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election day in america. the presidential race right now, in a nutshell, one candidate polls suggest voters cannot get enough of, the more they see her, the more they like her. and then you have number two, the other option. a poll by nbc news shows vice president kamala harris with a five-point lead over the ex-president within the margin of error, but a night and day difference from the last time nbc news polled the presidential race, that was back in july. nbc news also reporting this, quote, harris' favorability has jumped 16 points since july, the largest increase for any politician in nbc news polling since then president george w. bush's standing surged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. as we said, the more the voters see her and get to know her, the more they like vice president kamala harris. the harris campaign is now pushing for another debate, accepting an invitation from cnn on october 23rd.

that is just days ahead of the election, but it would be another chance for the country to see the stark contrast between these two candidates. the prosecutor versus the felon. a capability, experienced leader who understands what america stands for, versus the want to be dictator who idolizes vladimir putin, kim jong-un and viktor orban. someone who lives with us over on earth one with a firm grasp of reality and understanding of the country's problems, versus the guy who took to the debate stage and claimed that haitian immigrants are eating people's cats and dogs with no evidence. speaking to reporters the vice president had this to say to donald trump sunday night. >> join me on the debate stage. let's have another debate. there's more so talk about and the voters of america deserve to hear the conversations that i think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies. what's your plan? what's my plan? and we should have another one before election day.

>> just a day earlier trump told a rally that it was too late, just too late was his quote. he said it was too late because voting had started in a few states. but back in 2020 the last debate was held on october 22nd, this cnn debate that's been proposed would be held on october 23rd. seems he's doing anything to avoid the humiliation he endured last time. a spectacle in which vice president harris exposed donald trump as being manifestly unfit for office. >> one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply-held beliefs to agree the government and donald trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body. donald trump was fired by 81 million people so let's be clear about that and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that. >> it is absolutely well-known that these dictators and

autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they're so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. >> i'm going to tell you that i have traveled the world as vice president of the united states and world leaders are laughing at donald trump. i have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you are a disgrace. >> and there's more. brand-new reporting reveals that team trump has been reeling internally ever since that night, having to defend trump's crazy claim about haitian immigrants facing concerns from across the gop that the candidate the party went with a third time, even after his failed coup attempt, candidate clearly in the fat elvis stage of his career as our friend charlie sykes puts it, might not be up to the job this time. from the "washington post," quote, inside and outside the campaign advisers and confidants have urged trump to define harris more aggressively, including a few who say they are

unconvinced that his chosen nicknames are the right ones. allies have grown concerned that trump and the republicans are being outspent in almost every state. some by large margins, and that democrats are far outraising republicans. trump also spent several days after the debate calling allies to tell them how well he had done, which struck some as defensive. how about delusional? on top of all of that there's more. harris is consolidating support from people not traditionally associated with the democratic party or even politics for that matter. more than 700 current and former national security officials are out with a resounding endorsement of vice president kamala harris. they write this in part, quote, we are former public servants who swore an oath to the constitution. many of us risked our lives for it. we are retired generals, admirals, senior noncommissioned officers, ambassadors, and

senior civilian national security leaders. we are republicans, democrats, and independents. we are loyal to the ideals of our nation, like freedom and democracy and the rule of law, not to any one individual or party. this election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. it is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. vice president harris defends america's democratic ideals, while former president donald trump endangers them. we do not make such an assessment lightly. we are trained to make sober, rational decisions. that is how we know vice president harris would make an excellent commander in chief while mr. trump has proven he is not up to the job. that is where we start today with some of our favorite experts and friends. former senator and host of msnbc's "how to win 2024" podcast claire mccaskill. also david jolly, former

republican congressman and with me at the table for the hour distinguished political scholar and professor at princeton university, eddie glaude is here. claire, i start with you. i know that when you were in this position and five points nationally ain't nothing, you are desperate for your allies to continue to communicate that you are the underdog, that it is -- what was the old expression? i think dan rather used to call it tight as a tick. that there is no space for complacency. that said, the polls have to be a very encouraging sign-in side the harris campaign. >> well, the national poll, this particular one, is encouraging certainly. i especially like the progress she's made on some pretty important issues to most voters, namely the economy, and how her favorability has ticked up and i also like the enthusiasm that's recorded on her side of the

equation. but having said that, national polls don't matter. battleground state polls matter and there's seven of them and just today the same people that did this national poll pointed out that trump is in a much better position in arizona than she is, that trump appears to be in a somewhat better position in georgia than she is, that north carolina is essentially tied. so we've got -- and if you look at all the battleground states, if you add in nevada, michigan and pennsylvania and wisconsin, these are all margin of error races. we've got six weeks. this is no time to go, oh, we've got this done. this is a time where the candidate and the campaign is desperately wanting people to stay engaged, enthusiastic, calling their friends in other states that are battleground states, doing whatever they can to help, volunteering and making

sure that those registered voters become likely voters on harris' side of the equation. >> well, and, claire, that the likely voters become harris voters, right? it's both. >> it's both. >> it's turning out the low propensity vote towers turn them into voters and that's usually a lot of young voters, right, who may have gone off to college since they were paying attention during the summer, making sure they are registered, where they are going to be in november and doing that final bit of persuasion. i want to show you how our friend and colleague steph ruhle made an argument very effectively. someone who describes himself as undecided. >> it's not too much to ask kamala are you for palestinian state if hamas is going to run that state, yes or no. >> okay. and let's say you don't like her answer, are you going to vote for donald trump? >> no, i'm not. i just said i'm not going to vote -- >> kamala harris is not running for perfect, she's running against trump. we have two choices so there are

some things you might not know her answer to and in 2024 unlike 2016 for a lot of the american people we know exactly what trump will do, who he is and the kind of threat he is to democracy. >> i don't know -- >> it is unclear to me how there could be an informed -- >> the problem that a lot of people have with kamala is we don't know her answer to anything. okay? >> but you know his answer so everything. >> and that's why i would never vote for him and people shouldn't vote for him, but people also are expected to have some idea of what the program is of the person you're supposed to vote for. you're just not supposed to say, well, you have to vote for y because x is this, that and the other. let's find out a little bit more and i don't think it's a lot to ask her to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in oakland. >> then i would just say to that when you move to nirvana give me

your real estate broker's number and i will be your next-door neighbor. we don't live there. >> claire, at some point dick cheney knows enough about what kamala harris' policies are and i know him pretty well, he cares a lot about national security policy. liz cheney cares an awful lot about national security policy. she knows enough about what kamala harris' policies are, so do adam kinzinger, jeff dunker and eric giles of minnesota. this to me doesn't feel like it's about what people like that say it's about. >> yeah, listen, i think people -- kamala harris has been in public life for a long time. kamala harris has set out her positions on some very important issues like housing and affordability issues and food and groceries. she has certainly stated her policies on how important the climate change issue is. and, by the way, she has been very clear about what her position is in reproductive

health freedom whereas -- really, brett stevens, does that guy know what trump is going to do on that issue? he changes every ten minutes on what he's saying about how he will treat women's essential freedom in terms of controlling your own body. and that's the other thing. it just drives me crazy these republicans saying, well, it's his policies. he can't put three sentences together about his policies. he gets a question about manufacturing in michigan and he goes on ten minutes about countries that have a nuclear weapon. it's like what? i mean, he isn't cogent about his policies and i'm not sure these people even know what his policies are. all i know about his foreign policy is that he loves dictators. that's all i know. >> david jolly, brett stevens cares a lot about foreign policy. there is not a single person who saw donald trump in the sit room who is voting for him again. not a single person who saw donald trump in the tank briefings where the pentagon briefed him on operations and

crises who is voting for him again. former chairman of the joint chiefs mark milley gave a fiery speech saying in america we don't swear an oath to a king or dictator, we have pledge an oath to the constitution. there is not one person who saw him up close in a military or national -- general kelly who was his chief of staff said that he is the, quote, most damaged person he ever ever seen. rex tillerson called him a moron. bob corker said that the west wing resembled adult day care. you find me anyone who thinks that donald trump is a good bet on anything related to u.s. national security and i will send you a box of doughnuts. >> nicolle, say that all again. louder, please. that's exactly, i think, the point that stephanie ruhle was trying to make in her exchange there which is we now know donald trump's view of the world, view of the country, we know his leadership and for many people they see him as a danger to constitutional order,

constitutional norms and to, frankly, the order on the world stage. look, i think if -- i didn't see the entire segment so if brett was being critical of vice president harris unduly then he should be criticized but i do think this is an area where sometimes it's easy to hold vice president harris to a standard of perfection that she can't meet. she is not a perfect candidate, she came into this race 45 days ago, some of her positions have changed and there are questions she hasn't answered, but what we dmoe is the value set she brings to the office for domestic policy and view of the international order, her willingness to protect constitutional norms, willingness to protect personal freedoms, willingness to fight for an opportunity economy for all people. we know her record with the biden administration, helping lead a post-pandemic recovery that's the envy of the world. we know that the biden/harris administration has restored respect for the country on the world stage. are there questions she hasn't answered? of course. of course there are. but to hold her to a standard of

perfection, we're failing the real choice test here which is what stephanie ruhle was trying to point out there, which is we know the danger that donald trump is and i think where we see that reflected in the nbc poll, what fascinates me is the first question are we going in the right direction or wrong direction? 65% of the country says we're going in the wrong direction. it's like 65 to 28 maybe. but the fascinating thing is within that poll, voters see vice president harris as the change agent and she is. there's no -- there's no faking this. donald trump this is his third time as the major party nominee, we've seen him as president. he is not a change agent. vice president harris this is her first time as a presidential nominee who is offering her view of the world. the american people see that as change and they say that is the change we want particularly compared with donald trump. >> eddie, how do you see the contest and the conversation about the contest? >> i thought that stephanie was engaged in an interesting moment

with brett. it was if she doesn't hold these positions are you going to vote for donald trump? there is this kind of worry that kamala harris is going to turn out to be a liberal. perhaps she is. but does that mean -- does it follow from that fact that you can't not vote for her because your identity is so constituted as a conservative that you are willing to hand over the country to someone like donald trump? and that's what she was trying to say. you can't make her into you. she's -- her policies are not going to be aligned with project 2025, her projects are not going to be aligned with moderate republicans. she is who she is and we can begin to detail that over the course of her career. we can't morph her into something else, but the question for the coalition, the broad coalition, is that she is who she is and donald trump is who he is. where do you land? >> i think the other thing is for them it's about them. >> of course. >> because there is a voter, i think mitch mcconnell and bill barr are the same kind of -- and i don't know -- brett has made

clear he's not going to vote for trump. i don't want to pick on brett stevens but i do think he gave voice to this thing that is out there. if you care about things like judges or foreign policy, then you must care about the process that appoints judges and confirms them. you must care about the limits of presidential power and of, you know, the state department or -- and the thing about trump is that if you care about the things you think you care about, you go on a tv show and say you care about, brett was making clear that he wants to understand her positions in the middle east, something he writes about regularly and i trust that he cares about that deeply. i know he does. if you care about that what you are saying is not going to vote for trump but i'm not going to help defeat the person who would literally be the political version of russian roulette when it comes to the issues that i care about most. >> absolutely right. there's nothing that i probably agree with in terms of liz

cheney in terms of policy. probably zero. negative zero in some ways. but she and i agree on the background conditions that allow us to disagree. >> correct. >> that's the key. >> that's the point. >> that's the point. and it seems to me that those persons who are using policy as a proxy for something much deeper, right, there are some folks who believe that if they vote for a democrat somehow they've cut against the grain of who they take themselves to be. >> right. >> part of what we have to do is to unpack what policy -- what the demand for policy details is actually standing in for. >> because -- and this comes back to where claire and i started and where david -- like it's about -- it's about making registered voters, likely voters, it's about making likely voters harris voters. it's about people who don't like trump but say they care about things deeply to understand that if you care about things deeply the only one that keeps us a functioning democracy is harris. we have so much more to do on this. there's so much more to show you from the weekend, i have to

sneak in a quick break. i will also show you what liz cheney said about the need to start over, scrap the republican party. still to come for us as well donald trump still hasn't said a word about his guy in north carolina, mark robinson, he likened him to mlk, he really, really likes him and hasn't reversed course since there have been mass resignations on his own campaign staff that say a whole lot. the very latest on what's left of that campaign and how it's reshaping the political map nationally maybe. and later until the broadcast how afraid were trump's own white house lawyers that he would use the justice department to prosecute his so-called enemies? we have an answer. they were so afraid they smuggled drafts of the memos made for him out of the white house at the time. so there would be a record of what they did to try to stop him. the reporter who got his hands on those memos will join us ahead. all that and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break.

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live in the moment. ♪ ♪ this one is for you.

we need our political system to reflect the goodness of the american people and that, you know, the -- i think the majority -- i don't have any question that the majority of americans don't want somebody like donald trump to be the president. the majority of americans really would like to have a president that their kids can look up to. they really would like a president they know is going to defend the peaceful transfer of power. and i think that -- that that's where we have to start. i don't -- you know, whether

it's organizing a new party, look, it's hard for me to see how the republican party given what it has done can make the argument convincingly or credibly that people ought to be voting for republican candidates until it really recognizes what it's done. we are back with claire, david and eddie. i mean, david, this took liz a long time to say. i think if you watch the convention speech in 2016, and you watch trump give that speech -- i remember saying on the air that the republican party died tonight and it wasn't about him, it was for them, it was for clapping for that. the inaugural american carnage, it was about that. i saw a headline in north carolina that the 20-year-old staffers in the robinson campaign has more integrity than he does. the republican party has rotted from the inside out, they are

the enablers for someone corrupt and criminal that's been convicted of crimes and that apparatus is as worthy of examination and study and political prosecution as the apparatus that propped up jeffrey epstein or the apparatus that -- i mean, it's an apparatus that is propping up someone who is convicted of felonies, who is clearly corrupt, who is charged with others and the apparatus doesn't get enough accountability. there's been no system until liz cheney started campaigning for colin allred and kinzinger spoke at the democratic convention. but i feel like we've been rowing as hard as we can from the outside, but from the inside it really needs to understand that it's part of something bad. >> yeah. look, donald trump did not hijack the republican party. he walked through the front doors and everybody lifted him on their shoulders and he became the nominee of the party, the great ambassador and the leader and the party celebrated him. and that includes liz cheney in

'16 and '20 as we've talked about, having voted for donald trump even after everything she saw. so what do you do now? the truth is there's a thread to our previous conversation before the break, which was the steph ruhle brett stevens conversation and what if you are a never trump republican or a republican who is soft or can't vote for trump? i would tell you this right now, there is something that started under joe biden but really took hold under vice president harris in the last two months, which is this, if you are a never trump republican or a soft republican, you are more welcome in today's democratic party than you are in your own party. truly. you have been given a seat at the table and vice president harris' view of the democratic party, you don't have a seat at the table in today's republican party. you functionally have been kicked out. now, for some people it's a bridge too far to join the democratic party so you heard cheney tease out a new party thing. what i would suggest is very simple math, it's a $100 million proposition to start a party and

don't conflate running a person for president with starting a party. those are two totally different things. the other caution is in this environment you are not going to start a party under the dynamic visible leadership of one person, it really takes a coalition coming along with the finances and the resources to do this in all 50 states. the one thing that the two major parties have been able to do over the last century is make it very hard to start a new party. so i think the fact that liz cheney is now talking about that suggests we are at a breaking point for today's republican party. there are many people who say it's time to leave. there are many people who have said let's at least stay and fight the battle even though we might have a few more cycles of losing we will win by not leaving and standing on principal. you create this had mess, you owned it, you earned it, deal with it. >> claire, harris doesn't get enough credit for doing exactly what david jolly just said.

there is no hesitation in welcoming and branding her own coalition as this idealogically diverse coalition that's about freedom and i have never seen anyone in either party sort of create -- and, again, she gets, you know, the parallels are always sort of i think intended in a very positive manner back to the '08 obama campaign in terms of enthusiasm, but we haven't really perfected the way to articulate the idealogically expansive nature of her base. >> yeah. and i think she doesn't get enough credit, nicolle, because it's a binary choice and i think so many people are wrapped up in the disqualification of donald trump as a leader, as a terribly flawed man and a dangerous man in terms of having the kind of power a president has that they

aren't paying close attention to how much she is reaching out. certainly the convention was a good example of reaching out to republicans. you had a lot of republicans speaking, i think a memorable line was from the lieutenant governor of georgia who said voting for kamala harris doesn't make you a democrat, it makes you a patriot. so, you know, i -- but she will try -- if she is elected she will try to put republicans in her cabinet. i remember when obama worked at putting republicans in his cabinet and he managed ray wahood and he reached out to a few others, but it was tough to get republicans to join in in terms of a more unified party in the middle. it was tough. and now with social media and the polarized nature of our politics it's even harder, but nobody can say she's not trying. and the criticism that she's not laying out her policies i think that's going to start ringing pretty hollow when he refuses to

debate her. he's cowering in a corner, refuse to go debate her, how can he criticize her for not interviewing with people when he won't stand on the stage and debate the issues with her. >> when he does stand on the stage and gets a question about child care he goes to tomato, man, woman, the results of his own -- it's like gobbledegook. the idea that anyone can say the reason i am hung up is because i don't know what her policies are, i force you to sit through an entire trump rally and then you tell me that that's the right thing to be hung up on. >> because i think for most people they understand that trump with a cypher. it's like him walking mar-a-lago i just made all of you rich, that kind of moment. i don't want to run past what you said earlier about the apparatus, about the enablers surrounding folk and what cuts across all of these different

domains that you mention, spectacle, greed and cruelty. >> and gluttony. >> greed and gluttony and cruelty. someone like donald trump can enter into the sphere -- and feels like wwe and everybody is glued to that particular -- that particular moment. and then of course the greed is citizens united, this is my position, all of the money that has flowed -- that flows into our politics, all the money that the kamala harris campaign has raised. i was just thinking what could be done socially, culturally in our country with all of those resource as soon as and then you combine it with the deep-seeded hatred, locked on to cruelty and meanness, and you say, well, this is where we are. this is how this kind of guy can be enabled and, you know, i love claire to death, it's not about -- i understand the politics, it's not about the middle. in this moment it's about us and

how we're going to change the direction of our politics by addressing spectacle, greed, and cruelty. >> and meanness. i mean, i think there is something that she has started to loosen this knot of calcified meanness and i think it's scary to trust that it's safe to let go of all your defenses. i mean, at any moment -- after that appearance trump took to his platform and tore apart stephanie ruhle who is a tough cookie, i'm sure she's fine, but that is the republican nominee for president of the united states. it's not even his headline. it's not even a headline anymore. >> and that meanness is part and parcel of our history that we have to grapple with. it's the underbelly of the whale, that melville wrote about. we have to confront it honestly and talk about it directly. >> because none of us is raising our kids to be mean. >> hopefully, pairfully.

>> thank you for starting us off. ahead for us, news on donald trump's candidate of choice to serve as the governor of north carolina, mark robinson. you may have heard of him lately. we will bring you the latest next. f him telaly we will bring you the latest next shut down planned parentho. the health care of more than 2 million people is at stake. our right to basic reproductive health care is being stolen from us. planned parenthood believes everyone deserves health care. it's a human right. future generations are beginning to lose the rights we fought for. the rights for ourselves, our kids, and our grandkids. gone. just like that. i can't believe this is the world we live in, where we're losing the freedom to control our own bodies. last year, politicians in 47 states introduced bills that would block people from getting the sexual where does it end? planned parenthood fights for you every day. but we need your support now more than ever.

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trains. [whoosh] ♪ trains that use the power of dell ai and intel. clearing the way, [rumble] [whoosh] so you arrive exactly where you belong. if the last person leaving the mark robinson campaign could please turn out the lights because following an exodus this weekend among the republican's top staff, north carolina public radio reports there are only

three people left working for his campaign for governor. two spokespeople and a bodyguard. the campaign says none of the four major resignations this weekend were related to robinson's latest scandal, although they provide nod reasoning. it is worth noting how soon these departures happened after the scandal was reported by cnn. details salacious, anti-semitic and racist comments he allegedly made on a porn site years before he entered politics, and robinson denies it and says he's staying in the race for north carolina governor. that report from cnn has not been verified by nbc news, but importantly robinson is currently the lieutenant governor of the state, he's also, more importantly, politically speaking, donald trump's choice, his only choice. even still sources telling nbc news the disgraced ex-president has no plans to pull his endorsement which has been enthusiastic and vigorous for

robinson, although trump did not appear with or even go so far as to mention robinson's name at a north carolina rally saturday. the rest of the republican party appears to be trying to walk some sort of tightrope condemning robinson's alleged comments but stopping short of demanding any accountability at all. try to make sense from this nonanswer from the most unpopular vice presidential nominee. >> i don't not believe him, i don't believe him, i think you need to let these things play out in the court of public opinion. 's geg to make whatever arguments he wants to make, i'm sure the news media will investigate comments further. i think it's mark robinson and the people of north carolina who get to decide on whether he's their governor and that's what we're going to focus on. >> this is a guy who just revealed he doesn't believe in the truth, right? i don't not believe him. we're going to let this play out in the media. the same guy who said in an interview with a journalist, i created this story about people

eating cats and dogs. joining our conversation senior opinion writer and columnist for "the boston globe," msnbc political analyst kim atkins stohr is back with us. the haitian immigrants who happen to be his constituents for whom he has no integrity or right to live free happy lives and the nonanswer to robin sign are linked. he stands for nothing and no one. he cannot protect his own constituents living in his own state and he will not condemn someone who is the subject of reporting that is enough to get his staff to flee en masse. i was a campaign staffer at a state level. when you are in your 20s you don't make a lot of money. these are people without the kind of financial backers like j.d. vance has and they were out. out. quitting.

quitting their promising, you know, career-building jobs on a republican campaign of a trump-backed candidate for governor in a pretty purple, trending red state of north carolina and they walked away. something j.d. vance could not do. >> yeah, it is inextricably linked, nicolle, you're right and it's also linked to the previous conversation that you were having about the republican party writ large and its embrace of donald trump. if i were a republican who believed in, you know, small government and, you know, strong defense and, you know, tax reform, i would feel furious right now because the party has chosen maga over that, and this is what you get. you have a campaign full of people who are working -- and, nicolle, you can attest, campaign work is hard. you need dedicated people to do it. so if those people are walking

away and saying, i can't back this person, and all that's left are three people, that says a lot. but what says more is that donald trump and j.d. vance and everybody in maga world is going to stick with it because winning is more important than anything. it's just a symptom of what has happened to a party that once was about debating differences with democrats because they believed that their views were better. a party of people like john mccain who chastised someone who slurred obama to his face and said, no, no, he is a good man who loves our country, we just have very different ideas of what it would take to make it meet its potential. but this is where we are now. >> kim, let me show you what senator rafael warnock had to say to my colleague jen psaki. >> i can tell you as the pastor of ebenezer baptist church that mark robinson is no martin

luther king jr. he is the antithesis that everybody that dr. king represented. he is white supremacy in black face as he talks about his desire to bring slavery back. i mean, this talk is way beyond the pale, calling himself a black nazi. these are his words. and i think that the people of north carolina need to take note of the fact that this is donald trump's candidate. this is who he keeps pushing and encouraging. this is who he thinks should represent them. but donald trump has a long history of this. he tried this in my race. this is not the first time he has put forward a black candidate who is unfit and unqualified to serve with a cynical notion that somehow the electorate will be confused about who this person represents. the people of north carolina deserve better. they've got real issues that they're trying to address and they're going to see through

mark robinson in the same way that the people of georgia saw through my opponent. >> this -- every time i hear it it's shocking. he is white supremacy in black face. this is where we are, kim. >> it is where we are, but we've been here before. i think a lot of people don't understand when -- you know, when i say one of the reasons that people still support donald trump, whether it's women who know that he's going to take their repro buck testify rights -- reproductive rights away and others. i think it's the protection of white supremacy. it's like how can black people protect white supremacy and white privilege. that has happened since the beginning of our nation. you don't need to be a white person to feel that you can benefit from the protection of having white people in power at the expense of others. so long as you saddle up to them, it is in your financial

and political interest. we have always seen black and brown people line up in that. a small percentage overall but enough because mention it's in their interest. just because the candidate is not a white person doesn't mean that white supremacy isn't always in play. you do not always see candidates say it as plainly as in this case calling themselves a black nazi but you see it there. i made the same statement when herschel walker was running that is what that was about. we're seeing it right in front of our there was faces. >> i have to sneak in a quick break. faces. >> i have to sneak in a quick break. on. ready to have some fun? yeah, let's do it. the dallas cowboys take on the new york giants, as thursday night football is on. stream thursday night football. only on prime.

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we're back. eddie, you're ready. >> i was dying. i thought senator warnock's white supremacy in black face was so important, you know, america's first theater was minstrel. making themselves black and pretending to be black folk and then black folk had to put on black face in order to perform for white folks. so the irony of black folk corking themselves up, putting white lips on to play into a stereotype. so there's always been this cynical play around race where we have to in some ways perform a certain set of positions in order to comfort folk. so mark robinson is the latest example of a cynical racial politics coming out of particular republican party in

this instance where they put forward these people who are obviously not qualified, whether it's e.w. jackson in virginia when he ran for lieutenant governor or now -- or jesse lee peterson. i could go down -- reasonable republicans, though. >> but he is elected statewide, he is the sitting lieutenant governor. >> and they knew all of this stuff before they elected him. but, again, what does it mean that a black person has to put on black face in order to sell the goods to the white audience? and white supremacy in black face. >> and then to be -- i mean, just to close the circuit, to be so warmly embraced by donald trump who is standing by -- i mean, again, 20 and 30-year-old campaign staffers they're gone, they left, mass exodus, trump and i don't even understand j.d. vance, i'm not not with him i think if i can do the math i think that means i am with him. >> trump just needs his black friend, if that makes sense. >> incredibly cynical. it's almost so bleak and dark that the politics should be

obvious, but i wonder, kim, what do you think the politics are for the harris/walz ticket? >> i think the policy -- the politics for them are to keep doing what they're doing, which is showing leadership by demonstration. she is a black woman who is winning over supporters. she is showing who she is. she is showing her strength. she eviscerated donald trump on the campaign stage. she has a broad command of policies, both domestic and foreign and international. she is doing what she ought to do, she is demonstrating what it means to be a black person who can appeal to black people and all people instead of performing this black face on the republican side saying, look at friend over here, which donald trump has actually said. i think that's nearly a direct quote. >> mm-hmm. >> so rather than that performance they're not talking about it, they're being about it on the walz-harris side. >> i think it's also a quote for

donald trump at his rallies to say "where are my blacks?" >> mm. >> to call them out. it is interesting. identity politics are something that republicans smeared democrats with for years. vice president kamala harris does not play identity politics at all. it's not a part of her campaign at any level. there's outreach to every sort of bit of the coalition, but the coalition is the whole country. and trump is the one wrapped up in identity politics. >> always. always. that's the irony of it all. >> right. >> what's so powerful about the moment, and it's a complex one, and there's this line in many thousands gone by james baldwin where he says i have to wash my face blank in order to wash away your guilt. i have to leave the particularity of who i am at the door as a precondition for my entree into the room. but what kamala harris's campaign does, it seems to me, it suggests, maybe i'm projecting, i don't know, is that i'm not leaving the specificity of who i am. i'm bringing the fullness of who

i am in the room. being my full self without having to wash myself blank in order to make folk comfortable. and that is a shift, i think. >> and that's the joy piece. that's how i hear the joy piece. >> exactly. laugh my full-belly laugh. >> she got the whole country laughing at him. i think we call that a last laugh. oh, my god. i feel like we need another hour. can we pick this up again? kimberly atkins stohr and eddie glaude, thank you for spending time with us. just ahead for us as the ex-president continues to claim that we're experiencing a crime wave there are some new numbers we need to tell you about. that's next. u about. at's next. your dreams. known for keeping with tradition. known for discovering new places. no one wants to be known for cancer, but a treatment can be. keytruda is known to treat cancer. fda-approved for 17 types of cancer, including certain early-stage and advanced cancers.

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show them they're not alone. please call or go online to givetosave.org to help save lives. . they've got to stop crime. you go out for a loaf of bread today and you end up getting mugged, killed, shot. crime is absolutely out of control. >> they just released, as you saw, numbers saying that crime is up 44%. >> no, they didn't. that's trump's version of the triple threat, right? lying, slurring and making things up in his imagination. he's never bought a loaf of bread. that was him doing all those things about crime. over the weekend. but here on earth one there is new data. statistics from the fbi, run by someone donald trump appointed to the post. it confirms a clear trajectory all across the country of massively declining violent crimes in america, with a more

than 10% drop in murder between 2022 and 2023. that's the largest year-over-year decline in crime reported by the fbi in 20 years. and if you're thinking well, what if the doj has different numbers than the numbers trump's talking about? the answer is no. the doj's preliminary data also from 88 cities also shows that violent crime has continued to decline considerably this year. just ahead for us, with six weeks left until election day in america the ex-president's open threats against his real and perceived enemies are getting a closer examination thanks to some new investigative reporting about his first time in the white house. we'll bring you that story and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. you love your bike. we do, too. that's why we're america's number-one motorcycle insurer. but do you have to wedge it into everything? what? i don't do that. this reminds me of my bike. the wolf was about the size of my new motorcycle.

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i think you have so much to do you don't have time to get even. you only have time to get right. >> well, revenge does take time. i will say that. >> it does. >> and sometimes revenge can be justified. let's be honest -- >> no -- >> sometimes it can. >> do you regret not locking her up? and if you're president again, will you lock people up? >> i'll give you an example. the answer is you have no choice because they're doing it to us. >> the constitution says treason is punishable by death. you've accused your adversaries of treason. who specifically are you accusing of treason? >> well, i think a number of people. if you look at comey. if you look at mccabe. if you look at probably people -- people higher than that. if you look at strzok.

if you look at his lover, lisa page. >> it's a democrat charging his opponent. nobody's ever seen anything like it. that means that if i win and somebody wants to run against me i call my attorney general, i say listen, indict him. >> that's his attorney general voice. hi, everyone. it's 5:00 in new york. as the great maya angelou puts it, when someone shows you who they are, when they tell you who they are, believe them. and the disgraced twice impeached, four times indicted ex-president has been telling us exactly who he is and how he plans to wield his power if he returns to the white house. out loud. from podiums for years now. he has made clear he is running on his intention to prosecute and, quote, take down his perceived political enemies. and make no mistake at this point, this is not bluster. these are not empty promises. just ask jim comey or pete strzok or andrew mccabe or lisa

page or any of the other people whose lives were upended when they landed on trump's enemy list. and were subjected to investigations or audits or had their reputations constantly smeared. and now with just 43 days until the election there is bombshell new investigative reporting in the "new york times" exposing what was actually happening behind the scenes during donald trump's first term. as he went on the war path against his perceived political enemies and the extraordinary network of trump aides who narrowly succeeded in slowing him down. mike schmidt from the "new york times" writes about the spring of 2018 when, quote, donald trump faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign's ties to russia was furious that the justice department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies. quote, in an oval office meeting mr. trump told startled aides that if then attorney general jeff sessions would not order the department to go after

hillary clinton and jim comey trump would prosecute them himself. quote, recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for criminal ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, white house counsel don mcgann sought to stall. quote, how about i do this, mcgann told trump according to an account verified by witnesses. quote, i'm going to write you a memo explaining to you what the law is and how it works. and i'll give that memo to you and you can decide what you want to do. schmidt writes that this, quote, marked the start of a more aggressive effort by trump to deploy his power against his perceived enemies despite warnings not to do so by top aides. and underscored what schmidt calls, quote, a pattern where after trump made repeated public or private demands for someone to be targeted by the government

that person then faced federal pressure of one kind or another. and that this, quote, has a powerful resonance today as trump threatens to carry out a campaign of retribution if he returns to the white house and has signaled that a second trump administration would be stocked not with people who served as guardrails during his first term but with carefully vetted loyalists who would eagerly carry out his wishes. it's where we started the hour. some of our favorite reporters and friends with us at the table. "new york times" investigate riffive reporter mike schmidt is here. he is bylines on that piece of reporting. plus former assistant u.s. attorney, author of "remember, you are awiley." maya wiley's back with us. also joining us professor of history at nyu ruth ben-ghiat joins us. mike, take us through what you're reporting. >> i guess there's a lot there. but the -- i think the thing that struck me the most about all of it is when we went back and we looked at what trump said

publicly and we looked at what he did privately and then we looked what happened to these people, and pretty much for every person that he wanted investigated or targeted or gone after something happened to them. and that was just a pattern that was really hard to look away from. it's criminal investigations. it's irs audits. this happened in 2020 around the books, but it's lawsuits against people who had written books against him. and all of that was kind of startling because there's so much that happens with trump on a day-to-day basis on so many different issues that keeping track of it can be hard. but when we took that step back and looked at the wreckage it was more substantial than we

thought, and this coming from a person, myself, who had spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand this issue. so you know, is there a direct order that we have where donald trump said, you know, go do this? no. but donald trump in 2018, right after mcgahn writes these memos to him, says that john kerry should be prosecuted or investigated for the logan act. and two days later sdny gets a call from the justice department, in a conversation they say begin this investigation into john kerry. when trump tweets about the investigation a year later, and this is all in berman's book, when trump tweets about it a year later doj calls sdny to ask why they haven't been taking an investigative step. there's a unique type of power that trump was able to use, this sort of public and private pressure where he could say

things publicly, he could get them into the ether, he could behind the scenes push on aides, push on the attorney general, and by the end of it you have hillary clinton that has to sit down with john durham with her lawyer david kendall next to her and answer all these crazy questions about clinton 2016 russia conspiracy theories. so everyone -- we kind of start this reporting, we say okay, what's he going to do if he comes back, we've got this marco rubio quote where marco says you know, the only vengeance he's going to seek is making america great again. he's not going to go after his political opponents. and what we said was, actually, it already happened. and it happened in a more substantial way than we thought. and that's why we wrote as much as we did about it. >> why did -- why did they write memos? >> so don mcgahn and john kwlooe

had a way of dealing with trump -- if trump wanted to do something and it was outright illegal, they would say -- kelly would say to trump you can't do it, go to congress, get congress to get you to do it. and trump would just get frustrated and go away. the problem that they ran into, that kelly and mcgahn ran into, is the crack between things that are legal but they're wrong. so trump could meddle in the justice department. that's a post-watergate norm. that's not laid out in the law. so when they ran into those cracks like they did in 2018 and trump wanted to get involved in justice department investigations, it was harder for them because they would have to explain to him yes, you have the power to do this but no, you shouldn't do it. and when they ran into those cracks, what they did was they wrote memos. and mcgahn's office wrote these memos. in this instance to trump about why intervening in justice

department investigations is a bad idea, including telling him in the memo, in one of the drafts of the memos that we have, that a consequence of this could be at the ballot box. you could lose at the ballot box. you could be impeached because of all of this. and what happens is that they write these memos and it's given to trump and it's hard to think that trump read a 12-page memo about the sensitivities of the post-watergate norms of the line between the white house and the justice department. but what happens in the weeks afterwards is that copies, drafts of these memos were smuggled out of the white house. now, why were they smuggled out of the white house? because the people around the president didn't trust what he was going to do and they wanted to have evidence that backed up the counsel that they had provided the president. so in publishing the story that we did on sunday, in publishing the chart that we did that showed trump's impact, we published thousands and thousands of words from two drafts of the memos that lay

out -- and you can see what the counsel's office told trump. >> why did they smuggle them out? >> why did they smuggle -- >> like why didn't they send them to democrats on the judiciary committee or send them over to the fbi, which was by '18 investigating donald trump for obstruction of justice? >> well, mueller's team knew about the memos. mueller's team knew about trump's attempts to weaponize the government. but mueller's team took a very narrow posture. and trump legally could meddle in justice department investigations. and they were very serious about the four corners of their investigation. so they knew about the memos. they had discussions about trying to get the memos. they knew if they did that and they asked emmett flood, who was the white house lawyer at the time, he wasn't going to give it to them. they could have pushed on witnesses to get it. and there's a quote in the story from one of the mueller team prosecutors, and one of the mueller team prosecutors they have a book that's coming out that tells their side of the story of the whole

investigation, not about this. and he says that look, not all conduct that's awful is illegal. and this was some of the worst conduct that they saw. but it's not a central -- there are some hints of it and there's a little bit of stuff about trump trying to use the justice department in the mueller report, but it is not a central theme. >> and when you hold up this whole -- what's new is the text of the memos, right? because you broke the story about the irs doing these incredibly invasive audits of comey and mccabe. your body of reporting on commee and strzok, i mean, all of the -- a lot of the targeting of his perceived enemies as well as the things he said on tv about treason, accusing all these folks of treason, were known. what seems to tie it together is that the people closest to him knew how dangerous it was and now that he's running out of the closet as an authoritarian it

