that principle. >> 7 to 2. lisa rubin, thank you very much. that is "all in" on this wednesday night. "alex wagner tonight" starts right now. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. good evening, alex. says of course it's a functional principle of our democracy nobody is above the law and that applies to presidents, too. this is the ultimate test to you, brett kavanaugh, and how committed you are to that principle. >> that is all in for this wednesday night. alex wagner begins right now. >> i'm waiting for the next kate shaw op-ed.

married up, dude. >> i sure did. thanks to you at home for joining me this hour. in the year 2000 george bush became the first president in more than 100 years to win the presidency and lose the popular vote. in 2016 donald trump became the second. now, what made both of those victories even possible at the expense of the popular vote was the electoral college. but in 2000 it wasn't just the electoral college. it was also the supreme court. the 2000 election came down to the state of florida, the margin between al gore and george bush was 537 votes, a number that remains staggering to this day. and even though al gore had won the popular vote by more than half a million votes, whether those 537 votes in florida did or did not get counted would decide the race. and after a flurry of legal challenges and appeals, that decision ended up in the hands

of the supreme court. >> the supreme court hasn't been asked to decide the election, but their decision just might do just that. >> and here comes our -- here comes our runner -- >> the decision's been reversed. the u.s. supreme court has reversed the decision of the florida supreme court. >> several of the justices take the time to write separately. there's a dissent from justice breyer. there's a separate dissent from justice ginsburg. there's a separate dissent from justice sutor. so it appears the 5-4 vote is holding. it does appear as i look here to be a 5-4 opinion. >> the entire reason we as a country ended up electing george w. bush in the first place was a 5-4 vote by the supreme court, a vote along ideological lines with five conservative justice ruling in a way that handed bush the white house, and four liberal justices dissenting. and now today an even more

conservative supreme court could again effectively decide the 2024 election. there are two issues headed imminently towards the court, ones that could set the playing field for the 2024 election. number one, is how the court responds to yesterday's ruling from the colorado state supreme court, the one saying that donald trump should be taken off the ballot in that state because of section 3 of the 14th amendment. this one is particularly tricky. section 3 of that amendment says that no person shall hold any office civil or military under the united states who having previously taken an oath as an officer of the united states to support the constitution of the united states shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. now, i say this one is tricky because very few people have committed insurrection against the united states, and even fewer of those people tried to run for office after doing so.

so there is no real analog here as far as precedent. so where does that put donald trump? multiple lower courts have already ruled that trump himself did personally engage in insurrection. but a core question at issue here is for whom this insurrection clause was really intended. which offices count, which officers count? was it intended for presidents or presidential candidates or are they somehow exempted? now, the colorado state supreme court goes a long way towards resolving what the authors of this amendment were thinking about when they wrote this, whether they specifically intended this amendment, this section 3 of this amendment as a guardrail against presidents and potential presidents who engaged in insurrection. the state supreme court did some very, very deep research to make the case that, yes, this sure does apply to presidents and presidential candidates.

and to that end, among the best and deepest cuts cited in this ruling is this one. it is a conversation between two senators in the year 1866 as they were literally writing the 14th amendment. senator reverdy johnson worried that the final version of the section 3 did not include the office of the presidency. he stated this amendment did not go far enough because past rebels may be elected president or vice president of the united states. so he asked, why did you omit to exclude them? i do not understand th tbe excluded from the privilege of holding the highest offices in the gift of the nation. senator lot morill fielded this objection. he replied, let me call the senator's attention to the words "or hold any office civil or military under the united states." this answer satisfied senator

johnson who stated, perhaps i'm wrong as to the exclusion from the presidency. no doubt i am. the senators who literally wrote the 14th amendment specifically meant for it to apply to the presidency. it does not get anymore originalist than that, my friends. and that is exactly the point here. adam severer argued this is going to put the conservatives between a rock and a hard place. they often justify their decisions through the legal philosophy of originalism or trying to interpret what the founders met. writing this colorado court is calling the bluff of the u.s. supreme court's originalists, forcing its conservative justice to choose between their purported legal philosophy and

