to comcast business internet customers. so boost your bottom line by switching today. comcast business. powering possibilities™. tonight, on "the reidout" -- >> whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. it's an absolute right. this is the law.

>> nope. going to have to correct you there, donald. that is in fact not the law, which is how you ended up in a court of law just yesterday. plus, gaslighting efforts kick into high gear on the right with false equivalencies flying fast and furious all over fox. and later, the great rachel maddow joins me to talk about her amazing new podcast that takes us back in time eerily similar to those we are experiencing today. we begin tonight on donald trump's birthday. he turned 77 years old today. happy birthday you twice indicted, twice impeached found liable for sexual abuse former president! i'm sure it's been an interesting one. a day of reflection perhaps on what matters in life like family, good health, community, or not. i mean, this is donald trump we're talking about. so what matters in life are things, gold toilets, celebrity

tchotchke collections, gold stuff on the walls in the gold ballroom or the shaquille o'neal sneak he bragged about to a "wall street journal" reporter back in 2015. >> this is shaquille o'neal's shoe. >> oh my god. >> right here, which is a serious shoe. >> is that a real shoe? >> took it off after a game and handed to me. i carried it like this. >> yeah, i guess. you don't really like germs any way. >> from shaq? >> that's a serious shoe. >> we've always known this about trump, right? he is kind of a weird old hoarder guy with a taste level of a mega millions lotto winner from the 1980s mashed up with that guy you went to high school with who still wears the letter jersey from his 11th grade football championship. it explains why he would leave office with a mania to cling to physical icons of power. trump sees classified documents the same roi he sees shaq's shoes, the ultimate trappings of presidential fiat, evidence that he held that powerful office, and no one can forget it.

so when it came to these boxes, he couldn't believe his luck. talk about shiny new objects, brighter than a saudi orb. military papers and intelligence briefings he got to show off, the way that the youngins need to document everything for the gram. he clearly wanted to hang on to them, kind of like gollum and his precious, only it's my boxes. ornamental nuclear secrets. chris christie who is running against president trump for president has something to say about that. >> he cannot live with the fact that he lost to joe biden. he can't live with it. he wants to continue to pretend he is president. he want the trappings of the presidency around him. and i think one of those trappings is these documents that he can wave around to people. >> in addition to being weird about stuff, trump is also a really bad legal client. in march sean hannity offered

trump a lifeline that went awry. >> i can't imagine you ever saying bring me some of the boxes that i brought back from the white house. i'd like to look at them. did you ever do that? >> i have the right to do that. there is nothing wrong with it. >> but i know you wouldn't do it. >> i don't have a lot of time. but i have the right to do that. i would do that. >> all right. let me move on. >> no, no, no, sean, i'm guilty. i totally did it. a month later his legal team tried to get him out of trouble again, sending this letter to congress, saying they'd seen absolutely no indication that trump knowingly possessed any of the marked documents or willfully broke any laws, blaming the mishap on haphazard packing process by white house staff. trump then managed to screw those attorneys over with these remarks at his disastrous cnn town hall. >> i had every right to do it. i didn't make a secret of it. i took the documents. i'm allowed to. >> oh, the agony of being a trump attorney. he is allowed to do what he thinks. it's his basic defense.

everybody does it. and i can do it because i'm still kind of the president. like when you're a star, they let you do it. but it wouldn't be donald trump without undercutting his defense again, the exact same day he pleaded not guilty, he used his post arraignment speech at his golf club, tricked out like a fake white house, to again admit he did it. >> many people have asked me why i had these boxes. why did you want them? the answer, in addition to having every right under the presidential records act is that these boxes were containing all types of personal belongings, many, many things. shirts and shoes and everything. i hadn't had a chance to go through all the boxes. it's a long, tedious job. it takes a long time, which i was prepared to do, but i have a very busy life. i've had a very busy life. >> you know what former fbi general counsel andrew weissman calls that thing that trump just said, and all his other pretend

defenses? a confession. >> one thing it's important for everyone to know those statements that you just played are admissible as admissions. regardless of whether donald trump takes the stand or not, those are admissions. so that is part of what he said is just straight out confession. it's not a defense. it's confession. when you are charged with the illegal retention, the possession, the illegal possession of documents, it is not a good idea to say hey, you want to know why i took these? because i could. that is not a defense to that charge. that is an admission to that charge. >> joining me now are former missouri senator and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill, former acting assistant u.s. attorney general for national security mary mccord, and former assistant district attorney for manhattan, katherine christian. i'm going to start here at the

