seat. but until that race has decided in november, senator butler will continue to represent a great state of california. and all of, that is why i'm really looking forward to talking with her this week at howard university. it'll be her first major sit- down interview. me at noon eastern, msnbc. i am my mom and what she will do in the senate. that does it for me this hour, the rachel maddow show starts now. identity not going to inquire live on television how you got that interview, but i am going to button hole you the next time

so -- >> she's the kind of person you're excited to see in elected >> exactly. well-done. thank you, my friend. much appreciated it. thank you for joining us this hour, reallyin happy to have yo here. there's so much going on in the news right now, so much going on in the news just today. i do feel like it's one of those times in the news world where it feels like the world is trying to make sureor we're not alone. in the n nation of panama, for example, they have a rich conservative businessman who is is a former president. since leaving the presidency recently he has faced multiple criminal charges. he beat some of those charges but not all of them when he was convicted onm money laundering charges recently, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. now, the country's supreme court recently denied his appeal of that conviction, but in a dramatic move, another country,

nicaragua, stepped in and offered him amnesty. and this other country, nicaragua is apparently trying to protect himgu from going to jail. this former president who has been convicted, due in prison, he's not gone to prison. instead he's moved to the nicker waugan embassy in his country he's they've offered him asylum. heff moved in with his desk and his dog named bruno. there's bruno. from thatbr exile, from that otr country's embassy while he's hiding out from his ten-year prison sentence he's now running for president of panama again. and he'st winning. according to "the new york times" recent polls show him running in first place. this convicted fugitive right wing businessman former president now trying to rally his countrymen saying online, quote, you have to be very cowardly to discoif a presidential candidate who's

first in the polls. yes,di if i can win votes who cares if i'm a convicted felon, spring me out of here. that is happening right now in panama the convict, now a fugitive. he's taken his dog and moved into the foreign embassy of a country who's given him asylum and he may win re-election from there. soro we're not alone. that's panama. also pack sfn. there they've got p a former pre minister who was osted from being prime minister in 2022. he's now in prison. campaigning from prison, his party won this weekend's elections in pakistan. his party didn't know exactly how to deal with the logistics of him proclaiming victory while he's in prison, so they had a.i. generate a fake victory speech in what sounded like his voice even though it really isn't his voice because he's in prison so he couldn't give the speech.

nowve they have to figure outle how to form a government with him in jail but with his party having won. and all the headlines about this turn of events in pack establish is predicting some version of the same thing, all-time using the same word, chaos, chaos, chaos. nobody wants to be a country where the election news and the prison news are kind of the same thing. nobody wants to be that. that said, if you elect someone to be president who's been committingen crimes and/or you elect someone president and then when they're president they do crimes maybe to stay in office once they've been voted out, honestly you have no choice. congratulations, you've joined where munity of nations sometimes people, you know, run for president from prison, can they sometimes win. and there'sth no easy way out o that. in brazil, the so-called tropical trump, right wing former president jair bolsanaro,

he was just named officially as ana target of a federal crimina investigation in brazil as to whether hera plotted a military coup to try to stay in power.to you'll remember that bolsanaro lost re-election in 2022. he claimed he was robbed, that the election was rigged and was stolen. he made those claims about the election being rigged even before people started voting in that election, so when he lost his supporters were of course primed to protest and disbelieve the result. why does that sound familiar? then on january 6th -- i mean 8th after the election, his supporters gathered for a protest at the capitol which quickly turned into a violent mob attack on the capital and the supreme court as they tried to use apr riot, they tried to e mob violence to keep bolsanaro in power rather than allow the peaceful transition of pow door the newow guy who'd actually beaten bolsanaro. now it looks like bolsanaro is going to be federally prosecuted

