♪♪ ♪♪ aloha, hola and namaste. it is 4:00 p.m. in new york city, everyone. i'm john heilemann in for nicole wallace one more time where we are dealing with these realities. since the start of this week the most highly anticipated development with the justice department's unprecedented investigation into the disgraced twice- impeached, disgraced, duplicitous ex-president has been at a court hearing today in south florida over the release of the affidavit used by the doj

in support of the request for a search warrant that gave the fbi legal license to enter mrara lag on. on one side of this dispute the doj strenuously opposing the release and on the other side donald trump and a media of organizations including nbc news urging that the affidavit be made public. there was little to no chance that the judge reinhart would approve the release of the affidavit and at the conclusion of today's hearing that judge reinhart was, in fact, open to releasing a redacted version of it and asked the department of justice to submit a proposal for what a redacted version might look like by next thursday at which point he will make his ruling and it will feature counterintelligence jay brat and he attended the team deeply involved in this case. he told the court that the investigation is still in its

early stages and that the affidavit needed to be contained under wraps because it contained sensitive information in a unique case with national security overtones and he expressed concern of the safety of the fbi agents and this is a volatile situation with the political spectrum, one side in particular. a member of donald trump's legal team, christina bob, we talked about her yesterday on the air, she told politico she was merely there to watch the proceedings. in fact, team trump for all of their repeated demands did not address the court or file anything at all. today's hearing came as investigators were still grappling with the dozens of boxes and 11 sets of classified documents seized from mar-a-lago. nbc news reporting this, quote, more than a week after they searched former president donald trump's florida residence, fbi agents are still sifting through the seized documents two law

enforcement officials briefed on the matter told nbc news, the filter team, a group of agents independent of the overall investigation is tanked with separating out documents that are tasked with attorney-client privilege and material not relevant to the probe. officials said the filter team is checking to see if the documents or other materials not marked classified include classified information. here on set with me today, neal katyal, the acting solicitor general of barack obama and almost no one on planet earth that i enjoy seeing more than you, neal. one of my other favorites, betsy woodruff swan and another favorite of mine, peter baker, all three, all three, all three msnbc contributors. neal, i want to start with you as i always do on matters of legal. i said in the open i asked a lot of people over the last few days, like, tell us about this affidavit thing and they said there's no drama here.

the judge is definitely going to say no. there's no word, no precedence, never going to come out. were you surprised that he's going this far and he's even proposing the notion that a redacted version could be made public and it was surprising to me. >> what would be surprising, john, is that he ordered serious stuff in that affidavit released. so when the justice department opposed it last week which they do traditionally, i filed similar oppositions in ongoing investigations. you say, you know, this is too dangerous, we can't do it. they didn't provide an alternative in the justice department filing. they didn't say here's what, if you ordered us to redact the document, here's what we would say you could release. so the judge today he didn't order a release. all he said was tell us your proposal for what could be redacted and what wouldn't, and i would be very surprised if we saw serious information in that affidavit and this is an ongoing investigation and jay brat, the counterintelligence official who

was arguing the case that said this is at the early stages, so i think we should wait and see and i would be really surprised if there is anything that will undermine the investigation that the judge would order released and it's not stuff that donald trump wants to have to see the light of day. >> i wish you legal analysts would like to advance. one thing he could do is split the baby and i don't blame you, and it's a very unusual circumstance. is there a world where the doj hands him his proposal for what a redacted version would look like and the judge looks at it and reinhart looks at it and says, you know what? all of this will do is be meaningless information and decide to not release it in the end anyway. it could very well happen here and the judge himself today according to reports said exactly that. he said, look, at the end of this after you hand me the redacted version it may not be intelligible to folks. the stuff that's low-hanging

fruit and the justice department sounds like they did try and negotiate with donald trump beforehand for a return of these documents and he said no. that's information that could come out, i suspect, without jeopardizing any aspect of the ongoing investigation, but again, that's not something donald trump wants to come out, and here's the basic thing. trump is on tv and social media saying this search is abusive. if he really thought it was abusive he has an easy remedy. file a lawsuit to say this search violated my fourth amendment. he hasn't done that. he's bloviated on tv because he knows he doesn't have a real legal case. >> peter baker, let me ask you what you think about where the former president's world is right now as they watch this unfold. it's notable to me that they would decide to have a lawyer present in court and not make an argument. do you think they feel they would achieve anything in the hearing today?

>> well, look, from the former president's points of view, they may say they want this out and there are damaging things in this affidavit because this is the government's version of what they think happened, right? not trump's version of what happened, and that's not going to be obviously something that would be beneficial to him. so they're actually -- this is the judge keeping quiet, to be honest with you. it may be that the judge releases the redacted version, and it is so redacted it becomes meaningless in terms of sussing out information that they got the information from the inside source and when did they tell him that and when did they know about these documents and what these documents actually tell us about trump's motives here. the one big unanswered question that we haven't gotten is what was trump thinking? was it just about keeping souvenirs? was it about jabbing at the govern for telling him what to do and he doesn't want to and he

thinks he's still president or was there something more nefarious? the one thing we want to know from this affidavit that they might not want to tell us. >> betsy woodruff swann, the cover sheet of the warrant that was released today just so we know what we're talking about here reminding everybody that these don't seem to be laws related to scrapbook keeping as eric trump suggested, these are the laws in question. u.s. code title 18 section 793, and u.s. code title 18, section 1519 obstruction of a federal investigation. you know, brat today on behalf of the government said it is a redaction -- a redacted version of this said there would be nothing of substance, et cetera, et cetera.

betsy, what do you think the government's attitude is going to be towards this now? do you go -- do you play this by the book and really just kind of go through and try to create a version that could be released or do you redact the thing to such a degree that it kind of confronts the judge with yes, this is just gibberish that we would be releasing and try to force him into turning down the application for putting down the affidavit altogether? >> that's a great question and you're basically asking if they'll act in good faith if they're turning in a bunch of pages that are simply wide margins with big black rectangles over them or if they'll try to find out what is available to the public. doj officials in these situations don't want to put themselves in a spot where it feels like they're sort of, you know, flagrantly giving the middle finger to a federal judge. that's not the way doj operates. i think it's very safe to assume

that the proposed redactions they put together are a good-faith effort to create something that the judge might understand as potentially useful to the public. one thing that was revealed in court today that was interesting is that brad himself said that there were multiple witnesses who would be easily identifiable based on the way that they're described in the affidavit. obviously, there's been an anonymous resource about doj working with people who themselves his a direct knowledge of what was going on involving these boxes and papers that were moved into mar-a-lago. it is a big deal for the top counterintelligence official to confirm that on the record in court that multiple folks are helping them figure out what documents are we talking about? where are the documents located and how long were they there after one of trump's lawyers signed some sort of document saying that the doj had gotten

everything that it was supposed to get at least as it pertained to classified materials and these boxes. so i would guess based on the way that brat is characterizing this affidavit that the proposed redactions are going to be pretty thorough, but i don't think that's a reason to think that the justice department would be necessarily trying to overredact for the sake of overredaction although it must be said from the journalist perspective, sometimes although not often that people within the doj or the intelligence community do engage in a redaction and they would be able to litigate the redactions and often find what's underneath them is underwhelming. >> my suggestion is i wouldn't be surprised and i think they would be acting in bad faith and there's a characteristic tendency of every stripe of my history and they want it as much as possible and it's a knee-jerk

reaction and neal -- what? >> i don't think it's a knee-jerk reaction, john. >> mean in general. >> i think what the justice department will do here is pretty easy for them. they'll say, look, this judge has ordered us to make redactions and look at the low-hanging fruit and things trump already knows like what he said to the justice department about these classified documents, but i don't think they can go further than that not just because it will jeopardize their ongoing investigation in this case with witnesses, but also because of what happens in this case sets a precedent for investigations around the country and so the department has to fight the idea that in an ongoing investigation the news organizations as much as we love them can go and get access to that ongoing material. >> so what's your -- and i'm going to ask betsy this question as a matter in a second, but given what you know about how doj lawyers operate and the circumstances and the stakes in this case, when they walked in there today obviously what they wanted was a slam dunk that no, the affidavit is not coming out.

they can walk out and breathe easy. are they freaking out about the fact that they had to do this? >> not only do i think it's one of the alternatives, i think they might want this alternative. they don't want to be releasing everything in an affidavit and that sets a terrible precedent, but if a federal judge says i'm ordering you to look at anything in here that can be released. >> right. >> as peter was saying a moment ago, this is the government's affidavit. it is ex party. it's not been subject to the other side. if that's released, it's generally going to be very bad for donald trump which is why he doesn't want it released and the department, if anything, isn't all that upset about releasing their negotiations with donald trump to return these highly classified and other documents. >> betsy, just from a reported standpoint there was a fair amount of conster nation of the lawyers going into the hearing, as i understand it. what's your sense of how they're feeling about this outcome today? >> i think what's likely is the

redactions that are put on this document which are some of the forward processes that the justice department would have done because both what is redacted and not redacted are so consequential because the document itself will be extraordinarily widely viewed and that's now the urgent work that doj had to do and sometimes people say two lawyers, three opinions and it will be iterated on what may or may not to be available to the public eye in this case do's inequities. it's something that will be a top-tier priority as something very sensitive and very important. >> so, peter, we talked about donald trump's team and this has become the center of furious political contention and it's not just trump's inner circle

and the whole republican party has an aggressive stance and mostly quite incendiary and one of the people who has been out there among elected officials in terms of suggesting the possibility of planted evidence last week and now really banging on the doj has been rand paul. i want to play fox news between rand paul and my new favorite newsman, mr. ducey in the morning on fox news because this man has suddenly become dark ducey. i'd like to think there is a meme out there and the man has suddenly startsed to talk like an actual journalist. let's listen to this exchange between them earlier today. >> i'm going to require proof that there was some sort of probable cause of a crime, and i'm suspicious that there was not. >> senator, absolutely congress has oversight over the fbi and the department of justice and everything else. the problem is over the last week or so there have been so much violent rhetoric directed at the fbi, and i heard somebody

printed fbi stands for fascist bureau of investigation or something like that and unfortunately, now the people who work at the fbi headquarters, you know, there are death threats and all sorts of stuff. i heard from a staff member there who was talking to a colleague at the fbi, and the colleague realized oh, look, i'm wearing the wrong shoes today to work because if somebody comes and attacks the building, and i've got to run i can't run in these heels. so unfortunately, people at the fiber caught in the crosshair. >> if you told me two weeks ago that i would be playing steve ducey almost every day as one of the few republicans speaking for what used to be the way republicans always talked and it's basically common sense i would have bet you every dollar in neal katyal's bank account that that would never have happened, but there it is. peter, what is it about steve ducey personally, but why is he

in such a minority in understanding the danger of the way the republicans have politicized with this, and i mean the danger to law enforcement and being seen as we hate the fbi and defund the fbi guys and this seems like a political trap that they've set for themselves. >> yeah. it's hardly a liberal point of view to say to a sitting senator that this is dangerous for the fbi and that the rhetoric has undermined the credibility of the law enforcement. that doesn't mean the fbi is immune from criticism and there are plenty of ways to criticize the fbi including the media for the way they've handled things and there's a difference between them and the rhetoric that we've seen which clearly suggesting extreme answers as we saw in cincinnati with that one

attacker and my guess is, i don't know this, but my guess is that steve doocy knows people in the law enforcement space who find this to be very troubling, to find it perplexing to see republicans of all peopl attacking the credibility of law enforcement when they've made great political points are being for back the blue and law enforcement. again, it doesn't mean anybody can't be criticized. there may be reason to criticize and that's for people to decide, but what's happening is beyond that. they didn't wait to see the affidavit. they didn't wait to see any information before immediately talking about defunding the fbi before attacking them as some sort of seditious organization and fascist and all these things and it didn't matter whether it was evidence or not and it was knee-jerk to use your phrase response to the fact that their hero, former president trump was under scrutiny.

>> they're the stazzi and the gestapo, and i don't know a single strategist that says defunding the fbi is like defunding the police. donald trump, on truth social, there's some platform that -- i don't even think about, that apparently trump does his version of tweeting to his faithful on that platform and they put out today -- we'll tell you about declassification and he put this out, a memo from january 19, 2021, around the time he was leaving office. the title reads memorandum related to the crossfire hurricane investigation. now in the full spirit of volleyball team i'm going to loft the ball up in the air for you and let you spike it over the net and maybe this is not

germane wholly. >> i have not seen the document, and it sounds like declassifying certain documents and maybe donald trump says those are the exact documents that the fbi found at his house and it proves the opposite, when he was bringing documents home he wasn't declassifying them, because if that was true, he wouldn't have had to issue that document you just flashed on the screen. the other thing to go back to what you asked peter a moment ago about the republican party. if you had a functioning republican party, i think they'd be asking two questions right now. one, to defund the fbi and this is an abuse by the fbi and he was appointed by donald trump and chris wray. the notion that this is some deep state operative and the second is trump has never, ever explained what he wanted to do with these documents. >> the big question is still out there. it's fine for trump to bash the

fbi and the minions and the republican party. i would expect someone in the part to ask the simple question. tell us what you were doing on this stuff. i want to make this one point not because i know about the law, but it's because i listen to you, the statute isn't really a class if i kagsz or declassification. it's about defense materials and the classification is interesting, but not germane. >> it's not relevant. >> but the three statutes that you flashed before -- >> yeah. >> that were in the search warrant don't depend on the information being classified. >> just pertaining to national defense. peter and betsy are sticking around. after the break, one of donald trump's closest allies for decades, ex trump organization cfo, allen weisselberg pleading guilty, guilty, guilty, 15 times. 15 felony charges and what that means for the donald himself, plus a new window into the

federal january 6th investigation and a major subpoena that we are now just learning about and the grift just keeps on grifting and donald trump cashing in on the mar-a-lago search. please, do not leave us. search. please, do not leave us. we listen. like jack. he wanted a streamlined version he could access anywhere, no download necessary. and kim. she wanted to execute a pre-set trade strategy in seconds. so we gave 'em thinkorswim® web. because platforms this innovative aren't just made for traders -they're made by them. thinkorswim® by td ameritrade

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wait, what was that? timber... [ sighs heavily ] when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you've built with affordable coverage. breaking news today out of this here state, new york state where one of the disgraced twice-impeached ex-president's closest confidants is now facing prison time. former trump organization cfo allen weisselberg pleading guilty to 15 felony charges in the state's tax fraud case involving the trump organization's business dealings agreeing to pay back nearly $2

million smackeroos and expecting to serve up to five months at rikers as part of the plea agreement. more notably weisselberg will testify against the trump organization in an upcoming trial this fall however, there is no indication that weisselberg will testify against the former guy himself after nicholas gravante, in one of the moef difficult decisions of his life, mr. weisselberg decided to enter a plea of guiltiy today to put an end to this case. rather than risk possibility of 15 years in prison he's agreed to serve 100 days. we are glad to have this behind him. tom winter and neal is back, as well. tom, you were in court today. talk a little bit about what went down there, the drama. i mean, maybe a lot of this is behind him, but five months in rikers sounds like a nightmare

to me. >> about five hours in rikers sounds like a nightmare to me. it has become an infamous and notorious jail in this city and in this country and a number of fatalities this year and it is not a place where anybody regardless of their age let alone a 75-year-old wants to spend any time. let's be clear here. he's not expected to spend time in general population, but he will have a lot to think about when he is sentenced there either later this year or early next. inside the courtroom as you asked, john, really a muted affair today when he was initially charged and a big media circus here. we were kind of elbow to elbow. people reporting on what the specific charges were. we kind of knew what they were going to be last year, but we didn't know all of the details. we didn't know what weisselberg would say and this is pretty well telegraphed and reported in advance going back a couple of days when he would testify before the upcoming trump organization trial which is in late october and october 24th,

so not too long from now and not too long before the midterm elections and think, weisselberg, quiet in his tone, barely audible at points, agreeing as the judge went count by count. all of the things that prosecutors and now weisselberg says he did do. the thing about this, john, what weisselberg received was not necessarily illegal. an employer can absolutely pay for your automobile payments. an employer can absolutely pay for housing. that's not illegal at all. it's only illegal when both sides don't pay for it correctly and when the taxes aren't paid correctly and that's what they eventually got weisselberg for and that's eventually what he agreed that he did, and i think providing that testimony for the exact same conduct for which the trump organization has been charged providing that testimony at that trial and that he has to provide it truthfully in order for him to get that five-month

sentence i think is going to be really key for prosecutors here. >> so, neal, i want to read to you from "the new york times" which gets at the core of this. i remember when we all looked at weisselberg, if they can get weisselberg to flip on trump that will be the end of him. weisselberg not implicating trump. he's refused to agree with prosecutors against mr. trump program weisselberg possessed a curious knowledge of the business practices and prosecutors had pressured him to cooperate with a wider investigation of the former president, and he was not able to sway him and mr. vance's successor, alvin l. bragg has also been unsuccessful. here's the part i don't get, right? in addition to the fact again, expectations, as is often in the case of donald trump that goes flying against the hard face of reality is how do you testify against the trump organization without testifying against donald trump? the trump organization for most of its existence was donald

trump and a couple of people rung around doing his bidding? >> so first of all, john, it seems like everyone within 100-mile radius of donald trump is either under criminal investigation or going to prison at this points. so weisselberg has pled as part of this complex deal to that five-month prison sentence and $2 million fine and there's a separate trial in october on the very same charges against the trump organization and not donald trump himself and the contours of this deal are weisselberg saying 15 different felonies, but i don't want you to reduce my sentence for any testimony that we'll give specifically to donald trump, no deal. that looks weird, but that's actually the kind of deal and the kind of tightrope that people walk in mob situations because they don't want to face reprisal from the boss, but they also have to cut some sort of deal for themselves. the problem here as you're saying that trial in ukta october is effectively a trial against donald trump because he was running the trump organization for those years.

so weisselberg will testify not against trump, but the trump organization and law enforcement and new york will have to say to themselves, hey, is this enough? do we want to open a case against trump or are we satisfied with a conviction of the trump organization. my suspicion is that the prosecutors say if we get weisselberg, and the trump organization that will be a felony organization in october and that will threaten the future financing and the loans and all sort of stuff like that. >> i remind everybody that the trump organization, when we say donald trump was synonymous with it. this is not an organization that employed hundreds of employees and it was donald trump and a handful of people in a shoestring way with very few controls. i want to read to you the trump organization's reaction to today's deal with allen weisselberg and here's what they

said. allen weisselberg, a long time trusted employee of the trump organization is a fine and honorable man who in the past four years has been harassed and persecuted and threatened in a quest to get president trump. in an effort to put this matter behind him, decided the best course of action for himself and his family was to plead guilty. the two trump companies that the manhattan d.a. has been targeting, however, will not be taking a plea for the simple reason that they have done nothing wrong. as a result we now look forward to having our day in court which quite interestingly has been scheduled for september 24th, around the time of the midterm elections. you mentioned the proximity to the midterm election. what do we imagine not just the political stakes of that trial is obviously not going to conclude before the midterm elections and trump will make it

germane to the midterm elections. talk to us through that. >> jury selection starts on the 24th so by the time we hear opening statements and by the time we get to opening arguments we'll be closer to the midterm elections and i'm not the political expert and this is more of a thought for you and for folks that look at this type of thing. is there anything that's going come out about this trial keeping in mind that it's closely held to the type of conduct that weisselberg is doing. the conduct is essentially identical. so are we really going to hear something through the course of this trial that we haven't heard before, that's going to be surprising to anybody who has supported the former president. from a political calculous s that something that's going to impact people? you do wonder if prosecutors will bring in information about the president. they do have an open investigation into him today in a statement, the manhattan

district attorney alvin brag did say that the investigation into the former president himself outside of the organization, outside of allen weisselberg does continue, but i would note we haven't heard of any new investigative steps in that investigation and now almost about a year they were able to get the president's taxes and the only investigation that we're aware of where they've been able to get that, but we haven't heard of anybody new being brought before the grand jury, and being questioned and new witnesses and new documents and we don't know what we don't know, but i do know at this point it will be interesting to see whether anything comes out on that trial and a big caveat on that, though, it could not be more clear that allen weisselberg is loyal to donald trump and we're not against him. it makes it very clear where the dark line is for allen

weisselberg. >> there's no question about his loyalty. >> for a 75-year-old man? sure. >> i would say for any year-old man. the statement from bragg, and manhattan, for devising and operating, here ate part i'm interested in a 15-year scheme to defraud federal new york state and new york city tax authorities of any payment of taxes due on $1.76 million of unreported income. i see the word federal. federal opens some doors i would imagine legally speaking? >> 100%. you highlighted the very word that i would have highlighted. weisselberg is agreeing that he not just violated state law, but federal law. who did he violate it with? the trump organization.

who runs the trump organization? a guy named donald trump. so the question now is merrick garland investigating this because you now have an admitted federal felon in the books. the question is was he doing it on his own? was weisselberg coming up with his tax avoidance stuff on his own to for donald trump's properties? probably not. so i sure hope that the justice department's investigating this. i think they have to. i don't see a way that they can look the other way. garland's obviously biz we several other investigations against donald trump. i think trump right now is facing four things that we know about and he's facing the january 6th grand jury, he's facing the classified information at mar-a-lago. he's facing georgia felonies and there's one other that i'm spacing on right now -- oh, the -- this new york one. >> that's the fourth. that makes it four potentially.

all i can say at this moment is whenever i hear the things that merrick garland has justification should be investigating and man, i feel like it's jaws and we'll need a bigger boat or more lawyers and another merrick garland and a lot of resource strain that donald trump has put on investigators. up next, the documents that could tell us which direction the criminal january 6th probe may be heading after this. probe may be headi angfter this. trel. [coughing] ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze driftin' on by... ♪ if you've been playing down your copd,... ♪ it's a new dawn, it's a new day,... ♪ ...it's time to make a stand. start a new day with trelegy. ♪...and i'm feelin' good. ♪ no once-daily copd medicine... has the power to treat copd in as many ways as trelegy. with three medicines in one inhaler, trelegy helps people breathe easier and improves lung function. it also helps prevent future flare-ups. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler

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we are learning of some new developments in yet another investigation into the disgraced, twice-impeached, coup-plotting ex-president and his actions related to the insurrection on january 6th. the federal grand jury has subpoenaed white house documents including schedules, phone logs and other records from the national archives as part of its investigation into the role that donald trump and his allies played in the run-up to the riot at the capitol. according to "the new york times" the subpoena which was issued back in may to trump's handling of classified documents which resulted in the search for mar-a-lago, and it's hard to tell the players about the scorecard. the question many are asking today is why did it take so long? maybe a year to subpoena the documents that the january 6th house select committee tack when it started this investigation. as reporting from "the new york times" quote, that the justice department has not only been

following the committee's lead in pursuing the inquiry, prosecutors believe evidence of a crime may exist in the white house documents and the archives turn over to the house panel. we are back with neal and betsy. i do think, betts see, that the question that is begged, many people over the course of the last year have said merrick garland is asleep at the switch. the doj is really not on this 1/6 stuff and the committee is way out in front of them, is it not just a huge tell today that this subpoena that impacts the skeptics about the doj on this far right? >> i think so, and i don't want to speculate too much about the reasoning behind the justice department taking so long to issue this subpoena. one thing that i would note, though, is that if they had issued a subpoena like this a year ago they would have got ren far fewer documents than they will get as a result of issuing a subpoena in may, and that's

because so many trump administration officials and other assorted characters in the constellation of personalities mixed up with the january 6th probe took a pretty long time to produce documents. many of these subpoenas were litigated and there were all sort of different core fights for a number of people. they produced some, but not necessarily everything that the committee wanted and it was just pretty time consuming and on top of that, though, when we were looking at the nara documents it took the national archives quite a while just to work through all of the records from the trump administration. typically doing what the national archives had to do in the last year, processing all of the records of a white house, typically that would take many years and typically it would be done under a much calmer and less exciting circumstances. the national archivists have had to work incredibly quickly to get these records and if doj had subpoenaed them right at the

same time that the select committee did, it would have taken the department quite a while to hoover up everything. that doesn't mean that the doj isn't late to the ball game when it comes to this investigative work only that the delay might not necessarily have had a huge impact on the access to records that they're getting. ? so i want to put up this full screen of what's in the subpoena documents so we can have a sense of what we're talking about here. here's a list, records of mark meadows, stephen miller and patrick philbin, white house diary, and logs from january 6th and kayleigh mcenneny. why did it take so long, and you know me, neal, i'm always about moving forward and not looking back. whether they're late or not, does the fact that they're doing this and subpoenaing people like eric herschmann to testify and

others who we know testified for the grand jury. they were late and now they're finally on the case. >> it's a huge, ongoing step, john, that suggests an active, federal criminal investigation into trump and high-level white house officials before we knew there was an investigation on january 6th in the attack on the capitol and fake electors and that scheme and what this material suggests is the broader investigation that's aimed at the top of the white house and there are three possible reasons why it took that number 480 days. one is garner was being incredibly strategic that trump and all of his allies like navarro would go write books, talk about it and wave any court of privilege. i think that's unlikely to be the reason, but it's out there. a second possibility is that congress might have opposed a request or subpoena for these documents earlier.

they were running the investigation and they might have said to garland, hey, we don't want you to ask for this. let us run this for now and the third is this is garland being cautious, overly cautious, perhaps, but this is a trait that garland has. the idea that trump tries to paint him as a blood thirsty prosecutor and this is literally the opposite of that guy and i can't find any guy in my town who would work with mrim on my side of the aisle. it's plausible. >> i have no dog in this fight, and i have to say if garland ends up bringing the -- bringing the heat down on trump there will be a lot of people who are frustrated with how slowly he went who will have to eat those words because in the end and appearing cautious, being cautious, being methodical wound up being a huge political advantage that makes sense for the public. >> that's how garland's whole

life has been that trademark cautiousness. i would bet on him over trump every day of the week. >> that's not a fair standard. neal katyal, setting them up strong and blowing them down and see me at the table. after the break, how trump is turning a raid -- not a raid, how donald trump is turning the search of mar-a-lago into a cash grab. nto a cash grab

lily! welcome to our third bark-ery.

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the exgrifter in chief, donald j. trump, is at it again in the wake of the search of mar-a-lago, wasting not a moment in attempting to fund-raise off his latest set of legal troubles. "the washington post" reporting, "former president donald trump bombarded his supporters with more than a hundred emails asking for money based on the fbi search of the mar-a-lago club for classified materials last week. they paid off. contributions topped a million dollars on at least two days after the august 8th search. the daily hauls jumping from a level of $200 to $3,000 that had been typical." joining us to talk about this all too predictable and all-too-disheartening scam, former congressman david jolly and politico correspondent eugene daniels. both are msnbc contributors.

grifters gonna grift, we've said it a million times, and this has turned on the money spigot for donald trump. you could have questions about whether republicans rallying around him is going to pay off in the long run, but in the short run, it's paying off financially. >> it is, john, and i think it also represents something much larger that i'm actually surprised donald trump hasn't leaned into further, which is if he is to be a candidate in 2024, this might be the most catalyzing moment he will be presented with. now, sometimes as a candidate, you need the moment to meet you halfway. we weren't sure in the first 12 to 24 hours what the search of mar-a-lago would result in, politically, for donald trump, but what it demonstrated is that if he issues the call to action, republicans rally around him, and john, if i was advising the president, i'm sure others have, about his potential candidacy, i would say, now is the time you declare for 2024. this is the moment where you would force republicans to side

with you. but the telling thing, john, the very telling thing, is that he has not made that move. and i believe it's probably because donald trump and the people around him actually know there are more developments of greater consequence that are likely to occur. and so, he could not make an announcement like that thus far. he just has to raise money. >> david, i'm going to come back to you with a question about that in one minute, but eugene daniels, i want to read -- there's a couple things in the "washington post" story that are worth reading. i want to do the one that talks about how many fund-raising emails there are. this is the story. "the fire hose of trump fund-raising emails referencing the mar-a-lago search exceeded the pac's average pace by nine per day. messages used alarming phrases in bold and all caps, they broke into my home, they're coming after you, and this is insane. one message included a poll asking, do you believe that

president trump is being politically persecuted? another promised an exclusive 13,000% match today only. wow, that's a lot. a common tactic used to encourage people to respond immediately. such menacing rhetoric from trump and other republicans has drawn criticism and concern." look, it's obviously working in terms of money. eugene, do you think there's a reason it's right to be worried, that in addition to being a payday, it's also something that could be dangerous? >> yeah, i mean, when you look at january 6th, you don't have to look very far to think about when the president, the former president, says, they're coming after you. this is really terrible. our country is being overtaken. it's being stolen. this is all the same thing. and so now, telling people on fox news and other right-wing networks is republicans telling people not only are they coming after donald trump, they are also coming after you next.

and you have to give us money so we can get to the white house to protect them from coming to you. and this is something that, you know, we've seen for years in politics, but donald trump does it more and, you know, i guess depending on how you look at it, better than anyone else. when you tell people, they're coming after you, these scary liberals are going to come from d.c. and new york and knock down your door and take everything out of your safe, which most americans probably don't have a safe, that is dangerous, because then, you know, for those people who are just going to see the rhetoric and repeat it, there are also those who are going to take actions. we saw what happened after the fbi went to mar-a-lago, what happened at the fbi, at that fbi field office. so, these are the kinds of things, when you're talking to law enforcement officials, that they're worried about. >> david jolly, i'll tell you, back in 2016, i remember doing focus groups among undecided republican voters, 2015, and one of the things that made me

realize that donald trump could be the republican nominee is when people who had nothing in common with donald trump would say, he's one of us. i would say, do you have a gold toilet? do you eat only hamburgers? no, no, in but he's a blue-collar billionaire, they would say. there is this thing, he's traded on that, the notion that somehow, this most ludicrous, preposterous man, who looks -- who looks, acts, lives like almost no one in america, is somehow relatable. i don't understand how that's true. how he maintains that, david jolly, and whether he can maintain it, even in the face of being indicted for his mishandling of classified information, which no one in america will ever touch. >> yeah, john, i think, because there's a nuance to that message, which is, that the government, the deep state, as eugene's saying, the elites, they're coming for your way of life. they're coming for your culture, and they're coming for mine too, and i'm the one that's going to protect you in that fight, which is why this event, the search of mar-a-lago, feeds perfectly into

that seemingly illogical trump narrative that we're in this together, you and me, the common man and the elitist. we're in this together because the deep state's coming for me, and you just saw it at mar-a-lago, which is why, i think, in that environment, if donald trump were to issue a time for choosing, you're either with me or you're with the deep state, it squeezes out the ron desantiss and other republicans of the world. it's an interesting time for donald trump. >> david jolly, i know you're a man who does not have a gold-plated toilet. thank you for coming on. eugene daniels coming back in the next hour, thank god for that. he's got reporting and analysis to share. after the break, a political perfect storm that could boost democrats to victory in november. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts right after this quick break. deadline white house" starts right after this quick break. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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we hit a couple of cycles where the attitude was, don't get involved in primaries, so i always like to mention to people, for folks you may have forgotten, sharon engel, todd akin, richard murdoch. i think it's pretty safe to say, after 2010 and 2012, i concluded we needed to change the business model, and by that, i meant, not so much a philosophical litmus test or in this era, whether you do or don't like donald trump, but can you appeal to a general election audience? >> bonjour. it's 5:00 in new york city. i'm here once more, john

heilemann, in for nicole wallace with a good friend onset. talk about senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, he was very clear about what needed to happen if republicans were going to win back the united states senate and that was candidates with broad appeal, not extremists, not nuts, not bad candidates in any way. fast forward, primary season is winding down, almost over, and midterms are just 12 weeks away and it appears that what mcconnell was hoping for, praying for, almost predicting, did not come to pass. something other came to pass and it could cost the gop dearly. at this moment, a political perfect storm may be brewing that could land democrats in a position they never thought they would be in, heading towards the midterm elections in november with the very real prospect they could increase their margin in the united states senate and on the house side, significantly reduce losses there, as history would dictate, or maybe, just maybe, keep control of the lower chamber. there are a bunch of elements that comprise this perfect

storm, beginning with president joe biden and congressional democrats who have seen a string of fresh legislative successes as inflation and gas prices are falling. democrats have also been energized over flash points like abortion and gun rights, following the supreme court's overturning of roe v. wade and the tragic frequency of mass shootings, the shooting in uvalde, texas. meanwhile, on the republican side, despite the advice of mitch mcconnell, republicans have done something a little different in terms of nominating the senate candidates who will represent the party. those candidates are somewhere ranging between very extreme and extremely extreme and often more than a little divisive. there's the former president himself, his dereliction of duty exposed prominently and events revealing he's the center of a potential criminal enterprise related to the handling of classified documents down at mar-a-lago. that man, front and center, always the thing that gets democrats steamed up, raring to go. all of this, potentially, bringing on that political

perfect storm. democrats thinking at this moment that they are in a pretty good place to hold on to their senate majority. since may, they have had the advantage in the generic congressional ballot, polling showing a four-point lead according to politico and morning consul, and it may explain why mitch mcconnell made those very revealing -- made these very revealing comments just this afternoon. >> i think the -- there's probably a greater likelihood the house flips than the senate. senate races are just different. they're statewide. candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome. right now, we have a 50/50 senate and a 50/50 country, but i think when all is said and done this fall, we're likely to have an extremely close senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly. >> that's not a man who's brimming with confidence all of a sudden. joining us now, politico's

eugene daniels back from the 4:00 hour, senior senate and government editor for the cook political report. that's jessica taylor, msnbc contributor, tim miller, and joining me onset, michael, the multi-emmy-award winning former contributor to "the atlantic," long-time editor of spin magazine, also the founder and creative director for the people pac, progressive digital advertising that is working to counter republican extremism, and eugene, you're the guy who came out in playbook today with your colleagues and said, here's the landscape that we're facing right now, things are moving fast. democrats have been saying for the last couple months that the momentum is on their side, but now that we sort of see, like, pretty clear sense of all the senate races that are really in play, not all of them, most of them that are really in play, we know who's on the ballot for republicans, we know where democrats stand. talk about, from 30,000 feet, why it is it's not just the

democrats are feeling momentum, but why it's right that they find themselves in a better position with respect to the midterms today than i would say they've been in for a year. >> and a year ago, and even, you know, less than a year ago, when i was talking to republicans, they were saying, you know, they may see 60 seats in the house, right? they would hold on and go further in the senate and take over the senate. when you talk to them now, like you saw mitch mcconnell, that's not how they're talking, and democrats tend to be a pretty hopeful group, so any time you're talking to them about their chances, they're pretty optimistic. but they are feeling really good, and when you look at all those things you just outlined, john, about how well things are going for them and president biden right now, it does look like they could be right. mitch mcconnell doesn't seem that way. rick scott, the head of the campaign article for senate republicans, when he talked about the senate yesterday, he kind of said, basically, you

know, if we have money in november, it will be fine, i guess. that is not, again, a group that feels very confident. and a lot of it comes down to candidate quality, not just democrats feeling good and doing well. candidate quality. trump went out there and had free rein, being able to pick the candidates that he wanted, and some of these states that used to be ruby red, it doesn't work as well to have someone who is far-right, especially when you have a republican party that's much further right. some of them have personality issues like voters just don't like them. like ron johnson in wisconsin, herschel walker who has gaffe after gaffe. people wonder, does he know what he's talking about? all of those things give democrats an opportunity here to expand the senate map, something they didn't expect they would be able to do. and this is something republicans have been worried about for a long time. when i talk to republicans behind the scenes, they would

never say this on camera or on the record, but they would say, you know, we don't really want donald trump picking folks because when you get to the general election, it's going to be too tough for us and that is exactly the situation they find themselves in now. we still have time. there's plenty of time for things to change, but as it stands right now, that's how things are looking. >> tim, i'll ask you, as the a apostate republican in the room and a man who was actively involved in the 2012 and 2014 cycle. mitch mcconnell is like a delphic oracle. he says, you know what? if we do -- if we look like the year is like 2012 and we have people like todd akin and richard murdoch on our side, we are screwed, and we got to aim for something more like 2014 where you had cory gardner and joni ernst. as you look across the spectrum, let's stick with the senate for

right now. do you think it looks more like 2012 or 2014, a good year for senate -- for the crop of senate candidates that republicans are left with or a very bad year? it looks like 2012 from a candidate quality standpoint. >> that looked like a defeated man, but not defeated in the sense that republicans wouldn't win the senate. rain cloud alert, i'm not as bearish on the republicans' chance to take the senate as everybody else is, it seems like, but he seems defeated in the intraparty struggle. in 2014, mitch mcconnell maximized the amount of republican seats because he was fighting in primaries. in mississippi, thad was going up against this racist radio host and mcconnell worked hard to keep concord in there to make sure the republicans didn't blow a seat in mississippi. this was happening across the board. mcconnell felt confident. he felt like he could put his thumb on the scale in republican primaries and have it make a difference.

now mcconnell, if anything, is toxic in republican primaries. if mcconnell endorsed a candidate publicly, that would be like a kiss of death. he's lost control of his own party. donald trump controls the party. and so, you know, mcconnell would have liked to have mccormick in pennsylvania. instead, he gets oz. and oz obviously is struggling with his crudite and winning that seat in pennsylvania. in georgia, mcconnell succumbed to reality and went along with herschel walker. he tried to recruit doug ducey, the governor of arizona, chris sununu in new hampshire. in both cases, a maga freak is going to win the primary. this was a year that republicans could have won four seats if you look at that, arizona, new hampshire, georgia, and with better candidates, and instead, i think the best case scenario for him is looking like a one, maybe two-seat majority in a wave year because they're just going to leave so many of these on the table with kooky and extreme candidates. >> that actually, you just

created a perfect segue to jessica taylor. and jessica, i want to talk about the cook political report and what you have seen in the last weeks unfolding. you just made a change in one of your ratings on the pennsylvania race in the pennsylvania senate race from toss-up to lean democrat. i'm going to quote something from the report now. "if you had asked us before the primaries began in earnest in early may, we put the odds that republicans would flip the senate at more than 60% with a gain of as many as four seats possible. right now, the range we see is between democrats picking up one seat and republicans gaining three. the most probable may be a net change of zero or a gop pick-up of one or two." you know, i laid out a bunch of factors in the political perfect storm, jessica. why don't you talk a little bit about what you think is driving the changes, which right now, even if they don't end up being -- creating a massive blue wave, which no one expects, that are all basically trying to get democrats direction. which ones are the most salient

as you rate them at cook? >> if you tell democrats at this juncture, a year ago, that -- or last fall in the early this year, that they could -- no change in the senate would be a good thing, and that's really the shocking thing, and it really has been these candidates that have been nominated, and again, as tim said -- the environment is still not great for democrats, but it's gotten a little bit better in the past six weeks with abortion. money is another thing right now that republicans do not have that democrats do, and their candidates have been able to be up on air, airing positive messages, and voters have seen that. now, sort of the republican cavalry is coming in, but they're also coming in to save seats they didn't think they would have to save. senate leadership fund is going in with $28 million in ohio, a state that should not be on the board at all, because jd vance has disappeared since he won that really bruising primary.

you have tim ryan that is probably the best democratic candidate they could have got there that is running pretty close to a perfect race. that doesn't mean that republicans are going to lose that seat. we have them as favored, but what we are seeing in these marginal races and states that are traditional toss-ups, the presidential battlegrounds every year, pennsylvania, arizona, georgia, those are the ones that sort of democrats might have thought were off the table. i'm not sure republicans were optimistic early on, but now the political reality is here that these are the candidates you have to dance with. this is what donald trump has brought with these candidates he's endorsed, and the big reason why we moved pennsylvania, which i think, at this point, is the most likely senate seat overall to flip parties, it's an open seat so it's a little bit easier anyway, but i have dr. oz that survived that primary, but his approval ratings across the board for someone that is well known

already, also dealing with a carpetbagging issue because he essentially just moved to the state. he went to medical school there, his wife is from there, but tenuous ties. exactly what he does this week, he's not relatable to a lot of these blue-collar voters, and trump was. you were right at the beginning where you said that it really was -- it's still fascinating to me even so many years later that trump can -- these blue-collar voters do cling to him. >> yes. >> but trump cannot put his touch on candidates and they have the same appeal with these types of voters. we are seeing them going against that and you see very consistently someone like john fetterman, who looks more like pennsylvania than dr. oz trying to put together a crudite plate. >> there is mehmet oz, and we see these polls and i want to string a few things together for you, great student of media and personality that you are. "the washington post" has this story. it talked about trump. we're going to talk about a

couple of these candidates who are -- dr. oz is one of them. we're going to talk about herschel walker a little later in the show but i want to say the overarching thing, "trump's dominance comes into focus. having amateur candidates who had never run for office before carrying the banner for the republican party is a risky move, said a pollster. the list is quite lengthy of senate seats lost by weak republican candidates, even in good republican years." so, this is mitch mcconnell's point, something if you're ever covered politics for a long time, you know. senate seats, like gubernatorial seats, they make their own wind and weather and you have got to have good candidates. it's hard to beat an incumbent. you're not well funded, you're not a good candidate, you're not going to beat an entrenched incumbent, and you look around at some of these guys and i just want to look at the polls here. pennsylvania, there's that number we just saw. fetterman, 48 over dr. oz at 39. up in wisconsin, you're got someone who actually is an

incumbent in ron johnson's case, according to this marquette university of law school poll, mandela barnes up 51%. who knows if that's real. and down in florida, for the first time in a year, you see a poll from the university of north florida where val demings is up over marco rubio. that's within the margin of error, but all these trend lines. so, the question i want to ask you is, how much, at this moment, that democrats have a right, truly have a right to feel like they could maybe pull defeat out of the jaws -- pull victory out of the jaws of defeat and be okay in this? >> i think there are three things that have changed. one is, for the first time in a long time, democrats are running smart campaigns.

the messaging is simple, direct, offensive. it's creating wedge advertising of the sort that republicans had traditionally done. fetterman is running literally a master class in campaigning. he's weirdfying oz in a way that i don't think oz ever recovers from. the other -- and this is a really fundamental change that i don't think people have fully grasped. the abortion decision is not just the abortion decision. the abortion decision transforms the debate from republicans are for freedom to republicans want to take your freedom away. they want to literally get all up in your business. not your and i business, but some other folks' business, and that creates a huge opportunity for the democrats to rebrand as the party of freedom, as not the woke nags, but the people that are going to protect you from government intrusion. >> well, and i would say that there's these factors, there's the abortion decision in roe v. wade, which we've seen. kansas was a great illustration of that. the energy on the gun side.

but there's also this notion -- it's not just that trump is a polarizing figure. it's that the -- just in this last week, what he has provoked, the entire republican party to come out and attack the fbi, attack law enforcement, that they have had for years, rightly or wrongly, they have had this advantage on law and order issues and beat up democrats and says, they want to defund the police and now they are literally out there on television saying, defund the fbi. go to political perfect storms. the democrats did nothing to bring that out in republicans. but they are only going to benefit from it, it seems to me. >> if we run on it smartly. >> absolutely. >> a couple progressives said, defund the police in 2020. the republicans ran three cycles on it. we should be running on, defund the fbi. you know what happens when you defund the fbi? the fbi, you know, protects your children from rapists. they protect the border from cartel members coming over. we should be scaring the crap out of, in particular, republican women about what happens if the fbi is truly

defunded. >> and i think, look, in the long arc of american politics, if democrats could seize the mantle of, we are the friends to law enforcement and the boys in blue, it would transform our politics. we're going to talk about some of these candidates and give you a vivid sense of just how screwed the republican party is in a couple of very key senate races. eugene daniels, jessica taylor, thank you for spending time with us. tim, michael, sticking around to watch that video with me. when we return, closer look at some of the places where the cost of donald trump's endorsement power is becoming increasingly clear and horrifying for the republican party, including the great state of georgia, where senate candidate herschel walker is not doing all that well. another example, we just talked about it pennsylvania. a new day brings a new gaffe from dr. oz. we had one today. the hits just keep oncoming, and the fetterman campaign is taking full advantage.

arizona has become ground zero for the disgraced twice-impeached ex-president's big lie. now, republican party in the grand canyon state is taking aim at democracy itself. "deadline white house" continuing after a quick break. "deadline white house" continuing after a quick break lily! welcome to our third bark-ery. oh, i can tell business is going through the “woof”. but seriously we need a reliable way to help keep everyone connected from wherever we go. well at at&t we'll help you find the right wireless plan for you. so, you can stay connected to all your drivers and stores on america's most reliable 5g network. that sounds just paw-fect. terrier-iffic i labra-dore you round of a-paws at&t 5g is fast, reliable and secure for your business. >> tech: cracked windshield? don't wait. go to safelite.com at&t 5g is fast, you can schedule service in just a few clicks. it's so easy. and more customers today are relying on their cars advanced safety features, like automatic emergency breaking and lane departure warning.

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so, we've been tag the potential for a political perfect storm since this hour began, something that might develop for democrats and what could make the midterm elections closer than everyone in political conventional wisdom business thought. we've got an improving economy,

legislation joe biden's been on a roll with, the january 6th hearings and last week's search and seizure operation at mar-a-lago and the crazy response of republicans attacking law enforcement. there's another thing, though, maybe the most important thing in the senate races, candidates hand-picked by donald trump himself who seem sort of like the opposite of the ready for primetime players. one place where the cost to the republican party is already clear is georgia. newest battleground state where former football great herschel walker is looking to defeat incumbent senator raphael warnock. once a vocal critic of absentee dads, walker has been forced to acknowledge children previously unknown to the public more than once on the campaign trail, has lied about working in law enforcement, about owning companies that simply don't exist, about graduating in the to be 1% of his class at the university of georgia, despite the fact that he never graduated at all. and maybe most damningly, he's been forced to reckon with allegations of past domestic

abuse, which he has in the past attributed to his struggles with mental health. those abuse allegations are the subject of a powerful and unsettling new political ad aimed straight at walker's solar plexus from the republican accountability pac. >> do you think you know herschel walker? well, think again. listen to what his ex-wife had to say about him. >> his eyes would become very evil. the guns and knives, i got into a few choking things with him. the first time he held the gun to my head, he held the gun to my temple and said he was going to blow my brains out. >> republican accountability pac is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> tim miller, michael are back. tim, i start with you. in every -- in our lives, in politics, working in or covering politics, an ad like that, which is based on something that walker doesn't even deny, would

basically be like, that would be it. you would be done in the campaign. do you think that is going to have that kind of an effect on herschel walker, or are our politics now beyond any one allegation or ad killing any candidate's career? >> i think our politics are beyond that, but boy, it's damning, and there's a lot of these -- our voters might be the former republican voters in georgia. they're more important than almost anywhere, the atlanta suburbs, you have a lot of suburban dads and moms, mostly, that had moved from republican to voting for joe biden in the last cycle, put joe biden over the top, and so these voters, i think, are going to be very turned off by walker, just by how unprepared he is, and these are very serious accusations of domestic violence and his kind of rebuttal video that he did, he talked about how, well, you know, you're stigmatizing mental health issues. this is a category of difference from mental health issues, which we should all be sensitive to,

putting a gun to a woman's head and threatening to murder them, that is domestic violence, so i think that's really going to harm him. the best thing herschel walker and mitch mcconnell have going for them is that brian kemp is on the same ballot and we're living in these polarized times and i think it's a big ask for people. that's why these ads are so important to get some of these former republican types or wavering republican types who are going to vote for brian kemp to vote for also rafael warnock in the senate race. i think these ads will go a long way in persuading them. >> here's the most recent poll, this fox news poll of the georgia senate race. it's got raphael warnock up 46-42. that's within the margin of error but it's also the case that warnock has led in every major poll since april, and interestingly, michael, as tim points out, governor kemp is basically ahead of stacey abrams by about this same margin in most polling, which you could be bummed if you're a democrat about the fact that brian kemp is winning or you could look at, that's the disparity between how

bad walker is, that in a state where governor kemp is leading stacey abrams consistently in a lot of these polls, maybe not permanently, but consistently, walker is way down, and that just gives you a sense of what the toll of his problems, his candidate quality, we'll get to more of that in a second. but talk about whether you think that ad and that argument is something that he just can't escape. >> i think it's incredibly powerful, and i think that it's just the tip of the iceberg. i think people haven't really grasped how weird this guy is. this is a really, really strange person who will sort of just out of nowhere talk about chasing somebody down and, you know, shooting them in the head, and then sort of laugh about it. >> right. >> like, hey, that's funny. >> that's a good lead-in to what we want to say. we have herschel walker's greatest hits on the campaign trail. we can talk about what michael's talking about on the other side. let's look at that. >> we don't control the air. our good air decides to flow

over the china with bad air, so when china gets our good air, their bad air got to move. so, it moves over to our good air space. >> that's right. >> and now, we got to clean that back up. cain killed abel and that's a problem that we have, and i said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things, you know, they talked about doing a disinformation. what about getting an apartment that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at their social media? what about doing that? looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way. now, think about this. because at one time, science said, man came from apes. did it not? go to the science. >> every time i read or hear that, i think, you didn't read the same bible i did. >> this is what's interesting, though. if that is true, why are there still apes? >> tim, i ask you, like, why are there still apes?

no, that's not my question. my question is, explain how it is -- tim, my friend, an evolutionary biologist out there on the west coast. how could it be that someone that bad with the record, the accusations of domestic abuse, which were known before donald trump endorsed herschel walker, and with that kind of candidate quality, that guy makes donald trump look like peroclese. what explains trump, who likes to win, what explains that decision on donald trump's part? >> he loves celebrities. you know that. he likes famous people. he had a show, you might remember, "celebrity apprentice." herschel was a star contestant on the show, finished sixth place, didn't do very well in the cooking competition, as i recall. but i think that's it. it's why he went to oz. it's why he went to walker. both of them are willing to flatter donald trump. donald trump likes it when famous people and football stars and tough guys flatter him, and i think it's as simple as that. and so, he's left republicans in

this really horrible, horrible place with these candidates, and honestly, that little clip was, you know, pretty alarming, obviously, those three clips you showed, but we could have done a whole show of even more insane clips, him playing russian roulette and chasing people down with a gun, very dangerous stuff. this guy's a risk, i think, to himself. >> i think we should probably pitch that show to peacock, just a daily hour streaming on herschel walker's most ridiculous things and the things that will doom him in the senate race. we're going to get right back and talk about dr. oz. you can never talk too much about dr. oz. we showed you that viral video of dr. oz shopping for what fetterman calls a vegetable plate. now the fetterman campaign is trolling dr. oz for an answer about the number of houses he owns. we will show you that. great new ad from fetterman after the break. you that. great new ad from fetterman after the break. once upon a time, at the magical everly estate, landscaper larry and his trusty crew... were delayed when the new kid totaled his truck.

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to permanently fund getting people off the streets a prop 26? not a dime to solve homelessness prop 27 has strong protections to prevent minors from betting. prop 26? no protections for minors. prop 27 helps every tribe, including disadvantaged tribes. prop 26? nothing for disadvantaged tribes vote yes on 27. thought i'd do some grocery shopping, i'm at wegner's. $6? must be a shortage of salsa. that's $20 for crudite, and that doesn't include tequila. that's outrageous. >> i was exhausted, campaigning 18 hours a day, i've gotten my kids' names wrong as well. i don't think that's a measure of someone's ability to lead the commonwealth. >> apparently still tired, because he thinks that the united states senator is the leader of the commonwealth of

pennsylvania. that's the governor's job, dr. oz. you probably should also work on remembering your kids' names, even when you're tired. he's been dealing with the fallout from crudite-gate in the context of his opponent, john fetterman, already crushing him over that yesterday and now has moved on to his next line of attack in another race for donald trump's endorsement that's hurting republicans. fetterman now highlighting oz's difficulty in answering a question that will remind some people of some republicans in the past when he was asked about how many houses he owns. >> ladies and gentlemen, the man himself, dr. oz. >> how many houses do you own? >> well, i, legitimately, i own two houses. >> survey said?

rich people think different. >> that's a lot of houses, and i believe there was only one of those that seemed to be in pennsylvania. a lot of them in very exotic locales. i'm sure that will go over really well in latrobe. talk about -- i know you are an admirer of fetterman and his media camp and the way in which he's prosecuting his media case. talk about why he's doing such a good job and what the frame is that he wants to put around dr. oz, and that dr. oz is kind of helping, i will say, in the way he's behaving of late. >> yeah. the brilliant part is two things. one is, none of us are talking about the fact that he had a pretty serious medical incident this summer and has only recently gotten back on the trail. >> a stroke that he's been recovering from and has not been very active, campaigning for months, basically. >> correct. two, we're not talking about, is he too progressive? how progressive is he? is he too left-wing for

pennsylvanians? we don't really know what he thinks on significant issues because his stuff is good. his stuff is really funny, tonally brilliant, and he's the only guy who seems to be having fun out there. and i think that really, you know, is something that you can't really get out of. it's what trump used to do to people. he would troll people so hard, there was nothing they could say in response. >> tim, you know, the thing we talked about yesterday on the show, when we played -- when we got into the crudite-gate and fetterman who said, we call those vegetable plates in pennsylvania, dr. oz. we talked about that. and a couple of the smart -- of your smart colleagues like david plouffe and matthew dowd were on and they said, the thing is, it reinforces an existing narrative about dr. oz, and certainly, that's true. as does the houses thing, right? that he's rich and elitist and out of touch. but the thing that the fetterman campaign is really trying to tag him with is that he's weird. do you think that, like, this is the -- that these things are

