welcome back to the weekend, folks. we re here, and house speaker mike johnson is proving he is actually really good at one thing. kicking that can down the road. congress now has another week to avoid a partial government shutdown. but none of this is normal, and we cannot say that enough. if congress was actually functioning like it should, this would have been a done deal back in september. so, joining us have to discuss this and all other things happening with the government s transportation secretary pete buttigieg. secretary buttigieg, welcome to the program. you are still in washington, d.c.. your colleagues on capitol hill, most of them, have gone home. there s a chance that we re gonna be here this weekend, figuring out if they can continue to fund the government. they kick the can down the road. they bought themselves about a week. can you just give us a sense form your vantage point of what is at stake with the government operating in this way, with congressional
very good to beac you for another hour. i m alex witt in for katy tur. we re continuing our breaking news coverage of a legal setback for special counsel jack smith in his election interference investigation into the former president. the supreme court has just put out a single line order statement denying smith s request to immediately settle trump s presidential immunity claims, meaning the issue now heads to the court of appeals in d.c. we do have the date for those oral arguments. so what this decision all means for timing and how quickly the supreme court could take up the case once that court rules, there s a lot to get into. we re going to dive in right now joining us, justice and intelligence correspondent, ken dilanian, and msnbc legal analyst, and former assistant d.a. with the manhattan district attorney s office, catherine christian. ken, first off, were we expecting a sidestep like this? because that s essentially what it is. it s a punt, if you will, from the su
we will hear argument this morning in case 23-939. trump versus the united states. reporter: tonight, new testimony of the alleged criminal conspiracy to help elect donald trump. trump turned to the business at hand and asked david pecker how is our girl. as his argument for absolute immunity finally goes before the supreme court. this court has never recognized absolute criminal immunity for any public official. a private attorney to spearhead his challenges to the election results. what was up with the pardon for president nixon? if everybody thought that presidents couldn t be prosecuted what was that about? if it fails completely it is because we have destroyed our democracy on our own, isn t it? tonight, rachel maddow, nicole wallace, joy reed, chris liz. lawrence o donnell, lisa ruben all here as msnbc s special coverage of trump on trial begins now. who has the time? who has the time? you are telling me that simultaneously, we have nearly three hour
we have heard it from trump himself by the way. something a little different when sean hannity asked him if he could abuse power as retribution. he said you re not going to be a dictator are you. i said no. we are closing the border and drilling. okay, the big question tonight, are there any guardrails left? here tonight, someone who may have the answers. joining me now is eric holder, former u.s. attorney general under president obama.. i m so glad you are here. i served as a prosecutor while you were the attorney general. there is a lot that happened since those moments and there is new news tonight before we get into all we want to talk about tonight. there is new news about hunter biden. there is an additional indictment. a new nine-count indictment against him. it includes three felony counts for failure to pay taxes in california and he is accused broadly of a four-year scheme. this one to avoid paying $1.9 million. this comes after the plea offer and plea deal blew