for stephanie ruhle. don't worry, stephanie will be back here tomorrow night. you can catch me on saturday and sunday mornings on my new msnbc show, the weekend, with my co-host michael steele and alicia menendez. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks so much for staying up late. goodnight. ♪ ♪ ♪ it was called "damn love", "damn love".

it was a game that you played on your cell phone. now, i will tell you, the premise was a little bit dark, but straightforward. you see, there's like a grumpy looking person in the foreground on the left, and a happy couple on the right. so, the grumpy person in the foreground is supposed to be you in this game. and your goal as a grumpy little troll is that you are supposed to break up the happy looking couple behind you. now, you play against your opponent, and over the course of seven rounds, you basically have to choose between two scenarios, that might cause a rift between this otherwise happy couple. and at the end of the game, the player that causes the most heartbreak is declared to be the winner. now, this game does not exist, but these screenshots from it are real. congratulations, you just plunged to the next rank, you awful person!

it was a little twisted and it was very, very irreverent. but it was also kind of addictive. and the creator of that game said the app was profitable pretty much right from the start. she actually compared it to the mother of all video games. she compared it to pong. she said, quote, i will tell you, it's as simple as pong. this is the dating equivalent, it's not complicated, it's simple. but it's fun. now, "damn love", despite its profitability, it was more of, like, a side hustle for the scrappy early video game developer who created it. she did that video game thing. she did some other stuff. her full-time gig was as a writer, journalist. in the late 1970s at the age of 36, that woman who developed that game, her name was elizabeth. she submitted a story to the men's magazine, esquire, and

she says the fact that it even got published was a fluke. and editor grabbed it out of the slush pile by chance and bought, it decided to run it. and that first article in esquire open the door for other writing gigs for her, more articles for esquire, but also big powerhouse publications in the golden age of big men's magazines and big mass market magazines like rolling stone and new york magazine, and even glamour, the atlantic, and vanity fair. she was getting published in all of those places. and she carved out a niche for herself, writing these often truly hilarious, i think more or less eccentric, gonzo stories, where she would embed her south with famous or interesting people, and with them, do infamous or interesting things. and then, she would write about her experiences. and these stories ended up being as much about her subject as they were about herself.

that was a kind of gonzo style. for example, you know who fran lebowitz is. she interviewed the infamous curmudgeon, fran lebowitz, and fran lebowitz notoriously hates to leave her apartment, let alone leave new york city. but this author took fran lebowitz camping of all things, like the one thing that fran lebowitz constitutionally could never do, she took her camping. and then, she wrote hysterical piece about the whole thing for the cover of al-qaeda magazine. quote, nothing much doing after we get the tent up, so we are sitting around and fran is looking at the pint choice across the middle. i say, how nice it is to sit around and do nothing. fran says you can do nothing in new york too. only there, you get to do it on a sofa. you get the gist. she also followed a pack of basketball groupies around. that was a truly scandalous article. she did an interview with the

storied anchorman dan rather that was unlike any other interview with dan rather. it starts, would you consider cosmetic surgery? no, says rather. what if somebody says, well, really, dan, you have bags down here. it happens, says rather, grinning. what is your age? rather says, i'm 113 years old. he grins all the way down to his clavicles. she also did a profile of the musician lyle lovett. that is still to this day, i think, the definitive profile of lyle lovett. now, it was sort of unheard of for women to write for not just big mass market magazines, all the brassy men's magazines too, but our magazine writer, elizabeth, she did it perfectly. she was the first woman ever to be named a contributing editor at playboy. and the new york times wrote about that this weekend, they wrote about that time when

people do we need to read playboy for the articles. it was a woman's magazine, though, that really catapulted her career. in 1993, she got a call from elle magazine, the world largest fashion magazine. the editor in chief had been reading her work. she wanted her to write irregular advice column for elle, and so she did. she did it under her now famous name because elizabeth use just her first initial with her name. in print, she was always e. jean carroll. her new advice column in elle was called ask e. jean. and it ran for more than a quarter of a century. it's one of the longest running advice columns in the history of american publishing. that column was so popular, it gave way to a daily television show by the same name which aired on the predecessor to this very tv network. she was asked to appear as a contributor to the big mega talk shows, like that today

