everywhere so you can make a compelling argument. but also to normalize, yeah, it is not the same guys from 16 but this is who he is. >> it is always great to have you here in person, have a great evening. that is all in on this wednesday night. you can catch me later tonight on the late show with stephen colbert her. although, also, it is fine if not. i can never get enough. >> you know who else can't get enough? i bet you my parents are will be watching that. >> that is what parents and fellow colleagues are for, unwavering support. i am here for you. as i have been for a quarter of a millennium. or, a century. it feels like a marohn and am. a long time. thanks to you at home for

training me this hour. today the supreme court made a momentous decision, one that has significant applications for the rule of law in this country. at 5:00 p.m. eastern this afternoon, the supreme court agreed to take up former president trump's claims of presidential immunity. these are not credible claims, that has been thoroughly litigated in both federal district court and federal appellate court. i nearly deciding to do this, setting aside whatever the court's final ruling is, the court has essentially upended the attempt to hold donald trump accountable for his actions to subvert democracy. the court may have ended that attempt entirely. the decision is also certain to reshape the 2024 presidential race and it will likely play a determinative role in its outcome. but, as much as a significant of this ruling is already apparent, the full consequences here hinge on the timing.

in its ruling tonight, court said it would hear oral arguments in the case the week of april 22nd. april 22nd is not close to today. we will get into why exactly the court did not choose a date that is a lot sooner than that but april 22nd also on its face sort of seems pretty far from the november election. it is not. because when you start crunching the numbers and looking at how a trial could actually time out after the supreme court makes its decision here, the window in which trump could face trial, the window for that happening before the november election, is incredibly small. the first thing you have to take into account is that the prep time the judge who is overseeing this case, judge tonya check in, the prep time she allotted for trump and his lawyers has been effectively stalled. she initially give donald trump and his legal team seven months to prepare for this case. from the day he was indicted to the original trial date in

march. back in december on december 7th , trump's legal team asked for a pause, a stay in this case while trump's immunity claims were appealed, and the judge granted it. in that pause, it did not just freeze the case, it also paused all the prep time as well. trump's team still had 88 days left to prepare before the case was paused, and the expectation now is that they would still get those 88 days or something similar to prep when this case is an positive. that is point number one. even if the supreme court rules this case can go forward the day after the hear oral arguments, the trail cannot just start right away. trump's team would get another 88 days. point number two is about how long the trial would actually take. last year before the case had been pause, potential jurors for the case in the d.c. area received this prescreening

form, you see it on the screen. it specified the trial will last approximately three months after jury selection is completed. special counsel jack smith and judge chutkan have signaled we are looking at something like a three-month trial for this. just to ballpark this quickly, let's assume 88 days for trump's team to finish their prep before the trial, then let's assume the three months needed for the trial itself is a nice round 90 days. that comes out to 178 days. that is how long it would take for this trial to actually conclude after we get a decision back from the supreme court. let's go back to the calendar. the election is november 5th. an oral argument on trump's presidential immunity claims that the supreme court is set for the week of april 22nd. this would be the fastest possible scenario here, as

everything stands at present. the supreme court meets monday, april 22nd and they make a decision the next day. tuesday, april 23rd. if we add 178 days to tuesday, april 23rd, that would mean the trial would finish on wednesday, october 16th. 20 days before the general election. that is what we are working with here. in the best case scenario. 20 me now is the former acting solicitor general of the united states under president obama and the senior editor at slate covering the court. thank you both for being here tonight. i first want to start with your reaction to the court's decision hearing. and your level of optimism about this trial actually happening before the election. >> i have a lot of institutional respect for the supreme court, i was there this morning with my team arguing a different case and yet i find

myself gravely concerned by this decision by the supreme court to hear the case and wait until april, i am greatly concerned for the rule of law. donald trump has a bogus legal argument here in the supreme court is spending press this month trying to hear it. the court is known for a lot of things and certainly this essentially is not one of them. i think the best that can be said is they have left a schedule that leaves everyone unhappy, it is too fast for donald trump but too slow for jack smith, creates far too much uncertainty about the preservation of rule of law and the outcome. you can talk about those days, 178 days and 90 and 88 days, there is still a strong possibility the case could be tried against donald trump before the election and i can go into detail later about that but i certainly think right now i am concerned. >> i want to talk about the

