good evening, rachel. >> good evening, my friend. much appreciated. thank you for joining us at home this evening. good to have you here tonight. all right, here it is. you ready? in late december phillip johnson and alan blackburn summoned a reporter from "the new york herald tribune, called them adventurers with an intellectual overlay. and explained that the two were taking a sabbatical from the museum in order to start a new political movement. they were calling it the national party and they were ve lighting out for louisiana the very next day to try to sign on huey long as their new national

leader.g jaunsnen and blackburn then revealed the new party's idiotic slogan. "the need is for one party." and they also showed him the snazzy new pennants they had designed, blazoned with aerodynamic flying-wedge emblems, which they would be mounting on johnson's automobile. and they also laid out their new party's platform, which consisted of its entirety of direct action and, "more emotionallism, in government. the kind of loyalty that gang centers john dillenger and al capone required, he explained. and, quote, mr. johnson favored a submachine gun, the "herald tribune" reported but mr. blackburn preferred one of r

the larger types of pistol. the next day the pair of 20 somethings attached their flyinh wedge felt pennants to the fenders of johnson's baronial 12-cylinder packard. they loaded up with shakespeare, machiavelli, dennis, and their weapons catalog if not their weapons itself, and they headed south. so what that is from is i wrote aom book. i have written a new book. i said i would never do this again but i did. we just got the confirmed publication date and the first look at the cover. this is what it looks like. the book is called prequel, an american fight against p fascis. it comes out october 17th. i have been killing myself getting it done which is why i look this way. but it is done.

and this is the very first announcement i have been able to make about it.t. writing, i find, is the absolutf hardest thing in the world. i do think of the books i have written, i wrote "drift" which was about the military and politics around the military. i wrote "blowout," which is about russia. and i wrote "bag man," about the spiro agnewsterry. i will say this is the one i'm most proud of, or at least the one i feel most compelled to write. i'll tell you more about it as we get closer to the publication date.se i am going to do some kind of book tour this fall when it comes out. not like a giant book tour but somewhere between a half dozen w or dozen cities.it so if you have any desire to see me in person, keep an eye out for that.

i'll let you know when tickets go on sale for all these events and where i'm going to be. again, that's this fall.n, and if you think you might want to read the book, like i said it comes out october 17th, but as of today you can preorder it so that you get it the day it comes out, which is why i wanted to tell you about it today because it today is the first day for preorders. todayy is the first day you ca put in a preorder. again the title is "prequel." you can order it online right now at msnbc.com/prequel. and that's it for now. point of personal privilege over. but at leastiv now you know why i've looked like i've rin run over by a bus. it's because writing is absolutely ecimpossible, and i' been doing a lot of it. and i'm really into this book, and i hope thatnt you like it. i hope people dig it and get something out of it. it was really important to me.t and anyway, okay that's it.

announcement over. october 17, msnbc.com/prequel. where we start tonight is not in december 1934 in new york city with rich, young fascists trying to start their own ridiculous pro-dictator political party and designing pennants to go on their cars to advertise it. we start todayad in the great state of minnesota where a reporter forta the conservative national review magazine recently wrote, quote, for the price of a new xbox game you too can own your very own state party. it turns out that is sort of true. madden nfl 23 for xbox 1 is $59.29. the game farming simulator thaone costs $49.99.

star wars is $52.49. if you are willing and able to shell out that kind of money roughly for an xbox game, let me tell you "national review" is right. you are in the ballpark for what it would take to buy out all the cash assets of the republican party ofof the great state of minnesota. the stateta republican party in minnesota recently reported its bank accounts are currently flush with a grand total of $53.81. so that is $1.32 more than the star wars game costs, but for farm simulator it's actually a deal.tu you could cash in all the cash assets ofe the minnesota republican party and with that money you could get in the $49.99 farming simulator game plus almost $4 change, which in addition to that farming simulator you could buy some

cheetos. why does the republican party of the state of minnesota have less than $60 in its bank account? i do not know. but "the daily beast" was the first to report it, and the details actually only get worse from there. next to having less than $60 to its name, the republican party of minnesota also reportedly has over $330,000 in debt, which it needs to pay off, which it'll not be able to pay off with leso than $60 cash in its bank accounts. it also turns out is not an isolated story. the same sort of thing or at least a variation on this sort of thing is happening in a whole bunch of i key states for republicans right now. in colorado, for example, "the colorado sun" was first to report that state's republican party was so broke it's stopped

