tonight on all in. >> how does ohio feel about president donald j. trump? >> the big vote no ohio as the

top of the ticket runs out of cash. >> i am very humbly asking if you could chip in, 5, 15, or $25. >> tonight t first results from a crucial senate primary and a nominee desperate for money. >> i would like to take the cash away so i can't use it on the campaign. >> then a trump white house aide breaks his own news. >> the little story here is navarro is going to prison today. >> and as trump lawyers released their supreme court argument for absolute immunity, and the indicted front runner turns his attempted coup into a campaign, corner stone. >> please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated january 6th hostages. >> when all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes and it is once

again election night in america. a slightly less super tuesday if you will. primary voters are headed to the polls in arizona, kansas, florida. ohio is the most contested race tonight. polls there closed half an hour ago. we are expecting results to trickle in throughout this hour. as always, steve kornacki will join me at the big board to break it all down. there he is hard at work getting ready. the reason why ohio is the state to watch tonight is because republicans there are trying to unseat three term democratic senator sherrod brown. brown has remained an electoral marvel in the buckeye state. brown, a progressive pro labor democrat has managed to hold his seat. republicans feel the tide has turned. with the election of jd vance. it is true that senator brown is vulnerable even as he holds

a narrow lead in the polls right now. ohio has not trended anywhere more to left since brown ran in 2018. as we see time and time again, candidate quality matters. that is the question at hand tonight. the republican primary is effectively a dead heat between the establishment back state senator, and the trump endorsed maga guy. also running is secretary of state frank larose there on the right. you might remember him from his failed attempts to keep abortion rights off the ballot in ohio last year as the secretary of state. backers of moreno are calling this the death nell. >> do you want to go back to the romney bush, kasich party? >> no. do you want the party of jd

vance? >> yeah! >> donald trump? >> yeah! >> that is what this election is all about. it is what has held us back. let's just be clear about that. >> to be clear, senator vance who the crowd was cheering for, lived in san francisco for years before he realized maga was a his way forward politically. so, moreno and his trumpian backers are posturing themselves as the future of the republican party. the old republican guard is not going down without a fight. it is still a neck in neck race which is why moreno had to bring the indicted man himself to stump for him over the weekend. >> if i had prisons that were teeming with ms13 and all sorts of people that they have to take care of for the next 50

years right? young people in jail for years. if you call them people. i don't know you call them people. in some cases they are not people in my opinion. these are bad, these are animals. we are going to put a 100% tariff on every car that.comes across the line. if i get elected, now if i don't get elected it will be a blood bath. that will be the least of it. it will be a blood bath for the country. that will be the least of it. >> teeming. not human. animals. that's the ex-president's discussion of immigrants. a full display of everything that makes the ex-president such a dangerous toxic force politically and morally in american life. the blood bath comments which i'm sure you have seen got a lot of attention. they came in the form of he is effecting to double the price of all cars made overseas including cars from american companies like ford and gm produced in mexico. but it doesn't end there. trump went so far as to open

the rally with a salute to those currently incarcerated for their roles in his deadly insurrection he referred to as hostages. a bizarre spectacle was set to a song by the so-called jan6 prison choir. he did considering he is the reason they are in prison in the first place. the whole affair incited a two day news cycle about how unhinged he is. which, yes. but all the downsides may be what it takes to push his preferred candidate over the top in ohio. i want to bring in steve kornacki at the big board. steve, what do we have so far? >> as you can see, the polls have been closed over a half hour, we have a fair amount of the vote in right now. and it is right now on the scoreboard at least, a close race between dolan and moreno. now let's look at it this way. let's look at it from dolan's perspective. he likes where the scoreboard is now as i said. he is close.

what he also likes i think is this. his home base cleveland, about 6% of all the votes cast. back in the 2022 primary when he lost to jd vance. again, we just got, butler county right outside cincinnati. we just got our first report there. and there you go. this is a big suburban area. moreno winning. and statewide, a point-and-a- half lead from moreno waiting here to get anything from cuyahoga county. so, dolan has an outstanding piece of real estate. the other thing he likes is that larose who has also tried to align himself with trump has gone hard after the trump base. the trump voters. what dolan wants is a strong enough showing from larose to take just enough votes away from moreno to allow him a path

to win this thing with the purity of the vote. the closer it gets to 25, that is where dolan wants to see in this race. that being said, if you are dolan, here is the biggest source of concern for you right now. these numbers may look good. but these numbers are basically mail in votes. the mail ballots are counted, tabulated and released first in ohio. if you see 18% of the vote in, you take a look in summit county. this isn't even 1% of the vote. you are looking here, franklin county. this the state capitol. one of the other biggies in this thing. 12%. you are looking at mail-in ballots. everyone watching this probably knows, since the explosion in mail-in voting back in the 2020 presidential election, overwhelmingly, it is democrats more than republicans who use mail-in voting and even in republican primaries, we have

seen so far to date, the trump skeptical, trump hostile wing of the republican party as it exists is more likely to vote by mail than the trump supportive. the core trump vase. they tend to vote same day. same day is not counted anywhere on this. basically anywhere in this map yet. i'll go back to the statewide total here. if that trend holds true, what you are looking at in these counties is the high water mark for dolan. as the same day vote. the early vote gets added to this. the number would come down. you figure the moreno number would go up. that is what i think we are waiting to see now. when you start to get the same day vote in. does this pattern hold or does this pattern switch? history says it will switch, but we'll see. >> all right, fascinating. steve kornacki, thank you very much. i want to turn to someone who really knows ohio politics from the inside. david pepper serves as the cochair of the state's democratic party. and has written several books. david, your read on this race,

on the fact that apparently, at jd vance's behest, donald trump came back into the state because it looked like a very tight race between, you would think the guy he picked being able to romp to victory given the state of the republican party, what is your read on this. >> the endorsement didn't really breakthrough like it did for vance a couple of years ago, but late polls had dolan up. that was clearly moreno needed that visit. it may be the thing that puts him over the top. until that point, it didn't seem like the endorsement put moreno into a winning position. but it may have. that may have saved his campaign. trump may have come in and saved him as well. >> obviously, he relishes that role. he feels that person owes him. i'm curious about this dynamic we see time and time again. which is what plays in the crowd and what plays to the

base may not be what plays outside of it so i'm curious after an event in the state of ohio for this race that got a lot of attention nationally, if that attention was reflected locally, in terms of some of the things he said, in terms of the blowback, et cetera. >> basically all three candidates just to be clear, all three by the end were trying to sound somewhat trumpy. trump coming in, whatever was picked up, you knew he was in ohio. supported moreno. sort of attacked the others. so if the whole battle was who had trump support, i think it didn't make a difference. but let's go bigger picture for a second. the most important point is what happens in this battle between the older establishment and the trump wing? in this the most important number i can share with everyone tonight is the establishment the governor candidate two years ago won ohio by 25 points. jd vance won it by six points. that is a horrific

underperformance and it was a terrible democratic year. so the trumpy vance and moreno lane in the general is not a very good lane even in ohio. that underperformance changes the outcome. if it is continued. so, this trump, moreno's speech that you quoted there, where he said are we the party of jd vance and trump? they are cheering for the wing of the party that did almost 20 points worse than the more moderate wing that was all in for matt dolan. so, it is sort of like the herschel walker, oz wing that performs the older establishment republicans here. >> and of course, sherrod brown, the incumbent senator there, very popular. he really has carved out an

incredible niche. he has been the same guy. i profiled him in 2005 when he was running for senate. and i will say this. he is exactly the same. he is exactly the same 20 years ago as he is now. he speaks in the same way. both in the democratic party. some ways the republican party has come toward his positions. >> yep. if you look at how you win ohio, there are a lot of key areas. whether it is matt dolan, whoever withins. just to be clear, you do not win ohio. if you don't do well along lake erie. that is where sherrod will have a great contrast. let's say dolan wins. family owns the cleveland guardians. he can go and make a great contrast like he did against

dewine. and moreno, if moreno wins, i think he has a good opportunity in the suburbs. mike dewine won the suburbs in a big way. jd vance did not very well versus tim ryan. so whether it is dolan or moreno and i don't know what is going to happen tonight. he is the long standing brand, allows him to really pivot and contrast against either one of them in different parts of the state. >> that is interesting. so they are a different, the contours of this race might look differently depending on who comes out tonight. but, to your point earlier about the sort of underperformance, i remember sitting in this room in 2022 watching dewine cruise to victory. and there have been, you know, the sort of attempts to boost moreno because they think he is

a weaker candidate. they have run $2 million portraying him as an unapologetic conservative. what do you think about that strategy in the context of this race? >> i think it is a little risky. in tend, moreno is dangerous. and he is going to beat. jd vance is an embarrassment. all he does, he is not really our senator. he is trump's senator. the last thing we want is two trump senators from ohio when we used to have people like john glen. i do think it is pretty clear. that is brown's best matchup. tim ryan first time running statewide. only lost by six. sherrod brown, much bigger brand. against moreno who i think is probably a weaker candidate than even jd vance was. that is a good matchup. again, this is sherrod's hardest reelection, clearly. but a moreno matchup is one that he can win. but like i said, if dolan does

win, it is a different pivot. a different contrast. it looks a little more like how sherrod beat mike dewine back in 2006 when he was a little more establishment. >> after that loss, mike dewine never heard from again. kidding of course. he's the governor. thank you very much. appreciate it. >> thanks so much. coming up, donald trump's decades of bragging are putoff the test. >> part of the beauty of me is that i'm very rich. so, if i need $600 million, i can put up $600 million myself. that is a huge advantage. >> hmm. how the ex-president's fragile financial situation is dragging down the whole republican party next. the whole republican par next.

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donald trump cannot pay his bills. he is drowning in debt. he owns assets he could sell in a rush forced liquidation, he doesn't have the actual cash that he needs on hand. just yesterday, we learned that trump was unable to secure a bond for the $454 million penalty he owes for his new york civil fraud case. that is after quote approaching about 30 companies that provide appeal bonds. in the last year alone, trump

spent more than $55 million in donor money on legal fees. donald trump's personal finances have always been shaky. he received hundreds of millions of dollars from his father's real estate empire but his businesses have lost a billion dollars in one decade. his one business success was playing a successful business person on the apprentice which earned him $400 million including licensing and endorsement deals. when donald trump came down that golden escalator at trump tower, he began the other most successful money making enterprise of his life which was raking in donations from small dollar donors. and now, just like his personal finances, that is breaking down. cnbc reports trump's reelection campaign has begun to see warning signs that the small dollar donors have slowed their support. back in the 2020 cycle, the $370 million he raised from small dollar contributions represented almost half of the

total cash that trump's campaign pulled in. 62.5% less money than it did in 2019. in the runup to that election. in january, the campaign reported raising around $3 million for small dollar donors. $3million. now, compare that to president biden's campaign raising $2 million in just one day. donald trump has been hitting up the same group of people for money over and over again. a lot of it to pay his legal bills like the 55 million he spent last year, what is happening is they are kind of running out of cash. like, there is only so much that you can hammer a fund raising list until it starts gives you back the money. this is a big deal. because trump's appeal with small dollar donors has been crucial to his political success. it provided him with a direct line of endless money. it insulated him from other parts of the republican party infrastructure which couldn't hurt him by withholding big

donors or fundraisers. it served as a source of power he wields it over others who are desperate to get their hands on that trump donor list so they could pump those same people for money as well. it was even part of his appeal back in 2016 when he claimed to be self-funding his campaign. of course that wasn't true. and a small dollar donation that sustained him dried up, trump and his allies are making increasingly desperate appeals. >> if you have done well, if you remember the great four years that we had where you made a lot, we need your help. >> you need to help this man, donald j. trump. they are trying to drain him dry. he spent more money on lawyers than most people spend on campaigns. give the president some money to fight this [bleep]. this is going to destroy america. >> i'm sorry i'm so upset. but please help president trump. if you could afford $5 or $10. >> i'm very humbly asking if

