got a bunch of other rioters inside, sort of helped lead that mob there. he's wearing paramilitary gear at the time of that. you can see him there coming in the window and pushing it open. after those initial january 6th charges, kelley was released. months later he was rearrested for what, he was plotting to kill the fbi special agents investigating him. his co-defendant in that case has pleaded guilty. kelley has not yet gone to trial. >> that's a pretty serious allegation. ryan reilly, thank you so much. that's going to do it for me today. "deadline: white house" starts right now. ♪♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. the tensions between special counsel jack smith and the judge who's puzzling the eyebrow raising decisions have led to questions about whether she is indulging donald trump apes strategy of delay -- donald trump's strategy of delay,

delay, and delay again, have turned into a war of words. in a ruling issued late afternoon, an hour ago, the judge denied donald trump's request to dismiss the classified documents case based on the presidential records act defense. in essence trump was claiming that he had the right to hold onto national security state secrets because they somehow belonged to him. today judge cannon rejected that rather ridiculous defense handing jack smith an ostensible win. this could be round one on these issues. cannon saying that the criminal charges against trump, quote, make no reference to the presidential record act, never to -- nor do they rely on the statute for purpose of stating offense, adding, quote, accepting allegations of the superseding indictment is true, the presidential records act does not provide a pretrial basis to dismiss. the judge there leaving the door open to revisiting this issue. and as we've reported on this broadcast, at that hour yesterday, cannon had asked both prosecutors and trump's defense

team to address the question of whether those documents could be considered personal in jury instructions which led to a sharp rebuke from special counsel jack smith's team. he called the idea, quote, fundamentally flawed, in her ruling today cannon fires back saying that smith's demand to settle the issue of whether the documents could be considered personal once and for all is, quote, unprecedented and unjust. getting hot in here. we start today with two of our favorite experts and friends. former lead investigator for the january 6th select committee tim hay hathy. and former official at the dutch just and legal analyst andrew weissmann is here. break this down. >> it may be confusing because you think she ruled for jack smith on this motion about the presidential records act. so what's the problem? jack smith said i need a ruling on the presidential records act, that it's not a basis to dismiss the indictment. and she ruled in his favor that

it's not. here's the problem -- until this ruling today, she skipped over making this ruling and said, oh, i just want you to give me jury instructions, which was already bizarre for a trial that has not started and there isn't even a date for it to start. >> when do you normally give jury instructions? >> at some point during the trial. so you know -- long time from now. but it was worse than that because she didn't just say give me your jury instructions as to what you think the law is that i should charge the jury, she said you only have two choices -- i don't want to hear anything else, i only want to hear presidential record act choice one and presidential record act choice two. in other words, she was all in on the presidential records act as a defense here. and she only gave two options to the parties to address. and so jack smith, the reason everyone is like, oh, he really

took her on, he's like you need to give me a ruling because i don't think the presidential record acts applies at all. and the reason you are not ruling is because if you were to rule against us, we get to go to 11th circuit. >> as a non-lorain county the presidential -- nonlawyer, the presidential record act isn't applicable in the eyes of big barr, trump's only former defense team who said legally his goose is cooked. >> absolutely. this i can make simple -- this is a criminal case, there are criminal statutes that are charged. the presidential records act is a civil statute. it has nothing to do with this case -- >> why did the judge in a criminal trial have anything to say about it? >> she shouldn't have. and that is why what jack smith was saying is i need you to tell me now are you going to buy off on donald trump's crazy theory involving a civil statute that has nothing to do with this case? >> basically a talking point for

his fox news interviews. >> exactly. but it also would be a basis for her to say i'm dismissing this case on this crazy theory, and this is where it is complicated -- if she did that during the trial and did what's called a rule 29, she has unfettered, unreviewable discretion to get rid of the case. >> can she still do that? >> exactly. so the part that you read as going into this which i think is key is she said that the presidential record act does not provide a pretrial basis to dismiss. in other words, i'm not going to dismiss now. so what this means is jack smith is one pretrial -- has won pretrial, he's prevailed. but that's pretrial. she's not saying it's not a basis at trial. and that just to be clear -- it is not a basis pretrial, it is not a basis at trial, it is not a basis after trial. it has nothing to do with this

criminal case. so the next question really is, what is jack smith going to do? because you really have a judge who was saying something that was completely lawless. she has kept the door open to continuing down this track. and he's got a real concern of once the jury is sworn will it be too late. so these are things he can do. he obviously can do nothing. he can try and make a motion to recuse her. she has to respond, and then that can be appealed. he can try and take this record and -- >> hasn't he done that already based on the fact that she hadn't ruled on anything yet? >> not -- >> ruling -- >> not ruling on things -- to get somebody off of a case it's a big deal. you have to show that the person is really just -- sort of really in the bag for one side or the other, has done things that are improper. >> not ruling on anything lets you aid one side and not the

other but not recused -- >> exactly. she has been sitting on a variety of things. to be fair, she has ruled on some things. it's just, it's coming out like a eyedropper compared to what we're seeing in new york or what we're seeing in georgia or what we saw in the d.c. federal case where you see judges operating in good faith. you may not like all their decisions, but they're moving the case along as you should. she is do not that, but she is making some rulings. so it's not like she's put a complete stop to the case in terms of making some rulings. so he could try and recuse her now. he could say this is enough to go up to the 11th circuit now. the other thing that he could do is if she tries to revisit this at trial, there is the ability to go up during a trial. i've done that. it's -- all of these, by the way, they're hard. this is -- just imagine you don't want the parties on one side or the other to just be oh,

i don't like the judge's rulings, give me a new judge. you have to have a good record. i do think here there is a good record. one of the things i just found amazing is obviously, you know, jack smith pushed for this saying you need to make a decision. and withone one day she's making -- within one day she's making this decision. she's sort of won the battle. this little skirmish. but some of her language is -- it's hard to not view it as -- i don't know how to describe it, disingenuous, not terribly candid. where she said, i was just -- when i heardordered you to addr one. two options and only two options, she said, i was just trying to understand the parties' positions on the law. the parties' positions on the law were neither of these applied. she said no, no, no, you have to address these two and only these two. so i mean, her statements to try and cover her tracks as to what she was doing i think are going

to be fodder one way or the other when this case eventually is in the 11th circuit. >> tim haify, again, everything i know about the law i learned from all eight seasons of "suits." but i have covered trump now for eight, nine years, and if i were interested in holding him accountable, i would want to be somewhere where this nine-year record of people that are tied to him doing whatever he wants them to do couldn't interfere with -- with the facts, the facts of the case. the facts of this case are -- they're super new year's eve. you can't get between -- nova. you can't get between bill barr and the camera because he thinks it's open and shut and done and trump is toast. you can't get between trump and some people who represented him in other legal issues, where they successfully muddied the waters in terms of what trump's base thought of it. in this case, one of the start witnesses is his own lawyer,

evan corcoran, criminal defense attorney. what stops jack smith or what has stopped him from -- from charging part of it somewhere where he doesn't have to deal with a judge who isn't interested in an aggressive pursuit of the facts? >> it's a good question, and prosecutors make venue choices based on a lot of factors. there may have been conduct here that took place in other jurisdictions. there's been reporting about documents he may have maintained in new jersey, maybe you could argue washington is the place because that's where the information originated. but the default, nicolle, is to charge the case where the majority of the conduct occurred. that is florida. and again, you don't get to choose the judge that you draw. there are several judges in that federal district in florida. so i think jack smith has been hoping all along that for all the reasons you've said because of the strength of this case, the relatively straightforward theory, it doesn't matter where it's tried.

