store for us if he's restored to office. >> that messaging, amanda, does strike me as the most important here, and also there was one thing that joe biden has been good at throughout his political career is just like kitchen table, meat and potatoes politics, and even that, you've got to do that, and if you can't do that then we are all in trouble. >> let me be a little bit more optimistic here, because number one, i think it's important to remember that the largest coalition in america is the one that has been showing up again and again in midterms in general elections, and that is the pro-democracy coalition. some people call it the never trumper coalition or the stock trump coalition but it is the pro-democracy coalition. it is important to remember we are already in uncertain times where nothing is guaranteed and we can stay together. that is the most important thing. >> michelle goldberg and amanda carpenter, thank you both. that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, alex. >> it is uncertain times my

friend and uncertain times indeed. have a great weekend or holiday, i should say. >> have a great holiday. july 4, america. >> go america. what a time to be alive. it was march 31, 1968, when the president of the united states made an announcement that changed the course of history. >> i shall not seek and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. >> reporter: president lyndon johnson decided not to seek reelection in late march of an election year, just months before the democratic party's nominating convention. the outside observers believed at the time that president johnson exited the race largely over the quagmire in vietnam, sources in the white house would later reveal that it was concern about his health that

drove president johnson to withdraw. at the time, johnson was already facing challenges from eugene mccarthy, a liberal antiwar candidate, and from senator robert f kennedy, a political psion, a senator and a former u.s. attorney general. but president johnson's exit left a power vacuum and that was filled by the entry of johnson's vice president, hubert humphrey. the democratic candidates were now hurtling toward a contested convention. but before that convention even began, there was another shock to the race. on june 5 of that year, robert f kennedy was shot at the ambassador hotel in california. the next day, he was pronounced dead. two weeks before the convention began, south dakota senator george mcgovern announced that he would throw his hat into the ring as a stand-in candidate for voters who supported rfk. and when the democratic delegates eventually gathered in chicago, nearly 10,000 antiwar protesters swept into the windy city. they were met by more than

twice as many members of the national guard. >> demonstrators have filled the streets in front of the conrad hotel. police held them back. tensions were high and they broke. >> those tensions then spilled into the convention hall as delegates battled over who would be the party's nominee. >> george mcgovern is president of the united states! we wouldn't have to have gestapo tactics in the streets of chicago. >> how hard it is to accept the truth. truth. >> the 1968 convention went down in history as one of the

most chaotic, divisive, and weird moments in democratic party history. people lit their delegate cards on fire. protesters threatened to put lsd in the chicago water supply. the youth international party nominated a pig, a pig named pig a sauce for president and then demanded that the pig received secret service protection. at the end of it all, vice president humphrey won the delegate contest and became the nominee of a bitterly divided party. he went on to lose the general election to one of the most corrupt republican presidents in u.s. history, richard m nixon. and today, right at this very hour, the question is whether or not democrats are headed for another contested convention in chicago. and there are things about this moment that are both eerily similar and dramatically different than what happened in 1968. first of all, robert f

kennedy's son and namesake is running for president, albeit in a completely different context, as a fringe third- party candidate who just this week faced new allegations that he sexually assaulted a babysitter in 1998. msnbc has not independently verified those allegations but rfk jr. responded to those allegations by saying this -- >> listen, i've said this from the beginning -- i am not a church boy. i am not running like that. i said in my -- i had a very, very rambunctious use. i said in my announcement speech that i have so many skeletons in my closet. >> this is not exactly the rfk of 1968. but this year once again as in 1968 there is a foreign military conflict dividing the democratic party, this time in gaza. but the central issue looming over this year's convention is not the war and it is not the

kennedy in the race. in fact, by all outside measurements, the democratic party is in a period of relative unity and cohesion, and especially in its shared alarm about the threat posed by the party's opponent, donald from. said both structurally and politically, it is a dramatic difference from the year 1968. instead, this year the issue that is fracturing the party, the thing that hangs over what is a very big tent at this point isn't a policy division, but a personal one. it is the issue that lbj kept to himself all those years ago, the health and the vitality of the incumbent president, his fitness for office and his ability to run against a dangerous candidate who threatens american democracy. as of right now, as of this evening, president biden says he will remain his party's candidate. during an all hands call with his campaign staff, biden reportedly announced, me say this as clearly as i possibly can, as simply and straightforward as i can -- i