table and just go through what you just heard, those three bites of trump, because it sounds to me like his defense is i did it. >> yes. he, as andrew said, he's had multiple confessions he's made. his public statements are the gift that keeps giving for prosecutors, or plaintiffs attorneys. every time he speaks. i'm sure his attorneys say please don't speak, please don't, and he just keeps doing it. so he's admitted that he had the documents, and he contradicts himself also, because he said that he didn't look through the boxes. >> right. >> well, clearly he did, because there is an audiotape of him at the same golf club apparently waving around a document and then saying on it, well, it's confidential, and i could have just declassified it when i was president, but i didn't. so he is completely inconsistent, but he has given multiple confessions in this case. >> if you had someone on the stand in front of you as a prosecutor, and there were previous statements recorded that they recorded all over the place saying i totally did this, would you even have to put them

on the stand? could you just use their prior statements as the equivalent of putting them on the stand? >> you mean cross-examination? >> yeah. >> i can't imagine he would, but if he ever took the stand, it would be a dream for anyone cross-examining him. he would have his direct examination and then is it true? and you would just pull up the videos of him, one after another after another. and it speaks for itself. >> okay, mary mccord, let me go to you on this. because this is trump's other defense. he has been using this a lot, and i think to people who don't know the law and aren't familiar with it, to them it probably sounds credible. here is president trump giving the presidential records act. >> i had every right to have these documents. the crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject known as the clinton socks case. in other words, whatever

documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. it's an absolute right. this is the law. >> mary, please fact check that. >> well, it's not the law. it's not whatever documents the president decides to take with him when he leaves the oval office are his documents. the presidential records act explicitly made clear in law that presidential records, records of official business that are not just purely personal records are not the president's property. they're not the former president's property. they are the public's property. they are the government's property. and so that's why the national archives reached out the donald trump after he left the white house from mar-a-lago and said we need all of these records back. you know, when they first reached out, they weren't necessarily suspecting that there was classified information in those boxes. they just knew they were presidential records, and it was their duty as the archivists to go through the boxes. and if there was anything in there that was not an official

record, that did not meet the definition of presidential records, well, then they would send it back to mr. trump as personal information. but he does not get to just call his own anything that he wishes. that's not in the law at all. and i do think sometimes the reason he keeps making these admissions, besides the fact that he can't control himself and he can't ever admit he did anything wrong is i think he's trying to sort of convince the population that he had no intent to break the law. he was just complying with the law. the problem is that's based on a legal fiction. >> you know, claire, first of all, saying it was in with my socks and my clothes is not the own donald trump thinks it is. republicans are trying to argue that our top secret and nuclear information was safer in his gold bathroom than it was in joe biden's garage. but if you're saying that your care for national security is limited to you throwing national

security information in a box with your socks and clothe, it doesn't sound like you care too much about national security, and yet republicans are trying to make this make sense. >> the biggest problem the republicans have is they are actually trying to pretend that donald trump is getting indicted because he took documents. that's not why he is getting indicted. the archives, they wanted him to return the documents. this took so long because they were giving him every opportunity to do what joe biden and mike pence did immediately. hey, they're here, take them. come look all you want. i don't want any of them. and we don't even know if any of those documents were serious in terms of national security implications. that's not what happened here. donald trump, they said please give them to us. he said eh, and they said we really mean it. please give them to us. he said eh, they're mine. then they subpoenaed him. he said yeah, i'll give you.

so meanwhile, he is telling his lawyers can't we just make them disappear? he is telling his staff go hide them. he is lying because he wanted to keep them. for two reasons. one, he is an insecure braggart, and two, i think he thought he could monetize them in some way, because at the end of the day, with trump, it's either about one thing, money or lying. >> mary mccord, let me good back to you for one moment. you worked in the national security division. so you are personally familiar with the frequency of prosecutions for this under the espionage act, of people high and low, some guy that's a national guardsman or whatever that goes in and gets stuff. reality winner, was trying to help our country. you could go on and on and on. if trump had given the documents back, do you think that he would have been indicted? >> no, i don't. that would have been more like the situation of mike pence and the national security division and the department of justice have recently sent a letter to his attorneys saying we are

