welcome back to "face the nation." more than 21 months after the attack on the u.s. capitol, a trial against defendants charged with seditious conspiracy began here in washington. new disclosures were presented to jurors in what prosecutors call one of the most important cases seeking accountability. cbs news congressional correspondent scott macfarlane has more. >> reporter: a crime unlike any in the nation's history has led to a criminal trial unlike any in history. stewart rhodes, military vet, yale law grad and former congressional staffer is founder of the far right oath keepers group, along with four

codefendants he's standing trial for seditious conspiracy to block the peaceful transfer of power in america. and facing decades in prison if convicted. former justice department attorney michael greenberger says no matter the outcome of the six-week long trial, history will be made. >> this case is the most important seditious conspiracy case that was ever brought. >> reporter: in the trial's opening days, prosecutors argued the group was plotting just days after the election. jurors heard a clip of rhodes from november 9, 2020, urging his group to be ready to fight, to create a pathway to keep trump in power. >>al i'm willing to sacrifice myself for that. let the fight start there, okay. that would give president trump what he needs. >> reporter: prosecutors showed an open letter written by rhodes for trump to invoke the insurrection act, to mobilize militias and order a new election the militia would help administer. they played this interview clip of rhodes for jurors.

>> we have been already stationed outside d.c. as a nuclear option. >> reporter: they shared messages, predicting blood and violence. they said the group staged guns outside the d.c. limits and helped the execution of a military stack formation to breach the capitol. the justice department, which has gone to trial against approximately january 6th defendants so far and won convictions in every case before juries, the stakes here are higher. the justice department has limited experience going to trial on the charge of seditious conspiracy, but greenberger says the trial itself could help avert a future attack. >> bringing the trial limits those who say, we'll go to washington, we'll break into the capitol. no. you're going to end up, win or lose, convicted or not convicted, to votine devoting a large part of your life and your fortune to defending yourself.

>> the trial resumes tuesday. the jurors ought to get comfortable. this could last up to thanksgiving. six to seven weeks is the estimate. we have a nice full table here at "face the nation." i want to welcome everyone. cbs news congressional correspondent nikole killion, and white house chief correspondent peter baker and "new yorker" staff writer susan glasser. susan and peter are coauthors ew book on the trump presidency called "the divider." susan and peter, i want to start with you. to what degree did you just see what kari lake do many in the trump world consider her as a fast rising star? >> i was struck in your interview with her that the trumpist style in american politics, ala the famous paranoid style in american politics seems to be with us whether or not trump himself is literally on the ballot.

i think kari lake is an example. she was rerunning a trump play from the 2018 midterm election, which did not work, by the way, in which he falsely claimed there was an invasion at the southern border and actually sent real u.s. military troops to defeat this fake invasion. you have her and other candidates now using this language of invasion. i think we should point out, as a matter of fact, that we are not actually experiencing an invasion, number one. number two, you just -- you have brazenness, i think, as a superpower. you have for donald trump, he's willing to go anywhere and to say anything. one thing he's found is that millions will follow him. for example, in the election lies about 2020. interestingly, in your interview, she did not -- she was not willing to actually come out and say that joe biden was not -- >> what bpublic onthou they' al soughtump'sseme on the basis of his false claims.

donald trump? they can't fully >> and yet kari lake is running neck and neck in arizona. donald trump got million more votes when he ran for re-election in 2020 and 2016. >> we call it "the divider" because trump manifested the divisions in our society. he's the manifestation and figured out how to exploit them politically. now we're seeing whether his inhaters, if you will, can translate that same style, that same technique and approach on the state level in places like arizona, michigan, wisconsin, so forth. and the answer right now is they have a real strong support. it's a very evenly divided country. when you see these battleground states at 50/50, it tells you the trump part of the country i. it's a significant part of the country. it can't be dismissed. this will outlast trump himself. >> do you think voters drawn to it are wrong to be drawn to it or that is an acceptable alternative in american

