>> all right. senator dick durbin, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. appreciate it. >> thanks, chris. >> that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" begins "the rachel maddow show" begins right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thanks, my friend. >> you bet. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. we knew this day would come. we didn't not know exactly when. as recently as yesterday there are people paid to talk for a living that were assuring us this day would definitely not come today but it's come today. the time has, in fact, arrived. and my friends, we must now gather together to poof marco rubio. we started with 17, 17. 17 people all got in over the course of last spring and summer. nobody got out until september 11th when the first one we got to poof was rick perry. ten days later we got to poof scott walker. then we went almost another two months without being able to poof anyone until finally bye-bye, bobby jindal.

we got to poof lindsey graham. then between christmas and new year's, we were supposed to poof george pataki but it was between christmas and new year's, a lot of stuff going on and it was george pataki and honestly we kind of forgot to poof him. governor pataki, we owe it to you. poof. december 29th. then after iowa, at the start of february, in quick succession we poofed mike huckabee, rand paul, rick santorum. a week and a half after new hampshire, it was a conflagrations of poofing. we lost in quick succession, chris christie, carly fiorina, poof, and jim gilmore. poof. a week later after south carolina the bush family's long multigenerational winning streak ended in that state and we got to poof jeb bush. now we've arrived in the month

of march and the first week of march we pulled a little bit of a pataki on this show when i forgot to poof ben carson. no real reason i forgot to poof ben carson. every time i started thinking about it, my mind wandered. totally on me. earlier this month i forgot to poof ben carson, but he did quit. poof. then we were down to four. so the field of candidates that was so giant to begin with, we've had to poof so many of these people over the past few months to get down to this little group we've got left. you think we'd be used to it and it wouldn't be a big deal anymore but always feels like a big deal when somebody drops out of the race and now in particular when you're down to this tiny number of people still left in the race, it is kind of dramatic to lose one. it's also dramatic to lose people from the republican race right now, to keep poofing people off what started as a giant roster of candidates

because now we're starting to think seriously about the prospect that maybe the republican party will poof everybody off this list. that they will not just get down to one, they will get down to none. i mean, it is a fairly open discussion in some republican party circles right now about whether the republican party will add a new potential nominee to the mix at their convention in cleveland. somebody who's not been running in the race already for the past year. it's hard to believe you can't find one person you like out of 17 candidates, but they really might try to find the one republican who didn't actually find time to run for president this year and might give the nomination to that person instead because they don't like any of the 17. today former republican house speaker john boehner said in ohio that he would be happy to go with that kind of a plan. john boehner has just said that if none of the remaining candidates in the race get a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the convention this summer, he says none of those candidates should get the nomination. and he also says none of those candidates would get his vote.

he says at that point after just one ballot, he'd be happy to pick somebody altogether new and his pick would be the current house speaker, paul ryan. and if this line of reasoning sounds familiar, it's because paul ryan got the house speaker's job not too long ago after a similar dynamic emerged in the leadership of the republican party not in terms of the presidential candidate but in terms of who would be their leader in congress. the republican party needed a new speaker of the house after john boehner unexpectedly resigned last fall. dozens of possible candidates emerge from within the republican pear, literally there were tons of them. we tried to line them all up and pick them out like an eye chart at one point and it was very hard to do. even some potential house speak candidates, random outside republicans they thought could take over for john boehner were among people discussed as possible house speakers. and, yes, paul ryan is now saying, absolutely not, to the

prospect that the republican national convention might turn to him this summer. that they might turn to somebody completely outside the presidential contest thus far to save the party and step in, become a fresh new nominee unsullied by the primary process. yes, paul ryan is saying no to that now. remember, when the speaker's job was open in the republican party, he also said no to that job. he said no a thousand times in a thousand ways that he liked his current job, he absolutely did not want to be speaker of the house and would not be speaker of the house, but you know what, he's now speaker of the house. and so who knows? donald trump may end up being the republican nominee. john kasich or ted cruz might end up being the republican nominee. we may well end up poofing donald trump and john kasich and ted cruz off the list of candidates before this process is done. i mean, maybe the republican party really well have ended up considering all 17 of their potential declared candidates this year and maybe they will reject all of them.

but we're not there yet. and today it really is a big deal for this epic race on the republican side that it has now gone from four people to three people. so let's do it. you ready? say it with me now. senator rubio, three, two, one, poof. senator marco rubio is used to getting absolutely fawning national press coverage. good for him. people criticize him for getting this. it's a skill to get good press coverage. he's really good at getting good press coverage. i mean, his hometown press in florida doesn't treat him with nearly the same suck-up-itude as the national press does. the national press has serious suck-up-itude for marco rubio. the national press portrayed him almost literally as a messiah figure for his party. he's been the guy whose concession speeches were treated like victory speeches.

in this campaign he's the guy who was lauded in the press as not just a top-tier competitor but the likely nominee of the republican party this year even as real voters in state after state after state kept saying no, they did not want him over and over and over again. and then in his home state last night, marco rubio did not just lose by a lot, last night in his home state, this is not a typo. this is not us screwing up the graphic or somebody dropping their lipstick on the slide. this is the result last night in florida. marco rubio lost 66 out of 67 counties in the state. and so then last night he had to quit this presidential race. and so that brings us to today. which, of course, would end up being a very different kind of day for marco rubio than he was used to from the press. right? after a lifetime worth of positive national press crammed into these few short years he's had in national politics.

marco rubio today had to brace himself for the first full day of terrible press coverage he has ever had in this life. right? today was marco rubio political obituary day, but unlike a real obituary where people say nice things about you because you're gone, in a political obituary we're not really gone, you're just a failure. saying every bad thing about you, listing every bad thing you did in your life. this is one of the reasons you don't want to go into politics statistically speaking. right? this doesn't happen in every industry but for politicians they have what i've always thought of as salt in the wound day. day after losing day. right? it's the day after you have the worst public career humiliation of your life. if you're a big enough deal as a politician, after you have that terrible public humiliation and failure, you have to spend the next day reading all about how terribly you blew it and how you deserved it and --.

so marco rubio had to brace for that today. after quitting last night, that's what marco rubio knew he was going to have to do today. until he didn't have to do that at all. because apparently for marco rubio, there is yet one more gift from the gods of the national political media. yes, yes, this happened today before lunchtime. yes, thank you, president obama, thank you supreme court nomination process, thank you, gods and goddesses of limited news cycle attention spans and fortuitous timing. today the best day of supreme court nominee merrick garland's life just stepped on the tail of what was all set to be the worst day in the political life of marco rubio. i mean, guess what pushed the end of marco rubio's political career completely out of the news cycle today? woo-hoo! thank you. and for that, surely judge merrick garland should be able to count on a payback thank you

vote from marco rubio in the united states senate, right? maybe? fairly certain that will actually not happen although the rules of karma say that it should. we're in this interesting moment, though, now, because now we've got a supreme court nominee, not just a supreme court vacancy, not just a supreme court issue and a debate, now we've got a name. now we've got a person. we've got a record. we've got a resume. and we're going to be talking this hour with both dahlia lithwick about judge merrick garland and his prospects of becoming justice merrick garland. we're going to be talking about with this nomination means. this nomination happened today in the context of this red-hot political campaign that we're in right now. right? this unusually insane process we're having this year of trying to choose a successor to president obama. i mean, today, alone, we've got senator rubio dropping out of the race.

we've got the real prospect that marco rubio may go further than quitting the presidential race. he may actually quit his u.s. senate seat rather than return to it. part of the way senator rubio campaigned for the presidency was by talking openly about how much he hated the job of being a u.s. senator. brags about the fact that he basically never showses up for that job. trying to turn his worst voting record in the senate into some sort of political advantage because he hates the senate so much. he's been open about that. right? so there's the prospect that he will also quit the senate. that's out there today. we've also got former rubio supporters in the state of pennsylvania tonight dropping their legal challenges which could have potentially kept ohio governor john kasich off the presidential ballot in pennsylvania. there's some question about the signatures that john kasich's campaign filed to get governor kasich onto the pennsylvania ballot but those challenges to his eligibility, those are challenges that came from marco rubio supporters and those challenges have now been dropped in the wake of senator rubio quitting the race.

i mean, everybody thinks marco rubio's supporters and his donors and campaign infrastructure are all going to go to ted cruz but maybe this is little sign that john kasich could be in the running for some of that, too. who knows. i mean, john kasich certainly seems like he'd be a better bet than ted cruz when it comes to running against donald trump in forthcoming states like pennsylvania and maryland and connecticut and maybe wisconsin and new york and new jersey and delaware. maybe even utah which votes next week. wouldn't john kasich potentially run better than ted cruz against donald trump in those states? then simultaneously, there's also the fate of the stop donald trump effort within the republican party and the conservative movement. so not just the guys running against him, but the effort within the party to try to stop him. politico.com reports now that there will be yet another conservative summit in washington, d.c., tomorrow to, again, try to stop mr. trump's march to the nomination and who knows, maybe this one will do the trick.

