Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Dec. 17

this decision by the national republican party to pay trump's personal legal bills it it comes at an odd moment for the party itself i mean the logic there is that they want trump to be happy right so they they give him money i guess they pay for things he would otherwise have to pay for himself as a private citizen because he's so important in the republican party that they can't like run the risk of alienating him or the whole party will collapse or something that appears to be the running theory in washington for why the national republican party decided to spend its donors money paying the private legal bills of a very rich public citizen very rich private citizen right trump's such a big deal to the republican party they have to put all of their resources including their financial resources to personally propping him up or the republican party will collapse because he's so important to them even just this week there has been a whole bunch of evidence that undercuts that theory of the case a bunch of evidence that he's not exactly super potent anymore when it comes to republican politics or even to his much vaunted ability to separate his devoted followers from their wallets mr trump for example has arranged to do a four city speaking tour along with a man who used to be on the fox news channel but he was fired after it was revealed that he and the network had paid out literally tens of millions of dollars to settle settle multiple sexual abuse and sexual harassment claims they're a nice pair these two you might remember hearing about this planned speaking tour the tour was announced far in advance far enough in advance that it was way back in july when politico.com ran an article reporting that the ticket sales for these events were very slow the venues these guys had booked for their speaking tour were having a hard time selling the tickets well it's december now and these events have started the first one was in sunrise florida this past weekend here's the south florida sun sentinel reporting on how that went quote many seats remained empty in the caverness arena the top level was closed and ticket buyers were quote upgraded to the lower bowl the next night was in orlando florida and apparently they had the same problem here's the orlando sentinel quote hundreds of seats for the trump event were listed as available in the upper bowl as late as sunday the day of the event but when doors opened at noon on sunday people who bought tickets to an upper bowl seat including an orlando sentinel reporter were told they had been upgraded to empty seats in the lower bowl the closure of the upper bowl with tarps was similar to what was done at the previous trump o'reilly event in south florida the day before at that orlando event the second event in florida that arena can hold up to 17 000 people for an event staged like that one was trump remember had bragged that it would be sold out standing room only but out of these 17 000 available seats in that arena apparently he was only able to sell about 5400 seats which means the venue was more than two-thirds empty the next two events on this big tour are this weekend tomorrow and sunday in dallas and houston texas maybe he'll do better there we'll see there are reports that the q anon doomsday cult people uh those people have been in dallas for weeks there have been reports this week that all of those people are going to go to the trump event this weekend so maybe that will fill out the crowd that said there have also been reports this week that the dallas q anon jfk trump people have also been doing online seminars on telegram this week on the benefits of drinking their own urine so i don't know if that's going to happen before they plan to all go out in public but maybe that'll put a crimp in the plans i don't know how that affects you say this only because um i think there's a disconnect sorry sorry that last point just i was going to say let it wash over you but don't i'm sorry excuse me i say this i bring this up because i do think there is a disconnect between how this guy is now operating in the real world now and the kind of deference and bowing and scraping he's getting from the national republican party i mean he's not selling seats to his supposedly you know fervent faithful he's also striking out in endorsements the national journal this week had good reporting on this that i think didn't get more pickup in the beltway press because i think it goes against beltway common wisdom but what the national journal reported on this this week is all true here's the headline quote too big to fail trump's endorsements risk diminishing his political clout trump is already oh for two in congressional endorsements this year with several other favored candidates struggling to meet expectations the article at the national journal goes on to explain that trump's endorsed senate candidate in pennsylvania uh has dropped out of the race trump's endorsed senate candidate in alabama looks like he's falling behind another republican candidate there trump's endorsed congressional candidate in a texas special election earlier this year that that candidate lost two there is this beltway common wisdom about why republicans all have to robotically repeat trump's toxic wingnut bullpucky stew about him not really losing the election and the election being stolen right supposedly all republicans have to repeat that they have to endorse that craziness because otherwise trump will turn against them and trump will endorse someone to run against them and that will end their careers which even if that were true would that be the worst thing in the world but it doesn't look like it's true i mean so far in the real world his endorsements aren't working they aren't doing much they're not moving the needle not just in general elections but in republican primaries where he's supposed to be the end-all be-all right and that that losing streak extends to an even more republicans only exclusive environment where he's also been trying to throw his weight around doing everything he can hammering away at it for months in this case even with support from his most loyal supporters in the conservative media but again impotent it's not working here's the headline at politico.com today gop blows off trump's bid to oust mcconnell quote despite months of attacks a campaign led by former president donald trump to depose senate republican leader mitch mcconnell has resulted in firm pledges from just two republican candidates and no republican senators and it has failed to turn up any formidable challenger to run against mcconnell this week alone trump issued several official statements lambasting mcconnell quote how this guy can stay as leader is beyond comprehension this is coming not only from me but from virtually everyone in the republican party trump wrote on thursday he is a disaster and should be replaced as quote leader asap oh this is coming from everyone in the republican party well it is coming from trump and friends the barrage of attacks on mcconnell according to politico quote have been amplified by fox news hosts tucker carlson and sean hannity who have also gone after republican leader mcconnell on the air mr carlson during a segment last week announced that his show would begin regularly highlighting problems with mr mcconnell but inside the capitol conservative senators shrug out the question revealing a lack of appetite even among the republican party's anti-establishment wing it's just it's it's impotence irrelevance impotence political impotence can't sell seats his endorsed candidates lose his demands to throw people out get met with a shrug even when they get a fox news boost impotent soft increasingly politically irrelevant which does raise questions about why that private citizen a billionaire after all right is having his personal legal bills paid for by the national republican party when he's a private citizen particularly among signs that those legal bills are just going to keep going up and up and up but that deflation of his political potency contra everything you're hearing in the beltway press the real world signs are that his political potency is poop and that comes at a time when non-political consequences are already also starting to loom larger and larger with each passing day after serving about a year in prison though mr cohen got out and he was transitioned effectively to home confinement and the reason he got out then is because of covid it wasn't special treatment for him it doesn't appear to have been this happened to a lot of prisoners at the time but a seriously crazy thing happened to him right after that something that appears to have been very specifically designed for him just a few weeks after he was sent home because of covet the bureau of prisons revoked his home confinement and decided that even though he'd only been home for a couple of weeks they were going to send him right back to prison and because they said he had broken the rules about what you're allowed to do while you're on home confinement well what is the rule that he had broken what did he do to get his release revoked and to have himself thrown back in federal prison turns out what he had done is he had written a book critical of then president donald trump and it started speaking publicly on social media about the forthcoming publication of that book the problem with that scenario as i just laid it out is that that's not actually against the rules for people who are out on home confinement like he was in that moment it appears and this is contested but it appears that under the trump administration federal prison officials drafted a special rule just for michael cohen that said he couldn't write a book or talk to anybody in the news media or post anything online a special rule just for him and as i say this is contested but i'm also pretty confident in saying this is what it what appears to have happened because it's not just me who's asserting it it's not just michael cohen who's asserting it a federal judge says that's what happened after they shackled michael cohen back up again and sent him back to prison for the grave crime of him writing a book and saying it was going to be published last july a federal judge in new york ruled that cohen actually had to be released again and further the judge ruled explicitly that the trump administration had locked michael cohen up had revoked his home confinement and put him back in prison in retaliation for him writing this book that was critical of then president trump the judge said in his ruling quote the purpose in transferring cohen from release on furlough and home confinement back to custody was retaliatory in response to cohen desiring to exercise his first amendment rights to publish a book critical of the president and to discuss the book on social media federal judge proclaims this to have been an unconstitutional act an illegal act of retaliation against him orders him freed and it is you know it's one thing for a person like michael cohen's former boss donald trump to you know threaten michael cohen shake his fist at him criticize him to maybe personally retaliate against him you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas but it's a much bigger problem for all of us if any president so motivated can employ the federal bureau of prisons and the department of justice to carry out that kind of retaliation with all the power and compulsory compulsory force of the united states government i mean trump might have loved to say lock her up about hillary clinton and you know he threatened during the debates presidential debates in 2016 that if he became president she president she'd find herself in jail he never did that of course but he did actually lock up michael cohen and a federal judge ruled that the reason michael cohen was locked up was because of retaliation against him for criticizing trump they actually put him in prison for doing that that's what a federal judge says what happened when he ordered cohen freed well now mr cohen has filed a new lawsuit against trump and also importantly against trump's last attorney general william barr who was head of the justice department at the time all this happened also he's also filed the suit against a whole variety of federal prison officials who were involved in this mishigas and i know this might seem like sort of a you know new chapter in the ongoing michael cohen saga i know the personalities here can get distracting but take the personalities out of this i mean a president being a bad guy is one thing a president being a bad guy and then being able to use the bureau of prisons and the justice department to go pluck his enemies out of their homes shackle them and throw them in jail without legitimate cause that is a blaring red siren not just for what it means to have a bad person in power but for what it means to have a government that is bent to that person's will for what it means to have a government that is insufficiently independent and governed by ethics and law that an unscrupulous leader can employ the power of the us government in that way for their own purposes that's a that's a big blaring red siren and i've always felt about that case that because it's michael cohen and because there's so much drama around michael cohen i felt like that case maybe never got taken all that seriously that's a big deal case in terms of who we are as a country joining us now is marty peony he's former senate democratic floor advisor former senate liaison for the obama administration he's now senior advisor for the prime policy group mr peony it's a real pleasure to have you here thank you so much for making time to be here tonight oh thank you for having me i know that there are things about your discussions with senate democrats that you are not going to tell me but i was hoping you might be able to describe uh what you were asked to come do today what what about your expertise did they want to tap well senator schumer had been working on this for quite a long time and trying to get some movement on a voting rights bill and they've come close as you noted senator kaine unveiled a package of uh possible changes and they're getting closer and so they asked me to come in and talk to members about you know what the place was like and uh how it's changed over the years and uh whereas you know it used to be a much more wide open senate where members could walk in and offer amendments of their choice uh and they would get majority votes uh you know feinstein sir feinstein's assault weapons ban in 94 was passed i think was 52 votes so there was no cloture necessary now unfortunately you need closure on everything pretty much uh unless it's a reconciliation bill and you know it's a much more closed environment and so he was asking me just to bring in come in and talk with the members about the changes that they've had that have happened over the years and how these potential changes that they'd like to do might impact the current side given that evolution that you're describing and the way the actual sort of pattern and practice of the senate has changed over time so that there's this 60 vote threshold the sort of unspoken 60 vote threshold for almost everything now um do you think that it is that the the the democratic senators are on the right track procedurally not not as a matter of sort of political opinion but procedurally do you think they are on the right track to think that it may be possible to change the rules in a sort of one-off way to make a change around this voting rights question that won't necessarily have a cascading effect or the kind of slippery slope effect that senator manchin has said he's so opposed to in terms of fundamentally altering the way the senate operates well whatever change they make the opponents will say that you have made such a change of you know irreversible altering of the senate um and they don't necessarily have to make it to apply just to voting rights they could do a generic change that voting rights would be the first to benefit from and these are questions that they're still dealing with and we'll see how it comes out in terms of the sorts of objections that some senators have raised moderate senators in particular have raised saying that they don't want the senate to become like the house that the filibuster rule in the senate like it or like it or or hate it it has an effect of promoting bipartisanship and comedy and um and and uh sort of conciliation between the parties compromise between the parties is it your view that that's true is that the practical effect of those rules as they have changed over the over the years as you were describing a moment ago it may have been it probably was true in another another era like if you look at the 64 civil rights act that bill was on the floor for many weeks and it was opposed by a lot of i think 18 democrats and one republican was supported by dirksen uh the republican leader in mansfield but dirksen still and some of his colleagues had problems with how broad the bill was and so after there was on a build floor for 60 days after 54 days humphrey and dirksen worked out a compromise that met some of their fears or their concerns and uh they accept they put up they offered that as a substitute amendment and then they were able to get closure shortly thereafter by more than by 70 votes but now the bipartisanship and the parties have changed and in those days you had liberal democrats conservative democrats you had liberal conservative republicans now it's republicans versus democrats it's just the two teams and uh you know you don't there's very much there's very little uh bipartisanship that you used to see the chase's place has changed partially because of the country and uh the hyper partisanship it's also changed physically in the sense that in those days that i referred to the senators lived in this dc i mean remember when said when president ford died you know they they brought his his casket around and uh down i think it was into alexandria i mean they used to live here with their families and uh they weren't criticized for it now uh many of them house and site people uh members do not bring their families to washington you know it's like you know it's taboo for them and it's really unfortunate because when they all lived here they got to know each other better you know they they their kids went to the same school yeah you know they were members of the same pta they even carpooled sometimes uh but those days you know are completely changed and they now walk around with instant news on their you know on your phones and it's a different era which means that you may need different rules to deal with [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

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Keywords: MSNBC, Politics, News, trump, donald trump, trump influence, gop, republicans, trump rally, michael cohen, january 6, january 6 committee, bill o'reilly, trump tour, filibuster, democrats, U.S. senate, senate, Maddow, rachel maddow, us news

Id: s75zch_nR0I

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021