"Woke? You mean practicing basic empathy? Valuing people who are part of your community?" - Kayla Kisseadoo was among the bright, motivated New College students Alex Wagner was able to speak with in Florida recently.
"This is a huge scandal. I do not understand why the Senate is not doing a hearing on all of the Turmp grift."
@clairecmc
outlines the 'blinking red light around Jared Kushner.'
"If people think these guys are trying to clean the swamp, then why is his progress toward the speakership all about a backroom deal over money?" -
@clairecmc
wonders if this was even done legally
"Clearly a dereliction of duty of the speaker" -
@BennieGThompson
calls for Kevin McCarthy to be held accountable for compromising Capitol security by granting Tucker Carlson access to January 6 security video
"As soon as people start thinking they do not have, somebody can point at somebody else and say, 'That's why you do not have.'" -
@Trevornoah
on the basic construction of grievance politics.
"If your only reason for running for higher office is to force people to fall in line with the tenets of your cult, that is not freedom." -
@malcolmkenyatta
calls out candidates whose idea of freedom seems more focused on oppressing others.
BREAKING: Judd Blevins, who attended the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been recalled from the Enid, Oklahoma City Council.
NEWS: Our colleagues at
@NBCNewYork
have confirmed tonight former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg's attorneys, who were being paid for by the Trump Org, are no longer representing him.
@KFAlegal
shares some analysis of what that might mean.
.
@susannecraig
points out to
@alexwagner
that Donald Trump also has an IRS audit going on behind closed doors that could put him on the hook for as much as $100 million.
"This is a moment in American history: The president of the United States is effectively being called, in an official court document, the head of a criminal enterprise." -
@alexwagner
Citing statistics on issues like crime, taxes, and gun deaths,
@GavinNewsom
expresses his frustration that Democrats aren't better at turning blue state/red state contrast into messaging to voters.
As amazing as it would be for one elementary school to be given $5 billion, that's just one of many things Marjorie Taylor Greene managed to get wrong in a surprisingly short amount of talking.
"Donald Trump would sell this country for a dollar if he thinks that it would benefit himself."
@AOC
raises concerns with
@alexwagner
about Donald Trump's growing desperation.
"I had a top secret clearance. I was an Army officer. If I had done what [Trump] did I would have been in jail. 100 percent."
@PatRyanUC
calls out "traitorous" Donald Trump and talks about the "guardrails of democracy" with
@alexwagner
TONIGHT:
@Trevornoah
joins
@alexwagner
to discuss his role as the executive producer of the new
@msnbc_films
documentary series “The Turning Point,” as well as his plans for the future after announcing he’ll be leaving “The Daily Show.”
Watch
@WagnerTonight
at 9pmET.
Don't let people yank your chain.
Control the narrative yourself.
If somebody is trying to take over the news cycle by being outrageous, do not take the bait.
Instead, describe what they are doing rather than allowing them to do it through you."
Among the more mind-blowing details of the Washington Post's reporting on the materials found at Mar-a-Lago is that some of it was so highly classified that the investigators realized they weren't allowed to look at what they'd found, as
@CarolLeonnig
describes to
@alexwagner
"Obviously the Republicans have become a cult. So I'm going to try to pull the people from that cult if I can." -
@AdamKinzinger
pulls no punches in talking about the current state of the Republican Party
"Sometimes to get from the periphery in the back of the house you've got to go to the well of democracy and demand that democracy be true for everybody." -expelled Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson
"It's an agenda for the long haul."
Don Falls, a Florida teacher who has joined a lawsuit against Ron DeSantis' "Stop Woke Act," describes the long term strategy of conservatives trying to manipulate school curricula to align with their idology.
On Liz Cheney's loss tonight,
@AdamKinzinger
points out that while many current Republican members of Congress don't really believe the Big Lie and Trump conspiracy theories, the scary thing is that the next generation being elected to office sure do.
Rep.
@danielsgoldman
explains to
@alexwagner
how Republicans could be criminally exposed if they continue to use what they now know is Russian disinformation meant to interfere in the election.
