hi there, everyone. how are we doing? it's 4:00 in new york and it is a huge day of developments in the 2024 presidential campaign all across the country. this hour, president joe biden will deliver remarks before a latino civil rights organization in las vegas. he's expected to make a major announcement that will affect at least 500,000 immigrants. we'll bring those remarks to you live and in their entirety. but we begin with donald trump's number two under the glare of the klieg lights. republican vice presidential nominee jd vance will deliver a prime time address on the third day of the republican national convention. of that "the new york times" writes this, senator jd vance of ohio had never attended a national political convention before this year. on wednesday two days after donald trump added him to the republican presidential ticket,

he will speak from one of his party's loftiest heights. the jd vance who appears today isn't the one who said trump was a cynical a-hole or america's hitler. or quote cultural heroin or quote a moral disaster or, quote, a total fraud. we could go on and on but we only have two hours. instead the jd vance we'll see tonight is the one saying things like this. >> democrats see an opportunity to massively transform who votes in american elections and who gets congressional representation. they are using it to subvert american democracy by changing out the people who currently live in this country with other people. it's a disgraceful attack on american sovereignty. if you wanted to kill a bunch of maga voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?

it's like joe biden wants to punish the people who didn't vote for him and opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it. >> but i also think, you know, there's something comparable between abortion and slavery. >> this is one of the great tricks the sexual revolution pulled on the american populist which is this idea that, like, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent but certainly they were unhappy and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that's going to make people happier in the long term. >> what kind of virtues do we want our leaders to promote? certainly not the people who are burning kenosha, wisconsin, down but the ones that exist in kyle rittenhouse. >> takes your breath away, huh? now, the extremism, if you can even call that, it's almost an insult to the extremists but the extremism he's peddled is what

earned him a spot as trump's number two. that spot is only open because trump literally left the last guy for dead. the point of extreism isn't lost. vice president harris is out with a new video laying out the stakes ahead of vance's speech tonight. >> hey, everyone, so donald trump picked his new running mate, jd vance. trump looked for someone who knew would be a rubber stamp for his extreme agenda and jd vance will only be loyal to trump, not to our country and unlike mike pence, vance said he would have carried out trump's plan to overturn the 2020 election. he supports a national abortion ban and voted against protecting ivf and if elected, he will help implement the extreme project 2025 plan for a second trump term, which would target critical programs like head

start and medicare, but we are not going to let that happen. >> that's where we start with some of our favorite expert, staff writer for "the atlantic" mccade coppins joins us. also joining us, david jolly and writer eneditor for protect democracy amanda carpenter is here. david jolly, former republican congressman now an msnbc political analyst. now, we really could have gone on for two hours and mckay has the best quote i ever read about jd vance from mitt romney we'll get to in a second, but i mean the contrasts write themselves. >> sure, you know, as i said i think the other day, flip-flopping i think is kind of baked in and i don't look at jd vance through the same lens as i look at lindsey graham and marco rubio and others. i see the nomination of jd vance as kind of the final transformation of today's republican party. the resistance has died. it's no longer there.

and jd vance is happy to take the torch and hoping himself he could take the torch even further four years from now. i think there is a purity to the vance nomination. now, that doesn't ignore his transformation from what used to be his political convictions to now. but i think he has fully lined up with the trumpism movement and it really is a coda to the last eight years, and as we were discussing, i think part of that is also look at the other atmospherics of this convention, the absence of paul ryan, mitt romney, mike pence himself. donald trump this time around didn't need a mike pence. he didn't need a marco rubio. he didn't need a lindsey graham. he was age to reach down to a jd vance, the puritan now of trumpism. look at the fact that mitch mcconnell got booed and kevin mccarthy isn't welcome there. matt gaetz was right go this. this party transformation is done and that's one of the significant themes we're seeing in milwaukee. >> no one has been able to answer this question for me, amanda carpenter, but i've been

reading, the summer i have, i've been reading project 2025, and the loyalty test is super specific. i mean, in '16 it was sort of a morpheus, must like trump he would say referring to himself in third person and don mcgahn wanted ndas signed. this time it's on paper and the things jd vance said about donald trump go much further than eight years on this program of some of the most sort of alarm from a constitutional legal and political spectrum, i mean, jd vance has called him worse things than anyone i've ever seen and he's called him america's hitler. the plan he associated with, project 2025, would prevent him from going near a trump administration in any slot other than vice president. >> yeah, you know, i spent last night watching nikki haleyhaley speech and thinking about the theme of unity and ron desantis and what the party is rallying

behind, especially when it becomes clear with his pick of jd vance and what the party is behind and why is a trump/vance ticket and not trump/pence is that the party has come to terms with an authoritarian view where it is acceptable to use every tool at an executive's disposal to stay in power. that's what project 2025 is really about, consolidating executive power to wield it, full control of the federal government. and when i talk to people about the autocratic theft as we've been doing at protect democracy for years now, the thing that is hardest for people to believe is the idea that if trump was elected to a second term he wouldn't leave. the selection of jd vance proves that this is a real threat that could happen if trump is elected and that is because jd vance is willing to do everything that mike pence wouldn't. he went along with the election lies. he thought the false elector

strategy was a good idea. he doesn't have a problem with trump leaning on the department of justice to create sham investigations against his perceived opponents. he's whitewashed the january 6th insurrection and he says today that the real threat to democracy is any form of accountability for those actions. the real threat to autocracy is accountability, and that is what the trump/vance ticket resists and that is what the party is promoting. >> mckay, for your great book about mitt romney, i think it's in the book and the article that you wrote around the time the book was published. take us inside romney's instant classic about jd vance. >> you know, i remember talking to mitt about jd vance when vance was running in the republican senate primary in ohio, and i think what really got under romney's skin was the speed and abject cynicism as jd

vance's maga makeover. romney had met jd vance before, thought of him as kind of this bright kid who had some interesting conservative ideas about how to address poverty. he had read his book, thought it was really insightful and mostly he thought that jd vance was very clear-eyed about the -- what trump was offering to the white working class and why it was actually really poisonous to the culture of the trump base and then to see jd vance so quickly decide i want a senate seat and i'm going to abandon everything i've said before and kind of remake myself in the trump republican image was a little too much for mitt to take. i still remember sitting in his living room and mitt just saying, you know, i think it would be hard for me to disrespect somebody more than jd vance, and he just went on and on and on about it. you know, it's all in the book. it's kind of become widely cited

in recent days, but, you know, the important point and i think mitt was wrong about one thing was that he said to me, you know, i want to take jd vance aside and say, you know, a senate seat isn't worth all this. like, you're not going to be famous and powerful just being 1 of 100 senators. well, jd vance actually got a prize much bigger than a senate seat and could very well be the next vice president and might be the favorite to be the republican nominee in 2028. so if he was selling out, he didn't sell himself too cheaply. >> i'll read it exert. you're underselling it. it's perfect. quote, i don't know that i can disrespect someone more than jd vance, romney told me, vance had seemed bright and thoughtful with interesting ideas about how republicans could court the white working class without indulging in toxic trumpism. then in 2021, vance decided he wanted to run for senate and reinvented his entire persona

overnight. quote, i do wonder, how do you make that decision? romney mused to me as vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail that summer. how can you go over a line so stark as that and for what? romney wished he could grab vance by the shoulders and scream, this is not worth it. it's not like you're going to be famous and powerful because you became a u.s. senator. it's like really you sell yourself so cheap. the prospect of having vance in the caucus made romney uncomfortable. how do you sit next to him at lunch? now, i've watched the reaction and i'm flabbergasted that the price vance has paid is that prominent right-wing sort of acolytes of trumpism, people like nick fuentes who was on the debate stage has smeared in racist terms jd vance's wife and it brought back a parallel to mitt romney's wife being smeared by trump himself. what is your sense of mitch mcconnell's sacrifice, which tim alberta accurately described on