am running. no one is pushing me out. i'm not leaving. i mean this race to the end and we are going to win. but according to a report also today in the new york times, biden is telling allies that he knows he has just days to save his candidacy. now the last few days have seen new polling showing president biden losing some ground with voters following thursday's debate. perhaps in recognition of that, the biden campaign is preparing a sort of mini pr blitz over the fourth of july holiday. on friday the president will sit for an interview with george stephanopoulos of abc news . then, over the weekend, he will make campaign stops in pennsylvania and in wisconsin. and next week the president will hold a press conference during the nato summit in washington, where he is a method to take questions from reporters. at the same time, the president is now, finally, reaching out to party leaders. over the past 24 hours, president biden has placed

calls to house majority leader hakeem jeffries and senate minority leader chuck schumer. he's also reached out to former democratic leaders like speaker america nancy pelosi and congressman jim clyburn. tonight the president held a closed-door meeting at the white house with democratic governors, many of whom have been whispered about as potential biden replacements or running mates on a ticket with kamala harris, including gavin newsom and jb pritzker, gretchen whitmer and westmore. both inside and outside the biden white house it is clear that this party is in crisis mode. yesterday texas congressman lloyd doggett became the first elected democrat to call for president biden to step down as the democratic candidate. tonight arizona democratic representative raul grijalva became the second democratic member of congress to do the same, to call on biden to step down. all of which makes this feel like a very live question.

is this the beginning of a legitimate effort to remove joe biden from the democratic ticket or is this a fire that the party will succeed in putting out internally? in other words, will the third week of august be business as usual or will the democratic party fracture just in time for a second chicago convention. joining me now is david plouffe, former campaign manager for barack obama's 2008 campaign. also with me is mark lubavitch, staff writer with the atlantic. his new piece is titled the lie democrats are telling themselves. david and mark, thank you for joining me. david, let me just first start with you, in terms of how to interpret what we've seen in the last, i'll say 12 hours from the biden white house and particularly the biden campaign. how do you read these statements and this behavior? >> joe biden is very clued into his campaign staff.

he's in the race for the duration to win it and i think most of the democratic governors, if not all, signal support. so i think that is the most likely scenario. i think there's going to continue to be unrest because we are going to have public polls but more importantly private polls the people running in tough house and senate races are showing, and i just want to remind everybody that we were behind in this race before the debate. joe biden was behind for inflation reasons. incumbents all over the globe are losing elections, and badly . it's definitely got an anti- incumbent fervor, but it was also i think primarily about people sense, was he up for this job, and those answers only got more challenging for him after the debate. so i think if he stays in this race, and alex, i don't think we're going to have drama in chicago. maybe if they have an open convention, either this is going to settle down in joe biden is the nominee or there will be a convention to make

the case for him and most important against trump, or he will get out and we'll have a process. it could be message but i don't think we're looking at a repeat. there definitely listening. there's going to be protesters around and at least everybody has got a phone now that can send videos around the world so it will be overstated but i think the question really is, whether it's joe biden or somebody else. after the supreme court ruling yesterday, the threat of donald trump is even more pronounced. it could be enterprise ending for the country. so this isn't about trying. you have to win and i think if joe biden is the candidate we have to understand, and i think he's capable of doing this with the degree of difficulty is hard. we have to make up a lot of ground. we are losing. we are losing in the battleground states, so you have to pull votes away from trump. you've got to worry about your vote. you've got to be worried about turnout. you've got to pull votes away from rfk. that's just a mathematical

reality. so i hope he does well in the george stephanopoulos interview. i hope he does well this weekend. that continues but that's not going to answer the mail for those voters. what will answer the mail for those voters is a repeat of the debate and i think it remains to be seen whether trumbull offered biden an opportunity. >> i'm hearing a lot of i hope sentences beginning with the words i hope, as it concerns biden's performance and his future. and what's possible with this current democratic ticket. you've been very upfront about what you think needs to happen here and i wonder how you're kind of reading the moment as we hear from the president and his, i think defiant posture that he's not going anywhere. >> i think defiant posture is one way of saying it. i think stubborn, hubristic. is hubristic even a word, i'm not even sure. >> it is. >> okay, hubristic is something you here, reckless is a word you hear. i think in the last seven days or six days since the debates, not only has biden been basically invisible since the

