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tv   Weekends With Alex Witt  MSNBC  January 10, 2021 9:00am-10:00am PST

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calls for trump's resignation are growing within his own party. the second republican senator calling for the president to be removed from office. >> i think the best way for our country, chuck, is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible. i actually do believe that the president has disqualified himself. i don't think he's a viable candidate for office ever again. >> this comes as trump is days away from facing the second impeachment of his four-year term. house democrats moving full steam ahead set to introduce one article of impeachment storm for incitement of insurrection. this morning, democrats ramping up the pressure to act now. >> the goal at the present moment is to address the existential threat that donald trump presents at this time. every second, every minute, every hour that donald trump remains in office presents a
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danger to the american people. >> it's gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. so, you know, my message to them is, you don't want us to impeach him, what else are you willing to do? >> a new polling shows how the american people are perceiving wednesday's attacks with 56% of americans saying president trump should be removed from office, a and that includes 94% democrats, 58% of independents. the capitol physician is alerting congressional members and staff who sheltered together wednesday that they could have been exposed to someone with coronavirus. let's get to the headlines now with our reporters and the latest on the fallout. first joining me is going to be california congressman ted lieu, democratic member of the house judiciary committee. welcome, sir. you and your colleagues have drafted an article of
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impeachment and it will be introduced tomorrow. what specifically are you charging with the president with? >> thank you, alex, for your question. we are charging the president with incitement to insurrection, the article of impeachment drafted by congress members jamie raskin, me and house staff now has 195 cosponsors and we will introduce this tomorrow. let me make clear what happened on january 6th. donald trump incited a violent insurrection, the mob invaded the capitol and they were hunting members of congress. they were trying to lynch vice president pence. we can't just pretend this didn't happen. impeachment is the minimum we should do. donald trump should also be prosecuted for incitement to insurrection and felony murder. >> congressman, of those 195 cosponsors, are any of them republicans? >> not yet. we did draft the article narrowly with a goal of trying to gain republican support.
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i'm pleased for a number of republicans to publicly come out and say they either think donald trump should resign or they support him being removed from office through the 25th amendment. it's not a very big leap to go from that statement to impeachment. >> yeah, just notably, we heard from senator pat toomey on that front. what happens next after you introduce the article of impeachment tomorrow? give me the process, the procedure. >> sure. so we're introducing this article of impeachment on monday in the house's profore mis session. nancy pelosi told us to come back to washington, d.c., this week. it will be up to her as to when she will call a floor vote and a vote will be taken on the articles of impeachment and we'll see what happens from there. >> let's get to the president's permanent suspension on twitter.
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will more republic lawmakers do you think find the encourage now to speak out against trump, now that he can't put their name in front of millions of people and ridicule them for what they've said? >> i sure hope so. and it wasn't just twitter, he was also banned from pretty much every single social media platform. i hope republicans now realize that this man is the danger we've been saying he has been for the last four years. it shouldn't have taken multiple people dying in an attempted coup for republicans to now realize this. but they are realizing it. a number of republicans have called for him to resign from office and then you had a senator ben sasse who said he was open to articles of impeachment. >> however, as you know, there are some republicans arguing against impeachment. they say it would do more harm than good at this point. is there legitimate concern that removing president trump would further incite violence? >> we absolutely have to heal,
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unify as a nation. we cannot do that without first having justice. and that's why we need to remove donald trump. we also need to make sure he doesn't have his hand on a nuclear trigger which is why congress members sent a letter last thursday to the acting secretary of defense telling him to put additional constraints on the nuclear launch authority. we need to do everything we can no remove or at least try to constrain this president. >> having mentioned senator pat toomey and his support of removal of the president from office, when he speaks about impeachment at this point, right now, looking at this calendar, he suggests it's not practical. let's take a listen to what he said. >> it's likely that if the house does pass articles of impeachment, we couldn't get them until tuesday or wednesday. we're less than one week to go at that point. i'm also not at all clear that it's constitutionally
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permissible to impeach someone after they have left office. there may not be a viable impeachment route at this point. >> look, i understand that we are in somewhat unchartered waters in terms of constitutional law. i've been going around and around with experts on that. overall, what is your response to that? >> senator toomey is wrong. they put in a lifetime supreme court justice in eight days, the senate can act on impeachment if they wanted to, it's just a matter of political will. impeachment has a number of earn purposes, one is to remove a delusional president, it would strip him of taxpayer-funded benefits. there's reasons to do this. one of the most cogent reasons is that future generations will know that congress acted swiftly and strongly when we were attacked by a violent mob.
