that is tonight's last word. the 11th hour with stephanie ruhle starts now. tonight the historic supreme court decision on donald trump's immunity claim. the high court raising the bar for prosecuting the former president. how it's going to impact of the federal election case. then, what's next after last week's debate. the biden campaign touting big fundraising numbers when they fend off calls for biden to drop out of the race as the 11th hour gets underway on this monday night. good evening once again. i am stephanie ruhle live from rockefeller center and we are now 127 days away from the election. today the supreme court gave donald trump more legal covering his election interference case and transformed the power of the united states presidency. in a 6-3 decision the justices ruled that trump does have immunity for some of his actions as president in that case. here is my colleague laura jarrett with the details. >> reporter: tonight a monumental win at the supreme court for former president trump . the conservative majority finding the presumptive gop nominee must receive sweeping immunity for any official act taken during his presidency. the 6-3 ruling a defeat for special counsel jack smith with the court bulldozing for the charges against mr. trump for his alleged criminal efforts to stay in power, making the completion of any trial before november virtually impossible. chief justice john roberts laying out a new sliding scale of what can be prosecuted, saying a president may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, that he has immunity from prosecution for all his official acts but that a president has no immunity for private, unofficial acts while cautioning the president is not above the law. the federal grand jury indicted the former president for orchestrating a conspiracy to retake the white house. prosecutors alleging he leaned on his doj, vp and state officials to help them reverse the election results, mobilizing meetings of fake collectors. it all culminated in the violent attack on the capitol on january 6. mr. trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued without immunity, every president could be prosecuted by political opponents. >> if you don't have immunity you're not going to do anything and you're going to become a ceremonial president. you're not going to take any of the risks. >> reporter: the majority today a green the commander-in-chief must be able to carry out his constitutional duties without risk of political prosecution, writing without immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex- presidents could quickly become routine and that would weaken the presidency, which is exactly what the framers intended to avoid. the special counsel had pushed to get the case to trial before november. >> my office will seek a speedy trial. >> reporter: the ruling is dramatically chipping away at parts of smith's case. the justices finding mr. trump's urging of the then attorney general to investigate voter fraud now absolutely immune from prosecution. what remains in the indictment, including his pressure on his former vp. >> mike pence is going to have to come through for us. >> reporter: and local officials like this phone call to georgia to secretary of state. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. >> reporter: are now entitled to a presumption of immunity. the liberal justices with a blistering pushback. justice sotomayor writing, when a president uses his official powers and anyway, under the majority's reasoning, he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution, or does the navy seal team six to assassinate a political rival, immune, organizes a military coup to hold onto power, immune, takes a bride in exchange for a pardon, immune. even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, the damage has been done. >> tonight president biden criticized the court's decision, calling it a dangerous precedent for the future and saying it is a disservice to the nation that donald trump will not stand trial for his actions before the upcoming election. >> now the american people have to do with the court should have been willing to do, but will not. the americans will have to render judgment about donald trump's behavior. perhaps as importantly, the american people must decide they want to entrust the president once again, the presidency, to donald trump, now knowing he'll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases, whatever he wants to do. >> with that, let's get smarter with the help of our leadoff panel tonight. andrew wiseman, former fbi general counsel and former senior member of the mueller probe. now he's a law professor at nyu. harry littman, former u.s. attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general and susan glasser, staff writer for the new yorker. andrew, what does this really mean for jack smith selection interference campaign -- excuse me, case against trump connectors lots of reaction but just level set for us. >> sure. small picture. the big picture right away is the decision in terms of what it means for the presidency and checks and balances and this could not be a worse decision in terms of our country. but in terms of what it means for the case, one, there will not be a trial before the general election. there is no way for that to happen. there's too much that would need to happen and too many appeals. two, there likely will be a hearing that judge chutkan has been called upon by the supreme court to have to decide what his official conduct and what is unofficial conduct. and at that hearing, although i think there will be lots of disputes about what evidence can