helping to secure them. i think that's an open question. but continuing to watch jim jordan try to go to all of these different potential king makers or movers and shakers within his conference to try to see if he can shake loose some of these current no votes is really a sign of the fact that they're not on the floor, they're not voting right now and jordan is still very much working behind the scenes. >> this is not over until it's over. we should say that. who knows what might happen in the next vote. ali vitali, thank you very much. what a day it has been. that is going to do it for me. "deadline: white house" starts right now. there is a lot of news. don't go anywhere. ♪♪ hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york, it's 11:00 p.m. in israel and in gaza and today an all hands on deck approach from the biden administration in handling a crisis that began ten days ago.

the heinous terror attack in israel that killed more than 1,400 people. the crisis that continues to threaten the innocent lives of hundreds of hostages and endanger the entire civilian population of gaza. in a spiraling humanitarian calamity. in the next hour president joe biden will depart for israel for what could be one of the most important trips of his presidency. his visit is of course a show of support for an ally grieving the murder of more jewish lives than at any time since the holocaust. but also bracing for a deadly and dangerous point in this conflict with hamas. it is also a high wire diplomatic endeavor with nothing less than the possibility of a major regional conflict breaking out looming over every fraught development and every development in the last few hours has been that, fraught. it's also added fuel to a volatile situation. there are reports of a deadly strike on a hospital in gaza. now, the hospital was filled, of course, with the wounded and with palestinians seeking

shelter. hundreds are believed to have been killed in the strike. a spokesman for the israeli military denies targeting that hospital and says the hospital was not a target. moments ago they said that they believe that a rocket from the militant group islamic jihad is to blame. the ramifications of the strike on the hospital are already being felt. the ap reports that palestinian leader president mahmoud abbas has canceled this planned meeting with president joe biden. anger at the strike on the hospital has also led to protests, video here shows the keen in ramallah in the west bank. we will get to a live report on the ground in just a moment. here at the table for the hour is my colleague and friend msnbc's rachel maddow, we plan to talk about lots and lots of things. it's a privilege to have you here for this story as it continues. >> it's going to be a tough couple of hours. i mean, this is a really -- we don't know exactly how this is going to go, but seeing the way that this news is being greeted and this contested news about

what may have happened at the hospital it's just -- this is a deep breath moment. >> for everyone. well, i'm glad that you are here. >> thank you. >> we're also joined by someone we have turned to multiple times already in the last ten days, marry eisen, an intelligence and counterterrorism expert, a former colonel for the israeli defense forces. what is your understanding of what happened in this hospital? >> it's one of those situations where as i look at the two of you and nicolle, rachel, sitting where you are at the studio, you do understand that what we've just been amplifying is what the hamas have said. hamas claimed that israel attacked the hospital. israel immediately went to check that. we haven't been attacking. we have never targeted a hospital, but we want to check ourselves because the entire world is saying israel attacked a hospital, and we checked it and palestinian islamic jihad fired a rocket. they have had 30% failed

rockets. it probably is the one that fell on the hospital. but all of us are amplifying right now the idea that, a, israel would target a hospital in the first place, and b, that when hamas give out information that it's something reliable that we're supposed to notice. it is going to bring out horrible, horrible things in the streets. this is part of their psychological warfare. and for a moment i don't think the palestinian islamic jihad meant to hit the hospital, but they did so and that is part of what's going on. it's horrible. >> i take all of your points and i welcome the rebuke. i just want to -- i just want to -- i want to take it apart a little bit. are you able to confirm definitively that israel had no role in the strike in the missile that hit the hospital? >> israel did not target a hospital ever. we did not say to the hospital -- there is fake news coming out on al jazeera where they say we hold to leave.

we're never done that. i as an israeli say, my god, have we done something so horrible. rachel said this is a turning point. and i'm saying this is part of that terror campaign. it is horrific and it is horrific when innocent people in a hospital die. israel has been telling so many people in the gaza strip move. we don't want you to be in the line of fire. we did not attack a hospital. >> colonel eisen, i want to press on the other piece of this and that is it is the most saturated social media moment, right? it is the most power that disinformation has ever had ever in a conflict between israel and the terrorist organization hamas. can you just take us through

your guidance for how we deal with information and in your view disinformation coming from the region? >> that's not just from the region and i think that all of us can agree that this is a challenge in social media not just in the middle east inside the worst terror war ever, but for all of us in so many different ways. inside our region remember first of all there's a difference in languages, meaning what they say in arabic is not the same as what they say in english. the terminology and the framing of that is always different. it's the messaging that gets out. it's the visuals that come out. when i talk about there's one aspect of fake news and the

other is also the psychological operations because i remind you that ten days ago as i don't even want to see it, but the hamas terrorists who came into israel live streamed on to the facebook of the people that they were killing the killing of the people so that their families would see that. so when i'm talking about we did not attack a hospital, and, no, i don't know that, i know for sure that we did not target a hospital and that we checked and said that this is most likely a palestinian islamic jihad rocket. i don't know that but now it's already in a spiral. the pictures that are coming out looking at them and knowing are they from the hospital? but that's irrelevant. the hospital was hit by something and that's what we're all showing right now. worldwide it's israel to blame and i'm at the stage of really? haven't we changed anything in the last ten days of how these things are presented and framed? and i come from such a position where i can't believe i have to sit here -- i'm scared that i'm

getting mad, but in the social media to read it, to look at it, to make sure just like we do on all sources. >> you know, u.s. intelligence official reached out to me last friday and didn't have a ton of information but said to me check the date stamp on anything you put on your air. he said it's not a classified tip, it's not a sophisticated tip, but it gets at what you're talking about, the deployment of images, the inability to understand if they are part of a geopolitical -- i guess in this case it isn't geopolitical it's a terror campaign to continue to terrorize israel and to cleave off support from its allies. i wonder if you can speak to whether the intended action was what happened, the canceling of the meeting with president a abbas and president joe biden. >> i don't want to be the person who would say that a terrorist organization would on purpose attack their own hospital and kill people. i can't say that. i'm miri, i'm sitting in israel,

you're sitting in d.c., that's not the right way to go about that. having said that i think that right now in the event that developed, inside this war, it immediately is used in a negative way, in a false way and these are the actions where once it starts, right now i'm scared what's going to happen in a country like jordan or in the west bank what's going to happen in east jerusalem and for that matter even inside some of the arabic speaking -- inside israel, this false information is horrific. as we go about on those sort of things, i try to breathe in deep on everything happening day by day, but i am not willing to say that i can believe that anybody would attack their own hospital. i just have to believe that palestinian islamic jihad who declared they fired a missile at israel and it never arrived near israel and that's why we think that it was that failed launch. that out of all of that the hospital was hit and they are not exactly going to take responsibility.

sorry, sarcasm doesn't go through well over live tv and at this stage that's pretty much all i have as my defense. >> i just want to stitch this together for our viewers. so -- so the jihadists acknowledge firing a missile at israel. israel can confirm that no missile arrived and in the same window a hospital in northern gaza was hit and there are these horrific civilian casualties and injuries, the images that have ignited you're talking about protests far beyond the west bank and in jordan and israel and beyond. i just want to make sure we're sharing facts. >> nicolle, you understand me better in that sense, you managed to say that much more clearly. and, again, i say i am in a war. this is a horrific war. it is an unprecedented one and part of what's going on within this war is that war of social media and of images. it can be of the hostage and the different israeli hostages and

it can be the cynical horrific use of something like this against israel to get world opinion against us which in any case everybody is talking about the humanitarian disaster in the gaza strip and i keep saying my heart can go out to the people in the gaza strip, but i haven't seen the hamas who are hiding behind their own people, who for two years prepared this attack, prepare anything to take care of their people. no, they want to use them as human shields. so my heart can go out but also that is where hamas is located. that is where they are hiding behind. >> i want to ask if you're able to stay with us. i know it's getting late there but i'd like to be able to come back to you. we're trying to gather information in realtime from our colleagues. i'm going to bring in nbc news foreign correspondent raf sanchez, he is in ash do the, israel. i'm struck by two things that you and i have talked about in the past ten days, one is secretary of state antony blinken offering pretty

