The former president may have revealed the truth about his own intentions.
Tag: MSNBC
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Donald Trump’s lawyers make “very misleading” arguments: Legal analyst
Former U.S. attorney and legal analyst Barbara McQuade said Sunday that lawyers for Donald Trump make “very misleading” arguments over the former president’s repeated attacks against judges and court staff.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces various legal troubles with trials at both the state and federal level, with a total of 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases. Trump, meanwhile, has maintained his innocence in the cases. The former president has also been civilly sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for $250 million. In her lawsuit, James alleges that Trump, his adult sons, and top executives at The Trump Organization, conspired to increase his net worth by billions of dollars on financial statements provided to banks and insurers to make deals and secure loans. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has called the trial politically motivated.
Still, Trump has continued to make repeated attacks on judges and court staff, often taking to Truth Social, his social media platform, to voice his stance, which has caused him to be issued gag orders.
On Monday, a New York appeals court is expected to review whether to reinstate a gag order imposed on Trump by Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing his civil fraud trial, that was temporarily lifted last week by an appellate judge who raised free speech concerns.
Former President Donald Trump is seen on November 18 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Former U.S. attorney and legal analyst Barbara McQuade said Sunday that lawyers for Trump make “very misleading” arguments over the former president’s repeated attacks against judges and court staff.
Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
In an interview with MSNBC host Katie Phang on Sunday, McQuade spoke about Trump’s repeated attacks, adding that the former president’s lawyers’ arguments over the gag orders have looked at cases outside of the context of court, a move she describes is “very misleading. “
“One of the things that the [Trump] lawyers have done, that is very misleading here, is to look at cases outside of the context of court, of opinion criminal cases. You know, prior restraints are frowned upon of course. Anything that limits core political speech is antithetical to the First Amendment,” McQuade said.
She added that those outside cases that Trump’s lawyers refer to in their arguments are different, stating that we are in the world of a trial and “those rules are different.”
“That’s not the world that we are in. We are in the world of a trial. And so inside a trial to protect the parties, to protect court staff and to protect the fair administration of justice, those rules are different. And so I hope that the court sees the light and understand the very threat on the one hand versus the restriction on the other,” she said.
Although it is not clear which outside cases McQuade is referring to, Trump and his lawyers have continued to argue that any gag order against a presidential candidate is a violation of his First Amendment rights.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump and his lawyers via email for comment.
This follows the Department of Justice‘s (DOJ) court filing on Thanksgiving, arguing that a gag order against the former president must remain while pointing to documents filed as part of the civil fraud trial in New York.
The government’s court filings pointed the appeals court to one section in particular, in which an employee at the New York State Unified Court System details the “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages” which had been sent to Engoron as well as his law clerk Allison Greenfield. Engoron fined Trump twice in October for violating his gag order after he failed to remove a Truth Social post targeting Greenfield more than two weeks after the judge ordered it be deleted, and then a second time after the former president described Greenfield as a “very partisan” individual to reporters outside the courtroom.
McQuade is the latest in a growing list of those who have noted Trump’s repeated attacks and have called for the court to take a more serious approach.
On Saturday, former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner appeared on MSNBC and said the judges in Trump’s different cases have a responsibility to pay attention to the ongoing “witness threatening conduct” Trump incites.
“I think it would be irresponsible for one jurisdiction to decline to pay attention to the potentially witness threatening conduct by the same pretrial defendant in another jurisdiction and we have seen some cross pollination between and among the judges. I can only wonder if at some point Donald Trump’s luck will run out and the judges will say enough, we are going to impose these gag orders, we are going to keep them in place,” Kirschner, a staunch Trump critic, said.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Colorado Official Slams Judge Over ‘Very Troubling’ Trump Insurrection Case Ruling
Griswold – in an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Saturday – chimed in on the judge’s decision that found Trump engaged in insurrection but rejected an attempt to prevent his name from appearing on the state’s ballot.
The decision arrived after a lawsuit from a D.C.-based ethics watchdog argued that the former president’s actions linked to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 conflicted with a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment to bar people from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.
Griswold, after Velshi referred to the decision as being far from a “victory,” said she was “surprised” by the ruling and the MSNBC anchor was “really hitting it on the head.”