show, and good morning america, and oprah. at one point, she was even hired as a writer for snl, saturday night live, that pit stop at snl earned her an emmy nomination. that cell phone game that i mentioned at the top, the breakout cell phone game, it wasn't her only business venture outside journalism. in the early 2000s, she started a successful matchmaking service. she also started a dating website. the latter was sold for six figures. she's also written five books over the course of her career. it's a body of work that spans decades. she has had that kind of career in publishing that a lot of young woman in journalism dream of having, prolifically published with an absolutely singular instantly identifiable writing style. practically, universally beloved by her peers and the business. here's a brief sampling of how she has been described by fellow journalists and editors. she has been described as,

quote, quirky, cheeky, daring, gutsy, funny, trail blazer. people have called her that female hunter s. thompson. despite that illustrious, lengthy, enviable, multifaceted, creative, deeply impressive career, these days, e. jean carroll's almost universally remembered for one of the last things, her most recent book, in which e. jean carroll first accused former president donald trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in new york city in 1996. after she made that accusation in that book, published in 2019, while donald trump was still president, he said she was lying about it. he said he had never met her, let alone assaulted her. and so, she sued him. the sitting president. and it took a while, but in the end, it has now resulted in a

jury ordering donald trump to pay e. jean carroll more than $83.3 million for defaming her with false claims after a jury determined that he was indeed liable for having sexually assaulted her that day in 1996. and of course, what this was, it was a civil case, right? this was a lawsuit brought by one person, by this one extraordinary, interesting, totally unique person, brought by her against another private person. it's not a criminal case. nobody is going to jail. nobody is being criminally charged here. this is just what about the defendant owes the plaintiff, what he should be forced to pay to her to compensate her, to compensate her and to punish him for what he did. it is a civil case between two very identifiable, very unique individual. and as such, there are two ways this has resonated so much with all of us. there's two reasons why we care

so much about what she has just been able to do. the first reason, the first reason it resonates, the first reason we care, honestly, it's because of us as a country, and who we are, and the way he, as a political figure, is trying to change us as a country. >> you are promising america tonight that you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. >> except for day one -- except for day one. >> meaning -- >> i said i want to be a dictator for one day. >> i only want to be a dictator for one day. >> would you rather have 40 years of donald trump as a dictator, or four years of joe biden as a president? >> trump. >> as a dictator? >> maybe. >> sometimes, in life, we all need a good paddling from the principle, to set our life on the right track. and this country does need a

little bit of that. we need a little paddling. >> a strongman running the country -- >> would you rather have four years of trump as a dictator, or four years of biden as president? >> donald trump all the way. >> even as a dictator? >> yes, yes. >> trump as a dictator. >> trump as a dictator. >> i'm going with a trump for sure. >> i'd rather have trump as a dictator. >> the other day trump said on his first date, it's gonna be a dictator day -- >> i like that. >> would you rather have donald trump as a dictator for four years or we elect biden for four years? >> i would rather have donald trump, i like to see the repeal of that roosevelt law so that he could be a president for a lot more than four years. but we, this country, needs a dictator. i hate to say that but it's the truth. >> this is part of why we care, right? because putting him in court tests this whole idea. what is appealing about a dictator? a dictatorship, what's appealing about a strongman leader replacing democracy,

having somebody who stays in power indefinitely and has unchecked total authority to do whatever he wants? what is appealing about that? not just why would you offer to be that, you can see the appeal to a person who wants to be that kind of person. but why would you want that in your country? the most appealing thing about a strongman leader, right? is that he'd be able to get stuff done. he would be unconstrained, couldn't be stopped, you know. i alone can fix it. through enforcing, you know, loyalty to him, or death, by locking up his enemies, by breaking all the rules, government, congress. the courts, yeah, right. that's what he's promising. that's the appeal. and so, what this writer, this journalist, in this extraordinary unique woman did was give us pretty much the first test of that prospect that has come all the way to fruition. this is running to the end now.

this is the test. is he that strong demand that he claims to be? and that his followers believe him to be and that they so want instead of this messy democracy, or sometimes other people get their way. is he that? or is he a citizen, an american who live in a democracy, which has courts, and laws? i mean, to be clear, the only reason to bring criminal charges against a person is because they have committed a crime. the only reason to bring a civil case against someone is if they have done something legally actionable for which they should pay. but one should believe a person has done those things once they are in court. you are a testing not only the allegations in that particular case, you are at testing the system. you are protesting whether the law that applies to everyone else can be brought to bear even on that guy who says he is absolutely immune. you bring him to court and that is the test of us as a country. and that is why the court

system looms so large in this era, right? that's why we've all become armchair lawyers in the last days here. that's why these former prosecutors and exploiting gaiters have jobs on tv now explaining stuff, right? that's why judges and the court system are so important and central in the age of trump and his takeover of the republican party and his promises strongman style dictatorship. a would-be strongman says he is immune from the legal system. he's unconstrained by any constitution and by anything in our government. e. jean carroll is the one who called that question. e. jean carroll civil case says, i'm not a strongman. and neither are you. none of us are. no one can be in america because this is a democracy, and law, and in a case like this, the law protects me even from you. and so, i will call the

question. i will call on the law, the court system, to show that, to prove that the strongman model does not work here, however much people might want it. this is not europe between the wars. this is america. and that's the second reason that we care, right? that's the second reason this case, this huge $83.3 million judgment resonates so much with us, because she did this in a civil case, human to human, eyeball to eyeball, she did this in her own name and in her own personal defense. she called upon the law to protect her, a a person who was willing to put her name to the allegations, and to show up to court and say it. so much of that calculus in our country right now, so much of the calculus frenzy in the world right now, so much of the calculus about how to contend with trump's, how mad is he gonna be? how crazy will his supporters go?

historian tim snyder seminal book, on tyranny, this anticipation of the backlash, this worry about how upset trump and his supporters might get, this is a phenomenon that snyder describes as obeying in advance, as in do not obey in advance. do not give the tyrant, or the would-be tyrant, what they want because you fear what they might do otherwise. put more bluntly, the message is, to snyder's light, the lesson from the 20th century is, stand up, say no, have guts. the the one. how many of us would have the guts of e. jean carroll at age 80 to do what she did, to call his question, to test it, to make us decide it as a country, to render this would be strongman just a man? joining us now is e. jean carroll, who successfully sued

donald trump for defamation. she's flank tonight by her lawyers and the case, robbie kaplan, who you see on the left, and shawn crowley who you see on the right. thank you all so much for being here. it's such a pleasure to see the three of you here, and to have you here. i'm really grateful you made the time. >> pleasure. >> jean, let me just ask you, you guys have lived this case in one way or another since 2019, since trump was still in the white house. and you published your book. how different is it now to be part of this case, now that you are out in the other side, you have won this massive $83.3 million judgment. does it feel different to you now than it did when you are in the middle of it? >> rachel, thank you for that incredible introduction. the three of us were shaking with laughter and tears in our eyes, laughing, crying at the same time. we have to put in a nutshell what we were fighting for. you did it. thank you so much, rachel. yes, i feel that this bodes

well for the future. i think we've planted our flag. i think we've made a statement that -- that things are gonna be different, that there is gonna be a new way of doing things in this country because of this indestructible team of lawyers, rachel. sometimes, i'm 50 years older than some of the associates on our team. i'm 40 years older than shawn crowley, and i'm 40 years older than robbie. and together, this team of brilliant young people have, as you said, when stood up to the man. who, by the way, rachel, is not even there. he is nothing.

he is without -- he is like a walrus, snorting, and like rhino flopping his -- he is not there. that was the surprising thing to me. >> well, on that point, talking about, you know, being face to face with him, being in the same physical space with him for the first time since, when you say he assaulted you in 1996. what you are describing their, in terms of him being nothing, him feeling like an animal, feeling not intimidating, was that a shock to you? your guts here, your bravery here, including the physical bravery about being around him again, it sounds like it didn't go the way you expected to in that courtroom. >> rachel, i was terrified. i was just a bag of sweating corpuscles as we were preparing for trial. and three, four days before trial, i had an actual

breakdown. i lost my ability to speak. i lost my words. i couldn't talk, and i couldn't go on. that's how frightened i was. but oddly, we went into court. robby took the lectern. i sat in the witness chair like this. and she said, miss carroll, good morning. would you please spell your name for the court. and amazingly, i looked out, and he was nothing. he was nothing! he was a phantom. there was people around him who were giving him power, but he himself was nothing. it was astonishing discovery for me. he is nothing. we don't need to be afraid of him. he can be knocked out. twice, with this woman right here -- >> rightly so. well, by the team here, i mean,

