hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. if and when special counsel jack smith sets about serving justice to donald trump and those closest to him, could their roles in the deadly attack at the u.s. capitol, they could do so with one essential set of facts, facts that answer a fundamental question. did trump and his people know that their b.s. was just that, b.s.? did they know their lies were lies? to prove that in court, that yes, indeed, they did, prosecutors will draw from a number of sources. what we understand this afternoon, there's one avenue in particular focus for them. "the washington post" reports this, a specific exchange of text messages, is now being scrutinized by federal prosecutors. it's between mark med dose and eric hirschman.

remember him? the process of poo pooing the false claim by rudy giuliani that 10,000 dead people voted in georgia, meadows mentions his son was looking into it. my son found 12 obituaries and 6 other possibilities. eric hirschman responds, that's more like it. maybe he can help rudy find the other 10,000. meadows messages back. wait for it. lol. does that sound like a person who actually believes there's a serious claim that widespread fraud exists? that it's real? while it was lol in private, white house lawyers, meadows went about publicly spreading the lies about fraud and pressuring state officials all the same. days later he set up trump's infamous call with georgia's secretary of state. he spoke on the call. listen to him. >> yeah. so, let me recommend, ryan, if

you and kurt get to together -- when we get off of this phone call, if you can get together and work out a plan to address some of what we've got with your attorneys, where we can actually look at the data. for example, mr. secretary, i can tell you, you said there were only two dead people who would vote. i can promise you there are more than that. and that may be what your investigation shows. but i can promise you there are more than that. >> on the phone, representing the president of if united states of america, and there were. there were four, quote, lol. crazy, right? infuriating. so is the fact that all of this had to happen in the first place. jack smith's dual criminal

investigations are necessary they are also costly. the latest "new york times" reporting indicates this, donald trump's behavior before and after his time in office, demand extraordinary resources. they're alone costing $25 million a year. that's almost pennies in a jar compared to the broader cost, the strain the investigations put on our institutions and the democracy itself. it's what one official calls a trump tax, for government agencies, forcing leaders to expend time and energy against the former president and defending themselves against unfounding claims they are persecuting him in the interest of public safety. all that because one guy from mar-a-lago seems unashamed to break the law over and over and over and over and over again. that's where we start with some of our favorite reporters and friends. investigative reporter, carole linick is back with us.

and washington correspondent, glen rush is back. former assistant director for the fbi, frank luzzi is here. and glen kirshner is here with us. let me start with you, glen kirshner, as the first person that i put on the spot as a reader of tea leaves. what do you sense based on the reporting that carol glen's reporting is doing, for prosecutors and the possible indictment? >> timing is tough to say. given that a target letter has the been delivered to donald trump, that's a sure sign that the prosecutors are close to asking the grand jury to vote on charges. can i say lol by mark meadows made my blood boil. if you can't have fun at the expressed bill of the voters,

when can you have fun? i read the remarkable reporting and buried way down there was, what i thought was a really important data point, regarding mark meadows' status at this moment. witnesses in the grand jury have been shown a grand jury exhibit. when we're investigating cases in the grand jury, we will put together any number of exhibits to show the witnesses as we try to puzzle through what happened and who should be charged. this exhibit was a grid of communications, text messages, e-mails and what have you. when i saw that, my heart sank a little. that's one data point that cuts against mark meadows being a full-blown, signed-up, corroborating witness, who is now providing all of the information the prosecutors

about the crimes and others of donald trump. i would show grids of one of my signed-up cooperators, asking them things like, what did mark meadows mean when he was using this language or this language? what did he mean by that? i don't know what mark meadows' sttus is. there is reporting he testified before this grand jury in june. was he a cooperating witness, an immunized witness, a hostile witness? we don't know those questions. but one way or another, it feels like mark meadows will be a cooperating witness, who is somebody accepting responsibility for his crimes and agree to cooperate. or he may end up a marquee co-defendant in the january 6th indictment with donald trump. >> interesting.

i also thought, buried deep at the end is an interesting paragraph. it says he won't lie before the grand jury or something to that effect. take us inside being mark meadows. >> you know, i've been covering mark meadows for a long time when he was the chief of staff. but even before that. and mark meadows, as white house chief of staff, took a kind of personality turn, in which he was trying to keep the chief happy, meaning the boss. and keep a smart group of folks who thought the claims of fraud were baloney also happy and feeling heard. my understanding from reading a

lot of the documents, reviewing a lot of the information and talking to other sources, is that meadows' position now is similar. he is not trying to antagonize donald trump. he is not trying to antagonize supporters of donald trump, who back some of meadows' best friends in the freedom caucus. he is going to, in the words of close ally, let the chips fall where they may, as it happens with donald trump. he's going to tell what he is required to do under the law and has. if that's a report that finds donald trump engaged in horrific violations of his office or involves in him being indicted, that's where the chips fall. meadows has frequently played two sides. as he did in his private text message, nicole. lol. eric hershmann. maybe my son can find the other

10,000 votes. ha, ha, ha. in that call with the president of the united states, he seemed to coddle and indulge the belief that dead voters names were used. when certainly meadows knew that was not true. and many of his colleagues have told us that meadows confided to them, he knew it was not true. >> meadows conduct and knowledge that trump has lost and this was a hoax, burst into public view most obviously with cassidy hutchinson's testimony. let me play that for you. >> after mr. giuliani left the campus, i went back up to our office. and i found mr. meadows in his office on the couch, scrolling through his phone, saying, some

interesting conversations with rudy, mark. sounds like we're going to go to the capitol. he didn't look up from his phone and said something to the effect of, there's a lot going on, cass, but i don't know. things might get real, real bad on january 6. >> i feel like we grade meadows' legal exposure on a scale because he has a competent and highly regarded lawyer. but he's in deep doo doo. i don't know if he doesn't have exposure in classified documents, as well. i worked in a white house and no one knows more than the chief of staff. in terms of who was putting what in what boxes, that's mark meadows' rear end on the line. in terms of norah, that's mark meadows. in who was dealing with the president's documents postwhite house, that's the chief of staff unless he delegates that. that's documents. on the coup, meadows is texting with everyone under the gosh darn sun that he knows it's a

lie and he's managing the principal. he's managing the principal the way tucker carlson's people manage talent. he is managing a lunatic principal. but he knows it's all b.s. he sees the election the waybill barr does. and i meal like that is established in communications we've seen. >> two things. first of all, what this shows is that med dose had a full understanding that donald trump lost the election. and these election claims were false. so, from a prosecutorial perspective, these are important if you're going to make a case against meadows or attempt to flip him. number one. number two, we've been in white houses. i spent ten years covering white houses. this is not a functional chief of stop. chief of staff that they call in

washington is second to the president. and the role is that of gate keeper. the notion that he would go on a call, a call with the georgia secretary of state, and insinuate that any of the stuff he knew wasn't true was true, indicates to me he didn't really understand the gravity of the position that he held. the notion of chiefs of staff not standing up to their bosses in a moment, where their bosses are clearly doing things that are counter to fact and counter to law, your job is literally to tell the boss how far he can or can't go. as you know, in the waning days of the trump administration, all kinds of people were jumping ship when they were asked to do things they weren't comfortable with. meadows, this more or less establishes, you talk about him being the man in the middle here. you can't have it both ways. you can't serve the law and the constitution and a principal who seems from the preponderance of

evidence, to be contrary to those things. for me, that once wore the hat of covering that building, this is not something who is functioning in that capacity of chief of staff in any nominal way. >> was he functioning as a coconspirator for the proceeding? sounds to me like he was. >> you know, glenn kirshner had us view this through the lens of a prosecutor opinion and it's hard to imagine that med dose is not cooperating or is criminally exposed here. i echo the criminally exposed part.