“The idea that any official who would engage in insurrection would be barred from taking office except the presidency is incredibly surprising. That basically means that the presidency is a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for insurrection,” said Griswold, adding that it was “very troubling” to her.
“The American people need to know that the president, the person – if anybody – the person most in charge of protecting the Constitution, actually has a duty to do so. So I’m right there with you. I find it very troubling that the president of the United States could engage in insurrection and unlike everybody else, could then be president again.”
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Joe Scarborough Delivers Blistering Takedown Of Mike Johnson’s Gun Logic
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) “preposterous” comments against gun reform following a mass shooting in Maine that left 18 people dead.
On Wednesday, the same day Johnson was elected speaker, a gunman opened fire with an assault-style rifle at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston.
In an interview on Fox News Thursday, the Louisiana Republican said the problem is not guns, but “the human heart,” and argued it’s “not the time to be talking about legislation.”
On “Morning Joe” Friday, Scarborough noted that the human heart “is not made of steel, and it can’t repel the bullets.”
“Let me get confirmation from Katty,” he added, asking British-Swiss journalist Katty Kay. “Do they have human hearts in Britain and France and Germany and Spain? And by the way, do they have video games there? Do they have mental health problems?”
None of those countries have gun laws anywhere near as relaxed as the U.S., or gun ownership levels anywhere near as high. Mass shootings there are rare.
Later in the broadcast, Scarborough said Johnson knew he was being dishonest and “he knows that the United States has a problem unique to these types of shootings.”
“I can’t believe we actually have a politician that will say in 2023 after a shooting, now is not the time to talk about mass shootings,” he said.
Republican lawmakers — many of whom receive substantial campaign support from the gun lobby — have concocted myriad excuses for mass shootings over the years, blaming just about everything but the guns.
There have already been 566 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive’s tally.
Pointing to this figure, Scarborough wondered, if “now is not the time” to talk about it, when is it?
“There are no breaks in America anymore between mass shootings,” he said.
“We have more mass shootings in America every year than we have days in the year,” he added.
The suspect in the Maine shooting was still on the loose Friday morning.
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Maine Shootings Send Cable News Into Overdrive
Cable news went into marathon-coverage mode Wednesday night as the nation was shocked by reports of mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine.
The shootings occurred at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant and Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley, the Lewiston Police Department shared on Facebook. At an official press conference, Mike Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, did not disclose an estimate of the number of people killed and wounded in the shooting incidents.
CNN, Fox and MSNBC are among the news channels covering the shootings and sharing ongoing updates from police, including the Lewiston Police Department identifying the “person of interest” as Robert R. Card.
“These incidents end when police arrive and confront the shooter — the shooter takes his own life or engages with polices or tries to take their lives,” said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, on Wednesday night. “In this case, the shooter made a definitive effort — a deliberate effort — to get away. To get away from the first location, to commit the second part of the crime, to get away again. So we have to ask ourselves, from a behavioral standpoint, is he getting away because he thinks he’s not gonna be identified, that he might get away with this crime? Or this worst scenario, is he getting away because he has another target, that he has another location?”
“As our chief from Boston said a few minutes ago, Ed Davis, this is a nightmare scenario for police,” Miller continued. “They know they’re not just confronting a criminal —they know not just an armed criminal — but a criminal who is heavily armed and has very little to lose in terms of, there is nothing he will do beyond killing 22 people that is going to get him in any more trouble.”
More to come…
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Ex-GOP Congressman Delivers Damning News About Next House Speaker
“They’re all bad,” former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) said on MSNBC on Sunday.
A revolt by far-right GOP lawmakers toppled former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and has left the House without a leader for nearly three weeks.
Jolly called Jordan an “authoritarian anti-democratic crazy,” but said that McCarthy would’ve gone in that direction eventually had he kept the job.
“It’s the same with all of these candidates,” he said of the nine now seeking the gig. “They would all end up being a speaker who ultimately gets to where Jim Jordan starts. That’s the danger we face.”
