tv Alex Wagner Tonight MSNBC February 16, 2023 1:00am-2:00am PST
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has been subpoenaed by jack smith. we don't yet nbc have that. we haven't match that although kudos to cnn for breaking that, if it's true. what do you think about that? >> he's obviously a material witness. i come back to other first things they said to you after january six happened, which is the highest ranking people in the country, like the president and the chief of staff, the people who have sworn an oath of office to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic should be the very first people to come out and tell everything they know about exactly what happened. and that's two of mark meadows. >> congressman jamie raskin, thank you very much sir. that is all in on wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. ght now. thank you very much, sir. have a good night. that is "all in" on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening. >> chris, we're picking up right where you left off on the subpoena on mark meadows, my friend.
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we start tonight with that late breaking news that special counsel jack smith has subpoenaed trump's former chief of staff mark meadows part of smith's investigation into trump and his role in the january 6th insurrection. now, i should say this is according to a single source and being reported by cnn. nbc has not yet independently confirmed this reporting. but cnn reports tonight that meadows received a subpoena for documents and testimony some time in january. this comes just one week after we learn that special counsel smith subpoenaed trump's former vice president, mike pence. so clearly things are heating up. and beyond the fact that subpoenaing the former president's former chief of is staff is a huge deal on its own, mark meadows in particular is quite a potential witness. meadows was involved in a now infamous phone call between trump and georgia secretary of state raffensperger in which trump pressured raffensperger to find 11,780 votes.
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and he was in the office with trump for much of the day on january 6th and everything else he was privy to as chief of staff. here to discuss all of this and give his thoughts the person you want to talk to, the perp you request desperately to hang out for another hour when breaking news thick this happens. andrew wiseman, good to see you. >> good to see you. >> mike pence has a subpoena, mark meadows has a subpoena. to some degree that makes a lot of sense. what does that tell you about the special counsel investigation. >> remember when john smith was appointed asked everyone was concerned about how this was going to slow things down, and i love patsing myself on the back because i know jack smith and i was like quite the opposite. just like robert mueller he's really steeped in this idea he
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has an obligation to go as fast as possible and responsibly, and i think that's what we're seeing. mark meadows makes total sense you're going to put in the grand jury for all the reasons you said. this is a key player and key witness. he now has four things he can do. he can assert the same sort of executive privilege. i think that's going to get nowhere very fast. >> which he's trying to do before. >> he has done that before and been all signs both the district court and d.c. circuit may have already ruled on that issue, so that's really not going to be a winner. he can assert the fifth amendment and jack smith has to make the decision whether he charges him or iminizes him or he can go in the grand jury, and if he goes in the grand jury and testifies he can lie or he can tell the truth. lying is going to be very hard for him to pull that off because there's so many people around him and documents to confront him. if you're his lawyer and i've been a defense lawyer, it is a hard thing. first you can't counsel someone
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to lie. >> there's that. >> and second you're going to get caught. so he could end up getting charged not just with the underlying crimes of seditious conspiracy and obstruction of justice of congress but he could actually get charged with the lying and obstructing of the grand jury. this is totally the right move if you're jack smith. you want mark meadows to feel pressure to come clean. >> do you think jack smith is moving quickly because the judge in this case who has been sort of the judge that's presided all over the trump scandal, you know her well, is retiring. and a new judge is coming in to oversee all these subpoenas, et cetera? >> i don't think so. >> okay. >> the reason is she's short of termed out as the chief judge and she'll still be a judge but won't be in charge of all the grand jury work. the new judge is also excellent. we've dealt with him in a special counsel investigation
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from time to time. he was sort of the backup judge for judge howell. i don't think that would be the reason. i think there are many, many reasons in terms of the investigation itself to be moving very quickly. and pence and meadows -- >> they're the two. if i'm a special counsel there are two guys i want to talk to, three really. donald trump is one of them. but mike pence and mark meadows are the guys. i think i'm old enough to remember the juncture at which mark meadows was cooperating with investigations into january 6th, the congressional investigation on the january 6th committee. he handed over a lot of his text messages, which provided i think we can safely say the foundation of so much of the case that the committee laid out. >> everyone at the time was thinking, oh, he's going to fully cooperate. i think this is a seen that he didn't. he decided not to go down that route. one sort of technical thing that's interesting is mark meadows can't be a target of the grand jury. and the reason i'm saying that
