times senior washington correspondent bestselling trump biographer maggie akerman. maggie, thank you for joining me tonight. wonder as you know we ve been racing for this indictment waiting for it to come down. what stood out to you as you read through it? a couple of things kaitlan. much of this was known, much of it was in the public domain or was uncovered by the house select committee run by liz cheney and some of her colleagues. so you look at this two years of investigative work that preceded this and it s all there. it s all very clear. there were a couple of threads that they boil down jackson s team boil down to three conspiracies and he said took place and trump was at the center of. what is striking is that the few details that they have are from mike pence who clearly talked to investigators about private conversations he had with trump, who had his notes subpoenaed, which is why they show up there. there is an effort by jack smith in this indictment to say
substance of what this is and just going on, even somebody like tim scott who like other members of congress was there on january 6th. his response is i m concerned about the weaponization of what biden s doj and its immense power. it s like cut and paste whatever it is they think that they need to say and the only person, and only a few people of address the claim by mike pence because it anemone tries, because he was so involved in this and into people hutchinson who you had on. i haven t seen chris christie s but i m sure he will say the same thing. the people, the rest of the people who are running against him are running towards him and helping to support these lies in doing so. what s important abby philip is we don t hear most of these republicans who are still afraid of offending trump s base addressing any of the facts and findings and evidence
walk the line without offending trump supporters. that s why he doesn t want to talk about donald trump but he wants to benefit from his base talking about critical race theory, quote, unquote, refusing to say in september whether he would have certified the election had he been in congress. you know, it s a line and that s why this is one of the reasons it s such a big bellweather election, because they re testing a 2022 post-trump strategy in virginia. you have to understand the overall dynamic historically in virginia has actually been what swings the governorship to the opposite party from what the president was just elected from. right, with mcauliffe being an exception. larry, you ve got a democratic candidate very critical of some of his own democrats the last few weeks for not getting this infrastructure bill over the finish line. what happened last night? another delay. what does that mean for mcauliffe? it sure doesn t help him.
right by a trumpest candidate. that s the epidemic of cowardice we see. there s no one literally willing to lay down a political career to stand up for principles that they cherished and held dear until i guess say 18 months ago and since that time, everything that these republican members as a jen proposition once believed in they no longer believe in or still believe in or just too scared to say it out loud for risk of offending trump. the die is cast on this one for sure. that s former republican still a strategist, steve schmidt. thank you for staying up with us facebook is not naming names but somebody on the social network is acting a lot like the russians did during the 2016 campaign. more on that story ahead. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling?
trump rejected it. there are seven republican co sponsors, let alone how many others may be willing to vote for it, but are not willing to buck mitch mcconnell. if that was given a standalone vote on the floor, it would pass. if paul ryan would put it on the floor of the house, it would pass. the fact that they will not do that is that they re operating in bad faith, they don t want to rescue these 800,000 dreamers. they re worried about offending trump s xenophobic base. stand by, sunlan is here with us. i m here at the russell office building. this is a place where many senators came down from their office, they take the short trip over to the u.s. capital, i spoke with a lot of senators as they were enroute there, it s no surprise how this vote is breaking this way, a lot of talk about what the plan b is, and i