i'll see you back in d.c. tomorrow, but for now, "deadline white house" with nicole wallace starts right now. ♪♪ hi there, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. as most of you know, we are reluctant here to cover the never-ending avalanche of ramblings of the twice-impeached ex-president. they are incoherent, riddled with lies, they fuel conspiracy theories. but the reason we cover a select number of these ramblings and smears and lies on this program is this. often, the targets of the ex-president's smears and verbal attacks become targets for real violence or worse. >> hang mike pence! hang mike pence!

>> oh, nancy, nancy, nancy. >> bring her out here. we're coming in if you don't bring her out. [ bleep ] you. you back up. >> hundreds of trump supporters radicalized by trump's lies in some of those cases specifically about what mike pence as vice president could and could not do. now, we also know that his grievances and lies sit at the fulcrum of a grave and growing current domestic violent extremism threat in the united states that law enforcement contends with every single hour of every day.

and lo and behold, donald trump, once again, over the weekend, lit a match to the tinderbox that is american politics with the midterm elections just weeks away now. the response, notably, from republican leaders, was particularly limp and pathetic. a statement by donald trump posted on his ailing platform went after senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, and his wife, elaine chao, in particularly personal times. chao resigned in the wake of the january 6th insurrection. we'll read "the washington post" reporting on this. "he has a death wish," trump posted late friday. criticizing mcconnell for agreeing to a deal to fund the government through december. he disparaged mcconnell's wife, elaine chao, who served as trump's transportation secretary and was born in taiwan, in racist terms. congresswoman marjorie taylor greene appeared at a trump

rally, saying, "democrats want republicans dead. and they have already started the killings." of course, a delusional thing to say. as for trump, a spokesman for him tells nbc news that it was, quote, absurd, to think the ex-president's comments could be taken as incitement to violence. it is the kind of defense that would require you to bury your head in the sand. of course, republicans are all too happy to do exactly that. here's the republican senator from florida, rick scott, shamefully refusing, over and over again, to denounce both donald trump and marjorie taylor greene's comments. >> what i quoted you was a phrase saying, mcconnell has a death wish. he said racist things about elaine chao. and then they have already started the killings? i mean, that's not a policy dispute, senator. the language is what i'm talking about. isn't that dangerous? >> i think we all have to figure

out how do we start bringing people together and have a common goal to give every american the opportunity to get a great job, their kids to have an education they believe they can be anything. >> and you would agree that that language doesn't bring people together? >> i believe that what the -- i believe what the president trump was talking about is the fact that we can't keep spending money, we are -- we're going to hurt our poorest families the most with this reckless democrat spending, and we cannot -- we got to stop it. we can't cave into their spending. >> okay, that's not what the former president said. and cocoa chao was the phrase he used to refer to a former cabinet secretary, elaine chao. >> look, he likes, you know, he gives people nicknames. >> so, if trump and greene were the first and second most disgraceful things that happened over the weekend, that was the third. it's worth noting that rick scott and multiple opportunities across multiple network

interviews to denounce trump and greene. ultimately, he finally sort of caved to what was going on, and on cnn, eked out this. "it's never okay to be a racist." a nonsensical statement that does not square with his ongoing support of donald trump, who's a proud racist and a proud participant in vigils for the charged felons of the insurrection. now, against this backdrop of all this is a yearslong spike in threats of violence and actual intimidation, confrontation, with critics of the twice-impeached ex-president bearing the brunt of all that. "new york times" reports, members of congress in both parties are experiencing a surge in threats and confrontations as a rise in violent political speeches that increasingly crossed over into the realm of in-person intimidation and physical altercation. in the months since the january 6th, 2021, attack on the capitol

when brought lawmakers and the vice president within feet of rioters, republicans and democrats have faced stalking, vandalism and assault. it is part of a chilling trend that many fear is only intensifying as lawmakers scatter to campaign and meet with voters around the country. ahead of next month's midterm congressional elections. the disgraced ex-president and the ongoing threat of political violence looming over our country is where we begin today. former fbi counterintelligence agent pete strzok is here. also joining us, charlie sykes editor-at-large of the bulwark, also an msnbc contributor who writes on this topic today. and former senator and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill is here. what is clear, pete strzok, is that we don't have a circuit breaker anymore. we don't have a thing that breaks the fever. i looked to see if mitch mcconnell had recanted in a statement he made to jonathan swan when he was asked, recently, this year, who he would support for president in

2024. that answer, right now, is donald trump. if it's changed, i think their office knows where to reach me. but what does it do when the person who targets politicians can still count on the support of said politicians? >> oh, nicole, it does nothing but encourage it. look, this is really, really concerning. after 9/11, the government spent untold man hours, resources, went to war and fought radical sort of terrorists and looking at what caused radicalization, what caused violent radicalization, and there was the same sort of pattern that came out again and again. the it was ability of people to take sort of an unformed grievance and make it concrete, tell people how they had been harmed and then to translate that, say, these are the people that have done that harm to you and then from that to progress to taking those people who had done the harm in seeking to dehumanize them, to belittle

them, because that all lowered the cost to doing violence and attacking those folks. if you look, instead of at al qaeda or aqap or isis and instead you look at donald trump and members of the republican party, the exact same thing is going on right now. and we're seeing the results in attacks on fbi field offices, on federal judges getting s.w.a.t.'ed and having anonymous calls to 911 made drawing the police to their homes. we are on a path to violence. we are seeing the results of that violence. it is what we have seen for decades in an international terrorism context, and now we're seeing it here at home. and when you have trump, when you have people like mcconnell and scott refusing to say anything, all that does is allow this pattern to continue, and i'm really worried about where we're headed. >> pete strzok, just to understand the extremism models where they have -- where countering extremism has worked and where it hasn't, is there any example where the extremist

is flattered and appeased and acquiesced where the extremist threat of violence goes down? >> no. i mean, the best that we've found is a government to try and combat radicalization is to go out into the communities here in the united states and abroad, talk to community leaders, talk to faith leaders, talk to political leaders, and say, you need to de-escalate this rhetoric. you need to hold and say this behavior is unacceptable. you need to work with law enforcement that people, when they are radicalized or you see signs of radicalization, that you turn that over and you let law enforcement know. now, compare and contrast that, which we in the fbi, dhs and all across the u.s. government went across the united states asking communities to do, compare that with the behavior you're seeing from donald trump. compare that with behavior you're seeing out of mitch mcconnell or rick scott or marjorie taylor greene or whoever you want to pick in the right wing of the republican

party. they are doing none of those things. if anything, they're encouraging it, and i don't think, in that environment, you're going to see anybody with much of an impetus to try and slow down or deradicalize, given the heated environment that we're in. >> the "wall street journal," which did more laundering and legitimizing of donald trump's presidency than perhaps any other outlet, they're as culpable as any news organization in this country for his presidency. and his ongoing viability as a political figure. charlie sykes, they write this. "this continues trump's attacks on elaine chao, mr. mcconnell's wife, for being chinese american. her real offense was resigning as transportation secretary after trump's disgraceful behavior on january 6th. his feud with mcconnell is also personal as the kentucky senator condemned trump's january 6th actions and hasn't spoken to him since. the death wish rhetoric is ugly and deserves to be condemned.

trump's apologists claim he merely meant mcconnell has a political death wish, but that's not what he wrote. it's all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking trump seriously and literally and attempting to kill mcconnell." many supporters took trump's rhetoric about former vice president mike pence all too seriously. so, is this is why this is our lead story, charlie sykes, a "wall street journal"ist today warning some fanatic could take trump seriously and literally, another seven years too late to the parade, but i welcome them. this has been the threat all along, and i wonder what it is that makes mcconnell, as of today, we've checked, still someone who would vote for trump in 2024 should he be the nominee again. >> well, there's two things going on here. number one, it is ugly rhetoric. it does needs to be condemned and seen in the context of

increasing passion of people on the right for violence, including donald trump's embrace of qanon or the implicit threat there would be chaos and insurrection if he's held legally accountable. but the second point is the one that you're addressing, the complete lack of pushback from republicans, including the unbearable lightness of rick scott, who was presented multiple opportunities to say racism and suggestions of detd wishes is inappropriate. he wouldn't do it. and i think this is just a reminder that, you know, for a lot of republicans, it's just, they have become numbed by all of this, that they don't even try. they don't even go through the motions, and i think it's worth remembering, you know, how we got to this moment. if you accept one big lie, you accept other big lies. if you're willing to swallow other racist rhetoric, whether it's birtherism or the mexican judge or s-hole countries or muslim bans, then they've swallowed it all. and so why would they stop now when there's an election to win?