the partisan interests of the party of which they identify. now, trump has until january 4th to appeal the colorado state supreme court decision, and his campaign says it plans to. and when that happens, it will put the issue on hold until the supreme court makes its decision, meaning trump will likely be on the colorado republican primary ballot, but whether he appears on the general election ballot in colorado and potentially in any other states that could follow colorado's lead, all of that will rest once again in the hands of the supreme court. that is not the only big call they have to make or consume. today trump's lawyers file their response to the special counsel's motion, asking the supreme court to immediately take up trump's question of presidential immunity. trump's lawyers have been trying to argue that the entire federal election interference case should be thrown out because trump is protected by presidential immunity. the special counsel asks the court to take up the issue

immediately to prevent the appeals process from delaying a trial that it currently scheduled for march 4th. in today's filing trump's lawyers urge the justices not to rush to decide. the supreme court is likely to decide in short order whether to take that case or to punt it back to the appeals court. and that decision could either keep the trial date on track or delay it, potentially past the 2024 election. in both the 14th amendment case and this presidential immunity case, the supreme court yet again finds itself in a position that could make-or-break this election for donald trump. joining me now are george conway, contributor to the atlantic magazine. and joseph sterns, senior writer covering the state and the law. i really think he's onto something in the way this state supreme court ruling is going to test the bounds of originalism

that clarence thomas and sam alito, and justice roberts, all the conservatives on the bench say they're beholden to. what do you make of it? >> yeah, i don't think there's any way you can constrew section 3 of the 14th amendment. the defense did not bother with that argument which is very transparent and very weak on the part of the district court which otherwise found trump to be an insurrectionist. you need only look at the language, and the fact of the matter is when it comes to originalism and textualism of the sort that scalia has taught us all, if the language is clear, you don't have to go any farther. and the fact of the matter is the reference to officer of the united states clearly includes the president because the constitution elsewhere refers to the office of the presidency. so it would be precious -- it

would be totally bizarre to hold as the district court in colorado did that an officer of the united states does -- you know, is someone who -- a person who holds an office of the united states is not an officer of the united states. it just makes no sense. and you don't even have to look at the legislative history in congress. >> yeah, you don't have to, but then you wouldn't be able to talk about senators reverdy johnson and lot morill in the year 1866. it cites the office of the presidency i think it's 25 times in the ruling they mention. but this anecdote between these two senators as they're literally drafting the amendment, maybe it's guilding the lily, i don't know. but it seems they truly understand their audience here, which is a supreme court group of conservatives obsess would the writings, talkings, theorizings, and legislating of

dead white men largely in the 18th and 19th century. >> absolutely. and i think because this is a case of first impression there may be temptation to dismiss it as absurd or overreach. but once you drill down into the analysis as you have already, it's really difficult to find fault with the reasoning and that reasoning is rooted in constitutional text and history to a truly extraordinary degree. i think you're spot on this majority despite being quite liberal was aiming its decision at the supreme court conservatives, almost lobbying the conservative tuesday say, hey, look you guys say your contextualists, say you're originalists, bewell we have spent more than 100 pages now walking through exactly why the original meaning of the 14th amendment disqualifies trump from the ballot. and if everything you say is true, that you only look at text, you only look at the original public understanding of a constitutional section, then

is this an easy case? all you have to do is apply that original meaning and trump must be knocked off the ballot really not just in colorado but in every state. i think the best argument to the contrary is that such a decision knocking trump off the ballot could be quite destabilizing to the 2024 election. and frankly i agree. i'm quite concerned myself about the implications and consequences of knocking trump off the ballot in colorado or anywhere else, but that's not a constitutional argument. that is a policy argument. and the roberts court has told us over and over again we do not bother with policy. if you don't like what the constitution says, you should change it. our only job here is to interpret and apply the law as written. and if that's the case, again, the court has an easy job ahead. i'm not sure it will do what the colorado supreme court suggested, but i think it will be a tougher call for some of these originalists than a lot of

