fuzzier is that both sides are saying, this is a win. the advocates are excited about the fact that they'll be able to bring some of the tone and the frustration around the culture warring that's going on in school down, because of these changes, but desantis' team is saying, this is a win because the instructional piece of all of this is still in place. >> that's really interesting. but i think a real big and significant change that there was any settlement that adjusted the words in that law clarified it after it passed. antonia hilton, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. and that is going to do it for me today. "deadline: white house" starts right now. hi, there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. america, meet trump employee number five. the mar-a-lago staffer dropping a bombshell in the classified documents case brought by

special counsel jack smith against donald trump. in an interview with cnn, mar-a-lago employee brian butler painting a -- painting a very specific picture of trump's inner circle, and how it operated more like a mafia family than anything else. with loyalty prized above everything. a world where fealty to the boss led to criminal exposure. now, nbc news has not independently confirmed butler's identity as trump employee number 5 and he declined nbc's request for comment. in his interview last night, butler says he helped trump's co-defendants, walt nowta and carlos move those boxes containing some of our nation's most sensitive national security secrets. watch. >> he followed me. he pulled out, got behind me, got to the airport, i ended up loading all the luggage i had and he had a bunch of boxes. >> you noticed that he had boxes. >> oh, yeah, they were the boxes

that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes. that's what i remember. >> did you have any idea at the time that there was potentially u.s. national security secrets in those boxes? >> no clue. i had no clue. >> and here's how carlos talked about moving classified documents for trump. >> there was one time towards one of the last times i was with him, and we were talking about, you know, boxes and like, biden did the same thing, you know, you can't get -- it always got brought up about biden and other people that did the same thing, and then there was one time where he said, you know, we're all dirty, we all move boxes. >> "we're all dirty," but we're not. of course, president joe biden was not charged with obstructing the government's attempt at retrieving classified documents. unlike donald trump and his employees, who allegedly tried to delete all of the surveillance footage that showed the boxes being moved. here's butler describing a

conversation he had with d'alvera about the widespread panic around that footage. >> i remember him saying, oh, by the way, walt's coming tomorrow. i was like, oh, okay, cool, great. it wasn't until the following day when we were out walking that he said, oh, by the way, it's a secret, don't tell anyone walt's coming. why? he needs me to find something out before he gets here. oh, what's that? he needs me to -- you know, how long the camera footage is saved at mar-a-lago. and i'm like, that's odd. why you need the camera footage? why do you need to know how long it's saved? and his response was, i think they're looking for somebody that was there. >> as the justice department closed in, trump allies pressured that man, butler, offering him an attorney amid a full-blown hysteria now about who was talking to prosecutors and what they were saying. butler now says that he would testify in a trial against

donald trump, and that contrary to the ex-president and his wild conspiracies about the weaponization of the government and the deep state, this case is no witch hunt. >> do you view trump as a national security risk? >> i personally would just say that i just don't believe that he should be a presidential candidate at this time. i think it's time move on. >> does it concern you that he -- very well could be. >> yeah, absolutely. i think we can do better. and you know, for him to get up there all the time and say the things he says about, you know, about this being a witch hunt and everything, it's all -- you know, just -- he just can't take responsibility for anything. >> an extraordinary firsthand look through the eyes of a firsthand witness in this classified documents case. who lays out from the inside

team trump. former senator and co-host of msnbc's "how to win 2024" podcast, claire mccas kyl is back with us. national investigative reporter for "the washington post," our friend care leonnig is here. with me at the table, former top official at the department of justice, msnbc legal analyst, andrew wiseman is here. let me start with you, carol. this was jaw-dropping stuff. and kaitlan collins does a masterful job of bringing the witness through all of the parts of the story. obviously, prosecutors pieced together the story with a lot of different witness testimony. and she does a good job for the viewer at plugging it all in. but he's -- he's there for the crime of the hoarding, he's there for the crime of the movieing of the boxes. he's there for the boxes' summer trip to bedminster, which is some of the most riveting stuff. he drove a sprinter truck with a bag and the boxes were moved by someone else, who is now trump's co-defendant, and he's there for the pratt stuff, which is

perhaps the most stomach-sinking, gut punch for anyone coming at this story, as i know you do, from the national security perspective. tell me what it was like to sort of hear him in his own words describing the anatomy of the crime? >> i couldn't agree more with you, nicole. like, every time we think, and i know that claire and andrew and i and you all think that we know this down to the studs. every time i think, i've got this mar-a-lago story totally understood, i see a new character in the netflix special. and that's what brian became when kaitlan began to interview him. it was like, of course he was unwitting, but to me the most dramatic moment is actually, and this is where i started thinking about the screenplay, is june 3rd. remember, at this point, june 3rd, 2022, donald trump has tried to get his lawyers to lie, asked his lawyers if he may be

could lie about whether or not there are records still at mar-a-lago. the fbi and the head of the counter espionage section is coming down from the department of justice to get whatever documents are still on the premises that are classified and evan corcoran, president trump's attorney, is supposed to hand them over in a sealed envelope sealed with tape. at that moment, mr. butler, earlier this morning, has been instructed along with walt gnata to take a bunch of boxes into a van that are going to go to the airport and on to the private plane of the former president, where he and melania and all their luggage is going to be taken for the summer season to bedminster. those boxes are leaving the premise as donald trump is jumping into a little june 3rd meeting with the department of justice and mr. career public servant, jay bratt, just down here to get the rest of the

classified records, sir. donald trump says, i'm an open book, you know, look at whatever you need to. i just want to give you this stuff back. but meanwhile, there are documents in a van heading with brian. he doesn't realize that there's classified national security information inside, but they're being spirited away from the former president's palm beach club at that exact moment pip see the movie. >> i mean, you called trump goti-like yesterday. and if you take classified state secrets out of the boxes and put body parts in it, it's no less dramatic, right? this is someone who was in charge of driving the boxes with the contraband in them. it is haunting to me how he says, yeah, there was this white-haired tall guy i would later learn was the attorney, who ends up turning over his notes to jack smith's prosecutors. this was so many touchpoints to the criminal conduct, both the

mishandling and the very, very deliberate intent to obstruct. >> yeah, this is a firsthand witness to, as you said, both the retention part of the case, retaining classified documents, and also obstructing the investigation, and even the dissemination, because he overhears talking about this to someone who clearly shouldn't know about it. >> pratt, the australian -- >> exactly. and my reaction there to all of this is it's a huge indictment of our judicial system. we're all listening to this, it's riveting. that's what a trial is supposed to be. you know, donald trump should have his day in court, to be able to cross-examine all of this. but the public is entitled to not just hear from mr. butler, but everyone. the supreme court of the united states, that is putting a stay needlessly on the d.c. case, and judge canon -- don't get me started.