be used, a lot of witnesses can be called, saying you could have a sort of mini trial. i read about this for the new york times today and said that is sort of a small silver lining that there may be that vehicle for people to see additional evidence that did not come out during the january 6 hearing, and then whatever judge chutkan finds, there are likely to be appeals of that as to whether she got her decision correct as to what should be in her official docket and therefore is immune under this case or what is unofficial and therefore not immune under this case. >> harry, you wrote an op-ed for the l.a. times, saying that this ruling makes it anyone's guess whether trump, not just before the election, but will ever face accountability in this case. how does today's decision compare with what you expected to see? >> it's somewhat more far- reaching and in particular to that point it just lops off big chunks of the indictment, and it's not at all clear that we have no sort of concrete guidance that obviously saves any part of the indictment. trump has an argument to make in any context to the point that andrew just raised, he will fight tooth and nail and say you can't even put on evidence because i would be immune here and they are really cryptic but it's quite clear if he's acting in a way that can somehow be classified as part of more hours. he's immune and immune for a really, i would say, pernicious reason. they cannot look into his motives, which is the core, i think, of what we think he did wrong and the soul of the criminal live. it doesn't matter why he uses powers and that really does make him tantamount to a king. >> corp. hours. all right, you guys know whatever the case may be, i'm always going to try to connected to money and power. so i want to talk to business impact because now donald trump has an even more wide-open lane, if you were to be president again, to mix his personal business interests with the possible official government role. if you remember, early in his presidency claimed there could be no conflicts of interest for a president and then he steamrolled through his four years with the trump hotel in dc, events at doral, events at mar-a-lago, all the lobbyist roots, foreign governments booking up rooms, basically soft bribing him with pain these businesses. we saw ivanka get chinese trademarks and of course jared raising money from the saudis. it infuriated people. they talked about the emoluments clause yet nothing happened and now he is going to have an even easier time, if you are to be president again. susan, the irony of all this, it's reported today that the trump family just inked a deal for trump tower saudi arabia. >> but of course they did, steph. look, it's a breathtaking decision and you can only imagine that donald trump, he is a maximizer. he will seek to push the limits, whatever the limits are, and now the supreme court has basically said there are practically no limits whatsoever. of course he's going to plead that basically any conduct that he engages in is ipso facto official conduct and therefore he can do whatever he wants. i think your point is a really important one, that already trump pushed the boundaries. other presidents abided by the rules that apply to other federal employees. they divested themselves of their private business investments. they tried to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. donald trump was the first resident to say, no, i'm not going to do that. he did not sell his business or otherwise put it into a blind trust. he refused to do that and other family members followed suit. i will remind you that saudi arabia, jared kushner was in the middle east on january 6 itself, flying back from meetings in the middle east where he was working to set up his future to billion-dollar investment fund with funding from the crown prince of saudi arabia. so it's not even new for the trump family to be engaged in business with the same family that they're trying to use to help influence elections in the united states, to try to influence international diplomacy. it's a morass of conflicts of interest and we would not tolerate in any other federal government employee except, apparently, the former president. >> it's just bananas because when trump was running for reelection, democrats are arguing, we are not going to let the barn door be opened. we are going to change the rules. we are going to tighten them up. and now here we are, they are looser than ever. our friend john mcclain said there is some good news in this ruling. no immunity for unofficial acts as well as saying immunity for official acts is only presumptive and i want to share a bit of what chuck rosenberg and lawrence o'donnell had to say about it. watch this. >> i don't see anything in here that says assassination of a political rival is part of the president's core constitutional responsibilities for which he or she will be absolutely immune. the problem i think is that much of this is indeterminate, that we know certain things are absolute and we know the purely private conduct is not, and then for those of their official acts which are presumptively immune, you have to have a case-by-case factual analysis. >> what this is, is we've created absolute immunity on one paragraph of the indictment applying to exactly one paragraph of the indictment. all of the rest of the indictment goes back to judge chutkan's courtroom and she schedules this. this supreme court has ordered her to have a hearing about the evidence in the case, to determine whether the act in question is an official act, whether it might have some kind of protection or not. >> so andrew, this is