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headquarters in new york. well, everyone, to "alex witt reports." demonstrators on the steps of the capital. let's go right to allison barber who is joining us from austin. i'm curious when you are hearing from the participants there? >> i was telling them that's okay, they didn't need to move because we were standing here. they came out here today because they feel there's no question in their mind that these laws, this legislation is designed to limit voting opportunity particularly for communities of color in texas, and yes, there is a republican governor and yes the legislature is controlled and the odds of stopping it might not be very high. they wanted to make sure people heard what they had to say and this is not voter suppression, he said and this is the term he used that it is voter

enhancements. activists say that could not be further from the truth and that this law is designed to restrict voting rights by limiting voting options as well as imposing new restrictions on mail-in voting and here's what the president of the texas civil rights group had to say this morning. >> it's hard to have any conclusion other than decide that they are passing these laws because they make voter -- voting more difficult for people of color, and that is something that can -- should concern absolutely all of us because it strikes very much at the heart of our ability to have free and fair elections. >> so there are about 250, 300 people here right now. congressman beto o'rourke is at the podium speaking at this moment. they want people to remember that this bill, it's really not done yet. yes, it passed in the house, but it's a different bill than what was initially passed in the senate so it has to go back over to the senate and most likely it

will go to a conference committee where reconciliation has to happen and the governor has to sign it before the legislative session ends on may 31st. so one thing activists like the woman you just heard from there say they want to do is hopefully at least delay the process so maybe they can run out the clock, if you will, and if that fails, opponents plan to take this to court. alex? >> i am glad we're hearing beto o'rourke and i'm glad you got him one-on-one so we heard him more quietly. thank you very much. let's turn to developing stories as the rallies take place in texas. a bill just signed into law by governor ron desantis. charlie crist, a former republican governor of florida, think about that, slamming the move on msnbc earlier. >> i think governor desantis is trying to suppress the vote for the 2020 reelection that he

seeks and i don't think it will work. i think people understand when you're trying to put your finger on the scale and make it unfair. i don't get angry very often and a couple of things do frustrate me a lot and one of them is unfairness and this is clearly unfair. battle lines are being drawn with the gop and two controversial republicans, marjorie taylor-greene kicking off their speaking tour and the pair bashing members of their own party including liz cheney who is expected to face a vote next week to be ousted from her leadership post. jim hines giving everyone his view of what's unfolding on the other side of his aisle. >> the country needs a functioning republican party that pushes back on my party. quite frankly, that is a good dynamic when we have people that disagree in good faith. the republican party started in the convention when we don't have a platform and it's whatever donald trump wants, gave up that role, but even more ominously and this keeps up at

night. >> and the shocking new revelation first reported by "the washington post," the trump justice department secretly obtained three of the phone records in 2017 while reporting on russia's role in the 2016 election. we'll get reaction from a reporter at the post. congresswoman madeleine dean gave her reaction right here on msnbc. >> it is extraordinarily troubling, but probably not surprising that the trump white house actually seized the personal phone call, the professional phone calls, the phone calls of "the washington post" reporters for three and a half months. what this justice department is doing is shining a bright light on what is mischievous behavior of trump administration's department of justice. >> we have reporters in place

covering all of the angles of this story. we start with kelly o'donnell at the white house. kelly, the justice department has confirmed that the trump doj did obtain the phone records of these washington post reporters, but do we know why they did it? >> well, at the time those reporters were working on russia investigation-related matters and it appears that the trump administration, under the direction of attorney general william barr at the time, believed that there were unlawful leaks going to these reporters, not the reporters in the sort of sphere of wrongdoing because it's a first amendment protected practice of journalism, but they were trying to find leakers, they claim, and that was something that we sue infuriated the trump white house. it upsets white houses regardless of party, but it was an intense anger and concern during the trump years because of the degree of the kinds of stories that were subjected to

the kind of intense public awareness like the russia investigation which had a criminal and counter intelligence and an impeachment-related kind of exploration. so this had to go to the level of the attorney general which means william barr at the time had to authorize this, and "the washington post" has expressed its dismay and upset at the intrusion of these records. what it does is allows those who obtain the records to see phone number, lengths of phone calls and not the contents of the call and we don't know what was said back and forth, but this is highly unusual and intrusive and it has happened in the past, but it is very rare and under very unusual circumstances that reporters are swept up into this kind of an investigative net, seeking records for phone, email and so forth, of targets of an

investigation, that happens all the time, not of journalists who are going about their constitutionally protected work. so this is unusual. it is a chilling effect on journalism which is one of the things that is of great concern to people in our line of work and it also tells us some things about what was happening at the highest levels of the trump administration and the concerns that we know publicly the president often expressed about the russia investigation and its concern about leakers and his concerns were carried out apparently by the attorney general at the time and now it is this new administration that has notified those reporters that those records were obtained back a few years ago when the russia investigation story was a dominant one before the robert mueller report came out and all of that. we're going back to the first -- the first period of the trump administration. so some of these records were approved toward the end when

william barr was the attorney general and some were attorneys general at the time of the trump year. so it is notable for what it tells us about the trump administration and what it tells us about some of the perils of reporting on highly controversial matters like these investigations. alex? >> thank you for that. we'll be talking with a washington post reporter and get the effect on all those reporters and what they think about it in the newsroom. thank you, kel. we'll go to florida where the republican divide appears to be growing deeper. those two there, marjorie taylor-greene and matt gaetz kicking off their trump tour, bashing not only democrats, but some of their own republican colleague, as well, as we go to nbc's leann caldwell joining us from the villages where that all took place. as i say hi to you, leann, what message did this rally send? >> hey, alex. well, according to them the message sent that donald trump is still the leader of the republican party. here at the villages it's like

disney world for retirees and it is also a jackpot of votes for republican candidates and it's also for the time being, the latest state in the battle for the ongoing control of the republican party. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ we are the champions ♪ >> the friday night political bash hosted by two fire brand house republicans, one kicked off her committees for controversial statements, the other facing allegations of sexual misconduct which he denies, but here, celebrated on the rollout of their america first trump-focused tour. >> this is our first stop, but there will be many more and america's greatest president and the undisputed party, donald j. trump might join us on a few. for those who reject trump, representative anthony gonzalez, censured for impeachment by the

ohio gop. mitt romney, a trump critic booed by utah republicans. representative liz cheney insisting on a january 6th commission on the verge of losing her leadership role. the rift creating a rupture in the party. one that cheney and allies are determined to repair. >> if we're going to be successful in the future as republicans we have to have everybody. i think a lot of liz cheney. >> house republican leader kevin mccarthy is choosing a different path, betting fidelity to trump is a house majority and perhaps a promotion to speaker. >> all of the talk right now is about the divisions inside the republican party, and about the future of the republican party. >> cheney's likely replacement, new york representative elise stefanik pressed to prove her trump bona fides blanketing conservative airwaves. >> we're going to, and that's

what the members of congress want who are republicans. >> so, alex. most immediately the house republicans are going to take a vote on the future of the republican party this wednesday. it will be a secret ballot where they'll have a clear choice between cheney and the reality of the election or stefanik and the former president and it's likely going to be a battle that's going to continue until the midterm elections. >> thank you so much. leann caldwell. >> joining me now is jacqueline alamani. good to see you again. nice to have you joining us. we'll get to matt gaetz and marjorie taylor green, and i want to start with the report that the trump justice department secretly obtained reporters' phone records where you worked. did that send a chill through the newsroom? >> i can't disclose

conversations that have been taking place internally and i do want to reinstate a statement about how deeply troubled that it is by the government power to seek access through the communications of my peers and our journalists. it has called on the doj to immediately raise clear for the intrusion into the activities and reporters just doing their job, but i will say this does raise serious first amendment concerns that this attempt to secretly obtain phone records and it comes four years after our reporting of the trump administration and russia's role in the 2016 election. raising more concerns about the motivations behind why the trump administration was seeking those records for the first place. >> i appreciate that statement and deeply troubled gives us an inkling as to how people feel about it.

>> let's take a look at the gaetz-greene rally which is a perfect example of your article. republicans are embracing trump-enabled more than ever. >> what you saw the america first rally, what did you find? >> what we are seeing at this very moment is the perfecten capsulation of just how far to the right this party has drift ed. you have liz cheney who has been ousted from her position, it hasn't happened yet and it is very likely to happen by someone who has asserted herself as a messenger of the agenda and then you have marjorie taylor-greene and matt gaetz, one of whom is a congresswoman from georgia who is probably most well known for her conspiratorial record in propagating political violence on social media and making again

anti-semitic, islamophobic and matt gaetz who is under sex trafficking allegations. this is the agenda they're propagating the former president's continued false claims that there was a widespread election fraud which they have found no evidence of and again is just the snapshot of what this party is grappling with and as they go forward towards 2022 mid-term cycle where they're fighting to win back the house and the senate. >> i'm curious because i know you've been following the house republican efforts to oust liz cheney from leadership. what is different now compared to when cheney was being removed in january and how is donald j. trump in all of this? >> that is an excellent question, alex and it gets to the heart of the matter. the biggest difference between

now and when liz cheney first faced an effort to oust her from her leadership position is where the speaker kevin -- the minority leader kevin mccarthy stands on the issue, cheney no longer has the support of mccarthy and a lot -- we did some reporting that showed that cheney might have been potentially saved by the concurrent saga of playing out with marjorie taylor-greene at the time as i'm sure a lot of our viewers remember, greene was also facing calls for her to be stripped of her committee assignments because of her social media posts. democrats have called for it and republicans doubled down and want to protect her so that they refused to succumb to democrat calls that this was a member of their party and their decision to make, so concurrently, while liz cheney, the vote to remove liz cheney from her leadership position was playing out and there was also this vote about marjorie taylor-greene.

when kevin mccarthy made the decision to tout a big tent party and he had to protect all of his members. there was a recognition that there was a pretty toxic, optical, to protect marjorie taylor-greene and not liz cheney for speaking truth to power so liz cheney -- her job was saved the first time around. this time around i think the feelings that she doesn't have this blanket of another story playing out at the same time, and i think feelings about president trump, former president trump have evolved and there's a recognition that he's still very popular with the base and we have really moved far away from where we were after january 6th when there was a lot of widespread outrage. >> to your point, i don't think any of our viewers will ever forget marjorie taylor-greene saying that jewish space lasers were responsible for the fires in california. wow! okay. thank you, jacqueline. thank you so much. the trouble tracking down the worst of the worst of the

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♪♪ ♪♪ president biden is seizing on the new jobs report using it to make the case for his $4 trillion spending plans. 266,000 jobs were added last month. experts were anticipating about a million or more. the president preparing to meet with six republican senators next week to negotiate his economic legislation. let's go to ali vitali joining me from capitol hill. what do you think the role of the jobs report is going to have in these negotiations. >> alex, it provides a completely new backdrop because while president biden is using this argument for his new $4 trillion in spending that he hopes passes through congress, republicans are using it against those plans saying they were too big in scope and size and now they're using this data to

bolster those claims saying the $2 trillion in covid relief shows that it's not bringing the economy booming back. in fact, republicans are saying that things like that extra $300 a week in unemployment are stymieing the job market and keeping people from going back into the workforce. by contrast, democrats would say that what's keeping americans out of the workforce is things like a lack of child care and a lack of other social safety structures. those are things that are in that $4 trillion of plans, the american jobs and the american families plan. so that will be the new backdrop there as he meets this week on a few different bipartisan fronts. the white house has been clear and they want to work across the aisle on this, but democratic senators have said repeatedly they're not sure that will be able to happen especially after senate minority leader mitch mcconnell makes comments that 100% of his focus is on with the

agenda. the senator says she still feels there's room to negotiate here. listen. >> the signals that we're getting from democrats and from the white house is that there's a hunger and a will and a determination not just in congress, but all around the country to see us work together. so we'll go in with our eight. they'll come in with his 28 and we'll start moving it down and seeing what areas, mr. president, do you think needs to be included in here that we can say we believe, too, would be physical infrastructure. >> alex, there has been so much conversation over what infrastructure means, what qualifies as infrastructure? is it those social safety net programs in addition to the more traditional road, bridges and tunnels? but there's also a conversation about what exactly bipartisan means. you hear the white house very often say the policies they're putting forward have bipartisan support. on capitol hill, that is not