that exposes you. it's helpful to look at the lens of a grand jury. either or the fulton county grand jury or jack smith's grand jury in d.c. it's not unusual for grand jurors to engage in dialogue and ask questions. i find it hard to envision a scenario where grand juror doesn't raise their hand and say why aren't we indicting this guy, meadows? are we doing that? have we gotten to that point yet? is that tomorrow? all of the evidence is showing he is engaging in a crime. he falls for anything. and he stands for nothing and has himself jammed up. i think criminal. >> carol, the reporting does a great job of reminding what the break with trump was.

it wasn't turning all of his texts over to the january 6th committee. i misremembered. it was writing in his book that trump almost dies when he has covid. that's something your news organization, as well as glenn's, was close to reporting at the time. trump was so sick, he almost dies and trump is irate. it's trump's interactions with meadows' autobiographers that leads to the documents in that case. it sounds like the body of reporting on meadows is that he's like pence in trump world. he's dead and he may not know it. >> i think he's dead to trump world and he does know it. notice the careful dance he's done in terms of really not as much of a public face of late, according to my colleague's good reporting. he's stoeped back from trying to interact with trump world.

enacting with giving advice. i think meadows, based on, people close to him, that his relationship with trump is pretty much over. and it is partially, that part of the book, where he ripped into. and donald trump's own view as superman. you may remember donald trump may remembered wanted to do a stunt after getting out of the hospital. he wanted to break open his buttondown shirt and have a superman kind of jersey underneath it. and here is mark meadows, the one busting that bubble and the one that he hoped to present that he is larger than life and nothing can take him down, not even a pandemic.

the other thing i can say about the position right now, is he is in a potentially precarious place. we don't know. is jack smith delighted to have his full account of how all of this went down? and does he see the muddy evidence that meadows trod behind the scenes, to short circuit donald trump's craziest final hours. i've been told by multiple people, that some of the things meadows counsels is president in public calls, like raffe jump t of the boss' insane idea. there's more than two dead people that voted. there might be 22, instead of 5,000. this idea that meadows is a fence-rider, a really good description by frank. it was his way the entire time

he was in the administration. and now, here he is, basically trying to remain tight with republicans who support trump. and knows his days are pretty much over. that dance is done. >> what is so interesting is the disparity of what cassidy hutchinson was able to articulate as mark meadows shadow and what he was able to say. cassidy hutchinson saw him with trump on that day. she knows that mark meadows wasn't being responsive because he liked what the insurrectionists were doing. said multiple times on this program, getting to the principal is not exculpatory, it's likely incriminating. >> cassidy hutchinson was an extraordinarily brave, powerful, credible, compelling witness.

and let's say, mark meadows is no cassidy hutchinson. and frank and i agree with carol that mark meadows is a fence sitter. right? that seemed to be his job in the white house. he was a fence sitter in his professional life and political life. there's one place that you cannot sit on the fence. it's in the grand jury. when he went in the grand jury, he was represented by competent counsel, he had to go in with some protection. there's only three forms of protection in the grand jury. four if you have done nothing wrong. you are completely blameless. we can rule that out. you need the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination and you plead the fifth. or you need the protection of immunity, so nothing you say can come back and be used against you. or you need the protection of a cooperation deal, pleading guilty for your crimes and

agreeing to cooperating and in exchange for a benefit, of a reduced plea or sentence at the end of the day. his counsel wouldn't let him go in there unprotected. i think what we're grappling with, is which of the three status does mark meadows occupy. he could have gone in and lied through his teeth. but all that does is gives somebody like jack smith added leverage. as i told everybody witness before i put them before the grand jury, i can promise you one thing. if you go in there and under oath you lie to the grand jury, about a material matter, about something that is relevant, i will ask them to consider to vote out an indictment for perjury, perhaps obstruction of justice. sometimes that has the desired affect and we can pry the truth

out of difficult witnesses. we're in a guessing game of what is mark meadows' status. >> carol, this gives us a body of things to chew on. everyone else sticks around. we'll dave into glenn's reporting from over the weekend when we come back. much more on the top story. "the new york times" reporting, dubbing it the trump tax. the incalculable cost of law enforcement against him and his attacks. plus, even though mobs went to the u.s. capitol, chanting hang mike pence, the former vice president, mike pence, says that the actions that day of the man who assembled the mob, the ex-president, the guy who made him run down the scares, were not crimes. really? later in the program, the devastating price of ron desantis' opposition to covid vaccines. new reporting shows that the florida governor's disinformation could have led to

scores of preventable death there's. all those stories and more when "deadline white house" returns after a quick break. quick break. ♪ the thought of getting screened ♪ ♪ for colon cancer made me queasy. ♪ ♪ but now i've found a way that's right for me. ♪ ♪ feels more easy. ♪ ♪ my doc and i agreed. ♪

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the justice department has a greater capability of testimony. there was a lot we didn't have access to. at the same time, i believe the work we did, and the effort we put forward to the country and the justice department, compelled them to look at the serious allegations of criminal activity by donald trump. i'm not sure that would have happened in the absence of the work that we did on the january 6th committee. >> everyone is back with us. it didn't come with any

cost-cutting, though. glenn thrush, let me read what you and your colleagues reported. only the $25 million figure begins to capture the full scale of the resources dedicated by federal, state, and local officials, of trump's behavior, during and after his presidency. while no comprehensive statistics are available, the effort alone to prosecute the members of the pro-trump mob that stormed the capitol on january 6th, is the largest investigation in its history. that inquiry is one of many civil efforts being brought to hold trump and allies to account. the reporting is remarkable. almost the economy of holding trump accountable. take us inside it. >> jack smith has spent his first four months on the job, $9.2 million. half of that would have been spent on salaries at doj anyway.

