♪♪ good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc in new york city. another new first for this country. the first trial of a sitting president's son getting under way in delaware just days after the end of donald trump's historic trial. what will the impact be both personally for the president and politically for his re-election. we'll go live to the courthouse where jury selection has been going on since 8:30. plus, the man who became the face of the covid response, dr. anthony fauci coming face-to-face with his congressional critics for the first time since leaving his post. the demand by one democrat for an apology, and what provoked an emotional response. the latest drama from capitol hill coming up. potentially devastating news for the families of israeli hostages. prime minister netanyahu saying today that president biden got it wrong on the details of a potential peace deal. and in his words, the claim that israel has agreed to a cease-fire without its conditions being met is not true. will a pressure campaign from the u.s. and hostage families get him to change his mind? a lot to get to on this monday. we start in delaware where for the second time in less than a week legal wranglings inside a courtroom have the potential to sway voters in what is already an unpredictable, unorthodox and volatile president election. hunter biden's charges linked to a gun purchase in 2018 and the trump hush money trial are very different legally. of course, only one involves a candidate. but politically they are fodder for arguments on both sides over ethics and fuel for the deeply divisive debate over the integrity of our criminal justice system. while trump is wearing his 34 criminal convictions as a badge of honor and raising millions of dollars, "the new york times" is describing the trial starting today as a, quote, excruciating personal ordeal for president biden. his statement out this morning reading in part, i am the president, but i am also a dad. as the president, i don't and won't comment on pending federal cases, but as a dad, i have boundless love for my son, confidence in him and respect for his strength. joining me from outside the courthouse in wilmington. also with me tim miller host of the bulwark podcast and also an msnbc analyst. i want to read how "the washington post" framed the challenge. they write, facing a situation unlike any president before him biden who at 81 is the patriarch of a large and growing family will have to navigate the trial as president, candidate and father. so putting the personal aspect of this aside for a moment, how difficult could it be for him as a president and a candidate for re-election? >> i'm not sure how much the hunter biden trial actually hurts his re-election. i think his statement today as a father was totally appropriate. i think obviously the republicans will try to make hay of this. frankly, i know the biden team won't say this or wouldn't say this. i see this as a political opportunity for joe biden, and i think that the people around biden, democrats on the hill and otherwise who don't carry the personal familial baggage should really aggressively go on offense against the republican colleagues who spent the last four days denigrating our justice system and calling joe biden a despot trying to jail his political opponent and expose once again their lies and their extremism and talk about how appropriate what the president has done in this case and in the donald trump cases has been by keeping his hands off it, doing exactly what we'd expect from a president. hunter biden is on trial today. there's another case later this year in september, two separate cases targeting his son. i think that fact alone really undermines and reveals the false talking points that we've seen from literally everybody save larry hogan and the republican party. >> mike memoli, is the biden campaign worried about any potential downside here? >> reporter: well, i think as you talk to people close to the president, their concern is less about the impact on voters, frankly, than it is about the impact on the president. i've covered the president for a long time, including when he was vice president, we saw the toll that the death of his son beau took on him and his family. in fact, you draw a direct line from beau's death to the charges and the environment under which hunter biden's addiction deepened to drugs and alcohol. so i think the concern here is that, as a father, will he be distracted? will he be concerned about the fact that his son is not just on trial. that alone is a concern. but will the fact that the most period of his life is about to be picked apart and discussed in a jury room including with his ex-wife and his brother's widow with whom he was also romantically involved. that's why you see this really unprecedented show of force really, the first lady sitting behind hunter today. to the extent there is going to be a political impact here, i was just in the courtroom, and i was struck as they were questioning some of the potential jurors here, how many of them answered yes to the question about whether they knew somebody who struggled with addiction themselves. there was a drug counselor, for instance, a woman who said she lost her best friend because of a heroin overdose. when you talk to the biden campaign about the politics of this, they think the trump campaign is misreading the electorate, that many people have gone through similar family ordeal, and if anything, they will feel the same kind of sympathy towards president biden that he has shown as one of his main political calling cards. >> tim, i want to read exactly the other portion of the president's statement tonight that deals with that specifically, quote, hunter's resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us. a lot of families have loved ones who have overcome addiction and know what we mean. so do you think republicans might enter this at their own peril? >> i do. i think we see it in focus groups, too. people get uncomfortable with attacks on hunter over particularly related to his struggle with drug abuse. that's true in republican focus groups. i think a lot of times these republicans, you get very kind of internet, get into your maga media echo chamber where attacking hunter is just kind of something that is happening constantly over on news max and these maga media outlets, and you think that is something that lands with the voters, the most rabid partisans. unlike some of the other things, some of the other texts that do land with a broader audience, these attacks on hunter do not. i think they have the potential for back firing and it undermines his attacks on the justice system. i think there are a lot of areas of political peril here for the republicans. >> so sarah, there are lots of experts who believe that trials can be won and lost with what's happening right now, which is jury selection. as i've been reading through the notes of them, it's sometimes intense. it sometimes seems a little boring. sometimes it's funny. there was a retiree who suggested that if the judge put him up in a hotel so he could serve, he would be in big trouble with his wife because of a birthday pending and plans for a weekend at the beach. tell us what's been going on inside that courtroom. >> you're absolutely right, chris. watching as each juror comes in and responds to questions from the judge and then to questions from both sides, it's really an amazing cross section of american society, people who might go bankrupt if they miss a week of work. you see in these jurors the issues facing the american people. in the questions that we've had them answer, the specific questionnaire that they've had to fill out and have been questioned quite deeply by the judge and attorneys for both sides, we see that these political issues that in theory shouldn't impact this case are really at the heart of every prospective juror and could influence how they look at this case. you see that so many of them are gun owners, have concealed carry permits, have had to go through the very process that hunter biden did when he filled out that form, which is kind of the central charge in this case. and at the same time we see lots of families that have struggled -- that have family members who have struggled with addiction. one woman i was really struck by, she got very emotional. she says i don't look down on others who have gone through this. it's a disease. we're going to see kind of two opposing major political themes in american life that, even though they aren't central to the facts of this case, are going to really influence how this group of ordinary people from delaware are going to consider this case. >> so, mike, there's going to be some things that may come out in this trial that the biden family or any family would prefer to keep quiet, right? obviously we've talked about the drug addiction. but two of the expected witnesses will be hunter biden's ex-wife, but also his brother beau biden's widow who he then became involved in a relationship with. the two of them could take the stand here. what are you hearing from biden world about what some would say is the tawdry or at least the more sensational aspects of this trial? >> well, people close to the bidens have pointed to the fact, and this is one reason why the president and the first lady say they're so proud of their son, is the fact that hunter acknowledged and wrote about this in quite explicit terms in his book which came out just a few years ago. in fact, portions of that book might be part of the evidence that we hear during the course of this case. it's notable that hallie biden, beau biden's widow was just with the president, the first lady and hunter last week as the family went to beau's grave site, marked the ninth anniversary of his passing. hunter's ex-wife, kathleen, is still part of the family, in fact sitting next to dr. biden in the courtroom today is her grandson in law who married naomi biden at the white house a few years ago and kathleen was part of that event. it will be difficult for the family to have to see these family discussions which they do like to keep private to the extent they can, borne out in a public way with reporters like sarah and i in the courtroom. the family has talked about how they rally around each other. that's certainly what they're saying. that's at the root of the concern of how the president will process all this, during the last campaign he'll ever run for public office. >> big picture outside the courtroom, tim, and you're a communications expert. is sometimes the best messaging little or no messaging at all? are both sides well served to say little or nothing about this and let the system play out? >> i don't know. as a communications person, everything is a nail and i'm a hammer. i don't know. i feel like they do need to message around this. and i think particularly they need to message around it from an institutional standpoint and talk about the fact that, frankly, this -- if you want to talk about overzealous pro can you tellers, this is a minor charge, the idea that someone is going to trial for this is pretty rare, and use that as a way to bludgeon republicans who are trying to attack in the most vicious terms this administration as being politicized. i just think democrats have to talk about that and expose the republicans' hypocrisy. i think on the republican side, potentially there is some elements of this scandal, if the republicans ever had a deaf touch, this would call for using it. i don't really expect to see that. >> sarah fitzpatrick and mike memoli outside the courthouse, thank you. tim miller, you're staying with us. in 90 seconds, trump's breaking point. the former president's warning about what could happen if he goes to jail and the new polling on how independents feel his 34-count guilty verdict should impact his campaign. we're back after a quick break. , power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley there seems to be a major disconnect between donald trump's public and private reactions to the possibility of jail time when he is sentenced in 38 days. in spite of numerous reports that privately he's very worried he could land behind bars, on tv he suggests it's the country that should be worried. >> the judge could decide to say, hey, house arrest or even jail. >> he could. i'm okay with it. i saw one of my lawyers the other day on television say, no, you don't want to do that. you don't beg for anything. it's the way it is. so it could happen. i don't know that the public would stand it. i'm not sure the public would stand for it. >> you're saying house arrest or -- >> i think it would be tough for the public to take. at a certain point there's a breaking point. >> those comments come as a new poll from abc news and ipsos shows half of americans think the guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records was correct. and in that same poll, 49% of americans say trump should end his campaign because of that verdict. 37% say he should not. tim miller is back with me. also joining us, nbc's dasha burns. talk to me about trump's comments over the weekend. it was a long interview. >> very long interview, 90-some minutes. there are these two parallel tracks. the legal piece of it, that process that potentially could be a serious threat to former president trump, and then there's the political track. they are trying to take as much advantage as they can of actually that possibility of jail time. though if you talk to lawyers, they say that's very unlikely. he's out there fund-raising knows, text messages, social media, calling himself a political prisoner. he sent a fund-raising email earlier today saying they want to put me in prison for 187 years which, of course, even if he were to go to jail, that would not be the case. calling for unprecedented response from his supporters out of this verdict. they're using that to again rally the base and fundraise. he's already raised tens of millions of dollars off this. >> yeah. they say it was a record couple of days or 24 hours. >> we won't be able to check that until we see the financial disclosures. >> tim, let me ask you about the new poll from abc. tell me why you're shaking your head? >> sometimes i feel like we're in an alternate universe. i'm in never land or something where -- i'd like to see some evidence that it might be good for him. it's only drum that gets this treatment where pundits go out and say, maybe it will be good for him that he has 34 felony counts, that he might go to jail, might have an ankle bracelet on when he gets the republican nomination. it's hard to go back to 2016 and think of a pundit going back, man, if hillary goes to jail for these emails, that might be a boost to her campaign. it would have been a preposterous thing to say. color me skeptical. i think there is some fund-raising benefit. outside of that, i'm still skeptical there's a political benefit. >> let's talk about early polls. a lot can happen between now and when people get their ballots. 52% of independents believe the jury reached the right verdict and think it should end his campaign. those double haters, the folks that don't like trump or biden, 65% say the verdict was correct. 67% say it should end trump's bid for the white house. tell us how you read that poll. >> those are the crucial voters, the double haters. they come in all shapes and sizes. there are some that are liberal and unhappy with biden and inflation or gaza. and some that are former republican-type voters. so i think the fact that there is such an overwhelming response among that group, two-thirds that thought the verdict was correct. i think it's very telling and very important. if you look at 2016 and 2020, the double haters, they broke late for trump in 2016. they broke late for biden -- they didn't break late for biden, but stuck with biden late in 2020. that was the key difference. i'll go back to the political element of this. it definitely seems like this trial will have at least some effect. how long will it stay? there are other factors. we have multiple debates ahead. i don't know it's prescriptive of what happens in november. i think it shows it's not a winner for trump. >> in the same interview trump talked about this now familiar phrase from 2016 campaign referring to hillary clinton and denied something we all know happened. let me play that from the interview. >> hillary clinton, i didn't say lock her up. the people say lock her up, lock her up. i said pretty openly, i say come on, just relax. >> i didn't sap lock her up. remind us what actually happened. >> not quite true. quickly to tim's point, i'm just a journalist out there watching and listening and trying to -- >> talking to voters. >> talking to voters. i don't know if this will be good for him or not. watching their strategy right now, they are very much leaning into this idea of him as a political prisoner, as a victim of this system they clearly think can gain some sort of advantage. in the context of talking about trump and jail time he was asked about hillary clinton. he absolutely said lock her up. let's just go back to the tape. >> lock her up. lock her up. lock her up. >> for what she's done, they should lock her up. it's disgraceful. >> so crooked hillary -- wait. you should lock her up, i'll tell you. >> lock up the bidens, lock up hillary. >> in the interview, he also said that he could have locked her up, but he decided not to because he thought it would be a terrible thing for our country. so make of all of that what you will, it's on tape. we've got the receipts. >> dasha burns, thank you. tim miller, again, you're sticking with us. congress is back on capitol hill with dr. anthony fauci testifying before the republican-led oversight committee. there are new concerns the country is less prepared for the next pandemic. plus, the price of climate change. why advocates are warning that home cooling costs could reach a ten-year high with extreme weather, that heat roiling the u.s. you're watching "chris jansing reports" only on msnbc. reports" only on msnbc [♪♪] there's a way to cut your dishwashing time by 50%. try dawn powerwash dish spray. it removes 99% of grease and grime in half the time. it cleans so well, you can replace multiple cleaning products. try dawn powerwash. introducing, ned's plaque psoriasis. he thinks his flaky red patches are all people see. otezla is the #1 prescribed pill to treat plaque psoriasis. otezla can help you get clearer skin. don't use otezla if you're allergic to it. serious allergic reactions can happen. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. some people taking otezla had depression, suicidal thoughts, or weight loss. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. live in the moment. ask your doctor about otezla. sup? 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