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center of them all, donald trump and his unlawful attempts to get in power and stay in power. first, in the state of new york, one of the star witnesses in trump's criminal trial was back on the stand for a third day of testimony. the prosecutors finished their questioning of former "national enquirer" publisher david pecker. where he acknowledged that the purpose of catching and killing playboy model karen mcdougal's story about an affair with trump was to help trump during the 2016 election cycle. and pecker said he was aware that he was breaking campaign finance laws. pecker also testified that he discussed mcdougal with trump while he was in the white house. this comes less than a day after 18 people were indicted in arizona for their roles in an attempt to overturn trump's loss in the 2020 election there. including 11 fake electors who submitted a document to congress falsely declaring that trump won

the state. along with several trump aides including rudy giuliani, mark meadows, and boris epshteyn. trump himself was not charged but was referred to as an unindicted coconspirator. as all of this was happening, in washington, d.c. today, the supreme court heard oral arguments on trump's claim that presidents have absolute immunity to essentially do whatever they want in office, crimes included, as long as it's, quote, an official act, which according to trump's lawyer includes potentially staging a military coup or ordering the assassination of political opponents. that's a real argument he tried to make. >> well, he's gone. let's say this president who ordered the military to stage a coup, he's no longer president. he wasn't impeached. he couldn't be impeached. but he ordered the military to stage a coup, and you're saying that's an official act. >> i think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act. if it's an official act, there

needs to be impeachment and conviction beforehand because the framers viewed that kind of -- >> if it's an official act. is it an official act? >> if it -- >> is it an official act? >> on the way you described that hypothetical, it could be. >> that answer sounds to me as though under my attest, it's an official act, but it sounds back. >> it certainly sounds bad. >> as to most legal experts and humans here on earth one, this may seem like an absurd concept to entertain in the country's highest court. after nearly three hours of questioning, it appears even as the court seems skeptical, a handful if not all of the conservative justices are seemingly open to the argument that presidents are indeed entitled to at least some form of immunity from criminal prosecution, meaning they very well could remand the case back to d.c. circuit court for further proceedings, which

would, you guessed it, delay trump's federal election interference trial even further. all but guaranteeing it will not be heard before the november election. but if you take a step back, these three stories essentially all have the same bottom line. donald trump allegedly used unlawful tactics to win the presidency in 2016 through hush money payments and after he did win, he tried to remain in office unlawfully in 2020 after losing. allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of a democratic election by way of fake electors. something that ultimately culminated at an insurrection at the u.s. capitol. as we're months away from another election where the same guy is once again a nominee for the same office, the supreme court is wasting time, having an intellectual debate about whether or not any of that is actually illegal. make it make sense. because the stakes could not be higher. something justice ketanji brown jackson aptly pointed out during today's arguments.

>> what i'm, i guess, more worried about, you seem to be worried about the president being chilled. i think we would have a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn't chilled. if someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> joining me now is congressman jamie raskin of maryland, a former member of the january 6th select committee. congressman, thank you for being here. and you know, i hope people join me in this -- this new reality. because can we now just stop pretending that when the supreme court meets to hold oral arguments and to make decisions, that they are even thinking about the constitution?

this supreme court majority, leonard leo six, are so clearly politicians, the only difference between them and politicians like yourself is you're honest about it. you're a democratic politician. they are republican politicians trying to achieve republican goals. they didn't even pretend today that they had some constitutional argument. even as a lay person, i didn't hear them try. what i heard was them saying we're going to make sure that donald trump is protected from prosecution, the end, and what are you going to do about it. your thoughts? >> well, they're politicians who are not even subject to popular election, unlike me. they should move the supreme court over to the rnc headquarters, because they're acting like a bunch of partisan operatives. the most astonishing thing for me today was justice alito's question, he actually asked whether holding the president criminally accountable for actual crimes committed, whether murder or coup or you name it,

whether holding them accountable would actually encourage them to stage more violent coups to stay in office to avoid prosecution. which buys completely into donald trump's narcicisstic criminal world view. for all of american history, we have said presidents are subject to criminal prosecution if they commit crimes. that's why gerald ford pardoned richard nixon. that's why bill clinton agrees to give up his law license with the bar for five years. now they say, well, if you're really mean to donald trump and hold him accountable the way every other american citizen is accountable, then he'll really overthrow the government. he'll really bring out the big guns and we can't afford that. and that's a kind of masochistic capitulation to donald trump's authoritarianism. of course we have to hold the president accountable to the law. it's the basic premise of our

law that nobody is above the law, including the president. and when they say, oh, well, you can impeach and convict him and then you can prosecute him, again, that twists the language and turns it upside down in the constitution. it says even if you're impeached and convicted, nevertheless, you can still be prosecuted and tried and convicted and punished. presuming presupposing that of course the president is subject to criminal law, and now we've got a bunch of justices who are asking questions that indicate that they are as corrupted as members of congress who i serve with. when we get through this period, this miserable period of american history, and we will get through it and we're going to beat them all in november, which is the only solution to this nonsense, these people are going to be fit only for selling incense and flowers at dulles airport. >> what is the solution? because it's a big if, if we get through this. they're trying to seemingly engineer a republican victory so

that the two oldest conservatives there, clarence thomas and samuel alito, can retire and be replaced by 30-year-old versions of themselves. that seems obvious. the bride is sort of implied. what legislatively can be done? brett kavanaugh has already gotten away, perhaps, with criminal activities, so he already feels a certain impunity. he got on the court, you know, having been credibly accused of a sexual assault. that didn't matter. he wasn't even investigated. clarence thomas was credibly accused of also being a sex pest. he got away with that. they themselves live with impunity. is there anything that might be done, could be done if democrats were to take back the house and have enough senate votes, should any of them be impeached? it's clear corruption. it's so obvious. >> well, the american people have to insist upon the rule of law here. the president's primary job as a republican judge on the d.c.

circuit put it, is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. not completely betrayed and defeated. and she said it would be strikingly paradoxical if the person who is supposed to be taking care that the laws are faithfully executed including all of the election laws and the 12th amendment and the 20th amendment, which says you serve four years in office and you leave by noon on january 20th, then the person who is supposed to be enforcing the law is overturning the law, then we really don't have a constitutional democracy anymore. so the people have got to insist upon that. and what's happening, joy, as i see it is that as donald trump and his various january 6th aiders and abettors are being exposed now for what they did, finally, on january 6th, 2021, in the factual case is just crashing in on them all over the

country, now they're shifting to the law to say, oh, well, of course, the president is not really held accountable under the law. and they're buying into trump's argument that there's this absolute presidential immunity. where did that come from? the stork brought it. that is not in the constitution. that's the very opposite of our constitution and it's the opposite of impeachment judgment clause. >> well then what's the answer legislatively? you're in congress. is it expanding the court, is it putting 15 members on the court as our friend ellie mistaland others have said. what can be done to rein them in. at this point, they're stripping the 20th century reforms of the warren court and others down to the sparks. we're almost going to have nothing left of the revolutionary american century. before they're done, we'll be back to the mid-1800s legislatively and have a king. >> yeah. well, i mean, here's the problem. we could build big political

majorities in the country and we must do that to restore the voting rights act, which they eviscerated in shelby county versus holder. we can pass national legislation to restore roe v. wade and protect women's right to choose, and we must do that. but all of it could be appealed back to this right-wing reactionary supreme court. so we'll have to take up the questions you're raising, but we have to go one step at a time. you're several chess moves ahead of me. we have to win this election and go out and organize the whole country to understand that democracy is on the line, and freedom is on the ballot, and our major weapon for constitutional self defense at this moment is this election and getting everybody out to vote and to participate, and then to defend the election results. >> congressman jamie raskin, constitutional scholar and a politician who admits he's a politician and a friend of the show.

i appreciate you. let's bring in elie mystal, the justice correspondent for the nation and kenji osheeno, professor of constitutional law at nyu school of law. let me just read a bit of your piece because it spoke to my soul and i reposted it on threads. you wrote this, and this spoke my whole spirit. at this point, people who expect anything less than the maximum partisan thuggery possible from the republican justices are not paying attention or worse, they're actively lying to themselves and the american people about what the roberts court has become. the question has long since ceased being whether the court will help trump. the question is only how it will go about doing it. say more. >> can we speak as adults for a second? >> let's please. >> nothing that happened today with the supreme court being in the tank for donald trump is surprising at all. it's not surprising to me. it's not surprising to your viewers at home. you know why? because we're not stupid. donald trump called his shot month ago. he said my supreme court

