government documents where the ball is at this hour in trump's court after judge aileen connor

last night asked that investigators regain access to 125 documents found in that search of mar-a-lago. that is part of the extraordinary appeal to cannon's order which politico puts like this, it aims to a full-throated rebuke of the ruling by cannon, a trump appointee who was confirmed to a seat after trump's defeat in the 2020 election. prosecutors used the filing to describe her ruling as a danger to national security and one ignorant to the counterintelligence work and lacking in an understanding of the complexities of executive privilege. all of it and the bid to continue to use the classified documents from mar-a-lago in the investigation amounts to a bold gamut from doj. once again, from politico, quote, they're going forward with an appeal despite the risk of cementing an awful precedent.

we're getting an even worse ruling from an appeals court dominated by trump appointees and they're daring cannon to double down on analysts that legal analysts on the right and left have scoffed at. now another bombshell piece of reporting adding to the ex-president's legal jeopardy, news that doj is now looking into what january 6th select committee members zoe lofgren coined the big ripoff that came with the big lie. the millions of dollars raised off of those baseless lies that the election was stolen. from "the new york times," examining the formation by a super pac created by donald trump after his loss in the 2020 election as he was raising millions of dollars by baselessly asserting that the results have been marred by widespread voter fraud. according to subpoenas issued by the grand jury a contents by the

new york times the justice department is described as the inner workings of the save america pac. trump's main fund-raising vk after the election. similar subpoenas who worked in the white house and for trump's presidential campaign. the doj now digging deep into the conduct of the ex president and his allies is where we start today with some of our most favorite reporters and friends. carol leonig is here and msnbc contributor, also joining us, harry littman and former deputy assistant attorney general and he now hosts the fantastic podcast talking feds. frank figliuzzi is back and now msnbc national security analyst and charlie sykes is here and editor-at-large of the bulwark and msnbc contributor. i want to start with you, carol leonnig because this is fast moving and there was analysis

from very senior doj officials and people like mary mccord who said this was not clear cut in terms of legal strategy and counterintelligence strategy, what doj should do. they decided to narrowly appeal, aileen cannon's ruling, but they have left open this appeal to the 11th circuit. it seems that bill barr's public comments about the strength of the doj case seemed to be consistent with how doj views its evidence. >> absolutely. bill barr's really leading the boat there in terms of reminding conservatives how the rule of law really works, how criminal investigations really work and whose property these documents actually are. the ones in mar-a-lago are indeed government property and gathering up various notations or cartoons or whatever might be slipped amid the classified records as barr correctly points out can be seized and then

returned. there is not a need for those to go through some special master program in order for them to fairly be returned to the former president's possession, but let's start with your good question which is really where we are right now and where we are right now is the department of justice had to make a call, a hard call, when it believes national security is potentially irreparably to be damaged by records that were of uncertain security in essentially a beach club in palm beach. these records were so sensitive in some cases as my colleague and i reported earlier this week. some were so sensitive that there was no chance in the world that anyone at mar-a-lago had the authority to even look at them, much less move them around or decide how to store them, and so the justice department chose to say we'd like you to revisit this, we'd like to remind you what's on the line here in terms

of possible damage to national security about other documents we don't know. we had a search warrant and we spent nine hours at mr. trump's part-time home, but there may be more records and there may be other places and there may be other locations and we can't not review this material that we've obtained as we continue a criminal investigation that has huge national security implications. >> frank, chuck rosenberg gave us a nice frame around which to look at the doj subpoena. it was judges don't like to be told what to do by a higher court, the appellate court and judges don't like to be asked to go back and revisit and reverse their own decision, but judge aileen con nor put herself in the box that she finds herself in and she's been rebuked of either being ignorant of national security and

imperative, and that's the bottom line and bill barr thinks so and he was the beacon to put their finger on the scale ahead of doj. even he thinks that the special master was a red herring. where do you see doj of national security as a priority and of being allowed to continue to have clarity legally so they can protect classified documents and u.s. national security interests? >> so, first, i applaud doj's intention to appeal here, and i have to tell you this is a scorching rebuke, almost in the form of a master class for the judge in how things are supposed to work and what national security is and really, although they don't come right out and say it, they say, your honor, the totality of your ruling is

contributing to the national security threat and they explained this because they actually attach, nicole, a letter from the current head of counterintelligence at the fbi, a position that i held, and he explains the problem here and you can and i were talking about this just a few days, nicole, where i'm afraid that the criminal investigation has come entirely to a halt and after that yow had part of it, okay, kwud using the documents from the search warren, but if this doj filing -- they've stuffed. the fbi i know we don't want to inkr kr the wrath of a judge and we're not going to play games figuring out what interviews we can do, and more important the head of counterintelligence is saying that the risk assessment

and the damage assessment under the dni is actually carried out by fbi agents on the ground, right? so the dni goes across the intelligence security and tell us how bad this is, but then the fbi just have to go out and interview these people and figure it out. well, guess what? those are counter intelligence agents from the same case and what the head of counterintelligence is saying in the letter is, look, they're inexorably linked. the national security review, damage assessment, we can't separate those. what are we supposeded to do? ask where the document came from and whether he saw it or others saw it and ignore that for the criminal case? are we supposed to use other agents? how do we separate that and it can't be done? so we learned it stopped and the criminal investigations has actually come to a halt. >> frank, i never doubted you and i saw some of the gov on twitter and i know our viewers know you speak from deep experience and you usually know

more than what you say so that you turned out to be right was no surprise to me. i want to press on this because what i feel that you're saying is probable cause for the crime is the violation of these classified -- i mean, the mishandling of the documents is the threat to national security. you cannot separate them in any artificial, you know, incompetent or inexperienced or boneheaded legal opinion. you cannot separate the two. >> right, the substance of a mishandling violation is indeed the classified do you means and it belongs to the executive branch of the government and trump has no property interest in this and they laid it out like law school 101 for the judge, look, we're happy to give back all of the personal documents, photos. whatever you want except those that are mixed and intermingled

because that shows how and we are not about to show the documents, ts, we're going over your has. >> harry littman, i want your legal analysis and this was either the safest or fastest course of action for doj and it's when they pursued really in terms of what we understand because of what frank is talking about and carol and the national security imperatives of continuing to have access to what was -- what was endangered and what was intentionally compromised and making sure that can continue and not get mired in this legal muck. i wonder, one, what your best, educated guess is in the prospect of success in whether you think it does end up in the 11th circuit?

