of the hobby lobby cheered today s victory. the oklahoma family that owns the chain of 500 craft stores claims that providing insurance coverage for some forms of contraceptives under obamacare would be the equivalent of paying for abortion. the court called the rolling startling and said it will allow companies to opt out of any law they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs. the hobby lobby decision. the majority opinion was written by justice samuel alito and it was one of the first signs that conservatives on this court were willing to go after reproductive freedoms no matter the consequence. in the wake of the dobbs decision 10 years later, hobby lobby seemed sort of like the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. in november 2022, the new york times offered key reporting about how the hobby lobby decision came to be. for years before the court heard the case, conservative christians have been engaged in a campaign called operation higher court. that operation was to personally court and influence the supreme court s conservative justices. that effort was spearheaded by a man named reverend robert shank who would recruit christian couples who he called stuff missionaries to gain access to the judges and to impress upon them the importance of conservative christian values. here is how the new york times described one of their strategies. reverend gave his stuff missionaries close instruction, the justices were more likely to let their guard down at the supreme court historical society annual dinners because they assumed attendees had been properly vetted. ca justice, boldly approach, schenck told the couples according to a briefing document reviewed by the times. if given the opportunity, bear witness to biblical truth, but don t push it, he said. your presence alone at the historical society events telegraphs a very important signal to the justices. christians are concerned about the court and the issues that come before it. that strategy appears to have paid off. according to the times reporting, some of schenck s stuff missionaries were able to build enough of a relationship with justice alito and his wife, martha and, that they obtained advanced notice of the court s hobby lobby decision before it came out. that breach of that unprecedented breach foreshadowed the leaked dobbs decision striking down go versus wade two years later. that specific strategy of using the supreme court s annual historical society dinners as a way to gain access to supreme court justices, it turns out that too is relevant again, just this week. they historical society dinner is a yearly event where wealthy donors give money to a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the court s history. in exchange for their money, those donors get to rub shoulders with some of the justices and their spouses. as it turns out, conservatives weren t the only ones in on this arrangement. last week, progressive activist lauren winsor who happens to be a member of the historical society, bought a ticket for the event. she got in, she pretended to be a conservative donor attending the event with her husband. ms. lender then approach some of the conservative justices and secretly recorded her conversations with them. and busyness has not heard the full tape of what is recorded so we cannot say for certain where edits were made if any were actually made. tonight we have some brand-new, never before heard audio from that event to play for you and when you hear these new tapes, he will hear something familiar to what was on the tapes released yesterday. a justice in this case, justice alito, who is aggrieved and frustrated, who is nakedly partisan and totally unconcerned by appearing to be all of those things in front of a total stranger. remember what we heard yesterday. as someone who really cherishes my face, i just don t know that we can negotiate the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. i think it is a matter of, like, winning. i think you are probably right. on one side or the other, one side or the other is going to win. i don t know. i mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully. but it is difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can t be compromised. they really can t be compromised. so it is not like you are going to split the difference. and that is what i m saying. i think that the solution really is, like, winning the moral argument. like, people in this country who believe in god have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness. i agree with you. i agree with you. member, at this closed-door cocktail party, winsor was also able to get justice alito s wife, martha and, to explain her deeply personal motivation for flaying two insurrectionist flags in front of their homes. that is a story that has just scandalized this court and is reporting this week would seem to suggest that mrs. alito has no shame about what she has been doing , in fact, quite the opposite. after deriding who have been critical of the scandal, she made clear that these flags she flies are explicitly her form of resistance and response. i know what i want, i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i had to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. and he is like, please don t put up a flag. i said i want to do it because i am deferring to you but when you are free of this nonsense, i am putting it up and i am going to send you a message every day, maybe every week i will be changing the flags, i made a flag in my head, this is how i satisfy myself, i made a flag, it is white and yellow and orange flames around it. in the middle is this word. in italian, it means shame. just to be clear here, justice alito has publicly stated his wife did not fly these flags to associate herself with the stop the steal movement or any other group. but it seems quite clear from the clip that his wife very much sees these flags as a form of political expression and a response to what she believes are liberal attacks. perhaps most concerning in these recordings, though, is martha-ann alito s five-year plan for revenge . it is okay because if they come back to me, i will get them. i m going to be liberated, and i m going to get them. there is a five-year defamation statute of limitations. i don t know what you mean by they. the media. okay, so martha-ann alito, the wife of a supreme court justice, that she has a plan to get back at the media by suing for defamation. and she thinks she will have the opportunity to do that in the next five years, when she is free of all this nonsense. is samuel alito s wife telling us something here about justice alito s retirement plans? and how concerned should we all be that a supreme court justices spouse is talking about the american media with open contempt? tonight we have grand brand- new audio from that same event where justice alito himself tells us what he thinks about the press. the other voice you will hear on this tape is an associate of lauren winsor s who was also at this event. 