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tv   The Reid Out  MSNBC  February 16, 2024 4:00pm-5:00pm PST

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strength in the conviction of the defendant, and i don't believe that's been proven. >> i got 20 seconds. do you think she made the right legal call to testify? >> that is a perception. i have gotten so many texts today from women saying she's done a phenomenal job. she had to push back, and then there are a lot of men who are saying, why didn't she calm down? she had to be more -- have showed more decorum. she should have been more of a lawyer. again, i think you and i have both watched witnesses on the stand and come away with totally different versions of what they say. >> i certainly think she has every right to go up and defend herself as she did. the legal question is could they have carried that without the testimony then why put yourself out there, but again, that's one you can debate. thanks for joining us. i want to remind everyone to tune in "the beat" tomorrow, saturday, 4:00 p.m. eastern. we have that special "beat" weekend. "the reidout" starts now.
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good evening. we begin with today's major breaking news from new york, with that jaw-dropping number. $453 million that is the amount judge arthur engoron has ruled donald trump has to pony up in his new york civil fraud case which includes nearly $100 million in interest. that number will continue to grow until he pays. and if that was not enough to ruin trump's weekend plans, engoron also ruled trump is barred from personally running a business in new york for the next three years. yes, the man who built his whole brand around being a successful and wealthy businessman and real estate tycoon has been hit with an unimaginable fine. engoron's ruling also hit the elder trump's sons finding eric trump and donald trump jr. $4
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million apiece and allen weisselberg $1 million. letitia james reacted to the ruling. >> donald trump may have authored the art of the deal, but he perfected the art of the steal. this long-running fraud was intentional, egregious, illegal. today, we are holding donald trump accountable. we are holding him accountable for lying, cheating, and a lack of contrition, and for flouting the rules that all of us must play by. >> moving on, this ruling is not all that surprising given that before the trial began in october, engoron had already found trump liable for fraudulently inflating the value of his properties to get better terms on loan and insurance applications. but nevertheless, that doesn't lessen the pain from the one-two punch where it hurts trump the
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most, to his wallet and his ego. his 92-page ruling, judge engoron used trump's own claims against him in making this decision, writingerse donald trump professed to know more about real estate than other people and to be more expert than anybody else. he repeatedly falsified business records with the intent to defraud. at one point in his ruling engoron referenced english potet, to err is human, to forgive is divine. he wrote, quote, defendants apparently are of a different mind. after some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error inadvertent they acknowledge, is the tripling of the size of the trump tower penthouse. their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. the trump organization is calling this a groce mischaracterization of justice, and alina habba has already said
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they will appeal. joining me is melissa murray, law professor at new york university and msnbc legal analyst. tim o'brien, senior executive editor at bloomberg opinion, and msnbc political analyst. and tristan snell, former assistant attorney general for new york and author of "taking down trump, 12 rules for prosecuting donald trump by someone who did it successfully." thank you for being here. i'm going to go to you, tim. you wrote a piece entitled, trump loved new york. now it's giving him the boot. you write, the former president fashioned himself as a gotham tycoon and longed to be accepted in its elite business circles. the rejection from that world may sting more than the severe financial penalties. say more. >> well, you know, when we talk about the trump legacy, we should remember that we're not talking about the rockefellers or the roosevelts or the business or political sense. it's sort of a pulp novel version of those families, but
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nonetheless, trump spent decades fashioning this idea of himself as the consummate new york deal maker and entrepreneur. and he got into the world and got the attention he was able to glean from it largely on the shoulders of his father. it was fred trump's wealth that gave trump this springboard into business. and also insulated him from myriad mistakes he made for decades in his business career. and in the decades since, he's essentially taken a sledge hammer to the foundations of his own myth making and the foundations of much of what fred transferred to him in new york. he has a massive penalty that he's going to have to scramble to pay. and he's got on his sort of forehead now this mark of cane. he's been exiled for three years from new york and can't do business in the state. for someone whose idebty was shaped as a new yorker, particularly as a businessman,
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and the city is now turning to him and the state is now turning to him and saying go somewhere else, we don't want you, it's a comeuppance that is going to sting for the rest of his days. >> it's ironic that it is new york that is making him pay the price. new york that is bringing him to heel. it is letitia james, coming up going to be alvin bragg who also has a case coming up. but it first started with e. jean carroll. she held donald trump to account for defaming her and sexually assaulting her to the tune of $83.3 million plus the $5 million the first time. he now owes $gour 53.5 million. he owes ms. carroll. should we assume he's ever going to pay that money himself or is he going to make the rnc pay it once his daughter-in-law is in charge of the rnc, and is he going to have all those people buying $29 red hats or $46 or
