-- he sanctioned west bank settlers in what is a really important step. but i still think there needs to be more distance. the theory, at least what the administration was saying, was they are hugging bibi in public and then trying to prod him in private. well, bibi has no interest in kind of shoring up biden's political fortunes. >> correct. >> he holds an incomplete contempt. so it's past time to admit that strategy is not working. >> yes, i can say, bibi netanyahu is probably a trump supporter at this point. joe biden, take note. michelle goldberg, thank you so much for your time tonight, my friend. that is our show for this evening. now it is time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, alex. we are gonna be joined by a yale law school professor who's actually going to elaborate on what hillary clinton was telling you about what the supreme court might do, and elaborate on exactly hillary clinton's idea in detail. and it's a two

senator night course of the eve of the supreme court argument, we have senator sheldon whitehouse. but we have senator jon tester. and alex, i don't know, we know him as the mild mannered and of course toughest person in the united states senate, because he's an actual working farmer. >> yes, he has a major, majorly huge tractor, which, yes. >> he sent out an email today that begins with i am sick of this bs. >> mm. >> so, i don't know. >> sounds -- >> we might be getting calls off, jon tester, in the next hour. >> sounds testy. >> we are gonna find out what bs exactly he's -- keep it up. >> keep it a family program tonight, lawrence. >> thank you, alex. >> have a good show. donald trump had been administering a national until the test of american since 2011, when he began lying about president obama's birth certificate. millions of

americans failed that intelligence test when they believed donald trump's lies about president obama's birth certificate in his lies about how he was investing president obama's birth certificate by sending private investigators to a white, which of course he never did. he just lied about it in interviews on television, where no one ever challenge his claim that his mysterious private investigators were finding out amazing things. since he began running for president in 2015, donald trump has been administrating daily national intelligence tests to americans, and the results have been a devastating demonstration of higher levels of rank stupidity than anyone could have guessed. in 2016, donald trump came in first in the electoral college, but second with voters, with only 46% of the vote. hillary clinton got 3 million more votes than donald trump, which amounted to 48% of the vote. in 2020, donald trump came in second in the electoral college and with voters, winning 46.8% of the vote.

joe biden got 7 million more votes than donald trump, with 51.3% of the vote. and i know for a fact, through private conversations with trump voters in both of those elections, that there are trump voters who simply want lower taxes and or her opposed to abortion. and voting for the republican presidential candidate is what they've always done. but they know that donald trump is a buffoon, liar, and very likely a criminal. they are trump voters who are not fooled by donald trump, and are not voting for donald trump personally, they're voting for lower taxes, and for ultraconservative supreme court justices. but that leaves at least 40% of the electorate who fail every pebble intelligence test that donald trump administers, every one of them. like the one he did today on his social media site. if you believe anything donald trump says in this social media post, you have failed today's intelligence test.

donald trump wrote, if a president does not have immunity, the opposing party during his her term in office can extort and blackmail the president by saying if you don't give us everything we want, we will indict you for things you did while in office, even if everything done was totally legal and appropriate. that would be the end of the presidency and our country as we know it, and is just one of the many traps there would be for a president without presidential immunity. obama, bush, and sun joe biden would all be in prison. protect presidential immunity. donald trump is pretending that the concept of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution already exists, which is why he says project presidential immunity, instead what he really means, which is create presidential immunity. donald trump has probably lived a very coddled life as a rich person since birth who never missed a meal and never missed a day of being stupid. but as stupid as donald trump

is, he's not stupid enough to believe everything that donald trump says. if donald trump thought presidential immunity from criminal prosecution existed while he was president, he would not have been so polite with vice president mike pence in begging him to overturn the presidential election. he would have, by late morning of january 6th, put a bullet in mike pence's head, thereby automatically moving up president pro tem of the senate, who was chuck grassley, to preside over the electoral vote count, and chuck grassley would've absolutely counted those votes anyway donald trump told him to. we know two things about january 6th. number one, donald trump wanted to remain president more than he ever wanted anything in his life. and number two, there were things he would not do to achieve that, crimes he would not commit. because donald trump knew he could not in fact, according to

