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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  July 7, 2023 1:00am-2:01am PDT

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having known you it seems hard to believe. >> there you go, there's nothing left. >> we will never tire of the things you have to say. keep saying them and i'll keep following. thank you, chris. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. we start this evening with this. get caught in a hot mess? that is an ad for the legal services for the new former representing former president trump's alleged coconspirator walt nauta. just from a laymans perspective
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here it sure seems he's caught in a hot mess. today nauta finally pleaded not guilty. for weeks now mr. nauta has been delaying this arraignment claiming he's had trouble finding local florida representation. and today, well, we learn he has found that representation. now, we don't know for sure who's paying for mr. nauta's new local counsel, but the other lawyer, the non-local counsel mr. nauta has had for a while and by the way was in court today and enter a plea was attorney brand woodward. and we know the law firm is being paid by president trump's political action committee, save america. that little tidbit matters because if the past is prologue here, then the lawyers who pays
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for the lawyers can make a world of a difference when it comes to actually getting at the truth. >> i was in the vicinity of a conversation where i heard the president say something to the effect of they're not here to hurt me, takes the f-ing mags away. >> remember cassidy hutchinson? she was a former top aide to trump's chief of staff, mark meadows. and she was one of the star witnesses for the january 6th investigation. she describes how president trump not only knew the crowd gathering during a speech at the ellipse had weapons but testified how trump security didn't want to take those weapons away. but cassidy hutchinson wasn't always completely transparent
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with the january 6th committee. early on in the house investigation, hutchinson was represented by a lawyer named stefan passentino, they were paid by trump's political action committee, save america, the same organization that has paid the law firm of the lawyer representing mr. nauta. and because of the extensive testimony ms. hutchinson gave to the house we know exactly what kind of legal representation trump world was paying for. the lawyer told ms. hutchinson things like we want you to focus on protecting the president. we all know you're loyal. he gave her legal advice like the less you remember, the better while instructing her not to look at calendars or look at time lines or do anything that could jog her memory. that is the kind of legal advice that trump world was paying for.
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it has a distinctly pro-trump bent. ultimately in the end we know the exact moment she decided to flip. around june last year hutchinson believed the house investigation might hold her in contempt of congress for not cooperating with them. this was the advice that her lawyer gave her at the time. there's a small element of risk to refusing to cooperate, but i think it's the best move for you. do you agree? turns out cassidy hutchinson did not agree. she described that moment explicitly as her breaking point, saying it was then she knew she needed to sever her attorney-client relationship with or without a new attorney. now, we are recounting all of this because cassidy hutchinson and walt nauta are strikingly similar figures. hutchinson was a trump loyalist, she was still a top white house aide as of january 2021, which
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is telling in its own right. walt nauta has done everything from fetch donald trump his cokes to move boxes at mar-a-lago. and since they were coindicted they've been spotted over and over again sort of attached at the hip. remember both legal fees were at least initially paid for by trump's save america pac so far walt nauta is taken the same lead, he is stone walling investigators. for example, one of the crimes he's charged with is lying to investigators. the indictment lays it out like this. in may last year the fbi asked nauta if he say aware of any boxes being brought to trump's home. nauta answered no. when asked if he had any information at all where those boxes are kept, nauta responded i wish i could tell you, i don't
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know, i don't. i honestly just don't know. it is now, of course, very public knowledge jack smith's office knows this is a lie and they can prove it. they have security camera footage of mr. nauta moving the boxes before making those statements. they have text messages of mr. nauta pchs where he talks about moving those boxes, again, before making those statements. but, still, today walt nauta pleaded not guilty. i don't know if that was his own idea or it was the legal advice he's getting but a certainly bold decision here. and the very live question now is how long will walt nauta stick with that decision? will he make it all the way to the trial with a lawyer paid for by donald trump? joining us now to discuss is the former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of megs, msnbc legal analyst barbara mcquade as well as david aaron, former federal prosecutor and intelligence attorney with the u.s. department of justice.
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thank you both for being here. barb, i have a good set of theories about why walt nauta might be inclined to flip on trump, but why -- i mean entertain the idea for a moment that he doesn't flip on trump. what are the incentives to staying in the good graces of trump world at this point? >> well, as pleading guilty is a very personal decision and sometimes it takes people up until the very end to be convinced that their guilt could be proved. but i can imagine when you're in a position of someone like walt nauta and you're working for donald trump perhaps there is a motivation of loyalty. perhaps there is a thought that ultimately any prison time would be a small portion of the rest of your life, and the rest of your life you could instead be rewarded by donald trump. so there may be financial reasons, there may be fear reasons and there may be loyalty reasons. i don't think it's over. he can cooperate up until the time the case goes to trial, but
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i do think he's probably blown his best chance which would have been a preindictment plea. if he is to plead guilty now i think he'll have to plead guilty as charged and hope for leniency from the judgment in exchange for cooperation. >> dave, does it surprise you walt nauta who again his moving of the boxes as part of the affidavit for the search warrant, he has been sort of at the ground zero of this criminal indictment from day one. does it surprise you that he is pleading not guilty here? >> it doesn't surprise me at all. most defendants plead not guilty at their arraignment, and as barbara said, negotiations can proceed from there. i do think in this case as the days have gone by is that usefulness to a potential -- as a potential cooperator is probably declining steadily. i think if he was going to make the decision to cooperate, he's about a year late.
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>> barb, what do you think in terms of the peril he's facing given the fact he's the only other person named at least in the initial criminal indictment from the doj. what are the potential consequences here if he is found guilty? >> the penalties can be steep. the false statements charge is penalized up to five years in prison, but it's the conspiracy to obstruct justice penalized up to 20 years in prison. the sentencing guidelines usually bring that number to something lower, and i can imagine if i were the lawyer for walt nauta i would argue he should get a reduction. he was taking orders from donald trump. nonetheless i think he's looking at years in prison and so there's still an incentive to plead guilty in an effort to reduce that number. >> yeah, years in prison is not nothing. >> dave, in terms of the legal representation he now has, she is not a former federal
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prosecutor. do you think that has any effect on her inclination to strike a deal with the government if that is even in the cards in the future? >> i don't think so. i think there are a lot of excellent defense attorneys who have been public defenders, who have not been prosecutors. several of them have -- i think like any defense attorney she's going to assess the case against her client, see what his options are, see what the most advantageous way forward is and advise her clients. this decisions at the end of the day are her clients'. she can give the advice as much as she wants but ultimately her client has to the decide what the best way forward is. >> i'm not suggesting she's not a capable lawyer, but in terms of her ability, the negotiations between former federal prosecutors and current federal prosecutors at least
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colloquially and anteic dotally speaking, is there any validity to that? >> there's current language a former prosecutor and current prosecutor will have, but in my experience those relationships are really much more on a case by case basis, and you might be up against a former prosecutor. that's not going to be a good relationship, and i've had excellent relationships in the world of defense attorneys who would never think of prosecuting somebody. she's had a lot of time dealing with prosecutors. i think she probably knows how to engage. also it's important to remember she's not alone here. she has at least one team member now. i expect that team will grow. there'll be plenty of opportunity for the personalities to work themselves out. >> barb, just to be clear, if there is any evidence that walt nauta's counsel not had walt nauta's best interests as the central concern, that can be
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cause to vacate the case. the government has a vested interest in making sure she has adequate legal counsel in all of this. is that right? >> yes. and so it is permissible for someone else to pay your legal fees, but the duty of loyalty for a lawyer is to the client. and that is an ethical duty that every lawyer has, so regardless of who's paying the bills you're supposed to take the best interest of the client at all times. in that cassidy hutchinson case you said it earlier we see how those incentives can cause people to do things differently than perhaps the ethics rules would suggest. so i think that for prosecutors they're very reluctant to get in between a lawyer and her client to do anything to disrupt that relationship, but if they were to get wind that something was amiss what they could do is file a motion for a hearing with the judge for the judge to inquire directly with a client as to