mechanisms by which both the doj, special counsel, and judge chutkan might try to certain that 178 days. but first, he raises a point that, in the world of possibility that the supreme court thinks that somehow reaching a compromise decision here by having this on a timeline that is faster than trump wants, which is next february and slower than jack smith would have liked which would have been in march? >> i think we were hoping a week or two weeks ago that the compromise was that trump might prevail in the colorado case and was absolutely in this immunity case, that was supposed to be the ground bargain. now we are sort of doing a paradox where we are taking smaller and smaller halves of what we thought might be a win. i think that the real issue for me, neil just made this point, is that the court knows how to act quickly when it needs to

and it certainly acted very thickly in that colorado, bumping him up valid case. it acted much more quickly. so i think one of the things that worries me about this case is the sense that the court tells us what an emergency is and it has done that in case after case over the last couple of years, does not seem to feel that there is any emergency or any exigent shot clock going on here and for those of us who are doing the math you are doing and neil is doing that is trying to eke out some kind of case on the merits before the election, what the court did today was sort of advanced almost no concern for the fact that it is kind of democracy itself against the shot clock and they seem to be bothered by neither of those. >> to her point, if the supreme court does not even see the shot clock, judge chutkan does

and the special counsel does. you mentioned there might be ways to shorten the time frame of 178 days . first let's start with judge chutkan might be able to do. is there a way to narrow the prep time window, the 88 days trump and his defense team are due, once the case is returned to her, assuming of course that the supreme court does not rule in trump's flavor on the immunity claim? >> yeah, even before we get to judge chutkan, the question is, when is the court going to decide the case? i think she make such an important point in saying, look. this is a core that moves quickly, for example i was a lawyer in bush versus gore, that was a 36 day start to finish case, remember the first case of the supreme court we had four days to brief it. it had gone from 4 to 40 in the supposedly expedited case. so that does concern me having said that, i do think the court , and i hope they listen to the pressure of the american public to decide this thing quickly. after the hear the case on april 22nd.

judge chutkan into the interim does have some options that she said she was going to give donald trump 88 days to prepare for the trial that she said that well before trump had had the supreme court to grant his immunity case. and trump and his lawyers can walk and chew gum at the same time, they don't need all of those 88 days and so judge chutkan could even now say look, if this case comes back to me, donald trump , you start working now because you are not going to get the full 88 days, that was a world in which he did not have months and months of pre-existing delay like you do now. >> in addition to the prep time she could shrink, is there something jack smith could do? they suggested maybe they trim the charges against trump, do you think that is at all likely and if it is, what might be taken out? >> i think in some sense, jack smith has doggedly made the case, time after time to the court, that you have got to do

this more quickly. and in some sense, as we have said, he have had a little bit of a split the baby today where he does not get what he wants but donald trump does not get what he wants, whether he can, i don't know, sort of hive off some of this, this was a pretty tight case as compared to the bonnie willis sprawling case in fulton county, this was a pretty tight case, i suppose there is a way to tighten it but i think the real thing we have to ask ourselves is are we going to wait for weeks and weeks for somebody to write, say, a dissent in this case at the supreme court? and then it is coming down at the end of june. so i think what i worry about more than anything is that no matter what judge chutkan or jack smith can do , if you have four votes of the supreme court or three votes they want to do the runout the clock away, i think they can kind of keep this thing stalled for much longer than need be.

>> d read, to her point, the fact that they do not seem to be working expeditiously and they know how to work quickly when they want to? do you read anything and not in terms of how much they are going to favor trump in all of this? it seems clear that they understand the political reality here. how could you not? do you think it suggests they might actually find in his favor on these ludicrous claims of presidential immunity? >> no, because they are so ludicrous, no, i do not expect any justices to side with donald trump on the merits of this claim. it is crazy and he even said so, his lawyers back when he was being impeached after generations, he said the only remedy is to indict me after i leave office so that is what is happening, and now he is and complaining and saying you cannot indict me because i have absolute immunity. it has all been a long, long

