university and they said everything went through the appropriate budget approval processes. as for his resignation, i find it inappropriate to speculate considering there is no concrete information other than his wife's recent epilepsy diagnosis, so i would say there is no new information on that front. >> we should also say a great feature of the state of florida is that it has really good public records laws, which clearly you and the folks at the alligator used it to great effect here and we as a reading public are grateful for it. it is a really fantastic piece of journalism. i think we will be hearing more about the story. great reporting. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> that is all in on this thursday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, alex. w. good evening, alex.

because reporters can get everything, every arrest report, >> thank you for florida man. thank you, chris, as always. >> you c bet. good night. today was a big moment. today was a big moment for the democratic party. for the first time since becoming the party'se nominee, vice president kamala harris appeared alongside president joe biden. >> today we take the next step in our fight. >> i served in the senate for 270 years. i know i look 40, but i'm a little bit, older. folks, i have an incredible partner. the progressbl we've made, she' going to make one hell of a president. >> the whole thing was really pretty joyful and forward

looking and also policy-focused. the president and the vice president talked about their record taking on big pharma and lowering prescription drug prices. and then there was the republican ticket. today donald trump held a press conference outsidemp his home i bedminster, new jersey. now, the event was supposed to be about inflation, and trump had surrounded himself with grocery propsou including sever packages of uncooked sausages that sat on a table behind him in 87-degree heat, which is not the recommended place for uncooked sausages especially when you don't even really talk about the reason why you have a bunch of uncooked sausages on the table nexth to you. trump only intermittently mentioned inflation and the cost of groceries during his 90-minute press conference. nchkt, it wasn't until one hour into his speech that trump even acknowledged the expiring perishables behind him.

he didn't ndeven mention the rotting sausages. instead, trump spent the bulk of his remarks making baseless claims about a stolen election and floating wild theories about immigration. he even took thees occasion to dust off his most tired line about immigrants. >> what they're doing is they're taking all of their criminal, they'ref bringing them into th united states. they're taking their drug dealers and their rapists, murderers, every criminal, and bringing them into the united states. >> it's been nine years since donald trump came down that golden escalator and announced his first presidential campaign. and eightti years later his campaign, again, still boils down to one central xenophobic idea. immigrants are destroying america. i don't want to play too much of the former president's baseless smears against immigrants, but to givest you a sense of exactl how untethered from reality it

all was consider this. >> most of the job creation has gone to migrants. in fact, i've heard that stojsy more than -- actually, beyond the number of 100%. it's actually much higher than that, but the government hasn't caught up with that yet. >> more than 100% of job creation has gone to immigrants. how does that work? do the immigrants bring extra jobs with them? none of it makes any sense. while taking questions from reporters trump deflected a question about his recent praise by the people who fire union workers by trying to scapegoat immigrants. >> don't forget the unions are really threatened by what's coming in by these millions and millions of people coming in. the black population is absolutely threatened.

theso hispanic population is absolutely threatened because these people are coming in, they're going to take their jobs. >> not only did trump walk right up to the line of repeating his criticism about black jobs, he was also dead about how america's unions approach the issue of immigration. over theis past two decades the american labor movement has embraced the idea of america as a nation ofa immigrants. the aflcio, america's largest union, states unequivocally the labor union is the natural home to achieve economic security and win social justice. all of this serves as an important reminder.

nopo matter how many strategist and foxw news pundits urge dond trump to talk about inflation, talk about the rotting sausages, stay on message, donald trump is always going to go back to his comfort zone -- racism and xenophobia. yesterday the trump campaign posted this image online with the caption "import the third world, become the third world." it shows a typical suburban homl on one side, which is captioned your neighborhood under trump, and on the other side there's an imageth of migrants at a shelte in new york city with the caption your neighborhood under kamala. today in the atlantic charlie sykes wrote about that post saying the neighborhood post went beyond all possible doubt trump's fix az on migrant crime tomi highlight his campaign's embrace of the grit replacement theory, the fear that black and brown migrants will replace americans in the voting booth, theot workplace, and a neighborhood near you. joining me now is charlie sykes,

