hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. an independence day like none other. people gathering safely for the first time in nearly a year and a half thanks to the miracle of the vaccines. an economy showing signs of growth and stability. everywhere you look, signs of a cautious return to normal. yet our country is also emerging more divided, not just along political and cultural and geographic lines, but perhaps most ominous in terms of our potential to get out of the current nosedive of tribalism, we are also now divided in terms of whether we believe in facts and evidence and science versus an unshakeable addiction to

disinformation, conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda. at the centered of the conspiracy theory devoted is today's gop, which purges members who refuse to lie about the election and is engaged in a coordinated attempt to whitewash the horrors of the january 6 insurrection. the divide has left democrats to defend democracy, while republicans in their current form endanger everything from minority voting rights to an unearthing the truth about the deadly attack on the u.s. capitol to racial equality. punch bowl news has a blunt assessment of the state of dysfunction in congress today just six months after the deadly insurrection at the u.s. capitol. they write this, the two parties loathe each other as much as ever. some democrats believe republicans threaten their physical safety, especially on the house side. there's still mags outside the house doors. there have been shouting matches in the halls of the capitol. one house democrat moved her office because she did not feel safe near a republican. congress has not approved

additional security funding for the capitol complex. the nearly $2 billion package remains stalled in the senate. the gop's abdication of its role in holding those responsible for the insurrection accountable is now hard wired as a prominent feature of the trump-era republican party. not a bug, not a fluke. it comes as a criminal investigation shifts its focus to some of the most lethal elements of the trump-backed mayhem of january 6. the associated press reports this, quote, among those who still haven't been caught, the person who planted two pipe bombs outside the offices of the republican and democratic national committees the night before the melee as well as many people accused of attacks on law enforcement officers or violence and threats against journalists. the fbi website seeking information about those involved in the capitol violence includes more than 900 pictures of roughly 300 people labeled unidentified. it's always important to examine the more insidious aspects of

the election lies and the ongoing attacks on our democracy. the way that the big lie about election fraud has commingled with out-and-out white supremacy and is quite literally spilling into the streets of american cities. this is the scene from philadelphia over this weekend. about 200 members of a white supremacist group marching in downtown philadelphia and in front of city hall. our nbc news affiliate reports, quote, philadelphia police said the patriot front members chanted "reclaim america" and "the election was stolen" as they marched. a few people could be seen engaging in minor pushing and shoving with members of the group, and police said several physical confrontations took place. police also said members of patriot front used what they believed to be smoke bombs to cover their retreat as they fled. that dark underbelly of american society fueled by the ongoing public statements of the twice-impeached ex-president who used his public events over the

fourth of july weekend to smear the law enforcement officials who defended the united states capitol and his vice president on january 6th. the melting pot turning into a cauldron of lies and racism in the u.s. capitol and on city streets is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters an friends. eugene daniels is here, white house reporter for politico, co-author of "playbook." also joining us olivia troye, now the director of the republican accountability project and clint watts is back, former consultant to the fbi counterterrorism division, now a distinguished research fellow at the foreign policy research institute and an msnbc national security analyst. eugene, i start with you. i was so, i guess, shocked isn't the right word, but disturbed by the reporting about how this event of january 6, this attack, this insurrection, not only did it not break through all the animosity and sort of the pent-up hardening, i guess, of

each side that took place during the trump years, but things are worse now than then. >> no, absolutely. and in a different time years ago, you could see a time in which an insurrection at the u.s. capitol where members of congress were huddled in the chambers and their staff were huddled under desks in their offices, walking around saying they were going to hang mike pence and looking for the speaker of the house, it would bring people together and would have people having a different type of conversation. that's not what we've seen and honestly, we've been talking about this for months on msnbc and at politico. it just -- it's unclear how it's going to shake out. there was a time in which we hoped and it seemed like maybe everyone went to their corners, eventually they'd come back together and the conversation around january 6th would be honest and it would be real and that's yet to happen. you're right, that animosity is continuing to grow. a part of that is because donald trump is still running around saying lies about the election, talking about -- and because of

that, they have whitewashed it, fox news and other right-wing news outlets have whitewashed what happened on january 6th saying it wasn't that bad. so then you have officials, it's a cycle. now you have officials saying the same thing and then you have racists running around philadelphia saying that the election was stolen. so all of these things are interconnected, so interconnected it's hard to see how you break them apart. >> you know, clint, you've talked about this really frightening sort of toxic storm of these elements that we saw literally spilling into the streets of american cities over the weekend. i wonder if you can just pick up on eugene's thread. i'm not going to play it on this program, but the ex-president's message on -- wherever he is, at his events, is to smear law enforcement efforts to protect the u.s. capitol and his own vice president that day. so not only have things not gotten better, it seems like

whatever was still holding things together has frayed more. >> that's right, nicolle. one of the oddest things i've heard is the president trying to be pro law enforcement while smearing law enforcement, from state to local to the federal level. it's really an odd juxtaposition and it really is just indicative of how this story six months later has changed again back to this narrative that it was nothing more than a peaceful protest, as you'll hear ron johnson say. nothing could be further from the truth. the video footage speaks for itself. i think what's also quite alarming and, you know, i was often times criticized about it in years past, i would try and distinguish between international and domestic terrorism and why our responses are different. i would always point out that domestic terrorists vote and international terrorists don't. you're really seeing this convergence as eugene was talking about between extremists of many different stripes and political leaders of very

different positions throughout the government now. when president trump was there, he united a lot of different extreme and far-right positions under his umbrella. now you're seeing all of those positions really fall to a collective of politicians around the country. my biggest concern is that because there has been no real repercussions to the political leaders for the big lie about voter fraud that did not occur, there's been no repercussions for the extremists that stormed their own house, you will see them again begin to embrace violent rhetoric or incitement which will lead to violence not just at a federal location but state and local locations. i'm also concerned as we see things start to unfold through the summer where we have two nations that are one vaccinated, one not, do we hit a variant or do we need to implement controls again, will doctors, will public health officials, will certain elected officials be targeted

again by this sort of extremist rhetoric. >> that's such a terrifying thought, but you're right. i think the first bulletin that went out to law enforcement in january did suggest there's an intersection between those who adhere to the lie about the election and those who chafe against public health warnings. clint, i'm going to go ahead and put up your sort of detailed list of the various factors behind the domestic violent extremism threat that we face as a country, because for all of the sort of romanticizing about unity in our politics, it's more rare than not. but i don't know that we've seen a moment in american history where there's such ambivalence to a domestic terror threat. i know you ticked through some of the dynamics with the militia groups, especially as more and more members become sort of charged or under scrutiny. can you just take us through where sort of generationally and

in terms of the belief system the militia groups most scrutinized as being part of the january 6 insurrection you think things stand today, six months later? >> the ones we focused on the most were the militia violent extremists out there on that day and leading the charge in certain respects. the oath keepers being the predominant one and the proud boys being the other. you've had them very derisive factor happen but it's led to a bifurcation of the militia movements. for the most part many have de-escalated or moved away from national chapters. you'll see that from the oath keepers and proud boys. many saying they don't want to be part of what they saw at the insurrection. but separately some of the more violent adherence have broken the other direction. they want to move toward more violent groups and those predominantly are about white supremacy. the individuals more committed

to white nationalism and white supremacy have moved in a more violent direction. this weekend that was a younger collective, they were not as forward a presence in past years and you're starting to see them show up more. that is a group that is going to be more likely to move towards some sort of separatist or white supremacist type violence. you can tell the organization in terms of their outfits and in terms of what they're doing. that's not a proud boys collective of people in misshapen gear and setting up for rowdy drinking parties. this is a neofascism that we've not seen in this country, more reflective of what we saw in the 1940s and '30s in a place called germany. so i find great concern with that. the other dynamic that's super important to look at, which it's very hard to discuss which is the online environment. you'll hear director wray, aside

