MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024
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Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you.

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Over the past weekend, we held a big event called Democracy 2024 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The whole day was a celebration of you, our viewers. My colleagues and I dug into the politics of this crucial election season, and we got to meet a bunch of you in person.

Thanks again for coming. But if you couldn't join us in person, don't worry. We don't want you to miss out on all the fun. So we're going to share some key conversations here for our podcast listeners. So sit back and listen to this mashup of a few segments we think you'll love. First up is Andrea Mitchell, Jen Psaki, and former Senator Claire McCaskill with an insider's take on the final sprint to Election Day.

And then you'll hear from Chris Hayes and legal scholar Kate Shaw, who happens to be Chris's wife, on the potential legal challenges surrounding the election and the Supreme Court's role in all of this. The next segment will feature Andrew Weissman and Ari Melber on how the legal problems facing the former president will or won't impact the upcoming election.

And finally, you'll hear from Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell on what's at stake for democracy in 2024. Thank you so much for joining us.

Okay. So we were all listening to the last panel and it sounds like you all now know the path to 270, what counties to watch, what Senate races to watch. I hope you all have your notebooks and everything. How would you all like to be a fly on the wall in an editorial meeting leading up to, I don't know if you've heard there's a debate coming up in a couple of days, or

a fly on the wall in a campaign and what it's like leading up to a presidential debate. So that's what we're going to do. We also may talk a little bit about gender because, you know, we're all women. So thank you guys for having us. Okay. So let me start with you, Claire, because as I noticed, I think everyone here who would have come and bought tickets knows there's a debate coming up. So we're all paying attention to it.

Right now, there is a lot happening on the Harris team. They're holed up in a Pittsburgh hotel room. They are doing mock debates. They're walking through Philippe Reines, who played Trump in 2016 when they practiced in advance of the debate Clinton did, is doing it again. Believe me, he can be. With the red tie. With the red tie. He can be as cuckoo. He puts a pillow in, too, so he's nice and fat. It's all of that. Exactly. Exactly. He's doing that.

They're hunkered down. They've been for days. You've been, you've won tough races. You've been in tough debates with some annoying people, I think it's fair to say. What's happening right now? And is Kamala Harris, is she freaking out? Is she playing Rocky music? I mean, what's happening? She's not freaking out. She doesn't freak out. One of the things that's happened over the last five, six weeks is America has figured out how much she was underestimated. Thank you.

I think if you go back and look at Kamala's debates, and she defeated an incumbent for DA in San Francisco. That's always a tough debate when you're going against the incumbent. Then she had, I thought, a very illuminating debate when she ran for the United States Senate that showed her focus on being strong,

But also, and I know it bugs women, I know it. I used to hate it when they said, you've got to be likable. But you do. Men and women both have to be likable. Because the American public, especially low-engagement voters, they know they're inviting you into their living rooms and their kitchens for four years.

They want it to be somebody they can feel like they could get along with. So she's focused on those two things and was in all of her previous debates. And then I think she's probably given a little thought on how she can bug him.

Maybe just a little bit of thought to that particular thing. Okay, so now we know what's happening a little bit in Pittsburgh in the hotel room. She also is very studious. She studies a lot. Almost too much. Almost too much. Almost too studious. There is such a thing. There is such a thing. When it comes to preparing for a debate. Now we know a little bit about that. Okay, Andrew, you've sat in on how many, you've moderated debates.

You've sat in on many editorial meetings about debates. So what's going on in the editorial meetings at ABC or other networks right now?

It doesn't have to be ABC. I mean any network that's preparing to cover this about what you're watching for, what you're looking out for, the clips you might pull for news packages. All of the above. And what we actually did when we were doing a big debate, a Democratic primary debate, Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, was in charge. We took ourselves, we were taken off the air for a couple of weeks. We went into a room, a separate room upstairs at 30 Rock,

with researchers, with fact-checkers, with producers. And we went through books, and we had the whole panel. It was Rachel and me and Ashley Parker, a great young reporter from the Washington Post. And you guys do mock debates too? We did. And with Kristen Walker, and we ask each other questions. You check, first of all,

How do you get them off their talking points? You want a real explanation of who they are. You want to show people, voters, people who are maybe low information or high information voters, people of all types. I mean, let's face it. Well, Kamala Harris needs...

She has a lot of Democrats, we think, you know, after the DNC. She needs, in a very tight race, she needs the people who are swing voters, independents, women, Republican women, people who might not be in tune with her, who might not know enough about her. And what they, what we need to do as moderators is...

Figure out what are the big issues that everybody wants to know about. Who are these people? How will they react to an emergency? But also, what are their basic answers on complicated questions? And I don't mean just saying, well, child care is child care. Okay? Okay?

Not like that. First of all, I can say as a mother of two small children that those words were not spoken by somebody who has ever thought about child care or dealt with child care for their own children. Right, exactly. I mean, it was just...

bizarre and that audience and elite, you know Wall Street big deal banker audience They may be clapping and applauding because they like tax cuts But the larger audience across America needs to know how we're gonna pay for it. Where do you really stand on deficits? You know, do you know the difference between a tariff and a tax and who gets affected? I mean these are really important questions and how do you get someone to show that in

And the moderator at a certain point, you know, you're stepping back because you want the two candidates to reveal themselves. But you have to do a certain amount of fact checking. So that's all the hard work that goes into prepping. Let me ask you a question that I as I like to say is on my college text chains. If anybody has these text chains with your friends from college who may not be as into politics as all of you. Why can't the moderators jump in more and fact check Trump in the moment? So people understand.

because it's a common one I get, and I think it's important for people to understand how you think about it when you're sitting in an editorial meeting and you're preparing to moderate a debate or cover a debate. Well, I actually think you do have to step in, and the way to do it is respectfully is to say, excuse me, that's not true, and what about this? But...

I mean, the point is you have to know more. You have to know the answer to every question that you're asking. You have to know more about it. You have to really study so that you can't get tripped up and, you know, you can't make a mistake. I mean, it's so high profile. And it's very, very tense. I think, frankly, not just because she's my friend and she's great and she's, you know, our colleague, but I think Kristen Welker proved in the last debate of the last general election the last time that she handled the pressure and, you know,

being, you know, straightforward and respectful, but holding people to account. And I think that's what the moderator has to do and make sure that no one is being stepped on and being treated

unfair. It's a hard question. The age of Trump is different. I think it's important. I knew we'd get a lot of applause the moment we said that the moderator should fact check because I run into these folks at the grocery store. Your own college tech store. Usually it's the grocery store, produce section. I can't get to the meat. I get stopped in the produce section. People say, I don't understand. You have to understand one of the things that can happen if a moderator takes an aggressive role, it becomes a debate

between the moderator and Donald Trump, not a debate between Harris and Trump. And the moderator's job is to make sure it stays a debate between the two of them. So, you know, take a deep breath and remember that if the moderator did everything you're longing for them to do, it would kind of turn into a shit show. Yeah.

Okay, Claire McCaskill. I was wondering if we could say shit show, but now Claire has answered the question. Okay, Claire, one of the moments I think I remember, we all remember from the 2016 debates, which was the last time Donald Trump debated a woman, was the creepy town hall situation. Now, don't worry, it's not set up like that at this debate. But what it made me think about is, Vice President Harris is not, I mean, she's obviously would be a historic president on multiple fronts.

She doesn't wear that on her sleeve. She didn't wear white the night of her speech. She does not talk often about being the first. What do you think? What does that tell us about her? You know her well. Why is that? I think she understands that to be elected president of the United States, you first have to convince the American public that you are qualified to do the job, that you are capable of doing the job. And some things can be left unsaid.

If you lead with that, then it becomes the topic. She doesn't want the topic to be her gender or whether she is black or whether she's South Asian, any of that. She wants the conversation to be about what she can do for you. That's what she wants the conversation to be about. Thank you.

The discipline she's showing about doing that, not going there. You do see a lot of pictures, which is not by accident, where she's doing, they call them OTRs or whatever they call them, when she's out and about. She stops for young girls.

If you've noticed, you see in the media, more often she is talking to young girls. That's sending that message without her having to say a word and a much more effective way to do it. But she wants to make sure the American people know she's ready to go toe-to-toe with Kim Jong-un. That's what she wants to do. It's really...

Yeah, well, Andrew, I don't want to ask you. I mean, you've covered the Clinton campaign very closely. You've covered other prominent female candidates. Is this a sign of progress? Is this a sign of a different strategy? I mean, what is it a sign of in your view? I think it is a sign of progress. It's so exciting to me as someone who broke into a business, frankly, where I was first...

The only woman in the newsroom in Philadelphia, pretty big town that I started out in. And in this radio, all news radio newsroom, I was, I only could get a job by working the night shift where I wouldn't be seen during the day. And I was called copy boy. I was a copy boy. So there's a lot that's changed. Hashtag copy boy. You know.

In our profession, just look at the women who are leading our networks. Our bosses are women. Our camera people are all kinds of editors and my colleagues and anchors. But the difference in politics has been so profound. I covered Hillary Clinton when she was, you know, the first lady in 1991 and 92. They were first running. So for all those years, I was a White House correspondent with them. And

She made it possible for Kamala Harris to not focus on gender. And it was so interesting to me that Kamala called Hillary before it was announced, right before it was decided. And they talked about all of this. Hillary Clinton, by talking so much about gender, and perhaps it was not a good tactic for her to emphasize it as much as she did,

made it possible for Kamala Harris not to have to talk about that. It is so obvious, as Claire says. And she didn't focus on that. Remember in that first interview, when asked about gender, she said, you know, next question, she's not going to recognize that he is attacking her on gender. It's so implicit. And the other piece of that is that she was so active after the Dobbs decision, so she has been the primary person

you know, advocate against Dobbs and for reproductive rights for the administration. That has been one of her signature roles. Yeah, no question. I mean, one of the things, and I have not won a difficult Senate race, nor have I been covering presidential politics since 1772, but I will tell you when I became the white house press secretary, um, the first day I, I was so relieved. Uh, I was, you know, it was an honor. It was thrilling. I was so relieved. And, uh,

this wonderful woman texted me and said, you did great. You did great. One suggestion, you should look like maybe you're wearing some makeup when you're out there. Um,

And it was not a bad thing. And I use this as an example because, and I want to ask Claire this, there are different, there are all sorts of pressures on women, right? Are you likable? Are you friendly? Are you approachable? Are you also strong and fierce? It's a lot of, I'm not going to do the Barbie monologue, but you get my gist here. There are also things that are very, campaigning is a lot of work on candidates and you

And you have to kind of look good for picture. I mean, what are the things that people aren't aware of that are challenging when you're running for high-level office as a woman? Well, I think one of the brilliant things that Kamala Harris has done is she has adopted a uniform. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

always was jealous because, you know, I couldn't decide, do I wear a suit like they do with a floppy little tie? Or do I, you know, can I wear pants all the time? Do I need to wear a dress? She just from day one said, it's pantsuit, baby. It's pantsuit. She rocks a pantsuit. And she rocks the pantsuit. It's going to be pantsuit all day long. I won't be surprised if she turns up in a pantsuit for the inaugural ball. But I think she has figured out

that if we focus on the things that are irritating to us as women, we take up too much energy. Like have you noticed how much he's embracing loving to cook? Yeah? I mean, I love that. You guys might have noticed I bake. Huge baker. So that is a huge progress because back in the day, if you were a woman candidate, when I first started running years ago,

You know, we would never... I never would have done that. When I was running for DA in Kansas City, I wouldn't even put my children in the picture because I was afraid they'd think, oh, she's going to be abandoning her children to be the prosecutor, and she's probably not tough enough to be the prosecutor. So look at the progress we have made. There has been huge progress. We can now cook, we can bake, and we can be commander-in-chief all at the same time. Absolutely. You know, and I...

Even someone at the pinnacle, we've got a Supreme Court Justice, Katonji Brown-Jackson, who, you know, and I know her from Washington. I know her as a clerk at the court. I know her as a judge, now a Supreme Court Justice. And she writes this book about the turmoil she felt because her husband was in medical school. She had two small girls. She was just beginning in her job and had to decide whether she could go and pick up the kids at school.

We all share that, whether we have kids, whether we're old or we're young. On gender, we share that, and that is a bond, and I've learned that in my profession with women reporters. Thank you.

That's unbreakable if you respond as people and don't feel you have to hide that part of your life. No, that's such a good... I will tell you, Andrea Mitchell is like the kindest person to other women. She is. It won't surprise you at all. It is very true. Very true.

- I'm gonna get to some audience questions and I could keep talking to you forever, but we have other panels. I did wanna ask you about, we always shorthand this as October surprises, by the way, it could be in September, who knows what could happen, but it's the things that are unexpected. So I wanna take you back into the editorial meetings and rooms, because by the way,

Every news organization, every campaign plans for all of the possible things that could happen. So you see where this is going. Andrew, what are the things, as a longtime journalist you're watching for, could happen, may not happen, but just over the next...

Around 60 days. 59 days, I think, yes. Just think about the Iran hostages and Jimmy Carter and what happened right before his election. The night before the election, he was out crisscrossing the country, flew back. I was standing on the South Lawn. He had to come back because there was a possibility they were going to be released. They were released immediately.

by Iran at 12.01 when Ronald Reagan had been just sworn in. That was the worst possible October surprise. There was Access Hollywood. That was a huge October surprise. It was a couple of days before the debate, and the debate had to be, you know, then the

the Trump campaign tried to trot out all of these women who had made accusations against Hillary's husband in the past and seat them in the front row. And the presidential debate commission wouldn't let the debate start until they moved them aside. I mean, just to,

create that stir and a distraction. So there are a lot of October surprises, and the fact is this is going to be a close election, everybody, and nobody should make a prediction about this. We could talk about blue walls, we could talk about 270, and Steve Kornacki is the expert, but he knows better than anyone anything can happen here. Ask Hillary Clinton about 11 days before when all of a sudden we're flying to Iowa and they come up with a new laptop and more emails, and then

You know, the FBI director says the two days before the election on a Sunday night, we're in New Hampshire. And he says, oh, never mind. We were wrong. And they saw the polls just go down. We all remember this. I'll just add. Remember, the Access Hollywood tape came out. I think we all remember where we were at that moment. It was the same day that the U.S. government and I was in the U.S. government at the time finally put out the statement that Russia was behind the hack.

right? So it was the same day, which is you forget. And it was like, oh, this is the same day. Well, it's okay. Access Hollywood, you know, that will change things. It didn't. Anyway, Claire, what are you looking out for? You've run many tough campaigns. What are they red teaming about, as I like to say, in the Harris Walls world right now? Well, if you look at all of the things we just discussed, I

Probably they were not discussed ahead of time. That's why they were surprises. So I don't know that I can guess what the surprise is going to be, because if I knew what it was, it wouldn't be a surprise. I'd be telling you guys right now. Fair. But I'll tell you what I'm holding out for. I'm holding out for a Philadelphia rally where the warm-up act is Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Oh!

You're all invited. We'll all be there. You're all invited. Okay, I'm going to get to audience questions now because I want to get to as many as we can. Okay, so Claire, let me start with you. This is from Cora B. from New Jersey. If you're here, and I think you're here, you can give a little shout and we'll know where you are, Cora B. from New Jersey. But the question is, if Trump loses this election, do you think it will finally dismantle MAGA? What will the GOP look like post-Trump?

That's a biggie. You have 40 seconds. I'm just kidding. Put me on the clock. It's a really good question. I don't think, I mean, I'm from a state where they mainlined Donald Trump. I mean, keep in mind, I won an election by like 15 points in 2012 and lost by six in 2018 to

to a guy who was hugging Trump. Trump came into the state time after time after time, was there two nights before with Sean Hannity on stage with him, Rush Limbaugh on stage with him. You know, it was Sarah Palin on stage with him. He won by almost 20 in my state. So what happened? Well, the main lining of grievance, and that's going to still be there after Trump is gone,

I'm not sure that MAGA goes away. And if you notice, Vance and some guy, some jerk named Josh Hawley and others are taking this mantle up. And they're actually embracing it. Now, most of the Republicans in the United States Senate think it's awful.

They're too scared to say it out loud, but they think it's awful. But there's a core number of House members and Senate members that think they're going to be the next Donald Trump, and they will try. It remains to be seen whether this cult of personality is transferable. I'm not sure.

I don't get it, so it's hard for me to explain it, and it's certainly hard for me to prognosticate around it. But I don't think you will immediately return to the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan, which is smaller government, free trade, strong foreign policy, because you now have this populism, this nationalism now baked into the base of the Republican Party, and someone's going to want to take advantage of that.

Ooh, that was a good answer. All right, Andrea. This comes from Heather M. from Denver. Same offer applies if you're in the room and you want to give a little shout, say hello. Her question is, Heather M. from Denver. Okay, this is for you. Being a journalist in such unprecedented times, Andrea, I'm curious how much or how little do you allow your own personal feelings to creep in while reporting on topics like Trump and the rise of authoritarianism?

You know, I don't let my personal feelings creep in, as you say, except if there are some cases where there's not on the one hand and the other hand. There's good and evil. And if I'm talking about Hamas, I'm talking about evil.

If I'm talking about the desperation of the Palestinian people, I'm talking about desperation and terrible abuses or what happened on October 7th to the Israelis. So you got to respond as a human being. I'm very close to some of the hostage families. That's happened over this terrible almost a year. And I was in a car in New Hampshire when I heard...

before it was even confirmed, I got it confirmed that that Hirsch had died and I started crying in this car getting to the airport to come back.

Because I'm a person, and you shouldn't hide that, I don't think. But I don't think that I should come on the air and declare my views. I'm an objective reporter. But at the same time, if someone is telling lies and making false accusations, I think it's my obligation to say something and not just be a tape of it. Thank you.

You're definitely not a tape recorder, as you said. Okay, this one is for me, so I'm going to ask myself the question. It's also from Jennifer C. There's a lot of Jens from Irvine, California. If you're here. Oh, hello, Jennifer C. Right there. Hello.

So Jennifer C. asked me, does your experience in the White House affect how you process and present the news from the perspective of an anchor? And the answer is absolutely unapologetically yes. And here's why. I mean, I think anyone who anchors a show, whatever it may be, will tell you it's a huge opportunity and it's also a huge responsibility. And how I see my show on Sundays and Mondays is...

I am here to call it like it is and tell it to you straight about what's happening, but also to reflect on and lean on many of the experiences I had. And I think sharing what it's like to be in the Situation Room, what it's like to be in the Oval Office, what these meetings are actually like, what campaigns are actually contemplating, and sharing with the audience when something happening may not actually be a huge deal, so don't stress out about it.

is part of what I bring to the table. Um, but yes, it is definitely a part of how I think about, um, doing my job, um, every day. And that's why Jen's show is called inside with Jen Saki. You are getting the inside look at what's really happening behind the scenes. Just like our panel. There we go. It's a perfect queue up. Okay. We only have a couple of minutes, but we're going to get to two more questions. We'll see. Okay. Andrea, um,

This is also, oh, also a question from Jennifer C. from Irvine, California. Okay. Hey, Jennifer. You must have had some really good questions. Can you recall a moment in your life that affected your decision to become a news show anchor? Andrea wrote an amazing book, but let's hear what you have to say. I think it was way back when I was reporting and it was during a protest era.

civil rights movement and Vietnam War movement. I was just out of school and I was no longer willing to just be writing

And thinking about these issues, I was thinking of becoming an English professor, actually, and going to graduate school, and I decided I just wanted to do this so much. I was running the college radio station, covering politics as a student, and I just said, I really want to do something and...

tell people about stories. I'm a storyteller. And as it evolved over the years, I've had the greatest opportunities to have the responsibility and the obligation

of being in the White House and asking questions of you and others and your successors and predecessors. And you just really feel every time you walk through those gates or walk up to Capitol Hill or walk into the State Department that you are honored to be a witness to history and bringing all that to all of you. And hasn't she been an amazing one? Yes. Yes.

I will tell you, since I traveled with Andrea when I was the State Department spokesperson, and at that point Andrea was already Andrea Mitchell, if you know what I mean. She'd already proven herself by thousands of times.

I remember being in China with you and Andrea literally slept under the table at the press conference so that she could have a seat in the front row to ask questions to bring the reporting back to the American public and that tells you about her commitment. Okay, Claire, you're going to bring us home here. Uh-oh. Claire. I won't filibuster, I promise. No, no, no, you never. What do you think is the... I'm sorry, this is from Angela P. from Charlotte, North Carolina. Angela. Hello.

Oh, Angela, okay. Claire, what do you think is the best argument for residents of purple states to persuade community members who do not plan to vote or go to the polls? Well, Angela, you've got a big job in North Carolina. You need to bring it home. She's right on it. Listen, it's not complicated.

Between now and the election, anybody who complains to you about anything that has to do with government, I don't care if my trash hasn't been picked up or what's going on in the South China Sea with China in a blockade, I don't care whether it's about the cost of living and Social Security or whether it's the local sales tax. The minute anybody complains to you, you need to ask them if they're registered to vote.

If they say they are, then you need to ask them if they've made a plan to vote and if they've got their whole family. It really is, I get so tired of people who whine at me about the government and then think they have no obligation to participate. And you don't have to be mad at them. You know, I mean, I'm somebody who came from a state, I never could have got elected in Missouri with just Democrats, ever.

Ever. I had to have voters that didn't call themselves Democrats. And so what I always tried to start with was something that I knew we all agreed on. Love of our community. Love of our schools. Love of education. And if you start from someplace you know you agree with someone on, then it's much easier for you to be persuasive about getting them not only to vote the right way, but making sure they vote, period. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. Great talking with you guys. So much for having us. Thank you so much.

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Please welcome, get this intro here, constitutional law scholar, Penn Law professor, and the co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, Kate Shaw and her husband. Thank you. Hi, guys. Hey, babe. How are you? I'm great. Who's got our kids?

Kidding. I'm kidding. I'm sure someone hasn't. So we're going to talk a little bit about the election that's coming up and particularly the legal landscape around it, something that you've spent a lot of time thinking about. You've been sort of a practitioner, too. In a previous life, you worked a little bit on the campaign and you worked in the transition. You worked in the White House Counsel's Office. So I wanted to just start with a question about

How folks that are not necessarily legal experts who are watching this, like what you're looking for in terms of issue spotting, because obviously there was a lot of litigation in the last 2020 election. It was all frivolous. It didn't really amount to anything. But what you're kind of like looking out for in the legal landscape, both now to Election Day and the post-election period? Sure. I mean, I think at the outset, margins are everything.

So we have this idea of a margin of litigation. If an election is close enough in a particular state, litigation could turn an L into a W. It could actually change the outcome. We were spared really having a state within the margin of litigation in 2020. So you had pretty close outcomes

in Wisconsin and Arizona and Georgia, but not in the couple hundred votes or even low thousand votes, which I think might have put us within the margin of litigation and thus, you know, really thrown into question the outcome in those states. So...

if we have states that are closer this cycle, then I think a lot of the focus will shift to the courts. And so we are seeing right now some of the groundwork for some of those potential post-election lawsuits being filed around things like absentee ballot return deadlines, the ability to correct a

a ballot that has an omission or an error on it. Because there's a strong presumption if you file a lawsuit after the fact, challenging election rules that are in place before the election, that's a very, very steep hill to climb to succeed. So I think that's why we have seen some of those lawsuits filed now. So I do think

the likelihood of success and potential impact on the national electoral map really is going to turn on how close the results are in these kind of critical battleground states. Yeah. So let's stay on that. Like the notorious Donald Trump phone call to Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. You guys all remember that? Boo. Yes. I disapprove of that call. Whoever said that, I agree with you. Bad call. Yeah.

There's a very funny quote where he goes, fellas, I just need 11,000 votes. I mean, come on, I need 11,000 votes. I was like, 11,000 votes is a lot of votes. Like, you can't, you know, in the case of Florida famously in 2000, you know, that margin was 537 votes. Was it something like that? So the margin really does matter. What you're saying is, like, if you're in that category of 10,000 votes, even 5,000 votes,

is not going to be determinative in either way. It's unlikely, yeah. So I think that it's the margin and honestly, it's what the legal teams look like in some ways. So this is something that I have, I think especially since the Dick Cheney announcement yesterday, I've really been thinking about this, which is that there could be this kind of moment of reckoning for the legal profession, right? Because we know

from here that Donald Trump has said very clearly he's not going to accept any outcomes in which he is not the victor. And so he will bring lawsuits to challenge results in states he loses. We know this. And how plausible those lawsuits will be, I think, turns in part on how close the results are, but also what kind of team of lawyers he is able to assemble. And I actually really do think that this is a moment when

conservative lawyers, Republican lawyers could basically say, you cannot sign on to facilitate an anti-democratic effort, an effort that is just a power play in search of a legal theory, because that's what it would be, an effort to subvert the results in a state using whatever facially plausible legal set of claims you could manufacture. But you can't sign on to that and remain a member in good standing of the legal profession. I actually think that would be a very powerful message. Yeah. I mean...

You know, this is someone who's saying, we already have enough votes, we don't need any more votes. He told Dr. Phil the other day...

That if Jesus counted the votes in California, he would have won California. I missed this. That's an actual, I did not make that up. So, you know, his contention is it's impossible for him to lose, and anything that he loses is rigged. The other thing that I wanted to talk about a bit, and you wrote a book review of a great book called Let the People Choose the President, which is a book making the argument for a popular democracy in the U.S., get rid of the Electoral College. Thank you.

And you've made this point before, and you've made it to me in private and also publicly and in things you've written for the New York Times op-ed page. There's a whole bunch of reasons the Electoral College is bad on first principle democratic grounds, on the fact that huge swaths of the country, every voter in Wyoming, every voter in California has basically no say over the electoral outcome. That's bad. The Rube Goldberg machine that is the Electoral College is

It's like an attractive nuisance. Yes. It's like a uncovered swimming pool for Donald Trump to go play in, right? Because it's a complicated machinery, there's all sorts of dates and points of intervention, which he tried to exploit last time, that are going to be around this next time. Right. So this, not just its kind of anti-democratic character, but the very complexity of the Electoral College, the different deadlines that happen in each state and then in Congress, and

Each of those is a potential vulnerability and an opportunity for exploitation and mischief, and that is

I think the democratic deficits of electoral college are in some ways the bigger problem, but this is an enormous problem as well. And there has been some reform in the electoral college, the electoral count reform act, which was passed two years ago, somewhat cleans up some parts of this rickety 1887 statute that governs a lot of the process by which we translate votes into the selection of president. But there are still opportunities for exploitation and mischief. And I think that is a huge part of the problem. So, you know,

If we needed another reason to be deeply skeptical of the Electoral College and committed to reform, its susceptibility to exploitation by bad actors is a really important one. And it also connects to the first point you made, which is a really important one, if you take away anything from this about the way margins matter. You know, the closest election of our lifetime, which was 2000 national popular vote, Al Gore won by 500,000 votes, right? Yeah.

He lost Florida by 500 votes, right? It's impossible to imagine a national popular vote margin that's 500 votes, right? It's even very close race. The sort of law of large numbers is going to be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. But a state, the defining state could be a thousand, you know, Pennsylvania can come down to a thousand votes. So you also are inviting a situation in which the...

The determinative result was within that margin of litigation, whereas if you just, everyone just counted every vote across the nation, you're not going to end up in the margin of litigation. And increasingly in recent cycles, right, so Joe Biden won by nearly 7 million votes. It's likely going to be a very, very big popular vote victory, whatever happens in the Electoral College.

for Vice President Harris. But yeah, if it comes down to a state like Pennsylvania, where we're within a couple of thousand votes potentially, only because of the Electoral College could we even be in a position in which the courts are all of a sudden going to be deciding who the next president is. So that brings us to our first question here. And this comes from Jeffrey L. from the Bronx, who is the Bronx in the house today? The spattering of the Bronx.

Which relates to this and which I think people have in their minds, which is can the Supreme Court overturn the 2024 election if Donald Trump loses? How can the Constitution protect the peaceful transfer of power after an election? Well, so we did see, Chris, you've alluded to Bush versus Gore 2000. The Supreme Court decided the outcome in that election. And so there is absolutely precedent for the court deciding the outcome of a close presidential election.

I think, as we have been talking about, that only becomes a realistic possibility if there is one, maybe two states in which things are close enough for a lawsuit that, again, is well-lawyered enough that it has some facial plausibility that then looks like it could throw into question the result in that state. And then, yes, someone could get the case before the Supreme Court and...

I think there's reason to be very, very alarmed about what we've seen from the Supreme Court in the last few years and what it might do if given the power to decide the outcome of a presidential election. - Yeah, you don't wanna give this crew a second run at Bush v. Gore. That just seems like a bad idea. This one comes from Beth G. from your hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Chicago in the house. - Yes. - Nice.

Does Ms. Shaw, that's you, believe President Biden or President Harris, if Kamala Harris wins this election, should pursue adding more justices to the Supreme Court? The crowd likes it. So far, you guys are down on the call to Raffensperger and up on more justices to the Supreme Court. That's my polling survey. We agree. What do you think?

have come around on increasing the size of the Supreme Court. I am an institutionalist by nature, and that is a significant and serious step, but I have come to believe it's entirely warranted. So, yes. I mean, it also has, expansion of the Supreme Court has the advantage of being achievable by ordinary legislation, and all it takes is a Democratic Congress and president and maybe filibuster reform, and this

the size of the Supreme Court is not set in the Constitution, as people may know. You could, by ordinary legislation, just add a few justices. And I think that has the potential to really change the Supreme Court in a way that other important and needed Supreme Court reforms, like ethics reform... So that...

should be a no-brainer, but it would change some aspects of being a Supreme Court justice. But in terms of impact on the composition of the court, that might incentivize retirements, but I don't think it would immediately change the composition in a way that expansion would. And so I've come around to thinking that should be not only something that is pursued, but should be very high on a legislative priority agenda. Anthony in Detroit. I thought this was a great question. Is

Is there an effective way for me to better frame how impactful the overturning of Chevron, Chevron deference for the Supreme Court, is without boring my friends to death?

I too struggle with this. My students, my friends, because people understand viscerally why overturning Roe versus Wade was so important. No one has to really struggle to explain that. It is more difficult to explain why overturning Chevron versus Natural Resources Defense Council was also really important, but it was. So this last term in a case called Loper Bright, the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent called Chevron. And I think here's the best way, I think, to kind of communicate at stakes.

So Congress passes a lot of laws and some of them have very general terms in them. So if Congress passes a law saying workers in hazardous workplaces have to wear sufficient protective equipment,

Somebody has to decide what sufficient means. And you have a couple of choices. You have experts in agencies like the Department of Labor, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who study workplaces, who understand what kinds of protective equipment is available, would be effective, who are real subject matter experts. So they could decide what is sufficient, what sufficient means.

or Clarence Thomas with a dictionary could decide what is sufficient.

And what the Supreme Court said last term is the guy with the dictionary. That's who's going to decide what statutes mean instead of experts at agencies. And that has potentially catastrophic consequences for things like workplace safety, but also all of our safety, health, well-being around food and drugs and the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is this very, very reactionary Supreme Court rather than experts in administrative agencies who are going to be deciding what all these statutes mean. And to my mind, that is...

an incredibly troubling development. I hope that helps with the cocktail party conversations. You get that, Anthony? That's good. So this question is from Sharitha in York, Pennsylvania. We're hoping that Sharitha is registered to vote and going to vote and all her friends. Isn't that funny? What a bizarre system that like, oh, it's like, oh, Pennsylvania, your vote counts. That's a, wow, neat.

She asked both of us, what percentage of the day do you both discuss politics? What would you say?

Well, we have a little screen time app that tells us, you know, at the end of the day. We should. A fair amount of time. I mean, look. I mean, obviously, the vast majority of what we talk about is the logistics of our children. Yes. Their sports, their practices, team's practices. Who's picking up David Lynn? How's he getting a basketball? And then probably, like, the latest, like, registration data out of Pennsylvania. Yes. That's next. In that order. We do talk about this stuff a lot. I mean, I would say possibly.

would say politics like this is a very law professor answer but sometimes we talk about like high in constitutional law you kind of think about like high politics and low politics like I would say partisan politics not much really at all but like high politics thinking about like you know the nature of government and I mean we're not talking about that every day either but I would say we do there's like there's a combination of the two but but actual partisan politics horse race politics

Not that much. Low single-digit percentage of the day. We were on vacation when the announcement came from President Biden that he was going to not pursue the nomination and then endorse Kamala Harris. So we did talk about that a little bit on vacation, just a little bit. It came up. It came up a little bit. This is...

One more sort of personal question, then we'll sort of go to a final question on, which is an important one about this election. So the other one is, how many people are in your team to help research the topics you present on the news? I think that's probably to me. How do you and your wife get rest and perspective during intense news cycles? Also an important question.

Well, we have about 22 to 25 folks on our team to produce the show. That's people that are doing booking producers, line producers, segment producers, folks that are doing graphic, senior producers, executive producers. So it's a team around there. In terms of perspective and rest, I need to sleep a lot.

So I tend to go back to sleep. Like, we'll get up in the morning, get the kids to school, and then I go back to sleep for a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean like as much time as I possibly can. I think this is so useful. Chris is a champion napper. He is one of the best nappers. I am. It's true. And it is like his superpower. He can catch a little nap basically anywhere, basically at a moment's notice. Charge right back up. It's like plugging in your iPhone. I think for a while. It is. It's like, okay.

Just like you have to plug him in. Sometimes you restart him and it's great. But I think for a while you were a little sheepish. Not for a while. For a long time you were kind of sheepish about this. It's humiliating how much sheep I have.

But it is like, it makes, it is incredibly important. And it means that during your waking hours, you are like unbelievably productive and present. And if that's the way the day has to break down for you, like there's nothing embarrassing about it. So I think this is good. This is a good step in embracing. He gets like four hours of sleep a night and like runs 10 miles a day and doesn't need any. I don't need that much sleep, but I think that if when you need it, you should take it. All right. This is, this is the, this is a question about the election, probably the most significant with 90 seconds to go here.

Which is, the big question is, what happens if election officials refuse to certify election results? We saw

This was the big one. In Wayne County, the closest it came was Wayne County. You remember there's a bipartisan county board, right? There's no partisan majority. Republicans balked at certifying those election results. They then switched back to certifying. They then got lobbied by Trump and tried to rescind their certification. One Republican crossed over at the state level to certify. There's all this talk now about either county level or state level election board. What happens if they don't certify?

So, you know, we don't have a good script for this. And a little bit of it is playing out right now in Georgia, where the state election board has issued a new regulation that seems to remove the obligation to certify this in a state statute. There's already litigation challenging the lawfulness of that regulation.

So I think that hopefully pre-election litigation will make clear that certification is an obligation and that will remove any suspense or uncertainty about what can happen after the fact. But there's pre-election litigation saying you're going to have to certify. You have to certify on a certain date in December and the votes stand where they stand at that point. But I think we probably are back where we started the conversation, which is that

Because this is somewhat uncharted terrain, we might end up back before this Supreme Court making a determination under the federal constitution. And if they have to reach out to invent a legal theory like they did in Bush versus Gore, that may be where we are. Well, that's not a good note to end on. No, it's not. Let's end on something more uplifting. Wait a second. All right. We're going to just do this one for Michelle Lange.

I'm serious. We're not ending on that. Sorry. I know we're going over, but give me a second. What do you find the most challenging and rewarding about your job? I love the law. I think there are hard puzzles and questions all the time, but like, but, but I get to like sort of think about the constitution, about our democracy. And I am by nature, a deeply hopeful person. And I have found the last month in our national political life, like a deeply hopeful time. So I think that like we have the tools and I get,

I have this sort of set of, you know, kind of skills and training to try to figure out how to sort of like best make an impact on that little part of the legal world. And so I guess I find that like deeply gratifying. And the conversation today with you, this kind of thing, like getting to do this together is really gratifying. Gage Shaw, give it up for Gage Shaw. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. It's been a very busy year of legal challenges for former President Donald Trump.

Four criminal cases being found guilty on 34 counts with sentencing pending just delayed until November 26th after the election. And there is a presidential election in the balance. Here to talk about all of that are the stud MSNBC legal eagles, the host of the beat MC Ari Melber.

And former Lee Muller prosecutor, attorney, law professor, and co-host of Prosecutor on the Pocket. How you doing? How you doing? How you doing? Nice to see you. Look at this guy. Right? Baskin-ing. I'm going to milk it a little more. Can I milk it? Since we're all here together? Okay. If you believe in facts, make some noise. Two more. Two more. Okay? If you believe in justice, make some noise.

All the way up here? Are you going to do the mosh pit? And finally, if you believe in MSNBC and Andrew Weissman. Thank you, guys. I mean, wow. This is awesome. Have a seat. Have a seat. Thank you guys so much. We're thrilled to be with you. How are you feeling, Andrew? I was waiting for him to do the mosh pit.

Well, we have some time left in the evening. Okay. So that could still happen. I see a lot of energy up front. The key to a mosh pit is everyone has to be engaged together. Yeah. Like democracy. You're on notice. We're going to talk about the Trump cases and a lot of other things. I thought I would ask a question that I've heard some of you ask us, which is, how did you get here, Andrew? What are you doing here? Because he's a very serious prosecutor. And by way of introduction, I will say...

that even though we hear from Andrew and our other great lawyers a lot, they spend most of their careers avoiding any comment whatsoever. So you made a big jump, and I will say, and many of you know, 50 Cent memorably said, Really? This soon? One minute in. I let my car talk for me, let my watch talk for me. Hi, what up, shorty? By which he meant, he didn't have to say much. He let his success or his work do the talking.

And that's what Andrew did through many years in government as a prosecutor in this Brooklyn district that we're in as general counsel, the FBI. And in the Mueller probe, we would call in, check facts, ask. We would never get a comment from anyone, including Andrew. So how did you go from that?

quiet mode of work to what you do now. We used to say about our press person, he had the best job ever. It was, you know, being paid a full salary to say two words. No comment. So, you know, when I left the

Mueller probe and I was going into the private sector, one, I had seen so many people try to translate what was going on inside to an external audience. And I thought having had that experience, I might be good at it and it might be useful. And on a more personal level, having...

been sort of vilified by sort of the MAGA right, I thought it might be useful for people to just make their own judgments based on who I actually am rather than the caricature. So, okay, but enough about me. Actually, I do, I want to tell one story. So on the part about whether I'd be good at it. So the very first time I was on air,

And there were all these incredible people on with me. So Andrea Mitchell was on, Savannah Guthrie, Lester Holt. So it was like a really high-powered group. And you don't know the questions beforehand. It's all impromptu. So it was pretty nerve-wracking. It's not what I'd been trained to do at all.

And afterwards, the person who's head of talent, I said, so Elena, do you have any comments and questions, anything I should learn from? And she was like, no, no, no, it was fun. Which I knew was not true, but I mean, she was being... I said, but give me the feedback. I really need it. And she says, well, do you have any other glasses? And I was like...

Yes, but why? And she goes, are those transition glasses you're wearing? And I was like, Elena, are you telling me that it looked like I was wearing sunglasses on air? And she's like, yes. So you can go back and see that my very first appearance, one person looked like a rap artist. Yeah, real rock. Yeah.

Real rock star energy. Yeah. So anyway, I have a question for you, which was so interesting because I had it, but also Karen from Schenectady...

had a similar question, which is, I so admire, as you may know, my taste in music sort of ends with the 18th century. So, which is why actually being right here kind of feels right, given its history. But here's the question. How did you become so interested in music and so adept at quoting musical lyrics, which we just saw? Respect.

And a great question. Yeah, we have a couple questions from all of you that we're going to get into. So you and Karen asked that. You know, I will share this. I don't always talk about it on the program, but I went to Garfield High School in Seattle. That's Jimi Hendrix High School. I met some of you out there, and there were some people from Seattle, Tacoma area. It's Quincy Jones High School. So it has this rich musical tradition. It's a magnet school, public, diverse school in Seattle. And so that was the energy, and honestly...

I didn't think two ways about it at the time. We were all really into hip-hop, and they had a big marching band, jazz band. Seattle also has the grunge and rock scene. I grew up also on my parents' vinyl, which they saved, and I used to go through it. And all of this, of course, as we know, pre-internet streaming era...

mattered and you were trading the vinyl or the CDs because you didn't have unlimited access to everything. And so I really developed the interest then and then I've always been interested in words and a writer. So the lyrics part came to me very naturally. And the other thing I'll share again, because we're here for our MSNBC gathering, I don't always talk about this on air either. I've always quoted lyrics in my life, but for most of my life, it was seen as quirky or annoying. And...

Guess what? And maybe it still is. Maybe it still is. But back in the day, I would do that in school, and I would be in class, and I'd be like, well, it's like Tupac said, and everyone would be like, stop. And so I do have friends from school who are like, you know, we did give you a hard time on that, but it didn't stop you. You clearly just...

Keep being yourself. And now it's a thing because when we had Senator Booker on once, and it was a relatively serious news day, and we were talking about a bunch of stuff. And at the end of the interview, I said, Senator, thank you for coming on, you know, because there are different moments. I don't think we always have to be dead serious about everything, but it was one of those days. And at the end of the interview, he looks at me and goes, what, no lyrics at all? So...

All right, now we're going to... Oh, you got something else. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay, so knowing that you are a fan of lyrics, I have a little test for you. Oh, I didn't know this. All right. Seriously, he does not know. No, I didn't. So I am going to give you one hint, which is it is appropriate for where we are. It's the history of the place. So...

The vengeance of hell boils in my heart. Death and despair flame about me. Which may describe how many of us felt this past summer. This is a lyric? It's a lyric. Is it a song after 1960? I'm giving it, so the answer is no. And I can give you another hint. Go ahead. This is good because it's R.E.,

It's an aria. I was going to say, when you lose, it's good to lose fast. I don't know. I was thinking some kind of opera. Very good. Anybody? Anyone? It's... Anybody? Okay. It's Mozart, Queen of the Night Opera. It's her... Shout out to Mozart. All right, now I'm going to turn us... Okay. I'm turning us to law. Let's start with...

Donald Trump tried to overthrow and steal an election he lost and is now running for office again. And we have seen the legal system work in some ways and falter in others. The federal coup case is scheduled to continue in narrower form after the election, basically. So what can you tell us as the latest briefing? And how do you feel as someone who's worked in the Justice Department and seen it play out this way?

So big, big picture is in case anyone in the audience does not think the Supreme Court is on the ballot. And obviously you can look at all sorts of decisions starting with Dobbs. But the Supreme Court presidential immunity decision is the gift that keeps on giving for Donald Trump.

Your comment about the fact that it narrowed the case in D.C. is totally fair. The superseding indictment that was brought by Jack Smith substantially was narrowed, not because Jack Smith wanted to. It was because of the Supreme Court decision.

And the same thing is happening in New York, where Judge Mershon has to make a decision, which many of you are going, how can that possibly be the case? Because the New York case has nothing to do with what he was doing while he was president. As president, it was personal. And the Supreme Court said that not only do we give him presidential immunity, but when he is acting personally,

in an official capacity, nothing from that time period can be used as evidence in a trial, even for unofficial personal conduct. So the reason that Judge Marchand has a difficulty here

is he put off not just the sentencing, but he also put off the decision on the immunity question, which is also pending. And one thing that is a silver lining, I'm not saying that he should have put it off, but one silver lining by his putting off the immunity decision and the sentencing is it keeps this case out of the clutches of the Supreme Court.

If Trump wins the election, we all got the refresher about how a sitting president isn't chargeable under DOJ rules. So people remember that if he loses, then you expect him to go on trial in D.C. for for the attempted coup.

Absent the Supreme Court, you know, where it was sort of six to three, five to four, Amy Coney Barrett is somebody to keep your eye on because she did not go along with all of the outrageous parts of the decision. Really interesting. It showed some real bona fides in my view in terms of good faith dealing with the issues. The big

The big issue that will remain is how much the Supreme Court continues to mess up that case. If Donald Trump does not win, the case goes forward. It will go back to the Supreme Court, however, before there is a trial.

There will be a second bite at the apple on that. And then with respect to Judge Marchand, I am confident that Judge Marchand is not going to dismiss the case on his own. No way. But ultimately, if he does that, eventually Donald Trump will take that to the Supreme Court to evaluate. Now, in a world where Donald Trump has lost power,

you can only hope that the Supreme Court, that there aren't five justices to sort of continue doing what we have seen. I'm not the only legal analyst that was just shocked at the decision and the presidential immunity decision. Yeah, and I'll just add, I think people have felt a lot of

passion, fear, anger, a lot of different questions about what kind of republic we are in the MAGA era. And my basic overview is it's worse than you thought, but better than it looks. The Supreme Court is a highly partisan institution. When you went to law school and when I did, there was a lot of

emphasis on understanding the legal doctrines like that's how they make decisions. And I think if you taught a class today about this court, it would look more like teaching about Congress. And if you know somebody's red or blue party, you know a heck of a lot about how they're going to rule on the big political issues. And it's not supposed to be like that. It hasn't always been like that. And the Warren court wasn't like that as partisan. So that's the part that's worse than it looks.

I mean, worse than you even thought. Why it's better than it looks, excuse me, is that

On a lot of the key questions, including Donald Trump's many efforts to overthrow the election in 2020, a similar court, right? It's a very similar court, said no to all that and didn't want to go as far as actively stealing elections. They will apparently actively try to politically help him, and they'll also, some of them, enrich themselves and do grifting and take gifts and all these problems. But they didn't go...

that far. And so I get a lot of questions about this campaign season. And I think if it's a very close outcome, you can expect a lot of the appeals and lawsuits that you get. I think if either candidate wins by several states, right, Biden won by three, the precedent would not suggest the Supreme Court is going to try to become a dictator court. So that's my thought. I want to give you a response. And then with about five minutes left, we do have a couple more questions.

From you guys. So I have a, I'm going to, I teach at NYU, so I'm used to grading. So if I had to grade our legal system in terms of how it holds sort of top political leaders, starting with the presidency to account, it's an F. Um, um,

So, you know, we think of sort of American exceptionalism and we think our legal system is so much more advanced and better than other countries. And we have this very sort of

myopic view of our world in this country. But if you look at Brazil, Argentina, Italy, France, a whole host of countries have had timely, fair trials of political leaders. And that's not to say there should be a verdict of guilt or not guilt. That's for a jury to determine. But the idea that we have not

other than Judge Mershon, who gets a ton of credit for doing it, that we have lived through what Judge Cannon has done, what the Supreme Court has done by having a delay of eight months. And just clearly, to me, is undermine the public right to a trial. Yeah. So I do want to say that applause was not as loud as the applause for FACTS.

But it was loud, just from what I hear up here. We've taken some questions from all of you, and I want to mention again, it's so great to be here and see you back at U. Every night, all of us, all of our colleagues, we're looking into this screen, and we know you're out there. But it is kind of cool as a community to see each other. So, thank you. We took some of your questions. We have two more here. I'll just read both. One is from Karen in Seattle. Hello.

Ari, it says, Ari, coming from a city like Seattle, which Karen, you obviously know, is a progressive place, she writes. How do you think we can bridge the gap between so many polarized regions in our country? And since we have two minutes for that, obviously I have the solution, and then we'll be good as a nation. And then Leah from Athens, Georgia said, what's your election night playlist? Oh, I love it.

I've already given mine. Exactly. I do think that polarization and people living in different pseudo realities, especially with media and the internet, is a growing problem. But it is also one we've had for a long time. We've had worse periods spanning racial division, political violence. The founders were worried about factionalism. So I take some comfort in the fact that this is not the worst ever and we've been through

worse problems before. My view is if you get out of the political clash, obviously if you show up at a rally and you have a jersey and they have the opposite jersey, I don't know how much bonding you're going to do. But in where life is lived, right, in your

Parents association or school or community or if you worship in those places if you listen and talk back and forth with people a lot of people still want to learn about each other and engage in facts and Sometimes some of the things that we find are shared most from our program are

or interviews where things were learned and not just another rant or opinion. And so I have real optimism about that and I think that's part of it, but not the full solution. And then on the playlist, and then Andrew gets the last word, my honest answer is when I'm getting ready to go out to work, I usually go for like the highest energy, high tempo rap. So...

Lil Jon, Rick Ross, Classic Jay-Z. I listen to a lot of other music. Like, I love reggae on the weekends. I love classic rock and roll. We had Graham Nash from Crosby, Stills & Nash & Young on our program recently this week. But yeah, so if you're asking election night or any big night, I've always found for me music works better than caffeine. So if I put on the right song, I get a natural lift for a little while and none of the crash of caffeine. Yeah.

Andrew, technically they've given you a minute and five seconds for anything you want to close us out with. So I was hoping the question was not going to be about playlists, but what kind of gin you will be drinking. And...

Whether you're shaken or stirred, whether you're olives or a twist of lemon, the big downside of MSNBC, and I know this is like a little secret, but no drinking. None. None.

Yeah. So obviously, if you're doing the coverage on election night and there are no legal issues, then I will have my own form of a playlist. Well, there you have it. Join me in thanking Andrew. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.

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Hold on, hold on, hold on. Twirl, twirl, twirl. Twirl, twirl. I twirl you. You twirl me. I twirl you. Oh, God. Now I twirl you. No. No. No.

Did you see how he wouldn't let me twirl him? Before the night is over, you will let me twirl you. That was not in the rehearsal, Rachel. I forgot to go to the rehearsal. Yeah, well, we forgot to have one. So we actually... Oh, can you hear us now? No. Is my microphone okay? Okay. Okay.

Louder. Louder. We can do that. All right, Rachel, congratulations on your 16th anniversary show, which is going to be Monday night. It is? Yeah. I did not know. Thank you. No, of course you didn't know, but I am counting. You know why? Because my 14th anniversary show will be coming up a few weeks after that. Okay. And what's important about that, what's really...

We can hear them. We can hear you. And so what's so great about that is that you are actually older than I am in anchor years. And I so appreciate that. I so appreciate that. Now, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone here, and I think I've said this publicly, my favorite part of the show happens to be

the highest rated part of the show. Which is the moment when Rachel says good evening to me. Which some of you may have noticed I might enjoy a little too much. But here's what happens to me. When I run into fans of MSNBC,

on the street somewhere, very first thing they'll say to me is, "Oh, my favorite thing about your show is the Rachel handoff." And I get it. It happens to be my favorite show. And I'm sure they speak for millions when they say that. But thanks to Twitter, there are other views of the handoff. For example, here's one. This is important, the timing on this.

It was written at 10.04 p.m. 10.04 p.m. So you can imagine the depth of feeling of this particular tweet, okay? To me, okay? I just can't watch the handoffs from Maddo to Lawrence. I always have to change the channel. I can't watch Rachel being taken hostage for umpteen minutes.

I just think that side of the audience deserves a fair hearing. And there's more, okay? We'll just do one more, but again, I'm sure this represents the feelings of millions of people. And this one, Rachel, has a lot more detail, a lot more thought out, just as much rage. And I think it's one you're going to want to take straight to your agent. It says...

Minus commercials. Meadow is 44 minutes long. Rachel just had to endure Lawrence for three minutes during the handover. Talking to Lawrence is awkward and painful. Therefore, Rachel deserves overtime and hazard pay. Give her a 10% raise or tell Lawrence to start a show without her. Okay.

Never, never, never, never. Love you, Lauren. Love you, Lauren. So my favorite thing about the handoff is that I have no freaking clue what you are going to say. Ever. Like, I...

there are other shows and there's other handovers and other things where I think the producers talk to each other and they say, you know, my host is going to ask about this thing that's coming up on the show or I know that my host is interested in this thing you're doing in the C blocks. That does not happen with me and Lawrence. And so it could be,

Me and your mom are talking about what we're going to do for Thanksgiving. Like, oh, that could come up. Okay. You're coming for Thanksgiving. That's good to know. It could be this thing that you just did. I have a better guess than you on that coming up. It could be this thing that you said in your A block, which I've now forgotten because it was 44 minutes ago, was interesting. And I'd like to ask you some in-depth follow-up questions on it. And I don't remember what it is.

So there is a, I feel like the one thing to note is, do I look frozen in that moment? Because if you're speaking, I feel like the one thing we have in a tacit way worked out between us is that if I look like I might be paralyzed, not moving, not blinking, nothing, Lawrence knows to keep talking.

Until I come out the other side of the shock and have something to say. So two things to know about this handoff business is, one, that's absolutely true. Rachel has no idea what I'm going to say, and usually I don't either. Until...

Until seconds before. There's somewhere in the good of good evening that she says to me that something occurs to me. And of course, that's mostly laziness. I don't do the kind of homework that Rachel does, so I don't usually think about it ahead of time. And here's the other thing to know about it. This is the only time we've ever talked about it. We have never once discussed this thing.

Not ever. And it is, you know, Rachel has the hard end of that deal. Because she is sitting there with a nut who might say anything. It could be deadly serious. It could be utterly ridiculous. And, and these are my favorite, it could make absolutely no sense for the first sentence or two. And she's just left there waiting for, okay, when...

When is this ball gonna land and take a bounce so I know what to do and and she's so just Brilliant and gifted or frozen and waiting for it to make I am I am both God we're talking about this and I'm glad you've just been on that We've never talked about it before. It's like it's the issue in your relationship. That is Not going badly and so you don't bring it up at therapy because it's not broken but

This is an out-of-bounds question, and I'm sorry to ask you with no warning, but fair play. You've done a lot of TV in your life. I've done some TV in my life. And I feel like in most TV environments, all the people who do the kind of jobs that we do don't necessarily like each other and aren't necessarily good people and don't necessarily treat each other well.

Except at MSNBC, right now, with this crew and these executives and these producers and most importantly, these hosts, I feel like we all really like each other in Get Along and are mutually supportive. Yeah, yeah. And...

I don't mean to cast dispersions on the business. I don't think that there's more problems among people in our business than there are in any other business. I just think we're really lucky right now. And I'm curious as to whether you think that affects how we do our jobs and how well we're able to do with our TV work. Well, I think it makes the workplace and literally being in the building, which you don't know that much about anymore. By the way, I do...

I do have a question about that. I think it might partially be my fault. But...

It is great to come into a workplace. I had this at the West Wing where everybody was writing and producing the NBC series, The West Wing. It's a giant troop of people. There's 100 people, you know, from crew to writers to actors to makeup to wardrobe to set design and all. There's just 100 people spread over the Warner Brothers lot. And we just loved each other and do to this day. So I've had these two workplaces now.

And now we have it, I think, at 30 Rock. We definitely have it. And the thing is, we do have differences of opinion. I hear people say things, our colleagues say things in the course of the day and the night, and I think, oh, I don't agree with that. But

Full respect full respect for that opinion exactly how that opinion was arrived at you know no absolutely no question It's never I don't think he's thought about that enough, or I don't think she's you know It's just it's just we have difference of opinion and so it isn't about that we all think the same But it is it is just a really great and positive and friendly workplace which brings me to this in the reorganization of

where the offices were all relocated to make room for the expanding universe of streaming and all of that stuff. I was really thrilled when Greg Kordick called me up to tell me, "Yeah, we're moving your office. Sorry, it's going to be a smaller office. You won't see the skating rink anymore." And then he saved the best for last. He said, "But it's going to be right beside Rachel's office."

And I thought, okay, like my group of offices will be beside Rachel's group of offices. No, no, no, no, no. We both have these two little rooms and we share a wall. And this is the approximate thickness of the wall. So what's so interesting about this, what's so really interesting about this, is immediately after that, Rachel went to one night a week. Was it something I said? Was it something you overheard? Yeah.

I overhear absolutely everything. I know. There are not noise-canceling headphones in the world that cancel enough. I've pushed this technology to its limits. But it's, you know, I get to know a little bit more about what you're going to say. Because I hear you say it before. And I... This is a good... We don't have time for this on TV. This is all the stuff we don't have time for on TV. I need a favor. Okay. Yeah. Um...

I'm in giant trouble with my publisher. I am literally years behind on the deadline for my next book, which will be my third book, which no one knows because there's so much distance between the books that people forget. Do you have a topic or a title? Yeah, there's a title. It's painful.

That's painful. So, you know, when I'm making my excuses to the publisher about, well, I got to cover the Trump trial and I got to cover the campaign and all of that, I know that lurking in the background, and they say this out loud every once in a while, is the fact that in the number of years this book has been overdue, you...

You have chosen to produce a couple of giant podcasts that are as much work as a book. One of them, Steven Spielberg's now going to turn into a movie. You've got a documentary out now. Oh, and you've produced a book or two in the number of years that I have delivered nothing. And so my favor is, Rachel, would you please stop? LAUGHTER

Would you like to write a book together or do a podcast together? You could do that. Let's do that. Let's do that. And if we're getting, now we're getting somewhere. This is a good working session. So I was going to say, if you can't stop, because I have a suspicion you can't, could you, do you believe it could ever be possible to teach a guy from Dorchester to multitask? Yeah.

I mean, listen, the reason that I've been able to get the stuff done that you just so generously described is because I have driven myself down to be a mere husk of a person. Whereas you have a full rich life with humans, activities, relatives. Lawrence came to my book event, that one that we were talking about in the crossover. He came by boat.

Who goes to a thing by boat? Because he was boating. I don't boat. I don't do these things. I have nothing in my life, Lawrence. You sail to Provincetown. That's how you get to Provincetown. So on the... We'll do something together. Okay. I have some ideas. Oh, good. Oh, great. But seriously, on the multitasking for them...

How do you do it? How do you do it? I don't have anything else in my life. It's not a good news story, Lawrence. I'm a mess. All right. Yes. Okay, good. All right. That brings us, that in fact brings us to the last two hours. Because we arrived here, you know, in and around three o'clock or so, a while ago, right? You know what I've been doing? What? Nothing. Now, I heard a rumor that I really, really don't want to believe.

I heard a rumor that while I was doing nothing, Rachel was alone in a room back there writing, writing Monday's show. It's Saturday. It's Saturday. It's against the rules to write Monday's show. That's not fair. I write Monday's show on Monday. Late on Monday, and you can tell. But...

While you were doing nothing, you were probably having human interactions, something of which I am not capable. Okay, but let me ask you this. Snacking, right? When we watch Monday night, will we be able to tell which part was written on Saturday? LAUGHTER

Yeah, it's the part that starts in the 40s, probably. Can I ask you a politics question? You can. So you were talking about having different opinions than your colleagues and the mutual respect that means that that is not a crisis, but an opportunity for conversation. Before President Biden decided not to run, you were very outspoken about your belief that he would win. He did not need to drop out in order to win. That if he stayed in the race, he would win.

And a very different take on it than many of your colleagues, and one that I think was a real lifeline for a lot of people in this country, including a lot of people in my own family and my own friend group. Now that President Biden is not running, do you think that Vice President Harris has the same, better, or worse chance of winning than he did? I think she now has a better chance. And I do...

So, look, there's a couple of things about that whole period that I found difficult. And you've got to remember, the period actually began in January. I mean, there were op-ed pieces and people arguing back in January, you know, you have to get rid of Biden. And at the time, I just raised a very simple thing in defense of the Biden candidacy, which is he was polling against Trump better than anyone else by far.

And oh, by the way, the next one down is Kamala Harris. And I knew, and they made this pretty clear, that everyone who wanted to get rid of Joe Biden also wanted to get rid of Kamala Harris. Pretty much every one of them. They thought she would be a terrible nominee. And so they were imagining some dreamscape of a convention of some sorts that would be contested and all that. And when they came up with that, I simply pointed out, here are your challenges and possible nightmares with a contested convention.

And as it became a more and more pointed issue, and after that debate with Trump, when Joe Biden obviously had failures on the stage, what I kept saying every night was, number one, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I do not know. And I don't know if Biden's going to stay. And I don't know what's going to happen.

At a certain point, I certainly didn't know what should happen, but I knew it was an extremely difficult decision because it has never happened before. And I am an extremely conservative analyst of politics.

which is to say, I am always going to choose the most conservative, careful choice in governing and politics or campaigning, and always did when I was in it. I'm not the one who's going to experiment with the thing they've never done before.

And so Joe Biden made the decision. That's the thing that has to always be remembered. He's the one who decided. Joe Biden knew better than I did every single day. Joe Biden knew better than I did every day what he was capable of. He knew better than I did how to calculate on any given day on the calendar. What should we do tomorrow? Because remember, that's what politics is.

It's what should we do tomorrow? And so on certain dates on that calendar, what Joe Biden thought he should do tomorrow was go out and do an interview with Lester Holt, go out and try to do a campaign speech, go out and try that. There came a Saturday afternoon where he decided what we should do tomorrow is hand this campaign to Kamala Harris and make absolutely sure.

make absolutely sure that it is a seamless and instantaneous nomination transition to Kamala Harris and that there is no contest. And I think he achieved that. He achieved it with the timing. Like, literally, if he had done it the Sunday before, I don't know. I don't know. If you did it seven days before, would a candidate jump up and say, hey, me? I don't know. And so, you know, I was just watching...

Everyone make they everyone had a wish of like I wish we had a younger nominee and what I would point out to everyone who was wishing that was I understand but here all of your challenges and trying to jump from this iceberg to that iceberg and there's a lot of cold water in between yeah given given The what happened as a result of that first debate now we're about to have a second debate and

I feel like, did you ever see the movie World According to Garp? Yes, I did. So you know that there's that moment when it's Robin Williams is going to go by the barn, like by the house. And then he's standing there and a biplane comes and smashes into the barn. And he goes, I'll take it. You'll take it? Yes. What are the odds of anything like that ever happening again?

I feel like we're kind of in that kind of a moment with this debate. We just had the most consequential presidential debate in American history. A debate, the first five minutes of which not only ended a presidency at a single term, but changed just a month before the convention, the terms of the general election. I mean, that debate was a consequential thing. And now we're about to have another one. So has the biplane already hit the barn? Right.

What are the odds of something like that happening again? Or is this next debate likely to also be very consequential? I doubt it because it looks like the electorate is locked in pretty tight right now. The Trump support number is pretty tight. The Harris support number is pretty tight. And you only have a float, depending on the state, of 3% or 4% possibly. And you've got to remember something about the undecided voters. They don't like this.

It's not like they're undecided because they're thinking about it and it's a really hard decision.

It's like me being undecided about which golf club to use, having never owned a golf club, and I don't care about golf. And I never watch the golf channel ever, ever, ever. And so the theory of presidential debating and of the way it's going to work this time and of the conventions is we will roadblock

the undecided voters TV will take all those NBC sitcoms and ABC sitcoms off the air and will force you to watch this stuff. And that used to work, except now they've got streaming and all sorts of other things. And so it's unbelievably difficult to reach these undecided voters with these kinds of activities. And so the percentage of undecided voters who will actually watch this debate is, I think, you know,

pretty tiny, so I don't think it has the ability to shift much. Trump will be nutty. He's always been nutty. Kamala Harris will be solid. She's always been solid. You know, so I don't really see what it does. I have a question from the audience for you. It is from Sharitha M. from York, Pennsylvania, who may be... Hi, Sharitha. Hey, PA.

And, you know, Sharifa, I apologize for stepping on your question a little bit, getting a little bit of a head start on this question of yours, which is, how do you decide topics and questions for guests and contributors? Oh, yeah.

My question is, how do you decide it two days ahead of time? There isn't an easy answer to that. It's the best part of the job, definitely, is getting to decide not what exactly to say on a specific day,

thing, but what to talk about. What counts as the news of the day that you want to say something about, that you think you have something to offer, that you want to hear from a newsmaker or a guest or an expert about. And that process, that story selection process, to me, is the most

and most intellectually engaging and most rewarding part of it. Much more rewarding to me, much more difficult for me than the actual writing, what there is to say about it. And I value the editorial freedom that we've got. I mean, MSNBC is not one of those networks where there's some boss chomping a cigar who says, this is the six things you're going to cover today and here's how you're going to cover them. And by the way, you're booking my frat brothers.

We're not that kind of a place. They trust us enough to abide by NBC rules and standards, to make our own decisions about what's newsworthy, to cover what we want, and to not cover what we don't want. And that is a blessing. And something worth protecting and fighting for. So yeah, it's the art of what we do, not the science, and I love it.

Yeah, I try to come to it as late as possible. By the way, no, so I'm a collector of lazy excuses that are legitimate. The first one that I ever had was on my first book that was so long ago, Larry King had a radio show. So...

Larry King, who had the biggest radio show in America, was a big deal for a book. And it was one minute before going on. His studio was in Washington, D.C. And he turns to me just before we start and he says, I never read the books. Because it's talk radio, right? And he says, you know, because if I read the books, I might think you're too interesting.

He said, "I have to hear it here. I have to hear it the way they're hearing it. Then I'll know how long I want to listen to this." "Good evening." And he starts to sh-- That's the last thing I hear before-- And I think this is genius. It's the laziest possible choice. Totally legitimate.

You know, totally legitimate. You know, and Marlon Brando, at the end of his career, he got an IFB like we have in our ears, you know, during our shows. He never read a script. He never learned a line. Because he said, by that time in his career, the line would be fed into his ear. You'd say your line. Then Marlon would wait a while, say his line. And he said, well, I mean, no one knows what they're going to say. No one knows. I don't want to... You know, and it's like that's artistically... So it's a heroic cause. Yeah, yeah. And so...

In the spirit of that, I tell myself that I need to come to it as late as possible because I might find myself too attached to something at 10 a.m. that I'm no longer caring about at 2 because something happened at 12 and all of that. And it kind of is totally, it's justifiable. You can be the judges of whether it works. See, I do that with guests. That

I don't like to book guests way in advance. It's not a very guest-driven show. But I like to pick topics when things occur to me, but then when it comes to who's going to come on the show and talk about it, that to me, I still think it's magic. How do you persuade a person to come on television and talk to you about a news story? I have no

no idea. I don't understand how the process works and I'm too afraid to call people. So other people have to do that work and I make everybody do it very late in the game, which is cruel. Yeah, I never ask people to be on the show because when I was working for Senator Moynihan, every single such request was treated as a burden and he turned down 99 out of 100. He always did Tim Russert's show, Luke's father's show, because Tim actually used to work for him and he loved Tim Russert and that was the only one where...

It was automatic. But I've always seen the invitation or request to be on my show as a burden. And so I've never... By the way, you might notice...

It's also lazy that I have never asked anyone to be on the show. But, right? There's a legitimacy to that reasoning. Let's go back to the handoff. They just showed our first, our very first handoff of my first show. Oh. Which was up there. And then we stopped doing it. We actually stopped doing it for years. Do you remember when we resumed it? No. You don't. Well, it was a little more important to me. And...

As you can tell, it is. Everybody who accuses me of being so needy in those handoffs is underestimating the neediness involved. So I got knocked out of the show for almost four months in 2014. I was in a

Car accident, taxi accident. I was in the backseat of a taxi and I broke a lot of bones and I couldn't walk for a long time and I had to learn to walk again. Out of the show for a long time, Ari Melber filled in for three months, did a great job. And I finally was coming back and I was so profoundly out of it.

I didn't know how to do the show anymore. It was like, it really was like, you know, throwing a baby into the deep end of the pool. I had no idea how to come back into this. And I signaled that by coming on without a necktie. It's not the guy you used to see. I had a beard that had grown and three or four months when I came on. So I had these external signals of, it's not really me and I don't really quite know what I'm doing. And at the very last minute,

Very last minute, I said to Greg Cordick,

Ask Rachel to say good evening to me tonight. And we had stopped doing that because in those days I could pre-tape the show on Thursday nights, fly to LA at 9 p.m. Thursday night, drive my daughter to the school bus stop Friday morning, pick her up from school on Friday. And, and you, so you could, I thought I can't do a handoff in the tape show on Thursday. Therefore I can never do one. So we just stopped doing them and it hadn't done them in years.

And the only thing I was conscious of in asking that Rachel say good evening to me was, I felt like I needed an introduction. Like, it's the Ari Melber show now. Like, do they remember this guy? And Rachel will say my name and say good evening to me, and then...

you know, we'll get going. And this miraculous thing happened because I was in the studio in LA and, you know, Rich was in New York and she did that thing you've all seen, the Good Evening Lawrence. And I, who was completely, really disoriented to the point where I wasn't sure that I could get to the first commercial. I wasn't sure I could get through this weirdness that I was doing of coming back to the show.

And Rachel said, good evening. She started talking to me. And the one thing I knew I knew how to do was talk to Rachel. And so we talked and she really was, you don't know this and I've never said this, but what she was really doing in this astonishingly maternal way that she didn't even, just using a power she didn't even know she had or was using in that moment, was she was reaching down

to that little boy and picking him up off the floor into his high chair, which was a high chair because I couldn't actually sit. I had to sort of lean and saying, it's going to be okay. You can do this. And so, yeah, it means a lot. And so the next...

The next night, the next night I said to Greg Cordick, tell Rachel to say good evening to me. And she's been stuck for 10 years now. Whatever you do in your life, whatever you do for work, whatever organizing principle you have that involves other people in your life. First of all, make sure you have something in your life that involves other people.

Even if you work alone, some aspect of your life has to have regular engagement with other people who you look in the eye. And if you are lucky enough to have colleagues who are mutually supportive, mutually respectful, brilliant, and kind, even in difficult circumstances and even when you disagree, never let that person go. Rachel Maddow gets tonight's last word. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you guys. I'm down here. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks again for listening to these select conversations from MSNBC Live Democracy 2024. For more, be sure to check out our TV special airing Saturday, September 14th. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the event and be able to check out highlights from a few more panels. And please subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to MSNBC original podcasts like Prosecuting Donald Trump, How to Win 2024, and Why Is This Happening?

The Chris Hayes Podcast, ad-free. This podcast special was produced by Donnie Holloway. Our associate producer is Jamaris Perez. Our audio engineer is Catherine Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Alicia Conley is the executive producer of Special Projects. Lauren Peekoff is the executive producer of MSNBC Live. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio.

And Rebecca Cutler is the Senior Vice President for Content Strategy at MSNBC. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets.

So, whether you're drawing up the same game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team, the BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only. U.S. promotional offers not available in D.C., Mississippi, New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico.

Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Available in the U.S. For New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY 467-369. For Arizona, call 1-800-NEXT-STEP. For Massachusetts, 1-800-327-5050. For Iowa, 1-800-BETS-OFF. For Puerto Rico, 1-800-981-0023. Subject to eligibility requirements in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel.