good evening from new york,

i am chris hayes here with alex wagner for night two of the republican national convention. we expect a number of high- profile speeches including from steve scalise, himself the survivor of an attempted assassination. speaker of the house johnson will also be in this hour. we are also covering the announcement on the first day of the convention, the first time in decades the announcement was made at the convention of j.d. vance, the junior senator from ohio, quite junior, less than two years a senator and former never trump her who will be his running mate. there's a lot going on. including the conviction of democratic senator bob menendez in new jersey. i'm here with my good friend, alex wagner. it's good to have you here. >> it's good to see you, my friend. >> i do think that the menendez case is interesting because of the theme of the weaponize department of justice and the

doj doing the unexpected, playing checkers, getting his son and now also getting a very prominent democratic senator. >> it is so deep it is like a parallel universe. it is interesting. i would say broadly there are a lot of facts to support that the biden administration has not weaponize to the government. that will not stop the right from suggesting that it is, because it is a potent tool when it comes to stoking rage and grievance against the deep state. >> one of the themes tonight is about make america safer and one of the things i keep thinking about besides the felony convictions of the man at the top of the ticket is the fact that the vision of 2025 and of roberts on the supreme court is a vision in which law enforcement becomes a kind of plaything for the president. >> a cudgel. >> a cudgel, so the roberts opinion says you can call up the justice department and be

like what are you doing inciting indicting a senator in my party? >> and it extends to the federal district court. you look at what judge cannon did in fort pierce, effectively taking the memo sent her way by clarence thomas in his opinion on the immunity case and running with it. dismissing one of the most open and shut criminal cases that we have seen in a long time and probably the most open and shut criminal case against a former president. what we are seeing is the total takeover of the judiciary in many ways by conservative forces, using it as a partisan vehicle to drive an outcome that serves one political party. it is a series of stunning developments to reckon with in a moment like this when you see the republican ticket come into full bloom, if you will. >> full bloom and committed i think, on the same page as this ideological vision. my shorthand for the justice thomas concurrence in the u.s.

v trump, saying i don't know if this guy is legally appointed, as the come on eileen strategy. >> that is great. >> i came up with that before. >> also a great wedding song. >> it is a great wedding song and a great strategy. the last thing on this night of making america safe again, that backdrop of what the sort of legal institutions of the country will be. will they operate with equal justice under law, as carved in front of the supreme court? it is the kind of backdrop to everything being set on the stage tonight where a number of people are very focused on crime and law and order. >> you mentioned the theme of tonight, chris. >> i am into themes. >> the official theme as you say is make america safe once again, but judging by the speakers list tonight it just as easily could've been called

the night of 1000 humiliations. primetime speakers include two of trump's fiercest opponents, ron desantis and former south carolina governor nikki haley. while losing candidates often speak at the victors convention, trump's humiliation of these particular rivals reached a different order of magnitude during the republican party. >> the problem with ron desantis is that he needs a personality transplant. he's not a talented litigation. he was walking off the stage and his feet, it's weird, because his cowboy boots. inside you've got a big deal going on and he's walking like -- >> after mocking governor desantis for allegedly wearing lifts in his cowboy boots, desantis eventually dropped out and trump focused his attentions on nikki haley, who in the closing hours of her

presidency days candidacy called trump not qualified to be president. trump suggested her parents status as immigrants from india might somehow disqualify her. trump misstated her given name repeatedly and explained to foxnews that those mistakes were definitely intentional. >> reporter: she says that you are using a nickname based on her given name, nimrod a. you called her nimrod the other day. why do you do that? >> i do that with a lot of people. it is a little bit of a takeoff on her name, wherever she may come from. >> wherever she may come from. in addition to the xena phobia trump also engaged in explicit misogyny, calling south carolina's first female governor essentially a bimbo. >> she's not tough enough. she's not smart enough and she

