it is 4:00 in new york. happy friday. an enormously significant confirmation this afternoon from

a senior u.s. confederacy official. the united states believes it was two ukrainian neptune missiles that sank russia's flagship in the black sea. a colossal ground breaking victory for the ukrainians. and it is one they practically predicted for weeks now. just ask nbc news colleague molly hunter. >> reporter: in the strategic port city of odesa two weeks ago the highest ranking naval officer on shore predicted about the russian warships. we will sink them and the fish will grow fat. >> in the 24 hours since we experienced the sinking of that flagship on this program, the russians confirmed it was sunk, new signs of russian fury. perhaps revenge. a white house official today confirmed earlier "the washington post" reporting that said that russia sent what

amounts to a cease and desist letter to the biden administration over weapons shipments. a warning is to one way to describe the letter. a written threat might be another. the kremlin saying the weapons deliveries could result in unpredictable outcomes for the u.s. the target, a military factory in the outskirts of kyiv. the russians retreated from that part of the country and suggesting this is the first of many such attacks. of course the kremlin hasn't bound itself to military targets. the united nations revealed late this afternoon nearly 2,000 civilians have been killed seasons the war began. although they say the actual casualty figures are likely to be considerably higher. with that in mind two sources familiar with the discussions say president zelenskyy asked the biden administration to designate russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

it would be a dramatic move to open new avenues for crippling new sanctions. ali arouzi is live for us in ukraine. hi there. >> reporter: hi. >> take me through the call to designate russia a state sponsor of terror? >> reporter: well, i mean, you ask anybody here in ukraine and they'll tell you that they have been terrorized by the russians. it would make sense to anybody from zelenskyy to the child that's been bombed in kharkiv today. just residential areas. killed seven people including a 7-month-old baby. that's not a military target. they have decimated the civilians here. i guess that constituted a form of terrorism.

the things to mariupol is astonishing. leveled 90% of the country. this was a completely unprovoked attack on a sovereign country and they're trying to defend themselves and the russians keep saying that they want to take revenge on the ukrainians for terrorism on russian territory. this place is annihilated. probably a little bit of saber rattling from the russians to the white house and indicate that is the russians are nervous they're not doing in this war and the armament of the u.s. is making them nervous and don't want them to get the armaments so i probably think anybody agrees as russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because the people have been terrorized. >> you think of the reports we have seen this week that start

with the really grim task of pitting black and white print to the horrors of buchs. only days since the world first saw with their own eyes. bound civilians shot and tortured. child rape and rape as a weapon of war in the country where we don't have as much visibility. it feels like a case is being built as we speak. >> reporter: it is absolutely being built. today the kyiv police said that they have just found 900 bodies of civilians that were killed when the russians had encircled the suburbs and the number could go significantly because there are stale lot of people missing. head prosecutor from the icc referred to bucha and the country as a crime scene so this

is a real tragedy and we have spoken about mariupol so many times you and i. nobody is able to get in there. they say 20,000 people killed there and now the city council in mariupol say that the russians are exhuming bodies of people buried in the front yards and exhuming them, taking them to who knows where the people say to cover up the evidence. nbc news can't independently confirm this but the mariupol city council said they're using mobile crematoriums and so many eyewitnesses that no matter how much they try to cover it up they can't get away with it because it's a digital era and 21st cent rain the things can't be hidden. of course they're bracing for something horror to happen in the east. in the donbas region. because they're all encircling

that area. we spoke to the mayor of a town and that's a pivotal town in the battle where the russians want to take over to encircle the ukrainians and he spoke to us on a zoom call with a gun on the desk and so worried about his safety. take a listen to what he had to say. >> translator: the weather influences the offense. but from the ukrainian armed forces influences the offensive. the weather was not that bad. it was rainy several days but dry already today. however, the intensity of the russian offensive is not decreasing and have a rebuff from the ukrainian military. >> reporter: so he's pretty sure that once the weather clears up the mud dries up there they will feel an all-out assault from the russians in that area and where the focus of attention will be i

think going forward. >> is the reversal of the russian commitment from kyiv to strike the military factory there or consistent with sort of that is not a territory they seize but strikes on anything they classify as a military installation regardless of where they are? >> reporter: it is not so much a reversal. such a botched attempt to kyiv that they have to move out of there. but after the ukrainians sunk the "moskva" warship they had to safe face. we hear from ukrainian news that they made the neptune missiles in that factory. it was the point russians felt they needed to make and that speaks volumes about the ukrainian resistance. these were not anti-ship

missiles given by the british or american. domestic made. the russians need to make a point by hitting that factory. that was the biggest attack in kyiv since they retreated. if they are successful in the east they'll probably refocus on kyiv again. that ship was a real embarrassment to them. a symbol of russian military might and now taken out and lying at the bottom of the black sea. on coastal cities people were singing and dancing when they got news of that ship sinking to the bottom of the sea. >> it is an unbelievable military victory and as you're attesting to a psychological boost for the ukrainians. thank you so much for another week of encredible reporting. we are really grateful.

please stay safer. >> thank you. >> joining us is michael mcfaul and "the new york times" diplomatic correspondent michael crowly is back. ambassador mcfaul, let me ask you to pick up on what is the ripple effect. let me ask you something that i was thinking of. by bombing the factory where the neptune missiles are made the russians are confirming the russian lie and the missiles sink the flagship. right? >> that's a great point. that is an excellent point. i sometimes wonder why anybody ever believes anything a russian government official says at all. that we had to confirm. it is great to con firm what it was but hearing anything from them about what's happening on the battlefield we should treat it as part of the disinformation tactics. we know why it sank why not because of a russian mistake.

it was because of a ukrainian victory. >> michael, take me inside. we have covered this as a new phase and i feel like it is a new phase and a new phase has begun in ukraine including saber rattling and this more targeted strike on the weapons factory outside of kyiv foreshadowing of brutality which is interesting as a psychological tool of war because the brutality of bucha is revealed to the world. how's the administration adjusting to the new phases? >> the administration is just stepping it up and pumping more weapons into ukraine. i think that the letter from the state department received this week puts a fascinating frame on

the key question here which is, where is vladimir putin's red line? does he have one? does he know what it is? i don't think the u.s. knows what it is. the point at which he says, nato and the west and the united states are giving ukraine too much, this is getting -- i can't tolerate this. too many russian soldiers are dying. what we have seen is just increased flow of weaponry to ukraine as russia beats a retreat, takes incredible losses. ukraine is suffering enormously but this has been basically a debacle for russia. at this point if you had kind of looked into a crystal ball you might have said putin may be nearing the point of a tactical nuclear weapon or striking nato supply lines, possibly even striking into nato territory daring them to invoke article v.

he is not. he looks a bit like a paper tiger. the u.s. and the west is doing more but i think the big question is, whether and when putin finally draws the line is there some retaliation? could be a cyber attack, a shot into nato territory across a border. no one seems to know. >> you write about the questions, ambassador mcfaul. i want to read from the piece in "the washington post." russia's army is struggling mightily. under such circumstances putin is unlikely to attack the largest military alliance in the world anchored by the most powerful military in the world, the united states. putin is angry and unhinged but not suicidal. biden and the team might have classified intelligence that suggests that these risks of escalation are greater than i

can assess through open sources. if not the free world needs to provide ukrainians with the quality and quality of weapons to prevail in donbas. a loss will produce the opposite. there are others with knowledge of the dynamic in the region and the stakes saying the same thing, that right now, ambassador taylor saying ukraine needs to win. tell me what that looks like and how short we are of doing for them what you call for in your piece. >> first, two things. the red line that michael is talking about is an essential question and in my assessment it is not about attacking nato. it is not about a nuclear war with us. they rolled out to make that clear for us. it is all about whether or not he might use a tactical nuclear weapon or not in ukraine.

i'm skeptical that we would. the consequences are high. we have to focus on the red lines. on victory, i want to make it clear. if putin wins all of our allies in the region are more threat upped. all allies and partners in the middle east and asia will feel more insecure and if he loses it is the opposite and therefore i do think there is a change in the biden administration. i talk to them fairly frequently including today. senior pentagon officials. i think they understand that and want to see a scenario in which the world can see that putin gambled. he overreached. this is his afghanistan. and as a result they're weaker not stronger as a result of the military intervention. >> the administration, you think that biden administration is all in to help the ukrainians? >> yeah. with a couple caveats.

let me be careful. they have chosen not to send m-29s. right? they have chosen not to send tanks. they draw the line different than what i am and where i would but generally speaking the new kinds of weapons you have, the quantity and the long range artillery they announced two days ago, zelenskyy gay them a list and they delivered. not a lot zelenskyy would say but they seem to be leaning in. weeks ago the government in ukraine quite disappointed how slow the united states and the west was moving. they understand the battle of donbas is where this war could be decided and they want to help the ukrainians as much as they can to win the battle of donbas. >> michael, the rhetoric used by president zelenskyy is this sort

of invisible weapon of war that the ukrainians have. that they have used to just extraordinary effect and will be studied. i have paid attention to the words. he was calling putin a war criminal days and weeks before. but the american president -- i'm not suggesting it's causal but see the things the same way. president zelenskyy escalated and described what was happening as a genocide and president biden saw the evidence that that's what vladimir putin was doing in ukraine. targeting civilians. reducing the country to dust. using rape as a weapon of war. zelenskyy today asked the biden administration to classify russia and putin as a state sponsor of terror. what's the reaction?

>> you know, i think it rings true on some level. it is obvious that russia is terrorizing the civilian population of ukraine. by the way, i think you put your finger on something that's seiche. i don't think there's a way vladimir putin that predicted the recognize lens of zelenskyy in the west. this has to have completely blindsided him. no one in the west thought that he would develop this cult of the personality and one of ukraine's greatest assets. after javelin missiles it is zelenskyy on streaming video. it is astonishing and he has had a way to shape and lead the debate in the west. this is if i can say clever new formation. he finds way to reframe russia to get a conversation going in the west that keeps people

engaged, interested and outraged and we haven't kicked around the concept of terrorism and what it means in the means of a conventional battlefield. i cannot tell you whether the terrorist designation apply in the conventional sense like this. at least for me new ground. i don't know what's likely to happen but i think you put the finger on the interesting thing here is that the skill in framing the conversations, keeping them going. this is all tremendously to ukraine's benefit maintaining the popular support in the west and also a certain amount of patience from the higher energy and prices causing real disruptions. >> tragically what president zelenskyy has going for him is a terrorized population, dose mated swath of the country. the tragedy is that he's

correct. so the rhetoric is only as powerful as it is because it's speaking this brutal, eloquent truth of what happened to his country and the people at the hands of vladimir putin. i wonder, ambassador mcfaul, your thoughts about this debate inside our government, whether or not to consider designating russia as a state sponsor of terror. >> i run an international working group on sanctions. academics like myself, former government officials, europeans, ukrainians. we met on tuesday and discussing -- we'll have a paper come out on monday and discussing whether we should include this proposal from the ukrainian government and to your point about strategic communications, who know who zoom bombed the call? president zelenskyy. he suddenly showed up and he wanted to encourage us to lean in to do that and to echo the point about how i think their

incredibly smart about strategic communications. i'm with michael. u.s. government officials briefed the group. zelenskyy is forcing the issue. we are talking about it right now and eventually the biden administration will have to have an answer for them. >> former ambassador mcfaul, a great anecdote about a zoom bomb from president zelenskyy. makes the points better than any of us could. michael crowley, thank you. grateful to both of you. we know both from reporting and the january 6 committee members that mark meadows texted with a whole lot of people all day between the election and the insurrection at the u.s. capitol. the latest phone exchange reveals how far two republican lawmakers went in pushing trump's chief of staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election. plus another community trying to

understand how a traffic stop turned deadly for one armed black 26-year-old man. are cities and the police forces in the cities doing enough to make changes to stop the fatal interactions? a new interview with ukrainian president zelenskyy telling our friend anne applebalm what it is like to have to ask world leaders to help him. stay with us. stay with us riders! let your queries be known. yeah, hi. instead of letting passengers wrap their arms around us, could we put little handles on our jackets? -denied. -can you imagine? i want a new nickname. can you guys start calling me snake? no, bryan. -denied. -how about we all get quotes to see if we can save with america's number one motorcycle insurer? approved. cool! hey, if bryan's not gonna be snake, can i be snake? -all: no. i recommend nature made vitamins, because i trust their quality.

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committee is analyzing. skrn cnn is making public messages from the most loyal defenders in congress revealing how mike lee and chip roy privately went from aiding and abetting the big lie effort including pitching meadows' bogus plans from powell and eastman to begging him to turn up actual real evidence to back those plans up before ultimately voting against it all. we have the progression of chip roy and the texts with mark meadows that cnn says it has seen. from roy the day biden was announced as president-elect, in part, we need ammo, fraud examples, we need it this weekend. meadows' response, quote, we are working on exactly that. two days later from roy, quote we must urge the president to tone down the rhetoric and

approach the legal challenge firmly, intelligently and effectively. on new year's eve, quote, the president should call everyone off. it is the only path. if we substitute the will of states through electors we have destroyed the electoral college respectfully. on january 1, 2021, if potus allows this to occur we drive a stake in the heart of the federal republic. meadows does not comment on the reporting. lee's spokesperson telling cnn that lee quote has been fully trance parent and roy tweeting this afternoon he makes no apologies for the private texts or public positions. joining us is luke broadwater who has new information about that miller testimony we reported on yesterday.

eugene daniels for politico and co-author of "playbook." luke, take me through this evolution of trump allies says to you about the lack of evidence produced within the trump coup accomplice circle. >> firstoff, credit to cnn for great reporting here obtaining the text messages. we have been able to authenticate them. it shows a progression of two of trump's most loyal followers in congress. they start out that they want to push to try to overturn the election through whatever means they can, first through the courts with different lawyers, powell, eastman. then to mike lee endorses the plan to use the so-called

alternate electors. after effort after effort fails or ends up looking crazy, they both eventually back off and try to call everything off at the last minute. you read the texts from chip roy saying call everything off. we'll drive a stake in the heart of the republic. they vote against overturning the election for trump so they do ultimately come out against the plans in the end but only after trying multiple different paths to try to find a way for donald trump to stay in office before they reject them. >> let me dig with you, luke, to the mike lee text because the date is interesting to me. november 9, senator mike lee text this. i don't think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would

like us to do. i know only that this will end badly for the president. unless the states submit new slates pursuant to state law we do not, we do not have the constitution on our side he is saying. he seems to have mental awareness and knowledge on the 9th that it is unconstitutional for the congress to override the will of the voters. i wonder if that is important to the january 6 committee and if they asked him for an interview. >> i would think it would be quite important. you see him trying to draw very slim distinction between pressuring mike pence and pressuring the state lawmakers to putt forward these electors for donald trump in states where he didn't win. i think most people see there's

not a distinction there. it's attempts to pressure people to defy the will of the voters. as for the committee interviewing him, i would count on that. it is a house committee and seem to be very much following the traditions of congress where the house never talks to the senate and the senate investigation never talks to the house. they haven't called in the senate sergeant at arms or ask for ted cruz or josh hawley that led some of these efforts. chip roy could be open to them asking him some questions but again they have been quite reluctant to call in house members as well. they have sent letters to a few house members so i would not anticipate that unless their stance changes tremendously. >> this is something senator mike lee sends.

eugene daniels, after the powell-giuliani presser. senator lee november 19th, i'm worried about the powell press conference. the potential defamation liability for the president is significant here. unless powell can back up everything she said which i kind of doubt she can and meadows quote, i agree, very concerned. it's amazing to see that what we thought was bad bleep crazy was up on of trump's closest advisers maybe did, too. >> yeah. the thing is that the issue for the senator lee and a lot of other republicans who texted or talked to members of the trump administration at the time was the messiness in which this is going on. wasn't that their trying to

overturn the will of the people but didn't look good and going too far and seem a little crazy and that was the biggest issue. as that continued and luke took us through the trajectory and seeing folks saying i have to back up because i was with you when i thought you could work this in a way that didn't look as messy as it ended up looking. that's something that's important to think about and remember for the future if there's a way and republicans -- some republicans have shown an openness to this. giving the trump teams how to make it quote/unquote legal and overturning the will of the people and if they get the same information and doesn't have powell or rudy giuliani doing the press conference or going to some of these states then what do we have as a country?

that's important to continue talking about. you spend time talking about that because looking for ways to do this in a way that isn't messy is something that i think folks are taking seriously. >> to me it is insane lindsey graham calling into georgia and in the notes turned to the senate judiciary committee before in the hands of the 1/6 committee recorded that donald trump says to then acting ag declare the election fraudulent and me and my "r" buddies will do the rest and they have not gone and and shared if they didn't do anything wrong why didn't they tell their stories to the 1/6 committee? >> i think part is because we have all seen so much in public and there has been reticence on

the committee's part to bring folks in because of how messy that would be and i think more importantly what kind of precedent that would set for the future. right? republicans will be in charge of the committees in congress and what kind of investigations will they throw in and the members of congress to come to the committee and what will that look like? that's something democrats have been thinking about a lot and you're right. there is so much of the powerful people in the country, whether the house or the senate or connected to powerful people in this country in on this and following donald trump with the big lie and that more importantly continued to do so. so as they -- the committee draws down or seems like they might be there's some stuff we don't know. maybe conversations they have had with the members and most part seems like they made sure to stay out of that despite the

fact that we know the things that were insane. >> and what the republicans count on is what you're saying. it is a norm busting thing to ask members to come and talk to a congressional committee but that guarantees that they'll do it again. because the democrats won't ask them to come talk. we promise if we ever collude to overturn a democratically decided election we'll come balk to you if you're in control. none of it makes sense to me. i'll ask you to stick around because there's brand new reporting on stephen miller sitting with the january 6 committee and fireworks. not aware of anyone crying but looks like i might. stay with us.

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...even sneaking away for a vacay rashida. shhh! i've earned this, okay? earn 5% cash back in your top eligible spend category, up to $500 spent each billing cycle. with the citi custom℠ card. we're back with luke and eugene. luke, you have great reporting on the committee meeting with stephen miller. one, you report that miller invoked executive privilege when asked about january 6 call with trump and argued that the election had been stolen. he maintains the lie about the 2020 election result. and then this unbelievable bit of reporting that says he rebutted the implication that the word we indicated that mr.

trump was trying to incite the crowd to action. wow. explain. >> yes. so the january 6th committee was pressing the investigators on the committee were pressing miller in this interview yesterday about donald trump's speech at the ellipse on january 6 encouraging the mob to or what would become the mob, the crowd at the time, to march on the capitol, to fight what he called election fraud, and to try to keep him in office. and so they kept asking what did he mean when he said we? was this his intent? they were trying to get at whether or not he intended to incite the crowd. and stephen miller argued according to our sources in this interview that this speech was a normal speech why it was routine and using the rhetoric compared

to other great presidents at great moments in history and he, you know, argued with the committee. he pushed back and claimed the election was stolen and he claimed that this speech, nothing wrong with it. my understanding from -- this is according to sources. we weren't sitting in the room but at times a quite combative and pugnacious interview. >> the problem with the actual claim itself, i'll leave the nature of the witness alone, but the problem with the argument itself is that the facts belie the argument because once we marched on the capitol and the time the line says i will go with you, once it turned violent if he didn't mean we will engage in brutal medieval hand to hand combat that causes brain

injuries and leads to death, there is a podium and briefing room and correspondents for every network to say that's not what i meant we will do. we all know trump didn't do that. he didn't ever do that until his daughter and others begged him to make a lame video in which he said we love you. what about the fact problem that the miller testimony represents, eugene? >> that's exactly right. all of the things you laid out make it hard to believe that this speech was just a normal speech. it is almost impossible to believe and doesn't happen in a vacuum. the speech itself that happened on january 6th is connected to all of the behavior months before and after the election where then president trump talking about the election going to be stolen from him because of

people allowed to mail in the ballots. after the election, the day of the election talking about that. it doesn't happen in a vacuum and the investigators know that. we know this. stephen miller knows that these things are connected and a reminder to viewers that the committee is not just looking at the actual actions on january 6 by that crowd but everyone connected before and after what happened january 6 because all the things are interconnected. >> luke, what is your sense of where the committee heads? i had congresswoman zoe lofgren on the beginning of the week. if they wanted to make a criminal referral they had the evidence and then confirmed the reporting that they reached that hurdle. they have enough evidence if they chose to make a criminal

referral. eugene referred to the final stage of the investigation. what does that look like? >> yeah. i think they are getting close to the end here. they're doing something around 20, 30, 40 interviews a week depending on the week. it is believed they could wrap up this end of this month. they have sort of -- they're still a couple big names that could be the final interviews but they are in the closing stages. we know from the court filings, from the reporting that they do have a very strong case here. may be bringing some people back in for a second or third interview to get more details as they look to shore up this report and then move to educating the public on what they have found so i think close watchers of your show know this

very well but there's people in the country who have turned off paying attention to january 6 and so how can they bring back in those people and make them aware of their explosive findings once they're ready to release them? i think that's the big question now. >> especially heading to another season of midterm elections and two years out from a presidential election. luke, eugene, thank you so much for spending time with us today. the fatal police shooting of a 26-year-old unarmed man from michigan coming to likt this week. another traffic stop. a live report on how that community is responding and a look at why after calls for change things feel at least in this community to have not changed much at all. that's next. t.

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grab lyoya before he pulls away and starts to run. the officer then tackles him to the ground where the two struggle for a bit. the officer's body cam switches off during the struggle. the man's final moment was captured by the cell phone of a bystander on the sidewalk. we want to warn you, the video is disturbing, and we've frozen the video before the fatal shot. so let's watch together. >> taser. >> he ain't grab no taser. >> let go of the taser. >> drop the taser. >> in a statement, grand rapids police said that they're conducting a full review of the shooting while lyoya's family is demanding that justice be served. let's bring in nbc news correspondent shaq brewster live in grand rapids, michigan. joining us onset, the reverend al sharpton, host of "politics nation," and the president of the national action network. shaq?

>> reporter: hi there, nicole. >> tell me what the sort of latest assessment of how this happened, i mean, sometimes in these early stages, there's a fog of what the actual interaction was about. this one seems somewhat straightforward. tell me what your reporting has revealed. >> reporter: well, since we got that video on wednesday, we haven't gotten any updates from police or from investigators. you mentioned that this is an investigation that's being led by the state police, and we just haven't heard an update. we don't know a timeline on how long that investigation will take. as far as we know, once that investigation is wrapped up, then it will be reviewed by the county prosecutor and also the individual local departments, but nicole, i actually had a conversation earlier today with seth, the use of force expert who you might remember from the chauvin trial and from the kim potter trial in those successful prosecutions of those officers in minneapolis, and one thing

that he said is that his initial read of the video did raise some red flags, but there could be more to the picture. i want you to listen to what he told me. >> depending on aspects of the situation that simply are not visible or clear from the video, the officer's actions might be egregiously unjustified or might be potentially justified. we really need more information about whether the taser was operable as a weapon, whether it could incapacitate or disable the officer. >> reporter: he said a lot of this will come down to the officer's statement and the statement of any witnesses that were there. we know there was at least one passenger in the vehicle and perhaps a neighbor who we saw in the video. but i'll tell you, the investigation and the details of those investigations, people here in the community are anxiously awaiting for what the conclusions will be. we know from the family, there are clear demands.

i spoke with them yesterday. there are clear demands in this case and for the investigators, they want the officer who fired that fatal shot to be identified, fired, and prosecuted, and that's something that you're hearing from many of the people in the streets who continue to demonstrate for a third straight day, nicole. >> rev, tell me what -- i mean, you've been with these families through so much of what happens. tell me how you see this case and how you understand the family to be doing. >> they will have to deal with the facts as they come out, but clearly, the officer should be identified and fired. you're dealing with a traffic stop. i don't care how you cut it. how you go from a traffic stop to a guy being shot in the back of his head is absolutely unthinkable. the one that is trained to de-escalate is the police officer. if you are in a tussle, as we saw in the videotape, you are physically there with you on top of the guy, you know he's not

armed, so whether you think he's knocking the taser gun away from you, using it on him or whatever, you know your life is not in danger because you are on top of the guy. you know he has no arms. so, why would you even pull a gun? and i think that the family is correct. certainly national action network is going to be involved. i've been back and forth on the phone with ben crump, and i think that the real problem is that there has been any number of cases in grand rapids, and the community there does not have a lot of trust in the local prosecutor, and it may be that the federal government has to come in. but we certainly do not see how you go from a traffic stop on tags to shooting someone in the back of the head that you were on top of and knew he had no arms, so you knew you were not in a life extenuating circumstance. >> when you see these tragedies unfold, someone lost his life, and whatever the officer goes

through, it's unwelcome and unnecessary, as you're saying. what are your thoughts about the lack of progress at a federal level for reforms? >> i think that the lack of progress is very disturbing and could be discouraging, but then the alternative is you keep letting it happen. we did get convictions in the case of potter and the case and in the case of daune wright and george floyd with derek chauvin, but what we need is law, and the federal government has to give us law. the george floyd justice in policing act. if we had dealt with qualified immunity in that law, a policeman would think twice about his house and his family because he's liable before he pulls a gun. >> or maybe they do the training. >> and they do the training to protect themselves from this. but as long as they feel that they are not going to be questioned or they're not

liable, then i think that we're going to continue to see this. we have to do everything we can, and it's not that you're anti-police. it's that you can't keep having these situations occur, and this one is as bad as it gets. i understand the family's talking about doing an independent autopsy. if it comes out that he was, in fact, shot in the back of his head, how can you justify that by any stretch? >> rev, thank you for being here. shaq brewster in grand rapids, thank you for your reporting. rev's guest this weekend on "politics nation" will be patrick lyoya's family and as he just mentioned, attorney benjamin crump. don't miss that. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a quick break. sfloem e" starts after a quick break. sfloem so get relief fast. only tylenol rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast for fast pain relief. and now get relief without a pill with tylenol dissolve packs. relief without the water.

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♪♪ things will get uglier because failing to take over kyiv and to have relatively bloodless win, putin now has shifted to what he knew best, to leave a scorched earth.

putin badly needs a victory, any victory before may 9th. this is the day when he wants to celebrate his military triumph so that's why everything that he has will be now thrown into donbas area, so trying to break ukrainian defense line in the region. >> hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in new york. a grim prediction there from the chairman of the human rights foundation, gary kasparov, earlier on the next stage of russia's war against ukraine, the feeling of desperation, militarily, felt by putin that kasparov speaks of, likely not helped by the pentagon's confirmation today that the russian flagship in the black sea was shot down by two ukrainian neptune missiles. previously, russia had said that the ship sank after a fire was detonated by ammunition stored on the ship. this is a big win for the ukrainian forces as our frequent guest and retired u.s. navy admiral james stavridis told

"the new york times." picture the "uss george washington" going to the bottom of the ocean. despite ukraine's victory, areas of that country are still under constant shelling and new atrocities being committed against civilians every single day. president zelenskyy asked the biden administration to designate russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. that would trigger some of the most aggressive sanctions the u.s. government could adopt on any country. although the sources note that request did not carry the same priority as urgent appeals for more weapons and energy sanctions against russia. a revealing new interview in the "atlantic" paints a portrait of zelenskyy as a compassionate man doing whatever he can do to save his country and his people, described as, quote, a kind of anti-putin, rather than telegraphing a cold-eyed murderous superiority, he wants people to understand him as an everyman, a middle-aged dad with

a bad back, but one that fully comprehends the complex and dangerous nature of war. more from that new interview. quote, if the russians are not expelled from ukraine's eastern provinces, zelenskyy said they can return to the center of ukraine and even to kyiv. it is not possible. now is not yet the time of victory. ukraine can win and by win, he means continue to exist as a sovereign if permanently besieged state, only if its allies in washington and across europe move with alacrity to sufficiently arm the country. we have a very small window of opportunity, he said. that's where we start the hour. joining our coverage, anne applebaum, also the author of the book, "twilight of democracy." with us onset, john heilemann, nbc news and msnbc national affairs analyst, the host and executive producer of showtime's "the circus," and executive editor of the recount. ann, tell me more about your interview with president zelenskyy.

>> we saw him late at night in his compound. you get to it via dark corridors and soldiers with flashlights. but when he came and he didn't make us wait for a long time, he didn't make us sit at a long to table. there was no pomposity, no formality. he's somebody who really is an ordinary person and he wants to be seen that way, and that's one of the ways in which he builds sympathy and trust, which is also a way of kind of girding his nation both against the military war but also against the information war, so it makes people more resistant to propaganda and disinformation when they have, you know, trust in their leader. he had two real messages, important message, aside from other things we spoke about. one was that he does believe the war is not over. he believes that the russians are gathering in the east to make a new assault on the country and will perhaps try to take kyiv once again in a different way.

also that he needs weapons very urgently and he wants the western world, europe, and america in particular, to understand that, you know, they can't be delivered in three weeks. they can't be delivered next month. they need them right now and after the interview, one of his aides texted us a list, which we printed in "the atlantic." >> anne, i want to read some more from your great piece from the interview. much of zelenskyy's time is spent on the telephone, on zoom, on skype, answering the questions of presidents and prime ministers, often the same questions repeated to a maddening degree. i like new questions, he said. it's not interesting to answer the questions you already heard. he's frustrated, for instance, by repeated requests for his wish list of weapons systems. when some leaders ask me what weapons i need, i need a moment to calm myself because i already told them the week before. it's groundhog day. i feel like bill murray. he has a command of pop culture, in part because of his youth, but he knows how to deploy it

better than anyone i've ever seen in politics or any foreign leader. >> no, he's a former comedian, but also an actor and a television producer, and he has a really good sense of his audience. he's seen a lot of movies. he can refer to them, you know, and he lives very much, i think, within the same world that we live in. he's not exotic. he's not strange. he's watched the same movies you and i have watched and he's willing to talk about them and refer to them. we actually talked quite a bit about humor in the interview and how it's used and he has a very sophisticated understanding of it, that humor is sometimes a way to get truth to people. you don't have to give them complicated books or, you know, ph.d. theses. you can tell them a joke and instantly you can expose something about the nature of politics and the nature of reality, and that's how he

understood his youth and humor to form. he was a satirist, somebody who made fun of the political world as it existed. he was capable of mocking putin. he was capable of mocking ukrainian politicians. and now, of course, nothing's funny anymore, but i think he's still -- you know, he still looks for ways to explain things to people in ways that they can understand, and i think that's part of the legacy of his training as a performer. >> i want to read some more from your great piece. you write this. "it's not that the various presidents and prime ministers who profess sympathy for the ukrainian cause don't want to help, zelenskyy said. they're not against us. they just live in a different situation. as long as they have not lost their parents and children, they do not feel the way we feel. he makes the comparison to the conversations he's had with the extraordinary defenders of mariupol, the besieged port city where 21,000 civilians may have been killed so far. for example, they say, we need help. we have four hours. and even in kyiv, we don't

understand what four hours are. in washington, for sure, they can't understand. however, we are grateful to the u.s., because the planes with weapons are still coming." this four hours is so haunting in light of what we've learned and seen out of bucha, in light of what we know we don't know and can't see in mariupol. tell me how the war has changed him. >> i think the cruelty of this war, the way in which civilians are deliberately targeted, the nature of the russian occupation, the territories they occupy, you know, they aim immediately for the local mayors and local leaders. they're willing to use terror, violence, rape, you know, tactics that we associate with the second world war and haven't seen in europe in a long time. you know, i think people, maybe intellectually, knew that was possible, but i think people are still shocked. it also means, of course, that

the question of negotiations and a settlement for ukraine is extraordinarily difficult, because giving up any territory, it's not just about giving away land, it means that anything you give to this russian army means that you are giving your citizens away to torture, murder, rape, you know, we were in bucha, we were in the suburb north of kyiv the day after the interview, and we saw what happens to a town, very ordinary suburban town, when it's approved by the russian army. the houses are blown out. there are blackened doorways and smashed windows, and there were mass graves. the day that we were there, they were exhuming bodies that had been buried outside a church, and knowing that that's what's going to happen to your citizens, you know, every inch of territory that is lost, you know, is at risk of being destroyed in that way makes it very hard to be a leader. >> so, anne, it's heilemann

here. i'm curious about two things. i'll start with this first one, which is to go directly to the point you were just talking about, which is, you know, he's been clear-eyed for a lot longer than most of us have been, since almost the very beginning, about the notion that putin's ambitions here were genocidal, the notion that putin wanted to eradicate, wipe out the ukrainian people, and now that's all kind of come to pass and now it's sort of -- you heard that call not just rung out by him but also joe biden who recognize there's a genocidal quality to this. does he recognize how -- it's not him that's inflicting the genocide, but he's the called it out, it's acknowledged by the leader of the free world in joe biden. does he recognize how difficult it makes that to reach some kind of what would previously have been thought to be an acceptable accommodation with putin? once you start talking about things like genocide, it makes it very hard to have a negotiated end to this conflict and i think he's doing the right

thing by calling it out, but does he see the conundrum there in terms of trying to figure out how this ends? >> so, i think that they've come to an understanding that the only way this ends is if they win. in other words, they have to have a military victory. they have to physically push the russians out of their country. before there's going to be negotiation. there is no other negotiation that will succeed because the russians right now are -- i mean, there are some meetings between russian representatives and ukrainians in istanbul, there were some in belarus. there's some taking place off camera elsewhere, i'm sure. but none of them mean anything because the russians are using them as a stalling tactic, as a way of buying time. until the russians are actually beaten, until they decide they don't want to fight anymore, then the war isn't over. >> right. >> so i think, you know, for him, the question is, how do we -- it's not about how do we negotiate the stop to fighting, it's how do we push them out of the country and rescue our

people from torment and torture and mass murder and perhaps concentration camps. so, it's a -- this is a very existential war for them. it's not -- as i said, it's not some squabbling over territory or where the border's going to be. it's, what's the fate of those people who live in the territories that are occupied? >> right. that actually got directly to my second question, which was going to be about sort of, how he -- when you're leading a country under siege like this, you live in the moment, from day-to-day, i'm trying to save my people, hour-by-hour as you both talked about the four hours thing but i was going to ask you about whether he has a view about the various potential scenarios and options, but i think you answered that question. he lives in the moment so save his country and there is only one outcome which he thinks is acceptable which is victory in the conventional sense, winning the war in a totally unambiguous way. >> yes. i mean, i think that's what they want, and i think his task now is to convince people in

washington, people in berlin, people in paris that this is possible. i think when the war began, we all -- i shouldn't say we all, but many people assumed that it would be over very quickly. it would be over in three days, you know, the russians would march in, take kyiv, and it would be over. and getting the world used to the idea of ukrainian victory and persuading them that it's possible and that what they need is the really rapid delivery of the weapons that will make it possible, that's part of his task, so he's not just a military leader, and he's not just a political leader. he's also somebody who has to be a spokesman for his country and for this vision of victory, and that's one of the reason he's talking so much to journalists like us and to others is to try to get that message across and make it clear. >> anne, he has invoked in the speeches to different countries sort of each country's own history with horror, horrors of war, when he addressed u.s. congress, he talked about pearl

harbor and 9/11, and he tailors every plea for weapons and sanctions and assistance with such emotional -- he has an ability to invoke each country's most sort of horrible ability to come close to understanding what his country is going through. today, he asked the biden administration to designate vladimir putin as a state sponsor of terror. obviously, our country's experience with terror in recent history is 9/11 and a war against terror. is that how he sees the war and the invasion? is it a terror campaign inside ukraine? >> so, first of all, yes, he does think a lot about how to talk to different countries. we actually asked him about that, and he says, yes, i read about them. there's no time to do great historical research on each country but they do spend time thinking about the history of each place that they're speaking to. but yes, i mean, i think it's very important for people to understand what it feels like to be on the ground in ukraine when

the russians come. that there's extraordinary violence. there are attacks on civilian homes and civilian infrastructure. people are hauled out of their houses and shot in front of their children. girls have been raped. children have been shot in the street as well. it feels very much like a massive terrorist attack aimed at civilians, so this is a war which is very much aimed at the ukrainian people. it is not just about military targets. it's not just about taking over territory. it's about eliminating ukrainian-ness and this has been said on russian television, and this, of course, is why zelenskyy's so attuned to it. he's somebody who understands television. he knows what russian television says. he watches their propaganda. he knows that it's about eliminating ukraine as a nation, and that is -- those are very frightening words in europe, and he knows exactly what they mean, and he wants to make sure that

the rest of us understand that historical echo as well. >> when he started talking about war crimes, it was -- and again, i'm not suggesting that he's necessarily leading president biden, but it was a matter of days before president biden saw it the way president zelenskyy talked about it, war crimes being committed by vladimir putin. he talked about a genocide, the world saw it after bucha, and it was, again, only a matter of days, as john said, before president joe biden described what's happening in ukraine as a genocide. is his hope that president joe biden, again, is, as the american president, sees this the way he does, as a terrorist campaign, as terrorism taking place in ukraine? >> i'm sure that is his hope. you know, he wants not just joe biden, he wants the rest of the world to see it that way. like i said, this is how they experience it. they don't experience it as some kind of technical war for mastery of space.

it's direct at individual people and everybody in the country now has friends and relatives who have been affected. everybody i met in kyiv knows somebody who is one of the occupied territories. i have ukrainian friends who are now scattered all over europe. all of them have friends and contacts inside the country who have experienced things. so he said in one of his previous interviews that by the time this is over, every single person will have been touched by it in some way, either through a cousin or a relative or because they have had to move, they have had to leave their homes. you know, people are making very dramatic decisions, abandoning everything they have instantly to move to another country where they don't speak the language. and coming out of ukraine, we saw some of the refugees and in some cases, people who were very disoriented and they don't know exactly where they're going or where they're going to end up and to have that inflicted on a nation of millions and millions of people is one of the most extreme forms of terrorism that you can imagine.

>> anne, you know this part of the world, you know all the players. how did this reporting trip, this trip into the country down the corridors to talk to zelenskyy change your view of things? >> it's funny because i was in kyiv in december, just before the war, and i didn't quite know what to expect. and i think the understanding of what it really feels like to be on the ground in kyiv, you know, in some ways, it's still a normal city. the traffic lights work and the subway works and the supermarkets are open and you can buy things and it functions, and yet almost everything, almost all the restaurants are dark, so many people are clearly gone. you know, the feeling of being constantly under siege, this constant tension. you don't know what's going to happen next. you don't know when there's going to be a bombing raid. you have to listen for air raid sirens. i mean, that's a huge transformation for the country, the city, and of course the rest of the country to have gone

through in just a couple of months, and you know, by being there, i think you feel some empathy not just for the country's situation but for individuals, you know, again, how does it affect people's lives? a friend of mine's mother had to leave the country rapidly. where is she going to go next? we talked about possibilities with that, with her. and it's not just -- it's not just a political problem. it's a personal problem for every single person you know and everybody who lives there. >> yeah, and to think 52 days ago, they were living lives like ours, trying to figure out what to make for dinner, what to do for the weekend, and life has changed, as you said, in every corner of that country for just about everybody. it's an extraordinary interview, anne applebaum, thank you so much for starting us off this hour. john heilemann sticks around. when we come back, we'll check in on kyiv where there has been new shelling just as life in the city was starting to inch back to something resembling normal.

we'll have a live report from the ukrainian capital after the break. plus, legal troubles are mounting this week for ex-white house chief of staff mark meadows. his text messages are revealing the central role he played, leading up to the january 6th insurrection. he still faces possible criminal contempt charges, and oh yeah, he's now credibly accused of voter fraud. those stories and more from "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. "deadline ws after a quick break. riders! let your queries be known. yeah, hi. instead of letting passengers wrap their arms around us, could we put little handles on our jackets? -denied. -can you imagine? i want a new nickname. can you guys start calling me snake? no, bryan. -denied. -how about we all get quotes to see if we can save with america's number one motorcycle insurer? approved. cool! hey, if bryan's not gonna be snake, can i be snake? -all: no. do your eyes bother you? my eyes feel like a combo of

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there are new russian attacks on the city that was finally very recently starting to feel some relief.

officials in kyiv say that three missile strikes were carried out there earlier today. it comes as local officials report the civilian death toll in the area has reached more than 900. kyiv's police say that most of the civilians were fatally shot, an indication that many people were simply executed. joining us now, "time" magazine correspondent simon shuster live in kyiv, ukraine. simon, tell me what this sort of duality of a well-publicized russian retreat from kyiv and then a targeted strike reportedly, possibly in retaliation for sinking the russian flagship. >> yeah, it's created this kind of strange dissonance in the city, which on the one hand is coming back to life quite a bit, you know, the central bazaar is opening back up, there's a lot more people in the streets, a lot of people are coming back from other parts of the country where they fled initially, but at the same time, there's this

increasing fear of more rocket strikes, so the threat to kyiv is quite different now. if at the beginning of the invasion, it was more of a -- people were afraid that the tanks were going to enter the city and that kind of thing, you can prepare for. you can put up tank traps, concrete barriers. but now the fear is more about aerial bombardments, similar to what we've seen in many other parts of the country, kharkiv in the east, mariupol in the south, and that -- when you talk to people here, it's sort of -- they throw up their hands and say, well, if something falls from the sky, maybe you're quick enough to go down to the bomb shelter before it drops, but really, there's not much you can do about it. so, that's kind of the duality of the mindset here now. >> simon, some of the most horrific scenes that we have been able to see, because i'm guessing there are more horrible things that we haven't seen yet, are very close to kyiv, irpin and bucha.

tell me how those horrors sort of haunt this return and this attempt to turn back on kyiv. >> it's really hard for people. i mean, that was such a turning point in the first days of april when those images and the news began to emerge of what had happened in bucha, and then in other towns in the region around kyiv. you know, i talk to people at this market that opened, the bazaar, the central bazaar in the city, and you know, a couple of people who came back to sell vegetables and meat and so on started crying when the topic turned to bucha. they said things like, we've been friends. we had customers here who were russians, and now i can't look those people in the face. so, i think what happened after bucha is for ukrainians, it became a lot harder to separate how they felt toward the russian

military and the russian state, to separate that from how they feel toward russia as a country, as a nation. and that's going to be a kind of divide and an mosty that will be a lot harder to heal at the end of this war. >> simon, can you just tell us what, if you walk around kyiv, i mean, we've seen interviews with the mayor and we covered the targeted strikes on apartments where civilians were killed in those strikes, but if you walk around kyiv, anne applebaum was just reporting that it's functioning, that the grocery stores are open and while many of the restaurants are darkened, there is sort of a sense of maybe a new normalcy. can you just tell me what a walk around kyiv is like right now? >> well, the weather's good. cafes are open. people are enjoying the good weather and i mean, i spent some time in recent days also at the

presidential compound for some meetings there, and the atmosphere there is also quite a bit different. there's still quite a harsh perimeter around the government quarter here, so it's very difficult for anyone to get in. that's still blocked off. but the concern inside the compound, again, is much less about things like snipers or potentially assassination teams as were reported before, earlier in the conflict and it's more about aerial bombardment and again, the people there are trying to actually spend more time in their offices, rather than in the bomb shelters. they're trying to return to some kind of normalcy, but again, you ask them, the threat of aerial bombardment is still very much there. there's still the threat of -- there's still the threat of, you know, retaliation for the sinking of this warship, so --

and again, they say phrases like, what will be will be. we can't do anything about an adversary that has a nuclear arsenal, that has, you know, enormous air force potential to drop bombs that one of the bombs that russia used in kyiv already last month destroyed one rocket and destroyed an entire huge shopping complex. a shopping mall. so, you know, it's the kind of threat that is just very difficult to prepare for, and one of president zelenskyy's advisors told me, look, you know, we hear the air raid sirens, we go down to the bunker. but then we come up, we try to continue working as normal, and you know, whatever happens, happens. but we have to press on. >> simon shuster pressing on in ukraine. thank you so much for spending time with us. please stay safe. >> thank you. joining our conversation,

retired u.s. navy four star admiral mike rodgers, served as the former director of the national security agency and former commander of the u.s. cyber command. john heilemann is back with us at the table. admiral rogers, i want to understand -- i want to understand the impact for both the ukrainians and the russians of sinking that russian flagship. tell me how that happened, and the fact that the russians went and blew up the munitions factory that makes the neptune bombs seems to confirm the ukrainian account that it was indeed the ukrainian neptune strike that sunk the ship. >> so, i think first, the loss of "moskva" is much more about perception and image than something that is going to have significant tactical military effect, the loss of one ship. i mean, she was an old ship, commissioned in 1983. in fact, they had decommissioned here in the early 2000s, then

brought her back to be the flagship of the black sea. united states navy, for example, has no similar surface combatants from that age, 1983, that are still in commission. i think the loss goes to highlight, and the image thing, i think, is important. the same kind of operational military inability that we have seen on the ground, the lack of, you know, tactical military excellence, now to see that occur again in the maritime domain, the flagship of the russian black sea fleet unable to defend itself and lost after being hit by two missiles. and you have to go back to 1982, to the last time the general in the falkland war, last time you saw a ship of similar size lost, and in terms of -- one thing that sticks in my mind as a u.s. naval officer, the "uss stark," a ship about three times smaller than this, was struck by two

missiles in the persian gulf in may of 1987. 37 sailors killed, but that ship not only didn't sink. it returned to bahrain the next day under its own power. i look at this activity, and i think to myself, what kind of -- not just operational war fighting, why didn't you detect and destroy the incoming missiles? but basic damage control. basic maritime professionalism. it just -- i think it sends a really bad image for the russians, and i think that is what concerns them the most, this continued visible image of an inability to demonstrate tactical military excellence. >> john heilemann here. this week -- this war has been brutal on conventional wisdom and one of the big pieces of conventional wisdom was from day one, obviously, was the, you know, russian militarygive them, even if the war wasn't over in a few days, the one thing we could

assume, even as we saw the ukrainian resilience and determination and their strength in defending their homeland, was that the one thing they could never do was overcome just the sheer -- the defense budget, the size of the russian military. they would never be able to drive the russians out of ukraine, and now we have a conversation with anne applebaum in the previous block where it's like zelenskyy and others are like, well, maybe that kind of a straightforward conventional military victory is possible. my question about all that is, how do we all get it so wrong? and i don't mean we all, the three of us in this conversation. i mean, the whole of western conventional wisdom and the foreign policy and national security domain who sang as one that this was -- this could never happen. now there's, you know, at least a chance that it can. i ask you, you know, how do we miss this so badly? >> so, i think, first of all, if you look at probably the last three examples we saw of similar kinds of russian military activity, syria, you know, 2014 to 2016, 2017, the operation in

crimea with the russian military in february of 2014, and the russian efforts in georgia in 2008, so three times, we have watched a similar kind of scenario, significant insertion of russian forces into a geographic area and they're able to english some level of control and push out the occupants. so the baseline, i think, was, we thought they would be very sloppy. we thought, again, their view of warfare has always been damage of civilian infrastructure, attacks against civilians designed to break their will, the indiscriminate use of military force as a tool to break social cohesion and create internal discord. that's always been their model. we've watched them use it in these three previous scenarios. that baseline, i think, led us collectively to say, it might take longer than we think it's

going to be, perhaps, much more costly in terms of life, but if the russians are really focused on this, they likely are going to be able to achieve it and i think the difference is, in those three previous scenarios, syria, crimea, and georgia, you did not see a ukraine both government, military, and the broader society display such resolve, such conviction, and such willingness to directly take on the russians and not to simply roll over or say to themselves, we can't win here so why don't we try to minimize the cost to us or the damage to us. >> yeah, it's been, to john's pint, it's been one of the things -- the zelenskyy story and the ukrainian military. >> can i -- >> go ahead. >> i want to make one point. >> go ahead. >> it's clear, i believe, you can see the russians have also come to the opinion that they no longer have a high probability of success against ukraine if

the russian goal is seizure of a majority or at least a significant part of ukraine territory. i think that's why you have seen them shift to this idea now of, we're going to pivot, we're going to continue to do these indiscriminate strikes like we have seen in kyiv in the last 48 hours, as a vehicle to sow discord, as a vehicle to attempt to terrorize, to attempt to weaken the civilian populace and potentially sow discord. but at the same time, we're going to pivot to this focus on military activity in the east, in the donbas, and around mariupol with the view that we're going to create a land bridge to the ukraine. i think that's a reflection, they will never publicly admit it, but i think the russians have come to the same conclusion. they cannot take on ukraine as a whole. they've got to focus on a much smaller subset. >> unclear if putin knows that yet, but clearly the military has made that determination. admiral mike rogers, thank you so much. john sticks around. when we come back, it's been a very bad week for the disgraced

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there have been some public-facing signs all week long that the january 6th committee is working overtime to fill in any remaining gaps in its investigation with new evidence and interviews. for mark meadows, the disgraced ex-president's ex-chief of staff, it appears his legal woes only began with the committee's vote to hold him in criminal

contempt of congress last year. pressure is building on attorney general merrick garland to act on that referral of criminal charges. meanwhile, the texts meadows turned over to the committee before he stopped cooperating continued to reveal his outsized role in the coup plot, that scheme to overturn president joe biden's legitimate victory in the 2020 election. not to leave out a bombshell story, we told you about earlier this week, a legitimate voter fraud investigation into mark meadows himself from nbc news learned was removed from the north carolina voter rolls on monday, citing, quote, documentation that indicated he lived in virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there. joining our conversation, msnbc legal analyst maya wiley, civil rights attorney and former assistant u.s. attorney. john heilemann is still here. maya, i'm old enough to remember how aggressively state attorneys general went after allegations

of voter fraud and sought to criminally prosecute anyone, and it turns out most of the cases of voter fraud are people who fraudulently maybe were registered to vote on the trump side. it's ironic and funny, but it's also incredibly cynical that they have really no intention of prosecuting anyone in their own political tribe. >> well, you know, nicole, one thing that's true about voter fraud is it's very rare to see prosecutions of voter fraud because voter fraud itself is very rare. but i think here's the thing. you know, we have been seeing cases of voters who are clearly intentionally violating law who are white who are getting probation. that's been true of a woman in iowa who voted twice. that was true of a man in las vegas who voted for his dead wife. another man in pennsylvania who registered his dead

mother-in-law and his dead mother to vote and then tried to vote. so, it's not that -- i think what's shocking is that we're seeing efforts to find voter fraud. we're finding intentional voter fraud much more often with both trying to push the line for republicans and still hugely rare. but i think what's troubling to me is that, one, mark meadows, someone who's elected to congress, someone who is working as the chief of staff for donald trump and helping to support the big lie, himself was apparently trying to demonstrate that the lie was truth by his own acts. i mean, this is a man who knew where he lived, who registered to vote at a trailer home that he did not own and that the woman who did own it had no idea that he used her address, changed his voting shortly before the election and if you look at it from the standpoint of a prosecutor, it certainly looks like intentional voter fraud, at least if the facts

prove what the news stories are saying, except that the people we're seeing being prosecuted and getting prison time are most often black. and that's just important to point out there. it's like, the law should apply equally to everyone, but that's not what we're seeing right now. >> it's a reminder of a few things, that for the trump side, it's never about what they say. they're not actually interested in voter fraud. they're interested in helping donald trump overturn a defeat. now, we should point out that what nbc's reporting is that he's registered in two places. >> yeah. >> which is illegal. there's not evidence that he voted twice. but he's a real lawyer who's, i guess, ostensibly, defending him in the january 6th probe, but he's going to face criminal charges for defying the subpoena. and then the doj investigation is squarely just based on the texts that we have seen going to

ensnare him as it involves the rally planning ahead of the insurrection. >> well, there's a couple things. first, it's not just the -- yes, it's true. it's never -- it's always just about trump. everything they're doing is a pretext or a convenient tactic to try to serve that strategic interest. it's also a kind of lethal combination of a thing that has nothing to do with trump, which is republicans fixated on voter fraud. it's like the -- it's like a trope for them, right? they're not concerned about voter fraud for real because there is no demonstrated voter fraud. >> you're trying to overturn the real results. >> right, so it's the combination of the trump -- the servile nature of all the people around trump really just trying to do whatever they can do by any means necessary to help trump, plus the employment of this kind of -- this fake tactic, but then there's the other thing that's very trumpy about this to me, which is, like, i just think maybe mark meadows, on the basis of what we're learning, i never thought he was a very good chief of staff, but now with this, this is the kind of thing that, you know, there's never been --

there have been evil, maligned white house chief of staffs, power mad, narcissistic, we have had those before. go back and look at the nixon -- the one that ran nixon's white house. but like, this one, the combination of the incompetence, the stupidity, the venality and the stuff we were just talking about really puts mark meadows in a whole different class unto himself. it's like we're really finding out that he is going to be like the prima ballerina of disgraceful chiefs of staff in the history of the country. and you know, we have all said trump was the worst president we've had. of all the bad trump's chiefs of staff, meadows takes the cake. >> there are so many to choose from. >> there were like 34 and none of them were any good. >> do you remember the "rolling stone" headline earlier in the week, i think it was, fraud endorses quack? we've got an update to that story on the other side of a break. maya and john stick around. er sa break. maya and john stick around

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♪ ♪ nice suits, you guys blend right in. the world needs you back. i'm retired greg, you know this. people have their money just sitting around doing nothing... that's bad, they shouldn't do that. they're getting crushed by inflation. well, i feel for them. they're taking financial advice from memes. [baby spits out milk] i'll get my onesies®. ♪ “baby one more time” by britney spears ♪ good to have you back, old friend. yeah, eyes on the road, benny. welcome to a new chapter in investing. [ding] e*trade now from morgan stanley. the disgraced ex-president formally endorsed the author jd vance in the race for senate. vance was a never trumper. sharply criticizing donald j. trump in 2016. it was so brutal that donald

trump acknowledged the past critiques writing like some others, jd vance might have said some not so great things about me in the past but he gets it now and i've seen that in spades. we're back with mya and john. jd vance wins political contortionist of the year. >> that's what i teased. >> it's really interesting, you know, you have all of them paying attention to very widely many the primaries and said that's a lot of where his powers come from. the republican party are afraid of him because if he primaries you, trump had that muscle and

post-presidency he's making these calls in the races. there's two ways it could go. these people could lose. dr. oz could lose and trump might be crippled in terms of his power or they might win and cough up republican senate seats that their party needs to win. >> there's the political piece of this but then there's the anti-democracy piece of this. they are associating themselves with a coup plotter. i know they live in this mega bubble but on planet earth there's a committee that will marshal witnesses.

they are from inside trump's white house or administration or campaign or political universe or exfreedomist rally planners. they will be front and center for many, many months. what do you make of the reckless abandon to which one of the two parties pursues the autocrat. >> it appears and self-interest over country. self-interest over people. jd vance is a perfect example of this because of the position he took in 2016. he called out from supporters for racism in wanting a border wall. he talked about the fact that some trump voters were susceptible to the kind of racist manipulation that trump brought. now we have this mounting evidence of just how not just fraudulent but reckless, dangerous physically in terms of

violence as well as dangerous to our democracy donald trump has been and yet jd vance continues to say i've seen the light. the light is at his own ambitious tunnel. i think to john's point, this will be a test of his -- voters do not like flip-floppers. they want to know the people they are sending in office are believable. they want to know whatever you're saying whether they agree with you or not, you mean it. i think what jd vance shown there's far too many people who don't. people like senator mike lee and congressman roy who were by november starting to realize even though they had been supporting the big lie that there was no evidence behind it.

that's the kind of thing that make us very concerned about democracy and this will be a test of that, i think. >> is there anything crazier of the fact not that jd vance turned himself inside out, the two main candidates just build their campaigns around getting the endorsement of an insurrectionist coup plotting of donald trump. the whole race was geared around that. he's like a hedge fund guy who is like i'm going to hire hope hicks and stephen miller. i'm going to court donald trump. the fact he lost this endorsement to dr. oz is seen as crippling blow. he's like how will i survive having lost an endorsement of an insurrectionist twice impeached president. >> the green tea pill siller. putin has about a 3% approval

letter but trump loves him allot. >> thank you so much for spending time with us. a quick break for us. we'll be right back. us. a quick break for us we'll be right back. ♪ ♪

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robinson's number 42 today. the empire state building will be lit blue and white. in la -- 75 years is a moment in history that continues to inspire generations of americans and no doubt will for generations to come. thank you for us for letting us into your homes for another week of shows during these extraordinary times. "the beat" starts right now. hi, jason. thanks so much. welcome to "the beat." we have basic, big show for you tonight. a special intere interview with former president obama navy secretary on the crushing loss for russia. that warship sinking after taking tire. we start with the january 6th probe in the committee flexing its evidence. we're starting to see more incriminating evidence leak out seeing just how deep the plan to steal the election