bewitched defense that he somehow can sort of magically transform documents into unclassified documents. >> if that's the case, well then, anybody can just magically wave a wand, and poof, reclassify them. this whole thing is just so insane to hear a former president of our country say this out loud. >> trump defense of the indefensible is getting more absurd by the day, and now his hand-picked judge has received an embarrassing rebuke from a panel of appeals court judges. also tonight, new york attorney general exposes trump's most sensitive insecurity. the fact that he's not nearly as rich as he claims to be. something my guest tim o'brien forced trump to admit in court a decade ago. >> and the performative sadism of ron desantis, as the daily beast describes it, few other politicians seem to get as much glee out of seeing other people

get hurt. >> we begin tonight with a simple rule of legal professionals. in most cases whenever possible, keep your clients off tv and avoid letting them do interviews, which usually do more harm than good. unfortunately, donald trump's lawyers are needy, attention craving client could only hold out for so long, so last night on one of his favorite shows in an interview with his friend, sean hannity, he seemed to make a losing argument even worse. in his latest throw spaghetti at the wall defense or is it throw ketchup at the wall? trump made this outrageous claim about his magical powers to declassify documents. >> if you're the president of the united states, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified. even by thinking about it. because you're sending it to mar-a-lago or to wherever you're sending it. and it doesn't have to be a process. there can be a process, but there doesn't have to be. you're the president. you make that decision, so when you send it, it's declassified.

i declassified everything. >> of course, moments earlier, trump again applied that the fbi may have actually planted those very documents that he supposedly declassified. unfortunately for trump, we are not all living in an episode of "bewitched" and he cannot just wiggle his nose and expect classified material to miraculously become unclassified. even if he could, that would also mean the material he knowingly declassified including what has been reported as info about a foreign nation's nuclear capabilities, and beyond all of that absurdity, trump appeared to indicate he intentionally sent those documents to mar-a-lago and perhaps two other places we don't yet know about. so much for it all just being one big accident. now, none of this actually helps trump's legal team, which is also dealing with the news last night of a much needed course correction from our judicial

branch. the 11th circuit court of appeals cleaned up the mess created by the trump appointed district judge who ruled trump had apparently potential right to the classified documents he stole from the white house when he left the white house. in a reputeiation of aileen cannon's rule, they sided with the department of justice allowing them to resume using its more than 100 documents in the criminal investigation and removing it from the special master's view. counter to judge cannon's new, they said for our part, we can't understand why the plantf would have an interest in or need for any of the 100 documents with classified markings. for trump's repeated claims he just declassified everything magically like i dream of jeannie, the court of appeals writes that that argument is irrelevant, quote, in any event, at least for these purposes thrk declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its

content or render it personal. as a result of the decision by the appeals court, judge cannon has already revised her initial order for the special master. removing any references to the classified material that was seized from mar-a-lago. joining me now is a former senior director for counterterrorism at the national security council and associate professor at the university of michigan's ford school of public policy, and barbara mcgrade, former u.s. attorney and professor at the university of michigan law school. barbara, i'm going to start with you. it feels like order has been restored and the judiciary's dignity has been restored. i sat and read this 11th circuit court ruling and it read to me like you're an idiot, you're an idiot, and you're an idiot, and what? it read to me like a rebuke. how did you read it? >> absolutely, it was such a good day for the rule of law. and i know sometimes people are very cynical about the idea that there are trump appointed judges

on this panel, but they followed the law. they described it, and they really shot down the opinion written by judge cannon in the district court. and as you said, to me, the most important line in the whole thing is this idea of declassification is just a red herring. it doesn't matter that donald trump, if he did declassify these documents, because it doesn't change or transform them into personal records. so sometimes when something is so far afield, it's difficult to know even where to begin, but they very methodically walked through all of the mistakes made in judge cannon's order and restored order and some faith in the rule of law. >> the thing is, i feel like their ruling, because you, same. it seemed like he wanted to be the special master in a way. all these documents that you can't say that you have some

sort of possessory interest in something that isn't yours. that seems like, you know, not even law school 101. and so when you look at what this 11th circuit did, how do you then think about this judge? because there's no grounding in what she did. is what she did somehow corrupt in your view? >> i don't know. i don't want to call her corrupt. i like to assume good faith when a judge makes a decision. but it was so profoundly wrong, you know, the idea that a special master may be appropriate to review attorney/client privilege in the case of a lawyer would have been a stretch, but in this case, fine, it's harmless enough. that she extended it to executive privilege seemed wrong when it's the very executive branch itself that wands these documents. but the part that was entirely over the top was dismissing the government's assertion that these documents were classified, that they were government records, that they belonged to the united states, and even