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we can't issue press releases as our only sboresponse. >> we're looking at the video evidence of that attack by the angry mob. and you have pro-trump extremists, they've been rallying online. they're vowing to return to washington for the inauguration. are you worried about this and do you think enough preparations are under way to deal with any possible insurrections? >> so if those folks want to post on their social media platform their name and where they're going to be in d.c., i'm sure the federal authorities will be there when they come. so we're going to have a massive police presence, i am sure of it, for the inauguration. and they're going to protect the president and vice president and nothing is going to stop joe biden and kamala harris from being inaugurated on january 20th. >> we have just learned that the capitol physician is alerting house members and staff, those
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that sheltered together in a very large hearing room on wednesday, saying they may have been exposed to someone with coronavirus. have you been contacted? are you hearing anything on this? >> i got the same memo from the house physician. it is really disgraceful that republican legislators think they have the constitutional right to have their respiratory saliva spread everywhere, they do not. they should not be spreading the coronavirus. this is a virus that is highly contagious and for some, it is lethal, especially for people who are older or have pre-existing conditions and there are people in that room that if they got covid-19, they would be at risk of serious illness or possible death. these republican members in the room who refused to wear a mask should be ashamed of themselves. >> thank you for your time. let's go now to josh lederman. we're hearing from a former white house insider about the situation that the president is
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facing. can you elaborate on that? >> reporter: it's as if a tide is starting to turn in the wake of the insurrection attempt this week and republicans who have long shown fuelty to president trump are starting to view it more as a liability than an asset to go down in history as having been so loyal to president donald trump. enter the revisionist history of folks like mick mulvaney who stayed on even after he departed the chief of staff role as president trump's special envoy to northern ireland until he resigned only a few days ago. back in 2016 when president trump was running, mulvaney said that trump was a terrible human being. but if you listen to what he says now on "meet the press" with chuck todd, he never saw any of this coming. take a look. >> i thought that we'd never be here. i thought the president would be presidential. clearly that system has broken down. whether or not the president is different or the people advising him are different or both, i
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don't know what's going on inside the oval office. one of the things i'm afraid of is that the west wing is different now than when john or i was there. the president used to love debate. he would love to get information from all sorts of different sides. i'm not sure that's happening now. if there aren't people there reaffirming and reamplifying what he thinks he wants them to say. >> how much influence will president trump continue to wage over the republican party in the years that come? folks like mulvaney as well as pat toomey saying they believe president trump's influence in the party is far diminished after what he saw this week. but that's not necessarily a done deal. if you look at what happened at the republican national committee's winter meeting in florida, it was still full loyalty to president donald trump and a lot of members in congress opposing these impeachment calls. they're still sticking with the president. >> let me ask you about this. house speaker nancy pelosi says that invoking the 25th amendment, that's still on the
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table. nbc news is reporting that the president and vice president have not spoken since wednesday? what is that about? is there any indication that pence is considering invoking the 25th amendment? >> reporter: well, you're absolutely right. according to our sources, president trump and vice president mike pence have not spoken at all since this occurred on wednesday. and as far as the 25th amendment, nancy pelosi surely does want that to happen, but it's not up to her. the vice president has to be involved in that constitutionally and multiple sources with knowledge of the vice president's deliberations tell us that he is disinclined to go that route. he thinks its impactable and would rather see the time run out on president trump's administration without actually removing him through office through the 25th amendment. >> thank you so much. we'll see you next hour with an update. new today, everyone, the u.s. attorney general for d.c. tells npr the scope of the riot investigation is unprecedented
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and there could be hundreds of people charged. nearly 20 have already been charged or arrested with various federal crimes. the identities of rioters are emerging as investigators and the public comb through the evidence. police and fire departments across this country were investigating whether their own members took part in the riot. but some rioters yet to be charged are expressing regret including larry brock jr. telling "the new yorker" he wish he didn't pick up the zip ties on the senate floor, and the man who climbed the senate balcony says he was caught up in the moment in a statement, he says my actions have brought shame upon myself, my family, my friends and my beautiful country. i beg for forgiveness and my home state of idaho. we're hearing more about the breaking news on capitol hill about a covid exposure for lawmakers and staffers. vaughn hillyard is joining us.
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what are you hearing about this? >> reporter: exactly, just in the last 20 minutes, our capitol hill team is reporting that the capitol physician's office has put out a statement. on wednesday, many members of the house community were in protective isolation in room located in a large committee hearing space. the time in this room was several hours for some and briefer for others. during this time, individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection. you'll recall on wednesday, as this insurrection was taking place, lawmakers, great many of them house members, huddled into a hearing room. there's a video circulated in which there were six republican congress and women including congressman andy biggs of arizona who were refusing an offer to wear a mask. now we hear they're saying that
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in fact there's an individual in that very room that had covid-19 and is now putting those lawmakers -- if you're having a conversation about impeachment, this could be a serious issue at hand when it comes to having members who are present to vote. concerns about a superspreader event inside of that hearing room on wednesday. >> do me a favor, repeat one more time the numbers and the specifics of who was offered a mask and denied it. >> let me get you here these names for a moment here. again, two of them were, one, andy biggs and taylor marjorie green. and so i don't have the other names of the individuals on hand. it was a democratic lawmaker out of delaware who was offering those individuals masks and, again, they denied that request and that offer. >> okay. those names should be duly noted. thank you. coming up next, one of the
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tonight on the week with joshua johnson, a special report on the attack on the capitol. the missed warning signs and the potential consequences for president trump. that is at 9:00 eastern here on msnbc. with just ten days until inauguration, president-elect joe biden is gearing up to take office at a time of unprecedented crisis. ali vitali is covering the biden traditi transition for us. how is the biden team preparing for the first days in office amidst all of this unrest and deep concern? >> reporter: well, alex, there are the things that they knew they were going to have to prepare for and the things that they are now being forced to prepare for. on the expected front, we know that the biden transition team has placed a large number of priorities on getting covid
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under control and especially figuring out the most efficient way to get the coronavirus vaccine disseminated. that remains a top priority for this group of people. but now they're also seeing these mounting calls for impeachment both from democrats and now some republicans. that's going to bleed into the early part of biden's term in office. though, we are hearing this morning from some, including jim clyburn saying that maybe the house could move on impeachment itself but wait to send the senate those articles of impeachment giving biden some time to figure out his first 100 days in office. listen to clyburn this morning. >> we'll take the vote that we should take in the house and she will make the determination as when is the best time to get that vote and get the managers appointed and move the resolution over to the senate. it just so happens that if i didn't go over there for 100 days, it could -- the 100 days
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he needs to get his agenda off and running, and maybe we'll send the articles sometime after that. >> reporter: so there's a few reasons that they may want to do it in that way, alex. chief among them is the more democrats they have in the senate, the better their chances are and the less republicans that they have to pull over to their cause to actually move on these articles of impeachment after they're sent to the senate. on the other piece of this, it takes one more complication off the table. remember, the biden team has all of these cabinet nominees, but only one of them right now has a date on the calendar for when their hearings are supposed to start for confirmations. at this point, we don't know that biden is going to have any members of his cabinet confirmed on the day that he's inaugurated. that's clearly a push that we've seen starting to happen here on the transition side of things. all of those things are confusing to this because there's only so much political
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capital to go around in washington, d.c., and the biden team has a whole agenda including trillions of dollars in stimulus spending that they would like to push through congress in the early weeks of their administration. impeachment complicates that effort. that being said, if you're democrats and even some republicans now, as we're seeing this conversation continue forward, it makes sense why they would want to move on impeachment broadly against president trump because, of course, the top reason for that is, it would stop him from holding federal office ever again. alex? >> absolutely. outlining incredible feats and all they have to juggle as they come into office. it's extraordinary. thank you for that. more now on tomorrow's expected move from speaker nancy pelosi. joining me now, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the "new york times" and co-author of "the man who ran washington." peter, welcome to you, my friend. trump could be the first president to be impeached twice, this, by the way, in a single term.