the law, stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody . a day in the life of the trump white house was full of two things, the action of a president out of control, and the decisions of a president who knew he could not do many of the things that he wanted to do. he knew there was no criminal immunity for his conduct. and he often feared making choices that he believed could help him, but wouldn't look good . and they weren't illegal, they just wouldn't look good. and that was enough to stop donald trump. on january 3rd, 2021, the final days of what is now his accused criminal conspiracy to overturn the presidential election, donald trump led a long meeting in the oval office about his plan to install his now criminal codefendant jeffrey clark as the acting attorney general of the united states. during that meeting, senior members of the justice department were yelling about how stupid the trump idea was. they threatened to all resign if donald trump persisted in naming jeffrey clark the acting

attorney general. and what happened after all the yelling in the oval office about donald trump's stupid idea ? donald trump backed down. it was not an illegal idea. but donald trump was still afraid to do it, because he knew there were limits. yes it is court of appeals opinion pointed out that we have over 200 years of history of presidents not being criminally prosecuted by the attorneys general of the opposing party after they leave office. all of those presidents knew they could be prosecuted for crimes committed while they were president. donald trump it was 28 years old in the summer of 1974 when the country got the most vivid lesson in our history of how fully subject to criminal prosecution former presidents are. on september 8th, 1974, one month after richard nixon in august resign the presidency in the middle of an ongoing

criminal investigation of his administration, he was pardoned by his former vice president, now president gerald ford. it was a part unlike any other issued by a president, it was not a pardon for a specific named a crime. it was a pardon for any and all possible crimes richard nixon might have committed from the first day of his presidency until the last day of his presidency. a blanket pardon to cover any and all crimes that richard nixon committed while president. the issuance of the pardon was much bigger news than the score of the super bowl that year. there wasn't a high school kid in an america who did not know about that pardon. donald trump now wants us to believe that there was 1:28 year old who recently made the big move across the east river where he grew up in queens to a studio apartment in manhattan

on the upper east side who had no idea that the president of the united states pardoned the previous president of the united states. news stands we're on every corner in new york city in those days, with multiple new york city newspapers on display with their headlines prominently displayed so that even if you did not read one of new york cities several daily newspapers in those days, it was impossible for you to miss the news of the day if your eyes were open. donald trump was not one of the 28- year-olds in new york city doing drugs that day. he never did drugs. he never was drunk. he walked by this headline whole day on severe or eight, 1974. donald trump has never been a reader, so there's no reason to think that he read the words of the pardon president ford issued richard nixon, and included

this paragraph. it is believed that a trial of richard nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly beginning till a year or more has elapsed. in the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former president of the united states. the prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office in the united states. president ford use the word trial three times, a trial of richard nixon, bringing to trial a former president, the prospects of such trial, three times. and not one lawyer or law professor in america said, but you can't bring to trial a former president. the constitution forbids it.

the president has immunity from colonel prosecution, not one person in america believe that or said that, including duke law school graduate richard nixon. an hour after the pardon was issued, after president ford issued the pardon to richard nixon, richard nixon formally accepted president ford's pardon, saying in accepting this pardon, i hope that his compassionate act will contribute to lifting this burden of watergate from her country. nixon went on to say one thing i can see clearly now is that i was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with watergate. no words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over watergate have caused the nation and the presidency. i know that many fair minded people believe that my motivations and actions in the watergate affair were intentionally self serving and illegal. i now understand how my own

mistakes and misjudgements have contributed to that belief and seemed to support it. this burden is the heaviest one of all to bear. everyone in america , including richard nixon, knew that richard nixon was on his way to a criminal trial if president ford had not pardoned him. and now, donald trump is asking his voters to believe that on that day in 1974, donald trump was the stupidest person in america. stupid, yes. but not that stupid. he knew. he knew. donald trump knew every day of his life since he was 28 years old that the president of the united states does not have criminal immunity for crimes committed while president. donald trump has known that for 49 years now. the dysfunctional minds who believe donald trump

