perhaps, then i do think as manu noted there s going to be a lot of pressure on kevin mccarthy on whether or not that requires additional action. jeff zeleny, i see you re over at cpac right now, one of two high-profile republican gatherings taking place this week. what does the list of speakers reveal to you about this growing rift we re sensing within the republican party? wolf, you know cpac is an annual event. but certainly every four years right before the presidential election it s a rite of passage for republican hopefuls to stop by cpac to meet these conservative act vifs visits from across the country. this year it is an entirely different feel. there s no leadership of the republican party here unlike years before. there are no senate republican leaders here. house republican leaders as well. this essentially has become the trump show. you walk through the hallways here. so much paraphernalia and other supporters of former president donald trump. while other presidential
you re his spouse. but you do hold a lot of influence. what are the areas you do offer him advice on? well, certainly, i tell him stories and things that i ve seen and things that people want and where the challenges are. so it s not that i m like weighing in. it s like let me tell you what i saw or what i heard or what people are saying to me. so it s in that context. because i m out every day, i m in the classroom, i m out, you know, somewhere in the united states and so i think it s a good balance, really. and i think there s a lot of focus on the role and the impact that you have on him, but how does he help you? well, sometimes i don t i may not see things from his perspective. let s just put it that way. and so he offers both sides.
like most veterans, i m a huge believer in diplomacy because i understand the costs of war when diplomacy fails. and you just can t substitute going face to face. we have to talk with our adversaries. that s exactly what blinken is doing. you say that by ruling out f-16 fighter jets to ukraine at least for now president biden is signaling to russia he doesn t want this war to escalate. but by not providing fighter jets is the u.s. essentially allowing putin to draw a red line? no, i don t think he is. you have to be careful about that. that s certainly a risk. but this administration all along has been walking the line between getting ukraine what they need to win and not escalating this into a russia on nato war. and i think biden is doing the right thing by continuing to signal to the russians that we re going to support the ukrainians a lot. we re going to support them enough to win. that s clearly our policy. but that doesn t mean that we re
which was to have someone try to kill him so that his son buster could recover insurance proceeds. i think that s a very powerful argument for any juror sitting there having a hard time believing that this man is so monstrous that he would kill his wife and his son. here s an alternative theory. yes, he may have done something crazy, but that crazy was to try to kill himself, hire a hit man who turned out to be like a distant cousin to try to kill himself rather than kill the people that he loved the most. so i think that s a powerful argument that some jurors are going to have to wrestle with. in their closing rebuttal the prosecution argued you don t lie and misremember being at the scene of a murder. does a statement like that actually carry a lot of weight with the jury? well, the prosecution put on a really comprehensive case given that they didn t have direct evidence, given that they didn t have the murder weapon, they didn t have the bloody clothes. so they had circumstanti
0 fraud he had been committing for years, the defense pointing out that doesn t make any sense, all that did was landed him in law enforcement s focus. so, what we see here is the defense trying to eat away at the prosecution s case. they did that earlier by attacking forensic evidence. they spent a lot of time talking about blood splatter evidence and why that might not be a reliable indicator of guilt. and while the prosecution has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecution, in essence, has to convince the jury on each of these points. the defense only has to make that one small inroad, that s their strategy here here. joyce vance, thank you so much. that does it for me this hour. i ll be back tomorrow. jose diaz-balart reports starts right now. and good morning. 11:00 a.m. eastern, 8:00 a.m. pacific, i m jose diaz-balart. we re keeping our eyes on south carolina courtroom where former attorney alex murdaugh stands trial for the murder of his wife maggie and