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how is the president reacting to impeachment this time compare today the last time? >> well, you know, look, i think last time he knew that they weren't going to get the votes to throw him out of office and he look at it as a political battle, a battle to whip up his supporters and make the case that he was being unfairly persecute asked he came out of that impeachment a year ago where he was acquitted by the senate emboldened. that wasn't the lesson that a lot of democrats and republicans would take out of it. he purged the government of people he thought they were enemies. this impeachment is different. it's not going to probably take him out of office early. 10 or 11 days at this point away from his departure anyway and jim clyburn made clear that they don't think they can do it in time. but he does look at it as a repudiation that will stick with him. the fewer loyalists who are
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still with him is how it's going to affect his legacy. it will disqualify him from running again in 2024, but it will be a stamp in history saying that he was responsible for this attack on the capitol and that will be the first line in the history books. >> in your recent article in the "new york times" you said that a new impeachment would be more than a do-over of the drive that failed last year. so the motivation is there to try to impeach the president for a second time. but, again, looking at the calendar, you cite james clyburn. there are just days now until the end of the term. is it purely about accountability or is there an element of maybe we can get him this time to it? >> well, i think it's about accountability. i think it's maybe a deterrent seen by the democrats as a way of restraining the president as best he can be restrained in these final ten days. nothing else -- >> and for the future.
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>> and for the future, right. exactly. it would still require a two-thirds vote by the senate to convict. 17 republicans in this new senate, assuming all democrats went that way. that's not likely and yet it's not inconceivable. that's what republican party leaders are telling me. you can count up four or five senate republicans who have said things in the past, you can put in the conviction camp, can you get to 17, there's such palpable anger against this president now inside his own party. there's a sense that he not only, you know, endangered them with his actions, but that he tossed all of them under the bus. he's destroyed in some ways the party's role in washington at least for the next two years because of the georgia races that he, you know -- that they blame him for losing. and so the loyalty to him that was so strong, at least among officeholders has diminished greatly. that doesn't mean he doesn't have a core support among his
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base. a lot of people feel strongly about him. but among officeholders, he's finding fewer and fewer friends. >> what do you know about his reaction to everything that went down on capitol hill wednesday? >> well, you know, watch what he said. he's not condemned -- he condemned the actions in one video that he was forced to or pressured into making by his staff. and immediately regretted it privately. he didn't get the credit he thought he was supposed to get for it. he didn't express any regret for his own role in this. he immediately goes into a role of defiance. he's angry at the world, basically. he's been convinced by at least some people around him that he really did have some cause for complaint about this election that he lost and, you know, he feels abandoned and betrayed by mike pence and mitch mcconnell, other people who didn't stick with his effort to overturn a
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democratic election and he's more and more isolated inside the white house. we haven't seen him in person since wednesday. he's hiding, basically, from the public. he's been cut off from his social media bullhorn. it's really -- on tuesday, he's planning to go to texas, argue about how his immigration policies were good. i don't think he's going to be able to change the policy the way he wanted. >> how did trump react to being taken off of twitter? before -- you look at him, it's the biggest platform for him, for years, right, it's been suspended and that was before he was president, he used that. we saw a video of don jr. lashing out at twitter for silencing his father, but what do we know about his reaction? >> he's upset about this. you're right, this was his main vehicle for communicating with the public. 80 million followers. he didn't need to talk to us. he didn't need to come to the briefing room. he didn't need to go to fox news
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because he could always get his message out. it was not just that he had a strategic use of twitter. it was his outlet for his anger or venting, just his generalized reaction to anything he saw. sometimes it was strategic, a lot of times it was literally his way of expressing his reaction to something. throughout four years, we watch as he basically saw something on television and told us what he thought and would throw out a bomb and see how people reacted to it. now he's not able to do that. he's very frustrated, he tried to get around it by using other accounts and that didn't work and that silenced him in a way that nothing has so far. raised a lot of questions why twitter did it now as opposed to before, whether it's a precedent for other bad actors as they see it. what would the laws -- what would the rules and the lines be. for president trump, sitting in the white house without that outlet, it's a great frustration. >> do you think he's going to try to pardon himself before
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january 20th? >> he's talked about it with aides, obviously. no president has ever done this before. there's a constitutional argument as to whether he could. but he feels under threat. he feels concerned. even before this last week, he felt that leaving office was going to provide legal exposure and legal exposure to the one thing that has been a check on him in the past. it's the one aurrgument that hi aides made, you have to pull back the rioters and condemn them. you face legal liability after you leave office from this. and the chief prosecutor to washington, the u.s. attorney appointed by president trump has said that he would consider looking at people who encouraged these rioters, meaning the president of the united states. so he's concerned about that legal liability that might encourage him to go forward with this pardon. but we haven't seen any indications yet. >> yeah, okay. peter baker, thank you so much. always a pleasure. and we're going to pick up and go further with this conversation and head inside the mind of president trump, what is he thinking and what might he do
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this is his ability to communicate with the masses that he has created this fiction in his head that he has a hundred million supporters. you're taking away the oxygen for him to breathe by removing him from twitter and social media. >> michael cohen talking about the president being cut off from twitter and it's not the only platform he's lost. several sites taking action against the president and his allies leaving trump with fewer options to speak out during his final days in office and joining me now is tony schwartz founder of the energy project and co-author of "trump: the art of the deal" and sam nunberg. good to see you both. sam, what do you think it means for the president to lose twitter? how do you think he's handling
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it? will he lose influence about those social media platforms? >> it's very interesting that they would take this platform away from him. you're talking to somebody, by the way, i remember roger stone. we were sitting after he hired -- wasn't going to run and he wanted to stay involved in politics. and we said, what do we do? what's our deliverable? he said social media, twitter. he used to say to me all the time, sam, i love twitter. it's like owning a newspaper but not the losses. michael is right. there's another argument, but i believe at the end of the day it's going to be put back on twitter once the pressure goes back on them. if they were willing to take them off, this is ironic, then -- they're saying they have culpability for what he's been doing. >> that's interesting. the word permanent has been applied to his being suspended. i don't know if they will put him back on. we don't have time to talk about
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that now. tony, your reaction on twitter to trump's suspension was sweet. what's president trump without the tool of twitter? >> he's what michael cohen said, a man without oxygen. there's evidence that he hasn't been getting much oxygen to his brain for some time now so this is only an ad. but it has felt utterly and completely different to me for him to be off. it's made me realize how addicted even i am with my own self-awareness of this to what he's going to say and the outrage it will prompt in me. i know that i'm not alone and the absence of trump is the absence of trump. this, alex, will be one of the final times i speak publicly about trump because i feel i've contributed what i can and there really is more to say about donald trump at this point.
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the truth is out. the jig is up. the game is over. >> tony, i may still come after you, but we'll leave that for another time. sam, at one point on wednesday, the u.s. capitol rioters were heard saying "hang mike pence." they're telling nbc news that while the vice president and his family were in the bunker on capitol hill, the president didn't reach out to check on his safety. in fact, he hasn't spoken at all with pence since this time. has president trump turned on his vice president, and if so, does that surprise you? >> against this legal -- he was completely misinformed. at the end of the day, that's his problem. because that's all he could attest to. he had been told early on, look, this is unlikely you could overturn this, but this can work out for you politically in the
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long run. he wanted the people around him, by the way, he's -- which i find ironic, you're asking for a pardon. he had people telling him that pence could stop it. they had a seven-hour meeting. it was supposed to be a lunch. it was a meeting. and he said terrible things to mike pence and i think even he would regret saying. when i -- >> like what? if it's really colorful and you can't say it, can you give us the tenor of it? >> along the line, i made you, you would have lost without me. how dare you do this to me? you're completely misinformed. and he called him an expletive i don't want to say, but it starts with a "p." >> how do you, tony, interpret what's happened between the president and vice president? is this proof that no one truly matters to this president? who is left now, tony, who has the president -- has he not
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alienated around him? >> well, you can see, it's as few as a half dozen people, i suspect. including his children who have no choice. they've been hostages to donald trump for a long time. and somewhere deep down they wish they were free of him. but they're going to stick -- >> why do you say that, tony? how do you know that? >> how do i know which? >> about the children and that they've been hostage to their father for quite some time and would prefer to be free of him? >> it's an inference i make about development. donald trump, like his own father, was incapable of expressing love, of creating safety or security when his kids were very young. donald trump jr., you see there, turned against him completely for over a year or two and when you don't get love, you desperately look for whatever kind of approval you can get. and you're either in donald
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trump's world in or out. and you can't afford psychologically as a child to be out. or at least it's extremely hard. so i don't think that's conscious for them anymore. i think they think they're aligned with him. but i think it's there. i also think that to go back to your other question he has turned on mike pence, he has turned on anyone who has anything to say about him that is not consistent with what he believes at this moment himself or what he would like to believe and what he would like others to believe about him. this is always what trump does. he is demanding of loyalty and incapable of giving loyalty. >> sam, do you have any regrets, given everything, the big picture, for having worked with donald trump? >> no, i don't. look, in 2015 he came down an escalator, you had americans that because of endless wars, because of trade, they really