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$45 plus tax. are they going to end up paying this? is he going to go to all the little people in his cult and make them pay it rather than him? >> a great question. when we interviewed robby kaplan, the lawyer who representing e. jean carroll in the defamation case, we interviewed her on our podcast, and she's very clear that donald trump will be putting up a bound that had been organized and e. jean carroll would be getting her money. so all of this is sort of fungible pots of money moved around and a big aspect of the interest in campaigning on the interest in the rnc is to free up certain kinds of money, certain lines of money to run the campaign so his personal funds aren't able to be used for it. a lot of this is basically about managing the various pots of money that are accessible to the trump family. but for sure, the fact that he has that bond will certainly be secured through the value of his properties, values that far exceed the amount of this
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judgment. it's going to be covered by his holdings. that is something that's going to happen. he's going to be on the hook for this, especially if the appellate division of the new york courts actually affirm this judgment going forward. so i think we wait to see what happens with the appeal, but yes, certainly campaigning is a way to funnel some cash into his campaign so he does not privately fund it. >> but to your -- what you're saying is he has to put up a bond if he wants to appeal and has to back that by property he owns. >> right. >> okay, at least he has to do that. let me go to you, trysten. you have the experience of having done this to him on trump university. you know how letitia james is feeling about getting some accountability. there was an interesting part in this ruling in which on page, what is this, page 3, i believe here. page 4, they make the point that timely repayment of loans does
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not extingsuish the harm that false statements make. they're saying paying back the money doesn't do any good. they put up properties. all of these properties, he now has been adjudicated that he inflated their value. so the fact that he paid his bills potentially for the mortgages on the properties, why did that not help him? >> that's not what the law requires. this is not a commercial case between a bank and a fraudulent debtor. this was a case being brought by the people of the state of new york under a statute that is similar to statutes in all 50 states and on the federal books as well. that basically say you cannot have these frauds on the marketplace. you cannot just be able to lie and say whatever you want and get away with it, and we're not going to wait for some wronged
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party that may or may not have stockholm syndrome to come forward. we're going to say that the people are going to sue to vindicate their rights. and that's what happened today. >> you know what's interesting that you say that, and tim, i'm going to come back to you because you have also beaten trump in court. we're waiting for melissa's case as well. there is this thing where we learn in this little ruling here about something a lot of americans will never experience. private wealth management. the way he was able to go around what normal people have to do when you want a mortgage. he had a private wealth manager. and also there was just his attitude, the ruling points out his behavior. overall, donald trump rarely responded to questions he was asked. he frequently interjected long irrelevant speeches. he refused to answer the questions directly or in some cases at all, severely
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compromised his credibility. is this the hubris of wealth. wealthy people feel like i don't have to pay my bills, i don't even have to go to the bank. i go to my private wealth manager and they give me money? >> even in the world of extremely wealthy people, donald trump is in a class by himself. most wealthy people are not this unhinged in a courtroom. and haven't had the sort of decades of financial malfeasance and pushing the edges of civil society to get what he wants. and the rule of law. and it finally caught up with him. one thing in the ruling, when engoron said that the defendant's disdain for the crimes they were charged with borders on the pathological, he used the word pathological, and all of trump's antics and his lawyers' antics that were scoring him big points on the
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political trail, that he felt he was free to do, i think, and this lawyer, who has now brought two financial penalties on her client's shoulders attacks the judges in these free-for-alls in every case. i think they thought they were going to roll the courtroom. and i was surprised by the severity of the financial penalty in this case. i thought what engoron was going to do is kick trump out of new york, maybe shave this $370 million ask down to a much lower amount. and i think you can read into this document that he was sick of the way trump conducted himself. and he wanted him to pay for it. in terms of the private bank, and i'll be brief. the remarkable thing about his private bank was the commercial real estate lenders at deutsche bank ended up getting burned by donald trump and refused to do business with him, and the private bankers in the same bank went ahead and did it. it's not only that the wealthy can get around the corners, they can sometimes play people in the
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same bank off against one another to get loans they might not otherwise get. >> and i think that, melissa, is for a lot of people t is sort of shocking to me the number of broke people who revere donald trump. i mean, what this reads as, this ruling, is the way that people who are super rich don't have -- at least they don't have to play by the rules. he clearly didn't think he could --
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>> he portrays himself as the vindicator of the everyman. this is not someone who spends his time in walmart and has a gold plated toilet in trump tower, but this is someone who working class americans, americans who feel aggrieved by the system really resonate with. he's setting things right and they love that brashness and the fact he's not taking anything sitting down, and he's really going toe to toe with these institutions, including people like judge engoron. in many ways this trial sort of cemented their affection for this figure. this is everything that they like about him. >> he may be a lot more like them soon because by the time he's done, he might be broke. and he might be one of the broke. we'll see what happens. my panel is staying with me for more on this brutal week of crushing legal setbacks for trump. i don't know, will they like him as much if he's broke? we'll see. e.
