dutifully, but it is not driving conversation. there is no sense that anyone in the republican party is wringing their hands over the fact they have tied themselves to this person. >> sitting in federal court for the things he did. i don't know. i guess i have some little part of me that is like, maybe there are some boundaries left, but i don't know if i want to go forward hoping that we find them. >> i think there are some people. >> and she is a woman, too, which i think matters. >> this is not been a good week for marjorie taylor greene. in arizona day >> kari lake, yeah. >> all of these people who tried to follow in trump's footsteps can't pull it off. >> that is "all in" for this week. "alex wagner tonight" starts now. >> what is the old adage? you know you are losing when you are explaining just how many animals you took to a gravel pit and shot. >> that's right, you know you are pivoting to the horses. >> that you took photos of

before you shot. >> when i saw the clip and they were showing the gravel pit. >> someone was outside the gravel pit with a camera, looking into the gravel pit as she was taking aim. >> a gravel pit photographer. >> the executioner photographer. here we are. thank you, have a good weekend, my friend. there were a lot of memorable moments from the 2016 presidential campaign, a whole lot. one moment that really stands out after all this time is this one. >> to be clear, mr. trump had no financial relationships with any russian oligarchs? >> that's what he said. that is obviously what our position is. >> donald trump's then campaign manager, paul manafort, completely rattled by a straightforward question about ties to russian oligarchs. it turns out he had a good reason to be rattled. in the weeks that followed that

interview, the new york times published a series of bombshell reports definitively showing that prior to joining the campaign paul manafort had earned millions in secret cash payments advising russian oligarchs and pro-russian political leaders in ukraine and within days of reports coming out, the scandal forced manafort to resign from the trump campaign. eventually the shady business dealings landed manafort in federal prison until he was pardoned by donald trump in the final days of his presidency. but now paul manafort is reportedly returning to the trump campaign to help run the republican national convention this summer. that is even as new reporting today in the washington post shows paul manafort will do that while pursuing business deals backed by the chinese government. despite that, advisors say trump is determined to hire manafort, likely handing him a substantial role at the rnc in milwaukee, because trump appreciates that his onetime

campaign chairman has remained loyal to him, even while serving in prison. just amazing stuff. and somehow that is not the biggest news about a former trump campaign manager turned convicted criminal. remember that when manafort left the trump campaign he was replaced by far right strategist steve bannon. before the end of trump's term bannon had been charged by prosecutors with defrauding donors in a scam involving trump's border wall. so just like paul manafort, trump also pardoned steve bannon. steve bannon then promptly turned around and got himself indicted again, this time for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the january 6 committee. so in 2022 steve bannon was sentenced to four months in jail. bannon appealed and the judge agreed to postpone the jail sentence while the appeal played out. today a three-judge panel rejected steve bannon's appeal.

so it looks like former trump campaign manager steve bannon could very well be headed to prison at the exact same time that trump's other former campaign manager is completing his own journey from prison back to the trump campaign. the trump campaign to prison pipeline, there is really nothing like it. but that is not the end of steve bannon's legal troubles. it is not because in addition to his impending jail sentence, he is still facing charges in new york for his trump border wall scam and the judge who will oversee the trial for his border wall is, wait for it, judge merchan. the very same judge overseeing trump's hush money trial in new york. we just learned that when it comes to recurring characters from trump world, the judge may be losing his patience. today prosecutors closed out the third week of the hush

money trial by telling the court that they just have two witnesses left a call, one of whom is the star witness, michael cohen. he will take the stand on monday. today judge merchan told prosecutors that he had a personal request for them. tell michael cohen to please stop talking about this case on social media. :, as recently as this week, appears to be using tiktok to sell t-shirts with a picture of donald trump behind bars. he has also appeared on tiktok wearing the same shirt. prosecutors told the judge that they have already tried to get him to stop talking about the case. here is prosecutor joshua steinglass. judge, we repeatedly instructed all of the witnesses in this case to the extent we have any control over it to refrain from making public statements. the fact of the matter is, we have no control over what they do. we repeatedly asked the witnesses not to do that. not just mr. cohen, all the