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had had their livelihoods and they had had -- they felt this. and they were taken for granted. and these were plenty of republicans, by the way, who felt like this after bush and voted for obama. the president with donald trump, he's a very conflicted man. he's not a perfect man suffice to say. and, you know, at the end of the day, when you're elected president, even barack obama, he would not have won in 2004 -- >> sam, you're kind of not answering the question. do you have any regrets about working with donald trump and helping him get elected, given what we've seen over the last four years, the big picture. no? >> no. >> okay. how about this, sam, let me ask you this -- i'm going to ask this of tony. a friend in palm beach told me that the general sentiment there is that donald trump will be a nobody in five minutes and that he's embarrassed himself beyond repair. do you agree? >> i can't help but answer on sam. it is incredibly sad to me that a guy could have done what
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trump's done, he has been a sociopath since the first day that sam nunberg met him and it's really sad to hear somebody say, i don't take any responsibility. i spent four years taking responsibility for the mistake i made 35 years ago. come on, sam. you step up. get others like you to step up. it's time to say the truth about this man. he is one of the worst human beings alive. maybe the worst. >> the question was, do i regret helping him get elected president. i don't regret the supreme court, i don't regret where jerusalem stands today, and that's my position, tony. if you don't like it, that's fine. tony, give back all the money you made during the years when you needed it with "art of the deal." >> i've given a quarter of
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million dollars of royalties from "the art of the deal" back. >> i find you interesting with what you said. my position is the following, once again, he did a service to the forgotten men and women, the people that had no voice under a two-party system, and in the end, i am happy that he beat hillary clinton who is the most -- >> we so don't have time to get into hillary clinton. i'm sorry. last thing to you, last word to you, tony, about the reported perception that he's going to be gone in five minutes, that he has shamed himself out of this presidency from those down in palm beach where i heard it from. >> on a relative basis, alex, i think that's true. relative to the man of command he's had of attention, it's going to be a fraction of that. >> gentlemen, that's a wrap. tony and sam, it was interesting. thank you, guys. appreciate that. who is to blame for the
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i think the best way for our country, chuck, is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible. it does not look as though there is the will or the consensus to exercise the 25th amendment option and i don't think there's time to do an impeachment. there's ten days left before the president leaves, anyway. i think the best thing would be a resignation. >> you see it right there. deeper cracks starting to form in the republican party. senator pat toomey speaking out against the president's action and is the role played in last week's riots on capitol hill calling for him to resign. joining me now, republican star strategist for the lincoln project, founder of the national protection voter action fund and
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former congressman from california. what do you make of toomey's comments and do you think more republicans are going to join him? >> there will be a few more republicans that probably join him. but he's not seeking re-election nor is he seeking to run for governor in 2022. it gives him a little bit more freedom. but it is telling that he's willing to go that far and, again, setting the groundwork for others. it all depends what happens with the feedback that the elected officials get in their district and how much this continues to grow. we tend to skip trump stories so they don't fully play out, i have a feeling this one is different. >> you mentioned the reaction, there's a new poll that shows we've got 89% of republicans -- 89% of republicans who say -- let me go back. with this, we have 69% of republicans, pardon me, they say that donald trump deserved little to no blame for the
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violent actions of some of his supporters. what do you make for that, now that i have the numbers right? >> toomey is leaving. i talked to a house republican very similar in ideology and makeup to toomey, i said, would you vote for impeachment? and he said, no, because i'm likely facing a primary. which tells me that -- what we saw from roy blunt and marco rubio, republicans are going to circle the wagons around donald trump and protect him. in terms of culpability, donald trump laid the predicate in saying that the election is rigged. he issued the invitation to come to town on january 6th and gave the charge saying march to the capitol and show strength. he is culpable here. >> when you say those who circle the wagons are going to circle the wagons to protect trump, are they doing that or protecting themselves? >> well, both. they're protecting their own political interests, as i said,
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this member who said, i would be primaried, they're protecting the republican party. the problem with any feedback temperatu fracture in the republican party, this is a coalition of 48 or 49% of the country. if they try to push out the trump populous, they don't have enough votes to win. if trump populists try to take over, they don't have enough to win. shame on republicans who let that go ahead. >> nbc news is reporting that vice president pence is not considering the 25th amendment and that's in part because there are ten days left in the administration. how much damage can be done in the next week and a half? what do you expect to see? >> there's a tremendous amount of damage that can be done in the next ten days and some of it we won't know about for years down the road. i'm monitoring a situation happening with trump messing around in the judicial department. he's not done putting his people in place and moving the weaponry