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is doj has a rule which is that you cannot put a target in the grand jury. for instance if donald trump was a target, you wouldn't be able subpoena him. and it's just an internal doj rule. so clearly someone has decided mark meadows might be a subject, a person of interest but not actually someone targeted as looking to see whether you can charge him. that's sort of an interesting call because you would think he might be so exposed in terms of seeming to be the right-hand man of donald trump. >> what -- what legal exposure does he have and what kind of legal peril is he in georgia it seems he's facing almost certain legal peril. >> in my view everything you're seeing with respect to donald trump, if i was a prosecutor on
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this i'd think mark meadows is aiding and abetting and conspiring, so i don't see any daylight. this is going to put a lot of pressure on meadows. i think before then he's going to be asserting any privilege he can, but he may at the end of the day plead the fifth amendment. or is it so important to get his testimony you're willing to immunize him. that's a hard call that you would give that kind of deal to him. but that's all things we're going to be watching to see what he does. >> does his behavior initially with jan 6 and cooperating give you any into the state of mind as decisions he has to make now?
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>> it does. we have the same with rick gates where he started to cooperate and then backed off. and there's so much pressure in these kind of cases from your conspirators, there's so much pressure in admitteding wrongdoing in a huge public case, just imagine if you had to as an upstanding citizen suddenly admit you've done something wrong and it was not just in a court but going to be on every front page of the united states newspapers. so it's very hard to get cooperators and get people to admit that because it's so public, and so i think there's a lot of pressure on people in terms of what they're going to do. and the bay you're in the government and do that you have to build that case. you have to sort of make it clear that the only choice is someone is going to jail or decide to cooperate. >> you know who built that case most effectively, his former aid, cassidy hutchinson. >> what's great is she has some
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evidence but not a lot of direct evidence with respect to donald trump. but you know she has a lot of direct evidence about, mark meadows. so that's who has has to worry about. there's a lot of people who saw him, heard him, so it's going to be very hard for him to decide in a grand jury i'm going to try and lie my way out of this. >> just the phrase i'm going to the grand jury to lie -- i'm not a lawyer but i wouldn't advise that. thank you for your time and brilliance as always. it's great to have you to spend the whole night. okay, georgia, we were just talking about it. of course this news tonight regarding mr. meadows comes on the eve of the release of certain parts of the fulton county special grand jury report of trump's efforts and those of his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of georgia. naturally fulton county d.a. faunae willis is best known for this investigation. in the state of georgia she's
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made a name for herself prosecuting gangs. she's brought three rico cases against three area gangs. racketeer and corruption charges are notoriously difficult to bring. you have to prove that a group of people were involved in a pattern of multiple crimes and that those crimes were all related to one another. but rico cases aren't all gangs and mafia numbers. the first case of faunae willis' was a case she brought against a group of public schools and teachers that they were working together to cheat state standardized tests. literally faunae willis brought rico charges against teachers and won convictions. so one of the big questions in former president trump's case is will faunae willis use particular skills she has in bringing rico cases against
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specific defendants. tomorrow we get a sneak peek that might help answer that question, emphasis on the word might. from may to december of last year willis' office had been using a special grand jury in fulton county to investigate the matter. the special grand jury was specifically charged with submitting a report recommending whether anyone involved should be prosecuted for potential crimes. in december that grand jury gave their report to a fulton county judge who in turn gave it to faunae willis' office. tomorrow, less than 24 hours from now that same judge is going to release a report. but tomorrow that judge will release that report's introduction, its conclusion, and a section devoted explicitly to the grand jury's concern that some witnesses may have lied