kind of contributing to this picture that weird does not play? weird and elitist, particularly, does not play in pennsylvania, and they're getting to a good job of illustrating that? >> yeah, really well. weird and not pennsylvanian. he's carrying a very strong, very clear message, both on paid advertising in pennsylvania and on social media, and oz is -- has no narrative at all, right? like, what is dr. oz's narrative against fetterman? it's not like there aren't potential weaknesses that fetterman has. but right now, this campaign is completely being run from an area of fetterman's strength, his authenticity, as somebody who is pennsylvanian and cares about pennsylvania, and dr. oz is being kind of this weird interloper who doesn't understand the pennsylvanian ways. and fetterman has done a great job of just basically conducting this entire campaign on that turf, and you know, oz is starting to -- he's got a few months left, but starting to run out of time to change the frame

and make it about things that fetterman might be a little weaker in. >> i was talking, michael, to a former obama campaign person who was talking about in 2012, if you looked at all of obama's digital advertising, all the television advertising, you would see over and over again an image, an image of mitt romney getting on a corporate jet. their favorite one was one that captured trump and romney getting on their respective planes, but even if it had nothing to do with it, reinforcing the notion of, mitt romney's rich, out of touch, a corporate raider, all that stuff. that was therapy frame for him in that election and it was hundreds of ads. the fetterman people think that they have a similar image of dr. oz that kind of is what they really want, it's not about crudites or whether guacamole. >> crudite. >> i'm sorry. i'm not nearly -- we debated yesterday whether there was an "s" at the end. >> he did it in the french style. >> i want to put it up. this image of dr. oz, this image

was in the primary, in the gop primary. i want you to pause and just think about this for a second. it's -- it could go fly by you in an ad, but they're really using it a lot. first of all, he's on hands and knees. he's kissing the ground on hollywood boulevard. i'm from los angeles. you don't want to kiss the ground on any public street in america, but really not on hollywood boulevard. there's a lot of bad stuff. and then he's kissing his own name. i guarantee if you live in pennsylvania, you're going to see that image a lot, and it's not a cheap point. it is, like, that is narcissistic and strange, and again, to a lot of ordinary voters in pennsylvania, they're going to look at it, i think, and be like, that guy's not like us. >> so, i wonder if it's -- because the question -- i don't have the answer to is, why is it okay for trump but it's not okay for oz? so, he's a rich guy with a whole ton of houses who's wildly narcissistic and fairly unapologetic about it, so why does trump get away with it and oz doesn't? so, my thought, because you had sent me that photo earlier to

think about, is that he's on the floor. trump would never be on the floor. >> never on all fours on the floor. never see that. donald trump knows enough about image making that you don't do that. long before he ever ran for office, he realized, you don't want to be on the ground like that. poor dr. oz. tim miller, michael, thank you both for spending time with us. we've got arizona, a new battleground state, that's turned into ground zero for donald trump's big lie about the 2020 election being stolen. now, the grand canyon state is the epicenter of the republican war on the truth and on democracy itself. we will explain after this. n democracy itself we will explain teafr this

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enjoy these and more when you join panera's unlimited sip club. they watched a corrupt election happen. and then they certified a corrupt election. and that's the problem. >> you would not have certified our election? >> no, i would not have. >> i think what hawley and cruz did was right. >> we have to first defeat the establishment, weak-kneed rensz. we can feel it in our gut that what occurs this election will determine our country's future for the next century. >> believe it or not, those are the republican nominees for governor, united states senate, and attorney general in the state of arizona. every one of them spouting off lies about the 2020 election and those supposed rinos who did the unthinkable and acknowledged that the election in 2020 of joe biden was, in fact, legitimate. in "the new york times"

magazine, our next guest, robert draper, writes this, "state has become a bellwether for the rest of the nation, not just because of its new status as a swing state. it was and has continued to be the nexus of efforts by former president donald trump and his republican allies to overturn the 2020 election results. at the same time, party figures from trump down to rose sperry, 2020 election denier, they have sought to blacklist every arizona gop official who maintained the election was fairly won and draper ominously adds this. "they've cast the 2020 election as not just history-defining but potentially civilization-ending as lake told a large crowd in downtown phoenix the night before the primary, it's not just about republicans and democrats. it's a battle between freedom and tyranny, between authoritarianism and liberty and between good and evil." obviously, very dramatic. joining us now, the author of that piece, "new york times" magazine's robert draper.

great to see you. you've been on the frontiers of crazy republican, right-wing nuttery. how bad is it in arizona right now? >> i've never seen anything like this, john. i have never, in over 20 years of covering conservative politics, spent time in a state where proactively, candidates and at various grassroots activist events, proactively, people say, we're not a democracy, and we don't want to be a democracy. we're a constitutional republic. there's no other state where so aggressive an attempt has been made as you were referencing earlier, not just to, you know, have a kind of -- a discussion, even a really vigorous and confrontational discussion between the two wings of the republican party, but to basically blacklist, as i used the word, advisedly, because i've heard a couple different people invoke joe mccarthy's name approvingly when i was

there, to blacklist everyone from the sitting governor on down who dared to say the election wasn't stolen. >> i'll read something to you from the "new york times" about the anti-democracy experiment going on with the arizona republican party. here we go. this is from your piece, draper. "arizona's thus become what the state's well-regarded pollster mike noble characterizes asthma magenta. the latest state of red. in the face of this shift, the state's gop has aggressively declined to moderate itself. instead, it's endeavored to cast out some of its best-known political figures. last year, it censured its sitting governor, doug ducey, its former u.s. senator, and cindy mccain, the widow of the united states senator john mccain. arizona has presented an american case study in how backlash to demographic and social change can cause a political party to turn on itself, even at its own electoral peril." the point here is that the party

is not just in a state of -- everyone's gone crazy. it's that this is a state that's just, just become a battleground state for the first time at the presidential level in generations. joe biden won the state by the narrowest margin and what you would normally the do is be mid to the right but they're sprinting beyond the right and off a cliff. talk about the way the demographic changes what you see as driving them in that direction to their own electoral peril. >> sure, it's an aversion to or a phobia about the possibility of arizona becoming like california. there's a website don't californicate arizona. the real estate is cheaper than other places on the west, so that is at the top of the list of existential anxiety amongst

conservatives the value system will shift, a great replacement not only from the border but also from other states, and so you hear kerry lake proactively saying we cannot have california values. we cannot allow their garbage to infiltrate arizona. as pointed out, john, this is a purple or magenta state. it's not just that trump lost in 2020, both the senators are democratic, the state legislature is held by the republicans by a single state senator and a single state rep, so they're right on the bubble of becoming blue, and in the face of that reality, as you say, they've doubled down, aggressively declined to moderate themselves. >> so here's what, you know, all across the country, as you know, robert, democrats did everything they could to get candidates like the candidates that we played earlier. this arizona, the slate of republicans who got the nomination are what democrats wanted. they were like bring us the

crazies. they'll be easier to beat. having taken the temperature of the state as you look towards the general election, do you think that's a wise bet on democrats' part or they courting disaster? is there a way the candidates could win? >> yes, there's a way they can. all of the races you named plus the secretary of state race will be, they're going to be very, very competitive. the democrats didn't do anything to nudge, to put their thumb on the scale in favor of these guys. the voters selected them. so the experiment continues. we will see on november 8th whether this is way too out there a slate of candidates for a state that is becoming somewhat moderate. >> like "apocalypse now" in arizona. robert draper, sounds like scary stuff, one of the best people writing about american politics in our profession. always a treat to read what you write. a quick break for us and we'll

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thank you for joining us on this thursday. we'll see you tomorrow, that will be friday. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. >> hey, john, thank you. welcome to "the beat." we're tracking breaking news. the nation's about to learn even more about that unprecedented search of trump's home, because a judge has ruled that parts of the doj prosecutor's road map for that must now be unsealed and released soon. it's the affidavit the garland doj wanted to keep secret after