the rest are new expenses incurred. what is fascinating and disturbing is $1.9 million of that money, went to paying the u.s. marshals to protect jack smith, his family and prosecutors, working on the case, many of whom have been name checked on social media by donald trump. and his supporters. people went out of the way to tell me that number was rising rapidly as threats were increasing. the reports are coming out from smith's office on expenses, we're going to see that number rising. we've seen protected expenses for other special counsels, incluing robert hurr, but they are much less. i'm told, the sources tell us, that the effort to protect smith is something we have not seen before. >> when you look, glen, at the

attacker that approached obama's house, after donald trump republicized his home address, the expense can be ongoing. have they changed their budgeting in terms of protecting these people indefinitely? >> i think they don't have -- these are not fixed costs. they're not necessarily tied to a budgetary line. they can rotate. a $20 million expense is larger part of the $40 million budget at doj. these things weigh on the entire organization. the entire posture of the department of justice has changed because of this investigation. >> frank figliuzzi, i think just doing your job for a government salary, that is nothing ostentatious at all, is

something that causes these people to need security and protection, perhaps indefinitely. >> i don't want to hear much from far right extremists about how much it is costing to save democracy from shn who seems intent on destroying it. when $2 million of the $9 million we're talking about so far, is protecting people against the threat and risk of the people under investigation are generating. this is a self-generated security and threat risk from the people who are under investigation. so, if you break down the $9 million as glenn is telling us and he's telling us that half of it, $4.5 million, is career professionals at doj and fbi, that were going to get paid no matter what they are working. there's half.

almost $2 million in security. that gets us to $6.5 million. the remainder is what office space rental in washington, d.c., to me, i'll take that price tag for the price of defending democracy against people who want to dismantle it. >> and want to dismantle it as a campaign message. this is someone running for president on the message of dismantling the rule of law. while i have all three of you, i want to ask you about news that's broken this afternoon about bernie carrick. we have reporting of our own at nbc news. quote, i have shared the documents approximately 600 megabytes, mostly pdfs with the special counsel. look to sitting down with them, the special counsel, in two weeks to discuss. i'm not sure that his word is something you take to the bank. but also not sure it's not to be

believed. what do you make of bernie carrick of the end stage witness? and what do you make of the date of mid-august? >> so, i think if this was i suspect there is much in there that's not all that helpful to jack smith and prosecutors. i believe this is something that they collected up in their determination to show the election was stolen. there were all these fraudulently cast ballots. they're going to turn that over to jack smith. the reason -- i think if they're not going to the mat and fighting tooth and nail to keep from turning it over, to jack smith, it's my suspicion that it's probably, there's a lot of fluff in there and none of it is likely to be all that damaging.

i would be interesting to get him to divulge all of this information. >> when carrick is interesting, he's done time before. he ended up at the willard and the command center, for january 6th. any idea what part of the investigation he feeds? any insight into timing of his interview or of jack smith's broader investigation? >> what's interesting -- >> i'm sorry. let me bring in glenn thrush. i'm sorry, glenn kirshner. two glenns. i love it. >> that should be a movie. "the two glenns." >> or a show. >> bernie carrick made a cameo at the beginning of this investigation. i remember doing stories, not too long after the mar-a-lago

raid of southbou subpoenas on ty 6th case. todd windham was running out of doj. when a couple of people were on the subpoenas. they were asking local officials, republican officials in georgia, if they had information on the activities of others. this is what is fascinating about the smith probe. >> we don't know until and unless an indictment is unsealed. we don't know unless there's a trial. to the two glenns, thank you so much for spending so much time with us. frank sticks around a little longer. frank, i feel like i left you out. i have to find you another frank. one republican candidate

says january 6th was not an insurrection. another says that donald trump's actions that day were not crimes. how the republican party's attitude towards january 6th stands in cheat and total contrast and contradiction to the facts, as they saw them that day. that's next. (v what goes in it. now she gets to pick only the perks she wants and saves on every one. and with an incredible new iphone on us, no wonder sadie is celebrating. introducing myplan. get exactly what you want. only pay for what you need. act now and get iphone 14 pro on us when you switch. it's your verizon. you founded your kayak company because you love the ocean- not spreadsheets. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire

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ex-president, there's a concerted effort right now among republican candidates across the nation, in close allies of trump, that whitewashed january 6th and spread the dangerous belief that accountability for staging a coup is the political act, not the whole armed insurrection itself. this sounds crazy, but it is spreading like a contagion among republicans with presidential ambitions. >> the presidents words were reckless that day. i had no right to overturn the election. based on what i know, i'm not convinced they were criminal. >> i don't hold the capitol.

>> it was not an insurrection. they were there to attend a rally and there to protest. it devolved into a riot. the idea this was a plan to overthrow the governmen of the united states is not true. >> he was not charged with criminal activity. he told people to be peaceful. >> they tend to rally with zip ties in their pockets. frank is back with us and david jolly. david jolly, trump said it, right? the thing with the trump story is, it's not hidden in documents that are stuffed in his desk or flushed down his toilet. it's usually something he says out loud. he told people not to believe what they see with their eyes or hear with their ears. but what republicans are doing to themselves is making the bet they will be able to build a

coalition of fanatics who will also refuse to believe what they see with their eyes and hear with their ears. and so far, in our politics, that hasn't happened. >> what happened was exactly an insurrection. the use of violence against the government. that was exactly that day, when people resorted the violence, to stop the proceedings of the senate, to ultimately affirm the election. it was an insurrection. you see republicans from denying the election to denying the insurrection. and the danger is not just in the whitewashing of history and the truth and overlooking the need for accountability. we'retalking about people asking to lead the nation in the future. mike pence, ron desantis, tim scott and others. that gets into destabilizing themes that we used to assign to donald trump. now, i think it's fair to assess

whether or not we can assign the destabilizing themes to the other gop candidates, as well. >> like men racing through the halls meant no crimes were happening? that's illogical. we saw josh holly sprinting through the halls of the capitol. others were not moving as rapidly but moving as rapidly as they were able to do. what they're asking us to do is forget they ran for their own lives? forget they were huddled in rooms with speaker pelosi. mike pence was locked in a parking basement, loading level, refused to get in the car. they're asking their base to forget about a whole bunch of other things. >> the suspension of reality, truth and facts has worked for them so far. yes, it has always struck me the

degree to which it seems that they really believe the american public at large was just stupid. that the facts just wash over everybody and don't sink in. you know, there's an old line in sports about the balance in sports. something like, i went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out. they want us to believe that people went to a protest and just somehow magically this insurrection happened, this riot happened. and as you said, it completely dismisses the organization of people who have already been convicted of seditious conspiracy. oath keepers leadership. proud boys leadership, already convicted. i guess we're going to close our eyes and pretend that that never happened. there's something larger going on. an entire party is knowingly identified with a horrible act of violence and breach of

security. they don't want that to be their identity. and they're praying it away. that's what's going on. and from a law enforcement perspective, it is a complete denigration of the rule of law. when you have presidential candidates, like pence, like tim scott, already coming out and saying we don't know if there's charges. maybe he did it. maybe he didn't. are you dismissing before it happens a legal case? are you saying whatever happens will be unlawful because you decided that you're the arbiter of what is criminal and what is not? it's dismissive of our institutions. >> and of reality on earth. we need both of you to stick around longer for us.

there is one republican bucking the version of events. we'll show you what he had to say. and ask david jolly if it's going to reach the ears that need to hear it. that's next. now you get out there, and you make us proud, huh? ♪ bye, uncle limu. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ when i was diagnosed with h-i-v, i didn't know who i would be. but here i am... being me. keep being you... and ask your healthcare provider about the number one prescribed h-i-v treatment, biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in many people whether you're 18 or 80. with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v

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i heard tim scott yesterday say that, well, it's not really the president's fault. well, the president invited them there. he incited them by telling them the election had been stolen.

and then, he requested that they march up to the capitol. of course, like donald trump, said that he would march with them. and immediately marched right back to the safety of the white house and watched what went on. >> that was former new jersey governor, current republican presidential candidate, chris christie, one of the only voices in the republican field speaking the truth and speaking up against the disgrace at the ex-president. and the other republicans running for president, running against the truth. you know, again, there are things that are easy to understand. if tim scott thinks that trump didn't do anything wrong, why did trump say, take down the damn mags. they're not here to hurt me. trump knew they were armed and weren't going to hurt him. they knew who they were armed.

there's republican members that sat in the office or talked to the insurrectionist. why were they shaking their hands if they weren't violent? if you weren't running against the liars in the republican field, there is so much tape to roll over and over again. >> it's enormous opportunity for chris christie to litigate this in the republican primary. i would suggest that it takes more than holding the trial of donald trump within the republican primary. you know he will be acquitted by other gop contenders or by voters themselves. you question the sincerity of all of the other presidential candidates. what i mean by that is this. the scurrilous part of the behavior, is ron desantis and tim scott and others, are the first the to condemn donald trump if they thought that would get them elected to the white house.

if you can demonstrate the lack of principles of the candidates that they are willing, with their own insecurities, to embrace compromising the very republic in which they are asking to leave, compromising their own democracy, they are willing to do that for their own political fortunes, you have painted them as the cowards they are. to simply try to litigate donald up from within the republican primary will get you the admiration of history and a lot of americans today including myself, but i'm not sure it's the most successful approach to expoing this rot within today's gop. >> you're so right, david jolly, that they're doing this based on what polls well. do you think -- i mean, i never view the republican party as static. i think that we don't know what will move them. perhaps tommy tuberville not allowing our military to be ready should we need them to be is something that moves them. i mean, do you view it as static or do you view it as dynamic? >> i view it as dynamic but getting worse by the day and by

the election. i don't think it ever comes back. and so the importance of a mike pence or tim scott or even nikki haley might not be in their ideology. i know progressives certainly would disagree strongly with their ideology. but that they might not be the same risk to the constitution that i adonald trump or ron desantis is. but look at who's leading. donald trump and ron desantis. the gop's not coming back. >> right. right. i need you guys to stick around for one more block. we have to sneak in a quick break. we'll all be right back on the other side. break. we'll all be right back on the other side you tried. limiting when it was okay. no tech behind closed doors. but social media's algorithms of addiction always won out. it's not your fault. alone you can't stop it. together, we will. we have a plan. join us. ( ♪♪ ) as americans, there's one thing we can all agree on.

the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people. but here's the truth. attacks on our constitutional rights, yours and mine are greater than they've ever been. the right for all to vote. reproductive rights. the rights of immigrant families. the right to equal justice for black, brown and lgbtq+ folks. the time to act to protect our rights is now. that's why i'm hoping you'll join me today in supporting the american civil liberties union. it's easy to make a difference. just call or go online now and become an aclu guardian of liberty. all it takes is just $19 a month. only $0.63 a day. your monthly support will make you part of the movement to protect the rights of all people, including the fundamental right to vote. states are passing laws that would suppress the right to vote. we are going backwards. but the aclu can't do this important work

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when the news broke about the target letter, i didn't know what to say because initially like you said all you want to do is -- all i've been doing is fighting for accountability and justice, and now that it's like showing it's almost here i thought i'd be excited. and no, it's not exciting. it's actually very sobering and it's a sad moment. it made me realize that there was so much unhealed trauma still there. >> we're back with david and frank. frank, i play that again because david and i were having a conversation about the three-ring circus and the republican primary is in one of those rings. but what this is about is the facts and the real victims in the fact-based country in which i think most americans want to live. and harry dunn is one of them. what do you make about efforts to sort of center this next chapter for doj and for trump in

reality-based terms? >> it's going to be difficult. we're living in an environment right now where we've become numb to things like mass shootings and abnormality and just everything seemingly being upside down in terms of how our government is supposed to function. and so it's going to be very easy for people to be dismissive and again numb of all the charges that are coming. but look, the gravity of this moment shall not be missed. we can't dismiss this. we have a former president that looks like he may be charged with the very kinds of conduct that go to the core of a democracy. whether we accept free and fair elections or not, whether we defraud the public, deprive them of their right to their vote or not, don't tie this up with all the other charges. this one is different. and i think we've got doj and an a.g. who know they can't come

out and call a press conference every day and tell us how things are going. that's not how that works. even though some people want that to happen. we've got to take it upon ourselves to absorb what's happening, tune out the noise and the nonsense and understand the gravity of this moment. >> frank figliuzzi, thank you for doing just that over the course of the last hour. david jolly sticks around into the next hour. coming up for us, the deadly cost of disinformation. how florida's governor ron desantis's opposition to covid vaccines may have cost lives. the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. tarts after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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the only conclusion one can reasonably come to from looking what i've told you over the last few minutes is please, get vaccinated. it will protect you against the surging of the delta variant. >> there is a clear message that

is coming through. this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated. >> vaccination is free. it's easy. it's safe. and it's effective. if you're fully vaccinated, both shots plus two weeks, your risk of severe illness from covid-19 is very, very, very low. >> hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in the east. florida governor and struggling 2024 candidate ron desantis really, really, really does not want to debate any of those individuals. he wants to smear them, to ridicule them for his own political advantage. but it turns out they were right and he was wrong about one hugely consequential and definitional thing. the effectiveness of covid vaccines. ron desantis's decision to play politics with the vaccine and play into an amplified misinformation about the shot at a critical time during the pandemic had a drastic cost for

his own constituents, for people living in his state of florida. a new deep look into desantis's turnaround on covid vaccines by the "new york times" has some alarming revelations in it. especially as his covid strategy remains the foundational pillar of his own 2024 presidential bid. from that new reporting, "while florida was an early leader in the share of over 65 residents who were vaccinated, it had fallen to the middle of the pack by the end of july 2021. when it came to younger residents florida lagged behind the national average in every age group. that left the state particularly vulnerable when the delta variant hit that month. floridians died at a higher rate adjusted for age than residents of almost any other state during the delta wave. according to the "new york times" analysis. with less than 7% of the nation's population, florida accounted for 14% of the deaths between the start of july and the end of october.

"the new york times" continues, "in florida, unlike the nation as a whole and states like new york and california that mr. desantis likes to single out, most people who died from covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. as the governor's political positions began to shift, so did his state's death rate for the worse." you can see here in this chart just how much higher florida's covid death rate in the late summer and fall of 2021 was compared to the rest of the country. so now two years later as he campaigns for the presidency touting his record against mandates and public health measures, desantis leaves out the death toll of his covid vaccine position. it may all factor into his sputtering presidential campaign, as separate reporting in the "new york times" refers to it. once thought of as the answer for the republican party looking to move on from donald trump, desantis has failed over and over again to gain any traction,

remaining significantly behind the ex-president in public opinion polls. this weekend reporting finds this -- "his advisers are promising to reorient the desantis candidacy as an insurgent run, remake it into a leaner, meaner operation." okay. a look at dangerous, life-threatening covid decisions made by ron desantis as he hopes to stay alive in the republican presidential primary. it's where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. pulmonologist, global health policy expert msnbc medical contributor dr. vin gupta's back with us. dave errenberg is also back with us. and our friend the former renl congressman from florida david jolly is back with us. this is at its core a really heartbreaking piece of reporting to get through. and this is at its core about why we cover politics in these times, because politicians' words impact the actions that

people take during an emergency, and in this case dr. gupta, he cost the lives of his own constituents. tell me about this reporting. >> nicolle, good afternoon. that was really hard to hear. when you go into that really in-depth analysis from the "new york times." it was important to hear, though, because what we saw was florida accounted for 14% of the deaths of all americans between july and october of 2021. that delta wave you referenced earlier. they had overall at the end of it the third highest covid death toll in its entirety across the country at the state level. so by no means was the desantis administration in any way effective in controlling this virus in what is a highly vulnerable population. what i think is important, the takeaway here, is clearly that as the puck skated in different directions when it came to what was politically expedient to message on from a public health standpoint, pro vaccine to creating skepticism on the

united states, the individual that wore a white coat and stood at the podium changed dramatically from scott rivkees, widely respected. he's a clinician. he still sees patients. that mattered. to somebody like joe lodaco. to somebody like scott atlas. folks we don't actually consider, many of us who still see patients, physicians. we think of them as wearing themselves or wrapping themselves up in the white coat to put on a political message to help further an aim or an agenda. that's what was happening. the feno type of the m.d. in front of the microphone changed. now we're seeing a cottage industry of those types of doctors out there putting out misinformation. >> i want to read some more of the "times" reporting and then i want to press all of you on just the whole infection of politics and the conversation that's still go on around covid. this is also from the "times" report. "two former aides who spoke

anonymously for fear of damaging their careers said that desantis staff members complained to jared moskowitz, then the state's head of emergency management, that more tests detected more infections, which spawned bad press. in may of 2021 florida closed its 27 state-run testing centers. the next month, on orders from the governor's office, the health department halted daily reports on infections and deaths, switching to weekly reports that drew less attention. the governor also began to attack dr. fauci and other federal pandemic experts. a political fund-raising operation backing his re-election began that hokd $12 beer bottle sleeves and $9 t-shirts carrying the slogan don't fauci my florida." dave, what was going on? what was that like for this period? >> nicolle, it's harder to remember at this point, but ron desantis used to be pro vax. in the beginning he wanted everyone to get the vaccine.

he pushed the vaccine onto people who were 65 plus when the federal guidelines were for 75 and above and for essential personnel. he was out front on the vaccination. but then he saw which way the winds were blowing and so he pushed out dr. rivkees, as dr. gupta said and dr. birx and instead palled around with dr. scott atlas, the controversial doctor who believed in herd immunity, let people get the virus so they can build up the immunity. and he had no expertise in infectious diseases. and so this whole thing was political. and you know how we know it's political? because as you said, he was selling anti-dr. fauci merch on his website. i mean, that shows you he's just trying to make political points, raise some money off of it. it's not about public health or public safety. and when he saw donald trump, his one-time mentor, get booed at a rally in alabama when he said that he had supported the vaccines, then it took it to

another level and desantis wouldn't even mention that he got the booster shot. not exactly a profile in courage. >> and david jolly, i want to read some more from this fantastic reporting. this is dr. riffkees quoted in the story. "these were preventable deaths. dr. rivkees who resigned as florida attorney general in 2021 said in a recent interview. quote, it breaks my heart thinking things could have ended differently if people embraced vaccines instead of this anti-vaxx stuff. this was always the deadly hypocrisy of fox news, attacking the vaccines while you had to be vaccinated to enter fox news headquarters in new york city. >> yeah, that's exactly right. i mean, the inconsistencies and hypocrisy on the right around covid, public health science and particularly vaccines has been well documented. i'd suggest with ron desantis what is often misunderstood about him is how inconsistent and hypocritical and almost

rudderless he has always been when it comes to ideology. consider this. when the tea party and the freedom caucus were cool, when libertarian was on brand, he was the leader of libertarianism. and then when angry populism became the calling card of republicans, he embraced donald trump and populism. and now he's big government ron taking on disney and trying to rewrite your kids' schoolbooks. now apply that inconsistency in leadership to covid, and dave aronberg is exactly right. despite what ron desantis wants you to think, he actually embraced the vaccine, he rushed it to republican strongholds to high net worth donors. he closed down the beaches, the restaurants and the nightclubs. he did all of that. until he saw the anger growing. and instead of using the authority of his office, the bully pulpit of his office to try to impress upon the public the need for public health, he wanted to be first out of the gate as a politician to say you know what, you're exactly right. so he made up this narrative, that he did his own research on the internet and he came to

these very important conclusions that covid wasn't as deadly as it was. if you do your own research and your conclusions are antithetical to science, it doesn't make you smart. it makes you good at internet research. he's a fan of google. that's it. so the danger is put him now in the white house two years from now and have a public health crisis. we have seen his leadership or lack of and the danger it creates. >> i mean, dr. gupta, there has to be a whole sort of class of patients that make all physicians cringe, that have googled their own symptoms. but there seems to be an exponential danger and damage to public health when that person is the governor of one of the most populated states and their citizens are dying at higher rates than anybody else. i mean, what -- and i don't even want to ask you this in the context of looking back. covid is still out there. i know people that have contracted covid this summer. what is the lingering damage to public health from desantis's

disinformation? >> well, nicolle, unfortunately for our world the two biggest risks right now, to public health broadly in the united states and worldwide, are highly politicized. it's climate change and the next pandemic. i say this as a pulmonologist. both those risk factors impact your lungs but both are highly politicized. people feel very strongly one way or the other against it. if ron desantis is president in two years, we're an election away from joe lodaco being our next potential surgeon general where the same thing will happen again and doubt will creep in. unfortunately what's happening now the big problem as an industry in health care, we have no way to hold accountable our fellow individuals, our clinicians in white coats who are spreading misinformation. it's happening at the state level to a certain degree. licenses are being retracted, just like our friends in the legal industry, they can retract bars and the ability to practice

law in certain states if something is done wrong or untoward. that needs to happen at scale in medicine and in public health. if you are -- you need to be held accountable. we don't have those mechanisms in place. you're going toless afind a cottage industry of physicians or those wearing white coats giving credibility to a political agenda in health. >> dave, what is the read, what is the talk in florida, among floridians, particularly if you're among this part of the state that was pandered to really with disinformation about the vaccine not being necessary? >> well, people become so cynical they know it was a political calculation for ron desantis to embrace the anti-vaxx nuts. i mean, these are the same people who are fueling rfk jr.'s presidential campaign. and it also allows desantis to show some daylight between him and his one-time mentor former

president trump because trump is credited by a lot of people with expediting the vaccine. and you know, what desantis is doing is really cynical, though, because he doesn't want to go fully into the anti-vaxx camp because that looks bad in a general election and really a lot of those folks are kooks. so he plays footsie with them. he passes laws that eliminate vaccine mandates. he claimed last year that the mrna vaccine was developed based on lies. and he even impaneled a statewide grand jury to investigate scientists and big pharma over the creation of the vaccines. now, of course that grand jury goes nowhere. but it doesn't matter. it's the press conference that's the victory. so he gets that. it's all political. and i think most floridians are onto it. but in his base they're still rooting him on. >> david jolly, maybe we don't spend enough time talking about the dark, dark, dark political

instincts of ron desantis. i feel like we try to and we try to get to it. but this is a horrific picture of politicization and almost criminalization of a widely globally accepted public health safety measure. i know you have a very grim view of what republican voters will take in terms of the facts as they exist on earth one, but is this something that you could imagine christie or trump using against him, that his disinformation cost lives? >>o let's start with just on the ground voters. dave and myself included. if you were a family in florida during that time, you were terrified because there was zero leadership on public health coming from tallahassee and you had your own lives, your family's lives, your children's lives at risk. and it was hard not to personalize that against the decisions of ron desantis and his surgeon general pick. now, what are the politics within a republican primary? i'm fascinated about this. dave kind of touched on it. this is classic ron desantis. he kind of wants the identity of

the warrior without actually the battle. if he really meant this, if he really meant this, one way to go at donald trump in republican politics right now is to say to republican voters donald trump misled you. he and fauci misled you on the vaccine. operation warp speed. he misled me. ron desantis, if i made any bad decisions in florida, it's because i listened to donald trump and he was wrong to lead us in that direction. had i been president i wouldn't have done any of that. it's a dangerous place for the nation. it's a dangerous place for our public health. but it's the politics of today's republican party and it's the politics of rfk jr. and the democratic party, which is probably why he should consider jumping over the gop before this is done. >> let me ask you, david jolly, while i have you about the sad state of ron desaptis's campaign. i think he's behind 30 to 35 points in the earliest days of iowa and south carolina. the composite picture of desantis republicanism is a massive loser even among the

extreme and radicalized right-wing base. do you think he goes harder into the crazy? do you think he tries to take some of rfk jr.'s voters? >> it won't work. here's my assessment. i don't think ron desantis needs a reset. he needs a rebrand. he is known nationally with this very hardened, angry paranoid culture warrior ethos that he has exhibited for the last five years, and he's running into a ceiling. you know, donald trump is chasing economic populism. tim scott is chasing the aspirational republican themes. and ron desantis is saying the world's coming for your children and i'm going to protect them with all this discriminatory action. so watch out. it's a very dark american carnage view. and he's simply hit a ceiling. so if he needs a reset he first needs a rebrand to become a traditional national security republican that believes in aspirational economic growth for all people. the problem is he's got nothing to back that up. and so i think we're seeing a

presidential campaign permanently start to sink. i think by the august debates if he doesn't have a knockout performance he's looking at third or fourth place going into iowa. >> dave, i'll give you the last word on the sorry state of the desantis presidential campaign. >> david jolly hit it on the head. he and i were in politics for a while in florida. in my previous life i was a state senator. and i'm a recovering politician now. but i can tell you this, that right now in florida the biggest crisis is homeowner's insurance. it's skyrocketing. people are hurting and they're wondering where the governor is. he's out of state. he's campaigning. and i think the culture wars are wearing thin. there's only so many times you can go to the well, bashing mickey mouse and imposing six-week abortion bans and imposing book bans and get away with it while your insurance rates continue to skyrocket. >> thank you for injecting the real world into this. you're absolutely right. dr. vin gupta and dave aronberg, thank you both so much for starting us off. david jolly sticks around. ahead for us, the other big

problem for ron desantis, as david alluded to, his defense of new florida education standards that teach kids that some enslaved people actually received personal benefits from slavery. if it sounds outrageous, it's because it is. we'll bring it to you next. and later in the broadcast a far right government taking extreme measures to consolidate power and dividing its citizens in the process. it sounds eerily familiar, right? what is happening today in our close ally israel's nation and what it could portend for our future here at home? "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. se" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. thes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes. the towel washed with downy is softer, and gentler on your skin. try downy free & gentle. there's a story in every piece of land. written by those who work it. like the upshaws. the nelsons. and the caggianos.

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i didn't do it and i wasn't involved in it, but i think -- i think what they're doing is i think that they're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life. but the reality is all of that is rooted in whatever is factual. they listed everything out. and if you have any questions about it just ask the department of education. >> does anyone wonder why even republican primary voters aren't into that guy? that was florida republican governor ron desantis defending but not taking a lick of responsibility for his state's outrageous, inhumane whitewashed new education standards. we broke the news here on friday. specifically the requirement in florida for middle school teachers there to instruct this. quote, how slaves developed

skills which, comma, in some instances, comma, could be applied for their personality benefit, end quote. slavery. we know that in between the lines of desantis's claim that he, quote, wasn't involved in the disgraceful, appalling suggestion despite his own law against wokeness demanding exactly the sort of thing and his stacking of the education board with loyalists, he knew would obey him, it is perhaps some new fear that he's starting to have as he plunges in the polls about the effectiveness of his war on woke. key pillar of his struggling campaign to be president. where he also promises to eliminate entire u.s. agencies including the department of education. joining our coverage, chairman of the -- actually no longer the chairman. our friend eddie glaude is here from princeton university. david jolly is also back with us. eddie, correct me once and it sticks in my brain. eddie, i want you to widen this out for me because i think as a

country -- we're not going to do this, right? we're not going to try to even understand what they meant or what he meant. this is a stain on american history and i think reality on earth two wins when we take the bait. right? and even dignify the debate. i want you to tell me what you think is happening when ron desantis stands at a podium and says "i didn't do this." this wildly racist thing about not just erasing history but then reteaching what slavery is. it benefited some people. what is that? >> well, i think he understands that there is a limit to the sorts of claims that one can make without being overtly racist, even though they have already been overtly racist. right? uz baa the one thing -- the worst thing that you can call some people in the united states is a racist, even though they may hold racist beliefs. i think part of what we see here is this idea that evil can be

ministerial to good. this is what's being promulgated here. that is to say that the evil made possible something good. if it wasn't for slavery black folk couldn't have become christian. if i wasn't for slavery they wouldn't have acquired the skills that allowed them to make a living after slavery. so this is a way of absolving oneself of the evil of slavery, by pointing to the so-called good that it produced. and we know that that is morally bankrupt as a claim. right? that's like saying the nazi holocaust was good because it gave us anne frank's diary. that doesn't make any sense on its face. right? so instead of confronting the evil for what it is there's an attempt to absolve. so this connects back to the feeling of guilt. right? and this is at the heart of it. and it also connects to the question of addressing the ongoing legacy of racial inequality as a result of the institution of slavery itself. >> but eddie, i worry about --

there's something disorienting about it as well, right? and i worry that if they succeed in disorienting -- you've even got some republicans, not enough for my appetite for clarity, but even a couple of republicans are saying flat out no, wrong, you know, survey says no. but there is something disorienting. and i think republicans see the success trump has had in disorienting his own base. and that feels like the other insidious piece of this. >> absolutely. it's disorienting because it in some ways -- it turns over the well, nicolle, to use herman melville's analogy. and what do you see on the bottom of the belly of the whale? all of these barnacles, the detritus of american life. and that's what it does. it reveals who we are. when i first read the story, i got angry, as i often do. right? i got angry. and the reason i got angry is i