under the presidential records act, it is the u.s. government that owns them, even if the president is permitted to access them upon request. so everything about it was wrong to varying degrees, so i don't know if she was just working very hard to in a case of significant public opinion bend over backwards to show every courtesy to a president she did say that she considered his status as a former president to be significant, but of course, in this country, we're supposed to consider every litigant to be equal before the law. >> exactly. j javad, let me bring you in here. everything he said in this interview seemed ill advised. here he is attacking the national archives which is like a library. >> you have a lot of problems with nara. nar nara is a radical left group of people running that thing. you send documents over there, i would say there's a very good chance a lot of these documents will never be seen again.

>> never be seen again by you. they're in the national archives. this is what andrew wiseman said, it's just an admission that he intentionally did not return the documents. it's not a legal defense at all. what deyou make of the fact he openly admitted on tv, i yeah, i took the documents, you can't trust them. they're the liberal nara? >> great to be with you and my colleague barb from the university of michigan. to get to these questions, it's just another example of president trump sort of reaching in different moments of time for different strategies that may sort of try to throw the trail off his potential culpability here. so attacking nara, suggesting these other kind of schemes are in place, it seems to be part of the playbook. and going back to some of the earlier points that you raised in the beginning of the clip about the classification process, the president, even though he has or they have broad

powers under article 2 as commander in chief, cannot magically declassify anything on a whim. it has to go through a formal pros. i know it's very deliberate, very methodical. the intelligence community has to take a step back and look at the potential risk to intelligence sources, methods, and any mitigation plan to restore a lost collection once you declassify something. so none of that happened in this case. and again, this claim that he just thought about declassifying something and it thereby made these super sensitive documents automatically declassified just doesn't hold any water. >> i think therefore it's declassified, if that were the case, any president's thoughts could become incredibly dangerous. these are classified for a reason. they're protecting national security. some country's nuclear secrets apparently are in these documents. talk about how the intelligence community now can move forward. donald trump is accusing the fbi of planting the documents in his house. first he said he took them, then

he said no, they were planted by the fbi. judge dearie said prove it. he said bring me back evidence that somebody planted something there that wasn't already there. so every one of his claims is knocked down, but talk about the importance for the investigation and national security of this country that now the government can reaccess these documents. >> well, the office of the director of national intelligence, according to media reporting, is conducting a damage assessment based on the classified documents that were recovered at mar-a-lago. and those are only the ones that we know of, we don't know what's missing but the ones that were recovered, really digging into those and seeing how sensitive the sources and methods reveals in these documents and i would assume these were intelligence assessments, not individual reports of a particular type of intelligence. but even collectively, there's a lot of intelligence material to sift through, and now it's a question of, again, who had

access to what, has potentially any of those assessments, could they have now been in possession of somebody else or did someone remember details and shared it with someone who didn't have security clearance. and where it goes from there could be a game of telephone. this is going to take a while, just even on the intelligence side, forget about the law enforcement criminal side that barbara is more familiar with, to figure out the damage that potentially could have been done. again, if collection has been lost on certain topics, how do weget that back? and that sometimes you may not get that back once you lose it, and something becomes declassified. this is going to be an ongoing challenge for the intelligence community. >> i want to ask you both. given the fact that donald trump asserted, essentially these are mine, i want them, and also that his lawyers wanted to see them again and they seem to have this sort of possessiveness toward them, would that prompt you as an investigator and a national security professional to want to, i don't know, search his

other properties to city if he's got more? >> well, i think that's potentially in play here because even in the mar-a-lago case, if folks remember, beyond what was recovered, there were apparently other blank folders labeled classified, whether they had cover sheets on them, it's not clear to me, but there may have been additional classified information, and again, probably intelligence assessments in those folders, and where are those? and who had access to them? and what do they contain? these are all questions we don't know on the missing, potentially missing material. >> absolutely, and barbara, given the fact we now have sort of two kind of types of judges. one judge who was very solicitous, we'll say that, solicitous of donald trump's claims that he could go back to if bedminster was searched, but you also have the 11th circuit saying no, no, these belong to the government and they have the interest in them. what do you think would be the hurdles that theoretically if