See more of his conversation with MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez below:
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Attorney explains “most significant” fact of Trump lawyers’ guilty pleas
Attorney Neal Katyal explained on Saturday that the “most significant” fact about Donald Trump‘s ex-attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, who recently both pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case, is that they were both handed no jail deals.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘ investigation into the former president’s alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia continued on Friday with Chesebro, one of the 19 defendants named in the case, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents. This comes after Powell, who frequently repeated unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen via widespread voter fraud, pleaded guilty to reduced charges on Thursday. Trump, meanwhile, maintains his innocence in the case.
While appearing on MSNBC‘s The Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart, the legal analyst shared his reaction to Trump’s former lawyers pleading guilty, while adding what he thought was the most significant fact about their respective deals.
“To me, what’s most significant about both of these deals is that they are no jail deals. So one, Sidney Powell pleads guilty to some misdemeanors and Chesebro to a felony, but neither of them are serving jail. The only reason you would ever agree to that as a prosecutor is if they are providing evidence against higher ups,” Katyal, the former acting solicitor general of the United States during the Obama administration, said.
Former President Donald Trump is seen at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on August 24. Attorney Neal Katyal explained that the “most significant” fact about Trump’s ex-attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, who recently both pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case, is that they were both handed no jail deals.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Katyal continued to explain that with these no jail deals, Trump is on the receiving end of “incredibly bad news” as these were his handpicked lawyers who have now seemingly been flipped and will testify against him.
“This is incredibly bad news for Donald Trump and not news, Jonathan, that he can spin…these are his handpicked MAGA [Make America Great Again], Kraken, whackjob lawyers,” he added.
Both Powell and Chesebro will also have to testify truthfully against their co-defendants—including Trump—as part of the plea deal. In addition, not only does Chesebro have to testify, he will also be required to provide documents and evidence—including text messages and emails—to state prosecutors to be used in their case.
Katyal is not the only legal expert who weighed in on what these plea deals could mean for Trump as former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi previously told Newsweek that the plea deal marks “another bad day” for the former president.
“Whenever two attorneys that are part of your legal team have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, that is never a good day. The two attorneys who have pleaded guilty could be very powerful witnesses against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and the others charged,” he said in a Friday phone interview.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment via email.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Longtime NBC Journalist Says Hamas Took Wife’s Family Members Hostage
Former Israel-based NBC News correspondent Martin Fletcher revealed during an MSNBC appearance that two members of his wife’s family were among the hostages captured by Hamas from Israel.
Fletcher, who served as Middle East correspondent and Tel Aviv bureau chief, choked up as he explained the situation to MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Thursday night during a discussion about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
He said he had just learned the news that day. He said that Natalie and Judith Raanan, Americans from Evanston, Illinois, were in Israel visiting their grandmother for her 85th birthday.
“They were last seen [with] their hands tied, being dragged away by the Hamas terrorists. So it’s personal, it’s real,” he said.
Judith Raanan and her teenage daughter Natalie Raanan were visiting Judith Raanan’s mother at a kibbutz in the south of Israel at the time of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack, The New York Times reported last week.
Natalie Raanan had just graduated high school.
Family members in Israel were reportedly told that the women were in Gaza but that it was not known if they were dead or alive.
Family and community members in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago, told The Associated Press they’re praying for the pair’s safe return.
Natalie Raanan’s aunt, Sigal Zamir, said, “I pray for them to come back alive. They’re innocent and loving, and they didn’t do anything.”
An estimated 200 people were taken hostage to Gaza, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said on Thursday. Hamas says it has 200 hostages, Reuters reported. At least 20 Americans are missing, according to U.S. authorities.
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MSNBC Anchor Alicia Menendez Says She Won’t Cover Father’s Indictment
“Last week, a grand jury indicted U.S. Senator Bob Menendez. This past week, dozens of members of his own party have demanded his resignation,” said the MSNBC anchor on her “American Voices” program.
“I have been watching, along with all of you, as a citizen and also as his daughter. I will not be reporting on the legal case.”
She later pointed to her own network’s reporting as she spoke just over one week since her father was indicted on corruption charges.
“That said, my colleagues across MSNBC and NBC News, they have aggressively covered the story and they’ll continue to do so, as they should,” the anchor added.
The anchor’s on-air comments arrive after her father and her mother Nadine Menendez were among those indicted in an alleged bribery scheme.