these efforts within the republican party and within the conservative movement to try to stop donald trump, they did just get a big full-scale road test in the great state of florida where the $15 million spent just against donald trump in that one state in advance of last night's vote, that $15 million anti-trump dollars, $15 million, that positively dwarfs anything spent against any other candidate or for any other candidate in that state. and the result, we now know, of that massive concentrated sustained anti-donald trump onslaught in the state of florida was donald trump last night won 66 out of the 67 counties in the state of florida and polished off his earlier meal of the state's former republican governor with a tasty dessert of the state's messiah junior senator. so now we've got this nominee. this supreme court nominee. republicans in the senate say that judge merrick garland will

never get a hearing. let alone a vote. let alone confirmed as long as barack obama is still president of the united states. and everybody's entitled to say how they see things. everybody's entitled to make their own threats in politics. but for his part, president obama seems to think that picking this particular nominee is his best chance of getting around those political threats. and that is in part because of who judge merrick garland is but it is also in part because judge garland's nomination is happening now. judge garland's nomination is happening this year in this political environment with all this mishigas as the background political noise in the party. president obama seems to think in this time, in this place with the national politics we're having right now, merrick garland is the one key that will turn in this particular lock. is he right? joining us now is my friend, dahlia lithwick, senior editor at slate.

i'm glad you could be with us tonight. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> is merrick garland a liberal or a moderate? >> he's a liberal-moderate. somewhere between the two. he has a 19-year judicial record, rachel, so whatever he is, he's not a mystery and i think he's pretty much a obama kind of reach across the aisle consensus building, incremental, judicial humility moderate liberal guy. >> one of the other criteria touted about some of the other people said to be on the short list for this pick were they had been confirmed to their most recent federal judgeship with zero votes against them. that's true of the few other people on the short lists circulated in the media. that's not actually true of judge garland. there were more than 20 votes against him when he was confirmed to his current job as chief justice on the d.c. circuit court. what was that about and should

that be seen as relevant to his political viability? >> well, i don't think so. i mean, it was a very, very hotly contested confirmation and nomination, and it lagged for months and months and months. i think probably the most useful number is there are eight republicans who are sitting republicans now who did vote for him and i think not even the vote, rachel, but the rhetoric around him subsequently has been so interesting because no less a person than orrin hatch said very recently, you know, if obama wanted to be reasonable, he'd give us a moderate candidate like merrick garland. and so they talk about him as though he is a centrist person that they can confirm very recently talking about him that way, and then suddenly he's named and they're like, obama's just fake reasonable. so, you know, it's -- this is not just the vote, itself, but

the language around him which has been so supportive. he's such a beloved figure across the board. so many former solicitors general have come out and said, you know, this is your guy across the aisle and, yet, it doesn't matter what the vote was, it doesn't matter what they said about him, now that he's the pick, he is, you know, a pot smoking hippy liberal. >> the president's strategy here, the way you're laying that out seems very clear, right? this is somebody who might be the hardest person in the country for republican senators to say no to. particularly not republican senators in the abstract, but the republican senators currently in the united states senate and have to face this promise that they've all made that he's not going to get a hearing. that's obviously the take that -- that's the tact that the white house took with this choice. do you agree that was the right strategy to take? there's other ways to do it. you can pick somebody who can

really galvanize liberals to try to make this a general election issue, to try to help the democratic nominee by effectively putting the supreme court nominee on the ticket with hillary clinton or bernie sanders, you can approach it through some sort of bank shot where you elevate somebody because you want to put somebody else in their seat and can campaign in either of them. what do you think about the president's strategic choice here? >> i was a person not a week ago saying put up elizabeth warren, put deval patrick, put someone who's going to galvanize the base, get out the vote, who's basically going to be hillary's mini me vice president who just stumps for, you know, months saying give me a hearing, give me a hearing and make it somebody that the base is excited about. and even i think it's fair to say jane kelly, sri srinivasan, people on the list until the last second, even though they'd be called moderate centrists, you know, left, but certainly i think people who everybody could