spectators might assume. >> it really puts their money where their mouth is. in the wake of this "the new york times" reporting about how the political considerations of the supreme court made in hiding the case from the docket and otherwise making, you know, decisions that seemed very clearly political, clearly partisan in taking up the dobbs case, it really makes you question the very notion of their strict constitutionalism and whether or not that is long ago been trump bipartisan affiliation. i wonder how it all shakes out if and when the supreme court takes it up. >> i beg to differ a little bit because there's nothing in the constitution of the united states from which you could imply a right to an abortion. the only basis for maintaining roe was stare decisis. but there was no contextual

basis for abortion. here the language is unmistakably clear. as mark says here, there's really no legal basis to ignore section 3 of the 14th amendment. and in fact, in the supreme court emblazoned in the marble is a saying, an old latin saying. and forgive my inadequate high school latin pronunciation it goes like i think it's fiat justicia -- and it means let justice reign though the heavens may fall. in other words, you have to let the chips fall where they may if the conclusion is the disputable, which i think it is here. and there was no contention by the dissent here that the legal conclusion was wrong or no contention here that the facts did not -- were not shown by clear and convincing proof in the district court. i don't know how they get around it.

and i wrote an article today in the atlantic saying exactly that. the dissent's weakness last night showed that the majority opinion was quite correct. >> yeah, and i'm not going to relitigate the dobbs decision with you because we don't have time, george -- >> we could do that per week. >> yeah, we will do that on another segment. this court is -- to your point, mark, this court has proposed it is not a political body, that it doesn't take political policy considerations, it's just looking at the constitution. the state supreme court ruling goes back and quotes neil gorsuch in this ruling. it's specifically targeting a decision that neil gorsuch made, a ruling he made in 2012 as an appellate court judge in colorado where he recognized it is a state's -- it is in a

state's legitimate interest to protect the integrity and practical functioning of the political process that permits the state to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office. in addition to being strict constitutionallests, these justices tend to love to send things back to the states and be proponents of state rights. >> right, we heard this after the 2016 election, right? when people complained donald trump had lost the popular vote, the conservative response was we're in a republic, not a democracy. really the states are in the drivers seat when it comes to federal elections, and that really should cut both ways for republicans in 2024 because if the states are in the driver's seat, if they're the ones making these decisions, i don't see why a state shouldn't be able to apply the 14th amendment as written and say you know what, there aren't very many qualifications to be president? right? you have to be 35, a natural born citizen, you can't have engaged in an insurrection.

and i think it's quite reasonable given our federalist system for a state to have the authority through its supreme court to say, you know, we're just not going to let this guy on the ballot because he lacks one of the very few constitutional qualifications to run. i want to add one point to what george said, though, i think we should look at this through the lens of politics. politics can be a consideration. i also think we need to consider whether these justices can and should look at outcomes of a case. when the court decided a big second amendment decision last year where the court declares that most restrictions on firearms are presumptively unconstitutional, there was a lot of hew and cry on the other side this would leetd to gun deaths and impair american krdss, and the conservative response was a big shrug. they basically said that's not our problem. our only job is to decide what this means, and the chips will fall where they may. any consideration of the results

or the outcomes, that would be a kind of biased judging that has no place in our judiciary. if that's true of guns and true of so many other things, corporations buying elections, women have bodily autonomy, it should automatically be true for trump becoming president as well. not just for the originalistf principle how they should apply the constitution but how they should be judges, how they should exercise the authority, the extraordinary authority they've been given to have the final word on the law. do they balk and chicken out and say this is too radical for us, or do they acknowledge the 14th amendment is still radical and apply tg as written might lead to fearful results, but that's the court's job and it's our job to respond. >> i'm looking for giant fat

heads outside. that's my contribution to this. please come back. we have a lot to talk to you guys in the days and weeks ahead. i appreciate your time tonight. we have a lot ahead this hour including an arizona judge allowing a defamation lawsuit against republican kari lake to move forward. the latest proof the big lie comes with big consequence. but first trump supporters seem to care about whether he's convicted but not in the way donald trump would like them to. we'll have more on that after the break. e them to. we'll have more on that after the break.