politics? there is something democrats are missing about this particular approach? >> there's a politics of grievance. trump tamped into resentment among americans that the elites have let them down. it's also dividing along racial lines, cultural lines, ethnic and income lines. and it's been a succesful trademark in this era. the question is how do you address those concerns in a way that doesn't exacerbate the divisions instead of bring people together. >> you're on capitol hill and also traveling. what are you seeing in relation to things susan and peter have been talking about? in georgia, a candidate had a stressful week. >> in terms of herschel walker, for now the party seems to be standing with him. so are voters. they're willing to look past his faults. i think it's yet another example of many voters being willing to accept anything. you know, at one point in our races, the issue of candidate

quality was something that meant a lot. now you have candidates who deny elections, candidates who may have had past transgressions and yet voters are willing to look past that. >> in the case of the georgia race, it's not just a transgression. it's something that fundamentally disagrees with what his position is, if i understand it correctly, on access to abortion. >> absolutely. this is someone who has been staunchly anti-abortion, doesn't support abortions with exceptions, yet these reports have started to come out that at one point in time, he paid for an abortion for a girlfriend, perhaps, encouraged her to get an abortion on a second opportunity. and so, that didn't happen. this woman claims to be the mother of his child. again, cbs news has not been able to independently verify some of those claims. but it does raise questions about where he comes down on this issue. and this race is critical. i mean, this race could really decide control of the senate. and so this is kind of a make or break moment for his campaign. >> scott, you watched the

trials, prosecutions resulting from january 6, 2021 very closely, but you also keep a very close eye on the atmospherics around the capitol and the midterm elections itself. what is the sense of risk that members of congress seeking re-election feel they are under either at home or the capitol itself? >> significantly growing risk. in just a year's time, capitol police have investigated thousands of potential threats against members of congress. and then the justice department reveals that it has a task force that is also reviewing hundreds if not thousands of potential threats. and the political impact of this aside, and there may be a significant political impact to election denialism and questioning the integrity of elections, let's talk about the blocking and tackling of administering elections. it puts that at risk as welchcl .ke t thelectns administrator in lansing county, michigan, a purple county,

concerned about threats against her poll workers, concerned about recruiting poll workers, finding people to come in and want a piece of that. we know that some of the administrators of elections nationwide are trying to recruit law students, american bar association-related volunteers, somebody to come man the polls in this uniquely toxic environment. >> toxic environment, susan, does that feel like something that will be inevitable not only this midterm election, it's not going to go away, this toxicity, should we assume it will continue up to 2024, if not beyond? >> yeah. it's not just a matter of rhetoric. it's structural changes being made in our politics. you have trump white house reoriented the republican party and radicalized it. "the washington post" reported this week that 299 nominees, republican nominees for house, senate and major statewide posts are election deniers, including in some will be in key races

where they are determining the counting and the certification of votes going forwards. by the way, many of those republican nominees are in safe republican seats so they're now guaranteed to have essentially a wave of trumpian shock troops who have made election denialism a foundation of the republican party's new ideology. so, it's not just a matter of rhetoric. i think we're changing the structure of american politics in ways that are designed to exacerbate this ongoing crisis in american democracy. >> it's pretty clear, if you look at the spending patterns in some of the senate race, wisconsin, pennsylvania, dramatic examples of this, on the republican side more than half of the money spent on tv advertising is about crime. to what degree do you see that playing as a potentially pivotal issue in the midterms? >> well, it certainly is a republican talking point and an issue they want to put front and center. i was in wisconsin over the weekend and talked to senator johnson, who is going for his third term. he said he feels that should be a defining issue in this

election. on the flip side, though, in terms of his opponent, he has tried to paint him as someone who is soft on crime. but in terms of mandela barnes, his approach has really been making this abortion rights issue, which we have seen democrats time and again in a lot of these senate races really trying to bring that to the fore. as anthony pointed out earlier, each party has a different narrative. it's a matter of which one is going to rise to the top. >> peter, in your book with susan, do you deduce anything you think is of lasting and positive from the trump years? >> well, i think it's reinforced this conversation about what our democrat is and should be and forced us to look at the structure, as susan said, of our politics and of our system. i think what the concern is, we don't know where it's going to lead us. do we reaffirm our commitment to this system we created some 40 years ago or are we going to find ourselves lost? i think that's the big question heading into 2024. >> i mean, if the former

