Caitlin clark. Reporter tonight, her pro career officially begins bringing in new fans and transforming the league. Stephanie gosk, connecticut. Clark and her teammates will be in New York City this weekend taking on the liberty. If you want to goings you better get your tickets soon. And on that note, i wish you a very good night. Ari melber is up next and you do not want to miss tomorrow nights show. Senatormitt romney will join me for an exclusive interview. He is reflects on his final year in congress and offering his view on how conservatives should approach the 2024 election and beyond. Thanks for staying up late with me. Good to be back. Ill see you at the end of tomorrow. The final witness for the prosecution. I have lied but i am not a liar. Reporter back on the stand. He went through all his legal troubles. Reporter under Cross Examination from the defense. He is obsessed with revenge against donald trump. Thats what they are saying. Reporter as donald trump rolls in with a full entourage including the Speaker Of The House. President trump is a friend and i want ed to be here to support him. Reporter chris hayes and alex wagner break down what happened inside and outside the courtroom. With Rachel Maddow, Lawrence Odonnell, ari melber, katie phang, and msnbc legal and political experts when Trump On Trial begins right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes along with alex wagner. Thank you for joining us for our special coverage of day 17 of Donald Trumps criminal trial. We will be join bid Rachel Maddow and Lawrence Odonnell to break down what we heard. My experience was firsthand watching him testify in the courthouse. How did he do . He finished direct testimony with the prosecution before an intense crossexamination with the defense in the afternoon. He told the jury the story that is by now a familiar one. Michael cohens transformation from a loyal conniving energetic hustler to a fierce trump critic. Who has now spent years cooperating with various investigations into him. The transformation from trump acolyte to trump critic. He sat ten feet away from the man responsible for that. Much like his former boss, Michael Cohen is a guy whose got a long record of not telling the truth. From where i was siting in the courthouse. When it came to core allegations. Cohen did seem sincere. When he was on the level. The mayor central question, one that might decide the case is what the jury makes of the man that they saw on the stand today. I have a lot of questions for you. Great. I do want to say i was struck the course of the last few days and it came to a head today. That a certain essential part of the defensive strategy is predicated on the assumption that people are no bigger than the jobs they do. Stormy daniels the porn star would reveal herself on the stand to be a sleazy bottom feeder. And that under withering Cross Examination, she would just fall like a house of cards. The same assumption seemed to be made for Michael Cohen. As it turns out, Stormy Daniels was an incredibly strong really resilient witness that seemed incredibly credible and humiliated the defense and Michael Cohen they tried to prod into being a rage machine showing he was a bottom feeding grifter. They would give these statements and he would say sounds like something i said. He was completely unapologetic. You can tell he took pride in the work he did. And i dont know, chris, he seemed really credible. At least on paper. What was it like in the courtroom . In the courtroom i will say. Throughout the day, there is sort of we started with the direct. And then went to the cross after the launch break. And just generally it is my first time in that courtroom. It is probably a seven or eight out of ten. It is like, this is like a seven or a eight. Judge merchan as tremendous. It feels like the epitome of judicial temperament. Everything that is happening is sort of orderly. And moving along. I agree with you that again, we got the best version of Michael Cohen yesterday. Was there going to be some blow up moment . Where he slams the podium and says yes. Im lying. Youre right that he kept composure the entire time. And maintained that more quiet chaste inversion of himself. There were a few glimmers of the other Michael Cohen. Did you call him, you know, a cheeto faced dictator . Im mashing up all the words together. But he had relinquished his rage in a lot of ways for the most part. And that seems really powerful to me. I will say, and well talk about this more as we go throughout the evening. I will say on cross, there were moments where he seemed nervous. Shifty. A little cotton mouth. Going for water. There were very few long pauses. When you ask someone a question. They go. That pause doesnt make you think well like now im going to get the truth. There was a little bit of that. All of that is a little atmospheric. We whether talk about it the next few hours. None of that drilled down to the sort of core questions at issue for guilt or innocence of the defendant. Who sat there i will say with the failings of friends, Family Members. His buffer zone. The person that puts together the word doc that has all the nice articles about him. You had an eagle eyes view. This is a good example i think that epitomizes a little bit of the cross. We sort of know the conversion story. I dont know how much the jurors know. You also said again i said in 2015, that in your view, President Trump speaks from the heart. I said that. All he wants to do is make this country great again. You said that. Sounds right. At that time, you werent lying right . Cohen, at that time, i was knee deep into the cult of donald trump. Yes. That was the story that got told today. We watched under direct the trajectory of Michael Cohen in the fold and outside the fold. And then that theme continued in the cross of is there something the jury should suspect about Michael Cohen because he went from in the fold to outside the fold . We are joined now by Rachel Maddow and Lawrence Odonnell who was also at the courthouse today. Yeah. And, look. The simple Score Card Reporting is not a single point. Relevant point was scored against Michael Cohen on Cross Examination. To everyones surprise, the demeanor held up. That was the suspense of last night. The suspense was wow, that is the most remarkable version of Michael Cohen we have ever seen. But can he do it on cross . He is such a defensive and combative guy in every other environment. But he was contained as most people are by the pressures on the confines of the courtroom. Especially the Witness Stand. You got to remember when lives end up in a criminal courtroom and you are the key witness for a criminal prosecution, yours is a broken life. Because you are here as the eyewitness who your Friends Murder and you are part of a tragedy yourself. So Michael Cohens life was broken by all of this. And what you saw on the Witness Stand was this broken man. And i love what we saw from the courtroom art. The capturing of Michael Cohens mournful face which is what this was. Mourning for his own mistakes. Mourning for the terrible mistakes and describing a Family Intervention to get him to turn away from what was literally his life of crime with donald trump. And save what could be left of his life by the simple course of telling the truth to prosecutors. Doing time in prison turns out will be a consequence of this. And chris, one thing i say about Michael Cohens pauses on answering questions, i took those to be smart moments. The jury wont be thinking the way i am about it. But seeing the witnesses, especially lawyer witnesses. What he is doing is listening to every word you just said and deciding how to answer it, whether he should answer it, whether he should ask for clarification and it never felt to me like it was Something Weird about the pause. But it could to a jury who doesnt know that is what i see going through his mind. And there was a little bit of this thing happening, having been through depositions. There is a little bit of this, a question is asked. And you sort of quibble the characterization. So blanche comes back. At one point, there was a big standoff. Blanche. Was that a lie . It wasnt truthful. Well it wasnt a lie. Im asking if you call it a lie. There are a few of those standoffs. But again, yes, i think that was intentional on cohens part. Right . He is a lawyer. That last point, the weight of all this which again, when we were talking yesterday, everyone was talking, it was like is this going to last . It was clear today that spectral presence he had. This gaunt broken guy. That remained throughout. Rachel, obviously, you were following raptly today im sure. What was your take away . My big take away was is this all there is . For the defense. Yeah. I mean, i think that you know, the defense is under no obligation to put any witnesses forward at all. Lawrence has been very articulate and persuasive in saying that there is zero percent chance that they will put the defendant that they will put their own client donald trump on the stand in his own defense. But we dont know if they will put anybody. And so, if they dont, this is their defense. The crossexamination of Michael Cohen is the defenses case. And to get what blanche was able to get out him today, there was nothing. Which makes me feel like they must be incredibly confident in their ability to try to get a Mistrial Ruling here. Or something surprising is going to happen on thursday or they didnt bring it because there was really nothing. Especially when you consider that when the prosecution laid out their case at the out set, they basically said this is a documents case. We will butt Michael Cohen on the stand. You will hear about why. And everything we need to prove to you in order for you to come back with a guilty verdict will be bolstered by corroborating evidence. By multiple witnesses and adopts and they spent a last couple of weeks doing that. Giving all the corroborating witness testimony. They get to their culminating witness. And he performs perfectly. As a witness for them. He doesnt lose his cool. He doesnt go into weird side bars. They hand him over to the defense today after lunch. I have to tell you, i thought this was it. They will keep donald trump out of prison. It was just nothing. So maybe thursday is going to be something. But otherwise, it looks like they are just not mounting a defense at all. I was struck by the same thing. Not only wheres the beef. But also the spaghetti against the walls. They try to point cohen as a bunch of different things. Unreliable narrater or grifter. Or spurned lover. I might have found any one of them effective had the prosecution not laid all of them out in context. I didnt know that Michael Cohen had called the Defense LawyerTodd Blanche A Crying Little Swear word. The prosecution did a good job at illicitting the witnesses. Michael cohen, he only fixes things he broke. We get everything you could want about Michael Cohen we have. And they put it all in context. Here is what he was when he served donald trump. Here is when he stopped serving donald trump. Here are the sins he has committed. For todd blanche to be up there as Donald TrumpsDefense Lawyer, oh, but Michael Cohen, didnt you lie to congress . Yeah, we heard the explanation for that already and know why it is. Why are you bringing it up again . The thing that struck me today on the cross is again, i do think there are plausible stories to tell here. For instance, when they are spending a lot of time on his podcast. The different merchandise you sell on your website. At that point, at least was legible to me. There were large parts of the cross today that i could not follow. And i think im pretty good. It was a small color thing. In the direct, all of the evidence is being put up for all of us to see. Which is extremely helpful. Here is the pay stub. During the cross, when they would present a document to Michael Cohen to refresh his memory, it was not admitted into evidence broadly. Which meant he is looking at a screen. You dont see what the document is. Again, this is intentional. It is really hard to pull up the whole thing. There were long lines of questioning where im just lost here. I was like what are we doing with the phones . Why are we on the phones thing. Michael cohen is looking at a document we cannot see and he says you are misrepresenting what is on this document so it is not working on any level. But hey, welcome to the representation of a guilty client. This is what it looks like when a criminal Defense Lawyer has a client who did exactly what Stormy Daniels said he did. This is what it looks like when you are representing a client who did indeed conspire to create false Business Records. You may have heard it in the first ten minutes. Is they are going to try to create reasonable doubt. But president ial level reasonable doubt. They will bring you a higher level of reasonable doubt. You cant possibly convict him on the word of that man. Rachel, lawrence, stay with us. It was a combative scene in the courtroom. But the Scene Outside was somehow just as wild. We are talking about the transparent attempt to appease trump and the work around the gag order via the Speaker Of The House basically next. E bas hi. 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But Scotts Healthy Plus will cure it lawn disease . Been going around. So like other people have it and its not. Pick up a bag of the new Scotts Turf Builder healthy plus lawn food today. Feed your lawn. Feed it. They are speaking very beautifully. They came from all the way from washington and they are highly respected. Donald trump loves ranting about the prosecution against him and the witnesses and the judges and the judges daughter and the jurors. But how to do it without Running Afoul of his gag order . Well, have thirsty republican proxies do it for him. Last week it was Florida United States senator rick scott. Yesterday it was ohio United States senator jd vance. Outside the courthouse today, trumps entourage of political sycophants and wannabes included the governor of north dakota. Vivek ramaswamy. That guy. That guy has a podcast im sure. And the Speaker Of The House. All of us are here as friends of donald trump supporting him. In our personal capacity. President trump is innocent of these charges. The American Peop