it's just so strong and so compelling that he could charge it in any jurisdiction and it wouldn't matter. he's facing a really inexperienced judge who has only had four, five criminal trials as a judge. not ideal for a case that does raise some novelish -- i think they're novel, not that complicated. and to go back to what andrew was saying, the presidential records act just does not apply here. the presidential records act deals with paper, with records. and it's a civil statute that says something doesn't involve your official business as president, doesn't necessarily need to be maintained by the archives upon the departure of the espionage act, what's at stake here, that governs information. doesn't matter the form in which it takes. you could say something out loud, and if it's classified and not secured, it is intercepted or overheard by someone, or if it's in a document or in a phone call or -- whatever the form, it

doesn't matter, right? so these charged violations, espionage act, based on information he says the presidential records act, civil statute, doesn't apply. that's right. that's clearly right. and judge cannon's an experienced -- i won't go as far as to say, you know, bias toward the former president, i'll leave that to others. but for whatever reason we're not getting to court resume. i think jack smith doesn't have a basis to recuse an inexperienced judge who rules slowly is not a basis. there needs to be indication of a personal bias. i think the only choice is to try to case, to continue to argue the inapplicability of the presidential records act and hope that she is convinced by the clarity of that position whenever she rules mid trial. she doesn't give those crazy instructions that were submitted. >> let me just share with our viewers some of the logjam of things she hasn't ruled on. from "the new york times," quote, judge cannon has not issued a ruling on a request

made in january by trump's lawyers for additional discovery material about the prosecution's ties to the intelligence community and other national security officials. the judge is also sitting on a two-month-old request by mr. smith to permit redactions to be made to several of trump's own filings to protect the identities of witnesses who might testify for the government at trial. judge cannon is still considering a host of the ex-president's pretrial motions to dismiss the case. there is a significant logjam. this judge was also -- if the right legal word, tim, is reversed or rebuked or maybe somewhere in between by an extremely conservative circuit. is there a -- is there a reason to trust that this will all work out in the end, tim? >> look, you never know. any lawyer who comes on your show and tells you for sure this

is what's going to happen would be unwise. andrew knows this, as well as anyone. you just can't tell in a criminal justice process. again, jag -- jack smith is holding a full house here. he has the overwhelming weight of the authority with respect to the law. he has very strong facts. while frustrating and while tedious and while protracted, i think he stays the course. he makes his arguments, he pushes for rulings. a judge is -- i won't go as far as to say incompetence, but her uncertainty is not, again, a reason to recuse. so i don't really see a basis to kick her off the case unless and until she indicates some sort of bias that prevents her from being impartial. so being bad or slow isn't enough of a reason to get her off the case. >> and tim, what do you make of the escalating sharpness of her language? let's just study what we do know about her filings.

>> yeah. i think she's frustrated. i think he's frustrated. i think that the public criticism of one has prompted sharper language from the other. you know, the pleading that was filed tuesday night was pretty sharp. it basically says you're wrong, your honor, that's rare in litigation. she fires back and calls his request for this ruling, you know, unprecedented and unjust or something like that. so that's rare, unquestionably there are some -- judges are human, lawyers are human. but they're also professionals. again, i think the special counsel who has demonstrated time and again his ability to keep his head down and focus on the tasks at hand will stay the course, will continue to litigate this case as quickly as possible with the strong hand that he has been dealt. >> i think all of tim's arguments and accept them -- the only thing i would inject is that what is unprecedented for everyone involved in this is that they're staring down the barrel of an election that will

decide who has control of the kinds of state secrets that trump left next to the toilet. is there any consideration of that realiti? >> not in the judge's part. that is -- >> what about jack smith's? >> oh, absolutely. just to be clear, the department of justice has every legitimate interest in seeing that its federal cases are tried promptly. that is a standard that's in the justice manual, that bind the department of justice. the supreme court has recognized that, that that is a public interest. just think about do you -- our interests which as citizens is to have those cases tried quickly. >> i mean, honestly, objectively, trump's interests. if he thinks he's innocent, it's in his interests to have this adjudicated. >> absolutely. think in the d.c. case, he has said that the gag order is something that is impinging on his ability to run for office. well, if that's true, just take that as a given, that's his position, you would want to have that case decided quickly to

vindicate your position. >> the reality and where it's unfair -- it's not his position. like he acts a certain way when he knows he's guilty of what he's charged of. it's not his position. the position is to delay all of the proceedings until after the election. and his plan is to prevail in november and pardon himself or make them all go away. and i guess my question is, in another case where because no one imagined an ex-president and potential future president like him, does the legal system not have the tools it needs to adjudicate something ahead of an election? >> here, i think the issue is i'm more cynical than tim is with respect to i think here the issue is the -- the legitimate concern that the courts have that you don't just remove a judge because just don't like their rulings. it has to be egregious. and so that is a fair thing to have there.

but you're not contemplating a judge who is going to be biased and is hiding it. and i -- i think that if you put together her -- the two decisions by the 11th circuit which were scathing, and that is -- >> rebuke fair, reverse, rebuke? >> a friend of mine who is a judge said she wouldn't have done that that morning, it would have been so embarrassing. they were scathing, the law was wrong. this is a circuit that's conservative that said absolutely wrong. here she has to do this sort of face-saving which is, oh, i was always planning on ruling on this. of course not. the timing makes that clear. and then her mischaracterization of what happened is this idea of the unprecedented unjust is because she's -- mischaracterizing what jack smith said which is i need a ruling, which is what she then provided. i would also note something that's -- that she's describes the case, and you two were just

talking, tim and you were talking about how this is not a complicated case. she says this is a complex case of first impression. only for her is it a complex case of first impression. >> yeah. i mean, the only thing that's novel is the defendant. there are people charged under these laws all the time. >> absolutely. there is nothing complex, and there's nothing first impression about this other than a former president. but that is not really posing any legal or factual barriers that make this so unusual from her perspective. it's that she is so new that for her she's sort of really overwhelmed and if she is partisan, she's also taking tacks to lay this case so it never sees the light of day. >> let me put you on the spot. do you think she ruled in jack smith's favor so he didn't have grounds to get rid of her? >> absolutely. he said, i need a ruling because if you are wrong, i have appellate rights.

she basically took those away by saying, fine, for now i'm going to rule for you so you don't go up on appeal. >> all right. no one's going anywhere. when we come back, could a weaponized doj under a potential trump second term really go after people like us, critics, political opponents? it's something members of the january 6th select committee and their staffs are grappling with in a very real way right now. we'll talk about it. plus, president joe biden warning the prime minister of israel that something needs to change. speaking today he said that u.s. support for israel's war against hamas will only continue if the treatment of civilians in gaza changes. and later in the broadcast, threats of political violence on the rise today. two chilling new threats just in the last 72 hours showing that the words of the ex-president are definitely being heard. all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. continues after a quick break. tt hollywood white smile. new sensodyne clinical white provides 2 shades whiter teeth and 24/7 sensitivity protection.