>> no, get started. say it! >> it's clearly, clearly is not going to have this trial. and that is why you have him speaking and in some ways, they say, thank god he's speaking. normally a prosecutor would be like, i do not want my witnesses to be doing this. i can't prevent them, but it's not a good thing. in this case, my reaction is, this is the only case the public is going to learn it. and that's really not right. the public has a right to have a speedy trial, to hear the evidence. and so it's great that this interview happened. he seems very credible, but they're entitled to the whole story. to butler and everyone else. and it really tells you about what the judicial system is doing in closing down accountability and so, this is the form where we can have some account after what happened, but it's not really enough. it's not what is really the way that we decide things in the united states, when there's a dispute, you have trials and

facts and law should matter. that's sort of my main reaction to this, is about, you know, judge canon has a lot to answer for. >> let me -- butler and kaitlan collins deal with the what of this. the why he's out there. let me play that. this is butler explaining why he came out, and how even he as a witness in this trial is having to navigate what he's afraid canon's going to do. >> why are you speaking out publicly with your story now? >> well, i mean, it's been almost a year since fbi agents showed up at my house when my wife was at home and, you know, over the course of the last year, emotionally, it's been a roller-coaster. you know, a couple of weeks ago, judge canon says she's going to release the names of the witnesses, you know, you go from highs and lows in this. and instead of just waiting for it to just come out, i think it's better that i get to at least see what happened, than it

coming out in the news, people calling me like crazy. i would rather just get it out there. >> i mean, carol, it's such an indictment of what trump's gotten away with in terms of witness tampering and character assassination. and it started with, i guess it started with jim comey, it probably started before that, who couldn't see to let mike flynn go, see to let it go, he's a good guy, end quote. this was trump's employee. this was a guy who probably has a couple of red maga hats in his closet, i'm guessing. who when the fbi came knocking, and even goes on to say, just wants his life back. >> i have to say, you know, in terms of character -- again, i'm thinking about the narrative of this. this seemingly very credible and also very genteel person who explains that many of these individuals who are charged as

co-conspirators were either bosses he liked, donald trump initially, or close, close friends. he's essentially i think one of the most sort of heart-wrenching pieces of kaitlan's interview with him is when mr. butler describes that his friendship is divided and almost over and has been for some time. he compares it to the way in which the country has been divided by donald trump. donald trump got his friend to do something that then got him a lawyer, when he was in trouble, and now that friend is indicted along with donald trump. and they can't speak to ooemp. it's legally dangerous for all sorts of reasons. brian butler chose to get independent counsel and he sees donald trump as a danger for misleading the public about how much he tried to interfere and corrupt a criminal investigation by the department of justice,

and he does not view this as a witch hunt, and he now sees how donald trump basically got a bunch of his close friends and former colleagues in a lot of legal hot water. and wants to sort of tell his story. but when he described that break in this long-term friendship as being similar to breaks that are happening all across the country, that really got me. >> look, it's got an echo to cassidy hutchinson's story. she goes in with a lawyer trump hired for her, doesn't tell the truth at the january 6th committee, hires independent counsel and then tells the truth. i want to show more of the testimony he provided. this is seemingly central to jack smith's case and ask you about this. this is butler describing the australian billionaire, mr. pratt. >> i believe it was april of 2021, there was a member, anthony pratt, who he was coming -- he flew in the night

before. >> he's an australian billionaire. >> he finishes his meeting with the former president, gets in the car, and his chief of staff says, how did the meeting go? pratt without saying says, he told me, and it would be u.s. military, you know, classified information of what he told him about russian submarines and u.s. submarines. and that's really all i remember hearing and i go, what. i remember thinking, what? i'm in the car, did i just hear that? it wasn't like, he went straight to the point. he told me that the must subs and with the russian subs and you know, something that would more than likely in my mind be classified. >> so anthony pratt, this australian billionaire you're talking about, he would pay a lot of money to come and have these new year's eve parties. >> so, so it might cost $1,000, $1,500 per person. he was giving $1 million.

and i think at the height he had 30 or 40 people there. so something that would be $50,000 -- let's just say, max, $50,000, here's a guy that's just buying access. it's very easy to see. >> so either wittingly or unwittingly, not just outing trump for the spillage or the leakage or whatever we want to call it, revealing state secrets to an australian billionaire about submarines, military submarines, ours and russia's, but also describing the pay-to-play. >> so i'm going to relate this in one way to judge canon, just to hit that note again, but in a recent decision, she said one of the reasons that trump can be trusted in having classified information is that there's no charge in the indictment that he disseminated any of this information. first of all, that's not the

standard whether he's charged with it. there's evidence of and we just heard it. the idea that she's so cavalier, this is why she was reversed by the 11th circuit. and as you and i have talked about, if you been in the intelligence community, listening to what we just listened to, it's so hard to convey to this the public how unimaginable it is. you feel such an obligation in terms of the information you have and your responsibility as a public servant, and you still have that a obligation after you leave the department of justice. i saw tons of highly classified material and i really wish i'd never done it and never seen it. the idea that you would have no sense of obligation to anyone other than yourself in terms of telling anyone, let alone a foreigner, when this is -- the kinds of information that are listed in the indictment, you can't have more serious

information about our military capabilities, what we know about military capabilities of other countries. the idea that you would spirit that away to an insecure location, but then also talk about it, anything like that is unimaginable. and it's, to me, that is the kind of question for the public and thinking about why would you want that person to ever have access to that information again? >> and claire, if you turn it around, as i try to do, to trump's fervor, a fervor that he's getting a lot of help from our legal system with these days, to not have these trials. this guy is credible from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes. this guy was in charge of the car service. this guy wasn't spying on trump. this guy wasn't watching msnbc. this guy's best friends are trump's co-defendant, walt nauta and employee number three, car

lost dee al vero, who's charged in a superseding indictment, and he's telling us that nowhere, no how trump should be anywhere near the oval office. that's why trump doesn't want a trial. >> and the interesting thing is, when he mentions the common throwaway line, well, biden did it, biden didn't do this. they were running these boxes out of there right before the fbi came to pick them up they were told, the feds are coming this afternoon. they were trying to leak videotape that showed them trying to hide these boxes. he cavalierly showed some woman writing a book the military's plan that would be implemented if we ever invaded iran. this is so different. it is the cover-up that reveals

the criminal and we used to tell young prosecutors all the time, pay attention to what the criminal does after he commits the crime, because that tells the jury the story. that tells the jury that this is someone who did something they knew was wrong, and they're trying to hide it. that's not what joe biden did. joe biden didn't -- joe biden called them and said, please come and get it and i'll answer any questions you've got. immediately. if trump had done that, he never would have been charged. >> claire and andrew, stick around a little bit longer with us. carolyn, i thank you for starting us off on this story today. it's always great to get tuk you about these things. still to come for us, democrats pushing -- sorry, our teleprompter -- how the trump-appointed former u.s. attorney portrayed president joe biden's memory, calling the report a political hit job and

saying that the special counsel knew exactly what firestorm would develop with its release. and its attempt to equate the behavior between biden and trump. congressman dan goldman joins our conversation on how robert herr was received on capitol hill today. plus, donald trump promising on day one to free hundreds of violent insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on january 6th, getting an assist today from some in the house gop. and later in the broadcast for our series, "american autocracy: it could happen here," what the biden administration is doing to make sure it doesn't. secretary buttigieg will be our guest here. all of that and more when "deadline: white house" continues after quick break. wh "deadline: white house" continues after quick break. ( ♪♪ ) ♪ i feel free... ♪ ♪ to bear my skin, yeah that's all me. ♪ ♪ nothing is everything ♪ ( ♪♪)

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there's no person that wants loyalty more than the former president. he says it all the time. >> given how other people who have been in trump's orbit and left and told the truth and how they've been treated, did it ever make you hesitate to -- >> no, look, i was always going to tell the truth, but after one of the interviews with the skbris -- the investigators on this case, you know, i think it got real when at the end of -- it was either my second or third, fourth time talking to them, where they said, at the end of it, oh, by the way, all of your grand jury testimony, witness testimony, has been turned over to the trump defense. you know, at that point, you're like, whoo, oh, boy, you know. >> oh, boy, because we know what

happens next. andrew and claire are back with us. this is this very real conversation, we talk about, sometimes in abstract terms, but now we have a man who's talked about his wife, who's gone on television to do something extraordinary. >> so, ruby friedman, shea moss, e jean carol, and cassidy hutchinson, sarah mathews, there's a litany of people, and you have somebody who has no compunction about having all of this information. this is why there is, just to be clear, what's going on legally. that's sort of in the world, but this is just back to judge cannon, her decision was that these witness names and their statements can just be outed as if there's not real-world threats going on to judges and prosecutors and witnesses and jurors if their names are revealed. and what is pending now is the government's motion to reconsider that. and you heard from this witness

that that was one of the factors for why he came forward. he could sort of see the writing on the wall, that this was going to happen, and he figured, i better just get out ahead of it. that is not how our justice system should work. the idea that witnesses are worried about being threatened is the kind of thing i worried about when i used to do organized crime cases a million years ago. that is not something that i worried about when i was doing the enron case and it's a white-collar case. that isn't done. the idea that it's -- that this is happening in these political corruption cases tells you everything about donald trump and the world we're in, where this isn't sort of universally reviled as unacceptable, and you're seeing in civil cases and in criminal cases, the judges having to take steps to protect the judicial process from the former president of the united states. >> and current -- you know, nominee of the republican party.