started worrying about all of those black and brown children who are going to have to read this mess. but then i thought about it and i got angrier. i started worrying about the white children. see, the problem with our democracy, it seems to me, is that we're not the people, we're not the kinds of people that our democracies require. we're not -- we don't exhibit the virtues of democracy, caring for the other. and here we have a form of education that will cut people off from aspects of their story that is central to the development of a character requisite for our democracy to function. and when this happens -- i'm sorry, go ahead, nicolle. >> no, i was going to say this is why we're friends. i see this the same way and i feel sick inside and angry on all those levels. and then i go deeper and i feel sick and sad and angry that there are people that buy it. i feel sick and sad and angry that desantis is selling it. i feel sick and sad and angry when i watch him stand there and

say it's so repugnant, i didn't do it. and then i feel really sick and sad and angry about all the people that it will impact. i also think that people that are putting this garbage into the education system haven't talked to a 10-year-old lately. they don't see color. they don't see all the hubbub with gender. a child isn't born with hate in their heart. and i really, really worry that not just this is being peddled but this is being bought. how do we solve this? >> well, we have to call it out for what it is. we see an assault on our children's innocence. you're absolutely right. but you know, those children grow up. they do. we saw what happened. think about a whole generation of young people taught the lost cause. taught the lost cause, nicolle. and they grew up. and what did they do, many of them? they were in those mobs that engaged in cruel barbaric acts. they raised children who were

then shouted folk in little rock and the like. we have to be better people if we're going to be a better and more just democracy. and this to my mind is at the heart of distorting and disfiguring the character of our children. and there's so much more to say here, from missouri education department -- i mean, school boards reneging on anti-racist platforms to emmett till monuments being shot up in mississippi such that biden has to make it a federal, i mean, all of this is a part of who we are. and unless we are honest with it we can never change, nicolle. we will never change. >> well, let's have a -- we've got to have longer conversation tomorrow because i any there's some news on that front. i think mike pence's fly is in my studio because we didn't cover him very favorably in the last hour. david jolly, this goes to part

of the conversation we had in the last hour. the bets republicans are making are very cynical, and i would argue wrong. i mean, they're not sustainable. it's not sustainable to bet that our children will be damaged by the truth. we learn the truth and we're fine. the idea that you're going to not just erase the history of race but you're going to rewire it to say it actually had pros and cons, roses and thorns? it's so sick it feels like it deserves an emergency reaction. i didn't see that in the republican party from top to bottom, east to west. >> yeah, that's right, nicolle. and let me just say anytime you and eddie just want to keep talking, keep talking because i'm learning along with everyone else, with eddie's brilliance here. first of all i think you do have to call out the lies. classic ron desantis, i didn't do this but there's nothing wrong with it. he did do it. and the way he did it was sequentially. he passed the anti-woke bill. called the anti-woke bill in

florida which says white people should not feel guilty for anything in their past. that's at the root now of public policy in florida. he then appoints the florida board of education members who then adopt curriculum that says what? hey, white people shouldn't feel guilty for enslaving black people, in fact they should take credit for the fact that through their generosity slaves learned to be a blacksmith. so we call out the failure in leadership as it is. but how does it translate to the voter? the root of your question, nicolle. i think in a very simple way. what is bringing down the republican party today is on all the hardest issues we face, even cultural issues. we can immediately take the measure of a person and recognize are they working in good faith or bad faith, toward equity or against equity? and so on the question of race you do not see in ron desantis and other republicans them working in good faith toward greater equity. you see them working in bad faith toward marginalizing minority communities and then telling you they're not doing it. on the question of immigration and the place of migrants in our society, at the root of their

border policy is a xenophobia that says we don't want migrants here. it's a very bad position. it's not saying we're wrestling with policy to try to be more accommodating. that's not what they're doing. on questions of lgbt status they're not working in good faith toward equity on some of the hardest questions we face today including on equity for the trans community and others. they're working in bad faith to say you're not allowed to be that person that you are and we're going to make sure you have to hide in the shadows if you are. they're not working in good faith toward an economy that lifts all people. they're saying the rich can get richer, we can take ours and to hell with the rest of them. but the fundamental tenets of republicanism today is bad faith. and it takes no voter -- you don't have to follow the news every day to spot that in a leader. they're either working in good faith or bad faith. today's republicans are all agents of bad faith when it comes to public policy. >> amen. i mean, i think that's exactly right. and that's such a -- it's an umbrella that you can't disprove. you cannot find an example where they're doing the opposite. they're working in good faith.

eddie glaude and david jolly, always my favorite part of the show when i get to talk to both of you. to be continues. thank you both so much. shifting gears for us, the dramatic shift toward autocracy in america's closest ally in the middle east. tens of thousands of israelis are protesting their own government right now. and what it could mean for us here in our country. stay with us. now, there's skyr. ♪ things are looking up ♪ ♪ i've got symptom relief ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪ ♪ ♪ control is everything to me. ♪ feel significant symptom relief with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements at 4 weeks. skyrizi is the first and only il-23 inhibitor for crohn's that can deliver both clinical remission and endoscopic improvement. the majority of people on skyrizi achieved long lasting remission at 1 year. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to.

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mass demonstrations across israel continue to grow larger

and larger. that's after israeli lawmakers in parliament passed a law earlier today that severely curbs the country's judiciary by limiting the supreme court's ability to overturn decisions made by the government. as voting took place, opposition lawmakers shouted "shame" and then stormed out of the chamber in protest as prime minister benjamin netanyahu's allies approved the key portion of his incredibly divisive plan. according to reporting in the "new york times," president joe biden had been repeatedly cautioning netanyahu against making this move in the first place, which despite widespread opposition both at home in israel and abroad exposed the larger problems in israeli politics and society. as the new measure seemingly pushed that country toward far right and authoritarian rule. let's bring into our conversation former deputy national security adviser to president obama ben rhodes. plus retired four-star admiral james stavridis who in his role as the supreme allied nato commander was responsible for the u.s.-israel military

relationship. he's now an msnbc and nbc news chief international analyst. admiral stavridis, i start with you. your reaction to what we're seeing. >> shocking and hurtful and extremely dangerous. and i think the way to think of it, nicolle, is in kind of three dimensions. what's happening in israel, this incredible divisiveness, i think we can only compare to what we saw on the 6th of january. it just chills your heart to watch this in an ally like israel. second dimension, in the region where iran continues to be a very difficult force across that region, sponsors terrorism, hezbollah, all the other aspects, seizing tankers in the arabian gulf, we count on israel to be part of a coalition to stand against iran.

so with this internal distraction friends like the kingdom of saudi arabia, the gulf allies that are trying to get closer to israel, find it more difficult because it's all of course undermining the idea of a two state solution. and then third and finally, how does this reflect back here in the united states? not only in our jewish american communities but really in our larger sense of ourselves as a nation are we watching this kind of division as a harbinger of what could come for us. very unsettling several days. >> admiral stavridis, what does bibi netanyahu want to do that he can't do without this structural shift in how his country functions? >> my assessment is what he wants to do fundamentally is undermine the idea of a two-state solution, collapse any tlee theory of a case that would allow palestine to become a nation.

that's the second state in the two-state solution. and he wants to put the arab israeli population on notice that they are under suspicion, that their rights in the state of israel are not going to be regarded as having real value. so he has a right-wing authoritarian agenda that he is going to try and push through as a result of this. >> ben rhodes, you write so ominously many months ago now about the struggle within nations of anti-democratic and democratic forces. and this story seems to be playing out in just that way. >> that's right. netanyahu's following a playbook we've seen in a lot of other countries, countries that were once liberal democracies like hungary where an elected leader turned the country into an autocracy, and in fact actually netanyahu and orban shared some political consultants along the way here and they shared the

playbook. i think for people to understand what's happening here, israel does not have a written constitution like the united states. they've relied on basic laws and norms. because of the nature of their system, because netanyahu's essentially neutered the capacity of the supreme court to intervene to block certain laws that are passed by the legislature, what you have is a single legislature, the knesset, headed by the leader of a coalition, bibi netanyahu, who has no checks and balances. right? so there's not like a house and a senate and a supreme court enshrined in a constitutional checks and balances. what he's done is made it so that he is essentially a one-man one rule, so long as he can hold together a coalition of parties. and a coalition of parties, by the way, that did not even get a majority of the ballots cast in the last election. so essentially there are no protections for minority rights. there are no protections for people that are not represented in that coalition. and that is going to allow him to consolidate power, to neuter investigations into his own corruption, to put in place

essentially a second-class citizenship as admiral stavridis said for arab citizens of israel, and to kind of open up the aperture for things like settlements and the displacement of palestinians that render a two-state solution absolutely impossible. so this is profoundly going to shake the foundation of israeli democracy and put it on a pathway towards an autocracy so long as bibi netanyahu and the most far right government in israel's history can hold together their coalition. >> i have so many more questions for both of you. i have to sneak in a quick break. i'm going to ask both of you to stick around to the other side. we'll all be right back. her side we'll all be right back.

we have some news that has broken since we've been on the air. the justice department has announced that it is suing the state of texas over texas governor greg abbott's decision to place floating buoys on the rio grande, creating a barrier intended to stop migrants from crossing the river from mexico into the united states. in its lawsuit doj is asking the judge to order the barrier to be removed, claiming that the buoys are in violation of federal law. doj has raised humanitarian concerns over the barrier, calling it a threat to public safety. in a letter to abbott released a few days ago governor abbott has not yet responded to the lawsuit, but has vowed to fight any attempt to remove the buoys in court. at the white house press briefing this afternoon white house press secretary karine jean-pierre accused governor

abbott of, quote, sowing chaos and staging political stunts. we're back with ben rhodes and admiral james stavridis. ben rhodes, there are human beings involved in all of this. and i know that immigration and migration are vexing policy challenges for democratic and republican administrations, both of our two bosses worked on this issue. but there is an inhumanity to the republican stunts, as karine jean-pierre called them. and i wonder what you make of the doj legal move to stop it. >> yeah. i mean, first of all, the texas policies have generally been about performance rather than results. and the reality is they've done nothing in texas that has helped to bring control to the people crossing the border. and you can put a buoy in part of the river and people cross in other parts of the river. and the reality is this is a danger, right? we don't know what this might do, whether this is the kind of barrier that could lead to the deaths of families and children

that are trying to get across the border. this is not the way to do things in a democracy where the federal government is responsible in coordination with the states for securing our borders. this is greg abbott making an end run so that he can get political coverage. it's not a governor trying to sincerely solve a problem. and it is certainly someone showing no regard for the humanity of people who might be harmed by putting this kind of barrier in the middle of a river, frankly in a way that's not going to stop the problem to begin with here. so this is exactly what's wrong with the politics of immigration and the politics of border. it's not about solving problems. it's not about securing the border. it's not about having any regard for the safety and humanity of the people trying to cross the border. it's just about politics and somebody trying to appeal to a very narrow sliver of his right-wing base. >> well, and admiral stavridis, to tie this to the story we brought both of you on to talk about today, i mean, this is about weakening democracies by replacing democratic practices and norms with brute force and

with displays of brute force. and i wonder if you worry about how the world sees us when they see stories like this one. >> i do worry. and you know, before i was commander of nato i spent three years as commander u.s. u.s. sod on this world to the south. everything south of the united states. i've studied these issues pretty hard. i'm going to make some news here, you could build a huge wall, all 1,800 miles and seal off every bit of that border and here's the news flash, and i know this because i'm an admiral, there's ocean to the right and to the left. people are going to find ways to come to the united states. we have to solve these problems by working together, not only inside our own country, but working with the nations of south america, central america and above all with mexico. to tie it to the israeli story

we have been following, yes, we ought to be very concerned about how we come across in the world. we, the democracies, when we begin to fall off our moral position. when that happens, we undermine all of these glittering alliances that have helped us in so many ways, nicolle. >> ben rhodes and admiral james stavridis. i feel like we could have you here for the two hours, and anything that happens, we could plug you in and you have vast experience on all of it. thank you so much for rolling with us today. a quick break for us. we will be right back. a quick break for us we will be right back. that's my boy. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ -dad, what's with your toenail? only pay for what you need. -oh, that...? i'm not sure... -it's a nail fungus infection. -...that's gross! -it's nothing, really... -it's contagious. you can even spread it to other people.

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lynching is pure terror, and forcing the lie that not everyone belongs in america, not everyone is created equal. pure terror to systematically undermine hard fought civil rights. innocent men, women and children, hung by a noose from trees, bodies burned, drowned castrated, their crimes, trying to vote. trying to go to school. trying to own a business. trying to preach the gospel. false accusations of murder, arson, robbery, lynched for simply being black. >> that was president joe biden, those remarks were ones he made this past february at a white house screening of the film "till," which we told you about and covered on this program. the film tells the story of the brutal murder and lynching of

14-year-old emmett till and his mother's courageous pursuit for justice for her son in the after math. as eddie glaude referenced on this program. president biden will announce the establishment of a monument dedicated to emmett till and his mom. one at the temple church in chicago, where his funeral was held, where his mom made the courageous decision to open her son's casket and show the world what had been done to her. one at the tallahassee courthouse in mississippi, where those kudsed of killing him were acquitted of the crimes, and one on the river bank where his body was found mutilated. it is a reminder that we can tell the truth about our nation's history and live to tell, especially the brutal parts and unjust parts, and a reminder of the importance of honoring those before us who

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letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful. the beat with melissa murphy for ari starts right now. welcome to "the beat," i'm melissa murphy. we begin with tantalizing reporting about the special counsel's coup probe and what it suggests about donald trump's criminal intent. jack smith has already sent trump a target letter and an indictment could come any day. today, "the washington post" reports the special counsel's team is scrutinizing text messages sent by