podcast today. we have a new episode of why is this happening every tuesday. today's episode features a very clarifying walk through war in yemen and what we are doing to support the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. that's all for this evening. good evening, rachel. >> good evening. thanks to you at home for joining thus hour. happy to have you with us. i hope you had the day off. i hope you are attended, rested and ready, because back at school. stay day one. former secretary of state, former senator, former democratic nominee, john kerry is here tonight on this show for the interview. he will be here live onset with me. i am very excited about that. it is always exciting. it is always and almost intimidating privilege to have the opportunity to ask questions of somebody who has been a presidential nominee from a major party, let alone somebody

like secretary kerry who was also an immediate past secretary of state, let alone one with 28 years of experience in the u.s. senate. so it is always exciting to have the chance to talk with, to ask questions of someone with that kind of experience. but after a day in the news like today, man, take your pick of the number of things would you like to talk to somebody like john kerry about. he'll be joining us in a moment. even if you start with the small stuff today, today ended up, what would usually be like relative small bore news, right? that an indicted sitting congressman and his wife had to appear in federal court today in california to face a federal judge. the judge will be hearing a massive corruption case against that sitting congressman. today was a hearing ahead of that trial. so we've seen members of congress indicted before in this country. part of the reason this duncan hunter in court today story ends

up being a big national news story with ongoing ramifications is because we've never before had a president react to an indictment of a sitting member of congress the way this president is reacting right now. president trump this weekend saying publicly that the attorney general was wrong to have allowed the prosecution of that congressman and another one recently indicted specifically because both those indicted members of congress are republicans. the president making the argument that the republican party might lose those two seats in the upcoming mid-term elections and therefore the attorney general shouldn't have allowed the prosecutions to go forward. there's all sorts of norms and policies and supposed third rails, right? in politics and law enforcement that are all designed to avoid even the appearance the criminal law and the courts have become a tool of one party or the other, or they're being used by the administration and power to go after political enemies.

there are all these norms and rules and policies about avoiding the appearance, avoiding creating even a minor suspicion that law enforcement might be unfairly inflected in that way. this president is just flat out advocating, yep, that's the way it should be. which sort of renders quaint any other comparatively delicate nixonian shadings in the past. this president just overtly argues that law enforcement ought to be used to punish his political enemies and reward his political supporters. today also brought news of a new bob woodward book about the current president and his white house. and bob woodward has written long revealing books on eight modern presidents. so you might think we've gotten used to what it means a presidency to have the next bob woodward book come out about the serving president. but if today's advance reports

on the content of the latest woodward book are to be believed, it seems like this latest bob woodward book is going to be weighed different than all the others. this sort of seems like this is maybe the kind of science fiction bob woodward book, or at least the other worldly bob woodward book in which there aren't normal things going wrong in the white house. in this white house, the u.s. military is bluntly ignoring and disobeying orders from the u.s. president. in this white house, senior advisers steal documents off the president's desk on prevent him seeing those documents or god forbid signing them. and about the war in afghanistan saying, you should be killing guys. you don't need strategy to kill people. and this white house, this president has said by his defense secretary to be quote, acting like and having the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader.

in this presidency, the chief of staff is reported to have said about the president, he is an idiot. it is pointless to convince him of anything. we are in crazy town. i do not even know why any of russ here. and this president's potential testimony to the white house counsel saying he was elected if part because of collusion. that apparently produced a january practice session in which the president and his lawyers on the russia scandal gamed out how the president might answer questions posed by the special counsel's office in an interview. this is from the "washington post" which obtained an advance copy of woodward's book and published an article about it today. quote, john dowd was convinced that president trump would commit perjury if he talked on special counsel robert s. mueller. on january 27th, the president's then personal attorney staged a practice session to try to make

his point. in the white house, he peppered him with questions the russia investigation. provoking stumbles, contradictions and lies until president eventually lost his cool. now, fast forward six weeks or so, and according to bob woodward, at least according to the "washington post's" account of the book, on march 5th, john dowd and jay sekulow met with the special counsel himself and the deputy james quarles. there upon dowd and sekulow reenacted trump's january practice session. dowd then explained to mueller and quarles why he was trying on keep the president from testifying. quote, i am not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. and you publish that transcript because everything leaks in washington and the guys overseas, i think the implication is leaders overseas, are going to say, i told you he was an idiot.

