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The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell - Season 13 - Episode 15
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00:01There is exactly one politician in history who sued a newspaper for publishing a poll.
00:08There's only one politician in American history who is so constitutionally illiterate
00:15that he actually thinks you can sue a newspaper for commissioning and publishing a political poll.
00:21And now he's threatening to do it again because the New York Times published a poll showing
00:26only 32 percent of Americans think they are better off with Donald Trump as president
00:33than they were with Joe Biden as president.
00:3649 percent say they are worse off and 19 percent say it's about the same.
00:42The New York Times poll published today that has provoked Donald Trump's newest absurd and empty threat
00:48to sue over a poll shows that 56 percent disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling
00:56his job as president.
00:58The poll shows that Donald Trump has lost the voters that gave him the electoral college.
01:04The swing voters who swung from Joe Biden in 2020 to Donald Trump in 2024 have swung back
01:10away from Donald Trump.
01:12Donald Trump has lost them on the most important issues in the poll.
01:17And so you are not alone tonight in America if you disapprove of the way Donald Trump is
01:24managing the federal government.
01:26You are part of the 56 percent majority who thinks that.
01:32You're not alone tonight if you disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling Venezuela.
01:37You are joined by 53 percent of the country.
01:41You are not alone tonight if you disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling
01:45the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
01:48You are part of the 54 percent who feel that way.
01:52You're not alone tonight if you disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling immigration
01:57and the economy and relationships with other countries.
02:02A powerful 58 percent majority disapproves tonight of how Donald Trump is handling those three issues.
02:09Immigration, the economy, and relationships with other countries.
02:14That is the same amount of disapproval Donald Trump faces now in how he's handling the war
02:21between Russia and Ukraine.
02:24Fifty-eight percent disapproval.
02:27And on the final two numbers, the final two issues, the numbers get much worse.
02:34On the issue that was widely considered the most important issue in the last presidential campaign,
02:39Donald Trump now has a 64 percent disapproval rating because 64 percent disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling
02:50the cost of living.
02:51That's what the last campaign was supposed to be all about, the cost of living.
02:57And the swing voters reportedly swung to Donald Trump because of the cost of living,
03:02and now they all disapprove of what Donald Trump has done to them, what he has done to their cost
03:09of living.
03:11And there's only one number in the poll that is even worse for Donald Trump.
03:17It's the worst number in the poll.
03:19It's the kind of sky-high number that is seldom seen in issue polls like this.
03:26And it is the reason this program has focused so much attention on this issue over the course of the
03:35last year.
03:36It is the issue that has separated more voters from Donald Trump than any other issue.
03:46You are not alone tonight in America if you disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the Epstein files.
03:58Sixty-six percent disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the Epstein files.
04:03Seventy-four percent of independents disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the Epstein files.
04:09And a full twenty-five percent of Republicans now disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the Epstein files.
04:16And that is as high a disapproval among Republicans as it gets for Donald Trump.
04:22There are Trump voters who support Donald Trump on every issue, no matter what.
04:26A 77-year-old man in Dedham, Massachusetts, told the New York Times in his response to the polling questions,
04:32quote, I mean, Donald Trump could look at me in the face and tell me to go screw myself and
04:37I'd say thank you.
04:40Separating Trump voters from Donald Trump is the most difficult political exercise anyone has ever tried to do.
04:48But a dead man is doing it.
04:52From the grave, Donald Trump's old friend Jeffrey Epstein is separating more voters from Donald Trump than any issue ever
05:00has.
05:02Donald Trump's relentless campaign to keep the Epstein files hidden has ended up revealing the real Donald Trump
05:09in a way that his voters can now easily understand.
05:15Tonight, Donald Trump is in his thirty-third day of violating the law that requires the release of the Epstein
05:25files.
05:25Full release, all the files.
05:28It is part of the long list that proves Donald Trump's sheer hatred of the rule of law.
05:36It's not that Donald Trump doesn't respect the rule of law.
05:39It's not that Donald Trump doesn't understand the rule of law.