paying its employees and it's unable to pay rent on its office space. the deputy chief of the -- excuse me of the colorado house republican party told the "colorado sun," the colorado state republican party is very simply bank rupt. i don't know if there's a connection but i should tell you the colorado party is planning to vote next week to simply cancel the 2024 republican primary in colorado. if you don't have enough money toen pay your staff and you're bankrupt. in arizona the messenger new news outlets was first to report arizona's state republican party reported in its federal election filings it has only about $23,000 in the bank in total, and that might be enough to tradeig for a new hyundai elant

but only if you don't one with cruise control. with all the trouble of the arizona republican party being that broke, i should tell you the party's highest profile, arizona republican party's failedan gubernatorial candidat kari lake, she's heading soon to another state, to michigan, to help michigan's republican party raise some money. you'd think she might be able to help out at home but she's going to michigan to help them raise money. that was reported today by the detroit news. that said, maybe it's needed help. even with arizona being as broke as it is, in michigan they've got trouble, too. the michigan state republican party is broke as well. they reported $93,000 total in their bank accounts. and that comes in michigan as 16 michigan republicans including the former state party cochair are now facing multiple felony charges for having submitted themselves as forged electors, as michigan electors in the

presidential race in 2020 even though they really weren't because joe biden won that state, not donald trump. we don't yet know if other people who participated in the fake elector scheme for trump ie other states are going to be charged as well the way they've been charged in michigan but georgia is one of those states where we know there's a possibility. wee' know in georgia who participated in the fake elector scheme, theyct received target letters from the prosecutor in that state, fani willis' office as she investigates throwing out election efforts and falsely proclaiming trump the winner this is also turning out to be an expensive prospect for the statet republican party in georgia. georgia state republican party agreed to pay the legal bills for those fake electors and in so doing georgia state republican party saddled themselves with a financial

burden. already the party spend over a half million dollars on this. it spent five times of all the party's annual legal expenses combined since 2021 and we're only halfway through the year thus far. in the first half of 2023 they spent five times on what they spent on all legal expenses on everything as recently as 2021, and that was for the whole year. that's a lot of states with a lot of financialit drama, and these are not state republican parties in, like, forgive me sort of obscure states where things are never going to be contested. minnesota, colorado, arizona, michigan, georgia, that's like the table of contents for places republicans want to show what they can do in this next election cycle and the one after that. but all of them, all those states they're broke or spending themselves into oblivion.se i started by saying that the

national review compared the assets of the minnesota state republican party to the price of a single xbox game. that same conservative publication recently looked at this dire financial picture in multiple states and said this. they said, quote, if republicans are disappoint would the resultt of the 2024 elections for the fourth straight cycle, mind you, a key factor will be the replacement of competent, boring regular state party officials with quite exciting blustering nut jobs who have little or no interest h in the basics of successfully managing a state party or the basic managing and tackling involved in helping gop candidates win elections. quite exciting blustering nut jobs, couldn't have said it better myself. and here's another piece of what i think is that same puzzle. morning consul recently did a public approval poll in all 50

states. and it was public approval polling in all 50 states about the governors of all 50 states. and this generated a bunch of local headlines, state headlines you would expect. most of those headlines were about theos relative standing o the most and loose popular governors in the country, and governors up for re-election this morning consul polling helped various publications get a handle on whether that governor's approval ratings were going up or down. that kind of local interest and state interest. here's my interest, though. look at this stuff overall. however interested you might be in who's slightly more or less popular among the governors, there is one big overarching story here, which is that all of the governors are popular. all of them in all 50 states. there is not a single governor in any stategl in the country right now who has a higher disapproval than approval rating, not a single governor in

the entire-country is under water. they're alls more positively viewed by their constituents than they are negatively viewed. and again, you can maybe tell a story about local interest about any one guv whr who finds himself ory herself in that position. but when it'sn all 50 governor in that position that's a bigger story. that's a national story hiding in plain sight, which is that americans broadly are not that unhappy with how things are being runhi right now. and, yes, you ask people about national political figures and national political institutions. and americans say, like, basically -- broadly, americans say i hate the congress, i hate the supreme court, i don't like the president. honestly americans unless they're kind of culty about it, they don't really like any of the otherli presidential candidates who want to run against the president either.

it if you ask how things are going governance wise americans are like things are terrible. but if you ask americans that doesn't have national conversation around it, if you ask, hey, how are things running government-wise as you see it more or less the answer in every state in the country is, yeah, things are okay. everybody's pretty happy. everybody's at least more happy thansa not in all 50 states. every single governor in the country is above water. and if you put a political science lens on that so you stop trying to parse that in terms of theth individual performance of those 50 governors. if you put a plit sl science lens on that, if basically means if you strip away nationalize partisan political combat and nationalized partisan tribalism, the fundamentals in the country as viewedta by the american peoe are pretty good.

and the fundamentals are almost always about the economy. so, yeah, you look at that chart of every governor in america being above water, maybe what that has something to do with is the beating all expectations economic growth and personal income rising and inflation flattening out, and an infrastructure surge, and record job growth and the lowest sustained unemployment we have had in decades. and no one apparently wants to credit joe biden and the biden administration for that, so the credit their governor. they credit their governor in each of the 50 states. but that's okay. you know, we can read. we know basic political science. we also know basic polling. where if the country really was over president joe biden and really wanted him out of there and everybody was really ready for somebody new, then the opposingth party, republicans would be falling all over

themselves to right that train, right? to become one of the immensely popular candidates ready to take on this unpopular president, joe biden, who everybody agrees is doing such a bad job, right? that is not what's happening. the newest "the new york times" siena college poll that's out today shows this. former president trump with 54% of the vote, his nearest rival at 17%, and not a single other candidate topping 3%. now, again, looking at this in political science terms in general when you've got only two people polling above 3%, you're supposed to call that a two-man race, but when one of those two men holds a 37-point lead over the other one, what you're looking at is not a two-man race. what you're looking at is not a race at all. this is a romp. according to "the new york times" analysis of its own poll today, quote, in the half century of modern presidential primaries, no candidate who led

hirsz nearest rival by at least 20 points to the stage has ever lost a party nomination. he's leading by nearly double that. he's leading by 37 points. and it's not a matter of the opposition being split. even if all the not trump candidates had their percentages combined, you'd still have trump at 54% and everybody else combined at 30%, so he'd still be leading by 20%. and it actually got worse when pollsters flat out asked about that. they asked about the guy polling second tohe trump. that you said imagine if you didn't have a choice of the other candidates at 1, 2%. imagine you could only choose between the number one and two guys in this poll. you could only choose between trump and desantis. you would expect desantis to pick up all the other non-candidate votes. you would expect that 54 to 30, 30-point margin between them. when asked in a hypothetical

matchup between trump and desantis republican voters say trump doesn't lead desantis by 24 points, trump leads desantis by 31 points. 62 to 31, he doubles it, he laps him. even in florida alone new florida university polling shows desantis would lose to trump in florida by 17 points. so at least so far -- i mean things might change -- but at least so far on the republican side, hey, republican party. how you doing? it turned out not to be a race at all. which means the only republican who appears to have any shot at all at running against president biden is the former guy, who as chris christie pointed out this weekend is likely to be out on bail in four different jurisdictions by the time of the first presidential republican al debate provided they have one given these are the contours of

the republican presidential primary. the only person who the republican party appears capable of putting up to run against joe biden is someone who's likely to be out on bail in as many as four different jurisdictions by the time the first republican debate happens. it's someone who is running for the presidency as a hail mary to dismantle the american legal system and constitutional structure and thereby keep himself out of prison. this is not the only candidate theon republicans should be abl to credibly field in this election against joe biden if they really think that president biden is -- but that's where we are. with state republican parties eitherie in dire financial stras or crippled by people charged with financial crimes or outright bankrupt, we've got a republican presidential primary

