trump, pardon the metaphor, whatever biden is doing on the economy a young -- economy among young people? >> there is no question that it is a dampening affect. obviously the president on this issue has to show policy changes in order to get people excited about voting for him and supporting him. i think if you get $20 million as congress approved for joe biden to give to israel, i hope you would hold that and condition it and say you don't just get money until you change behavior. there has to be accountability by netanyahu and a government that kills 34,000 people. i think the freedom that i see on campuses, that freedom of speech, connects by the way to some of the things we are talking about. it is a movement in this country advocating for democracy in a lot of ways, including on campuses. i see this as connected, but

you are right that it challenges what is animating people's minds and discourse and the things they are hearing. i hope they hear more about the economic transformations as well. >> come back anytime. faiz shakir, one of my favorite people to talk about good news and bad news. thank you for your time tonight. that is our time tonight. now it is time for the last word. >> a fantastic discussion to end the week. >> have a great show. today was a special day for defendant trump, not because it was the eighth day of a historic criminal trial, the sorts of which has never been seen in this country. today was also the birthday of donald trump's third and current wife, melania trump. she did not support her husband in court. instead she stayed in florida. she had seven other days of this trial that were not her birthday and neither she nor any other member of the trump family have set with donald trump in the trial so far, but melania's birthday was such a big deal to donald trump that

he used his first moments walking into court to complain about having to sit in court, rather than to be with his third and current wife on her birthday. in this text message went out to trump supporters. from trump, i'd love to be with melania on her birthday, but instead i'm stuck in court. the message went on to say, while i am away for my family, i'm humbly asking you to please stand by my side today. stand by my side, in case you have not figured it out, is code for send cash. today donald trump also repeated the lie he has told over and over. i am at the heavily guarded courthouse. security is that of fort knox, also that maga will not be able to attend the trial. again that is a lie. just like donald trump's family, no one is preventing anyone from coming to the trial. two tourists from alaska took time out of their vacation to

sit in the courtroom after seeing the play, the enemy of the people, on broadway. if any of the 74 million people who voted for donald trump in 2021 wanted to come to the manhattan courthouse, they could have. donald trump would rather lie than admit that neither his supporters nor his family are showing up to his first criminal trial. had any of them showed up, this is what they would have heard in court today as prosecutors called three witnesses to the stand. witness david pecker largely stood his ground despite attempts by trump's legal team to undermine his testimony by claiming deals to bury stories like karen mcdougal and stormy daniels were standard operating procedure. the second witness, donald trump's former executive assistant, rhona graff, provided testimony that she entered stormy daniels and karen mcdougal's contact information on the trump organization database. the third witness was gary

farro, a former manager at the bank michael cohen used to obtain a $130,000 home equity loan which cohen funneled to stormy daniels through a shell company. on friday, he authenticated bank records from that shell company, which prosecutors showed to jurors. testimony will continue when the trial resumes tuesday morning. prosecutors are using his testimony to authenticate documents related to the transaction. gary farro's testimony will continue when the trial resumes tuesday morning. judge merchan also noticed that a gag order hearing will take place on thursday to hear evidence about the new violations donald trump has committed this week. leading up our discussion, he was in the courtroom today and will be every day. former supervisor of the special prosecutions and civil rights unit of the eastern district of new york.

good evening to both of you. unlike a lot of donald trump supporters and family, you have been there, watching what is going on. tell us what happened. we had three interesting pieces of testimony. >> we did and first and foremost we had the end of david testimony. this has been weeklong testimony that set the course of the trial and it is interesting to analyze why david pecker is there to start the case. because it goes to the prosecutions broader theory that this was election fraud and it goes back to, his testimony today, he spoke about the 2018 nonprosecution agreement that ami, national enquirer's corporate parent, signed with federal prosecutors and that agreement did not go far enough to actually admit the campaign-finance violations, but david pecker did today and he did yesterday

on the stand. he said we agreed that we committed campaign finance violations. he also said today, when asked directly by the prosecutor if that was his understanding back then, directly answered yes. now we are on other witnesses. once that you mentioned in the introduction, who are custodial witnesses. they are introducing pieces of evidence that are just data points for the jury that will put the pieces of the puzzle together for them. the contact information for stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. why is that on the trump organization database? that will come into play later. we are starting to see the custodial records behind this byzantine way of funneling $130,000 in hush money to stormy daniels through a shell company and a lawyer and we are getting into the weeds on that and that is the jurors last impression.

