our hearts for nearly 40 years. the rules are simple, fit the falling shapes into solid rose. as the levels rise, tetris tumbles faster and faster. the teen believed to be the first person to beat the game, so historic the ceo of tetris calling it a feat that defies all preconceived limits of this legendary game. willis said it took a lot of practice. the win, dedicated to his dad who tragically died in december. >> i'm dedicating it to my dad. he was always very supportive and i think he'd be proud. >> tearing down an icon, brick-by-brick -- >> yes! >> again breaking victory, just falling into place. steve patterson, nbc news. >> well, i know that it is an absolute fact that your father would be proud. congratulations, willis, what game are you going to be beating next? an amazing story that i want to end the show tonight on that very good and victorious note.

and, from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news. thanks for staying up late with me. i'll see you again, tomorrow. ou again, tomorrow president biden has now officially released his first campaign ad of 2024. and in that ad, president biden makes clear what he believes will be the central issue of this election. >> i've made the preservation of the american democracy at the center of my presidency. i believe in free and fair elections. and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted. >> there is something dangerous happening in america. there is an extremist movement that doesn't share the basic beliefs of our democracy. all of us are being asked right now what we will do to maintain our democracy. we are the united states of america. there is nothing beyond our capacity. but we act together.

i am joe biden, and i approve this message. >> that is joe biden's campaign message this year. that donald trump and the movement that he has encouraged are a threat to democracy. tomorrow, the president will continue to push that message in a speech commemorating the three year anniversary of the january 6th attack on the capitol. and the message that president biden will deliver their, while important, will not be new. donald trump's threats to democracy are well known. american side when trump spent his presidency cozying up to dictators, and shutting americas democratic ally's. they sought when trump did everything in his power to try to overturn the results of the illegitimate democratic election, culminating in a violent speech on her seat of government. they can see and now, when trump openly muses about the idea of being a dictator on day one, should he be reelected. perhaps the biggest example of donald trump's threat to democracy is something that is essentially falling off the radar. an active threat to democracy by trump and many of his republican allies, that is so

dire, and so urgent, that it could wipe a democratic nation off the face of the earth before we get to election day. it has been nearly two years since russian dictator, vladimir putin invaded the democratic nation of ukraine, and in that time, against all odds, the biden administration has managed to keep russia, thought to have been one of the finest armies in the world, at bay. joe biden held together a fractured nato alliance fractured in large part by donald trump himself. and they rally military and financial support for the besieged nation of ukraine and it was by all appearances a victory for the concept and the strength and durability of democracy. of democratic nations standing up to authoritarianism. and, now that victory may be slipping away. over the last few weeks, ukraine has faced some of the heaviest attacks from russia since the war began. russia is once again firing

missiles at ukraine's two largest cities. kyiv and kharkiv. russia has taken roughly 20% of the territory while leaving entire towns destroyed and its week. the fighting on the front lines of the war has become a bloody stalemate. ukrainian societies become we are. it becomes harder to find the ukrainian troops to fight through the harsh winter months. all of this during all of this ukraine is literally begging for a sustenance from its western allies. thanks to trump and republican leaders in congress, that assistance has almost stopped flowing. just before the new year, the united states set up what could be's last package of military aid in ukraine. the only way to get more aid to ukraine now is for congress to specifically authorize a message that the biden administration has been hammering for weeks. here was national security council spokesman, john kirby

today. >> here's the bottom line. the most effective response to russia's horrific violence against ukrainian people is to continue to provide ukraine with vital air defense capabilities and other types of military equipment. ukrainians deserve to know that the american people, in this government, will continue to stand with them. so it's critical that congress needs this momentum responds with providing ukraine with what they need to defend themselves. the time for congress to act is now. >> the time for congress to act is now. but as the white house continues to hammer that message, congressional republicans, one staunch ally of democracy, and opponents of authoritarianism have remained defiant. yesterday, the house speaker, mike johnson, held a press

conference at the u. s. southern border where he said that republicans will not pass any ukraine aid package, unless president biden agrees to draconian new border restrictions. for weeks, now the biden administration has signaled a willingness to compromise with the republicans on border policies in order to get aid for ukraine. so much so that some democrats have raised concerns about how much joe biden is willing to trade away. but republicans have rejected those compromises. because for them, rejecting aid to ukraine while hammering biden on the border is itself a victory for their maga base. when asked about the prospects of a deal, the republican congressman, troy nehls, told cnn yesterday, quote, i'm not willing to do too much right now to help the democrat and to help joe biden's approval rating. let's just understand that for a moment.