have lived with, they would have at least had this sort of demographic appeal. you know, maybe he'd be putting up the first african-american woman, maybe he'd be putting up the first hindu. all that falls away when he makes a decision to put up not just a white guy from harvard, like we haven't had a million of those on this court, but a white guy from harvard who's 63, right, easily 12, 13 years older than a lot of the other people on this short list. i think the reason is exactly what you said. he just made the decision, rachel, he was going to use this, i think, to box in republicans. to force them, particularly republicans in contested races, in the senate, to go back and say i'm not voting for him, i'm not even meeting him, when he walks down the hall, i'm going to hide under my desk. no, no, he's not even real to me. i think it was an effort to do that, to sort of say, you live with the fact that i put up, you

know, an incredibly moderate reasonable white person who you lauded only recently and you won't even shake his hand. >> trying to push that resistance to the breaking point which will set a weird precedent if and when it doesn't break. dahlia lithwick senior editor at slate. i was looking forward to talking to you about this. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> we don't know what the president was thinking or what's going to happen next. we're going to talk to nina totenberg about this later in the hour. it's my sense the white house can't expect that merrick garland is going to end up on the supreme court at the end of this process. if a republican wins a presidential election, republicans in the senate definitely aren't going to hear him. if a democrat wins the presidential election, the democratic nominee will want his or her own nominee to put forward, right? maybe they'll pick the same person that president obama picked. more likely they'd pick their own.

i think the president does not expect merrick garland will end up on the court but the white house probably calculates if something goes crazy in this most unpredictable political seasons we're in, if merrick garland does get the vote, the country would be in safe hands. i think that's their calculation. that said, i'm completely making that up. we'll be right back.

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here's what republican presidential front-runner donald trump said today when he was asked if there is a republican convention this summer that is contested and the result of that contested convention is that he does not win the nomination. >> i think we'll win before getting to the convention, but i can tell you if we didn't and if we're 20 votes short or if we're -- if we're, you know, 100 short and we're at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400 because we're way ahead of everybody, i don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. i think it would be -- i think you'd have riots. i think you'd have riots.

>> it's one thing for other people to predict violence or even riots in a politician's campaign, it's another thing for the candidate, himself, to promise/threaten that and then not condemn that as a possibility. more on that next. stay with us.

okay, this is a little bit of a doozy and will not see this elsewhere. before we covered fistfights, kick the protester scrums at donald trump political events, back before donald trump made national presidential politics look like this in our country, it used to be a rare thing to see a punch thrown in major party national politics. it used to are be really rare. used to be newsworthy when there was a small punch, a shove even within the context of presidential campaigning. that is what happened last year when marco rubio's deputy campaign manager got into a

little physical skirmish at a republican conference in michigan. this happened in september. a bunch of the republican candidates and their campaign staffs were all hanging out on mackinaw island in my favorite state of michigan and something went wrong in a bar. and you can see here on this tape that we've looped here that one of these staffers landed a punch or shove or some kind a whack on or near the jawline of another guy attending that conference, so, you know, it's exciting. bar fight or bar punch or bar shove. or not that much of anything. but this happened. and the reason anybody knew it happened is because punching and shoving used to be rare in presidential politicking and because the two guys who were involved in this little altercation were both working were presidential campaigns. the puncher was the deputy campaign manager for marco rubio. the punchee, the guy on the receiving end of that whatever it was, he identified himself publicly after the incident as both the guy who got punched in that bar and as a high-level staffer for the rand paul campaign. which used to be a thing.

the punchee's name is a very memorable name. his name is john yob. john yob is a longtime republican operative. was national political operative for john mccain in 2008. he worked on my friend, rick snyder's gubernatorial campaign in michigan, worked for i am not a witch christine o'donnell and worked for the sharron angle that year. he's tried to carve out a niche for himself not just as a generic campaign guy but as a delegate guy. when rick santorum came in second in the republic cap presidential primary in 2012, john yob ran rick santorum's delegate operations and became his area of focus. john yob is an experienced political operative, a delegate guy, he's fashioned himself into being an expert on delegates and specifically on political conventions. last month he published this

book, "chaos: the outsider's guide to a contested republican national convention." timely, right? the book makes a prediction about the current republican primary. it says, "the only thing that is certain is that there will be chaos in cleveland." chaos in cleveland. you know, even if none of the rest of us are experts on this stuff, we can all do enough of the delegate math, ourselves, to know the only hope the republican party has of stopping donald trump from becoming the nominee is to try to maneuver these delegates he's earning across country as he wins state after state to somehow peel those delegates off donald trump and cobble together a majority of those delegates to support somebody else at the convention. now, that's not stealing. it's not illegal. it's not necessarily against the rules unless they decide to break the rules. but that sort of thing, that sort of process which i think is the only way donald trump doesn't end up the nominee, it's kind of a dark art.