the doj were to say, now we do want to search other properties, could trump play the same game again and go back to the same judge, cannon, and do this dance again? >> well, if they looked in bedminster, the jurisdiction of a judge in that district. so district of new jersey if we're talking about bedminster. to get in the door there, they would need to be able to establish, doj would, probable cause not only that a crime has been committed which i think they have established, but also probable cause to believe the documents would be stored at that location. so i can imagine part of the damage assessment and the criminal investigation is to investigate what happened to these documents in the missing folders and interview people who work at bedminster to find out if they have seen evidence of this. if they have a witness who says, oh, yeah, i saw boxes come in door, that could be a probable cause. if trump wanted to challenge that, he would have to do it in new jersey and begin his judge shopping again. >> if you want to talk about

trump, in the grill, there are documents. what is this? whatever jurisdiction. so cannon can't control it all. interesting. thank you both very much. appreciate you both. >> up next on "the reidout," in his business dealings trump has gaupten away with lying and cheating for so long. he thinks it's his god-given right. now it's all out on the table. and he's in big trouble. "the reidout" continues after this. ♪♪ here goes nothing. hey greg. um...hello? it's me, your heart! really? yes! recording an ekg in 30 seconds. tada! wow that was fast! good news, pal. i'm not detecting any of the six most common arrhythmias. what next? let's get some fresh air. been cooped up for too long.

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audience to ever witness an inauguration, period. both in person and around the globe. >> remember that? when newly minted press secretary sean spicer presented that whopper the day after the former president's inauguration, you would be forgiven for thinking it was ridiculous, because it was, but only if you were not familiar with his then-boss. since donald trump's entire existence has been one giant hyperexaggeration, especially when it comes to his supposed wealth. >> i built something that's recognized even today as being immense and potentially extremely valuable. >> you put up $600 million for this? >> absolutely, assuming i'm doing well. >> do you have $600 million to spare? >> absolutely. part of the beauty is me is i'm rich. >> i don't need anybody's money. it's nice. >> i don't care, i'm really rich. >> then they had, oh, but he'll

never put in his financials. because maybe he's not as rich as people think. >> but then it turned out i was much richer. now they're really screwed up. much richer. >> i did too well, that's the way, i cane be bought. >> well, in the midst of all that, in 2005, author tim o'brien wrote his book "trump nation." but trump actually wasn't a billionaire, as he had claimed to be. and people he had spoken to estimated trump's net worth at between $150 million and $2 gift million. still a lot of money but not a billion. habitual donald trump made the decision to sue o'brien. trump, of course, lost, but in the process, made obrie one of the few people to see trump challenge on his lies under oath. more than 30 times in fact in a december 2007 deposition. tim o'brien joins me now. he's senior executive editor of

bloomberg. we have talked about this so many times over the years. i'm so glad to get a chance to talk to you again about it today. the thing about donald trump is he's always lied and claiming to be a billionaire and fronting as a billionaire, it's fundamental to his brand. it's why he got "the apprentice." they sold this complete bs, and people bought it, including the media. >> well, and the idea also that he was self-made. >> yes. >> you know, donald trump is a guy who was born on third base and spent his life telling people he hit a triple. he would not have been able to enter the manhattan real estate market without his father's money, joy. his father bailed him out repeatedly when he made numerous different mistakes by taking on debt, not running businesses properly, et cetera. and you know, one of the interesting things in my book is the pages that discuss his net worth are only two to three pages of a much longer book, and

that's what he zeroed in on. i think the reason he zeroed in on it is because he's so wildly insecure about who he is and what he's done that he constantly needs to bloviate, and by the way, it's not just his wealth. he talks about his intellect, about how attractive he is to women, he talks about his physicality, his money. there is nothing about his identity that he's not insecure about, but he sees money as a scorecard. and the reality is he was never the biggest real estate developer in manhattan. he is not a self-made man. and at the time i was writing the book, he was telling me he was worth anywhere from $3 billion to $9 billion. sometimes those valuations differed in the same day. when i spent time with him. and i think the fact that he decided to sue me over it is a reflection of how aware he is that his lies reside very close to the surface. and of course, the difference when i wrote the book was i was not a prosecutor.