it's extraordinary. claire, you mentioned -- and frankly, the witness in this interview with kaitlan collins mentioned that the private conversation was, we all touch boxes, we're all dirty, biden did it, trump did it. you made the point, no, he didn't. here's adam schiff making a similar point to mr. herr today. that's the republican trump holdover who looked at biden's turning over of classified documents. >> you were not born yesterday. you understood exactly what you were doing. it was a choice. you certainly didn't have to include that language. you could have said, advisories is a advisory the president found, there is nothing more common with a witness of any age, when asked about events that are years old, to say, i do not recall. indeed, they're instructed by their attorney to do that if they have any question about it. you understood that, you made a

choice, that was a political choice. it was the wrong choice. >> claire, so, her -- i guess it was not a holdover, was asked to look at biden's handling and turning over of documents. i was still on leave, but this is one of the few stories that i saw. he goes out, before the transcript is released, it hasn't an echo of bill barr going out before the mueller report is released and characterizes his interview with biden. the transcript came out, i read the whole thing, biden talks the way anybody talks. anyone with a traumatic event tries to put that event in the context of the other things that were happening in their life, and it would have been fair for her to come out and say, biden turned to others in the room to confirm the year in which his son, beau died, whether it was '16 or '16 and it would have been accurate for her to come out and say, biden digressed, we talked about all sorts of things, he even worked in the fact that his wife jill biden's hot, you might find a picture of

her in a bathing suit. that would have been legit. herr comes out and smears the president of the united states, says his memory is too faulty to hold accountable for retaining classified documents, which is not what the own transcript of his own interview says. my worry is that the lie and the smear gets all the way around the globe several dozen times before half a dozen people read a transcript. but what your thoughts about what went down today on capitol hill? >> well, jim comey, started this by characterizing a decision that in the history of the justice department, at least the modern justice department i'm familiar with, and i know andrew is familiar with, you don't make your own opinions and comments when you've made a decision not to file criminal charges. you're playing with people's lives here. i don't care if you're joe schmo or you're joe biden.

you do not characterize a decision. bill barr did it with the mueller report in a way that was really despicable. and now herr does it. and he's right. this was a smart. he knew exactly what he was doing. he was trying put his finger on the scale politically and we don't do that in our criminal justice system in the united states of america. period. and the fact that he did it really tars his legacy and the idea that he tried to be righteously indignant today, as if he is somehow above this criticism is frankly sickening. >> so i noticed her his shoulder was bill burke, also over the shoulder of john durham, when he faced questioning from congress about the potential political influence of the durham report, the much bally hooed investigation that amounted to nothing, a bunch of legal defeats and not much else.

hur seems to understand what claire is articulating. what are your thoughts? >> i couldn't agree more with claire's comments and adam schiff's comments in terms of the propriety of what was said and done. and i would add to your comments that one thing, if you wanted to play it straight and just be by the book, he could have said, by the way, he also had a photographic memory, which is one of the things that hur says to the president about his recall. so in other words, if you're going to play it straight, you have to have the good and the bad. this is one where it was so easy to play it straight. this is really, this is not complicated. no crime here, it's not a crime unless you have willful retention. there obviously was no obstruction. there clearly is absolutely different than donald trump in terms of, you know -- >> so what happens to these prosecutors, like durham and hur. what happens to them? >> nothing. nothing is going to happen to them. >> how do they get to this point? i think schiff's point, you know

what you're doing. >> so here's my other point, it was a mistake to appoint rob hur. >> by merrick garland. >> exactly. you knew what you were getting. not sort of like a know-it-all, but everyone knew what he was. >> and who was he? >> it's not that just because you worked in the trump justice department that you're somehow evil or wrong, but just remember, not only was he a senior official in the trump department of justice, but he did something that will resonate with claire as to how improper it is and tells you about his moral fiber. there's a recall that the justice department is supposed to be separate from the white house. you do not make calls on cases based on what the white house wants. that is the road to autocracy. that is what we're facing now. >> totally. >> he gave a press conference at the white house. it's hard to convey big a deal

that is, but for everybody who is steeped in being at the department of justice, current and former people, that is a line you do not cross. as soon as i saw that, i was like, you know what you have here. >> why'd garland pick him? >> i think that this idea that you pick a republican, because i don't want to be cruised, because i pick a democrat, they're going to say, oh, he's going to pull his punches, is the thing you have to fight at the outset. if you have this idea that you're going to only appoint republicans to investigate republicans and republicans to investigate democrats, what world is that? and what you're buying into is the idea that people don't act out of principle. at the justice -- >> you were acting political. >> exactly. that decision to appoint rob hur, he is not -- with all due respect to him, in terms of a good lawyer, but he is not the best person for the job.

that's what you should be looking for. not the best republican for the job. and so that was really a mistake. and it was political in a small "p" sense. and buying sort of peace in the short-term, but this, as night follows the day, this is what was going to happen. >> no one's going anywhere. we'll bring congressman dan goldman into this very conversation. stay with us. into this very conversation stay with us i couldn't slow do. we were starting a business from the ground up. people were showing up left and right. and so did our business needs the chase ink card made it easy. when you go for something big like this, your kids see that. and they believe they can do the same. earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase with the chase ink business unlimited card. make more of what's yours. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. ♪ ♪ i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it.

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the desperate question is a distraction from the 91 federal

and state federal charges that donald trump faces now, his staggering civil court losses in new york now totaling more than a half a billion dollars and his full-blown embrace and romance with authoritarian dictators and communist tyrants all over the world, from victor orban in hungary to vladimir putin in russia, the former head of the kgb to the communist dictator of north korea. it's not that this, my friends, this is a memory test. but it's not a memory test for president biden, it's a memory test for all of america. >> that's us, guys. a memory test for all of us. that powerful, searing message from congressman jamie raskin, we expect nothing less at this point, was earlier today at this hearing, we've been talking about. the questioning of special counsel robert hur, who investigated president joe biden's handling of classified

documents. congressman raskin reminding all of us that while report to attack joe biden on his age and his memory, the president's very likely opponent in the 2024 race is busy facing dozens of criminal charges and cozying up to dictators he seeks to emulate. hur's report last night did not charge president joe biden with a crime, a stark contrast to the investigation into trump's handling of classified documents. and democrats today slammed the special counsel for how he characterized the president's memory in his report. "washington post" points out today that the release of the full hur transcript shows this. quote, biden doesn't come across as being as absent-minded as hur has made him out to be. the full transcript provides a more complete window into the back and forth between the two men, in which biden frequently joked in a setting that seemed more setting than antagonistic. joining our coverage, congressman dan goldman of new

york. >> thanks for having me, nicole. >> this is so interesting. i was out, so i was catching little bits of news, probably more like people consume news than those of us who work in it. and i remember seeing biden's response as a very quick rapid response to hur's characterization. when i read the whole transcript, as i did when i was up in the wee hours this morning, it's clear why biden felt so betrayed by the characterization. how do you, though, in this era, get all of the nuance of the transcript out ahead of the smearing that hur did with his characterization? >> well, look, i think that's part of the problem. and this also goes to the attorney general, who ultimately did release the report, and without the transcript. but it does confirm exactly what many of my democratic colleagues on the judiciary committee pointed out today, and i've been

saying for a while, this is, he cherry picked information that was politically damaging to joe biden to include it in the report, and he left out contrary information from the transcript and from the interview that would have contradicted that conclusion. and to say, for a prosecutor to actually say, in an interview of a witness, that you have a photographic memory, and then in a report, to say that your memory lapses are so significant because of your age, is really, really misleading and devious. and i think it just underscores how political mr. hur was in drafting this report and my colleague, and former boss, adam schiff pointed that out so well today in the hearing. >> so you're describing hur today as misleading and devious. those are strong words. i just, in that spirit, i want

to show you ted lieu's questioning of him, who seems to perhaps predicate his questioning on perhaps the same conclusion. >> in your investigation, did you find that president biden directed his lawyer to lie to the fbi? >> we identified no such evidence. >> did you find that president biden directed his lawyer to destroy classified documents? >> no. >> did you find that president biden directed his personal assistant to move boxes of documents to hide them from the fbi? >> no. >> did you find that president biden directed his personal assistant to delete security camera footage after the fbi asked for that footage? >> no. >> did you find that president biden showed a classified map related to an ongoing military operation to a campaign aid who did not have clearance? >> no. >> did you find that president biden engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice? >> no. >> did you find that president biden engaged in a scheme to conceal?

>> no. >> mishanding classified information in its criminal efforts to deceive the fbi. >> if you saw kaitlan collins' pretty masterful interview of witness number five in the mar-a-lago case, you saw that he described what the conversation was around the moving of the boxes containing state secrets at mar-a-lago. he said, what we talked about was, we all did it, biden did it. i mean, this effort, and anyone that participates in it, to make it sound like everybody does it, has damaging consequences for our state credits. what are the national security implications of these two seemingly dueling investigations that merrick garland ordered into biden and trump? >> well, they're significant, because what donald trump did, and i think congressmanlieu laid out the litany of what he did so well, was very dangerous. and it was the fact of the

knowing l and will have obstruction that can only be explained by the fact that he must have wanted those documents to do something with them, and if he did anything with those documents, he's violating the law, because certainly, he's violating the law to have them, but to disseminate them. and if he knows they're classified material, which he clearly did by the fact of instruction, then he is trying to disseminate them illegally. and that endangers our national security. and if we're going of this everybody does it, oh, joe biden had some classified information, donald trump had some classified information, it's all the same, this is just how it works. mike pence did, too, then we miss the point. what was egregious about donald trump's conduct was not necessarily that there was classified information in his boxes that were probably packed by somebody else. that's bad and we need to address that in congress, especially. but it's that he then learned of it, if he didn't know it

already, and actively tried to keep those documents. that's the real national security risk. and that gets undermined by this false equivalently between biden and trump. >> dan, you were in the justice department for many years. what's the answer. how do we deal with this world we seem to be in, where the attorney general feels like they have to have a republican appointed as a special counsel to investigate a republican and a republican appointed to investigate a democrat. doesn't that -- to me, that always seems to buy into the idea that the special counsel can't act out of principle. and that seems to be in some ways the root cause of the problem, because it doesn't seem like a surprise that rob hur acted the way he did, given his history. >> well, to be clear, the reason is that democrats, broadly, care very much about the separation

of the doj and the who is, care very much about the rule of law, care very much about making sure that our criminal process is independent from politics. and that that is why democratic attorneys general have appointed republican special counsel. and that's confirmed that republicans don't care about that, because they don't take those measures to try to boost the credibility to the extent that anyone thinks it's political. but andrew, i think the problem is even more than that. which is that since 2016, donald trump has politicized absolutely everything in our government. he has politicized the department of justice in our criminal process. he has politicized our intelligence and our intelligence community, and traditionally, those two entities are within the executive branch have been apolitical, and very importantly so. but if you are going to

politicize everything, you are going to tarnish any form of objective, independent review, and that is what donald trump has inflicted on this country. and that's why i suspect that merrick garland felt like he needed to appoint someone from a different party to investigate the president to make sure that can be no allegations, even though you're right that they're generally false, of any kind of political interference. >> i mean, having once been a member of that party, can i assure everyone and anybody who's watching that there's no placating this version of the republican party with anything, so people should just do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. congressman dan goldman, thank you very much, my friend. up next for us, we'll turn to the news about the nepo rnc, and why it may not be that bad of a political story for democrats. ad of a political story for democrats.

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this is our future, ma. godaddy airo. creates a logo, website, even social posts... in minutes! -how? -a.i. (impressed) ay i like it! who wants to come see the future?! get your business online in minutes with godaddy airo guys, we have a con artist as the front-runner in the republican party. a guy who has made a career out of telling people lies so that they come in and buy his product or whatever he does. you ever heard of trump vodka? >> yeah! >> you have? well, it doesn't around anymore. or trump mattress? or trump air? or trump ice? or trump water? those are all businesses that are gone because they were a disaster.

trump hot air. yeah. so, we cannot allow the conservative movement to be taken over by a con artist, because the stakes are too high. >> i don't know if i've ever said this on the air, but marco, i agree with you. tragically, that was the year 2016. fast forward to 2024 and the con is still very much alive and well, as marco rubio told us it would be. trump's own daughter-in-law is now the co-chair of the rnc. and she's acting on a mandate to divert rnc committee spending away from down-ballot races for instance and toward stuff important to her and her father-in-law. trump's various legal fees. but the party takeover doesn't stop there. politico was first to report that we're in the early stages of what it reports is a, quote, bloodbath at the rnc. 60 staffers including five of the most senior staff. joining you are coverage from rnc spokesman, host of the bulwark podcast, tim miller is

with us. claire is with us as well. tim, in terms of party structure, the rnc was the last thing standing between trump using all of the money on whatever he spends on, his hairdo, his legal bills, whatever else. this is great news for down-ballot races, which means state legislators, governors, i mean, this is a political debacle for the republican party. >> yeah, and the democrats already have this big advantage right now, nicole. and as you've played, joe biden's campaign is already on the air with a campaign trial to frame this race up. meanwhile, you know, the republicans are re-organizing the republican national committee. you know, trump has chris aceveda, one or two competent people around him. you might have worked with chris during the day. but in order to do so, he's

going to have to be competing with the president's own daughter-in-law, who has said that, you know, she's going to make sure that money that comes into that committee is going to his legal fees. i think that we're looking at a big financial advantage for the democrats, at least through the spring and summer, we'll see if they can clean it up late in the summer. i think that has an impact. the rnc doesn't do advertising, but more of the ground game type elements of these down-ballot races. like, the offices, you know, making sure that the state parties are well resourced. you know, all of that is being funneled, essentially into like a trumpy slush fund. he already has a couple of pacs that are funneling into a trump slush fund, as well. and to have the actual republican national committee doing that is a -- let's just say, a very big departure would be an understatement from what the type of committee work has done in the past. >> claire, chris aceveda is a

smart guy, but a trump chairman especially with trump as your family cannot also be charge of the party functions. it can't happen. it doesn't work. what is your sense of the strategic advantage gained for democrats this week? >> well, first of all, i never argue with you. but, i've got to say, i cannot call anyone who is making their life's work at this moment in time returning donald trump to the oval office "smart." >> fair. fair. >> there's something wrong -- >> competent? >> fair. >> there's something wrong with this man. because if you were smart, you would run. you would not embrace. you would not be part of an effort. here is what's really going on. trump went on squawkbox this week and said what he thought

that audience wanted to hear. trump is desperate to break into the big money sector right now, because he is running on fumes, because he's diverted so much, he's using all of those tens of millions of dollars to pay his lawyers. so now he's got his daughter-in-law and got somebody who is clearly not thinking straight, because he's helping trump, to pare down the rnc so they can move that money to trump in any way he wants. and tim's right. where this really hurts is state parties and ground games. the rnc and dnc never buy ads. they don't ever run an ad for a governor candidate. but they help identify voter files. they help build voter files. they help the ground game

volunteers to be organized with staff in each individual state. so it has good news. for hakim jeffreys and chuck schumer. >> claire, you should always feel like you can argue with me, but i'll waive the white flag. >> and tim miller, come back tomorrow and we'll finish this conversation tomorrow. andrew weismann sticks around. he already knows he can check out but never leave. when we come back, we'll bring in more of what claire is talking about, trump's plans for a second term. they include releasing what he describes as j-6 hostages. don't go anywhere. j-6 hostages. don't go anywhere. ♪♪ get 6x longer-lasting freshness, plus odor protection. try for under $5! so this is pickleball? it's basically tennis for babies, but for adults. it should be called wiffle tennis. pickle! yeah, aw! whoo! ♪♪ these guys are intense. we got nothing to worry about. with e*trade from morgan stanley,