The anchor didn’t appear on her program last weekend in the wake of the indictment. A source told The Washington Post that “the timing was coincidental” as she was long set to attend a wedding.
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‘Morning Joe’ Brands Rudy Giuliani With A Blistering New Nickname
Rudy Giuliani has gone from “America’s Mayor” to “America’s Deadbeat,” according to “Morning Joe” hosts Willie Geist and Joe Scarborough.
The MSNBC personalities coined the moniker Friday as they recapped the latest in the former Donald Trump attorney’s fall from grace.
“I don’t know if he faces prison, if he faces bankruptcy, if he faces additional charges,” said Scarborough. “It’s just from from all directions. And this is the cost, of course, when you turn your life over to Donald Trump.”
Geist said that it appears Giuliani can’t pay his legal bills.
“It was all fun and games until the indictments started coming down,” he said. “And now, like for so many of the people around Donald Trump, the bill is coming due.”
Giuliani, once celebrated as America’s Mayor for his leadership of New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is dealing with enormous legal and financial woes following his heavy involvement in Trump’s attempted coup.
This week, news broke that former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson accused Giuliani of groping her on Jan. 6, 2021, the day that right-wing rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Giuliani denies the allegation.
And on Thursday, lawyers for 2020 election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss said in a court filing that Giuliani had failed to pay them $89,000 in attorneys’ fees by Wednesday, the deadline set by a federal judge.
Giuliani last month lost a civil defamation lawsuit brought by the two women after he falsely claimed they helped commit fraud during the 2020 election.
In Georgia’s Fulton County, he is charged alongside Trump in a sprawling racketeering indictment over a push to overturn the state’s election results. He was hit with 13 felony counts.
Giuliani was also identified as an uncharged co-conspirator in Trump’s federal election conspiracy indictment.
At the same time, he faces potential disbarment and multiple other lawsuits.
“From America’s Mayor to America’s Deadbeat,” Scarborough said on his MSNBC show. “Following Donald Trump can get you thrown in jail or ruin you financially.”
Watch the “Morning Joe” clip below.
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‘Perfect Example’: Ex-US Attorney Names Trump Insider Who Could Flip Next
Donald Trump is leaving a lot of his inner circle hanging when it comes to the massive legal fees many of them are facing for actions they took on his behalf ― and former U.S. attorney Harry Litman said that could come back to haunt the former president very soon.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Litman said on MSNBC on Wednesday night. “Jenna Ellis is the perfect example here.”
Ellis and Rudy Giuliani helped to lead Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Like Giuliani, however, she’s also been charged in the Georgia election interference case and doesn’t have the money to defend herself.
She’s turned on Trump publicly after he refused to pony up cash to help her defense, slamming his “malignant, narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong” and saying she’d never support him again.
Ellis raised $200,000 via crowdfunding, which Litman said “might fund two days of trial.”
“What are they really supposed to do other than get public defenders?” he said, noting that one of the figures in the classified documents case did exactly that as he flipped and turned into a witness against Trump and won’t be prosecuted as a result.
Trump can expect others to do the same as they face potential bankruptcy, he said.
“These are dangerous people and dangerous times for Trump,” he concluded.
See more of his conversation below:
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‘Morning Joe’ Hosts Can’t Get Over ‘Unbelievably Stupid’ New Trump Report
A new report about Donald Trump’s alleged sloppy handling of classified documents left MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts aghast.
“It’s so unbelievably stupid,” MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski said on Tuesday, describing the situation as almost “cartoonesque.”
She was discussing a Monday ABC News report that Molly Michael, a longtime assistant to the former president, told federal investigators that Trump wrote to-do lists for her on White House documents with visible classified markings.
According to ABC News sources, when Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview the aide last year, he told her: “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”
A Trump spokesperson told ABC News that the story lacks “proper context” and Trump “did nothing wrong.”
“This woman has turned over the information to the FBI and she’s probably in a very serious situation,” Brzezinski said.
Her co-host Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, was in disbelief.
“There are so many people that served this country … that understood exactly what they could and could not do. And he has breached that code of conduct so many times,” he said. “This is just the latest, most egregious, and one of the most reckless examples.”