was not respected enough. she cannot do this job. >> despite the never before heard humiliations and significant reservations, last week nikki haley released the 97 delegates she wondering this year's republican primary so that they, in turn, could vote for donald trump yesterday and tonight both haley and desantis are pellet -- pledging loyalty to donald trump, despite donald trump not planning to meet with either of them this evening. not even bothering to meet with them is really the last humiliation, maybe. i'm not sure. >> one of the things i find fascinating about this. j.d. vance being the most extreme example. the trajectory of submissiveness of the kind of politics of domination we make fun of someone, you cow them, you bully them and then they sort of end up kneeling before you and this happens time and

time again and it is a huge part of the trump mystique and stick within the base that he is the powerful one, the sort of dominant one. what i find remarkable is there are these twin impulses in human psychology, which is ambition and ego and self regard and it is wild to watch. >> they are very divorced from one another. in a weird way. >> what i find remarkable is just speaking for myself, i don't have it in me to humiliate myself that way because my ego is too big and i have too much, like, vanity. what i find amazing is that they don't. everyone, and you, i would say alex wagner sitting at this desk, you are like, haley is going to fall in line. >> i have to say, i am the naysayer. i don't believe it. i don't know what the point of her candidacy was. i know someone who does.

>> yes, someone who does, joining us live from the arena. mckay, let me ask you this first because alex made this point. there are unity events and they feature the other contestants, right? so that is part of what a convention is for, that we all rally behind the nominee and look we have all these people. in 2016 ted cruz famously did not do that. i was inside watching him give that speech when he said vote your conscience. it does seem like there is an added dimension here in milwaukee and the modern republican party that is above and beyond the normal falling in line. >> i think you are right. as you two were talking i was thinking about how, in some ways, this feels like the same story we've been doing for eight years. this story of dominance and submission, of humiliation, of

abject loyalty tests. we've been talking about this since 2016, but i was thinking back to the convention in 2016. i was there, too. there were still, back then, signs of factions within the party. ted cruz famously did not endorse trump during his speech. you had mike lee along with the utah delegation on the floor, screaming their protests to trump's formal nomination. there were signs that there was still some resistance to trump and at the time i will admit to this. as a reporter who covered the republican party extensively, i was sort of naively surprised for the same reasons that you laid out that people like paul ryan, marco rubio, had been so willing to fall in line. eight years later i'm not surprised and i will pay i have been at this convention for a couple of days and there is no sign of resistance. there is no sign within the

party. everybody is completely in lockstep with donald trump and the handful of republicans out there who are not, didn't show up in milwaukee. that's the difference. if you are not fully on board, you just don't come and you really are not participating in the national party. >> i want to bring in tim miller who once served as a spokesman and is now a writer at large for the bulwark and one of our most trusted seers on all things republican. mckay makes the point about the humiliation process that is different and more extraordinary this go around when it comes to people like nikki haley and ron desantis. up until the end of this primary there were still people that weren't voting for donald trump in the republican primaries. do they, too, capitulate? do you have a sense that that resistance even exists? >> chris is nodding yes. i think they are divided.

the nikki haley voter was basically three types of people. she's getting 21%, that means 21% of republicans are for her. 8% probably might go back to trump. 8% of former republicans were still registered from the past that voted for joe biden already in 2020 and like 5% of democrats and independents who crossed over because they hate donald trump. real psychos. >> we call them engaged citizens. >> i literally saw one in one of our focus groups and she was like david on msnbc told me to cross over so i'm going to do it. that can very much matter. nikki haley speaking to that group tonight is going to offer them a pitch. j.d. vance, the j.d. vance pic was not a move for the nikki haley voter. it was a move for the other side of the horseshoe. even more working-class white

men. even more younger based voters. the vance pic makes the haley speech absurd. it will be interesting to watch because she is like i am doing this -- both of them want to give you kind to putin. >> although one of the things i will say and, mckay, i'm curious. we've been listening to some of the speeches and let's be clear, convention speeches are just forgettable and that is true for all parties and all the conventions i've been to, but am i looking care? thank you. mckay, the question i have for you is one thing that conventions can do very effectively and i think you saw this in 2020 with immigrants at the white house, is to play against type. you are trying to get people to vote for you. you have this big platform to