not a total home run for trump, correct? >> it's not a total home run but i think those two clips are way too rosy. one, the court has said that there is absolute immunity with respect to what the president does with respect to the department of justice. absolute immunity. the court has also said for official acts, which by the way, were any core acts of which they say very, very broad, anything that involves basically the take care clause and anything that's been designed directly to and exclusively to the president. those are absolutely immune. but even for just ordinary official acts, this presumptive immunity and the test for overcoming that is one that seems very high in terms of the state meeting it. and it's important to note that the court did not say that presumptive immunity is it. they said at least presumptive immunity. from that, i think what you can read is that certain of the justices wanted to go further and so they left open the door to say that it's at least presumptive. that doesn't mean that they can't go further later, and it also means that when it comes back, if there is a hearing and judge chutkan makes rulings when it comes back up to the supreme court, the court can say, you know what, that's not the right test, these are all official, they're not unofficial and they're all immune. i think the court does have to reach that now because of donald trump because the president in this case will be gone the moment he takes office. he will just dismiss it and so they don't have to reach that now but i think it's way too early for someone to have a rosy view of this case. my view is this is a fundamental change in our country as to the checks and balances on the presidency. >> trump certainly has a rosy view. his immediate fundraising email was titled total immunity and based on this decision, he's now trying to get his sentencing in the new york case postponed and the guilty verdict set aside. what are the chances that happens? >> well, most of the conduct there is free presidency but some of it was after and can you conceptualize it, that's always the issue, he's signing checks to pay back someone who advanced money for hush money to a mistress. man, if anything it is unofficial. it sure seems that is, but i do want to agree with andrew that i think shot and maybe lawrence are being a little rosy here because this presumption only applies at a second level. at the higher level quote, unquote official actions. if you're within article two powers you are out of luck, period. so when he is using navy s.e.a.l. six, he's the commander in chief. when he's doing saudi arabia deals, he is doing foreign- policy. if he can place it in that category of article two, game over, period. >> my goodness. susan, the washington post editorial board wrote tonight that this decision invites presidents to push the boundaries. harry just walked us through how that could happen. what could president biden do now that this decision is made? he's still in office. >> well you know, everybody's got a hypothetical because we are going to totally brave new world in terms of scenarios, so everything is hypothetical. president biden did come out tonight, this evening, and i think he tried to make it clear that he would continue to abide by what he sees as the rule of law and i think that his point about this decision was that it would empower bad actors like the former president donald trump so i don't think in the white house, as much as they might be tempted to right now, they're probably not sitting around, drawing up scenarios for using seal team six against donald trump. that would be my strong resumption at this moment in time. but you know, we really are in the realm of the unthinkable, aren't we? >> andrew, justice thomas strongly suggests that the appointment of jack smith as special counsel might be illegal. that's already become an issue in the florida classified documents case. what's your reaction? >> if you want to know sort of the corruption of this supreme court and sort of where it's gone, the idea there is a precept when you're a judge that you only reach the issues that are before you and you don't start giving sort of advisory opinions about things that are not before you. and he issues this concurrence that basically is a roadmap to judge cannon to say you should rule that the appointment of special counsel smith is illegal. he had no business going down that road. the issue is not fully briefed and before the court and by the way, if jack smith's appointment was bad, well what about rob hur and david weiss and all the other special councils? you don't get to sort of pick and choose, well you know what, i just don't like the special counsel that deals with the horse that you're backing. and so it just to me was really just a deplorable sign of where the supreme court is. >> terry, john dean, richard nixon's white house counsel, said that under today's decision, nixon would've had a pass on watergate. what are your thoughts on that? >> it's totally true. look, nixon and watergate in 73 orders the doj to tell the fbi to stand down on the investigation. that, to us, is the soul of obstruction, the soul of corruption. now would it come out under today's opinion, oh well, he's talking to the doj and that's part of his official powers, deciding whether to investigate and prosecute cases, and by the way, we want inquire into motive. that's it. he gets a pass there and the court did try to preserve the principle of having to produce evidence, but he could not be subject to criminal prosecution for anything i can think of in watergate and the most serious transgressions that the country and history have long since convicted him of, in that sense, are now by the boards completely. >> oh my goodness, here we are. andrew, harry, susan, thank you so much for getting us started tonight. when we return, the supreme court is facing serious heat, not just from the american people but from former judges. one of them joins us to share what he thinks about today's decisions and the fears he has for the future of the high court. and later, the biden campaign navigating post debate and those who are calling for the president to drop out. recovery efforts as the biden family urges is to keep on fighting. the 11th hour just getting underway on a serious monday night. night. sara federico: at st. jude, we don't care who cures cancer. we just need to advance the cure. it's a bold initiative to try and bump cure rates all around the world, but we should. it is our commitment. we 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x marks the spot. now you can add the new xfinity streamsaver™ that includes netflix, peacock, and apple tv+. that's xfinity streamsaver™ for just $15 a month. all your favorites. all in one place. only from xfinity. for more watching and less spending... x marks the spot. do it all on the network made for streaming, and bring on the good stuff. today's decision on presidential immunity is bringing even more scrutiny to the supreme court. our next guest spent decades as a federal judge and was even considered for the supreme court under president clinton. but this year he retired from the dc circuit court of appeals in part because of his frustrations with the current supreme court. he says the court, quote, seemed to hold in the lower regard the principles to which he dedicated his life and it had turned into something he could barely recognize. i'd like to welcome retired u.s. circuit judge david table. he served for three decades on the federal bench. his new book, vision, a memoir of blindness and justice, is out now. thank you so much for being here. i want to start by getting your reaction to this immunity ruling. what do you make of this decision, sir? >> in my book, stephanie, i say in a chapter about the supreme court's evisceration of the voting rights act, at the end of the chapter i say start i fear for our democracy and today i fear for it even more. i had exactly the same reaction reading this opinion that john dean did, if this opinion had been issued in 1970 i don't think president ford would have had to issue a pardon. it's not exactly clear what the parameters or limitations of this decision is, but to me, the one thing that is clear is that i think it's quite unlikely that any future former president is going to be held of responsible for criminal acts committed during their presidency. i think it's just unlikely. >> house democrats have vowed to get aggressive on the supreme court after this decision. they have very few levers to do so. congresswoman alexandria ocasio- cortez said she plans to file articles of impeachment against at least one justice. we don't know what justice that is. what do you think a solution could and should be? >> i think it's a long-term solution. i think it depends on elections and how they turn out and i think it depends on the court itself. i don't think there are any shortcuts to this problem. >> in your book -- >> impeachment certainly isn't one of them. >> you're saying impeachment isn't one of them? >> no, i think -- i don't have any doubt that under the constitution impeachment is reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors and not judicial decisions. impeach a judge because of a decision i think would be a terrible development. >> we know that the american people has possibly the lowest opinion of the supreme court than they have had in modern history. do you think the court cares? none of them have to run for election. they're at no risk of getting fired. are they just brushing this off? >> having one of those positions for 30 years, lifetime employment, to be honest i didn't think much about what the public thought, either. i worked really hard to function as a judge. to me, here is what i think about this. i think the public respects sports courts and has a high respect for courts when courts function as courts and are perceived as nonpolitical. and i expect that there is a direct relationship between the decline in the public's support for the court and the public's view that the court is increasingly political. just look what happened in 2016. donald trump said that he was going to overrule roe v wade and rain in the federal administrative state. he gave us a list of judges who he said he would appoint, who would do that. he won the election. he appointed them and they overruled roe and in a series of decisions last weekend today, they effectively reined in the administrative state, all on 6-3 decisions with the republicans in the majority. you could forgive the public for thinking that this is a political, not a legal institution, and i think that's why poling has dropped. >> in your book you talk about chevron, calling it an important principle of judicial restraint and then of course last week the supreme court overturned that landmark decision. what was your reaction to this? >> i dealt with chevron on the dc circuit for 30 years in hundreds of cases. chevron was a very effective way of balancing the need for federal agencies with their expertise to fulfill their mission of protecting human health and safety. to balance that against the responsibility of the courts to rein in the federal agencies when they had exceeded, therefore, and it's one of the reasons why i think agencies from the epa to the