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we're following the major breaking news out of new york today. judge arthur engoron delivering a crushing blow to trump, ordering him to pay over $453 million in damages and barring him from running a business ipnew york for three years. our panel is back. tim, this was trump's first truth social post after the ruling. he shared a series of photos of himself alenling he looks physically heavier and claims that ai was used to make him look big boned. and he says the other pictures of me hitting golf balls today to show the difference. sadly in our country, fake news is all i get. his first post is to say i'm not fat? your thoughts. >> you know, well, how pathetic is all of this? this is a former president of the united states who sits atop billions of dollars, who makes
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decisions that may effect the lives of average people in the united states and across the world. he potentially has his finger on the nuclear button again and he's posting pictures arguing that he doesn't have a potbelly. by the way, pictures on a golf course where he routinely cheats. and it's yet another exhibit in a long series of exhibits that this man is not well. he is deeply unhinged. and he's been permitted to sort of wade across american society and the international landscape because he's this outcome of a lot of problems in the united states that he personifies. and people are willing to let him get away with this because he plays upon their worst instincts and their worst emotions and their fears. and he just reminds us every day that we have a cartoon character
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campaigning again for the white house. >> yeah, and your book is called prosecuting donald trump and the 12 steps to doing it. there are lots of people following suit and doing these prosecutions, but isn't the message of this prosecution that, you know, a lot of americans say and i never understood this, we want our country to be run like a business. businesses lay people off and boost their stock price by reducing people's wages. i'm not sure why they want the country run like as be, but whatever. but isn't the message that donald trump can't be trusted by the state of new york to run a business? isn't that the bottom line of this ruling, that he can't be trusted to run a business? >> that's exactly right. he cannot be trusted to make statements to other parties in the business world. you know, really what we have to look at is what were the values that were truly appraised for these properties, and then what
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did he claim they were. and there have been a number of really great graphics that have shown this, but where you see in black and white the disparity, we're not talking about a 10% disparity, 20%. oh, we added a little bit to puff it up a little bit. no, no, no. this is ten times, 20 times, 30 times the value. it would be the equivalent of somebody saying they -- i know my house is only worth $300,000, and then walking into the bank and claiming that it's worth $10 million so that the bank gives you a whole bunch of cash in loan debt. you would get arrested. you wouldn't go through a civil trial. you would be done. so we're already treating him with this -- with these kid gloves and this different standard. absolutely he's being run out of the new york business community, but truly this should have been
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a criminal prosecution because the amount of money we're talking about was just absoluteliastnomical beyond the pale of what everyone else in the business world i have ever seen do. >> and that is an excellent point. i want to throw that to you. when you look at the scale and you read through, you know, the prosecution and the things that he did, one does wonder why this was civil and not criminal. can you explain why that might be? i think for a regular person, this would be a jailable offense, this kind of fraud against the state. >> so i think the reason why tish james decided to deal with this as a civil suit is because the standard for establishing proof in a civil case is far lower than that in a criminal case where the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, which is quite high. given here that the issue was the valuation of the properties and there can be very subjective valuations, there would be wider room for finding a verdict of acquittal if this were a criminal trial. i think it's important to think
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about this civil verdict in the context of the four criminal indictments brought against donald trump and those four criminal indictments span not only the scope of his presidency in terms of the election interference indictments but also the period proceeding his presidency and the period after. so before, during, and after his presidency, we have criminal prosecutions of donald trump for serious crimes, and interestingly, many of those crimes relate to the kinds of things that were charged in the civil fraud trial. this idea that he overinflates his own acumen, a similar kind of impulse that you see in the election interference. i won the vote, i won the vote exceedingly in all of these states where it's actually much closer than he said, and in some cases he says there's been fraud when there's been no fraud at all. these are all species of the same kind of impulse, sort of overinflating his own worth at the expense of a public that is forced to play by the rules.
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>> well said. well said. and i think people should really take that in and think about it as you're thinking about who you want to be the president of the united states. thank you all very much. still ahead, the hearing on a motion to disqualify d.a. fani willis from the trump election interference case continues in fulton county. with willis' father taking the stand. we'll get a live report on today's testimony from katie phang in atlanta next. endless craving loop. nicorette reduces cravings until they're gone for good.
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it was day two of the fulton county evidentiary hearing over misconduct allegations that were aimed at fani willis and the special prosecutor who she appointed to the trump election rico case, nathan wade. willis' father took the stand, which was a surprise given the fact that he was supposed to appear by zoom. mr. floyd testified on behalf of his daughter, defending her practice of keeping large sums of cash at home, which is how she said she reimbursed wade for trips they took together. central to the accusations she benefitted from bringing wade on as a prosecutor against trump and his fellow insurrectionists. >> i'm naught trying to be racist, okay, but it's a black thing. okay. you know, i was trained and most black folks, they hide cash or
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they keep cash. >> i mean, that's just true. mr. floyd also described nightmare threats against his daughter's safety after she took office, a circumstance that an earlier wince said led her to move to a condo. >> so many death threats and they said they were going to blow up the house, kill her, kill me, kill my grandchildren, on and on and on. it just became, and i was concerned for her safety. >> on thursday, willis testified that the threats against her grew so extreme that she could no longer live at her home. mr. floyd also testified that his daughter was in a relationship with a deejay in 2019 and he had never met nathan wade from 2019 onward, which contradicts the testimony of former fulton county employee robin yeerty who claimed that willis and wade started their relationship in 2019. despite all of the salacious details of the defendant's
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lawyers have ginned up to seemingly fuel donald trump's social media posts, it is yet to be seen if these lawyers have successfully provided any evidence, any evidence at all to support their misconduct claims. joining me now from the courthouse in atlanta is katie phang, trial attorney and host of the katie phang show on msnbc. katie, what struck me today about mr. floyd's testimony is it was a class for many americans in the lives of black folks and the things you do, keeping cash at home. there's a piece where he talked about not being able to, you know, have his credit cards accepted when he went to shop when he was in cambridge. i thought he was brilliant. what dud you make of his testimony? >> yeah, there were two very powerful aspect of john floyd's testimony. number one, how could you not be impressed, the man in and of himself was a legal legend, the first to try a case in an international criminal court. what came across was his earnest
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desire to tell the truth. he took the stand in a surprise. he was supposed to appear via zoom, and it was so great to be able to assess his body language and his credibility in person. that's what counts here. the idea that the judge has a chance to assess the credibility of the witnesses that are testifying in this hearing, but john floyd made it clear that he raised his daughter to be like him and to understand the importance of taking care of herself and being independence. it fed into the corroboration of fani willis' sworn testimony yesterday. the evidence has now concluded in this case. the judge has indicated oral arguments will take place towards the end of next week, maybe the following week, and they'll be brief. they'll only be 10 to 15 minutes. the testimony took a bizarre and unexpected turn this afternoon when terrance bradley, the former divorce attorney for nathan wade took the stand. remember, there was a whole legal wrangling about whether or not he could testify because of attorney client privilege. the defense tried to pierce that
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privilege by saying a crime, a fraud had been perpetrated on the court by nathan wade, but the judge said absolutely not. that crime fraud exception does not apply here, so terrance bradley cannot testify about any privileged communications he had with his then client nathan wade. but joy, this is an evidentiary hearing. it's something that is worth repeating over and over again. i'm glad it's something you bring up time and time again on your show. we traffic in evidence and the facts when we're trial lawyers. this is an evidentiary hearing. there's a law that applies to disqualification. there has to be an actual conflict of evidence. the defense had its burden. it has not met its burden. at this point, there is nothing, and i say nothing that would substantiate or support the idea that fani willis should be disqualified. >> right, because there has to be a conflict of interest that's financial. people on the other side, they can be married to each other, it doesn't matter. it has to be a financial conflict of interest, am i
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correct? >> it has to be a personal stake in the conviction of a defendant, joy. and fani willis doesn't have any. i said what an elaborate scheme, if you believe what the defense has to say, fani willis put together this whole indictment, she convinced a grand jury to return charges, to return an indictment just so her then boyfriend who by the way she doesn't even date anymore, so he could get a job, so she can take a trip, that she testified she reimbursed him in cash. come on. >> let me play quickly before i let you know, this is the former governor, roy barnes, on why he didn't take the job instead of nathan wade. >> were you approached by the district attorney of fulton county, fani willis, about being a special prosecutor? >> i was. i don't recall the exact date, but i know it was some time in
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2021. i told d.a. willis i had lived with bodyguards for four years, and i didn't like it. and i wasn't going to live with bodyguards for the rest of my life. >> i thought this was an important point. he didn't want the job because he didn't want to get death threats from trump supporters for the rest of his life, so nathan wade had the guts to do it. >> yes, and that fits in with what john floyd, fani willis' dad said, that they had to move because of death threats, because of racial epithets and slurs chanted outside her home, fear of harm to her children that was going to come. it fits with the maga agenda. it fits with the maga motive to be able to intimidate, and intimidation is also part of the indictment. there are claims that certain witnesses were intimidated. you heard a former governor say i'm not taking the job because i'm not going to be threatened because i have done it before and gone through it before. >> and it feels like intimidation, humiliation is why we're here now.
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litigating whether this woman was dating this man and whether she had cash in her house. that's me saying that, not you. katie phang, thank you. coming up, the death of imprisoned russian opposition leader alexei navalny sparks condemnation of putin's regime. how many people did you tell? only pay for what you need. jingle: ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ baby: ♪ liberty. ♪
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we're travelling all across america, talking to people about their hearts. ooh, take this exit. -how's the heart? -i feel like it's good. -you feel like it's good? how do you know when it's time to check in on your heart? how do you know? let me show you something. it looks like a credit card, but it is the kardiamobile card. -that is a medical-grade ekg. want to see how it works? -yeah. -put both thumbs on there. that is your heart coming from the kardiamobile card. -wow! with kardiamobile card, you can take a medical-grade ekg in just 30 seconds, from anywhere. kardiamobile card is proven to detect atrial fibrillation, one of the leading causes of stroke. and it's the only personal ekg that's fda-cleared to detect normal heart rhythm, bradycardia and tachycardia. -how much do you think that costs? -probably $500. -$99. -oh, really?
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-you could carry that in your wallet. -of course you could carry it in your wallet, right? -yes, yes. kardiamobile card is just $79 during heart health month. don't wait. get kardiamobile card at kardia.com or amazon. shingles. some describe it as pulsing electric shocks or sharp, stabbing pains. ♪♪ this painful, blistering rash can disrupt your life for weeks. a pain so intense, you could miss out on family time. the virus that causes shingles is likely already inside of you. if you're 50 years or older, ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingles. now to the parallel stories of a russian patriot and an
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american idytd. patriot, alexei navalny, the political activist who led the most successful opposition campaign against vladimir putin for more than a decade, galvanizing primarily young russians to stand up against their dictator, using social media and just plain bravery. so successful in exposing putin's corruption that he was barred from running for president against putin in 2018. in 2020, he was poisoned with a military nerve agent while on a business trip to siberia. blaming the attempt on his life directly on putin. after recuperating in germany, he returned to russia in 2021 and was immediately imprisoned and sentenced to a draconian 30 1/2 year sentence on a series of seemingly trumped up charges. navalny was transferred to a siberian gulag where he was kept in a punishment cell. he was seen in court thursday
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vio video link from the penal colony seeming to appear healthy. according to russian authorities, today, he fell sick and lost consciousness after a walk and died. and whether you believe that he died under the brutal conditions in that arctic prison or that vladimir putin had him put to death, either way, the responsibility for his death lies at the feet of putin as vice president kamala harris explained during a forceful speech in munich where she met on the sidelines with navalny's now widow yulia. >> we have all just received reports that alexei navalny has died in russia. this is of course terrible news, which we are working to confirm. my prayers are with his family, including his wife yulia, who is with us today. and if confirmed, this would be a further sign of putin's brutality. whatever story they tell, let us
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be clear, russia is responsible and we will have more to say on this later. >> which brings us to the american idiot. according to craig ungar, who interviewed a former kgb spy named yuri for his book, american kompromat, donald john trump, a third rate real estate developer from queens who was desperate to break in the big leagues in manhattan and to be respected by the blue heeled elites he so claims to despise, first appeared on the soviet union's radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, ivana, a czech model, and he allegedly became the target of a spying operation overseen by czechoslovakia's intelligence operation. three years later he opened his first big property development in new york, the grand hyatt, buying 200 television sets from
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a kgb asset who co-owned an electronics shop. he befriended trump and got in the habit of flattering hip. in 1987, donald and ivana visited russia, pumped full of talking points that the operative reportedly fed him by stoking his ego and telling him he should go into politics. to understand how to exploit our american idiot, the soviets studied his personality. they told the guardian for the kgb, it was a charm offensive. the feeling was he was extremely vulnerable intellectually and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery, and flatter they did. words started to spread that our american idiot might run for the republican nomination for president in 1988. and shortly after he returned from moscow, he took a full page ad out in the new york times declaring that there's nothing wrong with america's foreign policy that a little backbone
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can't cure. it took the form of an open letter to the american people on why america should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves. the ad criticized ronald reagan's foreign policy and implied skepticism about u.s. participation in nato. the night it first ran, he went on cnn and was asked about nato. >> there are many other countries and taking tremendous advantage of this including nato. if you look at the payments that we're making, they're totally disproportionate with everybody else's and it's ridiculous. >> fast forward to 2016, that american idiot, donald john trump, actually became president, due almost entirely to his celebrity as a former reality tv star on nbc. and now, as an ex-president having committed serial crimes before, during, and after his presidency, including fomenting an attempted coup to try to
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remain in office after losing his bid for re-election because of how incompetent he was as president, that donald john trump is still peddling those same pro-russia talking points. talking points so perfectly aligned with the kremlin, it's almost as if he was still receiving them from moscow. russia helped get donald trump elected in 2016. according to the mueller report. by exploiting american social and racial divisions and amplifying them online. and by stealing hillary clinton's emails and exploiting the news media's voracious interest in them, and former kgb spy vladimir putin who has been dictator of russia in one way or another for nearly 25 years is getting bolder and more blatant in his determination to subordinate the united states to him. to rebuild the soviet union by annexing ukraine, which he lectured another american idiot,
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tucker carlson, belongs to russia, and by openly jailing and killing his opposition with impunity. the latest victim being alexei navalny. while trump leads one of our two major political parties with his fellow republicans parroting russian talking points to the point where it's almost parody. >> whether you agree with it or not, vladimir putin believes that russia has a historic claim to parts of western ukraine. so our opinion would be to view in it that light as a sincere expression of what he thinks. >> we're paying for a war, a proxy war with russia when i have never seen putin actually show in any detail his plans to invade europe. no one has shown me that. so i don't believe the lies i'm being told about this. >> making people believe ukraine can win, ukraine can't -- putin won't lose. putin will not lose. he's not going to lose. you have to factor that into the reality if you're going to deal with this effectively to bring
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this war to an end. >> today, the republicans' dear leader, donald john trump, had no response to the death of alexei navalny, as one would expect from someone so enthralled to vladimir putin. but president biden did not mince words about navalny's death or the russian dictator's regime. we'll play you what he said after this quick break. ♪ upbeat music ♪ asthma. it can make you miss out on those epic hikes with friends. step back out there, with fasenra. fasenra is an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks. fasenra helps prevent asthma attacks. most patients did not have an attack in the first year. fasenra is proven to help you breathe better so you can get back to doing day-to-day activities. and fasenra helps lower the use of oral steroids. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems
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make no mistake. putin is responsible for navalny's debt. putin is responsible. what has happened to navalny is more proof of putin's brutality. we gotta exactly what happened but there is no doubt that the death of navalny it was a consequence of something putin and his thugs did. >> strong words from president biden on the tragic death of alexei navalny, wrongly and present in a siberian gulag. we still don't know all the
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details. but as the president said, ultimately putin is responsible. joining me now is former cia director john brennan, msnbc senior intelligence analyst and -- i want to also play for you alexei navalny's widow, julia navalny. this is what she said this morning in munich. >> translator: but if it is the truth, i would like putin and all his staff, everybody around him, his government, his friends, i want them to know they will be punished for what they have done with our country, with my family, and with my husband. they will be brought to justice and this day will come soon. >> john brennan, who will bring justice to julia navalny?