right? it requires a sorcerer's knowledge of the rules and the rules for making the rules. it requires tons of preparation and organizing. it requires a real commitment to scheme effectively and efficiently out of the public idea and behind the scenes. and that is why we were very intrigued to see this former rand paul staffer, the whacked in the face on mackinaw island chaos at the convention delegate math master operative from michigan. we were very intrigued to see his name turn up at the top of this unexpected list. because it turns out that guy, john yob, the guy from michigan got himself a gig as a presidential delegate from the u.s. virgin islands. what? republicans in the virgin islands held their caucus last week and i remember reporting on it at the time seemed a little weird. we were like the virgin islands had their caucus. so far the result is that uncommitted one, how did that turn out? we knew there was something wrong. well, turns out what happened

there is john yob was the virgin island's top vote getter as a delegate and that's kind of weird. i mean, this whole thing is weird. i mean, most particularly just because a week before the caucus, election terribles in the virgin islands had declared john yob and his wife to be ineligible to even vote in the virgin islands. election officials in the virgin islands said he had not lived there long enough to qualify to vote there. they accused him of sneaking around and lying and telling two different stories to try to basically fraudulently get himself onto the voting rolls there even though they thought he had not lived there long enough to qualify. then at the last minute, literally the day of the caucus, a local judge said that john yob would be allowed to vote pending a court hearing later this month. the effect of that ruling was that he could also in addition to voting he could also stand for election as a delegate. later that day. the same day of the ruling. he did sand for election as a presidential delegate and won. he got the most votes of anybody.

he's going to head to cleveland as a head of a slate of undeclared delegates from the virgin islands who can be wooed and courted and fought over in cleveland. not to mention things like going to the rules committee meetings and all the other stuff that needs to happen in order to organize this plot if somebody other than donald trump is going to get the nomination. now, i should tell you john yob is very much qualified for the delegate job, finalized a deal on a house in the virgin islands back in august, he said he spent time there on and off since 2009. he said his kids are now going to school there. but if you want a little taste of what we've got in store as a nation, as operatives and guys with resumes like this, insinuate themselves into the delegate process for that blessed convention, just look at this. just look at this because dark political arts operative john yob getting himself from michigan to the virgin islands and taking over that slate in the virgin islands, opened a

window into the interparty warfare we've seen in quite some time. here's what i mean. the vice chair of the virgin island republicans, we called him for comment on this. he told us this week he voted for john yob. he said john yob's experience and expertise is needed at the national convention. that's the vice chair. the chairman on the other hand, when contacted him for a quote, he volunteered to us his vice chairman is, i quote, "a convicted felon, a moron, a compulsive liar" and "a nazi sympathizer." excuse me? not like we asked him what do you think of your vice chair? he volunteered this to us. oh, really? tell me more. the chairman of the republican party in the virginal islands then told us this. "i want nothing to do with that nazi." and to be clear by "that nazi" he means the vice chairman of the republican party in the virgin islands.

he's the chairman. virgin island republicans, i'm in love with you. it turns out there's for. at this point, once you heard that you have to call back. time for another quote. we called him back and the vice chairman told us, okay, it is true that he's a felon on a count of federal fraud involving long-distance phone service in the '90s? the vice chairman told us, the chairman's right, "i am a convict." the nazi part, he says, "that is rubbish." let me mention once again this is the chairman and vice chairman of the republican party in that small place. in the place where the guy who literally wrote the book on how to use the delegate process in chaos to game the republican national convention this year to your own advantage, he just moved to their little islands in the deep caribbean and took over

their slate of delegates to cleveland as an uncommitted delegate. we know what chaos at political conventions looks like. it's not like we've never seen it before in our country. but this year, we are four months out from cleveland and front-runner donald trump today promised riots at the cleveland convention if he doesn't get the nomination. and the remaining candidates have all hired slates of these sorcerers who are supposed to be skilled at delegate deceit and trickery and hiding as double agents. at least one of those kind of operatives has taken over one territory slate of delegates as that party, itself, melts down back at home amid allegations of who's a nazi, who's a felon, whether it's okay to be one but not both and still be running that party. we have seen chaos at conventions before. this year's chaos is well planned, it turns out, in advance. ....for just $9.99