so, rick scott says, you know, racism is never okay. well, he obviously doesn't mean that, because he refuses to push back against it. he refuses to denounce it, and he will enthusiastically support donald trump's return to the presidency. so, this is a moment that's incredibly dangerous, and i have to say, as appalling as trump's rhetoric is, the failure of grown-up republicans or the alleged grown-up republicans to say anything about it or to act as a circuit breaker or to call for the de-escalation of the rhetoric is even scarier, because it means there are no guardrails. there's no -- there is -- there is nothing that is saying to donald trump, guy, could you just tone it done? people are being killed. people are dying. there is real violence out there. this is irresponsible. we're hearing none of that. >> and if you are a student of sort of patterns of abuse, the abuser, donald trump in this

scenario, i would argue, all of them in the case of our democracy, but in terms of threatening other republicans, this is what he can count on. this is mitch mcconnell saying, trump would have his vote again to jonathan swan. >> well, as the republican leader of the senate, it should not be a front-page headline that i will support the republican nominee for president. >> after you've said that about him, i think it's astonishing. >> i think i have an obligation to support the nominee of my party. >> is there anything they could do? >> that will mean that whoever the nominee is has gone out and earned the nomination. >> okay, but donald trump earned it last time, and i'm just trying to understand, you know, what you say matters. you're a very important voice in this country. you're the leader of your party. and you seem to hold two concurrent conflicted positions, which is -- >> not at all inconsistent. not at all inconsistent. i stand by everything i said. >> i understand. >> about january 6th and everything i said on february

13th. >> what i want to understand, which i haven't heard you address -- >> because i don't get to pick the republican nominee for president. they're elected by the republican voters all over the country. >> claire, what republicans have refused to participate in is leading. they did it after donald trump lost, fair and square, sizably to joe biden. they refused to say the election was over. so, what mitch mcconnell gets wrong is he doesn't get to pick who the republicans pick, but he does get to weigh in on what is true and what is not. and what was true was that joe biden won, and that was clear in november. it was clear to donald trump. it was clear to donald trump, who was trying -- you don't need to overthrow an election and get your defense department to seize voting machines if you've actually won. he knew he lost. mitch mcconnell knew he lost. and perpetuating the lie is why mitch mcconnell's base will pick donald trump again. at what point -- i mean, i know we're beyond the point where they've reaped what they've sown, but do you think threats against his wife and his safety break a circuit for mcconnell,

publicly? >> you know, i'm just worn slick being ashamed and disappointed at my former friends who are not standing up to this kind of disgusting behavior. i am just worn slick. now, here's a sentence that mitch mcconnell should practice in front of the mirror. i may vote for the republican nominee, but i'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it's not donald trump. they should all try that out. liz cheney's doing it. she's saying she will do everything in her power to keep donald trump from power again. and that's what they should all be doing, and you know, let me circle back to something peter said, because we've said on this show, week after week, and called out the cowardice of the republican leaders, their failures to do the right thing. one of the things that we have done with extremism around the

globe and even in this country is go out to communities and talk to leaders, particularly religious leaders. maybe it's time to call on all of the rabbis and priests and imams and ministers, especially evangelical ministers, to ask them to take -- evangelical ministers should take the gospel and put it up against what donald trump is doing, and talk about that guns are not the answer, and violence is not the answer. ministers and religious leaders in this country need to start taking a leadership role. they are sitting back and letting donald trump speak with moral authority with the immoral things he says and does? it is unbelievable to me. republicans, i've given up on. maybe religious leaders, maybe we should start trying to push them more. >> tim alberta did some incredible reporting about how radicalized many of them are as well. i want to just keep this -- what

law enforcement has to deal with today in front of this conversation. because this is not an abstract possibility. it has arrived. pete strzok, the "times" reports this. lawmakers confront a rise in threats and intimidation and fear worse. congresswoman ocasio-cortez said her office can hardly keep up with the astronomical amount of threats she receives in a day. more than any other member, except house speaker nancy pelosi, democrat of california and representative omar, democrat of minnesota, according to what party leaders have told her. the onus is on the aides who answer the phones in her office. some as young as 19, to determine what constitutes a threat. so, ms. ocasio-cortez has taken matters into her own hands. her office has a daily morning routine of creating a document with photos of the men who have made threats against the congresswoman so that she can recognize and avoid or report them. since 2021, she's spent more than $120,000 on security services, according to the data analyzed by the "times."

is this how it should be, that a 19-year-old congressional staffer is fielding calls and assessing threats? or should she have more protection, pete? >> no, of course not, nicole. a 19-year-old isn't suited to go through and evaluate the threat and trying to decide what is credible and what is not credible and do that sort of analysis and have only their, you know, 19 years of life on this earth as the experience to guide that. you know, it's horrifying, that's the sort of thing i did when i worked abroad. that's the sort of i think i had to do growing up abroad in the middle east or west africa. the notion that anybody in america should be sitting there having to evaluate threats that are coming into their person, to their email, to alter the routes they're taking to and from work, to sleep in different places, that's just incredibly disturbing. and the fact is, you know, they give the example of congresswoman ocasio-cortez, but it's not just limited to congress. we see threats to judges. we have seen threats to the

executive, to law enforcement. it's just across the board, and that's not anything that certainly, you know, a 19-year-old junior staffer should be -- have that responsibility on their hands to keep somebody from violence. >> and charlie, let's be really clear. you and i, especially. this is not a problem of our politics writ large. this is a problem in the republican party. you write this in the bulwark. the infatuation with violence truly does extend throughout the entire republican conservative vertical. at the grassroots level, we have the michigan militia guys storming the state capitol with long guns. at the professional level, you have think tankers ranging from michael anton, arguing that violent revolution is an important part of the american tradition, to julie kelly claiming that police provoked the insurrectionists. then there are the actual republican politicians dancing around the glorification of violence. you remember the eric greitens ad where he and the armed men breach a house hunting for

rinos. can you find some democrat somewhere stoking violence and division? probably. but that's not where the main body of the party is. either at the grassroots or the elite levels. one of america's political parties is more or less operating within the american political norms that have held for most of our lifetimes. the other is flirting with political violence as an alternative means of power. have we -- i think that is exactly right. have we made the adjustment? do we know what we're in for this november ahead of the midterms? this is the party -- this was not where the party was two years ago. this is not going to be 2020, and anyone who thinks it is, is thinking too favorably about what's to come. do you think we've adjusted to this reality you describe on the american right ahead of this year's midterms? >> first of all, that was wonderful that was not written by me. that was written by my friend and colleague in the bulwark, but i agree with everything he says. we have not adjusted and it is moving rapidly in realtime, and i don't know that we've caught up with the extent of it.

can i just say something about asian americans? because i think that the bigotry against asian americans has been something that we have tolerated for way too long in this country, and you know, yes, the threats of violence are very, very real, but just take a moment to realize that you have the former president of the united states reaching back to this long tradition of anti-chinese bigotry with the cocoa chao comment and the violence against asian americans has been low-level, chronic, but growing around the country. and i think that for a variety of reasons we perhaps don't react as strongly to it if he had something that had been offensive about a jewish wife of a u.s. senator or if he had said this about an african american or even an hispanic american, but the threats against asian americans ought to be of real concern, and the way in which he has weaponized concern about china to go after her because of her ethnicity is itself

extremely dangerous, so this is the problem of donald trump that she has brought into the mainstream so many of these dangerous and toxic ideas, and as you point out, look, this is only coming from the right at the moment, and it is being normalized, and there is no indication whatsoever that the republicans are pushing back, and as a result, it doesn't take a lot of people out there, demented individuals, who are influenced by this, who listen to this kind of rhetoric, who act. so, it is a dangerous time, and i think it's far more dangerous later in the day than many of us realize. >> ominous last words. when we come back, opening statements just wrapped up in the oath keepers seditious conspiracy trial. there are bombshell new details to tell you about on how those members of the far-right militia group were waiting. they said they were waiting on orders from donald trump. the man who sends him to the capitol, of course. the jury seeing the evidence about just how much worse

january 6th could have gotten today. we'll have a live report from the courthouse. plus, new questions today aimed at florida's governor ron desantis. how and why did a former counterintelligence officer allegedly help lure migrants to be flown to martha's vineyard from texas? lawyers for those migrants say they hope to find out just who put this woman at the center of the governor's political stunt last month. and later in the show, president joe biden this afternoon is in puerto rico as that island looks to rebuild after the massive hurricane that just hit there. he'll head to the devastation in southwest florida on wednesday as the death toll from ian tops 100. white house chief of staff ron klain will be our guest. must have more after this. don't go anywhere today. guest. must have more after this. don't go awhnyere today.