>> the issue with a story like this is that there is no question that it is very unusual how this $130,000 was handled, how these things happen, and some of that in itself is a violation of the way books have to be kept and records have to be kept. what is the challenge for the prosecution? they will probably be able to demonstrate that effectively, but ultimately having the jurors believe that this was in fact in furtherance of a different thing and that was to conceal something from voters that might have made them make a different decision. how difficult is that? >> you put your finger right on it. as the week started there were two dramatic competing visions in this case. the prosecution said this crime is about tipping an election in 2016. it is about donald trump desperately wanting to hide his relationship with thisstar, with other relationships that could have hurt him in the

election. on the other hand the defense put forward a very plausible explanation that this is a minor records keeping violation. ex-president trump should not be indicted or tried on the campaign trail for something like this and most importantly, outright denied that former president trump had his fingers on this at all. made it clear that he would not know what small ledger entries are on his books and records, for example. so what happened with mr. pecker this week is he made in inroads with the prosecution to show that trump definitely wanted to alter the selection. that these are important election crimes. he did not care about hiding this from his family, but he cared about winning the election. so that really buttressed the prosecutions case and now they go about the important, steady,

less exciting work about linking up the transactions officially occurred and false records were on the books of trump's company. >> this office, by the way, is good at doing because they do that another places. let's go back to the idea of david pecker. the defense team, the trump team was trying to make this come across as standard. this catch and kill idea is standard, happens to a lot of people. and pecker was saying this was actually in furtherance of something more serious. this wasn't the typical catch a story and kill it. there are probably reasons why you would take on a story, pay somebody for it and kill it, but pecker said the unfinished part and this was in furtherance of what donald trump was trying to achieve. >> absolutely and that came across on redirect examination. what happened was the defense attorney has presented what one would call the casablanca

defense. there is gambling. ami does this over and over again, that they by people stories. not unusual. in the prosecutor on redirect honed in on the differences. that there has never, even though they have, ami has quashed stories of celebrities and even political figures in the past, they have never been the eyes and ears of a presidential campaign. they have never identified sources of scandal and worked to silence the accusers who are bringing about that scandal. they have never had an admitted campaign-finance violation, which was said in no uncertain terms today and yesterday. so, systematically the prosecution on redirect confronted each and every defense that trumps defense attorney had presented over the past day. >> faith, there has been a remarkable effort on the part

of the donald trump team to discredit michael cohen, who is central to this funneling of the money. cohen said his piece. he will testify, but tell me about that part of the case. because it was funneled and there were shell companies and a mortgage taken. tell me how you make sense of that for a jury. in the end they need to understand that this money was managed to pay someone off for their silence. how hard is it going to be to connect that? >> you put your finger on it earlier. the government will go through and probably use charts and graphs in closing arguments to show where the money moved, dot by dot. some of that will not be terribly interesting to listen to, but there will be jurors who care a great deal about seeing that the process links up. it is also incredibly important to link up the money trail, because michael cohen is going to need buttressing. he will be attacked like no

witness in the case. he has been very consistent about the story he is telling, the testimony he is giving, but he will be attacked in terms of all of his untruthfulness. his participation in the crime. can't prove a crime by having nuns and priests. you have to have someone who participated, but you need the upholstery of the transaction of the movement of the money around. i believe the government is doing exactly what they should do, which is probably putting them in the middle of a case. you want to set the stage about tom important this crime is through mr. pecker and then put some of these witnesses around, again, for upholstery. you don't want the jurors, the last thing they hear, to be a bloody cross-examination of cohen, which is coming. >> i understand this case a lot better thanks to the interpretation you both have provided. we always appreciate having you on. thank you for kicking us off tonight.