air as sort of soul-selling talking about marco rubio and nikki haley and other, but is is it romney's sense there was a soul to sell or was it pure naked ambition in romney's view? >> you're, by the way, i would add another data point to this wife-insulting, ted cruz, famously donald trump said -- suggested she was ugly, ted cruz, of course, last night giving a rousing speech on behalf of donald trump. you know, look, i think that mitt romney sees jd vance as a particularly stark example of this phenomenon that we've been talking about for years now in the republican party of people who really are willing to do anything to get closer to power, and, you know, that is a bipartisan phenomenon but, boy, it has been especially vivid on the right in recent years, and

you keep thinking and i mean, i remember in 2016, maybe naively thinking that we would reach the bottom at some point, that at some point there would be some of these republicans who would not be willing to sell their souls anymore to be on trump's team and we have seen a few, a few kind of break away, mike pence is one of them but i think for most of them, power is a really corrosive drug and once you get addicted to it it's really hard to give it up and i think that's what we're seeing this whole week in milwaukee really. >> let's deal with women, amanda, since we sort of opened the door and let's charge through it. a lot of jd vance's insults are for what he describes as cat lady, single women or married women who haven't had children. he is derisive. when he takes the stage tonight, does he defend the mother of his children from nick fuentes and

charlie kirk? >> i don't expect for him to even acknowledge that that's happening. i mean, listen, he is a good storyteller. "the new york times" best-selling author. he knows how to paint his biography in the best possible light, and so what we'll see tonight is certainly the most sanitized version of his agenda, of his thinking, of his upbringing, of his philosophy that we can ever expect to see but i just hope that people are very clear-eyed about why he is the pick there, and, you know, when mckay is talking about republicans that tried to stand up and weren't able to, i mean, the thing that is most threatening about the trump/vance ticket aside from possibly the end of elections is the fact that they have a plan with project 2025 to systemically gut checks and balances and we've seen the first check which really is the republican party blown, absolutely no checks on that and this is a full endorsement of not only the scary authoritarian

policy ideas but this hostility that you see towards women, towards out groups that they disapprove of and i think that will become more to light in the coming weeks but certainly tonight jd vance isn't going to mention that. >> kevin mccarthy has mentioned something in every interview he's done about matt gaetz's -- kevin mccarthy telling matt gaetz has had sex or paid with sex with a 17-year-old. charlie kirk and nick fuentes since the pick was made public have attacked the republican nominee's wife not just on twitter and tweets but videos that are all over social media. the central pillar of the assault on women is in jd vance's view this abortion ban, national abortion ban. kamala harris mentions it in her video there, which trump has said will go to the states but if congress passes a national abortion ban, you show me the trump who won't sign it.

what is your -- what in your view is the opportunity tonight as the republicans try to sort of inflate the grandeur of this selection? >> well, i think the opportunity for democrats is to continue to share with the nation that jd vance is unqualified to be vice president and certainly unqualified to be president and coming off of saturday in butler, that does matter, jd vance is not qualified but i think in the case reporting around mitt romney there's something which is jd vance cannot be trusted. because i believe what i know infuriated mitt romney was that jd vance abandoned any reason to put trust in him and in politics that's your only currency, once you break trust, you've got nothing. the old clip, never question a colleague's judgment or it's fair to question a colleague's judgment but not their motive. the motive for jd vance has been clear since he got into politics and i think that's what

unsettles mitt romney and everybody else that's looking from afar and so then the consequence of his being unqualified and his lack of trustworthiness, the consequence is real because it's a rollback of freedom here in the united states, an abandonment of freedom on the world stage be it his interest in the national abortion ban or attack on the migrant community and communities of color or be it the abandonment of freedom in ukraine, the consequences of jd vance being unqualified and not being trustworthy is real for the american people and i think there's an opportunity to hit that hard for democrats because it also perfectly reflects all of the frailties of donald trump himself. >> mckay, chris christie posted an op-ed criticizing the selection and sort of saying it undermines even phony effort of being about unity in this moment saying that jd vance was the most high-profile person in the minutes and hours after the shooting on saturday to blame joe biden directly without

evidence. what liabilities does this pick represent? even within the republican umbrella. >> well, just this week, i think, you know, the pick does undermine the purported effort to use this convention to unite the country, right? to chris christie's point, jd vance was one of the very first people to weaponize what happened to attack democrats and the media. but going beyond this week, you know, jd vance i think something that a lot of people don't quite realize about him and may discover in the coming weeks is that he's actually a pretty reckless speaker, you know, when he goes and does these interviews, when he -- when he gives speeches, he is not controlled. he is very articulate and soy i think people see him. he is clearly a bright guy, he's eloquent. he can fire off talking points better than most people and they think, oh, he's going to be a great surrogate. i think there is a liability,

though, because part of what hurt him in the ohio primary and in the ohio race was that, you know, he has all these clips of him saying outrageous things, provocative things, things that, like, don't necessarily help his cause, and i am sure that the biden campaign's opposition researchers have already done a lot of this work and are kind of champing at the bit to start releasing this stuff and i think that in the weeks and months ahead, if they decide to put him on camera a lot, like if they make him available to the media, i hope they do. i think, you know, he should be talking to journalists, but i think that it's very possible he will continue to give the biden campaign and democrats ammunition by, you know, just kind of saying things that are not helpful to the trump campaign's cause, especially as they're trying to argue that they are now the mainstream big ten party. >> talking will be a liability.

america's hitler, cultural heroin, and a-hole. mckay coppins, amanda carpenter, thanks for starting us off. david sticks around for the hour. just ahead of jd vance's address tonight, the biden/harris campaign will release its first national ad now that the gop ticket has taken form and shape with a firsthand account putting a spotlight right on the threat that the trump/vance project 2025 agenda represents to all women when it comes to reproductive freedom. the ad features hadley duval who is emotional and her personal story as her own sexual abuse as a child made her a leading advocate for abortion rights. we'll she you that extraordinary new ad and hadley will be a guest. such an honor we get to talk to her. and senator sheldon whitehouse says he's all ready to go into court reform and

ethics. the senator will join us and later, how a jd vance in the white house would do things mike pence wouldn't dare to do. we'll show that to you and much more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. who knows what to expect! turn shipping to your advantage. keep it simple...with clear, upfront pricing. with usps ground advantage®. ♪♪ ♪ you need t-mobile... ♪ ♪ home internet with 5g. ♪ wait! t-mobile has home internet? ♪ what a feeling! ♪ ♪ to have t-mobile now! ♪ for people who feel limited by the unpredictability of generalized myasthenia gravis and who are anti-achr antibody positive, season to season, ultomiris is continuous symptom control, with improvement in activities of daily living. it is reduced muscle weakness. and ultomiris is the only long-acting gmg treatment