disaster of last thursday, but morale around the party has only gotten lower around obviously since some of these polls have come out but also just his invisibility. but also, there is no sign that there is anything afoot, whether it's an interview or another debates in the near future, that could turn this around anytime soon. and as david said, this is a mission-critical election. this is a kind of imperfect analogy i've made before, where if you are an airline pilot or an air traffic controller, you would've been forced to retire 20 to 25 years ago. this is a mission-critical job and election and obviously i don't think the party is fundamentally divided as it was around vietnam. that was just a pervasively divided time in that convention but look, the level of confidence in the person who insists on continuing to fight and be the nominee at this party is really, really low for someone who has a lot of ground to make up for to begin with. >> and i want to be clear, i don't think we are headed towards a 1968 style chicago

convention but david, given the desires and the varied intent of the democratic party, coming to an alternative to biden is going to take some negotiating, if that's even in the cards. i do want to ask, though, to mark's point about the defensiveness here, the fact that the president is only in the last 12 to 24 hours reaching out to elected democrats in congress, did that surprise you? >> it did. i mean generally when you're in crisis, whether it's in governing or in campaign mode, the phone is your friend. it's an easy thing to do and even if those conversations don't go as well as you like, people respect that you reached out. so i think a lot of the activity we are seeing in the interview, the call should've happened last weekend, last friday, even after the debate. so i think we're in a moment now where the president has to perform. listen, that campaign led by dylan and clinton faults is a very strong campaign.

i have a question they'll do what's required but campaigns only make a marginal difference. it's humbling for those that used to run them. it's the candidate really and the times that dictate kind of the most powerful wins in politics. this will be on the president to convince voters. the voters that are swing voters, democratic voters now say they might not vote, that okay, maybe it was more of a bad night and not. but again, these questions about fitness and should he run have been with us the entire campaign. they've really been the headwinds he's facing and he just dug a deeper hole in the debate. so he should do everything he can, interviews, press conferences, go on with influencers, do town halls with voters. he's got to do all that. but the thing i remind you of is most people who voted in this election didn't even watch the debate. it's really hard to reach people but the new york times poll suggests that people who did watch the debate even have more concern because all they

are seeing is the means and videos. it's going to take something big like another debates. the conventions don't do it. i've led conventions. it's important that they go well. they don't really reach swing voters. they don't really reach hard to turn out voters the same way the debate and its aftermath does. that's what it comes down to, his performance, so listen, generally candidate to win elections have good political appeal, they have good story, they can connect with voters. joe biden has done that. that's why he won in 20. what i've learned when you're behind in a race, that's where you really need the political athleticism. it's like traversing a really dangerous obstacle course, so i just think we have to be honest that's where we are and if joe biden can basically manage that obstacle course, i think it gets back to a really close race. but it's going to take a lot of dexterity to do that. >> i hear the words athleticism and dexterity and i'm not trying to be ageist at all but this is a candidate who has done a lot of the things he was supposed to do in terms of not sitdown interviews, but he's traveling the world, he's trying

to put -- the campaign is trying to put him out there, mark, as much as they can in a format they think will be good for him. they thought the debate would be a good idea. it was theirs. that was part of strategy. it blew up in their faces. i do wonder at this point kind of where we are in the trajectory of knowing is going to be at the top of the ticket. we have news tonight from the new york times that reed hastings, who is the cofounder of netflix, huge democratic donor, is saying biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous democratic leader to beat trump and keep a safe and prosperous. what are the pressure points, in your mind, outside of the inner sanctum of the white house, mark? is it the donor class? is it voters? as a democrat in congress? is it none of them? >> it's polls but it's also people like reed hastings and members of congress, members of the senate, governors actually coming out. what i was struck by really in these last few days, which in some ways have been as

depressing as the actual debate itself, was the sense of -- i mean i guess the learned helplessness around both parties in some ways, but in this case the democrats really are helpless to do anything except to just accept the will of one obviously greatly diminished 81-year-old incumbent who has been very, very, very impressive and honorable throughout his career. he was very heroic in defeating donald trump in 2020. he had a good presidency by many standards, and yet, here we are, and there's nothing anyone can do about him. and i keep thinking about veep with the campaign that david plouffe led and yet, we were all in grant park in 2008 and even both parties, there was a sense of decency and possibility. and here we have just no choice but to sort of go with what we have been given, which obviously people in both parties and people across america are very dissatisfied with. so i don't know. i just think i wish people would just be honest and be

