welcome to our special new york versus donald trump. i'm ari melber and we are going to get into this criminal trial. we're covering that tonight in the course of this hour. we'll have new reporting on the damning testimony, experts from law to the sorted world of new york tabloids. we have experts on that, too, believe it or not. we also tonight have a beat special report on a new separate indictment on a trump lawyer, boris epstein, who first admitted his role on the beat. to hear all of that tonight. this weekends with a remarkable contrast from d.c. to new york. let me tell you what i mean. in washington a trump friendly court asked trump friendly

questions about all of the problems with prosecuting a president. if you read about it, it almost sounded like that kind of trial was a futile project. while right up the east coast an actual trial of an actual former president was going forward and the republic did not crumble. it is a contrast that hangs over all of this in america and the very first week of the new york trial. it seems to undercut the supposed concern of the trump-appointed justices that hypothetically some day somehow in the future trials of presidents are a very bad thing when they're actually already happening. in the first week of this trial it shows not only that it's possible but it also gave us the first real evidence back in court binding version of the da's story. put together a brisk ride through what we're learning. >> the prosecution in donald trump's hush money trial drew the sharp outlines of its case

against the former president. >> the prosecution started. they laid out a dispassionate, straightforward, very linear, very blunt -- >> prosecutors telling the jury of seven men and five women today, it was election fraud. pure and simple. >> the defense gets right up and the defense says, the story you just heard isn't true. >> you hear the prosecution lay out a clear roadmap. >> you had a reference to the tape recording, that that's a terrible tape for donald trump. >> the defense was like a circus leader. >> it has been striking that there's no family. he is by himself. >> david pecker, the ceo of america media inc. giving bombshell testimony. >> pecker tells him, quote, we committed campaign violation. he said he wasn't worried because, quote, jeff sessions is the attorney general and donald trump has him in his pocket. >> david pecker acknowledged

that he did this catch and kill with karen mcdougall for the benefit of the trump campaign. >> the defense spent hours trying to trip him up, catch him in contradictions. >> senior vice president of the trump organization and donald trump's former long-time assistant described as the gatekeeper. his right hand. her lawyers are being paid for by donald trump. >> you heard that word, gatekeeper. the gatekeepers and supposed allies and friends are talking under oath. the da's getting details out of them to bolster the opening argument where the jury was told cases about a criminal conspiracy and a cover up. tabloid veteran david pecker has been admitting that. he recounts his dealings with trump lawyer turned star witness michael cohen to buy and bury stories all to protect trump's campaign. they led to a specific agreement to cook the books to hide their

financial footprints. the da said this will be corroborated with evidence in trump's own words. trump's defense rebuts that saying there isn't even a actual conspiracy charge in this case, that's true. the word conspiracy has a legal meaning and a more could he loek which al meaning be. they're attacking the whole election theory that trump promoted an election by unlawful means. that would be needed to super size it into a felony case. so the trump defense has kind of said, well, maybe the da is just being alarmist about what amounts to, however dirty, politics as usual. that's how they argue it. trump's lawyers proclaiming there's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. it's called democracy. the da has put up three witnesses with testimony this week. now the national enquirer chief david pecker was clearly the

hottest unloading details, dishing on the original sorted meeting that formed the trump alliance which involved a heavy dose of defamation including ted cruz and his family. details how the enquirer acted as an arm of the campaign, meaning that its so-called media decisions were phoned in by cohen himself and the money to silence women came from both the enquirer and cohen who, of course, was reimbursed by trump. karen mcdougall and stormy daniels, they got money from different places but it went back to the original campaign motivation. pecker told on cohen for how he tried to hide their contacts back in the day when i using secret messaging app? how secret is it if we all are hearing about it in court? that didn't work. the da said trump's side knew this was wrong, pecker got nervous when election regulators probed and cohen claimed jeff

sessions was in his pocket over at the doj. that adds to the evidence that team trump knew they had criminal exposure from this and their thinking was not we didn't do a crime, their thinking was, our appointees will protect us, we have them in our pocket. i don't know how jeff sessions would fit in there, but it's an analogy. but trump's doj didn't actually shield michael cohen. he was convicted and imprisoned by the very independent sdny prosecutors who were prosecutors during the trump era. and by the end of the week they turned to vrana graph. she is frugal but the defendant, his company, they are still paying for her lawyers. you take this all together and what you see is a lot more evidence against trump than reasonable doubt on his behalf. that doesn't mean he's losing this case. we are on the da's side. the burden is on them, but for a