shell game and i take her point about the court and maybe a dissent or something like that, but i think that when the court hears this case and realizes just how bogus donald trump's claims are, they will decide it quickly. even if there is a dissent, the chief justice has the power or whomever is in the majority, to release the majority opinion without waiting for the dissent and in a case like this, with the american public deserving so much of answers about what happened on january 6, on a formal trial to get to the bottom of it, i sure hope that is what will happen once we get there. >> to the rulings that have preceded this case, the supreme court taking it up, the appellate court ruling was, i think you call it a bench of flap. there was no room for entertaining any legality in trump's argument and at the supreme court has taken it up. i would imagine if you are

sitting on the circuit court of appeals and you are one of the judges that took your time to write a very thoughtful, wide- ranging opinion about how this thing did not hold water, this immunity claim, sort of like, what are the implications there that the supreme court decided to take it up anyway? >> i will go you one better. don't forget when the colorado case was argued, when anderson was argued, at the supreme court, the court did not want to touch the question of the insurrection and donald trump's responsibility for the insurrection and in fact donald trump's on lawyer was like, yeah, that was super bad, right? so we don't even have a court that wants to touch the merits of how bad january 6th was and i would add to that, the american public has seen the january 6th commission, has seen the impeachment trial. they had seen two e. jean carroll verdicts. they have seen a verdict in new york in the trump financial

misconduct case. there is a pile of unrefuted evidence including the finding at the colorado supreme court, that donald trump insurrection, all that stuff has not been touched as best as i can see by the u.s. supreme court. i am not confident they want to touch it. to neil's point, i think it is really important to understand when you get to the merits, when you get past all the sort of shell games about timing and the court feeling and needs to weigh in on this, they could not do a summary, we have still not had a single signal from the u.s. supreme court that that per curiam opinion, that three-judge opinion that came out of the d.c. circuit is anything but bulletproof. i think it is still bulletproof. i think they are just trying to figure out how to get there. >> all i have to say is, maybe the supreme court justices should look at how the judges

have handled their cases here in new york where we get things done when it comes to holding people accountable. not saying, just saying. thank you both for joining me tonight, really appreciate it. we have lots more ahead this evening including the breaking news that an illinois judge has disqualified donald trump from the 2024 presidential ballot over his actions on january 6. supreme court, over to you. first, more on this stunning decision by the supreme court to entertain donald trump's immunity claims. which justices wanted to hear this case, that is coming up next. more than just work. like when it needs to be a big soft shoulder to cry on. which is why downy does more to make clothes softer, fresher, and better. downy. breathe life into your laundry. i'm starting to think this was a bad idea. what! we could find a better gift on etsy's new gift mode.

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to agree to hear a case, at least four justices much vote to take it up. not a majority, although it can be. four out of nine is the bare minimum, it is the magic number. now with the news of the supreme court deciding to hear donald trump's claim he is somehow immune from criminal prosecution, it begs the question, which of these nine justices decided to take up this case and why did it take the court so very long to do so? after all, it took just 51 days from the time trump was kicked off the ballot in colorado on december 19th two when the supreme court heard oral arguments for that case on february 8th. on december 11th, 2023, special counsel jack smith asked the supreme court to quickly weigh in on trump's presidential immunity appeal and to do so early. which, the court rejected. now by the time we get to april 22nd, which is when the court plans to hear oral arguments in this immunity case, it will

have been 133 days since the court was first asked to hear the appeal. the case is curious, around 50 days when it appears to help donald trump and over 130 days when it doesn't. joining me now is the senior writer for slate covering courts and the law and the justice correspondent for the nation. first, let's talk about the optics of this order. is unsigned, there are no descents. i am asking you to answer maybe the unanswerable, but do you think it is possible this was a unanimous decision, that the liberal justices on the court cosigned taking this case up? >> i highly doubt it. as you said you only need four votes to take the case at all. most likely it was the four horsemen, it was thomas, cavanagh, the four horsemen of the apocalypse today decided to hear this case. i am interested about the fifth vote. there is an option for the supreme court to take the case