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as president, the first step i will take will be to get control of the virus that has ruined so many lives. >> president george w. bush will keep the promise of social security, no changes, no reductions, no way. >> i put forth a plan for

universal health care to cut the cost of health care more than any other candidate. >> read my lips, no new taxes. >> jobs, education, health care. these are not just commitments from my lips, they are the work of my life. >> hi, again, everyone. it's now 5:00 in new york. so when folks run for office, they articulate an agenda that they want to enact, right off the bat. they put into effect initiatives that set the tone for their entire time in office. but for the man who tonight is expected to officially clinch the 2024 republican presidential nomination, his first act, should he prevail in november sounds quite a bit different from all of those. in a post on truth social last night, trump wrote this, quote, my first act since your next president will be to close the border, drill, baby drill, in all caps, and free the january

6th hostages being wrongfully imprisoned. let's stop right there and talk about those january 6th insurrectionist and rioters, not hostages, as trump calls them. on january 6th, 2021, there was a deadly insurrection against the united states government. a mob of rioters stormed the capitol with the explicit goal of stopping an official proceeding that was underway. men and women charged the building. they smashed windows, they violently attacked and harmed members of law enforcement. they damaged government property and who can ever forget, they called for the hanging of the reasonable then vice president, mps. these are the people trump wants to set free. >> we have a breach of the capitol! breach of the capitol! >> our house! >> whose house?

>> our house! >> whose house? >> our house! >> we're coming if you don't bring her out [ bleep ] [ bleep ], son of a bitch! you back up! >> those are the people trump is calling hostages. now following that fateful day, the department of justice undertook its most sprawling investigation in its history. the department has since charged about 1,300 people for their roles in the deadly attack. nearly 500 have been sentenced to jail. they are not, to a person, wrongfully imprisoned. they are simply facing the consequences for crimes many of them admit to committing. defender of the rule of law, republican liz cheney, tweeting this. if your response to trump's assault on our democracy is to lie and cover up what he did, to attack the brave men and women who came forward with the truth,

and defend the criminals who violently assaulted the capital, then you need to re-think whose side you're on. hint, it is not america's. it's where we start the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. former january 6th select committee member, democratic congresswoman joe loftgren is with us. she's also a member of the house judiciary kpep also joining us, charlie sykes, andrew weismann is back with us. congressman, liz cheney seems to be saying, it is un-american to do what trump did last night on truth social. do you agree? >> i sure do. for a candidate for president to say the nirngs he's going to do is to open the prison doors and let a bunch of criminals out, that's pretty shocking. and you know, these are individuals who have been convicted. nearly 800 people have pled guilty. and how many have been exonerated? just three so far? . so the officers they hurt, like

sergeantganel, he was injured so severely, he had to retire from the force. they tried to gouge out officer hodges' eye. they caused officer ganell to have a stroke. this was a vicious, vicious brutal, criminal attack. and they should be held to account. they're not hostages, they're criminals. and they should be in prison where they are. >> it's fascinating to watch the echo chamber, right? putin says in interviews, including with my own colleague, keir simmons, that these are political dissidents. he defends the insurrectionists. tucker carlson takes up for them. the gets the security footage that was part of the congressional select committee probe that you were on, that you helped lead. and now trump is calling the insurrectionists, many of whom have pleaded guilty, all but three have been convicted by jurors of their peers or judges

for their crimes, crimes that aren't in question, many are on videotape, the effort to re-write what's true is something that trump seemed to foreshadow at the beginning of his presidency, when he told, don't believe your eyes, don't believe your ears, only believe me. how can we have rule of law in this country if that comes to pass? if he's telling his supporters that these are hostages, not insurrectionists? >> well, this is an individual, mr. trump, who obviously does not believe in the rule of law as shown by his own activities that caused the committee to refer him for criminal prosecution. but also defending the vicious assaults neemz engaged in. i guess i'm old-fashioned, but i think that complying with the law is something that we should expect of each of us. and certainly, the people who want to occupy the highest office in the land, that someone

would say that the law should be violated actually is pretty shocking that person would ask us to trust him to be the chief executive, whose charge it is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. >> i'm about to sneeze. excuse me if that comes out. the leaves are starting to bloom in new york city. congresswoman, i want to ask you what it's like to have put this entire body of evidence before the country, through the work of the january 6th select committee and watch that person then become the nominee of the republican party. watch people like mitch mcconnell, who at the end of that second impeachment trial basically did what the question did, referred trump criminally to the doj for prosecution for a way he didn't that trump had had. what's it like to watch all of these republicans fall in line behind trump's candidacy? >> well, you know, it's pretty sad. our country is well served, when we have two vibrant political

parties, who can present competing policy agendas for the public to choose. not well served when one of those parties throws away its principles and does whatever one man who says he wants to be a dictator on day one, whatever that man wants. it's really pathetic to watch the implosion of the republican party. it doesn't help our country. >> let me show all of you what jon stewart, who is really rip roaring out of the gate since he's back in the chair, had to say about this plank of trump's re-election campaign. >> patriots, festooned in american flags, co-signing dictatorship. remember, we the people? you know there's more words after that, right? smaller font, still binding. look, if you want to love trump, love him. go to the rallies. buy the sneakers. if you want to give him absolute power, you want him to be the

leader over all of us, you want him to have the right of kings, you do you. but stop framing it as patriotism. >> this and the president's state of the union address and liz cheney's tweet made me want to ask you this question. is it time to reclaim the mantle of patriotism for people who actually believe in those founding documents, the constitution, the rule of law, the things that are supposed to bind us as citizens? >> absolutely. you can't be patriotic only when your side wins. you can about be patriotic when you use the american flag to attack police officers on january 6th. you can't be patriotic when you say that criminals ought to be let loose off their prison for the conviction of assaulting officers. that's not patriotism. you know, i'll stand with the

institution and my adherence to it. i just wish that the republican nominee had that same passion for our institution and for the rule of law. it's not patriotic. it's un-american, actually. >> you know, charlie, let me bring andrew in on this. i think because around this table, we don't have right/what. i never thought i'd see the day when judge lute ig moved me to tears or liz cheney's quotes are ones repeated all day. this bipartisan effort to claw back our democracy before it slips away is moving, but i worry it's too late. when you hear things coming out of trump supporter's mouths like the footage that vaughn hillyard rolls on. yeah, we like our strong man, this is what we want.