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here's something to watch for ahead of time. this is going to be something you need to put on your calendar for tomorrow morning. here's the context, though. let's say republican governor rick snyder of michigan quits, say he resigns or the recall effort against governor snyder succeeds, either succeeds in november and gets turf out of office or the recall effort spooks him enough he comes up with some reason to quit before the end of his term. either way, let's just say in the wake of the flint, michigan, lead poisoning crisis his administration caused, let's say

rick snyder is out. in that case, who becomes the governor once rick snyder is gone? this case turns out to be an easy answer. the question is the state's lieutenant governor. not all states have lieutenant governors. in states that do have one, the main job of the lieutenant governor is to stand around and be ready to take over if the governor's got to go for some reason. in michigan, they do have that job. the new governor if and when rick snyder resigns will be this guy. if rick snyder is out in michigan, this guy will move up from lieutenant governor to governor. got it. here's the harder question, though. if that guy moves up from lieutenant governor to governor, who's the new lieutenant governor? that turns out to be a good question and a hard one to answer. but it's one that michigan started trying to answer today. today, two separate bills were filed in the michigan legislature to try to sort out that part of the state's law in the event that that manmade disaster in flint means that rick snyder doesn't make it to the end of his term.

lieutenant governor would move into rick snyder's job. michigan legislators are looking to name a new lieutenant governor if that comes to pass. listen, make rick snyder will never quit. maybe the recall against governor snyder won't succeed or rattle him. maybe this a stunt by michigan democrats in the legislature today. those bills did get filed today. here's the point for your calendar tomorrow because tomorrow is the day when rick snyder is going to be on capitol hill in washington, d.c., testifying under oath about what he did to flint. that testimony is due to start tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. and by the way, the lieutenant governor's name is brian calley, c-a-l-l-e-y. everybody's learning to spell it now. c-a-l-l-e-y. watch this space. and not enough time in my kitchen. (announcer) need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job

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i'm a crier. movies. music. particularly live music. good commercials. bad commercials. well-crafted tweet. doesn't really matter. if it works, it works. i have leaky waterworks. i cry all the time. as a crier, i'm more than sympathetic, i'm empathetic about crying in public. even by elected officials, even by sports hero -- by anyone, particularly when it is tears of joy, right? you know, years of hard work, hoping and planning, it all pays off. there's that release.

there's that rush of emotion. today we got one of those moments in an unexpected context. and for cryers everywhere, i think i can say that that is a good thing in and of itself. but that story is next. stay with us.

thank you, mr. president. this is the greatest honor of my life. other than leann agreeing to marry me 28 years ago. there's another caveat, the birth of our daughters, jesse and becky. fidelity to the constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life. and it is the hallmark of the kind of judge i have tried to be for the past 18 years. if the senate sees fit to confirm me to the position for which i've been nominated today, i promise to continue on that course.

>> that was judge merrick garland speaking this morning at the white house not unafraid to show some emotion as he was nominated to the united states supreme court by president obama. and this is usually the point where somebody yells, "go" then we start learning all sorts of things about judge garland. generally from members of congress who plan on opposing his appointment and outside interest groups who are intent on opposing his appointment. this is when people start digging through his history, reading this history of decisions and public statements, favorite music and sports teams, everything in his life that could potentially be seen as objectionable by anyone. anyone who plans on opposing him lines up behind whatever oppo gets kicked up and thought of as the most resonant at that moment. and as distasteful as that might be, there's nothing inherently wrong with that adversarial process. sometimes there are disqualifying occurrences in a judge's background that might have been missed by the vet, right? or at least there are some questions that need answering.