you could chip in $5, $10, or even $25. >> if you ever voted for my father, chip in 5, 10, or $25 to his campaign. crooked joe biden has an army of liberal billionaires. if everyone watching this chips in, he will be able to drown them out once and for all. >> we will win back the white house. we will make america great again. greater than ever before i promise you that. >> okay, so that is just a little sample. a little sample. we could have done that for hours. and that is the videos. the trump campaign says they are even more dramatic than anything on camera. this one says solemn promise, make the pledge to me and the rest of the country so we can

save america together. of course. for the link to donate. yesterday, this message from donald trump claimed that his enemies are lying about his comments about a blood bath. that he loses the election. before the day is over, i'm asking every single one of my supporters to chip in and say i stand with president trump. there is even a special valentine's day fund raising appeal. written as a love letter to trump's wife melania. and again, you are probably familiar with the genre. it crosses party lines. it crosses ideologies like small dollar fund raising like this is everywhere. but the problem they have is that they have been doing this so hard, so aggressively for so long, well has run dry. okay? that is what they are beginning to realize. clearly, we have a presumptive nominee for president who is desperate. i mean, absolutely desperate for immediate cash infusions for two purposes. both his personal finances and

his political finances. and, he is in the market, man. he's got his hand out. okay? he can take that money from just about anyone and promise them just about anything if he gets back in the white house. think of that. earlier this month, trump met with the richest man in the world. elon musk who certainly has policy preferences he would like to see from the u.s. government. musk claimed after the meeting he is not donating to either candidate for president. though he says a lot of things that turn out not to be true. trump also met with jeff yass who has a $33 billion stake in tiktok and has reportedly threatened to cut off funding to republicans who support the tiktok divesting bill. days later trump came out and flipped his position on banning the social media platform. there are many foreign entities who would love to have power and influence over the man who would be the next of the united states. trump would make that easier bringing in his 2016 campaign

manager back into the fold. this is a guy who was convicted of tax and bank fraud in relation to his lop bying for pro russian ukrainian politicians. prosecutors allege manafort had polling data. without a small dollar donor. trump is financially desperate. it brings danger in every intersection. this guy just needing money. cash infusions from wherever he can get it. for whatever they need. it is danger that is political and legal. national security danger. the last thing you want is a president who is an owned man his first day in office. his first day in office.

if you read donald trump's accounts, people were in prison storming the capital and attacking law enforcement january 6th. you may have read he called them hostages but you need to see it for yourself. donald trump's standing and saluting as a recording plays of january 6th prisoners singing a rendition of the national anthem intersperses with trump reciting the pledge of allegiance. the recording which donald trump helped produce has become about anthem for the pro coup movement that is essentially fused with donald trump's political campaign. >> ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and

unfairly treated january 6th hostages. >> ♪ oh say can you see by the dawn's early light. what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. >> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america. >> ♪ whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, oer the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. >> there is some excellent new reporting in semafor on how

donald trump has put the devoted at the heart of his campaign. great to have you here. very good reporting so tell us about the way in which the trump and trump circle and campaign have fused with this pro january 6th prisoner movement. >> this has been a years long effort on behalf of the january 6th advocates. and, people close to trump. so it is sort of started, we saw starting in march, he made public comments where he was softening his language around this situation. and it grew from there. the january 6 lawyer met with people close to people at mar-a- lago and essentially asked them you know, listen i want to know if you guys are going to pardon the rioters if he gets

reelected. and, right around that time, he started talking about pardoning rioters. it was really this sort of pressure campaign mixed with trump's own interest in the situation. >> i just want to be clearment it is not like he never got real harsh on them. >> the days after when he made those prerecorded statements denouncing it. and then, pretty soon. >> under considerable pressure we later learn from other people. even on the day of the thing, as the blood is coming down the glass and the cops have been concuss. he is saying i love you. this is what happens. >> it was not a sharp, it was not a sharp pivot. it was more of a gradual, you know. a slow pivot into embracing this entire situation. >> what is interesting to me is

the political calculation here. i mean, you know, to use the word hostages for instance. that is such a loaded word. obviously, there is american citizens currently being held hostage in gaza. there's dozens of israeli hostages under conditions god knows what those conditions are. to compare individuals arrested with full constitutional rights for the storming of the capitol, that is quite the word to use. where did that word come from? >> that's the word that if you talk to advocates, that's the word that they also use so it seeped into donald trump's own messages as he continues to meet with these people and speak to them and embrace their arguments when it comes to january 6th. >> right. we saw, there is, what you were

saying. there is a clear policy trajectory. there is an ask, we want you to pardon all these people. in the beginning, he was a little like i think, there was music in his classic way. now it is like a pledge. he is committed that one of the first things you can do is pardon everyone who was involved in january 6th. >> absolutely. and i think that is really notable as well. because it shows that this is not just sort of a one off comment that trump makes where his policy advisers will say i don't know what he is talking about. this is something behind the scenes he is actively talked to people about. and it does seem to be something that should he be reelected, he certainly is going to make an effort to issue pardons. >> there is also i think movement in the republican party as a whole which in the days after even the evening of january 6th, i think there was

broad consensus from the republican party this was bad. then it went from this is bad to let's just forget about it to move on. but the contention here, i think is that it was good actually. what we did was good and proper and incorrect. >> it is interesting. >> we were patriots. we were doing what donald trump asked. we just walked through the capitol. the people who committed really violent crimes should be in jail. this whole other swath of people shouldn't be in jail. this is really nuanced but certainly, the republican party as a whole when you look at the the days after january 6th

versus now. there is a movement away from being incredibly critical of what happened that day. >> one of the things you note in your reporting is there is talk about them being involved in the rnc. >> this is something i asked one of the main lawyers of the january 6th defendants about the rnc. and he said yes, they would love to have some sort of a presence. he complained about the former leadership of the rnc. said they didn't really care about january 6th or our movement. they shied away from all of this. but he is a little bit more hopeful that the new leadership which is a lot closer to donald trump is going to be willing to listen and be more willing to embrace all of this. >> yeah. i think i said this before. finishing the job on january 6th is sort of a campaign pledge of donald trump that

would make perfect rational sense. thank you very much. still to come, it's been more than three years since donald trump tried to steal the presidency. now as the first member of his administration heads to prison on coup related charges, how it all went wrong for peter navarro next. wrong for peter navarro next.

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primary in ohio. the nbc decision desk can confirm that bernie moreno, the trump candidate, will emerge as the winner besting matt dolan and frank larose. right now, we have about in. but, it looks like moreno is on his way to be the nominee. he will go up against incumbent three term senator sherrod brown this fall. >> i'll be going over there. so, the little story here,. >> it is now going to be the first coup plot tore go to prison. not even for his role in the plot itself. after the 2020 election, navarro's trade office was putting out reports pull of

debunked conspiracy theories about rampant election fraud. then he drew up a white house game plan to overturn the election in congress and called it the green bay sweep. >> the remedy was for vice president pence, the quarterback in the green bay sweep to remand the votes back to the six battleground states. >> do you realize you are describing a coup? >> no. >> well, he must have realized it by the time the january 6th committee got to work. he flagrantly ignored them, just said no. claiming trump's executive privilege covered all their communications. the department of justice disagreed. so did the grand jury which indicted him on two counts of contempt of congress. after a two day trial, another jury convicted him. prison is an unpleasant thing to contemplate for peter

navarro who is 74 years old. >> if i were to go to prison for a year which is what the contempt of charge could do for me, that would be a fourth of my remining life. there could be a fine with a significant portion of my retirement savings. so i'm taking this very seriously. >> he only got sentenced to four months in prison, but still, navarro appealed the conviction. he asked the supreme court to keep him out of jail during that appeal. monday, the court said nope, we're good. which is how as h hour grew near, navarro posted up on the strip mall next to the prison. lashed out against all the lawmakers and the prosecutors and the judges and the juries that put him there. >> every person who has taken me on this road to prison is a freaking democrat and a trump hater. >> that was untrue. like a lot of things navarro said in his prejailing presser. which even fox news had to

correct for the record. >> to fact check there, it is no longer an alleged crime he will be serving this sentence for. he has obviously been convicted. and there was no evidence that did, that would have excluded him per executive privilege from testifying. >> the truth is navarro broke the law and knew he was when he broke the law. unlike trump, he did not have a hand picked judge to bend the rules for him. he is just the guy who helped plot a coup. just like trump. now he is in prison for a little while. while trump walking around free. little while. while trump walking around free.