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whether they were satisfied, walt nauta was satisfied with representation. but i think it would take a lot before that could happen and lawyers and prosecutors would put themselves in that situation. >> yeah, i mean, dave, just based on what we know from cassidy hutchinson, the advice she was given seemed plainly not in her best interest or in the interest of getting to the truth, if that's another matter. and there were no repercussions there. it seems a really high bar to prove your legal counsel is not acting in your best interest but instead in the best interest of the person paying the bills, in this case donald trump. >> it is a difficult thing to decide to come between an attorney and client. and ms. hutchinson and mr. nauta are in different positions. one was a witness before a congressional committee and the other is now in a defendant. they're in different postures. there was no judge to come between ms. hutchinson and the
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committee. so she's really making that decision on her own. in a way it's a good thing for mr. nauta to hear there's a judge to potentially make whatever inquiry needs to be made if it comes to that. >> yeah, and that would be aileen cannon, so we will see how this all plays out. barbara mcquade, david aaron, thank you boelgt for joining me tonight. really appreciate it. still ahead here tonight, calling 9/11 a hoax is not enough to get you kicked out of the far-right house freedom caucus, but calling your fellow member names, well, that is. that's next. and as ron desantis' campaign appears to shall we say falter, his state of florida is dealing with malaria, as in malaria. stay with us. malaria. stay with us
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do you remember this moment? this was the house floor fight captured by c-span's cameras between former allies and current congresswoman margery taylor greene and lauren boebert. it happened just about two weeks ago. reporters claim during that dispute they heard congresswoman greene call her colleague, ms. boebert, a word that rhymes with kitsch. marjorie taylor greene later
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called that reporting impressively correct. state politico reports the house freedom caucus, the far right wing of the republican conference has voted to kick ought congresswoman margery taylor greene. one member told politico tensions had been brewing over greene's decision to side with house republican leadership and against far-right members on issues like the debt ceiling. the member called the incident with boebert the straw that broke the camel's back. this is the first time the house freedom caucus has ever booted a member from its ranks, the first time the camel has bucked, if you will. the caucus previously allowed members marjorie taylor greene and paul gosar to remain in good standing despite attending a conference made by known white supremacist nick fuentes. the fight between hem was over which one of them would get to
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bring articles of impeachment against president biden. still, the woman who once suggested that 9/11 was a hoax and blamed california wildfires on jewish space lasers, that woman is now considered insufficiently radical in the eyes of house conservatives, which tells you everything you need to know about the chaos that speaker of the house kevin mccarthy is currently swimming in. politico reports this week that house republicans are now ramping up their fight against the fbi and the department of justice including a renewed push to defund federal law enforcement, a move that not every republican is onboard with. again, according to politico in a recent closed door meeting, conservative republican congressman ken buck of colorado privately urged his colleagues to be careful of how they talk about justice department funding adding i'm not in favor of cutting doj. at the same time some conservatives are pushing to bring articles of impeachment against attorney general merrick garland in what would be the
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first impeachment of a cabinet official in nearly 150 years. attorney general garland is slated to testify before a house committee later this summer. joining us now is brenden buck, former aide to house speakers paul ryan and john boehner. brenden, there was a time in american politics people let bygones be bygones, but that doesn't seem to be the case during the debt ceiling fight. i personally am surprised the house freedom caucus is still so incensed over that deal. usually isn't it that once a speaker gets it done everybody can move on? that does not seem to have happened here. >> well, i think maybe they moved on but they don't forget, and i think that's what kevin mccarthy problem is here is that some people gave him a pass. but even the ones you might have been surprised supported him have kind of said, well, we're going to look down through the appropriations fight, the actual spending of money later this year, and if we don't end up
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cutting spending much below this deal, we're going to have a real problem. that's what marjorie taylor greene's problem is here not so much she's fighting her colleagues but she's become an ally of the speaker. their-curves to be sure but their bigger priority is screwing with leadership. i've seen that plenty of times, and margery taylor greene has become not just an ally but a shield from a lot of conservative criticism of the speaker and i think in the house freedom cot she's become a pawn of the speaker. and at times it's not just supporting kevin mccarthy for speaker which she did, it's defending things like the debt limit deal. she has at times looked like the serious one which i think says a lot more about the freedom caucus than it does about her. she's still a conspiracy theorist, but it tells you the kind of challenges kevin mccarthy is facing. they saw what happened, and they haven't forgotten.
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they're just waiting until the next opportunity to strike. >> well, it just bears mentioning they could have scuttled the deal. they could have scuttled the debt ceiling deal if they'd wanted to. they had enough votes to make kevin mccarthy's life complicated and they didn't and now they're angry. and margery taylor greene was the adult in the room which kevin mccarthy has now lost, and to your point how critical is she/was she in those fights where you had to get the house freedom caucus members onboard? how much of a weapon for lack of a better term has he lost? >> i still think she'll be useful to him, but what ended up happening in the debt limit deal, the bill passed with a huge majority and basically able to ignore the house freedom caucus and they hate that. they hate being ignored in anything going on.
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they did have conservative cover not just from margery taylor greene, but people like jim jordan was supporting it. in the aftermath of that that's when you saw them lashing out. they shutdown the house floor and now they're making kevin mccarthy pledge on spending cuts wherever in the deal. it's really setting him up for default. they're always looking down the road for ways they can trip him up. >> they have a big appropriations fight in november where they can shutdown the government which seems almost like a forgone conclusion to all this. but in the mean testimony they're going to defund the fbi and doj. and that seems coo coo, but how much is that is something the doj has to consider inside the house? >> if you've been telling your
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constituents for years the doj is not just corrupt but targeting folks like you out in red america eventually your constituents are going to expect you to do something about it am. when the time comes to fund the doj, people are going to demand some type of action, and obviously they're talking about other things like impeachment. at some point the bill is going to come due with all of the promises you've made. oversight typically works in that you search for facts and then you reach a conclusion. here house republicans have reached a conclusion first. doj is corrupt and now they're searching for facts to back it up and make the case. so far to no avail. in the end this is setting up kevin mccarthy for failure. they're not going to be able to defund doj. the problem with all of this is if you shut it down, you do look crazy. >> i would also say what does it do? the republican party wraps itself in the mantle of being the party of law and order and
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seeks to cut fundish for the department of justice and federal bureau of investigations and rallies around a candidate who may have multiple federal criminal indictments against him. is there not a price to pay for that for conservatives out in the country, swing voters out in the country, independents in america? >> absolutely there is, and it's a four-seat majority, five-seat majority. and there are moderates who push back and say are we doing, this is crazy stuff. that's not the culture of the house republican conference. the culture is to worry about feeding the base all the time and they don't care about the people who put them in majority. the big question will be whether five of these moderates stand up and say i'm not voting for this and push back. >> how many times can we slip on the banana peel? i don't know. and yet kevin mccarthy is still the speaker. brenden buck, former aide to house speakers paul ryan and
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john boehner. still ahead here this evening, florida reports two new cases of malaria today, cases people got in florida, but governor ron desantis has so politicized public health his guchltd can't hire anyone for top jobs to manage public health. and as the right wing goes nuts over a baggy of cocaine found at the white house, we're going to get into the real history of drugs at the white house coming up. stay with us. drugs at the whit house coming up. stay with us
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the state of florida has issued a mosquito alert after confirming four cases now of malaria in sarasota county. >> concerns are growing as this marks the first time we're seeing local transmission in the u.s. in two decades. >> those cases discovered in the counties has concern from health officials it could spread. >> malaria a disease transmitted by mosquitos, something the united states eliminated in 1951, it is back at least in the state of florida. the cluster of cases in florida plus one case in texas are the first instances of a locally transmitted malaria diagnosed in this country in 20 years. now, from time to time you might hear about someone diagnosed with malaria in the u.s. after they caught it overseas. but it seems like this cluster originated in sarasota, florida. it came from there, and it is spreading. today alone two more cases were
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reported in sarasota raising florida's total case count to six. last week the cdc issued a health advisory warning about these cases while assuring the public that overall the risk of contracting malaria in the u.s. remains low for most of the country. but florida epidemiologists are concerned because, well, florida is not the rest of the country, which is probably evident by now. but anyway, for starters the person at the helm of florida's department of health is dr. joseph ladapo. he's the doctor governor ron desantis appointed as florida's surgeon general in 2021, right in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic after the doctor openly questioned the effectiveness of covid vaccines. after governor desantis announce his appointment dr. ladapo announced there's nothing special about vaccines compared to any other preventive measure. it's been treated like a
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religion and that's just senseless. the year before that dr. ladapo joined a controversial group of doctors as they gathered outside the supreme court to tell the american public they definitely didn't need social distancing or masks to stay safe. most recently dr. ladapo was accused of personally altering data in a report about health risks for young men associated with the covid-19 vaccines. it may be good politics for desantis and his team but it's not exactly attracting the stars of the public health world to the state of florida. nbc news is exclusively reporting today two of it top public health officials in the desantis administration, the ones responsible for tracking and preventing the spread of diseases like malaria, they left their positions in recent months, and those positions will remain vacant. nbc reports the open positions includes the head of florida
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department's bureau of epidemiology which overseas many of the state's core public health functions. a second key post, the administrator of the bureau's sfins division has been vacant since march. we don't yet know why these officials left their positions, but some experts believe florida is having a hard time replacing them because governor desantis and dr. ladapo has so politicized public health. meanwhile the governor himself is spending very little time in florida these day. instead he's been campaigning all over the country including this past fourth of july weekend. governor desantis was literally caught in the rain as he marched in an independence day parade in new hampshire. that is new hampshire, new hampshire, not new hampshire, florida, where there is not currently a resurgence of malaria at least as far as we know. desantis is trailing donald trump in national polls by roughly 30 percentage points, a gap that has widened significantly since desantis began actually meeting voters. back in desantis' camp the
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talking point is that polls will begin to lean his way later on once he is done touring the country, at least that's what they told "the new york times." bryan griffon, a spokesman said this campaign samarathon, not a sprint. we will be victorious. okay, a lot can happen with enough time including, by the way, the reemergence of malaria in florida after two decades, but a desantis nomination at this point seems like kind of a long shot at least right now. we will have more on that ahead with the great claire mccaskill. . it's the moment when you realize that a good day... is about to become a bad one. but then, i remembered that the world is so much bigger than that, with trelegy. because one dose a day helps keep my asthma symptoms under control. and with 3 medicines in 1 inhaler, trelegy helps improve lung function so i can breathe easier for a full 24 hours. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. trelegy contains a medicine that increases risk of hospitalizations and death
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i think, you know, identifying donald trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the main stream where he was having men compete against women in a beauty pageant, i think that's totally fair game. >> that was florida governor ron desantis attempting to defend what we will generously call a bizarre ad shared by his campaign this week. the video released on the last day of pride month tries to paint donald trump as a woke ally of the lgbtq community. it also hypes ron desantis' efforts to restrict lgbtq rights in between super cuts of shirtless men and the serial killer from "american psycho." all of it set to a club sound track. the ad has not helped governor desantis. even the log cabin republicans accused him of venturing into
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homophobic territory. and it has given rise to a number of questions about the desantis campaign and its strategy, namely, what is it? because it is starting to seem like the more people hear from governor ron desantis, the less they like him. republican primary polling averages show desantis trailing trump by more than 30%, a gap that has only widened as voters continue to meet desantis on the campaign trail. joining us now claire mccaskill. claire, thanks for joining me. there's literally no one i'd rather hear from in terms of assessing that ad that was shared by the desantis campaign. what do you make of it, and what does it tell you about what the campaign thinks of republican primary voters. >> >> well, the interesting thing here is he has to have and his team has to have some theory
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by which he takes votes from donald trump, and he thinks the way to do that is to out-trump trump or go even further and spew more hate and bigoted language. and i've got to tell you the biggest problem that desantis has is in order to be a conman you have to have showmanship. now, we all know donald trump is a conman. he is a huckster. he's someone who thinks it's about self-promotion and marketing and nothing about substance or policy. ron desantis is no showman. he doesn't have the personality to be a showman. he is awkward. you know, frankly, he has the personality of kind of a dead frog. he is really not a guy that is going to light up a room or light up a hall or light up a rally with his showmanship, so