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under oath during their testimony. now, the judge has said explicitly that tomorrow's report will not be naming names, but that is obviously a huge deal considering to testify before this grrmg. rudy giuliani and john eastman, senator lindsey graham, and former trump national security advisor michael flynn. these are just some of the dozens of witnesses that a special grand jury could be accusing of certain crimes here and one of the most potentially explosive questions will be does the grand jury suggest that a group of people who are involved in a pattern of multiple crimes all related to one another with the end goal of overturning the 2020 election, could this be another faunae willis and rico case? joining us now is barbara mcquade and professor at the university of michigan school of law. barb, thank you for being here on this night of all things
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legal. i've got to ask you every time i read a story about faunae willis, the word rico is in the story because of her record on this and because of the speculation that maybe she will try and turn this into a rico case as it concerns trump and the 2020 election. does that look like maybe what could happen to you? i mean where do you land on that question? >> i think there's a very good reason, alex, that people talking about a rico charge in this. one is faunae willis' historic use of them. there are prosecutors who shy away from them, find it uselessly complicated. you don't want to charge something so complicated that a jury doesn't understand it, and in some ways you've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by needlessly complicating a case. but she's shown she knows how to use it, and as you've it's not
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just for the mafia. it was passed in the late 1960s but it's since been used for gangs, she's used it against teachers. i've seen it used against political machines. and the idea and why it is so useful, it allows you to go after the boss, the person who doesn't get his hands dirty and allows the underlings to do the dirty work. and you can bring together various schemes under one umbrella. the enterprise could be a street gang, the enterprise could be a mob, a political campaign. so it allows you to get everybody participating in that group, as long as you can show that some member of the group agreed that two racketeering activities would be completed, that's what makes it a pattern. it could be fraud, pressuring brad raffensperger to change the votes, tinkering with the machines, could be submitting false slates of electors, and so all those schemes would be able
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to come under one umbrella. for that reason i think it's an attractive charge in this case, and since faunae willis has shown an ability and fearlessness in charging it -- >> you know, it's surprising when you go through the history of investigations into trump how much the rico charge comes up. i know that in the manhattan d.a.'s investigation, the former special assistant to the d.a. who just wrote a book mentions in the book they consider using a state level rico charge against trump but ultly decided not to. he writes the task of building out the proof on the whole pattern of enterprise corruption was too ambitious for the human and investigative bandwidth we had. the trump administration, you know, you listen to michael cohen's testimony really does seem like an organized crimes
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syndicate. the more information we have, the election fraud piece of this seems much more complicated to prove in terms of rico charges. and how much of an uphill climb would this be for someone like faunae willis if it was too much for alan bragg and his d.a.s? >> it is complicated. can you help a jury under this kind of case because it does have a lot of moving parts, but there are ways to explain it to a jury, and i think that it doesn't necessarily require additional man power from the prosecutors. it does require a level of complexity and understanding these things, so i'm not sure i fully credit mark pomrantz assessment there. i think thore capable and faunae willis is capable of bringing this case as she's shown in other cases. but it's the perfect tool in a case maybe what she has here where you've got somebody who's
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calling the shots but allowing other people to be engaged on the ground so you can bring in all of those things and allow the jury to hear the full scope of criminal activity. you also have fake electors and tampering with voting machines, and if other people did those things they might not ordinally come in under other joineder rules. if you charge the rico then all that comes in and the jury gets to understand the full scope of all the activity. they may seem less important, but when you view them in their entirety, you see this was a very wholehearted effort to overturn an election. >> indeed it was. what do you expect for the report tomorrow? everyone is saying lower your expectations. do you think we'll be able to get anything given the way this is going given the introduction and conclusion and other parts
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getting released? >> faunae willis tried to keep this under wraps. she wouldn't be fighting so hard to keep it quiet if only to say no charges here, folks, the case is closed. she talked about protecting the fair trial rights of defendants. so i think there's going to be something there. if all we see is the introduction and conclusion and it's been scrubbed of names it seems all we might learn is a little bit about the scope of the investigation. it's hard to say, it may say we recommend charges against individuals. we'll see. and i'm especially intrigued by the section that will disclose witnesses who lied before the grand jury. again, it won't include names but the mere fact they believe so many lied before the grand jury is itself a serious crime. so i'll be particularly interested in that section if it gets revealed tomorrow. >> we are going to be talking about it. whatever is there we're going to be talking about it in detail tomorrow. barbara mcquade, thank you as always for your time. coming up ron desantis has
