and then, you get to erase the, bad you continue to do. >> not committing crimes does not make you a hero. apart for elected officials as to be higher than the bare minimum. we can't expect more, and we have to expect more. that does it for me tonight. the rachel maddow show rates right now. hi rachel, welcome back. >> that was fantastic. i just had an event with stacey abrams where the book tour where i had to cancel everything for getting covid. she is so impressive every time i speak with her. i can't stand it. >> i know, i just kept thinking about what she said. the and i just kept thinking about what she said, the lowering of the bar of elected officials. we need to raise the bar. it's so important to remember it should be they're making peoples lives better, thought they're breaking the law. >> to be clear-eyed what this is, what public service is and what heroism is.

and these two things don't go hand in hand. she's a very, very smart person and i'm looking forward to her being back in office somewhere, someday, at some point. >> she's not ruled that out. politics is in her blood. >> appreciate it. >> have a great show. >> thank you. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. i dopologize for not week here in this chair tis this time last week. i was out sick. i think i was in the last people in the country who never had it before, but i finally tested positive about a week and a half ago. i'm vaccinated, so that helped me get an easier bout, and rested up and took a five day course of paxlovid, which honestly is kind of gross while you're taking it, but in my oin totally worth it. it's only five days of pills. by the end of my five days i had no fever, totally reduced

symptoms, and most importantly i was testing negative and plot a risk to other people. anyway, i'm back. i'm sorry i missed you here last week. i also had to cancel and reschedule the remaining book tour for my book events "prequel." i will tell you prequel debuted at number one on the "the new york times" best-seller list. i'll be back out book touring as of this weekend in new york city with chris hayes, and next week i'll be in north hampton, massachusetts, and boulder, colorado. and november 28th you can see me in tulsa, oklahoma. and i'll be with seth myers tomorrow, the cbs morning show this week. everything had to get canceled

for a while and that's why i was gone, but now i'm back. a lot going on. thank you science, thank you covid vaccines. happy to be back. and i will say i'm particularly grateful to be back on my feet in time for election day. this is 2023 obviously, an odd number year. it means we're not having national federal elections this year, but the elections that we are having this year, tomorrow are more fascinating, more surprising than your usual off-year fare. surprising in the sense that i mean depending on where you look, one of the races that might actually be contested tomorrow, that might actually be close is the governor's race in mississippi. seriously. i mean mississippi hasn't voted for a democrat for president since i was 3 years old. i am now 50 years old. it has been 24 hours since a democrat was elected governor of

mississippi. but nevertheless believe it. democrat brandon presley is in the running for that state's governor's election tomorrow. democrat brandon presley, he has that famous last name. elvis presley was in fact his second cousin or cousin once removed or something. but his story is much more relatable than that distant celebrity relation. brandon presley was raised by a single mom. his mom worked in a garment factory. his father was murdered when he was 8 years old. brandon presley's family was poor enough they had their utilities, they had their water cut off because they couldn't afford to pay. mr. presley is campaigning in mississippi saying that it's ridiculous given the economics in mississippi that state has the highest tax on groceries in the whole country, and so he wants to get rid of that. obviously that's a very popular position. mississippi really has

unaffordable health care, lots of people uninsured. presley said he'll get people insurance by huge numbers by expanding medicaid, which is financially a very, very, very good deal for the state and would get hundreds of thousands of people insurance in mississippi. so with popular positions like that, with the compelling personal story that he's got, brandon presley is running against the republican incumbent, governor tate reaves, one of the least popular governors in the country. one of the albaterouses around his neck is the huge ongoing corruption scandal in mississippi. you may have heard about it this over the last few years. it was 2020 when the state auditor announced that $77 million in federal funds have mysteriously gone walkies in mississippi. it was apparently diverted into huge speaking fees for politicians and people connect today the state administration,

also a bunch of money was diverted into a weird pet project for bret farve, retired quarterback from mississippi. this was supposed to be federal welfare funds. tate reeves was governor. since the sc broke several people have pled guilty to bribery and fraud and conspiracy charges. the guy who was the state department of resources under tate reeves was sentenced to decades in prison for this scandal. now, tate reeves himself has not been charged, again in a federal investigation that's put one person in prison for decades, the federal investigation here is an ongoing thing. so, yes, it's mississippi. and mississippi very much appears to be a red state. but this democrat, brandon presley, is making a real run for that governorship tomorrow,

tomorrow we shall see. the fact it is not a slam dunk for republicans and that it is considered to be a leans republican race, considered where a democrat at least has a shot at potentially a runoff is just a remarkable thing. also kentucky. you think mississippi is red? for perspective mississippi went for donald trump by 2020 by 16 points. kentucky went for donald trump in 2020 not by 1 points but by 26 points. wow. still, though, the year before that in 2019 kentucky elected a democrat for governor, andy bashir, and democratic governor andy bashir is up for re-election tomorrow in kentucky. and again, yes, this is a super, super red state by some metrics, but democrat andy bashir won the governorship there in 2019, and he has run a solid campaign for re-election, and there is a dynamic at work in this kentucky

election that is, i think, maybe hard to overestimate. it's at least hard to estimate in terms of its effect on voters. the issue in kentucky of abortion rights. republicans coal the state legislature in kentucky when conservatives on the u.s. supreme court overturned kentucky is one of those that got effectively a complete and total ban on abortion. a majority of kentucky residents voted in favor of abortion rights in a statewide referendum but the republicans in the legislature nevertheless imposed this total ban. and it is really a total ban. in kentucky you're only allowed to get an abortion if not getting an abortion will kill youory permanently disable you. other than that, no exceptions. the government will force you to carry a pregnancy to term, will force you to give birth against your will even if you're under age, even if you're pregnant because you were raped. and this is not a theoretical

thing. this is the existing ban, this is the existing law in effect in kentucky. and polling by the bashir campaign shows that support for the total abortion ban that's in effect in the state right now is at 12%. only 12% of people in the entire state actually approve of the total abortion ban that the republican legislature has imposed there. but the republican nominee for governor, daniel cameron, he's defended the ban in court. he said he supports it, and that's led to this point in the governor's race in kentucky, an ad i'm going to show you here. i'm going to show it to you in full because this is the most effective, most memorable, most sort of stop you in your tracks 30-second long political ads i have seen in a very, very long time. i will warn you that this is

very intense so it is very personal. as i said it's just 30 seconds long, and i think you'll see immediately why this is perceive today have had such a big effect on voters in kentucky heading into this governor's election tomorrow. watch. >> i was rape by my stepfather after years of sexual abuse. i was 12. anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes. this is to you, daniel cameron. to tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. i'm speaking out because women and girls need to have options. daniel cameron would give us none. >> daniel cameron is, again, the republican candidate for governor in kentucky. he has defended the total abortion ban that's in effect in that state. that ban does force girls and women impregnated by rape to

give birth against their will. and according to internal polling from the bashir campaign as reported in "the new york times" only 12% of kentuckyians say they are in favor of that abortion ban. but republicans in the state legislature imposed it, the state is living under it right now, and that in part is why a state that trump won by 26 points is nevertheless looking at a tie game in the polls heading into this election tomorrow. the last poll heading into tomorrow's vote is literally 47-47 as this state decides tomorrow in kentucky whether or not to re-elect their democratic governor who was against that abortion ban or instead elect republican daniel cameron who is for it. tomorrow election day abortion rights also going to be on the ballot directly in the great state of ohio. you know, everywhere there's been a statewide vote on abortion rights since the conservatives on the supreme court overturned roe, everywhere

people have had it chance to vote for or against abortion rights in kentucky, michigan, everywhere, people have voted for abortion rights. and ohio's going to have that vote tomorrow. in ohio republicans there have passed an almost complete ban, a so-called 6-week ban. it has been tied up in court, but in the meantime republicans are pretty sure they're going to lose a state-wide ohio vote tomorrow. ohio voters tomorrow are expected to vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution, which would effectively block the republican abortion ban. republicans have done everything possible to try to forestall that eventuality tomorrow. they tried to change the threshold number of votes you need to be able to add something to the constitution. they very quietly canceled the voter registrations of 26,000 people in ohio right before the deadline to be registered to vote before tomorrow's election.

