douglas brinkley and amie parnes, we appreciate it. we'll be back in a moment. >>> a celebration last week in kansas city that was meant to mark the chiefs win in the super bowl took a horrifying turn when a burst of gunfire killed one person and injured nearly two dozen others. our mark strassmann has more. >> reporter: gounshots, panic o paraded in kansas city. a super bowl situation hijacked. another american moment shattered. >> i was crying a lot. >> you had to be terrified. >> i was terrified. >> reporter: with today's gun violence there is no sacred space. inside this mega clutch last sunday, a woman stormed in firing an ar-15, shot and killed by off-duty police officers after a running gun battle. >> it's scary. >> reporter: on average, more tan 325 americans are shot every day. last year, saw 656 mass shootings defined as four or more victims. >> travel the world and feel a lot safer there than i did in my own city. >> reporter: bullet by bullet, gun violence grasps on to every stresses. >> people are experiencing trauma. >> r

joining us now to discuss it is presidential historian douglas brinkley. douglas, good to see you. i'm excited to talk to you about this. you edited ronald reagan's diaries which are evoked in this report. biden suggests he didn't do anything different than what reagan did. i think it is something like that. what is your take on how all of this is playing out? >> on that score, i think president biden is mistaken. ronald reagan did not have any classified documents and that reagan read something already marked read by someone else that is classified. what ronald reagan did was every night, he went to bed with his wife nancy. he would write a couple of lines, not drawing up reports on just what he saw or felt that day. that became the reagan diaries. other presidents have different ways of doing these things. bill clinton had taylor branch come to the white house and a journalist, and they would make these tapes. taylor would go off with him. it was all of these presidents after watergate -- we are trying to find a way to keep some of the stuff read in regards to donald trump and jo

i want to bring in presidential historian douglas brinkley. he's also the author of silent spring revolution. doug good to see you what do you think the history books ultimately will say about just the court's decision alone to hear this case >> well, i think it's important that they're going to hear it, but it'll be talking about the timing. january 6 seems like a long time ago. years have gone by and the fact that is bleeding right into the presidential election can be seen as troubling april 22 is what will be here but things won't get really be no, no, june and july 15th that the republicans hold their convention in milwaukee. >> and i think >> it's looking today like a win for trump side. give kicking this can down the road away. so it's a six three conservative supreme court. and they seem to have they're not going out a snail's pace, but they might be at a tortoise pace here. and time is running out. but we'll see what happens come april and june. >> yeah. i mean, when you think about the last time that the court weighed in on this idea

. >> joining me now is douglas brinkley, presidential historian, professor of history at rice and coauthorthe nixon tapes, 1971 to '72. doug, norma anderson actually said she we want the night goldwater lost to lyndon johnson. however unlikely she may be to help bring a case against donald trump, is it one of the greatest things about democracy that ordinary people can end up at the highest court in the land seeking justice. >> absolutely. she's in the history books now. anderson beat trump. you know, i just love the story that she carries around a pocket constitution, and has read it over and over and over again, which gave her the fortitude to forge forward on the 14th amendment, section 3 clause. i should note that she's from our state of ohio. i know you're from fairport harbor, and she's from elyria. colorado is getting all the glory, but she's from ohio originally. and she had already had at least a good university press biography going to be written about her, and maybe more now because she was the first woman who was majority leader of both the house and senate in colorado. so this

you're going to hear historian douglas brinkley saying he thinks the first lady is behind the presidentonded to this. let's watch. go ahead, roll tape. >> she is the vital part. dr. jill biden is it. you know, if you go back to 1952, harry truman could have run, and he didn't. why? well, the korean war, and you know, other -- but bess wanted to go back to independence, you know? e didn't like it in washington. that's not the cases with jill biden. he likes power. she wants to stay. she wants some sense of revenge. elizabeth: she likes power, wants some sense of regime. show the new quinnipiac poll. 6 -- 64 say the president is mentally unfit for another term versus 41% of trump. what do you think of all of this? >> he's clearly unfit. and steve forbes pointed out they're calling jill biden mrs. wilson, referring to woodrow wilson when he was incapacitated and the wife had to run the country. everybody can -- it's clear -- would you let him drive you in a car? elizabeth that's a good question. >> the answer is, no. he's not fit for the job right now. elizabeth mark simone, love having yo

right here on set, presidential historian, douglas brinkley. okay.e. does the biden team have any choice but to rebut it, but then of course that keeps it in the news. >> well, first of all, i don't think they're going to be affected by people coming out and trashing the report. i don't think that joe biden can hide in the basement and do a rose garden strategy to be effective here. look, he's done a lot of things here on the border trying to get this agreement. nobody in the country knows about it. i mean, why wasn't he really attacking the republicans for being hypocrites about this. secondly, you know, netanyahu just said that he's been dealing with biden in the middle east, an explosive situation. he said biden's been on point. thirdly, he's attacked these iran proxies. nobody knows anything about this. it's like they won't let him speak. so i know that he makes mistakes. he's made mistakes all of his lifetime. to think that he can have people go out and bad mouth a report, people have got to hear from biden, and if they hear from biden, they kno

the issues facing the country and that clearly isn't advantage for the democrats last week, douglas brinkley told me that biden instead of reacting angrily to comments about his memory or his age, should take a page from ronald reagan's playbook. tried to use humor, at least more often to counter the attacks. perhaps the president, what it might have been watching, take a listen i've been around, i know i don't look like i've been around awhile i do remember that do you agree that laughter is the best way to deal with this >> is one very good way. absolutely. jake, can, you know, when you see him on the stump, you and i have been with him on the stump and he's really good with normal voters because he does have a sense of humor. he can connect with them. and i think that's what you're seeing there. and so i think absolutely humerus, one way to deal with this, the other ways to get out there and how people see you in the clearly the campaign and the white house are doing that, are ramping that up. and i think that's another way voters need to see their president out there doing his job. and t

july >> we'll soon find out douglas brinkley, always great to talk to you and have that perspective. thank you very much. >> thank you, abby >> and before we go tonight, some sad news to report comedian richard lewis has died. his publicist told cnn that he passed away peacefully at his home in los angeles last night after suffering a heart attack. most recently, he starred in curb your enthusiasm with moments like this where it all again today i'm a word of wisdom, man, i didn't three tried a street in a row he really on a good strike on a huge strikes that >> before his time on curb, louis had a long career as a stand-up comedian, where he went deep into his own torment, earning him the nickname, the prince of pain he was also in films like mel brooks is robin hood, men in tights and last year he revealed that he'd been living with parkinson's disease. richard lewis was 76 years old and thank you for watching news night. laura coates live starts right now with a democracy. >> well, the jury >> i mean the supreme court is still out on that one tonight on laura coates why well, it's

i think douglas brinkley shared it and he talked about democracy being the freedom from fear, the freedom from want. there was a lot of discussion about equality. so in this, your answers had a lot to do with the form of government. so where do these inspirational ideas about equality factor into how we talk about and think about democracy? and i do want to. well, certainly. i mean, the declaration makes equality sort of a basic american value. people have taken it for that. i mean, we've talked a lot about. lives have been written about what the declaration actually meant. but like any piece of writing, it means it takes on a different meaning or the meanings that the readers who read it wanted to take and how meaningful it is to them. so i think we've been on a long journey of trying to realize the the principles, the basic principle of equality and for us to morrissey has to lead towards that and that if you don't have the part of the thing that you want the people to be able to do is to make choices that result in a society that is equal, that points towards equality and fairness to a