that isn't worth watching let alone polling at this point. the l.a. times reports police had to be called in to avert fistfights between two different republican factions. what's adorable about this story is the nature of the fight. at the behest of the trump campaign the california republican party tried to change the rules of its presidential primary to benefit trump. trump's campaign basically told the california republican party to change the rules of its primary so that trump would be all but guaranteed to get every single one of the delegates out ofth california. the california republican party asked to do this by the trump campaign said, yes, sir, absolutely, how high? but some of the even more radical trump supporters in that party convinced themselves a nefarious scheme must be afoot to trickbe them, of course that what they want you to think. so they put on their tinfoil hats and made their little signs about the illuminati or whatever

and marched on the meet [the cop husband to be called to brake it out. it was quite exciting, blustering nut jobs. so depending on where you are in the country, if you're republican this is your republicanyo party. party financial assets equal to one discounted xbox game in one keyx states, fistfights among republican faithful in another state only because they're so qanon addled they cannot even understand when they're getting what they want. a biden economy everyone begrudgingly admits is working for everyone and an accused felon promising to destroy the country as the only challenger they're able to put forward to run against president biden. in this challenging time for one of our two supposedly governing

parties, where is this all landing? where's this all going? where it has been landing and seems like it's going to keep landing is in culture war politics, which so far is going great for them. republicans, for example, continuing to rail against the "barbie" movie which has now taken in $775 million and counting, just a global juggernaut peoplelo absolutely love,er which republicans say y are wrong to like. ron desantis in florida trying his hand at a winning national political message by campaigning now on the need to look at the bright side of slavery. in arkansas this weekend a federal judge having to stop in to stop arkansas republican governor sarah huckabee sanders' plan to start arresting librarians and people who work at bookstores for the grave crime of loaning out and selling books. we've also been reporting recently on republican attorney

generals in the states, in republican-controlled states using their powers to confiscate private un-redacted medical records from regular civilians in their state. this has now earned a major lawsuit in tennessee as of last week. today brought another lawsuit against the attorney general in alabama whoag says if you are a alabama resident, he wants to get your private medical records, even if you go to a another state to get health care because he might want to prosecute for the health care you get in another state or he might want to prosecute your friends or t mom for aiding and abetting you or leaving the state for health care once he's gone through your medical records to decide if that health care is something he wants to prosecute you for. in alaska where the republican attorney general has said he wantspu to do the same thing, i alaska the attorney general there says he wants your medical records to see what kind of care you're getting outside of

alaska. here's the head tine on theatorial.th why does alaska attorney general treg taylor think that your health care is his business. look at this headline. opinion, how the alaska attorney general's letter replays the mistakes that led to the civil war. when that's what the biggest paper in your state is publishing about your attorney general, you're doing something wrong. going after gay people or going after trans people, go after immigrants and latinos, black people and go after civil rights and civil rights history and stealing people's private medical records toeo investigat what kinde of health care theye getting, the republican party is doing their best to show us what they want for the country. and the stuff that they are doing is also deeply, deeply unpopular, even angering. and we've got one prime and very

pressing example of that coming up on tonight's show. we've got lots more to come tonight. busy night. stay with us. e tonight. busy night stay with us [ tires screeching ] jordana, easy on the gas. i gotta wrap this commercial, i think i'm late on my payment. it's okay, the general gives you a break. yeah, we let you pick your own due date. good to know, because this next scene might take a while. for a great low rate, go with the general.

oppenheimer is magnificent. next scene might take a while. the new york times calls it staggering. it's utterly enthralling and one of the best movies of the century. in the great state of ohio, republicans there have passed what's effectively a full ban on abortions, what's called a six-week ban. and ohio residents don't like that. there is a ballot measure set for this november that would undo the republican abortion ban and protect abortion rights in that state. that ballot measure is leading

in ohio polling right now by more than 25 points. and look at this, among independent women, among women not in either party, the republican abortion rights ban has got 85% support among independent women. and so ohio republicans have just filed a lawsuit to try to keep that measure off the ballot to keep ohio voters from voting on. next week ohio republicans will try to change the rules so something like that can't pass with a simple majority. they're trying to change the rules so you need a big super majority. they're only trying to change those rules because they know they'll lose when ohio votes on what they are doing. one of the things that's going on in american politics nationally and at the state level between trump at the top of the republican party and this