coming up, it's hard to overstate how bizarre and unprecedented yesterday's supreme court oral arguments were. our next guest says the very idea of the supreme court considering donald trump's claim of presidential immunity is, in and of itself, a bad thing for our democracy. that's next. migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of episodic migraine in adults. it's the only migraine medication that helps treat & prevent, all in one. don't take if allergic to nurtec odt. allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. people depend on me. without a migraine, i can be there for them. talk to your doctor about nurtec odt today.

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person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity? >> it would depend on the hypothetical. that could be an official act. >> he ordered the military to stage a coup and you're saying that's an official act? >> i think it would depend on the circumstances whether it is an official act. >> one could argue the timeline of self-inflicted harm to the supreme court began 201 years after the court first assembled in 1790. the year was 1991 and allegations of sexual harassment against supreme court nominee clarence thomas spelled out into public view during televised senate judiciary committee hearings. be on the scandal, it turned the high court into something of a joke, literally serving as punchlines on late-night talk shows and creating fodder for a

saturday night live sketch making fun of the hearings. further damage was done with the controversial decision in bush v gore that ultimately decided who had won the 2000 presidential election, paving the way for george w. bush to take the oath of office on january 20, 2021. -- 2001. in 2010 they undid a century of campaign-finance decisions. the supreme court effectively gave the rich more room to use their money to shape elections and manipulate who gets on the supreme court itself. in 2016, mitch mcconnell invented a rule that the senate cannot consider a supreme court nomination in an election year. that completely made up maneuver stopped president obama's nomination of merrick garland and politicized the court even further. the trump presidency then saw, incredibly, three supreme court vacancies during one

presidential term, allowing the most legally dubious president of the modern era the ability to submit the courts conservative majority. for the third appointee, amy coney barrett, mitch mcconnell entirely thought about -- entirely forgot about his rule about election-year nominations. they have taken away abortion- rights with the dobbs decision and it may not stop there. then there is what we heard from the conservative justices yesterday. >> the only words in the constitution that have to do with the president and law is that he shall take care that the law be faithfully executed, correct? >> that's right. >> hard to imagine that a person who breaks the law is faithfully executing the law, correct? >> he has executed all of the laws. >> really, presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions about enforcing the law and they have to make decisions

about questions that are unsettled and they have to make decisions based on the information that is available. did i understand you to say, well, if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he is subject to the criminal laws like anybody else? you don't think he is in a special position? >> he is in a special position for a number of reasons. one, he has access to legal advice about everything he does. he is under a constitutional obligation. he is supposed to be faithful to the laws of the united states and constitution of the united states and making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution. >> what would happen if presidents were under fear, fear that their successors would criminally prosecute them for their acts in office? whether they are engaged in drone strikes, all of the

hypotheticals. i'm not going to go through them. it seems to me like one of the incentives that might be created this for presidents to try to pardon themselves. do you have any thoughts about that? >> i didn't think about it until your honor asked it. that is one incident -- >> in response to yesterday's oral arguments, our next guest posted this. whatever the court does, having this case heard and the idea of immunity for a military coup being taken seriously and debated is a big victory in the information war that maga and allies wage. authoritarian specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and this involves giving them a respected platform. joining us now is ruth ben- ghiat, history professor at new york university, author of strongmen, mussolini to the president. ruth, this is something i've struggled with. on the one hand we have courts because we are supposed to decide and discuss all of these

things, but there is this chance that when you legitimize everything and all sorts of behavior, like john sauer, who was a solicitor general of one of our states. by putting these hypotheticals forward, you cause supreme court justices to discuss them and you cause us to cover them. they are outrageous ideas. >> yeah and i'm looking at this from the point of view of threats to democracy and information warfare. because republicans are waging legal warfare on our democracy, but they are waging a parallel information warfare. what that does is try to change the way that people think, but also move the needle on what they will accept as possible in society. so you introduce extremist ideas and give them legitimacy and you have discussions on things that should be settled. and i believe that is what the supreme court did in hearing