in e pruzil for his effort to overthrow the government and stay ippower. the courts have barred frim for standing elections again anytime in the future but now it looks like they're going to charge him.ng within the past few days four of aides were f arrested and also ordered to hand over his passport. who knows, maybe he'll try to get asylum to somewhere. maybe he'll try to sneak back to south florida again.ut if you see him in south florida or even if you see him brazil, hey, if you see him walking his dog towards the embassy of nicaragua, call somebody, it's news. alldy things considered it's better to not be a country where presidents and prime ministers go to prison. we have the sort of luxury of not being that for a very long time, right? the closest we got was nixon, right? and everybody was furious when

gerald ford gave nixon a pardon rather than waiting for nixon to probablyin inevitably get indicted. before nixon could be indicted, he was probably going to be indicted, ford gave him that pardon and everybody was so mad. maybe if ford hadn't pardoned nixon, we would have learned our lesson then. we would have learned the consequences of putting a criminal in the white house are absolutely terrible for the country, terrible forbl the criminaltr himself, sure, right? but way worse for the country hat has then and forever tlaf to jam up its politics irretrievably with the accountability under criminalva law.mi politics and prison news having from that point forward having to go together. here we are, we have lost the luxury we used to have. t we're definitely not alone in the worldde on this score anymo. yes, tonight on this broadcast we're going to be talking about

former president trump's filing claiming to be immune from prosecution for any crimes he might have committed while serving as president and talked about efforts to disqualify the prosecutor who brought him up on rico charges. talking about the timing of t his criminal trial r alleged illegal hush money payments to a mistress, a trial we might get a start date for by the endat of this week. we'll be talking about the expected civil judgment against him and his business which may total hundreds of millions of dollars. and that's some of them. that's leaving some of them out. here like so many countries around the world covering politics now has to include a lot of prison side of things, too. and the inherent drama of all that courtroom confrontation does make covering politics feel different. i meanol sometimes i think it makes it hard to remember that we're not just running a

steeplechase of unprecedented legal challenges, hurdles, and hazards that we've never had to deal with before as a country. i mean, yes, we are now -- right now in our generation, in our lifetime, in this year we're trying toti avoid becoming a fundamentally different kind of country, right, by having to do all this. we're caught up in this incredible and frustrating drami trying to use democratic means to save our democracy from people who are not using democratic means because they want to end democracy by force. we are trying to defeat those forces as a country while holding onto democracy itself and using democratic means to save the democracy we're fighting for. d and that's really hard.ll and there is so much procedural drama in this whole process we're in the middle of, that oats sometimes easy to forget that through this messed up, fraught, upsetting, unprecedented process we are in,

we are also picking a candidate. we're also picking a president with all of the high stakes that that makes. you ever heard of the chip and dale building in new york city? that's its nickname, chip and dale building. it's in new york, midtown manhattan from madison avenue. fromom the ground it looks like new york office building but up top it's weird looking. the top of the building looks like it's visiting from another object, right? the topot looks like maybe a pie of furniture. that's where the nickname came from, the chip and dale building. it's thecae building version o mullet. business building down stairs, some kind of weird uninvited party happening upstairs. the chip and dale building in new york, some people love it, some peopleeo hate it. if you want to p see the critic point of view that this really is just a building with a whole

other idea for a whole separate building plopped upwardly on top of it, if you want to see the idea of people who don't like this, andho this has got the ha on a horse element to it i think you can see the critic's perspectiveic clearly if you se it y alongside another building madeth by the same architect whe he seemed to be pursuing the same kind of idea. here's that other building. thasame guy made both of these, and you can see the idea carried through. in both cases what you've got a normalou building, maybe an attractive building with a whole other building plooped on top of it like an aforethought or a joke. one is at the university of houston, that's their architecture school to there,icidely, both designed by the same guy, a man named philip johnson. and poorip houston. houston is one of my favorite

cities, butor houston has lots philip johnson buildings around, way more than their quota. philip johnson buildings are kind of b iconic buildings of t houston skyline, and they're still in office parks. this is matter of taste, don't get me wrong. there's lots of people who love philip johnson as an architect. people like vodka martinis, too. this guy philip johnson probably the most famous and well-known and prolific modernist architect, philip johnson, was also a raging fascist. philip johnson wrote admiring reviews of "mein kampf." philip johnson went to germany in 1932 to attend a hitler