>> look, a way that was the left she could to. she didn't understand, it is the keck tiff bank, and it means you deblow they supervise it both and the consequences, by the way, and this is another thing that's been underreported. if you make a mistake on the attorney-client side you can be absolutely taken out of the case. so if she were going to have the same framework for executive privilege and no one knew what she would have it would be huge consequences, but look, i agree with frank and with politico. it's scorching in substance, but two points to note. they really wear a kind of a velvet glove here. it is, you know, in its own way, yes, they call her a public enemy, basically, but if you can do it, they do it sort of

respectfully, cleanly, straightforwardly, and it's not a kind of pol amickal brief,ing and two, the remedy they served up is surgical. just these understand we can get done what we need to do that, and judges don't like to reverse themselves and they now have this effect and this is what we'll tell the 11th circuit and conservative judges will grant the stay of what they want. i'll bet right now she's praying all weekend that trump at 10:00 a.m. monday says okay, let's do it. it doesn't seem to be in his dna, so, you know, i'm once burned, twice shy and saying she'll see the light, but she has much more tangible pressure on her having been lambasted and knowing it's going to the 11th

circuit to just ignore them, and i think she's really hopes to see a way to let the doj have its way and what looks like a kind of face-saving, modest measure of just the hundred classified documents. >> there's some reporting, charlie, i want to read about what it appears to be the least legally sophisticated argument for people like me. she plain, straight up didn't understand what executive privilege was or is, and it sounds like trump wants his modified concern path back, he can have it and is the washington. >> reporter:ing. with less than two years, jinl cannon does not have a record record to review while presenting untested questions to shield sensitive communications from disclosure may be applied to past occupants of the white

house in conflict with their successors. former senor russ feingold who leads the constitution society which closely tracks judicial nominations says trump in his republican allies sought out judicial nominees like cannon showing an overwhelming preference for individuals often lacking the experience previously considered necessary to sit on the bench. this reporting, i think, makes clear that she was targeted by truck and i'm not nearing anything close to sympathy. she made her own bed and she gets to lie it in now and it's laying bare at trump's cravenness. >> also, look, i think it is very heartening that the department of justice did not blink in the face of a visibly bad decision. 24 decision wasn't even workman like and it exposes the flaw in her legal reasoning and understanding. i don't think the department of justice had any -- any choice

other than to appeal that ruling. it's also an indication that they regarded the stakes as so high that they couldn't let something like this stand. so for people who are wondering will merrick garland's department of justice back down in the face of what will be considerable blowback and perhaps rulings from trumpist judges? the answer appears to be no, but again, the stakes are very grave for national security and the department of justice took a dramatic step by executing the search warrant at mar-a-lago because they thought so much was at stake, and they got a judge's ruling that just cannot stand. >> so i understand the people who say it's very risky. at had point, department of

justice does will carry some sort of political or legal rick, but the risks of not going ahead and better, letting than on the 11th circuit which by the way is stacked with judges with considerably more legal experience and acumen than judge cannon. >> i want to switch gears. i want it show you what congresswoman zoe lofgren had to say and it was at the january 6th committee and we now learned that doj is potentially investigating for fraud the trump super pac that raised money off the lie. i want to put to you another question about whether this is just a slower, more opaque process at doj or whether some of the evidence presented by the 1/6 committee has helped shape or direct some of their leads. let's watch that first. every american is entitled and encouraged to participate in our electoral process.

political fund-raising is part of that. small dollar donors use scarce disposable income to support candidates and causes of their choosing to make their voices heard and those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used for. throughout the committee's investigation, we found evidence that the trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for. so not only was there the big lie, it was the big ripoff. donors deserve to know where the funds are really going. they deserve better than what president trump and his team did. >> carol, any sense of watching this whether this was already under scrutiny or whether this was another thing that the committee put on doj's radar? >> my understanding is that it

is already under scrutiny as was true for other elements of what the department of justice was investigating. the committee amped up the knowledge base for the department of justice, that they definitely added, few details and leads and things like a reporter said if i read that in "the new york times," oh, that's interesting. i think i can follow up on that one. everything is a clue. everything is a big clue. i would also stress to you that when we looked at the evidence of the january 6 committee, what was striking it was in fact pattern in a case that was easy to explain, easy to explain and that was to get a convention and that was steve bannon in which he is a board lender and we

would reld rethe call on construction out at the border. they were buying luxurious items and quite handsomely and quite a slam dunk case gathered by the committee and no doubt the committee is curious about the slam dunk case here. >> i would add one more thing. >> go ahead. >> one more thing, when we learned about the raid at mar-a-lago, i remember talking to sources and also talking to you a little bit about this, that they are sources close to trump and they said, you know, since june you would not believe it, but we really believed this mar-a-lago case is so straight-up, so unnuanced, so vulnerable making for the former

president, well, there are some similarities to the pac creation, and it will -- you know, it bears watching to see what beenes provide the department of justice? as witnesses finally tell the truth, there will be witnesses who tell the truth of how this committee was working. >> it's such a good point, frank, and doj shouldn't be criticized for going for the low-hanging criminal fruit first, as carol is saying you want to argue that the rule of law should apply to everyone evenly, sometimes it's easier to apply the rule of law of handling of classified documents and in this case, it was trump supporters. the other side of is that the evidence is so clear and that conduct so brazen that the big picture that you pull back and see is a bunch of people at trump's direction acting like

criminals all day on every front, scramming their supporters for the wall or the super pac, lying about what they were taking from the white house and carol's talking about witnesses, we know the two lawyers who sometimes sit at the nexus of a lawless president and what the office is supposed to be, don mcgahn found himself in this position, too, are sometimes the one that respond to subpoenas and tell the whole truth. >> yeah, let's forget famously al capone was not taken down for the murders and his racketeering career, but simply on tax violations and it does look like as carol said, doj may be headed to a straight-up fraud violation. you told people you were going to take their money for x and you used it for y, and i'm curious to hear his analysis. this gets complicated, unlike the steve bannon case, where he

took money to build a wall and stuck it in his pocket and he converted to personal use. doj is not there yet. you told people you were going going to save america because of a fraud of the baseless allegation that the election was rigged and he actually won, and that's fraudulent, yes, but people lined up to give you up to a million dollars a day at one point, nicole, for this effort because they thought the election was bad. now you moved that money and you're paying legal defense for other people, you're even paying for defense on the documents at mar-a-lago, right? so it's a little more complicated than straight-up you lined your pocket with it, but that's where they seem to be going. >> we all want to hear harry litman's legal analysis and i have to slip in a quick break and when we come back the panel will weigh in what we can expect

in the coming days and weeks and not the back and forth with doj and donald trump over this case of the classified documents. voters, clearly, extremely fired up about the supreme court fired up about roe versus wade. michigan the latest to put that to voters there on the ballot this november. it isn't just abortion. marriage and guns are energizing democrats these days. these issues shaking things up politically. democrats, not republicans on the offense when it comes to culture question. >> later in the program as head of the british royal family, king charles brought in a new monarchy and we'll have that and more after a quick break. stay with us. more after a quick break stay with us les