but not grant this day but allow justices to keep forward and they must've had a fifth vote to come up that process so that most likely came from roberts or barrett or both. i doubt very highly that the liberals were in on it but what i will say is that we have talked about, dahlia was talking about colorado earlier, right? the liberals are going to allow trump back on the ballot and they got nothing for that. they traded away that for nothing because the deal, potentially, of letting trump the on the ballot but denying his immunity, that obviously did not happen. >> that seems to be up in smoke. i have to go back into the way back machine, to revisit the conversation we had, i don't remember when it was, two weeks ago. seven years ago in tv anchor time. you suggested that the supreme court may have had already decided to take up the immunity case, you suggested that they had sort of cleared their april calendar to take up a high-

stakes case. can you talk a little bit more about what feels like a very prescient piece of analysis? >> is, i am saddened to learn that my educated guess was correct there. but what i noticed was that in december, shortly after jack smith first asked the supreme court to take up this case on an expedited schedule, the court was granting but not putting them on the april counter brady filing revealed the court has greatly told the parties we're holding this over until october so you don't need to rush. in january and other major case, a death penalty case, the court, rather bizarrely, hung onto it and held it over until next term. that was a strange pattern to me, i have covered the court for a long time. usually do not see that. the justices like to clear their pates with these cases by filling up the calendar until the end of april.

that was why when we spoke a few weeks ago or maybe a few years ago in anchor time it seems to me there was a real chance that what the justices were thinking was, look, we are going to have at least one more walk bester emergency case. it will probably be the immunity case and so we are going to hold open space for it later in the term. again, just my guess but i fear that in light of today's news, it is quite plausible. >> if they did that, first of all, i am reminded of the dobbs decision where they have decided they were going to take up the case but did not actually put it on the docket for several months because of political realities, right? this court have done that again and what does that suggest to you about, they could have taken this up in january when special counsel jack smith said , can you hear this on an expedited basis? but chose not to. than the appeals court gives a bulletproof ruling and they still decide to take it out. >> what it says is they are corrupted, political actors who act in bad faith. the reason why people like mark

and people like dahlia seem to have a crystal ball is because they are real. because they are realist and they understand the court for what it is and at some point, people in the media, people at home and people sitting in the white house have to stop pretending that the supreme court is some kind of benign, trying to do its best institution and start to realize there are six republicans, not conservatives, republicans, on the supreme court who view it as their job to help the republican party. and until we do something about that, until we take away that power, until we draw the line on them, there, they will continue to do this. they will help trump, they will take away abortion rights, they will and affirmative action, they will liberalize gun rights. we will do all of it until we stop them and somebody needs to start listening in the higher echelons of the democratic party. because we will keep losing every day we allow these six

republicans in robes to rule over all of us. >> iso appreciate his passion and disdain for this court. it is an incontrovertible fact that when the 14th amendment case rolled around, they were able to move that thing through real quickly, even though the stakes are as high if not considerably higher in this case. and i wonder if there is any explanation you could even fathom other than political calculation. >> i think there is a possibility that over the last two weeks the liberal justices were trying to come to a compromise with a handful of conservatives. i think elie is right, probably roberts and barrett were seen as the most gettable here to issue a summary affirmance perhaps of the d.c. circuit's bulletproof decision or to simply deny a stay. the court could have denied a stay, allowed the trial to move

forward in the preliminary stages, and also heard arguments and rendered a decision to affirm the trial could move forward in the summer. the court had other options and i really do think the justices on the left were struggling to find something salvage something out of this over the last few weeks that would make it anything less than a disaster, but frankly, it appears they have failed and i cannot come up with any other justification for what the court has done here. delaying over and over again, allowing trump to run out the clock. but only in cases that he wants the court to move slowly on. as you have said, when he is bumped off the ballot, he gets to the court the next month. when he raises a bogus immunity claim, he gets to push his trial back so many months that it probably will not happen before the election. that is a disturbing pattern. i have to say, i am cynical about this court, even i am shocked by what happened today.

