we also spoke about the future of the republican party and his call for all of us to keep an open mind. i'll tell you what else we learned, listening to mr. cohen, he rebutted what mr. costello said. all of this leaves us following what trump started on saturday, a conversation about whether he'll be indicted but we have no reportable information that it would be tomorrow. that's the president's claim. as for the process, we'll keep following. if you want to connect with me, i'll remind you here, you can always connect with me on arimelber.com or @arimelber on social media. you can tell us what you thought of the dueling accounts from mr. costello and mr. cohen on this big case. thanks for spending time with "the beat" with ari melber. "the reidout" with joy reid is up next. tonight on "the reidout" -- >> folks, honestly, she's guilty

as hell. she's guilty as hell. i will say this. hillary clinton has to go to jail. okay. she has to go to jail. >> the party that has campaigned for more than six years on their plans to lock up their political opponents, well now they're crying foul now that one of their own, donald trump, is facing possible indictments for actual crimes. and as we await the first of possibly multiple criminal charges, republicans are all coming to trump's defense, as usual, and promising to haul anyone who dares to prosecute trump before congress. and we begin tonight with the potential indictment of donald j. trump over allegations he illegally paid hush money to adult film actress stormy daniels during his 2016 run for the presidency. the indictment of a former president would be a stunning moment in american history. full stop.

it's an event that looms as grand jurors heard today from attorney robert costello who was called to testify at trump's request. he was a legal adviser at one time to michael cohen. a trump fixer who said trump directed him to make that payment to ms. daniels. costello could be among the final witnesses in the manhattan grand jury investigation into the hush money scheme. we'll get to more on that shortly. but first, let's just recall that trump and his party once campaigned on a very specific promise about hillary clinton. >> and if i win, i am going to ask my attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to look into her crimes. >> she should be locked up. tell you right now. what she's done, what she's done, she ought to be ashamed of

herself. >> lock her up is right. [ cheers and applause ] >> lock them up. you should lock them up. lock up the bidens. lock up hillary. >> lock her up was the central theme of trump's 2016 campaign. along with build a wall and have mexico pay for it. it was the perfect distillation of the sexist way conservatives pile on women leaders and dangerous feminists. so much so that the slogan became republican gospel. but the frenzied vow to clap their political rivals behind bars is more than a rallying cry for republicans these days. it is their entire brand. their top priorities are less about the people who elected them and more about investigating long debunked conspiessary theories around the clintons along with president biden and his family. you can now tack on the manhattan district attorney's

office, run by alvin bragg, who has become a new target for maga republicans like jim jordan, who is demanding that bragg testify in congress about his investigation. they love saying lock him up, for their opponents. quite a different story when trump could be facing that very fate. talk of locking up trump, holding him accountable, suddenly we're in a banana republic. cue the spectacle of outrage. kevin mccarthy called just the prospect of a trump prosecution an outrageous abuse of power by a radical d.a. others called it a sham, stupid fake charges, utter and complete crap. let's not forget andy biggs with the warning, if they can come for trump, they can come for you. false start, team maga. there is no indictment yet. but now we know your defense. and it's pretty rich coming from actual insurrectionist apologists inside congress.

do they miss their own memo on how the entire republican platform is centered around locking up their political opponents based on nothing? d.a. bragg is not commenting but he has communicated to his team internally they will not be intimidated and federal and state law enforcement are preparing for the worst. all based on a trump post on his bootleg twitter, and all caps secrete about an imminent arrest and calling for his supporters to protest. remember what happened the last time he called on his patriots to protest? mike pence remembers. it was the day he was almost killed by a mob that wanted to hang him. they even brought a noose and everything. which is why in my opinion da n former vice president said trump was wrong for what he did. you think? again, he said this nine days ago. less than the fingers you can kunt on two hands. already, pence has changed his tune. calling just the possibility of the indictment of his former boss a politically charged prosecution. lock them up, except when it's

trump, which is exactly the way a trump banana republic would look like. joining me now, peter strzok, claire mccaskill, and charles blow, columnist for "the new york times." peter, i want to start with you. i want to play what mike pence, the full sort of quote, not the full quote, but i'm going to play a little bit of what he said because it feels vac ironic and i would love to get your take. here's mike pence. >> i'm taking aback at the idea of indicting a former president of the united states. at a time when there's a crime wave in new york city, the fact that the manhattan d.a. thinks indicting president trump is his top priority tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country. it feels like a platically charged prosecution here. >> he had all the erogenous zones on the far right. as someone they wanted to lock up yourself, what do you make of