co-founder andar former editor large of f the bulwark. also with me is angela rye, co-host of the podcast and former executive director and general counsel to the executive black caucus. great to have you here to talk about an up fortunate sort of -- i won't even say development because it's been going on for so long, but the reality in the gop. at one point republicans still tried to call this immigration, but it seemed so obvious at this point this really is about the great replacement theory. does it surprise you? andt do you think it is at all liability for voters if trump is going to win this election? >> well, obviously he's not tryings to persuade swing vote. he's tryingo to inject more fe and motivation to his base. i understand some people will say he's always been doing this. and it's true. he's been playing this card since he came down the golden

escalator and even before that when he was pushing the birtherism conspiracy theory. what is striking is how blatant the i racism is and how, in fac it comes from the campaign itself. if thatai post you were just talking about had w appeared on white nationalist website or a trump supporter -- but this is the trumpte campaign itself, ani think it's an indication of the way they'ren amplifying and escalating a message that not that long ago in american politics we would have recognized as crossing the line ofsi blatant racism. and on earth 2.0 this would be dominating the news cycle. we'd be talking unt willy horton on steroids. but because this is donald trump it's just a question of why. there's no question this has become a central theme of his campaign. if you watch thef ads, listen donald trump -- basically he said yesterday thatba america's become a third world country.

this is a constant theme.co now, again, not new for him, but you can tell he's moving beyond dog whistles to foghorns. and it's not a coincidence that he is trying to tie this carnage to the first black woman candidate -- the possibility for a nominee for president, a woman with a jamaican and indian heritage, that he's playing all of these cards. and you're absolutely right what he's doing rather than talking about his vision for the future is he's going back to play his greatest hits or his ugliest hits. >> i'd love to get your aspect on this, one how running against kamala harris has reawakened his racist tendencies but also the even moret pernicious element this, which he's trying to stoke -- he's trying to further a racial divide within communities of color, right? by saying black people, these immigrants that are coming over

the border trying to steal your jobs, he's using racism to gain favor with a group of people that he has already established himselfes as having a record. >> yeah, i think what's hard about this is there is a part of the black community, there's a part of the brown community, there's a part of asian pacific islander communities that struggledha deeply with what is happening in this country, and there are issues that have worked to combat or to traffic in they're taking your jobs, they're taking your opportunities. they're not paying the same amount of taxes as you. because we're talking about communities of color that have been hurting for hundreds of years. so it has been a successful tactic for the republican party long before donald trump is this boogeyman theory. and for the boogeyman theory, sometimes it's an individual, and sometimes it's a class of people. in this instance it is a class

of people. we are talking about migrants. that term, third world is normally used to talk about asian countries, african americans, and latin-american countries. that is not by mistake. him saying your neighborhood under mesa versus your neighborhood under kamala is not a mistake. that othering he's been doing sincehe birtherism with preside obama ise absolutely a thing. you say he reawakened it. it was never rasleepch and the sad thing there are people friends of his and foes who stilloe have this underling of this other, this person getting ahead soeven though i paid my ds and i've been here.an what we've got to do is address the elfingerprint in the room and i dare not call it a boogeyman. theificate is there are people whoei need to flee politic persecution, and there are folks coming here for a better and brighter day. and there are a bunch of us who

don't allh agree on immigratio. what we know is donald trump's way of doing this is highly dangerous. it is highlyhl violent. we saw i it already in his firs administration, and we've got to be very, clear-eyed about the fact that he just doesn't like other, and that is the same thing he did to president obama. >> yeah, the otherizing is happening across the board everywhere, and in this case he'syw weaponizing to stoke racl resentment. from the right-wing where folks were saying donald trump needs to focus on immigration and yet it's like there's no stopping the essence of trump, right? this is fundamental who he is. and the hires that the trump campaign announced today including a bringing back cory lewandowski, who literally wrote a book called "let trump be

trump" suggestions to me that reining this in isn't actually going to be the play heading into november. it feels like it's going to get worse. >> no. and t your setup captured the moment. you look at c that scene where u had all the charts about inflation, that is the message. that is the message that republicans and professional aides want him tos do.ai what you saw was a donald trump who was asincapable and complety uninterested in staying on message. what youg saw was trump being trump. and so,mp first of all, that wa not really a press conference. it was this rambling stream of grievances, insults, fabrications, and gibberish, which we've now gotten for pretty much the last three weeks. and i agree with you, i don't see any indication that's going to change. you can see the campaign trying to make him talk about the economy like they did in north carolina, like they did today, andy he just can't bring himse. one other point, george conway

posted a little while ago apart from being deranged, trump is an idiot. for a guy supposed to be a successful businessman his ignorance of basic economics is kind of jaw dropping, and that was on display as well. i'll be interested to hear the on the record or off-the-record reaction of republicans looking at him and going what are we going to do with this guy? we bowed a knee to him, we joined ourselves at the hip with him, do we really want to put this man back in the oval office? where's he taking us? i think it's prettyak clear by now. >> yeah, like his grasp of basic math and the fact it's -- >> 100%. >> immigrants are taking more than 100% of jobs, he's working on ark different, maybe like a different time space continuum and different sort of mathematical standards than the rest of us. angela, to go back to what we were talking about a second ago, as he's trying to stoke division

between lately arrived immigrants to the country and those that have been here longer, he's alsoer undermining that very attempt by taking on the womanby who could be the fit black south asian president of the united states, and the racism isn't even -- it's explicit. at one point in the press conference he said that kamala harris was unbelievable in terms of herrr badness. he's called her stupid. he's call her radical. hel talks about her intelligen all the time, trotting out some of the most poisonous tropes about african americans in this country. a long, long history we have of that, years worth for donald trump, and he cannot quit it. i wonder if you think the whistle is loudin enough for everyone to hear at this point. >> charlie said it earlier, and i used to it say it all the time during his first campaign, and that is donald trump doesn't use

a whistle am. it is a foghorn and signaling to the grossest fears. you already mentioned, alex, this stuff didn't come out of nowhere. the reason why black folks were targeted for slavery was this idea we were somehow more submissive and could be coached into and beefed into this because of ignorance, our brains are smaller, all of that. none of that is true, and all of that is what's he plays into. what i think is the truth is donald trump deeply fears how brilliant kamala harris is,y s he's trying to psych himself up for this first debate. he knows he can go on the stage of any campaign rally, any press conference, say whatever he wants. he won't be fact check by most networks. it's just entertainment at this point. he knows that if kamala harris goes toe to toe with him with facts and with her record, that

he doesn't h have a shot in hel. that isot what we're really up against. i think what's scary to me and charlie mentioned this as well, is that donald trump is -- half of the american electorate is right there with him. that is scary, but i think we would bear also very silly perhs pretty ignorant if we turn a blind eye to what happened before. in w2016 that same electorate,t least the electoral college, thanks to that thing, right, they brought him into the presidency. he got sworn in with that ignorance, that he announced his campaign the very thing we're talking about today is the xenophobia. came down the escalator and calledca mexicans rapist and dr dealers. that is the same thing he's doing today because it burkes. we've got to challenge ourselves about how to make the truth work more than the fiction and the fear. >> yeah, that's so well said.

look, demographic change is complicated, change is ge complicated. what trump hasd, done is exploi the fear around change and brought out the worst in the american public in that respect. charlie sykes and angela rye, thank you both for your time. appreciate it. we have lots more ahead as kamala harris' poll numbers rise so do his fears. >> j.d. vance made the mistake of j taking on stacey abrams, a now stacey abrams the here to set the record straight. she joins me next. stay with us. s me next. stay with us

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when you add one unlimited line. plus, get a new google pixel 9 on us. bring on the good stuff. here's why you should switch fo to duckduckgo on all your devie duckduckgo comes with a built-n engine, like google, but it's r and doesn't spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browsel but it blocks cookies and creepy ads that follow youa and other companies. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. if it's thursday, it must mean there's another weird j.d. vance statement to unpack. in may of 2021, less than two

months before announcing his senate run, vance gave a speech at a maga affiliated think tank, arguing that companies that support abortion access do so to get cheap labor. >> one of the things i've been most frustrated about in american politics is when stacey abrams said about abortion restrictions a couple years ago is that this was a bad bill because it was bad for business. that was the argument of our new corporate neoliberal class. and she was right. when the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to parent children, she's right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business. >> you heard vance name check former georgia democratic house minority leader and prominent leader stacey abrams. she's also i should say the host of the unmiscible and very timely podcast "assembly

required." that podcast launched today. we're glad to have her as her first interview as a podcast host. i'm sorry you have to respond to j.d. vance's name check, but i'd love to get your thoughts on his allegations here. >> j.d. vance misrepresents, misunderstands, and misappropriates information to make himself look or feel better and to try to excuse terrible decisions that he makes. what i said and what i mean is that women should have the right to control their bodies because it determines how they secure an education, how they make a living, how they decide to grow families, and that companies are going to make terrible choices if they support restricting those rights. women make decisions about not only where they work but what they buy. and if we have companies that do not respect woman's basic human rights, the right to abortion, the right to health care, then

those companies are making poor economic choices. but even more, the notion that women would make these decisions because of some concern about the tradeoff between parenting and having a job presumes that you understand the crisis that women are going through when they make these choices. j.d. vance has shown again and again he has almost no sympathy for how women experience life in america. and he has demonstrated again and again that he reduces women to the least and most puerile notion of humanity, and i would encourage everyone to discard and disregard what he says. >> as he's been made to explain his words of the recent past and some of the most appalling charges he's made or theories he's floated, he's gone back to this what i him i think is a safe space where he talks about being a parent and how he just

wants to make life easier for parents in america. and yet he stands on top of a ticket that has no interest in providing services or support for mothers and fathers and parents in the workplace or otherwise. i mean it just seems like he's betting on ignorance all around with this, stacey. >> not only is he being on ignorance, it is suborning and supporting those who engage in this antithetical behavior. i mean if he's that concerned i encourage him to call on governor brian kemp to accept the ebt funding to pay for poor children to have lunches. right now we have a republican governor, a strong lieutenant of this ticket who is refusing to accept paid lunches for children, for poor children in the state of georgia not because we can't afford it but because he doesn't believe they deserve it. that's the kind of decision making that we face when men like j.d. vance who likes to lean on parent hood as a construct but not the practical realities of taking care of the children brought into this world

that are caused by the laws that they pass and that they champion. if brian kemp and j.d. vance want women to have families, then you have to be there for the entirety of the decision. grow can't intercede in one moment and then advocate responsibility the rest of the time. >> you know, you bring up brian kemp and the state of georgia, and i do have to ask you given your background and expertise, how you see all of this playing out in your state where the latest polling has kamala harris tied neck and neck with donald trump, 48%. this is going to be a very close race. for some -- you know, back when biden was on the ticket i think a lot of democrats had given up on georgia. the race had tightened, but it's still neck and neck. can you talk a little about the change you've seen since the vice president has taken the top of the ticket and what your level of optimism is for democrats in the state? >> well, we've gotten to see a lot of vice president harris from the very beginning of this

campaign. she understands how critical georgia is. she understands that a battleground state does not mean there's an automatic win or loss. it means you've got to fight. and she believes this is a fight worth fighting. she understands we're the most diverse of battlegrounds, that we understand what america looks and will look like. i was a very strong supporter of president biden and i'm an incred aenl strong supporter of vice president harris because they understand what we represent in georgia is the future. when we fight not only do we win, but we create the type of change necessary to bring everyone along. while the trump-vance ticket is looking backwards and trying to return us to a halcyon day of women without rights and respect, vice president harris and governor walz are fighting for a future where we are all

respected and where we can all win. >> i hear your optimism, and i hear your deep and enthusiastic support for the ticket. i wonder, you know, if you could put on your voting access hat for a second, if you could talk to me about your level of trepidation on actual election day. given the fact i believe the georgia legislature, the election board in georgia just passed two rules, one of which allows election officials, some of which are very maggaified and election deniers themselves to arbitrarily refuse to certify election results. and therefore, you know, opens the door to a lot of chicannery in terms of certifying the statewide results. what's your level of concern about that as we barrel towards election day? >> it's deep concern, but it's deep concern i've held for several years. this is brian kemp's baby. this is his state election board. he signed the laws that have given this elections board the ability to run apock but to enable mass challenges at the

county level. we have a secretary of state that has a cancel your voter registration website that has unfortunately violated access to data privacy at least once that we know of. and so i want us to understand that the fight in georgia is a fight to protect and defend the right to vote. i am so proud of the work that fair fight continues to do working with allies across the state and around the country to lift up what's at stake. i'm not optimistic, i am determined. i believe that we can get this done because we've done it before. and we didn't do so ignoring the reality of voter suppression. we did so by calling it out, by confronting it, by making certain that voters understood all of their rights, and by doing what we could to raise public alarm. and while this is happening in georgia, we've got to watch states across the country and voter suppression remains one of the top tools republicans use in order to win elections, and we've got to push back by

demanding free and fair elections where we can. and so while i am very bullish on the capacity of vice president harris to win georgia, i know it's only going to happen if we do the work necessary to raise the alarm but also to hold accountable governor kemp, secretary state raffensperger, and that state election board that wants to have the ability without impunity -- i mean with impunity to actually decertify election results. this is not just a maga play book, this is a republican play book because republicans right now can demand better action in the state of georgia. they're refusing to because they're triangulating. they want to have credit for not committing treason in 2020 but they want the benefit of not having to certify elections in 2024. we have to hold everyone accountable for free and fair elections starting at the top. >> yeah, you're either for free and fair elections or you're not. stacey abrams, your determination makes a lot of us optimistic about where we're

headed. thank you for that and thank you for your time. and thank you for the podcast, which we will all download at itunes or whenever you get your podcasts. >> thanks for having me. coming up donald trump is trying his hardest to distance himself from project 2025 by hiring people involved in project 2025. we're going to talk about that strategy and how it's working out. and next, is criminal sentencing election interference? donald trump's lawyers think so. we're going to have more on that right after the break. right aft.

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we are just about one month from donald trump's scheduled sentencing in new york related to his rush money payments for adult film star stormy daniels, and the possibility of prison is apparently looming very large in donald trump's mind. in a roughly 6-minute long rant in a free wheeling press conference today trump repeatedly accused his political opponents of trying to lock him up. >> they want to sentence right before an election takes place. let's sentence him right before. no, this is interference with a presidential election. >> but trump referring to his impending sentencing as election interference is not just talk. trump's attorneys today asked judge juan merchan to postpone

trump's sentencing until after the november election. joining me now is melissa murray, msnbc legal analyst and co-host of the indispensable legal podcast "strict scrutiny." it's been a minute since we've talked about trump's legal peril, but it's clearly something he's been thinking about a lot especially as kamala harris' poll numbers go up. the first thing i want to ask you is this idea that the supreme court's ruling on immunity would have an effect on the ruling that judge merchan -- the guilty ruling in alvin bragg's case against trump. do you think there's any there there? do you think there's reason to be concerned that the immunity ruling will affect this case? >> i think, alex, we have to be pretty worried about this. as we said when the supreme court issued that decision at the end of its term, it was far more sweeping than anyone anticipated. and one of the things that the court made clear was not only was a president immune from

liability for criminal acts that fell within his official duties, he was also shielded from the use of evidence related to official acts in order to prove other crimes even if those crimes were outside of the scope of official duties. and that's basically the crux of the argument around the new york hush money case. what trump is arguing is that key pieces of evidence that the prosecution submitted to the jury, evidence that was used to establish his guilt on those 34 counts were official act evidence that should not have been shown to a jury. and if that's the case and if he's correct and if a judge agrees with him, then that means those convictions essentially crumble. it's a big question. whether or not judge merchan buys it, it does mean donald trump has some room here not only to press this argument but then to appeal it if it doesn't go his way with judge merchan, and perhaps appeal it back to the supreme court for the decision there. so i would take this very

seriously. >> play along with me, if you will, for a moment that the case moves forward or the sentencing moves forward. as part of that sentencing the d.a.'s office would have to issue a kind of public memo i believe that we're going to have information in it related to the trial and stuff that hasn't been public yet, that donald trump's legal team very much does not want to see released especially in september before a november election. do you think they have a case to be made here that releasing that memo would be i think it was politically prejudicial to president trump? >> again, i think the devil is in the details, alex. we don't know what would be in that recommendation memo to the judge. i think that's one of the things judge merchan has to weigh here. in pressing this argument to delay the sentencing until after the election, trump's lawyers have made a couple of elements. that one, having a sentencing just as early balloting is happening or early voting is happening in many states would

influence the election unduly. so we've already heard that argument. the second argument relates to the recommendation memo, that there's information here that really shouldn't be seen by the voting public, it's too prejudicial. they're expecting whether or not the evidence around immunity and the evidence used in the case are actually holding water. and they believe that if it doesn't go their way, having a sentencing on september 18th, just two days later doesn't give them enough time to repair a repeal or pepercussions on immunity. there are a lot of different parts to this request for delay, and the real question is, i think, whether or not alvin bragg and his office is going to oppose this motion to delay the sentencing. they already acwessed after the immunity decision to delay in order to deal with the question of what the immunity decision

means. if they don't object here, judge merchan is likely to delay this going forward. but it does come down to whether or not they decide to object. >> so it's been a minute since we've talked about trump's legal peril as we talked about it. and a lot of it as you point out may be pushed off to a later date, but the reality is we are going to be talking about crimes and indictments in september and presumably october of an election year. and boy, that is an "x" factor we're not seen in american politics yet. we have more to talk about. please hang with me for a few more minutes if you can because coming up donald trump is pleading innocence about project 2025, but one of its leaders is saying he has trump's blessing to reshape the federal government. how exactly does that arrangement work? we're going to talk about that next. arrangement work we're going to talk about that next

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i just want to get from you your thoughts on project 2025 and whether or not biden can use this effectively against you. >> i don't think he'll be able to. first of all, i have no idea what it is. i don't know what the hell it is. it's project 2025. i know nothing about project 2025. >> donald trump is doing everything he can to pretend he doesn't know about project 2025 or project 25, as he calls it. and there's good reason for that. project 2025, also known as the presidential transition project,

is just that. it is the plan for what trump might do if he retakes the white house. it is an extreme right-wing road map for a second trump administration put together by a consortium of conservative groups, and it is filled with stuff like this. >> i think you have to rehabilitate christian nationalism. he has the largest deportation in history, blocked funding for planned parenthood. i want to be the person that crushes the deep state. >> this is rust vote. he was the policy director for the republican national committee's platform committee just last month. he's one of the main architects of project 2025. today a british organization called the center for climate reporting released footage of russ vote that they secretly taped last month while pretending they were potential donors to vote's group. listen to how mr. vote talks

about the attempt to distance himself from project 2025 when vote thinks he's talking to conservative sympathizers. >> i expect to hear ten more times from a rally a president, you know, distancing himself from the left. >> you're not worried about that. >> i'm not worried about it. >> okay. >> he's running against the brand, he's not running against any people. he's blessed it from -- i remember walking into our last day in office and told him what i was going to do, so he's very supportive of what we do. >> trump is very supportive of what we do. we have reached out to trump campaign for comment on these videos, but we have not yet heard back. a spokesperson for the organization vote run says their policy work is totally separate from the trump campaign, clearly. and that was actually the second video leak from project 2025 this week. on saturday propublica published 14 hours of training videos made

by project 2025. they're similar to kind of video training manuals you have to watch at work on things like password security and how not to give away corporate secrets, but these videos are about stuff like how to eradicate left-wing coded words from the government, totally normal stuff. a spokeswoman for the trump campaign quickly disavowed the videos, and that spokeswoman's name is caroline levitt. >> i'm a former political appointee in the donald j. trump administration. >> that is right. the trump campaign spokesperson who the campaign had disavowed the project 2025 training videos is herself in the project 2025 training videos. because nothing says we have nothing to do with this thing like totally being involved with this thing. i'm going to discuss all of this

with melissa murray right after the break. f this with melissa murray right after the break.