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it's a big day at the supreme court on several fronts. the first, the court ruled the state of texas can enforce its own state level immigration law even as the very constitutionality of that law is adjudicated. then this afternoon, we got donald trump's argument that is president is above the law. to give him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for trying to pull off a coup. it is not trump they are looking to protect with this argument. his lawyers argue every future president will face blackmail and extortion in office and will be harassed by politically motivated prosecution after

leaving office. ominously warning, quote, that would be the end of the presidency as we know it. harry served as deputy assistant attorney general. talk us through what the court did today. >> look, it is, and it isn't. what the court did was say we are going to let texas have its way even as we figure out whether their law is constitutional. and as you said, chris, it is flatly against the supreme court ruling, the arizona case. nevertheless, the procedural nicety you are talking about is two justices said well, this is an administrative stay which means basically a stay to consider whether to grant a

stay that the fifth circuit entered without any kind of reasoning. and we don't ever normally review those. that's questionable. but the bigger answer is, so what? this is the supreme court of the united states. they left the situation on the ground. that texas can violate current constitutional law. and that means possible chaos in the field between federal and state agents. it means the possible immigration rights. it means possible interference with our foreign relations with mexico. and it means the suspension of the supremacy of federal law. what are they there for if not that? and it doesn't matter if it is for a day or a week. this is what the justice was saying. administrative stay? who cares? if they have made it the state of affairs that federal law, binding federal law is set to

decide that that's the exact opposite of what a supreme court is supposed to do. >> yeah we should say the federal district court judge who evaluated this law. first of all, this law was done in the same way that you know, mississippi passing its abortion law, they knew that they were flatly challenging stated precedent. texas knew that. there is black letter, clear precedent here from the 2012 decision on the arizona law, you can't do what texas is doing. sb4 says state officials with remove, can arrest and remove people. right? so the federal district judge says you can't do this. and not only can you not do this, we have to stay it because there is harm, people being removed from the country possibly wrongly. >> here's the irreparable harm.

the very right wing fifth circuit above him basically got extremely cute to basically block that. right? >> they entered an administrative stay. but it stays around for a month. you could say extremely conservative, the fifth circuit, you could say completely coocoo. they are way out of the mainstream in many ways. but that's right. they enter it. and as the justice says, there is a place for administrative stays but when it stays in place for a month, we are a supreme court here. and while we decide whether it is right or not, the law should prevail not just because the law should prevail, but because the practical consequences of letting texas go around and arrest people in the field and remove them are really severe. >> we should say to that end, the mexican, i think the mexican ambassador says our

country will not accept repatriation from the state of texas. and we will keep talking to the federal government. >> what kind of clash we have just for that situation. sorry, go ahead. >> they are now expediting oral arguments tomorrow. the fifth circuit because i think they got the message a little bit from the supreme court. we have 90 seconds. >> very quick point. it shows kavanaugh and barrett saying if you don't do it, we will maybe revisit. it shows they know the authority is there that they are not exercising but you're right. fifth circuit says uh-oh. we'll have the stay argument tomorrow. no more administrative stay. real stay, we'll consider it. >> in the final minute here, the brief from trump's lawyers on immunity. anything surprising? >> it is everything he said today, the argument was demolished by the dc circuit. there is a new argument in there saying when congress

passes a criminal law, unless they specify it applies to the president, you shouldn't apply it. that's a whole new one. the big thing that is going on here, though, chris, the court remembers, said whether and to what extent. that means reman. he is never going to win trump. but it means another round. that means another round up and down the courts. that means another month anyway. that's the delay aspect of the question they have framed. >> all right, harry, thank you very much. >> thanks chris. >> that is all in tonight. is a. >> you have a great evening. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. staff starjant ginel was one of the many capitol police officers brutally beaten by rioters on january 6