sort of norm core republicans, used to be like mike pence, suddenly thinking, you know, maybe locking up trump for actual crimes would be an abrogation of the law? >> well, short answer is i think it tells you they're terrified still in early 2023 of donald trump and will be for the continuing future. look, to use mike pence's word in the clip, the clip tells you everything you need to know about mike pence. trump whipped the crowd on january 6th into a frenzy and they were chanting "hang mike pence." mike pence was sitting in apparently a loading dock underneath the capitol afraid to get into his secret service motorcade because he didn't know what was going to happen. so despite his life being threatened, for over hours, over the course of january 6th, despite being willing to talk about all of the horrible things that happened in the "wall street journal" editorial and his book, he's still afraid to denounce trump. he's still hiding from a grand

jury, still attempting to provide any information in a criminal course of law to provide information on what happened. i think what that tells you, everybody in the republican party is terrified about donald trump. still. and i don't see that changing, unfortunately. >> and the thing is, claire, they're trying to sell this as some sort of weaponization of government. first, they're stepping all over the supposed separation between the powers of the state. they were supposed to be the federalists here and the powers of the federal government, you touched trump. you have to come and talk to us. not true. but i am struck by the fact that they don't seem to recognize how much the federal government has operated to protect trump. i found this stunning. michael cohen did an interview this weekend with alex witt and reminded her of something i had forgotten. it went into the memory hole. geoffrey berman who used to be at the department of justice, he was supposed to uphold the law. at the time, this is what he wrote in his book four years after leaving office.

according to his book, berman's book, justice department top brass tried to shield trump, demanding berman's team of prosecutors scrub any reference to him in public law enforcement documents. and the attorney general at the time, bill barr, even tried to unravel michael cohen's prosecution by shopping around an alternative legal theory that in fact trump's right-hand man had not in fact broken campaign financial laws. they were literally, berman sort of admits to being leaned on by barr to not prosecute trump. and then they wound up only prosecuting at the federal level michael cohen for paying off somebody donald trump was sleeping with. so trump has been protected the whole time, claire. and now they're screaming bloody murder because he's been busted. your thoughts. >> yeah, well, trump not only has been protected, trump used the pardon, he used bill barr to basically wipe out a guilty plea by michael flynn. unheard of, as people tell you in the federal system, you don't

wipe out guilty pleas by criminal defendants, ever. one thing this incident should do is remind americans about checks and balances and the rule of law. i think a lot of americans get confused about the difference between federal prosecutors and state prosecutors. alvin bragg is a state prosecutor. nobody in congress can do diddley squat to him. the people that check him are the voters and judges. and the ethical considerations of his job. nobody in washington can pardon whoever is convicted by a local prosecutor. and this idea that republicans now are going after duly-elected prosecutors at the state level, by the way, who are prosecuting 99% of the crime in america, and doing it very well by and large, there may be some outliers who have made mistakes but the voters will have their way.

so alvin bragg is going to follow the facts and the law. and that's what makes all these folks so nervous. and by the way, i'm old fashioned, joy. i think somebody who is running for president should not be allowed to pay off a porn star in order to get elected pred. i just think that's wrong in america. >> that's because you're not a republican, claire. because they don't care. the morality is not even in it, charles. the reality is, if you build an entire political platform around locking up your political enemies for reasons you don't even specify. you're just going to lock her up, but then when your guy gets busted for actual crimes and you know how i know these are actual crimes and i'm not making up hyperbole, because michael cohen went to prison for three years for them. if it's illegal to do what michael cohen did, he did it for trump. they did it together. your thoughts. >> i mean, you know, the false equivalencies here are all over the place.