republicans are willing to lead ukraine, a democratic country and a u. s. ally fall in order to keep joe biden, or a democrat, from winning this next election. which is music to the dictators and authoritarians of the world. authoritarian leaders like vladimir putin do not have to worry about reelection campaign. putin is in one right now, but his main opponent is in jail. he will remain in power for as long as he wants. which means he, and searching ping, and kim jong-un can all just waited out until joe biden is out of office and the world democracies are no longer united. or until the united states is once again led by a president who talks about leaving nato, who admires authoritarian leaders, who does not care about protecting democracy's

like ukraine. a president who famously withheld military aid for ukraine, until it agreed to dig up dirt on his domestic political rival. a second trump presidency that would be a threat to democracy here at home, but also around the world. joining me now is a retired united states army lieutenant colonel and former director of european affairs at the national security council, alexander vindman, also with us tonight, former deputy national security adviser under president obama and the co-host of save the world. thank you for being here tonight. . carl, when we started talking about ukraine years ago after you sew briefly reported on that phone call on which donald trump tried to shut down the then new president of ukraine, it was about our allies. it was about european safety. it was about curtailing and it was not that centrally about democracy, the state of democracy in the world. today it kind of is. we have learned that democracy around the world's fragile, and that ukraine, to some degree, is our frontline for this. >> that is very true. let me start by saying happy new year. we will start on a positive note. it's amazing being on with you because you get to the heart of

the matter. other cable news network is running the audition for vice president, for donald trump who is looking to destroy our democracy, and you are focused on the real threats to democracy, and the fact that we have an election about democracy, and freedoms, and this is a thread that we are talking about domestically, and around the world we see threats not just from russia, ukraine, where we started the conversation two years ago. we have instability in the middle east with an ally of russia and iran, that is running proxies that are affecting u. s. interest and commercial interest. we have threats in the pacific, we have the north koreans providing long-range missiles to russia, this is a much, much more complex year than we started two years ago, frankly,

or the past year. i fear that we may be alert to the dangers at home, that seems to be the pattern in the election in 2020, 2022, likely to play it down in 2024. but we are not sufficiently focused on threats abroad, and we are not sufficiently focused on the fact that russia keeps marching forward, its relationships with other authoritarian regimes get tighter, and we are in for a, very very difficult year at home, and abroad. >> ben, what colonel vindman just said i think is interesting. the threats have proliferated. the world is just fundamentally more dangerous place than it was four years ago, and what happens, or what we do, not just what happens in ukraine, what america does, how america leads in ukraine is something that not just our allies are worrying about, and paying attention to, but more importantly, perhaps our adversaries. >> yeah. i think that we are living through a phase of

authoritarian renaissance of sorts, the ethnonationalist for i. t. . it has been going on for several years. one things that americans have to understand is that it is not just a foreign policy issue. it is the fact that this trend is interconnected. you do not get this many nationalist authoritarian leaders in this many places, you've got vladimir putin, russia you've got netanyahu in israel, you've got the philippines, and these are very different places. i could unfortunately list five or ten more countries at least, the reality is, there is a push back against democracy and ukraine is the most acute manifestation of that. where you have the leader, the kind of vanguard of this autocratic trend in vladimir putin, literally trying to extinguish his sovereign democracy, as a part of europe.