will never know that yesterday's appeals court opinion points out that we actually live in a country where the attorney general cannot, as donald trump would put it, quote, indict you for things you did well in office, even if everything done was total illegal and appropriate. donald trump's speaks to his followers as they are completely un-educated children. and his followers are completely incapable of recognizing that insult when he delivers it to them. the day richard nixon resigned the presidency and gerald ford took the oath of office, the very first thing president ford said to the country as president was my fellow americans, our long national nightmare is over. the long national nightmare he was referring to was the 18 month investigation of criminal conduct presided over by president nixon. the long national nightmare, nightmare that is donald trump, it is much

longer than the nixon nightmare . and it is ongoing. but now, the federal court of appeals has unanimously sent donald trump on his way to becoming the first former president of the united states to face not just one criminal trial, but four criminal trials. tonight, no one's having worst nightmares than donald trump. leading off our discussion tonight is barb mcquade, former u.s. attorney and law professor at the university michigan law school. she's co-host of the podcast -- and author of the upcoming book attack from within: how misinformation sabotaging america. also with us glenn kirschner, former federal prosecutor and host of the justice matters podcast. they are both msnbc legal analysts. and barbara, let me start with you. i have not heard you in your reaction to the appeals court opinion, but donald trump's

statements about it today, pretending that there has always been this presidential immunity , is the way he's trying to trick his followers into thinking that something is changing here, something just changed in the appeals court, when nothing changed at all. >> absolutely, lawrence. i mean, the opinion of the court of appeals was not a surprise. they were simply restating the law as we have always known it. and what donald is doing is engaging in disinformation. he is suggesting to the public that what the court has done is something that is very radical, that it's now eroding a power that existed before yesterday. and that now, presidents have lost the power to be able to govern in this country without fear, and the chilling effect they would have to now face some sort of accountability that they did not freeze before. but as you said and as you have beautifully laid out there, for all of this nation's history, we have presumed that a president was not above the law

and that they could be tried with crimes. donald trump is the only one suggesting that this was different and that this is something new. but for people who don't know better, they will read that and they will fall for that colin. >> glenn, you have to struggle as a practitioner in courtrooms , presenting information to jurors who start the experience knowing absolutely nothing about what you're talking about. that's their qualification for being in jurors. so you have to penetrate the space where they know nothing and in effect educate them. so the great trial lawyers are great persuade or's, our great deliverers of information. is there a way that you can see to somehow get across to people who don't already understand it , that everything donald trump is saying about this completely false and the complete opposite of our history?

>> lawrence, we can keep doing what we're doing. we can try and explain in layman's terms what's really going on here to combat the disinformation from donald trump and those of his ilk. i actually think the supreme court has a role to play in helping tamp down the disinformation. and that would be as if they refused to accept for review this case involving the nonsensical claim of absolute presidential immunity, we can also helpfully point to the language of the constitution itself, which defeats the claim that presidents have immunity. two passages, one, a president has the duty, the responsibility to faithfully execute the laws of the country. lawrence, in what version of the english language does that bestow upon the president the opportunity to violate the laws of the country with complete impunity and immunity? it doesn't.

but there's even a more dramatic example. it is the impeachment judgment clause, because it says, even if a president is impeached in the house and convicted in the senate, he is still susceptible to trial, to judgment, to punishment, to indict. actually, the language of the constitution is a constitutional declaration of a presidents susceptibility to prosecution. i would go so far, lawrence, as to say i don't see a legitimate reason for the supreme court to exercise review over this case. and if they refused to take it, they're sending a powerful signal, a lawful and constitutional signal, that the appellate court got it right, and donald trump has it wrong all day long. >> glenn kirschner and barbara mcquade, thank you both very much for starting off our discussions tonight. thank you. >> thank you. and coming, up our next guest, a yale law professor,

has an op-ed piece in today's new york times offering a detailed version of what we just heard hillary clinton tell alex wagner about how the supreme court might rule after hearing tomorrow's argument about donald trump being barred for the presidential ballot in colorado. that's next. lot in colorado. that's next.