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really? look how the brushstrokes follow the line of the gas tank. -hey! -hey! brought my plus-one. jamie? from texas to arizona, idaho to georgia, women like me have been told that we're not sick enough to receive care that we desperately need. we've been turned away from hospitals, we've been found collapsed on bathroom floors, we have been told to flee our state borders in the hope of receiving basic reproductive care. if donald trump and jd vance are

elected they will make my devastating story the stories i've heard across the country the reality for far too many more american women. >> that's a familiar face, amanda zurawski, one of the first to come forward telling her story losing her daughter and being denied emergency abortion health care during a crisis talking about the danger of a trump/vance presidency and what it would mean to alt american women. it's not an exaggeration to say jd vance is one of the most extreme politicians when it comes to reproductive rights in our lifetime to appear on a presidential ticket. he has called for a national abortion ban. he has voted against protecting ivf. he has worked to remove federal protections to keep women who leave anti-abortion states for care from being prosecuted when they leave and when asked about exceptions to abortion bans for rape and incest, he said this, quote, two wrongs don't make a

right. amanda is not the only woman to bravely come forward and tell her story about what someone like jd vance would mean for american women, today hadley duval, the woman who is featured in an ad for kentucky governor andy beshear talking about her experience as a survivor of rape and incest in her own home talking about how dangerous it is when there are bans with no exceptions, how dangerous that is for women and girls. shoo he's come forward in a brand-new ad for the biden campaign to share what a trump/vance presidency would have meant for her and has given it to us to play exclusively here. >> honestly, i didn't even know what was possible for my future when i was a kid. i had always wondered, like, sitting in class, like do these people go home and are they afraid of their dad too? when roe v. wade was overturned

immediately i thought about being 12 and first thing i was told to me when i saw that positive pregnancy test was you have options and, you know, if roe v. wade would have been overturned sooner, i wouldn't have heard that and then it had me thinking that there's someone who doesn't get to hear that now. girls like me across the country are suffering. their futures are being ripped away. trump and jd vance don't care about women. they don't care about girls in this situation. they will continue to take our rights away. in this election we have a choice. >> i'm joe biden and i approve this message. >> joining us now, survivor, sexual assault survivor and biden campaign surrogate, hadley duval who is featured in that ad. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you so much for having me. >> i watched this in the car on my way here, and i cried watching it, and it's when you

describe what it felt like to hear you have options. will you say a little more about that? >> one thing that i was sure about was the options that i had, you know, i was going through such an unimaginable time, and i didn't know who to trust. i didn't know who i had. i was so young, i couldn't understand what was going on, but i could understand that i had options and that is ultimately what kept me going. >> hadley, what does it mean if we choose to become a country, if pore people vote for the guy that would take away those three words, you have options, from other girls, these aren't women. these are girls that are in your situation. >> well, we're already seeing a sneak peek of what is happening. you know, in kentucky right now, we do not have exceptions for rape or incest. we don't have exceptions for

health of the mother. there are very, very few limitations that can allow you to get an abortion in kentucky, and we are experiencing people in our state in the same state that i am speaking so loudly for and hearing that it is just such a small statistic but it's not true. you know, we're seeing it right now in kentucky and other states what would happen and what will happen if they're elected. >> hadley, i have to ask, we played the ad you did for the beshear campaign. where does your strength come from? >> knowing that i didn't have anybody come and save me. i didn't have anybody give my voiceless self a voice, and there were times where i was so lost and so deeply broken, but i knew that there were better days and i just used sports a lot and

i used helping other people and making friends and doing whatever i could to not live the nightmare i was living at home and, you know, be a person-to-person outside of my home and just try to make it out and make it through. >> hadley, for victims of abuse or any trauma, it can sometimes be retraumatizing to think of how many people will go through the exact same thing, and in your ad, in the story that you tell in the ad, it's about a worse outcome than even the nightmare you were living as a 12-year-old. what would you say to politicians that maybe think they're republicans but that don't understand what they'd be doing to young girls who were victims of rape and incest. what would you say to them to change their mind? >> if they cannot look at their wife or their daughter, their niece, their granddaughter and tell them, if you're in this situation, you have no choice, you don't deserve a choice, i

don't care what happened to you, it's sad but it's not sad enough for you to deserve a choice. you're too young to understand what's happened but you're old enough to, you know, suffer from the consequences, if you can wholeheartedly look at your wife, your daughter, any significant woman in your life or girl in your life and say that to them, then, you know, i'm not really sure how you can say that you have love for those important women in your life. and if you can't say that to them, then that is why that is the smallest reason why we need options. >> what is it like to be in the middle of one of the sort of most rough and tumble areas of civic life, presidential politics? what has it been like for you to be out there speaking for president joe biden and vice president kamala harris helping them to make their case which you do extraordinarily well? >> thank you. it has been very rewarding.

it is something i could have never possibly even dreamed of, especially, you know, being that 12-year-old girl, i would have never seen myself here, but, you know, it has also come with some negativity and come with some bad, but there is nothing worse than what i've already been through, so that is really what just keeps me going and knowing that there is nothing that the people on the internet can say or do that hasn't, you know, already been done to me by somebody i was so close to me, so i know who i'm doing this for and that's really the best part of it. >> hadley, i will just say this as someone who's spent more of my life in politics than i have now, you can do whatever you want. you're extraordinary. you moved me and i think you're change a lot of mights. what you're doing is really important and really brave. hadley duvall, thank you? >> as we reported first yesterday is the story as it was breaking president joe biden set

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there's probably going to be two more appointments to the court. there's probably two people that are going to resign or resign, retire. just imagine if he has two more

appointments on that, what that means forever. >> it's the stuff of my nightmares. president joe biden addressing the massive stakes in a brand-new interview. this week we're learning about a seismic shift in response from him to the supreme court's years now of transgression, bucking of important precedents vital to the functioning of a democracy. president joe biden's plan plans to endorse major court reform including term limits and enforceable ethics code for justices and as "the washington post" reports possibly the elimination of broad immunity for american presidents. it comes after president biden long resisted calls from his own party, many of whom have had their own legislaive proposals ready. some have called for the impeachment of justice clarence thomas and samuel alito for, quote, unchecked corruption or demanded a special counsel investigation into whether justice thomas's repeated failures to klis dose lavish gifts violated law including sheldon whitehouse of rhode

island. david jolly here as well. this broke while we were on the air, and i wished that i had sort of seen you reading the news. i waited for your reaction. your thoughts to news that president joe biden's moving in this direction? >> very good news. >> yeah. >> the court ethics bill is through the senate judiciary committee, and to have the president's support for that is very important, and we have both term limit bills in the house and in the senate. i'm the author of the lead senate bill and that's really important to restructure the court. it has become so politicized and it has become so grandiose that things that i think were unthinkable just a few years ago are now, i think, viewed as extremely necessary by most americans. and first off we need to get to the bottom of what's gone wrong. i mean, we got to finish the investigating. >> senator, one of the things

that's different is how much the wind of american public support is behind all of these initiatives. let me read you polling from fox news of all places. 60% of fox news of respondents disapprove the supreme court. only 38% approve. 56% disapprove of the immunity decision. 78% of all respondents approve of 18-year term limits for justices. this sort of feels like, you know, a synergy of public opinion, a supreme court that is all but begging for this. people like yourself who've led these efforts and a president who's ready to make a big and important move. >> yeah, and i think evening bigger than those numbers are the numbers of people who want to understand what has happened to the supreme court. who think that congress should do a full and proper investigation. and so although republicans are

obstructing the senate investigation right now, if voters put the house in democratic hands, guess what republican senators can't do? they can't filibuster a house subpoena and mr. barron and mr. navarro learned about house subpoenas recently so a whole investigative avenue could open up after the election and we also hope that the attorney general will do his job and look into these very predicated allegations that we've referred to him. >> is the next step on the investigations for him to either open, to find probable cause and open an investigation or appoint a special counsel? is that what would happen next? >> yeah, there are two ways into this. one is that the attorney general could appoint a special counsel and instruct the special counsel to look into the tax problems, potential tax fraud, the potential felony false statements and the criminal