i told you he was a gd dumb bell. what are we dealing with this idiot before? and em, i understand. later that month the president's lawyer reportedly told the president, do not testify. it is peeth or an orange jump suit. it is hard to imagine the president in an orange jump suit. for a lot of reasons some of the aesthetic, some more substantive. if you want to understand what happened 28 the utter chaos in washington, brought about in that senate committee room by both protesters and senate democrats trying to delay or stop this particular president from making a nomination to the supreme court right now, it is worth being cognizant of the fact this president is in a legal situation unlike any other president who was in the position to be nominating someone to the supreme court. the orange jump suit concern is real. the president's own legal

jeopardy is barreling toward a finale that will almost assuredly rocket through the federal courts and there by almost assuredly get to the supreme court. this president is an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case that has been brought against his personal lawyer and has already resulted in eight guilty felony pleas. that same long time personal lawyer swore in open court under oath that it was the president himself who ordered him to commit multiple felonies during course of the presidential campaign. the president's first national security adviser, his deputy campaign chair, a campaign foreign policy adviser, have all pled guilty already to federal felony charges in conjunction with this investigation. we're waiting a sentencing at the end of this week for the campaign adviser who has pled guilty. the injure selection process started today for a second federal jury that will hear additional felony charges against president's campaign chair who was already just found guilty on eight felony counts and who is about to go on trial

for another seven felony counts. the president's white house counsel has reportedly given over 30 hours of interviews and he's just announced he is leaving the administration. the cfo of the president's business, an executive who has been with the president for decades and who worked for the president's father before him. the executive who has apparently authorized every payment ever went through president's business or charitable foundation, the executive who reportedly filled out at least some of the president's tax returns, he has been granted immunity in exchange for cooperation. as has the head of the "national enquirer" which they said participated in the president's illegal hush money schemes which have now been charged as federal campaign finance felonies. also granted immunity, this convicted pedophile who most recently was the business partner of a major trump donor and a high ranging republican party official who is now

reportedly under the investigation for influence peddling. a federal grand jury in washington this week is continuing to hear testimony that appears to be connected to the president's long time political consultan, roger stone, who is now pleading publicly for help paying his legal bills. he says he's quite sure that he is the next one to be indicted and soon. yes, so it's not like the president has anything to worry about. no chance anything related to this president will end up in the courts any time soon, right? "the new york times" reports that the special counsel's office is now negotiating in writing with the president's current legal team about the manner in which they expect to be taking testimony from the president himself in this scandal. and so yeah. you might expect a little controversy. a little turbulence when a president personally facing this amount of legal jeopardy tries to install in this context a new justice on the supreme court.

>> i believe you've repeatedly and enthusiastically embraced an interpretation of presidential power so expansive it could result in a dangerously unaccountable president at the very time when we are most in need of checks and balances. >> you are the nominee of president donald john trump. this is a president who has shown us consistently that he is could not temptuous of the rule of law and pits president who has decided that you are his man. you've taken the unorthodox position that presidents should not be burdened with a criminal or civil investigation while in office. this is, now we have a president who has declared in the last 24 hours that the department of justice shouldn't prosecute republicans. it is alice in wonderland.

i find it difficult to imagine that your views on this subject escaped the attention of president trump who seems increasingly fixated on his own ballooning legal jeopardy. >> senator leahy is talking about when he says the unorthodox positions of supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh, that the supreme court shouldn't be burdened while in office. what he is saying is true about brett kavanaugh. republicans have tried to create an image of brett kavanaugh as a generic conservative pick for the supreme court. but he does swing really, really wide on, of course, the purely hypothetical issue of a president someday, who knows, maybe, somehow, finding himself or herself in legal jeopardy. he swings really wide on that issue. he does not come across as a cookie cutter conservative

republican nominee, on that issue in particular. on that one, he's an outlier. even among conservatives. brett kavanaugh writing in 2009 we should not burden a sitting president with civil suits, criminal cases or prosecutions. the president's job is difficult enough. the country loses when he is distracted. quote, even the lesser burdens of a criminal investigation including preparing for questioning by criminal investigators are time could not sxooming distracting. like civil suits, criminal investigations take the president's focus away from his or her responsibility's to the people and the president concerned about an ongoing criminal investigation is almost inevitably going to do a worse job as president. the indictment and trial of a sitting president would crim the federal government. such an outcome would ill serve the public interest. yes, it is decisive vote to make

abortion illegal. at northeast large swaths of the country by overturning roe versus wade. brett kavanaugh is expected to reveal secret money in political campaigns. a potentially decisive vote a number of issues of racial justice including his enthusiastic hostility to affirmative action and i could keep going. the basic idea is clear and republicans see all of those as the plus side for brett kavanaugh. that's why they want to confirm him. but there are a million jls like that they could have picked. a million judges who have all those same positions on those issues who would actually be more confirmable than brett kavanaugh for this seat on the supreme court. a million conservative judges throughout who don't have gazillions of pages of documents from their five years serving in the george w. bush white house dealing with the most controversial issues of that administration. documents which republicans will

have to bend over backwards to conceal from scrutiny. thus breaking all their own precedents. the top republican in the senate, mitch mcconnell, is said to have warned the white house specifically against picking kavanaugh because he might be difficult on confirm, specifically because of his super long paper trail that republicans didn't know how they would contend with. kavanaugh is not the easiest pick for them. he was first nominated for a federal judgeship in 2003. it took three years to confirm him because he was seen as so controversial and so partisan. when he was finally confirmed, there is strong evidence that he misled the senate at his confirmation hearings and told them something that was not true when they were trying confirm him for that last job. republicans could have chosen a bunch of different judges when it comes to, he will vote as a

right wing justice. but out of all the judges this president could have picked, this president picked the one, the only judge we know of to have been on the president's supposed list of contend here's had gone out of his way in a public setting to say the supreme court's unanimous ruling in u.s. v. nixon might have been wrongly decided. the only nominee who has sketched out a truly unique even to the point of being strange view of a president's susceptible to serious criminal investigations. brett kavanaugh is the only one out there that we know of that says a president shouldn't even be questioned, let alone indicted or prosecuted. so yes, it is a little on the nose that this particular nominee was chosen by a president who is himself the subt of serious investigation right now while kavanaugh's proceedings are underway. and now the senators from the president's party appear ready to pull out all the stops to get

this confirmed before the mid-term elections in november that will decide the control of congress. the president signaled in an interview with bloomberg news, as soon as the elections are over, he will move to fire the attorney general jeff sessions. after the mid-term election we know from a tape we obtained of devin nunez, and kathy mcmorris rodgers, we know from the tape we obtained of them speaking at a fund-raiser, that the house republican plan after the mid-term elections is also to impeach and try to remove from office the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who oversees the mueller investigation and he will continue to oversee it unless and until jeff sessions is replaced in office which the president says will happen right after the mid-terms. in order to rush through kavanaugh's nomination before the mid-term elections, before the mid-term elections take place and the white house and

congress, the republicans in the senate are trying to ram through this as quickly as possible. and part of reason, part of the way they're doing is it by not allowing a review of kavanaugh's record. if you saw the hearing today, you saw democrats complaining about not having the paperwork. it is being held from the public. it is an unprecedent way. to not have records of the time in public service, revealed and made available to the sxhoo he the public so they can stret nomination. rather than allowing them to release the records, republicans instead, they're really trying to get away with this brand new system. they have mcgyver'd up for considering the paper trail as fast as possible. but definitely before the