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>> we're back with our panel and continuing with this coverage out this week of a criminal investigation into the trump super pac. i want to show you, we want your legal analysis, but i just want to add a little bit more from this public hearing back into the conversation because it's been a minute. this was the select committee investigator, staff member amanda wick explaining how money raised off the big lie went to trump's pac. >> they continue to barrage small-dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the official election defense fund. the select committee discovered no such fund existed. >> i don't believe there is

actually a fund called the quality election defense fund. >> it is another on eye think we call that market list. >> the claims that the election was stolen were so successful president trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million in the first week after the election. on november 9, 2020, president trump created a separate entity call the save america pac. most of the money raised went to this newly created pac and not to election-related litigation. the save america pac made millions of contributions to pro-trump organizations including $1 million to trump chief of staff mark meadows' charitable foundation, $1 million to the america first policy institute, a conservative organization which employs several trump administration officials and 204, 857 to the trump hotel collection and over $5 million to event strategies, inc. t the company that read the

rally on the ellipse. >> they have got the receipts. you have to assume harry, that doj does, too. >> i agree. i just want to make two quick points. the first on the low-hanging fruit al capone point. we think of capone as having been convicted for tax crimes that didn't really capture what was so evil about him and it was sort of opportunistic. the current one at mar-a-lago and this fraud, they are righteous cases and they're not just regulatory. the mar-a-lago gets the risk of is fraud of thinking everything is his and there's low-dollar

supporters. it's bad and you just saw it, it's a little bit less clean than bannon was remarkably brazen saying again and again in black and white saying not a dollar of this will go to us, and only 100,000 and the yacht and that is so clear to prove and that matters in a fraud case where intent can be tricky. this looks pretty bad, but trump's statements of election fraud and some of the things like the 5 million that you just showed to the january 6th committee, they might be able to argue about. it sure smells as a fraud to me and not as rank and as clean and easy as the bannon case that he just surrendered on yesterday. >> charlie, i read this and remembered that there was investigative reporting about the inaugural committee. he was before he was inaugurated

through the coup plot. i want to read from the times reporting because it suggests that there is a much broader reporting under way that may ensnare trump's accomplices. the subpoena sought information about communications with a range of people, many of them lawyers who were also listed on earlier subpoenas that focused on the fake elector plan. among the lawyers appearing as subjectses of interest on both sets of subpoenas, jenna ellis and kenneth chesboro with the fake elector scheme. the people who were a party to the same criminal acts. >> well, i can't weigh in on the legal issues involved here, but i am fascinated by the political implications of all of this,

because as you pointed out, one of the central factors of maga from the beginning, at bottom it is a massive con game, and it illustrates the incredible of both trump and steve bannon connects them and the incredible contempt that they have of the most loyal supporters that they believed and they were able to execute a plan to fleece the most gullible trump supporters to the tune of $250 million. so, yes, there's very clear legal case involve that i agree and not necessarily a slam dunk, but just step back for a moment because one ever trump's claims has been that you people are victims. i am your big defender. i am the only one who can protect you when in fact the opposite is true because he looks at them as marks and he looks at them as people to grab by the ankles and turn them upside down and get the last

nickel out of their pockets. you have these donors who have been lied to over and over and over in an effort by this from this president who lied in the attempted coup to monetize this in the most aggressive way possible. i know that most people don't like to be told that they have been conned or that they have been lied to, but at some point i think this is something and i think this is the background noise of all of the more important things that are going on, but this has been sort of the background theme of donald trump's operations from the beginning because constant fund-raising and this constant effort to how do we fleece the people that we think of as gullible yolkel. if even a small portion of them begin to realize wait, wait, wait, you were supposed to be on our side, but you have been targeting us, you have been lying to us and you have been ripping us off, if even 3% to 5%

of those voters can be peeled off, it might have an effect. i am very interested in the legal case, because this has political residence, as well and people ought not to let this one lie the fact that on and steve bannon are not political martyrs and they are grubby crooks targeting their own people. >> grubby crooks. i was thinking, too, charlie sykes, about stephen ayers. he didn't just take their money. he pushed them to commit criminal acts for which they're doing time and paying huge legal fees. it really is the sick underbelly of the trump movement. carol leonnig on a week when you had a huge scoop, thank you for talking about the week's headlines and harry litman thank you, charlie sykes sticks around. >> how abortion, gun violence on

the right have become winning topics for democrats this summer and how democrats plan to take advantage of a lot of public opinion around those issues in the upcoming midterms. that story's next. is clinically shown in a 7 day study to cause fewer ulcers than immediate release aspirin. vazalore. the first liquid-filled aspirin capsules...amazing! oh, that i can't believe i scored this price feeling! wayfair always delivers vazalore. small prices for big dreams. ♪ wayfair you've got just what i need ♪ it's 5:00 a.m., and i feel like i can do anything. we've got apples and cabbage. 7,000 dahlias, vegetables, and brisket for dinner. this is my happy place. we've been coming here, since 1868. my grandmother used to say,

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four other states, california, kentucky, california and vermont will put ballot measures before voters this fall, potentially boosting turnout in those states. it comes as republicans are quickly losing the culture war debates in america, pushing positions on abortion, contraception and gay marriage that are wildly out of step with the american public in every single measure of public opinion. it could badly damage their chances of taking back the senate and maybe even the house this november. politico's reporting this, quote, for the first time in years republican and democratic political professionals are preparing for a general election campaign in which democrats, not republicans, may be winning the culture wars. a wholesale reversal of the traditional political landscape that is poised to reshape the midterms in the run-up to 2024. joining us now the reverend al sharpton host of msnbc's "politics nation" and alexy is

back and msnbc political contributor and charlie sykes. i'll start with you. i'm not a brilliant pollster or i wasn't a super, super cutting-edge political operative, but even i can do math. upwards of 65% of americans know where it was. more than 93% of americans support exceptions in a brgz restrictions in the life of mother and americans support exceptions in the case of relationship and incest. that's not where the republicans have gone, they celebrated forcing a 10-year-old rape victim crossing state lines to receive healthcare. some of them are interesting and heartening, but the writing was on the wall. i liken it to a dog catching the car. what explains republicans hurdling over the cliff on this issue with almost no one supporting their positions? >> well, i think we're seeing them realize in real time the

implications of being out of step with where the majority of americans are on this issue as you just laid out not just in polling, but specifically in michigan as you were just talking about. over 730,000 people signed the petition to make sure that this abortion amendment will be on the ballot this november and that is significant because it shows how fired up people are when republicans or the supreme court do something that is against what they want. i think the other important point that you know well is we've never had an election where the constitutional right that had otherwise been affirmed for over half a century was being taken away or had been taken away and this was completely unprecedented in many ways and i think we're seeing republicans respond to that in real time as we reported in axios, and i know others have, too, literally scrubbing language from their websites about their anti-abortion portions and not taking questions at all about it on the campaign trail, and so they're

trying to figure out, i think, in the background what their position is on this issue that would be most palatable to voters that they need in november. >> they also celebrated instead of condemned supreme court justice is thomas' opening the door for other rights, and i think the voters appropriately feel like more than access to abortion is at risk, a grave risk right now is because of that language, charlie. what do you make of that? >> yeah, no question about it. this has changed the political environment in ways that i don't think were immediately apparent after the decision was handed down because it has changed the political universe that people have lived in for 50 years. i've talked to a lot of republican women who are pro choice, but have voted for republicans because they figured it didn't matter because roe versus wade was the law of the land. that's all completely changed

now. republicans are finding they're hostage to their own base and this is a decision that they made. there are compromises and there are ways of spinning this that they're discovering are too risky and you're seeing this on one issue after another and justice thomas raising the possibility of overturning the bergerfell decision. you would have republicans now pivoting to the center, the ones that got through the primary. they don't have to appeal to the hard core base, they can pivot to the center and they're afraid to do that even now because they are so frightened of losing any part of their base including those that are taking the most extreme positions on abortion and an opposition to gay marriage. so this is a real problem for republicans and one that as alexy just mentioned they're having a hard time figuring out how to navigate.