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 is 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 the beginning and the end of it. and there are there are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks. that s what it is. like who? propublica. propublica gets a lot of, you know, gets a lot of money, and they have spent a fortune investigating clarence thomas, for example. everything he s ever done in his entire life, and they ve done some of that to me too. but, you know, they look for any little thing they can find, and they try to make something out of it. and be seen is reached out for comment from both samuel alito and his wife, martha-ann alito, but we have not heard back. joining me now is lauren winsor, progressive activist and the executive producer of the undercurrent. thank you for being here, i know you have had a busy week so far. we are so appreciative of all that you have set this far and all you have to share with us tonight. first, start with a new sound that your organization or your colleague has given us. there are two parts of this new tape that strikes me as concerning. the first is justice samuel alito saying that the media is attacking him because the media doesn t like how they anticipate the court has decided cases and may decide upcoming cases. was that a window into what may be coming down the pipe in the next two weeks? how did you interpret that? i mean, i definitely interpreted it as being a harbinger for bad things to come. did you get the sense when he was talking about the media and specifically citing propublica, for example, and their expensive investigators reporting about clarence thomas, that these stories are very much being shared behind closed doors at the supreme court? his media awareness seemed to be relatively high. it is very high, and he already had a sense of grievance when i first spoke with him in 2023, but it was much more pronounced this year i think in the two conversations that both allie and i had with him. can we talk about the context here? the fact is, you and your colleague both had conversations with the alitos. for those who have not been to historical society of us, is this what happens at them? we know two bombshell series of reports about conversation, advocacy campaigns that are happening between attendees and the justices on the supreme court. it is interesting, i had actually read that initial report in the new york times about reverend schenck and that is part of what played into my going in the first place but i did not read that report and think i should become a member now. it really was incited by the propublica reporting on clarence thomas and it is interesting that justice alito wants to rail about the money taken by propublica for investigating public servants while clarence thomas is not disclosing millions of dollars of gifts from gop donors and i have no idea what propublica s finances are but as someone who is an independent journalist, i would imagine that the money that clarence thomas is taking probably read the budget of propublica in any given year. is such a good point, what did you hear in justice alito s explanation for that? did you hear it almost seems as if there is certainly no contrition, but there is not even an acknowledgment that there was any wrongdoing on the part of clarence thomas in accepting potentially millions of dollars in unspecified gifts from conservative donors? it is not verbatim, but it is almost for meeting verbatim, making something out of any little thing. i don t consider any little thing to be buying my mother s house or paying for my nephew s tuition or getting a free rv loan. and these are all things he has accepted from gop donors. so, it would be a much different story if this were just about vacations he was taking with his wife and the family, most people would write it off as, it was a trip. most people would not consider traveling with friends or associates as being something that is that big of a deal, that is not actually what we are talking about with clarence thomas, is it? no, it is another order of magnitude, it would seem. and it has been going on for years. i guess some part of me is surprised that you, not knowing the alito s, you re just a random member of the historical society, is able to even get within shoulder rubbing distance of a justice and then draw him into conversation about some of the most incendiary topics in this country, which is a partisan divide. how did it actually unfold when you were in the room with the justice? it should be stated that in the guidance for the events, the historical society says, if you broach topics that are before the court, it may be grounds for you to be kicked out and so there is definitely a deliberative process in, how do i approach someone that, you know, not only are judges supposed to be really the height of discretion, the height of, you know, judgment, right? this is the highest court in the land, this is the supreme court justice, so i definitely went into this assuming that i was not going to get anything newsworthy. in 2023, i did not get anything newsworthy. but, i thought, you know, throughout the year that transpired, the media s scrutiny on justice alito has intensified so much and his grievance level is probably so much more peaked, that unlike clarence thomas who did not show up to this dinner but has been reported to have shown up to it many times, and he did not show up in 2023, by the way, that justice alito would probably attend anyway, even though he was undergoing this very intense media glare and sure enough, he was