the second thing still on his to do list that he said he hoped to do before he died. >> in the time you have left, d what would you like to see me happen? >> completely eradicated before i die. i would like the last guinea worm to die before i do. that was president jimmy carter speaking in 2015. he was 90 years old. president carter is now 99 years old. it turns out he's getting very close to having that wish fulfilled.in what's a guinea worm? guinea worms are a thing that ne humans can get essentially as a parasitic infection. you can have infected water that has the larva of guinea worms in it. i could show you what that means in humans. i'm not going to. i have seen the photos myself in terms of what it mean for human infection and how these worms grow in your body. i have seen these photos. i am haunted by them. i'm not going to show them here. trust me, it is vile and very, very memorable. basically you unknowingly drink water that has the larva of theh worms in it. then the worm grow inside your body and the guinea worms don't necessarily kill you but they can make you incredibly debilitatingly sick for months at a time and they're excruciatingly painful. and these things have been around forever. scientists have found their remains in 3,000-year-old mummies. in the old testament, there is a description of fiery serpents attacking the israelites in the desert.e some scholars think that what that might have been referring to in the old testament was actually guinea worms. these things, i'm sure they're beloved to each other, right? i'm sure they have friends and moms. but to us humans, they are a plague and they have been causing horrific human pain and misery for thousands of years. particularly the little kids mpl in 1986, six years before he way voted out of presidency, formerp president jimmy carter decided m to use his pull and his sway, his remaining power in the world to try to rid the world of this one particular awful plague. because it was a doable thing. getting rid of this not goody worm thing, it's not a high-tech solution. it's not dependent on some scientific miracle. it just takes focus and where with all and somebody to lead the effort. people, basically, the solution is people have to know how to identify when they have the infection so they don't spread t to it others and people need to do simple filtration of their drinking water so they don't er invest the larva. for literally thousands of s years, we as humans could not h get together to do these two t basic things.gs but jimmy carter decided to try to do it. so you know, basic stuff. doctors and care for people with this disease and education about it and also, little straws that you can drink through to filter your drinking water. that's basically the whole program. when jimmy carter started working on this, there were 3.5 million active cases of guinea worm disease in the world. i that means 3.5 million people who were in excruciating, unbelievable pain from infection with this parasite. but he got to work to try to get rid of it. and 32 years into it, when he did that interview at the age of 90, he said he was hoping the last guinea worm in the world would die before he did. well, yesterday jimmy carter turned 99 and it looks like he really might get his wishful as of today, the carter center says that in the first eight months of this year, from january 1st to august 31st, if you look at the first eight months of this area, combined in total, the number of known cases of guinea world disease anywhere in the entire world is six. not 6 million, not 6,000. six cases. when jimmy carter started this eradication program, there were 3.5 million simultaneous cases in the world. now in total combined all eight months of this year, there are six cases on earth. the only human infectious disease that has ever been eradicated is small pox has the to vaccines as of 1980. we might be about to have the second. right now human kind is on the a door stop of eradicating a terrible human infectious disease for only the second time in the history of earth.ly and it's not thanks to a big scientific break through. it's thanks to jimmy carter who turned 99 years old yesterday. earlier this year the last times reported how former president carter would talk about his joy at one visit he made to go see the progress of this program that he was running. he visited a school in rural nigeria and he said some of the school kids came out to greet him with a sign that said, watch out, guinea worm. here comes jimmy carter. former president carter said ofy all his years in politics and public itlife, that's his favorite. watch out, guinea worm, here comes jimmy carter. so happy 99th birthday, mr. president. middle east peace may still be a work in progress but this other goal, you might get to cross it off your list. jimmy carter turning 99 years old yesterday. with jimmy carter and his global guinea worm eradication program, we have one model for how a former american president can make the best use of his post-presidency years. there are other models, too. and we will talk later on this hour about the remarkable scenes in court today in new york. former president donald trump deciding to be in the courtroom today in new york even though he did not have to be. this today was the civil case brought against trump and his adult sons and top employees of his business and his business itself. it is a civil case in which the new york attorney general has alleged insurance fraud and falsified business records and financial records. the basic allegation from the attorney general in this lawsuit is that trump's real estate business is built on fraud. it is built on systemic, sustained, deliberate financial fraud. what the attorney general is claiming here, former president trump's lying insistence that he's way richer than he actually is has not just been pitiful bus harmless bragging by a sad man. the allegation is that those lies were materially consequential in business terms in a way that new york state is now going to make him pay for. now, when you're a defendant in a criminal case, when you've been criminally charged, you don't have a choice about showing up in court while the case is being tried.in you have to be there in a criminal case. this isn't a criminal case. this is a civil case. so donald trump did not have to be there in court today. he chose to be there today nevertheless, which itself tells you something about how important this case is to him. nobody will get prison time out of a civil case like this. he's facing potential prison time in the four other cases in which he has been criminally indicted but not this one. this is a civil case but it is the one where he very well could lose his whole business and all its properties that he cares about. this one he cares about. today elected to be there at the trial in person. he will apparently be there again tomorrow. he spoke to reporters outside the courtroom. he called the judge in the case the rogue judge. at one point talking about new york attorney general letitia james who brought the lawsuit. he said, quote, you have to go after this attorney general, which felt i'm speaking in layman's terms here, but that felt very much like him crossing the line when it comes to the way he has talked judges and prosecutors and other people involved in the various court proceeding in which he is implicated. you ought to go after this attorney general?en what did he mean by? so we'll talk about that a little later on. o we'll talk with someone who wast in the courtroom today and try to sort it what we can expect in the days ahead with this case, particularly since it looks likes this one is really agitating the former president and it is one in which he may end up himself on the witness stand testifying under oath. but you know, the news gods move in mysterious ways. this contrast in today's news between the jimmy carter post presidency at his 99th birthday and the trump pose presidency in court today in new york, sort of feel a little like it is here to help. here to help us right now in terms of understanding what is going on in this moment in american politics. particularly with our two major political parties. because as much as i have found it frustrating for years, there is still even now unbelievably a lot of lazy punditry. a lot of lazy assuming out there in the press that our two major parties in this country are basically the same.e that they're mirror images of each other. the actual news from the actual world is here to disprove that. today, congress just narrowly averted a government shutdown this weekend, right? today congress was consumed with drama over whether the farthest right faction in the republican party will be successful in their efforts to oust the republican speaker of the house. why do they want to oust him as speaker of the house?he because he had the temerity to work with democrats on a bill that kept the government from shutting down. that's kind of their sum total of their argument against him. i mean, for them, it is self-evident that grave crime is enough. if house speaker kevin mccarthy will commit the mortal sin of working with the democrats on anything, that obviously, he must lose his job. he can no longer be a republican speaker of the house. and that is what today was consumed with in congress. that's what congress will be co about for at least the rest of this week and maybe longer. congressman matt gaetz tonight actually filed his motion to vacate, which means within two legislative days, members of the house will have to take up the future of mccarthy's speakership thanks to gaetz' objection that mccarthy had the temerity to work with democrats. nobody knows whether this will work, what the price if they he clues to do that. we don't know how republican there line up for and against kevin mccarthy. fox news is reporting that some republicans who like mccarthy might try to expel matt gaetz altogether. that should make for some happy times. bottom line, whether or not republicans succeed in ousting their own speaker of the house, over this narrow miss on a government shutdown, whether or not it ultimately ousts him for the speakership. the message here is clear, right? i mean, in the republican party, if you work with democrats on anything, you are in big trouble as a republican. that is where the republican party is at right now. meanwhile, here's how the democratic candidate is campaigning for election. >> there was a time in america when we expected leaders to put people over politics. when instead of shouting, people from different parties talked and listened. but for joe biden, compromise isn't a way of the past. it's how he's building america's future, passingca hundreds of re bipartisan laws. a law that rebuilds our roads and bridges that puts americans to work, to make america a leader in high tech manufacturing, bringing good jobs home. laws to improve veterans' health care and strengthen gun safety. every one of those laws, bipartisan. he hasn't gotten everything he wants, but that's not how he measures success.ce for joe biden, success means lifting everyone in america, noe matter where you live or who you voted for. because he is a president for all americans. >> i'm joe biden and i approved this message. >> he hasn't gotten everything he wanted but that's not how he defines success. to true liberals watching that ad, you may ojto that strategy. and some of that imagery in particular can be hard to swallow. condoleezza rice and reagan and even john mccain. but that's joe biden. president biden has always been a very collegial guy, with his democratic colleagues and also with republicans. it is a core part of how he works as a politician and therefore what people expect from him in politics. yes, he is a liberal, a progressive on almost all policy issues but he will work with everyone. he'll always try to find middles ground. that's joe biden. he's been doing this literally for decades. it's not a surprise that this is how he works and how he is campaigning for re-election. for him to be campaigning for re-election saying, i won't get everything i want, i don't think we're supposed to get everything we want. we're supposed to work it out together. contrast that with what it takes to rise in republican politics right now. democrats are campaigning for office by saying, i'll compromise and find middle ground. republicans are run out of their party for even thinking about that, let alone doing it. there is no way to both sides this. one of these things is not like the other. the two parties are working on two different projects. and the reasons for that are myriad but here's another piece of it that we are just learning. nbc news has just broken a news story tonight. a very provocative story within the last hour that may give us a little bit of a window into why the two sides, the two major political parties in the united states right now seem like they are coming from two different planets and they are trying to do two totally different things. it may have a little to do with the relationship between the fringe, the extreme and the middle. the distance between the, you know, not just not governing but really far out there sort of nonrespectable fringe, and the actual fworning part of the le story. in 1997, the flagship conservative magazine, the national review, went through one of its periodic challenges. they realized as they periodically do that they were employing some writers that were publishing some pieces that were just too racist.is they have periodically realized this over the history of this magazine. they have to do this when they have ended up publishing people who claimed that white people are naturally more intelligent than everyone else. white people are genetically superior to all other races. they were publishing a guy who argued that white parents and asian parents should teach their children to avoid black people. they published the guy who published america was in a genocide of white people because of nonwhite people coming into america. the national review has had to do these purges. the one in 1997 resulted in a new home being founded effectively for people like that who the national review has to fire. in 1999, an organization was set up called vdare. and vdare they say stands for the name virginia dare, who they say was supposedly the first white child born in colonial os america. you can see where this is going, right? the founder of vdare, one of the guys who got fired from the national review for his whites only immigration stuff, he set it up as an academic hub for people h to advance political sounding racism. i don't mean that in a vague way. i mean it specifically. the founder of vdare calls himself a racial nationalist. it means in this nation, it should just be the one race. he said the obama administration was a minority occupation government, meaning it was not an american government but a minority occupation by some foreign entity. he also says, and forgive me for even quoting this, he says that hispanics, quote, specialize in rape. the united states, quote, is a white nation. so this is stuff off the edge, right? at least it used to be. in 2018, cnn reported that a speech writer in the trump white house had spoken at a white nationalist conference and done a panel with the founder of vdare a few days before election day in 2016. when that news came out on cnn, that speech writer was fired from the trump white house. these guys have to land somewhere, right? it turns out that guy who went straight from appearing with the vdare guy at the white nationalist event the week of the 2016 election, he went straight from there to a job working in the trump white house as a speech writer there after. when he was fired from even ther trump white house, he first briefly landed a new speech writer job with congressman matt gaetz who just tonight has filed this motion to vacate to removev republican speaker of the house kevin mccarthy from his job for the capital crime of working with the democrats to keep the government open. this guy fired from the trump white house briefly lands as a speech writer with matt gaetz. then he lands at a website. a right wing website that among other things push the conspiracy theory that there wasn't really an attack on the u.s. capitol by a trump-supporting mob on january 6th, 2021. that was actually an fbi operation with fbi agents and informants and operators just pretending to be trump supporters because deep state, flat earth, qanon, whatever. now nbc news reports in the last hour that it is that guy's webb website that appears to have published the t blueprint for right-wing billionaire elon musk to buy the social media platform formerly known as twitter to take it private and then to basically kill it off as a means of helping the far right and hurtingnd the united states of america. the article called it a, quote,n declaration of war against the globalist american empire. so that's how things are going on the right. in the democratic party, it's former president jimmy carter in hospice turning 99. he may yet eradicate guinea worm infection from the face of the earth before he goes as part of his legacy of good works and practical post presidency, decency and leadership. we've got the current democratic president running for re-election by showcasing how much he wants to work with democrats and republicans, and how much it is okay the compromise and not get everything you want as long as u you bring people together and he's committed to that. on the right, it's a -- what's the phrase? a declaration of war against the globalist american empire. shaping the media landscape in america. and a former president indicted on 91 felonies and spending his days now trying to sick his supporters on the prosecutors and judges in court. both sides about our two major political parties has really never been not in my lifetime. right now it is not just unwarranted. it is malpractice. one of these things is not at all like the other. t ben collins from nbc news joins us next. us next. 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disinformation and threats related to elections. apparently not though. last week, we learned that the new owner of twitter, right wing billionaire elon musk, just unexpectedly cut half of the election integrity team at the company including the guy had a just a month before said the company was hiring for that department. mr. musk confirmed the firings himself on twitter. since taking control of the company a year ago, mr. musk has not just reinstated accounts that had been banned for harassment or misinformation or inciting violence. he's also taken some weird turns like when he started blaming the jewish civil rights group, the anti-defamation league, for twitter's financial failings. for a social media platform that had become ingrained in daily life and conversation and politics and journalism for millions of people, his tenure there, it hasn't just been, it hasn't just been the loss of a once reliable information platform. it has been that. but it's also sometimes just been weird which is what makes this next story that is just out tonight from nbc news so intriguing. this is new tonight from ben collins of nbc news. he writes, quote, on the day that public records revealed that elon musk had become twitter's biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social media outright. musk's purchase of twitter, the 3,000-word anonymous article said, would amount to a declaration of war against the globalest american empire. the sender of the text was offering the tesla and spacex ceo a play book for the takeover and transformation of twitter. as the anniversary of the purchase of the platform approaches, the sender remains unknown. the three texts were send in 2022. and many decisions made by musk after that have followed that road up to and including his ongoing attacks against the anti-defamation league. a nonprofit group founded by jewish americans to counter discrimination. it was published on a byline run by a far-right blogger and former trump white house speech writer who was fired for speaking on a panel alongside white nationalists. asked by nbc news if he knew who sent the texts to musk and who wrote the article that he sent to him, the former speech writer declined to comment and instead suggested the adl should be investigated. quote, i think i'm familiar with it but i'm not in a position to comment on that, the man said. he said i wish i could give you something else but you should look into the adl. joining us now, ben collins, senior reporter for nbc news. thank you for being with us tonight. i'm really intrigued by this new reporting. >> thank you. it's been a long journey with this story. >> tell me about that. first, tell me if i got anything wrong with the way i explained and it tell me about why it's been a long journey. >> no, you got everything absolutely right there. and it's been a long journey because we've been trying to figure out who sent that text message. that text message is even public because twitter tried to sue elon musk to get him to go through the purchase of twitter last year. and elon initially said no. i'm not doing that. part of the discovery process was him revealing a bunch of these texts. most of these texts in that discovery process were publicly known, who sent them. for instance, richard spencer, the white nationalist, his name is in this tranche of documents. it's a long laundry list including an info wars host in the documents. but for some reason, despite the nine-month fight that we went through, we still cannot figure out who sent this text message. >> and the text message recommended to mr. musk that he look at this article and the article laid out that he should buy twitter. that he should buy twitter and use it as part of a project to destroy the american empire, and it sort of laid out a series of, a, things he should do, but also ways in which people would react once he did those things. kind of laying out the way twitter has collapsed and turned very, very right wing. >> yeah. this blog outlines exactly what would happen the next 18 months. basically he said you should invite back on the far right users. that might chase away most users from this website that you now own, that you paid for. but it's worth it for the project. by the way, you're going to lose all your advertisers. he says this outright. but then he says, i have a plan for that. you should blame the adl. which to most people would come out of left field in the last few weeks. why is elon musk so angry with the adl? but in this sphere, i would call it the banning sphere. this is where he lives. darren beaty went on after this was published on his blog. he went on tucker carlson's website, sorry, on his show which no longer insists and basically recited this one to one. so i don't know exactly where elon musk saw this stuff. probably when he texted it. it is clearly a play book that elon musk ran directly parallel to or read from directly himself. >> and the thing about the antidefamation league being the target hear, this is a jewish rights organization to have these two things line up where you have these recommendations to musk to do all these things that he has done, that would elicit the reaction that has occurred. and then bram a jewish civil rights group. to have that along with people proposing that sort of road map publicly who are associated with white nationalists, and the very, i mean, a ragged far right fringe so distasteful to even the trump white house that they felt the need to fire someone who was espousing these and associating with these people. i mean, that to me feels like fireworks. it feels like an incredibly dangerous thing. >> yeah. if you look back through this, i've talked to a lot of people on the elon musk beat over the last few months. what they want to say to you is that while all this stuff looks like chaos and nonsense and he doesn't know what he's doing, it's possible this guy had a plan. just because the plan is bad and leads to bad outcomes for almost everybody doesn't mean he didn't have a plan. that's what we saw. can i read you the end of this article? it's fascinating. he said the global empire will never be brought down unless people like elon musk are ready to step up to the plate with the risky and meaningful moves like buying twitter. it will not be easy. it will be war. let the battle begin. that's what was texted him, by the way. at the end there. and then they recommend hiring like a ceo of enforcement which they wound up doing with linda yackarino. >> thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you for your time tonight. we planned well for retirement, but i wish we had more cash. you think those two have any idea? that they can sell their life insurance policy for cash? so they're basically sitting on a goldmine? i don't think they have a clue. that's crazy! well, not everyone knows coventry's helped thousands of people sell 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(guitar music) this belt i used to wear, way down at the first and second notch, it's the only thing i've kept from before losing weight and i'm keeping this because i'm never going back. when former president donald trump arrive at the courthouse this morning for the first day of his new york fraud trial, he came with a standard list of grievances. he stood outside the courtroom and called the case a witch hunt. he called the attorney general a racist for filing suit against him. he said it is all a big conspiracy hatched by the u.s. justice department which has no role whatsoever in this new york state case. what was telling, perhaps most telling about mr. trump's courthouse rant this morning was the very first thing out of his mouth when he arrived. the very first thing he complained about was the perceived size of his business. he complained that the judge in this case had suggested that trump is worth less money than trump says. trump told reporters season got to court this morning, i'm definitely worth as much as i say i am. in fact, i'm worth way more than that. how dare you denigrate the size of my -- business. the trial that kicked off today in new york, because it is a civil suit, the stakes for trump would appear to be lower than in the four criminal indictments he's facing in various jurisdictions. the civil case could decimate his business. but the criminal indictments could land him in prison. yet as the "new york times" put it today, trump is treating this civil suit as if it is a fifth indictment. as a civil matter, he wasn't required to be there in court today but he chose to be there, sitting at a defense table all day long and then criticizing the new york attorney general and criticizing the judge hearing the case when he passed reporters on the way in and out of the courtroom. at one point he did seem to call on other people to join in his attacks on attorney general tish james when he said, quote, you ought to go after this attorney general. seems like a red flag. it's not like there is the first major civil suit that trump has faced. he never showed up in person for the civil case against him from writer e. jean carroll. that was a case where she accused him of sexual assault and rape. the judge found him liable for sexually abusing carroll but trump never bothered to show up during that trial. he cared enough to show up today. presumably because this case is about a thing that is famously more important to him than anything else. how big people think his business is. how rich people think he is. the judge in this case has already determined that trump did fraudulently inflate his assets to make his net worth appear larger than it is. the trial that started today is just to determine what punishments the judge will impose. those could include barring trump from ever again operating a business in new york. joining us now, msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin who was in the courtroom today. i feel like you need a little bit of augmented pay for having suffered through this all day, but we're really glad you did and it's good to see you tonight. >> good to see you, rachel. >> one thing i don't understand. this is a civil case but it is not jut about business entities which could have their business certificates canceled. the entities could be put into receivership or liquidated or somehow forfeited in terms their assets. what does it mean to have individual people, persons identified as defendants in a civil case? what are donald trump, his adult sons, the senior executives from his company personally facing by being named defendants in this case? >> one of the thing they're personally facing are a number of bans or because on their ability to do business in the state of new york. that would include anything from serving as an officer or director in the case of the current cfo and the controller, being able to financially control people and companies. the other thing that donald trump himself could face here is disgorgement which is a fancy way of saying, clawing back all the profits that he and his business entities got through this persistent fraud that the attorney general has laid out through her 200-plus page complaint last fall and intends to further prove here at trial. >> that's money they would take from the assets of the business entities involved? or that's something the individual people named as defendants would be personally responsible for? >> you know, it's not clear to me that all the of individual defendants are people from whom they could seek discouragement. the short answer is yes. they could seek it from donald trump himself and the business entities. indeed, one of the reasons donald trump fears the disillusion of his company through the action is that it's not clear how liquid he is and how much money he has in cash to satisfy the judgment that the attorney general is seeking here of at least $250 million. >> they said there was a lot of discussion today. i think it started mostly by president trump's lawyer and then also trump himself commenting on the same matter about the fact that this case is being heard not before a jury but before just the judge. and there was at love discussion about that today. essentially saying that trump and his legal team made a mistake. that if they had in fact wanted a jury, which is what trump was complaining about today, they could have very easily gotten a jury instead of ending up just before a judge if they had only sent in the correct form. a lot of people were dunking on them saying, they screwed that up as a matter of basic paperwork. i gather from talking to you about this today a little bit that it isn't quite that simple. could you explain how you see that as having gone? >> yeah. they didn't. they're right to i is a they didn't request a jury trial and neither for that matter did the attorney general. but had they requested a jury trial, it's not clear that they could have gotten one because the relief that the attorney general is seeking here isn't the kind of relief that a injure can award. it's what is called equitable relief. all of these bans and bars on the trumps doing business in new york as well as the disgorgement, the clawing back of profits rather than the awarding of damages, that's only for a judge to award. they could have tried and maybe the judge would have bifurcated the trial, allowing them a jury on liability and then just to him alone on the equitable portion. with you as everyone noted today, they didn't try. and if you don't ask, you don't get. >> msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin. thank you so much. i know this is going to be a bear to cover as it stretches out into a two or three month trial schedule. appreciate you being there for us. >> thanks. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. nks. >> we'll be right back stay with us (man) mm, hey, honey. looks like my to-do list grew. 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(soft music) here's why you should switch fo to duckduckgo on all your devie duckduckgo comes with a built-n engine like google, but it's pi and doesn't spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. one last quick note before we go tonight. this is something i said i would keep you updated on, so here's your update. i have this new book coming out in a couple of weeks. it's called "prequel, an american fight against fascis" i'm very excited about this. i mentioned on the show i'm going to do a littl bit of a book tour when the book comes out. a bunch of stops on the book tour sold out very quickly, which is shocking to me. that's great but frustrating to a lot of people who want to come out. we added another date. this one just added, a new date just added. i'll be in phoenix, arizona, on october 25th. so that's just been added. you can still get tickets in phoenix, and there are a few of these dates where there are still some tickets left. as of right now there are still some tickets left for philly, new york, chicago, atlanta, and tulsa. everything else -- and also the new date in phoenix. everything else is sold out. but philly, new york, chicago, atlanta, tulsa, you can still get some tickets. and i should tell you in new york which is the october 17th event, i'm going to be sitting down with the actor and director ben stiller. he's going to be moderating that leg of the tour, fascinating. and just a few days later at the stop in atlanta the moderator is going to be stacey abrams. i'm excited about all the excellent moderators. if you want to get a seat before the tickets are all gone you can go to msnbc.com/prequel. that does it for us tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. do you expect that democrats will be needed in the motion to help vacate vote, and if you don't win that vote will you put yourself up for the