debate. >> i don't have much time, but do you think she would be a good president. >> i do. >> thank you very much. tune into the weekend, simone and michael and alicia every weekend. katy tur reports is coming to you live next week for the republican national convention. catch up at 3:00 p.m. eastern. and i'll also be feeling in with andrea mitchell from tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday of next week. that is going to do it for me today on this friday. "deadline: white house" starts right now. ♪♪ hi there, everyone. we made it to friday. it is 4:00 in the east. it is a claim that is breathtaking and in both its audacity and its danger. from the very same people who are building the infrastructure to help donald trump tear down the very pillars of our democracy, should he prevail in november, and return to the

white house, allies of the ex-president, many affiliated with the heritage foundation are claiming that the candidate will who disrupt the peaceful transfer of power won't be the repeat offender, donald trump, in their telling and their delusion and what amounts to an epic case of projection, they're accusing the biden campaign of doing so. stunning new reporting from "the washington post" on a discussion of supposed threats to the 2024 election bytrap allies revealed revealed that the washington headquarters states as a given that the biden administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forces of federal power to influence the presidential election. it did not supply any evidence. quote, as things stand right now, there is a zero percent chance of a fear and fair election. that was pike howell, executive director of the over sight

project. quote, i'm formally accusing the biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election. only one candidate in his supporters have done that. have refused to say if they will accept the results of the 2024 election and it is not president joe biden or any democrat. >> the question was, will you accept results of the election regardless of who wins, yes or no, please? >> if it is a fair and legal and good election, absolutely. >> will you accept the results of the 2024 election no matter who wins? >> yeah, i'll accept it. i think that there is no massive cheating. >> senator, will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024, bottom line? >> at the end of the day, the 47th president of the united states will be president, donald trump. and i'm excited to get back to

low inflation, low unemployment. >> senator, yes or no, will you accept the election results of 2024, no matter who wins? >> that is my statement. >> will you commit to accepting the results of this year's election? >> look, dana, i totally plan to accept the results of 2024. i think that donald trump will be the victory and it is a free and fair election, and i think everyone republican will enthusiastically accept the results. >> what about 2024? >> we will see. if this is a legal and valid election. >> stop right here for a second. chris krebs described the 2020 election as the, quote, most secure in american history. bill barr, bill barr, said there was no evidence of fraud. so if you think of this delusional and desperate but very strategic attempt to somehow turn the tables on the democrats, to depict them as the real threat to democracy as part

of big lie 2.0. and it is the first iteration of the big lie, was used to justify everything from baseless lawsuits to the deadly violence that we saw on january 6. this new version is no different but perhaps more dangerous. washington post reports that a heritage foundation staffer said this, quote, the exercise would lead heritage to file more litigation over election procedures. he also said it should help the public resist, quote, psychological operations, he claims were being used in 2020 and again. and he didn't say who ran the operations. the upshot is that we'll see a contested election the likes of which we've never seen. if we see the kind of manipulations we saw in 2020, i wonder if average americans who are supporters of donald trump will swallow that so easily as this he did in 2020. the idea that trump supporters swallowed anything or took the

2020 election results for what they were lying down is absurd. we all saw what they did. we all saw what happened on january 6. a mob of trump supporters sent by donald trump stormed the united states capitol, injured and maimed and led to the death of police officers, came incredibly close to harming mike pence and his family as trump supporters and members of the mob called for him to be hanged on site. and the war game presented by the heritage foundation, the biden campaign responded this week. this document is nothing more than an attempt to justify their efforts to suppress the vote, to undermine the election and ultimately another january 6. attempts to sow doubt about the integrity of the 2024 election by trump allies is gaining steam is where we begin today with our most trusted reporters and

friends. national political reporter for "the washington post," isaac aaronsdorf is back. and hello to someone's dog. and founder mark alias is back and host of the podcast in politics for puck, affairs analyst john heilemann is here for the hour and my friend and colleague vaughn hillyard is here. isaac, since this is your reporting that inspired the way we are starting today, take me through what you and your colleagues are reporting. >> yeah, it was a little bit of a weird day at the heritage foundation yesterday afternoon. didn't totally know what to expect with this transition integrity project. which was -- they described as a simulation, like a role-playing game where they had different people assigned to din parts to gain back out what might happen in the election. part of what was so stunning,

the conclusion they reached was that the sitting president as they described their finding, the sitting president is the biggest danger to the peaceful transition of power. but that was as if trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election had never happen and instead they were talking about as a given that it was already the case, never mind what they were predicting or imagining, but already the case that somehow the biden administration was engaged in using the small business association and the border patrol and all of the levers of federal power, the justice department, somehow to influence the upcoming election, although there was -- the evidence that they provided for this, for example, was that they had sent a camera crew to a housing complex in the vicinity of charlotte, north carolina, and were asking people there if they were citizens and if they were registered to vote and they

said that some number of people said yes but they never followed up to see if those were people that were registered to vote and they were presented that as proof of thought. >> john heilemann, there is something so insane about this that we sometimes brush it aside. we decided to lead with it. but he don't want to shave off the insanity. if you know where i'm heading here. barbra streisand kidnapped by hamas. and antifa and black lives matter protests taking over migrant detention facility and the fbi arresting donald trump. these are among the farfetched scenarios imagined by the 2024 election show cased on thursday by the heritage foundation. and in the 2024 project, heritage played by robert torsely and the war games included surprise emergencies such as the barbra streisand

kidnapping. we have spent nine years, i think, um, maybe looking away from some of the most insane things planned. this is a plan on paper. this is a group that is linked with former trump administration officials and people who are on list to be future trump administration officials should he prevail. trump is ahead in most of the battlegrounds and we thought today was a good day to really understand what the plans are for rigging the november election. >> well, i want you to know, nicolle, that in my weekend war game exercise that i do over here at my place, you have sometimes come and done that, we're deciding between a body snatcher thing and a martian thing this weekend. so if you have a point of view, let me know. yeah, i mean, i think this gets back to a theme that we have

returned to of late, particularly, because of the project 2025 kind of exposure that it has been getting, not getting as much attention as other stories recently. but the fact that the kind of cat is out of the bag and i do think that it speaks to a lot of things here, it speaks to -- it speaks to the way in which -- it speaks to the total capture of all of the these not just of the maga movement that the republican party and all of the associated and ancillary extra campaign and political organizations, the heritage foundation once upon a time was a mainstream conservative organization in washington, d.c. now they are not just a maga organization, but they are doing war games of this kind. i think largely, maybe not -- let's say at least partially, to continue to curry favor with donald trump. you are -- these are like so

much of this is performaive, rituals by institutions to curry favor with the cult leader, with the dear leader, with donald trump. you do these things to get in his good graces and maintain your credibility. i'm sure they have had this planned for a very long time. but as trump distances himself publicly from some of their work, i bet they're really happy to be doing this. this is a quality of this, hey, you never know what will happen with trump. we have to keep currying favor with him and certainly as we were talking last time i was on the show, every element of this matches up to the description that we talked about that day where i get our call, an atlantic writer who said that the january 6 insurrection was a dress rehearsal, this is literally a dress rehearsal, only it is a cos play dress rehearsal, it is a weekend craziness, but it is still a

dress rehearsal and we still have to take it seriously. >> mark alias, there was no lie more vigorously battled by people that didn't battle much of anything. right. and not a lot of stories of bill barr standing up to donald trump until he started lying about the results of the 2020 election. there may have been a lot of battles between cipollone and hirschman and i didn't hear about them, but this is a battle royal. they threw their body in front of trump and the overstock person and the other people, whatever her name was, the big lie in 2020 created the most violent clash to have become public. certainly there were other clashes. if trump goes back, there will not be anybody to clash with. it will just be big lie all of the time. ittel me how the country, the democracy prepares for that? >> we have to prepare for it in every way we can. the fact is that the big lie has

become the central plank of the republican party. you can be pro-trade or anti-trade, you could even oppose the nra and be within the republican party, the one thing that you can't be in the republican party today is in favor of free and fair elections or to speak the truth about what happened in 2020 when joe biden won in a landslide and donald trump filed frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit and when those failed he inspired a violent insurrection in the nation's capitol. and we have been dealing with the aftermath of that ever since. and since 2020 there have been efforts to refuse to certify the accurate elections results in this country in five states. in georgia, arizona and nevada and pennsylvania.