Very clarifying: In just a minute and a half,
@AWeissmann_
explains why Judge Cannon's answer today in the Trump documents case is not good enough for Jack Smith.
"If you're convicted of retention of a top secret document it can subject you to a recommendation that's 3-6 years higher than a not top secret document. And there are 21 of them in this document."
@BVanGrack
on why the sensitivity of the Trump documents matters
"There is no Republican establishment. There are no normies."
@SykesCharlie
cautions that "whoever becomes the speaker is going to preside over the chaos that has been building for years. He or she is going to be the mayor of Crazytown."
"This is somebody who has hopped on and off the Trump train so often I'm surprised she doesn't have a high ankle sprain like the winning Chiefs quarterback."
@clairecmc
tries to identify Nikki Haley's position on the Republican political spectrum
As
@Lawrence
points out, the indictment is not a complicated legal document and it's not even as long as the total pages suggests. Check it out yourself here:
"The level of death threats that I receive, it's not just harmful to me and my ability to feel safe and to continue to serve my district, but it's harmful to my family. It's harmful to the psyche of my children."
@IlhanMN
on the danger she is put in by violent right-wing rhetoric
.
@neal_katyal
's explanation of why the ruling yesterday against former Trump lawyer John Eastman is a big deal is 🔥
More (different) Trump legal trouble coming up on the show at the top of the hour.
"In a quarter century of practicing, Alex, I've never heard a statement like that from any judge. It just doesn't exist."
@neal_katyal
remarks on the extremity of Donald Trump's conduct in court and in public that made a judge advise jurors in a Trump trial to remain anonymous.
.
@brhodes
takes a wider view of how Judge Cannon is favoring Trump:
"The first thing that would-be autocrats do when they're trying to shift a democratic system to an autocratic system is they try to pack the courts with judges who will find in favor of their power grabs."
"The chief financial officer of the former president’s business is expected to admit to 15 felonies on Thursday and to take the stand at the company’s trial."
Donald Trump's "advisors, legal and otherwise, are growing increasingly concerned, and have been since June, that this is a criminal investigation in which the former president is in legal jeopardy ultimately of his own making,"
@CarolLeonnig
tells
@alexwagner
"Mr. Trump was charged with a total of seven counts, including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter."
"These things do start to seem like a pattern..." Rachel Maddow points out that the more Donald Trump's legal failings stack up, the harder it is for him to explain away the bigger picture they paint.
"It's insane!"
@SecretaryPete
blasts House GOP: "This is not a game. This is not a show. And this is not practice. This is the actual legislative body that actually governs the real military and government of the most powerful nation on Earth."
"No lawyer could let Donald Trump take the witness stand in his own defense without committing malpractice."
@JoyceWhiteVance
is skeptical of the legal practicality of Donald Trump's new "it was just bravado" defense.
Watch this amazing explanation from
@AliVelshi
of how the damage from bombs in cities is made worse by the chunks of rock and other shrapnel thrown by the explosion.
"It's kind of fitting that after rising to political power by falsely accusing Barack Obama of not being eligible to be president it turns out that it's Trump who a court has now determined is not eligible anymore for the presidency." -
@ianbassin
of
@protctdemocracy
"Don't even get me started with the weakness of the current speaker."
@GavinNewsom
has harsh words for Republicans following Donald Trump's orders to abandon work on immigration legislation.
"They don't want to solve this problem. They want to use it as a political issue."
"He will be destroyed on the stand in about 30 seconds by any decent cross-examiner on almost any subject because you cannot pull the stuff that you can pull at a town hall or even in a one-on-one interview with a good interviewer."
@gtconway3d
on Trump's rhetorical tricks
"Even in defeat, Cheney could emerge from Wyoming tough and unencumbered enough to serve as a one-woman wrecking ball against Trump and as a reckoning for a party that’s been terrified to speak honestly about him for years now. "
'Bring back the trades': Rep-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Perez talks "right to repair" and restoring the vitality of trade schools and technical education. (
@MGPforCongress
"But another thing, if you're Trump, that you're scared about is, is this now the start of a domino effect?"