i worry if this is all little, too late. do you have that worry? >> well, i worry about it, but i don't think that it is too late. that's why we'll have an election and a judicial process. but this is not a drill. this is really real, and it's becoming -- and the choices are very, very stark. and i'm really glad you led with this. the president -- former presidents promised that he is going to free the rioters from january 6th. now, donald trump is a chronic liar, but i actually believe him. he has said this over and over and over again. he intends to do this. and this is something that he would be able to do if he becomes president again, using and abusing the pardon power. but i think we need to freeze frame this. because -- and i think that he and other republicans need to be asked about this over and over again. are you say that if donald trump becomes president of the united states, that he would support him using that power to wipe away the legal accountability for people convicted of

seditious conspiracy. people who attacked police officers. as the congresswoman said, you know, show the pictures of the insurrectionist who beat police officers with american flags. who used bear spray and pepper spray on officers. who tased the officers. who caused them to have heart attacks and strokes. people died that day. are you going to release them? are you going to embrace them? and then, turn this issue of patriotism around, as well as the issue of law and order. do you back the blue? do you black law and order? do you believe in these constitutional values? because this is one of the things that might get lost in this fire host of outrage that we get from donald trump all the time. but he intends to do this. i think he's absolutely serious about it. he has said this over and over and over again, so i think this is one of those moments where

you need to take him at his word, that he's going to take people who brutal attack cops. who yell things like, take michael fanone's gun and kill him with it, he is going to open up the jailhouse door and embrace them as patriots. we need to take back the word "patriot" and the whole idea of law and order and accountability. >> andrew weismann? >> so, i totally agree, he's going to do it, and in some ways, that's not even a story. so, first, we know he's going to do it, because look at what he did when he was president. he was surrounded by people who were convicted of crimes and he pardoned them. manafort, stone, flynn, all the people that we were prosecuting in connection with the mueller team. it's not like he says, i don't know how to use the pardon power. yes, he is saying this, but the story is that he's saying it. it's not the story of, gee, i

wonder if he won't do it, and people thinking, if he won't do it, maybe we're overstating it. it's that he's saying it now. there's a law and order party that used to be the republican party, and that is now the constellation of democrats and the republicans two actually still believe in a civilized society. and if you think that this -- just using the pardon power with respect to people who are afforded due process, where they either had to plead guilty as a choice, or a jury found them guilty. this isn't the biden administration saying, you, go to jail. they were afforded all the rights of a criminal defendant. he's going to do that over and over again. he is already as president saying, you can go out and commit a crime and don't worry, i'll pardon you for it. >> to border agents. >> exactly. so this idea that it's going to stop just at the january 6th level is, i think, fanciful. it's going to be -- i mean, that pardon power is a flaw in the

constitution, because no one thought that we would descend to this point where it can be used as a get out of jail free card. and the final irony is for the congresswoman to be surrounded with a so many colleagues who are protected by the capitol police on that day, who aren't standing with them. i mean, that's the part that is just again, the ingratitude of what they were standing for and that they don't see that their own interests in what america should stand for is not something that overtakes their own sort of political aspirations. >> ways that like, congresswoman? i mean, i have the privilege of interviewing michael fanone and harry dunham on multiple occasions. and i know they keep their head down and do their job, but what

is it like for you to see those men and women who literally put their bodies between our country and trump supporters who were trying to take it over that day on the instruction and order of a corrupt president threatening the life of his own vice president. what is it like to see them now protect the building of all of these people who don't recognize or appreciate or even acknowledge the reality of their heroics that day? >> well, you know, it's depressing, really. you think about brian sitnick who died, talking to his mother on the anniversary of the day of his death. these are hostages, the people who killed his son. the officers whose bravery has been diminished by a few of my colleagues, they still stand and protect us to much of our credit. but it is embarrassing to serve with members who don't honor them, respect them, and

acknowledge what they did to save our lives. >> charlie, what do you think of a political effort in this area looks like? a really, really public effort to sort of erode law enforcement's traditional political alignment with republicans? >> well, i think this is a real vulnerability for republicans. i mean, republicans are willing to fall into line behind donald trump on this and other issues. but if the issue is taken to them, do you support freeing these individuals? i mean, this is going to be very difficult. look, we've seen the almost infinite capacity of republicans to rationalize anything. don't misunderstand. >> don't hold your breath. >> this is one of the moments where we saw this with our own eyes. we know what happened. put the. of harry dunham and michael fanone up against what one of the nominees is saying that they're going to do. so this is one of those where i think that there are pictures, there's video, it is graphic.

and it is a real vulnerability if democrats will willing to prosecute this case, which i think that they will be. and if they won't, then other third party groups need to do it on their behalf. >> just real quick, do you remember any other time when the rule of law was so central to the political conversation? >> i think maybe joe mckaraty was an example. i remember a talking to my parents about it, and when you think about it now, when you have somebody who is president and running for president so much power, it is a scarier time. i would say the only saving grace is you and people like you, it's that the press is now still has that roll, that's why there's so much attack on the press. but that is a difference. >> we have a platform if we choose to use it. it's kind of alarming that more don't. but thank you both for your kind

words about what we're trying to do here. thank you both for being part of this conversation. charlie will be back later in this hour. when we come back, how president joe biden is putting democracy front and center in this election. our autocracy, it could happen here continues with a key member of the president's administration, transportation secretary pete buttigieg will be our guest right here in studio after a short break. and later in the broadcast, a brand-new $50 million ad campaign featuring republicans, former trump voters, who say no more. they can no longer support him for 2024. we'll show you why. we'll show you what they're saying in their own words, explaining why and how they've moved on from the disgraced ex-president and why the campaign could prove devastating to his election prospects. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere today ntinues . don't go anywhere toda friends, they are the future. but did you know that millions of kids right here in our own backyard are facing hunger every day without healthy food?

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. i ask all of you with regard to our party, to join together and defend democracy. we're defending against all threats, foreign and domestic. respect free and fair elections, restore trust in our institutions and make clear that political violence has absolutely no place, no place in america. zero place. it's not hyperbole to suggest that history is watching. we're watching. your children and grandchildren will read about this day and what we do. >> history is watching. it is and was a theme that president joe biden came back to again and again in last week's

state of the union address. a state of the union that is a fork in the road for our great nation, as americans now face a choice over what path we're going to take, whether to as president joe biden put it in his speech to defend democracy were choose curtain number two, a very different path, one that could see our great nation backslide into autocracy. as deputy director of national intelligence sue gordon reminded us recently, 3 hurricane years for our democracy is not a guarantee. it is not promised. there's no contract on that. it is an existential choice that our nation faces that we've been examining in our new series, american autocracy, it could happen here. with putin on the march and emboldened on the hero's stage, victor or orban getting a welcome. would the american people meet

this historic moment? in the words of president joe biden, history is watching us. joining us at the table, u.s. secretary of transportation, member of president joe biden's cabinet, pete buttigieg. so i've said this behind your back and i'll say it to your face. you are not just the administration's most skilled communicator, but one of the most skilled communicators in our politics. and i wonder how you even bite at this mega, massive huge idea of democracy and the very real universal concern that the roads we drive our kids on and the roads that our school buses travel on without any seat belts on are safe and secure. how do you what the president want us to do and also talking to people where they are, which is worried about the bills, worried about the roads, worried about the schools. >> well, one thing i really appreciate about serving under president biden's leadership is i think this whole administration resolves around an understanding about the relationship between these

high-minded, almost cosmic things that we talk about, like the durability of our democracy, and incredibly everyday things, like filling in holes on the road, in the road, or making sure there's clean, safe water coming out of our pipes. and i think that's not an accident. one of the tests for any model of government is its capacity to deliver on the basics. and i don't think it's an accident that, for example, the last time it was really kind of acceptable or even fashionable in some circles of american society to talk about approvingly about fascism, which was in the '20s and the '30s, one of the excuses they would make for people like mussolini, dictators abroad is, well, he makes the trains run on time. by the way, that wasn't true. >> it's never true, because they don't care about the people taking the trains. >> but they say that. the narrative is that these more autocratic systems are somehow better able to deliver on the

