donald trump's lawyer arranging $130,000 payment to a former adult film star. >> he reportedly did settle in october 20 16th -- 2016. >> these are felony crimes in new york state, no matter who you are. >> we have officially begun the first criminal trial of the former president of the united states. >> he seems old and tired and mad. >> the first witness in this criminal trial is now taking the stand. >> ecker was right there in the beginning of the plan to keep his relationship with stormy daniels secret. >> just started crying. >> stormy daniels testified in vivid detail about their alleged sexual encounter. >> michael cohen was formally called to the witness stand to testify against his former boss. >> both sides made their final pleas to the jury. >> verdict has been reached in former president trump's new york criminal trial. >> found guilty on all 34 felony counts. >> we did our job. >> the american principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed. >> good evening. once again, i am stephanie ruhle. what a week we've had. let's bring in our nightcap, msnbc host, correspondent and new york times best-selling author, she wrote the book, "unbelievable," on the trump campaign. she was there when the verdict was read. tim o'brien joins us. danese wallace joins us. criminal defense attorney and comedian john, the host of the tell me everything podcast on sirius xm. all right, we have the verdict. there is no more use of the word, a legend. donald trump has been found guilty. what does this moment mean? >> could you say to gensler for me please? it would be lovely. >> guilty. all 34. >> yeah, i think we can say it is the most important, completely inconsequential event in political history. it's not going to change anybody's mind but there's no way to overstate the historic impact that it actually happened. the trial no one that could yield a conviction and yet the emotion and so many people realizing after the mueller report had 10 counts of obstruction and no one cared. after 10 counts of impingement and he walked. stealing from veterans of the emotion i got on sirius xm last night from callers, grown men crying because they couldn't believe there was finally a bit of accountability and i went from being very cynical about the whole thing to being so moved by how much people's faith has been restored by these 12 jurors. >> let me chime in because remember, he lost the last presidential election on people cared. the overflow room inside the courthouse. >> i wanted to be there. i wanted to see his face. i wanted to see how he reacts to potentially being found guilty, wanting to know if he would raise his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, what would his face look like? i even brought binoculars. anyway, it was such an overwhelming experience being in that room, reading the counts went so fast and there was anxiety. there was tension. people were shaking because who knows what's going to -- who knows what's going to happen next? does it affect the outcome of the election? is there political violence because of this? how much those jurors must be feeling tonight, today, tomorrow and the next day as they think about what if my identity is doxed,released? what if i am docs to -- it feels like we are standing on the edge of something. we just don't know what. >> we are on the edge of something, it's three more cases. this is the one that was on nobody's radar until a couple of months ago. people were say no that schedule but it will go forward. nobody expected this case to be much. people put it as number four out of four on the criminal cases against donald trump, me included. i did not place it very highly. in my view, any federal criminal case is always going to have a better chance of conviction than any state criminal case and i still think that is the case, but the practical reality is that if donald trump is elected and inaugurated in any of those federal cases are still pending, they will go poof. there will be an attorney general appointed who will make them go away, so if they ever go to trial, high likelihood of conviction. i would just have to say that the new york case, i did not see it coming this quickly. i fell asleep on it and all of a sudden, it was upon us. even to the last minute i thought that trial dates got to get pushed out and then it didn't, and it went forward. >> what do you think this moment means? do you think it only confirms people's political views? >> i sort of don't care about the politics of it right now. i think there is a sense of coming up, there's an election, debates, so many other moments between now and november but something john said earlier about mueller didn't go there, the impeachments didn't go there, i think that's an important thing to land on because bob mueller assembled a devastating amount of information about donald trump but chose not to prosecute him in the courtroom. he left that up to the u.s. attorney's office to look at his evidence and do something with it. >> and, almost no one read his multi-hundred page report. >> yes, we did. i don't remember talking to you about it but then congress impeached him twice. the house impeached him twice. the senate chose not to take it to trial. donald trump is turning 78 years old this month, and for about five of those decades, he has gotten away with lying, exaggerating, undermining the roots of civic and civil society, and this is the first time he has been brought into a courtroom, and that acta no longer works. in all of these institutional movements that have occurred around him during his presidency and post-presidency, this is the first one where he got put in a box in the fax got presented to a jersey -- jury and all of the bloviating and everything else lost their power , and he employed one of his three lawyers to essentially try to do that for him. embarrass the witness, defend your client in a nonstrategic way that appealed to his emotions but was not strategically wise. the jury saw through that. justice mershon saw through it and they delivered 34 count guilty verdict. >> i want to stand on that point because you just said he instructed one of his lawyers. you have covered him for years. you know him so well. was one of the biggest challenges for trump's defense team trump himself? >> of course. i mean, why do you think they denied he had a sexual relationship with stormy daniels? they didn't need to do that. why do you think they made a point of repeating that david pecker but a point of saying he sold the most magazines ever. why did they keep saying the present -- president of the united states. all of that was at least in part to assuage the ego of their defendant. we would not be here if it was not for the ego of this defendant. that is what gets him and all of this trouble. having the affair with the adult film star while his wife has a baby upstairs. all of this stuff, the ego surrounding it is what got him into this position. the fact that he ran for president then ran for president again. that he lied about all of these things. it's all ego driven. >> he was never held accountable because of wealth when he was younger, celebrity when he was older. >> he has the unique ability to have no shame. >> it has been his superpower but think of all the people in the last 24 hours were saying it was a kangaroo court, unfair, sham, i have yet to find anyone saying he didn't do it. >> i have yet to find any of them safe which specific charge, there were still 54 charges to go, which specific charge he is not guilty of in my favorite of the defense is well, you know, jesus was convicted, too. i've seen this all day long, literally comparing this man to the nazarene. >> there's a whole religious movement around donald that has come up. that he's part of a prophecy. >> for me, that is my pet issue because the only way you can support trump is if you throw out the attitudes, if you throw out matthew 25 and the idea of this fixation of trump as a christ figure is, it was mixing conservative religion and authoritarian politics that got jesus killed in the first place. they don't know how to defend him. they're just attacking the system itself and that is why it is so moving to me to see the republican party finally embracing criminal justice reform because they are going to start fighting for a convicted felon to get daily briefings really soon. >> let's talk about something the jury did that countless lawmakers have not. anyone member of this jury could have taken -- could've ignored all evidence and said not guilty and if they had, they could immediately have monetized it and become a right- wing media star. they would be on television. they would be doing speaking appearances. maybe they could get a job in the next potential trump administration. how extraordinary is it that these 12 ordinary new yorkers, none of whom asked for this -- right? when you get called to the jury it's like getting chain mail but they showed up, did their jobs and put public service above self. >> when you think of it, we only see the end result. remember, we had a voir dire process we also had other new yorkers were willing to raise their hand and say you know what? i'm too biased. i can't be impartial and they stood up and walked out. that is actually something trump and todd blanche were complaining about. i think it is an admirable thing about our jury system, that people in new york county are going to have certain biases just like people in staten island are going to have different biases based on polling and election results, and all of those people during voir dire were honest enough. some of them self-selected, raised her hand and said you know what? i can't be fair and impartial and the 12 that remained were not 12 random people. there were 12 people who had to look themselves in the mirror and say i can do this. i have opinions. i made of voted a certain way and i may have thoughts about the president because this is not a case where you're going to find someone who didn't know who donald trump was. this is not a case where you will find someone on the jury who had no opinions about donald trump and i think it is impossible to have zero opinions about donald trump. everybody in america has a thought about donald trump and yet, those people, by the time you get to those 12, once they had withstood the crucible of examination during the voir dire process, those were people who i guess i'm not that surprised, who had self- selected, kept themselves on the jury and you are right. there was always a chance of a stealth juror who was set i'm going to say all the right things and sneak on this jury. that was a possibility. maybe we got lucky. maybe we got historically lucky. maybe american history got lucky because no stealth juror is apparently made it onto the jury although republicans might say a stealth juror for the prosecution got on the jury. >> i'm surprised you even put the maybe on there. of course they would say that. i would've thought you would've looked at that jury and said of course they were impartial. >> i do. i do think they were impartial. i think this was an impartial jury. i think the criticisms from the right will be that. somebody got on there who is a manhattanite who really just wanted to convict trump. that is the narrative you're going to hear from the right. >> criticism from the trump campaign, they have been saying over and over it's impossible for him to get a fair trial in new york. less than two weeks ago, he held a giant rally in the bronx, brought all of these people in and said i think i can win new york, so on what planet can he say within the last two weeks, i can win new york, this is my hometown and at the same time, it's impossible for me to win in this left-wing city which by the way, a year ago, acquitted tom barracks, his close confidant, who was in a criminal trial in brooklyn accused of using his relationship with trump to get special access to the uae. on what grounds can the trump campaign make any of these arguments? >> that's an easy answer, none. you mentioned his invoking for the new york moment this was. he stands up in a courtroom just miles from where he was born, miles from where his father started building the developments that were the foundations of the family's fortune, that he has squandered in different ways, both reputational he and financially, and a jury of his peers in the city that made him a national figure, in a city that ended up rejecting him so much he decided to move to florida, brings him back home to try him and find him guilty. it is a very shakespearean fall for someone who is not elegant or civilized enough to enter the books of shakespeare, but nonetheless, the trajectory of all of this is profound and i think he felt that standing in the courtroom. i think when he came out in the hallway and started talking about the system being rigged again, and rambling on and on, he looked worn down. >> a little richard the third there. >> okay but are you concerned about the distraction that caused? we can all sit here and say the justice system worked but it was not just in the last five weeks. we have seen donald trump and the republican party chip away at the system so there are all sorts of americans right now who can say i accept the verdict. however, i don't know, i don't trust the court, i don't trust the judge, i don't trust the system. how destructive is that? >> it is really corrosive. donald trump ran on not believing our elections. that is what he's running on now. now he's running against the law. he is literally running against a court of lot and claiming that he can't be convicted because manhattan votes democratic. democrats can't possibly judge him fairly. the prosecutor was a democratic prosecutor. the judge he claims was a democrat because he give $35 to a democratic organization. if you follow that line of thinking that only republicans can prosecute republicans and democrats can prosecute democrats. what is justice scalia doing? what is justice thomas doing? can they possibly oversee any single case that comes before them that has anything to do with conservatives or donald trump? shouldn't he be calling for them to recuse themselves if he's going to take his argument to a logical conclusion? it's in a logical argument. you can't have it that way in this country. we all prosecute each other when we get in trouble. >> she gets the last word. nobody is going anywhere. when we come back, trump rails against the verdict and republicans stick by him and later, there are still three other criminal cases against the former president. what role could the supreme court play when our nightcap continues? we have a lot more to cover. av. only purple's gel flex grid passes the raw egg test. no other mattress cradles your body and simultaneously supports your spine. memory foam doesn't come close. get your best sleep guaranteed. save up to $800 during our memorial day sale. visit purple.com or a store near you with absorbine pro, pain won't hold you back from your passions. it's the only solution with two max-strength anesthetics to deliver the strongest numbing pain relief available. so, do your thing like a pro, pain-free. absorbine pro. i don't want you to move. i'm gonna miss you so much. you realize we'll have internet waiting for us at the new place, right? oh, we know. we just like making a scene. transferring your services has never been easier. get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. can i sleep over at your new place? can katie sleep over tonight? sure, honey! this generation is so dramatic! move with xfinity. today, donald trump railed against his conviction while president biden called those comments irresponsible and said the verdict shows no one is above the law. i want to know, how do you think this verdict will impact the election and the first thing i want you to do, danny, because there are all these people out there who think he's a convicted felon. he must not be allowed to run anymore. that's not the case. explain. >> there are exactly 3 qualifications in the constitution to be the president and we cannot add to or delete those qualifications. none of those include or have anything to do with being a felon or even charged with a crime and there is precedent. we have had a candidate run for office really from a jail cell. not a candidate really with any chance of winning. donald trump is the first ever to be convicted and run and what is still an open constitutional question is whether a president can be jailed and whether a president can run the country from a jail cell. we don't know the answer to that. we have tons of people like me with opinions about it but we really don't know until it happens. >> we are willing to find out. >> so, there is no felony disqualification for running for president. of course there is impeachment, you can impeach a president if you can connect the crime to something in the office but a convicted felon can run. >> you have to impeach and convict and then removal is automatic on conviction. >> it is almost impossible to tell how the verdict will affect the election because i think this will be ancient history by november. america has the collective attention span of the guy from a mental and something that happened way back at the end of may will be a distant memory by october. i think there is a very good chance the first presidential debate in june will have more of an impact than this ruling. i just don't know of any citizens whose minds will be changed by this. after he stole from veteran, with fraud online university and mocked a disabled guy. after six star wars movies and ready to say darth vader is the bad guy. i think people's minds are made up. there may be some nikki haley supporters of this will nudge but at the end of the day i think the selection may not be so much biden-trumpet trumpism versus non-trumpism. >> i think john is right about that. you can't tell how this is going to affect the election. we also do have a very short attention span. i spoke to [ inaudible ] on the air and she was arguing to take trump's comments live on television more, the exact opposite argument democrats made in 2016. they're saying no, have him out there reminding people what he sounds like, how he goes off on these tangents, how he makes no sense, how he is always railing against immigrants and sounding, in their words, bonkers. they will use a different b word but i will say bonkers. that will remind voters that donald trump is and erratic and chaotic. what might he say, what more might he start? they think more of donald trump, not less, is better. >> this takes me exactly to my next question. there are people who do not want that to happen and they are not democrats. they are megarich gop donors was said that even in the last two weeks, yes, we're going to back you, donald. especially wall street ones were hot on desantis, how to nikki haley in the collectively said we are upset about january 6, we are done with trump, all the baggage and we seen them in the last month, even in the last 48 hours start line back up after him. i was calling donor after donor, wall street guy after wall street guy. none of them were phased. is this because they are transactional and they know he is, as well, and at this moment when he is down, he's keeping score. he's going to see exactly who was with him and in six months if he is the next president, all of the superpowerful guys are going to have even more power, not just, were going to get the corporate tax cut extended or carried until this loophole is preserved. they're going to have a phone into the white house to get whatever they want and if you are in with us, if you are steve schwartzman, if you are nelson peltz, that's worth gold. >> he is already promised that to oil lobbyists. >> just two weeks ago. i will get wherever you need me to go. i think there are only really two issues for people funding donald trump from the financial community. especially once were leading the collection services. it is lower taxes and deregulation and it ends there, and that is because those most directly affect the health of their businesses and their wallets in the same way that flip-flopping republicans who once said they have nothing to do with him are now lining up behind him because he has that kind of sway and gravity within the gop. not going to be able to get through in the current era, primary, without some nod from donald trump. >> but it's more than that. you have the s.e.c., fet and you know in the next term you can say i don't want to take this call and he will fix it for you. >> he will try to fix it for you. it won't be that easy but he will try to do it. the other thing worth focusing on here is that the business community should care about long-term economic growth and widespread prosperity. it helps them, it helps their children. it helps all of them in myriad ways. everything he is proposing undermines that. he's got inflationary policies. everything he wants to do will add to the deficit. it doesn't give us more educated middle-class american population. everything that he wants to do is ultimately in the long term against the interest of the business community but in the short term, it pads their wallets. >> but it goes to ultimate power. elon musk is the best example. he is potentially putting together some sort of partnership or coalition. he will go out and raise money for trump. look at joe biden's policies. pro-electric vehicles, that's great for elon musk. donald trump is anti-electric vehicles. i'm not even talking about the extraordinary stock market yet elon musk is not donald trump's homeboy? if that is not about ultimate power i don't know what is. >> let's be fair. the thing i like best about joe biden is how evil billionaires despise them. that's been encouraging to me and oligarchs are going to oligarch and get behind trump. i think musk is an outlier because he seems much more concerned with being the joe logan of billionaires instead of actually being a successful businessman at this point. he seems much more focused on his own popularity and being adored by people. >> shouldn't we be alarmed when things are so blatant? i'm certainly not saying the white house is for sale but when you are seeing whether it's the meeting with the oil execs are suddenly saying businesspeople whose policies -- >> are you saying the white house is for sale? i will do what you want me to do? >> [ inaudible ] >> yes, that is true. it is a major concern that the white house is for sale, and he signaled that during his first term, so i don't know why anyone would be that surprised. we were talking about this earlier that there was this hope in 2016 that the white house would change him and we already know what we got. we know what we got for four years so there won't be any surprises. >> so many of his voters believe he is fighting for him even when he has shown he is not fighting for them. he may talk a big game but the policies he annexed don't generally benefit the common person. deregulation. does it make your water cleaner? no. he will say i want you to have the cleanest water ever but he's not doing anything to make that water clean. he changed taxes. a lot of people got a tax break. a lot of people did not get a tax break. but why have the democrats not been able to convince those people that trump is not good for them? why does he have this hold on them? is it the idea that he is the middle finger to the elites in this country? democrats have a messaging problem on this. they need to figure out a way to say listen, we've gotten rid of student debt for a lot of folks. [ inaudible ] inflation is coming down. all of these things are good for the average american. they need to do a better job of convincing americans of that. >> president biden and kamala harris were in philadelphia speaking to 1000 american voters talking about student debt, medical debt, an assortment of things they are actually doing. >> i think you are right there doing it 100%. all of these things are better, the stock market is better. prices are coming down. inflation is better. wages are going up. everything is good but [ inaudible ] >> the poll last week, 56% think wall street is having a terrible year. >> it's not people who are watching shows like these are reading the newspaper. they need to figure out how to get on social media and find a way to message to people who are only consuming information on social media. that is the issue. >> i actually think the thing that cuts through this and is most problematic for biden as his age. >> donald trump is essentially the same age. >> he appears to be more full of red bull than joe biden does, and i think a lot of voters have trepidation about whether or not joe biden will make it through a second term, and so they tune out these other things. >> as is because they have issues about his vice president? >> it's also because they have issues about kamala harris coming into the oval office with her that is because of racism, because of her track record [ inaudible ] a broker convention would require joe biden to willingly release -- >> i know but do you think he should? >> i think that's what we have to watch for the first debate. i think the reason he is having the debate early is to put that to rest. there will be a lot of pressure on him to release delegates in august. >> i have to believe more americans as we get closer to november will vote based more on ideology and policy than vibes and energy. biden is old. trump is old, as well. so, we will see what roe versus wade can do. >> were going to take a commercial break. as we were talking about evil billionaires, i do want to point out one who did something extraordinary. melinda gates. let's remember that really quickly. elon musk is can a raise all this money. trump is bragging about raising $34 million in lost two days. linda gates announced she's giving 1 billion in the last two years for women and girl causes. when we come back, donald trump facing more criminal cases. but, the supreme court will be weighing in first. 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. [sfx] water lapping. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [sfx] water splashing. ♪ ♪ [sfx] ambient / laughing. ♪ ♪ trump is facing three more criminal cases. we know one thing we are all waiting for is for the supreme court to decide if trump is immune from prosecution in the federal case. meanwhile, there are all sorts of ethics questions with these judges. most recently, judge alito with these two flags hanging in two of his homes. everybody knows what they are all about. he's refusing to recuse himself. do you think he should? >> i don't know about recusal. it's interesting to me everybody is talking about these flags. i feel like no one is asking the question, is that really what you do when you have a dispute with your neighbor? i've never heard of anyone flying a flag upside down. keep either house or put peanut butter under their door handle. don't put a flag upside down. >> that's only at one house. the other house was on the jersey shore where i live. it's the most apolitical place ever. the only arguments people have is are you going to the beach of the bay. it's nonsense. it makes no sense. >> exactly so should he recuse himself? i tend to think that we have a federal -- the framers made the federal judges the closest thing to royalty. they give them life tenure for the explicit reason, like it or not, that they are the ones who can ignore what people say about them and have a degree of autonomy. they can make choices that might be politically unpopular and whatever outside criticism because that is the way they were designed. not so with presidents, who are voted in and out, and not so with other politicians, so federal judges are unique in that sense. it really is the closest thing we have to a king in a country that really wanted nothing to do with kings and queens, so in the case of alito, should he recuse himself? i don't know if we are there yet. i think reasonable minds can disagree about that but i think there will be concern going forward with whatever he decides. on immunity, for example. wherever he goes on any of these cases is going to be for all of history. the question is whether or not it was something that was motivated and to some degree, clarence thomas, as well and that is something that whether or not we have recusal standards for supreme court justices, whether or not the rules of recusal apply to them, is something that realistically no supreme court justices over to recuse themselves. >> his other argument about these flags was oh, it wasn't me, it was my wife. but i'm being serious, okay? you were married, katie. can you envision a scenario for your spouse does something publicly that puts your absolute livelihood at risk, and you say to them, you have to stop doing this and there, i'm going to get back to you in two days. is that plausible? >> certainly not in my marriage. >> i can jump in on this is somebody who pot constantly does things publicly that humiliate my spouse, i can tell you that when it sums -- comes to something like a supreme court justice there may be a heightened burden for the spouse as well as the justice. you've got to have the talk. you got to say look, there are some good things that come with marrying me and the bad things. the bad things are, you're going to get into some weird stuff. please don't text the president's chief of staff. >> they are not as free as they were before the marriage. >> and the spouse, male or female, it doesn't matter. the bottom line is when you choose that job in my into that job unfortunately, that is the way it is. >> on the issue of you having to recuse, the upside down flag as a protest against the results of the 2020 election, and he is ruling on a seminal case about the january 6th insurrection. to me, that absolutely disqualifies him. >> it does. it disqualifies him to you and we have a system that says supreme court justices are virtually not disqualify a bowl. >> the court is worried about the appearance of partisanship. are they? >> they say they are, and if the chief justice is, as he claims he is, we should be expecting him to do some sort of policing within the court. >> can he? >> there can be pressure from -- he can go to all of the justices and put pressure on clarence thomas and say shape up, or recuse himself. there is a pressure you can put internally. he could've had a meeting with dick durbin and sheldon whitehouse. he could sit down with them. he could go out there publicly and say this is not acceptable. he could do those things. he is not done them. >> even after he does those, will he recuse or follow decorum? >> no, but it would send a signal to the rest of the country that hey listen, a good portion of the court takes this seriously and it matters to them and please disregard their opinions. they don't color the rest of our opinions. we are trying to do this for the good of the democracy. >> as danny said, they are the closest thing we have to royalty. they should be held to the highest standard. >> i just want to say pour samuel alito, you know, his wife did this to him. he had no autonomy over his flagpole. his choices taken away. it should be his flagpole, his choice, but a woman took that choice away from him. >> did you read the letter he wrote where he says my wife likes flags. i don't like flags. >> between him and menendez, it's a very good month for men blaming things on their wives. >> okay, we are going to take a quick break. when we return, our nightcap is here with what they are looking forward to. after this historic week, what comes next when the nightcap continues. comes next when the nightcap continues. what is cirkul? cirkul is the fuel you need to take flight. cirkul is the energy that gets you to the next level. cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com. we are getting a snapshot of what everyone here is looking ahead to, and what could happen next. tim. >> thank you. i'm looking forward to the debate. >> you think it happens? >> no, yeah. i think it is a calculated risk by the by the white house to show he can go physically, mentally, verbally toe to toe. >> no, do you think trump shows? >> yes, i do think trump shows. at this point, he said he would do it. both of their campaigns jointly brokered it. i think at this point he would look weak and afraid if he didn't do it especially when one of the hallmark messages of his campaigning as low energy joe biden, joe biden is awake, joe biden is scared of people. so yes, i think he shows up and it is a pivotal moment for biden and i think the white house thought long and hard about it because he has to overcome this issue that he is feeble and that he lacks energy to see his presidency through to the full term and i like his state of the union, this is -- >> powerhouse state of the union. >> republicans saying he's bonkers, i will go into donald trump and -- but anyway, you know, i think it is an important thing. i'm looking forward to seeing both how the debate proceeds and the impact it has. >> i think donald trump really does want to debate. their campaign thinks joe biden is going to come out looking weak. they definitely want it. >> but, that is a huge risk. joe biden has policy after policy, winning policies behind him and the thing that has been a hurdle is this idea that he is old. >> his walked into a debate with any policy chops and he always feels he walked out winning. >> we kind of took the air out of it. it is the trump immunity case. i want to know what the supreme court decides. we should be getting it in the next few weeks. june is fast approaching. that is the end of term. do they decide donald trump has no immunity? do they decide he has limited immunity? do they decide that judge check and has to go back and figure out what that immunity is? this will tell us whether that case could possibly be held before the election and whether this case will ever be held. they have a lot riding on them and we are also going to find out from this decision not for scalia and clarence thomas stan but where cavanaugh, amy coney barrett, course each. i think those are interesting questions about how they feel about the future of this democracy and the future of the executive office. and the presidency. >> both sides are going to win and lose at the same time on immunity. i'm looking forward to july 11th, the sentencing date for donald trump, which a lot of folks appear to be thinking that yesterday was the big show, and this happens a lot. people think about guilty verdicts as the main event in the trial but for more important, at least to citizens and maybe far more important to the constitution, is what happens if donald trump is actually incarcerated? i don't think there is a high possibility of that. i think it is far more likely that he gets probation but what if he doesn't? oranges is color but what if he does not? what if judge merchan decides to make a point and send them to jail even for a dale to process ? if it is a probation only sentence, it is really the same effect on his body. he showed up to court. he listened to a verdict. he walked out, gave a dress conference, gets probation, maybe he has to phone and but sending a presidential candidate to jail, to any kind of place, any correctional facility for any period of time i don't care if it is 48 hours, would be absolutely staggering so i mean don't downplay july 11th. it's a huge day. >> my event is three days later, the beginning of the republican national convention in milwaukee. it's going to be a lot of firsts. first ever convicted felon nominated for a major political party for president, first adjudicated rapist. they will bring in john youngkin. i think anybody who tries to contest this convention will get a one-way ticket to jeff flake island. it's going to be very festive to watch. i want to just give amount of thanks to the people who fought for yesterday's conviction and the people who gave me inspiration, who did not make it to see yesterday. so many great people, conservative brothers and sisters, too, who really deserve to have the joy of yesterday and for trump, i am grateful now it is done. he can finally fly back to florida and be with his wife again. >> what i am thinking about are some other extraordinary people. it is really my renewed faith in our justice system and i don't mean the prosecution or the defense or the judge, those 12 citizens. 18 if you consider the alternatives. they did not ask for this but the took on the task of being the jury in the first criminal trial of an american president. for five weeks they put their lives on hold and this is the really important part that i'm looking ahead and forward to. possibly, they are putting their lives at risk. they took this job seriously. they listen to hours and hours of testimony. they examined hundreds of pages of documents, and then they made a decision. they made a decision. they listen to evidence. they put country, they put justice first, and my hope, looking forward, is that each and every one of them is protected and safe, because they certainly deserve it. thank you all so much. what an unbelievable week. i'm honored to end it with you all. katie, tim, danny, john. thank you so much. remember we are not done. you can watch the nightcap most saturdays and fridays like just in case somebody you know wanted to watch tonight, they can watch tomorrow at 11:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. we are back with more after this. are back with more after this. 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? 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[sfx] water lapping. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [sfx] water splashing. ♪ ♪ [sfx] ambient / laughing. ♪ ♪ thank you for watching. on that note, i wish you all a very good and a very safe night from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news. thanks for staying up late. see you on monday. this is dateline. >> i don't even think i assume what happened. because you