there and i think, you know, it was just something that i can t say what was in his mind so i don t know if in 2023, he had the same level of grievance and, you know, it changed over the course of the year? there are a couple options there. did it change or was it always there and he just felt more comfortable? was it hard to get him to talk? at the very end of this conversation, he says, are you a lawyer? i think he is talking to your colleague, i am not sure if it is you or her but it wasn t like you had offered any biographical information other than you had a husband who is not in the room. and i wonder why you operate that piece of information? how did you actually get into conversation with him? did you go up to him and start talking to him? the reason why i brought up my husband was that in 2023, i came with a male friend. the context of it was, we had a conversation after dinner, in 2023, my male friend was with me , he was not with me in 2024, so when i saw justice alito solo, it was one-on-one. it was, hi, there, my husband really wants to let you know that we are rooting for you, that you really have all the grit. the reason why i said you have all the grit, if it does not stick out to people, this is because donald trump had treated something out about how , you know, there should be more justices like samuel alito , with the grit that samuel alito has, so i felt like it was kind of a flag, if you will , to justice alito, that it was a safe space for him? a safe space, yes. i was trying to signal to him very coyly without saying trump because it goes back to the way the conversation to bridge a conversation with someone who has the highest level of discretion come you can t talk about partisan politics, if i had locked up in answer to talking about joe biden or donald trump, he would have shut down. so talking about polarization was really a way into the conversation that wasn t as aggressive but also indicative of what i was really trying to get out, was, is he acting on bias? and i really do believe that the american people deserve to know, is the supreme court so compromise that we do not really have impartiality, the bedrock of our judicial system? i think hearing it from his mouth, that he cannot be impartial, there are things that cannot be compromised, that needs to be fuel for journalists and for congress to say, tell us, what are the things that can t be compromised? lauren, look. you brought us into a room that few people are ever in and i think these tapes are revelatory and they are coming at a time of crisis for this court. we are not in having this conversation, thank you for bringing some of that conversation to our air, we are really appreciative, thanks for spending some time with me tonight. thank you, alex pick coming up this hour, we have new details about donald trump s presentencing meeting with his probation officer. it turns out he is being treated differently, just maybe not in the way he would like you to believe pick for scott hunter biden today joined donald trump in becoming a convicted felon facing possible jail time. does that mean the system is now en route? we will get into the republican response, coming up next. next. chewy, a citi client, uses citi s financial expertise to help drive its growth and keep its supply chain moving, so more pet parents can get everything they need. right when they need it. keeping more pets, and families, happy. for the love of moving our clients forward. for the love of progress. if you have chronic kidney 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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. president biden s son, hunter biden, was found guilty today on three felony gun charges. given this news you might have thought maybe the conspiracy about president biden rigging the justice system, maybe you thought that is going to collapse. it did not. today is the first step in delivering accountability for the biden crime family pick we have been saying two-tier system of justice for some time. the president son being convicted on three counts [ inaudible ] it doesn t, every case is different and clearly the evidence is overwhelming here. do you think the department of justice is still left nice against conservatives even though we see this verdict today? absolutely, when they tell school moms they are domestic terrorists because they don t like what is being taught in their classroom and other things, we can go into it, but we can go into it, but we want. atrial campaign statement released today callcenter better s trial nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the biden crime family. and in lockstep with the party front-runner, the chairman of the house oversight committee, republican james, said the work will not be done until the department of justice investigates everyone involved in the the biden s correct influence peddling schemes. joining me now is the cofounder and editor at large of the bulwark. thank you for joining me. this criminal conviction is apparently a distraction from the real crimes of the biden crime family pick is that strategy going to work? today s conviction was awkward, right? it is awkward for the talking point that it was all right, that biden justice department was weapon eyes only against republicans. but we live in a world in which the reality and the fact have a hard time catching up, you can see how deeply invested republicans are in there talking point about the biden crime family pick so it is not a shock that they are going to continue to repeat those talking points over and over and over again. but, i do think the contrast and the reaction to the conviction of donald trump in the conviction of hunter biden has been very, very telling here. again, it is always difficult to know how it is going to play out. we may see this at the debate. and other biden folks think this is going to come up at the debate and you know donald trump is going to try to make an issue of the fact that the president s son is a convicted felon which will be offered, being a convicted felon himself . but democrats have been making this point and let me even make the point that there are a number of democrats who are facing indictments under the biden justice department, not just the president s own son, but a democratic senator, senator menendez, henry cuellar, down in texas, these are all democrats. if the system is so rigged, how do they explain that? the answer is, they don t feel the need to explain that at all. they are just going to go with a spin. i just wonder who the spin is for, right? you talk about the reaction, this was a statement from the president of the united states after his son is convicted of felonies. 