closing this investigation, because it was a mistake there. and when he realized he had them, he gave them back. what happened here, donald trump is not even charged with taking them, despite the fact that he has now admitted he took them. >> right. >> he is charged with retaining them after he was requested to give them back. and of course he is charged with a bunch of different obstructive conduct. and that's what makes this case so different than the pence and biden cases, but it also -- that's also the reason he was prosecuted. and in other cases, that's often been a similar thread there. some kind of lying about the documents once they're in possession. or there is dissemination. we have indications of dissemination here that are in the indictment, but not a charge of dissemination. >> in part because the dissemination alleged was in bedminster, and not in florida. but there are all kinds of aggravating circumstances in this case that anyone else with those kind of similar

aggravating circumstances would most definitely be charged and has been charged. >> and that is why the clinton defense doesn't make any sense. and that's why the biden defense doesn't make any sense. they're still making it. it leads us to his defense strategy. one of them is that the judge in this case, who seems to have a history and seems to have a history that's very pro-trump basically erases the case, directed verdict, or mess was the timing or somehow makes the case go away. that's one strategy. strategy number two is getting elected president, which means everything is on the line. be elected president and pardoning himself. and the third is plead out. i mean, do you see any -- i can't think of a fourth. >> i can't imagine donald trump ever pleading guilty to any crime. >> yeah. >> well, he confesses to them, but i can't imagine in a court of law him actually pleading guilty. and in terms of this case, many people say there is no way it

can be tried before the election. i think the special counsel is going try it. we will know immediately. i have appeared before a number of judges. you know immediately the first thing you appear in that courtroom how the judge is going to be. so we will know. is she going to be someone who is going to move the case along or is she going to try to delay it. when she delays, judges are the ones that delay trials. >> could they back up and say if she messes with the case, just go ahead and charge in new jersey for dissemination? because that's not been charged yet. >> they could. but what they could do if there is a question about whether or not they should ask her to further recuse herself and do that, i don't think that will do that because that will delay the case. but if she does anything crazy or unorthodox, they may, they meaning the special counsel, may go to the 11th circuit. >> and last question i guess will go to you. unfortunately, the disinformation from the right is seeping in, and it is effective, because they just what about it, and they mention biden.

they never mention pence, and they mention clinton. and that has been the strategy on the hill. it's not a legal strategy because it won't help them in court. but donald trump, the irony here is that he could win the politics of this even as he is getting convicted. >> no question about it. his plan a is to stall the case, and he is not running for president. he is running for pardon. plan b is what i am most worried about. that is he is trying to go for what we call jury nullification. he is trying to put enough lies out there, and he has enough people that believe his lies that he is hoping he gets one or with the of them on the jury. >> right. >> and that they can come on the jury and lie to the court about whether or not they can be fair. they could insert themselves in a jury down in florida and they could refuse to convict him, and that would be a hung jury. so he is going to continue to spew the lies. it's going to seep in to those people who refuse to read the indictment or see the facts.

and that's what i'm most worried about is a hung jury. >> and the only party that gets to talk is trump. the other side is only speaking through the indictment. so he has something of an advantage there. former senator and former prosecutor claire mccaskill, mayor mccord and catherine christian, thank you all. up next, trump allies and defenders adopt their favorite hero defense. he didn't do it. but even if he did, it's okay because he used to be the president. the "the reidout" after this. eis when i was diagnosed with h-i-v, i didn't know who i would be. but here i am... being me.

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so you can tell how serious this federal indictment is by watching how republicans are dealing with it. and they fall into two general groups. there are his dogmatic followers who ignore the facts that trump is being charged for hiding multiple classified documents from the department of justice, even when they politely asked for them back. nah, let's ignore the obvious and inject a heavy dose of what aboutism. who better? >> kevin mccarthy, do the documents belong to trump? >> what documents? >> the dumps. >> if they're classified, they should be given back. i don't believe the classified document has that president biden, they don't belong to him either. and i don't believe that hillary clinton when she had the server and bought the new software to bleach it all had the right to do that either. yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah.

but. >> kevin mccarthy forget to say this isn't apples to apples and he wouldn't even have been indicted if his he had done what his lawyers told him to do, return all the stuff that doesn't belong to you, man. then there those who want to cover all the bases as well as their behinds saying yeah, it's bad to hoard hundreds of documents in your bathroom, but the president shouldn't be held to such a high standard, because that's just not fair. >> that's not even the allegation that it was accessed by any foreign power or given to any foreign power. you to weigh the harm with the real harm this indictment is going to do, harm to our institutions, to our court. this is a portion gasoline on top of. >> it seems there are two systems of justice here, one for president trump and one for everybody else. >> i've read everything i could find about it, i'm not a legal analyst. so i'm not going comment. they're always wondering about this double standard of prosecution, about this unfair, unequal treatment of the law by certain prosecutors.