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some of the people who have been trying to warn us to take trump literally and seriously are doing just that in the case that trump should be re-elected president in november. members of the january 6th select committee, the members of congress and their staffs who have done more than anyone else to pull the curtain back on trump's efforts to overturn an election he lost are now bracing for trump's much-promised public promises of retribution should he prevail in november. in his plan, as we know, to weaponize the justice department and use it to go after all of the people he perceives as political opponents. zoe lofgren telling the los angeles, quote, if he intend to

eliminate our constitutional system, start arresting his political enemies, i guess i would be on that list. one thing i did learn on the committee is to pay attention and listen to what trump says because he means it. the "los angeles times" goes on to say this, quote, lofgren added that she does not yet have a plan in place to thwart potential retribution by trump. but representative adam schiff, who has long been a burr in trump's side, said he's having real-time conversations with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe if trump follows through on his threats. quote, we're taking this seriously because we have to, schiff said. we have seen this movie before and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator. trump didn't just say he want to be a dictator just once, he's now said it over and over again in public, in speeches, in front of his supporters, in all sorts of different ways. many, many times. his allies in the right-wing media and think tanks say it,

too. >> under no circumstances you are promising america tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody? >> except for day one. they have done something that allows the next party -- i mean, if somebody, if i happen to be president and i see somebody who's doing well and beating me badly, i'll say, go down and indict them. the democrat charging his opponents. nobody's seen anything like it. that means that if i win and somebody wants to run against me, i call my attorney general. i say, listen, indict him. >> do you regret not locking her up? if you're president again, will you lock people up? >> i'll give an example. the answer is you have no choice because they're doing it to us. >> on the evening after we've won, the accountability project's going to start. it's going to be thorough this time. it's going to be they're going to be in prison. >> they're going to be in

prison. no evidence of them committing any crimes. crimes are opposing trump. folks, we said it here before, don't get numb. these are not empty threats. these are not bluster, blow beating, they're that, too, but they're very real. plans are being drawn up, like white paper kind of plans, and they're chilling. here's what liz cheney had to say last week. >> one of the individual has talked about how he wants to -- wants trump to appoint him to be attorney general for three weeks, and at the end of three weeks he's -- he's going to leave washington with a pardon from trump, and he's laid out, you know, his plans for those three weeks which include indictments, detentions -- i mean, he's very -- it's chilling, and it's tempting to listen to these people and think, you know, well, they're crackpots, and they are. but a crackpot with power is

really dangerous. >> so tim, we know from your probe that they wanted to use -- they wanted to invoke the insurrection act. they wanted to get to that point where they had even in their view some sort of predicate for invoking the insurrection act. whats extraordinary to me is some corners of the media, especially conservative media who may not be conservative enough to be viewed as percent of the project, in just about every corner of big business, people think that wouldn't affect them. but the worst thing for the economy, the worst thing for a freeway press if you care -- free press if you care at all about it, is political instability. in invoking the insurrection act and turning the military against your own citizenry is the most politically destabilizing thing that can happen on the planet. >> yeah. absolutely. that's right. and we showed that again and again over the course of our hearings that with the department of justice, with the department of defense, that the former president believed that those were sort of instruments

of his political interests. that he wanted to -- to invoke the insurrection act, as you said, because there were domestic protests, completely inconsistent with the historic limitations of the military. thankfully men like mark esper and mark milley were there to tell him no, you can't do that. he wanted to use the department of justice to pursue these baseless allegations of voter fraud, and he was about to install an attorney general who would have sent some letter to the states basically saying because of our serious concerns about the election, you should convene special sessions. no basis in fact or law for that. and he was thwarted again by adults in the room. my fear is that those adults won't be in the room this time. that the currency for service in a second term would be loyalty, not competence. and that's chilling, as you said. thankfully there were people in place who were guardrails who

respected norms and respected independence of thothosations, those agencies. let me share a quick story about what president obama said to us when i was a u.s. attorney. i was fortunate to be appointed, presidentially appointed, confirmed by the senate, the united states attorney, when there were 50 of us confirmed in the beginning of the obama administration, we all went to the white house for the sort of meet and greet with the president. and he said to us, you're not my lawyer, you should not look at yourselves as president obama's lawyer, and you shouldn't think for a minute about whether you should do something that does or doesn't help obama. you should do what is best for the people of your district. and to me, that's right. like i so appreciated and respected that i was being told to separate politics, to separate the man who'd appointed me his political interest and do what was right for the western district of virginia where i

served. that's been the history across parties. republicans and democrats have imposed that at justice. have held to that at justice. and if we ever shrink from that, man, i quake to -- to imagine what could happen with respect to our criminal justice system. >> i mean, i think what trump is proposing on paper is -- is two train stops away there from that, right? on the spectrum, the next stop is what we saw in trump one. an extremely political justice department where bill barr put his thumbs on the scales of justice in the mueller probe, investigating trump ties. trump's proposing on paper, out loud, in writing, is turning it into a personal retribution center. this is the agency that in his view, in his telling to his own supporters will eke out retribution by, in his words, quote, indicting his political opponents. >> i have two thoughts. one is for those people who are skeptical thinking maybe he

won't do it, i have to wait and see -- i would say he is saying it now. leave aside whether he would do it. if you want to know the choice of who to vote for and what the rule of law means, he has told you now. he's said what his view is of the rule of law which is we are not a nation of laws, we are a nation of men and women, meaning that he can decide who goes to jail and who doesn't. he has told you his view now. it's not predictive. you can look at exactly what he's saying now about how he views the constitution and the construct of the rule of law here. the other is looking at that construct, facts do not matter for the same reason we talked about -- >> in the call, just say it's corrupt. my -- our allies will do the rest. >> he wants president zelenskyy just open an investigation, we'll do the rest.

jeffrey clark, just -- just say you've got an investigation, that's enough. facts do not matter for the same reason he is trying to avoid all of these trials and desperately filing motion after motion to delay things. he does not care about -- he doesn't want facts to come out and in terms of who gets charged, it would be totally fine if he said the people on january 6th committee, these are the crimes they've committed, and these are the facts to support it. then you'd be like, okay, but left out of everything he's saying is any discussion about what it means to have a country based on the rule of law which is you need to have a crime, and you need to have facts. the facts and law are something that should still matter to people. and what he is saying is he's telling you now who he is. >> running on it. >> right. >> unbelievable. tim, andrew, thank you so much for starting us off today. we're grateful to you both. for more legal analysis on the story and everything else

we've been talking about and everything else going on, scan the qr code on your screen right now to get the "deadline" legal newsletter delivered to your inbox. comes every friday. up next, president joe biden calling israel's strike that killed seven world central kitchen aid workers and the worsening humanitarian situation in gaza, quote, unacceptable. the president warning that u.s. policy in the region could be changing. we'll bring you the latest when we come back. n we come back it's time. yes, the time has come for a fresh approach to dog food. everyday, more dog people are deciding it's time to quit the kibble and feed their dogs fresh food from the farmer's dog. made by vets and delivered right to your door precisely portioned for your dog's needs. it's an idea whose time has come. ♪♪ with so many choices on booking.com there are so many tina feys i could be.