misfilings under the disclosure laws, that whole package of issues. at the same time, the judicial conference that is making a referral to the attorney general on whether justice thomas' misfilings were willful. if there's a reasonable chance that they were willful then that question of whether they were willful has to be referred by them to the attorney general, so the attorney general has two avenues at least into this. >> it's extraordinary. let me bring into our conversation cheryl lynn eiffel. she's the endowedicism rights at howard university. pleasure to talk to you. thank you for joining us. >> glad to be here. >> let me ask you about the news that broke yesterday about 24 hours ago in "the washington post" that president joe biden is preparing to announce support for supreme court reform. your thoughts? >> well, i think that certainly president biden has been on a journal but i think many people,

particularly many attorneys and those who practice in the supreme court have been on a journey in becoming comfortable with the idea that some reform is absolutely necessary. and i think that many people will attribute his trance for pace to a political calculation but i'm not sure that's true. i can tell you that there are a number of us in the field who practice who are lawyers, who have tremendous respect for the institution of the supreme court, who have been shocked and appalled and deeply concerned about what we have seen the majority of this supreme court do. not only in terms of their ethical conduct, but the kind of decision-making and some of the kind of recklessness we're seeing in the opinions they're writing. >> i interviewed president biden a year ago and saw what you saw, this institution deference and reference but i would argue in

addition to public opinion we're talking about the polls and you have 80% of americans who would like to see term limits for supreme court justices. the political climate is certainly favorable to reform, and pretty scornful, frankly, of leaving the status quo in place which includes a lot of republicans if you believe the way people are registered and self-identify. what's a shame is the supreme court and the cries coming from inside the house. you can read the alarm in the dissent of justice sotomayor and justice ketanji brown jackson and justin kagan. the radical nature of the opinions this term seems to be at least one of the variables. >> yeah, that's why i've always said it's not just what the courts are deciding but it's how they're deciding it. shortcuts they're taking. it's the overreach, the lack of judicial restraint. all of that is part of -- part and parcel of what has concerned people. this is a court on a mission. and the mission seems to be to

gather for itself as much power as it possibly can, and so we've seen this court undercutting the power of the executive branch through administrative agencies. we've seen this court cutting the power of congress, creating their own standards for statutes that fall within congress' purview. we've seen them unleashing the power of the president and this immunity decision. we have seen them returning us to a kind of states' rights republic, which i thought we had addressed with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution but they're doing this in the abortion realm. they're gathering this power to say not only what the law is but how american life will be lived, and if a court is doing its job, you shouldn't be noticing it that much. >> yeah. >> you notice your legislature, you notice your president. you shouldn't be noticing the

court that much in how you live your everyday life but now 10-year-old girls have to notice the court if they have been victims of rape and are pregnant and have to travel to another state to get an abortion, so something has gone off the rails and there's a sense in which the court seems to believe it is untouchable and yet congress does have a great deal of power to manage and regulate much of the power of the court. >> i want to continue this conversation if i could ask all three of you to stick around and i want to ask all of you what the conversation is with the american people 110 days ahead of a presidential election. i have to sneak in a quick break. break.

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and hopeful about the future. (energizing music) we are back with senator whitehouse, sherrilyn ifill and david jolly. david jolly, we are -- what do you call it -- refugees in the coalition but republicans used to run effective campaigns cynically and unfortunately because it got us to where we are right now but the supreme court is a front and center issue. democrats have that opportunity, and voters, you don't have to tell voters what this supreme court did but you do need to connect some dots with what senator whitehouse is proposing and give people hope from the despair they feel about dobbs and do need to say we it better. and president joe biden has a plan now. >> remarkably there's a pure opportunity for depends now. and i'm thrilled to be on with the senator. my political compass -- i'm an attorney, and attorneys and

senators naturally are somewhat prudent and conservative in their approach to any type of reforms with the court because you learn in law school and you're trained to follow precedent and to recognize the norms and to recognize the standards. even the basic ethics rules, you're an officer of the court from the time you become an attorney. even though you're an advocate, you have a job to represent the fidelity of the court. and what we have seen in both the ethics questions and charges currently among sitting justices but also as a result of the decisions that have rolled back some basic rights, i think we're in a place now where the american people want to hear about reform. so where -- >> 100%. >> where senators and attorneys may have been prudent in the past and even joe biden himself, you can tell the idea of expanding the court or term limits, he's never been comfortable with. now it's okay to talk about that. so whether it's term limits or whether it's moving to 13 justices to reflect the 13 circuits or whether it's actual oversight of supreme court ethics and perhaps the court of

appeals, as well, they have better ways to manage their courts. now is the time. and you can make that case because you're making that case in an environment where people feel the rollback of fundamental freedoms, and they're scared about what the next 20 years may hold. i think that's the most important thing. if you're a democrat now, you don't have a choice. if you don't start down this reform agenda, you've lost the high court for two decades. so now's the time to make the move. >> yeah. senator whitehouse, you've been for these things for so long. i wonder how you feel now that -- and it might be quoting a gatorade ad, i'm not sure, but the only way out is through. the only way out of a political moment is through something so necessary, so intuitively right. and that is this -- that is what you've been for now for years, supreme court reform. >> yeah. the polling is one thing, and you described it very well. at the heart of all of this is a united states supreme court that has been corrupted by very

powerful special interests, through what was essentially a covert op that lasted several decades to make sure they got their functionaries, their flunkies who would do what they wanted on to the court. it's a hell of a story to tell, and it's a hell of a terrible thing to happen to our supreme court. so cleaning it up and putting that court back on to sound footing again really is something that americans should be able to rally around. so it's exciting to have this moment come, all in all sometimes it's better not to be i haven't indicated vindicated. >> to have not been right. to that point, you mention how -- i think you gave us a window into how this conversation with voters goes, right? if the court is functioning as a co-equal branch, you're not thinking about it all the time. every woman -- i just -- you

know, interviewed a woman who -- 12 years old, when she was a girl, was a victim of rape and incest. every person in her shoes has to think about the supreme court now because in her telling, you won't hear the words that she said saved her life -- you have options. 12-year-old victims of rape and incest don't if trump and vance prevail in november. how in your view do you start having this conversation with voters ahead of the november election so they make a choice that leads us away from what the senator just described with this court? >> yeah. i think there are two things that are important. one is the only way you get supreme court reforms, the kind that the president is talking about and that we need is we're going to need legislation that makes its way through congress. and so if we want to add seats to the court, all of which falls clearly and appropriately within the power of congress to pass such legislation and for the president to sign it, we need not just the presidency, but we need to have congress. if we want to have ethics reform

and we want to have a real ethics code, we're going to need legislation. these are not things the president can do by fiat. it is congress that will have the power to control the supreme court's jurisdiction, to deal with an ethics code, to add seats to the court. and so that's the first pitch. the second pitch is even if we don't get to the point of reform, if the -- the worst happens and trump/vance are elected, we still need the senate and the house. remember, obama was president when the senate was held by the republicans, and that allowed mitch mcconnell to deny president obama the ability to fill a seat which is how we ended up with justice gorsuch. it was the senate, mitch mcconnell who pushed through the confirmation of amy coney barrett in september of 2020 when early voting had already started for the presidency. so we cannot forget it's easy to talk about the president, but none of this happens without congress.

and so i would just by the way that senators, many of whom have been talking about president biden and whether he should run and the top of the ticket -- they need to win their own races, whether president biden wins or not. that means the damage could be even worse. this could give trump even more seats to add to the court and justices to add to the court that will affect the lives of our grandchildren and great grandchildren. the two arguments are one we've got to have reform. the second argument is whatever -- however the top of the ticket is resolved, you've got to resolve in your mind now that the democrats are going to win the house and the senate, and especially the senate and really clear 52 so that we can deal with the issue of potentially the court and the addition of seats and the holding of hearings in a way that is what the american people want to hear, not the spectacles that we have seen with the

republican-controlled senate. so i think those are the two ways is to get people to understand it's the top of ticket, the president so that we can have real reform. none of it happens without congress. and congress members in both the house and the senate need to get out from under the conversation about who's at the top and win their own races. >> i know mic drop moment when i hear one. let that be the last word. i am going to ask all three of you to continue this conversation. i'm not sure there's a more -- they're all important, but this is one of the most important conversations i think we can have in the coming days and weeks and months. senator, i think you're always right on, this you have been. thank you all so much for spending time with us. up next for us the biggest difference between donald trump's current vp pick and his last vp pick, we'll show it to you in the next hour of "deadline: white house" after a quick break. e: white house" aft quick break. i bet allison doesn't get jelly on her shirt. urgh! i bet noah lyles doesn't get smoothie on his jersey.