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in place to continue to not only contest this election, but to mess up democracy from now into the future and continue with the chaos. i said for the last several years on your program, when we consider his universal policies, cruelty is the point, caging of kids. cruelty is the point. at this point, we have to recognize that the chaos is the point. i continue to call for objectives at every level. it's important to say here that what we saw on tuesday or wednesday, whatever day the insurrection happened, i think it was wednesday, what we saw was a rvisceral recollection of white people around the country. that's not a novel problem. democrats haven't won the white vote since 1960. what we've seen in the rise of the tea party is an acceptance and not only acceptance but a rewarding and elevation of those who are willing to say the racist part outloud. so the republican party has asked for this, has fomented
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this for a long time and this is the result of that. this is the result of not quashing this foolishness and eventually. i'm a christian and it's sunday, i'll leave them on a hopeful note, these people will eat themselves, we see it how they're treating each other. the only question, how many good and decent people will they take on their way down with them. >> let me ask you why we have not seen mike pence speak out? why is he so silent and is it to david's point, that he's in part, trying to protect his political future? because if you listen to what sam nunberg was telling us before the commercial break, a seven-hour meeting in which its reported that the president berated his vice president saying that he owed everything to him and using colorful language that sam didn't fortunately repeat. why is mike pence silent right now? >> i think he's just keeping it
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close to the vest. to david's point, yes, he's thinking about his future. what's interesting, since he hasn't been speaking to the president, he also hasn't reassured the president that he won't invoke the 25th. so it's an interesting dynamic he's playing, and donald trump may not want to speak to him, but i'm not so sure that pence doesn't want to speak to donald trump. it's -- it's a relationship that right now is better apart for pence. >> to which we say stay tuned, to see how this plays out and to see the three of you again. in just a moment. a focus on republican voters. does their opinion what have happened square with the majority of the gop? t have happened square with the majori otyf the gop? so you want to make the best burger ever? then make it! that means selling everything. and eating nothing but cheese till you find the perfect slice... even if everyone asks you... another burger truck? don't listen to them! that means cooking day and night until you get... [ ding ] you got paid! that means adding people to the payroll. hi mom. that means... best burger ever.
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47%, that is how many republicans feel wednesday's siege of the capitol was, quote, mostly a legitimate protest, this according to a new poll from the pbs news hour and marist, and the republicans who think the violence was unlawful also 47%. nbc's amanda goldman smoke to
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some of these voters who got a little more insight on why they are so divided. amanda with a welcome. what are they telling you? >> reporter: hi, alex, good to be with you. well, only a handful of republican leaders have outright criticized president trump's role in promoting and instigating the violence that we saw in the capitol this week. trump supporters, people who voted for him as recently as this past november are coming to terms with it a little bit differently getting mixed signals them. a number of them are outright condemning president trump's instigation of the violence saying it's causing them to question whether or not they would support him moving forward while others would still tell me that they would vote for him again if they had the opportunity. as the republican party continues to grapple with the next steps here, whether president trump will continue to have a powerful. many of the voters i smoke with gave very stark reaction to the violence that they saw. take a listen to what a couple of them told me. >> from both sides i think that peaceful protests is part of the constitution. it should be encouraged, but i do not believe violence is the answer. >> the riots, the protests, the
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demonstration, whatever they want to call it until it fine until it breaches or attacks our capitol building. >> reporter: alex, i should note that the young man i heard was a first-time voter who voted for president trump this past know. putting little context, we're currently in dioufal county, historically a conservative area but narrowly went for joe biden this past election and we spent a few hours over nassau county and went for trump pretty handley. moving forward and talking to these various trump supporters, what they told me is they did expect president trump to continue to have a voice and an impact across the board. even with platforms like twitter now banning president trump outright for life. they still feel that he's going to have a voice and be able to connect with supporters in the coming days and years. >> amanda, very interesting report. thank you so much. the house will introduce one article of impeachment tomorrow. i'll speak with a leading lawmaker who is co-sponsoring it
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next. good day to all of you. from msnbc world headquarters here in new york, welcome everyone with "weekends with alex witt." we have some breaking news once again as there are new calls to remove the president from office from a second republican senator and a majority of americans. house democrats will introduce an article of impeachment tomorrow. one of the house members who drafted it spoke to me last hour about why he thinks it's so critical. >> we