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. so many families who have had loveland battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love, out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. as i also said last week, looks at 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. it is a very strong statement, it is a tough statement for a father to make, and i think [ inaudible ] whatever the republican argument here is about biden rigging the system, among the [ inaudible ] i don t think there is any reason to doubt his word at this point. and again, this creates a really significant difference between the tantrum donald trump and his supporters have thrown and the acceptance of the rule of law and the decision of a jury that was represented with all of this evidence. the point you re making is, who is this for right now? almost everything republicans say is for the audience of one, it is for donald trump. this is what the base wants to hear about that is not the group of voters who will be deciding the selection. not to ask too poetic about it but i think embedded in biden s statement is a call to empathy, right? for those who have fallen, for people who have addiction and are trying to make it through a dark period, versus trump, who is all grievance all the time, and i think we think a lot we don t know a lot about where this country is headed, but really, appealing to people s since of forgiveness and empathy does not seem like a political strategy that has an expiration date. am i being too soft here? no, again, it is a very interesting contrast. if donald trump s superpower is his shamelessness, his refusal to ever take responsibility or apologize, joe biden s superpower is his empathy. and again, republicans aren t going to give him any credit for it but i do think there are a lot of americans who are going to say, this is a tragic situation, there are questions about hunter biden s judgment and his behavior, but also what you are seeing from joe biden is, this is what a father, a father who has lost his other son, how they would react to something like that. and i think there will be a sliver of the electorate, a crucial sliver, that is going to look at that and say we understand that seems human to us. that seems like something that we can identify with and admire as opposed to the constant conspiracy theories and the victim cardplaying and really, the vicious attacks on the criminal justice system and the jury system coming from donald trump. it is a real choice i had. this is going to be very, very indicative of who we are as a country. thank you again for your time, it is great see you. thank you. still to come this evening, we have new reporting about what appears to be a coordinated effort to broadcast disinformation about this fall s election on your local newscast. when it comes to donald trump a criminal conviction, republicans need a reality check. we have one, that is next. nex. with all the money i saved i thought i d buy stilts. being so tall definitely has its advantages. oh whoa. here you go, kiddo. thanks. hi honey ready to go? yup. there it is, there it is. ahhh.here we go. i guess it also has some disadvantages. yes it does. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty, liberty. as americans, there s one thing we can all agree on. the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people. but here s the truth. attacks on our constitutional rights, yours and mine are greater than they ve ever been. the right for all to vote. reproductive rights. the rights of immigrant families. the right to equal justice for black, brown and lgbtq+ folks. the time to act to protect our rights is now. that s why i m hoping you ll join me today in supporting the american civil liberties union. it s easy to make a difference. just call or go online now and become an aclu guardian of liberty. all it takes is just $19 a month. only $0.63 a day. your monthly support will make you part of the movement to protect the rights of all people, including the fundamental right to vote. states are passing laws that would suppress the right to vote. we are going backwards. but the aclu can t do this important work without the support of people like you. you can help ensure liberty and justice for all and make sure that every vote is counted. so please call the aclu now or go to my aclu.org and join us. when you use your credit card, you ll receive this special we the people t-shirt and much more. to show you re a part of the movement to protect the rights guaranteed to all of us by the us constitution. we protect everyone s rights, the freedom of religion, the freedom of expression, racial justice, lgbtq rights, the rights of the disabled. we are here for everyone. it is more important than ever to take a stand. so please join us today. because we the people means all the people, including you. so call now or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty. we re trying to save the planet with nuggets. because we need the planet. and we also need nuggets. impossible. we re solving the meat problem with more meat. (vo) in two seconds, eric will realize they re gonna need more space. (man) gotta sell the house. (vo) oh.open houses. or, skip the hassles and sell directly to opendoor. (man) wow. (vo) when life s doors open, we ll handle the house. i just went through a rigged trial in new york. it is a rigged system, a terrible system, actually, but it is a rigged system. the whole system is rigged. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged. that has been donald trump by the refrain during his criminal trial in new york, the entire system is rigged against him. and yet, the system really seems to be bending in his favor lately as we saw yesterday at his probation interview. trump s interview lasted less than half an hour and trump was allowed to attend the meeting over zoom from his mar-a-lago beach club in florida. with his lawyer, seated by his side. just for perspective here, according to a statement released by multiple public defender groups in new york city, public defenders are deprived of joining their clients for these meetings, the option of joining these interviews virtually by zuma is typically not extended to the people we represent either. joining me now is duncan levin who was a federal prosecutor and served as a senior staffer in the manhattan va s office, he is now a criminal defense attorney. thank you for joining me to make sense of this madness her. first of all, the circumstances of this probation, they sound relatively easy, maybe even cushy but donald trump says that everything is rigged against him. who is right? this is something that is a routine and it typically takes hours. to the extent that there have been things that have been different for him, they have only been different in his favor. most defendants have to come there in person, it is a drab office, these things take hours, there are reports his probation interview took half an hour. this is an opportunity for probation to actually ask the types of questions that a judge might want to know on sentencing that don t come out in the trial. this defendant is somebody who is so well vetted, everybody knows everything, but for most defendants, the judge does not have a sense of who they are as a person. what their family situation is, with her immigration status is, are they using drugs? a lot of people notice about donald trump but you could say half an hour maybe all you need but the fact is, this is them doing their due diligence and to the extent that it is on zoom, the lawyer is there, it is only half an hour, to the extent it is rigged or indifferent, it is only been in his favor picked the other piece of this he likes bringing up is the presence in this case on the da side of amending matthew purkey. they were to the department of justice and now works for alvin and they have literally used matthew to be like, the missing link between job biden, the publisher of the justice department and alvin bragg, the prosecutor that has sought charges against donald trump. for people who aren t familiar with this line of attack, this is how comp talks about matthew. matthew colangelo is a radical left from the doj who was put into the state, working with lakisha james , and then was put into the district attorney s office to run the trial against trump. we will take issue with it put into passive in that statement but you have gone between the doj and the das office, so you know what it is like, i guess, to be a plant. first of all, is that a normal thing that happens? and how in line with reality is this argument? this is something that is also being jammed up on capitol hill a lot. in a letter today, the department of justice said this was conspiratorial speculation. i think it is something a lot more sinister and dark that is going on, this is an attempt to really undermine law enforcement and to so distrust of the public if enforcement function. first off, the manhattan das office and doj walk together all the time, everything today. there are joint task forces on terrorism, on hate crimes, there is a joint task force that looks the filings the banks viral, the suspicious activity reports, there have been drinking since i have been prosecuted by the department of justice and manhattan das office against banks like standard charter, hsbc, ing and barclays, there have been cases every day that rd conflicting between department of justice and the manhattan das office, they don t arrest the same person or step on each other s toes and people go back and forth, and from the manhattan das office to the aspersion of justice and back to the manhattan das office, robert morgan was the most famous manhattan da who served for 35 years from 1975 to 2010, prior to becoming elected as a manhattan da with the united states attorney for the southern district of new york. he was an obama plant quick exactly, a stooge of the ministration. it is preposterous, right? and yet there is no sense these cries of foul play are going to end anytime soon. this is all coming to a head on july 11 when there is the sentencing hearing for trump and i guess i wonder what your expectation for that is and whether there is anything to be done around the cries of foul play in a rigged system that are inevitably going to come up no matter what trump is sentenced to? this is such a hard decision for the judge and you would not wish it on your worst enemy and frankly on both sides, nobody should want him to go to jail or want anyone to go to jail, it is a sad day. that being said it is a tough decision for him to make. the prosecution is virtually going to be asking for jail time. the defense is looking for a conditional discharge saying he has been punished enough by the felony and that is it. it will be an outcry on both sides no matter what it is. this is something that is very difficult decision. i don t know that there is any way to the political thicket of it, other than to say this is a judge who has really been around the block and will be taking this seriously unfairly and i think you ll see a sentence that is free of some of those political considerations, something that he will be, maybe dom amato, but i think both sides will be able to make of it like a rorschach test, if you will, they will be able to argue around it what ever it is. that is not exactly you are not giving me the inside dope on what you think it would be and i would never put you on the spot for that, but for all the we have seen thus far it feels like the volume is only going to increase. thank you, my friend, for being here, helping us all through this. coming up, trump appointee judge eileen cannon tosses out part of trump s indictment in the classified documents case. we are going to get to that but first, some very orwellian messaging broadcast from your trusted local news station, that is next. next. at bombas, we re obsessed with comfort. softness. quality. because your basic things should be your best things. one purchased equals one donated. visit bombas.com and get 20% off your first order. when life spells heartburn. how do you spell relief? r-o-l-a-i-d-s rolaids dual-active formula begins to neutralize acid on contact. r-o-l-a-i-d-s spells