politicsnation. tonight s lead, trump in or out. there is just hours left in 2023 and if this last week is an indicator, the looming presidential primary season will be dominated by without republican front runner donald trump can legally seek the office again. three years after he fanned an insurrection. this week that states of maine and california said yes he could. the state of maine said no he couldn t. but there are just three out of more than a dozen states weighing the issue. and trump head and especially venomous message for one michigan lawmaker who get to criticize his increasingly nasty campaign language over the christmas holiday, dragging her late husband into the war of words. that lawmaker, congresswoman debbie dingell joins me shortly with her reaction to that and to trump s enduring impact on her state ahead of 2024. and 2024 contender nikki haley has had an entire week to demonstrate that she knows the root cause of the civil war. the enslavement of
To resign after the january 6th capitol attack. mccarthy called the original report false. then said this after audio proved his denial was a lie. a lie, yeah. what they said we did, we never did. i mean, i never asked president trump to resign. we both talked about that. we ve talked about about resigning? no, he met be clear. you missed i have never asked the president to resign. what the book said was not true. i never asked the president to resign. if you listen to the phone call, i got asked a question. i was asked a question in a time period about the 25th amendment. all i did was walk through, like anybody would, what are the different scenarios that would happen. all we did was put out the different options. it s not all he did. all he did, he said he was disgusted by it. like he said on the floor he was disgusted by it. like he told members during the time period he was disgusted by it and said he was going to have
Was lies. this has become a party that s adopted putin and russia s sort of fire hood of falsehoods, and is employing it every day. we saw jd vance last night going out, lying through his teeth, just complete lie. once again, trashing our fbi, lying about the fbi, saying that they had illegally wiretapped donald trump s offices. it just continues every day. you want trump support? you have to trash the military. you have to trash the fbi. you have to trash the cia. you have to trash every american institution, the people like you and i hold dear. well, you know, what s interesting about kevin mccarthy s groveling and lying about this particular incident is the nature of his lie. i mean, think about this. joe, what he s saying is, you know, no, i didn t really have a moment of decency, principle, and duty. i never did anything about it,
And i got over it very, very quickly. not only does he have to continue to lie about it, he has a pretend that one of those brief moments where he had some clarity about what was right and what was wrong needs to be memory hold. so, yes, the republicans have created an alternative reality. i remember you and i probably discussed this back in 2017 or maybe 2016. we had a sense that things had gotten bad and they were going to get worse. things have gotten much, much worse than i expected, and i was not an optimist back then. it s accelerated because donald trump keeps raising the ante. i think he likes this. he likes this as an instrument of humiliation. how far can i push people? what can i get you to say? what can i get you to apologize for? so it is not surprising that we wake up on monday morning and find that donald trump is completely happy to have the next speaker of the house of representatives, possibly, on
His stance. trump called the quote a big compliment, that reasons who criticized him after january 6th would still back him. trump did deny he told mccarthy he accepted responsibility for what happened. a person close to trump tells nbc news mccarthy called to apologize to the former president. oh, my god. the person said trump isn t really mad. he s got other things on his mind. he accepts kevin for who he is. which really says it all. let s bring in founder of the conservative website, charlie sykes. we had a good talk on conservatism the other day. talks about where we went wrong. i think you and i probably think we continue to go wrong. maybe a little more than matthew does. anyway, it is an excellent book on reviewing conservatism. here, though, you know, part of what we discussed the other day