hello, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east after weeks of hunting down any minute detail having to do with the fbi's search of donald trump's mar-a-lago club today, but feels embarrassing to that like a quantum surge in new information. new facts, new details which collectively posed some very serious questions, unique in american history. we'll start with all that we learned today from the justice department's response to the ruling. over the weekend, the trump-appointed judge signaled her inclination to appoint a special master, a court-selected third party to review the materials seized by the fbi earlier this month. it was seen as an unusual move at the time given that judge hasn't yet heard arguments from the doj. she set a court date for this thursday and asked the government to produce a more detailed list of what they took. in its response today, though,

the department of justice reveals it has already complete its review of documents seized. in other words, they're now finished with what a special master would be designed to accomplish in the first place. they say that a privileged review team, quote, identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client information and is following the procedure set forth in paragraph affidavit for disputes if any. that filing, and it started a classification review of all of the materials seized at mar-a-lago. in the second, the odni, the office of the director of national intelligence is indeed leading an assessment, basically an evaluation of threats to

national security associated to trump's decision to keep whatever it is that he took and kept. remember, the affidavit released on friday showed the government's concern with how those important documents were stored at mar-a-lago. in addition to the room we've all heard so much about these past few weeks, "the new york times" reporting adds this, quote, during the august 8th search, the fbi found additional documents in the area and also on the floor of a closet in trump's office, people briefed on the matter said. then there is this on "the washington post" boxes of documents came with trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms all around the world including countries considered foreign adversaries of the united states. one thing is clear, as we said. this is a moment without any real parallels in american history on the historic nature of what we're seeing play out. katie benner of "the new york times "writes it has been transformed to one of the most

challenging, complicated and potentially explosive criminal investigations in recent memory with tremendous implications for the justice department, trump and public faith in government and it is where we begin with some of our favorite reporters and friends and the aforementioned katie benner is here and the justice department reporter and also msnbc contributor and harry littman, former u.s. attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general and now the host of the podcast talking feds and also joining us, former u.s. senator and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. and pretty important development in the story and take us through your reporting and then we'll go through some of the other things that the times reported on over the weekend. that we like other publications have been keeping up with the place, and much of that work has

already been done so it will be go interesting to see how she rules. in the meantime, we'll see more developments of how trump treat information and inside the justice department and the piece that i published today they are nowhere near to making a decision. in the department's own filing the investigation is ongoing with the possibility of interviewing more witnesses and taking further investigative steps and also, we know that the career prosecutors doing this investigation have not yet come close to fulfilling their duty to eventual of the information they found and compared historically to other cases under the same criminal statutes. once that is complete, i don't even know if they've begun, but once that's complete they will make a recommendation to merrick garland as to what to do and then he'll decide. >> katie, what do we -- it feels like some of the national security aftershocks or ripple effects are now at least in a teeny, tiny way public facing.

talk about is there any -- what does it look like doj with the case with such grave national security implications this also as you report in your great piece massive political considerations on the criminal side. >> i think that you're seeing conversations happen on at least three fronts and the invest is that the investigation itself what evidence is being found and what does the evidence ask prosecutors to continue to do, what questions have they not yet answered and where did their investigators need to go. a separate set of questions is looking at the information and assessing the true national security risk or harm of having that information live at mar-a-lago. keep in mind, if the justice department were to bring any charges against donald trump and the jury and the public saw that information and did not feel that a compelling list to national security had actually occurred, it could be really difficult to win at trial. so it's not just the classification markings on the documents themselves, it's

really what was the risk because keep in mind when hillary clinton had classified information on her server it was about drone strike programs that had already been widely reported in "the new york times" and in "the washington post." it would have been hard to have a jury find her risking national security to find things on her server that had already been reported and the third conversation, what does it mean for the justice department to prosecute a former president, putting trump aside. what is the historic question and what does it do to the credibility of the department, what does it do to presidential power. should a move by that either be undertaken or declined if they declined to prosecute donald trump for something like obstruction of justice. this will be two times under two administrations for which he's been investigated of that crime and then absolved. >> harry littman, it feels like the question, and i'm sure it's being asked in both directions, what is the consequence of not

prosecuting someone who was so cavalier with state secrets that human intelligence and the kind of intelligence that even a president is only supposed to the look at in a secure location was shoved in boxes and based on this great new post reporting carried around in said boxes from hotel room to hotel room. yeah, there's a lot of sentiment that says no one is above the law. you must treat him like anyone else, and if you and i had done that, we would be prosecuted and that's true and katie identified as the third inquiry. it will be in the end and there will be questions as in the nixon case in what is the best interest of the country. a lot of people have come around to the view and this is mine, that given the brazenness, the continuing injure to the body

politic and the characteristic meg lo maniac that the only thing worse than prosecuting him would be not prosecuting him, and that would be the inquiry and it potentially involves or improperly involves the white house, and i do know that the doj and merrick garland will keep it separate from the national security stuff and second, go through the principles of federal prosecution and then and only then grapple with the unprecedented, very difficult question what's in the best interest of the country here? >> claire, i'm not unsympathetic to the unprecedented nature of it, but having worked in the white house, i am hopeful that the work that the intelligence community is having to do now, they usually have to do when they catch a russian spy. robert hansen required them to do the kind of spill assessments that we have to do right now and

not a former american president from the republican party and it is an extraordinary imposition on the government he once led and leading again, so it fells hope would be part of his considerations, as well. >> well, i think it will be. let's be real here. if donald trump is prosecuted for violations of the law that were the subject of this search warrant, it will be very controversial. if donald trump is not prosecuted under the laws that are applicable to these factual circumstances and it will be very controversial. so there is going to be -- it's not a decision that the country is going to unify around regardless of what it is. so merrick garland has to decide which is riskier to the future of our country and to the rule of law to let him get away with this kind of callous disregard

for the law as a sitting president and as a former president, and i do think it's important to remind ourselves. we don't know all of the facts yet, nicole. we don't know what was actually in these documents. there are some things that have been reported that i've not seen cold, hard, factual evidence as to what's in the classified documents. if they are sensitive government secrets that jeopardize people's lives then i certainly think that weighs heavily toward putting this in front of a jury, but there will be a job for the prosecutors to do here because the jury is going to want to understand how this is different than the hillary clinton case. it is. it's factually different, but that's something that the public will have to be walked through because it's complicated. >> katie, i want to read some more from your piece that addresses some of what you're

talking about. attorney general merrick garland faces the prospect of having to decide whether to file criminal charges against a former president and a potential candidate for the 2024, and he may have to do this twice depending on what evidence that the investigators find into trump's efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, and his involvement with the january 6th attack on the u.s. capitol. i know inside doj, these are separate teams of investigators and prosecutors, but once these cases get kicked out to the highest levels, they're obviously on merrick garland and lisa monaco's desk. can we talk about what we now know because the search warrant went before the judge and what went on at the time was some of the most explosive testimony of the january 6th proceeding inside doj. >> absolutely. inside of the justice department they were watching the hearings with great curiosity in part to see whether or not the committee

and the january 6th committee was going to reveal any of the information that they had had or whether any of their witnesses and clearly the witness brews interviews that the public did not know about particularly in the national archives investigations and even though the affidavit is heavily redacted it does seem to indicate that multiple witnesses were interviewed and that whatever it was they told the justice department was concerning enough that the justice department felt that they were not being given the whole truth by trump's lawyers time and time again and they felt pushed to have to get the search warrant in order to obtain the information, but they knew that doing so was going to be a great step and as you can see from the amount of redactions there was an amount of debate to believe that certain crimes had been committed. >> harry, we're at this really scary and sad and unfortunately, routine part of the story where nara, an agency that not a lot