>> these folks forget to tell you that the guy they're defending spent four years demanding that his white house counsel order an investigation into his 2016 opponent hillary clinton. and for then fbi director james comey to literally lock her up. and when he didn't, he literally wanted to fire comey. that didn't happen because his white house lawyers warned him if he did that he would be impeached. he dropped that and moved on to joe biden and his family, trying to extort the president of ukraine to dig up fake dirt. and he was impeached for that. here is the thing. when trump has his back against the wall, he is happy to break everything, including america. his second impeachment was for fomenting a little insurrection when he didn't get reelected. yesterday, after he used the trappings of the presidency to fuel the notion that he is still somehow president, you know, closing udown highways and having his tv lawyer lie on camera, he headed to a cuban restaurant versailles to nurture the fantasy that he is the

target of a political witch hunt at the hands of marxist regime. >> i think it's going rigged. we have a rigged country. we have a country that's corrupt. >> then offered to pay for everyone's food, but knowing trump, he probably left the restaurant holding the bag. he didn't pay the bill. joining us political analyst fern nan armandi and politics in journalism, host of the award with jason johnson podcast, jason johnson, thank you for being here. fernan, i do want to start with you. i was texting you furiously trying to find out what was going on spanish radio, because we know that is a tool oftentimes for misinformation used by republicans. let me play you a little clip. take a listen. >> what we're seeing here is the type of thing, mr. president, that sadly happens in latin america. an our audience is very aware of it. a lot of people have left their countries because of the lack of democracy.

the lack of law and order, rule of law and the persecution of the political conservative opposition is happening in colombia, brazil with bolsonaro. hispanics can't help but notice it's happening here in the u.s. are we gressing as a democracy? how do you think hispanics feel about this? >> well, there is a regression. but there has been an incredible lovefest between the hispanic community and myself. >> how effective is this stuff? >> let's be honest. this is effective in the cult, right. the cult has their own information silos. the cult gets their information from very unique sources. so amongst the cult members, this stuff works. but the problem for the republican party, who wants to win a general national election in november 2024, when you tie your fate to a malignant narcissist with autocratic impulses like trump is, then you

have this dance that they're not going to be able to do on a high-wire without a safety net where you're defending the indefensible, while at the same time trying to keep the cult in place and in order. and they're not doing a very good job of it, joy. you see it in the clips that you played at the outset. you can see the tension. you can see the wheels turning behind kevin mccarthy and these others because they know the frankenstein monster that is now out there and about is the determiner of their fate. and they also know that if they pull back their support, trump will go on a jihad against the republican party and/or run as an independent and absolutely doom their chances, not foernl the presidency, but to old on to the house and maybe even recapture the senate. >> yeah, it's like a gordian knot, jason, that they can't get out of. you look at the polling numbers, and only 35% of republicans think that donald trump illegally stole classified documents. okay. 91% were democrats.

that's expected. 62% of everybody. and if you go through that poll, the reuters poll, all the independents numbers don't look good for republicans. they're actually making their own base smaller by riding with this guy. >> joy, i have an even more important poll. 100% of americans know that you can't keep classified documents in the bathroom. that's it. that's the most important poll. i will tell you, when you step away from people who do this for a living and political sophistication, when i talk to my friends and colleagues and students who don't have anything to do with this, the most simple response is what the heck was he doing with classified documents in the bathroom? i had a friend say is that the knock list from mission impossible? we've already seen evidence that we've had cia agents and people captured mysteriously ever since donald trump had this information. this is bad. there is no version of this that can be sold next year. and the republican party knows that this guy is an absolute anvil on their necks.

and joy, here is the thing. regardless what ends up happening in the presidential election, and my guess is joe biden ends up beating donald trump again. trump has never got the majority of the popular vote. most people don't like him. the republicans have three chances to take the senate next year. only three. manchin, tester, sherrod brown. if you've got donald trump on the ballot, two of the three guys are going to keep their jobs. if they don't knock out these senators, they're not going to be able to get them for the next six years because you don't have any other vulnerable democrats in the senate. that's how bad this is. they are connected to a man who is not only a malignant narcissist and try toe take over the country, but he is an idiot. anybody who is a voter can see that. >> and yet, even the governor of georgia who the media tries to paint as some sort of normie, even though he is a vote suppressing fool says yeah, i'll vote for him if he is the nominee. they're all lashed to him, and all the nominees are essentially promising to pardon him. and that is their strategy.