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xfinity1stand10gs.com for your chance to win. 12 hours from now, the united states supreme court will be hearing oral arguments on whether the colorado court can disqualify donald trump from the states presidential primary ballot based on section 3 the 14th amendment. now, today in the new york times, yale law professor akhil amar offered a possible outcome in the case which has not been fully considered on this program . just a line or two from me here and there. but in an op-ed piece entitled the supreme court should get out of the insurrection business, professor of our points out that we have 50 different ballot access laws in this country because each state has its own ballot access law.

most commentators on the case before the supreme court tomorrow have been suggesting all or nothing outcomes in which the supreme court should decide if donald trump should have access to all or none of the presidential ballots in the 50 states. professor amar offers what he calls a 50 state solution. quote, under the 50 state solution, facts as found by a state trial court in colorado permit that state to act. but other states using different procedures are free to act differently, or not at all. what happens in denver stays endeavor, in less other states choose to follow suit. in 1860, lincoln was not on the ballot in every state, ditto for ralph nader in 2000. welcome to the electoral college. we can be sure that most of the supreme court justices read professor amar's op-ed piece today, if not all of them, and especially his former yale law school student brett kavanaugh. joining us now is yale law

school professor akhil amar, he is the author of the book the words that made us: america's constitutional conversation 1760 to 1840, and host of the podcast america's constitution. professor, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i'm so glad you're here to expand on this, because i've mentioned once or twice not every presidential candidate necessarily gets on all 50 ballots in this country because there's a variety of ballot access, hurdles, that are deliberately put in place. the bigger states tenth of the most expensive hurdles to get over, like new york and california. and so, it is possible for a presidential candidate not to be on every ballot. and where it stands tonight with only maine in colorado saying they -- he's not going to be on the ballot, those are two states donald trump has never won. so it has no effect on his electoral college count. he could go back and get the same electoral college count he got against hillary clinton,

even not being on those ballots . >> that's right. michigan, for example, would be much more important state. and michigan has said, oh, under our state rules today, we don't have the same kind of rules about ballot access at primary elections. oh, but general elections might be very different indeed. now, if michigan were to keep him off the ballot for the general election, of course, that would need to go up to michigan state supreme court. but where they to say, yes, that's thanks to the what michigan law provides, if someone isn't 35, they don't get on the general election ballot. if someone is not natural born, they're not on the general election ballot. if someone is a two term president and ineligible, they don't get to go on the ballot. and that's how we do in michigan . we don't police it at the primary stage, we police it at the general election stage. wow, that would be a big one.

>> yeah, i mean, you could knock trump, for example, off the ballot in california and new york, and it wouldn't matter at alters lecturer college count. you hear many people referring to this as chaos, the idea that a presidential candidate's board from the ballot in some states and on the ballot in other states. is that chaos, in your view? >> it's federalism. it's the electoral college. it's the constitution. lincoln not only wasn't on the ballot in all the states, he basically wasn't on the ballot in any of the states south of virginia. he actually got zero popular, not electoral, zero popular votes south of virginia. so that's actually the way we do it in america. the different states are allowed to do different things. at the founding, some states actually, the state legislature picked electors. in other states, it was winner- take-all. in other states, it was my district. even today, you have 48 states that are winner-take-all.

but in nebraska and maine, it's winner take most. we've got some states that have seen the registration. other states have 30-day registration. and different rules for absentee ballots. some states have voting over a two-week period. on the west coast, does it differently than many east coast states. you might not love that system, but actually, that's our constitutional system. >> your op-ed piece, which i recommend to everyone in the new york times, guises to virtually every member this room court. [laughter] and especially on the conservative side, about why they would be interested in this and why this is in a certain way, describe it as the most conservative approach to the case that has presented to them. including this quote you have from justice gorsuch saying in a previous opinion, where he said a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited

from assuming office. so you point out why so many of these justices should, if they're consistent, be attracted to what you're proposing here. >> neil gorsuch said that, not just in any place, he said that in colorado about colorado. that was about a colorado election, whether someone was natural born or not. and colorado law basically says we police these rules with ballot access enforcement, even in the primary stage. >> and as you go through it, for example, you are a former student, brett kavanaugh, knowing -- to the extent that you knew the way he thinks about these things, how would you expect him to see this? in other words, another way to put it, what do you expect to hear from him possibly or other justices tomorrow? >> i wouldn't presume honestly, to tell you how they will vote.

here's how i hope they will vote . i actually respect all the justices across the board. and i think they've taken a solemn oath, each of them, to the constitution, not to their own political philosophy or even what they think might be fair or just in some abstract sense. this is a case all about oath and with breaking. and the oath of the justices take is to the constitution, come what may. and i actually believe each one will try to do that. if they do that, if they are faithful through their oath, i actually think looking at the words and the history of the constitution, the story of the first insurrection of the 18 60s, where people try to actually prevent a lawful counting of abraham lincoln's votes on february 13th, 1861, the january 6th equivalent, if they do that, they're faithful to their best selves and the best in our constitution, their

faithful to their oath, i actually think that a conservative court could very well rule against this president , and that would include three justices appointed by donald trump. and what a lesson to very cynical americans, to the world, but a listen in judicial independence and constitutional fidelity. >> everyone should be reading the article by yale law professor akhil amar in the new york times. professor, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, our next guest sent out an email saying i'm sick of this bs. oh. now, you've seen montana senator jon tester on this program when he's not angry. tonight, i don't know. you might be seeing a different version of him. senator tester joins us next. n >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ with the majority of my patients with sensitivity

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two leading candidates for senate. two very different visions for california. steve garvey, the leading republican, is too conservative for california. he voted for trump twice and supported republicans for years, including far right conservatives. adam schiff, the leading democrat, defended democracy against trump and the insurrectionists. he helped build affordable housing, lower drug costs, and bring good jobs back home. the choice is clear. i'm adam schiff, and i approve this message. you want to see who we are as americans? i'm peter dixon and in kenya... we built a hospital that provides maternal care. as a marine... we fought against the taliban and their crimes against women. and in hillary clinton's state department... we took on gender-based violence in the congo. now extremists are banning abortion

and contraception right here at home. so, i'm running for congress to help stop them. for your family... and mine. i approved this message because this is who we are. i had a popular commentator four weeks ago that i talked to that told me flat out before they knew any of the contents of the bill, any of the content, nothing was out at that point, that totally flat out if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, i will do whatever i can to destroy you. because i do not want you to solve this during the presidential election. >> that was oklahoma's right

wing republican senator james lankford on the senate floor today, describing the rage he has faced from trump fanatics because he actually try to fix a problem that donald trump says is killing 300,000 americans a year, which of course is a typical trump lie about the dangers of our southern border. the other thing that republicans have proved is a lie is the idea that republicans want to fix the border problems. they negotiated a bipartisan senate bill that strengthen security at the southern border and is endorsed by the border patrol union. and then donald trump ordered republicans not to vote for the bill they had negotiated. because donald trump doesn't want these southern border to be fixed on joe biden's watch. our next guest, senator jon tester, said it is shameful that politicians in washington have once again chosen to play politics with our border and put our national security at risk. senator tester is running for reelection in montana.

where a new republican candidate is entering the race, congressman matt rosendale, who joined the republican course in the house of representatives saying they would vote against a senate bill securing the border if it passed the senate and came to the house. every republican who has announced opposition to the senate bill has revealed that they have never for a single day of their lives being serious about their exaggerated threats of danger at the southern border or their promises to fix it. it was all a lie. jon tester beat matt rosendale for that senate seat once before in 2018. joining us now is montana's senior senator jon tester, democrat running for reelection in the united states senate. senator, i saw that email you sent out today. i'm sick of this bs, looked pretty angry. i can't imagine what it is like to be in that chamber on a day like

today when a negotiated piece of legislation to secure the southern border is in effect blocked by republicans who were part of the negotiation. i've never seen anything like it, never seen. >> look, lawrence, you covered it very, very well. people, people sent me here for montana to actually fix problems. not to play politics, it's the last thing they want. we've got republicans, we've got democrats. but the fact is we are all americans. and when i go back home to montana, i hear from everyone, from families to sheriffs to border patrol folks, we need to fix this border. we need to know who is coming across the border. so the negotiations went on for four months. it was a price to get the dollars for ukraine. and came up with a deal. and look, it was not the deal i would have written, but it was a doggone good deal. i think the bill that lankford and murphy and sinema came up with is pretty good.

it puts more manpower on the border, technology, changes the asylum rules. it's a good, thoughtful presentation. and we've had folks running all over our state and all over the country, i've been down to the border, it's horrible, it's terrible. well, let's fix. it we had an opportunity to fix it today. and the same folks, the same folks who are talking about what a horrible situation are on the border, and i agree, we need to fix it, voted against fixing it. why? because they want it as a campaign issue. when this town becomes more about democrats and republicans that it does about the american people, it just shows you how badly broken congress is. and i will tell you, it is unbelievably ridiculous what transpired today, where james lankford was hung out to dry by his own party. they told him to go out and fix this, he did it, worked in good faith, along with murphy and sinema in good faith, came up with a deal. they pulled the rug

out from under him. it's ridiculous. we had a chance to fix this problem. we saw it in 2013, with a border bill that failed because they pulled the rug out from underneath him, again in 2018, i now in 2004. this isn't about fixing the problems in this country by someone serving in the senate. it's about making sure they've got issues out there that they can run on and show everything that's dysfunctional about this country. the fact is i hope the american people understand what transpired today. what transpired today's political malpractice. these folks could have fix the problem and they chose not to, because they want to keep it as a political issue. >> you are a border, state a northern border state. two people in your state feel threatened by the southern border? or is it their sense of a national purpose that they don't feel specifically threatened by it, but it needs to be solved as a national issue? >> look, i think it's both. i think they want to know who's coming across that border. i think it's incumbent on our

national -- who's come across that border. the only way you do that is make the investment in manpower in technology. that's why the border patrol are in favor this. they understand we need more manpower on that southern border. you can find out with the asylum and it solves the problem. and montanans would say thank, you thank you for solving this problem. but these very same people who have been down on the southern border saying this is a catastrophe now say, no, we don't want to fix it. and it's just -- i got to tell you, it's the epitome of craziness. and we ought to -- i don't know what to say. how do you fix this place? it's badly broken, and the american people should not put up with it. >> and the members of the house who opposed it were opposing it before they knew a word that was in the bill. >> [laughter] 100% correct. you know, it's a little over 300 pages, it's not a hard read. but a person ought to read it. and in that vein, lawrence, i will tell you, we ought to add a bare minimum take in this bill to the floor and debated

it. had the opportunity to debate the bill and make changes on the bill. but that was not acceptable. so, you're right. i mean, folks are talking about 5000 people coming across the border. that's hogwash. that's not on the bill. that's hogwash. the fact that biden can do all these things without the bill, that's hogwash to. the truth is we need this bill in this country so we can secure our border and we should have passed it, or we should have at least got on to debate it today . >> senator jon tester, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> appreciate the opportunity lawrence, thank you. >> thank you. coming up, how many supreme court justices should recuse himself from tomorrow's argument about donald trump's access to the presidential ballot? by my count, for. how many will? zero. the dark money billionaires who created the republican majority in the supreme court did not put them there to recuse themselves. senator sheldon whitehouse is next. senator she whitehouse is next. even days after using. most common side effects were

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>> in a fair and ethical world, not the world the current supreme court lives in, each supreme court justice appointed by donald trump would recuse from a case involving donald trump, and clarence thomas would recuse himself from donald trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, because he is married to a woman who helped and cheered on trump when he was doing so. >> justice thomas failed to report a loan that was no longer being collected, with a big balance still due and hence was, as a practical, matter forgiven. he likely violated these requirements. if hefailed to file his taxes

accordingly, he also likely violated our tax laws. >> senator whitehouse has asked the judicial conference to investigate whether clarence thomas's violation may have been willful, which would require the conference to report clarence thomas to the attorney general for further investigation. in 2022 the new york times and propublica reported a billionaire donated ownership of his 1. 6 billion dollar company to a nonprofit political organization run by leonard leo, among the largest contributions ever made to a political advocacy group, if not the very largest, through a loophole of a tax law, called nonprofit in the republican billionaire avoided paying as much as $400 million in taxes on that transaction. yesterday senator whitehouse introduced the and tax breaks for dark money act to close the loophole in the tax code that allows billionaires to avoid paying taxes on assets of donations to dark money

organizations. join us now democratic senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island, member of the senate judiciary committee, and chair of the subcommittee on federal courts. he's also the author of the scheme, other right-wing used dark money to capture the supreme court. senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. the notion that is supreme court justice could violate the very simple list of tax law. tax law doesn't get much simpler than what he seems to have violated. it's something that was really unimaginable prior to the last, i don't, know you are so that we started discovering just how wide open this kind of nuttiness has become at the supreme court. >> yeah. that's why i'm trying so hard to get the judicial conference, which is made up of judges who actually are bound by the ethics laws and who can enforce the ethics laws. so they understand how the ethics laws work.