extensive remarks both in israel and in doha about a hamas tactic to be on the lookout for and it was this, it was that hamas terrorists would use their civilian population as human shields and after we learned about the number of hostages they would use israeli and really we now know they are from many countries, the hostages as human shields. with that very high profile information put on the public stage twice in two days last week and with some of this information that we're learning from miri is that there was a failed launch from palestinian jihad into israel, the missile that never arrived, what are the different things you're hearing to explain this tragic loss of civilian life in gaza? >> reporter: right. nicolle, so this is a very fast-moving and chaotic situation, but here is what we know. the palestinian health ministry is saying the hospital which is in gaza city in the northern half of gaza took a direct

strike from an israeli aircraft. they are saying at minimum hundreds of people are dead at this hospital. this strike or the explosion, let's say, the explosion seems to have taken place in a courtyard in front of the hospital where families were gathering, believing, fatally as it turned out that they would be safe if they were within hospital grounds. now, as you said, the israeli military is saying that at the time this hospital was hit, palestinian islamic jihad which is a smaller terrorist group that operates alongside hamas in gaza was in the midst of firing a barrage of rockets into israel and the israeli military says intelligence from multiple sources that we have in our hands indicates that islamic jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital in gaza. so, nicolle, this is an absolutely classic fog of war situation and we should be really clear, nbc news is not

able to get into gaza right now, the israeli border is sealed, the egyptian border is sealed, our teams are not able to get there and to verify this directly. we should also say that the israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims that this was a palestinian islamic jihad rocket. they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public. we should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with palestinian rockets. these rockets are dangerous, they are deadly. they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that israeli high explosives, especially these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these hamas tunnels under gaza city do have the potential to kill hundreds of people. we should say finally that there are instances in the past where the israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run and the one

example i will give you is that when the al jazeera journalist was killed in the occupied west bank the israeli military initially said that she was killed by palestinian gunmen and it was only months and months later that they admitted that it was likely an israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot. so we are dealing with a classic loss of life situation -- classic fog of war situation here. what we do know for sure is that this appears to be a truly explosive event in what was already a truly explosive situation. we are seeing mass protests in the occupied west bank now in cities like ramallah. the west bank has been violent over the last ten days or so, dozens of palestinians have been killed in confrontations with the israeli military, with armed israeli settlers but this has the potential to set things on fire. we are seeing large-scale protests outside of israeli

embassies in turkey and other countries. finally this has the possibility to upend president biden's visit to the region. he was supposed to be meeting president abbas in jordan, the palestinians are saying abbas is returning to ramallah, it is not clear if he's going to meet the president of the united states. the egyptians are forcefully condemning this. they are blaming israel for this strike and president biden will be sitting across the table from president abdel fattah al sisi tomorrow looking for his help in trying to somehow deescalate this situation and somehow get humanitarian aid into gaza. it is not clear what kind of constructive conversation can happen in the aftermath of a situation like this. nicolle. >> raf, fog of war has such a historic connotation but we don't live in a world that a laws for it anymore. that is the most factual thing i think we probably can know for sure, right? my question, though, and i

appreciate all of the -- all of the context and all of the background. israel seems to have zero incentive structure to do anything to jeopardize this visit from president joe biden. what are they saying about the importance and how -- i mean, it seems that everything including a possible ground invasion has hinged perhaps on some of these high-level visits, two trips from u.s. secretary of state antony blinken, u.s. secretary of defense lloyd austin and the hours away arrival of u.s. president joe biden. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. and, nicolle, we should be really clear. the israeli military says it does not target hospitals. it would not target hospitals. that doesn't mean that there couldn't accidentally be a strike on a hospital. hospitals have been hit in gaza in previous campaigns and the

israeli military is saying that it was islamic jihad. we will know more in the hours to come. we are in those chaotic initial moments where there is claim and counterclaim, but as you say, this is not what the israelis wanted. president biden is due to land here at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow local time, 3:00 eastern. prime minister netanyahu is going to meet him on the tarmac at the airport. we expect that the president may go to the israeli defense ministry, very unusually, nicolle. secretary of state blinken actually attended the israeli war cabinet so that is a senior member of the american cabinet essentially joining the israeli cabinet. we think there may be some similar format tomorrow where president biden will meet with the very small group of people, prime minister netanyahu, the defense minister, the leader of the big centrist party benny gantz and one other official. we think he may join them in

that format to talk about the strategic war aims. we expect president biden is going to tell them that the united states supports israel's right to defend itself, that the united states understands that israel cannot leave hamas in power in gaza after the scale of the terrorist atrocities carried out on october 7th, but we also expect that the president is going to press the israelis to think about the day after, to think about what happens after they roll into gaza, after they topple hamas, who is going to run this narrow strip of land on the mediterranean that is home to 2 million people? nicolle, as you know, president biden was very skeptical of the american adventure in afghanistan from the beginning. he is the man who finally gave the order to pull american troops out of there and you can be sure that he will be encouraging israeli decision-makers to think long and hard about what happens if they go into gaza if they topple hamas. who is going to run the gaza

strip the day after. >> raf, it's rachel in the studio in new york. talk being that really intense and interesting political integration that we're seeing between the u.s. government, the biden administration and the israeli government sitting in on the war cabinet itself, that's such a symbolic and substantive move by senior member of the biden administration, but what do we know about u.s. intelligence? obviously this issue with this hospital, whatever the story is about what happened at that hospital and how it came to suffer what it has suffered, obviously this is a mass casualty event, that hospital has been hit, there are two very different stories about how that hospital was hit that are being told by two sides. does u.s. intelligence have penetration at all into gaza? will u.s. intelligence be of any help in terms of sorting out either contributing to a meaningful investigation as to what caused what happened at

this hospital or towards disambiguitying the various claims, incompatible claims about what caused it? >> reporter: yeah, it's a really good question. the united states has unparalleled geospatial intelligence, put more simply the u.s. just has a whole lot more satellites than everybody else. whether they will have a satellite that was pointing in the right place at the right time to tell you with a high level of confidence whether it was a palestinian islamic jihad rocket or an israeli f-16 that destroyed this hospital, we don't know. the american government may not know. it takes time to sift through the massive, massive reams of intelligence that the united states is collecting literally every second of the day. we know that the american military has very deep ties with the israeli military. we know that they are talking to each other as well as the intelligence agencies talking to

each other. it may very well be that if someone in the israeli military knows something that the contrary to what's being said publicly and there is no suggestion that they do, but that those lines of communication are open between the u.s. military, the israeli military. we should say the u.s. and israel are best of friends, but they do -- there is evidence and we saw this from wikileaks, we saw this from edward snowden that the u.s. does conduct intelligence on israeli activities. it's very possible that the americans know things that the israelis don't know that they know, but right now this is a very chaotic situation, it's hard to know. i will just tell you speaking to government officials in general they will tell you more and more and more the open source intelligence, what you see on social media is often faster and it is often much clearer than the really expensive, really technical stuff gathered by satellites, gathered by signals

intelligence. it is often what people film on their cell phones and put on the internet that can give you the clearest information if you know how to analyze it. guys? >> raf, i'm struck that 24 hours ago when we talked the country was being rocked by the first nationally televised hostage video and all of the families of hostages that i've interviewed extraordinarily held so much grief and space in their hearts for what has happened today, the potential that a conflict would jeopardize innocent civilians, that many of them viewed at least before last saturday as their neighbors. what is the sort of psychic temperature of the country tonight? >> reporter: you know, nicolle, the psychic temperature is a really good question, both nationally and individually. just starting individually, the mother of that young woman, mia schem, who appeared in that hostage video, spoke to our own lester holt earlier today and

she described the absolutely wrenching, completely on sit emotions existing inside her at the same time when she watched that video. on the one hand the agony that you can imagine of a parent who is seeing their child in pain, pleading for their life, in the captivity of a terrorist organization and at the same time relief and even she allowed joy that she knows that at least at the time that that video was recorded her daughter is still alive. and there are hundreds of israeli families all across this country right now who would kill, they are desperate for a hostage video to know that their loved one is alive, to see their faces, to get some sense of what condition they are in right now. on a more national level, there is a real drum beat of war here and i think a lot of israelis, there hasn't been polling yet, but anecdotally a lot of