let me just, actually, miss kaplan, robbie, let me put this to you. as soon as the verdict happened, robbie, you said there is a way to stand up to someone like donald trump. and it felt like you are not necessarily advising your fellow lawyers or potential defendant. you are kind of advising the country. did you mean in that as advice -- do you mean that as advice for, you know, republicans who don't want to go along with him but to have been so far every to say no or stand up to him? >> i think in the moment, rachel, i meant it in the context of the court system and litigation. but in my guts, in my heart, i meant what you said, how you just described it, or how e. jean just described it. it is time, and we have proved in this case, it is time to stand up to the world's -- the u.s.'s current biggest bully. and the way to do that is by using the facts, and the law,

and our legal system to say that we're not afraid. and we saw a jury of nine new yorkers stand up as much as we did and say, not only did you do this, but you need to pay her $83.3 million. >> miss shawn, an opening and closing the trial, you ask jurors to consider awarding punitive damages. how much it would cost to make trump stop lying about miss carroll? how high the number would have to be in order to deter him from continuing to do what he's been doing to e. jean? do you think the award in this case is sufficient to make him stop? >> it's really hard to say with someone like that. so far, it has been, which i think is pretty remarkable, given who he is, and what he's done to e. jean, pretty much relentlessly over the last four years. you know, i do have to say that i think that he himself during the trial helped us make that argument by, you know, leaving

quote each day and posting on truth social and giving press conferences, where he continued to defame her, after literally sitting in court on trial for defaming her. and then, just his behavior in the courtroom, like, he just refused to follow the rules, shaking his head, he was shouting. he walked out during robbie's closing argument, which was something i've never seen before in a court of law. and so, you know, i think that it helps the jury to not just have to believe what we were telling them, but get to actually see it with their own eyes, the way that this guy just believes that he is not bound by any rules or laws. >> and it kind of tells you, if you think about who he really is, after all, our thesis in this trial was, one, that he is a bully, and two, that he is incapable of following the rules. and then, during the trial, he acted like a bully, and he was incapable of following the rules. you almost don't need to say anything. we just watched it. >> e. jean, robbie, and shawn,

if you don't mind stay with us for one more block. e. jean, i know that you've been thinking heart about what you're going to do with all of trump's money. i would like to talk to you about that. i'd like to talk to you about some of that developments that have happened, potentially related to this case, since that verdict on friday. stick with us. >> great, absolutely. all right, we'll be right back with a woman of the hour and the lawyers who won her case against donald trump. stay with us. with us no other complete hiv pill uses fewer medicines to help keep you undetectable than dovato. detect this: marnina learned that most hiv pills contain 3 or 4 medicines. dovato is as effective with just 2. if you have hepatitis b, don't stop dovato without talking to your doctor. don't take dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking dofetilide. this can cause serious or life-threatening side effects. if you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop dovato and get medical help right away. serious or life-threatening lactic acid buildup and liver problems can occur. tell your doctor if you have kidney or liver problems,

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alina, do you regret it?

>> no, no. i'm glad you asked me that question. no, i'm not having any second thoughts about representing president trump. it's the proudest thing i could ever do. >> yeah, but how did it go? [laughter] that was former president trump's lawyer alina habba on friday, just after the jury ordered her client to pay $83.3 million to e. jean carroll. we are back now with miss carroll, who did successfully sue donald trump for defamation twice. she's here along with her attorneys, robbie kaplan, and shawn crowley, thank you all for sticking with me. let me actually just stick i -- wasn't gonna ask this. and it may be rude. so you don't have to answer if you don't want. i would put it this either to make crowley or miss kaplan if either of you want to answer it. you are both very experienced twila tierney's. you've been against some of the best and brightest opposing counsel in all sorts of different trials. how is president trump's lawyer ring? is he well represented in court? >> i'm gonna let crowley answer

that. but i will say that what you heard just now in that tape of alina habba leaving the court and yelling at the reporters, that's what we heard every single day, multiple times during this trial, but yelling at the judge. and it was unbelievably nerve-racking each time it happened, and it happens multiple times every day. >> yeah, thanks for handing that one over to me. [laughter] i think that she had a hard job, and you could definitely see a difference between her sort of style, when he was in the courtroom, and when he was not there. she was much more disciplined and frankly acted more like a lawyer when he wasn't there. when he was, i mean, you could hear him telling her went to object, and loudly being frustrated with her.