and we won 60 cases. but in 2022 we had to sue cochise county to certify results. just today kari lake is back in the arizona supreme court saying that she actually won the gubernatorial election in 2022. we had to sue pennsylvania for refusing to -- i'm sorry, two counties in pennsylvania for refusing to certify election results in 2022. as speak in georgia, there is a rule to allow election deniers to certify accurate elections in this november. and in nevada, the washo county commission have refused to certify the election results in local elections and they are being sued in the nevada supreme court. nicolle, week after week, for more than a year now, you and i have a back and forth in which we say, when will people wake up

to not the theory of what may happen, but what is actually happening. i am here to sound the alarm one more time, that everyone needs to understand, that in a few months we'll have an election, and republicans are looking to undermine it through voter suppression, but also through election subversion and refusing to certify democrats the win. >> is the place, vaughn hillyard, where the right has become a fact immune echo chamber, but it is a place where money didn't break the mythology either. $800 million that were paid out from fox news to dominion, multiple other lawsuits from right-wing news organizations and no one has made a dent in the belief system, the power of the lie, or the refusal of anyone in positions of responsibility or authority to knock it down.

>> right. and i know from being on the campaign trail, isaac out there with me, he's had countless conversations as well, it is more than just the 2020 election that is not to be believed by a great cross section of the american electorate. but it is about what comes just four months from now in november. and it is consistent belief that if the election results were to come out and joe biden were to have won the election, they say very frankly they would not trust the election results and what does that bring after, that is unclear. several people tell us revolution, civil war, violence, an effort to take over government buildings and i think that is where this report from this organization that isaac was covering is notable is because there is explicit suggestion that joe biden, if we were to be found to have won the election, would somehow or lost the election, whichever the american

public would perceive it to be, would somehow not turn over power. just part of the report from this group, released yesterday, president biden is very well positioned to hold the white house by force in the case of an unfavorable outcome and it makes clear that the current president and his administration possess the means but also the intent to circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president. there are prominent voices in the right-wing movement including folks that are suggesting that there is an effort underway to circumvent to make this not a fair election law, that undocumented migrants are being signed up when they cross the border which is inherently not true. >> amazing. we're going to keep digging. no one is going anywhere. still to come for us, michigan's top election official will join us. she watched what they tried to have happen with the vote in 2020 and in her state. she'll be overseeing her

election in michigan in 2024. and there is reporting that fake electors from michigan will show up next week in michigan as official delegates of the republican national convention that started in just a few days. michigan's jocelyn benson will be our guest on that and much more. and later in the broadcast, wait until 2025. that is an ominous warning from another one of project 2025's co-authors following donald trump's first term family separation policy, we'll show you what group has planned for mass deportations in this country should the disgraced ex-president take back the white house. all of those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere today. limu, someone needs to customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. let's fly! (inaudible sounds) chief! doug. (inaudible sounds) ooooo ah.

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never before has the conservative movement been this unified around a governing agenda. obviously president trump, our movement standard bearer is going to make the decisions on what those policy priorities are, who the people are in his administration, and his project is in service to him and future conservative presidents. >> that was the president of the heritage foundation, his name is keb roberts on the support project 2025 has fromern on the right but specially donald trump. we're back with isaac and mark and john and vaughn. this is so linked to trump but we i guess already know he started to distance himself from it because it is not popular with a lot of voters. >> right. he has made the case that he doesn't know who the organization is or what the documents says and i don't know

whether he's read the 900 pages or not, but he does know the key architects of project 2025. he spoke at a heritage foundation dinner 2022. steven miller was an advise tore him as well as project 2025. at the same time, donald trump would be the president of the united states. and he could use whatever he wanted out of project 2025 or america first policy institute, the executive orders, other policies that they're coming up, that group also consists of a lot of former allies. but even of the organizations, they understand that donald trump can very much be a tool for them to ultimately execute on the policies that they have long sought to have be implemented. so for donald trump there is separation. but i think that these organizations including through this new report here, it is very

clear that the organizations have every intention of beingective in coming one policies and even personnel to wholly be able to operate the administration in an efficient way for four years. >> john heilemann, one of the things that has to happen and it is fascinating because this is being led from cultural icons and cultural figures more than from political actors, taraji p. henson mentioned it as one of the most googled political search terms. it is a case. a case must be prosecuted in front of the american people. but the vast majority of americans are opposed to everything on every one of the 900 pages. >> well that is for sure. and i rarely ever want to take exception to anything vaughn hillyard said, but i will say i bet every dollar in your bank

account nicolle wallace, that he is not familiar with it or endorse it or his people have not worked on it or it wasn't designed to carry out his vision. but i would bet again, that he hasn't read 900 pages in his entire life. he might not have read 90 pages in his life. that said, it is absolutely correct that on the cultural side, on the political side, on every side, with someone lays out a vision for government, this clear and this disturbing and this far outside of the mainstream of what american voters want, it is imperative, absolutely imperative for all of those who are on team democracy and i would say the presidential campaign on the part of the biden election campaign and the democratic national committee, every part of the democratic and progressive infrastructure and

the moderate infrastructure, not just the progressive ones to try to raise the profile of what is in these documents and pin them to their owner and that owner, despite i'm sure not reading 900 pages, their owner is donald trump. and it is one of the paramount treatic objectives to make sure that no one in america on election day doesn't know what project 2025 is and doesn't know who its poppa is. >> poppa. oh, i love that. someone said poppa and it is not even 4:30 on friday. i have an idea. it is dangerous, when you think of something on live tv. but let's do this. there is a story in "the new york times" saying that some donors have paused their sizable multi-million dollars donations and why not start an effort to education the country about project 2025 and park the money there. it doesn't have to wait for any

sort of anything else on the other side. and it feels like we have for trump something that we didn't have in '16 or '20. we have detailed plans on the monstrous policy agenda he intends. >> and i think we need to divide that policy into two pieces. there is the substantive policies which honestly i don't think donald trump cares about one way or the other. and if he is familiar, he may agree or disagree. and then there is the prose and that is where he sees the action, because it is a dire to be a dictator, not for a day or a week, but to be an authoritarian ruler that he could do whatever he wants and run government with his cronies in charge and have everyone in the executive branch at his beck and call and le go after his enemies and he will seek vengeance and not just the department of justice, but it will be the irs, it will be dhs

and permitting and he wanted to be able to control government to be at his -- as a tool of his corrupt vision of america. and so, should people be putting tens of millions of dollars into educating what population about project 2025, i would say no, they should be putting billions of dollars into educating the population around 2025. >> oh, wow. >> the fact is we are facing an existential crisis of democracy. and there is not -- the organized coordinated well funded and serious effort to understand that the otherside is not playing a game of propaganda. they are playing for keeps. and they're idea of keeps is to undermine democracy for a generation or more. >> i mean, you just gave me chills because i thought you were going to say, no one should spend money on this, they should

spend billions. isaac, i want to come back to you. i feel like there is trump benefits both from being so uninformed and poorly read, and so indifferent and sadistic, and when i say that i want to give you an example so i don't make anyone uncomfortable. his border policy was to make his wall as sadistic as possible. he wanted it painted black so it would burn people's skin when they went to climb it and he wanted spikes and when he saw a describe and the spikes weren't sharp enough, he wanted them sharper so anyone going over would be impaled. so we know he's indifferent about some things but where he meddles and gets involved it is in the sadistic vain. this plan is incredibly detailed. it has some elements of what viktor orban took a lot longer to usher in, in terms of totally corrupting for political aim, some normal functioning government agencies. i wonder how unwilling the

campaign is to talk about 2025 now thats in in the spotlight. >> you see them smacking it down repeatedly and they seem to not get the message. they keep talking and saying things like it is a second american revolution, and so then the campaign smacks them down again. and you know, john was talking earlier about the extent to which this is performative, about currying favor with trump, if that is what they're looking for, it is the opposite of what is happening. the campaign and i understand trump himself are furious with heritage nor not getting the message that they should be lying low and keeping their mouths shut and are causing all of this bad publicity and distracting from the message that trump and his campaign want to be putting out. but again, there is no escaping how these different proposals are kind of working out the details of the general ideas that trump is campaigning on.

and he's not a details person. so there is a sense in which they're trying to have it both ways. they don't want to be responsible for what they don't want to be responsible for, but you could bet that if they do win the election, then end up in office, they'll be grateful for all of the work that has been put in, in advance, by a lot of the same people. >> isaac and mark and vaughn, thank you so much for this conversation. to be continued. john sticks around for the hour. up next for us, as donald trump and the republicans step up their attacks on vice president kamala harris, there is new reporting today on how democrats are stepping up their own efforts to defend her. that story is next. n efforts to. that story is next

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donald trump has openly vowed if re-elected he will be a dictator on day one. and i quote, terminate the united states constitution. let us be clear. someone who suggests we should, quote, terminate our constitution, should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone, and never again have the chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the united states of america. >> prosecutors in the house. and no one can deliver a read on a criminal like an ex-prosecutor. that was vice president kamala harris at a campaign stop in

greensboro, north carolina, yesterday, highlighting the threat posed to all americans by a second trump term as allies of kamala harris have launched an effort to boost the vice president and defend her against more vicious attacks from donald trump as uncertain continues to swirl about whether joe biden will remain at the top of the democratic ticket. joining our coverage, nbc news washington correspondent yamiche alcindor. this is a point where we should say where the vice president turns up the heat on their attacks on an incumbent president. this is a point where more media starts to travel with the vice president. it is often the vice president's job to be the political surrogate so that a president could still president and, but, this year is anything but normal. tell me what it has been like for her on the trail?

>> well, she's really been put in this awkward position. but it is also prominent position to really be the lead defender of president biden in this moment where so many people are questioning whether or not he's should stay in the race. and from the beginning of what should be the dismal few days for president biden, she was there outlining the talking points that the democrats have used now since that debate. so in a moment after the debate, i was told by a number of sources that she didn't have talking points and there wasn't a road map with how to deal with the president's poor debate performance and she went on and said he shouldn't be judged for the last 90 seconds, judged for the last three years and that is what she's articulating pointing out that she thought trump was a liar and the focus has been on democracy and she has repeated and she's also been traveling to a number of states, about six states including twice to nevada in the last few weeks here and

she's been going out calling people, and calling elected officials, calling donors and civil rights activists making the case over and over again that president biden should remain at the top of the ticket as she's getting more intense support, if joe biden does step down, there is no one else that should come but kamala harris and there are a number of people, donors, i was just on the phone with a big donor group that is really launching millions of dollars in bolstering in this moment and looking at research and doing polls in the last week and a half on her in particular, talking about the fact that she's focusing and has a ability to mobilize young voters and voters of collar. but the k hive is getting started. you have all of the people that are buzzing about her. but also she's still saying look, i don't want to undermine the president, i want to be loyal. if he wants to stay in, i'm going to stay with him. and while she's balancing it, it is a wild point for her but she's stepped up and shown

strength and convinced some people who are really critical of her, questioning whether or not she would be a president or she would be even in 2028 someone the party could look to. and a lot of people say we see in her a strength that would be good for the presidency. >> yeah, i mean, she is very good at this. and i remember covering some of her events and i remember thinking she was good at it four years ago as well. but now trump is a convicted felon and she's -- it sounds like in some instances crafting some of the attacks and they're landing. and i watched the eents from the speeches to the rope line, they are kecking. and whatever happens, whatever happens on the democratic side, she is delivering the kinds of attacks against donald trump that are not just helpful, but urgently needed if the ticket closes the gap in some of the battle gounds. what is the plan for how to

deploy here. >> the plan is to have her go out in the country and talk to voters directly and the campaign are bolstering and spending money to make sure she is someone from the increasing attacks by republican wloz are starting to put a target on her back as they see her get stronger. the plan is to really help protect her and help really explain to the american public who she is, her background and her history and the prosecutor and as a trail blazer because she was the first black vice president but also the first statewide black attorney general in california, the second woman from my understanding to serve in the u.s. senate. so she really has a lot of background and a profile that this campaign really wanted to explain to the american people and she's also a relationship person. so she's dealing with the internal conversations when democrats are wondering whether or not they could get behind joe biden. she's calling her former colleagues because she served in

congress to say, hey, we should stick with him. i appreciate the fact that you're saying maybe i should step in, but i'm someone who will ride with the president here. so she's really someone that i think they are deploying both for voters and for donors and people who openly questioning because she's done a number of fundraisers in the last few weeks here. but i also want to point out as you talk about the messaging here. i wrote a story about her a few days after the debate and she was at a campaign rally and she said, one thing that is true before the debate and after the debate, this is vice president harris's words, donald trump is still a liar. so that messaging that is going after trump and she said he is still a liar and underscores where her messaging is here. >> john heilemann, an incumbent president has a hard time running for re-election. and it is impossible if it is a choice. it has to be a referendum on the

inadequacy of the alternative. she's executing as that is the political theory of the case. >> yeah, well, yes, i think of that always as the opposite way. you have to take it from being a referendum on you and your performance, to making it into a choice and the alternative. and in this case, you're sort of trying it into a referendum on donald trump. the things that people have -- she -- i know you and i have watched her, i've known her since i was in san francisco in the late 1990s when she was on the rise there and i've always been impressed and she always had a huge future. she's obviously navigating the difficulties that every vice president of every administration that i've ever covered always has to navigate and she's come through it on the other side as grown into the office. she's obviously been helped in the -- ironically by the fact that the country was hurt by

dobbs, by making that a central issue in democratic politics. the smart move for joe biden is to assign her that issue so that is begin her a huge amount of visibility and profile that vice presidents don't get and she's risen to that and when people think, there are a lot of things people are thinking about if biden were to step aside, who would be a successor, there are questions about does she deserve it just because she's his vice president. there is an argument to be made there. but if you put that aside and just think about what assets she's brings as the vice president in this case, which is what you're talking about, they're the same assets if she were to have to replace joe biden and which is to say, of all of the other talented democrats that we talk about, none of them come with something as clear as the framing that she brings into either office, either position on the ticket

which is i'm a prosecutor, she's a prosecutor, he's a criminal. you could love gretchen whitmer and steve beshear and gavin newsom and all of them, but if you have to replace joe biden you would need to move fast and one of the things that you would not have is the clear frame that you have with her. prosecutor and criminal. and she could fill that role in a heartbeat. >> yeah, i love that -- i love that articulation. because i think there is so much respect for joe biden in this process, that i almost sense some timidity and i appreciate you both for having a frank conversation for what have been a stellar two weeks on the part of the vice president. i think if you went into a lab, though and you had to come up with somebody and you were running against a convicted felon, you might, i think to bolster john's point, create someone exactly like what they are already having.

