Watch The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell full episode – April 4, 2026 on MSNOW Breaking News Today.  Lawrence O'Donnell delivers in-depth political analysis, White House updates, congressional investigations, Supreme Court rulings, and breaking develop - video Dailymotion

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Watch The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell full episode – April 4, 2026 on MSNOW Breaking News Today.  Lawrence O'Donnell delivers in-depth political analysis, White House updates, congressional investigations, Supreme Court rulings, and breaking developments shaping American democracy. This episode features expert commentary, exclusive reporting, and real-time coverage of the biggest stories in U.S. politics and global affairs.  In This Episode:  Breaking White House developments  Congress and Senate investigations  Supreme Court legal rulings  Biden administration updates  Election 2026 campaign coverage  U.S. national security briefings  Global political analysis  Stay informed with trusted journalism from MSNBC.  Subscribe for daily breaking news, political analysis, and full episodes.  The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell April 4 2026  MSNOW live today  White House breaking news  US politics today  Supreme Court breaking news  Congress investigations  Election 2026 news  American politics today Breaking news USA #TheLastWord​ #LawrenceO​'Donnell  #MSNOWBreakingNews​ #USPolitics​ #WhiteHouseToday​ #PoliticsToday​ #AmericaNews​ #Election2026​ #CongressNews​ #SupremeCourt​

Transcript

00:00Well, Donald Trump is going to address the nation tomorrow night at 9 p.m., and it appears

00:06he will be announcing his surrender in his war in Iran after he made his own personal

00:12surrender as clear as he possibly could this evening.

00:18Does Iran have to make a deal for the U.S. to end its operation in Iran?

00:23No, no.

00:25That is Donald Trump surrendering from the first objective he announced in his war four

00:31weeks ago, which was, remember, the words unconditional surrender, those two words.

00:38Unconditional surrender, of course, means, as we saw at the end of World War II, the surrendering

00:43country officially signing the surrender agreement, in which then both Germany and Japan at the

00:49end of World War II agreed to never fire a shot at the United States of America again

00:54and give the United States of America, in effect, complete control over their countries for the

00:59foreseeable future in 1945.

01:02That's what unconditional surrender was and is.

01:07Donald Trump quickly backed off his objective of unconditional surrender at the beginning

01:11of his war, within the first few days of his war, and to completely incomprehensible objectives,

01:19if there were any, that no one waging Donald Trump's war could ever explain to anyone.

01:25And when, much to Donald Trump's surprise and shock and amazement, Iran did the obvious

01:32in closing the Strait of Hormuz and shutting down 20% of the world's oil shipments, as well

01:36as crucial helium shipments and other important shipments through the strait, Donald Trump's

01:42new objective in his war became opening the Strait of Hormuz, that was closed only because

01:51of his war.

01:52Donald Trump kept threatening Iran with greater and greater versions of what he called obliterating

01:59Iran.

02:00If Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz by a certain deadline, sometimes two days away,

02:05sometimes five days away, and as those deadlines approached, each one of them, Donald Trump,

02:12of course, as Wall Street expected, and as Wall Street put it, chickened out.

02:19Wall Street is where the term taco was coined, meaning Trump always chickens out.

02:23And Donald Trump has, as Wall Street says, chickened out on every one of his ultimatums

02:29that he has issued to Iran in his war, including the one that he issued yesterday.

02:35At 7.26 a.m., when Donald Trump said in writing for the world to see if for any reason

02:42a deal is not

02:43shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately open for

02:49business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their

02:55electric generating plants, oil wells, and cargo island, and possibly all desalinization plants.

03:01So there was Donald Trump threatening to commit war crimes by destroying life-sustaining civilian

03:07infrastructure. And he said he was going to do it immediately. That was his time frame,

03:15immediately. He said he was going to do it, quote, if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for

03:22business. For everyone else in the world, immediately means immediately. For Donald Trump,

03:28it means nothing, because as Wall Street knows, Trump always chickens out. So that was yesterday.