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how does he get folks away from trump? i've got news for him. he's not. the people with trump now are not going anywhere. they're certainly not going to abandon him for someone who's just kind of a wanna be for donald trump. go ahead, alex. >> i was just going to say, first of all, apologies and it seems to what desantis cannot accomplish in terms of wit or comedy or anything approaching warmth he's trying to compensate with just trying to being the meanest, most aggressive shirtless warrior out there, not that he's shirtless but the people in his ads are shirtalize. to me it does miss something
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essential to trump which is abhorrent a lot of trump's policies may be, he's also a talented and magnetic campaigner and desantis seems to have completely shorted that part of the trump strategy but he also has a certain amount of basic magnetism for the people that love donald trump. >> yeah, and i think desantis has looked in the mirror and looked around a very close circle of people, and what he sees reflected is that he is wonderful, that he won florida by a big margin. therefore he's the guy, and he's not the guy. and the interesting thing here, alex, is that the hard thing about running for president, you've got to appeal to your base in a primary season in order to gain the nomination, but you have to do it in a way you do not alienate independent
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voters or voters not comfortable with their party nominee. ron desantis is digging a hole he can't get out of because every time he spews hate, every time he uses the heavy hand of government to take freedoms away from the lgbtq community or accuses public schoolteachers of being groomers and pedophiles, he is losing votes that are independents and republicans who don't like trump here for victory for him to ever be president of the united states. >> if you're -- i'm starting to smell a whiff of a jeb bush around ron desantis' campaign, which is someone who's a presumed front-runner who doesn't end up being a front runner at all despite all the attention and resources. i do wonder because trump is in so many ways unpalatable, because there is a sense yet unproven republicans would be willing to switch coffees, do you think donors hang with
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desantis longer than they normally would in a traditional campaign cycle with someone who isn't as necessarily filled with cripinate as donald trump appears to be? >> well, i think you're telling a really important point. the jury is out whether desantis can raise the kind of money he needs to raise. will he get the grass root donations that is in fact donald trump's lifeline? donald trump has never really had the big donors coming in guns ablazing for him, but ron desantis has had some big donors, but question is are they going to stick with him as he continues to fumble everything he tries to do in this campaign? and what are these debates going to look like? if trump doesn't debate, chris christie is going to tear desantis up. if trump does debate, both chris christie and trump are going to tear desantis up. and guess who's also going to tear him up? he's number two. number three, four, five, six,
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seven, and eight are going to tear him up because they need to get up ahead of desantis to be the next alternative to donald trump. so he's in a terrible position right now both in terms of his ability to raise money and frankly the fact that he's going to be a target of everybody running for president except him. >> yeah, if you're chris christie or nikki haley or tim scott, where do you go right now, claire, seeing the weakness of ron desantis? >> i think if they're smart they're going to talk about the issues that people care about, and they're also going to talk about that you should never run for president on a platform that is foundational with hate, that is foundational with dividing people. you know, alex, everybody in america has someone they love that is gay or lesbian. you know, this is not, you know, 30, 40 years ago when people were not, you know, so many people were afraid to come out
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and be honest with the world about their sexuality. not anymore. and it is main stream now and this country is not going back. this is not going to work. and i actually think that if the other candidates talk about uniting people around the traditional values of the republican party, that's their best shot. it may not be a good one because trump has got them all under a spell. >> hot tip, don't run on hate. straight from someone who knows politics, claire mccaskill. it is always a delight to see you. thank you so much for your time tonight. >> thanks, alex. we have one more story for you tonight. the right-wing conspiracy machine is fired up over a bag of cocaine found at the white house last weekend, but that is not the only coke to find itself at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. we are going to get into a brief history of presidential drugs
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right after the break. y of pres right after the break.
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the right-wing is having a field day after a baggy of white powder which lab tests confirmed was cocaine was found in the white house on sunday. now, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that president joe biden or his son hunter have anything to do with this. the president and his family were at camp david over the holiday weekend when a secret service official says officers discovered a suspicious powder. white house officials say the bag of powder was found over a highly trafficked area. the ips go through there but so do visitors as well as staff, military, and operations employees. and while officials have low expectations they can identify who left this cocaine, investigators expect to wrap up their forensic work by monday. but if you did not know it
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already, there is a fascinating and storied history of drugs and other illicit substances found in or near the seat of power right here in the u.s., and i have exactly the perfect person to talk about this with. joining us now is the presidential historian and a senior fellow at the center for presidential history otsouthern methodist university. thank you for making the time. this is not the first time cocaine may have been found in the white house. can you talk a bit about the era of franklin roosevelt, what was happening then? >> cocaine has been used in a number of medications because it has the ability of restricting blood vessels. for example, franklin roosevelt had a lot of seen s problems and reports suggest one of the substances doctors recommended was a diluted substance that would be swabbed on the inside of each noseral to try and help
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increase oxygen flow and reduce any blockages he may or may not have had. >> what about, i mean back in the day opium and cocaine were used in a lot of pharmacies, for lack of a better word. they were used as the basis for a lot of medicine. can you talk about that and what was happening in the 18th and 19th centuries? >> absolutely. as you said opium was a common ingredient in a lot of different medications and one of the most frequent was something called laudanum, and this is something prescribed for pain tolerance if someone was ill or had trouble sleeping. for example, we know two first ladies in the 18th century died while their husbands were in the house, letitia tyler and caroline harrison. we don't know exactly what they were prescribed but it's so common at the time it's hard to believe that wasn't one of the things suggested. when the first and only
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impeachment proceedings of a supreme court justice took place, and john randolph was in charge of the prosecution of that case. and he had such bad scummic issues his doctor prescribed him opium laced wine, and he was in so much pain he basically was taking a sip of this concoction in between every single sentence and by the end of the trial he could barely stand and was slurring his words because he had taken so much of this what they thought of then as medication. so just goes to show how much our understand of these things have changed. >> we still have the impeachment proceedings but don't have the odium laced wine. is it a big thing he was taking opium laced wine at the time? >> it wasn't so much of a big deal he was taking the wine, rather i think the quantity of it was what people noted and the effect on him because either had hadn't eaten much or he hadn't been sleeping well, so everyone was noticing that he was not his
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best self for his particular day in the senate chambers. >> it's not so much the opium in your wine, it's just how much of it you're drinking. okay, i'm very glad we had this history lesson. thank you for your time and wisdom tonight. we appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> that is our show for this evening. we'll see you again tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. he still cannot deal with the fact he's the only person outside the state of delaware and he wants to still pretend he's still president. he wants to pretend he's still president and show these things to people and say look what i still have, look what i still know. >> that's presidential candidate chris christie on his thoughts why donald trump may have kept classified documents at his florida golf resort. it comes as the president's former codefendant in the case makes his first

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