last term there were some decisions that suggested maybe a few of the justices in the middle would let us have some democracy, would let us have voting rights and make our own decisions and vote in a free and fair election and hold people accountable for subverting that election and now i just do not think that is true. i have to agree with elie's extreme cynicism. i feel like this court is in the tank for donald trump. >> in the break leading into the segment, you rightly point out the vested interest on these conservatives have in a reelection of trump as it pertains to their retirement. >> clarence thomas does not want to die on the court and he is getting old and he is never going to retire during a democratic presidency. one of the reasons clarence thomas is not re-cruising himself is that he needs trump to win again so clarence thomas can retire. most likely, sam alito needs trump to win again so he can retire instead of having to die on the bench. that is at least two of the nine who have a vested

professional interest in seeing continued republican hegemony over this country and that is not the first time this is happened. as we all know, sandra day o'connor wanted george bush to be president and thus appointed him president because she wanted to retire under republican president. this is how republicans roll. >> on that note, we are going to have to leave it there, the conversation is by no means over. please come back, thanks so much for your time and passions tonight. really appreciate it in these doldrums and dark moments. still to come this evening, the man who is arguably the most responsible for the 6-3 conservative majority supreme court dropped a bombshell of his own today. we will get to that, plus another breaking story for the third time, donald trump has been kicked off the state ballot. what happens now. more on that, coming up next.

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we have breaking news tonight. a judge in illinois has disqualified former president trump from appearing on the statement republican primary ballot. county judge tracy porter cited the 14th amendment's insurrection clause in her ruling, ordering the statement election board to remove donald trump east on his actions on

january 6th. illinois is now the third state to disqualify trump from 2024 primary ballots. the others are maine and colorado. as of right now, all three of these disqualifications are on hold, pending a supreme court decision that could come down any day. and porter acknowledged as much in her ruling tonight writing that she knew her decision could not be the ultimate outcome. whenever the court rules on this issue, it is sure to be considered in light of tonight's news that the court will now take up the question of presidential immunity in jack smith's federal election interference case. joining me now to discuss all this is mary mccord, former senior doj official for the national security division and an msnbc legal analyst. thanks for joining me tonight. some breaking news on all fronts, let me first get your thoughts on the immunity question and the degree to which the fact that the court is already mulling over the 14th amendment case is at all a

factor in the decision tonight on immunity. >> i know there have been people that have said ever since the court decided to take up the 14th amendment section 3 question and people listened to the arguments and i think most of us who listened to them felt like the court is not prepared, there are not five justices prepared to bar donald trump from the ballot, they are concerned about the state having the ability to bar presidential candidate from a ballot, i know a lot of people said maybe they will balance that against a ruling, either affirming the d.c. district in the immunity case or just not taking it up at all. i think in the subconscious of the justices, those kind of balancing things out may exist but i think they would very much deny that they do any type of training like that or that one case is related to the other in that way when the cases aren't technically related on legal issues.

i do think it is interesting today to just think about the juxtaposition of this ruling out of illinois with the decision to take up the question resented by the supreme court. so the question presented is the question that the supreme court has limited their review to is whether a former president enjoys immunity from criminal prosecutions for things that were within his official acts as president. so, we typically think of that based on the law that applies to immunity in civil cases, things that are within the outer perimeter of a president's official act may receive immunity that question has never been asked for criminal cases. when you think about what are a president's official acts? on the same day as this decision to take up this case, we have a court in chicago, or in illinois, like courts in other places, who have said donald trump engaged in insurrection. just thinking

about engaging in insurrection, the very thing that is criminal prosecution, in washington, d.c. is based on, engaging in this entire scheme that led to insurrection, it is hard to even conceive of that scheme as being within a former president's official acts. so, the supreme court could have handled this much differently and said we do not have to address questions about , and the generic space about whether a president could ever be a man for prosecution for things within the outer perimeter of his official acts because here, this case in front of us, is about a multifaceted conspiracy that led to an insurrection, an attempt and effort to overturn the votes of the american people and whatever else you might say about official acts, that is not a president's official act. >> it just seems like the court has been handed a lot of data points, if not just very strong rulings, suggesting, here is a person who fomented insurrection, here is a person

who has no claim to presidential immunity according to the appellate court system. does it surprise you that the even feel the need to weigh in on this and that there was no noted dissent in the ruling today? >> you don't normally have a dissent from a grant. you would have to since sometimes from denials or statements that sort of explain why the certification was denied. it would be unusual to grant a certification. a justice who is opposed, it is a good chance that justice will ultimately be opposed to the ruling of the other members and can issue a dissent at that point. i'm not surprised about that. i am surprised it took almost 2 full weeks for them to decide to take this case, i can't imagine why they could not have known immediately, justice by justice, whether they thought the case was important enough to take. i have heard others say, and i don't disagree with this, this could have been an effort by some of the justices to actually convince others not to