to get more serious about figuring out how you can oversee the supreme court. at the moment they just passed their new code of ethics for themselves, which is like saying we adopt the rules of baseball except for that part about umpires. we're gonna call our own balls and strikes. this whole umpire stuff, that's for other people, not us. that's a crazy way to look at it and when i was pointing out in that speech is that when these justices violate their own ethics laws, they are very often out of legal consequences. they may have made a criminal statement, and hello code. they may very well have violated tax laws that they failed to report a gift to them as income, or the donor might have failed to report the gift under gift tax rules. they might be in violation of gift tax laws. so all of this potential lawbreaking is a very embarrassing thing for the

court system as a whole to say well we're just not gonna take a look into that. i wanted to raise the stakes a little bit for the judicial conference to show how much there is to look at once you peel back the skin of what is going on of the supreme court. >> most of the work of the supreme court as we know is low visibility. there aren't headlines about it. there are countless tax cases that move through the supreme court in a given year. clarence thomas ruling on every single one of them. those cases involve questions of compliance. the notion that you have a non- tax law compliant justice ruling in such cases is just stunning. >> if anybody else had come before the united states supreme court with the argument that they didn't understand when they stopped paying the interest on alone, there's a principle they had never repaid, and that was not a discharge of that indebtedness and therefore not income, they

would be left of the courtroom by these very justices. but when they are the ones who were involved in, it then suddenly it all gets very peculiar. so if the judicial conference really has an important role here. also getting to the bottom of

these donations by the billionaires. why on earth a billionaire spending money to influence either the court or political elections should be able to use pretax money to exert their influence when every ordinary person who writes 100 dollar check to her friend who's running for city counselor for congress pays with after tax money. that's a completely unfair advantage for the billionaires, who shouldn't be allowed to spend that much money in the first place, let alone have a tax advantage. >> and the only way your bill is going to get through will be in a tax bill that is moving through on reconciliation rules that needs 51 votes, which is one of the reasons why you've got to have 51 democratic votes in that senate to do things like this. pretty much every republican would vote against it. >> yeah, unfortunately, the same billionaires who got these justices onto the court are also the major funders of the republican party. and they pull both sets of strings and the result is republicans will not look at the problems of the court to save their lives. >> senator sheldon whitehouse, thank you so much for staying on this case and we're keeping

that flashlight of yours looking around that room and revealing something else every time we go to it. >> thank you lawrence. >> we'll be right back. lawren. >> we'll be right back. don't take if allergic to nurtec. allergic reactions can occur even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion and stomach pain. talk to your doctor about nurtec today. i'm starting to think this was a bad idea. what! we could find a better gift on etsy's new gift mode. oh! can i see that? ♪ happy birthday... ♪ it's a people cake! don't panic. gift easy with gift mode, new on etsy.

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>> time for tonight's last word. >> if he's elected, the stock market will crash. >> wrong again. today the biden stock market hit another all-time high, with the dow closing at 38,006 77. that's tonight's last. word 11th hour with stephanie ruhle starts right now. >> tonight, looking ahead at tomorrow's case before the

supreme court on whether or not donald trump's name can appear on colorado's ballot. and the chaotic week on capitol hill. and it is only wednesday, with the republican dysfunction and its impact on actual governing. then, despite all the good news, we'll take a look at why americans are still feeling the blues, as the 11th hour gets underway on this wednesday night. good evening once. again i'm stephanie ruhle, and, lucky me, live from washington d. c. and we're now 272 days away from election day. and in 11 hours from now the supreme court will hear arguments in a case that could upend the presidential race as we know it. in december the colorado supreme court sided with the egg with donald trump cannot be on the 2024 ballot, citing the 14th amendment. part of that amendment says that if, as a sworn officer of the u.s. government, you engaged in insurrection, you cannot hold federal