this is both about the expansionist agenda of russia, that could lead to threats and other countries including nato countries in eastern europe, but it is also about putin wanting to send a message about which way the world is going. is the world going in the direction of people like vladimir putin? a world without law, a world without rules, a world in which -- or is it the world that will stand up for some principal other than -- that is what ukraine is really about. so this is about our domestic policy more than anything else. so if we are one of the dominoes that falls, and donald trump returns to power, not only is ukraine finished, they will be cut off by the u. s. assistance, not only will europe be threatened by u. s. expansionism, but they will be plenty of other democracies in parts of europe that might be poised to seize the momentum and get elected themselves, and we could be looking at a very different and more dangerous world today in a few years. >> colonel vindman, i remember in the early days of the war, there were speculations from a lot of intelligence agencies around the world, including our own, that russia could take ukraine very quickly.

the author the ability to leave the country, he declined. they offered, -- you are a pretty brave guy, as well. they offered him the ability to go to the western part of ukraine, he declined. he stayed in kyiv. he posted videos every night. he gives a message every night. he motivates his people. and he tells them that they can win the war. yet, around the world, the ukrainian people see this, he has got his officials, he has got himself going to america, begging, saying we could lose this war if you don't continue to fund us. how dangerous is this? could ukraine lose this war? >> it is unlikely that ukraine could lose in the next year or two. i think that absent this funding, the supplemental funding for ukraine, things could get considerably more complex. there are still options on the table. the the u. s. can live in a direction -- of these 300 billion dollars, and the central bank assets, that is one of the solutions. but he really does get complex, because it looks like we are just not serious. we are not serious about our security, we are not serious about our allies, and the fact is, it invites attacks, it

invites russia to conduct this war in the first place, on the heels of a january 6th insurrection on the heels of hyperpartisanship driven by maga. it invites the iranians to advance their interest in the middle east, including propelling their proxy networks, that are attacking the u. s. , and the world interests. we are talking about world commerce, and it propels the chinese to recalculate the cost-benefit analysis on conducting a war to seize taiwan, and bring it back into the fold, there are the venezuelans in latin america, with their aspirations to seize oil, dprk, and its agenda to exhort resources and maintain power. these are all opportunists. these are opportunities that smell blood in the water and they see an opportunity to really go after democracies that are making it seem disinterested in investing in their security. and this is the one area that i could really have been concerned about. i think we may possibly have turned the corner. at least orientations of the population in the u. s. is voting on democracy. it's not a pattern. but we are not serious about our security, there are fundamental decisions that need to be made about ukraine some clementa laid, and the administration could take steps on its own, to really significantly improve the support to ukraine, that is

intelligence sharing, logistical support, these are not expensive, big ticket items. these are small policy changes that the administration could take on its own, and it just has refused to do that and we really urge that administration to see the dangers of ukraine flagging a losing territory and inspiring other regimes to advance. >> the articulation that colonel vindman had, it just looks like we are not serious. this is obviously, when you work at the national security council, this is a very important issue. the idea is when donald trump weakened nato, it is not that he actually did anything, is that he sort of said, we are not that serious about this. you need to do this, we may not be around, it is the implication that we are not going to be solid partners to you. you and i have talked to world leaders who were very concerned about this, they do think that if they have to make a determination that the united states is not serious and they start strategizing about their

worldview differently. >> yeah, that's right. let me try to be very specific about this. because this began to get worse in the obama years, where it used to be that there was some baseline issues with national security. where political opponents like john mccain and barack obama, who might even have disagreements about foreign policy, they would agree on the building blocks of what america national security was. you know, nato, article five, it is the collective defensive nato. the need to stand up for certain values around the world and that was a continuum since world war ii and through the cold war. you started to see a trend where republicans would politicize every aspect of national security if barack obama was one thing one day they would be against it. if he switched his position

somehow than they would switch their position. that's obviously gotten worse since then. and donald trump's election, when he came in and he tore up a bunch of agreements that obama had reached, he basically upended the hesitation to articulate the defense of nato. america is not reliable. the dysfunction and toxicity in its democracy has rendered it and unreliable super ally. and the thing joe biden can't fix himself is that it continues to this day. even allies who welcome joe biden and welcome leadership in the united states in rallying to ukraine, they are sitting back and wondering, is donald trump going to come back? vladimir putin is sitting there thinking i just have to wait this guy out, maybe a house interfere in the 2024 election to get donald trump elected. my strategy is a waiting game. i, as a dictator, have more power than the american democracy because they are swinging back and forth like a

crazy pendulum and they are not reliable. and this is what this is really about. if we cannot sustain the policy, if we cannot sustain something like the basic support for ukraine, a democratic country that is unresolved. if we could sustain that for more than a couple of years, because congress can get its act together, how is any nation in the world going to trust our word? how are allies going to trust our collective defense agreements if they cannot do that, they are going to start to hedge. they are going to bend the pressure from china or russia because united states can longer be relied on as a cornerstone of their security. we are already dealing with not just because donald trump's previous administration. if he gets back into the white house, that's gone for a generation at least if it is something that we can over get back. that's how high the stakes are in this election. >> it's important we realize that as we are struggling for democracy in our own country

that we have a massive role to play in the rest of the world. guys, thank you very much, we appreciate that. retired army -- under president obama, ben rhodes, we appreciate your time tonight. we've got a lot more news to get to tonight, including the ouster of harvard's former president, claudine gay, a major notch on the build for conservative activism but also an assault on the public's faith and institutions. but, first republican presidential candidates are making their final push ahead of the iowa caucuses in just 11 days. we will look at what is cutting through the voters and what is. not that is next, stay with us. stay with us. ♪ i wanna hold you forever ♪ hey little bear bear. ♪ ♪

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and doesn't spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. >> it is 11 days until the iowa

caucus and here are where things currently stand in the republican primary race. recent polling and i wish is donald trump leading his closest competitor there by 34 points, and while trump is keeping his physical presence in iowa to a minimum, generally leading up to his surrogates to do the heavy lifting, his opponents are out and about across the state meeting voters and at diners, participating in town hall events, and engaging in the sort of retail politics you would expect from a typical presidential candidate this close to a contest. ron desantis even completed his so-called full grassley, which is when a presidential candidate visits each of i was 99 counties, not to be outdone, vivek rahm swami completed a full grassley for the second time.

how is this all working for them? sarah longwell has been hosting regular focus groups with iowa republican voters and here she is describing how the latest group reacted when asked about nikki haley declining to say that slavery was the cause of the civil war. >> so, we asked about nikki haley slavery comments. only the nikki curious army had even heard about it, and when we asked her, so can you explain to the group what it was? she said, well, she said something, but i can't remember what it was. you know, it was, like she had heard about it. nobody else had even heard about it. >> publisher of the bulwark and host of the focus group podcast. thank you for being with us. and i think that what you learned there, it's very telling to a lot of us who spend time worrying about these sorts of things and thinking that this would be campaign ending to not say that the civil war was about slavery.

it is a different game out there. the republican contest in iowa in the republican contest in general was a different game with different rules. >> yeah. no doubt. the fact is, first of all, doing focus groups all the time, one of the main things that i have learned is that voters are not paying it nearly as much attention as those of us who spent all of our time thinking and talking about politics. but what is interesting, i just did a group of iowa voters this week, and for them, it is over. donald trump is the person. they are not that interested in anybody else. i asked one of the voters in that group what it is one thing that can move you off donald trump and she said it he would

have to do something really extreme, like die, or murder somebody. and that was her line. and for everybody else in the group, like i said, in that clip, there was really only one person who was even kind of curious about an alternative. she was a little nikki curious, interested in learning more, was going to watch the debate. but for most of them, they said trump is a known quality. i know what i am getting with him. i want his economy back, i want his policies on immigration back, i want his positions on crime back. and they are just big fans of his. and that is why, it seems like this weird theater that we are going through when we really just talk about the rays like there isn't -- where trump is 1 million points up and then there is an earth to race where we are talking about nikki haley and ron desantis. but i mean, the voters, they were brutal on desantis. he has been out there meeting people, talking to people, and they were talking about him, one person said he seems like he's given up. and another person said, yeah,

well you would be depressed if you are down by 50 points. so i think, i don't think that there is a world in which these voters are going to late in the game, take another look at ron desantis, or nikki haley in a big way. it's really a conversation about who comes in second in iowa. >> if you think about the last three or four republican primaries, there was a race. at this point in the game, there was still erased. people are still moving close to the top, or for a week people would leave, and in this particular instance, you had somebody in your focus groups say that donald trump would have to do something, i think the word you used was extreme or something of that nature. that assumes that nobody and the focus groups believed that donald trump has done anything extreme, notwithstanding the 91 indictments. >> yeah. when it comes to the two-time trump voters and republican voters in general, i mean, they think that donald trump is being indicted because the establishment is scared of him. because, you know, people are out to get him. they believe that he's the truth teller, that he is the one there to shake up the

establishment, and the reason that he gets attacked, the reason they tried to take him off ballots, or the reason he's under indictment is about people being afraid that he's going to disrupt the establishment apple cart. and it's a totally different reality that republican voters are living in. for example, we think that it is extreme, obviously, that people attacked the capitol on january 6th, because of a lie that donald trump told about the election being stolen. but when you talk to republican voters, as i do week in and week out, many of them take it as an article of faith that the election was stolen. that democrats did cheat, and so if you lived in that reality all the time, you don't think of trump as extreme, you think that we are the ones who are

wrong. >> obviously there's a challenge there for democrats in the election coming up. but for republican candidates running against trump, is there any way to break through any of the stuff that you are talking about? the numbers indicate there isn't, but in the focus groups, are you hearing any opportunity for anybody who is not donald trump to make inroads with these voters? >> right now the one thing i hear is there is some nikki curiosity.

but the way people talk about her, several people said the same phrase, i don't hate her. and they're like, i'm giving her a lock. but they also see her as an establishment candidate, as somebody they can't really trust because people say things like she would be the mouthpiece of millionaires and billionaires. and so they think of her as sort of a pre-trump candidate. they don't actually want pre-trump candidates. one of the things they say very clearly is, we are not going back. we don't want to go back to that world, mitch mcconnell and mike pence and these others pre-trump candidates. we want to live in the make america great again, america first policies, that's the republican party that people want. so look, i think that there can be a world in which nikki haley outperforms expectations in iowa, comes in second over desantis, more or less ending or at least putting a deep freeze on his political career, goes into new hampshire with some wind in her back, which is the only state that is tailor made not terribly trumpy state and does well there.

i think she hits a wall. her own home state of south carolina where trump is favored by a lot. when you look at the super tuesday states, the amount of narrative shifting that you would have to do, you would have to say that nikki haley, she would have to beat trump in new hampshire, outright, to even shift that perception a bit. i view that is highly unlikely. >> the numbers are good here when you think of someone coming behind victories in the past, even single races there has never been this kind of spread. sarah, thanks for your amazing work. sarah long were longwell is opposable. work as trump tries to evade accountability for allegedly inferior 20 election, his lawyers are the judge overseeing his d. c. case are asking the judge overseeing his d. c. case to hold the prosecutors accountable. but first, while the right celebrates loreauville of harvard's president, there are some on the left to argue that claudine gay's ouster is just one part of a broader political war, and there is someone on the right who agrees. we will tell you who, next.

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stage with the weight and the honor of being the first able to say, i am claudine gay, the president of harvard university. >> on september 29th, claudine gay addressed a crowd of students and colleagues at harvard university for the first time as president of that institution. that moment made history, not only because she became the first black person to lead the

university but because, as she noted that day, arriving at that particular point in history was a journey. in a speech called courage to be harvard, she reminded her audience, quote, not 400 yards from where i stand, some four centuries ago, for enslaved ople lived and worked in wadsworth house is the personal property of the president of harvard university. my story is not their story. i am a daughter of haitian immigrants to this country, and the stories of the many trail blazers between us are linked by this institutions long history of exclusion in the long journey of resistance and resilience to overcome it. and because of the collective courage of all those who walk that impossible distance, across centuries, and dared to create a different future, i stand before you. end quote. courage was her message that day. it would take courage from harvard's community, they resolve against all odds, as gay put it, to press on for change. that was three months ago. and in the months since, the institutions courage was tested. conservative activists chris rufo led a coalition of mostly right wing opponents to remove gay, using allegations of

plagiarism antisemitism. since gay resigned early this week, the conservative coalition has been downright gleeful. chris rufo even try to tweet that he scalped harvard's president. of course he first had to learn how to spell scalped. but let's have the courage to ask why. why was claudine gay so important to chris rufo project? >> in op-ed yesterday, claudine ants often answer. this was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of american society. campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise because these are the tools the best equipped communities to see-through propaganda. but such campaigns don't in their. trusted institutions of all types, from public health agencies to news organizations, will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders credibility. end quote. according to rufo, she's right. this campaign against claudine gay was about toppling institutions and reshaping them in a conservative mold. he said so himself in his own wall street journal op-ed this week, titled how we squeezed harvard to push claudine gay out. quote, if america's to form it's academic institutions, the symbolic fight over harvard's presidency must evolve into a

deeper institutional fight, a grueling form of trench warfare in which each concept, structure, and institution must be challenge to change the culture. he continues, if there is any hope of stopping americas cultural revolution, it must begin with a clear-eyed understanding of how to wield power and reshape institutions in the real world, end quote. an interview with politico he called it really a textbook example of successful conservative activism. conservative activists activism to topple the risks institution responsible for maintaining democracy making it more inclusive. educational solutions that held information and analysis, journalistic institutions that separate truth from misinformation, even public health institutions that help keep us alive. we have already begun to see what happens when conservative activism tarnishes the integrity of par public health institutions in places like florida.

i'll have more on that story, next. ♪ ♪ ♪

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president that has beaten these people time and time again in the state of florida. yes, we beat fauci on covid. we bucked fauci. we beat fauci on covid. >> that's florida governor ron desantis literally running for president on the idea that denigrating our nation's public health experts is a good thing. as governor, desantis did things like mocking students for wearing masks, banning local governments from implementing their own covid mitigation, and, most importantly, desantis lobbied against vaccine mandates and eventually against the vaccine itself. researchers at yale looked at

covid death rates in florida and ohio before and after the covid vaccines were made available. they found that while the death rates were pretty comparable before the vaccine became available, after the vaccine became available democrats stopped dying as much as march while republicans kept dying a lot. the excess death rate for republicans was 43% higher than that of democrats. and now, as we are yet another covid surge, still here is ron desantis, handpicked surgeon july to pataki about vaccines yesterday. >> frankly i think it doesn't

have any integration at some level with the human genome because these vaccines are honestly there the antichrist of all products. >> the antichrist of all products? yesterday surgeon general ladder poll called for a full halt in the use of all am are a covid vaccines incited the very debunked allegations that they could somehow alter your dna. joining us to help us understand why that doesn't make any sense at all, is dr. peter hotez, professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology, the author of the deadly rise of deadly science, scientists warning. this is a man who i have talked to literally from the days before covid was spreading. peter, good to see you again. thank you for being with us. can you help us understand what the florida surgeon general is warning about vaccines indian a? >> yeah.

the bottom line is it's misinformation. as you rightly point out, it's not the kind of misinformation that caused so many americans to lose their lives in red states, including my state of texas. thousands of needless deaths because people refused covid vaccines because they believe the misinformation. what he is talking about is the fact that many vaccines, because they are biologics do have residual amounts of fragments of dna, not genes that cause cancer but fragments of dna and they are generally in the pikeville graham to nanogram range for those of you who don't use metro system a lot, that's one trillions of a gram. those are random fragments. but getting that into actually sales and into the nucleus is a tough job. that's why we have dna vaccines right now because dna fragments have to transfer to two membranes, the outer membrane or the sound in the nuclear membrane. that's why we have special devices to get dna vaccine in. so the amount of any pikeville graham, one trillion thug ram fragments of dna that can get into the nucleus is very tiny if at all and then we have special innate immune system proteins that prevented from integrating so even if that happens 99% or more is not going to integrate into the dna. the bottom line is, this is just a scare tactic to scare people away from taking mrna vaccines. they're extremely safe. there's no evidence of dna

integration. and it's important now more than ever, just about to save your life. to keep you out of the hospital. why? because this new jn. 1 variant that is now rising across the nation, and we're up to thousands of hospitalizations again, you need this new annual immunization which specifically tailored for the variants that are circulating. and if you don't take it you are a risk of hospitalization again. so why he would send out this message at all and why it's under this message that this time when we are desperate to convince americans, only about 90% of americans have even taken this new immunization, makes no sense at all and certainly is not fitting with someone who is supposed to be a public health leader. >> at least we have folks like you, peter, who for a long time have been giving us the science and not treating this like idiots. i'm hoping that we will research and listen. thank you for the work you continue to do, my friend. peter hotez, vaccine developer, talking about this for a long time before any of us knew what

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calling it part of, quote, the prosecutors desperate effort to harass president trump and prevent his likely victory in the 2024 presidential election. end quote. they're asking judge chutkan to order jack smith to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court as well as to withdraw all their filings since the case was stayed and before us to give trump money to pay for his legal bills. join me to understand this is joyce vance, former united states attorney for the northern district of alabama. joyce, i want you to help me with this. i am troubled by it. i don't understand it. judge chutkan stayed the case because it had been appealed to higher courts. i guess that's what she had to do. so now they are saying that because it was stayed, he is manipulating stuff? is that's what's going on here? >> so trump's team is saying that jack smith violated the rules that the game is supposed to be played by. this isn't a motion that will have any impact on trump's ultimate guilt or the failure to convict him. this isn't about that. this is just about whether the court's divested of

jurisdiction to do anything else while the immunity appeal is ongoing. and frankly this a good argument the judge does lacked that jurisdiction and that smith should not have filed these motions while that appeal was ongoing. >> so what happens then? let's say the judge agrees with him. does he just sort of put it on hold and bring it up when the trial is back in motion? >> yeah. i think that is right. i don't think this rises to the level of contempt. chancellors has asked the court to the lawyers to shower show caused. notice it would ask smith to defend himself against charges of contempt. the judge might say the motions concert on the record and the trump camp is no obligation to respond, or she might ask the court to take these off of the record and give smith leave to file when jurisdiction returns to her. smith is trying to keep trump from running the clock. i assume he is very frustrated with trump's delay game. doing everything he can to keep hold of his trial date. here he might have overstepped a little. >> tell me the consequence of that, a prosecutors overstepping. i ask you this in the context of such an important case, because in all of the trump

prosecutions, the judges in the prosecutors are going to be under greater scrutiny than almost any other case we have ever covered. >> prosecutors are always held to a higher standard than defense lawyers, just in terms of their conduct. so maybe he should have held off on doing this. but i think the delay issue is a big one. look, there are greater scenes and lesser scenes prosecutors can commit. if this is a scene it would be on the very lesser end of the spectrum. we will likely see the judge either say everything is stayed, everything is frozen, don't do anything else, or she will say mr. smith, refile your motions later on. i think it's unlikely she will reward trump any sort of monetary damages. >> i want to talk to you about the colorado case and alternate being on the ballot. we may hear from the supreme court at any point now about whether they will take on the case and what they'll do about it. there are other states in which we've seen main, there are 17 states involved but we've seen more action in massachusetts in

illinois tonight. what do you make on where we stand on this issue, the 14th amendment and whether donald trump is qualified to run again in how the supreme court will evaluate this? >> it seems to me that the supreme court will have to hear this case. it's a little confusing because every state has different rules about how they determine who gets to appear on their ballot and with the standards are. for instance, in illinois, which is in play tonight, the law in illinois actually requires the board that does this work to make a determination about a candidates eligibility to hold office. that is what the 14th amendment speaks to, trump's eligibility to hold office, not his qualification to appear on the ballot in any state. but frankly, just to avoid confusion and all sorts of problems in the upcoming election, makes sense for the

court to go ahead and take this and here it. but we have not seen them show an inclination here to act quickly, even with these pressing time deadlines emerging this week. >> we are here every day, so when they do, it will be ready. joyce, thanks. joyce vance is a former attorney for the northern district of alabama. that's our show for tonight. time now for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. lawrence, i think i've eaten up half a minute of your show every night for the last tonight. so i think tomorrow night i will give you back a pile of it. >> according to my clock it's 25 seconds. i wasn't ready toun