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earlier today, a jury heard opening arguments in the trial of stewart rhodes and four other members of the right-wing militia group, the oath keepers. that's over their actions surrounding the january 6th insurrection. the five are facing seditious conspiracy charges. those are the most serious offenses that have been charged to any january 6th defendant so far. in his opening statement last hour, prosecutor jeff nest ler laid out the aims of the oath keepers on january 6th, saying, "they concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of american democracy." he also played to the court a recording of rhodes saying, "my only regret is that they should have brought rifles. we could have fixed it right then and there." for the defense in their opening

statements, rhodes' lawyer says his client was at the capitol that day only in anticipation of orders, orders they believed they were expecting from donald trump. his lawyer also said he plans to put the oath keepers' leader on the stand. let's bring in nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly. he's been inside the federal course in washington, d.c., all day. this really is about donald trump directing the mob. this is -- this is already out today in the battle lines that have been drawn legally, ryan. >> yeah, i mean, that's right. essentially, the communications that we're going to be focused on this, in this trial as it rolls out, is that there is this communication that stewart rhodes had on the night of january 6th where he was talking to somebody who was apparently a trump intermediary in the room of a hotel, and essentially calling upon donald trump and calling -- telling this trump intermediary to put him directly in contact with donald trump and to tell trump to call upon these militias to step up, to step in, and essentially stop the peaceful transfer of power.

there's a number of overlaps between the oath keepers and the trump folks in this, and i think we're going to get more of that as this trial sort of plays out, but it really is, you know, is remarkable just to hear this defense from these oath keepers saying, listen, we thought all this was legal because we thought donald trump was going to usurp democracy, and we thought he was going to step in and essentially declare himself the leader of the united states outside of a legal process. essentially, do a coup. that's essentially what the defendants are alleging here in their defense. so, it is a very unique defense, and we'll see how that goes with a jury and whether or not they buy that or not, nicole. >> how does it play into the defense that they'll mount that donald trump is still doing media interviews where he's talking about pardoning all the insurrectionists? how could you, as a defense lawyer, describe your client as remorseful if they're still part of the slow rolling coup? >> that's a good question.

i mean, those are, i think, complicated questions in terms of the -- navigating the media discussion around this. i think -- the pardon idea is something that i just think has gotten -- it's very strange. it's very strange to have a criminal trial overhanging something where there's this threat of pardons. donald trump hasn't gotten very specific about the defendants which he would pardon, but he has called upon, for example, someone who dressed up as adolf hitler. that is someone whose aunt he brought to one of his rallies just a month or so ago and sort of held up as this individual who was being aggressively pursued by the federal government, someone who a jury found guilty and a judge sent to -- away for a number of years because of their crimes at the u.s. capitol. so, it's just this very strange rhetoric. we had a letter from a number of these january 6th defendants just over the weekend that posted on one of these conspiracy websites, saying they'd rather be sent to gitmo, which is quite a claim, rather than be held in jail here in

d.c., considering the conditions in gitmo versus the united states, it's not necessarily the most well thought out plan of attack here, but that's what they want. a lot of these folks are just all in on this conspiracy theory about the stolen election, truly believe that donald trump should be president, and they're going all out for it, and a lot of folks that had to get sent away for a number of years who still believe in those conspiracy theories, and you know, i think a lot of the folks here, stewart rhodes certainly is someone who still subscribes to those conspiracy theories. the oath keepers, a number of them are still individuals who believe that joe biden isn't the proper resident, and you can justify a lot if you think that someone is the president in the oval office right now who shouldn't be in that role and was improperly put in that role, nicole. >> but, but, but, but they knew that what they did was criminal and wrong, because they wrote this. this is an email from -- or a message, i imagine it wasn't over email. maybe signal or something else

encrypted. "you all need to delete all your comments regarding who did what," rhodes told members of an oath keepers chat. do not chat about oath keeper members allegedly doing anything at the capitol, he said. "go dark on that. do not discuss. let me put it in infantry speak. shut the f up." doesn't that suggest that he knows he was involved in a criminal conspiracy, ryan? >> precisely. and that's what prosecutors had sort of laid out here. they've laid out the fact that, you know, this is an individual who has a yale law school education, who is a lawyer who knows what he's doing. i thought one of the most effective moments for the prosecution was when they said that this -- this idea of, you know, invoking the insurrection act, that was all just a cover story for this illegal plan that the oath keepers were involved in, and the proof they rolled out for the fact that this was a cover story was, essentially, they had a recording of stewart

rhodes saying, this is legal cover. the insurrection act is legal cover for what we're actually going to do here. when you come up with this plan to have something that's going to give you legal cover, and it's just sort of a facade, you're not supposed to spell that out on a recording. hey, this is just legal cover. this is all nonsense. this isn't actually what this is all about. so, sort of, you know, undermines his defense, i would say, a little bit there, that recording that the prosecution was able to trot out in their opening statements here. >> pete strzok, if it comes up, and it sounds like it already has, what they believe donald trump's role to be, the rosetta stone, if you will, but there's lower-hanging fruit. nbc's reported that an oath keeper charged in the january 6th attack texted with andrew giuliani about the election. "vice" is reporting that congress has recordings. and we heard these five oath keepers charged with seditious conspiracy, the defense is, we were waiting on trump's order.

what do you make of what we will learn from doj's theory of the case on trump's culpability from these trials and this one specifically? >> well, nicole, i think we're going to see another example of what happens when this sort of mythical maga sort of legal thinking runs into the reality and facts of the u.s. judicial system. i mean, it is a convenient excuse to say they were waiting on trump to order them, but the fact is, the government has already indicated in charging documents, they have statements to the effect of, if trump fails to act, then we will. or, you know, with trump preferably, or without him. we have no choice. so, whatever they may be saying about waiting for trump to make some statement, the reality is that there's documentary evidence that indicated that this really, at the end of the day, had nothing to do with whether or not trump told them to go or didn't tell them to go, that they had planned and had every intention to take this action to engage in insurrection regardless of what statements came out of trump's mouth. i mean, clearly, you know, certainly for rhodes, this is an

opportunity for political theater, very much the same way we see folks like steve bannon or peter navarro, who do a lot of talking, which is very decoupled from reality and the u.s. legal system, but there are -- to approach the statements of certainly rhodes and his defense team through a legal lens is probably the wrong way to look at it. this is, for them, an opportunity to throw out any number of sort of political statements or misdirection, but i think at the end of the day, we're going to see that the government has very, very solid evidence. i cannot envision somebody as cautious and smart as attorney general garland going into and, you know, supporting a seditious conspiracy charge without extraordinarily strong evidence, and i fully expect we're going to see that in the weeks ahead. >> ryan reilly, pete strzok, thank you so much. claire sticks around. up next for us, the migrants who say they were duped into getting on a one-way ron desantis-sponsored flight to

martha's vineyard now plan to add another defendant to their lawsuit. perla. she is the woman who helped recruit them to get on to those airplanes. we're reporting on what we know about perla next. on what we kno abt ouperla next ♪ what will you do? ♪ what will you change? ♪ will you make something better? ♪ will you create something entirely new? ♪