and i think she felt like she had to say things to the judge and to us and sort of put on a performance, like we just saw in front of that tv cameras. >> e. jean, in terms of what you've just been through, i need, to hear a lawyer's experiences, robbie kaplan, it was nerve-racking to be in this courtroom sometimes. i have to ask you, you know, president trump has kept your name out of his mouth since being told he has to pay $83.3 million to you for what he's done in the past. but over the weekend, he did start posting links online, two articles that attacked you and denied your claims. again, he seems to be pushing it already in terms of whether or not he's going to go back to calling you a liar, and denying that he did what he did. if it came to it, if your lawyers told you that there was another case, and that you should go back, and get more money out of him, sue him again. would you do it? >> absolutely, absolutely! >> it wasn't too much wear and

tear on you. i mean, the gut factor here israel, in terms of how much you put yourself out there -- a lot of people who would not put themselves through what you've gone through. >> rachel, many people, as you know, have been through much worse than i went through in that trial. people suffered more difficult things than i've ever been through in my life. and i am more than willing to do it again because we achieved so much in a seven-day trial. we did what people thought was impossible. we beat donald trump. >> let me ask you about a way that you have talked about this, e. jean. you have talked about the fact that this was not just you being, you know, passively

victimized, but you fought, that it was a fight, and that the term that you use. and everybody gets to choose their own terms to describe something like this happening to them. but you chose that, and it seems like it's important to your sense of self, and to your own sense of agency, and knowing who you are, and making decisions about what to do next. what you just did 25 years after the assault, it was a different kind of fight, going at him at the height of his power and the height of his celebrity. i wonder if you can just talk about that self conception, why it's important to you to know for yourself that you fought, but also so that the world knows that you both did fight and that you will fight? >> well, we're fighting not really, rachel, for me. it's now about fighting for all women. we are also fighting, and we salute the women and men who've been assaulted, and who did not survive. we are doing this for women

around the country, whoa had been knocked down repeatedly. and so, it's really not about me anymore. we have moved beyond. and as you say, the fight now is really to take back our future. this is a man who stacked the supreme court, took away women's rights over their own bodies. we would like to be a part of turning our eyes to the future and taking back our rights. >> you've talked about using some of trump's money that you are about to get, to help shore up women's rights. do you know what that might be, what that might look like? >> yes, rachel! yes! >> tell me. >> i had such great ideas for all the things i'm gonna do with this money. first thing, rachel, you and i will go shopping, get completely new wardrobes, new

shoes, a motorcycle for crowley, and you fishing boat for kaplan. it's yours, rachel. penthouse in france, you want france? you want to go fishing in france? all right. >> that's a joke. [laughter] >> although, if me fishing in france could do something for women's rights, i would take it in. i would take one for the team. [laughter] as if you need persuasion in that regard. let me finish with a final question, and again, this is both for you shawn, and for you robbie, you guys can divide up responsibility here. there are multiple case here involving trump that are coming up. obviously, most eyes are on the federal january 6th case, having been up against trump in the courtroom, i'm wondering if you to have any advice in terms of what it's like to go up against him and his legal team, in terms of the way he approaches his defense? it's part of a. and i also want to know if this

big, whatever, what everybody is expecting to be a very large judgment against him and his company, change anything about the way that you approached the ask to the jury, the way that you presented evidence, the way that you are planning on making sure this money is in fact extracted from trump's wallet. how much do all of these different cases interact with each other, if at all, and can various lawyers involved in these various cases learn from each other's experiences? >> so, the short answer to that cases interacting with each other, absolutely all the time. to give you just one good example, in our case, we played at the end of our case not only the deposition that i took of donald trump in this case, but we played the deposition of the new york attorney general and their case because and that deposition, trump is bragging about how his brand alone was worth more than $10 million. he has $400 million cash on hand. and the reason that was so

relevant, assessing how much money to award punitive damages, the jury is not only allowed to, but supposed to think of the wealth of the defendant. so, when we said, when shawn said, give him enough, give him a enough, to e. jean, to make him stop. they had to think what enough would be for donald trump. so, that cases, they mix in predictable and unpredictable ways, kind of talking to each other all the time. >> on the first question, you know, i think that one thing that i wasn't maybe prepared for coming into this trial is that when donald trump is stripped of, you know, all of the press, and not at a rally, and there is no tv cameras, and he sort of has a small group of supporters around him, he's not that scary. and he also can be controlled. you know, i mean, his antics in the courtroom, we've talked about them. but at the end of the day, he did kind of follow the rules.

