♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ this sunday, criminal conspiracy. former president donald trump is

criminally charged for trying to overturn the 2020 election and hold on to power. >> the attack on our nation's capital on january 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of american democracy. it's described in the indictment it was fueled by lies. >> this is now the third criminal indictment against donald trump this year. >> every time they file an indictment we go way up in the polls. one more indictment, and this election is closed out. nobody has even a chance. >> as the charges mount, will his support within the party continue to grow? >> fake judge has flipped forth by the biden sham. we call it a sham indictment, and the man that's -- i really believe he's mentally ill. will his top republican rivals continue to rally around him or start to attack him and can our democracy survive this critical and unprecedented challenge? my guest this morning, trump's attorney john lauro and

jamieraskin and the january 6th impeachment manager. joining me for insight and analysis are. nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson, party baker, republican kimberly atkins stohr, senior opinion writer for the boston globe. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. voters next fall may be faced with an precedented choice whether to put former president donald trump back in the white house or to essentially sign off on his sentencing if he is convicted and send him to prison or a secret service protected home confinement. the latest federal indictment accuses trump of three conspiracies, one to defraud the united states, another to

deprive voters of a civil right to have their votes counted and two counts of corruptly obstructing an official government proceeding. the certification of the electoral college vote. the indictment details how trump was told by his vice president, senior justice department leaders who he had appointed, the director of national intelligence who he had hired, senior white house lawyers who he had hired, his cybersecurity agency, senior campaign staffers, state legislators many of whom endorsed him and state and federal courts and that there was no evidence of election fraud and that he had lost the election. trump's campaign even paid two outside resource firms to try to prove his electoral fraud claims, but they never released the findings because the firms disputed his theories and they could not offer any proof that he had won and trump was alleged to have repeated acknowledged in private that he had lost the election, in contrast to his public statements and yet as the indictment lays out it was not illegal in and of itself for

trump to lie. that is protected speech, but it was the actions the indictment alleges that he took that were illegal using claims of election fraud that he knew were false to try to try to get state officials to change electoral votes organizing slates of election in targeted swing state, deceiving them in many cases to sign on to the scheme, sending state's justice department letters falsely claiming that there were concerns about a specific state's election outcome, pressuring vice president pence to use his ceremonial role to fraudulently alter the election results instead of simply certifying them and even after a crowd violently attacked the capitol he still tried to persuade members of congress to prevent certification. in many ways the predicate was set on day one of the trump administration when the president direction his aides to insist an easily disprovable lie about his inaugural crowd size

that more people witnessed donald trump's inauguration than president obama's. kellyanne conway offered this explanation. >> you're saying it's a false ood and sean spicer gave alternative facts to that. >> wait a minute, alternative facts? alternative facts are not facts. they're falsehoods. >> his presidency began with alternative facts and apparently ended with alternate electorate, and it may all add up to a scenario where voters have to decide whether to put trump back in the oval office before he is sentenced. let's not forget that republican senators decided not to hold the president accountable via the process that the founders believe was the better process for this, impeachment. in fact, this was republican mitch mcconnell explaining his vote to impeach trump. >> president trump is still

liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary cyst zen. we have a criminal justice system in this country and civil litigation and former presidents are not immune by being accountable by either one. >> so instead of doing the tough work in the senate, they left it it to the voters who will be stuck with upholding the rule of law if trump is convicted. an unprecedented test of our democracy. prosecutors have asked a judge to issue a protective order after trump posted this on friday on social media. if you go after me i'm coming after you, citing trump's habit of attacking judges, attorneys and others associated with legal matters pending against him, and while they claimed that social media post was on something else, not on this, last night in south carolina, trump didn't do anything subtly, he attacked special counsel jack smith

directly. >> deranged jack smith. you take a look at that guy and you say that guy is a sick man and there's something wrong with me. joining me is one donald trump's attorneys in this specific case, john lauro. welcome to "meet the press "qwest. >> good morning. >> let me start with this. is the defenses on this indictment he didn't do it or he was allowed to do what he did? >> the defense is quite simple. donald trump, president trump, believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election, and as any american citizen he had a right to speak out under the first amendment. he had a right to petition governments around the country, state governments, based on his grievances that election irregularities had occurred and he had a right to speak after the election. certainly, mr. pence, his vice president agreed with him that there were anomalies and discrepancies in the election

process and mr. trump had every right to petition government and enforce his first amendment rights. that's why this indictment is an attack on the first amendment. the government, the biden administration would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that president trump did not believe that he had won the election. they will never be able to do that and that's why this prosecution is so ill conceived. >> you know, you mentioned that he had the right to do all these things. well, he did all of those things. he filed his petitions in court. he got a cup of recounts. all of it -- everything you outlined as saying he had the right to do, he did have the right to do, he executed that strategy and apparently, when he didn't get the result that he liked then he kept looking for another strategy. at what point does he accept the truth that he didn't win? >> well, he believes he won, and the biden administration will

never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he didn't, but what he's being indicted for ultimately is following legal advice from an esteemed scholar, john eastman, that he could petition his own vice president and ask his vice president to pause the voting on january 6th to give the states one last chance to certify or re-audit. that was the ultimate ask that president trump made in his ellipse speech and that's clearly protected. let's go back, if we could, and see what's going on on january 6th. both vice president pence and president trump saw that they had 10 million votes more than they had in 2016. no president has ever lost under those circumstances. they also saw that joe biden outperformed hillary clinton by 15 million votes even though she was an inspirational candidate and joe biden was sitting at home in his basement. they also saw that president

trump won almost all of the disputed counties. in addition, they had over 1,000 people come forward and under oath say that there were discrepancies in the election and finally and most importantly what president trump and vice president pence saw were that the rules of the game had been changed by local electoral officials. it was over and it was a peaceful transition of power. >> look. i have to unpack a couple of things there because some of it is just political spin, and i understand that, but let me get to this issue, and the esteemed legal part -- >> i understand that, the esteemed legal scholars and here's what the former attorney general bill barr said to that strategy, and i want to get you

to react to it. >> i don't think this defense of the advice of counsel is going to go forward because i think the president would have to get on the stand and subject to cross-examination in order to waive that and he'd have to waive attorney-client privilege. >> is the former president going to take the stand? >> if the advice of counsel can be raised without anyone taking the stand that's just plain wrong, but what we have was a very, very thoughtful memo by john eastman who was a professor of law, dean of the law school, head of a constitutional scholarship program and well understood and well renowned. he had been a supreme court clerk and a 4th circuit clerk. even mike pence said he was the legal scholar that was developing a lot of these points. people disagree about constitutional principles all the time. certainly, mr. barr may have disagreed with miioi eastman. that happens every day in our

government. it never leads to a criminal charge, but one thing for certain, president trump acted under the advice of counsel when he petitioned, under the first amendment petitioned mr. speech and that's legally protected speech. >> what you're arguing is if the president did violate the law he did so because he got advice from counsel to violate the law? >> no. that's what people misunderstand. in order to have a violation of law you have to have criminal intent and in this case corrupt intent and what that means is that you have to have some desire to do something unlawful. if your attorney is telling you that you have a right to petition congress. >> yeah. >> then that completely eliminates any criminal intent so under those circumstancesu e not violating the law. it is not a violation so you

would be acquitted regardless of your conduct. >> i understand. you keep saying some certain things that vice president pence apparently agreed with. let me play what vice president pence says the former president asked him to do. here's what he said he was asked to do. >> let's be clear on this point. it wasn't just that he asked for a pause. the president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crack pot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the house of representatives and literally chaos would have ensued. >> so he's just disputing the version o events you're describing. >> no, not at all. he's substantiating it. in this respect there were some preliminary discussions along the lines that vice president pence described, but the ultimate ask which was done at the ellipse was to pause the

voting for a period of time. now, issues like this get discussed and thrashed about all the time, but the ultimate -- the ultimate call made by president trump was to ask for a pause. if you read vice president pence's book, he agrees completely with president trump that there were these anomalies, discrepancies, even fraud in the election and vice president pence wanted those debated in congress. president trump asked that they be debated at the state legislature so you had a disagreement there, but once again, these constitutional and statutory disagreements don't lead to criminal charges, and one thing that mr. pence has never said is that he thought president trump was acting criminally. indeed, vice president pence is an attorney. if he at any point said or thought that mr. trump, president trump was acting unlawfully or contrary to criminal law he would have said that. no one ever suggested that. >> actually, he has said that.

he said the president asked him to violate the constitution. he said the president asked him to violate the constitution, another way of saying he asked him to break the law. >> no, that's wrong. that's wrong. a technical violation of the constitution is not a violation of criminal law. that's just plain wrong and to say that is contrary to decades of legal statute. >> let's get out of the constitutional -- >> let me say one last thing if i could, no, because this is a constitutional case. this is going to be the most important civil rights constitutional case in decades, and there's one other issue that's very important. everything that president trump did was while he was in office as a president. he is now immune from prosecution for acts that he takes in connection with those policies -- >> so you're going to try that -- >> the administration has not addressed that. >> an interesting legal place you're going to go that will

also create some constitutional question. i want to get you to respond to something that seems a bit more straightforward on intent. it's the infamous phone call in georgia. let me play an excerpt. >> the ballots are corrupt and you will find that they are -- which is totally illegal. it's more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. you know, that's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense. all i want to do is this. i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. >> if he had proof he won the state why did he threaten the secretary of state with a criminal -- with a criminal charge? >> that wasn't a threat at all. what he was asking for is for raffensperger to get to the truth. he believed that there were in excess of 10,000 votes that were

counted illegally and what he was asking for is the secretary of state to act appropriately and find these votes that were counted -- >> find. >> that were counted illegally. hold on one second. that was an aspirational ask. he's entitled to petition even state government, but that doesn't involve an obstruction of federal government, but what the biden administration has said is that somehow president trump obstructed a federal proceeding. that relates to what was going on in the states and president trump had every right to ask the secretary of state, i believe that this election was conducted improperly. there are deficiencies here i and want to see if there were more than 10,000 votes that were counted illegally and once again, that's core political speech. >> bringing up a criminal violation is somehow speech? it's the way, it sounds like someone saying that's a mighty fine restaurant you have there. it would be a shame if something

happened to it. it's no different than -- i mean. >> oh, it's absolutely -- have you read the first amendment? no, no, chuck, have you read the first amendment? political speech is the most protected speech that we have under our constitution. it's important to go back and read the text of the first amendment. so you can actually say that a government official is acting criminally. that's protected by the first amendment. if we lose the first amendment rights then heaven forbid we lose the right of freedom of the press and the right for me to appear or for you to speak. >> you're not allowed to use speech, though, in order to get somebody to commit a crime, and what he was directing raffensperger to do -- >> you are allowed to advocate. >> you're saying he did not commit a crime? >> you haven't read the cases, because, for example, you can encourage someone not to register for selective service.

i could -- i could see you, chuck, registering for vietnam and i can go up to you and say chuck, don't register for that war -- >> and i've violated the law. >> keep walking and go home. no, that's protected speech. my speech is protected. >> you coerced me to violate the law. >> there is a supreme court case, hammerschmidt, and it's not illegal. we can have this discussion and people need to start looking carefully at what our country stands for and what the constitution stands for. it applies to president trump just like it applies to everyone else. >> right. >> if we eviscerate our first amendment rights we will no longer have a country where people can freely speak their minds. >> have you been able to find any evidence, i know the campaign paid for two studies and they didn't find any evidence that would find enough fraud to overturn the election. have you found any evidence yet because you plan on relate

gaiting the 2020 election and nobody has found any evidence to back up donald trump's claims and it's been two and a half years. ? we will be litigating the 2020 election because much of that has not been litigated, but what we do know which is not in dispute under any circumstances is that state officials changed the rules in the middle of the game. they sent out absentee ballots -- >> can i finish? you're not allowing me to finish. >> it's been litigateded. >> you're like the biden -- >> no, no, no. don't play politics with me. i've allowed you to filibuster a lot. >> all of this -- go ahead. you're trying to create a confrontation for no reason. >> no, i don't want to, chuck. i'm just trying to let you know that the criminal rules are different than what you're talking about. in a criminal case the government has a burden of

proof. we don't have any requirement to prove anything. all we have to do is put the government to its test and one of the things that will be shown at trial is that there were these institutional anomalies where state election officials unlawfully broke the law and mr. trump was entitled to petition government and assert that he was right and that's part of the first amendment protection. we don't have to prove fraud, people don't understand that. all we have to do is say president trump was acting with his conviction that this election was conducted improperly. >> i want to let viewers know that everything you said, he actually went to the courts and all of this was actually deemed legal and that was done in the states. all of this was, but look, we're not debating. i have one last question for you. i need to get you to react about what your client is saying about the prosecutor. here's what he said last night. >> deranged jack smith. he's a deranged human being. you take a look at that face and

you say that guy is a sick man, there's something wrong with him. >> do you believe he's deranged? >> president biden in april of 2022 said he wanted president trump prosecuted and he wanted him out of the race. he repeated that in november of 2022. as a result, president biden has put in motion a political prosecution in the middle of an election season and obviously everything is open to politics. i'm not involved in politics. i'm just representing a client. i'm ensuring that justice is done in this case. president trump is entitled to his day in court and he'll get it. >> do innocent people attack prosecutors? >> this is a political campaign right now. this prosecution was instituted by president biden, and in the middle of that campaign people are going to speak out. my role is not to address anything about prosecutors, but

i will say this, there has been a history in the justice department of rogue prosecutions. they went after arthur anderson, a major accounting firm, destroyed the company, and the doj lost 9-0. they went after the former governor of virginia in a prosecution. republican governor who was convicted unfairly, reversed 9-0 and now the justice department, the biden justice department is going after a former president for acts that he carried out in full fulfillment of his office as president of the united states. >> are you confident that the president can be trusted with discovery and isn't going to weapon iedz what he learns about mark meadows and others that are cooperating? >> well, i'm shocked and i can find you awe lawyer to address this, but i'm shocked that all of the news media outlets aren't protesting what the government is trying to do. they're trying to say that we have discovery that's not

sensitive, but we don't want the press to hear about it, and mr. trump, our team is saying, president trump is saying that if there's evidence out there that the government has that's exculpatory or informative, then the press has a right to know, but the biden administration doesn't want the press to know that, and i'm shocked that there aren't petitions now file in the district court opposing what the biden administration is doing. >> john lauro, the defense attorney for the former president. appreciate you coming on and sharing your legal perspective with us. thank you, sir. >> good to see you as always. thank you. when we come back, when we come back, democratic i remember when i i firt started flying, and we would experience turbulence. i would wawatch the e flight attttendants. if thehey're n not nervousus,n i'm not goining to be nenervo. finanancially, i i'm ththe flt attetendant in t that situata. the relief that comes over people once they know

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on january 6th as the lead impeachment manager raskin argued before the senate is that trump should be convicted for incitement of insurrection, making arguments which sound familiar today >> president trump tried to bully state-level officials to commit a fraud on the public by literally finding votes. we saw him trying to get state legislatures to disavow and overthrow their popular election results and replace them with trump electors. >> and as a member of the house's january 6th select committee it was raskin that presented the committee's recommendation that the justice department charge trump with four counts, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the united states, conspiracy to make a false state and assisting in the insurrection they did charge him with the other recommendations in addition to adding the conspiracy against rights. so joining me now is the democratic congressman we have been referring to there, jamie raskin of maryland, congressman raskin, welcome back to "meet the press."

>> thanks for having me. >> let me first start with a couple things we heard from mr. lauro. you spent 25 years as a constitutional law professor i want to get professor raskin's take on this let me play one quick clip to something he sai me about e constitu inta technical ation of the constitution is not a violation of criminal law. that's just plain wrong. >> now, he added the word criminal law there, but it was my understanding if you violate the constitution you have related the law. >> first of all, a technical violation of the constitution is a violation of the constitution. the constitution in six different places open sposes insurrection our constitution is designed to stop people from trying to overflow elections and joe flow the government there is an apparatus of criminal law in place to enforce this constitutional principle. that's what donald trump is charged with violating he conspired to dee fraught the american people out of our right

to an honest election. by substituting the real legal process we have under federal and state law with counterfeit electors there are people who are in jail for several years for counterfeiting one vote. if they tried to vote illegally once, he tried to steal the entire election. his lawyer is up there saying that's just a matter of him expressing his first-amend the rights that's deranged. that is a deranged argument. >> he also seemed to hint that everything he did as president may not -- it may not be constitution that he's charged with this. sounds like the old nixon defense, i can do it because i was president. >> well, first of all, he's charged as part of a conspiracy so there were lots of people involved in doing it in any event, the law that applies tohe rt of us also applies tohe president of the united states. the principle they understood very well during the impeachment when they were saying, well, let's not do it during the impeachment because he's already left office.

deal with this as a matter of criminal law that's what senator mcconnell said, that's what a bunch of the republicans said now it's like a three card monte, you can't get him for impeachment because he's already left office but you can't get him for criminal law because he once was president i mean, america can see what's going on here. this is a guy who wants to a point himself completely immune from the rule of law that applies to the rest of us. >> he chose not to charge insurrection, it sounds like jack smith wanted to avoid a debate over the first amendment. >> well, there's a criminal statute aiding and abetting or giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists which to the mind of the january 6th committee donald trump definitely did i mean, he's calling them great patriots, saying never forget this day he continues to laud them to this very da i and saying when he gets back in he's going to pardon all of those people i mean, they are convicted of

assaulting our police officers and he's talking about pardoning them a lot of them have pled guilty to seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to overthrow the government. >> right. >> so, yeah, but he's being charged with conspiracy to obstruct a federal proceeding, the joint session of congress and conspiring to defraud us all out of our voting rights he tried to steal the election away from us. >> do you like how jack smith did this or do you wish he had added the incitement >> no, i think that -- i understand there were prudential and tactical reasons for doing what he did and i think it's excellent because the basic point is the deprivation of our civil rights abraham lincoln said an insurrection, an attempt to topple an election is an attack on the first principle of government, which is the right of the people to choose their own leaders. >> when you read the indictment, it's really strong on the alternate elector slate, right there is actions that are specific actions that are taken. slate. there's actors that are taken. it throws away the free speech

defense. you start to see everything. during the impeachment trial, you didn't have the scope of the elector scheme. would it have made a difference? >> it should have made a difference for psychologically for the senators that voted no. in a sense, what they were saying was the senate didn't have jurisdiction to try trump because he's a former president. seven republicans rejected that. 50 democrats rejected that. it was a vote of finding him guilty of insurrection. it was the most widespread vote in history to convict a president. trump is bragging that only 57 senators convicted him of that.

he's met match, in his special counsel that's holding him to the letter of the law. >> we're going to have what aboutisms. and we know the president didn't do anything wrong with hunter biden. but as michael kinsley once said. the real scandal is not what's illegal, but what's legal. should there be a code of conduct, something for family members here? the appearance of what hunter biden did, it's not good. >> i mean, we know there's a lot of, you know, influence in washington that's based on people's family connections. >> last names matter a lot on "k" street, as you know. >> and i have repeated comer on, in a nonpartisan way.

and he's pursuing a hunter biden thing as a one-off to score cheap political points. he doesn't want to talk about jared kushner, who brought back $2 billion from saudi arabia to a company he createded the day after the trump administration ended, when there's still blood all over the capitol. >> why do you think a thrice-indicted president is neck and neck with the current president? >> it's a great question. i wish lincoln were around to oppose it to him. it was his political party they take through the mud. it was a pro-immigration party. now, it's become a cult of authoritarian personality. even the candidates running against trump dare not challenge his clear detrails of his constitutional oath. donald trump knew exactly what he was doing. we have lots of testimony about that before the january 6th committee. his own white house counsel told

him he was wrong. the attorney general of the united states, the biggest sycophant of the trump administration, said the arguments he was following were b.s. he had to know 60 federal and state courts rejected every argument about electoral fraud and corruption they brought forward. and still, they went ahead. even if he did believe it, like his lawyer is saying, i don't think he did. even if he did, it makes no difference. you might believe that your bank owes you some money. you don't have a right to go rob the bank. >> jamie raskin democrat from maryland. thanks for sharing with us. thanks for having me. trump faces three criminal counts and more can be coming late their month. late their month. why is rump'st what if buildings could tell you how ththey could b be more effffic? i'm listenening. wellll, with ibmbm, yoyou can use e software to help p you connecect anand analyze e data— from h hvacs to elelevators to ligights. whatat if we usese ai-dririven insighghts to pinpopoint ineffificiency?

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and steal l them away.y. alone e you can't t stop. totogether we e will. wewe have a plplan. join u us. ( ♪♪♪ ) welcome back. the panel is here. nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson. peter baker, chief white house of the new york times. republican strategist al carden

as and kimberly atkins stohr. three of you have law degrees and three of them don't. i'm glad there is more legal help here. here's what donald trump said last night about his current legal predicament. >> every time they file an indictment we go way up in the polls. we need one more indictment to close out this election. one more indictment and this election is closed out. nobody has even a chance. we've already defeated the republicans. >> hallie jackson, that was actually friday night and he had rallies both friday night and last night there. he's been right so far. >> fair and there's new polling out even today that shows more than half of republicans think that these indictments against donald trump are an attack against people like them. he is reflecting and channeling what he hears from his base, from the people who support him and from his loyalists. >> the dynamics seem unlikely to

change at this point. the question is what dynamics are hoping to de-throne donald trump as a king of the republican party and we've seen the semi-sharpening of desantis. >> i'll give you the montage of the candidates and you will see the array of those at the bottom of the polls with the tough rhetoric, and those closer to trump with not so tough rhetoric. here it is. >> anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the united states. >> another sad day for america. i mean, now we have former president that's under indictment three times. >> in d.c., they will go after you if you're a republican. the facts be damned. republicans don't have a fair shot there. >> the doj continues to weaponize their power against political opponents. it seems like they spent a lot of time protecting hunter biden and democrats. >> like most americans i'm tired of commenting on every trump drama. i've lost track of whether this indictment is the third, fourth or the fifth. >> al carden as, you saw there,

those that are in the bottom of the polls are still comfortable criticizing the former president and those that think they can win the nomination are trying to go after the process. is that any way to win? >> at this point in time donald trump has effectively tied the indictments to joe biden and a political maneuver. once these cases go to trial, if he's indicted by a grand jury the facts change, the circumstances change and this is no longer about joe biden. this is about grandeur -- this is about a jury that has convicted of very serious crimes and if that leads to a sentencing hearing, that's a whole new set of circumstances and so so far it works well. are we forecasting that will continue to work well through the election? not if there's a conviction by a jury of his peers. >> i mean, peter, the likelihood that this trial is some time after the primaries and before the convention is pretty hot.

>> so whether everybody's fully focused on it now, i understand, it's like, oh, another trump indictment. i'm going to go to the beach. come april or may next year that will be the case. >> that's right. it will be showcased day after day after day after day and the republicans would have likely chosen their nominee and they'll be stuck with him if they decide they'll switch games and the convention will be after ward and someone can engineer something at the convention if he is convicted and maybe we should have a rule about not having a convicted felon. >> how is that going to go over with republicans? >> in many states delegates are legally tied to the person they voted for. >> politically speaking, with this indictment in particular, it naturally blunts what donald trump's biggest argument is, is they're coming after me to come after you meaning trump supporters. the count in the indictment, count 4 talks about how donald trump attacked the civil rights of every american. it was the opposite. he was not protecting you. he was attacking you for his own

political power in the most authoritarian way possible that will naturally blunt it in the same way that we saw it in the january 6th committee hearings. we could see that shift. >> i would still go back to what, if you don't debate trump on this, how else are you going to get into the primary discussion? >> i talked with one person close to former vice president mike pence in preparation for today who said, listen, he's leaning into it now because if he doesn't, then when? he's selling hats that say too honest. >> what choice does he have? he's going to be on that witness stand. >> and by the way, the person i talked to didn't rule that out, pointing to the fact that the former vice president has written about it in his book, but this is a guy that believe in the rule of law. on the other side i've spoken to a source in desantis role who said he will also hear more from desantis about this, and not because desantis wants to talk about it because their new strategy now is part of the

post-campaign reset is to get desantis out talking more and doing more media and they think he'll get asked repeatedly. >> republicans would be having a different conversation, wouldn't they? >> of course, they would. you have to think about the consequences. there's an election and there are people in the ballot in congress and in the states and they want one thing more than anything else, to get elected or re-elected. >> they're afraid of alienating the trump supporters. >> they're afraid of alienating them, but trump's numbers keep staying up. they're not going to speak against trump. a conviction takes place and circumstances change, there might be a mad scramble. >> kimberly, they may impeach -- they may go with an impeachment as a way to, quote, be counter -- one with the fox news commentators suggested it as counter programming. >> that just shows how badly broken, they're willing to break the constitution as opposed to lose an election, and i think

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♪♪ ♪♪ welcome back. "data download" time. anheuser-busch announced a 10.5% decline in the quarter revenue and it was due to a boycott of bud light after it partnered with a transgender influencer for an instagram ad. it's not just bud light that's been the target of boycotts. for americans they seem less than excitement when any company takes a political stance. overall as you see here, 58% think it's inappropriate for companies to get involved with politics when you look at it by political party, republicans are the most against it, but independents don't like it. democrats are basically split down the middle. now, have you boycotted and do you do these things when companies take stands? as you can see, more people boycott than buy when a company takes the stand and that is across the board.

a majority of republicans boycott, as you can see. it's a plurality of independents and a plurality of democrats. again, take a company stand. you will cost yourself money. bud light, chick-fil-a, we've seen it left or right, it doesn't seem to matter. a few other thins we seem to know here. who does the boycotting and who is most impacted? not surprisingly, income matters. the more you make the more comfortable you might be thinking that a company can take a political stand. the less you make, the more inappropriate it is because you know what? you don't want to know about the politics. you just want the cheapest product. >> also of note, there's a bit of an age disparity here which something anheuser-busch didn't figure out. younger folks don't mind companies taking stands. older folks can't stand it. perhaps a lot of older folks drink bud light and not younger ones. the threat of a thirt-party candidate is becoming more likely in the 2024 race as voters say they are opposed to another biden-trump re-match.

joe manchin, of course, is flirting with ron as a centrist backed by no labels. cornell west is seeking the green party nomination. in 1980 as jimmy carter faced off against ronald reagan, a matchup that some people didn't like. republican congressman john anderson of illinois decided to leave his party and launched an independent bid. here's how he pitched it in this program. >> i think i represent the broad, political center of this country. i will make it abundantly clear that you don't have to go back to some prior decade to find the solutions to the problems of the future. you don't have to be content with the kind of demonstrated incompetence that we have seen in the white house for the last four years, that there is a third way, and i represent that third approach for the american voter. >> john anderson would end up winning less than 7% of the vote. when we come back, as former when we come back, as former president trump went to court on if y you have heheart disease and d are on a s statin,

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yesterday. in the aftermath of trump choices, that it lacks a unifying voice of legal authority and consequential actions in political history. we are staring into the abyss on the edge of the cliff. we can pick our metaphor, but the rule of law's on the ballot and nobody is reassuring us that everything will be okay. >> institution as a whole are all under attack and their faith is being diminished whether it be the supreme court or congress and the media obviously and now the justice system and now increasingly largely because trump is out there telling people this, a lot of americans believe justices can't be trusted in the course and what did john lauro just say to you over and over again. he didn't say the special counsel or the justice department, he said the biden administration. a strategic part to make it as

political as possible. >> jan lauro and the trump team are lashing this decision by the special counsel to the biden administration. it's a bit of of a one-sided fight because the biden administration and the white house and the biden adviser tells all of you, i'm sure, too, they feel like they absolutely want to be keeping this arms-length distance because it undermines and this is me speaking, it undermines everything president biden said he would do which is not interfere with the workings of the justice department. i wonder if that doesn't create dissatisfaction from the democrats that want to see a more muck lar response. >> it should. there should be a way for biden the president to say this is a special counsel and i am demonstrating how a president does not just rule a justice department and certainly keeps hands off an independent special counsel from what they're doing and at the same time, candidate biden has to say, look, i am the candidate who will continue to protect the right to vote, to protect the rule of law. i am the president that signed the electoral count reform act. i am this -- the other person is the president who was charged

with trying to subvert democracy. he has to be able to make that claim, that has to be the top part of his campaign going into 2024 if he can't enunciate that message, he's in trouble. >> all i know is that the country is more unhappy than it's ever been before. the political system seems to be broken. more than 50% of the voters don't like either candidate and you have two more years of divisive trials coming up. you've got so much at stake in this country. you've got foreign wars and global stress. this country's going to go through 18 months that will truly test our ability to remain a strong, unirighted nation. >> i think we're all wondering if we have the leaders to meet the moment. i don't know if we do. >> i'm very worried. >> look at biden's numbers now. things are going well for him now and inflation is down and unemployment is really low, growth is up and crime, immigration ask all of these

indicators are off their peaks and yet it is the one thing that's not changing. it is stubbornly where it has been now for two years. >> do we think they're punishing. >> trump's numbers never moved and it's elected leaders getting punished for this horrible, political depression. we're talking about a political depression, not a recession, a depression and i think they punished all elected leaders. they have a chance to test themselveses and to present a new voice and fresh faces because the older generation is still hanging on, basically. >> which is why we were talking briefly about third or fourth options in her country. this country cannot stand for long, this eruption and there's no doubt in my mind that the third and fourth options will ride. >> if our system were allowed better. the problem is our system makes it so hard to do this, but the pressure is building at some

point, this vacuum -- >> the group has started the effort and they've now qualified in about 12 states, i think, they'll keep it going. >> come april or may when we're in a trial, people are going to be shopping. they may end up picking small or large, but they'll look for medium, anyway. thank you, guys. that's all we have for today. thanks for watching and we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." my late father-in-law lit up a room, but his s vision dimmed witith age. he hadad amd. i didn't't know it t then, but it c can progresess t, an advananced form of the d disease. hihis strugglele with visionon loss fromom amd made m me want to o help you see warnrning signs s of ga. hihis strugglele with visionon loss fromom amd lilike straighght lines thtt seem wavy,y, blurry,

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