israelis are prepared to fight this war as if there were no hostages. the loss of life on the israeli side is so great already, there is a very, very deep feeling among a lot of people in this country that the only acceptable outcome here is that hamas has to go, that the status quo that existed since 2007 in gaza cannot be allowed to continue to exist and, you know, if the hostages are collateral damage to achieving that, then that would be tragic, but that that is a strategic objective that needs to be achieved. guys? >> raf sanchez, i wrote down there are people who would kill for a hostage video because i'm sure you're right, but that just blows my mind. it's trauma wrapped in a tragedy, wrapped in just the most macab thoughts that a parent could have. thank you for being with us. i want to bring into our conversation john hudson, a national security reporter for the "washington post," he's

traveling with u.s. secretary of state antony blinken. thank you so much for jumping on and being with me and rachel maddow is here with me as well. this news broke just before we came on the air and first i wonder if you have any reporting about what has happened? >> yeah, so i have been with secretary of state antony blinken's top aides and team here in jordan, as you know, the secretary has basically laid the groundwork for president biden's trip to israel and parts of that trip, you know, are now in jeopardy. in response to the alleged israeli strike of the hospital mahmoud abbas the president of the palestinian authority has said that he is canceling his meeting with biden. there is a bit of a scrambling going on here about what is true, what isn't true? was this actually an israeli strike? but all they know is the trip that they worked very hard on, and by "hard" i'm talking about

trip back to back visits across the middle east. i mean, we have been in jordan, we have been in egypt, we've been to israel twice, we have been to qatar, we've been to the united arab emirates, we've been so saudi arabia. so much work has been done to set up president biden's trip and now you have protests going on across the middle east and including in jordan where we are right now. there are massive protests outside the israeli embassy in ayman jordan. basically so much of this trip was supposed to be choreographed and put together but of course this is something that came out spontaneously. no word on whether or not this means that there's going to be an adjustment, a cancellation of president biden's trip, but what i've been, you know, told by officials is that you could

expect that in the middle of a moment that is really seizing this region right now, the horrific images of blood shed at that hospital, you can expect that american officials are going to be changing and calibrating their words to be very careful about what they say. at the outset of this conflict of course you have had secretary blinken, jake sullivan, others talk about israel in the same way they talk about the united states. they've said, you know, we are democracies, we wage wars according to the rules of international law, and obviously that message, you know, could be muddled and it's probably a message that's going to be tweaked as you have these massive protests going around the region. >> john, it strikes me and my colleague raf sanchez used the word "fog of war." we don't have the tools, right, with social media and with the ability for a protest to erupt

based on something that makes its way around the internet and is on all of our phones before international intelligence agencies can determine why something happened or where it came from, but when you look at the israeli government denying that it had ever targeted a hospital, it seems that israel had a lot more to lose. it would seem that the explanation or the possible explanation that islamic jihad had fired a missile into israel that had missed was at least one that u.s. officials would be considering. do you have any sense what u.s. secretary of state antony blinken is considering as credible theories for what happened? >> basically u.s. officials don't want to get ahead of an intelligence assessment. these are -- you're right that these are the types of things that u.s. intelligence officials are going to be analyzing, scraping, looking over and using

other elements of the u.s. intelligence apparatus to try to get a better understanding so that they can provide government leaders like president biden, like secretary of state blinken, you know, better assessments about what happened. now, i will say the thinking of some officials is that even if it ends up being a different narrative from the ones that the palestinian authority are putting out and other palestinians and hamas as well, the difficulty is this thing has absolutely exploded across the middle east. these are difficult things to put back in a box and -- but, again, you know, one of the things that everyone has been warned about and has been gerting themselves about is that well over 6,000 israeli bombs in

gaza, one of the most densely populated places on the earth is that you will have significant civilian casualties and i can tell you that from my experience hop-scotching the middle east over the last few days with u.s. officials, there is no naivete, there are no illusions among u.s. officials about the likelihood of major civilian casualties. so this is not something that is going to absolutely stop them and it's partially why last night when i was in israel waiting outside israel's ministry of defense when secretary blinken was meeting with israel's war cabinet, it's why u.s. officials spent so much time, seven and a half hours, unprecedented going beyond the schedule talking about humanitarian issues. the humanitarian corridors, getting aid in and creating safe zones for palestinians because there's just an acknowledgment

that this is such a lethal, dangerous and treacherous conflict and we're just in the opening days. >> you have probably lived a thousand years in the last ten days traveling with u.s. secretary of state antony blinken. thank you very much. john hudson with the "washington post," thank you for talking to us. >> good to be with you. >> i wish you were sitting here and not me. it's so fraught. it's so heartbreaking. you think about everything that you hear. i take miri eisin's point, i think she is still with us, that these are the images that a terrorist nation wants out there. i take john hudson and raf's point that, i mean, to john hudson's reporting that 6,000 bombs have been dropped on a teeny, teeny space, tons of civilians there in harm's way, put in harm's way by hamas, and i wonder what your sort of

thoughts are about how we sift through this. >> if you look at what's happened at the hospital there is nobody -- there's nobody among us, there's nobody in the civilized world who would want to happen what happened to that hospital. to have people -- to have a place where it's an operating hospital, this is a place where there's patients there, there's wounded people there, in addition to people sheltering there. now, why did that happen at that hospital? we don't know and i think we can't underscore that enough. we have a clear assertion from the israeli side. we do not categorically target hospitals and we have a counterexplanation as to what the strike could have -- what could have caused that strike. they're saying it's palestinian islamic jihad, a misfired rocket essentially that was targeting israel and somehow hit that hospital instead. on the other side we have palestinian authorities say, no, this was an israeli air strike we cannot lose sight of the fact that in the gaza strip the government is hamas. there isn't a governing

authority that we are able to appeal to here that may have a more neutral understanding of this than the entity that launched those terrorist attacks in israel last weekend and that is at war with israel right now. and so, i mean, that's why i asked raf that question about whether or not u.s. intelligence has anything substantive to add to the factual understanding here. when you look at protests breaking out in the west bank and outside the israeli embassy in amman as our last guest was telling us and indeed in lots of places in the region right now, those protests are breaking out because of the perception that this was a deliberate israeli air strike targeting that hospital on purpose. you have to believe we as humans have to believe that the truth matters. we do not want that to be true. israel says that was not true. an investigation needs to be done to find out if that's true but you have to believe -- you can't say it doesn't matter what the truth is here and you can't say the street will erupt no matter what regardless of what the truth is here.

the truth does matter. it's the only thing that we have, it's the only way we can be held morally accountable for our actions. hopefully the united states with all of the resources and energy being put into this by the u.s. government, especially ahead of president biden's visit, hopefully the u.s. can meaningfully contribute to finding the truth. we have to believe the truth matters and we have to believe that at some point even if it's not in every moment that reason will prevail in terms of human beings finding a way to live with each other and move forward after what we have seen over these last ten days which is the worst of what humanity has to ever. >> i guess the only place to keep going here is the we isn't everybody, right? it doesn't include the hamas terrorists, they don't care what the truth s they are not part of the we. i think that's why u.s. secretary of state antony blinken in his first two stops in israel and in doha, one of the first things he said from the podium alongside his counterparts was hamas will use palestinian civilians as human

shields. it is what they do. lloyd austin said the same thing. so the we isn't everybody including the people who might have fired the missile that hit the hospital if it wasn't hospital. we isn't the people who have the innocent hostages who were at music festivals including a 9 month old baby. we is the rest of us. the we is -- the we is in the people protesting without accurate information, the we is -- right? the we is the victim of the terror attack and the united states at this point. >> nothing -- i feel like nothing is inevitable here. the terrorist organization that is hamas had a decision to make about how it was going to press what it sees as its case and they chose to set in motion what they set in motion last weekend. those terrorist attacks, those widespread sustained eyeball to eyeball human terrorist attacks killing well over 1,000 people, the elderly, babies, women, children, everybody, they had a choice about that. that was not an inevitable

outcome of anything. similarly, the world has a choice. nothing is inevitable about the response to that. the world has a choice as to what our values are. israel has a choice as to what its values are in terms of how it responds, whether it takes account of international human rights law, international laws of war and the human rights of the people who may be caught in the crossfire or targeted. everybody has a choice as to how to dee may have and we are judged on our own actions and there is nothing inevitable that somebody else's actions that effect out your own choice when you have a choice and that has to be the moral center we keep coming back to as americans, as observers of this, as people struggling in the news business trying to get this right. failing often but still trying the best we can to get it right and it's important as to how israel thinks about it, too, and i believe that's a live part of how the u.s. and the israeli government are engaging about

what can be the range of next steps that are considered here. >> i also -- and i am on the outside, there's much more that we don't know than we do know, but it seems that a lot of the constant contact, i mean, we've all remarked on how seven and a half hours in another country's war cabinet is an extraordinary amount of time but i was on the air sunday when the state department was talking about getting the water turned back on. the u.s. secretary of state, secretary the defense, the president, they seem to be very hands on in trying to not just protect lives, of course, that seems to be something they are imploring our allies and israel to do with any strikes or any ground invasion, but to make sure that the human suffering is kept to a minimum. to turn the water back on. i mean, this he seem to be very tactically involved in those policies. >> yes. and to that end i think it's really important for us to think not just about the bilateral strength of the u.s. and israel relationship. obviously that's at the core in terms of the way the u.s. is

responding. you see it in the emotion behind the words of people like secretary of state blinken and president biden himself. you see that. that's at the core. but operationally what may be just as important is our multilateral relationship with the countries that still talk to us in that part of the world. i mean, president biden and secretary of state blinken being able to interact constructively with jordan, with egypt, with qatar, perhaps even with the saudis or emirates, i mean, being able to leverage whatever soft power we can bring to bear with those, you know, allies of varying strengths, that is going to make all the difference in terms of hostages, that is going to make the difference in terms of humanitarian corridors, it's going to make all the difference in terms of the rafah crossing into egypt. we need to have deep knowledge and deeper trust than we probably have to use those relationships in order to stabilize this as best we can for the benefit of the most civilen lives. >> yeah, and it's like jenga,

you pull a piece out or say something too hot and alienate someone who could help bring out a dozen hostages or a dozen people at the center of the life of an entire family and community. it has incredibly high stakes. >> with multigenerational consequences for every family that loses somebody on every side of this conflict. you lose one person in your family your family is never the same for generationes. >> makes me cry now. >> i'm sorry. >> miri, i want to give you a quick last word. >> i just want to say that for me i do want to emphasize this isn't just about that israel would never target a hospital. listening to your discussion right now as i'm hearing it, i have very clear moral clarity and, rachel, what you just said in that sense, these expressions, i'd really like us not to be balanced. i don't want to heighten that terrorist voice that's coming out of hamas from the gaza strip

and that's not all the gazans. i want to highlight that we're trying to save people's lives and, remember -- not remember what happened here in the sense of the horrific attack, but we're still in this and there's still hezbollah and what's happening right now is not yet over and we have to be on the higher moral ground otherwise we won't survive. >> i love the candor with which you so elegantly and eloquently engage with us, i'm grateful for it. please keep it coming, miri. thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. goodnight. much more of our continuing breaking news coverage. we will talk to more voices on the ground in the region and later in the show republicans in congress this hour appear to be going all in on chaos and election denialism. jim jordan has so far suffered his first defeat in the vote to become the next speaker. his caucus is expect to go try again at 6:00.

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joining our breaking news coverage senior analyst for the times of israel, we've turned to you on so many of these sort of horrific points in the aftermath of the heinous terror attack in israel last saturday and we wanted to pull you in and ask you what you know and what your thoughts are about how we talk about this hospital that was

struck in gaza today. >> habib, we don't hear you. there you go. start over. >> there was an explosion at a hospital, there are significant casualties. that's first of all. there is of course it's a war, there are tremendous interests on different sides. the israeli military says that this was a misfire of a rocket launched by islamic jihad. it's not unlikely -- it's quite likely al jazeera footage 15 minutes before the first reports of hospital broadcast a misfire, appears to that misfire. the hamas and jihad claim it was an israeli air strike. i don't know to verify any of these things, i don't internally have my own intelligence agency. i can tell you israel doesn't target hospitals, doesn't target hospitals because that wouldn't

unconscionable, it also doesn't target hospitals because the israeli press would of it immediately also because it would be stupid for israel's interests. all of those things at all once and i think all are correct it doesn't target hospitals. could it accidentally have hit a hospital? i don't think this is the case. there is so much mounting evidence, including from arab media, and there's an al jazeera reporter on the ground who treat tweeted she saw a rocket misfire from either hamas or islamic jihad that is mounting that is that, that is the evidence and that's what the idf believes, but it's important to remember and i remember because i was a college student and i was paying attention and this was burned into my memory when the u.s. invaded afghanistan in 2001, it bombed a hospital and when the u.s. invaded iraq in 2003 it bombed a maternity hospital in baghdad and nobody ever assumed the u.s. was targeting hospitals. this is that kind of war in an urban environment with where

these things could happen. this doesn't appear to be what that is. and i'm saying that carefully because i don't have absolute documentary evidence but there is growing evidence and footage including in al jazeera that it was -- i am growing convinced that it was a rocket separate from all of the propaganda and shouting and screaming around the world, that it was a rocket misfire by a palestinian group. >> haviv, let's deal with how this has been received, right, because miri eisin offered a strong rebuke at the top of the hour that i welcome here. there is still skepticism even in this country about the mutilated, burned, tortured bodies of ifants from the terrorist attack last saturday. i wonder what the role is when covering hamas and a u.s. ally in israel. >> we need to talk about this. our future as democracies depends on it. whether or not we can produce a shared common body of facts will

determine whether we can have stable politics that don't dee generate into populism and lies and the inability to actually have a shared life together in any democracy. all the democracies are suffering, the whole fake news crisis and massive operations by, you know, bad actors like china, iran, and russia in elections, trying to sow the seeds of division and all of that is all true. we do have to talk about how we share facts. how we develop institutions that we trust. in the middle of a war there's simply no such thing. there hasn't ever been. even when people trusted mainstream media institutions tremendously and they were the shared facts of society in the united states, let's say in world war ii, there were still enemy governments that just lied and lying was a policy.

so right now, look, i know four things, i know israel doesn't target hospitals. i know it doesn't target hospitals because i know israelis and i know israelis involved in some of these things, i've covered some of these people and it's also stupid for israel to target hospitals. so it's bad policy and it's immoral. two, i know terror groups lie. they don't even think about it. they obviously lie. they're terror groups. three, people are dead. lots of people are dead. this hospital is a tragedy. and four, the group dragging a war into a civilian population and the group that is, in fact, its only strategy for survival right now is to create a civilian humanitarian crisis on a scale that the world pressures israel to stop is hamas. hamas is hiding behind these hospitals, underneath these cities and that is a crime against humanity in itself separate from what it did to us.

and i also have to tell you if you look at israeli public opinion and you look at the israeli mood and you look at israeli polls and you look at israelis today, today i had to deal with they finally found the body of one 4-year-old boy who has been missing and we were fearing of one 4-year-old boy who had been missing and we were fearing he was a hostage. but he was actually found dead, and the family is weeping from relief that he wasn't a hostage. and dead was the lesser -- we are still in this trauma. and so if the pro-palestinian global campaign people think that the israelis are done and that hamas can survive this because it is forcing israel to go through the civilian population to get to it, then they are mistaken, and that's an important thing to put on the table just as a diagnostic truth, as a strategic truth. if you want this to stop, you have to talk to hamas. this is not something going to stop from the israeli side, and

this hospital explosion was an absolute tragedy. i'm trying very much to figure out exactly what happened because it is possible to accidently bomb a hospital. every military that has ever gone into an urban setting has done so, but it really does appear that was broadcast live that it was a rocket. >> you always crack my heart wide open and make my brain explode. today was no exception. i am so sorry for the family of that 4-year-old. i have been thinking since last saturday i wouldn't be able to die fast enough if anything happened to my child, so thank you for continuing to share what these families call on you. we have to continue to have this conversation. at this hour we're awaiting president joe biden's departure to israel, a powerful show of support for our allies there. earlier today president biden issued a call to action for all of us here at home saying this, quote, history as taught us again and again that

anti-semitism, islamaphobia, and all hate is connect. he added this, quote, there are certain core values that should bring us together as americans. one of them is standing together against hate, racism, bigotry, and violence long haunted and plagued our nation. every one has a role to play. the idea everyone of us right now has a role to play is something my dear friend and colleague rachel maddow explores in her new book "prequel, an american fight against fascism." these were normal people, you probably never heard of most of them, but their stories remind us as president biden puts it that everyone has a role to play standing up against hate, racism, bigotry, and violence. it's sort of like the reader's guide to ultra. it's incredible, and i keep thinking of something joe biden

said i think it was wednesday taking all of his kids to dakao. and every word you've written here, every word from ultrathe price we way is the worst chapters in history could repeat themselves. >> the fact there was a big war in the united states in the lead up to world war ii is mostly lost in history because it's easy to say haerk was the good guys, bad guys were over there, we went over and liberated the concentration camps. there was actually a big pro-nazi movement in this country. and in times like this -- i don't want to get too far off the news here and draw analogies that aren't appropriate, but i do feel like what a lot of what this book taught me is about what people use anti-semitism

for. one of the cornerstones you look for in democracy that's potentially going towards fascism or going towardsaitarianism you look for the scapegoating of a favored group. not just saying they are inferior put saying they are a secretive cabal that is somehow in control and somehow scheming against all that's good and right. you have elaborate, nefarious conspiracy theories about minority groups almost always against jews and sometimes against other disfavored minorities, too. but that is functional. the reason that always rises at times when democracy is under threat because you need to plant the seed in people's minds that there are people among us who shouldn't get a vote, who shouldn't get a say, who are not part of we the citizens because they're evil and scheming against us. once you can turn people's minds that way towards their fellow citizens, towards any of them,

you've already set the seeds of destruction for our a democracy. >> one of the things that's so haunting and, you know, i'm always looking for the parallels, right? i try to find the characters in the book in our politics, which feel pretty unhealthy right now. the one party's desire to make it harder to vote. one party's desire to take away a woman's right to control her body, one party's desire -- we don't have a two-party problem. we have a problem in one of our parties. and what's so haunting -- i made this chart here. we look at extremism -- i sort of i do as flat line, but it goes through media, faith institutions, through politics, through law enforcement. will you talk about your characters in that respect? >> yeah, one of the things that surprised me, and this wasn't in ultra, but something just in the book. for example, henry ford. anything anyone who knows the history of henry ford knows he was an anti-semite.

what i didn't understand is he's probably the most prolific spreader of anti-semitic propaganda in the history of the english language. a detroit reporter went to germany and interviewed hitler before he became chancellor. she walked into his office and he had on his wall an oil portrait of henry ford and said he's my inspiration. he singled him out by name and talked about how he taught hit lar how to hate the jews. there's something about their influence, their reach that's the true danger. you and i grew up in california roughly the same time. i was very much aware of racist skinhead groups and klan groups, that sort of thing way out there on the fringe. now that i've grown into now that i've 50 is group said that have used that extreme who have links to people who are in power, and that happened, too,

in the 1930s. it is happening again now when you've got stuff that radical, that close to the center of the american power, and that's the real -- you know, that's the tinder. that's real danger. >> we had planned to talk about this earlier before in the block, but i hope we can be another stop on the tour because what i want to do is we have sort of the top of the iceberg, trump says stands back and standby. and we all look around and we're sitting next to each other like what? really what we're learning through the january 6th prosecutions is what happens there. what happens in the extremist group when the most powerful person in our country says stand back and standby. and i feel like in history we can learn some of what you're talking about. if the person has influence and has a whole lot more impact and power than if they don't. >> to see anti-semitism, to see violence the trulding into the political space, to see telling people democracy doesn't work and we shouldn't use it to solve

our problems and see that elevate today the most influential people in politics and by the most influential people in politics, that's when you get in real darnl of a democracy toppling. and that said that's the downside of it, but i also feel like history offers us a bit of an instruction book what to look for and how to fight it. you do need to prosecute crimes when crimes occur, and violence is always crime, but you also need people to expose it, people to infiltrate them, people to do the political work and get those people in power voted out. and i believe americans will still do that. you know, people who are very influential in the media have a lot to answer for, too, but there's way to both expose and combat all this stuff, and a lot of the people who did that most effectively and the last time we had to contend with this, those are the people i want to most write about. >> when you come back, i want to deal with this sort of platforming question, too. ford had the platform and that's

why what he thought and what he did was so vastly consumed today by hitler. >> it's why he's still cited today as an example. >> i don't want to let the moment go with the book, so i hope you'll take a rain chaek to have that hour long conversation. jim jordan, someone said to me today how is jim jordan going to impeach a president he doesn't acknowledge is the president? >> i mean jim jordan is not being elevated potentially to the speakership because of his policy chops. he's never passed a bill. >> never passed a bill. >> he's there for a different reason. >> promise, rain check? >> yes. >> the book is -- let me hold it. let me get it in the shot. i know you've listened to ultra, and i've gone back and listened to a couple of them. it all goes together and it's brilliant and wonderful. i feel like i got two hours out of you, right?

i asked you to come back and you said yes. >> this ankle monitor. >> you can check out but you can never leave. and poor andrew wiseman is like i've got to get the door. thank you so much, my friend. we're going to sneak in a really short break. when we come back, we'll get another live report from the ground in israel. my colleague is at the israel-gaza border. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. t go anywhe. we'll be right back. for you. humana can help. with original medicare you're covered for hospital stays and doctor office visits, but you'll have to pay a deductible for each. a medicare supplement plan pays for some or all of your original medicare deductibles, but they may have higher monthly premiums and no prescription drug coverage. humana medicare advantage prescription drug plans include medical coverage, plus prescription drug

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this attack is brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of anti-semitism and genocide of the jewish people. so in this moment we must be crystal clear we stand with israel. let me say again that any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking

advantage of the situation, i have one word, don't. don't. our hearts may be broken but our resolve is clear. >> hey, everyone. it's now 5:00 in new york. it is midnight in israel and gaza. this may be one of the most consequential foreign trips by a u.s. president ever. after ten days of a public wide defense to defend itself in a heinous terror attack one that's left more than 1,300 israelis murdered and at least 200 innocent souls held hostage, the president of the united states of america is set to travel to israel as that nation contemn plates just about all bad options for the way forward. hostage rescues are viewed by all experts as excruciatingly complicated and dangerous. the ground war in gaza risks the safety of thousands of innocent civilians and a swelling humanitarian calamity.

and the saber rattling from iran is impossible to ignore. this afternoon president joe biden is scheduled to depart joint base andrews from israel where the u.s. and israel will shake habds on a plan for so-called safe zones that would allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians in gaza. and they need it. as we speak protests are rapidly spreading across the area following a bombing a short time ago at a hospital in gaza. the palestinian health ministry says that 200 to 300 people could be dead from that strike. an israeli spokesperson says the hospital was not an idf target and blames the strike on the militant group islamic jihad. this is obviously a developing situation, and it is one that we will continue to follow for you. more broadly, though, thousands of lives hang in the balance if nothing changes in gaza in the next 24 to 48 hours, lack of medical care, food, drinkable water, electricity, and diesel we could be seeing a catastrophic collapse there of

society as israel goes about its bombardment and retaliation for the brutal terror attack orchestrated by hamas terrorists. "the new york times"ts even safer cities in gazare currently in croesus where people are sleeping in the streets, quote, long lines in front of water tanks, bakeries, erupting over the last remaining bread loaves and tomatoes. some people are building ovens hoping to save their families from hunger. and so president joe biden is expected to arrive in israel in a matter of hours not only tasked with a way to save innocent lives including those of hostages still being held by hamas terrorists but also to engage in the kind of careful diplomacy that may represent the best chance for avoiding a regional broader conflict that could spin out of control in the middle east. and that way the president's trip serves as an irrefutable

gesture of the strength and bond between israel and hamas. we begin with elson barber at the israel-gaza border. ellison, we have started every day with what you've seen and who you talk to. you fill up our understanding of what's happening there and how people feel so expertly, but i do want to start by asking you just the hour we've been on the air we've heard different explanations for what could be the explanation for the strike at the hospital in gaza. and i wonder what your latest reporting is on that. >> reporter: yeah, there's still so much we don't know right now. finger pointing is what's happening right now. i was just trying to message with a couple of people contacts we had inside gaza, some of them doctors working at the hospital believed to be treating some of the people who are coming from that attack at the hospital,

having a difficult time getting in touch with them. someone else just messaged us who was a civilian saying she can't talk or send video message right now because there is no power whereby no service and on top of that right now she feels so unsafe, she's scared to talk publicly. what we know about what has happened inside gaza right now at the hospital is that hundreds of civilians are dead. gaza's ministry of health, their director, they say they're having a difficult time right now getting the exact death toll because the situation on the ground is this. they say there are so many bodies that many of them -- and this is graphic but i think important to explain to viewers. they say many of the victims of the bodies moved today the hospital ethey're trying to count how many people have died, that many of the bodies are charred, and they have a large presence of dismembered limbs. we have seen videos on the ground from our teams.