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president joe biden in a phone call today with prime minister benjamin netanyahu calling for an immediate cease-fire, saying it is essential to stabilize and improve the situation on the ground in gaza. it comes after a series of air strikes by israeli defense forces killed seven aid workers with the charity world central kitchen, including one american citizen, jacob flickinger. according to u.s. officials, president biden told netanyahu he must agree to a cease-fire and said that the easiest way to achieve that is a deal that would implement a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages still held by hamas. at a press briefing today, john kirby, the white house national security communications adviser, implied for the first time since the war began after the october 7th terrorist attack that the u.s. might withhold military aid if israel doesn't take specific measurable steps to address civilian harm within hours or days. there has been growing pressure

on the biden administration to change its tactics toward israel, including continuing military aid since the strike on charity workers. earlier today "the washington post" reported that the biden administration approved the transfer of thousands more bombs to israel on the same diaz the strike the aid -- same day as the strike on the aid workers. correspondent for bbc and contributor katy kaye is here. staff writer for "the atlantic" joins us and at the table, former top state department official during the obama administration rick stangle is here. catty kaye, your understand of what's going on at this point still behind closed doors at the white house. >> yeah, my conversations with the white house is this is a big turning point potentially. they have given benjamin netanyahu a series of things they would like to have done, more security, more food aid, more security for aid workers, and this cease-fire to get there or some pause in fighting a

safety stand down or something in fighting. and they say, you know, pretty quickly they don't see those things happening, then they will be as the readout says, you know, considering their policy. they're not saying publicly that this means that america might put conditions on aid to israel. 's worth pointing out that israel is the only country that gets weapons from the united states that don't have some kind of conditions attached to them. but it's clearly opening the door to a revision of american long-standing american policy. i mean, the region, the questions are, you know, why has it taken america so long, and if america doesn't get something from benjamin netanyahu, something more tangible to show that the israelis are listening to the americans and that the americans do, in fact, have leverage, then america starts looking weak in the region. i mean, the white house's position has been we haven't attacked conditions because we want to be at the table, we want to be where the decisions are being made, we want leverage. now the white house is effectively saying you need to show us that we do have leverage and that you are listening to

us. >> rick, israel suffered a heinous, heinous terrorist attack on october 7th. and i know in israel, public opinion sort of goes from the grief that they still experience to despair that somehow their leader, benjamin netanyahu, managed to lose the world's some corners or a lot of corners of support around the world. it seems that it is good policy and good to address some of his own domestic blow back if you will to improve the conditions for civilians in gaza. >> yes, but he's -- like we've said before, i never use the word double down with netanyahu or trump because they you can't believe double down. so he sees this as i've got to finish the job. and he is the kind of a strongman a shame who has happened to perception of israel as a result of this. and i could what we saw and are

seeing in the white house today is a long time coming. i mean, in many ways, you know, biden is like the job figure defending netanyahu over and over. the relationship with israel is the real special relationship as far as biden is concerned. but all of this has just touched his own empathy and concerns, and he sees what's happening to israel in terms of perception around the world which he has mentioned. i was told by someone at the national security council that he was going to say something in the "state of the union" like this. and this is a kind of a breaking point. a breaking point for lots of humanitarian organizations, too. >> and the existential threat that israelis feel is obviously from iran, the other lethal threat that they face every day. what is -- what is sort of the complicated decisionmaking that the white house faces right now? >> i would start that answer, i

would start answering in a slightly different place. i think it's important that people understand why this humanitarian aid attack was so significant. obviously the israelis have killed a lot of people over the last few months. but this was deliberately -- this was a target that was known, the group had identified themselves to the idf, to the israeli army, in advance. they were hit three times absolutely on the mark. and so it couldn't have been a kind of accident. and one of the reasons why israel had so much american support over the years is the israeli soldiers did do courses in laws of war, they were taught to try to avoid civilian casualties, any israeli general you ever met would say yes, of course mistakes were made, and tragedies happen. but you know, this is not what we teach our soldiers to do. and this is an indication that there is something different happening in this war. that people are behaving in a different way.

and i think that's what's causing -- that's why you're seeing a really different reaction in the white house and around the world. >> all right. we'll stay on this with all of your help. no one's going anywhere. when we all come back, it is the 75th anniversary of the nato alliance. we'll look at what could be in store for nato countries and for the future of the world order should donald trump return to serve a second term in the white house. we'll bring you that new reporting on how the world is trump-proofing nato after this. i was stuck. unresolved depression symptoms were in my way.

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nato, the 32-member alliance that makes up the beating heart of u.s. national security policy, marked its 75th anniversary today at its headquarters in brussels. and as "the washington post" puts it today the alliance of now 32 members is, quote, older, arguably wiser and freshly attuned to its own mortality. and that is because of none other than donald trump. here's what he said about nato recently -- >> when i said everybody's going to pay, they said, well, if we don't pay, are you still going to protect us? i said, absolutely not. one of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by russia, will you protect us? i said, you didn't pay? you're delinquent? he said, yes, say that happened. no, i would not protect you. in fact, i would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. you got to pay. you got to pay your bills. >> not a golf course, but

comments like that are leading members to ask what the ex-president's potential return to the white house would mean for nato. also according to "the washington post" today, quote, in the weeks leading up to the meeting, the watch word in brussels had been trump proofing. the discussions about how to actually protect nato and its plans from trump have been fraught. among those who believe in nato's mission, there is deep fear about what comes next. katty, anne, and rick are back. anne, what's amazing is that just a teeny read of not even -- not even much history, but just recent history, we're the only country that's actually ever tapped into article 5. we're the only country that's asked anybody to protect us when we were hit on september 11th. >> yep, that's true. the only time nato has ever gone into action as a defensive alliance in that sense was after 9/11 when nato countries came out -- came to help us in afghanistan. you know, again, this has been said so many times, but trump

seems never to understand it. nato is not a protection racket. it's an alliance that's based on values. there's no -- there's no membership fee. there's no sum you're supposed to pay in order to be a member in order to get protection. the members of nato help one another. and yes, we are at a moment right now when people are very worried that that principle might not apply anymore. both because the really extraordinary way in which u.s. congress has continued to hold up aid to ukraine at the behest of donald trump who is running for running for president, and because of the comments trump made that you just showed. people are afraid that the u.s. no longer sees itself as part of the democratic world at all and therefore won't be a reliable ally. yes, they're beginning to think down the road, what do we do. in the next few months, europe still needs u.s. weapons, u.s. supplies, but there is talk now

of creating a large fund that will keep nato sustained and keep the war in ukraine going if need be over the next five years. >> and former national security officials like john bolton don't say trump, whether trump pulls out. they're trying to help people understand when he would do it and bolton recently said he would quote do it very early in the term. do people take trump both literally and seriously on this? >> they do. what most people don't realize is although there's a nato treaty and institution, nato is kind of a psychological promise. it's an assumption that one member of the alliance would defend the others and especially that the united states, with its nuclear weapon, nuclear shield, would come to the defense of its european allies. once, once trump says i'm not going to do that, i don't believe in it, then the rest of it, the institutions,

relationships and so on, just don't matter as much. then you could have an incident where russia attacks a nato ally even just as a provocation to see whether the u.s. president would respond. of course, the fear would be that he wouldn't. so it immediately means that the danger level in the world goes up by 100 degrees. >> you know, there has been this sense that you know, one, trump doesn't always mean what he said. two, he's too incompetent to carry out what he says he means or three, there would be guardrails. trump 2.0 has none of those three things slowing him down. he's publicly aligned himself with the world's most brutal autocrats. he's not even pretending to find value in nato and he's not pretending to surround himself with the likes of secretary mattis, kelly. none of those people are talked about as part of their project 2025. >> yeah. you got people like john bolton

and mark esper who are saying trump's going to pull out of nato quickly. but you've got people who are close to trump who are clearly worried he might pull out of nato. someone like marco rubio who managed to slip a protection for nato into the national defense authorization act. now, trump could kind of override that. he could effectively as ann brilliantly puts it, it's a psychological frame of mind. he could just effectively pull america out of nato. i thought it was interesting that rubio was worried enough about the prospect of trump pulling out of nato. rubio, who may eastern work in a future trump administration, that he managed to get something through the senate. look at those anniversary celebrations in brussels today. they're talking to the asians. the japanese, the koreans. you've kind of got this other area of the world. it's ironic, if america first means europe last, you've got asia saying you know what, we

still want nato. we want those security protections. i wonder whether you're going to have a situation were donald trump to pull out of nato, where you've got europe and asia working together and the united states, america first might look like america alone. >> it is sort of the reordering of the world order in anticipation of the possibility of him. that's how great the threat is. >> and by the way, the europeans have been thinking about this and anticipating it. president macron has been talking about having a strategic autonomy from the u.s. that's something that they've talked about for a long time. but it is this kind of unraveling of post war world that america held forum. it's still just stunning to me that donald trump doesn't understand that. doesn't care about it. doesn't see how important it is. this has been the most, most peaceful era of modern history since the end of world war ii. in part because of these institutions. institutions which he doesn't understand and doesn't like.

including nato. including the imf. the world bank. the u.n. all of these things. he would unravel that and that would have terrible consequences. >> ann, you talked about a psychological framework. what is is the psychological impact on the ground in ukraine where they are in a hot war with russia right now? >> it's very hard to find the right adjectives. people genuinely don't understand it. ukrainians, like a lot of east europeans, have this idea of america that's very idealized and they think of america as kind of the all powerful home to democracy. and the idea that americans are arguing among themselves and bringing in other issues and are unable to make a decision and that they're, and because of that, people are dying, is something people are finding really, really difficult to grapple with. not only ukrainians, the

lithuanian foreign minister said something really striking today. he said you know, nice stories don't win wars. this glorious narrative, unity and solidarity with ukraine is wearing thin, he said. so this was at the, right after the nato summit that was today. there's this feeling that people are still talking about ukraine but you know, as people see ukrainians dying on the ground, as they see ukrainians losing ground to russian forces because they don't have enough ammunition, as they see cities being destroyed because they don't have enough air defense munition because we won't give it to them. there's this feeling that the united states is a fake leader. that it's not really true anymore. that the organization doesn't really function. and the longer we delay and the longer we fail to do what we said want to do, which is to help the ukrainians defend themselves and win, the worse it

is for our reputation. the delay itself has done an enormous amount of damage. >> it's extraordinary. and i think one thing i hear, too, is you've got the leaders, the so-called leaders on board, but they are too impotent to move the rest of their party along and get the aid out the door. extraordinary moment. thank you very helping us understand it. up next for us, the rise in political violence in a parallel track with the words spilling out of the ex-president. much more news to come when the next hour of deadline white house starts after a very short break. don't go anywhere. a very short break. don't go anywhere. save 35% on your first autoship order. get the food they love. delivered again and again. (♪♪) [thud]

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i wish that people would realize that words matter. conduct matters. children are watching. children are guided by what we as adults do. and i think we lose a certain civility when we go low. to any leaders or people in the spotlight to think about what they say and how they treat other people. let's agree to disagree. we've become so inflexible. i feel sometimes like we're ready to break. >> ready to break. hi, again, everyone. it's 5:00 in new york. our kids are watching, the world is watching and words do indeed matter. the same message is being spread today by family members of martin luther king jr. who returned to memphis today on the 50th anniversary. the son of the icon told axios

the family feels it is important to be there during this election here. his wife said this, quote, this is the first year that we actually are going back as a family to memphis and we felt that it was extraordinarily important to be there this year. she said the king family sees little difference between the violent rhetoric coming from some christian nationalists and the kkk 60 years ago. king iii said civility in politics is diminishing and he worries more lives will be lost unless the nation recommits itself to nonviolence as his father preached. the family disclaimed the urgency of this moment, the threats against judges, prosecutors, against elected officials, election workers, and other civil servants have reached staggering new heights. a lot of it is thanks to the language used and deployed by the presumptive republican presidential nominee who has

repeatedly, publicly gone after the justice system and those who serve in it. charged with upholding the rule of law. a review by reuters of data from the marshal service reports this. quote, since trump launched his first presidential campaign in june of 2015, the average number threats and hostile communications directed at judges, federal prosecutors, judicial staff, and court buildings has more than tripled. yesterday, a man was charged for allegedly making terroristic threats against new york attorney general james and judge angoran. the two key figures in trump's civil fraud trial. both of whom trump has viciously attacked over and over again on social media. on monday, a navy veteran with ties to qanon who appears to be a trump supporter drove his suv into an fbi office in atlanta. he was stopped by agents and is

now in custody. those two incidents happened in the last three days. it's where we start the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. harvard law professor, nancy gerutner is here. and distinguished university professor at vanderbilt university and co-author of unequal, the story of america, michael eric dyson is back with us. frank, i want to start with you. with just a straight up threat assessment. i mean, i have a lot of thoughts about how trump has successfully numbed us to this and the fact that neither of those incidents of political violence directed at tish james or the qanon supporter that crashed into the fbi on the front of any newspaper this week. how do you see this moment from

a threat perspective? >> if we were doing a color coded, which i'm sure the fbi is actually maintaining at fbi headquarters, we would be red. the color would be red. we'd be at high risk. we're at high risk and we're seeing the increasing unrest for violence and violent threats because the first amendment citing that violence continued to ratchet up his language, understanding the consequence es. this is not something accidental, something he can keep at arm's length. he understands the consequences of his actions and that's where we are right now. and look, i want to do a quick note about the king family speaking out today because i think it's quite appropriate for them to do so. a family, an american family that understands the impact of political violence. i just want to say from the fbi perspective that there's a reason why every new agent's class at the fbi academy at

quantico visits the mlk memorial in washington. because it's part of a teaching module on the abuses of law enforcement when they're in the wrong hands. because the fbi did some really awful things with regard to treating king as a threat, but it's also about the fbi's role in preserving civil liberties and civil rights. that's why they visit the mlk memorial and if we're not careful, we're going to see the fbi and the other agencies in the wrong hands come next year and then the civil rights and abuses will be out the window. >> they would become policy. that's what's being promised in a second trump term, frank. >> yeah. we've already heard the plan, right? whatever plan you're looking at, it includes getting rid of the civil employee protections for federal employees so career employees have to do loyalty

tests. imagine the entire top echelon of field offices being picked by trump. they follow his bidding. weaponize intelligence and replicate that throughout the dod, dhs, department of justice and cia. and we've got a mess on our hands that we'll regret. people are saying i don't think it's going to be that bad. he'll rise to the occasion. we've been there, done that. he doesn't rise to the occasion. he finds the lowest common denominator in humanity and that's where he'll be. >> let me read you memphis magazine's reporting. quote, with 2024 a major election year and with the nation seriously divided, mr. king iii reflects on what more needs to be done. quote, it is daunting because the mechanisms that are in place to divide, he said. that could be social media to some degree. that could be some elements of mainstream media and obviously a lot of individuals who may be

influencers. certainly the megaphone that the former president has is probably doing the most damage. people seem to be in denial or blind to it seeing only what they think are the good things. we have to be very thoughtful and very direct and intentional is what i would say. where do you think the denial and the being blind to it comes from? >> well, first of all, it's always great to be with you. >> thank you. >> look, joseph lowry who ran scls after dr. king said we live in the 51st state. the state of denial. gore said we live in united states of amnesia, so thank god brother frank being honest acknowledged the complicity of the fbi in refusing to warn dr. king of threats of his life and enacted the agency against the progress by the civil rights movement and to acknowledge it's critical. not to get stuck in the past, but to understand that that past

has played a significant role in shaping where we are today. the denial comes from saying oh, if i support donald trump, it doesn't mean that i buy into his vicious ideas. the vortex of violence. the tornado of terror that rips across the american political landscape is what donald trump represents and he represents a threat not simply to people of color or to women or to other marginalized groups, he represents the threat to the very heart of democracy. the man in whose hands rests the symbolic capital of american democracy himself champions those who try to undermine it on january 6th because he was the cheerleader for them. so it is our refrefusal to acknowledge that a vote for trump is really sinking into the lower political echelon of american life and the inability to acknowledge difference, diversity, and the ability to say you say one thing, i say

another. let's work it out. hash it out. let's vote it out is all pushed to the side. and what we have coming to the floor is a vicious reputeuation of the best traditions of civility that have motivated the founding fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters and those of us in democracy. until we face that threat, we won't be able to do much more i'm afraid. >> i agree with that framework. didn't write fast enough but i got vortex of v violence and trz of terror. it is a means to the end and an end. because whether the political violence is realized as it was against the judge who was here at the beginning of this week, or you're simply too terrified to continue to serve as an election worker. or to continue to serve as secretary of state or to subject your family to the threats or subject their school to the swatting. whatever it is that the tale of the terror is also the tactic.

and when you hear normal, civilized people saying oh, come on. there are checks and balances. that's the denial. a amnesia. how do you wake people up, michael? >> that's a great point. you've got to say it's not simply about the judges, the jurists, the politicians and the like, it's normal, every day citizens. remember the other day in the ncaa women's tournament, the women of the basketball team in utah were threatened. they were treated to a racist terrorist who shouted an epithet against them and threatened them and followed them and the like. so it's not just the higher echelon of politicals. it's the normal citizens of america. but having said that, we've got to wake people up on the local, national, federal level. we've got to say to our politicians that 38 out of 50 state legislatures are run by republicans who are redrawing the map.

rejiggering the possibility of democracy. we've got to talk about that. we've got to talk about not just the explicit embrace of violence, but the spiritual violence, the moral violence, the rhetorical violence. so every day people must see if we don't stand up and we can say this by, in our churches, synagogues, temples. we can talk about the this in our sororities and fraternities and we've got to speak about it in our local organizations. city council and the like. until that message gets down to every echelon of american society, i'm afraid we won't be able to protect ourselves but we can do something about it and that's what dr. martin luther king jr.'s memory teaches us. that one single citizen can speak up and reverberate a message of transformation that can change the world. >> nancy, the ex-president and current gop presumptive nominee has at different points taken on

with his most sort of venomous vile and vitriol branches of government. so if they contradicted him or rebuked him, his base would say it's not you, it's them. i think he started with the intelligence community when in transition, he likened them to nazis and i remember talking to general hayden and others about how dangerous that is around the world. he turned very quickly to the u.s. department of justice where he fired jim comey because he wouldn't let his friend. and he has just, you know, he's just demolished like a fire hose the credibility of these institutions in the eyes of his base. includes the fbi now, tragically. the military among large swaths of his base. at least its leadership. the view is that so far the courts have pretty much held that's where all of his venom is

pointed out now. what are you concerns? >> the courts have held because no one besides the judge has ruled against him yet. when that begins to happen, i'm not so sure. by holding what i mean is the you know, the classic statement is that courts don't have armies. that people obey what a judge and what a court does without necessarily having to physically enforce it. because you believe in the legitimacy of the institution. it's a place for civil discourse. he, by what he says, is undoing that. whether successfully is another question, but he's trying to. he's saying with respect to all the judges that are on cases that are doing things that he doesn't like. he's not just saying you know, fair amount of criticism about judge cannon, for example. that criticism could be i don't

like what she said on this occasion, what she ruled on this occasion. not she is a trump lover and she is illegitimate and you know, her family is illegitimate. no one goes there. he focuses on that. and he was doing that from the beginning of his time as president. if you'll recall, he would be going after any judge's ethnicity. so he is really taking the institution to the lowest level is what happened here. >> i think he's done it most recently with the daughter of judge merchan. i want to follow up. the threats of violence come to the doorstep of judges that are dealing with trump cases. some arrested for threatening judge chutkan. i think in the case as reported by politico, a shooting or some sort of violent act was called into law enforcement at her house. they showed up and no such thing

had occurred but it's again meant to create this climate of fear and to terrorize. anyone trying to hold him accountable. are you confident that he can be held accountable? >> oh, i think he can be. the problem is going to be the timing. whether he'll be held accountable in time for this election is another question. and whether he'll be held accountable after that really depends on who wins. the issue of threats affects who wants to become a judge. it affects what you do as a judge. you know, it affects whether you worry if you rule this way, you're going to walk out and there will be an issue. most judges know how to resist that, but it could certainly enter your mind. when i was on the bench, i left in 2011. so this is before all of this. we were, we had security devices put in our home and we were regularly in touch with marshals whenever we left the courthouse

and security was very high. particularly after 9/11. but this is really something very different. this is a major candidate who is simply delegitimizing the bench. who's not watching his words in any way. and i think that it could well affect who becomes judges. who wants to take this on? who wants to you know, deal with this kind of abuse? and that's an issue. >> you know, frank, the nature of threats again as we've been discussing isn't fully realizing the threat of violence. it's everything that nancy and michael are talking about. what's he do in response to the fear of violence. but protecting every judge is an extraordinary undertaking. it's 24/7 human protection. it's hardening every place. it's an extraordinary accommodation.

it's an extraordinary tax on the system and i wonder what you view the solution at this point to be. >> well, let me echo your sentiment that protective measures are extremely resource intensive and expensive if done right. you are talking about really a protective bubble around the protectee and while certain federal agencies, particularly the u.s. marshals are adept at it and used to doing it, they're not used to doing it at this level to so many protectees. now move down to the state and local level with judges involved in various trump related things and you've got a real strain on resources. i want to just add that you know, we're all making an assumption here that law enforcement's doing the right thing and with the right intentions. i've got a column out today for msnbc daily that addresses the fact that on tuesday, the police officers association of michigan endorsed, they represent 12,000

police officers, they endorsed donald trump while he was there in grand rapids for president of the united states. what does that tell us about those who are supposed to be doing the protecting? if you're wondering why there isn't an immediate police response, why aren't threats against election workers being jumped on then you need look at the grand rapids rally will trump stood there flanked by uniform police officers and called migrants animals and said you know, he's going to release the hostages. there's nothing there about law enforcement and serving the public. so we make assumptions that it's going to get better because the police are on it. i can't tell you all the police are on it all the time. >> and you get me back to this frame that i can't release my thinking but it's a failure of imagination over and over again. it isn't about him anymore. it's about us because he has shown all of us who he is. it's about what we do to adjust

and adapt. i hope this is a conversation that we can continue. nancy, michael, thank you for starting us off. frank sticks around. when we come back, alarming reporting this week about china's efforts to interfere in our presidential election. how covert chinese accounts and pretending to be trump supporters and spreading disinformation on social media all in a bid to target joe biden. that's next. also ahead, the election is still seven months away and while democrats might have plenty to be nervous about, the whole future of democracy thing, we'll be joined by a long time democratic strategist with a message for biden supporters. breathe. simon rosenberg will explain why he is so confident that a biden victory will happen. later in the hour. deadline white house continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. after a quick break. don't go anywhere. crohn's de skyrizi is the first il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. serious allergic reactions

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election day in these united states, will we make it? we learned about how china is trying -- the results. according to the "new york times," they warn this -- signaling a potential shift in how beijing aims to influence american politics with more of a willingness to target specific candidates and parties including mr. biden. some of the chinese accounts impersonate trump fans including

one on x that purported to be a father, husband, and son who was maga all the way. the accounts mocked mr. biden's age and shared fake images of him in a prison jump suit or claim that mr. biden was a satanist pedophile. i've never seen anything along those lines before said elise thomas, an analyst at a non-profit research organization that uncovered a smallgroup of the accounts. joining us now, john heilemann, frank is still with us. john heilemann, part of my brain says what do we need china and russia for? we're destroying each other all on our own. i guess other side wondering how we can continue to leave ourselves so vulnerable from meddling from america's adversaries and not have a bipartisan outcry or reaction

that's uniform. >> well, happy thursday. >> hi. >> cheery topic to dive into on here as we learn that china, as we learn that china, the rising superpower that will probably dominate much of the next century in terms of its adversarial relationship with the united states has decided though it has hacked elections for a very long time, chinese information infiltration goes back for a long time. the mccain campaign was hacked in 2008. what's been the difference between china and russia is that china has traditionally not gotten into the kind of thing they seem to have gotten into now. we have russian disinformation, chinese hacking to steal secrets but not to draw these disinformation campaigns.

so now the good news for today is that china has decided to become more like russia. happy days are here again. i think that it points to the thing you're pointing to, all these threats are the things we recognize. especially after 2016. how acute they are. everyone talks about it. there is bipartisan discussion of it. what there isn't is any kind of meaningful bipartisan attempt to deal with it. i honestly think part of the problem with this is i don't want to go too much into hey, everyone, there's a conspiracy theory here and one side wants to see this happen. it's really part of this is it's really hard to deal with this because of the nature of the way the internet works. having to essentially build a wall to adopt effective policies that will protect against information warfare coming from adversaries is really hard to do. that there's the place where

there could be a more effective way of dealing with this is on the kind of, not supply side, but demand side. where you have to try to figure out, if you had both sides saying we understand that foreign disinformation, domestic disinformation, both of them forms of terrorism combined with the power of artificial intelligence is going to give us an election over the course of the next six months unlike anything we've ever seen before in america. the opportunities for malice and mischief are greater than ever. there is no way to stop bad actors from penetrating our system. we've got to build up, or ferret ut, and no one is any more close to where we need to be if we were going to have the demand side fully protected in time to fend off what we are about to see, which is a tsunami of disinformation between now and november 8th. >> yeah.

frank, john is way ahead of me on this. he did an entire episode on this circus on show time on this. i think that the part of it that my sort of political campaign muscle memory remembers is that campaigns used to be accountable to media, their supporters. to the other side, frankly, to make sure that things were fact checked. if you were in a campaign, you ran an ad and it wasn't truthful, you were crushed. it hurt you. you were clobbered in a debate. as one of the two parties has collapsed on itself being totally overrun by propaganda, being bolstered by a media ecosystem that couldn't care less about what's true and false and fact and fiction. what john is describing really is the nightmare scenario and i wonder if you are concerned or heartened by the kinds of conversations people are having about it. >> exposure is great.

sunshine is a great disinfectant but we're not all having that discussion, right? >> yeah. >> it's not a bipartisan. it's not a bipartisan discussion. in fact, first, couple of things. this technique china's using is called spamoflauge. they're camouflaging themselves as your favorite uncle. they're pretending to be with you on that topic. so you don't see it coming. you click, you join, you friend them. because they're like you. but it's the chinese intelligence services. number one. number two, the gop particularly has set the table for the inability of social media platforms to really jump on this. what happened in twittergate? people were screaming bloody murder that the fbi dared to approach social media platforms to simply point out this is russia. get a head's up. this is a disinformation

campaign. we're not telling you to take it down. we're telling you to get your act together on vetting who's posting, but as john said, it's virtually impossible. now china's doing it. screaming bloody murder about the fbi social media platforms, are they willing to have the fbi say here's what we know about which of your accounts is a disinformation account. >> i'm going to need you to make ut smarter about this. i feel like we're going to be wading through things blowing up on social media. i'm glad to start the conversation. frank, thank you for spending time with us today. john sticks around. when we come back, our next guest has a message for anxious democrats everywhere. calm down. simon rosenberg will explain why he is so very optimistic about president biden's re-election prospects. president biden's re-election prospects. urance claim? that means less stress for you. >> woman: thanks. >> tech: my pleasure. have a good one. >> woman: you too. >> tech: schedule today at safelite.com.

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glory of american elections are that they are not won or lost based on polls or pundits. they're not decided by what passes as conventional wisdom among our country's political class. elections come down to what you do at the ballot box on election day. period. a whole lot of time and energy and money goes into predicting what you are going to do on election day, none of us knows.

it's why i don't spend a lot of time on polls. exhibit 1a, we were told by all these people that president biden was too unpopular in the polls and voters were eager to signal a different direction so this happened. >> are we looking at one of the biggsest red waves in american history? >> we can see things happening in america we haven't in decades with a historic red wave. >> predictions of a red wave are accurate. >> it's going to be like the elevator door is opening up on the shining. >> you are about to see a red wave that makes day after tomorrow look like nothing. >> remember that deep impact disaster movie? that's the red wave tsunami that will come ashore. >> is it going to be a red wave? tsunami? i think a red hurricane. >> what are you feeling today? >> red wave. >> if there's not a red wave, i'll dance. how about that. >> so that guy dancing and the third person is now the head of the rnc. but the red wave never happened.

there was no way. just like a couple of drops. democrats maintained control of the senate. republicans gained a narrow sliver of the house, one that has diminished even further since that day. so perhaps it is healthier to question one of these tools. the common consensus and the polls. the latest available polling now, 215 days before the election is suggesting that donald trump will handily defeat joe biden. joining our conversation, democratic strategist, simon rosenberg, who sees those polls but famously predicted what we just described and is similarly optimistic about joe biden's chances heading into november. also joining us, democratic strategist. john is still with us. just tell me your philosophy about polls and predictions.

>> it's great to be here with this great panel as well. and i loved the introduction. may have to steal it for my own work going forward. >> it's all yours. it's free. >> it was really good. listen, my take on where things are right now is kind of simple. it's that joe biden is a good president. the country is better off. the democratic party is strong and winning elections across the country and they have trump, the ugliest political thing we've ever seen. i think that we have the ability as analysts to not just be guided by polls. there's a lot of other things we look at to determine the strength of a candidacy or the strength of a political party. money being raised. quality of the candidates, strength of the arguments. the team. all those things. you know. you've been part of this. when i look at everything and put it together, what i see in 2024 is that i would much rat rather be us than them.

he has a strong record to run on and i don't know how you dress up trump and make him look like a serious candidate in 2024. >> so much of what people use to sort of create the bubbles in which they exist and on the biden coalition side, exist in knots of anxiety and worry about the fate of our democracy. is this conventional wisdom that enough people will say oh, but the economy. oh, but i don't like the culture. the basket of culture issues that are associated. the right is obsessed with culture issues. they're obsessed with policies as they pertain to trans kids and trans athletes. they're obsessed with disinformation around the biden economy. and it's so hard wired and main lined into their base that i think it creates almost boomerang anxiety on the other coalition. how do you quell that or try to refocus that on the facts and

actual structural dynamics of the election? >> we have to remember that since trump kind of became maga in 2017, democrats have had four good elections in a row. we won in 2018 and 2020. we did better than expected in 2022. did well in 2023. as strong as 2018 and 2020 were for us, they were remarkable performances, what's happened since dobbs has been in some ways more remarkable. i do think that something broke inside the republican party when dobbs happened. i think for a lot of republicans, it was just too far, too much. the party has gone too crazy. it had become too dangerous. what you've seen in election after election going back to the spring of 2022 is democrats overperforming expectations and republicans underperforming expectations. they've been struggling. you saw it throughout the battleground in 2022. throughout the country in 2023 and you're seeing it play out in early 2024. so i think the democrats have to stay focused here. we've got look, we're not where

we want to be. a big chunk of our coalition is wandering. we have to bring them home. that's what the campaign is for. i think the biden campaign believed is that once the general election came and our voters understood it was really biden and trump, that our coalition would start to come home and the polling in the last few weeks, i would argue have shown that democrats are improving their standing. we're now, biden is now ahead in 16 separate polls taken in the last few weeks. the congressional generic, which is another measure of the health of the two parties has turned more blue in the last few weeks. i think we're gaining ground. the election the changing. i feel good about where they are and again, i would much rather be us than them because i think just selling trump 2024 is going to be a lot harder than selling trump in 2016 or 2020. >> you and i are old. i don't mean that you're old. >> formally young.

>> we were once young. but john, i had this conversation with a friend who said you know, i thought i knew what i thought about this election but man, biden's state of the union was something. it made me realize that he can be great. and i don't know what person is person is in. business person. very sort of moderate, i think, and probably has voted for members of both parties in the past, but it made me excited to still be doing what you and i do. because it reminded me that election performances matter and that the rituals of elections matter. a convention speech with matter. state of the union mattered. the convention speech is going to matter. a debate moment will matter. it just sort of restored my faith in the fact that none of us has any idea what's going to happen. >> simon has, who i've known for a long time and have had many conversations with over the years and has always been a wise

source of perspective on things. he's known in a lot of cases, he's been right about things when others were absolutely certain they would go the other way. a lot of those people are democrats who were wearing their hair shirts, gnashing their teeth. i never pretend i know what's going to happen. i'd be really surprised if simon or cornell, both of whom, cornell knows more about numbers than i do and simon has studied this stuff in a deep way. but we've all been around the track a few times. i'd be surprised that anybody doesn't think today this is a margin of error race and that on election day, it's a margin of error race. simon's 100% right, there are a lot of people who would say if they had to choose which game to play in this election, lots of people who would say i'd rather play biden's hand than trump's hand. but in that, embed nd the thing simon said, there's a lot of work to do for democrats.

i think democrats who are, who think that trump is unelectable, that would be a huge mistake for democrats to make and i think people understand there's a war going on in israel right now that's testing the democratic coalition. there's a lot of disappointment among a lot of democratic base voters. simon's right. that's what campaigns are for. there's work to do. it's a winnable election for joe biden, no doubt about it, but when roll up on election day, i think we're still going to be in the margin of error. i'd be surprised if cornell or simon thinks this is going to be a walkaway election for biden. >> we don't have walkaway elections in the united states. if you look at history, history tells us what you know, the idea that trump's going to do better this time than he did the last time. history doesn't point to that. but i'm a pollster. we should start talking about polls. on television so much and i

actually wrote an op-ed about this last month. we're centering too much of our conversation on polls an polls aren't crystal balls. they're not predictors of the future. i think we want polls to predict the future but they're not. from a campaign standpoint, what we use polls for to instruct us how to build a campaign. to simon's point, all a candidate really wants is a good story to tell. do i have a better story to tell than my opponent? and i think when you lay this out, biden does have a better story to tell than donald trump. and if you look at from an issues standpoint, look, where has donald trump improved positioning of republicans, right? you know they're not well positioned on abortion. even though their center issue of immigration, middle america is not where middle america and republicans are on immigrants poisoning the blood of our country. in fact, 61% of americans say

immigrants contribute more than they take away. so from a positioning standpoint, they're not very well positioned. i'm going to let you all in on a little secret. at the end of 2011 going into 2012, in our data on the obama campaign, do you think all those young voters who voted for barack obama in '08 thought wow, you know what, we got all the change we need. we're fantastic. you know. thanks for delivering all that change. no. of course they weren't. so what we to is we use polling to help us build a campaign. solve our problems. we've used polling to help build a campaign to help solve our problems. >> the bush campaign it showed us where we were in deep you know what. but yes, solve our problems is probably the way to say it.

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we're looking for adults 45 and under to be in our hpv vaccination ad. sound like you? nah...not me. in a relationship. if you're sexually active and unvaccinated, it could still be you. i'm too old if you're under 45, you're not. for most people, hpv clears on its own. but for those who don't clear the virus, it can cause certain cancers. wow... gardasil 9 is a vaccine given to adults through age 45 that can help protect against certain hpv-related cervical, vaginal, vulvar, anal, and certain head and neck cancers, such as throat and back of mouth cancers, and genital warts. gardasil 9 doesn't protect everyone and doesn't treat cancer or hpv infection. these diseases may have many causes. your doctor may recommend screening for certain hpv-related cancers. routine cervical cancer screenings are still needed. you shouldn't get gardasil 9 if you're allergic to the vaccine, its ingredients, or yeast. tell your doctor if you have a weakened immune system, are pregnant, or plan to be. the most common side effects include injection site reactions,

headache, fever, nausea, dizziness, tiredness, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and sore throat. fainting can also happen. help protect yourself against certain hpv-related cancers. talk to a doctor or pharmacist today. we're back with simon ko, cornell and john. simon, abortion seems to always be something that's underestimated, so tectonic, it doesn't need a lot of storytelling. anyone who knows a woman or loves a woman understands the issue. how do you make sure it doesn't get muddied by some bog gus

trump move that has no relationship to the actual record of appointing justices. >> i don't see there's any escape hatch for the republicans. they tried a 15-week abortion ban, and youngkin betted on that, and they blew up the race. you even have republican legislators in the house criticizing youngkin for making them run on abortion, and they blamed that for losing the house in virginia, right? we did a road test of this, this 15-week abortion ban, the fantasy escape hatch, and it blew up in their face. i think they're stuck. i was on a cull earlier today, and said what happened with roe was the biggest political mistakes by a political party in the last 50 years. donald trump is singularly responsible for ending roened

stripping the rights and freedoms away of more than half of the population. there's no way to get out of that. it's clear that the biden administration is leaning in as hard as they possibly can, as they should. not only is it bringing us votes, independent and republican-leaning women, it's bringing a lot of intensity to the democratic party. women irfighting with incredible intensity,in raising incredible amounts ofng money, more volunteers than we have ever had. it's making the democratic party, in my view, having done this for more than 30 years, we have the 3 stronger political machine i have ever seen. i think you'll see it unfold, on full display in the november election this year. itch to sneak in a break. don't go anywhere. k in a break don't go anywhere. oh, not the fries! where's the ball? -anybody see it? oh wait, there it is! -back into play and... aw no, it's in the water.

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cornel, what keeps you up at night at this moment in the political calendar? >> look of energy and voters not taking this seriously enough. it's something we've talked about before, democracy is on the line, your freedom is not on the line, and voters not being awake, especially young voters. if turnout is down across the battleground states, he can get that. that's what keeps me up at night.

can we continue this, as a group of four? simon, cornell and john, thank you all. another break for us. we will be right back. another break for us we will be right back. have a passion for online gaming? or want to explore the space economy? choose from over 40 themes, each with up to 25 stocks identified by our unique algorithm. buy it as-is or customize to align with your goals. all at your fingertips. schwab investing themes. 40 customizable themes. up to 25 stocks in just a few clicks. ♪♪

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than anyone else. get started for $49.99 a month plus ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. don't wait- call today. thank you so much for letting us into your homes. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. our top story right now is the diverging paths in accountability for donald trump's failed coup and insurrection. that includes some bad news for trump in the rico case today,

where