first week this wasn't exactly a slow rise or a lot of accounting spreadsheets, this was a 2x4 swung repeatedly at donald trump as a defendant and while some of that came from those prosecutors tough talk in the opening which i read to you, as we get into this in the special tonight, you've got to remember a lot of that tough talk and incriminating information came from his buddy, tabloid chief david pecker who said by the end of his testimony, it's not personal. he still counts donald trump as a friend, he's just telling the truth under oath about their campaign crimes. how bad is it? we have two special guests with me right here at the table when we're back in 90 seconds. spons, you immediately get your shortlist of quality candidates, whose resumes on indeed match your job criteria. visit indeed.com/hire and get started today. power e*trade's easy-to-use tools, like dynamic charting and risk-reward analysis, help make trading feel effortless.

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welcome back to our special," trump on trial, new york versus defendant trump." we are joined by joyce vance and jason johnson, both analysts for us. joyce, i went through some of what we got out of this opening week. i think it's fair to say if you're on the jury the da was up in the lead. it doesn't mean you know the outcome. what have they achieved and what do they have to worry about? >> sure. it's a great question. if you are the prosecution and you're not up after your first witness, you're in big trouble, right? >> right. >> but the prosecution really did start off i think with an unexpected bang. no one knew what to expect out

of david pecker. we learned he had been cooperating with prosecutors and he brought trump into the essential conspiracy, the election fraud conspiracy, which is necessary to turn the misdemeanor that's charged here into a felony. important testimony, he stood up pretty well on testimony, on cross examination. >> cross. >> they did not seem to come after him with a lot. they tried to pick away at his credibility, question some of the key pieces of evidence he came, but he was thoroughly rehabilitated on cross examination. >> i don't want to be unkind to the defendant and he's legally presumed innocent, but his family's not there. the jury can notice that. these are his friends and allies. some of them have gone so far like michael cohen who's so angry at trump that it might affect his credibility. >> right. >> some like mr. pecker who say, yeah, i'm friendly. the guy's a liar, but we're friendly. i mean, he may have committed campaign crimes, that's what i thought we did, but we're

friendly. and he's got a whole backstory of, shall we say, really complicated allegations but we're friendly. >> right. >> if these are the views of his friends, how does that hurt him both in not only the jury but in the court of public opinion? >> that's the thing, ari. that's why this is such a bad week, because we can go through all the sort of legalese, jargon, but really the average person is picking up every fifth word. what they're picking up are things like adult film star, payoff, family isn't there, and falling asleep during a trial. so the outside world is like, okay, this doesn't look good. he doesn't sound alert. we're not seeing anything that gives us the opportunity to think, oh, my gosh, trump is alert. he's paying attention to this. friends? how many of us have them? right? but if you heard someone say this room was filled with people who are supporting donald trump and they leave the room every day and melania is there and everything else like that, it gives the outside public the

impression these people believe in him. even if he's guilty, his family is still with him. the fact that he doesn't have people who are down with him, that's what the public is picking up and the jury sees that. >> are you going to tell joyce the reference she made? >> i don't think she does. no offense. >> go ahead. >> i don't know. >> i'm going to let you -- i'm going to let you marinate on this one. i'm going to let you marinade. this is a classic. i'll tell you at the end. >> in tv they call that a deep tease. when we say and joyce is coming back for a boris epstein breakdown later. that's a tease. we'll come back for that. >> yes, please. >> we take this all in. front pages in states red and blue, to say nothing around the world where they don't have a vote but it's ricocheting. what do you think it takes hey -- a level 10 richter scale, it's happening, to remind people what it's like if he's in

center, whether he's in power, the center of the story, people might have forgotten what 2019, 2018, 2017 is? what the feeling is. >> it adds up. people are thinking when is this guy not in court, right? he's in court for documents. he's in court for an affair. everybody thinks he's going to be in trial the whole time and that's what makes people worried. here's the other thing. we talked about this before. i don't carry too much weight in polls anything this early, but what i can say is. this the number of americans who have said that if donald trump is convicted of anything, that it will affect their vote has stayed steady at like 23 to 25%. so there is a risk here. this is not a situation where just trump supporters are going to say, you know what, no matter what, there's a core of the population, it tends to be independent, if he is convicted in something like this, they will say, i just don't think i can do it for this guy. that is a real consequence of this trial.