culture war stuff really failing for republicans politically, republicans really have deep political challenges all over the country. ohio is an exemplar here. keeping people from voting against you because you know they'll vote against you if you let them is both a sign of how bad things are and a sign how they're planning to fight, how they're planning to contest power when people broadly do not want what they're sending. joining us now is david pepper, he's been chronicling the rise of anti-small "d" parties in the country and including laboratories of autocracy, and wakeup from behind the lines. thank you for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me, rachel. great to be with you. >> what should national audiences watching right now understand about what's happening in ohio around the republican abortion ban, the effort to overturn it, and this

vote that's going to happen next week? >> first they should understand this is an all out battle for ohio's democracy long-term, but this is just part of the big national picture you describe. the issue run really is the sort of give away about what their ammo is. it's not only like the issues of abortion bans that led to that 10-year-old victim from indiana going to ohio, it's deeply unpopular. they know that. it shapes their entire battle whether it's gerrymandering everywhere. they do that because they know their issues are toxic, whether it's supretsing the votes of the majority or in this case like you said just changing the rules midstream, they know their views are unpopular. kansas was sort of a bat signal that these statehouses are way beyond their state people when it comes to their views. in this case it's a perfect example they just want to change the rules in this case. they're scheduling an election next week on a day that they made it illegal to have an election.

so they break their own rules to rig the rules against majority rule. it really shows you what they're doing nationally. ohio is just the recent test case of what they want to get away with. >> do people in ohio get that dynamic? i ask because as you mention there's this vote next week about changing the rules. you have to have a super majority to pass something like this abortion rights measure which previously would have been just a 50% vote, and you would have wanted it that way. i read some descriptions recently from local election officials talking about the turnout, people turning out registering and early voting for that megtser, and they seem to indicate people in ohio are turning out in unusually large numbers because they seem angered by this effort to change the rules. obviously you hold an election in august because you're hoping very many people might show up. seems like ohio residents might show up next week. >> one, they had to do it to get in front of the november one.

secondly, ohioans are frustrated because these are the same people who literally violated the ohio kaungsitution numerous times to jerry mander themselves into districts that violate the constitution. and in this case they were hoping an august election although most people see it for what it is, that turnout would be low enough they can scare their own voters through ridiculous ads and they show up and have an artificial majority only on august 8th. the good news is people are seeing it. we're seeing it in the polls and early votes. like most political folks, take nothing for granted. we've got a week to get votes in and show up on august 8th and win against this sneak attack on dem rockeracy. >> david pepper, a keen observer of those state politics, thanks for being here. keep us apprised of the vote next week. i think that vote next week is going to be nationally important. thank you. >> will do.

>> much more ahead tonight. stay with us. tonight stay with us

just within this last hour we've gotten a new filing from former president trump's political fund-raising group detailing its spending for the first half of this year. as expected it shows payments of tens of millions of dollars in legal fees for the former president and his advisers and ally. that massive expenditure on

lawyers is becoming an increasing drama in terms of trump's presidential campaign because of the impression trump is having to spend a lot of that legal money because he's enjoying basically setting fire to it. i say this not because he doesn't deserve an expensive and well put on defense in his many legal trials. i say it because he keeps doing ridiculous things with lawyers. for example, his long shot bid to get his hush money case in new york transferred to federal court was shot down decisively and now he's nevertheless appealing that ruling, spending a whole bunch more money on a case never going to go his way. and also having his attorneys go to court to try to resolve the racketeering lawsuit he once filed against hillary clinton. for a flavoring of this one, you should note aal federal judge not only dismissed this case, the judge ordered trump and his lawyer to may a million dollars in sanctions for even bringing something this ridiculous in the first place. and yet here trump goes demanding his lawyers go back

into court and file that one again. trump also just had his laugh out loud defamation suit against cnn thrown out of court. and just today in georgia a fulton county judge almost literally laughed off trump's attempt to have the election flrtference investigation there derailed before he's even indicted. the judge's order referenced rumple stiltskin. millions of dollars in legal fees well spent. the other question is what it means for the various investigations surrounding it, that he's paying the legal bills of his codefendants and some witnesses and potential codefendants and witnesses in some of these cases. i say this is an issue because we've seen him do it before to troubling effect. one of the things sort of left hanging from the january 6th investigation in congress is a potential witness tampering incident that the investigation

exposed. the committee's star witness, cassidy hutchinson, you may remember she got a phone call ahead of her deposition with the january 6th investigation, and in that phone call she was told trump's chief of staff knew she was loyal and that she would do the right thing. investigators later released testimony from her in which she described how her trump funded lawyer had attempted to shape her testimony and limit what she was willing to tell the january 6th investigation. cassidy hutchinson says that trump funded lawyer told her, quote, the less you remember, the better. eventually cassidy hutchinson got herself a new lawyer who wasn't on trump's payroll or on the payroll of his campaign, but that allegation about a trump funded lawyer trying to influence the testimony of his purported client now seems quite relevant again. there are now two trump employees charged along with their boss in the classified documents case, the federal criminal case in florida. lawyers for both those men are

being paid by legal entities -- excuse me -- by political entities associated with trump. and that raises the question are those attorneys acting in the interest of their clients, or are theyict aging in trump's interests? did the trump lawyer who allegedly tried to influence cassidy hutchinson's testimony have any consequences from that? what could special jack smith's lawyers learn potentially from the january 6th investigation in congress when they went up against this kind of potential witness tampering're? luckily we have just the person to ask about that. joining us now is a former lead investigator into the investigation in jua >> thanks for the invitation, rachel. >> so i just wanted to ask you about this hanging thread from the january 6th investigation which does feel like it's got some resonance with what's going on now. i know they made referrals for

john eastman you encourage state bar associations to look further into some of the lawyers involved in this case including the lawyer for cassidy hutchinson. i know he sued the committee for suggesting he tried to wrongfully influence the client. can you tell us how that all ended mup. >> you mentioned one thread. there are actually two threads significant here. the first thread is how the money is raised in the first place. so as the select committee showed, rachel, the trump campaign very quickly pivoted to a massive fund-raising operation essentially pedaling election lies. stop the steal became a cash machine and it raised $250 million between the election and president biden's inauguration. that money, the vast majority of it went into the save ameca pak which we then saw over the course of our investigation as the entity that was paying the

fees of witnesses before the select committee. the people that gave money to this -- in this effort were told it was going to the election defense fund, that it was going to sort of fuel and pay for litigation or rather efforts to reverse the result of the election. it did not go to any such thing. there was no election defense fund. instead is went to the save america pak. the first is the lies and the grift and the second thread is the money goes to pay the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses not just cassidy hutchinson but others. a lot of those witnesses did not remember very salient things, very important conversations that others said they were present for. only cassidy really suggested directly she was coached to lie. she indicated that her first

trump funded lawyer essentially encouraged her to hold information back and said you don't need to tell them about that, they don't know what they don't know. we had our suspicion and articulated in our report a lot of the trump funded lawyers were coaching witnesses to pattern, t is one that definitely impacted our investigation. >> coaching a witness to lie, coaching a witness to pretend to forget things they don't forget, coaching a witness to obscure for a lawyer. lawyers are not supposed to do that. that's potentially -- that's a way to get in trouble if you're a lawyer for a lot of different reasons. but in terms of -- in terms of witnesses who are considering their options given that pattern that you just described, what advice would you give right now to somebody wrapped up in these investigations who's currently related by a trump backed

lawyer, especially somebody who might lack the resources to get a good lawyer on their own? should they be wary? >> yeah, look, the ethical rules allow for the third party payment of legal fees. that's not against inrules. the lawyer has to be liable to the client not the fees. i would want to ensure that my lawyer was looking out for me, was acting in my best interest, was not sharing information or giving me advice motivated by anything other than what's in my best advice. so anyone who needs legal advice, legal assistance of any kind needs to be cleared that duty of loyalty is given to them. and those individuals who are accept legal fees ought to be asking, hey, is this lawyer really there looking out for me and only me or is there some other agenda? >> very clarifying. tim is a former lead investigator for the january 6th

investigation. when you really zero in on it it's clear and a little alarming. thanks for your time tonight, sir. >> thanks, rachel. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. we'll be right bak stay with us cabenuva is the only complete, long-acting hiv treatment you can get every other month. cabenuva is two injections, given by my healthcare provider, every other month. it's really nice not to have to rush home and take a daily hiv pill. don't receive cabenuva if you're allergic to its ingredients or if you taking certain medicines, which may interact with cabenuva. serious side effects include allergic reactions post-injection reactions, liver problems, and depression. if you have a rash and other allergic reaction symptoms, stop cabenuva and get medical help right away. tell your doctor if you have liver problems or mental health concerns, and if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or considering pregnancy. some of the most common side effects include injection-site reactions, fever, and tiredness. if you switch to cabenuva, attend all treatment appointments. ready to treat your hiv in a different way?