and now, that same grade inflation that he indulged in is the subject of an indictment. >> i mean, it's all coming apart. the thing that's so ironic, and we have talked about this in the past. if he had not run for president, he probably would have continued to get away with it. cy vance had no intention of ever touching him, leerily. didn't do anything. he was there forever. he has gotten away with this forever. the closest he ever got to a b in billion is losing $900 million, like going in the hole almost a billion. that's the closest he got to it. let me read from the 2007 deposition. lawyer, mr. trump, have you always been completely truthful about your net worth of properties? >> trump, i try. lawyer, have you ever not been truthful? >> my net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and even my feelings. >> his network is based on his feelings? >> the translation of that is i make it up. you know, at another point in

that same deposition, joy, we were asking about how he figured out the value of some of his various golf courses. and he acknowledged, he said he didn't -- just standard profit and loss statements that would help him figure out how profitable the golf courses were. all or not that was true, he said it in the deposition. my lawyer said, how do you calculate the value of the golf courses. he said i use mental projections. and donald trump's entire life is about mental projections. >> yes, and the power of positive thinking. he passed it on to his sons. it was his own son, the younger one, who told us, no, we don't need loans. we get our money from russia, and it shocked people, like you get your money from russia, and wanted to investigate it. let's go through -- >> that's eric trump who said that, and eric is the same individual who took the fifth i think over 500 times during his deposition with letitia james' prosecutors. that's going to be tested in

court now. >> exactly. here's another from the deposition. have you ever lied in public statements about your properties? you always when you're making a public statement, you want to put the most positive, you want to say it the most positive way possible. i'm no different from a politician running for office. you want to put your best foot forward. but tim, he said his old 1980s era 11,000-square-foot triplex in trump tower was 30,000 square feet. and worth like $300 million. that isn't just lying. it's madness. go ahead. >> it's pathologic. he also added invisible floors to trump tower to increase the height of the building. he lied about what he was paid in speaking fees. he lied about the amount of money he got for condominiums when he sold them. he's lied about his grades, about his academic record. >> yes. >> i think the issue for tish james is convincing a jury that he is so successfully duped his lenders that a crime was

committed. that's a high hurdle. i think it's a civil case. and i think she's got a lot of wind at her back, but that, you know, that gap between exaggeration, believeiation, and lying and committing a crime is the test of this whole thing. >> it absolutely is. it's going to be fascinating to watch. if it becomes criminal, it's a higher burden of proof. tim, thank you. >> and coming up next, the january 6th committee confirms the date of what may be their final hearing. and that they will be talking with ginni thomas about her own attempts to overturn the election. we'll be right back. don't mind me. i'm just the flu.

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we had real hearings, and 25, 30 million americans watching because we told the truth about donald trump's assault on democratic institutions and the right to vote in america. and maybe you can't handle the truth, but that's the reality, and nobody has laid a glove on any of the testimony that has come out during those hearings. >> next week, that january 6th committee is set to hold its final hearing. republicans with the exception of liz cheney and adam kinzinger, have refused to engage in the investigation, choosing instead to further the big lie. well, yesterday, one of those conservative activists and

election deniers, ginni thomas, wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas, agreed to meet with the committee to discuss her role in promoting the overturned of the 2020 elec. mrs. thomas talked with mark meadows about rejecting the results and emailed lawmakers in arizona and wisconsin, urging them to overturn the results weeks after joe biden was elected president. while thomas was scheduling her meeting with the committee, the house passed a bill that would prevent people like ginni thomas from launching another coup. the bill introduced by california democrat zoe lofgren and wyoming republican liz cheney would reform the electoral count act by clarifying ambiguous language which trump and his allies exploited. the bill makes crystal clear that despite what trump might say, the vice president does not have the power to reject the will of the people. the senate is working on its own version. now, tellingly, 203 republicans, the majority of their house caucus, rejected the

legislation. in so doing, they refused to put a stop to any future january 6th. a violent state on american democracy. officer eugene goodman, an army veteran seen here luring rioters away from the senate chambers, likely saving lawmakers' lives in the process, testified on wednesday at the trial of one of the men who led the mob that he faced down. what he told jurors and what republicans want to ignore, is that what happened on that day was purely medieval, and this afternoon, the secret service agent who was the january 6th site agent for mike pence testified at that same trial, and she was asked by the government if in her 13 years of service had she ever, ever had protectees come this close to danger, and she said no. joining me now is david plouffe, msnbc political analyst and former obama white house political adviser. thank you for being here. i want to start with ginni thomas because it is unprecedented for us to even know the name of the spouse of a

supreme court justice. i don't think i could name any of their spouses. but she's become quite famous, quite infamous for participating in and encouraging a coup. ginni thomas urged white house chief of staff to pursue efforts to overturn the election, and according to texts, urged lawmakers to overturn the election losses in wisconsin and in arizona. she was involved. what do you expect to come of her conversations, what do you think might come of her conversations with the committee? >> well, joy, i think most of us, anyway, wish this would be televised and all of america can see it, but i think we should be careful about questioning the january 6th committee. they really delivered the goods. they have done a tremendous job. they got a lot of criticism in the beginning and told an amazing story. these are unprecedented times except that we're reminded that we repeat history all the time. i'm watching the new ken burns documentary, america and the holocaust on pbs, and there's this line in the first episode where the narrator says, most of

the conservative politicians who enabled hitler to rise to the leader of germany didn't believe in everything he believed in and thought they could control him, but they all believed that it was time for democracy to end. and whether it's ginni thomas, unfortunately probably her husband, we saw those members of the house who didn't vote to protect the election from another coup in 2024, that seems to be the central organizing principle of one of america's two political parties. is they would just be fine, some of them, with democracy dying. many of them see it as what they really want in my view is to be unaccountable, to the law, to the voters, to the press, and it's scary. i hope what comes out of this hearing is the committee learned more about her role, the messages. we know the messages she sent, text and email. i'm sure there's more. that will give us a bigger picture because this was all a conspiracy. this wasn't independent actors acting on their own. they were organized and their cheerleader was sitting behind

the resolute desk in the oval office. >> what brings it all together and what is equally frightening is you had this because they didn't like the fact their candidate didn't win this one election. they don't question their own elections in the same race. if you're in the house, but they didn't like the results of that. but then in the states what you're seeing the same party doing is saying we want to strip women of their rights over their own bodies but we want to make it so hard to vote that you can't punish us for it. you're right. they want to be unaccountable and in permanent power and to stay in power and do to women, people of color, immigrants, whatever they want with no accountability. it scares me that so many americans are okay with that. >> well, joy, i think because a lot of americans think it's episodic. well, they were just having to defend trump, but when he's off the stage, if he ever gets off the stage, they will be more sensible, or they really won't go through with it. it's scary to stare it in the face and understand how close we are to losing our democracy.

but you only have to look around the country at who republicans have nominated. yes, in many governors races and senate races, but how about secretary of state races. the people who run elections in major battleground states, the republican nominees are saying they think the last election was invalid, so they can position themselves to insure their candidate never loses. your point about permanent power is an important one. this isn't episodic. this isn't an interregnum in the early 2020s. this is a desire. it's organized, it's planned. it's thought out, and i think it's going to be persistent to make sure that they never lose elections again that their care about. they have to be defeated at the ballot box and soundly. >> absolutely, i think about this electoral count act reform. only nine republicans felt comfortable voting for it in the house, and they're all lame ducks. and in the senate, you have i think ten who are now onboard, but they're also on the lame

duck side. and here's the other thing. it's not even clear that the senate version of this bill would fix it. because it would -- mark allys has raised concerns it would codify the idea that the governor would be the final arbiter of whose state of electors gets counted. what if the governor is kari lake? what it's doug mastriano? that didn't help. >> right, no one knows election law better than mark elias, and nobody can interpret the what could happen with these laws. i think the intention in the senate is positive. so we should applaud those ten republican senators. we should applaud the nine republican house members no matter how small the number is, but that tells you that almost every house republican and at least 80% or close to that of senate republicans and i would argue most governors around the country, most elected officials, they do not want to protect the

election from a wanna be dictator and autocrat, so those numbers are so startling. and that's why hopefully the house and senate can reconcile, something gets passed and something that will protect our country. because listen, there's no question, we don't know what 2024 holds, but most of our presidential elections in the last couple generations are close. we should assume the next one is going to be close. anything that's not a historical landslide blowout is ripe for malfeasance, and that's why something passed out of congress is important, but it's got to fix the problem. >> the thing is, if there was just a ginni thomas, that would be one thing, but it's like 90% of them are ginni thomas. the conspiracy theories, the lack of belief in elections and the fact we're now actually having to talk about fascism in america. you're watching that pbs special, but we're dealing with fascism, open fascism in some cases right now in 2022.

it scares me a lot. and how hopeful are you that we can beat this back? >> well, i'm hopeful because i believe in people. i believe in young people. i believe in the promise of this country. but i think this is, you know, a 60/40 proposition maybe if you're an optimist because you look at who they nominated. up and down the ballot all across the country, there are election deniers. again, not just they're saying we think trump won because we have to say that. they're now saying, you know, going forward, they're going to make it harder to vote, and they want to set up systems so they decide who wins. we have to make sure that we have as good election as we can in '22. that is the precursor for '24. i mean, so what i say, joy, is mid-november of 2024, if we're still a democracy and we're a democracy on january 20th, 2025, i think we have made it through the worst, but i think that's very much an open question and that's a scary thing to say in

america. you look at that trump rally over the weekend with the hands raised. and you know, that is the scariest sight we have seen in american history. >> i'm telling you guys david plouffe is one of the most sober, serious, nonhysterical people, and if he's saying this, take it very seriously. i'm serious. this is not joy saying this. david plouffe would not be saying it if it were not 100% absolutely dead serious. take it seriously. david plouffe, thank you very much. i do appreciate you. >> up next, scary stuff. we say scaring is caring over here. speaking of fascist forces, the politics of cruelty featuring the right wing's new favorite performative sadist, governor ronald don desantis. but how his cruelty is colliding head on with america's sense of basic human decency, which still exists here. we're back after this.

migrants who were shipped like cargo from texas to martha's vineyard in an inhumane stunt by ron desantis are now suing him. the lawsuit alleges the venezuelan asylum seekers experienced cruelty akin to what they fled in their home country. cruelty. it's a word we hear a lot these days about the republican party.

in the case of ron desantis, the cruelty gets uglier by the day. operatives linked to desantis approached asylum seekers promising a flight to delaware the next day at 5:00 a.m. where there would be work, but the next morning there was no flight, leaving the migrants stranded. no reason was given. another scene in which david lurie calls the performative sadism of rob desantis for whom cruelty and humiliation have been central to his rise, all for the purpose of owning the libs, to prove he's as hateful as donald trump, maybe more so. cruel, sadistic. possibly criminal. descriptors that no longer hinder republican leaders but in fact elevate them, because as the great adam serwer wrote, the cruelty is the point. joining me now is adam serwer, author of the cruelty is the point, why trump's america endures. it's really grak great to talk

with you. i remind my team often when we talk about ron desantis, he came from the tea party, and what we remember about the tea party were the ugly rallies, the maungy dolls, the name calling, the hanging barack obama in effigy, but also flinging money down on a parkinson's patient in the street and being like, i'll start a pot because he was on the street literally, physically, and spitting on black members of congress as they walked into the capitol to sign a health care bill to get people health care. i think people have divorced him from that movement, but that's where he came from. what do you make of his cruelty politics? >> one of the reasons i wrote this book was to illustrate how throughout american history, cruelty has drawn a line between the people who are deserving of love and respect and those deserving of contempt and violence. if you're an ambitious republican right now, there way to win a primary, the way to win office is to seen being cruel to

one of these communities that conservatives are fixated on, and have that covered by fox news, who will rave about what a true conservative you are. and that shows your commitment to them in a way, when you are cruel to people who are outside of the community, who they believe are not deserving of respect, that shows your commitment to their community. and so in this paradoxical way, they see these sort of sadistic actions, even if you think liberals are hypocritical on immigration, we're talking about real people being exploited for this stunt. even if you want to call out that hypocrisy, you don't treat human beings this way to do it. the reason it is acceptable is because it is seen as a kind of act of commitment to the community that he feels like he represents which does not include the people who disagree with him on politics. >> i mean, yelling at kids because they have masks on to protect themselves. suing cruise lines because they would dare to try to stop covid from getting on the ships with

passengers. the things he does don't have policy priorities. they to me feel more like 1960s era whipping up a mob at the university of mississippi because james meredith was coming and then cheering it on as four people are what does it say about our country that so effective? >> i think it says that we have a system that is kind of majoritarian, and it rewards a specific coalition that has ideally, geographically distributed to exploit the -- to win the electoral college to control the senate. because of, that is very important for the party that represents this coalition to make sure that they always are on the verge of apocalypse, they are being threatened by these people who are different than them. when you're in the situation, you think your back is to the wall, your back is to the wall. you think the apocalypse is nigh. then you are willing to do