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i want the american people to know that i had no right to overturn the election. and that on that day president trump asked me it put him over the constitution, but i chose the constitution. and i always will. >> if i had been vice president, i would have told the states like pennsylvania, georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and i think the u.s. congress should have fought over it from there. that is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks including me think had a lot of problems in 2020. >> let me shorthand that, constitution, no constitution. hi again, everybody. 5:00 in new york. there you have it. donald trump in his view upgraded running mate to someone who will do what he wants. constitutional be damned. what donald trump wants is to win no matter what again. constitution be damned. former vice president mike pence lost donald trump when he refused to put a single person above the united states

constitution and overturn the results, in this instance a defeat of what their own administration official described as, quote, america's most secure election in history, end quote. j.d. vance, on the other hand, is different. he continues to spout the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, that this country had a widespread voter fraud problem that nobody including bill barr was able to locate. in short, there would be no hang j.d. vance chants coming from the mob on that day who went on to storm the capitol because j.d. vance would have done what pence didn't. he would have overturned the defeat. he would have put trump over the constitution. we're just a few hours away from j.d. vance giving his first speech since he was named donald trump's choice out of all the people available for the job left vacant by mike pence. his appearance at the rnc further solidifying the

republican party's election denying, election-stealing ways. while the pomp and circumstance of the gop convention is going on this week behind the scenes, a larger more menacing effort by republicans is taking place. stunning new reporting in "the new york times" pulls back the curtain on what they report is a, quote, unprecedented legal campaign targeting the american voting system, end quote, by the ex-president's allies, setting up the proper conditions with the need to contest another donald trump loss. it says, quote, unlike the chaotic and improvised challenges four years ago the new drive includes a systemic search for any vulnerability in the nation's patchwork election system. trump's allies have followed a two-pronged approach, restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of election day, and short-circuiting the process of rat fighting the winner afterward if trump loses. the latter strategy involves an ambitious and legally dubious attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how

results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power. "the new york times" outlines specific efforts currently under way in swing states, quote, in nevada and several other states, republicans have sued to tighten rules for voting by mail. currently a method preferred by democrats. in georgia and arizona they have filed lawsuits that if successful would effectively give local election board members the right to hold up certification. and even conduct their own personal investigation into the vote. as we continue to wait for president joe biden to take the stage in las vegas, a speech we'll bring to you in its entirety when it begins, we're going to turn to this story -- anti-democratic efforts by one of the two political parties and its leader. that's where we start with the writer at large for "the new york times," "the new york times" magazine, jim rittenburg, his byline on the story and reporter nicholas needy. former senator and co-host of msnbc's "how to win 2024"

podcast claire mccaskill. jim and nick, so nice to have you here. i want to pull back the curtain on this reporting. if the tragic events of saturday evening hadn't occurred, your story is what was flying around numerous. and i think it would have driven a week of coverage, it's wednesday, took us a call days to get to it. just take me through -- nick, you've been reporting on the voter suppression laws, predicated on the lie. jim, you and nick together put together the two pieces of it, and what's terrifying is how they halt certification. so jim, you take me through that part of the plan. >> and it basically does -- i like that you refer to nick's previous reporting because it's -- there's been a lot of legal work going into this, into voting for the past couple of years. but what's been happening that's sort of a new twist since 2020 and some of it started in 2020 is looking at the certification process, the pageantry of affirming our votes, of making

it clear who the winner is. there are a lot of steps along the way. they start at very local election boards. and an increasing number of cases, those election boards are not certifying and, in fact, this a break from more than a century of jurisprudence. that is their job to certify. that's the law. now some allies of president trump and the conservative side are challenging that very concept to say you can stop certification if your conscience tells you to, if you suspect fraud. and that's that would up-end how we get to the january 6th vote affirming the presidency. >> you get the cool customer award. you're at the republican convention, cue the music behind you. you never broke face. i started to giggle here because i've been in your shoes. let me follow up with just sort of the reference point in the piece as ben ginsburg who, when i worked in republican politics, was the republican lawyer extraordinaire and n republican politics. he's on the other side of this effort saying that -- that this

is -- how radical is it, so radical that the most prominent republican campaign lawyer says it's totally unnecessary. take us into your reporting about ben ginsburg. >> i'll tell you, ben ginsburg was the most feared on the democratic side election lawyer. i mean, he is no shrinking violet. he is tough. he plays the law as far as he can to win elections. that's been his job. so when ben ginsburg says that this effort, this is look at certification, this thing that's been taken as a given, he thinks it's a radical thing and he's worried about it. but you know, the hope of people like ben, they -- people hope that the law will kick in because these things are illegal. the question is does the law hold firm as it did in 2020 when we get to january 6th of 2024. >> you know, nick, i think this reporting is one of the markers that has been put down, right, and the people that you get to

talk to and the story that you're able to tell in -- in this piece is one of the flashing yellow lights. i think it was burt gel man who wrote about the election officials who felt like the lights were flashing yellow ahead of the 2020 election. this is the flashing yellow lights ahead of the 2024 election. and one of the anecdotes you tell which is harrowing is what's happening in washoe county, nevada. will you tell us that story? >> sure. so a lot of this has been actually -- jim's been focused on this for a while. but what's happening in washoe is kind of the exact distillation of what could happen in november and what worries so many, you know, election lawyers and voting rights groups and things like that. there is -- there was a primary election for the county board in washoe, and there were two republicans running against each other. one was very much in the election denial community and was backed by prominent donors on that side. the other was a more traditional republican election official. democrats even came in and

supported that election official to try and protect the sanctity of the washoe election board. she ended up winning. but when it came time to certify her own election, she voted ton certify, plunging everything in washoe into chaos and uncertainty. the secretary of state and the attorney general, who were democrats, came in with a petition to the state supreme court saying we need set a precedent here that they're not able to do that. they don't have the discretion to choose this path of not certifying. this needs to be a mandatory, ceremonial, ministerial role. but as this has been happening, time's been going by. if we were to take this scenario that's happening in washoe right now and push the clock ahead, push the calendars ahead four months, we ambassador number a hairy situation -- we'd be in a hairy situation coming up against deadlines in the reform to the -- the ecra, january 6th, certification roles on the federal level. what's happening in washoe is exactly the biggest fear of what could be happening in a state or around the country in november.

>> and nick, what does j.d. vance mean on the ticket? you take pence out of the 2020 scenario and you sort of red team that. what does it mean if you don't have a pence? >> well, j.d. vance said in the past that he would not have done what vice president pence did, and he would have thought about not certifying or taking a different action on january 6th with regards to the objections of swing states of electors. he won't be, you know, in the vice presidential seat this january 6th. so in the immediacy it probably won't have much impact on the election. but if we're to look ahead to 2028, who knows who's running then, he could be running then, it opens up the question as to what might happen there. with that said, there was a pretty significant fix within the ecra that tried to as clearly as possibly state that the vice president's role and certifying the election or overseeing that process on january 6th is again a ministerial role. they don't have the discretion

to act out on their own. as the judge and others said both on this program and in court briefings. so that might prevent, you know, a vance from taking that action. but even trying to could certainly create chaos. >> jim, let me read one more piece of your reporting about this -- this certification piece. you guys write that voting against certification was practically unheard of in presidential elections until late 2020 when trump allies sought to block certification in wayne county, michigan, and until january 6th, 2021, when thousands of protesters sought to block congress from certifying the election results. since then members of state and local boards have voted against certification more than 20 times across eight states, according to a list compiled by protect democracy, a nonpartisan group that tracks anti-democratic trends in the u.s. in most cases the board members were outvoted or when they weren't courts or officials forced them to certify the vote. in the story, you take that dynamic and you push it against the calendar deadline of i think it's december 11th again.

just tell me what kind of pressure cooker that creates. >> well, this -- this is new. this is what nick was referring to. the new law about certification, which was passed after the january 6th chaos and then some, was meant to make a hard deadline on december 11th so there's no playing around. this is serious. if there's litigation the courts will want to fast track it. the problem is there's a lot of -- this deadline didn't exist before. it's unclear what happens after that deadline. any discussions about delaying the certification process, giving people time to do their own mini investigations which, by the way, everyone wants a clean election, but we have a court system for that. we have other processes to do this, not in the certification level. this could create a lot of uncertainty heading into that really crucial congressional vote on january 6th. and let's -- i want to say one thing for viewers is the best way to understand this -- because it's very complicated, right -- is that what we're talking about is exactly what

was going on four years ago, january 6th, when president trump, then-president trump wanted to block certification. vice president pence did not have that power or right. that's exactly what's playing out on these little boards, but in these 20 cases at least one or two, in some cases more, members of these local election boards did it anyway. >> well, jim, i mean -- and the impact is in an election decided in a handful of states by a few thousand votes, you only need one board of one county to hold up the ability to certify a state that may determine the presidency. what happens in that scenario? >> well, there's a lot of litigation right now, not a lot, there's some litigation right now trying to figure out that. for instance, in arizona, the secretary of state is trying to say if that -- if a county does that we are going to cut them to out and going to send our otherwise our totals to washington for the january 6th vote, the electoral college vote, sorry, for january 6th. now there's some litigation around that k. that really

happen? this is what i mean where it's all uncertain. there's a lot of effort here. i do want to repeat what ben ginsburg says, republican lawyer, there's confidence in our system, the law will kick in, judges will do the right thing. those who worry about this see it as a doomsday scenario but not impossible scenario given all that we've lived through the last couple of years. >> claire? >> couple things. one, the beauty of our system and the reason it can't be hacked and controlled by some, you know, machine in venezuela or some kind of crazy stuff -- >> laser -- >> pretend lawyers for trump said last time is because it's so disparate. every state does it differently. and even local boards do it differently. sometimes these boards are elected, many times they're appointed. and this has always been a duty, a civic duty where you just serve to certify and went forward. and if there was a problem, then people challenged it in court. and that's the way it should work. and so you know, that's the way

it should work. now, this is after this immunity case. and that's what scares the living daylights out of me. >> yeah. >> we've sat around this table, really smart lawyers, much smarter lawyers than me, saying, well, there's flow way the supreme court is going to say a president can do anything he wants. essentially kind of the supreme court said that. so that's what's scary about this. the other thing that's really interesting to note is when laura trump took over the rnc and when the trump machine moved into the rnc, they basically abandoned all of the money that was being spent on what we call the ground game, getting their votes out, opening offices around in these battleground states, instead they started putting all their money into quote/unquote voter protection. and that's what you're seeing here. you're seeing like tentacles going out from donald trump trying to monkey with the system so people who believe passionately in donald trump can put their finger on the scale

unfairly. >> well and all of that -- and that's been sort of the body of nick's report, we got to know nick on the show, all of that -- i remember republicans in the wake of 2020, we still talked to republicans calling and saying what would you not attack in terms of election integrity? i said, well, was there fraud? no, but -- no buts, there wasn't any fraud. the whole bucket of election integrity, as bill barr would say, bull shit. >> it's total bull shit. the other thing that's interesting is they're working against their own interests. one part of the republican party in many states is saying send in early ballots. we want you to use vote by mail. they see the advantage of the convenience of people -- and the voting by mail is very secure. many states have done it for a long, long time. and voters really like it. they do match signatures. it's not that people can just stuff ballot boxes, that's total fantasy. so you know, at the same time they're discouraging their voters to use the easiest tools

available to vote which hurts them, and then they're also trying to prepare to unfairly steal an election if they have to. >> nick, those efforts are on overdrive. they've been scaled across 48 states. talk about how they work together, though, the voter suppression is sort of stage one. certification -- >> yeah, it's -- as we lay out in the story, a lot of these lawsuits that we're seeing now challenging different parts of the electoral process, you know, trying to change laws, trying to either shave off different margins about throwing out ballots that didn't have a postmark, or the postmark was smudged or arrived a few days late, but within the legal grace period. all of that is from the certification argument a pretext that there was problems with the election. and so if those aren't fixed through these lawsuits, then you then have a system that was either broken or fraudulent. that's how the certification argument comes in.

so some of these election officials are choosing to vote against certification can look at those lawsuits that, you know, either didn't go their way or ballots that were counted that were postmarked by election day or -- but arrived after. as a reason that they could then not certify. so it really goes hand in hand. i think as we say in the story it starts with definitely accelerated no stone turned approach -- legal approach, that's been common. you know, fighting over ballots and what counts and what doesn't and the hours and everything is -- as old as elections. moving that into this certification area, trying to make that a gray legal area is where it's new, and that's how it fits together. >> we are not ignoring this for the lovely rendition, a rehearsal for later this evening. again, i applaud you as i did jim for staying focused on the conversation. let me just ask you a couple factual things that i think you were the first to put in the record for our understanding. vote by mail and dropbox ballots

are, it's my understanding you've reported, some of the most secure ballots because of the chain of custody and signature requirements. is that right? >> yeah, there's multiple ways that you can check and affirm that absentee ballot, a vote-by-mail ballot is indeed the ballot of the voter. and they go through a lot of processes. different states have different ways of verifying a mail ballot, paper ballot. they have a signature. they have a chain of custody, different ways of verifying that. that's a very secure method of voting. been used for decades. this isn't a new method that all the sudden was turned on in 2020 and everyone across the country was catching up to it. a lot of republicans actually were big proponents of this in 2000, 2004, with 2008, as a who to turn out older voters, lower the barrier to getting to a polling place. mail voting has been around for a long time. through that, through those years has gotten all the more secure. >> i'm so old that i was part of the -- jim covered the campaign i worked on when republicans had

the advantage on vote by mail. so it's just one of the sort of electoral tectonic plates that have shifted completely around. an incredible piece of reporting. one that we will pull from and look back to i think many, many times in the coming days and weeks. thank you so much for joining us to talk about it. nick and claire, stick around. when we come back, a top trump insider just released from prison -- can't make this up anymore -- is heading street to the republican national convention to speak tonight. not exactly the best look we think for a political party still clinging to the false claim that they might somehow, someday once again be the party of law and order. plus, how trump bans in administration is raising all kinds of alarm bells among the national security community and among our most trusted allies. those warnings most urgely coming from a party that once stood up to russia is ready to abandon our allies and partners in ukraine. we're still waiting for president joe biden to take the

stage in las vegas for a speech before a latino rights organization. as soon as those remarks begin, we will bring them to you live. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. s.

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yeah. ♪ ♪ if donald trump's glorification of the criminal acts his supporters carried out on january 6th and his description of the insurrectionists as patriots were not enough for you, today there's more because today after completing his fourth -- four-month sentence for a congressional subpoena, a crime, peter navarro is going straight from federal prison to the republican national convention

where -- there's still more -- he's slated to speak tonight from the stage. navarro will also be interviewed by donald trump jr. in the next hour. he was found guilty in september of two counts of criminal contempt of congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the january 6th selection committee. navarro was someone intimately involved in donald trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, concocting what was known as the green bay sweep plan to ultimately stop the certification of president joe biden's victory. we're back with nick and claire. nick, the green bay sweep sounds like it would be facilitated by some of the changes that you and jim report on. >> yeah, exactly. it's -- when you look at what has been -- what they're trying to do this year in terms of making certification an open question, trying to -- to change that idea that it's not a ministerial stamp, it's that local election officials have

the discretion to throw out the popular vote of a municipality or a state if they feel like there is improprieties, that was the basis for the entire idea of submitting false or alternate electors to congress to have them certified to throw the election to trump in 2020. it's really the root of the playbook. it's just what's happening this time is they're trying to get all of this established before the election. you know, it made 2020 such a chaotic and haphazard effort is it stumbled out of and after election day. those lawsuits, you know, 63 lawsuits i think was filed in about a three-week period, the former president lost all of them. and then they started to think, okay, what about certification and what if we can then get these electors into congress or different slate and then they could certify it now as jim and i reported, that entire thought, albeit not electors but certification, is being argued before courts at this very moment. >> claire, what's amazing is the

-- the legwork going into cheating. >> yeah. and we all know that this is a guy who would never admit he lost. so there's only one answer -- >> in golf or president. >> anything, anything. he's the best, i'm the best, have i told you i'm the best, i'm the most wonderful. and so this is just another example. if he loses, then he has to have been cheated. and we saw it in -- you know, he started saying it a lot beginning in april, the last time he ran, remember? over and over again. well, you know, it -- i'll accept it, but you know, it -- they'll probably cheat or it will be a fraud if i lose. so this is his mo. he will never accept the result of an election that he doesn't win. so if that's the case, then thank goodness we have good lawyers, and thank goodness the majority of the judges, even trump-appointed judges, held

firm to the law last time. this is quite a contrast to the old republican party, isn't it? >> yeah. >> think about who they're having speak. they had that rapper woman that did "slut walk" talk the other night. >> amber rose. >> this guy is coming straight from prison. >> couldn't make it up. >> they took the pro-life plank out of the platform. i mean, where is the moral majority? where are the evangelicals that think that donald trump is somehow, you know, sent from god -- are they not paying attention to the moral decline of their own party? it's fascinating to me. >> that he's saved by god now, the new role god plays. >> crazy. >> what do you, nick, think the sort of -- now that the whole party that -- that believes the lie about the last election, how -- how does sort of the fervor and the agitation and the spoon feeding over four years, not just several months, change

the calculations? >> you become bedrock to the republican base, and so much so that we -- i've been here since the gaveling in of this convention. most nights, you know, we've heard these pretty tailored lines about noncitizens voting and how we need to pass a law to ban noncitizens from voting in elections. something that's illegal almost everywhere. and certainly at the federal level. but by saying that, it -- feeds into what's been kind of eroding trust in elections for the last four years. and it sounds like something that's -- so unbelievable that so many noncitizens could be voting such as to turn a statewide or presidential election, be an unfathomable accusation if it were made in 2019. but that it's made now and that it's accepted and cheered. you know, it received standing ovations yesterday when it was made multiple times by multiple speakers from senator rick scott

to chairman whatley the day before. and that just kind of shows how much this has shifted into a pillar of kind of what the base believes it was once just kind of conspiracy theories. >> so unbelievable. and i'm just thinking of the -- the tapes of kevin mccarthy acknowledging that he lost and mcconnell referring him for criminal prosecution, something that couldn't happen anymore. nick, another incredible piece of reporting that you and jim have done. it's not in my prompter so if i get this name wrong correct me. author of the book of the summer, "i don't want to go home." >> that's it. thank you. >> if you're tired of politics, pick it up and read every last page. it's perfect. claire sticks around. whnchlt we come back, the selection of j.d. vance on the republican ticket marks a wholesale rejection of what this country and the republican party have stood for for years, turning its back on ukraine, nato, and our allies around the world. why the international community is sounding the alarm louder

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senator j.d. vance who was in munich at the security conference but didn't meet with you, he said that even if you got the $60 billion in aid, it is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield. what's your response to that? >> i'm not sure that he understands what's going on

here. to understand it is to come to the front line to see what's going on, to speak with the people, then to go to civilians to understand what will be with them. and then what will be with them without this support, and he will understand that millions of people have been killed. will killed. it's -- >> he doesn't understand it? >> because he doesn't understand it. of course he -- god bless you don't have the war on your territory. >> for allies and dear friends in ukraine, still fighting for their right to exist, j.d. vance isn't exactly an unknown commodity. quite the contrary, in fact. in the 2.5 years following russia's brutal invasion, senator vance became something of a figurehead for ukraines who oppose funding for the war in ukraine. while president joe biden has gone so far to invoke ronald reagan's name in helping to articulate the consistency of our commitment to ukraine and nato and the world order, vance is in a totally different camp. and republicans like him, they

sound almost alien, the classic republican sensibility. listen to what vance has to say. >> i got to be honest with you, i don't care what happens to ukraine one way or another. there are people who would cut social security, throw our grandparents into poverty why so that one of zelenskyy's ministers can buy a bigger yacht. kiss my ass, steve. it's not happening. become a state that will become a permanent welfare client of the united states of america and of nato. >> not exactly the shining city on the hill. j.d. vance obviously now nominee for vice president, and as jonathan martin reports in "politico" some republicans are worried about what this means for u.s. foreign policy. he writes, quote, while towing the party line and praising vance in their public comments increase private the interventionalists ranged from horrified to merely alarmed that one of the loudest critics of aiding ukraine could soon be first in line for the presidency. joining our conversation, the

aforementioned jonathan martin. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst mike murphiy's here, claire's with us, as well. if through the great reporting that you've done here. >> sure. this is a massive setback for the internationalist wing of the republican party. it's not an overstatement to say that the project of reagan, the project of, you know, projecting force abroad which has been central for the republican party for the last 40 years took a real hit this week because now you have donald trump who has one term, who is -- well positioned to win if he does get that one term, is going to have an understudy in somebody who could potentially serve for 12 years in national office who's a thorough going non-interventionist, and on the record, as you just played, talking in really harsh terms about ukraine. so our european allies tonight are obviously very nervous about the implications of this are.