they changed the language people will actually see on their ballots before turning out to vote. instead of seeing the real language of the new constitutional proposed government, republicans rephrased it and rewrote it in anti-abortion language to make it sound as bad as possible. but despite all those shenanigans, ohio voters appear to be as fired up on this as they've been in other states where this has been put to a vote since conservatives overturned roe federally. kansas, montana, california, vermont, michigan, kentucky, all the states where people have been asked about abortion rights since the supreme court overturned roe, in every single one of those states people are sided with abortion rights in considerable numbers. ohio is going to be the next state to make such a decision tomorrow. republicans have decided to play as many tricks as they can, to try to use as much small "d" anti-democratic mishegoss as

they can in this referendum, but we shall see. it is also going to be worth tomorrow watching the results in virginia. in virginia itit's the state legislature that's up, control of the state legislature which is currently divided between the two parties. but there, once again, it is a republican administration state government that's in charge of ministering it election. and in virginia just like in ohio, the republican controlled state government has admitted to purging thousands of people off the voter rolls right before the election. in virginia it's republican governor glen youngkin's administration that admits canceling the thousands of people's voter registrations in virginia even though those people were legally registered to vote. and even though the youngkin administration purged them off the voter rolls so late, so close to the election, that early voting had already started. it's a dirty trick, but they do

it everywhere they can. there's been a lot of quiet murmuring, a lot of political gossip if republicans in virginia do well tomorrow in these legislative races, if they do well and get control or super majority control in virginia, then republican governor glen youngkin will try to claim credit for that, by hook or by crook you do what you have to. youngkin if results go the way he wants tomorrow he'll try to use election results tomorrow to launch himself into the republican presidential contest as ailate entrant to try to beat donald trump for the republican nomination. again, this is gossip. and it is november already, and it seems wildly implausible someone would jump in now and take the lead in the race. but i'll tell you there's been chatter about this in republican circles for weeks, so watch for

virginia's results tomorrow. make of it what you will. as we head into election day tomorrow, though, in all these individual states it's always interesting in an off-year. you'll see there's a special congressional election in rhode island and legislative election in new jersey and virginia and statewide referendum in ohio. it's all these interesting one off things, but they do all give you some national information. and as we head into tomorrow's off-year elections in all these individual states, and as we hit one year from the national presidential election next year, you do see these two things intercepting with each other, right, affecting each other. these individual contests ins the states and what's going on in national politics, right? these things do sort of interweave. maybe the virginia results tomorrow might affect whether or not we get another republican governor jumping into the meat grinder of the republican presidential primary where donald trump is currently ahead

of his leading challenger by an average of 40 plus points. maybe that will happen because of tomorrow's legislative election results in virginia. maybe. it does not help, ultimately for the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, donald trump, to have put three of the justices on the supreme court to provide three new votes to overturn roe v. wade given how wildly unpopular that decision has been with the american people in conservative states, in liberal states, in every state across the country. maybe it really does not help for republicans in congress to have elevated to speaker of the house the cosponsor of the national federal total abortion ban. maybe that does not help in these individual state contests. maybe in mississippi where governor tate reeves has not been criminally charged in thapt that corruption case but seven other people associated with that scandal in his administration have been and the federal investigation is ongoing, maybe it does not help

tate reeves in mississippi tomorrow to have that corruption case looming over him as governor while we also have the likely republican nominee for president on trial in four different jurisdictions facing 91 felony counts. donald trump, you may have heard, today took the stands as a witness in the quarter billion dollar civil trial in which he and his business are accused of years of massive financial fraud. his testimony was chaotic and rambling by all accounts. legal observers broadly today said his testimony likely undercut his own lawyer's defense strategy in terms of the provable allegations in this case and the amount of distance his lawyervise been trying to put between him and the financial statements that are at issue in this fraud case. but, you know, the sort of chaotic, insulting, non sequitur character of his testimony today may not help with the sort of black letter law of this civil

fraud case that he's facing, but it does have a larger point for him, right? chaotic, rambling, non sequitur, out of control, insulting, sort of unprofessional, inappropriate testimony may not help with his case, but it does make a mockery of the legal system. it does implicitly, at least, and explicitly according to some of his testimony today, show that he's trying to denigrate and discredit and delegitimize not just this case but the legal system, the court system. that does appear to be his larger goal. when your legal troubles include a couple of huge civil cases and 91 felony criminal counts against you, one way to fight that is to fight each of the civil suits and each of the 91 felony charges on the substance. sure you could do gnat. the ease, path, the more

efficient path is to run against the legal system. to tell your followers the american legal system of justice and law enforcement and the judiciary and the court, it's all illegitimate. and your followers should see it as illegitimate, too. tell your followers you don't intend to follow the rules of the legalsome and they shouldn't either. delegitimizing the legal system, delegitimizing and trying to discredit the independent judicial court system is the most important step to zaufbing the court system or trying to turn it into something unrecognizable in a democracy. we're knowing to talk with "the washington post" reporter devlen barrett tonight about his new reporting about the planning that's under way on the right for what to do to the u.s. legal system if trump or another republican is elected president next year. truly chilling reporting from

devlen barrett and his colleagues at "the washington post." we're going to have devlen barrett here live coming up this hour. but you might have seen the wig political news over the last 48 hours was the "the new york times" siena college polling that came out this week about the presidential race. and the headline there is that president biden's re-election efforts look like it's in trouble. trump is ahead of biden in a theoretical match in so-called five of six battleground states. interesting even in that poll those results flip when people are asked about trump possibly being convicted of any of the felonies he's currently charged with. in that same poll all six of those six swing states would go for biden if trump is convicted on any count in any of his trials. so we'll see. but you see how central this is to trump's effort to try to get back into the white house. it's a chicken and egg thing in terms of why he wants to get there, right, and what

convictions have to be seen as by his followers. but you see why his effort is to try to not necessarily beat all these charges and all these civil suits. it's to say the local system doesn't matter and the legal system isn't in power, and the legal system doesn't need to be obeyed. here's one last point, though. one last poll number that i think isn't getting the attention that it should particularly from the sort of pundit class, it's this number. 71%. 71% support. americans have a favorable view of labor unions by a huge margin right now. 71% support, that's higher than at any time in my lifetime. it is higher than at any time since the 1960s. and unions have had this bunch of great successes within the past year. ups workers who are part of the

teamsters, academic workers, tens of thousands of health care workers at kaiser, airline pilots, the writer's guild in hollywood, all of these big labor successes in the past 12 months squch now of course the uaw, united auto workers, a big strike against the big three auto makers has brought agreements for what are being called record contracts, a 25% pay raise for auto workers over 4 1/2 years, $84,000 a year. plus cost of living adjustments guaranteed as a protection against inflation. now, these are all tentative agreements with the big three auto makers. uaw locals still have to ratify the results, but the terms the union won in this strike are so favorable that when they were announced, toyota, which isn't union, unexpectedly announced a surprise increase in its own wages for its own nonunion

employees presumably to try to preempt them all wanting to join the union now, to get the same kind of deal uaw was just able to get for its members at ford and gm and stellantis. the uaw strike was audacious, it was pushy, it was a huge success. uaw president sean fain said if the auto makers have record profits, which they do, then we should have record contracts. and now they do. just watch this. you can tell from the way they are messaging on this, from the very beginning of this strike you can tell that part of the wind in their sails here is that they know the kind of support they have from the american public. >> we have nothing to fear. i look around here i see power. i see faith, and i see a working

class that's fed up and fired up. i see working class people from all walks of life standing together. you all know what we need to do, and now the whole world knows what we need to do. when they tell us to sit down, we stand up! >> that point, we stand up, it's a rallying cry. it's also a technical point, which i will explain in just a moment. you may have recognized some democratic politicians in that footage from uaw. recognizable folks here, sanders, hakeem jeffries. this was all put out before the leader of the democratic party, the itissing president of the united states made history by being the first sitting president in the history of the united states to join union workers on the picket line, first time that's ever happened in american history. president joe biden made history that way in the midst of this

strike while his likely opponent next year, donald trump, instead ran out and said the uaw was selling auto workers down the tubes. he said to uaw members, quote, i don't think you're picketing for the right thing. he said member of the uaw should stop paying their dues. this was his contribution, and then uaw got record contracts from all three auto makers with massive support from the american people, basically the whole country cheering them on, with president biden making history to step out and support them in a way no president has ever done before. and then they won bigger than anybody thought they could in this supposedly fatally polarized country where we can't agree on anything, the country all basically agrees on this. they did. the head of the uaw shawn fain joins us live next. n fain joins us live next

ah, these bills are crazy. she has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com.

c'mon, we're right there. c'mon baby. it's the only we need. go, go, go, go! ah! touchdown baby! -touchdown! are your neighbors watching the same game? yeah, my 5g home internet delays the game a bit. but you get used to it. try these. they're noise cancelling earmuffs. i stole them from an airport. it's always something with you, man. great! solid! -greek salad? exactly! don't delay the game with verizon or t-mobile 5g home internet. catch it on the xfinity 10g network. it was called the sit-down strike, december 30th, 1936,

people who worked at a gm plant in flint, michigan, stopped working and they sat down. they weren't picketing outside the factory. they sat down inside the factory and wouldn't leave. they slept on car cushions, ate food passed to them through factory windows from friends and supporters and family members. they basically occupied the plant by sitting. sit down strikes had been used in europe. it was a fairly new strategy in the u.s. this one the 1936 sit down strike in flint was the work of the very, very new united auto workers. and the idea was that by sitting down by strike instead of picketing outside the plant, the workers weren't only withholding their own labor, they were also making it impossible for people to come in and take their place. this was a radical thing. and they stuck it out. they stayed when the heat got cut off in 16-degree weather. they stayed when police tear

gassed the plant to try to get them out. these guys stayed for 44 days, and they won. they got pay raises. they got new safety measures, and for the first time ever they got a major u.s. car company to recognize the united auto workers as a union. that sit down strike in 1936, it worked. today in our time the united auto workers has again taken on the auto industry with another new tactic, not with a sit down strike like 1936 but what they call this year a stand up strike. instead of having all their members strike everywhere in every factory all at once which it previously did, this time they picked individual strike tuesday plant and did it by surprise while they were continuing negotiations with the car companies. for 46 days the union would tell workers at specific plants just hours ahead of time okay now you, you stand up and walk off the job at that specific plant. and then the next day the stand up strike would happen somewhere else. this was a new strategy, and it

had an important and interestingly balanced impact. these roll localized surprise disruptions at individual plants, yes, they put the fear of god into the auto makers, but it didn't create the nationwide shortage of new cars and trucks that would probably quickly alieniate the public. a sit down strike was an innovation in '36. stand up strike was than the innovation in 2023. it worked. uaw has just won tentative agreements for vastly improved contracts with three of the country's biggest auto makers, gm, ford, and stellantis. the fight was led by uaw president shawn fain. >> we may get fired up, but we're disciplined. and we may get rowdy, but we're organized. not everything is about pulling out the bazooka. we've been very careful about how we escalate this strike, and we have designed this strategy to increase pressure on the

companies not to hurt them for its own sake but to move them, to get them to say yes when they want to say no. >> to move them, to get them to say yes when they want to say no. joining us now is shawn fain, president of the united auto workers. mr. feign, congratulations on the success of. >> great to be here. >> let me just ask if i've described the strategy here -- describing it correctly as an innovation, and did i get it right in the way it was sort of designed to calculate the effect we're looking for? >> you bet. basically it was harnessing the power of the membership. and think about this, i've only been in office for seven months, so in very short order we had to try to do everything we can to do be prepared for bargaining. we ran in the first time in our history for contract campaign, to get our membership prepared so in the event we had to take

action they would know what the issues were, know why we're out there and what we're fighting for. so the next step was, you know, we did a lot of for the first time unprecedented in this union was our transparency and communication with the membership doing facebook lives weekly, communicating with the members, keeping them updated what's going on at the bargaining table and out in other areas. you know, seeing our members rally and just action leading up to this, it gave us immense power at the bargaining table, and the company saw we had a unified union. in the past there was always two sets of people, the membership on the floor and the membership in detroit. and it's not that way anymore. we're one unit, unified, and this what happens when everyone gets together and unified in the approach and we had a great success with it. >> what do you think about how important it is there's so much public support right now for the union movement, for organized labor. i mean over the course of -- of

my lifetime we've seen wild fluctuations in the number of americans who are in organized labor, who are in unions themselves. you know, the uaw at one point was 1.5 million people, now it's closer to 400,000. we've seen big fluctuations, but we also see this huge amount of support right now in the public. how important was that to the success of these action and to the way you're thinking about to keep moving forward? >> i think it's very important and i think it's just a sign of the times. for the last 40 years almost working class people looked packwards continually. slowly it's migrated and there's this massive chasm between the billionaire class and working class. when 26 billionaires have as much wealth as half of humanity, that's a crisis. and our issues whether it's uaw, it's working class issues, whether you're union or not.

everyone identifies with what's going on right now. people in unions and people -- working class people that aren't in unions literally scraping to get by, they're working several days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day not to save money. it's way pastime and up to organized labor to lead that movement. and i'm really proud of the work we've done and other unions standing up to the working class. we've already seen the fruits of that. we negotiated record contracts of the big three, and within a week you saw toyota reduce their progression four years for their employees and give them 90% pay increases. we call that the uaw bump, and that's what happens. and when those people become members of the uaw, they'll get even more. >> let me ask you directly if you have anything to say tonight on television to tesla, honda,

toyota, other nonunion car companies that are making cars in the united states. as you mention toyota seems to have given a uaw bump to their nonuaw workers presumably try preempt any enthusiasm by toyota work toorz get the same deal by joining uaw. do you have anything to say to those car makers now what's going to happen next? >> i look at the migration of my grandparents from the '30s and '40s, i and may moved to union jobs and it changed their lives. we've had throughout this process because of the energy in this campaign literally we've had hundreds of workers from all over the south and nonunion companies reach out to us about organizing. they want tapiece of this. that's the comparison i look at is they saw a better life and setting a standard. people want to be a part of that. so we're reaching out to members, and we are in the

process of planning our next steps for organizing. we've revamped and organized the department, and we are locked and load, and we're coming from them. you know, those workers at tesla, hyundai, nissan, we want to have a wage where we can have a sustainable life not just live to work but work to have a good living. and that's too far gone the other way in the past, so i really believe we're going to have a lot of success, and i believe those members want to join. i think once they do and step aside from the fear tactics and scare tactics these companies will employ upon them, when they see the benefit, there's no going back. >> one last question. i mention the very visible support you got from president biden, it's historic for a sitting president to have done that. have you had substantive support from behind the scenes personally from president biden and his administration, and is

this likely to lead to a uaw endorsement for president biden? >> well, as we've said from the outset, our endorsements are going to be earned not freely given. and our memberships right now, our focus has been on our agreements. so the membership right now the focus is getting them all the information they can around the contract and let them make a good -- it's up to them to vote in the next few weeks, and we'll address politics when it's time to do that. i will say this, you know, there's a distinct difference between the two leading candidates. you know, for the first time in our history of this country a president visited the picket line. that says a lot. the other candidate chose to a go to a nonunion factory that has nothing to do with uaw or our members. also in the process of working through, there are things we were laughed at and mocked in

our demands for saying we're crazy for asking for those things. one of those things was the ev battery, the transition to ev. and secretary of labor julie sue and u.s. trade ambassador, the white house they worked with us on a lot of this and worked with kaefrms also so we could get to this agreement. there's still a lot of work to be done, but we're headed in the right direction. >> no one is laughing now, no one is scoffing at what you do. shawn fain, thank you for your time, sir. i know these ratifications still need to happen. keep us apprised. >> it's an honor to be here. thank you. >> thank you. much more ahead tonight. stay with us. u. >> thank you much more ahead tonight. stay with us

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in late 2020 one way donald trump tried to stay in power after he was voted out of office was by plotting with an obscure appointee in the department of justice to try to use the department of justice to overtrch the presidential election results. from evidence cited in the federal criminal indictment of trump for his attempts to overturn the election, we know that when that official was told that keeping trump in office using such means would likely setoff riots across the united states, that official allegedly replied, quote, well that's why there's an insurrection act. in other words, yeah we understand there will be riots, but that's not a problem because

we will use the u.s. military against u.s. civilians. we will run this coup the old-fashioned way. we'll have tanks in the streets, the u.s. army out there. we'll have the military install our guy in power using military force, which is insane. and that is why jeffrey clark is no longer an aerosecure justice department appointee. now jeffy clark is an unindicted coconspirator in the case against trump. all of that against jeff clark we knew. what we did not know until now is that this plan is apparently not in the past. jeffrey clark is now, according to new reporting in "the washington post," still working on the insurrection act thing, still working on having trump use the military, use the u.s.