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>> hopefully the russian people will be the ones to actually meet out freshest. as it has clear that as president biden said, alexei navalny was killed at the hands of the putin regime, which has been responsible for the deaths of many, many individuals over the past two decades. journalists, political oppositions, former military and government officials. this is something mr. putin has done when he's fearful of individuals or seeks revenge. clearly alexei navalny has been a thorn in putin's side for many years. and clearly what has happened to him, tragically, as a result of putin continuing to throw him. i think as early as, it there will be justice that will be brought as a result of this latest death. when it is going to come, we don't know. but i am confident that ultimately the russian people are going to overcome what has transpired over the last two decades, which is the terror of
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putin's regime. >> tom, if anyone hasn't seen the documentary, they should watch at. this is a heroically brave man. a heroically brave people, fighting for their country. true patriots to their country and want it to be a democracy. you say these very brave protesters out on the street, we'll show you some of them. one person was arrested. there were actual protests and moscow today. it is incredibly brave to do. that you will be arrested. when i say that and i see this, and american, parker cullen, who calls himself a journalist but in court admits he's an entertainer. let's say what he's doing and -- moscow, while they are protesting, risking their lives. >> if you type peoples standard of living, and tank it through filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can't buy that in groceries they want, it doesn't matter if they're a good person or a bad person, you are breaking peoples lives and our country. that's what our leaders have done to us.
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coming to our ocean grocery store, the heart of evil, and seeing what things cost and help people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. that's how i feel, anyway. >> most people in moscow they half of their salary for food. they're not buying $200 worth of groceries. senator tom tillis -- that soviets had a people like tucker, useful idiots, what terms would you use? >> pathetic. it is pathetic. and i can tell you, i've been a lot more russian grocery stores over the past 30 years than tucker cultures ever set foot. in this kind of navy, attention- seeking, go into any place that will have him just to put him in front of a camera regardless of the consequences, regardless of truth or lies is really just pathetic. that's the word i'd come up
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with. >> john brennan, it does feel up and get a whole lot of useful idiots that are doing putin's work for him up to and including donald trump and his party. >> i think we have far, far too many individuals. politicians, journalists, pundits and others who are doing exactly what vladimir putin wants them to do, which is to be able to propagate his talking points on american airways. and as tom said, the fact that tackles and is out there, conducting an interview with putin, and now spewing for this, this makes him even more testable, i think, from the standpoint he's undermining what this country stands for. the values of this country. and unfortunately, as he puts his foot into an echo chamber, too many peoples soak it up and believe what he is saying. >> that word interview is doing a lot of work there, tom nichols. what in the world is going on with that republican party, that there are so in hawk to russia and seem to be so in love with russia and with the allies
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of russia? people like victor -- >> some of this, and, we've talked about this many times and the past, some of this is a republican embrace of russia because they really believe that russia is this white, christian defender of conservative tradition and values. when in fact russia's mafia state. it is decadent beyond words. there are parts of things that go on in moscow in parts of russia that make america look like the old american gothic painting of virtue and rectitude. of course, these are the things people like carlson are never going to see and don't care about. it's also, i think, a kind of opposite world. like toddlers. if this is what most people believe about russia, and of this is what the biden administration is doing and as this is what our european allies
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believe, and wait must be wrong and we have to get on the other side of. this someone like marjorie taylor greene talking about how she's never seen the plans and she not seeing the evidence. she has no idea what he's talking about. none of these people really have any idea what you're talking about. most of them probably couldn't have spot russia on a mat or hit it blindfolded throwing a dark until five or ten years ago. so they are simply trying to ride that wave all of this sentiment for their own personal gain. >> it is pathetic. it is embarrassing. and it is dangerous. john brennan, tom nichols, thank you both very much. that my friends is tonight's read out. all in with chris hayes starts right now. right now. >> tonight on all in. >> for years, donald trump engaged and deceptive business practices and tremendous fraud. >> donald trump loses

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