election. this thing that they have invented. this system they have invented, the republican plan which is why democrats went so nuts today. the records will be reviewed by an old friend of his. fellow republican activist lawyer from the bush administration. a man named bill burke. who at the same time is representing steve bannon, former white house chief of staff reince priebus and don mcgahn in the investigation. so bill burck is rest representing three of them and assess gate keep order what documents from brett kavanaugh's past will be allowed to be seen by the committee before kavanaugh is put on the supreme court. so no. things did not look normal today at this committee hearing in

washington. and 70 people were arrested at this hearing today. and they couldn't get 30 seconds boo the hearing today before it all started the fall apart and it was hours delayed and we've never seen confirmation hearing quite like this. but there's a reason for that. we've never had a nominee like. this it is clear they went out of their way to find this particular nominee and he is trying, and the president is attempting to put him on the court at a time the president's own legal jeopardy sets him apart from anyone else. so there's a reason why things went a little nuts today. we have more ahead including my interview with john kerry. stay with us. y interview with john kerry. stay with us and we've grown substantially. so i switched to the spark cash card from capital one. i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy. and last year, i earned $36,000 in cash back. that's right, $36,000. which i used to offer health insurance to my employees.

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most people with commercial insurance pay nothing out of pocket. talk to your doctor and visit botoxchronicmigraine.com to enroll. . tonight is primary night in the great state of massachusetts which is where i live. and there has been another upset in a serving member of congress is going to lose his seat. we have seen a number of upsets in democratic primaries this year. unseating a very senior house democrat in new york. andrew gillum winning an upset

in the florida democratic gubernatorial primary. tonight, pressley has defeated michael capuano in massachusetts. this is a big upset. he is a ten-term incumbent. he outraised her 2-1. she is the first woman of color elected to the boston city council. she secured support from the massachusetts leading democrats including the state attorney general who was seen as a real rising star. she has pulled this off tonight. as you can see, only 13% in. this is moments ago.

>> over the time that you've been supportive of us, and this is not the side we wanted to be on. clearly the district wanted a lot of change. jeff sanchez lost tonight. i don't blame them of i'm just as upset as they are. but so be it. this is the way life goes. i will tell you that i have been honored all my life to be your friends. to have you supporting us and for all the work you've done. i will tell you that in this campaign, like every campaign, we've done everything we could do to get this thing done. today was no exception. the last eight months, most of you who have been working hard for us, and i will tell you that i'm sorry it didn't work out. this is life. this is okay. america is going to be okay.

ayanna pressley will be a good congresswoman and massachusetts will be well served. with that i'll say thank you all, to all of you. >> that's the sound of a ten-term incumbent member of congress conceding after a shocking win tonight in the democratic primary by boston city counsellor ayanna pressley. if she wins the seat in november, she will be the first african-american from massachusetts to ever serve in the house of representatives. primary night, you never know when it will be very exciting and take on unexpected terms. we'll be right back. stay with us. we'll be right back. stay with us as their spokesperson because apparently, i'm highly likable. see, they know it's confusing. i literally have no idea what i'm getting, dennis quaid. that's why they're making it simple, man in cafe. and more affordable. thank you, dennis quaid. you're welcome. that's a prop apple. i'd tell you more, but i only have 30 seconds. so here's a dramatic shot of their tagline

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finally you come before us by a president nailed in open court as criminal activity and the subject of ongoing criminal investigation. you displayed expansive views on executive immunity from the law. if you are in that seat, sir, because the white house has big expectations that you will protect the president from the due process of law, that should give every senator pause. >> joining us now, the legal correspondent is that senior editor, thank you 57 for being with us. >> thank you. >> democrats opened these hearings with an unexpected show of force. they did everything they could to try to get these hearings delayed. to get them knocked off course. things did get delayed by a couple of hours. what do you make of it? >> i've seen six of these now.