>> i appreciate the precision of your mind. you dropped a second reference i remember when wycliff said when we all in there the judge hit the hammer. will you unveil your earlier reference? >> no, i'm going to wait. i want this to be tease. i'm going to have you know this when you come back. >> e oh, wow. all right. >> she's going to integrate it. >> here's the thing, people ask was this planned be? was this scripted? i didn't know you were going to say it. i didn't know you were going to hold t. we'll all be in suspense. >> and the music. >> beautifully put. joyce, i did want to include you in the legal breakdown here because these arizona charges are not only a big deal, they involve one of trump's new york defense advisers. boris epstein. joyce will be here. as the cases collide, we'll show you boris epstein. we have that breakdown with joyce vance next.

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welcome back to our special trump on trial. this month is actually the first time ever americans have watched a former president be put on trial. trump at that defendant's table with his lawyers including a prominent one, boris epstein, a veteran of the trump white house, and campaign who has become central to trump's activities since 2020. he was in court with trump as you see there along with the lead defense counsel two days in a row just as he was at the defense table at that first new york arraignment. his work quarterbacking for trump came after he joined and led many efforts throughout 2020 attacking those election results that showed trump lost. we've been reporting on those efforts for years including how contrary to the initial impression they involved not just mainly january 6th violence but a host of other plots over

those months and paperwork and elector fraud. we've pressed epstein on his role in those efforts as well as his legal views which, of course, are relevant as he is involved in all of this. and now here we are in this extremely busy week as he is there, you see him working on his phone with the lead counsel trying to help trump stay out of the new york prison, but what we can tell you as part of our special and with all of this news, you may have missed it, for the very first time epstein joined trump lawyers who need lawyers of their own. they indicted him for elector fraud. >> charges for a host of trump allies. >> boris epshteyn has a prominent role. >> rudy giuliani, mark meadows, boris epshteyn. >> this is the first time he's been indicted or a former trump

aide who i should note remains one of his closest advisers. >> for mr. epshteyn, this is a big deal. he's presumed innocent. this is a live issue in this new york case. defendant trump using boris as a lawyer there and then reporting on all of these issues we have interviewed epshteyn including when the early subpoenas hit. >> when you say you will provide evidence, does that mean your intent be is to cooperate. >> i'm happy to provide evidence of the overwhelming fraud that happened in the 2020 election. >> was your plan to try to force a vote in the house to reverse the election outcome. >> i had absolutely no idea there was going to be any violence at the capitol. there was absolutely a plan and a process for there to be -- to be challenges to the electoral vote. >> is that a yes? is that a yes? >> it's got a process to

challenge electoral votes. >> you're on record as -- >> so we pressed on those issues and questions. epshteyn is now indicted along with giuliani, meadows, ellis, those who had to defend and trump himself named among the unindicted co-conspirators charging epshteyn. he could be an unnamed co-conspiritor in the jack smith case, the sixth spot has never been fully identified. "the new york times" said that. we have not confirmed that. but we can confirm that epshteyn participated in the elector plot because we questioned him on that all the way back then before some of these probes had gone much further and we elicited a newsworthy admission. this was about one year after the january 6th insurrection. it was long before jack smith

was active. we pressed on how the aides and even lawyers seemed to become directly involved not just making arguments or defending things, which they are allowed to do, but in advancing active work that appeared to break the law, which could be indictable. and these leads that we built on, investigators followed them. here we are in our special right now. i'm going to air that exchange and him ultimately admitting it. not defending its legality but saying he did it with giuliani. that is trying to put in false electors and we're airing this in the full context, about 90 seconds from the original interview and you will hear him admit the very elector plan that he's indicted for this week in arizona. >> there's also been reporting about the attempt to seat fraud due lent electors. is that something you worked on

or would support in michigan? >> that's so funny. >> not fraudulent. >> we fought to seat the electors. the trump campaign asked us to do that. did you ever make calls like that regarding what you're calling these alternate electors. >> yes, i was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors. >> your view just for the record here that you could as a lawyer to the trump campaign seat these electors in states where the process, the state results as overseen by the independent courts as approved by the supreme court found that biden won and you don't see any chance there that that could be against the law, boris. >> the supreme court never ruled on the merits. >> the cases were so weak they never reached the merits. not like bush vgore where they had the full case, they didn't see it. that included many trump justices. >> it was a different makeup of the court and more and more information is coming out every day out of arizona, georgia, pennsylvania, wisconsin. >> if you were aiding and abetting the seating of fraud