the bigger story domestically i think, politically, is this is a vivid illustration of the ongoing realignment of the republican party today. trump is obviously trump, but vance puts real meat to the bones in this reorientation of the republican party to a populist, nationalist movement. >> so here's what sergey lavrov had to say, and this used to be deadly in politics to win the praise of -- of the russian -- one of putin's top lieutenants. j.d. vance is in favor of peace, in favor of ending the assistance that's been provided. and we can only welcome that because that's what we need, to stop pumping ukraine full of weapons. and then the war will end, and we can look for solutions. used to be a toxic endorsement, but now sergey lavrov, j.d. vance, donald trump. la familia. >> there is a sign behind my

shoulders here to the delegates who are coming to the convention tonight that says trump will end the ukraine war. so you know, trump is running effectively as the peace candidate. but somebody who as, you know, nixon would have said is not promising peace with honor. he's somebody promising obviously some kind of a negotiation that is going to end the war on terms that are at least somewhat favorable to moscow. it's just unthinkable that that would happen under any previous president in either party. and that's why just walking around the arena the last couple of days, you can't help but run into the traditionalists in the republican party, joni ernst, senator from iowa, john thune from south dakota. of course they praise vance and what he brings to the ticket. but they're openly telling me that we're going to have to have more traditional hawks in the cabinet to really counter vance's influence. >> mike murphy, let me show you what adam kinzinger had to say

about j.d. vance. >> at a time where since world war ii the biggest defense of a country, of freedom that is happening right now -- i mean, in the trenches in ukraine you have somebody who is a musician next to a machinist next to a college professor. these are people that are not at all -- have anything in common except they're standing together defending their country. and all we have to do is help to finance that, right? we're not even fighting. and j.d. vance has aggressively parroted actual russian talking points. so this to me -- he is a guy that was an anti-trumper that all of a sudden is the biggest pro-trumper. he has no moral soul, no center in how you can like russia and what they're doing in ukraine is beyond me. >> mike, the politics of this are fine where jonathan is, right? they're fine, at a maga convention. they're not great in the middle.

i mean, there is still a lot of support, there's still a lot of ukrainian flags and bakeries that have nothing to do with politics. this is another proof point for campaign against trump and vance of how out of the mainstream they really are. >> well, you know, j.d. is at the far extreme way outside the republican mainstream on foreign policy. it's basically him and rand paul over in a corner somewhere. he's been elevated by this job, and jonathan's right it kind of throws a wrench into things. i think a lot of us will be looking at other personnel, run, choices they make, had secretary of defense and state and all that. but it's -- they've done everything except burn ronald reagan's foreign policy in effigy. i never thought i'd sigh a vice presidential nominee who's got a fighting chance at the order of -- we'll see what happens.

one, we'll see if they win. right now with president biden, they're in a very strong position. but you know, that dye may not be cast. second, the real politics i'm intrigued with is the vance-trump politics. i mean, on one level vance is kind of the son trump always wanted. on the other hand, trump is a solo act. you could have two scorpions in a bottle here. whether or not j.d. vance will be able to get his hands on the serious foreign policy making i don't know. that said, trump has not been particularly reassuring on these internationalist issues. so you know, it's a new republican party, and this is a -- a disturbing new sign -- we're basically going back to 1920-style isolationism, at least in the rhetoric. we'll see what the action is. and i guess to get to your question, not an election winner. there's a lot of sympathy for ukraine in the country. maybe it breaks even, so i'm not sure it's an election loser. but vance is in a party of two on that in the senate.

>> two scorpions in a bottle is probably the original expression. i've always described them as two tarantulas in a bowl. i'm going to borrow your scorpions. i want to show you that migration from reagan to nixon. i have to sneak in a break first. we'll be right back. first. we'll be right back.

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course, has been a characteristic of russian foreign policy for centuries. >> i'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to russia or mr. putin. and i'm certainly not going to say to him i'll give you more flexibility at the election. >> first of all we've got to realize what vladimir putin is. he's an old kgb colonel that wants to restore the russian empire. >> according to our intelligence services, the russian government has made a project of turning americans against each other. >> it is hard to think of a more consistent thread in modern republican politics than being against russia. >> for good reason. this -- these republican officeholders and frankly most democratic officeholders and a whole lot of people that remember, you know, what the cold war represented, and the lack of freedom and understand the lack. freedom that russians have. why in the world donald trump wants to take the side of putin,

by the way, if they were such a powerful country they would have rolled over ukraine in the first six months. they exposed how weak they are, that they don't have a strong military, they're not highly trained. and ukraine has held its own. yes, it's gotten a lot of financial help, but why would you ever want to take their side in this deal unless this is just about donald trump's love affair with strong men? he want to be one. he wants to be them. he wants to be putin and kim jong-un. it's fascinating to me that he's got a guy who's vice president that is basically thumbing his nose at the idea that democracies stand up for each other. >> yeah. i mean, in a lot of ways there's a lot of j.d. vance out there. he's on podcast says, he said more horrible things about donald trump than any guest i've had on this show. this show for, i don't know -- several years now. no one's ever called trump america's hitler, as j.d. vance did. no one's ever called trump

cultural heroine as j.d. vance did. how does j.d. vance go from seeing trump as america's hitler to being his wing man in throwing the war to russia? >> well, a deep sense of cynicism. i think that's what may bond them together. i've been kind of staring at this in disbelief. back in august it was -- i remember august 7th of 2017, j.d. called me and wanted to have a conversation about running as an anti-trump candidate for senate in ohio. i like the guy. i liked his book. he had a very smart take on trump. he had it all figured out. he's very, very smart. it was a daunting race, and i think he decided and has rationalized to himself to do the only horseshoe thing and sneeze hard enough and jump the horseshoe to the other side. and now he's not going let anybody out maga him anywhere. it's kind of soul crushing because he is a smart guy who clearly just got on google and

found foust.com and signed up. so the only upside i guess is i'm not sure he believes any of it. >> right. >> yeah. >> what he believes to be honest. >> yeah. those do tend to be the most dangerous people among us. i mean, jonathan martin, does that -- does that get through? i mean, do they know that he believed at one point that -- may still believe, what do we know, that donald trump was, quote, america's hitler, end quote? >> not only does trump know that, i actually think contra the conventional wisdom that that hurt vance in the veep-stakes. i think it helped him. the reason i think it helped him is because trump likes the idea of a convert. you know, j.d. vance has the he has the passion of a convert to the house of trump. he's astoned for his sins. he once was lost, now is found. he likes someone coming around

to him, who did say all that bad stuff. it reflects trump's power and powers of submission, frankly. so, like to me, i think it was added fuel to the appeal of vance. look, faustian as it may be, it's a remark campaign by vance to cultivate that relationship with the president and his son over a period of years. it will go down in the his toyed books as one of the most incredible internal backstage political campaigns by any individual, who, by the way, had never run for office before, in a period of three years goes from a first-time candidate, to vp of who he -- he wooed trump and his son and mission accomplished. >> jonathan, nick fuentes,

charlie or charles kirk, two close political allies of donald trump, nick fuentes dined with him, and have been attacking jd's wife. any plans to defend his wife tonight? >> i think that will be a really interesting tell. vance has to know -- if he doesn't, his allies have told him what's being said online. it's despicable, and i'll bet interested to say if he acknowledges in any way implicitly or explicitly those facts. >> if he doesn't, he would follow in the foot depends of mitch mcconnell, who never defended his wife from trump's attacks. another break for us. we'll be right back. s. another break for us we'll be right back. ood made with whole meat and veggies. it's not dry food.

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they were trying to find a person with a range finder. a source familiar with briefings today with the fbi, secret service, after reporting from "the washington post" that local law enforcement informed the secret service they did not have the manpower to secure the building that the shooter used to carry out the attack. another break for us. we will be right back. r us we will be right back. needs to customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. let's fly! (inaudible sounds) chief! doug. (inaudible sounds) ooooo ah. (elevator doors opening) (inaudible sounds) i thought you were right behind me. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, ♪ ♪ liberty. ♪

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