republican national convention in milwaukee, wisconsin. i m rachel maddow, joined here at msnbc headquarters by my colleagues joy reid and nicolle wallace and jen psaki and ari melber. we have chris hayes under a desk here somewhere. on days like this when it can be difficult to wrap your head around all of the news that will just not stop unfolding, we know you have every choice in the urld about where to watch the news tonight, so we re grateful to have you here with us. let s start with some of the day s biggest developments. just after 3:00 eastern this afternoon, republican nominee donald trump announced online that he had chosen ohio senator jd vance to be his vice presidential running mate. jd vance is 39 years old, he has held political office for less than two years before which he was best known for writing his autobiography. senator vance was famously a harsh trump critic in 2016 when trump first ran for president. jd vance at the time, again then, famous just as a
starts right now democrats are living through the stages of grief that that s tonight on newsnight good evening. i m abby phillip in new york tonight, coping with loss democrats, their reckoning with all five stages of grief all at once after joe biden s debate formats triggered panic tonight, biden delivered a standard but important speech, especially given the context. the subtext of it, that the rumors of him this political death and his mental decline are greatly exaggerated let s remember the fact that nato remains the bulwark of global security did not happen by accident it wasn t inevitable again and again, a critical moments, we chose unity over disunion progress over retreat, freedom over attorney hope over fear again and again, we stood behind our shared vision of a peaceful and prosperous transatlantic community. the president wants and needs to convince voters that they can just watch him like he s always pleaded with them to do and he ll extinguish those existe
right now. welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world, it is thursday, august 26th, i m john berman with brianna keilar. 36 hours left. that is the breaking news. sources tell cnn the evacuation effort in afghanistan will end in the next 36 hours. remember, the deadline for u.s. withdrawal is actually august 31st. this news means the end of direct efforts to get people out days before that deadline. we know there are american citizens still trying to get out. for thousands of green card holders, legal permanent residents, that hope is faint or all but gone. u.s. efforts are under way to help 2,000 local embassy staff get out. we did just learn that 13,000 people were evacuated from afghanistan in the last 24 hours. that is still a very large number but you can see that number getting smaller and smaller less than the 20,000 we had seen the previous two days. huge security risks complicating this evacuation over the next 36 hours. overnight, the
week on wednesday to the house judiciary committee. that is breaking news a couple of years in the making. well, you know, don mcgahn is the lead witness from the mueller investigation on president trump obstructing justice. all of those, you know, ten instances, ten instances plus of alleged criminal obstruction of justice laid out in great detail in the mueller report. mcgahn has never had to testify about it. this will be the first testimony that we ve heard about it, and it happens just as the justice department is deciding right now whether or not they re going to release to the public the memo that bill barr s justice department prepared about why trump shouldn t be prosecuted for any of those alleged incidents of obstruction of justice. it s kind of all happening at the same time. and because of the late hour at which this justice department memo is going to be released or not, we ve actually kind of adjusted the scheduling of this show so that neal katyal can appe
judiciary county. that is breaking news. a couple of years in the making. [laughs] don mcgahn is the leading investigator from the mueller report on president trump instructing justice on ten instances plus laid out in great detail in the mueller report. again, has never had to testify about. it this will be the first testimony we have heard. it happens just as the justice department is deciding, right now, whether or not they re going to release to the public the memo that bill barr justice department prepared about why trump shouldn t be prosecuted for any of those alleged incidents of obstruction of justice. it s kind of happening all at the same time. and because of the late hour at which this justice department memo is going to be released or not, we ve actually kind of adjusted the scheduling of this show so that neal katyal can appear later in the show. we don t have the memo yet. there is kind of a whole, as i think you know, in the script here where that memo is