word with lawrence o'donnell, good evening. >> good evening, i just realized we have three senate candidates joining us tonight, sheldon whitehouse, sharad brown and from delaware lisa blunt rochester. all running for the united states senate. they're all going to have their chance to talk to voters here tonight. >> that is a good booking list, someone did you very well there. >> thanks, alicia. thank you. at the end of this hour we're going to 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 that religion called trumpism insists is impossible because in the last presidential campaign donald trump promised this. >> if he's elected, the stock market will crash. >> trump is him depends on stability. it has to. because donald trump is so profoundly stupid himself, it is impossible to get stupidity out of trumpism. there was a time when i could tell you that every publican in the 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's how tariffs work. they are sales taxes paid by the american people. paid by the consumers in america who by the imported goods. but, donald trump has always insisted, to his followers, at his rallies, that china pays the tariffs that donald trump imposed on china. to be fair, to the 99% of trump's boaters who have never gone to a trump rally, it does appear that the very stupidest of trump's boaters attend the rallies and cheer for the breathtakingly stupid statement by donald trump about tariffs. but i promise you joe biden ever 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 whether this was a sign of neurological decline in joe biden. who pays tariffs should be a question at the next debate. 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 come up first for the republican candidate 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 insult from donald trump because he never ran against donald trump. but in his long shot current campaign for the vice presidential nomination, senator hawley today tried his hand at trumpian insult comedy. the hawley insult 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 four consecutive terms of president of the united states before term limits were established in the constitutional amendment. as president, franklin roosevelt was in a wheelchair. the same wheelchair he was in as his two terms of governor of new york. franklin roosevelt lost the ability to walk when he was by polio at age 39, so, no. standing for 90 minutes is not a presidential job requirement. and what did when roosevelt wheelchair? he did more things than any president before him or since, including winning world war ii. adolf hitler was a younger, healthier man than franklin roosevelt, but from his wheelchair, president franklin w roosevelt forced adolf hitler for 1000 miles away in berlin to commit suicide in his bunker as the allies commanded by general dwight eisenhower was closing in on the german capitals. 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 really admires as presidential. josh hawley knows that it doesn't matter how long the president can stand. josh hawley 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 2020 presidential election. senator hawley was the first member of the senate to agree to join republican house members in their land to challenge the electoral votes won by joe biden. if only house members challenged the electoral votes, those challenges would have been immediately ignored. but if the challenge comes from the house and the senate, then both parties 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 cruise and others. without senator hawley, the trump criminal conspiracy alleged by special prosecutor jack smith would have been incomplete. are there friends of donald trump? were not so lucky as josh hawley, today boris epshteyn became the newest alleged trumpet co-conspirator to face arraignment, this time in arizona where he pleaded not guilty to criminal charges for his role in the fay collector conspiracy there. boris epshteyn is an utterly incompetent buffoon, like most trump operators, who would 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's and 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 defense boris epshteyn was one of the very first, and was the very last trump's supporter who appeared as a guest on this program. it was during the 2016 presidential campaign and he appeared them to be the most reasonable of the trump operator 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 wires paid by donald trump to come on television and live for him. it is an abuse of television time to get the microphone 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 with 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's. we now know 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 just never admitting it. clarence thomas was violating the rules of financial disclosure for supreme court justices and flaming 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. where is thomas's defense has been the kind of defense that disqualifies you as a supreme court justice. it's the claim that he is just too stupid to understand these very simple ethical rules. that would mean 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 justices. and just when we think we know it all about justice thomas, there's more. the senate judiciary committee released information revealing that clarence thomas took three more flights than previously known on the private jet of republican mega donor harlan crow. that's three more flights than the public knew about when data compiled by the watchdog group fixed 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 in gift for a quarter million dollars in gifts. samuel alito came in second with roughly $210,000 worth of gifts in that same two decades. the records do not show the purpose of clarence thomas's trip on that jet, the washington post estimated that such flights might have cost between 500,000 and $625,000. as joe biden said this weekend in los angeles, if donald trump is elected president, he will have at least two supreme court seat to phil, president biden didn't specify which seats, but it's easy to see how quickly donald trump and rich republicans would be able to purchase clarence thomas a supreme court seat from justice thomas by providing him with the fabulously wealthy lifestyle that justice thomas so openly grades. justice thomas is 75 years old. donald trump would make him an offer he couldn't 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 a 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 could 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, a member of the senate judiciary committee. he is also the author of the scheme, how the right wing used dark money to capture the supreme court. senator whitehouse, i've 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 that there could be openings him a but as soon as we heard him say it, we could see how that deal made for those two openings. >> and there is a history of making deals for openings. justice kennedy left in what looked an awfully lot like a deal to put his former clerk brett kavanaugh on the court. and it's 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 rightward entitled and extremist supreme court. just moved from 5-4 to 6-3 made a profound difference in the courts behavior. it would go, let's say to 7-2, i think a rogue court would become a downright berserk court, and it's very hard to get rid of them, because they have these lifetime appointments. it's a very real threat to the country to have trump have more appointments to this court. >> senator, have i oversimplified the clarence thomas defense 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 as we know, all sorts of law that is far more complex than these very simple english language financial disclosure requirements. am i, i mean, that seems like a defense that disqualifies you from being a supreme court justice. >> his first line of defense is to say nothing at all, just to be mute. so he's never said a thing officially about what his situation was as regards his wife's role in the insurrection when he was ruling on cases that related to investigation of the insurrection. he just refused to answer, refused to engage. so nothing, there, just mute violence. then you move on to the filings he's made when he's caught making mistakes, he makes these weird partial corrections that he knows aren't 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'd be taken to task by justice thomas, so it's a double standard as to what they demand of the bar around them and the way they behave themselves. and then very simple things like understanding that 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 of the disclosure rule to know that. and he doesn't seem to have managed to file this proper disclosure and we're invested getting whether he's managed to file his proper taxes. >> and this is a judge who is in the federal appeals chain of tax evasion cases. and of cases of 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're going to get to the bottom of all of these disclosure violations, but, i've 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're 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 off our discussions tonight. >> thank you. coming up, democratic senator sherry brown is running for re-election in ohio, a state donald trump has won twice. senator brown's re-election could depend on how much ohio voters like fast talking car salesman, because that's who senator brown is actually running against. senator brown joins us, next. n 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 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