due lint electors and voter fraud, not only is that potentially against the law, you would lose the lawyer client privilege under the crime fraud provision. >> the perpetration of fraud was absolutely done and it was done by the democrats. everything that was done was done illegally by the trump legal team according to the rules and under the leadership of rudy giuliani. >> there you have it. that was a big deal at the time. epstein admitting in our interview in the back and forth after we pressed him and showed the results and the examples and the other corroborating evidence that he was in the elector plot and these are states like arizona where trump lost so it looks a lot like government fraud. joyce vance as promised is back with us. i mentioned the nexus to the new york case and also separately even if he wasn't involved anymore for trump this is another person in the elector plot that now is facing a

potential trial. >> ari, they might as well mark that tape you played exhibit number 1 and that's in essence boris captured on video talking about the fake elector scheme he's now charged in in arizona. when that's added on to some of the other evidence that we've heard about that's publicly known, right? we don't know what prosecutors might have that we're not aware of, emails trying to convince officials in arizona that they should come on board for this plan to put in a fake slate of electors to try to tie up the certification of the electoral college vote, that makes arizona's case look really solid. very interesting boris epshteyn was in court with donald trump. he wasn't there for jury selection. wasn't there for opening statements. he did show up the day after he was inbe dieted in arizona. maybe it was planned be in advance, but it's certainly worth following.

>> it again shows how many of these criminal plots intersect. this is someone now indicted for 2020 election crime trying to defend trump against a 2016 election crime as the supreme court hears the related coup election crime and we showed that. i want to put up on the screen just how many of trump's lawyers and other officials are in trouble. i know it looks like a lot of stamps. we'll start in the lower right where you have donald trump now an unindicted co-conspirator this week in arizona. that would be big news and it goes along with other indictments he faces. as you move over on the screen you see epshteyn, unindicted co-conspirator in georgia and now indicted in had arizona.

where do they fit in? it doesn't look like the other people are getting into it. >> something i've known as a prosecutor, how slowly justice appears to take place. we are getting to the find out point, right? donald trump is sitting in a cold courtroom, not on the campaign trail in manhattan, and as these other cases are indicted, and particularly this one in arizona, you have to wonder, will someone finally break from the herd and truly cooperate? is that seen as the appearance for someone, we don't know for certain, who was in close communication who can talk about what donald trump was thinking? that's something that jack smith would absolutely like to have in the federal prosecution in the district of columbia when it's permitted to go forward. it's all intermingled. it's a big swieder web. >> we'll leave this on the screen. i want to ask you, a lot of

these people, clark, eastman, giuliani and ellis and powell, you can tell i'm doing this out loud were all very public. ellis was also on this program. others giving press conferences. epshteyn i mentioned. one of their bets is if you launder this brazenly in public it mike look more normalized and prosecutors won't act. did that initially work? is that working now? >> it absolutely worked originally. people like you and me who were stunned, rite, who immediately saw this as an effort to interfere in the election from way far back, from as early as donald trump began to say ahead of the election year that he wouldn't necessarily be bound by a vote that he lost. but there was this effort to say it can't be illegal because we're doing it openly and in public. and you know that's just not the sort of strategy that you can maintain in the face of good, independent prosecutors, and that's where we are now. >> really interesting, and as you say, some people look and

go, it's like every other rorschach on these issues, oh, my god, they admitted it. someone says, they said it out loud so it can't be that bad. no, that's the trick or the game that some of them are playing some of the time, best as i can tell. like you, i've spent time dealing with this. but seeing this now reach accountability in arizona where, again, mr. epshteyn faces this mountain of evidence that he did in public. i did it. he doesn't think electorate fraud is a problem. the jury will decide on more than one topic. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> our thanks to joyce advance. more revealing testimony on the tabloid side. our experts on the history of new york tabloids and how this might play with the seasoned new york city jury. love because of ? get back to better breathing with fasenra, an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems

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here we are in this trial, and we want to take a step back as part of our special right now. donald trump grew, thrived, and enriched himself at the altar of pr and new york tabloid media hype, but as the great jay z once said, the same sword that knight you can be the sword that good nights you. donald trump is fighting for liberty and the possible incarceration that could come for that because of, more than anything, the way he did these

dirty unseemly tabloid deals. on friday his own former assistant took the stand and testified how she saw stormy daniels at that trump tower reception area. it was also the tabloid chief, david pecker, who testified and explained how this whole thing worked to buy and bury negative stories through the tabloids to boost the campaign. was that your purpose locking up the story about the play mate to conceal the election, prosecution asked? he said yes. pecker saying how they worked with cohen. i'm going to show you the head lines that are for the most part false, a false allegation about trump competitor marco rubio. another one i can show you. let me look at the next one. infamously going after ted cruz. pecker testifying that story was knowingly manufactured right