there is the mike pence false equivalency to pretend that some petty criminal who picks up something from a store and shoplifts is the same as a president of the united states who is a candidate violating campaign finance rules is the same thing. it is absolutely not. but they try to tie those things together as if they are the same. you know, there's the false equivalency that it happens on the right and it happens on the left. no one tried to politicize the department of justice to the degree that donald trump had. no one in the history of america tried to do it as hard as he did. it was just that they didn't allow him to do it. the crimes that they allege are happening with hunter biden, there is no equivalency. even what they say is involved in that to what jared kushner got after he left being trump's adviser in the white house from the saudis. there is no equivalency, and

there were no and still are no congressional hearings about that, but there are congressional hearings about hunter biden and their congressional hearings about looking into, you know, what happened with covid and the rules around that. the problem is that they want to make it one side does it and another side does it kind of conversation. it is not. america, it is not. there is no equivalency between what donald trump is alleged to have done, not just in this case about paying off stormy daniels but all of the cases in which he is being investigated. and what any other president has done, any other candidate, i'm now referencing hillary was alleged to have done, no one. this is in a league of its own. if there's a danger of america being broken by this prosecution, you have already skipped over the fact that donald trump already broke the norms. already. >> and peter, i mean, there's been no leak.

they're trying to make it sound like d.a. alvin bragg leaked i'm prosecuting trump. no, the only person who said trump is going to jail is donald trump. that was on his pretend twitter that we learned he might be arrested on tuesday. that is from him, to the point now where the fbi and the nypd are preparing for potential violence and trump is planning if he's not locked up to do a waco rally, as if he's trying to sort of, i don't know, memify and signal a very dark period and violent one in american history that involved a cult, which he also has. just for a moment if you could talk about how law enforcement should be thinking about this, because you have federal and state law enforcement, they do have to work together because he basically is sort of soft calling for another january 6th. >> i don't think it's anything soft about it, joy. he's absolutely trying to violate the space, trying to implicitly encourage violence. when he says protest, protest, protest, he's not saying anything about doing it

peacefully. he knows what happens when he says that, because he knows what happened on january 6th. not only is he going to waco, joy, he's going to waco literally on the 30th anniversary of the standoff at the branch of the devidian compound. there is a symbolagy there thad should not be lost on anybody. when you see thee things coming out of his mouth, when you see state, local, law enforcement getting together and trying to decide how we're going to safely get him to new york city and get him to his initial appearance, he very deliberately over all of these whatever you call them, truths, tweets, whatever you call them, he's implicitly calling for his followers to get riled up, to intimidate other people and try to stop things from happening. no doubt in my mind. you see it in the same platform, on all these fringe websites where it's kind of trickling out and you're getting the same sort

of chatter you had in late december and early january of 2021. >> and yet, claire, you were a prosecutor, state prosecutor. the response of the people who also were at risk of being murdered on january 6th, 2021, the republicans, is to say how dare they touch trump? you, state prosecutor, come here and explain yourself. has that ever happened to you? you ever have to testify before congress because of a prosecution you were doing? >> no, the only time i was asked to testify is when we were doing some strategies on preventing crime, and we were talking about drug courts and how effective they were. this is really a dark day, and i hope if and when he is indicted we don't make it a partisan party. this is serious solemn stuff. he broke the law. it should be enforced. alvin bragg just needs do his job and shut out the noise. >> it is a mundane fact that law breaking is followed by

prosecution. this is not something special for donald trump, and it shouldn't be special in the sense he gets away with it because he is donald trump. claire is right, this is not a party. this is the way the rule of law is supposed to work and that's the way it works, folks on the right. you just have to suck it up and get used to it if it happens. thank you very much. >> up next on "the reidout," the hush money grand jury hears from a witness trying to impeach michael cohen's testimony. "the reidout" continues after this. you loved doing... before your asthma got in the way? get back to the things you love... with fasenra. fasenra is an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma. having too many eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, can cause inflammation and asthma symptoms. fasenra is designed to target and remove eosinophils and helps prevent asthma attacks. fasenra is 1 dose every 8 weeks. fasenra can help patients to breathe better.

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donald trump made the baseless claim over the weekend that tomorrow is going to be the day he gets arrested in the hush money payment investigation. but the truth is we still don't know what charges if any district attorney alvin bragg's manhattan grand jury will send out or when. what we know is trump and his team seem really worried about

what trump's former long time fixer michael cohen has told the grandiary and what receipts he brought with him. today, the grand jury heard from robert costello, a former legal adviser to cohen and present lawyer for rudy giuliani at the request of trump's legal team in their attempts to try to discredit cohen. here is costello speaking to reporters following his grand jury appearance and michael cohen responding to costello with our colleague, ari melber, in the last hour. >> michael cohen told us that he was approached by stormy daniels' lawyer and stormy daniels had negative information that she wanted to put in a lawsuit against trump. so michael cohen decided on his own, that's what he told us, on his own to see if he could take care of this. so he sat with the lawyer for stormy daniels. they negotiated a nondisclosure agreement for $130,000. >> it's absolutely not true. i don't know what conversations he's referring to. he's making up so many stories

here. because he's playing to a party of one. he's doing what everybody does, and look, i said the same thing to jim jordan and mark meadows, and i i said know the game that you're playing. i know the play you're playing because i wrote the playbook. >> joining me now is joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and professor at the university of alabama school of law, and former federal prosecutor glenn kirschner. both are msnbc legal analysts. what do you make of it, let me read lanny davis' statement. mr. cohen was available for over two hours today, and we are pleased to report that mr. cohen was not needed. once again, we repeat the fact the documents speak for themselves, facts do matter. what do you make of the fact while he was available, the grand jury did not call him or the prosecutor did not call him as a rebuttal witness? >> well, it sounds like the grand jurors were not as impressed with mr. costello's testimony as mr. costello was. to hear him speak, he had

completely just eviscerated michael cohen's veracity, his truthfulness. if that was the case, you might expect the grand jurors would have quested as they're entitled to, to hear again from mr. cohen. the fact that they didn't suggests that there weren't major concerns. of course, we don't know for certain how that went, but the reality is the grand jury will be asked by the d.a.'s office to vote on returning an indictment, and they are authorized to do that if there's probable cause to believe a crime was committed. so it seems that this stunt that trump pulled today with costello didn't ring the bell they hoped it would ring and prevent an indictment. >> and i don't understand his argument, honestly, glenn. he's saying that michael cohen, who did not have an affair with stormy daniels, on his own went and took out a heloc for $130,000, and just on his own paid it, paid this money to stormy daniels just because he

wanted to. who does that? why would anybody, unless you know you're going to get reimbursed, and then he's trying to also make people believe that donald trump, who doesn't even pay his bills, just said, you know what, usually i don't do this, but get this $130,000 back, and all that's coincidental. i don't understand why they called him, this costello guy. i don't understand his argument at all. >> i would be surprised if the grand jurors were as gullible as the people who are still hanging on to donald trump not withstanding his crimes and his grifts and his lies. i actually think it was a pretty significant tactical blunder by team trump putting a mouth piece for donald trump before the grand jury. because let's assume that robert costello actually had some important information, some really serious damaging information about michael cohen. first of all, i don't think the grand jury would be moved because they have been hearing a

mountain of evidence about the crimes of donald trump. but what did team trump succeed in doing? they showed their cards. because had they saved robert costello for trial and sprung on the prosecutors and the trial jury any deeply damaging information costello might have had to offer, maybe the prosecutors would have been caught short. maybe it would have impressed the trial jury. but now, the prosecution can investigate anything costello said. they can follow it up. they can debunk it, and they can be completely prepared to meet the force of it at trial. this was a tactical blunder by team trump. >> let me just play what michael cohen said. this is what michael cohen said to ari about what they thought they were getting out of costello. take a look. >> in fact, it's a typical donald j. trump play out of the playbook.

figure out how you're going to muddy the water as best as you can possibly can. denigrate the person, disparage them, they did the same thing to cassidy hutchinson, to anyone and everyone that is for the truth. and the beauty, the beauty that i have is i have facts. i have truth. i have the documentation. let me rephrase that, the district attorney has the documentation in order to validate every single statement that i have made. >> and joyce, they also -- he has recordings. let me play one real quick. this is michael cohen talking to donald trump and weisselberg, the business manager, about paying karen mcdougal, the other person trump had an affair with. take a look. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david. i spoke to allen about it. when it comes to the financing

which will be -- >> what financing? >> well, i'll have to pay -- >> cash. >> no, no. >> the idea he is some rogue actor, joyce, makes no sense. he's consulting with donald trump about paying the other lady. what makes you think he's going to go and take out that much money, six figures to hand over to someone he didn't sleep with. that dog don't hunt. >> well, that's exactly right. and this is how it works if you're a prosecutor. you don't just put michael cohen, convicted felon, on the witness stand and ask the jury to believe him. you put him on the witness stand and you corroborate what he testifies to with evidence. you corroborate everything that's material that he says. whether it's testimony from another witness, whether it's documents. you have to give the jury a reason to believe him. i mean, michael cohen, this is a man who wrote a book called "revenge" and on cross-examination, donald trump's lawyers will

cross-examine him and try to expose his motives and say he's making it all up. the prosecution has nat burden of proving it, but they have something very important that they can argue to the jury after they do that. it's this, the prosecution didn't pick michael cohen as their key witness. donald trump picked michael cohen as the key witness. donald trump hired michael cohen. used him tactics, and that ultimately is the picture that the jury will see. >> and what he got convicted of was all stuff for donald trump. really quickly, i want to ask you, glenn, about this attempt to quash the georgia investigation. donald trump's folks, they released this brief in which they're trying to claim based on the fifth and 14th amendments that fani willis in georgia should not be able to prosecute him. your thoughts? >> yeah, usually we see a motion to quash when a subpoena has been served and the witness that has been subpoenaed wants to argue the prosecutor doesn't really have a lawful basis to issue the subpoena. so the witness will file or the

attorney will file a motion to quash the subpoena. asking the judge to rule that the subpoena is unenforceable. so a motion to quash a grand jury report recommending that certain indictments be handed down doesn't really feel like a procedural thing. i recognize we're in sort of uncharted waters here. but when you look -- i haven't absorbed it all, but when you look at what's been filed it feels like they're fighting the battle in the court of public opinion, not really in a court of law. this motion will be denied. >> they look scared. they seem real scared. joyce vance and glenn kirschner, we'll see. thank you both very much. still ahead, republicans try to weaponize the trump investigations with calls for investigations into investigators. when it was timp for a medicare plan mom couldn't decide. but thanks to the right plan promise from unitedhealthcare she got a medicare plan expert to help guide her with the right care team behind her.

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it's normal. with calhope's free and secure mental health resources, it's easy to get the help you and your loved ones need when you need it the most. call our warm line at (833) 317-4673 or live chat at calhope.org today. when republicans scream about the persecution of donald trump, they willfully ignore that he was a deeply flawed candidate with a long checkered past. or what many of them used to say about him. >> this man is a pathological liar. he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. he lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. donald trump is a serial philander philanderer, and he boasts about

it. >> i believe the republican party has been kind here. >> he says he's for the little guy but he built a lot of businesses on the backs of the little guy. >> and yet, as per usual, those same republicans are circling the wagons around trump and in an unprecedented and legally dubious move, house republicans are demanding a state prosecutor leading an active investigation, alvin bragg, appear before them to explain himself. talk about the weaponization of the federal government. this morning in a letter to bragg, jim jordan, who let's face it, has some appearance looking the other way when it comes to crimes on the ohio state wrestling team, allegedly, along with james comer who called for the biden family to be investigated for supposed crimes joined brian steel, an unremarkable republican from wisconsin, in requesting bragg's testimony, plus documents and communications related to the former president. joining me is kurt bardella, former republican who is now a democratic strategist. that's not a normal thing you ask for, kurt. you don't ask a state prosecutor to produce the documents they're

using in a prosecution. >> no, joy. let's be clear here. i spent years working for republicans on the house oversight committee. i know how investigations are supposed to work. i know what congressional oversight is supposed to look like. this is not that. this is a deliberate effort, a partisan effort, to try and interfere and obstruct an ongoing investigation so they can acquire information which they will certainly just turn over to donald trump and gift him a leg up as he tries to mount a defense against what we expect will be a pending indictment. it's just a flagrant abuse of power here. listen, congressional oversight is looking at the federal government, looking ought what resources are being used, what taxpayer resources are being used to make sure there's no waste, fraud, mismanagement going on. looking at a d.a.'s investigation before an investigation is concluded, before charges have been filed, is not the purview of a congressional oversight committee. what's going on right now is an embarrassing abuse of power, and

major damage to the separation of powers that we're supposed to have in this country. >> let me read you kevin mccarthy's tweet because he's a pernicious faker or maybe he's not faking. they were at orlando at newly desanticized disney world and he tweeted, d.a. bragg has, quote, different rules for political opponents. then he added this really gratuitous dog whistle that republicans stopped the radical d.c. crime law and we'll investigate any use of federal funds that are used to facilitate the perversion of the justice by soros backed d.a.s across the country. that's a little anti-semitic because you know when they say soros, they mean jewish. >> yeah, i mean, they're just going back to their greatest hits playbook here. notice how nobody in the republican party has anything to say about the actual crimes that donald trump is about to be

charged with. they don't have anything to say about the criminal activity, alleged criminal activity that trump and his campaign engaged in. they want to blow right past that and go back to their greatest hits rhetoric. to gaslight all of us, and i don't think it's going to work. i think this is a tired old playbook that we have seen time and again, and all the while, we have seen now the american people don't care about these republican baseless witch hunts masquerading as investigations. they want their lawmakers to focus on stuff that matters to them in their day-to-day lives. the fact republicans are at this retreat right now which probably is being paid for with taxpayer dollars and brainstorming ways they can act as a legal defense entity for donald trump to act as the opposition research department for the trump legal defense team is an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars and in my opinion, a violation of the oath of office they're supposed to take. >> an interesting drama in florida over how long it was going to take ron desantis to weigh in. he was pretty quiet. then nicky fried, the democratic

chairwoman, maybe the best they have had in a while, trolled him for it on twitter. he said, i have to say something. here's what he said. >> i don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star, to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. i just can't speak to that. but what i can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush money payments, that's an example of pursuing a political agenda. >> i notice he said porn star hush money twice. so did donald trump. this was his response. ron will probably find out about false accusations and fake stories in all caps some time in the future as he gets older, wiser, and better known. when he's unfairly and illegally

attacked by a woman, even classmates under age or possibly a man. i'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like i do, and that is over a picture that allegedly from midas touch of ron desantis with some teenagers when he used to teach high school, partying with them. thoughts? >> it's just a race to the bottom on the republican side, joy. first of all, you notice how when people of color are being murdered by law enforcement, republicans have nothing to say about our justice system, but the minute that a white billionaire who has a lot of power is brought to scrutiny, all of a sudden, our justice system is unfair. it's inequitable. it's amazing to find this out, that law enforcement might not be on the up and up, according to republicans now. ron desantis is trying to have his cake and eat it too. if any of these republicans want to be successful in toppling donald trump, you're not going to be able to do so doing it

halfway. you can't try to give him a slap across the face but on the other pander to his voters, pander to his base, try to cover for him and make him out to be innocent. that's not going to work. you have to go all in or you're going to find out just like scott walker, just like ted cruz, just like marco rubio, just like jeb bush that it don't work. >> that's lil' marco to you. it sounds like he's gearing up some oppo on ron. we'll see what that is. that sounds like a threat. >> up next on "the reidout," just days after becoming the third head of state ever indicted on war crimes charges, vladimir putin visits the destroyed occupied city of mar eopal from which many ukrainian children were taken. more after this. ♪ ♪ we're the ones getting it done. we're managing type 2 diabetes and heart risk. we're on it with jardiance. join the growing number of people who are on it with the once-daily pill, jardiance. jardiance not only lowers a1c,

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mariupol is the site of the worst tragedies of the war, with at least 600 civilians killed in the shelling of a theater, where they were seeking refuge. it's the site of horrific unforgettable images like this pregnant woman being wheeled away in a stretcher. the most galling part of this propaganda aup was putin's trip to a mariupol playground as well as a children's center and art school in illegally annexed crimea. notably, the arrest warrant from the international criminal court calls putin allegedsly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from ukraine to russia. many of those children are from mariupol. kind of obscene death and destruction will haunt the world forever. from a strategic vantage point, putin miscalculated how difficult it would be to invade and occupy a country that doesn't want them there. not the first time such a miscalculation has caused devastation. 20 years ago today, the united

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beginning of the worst american foreign policy disaster in recent history. as u.s. and coalition forces invaded iraq. it followed and air assault propagandized as shock and all that cleared the way for shocked troops. president george w. bush baked in the invasion as an effort to free the iraqi people from

saddam hussein's dictatorship, and to find hidden weapons of mass destruction. having already pushed his esteemed secretary of state colin powell out front to sell that lie based on faulty intelligence. there were also claims from vice president dick cheney of ties between hussein's government and al-qaeda, the terrorist organization between behind the september 11th attacks. none of that was true. but not before a lot of people died. as david cohen notes and mother jones, before donald trump's big lie it was george w. bush's big lie that launch that catastrophic war, adding that bush and cheney were not misled by false intelligence. they were promoting false information. and bush himself promoted a different type of false information, weeks after the invasion in his infamous mission accomplished speech in may, on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, declaring combat operations over. that was not true either. the invasion turned into an eight-year occupation that expose the united states as not the world's policeman, but a nation that could torture him present iraqis at the abu ghraib prison, with guards