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goli, taste your goals. i mean, look, if somebody's convicted or something of some of these things, there was no trial on any of this. they basically just said, what,

you can't be on the ballot? how does that work? >> we don't need to have judges making these decisions. we need voters making these decisions. >> i do not believe donald trump should be prevented from being president of the united states by any court. i think he should be prevented from being president of the united states by this country. >> donald trump's opponents say they want voters and not the court to decide his fate on the ballot. a sizable majority of republican voters are only willing to support trump for now while he can still say he hasn't been found guilty of a crime. nearly a quarter of trump supporters say he should not be a party nominee if he's convicted. another 40% say trump should go to prison if he's convicted. and 23% believe the former president committed serious crimes, twice as many as in july. joining me now is the staff editor for news surveys at "the

new york times." thank you for joining me. i'm very curious about these numbers here. the share of republicans and republican-leaning independents who believe that donald trump committed a crime has increased to 27% from 17% as well as 23 of trump supporters believe he has committed serious crimes, which is up from 11% in july. what do you think is driving that bump? and i'm going to pretend that we haven't been talking about it at nauseam because just to hear what the pros have to say. >> yeah, i mean it's really kind of a remarkable increase to see that number jump about 10% from july. we've been tracking this for over a year and the number was hovering right around 6 or 7%. and now it's quite high. at the same time these are people who are trump supporters and they intend to be trump supporters. so they think he's committed serious federal crimes, but they're not particularly

concerned about the fact. it's more kind of a fact to them. >> do you have a sense of the time line in which that number has increased? has it been recently or steady throughout the summer when there was indictments and trump at courthouses, in front of courthouse steps, et cetera? >> it's hard to know but there's a lot of reason to believe it was more recent and not steadily over the summer. we did a survey of battleground states and not a national survey so it's hard to compare. we did see a slight increase around then. >> as to whether or not they believe he should still be a candidate the numbers there are interesting. 24%, a kwrter of trump supporters say they believe he should not be the party's nominee if convicted. the caveat to that if he is convicted, it is unlike leto happen before he's a potential nominee. but i do wonder if you got a sense how firm that commitment was and whether there's any sense that these -- this quarter of trump supporters is even

aware of the alternatives, not necessarily in the republican party because this would potentially happen after trump was made nominee, but as third party candidates or even dare i ask president biden. >> yeah, so it's really interesting actually. that number one quarter is of trump general election supporters. when you look at trump primary supporters that's only about 4% of primary voters that could swing in one direction or another. not really enough to change the trajectory of the primary where trump is up 15 plus points against his opponent. but even then there's a lot of reason to believe those switchers are not that solid on it. i think they're waiting to see what happens. we've heard that from our respondents again and again if he's convicted, they might change their minds but they're waiting to see what happens. and it also depends which case he's convicted inch. >> what's interesting to me is give how in other cases as the

stakes get higher, they stand strong with their man for lack of a better phrase. and what these numbers suggest is they are open to seeing what happens to potentially changing their support for donald trump and that a fifth of them believe he should go to prison if he's convicted in the january 6th case. >> yeah, yeah. i think that prison number is particularly interesting. and one thing that wasn't in this survey but was in a previous survey we conducted of six battleground states last month is we asked people in the battleground states where it really matters for the general election, if he was convicted and sentenced to prison, if they might switch their votes to biden. and we saw about 6% of people saying they were open to doing that. >> we know it's going to be a tight one, so all of these sort of what look like margin calls really matter. ruth from "the new york times," thank you so much for your time. >> thanks for having me. still to come this evening trump campaigns on

anti-immigrant fear mongering while the state of texas offers us what a glimpse of his second term might look like. kari lake loses her bid to get out of an lawsuit filed by an election official. what this means for the other perpetrators of the big lie. coming up next. r the other perpetrators of the big lie. coming up next