supreme court hearings. it was like nothing i had ever seen before. the protesters, somebody being dragged out of the chamber. chuck grassley really seemingly discombobulated by the rudeness and then watching the dems work together in a very concerted, we won't stand for this, after which they stood for it, to be clear, but a very concerted effort to say you can't drop 42,000 pages on us at 5:00 and expect us to be prepared. it was really different from anything, including gorsuch. >> is there anything democrats could be doing that they're not yet doing to try to stop the nomination? >> there was some talk, now you get up and walk out of the room. now is a good time to make this be over. i think they're a little caught on the seam of, we don't want to be here and we're furious but since we're here we'll little gait it to the end. so i think they september a

mixed message. it seemed this relentless focus the democrats that we cannot know from seeing only 10% of the documents, what this man is all about. how do you expect us to do this? it will be salient the american public or it's not. the protesters were not upset about the documents. they're upset about abortion and the affordable care act. so it is a little risk to focus this but they worked together and that was pretty new. >> they're not necessarily trying to persuade the american public on the documents issue. they're trying to persuade a republican or two to have a little crisis of confidence. maybe a little crisis of conscience about trying to confirm this nominee in a way that no other nominee has been confirmed. the republicans' own precedent on what sort of documents you get from a nominee is the thing they're violating with this. and it seems the democrats trying to pry off one republican, two republicans who think they shouldn't do this.

this is the wrong way forward. >> and it was so important that they're trying to make the point you made earlier. this is just not normal. this president is not normal. this president should not get to fick person who will be the arbiter of the future of the comey dismissal or the future of whether he violated campaign finance rules. and i think trying to make the point over and over again. this is not happening in a vacuum. this president is picking the person who will determine whether this president stays in office. i think in a weird sense, the funny turns were senators like john flake and others who said, i feel a little hingy about the president's tweets from yesterday. but i'm still going to pretend it's not happening. so in a sense the other conversation that was happening, are we going to talk about trump or not talk about trump? if we're going to talk about trump, we would like senator flake and sass to stop telling us that they sure wish the senate could do something.

>> and talking about the importance of bravery in the face of challenges of the constitutional order. tomorrow it starts at 9:30. legal correspondent, senior edit editor, thank you very much. a lot to get to this very busy night. john kerry joins us for the interview next. stay with us. the interview next stay with us ♪ for millions of baby boomers there's a virus out there. a virus that's serious, like hiv, but it hasn't been talked about much. a virus that's been almost forgotten.

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uby making it easy to verifye you hyour car and driver.ome, uber is moving in a new direction. forward. this was february 1988. ronald reagan was president. his vice president george h.w. bush would become the nominee to try to succeed him later that year. but there was a scandal that was dragging around the reagan white house at the time. it was the first big presidential scandal after watergate that raised the prospect of potential impeachment of the president. it was the biggest scandal since watergate but it was also nothing like watergate. in watergate, nobody ever had to testify with a bag over his head. literally, a bag over his head.

watch. >> -- used to shore up -- >> did you personally play a role in some of the transfer of that money? >> yes, i did. >> the revelations that he paid panama's general noriega more than $320 million to help drug smugglers. that noriega and other officials supplied him with the names of undercover american narcotics agents. the big name banks in new york and elsewhere quoted rodriguez and picked him up in limousines in hopes of laundering accounts with the drug money. >> they're no fools. that gives you a tremendous insight into how sophisticated they are. i'm doing 43 years in jail. they paid fines when they get caught. >> rodriguez testified under oath without immunity, without cutting any deals with the feds. some observers wonder, as a