robbie cross-examined him. he was in the witness chair. you only got to answer three questions, i think. and he pretty much stayed within the bounce. i think when you have a strong judge, like judge kaplan, who enforces the rules of his courtroom, and you have real lawyers, you really can get him to behave, sort of. and when he is stripped of all of the rallies, and the truth social, he's just a guy. i think e. jean called him the emperor with no clothes. that's not my quote. but he definitely, he's not the guy that you see on tv. he's just a guy, sometimes acting like a petulant polar. but just a guy. >> an american bound by the law, just as every american is bound by the lock. writer e. jean carroll, attorney robert kaplan, attorney shawn crowley, you guys have made history a couple of times now. and you also have meant a lot

and continued to mean a lot in lighting the way, i think, for a lot of people in terms of moral clarity and strategic acumen. and i really, really want to thank each of you for making the time to talk to us, and i wish you all safety and rest. thank you. >> thank you, rachel. >> thank you. all right, we'll be right back. stay with us. with us directly at the source. voltaren, the joy of movement. liberty mutual customized my car insurance

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could potentially be very big news in the ongoing war between israel and hamas.

andrea mitchell and her team and nbc news reported tonight that officials from four countries from the u.s., israel, qatar, and egypt have agreed to a broad framework for a major cease-fire and hostage deal. this is a deal that would call for a halt in fighting for 60 days. it would provide for the release of the civilian hostages in gaza, there is more than 100 of them still held by hamas. each of the civilian hostages, released in exchange for three palestinian prisoners currently being held by israel. then after a month, again, it's a 60-day cease-fire. after a month, the agreement would allow for the release of idf soldiers are also being held as hostages, first the female soldiers, and then the male soldiers, released in exchange for thousands of palestinian prisoners held in israel. a stop in the fighting for 60 days and ultimately all the hostages released. that's the framework. now, obviously, the prospect of such a deal is heartening, but it would need to be signed off on with the israeli government

and hamas. so far, that hasn't happened. tonight, hamas is tweeting that they won't release any hostages unless israel withdraws its forces from the gaza strip. a spokesman for the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, tonight also said that no final agreement has been reached. but they do have this framework, this sort of painstakingly arrived at framework, to potentially get there if they wanted. now, that news comes amid the first u.s. but it terry white holidays from -- since the start of the conflict. this weekend, a drone strike on a small u.s. military outpost in northeastern jordan near the syrian border killed three members of an army reserve unit. more than 40 other american troops were injured in this attack. this is a base that has about 350 american service members, soldiers, and airman. the pentagon says this drone attack was launched by iranian -backed militias. and that's important because since the start of the war on october 7th, iranian-backed militias are blamed for more

than 160 attacks on bases where u.s. military personnel are present. that's more than one day. but this weekend for the first time, one of those attacks was fatal. and, you know, the fact that it's been claimed by iran-backed militias, it's a very provocative thing, in terms of what that means for a potential american response. and at the same time, though, the u.s. is also releasing information about how this might have happened. but nick on officials are saying that the enemy drone flew in essentially at the same time the u.s. drone was also in the air over the base, that possibly could have confused that air defense systems that would otherwise protect that base from the attacks. that complexity is leading to this interesting situation. it's obviously an urgent question for president biden and the administration as to why u.s. retaliation might be.