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♪ every search you make ♪ ♪ every click you take ♪ ♪ i'll be watching you ♪ - [narrator] the internet doesn't have to be so creepy, the duckduckgo app, lets you search and browse pria blocking most trackers all forf your search history is never tracked, so it can't be shared. and when you leave search, duckduckgo helps keep companies from watching you as you brows. join tens of millions of people making the easy switch by downloading the app today. duckduckgo, privacy simplified. (upbeat music)
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remember their classmates. the vigil tonight caps off protests in east lansing, michigan. hundreds of students and parents gathered at the east lansing capitol for a sit in. they addressed members of the state ledger s lacher urging them to do something to protect their lives. >> why can't i feel that safe regardless. it's only getting worse. it won't get better unless there's change and that starts with you. it doesn't start with me. i can't do anything. i'm 20 and i'm broke. i can vote, exactly. i can vote. but my vote won't matter if you guys don't do anything about me putting you there. you need to talk to your peers.
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>> michigan lawmakers are responding to that pressure from their young constituents by preparing to introduce three new gun safety measures governor whitmer outlined in her state of state address last month. state senators say they'll introduce the bills soon and hope their republican peers will support them. but the students today are clear, they're fed up. their parents are fed up, their teachers are fed up, and they want action now. that urgency could also be heard in calls for action in florida today where hundreds of protesters gathered in tallahassee for another kind of education protest, to hold another elected official to account. this week florida governor ron desantis indicated a potential expansion of his decision to ban the new advanced placement african american studies course which is still in its pilot stage. desantis and other officials rejected to the inclusion of temporary means. the college has stripped those
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lesson plans and removed the works of scholars. desantis is now threatening to sever florida's relationship with the college board and its ap courses all together, potentially replacing all ap courses with other methods of conferring college credit to high school students in the state. today protesters marched from the michigan baptist church to the capitol building in tallahassee to say they've had enough of the governor's so-called war on woke. led by reverend al sharpton demonstrators held a rally at the state capitol to save our history and to give the governor a little lesson american protesting. after 57 years of jim crow, it was education, brown vs. the board of education that kicked off in 1954, that inspired rosa
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parks to sit down a year later in 1955. if you would study history you would have known to mess with us in education always ends in your defeat. you talk about florida is well, won't die, we went from woke to work. until we tell the whole story. >> sharpton invoked the long history of civil rights protests in america and how they have moved the needle of protest. that pattern of protests and progress will continue no matter how many history courses and books he tries to ban. in the meantime there are still classroom libraries papered over, subject matter that's been banned from classrooms, ap classes banned in the state of florida and the war on woke expanding nationwide. joining us now is the renowned
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writer and scholar. she's the professor of law at columbia and university of california and of course executive director of the african american policy forum. professor crenshaw is a critical race pioneer, literally the person at the center of these debates who coined the term intersectionality which is a word that describes how race and gender and class and other trades intertwine. professor crenshaw, it's great to see you. thank you for being here tonight. apologies for the long introduction, but we felt it was important. let me first just ask you about this term culture war because the idea of a culture war implies there are two sides battling it out, but what this feels like is much more asymmetric. it feels like an attack. do you think we need to refrain how we're talking about what's
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going on? >> i couldn't agree with you more, alex. and in fact one of my good friends jason stanley just wrote an op-ed in yesterday's guardian calling it precisely that. to call it a culture war is not only a misnomer but people aren't being told exactly what's happening, so you're right to point out the asymmetry of this, you're right to point out, you know, a culture war is often a war of values. it can be warring op-eds. it's not a faction that basically takes a law into its own hands and determines that there are ideas, there are practices, there are policies, there are interests that can no longer be legally expressed in
