all hospitals, will we see a major difference. this lip service and small grants to community-based organizations is not enough. it is not enough. and there has to be more done. >> so story for this loss and your son and for your grandchild. >> children. >> sorry. >> there are two. >> it's awful. absolutely awful. because the babies survived. judge hatchett thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. this is important to me. thank you so much. >> that is going to it for me today. "deadline white house" starts right now. hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. we have lots of new developments in special counsel jack smith's investigation into whether the twice impeached, twice indicted, disgraced ex-president mishandled classified documents. a new report details how smith sent a target letter to a trump organization employee indicating

that that employee is suspected of lying to federal investigators and threatening potential charges. according to abc news, special counsel jack smith in recent weeks transmitted a target letter to the staffer indicating that he might have pur jurred himself during a may appearance before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the classified documents probe the sources toll abc news. quote, the target letter to the employee described by sources familiar with it but not reviewed by abc news, signals smith's growing interest in the trump organization's handling of the surveillance footage and potential efforts to avoid sharing it with investigators. donald trump who has pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts, related to this case, received a similar target letter from jack smith's office, right before a grand jury in florida indicted him. this files a filing by federal prosecutors working under jack smith asking a florida federal judge aileen cannon to reject a

bid by trump's team to indefinitely delay a trial, that would potentially postpone it until after the 2024 election. not only would a delay in trump's trial complicate protest against him, but if the trial is still unresolved and he's elected president, trump could very plausibly pardon himself once he takes office and dismiss the case entirely. now among their arguments, lawyers for the ex-president claim their novel interpretation of the presidential records act would take time to present and a trial would be difficult while trump is so busy on the campaign trail. pushing back against this deferred timeline, lawyers for the federal government blasted the trump team's arguments writing, quote, there is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion and the defendants provide none. for the impact of the presidential records act on this prosecution, any argument that it mandates dismissal of the

indictment for a defense to the charges here, borders on frivolous. prosecutors attack the notion that a presidential candidate should be given special treatment writing this, quote, the demands of defendant's professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case. many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time, energy and significant amount of travel. the speedy trial act contemplates no such factor as a basis for continuance and the court should not indulge it. now it's over to judge cannon to make her decision and the first major test of hers in presiding over this case. will she proceed with a speedy trial as the government argues or grant the ex-president who appointed her the special treatment he asks for, potentially throwing the whole case and the whole trial into chaos. that is where we start today with some of our most favorite reporters and friends new york times washington correspondent

mike smith is back, former assistant director for counter intelligence at the fbi, frank is back, and former assistant u.s. attorney glen kisher in here, all msnbc contributors. i want you to take me through substance and tone of what the government argues because it feels like they've laid a bit of a trap for judge aileen cannon. if she goes against the government they have already described those sort of judgements as frivolous and nowhere in the law. >> so first of all, nicole, let me start with the tone because that may be what i enjoyed most. i mean, it makes clear that jack smith and his team do not mince words, they do not pull punches, and they recognize that done right, justice is a full contact sport. and they went 100 miles an hour after each and every assertion that trump's team had made when they filed their request a few

days earlier that judge cannon set no trial date and, you know, the first thing that jack smith and his team pointed out on page 1, is that that actually violates the law. the speedy trial act which says a defendant once charged, the judge that has the responsibility to set a date certain for the trial to begin, and somehow that escaped team trump when they filed their, you know, pr piece with judge cannon mentioning over and over again, you know, i don't know if you realize this, judge, but, you know, donald trump is running for president and that takes up a whole lot of time and energy, and he doesn't think he's going to be able to fit in a federal criminal trial. i would urge everybody to read these two pleadings. jack smith's reply is really

compelling and foreshadowing of how we can expect jack smith's team to perform once this case is in trial. >> i love when you give us homework, glen kirsch ner. it is an important point. we're trying to read these tea leaves and the most we know about jack smith, we know from his filings. i'm glad you started with tone. i wasn't sure if it was frivolous to focus on it. i want to ask you if it's going too far to say he's basically throwing shade when he writes about lots of criminal defendants have busier jobs than you that require lots and lots of travel. basically you're popping around on your own plane in and out of state fares. it feels like it borders just a little bit of shade. >> little bit of shade, and he is throwing down the gauntlet for judge cannon. first of all the law requires you set a date certain for the trial and jack smith has twice gone on record in his filings as saying, december 11th, 2023, is

the trial date that we are requesting repeatedly. that gives the defense team plenty of time to get ready and, you know, the people are entitled to a fair trial as well. not just the defendant. and, you know, that as compared to trump's request that she set no trial date, but if you have to set a trial date, push it out well after the november 2024 presidential election, is going to be the first real test for whether judge aileen cannon has learned her lesson from the criticism of the 11th circuit court of appeals and, you know, does the right thing and sets a timely trial, or if she continues to cater to donald trump the way she did previously and, you know, i think everybody is going to be watching that next week to see whether she can redeem herself. >> watching and maybe not holding our breath. frank, let me bring you in on my

nonlegal analysis, basically calling -- on donald trump's defense, a noun and verb in the presidential record act. quote, the presidential records act is not a criminal statute and no way purports to address the retention of national security information. the defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the indictment and the government will respond promptly, but they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument. call it novel and then claim the court will require an indefinite twans to resolve it. basically using bill barr's favorite word calling b.s. on the notion that there's any defense other than perhaps political or rhetorical in the presidential record act for the crimes trump is accused of committing. >> you know, we're getting more than a glimpse here into what this trial is going to be like,

even in pretrial motions and filings. i love that part of this because, you know, we're seeing this play out back and forth in the paper and it's very inciteful. look, the public -- the presidential records act is, indeed, about a president declaring documents to be personal and his. there's not even a dream of it applying to classified information and documents that have been demanded repeatedly by the government. so that's going to go nowhere. it's an act of desperation by the trump legal team to continue to even this early push that notion that we've got this new idea it's going to take forever. flen really adeptly handled the legal issues inherent in the claim of let's extend this beyond the election. let me handle the national security concern, which is, the longer this gets delayed, the longer the public is denied the information we need to know to make a more informed decision