president were sitting here, he said i would improve the economy, make foreign policy stronger. do you think any of that has a validity based on the research that went into the book? a lot of voters say, i like donald trump because of what he accomplished. i like tax cuts or conservative supreme court justices, but the question is raised, at least in our book, goes beyond a specific republican/democrat, liberal/conservative ideological fight. it goes to the larger question of what we want to be as a country. that what makes trump unique. it's not about politics. it's not about whether health care or tax cuts. it's about whether you believe in the system we created. >> it's a time for uniqueness and larger questions, to be sure. peter baker, susan glasser, peter macfarlane, thank you very much. try febreze fade defy pl. it has built-in technology to digitally control how much scent is released to smell first day

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i still can't believe that i look like this. ♪oh♪ ♪then you take me by the hand♪ ♪i feel better again♪ ♪oh i feel better now♪ as russia's military suffers more setbacks in invasion of ukraine, president biden warned last week that russian president

vladimir putin is, quote, not joking, unquote, when he talks about using nuclear weapons. saying we face the prospect of nuclear armageddon unlike anything we have seen since the height of the cold war. for more on what's happening on the ground in ukraine, cbs news senior foreign correspondent charlie d'agata has more. >> reporter: in a serious escalation to the war here, security cameras captured the moment a massive explosion tore through the crimean bridge on saturday morning. russian officials blame the explosion on a truck bomb, calling it an act of terror. it comes on the back of a series of setbacks on the battlefields. ukrainian forces have been clawing back territory on multiple fronts in the south toward kherson and east in the donbas region, where we trad li. col ookt i we spoke with a battle. which weapons were important in this fight? artillery was very important, he

said. american weapons and, of course, the himars. the high mobility rocket systems that can strike targets deep behind military lines, but every inch retain in the very territory president putin has illegally annexed risks retaliation into the spectre of a nuclear response. in an interview with the bbc, president zelenskyy warns russia may be getting ready. >> they begin to prepare their society. that is very dangerous. >> reporter: once again this week the russian military showed a reckless disregard for human life. overnight, rockets rained down on a residential neighborhood in zaporizhzhia, leveling apartment blocks, killing more civilians. the latest in a series of strikes. earlier this week on a grand avenue in zaporizhzhia, we found firefighters still dousing a mountain of twisted metal and concrete. several hours after the rocket attack and the building is still

smoldering. this is no longer a rescue operation. and this is an up market neighborhood in the center of town. the more russian troops lose against ukrainian soldiers, the civilians. renewed shelling at the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has cut the main power lines there. engineers have had to rely on emergency diesel generators. president putin has signed a decree declaring it is now officially under russian ownership. >> charlie, thank you. we'll be back in a moment.

jim mansfield: my job was more important to me than my family, and i started drinking a lot, staying out of town. it took a toll on me. dr. charles stanley: you may be as low as the prodigal, but you are not hopelessly, helplessly lost if you will listen to what i'm about to say. jim: sitting on that couch, watching that sermon, something had happened to us. i'm talking about the joy and love in our hearts. i want more of that.

we turn now to america's economic challenges and to help us out, i want to bring in mohamed el erian, the chief economic adviser at financial services company allianz. he's also president of queens college in cambridge. he's here to join us from new york. so, this week was a very volatile week in the u.s. stock market.

volatility has been ever present, i would say, during this calendar year, but this week seemed really volatile. for our audience, break it down. what's going on? what's the source, if you can identify it, of that volatility. >>, so the main source of this volatility is changing perceptions of the federal reserve. we are in this incredible situation, major, where good news for the economy is bad news for the markets. and that's because the markets are worried that the federal reserve will tip us into recession by overreacting to strong economic news. >> every white house i've ever covered, and it's been more than one or two, says the markets isn't the economy. the economy is the economy. what markets do, markets are going to do. even so, volatility affects people's retirement their planning and sense of medium and long-term futures. how should people be looking at that? when they hear the president, as