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texas to massachusetts, and thus becoming political pawns of florida's republican governor, ron desantis. their lawyers now say they're prepared to add her to their lawsuit against him. "new york times" reports investigators and migrants identify her as perla huerta, who records say was a former combat agent. she was discharged in august after two decades in the u.s. army. "new york times" reports it reviewed a brochure used to lure migrants on to the planes. it was titled "refugee migrant benefits" in english and spanish and falsely promised "up to eight months of cash assistance for income eligible refugees in massachusetts." later, once they were on the island of martha's vineyard, they learned that no one, and no help was waiting for them as perla had promised them. from the "times," staff members of the community center in martha's vineyard arranged for a migrant named pablo to call home

to venezuela. a manager there said he appeared broken. my love, we were tricked, he told his wife, weepg uncontrollably. this woman lied to us. she lied. charlie sykes is back with us, along with claire mccaskill. you know, the plot deepens in terms of the sadistic nature of what republicans will do, claire. >> yeah. this is stunning. this is -- and by the way, this is little tiny-brained ron desantis sitting in florida going, oh, abbott's getting ahead of me in being anti-immigrant. i've got to figure out a way to get ahead of him. there was no concern about people's lives or committing fraud or even violating the florida law, because the law that was passed that gave him money to move migrants was for migrants in florida. he had to -- he had to recruit

some counterintelligence operative to go to texas to draw up fake brochures to recruit unknowing people who had walked through countries for days and months on end, subjecting themselves to all kinds of horrors to get a chance at working in this country to help their families. lying to them and then taking them to martha's vineyard, thinking it was going to be some wonderful political win for him when, in reality, the people in martha's vineyard did nothing but just want to help them. >> you know, charlie, i've been asking this question for five years. who are the people that go work for the sadistic politicians? because that's what this is. and i used to understand the staffers in both parties who just believed in totally different political ideologies. i do not understand how people sign on to the sadistic

assignment of going to a state, as claire said, with funds that are not from that state. i mean, the legality of taking florida state funds, traveling to texas, moving migrants located in texas to massachusetts, moving all these humans across multiple state lines, seems like extraordinary legal exposure for all the accomplices of that scheme. what do you make, as more details are coming out? >> well, ron desantis is really telling us who he is, isn't he? i mean, it's not just sadistic. it's incredibly cynical and manipulative. look, the story that's being told is a story of flatout fraud. fraud in order to advance a political agenda to trigger the libs, to create a media stunt, and so, you know, in some ways, again, this seems like it's an old story, that the cruelty is the point, but it's the manipulative and deceptive cruelty that ron desantis has decided that he will use to advance his political career,

and the unfortunate thing is that it might. in the current political environment with the current incentives, this might work on his behalf, which is why it is so important that the legal system continue to operate, because i don't care if you are the president of the united states or you are the governor of the state of florida or texas, if you are engaged in this kind of rank fraud and deception, you ought to be held accountable for it. and you know, to your question of why do people go along with it? you know, to a certain extent, people get sucked into the gamesmanship of politics and they lose their moral compass, and there is this new culture that if you're concerned about norms, if you're concerned about human decency, that somehow you're not playing the game. and i think that that's infected just too many people. and you just sort of know or you hope that 10, 20, 30 years from now, many of the people involved in this deception, this manipulation of these refugees, these asylum seekers, will wake up in the middle of the night

and ask, what was i thinking? what did i do? >> yeah. hope springs eternal on that front. claire, this is more of the "new york times" reporting about how perla allegedly enlisted the migrants to help carry out this very carefully orchestrated and funded plan. "she asked another migrant to help her recruit other migrants like him from venezuela, but he said he felt betrayed because she never mentioned working on behalf of the florida government. i was also lied to. if i had known, i would not have gotten involved. all he was told, he said, was that she wanted to help people head up north." this was a very intricate, premeditated plan. this is also from the statement the migrants had. "the fact that perla is apparently a former military operative and spy aligns with the allegations in the complaint, which describe a highly orchestrated plan based on secrecy, deceit, and

misrepresentation." we should make clear that texas's version of desantis, greg abbott, didn't even know this was going on. if you were investigating this, what would you -- what would your questions be, claire? >> well, i'd follow the money. i would make sure that the money that was used was, in fact, money that was specifically appropriated for migrants that would be in florida. i would pull all the operatives in. it is clear -- there's even a connection to the airline that was used, a political connection. one of desantis's cabinet members was a lawyer for this charter aircraft. i would pull all of those in front of a grand jury. i would certainly get perla and probably she would end up being a target for someone who has committed this kind of fraud. you know what they're banking on? they're so far on the low road, nicole, here's what they're banking on. that nobody cares about these

people. that these are less than human beings. and if you take in isolation who these people are, it is startling that someone who professes to be a christian would treat these people this way, because all these people want is to work hard and try to take care of their families, coming from a desperate situation. and they're being treated this way as was just said. these are pure political pawns in a political stunt based on fraud and deceit, and somebody ought to go to jail over it. >> yeah, i mean, it just makes the party of life stuff absolutely despicably fraudulent as well. charlie sykes, claire mccaskill, what a news day. i'm so grateful to have both of you here today. thank you. when we come back, we'll have a live report from florida where more than half of the confirmed death toll after hurricane ian comes from one single county there, lee county. officials there facing questions about why their evacuation

orders came an entire day after other nearby counties. our crew is the first to arrive in st. james city, florida. kerry sanders will join us from there after the break. don't go anywhere. m there after the break. don't go anywhere. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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we head back to florida now where the cleanup and search efforts continue in the wake of hurricane ian, one of the most powerful storms to hit the united states ever. ian has left now at least 100 people dead. more than half of those people

come from lee county, florida. it includes fort myers and sanibel island, two of the places hardest hit by the storm. there are now new questions about why more people did not leave their homes sooner. "new york times" is reporting that emergency officials in lee county "did not issue a mandatory evacuation order for the areas likely to be hardest hit until tuesday morning," a day after several neighboring counties had ordered their most vulnerable residents to flee. today in the wake of that criticism florida's top emergency administrator is defending lee county's actions last week, saying they made the best decision they felt was right at the time. let's turn to nbc news. kerry sanders on the ground in st. james city. he and his crew are the first tv crews to arrive in this community on pine island, which is in lee county. kerry, you are our eyes and ears. what are you seeing? >> reporter: well, nicolle, it can be visually numbing when you see destruction after destruction. but we are the first to come

here to sort of show what happened. and there's a lot of people curious. so you can see this is where the storm surge came through here. in st. james city. and i'm here to report there were a lot of people who decided not to leave. in fact, i spoke to adam morgan, one of those who decided to stay. he said look, the problem is we always hear evacuate, evacuate, evacuate and we're like, you know, it never seems to come, so we just kind of ignored it and it was at our own peril. this is where a ten-foot storm surge came through. you can see a little bit right here, this is the impact glass. this is like hurricane glass that is designed to prevent anything from coming through. but you can see the two-by-four here just shattered the glass. i'm going to take you in through here so you can see one of the homes here. now, what's interesting is there are survivors here and those who've decided to not only stay here for the storm but now stay put and not leave say that they are choosing -- not that they have much of a house to stay in,

to stay put and in many cases are sleeping outdoors. we've seen some signs, "you loot i shoot." there's people who want to hang on to the few things that may be salvageable here on st. james island in their possessions. but at the end of the day the only people who have been here to visit from the outside world are some deputies who have come here in boats, walked the streets. what the folks here say they have not seen is anybody to provide them with water, with ice, with generators. none of that fema support that they thought might be delivered here at some point. they're relying on friends and neighbors to ferry it out in boats. i had a chance to speak to heather hoffman, whose father at 72 years old decided that he would stay here. joe lou decided to ride it out. and she said that he she feared for so long that she wasn't sure whether her father was alive or not. finally, at&t with more than 180

folks had made their way to a nearby island. they made it to sanibel. they'd been able to light up one of the towers there. and by lighting up the tower signal has made it over here to st. james city, and folks are now able to advise people how they're doing, what they're doing, and the help they need. but they're really hoping that the message that is being picked up right now is don't ignore st. james city. they feel that so many people have made their way to sanibel, have made their way to matt lachet, fort myers beach and they feel this area has been overlooked beyond the sheriff's deputies who made their way here. the hope is there will be some aid coming here soon and those folks who were here who say they won't leave can figure out a way to hold on to what they have and hopefully, hopefully that there is no looting and no gunfire. nicolle? >> kerry, they are not forgotten for now because you are there

telling their stories. as you get around there and are able to talk to more people later today, i'd love to hear how they feel about what they understood to be coming their way ahead of the storm. thank you for sharing your reporting with us. we will have more on how the federal government responds to these disasters when white house chief of staff ron klain joins us in the next hour. he's also going to be here to talk about president joe biden's trip today to puerto rico. but up next for us, the national archives says they are still missing records from the trump white house. that story ahead of a quick break. don't go anywhere. k break. don't go anywhere. what will you do? ♪ what will you change? ♪ will you make something better? ♪ will you create something entirely new? ♪ our dell technologies advisors provide you with the tools and expertise you need to do incredible things. because we believe there's an innovator in all of us.