@neal_katyal
's description of how flip often follows flip in conspiracy cases was barely 12 hours old before the next flip (Chesebro) was announced.
In this second audio clip from tonight's exclusive report, a Trump campaign official tells former Fox producer Abby Grossberg that "the audit came in pretty darn close to what the machine count was" and "there weren't any physical issues with machines" in Georgia.
"I'm told by sources that Christina Bobb will automatically be a witness. She will be asked for testimony. We'll see about Evan Corcoran, he is still a lawyer." -
@CarolLeonnig
shares reporting on the trouble Donald Trump's lawyers are facing.
As of yesterday, anyone can file a complaint against any Florida public school teacher for anything they deem as indoctrinating their children about race or gender, and thereby cost that teacher not just their job but their ability to teach at public schools in Florida.
Hello
#Maddow
podcast listeners!
We've been putting MSNBC Prime and the new
#WagnerTonight
episodes into the Maddow feed, but soon we'll have the Alex Wagner episodes exclusively in their own feed.
Search for Alex Wagner Tonight where you get your podcasts.
In response to
@AliVelshi
asking about how to become a foot soldier for democracy when it's under threat,
@TimothyDSnyder
offers a healthy list of suggestions:
On overcoming car culture nostalgia
@SecretaryPete
points out that the automotive tradition was born of looking toward the future. "The best things about our past had to do with getting out of the past. And the worst things about our past are things that we don't have to repeat."
"There's nothing about "the talk" that could save my son if he runs into a cop who's having a bad day."
@esglaude
on the futility of trying to assuage a system that is geared for violence
"Now we know that while [DOJ investigators] were seeking some of this material, lo and behold they found some." -
@CarolLeonnig
explains the timeline of the news she and her colleague
@DevlinBarrett
broke in the Washington Post tonight
.
@lawofruby
's thoughts on why Donald Trump is not actually charged in the Arizona fake elector case suggests the stakes are even higher for the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity. (Arguments in that case are tomorrow!)
"It allows you to go after the boss, the person who doesn't get his hands dirty and allows his underlings to do all the dirty work." -
@BarbMcQuade
offers a clear, helpful explanation of what a RICO case is and why Fani Willis might use it in the Georgia election case.
BREAKING: A Texas judge has ruled that the state’s abortion ban has proven too restrictive for women with serious pregnancy complications and must allow for exceptions without doctors fearing the threat of criminal charges.
.
@gtconway3d
lays out his favorite scenario for how the Trump presidential immunity Supreme Court appeal plays out next week. (It results in a trial as soon as May.)
"...the discovery in this case is somewhat like 78 copies of War and Peace, but not in the way the defense meant: After you read the first one, you don’t need to read the other 77."
“Every time you cross a threshold, other jurisdictions watch.” -
@neal_katyal
anticipates other judges may follow Judge Engoron in imposing limits on Donald Trump
Last night
@lawofruby
pointed out that while we're all focused on the civil fraud ruling (and E. Jean Carroll), Donald Trump was already carrying a lot of debt going into these cases.
"...and he can be on the indictment."
The transcript of an exchange between a Fani Willis prosecutor and a defense attorney for Georgia fake electors seems to make clear that there is, indeed, an indictment coming related to that case.
Rep. Susan Wild, ranking member of the House Ethics Committee, says she expects a privileged resolution to expel George Santos to be passed by the "Wednesday following Thanksgiving," and adds that "all of the members of the Ethics Committee will be voting yes on expulsion."
"Without vaccines, the country would have experienced four times as many deaths, 1.5 times more infections, and 3.8 times more hospitalizations in the time since December of 2020. The vaccines also saved the U.S. $1 trillion in additional medical costs."
Former Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance says he made a mistake in putting off his investigation of the Trump Organization in deference to the DOJ which ultimately walked away (though he does not think it would be bad for other state cases to do so now). Watch: