the rachel maddow show starts right. no good evening, rachel. it has been a busy day in the news today. a lot of news continuing tonight. we happy to have you here. it has been a busy news day and a lot is continuing tonight. we got word late this afternoon, feels like evening, we got word that the fda looks like it's going to move this week to approve booster shots for all adults. the previous approval had just been for high-risk adults to get boosters, but a bunch of states have basically ignored that and started making booster shots available for any adult that wants one. it's moving tonight that that should be the national standard by the end of the week, booster shots approved for all u.s. adults. that's good news. it's at least sort of simplifying news in terms of the rules and formal government advice about vaccinations. that news comes on the same day, we've learned, that pfizer is

going to the fda to get approval for its new antiviral pill. this is not a vaccine, this is a pill you take as a treatment for covid. merck has one of these antiviral pills, pfizer has one of them, too. the merck clinical results looked really good in terms of people being kept alive, getting out of the hospital if they could get that drug soon after being diagnosed with covid. the merck results were good, but the pfizer clinical trial results looked even better. the pfizer clinical trial results showed nearly 90% efficacy at keeping people out of the hospital and alive if they could get this drug, this new pfizer antiviral drug, again, that you take as a pill soon after contracting covid. again, pfizer has just put in to the fda to have that treatment authorized for use in the united states. merck's application for its antiviral treatment is already being processed at the fda. that's all good, having a whole

new armamentarium of clinically proven effective drugs to treat covid. that is a big deal, a really big advance in terms of the fight against this pandemic. we also have monoclonal antibodies, and if you can get those monoclonal antibodies in time to people, they, too, show effectiveness at keeping people alive. the problem with monoclonal antibodies, you have to take them as an injection or an infusion that has to be done at an infusion center or a site set up to function as an infusion center. it's hard to administer. in the case of the merck pill and the pfizer pill, they're just pills you take. for a relatively short course of treatment. each is a five-day course of treatment. the pfizer vaccine requirements that are due to go in effect,

for all of the controversy around the vaccine requirements, those will have an effect of boosting vaccination rates around our country. the number of vaccinated kids will rise steadily over time. all of those things are good news on the covid front, particularly if now doctors are going to have, as i said, a whole new armamentarium of drugs that don't over need to be refrigerated that they can give people if they do contract covid to keep them reliably out of the hospital and from dying. it's all good news. frankly, it's all good news you hope could move along a little quicker given the rising case numbers once again, the rising hospital case numbers we're seeing once again. this time it's the mountain west and new england and some places in the southwest. the state of minnesota, for whatever reason is also seeing the fastest growing case numbers in the country right now.

but, honestly, if it's not one part of the country it's another. overall as a nation, we're still up over 1,100 americans dying in this country every day from covid, still. over 1,100 americans per day dying on average right now. obviously the more vaccinated we get as a country, the more good clinically proven options doctors have for treating people who do get infected. the closer we have to getting this thing in hand, we are making progress, important progress just announced tonight. of course, it's all still too slow. i should also say on this subject that at the same time that pfizer is starting the process of having its antiviral pill, its covid treatment approved here for use in the united states at the same time that they have applied for that authorization for it to be used as a covid treatment here, today they also, the same day, announced they've come to a deal with the u.n. medicines patent pool, which, without getting too much into the weeds, pfizer will

allow for that potentially game-changing drug to be manufactured all over the globe. they're going to let countries all around the world make it themselves, which is huge news in terms of the global pandemic. it's the only way there's any chance that that life-saving treatment is going to reliably get to poor countries is if it is manufactured all over the globe, not just in the west, and those poor middle income countries have to worry about it getting shipped out from here. that deal that the drug from pfizer can be manufactured globally, that's a really big deal in terms of the drug. the drug itself is good news. we may soon have access to that drug in this country for people who have contracted covid besides the clinical trials they already did. it's all good news. but we do need to go faster. and speaking of literally global problems, we've also got a brand-new problem i had never

even thought about before it descended upon us now, but it has descended upon us now thanks to russia. russia this week literally used a ground-based missile to blow up one of its own satellites. they had a satellite that was out there in space orbiting the earth. they shot a missile from the ground at that satellite and exploded it. now, the good news for russia is that the missile hit its target and in fact blew up the saltite. satellite. the bad news for russia and the rest of the world is that missile hit that target, blew up the satellite, but they blew it up into a gazillion little pieces that are now still there orbiting around the earth like a million little faster than a speeding bullets, posing a real threat not only to, you know, other satellites in orbit but most acutely posing a threat to the international space station which is currently in orbit full of astronauts who are currently living on board. those astronauts had to take

emergency precautions yesterday as they were surprised, flung into an orbital debris field that didn't exist before russia chose to pull off this stunt despite the proximity of the international space station and to the humans on board. thanks, russia. did you think about that first? did it even matter to you that some of the astronauts you put in danger were themselves russian astronauts? do you care? you just wanted to cannonball into the crowded kiddie pool and never mind who you crushed on the splashdown, right? knock yourself out. it's a problem i never even conceived of before, and now we're living through it. we also, late tonight, got a massive revision in important economic numbers, in jobs numbers. all summer long, the job numbers that come out every week and come out monthly, the job numbers were kind of meh.

president biden and biden administration and democrats in congress got all sorts of bad press over that, about how the economy wasn't performing great under democratic leadership, and surely that was going to be a drag on the democrats and the election this year, months of coverage like that, right? well, now, hey, look, it turns out the job numbers have actually been kind of awesome because they've been retroactively revised. here's the "washington post" tonight. quote, the government dramatically underestimated job growth this summer. initial reports underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs over four months. quote, in june through september, the bureau of labor statistics reported it underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs. that's the largest underestimate of any other comparable period going back to 1979. if those revisions were themselves a jobs report, they would be an absolute blockbuster. president biden may have even paid a political price for the

lackluster jobs numbers, which have now been revised. from april to june, polls found most americans, 51%, approved of president biden's handling of the economy. but as the bad economic numbers came out, those approval numbers fell steadily. by october just 39% approved of biden's handling of the economy. yeah, people were subjected to months of headlines about how meh the jobs numbers were. now it turns out those numbers and headlines were wildly off, more off than they've been in 40-plus years. actually, the job numbers have been pretty good all this time. oops, we need to add another 626,000 jobs to what we thought the numbers were. at which point president biden gets to say, great, now, where do i go to get my reputation back? where do i go to undo the months and months and months of bad press that turns out were based on false pretenses.

like i said, a lot going on tonight on lots of different fronts. for a surprisingly large number of americans on the political right, though. the most important and most shocking and most difficult-to-take news of the past 24 hours is that john f. kennedy jr. did not rise from the dead at midnight last night in dallas, texas to reveal himself as the new running mate for donald trump in 2024. and, no, this news is not a rerun. this is happening again. there is a surprisingly large slice of the trump supporting world who adheres to the fractiously insane qanon theory that's on the trump cord by pretty strong cords. here's mike flynn and his family pledging his allegiance to the qanon cult with a video.

here's marjorie taylor greene promoting qanon conspiracies on social media with gusto which is how she built up her pro-trump right wing following that propelled her to congress. it was the audit of the arizona election that told thousands of americans that the 2020 election was somehow stolen, even at the conclusion, that audit was, oh, yeah, i guess biden did win the state. there is a reason that the qanon conspiracy theory has sustained itself this long. and there is a reason it's attached to the world of trump supporters. and it's the same reason. it's that high-level, high-profile trump supporters have not only explicitly endorsed and promoted the qanon

conspiracy theory, they've nudged and winked and hinted at it long enough to keep it propulsive in right wing circles, that had some support from the cultists worshipped. trump and his circle are the center of the qanon conspiracy theory. their support for it, their outreach for it, their willingness to tolerate it, engage with it, has kept it going all the time. there's the media how come the qanon thing is still around given trump is out of office? well, because trump and his folks are still around helping this stuff survive. the pro-trump qanon conspiracy theory world has morphed into a lot of different increasingly insane ideas over the few years it's been around. we don't have to go through all of that, you can look it up if you want to feel sick. if you want to feel sick. but one offshoot of it is led by a guy who does a sort of magic fake numerology about things he

finds in the world and by teasing meaning out of these numbers that he's made up, he keeps making prophesies and they're about dead celebrities. he keeps telling his followers that dead celebrities are going to return from the dead or they're going to return from having been in hiding when they were pretending to be dead, they're going to reveal themselves as having been alive all this time, and they're going to do that soon, his numbers tell him so, they're all going to come back and reveal themselves as alive now so they can all be part of trump's triumphant return to power not just as president of the united states again, but as king of the world. so the qanon folks initially prophesized that jfk jr. would come back from the dead and reveal himself on july 4, 2019. that did not work out. must have been something wrong in the calculation. then a couple weeks ago,

november 2nd of this year, 2021, like a ton of qanon people, maybe a thousand people, maybe more, turned up in dallas at dealey plaza where president kennedy was assassinated in 1963. all these qanon people turned up in shockingly large numbers on november 2nd, expecting that not only jfk jr. would be rising from the dead there, but that his father jfk sr. would be there with him. the people resurrected from the dead revealed to not have died at all. these people, who are believed to be dead, are showing themselves to the world because they're on trump's side and they're going to help trump return to power as king so he can start in on the mass execution of all of his enemies which has always been the end point of all the qanon conspiracies. it's a bloody thing. that they promote. when i said, you can look into

it if you feel like you want to get sick, the qanon conspiracies have latched on to all sorts of various things, but at their heart they're sort of a blood-soaked vengeance tale of every democrat you heard of and every celebrity, and people you never heard of that they decided are key to their conspiracies. it's about killing people in mass numbers for the entertainment and glorification of the qanon adherence and donald trump. and a couple of weeks ago when that unexpected large number of qanon folks turned up at dealey plaza, this was a lot of people. it was craziness, it was like conspiracy theory fringe vest that popped up in the middle of dallas. but then it faded away. until yesterday they came back. vice news had some actually good reporting this week showing it seems like a significant number of these qanon folks never left dallas after the failed prophesy

of jfk and jfk jr. a few weeks ago, right? as of midnight, they apparently all thought jfk jr. and jfk sr. would be coming back, so they all went to dallas again by the hundreds to wait for the lightning bolt or whatever. at one point last night, as they were all assembled there at dealey plaza waiting for the resurrections, some police cars went past with their sirens on, and the whole crowd of qanon folks at dealey plaza lost their mind. it must have been him. it must have been him. oh, my god, i have chills. what happens to these folks? what happens to them in the short run? do these people now leave dallas again? they thought this was going to happen in 2019, they thought it was going to happen two weeks ago, they thought it was going to happen last night at midnight, it seems like it hasn't happened. do they stay in dallas now, because they're going to get another date? right?

the guy is going to pick some numbers in the squiggles in his ramen noodles and tell them, oh, actually, it's wednesday. do they stay in dallas? do they pack it up? does he say that other dead celebrities are going to turn up somewhere else? do they pledge allegiance to one of the multiple grifters who is claiming to be reincarnated jfk jr.? i kid you not. do the trump supporters and qanon pick one of those jfk jr. followers and start following them as if their prophesy came true? for the many, many grifters working the sad and dangerous trump world scam, happily relieving these poor souls of their retirement savings, but do they go back to dealey plaza again? will they make it a permanent

site? will there be some other one? will there be merchandise to buy? i'm sure there will. that's how it's going to the republican base of trump world. how was your day? what was the news like in your day? today, abc news reported jonathan karl's book finally came out about the last months of the trump administration, this book has been making news for weeks prior to its publication day. here's the nice part. you may recall a controversy we spent quite a bit of time on right at the end of the trump administration. it was something that we were never quite able to figure out, but that sort of set off a lot of alarms. after the election in the last weeks between -- trump lost the election to biden and inauguration day when biden was finally sworn in. during trump's lame duck period, trump went out of his way to stuff the top echelons of the pentagon with trump loyal appointees that had no kind of experience that would qualify them for those kinds of senior jobs.

these people were above all, and in some cases, exclusively known as trump loyalists. they had worked for mike flynn who had worked for the fringiest and weirdest trump warriors in congress. people who worked for like congressman devin nunes. what did trump want with those guys all that time, that he spent all that time during the lame duck period stuffing the pentagon with them. what did he think they were going to do there? in jonathan karl's book, he explains how one of those trump appointees who we spent a long time trying to figure out what he was doing at the pentagon, one of the things he was doing in his last days at the pentagon, he was fielding mike flynn's phone calls after the election. he was telling mike flynn that he needed to use his senior seat at pentagon to overturn the election. he said, we need you, flynn told him. he said there was going to be an epic showdown over the election results. he said he needed to get orders signed that ballots needed to be

seized, that extraordinary measures needed to be taken to stop democrats from stealing the election. and cohen had enormous respect for flynn and the retired general had given him one of the most important jobs on the national security council. he thought his old boss sounded manic. shortly after flynn called him, cohen received a call from sidney powell, flynn's former lawyer who was now advising president trump, and like flynn, promoting some of the craziest theories about the election. powell called cohen with a bizarre request. her request was specific, urgent and also completely insane. cia director gina haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in germany, she told cohen. you need to launch a special operations mission to get her.

cohen had never talked to sidney powell, and he was shocked she would call him direct to his office. it's an unpublished number that someone with access to the internal directory had to have given her. sidney powell went on to explain that gina haspel had been hurt in a secret operation to seize a computer server from a company named seidel. the server powell claimed contained evidence that hundreds of thousands had been rigged to switch voting machines. powell believed haspel had embarked on this secret mission to get the server and destroy the evidence. in other words, she was part of the conspiracy. that's why sidney powell wanted cohen to send a special operations team over to germany immediately. they needed to get the server and force gina haspel to confess. cohen thought powell sounded out

of his mind. she then emailed cohen and asked another bizarre request. she wanted help getting a letter of marque. it would essentially allow powell to act as a modern day pirate, seizing property from u.s. adversaries. jonathan karl writes, seriously, it's actually a real thing. in article one of the u.s. constitution congress is granted power to grant letters of marque and reprisal and make rules concerning captures on land and water. at the time it was written, the idea was to give privately owned ships, pirateers, aka pirates the authority to raid merchant ships who were aiding an enemy during time of war. why did sidney powell want a letter of marque? did she want to conduct her own mission to seize a mysterious computer server in germany? who the hell knows.

the efforts of michael flynn and sidney powell to enlist ezra cohen in their efforts to overturn the election results, which are reported here for the first time, are among the strangest and most potentially dangerous actions taken. just think about the request from sidney powell. she was asking the top intelligence official at the pentagon to dispatch a special operations team on a mission to capture the cia director. and the most disturbing thing about all of this is that sidney powell was not just a lone crackpot, she was working side by side with rudy giuliani as a member of president trump's legal team, and she would be meeting with president trump in the oval office. although ezra cohen ignored powell's e-mails, the secret mission spread throughout social media on websites associated with the qanon conspiracy. and now tonight, less than a year later, the qanon conspiracy

theory adherents are waiting in dealey plaza in dallas for jfk jr. and jfk himself because they are going to be trump's zombie running mates or whatever. trump is endorsing republican candidates all over the country who pledge, yeah, really, he should be reinstated as president. and jonathan karl's reporting in this part of the book does actually jibe with something that really made no sense at the time, last december. december 4, 2020, right around the time that he reports this was happening, reuters put out a fact check about some of the trump election claims that were circulating online, and their fact check on december 4th included this bewildered statement from an actual cia spokesperson. quote, cia spokesperson nicole de haay told reuters, well, this is the most absurd inquiry i've ever addressed, but i'm happy to tell you that director haspel is alive and well and at the office.

it was so confusing at the time that the cia had to bother to put out a public statement from a named spokesperson asserting that the cia director was in fact alive. but we now know that this wasn't just a response to crazy qanon people talking in the chat rooms, talking on the gab with the machines they made with the cans and the string between them. now we know that cia spokesperson wasn't just responding to that craziness in the smelliest, dankest corners of the internet. cia was responding to something that had been put to the top intelligence official at the pentagon, a trump appointee, who was being asked by someone meeting regularly with the president to go dispatch navy s.e.a.l.s or like delta force or whatever to go rescue the cia

directorer so they could then be interrogated and then presumably publicly executed like all the democrats and celebrities who the qanon people want trump to kill in front of them. this is how it's going on earth, too, where millions of fellow americans live. there's president biden today on earth 1 in new hampshire promoting the fact that his new infrastructure bill is going to finally pay to repair a bridge that has been considered dangerous since 2013. that bridge is finally going to get fixed. today, president biden is going to go to a big electric vehicle factory, a huge factory, that gm is opening up in michigan. president biden's epa chief was just in jackson, mississippi talking about how the infrastructure bill would help that city fix its terrible and retractible drinking water. here's the fda authorizing pfizer boosters for all adults and to approve covid treatments

about that developed in record time. that's what's going on on earth 1. and then simultaneously here's the republican party's most fanatical base voters singing "we are the world" and praying in a circle and swearing at passing sirens because they're the reincarnated former president's son will rise from the dead. soon, it's about to happen. tomorrow, most rabidly pro-trump congressman in congress paul gosar will be stripped of his duties after publishing an anime video depicting ocasio-cortez's killing. the most normal thing going on right now, that congressman

palmer from alabama has apparently distinguished himself for becoming the first republican member of congress for sending out a press release claiming credit for the infrastructure bill, for what it's going to do for his home state of alabama, even though he himself not only voted against the bill, he spent months denouncing it as a terrible, reckless thing. gary palmer in alabama denounced the infrastructure bill, he voted against the infrastructure bill, now he wants his constituents to know he's taking credit for all the things that infrastructure bill will do for the people of alabama. congressman gary palmer. it used to be a story like that would be like a slam-dunk story for the national press for weeks, that the republican party would have to come up some answer for because that was so embarrassing, hypocrisy at that level, disingenuous craziness on that level, oh, how are we going to put out this firestorm? these days that's cute given what else is going on over there.

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in the days after the presidential election, the trump campaign and the great state of nevada and our friends at the fox news channel, they were very, very excited about what they said was one clear, indisputable terrible case of documented voter fraud. you may say voter fraud wasn't proven, but in this case it was definitely proven. there was a single ballot cast by a woman who could not legally have cast that ballot herself

because she sadly had died in 2017. clark county, nevada issued a mail ballot in her name, this deceased woman's name. they mailed that ballot to her home address. voting records then showed that ballot had been filled out, returned and counted in the election. how could that be? she died in 2017. her husband said he saw no ballot, no ballot ever arrived at their house, so this must be a clear case of voter fraud. someone stole that woman's ballot and voted in that woman's name. the nevada republican party frequently, repeatedly, promoted this video of the husband speaking with a local cbs station. >> it was disbelief. it made no sense to me, but it lent some credence to what you've been hearing in the media about these possibilities, and now it makes me wonder how pervasive is this. >> how pervasive is this.

he was shocked. shocked to find out that a ballot had been cast in his late wife's name. couldn't believe it, made no sense. but it sure does make you think, right? all these claims you've been hearing about this voter fraud, it must be true. here's this proven case. if there's this one proven case, there must be tons of it. today that man, the husband, pled guilty in court to felony voter fraud because he now admits after all that that he was actually the one who cast his late wife's ballot. the poster boy for voter fraud who was so shocked that this could have happened. kirk hartl was sentenced two years' probation. here was his judge at his hearing today. >> this seems to me a cheap political stunt that backfired and shows the voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught. >> our voting system works because you were ultimately caught.

after all the hyping of this story by the trump campaign and fox newschannel and nevada republicans in particular, as far as we can tell none of those entities have had any response at all now to the husband pleading guilty, to the bizarre stunning collapse of probably the most highly promoted false voter fraud allegation in the country. joining us now is the man we turn to any time something crazy happens in nevada politics, my friend jon ralston, founder and ceo of the nevada independent. great to see you, john. thanks for being here. >> nice to see you, too, rachel. >> have i got the corners of this story correct? is there anything i'm leaving out or getting wrong? >> there is a qanon tie? do you want to hear that since you've been talking about qanon a little bit? >> okay. go ahead. >> the one part that you didn't talk about is this guy who has now pled guilty actually works

for a guy who is essentially a mini sheldon addleson out here, and he is a rich guy who, when caesar's palace rejected a qanon convention recently, guess where it went? to the company where this guy works. this whole thing was a sham from the beginning, rachel, we now know, but you accurately dramatized how incensed they all were how this voter fraud had taken place, and how front and center kirk cardle's allegations were. it was addleson who was a co-chair of the trump campaign, and the trump campaign naturally sent two partisan thugs out here, matt schlab of the american conservative union who mentioned hartl by name and nick

pernell who you know by name and the troll from the trump administration. those three were at a trump conference and they said there was massive voter fraud and promoted kirk cardle's name, and essentially the poster boy, as you called him, for voter fraud. now it has all collapsed. >> now that it has collapsed, has there been any reckoning at all? i wouldn't expect it from somebody like ambassador grinnell, for example, but within the republican party, particularly because they used this not only to hype this idea nationally, but to use it as the basis for advocating for voting restrictions in the state of nevada, has there been any reckoning with the fact that the whole pretext of the story they created was false? >> sounds of silence, rachel. they've not said a word. and if they were intentionally trying to create this atmosphere to put those election restrictions in place, rachel, they would have apologized for

foisting this fraud upon the public. you know, the big question to me, of course, is what did they know and when did they know it? that this was just a guy who essentially was fabricating this. and believe me, he's getting off relatively easy as you saw with the sentence there, because the case essentially is circumstantial. that is, they didn't actually see him cast the ballot, but they have evidence, my sources tell me, on video and some text messages in which they had the guy pretty cold. so they have not -- adam waxall, rick grinnell, matt schlapp, chairman of the republican party, mike mcdonald, there have been crickets since this decision came out and the sentence was imposed today.

>> jon ralston, the founder and ceo at the nevada independent america's indispensable source on all things weird nevada politics. jon, thank you for being here. >> you bet. restore healthy skin, with no sticky feeling. gold bond. champion your skin. do you struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep? with no sticky feeling. qunol sleep formula combines 5 key nutrients that can help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up refreshed. the brand i trust is qunol.

in a federal courthouse in charlottesville, virginia, it was a civil trial of the 2017 unite the right rally. today the plaintiff side of that trial rested their case, which means the defendants get their turn, and since so many of the white supremacists and neo-nazis are represented themselves serving as their own lawyers that means today was day one of us all being treated to the spectacle of literally holocaust deniers and nazis and white supremacists asking themselves questions and answering their own questions in the courtroom. they are questioning themselves about their own beliefs. the plan is for that case to start on thursday. another extremely high-profile trial in georgia,

the prosecution today rested its case after three men are accused of killing ahmaud arbery. he's an unarmed black, 25-year-old man killed while out for a jog while in his neighborhood last year. prosecutors say arbery was murdered after being harassed and chased down by these men in a truck. you'll recall that one of the attorneys made headlines last week for the wrong reasons as he protested reverend al sharpton in the courtroom saying, we don't want any more black pastors in here. today that attorney was at it again, he told the court he had filed a motion to, quote, prohibit any further conduct that may intimidate or influence jurors. the very presence of black pastors is intimidating and cause for a mistrial? we'll see how that works out. tomorrow the defense will begin presenting its case to the jurors in the ahmaud arbery trial. meanwhile, tonight all eyes are on kenosha, wisconsin, as we're

awaiting a verdict in the kyle rittenhouse trial. rittenhouse is accused of killing two men and injuring a third at a protest following the shooting of a black man named jacob blake. the jury got the case today. they started deliberating. they're considering five counts. the judge zrifd dismissed two other counts rittenhouse was facing. the most charge is a homicide. that is a mandatory life sentence. the jury is due back tomorrow with arguments in the courtroom over, all of kenosha, all of the country is bracing for what the verdict is going to be. wisconsin's governor had 500 coast guard members ready and and in kenosha, whatever the verdict is, there's going to be a strong response from the public whichever way

this goes. joining us now from kenosha is shaquille brewster. shaq is at the courthouse where the trial was deliberating today. he's been on the story from the beginning where an officer shot and killed jacob blake. thank you for being with us. i know this has been a long haul. >> reporter: rachel, no problem at all. the courthouse is quiet now, but it was much different earlier today with people who were defending kyle rittenhouse and people protesting and demonstrating against him, calling for his conviction, you had people gathered outside the courthouse supporting him. we got a picture of the jury deliberating. they broke for the night. they'll begin day two of deliberations tomorrow, but we know that makeup includes seven women and five men. out of that entire jury, one person identifies as being a person of color, a man, and this is a county that is about 87% white. so it's fairly representative of the entire county and of this community.

but you mentioned that this is a case that so many people are watching incredibly closely, and that is definitely the case. i spoke to, actually, the brother of jacob blake. remember, this is the protest. he was the man who was shot by a kenosha police officer back in august, and that's the protest that then led to the shooting that is now leading to the trial of kyle rittenhouse. he said that he is watching this closely. he says that it was the closing arguments that made him more comfortable about this, but he knows, and he's praying and hoping for that conviction, but he knows that there is a high bar the prosecution has to clear. that's what many people are thinking right now, what they're watching as jury deliberation extends to that second day, rachel. >> shaq, with the governor calling up the national guard, and we know from other things in your reporting that small business owners in the area preparing for the worst, people worrying how the public will respond when the verdict is

announced either way. it makes me wonder about community leadership on all sides of this issue. some of the things that you look to in order to try to predict whether or not things are going to be peaceful and constructive in terms of people expressing themselves is whether or not there is community leadership that is there to guide people and lead people to being constructive, to being nonviolent. are you seeing evidence of that? are you seeing that has people are yelling at each other and facing off and taking different sides of this issue that there are responsible parties among them trying to guide this in a nonviolent way? >> that's something, you know, that even existed, i'll say, back in august after the shooting where you had pastors, members of the religious community coming together and calling for that calm. we do know that members, leaders in the religious community have been gathering and praying over the deliberations, praying over this trial asking for that calm. you mentioned political leaders

as well, governors urging if you're not from kenosha, don't travel to kenosha. that is there, and that is definitely a presence there. you mentioned the business owners we've been talking to. they've gone through a lot over the past year, and you have some businesses decided to board back up with the idea that this verdict is coming any moment now. despite that, they're saying they're hoping things will remain calm and from the feeling on the ground, i talked to you about the protesters who have been at the steps of this courthouse throughout the deliberations and even in the closing arguments phase of this trial has been relatively muted. the media presence has outnumbered anything that you saw from the protesters or heard from them here as well. so there is a balance that you see there. things -- there is an underlying tension. you get a sense that people are watching this closely, but you don't have that hostility. there is not that level of real concern that has been expressed or that's being seen or reason for concern that we've seen just yet, rachel.

>> that's a hopeful note there. nbc news correspondent shaquille brewster. shaquille, i hereby urge you to go somewhere warm and indoors. i know it's a cold night in kenosha. thanks for being out there under the lights for us. i appreciate it, my friend. thank you. >> you got it. we'll be right back. stay with us. -had enough? -no... arthritis. here. new aspercreme arthritis. full prescription-strength? reduces inflammation? thank the gods. don't thank them too soon. kick pain in the aspercreme.

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and ride in a sleigh that really slays. because in a cadillac, tradition is yours to define. so visit a cadillac showroom, and start celebrating today. ♪ ♪ he made threats and suggestions about harming a member of congress. that is in itself an insult, an endangerment of congress and an insult to the house of representatives. we cannot have members joking about murdering each other as well as threatening the president of the united states. >> that's how speaker nancy pelosi explained why the house will take action tomorrow against pro-trump republican congressman paul gosar of arizona.

he made national news a number of times for his sort of increasingly bizarre and radical statements and actions. including his promotion of election conspiracy theories, his association with white supremacist groups. tomorrow the house will vote to formally censure him for posting an anime video of a killing of alexandria ocasio-cortez as well as attacking president joe biden with swords. the censure resolution needs a majority to pass. and democrats are in the majority in the house. once it passes, they will remove paul gosar from his seat on the house oversight committee. should be noted he serves on that committee alongside congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez. he will be stripped of his seat on the committee on natural resources. that will leave him with no committee assignments which will leave him nothing to do. another thing to keep an eye on tomorrow alongside that vote on congressman gosar is the sentencing tomorrow of capitol rioter jacob chansley. came to be known as the qanon

shaman. you may remember him as the guy running around the capitol on january 6th with a six-foot spear wearing horns and a fur hat. the justice department is asking the court to sentence him to prison for more than four years. they are asking for more than 51 months in prison for him. if the judge accepts the justice department's recommendation, that would make him -- that would give him the longest sentence of any january 6th defendant thus far but again that vote on gosar and that sentencing decision on this guy would both be happening tomorrow. watch this space.

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where does the time go? a lot going on. makes the news go fast. that does it for us now. i will see you tomorrow night. "way too early" is up next. ♪♪ as covid case numbers rise from coast to coast, this week we could see the fda green light booster shots for all adults. with the holidays right around the corner, the question is, will this help prevent a winter surge? plus, former president trump has never shied away from attacking and now gop lawmakers are incriesingly turning on each other. the question what if anything is kevin mccarthy doing about it? and the white house is planning to stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming olympics in beijing. the