convict felon, can he be trusted? they wonder about the credibility of other witnesses. this witness was noriega's personal pilot but also a drug smuggler and a gun runner. this witness is serving 30 years for drug peddle. >> he doubts they have perjured themselves. >> witness after witness has corroborated the money laundering, corroborated the net work, corroborated the names. >> senator john kerry in 1988, before he ran for president, before he became secretary of state. we saw him there leading the investigation, part of which became the iran contra scandal. specifically in that sub committee there, he is following the money behind that scandal through the drug proceeds and the money laundering, right up to the banks that made the whole thing happen. and because nothing and no one in politics and our history ever really goes away, here's how that worked out. the bank doing the moneyy laundering was a super well connected bank called bcci. john kerry and his investigation figured that out. but then what? who will do anything about this

crooked bank? well, here's how kerry explains it in his new book which is called every day is extra just out today. he says, it was impossible, let alone wrong to sweep what we discovered under the rug. the department of justice didn't care so we brought our evidence to new york district attorney robert morningentha un. this is why you hear about financial crimes is that banking crimes, new york prosecutors have jurisdictiojurisdiction, e international jurisdiction because business have to run through new york and wall street. so here's kerry again, he shared our alarm and succeeded in convincing the grand jury on fraud and bribery charges. thankfully the department of justice soon had a new head of its criminal division. my st. paul's classmate, a vietnam veteran and a diligent

law enforcement professional named robert mueller. our sub committee's two staffers had exposed the perfidy of bcci. regulators had seized the bank. bcci was dead. john kerry killed off the world's sleaziest bank with help from robert mueller and new york prosecutors. that came out of him starting the investigation that led to the iran-contra scandal. that came out of his decades of service in the senate where he served 28 years. he is a combat veteran who was awarded the silver star, the bronds star and three that you are will hearts. medals and injuries for which he was impugned and mocked by the republican party when he ran in 2004 as the nominee against george w. bush. in 2008 he declined to run again himself. he endorsed barack obama for president in 2008. and then in obama's second term, john kerry became secretary of

state. the paris climate accord, the iran nuclear deal, destruction of serious chemical weapons, the normalizing of relations with cuba. john kerry had a busy, busy time as secretary of state. and now he's facing questions with his new book out about whether he might run again himself to try to unseat this new president who among other things sees john kerry's list of accomplishments of his most urgent things he wants to do. joining us now, john kerry. the long time senator, the new book is called every day is extra. thank you for being here. >> i'm happy to be here. thank you. thank you. for your diligent prosecution of the truth. >> that's nice of you to say. >> i want to talk to you about the book. i have to ask you about breaking news we just had moments ago. ayanna pressley just unseated ten-term massachusetts

congressman michael capuano in a democratic primary tonight. ten-terms, 20 years definitely ayanna pressley at one point work for you? >> she work for me for a long time. she worked me until she left to run in the city council. >> what is your reaction to this? >> well, i'm excited for her. i am really feeling enormous sense of pride for what she's accomplished. i personally told her that i could not get involved in the campaign simply because michael capuano was deeply supportive of me and when i ran for president, and we worked very closely together in the congress. but i have huge respect for what she has achieved. an enormous sense of pride and i'm very happy for her. i'm happy for massachusetts. and i think michael capuano gave a very gracious, very honorable, grown up concession speech. he will be all right.

massachusetts will be, the country will come out of this mess and it will be because of the ayanna pressleys and others who will create a new era of accountability. i bring that in the book by the way. it is part of my only mix. it is part of why i say every day is extra. we now have the ability, the responsibility to remake and reaffirm our own democracy. our democracy is deeply troubled right now. deeply troubled. and all over the world, as a result of what this president is doing, people are questioning the commitment. utah, the credibility of the united states. and it was before donald trump, by the way, came into office that we still were troubled. that there is an avoidance of response for climate change, herring, for making the work place fair, for trade deals that make essential for people.