ask your doctor about every-other-month cabenuva. every other month, and i'm good to go.

i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance every other month, through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? also $9.95 a month. i just turned 80, what's my price? $9.95 a month for you too. if you're age 50 to 85, call now about the #1 most popular

whole life insurance plan available through the colonial penn program. it has an affordable rate starting at $9.95 a month. no medical exam, no health questions. your acceptance is guaranteed. and this plan has a guaranteed lifetime rate lock so your rate can never go up for any reason. so call now for free information and you'll also get this free beneficiary planner. and it's yours free just for calling. so call now for free information. so here's an update for you, sort of a provocative one. you may remember that earlier this year in a country called uganda they passed a kill the gays law, a law among other things imposes the death penalty for something called aggravated

home sexuality. when that was signed the biden administration said they were revolted. they very forcefully came out against it. they said the u.s. would reevaluate the way the u.s. engages with that country because of it. well, the big high dollar way that our country engages with them is a universally respected american program, it's a huge sustained initiative to fight aids and save lives. it's one of the unilaterally uncomplicated good things the united states has ever done in africa. it absolutely works. but in may in light of the new law with the death penalty for being gay, the biden administration said it would reassess its funding of that program. it has not played out that way. so far the white house has made no changes. a senior administration official told nbc news last week for now the program will continue as is and the administration will, quote, reassess on an ongoing

basis the ability to deliver the pepfar funding. people who have been champions of it, many of whom who also work with african human rights groups, they're calling on the biden administration to change things, to change the way they provide this funding. this is hundreds of millions of dollars in this one program each year. it's a ton of money, and if nothing changes, that funding will go specifically to officials who have led and championed this new law which promotes the extermination of gay people in africa, which is the biden administration has said it is furious about. this also comes at a time when this may spread beyond uganda. kenya and ghana and tanzania and a dozen other countries are looking to adopt similar kill the gays laws targeting their country's lgbtq citizens. the other context here is uganda has tried something like this before. they passed legislation similar

to this in 2014. it was met with massive resistance in the country itself but also from the obama administration at the time. and under pressure from the obama administration at the time uganda back in 2014 backed down. this time uganda is going ahead and they think the biden administration is going to let them and they're going to keep getting all the assistance they've ever had from the united states with no changes and no strings attached. the biden administration said it would reassess this relationship. so far they're not. what will the consequences be if any this time around? will they keep their word? confounding swaz here. watch this space. watch this space more cash. you think those two have any idea? that they can sell their life insurance policy for cash? so they're basically sitting on a goldmine? i don't think they have a clue. that's crazy! well, not everyone knows coventry's helped thousands of people sell their policies for cash. even term policies. i can't believe they're just sitting up there! sitting on

all this cash. if you own a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more, you can sell all or part of it to coventry. even a term policy. for cash, or a combination of cash and coverage, with no future premiums. someone needs to tell them, that they're sitting on a goldmine, and you have no idea! hey, guys! you're sitting on a goldmine! come on, guys! do you hear that? i don't hear anything anymore. find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com.

♪ upbeat music ♪ ♪ [ tires screeching ] director: cut! jordana, easy on the gas. force of habit. i gotta wrap this commercial, i think i'm late on my payment. it's okay, the general gives you a break when you need it. yeah, we let you pick your own due date so you can pay your car insurance when it's best for you. well that's good to know, because this next scene might take a while.

[ helicopter and wind noises ] for a great low rate, go with the general.

it's been good to have you here tonight. thanks for being here. that's going to do it for me for now. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. indictment watch continues in washington this morning with special counsel jack smith's grand jury supposed to meet today. we'll have the very latest on all of the legal troubles for the former president. meanwhile, donald trump's attorney fees are draining his political operations. we'll dig into the new numbers that show he's burning through millions of dollars. and also ahead we'll bring you some new reporting on voters in a key state for president joe biden back in 2020 that might be