rally. he started to start his own fascist political party in the united states, which he want today become an armed faction in a single pare that would become a one taggest state. philip johnson tried today form a paramilitary group. philip johnson called his group the gray shirts, and they met in philip johnson's apartment. philip johnson personally bankrolled fascist ipt leck chels in the united states in the lead up to world war ii. he put them on his personal payroll so they could continue their work. philip johnson wrote eugenics based essays about how the great white race was dying and needed to be rescued. philip johnson, very famous architect, was a world class american fascist. and in 1939, when german troops invaded poland and started world

war ii, philip johnson was invited along to poland to covel the fun. he was invited by the german government. reporters and correspondents for major news organizations were covering the invasion and its aftermath, that was not unusual. but it was unusual philip johnson wasit invited today be there, too, because he wasn't really a journalist. he was an american pro-nazi, fascist activist and would-be architect issoon. but he was nevertheless invited along by the germans to cover their magnificent invasion. and he filed articles about it for the pro-fascist newsletter that was putsc out in america b father charles. and what philip johnson wrote about the nazis starting world war ii, what he wrote about it is poland really was asking for it, that poland had given hitler no choice.

that, sure, it looked to the world hitler had just invaded poland and they started world war ii, but really they cooperated, but then they stoppedat cooperating with him he had to invade and it was their fault. really? philip johnson further explained it kind of seemed like hitler should haved invaded poland. philip johnson wrote up that invasion as w if hitler had don poland ale real favor because among other things poland was really full of jews. philip johnson was not a very reliable observer of what was going on in that invasion that started world war ii, but he wau a great stenographer of exactly what hitler and the nazis themselves wanted the world to think about what they did. he did a great job conveying their absolutely ridiculous, self-exculpatory cover story. in -- in no world, in no contemporary journalism, in no

history since then, did poland start world war ii. in no world did poland force hitler to invade poland. not since hitler and the nazis cooked that up as a ridiculous joke in 1939 and committed american fascists who wrote this monstrosity, not in 85 years has anybody tried to sell that kind ofto horse hockey fairy tale of who started world war ii to the american people. until now. now it's back. thursday night a new interview with russian president vladimir putin with a former fox news host was posted online. and if you heard anything about it i'm going h to guess you probably read news articles about it that r described the interview as boring. you might have read that it started with putinea giving a lg inexplicable and boring history lecture that went on b and on a on andnd on and didn't seem to

have a point and definitely lost most of its american audience. true, aller true. part of the e history lecture where putin got to 1939, at which point he then claimed in this interview that it was poland who started world war ii.st poland did it because even though poland had cooperated with hitler up to a point, they stopped cooperating with hitler, and hitler really wanted them to cooperate more. and once that happened, hitler had no choice, he had to invade. and by the way, it was kind of doing poland a favor. exact same line. wet haven't had someone tryingo sell this line to an american audience since it happened the first time in 1939, right, with philip johnson's quote-unquote u reporting, right? when with him we had a committed american fascist allied with the nazisll openly rooting for them trying to sell us this bill of goods. thaft that happened in 1939.

it hasn't happened since until now.in the reasonil putin is trying to sell us this now is more worrying than it is interesting. it might bes boring, but it is worrying. here's a russian journalist explaining it for an american audiencefo in "the new yorker," piece in really highly recomme you take a look at if you can in "the new yorker." he says this, quote, i can't get one passage out of my mind. in the history lecture portion of the interview when putin got to 1939 he said poland cooperated with germany but then it refused to cooperate with hitler's demands. polls forced him, they forced him to start the second world war by attacking poland. poland forced hitler to invade them. the idea that the victim of the attack serves as its instigator by forcing the hand of the

aggressor is central to all of putin's explanations for s russia's war in ukraine. he says to my knowledge this is the first time putin described hitler'sin aggression in the sa terms. quote, the way putin describeded the beginning of the six world war in this interview suggests in his mind he might see himself as hitler but perhaps a wilier one, one that can make inroads in the united states and its futureni presumed president. it's telling too, gessen, continues putin took the time to accuse poland of both allying with nazi germany. as he's done in the past he's positioning poland ase the hei toti nazism. putin mentioned poland 30 times in this conversation. if i were poland, i'd be scared. vladimir putin is selling a new

line to americans. he's saying that poland is the real aggressor that we should blame for world war ii. and he's starting to use the sameta language, starting to ci the same weird reasons he used to justify invading ukraine when he talks about poland. and what's really, really important to understand about that is that poland is nato country. they have been for 25 years now, and we're a nato country, too. and if putin decides that he doesn't just want to invade ukraine, which he's done twice now since 2014, and he doesn't just want to invade georgia and moldova as well, which he's alsw invaded. if h he decides as he's sort of threatening here,rt if he decid he's going to start shooting at poland now, too, or trying to take land in poland that would be putin and russia attacking a nato, which would abliemg the other 30d nato countries in th world including us to come to theirwo rescue against russia.

or maybe not. less than 48 hours after that interview posted online former president donald trump at a rally said if he's president again basically he would not honor that commitment. heth appears to have made up a a conversation with what he called up the leader of a, quote, large nato country in which he said he told this leader if that country were attacked by russia, quote, no, i would not protect you. he said, quote, in fact i would encourage them, meaning russia, toan do whatever the hell they want. as davidey sanger wrote in "the new york times" tonight, quote, thet, larger implication of his statement is that he, trump, might invite president putin of russia to pick-off a nato nation as a warning and lesson to the 30 or so others in nato about heeding mr. trump's demands. i have to stress here trump really did use the word encourage. he did not say the united states

would sit idly by in case russia invaded a nato ally. he said he would encourage russia to go after one of our allies. he would encourage them. in other words, he would tell russia to go take out one of our allies with the assurance we do nothing to help. this is happening within 48 hours of putin telling a hand pickedli interviewer which countries he thinks really have had coming, and he's got one of them in nato at the top of his list. but don't forget president biden is three years older than that guy so obviously there's equallv enormous risk in picking either of these candidates to be president of united states. one is obviously old. one is also old and facing 91 felonyfa charges and saying he will literally encourage russia to expand its war to hit our allies while russia's dictator is signaling to an american audience he plans to do just

that. lots of other countries -- i'm sad to say it, but lots of other countries have to deal with former presidents and prime ministers facing criminal charges. it is awful and complicated and fraught and nobody in this country wishes that we had to deal with ththat, but now we do. that said, take comfort in the factak lots of other countries have had to deal with that one wayal or another. maybe we can learn something from the lessons in how they've done itns well or poorly. lots of other countries have had toun deal with criminal charges against leaders and would-be return leaders, but no one is dealing a would-be return president telling a dictator who's just invaded one of allied to please go on and invade another, pick one, go on, do it. for that one that's asking a lot. r that one that's asking a lot.

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nato has been a success story for the last 75 years, but what bothers me about this is don't take the side of a thug who kills his opponents. don't take the someone who's gone in and invaded a country and half a million people have died or been wounded because of putin. >> amid all the other political drama and legal drama that we are contending with right now as a country, including the drama that our legal stuff and our political stuff is intermingled from here on out, the leading republican presidential candidate and former president, donald trump, this weekend promised if he is elected president again, the united states will no lawner pledge to

defend american nato allies if any of them are attacked by russia. in fact, quote, he'd encourage russia, that was the word he used, encourage, russia to do, quote, whatever the hell they wanted. ambassador mcfaul was recently in lathe wania where he had the opportunity to speak to that country's leaders and has a bit of insight how this may be playing for our allies very much at the pointy end of the spear here in discussions like this. ambassador mcfaul, great to see you. thanks very much for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> let me first ask you if you feel any of it reaction to what president trump said this weekend, the interpretation of what it means, its implications, if you feel like any of its being misconstrued or feel like people are getting it the wrong way around or if you feel like this is getting the right

response. >> i'm shocked how the interview response is. you said it several times tonight, rachel, it is completely shocking what he said. and the fact we're not all -- thank you, by the way, for devoting so much time in your program tonight on it. and thank you for making the connections to the 1930s because this is a 1930s vibe, and when i was in lathe wania and meeting with leaders not just lathe lithuania but estonia, latvia, we're not shocked by it. the fact he said russia, putin should invade one of our allies and he would encourage it, is just outrageous, extraordinary. so that's the reaction i think that is strange to me that there's not more people saying that especially national security officials, former

officials in the republican party. because i know that they agree with me. and i'm shocked that they're so silent tonight. >> in lithuania, latvia, estonia, in those countries is there a sense this is more than just uncouth? that this is somethingthers a real threat here that putin is actually sort of testing whether or not he can cross yet another bord, that he can start military action against yet another country? >> without question. publicly leaders from those countries have said it, behind closed doors they say it with even more emotion in their voice. and here's the scenario they worry about. right now russia is stuck fighting a difficult, you know, stalemated war in ukraine. thank goodness they haven't achieved greater objectives, and we need to help them the ukrainianssy they don't.

they worry what happens two years from now, three years from now, four years from now when russia has greater capability and we -- because mr. trump comes to power are no longer interested in defending our nato allies. and they talk very openly what we will have to do if the united states is not there to help us. they talk very openly about how the soviet union was weak in 1941 when hitler invaded but came back roaring in 1943, '44, '45. and they talked very explicitly will the united states record the article 5 we have in nato to defend them, and if we don't which coalition of countries will have to do it on their own. now, i hope they're wrong and i think it's important to understand and underscore that so far russia and the soviet union has never attacked a nato country. that's the good news. but the fact they're having these conversations is deeply

troubling, exacerbated then by what mr. trump said a few days ago. >> and it -- i mean some of the response has been sort of levined on the republican side. i'm thinking principally here about senator marco rubio but also some other republicans who have said, hey, ligsen, you know, we passed a law that says the senate has to give permission if a president ever wants to get out of nato in the future, you know, this is like you said trump just being trump, this isn't a real risk. i feel that may be true on paper, but the risk is that the green light is given once an american commitment is kwaegzed on american soil by a would-be american leader. the green light has been given, the security has been given that the security umbrella has been removed regardless legalsty whatever happens as a conskwngs

of trump's remarks. is that a fair assessment? >> that's exactly right, rachel, which is to say we're not going to withdraw from nato but potentially if it's an ambiguous attack and trump says i don't care because they didn't pay us, that's nato begins to crumble with or without that law in place. >> michael mcfaul, former u.s. ambassador to russia, sir, it's really good to see you. we've got lots more to come tonight. stay with us. we've got lots more to come tonight. stay with us

so this week is going to be kind of nuts. i think we can all agree. former president donald trump started the week today at a courthouse in florida, federal courthouse. it's for a hearing in the federal case related against him to his allegedly hiding classified documents at his florida golf club and refusing to return them when asked for them. that's how his week started in florida. his week could end with a new york judge ousting him from having his family business and pay hundreds of millions of of dollars. that's the punishment the new york attorney general is asking for her in her fraud case against trump and the trump organization. the "the new york times" reports today the judge in that fraud case is expected to issue his verdict on friday of this week. again, that is just "the new york times" reporting. we have not confirmed that, but we're watching that as well.

judge engoron could rule whenever he feels like it. friday is also the deadline for trump to appeal to the u.s. supreme court to try to get the justices to throw out lawsuits against him from capitol police officers who were injured on january 6th. on thursday in new york there will be a pivotal hearing in the hush money criminal case in which the judge is expected to officially schedule the start of that new york state criminal trial. that trial could start as soon as next month. that could be the first criminal trial that trump is actually in the courtroom for. also on thursday georgia prosecutor fani willis will be appearing at a hearing about whether or not she should be disqualified from her rico case against donald trump in georgia. trump and his of his 14 codefendants in fani willis' case in georgia argued she should be disqualified because she and one of the top prosecutors she hired for the case are involved in a personal, romantic relationship. fani willis has argued nothing

about that personal relationship is disqualifying. she's argued trump and his codefendants are using these allegations essentially as salacious distractions to try to muddy the waters and scuttle the case against them by creating a lot of public relations nonsense about this issue that has no legal consequence. that said, there was a hearing today on these allegations, and the judge in this case in georgia said that these allegations against district attorney willis could result in willis being disqualified from the case. and as such he says he definitely wants to hear evidence on these allegations on thursday of this week. so if all makes for a very, very busy week in terms of the legal part of our political news now, but it also puts district attorney fani willis in quite a spot. regardless of what you or anyone else might think about willis' personal relationship with this prosecutor and whether she did anything legally wrong here, the only person whose opinion

matters on that right now is the zwruj, and today in court he did make clear, he did say explicitly he thinks she might be disqualified from this case because of these allegations. now, the key dynamic at work around this is that if fani willis is disqualified fairly or unfairly, her whole office, the whole district attorney's office is disqualified from working on that case, which would mean in all likelihood that whole case would go away. and that is why georgia state university law professor clark cunningham argued in "the new york times" last month that the best think fani willing could do to protect her case against trump and defendants in georgia would be for her to take a leave of absence, for her to take a personal leave of absence from the district attorney's office to turn over the case to a deputy district attorney. that would end these proceedings against her, effectively, and it would leave her office in charge of the case, and the case could still go forward. we contacted professor

cunningham about this today, these new developments. he told us, quote, this action meaning personal leave by district attorney willis should be looked at strategically as the best option she has to make this enormously distracting controversy go away and put this case back on track, still in control of the fulton county d.a.'s office. her option to take leave probably disappears at that point. now, i should also mention "the washington post" is reporting tonight that trump plans to attend that thursday hearing in georgia so he can be there in the courtroom as the details of this personal relationship between fani willis and this other prosecutor are laid out in open court. that should make it all the more of a circus. there will also i believe be cameras in that court proceeding. don't quote me me on that, but of course trump would like to be there regardless. all of that legal drama that

makes up donald trump's week, everything i explained there doesn't make up the biggest legal development of just today. trump as of tonight is once again asking the u.s. supreme court to step in on one of the cases against him. he's asked the court to step in on the immunity case in a way that not many observers predicted. got the details on that and much more still to come. hat and much more still to come

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a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in washington, d.c. released a

unanimous opinion last week saying that donald trump is not immune from criminal prosecution for his attempt to stay in power after he lost re-election. and when they issued that ruling, they also tried to box him into what he could do next. they tried to box him into appealing straight to the u.s. supreme court. they said the way they ruled they said that if trump try today come back with that same appeals court, if he tried to make that same court take another turn with that same case, trump would risk the whole process speeding up, which is the last thing he wants. they said if he came back to the appeals court instead of just going straight to the asupremes, his trial in this issue would effectively be unfrozen. today donald trump did go to the supreme court, but he asked them to overrule that part of the appeals court ruling where they're trying to speed up the

process. he's asking the supreme court to allow him additional review from that same appeals court, he wants to be able to go to all 11 judges on that d.c. appeals court instead of just the three-judge panel that gave him a ruling thus far, and he wans to be able tado that before he appeal tuesday the supreme court without risking his trial starting up as punishment. he argued in his filing with the court tonight that this court should stay this unprecedented and unacceptable departure from ordinary appellate procedures and allow president trump's claim of immunity to be decided in the ordinary corts of justice. this presumably, this filing tonight from trump and his lawyers seems to be their way of trying kind of a bank shot. they're insisting he should get yet more review in the appeals court in d.c. before he inevitably appeals to the united states supreme court. he's always playing for more delay, always playing for more procedure, always playing for more time. well, how strong is this play?