but the u.s. is also explaining that what happened here might not necessarily have been a qualitatively different kind of attack then all of these 160 plus previous attacks which frankly did not result and called for potentially those dating glee as glittery hoteliers those dating glee as glitter hotelier it is very much a movig target at this point, very much a developing story. joining us now to help us understand, courtney kube. she covers national security independent on for nbc. courtney, thanks very much for being with us. let me just ask you first, if i got that all right. i know this is a developing story and some of these details are still getting hammered out and explain over the course of the next few days. >> reporter: you did. here's what we know a little bit more about, the potential, one of the theories for how this attack a drone was able to get on to the base. you mentioned that it was coming in according to pentagon officials at that same time that a u.s. drone was also moving towards the base, maybe coming into land. and that may have confused the air defense systems. that's one of the options, or the theories, that the u.s. is

looking at, for how it was able to get on the base in the first place. they're also looking at the possibility, flying such low altitude, that that may have played apart at well. but the real reason that the number of casualties here is so high is because where this attack drone was able to strike and explode, it was a drone packed with explosives, rachel. it was right near an area where u.s. troops or sleeping. and because of the fact that it got through that air defense systems, there wasn't any alums to wake them up, sending troops to the bunkers as would normally be the case if there was some sort of incoming. because of that, there was people who were there and they were caught unaware when this drone attack, frankly, hit right outside of their sleeping area. >> it's sort of a technical failure, a very unusual circumstance, a sort of a coincidental event in terms of american drone, and the enemy drone being coincided in the same airspace. is that complexity, that potential factor, and how this happened, and why the soldiers

were not in the bunker, why they weren't defended the way they otherwise might have been, is that affecting the way he was speaking about potential retaliatory options? >> it's not so much thinking about retaliation but security going forward. one of the concerns here tonight at the pentagon is that this may be a new tactic. did some of these iranian -backed militia groups figure out a way that they can get around these base air defense systems. you mentioned there have been more than 160 such attacks against bases in iraq and syria since october 17th. many of those have been one-way attack drones like this. but the majority of them have been intercepted, or frankly, they haven't made it all the way to the base. and they've just fallen outside. this is not the first time, though, that one has made its way. there was a case several months ago where a drone actually landed on one of the barracks areas at a base in iraq. and the only reason that we did not have a catastrophic event is because the drone did not explode when it landed. it's not the first time they have gotten through.

again, the fact that it was able to land in an area where no one was aware that it was coming. there was no time to react and there were so many people where they are, and they were frankly sleeping or at least in the birthing area at the time. that's one of the reasons that this was so effective as an attack, rachel. >> courtney kube, nbc news correspondent, covering national security and pentagon. courtney, thank you for helping us understand that complex story, it's just devastating, obviously, for all the obvious reasons. courtney, thank you. >> thanks. the pentagon has announced the identity of the three soldiers who were killed. 46 year old sergeant william jerome revelers, 24-year-old specialist kennedy sanders from georgia, and a 23-year-old specialist breonna alexandria moffatt from savannah, georgia. all three killed and that hostile fire incident this weekend in northeastern jordan. we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us

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her out and picked a new leader for the michigan republican party, insisting that he is the real chairman now. now, the national republican party, the rnc has weighed in, saying they do think she was probably removed, but they don't recognize the new guy. [laughter] so, at the rnc winter meeting that start tomorrow neither of them would be recognized on the rnc website. right now, michigan's state chair is listed as a vacant because, sure, who needs a party chair in one of the top battleground states in a presidential election here? that is michigan. in florida, that states republican chair was also ousted, no confusion about that one. he was ousted after news broke that he was being investigated for allegations of rape. police last week cleared him of the rape charges but they are now seeking video voyeurism charges for allegedly illegally video recording a sexual encounter without consent. and then came arizona, when the state republican party chairman has just resigned, following the release of a super fishy

audio recording of a conversation he apparently had with failed republican arizona gubernatorial candidate kari lake. she of course insists that she won the governor's race in 2022, and she is in fact the rightful governor of arizona right now, even though you can't tell from outward appearances. she contends that the tent party chairman tried to bribe her to stay out of arizona's senate race this year. he says that he resigned because she's threatening to release more damning recordings. he didn't resign. that's how it's going. michigan, florida, arizona, three battleground states, three republican party chairs gone in 17 days. now, though, in the not at all battleground state of oklahoma, it looks like there might be a fourth. this weekend, it looked like republican u.s. senator james lankford was getting censured by the oklahoma republican party for daring to work on border legislation, which langford has described as the most conservative potential immigration policy in 40 years.

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