united states senate. so they will all have the chance to talk to voters tonight. >> that is a good looking. someone did you very well. >> thank you. >> have a good night. stack at the end of this hour we have to say our final farewell to willie mays, who sadly died tonight at the age of 93. the stock market hit record highs again today. something that the religion called trumpism insists is impossible because in the last presidential campaign, donald trump promised this. >> if he is elected, the stock market will crash. >> trumpism depends on stupidity. it has to because donald trump is so profoundly stupid himself. it is impossible to get stupidity out of trumpism. there was once a time when i could tell you that every republican united states senator knew donald trump was lying when he said that china paid american tariffs. american tariffs for the entire history of the american government have been paid by the american people, that is how tariffs work. they are sales taxes paid by the american people. paid by the consumers in america who by the imported goods. donald trump has always insisted to his followers at his rallies that china pays the tariffs that donald trump imposed on china. now to be fair to the 99% of trump voters who have never gone to a trump rally, it does appear that the very stupidest of trump voters attend the rallies and cheer for the breathtakingly stupid statement by donald trump about tariffs, but i promise of joe biden never claimed that a foreign country pays american tariffs, the new york times would destroy him in a massive front- page headline and begin to debate whether joe biden was lying about tariffs or this was a sign about neurological decline in joe biden. who pays tariffs should be a question at the next debate, but the debate questioners always pride themselves on the complexity of their questions that never lead to yes or no answers or revelations of the shocking ignorance patterns of people like donald trump. donald trump introduced insult comedy to american presidential politics with his nasty nicknames, first for the republican candidates he was running against in 2016, all of whom then proved themselves to be worthy of even nastier nicknames for publicly offering their complete loyalty to donald trump after he humiliated them and insulted them and insulted some of their wives and gave out their personal phone numbers, things like that. senator joshua holly has not been on the receiving end of an insert insult from donald trump because he never ran against donald trump, but in his longshot current campaign for the vice presidential nomination, senator hawley today tried his hand at trumpian insult comedy. it was based on a lie circulating in right-wing media claiming that joe biden did not want to have to stand for the 90 minutes of the upcoming cnn debate. cnn said that was a lie with a cnn spokesperson saying, cnn's proposed format was to have both candidates stand and both sides agreed to the rules when they agreed to debate. and remember, joe biden was the first to agree to debate. he was the first to agree to stand for 90 minutes, but the lie that senator hawley used to insult joe biden revealed just how much he doesn't know about the country he lives in. senator hawley tweeted, he can't stand for 90 minutes, but he's 100% able to be president? have fun explaining that. okay, i can explain it in three words. franklin delano roosevelt. he was our longest-serving president, elected to for conservative terms as president of the united states before term limits were established by constitutional amendment and in every day of his 13 years as president, franklin roosevelt was in a wheelchair. the same wheelchair he was in in his two terms as governor of new york. franklin roosevelt lost the ability to walk when he was struck by polio at age 39. so, no, standing for 90 minutes is not a presidential job requirement. and what did franklin roosevelt do in his wheelchair? he did more things than any president before him or sense, including winning world war ii. adolf hitler was a younger, healthier man than franklin roosevelt, but from his wheelchair president franklin delano roosevelt forced adolf hitler in berlin to commit suicide in his bunker as the allies commanded by general dwight eisenhower were closing in on the german capital city. hitler could stand for 90 minutes. he did it all the time. 90 minutes was a short speech for adolf hitler. josh hawley would have loved adolf hitler if standing for 90 minutes and ranting incoherently is something josh hawley truly admires as presidential. josh hawley knows it doesn't matter how long a president can stand. he knows the republican governor of arkansas, who republicans believe is the greatest texas governor in history, has been in a wheelchair every single day of his governorship. but wiseguy josh hawley wants to do his joke about standing for 90 minutes, so that he can impress the world's worst insult comedian, donald trump. senator hawley is one of the unindicted participants in donald trump's attempt to overturn the election. he was the first member of the senate to agree to join republican house members in their plan to challenge the electoral votes one by joe biden. if only house members challenge to the electoral votes, those challenges would have been immediately ignored. but if the challenge comes from the house and the senate, then both bodies have to vote on the challenge. no republican senator was willing to step forward to support those challenges that they knew were coming from the house until senator hawley, craven lee, became the first. then he was immediately joined by his other comrades, like senator ted cruz and others. without senator hawley the trump criminal conspiracy alleged by special prosecutor jack smith would've been incomplete. other friends of donald trump were not so lucky as josh hawley. today boris epshteyn became the newest alleged trump co- conspirator to face arraignment, this time in arizona where he pleaded not guilty to criminal charges for his role in the a collector conspiracy. boris epshteyn is an utterly incompetent buffoon like many trump operatives who would have never have found a position of responsibility of any kind in a serious republican presidential campaign before donald trump. boris epshteyn is a nonpracticing lawyer who knows nothing about the practice of law and so spent every day of the trump criminal trial in new york sitting in the front row of the spectator seats, totally ignored by the real lawyers handling donald trump's losing defense. boris epshteyn was one of the very first and was the very last trump supporter who appeared as a guest on this program. it was during the 2016 presidential campaign and boris epshteyn appeared then to be the most reasonable of the trump operatives who only lied a little bit, not every word. but after listening to him on this program i realized it was a disservice to the audience to ever-present liars paid by donald trump to come on television and lie for him. it is an abuse of television time to give those people microphones. i have never seen a successful interview of a trump operative, because they will lie about anything and it is impossible to pursue all of those lies. but boris epshteyn is now going to find, as a criminal defendant, what donald trump has found. which is that fast talking lying on tv that trump and his people do just doesn't work in a courtroom where donald trump in fact was afraid to even open his mouth when he was on trial as a criminal defendant in manhattan. trumpism has infected the supreme court in ways that were unimaginable before donald trump. but some of which were actually happening before trump. it is inconceivable that justice samuel alito and justice clarence thomas and both of their wives suddenly became rabid, right-wing, trumpian republicans only at the emergence of candidate trump. we now know that the financial corruption of clarence thomas, the outright selling of his supreme court seat, or at least what we can all agree is the financial exploitation of his seat on the supreme court, has been happening for decades. clarence thomas was never admitting it. clarence thomas was violating the rules of financial disclosure for supreme court justices and claiming that as a supreme court justice, it was impossible for him to understand these very simple rules that you do not have to go to law school to understand. rules that anyone could understand on their first reading. clarence thomas's defense has been the kind of defense that disqualifies you as a supreme court justice. it is the claim that he is just too stupid to understand these very simple ethical rules. that would mean that he is by his own confession, too stupid to be a supreme court justice. but trumpism means never having to say you're sorry for being stupid, so everyone in republican politics accepts clarence thomas's defense that i was too stupid to understand the ethics rules that apply to supreme court justices and just when we think we know at all about justice thomas, there is more. the senate judiciary committee revealed no information that clarence thomas took three more flights than previously known on the private jet of republican mega-donor harlan crow. that is three more flights than the public knew about when data compiled by the watchdog group fix the court showed that clarence thomas received at least more than $4 million in gifts between 2004 and 2024. in the same two decades, no other justice reported even half $1 million or a quarter million dollars in gifts. samuel alito came in second with roughly $210,000 worth of gifts in the same two decades. the records do not show the purpose of clarence thomas's trips. the washington post estimated that such flights might have cost between $500,000 and $625,000. as joe biden said this weekend, if donald trump is elected president he will have two supreme court seats to fill. president biden didn't specify which seats, but it is easy to see how quickly donald trump and rich republicans would be able to purchase clarence thomas's supreme court seat from justice thomas by providing him with the fabulously wealthy lifestyle that justice thomas so openly craves. justice thomas is 75 years old. donald trump would make him an offer he could not refuse. the golden motorhome offer. the unlimited private jets wherever you want to go offer for the rest of your life. multimillion dollar income by sitting on corporate boards, making speeches to closed-door republican gatherings and donald trump would make samuel alito an offer that samuel alito's wife would not let him refuse. according to recently recorded comments about how much she hates her husband's job. donald trump would replace at least two supreme court justices in their mid-70s with extreme, right-wing republican lawyers like, say, 44-year-old joshua hawley, who can serve on the united states supreme court comfortably for another 40 years. where he could do much more damage than he tries to do now in the united states senate. leading off our discussion tonight is democratic senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island. he is a member of the senate judiciary committee and also the author of the scheme, how the right-wing used dark money to capture the supreme court. senator whitehouse, i have been wanting to get your reaction to what joe biden said this weekend about those two possible supreme court justices, which is not something that we in the media have been focusing on. the possibility there could be openings. as soon as we heard him say it, we could see how that deal would be made for those openings. >> yeah and there is a history of making deals for openings. justice kennedy left in what looked an awful lot like a deal to put his former clerk, brett kavanaugh, on the court. and it is customary for republican justices who claim to be nonpartisan to wait until there is a republican president before they retire and create a vacancy. i think more importantly what it reminds the american people of is what the stakes are of another trump presidency and an even more entitled and soupy messed supreme court. just the move from 5-4 to 6-3 made a profound difference in the courts behavior. if it were to go to 7-2, i think the rogue court would become a downright berserk court and it is very hard to get rid of them, because they have these lifetime appointments. so it is a very real threat to the country. to have trump have more appointments to this court. >> senator, have i oversimplify the clarence thomas to dance -- which to me seems to be, i couldn't possibly understand these complicated rules for financial disclosure for supreme court justices? this is someone who has to analyze antitrust cases and as we know, all sorts of law that is far more complex than these very simple, english language financial disclosure requirements. i mean, that just seems like a defense that disqualifies you from being a supreme court justice. >> the first line of defense is to say nothing at all. just to be mute. so he has never said a thing officially about what his situation was in regards to his wife's role in the insurrection when he was ruling on cases that were related to investigation of the insurrection. he just refused to answer, refused to engage, so nothing there. just mute silence. then you move on to the filings he has made, when he is caught making mistakes. he makes these weird partial corrections that he knows are not complete and then says that his failure to file very obvious requirements was inadvertent. if a lawyer made to justice thomas the argument that their mistake was inadvertent, they would be taken to task by justice thomas. so it is a double standard as to what they demand around them and the way they behave themselves. and very simple things like understanding when a $250,000 debt is forgiven for your motor coach, that that is income. all you have to do is read the plain language of the statute and the disclosure rule to know that and he does not seem to have managed to file his proper disclosure and we are investigating whether he managed to file his proper taxes. >> this is a judge in the federal appeals chain of tax evasion cases. of cases to failure to comply with taxes. both civil and criminal cases that find their way up there, where he has to be the ultimate interpreter of tax law as it applies in that case. >> we are going to find out what the facts are and they look very much like a supreme court justice has committed tax fraud and we are going to get to the bottom of all of these disclosure violations, but i have gone to the senate floor to disclose what happened when executive branch and legislative branch officials engaged in similar disclosure violations. they were prosecuted. they pled guilty to criminal charges. so we are dealing with very serious matters about which we have a supreme court justice who is simply not providing honest answers. >> senator sheldon whitehouse, thank you very much for starting our discussion tonight. >> thank you. >> coming up, democratic senator brown is running for reelection in ohio, a state donald trump has one twice. reelection could depend on how much ohio voters like fast talking car salesman, because that is who senator brown is actually running against. senator brown joins us next. ex. , but so especially now is saving. that's why america's best includes a free eye exam when you buy two pairs of glasses for just $79.95, that's a savings of at least sixty nine bucks. two pairs for $79.95. includes a free exam. that's not just a better deal, it's america's best. book an exam online today at america's best.com. ann, (music)n mute. have heart failure with unresolved symptoms? it may be time to see the bigger picture. heart failure and seemingly unrelated symptoms, like carpal tunnel syndrome, shortness of breath, and irregular heartbeat 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(♪♪) san francisco's been through tough times. london breed led us through the pandemic, declaring an emergency before anyone else, saving thousands of lives. from growing up in the western addition housing projects to becoming mayor, london has never given up on the city that raised her. london is getting people off the streets and into care. london never gave up on me. i found a home, and my life is on the right track. london made it super easy for me to open my small business, by cutting city fees. and she's reinventing downtown to make our city vibrant again. she's building 82,000 new homes and helping first time homebuyers, just like us. and london's hiring hundreds of police officers, and arresting drug dealers. san francisco has been through difficult times, but our hard work is paying off. working together, we're building a better future for the city we all love. ad paid for by re-elect mayor london breed 2024. financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org. is ohio goes, so goes the nation. that's how it used to be until joe biden won the presidency without winning ohio. the last president to do that was john f. kennedy in 1960. donald trump one ohio twice, but joe biden was able to be donald trump by picking up electoral votes in other states. that might be the way ohio goes this year when the most important when could be senator sherrod brown is reelection. hold onto control of the senate, sherrod brown has told onto the majority of voters in ohio who already elect did him to the united states senate three times. he won his last election with 53% of the vote. two years after donald trump one ohio with 51% of the vote. everyone in the senate on both parties wants to know how sherrod brown does it. how he wins reelection in an increasingly challenging political environment for his party, in his state. the only person on the senate who actually knows how sherrod brown does it is sherrod brown, who will join us in a moment. what we know is that at stake in sherrod brown's reelection is whether democrats will still be able to confirm appointments including possible supreme court justices. also at stake is whether the united states senate will pass a national abortion ban which sherrod brown opposes. democratic party control of the senate is not the kind of issue that swing voters usually find compelling. sherrod brown's campaign seemed to turn on the personal relationship and trust he developed with a majority of ohio voters. that is one of the reasons why unions come out in force for sherrod brown and his senate campaigns and in what has already become a hugely expensive senate campaign with a trump endorsed, rich republican nominee who got rich selling some very expensive cars. the brown campaign is now emphasizing moreno's zero experience in government and, in effect, testing how much voters trust car sellers. >> as a car salesman, bernie moreno would say anything to sell a car. >> 52 carwashes a year. >> an amazing vehicle. >> now that he is running for senate, bernie moreno has not changed, not one bit. you could not trust him as a car dealer. so why would you trust him as your senator? >> nobody else can offer you -- >> i am sherrod brown and i approve this message. >> joining us