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and you know, i think the

most telling thing is we're like seven weeks after that search into mar-a-lago and donald trump has never provided one explanation ever for what in the world he's doing with these very highly sensitive documents involving nuclear secrets, human spies, things like that. >> just things like that. hi, everyone. at 5:00 in new york. there's some late-breaking news this afternoon to tell you about. just in the last hour since we've been on the air the national archives released a number of new documents associated with those 15 boxes of materials they got back from mar-a-lago in january. months before the high-profile search by the fbi in august. these freshly public communications are a fraction of what they have in total, but they go a long way toward confirming some of the excellent investigative reporting we've consumed over the last many months including that a journalist we're about to talk to. before we get there, though, you

no doubt remember the phrase, we've repeated it so often during donald trump's one term, that it came to define much of his presidency. shocking but not surprising. a heaping dose of that this afternoon as it relates to what our friend neal katyal was just talking about. the justice department's mission to recover everything trump took with him to mar-a-lago illegally when the american people were done with him, when they kicked him out. we're now learning that there's still lots of stuff missing. remember, again, shocking but not surprising. in a letter the national archives informed the house oversight committee that it has not yet recovered all the records that should have been transferred from trump back to the national archives, and in compliance with the presidential records act. in a letter to chairwoman carolyn maloney acting archivist debrawall said its department is rather astungdly still trying to get its hands on records from officials who conducted non-official business using

non-official messaging accounts. she adds, "while there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should." so what happens next? in that same letter wahl suggests it would consult the justice department about whether to "initiate an action for the recovery of records unlawfully removed." meanwhile, key documents in court today, the justice department wants things to move faster, asking the 11th circuit of appeals to expedite an appeal to judge aileen cannon's order appointing a special master. doj proposed that all parties file briefs by november 11th, with oral arguments on the appeal taking place soon thereafter. the reason for their urgency, the department is currently unable to access certain non-classified documents, hamstringing their investigation. in a rather astonishing official response today trump lawyer christopher kise suggested those oral arguments should not take place until january or later. we'll say it together this time.

shocking but not surprising. it's where we start the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. jackie alemany is here, "washington post" investigations reporter and an msnbc distributor. our friend glenn thrush is back, "new york times" justice department these days. and david laughlin is here. at the national -- jackie, i'll start with you. i think we first learned about this from your reporting and we have the actual documents from nara to trump lawyers. they're in line with what you'd first reported. they say this. there are also now certain paper textual records that we cannot account for. we therefore need your immediate assistance to ensure that nara receives all presidential records as required by the presidential records act. for example, the original correspondence between president trump and north korean leader kim jong un were not transferred to us. it is our understanding that in january 2021 just prior to the end of the administration the originals were put in a binder for the president but were never

rushed to the office of records management for transfer to nara. it is essential these original records be transferred to nara as soon as possible. i think maggie haberman has also written about this and i think a lot of journalists who were around trump knew how much he loved his love letters to kim jong un. what do you make of this update to the story we heard just in the last couple hours? >> yeah, nicolle. i think what this e-mail shows and corroborates, rather, is some of the reporting that we published a month ago, that nara officials were concerned about trump keeping dozens of boxes of official records even before he left the white house. this investigation has been long running but there were multiple flags raised even by trump's lawyers, people who sort of were aware of his habits of mishandling classified information, and it showed that the lawyers had concerns about trump taking boxes and agreed that these two dozen boxes that were referenced in that e-mail

should be returned to archives officials. still trump kept those documents. but i think what this e-mail also underscores is how much is still unknown, who was responsible for the packing of those boxes, who kind of let this slip through the cracks despite it being flagged numerous times. you know, i think the archives noted in the press release that they released with regards to this e-mail that they released publicly on their website today that there are still thousands of pages of correspondence that they're not releasing between not just trump officials and national archives employees but others, people in congress on the oversight committee and other officials in the archives regarding the retrieval of these boxes which ultimately as we learned last week has resulted in nearly 2,000 pages of documents being returned to the national archives after they were retrieved from mar-a-lago.

>> glenn thrush, clearly -- a committee member said to me that the fbi piece of this is walled off, and it's obviously embroiled in doj's own legal back and forth with trump's team. but how much more does doj know than what has been released to congress? >> well, it's hard to say. first of all, the coordination between the january 6th committee and the department of justice has not been shall we say optimal. and it's also not clear precisely what it is that they were able to get during the period they had possession, august 8th when they got possession of these materials from mar-a-lago and when judge coop shut them down. we presume given their vast resources, both doj and fbi, that they had a pretty good opportunity to look at them. but i think the requests that the department made to expedite the appeal really gives the game away a little bit.

they were obviously -- and i'm not questioning the argument that doj made in court that they needed access to this material in order to conduct a national security assessment. but the most recent filing really makes it clear that they're prioritizing a fast criminal investigation. and that -- you know, that's been reinforced by this burst of activity we saw really at the 60-day mark prior to the midterm election in which they sent out 40 subpoenas and confiscated some cell phones including that of boris epshteyn. what we're seeing is a department on the doj side that's attempting to move really, really fast. and a trump legal team that wants to pump the brakes as long as they possibly can, in part i suspect because the communication between the legal team and their client hasn't necessarily been all it could be. >> i want to dive into more of what came loose today. but i want to pick up on glenn's

point with you, david. this is about the sort of convergence of these conversations and fights about executive privilege between the january 6th and mar-a-lago investigations. as the justice department investigates both trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of sensitive documents at his florida residence, his legal team has repeatedly claimed that he has retained power to keep information secret, allowing him to block prosecutors from obtaining evidence about his confidential oval office communications. president joe biden is not backing trump's attempt to use that power, and many legal scholars in the justice department have argued that he is stretching the narrow executive privilege rights the supreme court has said former presidents may invoke. that there are few definitive legal guide posts in this area and the fight could have significant ramifications. there's so much that is interconnected. the national security effort is tied into the criminal investigation because of the nature of the documents as

glenn's talking about, the same department and some of the same individuals are involved in different equally sensitive and politically charged investigations into a twice impeached ex-president. where do you sort of put where these investigations stand right now? >> well, at a leadership level at the department of justice i think there probably is some sort of overarching certainly awareness and to some extent coordination to make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing between the purely criminal side and the national security side, where they intersect in the mar-a-lago investigation. one of the interesting things about today's developments involving the national archives are that even with respect to these non-classified documents that remain in the wild, so to speak, they intersect with one of the statutory bases for probable cause in the search warrant that was approved by the magistrate, which was 18 u.s. c-section 2071, concealment or removal of government records.