we swear we'll pardon him. yet 40 people are running against him. the mayor of miami, francis suarez just jumped in. >> so i can't help, most of america has no idea who francis suarez is. they're not going to have any idea when this is over, because he is not going anywhere. but just to make it clear, francis suarez voted for andrew gillem. he voted for hillary clinton and joe biden. but when asked the other day who you support donald trump, he cull tully came out and said yes after supporting hillary and biden and andrew gillem against ron desantis. so it's a joke. the truth of the matter is remember, they're doing in essence donald trump's bidding by getting in this race. every new candidate that gets in this race just means that the hard-core white molten lava core of the cult is going to burn brighter and stronger for trump, and he is counting on that to capture this knowledge nation. >> the thing is, none of the

other candidates except chris christie is presenting a plausible alternative to subbing up to trump. even desantis is i'll pardon him. there is nothing else other than christie, that argument, and trump. >> because people know they can't beat trump, that's when you have people jumping into the race just in order to cover themselves or to raise money. suarez is, he is the deval patrick of bobby jindals. we know where that's going. it's not going to go anywhere under any circumstances. and then your front-runners, at least by name, when you get desantis and christie and possibly tim scott, none of them have the backbone to really stand out and say i'll hold this guy accountable. nothing credible comes out of chris christie's mouth because he was a guy who following trump around like a love sick puppy for most of his interpret, right? so none of them can actually criticize him. and at the end of the day, if you actually consider what's going end up happening in this primary, every single person who jumps in the race makes it easier for donald trump to win. >> yeah. >> republican primaries, its

first pass, he is going to end up winning. >> you used to be so cynical. it's so charming to put tim scott as a leading candidate. come on, y'all. let's keep it real. come on, come on, tim. thank you both. up next. history won't stop. none of these people are going to be president. history won't stop repeating itself. and that is why we're in the mess we're in today. we'll be right back.

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narrator: it's called, “shared leadership.” driven by each community in a groundbreaking setting: california's community schools. where parents and families, students and educators, make decisions as one. creating the school and shaping futures - together. based on the needs of their students... ...steeped in local culture. curriculum from cyber security to gardening. and assisting families with their needs: wellness centers, food pantries, and parental education. california's community schools: reimagining public education.

if you have any questions about how american politics got to where we are right now, remember this moment from the 1964 republican national convention. >> i will remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. >> there is a through-line from that speech from republican presidential nominee barry goldwater to the present. because of the john birch society, the far right insurgent movement that roiled republican party in the late 1950s and '60s. it was founded in 1958 by a candy magnate named robert welch, who trafficked in conspiracy theories and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents. he alleged that president dwight david eisenhower and most of the u.s. government was under secret communist mind control. he even opposed adding fluorine

to the nation's water supply, also part of the communist plot to control our minds through an involuntary medical experiment. at its peek, the john birch society had more than 100,000 member. so what does this all have to do with barry goldwater's most infamous line? well, at the time, despite the birchers' growing popularity based on their anti-communist and evangelical zeal, conservative leaders like richard nixon and william f. buckley rallied to boot them out of the party. but goldwater knew he needed those bircher votes. the group had endorsed his candidacy. hence, the extremism in the defense of liberty red meat. american voters weren't so keen on it, though, and their association of him with the birchers arguably contributed to goldwater's landslide defeat and the purge from the republican party of that particular brand of extremism. except it never actually went away. their ideas are still thriving among the modern day maga right.

one historian of the group noted at the time the birchers promoted america first style isolationism, and dabbled in anti-semitism and racism, sparking concerns the society would use secretive violent means to disrupt free and fair elections and help tip the united states into a civil war. another historian pointed out a key bircher intellectual. e. merill root wrote a book, "collectivism on our campuses." he was concerned how these ideas were creeping into our schools and they were infecting the minds of our children and liberalizing them. paging ron desantis! if this all sounds eerily familiar, it is because that is another example of the old adage frequently quoted by the great rachel maddow, history rhymes. rachel has an incredible new podcast exploring that very phenomenon, and she joins me next. etty.