fcc to the fda, all of them have been so effective over the years in fulfilling their missions, is because they've been free to exercise their expertise on their complex problems but yet the courts have kept them within their jurisdiction. the court, this court, which ruled under chevron for 50 years, applied chevron, suddenly decided last week that it was no longer lawful and i think the consequences of that are to shift all this power that used to be in the agencies, all this expertise will now have to be exercised by the federal courts and the federal judges will be making decisions that they're simply not qualified to make but the one thing it will do for sure is it's a massive shift of authority from the executive branch and the congress to the federal courts. >> judge, thank you so much for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. >> glad to be here, thank you. when we return, after a rocky night on the debate stage, the biden campaign is trying to move on from cold to drop out. when the 11th hour continues we are going to dig in. in. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ you were made to find inner peace. we were made to track flight prices to paradise. i have moderate to severe crohn's disease. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are looking up ♪ ♪ i've got symptom relief ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me ♪ (♪♪) ♪ control is everything to me ♪ feel significant symptom relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements. skyrizi is the first il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. and skyrizi is proven to help deliver long-lasting remission at one year. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to. liver problems may occur in crohn's disease. now's the time to ask your gastroenterologist how you can take control of your crohn's with skyrizi. 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(vo) ding dong! homes-dot-com. ♪we can secure our world.♪ ♪when it's time to update an app,♪ ♪don't you hesitate, do it asap.♪ learn more at cisa.gov/secureourworld ♪that's how we can secure our world!♪ ♪we can secure our world.♪ ♪when you choose your passwords♪ ♪make them strong.♪ ♪use a password manager to help you along.♪ learn more at cisa.gov/secureourworld ♪that's how we can secure our world!♪ the fallout continues tonight from last week's debates but there are no signs that the president will step aside. this weekend he huddled with his family at camp david and they encouraged him to stay in the race. meanwhile, biden aides are looking for ways to move on from last week. one option they are considering is holding more public events and interviews to show the american people exactly who this president is, what he's achieved, and what he can do from here. i want to bring in john allen, senior national politics reporter for abc, david poff, senior campaign manager and advisor to president obama and stuart stevens, advisor to the mitt romney and george w. bush presidential campaigns. he's now with the lincoln project. where do things stand inside the biden campaign now? >> the short answer, stephanie, is that they are going forward as we reported this weekend out of those meetings in camp david, they are telling their allies that. i spoke to one ally who talked to a top white house official in the last couple days that said they're not budging, they're not moving on that so finally the short answer is joe biden is moving full steam ahead and that will be the case, up to and until he decides that he's not. so don't expect to get any sort of preliminary indications of any change, even if there is one coming. >> david, if you are inside this campaign how would you be advising the president? >> well, stephanie, heading into the debate it's a close race but biden is behind. stewart and i have both worked on races where you got a lead and you're behind and when you're behind you got to do everything you can to overtake your opponent. the debate was the best opportunity for the president to do that. that was a missed opportunity. we'll see where the rate settles in the next five-7 days. i think it's probably going to be a bigger deficit, not a huge deficit, and i do think trump is close to his votes in the campaign the central question is the polling suggesting over 70% of americans have concerns about his fitness, he's got to address that every wakes. hopefully he'll have another chance to be on the stage with trump on september 10. that will be the best opportunity. yeah, the interviews, podcasts, talking to influencers on tiktok and instagram, you've got to do it all. got to campaign hard. july 4 is generally a time where things intensify. bus tours in the battleground states and campaign hard. i know there's some risk associated with that but at the end of the day it's the central question facing joe biden and i think he's got to get a lot done today, show that you're fighting for this, understand that you're behind but given this important decision today, this is not an option for the country. donald trump has to be defeated. so the question for the campaign and the big bar is not just how do you kind of get back on track and lay the question but how do you win, how do you get 270 electoral votes, and i still think there's time for joe biden to do that, but things are going to have to be adjusted to answer the voters concerns. these are not just pundits. voters have concerns. i think joe biden can address them but you've got to get on task to do it. >> today's supreme court decision, do you think there is an avenue for democrats, for the campaign to use it to their advantage in the same way they