>> you know, the trump supreme court is a political anchor around the gop. to charlie's point, i don't know that that was abundantly clear before the ruling on abortion. i know there were other really alarming vowelings that were certainly more than a canary in a coal mine and they've been revealed and the fact that they're a political detriment to the gop doesn't do much to change the political on the one hand and the power that they wield on the other. >> the power they have is frightening which is what will drive the political in terms of a lot of people coming to the polls. when you are in a cult, and that's what the republican party has allowed itself to be overtaken by the trump cult, you from a cult don't get to in a good reading on a culture because you're only talking

inside your own little cult group. so not only did they misread the people's reaction to what they did to roe, the justice will come behind and say we ought to look at these things and that only energized even more people no longer looking at the midterms in how we judge a sitting president's party, but how do we preserve that we feel must happen in the culture. i have people in the action network, nicole, that are fundamentalist christians and say i don't believe in abortion, but i don't believe i have the right to make a woman's choice and they have energized people that may not have been paying attention other than they feel this is not a now referendum on biden and it is something that i've been used to all of my life. >> that's so smart. that's so ride.

everyone is sticking around and we'll show you joe biden trying to shame republican lawmakers who are true trying to take a victory lap for some key democratic programs and we'll show you that next. show you that what's for dinner? panera! freshly prepared with clean ingredients. it's not just a night off from cooking. it's a delicious night on... for everyone at the table. panera. $0 delivery fee for a limited time. i think i changed my mind about these glasses. yeah, it happens. that's why visionworks gives you

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generation investment in our nation's roads, highways, bridges, railroad, ports, airports, water system, high-speed internet. we got a little help from republicans, but not a lot, but

enough to get it passed but the truth is, there are a lot more republicans taking credit for that bill than actually voted for it. i see them out there, now we're going to build this new bridge and road and we're going to have internet. i love it, man. they ain't got no shame. >> this is what happens when shame dies in america, folks. there was president joe biden calling out the shameless republicans who are trying to take credit for some of the largely democratic, slightly bipartisan accomplishments, accomplishments that many of them did not vote for. it appears to be just the latest from the president who seems to have gotten his mojo back, no longer staying quiet about the hypocrisy emanating from the maga republicans. he's careful to always single them out. we're back with the panel. rev, what do you make of his political positioning of late? >> i think that it is the right thing to do. i think that the fact that he

had been, in many ways, said by many in his own base and own party that he has not been showing fight, that he's come out and shown us vigor that has surprised everyone, including some of his supporters. but i think what is really working for him is that they're doing it with substance. they have passed this inflation reduction bill. they have passed the infrastructure bill. so, he can talk about this and say that they're trying to take credit for things that are really being achieved by his administration, which is further mocking them, and i think the more he does it, i think the more it will energize his base and energize a turnout, and give them something on the -- in the opposing party, something of a dilemma on, how do they campaign against infrastructure when they need the roads that they're claiming they helped to put there when they really didn't? how do you, when you look at jackson, mississippi, not deal

with climate change? they're in a very awkward position, and he's been able to do enough substantive legislation that he can come with it and it be true, and they have no real response to it. >> i mean, i think the surest sign that what he's doing is working is that the right is just flipping out. they can't stop writing op-eds and freaking out and foaming at the mouth. they're just freaking out that he is calling out the maga republicans among them. he's still really careful to say, not all of them. i still like the old way, the old republicans. but the maga republicans, they're a problem. >> i mean, and i feel like he's getting clearer and clearer in making that distinction between those extremists and the rest of the party. joe biden has been someone who's championed bipartisanship. he definitely did this on the campaign trail in 2020 and even at that point, reporters and pundits and other people were, like, are you sure, if you get

elected, you'll be able to work with this republican party? they've changed a lot. and he maintains that he would be able to, and now, we're seeing, as president, how he's realizing and really taking the charge for his party, that that's not the case, that he's not able to work with the republican party in the same way. former president barack obama has acknowledged the same thing in private remarks at fundraisers with democrats recently, and so i think that in some ways, the president is really helping the rest of the party refine this message that really sets up this contrast between republicans but republicans are realizing, sort of to the point we were talking about earlier, that they don't have a lot to fight against with democrats, except for president biden. so, i think that's in part why they're going so hard against him because now everything, to them, is a referendum on the president. >> you know, charlie, it didn't have to be this way, but it does, and i guess by that, i mean, the republicans made their bed. they made their bed when, after the 2020 election, they refused

to condemn trump's lies about fraud. there was no fraud. mitch mcconnell knew that. and what's that game, two truths and a lie? i think if you said to mitch mcconnell, you know, jd vance is a low life, joe biden is a good man, and, you know, who's the loon out in arizona who scrubbed abortion from his thing, you have to spend nine hours in a car with the republican nominee -- you know, he'd pick, like, joe biden is a good man is the truth. i mean, the way that joe biden is forcing republican establishment figures to look in the mirror at what they've ushered in and enabled for their party is one of the healthiest by-products of this political term. >> well, i don't know if you're going to get republicans to look in the mirror and see about their hypocrisy, but it's worth highlighting -- >> i mean, when they're in their pajamas at home, brushing their teeth. if you had to put it to him like, which one is true?

i think -- maybe? >> well, mitch mcconnell and others have embraced sort of a post-policy politics. their agenda is content-free, because they figured that they could just run the various memes about critical race theory and whatever, the senility of joe biden. this is a political party that didn't have a platform in 2020. i think they asked mitch mcconnell what agenda do you want to run on? and he said, i'm not going to tell you now. and, you know, rick scott came up with stuff that's blown up in their face. and so, here, you have joe biden running a very sort of, you know, retro political campaign, where he is saying, you guys may not like spending, but you all like the infrastructure programs in your own district. and i think one effective message might be for joe biden to channel his inner harry truman and run against a do-nothing republican congress. they don't control it, but what's very clear is that republicans don't have an

agenda. they have a lot of things that they're against. they have a lot of things that they want to exploit. but in terms of getting things done, they have become a very unserious party, and so among the various notes that joe biden is hitting and, by the way, i thought his speech last week was very, very necessary, and i don't join the hand-wringers about all this, but calling them out for their hypocrisy and do-nothing agenda is good politics. >> i do too. we'll all wait and watch together. the rev al sharpton, alexi and charlie sykes, three of the smartest and best friends of the show. thank you for spending time with us today. when we come back, a brand-new book not out yet on how the ex-president weaponized the department of justice for his own political gain. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. e" starts aft break. don't go anyerwhe. lily! welcome to our third bark-ery. oh, i can tell business is going through the “woof”. but seriously we need a reliable way