this case. we heard it in your clips. they took the most prestigious platform, the most legitimate platform, the supreme court, and had hearings and aired arguments that should be settled in a democracy. of course the head of state should not be immune from prosecution in assassinating a political rival or having a military coup. that is what autocrats do. that is the definition of autocracy when the head of state cannot be touched by the law. that is why trump admires putin and all these people and instead we have this situation where things seem to be up for discussion and that is very dangerous for a democracy and i think that is why this is a victory of information warfare, no matter what happens legally. >> there are some justices trying to keep this from going off the rails and one of the arguments that justice kagan made is that the framers of the constitution were responding to the fact that there was a monarch and back in the day,

there are good monarchies i suppose today, but back in the day essentially monarchs were authoritarians. the framers knew this to be true, so justice kagan says -- actually let's play it. i want to hear what she says about what the framers could have done about immunity for the president. >> the framers did not put an immunity clause into the constitution. they knew how to. there were immunity clauses and some state constitutions. they knew how to give legislative immunity. they didn't provide immunity to the president. and, you know, not surprising they were reacting against a monarch who claim to be above the law. wasn't the whole point of the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law? >> she puts it simply that we already had a guy who was above the law. we already had somebody immune to prosecution, because that is what the monarchy was and a lot of americans lost their lives to fight against that idea. >> yeah, but the context for

this is we have a former president who staged, incited a coup and is running again as the front-runner and is saying that he deserves immunity. that he should not be accountable to the law. is saying that he will be a dictator. he is telling us what he would like to do. so i believe the court, not all of the justices, but by hearing this the court becomes complicit to this attempt to create a climate of opinion that is preparing for a kind of autocratic takeover and project 2025 is doing this in other realms. it is no good having a coup or take over if nobody is going to find your government legitimate. you have to work on public opinion and also the legal framework. you have to create a sense of possibility for things that were not seen as possible before and i believe that is what the outcome is for these discussions.

>> and justice jackson seem to be reading off the same page that you are, about what could happen if this goes forward. listen to what she said. >> if someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> and that is sort of your thesis. once you know that you are beyond reproach, beyond authority, beyond being held to account, knock yourselves out. that's the whole ballgame. >> yes, justice jackson said this beautifully. authoritarianism at its offenses not just removing restraints on what the leader can do. it is actually about arranging society so the leader and its

cronies can get away with crime. so the image of the oval office as the seat of criminal activity is all too accurate a description of what happens with, for example, putin's russia or north korea. >> ruth, thank you. i appreciate you being with us tonight. ruth ben-ghiat is a history professor at new york university and author of strongmen, from mussolini to the present. coming up we got a look at the big and real the fake electors plot was in donald trump's efforts to subvert the election with another indictment. this time it was in arizona and i will discuss that with nbc news justice reporter ryan j riley after this. groans] sure, i can hold. ♪ liberty liberty liberty liberty ♪ in theaters now.

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we now have another piece of the puzzle showing how big and organized donald trump's alleged plot to stay in power after losing the 2020 election really was. among the headlines this week about the most legally ensnared former president in american history, the charges in arizona against 11 so-called fake electors and key aides to trump. i'm sorry, as nbc news reports, are the latest example of trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, spouting into legal cases during his 2024 bid to retake office. arizona was one of the seven states were alternate electors signed paperwork falsely claiming trump had won the state.

