wow! >> the official clincher for joe biden and the case's momentum is pointed in the right direction. then. >> every single penny goes to the number one and the only job of the rnc. electing donald j. trump. >> the unexpected hollowing out of a major political party. and the infatuation with strong men. >> nobody is a better leader than viktor orban. >> all in starts right now. >> good evening from new york. it is election night in america. did you know that? and president biden just clinched his party's nomination. joe biden is indeed official. the presumptive nominee. within just a few minutes of polls closing in georgia, the president secured enough votes to cross the threshold for his party's nomination. it has been apparent since nikki haley dropped her bid that 2024 would be a rematch between donald trump and joe biden. but tonight, that is expected to become all but official when both candidates cross the delegate threshold set by their respective parties. for the republican nomination, donald trump needs 1215 delegates. he is close. should make that number later tonight. steve kornacki is at the big board with the latest. tell me, where are we? the delegate map? >> the last couple of minutes the polls closed in mississippi. joe biden, i can show you here, has no opponent on the ballot in mississippi so he has been declared the winner in mississippi. there are 35 delegates at stake for the democrats. all of them go to joe biden so he sweeps mississippi. what that does, he is at 2012. i can show you what georgia is looking like. the designation. the check mark and the presumptive nominee designation. that went into effect an hour ago in georgia. so biden is now just piling on top of that. he gets everything in mississippi later tonight. there are 92 delegates for the democrats in washington state. so joe biden officially clearing the threshold for the his party to become the presumptive nominee. for donald trump, he is not quite there yet. we did just in the last few minutes declare him the winner in mississippi and he gets all 40 delegates up for grabs in mississippi. he is also so far i can show you, georgia. again, about 27%. 27% of the vote in there. it is 84% for trump. remember, haley dropped out. but her name is still on the ballot. donald trump has claimed 52 of the 59 delegates needed at stake in georgia. sorry. i'm just trying to get the delegate numbers. 52 of 59. there are still seven more to come. he is likely to get those but they are not allocated yet so we will see if he picks up a delegate or two. all of mississippi for trump. 34 delegates shy of this threshold of 1215. and that also leaves washington state outstanding on the republican side. 11:00 p.m. eastern the polls will close. in washington state. again, haley's name remaining on the ballot. but there are 43 delegates here. and again trump at this point, only needs about three quarters of them. if he can get more delegates from georgia, that number will be less and washington is a state that does its voting by mail. and so, a lot of that vote is going to be counted, tabulated and released very quickly. after that 11:00 poll closing time. if it looks anything like it does in georgia or mississippi and we have no reason to think it won't, i think you can expect somewhere in the 11:00 hour, probably early in the 11:00 hour, donald trump will cross the threshold. that check mark, that presumptive nominee designation will go there and both parties will have candidates with delegates locked in officially committed to voting for them to get the nomination. if it does happen before midnight, a little piece of trivia for you, it would make this based on that standard, when did each candidate cross the delegate threshold? it would make it the longest general election campaign in history. if it goes after midnight into tomorrow when that happens, it will be tied with the 2004 and 2000 elections. >> fantastic. thank you very much, steve kornacki. so joe biden is the presumptive nominee for president. his reelection campaign begins full force. he will be running primarily on his record. what he has gotten done with the american people the last four years. here's the thing. this election is very interesting and different. for the first time since 1892, biden will be running against the man who held the office just before him. the man he beat. the man who didn't want to leave. it sets up one of the most clear cut apples to apples comparison. they don't have a record: but in this case you have two records to compare. how was the country doing when donald trump was president? he left in disgrace, having fomented an unsuccessful coup? how are things now? there is quite a story to tell about the general trajectory of american life in the last fur years and we just so happened to have some visual aids to tell that story. we will show you some charts. and here's the thing about the charts. generally, you want the good stuff to go up. and the bad stuff to come down. pretty simple. so this is how that looks. the gross domestic product. it is the size of the u.s. economy. and like the rest of the world, we saw a significant drop. that was the pandemic. that was under donald trump's watch. but look at the recovery. go up. the u.s. had the strongest recovery of all its peers. last year, our economy grew faster than any other nation in the g7. when you zoom in a little further, showing only the biden years, it is essentially the straight line going up. that was not fore ordained. a lot of it could have gone wrong. it is hard to pick yourself back up. we have seen this reflected in the stock market. start low, go high. four years ago, the dow plunged. march 16, 2020, almost exactly four years ago. under president donald trump. he was obsessed with the stock market. four years later, not only is it back on track, it hit an all time record high at the end of last month. once again, over the past year, right? from here, to there. getting better. there's a bunch of reasons for this remarkable economic performance and growth in this era. the biden era. jobs have bounced back. labor force participation rate. really increasing steadily from the covid era lows. lows during the pandemic. then it goes up. new business application. this is people starting businesses. the american dream. in 2023 alone, americans filed five-and-a-half million new business appliques. that was a record high for the year. that was the third year in a row of record breaking applications for a total of 16 million over the first three years of the biden administration. starts down here, goes up. manufacturing is also booming. thanks to a flurry of biden signed legislation. more and more goods being produced in america again bringing good paying manufacturing jobs back into the u.s. see? see how that goes? hospitality jobs. in particular have bounced back. after plummeting after the pandemic. again, not a given the industry would recover fully post covid. you see it go down here. but travels back. we can see from the number of passengers flying on u.s. airlines. this is the summer of 2020 in the depths. up to now july, 2023. across the board, and this is key, wages are rising. wages rising in real terms. okay? workers now make an average of more than $34 an hour. earnings are out-pacing inflation crucially. that means there is more money in americans' pockets to spend. disposable personal income. took a huge hit when covid support ended and inflation spiked. now it is on the right track. from down here to up there. we are producing more energy in the u.s. basically no one in america knows this, so listen closely. crude oil production under democratic president joe biden broke records last year. it is out-pacing projects so far in 2024. in fact, we are producing right now more oil than any other nation has at any time ever. you might say as i do, from a climate perspective, not great. which, true, but crucially, also, renewable power is booming. renewable power generation is also up. 370billion-dollar investment in the clean energy reduction act. remember that? they named it that. not necessarily because it was an inflation bill. but because of this chart. inflation. this is the whole story. of the last four years. the reason i think that joe biden faced political head winds. the story in every other country on earth. inflation has hit a rocky ride since the pandemic and the massive supply chain interruptions it brought. it hit nine percent in the summer of 2022 there. and that was bad. it caused severe financial strain for people. and this was a global phenomenon. happened everywhere. but since then, it has come way down. it is now hovering at 3%. this was not guaranteed. if you read the economic press, people are like we will need a recession. or, it will keep going up forever or we are screwed. none of that happened. it has come down to 3%. and like economic growth, this is better than basically any of our peer countries. they would all trade places to be us. the unemployment rate has dropped massively. after hitting an unprecedented spike of nearly 15% in 2020. right? the same story in the chart. bad things happen in 2020. and then they get better after donald trump leaves office. over the past couple of years, the biden presidency, unemployment has been hovering below 4% for an unprecedentedly long period of time. in the past year, amid all the economic improvements, mortgage rates which have risen quite a bit as the federal reserve hiked rates have started coming down as well. we are seeing gas prices drop. remember? remember this story from a spike nearly $5 per gallon in the summer of 2022? people putting on their joe biden stickers on gas pumps saying i did that? you don't see that so much anymore. because we are now down a little over $3 per gallon. they start here, they go down there. finally, and this is the one conservatives love to get wrong. there has been a big decrease in violent crime under president biden. 2020 was one of the most dangerous years in america in a decade under donald trump. violent crime spiked across the country in urban and rural areas. but every year the biden administration, violent crime has come down. in fact, according to the latest estimates, 2023 is on track to have one of the lowest violent crime rates in half a century. so compared to four years ago, these are just the facts. the country is safer. it is more prosperous. there are more people working and making higher wages. more people starting new businesses. more people working in manufacturing. the last year of the last president's term, donald trump's term, was a nightmare. because it was a nightmare, it is easy to block out. but this is what has been achieved under president joe biden and the pitch you can expect him to make to voters all this year. coming up, he has a structured penalty and he needs cash now. donald trump's jg wentworth campaign and the bust out of the rnc, next. of the rnc, next. >> absolutely. that's why you see a go fund me get started. that's why people are furious right now. they feel like it is an attack not just on donald trump, but on this country. >> donald trump and his family just took over the president trump national committee. the last head of the party stepped down amid an interparty battle. trump's daughter-in-law laura made public what the priorities would be if she got the gig. >> if i'm elected there will not be any more $70,000 or whatever amount of money it was spent on flowers. every single penny will go to the only job of the rnc. electing donald j. trump president of the united states. >> you can guess which side of that fight the ex-president was on. the man owes nearly $700 million in civil penalties. under the most acute financial stress of his life since his bankruptcy filings in the 90s and the early 00s . so there is nothing stopping him from busting out the rnc for his own purposes. like a mob boss. taking over a sporting goods store. last week, a party resolution to stop that from happening. specifically to block committee money from going to pay trump's legal bills died. she inaugurated her tenure with this email marked from the desk of lara trump: and we are not dealing with a man known for scrupulously determining between his personal money. he raided his charity like a piggy bank. spent tens of thousands of dollars on portraits of himself. now he has access to a whole political party. it should be interesting. you previously oversaw polling for the dnc. and sara runs a group called republican voters against trump which is launching today. a $50 million campaign to showcase the anti-trump coalition interviews with people that voted for trump and never will again. let me start with you on the implications. your reaction to the flurry of the trump takeover from the desk of laura trump. email going out. the death of the proposal to block the committee. what does it lead up to? >> i feel like we have taken the final step in trump's complete takeover of the republican party. but there is always another step actually. this because he is formally taking over the republican party apparatus here, you know, so it started with the resignation of jeff flake and ends with lara trump controlling the rnc and him installing loyalists which by the way, what trump is doing at the rnc, firing everybody and then installing people who will only do what he wants them to do, that's what he wants to do to the government if he is president. he wants to create an entire american government at his service. he is trying to be elected president to stay out of jail. it is all about him. and the republican party now is completely in service to that. no one is balking at this. what is crazy about that, that is money he is draining from other republican candidates. there are down ticket races where people need money and the rnc is only there singularly for trump. >> you worked an official capacity. and i just did not overstate the case here. the nominee takes over the apparatus to a certain point. the dnc is not separate from him. there is always a synergy. but this notion that it only exists, that every penny should be spent in laura trump's words for electing donald trump, what does that mean for the rest of what a party apparatus does in an election? >> yeah. i have to underline what my friend on the other side just laid out here. this is a big deal. when historians write about the politics of this era, this will be a really important section of this. they were the arm of the party. and look, the dnc, yes, we focus on the presidential. but we also focused on state races, congressional races. a lot of ballots. we were building a bench. and what donald trump has basically done is he has thrown all of that out. he has made this historical organization, about strengthening and building across the country. it is a humongous deal. if i'm a down ballot republican, and i look at them gutting the rnc to hire his cronies who may or may not have political experience, you know what the dnc will be doing the next couple of weeks? they will not be gutting the dnc. they will be building the dnc out and growing it out. because not only is it about the president, but they will also help folks, democrats up and down the ballot. if you are a down ballot republican right now, i don't know how you could possibly look at this and see this as good overall for the party. it is very good for donald trump. but not good for grass root republicans. and why on earth if you are a grass root republican, why on earth would you give money to the rnc when it is specifically just about donald trump? >> it will be interesting to see how that works. cut out the middleman. they are understanding that house freedom caucus member, very conservative. increasingly sort of at odds with the particularities and the maga cults of personality. he announced that he is leaving. now. didn't even give mike johnson a heads up. he can only afford to lose two votes. it seems to me, this is not unrelated to precisely the same forces who are leading to the rnc being taken over in this fashion. >> yeah. what struck me about ken buck's resignation is how mad he was. he did a throw it down i'm out of here. he even imperilled lauren boebert. she is trying to switch districts to run in his district. but he made them have to have a special election. and so, this is him being done with the party. he gave mike johnson no notice and i think, i am surprised there is not more of these resignations. there has been an increasing number of people looking at the next couple of years and the fact that donald trump is the nominee and you do see some republicans walking away. especially people like mike gallagher. but i don't know how any of these republicans stay in office. anyone who is a serious legislature. what is coming has nothing to do with the party. they will be people acting at donald trump's beck and call. and, there is more and more demand for people to act like lauren boebert and very little call for people who want to do serious legislating so i think a few more people should follow ken buck out the door. and just let the democrats do things because at least they are interested in governing the country. >> there are different reports. as many as 60 people getting fired. how much does institutional knowledge matter? >> it matters a great deal. when i was at the dnc under the historic chairmanship of governor howard dean, we built up a season team and it was about can you get on the phone with the county, director, and georgia, mississippi. having people trust you and also spreading money and resources down to places where that money helps build up the party. if it is all about the top of the ticket, you will rot away the party. that's what happened. so when i see them gutting the party at the exact same time, when the race will be pitched forward and heightened, nothing good come of it. >> thank you. still ahead, as the general election kicks into gear, donald trump's style stays the same. the disconnect between what he says and what his supporters think, next. his supporters think, next. r print everything you need slap the label on ito the box and it's ready to go our cost for shipping, were cut in half just like that go to shipstation/tv and get 2 months free the ex-president has been acting the same way. the insanity, the violence, the incoherence has just been out of constant view. tonight, he is about to clinch the delegates he officially need to be the presumptive republican nominee. as i have made the case on this show and elsewhere, this is why we need to report on what he is doing and saying day in day out. so, let's just take the last few days. at a rally saturday, he repeatedly defamed e. jean carroll. the woman the jury found him liable for abusing. he raped her in a dressing roomened and also found him liable for defaming her. he also mused about cutting social security and medicare because why not? he pledged one of his first acts as president would be releasing violent criminals out into the streets. to free hundreds of people put behind bars for being part of the armed mob that tried to help him pull off his coup january 6th. all of this in the space of four days for the presumptive republican nominee for president. jamel has been tracking the spiraling nature of trump and the republican party and he joins me now. what do you think about the strategic genius of repeatedly defaming the woman a civil jury found you liable for sexually abusing? >> seems like he is playing with fire with a lot of this. openly speaking of cutting social security and medicare. releasing the january 6th people kicked. one of the things i think is underrated, he resaid he wouldn't cut social security. he presented himself as sort of tough on crime. tough on various things. but not going to go after your benefits. it has been interesting watching him the last few weeks. turn on that. reverse on that. the question of whether or not voters will actually believe him, the strange thing about trump, voters will believe some things he said. and other things he says, they will dismiss certain claims he makes. and take others at total face value. >> the biden harris campaign jumped on the cutting social security and medicare. he was clear on that. if you read the paragraph where he talks, it is just, you can't really make heads or tails of it. and this actually speaks to something. we keep bumping up against this problem, the man bites dog problem. dog bites man is not a story, man bites dog is a story. that's a novelty. this is the situation that you find, you write this, you say trump benefits from something akin to the soft bigotry. no one expects him to be a responsible political figure with a coherent vision of the country. no one blinks an eye when he rants and raves on the campaign trail. >> it is precisely because there is the general expectation that trump is incapable of behaving as a normal politician. when he does these things that are octavely worrisome. and this feels crazy to have to say, but he was president of the united states for four years. and this behavior was actively detrimental to the country. particularly when there is a global historic pandemic that killed a lot of people. it was a problem that the president was the kind of person who rants and raves incoherently and can't seem to focus on anything in particular. a separate issue. it is just yes. no one expects him to do anything different. so it seems boring to have to point it out. but it is actually quite significant. >> i was pretty struck by the pledge now. to release the january 6th, people convicted. and imprisoned for their role in the violent mob attack on the capitol that attempted to rest control of american democracy away from americans and toward donald trump in this tiny violent fashion. and again, i don't think free the january 6th hostages polls particularly well. but, i am curious to see how this plays out and whether this plays some role in reminding people of an episode i do think a certain portion of the electorate has kind of put in the back of their minds. >> it is so early in this process, in this campaign. it is hard to see at this point how things are going to play out. but if the former president continues to speak in this way, this will only bolster the biden campaign's attempt to remind people where the country was. that will be so much of the campaign approach of the biden campaign. there has been an amnesia. and trump continuously speaking in this way. will at least serve to help remind voters. yes. trump is culpable in this insurrection. and people were tried and convicted for it. they behaved very violently and it is something that should not be entertained. >> i have not seen a lot of campaigns in which the candidate pledges to release violent criminals on day one. but it is interesting. still to come, as donald trump praises hungary's viktor orban, we talk about his infatration with strong men. but first, the continued barrage of information on the right about immigration. how to sort through what it means for november, next. means for november, next. ah, these bills are crazy. she has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com. it has been a couple of days since the republican response to the state of the union. the performance of katie britt has been panned by everyone. republicans, democrats, and snl. she is being called out. in the speech if you recall, britt took the horrible story of a mexican sex trafficking survivor from 20 year, ago in guadalajara in the interior of mexico and tried to blame joe biden's current border policy for it. britt was roundly criticized by journalists and by the survivor herself. >> in fact, i hardly ever cooperate with politicians because it seems to me they only want an image. i think she should take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude. >> that was carla hacinto romero with good advice that republicans absolutely refuse to take. her horrible story appropriated by katie britt. the twisted claims were wildly misleading. she applied it was happening in the u.s. now because of biden's border policy. but here's the thing. that's gotten a lot of attention. it is dime a dozen. when it comes to right wing immigrant fear mongering. remember this guy? remember him? he is a migrant from venezuela. he was the focus of the right wing media's hate last month. after he was accused of being part of a gang that attacked nypd officers in time square. then he was photographed fliping the bird leaving court. when i saw that image and this story break earlier this year, i thought if i were a fox producer, or worked the new york post, i would be runing with this. i'm a bleeding heart liberal and i found this image provocative. so did fox producers who covered him in 84 segments over 38 days according to media matters. >> caught on tape giving the middle finger as they waltzed out of jail. >> being let out of court yesterday on bail and gives america, the press, everybody there, the double bird. >> so let me get this straight. he strolls across the border, given free shelter. beat up cops and suffered no conferences. >> this guy coming out and flipping off the camera. he is flipping all off of america. >> the hate fest went from fox new to a political ad cut by a pro trump superpac. but then this month, guess what happened? man hat pan prosecutors dropped the charges against guada. do you know why? they told the judge further investigation told the judge boada who had always professed his innocence did not participate in the attack in question. they misidentified him. it wasn't him. they got the wrong guy. not him. he didn't do it. have you seen coverage of that? you think they have run 84 segments on fox news about that? by then, the man's life is up ended. the myth of migrant prime, they will do it over and over again. whether it is false rumors of a migrant caravan about to destroy america or the guardian angels live on fox wailing on a man they claimed was a migrant thief when he was neither. he was an american from the bronx who hadn't stolen anything. that happened last month. remember all of this the next time you hear an immigration horror story out of republicans. aiming for fear. not facts. aiming for fear. not facts. i still love to surf, snowboard, and, of course, skate. so, i take qunol magnesium to support my muscle and bone health. qunol's extra strength, high absorption magnesium helps me get the full benefits of magnesium. qunol, the brand i trust. stakes here are enormous. whether donald trump knows it or not. putin is not likely to stop at ukraine. and the only thing that may be preventing the united states from being directly at war. men and women from this country fighting in russia and dying in europe is helping ukraine win pe this war. >> there was an announcement today from the white house essentially trying to come up with some work around stopgap. as ukraine waits for this aid to be okay. that they will send $300 million in weapons to ukraine. it will keep advancing russian troops at bay for only a few weeks. an official said. what is the read on the hill right now? it almost seems very opaque for me. if and when mike johnson brings it, he loses his job as speaker i think. and incurs the wrath of donald trump. that has been the equallibrium for two weeks and nothing has moved. >> listen, i think it is really an open question as to what happens to mike mike johnson if he brings ukraine up for a vote. you're right, it would pass ig with flying colors and i don't know that we should assume the republican conference has the appetite for another leadership fight. they don't have an alternative. and they maybe are not so politically dumb to put themselves into that quagmire now on the precipice of a general election. i'm not sure donald trump wants that. i think the the speaker should govern with a little more confidence than he does today. and he is trying to get through the next round of budget negotiations. i think if he brought the ukraine bill up for a vote, i think he would get the votes for it. he wouldn't get the contest for leadership he thinks. donald trump doesn't want that fight because he knows that would drown the republican party and him for the controversy. >> if there was a motion to vacate, they may just abstain. they are down to this very narrow majority now. so, not even sure, unless you could make sure all your members are there, you end up in a situation where you hand the gavel to hakeem jeffries. it seems to me that as i metabolize what you are saying a you don't really want to deal with that situation. >> yeah. but i also think that, you know, speaker has to come to terms with the fact that he is probably going to be a short term speaker one way or the other. even if they win this election, he won't survive very long. it is more likely that democrats one control of the house. his political obituary will lead with the question of what he did. on the question of ukraine. from what i understand privately. he is very worried about the fact that atit could be his defining legacy. that putin owns ukraine. that kyiv acbecomes a russian city. and perhaps world war iii erupts when putin moves forward into a nato country. i'm sure that is weighing heavily on him and that may be what ends up in him calling the ukraine bill for up a vote shortly after we fund the government. >> as we know, the ex-president hosted viktor orban. trump's desire to help putin. trump talking about basically, orban is a model. he is boss and what he says goes. what do you think of that? >> sometimes we get a little lecturey and we assume everybody is in on the project. i think there is an actual conversation happening on whether democracy is working for regular people. or captured by elites. i want my party to spend a little less time. a little more time proposing real big plans to massively transfer power from the elite to regular people as a means of showing the democracy can work for them. i don't think we should assume the people in this country will be in for democracy for the next 50 years. if it continues to consolidate wealth and power. we need to be wise to that conversation. that is happening all across the country. >> all right, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> that is all in on this tuesday night. in on this tuesday night. tuesday night. alex wagner tonight begins good evening, alex. >> democracy not a forgone conclusion apparently. thanks to you at home for joining me this hour. today the former