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♪♪ the fbi and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers, and the media who tell them what to do, you people right there, and when to do it. they're trying to silence me and more importantly, they are trying to silence you. but we will not be silenced. right? >> i know none of you miss him, but we had a method to our madness. bear with us. hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 now in the east. if you're unfamiliar with that concept of projection, that was it. when a person assigns their own

insecurities, their own crimes, their own flawed traits, their own past actions on to others, in this case, what you just saw there, the twice-impeached disgraced ex-president under criminal investigation, donald trump, accusing the department of justice of unfair political targeting in the classified material investigation at mar-a-lago. but given a wave of new revelations on trump's conduct in office, freshly in our hands today, that political targeting accusation sounds more and more definitively like projection. extraordinary revelations today, courtesy of one of trump's own top federal prosecutors. his name is jeffery burrman and he was the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. we call it sdny, one of the highest profile federal offices in our country. you might remember in what leader chuck schumer described at the time as a sordid, ham-handed plot, jeffery burman was fired, first by bill barr, and then by trump, because bill

barr didn't have the authority to fire him. it was late in his term. he twice refused to resign when they first tried to get him to do that. but in the course of carrying out his duties, berman says he was the subject of a number of white house pressure campaigns. "the new york times" was one of the first news organizations to get to review a copy of berman's book. it's not out yet. it's called "holding the line." we'll have our own opportunity to speak with him on this program on tuesday, but for now, we have what the "times" has written about it. he has anecdote after anecdote, according to the "times," having to do with plots to federally investigate and prosecute donald trump's critics and perceived political enemies. not for nothing, as far as we know, none of any of those democrats were hiding classified documents or intelligence having to do with nuclear weapons in their home closets. but we digress. what we're learning today constitutes one of the most brutal takedowns of the last

administration and specifically, its doj leadership today. berman's lived experience takes a sledgehammer to any claim that the trump doj played impartial or anything close to by the book. consider this from our friend and colleague, barbara mcquade, who reviewed the book in the "washington post." "berman reserved his strongest criticism for barr, calling him a bully, and his behavior, thuggish. upon taking office, barr tried to kill the southern district's ongoing investigations relating to the campaign finance crimes to which michael cohen had already pleaded guilty. the reference in plea documents to individual one made apparent that trump fashioned potential criminal exposure in this investigation. in fact, barr even discussed dismissing cohen's conviction in the same way he would later dismiss the false statements charges against former national security advisor mike flynn. in both cases, the defendants had pleaded guilty in open court." it is just one example of many

"the new york times" cites further berman reporting from his book. "throughout my tenure as u.s. attorney, trump's justice department kept demanding that i use my office to aid them politically. and i kept declining. i walked this tight rope for two and a half years," writes mr. berman, who's now in private practice. "eventually, the rope snapped." that is where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. mike schmidt is back, "new york times" washington correspondent, also joining us, eddie glaude, he chairs the department of african american studies at princeton university, and frank figliuzzi is back, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence. frank figliuzzi, there's so much ground here that we covered with your insights into what is normal, and it's clear that what the "times" is reporting about this geoffrey berman book is the blockbuster everyone's been waiting for, the shredding of any sort of notion that bill barr was anything other than what his critics feared he was,

an incredibly craven political actor atop doj. >> yeah, let's remember this. every time we hear bill barr sounding like a normal person, trying to rehabilitate himself, trying to look like he's normalized, he's not. and what we're hearing about from this book is the subverting of our rule of law, and the institution that embodies the rule of law, the department of justice. and so, it's worse than we perhaps thought in that it's not just that trump appears to have a doj that pressured prosecutors to open cases, but also to not go there in the sense of not pursuing things, and look, michael cohen appears to be just one of many people who's impacted by this. i hope that when you have berman on as a guest, you ask him a couple of things. first, why wait for the book? did he report this to the doj

inspector general, for example? has he been or i hope he will be interviewed by either ig agents or fbi agents, because in your last hour, i think it was carol leonnig who referred to the january 6th committee as lead material for the department of justice, that, you know, hey, look over here. this book may be serving, by berman, may be serving the same purpose to doj. look over here. we may have had an attorney general that ran a shop that was pressuring prosecutors to do the wrong thing. and maybe that's a case on bill barr. we need to take a look at that. michael cohen and i have had a long conversation about what he is doing now. he's filing a freedom of information act request. he's asking for his entire file. doj came back first and said, no, we've got nothing. we got nothing on this. nope. and then they came back and said -- so, he gave them evidence of an email or two that he had found, and they go, yeah, we've got something like 40,000 pages or 40,000 documents, one of those.

and by the way, it will take about 50 years because we can't give you any more than 500 at a time. he's pursuing this, and everybody impacted should be pursuing their own cases to see what happened. and so should kerry, who we learned from this reporting was a target of trump. >> kerry was a target for criminal prosecution, and what's made clear in what the "times" is reporting about the berman book, mike schmidt, is something that you reported about the mueller investigation. what trump tweeted very clearly directed his justice department. i mean, trump attacks kerry, the justice department, and sdny is asked to investigate john kerry, i think, for violations of the logan act, because he maintained diplomatic relations with iran. and then the greg craig intervention is just remarkable. it's a case that was investigated. they declined to prosecute at sdny, so doj leadership ships it out to another office where they do prosecute and lose.

>> the heart of this issue here is something that we've talked about a lot and i'm sure we'll talk about in the future is that when you have a president of the united states who talks about criminality and what the justice department should do, it creates a taint, and it puts a shadow over all of the actions of the department. and here we are learning about some of them and learning not only was of course there a perception problem that we knew, which was playing out publicly, but that privately, the president's demands and wishes were taken more seriously than we thought. and it appears like they were taken more seriously in the barr time than they certainly were during the sessions. when sessions was there. and it confirms the worst fears that people had about what was going on at the justice

department. people thought, look, okay, trump is saying these things, barr is clearly going along with some of them, but we never knew truly how far he was going with them. and i think there are some inspector general investigations that have been announced, you know, back many months ago if not years ago, into some of these matters that have not come out yet, and we haven't learned from. but my guess is that there's probably more here and more for us to be learned about what went on, especially in those last two years. >> you mentioned the inspector general. i think that's mr. horowitz. i mean, the berman allegations about his own department go far beyond anything i've seen horowitz detail in a report. would you assume that mr. horowitz is investigating barr's leadership and the prosecutions of mr. craig and mr. kerry?

>> i don't know specifically whether the ig is looking at those issues. i do know that when these issues really were accelerating in that last year under barr and there were questions about the stone sentencing and what went on with michael cohen and why was michael cohen put back in prison in the summer of 2020, about his book that there had been some noise that the ig was doing something, but i don't know -- we have not seen the fruits of that yet. but this is certainly revealing. >> grist. >> and in many ways, extraordinary. >> so, let's dive into what we're learning for the first time, because i think viewers of this program are very familiar with a lot of these cases and a lot of these individuals. this is from the "times" reporting. we've seen the book, but we're under an embargo not to talk about it until we have mr. berman on our show. this is from the "new york times" reporting. in march of 2018, some two months after mr. berman assumed the post of u.s. attorney for sdny, the justice department, then headed by attorney general

jeff sessions, referred to the southern district of new york, the investigation of mr. craig. the allegations focused on whether mr. craig, a white house counsel under president barack obama had concealed work he had done years earlier for the government of ukraine in violation of the foreign agents registration act, sometimes referred to as fara. and whether he had lied to the justice department when questioned about it. after months of investigation, sdny and the justice department met with mr. craig's lawyers. after the lawyers left and prosecutors voiced their opinions, berman said he believed craig was innocent. he believed craig was innocent of the fara charge, so a jury would be unlikely to convict him on a false statement count. a short time later, around mid-september, mr. berman his his deputy walked into his office and said he had just gotten a call from edward callahan, the principal associate deputy attorney general. mr. o'callahan, the book says, asked that the office even things out by charging mr. craig

before election day. in that conversation, mr. berman writes, mr. o'callahan kept reminding him that the southern district that had just prosecuted mr. collins and mr. cohen. after being told by the "times" of the statements, he called them categorically false." he goes on to say that craig never should have been prosecuted when doj moved it from sdny to another office that acquiesced with main doj's request. frank figliuzzi, would you assume that doj ig is looking into the greg craig prosecution? >> well, i assume nothing anymore, but they ought to open a case if they don't have one open right now. and look, there may have to be cases reversed, decisions reversed here. there's legal liability. there will be lawsuits from this. this will go on for quite some time, but it is worthy of

investigation, and this notion that there's some kind of evening out that takes place, my god, it's not -- you know, prosecutive decisions are not some baseball game on some child's rec league where we have to make things fair, you know, got to -- we have to give them a few runs. no. there's -- that's not how it works. there's nothing normal about this. i think people are going to be liable, because they're outside the scope of their employment when they do this kind of thing. i think, and hope, they will be sued. >> eddie glaude, i want to bring you in. we learned from mr. berman that john kerry was also targeted for investigation and prosecution by the trump justice department. this is what "the new york times" is reporting mr. berman writes. after the september 2019 acquittal of gregory craig, mr. berman writes he hoped the verdict would ease the pressure on the southern district to prosecute another enemy of the president. mr. john kerry. "that was naive on my part,

mr. berman writes. mr. kerry, a former veteran and massachusetts senator was secretary of state under president obama, a role in which he led the lengthy negotiations that produced the iran nuclear code, the administration's signature foreign policy achievement. trump, during his presidential campaign, called the deal insane and a disaster. on may 7, 2018, trump tweeted about mr. kerry's, quote, possibly illegal shadow diplomacy, an apparent reference to mr. kerry having conversations as a private citizen with iranian and other officials. trump tweeted another attack on mr. kerry the next day, the same day trump announced the united states was withdrawing from the accord. an justice department officials told his office he would be responsible for investigating mr. kerry's iran-related conduct. the fbi would join the inquiry. the focus was on the logan act, a rarely evoked 1799 statute barring private citizens from unauthorized negotiations with

foreign governments, which has been criticized as unconstitutionally vague. mr. berman notes no one has ever been successfully prosecuted under the law, but the conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority for the department of justice." eddie, again, we sat on the outside, and we had some experts like frank and some great investigative journalism from mike and his colleagues, but what the berman book makes clear is that we were barely scratching at the surface of just how completely and successfully donald trump corrupted the rule of law in this country. >> nicole, you're absolutely right. as i read the piece, i had to close my mouth. it kept falling open as i was reading the details. not only do we see the subverting of the rule of law, we saw the shredding of democratic norms, and we see, in realtime, the implications of the imperial presidency. so, you have a character like

donald trump who has no -- who obviously has no commitment to democratic norms whatsoever. combined with someone who believes in the imperial presidency. that is bill barr. and the combination of those two, one in doj, the other leading the executive branch, leading the free world, leads in some ways to the erosion, the very assault on the basic foundations of our democracy. can you imagine deploying the fbi, the doj, to, you know, indict and convict your political opponents? that runs against everything that a democracy stands for. here's more evidence. the question is, what are we going to do with it? we've been asking ourselves all along, what are we going to do with the evidence? >> that's what we've been asking ourselves for five years, eddie. mike, i remember your reporting about how trump wanted jim comey and hillary clinton prosecuted. bill barr confirms that one of his last interactions, and it didn't go well with trump, was he was mad that he still hadn't prosecuted comey. we learned the other side of

that, which was when trump was wrapped up in an investigation or prosecution, he didn't want evidence of that either. this is also from the "times" reporting of the new berman book. one case berman says his office had to keep alive was the 2018 prosecution of mr. cohen, the president's former lawyer that august cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over payments he arranged before the 2016 election to keep two women from disclosing affairs they had with trump. berman did not participate in the investigation because he had volunteered for the campaign, but he was later briefed on the interference in the case. before the plea, berman writes, as his office was preparing a charging document, detailing the crimes, a justice department official badgered his deputy, mr. kazumi, without success, to remove all references to a person identified as individual one. it was mr. trump. in the months after cohen's guilty plea, berman writes, southern district continued to pursue investigations related to possible campaign finance violations. apparently by others in trump's orbit. but after barr became the a.g. in february of '19, berman

writes, barr tried to kill the investigations and suggested that cohen's conviction on campaign finance charges be reversed, even though six months had passed since cohen had entered his guilty plea. in late february, he writes, barr summoned the deputy to challenge the legal basis for cohen's plea and the reason behind pursuing similar campaign finance charges against other individuals. you mentioned efforts to put cohen in jail. so, it's clear that cohen was this vessel on which they wanted to release pressure when they were worried it would hurt trump, but apply pressure when they were worried he would hurt him. >> yeah. i mean, michael cohen in the summer of 2020 being told that he has to sign a document that he's essentially not going to put out a negative book about trump and refusing to sign it and going back to prison, still one of the -- one of the more extraordinary incidents and questions that remain of the trump presidency of how that happened and why that went down.

i think there's an important distinction to make between these different actions or moves by the justice department and by trump. they sort of fall into two different lanes. one of them are sort of what i would call blocking or obstructive acts, where trump, you know, is trying to stop investigations into himself or upend investigations into his allies or that make him look bad, like the cohen example. a lot of that type of behavior occurred around the mueller investigation and such. but there's -- there's another type of action, almost something more insidious, which is proactive use of the justice department. using the extraordinary powers of the justice department to go out after enemies of the state, enemies of the president, and it's a totally different type of move, because it's using the

criminal process, the federal criminal process, something that we all put a lot of stake in and a lot of stock in, and in which the government has enormous powers to come into someone's life and to not only find out, you know, what's under their bed but put them in prison. and it was the use of that in this book which is -- which makes it different. we've seen donald trump try and obstruct a lot of different things, a lot of different investigations into him. but the proactive use is what's different and distinct here. >> frank, i'll give you the last word. is that -- those proactive targeting and you know, he succeeded. just because jeff berman refused to prosecute greg craig, he still gets prosecuted. a jury found him not guilty in five hours. john kerry didn't get prosecuted but he was investigated. are those the sort of things that you think a round of accountable is still called for? >> yeah. there needs to be consequences,

and that would be fodder for and a predication we just in our discussion we've established predication to open at least a preliminary inquiry, if not greater. and look, in the last couple of days, on the far-right media platforms, you've seen this allegation that president biden must have ordered the fbi search warrant at mar-a-lago. he must have. well, it's not just disinformation. it's also this mindset that michael speaks of, this kind of imperial presidency mindset of, well, that's how we would have done it. we would have ordered a search warrant on someone who we don't like. so, biden must have done it. that's the operating methodology here, and it needs to be investigated. >> that's so interesting. i mean, it sort of gets back to where we started with the politics of projection. some of what he says we now know he says because it's what he did and it's what he found people inside doj all too willing to do for him. an amazing, amazing new trove of information. we'll continue to dig through it together as the book becomes

public next week as we said, we'll get to speak to geoff berman ourselves on tuesday. frank figliuzzi, thank you for spending time with us. we are grateful. mike and eddie stick around. when we come back, mike will take us through his latest reporting this week about a new effort by democrats, some of them in congress, some of them in the states, to try to bar donald trump from ever holding office again. a potentially uphill fight to officially brand trump as an insurrectionist is next. plus, the brand-new anti-trump ad that calls out the disgraced twice-impeached ex-president's supporters for falling victim to his grift. it seems to have really irked him. and later in the program, it is the dawning of a new era in the uk as the nation in mourning hears from the first time from their new king, king charles iii. we'll have a live report from london. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. "deadline ws after a quick break.