witnesses. the judge responded i would direct the people to communicate to mr. cohen that the judges asking him to refrain from making more statements about this case, about mr. trump or anything related to this case or the process. that comes from the bench and you are communicating that on behalf of the bench. all of this is a perfect encapsulation of the challenges prosecutors face by calling cohen as a witness. he is key to trialing -- to showing trump's involvement in the skin, but he also spent the last few years as a trump critic, which could hurt his credibility in the eyes of the jury. it's the same issue prosecutors faced with stormy daniels because in trump world there are two kinds of people. paul manafort and steve bannon who will abide demands for loyalty, defy subpoenas, do their time, wait for pardons and pray for reentry into trump world, and then there is michael cohen and stormy daniels. real people with real flaws who

can muster the courage to defy trump, become the object of his fixation and end up pariahs in a world they cannot escape. joining me now is vaughn hillyard, and a former federal prosecutor who is now a senior writer for political magazine. thank you both for joining me. let's talk about this trial. just go back out to the big picture. in your expert opinion as someone who spent time downtown in the last couple of weeks, how is this trial going for the prosecution? >> the prosecution got what they needed. a human being who shared a story and stuck by the story. there was no flinching. despite susan necheles, attorney for donald trump, trying to extract discrepancies, you had a woman who said i told the truth and have been for the last 18 years. that is what the prosecution was looking for. now if you are the jury and you have michael cohen share his story, this for the prosecution is going to be key.

the hard part for the defenses they may try to paint michael cohen as a little figure in donald trump's world. even donald trump left the courthouse today and what did he say? michael cohen didn't do big deals for me, he did little deals. so you have two options. either allen weisselberg was okay with michael cohen calling the shots and having this payoff take place, or it was donald trump directing the order for the payment. the defense for donald trump has to decide in the next weeks. >> i do think that having a sort of test run if you will, the character assassination of stormy daniels, it was a useful model for the prosecution as they prepare for michael cohen and maybe not useful for the defense doing a trial of how they might treat michael cohen. how do you see the week informing what comes next in terms of michael cohen? >> i think stormy daniels ended up doing pretty well and i agree. the government got what they needed out of her and i don't think the cross went well for

trump's lawyers. i think they really overdid it and i'm guessing the jury sensed that as well. in terms of michael cohen, i do put him in a different box. he has lied to every branch of the federal government. stormy daniels has not done that and he is also -- the governments on witnesses throughout this case have been criticizing him, calling him dishonest, self aggrandizing, self-interested. nobody has been saying that about stormy daniels, at least not the governments witnesses. so he is in a different box and i expect trump's lawyers to take a very aggressive tack with him and i think it will be more effective than with daniels because they have so much more to work with. whether it will be sufficient to get the client off or hang the jury, of course we don't know, but it is going to be tough. it will be a tough few days for michael cohen. >> let me follow up with that.

in terms of the strategy that the prosecution might employ to, you know, get ahead of whatever the defense is going to try to do in cross. will they address his character flaws head-on in the opening days of this trial or his time on the witness stand? >> most certainly. that is a very good question, because the prosecutors in this situation, they like to sort of air out the dirty laundry on direct examination, when they have the witness, so they can frame the questions and ask more sympathetic or helpful questions to the witness, framed more generously. and get that stuff out to take the sting out before the defense brings it out, so you can expect they will be trying to get ahead of this in their direct examination. >> i was struck by prosecutor steinglass thing effectively to the judge, we know michael cohen is acting crazy and we don't have any control over him. >> right, this is a witness who is technically there witness, because they will bring him

forward. >> he is their star witness. >> he is the star witness, but he will go on tiktok and where what shirt he wants. he will do his own thing. this is not to they chose as the witness, it is who donald trump chose as the witness and the reality is, you are going through the history of donald trump and who flipped on him and who has not flipped on him. i think it is such a prudent conversation because if you go back to 2018 when this was becoming public, those around donald trump didn't think that he was ever going to cross the boss. not only did donald trump deny it, but you had rudy giuliani going on shannon hannity in 2018 and saying michael cohen had an arrangement with donald trump and the word from rudy giuliani, i feel bad, he is being victimized like this. >> he's a good man, that michael cohen. >> so the jury is about to hear those words back in 2018 when this was becoming public and they will also hear the words of michael cohen, the guy who flipped. >> i do wonder in terms of

cohen's tiktok habits. the fact he is wearing the t- shirts. i understand this isn't his case, but in a way it is his case. this is his credibility on the lawn -- on the line. i find it surprising that someone who last week said i'm going to take a pause and tap out about saying crazy things on trump for now because it is about credibility and not messing this trial up for the prosecution and yet there is something, i don't know what it is, that draws him back over and over again to the detriment of his testimony. >> his conduct has been very sub optimal from a prosecutors perspective and it is not entirely academic. the question posed about what is driving him to this, the defense will have an answer. they will say he is motivated by money and hatred of donald trump and you can't believe a thing that comes out of his mouth. unfortunately we learned today, you called it up in the transcript, the prosecutors

have been trying to tell him to cut it out for a long time now. so you can pretty much guess with a fair amount of confidence that trump's lawyers will ask how many times prosecutors asked him to stop doing this. how many times he ignored it? probably hundreds. and why he thinks he is free to flout instructions from any government entity. they could not compel him, but i am sure they implored him to cut it out and the fact he didn't will be a problem among others with his credibility. >> as we talk about witnesses for the prosecution, the defense has one, is that right? just one witness they are going to call and it is the fcc commissioner. i did not know this, but to judge merchan ruled in march that smith is not allowed to offer opinion testimony regarding federal campaign finance laws nor may he testify or offer an opinion as to whether the alleged conduct in

this case does or does not constitute a violation of the federal election campaign act. what is the point of this witness? he can't talk materially about any of the things trump might want to talk about. >> and imagine trump sitting in this courtroom after watching three weeks of testimony and imagine donald trump who openly suggested he wants to testify himself and it is quite angry at individuals who testified, sitting and allowing just one witness to go forward and then not even being himself. i'm not sure if donald trump will ultimately testify, but for a man who sees freedom on the line or political repercussions for november, it is hard to fathom that donald trump will be able to resist the pressures or his legal team, even if advising him not to do this, for him to sit there and acknowledge this. >> it feels like they are waving

the red flag. they come up with one witness who is, in your terms, sub optimal. bradley smith. is this bad lawyering? what does this strategy say to you? >> to put it in some perspective, it is not that unusual for defendants to have very few witnesses. of course the government bears the burden under the law to prove its case and some lawyers, some defense lawyers incredibly think that if they put on a defense case, the jurors might be weighing each side and it could alter their perception. that is one reason among a variety of reasons that we often don't see defendants put on a case at all. with respect to whether or not smith will be called, it is unclear he will be called given the constraints the judge put on him. it is also unclear whether trump will have other witnesses. my assumption is that bradley smith's testimony got litigated because the defense would have had to provide expert disclosures to the government i

had of the testimony. they wouldn't necessarily have to do that for fact witnesses, so it is possible trump could have other fact witnesses, i don't know. it is also possible there will be zero witnesses or trump could be the only witness. that remains to be seen and his lawyers don't have to make that decision until the government rests its case. >> it is super useful that differences don't have to call a lot of witnesses, but at the same time it is donald trump, who you point out is so ready to go to the stand in his own defense. how do you stop him when this is the last witness they are going to call? >> for donald trump politics is usually going to battle. he did it in his business and politics. for him i guess the question is if he thinks he can do it in a courtroom. >> self-control at the end of the day for this trial. we are going to see or you are going to see. vaughn hillyard and ankush khardori, thanks for your time. we have a lot more to get to