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public institutions. that's what desantis has done and that's what upwards of 17 states have done across the country considering what they consider this anti-wokeness crow sade. what it actually is a retrenchment, it is a reaction, it is a response to the tremendous mobilization that happened in 2020 in response to the killing of briana taylor, of george floyd. and frankly i think the fear that many people saw in every state there was a massive protest that involved people of all ages and all races. anti-racism was becoming a mujoritarian value to demand
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people pay attention not just to institutions but structures. and that's precisely why the backlash has gone after frameworks that allow people to understand our history in order to change our presence. >> i think we have a copy of some of the op-ed you mentioned. the passing of these laws signals the dawn of a new authoritarian age in the united states where the state uses laws restricting speech to intimidate, bully, and punish educators forcing them to submit to the ideology of a dominant majority or lose their livelihoods and even their freedom. my question to you is you use the word entrenchment just now, and i would love if you could sort of frame-up the tradition that this fits into in america because i think that there was contentment for at least some years maybe in the early part of the 20th century where it felt
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like this has been relitigated. like civil war america, that's where it feels like at least from my vantage point where we're at. how do you contextualize this in terms of american history? >> well, let's elevate some concepts or sound bites that sound like they came from the 19th century. you've got state rights. people are basically making arguments that our states rights allow us to say that there are certain ideas that cannot be taught about your history, the idea that white rights trump black realities, white emotions and comfort are more important than access and equity to black people and other people of color. these ideas are old, old ideas. they're ideas that basically suggest that your civil rights violate my civil rights, and there can only be my civil
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rights so basically you don't get a chance to have your history told. you don't get a chance to vote for the people you want to vote for. you don't get a chance to be full 100% citizens of this country. and the reality is that black freedom, freedom of people of color has always been a divisive concept. the very effort to not only create laws that eliminate the ability to advocate and to learn about racial justice under a divisive concept that tells you everything you need to know about how retrograde this moment and this movement actually is. >> critical race theory pioneer writer, scholar, the woman at the center of literally all of this, professor kimberley crenshaw, please come back to the show all the time. we'll ask you to speak extemporaneous for long periods of time and never censor what
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you want to say. >> black scholars have a new petition to restore the integrity of ap courses. >> we'll be looking out for that. thank you for the heads up, professor. we have more ahead tonight. nikki haley wants everyone to know she's part of a new generation of leaders but she is campaigning with some very old school bigots. plus fresh off a justice department subpoena, mike pence says he'll not enthusiastically participate in the left's obsession with race and gender. wait a second, the left's obsession? that is next. obsession? that is next
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♪ every search you make ♪ ♪ every click you take ♪ ♪ i'll be watching you ♪ - [narrator] the internet doesn't have to be so creepy, the duckduckgo app, lets you search and browse pria blocking most trackers all forf your search history is never tracked, so it can't be shared. and when you leave search, duckduckgo helps keep companies from watching you as you brows. join tens of millions of people making the easy switch by downloading the app today. duckduckgo, privacy simplified. (upbeat music)
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this is john hagee. he's an american pastor and televangelist. he once claimed god sent hitler to hunt the jewish people as part of a divine plan to drive them back to the land of israel. and he claimed women are only meant to be mothers and bear children. his beliefs are so controversial in 2008 republican presidential
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candidate john mccain was forced to publicly reject his endorsement as part of his campaign. but 15 years later pastor hagee has found a presidential candidate willing to embrace him. today he gave the opening prayer for the presidential campaign kick off for former governor nikki haley. >> i've got to give a shout out to the people who took the podium before me. to pastor hagee i still say i want to be you when i grow up. thank you. >> with her campaign announcement today haley made clear she was ready to bow a warrior in the republican party's new battle over wokeness. >> a self-loathing has swept our country. joe and kamala even say america's racist. this is not about identity politics. i don't believe in that, and i don't believe in glass ceilings either. strong and proud, not weak and woke, that's the america i see. >> strong and proud not weak and woke. this is the 2024 playbook.
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"the washington post" has reported that donald trump is now trying to play catch-up with potential rivals like ron desantis on the fight over race and gender in public schools. part of the florida governor's war on woke. and today former vice president mike pence, another potential contender, held his own rallies on those very same issues in minnesota and iowa. >> the truth is that the average american today is being dragged into a left-wing culture war that's invaded our schools, our colleges and workplace. every day we're told we must not only tolerate the left's obsessions with race and sex and gender but we must earnestly and enthusiastically participate. >> david, thanks for joining me tonight. i just wonder if you can square for me the results of the 2022 mid-terms and the play book that
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is emerging in the 2024 presidential race. >> well, i don't know if there's a way to square it, but it's a republican presidential primary, and these candidates and potential candidates are going to compete for the base of the party. at some point i can see this broadening out to have more general themes about the economy and national security. and we saw nikki haley today in charleston, south carolina, touch on that. but one of the issues that is driving the republican base today and even republicans beyond the base who are coming out of the coronavirus pandemic were concerned with public schools and what their kids were being taught are very interested in this topic. and interesting it is not a topic that we discuss in the 2016 republican primary or the 2008 republican primary. this is really new, but there's a reason that these candidates and potential candidates are
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focusing on it because that's where a lot of the energy and attention of republican voters are today. >> no matter what kind of election results they may actually, you know, result in terms of a general election, i do wonder why with the exception of mike pence the two declared candidates nikki haley and donald trump have not mentioned what used to be an old standard in the sort of cultural conversation, which was the war on choice, the question on reproductive freedom, the big "a," abortion. you know, the right has won that battle in a lot of ways. there are new fronts that emerge every day, but why do you think haley and trump aren't talking about abortion? are they sort of nodding towards a sort of reality on the ground in terms of voter support for anti-trump voters? >> listen, i think what we saw
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to nikki haley today she did pay homage to the issue. donald trump has expressed skepticism in going further than the supreme court has gone in terms of overturning roe v. wade. it's not an issue he feels is generally helpful to the republican process at the ballot box. i do expect during the course of this primary to have republican candidates compete at least some of them over who can take this issue to the next level, right, because the debate in the republican party right now about whether there should be a national ban versus states rights and the classic republican position that roe v. wade should be overturned and that states whether blue or red should make their own decisions on abortion with people that elect at the legislative level. and i do think republicans will call on congress to engage and implement a national ban on abortion rights, and i think some will promise if they're elected they'll do that or push
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for that and obviously the congressman along with it. other will talk about the need for state rights and saying i oppose abortion rights. i don't think a national ban is proper. so i think we're actually going to see that, and i think it's going to be one of the more interesting debates in the republican party as this primary unfolds. i think this issue in 2024 could really work for democrats in that this is no longer hypothetical or theoretical. this issue about judges and the supreme court as the court continues to evolve, other judges are getting older. we know that they don't last forever, and i think it could be a very motivating issue for voters that are concerned about abortion rights as we head into a general election in 2024. >> yeah, i think it was a motivating issue. it was the number two issue on voters minds according to exit polling in the 2022 mid-term. if republicans want to relitigate in 2024 or keep pushing for a federal ban i'm
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sure democrats would love to have that debate on the national stage. david drucker, thank you for your time tonight. >> anytime, thank you. coming up democrats are flipping the script on election denialism. we'll tell you how. that's next. we'll tell you how that's next. and it won't impact your ability to get pregnant in the future. find it yourself in the family planning aisle no prescription, no id. i've got this. ♪♪ if you have diabetes, then getting on the dexcom g6 i've got this. is the single most important thing you can do. it eliminates painful fingersticks, helps lower a1c, and it's covered by medicare. before dexcom g6, i was frustrated. all of that finger-pricking and all of that pain, my a1c was still stuck. my diabetes was out of control. i was tired. (female announcer) dexcom g6 sends your glucose numbers to your phone or receiver without painful fingersticks. the arrow shows the direction your glucose is heading: up, down, or steady, so you can make better decisions about food and activity in the moment.