how strong is his case for this? and if the supreme court does grant him what he's asking, what would that mean for the timing of his big federal criminal trial for trying stay in office after he was voted out? joining us now is chuck rosenberg. chuck, it's great to see you. thank you for being here tonight. >> my pleasure. >> did i explain the basics of that correctly, that he's trying to effectively get the supreme court to take away that russian tactic, that tactic by which appeals court was trying to tell him you've got to end this appeals process at some point and get to trial? >> yes, good description. three-stepladder. step one would be the trial court. that's where the prosecutors want to be. that's where a jury would be seated, a trial would be conducted and verdict rendered. prosecutors want to be there and mr. trump does not. step two on that matter would be

the appellate court. and what he'd like to do is be on number three, step three, the supreme court, or back in the appellate court. but by all means, rachel, to avoid step one, the trial court. >> what do you make of the strength of his argument and the strength of this filing overall and this approach? >> there's different arguments. the underlying argument he has absolute immunity i think is a weak argument. it's been heard twice now, once at the district court level, once at the appellate court level. a total of four judges have ruled on it. all four have agreed there's noimator whatsoever. procedurally it's like a bank shot. he wants to have another shot at the appellate court en banc where all judges sit together, all 11 and hear his appeal yet again. and if he loses there, not to go back down to the trial court but go back up to the supreme court. what do i make of it, i don't

think it's very compelling. i think everyone understand what you outlined in the ordinary course of justice which the trump team wrote means as slow as possible. and i hope the supreme court does not grant that portion of his request. >> in terms of -- i know it's always folly to predict any court's decision particularly the supreme court, but do you think there's anything we saw at work in their consideration of his ballot eligibility case, the oral arguments we saw on thursday, is there anything to extrapolate from in those arguments and what we saw of the justices in their approach to the trump matters that might predict how they're going to handle this pardon. >> i think, rachel. i hope so. the case you mentioned was put on expedited schedule. briefing occurred quickly. i imagine we'll have a relatively quick decision. if the supreme court adheres to that philosophy, they could move that absolute immunity claim

quickly, too. such that i still think it's possible, i'm somewhat bullish that he could be tried at rung one of the ladder in trial court, district court before the election. but that turns on a lot of ifs. >> chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former fbi official and explainer of hard things. chuck, thank you so much for being with us. it's always great to have you here. >> my pleasure, rachel. thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. thank you. >> we'll be right back stay with us

you can get all hung up in a tickly perch and your game will fly on, you'll be left in a lurch. you'll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump and the chances are then that you'll be

in a slump. and when you're in a slump, you're not in for much, unslumping yourself is not easily done. >> you know it's going to be a long night when dudes starts reading dr. seuss on the senate floor. that was ohio republican senator j.d. vance tonight unslumping himself. they have managed toed advance a bill on ukraine and israel after spending a whole day of -- on i guess we call it on deliberation, by deliberation i mean mostly grandstanding and also trying to run out the clock. that's the only way really to describe j.d. vance annoying the ghost of theodore geisel and josh hawley talking about the super bowl on the senate floor all evening. the bill they nevertheless passed this hour would send over $60 billion to ukraine, over $14 billion to israel. once the senate gives final

approval to this thing, it'll go over to the house. tonight speaker mike jauns has released a statement. in part, quote, the house will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. it's not at all clear mike johnson and republicans have anything approaching a unified will or republicans are in any position to know what that will might be. there's even talk amongst some house republicans of circumventing speaker mike johnson or doing it without him. who knows? watch this sfas. that's going to do it for us tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. now, let's make one thing clear, donald trump's never come anywhere near a military uniform. apparently he had bone spurs and that's why he couldn't serve. the most harm he's ever come across is