basics. the president often mentions that, almost anytime i'm in the room with him, especially early on men we were getting the infrastructure bill done, anytime infrastructure came up, one of the first things he would immediately mention was xi jinping and talk about how china was seeking to create the impression that their top-down, you know, command and control system was better able to deliver on things like infrastructure than our messy democratic system, and that getting this infrastructure bill passed would be a chance to prove them wrong. and that's, i guess that's my real answer to your question. that in this moment, if we can deliver on the basics, have better roads and bridges, have better trains and transit and airports and ports and the rest of it, and a better economy, and a better everyday life, that's part of how we validate the idea -- >> the system. >> yeah, because, the truth is, you know, democracy and the american system didn't win the ideological battle of the 20th century against the soviet

model, just based on theoretical arguments alone. we won because there were far more people in the soviet union who wished they were living in the united states, than the other way around. >> that really does come back to how we deliver on those things that make everyday life better or worse, depending partly on the condition and the functionality of your federal government. >> and this was biden's bet all along, right? it started with shots, then it was formula, when that got screwed up by private industry. it's why you can now get more kinds of formula in the united states of america, as anyone with little kids knows. and it is crystalized, probably most clearly in infrastructure. and trump, when he controlled a branch of government coveted an infrastructure bill all of his own. he wanted to do it, because even trump knew that you could cut a big fancy ribbon and stand in front of a road and a bridge and do it and he failed. and president biden invoked his predecessor 13 times in his state of the union address.

i wonder how you make this contrast clear that his what's on the line. that road, that bridge, that wi-fi you suddenly have, those bars on the top of your phone, you didn't have those the last four years, you have them now. >> i think that was a good example of the contrast between bluster, saying you're going to deliver something, infrastructure week again and again and again with no results, which is what we experienced in the last administration, and actually delivering, which this president did and this administration did in our first year. just this morning, i was in philadelphia at a bridge, the martin luther king bridge. i was at that same bridge a couple of years ago, as we were just announcing the beginning of this infrastructure program. now, i was talking to the workers who were in the middle of actually rehabilitating that bridge. so that difference between talk and action, between bluster and results is very much on display, in what we have right now with this infrastructure package. and i would say the how members, not just the what, but the how.

look at how it got done. there is this fiction out there that the way to get things done, especially infrastructure, is to have a strong man come in, barking orders, and just, you know, command and control, get it all done. >> the chinese way. >> the chinese way. >> or the orban way or the pick your dictator. >> right, which also rhymes with the last administration's kind of style, right? except that didn't get anything done. and the president in a very democratic way. by the way, a democratic way that was messy. i mean, we really worked at the president's direction to get republicans onboard and many of them did. we didn't do it by shoving it down anybody's throats. we got republicans to come across the aisle, not all, not even most, but republicans came across the aisle to work with me and the president to get this thing done. so our messy democratic system did, in fact, deliver. that is one of the best answers that we can have for this strong man fantasy that that's how you actually deliver results for

people. >> tim snyder, who wrote on tyranny and is now sort of a celebrity of this moment, but also super knowledgeable, talked about the problem with the strongman myth, is that the people who can be persuaded to want the strongman are never the people that the strongman cares about. once they're elected, they only care about other strongmen. and i wonder, as you're sort of out in the country, and you seem to value having some of these conversations on fox news, where some of the people watching, maybe most, didn't vote for your boss. why is it so important to try to reach people who are already persuaded that a strong man isn't such a bad thing? >> again, i think it's the difference between show and tell. so we're trying to show results, and whether i'm appearing somewhere on tv or whether we're out on the road, we're connecting that through in places that, yes, have forgot -- not only don't believe a president of a certain party might care about them, but don't believe that washington cares about them at all. i've been to almost every state,

just since getting this job. and think about places like chamberlin, south dakota, a small town. but big enough it actually has an airport. and that airport really matters. they use it for air ambulance missions to fly people to the nearest hospital, which is a very long drive away. and their general aviation terminal, it's a manufactured home. it's basically a double-wide. they've made it work, but for years and years, they've been wanting to have an actual building. a modest request, but an important one that they didn't have the funding to get done. we brought the funding to do that, out of the very same program that is delivering the horseshoe at l.a.x. that can tie you up when you're getting dropped off there. >> or you have to go around. >> and when we were there, talking to these very practical minded local and county officials, who i didn't ask what party they were from, it didn't

matter, but the emotion and passion they had around the project and the fact that we were finally getting it done was everything. so when i'm in a place like that or port arthur in texas or indiana, these places that have been overlooked again and again and again, it's another chance to show versus tell, not just to offer them resentment, or talk a big game, but get stuff done and have the receipts, literally. >> and what is the barrier to entry? do you -- do you walk up to someone in a maga hat and say, hey? and i know a lot of those rural communities, it's the trauma center that is if you have to drive, you die. so you need those facilities. >> this is one of the many reasons i love the transportation department, because as famously has been said, there's no democratic bridges or republican boats. you can talk to somebody who maybe isn't ready to listen on a lot of other issues, but absolutely gets why we need to get this road fixed or get this bridge done. and that being said, they may

not automatically be inclined to give president obama credit, especially because of the way our funding works, some of our states have grns who won't go out of their way to give president biden credit or how they got the funding. but that's part of why we're getting out there. and you'll see my cabinet colleagues, my administration colleagues, myself, leaders with the president and vice president out there, partly to highlight the communities and the people doing the work, but also, i think, you know, it's fair and proper that the president get out there and take credit for things that wouldn't have happened without him. >> and just ask the republican lawmakers who want to take credit who didn't vote for the bill. >> and there are many. but that's the best proof that it was a good bill and good policy. that's how you know these projects are the right thing to do. >> can i keep you over break? >> i would love to. >> we will be back with secretary buttigieg on the other side of a very short break. stay with us. he other side of a very short break stay with us

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we're back with the secretary of transportation, pete buttigieg. we called you mayor pete on the show for a long time, but i think it's some of that, when you're a mayor, you are literally touching people, people, and you obviously haven't lost that. i want to ask you what it's like, you know, and we've talked about going on fox news, but when you're out in the country and announcing a project and

putting people to work, you're touching people who literally believe that joe biden isn't the legitimate president. some of the exit polling that steve kornacki highlighted on super tuesday is legitimate. how do you -- how do you take that on and, obviously, wibs, before you came on, it was part of the last republican administration to honor the hatch act. there are things about a campaign you can't say, but this is about the very legitimacy of the campaign with which you served. how do you make that better? >> there are a whole set of things on the campaign side i can't talk about, but on the official side, the best way to earn legitimacy is to keep delivering results. and we're not automatically getting a ton of credit for everything that happens, but that shows you how long a period of digging that is taking to get into the hole we're in as a country. >> both literallily and figuratively. >> the literal digging is going

to get us out of the figurative digging, where we've had 30 to 40 years of underinvestment. and if i think about my generation, my first election i could vote in was 2000. and between about 2000 and 2020, with the shining exception of the affordable care act, obamacare, most of what my generation witnessed from washington consisted of policy failure. >> and war. >> and war. that was part of the policy failure. and you don't just bounce back from that in a season. given that we're still coming through a case of generational trauma, i know things feel back to normal, blessedly they are much more normal than they were certainly when president biden got here. but you don't just shake off a society shutting down and a million people dying in the space of a year or two or three. that messes with our heads in all kinds of ways. and it's often in the wake of a

generational trauma, whether it's something like covid or something like the great depression that you enter into a season where freedoms are on the line, and democracy becomes more rickety, and people begin flirting with autocratic rhetoric in a way they might not have in a way they might have felt more comfortable, secure, and hadn't been shaken by some world historical event like that. >> your generation is -- i mean, our generation, you're younger than me, but to see rights called into question, this is the political earthquake that is dobbs, but clarence thomas made very clear that marriage equality is back on the line, back up for discussion, back in danger again. republican sort of retrenchment seems to be about xenophobia and fear of migrants and immigrants, how do you, as a public official and a public figure deal with this moment that feels very much like regression? >> i think that's -- first of all, we have to name it.

