national political reporter. that is our show for tonight. time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. ali, you know that thing happens once in a while where one of our great guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television? that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing him back tonight to finish his thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not thought about in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us
national political reporter. that is our show for tonight. time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. ali, you know that thing happens once in a while where one of our great guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television? that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing him back tonight to finish his thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not thought about in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us his view o
apply for it is running out. the amicus briefs, harry litman, those filed in addition to the briefed by the parties in this very important appeals hearing in washington d. c. and today the court said we want to hear from both sides about these amicus briefs. the one that has the most vivid piece that does not appear in jack smith s pleadings is the amicus brief saying the appeals court doesn t even have jurist diction over this at this stage. what is your assessment of what we see in these amicus briefs and the pieces of them that the appeals court would be most interested in? there are now four. we just ran the gamut from reinforcing the arguments with very eminent parties to now there s a new one that actually says jack smith is an unconstitutional officer in the first place. but lawrence, i think the one you mentioned really bears
lost cause, the trumpian lost cause could win the presidency again and come back into power, unless we use the terror of our laws to prevent it. joining us once again is david blight, professor of american history and african american studies at yale university. processor bright, thank you very much for coming back. i can t tell you how agonizing it is for me to go to a commercial in situations like that and i just want to give you more time to expand on your point. with the departure point being what we found and on trump s new legal filing in maine, or one of the points where his maine lawyer makes is, the 14th amendment bars someone who engaged in insurrection or gave aid and comfort to insurrectionists, from holding office.
watching. what it says is that the test for whether or not he should have been able to take an appeal in the first place was really changed by unanimous 1989 opinion from supreme court that really narrowed the circumstances when you get that interlocutory appeal. and i think they will press the parties on it. if the claim holds up, it means the whole thing goes back to chutkan and the clock now recommences. so that would be the best scenario as far as delay goes. a quick point about barb meadows point, he has now hired, has meadows, probably the consensus, top or one of the top three lawyers in the country, pop clement, former solicitor general, extremely well respected in the supreme court in particular. so telegraphing delay but also