seems newly relevant. is that the why? >> i think we wrote this story because i think it's the most important issue or one of the most important issues at the center of the election. i think it's -- the problem is that if donald trump wanted to throw sand in the gears of mueller's investigation and obstruct justice, that's not a good thing. and that's not how the system's supposed to work. and it might be illegal. and you know, your legal beagles can give you different opinions about whether he should have been prosecuted for that. but if donald trump or any president is going to selectively prosecute people and go after them because he doesn't like them and not based on the law and the facts, you begin to head down an authoritarian path that is different. this is not about a differing view of tax policy or a differing view of environmental

policy. this is about the public seeing that the federal government is using its criminal powers not based on the laws and the facts, it is using them based solely on the whims of the -- the political whims of the president. and once you do that, you start to ring a bell that i think is really hard to unring. because the public sees okay, if i speak up, if i express my constitutional rights, these rights that we take so seriously in this country, if i say something then i could get into trouble. and what it does is it chills the opposition and it chills a lot of different things because people say oh, i shouldn't say anything, i shouldn't do anything because i'm going to get targeted by the government. what it does is it further entrenches the regime in power. so i kept on saying in these meetings that we'd have for this story, i really think this is important, i really think they need to write about it. >> i mean, ruth, this is also

sort of your expertise. this is where trump doesn't become like john yoo, the mega right-wingers who believe in the absolute power of the executive. this is when he becomes to the right of orban. this is when we're wrong to even place this conduct on the spectrum of democrat or republican past people in america, but to compare him next to putin and orban in terms of how they use the justice system in their autocracies. >> absolutely. and this terrific reporting by michael and everything he said, this is what authoritarians do because they personalize power and they go after enemies who can harm them and they use their personal -- it's all about personal vendetta. and the things that have been done, the lawsuits, having them

investigated for tax irregularities, also one could say attempts at defamation suits, all of this legal and other harassment is supposed to not only serve as an example to give others a pause before they speak out as michael said but also to show that there are no limits to what the executive will do when he has personalized power. so this is exactly what we find in orban's hungary, in erdogan in turkey is a huge practitioner of similar things. and the last thing is that even if they don't succeed, and here we have a kremlin tactic, the idea is to smear your target with the appearance of wrongdoing. even if they are unable to make their, you know, investigation stick and nothing comes out of it, the information warrior which trump is has already done

his job by getting the headlines that thierson is being investigated. so we always have to think about that propaganda and smear tactic when we think about trump. >> i think all of the cases that mike reports out, these people endured years of legal scrutiny that i guess in maga world smeared their reputations. i feel like on earth one the facts prevailed. none of them were found to have done anything that trump accused them of. but it was the perception and the hangover of the durham probe which ultimately found nothing, resulted in no convictions, where the facts were laid out before juries. and still this tactic did harm and cost all these individuals stress and money, and none of that seems to have a remedy. >> well, there is a remedy for democracy. i think that's michael's point. and the importance of

investigative journalism. is to shine a light so that voters can make a truly informed decision and understand what they're hearing from candidates. and i do think that's important. also to ruth's point, to prevent new victims of abuse of power. because what we're hearing and what's in mike's reporting but is also what we're hearing directly from donald trump is something we heard directly from donald trump at the beginning of his administration when he was president. when he fired comey because comey wouldn't pledge loyalty. that was at the beginning of his -- >> two weeks. >> right. we have seen pattern after pattern. i will say this. it is important for the victims who have -- i don't know that anyone really understands the cost, both the emotional and the personal cost of being threatened with the full power of the law. >> right. >> when it's unfair. there are a lot of people in this society that suffer from

that when it is turned on government for doing government's job. it becomes something that is deeply destructive. but it does matter because if donald trump is not allowed to do what he's really doing now, which is not saying make america great again, he's saying make me great again, there is a vindication because if he gets back in the white house he has already said he is going to do this very thing, except now what is different is we have a supreme court decision granting him absolute immunity to intervene directly in the operations of the department of justice in a way, and to michael's point, we never as a society after watergate thought we had to protect ourselves against that again. and this is where we are. >> and one of the mueller investigators quoted in your

story makes this point about how your body of reporting gets at the first term. what he's running on is something much more brazen and he has perhaps the wind at his back with the supreme court decision. >> yeah. and i think that he understands something that we were just touching on that i don't always know how to articulate. but he understands the specter and the shadow of criminality, of a criminal investigation as well as anyone that i've seen. and by that what i mean is as someone who has covered criminal investigations and people who are under investigation, that casts such a shadow on the individual under investigation. and i think he really understood that in 2016 and was able to use that against hillary clinton. and he saw that blow back on him in 2017 when the investigations are looking at his campaign's ties to russia and all the people around him. and it's in that -- because in

2017 he kind of dabbles in trying to get the justice department to investigate people. but by 2018 and by april of 2018 when they raid michael cohen's office in new york, all of this happens right after that. michael cohen's office in new york is raided in early april of 2018. the memos are written by the third or fourth week of april in 2018. so he understood not only how to use it against people but what it meant to him because when he finds out, you know, when sessions is in the oval office and he finds out the special counsel is appointed, he says this is going to ruin my presidency. he understood the specter of criminality under himself. so that is something that he really weaponized well as a politician, that experience. the other thing that i think backed up why we had to do this story is let's say every person that he wanted investigated was guilty. let's say they had all committed crimes and he was really on top of things and had pointed it

out. the reason a president is not supposed to talk about a criminal investigation is because he's a politician. and what it does is that it looks like his finger's on the scale. so even in those instances where there may have been merit to some of these things, there may have been something behind it, you cannot take it at face value because he weighed in publicly and privately about it and you don't know that it was the -- the action was actually taken based truly on the law and the facts, not on his -- >> this was not the -- none of them were guilty and they all faced scrutiny. fingers on the scale. none of them are found guilty once the system ground through their lives. >> and all these people protected donald trump's ability to abuse power. i don't think we should -- that's clear in the reporting in the sense that don mcgahn, who's writing these memos, had every opportunity to say more to

congress. >> i have to sneak in a break. i'll let you answer that on the other side, if you can stick around for one more block. we'll have much more with everybody on how donald trump used the justice department to prosecute his enemies the first time and his plans now written in black and white for everyone to see about exactly how he'll do it. if voters send him back to the white house in 43 days. also ahead the disgraced ex-president's bizarre and unhinged and dangerous new comments about us, women, and according to his twisted mind why he says women won't need to think about abortion anymore, because we'll be happy and confident and some other stuff. it comes in brand new reporting about the deadly consequences for millions of women living under these abortion bans. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. for any taste, or any diet, at prices you love. delivered fast. for low prices, for life of pets, there's chewy. he told us who he was.

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joining our conversation in progress, president of media matters for america, angelo carusone. mike, maya and ruth are still here. angelo, i thought of you when i saw this reporting because i feel like you can plug it into everything you understand about project 2025 and trump's very specific plans in this area if he wins again. >> yeah. i mean, i'll start with his announcement for re-election, right? where he did it in waco, texas. and it's not just connected to project 2025 because he chose that because of steve bannon, who picked that as a symbol of sort of retribution and sort of anti-government and in particular anti-deep state sort of revenge. that's why they chose that location. and this larger effort here ties in exactly with project 2025. michael was kind of alluding to this a little bit in the back of the last discussion where he noted that as they were going through this reporting they noticed that trump got better and better and more effective at using the tools and levers of

government as instruments of revenge and retribution to go after his opponents. by 2018 he was even better than when he first got in office. and what project 2025 is is an actual optimized effort to do that. so one, it builds off of this idea that there is too much friction in the system, there are these deep state efforts or in particular post-watergate norms that all have to be eliminated. that is a big hallmark of some of the legal theory behind project 2025, is that that shouldn't exist anymore. and michael even talked about that, that's one of the things that slowed it down, that and some of the potential risk for liability. basically, what project 2025 is is an actualization of the promise that trump made at his re-election announcement, where he talked about retribution and revenge. and what it does is it weaponizes the doj by first identifying any of these potential pressure points or impediments or speed bumps to using the doj as an instrument for retribution and getting rid of them. either by eliminating them,

firing them, and second, in not just a pinpoint response but a big sort of shock and awe. go after as many people, as many opponents as quickly as possible. and the last part which hasn't been discussed and where i'll wrap is where the targets are coming from. because they're not all coming from trump's head. they're also come free throw right-wing media that he consumes. there's a feedback loop there that where he sort of gets this from is he's pulling it back from the fever swamps and the media entities in a way that's sort of servicing back to the very audience that is helping propel him into power. and that's what we're really talking about here. the optimization and the actualization of what was sort of the haphazard effort of revenge back in his first term. >> mike, i think what you and saj lowe are both getting at, and i would throw the pardons into this as well-s by the end -- and sheriff arpaio, who was the first pardon, was with him last week. like the whole corruption of the rule of law is so central and out in the open, i wonder what you make of what this flurry of activity would be like if he won again. can you just play out sort of

what his directives would be for his doj, january 20th? >> the whole other side of this, of the politicization of the justice department, is what he would do with the january 6th rioters, which he's talked a lot about. and the story concentrates on the proactive uses of the government's powers against enemies. it doesn't touch on what he would doo those people that are under scrutiny. and obviously a lot of the january 6th people fall into that category, and he has playing of them singing the national anthem and all the stuff that he's said about pardoning them and such. those powers -- the pardon power is an unchecked power. and that's what i think made it so extraordinary at the end of his administration, and why i think he liked it so much, was that instantaneously, without congress, he could do something that created complete loyalty from someone for eternity.

some of these poem who helped him on january 6th that had received commutations before or shortly after from him. these powers where there is no check are where he has shown the willingness to push the bounds. and project 2025 would obviously allow him to do that more. the thing that would be particularly -- where the rubber would really meet the road if he came back would be with the judicial branch. and with what would the courts do if they tried to bring a prosecution? in the case of andy mccabe they brought an indictment to the grand jury and the grand jury didn't bring back an indictment and mccabe was not charged. trump really wanted mccabe charged. that was the closest that we saw. you saw a lot of people investigated. you saw a lot of -- you saw civil suits being issued by the

department. it's when -- those were not successful. but when you run into the courts is where it really starts to limit the power. the pardon power doesn't have to go to the courts. it just goes to the president's desk. >> i mean, angelo, this is where all the enablers that you've focused on and talked about, the people that populate his campaign and his project 2025 apparatus. because to try to charge andy mccabe it wasn't just trump accusing him of treason at an event in the east room. it was the entire leadership at doj had to assign staff, paid for by the u.s. taxpayer, to take this crap case where they couldn't get an indictment. i mean, how do you guard against what would be much more pliable actors in the next trump presidency? >> i think that's where the election comes in. i mean, ultimately this isn't a situation where mitigation is going to make that much of a difference. there are some existing safeguards like the courts. but they've been eroded as well.

and the stakes are really high. it is a prevention approach. and that's where this reporting comes in, being able to tell these stories, go back and look at what we know with fresh eyes to potentially where we're going to be helps put the stakes into focus. but i think what really scares me is even when some of these things are not successful, say, because they got investigated and potentially charged but the courts threw it out or ruled it out, as you noted in the earlier discussion, the damage is done. and what it does is it starts to get -- ruth knows better than me. but it starts to affect people's behavior. the reason we have heroes is because what they do is extraordinary. most people go along to get along. and you only have to bang and slam. and that's what's different about project 2025 and these individuals compared to the last time is that last time they were working with a small cadre of individuals they put into power whereas now they plan on erasing a very significant portion of the department and already bringing in prevetted and predetermined individuals at scale who know exactly what the assignment is so they can do as much of this early on -- and

even if most of them fail it wouldn't matter because the effect on individuals' behaviors beyond that would not just be chilling, most of them will go along to get along. so i think ultimately that's what's scary about these moments, is that sometimes -- there's not always infinite exit ramps. instead of thinking about what we should do beyond -- after the election, we have to really think about the real lever of power and decision now. this is the inflection point, not in three months from now unfortunately. and scarily. >> so ruth, with this as the inflection point and the perhaps last off-ramp before the rule of law in america is altered forever, if you accept he would build on all that's reported out in this story, what is the most effective way to have this conversation with the public about what we would lose if we headed down this path? >> i think what we're doing now but also emphasizing the personal nature of the vendetta. now, trump is very skilled at telling his followers that that

he's just standing in the way, everything is really about them. remember, he would say i'm being indicted for you. now it's going to be i'm investigating and persecuting people on your behalf. that's what every -- you know, every demagogue has done in the past. they present their violence, their repression as something that's for the good of the nation. so focusing on outcomes, also, you know, how the kind of -- these individual cases of people who are unjustly smeared, that appeals to the decency of the american people. and also, you know, the whole pardon thing. we can expect a very liberal use of pardons because all demagogues, all authorityians pardon people. because why would you have people sitting in jail when they can -- you need lawless elements in your government. so there are ways to focus on

outcomes as well as the stakes of everything. that's -- you know, that's the minimum we can do. >> all right. we'll continue to call on all of you to help with that. mike schmidt, thank you for being here to talk about this reporting. it's extraordinary. ruth ben-ghiat and angelo carusone, thank you. for making sense of it. and for spending time with us today. maya, you're stuck with us a little bit longer. when we come back, the disgraced ex-president isn't doing anything to help his political struggles with women voters. his newest remarks about women and reproductive rights are as convoluted and bizarre as they are offensive and dangerous. we'll bring them to you next. the promise of america is freedom, equality, but right now,

those pillars of our democracy are fragile and our rights are under attack. reproductive rights, voting rights, the right to make your own choices and to have your voice heard. we must act now to restore and protect these freedoms for us and for the future, and we can't do it without you. we are the american civil liberties union. will you join us? call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your gift of just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day, will help ensure that together we can continue to fight for free speech, liberty and justice. your support is more urgently needed than ever. reproductive rights are on the line and we are looking at going backwards. we have got to be here. we've got to be strong to protect those rights. so please join the aclu now.

call or go to my aclu.org and become an aclu guardian of liberty for just $19 a month. when you use your credit card, you'll receive this special we the people t-shirt member card magazine and more to show you're part of a movement to protect the rights of all people. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for everyone to have a voice and equal justice. and we will never stop because we the people, means all of us. so please call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your record label is taking off. but so is your sound engineer. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. our advanced matching helps find talented candidates,

so you can connect with them fast. visit indeed.com/hire it is inevitable. they will grow up. (♪♪) discover who they are (♪♪) what they want from this world. and how they will make it better. and while parenting has changed, how much you care has not. that's why instagram is introducing teen accounts. automatic protections for who can contact them

and the content they can see. (♪♪) it is clear that women in america clearly understand that donald trump is responsible for overturning roe vs. wade. new polling from nbc news finds that harris is leading trump with women by 21 points. 58% to 37%. and it is really starting to get under donald trump's skin. he knows he can't win if the gender gap remains that large. at a campaign rally over the weekend trump tried to fix it by claiming that if he's president everything will just get better if you're female. watch. >> let's talk about our great women. women have gone through a lot. are less healthy than they were four years ago. are more stressed and depressed and unhappy than they were four

years ago. i will fix all of that and i will fix it fast. and at long last this national nightmare that we're going through will be over. women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. you will no longer be thinking about abortion. >> ha! sounds like he's ready to follow bitcoin with like -- i don't know what. female happy pills or something. as if it ever occurred to the disgraced ex-president that women are more stressed and depressed and unhappy and less healthy because a constitutional right that we had enjoyed in this country for 50 years often inextricably linked not just to our maternal outcomes but to our chances of surviving a car crash or appendicitis was taken away by him, the guy speaking behind

bulletproof glass, donald trump. the thing he brags about and the devastating consequences that thing he brags about has had for women and families in america. over the last week we learned the names of two women, amber thur marn and candy miller whose deaths were caused in part by donald trump-era abortion bans. now new reporting on nbc news shows worrying signs that there could be a maternal mortality crisis in america because of trump's overturning roe and the abortion bans that have ensued. nbc news reports this on the warning signs coming from the state of texas, which had the earliest, most extreme ban in the country. quote, the number of women in texas who died while pregnant during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following that state's 2021 ban on abortion care. from 2019 to 2022 the rate of maternal mortality cases in texas rose by 56% compared with

just 11% nationwide during the same time period. that's according to an analysis by the gender equity policy institute. quote, there's only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality, said nancy cohen, president of the g.e.p. texas. i fear it is a harbinger of what is to come in other states. joining us is the president and ceo of the planned parenthood action fund, alexis mcgill johnson's here. maya's with us as well. alexis, take me inside what the data is showing everyone. i think folks like yourself knew this all along. >> yeah. i mean, look, nicolle, when you look at that data, 56% increase in pregnancy-related deaths since 2021, remember what is going on during that year. legislators are more concerned around allowing for bounty hunting to happen in pursuit of patients pursuing abortion, criminalizing providers for trying to provide care or give

information to patients who are going out of state in texas, and yet we see, you know, the deaths, the preventable deaths that you mentioned just now, amber thurman and candy miller, they were just the tip of the iceberg. this is what we have known all along, that in states like texas where the maternal mortality crisis was already incredibly high in this country is only going to get worse. doctors are not matching into banned states as they were previously. we've seen a 10% decline of o b obgyn residents matching into those states since these bans have come. 20% declines in states like alabama. and we know many more ob-gyn potential residents are considering whether or not they want to go into the profession. and that has led to a maternal care deserts, right? that we've seen across this country as well. the news is only going to get

worse because we are scaring providers away, we are scaring patients and creating a lot of chaos and confusion. it's really hard to navigate a health care system under those circumstances. >> i have this theory, maya, that there's a hidden male vote. i mean, of course it affects women. it's so personal. it's visceral when you read these stories. but the idea that it could be fatal to be pregnant in america, i don't think women are the only people who are going to reject those policies and politics. >> i think you're right. and i think we've already seen some of -- men including some young men organizing because they have sisters. they have daughters. they have wives. and i just want to go back to the image that you showed at the beginning of the two women we know to have died. they're black women. we also know that women of color, black women in particular, have already

literally given up their lives trying to become mothers because they wanted to be. and what alexis is pointing out so rightly and what planned parenthood has been doing historically, so importantly, is providing health care. and remember, embedded in project 2025, so as donald trump is talking about how he's going to make your life better, embedded in that is to take away what we have -- the one thing we are still holding on to despite the supreme court, which is the ability to get mifepristone, to get a pill even if -- >> barely. >> barely. but they want to take that away too. and at the same time they have also said we are not going to expand medicaid in a lot of these states to ensure that people can have the health care they need. and that is awful. >> and j.d. vance is flirting with the comstock act and charging -- in a lot of parts of the country you can't obtain that medicine unless you can get that by mail.

they threaten all of that. >> that's right. >> we need to sneak in a break. much more on the other side. don't go anywhere. much more on the other side. don't go anywhere. are now being analyzed and restored using the power of dell ai. ♪ hate and extremism in the united states are on the rise. in fact, there are more than 1400 hate groups in our country today. groups that vilify others for their race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. and extremist groups that spread dangerous conspiracies and encourage violent acts. this is a dark chapter in our history, but it can be rewritten. since 1971, the southern poverty law center has been fighting has been fighting hate and defending justice and equality in the u.s. but we can't do it without support from people like you. please call now or go online to helpfighthate.org to become a friend of the center. for just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day,

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where ivf is no longer legal? what will we do then? powerful new ad from vice president harris on the dangerous second trump term would pose for people desperately wanting to grow their family through ivf. what is the work of the next 43 days to make sure every woman, every man, ever voter understands that reality? >> reporter: well, look, i mean i think the work is being done and many of the stories that are coming out right now. as well as linking them to all of the other freedoms that are under attack if it is the freedom to build a family through ivf, the freedom to control your pregnancy with contraception. the freedom to get access to abortion and obviously there are freedom to vote, the very cornerstone of our freedoms and our democracy. i think it is really important over the next 43 days to also connect the really critical

ballot initiatives in california, florida, arizona, nevada along with the support, the great support that those ballot initiatives are enjoying with the same reproductive champions up and down the ballot to make sure people are considering what it means. we have to make the connections and close the gaps so people can understand there is really only one party here. only one set of champions here that is going to protect you at your access of reproductive freedom and act like our lives depend on it. clearly they do. one of the political phenomenals was watching how quickly politicians moved the marriage equality. i feel like the conversation around reproductive freedom in some way moved more quickly and people are just catching up. it is, if you are not the old debates it is if a woman lives or dies in a car accident, if she is pregnant she may not receive the same kind of care.

this is if someone begins ivf, expensive physical process has to be halted because radical in state legislature pulls the rug out of under them. it is about mortality rates exceeding those of any in the western world. how do you, how do you bring into focus how extreme and dramatic these changes are? >> well, i think you just did, nicole. [ laughter ] >> yes, our audience -- it is true. i think this is the point and we have been saying at the leadership conference we are the nation's oldest and largest coalition, planned parenthood is a member. we got the reproductive for all community as part of the civil rights community. we saw when dobbs came, the community organized and lined up right away with the understanding that this was life or death, that it was about the independent freedom and choice to decide how we live our lives, how we form

families. it is also deeply unpopular. and abortion as abortion banning it is unpopular. and because it is health care. and because it is, it is about freedom and individual power and the government not getting in the way. and, that is why we are seeing a huge increase in motivational voters to show up at the polls because of it. >> and young people can not imagine this is our country. thank you both so much for spending the hour with us. another break. we'll be right back. with us. another break. we'll be right back. the drivew? subject 2: dad! dad, we missed you! daddy, hi! subject 3: i missed you. my daughter is being treated for leukemia. subject 2: mom, mom, mom, mom. subject 3: i hope that she lives a long, great, happy life and that she will never forget how mom and daddy love her. st. jude, this is what's keeping my baby girl alive.

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