prosecutors have already charged alternate electors, this is a quote, in nevada, georgia, and michigan. now here is the thing about the story. lest you think that this attempt after january 6 was some fly by night cracked pots or leading up to january 6 was some fly by night, crackpot scheme. the arizona indictment yet again proves how coordinated these plots allegedly went all the way to donald trump and from nbc news, quote, trump is described as unindicted conspirator 1 in the arizona indictment, which includes charges of conspiracy, fraud, and forgery, end quote. the trump aides who have been indicted include mark meadows, transformer chief of staff. rudy giuliani, the former new york city mayor and attorney. boris epstein, campaign official and attorney. mike roman. former trump attorney jenna ellis. former trump attorney and john

eastman, yet another attorney and trump legal advisor in the aftermath of the 2020 election. these are very, very real charges of very real crimes allegedly committed at the highest levels of the trump campaign and the trump white house. trump himself is of course charged in george's indictment. the seven states with fake electors in 2020 were nevada, arizona, new mexico, wisconsin, michigan, georgia, and pennsylvania. as we've said we have seen charges in four states now. all seven of these states are key battleground states that could be decisive in this year's election. joining us now is ryan j. reilly, justice reporter for nbc and author of a remarkable book, sedition hunters, how january 6 broke the justice system. here's the thing.

that georgia indictment is so detailed. it has texts. it has communications that go to pennsylvania, goes to michigan, goes to arizona. so the information is not new to us, but the degree to which this was a sophisticated effort to overturn democracy is clearer and clearer with each of these indictments. >> it's true and even in the supreme court i found what was interesting in the arguments as you had the trump lawyer essentially concede that this was not activity that would be considered official presidential acts. this was private activity. the justices lined up some of those questions and coordinating those individuals is what ended up being part of the center of this federal case if it ever goes to trial. of course the fact that the supreme court had the arguments this week was a huge win for trump and it seems almost guaranteed to get kit days to get kicked back before the

election. in 2025 or whenever this goes, theoretically of donald trump does not get reelected, that is really what we will be focused on. a lot of these efforts to make january 6 this major day and create this sort of chaos and catastrophe that would allow for them essentially to take the election because there was so much confusion. they ultimately wanted to get this to the supreme court. creating the chaos and confusion and trying to get mike pence in on this was really the essence of what it was all about. the riot was an additional part of the chaos, but really was to create an environment in which they could seize the power and keep him in the white house. >> as you read the january 6 indictment or read the georgia indictment or you see what happened in michigan or you are reading this information out of arizona, what you are realizing is what at the time looked like a clown show. rudy giuliani showing up at the four seasons landscaping place

in philadelphia with makeup streaming down his face, it seemed disorganized, but in fact there was a plot. john eastman had designed it and these are all lawyers who knew better. it started being something well in case we win one of these audits, at least we will have a slate of electors, into fake electors who lied and said we are the real elect yours and tried to get their names submitted contrary to the law. >> reporter: the numbers are really what this is all about. it reminds me of this quote back in the day talking about january 6 and how a lot of the rioters who showed up were morons, as he described them, but there were 15,000 of them. that is sort of what the danger was and when you have all of these individuals who might be clownish and rudy giuliani having that ridiculous press conference. there are millions of americans willing to believe those lies and i think having those numbers

and having people, you know, who actually got law degrees at one point, willing to do this effort, is really what makes this dangerous. >> ryan, always great to have you on the show. thank you. ryan j. reilly is nbc news justice reporter and author of a remarkable book called sedition hunters. this guy has followed every case that has to do with january 6. coming up, after weeks of protests and angry calls and letters, they did it anyway. republicans intimacy passed a bill to arm schoolteachers and schools through both chambers of the legislature. the governor has signed that bill. we will talk to a tennessee mom who was a former elementary school teacher and current school board member. justin j pearson joins us next. . come on. i already got a pneumonia vaccine, but i'm asking about the added protection of prevnar 20®. if you're 19 or older with certain chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, copd, or heart disease, or are 65 or older,