down to the doctored photo. trump's lawyers said this was a routine thing they did. however bad it looks, it was not a trump campaign thing, it's how they roll. they brought up arnold schwarzenegger, the deal i had with an nold, i would acquire them, buy them for a period of time. defense saying cohen didn't pay the enquirer back for the mcdougall story. that's trying to get the jurors to doubt whether this was a trump campaign thing or maybe just an enquirer thing. now mcdougall, who you see on the screen, i spoke to her lawyer back in 2019, keith davidson, who told us this. >> the affairs happened in 2006. michael cohen and i first contacted each other about the matter in 2011. so at a minimum they knew about me and about stormy at a minimum in 2011. they knew about it in 2012, '13, '14. they knew about it in 2015.

they knew about it when he was a candidate. >> they knew about it the whole way and the money only comes through at the end. the point there and the money came because they cared about the campaign and nothing else and that's why this was not just tabloid business, it was campaign tabloid collusion if you will. the da highlights a text that davidson, who you just saw, sent to one of the top editors at the enquirer something that could be ripped out of a novel. wonder if we have a novelest around looking at having buried the stories it helped donald trump just like they planned but they saw that he actually won and said, quote, what have we done? we're joined now by presidential historian michael beshloch and james mcnary who wrote "bright lights big city" starring the great michael j. fox. welcome to both of you. >> thank you. >> jay, let's start with you.

you know your way a little bit around fact fiction in new york. what do you think about the tabloids coming back to bite donald this way? >> well, it is ironic. he lived in the tabloids, i'm afraid more than one of us did, but he used the tabloids for his own purposes. he knew very well how they worked in new york. i am happy to say on behalf of new york tabloids they weren't quite as blatant as the national enquirer. i remember when i was tabloid fodder it was something that i guess i would call trade and fade whereby if they had -- if you got called up and there was a scandalous piece of gossip about you, you could get out of it and you could have it killed if you had a juicier item to trade. so that was -- and certainly donald knew that. of course, he often called up

the tabloids as his own publicist, pretending to be his own publicist to spread some wonderful news about himself. but i thought it quite extraordinary that the enquirer actually paid in order to not do the job they alleged they were doing, to deliver news to the general public. and it's quite extraordinary. i hear pecker's a very nice guy, but it's extraordinary to me the things he's admitted, the things that he's admitted were standard national enquirer practice, at least in those days. >> yeah. i mean, i think you -- that's one of the parts of the trial that's so interesting and, michael, i'll turn to you. sometimes people watch these criminal trials and they learn how policing really goes down. >> sure. >> which is separate from the guilt question, right? >> i have never seen "law & order" ever in my life. >> it's not that the enquirer

has a vaunted, higher reputation, but even people who think less of it, they're surprised it's not a fact finding message. it's not a magazine. it's a whole bundle of deals with no intrinsic standards. here was donald trump talking in the '80s how he uses media. >> do you cultivate a high profile? >> no, i don't. for some reason people call and they want to do something. if newsweek calls and says, donald, we want to do a story, that happened and other things happened. it's just something that happens, jane. i can't really tell you why. >> that's false. he reminded how much he behind himself. >> you mean, donald trump said something that was false? ari, where did you find this? >> i'm curious what you think both about at times the sorted, almost low stakes of this when we think about history, yet this is the first trial and the

supreme court reminded everyone this week why it may be the only trial. >> i think it might be but i think in a way donald trump understood americans better than a lot of other politicians did, and that's not said to damn americans, but he understood the reach of the national enquirer. you know, the number of people who, you know, you would be very surprised to see in a supermarket sneaking a look at a magazine with a sensational cover. the same goes with that program he was on, the apprentice. i'm sure you were a weekly viewer like me. the point be is, that paved the way for donald trump. a lot of people watched that thing for more than a decade. shows a successful businessman who's tough with a heart of gold. none of those three things are true, but that was on that show so in 2016 people like me and my guests would be maybe you who

were not weekly viewers of "the apprentice" didn't know how much that would do to ease his entry into politics. same with the national enquirer. >> jay, again in the special we've had all of our little details. we brought you and the historian here are big fish. no disrespect to other -- >> my mother said that about her children as well. >> jay, this is a heck of a story, and it's a heck of a way to go down. and i'm just curious what the novelist in you thinks and would you write -- would you write a novel this way? would it be too fararfetched? the floor is yours. >> trump has appeared in one or two of my novels, something that i'm a little embarrassed about now. you know, i think it's interesting, michael just reminded us, of the way that trump actually apprenticed himself to the ways of the