and to the extent that nara is, you know, indicating that they're in conversations with the department of justice about possible next steps, it seems to me it would certainly be within the department's purview to seek a grand jury subpoena for additional federal records, even on classified records they know or believe are still in the possession of trump and his people. and if they knew or had reason to believe where these documents were, maybe they'd consider seeking another search warrant to recover through compulsory process these materials that trump has no legal or possessary interest in. you know, the reporting is true, that there are no sort of controlling legal precedent, if we can still use that term for those of us -- on this issue, but that's largely because no one has ever come up with such a cockamamie legal argument as donald trump that, you know, more than a year and a half after leaving office that he retains some vestigial executive privilege, let alone one that is

completely emasculated by a predominant government interest in law enforcement with an ongoing criminal investigation. so even if he has any privilege it's qualified and it's overcome by the government's interest. >> just listening to you talk, david, we're back to a failure of imagination. it was last used in the intelligence community to describe the audacity of the september 11th attack. now you're using it to describe the limits of our laws and the rule of law in america to deal wan unbound president who refuses to accept the results of a free and fair election. what do we do about that? >> i mean, you know, that's a question really for the strength and durability of our civil society and political leadership, not a question for the department of justice. the job of the department of justice is to determine through investigation the application of law, judicial precedent, long-standing enforcement policy, whether laws may have been broken and how do i

department who to hold accountable for them. you know, investigations have a momentum and gestalt to themselves, and prosecutors and agents don't like to take the foot off the gas pedal. so it's enormously frustrating i'm sure to the fbi and the trial attorneys and prosecutors assigned to this case that they are blinded in essence from a whole body of evidence that is central according to their filing, which glenn mentioned, not only to the investigation regarding the willful retention of classified information but to the other two pieces which often get forgotten, which are the obstruction of justice and the concealment or removal of government records. >> glenn, are you able to confirm that that's the case? is there some frustration that the head of steam they had coming out of the august 8th court-approved search has been slowed by some of trump's successes in front of judge aileen cannon? >> oh, i think that's -- you know, look, merrick garland and the team around him is -- are

extremely cautious about commenting on any of this stuff, especially given the fact that, you know, if republicans take back the house these guys are going to be really on the defensive. but they are very clearly frustrated with the delaying tactics. and frankly, you can read -- there is a level of contempt in some of these filings that even a legal layperson can clearly see. there's also -- i mean, you read these things, i mean, their first response to judge cannon was borderline contemptuous. i don't think you can really characterize it in any other way. and i think what's interesting about all of this is just how quickly they want to move on this. and for the viewers out there, that doesn't necessarily mean they want to move quickly so they can bring a case. it's just as likely that they want to move quickly so they can rule out prosecutions in some instances. but there is a general sense that they're dealing with an

unpinned hand grenade and either way they want to dispose of it as quickly as they can. >> all right. with all of you here i do want to dive into more of what we learned today from nara's response to congresswoman maloney and the oversight committee. jackie, this was the question that the committee had sent to nara. is nara aware of any additional presidential records from the trump administration that may be missing or not yet in nara's possession? and this was their response. "nara has identified certain social media records that were not captured and preserved by the trump administration. nara has also learned that some white house staff conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts as required by section 2209 of the presidential records act. nara has already obtained or is in the process of obtaining some of those records." your newspaper and glenn's reported as the trump presidency went on about jared kushner whatsapping with mbs and other

foreign leaders. there were reports about ivanka trump's use of personal e-mail. i mean, this was known at the time. is nara simply confirming that none of those were preserved according to the presidential records act statutes? >> that's what it seems like, nicolle. and they did give one explicit example in that letter from debra wall to house chairwoman carolyn maloney of peter navarro as one of the witnesses, one of the former trump administration officials who has yet to follow through on their request for him to provide the documents and official business he conducted on his personal phone over to the archives as required under the presidential records act. and this seemed to be a problem amongst many staffers in the white house and really across the trump administration, so much so that it has now prompted not just the national archives but also lawmakers, people on

capitol hill calling for reforms to the presidential records act in order to give the national archives more teeth to actually enforce some of these statutes and this legislation that is really in place for the benefit of the american public for the sake of preserving american history. but as we saw earlier this summer, the national archives through the department of justice filed a lawsuit against peter navarro. i suspect that we could start seeing more of those. they did sort of imply that they could escalate this further, potentially open up a criminal -- refer this to the department of justice to open up a criminal investigation in order to retrieve these documents now. the process of actually preserving records that are conducted on personal cell phones is a bit cumbersome. it requires you to actually forward those communications, take screenshots of them and

send them to your white house e-mail and then forward them to the white house office of records management. so it is not the easiest process. but if you are going to be conducting official business on your personal cell phone, that is what is required and i think it's pretty easy to see how trump administration's -- trump administration officials really flouted these requirements throughout the four years in office. >> well, i mean, glenn thrush, in a normal white house you turn over your non-government laptop and non-government phone and it gets copied for you. i mean, the story is -- that jackie is telling about a larger and systemic decision not to follow the presidential records act. i mean, is there any sense that we'll ever have all of the records from the trump presidency? >> no. i mean, look, i think one of the bits of real unfinished business

are these empty folders with classification markings on it. they have no idea what this material was. it's like the back of my car. you know what i mean? trying to figure out instead of empty mcdonald's containers empty classification folders. but i think those of us who covered the trump white house this comes as no surprise. there was -- you know, there were no great sense of differentiating things. i think when you're dealing with the biden folks, for instance, by contrast, and i'm not saying they're perfect in all respects, there is a level of kind of p.r.a. hygiene that just wasn't present at all during the trump administration. and i think this feeds into this much larger sense of the presidency as a personal possession, which i think we see with regard to mr. trump's behavior up to the january 6th incident and subsequently where he seemed to have regarded and i

think his assertion of extending executive privilege is very much in keeping with his larger view of a proprietary sense of the presidency that we have not necessarily seen before. so it's all in terms of his behavior and his setting a standard of behavior in the white house, as i think my colleague maggie haberman has documented exhaustively, fits very much a pattern of wanting to retain the power, hold on to it as long as possible in a way that he hopes will go unchallenged. >> david laufman, there is almost like a physical reaction that former intelligence folks have when people talk about what people that covered trump knew him to be, someone who treated a mcdonald's carton the same way as an empty classified document folder. what is the lasting danger of perhaps never, never ever retrieving all the classified materials that donald trump absconded to mar-a-lago and perhaps elsewhere? >> that it's in the hands of

people who may disseminate it to people who are not authorized to receive it, possibly even to foreign nationals, foreign governments, foreign adversaries, for whatever reasons they may wish to do so. you know, it is especially concerning given the high level of classification, the controls at the s.c.i. level, special access program level, the most restricted types of documents and controls were for a year and a half in a place they never should have been, brought there for reasons that are just completely unconscionable and almost certainly in violation of criminal statutes that make it a crime to willfully retain national defense information in a place it's not authorized to be. and by the way, even with respect to the non-classified stuff, i mean, i have to suppress, nicolle, a sense of irony, possibly a gag reflex, having overseen the clinton e-mail inquiry where a lot of people on one side of the political spectrum were trying

to clobber us over the head with allegations that the presidential records act had been violated because government business had been conducted over an unofficial medium. and here we have just this pell mel onslaught. it was the wild west of using non-official media to conduct government business. and nary a blink from people in the trump administration for people for whom this was business as usual. >> it's interesting. and the republican party which went along with the chants at trump's convention to lock her up. no republican has said much of anything about his egregious and intentional and braisen and systematic violations of everything we do as a country to protect state secrets. it's remarkable. jackie alemany, glenn thrush, david laufman, three of the best of the best. thank you so much for starting us off this hour. when we come back, another big victory for ukraine, sending russian occupiers fleeing from a key strategic city in an area

that vladimir putin tried to claim for russia. the latest sign of ukraine's progress on the battlefield is next. plus president joe biden surveying the damage from hurricane fiona in puerto rico. just days before he'll do the same for hurricane ian in florida. white house chief of staff ron klain will be our guest. and day one of the supreme court's new term comes as the supreme court is suffering what has been described as a crisis of trust, increasingly seen as the judicial arm of the gop. can that be reversed? we'll ask that question later in the hour. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. do you take ? 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 is designed to help protect... releasing aspirin after it leaves your stomach... where it is absorbed to help prevent another heart attack or stroke. heart protection with your stomach in mind.