exactly true, but out in america, polling does show that a lot of the approximately sees that they're putting forward in these american jobs and families plans do have bipartisan support. the other thing that those polls show, though is that americans would like to see lawmakers from both parties come together on this and the most recent view, i believe, in our nbc poll recently was that republicans are seen as obstructing the biden agenda and not trying to work along bipartisan lines and that's the other piece of this backdrop because all of this will turn into political fodder as we work closer to the 2022 midterms as that is far away and all of that is gearing up, too. >> thank you for that. >> joining me now, congresswoman stephanie murphy, democrat from florida, she sits on the arms services and house and ways committee. economic recovery is a marathon and not a sprint. small businesses have been

grappling with workers and they've been pointing atted by know's relief package and it's the one that offered the stimulus checks and the extended unemployment benefits. so what do you have to say to that? >> i think what we are in is a moment where it's like we're trying to shift gears in a manual drive car for your -- where you're trying to find the point where you can get into the next year and so while the april jobs report was not what we had hoped it would be, it is a reflection of the fact that people, we're in a place where we're trying to shift in the recession and getting people back to work. it is a reflection that people haven't yet all gotten their vaccines and they don't yet have their children in did i care and schools so that would enable them to go to work and so it's the reason why it's important that we invest in our workers and enable them to incentivize

them and enable them to go back to work and we are right around the corner from the economic recovery that we are all hopeful for. >> you are reflecting a lot the sentiment of a former guest of mine, heather boucher. how about ron desantis who signed a restrictive bill into law and it makes it harder for floridians to vote by mail. what's your reaction to that? >> you know, while as a democrat, the outcome in florida wasn't what i wanted it to be, i understand and know based on the facts that it was a fair and free election and the fact that the legislature and governor are trying to change the rules is really deeply disappointing. i come from a country where we don't have free elections, so i value the fact that i live in a democracy, and that the elections are free and fair here and you can trust that when you vote it is counted appropriately and there's been no evidence to the contrary and yet they're

making these changes to suppress the vote and that is just shameful within a democracy where if you have good ideas and good values to go to the public with then you shouldn't be afraid of having all americans who are eligible vote and what the florida governor is doing is trying to prohibit people from voting. they're trying to win by changing the rules as opposed to allowing american democracy to operate the way it should. >> just remind our viewers, didn't florida governor ron desantis, he was heralding the election and his results and saying great election, we did it well here in florida, right? >> exactly. there was nothing -- they were trying to fix something that wasn't broken and so what that tells you is they're really just trying to fix the rules so that they have a better advantage going into the next election and what that means is that democrats have to work harder

and every american, democrat, republican or independent has the ability to vote. that is at the core of our democracy and if republicans aren't willing to stand up for the democracy, democrats will. >> two of your republican colleagues in the house, marjorie taylor-greene and matt gaetz kicked off the america first message in florida. let's take a listen to the message. >> the way forward is not a re-packaged and regurgitated package of the green new way, and the socialist way, our way, america first, will rule the day. we will stand with america's workers and not the socialist billionaires or the corporate worktopians. >> what's your response to that? >> coming from a man who is

under investigation for possible sex trafficking and a woman who believes that forest fires are caused by space lasers, i think that that is a reflection of a republican party that has lost its way. we need a strong republican party that is rooted in conservative values and not in conspiracy theories. we can't work on the issues that are challenging americans all across this country if we don't have a partner in this that believes in facts. you can't address climate change if you think that space lasers start forest fires. you can't address gun violence if you think that school shootings are false flags. all of that is just nonsense and my hope is that the republican party finds its way, but from what i'm seeing them do, it appears that they have lost their way and they can't be trusted to be in elected office at this point. >> well, thankfully, her space lasers theory got her booted

from the election -- the education committee. i was, like, wow! on that one. let me ask you about you and what you said that you were seriously considering which is a bid for senate. you would be running against marco rubio in 2022. have you gotten any closer to a decision? your district could be considered a swing district which could mean them potentially losing the seat the democrats hold. how much of a concern is that for you in terms of keeping democratic representation there? >> look, my consideration is about where i can best serve my community and my country, and that has always been my guiding principle whether it was when i left the private sector after 9/11 to work for the department of defense or when i decided to run in 2016 when everyone told me there was no way for me to unseat a political, a republican politician who had been there forever. i know that i have a lot to offer to this job as well as to

the race, and my consideration is about where i can best serve, and i believe that democrats, if we run on our values and our ideas in the next election we can overcome what the pundits say happens in midterms. >> we'll be very much making sure you follow that decision and congresswoman stephanie murphy, good to see you. peanuts, cracker jacks and a covid shot. how sports teams are pulling off all of the stops to help get people vaccinated. to help get people vaccinated.

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who died at the height of the pandemic are still being stored in refrigerator trucks in brooklyn. many of them have not been claimed by a family member. that temporary morgue was opened when they were dying every day. the friday has full approval of the fda which means there could be a decision within six months and it is a star-studded night for global citizens vax live, the convert to reunite the world set to be tonight. vaccinated fans to enjoy performances from j. lo, h.e.r., and appearances by prince harry and selena gomez, and baseball fans will be vaccinated before the braves game. this push comes with an incentive and three more tickets to future games.

that should be incentives for sure to braves' fans. how many more were given out last night? >> reporter: we saw a lot. we are seeing baseball in atlanta for the atlanta braves. last night they braved before a sold-out crowd on their home field and its on the first time they've done that for more than a year and they're expected to do the same thing tonight. so, yes, with each ticket comes with a chance to get the shot for anybody who upons it and it's just an example of the creative measures that we're seeing different people take across the country when it comes to getting shots into arms. while players swing for the fences at the park, fans are sitting for their shots. free for every ticket holder who wants one. >> i wanted to get here as soon as possible when i saw it was going to be during my favorite team's game, and i made it, definitely. cool. a similar play in new york where the mets and yankees are offering free ticket vouchers to

fans who get vaccinated at their stadium. it is the latest creative approach urging americans to get their shot. it comes as the biden administration is celebrating what they call two major vaccine milestones. 150 million americans have gotten one shot and 110 million are fully vaccinated. a big step forward currently all three, pfizer, moderna and johnson & johnson are only approved for emergency use. >> what would change with full fda approval? >> the distribution, instead of going through the government it will go through normal distribution channels meaning your doctor's office can order it like they do different medications and you might see more mandates in schools and different industries. more signs of re-opening including in new york, the one-time epicenter. mayor bill de blasio is hoping to lure tourists back by placing vaccine sites near popular tourist attractions and the tsa

reported $1.64 million travelers on thursday, the busiest day since march 2020 as airport travel is steadily climbing. so, alex, back here at truist park, the home of the atlanta braves, we are just a few hour away from the gates opening and people able to come inside and get their shot if they have a ticket. blayne alexander, thank you for that. speaking of flying there and the airports, those across the country are expecting a surge in travelers as more americans are getting vaccinated. according to the travel association, 72% of americans are planning summer trips this year and that's compared to 37% last summer in 2020. corey is in queens, new york. welcome. what are you seeing there? is it busy? >> reporter: anecdotally, alex, yes. it is much busier versus what i saw last year and a couple of months ago when we were reporting an increase for travel

for the holiday season. the tsa reporting that they have had a million passengers screened every single day since march 11th and almost two months now straight and some of the travelers that i spoke with out here said the crux of this and the theme of this feeling more comfortable is getting the vaccine. listen to what one family told me. >> we are definitely planning to travel, and we are definitely looking forward to it considering what we've been for the last year and a half and it will be a great bonding experience for the family. >> we will travel and stay at a house rather than a hotel and driving rather than -- >> flying. >> flying. >> reporter: all right. so that's another good point to bring up is it's not just air travel, road trips are up massively from last year, as well. many rental car companies now reporting either completely sold out or shortages across some of the major states and moving

forward here, when we talk about travel, it has been under that guise, alex, of a safety risk of potentially spreading more cases and now the former fda commissioner thinks that the conversation around travel will be one of economic recovery and this applies largely to domestic travel as international travel seems to remain stalled amid the global vaccine availability. >> that dog was so cute that that family was holding. just adorable. >> thank you so much, corey. >> the fbi after the worst of the worst from the capitol riot. why aren't they in custody in frank figliuzi is with me next to answer that question. s with t to answer that question. align contains a quality probiotic to naturally help soothe digestive upsets 24/7. try align, the pros in digestive health.

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new reaction today to fresh nbc news reporting saying that the fbi is still after the worst of the worst involved in the january 6th capitol hill riots. congresswoman madeleine dean told me last hour that she is worried for the safety of herself and her colleagues. >> until every single one who was in any way responsible for the attack by americans on americans from a joint session of congress, i won't be at ease. we have to seek justice for those insurrectionists who came and attacked our capitol, attacked, maimed, wounded and killed capitol police. >> joining me now is nbc news national security analyst frank

figliuzi and the former assistant director of counter intelligence for the fbi. welcome back to the broadcast. who are the worst of the worst and why haven't they been caught or at least identified? >> they may fall into a couple of categories with that definition. first, it would be organizers and planners and those that led this and intended for there to be violence and the second category would be those who showed up, but acted out very violently according to security cameras and social media and that -- those two groups together could constitute the worst of the worst. alex, this still is the largest, fastest-moving investigation in fbi history and it has surpassed the 9/11 aftermath investigation. part of the problem with these remaining folks and now we're headed to 500 indictments and arrests are that there are true believers in this group. so the witnesses to this mob were in the mob and they are extremely reticent to cooperate

with law enforcement and turn in people they believe were doing something on a mission and for a cause and that's one of the issues and the other is that law enforcement has been very dependent on social media recordings and postings before, during and after and they have chosen strategically to not bring those devices to the crime they were committing and that's why you're seeing the crowdsourcing technique and that's why you're seeing the photos every day. do you see this person? this crowdsourcing technique is successful? are you confident to the point of getting each and every one. i know you told me that the fbi will not stop until they get everyone that they want to get. do you think that's still the case? >> yeah. they're not going to close a case, a file on someone even if they're an unsub, an unknown subject, and that file will

remain open until they're captured. will they get every single person? probably not, but we should be focused on the planners and the organizers and we should be very encouraged that we know of one, if not a couple of people who signed cooperation agreement, a founding member of oath keepers, a lifetime member is now cooperating and that will tell us volumes about who organized and who planned and that's the direction prosecutors need to focus on. >> let's turn to your piece, it is a new opinion piece in which you write the fbi didn't brief giuliani about russian disinformation. that's bad for him. can you explain that? why is that bad for him, frank? >> i think many people outside of law and law enforcement might sit back and go, hmm, i guess that means he's not in such trouble if they didn't find it necessary to sit down with him. i say in my column, no, it's the opposite of that.

not being briefed means that prosecutors and agents decided that you may have already crossed the legal point of no return and there was -- they did a cost-benefit analysis and i've engaged about those messages about to brief or not to brief and they decided this harms the case more than it helps us why? if you sit with rudy who is represented by counsel, so you have to be really careful about that and we are here to help you, and admonishments and he can turn around and say, they didn't tell me to stop, i guess it is okay. they're not in a position to tell a lawyer what to do or not to do and then he could come out and say they violated my rights they didn't mirandaize me. if he gets a special warning and briefing does everyone need to get the same briefing? i think they sat down and said

we've got enough evidence. this guy's crossed the line and giving a briefing doesn't help us at all and if he goes on and continues to do what he's doing, it's just gravy at this point. i think he's in big trouble. >> so you also say the fact that republican senator ron johnson was briefed while leading an investigation into biden based on disinformation from moscow and giuliani didn't, you say that speaks volumes about the degree of trouble that rudy is in. can you give me a guess at some of the implications and therefore for giuliani what the possible implications are? >> i think this is going to go far beyond a foreign agents act violation. this is not about failing to file paper work that you might have a client who is a foreign principle or foreign government and there's much more into this, and it's always follow the money. i think if it can show and maybe they have the evidence already that he was receiving money and lobbying to get theus ambassador

removed and he was receiving foreign money for another projection or that trump himself was calling the shots with regard how to plant disinformation to harm the campaign. now you're talking about money laundering, foreign agents and serious charges that could cross into national defense-related charges and then election violations. are you permitting a foreign government to mess with our election? that's a separate set of laws entirely. >> okay. our friend frank figliuzzi, author of "the fbi way," ten stories tall and twice as heavy as a school bus. guess what? this thing is crashing back down to earth right now. here's the tricky part. no one knows quite where or when. we'll have that next. where or when we'll have that next on the s. [ heavy-metal music playing ] -[ snoring ] -and a high of 89 degrees.

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♪♪ so, people across the world will be looking to the sky this weekend. debris from a chinese rocket

launched last week is expected to reenter the atmosphere and crash, but scientists can't pinpoint exactly where it's going to land. the re-entry is expected sometime tonight into early tomorrow, so joining me now is leland melvin, a retired nasa astronaut and author of the book. "chasing space." i'm so jealous of your career. in my dreams. but having said that, how concerned should people be about this sort of ominous threat? is anyone in real danger? >> alex, we had sky lab in 1979 fall out of the sky. we actually did a burn, trying to get it to tumble to have limited burn-up, but some of it did hit western australia in the pacific ocean so we're not out of the water, and i think that, you know, the aerospace corporation is tracking this right now. they have these lines that show you the possible places where it could hit at this time around, i think, sunday around 12:19 a.m. but you know, we don't know. this thing is 22 tons, and it's

big, and sky lab was 77 tons so there's a possibility it could hit somewhere, but right now, we don't know until they start the orbiting process. >> at what point after it starts the orbiting process, you get a debris trajectory, right? i mean, so how long until it would actually crash? how much time are we talking about? >> on the aerospace corporation's website, they gave it plus or minus four hours so over that four-hour period, you could have small pieces hitting. you could see streamers coming through the sky but then you could have big chunks coming down too, just depending on how it's tumbling through the atmosphere. the more tumbling that it does, the more interaction it has with the atmosphere, the more pieces will burn up but if it's coming in with less tumbling, the bigger pieces can come down and hit an area. >> so, leland, i mean, you know for a fact, you've seen it, this is not the only kind of debris that's out there. in fact, there are thousands of manmade objects orbiting earth from rocket debris to satellites and we're showing folks nasa animation. it shows how the number of objects in orbit grows from

1960, that's when sputnik iii reentered the atmosphere, moving forward to 2019 where all those little dots, they almost cover the entire screen. so leland, common sense suggests it's a problem that all this space debris is just flying around up there. is it really a problem? >> it is truly a problem. i mean, we have 128 million pieces of debris that are smaller than a centimeter, about 0.39 inches but the problem is, if a piece hits another piece, it just grows even more debris and there are probably about 900,000 pieces that are from one to ten centimeters so every time something interacts or hits, we sometimes have to reboost the space station to get out of the way of debris that could come at you at five miles per second and it's important that we have space command tracking all this debris to make sure we don't have a collision in space. >> hang on a second. you've got a one-centimeter piece of debris. when you were up there in the space shuttle, i mean, if you

were to see that, do you have to move out of the way? i mean, what would happen if it were to hit the shuttle? >> it would be a bad day. it would be a really bad day, because that piece would hit something and then it would cause more pieces to fragment and come apart and you know, we have layers on the space station, this international space station that i have worked on that, you know, you hit one piece, then it will hit another piece and pieces will shatter and fracture. but that's why we want to move it out of the way for that one-centimeter piece because it's a lot of energy coming at you at five miles per second. paint flakes. i didn't see anything when i was in space, but there are very -- smaller pieces than one centimeter that they're not tracking that could have little pit marks and places on the window. every time we come home, there are usually pieces, a pit of something that hit the shuttle when you come back home from the atmosphere. and when you think about this, this patch that i'm wearing,

mach 25, that's 25 times the speed of sound. it's how fast this thing is traveling. 18,000 per hour. i would look up tonight to make sure that something is not raining down. >> wow. this was so interesting, leland, thank you so much. come back and see me any time. any time you want to talk about space, i'm telling you, just come on back and we will chat it. and your book is "chasing space" for anyone who wants to read it. an effort to secretly keep tabs on journalists is not a secret anymore. we're going to break down the explosive claims from the "washington post" for you next. explosive claims from the "washington post" for you next

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♪♪ good day to all of you from msnbc world headquarters in new york. welcome, everyone, to alex witt reports. here's what's happening at 2:00 p.m. eastern. developing this hour, some new reporting on the trump justice department that secretly obtained phone records from "washington post" journalists. it happened amid their reporting on russia's role in the 2016 election, and new reaction today from former impeachment manager, congresswoman madeline dean. >> it is extraordinarily troubling but probably not surprising that the trump white house actually seized the personal phone calls, the professional phone calls, the phone records of "the washington post" reporters