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it's twice-impeached ex-president may or may not be mulling a run for president in 2024, but some democratic activists and members of congress aren't taking any chances. "the new york times" reported this week that they're doing this instead. "drafting new legislation and writing a flurry of lawsuits seeking to use an obscure clause in the constitution to brand him an insurrectionist." the plans amount to an extraordinarily long-shot effort to accomplish what multiple investigations of trump have failed to do, fore close any chance that the former president could regain power. while previous attempts to bar sitting members of congress, including madison cawthorn and marjorie taylor greene, from

holding office have failed, the effort gained new momentum this week in a judge in new mexico removed griffin from his post as commissioner of a new mexico county, branding him an insurrectionist for his participation in the january 6th riot. we're back with mike schmidt, whose byline is on that piece of "times" reporting and eddie glaude. mike, tell me if this is a sort of topdown legislative proposal or if this is a grassroots activist kind of push and what the chances are for success. >> i think it's both. i think that democrats and anti-trump republicans realize that you could be a convicted, imprisoned felon and still elected president of the united states. and for up until the first six months of this year into the summer, i think there was a lot of doubt on the left about whether the justice department was going to do anything in regards to trump and his allies around january 6th.

and i still think that on the left, folks say, well, even if there is something, what else can be done to try and stop trump from becoming president again? and some of these ideas are novel. this is not an ordinary process that we're seeing play out. this is not something that is the typical part of a election year back and forth. but it's an attempt to try and use other measures to try and stop trump. and i think that many folks have looked at the justice department from back when comey was running the fbi, as the place that was going to be the bulwark against trump. but we are -- we've seen more than a handful of major congressional and justice department investigations into trump and the results are usually the same.

so, folks on the left are saying, okay, what else can be done? what else can we come up with that could potentially upend trump and stop him? >> you know, eddie, mike's not wrong, but the reason is also always the same. it's always, republicans carving him out from the laws of legal and political gravity that apply to everyone else. literally, the same republicans who chanted "lock her up" with cameras on their faces in the light of day don't think that having another country's nuclear secrets in their house is anything that anyone should make a big whoop about. i mean, the one reason why two impeachments, the mueller probe, the cohen investigation we're learning from jeff berman was badly meddled with, i mean, the reason is the same but the result is also the same, that he still is a viable player on the political field, very much capable of winning the republican nomination in 2024. >> nicole, that's so right. and as i was listening to mike and as i read the piece, i was trying to say that perhaps

there's a kind of misplaced focus or emphasis. yes, okay, so, if you rid the political landscape of trump, what then? because it's not just trump. trump is a kind of cynic -- you know, he's a kind of representation of a much deeper, problematic, that you've just laid out. that is to say, he's not -- we're not going to remove trumpism by removing trump from the playing field. i just don't believe that's the case. we're going to have to deal with what's at the heart of the problem, and at the heart of the problem is this feeling, at least i believe so, and i think the data backs me up on this, the feeling that a certain demographic in this country believes that they are under cultural and demographic threat. so, trump could be the object of a certain kind of leftist plot to keep him from running for office, but that's not going to resolve the problem at the heart of the polity, that there are all of these people who believe what he represents, because in

fact, he represents them. >> you always make the political profound, eddie. let me ask you this, though, as a political matter, should they pursue this strategy? >> i think our energy should be placed elsewhere, to be honest with you. >> yeah. >> unless he's convicted, i think we need to go at the root. tap the root, not the surface, not the leaves. the root. >> mike schmidt, is there any indication that this is part of the legislative recommendations that the january select committee will present in their final report? >> it's -- this is something that members of the committee have talked about, and have looked at. i think this is something that raskin, as we pointed out in the story, is particularly interested in, himself a constitutional scholar. >> yeah. >> and you know, raskin has worked very closely with cheney, and this would seem to be something that would fit into a final version of the report, some sort of recommendation along these lines about how laws

could be changed or used. so, it would fit into that. >> the kinds of things they're looking at. so interesting. mike schmidt, thank you. eddie sticks around. when we come back, a new ad from the lincoln project calling out trump's lie for what it really always was, a big grift. we'll be back with that after a quick break. grift we'll be back with that after a ick break. my name is douglas. i'm a writer/director and i'm still working. in the kind of work that i do, you are surrounded by people who are all younger than you. i had to get help somewhere along the line to stay competitive. i discovered prevagen. i started taking it and after a period of time, my memory improved. it was a game-changer for me. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. plain aspirin could be hurting your stomach. vazalore 325 liquid-filled aspirin capsule is clinically shown in a 7 day study to cause fewer ulcers than immediate release aspirin. vazalore.

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it's not a solution. 90% of the money goes to the out-of-state corporations who wrote it. very little is left for the homeless. don't let corporations exploit homelessness to pad their profits. vote no on 27. trump told you the election was stolen to rip you off, to

sucker you, to take your hard-earned money and shovel it into his pockets. he spent it on himself. not to take back the white house. it was the biggest scam in political history. every dollar you sent him paid to keep his shaky business empire and lavish lifestyle going. it was a sucker's game all along. and you know who the sucker is? it's you. >> it's the new lincoln project ad that has gotten under trump's skin, delivering an inconvenient and difficult truth to trump's supporters, that in the end, all that he wanted was to sucker and scam them with his big lies about election fraud so that they would become regular -- there's been reporting about this -- regular automated small-dollar monthly donors, and as we discussed in the last hour, it turns out the justice department is very interested in this topic as well. adding it to their ongoing criminal investigation into january 6th.

"new york times" is reporting that subpoenas have been issued to several aides this week by a federal grand jury, and they show that the doj is interested in "the inner workings of the save america pac." mr. trump's main fund-raising vehicle after losing the election. joining us, rick wilson, cofounder of the lincoln project. eddie is still around. rick, you are the most -- and i say this with -- as a compliment -- the most effective trolls of donald trump, and this really triggered him, and it seems that that's -- that makes sense. it's cutting off his money, cutting off his financial relationship with his supporters, which from his end, cut him off from them. what use would they be to him? >> you know, i always say it's not trolling when you've got a fish on the line. he always takes the bait on these things. what we're doing with this ad in particular is telling his donors, there was never an election defense fund. this was always a, donald trump needs to pay his american

express bill fund. there was never any serious effort at all to really overturn the election in the legal space. he wanted to make sure, as you said, that he could milk these people dry, and every month the disability check comes and bang, half of it goes to trump. he was looking at this as a colossal -- and the most successful business, frankly, that trump's ever had in his life. >> yeah, i mean, and eddie, to your profound point in the last conversation about getting to the root of trumpism, the investment of their hard-earned money in his vision for the country is right there at the root of the problem our democracy faces right now. >> absolutely. and you know, i love what rick and the lincoln project is doing and has been doing, but you know what i was thinking as i was listening and watching? i was thinking about jim and tammy faye baker, being revealed as frauds. i'm thinking about all those