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blood on your hands! >> that was the scene at the tennessee house timber this week after republican lawmakers passed a bill that would allow some teachers to carry concealed guns. there were vocal protests inside the galleries about putting guns in schools. inside the chamber, democratic legislators pleaded with their colleagues not to pass the bill. they argued that in the years since the nashville mass shooting, more should have been accomplished by this legislative body. >> i can't even believe this is

the first major piece of gun legislation that we have addressed since the covenant tragedy. think about that. this is what we are going to do. this is our reaction to teachers and children being murdered in a school. our reaction is to throw more guns added. what is wrong with us? >> this law is ridiculous. it is dangerous. and parents are going to mourn and children are going to be hurt by it. this is increasing the dangerousness level of our schools. it is hurting and risking the lives of our children and each and every one of us will be responsible and accountable for the gun violence that will happen due to this pathetic excuse for dealing with the gun

violence epidemic. >> teachers are already doing for jobs and they are paid poorly for one. they are a teacher, they are a nurse, they are a social worker and they are a counselor. now we are saying take on another job. b-school security, but we will continue to pay less that you made 10 years ago. first of all, i cannot believe folks are even considering this and then you are saying, take your pistol up against and ar- 15 and multiple other weapons. again, you were asking the ridiculous. >> four republicans joined the democrats in voting against the bill. despite these objections, ultimately the bill did pass and earlier today tennessee's republican governor signed the legislation arming teachers into law. in a statement, governor lee said i think it provides a valuable option to public schools who want to

participate. there are folks who differ on the way forward. we all agree we should keep our kids safe. that is why there is an option in the legislation and it will be decided at the local level. i think that is the best way forward. end quote. joining us now is the tennessee representative, justin j pearson. thank you for being with us. the country came to know you because of the stand that you and some of your colleagues in the legislature took about having government take a stronger hand in trying to deal with the disasters you faced intimacy. the disaster that repeats itself across this country and yet here we are today. >> i mean the gun violence epidemic in our state is the leading cause of death for our children. we have a responsibility and obligation to do everything possible to make our schools and communities safer and the republican party in tennessee have refused to do that. unfortunately they view arming

teachers, increasing the amount of gun violence in schools and communities, as some sort of solution. no one would have imagined that after we experienced the tragedy that we did in the wake of the covenant shooting or the hundreds of lives lost due to gun violence since a year ago, 500 people in our state, that our resolution would be to increase the probability. we didn't pass red flag laws. we haven't addressed anything on gun safety storage and this is the signature legislation republicans of pushed, which is antithetical to anything anyone in the state of tennessee i've talked to have wanted to see for us to make our community safer. >> i'm curious how it even came to be, because if you were going to not bother, then just don't bother. this seems to be worse than not bothering. all of those reasonable things you talked about, which are things by the way that conservatives and republicans

in this country have started to consider. things like red flag laws. increased background checks. keeping guns away from the vulnerable and from children. how do you skip all of that and go to teachers carrying pistols? >> when you have people in positions of power who don't really care about protecting children, don't care about making sure teachers are safe and don't want to take the actions to prevent ar-15's and weapons of war from being in our communities. they try to take the political expediency route of saying they are doing something and they don't think critically about the ramifications of their decision-making. this is what the republican party too often does when it comes to gun violence, and action of healthcare, educational opportunity. it is always acting quickly and decisively without research, without information, without input from the people most directly impacted. so they skipped all of the good laws, good policies, good practices, because the

tennessee firearms association and national rifle association's fingerprint on the republican party won't be let go of by the people in positions of power and there is a refusal to acknowledge the pain and suffering of our communities. there is a refusal to acknowledge that that pain and suffering is caused by weakened cowardice actions of the legislature. even this past week an individual passed a law to prevent all localities from passing their own extreme risk protection orders, despite the fact that our state legislature refused to pass an order that would have prevented other cities from being able to do so. this is despicable and very dangerous. it is very harmful for our communities that children will be in schools where people have access to firearms. o firearms. >> i am almost surprised given what you and your colleagues did to bring the tennessee legislature to the attention of