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i gave my dad the ancestrydna® kit. honestly, i saw it on sale and i was a- broke grad student so i like a sale. i think it was a good gift. it blew my mind. give ancestrydna®. now on sale for father's day. history has a weird way of repeating itself, or at least rhyming. that is the theme of the new podcast rachel maddow presents day gentleman news with long time producer isaac davery aronson. it explores how history provides insight into current events. here is a clip from the first episode. >> if you have watched "rachel maddow show" on msnbc, you may have noticed we often look for stories from history to help us make sense of what's happening now.

so today, isaac is here with this story, this kind of historical antecedent for january 6th. >> and it's not just a similar event. it happened on similar date, the 6th, february 6th, 1934. and while this event isn't well-known in this country, it's very well-known in the country where it happened in france. in fact, just like our capitol attack is just called january 6th, the assault on the french parliament in 1934 is to this day simply known as february 6th. even almost 90 years later. which would suggest that these events and their aftermaths really are similar, we may be living with january 6th for a long time. >> which is reason enough for me to want to know if history can help here. if the real history of something that was very much like our january 6th can help give us smarter expectations about what's likely to happen here, next. >> joining me now is my esteemed

colleague and host of "rachel maddow show," my pal rachel maddow. i am so excited to get to talk with you. we're just obsessed with the same things, and i love it so much. my biggest proof that the earth is round is that we're just walking on a big wheel, and we're going around and around and doing the same things over and over again. please explain this exciting episode about the pre-maga. >> i'm so glad that you did the thing about the john birch society and the relationship between the republican party and what they saw as their too extremist wing and what made them seem not ready for prime time. and so they had to have kind of a purge, but not one that pushed those extremists too far out. i mean, it's -- for me, that stuff is helpful not just because history is fun to learn. history i think, particularly when it comes to political science, i feel like history is grounding. like so many of the things that we are facing are recurrences.

>> yes. >> are things that cyclically come around again. the relationship between governing parties and extremism. that's kind of a structural permanent thing. and when the extremists get ahold of the governing party and start thrashing it around a little bit, some sort of predictable things happen. and if you know how that went in other countries and other circumstances, in other generations before us and our own country, i think it can help us feel less overwhelmed. it can help us have more reasonable expectations for what's going happen next, and it can help us learn from other americans who had to contend with these things before. i mean, history doesn't -- doesn't repeat exactly, but there are recurring themes, recurring incidents that to me are the best explanation that we have sort of from our forebearers, the best help that we have from them in terms of how to contend with some of the stuff today.

i love that you think about these things this way too. >> i agree. i sometimes tell my republican friends, don't worry. the democrats had this problem. they have been here. they've been through this nightmare of having an extremist, racist, anti-black, really wild out there party, and they recovered so much. they did the black president. they had a black president. you can fix it. but it takes time and work and knowing what it's about. >> yeah. >> but the idea that this also happened in france, which is interesting, because we do think of the french revolution. but you're talking about a more modern version of a french revolution that is very similar to what happened on january 6th. >> yeah, when we think about the fight against fascism in world war ii, we think about european fascism which rose during the '20s and '30s, and when we think about france in that context, if at all, it's about france being occupied by the nazis. they had the vichy government which was a collaborationist terrible government. there was a big native fascist right wing movement in france.

and in 1934, for a whole bunch of very interesting reasons, involving a whole bunch of sort of very interesting big cast of characters, they had a january 6th. they had a right wing violent mob attack the seat of government to stop the peaceful transfer of power. and it happened on february 6th in 1934. and when they marched on the french parliament, it worked. they actually stopped the transfer of power to the center left prime minister who was supposed to be giving his inaugural speech that day in their parliamentary system, and they instead installed this sort of pro fascist very right wing government. it worked. i mean, it didn't work forever. but it did work in the short-run. and so it helps us imagine what might have happened if january 6th had worked that day. i think it helps us realize what the sort of short and medium term consequences could be. one of the really interesting

consequences in france is after the fascists and the pro fascists did this, it made everybody on the center and the left get over their differences, unified as anti-fascist and force them out, which is very interesting. it also set the stage for very dark days during the nazi occupation a few years later. and in the long run, 90 years after they had that incident in 1934, france is still contending with it. it still resonates in their politics today. there are still right-wingers in france who celebrate it and tell lies about it and say it will be wild, a great tourist visit to the capitol that day. so all of that i think is helpful for us in terms of setting expectations for how it might live on in our politics and how we might react to it, even in the sort of medium term. >> do you feel like part of what we and what societies havethis , as opposed to the opinion countries we came from, or the african nations that are ancient civilizations, is that there is always a percentage of

extremism, of extremists. they just are. they just exist. to the polling for the support for the extreme parts of the maga movement, it's always about a third. a third, a third, a third, no matter what the issue. is to believe the don trump is still president? othered. and maybe there is some way that society has learned to live with the existence of a paranoid part of its politics but not to be overtaken by it. is that the way you think about it? >> well, yes, and every country is different, every country has its own history and inheritance. i feel that one of the things i am starting to get more comfortable recognizing in our own age is that in a democracy there is a kind of centrifugal force, where in a democracy while you're trying to do? essential you're trying to run a country where everyone gets to say. there's always going to be some group of people in a democracy who feel like they are not getting enough of what they want out of this democracy and what this country needs is more

of what they want. [laughter] so we need to get rid of democracies on me and people like me can run this thing because we are supposed to. that's the constant tension in a democracy. it constantly throws of extremist movements and authoritarian movement, particularly from the right, from the business classes and so on on the far-right. we should expect it. we should find ways to stabilize our democracy by not being shocked when those things happen. by learning from other examples in our history and other country's history of how they helped extremism, helped extremists back into the governing fold and let democracy stand despite their efforts to undermine it. >> one way to do that would be to not have a president that's not governing from prison. so this is white where the interview becomes a hostage situation, because i'm gonna ask you to stay for the commercial break. when we come back i want to ask you about a theory that you floated that i am actually now

obsessed with because this is what rachel maddow does to me. she says something and i become obsessed with it and i need to talk to her about it more. so please stay for a bit longer. we will come back and i'm gonna ask the scintillating western that has to do with what we were talking about for the rest of the show, in just one moment. right back. right back - booked our trip to vegas! - in this economy? what are we, rich?! ♪ ♪ are we rich? oh, what a relief. no more secretly renting the attic to that scary lodger

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back with us. i'm putting up a headline here. it says how spiro agnew bartered his office to keep from going to prison. i know everyone saw this on your show. you talked about it on our big show. what are the chances that donald trump's, i had not thought about it i had not thought about it until you said it that instead of going through with this trial he takes a plea with the vowed to not run for president again like spiro agnew did in the 70s. >> i don't know what the odds are. i take the point from catherine christian earlier in your shows that i can't imagine him

pleading guilty to anything. who among us wants to spend too much time floating around inside his mind even proverbially? so who knows what's gonna happen. but if this is as strong a case as the indictment makes it look and that's the prosecutions best-case, it will get challenged in court. it will be an adversarial process. we will see how strong the defenses. but if the indictment is that strong and the justice department is going to treat this as a like case compared to other people who have been charged under the espionage act then he is looking at jail time. what would on trump do to avoid jail time? i guess, i literally suppose, that he would do anything. and if it's going to come to him avoiding jail time, now that this indictment exists he's either going to have to win in court defending yourself against the charges by saying yes i.d.'d is not a good defense.

and so how else can you avoid jail time? you can plea in exchange for leniency. we've seen lots of people including reality winner, a very how prime file case, plead for leniency and still get jail time. what can he offer prosecutors other than his confession, his cooperation? this is a crime he can only commit because he was in high public office. spiro agnew use that is a get out of jail free card. it's not just that he was vice president, it was the prosecutors assumed that nixon was about to become president. in order to keep agnew out, they traded him jail nine for his resignation. i'm not saying what that that's what the doj should agree to or what the defense would offer, i'm not saying it would be good or bad for the country, one other time we've dealt with this is a country, that's how we did it. >> what's fascinating about this theory is that donald trump's face an extreme miasma problems from georgia to new

york to everything, that for a blanket non prosecution agreement, if that is possible, if they could get fani willis and the d.a. in manhattan to join a non prosecution agreement, i mean trump says i'm undergo shear. >> i had ron liebermann, one of the prosecutors on of agnew on the show, and he said listen, it would have to be a not global non prosecution agreement, in this with this many charges against him that would be hard. but nothing about this is easy. again, i don't know that this is going to happen. i don't know that it should. but i think we should get real about the fact that the only other time it has happened, that was the most important card on the table. >> prison or gold toilet room. prison, gold toilet room. i know what i would. take rachel maddow, you're the best. be sure to check out deja news, wherever you get your podcast. i will be doing the same. that's tonight's read out.