run the list. and people on the right and people on the left all know that the system broken and it needs to be restored. so this is a critical election. nobody should be saying anything or focused at all on 2020. everybody should be putting their energy into 2018 when we can have a course correction and begin to remedy a serious array of challenges to our democracy. >> what you're talking about there in terms of threat of optimism in the book, i'm struck by that and you sort of said you were more optimistic than you showed. when you talk about the difficulties of what it took get the paris climate accord the iran nuclear deal many march, normalizing relations with cuba. what you had to go through in terms of setting up the back channels. you write about the painstaking process and all the things that had to come together and the hard work and the heavy lifting that had to make it happen.

and then this president has come in and seen everything that the obama administration accomplished. playly your diplomatic achievement that's he wants undone immediately. >> here's the optimistic rationale and here is why i think donald trump is on the losing end of this. the iran deal. it is the single strongest, most accountable, most intrusive nuclear agreement on the planet today. donald trump simply doesn't, as usual, know what he's talking about when he condemns it as the worst deal ever. we eliminated iran's capacity to actually make a nuclear weapon, certainly over the next 15 years and probably forever. but we know if they weren't. i can't vouch for what iran will choose to do bust if they chose to try to break it, we would know. that i can say. and our intelligence community said it. but here, even after donald trump said, i'm going to get out

of this deal. russia is in it, china is in it, germany is in it, britain is in it and iran is in it. iran just two days ago was that to be living by the agreement. so donald trump has pulled out. but the rest of the world is trying to hold on to this reality that iran has such a level of scrutiny on its current program, it can't make a nuclear weapon and nobody wants to lose that. paris. same thing. donald trump says i'm pulling out of paris. first of all, legally we are not out of the agreement until one day after the 2020 election. there's motivation for 2020. but leaving that aside, most of the states of our country, about 80% of the population of america lives in 38 states. those 38 states all have, most of them, 29 of them, an alternative renewable portfolio law and eight or nine of them have a voluntary one.

so most of america is living under a legal structure with respect to the environment and emissions which will keep america marching toward compliance with paris. and mayors, thousands of mayors across america are committed to living up to the paris agreement. so i've been able to say to people in europe and elsewhere. donald trump may have pulled out but the american people are staying in it. it is a remarkable repudiation of his ignorant decision. not based on science. not based on any facts. his simple sort of campaign promise that he made and is fulfilling on an ideological and base oriented approach. >> the way that he has made those decisions, whether they are effective or not at a policy level, and the way that he has conducted himself as u.s. president, the way you talk about the strain on our democracy, do you think that manager post trump goes back and rebuilds the things he's torn down or do you think that this

episode, this era in our politics has changed the way countries will view us forever? we'll always be the country that elected trump. >> we'll always be the country an opportunity in two months to be the country that did a course correction and in two years we can be the country that repudiated trump and sent him on his way. and i am really confident when you look at the real choices before our country -- i mean, look, i'm not just responding to president trump because he's the opposite party and because it's a new way of governing and so forth. what is happening is dangerous. and people around the world know it. and after the revelations today in the new book by bob woodward and so forth, people even have a greater sense of the chaos of this administration, of the inability of the president to do the job. so what's also happening is the republicans in the united states senate and in the house, but in the senate particularly, where

there's a greater expectation and capacity to make a differen difference, they are -- they have shown an immorality. they have shown an abuse of responsibility in their jobs -- they take an oath as a senator to uphold the constitution of the united states. and in so doing certainly to uphold the rule of law. they are consciously, except for two or three of them, one of them passed away now, turning their backs. they are more interested in protecting their power, their chairmanships, and they are not defending the constitution or defending the senate. they are defending their party and their president. this is dangerous in our democracy, where we lose a baseline of truth and we lose a baseline of facts. you can't governor in a democracy if you can't legitimately have an agreed-upon set of facts where you then can fight over an ideological approach or opinions.