take the case and maybe that is why it took this amount of time. it could have also been trying to hammer out what the actual question would be that they decided to take. but still almost 2 weeks is surprising to me and i think that is why a lot of us thought they would deny surge. in terms of, am i surprised about the justices? i think there is at least two who maybe want to side with the former president on this or at least do not want to see him go to trial before the election. which is different than necessarily siding with him but i think most of the justices ultimately, i think will come down on the same side the d.c. circuit did and determined that on these facts, if they reach this, if they don't send him back to judge chutkan to determine whether it was in the scope of the official acts but if they actually look at the facts of this case and address whether on a case with these

facts, that could possibly be immune from criminal prosecution, i think the answer will be no from a majority of the justices. >> you sure would hope so. i know this is going to be the subject of an emergency episode of your podcast, prosecuting donald trump. i will be listening. thanks so much for your time tonight. >> pleasure. still ahead this evening, in the past two years alone, this supreme court has upended some of the foundational rates of modern american society. there is one man who is not only responsible for molding this conservative court, he considers it his greatest accomplishment. that story is next. it contains a probiotic to help relieve occasional bloating, plus vitamin b12 to aid digestion. try align probiotic. these underwear are period-proof. and sneeze-proof. and sweat-proof. they're leakproof underwear, from knix. comfy & confident protection that feel just like normal. with so many styles and colors to choose from, switching is easy at knix.com

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the united states supreme court has once again created chaos. the high court announced it will take up donald trump's immunity claim in late april. the timeline could end the possibility of holding trump accountable for trying to steal an election before americans cast votes in another election this november. the court is set to make one of the most consequential decisions and modern american history at the precise time when americans are hugely distrustful of the institution and still reeling from the court's other recent decisions. because of the court's 2022 decision to overturn roe v wade, the future of reproductive healthcare including abortion and fertility treatments is now at risk. here is what the courts did in the past two years.

it ended race-based affirmative action, it blocked gun safety legislation, it allowed businesses to discriminate against lgbtq people. this court has radically, you neurotically upended american life. there is one man who almost more than anyone else is responsible for all of this. addison mitchell mcconnell the third, or mitch to his friends and foes alike. senator mitch mcconnell took one of the most and precedented and consequential steps in the modern history of the united states senate. >> republicans, over the fight of the future of the supreme court. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said there will be no vote or even any hearings before the election on any one president obama nominates to replace the justice. a mecca after the death of the supreme court justice, mitch mcconnell announced he would not hold a hearing on any nominee president obama chose to replace him. why? because it was an election year, he said.

>> reporter: the next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the supreme court and have a profound impact on our country. so, of course, of course, the american people should have a say in the court's direction. >> no one in modern history had ever actually stolen a supreme court vacancy from a sitting president until mitch mcconnell. that decision had a profound impact on the future of the country, trump won the election thanks to those votes from evangelicals interested in a supreme court appointment. he went on to appoint neil gorsuch to the seed that had been stolen from his predecessor. the next year they appointed brett kavanaugh to the bench as well and another potential election approached and people started to wonder, what would mitch mcconnell do if another vacancy opened up on the court? would he help confirm a third trump justice in an election year?

>> i would fill it. >> i would fill it. on september 18th of 2020, supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg passed away, and with less than two months until the presidential election, mitch mcconnell rushed through the appointment of amy coney barrett. that is how we got the radical conservative majority court we have today. this is mitch mcconnell's legacy. today and senator mcconnell announced he would reap that might be retiring from senate leadership this november. >> i am immensely proud of the compliment i have played some role in obtaining. have enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics and i intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed. >> mitch mcconnell will no longer be running the upper

chamber of a falling out with the former president, mcconnell may be trying to wash his hands clean of the trump era republican party. the irony is that it is mitch mcconnell who more than almost anyone else abided donald trump and may have just helped him evade justice. we are going to talk about all of that coming up next. aritin r is like... ♪♪ is she? playing with the confidence of a pro and getting all up in that grass as if she doesn't have allergies? yeah. nice. are you still struggling with your bra? it's time for you to try knix. makers of the world's comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com ava: i was just feeling sick. and it was the worst day. mom was crying. i was sad. colton: i was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma.