about an election, the more dangerous this becomes. and he is a -- trump is a continuing clear and present danger. if the judge decides this can go on indefinitely she's saying we can live under this threat indefinitely and that needs to stop. if she's going to weigh the issues, there are interesting discussions here to be had about hey, should we be prosecuting an active candidate for president. he is a private citizen. any interest in allowing somebody unfettered to run for president without being touched by criminal acts and prosecutions, is grossly outweighed by the public interest in vetting and knowing and preventing a threat from taking office again. it's a no-brainer, but we'll see if judge cannon can grasp it. >> mike, i know you're a student of how the federal government has very uncomfortably at times dealt with the tsunami of disinformation and lies that

comes from trump and his lawyers every time they're under scrutiny, and i want to read you something that was a subtle is the wrong word, but sort of tucked into this. this is from your colleague's reporting on the government's filing yesterday. mr. trump's lawyers also complain that a first trove of discovery evidence provided by the government was expansive, including more than 800,000 pages of material and would take a significant amount of time to sort through. prosecutors shot back the times reports, saying about a third of those pages contained unimportant e-mail header and footer information, and that a set of key documents that would guide the defense towards the crucial sections of discovery was only about 4,500 pages. it's sort of a fact check wrapped in a calling out the spin wrapped in a filing. >> yeah. and, you know, to the point that you were making in your introduction to this, this will really probably be the first

real test of judge cannon. there were these, you know, what legal folks and the circuit court said were unusual decisions that were made in the search warrant. the government has ended up in front of judge cannon here, probably in a situation that was possibly a nightmare to them, and as we have outlined in our own reporting someone who has little trial experience. she's overseen less than a half dozen trials, none of those trials lasted more than five days, and there could be no trial more complicated, probably, than this one, maybe in american history because it doesn't just involve regular sort of run-of-the-mill criminal charges. it involves classified information and a separate set of rules and sort of guidelines that are used in how those materials are handled at a trial where information is supposed to

be aired publicly, where the public is supposed to come in and see those trials. so, what this will be and it will be fascinating to see, is what does this say about how she is going to oversee this trial? like trump is asking for something that appears to be extraordinarily and, you know, we'll see what the date on this really looks like. the thing that i wonder about and that i think about is that, you know, we know that there are still ongoing strands of this investigation that the prosecutors are looking at, and are they looking at stuff in new jersey? we know that some of this stuff relates to stuff in new jersey and if cannon were to become a problem for them, how could they pivot out of that and are there other options for them? >> that is so interesting, frank. i want to come back to you on mike's point about classified documents because not only is she not overseen a lot of trials

she's never overseen a trial involving classified national security information. let me start with where mike finishes off, what's intriguing about abc's reporting is that this now feels a lot like the mueller probe, right, where there's lying. the difference being, of course, that trump isn't dangling a pardon in front of these people because he's no longer president, but what the abc reporting suggests is someone came in and lied in front of a grand jury or investigators or both about surveillance tape and there's still questions about the disposition of surveillance footage after the government asked for it. this feels like even more meat on the bones of an obstruction charge or set of charges for one or more individuals. where do you think what mike is talking about, the ongoing piece of the investigation, stands? >> yeah. look, it's still moving. it's still clearly active. the fact that they're now sending target letters out to people around trump still even

at this date, says look, to me, as an investigator, they're trying to flip somebody. let me tell you something, getting a target letter from the united states government saying we're fixing to get ready to indict you, we think you're indictable, i've had people tell me they became physically ill when they received a target letter. it's no fun. it's a bad day. people are going to have to make a decision about whether they're going to go down with the ship, the trump train, that's crashing, or whether they're going to cooperate and get on team justice and do the right thing. and so yeah, it's hardball. it's aggressive. this is what it looks like and it should have started a year ago but we'll get over that, right. the delays here. it's still very much an active case and i think this target letter is designed to not necessarily nail somebody for lying, but rather, to flip somebody to say trump told me to move boxes, trump told me to mess with the videotape. what's the deal with the flooded pool that somehow messed with a

server allegedly at mar-a-lago. that's where this is going. >> glen, i want you to weigh in on what that juggling act is like, where you are pursuing with these filings that i agree everyone should read, tomove toward a trial for the charged people in the investigation, but as frank said developing evidence and working on flipping people for the ongoing aspects of it. how does that work? >> i can tell you, i never stopped trying to develop useful evidence in my prosecutions, right up to the time i stood up in court and said good morning, ladies and gentlemen. my name is glen and i represent the united states, and i'm prepared to deliver my opening statement. i still had my agents and detectives out there trying to investigate the crime. here's the thing that i like about the target letter reporting. so a target letter is like act one in a three-act play.

you send somebody a target letter and a target is defined in the u.s. attorney's manual which is our procedural bible by which prosecutors do business, a target is defined as somebody for whom the prosecutors have substantial evidence linking them to the commission of a crime and the second element of the target test is that it's somebody that prosecutor intends to indict. somebody has a fresh target letter. the second act, is that person will generally be invited for a proper session. we heard reporting about rudy giuliani sitting for a proper session that gives the target the opportunity to speak sort of at no risk because he gets immunity for a day, speak ate his her own crimes and the crimes about others, obviously, donald trump, and then the third act is the prosecutors decide what to do with the target. ordinarily, they are looking to strike a guilty plea with cooperation, deal with the

target, but if not, then they will ordinarily move to indicting the target. let me finish with this, i was most interested to see when the florida indictment was unsealed, that there was only one charged co-conspirator, walt nauta. that could only mean one of two things. either walt nauta is the only one facilitating and assisting and aiding and abetting in donald trump's documents crimes, his obstruction crimes, or there are plenty of others who were assisting and facilitating, but they've already struck guilty plea and cooperation agreements which are under seal and we won't learn about them until we get closer to the trial date. >> mike, let me ask you a quick question. i remember reporting at the time that the government knew walt nauta was lying at the time and some reporting soon after that kash patel had a limited immunity. we know that the government knows who they've talked to. trump ostensibly knows because

he's been given the witness list. what do we know about who is a government witness and who they've already convinced to cooperate? >> well, we pretty much know they've talked to everyone that was in trump's orbit, you know, in the final days that he was in office when these materials were being packed up. the lawyers and representatives who were dealing with the national archives in the months after he left office, people like that, include mark meadows, his former chief of staff, who still had a custodial role with the national archives in the aftermath of the administration, so there's been a pretty good sense for a while that they pierced all of the layers closest to the president, the former president, in terms of not only what he was doing in those final weeks, but everything that happens in terms of moving the boxes and such.

