back. also joining us, dan goldman, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, former league counsel for the democrats first impeachment trial, not to be mixed up with the second impeachment trial and new york times editorial board member mara gay is here, all three msnbc contributors. i got through the draper piece, and i remember flynn being talked about as a vp and i actually remember i was interviewing jeb bush and people were covering threads of flynn. i think he was on morning joe one morning when you and i were both there, john heilemann, sort of cleaning up his positions on issues like abortion and whatnot. and then i saw mike pence give a speech today and i want to play what he said, and i wondered if it s beyond rational to wonder if pence and flynn could face off should trump sit it out. here s pence saying donald trump is wrong. and i heard this week that president trump said i had the right to overturn the election.
them, i think mike flynn s got more juice in the party than mike pence does. dan goldman, it s so shocking, i need something stronger in my cup but it does make robert draper s piece of reporting all the more important and seems like something we ll keep coming back to as we cover how the shape shifting proceeds. i want to read a little bit more from it. in phoenix, flynn described his motive for his ongoing activities as the patriotic urge to, quote, stand here and fight more p for this country and alluded to the scandal and financial ruin that followed for his family. what we experienced was unbelievable, he said. his war against the federal government is all the more dangerous because it s personal. quote, if you think of the classic case studies and how radicalization occurs, it all happened with mike flynn, a fellow military veteran who later did business with flynn observed. you re vilified, your family is ostracized, you don t see any hope economically, this is how you make an
trump it is likely to be an amplification of trump, not a pale imitation of someone like desantis. whatever comes next, it is not good. it is dangerous. it is autocratic and hostile to the american experiment and democracy. okay. you are sticking around because when we come back there is more on trump s former number two mike pence denouncing the ex-president for saying he could have overturned the election. it comes after the closest advisers have fielded questions now from the 1/6 committee. president biden is saying the economy is making the progress with omicron cases in retreat. more americans are returning to work. the american agenda appearing to be firing on all cylinders.
whether they read all the documents they have but the leads it inspired? i don t know. i m not covering that exactly but i will say that in terms of the pence cooperation with the aides coming in, i think it really their participation and cooperation mirrors the trajectory of pence s comments of distancing himself from trump and today saying you are wrong. he s not wanted to be in the position he is in today having to make the statement. if you recall a first time he spoke about january 6 after the event is milquetoast saying president trump and i will not see eye to eye on what happened that day and president trump bought him to the moment to make the statement because of trump s statement about pence. the aides, they re not wanting to payment in waltzing in there
know, these people will have much more power than they do now. this movement does not represent the majority of americans, but it can do great harm, and it has already done great harm, especially when you think about covid, for example. if we don t take it seriously. so it s good to see mike pence coming along and i hope he ll continue to speak out. so, john heilemann, there s an echo in what carol lee s reporting in this sort of straw breaking the camel s back with the way the committee sees the potential of bill barr as a witness. the hill is reporting that democrats are amping up the pressure on bill barr to testify before the panel investigating the capitol attack on january 6th, saying the former a.g. has a unique window into the thoughts and actions of donald trump leading up to the siege. quote, after operating so closely with trump for a long time, something clearly soured former a.g. barr on him, so i m very interested in what the sequence of events was that essentially br