i want to promise you this, i am going to make sure that in no way do i enable donald trump to ever be president of the united states again. and that s more important than my own personal ambition. [ applause ]. breaking news from the presidential race, trump s most persistent critic on the campaign trail, chris christie, announces he is dropping out. also tonight, trump often claimed to have unlimited power as president. now his pitch for absolute power. and his claims of immunity from any legal consequences should be setting off alarm bells. and yet, all we re hearing from republicans are the sounds of silence. good evening, everyone. we begin tonight with breaking news. just one day since the attorney for the former president of the united states argued in federal court that a president has the authority under the theory of absolute immunity to murder their political opponent. only one republican, one, reacted to that insane idea. former new jersey governor, chris
he remedied his actions in many ways since then. but that was sort of an admission. i heard that as a speaking to you re going to have to live with the consequences of the choices you make over the next ten months. he wasn t speaking to those who are running for the president. he was speaking to the party writ large. yes. he was speaking to that 70%, 60 to 70% of the rest of the gop. yeah. particularly those let me play more. they used to call him yesper. here he is saying what he wouldn t do. this is cut two from my wonderful director. eventually culminated that the long break, simmering break between he and myself in june of 2020 when he wanted to play active duty troops on the streets of washington, d.c. and suggested actually that we shoot americans in the streets. one more cut. this is esper saying what he thinks of trump. here is esper again. i do regard him as a threat
that he was pushing back at times according to some of the antidotes but he was largely pushing back against some of the people surrounding president trump, and less against president trump himself. so, it s hard to know whether that moniker of yesper, was really accurate. enough thing i d point out about mark yesper, he came in as the secretary of the army and then of course we had secretary mattis who was fired in december after secretary yesper had been at the helm of the army for a number of months. it was widely known that mark esper basically lobbied or campaign for the job to be secretary of defense. at that point, president trump had been in office for sometime, for more than a year it was well known sort of how he operated, how s administration operated. and yet mark esper still want to take over the pentagon serve as the cabinet secretary under president trump s administration. so, you know he knew he was when he was getting into, and
president s aides, apparently, according to the new york times story on the book, including steve miller sending 250,000 u.s. troops down to the border, things like that. what is also striking about this is esper talks about, to everyone s point, he thought about resigning. in fact, we reported while he was still secretary that he had written a letter, a resignation letter, that he would keep around, a just in case. he says the reason that he stayed is because president trump was surrounded by yes men. well, esper s name, particularly on the hill, was yesper, because he said yes to the president and didn t stand up to the president. part of what you re seeing here, and we ve seen these before as everyone noted, is this reputation laundering book. we ll see if it works. but the stories in here, setting aside the motivations and what esper kept to himself, are really striking.
finally gets an audience with lyndon johnson. he was determined to say why the vietnam war is a mistake. he gets in the oval office, and his courage deserts him. he gets the lyndon johnson treatment. by the end of the meet, he was saying, mr. president, you re doing a great job. he then says he went afterwards back home, took a shower, felt humiliated by what he hadn t done, and he promised, if he ever got a chance to meet with an american president, he d always tell the truth from that point on. he did. nbc news white house correspondent carol lee, that nickname, yesper, is painful. thank you very much for being on this morning. we ll be asking about that. coming up, we re headed to wall street for an early look at the markets after the worse trading day since the start of the pandemic. plus, incoming supreme court justice ketanji brown jackson takes the bench at a tumultuous time for the high court following the leak of a draft opinion to overturn roe v. wade.