those of us who have never paid any attention to it that they are still doing it. i appreciate the time you've taken to come and tell us about it. tennessee state representative pearson. joining us is a mom of two public school students in tennessee, a former public school elementary teacher and she's a current member of the williamson county tennessee school board, which is right outside of nashville. jennifer, thank you for being with us. i want to pick up on things i didn't talk with the representative about and that is it isn't easy being a teacher these days. your salaries have not kept up. there have been some good deals but generally speaking teacher salaries have not kept up with inflation and the increasing responsibilities they've got. there may be teachers who think this is an interesting idea, they are trained in guns. this is another thing, school security is not an add on extra thing we need to be thinking about. you are kind of busy, here's a

pistol, take care of things for us. >> absolutely. as a parent, i don't want that to be my child's teachers responsibility because teachers are professionally chained to be a variety of different things to these kids. most importantly, they are professionally trained, as a teacher, i remember going through these trainings, how to keep kids safe in a crisis situation, how to walk into the closets or shelter in place, lock the door, turn off the light, keep them quiet. they shouldn't be leaving those kids unattended to try to fight the bad guy with the gun. they should be protecting them and that up to the law enforcement officers who had been more thoroughly trained on how to handle that. >> it is a very specific thing. a number of teachers tell me, because hatley and in the school shooting cases, the perpetrators are also young, sometimes they are former students, existing students, and a lot of teachers say that is not their instinct. they are protective, their instincts and to shoot a student

if they know who it is or in person. it is a different job. teaching is a different job than a school resource officer or security officer. >> it is a lot to ask a teacher to step into that role. even if they feel like that is something they want to do, i think as a parent, it concerns me to think what is going to happen to their state of mind when they are facing someone they potentially know is a former student or what have you. it is not something that seems like the safest way to do it, especially this legislation, there were plenty of amendments that came up that would have dealt with some of the more concerning aspects of just arming teachers, letting them bring guns to school like notifying parents ahead of time. that was brought up as an amendment and was shot down pretty quickly. having them be safely stored, if they are going to bring guns on campus. that was also taken right out of amendment consideration.

so, i just, there's a lot of concerns as a parent and as a former teacher that i think makes this bill concerning for families. >> you are on the school board here as a representatives of the school board. in williamson county, your school superintendent has made a decision, as of other counties, that this is not going to happen in your county, the school superintendent said, this is jason goldin, says, "we have concluded teachers and staff carrying handguns will not improve school safety on williamson county school campuses so i will not authorize teachers and staff being armed." the sheriff school resource officers assigned to every wcso school are trained professionals and a vital part of the company the school safety plans. york county has, at least for the time being, made a decision that will not be the case. what the governor had said is that we are not telling everybody to bring guns to

school, we are just sending this can be done on a local level. what is the danger of that? >> honestly, i like that there was that stopgap measure in place for districts that maybe don't have the school resource officer resources that we have. if they need something like this, they have the option and that we signed off by the head of schools, superintendent, the sheriff's office, and the school principal. that was one that i was thankful for, it wasn't just a mandate that everyone was going to be able to just do it automatically. but, it is just, it is one of those things that i felt like was an opportunity for our state to come together in a bipartisan way to support some common sense legislation, especially in light of what happened at covenant and when we had a special session, this first came up, it was very clear at that time that families in tennessee were not in favor of this sort of safety measure for students. this wasn't what they wanted. it was more common sense gun legislation that would protect students and keep them safe. i think if you look at statistics, 70% of teachers do not want to have guns in their

schools. we are just like in tennessee, just across the nation facing a teacher shortage. and, i've heard from teachers in our county that have set straight up, you start letting people bring guns into school, i'm going to leave. i'm not going to do it anymore. that is another concern. >> there are, you are right, it is bipartisan. there's such broad bipartisan support for common sense gun legislation in this country, it is wild that the hold that the gun industry and gun lobby has on politicians. jennifer, thanks for being a teacher, for being a mom, for staying involved in for doing the courageous thing. we will be right back. bac. we live our lives on our home's fabrics. and though we come and go, our odors stay. it's called odor transfer. left untreated, those odors get trapped inside fabrics and then release smells into your air. eww. you need febreze fabric refresher.

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