bedtime stories he told you about going to iowa in 1972 for george montgomery, the first time in a presidential candidate paid attention to the iowa caucuses, winning it, and how he created political history with everyone wanting to follow. karl wagner s footsteps, managing a winning, presidential the monster he helped create, in other words. we were working monday night, all because of carl. he did this to us. he was looking on us with a smile on his face, and probably, a frown. brilliant. a brilliant move when he did it, and i m just sorry that it has become an enduring phenomenon of this absurd thing. all i knew was karl said, no one is paying attention to this, we can get there, when it, and get credit for it. then we re off to the races. only a son of iowa would come up with a plot like that. thank you carl wagner. thank you kara wagner. have a good show, lawrence. thank you alex. today, on the witness stand, in federal court, in manhattan, e. jean ca
host begins right now. e msnb host begins right now. good evening. welcome to tonight special coverage. i m rachel maddow here at the msnbc mothership with my colleagues joy reid and lawrence o donnell and jen psaki and ari melber. i friends chris hayes and alex wagner and stephanie ruhle or are gonna be joining us later. it s going to be fun. we re less than a week out from the republican presidential caucuses in iowa. theast eye or a public can debate is underway tonight with oddly a sort of random selection of two of the remaining five republican presidential candidates. taking part in that debate. if you can, right now, name all five remaining republican presidential candidates at the top of your head without looking anything up, congratulations. and i ll say you need to get out more. two are debating tonight. nikki haley and ron desantis. also tonight, two miles away from that iowa debate, fox news conducted a live town hall with the front running republican candida
where he ll finally experience consequences for some of his actions. next week, tuesday, marks the beginning of the second e. jean carroll defamation trial. news on that later on. but first things first, developments ahead of closing arguments. tomorrow in new york s $250 million civil fraud lawsuit. the judge revealed he would not allow donald trump to deliver part of those closing arguments himself as he had requested. the reasoning, neither trump nor his attorneys ever got back to the judge agreeing to preconditions. in truth, it is hard to imagine what trump wanted more, an opportunity to put himself at the center of proceedings to deliver his message in his own way, or an opportunity like this, to complain, whine about being silenced, despite the fact his own team failed to respond to the judge on time. remember, in both cases, e. jean carroll s defamation and new york s civil fraud, trump s guilt has already been determined. these decisions will only settle the punish.
as trump s lawyers are arguing? or is that claim not just constitutionally wrong, but also say license for future presidents to commit crimes while in office, as the justice department argues? and on the eve of a hearing on the question of whether trump can be prosecuted for his actions while in office, we are learning incredible new details about what donald trump said on january 6 and what h did and did not do. thanks t testimony, to the special l closest aides, the deputy chief of staff dan scavino. from that reporting, quote, sources say scavino told smith s investigators as the violence began to escalate that day, trump was just not interested in doing more to stop it sources also say that the former trump aidk luna told federal investigators that when trump wa informed that then-vice president mike pence had to be ush rushed to a secure location, trump responded so what. luna saw an unexpected willingness by trump to let potential harm come to a long time loyalist. and
ide with jen psaki starts no w. well, if the first week of the new year has shown us anything, it s that joe biden and donald trump are basically living on different planets when it comes to their approach to american democracy. tonight, i m gonna talk to house speaker emeritus nancy pelosi about all of that. plus, president obama has appointed david plouffe as a senior strategist who might be useful to the biden campaign. of course he would be. david is gonna join me tonight as well. but we do want to start tonight with some new reporting from abc news that is shedding greater light on what trump was doing, and more importantly not doing on january 6th. as a mob pushed its way into the capital, becoming more and more violent as the minutes tic by, trump was reportedly just not interested in doing more to stop it. and trump learned that his own vice president had to be rushed to a secure location, trump reportedly responded, so what? so what? trump accepted t