vocal and speak up and not just sort of giving to the learned hopelessness and give into the just sense of going along and sort of mentality that seems to have driven certainly the republican party to this point, but i also think the democratic party to this particular point. >> one more for you, david, do you read anything into the fact, david, that donald trump has been completely silent on the prospective biden stepping down? does that suggest to you that republicans would like to go one way rather than the other? >> my sense is they like this matchup, so that's always a tell . you should pay attention to what your opponents think. i don't think the trump campaign has probably gotten all the mileage they could have out of this. not going to provide a lot of advice on here tonight, alex, but it does speak to the other thing which, this is an eminently beatable candidate in donald trump. this is not a political goliath. he was not a good vote-getter in '16 or '20. he cost his party races they

should've won in '18 and '22. he is beatable so we are not talking about a situation where we are behind and we somehow have to find a way to slay a political dragon. his campaign is not particularly impressive. he's obviously deeply unimpressive. i think there is still a coalition of 50% plus americans who don't want to return, so that's the other thing here. this is a must win race because of the damage that could be done in the country but it's also a winnable race and right now it looks like it's going to be joe biden. if it's not joe biden, whoever the nominee is easy for me to say but i think the bar has to be -- you've got to win the race and the truth is it is a winnable race. so -- but i think donald trump and his campaign very much like this matchup so that's why i think they've been so quiet. >> david plouffe, mark leibovitz, this is a conversation very much to be continued. thank you for making sometime tonight on a july 3. we have much more to get to tonight including what the

supreme court's presidential immunity ruling means for all of donald trump's pending criminal cases. but first, as president biden valves that he's in this race to the end, former democratic congressman tim ryan is calling for a new democratic presidential nominee. i'm going to speak with him about exactly who he would like to see at the top of the ticket, and why, next. next.

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just been able to see, and because we've seen it or not, doesn't mean it hasn't happened. we are just limited to what we have seen. >> [ laughter ]. >> republicans are out today with a new ad targeting vice president kamala harris, clearly hedging against the possibility that harris will step in to take president biden's spot if biden were to end his campaign. to that end, new reuters ipsos poehling shows that in a hypothetical matchup against trump, harris outperforms four other potential democratic candidates, losing to trump by just one percentage point. that is perhaps why at least one democrat is on the record saying kamala harris should be the democratic nominee for president in 2024. joining me now is that democrat, tim ryan, former congressman from ohio. it is good to see you this evening. thanks for being here tonight. let's just get right to your

argument. why kamala harris? >> well, we needed generational change. there's no question about that. i think you look at what they call the double haters. they don't want biden. they don't want trump. i think it's really important that we give them the alternative so there would be a huge generational change. you look at the practical politics of the situation. look where we are bleeding out. we're soft with a lot of the minority communities and we are bleeding out young people. and i think kamala could come in instantaneously, juice our base, pull in young people. i've been getting calls from ohio, working-class people, they want biden to step down and they're telling me they be excited for a kamala harris run. so i think she checks a lot of these boxes and you take the choice issue just real quick. i think there's so much at stake for women. for her to be able to prosecute that issue for us in a debate against donald trump, i think you had all that together and i

think we're back in the game and we could make a good run at this thing. >> do you think it's a decidedly different moment than it was in 2020, when she did throw her hat in the ring for the presidential nomination and was out before i will? >> oh, 1000%. i mean you're better at your job 3 1/2 years later. most americans who do something for 3 1/2 years, especially at a very high level, you get better, you grow, you become seasoned. she already has a lot of raw talent and ability and charisma, and presidential campaigns are pretty tough, so that's a heck of a standard. but i think it culminated for me, in my mind, alex, to really start thinking about this, was how she handled herself on debate night. absolute star. i mean i follow her. i was so enamored. i followed her across all the cable stations as she was doing her interviews and she was masterful. and i think that's the culmination of 3 1/2 years.

so to me it's like what are we waiting for? we have a very good candidate here. let's help her go into the campaign and i think it would be a great move for biden to kind of set up somebody like kamala harris as the crowning jewel of what is a really significant and well done presidency. >> in the last 72 hours or the last five days, there have been a lot of names mentioned and what's been so odd about this is only in the last 12 to 24 has, harris's name really popped up as potentially a leading contender, if, the giant caveat that biden has not dropped out and only if he does drop out would she go obviously to the top of the ticket. i wonder what that signals. the wall street journal sort of takes the opposite opinion from yours. they're saying that biden is effectively trying to scare democrats that harris is the only alternative if he drops out. the reason we are seeing this

flurry of prognostication about harris's viability is because the biden campaign is floating that as a disincentive. do you think that that's tortured logic? what's your response to that idea? >> i don't know, honestly. i'm not understanding a lot of what's coming out of the white house in the last 72 hours. i don't agree with it. i think the way they've handled this has been tremendously unhelpful, to just voters like me, former members of congress and current members of congress. i don't know exactly what the machinations going on in side the white house are. i just hope they will take a very, very close look, they be even have the president watch the debate again, really see what's happening. i'm here in ohio. the average people are still talking about what happened on the debate night thursday. we are not going to shift that narrative, alex. we've got to come to reality. one of the things people don't like about democrats, we are not decisive. we don't act with conviction

enough. they don't see us as strong. this is an opportunity for all of us to shift all of this kind of narratives that the republicans have pinned on us as a party and i think the opportunity now is to do the right thing. let's quit dillydallying around here. we got a race to win. you saw the chevron decision. we saw the immunity decision. supreme court flipped the constitution and turned it upside down. what are we doing here? do we want federal courts that have a clarence thomas in every federal court across the country, every u.s. prosecutor in every jurisdiction, every district across the country is going to be from the federalist society? do we recognize what would happen to our country if we do that, and we are sitting here thinking the biggest threat i saw the other night in the debate was that trump was re- creating covid, re-creating the economy, re-creating climate, re-creating his tax cut, without any pushback at all. he's shape shifting people's minds because we are not pushing back.

we can't do that for the next four months. we'll get destroyed so i hope members of congress step. i hope this letter the people are talking about, i hope they send it and really let the white house know what's at stake here for their own personal careers. but the potential for our own democracy here that we are also concerned about. >> former congressman tim ryan with an impassioned argument for the vice president, going to the top of the democratic ticket. thanks for making time tonight. we really appreciate it. >> thanks, alex. still to come this evening, has the supreme court handed donald trump a get out of jail free card for more than one jail? the fallout from the court's decision on presidential immunity reverberates throughout all of his criminal cases. we going to get some legal expertise from kristi greenberg. that's next. nberg. that's next. now i'll be smelling fresh all day long. [sniff] still fresh. ♪♪ get 6x longer-lasting freshness, plus odor protection.

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on monday the supreme court dropped a proverbial bomb on all of donald trump's criminal cases by rolling along ideological lines that presidents are fully immune from criminal prosecution for any official act during their presidency. by doing that, the high court has not just potentially blown a hole on special counsel jack smith's january 6 case, and all of trump's criminal cases. in the federal january 6 case,

the indictment must now go back to the u.s. district court where judge tanya chutkan must decide which allegations from the indictment count as official act and which must therefore be unindicted and which are official acts that still can be charged. regardless of how that shakes out, it effectively means the special counsel's january 6 case has no chance of going to trial before election day. a similar process will probably play out in trump's other election interference case, the one brought by district attorney fani willis down in fulton county, georgia. trump and his lawyers have asserted presidential immunity in that case, as well, meaning the judge overseeing that case, judge scott mcafee, will have to parse through that and i and determine what may now be off- limits. judge mcafee won't even be able to start that process until an appeals court decides whether or not to grant trump's motion to through da willis off of the case. so don't expect any significant

movement down in georgia anytime soon. now in trump's new york hush money case where trump is already been convicted on 34 felony counts, yesterday we got the news that the sentencing has been postponed from next week to september in order to give trump's legal team sufficient time to argue that the case should be tossed out entirely because of the supreme court's immunity decision. down in florida in trump's classified documents case, even though that case is primarily about actions in trump's post presidency, actions that in no way could be construed as official acts, trump is still trying to argue that because he was still president when his boxes were first moved from washington, d.c. to mar-a-lago, he should be immune in that case, as well. there is a lot to unpack here. luckily legal expert kristi greenberg joins me next to do just that. just that.

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. donald trump has already been found guilty in a court of law. he faces up to four years in prison for falsifying business records as part of the criminal hush money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. now for those crimes trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced next week. that was until the supreme court granted trump immunity from virtually anything that could be considered an official act. as a result, next week's sentencing has been postponed

to september 18 so the judge in this case, judge juan merchan has time to consider an argument that trump's defense lawyers have used in multiple criminal cases, that his guilty verdict should be thrown out entirely. joining me now to discuss the likelihood of that actually happening is kristi greenberg, a former federal prosecutor. kristi, i am intrigued by this. i will say i have long wondered what the impact of the supreme court decision might be, potentially, on the new york hush money case and i wonder what parts of it, what parts of that conviction are potentially most imperiled in your eyes. >> so i don't think the conviction is imperiled. that's the good news. the charged conduct itself, directing your personal lawyer to make hush money payments to a star and then reimbursing them and covering up, none of that is official conduct so it

doesn't matter if they sign the checks to michael cohen from the white house, they were from his personal account to his personal attorney. unofficial conduct. the real question then becomes whether any evidence of donald trump's official acts was used to prove these unofficial acts because now the supreme court says that you can't use any of that. i spent a good time reviewing the evidence that trump's lawyers have now cited as saying that it's official act evidence that couldn't have been used. it was improperly admitted at trial and i looked at the rest of the trial record and essentially what i found is that even if you take the pieces of evidence that trump's attorneys say shouldn't have been admitted, even if you take that out, it was largely cumulative of other evidence that was already in that trial record that was proven trump's guilt. so the bottom line is the evidence of trump's guilt is overwhelming even without that evidence that trump's team is siting so i don't think any of

that evidence that they are concerned about is make or break evidence that would've let a jury to acquit. so i think this verdict will still be upheld. i think it will impact at least one case where i think people can breathe a sigh of relief at least for now. >> and it sounds like some of the evidence they're trying to get out of this is some of those oval office conversations, presumably between david packer, trump and cohen. you sound pretty bullish on the integrity of the conviction standing up. it also sounds like they tackled the immunity thing a while ago. they've already gone down this lane and they've effectively waived the right for immunity already, have they not? >> so they definitely waived their right to challenge the charged conduct. that's for sure. the judge already ruled on that and said this is untimely. you had the opportunity to raise this a while ago. same thing with the evidence but again, now we have the supreme court opinion saying you can't use any evidence of official acts to prove the unofficial acts. that's new law that was not the law that the da's office cited. that wasn't the law even that

the judge seemingly relied on in letting that in, so that's new and they have to deal with that. as you said, testimony, conversations just because they happened in the oval office, that doesn't make them official. i think something like a conversation with hope hicks, who was then the white house communications director, when they're having a conversation, for example, about how the stormy daniels testimony, how that story would play in 2018, arguably could be official conduct, that conversation under this opinion. but again, there are many other conversations, there are pecker 's testimony and michael cohen's testimony, both before and after the election, about the fact that donald trump didn't want these women's stories to come out to negatively affect the campaign. and his communications, even when he was president with private parties, that's not able to be official conduct. so again, i think we are on solid footing with a lot of this evidence. >> i do want to ask as we talk about the impact of the court's

decision on immunity in these other federal court cases, what do you think happens on the january 6 case? the ball is in judge chutkan's court and she can have these evidentiary hearings. and i wonder if you think we should be expecting sort of mini trials, if you will, around the evidence that can be used in this. is the public going to get some sort of small or bite-size diversion of a trial in the form of one of these hearings or is that overestimating the sort of information we are actually going to get paid public? >> bring on the mini trials. i think there's no reason here for jack smith to really hold anything back. this is for all the marbles, right? you have most of the indictment that is at least still in play so he's going to have to bring out his witnesses, his documents, to be able to prove that these are in fact either official acts, but you rebut the presumption of immunity or that they are unofficial acts. so i think we should expect to see a lot of this evidence brought forth and those