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here's a question. is this defamation or freedom of

speech? >> these two guys, they don't -- they don't like voters or candidates who question the rigged elections that they run. the incredible lengths that these two bozos went to trample and steal our vote, rig our election, and then swear in a bunch of frauds who are destroying arizona. tensionally printed the wrong image on the ballot on election day so those ballots would tensionally be spit out of the tabulators. >> that was election denying maga republican kari lake earlier this year at a rally where she lied about the rigged 2022 arizona gubernatorial election that she lost. lake name checked and showed

pictures of these two men repeatedly. maricopa county election officials bill gates and steven richer. now, both men are republicans. kari lake made incredibly specific and baseless claims about how the two men conspired against her and her campaign to mess with ballots and rig the election. one of those officials, steven richer, said lake's lies have hurt his professional life and harmed his reputation. he says the maricopa county sheriff's office has had to do regular patrols of his home and his workplace because of how many threats including death threats he has received. and so earlier this summer steven richer sued kari lake for defamation. in court lawyers tried to argue all her bogus claims should be protected, that they are free speech. they argue lake's claims are just, quote, ruatorial

hyperbole, and they asked the judge to throw out the defamation case in its entirety. well, today a judge ruled on that and flatly denied kari lake's request to throw out it defamation requests against her. the judge ruled if lake's statements against steven richter are provepen to be false and defamatory -- her name has been floated on donald trump's short list for candidates as vice president. donald trump is already test driving the kari lake defense, claiming all his election lies were free speech, too. this has implications for what we as a country allow election deniers to get away with. georgia election workers ruby freeman and shaye moss just won a $148 million judgment in their defamation against against rudy giuliani. but whether we'll get to see the

architect of the big lie held accountable is very much still an open question. much more ahead tonight including the unusual calm inside the biden campaign as everything everywhere else goes inside and donald trump is relentlessly attacking on the campaign trail and every wb is listening. e campaign trail and every wb is listening.

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let's get right to the drone images right now of our fox news aerial team live over eagle pass where they have been getting absolutely buried in illegal crossings today. we are talking thousands of people who have crossed over illegally. they continue coming in from all over the world, large amounts of adults coming in from africa. >> this week fox news zeroed in on the uptick of southern border crossings taking special note of monday's record breaking 12,000 apprehensions at the border. that record and this migration trend have become ammunition for some of the most extreme hard line immigration policies and rhetoric to date. donald trump has repeatedly spoken on the campaign trail about his plans to expel immigrants en masse promising to be a dictator and close the border on day one and defending his stance on what he calls blood purity. and trump did it again last night before a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters.

>> they come from africa. they come from asia. they come from south america, but not just south america. they were all over the world. they dump them on the border and they pour into our country. it's crazy what's going on. they're warning our country, and it's true they're destroying the blood of our country. they're destroying the fabric of our country, and we're going to have to get them out. we're going to have to get mass numbers of especially the criminals, they're coming from jails, prisons. they're coming from mental institutions. >> texas is already giving some of trump's immigration plans a test run. this week texas governor greg abbott signed into law legislation that makes crossing the border illegally a state crime and allows local law enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants. meanwhile in d.c. congress is reportedly in talks with the biden administration as they consider legislation that could upend the country's asylum

system altogether. joining me now is julian castro, housing secretary and current msnbc political analyst. thank you for being here tonight. first, hearing trump's words on the campaign trail could have just as easily come out of the mouth of adolph hitler, which he's not that shy about, by the way, the sort of parallels. the reality is as distasteful and abhorrent as you and i may feel they are, i think there's new polling out from market that says more people trust donald trump on legislation. what do you make of that? >> you have somebody like donald trump who presents a real threat because he's put some of these policies into place before and is neck and neck in the polls right now with president biden. saying these kind of things based on his track record and that he has so much support

still with the american people it makes you think what's going on with us? what's going on with the american people? not enough by any means but it's striking and very worrisome and i think dangerous if we're not careful. the kind of language that he's using, we know the result of this. this foments hate. it prompts violence like we saw in el paso in 2019 where somebody drove from dallas all the way to el paso because he believed there was a hispanic invasion. that's the kind of thing that happens when you use this type of rhetoric. >> i do wonder the -- the resonance of this rhetoric, the fact that people are listening to it and buying in. does that suggest to you that some of the attempts by republicans dehumanize migrants, to use them as political pawns, governor abbott is chief among those folks, he just sent his first flight of migrants from el paso to chicago with 120

migrants last night. this is something that ron desantis likes to do. are those tactics actually shifting public opinion, do you think? >> i think that's close. you remember in 2012 in that debate i think it was in january that year where romney said he was for self-deportation, and everyone went crazy and said, oh, that's ridiculous. outside of the norm at that point. they have stretched the so-called overton window massively. i have to say, alex, part of it for me is a disappointment with a lot of main stream democrats is because democrats don't push back hard enough with a positive vision for immigration. and when i say positive vision i don't mean that you don't concede that we need to address this issue, but you need to be pacific about how it should be addressed and then speak to the values of our country and that this is a nation of immigrants and put up that positive vision. if you don't do that, if all you

do is backtrack and then perhaps we're on the cusp of senate democrats accepting what would have been considered ridiculous extremist policies right before trump came in, but now buying into them like the reid statement of title 42 and doing aawith parole authority, then where does that leave the american people except to think, well, maybe extremism is okay. that's what you get when you don't push back. >> yeah, can you talk more about that because right now there are these closed door negotiations going on in the senate. the biden white house is involved in them, but it's unclear what the specific terms are, only that there may be some very significant concessions to the right wing on immigration policy, on asylum policy. do you think it's too late to stop that? i mean precisely because they've been happening in secret it's hard taknow exactly what the contours of the negotiation are other than what is being reported out. >> well, it is. there are several provisions

including bringing back essentially title 42, expanding the powers of the president to expel individuals, doing away with the opposite which would be what's called parole authority, which allows the executive branch to allow people who might otherwise be inadmissible temporarily in and other ways to address this. yeah, we don't know what's going to come out of that. i have a feeling at the end of the day because this was sort of a botched process, the congressional cot and progressive caucus will push back hard on this because they weren't brought in early having a part in crafting this. i don't think it's going to go anywhere, but it might. and if it does, this is going to remake our asylum system in the image of steven miller and donald trump. that is a terrible thing to happen. i wish that democrats had republicans they could actually negotiate with on this that would allow us to invest in resources for the border and to get asylum claims adjudicated

much more quickly so if people are not going to get asylum, they can be on their way. but republicans keep blocking that. so all around this puts president biden and democrats in a real bind, but you can't sellout your values, and you can't sellout the country that we are. even if it means forcing republicans on the brink in support of our allies. >> you can't allow greg abbott and donald trump to establish the narrative about people who are fleeing very dire circumstances, who are brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children just like we were and we are. julian castro, thank you so much for your time and expertise tonight. when we come back, new york magazine correspondent gabial ben detty on his deep dive into the biden campaign. why they're not scared about the president's polling numbers and what everyone else should do about it. that's just ahead. e else shouldo about it that's just ahead.