of people probably dealt with even in government until and unless they were in the white house at the end and a part of turning around the records, most of which you preserve is automated and all of your emails are copied and all of your documents get collected and nara has reported over the weekend that there were some threats to their officials and they're now having to harden their offices. i think in the last ten days that is the third government agency to have to do so. the fbi and the irs are the other two. >> can you imagine? the archives? the archives are now on the hit-list of the maga crazies and this matters a lot, by the way and plays into the point about the special master. that letter from nara. they're the ones who find out after a year, a year that he's kept something, and he gives 15 boxes back and holy lord, that's when everyone finds out it's classified and it's automatic you must report it now to the fbi and doj, but they let him sort of diddle with them for

four more months until they do. they're unbelievably forbearing and what that letter says finally is your idea that there may be executive privilege here is completely meritless and by the way, we checked with the doj and we have it down, et cetera. he is still trying to press that argument, that, i think, is going to be the rubber that hits the road on thursday in front of the judge cannon and it really is meritless and the one thing that could really create mischief and gum up the works here would be if she somehow, not withstanding the rulings of every level of federal courts up to the supreme court somehow sees some executive privilege play here. that would be his dearest hope. otherwise, everything else that we're talking about attorney-client et cetera is really small beer. >> claire, over the weekend, we also learned more about his patterns and practices and it came to classified material and the kinds of things that the

archives sought over and over again to get their hands on. let me read you some of the post story. in the three weeks since the fbi searched former president donald trump's florida home to recover classified documents the national archives and records administration has become the target of rash threats and vitriol according to people familiar with the situation. civil servants tasked by law with preserving the government's records were ratteled. the agency head sent an email to the staff with academic and the message from acting archivist was simple, stay above the fray. stick to the mission. nara has received messages from the public accusing us of corruption and conspiring against the former president or congratulating nara for bringing him down in an agency-wide message obtained by the times. neither is accurate or welcome. talk about ending up in the maga meat grinder, claire.

>> you know, i think about the people this work at the archives and the kind of people that are drawn to that kind of work, nicole are not the lindsay grahams of the world. they're not people who are going to elbow people out of the way to get an interview on television or try to be some kind of center of attention. the people that go to work there are the best of what this country is. smart people who want to help preserve the documents of our government because they respect our government. they don't make a lot of money. you know, they're not people that are ever going to be on the yacht in an italian riviera. these are good people and they're not political, and it is just infuriating to me how many institutions this wrecking ball of a liar is willing to go after in this country with no

repercussions from the leaders of his own party, whether it's the fbi or whether it's the secret service or whether it's the national archives. these are good people and the irs, it is ridiculous what this man is doing to people who deserve so much better. >> i mean, katy, and i wonder if you can sort of speak to the obstructive acts and the pattern of tampering with witnesses and the pattern of bullying investigators and the pattern of attacking robert mueller and andrew weissmann and everyone on that probe and the pattern of harassing anyone who has the audacity of his conduct. >> we saw him pushing back using twitter and his interviews and his bully pulpit in order to criticize anyone who dared to investigate him and anybody who questioned him.

not just investigators like robert mueller and members of his own cabinet who displeased him. since leaving the office and leaving twitter and on to his own platform truth social, they've become more ardent and more forceful. he's talked about the threat of disruption and violence if things do not go his way if investigators continue to investigate him. it is a very interesting moment that we're in. it almost sometimes feels as though he's using his rhetoric to soften the ground for the idea that if more investigative steps happen he cannot control what his supporters do. it's really reminiscent to me of some of the rhetoric he used before january 6th and perhaps a little bit stronger and a little more pointed. so even though we are talking about the situation in this moment as law enforcement and the attorney general and their decisions determining the course of history, we can't forget that

donald trump is using his megaphone to in his way try to control and curb to make his own statements about how he thinks he should be treated and then also to unleash whatever consequences that he feels are correct. >> yeah. and they have nothing to do with the substance of his conduct, harry. >> we know -- we know very little about what the evidence is that pointed to obstruction that was in the affidavit. there's a lot of redacted sections in and around it, but what is your sense of what is already under criminal investigation on the obstruction front? >> yeah. first, just to katie's point, he said what his substance is. he tweeted today that the right thing to do now is declare him the rightful winner or at a minimum, do a re-do of the election. you know, it is all redacted, but i think we have a pretty good sense of the conduct and the issue will be can they tag

trump himself with it, but given the people around and what they themselves say are several witnesses discussing this and the odds are pretty good and on obstruction and that is the most important and the one that struck anybody when it was included in the unsealed warrant means basically here knowing that they had these documents they weren't supposed to have and there is zero, zero doubt about that by the time a subpoena is served in june. they, nevertheless, concealed and there's no doubt about that that they did, a lawyer sent a letter saying we've given you everything and the department turned out to be a lie which is why they had to rush in and get everything. that's the conduct. there's some plausible, i guess, you have to develop the evidence to know now that trump was aware

of it, but everything we know about him his m.o. and things that reporters like katie has uncovered where it's mine and the like suggests that that won't be difficult for a boj to do and they're already hot on the trail of doing it. >> yeah. it's funny. my son's toddler years are fresh in my mind and it's mine is still in the contraband. it's simply an attempt at keeping the contraband. he puts out messages -- >> i'm sorry. right. >> everyone sticks around. when we come back, moving the goalpost again. it, too, is a familiar move. the new line from some officials on the right since hillary clinton was not prosecuted why should donald trump be held to a different standard? the editorial board of "the wall street journal" asking essentially is this all there is? we'll go through the problems with that bad-faith argument.

plus, threats of violence in the streets. should the justice department charge the ex-president with a crime? it's fear mongering at its most shameful and dangerous from the u.s. senator acting like january 6th never happened on his party's watch. at this time all of the warnings are being said out loud and on mtv. classifieded and top-secret documents and they are looking at what sort of damage and potential risk there is rid now with dangerous security. the counterintelligence is now investigate the zes-impeached president. that and more. stay with us. an answer. uncovered through exploration, teamwork, and innovation. an answer that leads to even more answers.

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we're back with katie, claire and harry. katie, there's some reporting about donald trump's legal woes and they're different from when he was president and he had bill barr and he had rudy as sort of theatrical and political as they were, they did kick up a lot of dust. your reporting that he was struggling to find both lawyers and arguments and talk about what -- what this state of a legal team is? >> so i think one of the main things that he had going for him when he was president is the justice department internal legal opinion saying that you could not prosecute a sitting president. so in addition to having an attorney general who was sympathetic to him, who did not believe that the russia investigation was valid in addition to having someone like rudy giuliani on his side he really did have that protection which he no longer has. he also doesn't have the protection of being able to decide whether or not something

was privileged and he does not have the power to decide that the prifl edge resides in the sitting president. he no longer can declassify documents. his allies say he did declassify everything found at mar-a-lago before he left and uncertain whether that will be proven out and he certainly cannot declassify things now. those were powers that he had as president and they are all gone and we're starting to see that that's difficult for his legal team. they're coming up with arguments that are being questioned by judges and there are legal briefs and judges that have asked at least one legal brief be re-written and the lawyers go back to the drawing board and they're working from a very different position and it's a weaker position than when he was president as if that's going to be an ongoing struggle for this team as they try to fulfill their clients' wishes. >> so, claire, he doesn't have bill barr. he doesn't have this olc memo.

he doesn't have an argument or a legal team, and he has a completely compliant republican party say for adam kinzinger and liz cheney and a very, very sympathetic right-wing propaganda media that i was surprised to see in "the wall street journal." let me read what he wrote over the weekend, he brings this on himself. his enemies break political norms themselves and they make trump into a political martyr. if you'll indict a former president you better have something better than mishandling documents. this is what they wrote about hillary clinton, emails showing mrs. clinton and her staffer were warned that her private email was vulnerable to hackers and she willfully and intentionally ignored the warnings and many employees were

prosecuted for mishandling information. they were prosecute for mishandling state secrets. mrs. clinton's decision to use a private server to give her aides access to it and to use it in hostile territory was grossly negligent. we can't wait for the next minion prosecutor for mishandling state secrets. i mean, if i found it in five minutes surely the person who hit print on "the wall street journal" editorial could have seen the hypocrisy was showing. >> well, listen, we don't any there could be a consistency here. i mean, the chants of "lock her up" are going to ring forever, and by the way, if you really look at this objectively, if this is all about the fbi getting in and it be corrupt and politicized, the way i remember

it, the fbi handed the presidency to donald trump in the first place. the press looking into the emails of anthony weiner two weeks before the election which brought up all of the email stuff again, i don't think there are very many people that don't think that had a decisive impact on donald trump becoming president. the fbi gave it to him, so i'm not buying that now all of a sudden the fbi is grossly political agency that has done nothing the entire time in its existence and we go after donald trump. he doesn't have a defense that is consistent or cogent. his lawyers, the ones he has and the ones that are willing to be associated with him know that. every single defense he puts out, he then the next day stomps all over it, and yes, is he an incompetent guy? yeah. he is. is he -- does he take nothing

seriously in terms of the norms of protecting documents? no, he doesn't, but in this instance, if the facts bear out that this was really dangerous stuff, he was playing around with, that's going to finally come home to roost and it should. >> harry, i think his buffer buffoonishness is his conduct and the great reporting in "the washington post" has given us a pretty flushed out time line allows for a mistake made initially, he left because he planned an insurrection and he was too busy to pull out the classified stuff. okay, sip loany and philbin telling him he needs to. he gets this stuff down there. they tried again to get it. they tried over and over again. you erased any inadvertent collection of classified

material and all you have is intentional and deliberate keeping of classified information. what does that tell us? >> yeah. first, as to claire's point, the intent whereas hillary's was negligent, but the bigger, bigger point, yes, classified, but we're talking top secret. everyone concedes that the government is very quick on the pen to go classified, but the level we're talking about here that people have said without hyperbole can get people killed is a completely different situation. your time line is so important and when the search warrant first came out i don't think we fully appreciated it. we have a year. they start pleading with cipollone before he leaves just as you say. he takes it anyway. it's four months until they realize that he has eight more

months of his bobbing and weaving until they realize it's not just these keepsakes. it is incendiary material. so we're talking already a year and eight more months passed and i want to review this, review that, finally they bring the hammer down and say we've got to refer this now to the fbi and doj and now we have this four-month period where people know what he has. they get harvest some more of it and even then they find out he's lying and he still has more stuff and we've learned it's incredibly prolonged and any other citizen, please don't prosecute me, here's everything back and incredibly prolonged and incredibly intentional. so those are the real calling cards of a very, very serious crime particularly given how grave and damaging to the national security what he

absconded and he is a citizen than anyone listening today. >> thank you so much for starting us off. katie, thank you for sharing your reporting for us. claire sticks around. a dark and dangerous prediction from a u.s. senator should donald trump be held responsible for any crime? the former president has managed to evade justice over and over again. how this time it is testing america like never before. we'll discuss that next. before. we'll discuss that next. ♪ we believe there's an innovator in all of us. ♪ that's why we build technology that makes it possible for every business... and every person... to come to the table and do more incredible things. time. it's life's most precious commodity,

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i mine, the hypocrisy of folks in my party that spent years chanting "lock her up" because her deleted emails are, quote, wiping a server are now out defending a man who very clearly did not take the national security of the united states to heart and it will be up to doj whether or not that reaches the level of indictment, but this is disgusting in my mind. >> congressman adam kinzinger no longer hiding his disgust with members of his own party for their flagrant hypocrisy for defending donald trump for imperilling national security by hoarding classified documents. one of trump's big defenders, someone he can always count on senator lindsay graham, he himself under investigation, says if doj does its job and follows the facts and those facts prove that trump committed

a crime well, it will lead to violence. watch. >> most republicans, including me believes when it comes to trump, there is no law. it's all about getting him. if they try to prosecute president trump for mishandling classified information after hillary clinton there will literally be riots in the street. >> i think the guy on the left literally led the benghazi hearings. joining us is msnbc political analyst david jolly is here and the co-founder of the lincoln project, claire is still with us. you know, rick, i am so happy to have adam kinzinger in the fight slugging away at hyprocrisy and flagrant debasing of u.s. national security norms, but this warning of violence is not

a prediction. they're not interested in news. it's a threat. >> that's exactly right and it's easy to laugh off trey gowdy and lindsay graham on the screen at the same time, but that is a threat to america. they're not just joking about it. they're promising something. lindsay graham is an accessory to this idea that if the law is applied to donald trump, there will be violence. this is not how a democracy works. this is not how a republican works and this is not how a dictatorship works. this is saddam hussein and not ronald reagan. they're saying the quiet part out loud and they're making the threat overt and they're making it direct and they're promising if we go forward as a country to enforce the law, we'll have to do it through blood. >> david jolly, it's just lindsay graham sounding like

a -- sounding unserious, unprofessional and unpatriotic and it's not just that and it's listening to stephen ayers as the public hearings that he heard trump's closest allies in congress who agreed with trump who say give him time, maybe there's something there and refused to call a joe biden and the president who won in a free and fair election that was the most secure in our country's history which is what life long republican chris grubs found. their words have very real consequences and they include violence and they just happened. what are they doing? nicole, there is a willingness inside the trump regime to use violence to achieve what they cannot achieve politically. that is the single narrative of january 6th and it supports in donald trump a man that would burn down the republican for his own vanities and for his own arrogance and someone like lindsay graham, you have someone bringing the kerosene and the matches to the party simply so

he can be part of the cool kids' club and he is a united states senator and the opportunity in that moment during a full discussion with trey gowdy is not to say, oh, it's inevitable there will be riots and it's to say that there should not be riots and it's to say that even if you have your differences with the decision that ultimately is made by the justice department of justice and the way to exercise that is through your franchise and to exercise that at the ballot box and to call for order and that's not lindsay graham and that's not donald trump and that's not today's republican party. it's an indictment and it's also a warning. it's a warning that this is a regime that must be stopped. >> and one of the most effective messengers who were, not for long and still in congress is adam kinzinger who basically made that point, claire. let me show this to you. >> the bottom line is the biggest threat right now to our country is democracy, and if you have republicans that are running against even left-wing democrats that believe in

democracy and believe in voting that person should be elected over somebody who basically would overthrow the will of the people and ultimately destroy this country. this country cannot survive outside of democracy. it will turn into a power struggle between groups of different races and different ethnicities and different religions because the thing that holds us together is this belief that we can self-govern. take that away, this country's a mess and republicans that are for that have no place in office. i don't care what their policy position on taxes are. >> so, claire, this didn't get as much attention as i think it deserved. he says if you have republicans running against left-wing democrats that believe in democracy and believe in votes, that's every democrat, that person should be elected over someone who would basically overthrow the will of the people and destroy the country. that's many republicans. this sort of message about democracy has hit a nerve with voters as has overturning roe versus wade. what are you feeling sort of among voters out in the country?

>> well, i think i'm, right now in the part of my state where trump is very, very popular, and it is a real headscratcher for me and the thing that is the saddest about this is i don't know exactly what adam kinzinger and liz cheney, what in their background separated them from the crowd and there's a few others and mitt romney had his moments and there were others that did the right thing in terms of certifying the election and not many and the power they have is immense and behind the scenes right now, mitch mcconnell is trying to use that power and he's not happy with what lindsay graham is doing. he's not happy with the election deniers and carrying the mantle, and he wants trump to be in the rear-view mirror and trump will not let that happen and others

need to do publicly what kinzinger has done. he called former president trump a kook when he was running. lindsay graham has kind of turned into a kook now. he's a kook because he's a lawyer. he's a former military prosecutor. he knows the difference between hillary clinton's case and this case. he knows they're factually different. he knows every prosecutor has to look at the facts and apply the law. so he knows better. so that means he is -- he is somebody who is embracing violence over the rule of law, that makes him a kook. >> he is a sad little man. everyone sticks around. on the other side of the break i'll show you a brand-new ad from the lincoln project with a warning to republican voters who might still be on the fence in november. listen to kinzinger?

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big government, federal spies looking into your bedroom, your bank account, re-writing the constitution, destroying american traditions. promoting violence against us, putting a bounty on our daughters. breaking our schools, making health care more expensive.

that's not conservative. that's not america. you may not think that's what you represent, but if you vote with them -- ♪♪ ♪♪ >> it is. brutal new ad from the lincoln project heading into the high season of the midterm elections, laying out the consequences for all americans of voting for the maga candidates. versions of that ad will run in targeted races, including in pennsylvania, arizona, and wisconsin where trump-backed candidates are so, so extreme, so outside of where the mainstream of american voters are in their states, they have imperilled their party's chances of success in november. we're back with the panel. rick, i know there's some great reporting about mitch mcconnell's, boo-hoo, the candidates stink, don't expect us to regain any majorities, but

mitch mcconnell stinks. i mean, he's the one that refused to vote to get rid of donald trump when he was impeached for a second time. they had him dead to rights, and they let him do this. >> and mitch mcconnell's most important strategist, josh holmes, said, we could have a permanent governing majority if we can just fool these rubes into voting for mitch's candidates. we're just humoring trump by not saying that he lost the election in 2020. all these people have made this terrible bet. they've made a terrible bet that they can control the alligator when the alligator going to eat all of them, and the reason we did this ad was to show voters that there is a choice this year. and donald trump is making it into a choice. do you choose violence, chaos, cruelty, conspiracy, or do you choose a country that can work? do you choose a small "d" democratic system? and we are seeing mitch mcconnell as one of the chief enablers of donald trump, and he's paying a terrible price. they've incinerated $150 million

of corporate donor money trying to elect guys like blake masters and dr. oz and jd vance. it's -- it is what i think is probably the greatest expenditure of money for the greatest failure of a political strategy in history. >> david jolly, there's some great reporting on just this topic. "biden alone cannot change the midterm from a referendum on his presidency to a choice election but he has an unexpected partner in the effort, trump and the republicans themselves. trump remains in the forefront of this election year, continuing his baseless claims about a stolen election, caught up in twin justice department investigations over his retention of classified documents and the january 6th attack on the capitol. and demonstrating that the republican party is now very much the trump party through the power of his endorsements to prop up questionable candidates." i think this needs to happen, and jd "women should stay in violent marriages" vance needs

to lose. doug mastriano, who posed in a confederate uniform, needs to lose. i mean, we have to see republicans reject the extremist threads in their own party. it can't be defeated just from the other side. >> no, nicole, you're right. this is possibly a worst case scenario for republicans. they thought they were cruising to a historic midterm election. biden's numbers were down and they wanted this election to be about joe biden, but now we're in a post-dobbs america and an america where donald trump has now inserted himself into the political dialogue. two terrible dynamics for republicans, and then they're burdened by a number of really bad candidates. democrats might just be able to pull off defying history in november by saving the house and saving the senate, but i would tell you it's going to take something very special, and we saw it in joe biden last thursday in rockville, maryland. just as the lincoln project is laying down the fear, if you

will, of what's on the line, joe biden and democrats need to invite independents and those mainstream republicans into the coalition. joe biden, on thursday, said, now is the time for democrats, independents and mainstream republicans to come together. do not take that coalition for granted. it was there in '18 and '20 to stop trumpism, but it wasn't necessarily there to really buoy democrats. you need that this cycle, so invite that coalition in. joe biden made a pivot last thursday that was a remarkable one, and one that could carry them through november very successfully. >> it was done 20 years ago for the republicans, george bush's party held and gained seats in the midterms because our security and freedoms were the question before voters. i don't know that our security, homeland and foreign -- national security has been a question before voters in a midterm in such a stark way since then, claire. we've also got our personal freedoms. you've got women -- roe has been

overturned, abortion is illegal in many states, ivf is in question in many states. i mean, the you know what has hit the fan, and people do not like what republicans have ushered in. >> you know, i always thought, as everyone -- all the pundits and i guess i am one now -- were saying over and over again, oh, it's the midterms, the democrats are going to get squashed. because that's what always happens. well, you know what? things are different. things are much different. there wasn't a january 6th before the last set of midterms and the set of midterms before that. there wasn't a president saying, just call me the winner. almost, you know, year and a half after the election. just forget the election. forget it ever happened. just call me the winner. this is all very, very different stuff. and it is upsetting to, i think, a lot of independent voters and mainstream republican voters. i talked a lot of those folks,

and i think david's right. it is really important that we specifically go out of our way to pull those people into this election, and dobbs and the -- and what the republicans are doing in terms of the extreme laws around abortion rights are certainly helping do that. >> we will stay on it. david jolly, rick wilson, claire mccaskill, thank you so much for spending time with us and starting us off on this monday. a quick break for us. then, we will have the opportunity to speak with a veteran justice department counterterrorism official on the vulnerability at this moment of our nation's security, potentially put at risk by an ex-president. we'll be right back. t at risk b ex-president wel 'lbe right back. ♪ ♪ we believe there's an innovator in all of us. ♪

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♪♪ so, there are -- there are things called scifs, sensitive compartmented information locations that are actually approved for holding classified information. i had one in my attic when i was the deputy director. and you're allowed to hold classified there. but these are places that are approved by security officers, right? >> and if they're not, then they don't follow procedures, and they may not follow federal law? >> correct. and you -- and you may be at risk in those cases of mishandling classified information. >> hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in the east. the reason that mishandling classified information is a potential crime isn't because law enforcement officials are mean. it's because, in the wrong hands, the information has devastating consequences. the extensive, dangerous, and

extremely valuable work performed by our nation's intelligence officials and their agencies and our allies could be exposed. it could be damaged, and the u.s. could be put in a very vulnerable position. the twice-impeached ex-president is a threat to u.s. national security, a familiar story by now for all of us. the disgraced former president endangered the country's most secret intelligence and methods, though, when he hoarded documents at his south florida golf club in locations that were far from the secure scifs described there by the former deputy director of the cia, mike morell. it's something we know the director of national intelligence is assessing. director avril haines responded to a request and announced her office will leave an intelligence community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would

result from the disclosure of the relevant documents. "the office of the director of national intelligence, odni, will closely coordinate with doj to make sure this doesn't unduly interfere with doj's ongoing criminal investigation." politico is reporting this. "the correspondence represents the biden administration's first known engagement with congress on the issue of the ongoing investigation ensnaring the former president. it is also the first known acknowledgement by the intelligence community of the potential harm caused by the missing documents, which prosecutors said friday included human source intelligence and information gathered from intercept -- from foreign intercepts." politico adds, about odni's announcement, "the intelligence community's review is likely to encompass whether any unauthorized individuals had access to the highly sensitive documents. the justice department previously raised alarms about the lax security of the records

within trump's estate. that question could also bear on the criminal probe as justice department counterintelligence investigators determined whether the highly classified records were compromised in any way." we are also learning just now that president joe biden will deliver a primetime address on thursday in philadelphia. he will lay out how america's standing in the world and our democracy are at stake and how the battle for the soul of the nation, his campaign message in 2020, is very much ongoing. we'll get to that story in a moment, but we begin with the ex-president of the united states of america as a potential national security threat to the country he once led with two counterintelligence heavyweights. first, a former top official in doj's national security division, mary mccourt is here. she served as doj's top counterintelligence official. she supervised the counterintelligence unit that is now leading the mar-a-lago investigation. notably, she supervised jay

brat, the doj official running the investigation into donald trump's mishandling of last records. we are also joined by a familiar face, former fbi special agent, pete strzok, a 22-year veteran of the bureau. pete served as deputy assistant director of the fbi's counterintelligence division. they are both uniquely qualified to help us make sense of the fast-moving developments that are now public-facing on this story. thank you both so much for being with us. mary, anyone that works in government knows how sacred classified materials are. i worked in a white house in the years after 9/11, so there was a lot of it. there was a need-to-know basis of who even had clearances. they were constantly updated, and the protocols were pounded into everyone's head. suffice to say that trump white house didn't operate that way, but there's nothing different about the danger to having classified materials out in the ether, is there? >> no, i mean, you know, any

time you have information that's classified, it's because it poses a danger to national security if it falls into the hands of someone who's not authorized to receive it. so, that could be anything from just some danger to exceptionally grave danger and beyond. it can also mean potential danger to confidential human sources. it can be dangerous to our allies. it can reveal sensitive intelligence collection methods. it can reveal things that are critical to, like, our crown jewels, our technology in america, our critical infrastructure, communications systems, our mass transportation systems, things that we need to protect in order to keep our country running and to protect, you know, all americans and all people living in the u.s. as well as living abroad. so, it's much broader than simply, you know, having some documents that you misplaced or didn't have in the right place. and with respect to mar-a-lago,

i think what's so different than some of the other cases we've seen in the past is that this is a place that's actually open to visitors quite often, foreign visitors, and we know from the past that there have been people already apprehended there who didn't belong there, who were able to get in and get in, potentially, for nefarious purposes, not to mention those who might be invited in. so, that means the possibility of this information getting into the wrong hands is a serious and significant danger, and that's why we have our intelligence community doing a full-blown assessment. >> mary, you led the office that's now running this investigation, and is you're familiar with some of the leaders of this probe, and i wonder if you can speak to what their considerations would have been going into both assembling the affidavit, going before the judge, and going before doj leadership to obtain permission to retrieve the classified material. >> well, i should start by saying, in the national security

division, every single attorney there, besides the assistant attorney general himself, matt olsen, is a career government attorney. in most cases, and in jay brat's case, a career prosecutor who served through republican and democrat administrations. jay and i served together both at the u.s. attorney's office in the district of columbia and the national security division at doj as career officials and career prosecutors. and so, these are people who have investigated cases for years and they're looking at, you know, in a case like this, as sensitive as this, involving the former president, i mean, this is why we see the back and forth go on as long as it did, trying to obtain these documents in a way that didn't cause the out, you know, the flurry, the kerfuffle, whatever you want to call that's happening right now, the speculation, the politicization, all that. they tried to avoid that, do this through other means, and as merrick garland said, the attorney general, when he spoke on this recently, you know, he

ultimately made the decision to go forward with the search warrant after alternative means did not work. and we know -- we've seen those recounted in various different filings of the government and even, frankly, from the filings by trump's own attorneys, the efforts that were put in to trying to obtain this sensitive information some other way. so, you know, that's a different -- you know, the decision to do a search warrant was also far different than any decision will be, and that is yet to come, about whether there's going to be any indictment or seeking an indictment for -- from a grand jury. that will involve a whole other assessment of many, many different considerations. >> can you walk us through that? will it be -- will it be dependent on what the material was and what we learn he was doing with it? or is it the defiance to return -- can you take us through what that process will look like? >> starting with first

principles under the department of justice guidance, the justice manual, no case is ever brought, no indictment is ever sought without knowing there's a reasonable probability that the government can prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. so, that's a high bar to make sure that prosecutions are brought only when they're seriously warranted and the evidence is significant. obviously, that would govern here. but there's some other complicating factors when you're talking about a national security defense involving analysis security information, which is not identical to classified information. the statute at issue involves national defense information, but information that is classified will generally always qualify as national defense information, and national defense information would not necessarily have to be classified, but almost always would be. but the problem is that once you go into court with a case involving national defense information, you have to reveal that national defense information to not only defense

counsel but to jurors, and so that presents its own national security risk. so, there's a strange sort of inverse relationship sometimes between the ability to prosecute and the sensitivity of the national security information. because if it is so sensitive that our intelligence equity holders, that means all of our intelligence agencies responsible for collecting this information -- if it is so sensitive that they don't think it could be revealed to a jury, even under classified information procedures act and things like that, then it sometimes is something you can't prosecute. now, here, we don't know what the documents are, and it's not just the 184 from the first 15 boxes. there's all these new boxes. so, they'll be considering how sensitive is it, is there things that can be declassified to present to a jury, and what is the culpability in terms of intent here? is it more than just mishandling and knowing mishandling?

and i think there's a good case that it's knowing because of the back and forth, right? if it was just accidental, then all you would have had to do is ask for it once and presumably, it would have been returned, but that's not what happened. also, there's the obstruction hovering here in the background. one of the crimes in that search warrant is an obstruction offense, and so i think one of the other considerations will be the level of obstruction, and then the government will have to consider what are the consequences of charging a former president? what are the long-term consequences? how will that play out? it's a tough decision, and in many cases, i think, damned if you do, damned if you don't. >> does the question get sort of tested the other way as well, though? i mean, look at the high-profile efforts to hold david petraus accountable. and there is a history of the justice department not fearing the standing of the people who mishandled secrets.

how does that conversation really go? >> well, you know, i'm not going to speculate too much. i just think that there's no way the department -- and i was there when some of these other decisions were made, and they were a lot of discussions about how these sensitive investigations involving high-level -- former high-lovely people should be handled and as you might imagine, there are sometimes differences of views. one of the things that's very concerning here, and this shouldn't play a factor, but you know, this is 2022, the world we live in, the department has got to consider whether there is -- whether the president would call for violence if he were indicted. he's already done some veiled types of threats of violence when he says things like, people are very angry. you know, what can i do to bring down the heat? he sends that message to the attorney general, you know, right before the attorney general goes -- makes a public statement. we have lindsey graham last

night talking about riots. like, this is irresponsible. in fact, i hate to even talk about it with you, nicole, because, you know, it might be true that there would be people angry. it might be true there will be some rioting, but that's very different when you have -- than when you have the former president essentially doing that wink, wink, nod, nod, people are angry, what can i do? i mean, this is what he did before january 6th. and look what happened. people mobilized. people engage in violence. >> do you think that we have adapted, sort of from a post-9/11 national security posture, where we did everything through democratic and republican administrations to make sure that we hardened our defenses on the intelligence front and the law enforcement front, and military front, do you think that an appropriate review by whatever agencies have that responsibility has taken place? a post-january 6th and perhaps

pre-president being held accountable for potentially criminal conduct? >> i mean, i hope so. i think, you know, we're in a time where we've seen things happen that we've just never really seen, at least not in modern history, not in my lifetime before, and i think you started it off as you sort of introduced this segment with, is the former president a national security risk? i've never really had to really think much about that in the past. because most former presidents, you know, for whatever politics they may disagree with opposing parties and sometimes things get ugly, politically, i think in most cases, they have the country's national security -- they take it to heart, and they feel strongly about it, and they want to protect it and they want to protect democracy too, which is part of national security. these things go hand in hand. and so, you know, particularly having seen what happened on january 6th, i do think it requires all of our, you know, national security community to

prepare for what that might mean. >> i want to bring you in on this, pete strzok. i mean, september 11th was a lot of things, but among them, the intelligence community and the self-assessment described it as a failure of imagination. as the author of the book called "compromised," you know, a lot of people have looked at donald trump, yours is the only book entitled "compromised." do you think we're little to use our imagination and stretch to where he's willing to go in terms of threatening national security? >> i don't know that we're not using our imagination. as mary indicated, we're in a place we've never been before, when you're contemplating wlrnt to bridge charges against the president of the united states, that's nothing that the fbi or department of justice has done. you can get into, you know, when we were looking at trump in 2016

and beyond, when we were looking at the national security threat that he and those around him might pose to the united states, these were really hard conversations. it was really difficult because you have what you ordinarily would do with anybody else, and then you have to sort of say, okay, does that change in the context of this person being the president of the united states? or, in this case, the former president of the united states. and so, i don't doubt -- first, there are a lot of things we don't know. all the information that's redacted in the search warrant. a lot of things known to the government didn't even appear in that affidavit, so there's a whole body of they recall that we don't have access to to make these sort of judgments and decisions, but at the end of the day, i think there's a temptation to overthink things, to say, should we, shouldn't we, and that's why when you look at it, strip away all the political sort of wins one way or the other and say, okay, what does the law say? what is precedent in terms of how the law has been applied in other circumstances? does that change one way or the other because this person is the president of the united states, and as best you can, say, what

is our job? what does the constitution tell us we are here to do? try make a decision based on that. so, i think doj is ready to do that. i think attorney general garland is absolutely the right person for that job. but i have no illusion that that's not going to be an extraordinarily difficult decision if and when the time comes, simply because of all the things that may play out from making the right decision. >> mary mentioned, pete, the security concerns, i guess, putting it lightly, at mar-a-lago. we pulled up some of the headlines that we already know about, people who already penetrated or sought to penetrate the not-so-secure perimeter. just last week, a fake heiress, who is also under investigation, i believe, by canadian authorities, was on the premises, posed for photos with trump and lindsey graham. in 2017, a paying member took pictures of trump being briefed on north korea and put them on his facebook page because he can.

in 2019, a chinese woman who breached mar-a-lago security was found guilty of lying to federal officials and illegally entering a restricted area. i know all spies aren't as smart as some movies make them out to be, pete strzok, but if you were a halfway decent intelligence officer for another country, how hard would it be to get into where we understand these classified materials to have been held? >> well, you know, nicole, looking at what we know, it reminds of the saying that you always catch the dumb ones. it's the people who are kind of goofy, pretending to be a rothchild and have an odd background, that are easy to find, that you catch pretty easily. good intelligence services do things well. i mean, yes, they can goof around and be ham-fisted but they're also capable of doing extraordinarily well-planned, deeply covered activity. that's true for the russians. it's true for the chinese. it's true for most major foreign intelligence services. so, one of the things the fbi has to be looking at right now,

and i'm sure they're looking at right now, is separate and distinct from trying to figure out what did or didn't happen from a criminal perspective, what elements of a crime may or may not be met for various statutes, the fbi in conjunction with the u.s. intelligence community is absolutely trying to figure out two things. one, who had access to these documents? not from a, can we bring charges against them, but, you know, let's fingerprint them, look at the cctv, do witness interviews, and if there were odd indications of somebody who was there, okay, well, this grounds crewman came into the room twice. well, who is he? what's his background? what sort of vetting was done? and then finally, all the sort of questions about, from that, you know, where is there anything that the intelligence community has seen about those sensitive sources and methods in the documents that is odd? you know, did a source dry up? did a source suddenly disappear? did a communications feed go dead? all that stuff to worry about in the context of mar-a-lago. >> mary, i want to come back to

you on this part of what we know a little bit about, but probably the least, and that's the fallout. so, 184 classified documents, 25 of them were top secret, 67 confidential, 92 secret. it included human intelligence, fisa material, originator control, which is another sort of close hold, i think, indicator, stuff for -- to not be seen by foreign nationals and signal intelligence. at least my time in government, all of those represent the most secret -- not just information but sources for gathering information. how involved -- i mean, what do you think the manpower and the international sort of span of the effort to, i think it's called a spill analysis, to understand what may have gotten out there, how long does that take, and how long until we can be confident that all those

sources and partners and methods are not tainted or damaged by donald trump? >> well, i can't put a timeline on it, and pete would be better at me, even, than estimating. i can say, though, that what you have just cited was, again, from those first 15 boxes, not even what we're talking about in this new tranche, right? so, we could have double that at this point. we could have triple that. i just don't know. we haven't seen, you know, a detailed inventory in order to judge that. but i think that's why the director of national intelligence, avril haines, wrote they're undertaking an assessment, first assessing the classification of the documents but separately, doing an assessment of the damage, and that means, like you say, and like pete says, you're looking at all of the sources who potentially could be compromised, which means you've got to pull that out of whatever documents they're in. you're looking at the signals intelligence that could be compromised.

you're looking, again, and that's why i brought this up earlier, there's things i think people don't even think about. like, we have highly confidential, highly classified documents relating to foreign transactions involving american technology. we have highly sensitive classified documents relating to, you know, our critical infrastructure. these kind of things that make us vulnerable could be among that cache, right? so, that's got to all be determined, what's in there, determined, as pete said, who might have had access. that's why they're looking at surveillance video within mar-a-lago. and frankly, talking to our allies and talking to those, you know, who might also be able to help in this assessment. so, i think it's going to take, you know, quite a bit of time, but i also think they're going to pour resources into it. >> pete, she invoked you. any thoughts on that question? >> mary's absolutely right. this is an ongoing process. it's not something that's ever going to be done forever. it is is sort of thing -- if a foreign nation got ahold of some

of this intelligence, they might not move to wrap up a human source. they might not move to wrap up some technical collection platform. they might seek to watch that, to see who are the u.s. officers interacting with that, and certainly one of the things that worries me, that puts the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, is the prospect that there's foreign intelligence there. there's no one in the intelligence community who wants to go to a foreign partner and say, can we sit down? by the way, in this tranche of materials we pulled out of the ex-president's home, there was a bunch of your material there. that's absolutely the kind of thing that kills and provides a negative impact to an intelligence-sharing relationship and we get an extraordinary amount of intelligence from foreign partners. yes, the damage is done, but it's damage that casts a long shadow into the future. that trust isn't rebuilt overnight. it isn't the kind of thing where they say, well, trump is gone, joe biden understands the process, we're fine. it doesn't work that way. there is always going to be this

increased shadow of doubt about, should i share this or not? >> yeah, i don't think they drink coffee. i remember general hayden in january of 2017, before trump was inaugurated, when everybody went up to trump's office, wherever, trump tower, warning about just that and to see it come to pass or see us having to make sure it hasn't, here we are, five years later, it's just haunting. it is a privilege. i could have asked you both questions for the whole hour. mary mccord, pete strzok, thank you so much for starting us off today. >> thank you. when we come back, how the political landscape is shifting ahead of november's midterms, now just ten weeks away, and why the democrats, at least in part, have the twice-impeached ex-president to thank for some of it. plus the republican nominee for governor was already under intense scrutiny for ties to white national social media platforms. now, photos of him as a

confederate soldier have emerged. of course they have. his democratic opponent, josh shapiro, will be our guest. and ongoing shelling in ukraine. what the international community is doing to head off nuclear catastrophe. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. "deadline ws after a icquk break. research shows that people remember ads with young people having a good time. so to help you remember that liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's a pool party. look what i brought! liberty mutual! they customize your home insurance... so you only pay for what you need! ♪young people having a good time with insurance.♪ ♪young people.♪ ♪good times.♪ ♪insurance!♪ only pay for what you need. ♪liberty liberty. liberty. liberty.♪

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when are we going to see the cards? let's remember, this has been a year and a half in the making. the former president trump has been out of office for going on two years now. where -- why -- you think this is a coincidence happening just

a few months before the midterm elections? >> he should have turned the documents over and apparently had turned a number of documents over. what i wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we're talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program. >> do you really wonder that? did you read the affidavit? that was chris sununu of new hampshire, republicans on the sunday shows yesterday doing the talk show version of cleaning out their refrigerators instead of talking about the disgraced ex-president and his possession of and hoarding of classified documents kept at mar-a-lago for 18 months. while republicans were expecting and boasting and chest-thumping about a big red wave in the upcoming midterm elections, their ex-leader seems to have taken some of the wind out of

their sails. the cook political report has downgraded their house of representatives outlook to a gop gain of only 10 to 20 seats. it is enough to take control but a huge dropoff from previous predictions. luke broadwater writes in "the new york times" that some republicans are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on joe biden and the high inflation and gas prices is being complicated by all encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president, his predecessor. john heilemann, the host of the "hell & high water" podcast and eddie glaude, chairman of the department of african american studies at princeton university. john heilemann, i did everything but sing you a love song last monday to thank you, but again, thank you, my friend, for helming these hours while i was away. >> nicole, if you -- i don't blush easily.

there's almost nothing that makes me blush, but if you had seen me here at home when i heard those words of yours, you would have seen me turn a shade of red that is almost like the shade that trump -- donald trump's face gets when he's exerting himself on the golf course, where he's beet red. i was -- i was honored to hear it. love you very much. >> well, thank you very much for being here, and you had one hell of a story to cover. >> any time. >> so, at least it wasn't boring. so, what do you make -- and i don't think it's just the trump taking the classified stuff and all this playing out. and, of course, the only reason it's in the news, the only reason the fbi had to go get it is because trump wouldn't give it back, but i think it's the -- i think it's three things. i think it's the public january 6th hearings, night after night, hearing from lifelong republicans talking about how donald trump incited an attack on the u.s. capitol. i think it's overturning roe vs. wade, the dog catching the car.

and i think it's trump being back in the news as a threat to u.s. national security. >> well, there's a lot of different ways to slice this, nicole. my view prior to the mar-a-lago security issue that we now are confronted with the documents, even before that, i would have said three things -- different three things that comprise kind of the unholy trinity for republicans. one, you cited, which is roe v. wade. another is just trump writ large. i mean, the 1/6 committee hearings were the things that prior to mar-a-lago that was pointing to and trump talking about running for re-election, which was every democrat in the country was praying at that point that if donald trump, god, please, let us be so lucky as to have donald trump announce he's running again before the midterms, allowing us to turn -- to make him the face of what we want to run against, which is republican extremism more broadly, and then i also think uvalde had a part in it too. there was that moment of

national outrage over what happened in uvalde, even though a, helpfully, a gun safety measure got through the senate. still the vast majority of republicans were out there fighting against raising the age limit for when you can buy semiautomatic weapons to the same age that you need -- that you need to be to buy beer. and i think all of those things caught a moment where what democrats started to see, what their message could be, they had to make the smartest strategists at the party were telling them, you got to try to make this into a choice and not a referendum on joe biden and the only way to do that is make this about something big. make it about something matters, make it something that's bigger than inflation, that's bigger than even americans' pocketbook concerns, bigger than anything. what could that be? they decided that it was going to be about republican extremism across the range of things from guns to abortion to democracy, and then donald trump rode in on

his brokendown -- i was going to say his trusty steed. his broken down jackass that he likes to ride around in my version of "don quixote." he said, you thought the 1/6 committee hearings were going to help you mobilize? here's the only thing i could do to get people more freaked out, more energized, to put more of my face, my big, fat, lying, document-stealing face, democracy-disrespecting, coup-plotting, twice disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president. slap my face on it. the only thing that you could do that would be worse, or better from the democrats' point of view, on the political front, was what's happening now where, you know, it's laid bare for everyone to see that donald trump's not just a menace to democracy, but a menace to national security and i think, you know, from a purely

political standpoint, this is a gift for democrats, and if they -- they got a lot of work to do now to capitalize on that gift, but man, what a gift all of it is for them to make people understand the stakes of these midterms. they just got to now go do the organizing, do the messaging, and win the races. >> you know, eddie, i stand corrected. i think it's uvalde, but before uvalde happened, we came on the air and we were still covering the funerals from buffalo, and what happened in buffalo was the hunting of grocers, african american citizens of the community who were grocery shopping, and what happened afterward? a republican who was willing to do something about gun safety was ousted. he left. so, it was the heinous, horrific tragedy of buffalo followed, before they had buried all the citizens of buffalo and all the victims that died in that shooting, uvalde happened. and again, the republican governor goes on tv and talks

about mental health, which is incredibly important. it's vital. but texas comes in last in terms of funds provided for mental health. so, what do you see? what do you make out for this political moment with some winds shifting in favor of democrats? >> so, i think that's a really important point, not only because of the horrible behavior of governor abbott in response to the -- to what happened in uvalde and some of the response to what happened in buffalo, but what was behind buffalo, of course, was this fear of the great replacement. this idea that, you know, white, christian men were in some ways threatened by these cultural and demographic trends. that hasn't changed. and so, i think that additional element to what john so brilliantly laid out will be the candidates that have been promoted, that have been put forward by the republican base, and so when we think about last week, that nbc poll that showed that the threat to democracy had risen -- it's not just simply

the january 6th committee. i think that's true. it's not simply trump's re-emergence. it's not just a national security threat. it's what we're seeing across the country in terms of these candidates from pennsylvania to arizona to texas to florida. these candidates who are, in fact, the face of kind of anxiety, a kind of panic and terror. and so folks are faced with a choice, and i think the democratic party has to not kowtow to this, but it can kind of say, there's no middle ground. you either have to choose democracy or you don't. >> and president joe biden is grabbing these issues, eddie, and giving a speech next thursday -- or this thursday on democracy. it feels like if you want to reunite the 2018 coalition and the 2020 coalition that voted for democrats, that's as good of a banner under which to do it as any. >> absolutely. and i think you have to do it in such a way that you stay at the level of the threat to democracy itself, because if you appeal

too hard to the swing voter, if you appeal too hard to the mainstream republican, there's a chance you might alienate your base. and so, i think across the -- the throughline, the throughline, of course, is that everybody's concerned that we're going to lose the republic, and i think that's the line that you have to take. >> eddie glaude, thank you so much for spending some time with us. heilemann sticks around. ahead for us, another example of just what eddie's talking about, about the kinds of candidates republicans recruit and had who won republican primaries are hurting republicans in their midterm election prospects. this one's in pennsylvania where a photo has surfaced of that state's republican candidate for governor dressed up as a confederate. his opponent, josh shapiro, is our guest. don't go anywhere. ponent, josh s our guest. don't go anywher e. when it comes to giving your home a fresh spin, wayfair makes it easy to refresh or remodel. so you can switch up your style. get an upgrade.

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oops. he did it again. right-wing republican candidate for governor in pennsylvania, doug mastriano, got caught with his extremism showing. this time, mugging in a confederate uniform. we are not making this up. the trump-endorsed state senator is facing backlash again, this time for a newly uncovered photo obtained by reuters. it's a photo of him posing in a confederate uniform while working at the army war college in 2014. mastriano's senate district includes gettysburg, the battle site where the tide turned against the confederacy during the civil war, to i guess that makes it even more interesting.

mastriano was recently under fire for his ties to white nationalist social media site gab, a story we covered on this very program. joining us now, pennsylvania's attorney general and the democratic nominee for governor, josh shapiro. what is going on? >> right. well, you used the word "again," again, multiple times in your lead-up, and to be honest with you, that is the vibe. that's the feeling. that's what i heard from people all across pennsylvania this weekend as i traveled in rural and urban communities from a farm to a baptist church in southwest philly. folks were not surprised to learn that the republican nominee for governor wore a confederate uniform. now, what i think is shocking and is disturbing is that he wore that uniform of traitors, folks who went to battle to defend freedom, on the grounds of the u.s. army war college right here in pennsylvania.

he wore that uniform along with going on gab, the white nationalist website, in an attempt to, i think, make clear that he believes certain people in this commonwealth, in this country, don't count. i want to be a governor that tries to pull all people together, republicans, democrats, independent, rural, urban, suburban voters. he's made clear that he is too dangerous, too extreme to be governor, and he would bring chaos and division to our commonwealth, something we do not need. >> mr. attorney general, you've got about a six-point lead. should it be bigger? >> well, look, nicole, this is pennsylvania, where every race is close. we're the swingiest of swing states in the nation. our last two presidential races came down to less than one point. we've always expected this race to be close. that said, we feel very good about where we are, the momentum we have behind us, not just with democrats but with republicans and independents as well.

we were endorsed today by a prominent republican official in pennsylvania to go along with the ten or so republican officials who endorsed us a few weeks ago. we're building a big, broad coalition, and we're competing in places in pennsylvania where democrats typically don't compete. so, we feel really good about where we are. we got 71 days to go, and no one's going to outwork us, and we're working as hard as we can and hustling. >> doug mastriano's campaign is a sort of cheap knockoff of trump's effort to delegitimize the 2020 election. if you win, how will you bring his supporters on board, who may not just disagree with you on policy, but may be so primed to not trust the process in pennsylvania? >> yeah, i think this election and -- in this midterm, it's critical to making sure we repair our democracy, and we can figure out ways to begin to

bring people together again, even if we disagree on policy. it's healthy to have fights about healthcare policy, tax policy, whatever the case may be. what's not healthy is this deep division that exists in our commonwealth and in our country today, a division that began to be sowed by the former president but now he has enablers like my opponent here who are doing real damage to our democracy. but what makes me hopeful and optimistic, nicole, is that the story of our democracy that was born just a few blocks from where i sit right now in this city of philadelphia, is a story where no matter how many times we've been knocked back, no matter how many times our politics feel like they have been frayed and they're dividing, people rise up, and they demand change, and they demand forward progress and forward momentum. it's the people that have corrected our democracy in the past, and i think those are the very people, from all parties, who are going to say to someone like doug mastriano, your brand

of politics, your vision of the world is too dangerous and too extreme and not something that we welcome here in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, and we want to continue to write the story of our democracy as one of forward progress, one of momentum, one of perfecting our union, and i think this race, for pennsylvania governor, is an opportunity for the people to rise up and do that and based on the reaction we're getting out in the community, that's exactly what i believe they'll do. these are freedom-loving people who want to create opportunities and want to bring people together, and that's why i'm confident they're going to reject doug mastriano. >> i'm dying to get out on the campaign trail, so maybe we'll figure out how to come out and take a look at what you're seeing out there on the trail. it is always such an interesting place to campaign and talk to voters. pennsylvania attorney general josh shapiro, thank you for spending time with us today. >> we welcome you any time. get out here with us. thanks, nicole. >> we need to. we got to get out of the studio.

thank you. ahead for us, we will turn to the war in ukraine where ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive to take back russian-held territory there while fears of a nuclear disaster continue to loom large. while fears of a nuclear disaster continue to loom large. kids don't always take the best care of school supplies.

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united nations international atomic energy agency finally arrive in the kyiv today for heading to assess that plant this week. russian and ukrainian forced hurled blame back and forth about the continued shelling of the plant. the arrival of the u.n. team gives hope of heading off a potential nuclear calamity. ukraine announced today it has begun a counteroffensive in the southern enregion of the country. let's bring in retired u.s. army lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. hileman is back and he'll throw a question at you as well. but tell me what we are to make of the country state of the war. it feels that russia's moes seem derived from potential humiliation. they're political, strikes on civilian, and ukraine seems to be making important gains on the battlefield. >> so, it's been a little less than a week that i have been

back to the u.s. i had a trip to ukraine primarily to kind of assess the developments of this war. this particular battle for kherson is probably the last real chance for what i would call a short war. if ukraine is successful in this kherson campaign -- and i say if because it's going to be a difficult go -- you could see a follow-on knock-on effect, a strategic collapse. it's going to make the operational picture for ukraine much, much easier on that location. you'll have the upper river location, and they could reposition forces for the eastern and northeastern campaigns. it's a tough go of it, because ukraine has taken some significant damage. they've lost about 30% of their lieutenants and captains, the folks that are actually fighting these battles right now. but if they are successful, it is going to be a broader strategic effect, and not just in ukraine with the rest of the campaign, but probably in

russia, too. they're going to have some explaining to do why the russian troops continue to do so poorly. >> colonel vindman, you said it's going to be a difficult go in kherson and said it's a way toward a short go. the likelier scenario you're saying is we're in for a long war. tell us what you think that scenario looks like as we head into the fall and winter. >> sure. so, if ukraine does not secure kherson in this particular offensive, between now and the fall, both sides are going to buckle down for a winter. it's not going to be a frozen conflict. significant hostilities but probably won't be major moment in lines and then a follow-on campaign in the spring, maybe into the summer. we're talking about a much more protracted war.

i think if anything i was probably a little optimistic before traveling to ukraine and spending a lot of time with the military and understanding how much damage they've taken. their weapons that they're getting from the west, they're actually not at maximum operational readiness rates. about 3 out of 4 are functional. so there needs to be some way to sustain those types of weapon systems for a campaign. and then in general, both the russians and ukrainians, ukrainians for an offensive, need to reconstitute, develop combat power so they can land blows on the russian forces and start to liberate some territory. >> colonel vindman, what did you learn there that we can't possibly know from our perches here? >> yeah, so, it's one of the most interesting items was probably a surreal interaction with a former russian politician in exile because he was critical

of the putin regime, sitting across the table from a neo-nazi, a russian neo-nazi, and those two on opposite sides of the spectrum, collaborating on ways to bring down the regime. basically we're probably on the cusp of larger scale political violence and resistance, something that frankly from a historian's perspective reminds me of the way that things unfolded in 1917 with the russian revolution. you know, the russian government's conducting this national level exercise. everything's okay, everything's going well. in fact, there are body bags coming back, population suffering, internal violence in russia, and it's going to be a hard thing for put ton try to bottle up. that was a very interesting thing to learn. >> i feel like we need to have

you back for a full debrief about sort of the hearts and minds of the ukrainian people, which is infinitely interesting to me. thank you both so much. a quick break for us. we will be right back. were delayed when the new kid totaled his truck. timber... fortunately, they were covered by progressive, so it was a happy ending... for almost everyone. kickstart your fall refresh so it was a happy ending... with wayfair's labor day sale. shop indoor and outdoor area rugs up to 70% off. cooking must haves up to 60% off. and kitchen and bathroom upgrades from $19.99. shop our labor day sale now through sept 7th. there's a monster problem and our hero needs solutions.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are so grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari, happy monday. >> thank you, nicole. welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber, and now a trump ally is directly threatening riots and unrest if prosecutors do go forward and eventually indict donald trump. >> it's all about getting him. they literally will be riots in the street. >> that is what the escalation sounds like now. it's an apparent threat with trump then amplified in a