so, you know, we know they've gone back and interviewed folks that were there earlier in the administration who had a sense of how he handled classified documents. i'm pretty sure they've talked to everyone, you know, as possible. so, you know, they have a pretty good sense of what was going on around him. >> all right. when we come back no one is going anywhere. we'll turn to what some of trump's closest allies know in the other jack smith investigation and that, of course, is what jack smith is hoping to learn as he continues questioning just how much and when the ex-president knew he had lost in 2020. the criminal investigation into his efforts to overturn his defeat marches on at the federal level and more states are pressing ahead with their own investigations as well. we'll tell you about that. former first lady melania trump in the cross hairs getting paid by the campaign and donors who

want to re-elect her husband for picking out things like forks and centerpiece stuff. one gop rival calling the ex-president and his family out for who they are. quote, the undoes putted champs of gifting. all the criminal investigations against the twice indicted ex-president, one in fulton county feels like it could be the next shoe to drop and that could be why today his legal team filed another desperate hail mary legal pass that probably won't get them anywhere. all those stories and more when "deadline white house" continues. s and more when "deadline white house" continues.

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i also think that there will ultimately and must be legal accountability for not just the effort to overturn the presidential election, but the very real threats and the violence that occurred not just outside my home but escalated into the tragedy over at our u.s. capitol on january 6th. my confidence is that the justice department and state and local prosecutors are collectively casting a broad net looking at these things with the goal of not just seeking justice but ensure they don't escalate in the future or reoccur. >> michigan secretary of state right here on this program yesterday, on the justice department investigation into january 6th. benson, we learned this week, is among a growing list of election officials targeted by trump who have already sat and chatted with federal prosecutors. add to that list the secretaries of state of pennsylvania and new

mexico according to brand new reporting from cnn, we're learning more about the wide net cast by jack smith's team as they zero in on trump's state of mind and his intent and work to establish from low-level aides to members of his inner most circle whether he knew he lost the 2020 election which "the new york times" reported was a key topic of questioning in their interview with his son-in-law jared kushner. now there are reports that former trump aide hope hicks testified before the federal grand jury in early june. it comes as investigations into election interference are moving along at the state level as well, with fulton d.a. fani willis expected to seek indictments in her cases in the coming weeks. the arizona attorney general opening his own investigation into the alternate electors who backed trump in the 2020 election. we're back with mike, frank, and glenn. mike, you joined us yesterday as the story was unfolding with the last sort of 16 hours have

yielded is even more information in the vain of what you and your colleagues reported, that they are -- jack smith is clearly trying to understand whether trump knew he lost, and it seems based on your reporting that mark milley and alyssa farah griffin and others established that for him, and then what happens when people like jared kushner say well, i think he thought he actually won. talk about this dynamic as a pillar of jack smith's probe. >> well, look, i mean, the importance of this story and why we were, you know, so interested in writing as much as we did about it is that it gets at the question of intent, and the, you know, pretty much most former federal prosecutors will agree that the stronger intent that you have, the stronger case that you have. and the better, more likely you are to convince a jury, and that there is nothing more powerful than someone's own word.

in the case of donald trump, there's not a lot of text messages, e-mail, no handwritten notes, there's never been any real examples of that, but there are contemporaneous comments to people around him. that is the closest thing that prosecutors can find to that type thing. big white collar investigations, they look for the e-mail or the text message or the slack message that shows, you know, the fraud that was going on. in trump's case, there isn't that, but there are the comments to the people around him. and they are trying to establish was trump saying to the people around him, yes, i know i lost, and because of that it shows that he undertook this false campaign, you know, effort to remain in power, that he pushed this false notion for knowing that it was false. that's why we concentrated on this story, and why they're concentrating on his comments to other people.

there's no notes, there's no text messages that trump has. >> frank, we compiled a list of what mike and his colleagues reported were other accounts and this is who we understand jack smith has already interviewed in the january 6th investigations. jared kushner, hope hicks, mike pence, mark short, greg jacob, the trump campaign election day operations official gary michael brown, that was in connection to the fake electors, bernie kerik, boris epstein, rudy giuliani, justin clark, all up on the screen. to say that it is expansive and that it expands what mike is talking about, the inner dialog, the inner conversations, the inner confessions to people like milley and cassidy hutchinson and the election officials who were targeted with violence and threats, people like brad raffensperger rushgs rusty bowers and benson, but what does it say to you as an investigator

of where this stands today? >> i like the scope and breadth of what jack smith is doing. there were reports from another network saying look new mexico, pennsylvania, those officials are under scrutiny now. i like it because it's justice. no one should skate or walk away that had anything to do with trying to it overturn this election. submitting fake lectors. no one gets off the hook. this sets a precedent for free and fair elections. with regard to the focus on intent, look, i'll defer to glenn on the prosecutive importance of this, no question, it could be explosive if they have somebody saying, i was in the room when he said i lost the election. by the way, i'll remind folks, general milley, who testified to the january 6th committee, testified to that effect, that he was in the room, secretary pompeo and one other person,

when they were discussing national security issue and trump said something like, yeah, look, let's table that for the next guy. i lost this election. something like that. right. that's really good. that gets into the mindset. i worry through analysis, all of us that do analysis, we're focusing too much on this. you may fervently believe something to be true, but it doesn't give you license to commit crimes based on that belief. i may believe that my local bank has screwed me out of thousands of dollars, it doesn't give me license to hold up the bank and get my money back. fervent belief may not be a reasonable belief, and it certainly is not license to commit crime around it. the crime, of course, the theft, the attempted theft of an election, is what we're talking about here. so a jury is going to sit there and let's say for some reason jack smith can't find anybody to say yeah, he knew he lost. the jury is going to sit there and get the scales of justice out and go, all right, i got

rudy giuliani, sydney powell, you know, kind of i'll call them -- saying there's fraud and i've got real attorneys including his attorney general telling him there's no fraud, we can't find it, and they're going to make sense out of that as jurors. it's not ending a prosecution or a death blow to a prosecution if you can't prove that he knew he lost. it doesn't give him license to commit crimes. >> i mean, i think the other part of it, glenn, we started this conversation yesterday when mike's story came out, is that you can't find the opposite. you can't find anybody in the inner most circle, not even his daughter or sister-in-law or hope hicks, what hope hicks said to the january 6th select committee, let me play that to you. >> evidence of fraud on a scale that would have impacted the outcome of the election, and i was becoming increasingly concerned that we were

damaging -- we were damaging his legacy. >> what did the president say in response to what you just described? >> he said something along the lines of, you know, nobody will care about my legacy if i lose. so that won't matter. the only thing that matters is winning. >> so, you know, glenn, from the reporting at the time of the era, it fell to people like hope hicks and ivanka trump to tell him the inconvenient things he didn't want to hear and to hear ivanka and hope hicks say we didn't hear evidence of fraud and story started to worry he would ruin everything, there is zero evidence that anybody thought trump won, including trump, for at least a month and a half after he lost. >> yeah.