documenting abuse and graphic photos. in a nation that sent hundreds of accused detainees to a gulag at guantánamo bay, since 2002, and none remain charged with a crime, in some cases because they were tortured. so the testimonies unusable. bush's lives further destroyed americans trust in government and broke our politics, giving lies to none other than donald trump, who during his 2016 campaign, pointed to the lies and bad decisions by bush's team, as his argument, to voters. despite the fact that when it started, he supported the war. most importantly, though, there is a devastating human toll of that catastrophic war that began two decades ago today. a brown university study found between 275 and 306,000 iraqi civilians were killed by direct violence following the u.s. invasion, in addition to more than 1000 american military personnel and contractors who lost their lives, and tens of thousands injured. joining me now is jon soltz, chairman of votevets. he is a two tour iraq war

veteran, serving as u.s. army captain during the initial invasion, and is a major at the end of the war. jon, i'm so glad that you are available to talk to me today. to me, one of the biggest legacies of the war where the lies. you know, two thirds of americans believed that war in iraq because of afghanistan, and that was not true. but still, most people believed the big lie. what do you think the legacy of that war is? obviously, the people who died, and the people who were injured, unconsciously to talk -- >> it's interesting, all weekend i started reading the news. and i think about the war every day. i mean, there's not a day that i don't think about it. but i met you many years ago, arguing against putting more troops back in iraq during the surge, which is still debated in the military. you, know there's a lot of people that want to stay, well, the war is done. but it was about as the invasion because it's simply just put on the presentation. but a lot of people now are questioning the war, and that

this was done with bad information or false information where these types of things. i look at all of them, and people say to me all the time, how did you know? how did you know that this was bogus? and the truth is they knew, too. a lot of the people knew. but the question was, could you question or stand up, or look past what you saw from, you know, certain networks and what they were spewing at the time. could you look past, you know, the vanishing of the dixie chicks, and do some critical thinking to realize that maybe said on hussein wants people to think he has weapons of mass destruction. and fundamentally, that is still the core challenge that we face, which is our truly misinterpretation of the perception that he portrayed and then essentially we destabilize the entire region. and then essentially w destabilfor many, many years. >> i mean, you know, even the tie to get no, this was his global war on terror we were allowed to open this gulag. but they were torturing people there to try to make them say

that iraq was involved, right? and they were not. i mean, we went to the point of torturing people to try to make them like, to say that somehow, saddam hussein was a terrible human being, but he was not involved in that. and the way that they manipulated peoples rage and fear over 9/11 to get into iraq, i still think is one of the biggest sort of political crimes, and crimes of immorality coming from a presidential administration. >> yes, i live in fort -- sometimes, people are like, oh, you are not into democratic politics. but you served in the war. i don't think i could ever, you know, be a republican because they light me into a war. and when i went to iraq, i was with major general, we left germany. we wanted to get to iraq to get combat patches. the war was over. we needed to get to baghdad, you know, i certainly believe that stuff. and i think that for me, one of

the reasons i had such a hard time after my first deployment when i returned home to go to graduate school was i had to really come to realize a shun that i was misled, or lied to. and over the weekend i was watching clips of people, documentaries, 15, 16, 17 years ago, and now the opinion today, and i think a lot of veterans have gone through that, with you know, because there was this huge sense of pride, and it's really hard to find out that your president or your government may have lied to you. and in regards to the gitmo stuff, i would just stress that, you know, we didn't get saddam hussein torturing people. you know, that is not a tactic that works, and it's a reason against the army field manuals. torture creates false information because people will tell you whatever you want to hear. but certainly, the perception of gitmo supercharged, even today, some challenges that we face in regards to rule of law and democracy promotion and undermining sort of our constitutional thesis. >> you know what's interesting,

you know, donald trump sort of the gated george w. bush who i think would have gone down as the worst president in american history but for the presence of donald trump. but the legacy of this is, according to studies, some 300,000 troops are suffering from major depression or ptsd, from serving in wars in iraq and afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries. and it was all for a lie. >> yeah, that is such a complicated question. i mean, i always tell -- safe like this. i, wars never end. you know, the people who fight in the war, they never really -- but the war will last forever. and for these folks -- i think that's the legacy of it. >> absolutely. jon soltz, thank you, thank you so much for being here. that is tonight's reidout. all in with chris hayes starts now. ♪ ♪ ♪ now. tonight on all in -- >>