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just days after illegally proclaiming that four ukrainian territories are now part of russia forever and just because he said so in a wild and belligerent rant, vladimir putin now has to eat his words after yet another military setback. ukraine's president zelenskyy announced that ukraine had taken back the strategic city of lyman in the donetsk, one of the four regions russia is trying to annex after sham referendums as ukraine continues to pick up territory amid their counteroffensive. lyman was a key city in the russian defense. it was used as a logistics rail hub. and not only is the ukrainian victory there is a strategic military one, it is also a psychological and ideological one. as ukraine was able to embarrass putin on the international stage just days after his speech in which he announced the largest land grab in post-war europe. joining us now, former obama deputy national security adviser

and msnbc contributor ben rhodes. ben, what do you make of all that ukraine is gaining on the battlefield and all that russia is losing not just on the battlefield but in ermz it of what putin values most, face. >> well, i think what's happening is you can see that one side in this war has a plan and the other side really has no idea what it's doing or why it's doing it. so on the ukrainian side these are very disciplined offensives in which they're just methodically cutting through the russian military in strategic ways. this is not just them taking territory that's available. it's them pushing back the russians and then cutting off them and their supply lines so that they can make further gains to essentially dislodge the russians from theirer side the don't even know what they're doing. they didn't know what they were doing when putin sent them in to begin with. he's not really articulated what the objectives of this war are. he announced these annexations but even his own officials are scrambling to determine what the borders are of these regions

that they claim to have annexed. and they don't control all these territories. so his propaganda and his conspiracy theories, you know, may serve to gin up a crowd in moscow, but they don't take the place of guidance for commanders in the field who still to this day don't seem to know why they're in ukraine and what they're there to do. >> can you talk about why the failure of the annexations is such a setback? not just to the psychological plan that putin has to basically terrorize the country but to the military strategy. if these people aren't aware of the referendums and they fail and ukraine takes the cities back, he's mostly out of moves, right? >> yeah, it's hugely important, nicolle, for a variety of audiences. for the ukrainians obviously it's an enormous morale boost as they're suffering under aggression, suffering huge losses, to see their military demonstrate that they can actually win this war in the battlefield.

that is going to boost their morale. and they already have this enormous morale gap with the russians, who by all accounts the troops in the field for the russians don't want to be there. on the russian side the purpose of the referenda is to create a kind of fait accompli, for putin to be able to say we've got this territory, it's game over, let's all negotiate, and we're just going to consume this chunk of ukraine. now, he's already failing to do that. but the ink is dry on these signatures that we saw at the kremlin the other day. so it sets back his whole plan. it's also important to the international community, not just on potential negotiations, because if putin can't demonstrate that he holds what he claims he wants to annex, but also because europeans in particular are going to be asked to sustain a pretty tough winter here with rising energy prices and the knock-on effects of this war. i think this allows ukrainians to say to the west, look at what we're doing, don't stop supporting us now, keep those weapons coming, keep those more

advanced systems coming that are allowing us to make these gains, it's worth it. and so across the board this is a big win for ukraine and a huge gap, a huge hole in putin's war strategy. >> all right, ben sticks around. when we come back, president joe biden along with the first lady, dr. jill biden, are on their way back right now from puerto rico after visiting there and promising that the island will not be forgotten or abandoned after suffering another devastating hurricane. it is obviously a far cry from the scene we saw play out before our eyes with paper towels five years ago. white house chief of staff ron klain is our guest. don't go anywhere. st don't go anywhere. diabetes? discover the power of 3 in the ozempic® tri-zone. in my ozempic® tri-zone, i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. announcer: ozempic® provides powerful a1c reduction. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events

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the main story that has been reported is the storm. but there's another story. what ordinary people did when the storm hit. they aren't paratroopers or search and rescue professionals. they're neighbors. they're just regular folks, ready and willing to do whatever they could do when their help was needed, when the neighbor was in trouble. and thanks to them all the people of puerto rico, this recovery from fiona is under way. still, we have to do more. we have to ensure that when the next hurricane strikes puerto rico is ready. >> president joe biden and first lady dr. jill biden in puerto rico today. the first of their visits this week to communities ravaged by hurricanes just in the last few

days. it has been two weeks since the island was hit hard by hurricane fiona. at least 25 people were killed there and the power company says about 100,000 people are still today without power. the president this afternoon directed more than $60 million in funding from his bipartisan infrastructure law to strengthen puerto rico's flood walls and to create a new flood warning system to help residents prepare for future storms. on wednesday the bidens will travel to florida where officials are still assessing the damage from hurricane ian just last week. joining us now on all of this, white house chief of staff ron klain. ron, in a hurricane i guess you always wish you know exactly where it's going to land. and i know from working in florida that isn't always the case, but there is some reporting that there's already some consternation on the ground in lee county about evacuations there. was the white house aware of evacuation orders or is the white house involved in any of these after-action reports about where mandatory evacuations

should have been issued? >> so the decision to issue an evacuation order is a state and local decision. the administration's obviously responsible for the national hurricane center which issues the weather reports. but look, i think our focus right now is on getting help and recovery to the folks hurt by hurricane ian. i think there will be plenty of time afterwards to figure out what warnings were given when. right now we're doing everything we can to help the people who are still living in these conditions, particularly on the barrier islands, and to start the slow and difficult process of rebuilding southwest florida. >> ron, when you work in the white house hurricanes are something you brace for and you gird for. these two storms were particularly brutal. how did it upend, you know, what you all planned to be doing this month to respond to ian and fiona? >> well, you know, nicolle, sadly, having these super intense hurricanes hit our

country has become the rule, not the exception. in recent years. and so we've been planning and preparing for the possibility that we have one or more of these hurricanes in the month of september and october, the hurricane season. we really had a surprisingly calm season in august, the first time i think since 1990s where there were no named storms. so i think he we knew that eventually this would hit and so we were prepared. fema prepositioned literally millions of meals, millions of bottles of water in the areas where the storms were most likely to hit. they've been quick onto the scene to help the people who are dealing with this in florida throughout the state of florida, in puerto rico where the president was today. we're doing everything we can to get people, you know, into shelters or if they can stay where they are get their power restored, get their water restored. we've seen tremendous progress in the past few days on that in florida, progress in the past few weeks in puerto rico, but obviously a lot of work still remains to be done. >> ron, as the hurricane was

hitting the shore, hitting florida, a weather person pointed out that the politics enter into the recovery effort pretty early on, and he cited the chris christie embrace with president obama and how that hindered him politically in the analysis of many. what have the interactions with desantis been like and can you characterize the president as pleasantly surprised or, you know, holding -- can you take us in the room for those calls? >> yeah. look, i think -- first of all, i think it's the opposite of politics. i mean, whatever the political fallout was from the fact that a republican governor worked with a democratic president in response to superstorm sandy, that's the way it should be. and that's what we've also done here. the president's spoken to governor desantis a number of times. he's spoken to republican and democratic local officials in florida, mayors, county commissioners, kind of up and down the line. fema is on the ground working

with all these local elected officials to get the people the help they need. there are plenty of times to discuss the differences between joe biden and ron desantis. but that is not around the subject of helping the people of florida when they have been devastated by one of these super powerful storms that took dozens and dozens of lives, that has devastated entire swath of the state. the president's working with the governor and working with state and local officials to get the help these people need and to start to get this part of florida back on its feet. >> ron, as a two-hour broadcast we have covered the hurricane recovery and we're happy to get to talk to you about it. we've also covered ron desantis's stunt and the investigative journalism that reveals that there was somebody working and spending taxpayer dollars for the state of florida to move human beings from texas to massachusetts. is there interest on the president's part in examining,

having doj look at whether or not any federal laws were broke n in that stunt? >> first let me be clear. we don't tell doj what to investigate. that's not the way the biden administration works. obviously, the president was outraged by this stunt and by the fact that people were misled and flown across the country with all kinds of promises that weren't true. but right now, as i said, our principal focus in florida is on helping the people of florida who've been devastated by this storm and whose lives have been -- many people whose lives have been lost and others whose lives and well-beings have been torn asunder. that's what we are focused on in terms of our dealings with the state of florida right now. >> we talk a lot about how your job is like drinking out of a firehose every day. you are now the longest-serving i think white house chief of staff for any democratic president. so i'm going to throw a question to you that i think our viewers won't like. i'm not sure you will like.