03:34The Strait of Hormuz has to be opened immediately. That was the objective, the full objective of

03:39Donald Trump's war yesterday. And this morning, when Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense was asked,

03:45quote, on the Strait of Hormuz is opening the Strait an essential objective,

03:50Pete Hegseth refused to answer the question in any way and wandered off talking about something else

03:56entirely. And then Donald Trump ended his day in a discussion with White House reporters after

04:01issuing a flagrantly unconstitutional and illegal executive order trying to seize control of mail-in

04:07balloting in American elections, which we'll discuss later in this hour. Donald Trump said Iran

04:14doesn't have to do anything anymore. They don't have to do anything for him to end his war.

04:24Does Iran have to make a deal for the U.S. to end its operation in Iran?

04:28No, no. As the stock market was sinking again today, Donald Trump desperately tried to get the

04:36word out through talks with individual reporters that he was going to end his war very soon. But when

04:43reporters got to question him this evening, he announced to the world that he was issuing his

04:48unconditional surrender on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

04:55I think that the people understand it. We'll be leaving very soon. And if France or some other

05:02country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the Strait and Hormuz Strait. They'll go right

05:11up there and they'll be able to fend for themselves. Look, the problem with the Strait, a guy can take

05:16a mine, drop it in the water and say, oh, it's unsafe. It's not like you're taking out an army

05:22or

05:22you're taking out a country or you know, they can drop it. Or you can take a machine gun from

05:26the

05:26shore and shoot a little few bullets on a ship or maybe an over the shoulder missile, small missiles.

05:33Uh, that's not for us. That'll be for France. That'll be for whoever's using the Strait. But I think

05:41when we leave, probably that's all cleared up. No kidding. When you leave Donald, the Strait of

05:51Hormuz will be all cleared up. As soon as you leave, you're the one who shut it down with your

05:57war. And you

05:58are the one who will open it up with your surrender in your war. This program has resisted the edge

06:06of

06:06the seat coverage about every movement of each aircraft carrier that is headed to the Middle East or

06:12the latest announcement of the number of troops being moved toward the Middle East because those

06:17announcements have never once included the commitment of the kind of forces, the number of

06:24forces that would be needed to invade Iran. And no, 50,000 troops is not enough to invade a country

06:32of

06:3391 million people. That's a little bit bigger than the New York City Police Department. So no,

06:39that's not enough. And Donald Trump knows that, knows that all those announcements he's made of

06:45troop movements are not enough. Iran knows that they're not enough. Donald Trump's defense secretary

06:50knows that. Moving 50,000 troops is a stunt so that Donald Trump can pretend when reporters ask

06:56about what they like to call boots on the ground that he has options when he does not have any

07:00options and he knows it. And so Donald Trump pre-announced his surrender tonight with reporters

07:07when he also eliminated what has been the edge of the seat speculation indulged in other corners of the

07:13news media about whether Donald Trump would send in soldiers and marines to get in there

07:17and seize Iran's uranium stockpile so they won't ever have the raw material necessary

07:23again to make a nuclear weapon. And remember, Donald Trump's stated objective at the beginning

07:28of his war was that Iran would never, ever be able to have a nuclear weapon. And now,

07:35Donald Trump has surrendered on that objective.

07:40In a fairly short period of time, we'll be finished. They will not be able to do a nuclear weapon

07:45for

07:46years. And when they already, maybe in a long time from now, able to do a nuclear weapon,

07:53you'll have a president that will be like me and that he will go there and he'll knock the hell

07:58out of

07:58them again because they cannot have a nuclear weapon.

08:03Okay. So we've gone from unconditional surrender to some years from now, another president is going

08:11to have to do the same thing. And that other president will be just like me, Donald Trump.

08:16No, Donald, there will not be another president like you. And so Donald Trump is ending his war with,

08:22as was reasonably predicted here and elsewhere from the start of his war, absolutely nothing to show

08:29for it. The same crushing dictatorial regime is in place. And every single thing Donald Trump has done

08:37with Iran since he first became president has made the situation worse for the world and for the people

08:43of Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated the deal that Donald Trump has failed to negotiate

08:49with Iran in which Iran put in writing that they would not develop a nuclear weapon. Secretary of

08:55State Kerry brought that deal back to President Obama, complete with a mechanism for monitoring that

09:02deal, thereby accomplishing the single greatest diplomatic negotiation of the nuclear age. A singular

09:09achievement in the history of foreign policy anywhere in the world. And Donald Trump ripped it up.

09:19The Kerry-Obama nuclear deal with Iran co-signed by our oldest allies, France and the United Kingdom,

09:27along with Germany and China and Russia. Yes, Russia. No one has been able to get all of those

09:34countries to agree on anything since then. And Donald Trump will never get those countries to agree on

09:39anything. The stock market and the price of gas have been in control of Donald Trump's war from the start.

09:44And so now, with the stock market suffering its worst quarter in four years, Donald Trump is doing

09:49a very good job of sounding like the hopeless loser of his own war. In a phone call with CBS

09:55earlier

09:55today when he was asked about the possibility of somehow removing Iran's enriched uranium stockpile,

10:02which was an objective of which was an objective of his war, he actually said,

10:07I don't even think about it. I just know that, you know, that's so deeply buried, it's going to be

10:14very hard for

10:15anybody. First, it was an objective of Donald Trump's war. And then, in his surrender, I don't even think about

10:24it.

10:25That is how a madman wages war in the 21st century. The material of war is the stuff of video

10:33games for

10:34these people. As the Trump team has made clear in their releases of demented videos of explosions in

10:40Iran mixed in with footage from Hollywood movies and football games, utterly goofy, childish stuff,

10:46only deliverable by the people who think war is some kind of game and that bombs and planes and

10:53helicopters are toys.

10:57There was a viral video this week. I don't know if you saw it. Army helicopters hovering near Kid Rock's

11:02house in Nashville. Did you see that video?

11:03I didn't see it, no, but I'm sure they had a good time.

11:07He's lying, of course. And of course, he did see it. And I'm sure they had a good time is

11:13the wrong

11:13answer for the misuse of army helicopters at Kid Rock's house. Now watch Donald Trump,

11:20the slowest student in the room, after he figures out that that was the wrong answer.

11:27Well, it depends. Are they, well, they probably shouldn't have been doing it. Yes,

11:36you're not supposed to be playing games, right? But I'd take a look at it. They're like Kid Rock.

11:41I like Kid Rock. Maybe they were trying to defend him. I don't know.

11:46So the commander in chief of the American armed forces says he does not know if army

11:53helicopters under his command were at Kid Rock's house to defend Kid Rock. And you have your choice

11:59here. And Donald Trump's answer, he was telling the truth, in which case he is unfit for the

12:04presidency or for even being given the keys to a car. Or Donald Trump was doing his pathological

12:09lying as usual, in which case he is unfit for the presidency. The country is at war. Donald Trump's

12:16war and his military helicopters are playing games at Kid Rock's house. And he pretends that he doesn't

12:22know about it. And then he says he doesn't care or he really doesn't know about it at all.

12:29Also today in the fourth week of Donald Trump's war, the war he cares about less than any wartime

12:36president in American history has ever cared about war. Donald Trump suffered a series of

12:41important defeats by federal judges, including a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issuing a

12:4635-page opinion stopping Donald Trump's building of a ballroom on the White House grounds this evening.

12:52Donald Trump was asked about that. But it was in one of those White House reporter questions that

12:58always asks at least two things at once. The first part of the question was about the possibility of

13:06Donald Trump's war ending soon, which seems like the most important question of the day with Donald

13:12Trump's war raging. And the second part of the question was about the thing Donald Trump cares

13:19about now more than anything else in the world. After you said today that the Iran war may be ending

13:28soon, the stock market closed much higher. Do you have thoughts on that? And also a judge just ordered

13:33you to stop construction of the ballroom. Are you planning to stop? Well, we'll appeal that,

13:38but it's not, I don't know, it's basically, I mean, I wrote, I wrote a part of his opinion,

13:45but basically he's saying I need congressional approval. And he's so wrong.

13:53And he went on for six minutes and 40 seconds, his longest answer of the day. And he never said

14:02a word about the first part of that question about his war in Iran.

14:09The glass, uh, it's bulletproof and it's ballistic proof. It's very thick. It's like that.

14:19And it's going 45 feet high. And every window is covered. Every door is covered. The roof is

14:25drone proof. We have secure air handling systems. You know, bad things happen in the air. If you

14:31have bad people, we have bio defense all over, we have, uh, secure telecommunications and communications

14:43all over. We have bomb shelters that we're building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities

14:54that we're building. We have all of these things.

15:01That's all under the ballroom. Seems to care about that a lot more than he cares about

15:07any member of the American military who might be in harm's way tonight in his war.

15:14And he gave a new reason for building the ballroom, saying the United States of America

15:22needs to build what Donald Trump calls the biggest ballroom in the world for the king of England.

15:33It's a very wet area. They used to call it a wetland, but I guess they don't do that for

15:38the White

15:38House, but it's essentially a wetland. And when it rains, you're in trouble. The water can go up to

15:43three to four inches over their shoes. It's not a good feeling for Prince, what, who was Prince Charles,

15:49who will be, who was, who will be here next, uh, couple of weeks is King Charles, who's a great

15:55guy.

15:56We don't want him to sit in a pool of water.

16:02That's the man who's waging war in Iran, the hallucinator in chief. Kings, as it happens,

16:10have managed to visit the White House many, many times without ever once sitting in a pool of water.

16:19Donald Trump is demonstrably mentally incompetent to be president of the United States or to perform

16:25any serious adult function. He proves that in new ways every day. And he finally is proving

16:32to more Trump voters every day that he has been lying to them from the start. Scott McConnell,

16:38the founder, along with Pat Buchanan of the American conservative in 2002, tweeted today,

16:45so, so ashamed and embarrassed to have voted three times for this person.

16:51What provoked his particular, this particular tweet at that moment was Eric Trump's tweet about

16:57Palm Beach International Airport now being officially defaced with the name President Donald

17:04J. Trump International Airport. In an article published today, Scott McConnell wrote, quote,

17:10Trump's successful effort to present himself as the peace candidate and my enthusiasm for his endeavor.

17:18Scott McConnell is now in the huge majority of people who polls show disapprove of Donald Trump's work

17:26as president and Donald Trump's war and is now, as he put it, so ashamed and embarrassed

17:31that he ever voted for Donald Trump. That was true of Nixon voters who were nowhere to be found just

17:39a

17:39few years after Richard Nixon was forced to resign the presidency in the middle of his second term.

17:43Nixon won 49 states in his reelection in 1972. And by 1976, you couldn't find anyone who voted for him.

17:55People just wouldn't admit it anywhere. Anyone who lived through that period can tell you. Millions and

18:02millions and millions of people felt what Scott McConnell now feels. They felt so ashamed and

18:10embarrassed that they voted for Richard Nixon for president. And so we have a right to hope tonight

18:16that shame and embarrassment will guide Scott McConnell and millions of other voters like him

18:22to more discerning choices the next time they are in a voting booth or filling out their mail-in ballot

18:28at home, which Donald Trump has tried to seize control of tonight with an executive order

18:33about mail-in ballots. Donald Trump's war on mail-in ballots is a more important war to him than his

18:39war in Iran. Donald Trump's war on mail-in ballots is a war on democracy here in the United States.

18:45And he spent today issuing his preliminary statements about surrender, about surrender in

18:51his war in Iran. At the same time, he launched a new attack tonight in his war on democracy in

18:56the United

18:57States, giving Trump voters even more to be ashamed and embarrassed about.

19:05Leading off our discussion tonight is Democrat Congressman Adam Smith of Washington State. He

19:10is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Congressman Smith, it sure sounds like

19:15at nine o'clock tomorrow night, we're going to hear the president of the United States explain why he's

19:20leaving Iraq and probably leaving out a bunch of the objectives that he's mentioned along the way.

19:26Yeah. I think I said Iraq, I mean Iran. You meant Iran, yeah. No, it's a very disturbing moment,

19:32because he decides to stop, and we're not actually in Iran, of course, we're bombing Iran. So what he

19:38really means to say is we're going to stop bombing Iran. And maybe he says that, but then where are

19:43we?

19:44We are worse off than when we started, and that's not even counting the costs of this war. The 13

19:49service members killed, the hundreds wounded, the thousands of civilians killed, the impact on

19:54the global economy, one more severe fracture to our alliance, as we saw NATO country after NATO

20:00country, you know, abandoning Trump's war today. So I don't know what he's going to say. Now, as you

20:06know, I mean, gosh, you've seen throughout this war, up, down, all over, sideways. You did a great

20:09job of summarizing that. But it sure seems like he's going to admit what all of us knew from the

20:15start,

20:15which was there was no point in starting this in the first place, and he's stopping it now.

20:20Now, he kept saying from the start, he said he could open the Strait of Hormuz immediately. He

20:25first challenged tankers and other ships just to go through, just to be brave and go through. Of

20:32course, that was an insane suggestion that no one took. And now he's just giving up, saying we,

20:37in effect, he said repeatedly today, we can't do it.

20:40Well, the other thing he said today, which was interesting, is he said, look,

20:43we're not that dependent upon the Strait of Hormuz. Other countries are dependent on it.

20:46You want your oil. You go get your oil. You didn't help us. We're not going to help you.

20:50It's like what those countries would say, hey, we had our oil before you came in and started blowing

20:57things up across the Middle East and shut it down. So maybe don't do that. And that will get us

21:02to

21:03the place that we want to be at. But it's really important also on the nuclear thing. Understand,

21:08we are no closer today to reducing Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon than we were on the

21:15day that he started this war. And you left out one of his better quotes on that, where he said

21:19at one

21:19point in this, look, I started this work as Iran was going to have a nuclear weapon. He even said

21:23at one point, and I think it was just him talking, they would have used it by now.

21:26Yes. They would have used it by now, which is really, really stupid, because obviously that

21:32wasn't going to happen. But he fought the war supposedly because of all of that. And he's no

21:37closer now after all of that destruction, after all of that money, after all of those deaths,

21:42after all of that disruption of the global economy. Not only is he not closer to reducing

21:48Iran's nuclear program, but Iran now has a greater incentive than ever to try to rush forward and build

21:55one because of the existential threat that he has presented to their regime. This,

21:59this war is an utter disaster. And, and I hope that people don't forget this and make him own

22:07this complete failure. And the person, Donald Trump person, waged this war also during his war,

22:14allowed sanctioned Iranian oil to be sold and sanctioned Russian oil to be sold, which would

22:21not be able to be on the market if he hadn't started his war. Yeah. He gave Iran 14, I

22:27think

22:27it's like $14 billion. It was somewhere between 10 and $15 billion. And we all remember how the

22:33Republicans lost their minds when there was $400 million that Iran was going to get. I think it

22:39was from South Korea. It was basically deals that had been made before the sanctions had been

22:44placed at least. And they said, this was the greatest portrayal our country had ever seen.

22:48And I can't do the math off the top of my head, but how much more $15 billion is than

22:52$400 million?

22:54Yeah, no, I mean, and this is what happens when you don't think, when you don't plan,

22:59when you simply react by, when you know it in your bones and you use your gut instead of your,

23:05well, I was going to say your intelligence. That's the wrong thing to say here about Trump.

23:08Your advisors, the people at the Pentagon, the other people who actually know and care

23:12about consequences of actions, not just acting and hoping for the best, but understand the

23:19consequences. Trump did not understand that. Congressman Adam Smith, thank you for starting

23:24us off tonight. You're going to be coming back when the Democrats win the House. You're the

23:28chairman of the Armed Services Committee. And this administration is going to be coming to you

23:32to authorize the rebuilding of these stockpiles of weapons that they've burnt off in this war.

23:37This is going to be a long aftermath. Thank you very much. Coming up, it was, as I've said,

23:43a very, very bad day in court for Donald Trump. And with a federal judge ruling that he can be

23:48sued for the January 6th attack in the Capitol, another judge ruling that Donald Trump's executive

23:52order denying funding to PBS and NPR is unconstitutional. And of course, a federal judge

23:57stopping Donald Trump from building what he calls the biggest ballroom in the world.

24:02All of that is next with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

24:07It was a very, very bad day for Donald Trump in court today. The latest tonight is a federal

24:14judge ruling that Donald Trump is not immune from being sued for the attack on the Capitol

24:20on January 6th, 2021 by sued by members of Congress and Capitol police officers who were victims of that

24:26attack. Judge Amit Mehta applied the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Donald Trump's criminal cases

24:32and still found enough of Donald Trump's conduct as described in the civil lawsuit to be outside of

24:40official presidential duties and that the lawsuits can continue against Donald Trump for January 6th.

24:49Also today, another federal judge stopped the construction of Donald Trump's White House

24:53adjacent ballroom saying that only Congress can approve such construction and that the president

25:00is not the owner of the White House, but merely the steward. And the day began with a federal judge

25:06ruling that Donald Trump's executive order barring federal funding of NPR and PBS is unconstitutional.

25:14Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

25:16He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Senator, let's go to

25:23the one that's closest to Donald Trump's heart, which is the ballroom, and a federal judge in a

25:29long opinion saying, you're not the owner of this place, you are just the steward.

25:36Yeah, he's an occupant. He's like a tenant. The voters put him in there for his term of office,

25:41but that doesn't mean he gets to destroy the place like any tenant gets to destroy the home of the

25:48landlord that they're renting. And Congress is where you go for authority to make changes in the

25:56building. It's the people of the United States through Congress that are the owner of that building.

26:01So that was, you're right. I think that was probably a tough one for him, but he is not a

26:08good week either. He lost the January 6th suit. He lost the ballroom suit. He lost the public

26:13broadcasting suit. He lost the Voice of America suit. He lost the anthropic AI suit. And he lost

26:21the Department of Defense press policy suit. And these weren't just arguments where the judges said,

26:30you know, we've come down on the other side. They actually threw arguments out using words like

26:36pretextual, which is a real danger sign for the government, because that imputes bad faith

26:44to the argument, bad faith to the government making the argument. So with all of these losses,

26:50and with that kind of language, Trump is in a real danger zone.

26:54So in the January 6th case, Donald Trump's lawyers actually tried to use

27:02rappers as Donald Trump's defense. Now, they came up with a theoretical rapper, as lawyers sometimes

27:08do come up with theoretical examples. And it was the idea that they presented to the judge in their

27:13brief, a theoretical rapper known for provocative and controversial lyrics, which might describe

27:18explicit violent acts. And, and how, you know, if that's allowed, then of course, Donald Trump can

27:25say whatever he wants in his speech at the Ellipse, telling people to go to the Capitol and fight like

27:30hell. The judge responds to that, but set by saying, but here is what is missing from the

27:35president's hypothetical. There is no contention that for weeks before the concert, the rapper told

27:40his fans and that the establishment had taken something valuable from them through fraud and

27:46deceit. No assertion that the rapper knew his fans had prepared to act violently on that very day,

27:51including by bringing weapons to the show to reclaim what was taken from them. And so that there's the

27:59judge finding that that lawsuit can go forward. And the crusher for Trump is going to be that he

28:06and other relevant witnesses like Rudy Giuliani and the folks in the beast driving him that day

28:16are potential witnesses. And in a civil proceeding, you can be deposed, you can be sat down at a table

28:23and forced to answer questions under oath. And if you lie, there are sanctions for lying under oath.

28:32And you're subject to cross-examined by good, smart lawyers who know the facts. And that is an

28:38environment in which Trump is going to do terribly. So I don't know what they're going to do by way

28:44of

28:44getting rid of this case. But if I were Trump's lawyer, I would do everything possible to make

28:48sure he did not have to go through a deposition because he would almost inevitably lie.

28:55And those are videotaped depositions now in cases like this.

29:01Yeah, it's public.

29:03Yes. But the only way out of it would be to somehow settle, to somehow say to the

29:08plaintiffs in the case, the members of Congress, the Capitol Police,

29:11here's how many millions of dollars I will give you.

29:15Which he would like to do with this Department of Justice, which loves to give away money

29:19to help him, even if not, even if there's not a real case. They just gave away over a million

29:25dollars to Mike Flynn, for instance. And so the sort of, you know, sue and settle deal

29:31for giving money away to Trump supporters with settlements, they call them. I put that in air quotes.

29:40It's kind of an established thing. And so I know he would like to go to Pam Bondi and say,

29:44well, let's go to the U.S. Treasury and have the taxpayers bail me out. You send

29:49the money over there. But because the judge has found that this was done not in his official capacity,

29:59he's not in a position to get the United States Treasury to bail him out. He is personally liable

30:06for acts that he has undertaken in his personal capacity. So, you know, the instinct to not ever

30:14have to write a check and pay and to think that he can bluster and lie his way through it,

30:20on Trump's

30:21part is going to be very strong. And his lawyers are going to have a hell of a time trying

30:25to

30:26protect him from himself. Because I promise you, if he gets into court and testifies,

30:31if he gets into a deposition under oath, he will lie.

30:35Yes. That's the one thing we know. Senator Whitehouse, we're going to squeeze in a commercial

30:39break here. And when we come back, I want to talk about this executive order Donald Trump issued

30:43tonight. Hugely important attack on democracy. Him trying to seize full control of mail-in ballots

30:51in the country. Donald Trump trying to decide in his federal government who is allowed to get

30:57a ballot. We're going to have more on that with Senator Whitehouse after this break.

31:04Today, a Florida voter who votes by mail said this.

31:13The cheating on mail-in voting is is legendary. It's horrible what's going on. And it's very clearly

31:21covered very, very clearly. So I think this will help a lot with elections.

31:29Legendary is a good word for it. Legend means really not true. One thing Donald Trump never

31:33mentions is the name of anyone who has ever cheated with a mail-in voting ballot. It is

31:39essentially a non-existent crime. And today, Donald Trump issued an executive order to the Postmaster

31:44General and the Department of Homeland Security, his Department of Homeland Security, ordering the

31:51Postmaster General who he appointed to seize control of mail-in ballots and invent a method with the

31:59Department of Homeland Security for delivering mail-in ballots only to people Donald Trump's Department of

32:07Homeland Security believes should receive mail-in ballots. Yes, you heard that correctly. Back with us is

32:16Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Senator, the early reviews from legal scholars on this one are,

32:22include phrases like wildly unconstitutional.

32:26Yeah, we'll start with the fact that this guy's polling is in the 30s.

32:30He's stuck us in a totally unpopular war. Corruption is everywhere in plain view.

32:39And people's cost of living is getting worse every day. So he's looking at that mess that he has made,

32:46and he's figuring, how do we get out of that? We've got to throw the election.

32:50And he's tried it with the SAVE Act. And in the House and in the Senate, his Republican

32:58members of Congress, with their usual spines of foam, have gone along with that effort. And, of course,

33:06they grab the Georgia election records. And we're going to find out what that's all about. But with

33:13this, with an executive order, he has now made himself subject to a lawsuit. And the segue to

33:22your last segment is that there's going to be litigation about this. He lost, for instance, his

33:27offshore wind executive order in a case up in Massachusetts. And now he's going to have to go

33:34into court this time, not with spines of foam Republican members of Congress, but into court

33:39and try to defend this. And there are some data points that are pretty interesting. Mike Lee of Utah

33:46has been the lead voice for Republicans on the SAVE Act. In Utah, the Republican Lieutenant Governor

33:54reviewed two million ballots and found that one person, one person out of two million,

34:04had registered without proving that he was a citizen, but he hadn't voted. So zero voters. And when a similar

34:10law passed in Kansas some years ago, they looked at the facts there and they found that 67 people

34:18over nearly 20 years had attempted to register without proof of citizenship. 67 people in 20 years.

34:28And the law going after those 67 people who may never have voted, they just attempted to register,

34:33was to disenfranchise 31,000 legitimate voting Kansans. So when they get into court and they have to answer

34:42to facts like that, it's a very different environment than if you're just asking your spines of foam

34:49Republicans in Congress to go to the floor and say what they're told. So, you know, I think they stepped

34:54in

34:55it with this one, and I'm really looking forward to that litigation.

34:58Senator, I'd like to here ask you for permission to steal the phrase spines of foam, which I'm

35:05writing down here for future use on this program. How about it? Thank you very much for joining us

35:11tonight, Senator. Thank you, Arthur. And coming up, our next guest wants the King of England to meet

35:18with Epstein survivors, some of whom might know the King's little brother, Andrew. When the King comes to

35:25Washington next month to meet with Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend, Donald Trump. Congressman Ro Khanna

35:33will join us next.

Watch The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell full episode – April 4, 2026 on MSNOW Breaking News Today. Lawrence O'Donnell delivers in-depth political analysis, White House updates, congressional investigations, Supreme Court rulings, and breaking develop

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