on a singular message that this election will decide whether american democracies survives. will those words move voters? plus, the u.s. scrambling today to find partners for peace in the middle east, even as the israel-hamas war threatens to spin out of control. will secretary of state antony blinken s fourth trip overseas break new ground. and a new front in the war of transgender rights. the stakes are high whether trans americans can run for office using the names they choose. i ll talk to vanessa joy who says she was kis disqualified from her race in ohio because of a law she believes could put other trans candidates at risk. we start with the president s massive political gamble, betting that voters will rally around him as the defender of democracy and reject donald trump s dystopian vision of america. that message is at the heart of a big speech he ll give near valley forge this afternoon and is expected to be the framework for his campaign going forward. they d
maybe a little too risky, putting too many eggs in this basket? reporter: well, look, you know, from president biden s point of view, the other eggs haven t been working, right? they went out and spent months trying to sell the country on bidenomics, it didn t work. it hasn t worked so far. maybe there s a lagging indicator and people will as they feel better about the economy give him credit. for the moment that changed his approval ratings in a positive way. i think they just believe, as we were just talking about, that they need to emphasize the contrast between the president and the former president, the stakes involved in the election. why did people vote for biden last time, even if they weren t excited about him because they didn t want trump in the office. he s going to make the case they shouldn t want him back. he s aiming at an audience of people who have been disenchanted by biden, who feel like he s too old or inflation is too high, he s going to try to make the case not
reduction act or other legislative priorities that haven t changed those poll numbers but to try to make that contrast so stark that they feel they have no choice but to return to biden no matter how unenthusiastic they may be about him. this speech was supposed to be delivered tomorrow, january 6th, a date one senior adviser told msnbc has been underplayed. i want to show you a poll from the washington post and the university of maryland. while 55% of u.s. adults say january 6th must be remembered, 43% say it s time to move on and that includes 46% of independents. and then i mean, once we get to election day, it s going to be almost four years in the past. is january 6th, do you think, the motivator the biden campaign thinks it might be? it is not the greatest motivator today, and so i think there s a question for the biden campaign. is the leaning in on protecting democracy, giving speeches like we will see today, is that the
followed in the past. there s just certain parts that are now unredacted, but a lot of the names have been previously associated with jeffrey epstein or pertain to things that have been litigated in other courts. there s been all sorts of civil litigation here, and i think the important thing for people to keep in mind, you know, a lot of folks thought, oh, there s going to be a list. we re going to find out about all these secret things that happened over the years. if you follow this case closely, you d realize that it wasn t going to be there because there was no evidence of it. if there were evidence of it, certainly the civil attorneys who were involved in this, who were representing these victims because they didn t feel like they got justice from the justice department with that original plea deal, if they had evidence that other men were involved, these are men that all have deep, deep pockets, and i think they would have gone after them in a civil sense. and we just haven t se