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election deniers who are still out there, elections officials across the country are now leading the charge to combat misinformation about election integrity. according to "the washington post" in arizona the new democratic attorney general has repurposed a unit that under her predecessor focused on election fraud and it will now focus on voting rights and ballot access. in michigan secretary of state jocelyn benson is working to toughen penalties against those who threaten elections officials. benson is also drafting legislation that would make it a crime to knowingly spread misinformation about elections, comparing the legislation to laws barring deceptive marketing practices. the way benson sees it individuals who intentionally spread misinformation that then leads to threats or worse targeting elections officials are just as culpable and should be held culpable just as those who are actually exercising the threats themselves. down in north carolina the board of elections is considering the removal of county elections
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officials who without evidence of irregularities refused to certify the 2020 mid-term results. after more than two years of unabashed election denialism is coming deny at the state level. joining us now to help us figure it out whether it is indeed good news is the voting rights attorney. how heartened are you by measures being announced at the state level across the country? >> i don't want to get ahead of it. as you said we have been having election denialism for two years, and at each stage we have thought, well, it'll get better. after donald trump loses, it'll get better. certainly after republicans witness the violent insurrection at the nation's capitol, the fever will break and it will get
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better. after they lose the mid-terms, it has to get better. but the fact is it's not getting better, so i am happy to see democratic election officials and holders are pushing back. i think we need to be realistic about the threats we face. they are persistent, escalating and coming from one side of the aisle. >> what about i mean enforcing some of these laws? first there's a question how you enforce them. benson's legislation making it a crime to knowingly spread misinformation about elections. is that enforceable? and then there's the sort of counter argument that the more you punish folks like this, the more a kind of almost -- the more it makes them dig in their heels, right? at least when you talk about misinformation on social media, you try and censor, you try and prevent it from spreading and the virus spreads to another host.
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when we talk about efficacy, where do you grade these things? >> it's hard for me to address this speech content stuff, but there are things we can do to really push back against election denialism. you know, you said that the bill is aimed at people who provide misinformation. it's not people, it's republicans. the election official in north carolina was a republican. we need to acknowledge this is not a bipartisan probe. the party we have is one party is hijacking a system of elections that rely on bipartisanship. right, they rely on democrats and republicans certifying elections together. they rely on democrats and republicans observing elections together, and they assume at the end of the day everyone has a common interest in seeing the results are tabulated and certified. but that just isn't the case. the measures i think we need to focus on are the ones that sort of do away with the nostalgia of
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the pageantry of what democracy what once and focus on democracy today. they focus on making sure they certify elections whether they like elections or not. and if they don't, they'll get sued and if necessary they'll go to jail. we need to be much more intentional about bringing to bear the resources and the steps necessary to enforce the laws to make sure every ballot is counted. >> do you think at this point it matters if any of these new laws are put into place, that any of them have republican support? does that matter at this point if you have a republican state attorney general or attorney general that is willing to sort of go out on a limb here and try and reform a broken system as far as the party and misinformation? >> no, i don't, and one of the things frustrating to me, right now, alex, as you said there are
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17 states, more than half the american public lives in a state with a democratic governor and democratic legislature. those governors can act to implement those provisions. they won't target every battleground state, every swing state, but they'll create a momentum and standard just in the way desantis and his cronies have acted in partisanship fashion to create standards on the other side. i don't think we should be ringing our hands to find some magical republican. >> mark elias, thank you for joining us tonight. appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. r time >> thank you >> we'll be right back explore new worlds, and to start screening for colon cancer. yep. with colon cancer rising in adults under 50, the american cancer society recommends starting to screen earlier, at age 45. i'm cologuard, a noninvasive way to screen at home, on your schedule. and i find 92% of colon cancers. i'm for people 45+ at average risk for colon cancer,
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