Trump, who is currently running for president, has been charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling classified documents taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort. He is also accused of obstructing government efforts to retrieve them and defying a subpoena to do so. He has pleaded not guilty.
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Nicolle Wallace Gives ‘Naked’ Mark Meadows Stark Reminder Of How ‘Exposed’ He Is
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace came up with a colorful way to describe just how “exposed” Mark Meadows is in the Georgia election interference case.
“I forgot how exposed he is,” Wallace said. “But he is, y’know, naked with his rear end hanging out on the fake electors plot. He’s essentially its quarterback.”
The former White House chief of staff and 18 others ― including Donald Trump ― were charged in Georgia with an array of felonies related to their efforts to overturn the election results in the state. Meadows has been trying, without success, to move his case out of Georgia state courts and into federal court, arguing that he was acting in his official duties.
But Wallace played footage from the Jan. 6 committee hearings making the case that Meadows went far beyond his official duties as he helped push the fake electors plot at the center of the Georgia case.
Timothy Heaphy, who was the Jan. 6 committee’s lead investigator, said Meadows didn’t deny his role when questioned.
“He essentially agreed with the factual allegations that are in the indictment,” he said, adding that Meadows argued that he was doing his job, which includes keeping an eye on what the president was doing.
But Heaphy said Meadows wasn’t a passive observer. He was an “active participant turning the wheels of the conspiracy, facilitating this fake elector plan.”
See more of that conversation below:
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Chris Hayes Says Peter Navarro Committed 1 Of The ‘Most Pointless Crimes Ever’
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says Peter Navarro might have just been convicted for one of the most “pointless” crimes of all time.
Navarro, a former White House trade adviser under Donald Trump, was found guilty on Thursday on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack.
Navarro defied a subpoena for documents from the committee and failed to sit for a deposition. The two counts each carry 30 days to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
“Just to be clear here, it’s not like Navarro was hiding his involvement in the coup,” Hayes said on MSNBC Thursday. “He self-published this document full of bogus claims of election fraud, that he called the ‘Navarro Report’ in case anyone wanted to know who wrote it. He wrote about the coup in his book, including his signature political strategy to overturn the election, which he called the Green Bay sweep ― reference to an old football play.”
Navarro also told The Daily Beast in 2021 how he and another former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, planned to overturn President Joe Biden’s election win, Hayes noted, and “appeared on this very network multiple times to discuss the coup.”
“So it’s not like Peter Navarro wasn’t willing to talk about the coup,” Hayes said. “He just wouldn’t talk about it with one group of people ― the January 6 committee.”
He noted that multiple other Trump allies, such as Roger Stone and John Eastman, complied with committee subpoenas but invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Bannon, who also defied a congressional subpoena, was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in October and sentenced to four months in prison, though he has been free pending appeal.
“I can’t help but ask: is this one of the stupidest, most pointless crimes ever committed by anyone?” Hayes asked.
“Even if Navarro wanted to disrupt the investigation, he could have just hired a lawyer for the week, pleaded the Fifth to every question. He’d be we well within his constitutional rights to do so, others did it. And now he wouldn’t be facing prison time.”
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MSNBC Is Having Its Super Bowl With Donald Trump’s Indictments
The MSNBC panel was awaiting former president Donald Trump’s Fulton County Jail mug shot, when Rachel Maddow asked her audience to register the gravity of the moment. “I’m saying we should slow down here just for a second, because this is serious stuff for the nation, for who we are as a country,” she said last week, as MSNBC aired the photo—the first of any current or former United States president. “This is not something to take lightly. Our constitutional republic depends on the very basic concept of rule by law, not rule by man,” Maddow continued. It was fitting that Trump looked so angry in the mug shot; despite being the fourth indictment and arrest this year, it was Trump’s first. “He’s embodying…the avatar for the rage that he has traded off of to become president in the first place,” Joy Reid said.
But not every moment was that earnest on MSNBC that night. Over the course of the segment, which followed everything from Trump’s plane landing in Atlanta to his motorcade to and from the jailhouse, the MSNBC panel—Reid, Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Nicolle Wallace—oscillated between analysis, weighty reflection, and, well, schadenfreude. O’Donnell mused, was the “strawberry” hair color listed in the booking information Trump’s own description? Maddow cast a cheeky glance to her colleagues when she read his listed height: “six-foot-three.” Then came Trump’s weight—listed as 215 pounds—sending the table into hysterics.
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MSNBC’s talking heads had been given the license to have a little fun. Even when Maddow and others were reflecting on the sheer weightiness of this newscycle—that even a former president can be held accountable under the criminal justice system—a viewer could tell: This panel was relishing every part of it. And, it seems, the viewers are relishing in it all too.
MSNBC has emerged as the network of choice for viewers looking for coverage of Trump’s criminal charges. The timing of Trump’s arrest in Georgia—Thursday night—didn’t correspond with Maddow’s regular Monday slot, but the network brought her on anyway; it was an evening ripe for the heavy hitters, after all. The tactic seems to be working. The network has seen a bump in ratings recently, reportedly beating Fox News in prime-time ratings for a full week in early June amid coverage of Trump’s second indictment, on charges related to classified documents. The network continued to bear the fruits of Trump’s legal woes earlier this month, which has been MSNBC’s most-watched in more than two years. When Trump was indicted for the fourth time, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, MSNBC prevailed over Fox News for the top three spots in the cable lineup, Forbes reported, citing Nielson data. More viewers turned to MSNBC from 9 p.m. through 3 a.m. than Fox News and CNN combined. Maddow’s 9 p.m. program, which happened to feature a previously scheduled interview with Hillary Clinton, drew 3.9 million viewers, and was the number one show across all of television, including broadcast. MSNBC beat Fox News in prime time again the next night. “While most of the country is experiencing some level of fatigue over Trump’s legal battles, MSNBC’s viewership has increased with each subsequent indictment,” Axios’s Sara Fischer noted.
MSNBC’s approach—and success—is in spite of the broader recalibration toward nonpartisan media that newer outlets like Semafor and The Messenger have said they see a market for. CNN, too, made an apparent attempt to overcorrect for its breathless coverage of the Trump White House. The result, largely ushered under now ex-CEO Chris Licht, has at times been over-sanitized, leaving viewers unsure of what the network is offering.
“CNN has definitely lost a ton of audience to MSNBC,” one CNN producer tells me. “One of Chris Licht’s great legacies was basically telling the audience we built during the Trump era: You’re not welcome, we don’t work for you. I don’t know if that’s ever going to be undone, and this new lineup is certainly not a strategy to attract this audience back.” CNN is maintaining its focus on hard news, both in its latest streaming effort and newly cemented prime-time lineup. “We now have a decade of data telling us that cable news viewers don’t want news in prime time,” the producer adds. “So this completely ‘blinders on, we’re gonna double down on news in prime time and hope for the best’—it just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC has seemingly only doubled down on being the premier news source for the Trump resistance. For two years, the network’s coverage and numbers were largely driven by Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “In addition to breaking pieces of news related to the probe—working in tandem with journalists from NBC News—MSNBC’s anchors, and, in particular, its opinionated progressive evening hosts, turned the Russia story into a gripping daily soap opera that not only helped grow the channel’s audience, but kept it coming back for more,” my colleague Joe Pompeo wrote back in 2019. A person close to MSNBC’s strategic thinking credits the network’s ratings to more than just the recent indictments, pointing to both the network’s consistency with viewers and expanded footprint across digital, audio, and streaming. Following Trump’s departure from office, the mandate for hosts has been to keep it nice, as Semafor reported—opinion without snark or bombast.
Now MSNBC is approaching what could be the apex in Trump political coverage: his indictments, trials, and another presidential run. The network appears particularly well-positioned to take on this story with its stable of legal analysts, including former top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, former acting US solicitor general Neal Katyal, and former US attorney Joyce Vance. It helps that NBC News has also been a central player this political cycle and appears well-sourced with both Trumpworld and Ron Desantis’s camp; NBC nabbed the first network interview with the Florida governor after he launched his campaign, and has been nabbing scoops on him as well as on the Biden administration.
Timing, too, is on their side; MSNBC is firing on all cylinders just as its competitors face a period of instability. Fox News is still figuring out its future without Tucker Carlson and girding for more defamation suits, while CNN is rudderless, with temporary management attempting to pick up the pieces post-Licht’s tenure, as the company searches for a new CEO.
Over at MSNBC, things are comparatively low drama. I’m told that MSNBC president Rashida Jones has an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality that has been well-received by top talent.
Charlotte Klein
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Florida Lawmaker: DeSantis Has ‘Blood On His Hands’ After Jacksonville Shooting
Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon (D) slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in emotional remarks after a white man shot and killed three Black people in what officials described as a “racially motivated” attack in Jacksonville on Saturday.
“Look, at the end of the day, the governor has blood on his hands,” Nixon, who represents a district that includes the site of the deadly Dollar General store shooting, told MSNBC on Sunday.
“He has had an attack, an all-out attack on the Black community with his anti-woke policies, which we know very well was nothing more than a dog whistle to get folks up and riled up in the way in which it just happened yesterday. As I listened to him for the first time with that statement, my blood is literally boiling.”
The lawmaker criticized DeSantis, who has condemned the attack, after he said “targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida” at a press conference on Sunday.
DeSantis has come under fire for backing efforts to loosen gun restrictions, gone after what he describes as “woke” policies and supported controversial standards for teaching Black history in his state.
Nixon noted that she – along with other Black lawmakers – have “repeatedly” warned the GOP presidential candidate about his rhetoric.
“This is absurd, it’s ridiculous, he is one of the causes to this, this is an agenda that he has been pushing since he’s gotten into office,” said Nixon, who referred to the governor’s “monkey this up” remark when he ran against his Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum, who is Black, in 2018.
″[We have] Republican leadership across this state who are doing everything to continually attack Black lives. They are doing everything to erase Black history. They are feeding our children propaganda. All that does is lead to the devaluation of Black lives.”
Nixon, who appeared alongside the governor as he was booed at a Jacksonville vigil on Sunday, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that DeSantis “needs to apologize for his part” in the attack.
″Gov. DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida are doing nothing but hurting us. And I am angry. I will not continue to sit idly by,” Nixon said in an emotional message.
You can watch more of Nixon’s remarks on MSNBC in the clip below.
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Jen Psaki Points Out Why Trump’s Mug Shot Is No ‘Political Winner’ For Him
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki said it’s “hard to imagine” former President Donald Trump’s mug shot making him “more appealing” ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The host, in a newsletter ahead of Sunday’s episode of her MSNBC program, argued that Trump thinks the mug shot is a “political winner” for him following his arrest at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail on charges tied to efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.
“He thinks this is a political winner for him. But as New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told me in an interview that airs Sunday, ‘independents hate it,’” wrote Psaki, a former White House press secretary in the Biden administration.
“The fact remains that Trump is going to need to expand his voting base to win a general election.”
Psaki went on to declare that while Trump has “turned politics on its head,” it’s “very unlikely” that the Georgia booking will make independents and moderates in a number of U.S. cities “more likely” to vote for him.
“This photo will be shared on every text thread in America. Sometimes, images are more persuasive than anything,” Psaki wrote.
“And it is hard to imagine that this image, of Trump scowling into the police camera, will make him more appealing to anyone who is not already a hardcore supporter.”
Atlanta, Georgia – Former President Donald Trump poses for his booking photo at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday. Trump was booked on 13 charges related to an alleged plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Several Republicans have weighed in on the mug shot since its release including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who declared that the photo will win him the 2024 presidential election, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who referred to Thursday as a “sad day in America.”
Others including Ty Cobb, a former lawyer in the Trump White House, likened the former president’s mug shot look to a “Batman villain” while a Trump spokesperson argued that the release is “probably one of the best things” that has ever happened to the former president.
The release has reportedly pushed Trump-linked groups – and the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. – to fundraise off the mug shot, The Hill reported. The former president has raised over $7 million since being booked in the Georgia jail, the Trump campaign told the outlet on Saturday.
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Explosive New Footage Shows Roger Stone Hatching Trump’s 2020 Election Plot
MSNBC aired newly obtained footage on Wednesday evening showing Donald Trump ally and longtime GOP operative Roger Stone dictating what sounds a lot like the core of the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In the video, Stone dictates a message saying that “any legislative body” can send their own electors to the Electoral College “on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud.”
No such evidence has ever been presented, and Trump and his allies lost in the courts at every turn, including in cases before judges Trump himself had nominated.
But Stone claimed state legislatures could overturn those results anyway to “accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud.”
He also said Trump allies must lobby via “personal contact” with lawmakers, which is what happened, in many cases with Trump himself calling and pressuring people to overturn the election results.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber notes it’s not clear what Stone did next or whether this message was actually given to Trump and used by his team. If it was, the footage could show just how early in the process the scheme was hatched, as it was recorded on Nov. 5, 2020 ― two days after Election Day and two days before the results were called for Democrat Joe Biden on Nov. 7.
“It sure is bad, it sure is incriminating, for people trying to say all they wanted to do was get to the real results or act on a good-faith belief,” Melber said. “You were trying to steal and overthrown an election you hadn’t even officially lost yet.”
The video was given to the network by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, who made a documentary about Stone and the 2020 election called “A Storm Foretold.”
The plot is now at the core of a federal indictment against Trump in Washington, D.C., as well as a state racketeering case against the former president and his allies in Georgia.
Attorney and former federal prosecutor John Flannery told Melber that the footage could be “powerful” for prosecutors, who could use it to show “knowledge and intent” behind the plot to overturn the 2020 election.
See the clip ― and the discussion ― below:
Guldbrandsen told The Daily Beast earlier this year that Stone at times seemed to forget he was wearing a mic and in one case became “really, really anxious” about the recordings afterward.
In previously released clips, Stone is heard calling Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, an “abortionist bitch” and warning that Donald Trump would get his “fucking brains beat in” if he ran again.
He has not commented on the new footage but has suggested in the past that the clips could be “deep fake” videos.
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Kamala Harris Says She’s ‘Worried’ About Voter Turnout Ahead Of 2024 Election
Vice President Kamala Harris declared that she’s “worried” about voter turnout as she appeared to knock Republicans for “unapologetically” proposing and passing laws that make voting difficult.
In an interview with MSNBC host the Rev. Al Sharpton posted Saturday, Harris weighed in on whether she’s concerned about turnout especially among Black people ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“I am always concerned about turnout, whatever election we are talking about. Because let us — in a moment where we thank everybody for what they did to turn out in 2020 — appreciate that it takes an effort to turn out to vote,” said Harris, who remarked on “obligations” of those working multiple jobs and taking care of children.
The vice president went on to explain that people who have the “most at stake” in the election are often those who are least likely to have the luxury of taking time out from their day to cast a ballot.
“I’m worried about it because I also know that there has been a lot of effort and laws that have been passed to try and make it more difficult for people to vote,” she later said.
“I mean, can you imagine, Rev? In the United States of America, we went through all these fights — the March on Washington, John Lewis, all that — and these so-called leaders who are so bold as to unapologetically propose and pass laws to make it more difficult for the American people to vote. The gall,” she added.
Republicans have pushed for more restrictive voter requirements in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
The “rush to restrict voting access after the 2020 election has waned somewhat this year,” the Brennan Center for Justice noted in a June report, although it still has hit “near record highs.”
There have been at least 13 restrictive voting laws enacted this year, which “surpasses the total number of restrictive laws enacted in any year in the last decade except 2021,” the center said.
“I do worry that we have to do everything we can to remind people of why it’s important and also fight against those people who are trying to make it difficult,” Harris said of voting.
Watch more of Harris’ interview with Sharpton below.
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Harvard Law Professor Spots 1 Major Flaw In Case Against Trump
Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe called the indictment against Donald Trump “brilliant,” but said there’s one factor that could render the whole thing moot: Timing.
“I do think that [Attorney General] Merrick Garland did not proceed as fast as he might have,” Tribe said on MSNBC on Tuesday evening.
As a result, the case against Trump over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol could drag on into the next presidency.
“If the next presidency is held either by Donald Trump or by one of his acolytes or by virtually any Republican, there is the horrible prospect that this will all be wiped away,” he said. “And that it will be relegated to a kind of a historic footnote.”
Tribe said it’s a reminder of how “vulnerable and fragile” the legal system is.
“We have a system that might go too slowly, that might be too opaque,” he said. “And a system that is not at all guaranteed to triumph over politics.”
See his full discussion with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell below: