Summary
The "New York Times" is reporting that the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol has conducted interviews with members of Donald Trump`s cabinet. Primary election night in New York and Florida. 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the former organizing director at March For Our Lives has won the Democratic primary for the House seat in Florida vacated by Congresswoman Val Demings, who won her primary tonight to challenge Republican Senator Marco Rubio in the general election.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Alex.
And I`ve had my eye on exactly one House race and that is the House race of my last guest last night, 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost. He has won his primary.
It is a highly Democratic district so this is one of those, those New York City primaries. The winner of the Democratic primary is very, very likely the next member of Congress from that district. So, we have a new youngest member of the House Representatives in January.
He was on this program last night. We are going to try to find him somewhere in the celebration at the end of the hour.
See if we can get a couple of minutes with him on the phone at the end of this hour tonight.
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC HOST, "ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT": It is a good news story. I love it, Gen Z in the house. It`s time. This is what -- this is what changes democracy, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: It really is.
WAGNER: Find that Maxwell Frost.
O`DONNELL: It really is. And that age group needed that win.
It`s really great.
WAGNER: Have a great show.
O`DONNELL: Thanks, Alex. Thank you.
Well, Donald Trump`s continuing unsolvable lifetime problem is that stupid attracts stupid. That is why Donald Trump has always been surrounded by stupidity. Now that Donald Trump has painted himself into the corner of the first ex-president under multiple criminal investigations, Donald Trump is surrounded now by nothing but stupid. And that is why the Trump sycophants decided it was a good idea to make public a letter from the national archives to one of Donald Trump`s lawyers written three months before the FBI obtained a search warrant for government documents at Donald Trump`s Florida home.
Releasing that letter was a profoundly stupid thing to do. The person who made the letter public is John Solomon who was dumped by the Fox propaganda channel because he was a bit too reckless even for them. Since John Solomon no longer has guest privileges on Sean Hannity show, he decided to reveal that letter in a podcast conversation with Steve Bannon who is so not smart, he is awaiting sentencing for criminal contempt of Congress.
Here is Donald Trump in the last year of his presidency introducing the person who wrote that letter and who in effect called in the FBI to go after the Trump documents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: Debra Steidel Wall, deputy archivist of the United States. That sounds like a very big job. That`s a lot of archives, isn`t it? How many buildings does that take up? Great, great job. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Yeah, it is a very big job and she does do a great job, as her letter shows. And the Archives take up more than one building.
But Donald Trump`s hotel in Florida is not one of them. Debra Steidel Wall could never have imagined that she was going to become the most important archivist in American history. If you`ve never known the name of the archivist of the United States before now, welcome to the club. It is not the place where attention seekers go to work.
It probably was not with Debra Steidel Wall was dreaming of when she was a college student at a graduate student at American University studying film. If she ever had fantasies of fame, it may have been of the Hollywood variety.
But, in 1991 during the Republican administration of the first President Bush, Debra Seidel Wall went to work at the national archives as an archivist trainee with a specialty in film. Twenty years later, Deborah Seidel Wall became deputy archivist of the United States in 2011 and after archivist David Ferreira retired in May of just this year, Debra Seidel Wall became active archivist of the United States.
[22:05:06]
And there, instantly, she found herself in the middle of the most serious problem any archivist has ever had with a former president. In her very first days as acting archivist, Debra Seidel Wall sent a four page letter to one of Donald Trump`s lawyers that the Trump team decided to make public last night and that reveals that in May, Donald Trump was knowingly violating the wall by possessing government records and asking the Archives not to tell the FBI all about it.
The letter describes the ongoing struggle to get the documents from Donald Trump, quote: The National Archives had ongoing communications with the former presidents representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to the National Archives in January 2022.
In its initial review of materials within those boxes, the National Archives identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of top secret including sensitive compartmented information and special access program materials. The letter points out to Donald Trump lawyer, quote, there are important national security interests in the FBI and others in the intelligence community getting access to these materials according to the national archives, among the materials in the boxes of 100 documents with classification markings, comprising more than 700 pages, some include the highest levels of classification including special access program materials.
The important thing to remember is that this is just a description of the first batch of documents that Donald Trump handed over. That first batch included 700 pages of highly classified material and that wasn`t all of what Donald Trump was still keeping at his home in Florida after he handed over the 700 pages, he still had more.
The archivist`s letter to Donald Trump`s lawyer explains that this is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. This isn`t May. The letter says, access to the materials is not only necessary for purposes of our ongoing criminal investigation, but the executive branch must also conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the parent manner in which these materials were stored and transported. Donald Trump lawyers had asked the archives to not hand over all of those documents that they found at his home to the FBI for their investigation so that Donald Trump`s lawyers could, quote, ascertain whether any specific document is subject to privilege and then to consult with the former president so that he may personally make any decision to assert a claim of constitutionally based privilege.
The archivist`s letter informed on Trump`s stunningly stupid lawyers that there is no such privilege for a former president. The letter said: Te question in this case is not a close one. There is no basis for the former president to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.
Debra Seidel Wall ends her letter to Donald Trump`s lawyer saying, I have therefore decided not to honor the former president`s protective claim of privilege for the same reasons, I have concluded that there is no reason to grant your request for a further delay before the FBI and others in the intelligence community begin their reviews. Accordingly, the National Archives will provide the FBI access to the records in question.
So, Debra Seidel Wall, who is now the most famous archivist of the United States in history of that very obscure office, he has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that she, who has a graduate degree in film and did not go to law school, understands all of the relevant law for better than any of Donald Trump`s lawyers who are as lost in the Trumpian fog of stupidity as their client always has been. And that is a problem that Donald Trump cannot solve.
Leading off our discussion tonight is Mark Zaid, attorney who represents -- who specializes in national security and security clearances.
[22:10:01]
Also with us, Glenn Kirschner, former federal prosecutor, and MSNBC legal analyst.
And Harry Litman, former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general under President Clinton. He`s now legal affairs columnist for "The Los Angeles Times".
And, Mark, let me begin with you. From the defense attorney`s perspective, let`s assume that somehow Donald Trump found his way to a competent criminal defense attorney in this situation. First of all, would you have made that letter public and secondly, what does that letter tell you about the challenges facing Donald Trump`s defense?
MARK ZAID, NATIONAL SECURITY ATTORNEY: I didn`t understand from the moment I read the letter why this was being released by the Trump team. As you and others have been describing, not by the legal team but by his supporters like John Solomon.
There is nothing in this letter that, as you just have laid out, that puts the president in any positive light whatsoever. I don`t particularly get it. I agree with the legal analysis that is in this letter, I will tell you, I worked with the National Archives many times over the years, I`ve help them recover stolen property.
I have sued the National Archives many times. In fact, I think I`m in a couple of current lawsuits against them now. Their top leadership that has been there for many years or experts on classification, in fact a former classification czar is in the leadership. Their general counsel mentioned in the letter, has been there for decades.
These are people who know what they are doing. They are neutral, they are nonpartisan. This is a damning letter against President Trump and his legal team.
O`DONNELL: Glenn Kirschner, so we`ve heard from the defense -- that`s as good a defense lawyer as you can get. He`s not saying exactly where you go with this on the Trump defense side.
GLENN KIRSCHNER, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, there really is nowhere to go. There is no safe haven for Donald Trump. No matter what his attorneys trying to throw into the mix, Lawrence. It only makes matters worse.
You know, as bad as that letter from the national archives is for him, it discloses that there are some of our most important national secrets that apparently were residing at Mar-a-Lago, being rummage through by who knows who. But, you know, I read something recently that I think is even worse for Donald Trump. And he`s been a lot of time on this, what "The New York Times" reported that Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021.
Now, first of all, that means he was concealing these documents on the property at Mar-a-Lago for a very long time. From late 2021 until the search warrant was executed by the FBI in August of 2022. But even more importantly, that has both legal consequences and even more importantly, practical consequences.
The legal consequences are, when your crime that involves possession like mishandling of classified documents or national defense information, prosecutors have to prove that the defendant handled them and mishandle them.
And you know, the law has two kinds of position. Actual possession, when you`re grabbing hold of something, and constructive possession like when Donald Trump said hey, put those boxes in a storage shed. He may never have touch the boxes, but he directed that they`d be placed in a location over which he had control and access. That is the very definition of constructive possession.
But, you know, we prosecutors are a conservative bunch. Not necessarily politically, but we don`t like to take risks, we like to bring really strong cases and, Lawrence, once I saw the reporting that Donald Trump went through the boxes himself, that will give prosecutors a real comfort level about bringing charges that involve Donald Trump personally mishandling classified or national defense information.
O`DONNELL: And, Harry Litman, "The Times", when it reported that line Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself, the sources -- I`m going to read the line again as they reported. Mr. Trump went through the box himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
So, Harry, that indicates that there are multiple potential witnesses to this piece of evidence that Donald Trump actually went to the boxes himself. Assuming he did, let`s make one more assumption. Let`s assume Donald Trump didn`t have any idea that there was any information at all at his home until December of 2021. That is a big leap into Trump`s favor just for the moment.
Let`s pretend he didn`t know any discovers them in December of 2021. And as "The Times" says, he went to the boxes himself.
[22:15:10]
What is his obligation upon going through those boxes and seeing that they are government documents, presidential documents that belong to the government? That is step one. And step to, within that, there are plenty of documents, hundreds of turns out labeled classified. What is Donald Trump`s legal obligation when he looks at those boxes?
HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, I`ll tell you one thing that it isn`t, that is to conceal them and lie about them. This letter is so damning for the reasons that you have said.
But two other things to really point out, the first is, he is brazen but he has a really small playbook. He`s a one trick pony. He is doing the exact same argument now about executive privilege.
So, his ally has just published an entire legal analysis, it`s not just from the archivist, by the way. She checks with the DOJ, the office of legal counsel so it completely trashes his legal claim. That is for starters.
And now, second in this ongoing where things going to look at Thursday. He has led with his chin in a way that now the department can come in and say, oh, well besides this letter, let me tell you what`s really happened and it will be now public accounting of the most important aspect that whatever would come out in the redacted version which is, all the back and forth.
Remember, this letters from May, for more weeks and then more and more and more. So he is given the DOJ an opportunity to just slap him around and make the magistrate come through. This has been revealed, we can do it in a more elliptical way. So, that is a long way of answering your question.
But the main point is, obligation, whether or not he needs to return right away, and any of us would. You see documents like that, your heads spins if they`re outside of the SCIF. You may not continue to conceal them and I lie about them. If you do, you are looking at 20-years statute that they did potentially charge, that they found in a search warrant here which is obstruction.
So, once you have his knowledge, the obstruction follows much more clearly.
O`DONNELL: And, Mark, another point on obstruction. This letter from the archives specifies to Donald Trump`s lawyers that these documents need to be handed over to the FBI for a criminal investigation. This letter is dated May 10th, here is don`s lawyer holding this in his hands on the tenth. If he doesn`t know it before, he knows now. The FBI is doing a criminal investigation of Donald Trump`s handling of these documents. That is may 10th.
June 2nd, FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers come down to Donald Trump `s house in Florida. The lawyers, the lawyer got that letter hands over more documents. But, he keeps some that are not handed over at that time. What does that do to this case?
ZAID: Well, I think it shows for one that there is more than just on Trump who`s potentially facing legal liability. It may be some of the lawyers depending on what they knew when they filed this asked devastation that they were no longer holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Clearly, it wasn`t true since we know by the FBI seizure. So, it brings in a lot of play.
But the other thing that this letter shows, people have been wondering this motion that on Trump filed yesterday which is horrible quite frankly, I would fire anyone who wrote it if they`re working for my firm. But that letter people were saying, why did it take two weeks to file the motion? You know, if you are asking for a special master to look at this information, we can talk about that if you want, it is a separate issue also, but if you waited that long, why?
This letter even shows more because here it is that they were put on notice back in May that actually the former president has the right to have representatives review the documents that are in its possession, to do its own classification review if they want to. As long as they have the proper security clearance, I believe that is even John Solomon that is being referred to in this letter.
Have we heard -- and Kash Patel, the other one who has been speaking of a this. I wave my magic hand and it is declassified. Have we heard them say anything about getting access? No. I would like to know why that is. Have they made an effort to get access?
[22:20:04]
They were even offered access to the unclassified information so that they could do an inventory. We haven`t heard anything about that either. I think we can agree that if there is silence from the Trump camp is because they actually think it doesn`t help them, that means I really want to know what it was and what the answers were.
O`DONNELL: Mark Zaid, thank you very much for joining us and thank you for having Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch over your shoulder, I wish we could have him in this discussion.
Glenn Kirschner, thank you. Harry Litman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I appreciate it.
And we`re going to go right to Steve Kornacki who is covering tonight`s primaries.
Steve, what`s the latest?
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we`ve got suspense here. I think some unexpected suspense potentially in New York`s 19th district. This is the special election here for a seat congress. Democrat Pat Ryan right now, you see the advantage over the Republican Mark Molinaro.
Now, keep in mind, the way the vote counting is taking place here in New York 19 is most of these counties are counting up the vote by mail and the early vote first that tends to be by far the much more Democratic friendly type of vote. Then what happens is they add in the same day vote, the vote that was cast today in person that tends to be a much more Republican friendly vote.
So we have been watching Ryan has had the lead all night, you saw it happen again, Molinaro has been creeping up as more votes have been coming in. But this seems to be, we will seem to be on a collision course, a very, very close race. To give you an example here of one county that is basically says, it says 80 percent but we believe based on what the county is showing us that this may be all of the vote.
This is just give you an example of what we are seeing here. Compare Molinaro wins this county 66 to 34 percent. This is Schoharie County. Compare that to the 2020 election results in this county. It is almost identical. Trump won this county 63 to 34 percent.
Now, this district as a whole went for Joe Biden by two points in 2020. So, for Ryan basically to be matching the Biden number. If you could do that across the district, remember Biden won it by two, if Biden is matching it in a Republican County, that is about where he wants to be. It gives you an indication of how close this is shaping up to be.
So the two key counties I think this really going to start to come down to. Number one is right down here. This is Ulster County. This is the largest county in the district of all the votes in the district are going to come out of Ulster County.
This is Ryan`s base. He is the county executive in Ulster County. You can see, just compare again, most Democratic county in the district, Biden got 60 percent of it. That was in 2020. Ryan currently is getting about 67 percent of the vote.
Largely what is still being counted up in Ulster County is the same day vote. So this Ryan number is going to continue to come down, we expect. The question is though, can`t land were all the votes are counted, can`t Ryan be at or above 60 percent in Ulster County? That looms as a crucial benchmark. If he can get to 61, 62, 63, something like that anyway -- back to you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Steve, thank you very much. We are going to be coming back to you. That one is going to be one we`re watching late into the night, it looks like. Thank you very much, Steve.
KORNACKI: OK.
O`DONNELL: And when we come back, Congressman Eric Swalwell will join us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:28:07]
O`DONNELL: Tonight, "The New York Times" is reporting that the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on Capitol has conducted interviews with members of Donald Trump`s cabinet. "The Times" reports, quote, the panel has been holding closed-door interviews with senior Trump administration officials in an effort to uncover more about the period between January 6th 2021 when a mob of Mr. Trump supporters attacked Congress, and, January 20th, when President Biden was sworn in. Including talks about the invoking the 25th Amendment.
Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He served as a house impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the United States Senate. He`s a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee.
And, Congressman Swalwell, those concerns about possibly invoking the 20`s Fifth Amendment occurred reportedly after what those members of the cabinet saw Donald Trump do and not do on January 6th. Though it is very likely it seems to me that the Justice Department is looking at many of those same members of the cabinet to put under oath in a grand jury to ask them what they know and what they saw about Donald Trump`s handling of classified material.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): We have every reason to be worried, Lawrence, that we would not see a peaceful transition of power on January 20th. Those 14 days were terrifying. That`s why Speaker Pelosi actually first try to make a deal before the impeachment vote to just have Pence lead an invocation of the 25 Amendment because they secure the transition was anything but guaranteed.
But it does raise the question, what was Donald Trump doing as it was likely that he was going to face a criminal investigation into January 6th, other investigation that were looming when he was going to leave office? What could -- what was his motivation or intend considering the access to classified materials, the vast materials that he would be able to take with him if he wanted to?
[22:29:50]
O`DONNELL: And when you read this new information about the -- Trump was on -- very much on notice by May, if not sooner. There could`ve been earlier communications referring to a criminal investigation. But by May 10th, we see from the National Archives a letter saying this is a criminal investigation of what you`re doing with those documents and Donald Trump continues to do it.
SWALWELL: Lawrence, the National Archives showed remarkable patience for an individual who is not worthy of patience. And someone who has priors. And when I say priors, this former president, while he was president tried to leverage millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to have a U.S. ally in Ukraine get dirt on his political opponent.
So you would have to assume that he is also capable of leveraging the deepest U.S. secrets that effect true protection, national security, our technical collection capabilities that he would leverage that as well for his own personal gain.
So of course, they were going to show deference because he`s a former president. But they pushed him to a point where they had to seize those records knowing that there was nothing good that Donald Trump, hardly a consumer of intelligence products, was going to do with that information.
O`DONNELL: As a member of the intelligence committee, you obviously know with real clarity the meaning and importance of these various classification elements that have been described by -- in that letter from the archives.
What do those classification levels mean? What did they mean to you? What can you tell us about them that we should know that those were the classification levels that Donald Trump was in possession of at his Florida home?
SWALWELL: Code word classifications mean that even if you have a top secret clearance that there is a limited universe within top secret cleared individuals who need to know. And when I heard, you know, from reporting of the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times" that one of the documents relates to one of our most closely held secrets, boy, Lawrence, there`s only a handful of times where I have been told by intelligence officials briefing us that this is something that fewer than 100 or 1,000 people in the U.S. government know.
And if there was something like that, you can see why the FBI, you know, lost their patients and wanted to seize those documents.
And again, this is somebody who has shown in the past that he would leverage the U.S. resources for his own benefit. So he deserves no benefit of the doubt that he wouldn`t try and do this again.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. We always appreciate it.
SWALWELL: My pleasure.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, we`ll have more with Steve Kornacki and John Heilemann will join us on this primary election night in New York and Florida. That`s coming up.
[22:33:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: It is primary election night in New York and Florida. Let`s go right to Steve Kornacki at the big board. Steve, what is the latest?
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Again Lawrence, we`ve just been following this drama in this special election for Congress in the 19th district of New York. The Democrat Pat Ryan, again we have been expecting his numbers going to continue to come down. The Republican Mark Molinaro, his numbers going to continuing to go up. They`re going to meet somewhere right around 50 percent. This thing is looking like it is right on the line.
The key here, again, the backdrop is it is a district that Joe Biden carried by two points in 2020. If you went back to 2016, it was a district that Donald Trump carried by seven. So it was a Trump-Biden district, it kind of swung in the way a country swung. And the expectation, you know, a month out in this race was that the Republicans, the national political climate a month or two ago looks very favorable for the Republicans.
Typically in the midterm cycle, it will look very favorable for the out of power party. What that meant was, the expectation with Molinaro, in a district that Biden won by two, in a typical midterm where the out of power party does really well, it usually translates into a win in an election like this for the Republican.
So watching these results come in tonight, what has been so striking in a lot of these counties is how similar the result ends up looking to the 2020 results.
Here is Schoharie County. It says 80 percent and we actually believe this is probably all the vote in Schoharie County. And you can see, very closely mirroring here the 2020 election results. This is a Republican county, but I`m just showing you this to show that it is not like Molinaro. He is surging here, Ryan is running at the Biden level even in this Republican county.
There are some other smaller counties where we have all or most of the vote in where Molinaro has made some gains on what Trump did. But what this is really coming down to, I think I will reset it so you see the phone numbers here -- what this is really coming down to I think potentially are two counties, two next door neighbor counties. And these are the two biggest in the district.
This is Ulster County you see in blue. This is the biggest county in the district. It is the political base of Pat Ryan, he is the county executive in Ulster County. It is also the most Democratic county in the district.
And right next door in red, you see Dutchess County. Dutchess County is the second biggest part of this district. Molinaro is the county executive in Dutchess County.
[22:39:59]
KORNACKI: So the two dynamics that we are watching as these final numbers start to come in will start here in Dutchess County, Molinaro`s base. You see Molinaro now has opened up a lead here of about 2.5 points over Ryan.
There are more votes to come, it is same-day votes that are being reported out here. Molinaro has been winning the same day vote in Dutchess County. And this is where Molinaro has made his biggest gain in the district just in terms of raw votes.
Biden carried the Dutchess County portion of this district in 2020. Molinaro is on his way to carrying it tonight.
So this is going to be -- and just given the size of this county, it is about one-sixth of the district in terms of the votes it produces.
So that swing, Trump getting 47 percent, Molinaro is at 51 percent. That could climb to 52 or 53. That is his biggest single gain tonight probably, anywhere in this district over what Donald Trump did.
And if Molinaro is able to win tonight, this will probably be why. That leaves the big remaining question in Ulster County where there are also votes still coming in.
Now take a look in Ulster County in 2020 Joe Biden got 60 percent of the vote, now Pat Ryan is at 64.5 percent of the vote. So the other question here is, how much farther down does this vote come for Pat Ryan? If he can land this at 64, 63 percent, maybe 62 percent something in there that might be enough to offset the gains that Molinaro is making in his home county of Dutchess County.
So how much better is Molinaro going to do in the remaining vote in Dutchess County and how much is Ryan able to hold onto what he has right now in terms of his lead in Ulster County.
There are some other places here, this gets really, really close. We could be talking about Columbia County, Rensselaer County, some other places with outstanding vote. But it really looks in some ways here like there is a battle between the two candidates` bases here in the two biggest counties in this district.
And again, I`ll just reset here to see if more vote has come in. Again, you can see here Ryan is leading by seven points right now. Still plenty of votes to come. This is -- by the way this is extremely high turnout, this shows there is extremely high interest. Both parties are showing in this race here.
And again, we have been looking at this race as a bellwether, this is our last true special election bellwether heading into the November election.
The question that has been posed this summer, the question that has been posed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade is whether the national political atmosphere has shifted in a way that is more favorable to Democrats than it looked earlier in the year.
Since the Supreme Court decision on Roe versus Wade at the end of June before tonight, there had been two special elections. One was in Minnesota, one was in Nebraska. In both of those special elections, the Republican candidate won but in each of those special elections, the Democratic candidate did significantly better than Joe Biden had done in 2020.
So Democrats were encouraged by those results because they had outperformed Biden and it suggested to them that potentially their own voters had become motivated in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
This becomes, and here we go, we just got a few more votes in, you can see that margin is staying right there at seven points for Ryan. This becomes the clearest test we have had yet. A district that was Trump, that was Biden, it was only a two point margin in 2020. If Ryan were ever able to finish tonight with an outright victory in this district, that argument that Democrats are making that the national political climate has shifted their way post Roe decision, would be strongly buttressed if he`s able to win it.
That is a huge, huge if right now for all those reasons I just showed you. But you can see, we did just get a few more votes and I`m checking to see -- yes, that`s where they came in from, they came in from Ulster County, Ryan`s numbers 63.5 right now in Ulster.
Remember, the Biden benchmark is 60, Ryan wants to be north of that by the end of the night. Nothing more from Dutchess since we started. So again, we`re going to continue to look. Ulster, Dutchess, a few other places. But this one is shaping up to be quite a nail-biter here.
Stakes are very high, last big bellwether before November and the big question here we weren`t expecting to be asking at the beginning of the summer, Lawrence, about the national political climate and whether Democrats might actually be improving their position now.
O`DONNELL: Well, we`re going to be watching that district to find out.
Steve Kornacki, thank you very much. We will be coming back to you as it develops there.
Joining us now is John Heilemann, co-host and executive producer of Showtime`s "The Circus" and host of the "Hell And High-Water" podcast from The Recount. He`s an MSNBC national affairs analyst.
And John, I have labeled this primary election night in New York and Florida, which it is, except for that race where there is actually a vacant seat in that district in the House.
[22:44:59]
O`DONNELL: And so, this is Democrat versus Republican and Steve Kornacki is right, that is the one we`re going to have to watch right down to the finish tonight.
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Look, it has been as Steve said, it has been one in the wake of what all that has happened and I would say, you know, it`s in the wake of the January 6th Committee hearings in June and July, in the wake of what has happened just in these last week at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump and obviously after the repeal -- the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the shooting in Uvalde -- all of these things that Democrats have been counting to shift the ground and create momentum.
It is obviously a bellwether. And I think there`s another question that, you know, -- if Steve, after I get off here, Steve can answer this, I would be really interested to know, you know.
Because the one question is, is the ground tilting towards Democrats? And the other question is, why? And you can cite these various triggers, these things that have happened in the national discourse.
But one of the questions Lawrence is like, what is it that Democrats are doing better on the whole. Is it that swing voters and voters in the center ideologically are now somehow more attracted to Democrats? Or is it what a lot of progressives think.
And I think there might be something if you look hard at these Ulster County results and you talk about the dynamic of that entire race is that what we are seeing is that this is going to be a bellwether that also says that what is happening is, enthusiasm, fear, anger, enthusiasm, however you want to add it all up, that all in the bluest of counties, the places where the core Democratic base which turned out in large numbers back in 2018, you might be seeing that also.
That that is kind of -- that`s the nature of the change is about Democratic partisans feeling motivated and energized and determined to turn out in the context of everything that is happening in the country.
O`DONNELL: And The drivers in those upstate counties today, filling up their gas tanks on the way to go vote were paying a lot less money to fill up those gas tanks this month today than they were at the beginning of the summer.
HEILEMANN: Yes. And look, I mean for those Democratic partisans who would get angry at pundits who would say you know, the White House is worried about gas prices. Gas prices -- the president is not in control of it completely, it doesn`t matter if it is a world wide phenomenon, we know historically that inflation is bad but particular kinds of inflation are worst.
And you can fight with people who pointed that out back in the past but I`ll tell you, one person who will never fight a battle is Ron Klain who watched that gas price every day.
And now the Democrats maybe benefiting from seeing the downward trend and there`s no doubt that there`s a lot of people in the White House, and a lot of Democrats across the country who are thrilled that what people think of as the bellwether marks of inflation.
You know, it`s like gas prices and the price of bacon, you know. You have to make sure those things are going down. Food and transport and if those things are stable and going down, that also augurs better for Democrats and them having a better chance to fight some of these historical trends that would say it was going to be a big Republican year.
O`DONNELL: John Heilemann, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
HEILEMANN: Thanks Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: And coming up, 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost joined us just last night on the eve of the Florida primary. He is a winner tonight. And he will join us next.
[22:48:25]
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O`DONNELL: Here`s the election I`ve been watching tonight. 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the former organizing director at March For Our Lives who joined us on this program just last night has won the Democratic primary for the House seat in Florida vacated by Congresswoman Val Demings, who won her primary tonight to challenge Republican Senator Marco Rubio in the general election.
That Florida district is a heavily Democratic district and so Mr. Frost seems very likely going to be the next member of Congress from that district. And joining us now is Maxwell Alejandro Frost.
I`m going to address you the way you will soon be addressed on the floor of the House of Representatives and in committee and that is Mr. Frost of Florida.
Thank you very much. This is your third time. You were here when your campaign began. You were here last night on the very last minute of your campaign. How did you do it?
25-year-old convinces that congressional district that you`re the person to do this job. How did you do?
MAXWELL ALEJANDRO FROST (D), FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL NOMINEE: Well look, it just wasn`t me. It was the movement that we built. Our volunteers, the people who are knocking at doors every day and making phone calls.
And at the end of the day it is our message. It is a hopeful message, one that says that no matter who you are, you deserve health care, you deserve a good job, you deserve a union, you deserve the right to an abortion. And these are the things that we were talking about with folks in this district.
But the other thing is also looking at the context of this campaign. We won this in the midst of a dark year in Florida because of Governor Ron DeSantis. So it was hope despite that. And I truly believe that is why we won this race and why we`re going to win the general in November.
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O`DONNELL: Did the right wing approaches of the governor actually helped energize your campaign?
FROST: You know, I think what it did is set the stage for this righteous anger that our folks have here in Florida. And what we did is, we wanted to transform that righteous anger into a love, a love of the people who have been oppressed by this governor.
This governor has said any issue that you can think of is the problem and is the fault of gay folks, of our LGBTQ Plus community, of black folks, of immigrants. He has scapegoated every vulnerable community for every single issue that he has failed to solve himself.
And so that is part of the reason why we won this campaign. It`s about the positive message despite what he is done. But we are moving forward. We`re looking towards November. We`re going to elect, you know, Congressman Charlie Crist to be the next governor of Florida. And we are going to remove Ron from the Governor`s Mansion.
O`DONNELL: Maxwell Alejandro Frost, it has been a remarkable journey from your first time on this program to tonight. Thank you very much for finding the time to join us tonight. We really appreciate it.
FROST: Thank you for having me and folks can follow us at FrostForCongress.com.
O`DONNELL: Thank you very much. We will be right back.
[22:56:09]
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O`DONNELL: Mr. Frost of Florida gets tonight`s LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE" starts now.