crazy things, or cruel things because you're thinking,, well i'm doing this to defend myself, it's part of my survival. i'm trying to save the country. it gives you a license. that gives you license to be cruel in this particular way. and i think that's why, when you see these donald trump or desantis giving these outlandish speeches, the liberals are doing this, the liberals are doing that, this crazy insane conspiracy, the point is to make these people afraid so they are willing to justify cruel acts towards people that they see as threatening them even though all these people are trying to come to a country and have a better life. >> you're right about this. and you talk about this, luncheons were part of a party and it was a part of being cruel together. it wasn't just due to the violence, but it was a license to do violence together so there is this horrible american tradition of this and i remember -- wonder if there's a way to counter politics that somehow mitigates it. >> it's not just human politics,

it's human nature, is that sort of primal thing when you're a kid and you tease the one kid who doesn't get in to show that you fit in with everyone else. it's that quality that human nature quality elevated to the level of politics. in the past, what has defeated, it is a willingness to engage in solidarity with the people who are different from you. and maybe the american political system was a little different, and the republican party could not have been in power with the sort of minority -- minority therrien coalition, rather, the could be able to reach outside their base to make it possible to simply deny someone else. when you look at the democratic party, it's not that liberals are more virtuous, you have to figure out a way to hipsters in brooklyn, church grandmas in south carolina, you have to be willing to work through your differences. >> it's such a pleasure, as

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and get healthier with golo. has been reached through the church more than likely believe in some of the conservative platform so it's much easier for them to get out and vote republican. so if republicans don't start energizing latino pastors and churches like democrats have been doing and dr. cha, is there will be no victory for conservative candidates across the country. >> latinos are the fastest growing voting bloc in the u.s., and in the valley of south texas, an increasing number of voting republican. tomorrow night, a new episode of msnbc's philip ford with paolo ramos, we will dig into what is behind the shift. joining me now is paulo around most. excited to watch paola, what are we going to learn? >> you're gonna learn what you just heard, that one of the things that republicans have found out is that if they go into latino evangelical

churches, immobilize, them and politicize them, you can actually get the result that they saw in the special election, which is for the first time in 100 years, there's a republican that is representing uvalde county. so your understanding the strategy, you'll understand the message that is resonating, we just got, family, country. and what we found finally is if a latina immigrant talks to latinos in this way, she has this incredible capacity to switch them over to the republican party in a way, joy, i haven't seen in the years that i've been in the rio grande valley. >> how is the abortion issue playing? polling wise, latinos and latinos are pro abortion majority, even though they are religious. how is that playing in the rejections? >> completely, that's what the national numbers will tell you. but what i found on the ground is that when i had conversations with on paper, latina democrats, and i asked, the more you pro bush, and many of them told me no. i would ask them to support same-sex marriage, many of them told me no. and i would ask them, have you

ever voted for a republican, ever? the majority of them told me no. why not? because they don't look like me. so, yes, you're right, the national numbers are telling us something, but in this specific district, it's abortion one of the reasons why a candidate like mira flores that used to support barack obama switched over to the republican party. as usual, latinos are not a monolith, it's complicated, i think it's a story that sheds light on that nuance. >> are both parties in the community trying to sway voters? what does that look like in south texas? in terms of the parties. >> that was the biggest question, joy. where was the dnc? someone like mira flores outraised her opponent 10 to 1, republicans gave her over 1 million dollars to spend on tv ads. her opponent had just over 130,000. that sort of the elephant in the room. where was the dnc? >> yeah. because you know what, outreach matters, and representation matters. i know it's true in politics in life, and in media. we like having you here. powell, i think. you be sure to watch the latest

addition afield report with powell that ramos, tomorrow 10 pm eastern. also streaming on peacock. a great young reporter, and you all should support her work. this was tonight's read out. all in with chris hayes starts right now. right now. >> tonight on all in -- >> if you're the president of the united states, you can declassified just by saying, it's declassified. even by thinking about it. because you are sending it to mar-a-lago, or to wherever you are sending it. >> he did it, and he admits it! trump confesses to sending top secret documents to his former retirement home. tonight, the deepening legal jeopardy for the disgraced ex president. then -- >> my husband told me the president spot me twice. so i'm wearing my trump button. >> they expected testimony from the wife of supreme court justice, clarence thomas. january six committee member pete aguilar joins me tonight. plus -- >> i believe there is some