thank you. we'll continue to call on you and john sticks around. extremists on the right have shown their willingness of the threat that exists in our country, threats against democracy, against our lkss and even against the people who run our elections. michigan's top election official jocelyn benson will join us next on how to fight back. that is next. on how to fight back at is next (woman) i'm so excited. i'm finally here in the city. what. (man) ahhhhh! (woman) no, no, no, no, no! (vo) you break it. we take it.

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convicted felon ex-president is set to be officially nominated by the republican party at the republican national convention by, wait for it, fellow election denies who themselves are facing criminal charges. embracing the old adage, fake it until you make it, new reporting details how next week's rnc is set to be infiltrated are party delegates that were part of the fake elector scheme. according to reporting on cnn, they represent the battle ground tates of arizona, georgia, pennsylvania, michigan, nevada and new mexico and wisconsin and adam kinzinger said election denialism is the price of the entry. if they have a mug shot, they've taken over the party. john heilman is back with you. jocelyn benson will join us in a

couple of minutes. john, we've talked about the overton window moving. it is now moved so far, some of the people are going to be facing criminal trials for their role in the fake electors extreme. it is the part of the scheme that clarence thomas's wife ginny thomas was involved in and now they will be delegates at this convention. how are you thinking about next week's convention? >> well it is a really good question, nicolle. in the sense that the overton window is as high as the holland tanl or as far in outer space as the third rock from the son. that is earth. i think it is pluto or something. i don't know where to locate the overton window any more. i don't know where it is. any gps can't track it.

>> yeah. >> i think that there is this -- i think about the convention, here is what i think about right now. i think a lot about the fact that at the same time the overton window that there is this madness, this lunacy, these ways in which the republican party that now exists, so this is the most banal thing i've said on the show this is nothing like the republican party that i grew up or any convention that i've ever covered. we didn't have a convention in 2020. the last convention we had was in 2016 and that convention was not totally -- was not maga. ted cruze launched a floor fight against donald trump on the convention floor in cleveland in 2016. there was still the vestage of the old republican party. it was radicalizing, but it wasn't anything like what it is now. so that is is one side of the coin. and then there is this other

side of the coin, you see in the tim alberta piece, fantastic reporting by tim alberta, but you see this sousy wilds professionalism of the campaign and people will say, don't talk about that, that is not real. it's real. i don't think donald trump has changed at all. but if you compare the trump campaign in 2016, which barely existed, to the trump campaign in 2020, which had -- was still at s-h-i-t show. this is a group that looks more like presidential campaigns that you have worked on. these are serious people, when it comes to -- when i say serious, ip mean they're serious professional operatives who are doing things that any serious professional operative would do with a normal campaign. that raises crazy moral questions. why are you guys who are these

basically normal operatives working for an a dictator, authoritarian, but that kind of tension, a really professionally run convention that also has -- is basically designed to cater to the crazy, wherever the overton people, the people who live wherever the overton window is in this space, that tension as a narrative matter, that is well i'm going to roll it into milwaukee and that is the kind of story buzzing in my head when i arrive there until i get hit with the crazy in the face and i have to go back to my room and go to sleep. >> let le bring in jocelyn bebson at the site of joe biden's rally later today in detroit. the attack on our elections, the attack on the integrity of the 2024 election, is the story that we started with from trump's close allies at the heritage

foundation. they were red teaming a fake scenario and the delusions about 2024 seem so accelerated from the delusions about 2020 which led to threats against you and your family. i wonder how your preparing for 2024? >> i'm bracing myself for what could really be not just a -- a reduct of what we experienced, but an intensification. we see the coordination, the sophistication of anti-democracy forces are much stronger, is much stronger than it was in 2020. and that has me and many of my colleagues very concerned. but we're also more organized and more sophisticated than in 2020 as well. we're ready and you have myself and raffensperger and al schmidt in pennsylvania and we're ready and we also know the organization that we're facing this time around and the

seriousness of an implication -- for democracy this year is far much worse than what we dell with perhaps or faced in 2020. >> you are at the site where president joe biden is set to speak. what is sort of the state of his candidacy in michigan and what are you hoping to hear? >> well i'm here today to talk to the people here about what is at stake in this election. the fact that michigan and michigan citizens need to recognize their power to ensure our democracy holds. and to ensure that we vote in furtherance of that. and that we understand whether we are democrats, republicans, independents, the power of our vote this year and the importance of us exercising in a way that will protect our freedoms for the future. that is what i'm here to talk about. i have seen a lot of enthusiasm, much more than listening to all of the chatter elsewhere. i would have expected coming in here. there is a lot of enthusiasm

here both for the president and for what is at stake in this election. >> you're always expert at putting those stakes into really, i think, easy to grasp ideas. what is at stake. what are you going to tell that crude, it is a big crowd behind you. i could see it. what are the stakes in november? >> we know the path to the presidency runs through michigan. but we also know that the path to the future of or our democracy will be decided by voters everywhere in the country this year and particularly in the battleground states so my goal today is to make sure that people remember their power. that we have the power, no matter how many forces try to confuse or distract us from that, that ensure that we stand for book over bans and stand to protect our kids when their in schools and women's freedoms and fundamental freedoms and rights over their bodies and you will that is within our power to ensure we protect this fall. and so, i'm going to be making

that case, i'm going to continue to make that case anywhere to any group and with that message that we have the power here in michigan and as voters there youout this country to block out the noise and stay focused on what is at take this fall and it is our democracy and our ability to hold our elected officials accountable at the ballot box that really is on the ballot this fall. >> in your view have the -- has the president's performance at the debate two weeks ago made it harder to stay focused on that message, madam secretary? >> there is a lot of chatter sure and it is amplified and escalated. we've all heard it. and it is in my view fed right into the goal of anti-democracy forces which is to create chaos and confusion and fear. and so i'm going to continue to be clear to the voters, all across our country and in michigan, and what is at stake. that despite the noise and the distraction and chatter, we have votes to take this fall and they will determine our ability to

vote in the future and we can't take our eye off the focus, no matter what names are on the ballot or how we feel about them. project 2025 and everything out there right now have made the stakes high and we have to stay focused on protecting who we are. and i'm going to try to cut through the noise and confusion with that clear message and i hope other leaders will do the same. >> secretary jocelyn benson, i appreciate you. john heilemann, our thanks to you as well. i think you're coming back? aren't you coming back? >> yes, i think so. >> you're coming back. i thank you. but i'm not saying good-bye to you. john heilemann sticks around longer. coming up for us, team trump has more radical plans. they involve the southern border going far beyond even the horrors we saw in his first term. that story after a quick break.

if president trump gets re-elected, bort border will be sealed and the military will be deployed and the little illegals are going home. it is 5:00 in the east. that was stephen miller, the architect of the utterly inhumane fall separation policy that was enacted during the trump administration. the policy that quite literally ripped children from their parents' arms who have just crossed the southern border where the cruelty was the point. it is one of the hallmarks of donald trump's first term and now on the campaign trail, the disgraced ex president has ramped up his rhetoric against migrants calling them animals saying their poisoning the blood of our country. the illegal immigration is the centerpiece of the 2024 run for president. as you heard stephen miller say there. and what trump and his allies are proposing for a second term

as president makes his first term clearly look like the dress rehearsal. this week at a rally, the ex-president noted specifically that he would bring back a man by name of tom hoeman. he was acting i.c.e. director and co-author of the right-wing project 2025 agenda wee been covering here. just days ago at a conservative conference, he said this, quote, trump comes back in january, i'll be on his heels and i'll run the deepest deportation force. they haven't seen s-h-i-t yet, wait until 2025. >> as the "new york times" reports it amounts to an assault on immigration unseen in modern history. millions of undocumented migrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or decades after settling here. such a scale of planned removals

would raise logistical and financial and diplomatic challenges and would be challenged in court. but there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift mr. trump is eyeing. diving deeping into that alarming 2025 mandate, they would finish the border wall, they would go after illegal migrants or even though who live with someone who is not here legally. and they would target people not born here but currently receiving protections like daca recipients, ukrainians fleeing their country while it is at war and afghanistan evacuees who came here after the taliban took over their country. they would restrict legal visas that help victims of crime and trafficking and they say this, quote, i.c.e. enforcement and remofl operations should be identified as being primarily responsible for enforcing civil immigration regulations including the civil arrest and

detention and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the united states without warrant where appropriate. subject only to the civil warrant requirements of the immigration and nationality act were appropriate. that is where we tart the hour with our favorite experts and friends. public interest lawyer for the aclu migrant rights project is here, he successfully brought legal challenges against the trump muslim and asylum ban and joining us victoria and john heilemann is with us. and take us through your read of what is not just planned, but what is so granularly detailed ahead of any election? >> yeah, thanks, nicolle. we're taking this very seriously. and the reason we are is because the trump administration engaged in family separation.

you and i have talked about the horrors of that. no prior administration, democrat or republican, would ever have done family separation or did family separation previously to mr. trump and now he went in and we, by our estimates now, that is a case that i led, more than 6,000 children, many of them under a year old, two years old, were ripped away from their parents. absolutely horrendous. and the unbelievable thing is that mr. homan's has said that he does not think anything went wrong with that. president trump has said he could do it again, or he's not taking it off the table. so i think we have to take very seriously everything that is coming out of project '25 and that president trump is talking about. i think there is no limit to what he'll try. but the one silver lining that i think is that if there is military in the streets, or if there is national guard or they're going around

neighborhoods pulling people out of homes and schools, i think the american people will react to that and one thing that we saw in family separation, that people across the spectrum came out and were repulsed by little children being taken away. i think we're going to see that. i hope that we're going to see people saying, enough is enough. we want an approach to immigration that is balanced and a constructive approach and efficient system at the border, but we're not going to go out on limbs where we're going through neighborhoods with the national guard, with the military pulling people out. and i know we're going to talk about this, but it is not just the humanitarian issue. if you start deporting 11 million people who are workers in this country, it is going to have an enormous effect, a devastating effect on the economy. >> lee, do you worry that with the supreme court giving donald

trump absolute immunity for what he deems official acts and trump's history of promising pardons to officials from his immigration and custom and border agencies in a first term, that we could sort of fail to imagine what he's capable of? >> so, you know, i don't want to be glib about this but i think that decision certainly doesn't help. because there are a lot of people who thought that criminal prosecution should have been brought based on the family separation, it was essentially kidnapping little children, physicians called it torture, child abuse. obviously now there is immunity out there which only adds to their feeling they could do whatever they want. >> representative, let me show you what donald trump sounds like in trying to sell this radical plan to his base of supporters on the campaign trail. >> when i return to the white

house, we will stop the plunder, rape slaughter and destruction of our american suburbs and cities and towns. we're going to stop it. we'll shut down deadly sanctuary cities an i'll shift federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement. we'll will close up our border and we want people to come in but they have to come in legally. they have to come in legally. and on day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in history of our country. you have no choice. >> so there is what trump is saying and then there is the applause behind it. and i wonder how you sort of inject reality into hearts and minds of a large swath of the country that is cheering that last line, on day one we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country? >> so, the fact is that if trump is elected, no one is safe from

deportation, even american citis. we've seen where i.c.e. has wrongfully deported american citizens, 70 have been reported to be wrongfully deported. project 2025 has no due process and there is no doubt that american citizens may be questioned about your citizenship or be given the due process to establish your citizenships, american citizens could be trapped and caught up in the deportation sweeps. we're seeing it here in texas with legislation like senate bill four which is working through courts, like house bill 20 was if we were not have killed it in the house, would have deputized civilian vigilantes to stop and harass and detain american citizens and with full civil immunity and one of the most extreme immigration bill in the country was drafted with the complete disregard for

federal law preemts and it is just something that we know is going to create mass deportations and family separations and have families caught up in the web. >> and we were talking about the need to prosecute the case against donald trump. he killed the most sweeping immigration reform that any president was successfully able to get as far as joe biden was able to get one. i mean, george bush tried and failed. president barack obama tried and failed. joe biden succeeded until donald trump pulled the rug out from under him. that case needs to be prosecuted as well. >> well, it certainly does, nicolle, and i think it needs to be prosecuted. there is a lot of reasons why the cases need to be prosecuted

and some of them are essential to the health of the country. others are politically essential. and i would say no one should be sanguine at this point about the state of the biden campaign and with respect to a lot of core constituencies, and some of the reason why some people are panicked about joe biden right now is that when people look not just at the horse race number nationally, but when they look at battleground states and the biden campaign's persistent lag now, we're getting very close to election day, and the numbers keep coming in where with core constituencies, with african americans, with young voters an in this case particularly with hispanic voters, they in a world of hurt. there is not a path to winning to electoral votes that doesn't involve fixing some of the numbers and one of them, the core one, essential to joe biden's victory in 2020, was the strength of the hispanic voters. donald trump has consistently

over the last few years eaten into that number. and there is a lot of things that need to be done about that. but prosecuting the case you were just talking about is part of that. and prosecuting the case about not just about the fact that -- that donald trump upended the immigration reform that joe biden had on the brink of being passed. but also what the plans are for how they're going to handle the questions of immigration in 2025 and beyond if donald trump gets into the white house. that has to be prosecuted within an inch of its life because the numbers are really -- i've seen them all. it is not good. and they got to make this case. if they don't make it, there is not a panel to win the election. >> and lee, just to bring it back to the human level, i mean, i remember where i was, i remember who was on the air, i will never forget the sound of the pro-publica audio of the child screaming when child separation broke. i remember when i was wearing. i remember everything about learning about that story for the first time.

and i think i only had one hour, those were the good old days, but i think before i got off the air there might have been statements from laura bush and other former presidents and you're right, there was an outcry, almost instantly, to the human horror of what was being done to children. but i want to read you some of the polling that john heilemann is talking about. because for the first time since 2005, a majority of americans want there to be less plgs. you could talk about the cumulative affect of donald trump's demonization of migrants and asylum-seekers over nine years that he's dominated the republican party and its rhetoric, has that had an impact on how people see migrants? >> i think it definitely has. you know, and to your point, and to john's point, we need to be out there explaining what exactly trump's policies will do. i think when you ask people in an abstract sort of way, if they

want more or less immigration, people aren't really sure exactly what that means. but when you talk about do you want a balanced approach to immigration, and here are the facts about immigration, the economic facts, the various other facts, and i argue if you want spg along the lines of what president trump is proposing and little children being ripped apart again and the military in our streets, those kind of things. i think people react differently. so i think it is incumbent upon us to talk specifics, but also to get the human stories out. my own feeling having done this a long time is that when you talk and sort of platitudes and abstractions to people, they're not sure where to go and they might answer, yes, less immigration. but when you say do you want little babies taken aware from their parents or the military in the streets or if you're an owner of a small company, do you want all of your workers deported, and i think people have a different reaction, so it

is incumbent for us to talk about it in a visceral way. with family separation, you're right. i never saw people when they said i'm on a different side than the aclu but this is a tep too far and that is why as you pointed out, did you see laura bush on her own come out and say, wait, this is not the american. and i think there is a balanced approach. people want to do something about the border but i don't think they want what president trump is proposing. i hope they don't. i can't say this enough, we need to get out there and make the case that this is way too extreme for what american people want and our values. >> representative naive, what is the level of awareness among your constituents about how radical trumps plans are? >> i think folks know how extreme donald trump is and one

of the key factors that phobes need to know is that higher costs for americans, right now we have a significant labor shortage across our country and in our construction industry alone. we are 1 million workers short. immigration and migrants contribute to our economy, to our gdp growth and our significant fact or on housing costs. so the fact that we don't have enough workers, even in the construction industry and many other industries means higher costs. those are the economic implications of policies like donald trump's are going to result in increased cost for american families. we could not allow another trump presidency to stay in our nation's progress and this economic factor is a key one that also needs to be considered. >> john heilemann, the economic damage that trump would do between his immigration and trade policies is devastating. but if you look for the analysis of that or the takedown, there is a cbs report that i think 16

or 17 economists gave. we're sort of back to this -- this lack of an argument, it is just an argument, i'm not even promising that it will work, but the lack of humanity, and the economic damage, you kind of get most people on one of the other or both of those issues. and, you know, we're just sort of reading through project 2025 and the immigration and pass deportation section was so galling to us. but i wonder, when you talk to campaign folks, what do they plan for the next 115 days in terms of prosecuting this case? >> i mean, nicolle, i mean, there is the conversations that one had with the biden campaign before the debate, and the conversations that one has with the biden campaign now which kind of don't resolve around the next however many four months they resolve around them trying to survive another 24 hours. they're not thinking that much

about, just being candid, about these questions. i do think one of these things -- i once had a conversation with president obama about the ways in which culture have come to dominate economics in our politics. and i think it does get into some of this, where the -- particularly as it related to immigration. one of the difficulties is that with you talk about a lot of economic issues, particularly ones that pertain to anybody from outside of the country, whether that is a trade, you're talking about foreign goods coming in and there is implications of foreign labors, with respect to foreign labor and with respect to domestic labor that is often filled by often non-white workers, and when you talk about immigration, which has all of the layers of culture that have been slipped up and put upon them and turned into a wedge issue by republicans over time. it is about us and them. and in trumps case it is about

vermin. these are now issues where the arguments on, well, if we do the following thing on immigration, there is the following impact on wages. they are so profoundly superceded by the us versus them positioning of them and the rhetoric of insiders versusowders, foreigners versus domestic, our side versus your side. they're taking things away from us. they're invading. that is one of the ways that i want to say is the success, that is the wrong word, but the -- the -- the trump republican party over time have turned issues that used to be argued on the merits of economics that are much more visceral and cultural and i don't think -- i think some of the human stories that we're talking about and the pain and devastation and the reason why i support for the dreamers was so strong was not on economic grounds, it was on grounds what do we believe about america, what do we think is

right about our country and do we want to be warm and embracing or closed off. those arguments are now limited on the emotional and cultural levels and that is where they're going to be now and they have to win them on that level and not on a technical argument about economics. although i don't disagree with -- >> i think that is absolutely right. and i think that is the policy divides diminish, people sort of agree there should be something fencible but not inhumane, the cultural arguments rise and fill some of the vacuums. we'll continue to call into you as we dig into trump's plans should he prevail. and thank you so much for joining us today. john heilman, thank you for spending your wisdom over two hours, we're grateful. when we come back, the argument made by the disgraced ex-president's legal team in the wake of the supreme court's decision on presidential immunity. how trump's lawyers are

manipulating the decision in an effort to dismiss his 34 count guilty verdict. and how donald trump married his love of grift with his penchant for playing the victim. the reporter behind that story will be our guest. and later, president joe biden returns to the campaign trail in michigan looking to reassure democrats and everyone in his coalition, we'll show what you the president is up to, an update on the state of the race from steve kornacki. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. ffrs power e*trade's award-winning trading app makes trading easier. with its customizable options chain, easy-to-use tools, and paper trading to help sharpen your skills, you can stay on top of the market from wherever you are. e*trade from morgan stanley

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. donald trump taking the supreme court's immunity ruling

in his favor and running with it. in a new motion filed by the ex-president's lawyers, they're seeking to use the ruling from the highest court in the land to try to toss out donald trump's new york felony convictions altogether. arguing that some of the evidence admitted during the trial falls under trump's official acts. i'm not sure which one those are as president. but supreme court has granted ab lute immunity for evidence like the testimony of hope hicks of the ex president's financial disclosure form and yesterday was supposed to be day that donald trump would be sentenced for his felony convictions but it was pushed back to september following the supreme court's immunity ruling. the latest effort by donald trump, the convicted felon an his team underscores how broad the immunity ruling is. and joining us for national security at the justice

department and legal analyst mary mccord and from palm beach county, florida, matt ehrenberg is there. and we've had this ruling for a couple of weeks and no one has had a conversation or written anything in the conservative media about how joe biden might use the immunity rule. it is all an analysis and donald trump is making it true, with moves like this one in new york. it is all about how donald trump will seek to evade criminal accountability. >> yeah, i think that is in part because people don't expect that joe biden would commit crimes and -- >> or anybody else. >> or any other future president, that is right. and yet here, of course, as you just indicated, mr. trump and his attorneys have just taken full advantage, rushing immediately into court in manhattan to seek to have the entire, all of the guilty verdicts thrown out and the case dismissed and have it all of course run into judge cannon's room also in florida seeking

briefing to have that case thrown out. so i'm not surprised at all that they've done that. but what is a little bit surprising, reading this 55-page brief that was just filed in new york, is how much they take an already expansive holding by the u.s. supreme court and they make it even bigger. they oorgued that alleged errors by the omission of evidence of official acts, which they claim are official acts on the trial on the 34 different false business records accounts, remember, the payment and the reimburment of michael cohen and the payment of hush money to prevent negative information from coming out while donald trump was a candidate. that he say these are all official acts and they are all not just poor constitutional powers of the government for which he has -- of the president for which he has absolute immunity, but this is structural error that means you can't even

review for harmlessness. let me tell you what structural error is. it is when you are forced to go to trial without a attorney. and the supreme court said there is no way we could fix this. you did have an attorney for the entire trial. and any error here is certainly not structural. >> dave, let me read again from just sotomayor's dissent to we keep this as mary has on the legal elements here. justice wrote this, the president is now a king above the law. never in the history of our republic has a president had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings to violate criminal law. moving forward all former presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. it was about hush money paid to an adult film actress for a sexual encounter that he wanted silenced ahead of the 2016

election. no official acts anywhere. >> right. and it is going to be back with you. i don't think the brief passes the smell test or the giggle test because how could anyone with a straight face say that it is part of a core constitutional power as a candidate to pay off an adult film star and then hide it. it doesn't make any sense. now, i think a better argument is the argument that you can't bring in the testimony of hope hicks or madeline wester, because based on the broad supreme court ruling but it is not a structural error, it is harmless error because the juries decision did not depend upon their testimony. their testimony was about purely unofficial acts anywaysm but even if you say that you can't admit that testimony, the jury's discussion rested on michael cohen's testimony, and on david pecker's testimony. and we know that based on the questions that they asked during deliberations. so if anything, even if there is an error in admitting their

testimony, it is harmless, it is not structural. there is no chance that this case will be dismissed by judge merchan. but you never know what the supreme court will do. because it is so radical and one more thing, i think the supreme court should clarify they're ruling because there is so much confusion to where justice sotomayor, could s.e.a.l. team 6 saying that the court should revisit the ruling and give clarification. it is so confusing that even they don't realize the ramifications of it. >> mary, what explains that? they took plenty of time? >> they did take plenty of time. and it is hard for me to imagine somebody like the chief justice, he's a smart person, has not thought about the consequences of this decision. but even so, i think they're so dramatic, beyond this case, even if we put aside the pending prosecution against donald trump for the january 6 related events

and the other prosecutions, going forward the real majority opinion are that there are so many things within a presidential core constitutional powers like his leadership of all of the executive branch department and agencies starting with the department of justice with the supreme court saying that is for constitutional power that is precollusive and they mean that congress is disabled from regulating it and courts are disabled from examining it. and the ramifications of that are weaponization of the department of justice, and investigations, prosecutions that are shammed and surveillance that are shams and it extends, there is no real limited principle in the majority opinion that wouldn't extend it to other departments and agencies. obviously the example that dave just mentioned and that justice sotomayor mentioned of ordering s.e.a.l. team 6 and the military

and the defense department to assassinate a political rival, the majority doesn't have a response to that. think about the irs, launching bogus investigations by the irs and other regulatory agencies. so the ramifications of seeing by the rational and words of the majority calling of that core constitutional pows over can congress can't regulate and courts can't examib, that is undermining the separation of powers that are the foundation for our constitution. for our system of checks and balances. >> and it is now the law of land. it is extraordinary, extraordinary. mary mccord, thank you and david ehrenberg, thank you. when we come back, grift and grievance, there is new reporting in "the new york times" about how donald trump has transformed his victimhood into a cash cow. they cart it martyr inc. and the

reporter behind that story will about our next guest. and what president joe biden just told supporters at a campaign stop in michigan. stay with us. with us (man) ahhhhh! (man) have you seen my ph- ahhh! (man) woah, woah, woah! (woman) no, no, no, no, no! (woman) great. (man) ughhh. (man) dude. (vo) you break it. we take it. trade in any phone. in any condition. guaranteed. and get a new iphone 15 with tons of storage, on us. (woman) oh yeah. (vo) only on verizon. [music playing] tiffany: my daughter is mila. she is 19 months old. she is a little ray of sunshine. one of the happiest babies you'll probably ever meet. [giggles] children with down syndrome typically have a higher risk for developing acute myeloid leukemia, or just leukemia in general.

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for just $19 a month, you'll help us continue the lifesaving research and treatment that these kids need now and in the future. join with your credit or debit card right now, and we'll send you this st. jude t-shirt that you can proudly wear to show your support. tiffany: anybody and everybody that contributes anything to this place, no matter if it's a big business or just the grandmother that donates once a month, they are changing people's lives. and that's a big deal. [music playing]

for the first time, we're creating a real physical trump card. it is an authentic piece of the suit i wore with i took that famous mug shot and it was a great suit, believe me. a really good suit. it is all cut up and you're

going to get a piece of it. >> that is real. that's real. that was donald trump back in december doing what he does best, trying to profit off his own criminality. since then we've seen t-shirts with his mug shot on them, pagga hats that say never surrender and sneakers, you name it, you could buy it off of him. fundamentally he's now selling a fiction where he's a victim of political persecution who needs help from the public. preferably in the form of money. and now, our friend russ betner of the new york times is reporting on how trump has woven his business venture news a martyr economy writing this, trump has reprised his pitch, his intertwined the marketing of the private business affairs with the campaign for profit, all of it could be described as

martyr inc. as the supporters have been characterize buying his prords as a form of patriotism. that was from the customized bible on the cusp of the independence day holiday. every patriot should have one, they said. joining our conversation, "the new york times" reporter russ butner who has spent years reporting on trump's finances and his by line on this fantastic piece of reporter that would be hilarious if it wasn't so disturbing. take me inside of what your reporting. >> well, nicolle, he has a long history as we said in the story of being a pitch man, right. and that started when the first rush of the apprentice success 20 year ago now made him internationally famous and also rehabilitated to point that companies just streamed into trump tower asking him to let them pay him to put his name on their products. that made him about $200 million

over the course of about the next 15 years. and this is a reprisal of that thing but in a very different sort of realm. this is not geared toward the mass market. you now has a different message and it just matches perfectly with his overall animating theme of his campaign which is that he's a man being persecuted and his a stand-in for supporters because they would be persecuted that if he didn't stand in the way. and he used the same pitch for his customized bible that he does to woo the evangelical voters saying christians are under attack from all sides and saying we're going to make america pray again. and you see it in the operation of his struggling social media company trump media, it is only property is truth social, the

sort of twitter replacement where they say the company exists because people have been canceled by woke corporations, they're trying engage the full, as they call it, patriot economy, apparently if you're not a supporter, you're not a patriot to prop up that stock price and the only reason is that the stock has fallen from 20i8 dollars to $30, because there are trump traders who are short selling the stock. they haven't offered any proof of that. but that is the main sort of defense for the company. >> let me read some of the this reporting from the piece because it is fascinating. trump's political persecution mantra has recently been molding into something of a business plan at trump media. devin nunez from california with prior little business experience has offered little in the way of plans to increase the company's tiny revenues. but much about his own proven

suspicions that trump's enemies are suppressing the price of the company stock. the company planned to use more than the $350 million it has raised by going public in related transactions to buy other companies and expand into video streaming with the goal of reaching the full patriot economy and not being held captive by woke corporations. in their own imagination, what woke corporations are, quote, holding them captive and how are they able to do that? >> i think almost every corporation in their perspective is a bad corporation, if you're not supporting donald trump. you're not a patriot and you're bad. there reason for being is that twitter banned donald trump, facebook banned donald trump for some period of time, because of the covid things because of january 6 and they see that as censorship, not as a company not wanting to broadcast lies to protect its own interests but as censorship on some level.

so they're goal here is to cre create a place where people that match mir message could say anything they want. but so far it hasn't really gained traction. they don't have many more than a million people checking into that site on a typical month. they're revenue is a little bit less than -- about a third of what the average chick-fil-a restaurant records in revenue every year. but because the stock price has been inflated so much, they have a market capitalization of the outstanding stock of similar to alaska airlines. >> it is unbelievable. it is an unbelievable piece of reporting and it is great to see you and talk about it with you. thank you for joining us. >> thank you, nicolle. when we come back, president joe biden moments away from returning to the came trail in michigan. we'll have a preview ever his speech in detroit and a snapshot of the latest polling in the race that the president alluded to last night from our friend steve kornacki.

back with that after a very short break. after a very short break. hi, i'm sally. i'm from phoenix, arizona. i'm a flight nurse on a helicopter that specializes in trauma. i've been doing flight nursing for 24 years. i had a fear that i wouldn't be able to keep up. i wanted all the boost i could get! i heard about prevagen fr a frien i read the clinical study on it and it had good reviews. i've been taking prevagen now for five years and it's really helped me stay sharp and present. it's really worked for me. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. the promise of america

is freedom, equality, but right now, those pillars of our democracy are fragile and our rights are under attack. reproductive rights, voting rights, the right to make your own choices and to have your voice heard. we must act now to restore and protect these freedoms for us and for the future, and we can't do it without you. we are the american civil liberties union. will you join us? call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your gift of just $19 a month, only $0.63

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means all of us. so please call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. the hard reality is, and i'm far from the only democrat who believes this, that the numbers, the trajectory, what americans feel in their bones right now, suggest not ome that joe biden would lose that race, but that he, or we, would lose the senate and the house. and the stakes are so high that we need to set aside that loyalty and that poetry and that

romance and the charge of a light brigade and we go down together in favor of some hard noses analysis about when this is the way forward. ly not stand silent as i see a trajectory to an electoral loss that leads to the presidency of donald trump and all that he has promised. >> that was a familiar face to viewers this program. that is congressman jim himes, the member of the house intelligence chitty. he was joining there the growing calls for president joe biden to step aside at the top of the ticket. ramping up pressure on joe biden's campaign. we're moments away from him taking the stage in michigan. it is a must-win swing state for president biden. and he's expected to hit donald trump hard over the conservative blueprint project 2025. a few moments ago at an event with volts and supporters, president biden was in his element connecting with voters

and making a dig at his age. take a listen. >> i'm convinced to give people a chance, give people a chance, everybody -- no guarantees. just a chance. and that is what we've done. and we're -- and that is why i'm running to finish this job. there is more to do. i know i'm only 41. [ laughter ] god love you. >> see, that was good. all right. let's get a snapshot of where the race stands. my friend and colleague national political correspondent steve kornacki is at the big board. something that the president said last night lit up my phone from the pollsters in my life. i think he said five incumbents with lower numbers than me and they won. i instantly heard from matt dowd who was a pollster and who said there was three and they all lost. take me inside the state of president joe biden's data and address congressman jim himes

point about the trajectory. >> and i saw that and it was unclear what the parameters were of what he was trying to say. and this goes back to 1980 and basically this is the incumbent president's running for re-election and this is their approval rating heading into the first debate. now obviously the first debate this year came at the end of june in all of the other instances you're talking september or october. but we thought that would be a fair point of comparison here. and you see where biden stacks up. the polling sense has not seen a big change here. about 40%, 41%, low 40s. and trump was a couple of points higher and he lost. we have george h.w. bush and he was a few points lower and they both lost and then the incumbents did win election, they were at 50 or higher.

so, could -- that is extremely perilous territory. now in terms of the question just asked about the trajectory of the race, i think it is a little bit more complicated. so let's take a look in the last 48 hours. four polls in the last 48 hours have been released and this maris npr and biden by two and an abc news poll has a tie and two polls from the economist and from pugh that both have trump ahead by three points and we've been seeing results like this since the debate. the polls conducted entirely after the debate. you'll see more trump leads than biden leads. we've seen several ties. and in terms of a trajectory, comparing predebate and post cod post-debate, they really don't look that different. if there's been movement towards trump, it's been on the small, the slight side of things. we've been telling this story with the polling now for close to a year. it was the end of last summer, the end of the summer of 2023,

when donald trump began to catch joe biden in polling and really sense then generally has had small advantages, depending on the pollster. there have been some that have had biden up. but a lot of polls since last fall have shown trump ahead. you look at it that way, that's also a terrible place for an incumbent to be, to be generally trailing the challenger in polling. but when you get to the specific question of well, okay, did the debate make things much worse just in terms of the polling, in terms of the horse race? did the debate put biden in a new category where he wasn't before? honestly, you really don't see that in the numbers. you see numbers that are very troubling if you're biden and very troubling if you're democrats, but you saw those numbers before. so, on the question of whether the debate made this much more difficult for him, much less possible for him, you can argue certainly how the performance is going to affect the campaign, how the reaction to the

performance is going to affect the campaign. but so far in the numbers, biden is basically in the same place he's been now since last fall. >> what do the battleground states look like, steve? >> that's the other thing here. we've really seen a few numbers here, but we don't have a ton of polling just since the debate in the battlegrounds to go on here. it's one of those we're hoping to see some more soon, to see if there's any kind of divergence, any kind of specific movement. you mentioned biden is in michigan. you're waiting to hear from him there. the biden strategy, it's no secret. and the trump strategy, for that matter. what we've seen consistently in the battleground polling is that trump is -- look at it this way. you look at the five states that biden flipped from trump in 2016 and then you add a sixth, nevada, which both sides acknowledge is very hotly contested here. and you look at the polling in these states. trump is doing the best in georgia, in arizona, and in nevada. so, if you just look at that, if

trump were to succeed in georgia and in arizona and in nevada, look where that puts him, right on the cusp of victory but not quite there. he's at 268. so, very likely what this comes down to is if biden can protect wisconsin, michigan, the state where he is today, and pennsylvania -- these are huge, huge ifs. but these are the three states where the polling we've seen he's got a better shot than the sun belt, sun belt extended. the game for biden is protect these three states, protect the congressional district in nebraska, and he could stay at 270. >> amazing. steve kornacki, thank you so much for injecting that reality for us. i really appreciate you. we'll be watching president joe biden's speech in michigan tonight. we'll bring it to you. another break for us. we'll be right back. o you. another break for us we'll be right back. yay - woo hoo! ensure, with 27 vitamins and minerals, nutrients for immune health. and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein.

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an update from a dear friend of ours here at "deadline." next thursday will be the official opening of danny's pantry, in remembrance of judge ester solace's son, daniel, on the fourth anniversary of his murder. it will be operated in the new jersey federal courthouse in newark. judge solace has been generous with us sharing her loss and her grief. it's a story of political violence that touched the nation. now a press release announcing the pantry says this, quote, danny's pantry will not only alleviate the burdens faced by

poverty-stricken families and individuals but also allow the court to become more connected to the surrounding community that it serves n. a time of much controversy and strife, it brings daniel's parents greet joy to know our court is doing its part to bring light and love to the surrounding community. another break for us. we'll be right back. us we'll be right back. ♪ i know the name, that's what i'm saying ♪ -cologuard®? -cologuard. cologuard! -screen for colon cancer. -at home, like you want. -you the man! -actually, he's a box. cologuard is a one-of-a-kind way to screen for colon cancer that's effective and non-invasive. it's for people 45+ at average risk, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider for cologuard. ♪ i did it my way ♪

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the moment i met him i knew he was my soulmate. "soulmates." soulmate! [giggles] why do you need me? [laughs sarcastically] but then we switched to t-mobile 5g home internet. and now his attention is spent elsewhere. but i'm thinking of her the whole time. that's so much worse. why is that thing in bed with you? this is where it gets the best signal from the cell tower! i've tried everywhere else in the house! there's always a new excuse. well if we got xfinity you wouldn't have to mess around with the connection. therapy's tough, huh? -mmm. it's like a lot about me. [laughs] a home router should never be a home wrecker. oo this is a good book title. thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari