vaughn hilliard, nbc news, new york. >>> we are tracking another major presidential election. this one in mexico tomorrow. that country is widely expected to elect its first woman president. yet violence has overshadowed political campaigns with dozens of candidates assassinated, the most ever. most guad venegas is in mexico city. and a warning some of what you're about to see is disturbing. >> reporter: it's a historic presidential election. for the first time in its 200-year history two female candidates lead the presidential polls in mexico. the front-runner claudia is a former mayor of mexico city, a close ally to president lopez. she speaks fluent english is also an academic that has lived in california's bay area, studying both at stanford and berkley. >> what i like about claudia the most is her scientific point of view about society. >> reporter: her top competitor is a businesswoman and former senator known for her center right politics. but the historic moment of this election is overshadowed by fear, violence, and death. dozens seeking office in mexico this election

mccaskill and political analyst and co-host and from the win 2024 podcast and msnbc correspondent vaughn hilliardchristine. let's start with the economy because that is going to be key tonight. poll after poll shows it's the number one issue for voters. what are some of the big things you'll be watching for tonight? >> you have this unique experience here where you have two men who each have a record that they can try to celebrate here tonight and you'll be hearing from president trump, i'm sure, that inflation was lower when he was president. when he ended office it was 1.4%, but the unemployment rate jumped to 6.7% at the end of his term and overall jobs added were jobs lost because of the covid crisis. the stock market jumped 69%. how he thinks things are better in his administration, but compare that with joe biden. after you saw a spike up to 9% and inflation's back down to 3.3%. the jobless rate has remained very low for an historic amount of time. jobs added, 15 million out of the covid crash into the booming economy that we're in now and under him the stock market is up 14%. i want to zer

joining us now here in atlanta vaughn hilliard, nbc news senior white house correspondent gabe gutierrez, former democratic senator claire mccaskill from missouri, and tim miller, writer at large for the bulwark. he served as communications director for jeb bush's 2016 campaign and is an msnbc political analyst. okay, gabe, what are some of the top lines we expect to hear from president biden tonight? >> hi there, chris. president biden is expected to try to make that clear contrast the campaign has been talking about for the last several months, differentiating himself between current president biden and former president trump and also hit the issue of reproductive rights. within just the past hour or so following a supreme court ruling the biden campaign out with a statement that women's health, lives, and freedom remain in peril across the country because of donald trump, essentially tying the former president to those abortion rulings that we're seeing right now. the other key point for the biden campaign is something they've been making since the start of this election season, that

vaughn hilliard is there. >> reporter: tonight, former president trump turning the campaign trail into a defiance tour. >> vote for trump. we want a felon! >> reporter: on his first campaign swing since his guilty verdict since falsifying business records. >> the people are watching and they know a fake deal. >> reporter: speaking to a crowd of several thousand in 100-degree heat under the scorching las vegas sun, the former president's rally coming under the shade of legal setbacks. nbc news learned on monday the former president is scheduled with a virtual sitdown interview with a new york city probation officer, a key first step for his sentencing and potential jail time. the officer will evaluate trump's level of remorse, his financial background and mental state and provide a report to the judge to help him determine the sentence that he will hand down to trump on july 11th. >> they've weaponized the department of justice like it's never happened in this country. >> trump publicly showing no regrets and over the last week he's repeatedly equivocated on whether he'd seek revenge on

joining us from atlanta, vaughn hilliard and staff writer for "the atlantic" and msnbc political contributoribovich. vaughn, donald trump is coming up with expectation. he's not controlled. he's not polite and he interrupts and over talks, but this is a situation that will cut him off. his mike will be cut. you can probably still hear him if he keeps talking and his microphone will not be on and are we going to see a different donald trump tonight? >> this is going to be his 17th debate, katy. as you said, this is not new for him, and of course, the last two times he debated were back in 2020 and against joe biden and those were two slightly different debates and the first one was very chaotic and he interjected more than a hundred different times if you were to go through and count, and the second debate after he was panned for coming off as overly aggressive and not giving joe biden any due time he came off a much more controlled, if you may, and a little bit more poised, and i think that's a question of exactly where does donald trump come in today? if you follow his social media post ove

i want to bring in vaughn hilliard and gabe gutierrez. the former chief spokesperson for vice president harris and co-host of the weekend here on msnbc. with me onset, tim miller, host of the bulwark podcast and former communications director for gelabale bush 2016, and jonathan, politico white house bureau chief and host of msnbc's "way too early." both are msnbc political analysts. what a great lineup. i'll start with donald trump. what's the latest on him and his strategy going into tonight? >> these two men are in different places than we were four years ago. at that time in the 2020 debates, it was joe biden who was able to use four years of the trump administration in his record to jump off of. this go-around, it is the opposite. it is donald trump who has been out of office, who will attempt to look at the biden administration's record. he is going to make the case that if he had been in the white house during these four years, that there would have been no invasion of ukraine. that hamas would have not attacked israel. the difficu

it's not an accident our colleague vaughn hilliard and i continue to show up in the same places together, because those two things that used to be separate are in the feedback loop together. it's not even in a feedback loop anymore. it's one and the same. >> yeah, i mean that's the way to understand this and process this. and, andrew, it's why i'm constantly trying to pull you into our political conversations. i have to sneak in a break, but i do want to put you on the spot, andrew weissmann, and ask you to answer for me if here in year nine of covering trump, if the legal system is able to sit through that and understand that he is using and exploiting his -- his rights as a defendant, now as a convicted felon to advance his campaign. sneak in a quick break for us. we'll have that conversation on the other side. >>> also ahead for us, a big ruling from the united states supreme court today. the justices have decided 8-1 to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and that's a good thing. bad news, all the justices except one agree that's a good idea. and i don't know how many of