play against type. george bush did the compassionate conservative stuff. donald trump did a little of that in 2020. john. 2004 was basically going to crawl through the mud to kill osama bin laden himself. is there any of that happening atmospherically, thematically from what you are seeing about playing against type for folks or maybe turned off about the harder edges? >> i would say to tim's point of anything they are going the other direction. i have not seen a lot of appeals to mitt romney republicans, nikki haley republicans, you know, reaganism. that is fully in the rearview mirror. i guess the caveat is that there are a lot of speeches that are not broadcast in prime time that are just very standard republican talking points that you have likely

heard 1000 times. but for the most part the big moments are not appealing to that left behind faction of the republican party. they've got the teamsters on stage. they are trying to appeal more to the kind of disenfranchised or frustrated parts. you know having spent time in the last couple of days texting with some of the old guard republicans, that they have not seen a single thing in this convention so far that makes them excited about donald trump. >> mckay coppins in milwaukee as elise stefanik is on stage. someone with a fascinating trajectory. did not make the cut as vice president. there is so much more to come on our special coverage of night two of the rnc including the make america safe theme of the night. plus the trajectory

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we are back tonight with special coverage of night two of the republican national convention. we are anticipating that the house majority leader, steve scalise, who himself is a survivor of gun violence, political violence at that

congressional softball game where he was shot, very grievously and seriously wounded. was able to recover. unbelievable acts of heroism displayed by capitol police and others as well as secret service ultimately in bringing that to a less catastrophic conclusion than it could've been. he will be speaking tonight. let's listen to house majority leader steve scalise. >> god bless each and everyone of you. i am house majority leader steve scalise from the great state of louisiana. i was born in new orleans, so i've seen some crazy things in my time, but new orleans has nothing on washington, d.c. these past four years.

joe biden and kamala harris have spent your tax dollars trashing america's finances in ways no sane or sober minded person ever would. let's talk energy. they have eroded the american energy dominance that president trump delivered. joe biden approved the nord stream pipeline for russia, but he killed the keystone pipeline at home. thousands, thousands of american jobs gone. it doesn't end there. biden let iran and venezuela export their oil, but he stopped liquefied natural gas exports here in america. president biden is not done. president biden waived taxes on chinese solar panels, but he raised taxes on americans. when we elect donald trump as our next president and expand

their republican house majority, we will end the democrats assault on american energy, once and for all. so let's look at taxes. >> one of the things that is interesting that you see on display there, and this has been a theme of this campaign in many respects, there are a few lines of attack the republicans use and again, this is normal politics. attacking energy policy. >> energy independence, yes. >> that is normal politics. that is what political parties do. one thing that is strange and reflects to the theme tonight on two places, one is the notion of energy independence. there is more oil being produced by the united states right now than any nation on earth has ever produced. not just in the history of the united states, but in the history of any nation on earth we are net energy exporters for

the first time. there is an idea in this ideological lane which i understand which is, we love fossil fuel production and democrats don't. it is just factually not true and there are all kinds of conclusions you can draw from that. there are people on the climate left were not happy with that. >> it is a fraud calculation to champion that as they try to move the economy and american consumer onto a not fossil fuel basically economy. i will say though, chris, what surprises me about the scully's remarks is here is someone who as you noted is a victim of political violence. what i am longing to hear from the republican party is some sort of analysis of this moment and what it means. there has been a reflects for don't say this, do say that, don't say this. there has not been a broader conversation about what it means. if anybody is positioned to

talk about where we are as a country and this moment, the import of this moment, it is steve scalise. >> having been to lots of conventions in the time that i have covered politics, these tend to be like human talking website kind of situations. >> although they don't usually happen three days after someone has tried to assassinate -- >> totally correct. it is like, it is a thing where here are the talking points. we are hitting them on energy, on immigrants voting, et cetera. >> what i want to say is it is a good thing. it's maybe not good political advice usually, but there has not been a message yet. these guys are all over the place. david sachs last night was talking about joe biden being responsible for ukraine and amber rose. they are all over the place and there is not a clear message. part of that is because they don't know. >> let's listen in here. >> not many know that while i

was fighting for my life, donald trump was one of the first to come console my family at the hospital. that is the kind of leader he is. courageous under fire. compassionate towards others. let's put donald trump back in the white house this november, so we can make america great again. god bless you. may donald trump continue to receive god's blessing and may god bless these great united states of america. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the speaker of the united states house of representatives, mike johnson of louisiana.

>> good evening, my friends. what an amazing crowd and what a great time it is to unite our party and to send president donald trump back to the white house. that's what we are going to do. but we are not just uniting us republicans. we are uniting today as americans in the wake of the assassination attempt on the life of president trump. everyone here listen to me at home and make no mistake, the house is conducting an immediate and thorough investigation of these tragic events. and that work has already begun. the american people deserve to know the truth and we will ensure accountability, i promise you that. i promise you that. this has always been an important principle to us. we, in the republican party, are the raw law and order team.

we always have been and we always will be the advocates for the rule of law. we know that that principle as well as many others is in serious jeopardy today. so we have come to a moment in america where the basic things we once took for granted are being openly challenged like never before. my friends, we are no longer in a battle between two opposing political parties. we are, but it is not just hours versus these anymore. we are now in the midst of a struggle between two completely different visions of who we are as americans and what our country will be. the republican party stands for the foundational truths that made america the greatest nation in the history of the world. we are the most free, the most powerful, the most benevolent nation that has ever been. it is not even close. it is not even close. >> that is speaker of the house mike johnson saying we are uniting as americans and then going on to say we are in the

middle of a struggle about what it means to be an american, what this country stands for. i want to bring a now jamie raskin, congressman from maryland, a democrat. he is the ranking member on the oversight committee and joins us now. thanks for joining me and chris hayes on this special night. i do wonder what your reaction is to, i guess, the conclusion, the thesis from the speaker of the house that this is a moment of unity while at the same time drawing a stark contrast between the two parties. >> i suppose we will have to do the same thing. it should be a moment of unity against political violence and we have been denouncing political violence not just since the events of january 6, which wounded, hospitalized and injured permanently many police officers, more than 140 officers caught up in the political violence unleashed

against us as part of the incitement to insurrection. there was the assassination plot against the governor of michigan, of course. there was the brutal, savage beating of paul pelosi. there was the attack on steve scalise, who spoke earlier this evening and then the shooting of donald trump. so political violence is very much in the air and i would like to see leadership in both political parties would denounce it and repudiated across the board, categorically, regardless of who is being targeted or who is the person committing the crime. at the same time we are dealing with political violence, of course we have a profound struggle taking place about the nature of american government and what the role of government should be. our party says government has got to be an instrument for the common good of all of the people, versus the trump model,

which is the government is basically the plaything and instrument for private self- enrichment of the guy who gets in and his friends and his operations and their allies around the world. so you know we have just seen the nomination of j.d. vance who clearly wants to pull the plug on any support for the people of ukraine. the people who are fighting to defend their fledgling democracy against the fascist invasion of putin, all because putin is, in, you know, the trump camp. they are on their team, so i think that the battle lines have been very clearly drawn, politically, between those who want to stand up for strong democracy and freedom that is inclusive, that includes the rights of women. that includes the rights of the lgbtq community versus those people who are pushing for

christian white nationalism and government in service of a very narrow group. >> i've spoken a number of times about your position on the house oversight committee, which has been chasing its own tail, attempting to come up with impeachment i think of the president, which failed i think fairly definitively and you've said numerous times, look, there is stuff the oversight committee could do that we can work on and by partisan fashion. there is a real role for investigation and congressional oversight over what seems very clear manifest failures by secret service and perhaps others in what happened in butler, pennsylvania and i wonder if you see the same thing, if that is an area of genuine inquiry and bipartisan cooperation? >> well, very much so and that is something that we tried to push really hard during the

january 6 bipartisan investigation, which was scrutiny of the secret service. unfortunately we did not get cooperation from the other republicans outside liz cheney and adam kinzinger about that, but i think it is something we very clearly could do. look, we could have january 6 style hearings, chris, about the epidemic of gun violence in america and what could be done to deal with that and that doesn't necessarily have to lead exclusively to the things that we want, like a universal violent criminal background check which is supported by 90% of the american people, on a vast, bipartisan basis. but there are other things that can be done, but there are certain subjects they don't want to talk about. i don't know if anyone is going to talk about climate change at this convention. i haven't been able to watch the past few days, but there are things we need to do to get ready to confront that reality. when you go outside and it is

brutal in most parts of the country and there are 120 degree temperatures all over the world including places in the united states. we could be confronting that, but they force themselves to be in denial about entire domains of life. >> i can tell you by the way steve scalise was speaking about energy independence, i do not think he had a climate change part in there that we missed. thank you for joining us tonight and thanks for your wise words. >> you bet. >> so, nights two is in full swing. you see vivek ramaswamy taking the stage. we will take a break, but when we come back, why big tech billionaires like elon musk are loving what they are seeing so far in milwaukee. stay with us. in 99% of people over 50.

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vivek ramaswamy is now addressing the convention. let's listen in. >> and our message to gen z is this. you're going to be the generation that actually saves this country. you want to be a rebel? you want to be a hippie? you want to stick it to the man?

show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative. say you want to get married, have kids, teach them to believe in god and pledge allegiance to your country because you know what? fear has been infectious in this country, but courage can be contagious, too. that, too, is what it means to be an american. >> of course, if you don't recall, that was vivek ramaswamy. he ran for president in the republican primary. i thought i reached the end of the chapter in my life in which i listened to vivek ramaswamy speeches, but i guess not. >> the book goes on. >> we will hear more from him, i think. this is, of course, part of the tradition that is the convention, which is everyone who competed in the primary get some sort of slot. >> a consolation prize. >> and there is status behind

how late of a time you get. behind the scenes there are brutal fights. if you think the control room of a cable news channel is rough. >> i wouldn't know. >> well, i've heard tales. let's bring in nbc news correspondent jacob soboroff, who is in milwaukee this evening. how's it going on the floor? >> reporter: it is going, chris. i, chris, hi, alex. you heard vivek ramaswamy give his message to gen z. what you didn't hear was he was addressing messages to many different socioeconomic and racial groups and one of them was undocumented immigrants. it is the first time i heard tonight the explicit reference from the convention stage to the policy proposal that is in the rnc platform by the republican party to create the largest deportation event in american history. it is a call back to 1954 when

the eisenhower administration deported over 1 million undocumented people back to mexico. some of them were mexican americans. it would go far further than any other immigration policy proposal, maybe other than the family separation policy of the first trump administration and i have not heard it yet, so it was sort of startling to hear, but maybe that is a sign of what's to come. i did talk to the former acting i.c.e. director during the family separation policy. according to pulitzer prize- winning reporting in the atlantic, one of the founding fathers of the separation policy. we expect him to speak tomorrow night, so that may have been the first reference to the mass deportation policy that the republican party and trump administration has teased, but i suspect it will not be the last. >> jacob, it is alex wagner. what we heard was an appeal to

gen z, as you mentioned. i do wonder what the age range in the convention is and what you are seeing on the convention floor. are you seeing gen z adhering to the republican platform? what can you tell us about two is there? >> reporter: i think you know what i will do to that question. let's take a walk in and look around. i was here eight years ago in 2016. here is a young person. hold on, one second. i've got to get under this dancer. excuse me. you look to be the youngest person in the general vicinity. >> i am kate crosby. i'm from lexington, kentucky, and i am 23 years old. >> reporter: is this your first convention? >> no, i went to cleveland. >> reporter: you are there in 2016? i'm bad at math, were you able to vote at that point? >> no, i was aghast. tonight i may delegate. >> reporter: we basically heard

vivek ramaswamy call out to young people, to gen z, to millennial's, to all kinds of groups around the country. did that resonate with you? >> absolutely. i think my generation is fired up. the media doesn't show that what we are. i'm excited to be here and everyone is having a great time. this is good. >> reporter: how do you feel about j.d. vance as the vice presidential pick? >> i think it is an incredible choice. we are really excited about it. >> reporter: thanks a lot. there is a real-life example of a young person on the convention floor. although not as many as people love a little bit older generation, i think. i will put it that way. back to you. >> nbc news correspondent jacob soboroff at the rnc for us tonight. msnbc's special coverage of the second night of the rnc continues. we are expecting donald trump and his vice presidential nominee j.d. vance, just announced yesterday, to show up. stick around.

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income in the united states was $4000 more than it is today. >> stopped the tape right there. that is. johnson, former republican presidential candidate. i googled that before i came on air. he was doing the are you better off than you were four years ago ref in a classic fashion. it is a widely misunderstood fact that donald trump was president in 2020 in the united states and one of the key strategies is that he wasn't. that there was a mystery there. you will notice that he says are you better off? the crowd says no and then he says in 2019, four years ago. 2019. they love to do that. joining us now is tim miller and claire mccaskill, former democratic senator of missouri. i do think when you zoom out,

we are seeing some of the messages about immigration or crime or inflation and an enormous part of the campaign of donald trump and the republican party is just a min and black style memory wipe of 2020. 2020 did not happen. everything ended in 2019 when things are going great and wages were rising, the economy was doing fairly well and the catastrophe that year and it does not exist and let's go back to that. >> the other thing they forget is the first two years of the trump administration when the republicans had the white house, the united states senate and the house of representatives and there was no wall built. none of the policies he talked about were enacted. the only thing they managed to do was a tax break for very, very wealthy folks. all of the other stuff, even when they controlled every part of government, and they completely ignored it. the question is, is mass deportation today the same as

we are going to build a wall and mexico is going to pay for it? >> i worry it is not, frankly. >> either way, either it is a big ruse to get his base riled up or folks who think the problem in this world is because of immigrants or he is really going to do it, which is even more scary. >> this is one of the questions to me, which is how seriously to take the agenda. this is part of what conventions do. a short version reads like truth social posts strung together. it is part of the reason there is such emphasis on project 2025 because that is a fully fleshed out, whole of government approach. tim, when we think of mass deportation, how do you view assessing whether this is rhetorical for certain parts of the base or actual serious? >> i think it is serious because the people who will go work for him are much more into

the agendas. to me the words that are coming out of these middle manager speakers in the middle of the day are less important. when you saw the former president walk in last night and sit in that box, who was sitting with them? tucker carlson, j.d. vance, very extreme florida congressman. his kids. it was the populist, nationalists of the party and we have the republican reporting today. who called him? tucker. his kids. what do all of those guys want to do? mass deportations. that is their agenda. this isn't the old republican party anymore. some of the more old-school republicans will go on the stage at the 7:00 hour and talk about energy or whatever. to me the project 2025 mass firings, mass deportations, the overhaul, that is what they will care about. >> that is -- to go back to

johnson and the contention that the country has gone to pieces in the joe biden presidency. whether we are talking about energy independence or unemployment or the wages to purchasing power ratio, the american economy is the envy of the world. is there anything to be done about that in terms of the broader narrative because that is going to go completely unchallenged, the contention that joe biden made a miss of the economy when in fact the opposite is true. >> and jobs. remember when the campaign in 2016 for the republican nominee was jobs, jobs, jobs. this president has done amazing on jobs. >> hold on one second. i believe j.d. vance, junior senator from ohio recently announced as the vice presidential nominee, is now entering the arena. fans was sat with trump last

night in that box. i did not want to interrupt you. i just wanted to make sure we got that on camera. a guy with a real talent for cultivating mentors. that is the most charitable way one could assess the trajectory of j.d. vance, but your point on economic management, i interrupt you, but it is crazy the sort of vision of, wow, america is really a scape in 2024 and it is not true. it was pretty rough in 2020 and 2021 and coming out of that has been rough, but it's not like after the financial crisis. it is wild how much that is distorted. >> that is why all of this talk about a different trump and unity and a softened trump after his brush with death. he is running a campaign solely

focused on grievance and that america sucks and, you know, that is not typically an uplifting message to people who are not engaged voters who make up their mind the last two weeks in october. >> by the way, you are talking about the tech burros. this pessimistic worldview that it is all broken and the great men of society have been hamstrung by government and administration is essential teal and therefore the same hymnal that j.d. vance sings. >> it is a big change and this is where democrats have an opportunity in a month and hopefully the democratic ticket can offer a persuasive counter message. >> j.d. vance in the box with the least stuff on it. also marjorie taylor greene is in there as well. matt gaetz off to the right. some of the trump children as well. he almost got elected governor, but then didn't. former new york congressman.

>> you do wonder about the party after trump. >> this is it now. i think the reason, to go back to what we were saying before about deportation, part of the reason for all the emphasis on project 2025, the reporting at the top where he said i was here in 2016 and there were dissenting factions. the transformation over the past eight years. the institutionalization of this. yes there is one president. yes there are however many hundreds of people in the office of the president, but there are hundreds and thousands of people throughout the federal government and they just did not have the people last time around to go as fullbore with what the vision is as they are trying to have this time. that is what project 2025 is all about.

>> interestingly some of the people endorsing trump, and i've had conversations with these people. smart, educated people who know he represents chaos and instability in all kinds of things that aren't good for this country, to name a few. they say to me, well, he said all this stuff last time and it did not happen. >> this is a huge part of it, i agree. >> and intellectual class bending the knee to this guy and a bunch of them know better, but they say all that stuff he says, he doesn't really mean that. i don't think they realize he is poised and ready to do the kinds of things that they would find scary and unacceptable. >> part of his vetting process for j.d. vance was will you do my bidding in a january 6 site scenario and j.d. vance agreed to swing the election for trumpet necessary. >> this is literally apparently tucker carlson called the former president and said if you pick one of these old- school republicans, the deep state is going to come after you. so they believe enough about

that and the conspiracy theory that that is why jd is on the ticket. >> i think a lot of discussions about vince and the sort of elon musk, peter teal people around him as the opportunistic transformation, but i would say don't underestimate the degree to which these gentlemen have self radicalized online and pickled their brains in a brine of truly noxious and monstrous ideology. claire mccaskill and tim miller, thank you very much. that does it for us tonight, although we are not leaving. >> we are not going anywhere. >> we pick up our coverage of the republican national convention with speeches from ron desantis, marco rubio, former presidential candidate nikki haley, all of that coming up with rachel maddow on msnbc. don't go anywhere.

good evening and welcome to our special coverage of night two of the republican national convention in beautiful, downtown milwaukee, wisconsin. super glad to have you with us tonight. i am rachel maddow with my beloved, cheerful, well hydrated colleagues joy reid, jen psaki, ari melber, lawrence o'donnell. we got nicolle wallace. we will be talking shortly, i promise you. any minute now we are expecting the republican party presidential nominee, donald trump, to be entering the hall at the rnc in milwaukee. if i look shifty like i'm not making eye contact, it is because i am trying to keep an eye on the monitors to know when that happens. both secret service and local