folks who to go to see wrestling matches and they know it's fake but they spend money anyway. i understand what it means to expose him as an expert level grifter, but there's something at the level of the psyche that's speaking to this sense of grievance and this sense of resentment that trumpism -- that trumpism attracts, and so i wonder how the lincoln project will get at that, even as they expose this grifting component of trumpism itself. >> sure. >> rick, you want to show some cards there? >> sure. of course. you know, eddie, first off, i couldn't love you more now that you're also a d&d guy. but i will say this. what we've been doing for a long time is splitting off small amounts of trump's vote. we all it the bannon line. it was named by steve bannon. he said, if they split off 3% to 8% of the gop, trump can't win. we said, hold my beer. so, we're splitting off fractions at a time in the effort to weaken his base, weaken his fund-raising, to

disrupt his operations, to make it harder and harder for him to be the only fish in the pond because, you know, we view donald trump still as the presumptive nominee in 2024. we think we need to be ready for that. and so the war against trump has to continue at a pace and a cadence that some people would like to pretend doesn't have to happen, but he is still the presumptive nominee, and you've got to start working on this well in advance. you can't be like 2015 or '16 and say, oh, we'll get to him in august or september of the election year for president. that's not how this can work. we've got to step this out quicker and more harshly than most people would want. >> it seems, eddie, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. one of the things people seem to be taking very seriously is his political viability. we talk about this all the time. i mean, it's hard to look. it's like looking at the sun, right? but on the right, he is propped up. he's rehabilitated night after night after night and conservative media points the

arrow they project trump sends on to the state, on to the fbi, on to the doj, on to the white house, and i wonder, eddie, you always pull the conversation to its more authentic roots. how do you right that while carrying out sort of the political task of weakening a party's most prominent figure but also protecting and preserving the institutions that protect us all? >> yeah, it's a very hard -- it's a very hard task to do. you have to aggressively go after those who are challenging -- who are threatening the very foundations of the republic. and at the same time, i think we have to offer a vision of who we can be. there's a sense in which at the heart of the -- at the heart of trumpism, it's this idea that america must remain a white nation, that it has to be this narrow constituency. those folks who feel a sense of grievance. we have to give voice, as we go after these folks, not those folk who feel displaced and marginalized and on the fringe,

but these folks who are threatening the foundation of our republic, we have to offer this notion of what frederick douglass would call this composite nation. we have to fight for it as aggressively as they're fighting for their vision. so we have to punch the bully in the mouth, and at the same time, tell him, this is why you shouldn't be a bully. this is the way we are. put forward a vision of who we can be. what rick and the lincoln project's doing, they're throwing heavy blows, throwing hands, as we would say back home, but at the same time, we got to put forward that vision, that robust vision of who we can be in spite of what we're seeing in our politics today, if that makes sense. i'm not sure. >> it totally does. and you took it out of, you know, something that could have been shallow and made it deep. you both did. thank you for that. rick wilson, eddie glaude, thank you for spending time with us. shifting gears for us, it's been a day unlike anything we've seen in more than seven decades, a new monarch on the british throne. what king charles iii told his nation in his first address as their king, next. on in his firss their king, next

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journey to join my dear late papa, i want simply to say this. thank you. >> it's a new era today, that was king charles iii addressing britons and his late mother on his first full day as their king. after 70 years as her heir apparent, he was greeted warmly by a large crowd outside buckingham palace. most of them and most people everywhere have never witnessed what we're seeing now, the transition from one monarch to another. let's bring in the best person in the world to talk to about it, nbc news senior international correspondent, keir simmons. you're working long shifts but you've seen everything that's happened. tell me if the shock that you were expressing, that you and the nation felt, at queen elizabeth's death, has changed into something different, acceptance, or acceptance of charles or tell me where the

mood of the country is. >> reporter: that's a great question, actually, isn't it? because there are so many mixed emotions. when you lose someone and when it comes to grief, and today was that kind of a day, really. there was certainly the feeling this morning that you were going about your business, distracted, getting on with things, and then suddenly, you'd stop and kind of go, the queen is dead. and it would hit you almost as much as it hit you the day before when it happened. so, there was that, and then there was -- that's the shock, i guess. there was the grief too and the amazing tributes about her and the way that she conducted her life and her dedication to duty. i have to say, though, nicole, there was also today an awful lot of laughter, a lot of celebration of the kind of person that she was and the twinkle in her eye, as one of her sons described it, her sense of fun. great story, for example, and

there's so many. the thing about the queen, there are so many stories, but let me just share one with you that was shared today, and that was up near balmoral, where she died, and she was, according to this story, out in the town, and she met a group of american tourists. they didn't realize -- she's a little old lady and they didn't realize she's the queen. so they start talking to her. listen, it's so exciting, isn't it? she's with her bodyguard and her royal protection. it's so exciting, isn't it? have you ever met the queen before. she looks straight and says dead pan to her bodyguard, i haven't but he has. stories like that again and again and that made it somewhat joyous. again, this feeling that people will understand from their own families, and i understand in a way we've said it already, that's what you get from the royal family in some ways, isn't

it, a reflection, a chance to think about your life and the challenges you have but at a distance looking at a different family. and everybody will recognize that kind of sense of mourning but also of kind of putting a smile on your face when you think about the life of someone you loved. >> but i think you've also been really upfront about the fact that even in our own families, someone's advanced age and a life well lived as her son said today does not make this moment any easier. i wondered as someone who's covered the family and the country, what you saw in charles today? >> yeah, charles did a very, very good job. you have to paint yourself looking at him outside buckingham palace as he stepped out of his car and stepped into history. you are not looking at prince charles but at king charles. he walked into buckingham palace, a new monarch walking in for the first time in 70 years

and it was an interesting mix. it was an impressive mix really. a genuine man in mourning, tearful about his mom and also a balance of love for harry and meghan. i thought that was an important message. continuity but change too. william and kate becoming the prince and princess of wales. the princess of wales, that title of course, which hasn't been held since princess diana. so he's trying to walk that tight rope that the queen walked which is to be a rock, to be a point of stability but then also to modernize. >> it's so great. no one better to talk to about all of this. thank you for staying up to talk to us. keir simmons, thank you so much. >> you bet. >> a quick break for us. we will be right back. us. we will be right back. thanks, dad. that's right, robert. and it's never too early to learn you could save with america's number one motorcycle insurer. that's right, jamie. but it's not just about savings.

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before we go for the week an update from ukraine, where president zelenskyy says ukrainian forces have regained ground in the battleground of kharkiv. he told his nation this, quote, in total more than 1,000 square kilometers of the territory of ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of september. that's just nine days. ukrainian and u.s. officials say the operation is ongoing, but it is a significant moment. russia had first gained occupation of parts of kharkiv back in february in the early days of the war in ukraine. another break for us, we'll be right back. kraine another break for us, we'll be right back

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during what was really truly an extraordinary week of news. we're so grateful. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. hi, ari. >> welcome to "the beat." we begin our program tonight with the ongoing scandal that has really engulfed donald trump's post presidency in a way that few would have predicted even two or three months ago. an inflection point is approaching. we know that right now because the justice department and trump together face this joint deadline, midnight tonight, to file their candidates for the procedural motion that trump did win, which mandates some extra review by