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the president's actually come up with a strategy that works so long as you are giving people like me and the government the ability to block funding for planned parenthood, block funding for fetal tissue research. what i told people is he had the most pro-life record ever. i've never seen him sustain in a way of opprolife initiative that actually was real. >> that was russ vote, the former trump administration official and one of the main architects of project 2025 giving his behind the scenes assessment last month about donald trump and the

conservative project to outlaw reproductive choice. back with me now is melissa murray, msnbc legal analyst and co-host of the strict scrutiny podcast. melissa, you can understand why trump is spending no small amount of time trying to get some distance between himself and project 2025, and it's all there in what russ vote is saying, which is effectively trump's a trojan horse, and by the way we're going to go after contraception and ivf, too. what's your reaction to it? >> this is much more sweeping than reproductive rights. reproductive rights a big part of it. it's part of donald trump's appeal to the evangelical base, the fact he appointed three supreme court just ss absolutely pivotal in overruling roe v. wade. but that's just the tip of the spear. by russell vote's own acknowledgement here this goes beyond all possible doubt to deal and capture levers of the government. he's the author of the section of project 2025 that deals with the executive branch in the

president's office. he did say in those taped meetings that they have real trouble in the trump administration. things weren't always successful because they had republicans in these offices, and they had career bureaucrats, but these people weren't towing the party line. they have decided in the second trump administration if it happens that hale not make that same mistake. they will replace those career pall tegs, those rinos with true party loyalists. i think that means they are being clear they're not going to fail twice. they are going to get it right this time and they're going to have the christian nationalist pro-life government that they wanted back in '16. >> do you think -- just to drill down on abortion specifically because it is an mating factor in driving people to the poll, it is a very, very real struggle for people, for families across this country. bodily, autonomy, basic health care, reproductive choice, it keeps coming up in this

campaign. j.d. vance was on fox i believe yesterday talking about the issue of abortion as an election time issue. let's take a listen. >> all these suburban women all they care about abortion and they don't understand the decision is with the states now. it's not banned nationally even if people wanted it be banned nationally. it's with the states. what do you say to suburban women out there who are marinating in this propaganda? >> well, first of all, i don't buy that, laura. i think most suburban women care unt the normal things most americans care unt. >> melissa, just to be clear caring about your body and surviving in an emergency room is a normal thing to care about. what do you think of j.d. vance's contention most suburban women only care about normal things, which don't include their bodies? >> i mean, alex, it's a thursday and another day that ends with why j.d. vance says something insulting to the vast majority

of americans. she made clear there's no threat here to american women because this is being handled on the state level. that's delusional and an opiate intended to an esthetize the masses to the true threat this administration will pose. what project 2025 says is that this administration if it comes into power will use the power of the executive branch, the department of justice to reinforce and begin enforcing again what's known as the comstock act. it's an 1873 law that's been languishing on the books but unrepeal. they're going to revive it and enforce it. if they do, it will enable them to effectively have a nationwide ban on abortion. because the com stock act prevents the transition in interstate commerce whether that's medication abortion pills or specula used to provide surgeical abortions. they don't need a nationwide ban from congress. all they need is a willing department of justice that will

reinforce this comstock act and they're ready to go and they're ipbusiness. so the idea this is staying with the states under a new trump administration, that is folly. and that's intended to distract americans from the very real threat this administration poses. >> and just as a -- i think you're so right about laura ingram being the most alarming part of that interview, saying that women who care about this stuff are marinating in propaganda. first of all, it's not propaganda. women's lives are being threatened and lost because of some of these draconian policies happening at the state level, and the gaslighting doesn't seem to be an election time strategy if you ask me. thank you for hanging around an extra block. thank you for your great expertise and perspective on all this. that is our show for tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. they did a nice job. wow. that's good. i don't like the tags very much. look at