hearings should happen before the election. there is no reason to delay. you will expect there is some breathing over the summer but come fall we should be seeing these hearings and there is a lot that is still at play here. donald trump's attempts to pressure mike pence to count these -- do not count the legitimate electoral votes, yes there is presumptive immunity under the supreme court opinion for those. but that can be rebutted in the supreme court itself said the vice president was not acting in his executive branch function when he was presiding over the senate, and that donald trump had no authority whatsoever with respect to counting those electoral votes. so expect testimony from mike pence and others to that effect. even supreme court justice barrett said as to the slates of fake electors, that's private conduct. so again, i think we are going to hear from a lot of these state officials that donald trump was trying to pressure a lot of private actors rivate acr people he was trying to get, to interfere with the state te processes, which the president

has no authority whatsoever to tell the states how to count their electors. i think that fake electors scheme will still be in play and we will get a lot of evidence to that. then there is the last bucket about everything connected and leading up to january 6 and we are going to hear more about how these tweets came about, how the communications came about, but it would be incredible to think be there, it will be wild, is an official act of a president. the supreme court said, look, presumptively a lot of communications are going to be official acts, but there are communications that all in the c bucket of candidate trump and i think his address to take our country back. sending the crowd to january 6. once the evidence comes in about what was going on surrounding those contacts, it is hard to see them as anything but candidate trump and not president trump. >> be there, will be wild, not

in the annals of presidential speech. kristy greenberg, it is always y great to get your expertise on this. thank you for dropping some wisdom tonight. really appreciate it. strike still ahead tonight, one of the masterminds behind b project 2025. one of the masterminds just revealed what conservatives plan to do with the law free zone created by the supreme court around the presidency and in his words they are planning for a second american revolution. i will talk to mark joseph stern about that, next. broad shoulders to get to where we are at today. on ancestry i was able to actually put together our family tree. each person is a glass worker. that's why we do what we do. we can't help it. the glass blowing - that's a part of our dna. it's in my blood, it's in my history. it's my job to make sure that this shop makes it to the next generation. i thought i was sleeping ok... but i was waking up so tired. then i tried new zzzquil sleep nasal strips.

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the left will allow it to be. >> that was kevin roberts, the president of the heritage foundation and architect of project 2025, promising a possibly bloodless second american revolution. this battle plan follows the supreme court's radical expansion of presidential power on monday, effectively allowing the president to be a king above the law. joining me now is mark joseph stern, senior writer covering the courts and the laufer slate magazine. what is your reaction to a potentially bloodless second american revolution courtesy of project 2025? >> you know, i have to say that he is reflecting on a triumphant supreme court term where he has been delivered a number of major policy victories. that he was intending project 2025 to accomplish of trump wins. it is a most like they are prevailing in the battle ahead of schedule. the supreme court fundamentally restructured our government in

a way that i think we are only beginning to understand. the immunity decision is the tip of the iceberg. there is much more to it and he has the attitude of someone who has one, because in a lot of ways he has. if he prevails in november he will have even more to celebrate. >> it feels like the ruling is serving the project 2025 goals on a silver platter and the partisan nature of all of this seemingly can't be denied, but the wall street journal has an op-ed out today and i know i am laughing because it is so preposterous, not because the subject is full of levity, but they are charging that the maga supreme court doesn't exist and basically focusing on the percentage of cases that were unanimous and glossing over the substance of the court decisions this term. what is your reaction to that and the story conservatives are telling themselves? >> i think that is an effort to prevent the american people from seeing behind what is going on in the supreme court. peering behind the curtain and

realizing how radically everything changed. from the imperial president now immune from criminal prosecution, to the court's seizure of power from federal agencies. the courts creation of this entirely new kind of judicial authority. it is a recipe for paralyzed government under a democratic president and for a repressive, monarchical government under a republican president who wields his power and tools of his office. >> you know, mark, to underscore that point, politico has an article in the magazine this week saying that seal team six could actually execute someone at the president's direction based on this new immunity ruling. that is the assessment from legal scholars. why did john roberts try to gaslight justice sotomayor and

justice kagan and justice jackson in their not alarmist reading of what the ruling does? >> justice roberts is treating the women as though they are hysterical and they can't possibly be trusted to understand. but i also think, he seems to think the president -- >> okay, mark, we are having some audio issues with your connection and i know everything you are saying is important, so please come back so we can talk about this more in detail with you with better audio. mark joseph stern, thank you for spending friday night with me. now it is time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell.". >> mark joseph stern, i read his every tweet. i retweet most of them. i wanted to hear what he had to