but much has been made of an interaction, and i want to ask you about an update to that story. the president on friday signed a bill to honor the late republican congresswoman jackie walorski, republican from indiana, in a private ceremony with her family and with kevin mccarthy. that bill designates a clinic for the department of veterans affairs in indiana as the jackie walorski virginia clinic. i don't know if you were in the room but to be a fly on the wall is something i would wish for if i had the genie wish. can you take us inside that conversation with the family? >> well, the president met privately with the family and then signed the bill with both speaker pelosi and leader mccarthy were both there, i thought in what was really a fitting bipartisan tribute to congresswoman walorski. and you know, i think she was well liked by both democrats and republicans in the house. she worked very hard on matters related to our veterans. that's why this veterans center's being named in her honor. and you know, the president had

a private meeting with her family. i'm going to leave it private because that's the way both the family and the president wanted it to be. but you know, he wanted to sign this bill. and again, we were really honored to have both leader mccarthy and speaker pelosi here at the white house for this bill signing. >> we'll leave it at that. enough has been made of that story. i'll ask you one more question. the january 6th committee plans one more public hearing. we believe it could come next thursday. as you sort of head into -- and i'm not asking you a political question. i know you don't do politics from the white house, a departure from your predecessor. but as you head into these important fall months, how much is it of an interest of the president to stay focused on his agenda and does he view the january 6th public hearings as a distraction or does he view it as a complement to his larger message about the extreme nature of this maga republican party and his efforts to preserve democracy? >> no, nicolle, i think he views

them as very responsible efforts to get to the bottom of a real threat to our democracy. he's been talking about the soul of the nation since he launched his campaign. he's been talking about the threat to democracy throughout both years of his presidency and gave a very strong speech in philadelphia last month on that topic. so the hearings congress is holding i think is part of what should be a national re-examination of whether or not this country is dedicated to democracy but what the threats and challenges to that democracy are and about the positions different views in our country about democracy. the president, the democrats, we very much believe this is a democratic country. small d democratic country. and it's important to keep it that way. it's important to strengthen our democracy and protect our democracy. those who feel differently, you know, that view is a very, very different view. and i think that difference between what the democrats in the house and senate stand for,

what these maga republicans -- not all republicans. not all republicans by far. what the maga republicans stand for in terms of this kind of assault on our democracy. that is an important distinction for people to understand, and being clear about that distinction, talking about the consequences of that distinction, that is part of the president's democracy agenda. >> white house chief of staff ron klain. as we talk about every time on his desk every single thing lands. we are grateful to you for spending some time with us today. thank you. >> thanks for having me, nicolle. ahead for us, big questions about the united states supreme court. it is facing a major shortage of trust from the american people, and it knows it. it began a new term. we'll talk about that next. don't go anywhere. t go anywhere.

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life... doesn't stop for diabetes. be ready for every moment, with glucerna. it's the number one doctor recommended brand that is scientifically designed to help manage your blood sugar. live every moment. glucerna. today is day one of the supreme court's fall term. it comes a little over three months since the court overturned roe vs. wade, creating a political tsunami. it also comes at a crisis point for the supreme court. a new gallup poll finds that faith in the court is at a new low. just 7 -- i thought this was i atypo. but 7% of americans have a great deal of trust in the supreme court. and a record 22% of americans said they have no faith in the court. "the new york times" editorial board warns that the increased politicization of the supreme court and the crisis of public faith could fundamentally

undermine the institution. from that "new york times" editorial, "the nine justices have no control over money as congress does or force as the executive branch does. all they have is their black robes and the public trust. a court that does not keep that critical role in american government. those who protested the loss of their rights after the dobbs decision are speaking directly to the court, and the justices stopped listening as they have in other moments in history, the people's voices will eventually become too loud for them to ignore. let's bring in maya wylie, former u.s. assistant attorney, the president of a leadership conference on human rights. maya, what do you make of the pub rick hand wringing? you have justice kagan saying what justice sotomayor said, that as if we act as a body that

jumps when they say cheque cheque check, then we'll have to stench of politics on us. >> i think that's exactly the problem. number one, let's just say, because it begins with the investiture, the placement of the first black woman and first public defender on the bench. that's pretty important. but i think the point here is one person does not change the fact that there is an ideological bent on the court which is far outside of the mainstream. that's with we saw in the dobbs opinion, and frankly i think what was so clear is, the politicization, if i can say that well -- >> it's hard. [ laughter ] >> making political the decision of who you put on the bench based on how they'll decide on a fundamental right is outside of the mainstream how we do appointments of justices. this is a court that was

gerrymandered by donald trump when he said explicitly i'm going make sure we overturn a fundamental right for the first time in our nation's history, and add to that the way the court got constituted, a public fight where barack obama was denied a mainstream candidate in merrick garland who republicans said they could support, in fact made progressives angry because they didn't think merrick garland was progressive enough, and yet he couldn't get a hearing for that nominee. all those factors -- >> then they ram coney barrett through. i think that the questions that people are asking, ben rhodes, about the legitimacy of the court were very apparent before the court decided to overturn roe vs. wade. so they are, in terms of -- it's a collapse. you and i have looked at poll numbers at various turns in our careers.

i think they're down 30 points in gallup polling, the most trusted polling this country does. they have dropped 20 points since then. and this new polling out today shows them falling even further. how do democrats make a commitment to trying to fix that part of the fabric of their party's message? >> yeah, i mean, it's a real crisis in legitimacy both because of how the court came to be, and what the court's doing. on the how to court came to be, you have a majority of justices that were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. donald trump taking that seat that any normal process would have allowed barack obama to nominate merrick garland, using that to get three justices put in place in three years, including rushing in amy coney

barrett at the end. that's how it came to be. what it's doing is it's ideological. that's what they have been put there to do. these conservative justices are not there to call balls and strikes, as john roberts said. they're there to undo decades of constitutional law and really advocate an agenda. and they are going to be there for a long time, because these are lyft appointments. i think democrats need to not just be educating the public about this -- sometimes decisions happen under the radar, but also putting forward proposals. there's a range of things that can be done short of expanding the size of the supreme court. i think things like term limits more supreme court justices. these wouldn't be easily implemented, but the reality is you have people -- my daughters, nicole are 5 and 7. when they're in their 40s and 50s, these same justices could

be there. that's not something that makes sense in a democratic society when you have power that's migrated to the supreme court. it might take time, but what democrats have to understand is republicans spent decades building this court. so we can't assume if something can't get done in the next two-year cycle it's not worth trying. i think there has to be sustained effort to make sure the supreme court is a place that is about justice for americans and not about advancing the relatively extreme minortarian political agenda, and that has to be a core effort of the democratic party to show people their very freedoms are at stake here. >> it also seems to warrant mention that the supreme court picks used to not operate this way. i read all the decisions around privacy. republicans used to vote they saw a right to privacy in the constitution. they voted to support the original roe decision. what do you do about the extremely ideological nature and power that the federalist society has over those picks?

>> ironically, it's the dark money flow into the how we even get supreme court justices. there's $1.6 billion of dark money flowing through the federalist society that is really covertly helping to support both a list of candidates that meet an ideological litmus test versus neutral qualifications, and frankly, the willingness to stand by precedent, which is frankly why the court has a problem right now. i think ben is absolutely right talk about other ways we would form the court and what matters so deeply, but at the end of the day we have to get people to vote so we get people appointing the justices who will follow the right procedures. >> they have a big voting rights case in front of them this term. we'll be watching. quick break for us. we'll be right back.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with katie phang in for ari melber starts right now. hi, katie. >> hi, nicole. thank you so much. i appreciate it. welcome to "the beat." we start with newly enflamed fears of political violence just over a month before the midterms. donald trump unleashing violent and racist attacks on his perceived political opponents. trump writing mitch mcconnell as a, quote, death wish, because he negotiated a government funding deal with democrats. trump also going after mcconnell's wife, elaine chao, saying quote, must