when i disagreed with president obama, it wasn't about the ideology or the -- it was about we agreed on the facts. we may have had a different opinion about how you implement something. but now there's a complete disagreement on facts. rudy giuliani goes out and says the truth isn't the truth. or you have trump with alternative facts. there are no alternative facts to real facts. two and two is four. four and four is eight. and those are facts. and it's not a truth that has to be proven by you or me arguing about it. it's a truth that's proven by algorithm, by mathematics, by science. and that truth is being ignored again and again. it's costing america deeply in terms of jobs, contracts, long-term interests. we've ceded to china in asia -- i mean, china's building -- spending a trillion dollars, rachel, on the one belt one road program. touching 68 nations. they're putting $500 billion

into new science and research laboratories. in those countries. they built railroads that are now connecting from china to nine european countries. 49 different routes. it's cheaper to send goods by rail from china to europe than it is to fly them or take by sea. things are happening, and we're not in it. cyber. you can -- cyber's as dangerous as nuclear weapons were initially and they are today. but particularly when we were gaining control over them without the treaties until we got the treaties in place. we don't have a treaty on cyber. the president of the united states ought to be convening the major countries of the world and forcing people to create a new arms control agreement that deals with cyber. so my book is i think optimistic and realistic because it shows how over a lifetime things have worked and we are able to get the outcomes that we want.

it speaks -- and john mccain and i coming together. there's a chapter in there on john mccain. it's not a policy tome. it's a series of stories and anecdotes that talk about how america can work and how we now, you, me, citizens, have a responsibility to make it work. >> and for me for the first time it had me thinking about what might have actually happened had there been a kerry-mccain ticket, which we now know -- >> yeah, we talked about it very seriously. >> john kerry has a new book out as of today. it's called "every day sex tra." mr. secretary, thank you. >> thank you. my pleasure to be with you. thank you so much. by the way, i have a suggestion for you. >> what? >> you should do a book club just like oprah did. you should call it rachel's recommendations. this can be your first book. >> well, that is very self-serving. thank you, sir. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. and tank. and tiny. and this is laura's mobile dog grooming palace. laura can clean up a retriever that rolled in foxtails, but she's not much on "articles of organization." articles of what? so, she turned to legalzoom.

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a ten-term incumbent democratic member of congress from massachusetts has lost his seat tonight in an upset win in a democratic primary. we turn to the great steve kornacki for more. steve, what has happened here? >> this is -- ten terms. it's stunning. michael capuano losing to ayaan nah presley. michael capuano, you say ten terms. think of it this way, in 1998 when he was elected he won a tenway democratic primary with 22% of the vote. never faced a serious challenge after that. and then this year lo and behold, city councilor from boston, ayana pressley runs

against him. she certainly positioned herself as being more aggressively anti-trump than capuano but a lot of this too had to do with the changing demographic character, the changing political character of this district. how about this? the history of this seat, this is a historic seat in congress that capuano has held. here is the lineage. james michael kerley, john f. kennedy, tip o'neill, joe kennedy ii, michael capuano, and now this will be the first african-american woman ever to represent massachusetts in congress. ayanna pressley. this is an overwhelmingly democratic district. by winning this primary she is as good as elected in november. from tip o'neill and james michael kerley, the democratic party now embracing ayanna pressley the new face in this district. >> we know she was endorsed by mora healey, the state a.g., seen as a real rising star in democratic politics and a big deal in massachusetts democratic politics which of course has a republican governor. massachusetts is a blue state

with a very popular republican governor, charlie baker. you say this is a sure thing. does this reflect any other trends in terms of massachusetts democrats and endorse sxmts who she's associated with? >> it's interesting because most of sort of the establishment in massachusetts, the democrats, they did rally around capuano in this race. mora healey the a.g. in going with pressley she was more going on her own with that. other incumbents were challenged in massachusetts. looks like they survived. richard neil. steve lynch a more moderate even conservative democrat from south boston, that looks like they've survived. but this one, wow. mike capuano. 20 years in congress. never a serious challenge. all of a sudden loses by double digits at this point. >> steve kornacki, thank you very much, my friend. much appreciated. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and you steve talking about my old neighborhoods tonight in the congressional race. fine with me. ca