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home of the brave -- >> that was one of nevada's fake collectors. a guy named jesse law, singing the national anthem of signing fake documents to overturn the results of the 2020 election for donald trump. the gentleman next to him is michael mcdonald, another fake collector. today these men gave new meaning to the phrase, fake it until you make it. nevada's republican party nominated those two fake collectors to be the actual electors in the upcoming election. more than that, the nevada republican party has nominated five of the six fake collectors, all of whom have been criminally indicted. the nevada gop nominated those fake collectors to be delegates at this summer's republican national convention. this isn't just a nevada

phenomenon. last month arizona's republican party picked one of the indicted fake collectors to represent arizona on the republican national committee. state-level republicans are not turning away from members of their party who were literally indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. they are instead choosing them to represent their states at the national level. the craziest part about this is that it is not all that crazy. it is actually in line with what the national republican party is doing in advance of the next election. let me explain. before donald trump and his daughter-in-law took over the republican national committee earlier this year and cleaned house, this was the big push ahead of november. >> when republicans vote early -- >> we win. >> joined the team that beats biden by taking the pledge to vote early. >> bank your vote -- >> the idea was to convince republicans that voting early

or by mail was actually a good thing. okay, that was an uphill battle after donald trump spent years publicly demonizing early voting and mail-in voting is somehow fraudulent. so, bank your vote was the rnc's big push, but now it is not even on the republican party website landing page anymore. the new focus of the party is a program called protect the vote, which is all about stuff like this. >> oh hello, i'm stephanie calling for the republican national committee cochair lara trump and the election security staff at the republican national committee on a recorded line. we all know the problems. no photo i.d.s, unsecured drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots, and voter rolls truck full of deceased people and noncitizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. if democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn't even an american citizen.

>> protect the vote is the republican party so-called election integrity project. the plan is the party will recruit 100,000 volunteers and attorneys, people who think the 2020 election was stolen, and then send those election deniers to watch the polls and contest election results. what could go wrong other than voter suppression, fanning the flames of conspiracy and the deadly democracy, other than that, what could go wrong? the washington post published a piece about how since trump took over the republican national committee the old plans have been tossed out and replaced with a new trump election playbook. according to the post, the old strategy focused on the ground game and getting out the vote. it called for opening field offices and hiring an army of local organizers. instead of that, trump has told the people in charge of the rnc to focus on election security more than field programs. focus on the cheating is what

trump said. so the guidance in the republican party is now focus less on actually winning this election and more on convincing the public it was rigged if trump loses. sort of a heads i win, tails you lose strategy. we will talk about what all of that means for the election and american democracy at large with tim miller, coming up next. get the rest to be your best with non-habit forming zzzquil. ♪ ♪

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with six months to go until election day, the trump campaign is reportedly shifting gears into a leaner operation that throws away the old republican playbook. the plan began with the takeover of the rnc, where trump cleared house earlier this year and now we have reporting the team trump has changed the strategy to pushing election lies instead of votes. trump told them not to worry about getting out the vote, since he could do it himself. trump told them instead to focus on the cheating. the biden campaign, meanwhile, is doing the opposite. it is hiring more staff and opening its 200th campaign office at the end of this month. joining me now is tim miller, cohost of the next level podcast. tim, it is great to see you this evening. i have to ask you first off, the idea that trump is like a get out the vote efforts, don't

worry about it. i am the greatest motivator. on some level there is some logic to that, but is that a safe bet? >> it is not a safe bet. i think there is something to at the presidential level where a lot of this is driven at the top by candidates. it does matter more in a legislative race, of course. these elections have been close. 2016 and 2020 were decided by 16,000, 20,000 votes in various states so it does matter at that level and it is crazy to think about it as we step back. he invented this lie about the 2020 election and in general if you are lying about something, you are supposed to be tricking other people. they are tricking themselves. they invented a lie and now they are changing their strategy to meet this lie. it is so weird. >> what is crazy is they are like focus on the cheating. right, sure.

there is no cheating. what does that mean focus on? you know what i mean? >> focus on the cheating i made up. it's crazy. there are other tangible examples of this. i pulled up one in the break. if you look at the votes from the primaries, chester county, pennsylvania. among election day voters trump one against haley who was not running at that point, 80-20. on mail-in ballots they tied. he is giving a gift to the biden campaign. now since they have steered everybody in the republican party away from using the mail, now they can know if you voted by mail, we can target you. you might be a biden voter because you are not the type of person to go along with insane conspiracies. it is a gift on multiple levels, really. >> we laugh about the focus on the cheating, but as a political strategy i don't know if it shows you the way it does

me. it is quite obvious that they are prepared for trump to lose and also to litigate the election and now they have more infrastructure than they did before. it is not as ad hoc as it was in 2020. some of these people have been integrated into the higher levels of the party. how worried are you that we are at this point already, six months out? >> it is worrying. on the one hand it is extremely worrying that he has all of these folks on board and this infrastructure around him. on the other hand he is not president, so there is less infrastructure that he has, because he can't use the attorney general and the insurrection act at his disposal, things that created chaos in 2020. it cuts both ways a little bit, but it is chilling and the fact that it is still this persistent that you have such a huge number of shock troops if you will, of potential believers

in this lie, i think is very chilling. particularly if this ends up being a closer election. the last one wasn't even close. that is kind of the macabre thing. joe biden won handily. if this ends up getting closer this is very worrying, for sure. >> given that i wonder what you make of the duality. his people in arizona are like there are no signs of life. it is a terrible mistake, but that is apparently the rnc fulfilling trump's wishes. the biden campaign is hiring more than 500 staffers. 200 offices will be open by the end of this month. they are doing what you traditionally do in a campaign, which is allocate resources, build an army, knock on doors. should they be trying to play moron trump's turf? i'm not sure exactly what i am suggesting, but do they need to be doing more work around the

issue of making the vote more transparent and to undercut the vote point that trump may make if he loses? >> i don't think so. i think trump will make up lies no matter what. i think we can be frank about this. doing his best to put lipstick on a pig, trump's campaign manager. the reason trump has less offices this time than last time is because he is spending his money on lawyers. diverting a ton of money to his legal problems. it is not as if, they can say we are trying to be lean and mean, but the reality is they don't have the funds they had in 2020 and that is really what is driving the strategy. >> i do wonder, trump is constantly calling on supporters to come out and make their faces known. make their anger and indignation known. they are relying on volunteers to come out and buy into the big lie all over again. i think it is an open question

about how many people choose to do that given that these fake collectors though they have gotten back into the good grace of the party are facing criminal sentences. >> i do worry about that and the other thing you kind of have to consider is what about the actual poll watchers? i think they have done a lot of education themselves. have they figured out a better way to abuse the rules? a lot of groups out there like protect democracy and those guys are looking into all of this, but yes, some people have been scared away by the jailing that happened after january 6, thank goodness, but i also think they are more sophisticated than they were four years ago. >> buckle up. here we go. six months. great to see you, tim miller. thanks for spending friday night with me. coming up, what a rubber bullet in the summer of 2020 taught my colleague about democracy. he joins me to discuss his new book, right after this quick break.

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>> all right, guys, i got hit. hold on. >> that was footage of our own ali velshi in the summer of 2020 when he was shot by police with a rubber bullet as he covered the george floyd protest. though clearly a member of the press he was targeted and shot at repeatedly and this is how the president responded months later at a campaign rally. >> i remember this guy got hit on the knee with a canister of teargas and he went down. he was down. my knee, my knee. nobody cared. these guys did not care. they moved him aside and they just locked. it was the most beautiful thing. >> it was the most beautiful thing. more of that is what donald trump has promised to deliver if elected. attacks on journalists, using the national guard to round up protesters, drag nets for undocumented migrants, mass

detention camps, overhauling the justice system to make sure he has absolute power and raising the specter of violence for those who stand up to him. joining me now is someone who recently wrote a fascinating book about these dire stakes and why we as citizens could not and should not sit back and watch. the book is small acts of courage, a legacy of endurance in the fight for democracy and it is written by my incredible colleague, ali velshi. it is great to have you here as a guest. let's talk about that moment in 2020. it was catalytic. can you tell me why? >> first of all, his story was better. there was more drama to it. >> it was also inaccurate. >> highly inaccurate and the really inaccurate part was this was a peaceful march. people were marching peacefully. they knew they were in violation of curfew, but this has been the history of protest. generally speaking, police let that happen. they let people march and they

deal with it that way. all of a sudden these cops and national guard came in out of nowhere. there was no violence whatsoever and they just started the shooting. donald trump is wrong, it wasn't a canister, it was a rubber bullet, which is a rubber covered actual bullet. we went to another intersection and ran into the same thing. we said we are press and yelled back, we don't care, and opened fire a second time. we later learned from discovery in court cases the police were looking for journalists that night. donald trump made a big thing out of it and as a journalist you have to understand, you are in this. you don't want to be the story, but it is very successful if you want to be an autocrat to scare the journalists or keep them out of the picture and that is something we can't do. >> why write the book right now? obviously this country feels deeply divided and there is a sense of apathy at the same

time about the ability to stop what feels like a slide toward autocracy. institutions are failing them and the powers of darkness, if you will, are encroaching. what can small acts do? >> it is my family story going back 125 years and mainly it was motivated by the fight against what became apartheid in south africa. it is the idea that you can do the things that are in front of you. don't boil the ocean. even my family that was fighting apartheid, while they wished for the end of apartheid their efforts were toward smaller injustices going on. when you look at the amazing people in this country doing things, some of the legislators we meet and talk to like the guys in tennessee. they are not trying to fix all injustices at the same time. they are aiming for specific things, drawing attention to them and these things get fixed. people take those victories and go on and do bigger and more important things. these people can become don b

or martin luther king or nelson mandela or your president of the united states. the idea is if you do what is available in front of you including going to school board meetings, stopping the banning of books, supporting local media, you actually can play an outsized role in the fixing of democracy. it is meant to be an encouraging book, saying you may not see the fruits of everything you're dealing with right now, but if you plant that seed the tree will grow. >> does it bother you that the idea of upholding and strengthening democracy is now coded as a partisan activity? >> it absolutely does and i like to point this out to people that we as journalists accept that the damage done by hurricanes is bad. school shootings are bad. homicide is bad. a warming planet is bad. we must accept as partisans of democracy that the erosion of democracy is bad. that is not politically partisan, it is partisan poured democracy. our democracy exists because our electorate is informed.

the electorate has got to be informed by people like us and we have got to be reliable. we have got to bear witness, which is why we go to those rallies. when donald trump says this is what was going on i can say actually i was there and you weren't. once you bear witness, if you are out there bearing witness, then the other opportunity we have is to interview important people who set policy and hold the power to account. that is the way the system is supposed to work if we do what we are supposed to do. >> i want to ask you because your family migration story is central to this and your identity, as mine is. the notion of participation in democracy through protest or activism, not just because we are talking about a partisan divide, but the idea of being active in a democracy and speaking truth to power is not always embraced. especially in immigrant communities. there are some communities and

we see this in voting patterns that say you question the guy in charge, you are anti- american. fall in line and support your country, that is patriotism. other communities say injustices cannot be tolerated. you are talking about people like us and we will fight for our rights. we will take an active role as participants. can you talk a little bit about what accounts for that divide and how you sort of challenge that divide? >> it is personal for me because in 1910 my great-grandfather set in his living room and had a conversation with mahatma gandhi. they had become friends and gandhi knew that efforts to fight racism were flagging and he said i need to train people to fight and i would like your son to join me. my great-grandfather was a businessman. it was not a good idea for him to be associated or have a son go to a school run by this agitator when you're trying to make a buck, so the excuse was we are muslims, you are hindu, i can't really send him to your

school and gandhi says i will learn your religion to teach it to him. he learned all these things, but the fact is you cannot take the view, don't rock the boat. because you didn't build that boat, because you did. enslaved americans who had no choice in the matter of coming here helped us build the democracy in which we live. helped us become the country america was. helped us become a more powerful country than the united kingdom after independence, why? because enslaved americans were providing free labor, did that for america. we all have a role to play. you do not have less of a role because you are a recent immigrant and the nonsense they are talking about with immigrants committing crime, it is statistically untrue. creating wage drops, statistically not true. >> engines of the economy in fact. >> we are so lucky in america that most people want to come here. this is still their first

choice. do not squander that. >> we are the lucky ones. it is a great book for a really important time and you are a great person to be articulating mistakes, ali. congratulations on the book. >> thank you. >> it's great to have you here. the book is small acts of carriage, by ali velshi. a legacy of endurance and the fight for democracy. thank you for being here. we have one more story for you this evening. donald trump, family man. just don't talk to his actual family members about that. it's coming right up. .

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he didn't realize both that his young son barron was chosen to serve as a florida delegate at this year's republican national convention and that his son is 18 years old, not 17. just a few hours ago we got an announcement from melania trump's office that barron trump will not be able to participate in the convention after all due to prior commitments. he is, however, still not 17 years old. he turned 18 back in march. when asked by nbc news for comment about the strange back and forth, trump's spokesman says nbc news has lost its mind and clearly suffers from trump derangement syndrome. nbc has chosen to engage in tabloid journalism fit for the checkout aisle of the grocery story. joining me now, host of the no live podcast. am i missing something or was that a national enquirer reference the week of the stormy daniels hush money trial? >> you would think he would be

more open to tabloid journalism. at the end of the day would he not be more prone to giving these people money? if he said nbc news is tabloid journalism, why wouldn't he be cutting checks to nbc? >> catch and kill stories right here, too. i am fascinated by the dynamics of the trump family in this moment because it has become a linchpin of the defense in court. there has been back and forth between trump's defense lawyer, susan necheles and madeleine westerhout, trump's executive assistant where she is asking, trump had a close relationship with his children, right? very close says westerhout. and he also had a close and loving relationship with his wife? yes. it is thrown into question when you have kind of a kramer versus kramer style situation between melania and donald over the subject of barron and the

reality that only eric trump has attended any days of this trial. >> there is also the fact that the whole trial is predicated on falsifying business records to cover up hush money payouts because donald trump was having an affair with multiple people. we can't forget that we wouldn't even be here if donald trump actually had a good relationship with his family. >> it is an apt point. if he had been home with his four month old newborn and wife maybe he would not be getting spanked by an adult film star in a hotel room in vegas. i do want to point out to everybody that trump made a big deal about attending barron's graduation. barron, the 18-year-old, not 17-year-old. he is getting a reprieve, there will be no trial next friday because he is going to attend barron's graduation. it turns out now on the day of the graduation trump scheduled a fundraiser and it is not in florida where barron is graduating. he will be in minnesota, st. paul, minnesota that night. i don't know, maybe the graduation is over and he needs

to raise some money, but it is all drawn into sharp relief when there was news this week about what trump was saying to donors behind closed doors. he promised to give away all climate related projects instituted and paid for under joe biden to a group of oil executives. first, let me get your reaction and second are you worried about what is happening behind the door at these fundraisers that are scheduled ad nauseam in the coming months? >> you don't even have to worry about what is happening behind closed doors, because eventually it comes to the surface anyway. donald trump is not shy about revealing exactly what he is going to do. in the same way he has always been open about his allegiance to fossil fuels and killing climate investments, he is doing the same thing now. i think it is important that we know this and for anybody like myself for home climate is an important issue, a foundational issue, because being able to live on a habitable planet

tends to be a foundational issue, this is the whole ballgame. i guess it is important for people to recognize what is happening. one more quick thing on barron. you know that this guy was in the courtroom trying to extort his kid for some of the points because he loves to traffic in victimhood, so he thought about anyways he could do that. he was complaining about how chilly the courtroom was. how he could not talk to anybody because of the gag order, which was a misrepresentation of the gag order. by pointing out barron's graduation i think he wrongly assumed the judge would not allow him to do that, so the kind of poetic irony is now donald trump is that going to this graduation or if he doesn't he will look like a total hypocrite, a total liar, which i understand may not be a big deal for someone like donald trump. >> and now he is leaving to go to a fundraiser in minnesota. another weekend trump news. thank you, my friend.