05:41It's that he hates the rule of law.
05:45The law must never apply to him.
05:48Donald Trump has abused every concept of the rule of law that has been observed by all other politicians throughout
05:54our history.
05:55He has done it on the civil side of our law and on the criminal side of our law.
06:00Suing the Des Moines Register for issuing a poll in the last presidential election?
06:05That's Donald Trump's hatred of the civil rule of law that says you can't do that.
06:12There's a First Amendment.
06:13You can't do that.
06:14Donald Trump wants to close down television networks if anyone on the network says anything negative about Donald Trump,
06:20because he hates the rule of law that prevents that from happening.
06:26Today, the man who tried to force Donald Trump to submit to the criminal rule of law by indicting him
06:31for a conspiracy against the United States
06:34in trying to overturn the presidential election and for violations of the Espionage Act in his illegal possession of classified
06:41documents,
06:43explained the aspects of his investigation of Donald Trump that he is allowed to discuss publicly at the House Judiciary
06:53Committee.
06:55And while former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was testifying,
06:58Donald Trump from Air Force One issued a social media post saying, quote,
07:04Jack Smith is a deranged animal.
07:09Republicans on the committee who defend language like that all the time, only when it comes from Donald Trump
07:15and whose relationship to the truth is identical to Donald Trump's kept insisting that Jack Smith was an unfair prosecutor
07:24who took orders directly from Joe Biden, even though Jack Smith has never spoken to Joe Biden.
07:29And all of the pathetically lying Republicans on the committee support Donald Trump's public instruction to his owned and operated
07:40federal prosecutors now at the Trump Justice Department
07:43to prosecute people in that same post.
07:48Donald Trump, of all people, called Jack Smith the deranged animal.
07:53He said, quote, hopefully the attorney general is looking at what he's done.
07:59Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and every president you can name between Richard Nixon and Donald
08:06Trump
08:06never did that, never thought about doing that.
08:09They never told the attorney general who they should be investigating and prosecuting.
08:14Donald Trump violates that principle all the time, and he does it publicly.
08:18Three hours later, Donald Trump said, quote,
08:20there is no question that deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions.
08:26You could not ask for a more flagrant, screamingly obvious proof of a president personally ordering prosecutions than what Donald
08:35Trump put in writing today,
08:36while lying Republicans on that committee were trying to pretend that Joe Biden or any other president would ever do
08:43anything like that.
08:45The Republican questions of the committee today ranged from the ignorant to the idiotic.
08:53I want to start by saying that starting out, I was not real familiar with this issue.
08:59In fact, when the chairman of the committee told me we had Jack Smith coming in, my first response privately
09:05was, who's Jack Smith?
09:07And so my one question for you, Jack Smith, is, are you familiar with the Vietnamese city of Ben Trey?
09:17Other Republicans asked repeated, pointless questions about how Jack Smith was appointed special prosecutor,
09:23but not one of them discussed the actual evidence that Jack Smith called proof beyond a reasonable doubt
09:30that Donald Trump committed the crimes of conspiracy against the United States and violations of the Espionage Act.
09:36The first sentence Jack Smith spoke to the committee today in his opening remarks was, quote,
09:43I love my country.
09:46He has said, he said in his testimony that he has no party loyalties.
09:52And then Jack Smith said this.
09:55President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law,
10:01the very laws he took an oath to uphold.
10:05Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions,
10:10as alleged in the indictments they returned.
10:14Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election,
10:17President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results
10:21and prevent the lawful transfer of power.
10:25After leaving office in January of 21,
10:28President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club
10:33and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.
10:41Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom.
10:47Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt
10:50that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.
10:56This is what Jack Smith said about the principle he has dedicated his life to,
11:01the rule of law.
11:05After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings,
11:09I have seen how the rule of law can erode.
11:13My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long
11:19that many of us have come to take it for granted.
11:24The rule of law is not self-executing.
11:28It depends on our collective commitment to apply it.
11:33The collective commitment to apply the rule of law was not present in the House Judiciary Committee hearing room today.
11:39The Republican side of that committee, along with almost all of the Republican House representatives
11:44and almost all of the Republican Senate,
11:47have abandoned the rule of law to embrace the rule of Donald Trump.
11:50And for that, history will reward them with nothing but disgrace.
12:00Leading off our discussion tonight is Professor Lawrence Tribe,
12:03who has taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School for five decades.
12:06Professor Tribe, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
12:09And I want to begin with you tonight on this point that Jack Smith raised,
12:14that we just heard him say, his fear.
12:15He says,
12:16My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long
12:21that many of us have come to take it for granted.
12:25I think that certainly applies to me, certainly at the beginning of the Trump era.
12:29I had come to take it for granted.
12:31He said the rule of law is not self-executing.
12:34It depends on our collective commitment to apply it.
12:38What is your assessment of the status of the rule of law in America tonight?
12:46I think the rule of law is in grave danger.
12:51It's in danger in part because, as Jack Smith so eloquently said in his closing,
13:00we take it for granted.
13:02We assume, almost as we assume that there is air to breathe and land to walk on,
13:11we assume that the rule of law is just there.
13:14And for most of us, much of the time, it is.
13:18We obey the rules of traffic.
13:21We file our taxes, even though the tax collector doesn't come knocking,
13:26except very rarely.
13:29But there are people in this country for whom the rule of law has ceased to apply.
13:36The President of the United States, those immediately around him,
13:42those who take his orders,
13:45those who commit violent acts and storm the Capitol,
13:51only to be pardoned en masse by Donald Trump.
13:56Now, that's extremely dangerous.
14:01And one of the reasons that it's happened is that we have gotten accustomed
14:07to multiple realities.
14:10There is the reality that most of us see with our eyes, hear with our ears,
14:15and there is the reality that is fed to us through fake issued statements through Donald Trump
14:25and his truth, ironically named, social.
14:30It was so surreal to have Republican after Republican today lying about things we all saw,
14:41things they saw about January 6th, in a room full of people,
14:47including both members of Congress and Capitol Police, who were there.
14:54Some years ago, that would have been breaking news.
15:02Members of Congress, members of Congress, obviously lying about things that happened in front of them.
15:10And when you look at the questions they asked to try to dent the powerful summation that we heard today
15:18of the overwhelming evidence of four grave felonies by Donald Trump
15:25related to overturning a lawful election and 40 more felonies involving stealing highly classified information
15:37and hiding it in bathrooms and ballrooms and other places where foreign spies could even see it.
15:46The kinds of questions that they asked to deal with that calm, compelling testimony
15:54had nothing to do with actually undermining it.
15:59They quibbled in some questions about exactly what details accompanied the first taking of the oath
16:09by Jack Smith, perhaps when he was overseas, but if there was any technical problem,
16:16it was irrelevant and it was cured.
16:20They asked questions, really amazing questions, about wasn't it odd
16:25that it was only the telephone records of Republicans in Congress
16:32that were subpoenaed by Jack Smith?
16:36You would have obviously expected that when he's looking for the people that Donald Trump telephoned
16:45to find out when he called them and how long the call lasted.
16:50Sure, he would have expected that he would have sought the phone records of Democrats.
16:56He would be very likely to have called Democrats when it was Republicans that he was trying to force
17:05into helping him stay in power.
17:11On top of that, there was all this nonsense about Cassidy Hutchinson.
17:17She was talking about what others told her.
17:22That's called hearsay.
17:24Of course, the rules that apply to the January 6th hearing didn't include a rule against hearsay.
17:30And anyway, all she was trying to do was prove something that Donald Trump admitted himself,
17:36namely that he wanted to accompany the mob to the Capitol.
17:43The way she tried to prove it was that somebody told her that he reached for the wheel of the
17:49limo.
17:50Well, maybe he didn't.
17:51But that was only relevant because it was another way of showing that he wanted to go with his mob
18:00to the Capitol.
18:01And he's admitted that he wanted to.
18:03So big deal about Cassidy.
18:05She almost certainly wouldn't have been called as a witness.
18:11There were things like, oh, another one that just amazed me was, yes, it wasn't Donald Trump who was responsible
18:19for trying to overturn a lawful election.
18:22It was Nancy Pelosi and the Capitol police.
18:29They're the ones who should have called the National Guard.
18:32But the law makes it absolutely clear that the one National Guard that is under the exclusive and complete control
18:42of the president is the National Guard of Washington, D.C.
18:47He doesn't have the right to call in the National Guard as a kind of military force to occupy Minneapolis
18:56the way he's tried to do or other places.
19:00The place he does have the power to call the National Guard is D.C.
19:05So what we witnessed was a bizarre saga in which we have a career prosecutor, no axe to grind, never
19:16talked to Biden, never talked to Garland, doing his job.
19:21The Republicans accusing him of being a partisan puppet, doing the bidding of the government, of the White House, at
19:33the very same time that the person who now occupies the White House is directing his Justice Department in the
19:42most partisan way possible to prosecute people like Jack Smith who are just doing their job.
19:48So we've got it's a kind of split screen reality.
19:52But what's at stake is not just these theatrics.
19:56What's at stake is the future of our country.
20:00Because what happened in 2020 when Donald Trump conspired to stay in power, despite losing, according to all 60 courts
20:12that looked at it,
20:13was a kind of dress rehearsal for what might happen in 2028, when it is not Kamala Harris or anyone
20:25like her who's going to be in the driver's seat.
20:27It's going to be J.D. Vance, who as vice president will be in charge of counting the ballots.
20:36So I worry that as the rule of law is on the chopping block, that our whole democracy is on
20:45the chopping block as well.
20:46We have to step up.
20:48We have to be courageous.
20:50Talk about courage.
20:52There was enormous courage witnessed today by Jack Smith, who's been threatened.
20:59His family's been threatened.
21:00But he does his job anyway, and he tells the truth.
21:06We have to be courageous.
21:08We cannot allow the rule of law and the Constitution that we take for granted to simply fade away.
21:17They are not self-executing.
21:19They take human effort to preserve.
21:24Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight.
21:29Thank you, Lawrence.
21:31Coming up, the thing Republicans feared most in today's testimony by Jack Smith.
21:38That's next with Andrew Weissman.
21:43The one thing that Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee today feared the most and refused to discuss
21:49was the evidence that Jack Smith developed to prove Donald Trump committed crimes.
21:56And so not one Republican had any response to this line of questioning from Democrat Pramila Jayapal.
22:05Did he pressure state officials to ignore true vote counts in those states?
22:13Yes.
22:14Did he spread lies and conspiracies to his followers to make them believe that the election had been illegally rigged
22:21against him?
22:23Yes.
22:23Did he pressure DOJ officials to stop the certification of the election?
22:30He did.
22:31Did he pressure his own vice president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification against the oath of office that he
22:38had sworn to the Constitution?
22:40He did.
22:41And when all of this didn't work, did he, Donald Trump, motivate and inspire an angry mob to the U
22:49.S. Capitol to stop the certification?
22:52Our proof showed that he caused what happened on January 6th, that it was foreseeable, and that he exploited that
23:01violence.
23:02Did Donald Trump know that his allegations of election fraud were lies when he spread them?
23:08Our proof was that he did, and we intended to prove that at trial.
23:14Today, it's now is Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and an MSNOW legal analyst.
23:19Andrew, I want to go to the last point that Jack Smith made, and that is, did Donald Trump know
23:24that he was lying when he was talking about the election?
23:29And Republicans on the committee, as you saw today, that was one of their favorite things, was to claim that
23:36Donald Trump believed his lies.
23:39And if Donald Trump believed what he was saying, then there's no fraud here.
23:47Yes, well, Jack Smith had an answer for that.
23:51So he pointed out the substantial evidence of people within his own administration, within his own campaign, who told him
24:03that he had lost.
24:04He pointed to evidence that Donald Trump was willing to believe anything that was as far-fetched and fanciful as
24:16could be imagined, if it would keep him in power.
24:19That he deliberately, according to Jack Smith's testimony, didn't seek out the advice and the opinions and the facts from
24:30people who actually would be able to tell him there was no fraud in the election.
24:34And that pattern happened over and over again.
24:37If it was information that would keep him in office and keep him in power, then he sought it out.
24:44If it was something against him, he did not.
24:47And that was, to me, very compelling.
24:51We, of course, do not have a trial.
24:54Unlike other countries that have held leaders to account, we get a giant F in terms of holding Donald Trump
25:03to account, at least federally, on both of these indictments.
25:08The other issue that they were stuck on was the idea that only phone records of Republican members of Congress
25:16were subpoenaed by Jack Smith, which, of course, harkens back to Watergate, where 40 people, 40 people were convicted of
25:27committing crimes for and with Republican President Richard Nixon.
25:30And all of them were Republicans.
25:33Big surprise, there were no Democrats conspiring with a Republican president then to commit crimes for and with the Republican
25:41president.
25:42And it looks like this case is the same thing.
25:46There were so many efforts to distract and to make arguments that just don't pass the straight face test and
25:58not deal with the actual evidence.
26:01There was just a dearth of dealing with what most of the members today experienced and witnessed themselves on January
26:126th and knew that there was a violent attack on the Capitol, what they themselves said about it at the
26:19time, about it being a crime and the president being responsible and the necessity for him to be held accountable.
26:28So the sort of cognitive dissonance that was going on was truly remarkable.
26:36I think that maybe the lowest point was one Republican turning to the Capitol Police and saying this was all
26:45their fault, as if that even if let's assume that was true.
26:50Of course, it's not that doesn't mean that it's their fault that the Capitol was attacked because they attacked the
26:58Capitol.
26:58What they were saying, what this person was saying is that these are Capitol Police that could have prevented this
27:05from happening.
27:06Well, you know who was in charge of the Capitol Police?
27:09You know who was the president at the time?
27:12Donald Trump.
27:13And Donald Trump didn't do anything beforehand to prevent it.
27:17And he certainly didn't do anything at the time to prevent it.
27:21It took hours and enormous convincing by people within the White House to get him to do anything, even after
27:28he issued a tweet that Jack Smith testified truly endangered his own vice president.
27:35Are we going to see the second Jack Smith report on the classified documents case?
27:41Wonderful question.
27:43That is a report that Judge Cannon has had issued an order that has been pending for about a year
27:55that has precluded that report from being seen.
28:01Now that is supposed to be it's supposed to be released in February.
28:07However, Donald Trump has now made an application to Judge Cannon to have it never be released.
28:16So we don't know what Judge Cannon will do with that.
28:19But I do suspect even if Judge Cannon were to grant that motion that she will be reversed for a
28:27third time by the Court of Appeals that oversees her.
28:31So that's a long way of saying that although Donald Trump is taking this last gasp to have it continue
28:39to be hidden from us, I think that we will see it, that I think the Court of Appeals there
28:44won't tolerate any more nonsense.
28:46Remember, it is the Court of Appeals that said to Judge Cannon, you really cannot sit on this motion and
28:53let it linger.
28:55You have to issue an order here so that if we disagree with it, we can we can overrule you.
29:03Andrew Weissman, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
29:06You're welcome.
29:07Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a former federal prosecutor, will join us next.
29:16I found Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the January 6th committee compelling, convincing and fully believable.
29:25And I still believe Cassidy Hutchinson, even though today Republicans tried to discredit some, just some of Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony
29:35to the January 6th committee because it was technically within the legal definition of hearsay, which does not mean that
29:45it wasn't true.
29:49When you returned to the White House in the motorcade after the president's speech, where did you go?
29:55When I returned to the White House, I walked upstairs towards the chief of staff's office and I noticed Mr.
30:00Renato lingering outside of the office.
30:03Once we had made eye contact, he quickly waved me to go into his office, which was just across the
30:07hall from mine.
30:08And when I went in, he shut the door and I noticed Bobby Angle, who is the head of Mr.
30:13Trump's security detail, sitting in a chair, looking somewhat discombobulated and a little lost.
30:20I looked at Tony and he had said, did you effing hear what happened in the beast?
30:26I said, no, Tony, I just got back.
30:30What happened?
30:33Tony proceeded to tell me that when the president got in the beast, he was under the impression from Mr.
30:41Meadows that the off-the-record movement to the Capitol was still possible and likely to happen, but that Bobby
30:47had more information.
30:49So once the president had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby, he thought that they were going up to the
30:55Capitol.
30:55And when Bobby had relayed to him, we're not, we don't have the assets to do it.
31:00It's not secure.
31:01We're going back to the West Wing.
31:04The president had very strong, very angry response to that.
31:11Tony described him as being irate.
31:15The president said something to the effect of, I'm the effing president.
31:20Take me up to the Capitol now.
31:22To which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.
31:28The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel.
31:35Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.
31:41We're going back to the West Wing.
31:44We're not going to the Capitol.
31:47Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.
31:51And when Mr. Oronato had recounted this story to me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.
31:59And was Mr. Engel in the room as Mr. Oronato told you this story?
32:04He was.
32:06Did Mr. Engel correct or disagree with any part of the story for Mr. Oronato?
32:12Mr. Engel did not correct or disagree with any part of the story.
32:17Did Mr. Engel or Mr. Oronato ever after that tell you that what Mr. Oronato had just said was untrue?
32:24Neither Mr. Oronato nor Mr. Engel told me ever that it was untrue.
32:31Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
32:34He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and former U.S. attorney, federal prosecutor in Rhode Island.
32:39Senator, from your federal prosecutor perspective, I want to get into this issue of hearsay.
32:45We all use hearsay in our lives all the time.
32:48Someone tells you, hey, I heard that house might be available.
32:51They haven't listed it yet.
32:52And sure enough, it is.
32:53It's hearsay.
32:54But now you have a new house.
32:56It was good hearsay.
32:57There are reasons why that kind of testimony is not allowed in court.
33:01But in congressional hearings, hearsay testimony and testimony like that is very common, isn't it?
33:09It certainly is.
33:10And in fact, it's actually allowed fairly regularly in court when there are circumstances that justify the admission of the
33:19hearsay testimony.
33:21You've got a ruling from the judge that says, yeah, you can go ahead with that testimony and then you
33:27can.
33:27I think this whole episode of the Republicans trying to rebut Ms. Hutchinson's testimony in the January 6th commission is
33:38a little peculiar because this was a hearing about Jack Smith and the prosecution of his criminal case against the
33:47president, which he has never had a chance to actually put before a jury.
33:52Because it has been obstructed by Republicans and by the Supreme Court, saying peculiarly that this president has an ultimate
34:04immunity.
34:06So that's an issue that would be worked out before trial had Jack Smith's case been allowed to proceed.
34:16And the real key with Jack Smith is his sworn testimony that I had the evidence sufficient to convict Mr.
34:25Trump beyond a reasonable doubt.
34:28And whether or not he used Ms. Hutchinson's testimony to do that is really beside the point.
34:35It shows what a struggle the Republicans were having today to try to deal with Jack Smith, that they had
34:41to go back to the January 6th commission and to testimony that may or may not have even been offered
34:47in a criminal case of United States versus Donald Trump.
34:52And prosecutors and lawyers making cases usually talk to more people than they end up using on the witness stand
35:01in court.
35:02Sometimes they make the decision on the spot, make a decision.
35:05We're not going to go to that witness. And it's not there's no negative inference to be taken about the
35:10witness who they don't use.
35:12And many of these witnesses, especially when they're talking about hearsay, are showing prosecutors avenues to pursue.
35:20She's telling you who else was in that room or, you know, talk to the two people who are in
35:24the room, see what they might tell you.
35:25That could lead you to somewhere else.
35:27So this idea that this perfectly normal testimony that she was giving in the committee somehow had no value was
35:37something that the Republicans were just obsessed with today.
35:42Yeah, completely standard stuff preparing for a criminal trial to look at the universe of available evidence and then pick
35:51within that universe the elements that will prove your case beyond that reasonable doubt.
35:58And by the way, one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule is for an excited utterance.
36:04And if you're to believe the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson about that circumstance, then what was going on in that
36:13the front of the beast with the president swearing and seizing at the steering wheel and all of that, you
36:18know, that seems like it might fit a bit into the excited utterance theory.
36:22So it's not even clear that testimony on that subject by Ms. Hutchinson would not have been available.
36:30But when you look at the way he's described his case, that really isn't critical to any of his lines
36:38of proof.
36:38So I think this is a distraction and essentially a confession by the Republicans that they've got nothing on Jack
36:48Smith, nothing about the adequacy of his testimony to convict Trump for crimes and conspiracies.
36:56And so, you know, they go after Ms. Hutchinson.
36:59Senator Whitehouse, we're going to squeeze in a commercial break here and please stay with us, because when we come
37:03back, I want to ask you about something that Donald Trump is now taking credit for that was actually accomplished.
37:09Big surprise by a previous president when Donald Trump was in diapers and I mean, when he was in diapers
37:17the first time, I mean, you know, well, when he was a child, I know he's still a child, but
37:2475 years ago.
37:26OK, that's next.
37:30Once again this morning, Donald Trump took credit for something accomplished by a previous president.
37:38So what are you willing to pay for Greenland?
37:40Well, I'm not going to have to pay anything.
37:42We're going to have total access to Greenland.
37:44We're going to have all military access that we want.
37:46We're going to be able to put what we need on Greenland because we want it.
37:49We're talking about national security and international security.
37:54Donald Trump is actually right about that.
37:57We can build any military installation we want in Greenland.
38:00And we've been able to do that since Donald Trump was in diapers.
38:05I mean, when he was in diapers the first time when he was little.
38:10President Harry Truman negotiated the deal with Greenland after World War Two that is still in place today.
38:16We had as many as 13 military bases in Greenland in the past, and now it's down to one.
38:22But thanks to the Harry Truman agreement, the United States has always had the right to use Greenland in any
38:29way we want, just about any way the American military wants to.
38:34We could build almost as many bases as we want there, which makes everything Donald Trump has been saying about
38:39Greenland for the last six years all the more insane.
38:43And he will now continue to tell utterly ignorant Fox interviewers that he achieved some kind of deal in Greenland
38:51by talking not to anyone from Greenland,
38:54and not to anyone from Denmark, but to the Secretary General of NATO, who, of course, did not negotiate a
38:59deal with Donald Trump on Greenland.
39:01There is no new deal on Greenland.
39:04We will continue to be operating under the Truman deal, and Donald Trump will continue to lie about it.
39:12Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is back with us.
39:15Senator Donald Trump obviously achieved nothing in Greenland, but there was no reason to try to achieve any of it
39:21because Harry Truman had already done it.
39:24Yeah, this has been the case for a long time.
39:26I've actually been to our existing base in Greenland called Tule, which is an airstrip and has, you know, information
39:33detection equipment.
39:36The agreement that was reached allows us to open ports, bases.
39:40It's about as broad a defense capability agreement as one could imagine.
39:47And what's striking is that for all these months, while Trump has been making these threats that have been highly
39:54destructive and disruptive to NATO, this has been true the entire time.
40:00And it's hard to imagine that there isn't one person in the White House or in the Defense Department who
40:06didn't tell him,
40:07Mr. President, we can already do everything that you want us to do.
40:12Here's the list of all the things we're allowed to do.
40:15All you have to do is go and execute on this existing agreement, which again makes you think, OK, if
40:24he has the power already under the Truman agreement to do essentially everything he needs for our national security in
40:31Greenland,
40:31in addition to the base we already operate there, then why all the big talk that is so disruptive to
40:39NATO?
40:40And all I can say, Lawrence, is that everybody in Europe got hurt by this stupid talk.
40:47The United States of America got hurt by this talk.
40:51NATO got hurt by this talk.
40:53The one big winner from the president's disruption of NATO is Vladimir Putin.
41:03We're going to have to leave it there tonight, Senator, we're out of time, but that is the perfect spot
41:07to end it.
41:07Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us.
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