me tonight. that's our show. over to lawrence o'donnell with the last word. good evening. >> good evening alex. glen kirshner joins us. we will hear about that. >> front row seat to bannon's departure for the big house. >> exactly. >> i'm eager to hear the color. >> i am, too. thanks alex. >> have a good show. >> thank you. he wasn't the most important person there. the president of the united states is usually the most important person in the room or the most important person in the stadium. or the most important person wherever the president is. not today. joe biden knew that the 200d- day veterans who surrounded him today on the coast of france were the most important people there. they were the most important people there 80 years ago and they were the most important people there today. >> the men who fought here became heros. every one of them knew the probability of dying was real but they did it anyway. they knew beyond any doubt there are things that are worth fighting and dying for. >> the world had never seen anything like the d-day invasion of the northern coast of france along the english channel. the world has never seen anything like it since. >> churchill called it the greatest most complicated operation ever. >> winston churchill wanted to be there. prime minister churchill said he wanted to board a navy ship to get a close up view of the allied props hitting the beach. eisenhower told churchill they could not take that risk. churchill told an exasperated eisenhower he would board a navy ship and there was nothing the american general could do to stop him. and that was true. eisenhower wouldn't stop churchill from boarding a british navy ship but the king of england could. when king george heard he was going to get on the ship, the king wanted to be on the ship too. and then, prime minister churchill, the most stubborn and courageous prime minister in history backed down realizing that he couldn't risk the king's life on that warship that day. so winston churchill and the king of england at the president of the united states had to stay at their posts and wait. wait for the most important news they would ever hear in their lives. before general eisenhower gave the order to go, he was warned by his top expert on the airborne landing of paratroopers that it was going to be a disaster. that almost all of the paratroopers who would be the very first americans to land. they would almost all land on french soil dead. that was the prediction. the paratroopers were going to land behind enemy lines so that if the soldiers who hit the beach could make it up the hill past the first line of german defense, they would have the support of those brave paratroopers already on the ground in france having landed in the middle of the night. general eisenhower was given a vision of all of those paratroopers lying dead in french fields. and he knew that the invasion plan couldn't work without the paratroopers landing first. he also knew that the slightest change in the weather could completely defeat the invasion. every single aspect of this undertaking could have gone wrong. and could have gone wrong all at the same time. and instead of the history, that can seem so inevitable, we could have had a disastrous defeat and full retreat back across the english channel to england. and the allies after such a full defeat and retreat could not possibly have attempted another invasion for at least a year. it had taken years to plan the invasion and taken more than a year to build the equipment that got the soldiers to shore that day. a new kind of massive floating dock had to be invented and then built and then dragged across the english channel. something that had never been used before and no one was sure would work. there were countless ways for the d-day invasion to fail and dwight eisenhower knew every single one of them and he still said go. when he said go, he hand wrote the statement with issue and defeat. the statement he never had to issue. in his own handwriting, general eisenhower wrote our landings in the cherbourg-havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and i have withdrawn the troops. my decision to attack was based on the best information available. the troops, the air, and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. if any blame or fault attach to the attempt, it is mine alone. of course general eisenhower was ready to take the blame alone. because that is what honor demanded. eight years later, general eisenhower was elected president of the united states. after his faithful service, became the first republican president in 20 years. and in a tragic collapse of honor, in dwight eisenhower's political party, it is now impossible to imagine the last republican president taking the blame alone for anything. in fact, donald trump's last white house chief of staff john kelly who was a marine corp. general says that donald trump quote rants that our most precious heros who gave their lives in america's defense are losers. and wouldn't visit their graves in france. earnest hemmingway was with the troops on d-day as they approached the beach. in a magazine article entitled voyage to victory, hemmingway wrote the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest. as we moved in on the gray early light, the 36-foot coffin shaped steel boats took solid green sheets of water that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the stiff, uncomfortable awkward lonely companionship of men going to a battle. as far as you could see, there were landing craft moving in over the gray sea. hemmingway watched the battleship texas shelling the shore. she was just off on our right now and firing over us as we moved in toward the french post. those of our troops who were not wax gray with seasickness fighting it off, trying to hold onto themselves before they had to grab for the sale side of the boat were watching the texas. under the steel helmets they looked like pikemen of the middle ages to whose aid in battle had suddenly come some strange and unbelievable monster. other ships were firing over us all day. and you were never away from the sudden slapping thud of naval gunfire. but the big guns of the texas and arkansas that sounded as though they were throwing whole railway trains across the sky were far away as we moved on in. they were no part of our world as we moved steadily toward the gray white capped sea toward where ahead of us death was being issued in small, intimate, accurately administered packages. they are like a thunder of a storm that is passing in another country. they were knocking out the shore batteries so later the destroyers could move in almost to the shore. on the beach, on the left, where there was no sheltering overhang of shingled bank the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth waves lay where they had fallen looking like so many. heavenlyheavily ladened bundles on the beach. >> the few, the notable band of brothers here with us today. kenneth smith is here. on that day under heavy artillery fire, he operated a range finder and radar. on the first american ship to arrive at normandy's coast. providing direct gunfire support for the rangers scaling the cliffs. on their daring mission to take out the german batteries. harris is here. bullets flying everywhere, he landed. tracers lighting up the sky. bob drove an m4 tractor with anti-aircraft gun mounted on top providing critical protection for the infantry against the german air force. on that day, and for many days after, he continued. miller is here. a medic. he and 13 other medics flew over the channel in a glider. his wings were ripped off by giant poles that the germans buried halfway in the ground to stop them from landing. they crashed. but they survived. and they did their duty dragging soldiers to safety. treating wounds, saving lives while the battle raged. every soldier who stormed the beach who dropped by parachute or landed by glider, every sailor who manned the thousands of ships and landing craft, every aviator who dried german controlled airfields, bridges, airfields, all were backed by other brave americans including hundreds of thousands of people of color and women who courageously served despite unjust limitations on limitations on what they could do. lewis brown is here, part of the red ball express. a truck convoy made up of mostly african american drivers. they landed in normandy in the wake of d-day. they rushed supplies for the rapidly advancing front lines. woody woodhouse is here. members of the legendary tuskegee airmen. who flew over 15,000 during the war. marjorie stone is here. she enlisted in the women's branch of the naval reserve. became an aircraft mechanic. spent the war keeping american planes and pilots in the air. theirs has always been the story of america. walking the rows of the cemeteries i had. nearly 10,000 heros buried side by side. can officers and enlisted. immigrants. native born. different races. different faiths. but all americans. all serve with honor when america and the world needed them the most. >> after the war, peace in europe was built and maintained with the united nations and with the north atlantic treaty organization whose mission is still maintaining peace in europe. >> they stand strong in ukraine. we will not walk away. ukraine will be subjugated. all of europe will be threatened. make no mistake, the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in ukraine. we cannot let that happen. to surrender to bully. to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. were we to do that, means we would be forgetting what happened here in the hallowed beaches. make no mistake, we will not bow down. >> volodymyr zelenskyy was there to honor those who fought for freedom 80 years ago. >> you are a savior of the people. >> no, you are. you are. >> leading off our discussion on this day of reliving history is timothy snyder. he is author of bloodlands, europe between hitler and stalin and black earth, the holocaust as history and warning. professor snyder, thank you very much for joining us tonight. we heard president biden say we will never forget. there are republicans who have not forgotten what they never knew. it seems there is no evidence at all that donald trump knew what victory in world war ii meant and what the pledge was made after that to hold the peace in europe. >> the president is certainly right that democracy is something that demands and the point of commemorating heros has to be examples. my favorite was the one where we have no right to commemorate others unless we take lessons from them for the future. as far as mr. trump, we have to acknowledge in the 1930s , a current which was called america first. that we should be admiring foreign dictators. that is the right form of politics was the reasoning and that current still exists in american life and mr. trump embodies it. he doesn't understand the value for which you would take risks. you can be an authoritarian or fascist if all you think about is yourself. in order to be a democrat or someone who cares about the rule of law or a constitutionalist, you have to take the step of recognizing another person is real. another person might deserve for me to take some kind of risk at some point. >> professor, i have been thinking about world war ii a lot. since the ukraine war, since vladimir putin invaded ukraine and the parallels. and it is not easy to make those parallels in these discussions every day. but this is one of the days when the parallels are so vivid with president zelenskyy right there in normandy. >> we should commemorate as we remember this difficult decisive naval operation, that the second world war was chiefly about ukraine. it was chiefly about the germans trying we should remember the scale of death during the second world war was horrifyingly great. about four times as many ukrainian soldiers were killed as american soldiers. another way i think it is worth remembering is that the second world war was about destroying states, destroying nations, categorizing people as being racially inferior. and that sadly has also been putin's rationale for the invasion of ukraine. to put it in perspective, the population they have lost as many or perhaps more people as we lost in the entire second world war. the comparison is appropriate. >> we also have the more powerful militarily powerful neighbor invading the cross border invasion. precisely what started world war ii. >> yeah. and looking at it from the other side, we have to remember that d-day, though we know it worked, the news seemed pretty bleak and we should remember that when we look at the war in ukraine. there will be moments, days, houser, weeks, months where it seems pretty bleak. that doesn't mean you can't win in the end. that's the other thing. is meaning of d-day has to do that we know the soldiers will go onto win the war. if we had lost, the meaning of the landing would be very different. that is an important point for ukraine. the meaning of what is happening in ukraine now has to do with who wins and who loses. >> i'm so glad you mentioned the way we watch ukraine compared to world war ii. today's media and politicians watching world war ii would have been complaining two months in. where american soldiers, it took more than a year for american soldiers to even get to europe after germany declared war on the united states. >> in 1943 we tried to land in italy with very mixed results and that was slow going. it was a long learning curve for the american army. another thing. a related thing we should remember and apply to the ukraine war is even as we were making our way to europe, we were backing our allies with a significant percentage of our economic power. that is a lesson we need to remember because that is the way that we need to support ukraine. we haven't mobilized our economic industrial manufacturing power this time around the way that we did then. >> well yeah. the reason britain existed still in an independent form where we could go in and help is franklin roosevelt's ingenious ways of supplying arms and other material. >> one side of it is human courage. like churchill or perhaps zelenskyy. the other side is economic power, finding ways to convert economic power into military power. finding clever ways to convert your manufacturing into war production. seeing that it is a long term process and starting right away. what happened in operation overlord, operation neptune, the landing on d-day has to do with an enormous amount of application of economic power, and planning and administrative skill. >> that we needed to move quicker than possible. >> there were quibbles with allies but there was a great deal more patience with allies and a great deal more realism. we were fairer with the people. and you're right. there is a certain kind of impatience for things to hit the right news cycle as opposed to understanding that wars cannot be won just on cliches, emotions, rushes of impulse. they can only be won by that combination of planning, patience, and human courage. >> professor, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> it's been an honor, thank you. coming up, steve bannon is going to prison on july 1st. glen kirshner was in the courtroom when the judge ordered bannon to prison. he joins us next. o prison. he joins us next. nothing dims my light like a migraine. with nurtec odt, i found relief. the only migraine medication that helps treat and prevent, all in one. to those with migraine, i see you. for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of episodic migraine in adults. don't take if allergic to nurtec odt. allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. it's time we all shine. talk to a healthcare provider 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[ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg's moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money. and don's paying so much for at&t, he's been waiting to update his equipment! there's a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to 70% on your wireless bill. so you don't have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. 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. donald trump's propogandist steve bannon who never would have been employed by any other american politician was told by a judge to report to prison for july 1st to serve his four month sentence for contempt of congress for violating the subpoenas issued to him by the january 6th committee. joining us now is glen kirshner. who was in the courtroom for that hearing today. >> he asked probing questions of the prosecutioner. he asked probing questions of david shone. the defense attorney and it really wasn't until near the end of the hearing as he was going through his findings that he said look. the reason i originally stayed judge steve bannon's sentence was because i thought he might have a viable legal issue on appeal. however, when the three-judge panel of the dc federal circuit court of appeals unanimously and in a full throated way basically rejected that legal issue, judge nichols said i have no basis to continue to stay the execution of his sentence. i am accordingly ordering him to report to prison by july 1st to begin his four-month sentence and you know, it is interesting, lawrence, because that seemed to make steve bannon unhappy. but his lawyer made a beeline for the podium. i can tell you in federal court, ordinarily, you wait for the judge to invite you to the podium. he raised his voice, got angry, and began yelling. and if judge had to basically shut him down and said that is no way to behave in the courtroom. he might have been performing for steve bannon or perhaps another audience. but it is pretty clear judge nichols finally decided enough was enough and there is no reason for steve bannon to remain at liberty and he will be now joining peter navarro perhaps in the same facility. perhaps not because peter navarro is serving his sentence for the identical contempt of congress crimes. >> and these four months might be the shortest sentence that steve bannon gets. he is facing money laundering charges in new york city, it is being heard by the way