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a "the new york times" siena college poll out this week shows president biden losing to trump by 2 points. but when likely voters were asked that same question, likely voters, the results flipped. biden wins by 2 points, 47 to trump's 45. which is to say this far-out from the 2024 election anything goes. and that possibility is revealing what new york magazine emphasis gabriele benedetti

calls a glaring cognitive split at the top of the democratic party. while commentators and many administrategists are aghast at biden's polling slide and desperate to see a course correction, the president's aides at the white house and at re-election hq give every indication they consider the election very much under control. joining me now is gabriele benedetti, international correspondent for magazine and author of this week's cover story. thank you for being here. i found it fascinating and intriguing. one of the first things that bears mentioning is according to your sources no one is really paying attention yet. can you reported what you heard? >> yeah, absolutely. one of the central dynamics here is when you look at polling numbers like the ones you were just talking about but also a lot of the ones that have been coming in the last few weeks in particular they participated a dire picture for the president,

his approval rating is pretty low and a lot of the head to heads with donald trump in the battleground states the numbers look bad for biden and across the democratic party lots of people demanding what's the plan here. i talked to a lot of people in the white house, in the campaign headquarters and a point they made time and time again is we have a year until the election, basically 11 months, and right now most real voters in fact a vast majority simply aren't paying attention. and why that's important is they're not conceptualizing as this between biden and trump. one person pointed out to me they had seen one poll that showed one fifth of voters again according to this internal research even thought that trump would win the nomination of the republican party. and that's in a republican primary that he's leading by a huge margin. so the central article of faith for a lot of people around biden is the numbers that we're looking at right now on the

national level and in the battleground states aren't really indicative what it's going to look like in a few months and let alone a year because most voters aren't conceptualizing this as a rematch. >> the average swing voter thinks about politics for 4 minutes a week and they're not waking up for another 12 months. oh, to be a swing voter i guess. the other thing is you talk about the sort of resources the biden team has allocated to fighting the battle ahead. and i wonder if you can talk in a bit more detail about the way in which you can use outside organizations like the dnc to house some of their sort of best and brightest, if you will? >> totally. yeah, it's a great question because it's a little bit under-appreciated just how much they've been using the dnc, and by they i mean the biden opoperation for a really long time now. even when biden became president when he was running in 2020 some of his top aides sat down and said what is this going to turn into if he does win and run for

re-election? starting then even before the transition back in 2020 they started putting money and resources into the dnc and making plans what this re-election might look like. during the mid-term time period you had democrats led by the white house, biden's white house deploying a lot of resources in the swing states and building updata operations, digital operations, in an attempt to try to be ready for this. one of the deputy campaign managers said to me earlier this year, he said while the republicans are going through their messy primary and focusing on other things, it's really important. this is the time we're building up and relying on allies like the dnc to be able to fight the fight once it becomes a one-on-one race next year. there's one guy who was running the digital operation of the biden campaign in 2020. he left that campaign after it was over to go work in the white house. he then left the white house just a few months ago to go work on this campaign. now he's the deputy campaign

manager. and when he walked into this job, he had 55 staffers waiting for them. they'd been sitting at the dnc building the digital and data operation for the last three years. >> that's not nothing. 55 staffers, three-year program already in progress before biden has even really begun his re-election campaign in earnest. gabe, what is the biden campaign worried about in terms of kind of outside x-factors. i would ask no labels and their efforts and third party candidates. i know cornell west is mentioned in the article. can you talk a little bit about that. >> absolutely. there's a potential for chaos with a lot of these third party candidates. the other one is a fundamental one which is they don't know what the battleground is going to look like in a year. we didn't know what covid was and trump hadn't been impeached yet, and that's true but these things can break both ways. as of right now they do have problems where there are a lot of democrats even young voters

either look at these third party candidates or not happy with biden that might sit this out. a lot of this has to do with outside factors such as war in the middle east and the perception around the economy which a lot of people around biden believe is going to be the course over the next year. right now it's true that biden's message the economy is improving and people are getting more money in their wallets. that hasn't really broken through and something that nerz not an obvious answer for. >> it is a great fascinating read and i will say reassuring to some people at this moment in time. gabriele benedetti, thank you again for your time and writing. that is our show for this evening. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. i think that this case is legally wrong and untenable. and i think this kind of action of stretching the law, taking these hyper aggressive