we have to recognize that it turns out it is far from automatic. that rights and freedoms will expand. and you can be forgiven for thinking it was automatic, because, again, think about my generation for all the frustrations we had on the policy front, when it came to basic freedoms, we grew up learning about american history and how even if it was not a straight line, as a general rule, each generation had more rights and freedoms than the generation before, from the 18th century all the way through the 20th. and, i always felt that things like marriage equality were an example of that. they were validations. they are validations that my generation has freedoms that one or two generations before couldn't have dreamed of. and yet, as we saw, with the dobbs decision, with access to abortion and birth control and even ivf now being withdrawn, it turns out that there's a very real possibility that the generations now living could wind up being the first in america to have fewer rights and freedoms than they were born with.

now, we can't let that happen. and the agenda that the president laid out in the state of the union includes expanding rights and freedoms. and i think it's meaningful that at least in their rhetoric, those who i very much agrees with politically feel the need to talk about freedom, because that gives us actually a shared vocabulary, as divided as we are, to really come back to what matters most. i think freedom is on the line, obviously, women's freedom to make their own decisions about their own health and own bodies is on the line right now. the freedom of families like mine to exist right now is on the line. i think part of why we see a renewed push in this anti-lgbtq legislation going through the states is very much a decision of freedom being on the line. and you have youth in these states who are different and for as long as there have been people who are different, there have been government officials demanding that they can form and be like everybody else. and what's happening now in these places is of a piece with that long, long pattern.

and the question will be, what happens next? but it's not for nothing that some of these same political elected figures are now in the business of banning books. and if you were involved in banning books, you are not involved in expanding freedom. it's just not possible to be both. >> are you hopeful? >> actually, i am. first of all -- >> i mean, lay all of that out. how? >> like you, i have become a parent rather recently, and that means you don't have a choice, right? >> totally, yes. >> you just literally don't have a choice to not be hopeful. you can't give up, because -- i used to talk about this in terms of my own generation's skin in the game now i think about it in terms of our 2 1/2-year-old twins and their stake in the game. another thing, by the way, it's not just at that aspirational level, but the stuff i see happening across the country makes me hopeful, the people i talk to. even before we get the projects finished, we are already talking about people who are benefiting from the work we do.

i was just in the pacific northwest, the i-5 bridge is this monster infrastructure project that they just couldn't get done because it's so complicated and to expensive. we're bringing $600 million to help get this done. it's 107 years old. needs to be fixed, needs to be replaced. and i got to sit down with people in building trades, including apprentices that were very new about this, and they were talking about how this was changing their lives. and some of the workers i met represented some of the groups who have really been on the outs of the policy decisions of the past. a working mom who up until now had to travel four hours to get to her work site and wondering if she'll ever get to see her kids. a returning citizen who is focused on how he can be a good example to his nephew. a marine back from iraq and syria who said literally that finding that union and the standards that were expected of them and the purpose that it gave them was the reason he's not a statistic. so the kinds of things that can be achieved through what i know

seems like very work-a-day -- >> wonky. >> yeah, pedestrian, nuts and bolts stuff like building bridges is how we bring those metaphorical bridges that make our social fabric stronger too, so very hopeful about what we can do, but under no allusions about what it's going to take. >> we are very grateful to get to talk to you. you can always make a new parent cry about the future. but glad to hear you're hopeful. you're out there and grateful for bringing some of that into our studio. thank you. >> thank you. when we come back, our group of never-trump republicans is using former trump voters in their own words to say they can't and won't support the disgraced president any longer. that's next. the disgraced president any longer that's next. >> he's going to be a dictator on day one, he's going to be a dictator period. i voted republicans straight across the board my entire life, until i saw trump in his role in january 6th.

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for the first time in over 50 years of voting in presidential elections, i will not vote republican. >> and i am a two-time trump voter. donald trump has shown that he has no regard for the laws of this country. >> biden may not have all of the policies that i agree with, but i know that democracy will be safe under biden. >> i voted for trump in the past

elections. i cannot do it now. trump is a gutless cowered who would last five minutes in a combat zone. >> his character does not suit the presidency. >> i will no longer be voting for president trump. i do think trump wants to act like a dictator. >> wow. that is just the sample of a powerful new $50 million ad campaign by republican voters against trump. the group's website already features over 100 homemade testimonials all from former supporters, people who voted for the disgraced ex-president who backed him in past election or elections, plural, about why they will never do it again. the group's founder tells "the new york times" the effort has been far more successful at cleaving trump voters away from him than traditional attack ads that contrast trump with biden, quote, it is really important to understand you're not building a pro-biden coalition, she said, you're building an anti-trump

coalition. i mean, donny, it may be a narrower mission but it might have the most chance of success. >> it's one of the oldest forms of advertising, testimonials. you've got to give people permission it's okay to leave the ship. there's something emotional going on if they voted for him and letting go of him whether they did it in 2020 or doing it now. when you're silting at home and you're not an independent voter or on the fence, there's this community saying, it's okay, we're going to give you permission to leave the ship and i actually think it's really effective. >> i had done one on who voted for liz cheney twice and was incentivized to read the january 6th committee and he said the same thing, he said he won't vote for trump again. they're not wearing biden t-shirts but they'll never vote

for trump again. they're important. >> secretary buttigieg was just talking about all of biden's accomplishments, and they're great. this election is going to be painting the images, painting the dots of what it would look like. people have got to start asking that question, do you think trump would would? do you think trump would take $10 billion from putin to let him invade poland? yes. do you think trump would create a registry of some group if it was in his best interest to keep office forever? yes. we need to start asking these questions, do you think he would use the military and sick them on protesters if he didn't agree with the protests? people are saying dictatorship and autocracy and lack of freedoms, we have the start putting strokes inside the lines to start showing what it looks like and people like that will be moved. >> charlie, you know who's doing a lot of that work for us,

trump. trump is telling us what he'll do. trump is telling us he can use s.e.a.l. team 6 to take out his enemies. trump is laying it out there. if '16 was sort of the era of the brilliant investigative journalist 2024 is the era of trump letting it all hang out. >> exactly. that's why this campaign is excellent. i hope they raise all the money, i hope they spend the money in places like wisconsin because these voters are in play here. they might not be on the radar screen all the time, but there's a sliver of voters and you've seen them disaffected in the primaries who, again, they're not going to become democrats, they're not going to necessarily vote for joe biden, but they have broken away from donald trump. and just look at the numbers here in wisconsin. if they had voted for donald trump he would have won the state in 2024, but there were tens of thousands who said, no, i'm going to draw the line

there. so this is a crucial segment of the electorate, and i want to have a hard agreement with what donny said about the permission structure this creates because our politics is very tribal. it is that sense that i am part of this group, and that binding together is more important than any specific issue, any specific data point. people want to be part of this, and it's very difficult for them to break away from the tribe, their friends and their family. and so when they see something like this, they say here's someone like me who is willing to do that, here is someone who's speaking to my doubts. and i think combine that with so many of the republicans who served in the white house with donald trump, so this is at the grassroots level but people who have been at the cabinet or chief of staff to do a montage of all of them saying i know donald trump, i work with donald trump, please do not put him back in, this is, i think, might break off just enough republican

voters to be decisive in november. >> to pick up on charlie's point the most-effective campaign would be milley, mattis, mcmaster to camera saying i can't let this happen -- >> saying the stuff they've said tons of -- >> it's got to go to gut. we're not going to do it with listing attributes. you've got to hit them in the gut. >> i totally agree. thank you so much for spending some time with us. another break for us. we'll be right back. ime with us. another break for us we'll be right back.

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