something is raised by all these people who have oppose that judge, hasn't come up among the people who support him. that's why we have hearings for a position like supreme court justice. that's not really the process that's under way right now, though, in the case of judge merrick garland. and that's because as of right now the republican-controlled senate does not plan on even having a hearing on his nomination no matter what they like or do not like about him. and that is basically unprecedented. joining us now to talk about judge garland is nina totenberg. thanks for being here. nice to see you again. >> nice to see you. >> you reported earlier today that republicans had essentially suggested judge garland as a nominee to the white house by saying even though they don't hold hearings on him now, they might after the presidential election in the lame duck session. can you explain that? >> well, i don't think it was quite an overt suggestion. i was told by democrats and

republicans this was a back channel to the white house that said, look, if you make it garland, we're not going to give him a hearing, either. in the lame duck session after the presidential election, if your side wins, we'll get him confirmed. and that comports with everything we know about merrick garland's relationships. he has friends everywhere along the aisle, not just across the aisle. i talked to nothing but conservative judges today who disagree with him on many things but who love him and respect him and say that he respects them, that as a chief judge, he is the model judge, the person who makes sure that everybody's view is heard. so there are a lot of people in this town who love him. even people -- you know, the things that he said in 1997 when

merrick garland's nomination was on the floor of the sunset you would hope that anybody would say about your nominee and he's the best the republicans are going to get. >> well on that -- i guess on the politics of this, the part of it that i don't get, the part of it that i don't understand or maybe i'm just naive, but i feel like if a republican wins the presidential election and that's the kind of lame duck that we're in, then i'm assuming all bets are off. >> all bets are off. >> they're going to wait until a republican president comes in to name the nominee. we expect the obama white house to let the new democratic president elect make her own selection at that point, i'm saying her in case it's secretary clinton. >> this president has very distinct views about the role of the judiciary, which he wrote about in his book and it is not

a super liberal viewpoint, it's defer to the legislation and defer to the executive branch as much as you possibly can, that the courts are the courts of a last resort. i don't think a nominee of president obama's would be the same as the nominee of a president clinton or lord knows of a president sanders and i think that he thinks this is his nomination. he's a politician. he's -- some people may think he's boxed in the republicans this way, but i also think it komports with who he is. merrick garland was the runner up before. >> legal affairs correspondent for national public radio. if the democratic nominee wins in november and president obama still has merrick garland hanging out there as a nominee , that's going to be an

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so last night was an excellent night for hillary clinton. it looks like she went five for five in last night's primaries, barring a recount in missouri, which stranger things have happened, but with that five state sweep last night that was the best night so far.

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today we got a pause in the democratic campaign for president. neither hillary clinton or bernie sanders did any campaign trail events. senator sanders huddled with his family in arizona after a bruising primary night. even though there were no public events today for either candidate doesn't mean there wasn't news because today the sanders' campaign advisers tried to recast the race. they explained how they plan to erase a widening delegate gap which stands at over 700 delegates if you count the super delegates. the they are the elected officials who can support whoever they want regardless of how people vote in their state. sanders have railed against the idea of the super delegates. they've got a campaign to get

rid of super delegates that's got close to 200,000 signatures, but now it turns out the sanders' campaign may need the super delegates. it turns out their plan to get the nomination may turn to pla i the sprz. he said the it will take a more formal pitch to current clinton super delegates urging them to switch. the reason the super delegates are supposed to think about switching to senator sanders is because senator sanders is about to start winning. they are pointing to six contests next week, five of them caucuses where the sanders campaign has fared well. there's a primary in arizona and idaho, utah hawaii. they believe they can win those six states. they believe it will get more favorable after that. they say next week's contests will reshape the race and result in clinton super delegates having second thoughts. interestingly the clinton

campaign is playing along with the first part of that. a memo today says senator sanders is poised to have a stretch of favorable states including a caucus next week that he's likely to win. whether that results in super delegate switching, i doubt the clinton campaign would concede that. team clinton says, this seems like the tactics of a campaign that has but given up on winning the nomination through pledged delegates. sanders' campaign has accompany resources at their disposal. they say they see green pasture ahead. i don't know if green pastures lie ahead, but the sanders campaign has now cast a view of how they think they get to the nomination that is very different than the way they were

talking about getting there before and that raises expectations of how they're going to do in every single contest next week. "first look" is up next. it's st. patrick's day. right now, donald trump warns there could be riots if he does not get the gop nomination. meanwhile, the republican led senate doubles down on a pledge to block president obama's supreme court pick. nike may be changing the way we wear shoes forever. plus, old blue eyes' son frank sinatra jr. has died. and president obama reveals his bracket busters and so much more. "first look" starts now. well, hello. i'm betty nguyen. president obama has picked merrick garland as his next supreme court justice. h