army against u.s. civilians on american streets starting day one of him retaking power next year. new reporting in "the washington post." that story is next. stay with us. ington post." that story is next stay with us we planned well for retirement, but i wish we had 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

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hi, i'm ben and i've lost 60 pounds on golo. (guitar music) i've struggled with weight my whole life. i'm sure you're like me and you've tried diet after diet. if you want to stop the insanity, try golo. i thought i was sort of past being shock. i will admit i found this legitimately shocking. quote, donald trump and his allies are drafting plans to potentially invoke the insurrection act on his first day in office to allow him to

deploy the military against civil demonstrations. quote, dubbed project 2025, the group is developing a plan to include draft executive orders that would deploy the u.s. military domestically under the insurrection act. the proposal is identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority. reported laleading the work on this insurrection plan of 2025 is jeffrey clark, a trump department official woo proposed having the doj endorse fake fraud claim tuesday effectively tell the states they should ignore election results and keep trump in power. according to trump's federal indictment, he allegedly favored using the insurrection act back then to use the u.s. military to keep trump in power. now, i should note that a spokesperson for the heritage foundation, which is organizing this project 2025 is denying the existence of this insurrection plan, but it is part of this --

it's part of this fairly shocking set of new reporting just out of the "the washington post." joining us now is "the washington post" national security reporter devlen barrett. devlen, nice to see you. thanks for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> i have to ask you in light of the heritage foundation it nighing the insurrection act part of this reporting, i just have to ask you if you standby your reporting and what do you make of that denial. >> well, absolutely. i mean, look, here's the weird dynamic that the insurrection act has played not just this year but for a number of years now, which is that starting around mid-2020 there were a lot of people who tried to convince trump to invoke the insurrection act to protest against his administration, any number of things they didn't like going on in the public square. so now what you have is a number of folks sort of mapping out what they would like a second

trump administration to look like. and one of the things they would like tee see is the use of the insurrection act to put down any protests. that is let's face it a theoretical conversation at this point. there is no second trump administration yet. there is no set of public protests to put down, but i think it says a lot about the way conservatives are talking about what a second trump administration would look like that one of the things that is right on the table right away is the insurrection act. >> yeah, the timing and it being there right away is the part of it really has stuck with me. i mean, if there aren't big civil demonstrations to put down, right, which is the theoretical justification for something like the insurrection act, is it your understanding they're preparing these executive orders, preparing these potential actions to potentially invoke the insurrection act as soon as he's president so it's there as a proverbial loaded gun for him to

use when he feels like it rather than being reactive to something they're anticipating happen in the country? >> sure, but i think there's one word of caution here to understand, which is that this is what some folks around trump and some folks who hope to be part of this second trump administration would like to see happen. that doesn't necessarily mean that trump has adopted these things, that trump already wants to do these things. i think one of the big conversations going on in conservative circles right now as we speak, and this is a big part of what we were trying to report on and explain is that there's a lot of conservatives including conservative lawyers who are trying to argue out like what should their role if any be in a second trump administration, because increasingly it looks like he will be the nominee, so there are a lot of republicans who have to make choices right now, and this is part of the discussion of those choices. >> yeah, the legal profession has choices to make, too, in term of its own professional

responsibility. this is chilling and fascinating reporting. thanks for helping us understand. >> thanks for having me. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. s for having me. >> we'll be right back stay with us

the next republican presidential debate is this week. it's wednesday night. we'll all be here wednesday night for post-debate coverage starting right after it's done at 10:00 p.m. eastern. of course tomorrow is election night in lots of states across the country. we here at msnbc will be covering it until the cows come home until steve kornacki's eyelids turn inside out on live television. all right, that does it for us tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. it's ridiculous. the numbers are much greater than on the financial statement, and we've already