Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. After his ukraine work dried up. And that is important because thats when he went to one of trumps closest friends and said i really need to get to trump. And then offered to work for trump for free. How and yes became the Campaign Chair is still a weird so far unexplained thing. Today in Court Prosecutors began laying out the evidence for the Dire Straits Manafort was in when he joined one Trumps Campaign for free. Thats something to keep an eye on as the trial goes forward. Joining me, senior white house political reporter, a close observer of the manafort case cynic it began. He was in the courtroom today. And i get to announce that as of today, he is an msnbc contributor. Ive seen some of the early reporting that there were audible gasps. Take us through some of the more audible moments. Well, this reference as having embezzled from manafort was something that grabbed my
was there a sense in the courtroom today that
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Their way to keep trump out of the trial. Abc news reports that prosecutors have been coaching their witnesses not to mention trumps name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. The judge in the case has warned that bringing up manaforts ties to trump could unduly influence jurors. There is at least one thing about this trial that is important to the relationship between Paul Manafort and donald trump. The first witness today was tad devine, chief strategist for Bernie Sanders an president ial campaign who worked with manafort on political campaigns in ukraine. The prosecution called him as their first witness to have him describe how much work manafort was doing in ukraine and how lucrative it was. Before we came on the air, we got a rush version of the transcript from todays hearing. Im not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but heres one little bit of the prosecutors Opening Statement worth hear. Th
the senate, yes, i would like to see her primary challenged, i think we ve got keep in mind that arizona has a significant number of independents, you know, they ve got a lot of democrats. they ve got a lot of republicans, but a lot of the electorate in arizona is made up by independents. when you see the arizona democratic party do this, this is not representing necessarily 50% of the state. you ve got to keep in mind that she has done some things that probably placate well to independent voters and that s something that any democrat has to keep in mind. shermichael, this question back to the question that the president posed on wednesday, what is the republican party for these days? alex, that s a million dollar question that i think half the country is trying to figure out. i think clearly the republican party is a bit in a different version of itself today than it was when i was a stalwart of the party when i was a strategist working on various campaigns. i mean, clearly at t
it will work out for him. it s been terrific. at the end of the day, i would think the last thing donald trump wants is chairman adam schiff with subpoena power. and that s what he will have. the interesting aspect of it is this. he may look out and see an 18-person democratic feel and pray that a socialist is nominated by the democrats, believing that you know, in his view, if there are two unelectable candidates, one of the two unelectable candidates will win. he had a razor thin margin of victory. he won by 78 votes across three states, losing the popular vote by 3 million people. and his approval numbers at their highest are mired in the low 40s. if you look at the special election results, and you re a strategist working for the house republicans, you re saying there is no republican safe in any
pray that a socialist is nominated by the democrats believing that you know, in his view, that if there s two unelectable candidates, one of the two unelectable candidates is going to win. he had a razor thin margin of victory. he won by 78,000 votes across three states, losing the popular vote by 3 million people and his approval numbers at their highest are mired in the low 40s. now, if you look at the special election results and you re a strategist working for the house republicans, you re saying, there s no republican safe in any district that is under plus 25% trump. that means you could be in a 20% trump district and lose in this midterm election. now, when the tsunami hits, and we consider its aftermath, what will be left of the republican party is not a chastened party not something that said we were blown out by trump because the