you did on friday, talk about navigating this transition, what does that mean? >> so, first of there's volatility and there's unsettling volatility. volatility when things go up and down and on the whole you're better off over time. that's not what we've had this year. we've had unsettling volatility because we've had the stock market down by anything from 20% to 30%. we've had bonds, which are supposed to safeguard your investment, also down by about 15%. so, there's been nowhere to hide. that's why people feel insecure. that's why they look at their retirement plans with concern. the president is right. we are currently on what i think of as a bumpy journey to a better destination. and we need to navigate both the journey and get ready for the destination. there is a possibility that the federal reserve makes another mistake and that that bumpy

journey actually changes the destination. that's why the markets are on edge. >> is it your perspective that the federal reserve has already made a series of mistakes, either not acting fast enough or overreacting? >> so, it's made two big mistakes that i think are going to go down in the history books. one is mischaracterizing inflation as transitory. by that they meant it is temporary, it's reversible, don't worry about it. that was mistake number one. and then mistake number two, when they finally recognized that inflation was persistent and high, they didn't act. they didn't act in a meaningful way. as a result, we risk mistake number three, which is by not easing the foot off the accelerator. last year they are slamming on the brakes. this year which would tip us into recession. yes, unfortunately, this will go down as a big policy error by the federal reserve. >> continuing your metaphor, slamming on the brakes, does that mean it is impossible to

achieve the either literal or mythical soft landing? >> even chair powell has gone from looking for a soft landing to softish landing to now talking about pain and that is the problem. that is the cost of a federal reserve being late. not only does it have to overcome inflation, but it has to restore its credibility. yes, i fear that we risk a very high probability of a damaging recession that was totally avoidable, major. >> washington, d.c., is a hyperpolitical town, not a news bulletin. it tends to absorb information internationally, sometimes in personal ways. so, there's a lot of chatter this week that when opec plus decided and announced it was cutting production, that that was against president biden specifically. do you agree with that or do you think it's a broader opec plus declaration about the direction of the global economy? >> so, first, it does hurt the

u.s. we've seen oil prices go up above $90 a barrel. what does that mean? it means that inflation, which has been coming down, now risks going up again. so that is not good for us. however, that came as a surprise -- didn't come as a surprise to me. opec is looking to protect oil prices in the context of declining global demand. all three major areas in the world, china, europe and the u.s. are slowing much faster, which means less demand for oil. what does opec do? they cut back supply. this shouldn't have come as a big surprise. that's what they do. that's their history. it's certainly not good new foss are the u.s. economy. >> tying these things together, do you think higher gasoline prices inevitably mean higher inflation, making all the things we've discussed more complicated? do you have a consumer price index prediction for the near future? >> so, the next measure comes

out in a few days. that's going to be for september. headline inflation will probably come down to about 8%. but core inflation, what measures the drivers of inflation, how broad they are, is still going up. so, we still have an inflation issue. inflation will come down, major. the question is, does it come down with a slowdown in the economy or a major recession? that is the question that's being debated right now. it's not whether we'll have inflation coming down. we will. but it's the cost of that inflation coming down. >> is the jobs report this week a silver lining in all of this otherwise gloomy assessment? >> it certainly is. we created 253,000 jobs. that's a lot for this stage. we also reduced the unemployment rate to 3.5%. that's really low. that was one concern, which is that labor force participation, how many people are in the labor force, came down.

and that's not good news. and it talks to the importance of focusing on human capital. >> one last thing before i let you go. we have about 30 seconds. about two or three months ago it was common for people on the web to see stagflation headlines. we are not in a stagflation situation. >> we are. growth is coming down. inflation is still high. unfortunately, it's not time to eliminate that term yet. >> very good. mohamed el erian, we thank you for your time. we'll be right back.

well, that is it for us today. we want to thank you for watching. margaret will be back next week. for "face the nation," i'm major garrett. preston, cbs news, new

york. ♪ >> announcer: this is the "cbs overnight news." today ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy warned there will be repercussions after russia's deadly missile attack on civilians. overnight at least a dozen people were killed and several apartment buildings destroyed in the southeastern city of zaporizhzhia. zelenskyy's comments come on the same day russian president vladimir putin called a truck bomb attack on the one bridge linking russia to crimea a terrorist act. cbs's charlie d'agata is in ukraine with the latest. >> reporter: civilians in zaporizhzhia once again found themselves the target of russian