did the dobbs decision, trying to alert the american people that checks and balances are off, that the decision today gives a person, whomever it is in the white house, even more discretion and even more power, and the american people, by and large, are not looking for a dictator or a king, and that could be where we are headed with a decision like that. >> first let me just say i think what david is advising is exactly right. it's almost like this guy has won a presidential race or something. but the president does need to get out there. i've always felt in this race that the higher the stakes the better the president will do, that if this was sort of seen as a normal election, and there is a tremendous hydraulic pressure to normalize this, as if it was like clinton versus dole or something, but you have to see it as an existential threat because it is so what happened today in the supreme court increased the opportunity to do that, showed the reality more of what a second term of president trump would be like, and i think that it also just serves to sort of change the subject from last thursday's debate, which always happens in campaigns. campaigns aren't static. they're a river. they flow. you had a bad night. you go on. but i think it's a positive move. i thought the president did the right thing to come out tonight. >> do you think, stuart, besides podcasts, tiktok, interviews and putting the president out there, another way would be press conferences. the press covers president biden day in and day out and many say they've had limited access to him. if his campaign, if this white house took a turn and had him on the podium doing press conferences, answering questions to the white house press corps on a regular basis, that would be a net positive for him to put thursday behind him and show america and show the press corps who he is and what he can do. >> is that a question for me? i think in one-on-one interviews i think they're actually better than that because you can go more in depth and you can ask more follow-up questions. like you did a great interview with ms. romney and i think that you know sort of soundbite press conferences that are less revealing than in-depth, so i would hope that they would sit down and do that. i think it would be good if the president went on fox news and did an interview. i think he would hit it out of the park. >> tom, you know we keep hearing, the people aren't putting their name to it, more and more people are looking for the president to step down or step aside. anymore chance that people who really want this to happen are republicans, because the chaos, if that were to happen, would be a gift to donald trump. >> all i'm hearing from republicans right now is behind closed doors or on telephone calls, that they have some fear that they're not going to be able to run against joe biden. of course it benefits them to say that because it weakens biden to say that, right, that they believe that he's the weakest candidate. i think if you were to have a change of candidates, that's certainly an unpredictable situation. i talked to one democratic lawmaker who said the only people who are more panicked right now than democrats are republicans because they don't want to be the one with the person at the top of the ticket who is most hated or seen as most difficult to have at the top of the ticket. i just think it's a very unbreakable situation, stephanie. i don't think any of us can look in a crystal ball and say we replace joe biden with kamala harris, who by the way, is overwhelmingly the most likely person, for a variety of reasons, to be the person that would succeed joe biden. we can't look into a crystal ball and see what that looks like. there's a lot of prediction. there are a lot of people with a lot of interest one way or another into making predictions about that. we don't know. >> dated, should democrats take a page from donald trump supporters who forgive that guy for absolutely everything? >> stephanie, i'm happy not to be a member of the cult that doesn't think so if the threat is accidental, and i think it is, joe biden does a good job of describing it. it's gotten even more so if you could say that after today. i think it's fine for democrats to say it was not a good debate and i want to say this, this wasn't just a bad night. we are losing the election. not by a lot but we are losing it. we got to overcome that. that was the best opportunity. i think it's fine for democrats to express concern. we've got polls coming out. there will be more polls coming out. the most important ones will probably be those of senate candidates and house candidates who will get a sense of where the race stands, so no, but at the end of the day, joe biden saying he's going to stay in the race, i take him at his word. right now i operate and act accordingly so i think everybody wants us to stop donald trump has to understand that it can be done but the degree of difficulty has been increased, and so i think what's helpful for democrats is to say we are going to work harder, we're going to get more involved, but also to send a message that this isn't just like okay, we had a bad night, let's just keep doing what we're doing. that's not going to get the job done, and again, stuart and i have been a part of races where if you're down 10 or 12 points that's a hard thing to overcome. that's not where this race is an donald trump i still think has a fairly low ceiling. he's a deeply unpopular candidate. swing voters reacted very poorly to his debate performance, obviously. a lot of focus on his family, and biden. from head to bed debate. i'm glad we were able to ask questions in our party and not ignore what we see. that being said, i think the focus needs to be how do you get the 270 electoral votes because what the supreme court did today guarantees that we are not going to like the next four years even more than we would've said 24 hours ago. >> gentlemen, you are all sticking around. when we return, the biden campaign raised millions of dollars after that the bates but with the dnc just eight weeks out, can he reassure donors that he is their number one guy? we're going to get into it when the 11th hour continues. with just eight weeks to go until the dnc, the pressure is on the biden campaign to convince the party that they can deliver. since last week's debate they say they have raised more than $34 million and the campaign is trying to reassure major donors with a call today from biden's campaign chair progresso with us, john allen, david cluff, stuart stevens. people are talking, talking, talking about a debate that didn't work out but those are big fundraising numbers. >> sure, well i think the only thing that stands to the between the donald trump presidency and democracy is joe biden and so you've seen grassroots donors and bundlers and others continue to give. that's important. listen, we're only 90 days away from people beginning to vote in battleground states, so you're running out of time. you know every day, every week, to make up the ground we need to make up. the most important thing would be joe biden's performances and those getting better and not giving voters who don't really want to vote for donald trump but are concerned about fitness, that will give them permission structure but advertising is important. ground game is important so you've got to basically be pouring it on right now. obviously you want to be fully funded in october as ballots are going out, as people are making their final decisions. but you've got to be on it right now, so seeing the fundraising keep up is a great sign because that's an important part of the matrix to kind of make up the ground we need to make up in these battleground states. >> you've got to have those dollars to show the voters all of the policy wins that are serving them. stuart, i want to turn to a cbs news poll. only 32% of registered voters believe that donald trump told the truth during the debate, just 32% but 46% claimed that he appeared residential. you have run campaigns. when you get a poll like that, what in the world do you do? yes he's a total liar but he appeared presidential. >> my first question would be who is those 32% who didn't think he was lying? what are they drinking? look, these polls are going to be asking a lot of different interesting questions but ultimately i don't think it really impacts what you would do. to me, this race has always hinged on two factors that the biden campaign needed to accomplish. he needed to represent the future more than donald trump, which in his policies and the way he talks about the future, and the stuff that he's done that's going to affect people's lives, i think he can win that game. there's really no policy. there is no vision in the trump campaign at all and the other thing is joe biden needs to be the safer choice here and part of that safer choice is show that he's up to the job, which he has to do, like everybody is saying. but donald trump is angry at the world. he's out there denigrating america in a way, when i grew up, if you talked about america like that somebody asked you to step outside the bar. i just think that is a comparison and a contrast that they need to drive. >> john, why doesn't that connection meets? why don't we hear more about it? donald trump has put forth almost no policy solutions. even when he goes after president biden about the economy, talking about inflation, the economy that donald trump would deliver us, where policies he would put forth would destroy the economic winds that we've had. why doesn't that seem to stick to the former president more? >> i think, stephanie, this is something that's been true about donald trump for a long time. it's more true in this particular election. he has put out a lot of policies but it's completely overshadowed by his rhetoric so i think number one, people aren't necessarily paying attention to the particulars of his policy. you go to his website, there are any number of policy prescriptions there, i think he wants to extend those trump tax cuts which is going to be paid for either in a very direct way by voters or overtime for recurring debt but he has had a way over the course of the years of using rhetoric that makes people sort of pay attention to sort of a few basic ideas. there is one thing i'd like to back up for a moment on this, stephanie, because david plouffe said it a couple times that he is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant political minds of his generation, of our generation, and he said it a couple times and i think many democrats are not listening to this, and i think that includes many of the viewers of our network. what david said is that the democrats were trailing before that debate and i think that that's something that a lot of the democratic voters were unaware of, not paying attention to, and if the democrats are to win this presidential election they have work to do in front of them and it didn't get easier on thursday night, it got harder. i thought it was a point david was making, i've heard a lot of other democrats make >> i'm glad you underscored it. john, david, stuart, thank you all for being here tonight. we'll be back with more. more. of magnesium. qunol, the brand i trust. 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