from the militia violent extremists will talk about online white supremacy and it is potent. it is out there. it is pushing for an acceleration type civil war or race war. i think that's where our biggest concern will be going through the rest of the summer into fall and it has connections far outside of the borders of the united states. now, the base, which is one of the most prolific white supremacist groups in the united states, its leader which is originally from new jersey lives currently in russia. that's where you see this white nationalist connective issue stretch from europe into the united states and the online environment is really where that metastasized. >> what's so remarkable is that without any sort of public bipartisan commission holding an investigation with some aspects of that public facing, all that we know about the investigation comes from the charging documents that a small handful of reporters i think are helping

to bring to light. olivia, i want to read you about how reporters were treated by the insurrectionists on january 6th. according to the member of the news media victim, once the saw -- the insurrectionists saw the credentials were from "the new york times," the men became agitated and angry. the men then pushed the member of the media victim to the ground, taking her camera. while on the ground she continued to fight the men off and began to scream loudly for help. after she screamed, the males began to walk away. one of the men again pushed the member of the news media victim away as the men fled the capitol. this is the thread. they are dressed as clint described and they are targeting political opponents, i guess, and members of the news media. >> they're targeting people who were telling the truth, and

they're targeting people who are telling the narrative that is in direct contrast to the narrative that they have chosen to subscribe to and believe in. fundamentally, that actually comes down straight from the top, right? these republican elected officials who started this entire thing and who started these movements. these individuals remain dangerous to our country. and it's not hyperbole to state it that way. when you block getting to the bottom of things, you block a january 6 bipartisan commission to investigate what exactly happened here and the threats that exist out there that remain after such a national security failure takes place, when you block things like that and then you shun people like liz cheney who come forward and take a stand and tell the truth and then join the select committee, which is the right thing to do for our country, and you call them out and they block them, this is what's going on in the gop and this is dangerous

fundamentally. it's a wave that's happening across the country and it's pervasive in our communities and it's happening to the average american. they're radicalizing americans is what they're doing and it is so dangerous for our country and for our democracy. >> you know, eugene, it also is happening within the republican party. i mean there are only two that we talk about because there are only two putting their careers and reputations on the line, liz cheney and adam kinzinger. but as much as trump is sort of the toxic variable, it's all the enabling of his toxic force on american political life and it isn't even just on the republican party. as olivia is describing, it's this pervasive radicalization not to even his voters but anyone who watches right-wing media that you have to adhere to the delusions, to the propaganda. i want to bring something that adam kinzinger said in a "new york times" interview.

he said i haven't had meaningful communication since january 6 with kevin mccarthy. he gave a great speech after that and then he went to mar-a-lago, charged the paddles and brought trump pack to life. that is the moment when i realized, oh, man, this is a problem. you come to understand that when the party and party leaders talk about unity and in the same breath say that donald trump is the leader of the republican party, what they're talking about is not unity, they're talking about capitulation. i would just add they are talking about capitulation to an autocratic force. there was a time when republicans jumped up and down about autocratic behaviors in other countries that they're now not just enabling but participating in in ours. >> they talked about that under president obama, right? i remember a lot of republicans talking about how autocratic president obama was. and now you have president trump when he was sitting in mar-a-lago and you started to see and we reported on it in

playbook, you started to see all of these leaders, kevin mccarthy being one of them, coming there, kissing the ring, and getting the seal of approval, right, to be able to go back. and what was interesting was that right after january 6th, that day, the week after, it seemed like the republican party was kind of turning its back a little bit. they were hoping that he wasn't going to run, they wouldn't have to go to any more rallies. but then immediately we started to see them jumping back onboard. so what's clear about the republican party now is it's not about, like, is this a party where donald trump is the leader. it is that they also are at the whims of him, right? he doesn't have the same microphone that he did because he's off of social media sites and not getting as many interviews. he doesn't have the bully pulpit of the white house. and so a lot of what is happening and what's interesting is they're guess mating what

they think he would do. you're seeing state and local officials doing the same thing. we talked about the nationalization of local politics, but this is where it's really happening. it's really happening on the republican side right now all over -- all over the country in these republican states. and in the democratic states where republicans have power because they think that donald trump is going to bring them back to -- you know, that he's going to run in 2024. a couple of my colleagues have gone to some of the rallies that he's had and they said what they have been shocked about is these suburban white moms who say that donald trump in august is going to be reinstated and move back into the house that's right behind me. we all know that that is never going to happen and that is something that is starting to take root in the base of republican party. it's unclear how you shake that loose, because donald trump is not going to stop people from saying those things. it seems like the leadership of the republican party isn't going to either. >> so, clint, what happens? pick up eugene's question.

how do you shake that loose, as he said? >> i don't think you do, nicolle. the biggest thing we have missed talking about probably in the last six years when i've been working on misinformation and disinformation is the demand by some people to be lied to. they want to believe that these conspiracies are going to come true. and even when one doesn't come true and another one doesn't come true, they double down every single time. and it is a scam. it is to a degree. it shows the power just as trump is a messenger. you know he is lying about these things and yet they still will buy tickets to rallies, they'll still show up and make donations and continue to perpetuate that. where i get very concerned, nicolle, is even in the wake of january 6th where donald trump in many ways is being cited in court documents as i'm the reason -- donald trump is the reason i went, the president told me to go to the capitol, he still is not backing away.

if he's not backing away, there have been no costs to him personally. there's no reason that he should not move forward with one lie after another because he still has a base that will believe it. what ends up happening is you have a complete breakdown in governance over time if the party continues to pursue that path. how do you navigate from a position where you legislate and lead the country forward on things like climate change, in the face of a pandemic. we have so many of these issues right now, how do you move forward when part of the country, a sizeable portion, does not believe in the reality of what's going on in the country right now and believe in a conspiracy world that is created by a guy who basically sits in a house down in florida at this point. it's pretty remarkable that the republican party cannot challenge that. >> yeah. olivia, i sometimes marvel at how fragile our democracy was, but then i marvel at how many

forces lines up with the proverbial loaded gun pointed against it. it's not just the ex-president and his corrupt family, it's the entire republican party, the entire right-wing media ecosystem. i remember when you spoke out and i remember when miles taylor spoke out, i remember when elizabeth newman spoke out. i guess my question is where's everybody else that saw trump behind the scenes? where's everyone who knows that his impulses are autocratic, that his disdain for democracy is true and that he's leading the republican party and the country down a very, very, very dark hole? >> that's a great question and these are the voices that should be speaking out loudly and calling this out. you know, as far as others go that are on the republican side, former trump administration officials, it's really about power and preservation, i guess, of reputation. but at this moment you need to put that aside and understand what's happening here is so

beyond dangerous. we are not going to counter this any time soon. i think it's critical. look, i think with this select committee investigation, i think it will be important to bring some of these people in that were still there or had just left and ask them what they knew and when they knew it and what happened in a manner where they tell the truth and we finally get to the bottom of this. >> olivia troye, thank you for speaking out and starting us off today. eugene and clint are sticking around a little longer. after the break, a new report details the lengths a sitting member of congress has gone to support one of the country's most notorious white supremacists and to embrace a far right fringe agenda. plus clues in the indictment of the trump organization and allen weisselberg that could show us the road map for investigators as the manhattan probe presses on. and a new appeal from president biden to the country's unvaccinated after crowds of americans gathered together this weekend to celebrate another

milestone in the return to normalcy. all those stories and more when "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. t go anywhere. cash mode from pnc bank giving you the options and extra time needed to help you avoid an overdraft fee. low cash mode on virtual wallet from pnc bank. one way we're making a difference. ♪ ♪ when technology is easier to use...

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minus the traditional markups. ♪♪ in the six months since the january 6th attack not only have we seen the promotion of the big lie about election fraud by the right but we've also seen the growing trend of far right extremism within the halls of congress. among the most closely linked with that extremism is congressman paul gosar who has emerged as a friend and ally in the halls of the united states capitol to those on the fringiest of the far right. gosar, a five-term republican from arizona, was one of the

most prominent backers of the stop the steal movement, if you can call it that, and who has repeatedly voiced baseless conspiracy theories like the false claim that the fbi organized the insurrection, has aligned himself closely with leaders of white nationalist and extremist groups, people like nick fuentes, the leader of the america first movement who "the new york times" describes as boasting the kind of resume most members of congress would run from. it was at the unite the right rally in charlottesville. he has warned that the nation is losing its white demographic core. other conservative organizations have denounced him as a holocaust denier and a racist. mr. gosar, though, has continued to associate himself with fuentes. "the new york times" adds this about the connection, the arizona republican was the keynote speaker at a conference hosted by mr. fuentes group in february. the only member of congress to

participate. gosar has spread america first motto and projects on twitter. written to the fbi on congressional letterhead in mr. fuentes defense. mr. fuentes has praised the congressman and urged his followers to donate money to gosar's campaign. his unapologetic association is the most visible example of the republican party's acceptance of extremism. we're back with eugene daniels and clint watts. eugene daniels, i've asked you this. i've put you on the spot as someone who covers that building and walks around and could bump into mr. gosar, but have you ever detected any shame from his close association with white supremacists? >> no. he tends to play coy. when we find out that he's been invited to speak at a dinner or fund-raiser or that he did that, which he did earlier this year

where fuentes was here and he was the headline of that event, he plays coy. what he said is i have no idea what's going on when he was asked by reporters in the capitol. but he also tweeted out seemingly defending whatever fund-raiser that might have been saying that he wasn't sure why everyone was freaking out. the reason everyone is freaking out is because of the racism and the white supremacy that is spread at these events and by fuentes. and i think what's really interesting is you're not hearing on the right and in republican leadership kind of any pushback against gosar. we heard that about marjorie taylor greene, you heard that for lauren boebert at times but nothing about gosar. that's been something that's interesting to watch because gosar was at that rally and has continually spread that misinformation about this election. i think he called president biden a usurper as if he stole

the building that's right behind me. so all of these things that he says. and then when an event happens he likes to play coy about it. you talk to democrats and talk to republicans on capitol hill, and they're kind of all saying the thing that they don't understand what's going on with gosar and why he plays coy or is kind of flirting with these extreme right groups. >> you know, and, clint, it doesn't matter anymore if you understand it. the facts are out before all of us. mccarthy purged liz cheney urgently and immediately from his ranks because she refused to repeat a lie. but gosar, gosar sits on committees. let me read to you from "the new york times" reporting on mccarthy and gosar. >> it has not resulted in any punishment from house republican leaders who have declined to reprimand those in their conference who espouse fringe

beliefs. kevin mccarthy said gosar told him that the advertised fund-raiser was not real. so liz cheney's concern about democracy is real and she refuses to pretend she's not concerned about disinformation about the election. gosar's association with fuentes is real but mccarthy believes him when he says it isn't and he's cool and she's not. what role does the establishment of the republican party green lighting these associations play in empowering them? >> nicolle, i would love to get an interview with former congressman king of iowa. when this situation played out for him, he was gone. i mean he was essentially removed from his committees and pushed out of office. he was no longer really relevant as a politician. in this case, i think gosar sees it as this is his base to a degree and he's rolling with it because that is a very vitriolic and outspoken person, fuentes,

who in many ways has replaced some of the folks from that charlottesville march in 2017. if you remember back, richard spencer was the outspoken person there. fuentes is equally on par with spencer in that case. i think he's prolific in rallying up a younger audience, by the way, for the republicans. younger male white audience, i would note. so it seems as if it plays to an audience and backers that he wants and he sees no political risk in it in terms of his location in arizona. i also, when you showed that clip there are gosar, it was marjorie taylor greene standing right behind him. it's a big stew of nonsense that you see come together over time, which is indicative of what we were just talking about in the last block in terms of january 6th and the denials, the lies, trying to recast history essentially about what happened recently and also try to forge

ahead. i think it really shows where the gop is just politically, that they wouldn't renounce somebody like gosar today and will play to it and they also are not looking at the dangers that come from embracing a young white extremist that could probably agitate people over time. really be someone who starts to stoke incitement that could really blow back just the way we saw on january 6th, could blow back on the party once again. >> eugene, there is a direct line between the ex-president, and i remember probing one of his outside advisers. i said why does he have such a hard time denouncing david duke? he said he wants his vote. he wants the votes of the people that support david duke. it seems that these republicans are just an extension of that belief system with potentially deadly consequences. >> yeah. something that we started realizing about donald trump when he was president is that he had a really hard time saying anything negative about people he thought might vote for him.

if you talked to anyone who worked for him, whether that was in the white house or on "the apprentice" they talked about the transactional way he thinks about everything. oh, they're going to vote for me, i have to be nice because that is a vote that i want. that is a different way than most politicians used to think. you're starting to see that a little bit more in the republican party now. that's why you don't see mccarthy talking about gosar and ridiculing him because what they're hoping to do is keep the trump base happy. to do that, you have to keep donald trump happy, first of all. but you also have to flirt with these really dangerous parts of society, dangerous parts of white supremacy, these people who think all types of things about people that look like me, right? so those are the things that are happening and that's connected to january 6th and that's connected to whether or not donald trump believes that the election was fair and free or

not. and so all of those things are happening on the republican side. what we're seeing from mccarthy, the bet that he's made and the bet that other leaders have made is that they're going to need those people's votes in 2022 and he wants to be speaker. so it seems like he's got to keep things cool as much as he can. >> it is an appalling state of affairs, perfectly articulated by you in your reporting. eugene daniels, clint watts, thank you for spending time with us. when we come back, why one former prosecutor is saying donald trump's paper trail might become the key in making a case against him, and even more important than flipping or not flipping allen weisselberg. that's next. my name is douglas. i'm a writer/director and i'm still working.

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before his days in the white house, donald trump actually dubbed himself the king of the tax code. now prosecutors say spreadsheets from his company provided a road map for the trump organization's indictment on tax-related charges, fraud. in court documents filed last week federal lawyers said the organization spent 15 years paying allen weisselberg, its chief financial officer, through off-the-books benefits like cars, apartments and tuition payments for his grandchildren. but the indictment goes on to add that the trump organization kept internal spreadsheets that tallied all this up, all these payments being hidden from the irs are on paper. as "the washington post" puts it, quote, prosecutors treated the spreadsheets as the

accounting equivalent of a confession and that concealment, they say, shows that the trump organization knew it was wrong. joining our conversation is david fahrenthold and marketing and branding expert, our dear friend donny deutsch. so david, this is what i feel like over the last five years has always come into play whenever trump or his company have been scrutinized in a criminal context and that is intent. the existence of two sets of books, one that makes clear they were knowingly defrauding the irs seems to show the intent of their tax filings. >> talking to tax law experts, that's what makes this a strong case. you don't have to wonder about trump's intent, did they know what they were doing, did they understand the tax law. they set it out there. we're going to make a record of how much allen weisselberg is supposed to be paid and subtract

out all the free apartments, free cars, free tuition for his grandkids. we'll subtract that out. whatever that adds up to, we'll subtract that from his salary and only pay taxes on the rest. the fact that they have done that shows prosecutors how much money they avoided telling the irs about and the fact that they hid it shows intent, that they knew it was wrong and wanted to height it. >> donny, my dog is barking. i'm sorry about that. you have constantly pointed to -- through your knowledge of michael cohen's professional and post-trump era life and time served of the organization's intent. talk about that in light of what the books show. >> well, the organization you have to also remember is very, very, very small. i mentioned this on the show that it is, and david would know this. this sprawling document, it's actually a small mom-and-pop operation. donald trump knew where every

check went, where it was going, so the sergeant schultz, "i know nothing" defense is not going to hold true here. the set of books is better than as you said in your lead-up any witness. witnesses make great sexy tv but documents and receipts are where the rubber hits the road. you know, the trump organization, is just historic. i remember hearing stories in the '90s when they were owned by citibank that trump would do things like a contractor would come in to refurbish a ballroom was a million dollars. he said make it $2 million and we'll split the difference. any sleazy, ridiculous, scummy thing you can do. this is the tip of an iceberg. it's an iceberg in and of itself. a million and a half dollars of tax fraud and a schematic fraud over years would put anybody in jail for years and years to come. so this is the tip. this is just the way this company did business. >> you know, david, through your reporting, through some great reporting in "the new york times" that's generational in nature, we know so much about

the desire to evade taxes and to cheat and to conduct his business exactly as donny is describing. let me show you the president in his own words talking about how he cheated on his taxes. >> look, nobody knows the tax code better than i do. okay? i know it better. i'm the king of the tax code. by the way, just so you know, i know more formulas, i know more about tax abatements, i know more about taxes than any human being that god ever created. i know how the tax code works better than anyone. and i'm going to fix it so it's fair and just and works for you. >> so, david, none of these comments were made in the context of helping the little guy pay less in taxes. they were all made when he was put on the defense and back on his heels for refusing to disclose his taxes in the republican primary back in 2015. how much is there a sense that trump knew exactly what was going on in terms of defrauding

the irs in his business? >> well, the indictment -- i can tell you two things. first, the indictments, they don't say trump has a role. they say weisselberg organized this scheme along with unnamed others. trump himself is not named. we know in general as donny said, that the way the trump organization worked, there was only one decision-maker and that was trump. there were other people with titles but nobody made any decisions except trump. so the idea, i think, that anything this significant could have been carried off without trump's approval sounds out of character for that organization. but that's going to be for prosecutors to prove. i think that's going to be probably the next thing they have to try to figure out. everybody knows trump was in charge of this company but show me on paper. show me the witness who can say this specific decision was made at trump's behest and trump knew it was illegal and wanted to do it anyway. >> you know, donny, there's a pattern. as i said, we've watched trump

under criminal investigation for five years now for one thing or another. there's a pattern of normalizing the illegal conduct for the purposes of his own base. i'm not going to play it here. but here's what he said over the weekend to his most ardent supporters. he said this about prosecutors. quote, they go after good hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car. you didn't pay tax on the car or a company apartment? you used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is? you didn't pay tax or education for your grandchildren? i don't even know. do you have to? does anybody know the answer to that stuff? so clearly he is not lawyered up. but this is part of the sanitizing of the criminal conduct for the purposes of his base thinking it's another witch hunt. i hate to say this out loud but so far, you know, taking dirt from a foreign adversary, obstructing an investigation into you, paying money to a porn

star, so far this is behavior that his base has accepted from him. >> yeah. look, normalizing the behavior is not going to work in a courtroom. this is what he's saying, it's ticky tack stuff. just rich guy stuff. when you are appealing to a base and your premise is your unhappiness in life is not your fault, it's the brown person's fault or the black person's fault or the media's fault or the jews' fault. that's a very powerful message where they don't have to look in the mirror. they will overlook just about everything when that is the core message, the other message. >> that's very profound. you gave me a lot to think about. david, i want to give you the last word on where you think this heads and what your questions are about the next steps. >> i'm watching two different fronts. the first is obviously the legal front. we're interested to see do prosecutors charge anybody else?

do they flip allen weisselberg and turn him into a witness against trump? if they can't, where does this go? this i don't think is the end, but what's the next step? also the financial step, how his business is already suffering having lost customers, vendors, lenders, lawyers. what does this add to a company already in an existential crisis? >> david, we will watch with you. thank you for joining us. donny is sticking around for a little bit more because after the break president biden with a dose of reality for our nation celebrating the beginning of the end of the covid-19 pandemic. d c

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do it now for yourself and the people you care about, for your neighborhood, for your country. it sounds corny, but it is a patriotic thing to do. >> president biden just this afternoon addressing the nation's progress on the pandemic and again urging americans to get the shot if they haven't done so already. this after the president touted what he called our independence from the coronavirus, and all across the country this weekend families gathered with loved ones and friends for the 4th of july holiday where freedom took on new meaning after so much time apart. but there's still concern about the rise of the delta variant, particularly for unvaccinated americans. founder director of boston university for emerging and infectious diseases and msnbc

contributor donny deutsch is still with us. dr. bedelia, i experience this, and i'm sure donny does, too, vaccinated americans want to get on with things. they want to go back to life as they knew it. there's still a lot of suffering among unvaccinated populations. what do we do? i mean how do we get them to sort of come to the other side and protect themselves and their loved ones and their communities? >> yeah, nikole, i think it is worth while saying when you have the more transmissible variants, you know, when we think about how do we get to a point where we're not seeing the transmission of the disease, you need to have a lot greater number of people vaccinated to get to a point where there's population immunity, but with infectious diseases that are more transmissible. what i saw in president biden's points today is a little realism. they're aiming for children and they're aiming for the vaccine hesitant knowing it is a

difficulty to go for people who truly are saying, "we're not going to get vaccinated." it is a problem that is hard that we will have to work on. what they said is they're going to work on getting to schools, pediatricians, school nurses, and that's going to increase the number of people vaccinated in our communities by just vaccinating -- increasing the level of vaccination among kids. the other thing i saw, which i think is a good stance, there's a lot of disinformation. you know, most of the patients i speak to that are hesitant are young women who are getting hammered with this information about reproduction and ability to have children, and just crazy sort of disinformation about what the vaccines are -- you know, are potentially do in. the other is a targeted approach, believe it or not, at communities of color. i have seen anti-vax groups target particularly african-american communities, and what i saw in the steps that they mentioned today was they're moving the message and the access to vaccines closer to people because there's so much noise. you know, big media, you know,

government messaging, moving the message closer to where people are, to their doctors, to their pharmacists, moving it so that people can hear it from people that they trust is going to make a difference among those vaccine hesitant. i think that is the next step we need to concentrate on. >> so, donny, design the campaign to convince that group that dr. bhadalia is talking about, not anti-vaxxers but children 12 and older for whom pfizer has been approved, hesitant and maybe some consumers of disinformation. >> yeah. first, before i get to the disinformation part, you know, i think most people who have been fearful of getting sick have already gotten the vaccine. you know, it is like there's a certain motivation used to stop people from smoking cigarettes, and after a while, okay, people get that it is harmful and there are other ways you have to do it like it is not cool or whatever. in this case i think some of the things that for instance, you know, walgreen's gave out $25 to everybody that walks in,