justices will never let this happen to me, and he was absolutely right. so with that information, my question to the american people is now, what are you prepared to do? because the supreme court has exposed itself as a partisan institution full of hacks that will do everything in their power to protect donald trump and make sure that a republican can be elected, not just in the next election, but in every election going forward. so what are we going do about that? my answer to that obviously is you cannot do anything in this country unless you expand the supreme court to take away their power and as you say, start removing some of these conservative justices who have already exposed themselves as criminals and liars. >> in many senses also perjurers before the united states senate when they got up and said stare decisis and lied about respecting precedent when it came to roe v. wade. lied to the faces of senators and got away with it. professor, elena kagan, and i'm

listening to this as a regular schmuck. i'm not a lawyer, although i hang out with them on tv. but even listening to it, i didn't even hear them try on the conservative side to make a constitutional argument. once or twice they said marberry v. madison, but they weren't even trying to pretend they had some basis in the constitution for what they were saying. they were just saying, maybe if we remanded, how would this help us? they were just trying to help trump's lawyers with the case to the point where elena kagan got the trump lawyer to admit that he thought a coup, staging a coup, would be legal. your thoughts. >> yeah, that was actually, you're hitting the nail on the head. that because the most alarming part of the oral arguments that the conservative justices were putting before trump's lawyer. he was completely unfazed by that. this kind of normalizes extremism. in the d.c. sirked, the killer

question that judge florence pan asked of trump's lawyer, if the president ordered s.e.a.l. team six to assassinate a political opponent, would the president be liable criminally, to which the answer is of course, yes, they would. no one is above the law, but john sauer's answer was it depends on whether he was impeached and convicted. at that point, my jaw is on the floor. that's like an insane reading of the impeachment clause, but it's also like a very, very weird, you know, response that goes right to the right most edge of political extremism. i thought he's going to clean it up when he gets to the supreme court. he's going to practice this over and over again. justice sotomayor asked exactly the same question of what happens and he said, you know, the same answer. like the president would have to be impeached and convicted first. basically, at that point, we were talking about this before. i thought this guy has made a bet.

he's made a bet that if he just survives in the district court and the appellate court, he's going to be in front of a much more friendly audience and he can make that argument and they'll buy it or/or throw him a life line. justice alito says that hypothetical is complicated biez s.e.a.l. team six has to obey the law. so that was what was alarming to me, you have the highest court in the land entertaining hypotheticals and having a serious argument that really normalizes extremism. this is how extremism manifests itself in nation states, we're going to go more and more to the extreme and ordinary institutions of justice are going to accept that. >> none of us at this table believe that they believe any of these rules apply to joe biden. i'm going to hold you until we come back on the other side of the break. they're coming right back. stay right there. more on this madness. at three in the morning. any time of the day. what people don't know is that not all dirt is the same.

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translators. what do we think they're going to do? >> if you're a republican on the supreme court and want donald trump to win, what do you do? do you want to give them absolute immunity forever? no, they're going to remand the case back to d.c., say the circuit didn't fully consider all the types of immunity. >> in their unanimous ruling. >> do your homework again. you didn't show your work. send it back to d.c. why? that delays the trial indefinitely because when you go back to d.c., they have to have another hearing. they have to make another ruling. they have to write another opinion. that opinion will be adverse to trump. they have to appeal. when does the supreme court get back to work? oh, first monday of october. do you think they're going to schedule a hearing on the appeal before the election? after the first monday of october? i don't think so. you think you're going to get a ruling?

you can't possibly have a trial before the election if you remand it back to d.c., which is why they're going to remand it back to d.c. and let trump skate until the next election. >> that kills both of jack smith's cases at once. >> that certainly kills -- aileen cannon is already killing the document case. she doesn't need extra help. >> professor, how do you think they're going to write it? it seemed like they were hinging a lot on this on official acts versus unofficial acts. even amy coney barrett tried to get them explain how fake electors is an official act. how are they going to write it? >> there for three distinctions that were salient. there was criminal versus civil because there is already broad civil immunity. then i think there was this official versus private acts, and then finally, there was sitting versus former president distinction. all of them, i think you're right, the one they're going to

loft up is the official versus private. i think they'll do something similar to the case a couple years ago where they remanded it, and it seemed like a slam against trump, but ultimately, it gave him infinite amounts of time. i think it's going to be some kind of four-part test for how to distinguish between official and private acts. you didn't consider that, d.c. circuit. consider it and apply it. >> they kept citing this case which is ironically police officers who said they were harmed by trump, and even though police officers enjoy complete immunity, they're like, he harmed us. one of the other ironies is brett kavanaugh. he worked for ken starr, and yet he was saying, if you prosecute, you're just going to hurt -- >> one of the most risible is kavanaugh, gorsuch, and alito very worried about political prosecution. very worried presidents would be prosecuted, and that was

infuriating because brett kavanaugh came to providence working for ken starr, who took a bill clinton land deal and dug it into monica lewinsky's closet. all of a sudden he's considered about political prosecutions. it's hypocritical at the maximum. who is going to stop them, though? they act with impunity just like trump does. because just like trump, they know nobody will stop them. >> the thing that also is really infuriating is every time justice jackson or justice kagan or justin sotomayor tried to get into the facts of this case, and every time the lawyer for jack smith's office tried to get into the substance, they would cut them off. they didn't want to hear the actual substance of the case. >> i don't want to talk about the subskns of this case. i'm ruling for the future. >> what future? because this is a future in which only republican presidents

would be kings. >> i mean, i think that's a really important point. just a couple thoughts. one is that they insistently detrumped this case. even if you listen to the oral arguments, they don't mention his name. they talk about the former president, about the defendant, but they don't use the word trump. similarly, they keep sort of trying to avert to a higher level generality with regard to the office, saying we're making a ruling for the ages. kavanaugh piles on saying this is a rule for the future. huge implications for executive power. they're trying to take the emp emphasis off this case. and they're trying to abstract away from it. >> once we're in trump land yeah, they feel they'll all be as if kings, it will be wonderful. this future will be great under the trump kingdom. thank you both very much. up next, trump has gone above and beyond to attack most of the witnesses in his hush money trial, except for former

"national enquirer" publisher david pecker. is it because pecker has something on trump that he doesn't want going public? who knows. stay with us.

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what have you thought of david pecker's testimony so far? >> he's been very nice. david has been very nice. a nice guy. >> you have to wonder, with donald trump's penchant for attacking just about every

person involved in his various civil and criminal trials, why is it that he's laid off david pecker, the former publisher of the "national enquirer" tabloid? especially since pecker's testimony today was quite revelatory. he shared for the first time that she signed a cooperation letter with the manhattan d.a.'s office back in october of 2019. that was even before alvin bragg was elected district attorney. pecker also admitted that he was well aware that he was breaking campaign finance and election laws when he acted on his catch and kill agreement with donald trump and michael cohen. having cut similar deals with, of all people, trump's apprentice rival and fellow republican show biz performer turned politician, arnold schwarzenegger. what pecker's testimony provided to jurors is how involved trump was in the scheme. how much access pecker had to the trump world, including in the white house. and how much trump relied on pecker to look out for him as his eyes and ears.

most importantly, pecker told the court that this was all done not to protect trump's family or melania, no, no, pecker said trump never mentioned his family. it was all to protect trump's campaign. pecker will be back on the witness stand again tomorrow to continue cross-examination. but after today, i wonder if trump still thinks he's a nice guy. joining me now is lockland cartwright who worked for pecker as executive editor of the "national enquirer." susanne craig, "new york times" investigative reporter, and msnbc contributor, and danny cevallos, criminal defense attorney and msnbc legal analyst, who is lucky enough not to have trump as a client because you would never get paid. welcome to the show. talk to me, what was sort of interesting to me was this transition from pecker being willing, he wanted to be helpful to the campaign, but as soon as he realized he wasn't getting

paid back for having fronted $150,000 and promised -- i forget her name, the playboy model. >> karen mcdougal. >> karen mcdougal and promised he was going to put her on the cover and then he realized he wasn't getting paid back, he was like, i'm not doing anymore. is that the sequence? >> he said on the stand, i'm not a bank. that's kind of almost why we're here, because of the stormy daniels payoff, boss he didn't want to front that money, because he had already fronted up the 30k for the doorman, that catch and kill that we did. and then, he would also have put up the money for karen mcdougal, the 150k. by the time stormy daniels comes on the scene straight off the "access hollywood" tape where the campaign is panicking. they don't want any more sordid details. that transaction is then put back on michael cohen and trump

because pecker doesn't want to front any more money. what i found extraordinary today, many extraordinary moments, but one of them and i think this was brilliant by the prosecution, really showing how the deal was structured with karen mcdougal, david pecker knew this was a campaign finance violation. the waythy structured that contract for the fitness columns which had an assigned reporter to ghost write them and she was unhappy with her fitness column, the first one. she didn't like it because the ghost writer had mentioned the benefits of vitamin d in the column. she said i want a new ghost writer which david pecker spoke on the stand today. it really kind of drove home for me, joy, that the way they structured that agreement, they were aware of the finance. >> they wanted to be paid back because they didn't want to show it on their books. they were hoping donald trump would persony give back the money, the $150,000. they were going to deduct $25,000, what seas actually

getting paid to be our fitness columnist and you're assigning some real person to write it. then the rest of it was going to come back from trump. when it didn't come back, they're like, we're not giving out any more money. talk to me about why david pecker's limit, moral limit, was a porn star on the cover. he was willing to say ted cruz was sleeping with all sorts of women. he was willing to put that on the cover. why not a porn star relationship? >> it comes back to money. we were talking about it, he was worried about blowback from walmart. walmart is one of our biggest outlets, distributors that put the enquirer on all of their new stands. he was concerned if a porn star was featured in the enquirer, had anything to do, there would be blowback from walmart because so much money ami made from walmart. >> you can say ted cruz's father killed jfk, but you can't have a porn star on the cover. >> also, they were worried walmart might learn about the payment. i think it was both. >> i want to go into it a little

bit. there was also this sense that the "wall street journal" would learn about the deal with karen mcdougal, that once it started to get out and her story starts to leak out, you know, you see pecker start to panic that maybe the way he's doing business is getting out, which is also, i found, kind of interesting. >> they did eventually learn about it. they reported it famously. there was a lot of panic about how this was all going to get out. >> do you think, on -- so in the cross-examination, which isn't finished. it started. one of the things that definitely is hanging out there is the idea this was just a standard way of doing business. there was nothing special about the trump deal. they went to the arnold schwarzenegger deal. that they did a thing to bury negative stories about him when he ran for governor of california. not quite the same because they weren't doing -- breaking campaign finance law, right? >> not just arnold schwarzenegger, but a lot of slebtds got hit with the sex shrapnel on the stand today. those were just the ones who came out in questioning.

it has me wondering, how much more does david pecker know about celebrities and maybe just maybe that's why donald trump is going so easy on david pecker, which then makes an even crazier proposition that we're here on trial because of donald trump's misbehavior with women. does that mean there's even more that david pecker knows that he's not letting on, coming out in this trial. so when it comes to cross-examination, i expect there are really only a couple inroads they can make with david pecker. they can challenge his memory, they can challenge whether or not he's motivated to be there. he's a classic cooperating witness. we learned today he has not one but two immunity deals. they cross-examine him about that, say you're here to please these prosecutors who gave you that deal. >> predating alvin bragg. >> you're giving them the benefit of the bargain. just like you made a deal that you say you made a deal, you definitely made a deal with these prosecutors and you're giving them what they want. those are really the two main avenues on cross-examination. you can expect more of that

tomorrow, but the main key that's very specific to these facts that you asked about is that they're trying to show that this is something that was going on for decades. literally decades and it went on with other celebrities. >> is it? >> i can only really speak from my tenure there, which is 2014 through to 2017. but yes, there were other folks, other protected species, and one of those was spoken about today. that's ari emanuel. so clients of ari emanuel, this was spoken about in court today. clients of ari emanuel -- >> protected in the same way. i'm going to hold this until the other side of the break. were there any other clients running for office and for whom there was a campaign finance? i'm going to ask you to hold your answer because we're going to make that a tease. they're all sticking with us for much more on trump's legal troubles. be right back. anthony: this making you uncomfortable?

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we have been chattering throughout the entire commercial break. lockland cartwright, susanne craig, danny cevallos. finish your answer. >> there were other protected species at ami. and i think that the difference here is they weren't running for president. >> harvey weinstein apparently. >> he was one of them. and so ami -- >> what is a fop?

>> a friend of pecker. you're on a no-fly list which means you're a protected species and there are no negative stories about you, and harvey weinstein inked a deal to produce something called radar tv, which never came to fruition, but it contained a lot of meetings between dylan howard and harvey weinstein, and requested came my way for damaging information on women that went on to recuse harvey weinstein of sexual assault. >> let's talk about these various meetings that pecker winds up in the white house. >> there were a couple really memorable meetings that david pecker talked about today. one involved a meeting right after donald trump is elected. and he gets a call from donald trump's secretary saying the president-elect would like to see you. david pecker comes over to trump tower and he's a bit overwhelmed by all the security. and jared kushner sees him and taps him on the shoulder and says come with me.

he escorts david pecker up to trump's office. he walks in and he sees this incredible assembly of men, like -- >> james comey. >> james comey, like the head of the fbi was there, reince priebus, this group of people. they're talking about government business. and donald trump introduces david pecker to the room and he says, he knows more than anybody in this room. and it was a joke, as david pecker pointed out. nobody laughed. >> especially comey. he's probably like, how is this my life? >> then, just to show you how obsessed he was with karen mcdougal, he calls -- so "national enquirer" is standing there, and he calls him over to the side, and he says how is our girl doing? >> there seemed to be a real obsession that donald trump had with karen mcdougal. >> he seemed to have brought her up and followed up and said how is our girl? he was interested enough or hoar may have been interested in asking a way, hey, she's still

quiet, isn't she? >> at the white house where he goes to the white house for his dinner, and donald trump and david pecker are together. they're talking. there was this iconic photo that was shown of the two of them in the back, walking down a corridor. it's a black and white photo. david pecker said what they were talking about was karen mcdougal. and donald trump asked how she is. and david pecker said she's fine. she's quiet. >> yeah. talk about the david pecker/trump relationship. because when i was in court, i got the sense he reveres him. today he said he still considers him a friend. >> a friend and mentor. >> and mentor. >> and there's these interactions i keep watching in court as david pecker sort of exits through this trap door in the middle of the courtroom, he goes past where donald trump is sitting, and there's been some interactions where they have acknowledged each other and smiled together. it was a very close friendship, and it was a friendship --

>> and symbiotic. >> favors both ways. something i'm sort of really interested in here, and i was hoping we would get to today. at that dinner as has been reported there were discussions at the dinner at the white house about facilitating, helping to facilitate david pecker with deals with the saudis. >> pardon? >> he went on to fly to riyadh, and there were discussions about helping ami, which was always in financial difficulties with facilitating deals with the saudis. so i was hoping we were going to get to a bit more of that today, and maybe that will come up. >> you think that will come up? >> that's the quid pro quo. everyone keeps saying, that's one of them. everybody keeps saying to me, what was in it for david pecker? >> money. saudi money. >> like a long game, too. that's what we're learning. it wasn't an immediate quid pro quo. we may learn shortly in some ways it was just having access

to donald trump. >> he wanted to be one of the oligarchs. >> it benefitted him financially. that can be the quid pro quo that the people are trying to establish here. >> and this is kind of the sort of trump ethos. it's selling access to himself, is kind of the way that he rolls. and that is another example. >> you saw that, i thought when you said that, even the hotel he owned in washington. >> bingo. >> the old post office with all that money -- >> that he was leasing from the federal government. >> a lot of foreign governments were doing business there, renting rooms there. you saw at mar-a-lago, most, pretty much all of trump's business is done there. and they lose money, but mar-a-lago, where he became president, they upped the membership fees to make money that way. >> does david pecker have dirt on donald trump? >> well, the dirt he has on donald trump is out there. >> the reason i ask is because there was this question of the boxes. trump is obsessed with the boxes. and there were boxes of items that he wanted. >> i can sort of give a bit of insight into that because that's

safe, that's been referred to as a couple times as my foot rest, dino sajudin, i got his contract out because they wanted the names of the love child, and the safe wouldn't close. i had to sit there, turn the tv up loud enough to hammer the safe closed. >> i may never let you live that down. >> i want to stress that the files -- >> i'm following your home. >> we're all following you home. >> the material, the files they're referring to were old clips, old files, the revelations that are out there have been out there, and there was old tips. the revelations out there have been out there and there was a stunning moment whereafter the wall street journal report, the karen mcdougal deal, donald trump is furious with david pecker. he says it was someone on the inside and i was one of the sources. this is a catch and kill and if you use this term it will give me some cover.

>> good gracious, we are all following you home. suzanne craig, danny cevallos, who will be at your home later tonight, thank you so much. stack up next, pro-palestinian protests have continued to escalate on college campuses throughout the country. we have the latest. do you own a lot of bras,

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a wave of nationwide student activism is meeting an increasingly hostile, over-the- top police presence that is starting to feel like hysteria. more than 400 demonstrators have been taken into custody in the last eight days, including 57 people in a particularly

violent scene at the university of texas at austin. 108 at emerson college at boston and 93 at the university of southern california. at columbia university, which saw the first wave of suspensions and arrest, kicking off the nationwide movement, organizers now say negotiations with the university have resumed after a 30 hour pause. joining me now is nbc news correspondent antonia hylton, who was at columbia university today. you have been doing fantastic reporting. tell me what you are seeing. >> reporter: well, what i am saying is a campus that is extremely tense. negotiations are ongoing, everyone is at the table at the moment, but they are incredibly fragile and i'm not sure people understand that. as you mentioned people walked away from the table. students told me they were threatened with the idea of the national guard coming to campus, which made them lose trust, lose faith in administrators they know. now they are back at the table,

but even as they negotiate the students are in the encampment, training their friends about what to do with the nypd comes back. what to do if you are pepper sprayed if you have never experienced tear gas. so they are operating under the assumption that things could fall apart again and that is why this is so sensitive. i've been told by the early hours tomorrow morning, if we are not hearing many updates, that is not going to be a good sign. >> we are one week away from the anniversary of kent state. authorities in this country have fired on children, fired on students. it's happened before. this is part of our history. the other part is that young people when faced with threats and bullying on these campuses, they are not going to back down. this is like the 1960s. they will keep going. the students of duggan. >> reporter: it is like gasoline to a fire. that is what i hear not just from students at columbia, but i am still in touch with students at cornell and harvard who say they've been watching what is happening and it has inspired them to grow or create

new encampments. if the idea from the administration at columbia was we are going to bring the nypd in and have an easy commencement, that is not how this is going to turn out. although i have been told by the dean of the columbia journalism school that the national guard is off the table. >> the core of this is what they are seeing in gaza. they are seeing it on social media, seeing it with their own eyes and they are upset about it. the protests have been peaceful. the demonization has been that the students are the ones doing anti-semitic things. are they? >> reporter: let me clear this up. this is not a black and white, us versus them, very easy story. this is a story where when you visit the encampments you see significant numbers of jewish students, visibly jewish students, taking part in pro- palestinian protests. they are advocating for palestinians and the vestment and a cease-fire.

right now on the campus there is a group of christian nationalist associated pastors, associated with organizations who believe only christians should hold political office in the united states, who are advocating for israel. there are arab israelis i've met who are advocating for israel, so this is a situation where it is not easy to figure out who is to blame. who is on what side? i can tell you i've been going to this campus pretty much every day since last week when all of this started and i have yet to meet a student who was engaged in the kind of anti- semitic threats that we have seen online. that is not to say they are not in existence. i have seen it. not on the campus, on broadway, holding an incredibly anti- semitic sign, but he is not a student. i have not been able to find a students name and attach them to one of these incidents and that is why i urge reporters to

be careful. this is not a story of jewish versus muslim students or black versus white students, because so often people frame it that way. this is a story where if you are going to cover it you need to understand who you are talking to, what organizations they are associated with and what you really believe before you broadcast 10 images of images or photos you have taken. make it very clear the context of the story, because when you talk to students they tell me they are a very different generation. they are seeing images of children dying on their phones. they are horrified. their kids were political science majors and study this for years and kids getting into this just for the past few days because what they have seen transpire around the country. >> this is why i love a real journalist. antonia hylton, you are there doing the work. this is what we need journalism to do. don't make up stuff based on what you think. go and report or rely on an actual reporter. antonia hylton, thank you. well done.