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system in this country. we have civil litigation. former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one. >> that was senator mitch mcconnell during trump's second impeachment explaining that mitch mcconnell would not vote to convict trump but that trump was still liable in the american court system. today, senator mcconnell announced he is stepping down as republican leader just hours before the supreme court that he helped compose announced it would delay justice in trump's election interference trial. training me now is michelle goldberg, ben and columnist for the new york times. thank you for being here. it kind of feels like mitch mcconnell is leaving the scene of a car accident that he helped create. >> i think that the only thing, the only kind of maybe sliver of a grim irony is that he has

sort of laid the foundation for the destruction of the party that he so deeply loved, right? he has enabled -- i think you makes no secret of his total disdain for donald trump even though i would imagine people endorse them and bend the knee like everybody else does but you saw after january 6th that he clearly -- he was clearly angry, he wasn't angry enough to actually take the step and show the leadership that would put an end to donald trump but he thought somebody else would do it for him and the reason, one reason that we are unlikely to see any sort of serious criminal accountability for the election is because of the very supreme court that mitch mcconnell kind of used these really devious tricks to reshape. >> his influence in shaping this court cannot be underestimated because not only does he hijack merrick garland's nomination to get one of trump's pics in the board of

conservatives, he answers that evangelicals and conservatives who were skeptical of donald trump in 2016 have a reason to come out to vote for him which is tingling an empty supreme court seat to the american public and say whoever wins get to has us. that was hugely influential in donald trump month he won, i think. >> also sort of was able to pack all of these lower courts and so we have these increasingly bananas decisions from, for example, our friend matthew. he has reshaped the court system in this country in a way that kind of all avenues toward both accountability for donald trump and justice for people who have been oppressed by the various -- by various republican policies are just being systematically shut down. >> i also, to go to your earlier point about he has abided trump, we will not not stop playing that found of him saying, presidents are not

immune from prosecution but we are not going to do it here in the senate. it is choices like that that have led us to this moment where donald trump, it is an open question whether he will ever be held accountable for his actions on january 6. and the inability of mitch mcconnell to understand sort of the harvest he was selling, both during his time before january 6th and thereafter is just -- >> mitch mcconnell is also kind of old-fashioned cold war republican who has now overseen the complete capitulation of his party to russia and vladimir putin and has been unable to engineer even something you would think would be as bipartisan as aid to ukraine when it is running out of ammunition. so he has just left such a path of destruction in his wake, not just of his enemies but of all of his own sensible values.

>> there is some reporting that the sort of straw that broke the camels back or one of the catalysts for this announced retirement from leadership is that he really wants to press on ukraine aid. tonight i say, how is it that retirement has to be a precondition for republicans doing the right thing? >> is also the opposite, if you really want to press for ukraine aid, that is actually the position in which to do it. >> i think the open question is, there has been also a lot of back and forth in terms of general scuttlebutt in the upper chamber about whether he is ultimately going to endorse donald trump. it is amazing to me a man who so clearly recognizes the destruction of his own party would even be entertaining the notion of elevating back to the office. >> he is 86 years old, is he really going to run for reelection in two years? he does not having other internal senate race to deal with. but we will see. i would not sort of put any money on mitch mcconnell's decency and integrity. >> you have any optimism about,

i am not asking who, but in terms of leadership that comes next? >> of course not. would say this. i would say the only optimism, the only sign of optimism is that i think likely the leader that comes next will be less competent, right? mitch mcconnell was very good at obstruction in the same way we somewhat kevin mccarthy. kevin mccarthy maybe was not great at his job, he was better at his job than johnson and that presented to the republicans benefit. >> is a house went from kevin mccarthy to mike johnson, the senate goes from mitch mcconnell. >> thank you for helping me ride the chariot into darkness tonight. i appreciate your time. that is our show for tonight. now it is time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. neal katyal and harvard law professor laurence tribe. they have a lot to say, and i'm going a to get straight to it. >> do it, i will be watching. >> thank you. gh