relief. our greatest responsibility is to serve our treasure valley communities. eastern iowa communities. we are extremely proud of the quality balanced journalism that cbs-4 news produces. but we are concerned about a troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country. we are concerned about a troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country. do you remember that nightmare fuel from 2018? the media organization, sinclair broadcast group, which owns nearly 200 local tv news outlets, had dozens of their local anchors across the country all read the same orwellian script about bias in the media. unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. today, sinclair broadcast group was caught again, with dozens of local anchors, again, reading the same script. the newsletters public notice and popular information first brought attention to the copycat newscast, which featured a script you might say has a very clear, conservative agenda. the wall street journal calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. illustrate journalism with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. is national correspondent matt galka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. the issue could be an election decider. now, the story, these dozens of local news outlets ran with was based on a widely panned piece in the wall street journal last week, claiming that behind closed doors, president biden was showing signs of mental slippage. the only people quoted on the record in that piece to support that reporting were republican officials, including former speaker of the house, kevin mccarthy, who is not at all known for being the most reliable anything. meanwhile, several democrats including senator chris have come out publicly to say that they get quotes to the wall street journal for that piece and the paper chose not to include them. include them. chose not to include them. said he told the journal that biden is someone who is sharp, engaged, and leads the conversation. on aside from the clear partisan edge to all of this, recent polling from gallup says that americans have very low trust in media outlets. just 32% of the country trust the media. but, that is not true when it comes to local news. pew research polling from earlier this year showed that 71% of americans trust their local news outlets. which is what makes what sinclair is doing here snow so nefarious. maybe you don t trust the wall street journal or cable news, but it might trust the station that gives them the weather, and that is the real issue. that issue could be an election decider. election decider. because there are places you d like to be. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this infection, an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. far-xi-ga they say we should stop eating so much meat. an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. so we made meat out of plants. because we aren t quitters. impossible. we re solving the meat problem with more meat. if you have generalized myasthenia gravis, picture what life could look like with. vyvgart hytrulo, a subcutaneous injection that takes about 30 to 90 seconds. for one thing, could it mean more time for you? 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it is certainly not a critical factor. all this means is that it is not sitting in what is otherwise known as a speaking indictment. it is still information prosecutors can bring out at trial, and almost certainly will litigate to make sure they can bring it out, as evidence of a prior bad act strictly in the context of mr. trump s intent, his motive, his desire, his willingness to conceal this information that he knew he knew he had classified documents, he knew he wasn t authorized to have them and he was retaining them at mar-a- lago. this is a minor, little victory for mr. trump. otherwise, the motion was denied. otherwise, the issue, of course, is that it just took so long. this could have been resolved weeks ago. it never needed to take this long. if it is not a significant win for trump, is it indicative, though, of a broader tension between the special counsel s office and this judge? because throughout this case and it seems like it has ratcheted up in recent months there is maybe not a volley because it seems like it is coming from one side, the judge does not seem happy with jack smith or his team. yes, certainly the tensions continue to boil and they have reached the point where in a hearing just a few weeks ago, prosecutors were so upset and frustrated with their attempts to try to explain to judge cannon their view on the case law and how certain legal precedents apply that the judge had to basically counsel them to calm down. none of us were there, i don t know how badly that got out of hand, but it is never a good sign when you are a lawyer and the judge is telling you to calm down. but, let s be honest about where this is going. judge cannon, for whatever reason, has chosen to take a slow and methodical approach. she hasn t granted donald trump anything of substance, yet, at any point in this case. but because of how she has dragged it out, because she is making sure the classified portions in particular are taking forever, it is almost guaranteed this will never see the light of day, it will never go to trial before people go to the voting booth in november. that seems guaranteed, there seems to be a question about whether we will see the trial, period. but, that seems to be based on politics. trump filed another motion to dismiss today, this one says that the fbi destroyed evidence by not preserving exactly where the classified material was in proximity to nonclassified material and trump is arguing he didn t pack the boxes, he didn t know what was in there. how substantive is this? or, does it matter, is it just more delay, delay, delay? i think it is largely a delay tactic, but the hope is that they might get an evidentiary hearing, something big mentioned in the motion, they want a hearing to probe into how this was conducted, how the boxes were organized, this way whether or not there is something to whether there are allegations of bias or improper storage. on the merits, it s garbage. it has nothing to do with anything in terms of 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.