incentivize parents with their children with money, with tax breaks. that's the stuff that's got to do it. you have to be promotional at this point because there's no more left-brain argument explaining it. people understand the virus is deadly and they understand a vaccine keeps you from getting the virus but they're still not doing it. i'm not talking about the ones absolutely verboten on it but those marginal fringe people the doctor was talking about, and to those you need stimulus. you need promotional stuff and money, services, something to motivate people to do it because the simple message is just not doing it anymore. >> dr. bhedalia, i thought if the sort of fear didn't motivate people to protect themselves, the sort of joy of going back to pre-pandemic life might. are you still sort of navigating the different incentives that donny is talking about? what do you hear the most? what works for you personally? >> yeah, i think most do because everybody is different. you see people who -- and the

tough part is that it is different if you are talking about living in a community like boston and massachusetts with clearly high vaccination rates. there's sort of an inverse flip almost where some people are saying, well, everybody else around me is vaccinated, why do i need to get vaccinated. i'm still working on that population to say, listen, if everybody thought like you your community would be vulnerable toward the delta variant, to the new variants coming up. so in a place like massachusetts, the strategy has to be appealing to what president biden was talking about, is that we're not just doing it for ourselves, we're doing it for our community. it is truly a patriotic duty that we are pandemic-proofing our community so we can move on to the problem like the homelessness, the economic impacts, the mental health pandemic that's coming and already here. so that's where i think it is an individualized approach. >> well, i mean i think the thing that's universal is no child under 12 is able to have a vaccine, so i think people don't want to do it for children, we

definitely have a different kind of problem on our hands. dr. bhadelia, donny deutsch, thank you for spending time with us today. when we come back the republican party's big lie contagion is spreading. the details and much more when the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. we are just getting started. ♪ when technology is easier to use... ♪ barriers don't stand a chance. ♪ that's why we'll stop at nothing to deliver our technology as-a-service. ♪

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yes, we need to know what our, you know, constituents think, what they want us to do. how do we advocate for our district? but if nobody is taking the role of leader and leading people a certain way, telling them the

truth when the republic is at risk which it truly is right now, then you can't expect anything but what you saw last night, which is thousands of people that believe the election was stolen because they don't hear people telling them otherwise. >> hi again, everyone. it is 5:00 in the east. congressman adam kinzinger there drawing a blight and crucial line few others in his party are willing to draw these days, that there is, in fact, a difference between telling the truth and leading and feeding your constituents lies to satiate the rage you helped create. the big lie has me takes tiesed since the president's sizable and verifiable loss perpetuated by republicans in both rhetoric and action. a new detailed report in "the washington post" lays out how gop candidates running in 2022 are using the lie, which also happens to lie at the heart of a domestic violence extremism warning, as a central message of their campaigns. quote, dozens of candidates

promoting the baseless notion that the election was rigged are seeking powerful statewide offices such as governor, attorney general and secretary of state, which would give them authority over the administration of elections in several of the decisive states where trump and his allies sought to overturn the outcome and engineer his return to the white house. a blakedown of the numbers shows that the lie about the 2020 election result is the animating force for many republican candidates. also from "the washington post", of the nearly 700 republicans who have filed initial paperwork with the federal election commission to run next year for either the u.s. senate or the house of representatives, at least a third have embraced trump's false claims about his defeat. many of them, 136 of them, voted against the certification of the electoral college on january 6th. on a state level, of the nearly 600 state lawmakers who publicly embraced trump's false claims, about 500 face reelection this

year or next. having these big-lie believers or at least big-lie propagators in positions of power could jeopardize the future of our democracy, as nbc news policy editor bengie sarlin points out. nightmare scenarios include local or state officials refusing to certify votes, governors and state legislators submitting electoral votes that disagree with each other ore overrule the apparent vote counts, fights over judges overseeing the process, and the house and senate disagreeing on a winner. a chaotic transition could create an opening for violent extremism if the winner is viewed as illegitimate. those worries come as we find out even more about the former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 result. the arizona republic reveals a pressure campaign against election officials in maricopa county.

quote. new records obtained by "the arizona republic" review behind-the-scene efforts by trump, his personal attorney rudy giuliani and state gop chair kelly ward to pressure the county supervisors. much of the attention from trump's allies were focused on supervisor clint hickman. the 56-year-old lifelong republican from a prominent west valley family that runs an egg company. on november 13th hours after a late evening ballot update from maricopa county clinched biden's win in arizona he delivered a message, quote. potus probably will be calling you. hickman ignored two calls from the white house telling "the arizona republic" saying that he presumed trump would try to influence the outcome as he did with georgia officials. this is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. ashley parker is here,

"washington post" bureau chief. eddie glide, princeton university. former republican congressman david jolly here, the national chairman of the serve america movement. lucky for us all three are msnbc contributors. ashley, this is tremendous reporting in "the washington post" we started with. take us through what it means for the mid-term. >> it just gives you a sense of how much former president trump is still the leader of the republican party and how much the false, dangerous and baseless claim he has perpetuated that the 2020 election was somehow stolen and, again, we should it was not, has pervaded just about every level of the republican party. it has become a fealty and litmus test for the primaries, but not just senate and house races. as my colleague amy gardner lays out in granular and stunning details, it is local officials up and down the ballot.

one of the lines that jumped out at me was one that you actually put on the screen earlier about, you know, these are people, secretaries of states, attorney generals, governors, people who really do have an actual hand at the state and local level of how states administer election results. and when you look at that and then you look at bengie's sort of nightmare scenario, it seems nightmarish potentially but not that far fetched. >> yeah. i mean i guess that's what is so terrifying, david jolly. i am going to put up two pieces of reporting for you. one is in "the washington post". in arizona energy executive jim lanman seeking the gop nomination to challenge u.s. senator mark kelley has embraced baseless claims of election fraud and purchased ad time on fox news in new jersey, thousands of miles from arizona where he is running, to win support from trump while the former president summers at his golf club in bedminster.

j.d. vance, "hillbilly elegy," said on monday that he regretted and has since deleted twitter posts that criticized donald trump amid accusations of flip-flopping as i vies for a seat in ohio now. as he runs for office, vance has shifted toward a pro-trump position, recently visiting the former president in florida in hopes of earning his endorsement. he told fox news on monday that he hoped people wouldn't judge him for his past remarks which he walked back. by the way, old tweets including vance saying he was voting for our friend evan mcmullen in 2016 and he called trump, quote, reprehensible because of his views towards immigrants and muslims, views that he no longer holds according to vance. >> yeah, nicole, look, there's a fault line that is developing. it is a very nuanced one but it is an important one.

so donald trump says the election was stolen from him, that he was rightfully elected. the protesters on january 6th that tried to attempt an insurrection, they believed the election was stolen. what we are seeing in the 2022 election is major candidates flirt with this notion that the election, it was stolen. why is that nuance? it is nuance because it is different from, say, your 2024 presidential prospects, ran desantis, greg abbott, kristi noem, who are saying we need election integrity, there was election fraud. but they won't go so far as to say the 2020 election represents a fundamental failure of our election. they don't actually want to go as far as donald trump wants them to, and so what is interesting about this 2022 cycle is it is a pretext for the next leader of the republican party. as ron desantis, greg abbott, kristi noem, are they willing to run on a platform that says the 2020 election was stolen?

that's different than saying there were election integrity issues, which we know in republican states they're passing these legislative packages to try to address, but it is ultimately a fault line on the republican party. i think donald trump's influence on the 2022 slate will be fascinating for how it precedes the 2024 slate should donald trump not run again. >> eddie, it is an important and nuanced point, but it is equally important to make clear it is the only fault line. there really isn't a war between adhering to trump's delusions and disinformation that is echoed on fox news and not doing so. i want to show you something jonathan swann said about the likes of adam kinzinger and liz cheney and what they're trying to do by telling the truth. >> this idea that she's going to create a new republican party or move, like it is absurd. it is absurd for anyone who spends any time talking to

republican elected officials. it is not where the party is. the party is extremely united. she is so unrepresentative of the republican party that you may as well just put a "d" next to her name at this point. even though she's deeply conservative, even though she has a completely conservative voting record, that doesn't matter. it is not about ideology. the party is not where she is. >> now, eddie, i will say what jonathan swann at least doesn't in that clip. the rest of the party is choking on trump's --. it isn't true but he is right that is where the party is. >> there's a distinction to be made between believers and those who don't necessarily believe but who are using the lie for their own selfish gains. i think you put it believers and propagators. i think that's the constituency of the republican party, and it is eroding our democracy. we need to understand how fragile our democracy is, right. in 2014 colleagues at princeton

declared american democracy had become an oligarchie. political scientists argued prior to 1965 it was an invoked democracy, that it wasn't a democracy until the passage of the voting rights act in 19650. so we always had these elements. if the democratic party and other actors in the party don't recognize the kind of political chernobyl we are witnessing in real-time and don't react accordingly, there will be a complete meltdown to stay true to the metaphor. we are experiencing and witnessing a political chernobyl, and it is going to have terrible consequences for our politics if we don't address it accordingly, nicole. >> you know, ashley, all of the reporting, all of the incredible journalism from your paper, from "the new york times" and from some of the states where trump waged his war against the 2020 result, all paint the picture that eddie is describing.

it is not hyperbole to say the ex-president declared war on the democracy he sought to continue to lead. i'm not sure why he wanted to lead it after he wrecked it. this reporting about the lengths he was willing to go in arizona is staggering for how similar it is to what he did in georgia, and the republican official made that point. let me put up some of the arizona's great reporting from over the holiday. arizona republican chair kelly ward's pressure campaign with hickman, the gop official who refused to pick up trump's call, began in earnest on november 7th as votes were still being counted. ward complained election observers were unable to see. after hickman pressed for specifics ward responded, quote, we need you to stop the counting. days later on november 13th, she wrote, we want you guys to do the right thing, prove to millions of arizona voters that the maricopa vote is legit. don't try to simply tell us that the recorder and elections

department say it's fine. prove it to arizona and to america. you have all the power you need to make it happen. the pressure campaign is clearly coming from the ex-president. i think he bragged about it. i think he flew some of the officials from michigan in, and it really does sort of undergird the point that save for a handful of local election officials, a lot of them republicans, we could have had a very different outcome in november. >> yeah, that's exactly right. in that reporting and in "the arizona republic" is fantastic and it is stunning when you stunning when you step back and think you have the president of the united states and his -- he would call them loyalists, others would call them hench men, calling local elected officials in an election where he is at the top of the ticket, where he has something or that he really stands to win or lose,

and pressuring them, and the idea that these local republican officials who are republicans through and through, many of whom voted for former president trump twice, recognize that it is so inappropriate that they are avoiding the calls of the president of the united states. normally if you are a local official, there's nothing better than if the president of your party calls you. it is something incredibly exciting. you can dine out on it, and they are avoiding his calls. when we talk about all of this mistrust in the election, there is a central irony here that one reason why voters might actually have cause to distrust these election systems is not because the election was stolen, because it wasn't, but it was because you have the president of the united states at the time and his aides calling local election officials and trying to meddle in the election to get the result that was not what the people voted for, but is what he himself would prefer.

>> david jolly i want to play you clint hickman last night on cnn describing some of what this was like for him. >> all of these people that called me, it wasn't stonewalling. we were in litigation at all of these points. it was getting hard to keep track of. i believe at one point there were eight cases being litigated, and maricopa county was finding themselves in the courtroom just, you know, at all times. so i wanted to make sure that i was not having conversations outside of that. whatever needed to be said, needed to be said in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury. >> so, again, these accounts are remarkable for how similar they are, whether it is the leaked audio from the raffensperger call to find 11,000 votes, whether it is pressure campaign when they were already in court. we know that the trump campaign,

the trump effort failed in every courtroom that it made its case. but these stories are still just so stunning for the audacity, the fraud that the ex-president was willing to perpetuate. >> nicole, donald trump engaged in a fraud on the american people, and he just happened to get caught and he wasn't successful. but let's be honest, he engaged in a fraud on the american people, he tried to disenfranchise the very people who he represented in the nation's highest office in the land. it is a lesson for all of us at how perilously close we got to having a fundamentally, what should have been a democratic election, perform in a way very undemocratic. this goes to kind of the central context of this conversation and many others, is then what about the broader republican party that is enabling and elevating not just donald trump but the theories that are so important to his fragile ego? that's where, look, for the adam

kinzingers and liz cheneys of the world they're american patriots and deserve to be lauded as such. i'm with jonathan swann, there's nothing left of the republican party other than a party that's able to embrace and to elevate an undemocratic, anti-republic theme that somehow we can engage in a fraud on the american people as long as it supports our guy winning an election. it makes the next presidential -- every election is so important, but it does make the next presidential election so important because is that part of the republican platform and do we now live in a two-party america where only one supports a true democratic republic or not? it is why i fundamentally believe a multi-party democracy is important in america right now but we're a long ways from that. until then we have to recognize that the republican party that celebrates donald trump is an anti-republican, anti-democratic party and they will continue to be so until somebody wrests control of the party from the former president.

>> eddie glaude, i'm not going to ask you how this ends because i think it is anyone's guest, but what happens next? >> well, it seems to me that those of us who are committed to democracy must rise to the occasion. we have to fight these folk at the level in which it demand. i mean we keep attributing to the republican party rational, political actors. they are, but not on behalf of democracy but simply on behalf of securing power. they're securing power, some of them at least, for tick lan ends and aims. those ends and aims are actually to my mind very dangerous for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, diverse nation. i think we have to respond in kind. what is interesting here historically is that we did not necessarily hold those southern elites who rebelled, nicole, we did not hold them to account. by 1877 with the compromise of -- the compromise, the radical reconstruction was done

in, black folk disenfranchised, american democracy on the ropes. 1896, pleasing versus ferguson wouldn't be overturned until 1954. that decision not to hold the southern traitors accountable produced this outcome. who are we holding accountable for what we're describing? who has been held to account for what we've just been describing? no one. we've on the precipice. we have to fight accordingly. >> ashley parker, david jolly, thank you for starting us off this hour. eddie is sticking around because there's more. when we return, despite zero evidence of any voter fraud, republicans are now making noise about launching an arizona-style ballot audit in pennsylvania, a state joe biden clearly and convincingly won. pennsylvania's attorney general josh shapiro will be our next guest. plus, pushback against the republican laws across the country banning the teaching of critical race theory as the gop tries to fight a cultural war

over race and history, critics are calling the new laws unamerican. breaking news in the matt gaetz' investigation. his one-time wing man joel greenberg wants a judge to delay his sentencing, and his reason for doing so may be very bad news for matt gaetz. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. anywhere.

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with most new workers hired from bayview-hunter's point. we don't just work at recology, we own it, creating opportunity and a better planet. now, that's making a difference. make no mistake, if they try to bring that sham audit here to pennsylvania we will be prepared and we'll fight back. if anybody tries to undermine it again, like i said, they will have to go through me. we will continue to respect the will of the people and the rule of law, unlike others.

>> that was pennsylvania's attorney general, josh shapiro, on this very show last month talking about his preparations if and when republicans in the commonwealth attempted to use the big lie to mount an investigation into the results of the 2020 election in pennsylvania. unfortunately, that day might be a little closer to arriving. a top republican in pennsylvania state senate led a private briefing last week with his fellow senators to talk about his audit plan, which will resemble the sham audit going on in maricopa county, arizona. according to the associated press, no county election board, prosecutor or state official has raised a concern over any sort of widespread election fraud in november's election in pennsylvania. a crucial state that democrat joe biden won by more than 80,000 votes or just over 1 percentage point. with the audit certain to face opposition from democrats in the state as well as legal challenges, the effort in pennsylvania shows the gop's continued efforts to peddle the

disgraced ex-president's big lie at whatever cost. joining us is pennsylvania's attorney general, josh shapiro. so i was reassured when you said any effort will have to go through me. i wonder if you remain as confident as you were then that you can stave off such an effort? >> i'm absolutely confident. look, every time they've tried to push the big lie in the courts, they've lost and we have won and we have defended the will of the people. we had a safe and secure, free and fair election here in pennsylvania. anyone who has tried to undermine that has met us in court and lost, and we'll continue to do everything we can to protect the integrity of our election system as they seemingly work overtime trying to disable it. >> can you believe we're still talking about this? i mean i remember talking to you and watching my colleagues talk to you in the days after election day through that saturday, which felt like 11 years in my life. but what does it say that this is what they've got, this is all

they've got? >> it says with a sliver of our electorate but a loud part of our electorate that that portion of the electorate and the candidates that are trying to speak to them are still trying to service donald trump instead of our democracy. it says the candidates, indeed the statewide candidates here in pennsylvania, are being rewarded for peddling the big lie as opposed to speaking truth, as opposed to dealing with the issues that matter most to pennsylvanians struggling right now. so there's a political benefit to it. now, of course, there's a destructive aspect to our democracy over the long term, but i think a lot of these folks don't really care. they're focused on not servicing the good people of pennsylvania but servicing donald trump. >> you know, i have always turned to folks like yourself or your secretary of state, katie hobbs, or secretary of state jocelyn benson in michigan.

there's some incredible reporting from tim alberta in "the atlantic" about lawmakers there. it is clear now local election officials, democratic and republican leaning, walk the line and were badgered and harassed and in some instances in georgia abused by the ex-president. with the attacks against him, with resigning in droves, what does the future look like for protecting the next election? >> i think the future looks bright. i don't mean to sound sort of, you know, pollyannaish, but i think the future is bright because we came to the brink and we were able to survive this thanks to those good people that you are talking about and many others across this country. thanks to the republicans and democrats in local counties that ran these elections. thanks to the prosecutors that did their jobs to root out whatever fraud existed, and here in pennsylvania, just for the record, there was less than a handful of incidents of fraud and they were all attempts to

vote extra times for donald trump. i think what we've seen is that our democracy is strong even though it is being challenged. now, we have to stay vigilant. we have to stay focused. we have to continue to speak truth and we have to act with moral clarity. sadly, the republicans who are being rewarded with nominations and support and seemingly, you know, the party favorites for various offices, they continue to peddle the big lie. they continue to suck up to donald trump and they are, at least in the short term, getting rewarded with that politically. but i think the public here in pennsylvania realized just how close we came, and i think the vast majority have tried to turn away from the big lie and instead are focused on things that matter most right now. how are we going to educate our kids and repair our bridges and focus on dealing with the real challenges that we have today. >> i don't mean to challenge your optimism, but i want to read you some headlines about

what's going on in pennsylvania. the state house of representatives has approved a budget that would allocate an additional $3.1 million to the state auditor general to create a new bureau of election audits. in a statement announcing the proposal, state house speaker brian cutler, a republican, said the new office was meant to underscore the integrity of future elections, not to review the past election results. if you had no fraud except on the republican side, why spend $3.1 million to audit future elections? >> well, two points in response. number one, the answer to your question of why is because they're not trying to service the people of pennsylvania, they're trying to service the big lie and donald trump. number two, the reason i'm optimistic is because of the veto pen of our democratic governor, and it is critically important that we always have that veto pen to be able to beat back these challenges to our democracy. but you asked me before about those actors in the various

states, and i said i'm optimistic because they exist, because they have stood in the breach, because they've done their jobs. as a result of doing their jobs from the democratic governor here in pennsylvania to the secretary of state in michigan, arizona and the others you cited, that protected our democracy. now, it is fragile and it is scary how close we came, but the reality is i think it opened up people's eyes to the reality of how important it is to have people in power that respect our democracy and are willing to either vote pro-democracy or veto things that are bad for democracy. that will be a critical issue going forward, and i think the public understands that. >> in philadelphia on saturday night, the convergence of adherence to the lie that the election was stolen and white supremacists marched on the streets of philadelphia. clint watts, who advised the fbi, described it as an image based on the uniforms and matching outfits reminiscent of

1930s germany, on the streets of philadelphia on saturday. your thoughts? >> it was horrific. nicole, you can draw a direct line between the big lie, the violent insurrection of our capitol on january 6th, and what happened in philadelphia here on independence day weekend. the modern day republican party owns this and it is time for all of them to denounce what we saw in philadelphia just a few days ago. as i've been saying for months, republican attempts to promote the big lie and roll back voting rights is directly rooted in racism. by the way, nicole, you don't have to take my word for it. just listen to the chants coming from those white supremacists in the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection just a couple of days ago, and in the face of their hate it is incumbent upon

all of us to speak truth and act with moral clarity. it is time for the republican party today and their candidates to stop winking and nodding at these people, to stop making it seem like what they're doing is somehow okay. these are racists who are trying to tear apart our country, who are trying to make it harder for black and brown communities to be seen and heard. you know what i would say to these republicans? show some courage already. stand up to these people, because this weekend they were marching in philadelphia, next weekend they could be marching in some other community. it is time to stop this and speak truth. >> mr. attorney general, is there anything your office can do in terms of investigating and if crimes were committed prosecuting these white supremacists? >> the philadelphia police department is investigating. the local authorities have jurisdiction here. certainly my office is engaged in all kinds of investigations

stemming from january 6th, before that and beyond. we won't hesitate to engage as need be. >> pennsylvania's attorney general, josh shapiro with his hands full. thank you for spending some time with us to talk about all of it. we're grateful. >> good to be here. when we return, the growing pushback against republican efforts to control what teachers can and can't teach about race in our country's history. that story is next. an made of doing what's right, not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. ♪ usaa ♪ we're made for. hi, verizon launched the first 5g network, and now we want to be the first to give everyone the joy

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the debate and the politics over critical race theory is the latest rift in this country over something that shouldn't be political at all. conservative groups along with well-connected right wing activists and fox news, of course, weaponizing the republican party's opposition to teaching critical race theory, using it as their new rallying cry in the culture war. so far republican-backed legislation has been proposed in more than 20 states. five states have passed substantial restrictions on what can and cannot be taught in public school classrooms. in a brand-new op-ed in "the new york times", four scholars, a progressive, a moderate, a libertarian and, yes, a conservative write that these laws are a threat to our education system. quote, let's not mince words about these laws. they are speech codes. they seek to change public education by banning the expression of ideas. even if this censorship is legal

in primary and secondary education, it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of american free expression. if the history is to judge the united states is exceptional, it is because we welcome contestation in our public spaces as part of our unfolding national ethos. it is a violation of the commonly shared vision of america as a nation of free, vigorous and open debate. to resort to the apparatus of the government to shut it down. we are back with eddie glaude. eddie, this caught my eye because it came at this sort of war about teaching our full history, in some of the same way that general milley did, that it is the opposite of what our country should be striving to reach, to shut down, a true and honest education of our history.

>> when we think of a liberal arts education, a genuine liberal arts education, nicole, we think of it as a kind of exposure to a wide range of material that in some ways unsettles you. we're not provincials, we're not parochial, we want to expand our horizons. the ideas are to unsettle our previously held judgments, our commitments by being exposed to a wide range of commitment while you are reading thomas carlisle or karl marx. you will have that kind of encounter in the classroom. you will have that kind of encounter in the classroom. but what we're seeing are arguments for illiberal education, right, to confirm your narrow prejudices, to confirm your narrow commitments, not to expand your horizons. this is what we're seeing and this is what i think that op-ed and what max boot and tim snyder have been arguing in response to what we're hearing from the right. >> do you think it will work? i mean do you think we still

value these things enough? i mean we talk about it in the context of voting rights. we talk about it in the context of whether we want to live in a democracy or not. it feels like the bad guys in all of those fronts are making a lot of strides, eddie. >> right. this is the third front. they're opening up a third front. we need to understand the attack on so-called critical race theory as working in lock step with the attack on voting rights, as being a component of what was being argued for in the insurrection of january 6th. these things are connected. what we're seeing, whether it is propaganda news or whether it is republican operatives, they're trying to stoke white resentment. they're trying to stoke white fears. you are going to be replaced, not only by demographic shifts but actually in the history books. you are going to be rendered irrelevant by these stories that they're telling your children. they're corrupting the minds of your babies. this is the logic of a kind of fascism, nicole. let me say this really quickly. this is happening in a moment

when we were on the precipice of trying to imagine ourselves differently. the racial reckoning i have talked about on your show, that we were experiencing through the protests, where we were grappling with our public history, this is an attempt to arrest that. every single time a new america is about to be born, the umbilical cord of white supremacy has been wrapped around that baby's neck choking the life out of it. we have to be better midwives, nicole, if we're going to give birth to a new america. >> i never want you to say anything quickly, and i need you to say more about how we do that. >> well, we have to be -- you know, i have been talking about this for a while. we have to be honest with ourselves. we have to confront who we are. you know, if we were at the july 4th picnic i would say we have to grow the -- up. it is a maturity that is required of us, to step into our history, a maturity that is

required of us to step into our history and look ourselves squarely in the face. this is who we are, and that acknowledgement becomes the precondition for us to be better. you just can't assert it. there's this assumption -- and i will say this really quickly. there's this assumption that america cannot be america unless we imagine ourselves as the best thing that the world has ever seen. we can be the best thing if we're true to ourselves, but you can't do that if we keep lying to ourselves, period. >> you are always so profound. i never want you to stop talking. eddie glaude, thank you for spending some time with us today. when we return, breaking news in the criminal case against matt gaetz' associate joel greenberg. he is asking a judge to delay his sentencing as he continues to cooperate with the prosecutors. that story is next. ry is next

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they're allegations he denies. according to court papers, the attorney for greenberg, a former florida county tax collector, asked the judge today for the delay, citing greenberg's cooperation with federal prosecutors and the expectation that he will participate in additional sessions with them. joining us now, nbc news investigations correspondent tom winter. tom winter, you saw this development on your twitter feed. it is one of the few i check on the air. tell us more. >> sure. so a couple of developments or at least a couple of things that we can glean from this, nicole, is basically he is asking, and apparently according to joel greenberg's attorney, prosecutors agreed with this, asking for a 90-day extension. he was supposed to be sentenced on august 19th in the morning. that would bring us out to simple math into november. when we look at this, this is something that we kind of typically see when cooperation is going well. in other words he's still talking to them. he's got more to share according to his attorney, and they want to keep this going.

as you may remember from his plea agreement, the idea that his sentencing could be further reduced is entirely dependent upon his truthful cooperation. so that's what we're seeing here, nicole. a couple of things that could be happening, not necessarily are happening but typically in these situations you see somebody who investigators are talking to other people, they continue to come up perhaps with more documents, continue to gather information, and then they will go back to joel greenberg and say, "okay, what about this" or "this person says this," and he will share with them that information, provide his own testimony. and then from there, they may go back to some of the other people they're talking to. you can expect in a case potentially as complex as this there will be a lot of back-and-forth between the parties. sometimes it can mean there's an issue between the cooperation and prosecutors believe he has more to say, are trying to draw that out of him, although typically in those circumstances they try to put a little bit more pressure on him.

at least at this point without prosecutors yet filing their motion and their paperwork, this feels like it is a cooperation that's going well, but time will tell, nicole. so i think those are a couple of things to watch. greenberg, remember, pleaded guilty to six counts, bribery, identity theft as well as sex trafficking among them. so we continue to see where this investigation goes. notably so far, i should say, at least recently, it has been pretty quiet as far as new developments in this. so we'll anxiously await and see where this investigation leads. >> one of the, i think, things that came up -- and it might have been in gaetz's sort of counterspin when the allegations of sex trafficking of a minor girl first came out was about the credibility of the witness. i wonder if some of this time is to corroborate a witness that might sort of admittedly have credibility problems. i know some of the actual receipts of the transactions allegedly with young girls have

been produced for various news organizations. is that the kind of investigative work that could be going on, tom? >> right. well, whenever i hear credibility concerns with a victim of sexual assault or sex trafficking, i'm cautious to look at the coin kind of two ways. one, it of looking at the coin one of two ways, one, is the person telling the truth or is the person's path making it challenge for the jury, maing the jury believe the story or credible. that's more often the case. when you look at joel greenberg, what's going on here, yes. more information from other people running by greenberg. okay, what happened there or you and another person in the room, can you corroborate it? all those things can be helpful and potentially moving the case forward. >> tom winter, thank you so much for joining us with this

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the confirmed death toll has reached to 36 with 109 people still unaccounted for. there is a search for victims entered 14 days. four bodies recovered today as

crew braved the weather brought by tropical storm elsa. >>. >> reporter: this is now becoming a daily routine to get these updates. there has been eight more individuals confirmed deceased, putting that total up to 136. 199 individuals are still unaccounted for. we have to know when there is good moments and we have to acknowledge situations where it could have been worse. today there is a potential of wind gusts anywhere from 40 to 60 miles per hour. over the last 24 or 36 hours, we saw the direction of the storm go further west. we should note earlier this afternoon, that rescue effort did pause. we have now learned for about two hours because of lightning and wind gust that exceeded 30 miles per hour. you can see behind us here, the large part of the storm from tropical storm elsa has moved west ward and north of here.

those crews are back on the scene continuing efforts, this is difficult, this is now day number 13th searching for their loved ones. >> there are still regular updates for the families, are they still holding vigils where the families meeting and receiving briefings since day one. >> reporter: yes, fema is here on-site, we are told they are working here with the families of those individuals that were in the tower that's demolished on sunday night. you have to take into account of the hundreds of individuals impacted by that, too. they're working with them to file those insurance claims. we don't have and do not expect to receive for months of what caused this here. we are hearing from the surfside mayor who is noting another

tower built at the same time by the same architect and concerns of the stability of that building, too, nicole. >> nbc vaughan hillyard, thank you so much for your reporting. we'll be back after a short break. don't go anywhere. k after a sho break. don't go anywhere. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ comfort in the extreme. ♪♪ the lincoln family of luxury suvs. ♪♪ ♪ welcome to allstate, ♪ ♪are you down, d-d-down, d-d-down, d-d-down♪ where we're driving down the cost of insurance. ♪ ♪ are you down, down♪ ♪d-down, down? are you♪

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