media. >> sure. >> with this show of his "the apprentice." pecker testified that during the long run of that show when he became more and more familiar to the american public he would -- he would repeatedly call pecker to promote or demote the contestants on the show, to -- you know, to sell his own agenda, whatever it was that week. and, i mean, it -- it -- it seems almost extraordinary and almost too linear for a novel, but in retrospect that was a very important part of his -- of his rise, was "the apprentice." which went, i don't know, seven seasons. i'm embarrassed to say unlike michael i never watched. >> maybe more. it was a network we know well. >> so much of the trump story i think would be deleted by any

conscientious editor as being -- as being unbelievable. >> and also the chief character is too cartoonish and inane in certain circumstances. it would be nice to have a little bit more subtlety. >> i think the character of trump just would not pass muster in a work of literature because it's a cartoon. >> although one thing, you know, you mentioned you had it on screen, i think we were thinking the same way, if you had a novel and it was about all of this, you would have a character from the national enquirer calling someone up on the night of donald trump's election victory -- >> exactly. >> -- and saying, what have we done? >> that's what i think is so important and this is the enquirer stories. wow, this really worked. they knew it was supposed to help. they didn't know it was going to work. the jury can take their mind back to the end of '16, "access hollywood" tape, the general

consensus proven wrong. you can talk about the iraq war, the consensus. he was going to lose. which is why they saw this as, yeah, less likely to have an impact. oh, what have we done? as we also mark this week, the supreme court justices who were friendly to trump continually implied that if you have law and order, accountability or trials, this would be some new bad thing. and we've had a lot of experts on and history is showing, that's not showing. trump bias is showing. >> do you think a little bit? >> i think maybe. >> maybe. maybe. >> if you did have a problem of over prosecuting and a cycle of prosecutions, that would be one thing. we haven't gotten there yet. >> right. >> >> we've prepared for your view now that we've seen it start. we know about nixon and clinton. agnew was right in there. in the line of the presidency. the fact there was an accountable process -- >> sure. >> -- by most people isn't

viewed as a problem. it's viewed at there are guardrails. >> i categorically and flatly deny the assertion that's been made by the prosecutors with regard to their contention of bribery and extorsion on my part. >> what is your reaction to the resignation? >> i think it's a sad thing. >> it makes me glad. should have been done a long time ago. >> well, i think they throwed him to the wolves, that's what i think. >> simply wonderful. nixon should be the next one to resign. >> history's lessons. before trump i think you could argue they were somewhat more bipartisan. >> yeah. >> and people looked at that as a high point. we heard from trump friendly justice kavanaugh this week, actually maybe that stuff was the problem and the only good thing was pardoning nixon. what is going on with the lessons of history -- >> pardoning nixon in my view

was a terrible mistake because that told later presidents, like donald trump, you can do whatever you want and probably the worst that's going to happen to you is like nixon, you will retire to your seaside villa. so in a way it made the later presidency a crime zone as was the case in those discussions on the supreme court yesterday. i couldn't believe my ears. i've always been raised to have respect for the supreme court. to hear them basically saying the things that sounded as if they're excuing january 6th as if it was just a tourist visit that was relatively harmless, those are the people who are going to assure a world of democracy and rule of law for future americans if they continue to talk like that and act like that and by the way in so doing delaying in the jack smith trial -- >> yeah. >> -- which is the only time trump will be directly tried on

january 6th, we are going to be living in a very unsafe country and the supreme court did that. >> really interesting. given how much real history and upside down alice in wonderland history in the court we wanted to get you on that. >> indeed. >> jay, i want to be clear. we started with "bright lights and big city" and the fun and adult content. >> great book. >> started with the enquirer on page 6 and "the new york post." by the end we classed it up. >> if you have to class it up with me, you're really scraping the barrel. >> i'm kidding. i'm kirding. >> classmates -- >> well, almost. you're a part and actually i don't know if jay remembers this, but the daughter of spiro agnew, who is a very nice, smart woman, was my class mate at williams father, and i think her father came to our commencement. i'm the only person in the segment whose commencement was

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you have been watching our special trump on trial. you can always connect with me online, including asking questions about this trial at arimelber.com. keep it right here on msnbc. . tonight on "the reidout" --