i don't think proving criminal intent in the ultimate trial of donald trump or the insurrection is going to be particularly hard. i will say in 30 years of prosecuting cases, i never had a defendant say anything that was even close to listen up, folks, my intent is corrupt. now i'm going to go out and do a criminal act. that's not the way this works and that's why judges in every criminal trial in jurisdictions around the country give the same instructions to the juries. ladies and gentlemen, there is no way to look into the human mind and discern somebody's intent. that's why the law permits you to infer intent from conduct and surrounding circumstances. but there really is one marquee statement by donald trump that does prove his corrupt intent and the prosecutors will hang it around donald trump's neck throughout his criminal trial, and it's when he was talking with his doj officials and they were telling him there was no fraud undermining the results of the election, and he said i

don't care if there was no fraud undermining the elections results. just say there was and leave rest to me and my republican allies in congress. that proves trump's corrupt intent, and everything moving forward will flow from that. >> that's so interesting. that was in mr. donahue's rosen's notes. quote, just declare it corrupt and our allies will do the rest. pretty clear. mike schmidt, thank you for joining us again on your great reporting. frank, thank you for starting us off today. glenn kirschner comes back to help us out more. candidate trump showing us once again how much more he values enriching himself, including his wife, over the angst of the american people and their families. the latest grifts is our next story. don't go anywhere. story. don't go anywhere. cold water, on those stains? ♪♪

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for the ex-president as it is highly unusual for a spouse of a candidate to be paid directly by an outside group affiliated with said candidate. congressman from florida, msnbc contributor david -- and president of the national action network and host of "politics nation" here on msnbc, rev, let me start with you. you've known trump the longest out of anyone we have these conversations with. grifting is his brand. it's a first time melania has been exposed to such a specific and egregious example of grifting herself. how do you think that's going over inside what goes on in that house? >> well, only god would know what goes on in that house, but i think that it is very interesting that we have this

allegation against melania who seems to always have been distant from the goings on of the family, his children, his sons, his daughter, and even jared, so i think when i read it this morning, it was very interesting to me because for her to have been in some way implied to have been involved, clearly, those of us that have run for office know that, particularly if you're married, you're supposed to be one and the same, so paying her is tantamount to paying him from a pac. i mean, there's all kinds of red flags there. and the question is, why someone in the pac and someone wouldn't have said this is going to cause serious questioning in terms of election law and in terms of ethics. and all of us that have had battles would have said this is not hard, you don't need a

lawyer toll you that. >> david jolly, i have no idea of what will come of chris christie's campaign but his live trolling of donald and melania trump is notable. let me share it. this is chris christie on twitter, quote, trump is shameless, a billionaire using donor money to pay legal fees and his wife more than two times what the average american makes to pick table ware. there's grifting and then trump grifting. undisputed champs. this is going to be interesting if other republicans pick up the grift as something that has. right there for the taking for a very long time. it's something that doesn't poll well when the question is asked and then in the time of trump it has to be asked. >> yeah. chris christie proving to be the republican reality check on many things, not all, but including on donald trump's grift and referencing one spokesperson i

believe suggested this wasn't for speaking. this was for helping design the table arrangements and flowers for a trump super pac gala at mar-a-lago where mar-a-lago has been the recipient of super pac money from donald trump. you and i have talked often about this issue or this idea of public trust and i think that's what resonated from the story which is, when you become a candidate, certainly elected office, you're choosing that path. one of the things that most politicians should be offering, certainly not all, is an acknowledgement and understanding you're asking to hold the public trust. it is hard to make that case for donald trump when he's somebody that one thing he's most consistent on is the grift. thus far republicans have said they're willing to make a compromise on the grift and elevate donald trump. >> it's truly stunning. within we come back, governor ron desantis, depending on what day it happens to be, is struggling to generate anything

resembling momentum or enthusiasm from voters. how his culture war crusade is flopping and viewed where he needs the support most. we'll bring you that new reporting next. don't go anywhere. go anywhere. ♪ tourists tourists that turn into scientists. tourists taking photos that are analyzed by ai. so researchers can help life underwater flourish. as americans, there's one thing we can all agree on. the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice

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(christina) with verizon business unlimited, i get 5g, truly unlimited data, and unlimited hotspot data. so, no matter what, i'm running this kitchen. (vo) make the switch. it's your business. it's your verizon. ♪ tourists tourists that turn into scientists. tourists taking photos that are analyzed by ai. so researchers can help life underwater flourish. ♪ florida's governor and republican presidential candidate ron desantis is in the midst of a three-day swing in iowa today as questions continue to mount about the sorry state of his campaign. politico is reporting ta there

is widespread angst among wealthy gop backers about the stable of candidates notably around the florida governor and his very bumpy start. donors are starting to look for alternatives, people like tim scott. not just donors who are turning their back on ron desantis, in a focus group comprised of swing voters in minnesota, desantis's positions on culture war, his harsh anti-lbgtq views are not landing well at all. several voters there describe him as, quote, a wannabe dictator. we're back with david jolly and the rev al sharpton. david jolly, i don't know what to make of this. he might just be a bad wannabe dictator and might be people aren't into wannabe dictators. where the electorate is concerned that is to be totally honest an open question as trump is still popular, but what's your take on be how not into ron desantis voters appear to be?

>> yeah. nicole, i think we're seeing the limits of cultural population compared to economic populism and what i mean by that is, you know, most politics is decided in the low to medium information space. it's not simply loyal msnbc and fox news viewers who consume this all the time. it's people who take the measure of a candidate based on pretty simple identifies and ethos if you will and they see in ron desantis a person who almost created the culture war movement in the united states. what does that translate in the low to medium space, for many americans rightly or wrongly, see ron desantis as the guy who hates gay people. that's it. coming off of that anti-lbgtq video, people see him as the warrior against the lbgtq community and that comes within electoral ceiling, if you will. contrast that to economic populism, which is how donald trump has decided to define his brand. set aside trump's challenges with xenophobia and racism and

misogyny he takes a chicken in every pot approach despite the inverse ideologies of trump and the former louisiana governor. it leaves ron desantis as a one trick pony in this race why he' behind. he is trying to tell america that there is a war on kids and america is saying, no there's not, you're just telling us how who raise our kids and we're not going to do that. for the 20, 25% of the country that might agree with the personal convictions of ron desantis, sure, they'll support him. otherwise they don't want him in their living room. >> what's interesting, rev, is he's not even getting 25%. i think what's interesting and the focus group used words like wild card and unpredictable, inauthentic. focus group participants said,

quote, it looks like he's trying to get the trump base. we have covered him and understood him to be a complete fabrication, manufactured outrage, manufactured culture wars and the bet was that racism and hate could galvanize the entire republican party and win a general election, i guess? now trump has to be reckoned with so we can't say, no it isn't, but i think we can say if you're doing it in a way that feels calculated, that won't work. >> and i think that he has underestimated where a lot of people are. to declare war on lgbtq communities and even fight mickey mouse over it is a bridge too far for people that may even have their own feelings about gay rights, but they don't want to go that far or taking black history out of the schools, the public schools. i mean, he has tried in his zeal

to outtrump trump going on this kind of culture war with steroids that a lot of republicans that may have some basic agreement but don't want to see the country that polarized or that excluded. and then when you look at the latest filings, he filed $20 million, trump 35 million, almost twice more under two indictments. and joe biden $72 million, three times more than desantis. so if you look at the money and you look at the polling, he ought to start looking at his house in tallahassee because he might have to stay there for a while. >> that's true. david jolly and the rev al sharpton, thank you both very much for spending time with us today. a quick break and we'll be right back. don't go anywhere. ht back don't go anywhere.

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all i want to do is this. i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state, i don't know, it looked red. i have to find 12,000 votes and i have them times a lot. and, therefore, i won the state. hi again, everyone. it's now 5:00 in the east.

we've played that call for one more time today because despite the ex-president's view of reality on earth, too, and his claims that it was a perfect call, he's now desperately trying every opportunity he can think of to stop any investigation into that call. and everything else that he did in georgia. this afternoon nbc news can confirm what was first reported by the "atlanta journal constitution," donald trump revived his push to disqualify district attorney attorney willis from investigating him. in a friday petition filed before the supreme court, trump's attorneys also sought to quash the final report of a special purpose grand jury that recommended people be indicted.

earlier this week we told you about how two fulton county grand juries were empanelled for a new two-month term, one of them very likely to vote on whether or not to criminally charge the ex-president. bonnie willis says investigations into his direct efforts to overturn his election defeat in georgia. but timing is in line with willis' previous signaling that an indictment could come in august. today's effort is not the first time trump's team has tried to dismiss bonnie willis' case. here's more. quote, in march trump's attorneys filed a similar motion seeking willis' disqualification in fullerton supreme court. they noticed the supervising judge of the special grand jury has yet to rule on the motion and that willis has notified local court officials and local law enforcement she is likely to seek an indictment at some point between july 3 st and august 18th. quote, stranded between the

supervising judges' protracted passivity, trump has no option other than to seek a motion. trump's last effort to pull off staving charges is where we start. greg bluestein is back with us and formers district attorney glenn kirschner is back. greg, take me inside what's happening down in georgia. >> this is a legal effort of last resort with indictments looming. some experts equate this to a legal equivalent of throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. even trump's attorney acknowledge this evident is unusual but necessary given the

really tight time frame with indictments expected as soon as august. and two new regular grand juries were just seated this week and one is likely to hear the case. we could hear from them in a knew weeks. >> greg, what is the feeling on -- i know this is asking you to do something reporters hate to do, but what is the feeling on timing, if anything, within that window? >> we're still expecting it mid august. willis said we will have an announcement either way before labor day so something is going to be happening very soon. again, we said this all along, when these indictments, this announcement comes down, we expect it to involve not just the former president, we can't be sure but all signs seem to be pointing that way but members in his inner circle and folks in georgia who might have been involved in the effort to overturn the election.

>> and how many people could be facing indictment, greg? >> we're talking about multiple people? >> yes. >> how many people? was this a long list? >> it's not a short list. we saw 75 people and there are six pages of the report cut out, i think, if you look at the page numbers. so it's not -- >> reporter: so we're talking about more than a dozen people? >> i would say that, yes. >> reporter: are these recognizable names, names that people would know? >> there are certainly names that you would recognize, yes. there are names also that you might not recognize. >> glenn kirschner, i have tried to not repurpose that very often. it was a weird part of this story. but in terms of the numbers of people we're talking about to greg's point, this is the indictment that could be something that we've talked about for a long time, a vast

conspiracy to overturn an election defeat in georgia. what are you expecting? >> yeah. so first of all, that was an unusual interview given by a grand juror because most jurisdictions don't permit or encourage grand jurors to give media interviews. but i think it's important to note under the procedure in georgia, the judge made clear grand jurors can give these kind of interviews, think just can't disclose what happened during deliberations. when we heard perhaps more than a dozen people will be indicted by the regular grand jury in georgia, it was pretty breathtaking but not unexpected and, you know, nicole, when i heard the reporting about how district attorney fawny willis contacted the district judges and found what i found a remarkable request, she asked the judges to clear their

calendars, to not set any trials and not set any in-person proceedings for the weeks of august 7th and august 14th. the message being sent is unmistakable that we are going to or intending to or expecting to run a whole bunch of defendants through the courts for their first court appearance, their arraignment on what is suspected to be a mega indictment that is coming. asking courts to clear their dockets and do no other business during those two weeks is a pretty dramatic ask and some pretty important foreshadowing. >> you know, glen, the other part of this story that's been so remarkable since the night of the raffensperger call was made public is that trump doesn't deny anything that happens on the call, and a lot of people think that the call is quite incriminating. he's not asking to find votes

that were potentially fraudulent, he's asking to find the exact number of votes by which he lost to joe biden. let me play some of his current -- this is from this spring. this is his description of the call with raffensperger in an interview with cnn. >> i didn't ask him to find anything. >> we heard the audiotape, mr. president. there's an audio of him to find 11,000 votes. >> i said you owe me votes because that election was rigged. if this call was bad, why didn't him and his lawyers hang up? how dare you say that? this was a perfect phone call. >> this is like i'm carjacking you. if it's a carjacking, why didn't you drive away? this is so insane. it's like the document case where there is no defense. he just goes on tv and makes up stuff. does he continue to cause

himself peril? >> over and over again. it's a perfectly incriminating call and it reminds me of when i was trying cases when wiretap evidence where i had the defendant in his own voice, who was sitting across the courtroom from 12 citizens in the jury box listening to him say i'm going to need 12 keys of coke on friday. you got me? i call that a just press play trial. on the charge. soliciting election fraud in violation of georgia state law, that phone call is the be all and end all and it convicts him of that charge. in the court of public opinion it may make him feel good when he can spew these things in news interviews or post them on his third rate social media platform. in a court of law it's going to be fatal. >> you know, kornel, i keep

thinking about where we are in this process, the effort to hold donald trump accountable for crimes he commits brazenly and in broad daylight. he gets away with one thing, he commits a more criminal gambit. he gets away and escapes accountability and mueller and the next day he calls zelenskyy and asks him to find dirt on joe biden. he clears that impeachment and starts laying the groundwork, calling the election rigged if anybody votes by mail in the middle of a global pandemic and he starts making phone calls like the one we heard to brad raffensperger. he's now under indictment and his campaign is all about being your retribution, unclear who

the "your" is. >> what do you make of this indictment? >> i appreciate you having me on. you got the reporting and legal questions covered so let me talk about the politics. the cultural undertaking by donald trump is tremendous. it's unlike anything we've ever seen in modern political history. if you look at the current hoarder of fund-raising, most are excited about it. we talked about how it may have helped his fund-raising being indicted, it may have helped his fund-raising a little bit. if you look on the other side, nicole, it clearly helped joe biden's fund-raising, which joe biden made over $2 million, double the amount that donald trump raised and is now sitting on more cash on hand than any presidential campaign in recent times. so it doesn't help him with the

general election. and the question becomes does it help him -- will we see his numbers expand and grow even more among primary voters. when the first indictments came down, we saw that. we saw desantis lose momentum and trump gain momentum. is there a drip, drip, drip here of more indictments and piling on that stops or reverses or pauses his ascension to the nomination? i don't know at this point. it looks like at some point is there a tipping point for even republican primary voters? i think we're going to see fairly soon. >> yeah, i mean, here's the thing to your point. politics are covered often as though they're baked in and anyone that works in politics knows that it is the opposite,

right? you're like walking on the bouncy balls. nothing under you is firm. and with donald trump, the tipping point isn't just with the electorate, the tipping point is how much can he strain his base. the gift isn't about grifting you and me, it's about rifting his voters. and it's about sending steven ayers and the grift isn't about outside analysts and pundits and coverage. it is now inside his base. how much can he strain him? can he put melania on the payroll and still have all of his voters forking over hard-earned small dollars? i don't know. can he be indicted for hoarding

classified documents and maintain the levels of sport he had in '16 and '20? i don't know. can he be charged with stealing and cheating? i don't think anybody knows the answer to that question. >> that's right. i think the growth argument adds he's putting out is just too much, moving in another direction. i think those ads are more resonant today than they were a week ago and they're going to continue to be more resonant as we see this indictment come down and we hear the evidence come out. more and more i think we'll see. >> yeah. i want to ask you, greg bluestein, as someone who we always turn to when georgia's in the news, which is every day, what the feeling is there about

perhaps being the center of the political universe again and perhaps being the center around something polarizing not just in a right/left context but within the republican party. if he's charged, the star witnesses are the state's most prominent republicans, the governor, the secretary of state and others. what is the feeling within republicans in georgia right now? >> and that's what's so fascinating about this, nicole. even though georgia is the home to some of donald trump east biggest electoral setbacks, of his hand picked candidates in 2022 and losing to senator rafael wornock still holds a pretty hefty lead. but there is a feeling that if someone comes up, gains traction, gains fire but even

with all those setbacks, he still is in the cat bird seat right now and that speaks volume to his enduring grip on the republican party here. >> glen, i wonder what you make of his grip on the legal system there. is there any chance he'll be successful with this -- it's been lukened as a, the legal move he's just made? >> there is zero chance that this petition for a writ of mandanus in the georgia supreme court court will succeed. george said they're like throwing stuff at the wall to so if it will stick. they risked a gam and it is rarely granted and will only be granted is if there is a clear and indisputable right for for

the competitioner to win the relief he was seeking and if the judge below violated a clearly established legal duty. and when you read, pleading it really is row markable an attorney would sign his or her name to it because it asks for things and don't allow any of the incriminating evidence to be introduced and disqualify bonnie willis and her office from the case. it's absurd to suggest that that's are clearly indisputable rights and remedies that donald trump is entoutle this succeeds. >> glen blewstein for your candor and clarity today. ahead we'll stay in georgia and

look at how a hand and nearly 100,000 voters there. there's new reporting of consequences and how it. plus, house republicans stuffing a defense spending bill with all kinds of culture bills. allowing a business to refuse service to a gay couple. now a judge in texas is hoping to use that decision as a shield don't go anywhere today.

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in the history of the world! there is an overall strategy. it involves a number of right-wing-funded organizations. it vofls the leadership of republicans at the congressional level, at the rnc, in the state levels. it is all aimed at making it harder to vote and easier to cheat. that was mark ailias earlier on this program earlier this week. j just the short amount of time since he was here, there's already new evidence, new reporting that proves his evidence against this ongoing war against democracy, specifically by new republican

laws that not only validated election denialism but given far right activists an actual say in who they think should be allowed to vote. propublican are doing potentially illegal damage. quote, a vast majority of the challenges since sb 202 became law, about 89,000 of 100,000 were submitted by six right-wing activists. at lease 2,350 voters were removed from the rolls and 87 others were placed in a "challenge." in the 30 counties for which pro

publica challenged -- let's bring in doug and cornell. >> thanks so much for having us on. we wanted to take a really deep dive, a granular look at who was making these charges and who was affected by them. so we put out a very wide swath of public requests and 89,000 of these 100,000 challenges were submitted by a very small group of people, just six people and we found five had ties to large right-wing organizations. >> let me read some more of the reporting so people have a sense of the examples of these challenges. jason frazier had challenged about 1,000 people registered at

nonresidential addresses such as p.o. boxes and businesses and another 4,000 people he claimed lived at invalid addresses, including one member of the county elections board, mostly because they had the wrong directional component at the end of a street name, for example, southeast instead of northeast. a woman who introduced herself as a survivor of domestic violence, she went to extraordinary lengths to try to protect myself and keep my address not public. >> the vast majority of these challenges were not going against serious errors in the rolls. they were finding small clerical errors. we talked to many county officials who said they had no knowledge of these challenges turning up any successfully

prosecuted cases of voter fraud, but these challenges have real effects on people. in the most serious cases they can remove people from the rolls and this can create a barrier that's very, very hard for them to overcome in terms of voting. if you don't know that you're removed from the rolls and then you try to go and vote without reregistering, you can't vote and it can be extremely difficult to get back on. and we found in the case of one homeless man that he was not able to get back on the rolls after being removed through a challenge and to vote in the 2022 election. >> let me read that part of your reporting. an unhouse voter found his removal from the rolls too high a barrier to allow him to reregister in final to vote. an in fulton county, an immuno suppressed cancer patient had to drive nearly two hours round trim to defend his right to

vote. a black woman likened her challenge to voter intimidation. is there any evidence that what they are doing is anything other than what that woman says she feels, voter intimidation? >> it's very hard to get inside of their heads. we were going to do a data analysis comparing to the people challenged to the demographics of people who voted in the primary. what we found was they challenged people at a disproportionate high rate who voted in democratic primaries. when we brought this to election experts and when we talked about it, the question that the experts raised was why are they doing all of these challenges if it's -- if they're not finding any fraud but they are causing all of these impacts to voters? and i think that's a good question to ask. >> cornell, we know the answer on the political side, right?

they are trying to manufacture an electorate more likely to vote for them and the people passing election integrity laws are all republicans. there are about 400 laws racing through republican legislatures this year i think in 48 states. so the big lie, which never had any evidence, not enough to convince trump backers like steve powers or brad raffensperger, has been successful in being manifested as voter intimidation or voter purge. >> there's a direct connection between this story and what we just covered there in georgia. why did donald trump ask for 11,800 votes? it's not that joe biden is

winning these really close battle states by 100,000 or 200,000 votes. no, joe biden won georgia by 11,779 votes. that's why donald trump asked for 11,800. those are awfully close margins. and if you can muddy up the process, as they're trying to do, and try to intimidate people, it's not very difficult to suppress 11,800 votes and in the next election see that flip the other way. and that's what they're trying to do. and this intimidate stuff, look, if you keep making it harder for people to vote, less people are going to vote. and that's what they're trying to do. on the other side we are trying very hard, nicole, to raise the stakes and make people understand how important their vote is and tell them to have a plan about going to vote so we can fight back these efforts.

>> it is amazing. and you're right, the two stories are definitely two interlocking pieces of the puzzle. doug clark for a piece of reporting that is totally dated and investigative in nature, we're very grateful to have it and to have a chance to talk to you about it. and cornell, thank you for spending your time with us on a summer afternoon. when we come back, we'll have reactions from republicans to stuff a bell with a boat load of right-wing culture war stuff. that story's next. t.ex

in a 219-210 vote with near nearly all republicans voting in favor and almost all republicans voting against, the house passed the national defense authorization act. it's a bill congress has passed every year for the last since decades. why was today's vote so signature, newsworthy? >> because republicans took this bill which deals with spending for the military as a vehicle to insert their latest and most divisive california war issues. among the amendments added to

this bill, one that would ban health care for transgender and one that would ban d.e.i. offices and requiring diversity training and overturn the pentagon's abortion policy. >> it is woefully irresponsible that extreme republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security and taken it over and weaponized it in order to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the american people. >> joining our coverage, form are u.s. senate candidate and retired u.s. marine corps lieutenant colonel amy mcgrath is back. and joining us the founder of

veterans of america and host of independent america's pod cast, paul is back. i'll start with your reaction. amy, you first. >> first of all, it's an unprecedented move by republicans to insert this right-wing ideological agenda deep into our military and into our national security. you know, just take number three on your list there, the abortion policy. i mean, right now what the republicans just voted on is they want to ban women in the military from being able to cross state lines and leave their bases and go and get reproductive health care in a state where they could get what they need. that's what the republicans voted for yesterday. it's ludicrous. it hurts military readiness and, frankly, it is a slap in the face to every woman in the military, people who put their lives on the line and the

military entrusted me to fly a $70 million jet into combat with thousands of pounds of bombs at my fingertips and now the republicans don't want to trust women in the military, people like me, to be able to control their own reproductive health care decisions. that's where we're at in this country right now. it's outrageous. >> well, when you put it that way, it sort of stops me in my tracks, amy. i mean, paul, the other part of this, is there are solutions in search of problems. the other piece is they're wildly unpopular solutions. take me through how you see this playing out. >> well, i think what we're seeing is the death of moderation and centrism of any kind and try to impose a

confederate ideology in all parts of the country focused on the military. everything will look like the confederate ring of the gop trying to push their ideological agenda down the throats of the moderate and left wing america. these are the days when cheney is long gone and kinzinger is gone. we've seen this wing dismantling our military. they're blocking motions, they're going to delay the defense bill and ultimately they are undermining the multi-. putin loves seeing this, isis loves seeing this and domestic terrorists love seeing this. yesterday you had a congressman use the term "colored people" on the floor of the house. this is all interwoven into an

extreme agenda that's ultimately going to push away a lot of people from the republican party and moderation. >> i guess from somebody who has been a candidate, the important piece is making sure that people understand that the republicans move the military as a political battlefield, no different from the cpac convention. >> sure, but, you know, it can really back fire on them because every single week the republicans are disqualifying themselves when it comes to national security. from marjory taylor green to donald trump's gross criminal mishandling of classified information to january 6th, to this crazy holding up of hundreds of promotions and hurting our national security by not allowing generals and admirals to be, you know, in charge of their units. we have no commandante right

now. what democrats need to do is show voters this is ludicrous. we need to have trusted voices, get in front of voters and say this is a matter of national security and the republicans party cannot be trusted with our national defense and here's why. >> paul, listen, i always wonder about the asymmetry of these things. the military is not a political institution, it is not wired for rapid response. so when the republicans -- when tucker carlson used to smear them with the military is woke. it takes voices like yours to end up on programs like this to put the voice out there but what is a better way to keep the facts in front of the american people? >> i think ordinary people need to get more involved in

politics. i know folks say it on cable news all the time but it's true, this is hitting people pretty profoundly like in alabama where they will jeopardize getting space command. nobody in the lgbtq community would want to work there if it's tommy tuberville's state. they continue to push this confederate agenda down the throats of 2023 america. ultimately it's normal people, it's people outside of politics and the folks in uniform. i thought the nominee for the chairman of joint chiefs has been very strong, admiral lloyd austin has been very strong. and important to note, too, they're black and tommy tuberville is white and he continues to pick fights with high pro-file african-american people in our government.

that's not an accident. >> it's just amazing. please promise me that these conversations are ones we can continue, the three of us. amy and paul, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. make sure to check out paul's latest episode of the independent americans' podcast where he discusses senator tuberville's confused statements about white nationalists. and when we come back, a judge never having to officiate a gay couple's wedding. we'll have more when we come back. we'll have bmore when we come back

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after the u.s. supreme court ruled in favor of allowing a wedding web site designer to refuse services to a gay couple, plaintiffs are tripping all over themselves to test what level of discrimination the nation's high court has ushered in and will not permit. the texas tribune reports that diane hensley who had beautiful been warned for refusing same-sex marriages has submitted a brief claiming the supreme court's decision is applicable

to her lawsuit. opportunities of discrimination have been created by the nation's highest court. the catholic school that fired a teacher for being gay cited a report in the recent report to to the fourth circuit. a hairdresser said transgender patrons are not welcome at the salon saying they have the right to refuse services now. let's bring in kelly robinson. i think this is what people who read the decision at the time worried about just what's coming to pass, opportunities for discrimination. tell me what you're seeing. >> i mean, this is scary, right? this is our worst fear playing itself out. what the story illustrates is how one bad decision from the supreme court came down around 303 and what it did was crack the door open just enough for a little bit of hate and bigotry to be seen and now extremists across the country are trying to bang that door all the way down and create a license to discriminate in every way. this decision from the supreme

court was bad but it was also narrow. i think the challenge is that now it's created an environment where people are actually openly spewing their ideals of hate, trying to find more and more ways to discriminate against our community. and furthermore, we are living in a state of emergency. lgbtq plus folks all across the country, these attacks coming from courthouses, from state legislative bodies, they're coming from congress. this is one of those moments where we need every american to stand up and say enough. this shouldn't only be frightening to lgbtq plus people, it should be frightening to anyone because if it can happen to us, be sure it can happen to your communities, too. >> kelly, i can never get out of my brain clarence thomas' invoking marriage equality as also be on the radar. i wonder will we look back and want to say we did these things in this window, sort of between

303, between dobbs and should this hyper political, hyper conservative court decide to touch that, what should we be doing right now? >> look, i got to be honest, this is really scary. but it's also intentional that it's playing out this way. the alliance to defend freedom was the same group that backed the 303 case and they were the ones that backed the dobbs case that overturned roe v. wade. this is not happening by accident. we've got to be clear that the proponents that are pushing for these discriminatory policies that are trying to pull us back in time, they are the same folks that are advancing hateful legislation in states all across the country. in fact, the southern poverty law center has designated many of them as hate groups. that is who we are fighting. i think it's important to, one, see them who who they are and, two, we have got to get out the vote. what the supreme court is doing is out of touch and out of step with the majority of americans. 80% of americans across this

country support robust and inclusive nondiscrimination protections for the lgbtq community. 70% of people across this country support equality. the way to fight back millions american eligible to vote and put the "we" back into we the people. >> it's an interesting moment where the supreme court had for years done something that animated the right. it's now on the other side of not just democratic-leaning americans, and on the question of abortion, the majority of republican women are against what the supreme court has ushered our country. i wonder about the -- how andy democratic these decisions become when judges and legislators that enact policy way out of the mainstream of the u.s. public opinion. >> absolutely. there's a bigger question about

what we are going to do to preserve a representative democracy in this moment and right now. you've got an unelected group of people that are actually legislating from the bench. they are not playing the role of neutral referee. they're making law from the bench that's rolling us back. 303, nobody even asked her to make a website. you have proponents making up liam challenges, when there isn't a problem to be litigated. i think we should all be concerned about the legitimacy of the supreme court and protecting our democracy. i will say that it didn't start this year with the 303 decision, it didn't start last year with the dobbs decision. i think it started when mitch mcconnell changed of makeup of the supreme court without putting forward a qualified nominee under obama. now we have to call the question, what will it take to

preserve our democracy, and make sure it represents all of the people. >> kelley robinson, thank you for your time. we are grateful. another break for us. we will be right back. another break for us we will be right back.

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never-ending heat wave is stretching now from coast to coast. temperature reports are being broken left and right. phoenix has been above 110 degrees for two weeks and is predicted to break the all-time record of 18 days at or above that temperature. el paso has seen 28 days over 100 with more on the way. the noaa have now we've lived think the three hottest consecutive months on record. we hope you and your beloved pets and loved ones stay cool and safe. another break for you, and we'll be right back. safe another break for you, and we'll be right back. a prime target for cyberattacks. but the same ai-powered security that protects all of google also defends these services for everyone who lives here. ♪

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letting us into your homes for another week of shows. we are so grateful. "the beat" with katie fang is in for ari. >> thank you so much. welcome to "the beat." i'm katie. today, trump filing a long-shot peat before the georgia supreme court, seeking to disqualify the fulton county d.a. bonnie willis just days after she seated the grand jury that would consider any criminal charges. it centers on a pressure ca