some of those videos, many of those videos are much too graphic to show on tv right now, but in them we can see some of what the gaza ministry of health is describing of charred bodies, of dismembered remains of people in severe agony, so severely wounded in this attack on the hospital. according to officials inside gaza everyone in this area, all the victims they believe they're all civilians, people who were sick or injured being treated at the hospital and also people there seeking shelter because so many people in gaza, hospitals, schools, those are often the structures to get to safety. so there were people who were there displaced internally that had gone there to try to have a safe space and ended up being anything but safe. israel right now they're adamant in saying they have nothing to do with this. they claim that the group inside

gaza, islamic jihad, carried out a rocket attack, that they were trying to target israel and that they misfired and struck this hospital inside of gaza. hamas, other officials, palestinian officials, the health ministry, they are saying this was the result of israeli air strikes. what we do know for sure is that this is massive casualty event from the videos we have seen, from what we are hearing inside, it appears largely civilians have been hurt here. some of the images we've seen, nicolle, you can see children in them. again, these are people largely we believe were at a hospital because they were already sick and injured and needing care or they were there because they thought it was a safe place to seek shelter. because remember even though people have been told to head south and told to evacuate, according to the u.n. about 600,000 gazans have moved to this area of land, this territory. there are a lot of people afraid

to leave. there have been reports hamas has not let them leave. there were people inside this hospital who thought they were in a safe place and they were not. nicolle? >> nbc's ellison barber, please stay safe, my friend. thank you so much for your reporting there. joining us now former israeli plrd to the united states, former deputy foreign minister of israel. mr. ambassador, a couple of guests on our program who said that al jazeera broadcast a failed missile launch from islamic jihad that it was was intended for israel and did not land in israel. do you have any information to confirm that account? >> yes, nicolle. and actually i have just seen the documentation not only of al jazeera but also from israeli cameras that are stationed on israeli homes on the gaza front,

and now it is quite clear it was the palestinian islamic jihad. they fired -- and you can see in the documentation they fired about five or six missiles. one of them you see in a very kind of a strange trajectory, which is going up and then down right there on the hospital. this is sad. this is another war crime, but this is hamas and islamic jihad. they kill our children and they kill their own children. this is a situation in which is abominable. it has to stop, and the only way to stop it is, nicolle, an unconditional surrender from hamas just like the demand from the nazis in 1945 was. >> will the israeli government be releasing the documentation? >> well, i hope so. actually that documentation

right now is in the possession of channel 13 in israel, by the way not a very friendly channel to the israeli government. so i'm sure that your reporter here can go to this and share whatever she can get from channel 13. this is not only authentic, it's brutal, but you see exactly the timing is right, the place is right, and there's no denying that this was islamic jihad missile that just was a failure launch. >> we will -- we appreciate all this realtime information gathering we're getting from you. we will see if we can obtain that evidence from channel 13, and if it's being broadcast there we'll try to see if we can pull what they're showing. i want to ask you how this tragedy impacts president joe biden's visit to israel. he's expected to leave i think

within this hour. it's 5:00 p.m. eastern. >> i think what makes his trip here more urgent and more important -- and by the way, we all appreciate the fact that from day one the president realized the tragedy. he realized the severity of the situation on the ground but also the implication, which have far-reaching implications for the safety of the world, not just the middle east. because what we see here, we see not only israel and the united states and western countries fighting hamas, but what we see here is that we are fighting really an axis of evil because hamas is part and parcel of the apparatus that iran -- that iran has built and iran is being supported massively by china and by russia. so we have here a clear, clear

division of the world where it is today. and if we do not prevail then woe is us. it's really a moment that very much eerily resembles like we say world war ii where we have the nazis and imperial japan at the time attacking -- a brutal attack whether it was pearl harbor or whether it was the barbarosa attack in europe. but this is what we face in europe. if we do not clear this event and hopefully with a minimum amount of uninvolved casualties, if we do not finish it then we are never going to be safe. and this is why hamas has to be stopped altogether and never become a military power. and i commend president biden

like a chur churchhillian moment. he said first of all hamas is to be eliminated, and second he said israel should not occupy gaza. and i believe we're not intending to occupy gaza. >> ambassador, thank you very much for joining us. we'll look for reporting at your channel 13. we're grateful for that information. it's really helpful. thank you. >> please do. thank you. >> let's bring into our conversation a spokesperson for the international committee for the red cross. for all of the rancor and violent clashes, everybody is hoping that you will be successful in your mission of helping the hostages. please tell me the latest in terms of what you understand their condition to be and how many you believe to be -- being held hostage in gaza. >> the international committee of the red cross is really engaged on this issue about

hostages, and we are having face-to-face conversations with hamas on this very issue. we're asking for three things. one, that the hostages be released. barring that, we're asking that our teams would have access to the hostages to assess their health and wellness, maybe to bring medicine if that's a possibility. and number three, we're asking that they allow family communication between the hostages and their family members either in written form, some other form to alleviate some of the suffering that both the hostages and the family members are going through. you asked what condition they're in, nicole. and while we are having the conversations we don't share what the details of those conversations might be. of course we know that the families on the one side and the hostages on the other are both scared, frightened, and hurting

today. >> how are the conversations with hamas going? >> the way that the international committee of the red cross works, we have this phrase that we use internally and it's a little technical and sounds a little jargony. we say bilateral confidential. we speak to hamas directly and they have faith we don't share those conversations. as interested in what people are of what those talks are, it's not something we share. and we don't share them because we believe that this method is the best way to make progress and move forward on behalf of the people who need the assistance. >> just in my own reporting i've interviewed families of hostages, one has a son who needs his inhaler. he was kidnapped last saturday in the terror attack. i interviewed someone else whose

grandparent, grand grandmother i think needed parkinson's medication. >> we're familiar with these needs and these demands. i couldn't confirm for you if we're in possession of a given medication, but clearly it's something that we will be willing to do and most certainly do if it's a possibility. >> in all of your experience in this harrowing but heroic line of work, have you ever encountered a situation like this, more than 200 innocent civilians many of them tortured and injured before they were kidnapped and taken into gaza now being held? >> what i would say there is that it's clearly a horrific situation for the hostages and the family members. and our hearts go out to each and everyone. and we want them to know this is something we're actively working on face-to-face talks with hamas. we have a long history in this region of working on the issue

of hostages, helping detainees, helping prisoners. when i say helping what i mean is helping ensure that their conditions meet minimum standards and to facilitate conversations between family members. we've done it in lebanon. we've done it in israel. we've done it in gaza, in yemen, done it in iraq and done it in iran. and this is over years and decades. we have a lot of experience with this. we're working our hardest to try to come to some positive humanitarian progress here as well. >> i think you have the whole world absent hamas rooting for you. thank you very much. please come back with any updates or information when you're able to share it. thank you so much for talking with us. >> thank you. >> we'll continue to monitor events in the middle east, but this has also been a very consequential day in our country in the political arena. when we come back we'll turn to jim jordan. he's struggling so far in his

bid to become speaker of the house. that position, of course, means you're second in line for the presidency. he fell short in the first round of voting but still has a shot in the insurrection that sought to keep the disgraced ex-president in power when he was defeated. he'll be our guest after a very short break. and later in the hour the ex-president was back in court today for his civil fraud trial in new york, and he's already testing the gag orders in that case as well as the federal criminal case against him in washington, d.c. where a judge issued a gag order against him just yesterday. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. after a quick break. don't go anywhere. about botox®. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they even start. it's the #1 prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment. so far, more than 5 million botox® treatments have been given to over eight hundred and fifty thousand chronic migraine patients. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks

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we were watching the house floor all day long in our free time as republicans try to decide whether ohio extreme right-wing congressman jim jordan will become their leader, the speaker of the house. if jordan is elected speaker, the person second in line to the american presidency after the vice president, the speaker will be someone who actively worked to subvert our constitutional democracy, someone who tried to participate in a coup against the united states government. according to the final january 6th select committee report, quote, jordan participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior white house officials, rudy giuliani, and others discussed strategies for challenging the election. chief among them claims the election had been tainted by fraud. on january 2, 2021, representative jordan led a conference call in which he, donald trump, and other members of congress discussed strategies

for delaying the january 6th joint session. quote, during that call the group also discussed issuing social media posts encouraging president trump's supporters to march to the capitol onanuary 6th. the day before january 6th, representative jordan texted mark meadows, passing along advice that vice president pence should, quote, call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all. he spoke with trump by phone at least twice on january 6th, though he has provided inconsistent public statements about how many times they spoke and what was discussed. when asked today why he would not admit to his republican colleague ken buck that the 2020 election was not stolen, jacketless jim jordan wouldn't give an answer. joining me now covering all the action my friend and nbc news correspondent ali vitali. ali, it's a sad state of the world not that it's light, but

it's lighter than a war, jim jordan as speaker. tell me the latest. >> reporter: well, look, i think you're right to point out all of that background, nicolle. on top of that you have to remember that the january 6th committee had a lot of valid questions for the congressman, he defied those subpoenas. that's something i talked with former january 6th committee chairman benny thompson today asking how it feels to see jordan basically within striking distance of the speakership, although he's far from having locked it up. and while thompson said he was dismayed someone look jordan could get that close, he almost felt better about the fact he wasn't there quite yet. i did reference the fact jordan was going to try again, and thompson said, yeah, anything could happen around this place. certainly for the members of the january 6th committee, it is certainly a stark moment of contrast to go from a democratic majority where there were valid inquiries into trying to piece together for the american public what happened on the 6th to now seeing someone who was an active

participant in that come as someone who's the likely next speaker of the house. and i think that word likely is really important, nicolle, because right now he's the person that's next, but it's not clear jim jordan can get the 217 votes he actually needs to get this position. it's why at the beginning of this hour i thought i'd be coming on the air with you telling you we expect a vote around 6:00. that's what my sources told me earlier in the afternoon. we know jim jordan and steve scalise had met, that jordan is trying to continue to talk to members. and now within the last few minutes jordan himself telling our colleagues that they still need more time to talk to members. and that means they're going to go home tonight and they're not going to do another round of votes until 11:00 tomorrow morning. this is because as jordan concedes, he needs more time to try to get those 20 members who are not onboard with him right now back onboard with him tomorrow. my sense was jordan was always willing to go multiple rounds of

balloting on this. but certainly doesn't seem they're making progress especially we're seeing them push votes to tomorrow. >> ali vitali, thank you very much for spending some time with us. we'll continue to call on you. joining us now it congressman zoe lofgren. i'm fascinating of someone trying to go to the next level. i wonder what your thoughts are about jim jordan's view, about jim jordan being speaker? >> well, he'd have to answer that himself. he has not been a good chairman of the judiciary committee, and he's not been a good member of congress. he was up to his eyeballs in the plot to overturn the constitution. we know from the poll records, the extensive calls he had at the war room where bannon and the others were with the

president, the president on the 6th, the meetings he attended at the white house, he called on his supporters to march on the capitol. you know, he's not someone who supports our democratic institutions. and the idea that he would be second in line to the presidency is pretty astonishing. >> i mean, i feel like you're being -- you're being diplomatic. he's a terrible member of congress in terms of what congress is, right? he's a terrible lawmaker. he's never made a law. and he's a terrible chair of the subcommittee on weaponization. this was his thing. this was sort of his steak and vodka he got from voting for mccarthy, and he's totally whiffed. he's done a terrible job. they have no actual evidence. you've got ken buck -- let's stick with the republican critiques about other republicans. you've got other republicans saying the things he tried to do when he was elevated by mccarthy were a bust. so what are you bracing for if

he should make up the, you know, nearly two dozen votes he's lacking and become speaker? >> well, he's not very good as a chairman or as a member of congress, you're right. if there's evidence before him, he just ignores it and makes stuff up. and that's really hard to prevail on in a legislative environment. i thought ken buck was being actually diplomatic discussing his failures. but, you know, the concern is not only is he bad at his job but that he doesn't really support our institutions of the government. i mean he tried to overthrow the government. i am not confident that he would abide by the rules of the house, that he would abide by the traditions of the house, that he would uphold the democracy. and the thing is there is another alternative. you know, we have been clear, and mr. jeffries, has been in

touch with the republicans to say there is a bipartisan path forward, that democrats and republicans could craft. and i hope that my friends and i do have friends who are republicans in this house who think about that because we can end up with a stronger institution instead of someone who really helped to try to overturn our form of government on january 6th. >> you were part of the committee that developed evidence that proved even jim jordan thought he might have committed crimes. the january 6th report says this, quote, in the days following january 6th representative jordan spoke with white house staff about the prospect of presidential pardons for members of congress. liz cheney said this, jim jordan knew what he planned more than any other member on the house of representatives. and if republicans decide gymnasium jordan should be the speaker there'd be no way to argue a group of elected

republicans should be counted onto uphold the constitution. should we reframe our conversations about why that is and why jim jordan needs sean hannity to earn support for him in his own caucus? >> i think we need to look at the maga mob. the maga mob tried to kill us on january 6th, and really jim jordan is calling on that maga mob to threaten republican members of the house and force them to vote for him. and the question is will that work. i was stunned that mitt romney said that some of the senators wanted to convict trump but they were afraid of physical violence if they did. so there's that element here at work, and this is an important decision for our country. are we going to be able to move forward in a civilized manner supporting our institutions and our constitution, or are we

going to give in to kind of a bully republic? and that's really what republicans have to weigh. i know that this is a difficult decision for some republicans because their constituents believe the lies that they've been told. and that makes it really more difficult for them than for me. i do understand that. but in the end we've got to do what cassidy hutchinson said and pass the mirror test. you've got to be able to look in the mirror and realize you can live with yourself for the rest of your life. >> congresswoman zoe lofgren, never a dull moment up there. thank you so much for spending time with us today. when we come back there's big developments to tell you about today in two of the legal cases facing the disgraced ex-president donald trump including his return to court in that civil fraud in new york. we'll get to that after a short break. don't go anywhere. t to that aft break. don't go anywhere.

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in where is waldo news, the disgraced ex-president appeared again today in a new york city courtroom watching as prosecutors made their case against him in that civil fraud trial and questioned more witnesses, important witnesses about whether trump overvalued his properties. we'll get to those developments in a nano second. it was on his way into that courtroom where two weeks ago he was issued i think it was his first partial gag order, that trump today complained about

another gag order from another judge in another case over trump's threatening comments in another trial. trump told reporters today that federal judge tanya chutkan's new gag oer in the election interference trial denies him, quote, the right to speak. meanwhile her very narrowly tailored partial gag order gives him the right to speak aut lots and lots of things but simply ensures an orderly proceeding barring frim hum attacking prosecutors and court staff. trump ranted and railed against jue chutkan who he said, quote, doesn't like me and said that her order was, quote, totally unconstitutional. joining our conversation and coverage, former assistant u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst ben kirschner is here, plus professor of law at the university of utah, first

amendment scholar and expert is here, and with me at the table "the new york times" investigative reporter susanne craig is back. these were pretty important witnesses. take me through what they added to attorney general trish james case? >> i think what jumps out a lot in this case is about this debate about appraisals and are they large, are they science, and that's sort of how it's being framed. >> and that's the defense that it's not -- >> yeah, that they're all squishy and, you know, what's 100 million, 200 million, are and i want to be clear with donald trump we're not look at variations of 10 and 30%. i think today what we saw is there was an appraiser that came up that had worked for the trump organization, and he testified that the things that the trump organization had said they had

come to some decisions on appraisals from information from him. and he said, in fact he didn't provide it. and so now you're really sort of i think they're going further by saying there was deception here and these sort of things. so it's not just going to be a debate about is it valuation, an appraisal, is there difference between a valuation and appraisal, and that's sort of the boring stuff i think you're hearing and getting repetitive. i think today you're seeing sort of more -- just evidence coming forward that actually goes to -- >> when i read about the testimony today i was thinking about his pattern of settling it's clear to me why he does that. and mean the facts don't ever -- there's never a day or witness where you think this really hurts, the evidence is like wallpaper, layer after layer after layer proving what has been alleged. >> right, he says he doesn't settle and he usually does

settle, and i think there's no settlement going to be happening here, and i think it's really important when we talk about this because i think these trials sort of blur to people who aren't following the ins and outs of each one. and in this case we've actually had a summary judgment where we're going into a trial and it's already been found he's liable, and he's going to have to potentially pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties at the other end of this. right now really what is going on in court in manhattan in the civil trial is just it's all over, i mean they're coming to a number, and that's the evidence the judge is hearing is just about how bad is it. >> i mean the shouting gets us to the other news we want to talk about right now. i mean the shouting is what trump is shouting about, we must shout more than the limited gag orders would allow him to, if i extended the metaphor too far, you can rein it back in. he's clearly intending to use

these narrowly tailored gag orders as a spark or prod to rile up his own supporters. is it going to work? >> well, i think that's what remains to be seen. it is definitely not uncommon for a judge in any criminal trial to advise all of the litigants and parties and lawyers to the case to avoid making extra judicial comments that would threaten the integrity of that proceeding. that's the piece that's not uncommon. everything after that is quite uncommon. if there are, of course, massive first amendment concerns for any judge who is entering into a gag order of prior restraint on speech. and particularly when the speech involves potential political speech or campaign speech, which is why we see the order, the written version of which we got today really carefully specifying the ways in which the judge is trying to limit the gag to speech that is specifically about the crimes of which this

defendant is accused and also the particular proceeding that she's about to have to the oversee. and i think importantly here one of the reasons that we don't have really great first amendment doctrine on this front is that this is a space in which that like a lot of other constitutional spaces, a lot of the work has been done here over time by norms, democracy enhancing norms that everyone observed with respect to the rule of law. and every criminal defense attorney everywhere urges their client not to speak about the case outside of the courtroom and certainly tells them to steer far clear of things that might be seen as enraging the judge or imperilling the prosecutor or court employees or tanking the jury or directly or indirectly influencing

witnesses. this is a unique defendant and a unique defendant in all sorts of ways, in these norm flouting ways but also in the fact this is a candidate for president of the united states and is someone as the judge noted in today's order who has the power intentionally or unintentionally to spur other people to acts of violence or additional intimidation. the real complexity here and the real intractable problem this judge is judges on appeal are going to have to tussle with is the one you point to which is our doctrine really presupposes we're dealing with a defendant who's actively interested in not enraging a judge or sparking the judge's ire, and this is a defendant who has shown he's eager to do the opposite, and these sorts of concerns means the court is going to have to be very careful about crafting

doctrine that is crafty about free speech law going forward but also aware of the immediate facts on the ground in this particular case. i think as the first amendment chaos goes, we're not at the end, we're maybe not even at the beginning of the end. my guess there'll be push back intention in the days to come. >> it's so interesting because no matter the context, whether it's the transfer of power. ooh, we didn't solve for this, there's nothing in the constitution about someone who refuses to leave, no one takes into account someone trying to burn it all down literally and figuratively. before we go to break i want to show president biden who moments ago boarded air force one departing joint base andrews on his way to israel. just happened. quick break for us. we'll be right back. happened. quick break for us we'll be right back.

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needs plan. humana. a more human way to healthcare. we're back. really the most consequential piece of this is whether the rule of law in this country applies to everyone evenly. and i think it's pretty universally held that anyone else would have been sanctioned or put under a gag order far earlier. and to rinell's point it would be because they'd be driven by an incentive to not jeopardize

themselves legally. and we haven't solved for trump's desire for total destruction for every process he's a part of. but i wonder how that plays into enforcement of the gag orders? >> yeah, great question. i think we just we just heard t first amendment chaos is just beginning. i say bring it on, because there will be lots of litigation assuming donald trump continues to speak and post recklessly. what are the odds? there will be litigation over whether they varietilated the term of this order and if so, what the appropriate sanctions will be. but this was so important to do. nicolle, you ask the question, won't he just use this to rile up his base? the answer as far as i'm concerned is, who cares? because if not this he will use something else to rile up his base. what judge chutkan did is take an important step to protect the new administration of justice and frankly, even more

importantly from somebody who spent a lifetime dealing with victims of crime, he protected the witnesses, he protected the court staff, interestingly she didn't seem to include herself in the gag order, prohibiting statements against court staff. and she also took measures to protect jack smith and his staff. and now of course the question is, has he violated it already? look at some of the comments he made at his iowa rally and then some of his posts there after. he said for example, the judge doesn't like me. not a violation of the gag order. he said the judge's whole life is about not liking me, to which i have to observe, narcissism much, donald? her life is about not liking you but again, i don't think that violates the gag order. he then lie about the gag order. he ed is gag order prohibits him from speaking badly about my opponents. no it doesn't, the judge specifically exempted out speech

going after joe biden, going after mike pence or other presidential candidates. so he lied about it. but again, a lie about the gag order is not a violation of the gag order, i don't believe. but you know what i does? it all goes into the donald trump bucket of badness, and it will be trotted out in court when he does do something that could be considered an intentional violation of the gag order, and the prosecutors will rightly argument you know, when he railed against you, judge, we didn't ask for a show cause order claiming he violated the gag order, and when he lied about the gag order, we didn't ask that he be revoked. now he's directly violated your order by talk about witnesses or court staff or the prosecutors or their staff, and now we are seeking sanctions. and there was some discussion -- i was in court yesterday -- about the range of sanctions. it could include financial sanctions. it could include home detention. it could include criminal

contempt, and ultimately it could involve revocation of his pretrial release. i think if donald trump decides he wants to directly test judge chutkan's resolve, watch out, because he may find himself in pretrial detention. >> extraordinary. glen kirshner, renell, thank you so much for being here today. to be continued. another break for us. we'll be right back. r break fors we'll be right back. and grime i. dawn powerwash has 3 cleaning boosters not found in traditional dish soaps that remove food and grease 5 times faster. and, because it cleans so well you can replace multiple cleaning products for counters, stoves, and even laundry stains. try dawn powerwash dish spray. brand power, helping you buy better.

in the midst of another horrific tragedy yesterday there was a moment of community and unity and extreme greeft in the desperate plea for peace. mourners gathered in suburb for the funeral of a 6-year-old palestinian american boy who was reportedly stabbed to death. in what authorities are investigating as a local hate crime. members of his local muslim community were joined by a group of chicago-area rabbis. one of the rabbis posted this photo with the mosques after a ma'am on facebook and says, the jerusalem tall mud teaches that the jewish people are obligated to comfort mourner of our team. the murder of a 6-year-old boy because of his faith and his identity is not complicated. it is a heinous crime, and that's why we went today. these day it really feels like

the world has lost its way. but it can't give up on trying, yearning, dreaming of finds the way to shalom, the way to salam, the way the peace. small sliver of beauty we wanted to share with you. another break for us. we'll be back. ith you. another break for us we'll be back. your workplace bs and retirement savings. with voya, considering all your financial choices together can help you make smarter decisions. voya. well planned. well invested. well protected. (all) ♪ toooo youuuuu! ♪ (sean) i wish for the amazing new iphone 15 pro! (jason) sean! do you mean this one - the one with titanium? (sean) no way i can trade this busted up thing for one. (jason) maybe stealing wishes from the birthday boy is not your best plan -- switch to verizon and trade in any iphone and get the new iphone 15 pro on them. (sean) what!? (jason) yup, and on an amazing network (sean) and i don't have to ruin anymore birthday parties! (jason) yeah, that ship has sailed... let's go get you the iphone. here we go, come on hon. (vo) it's your last chance to trade in any iphone for a new iphone 15 pro on us. only on verizon.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> hi, nicolle. welcome to the "the beat." i'm ari melber.