rachel rubin, thank you for joining us. , we really appreciate your time. >> thank you so much for having us. >> thank you for having us. ♪ john: online right now, we look at the 55,000 people with prior felony convictions who had the right to vote reinstated north carolina and what that could mean for the midterm elections. that is at pbs.org/newshour and that's "pbs news weekend" for tonight. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. hope to see you agn tomorrow. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] >> major funding for "pbs news weekend" has been provided by -- and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! ♪ >>> from kqed, this is the 2022 california gubernatorial debate. california's governor has vast powers and decisions over the lives of the 40 m

rubin legal analyst for the rachel maddow show. always good to have you, here my friend.nto what liz cheney the congresswoman was saying here, saying that she is not going to allow trump to turn this into a circus. here is a question. is that avoidable? do you think the former president will even testify? >> let's start with the second question, first alex. whether he will even testify. because before you can turn a congressional hearing into a three ring circus, you have to show up what you are showing in the first place. and i'm not convinced that donald trump will do that. you will recall that when his testimony was sought in the mueller investigation, for example, is that lawyer rudy giuliani appeared on television and said he would essentially throw is dead body in front of former president trump, before he would allow him to testify. and, here trump does not necessarily have to manufacture a whole bunch of excuses to avoid testifying, as new york times others have noted, there are a number of legal reasons that the former president could interpose here is an excuse

. >> joining me now is peter baker and lisa rubin, legal analyst for the rachel maddow show.have you both as always. after nine hearings at over 20 hours of testimony? the committee subpoena donald trump 21 months out of the january 6th attack. peter, was the decision to subpoena the former president purely symbolic? could it alter the outcome of the house committees investigation? >> i think it is mainly making a point. it's making the point that the one essential figure in all of this is donald trump. he hasn't -- he attacks the committee for being partisan, for being part of a hoax. he says that the election was stolen. he hasn't really ever answered a lot of the questions that people have about his actions leading up to january 6th and on the day of. rather than answer those, he has stressed engaged in partisan muscling of his own. i think that is the strategy here. he likes to say he would like to talk. we wrote in our book that during the mueller hearings he said that as well. of course, he didn't testify. his own lawyers don't believe that he would keep a story straigh