The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC. Just to get oriented as to where we are in this process right now, this impeachment trial of the former president and sort of what what we learned today as a country because of that process, what started today is up to 16 hours of the prosecutors, the House impeachment managers making their factual case. And I say up to 16 hours because it appears they're not going to take all of the 16 hours that are allotted to them.

They have been coming in sort of under time in terms of what we expected, not just yesterday on day one, when they were arguing the constitutionality of the trial itself. And they finished the day by giving back more than a half an hour of their time that they chose not to use. But also today, when they started factually laying out their case, they ended today after having used less than six hours of their allotted eight hours for the day.

Now, they can't take more than eight hours in any one day. So even if they take all eight of their hours tomorrow, they will not be using all the hours allotted to them. They will not be using all 16 hours to make their case, just as they did not use their portion of the four hours that was allotted to them yesterday to make their constitutional case. And again, what this means is just that the prosecuting side seems to be not just on track, but potentially ahead of schedule, getting done what they want to get done with time to spare.

Overall, the way the schedule works is that the House impeachment managers get to lay out their case today and obviously into tonight, they will also have tomorrow and into tomorrow night, as I mentioned, eight total hours available to them tomorrow. And they could use as much of that or as little of that as they want tomorrow. But no matter how early they finish tomorrow, President Trump's defense team will not take over until Friday. And then once the defense team starts on Friday, they also will have two eight hour days available to them.

They will have 16 hours total to mount in their defense, no more than eight hours in each of the two days. And I raise this now, just so you can think about how the next few days are going to go. But also I think it helps me figure something else out that has otherwise been a little bit of a mystery, that plan, that expectation right now about which side is going to go on, which days that may shed a little bit of light on this strange and otherwise sort of inexplicable thing we saw from President Trump's defense counsel when it came to scheduling the trial.

We've talked about this a couple of times in the last few days, largely because I didn't get why this happened. It was unexpected news a few days ago when former President Trump's defense team asked for the trial schedule to be changed. They asked for the trial to be stopped on Saturday because one of former President Trump's lawyers, David Shewn, is religiously observant in such a way that he doesn't work on the Jewish Sabbath. He doesn't work after sundown on Friday or all day on Saturday.

So they asked if the trial schedule could be changed so that the trial would not convene on Saturday. The Senate acceded to that request. They said, sure, we understand we will meet on Sunday instead of meeting on Saturday. Sure. Go for it. What was strange is that once that request was acceded to, once they got the schedule changed in response to that request, they then said, OK, never mind, we actually don't want the trial to stop on Saturday.

After all, it was a weird reversal. Now, of course, I don't know for sure, but one consequence of that change in course, that weird 180 oh, never mind. We don't want that change. After all, this relates potentially to the way the defense is going to lay out. I mean, if they weren't going to hold the trial on Saturday, that would mean President Trump's defense team would be offering an interrupted defense. They would be able to offer their first eight hours, up to eight hours of defense on Friday.

Then they'd be taking a whole day off on Saturday and then they'd have their second day on Sunday. That's what would have happened had they got the trial schedule that they requested. I think it's possible that once they realized that's what they've done to themselves, they'd put a day off in the middle of their defense case. They may have realized that was not ideal. Now, because they've rescinded their request, they will get two days, one after the other.

Right. We'll have two days for the prosecution today and tomorrow, and then we'll have two straight days from the defense, Friday and Saturday. So the reversal on them wanting that change in the schedule might make more sense along those lines. Speaking of not ideal, though, multiple news organizations have now reported that President Trump was deeply displeased with his defense team when he saw them in action yesterday, particularly, forgive me, but the sort of Bart Simpson meets Foghorn Leghorn routine that we got from the lawyer for President Trump, who went first yesterday, Mr.

Bruce Castor of Philadelphia, the president's other main lawyer, David Schoen, is the one who's religiously observant of the Sabbath on Saturday, even though Mr. Schoen has, on behalf of the defense team, withdrawn that request for the trial schedule to change, to take Saturdays off to accommodate his religious observance.

Mr. Schoen is religiously observant and can't work after sundown on Friday or all day Saturday. That means that David Stone will be out of pocket for the defense team Friday after five and all day Saturday. So it may be that Kastor, the guy who was such a disaster yesterday, who the president is reportedly so disgusted with, it may be that he's the one who will have to run the whole second day of President Trump's defense. Friday night and all day Saturday.

That does not seem promising for the president's defense, given Mr. Caster's performance on day one and particularly how apparently angry President Trump was and disappointed. I don't know if he gets disappointed, how angry the president was seeing Mr. Caster's performance on day one. So they tried to change the schedule.

They then changed it back. They now will get two days in a row, but the second day can't be done by David shown. It will have to be done by Kastor. Trump reportedly hated Caster's initial performance. Their only other option is if they go for one of the other people they have at the very last minute added to their legal team. The other main lawyer on their legal team is apparently this Michael Vanderveer and also a Philadelphia lawyer. Mr. VanDerBeek today had to publicly deny that he recently told one of his other clients that President Trump was a, quote, f ing crook.

Mr. Vandeven did defend a guy who was prosecuted for trying to hack into the IRS to get Trump's tax returns. That guy, the defendant in that case, says his lawyer, Mr. Vandeven, told him during the course of representing him that Trump was an f ing crook. That was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday. Mr Vandervoort today denied he ever said such a thing in a written statement, but that's awkward.

Mr. VanDerBeek is also not denying the fact that he did sue President Trump in the lead up to the twenty twenty election, which is not that long ago. Presumably Mr. Trump is not happy with either of those things, but who knows? Vanderlyn may basically be his other option besides the Foghorn Leghorn guy for running the whole second day of his defense.

We shall see the president's defense again will not start until the day after tomorrow, we'll see the prosecution. They had their first day to day. They'll have their second day tomorrow. President Trump's defense will start on Friday. We will see how it goes. It's going to be fascinating either way.

We have now seen two rounds of argument from the prosecution side, from the impeachment managers now on day one yesterday, the substance of what they were arguing was what Maryland congressman, the lead impeachment manager, Jamie Raskin, laid out his constitutional contention at the very beginning and the very pithy phrase that he chose for it. He made this argument that there's no Jan exception from impeachment that allows presidents free reign to commit crimes right before they leave office. Mr. Trump's lawyers and apparently forty four Republican senators contend that a president can't be tried on impeachment charges after he left office.

If that was the case, then a president could simply do whatever lawless things he wanted to do in January, in his final days in office, safe in the knowledge that the Senate wouldn't have time to put him on trial for those crimes before he left office so he could get away with any crimes he wanted. The impeachment managers argued yesterday that there's no way the founders intended for there to be this giant loophole this January exception within impeachment. Otherwise, all presidents who lost elections would essentially be invited to commit whatever high crimes and misdemeanors they wanted to commit in order to try to overthrow the results of the election or depose the incoming president who had defeated them.

Because it's the end of their term, there's no time to impeach them. Now, the vast majority of constitutional scholars agree with the prosecutors. They agree with the House impeachment managers on that point. And indeed, their argument carried the day yesterday in a fifty six forty four vote at the end of the day, by which by which the Senate decided that a president can be tried by the Senate for the impeachment charge laid against him by the House in this case in January, even though he's no longer president today.

But in terms of understanding where we are in this overall process, that really was the substantive theme of their presentation on day one, no January exception, you're not immune from prosecution for what you did just because you're gone from the presidency now. That was day one.

Their argument carried the day that is now for the purposes of this trial, a settled matter, the substantive theme of their presentation for today, day two, which, of course, is the start of them laying out the factual basis for their incitement charge against the president.

The basic theme for most of the day today is that what happened on January six didn't come out of nowhere. That this was a long plot and that therefore the president's culpability for inciting insurrection, for inciting the violence that happened at the US Capitol on January 6th is evident in part because the violence on January 6th was undeniably foreseeable. It was foreseeable for any reasonable person to expect that violence would result when the president did what he did on January 6th and in the days leading up to it.

And they made that case by going back a number of months to when the president first started really priming his supporters to only see the twenty twenty election results as legitimate. If Trump was declared the winner of that election, if Trump was declared the loser of that election, he told them explicitly hundreds of times for months on end that they should not consider those election results to be legitimate. Those election results should not count. He does sort of set the predicate for what would happen if he lost the election.

He would try to nullify or void the election results. He would proclaim himself the winner. He would try to delegitimize the real results of the election. And his supporters should expect that if the election couldn't be counted on to give an answer about who ought to be the president, then he would try to hold on to power by some other way, by some other means, rather than just by competing fairly in the election.

That's what he would do. That's what he would expect them to help him do. He laid it out over a period of months and promised to him that that's how it would go. And part of the reason a reasonable person should have known that violence was a likely outcome of the president's actions on January 6th is because, as the president made this case over a period of months. Violence and armed confrontation by the president's supporters had already happened, had already been the consequence of his statements about the election even before January 6th, and President Trump knew that he knew that this line of argument to his supporters had led to violence already.

Rationally, it could therefore be counted on to lead to violence. Again, it would lead to more violence if he upped the stakes in making this argument to his followers, particularly if he directed them all to react to his comments and physically be in the same place at the US Capitol while he continued to incite them in this way.

I mean, that's the case that they made today, that the violence on January 6th was foreseeable and therefore that incitement charge should stick because he knew the violence that would ensue. On November 5th, he tweeted in all capital letters, as if shouting commands, quote, Stop the count, stop the fraud.

The same day as those tweets, around one hundred Trump supporters showed up in front of the Maricopa County Election Center in Phoenix, some of them carrying rifles, literally trying to intimidate officials to stop the count, just as President Trump had commanded.

This was dangerous. It was scary. And it was a blatant act of political intimidation.

In Philadelphia that same day, police investigated an alleged plot to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted.

Police took at least one man into custody who was carrying a weapon.

And this happened all over in Atlanta, in Detroit and in Milwaukee, his supporters used armed force to try to disrupt lawful counting of votes votes because they bought into Trump's big lie that the election was stolen from them.

President Trump's months of inflaming and inciting his supporters had worked. They believed it was their duty to quite literally fight to stop the count, so they showed up at election centers across the country to do just that.

This is a fraud on the American public.

This is an embarrassment to our country.

We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.

Stop, stop. Taking it from us?

Yeah, we were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret. They will destroy America, right? O o o o o o. And there it is. They had bought into his big lie and you may say, well, he did know that they take up arms, but when he did know when it was all over the news. President Trump didn't stop. For anyone who says Donald Trump didn't know the violence he was inciting, I ask you to consider his supporters tried to drive a bus off the highway in the middle of a day to intimidate his opponents campaign workers.

And his response was to tweet the video of the incident that had fight music, joke about it and call those individuals in that incident patriots.

And once again, Donald Trump's praise worked to incite them further, emboldened by that praise, they remained ready to fight, ready to stand back and stand by.

This link is not hypothetical, just like we saw with the proud boy showing up in full force on January six. Donald Trump's encouragement of this attack made sure his supporters were ready for the next one.

The caravan bus attack had been organized by a Trump supporter named Keithley leading up to the attack on our capital of January six.

Mr. Lee teamed up with other supporters to fundraise to help to bring people to Washington, D.C. for that day. The morning of the attack, he filmed footage of the capital, pointed out the flimsiness of fencing, and then addressed to supporters before the attack, saying, quote, As soon as you all get done hearing president, you all get to the capital. We need to surround this place. During the attack, he used the bullhorn to call out for the mob to rush in.

He later went to the rotunda himself and then back outside to urge the crowd to come inside.

These are the people the President Trump cultivated who were standing by.

This was about foreseeability, the foreseeability of the violence on January six, the House impeachment managers today went back before the election to show that the president knew. Everybody knew because it happened in public. We all knew and he knew that violence on January 6th in D.C. was foreseeable. They used all these previous incidents of violence by the president's supporters related to the election to give weight to the contention that he knew exactly what he was getting into on January 6th, that his previous experience with his supporters reacting violently, seeking violent at times armed confrontation in response to the president's words.

That shows that any reasonable person and indeed President Donald Trump on January 6th could have foreseen that his words and actions that day would lead to violence on that day.

And then it was what was kind of one of the big reveals of the day. The managers introduced some new evidence about the permit for the Trump rally on January 6th in D.C., evidence that goes beyond the idea that the violence that day was just foreseeable and shows how the president actually intervened to change the plans of that day. That changed the plans for that day to make violence more likely than it otherwise would have been.

On December 19th, President Trump tweeted his save the date for January six, he told his supporters to come to D.C. for a big protest the day billing it as wild.

Just days later, Women for America first amended their permit to hold their rally on January six pursuant to the president's save the date instead of after the inauguration. This was deliberate.

Reports confirm that the president himself, President Trump, became directly involved with the planning of the event.

Women for America first had initially planned for the rally goers to remain at the Ellipse until the counting of the state electoral slates first was completed, just like they had remained at Freedom Plaza after the second million man march.

In fact, the permits stated in no uncertain terms that the march from the Ellipse was not permitted.

It was not until after President Trump and his team became involved in the planning that the march from the Ellipse to the Capitol came about in direct contravention of the original permit.

This was not a coincidence. None of this was Donald Trump over many months, cultivated violence, praised it, and then when he saw the violence his supporters were capable of. He channeled it to his big, wild, historic event.

He organized January six with the same people that had just organized a rally resulting in substantial violence and made absolutely sure this time these violent rally goers wouldn't just remain in place. He made sure that those violent people would literally march right here to our steps from the Ellipse to the Capitol to stop the steel.

Delegate Stacey Plaskett, who represents the US Virgin Islands, is doing a phenomenal job with her portion of the presentation today from the House impeachment managers. This new evidence from the managers today bolsters reporting from New York Times a couple of weeks ago that there hadn't been a plan for the rally goers to march on the actual capital until the Trump White House got involved in planning that rally and essentially made it their event. That is when they changed the wrap. The plans of the rally goers would march from the rally grounds to the Capitol building because Trump wanted that.

The New York Times had reported that within the last couple of weeks. Stacy Plaskett today in the Senate impeachment trial with the receipts showing that the permit, in fact, never had a accommodation for that. That was something the Trump White House wanted to do. President knew his supporters were primed for violence. He knew that his words had previously spurred them to violence multiple times. He arranged his January 6th rally to become a march on the Capitol. The impeachment managers today essentially dared senators to look at all that evidence and try to believe, try to maintain that Donald Trump didn't know what he was inciting that day.

I think the most powerful part of the day, though, came from house manager Stacey Plaskett, who you just saw, and Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. They're both experienced lawyers. They're both excellent speakers. And lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin left it to Plaskett and Swalwell today to do in the painstaking work of recreating minute by minute really what the attack was once it happened, what the character of it was in ways that we had never seen before. And I will be honest with you, there is no way that I can just like sum this up and describe it to you in a way that will do it justice while this part of the presentation was happening live.

I sent notes to all the producers who work on the show. You guys, how on earth are we going to summarize this? I sent notes to other hosts on this network. I sent notes to executives on this network. And trust me, I never ask executives about anything, but I felt like I needed help and advice. How do we summarize something like this? I don't actually think we can sort of, you know, give it a thumbnail summary in a way that fully captures what they did.

I'm very happy to tell you that MSNBC is actually going to play the bulk of it at midnight Eastern tonight. If you weren't able to see it live today, you will definitely want to see that tonight at midnight. But what they presented in that part of the president's impeachment trial today was essentially a visual autopsy of what happened, how the pro Trump mob broke into the capital, what they did once they were inside the violence they committed toward law enforcement, much of which we had never seen before.

Honestly, we'd seen accounts of police officers, injuries in FBI, indictments of some of the rioters. We'd heard from the police officers unions about how many officers were injured and even hospitalized. But we didn't really see the combat that police officers were in with the president's mob for hours in the way that we saw it today. We also had not truly seen before today how close we came to a mass casualty event at the US Capitol. We have heard members of Congress and the Senate expressed their belief that they were close to being killed that day.

Today, we saw in detail what they meant by that and that they were right. House managers spent the better part of two hours laying out this visual evidence of the mob that the president incited at the Capitol. And some of that footage was familiar to us. The man who was holstering that nine hundred and fifty thousand volt stun gun mounted on a hiking staff sitting at Nancy Pelosi's desk, the rioters who were chanting hang Mike Pence at the Capitol as they literally hunted for and tried to find Vice President Pence, police officer getting crushed by protesters in a doorway, screaming for help and screaming in pain.

But the impeachment managers, in addition to some of that footage that we had seen, they also presented new footage, new audio that was brand new to the public. The House managers, for example, played never before heard audio communications between law enforcement officials who were trying to defend the Capitol that day. Now, I'm going to play a little bit of that. And just for context here, when you hear the officers here calling the acronym Daeso, we think that means they're calling domestic security operations.

And I didn't know what that meant in this context before today. But The Washington Post Post is explaining that when you hear these officers referencing domestic security operations, what it probably means is that they're calling for help from the part of the police department that handles chemical munitions like tear gas and gas, because that's the kind of help they were asking for in terms of dealing with the onrushing mob when they were being overrun and being injured by the dozens that calling meaning get us those kinds of officers with that kind of equipment here immediately.

You will also hear an officer say ten thirty three, I repeat ten thirty three west front of the Capitol. What that means is ten, thirty three means. Emergency, that's the officer saying there is an emergency at the west front of the Capitol. Officers in need of immediate assistance. The advice you've got a group of about 50 charging up the hill on the west front just north of here, the stairs, they're approaching the wall now, part of this massive reviewing stand that's really helpful.

So helpful for this reason. Many of them are starting to pull against the wall. Not all that is causing a lot of the fireworks. The walls are starting to flow for some fireworks.

So we need to change. We get. Her favorite point was the whole point was careful to know that he wrote a piece of the plan, the whole. These are crowded in the news again, they are very strong in the crowd this morning. How do we know why he didn't go to the shop? OK, it is an open.

By our teachers was one of a couple. We will pay to rationalize. We've lost the line. So they say that we've lost the line never before heard footage of police communications during the attack as the police were attacked, overrun, injured, one of them killed. House managers also showed internal security footage that was taken by security cameras inside the Capitol. None of this had ever been publicly seen before. Security cameras capturing rioters breaking down the front doors of the Capitol building, using Trump flags to bust the glass and get inside.

Another security camera showing the rioters when they located the door that led to the House floor where the members of Congress were gathered. You can see one rioter waving on the rest of the mob as they streamed toward that door leading to the House floor. And this video, you can see the rioters essentially brawling, engaging in what really looks like hand-to-hand combat with police officers outside the metal detectors that usually have to pass through to get into the Capitol complex. This is footage from a police officer's body camera from the moment he was being dragged down the Capitol steps and pummeled and stopped by the pro Trump mob.

We also got more insight from this new security footage about what happened to lawmakers and their staff members that day as they tried to escape the Trump mob. This is a terrifying moment showing Republican Senator Mitt Romney. It is unmistakably him who was unknowingly walking toward the mob, the officer that runs toward him at full tilt. That's Officer Eugene Goodman, who is the man who may have saved the Senate. He warns Mitt Romney there and pulls them in the other direction to prevent Romney from walking directly into the path of the mob.

House managers showed this new security footage of former Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated and you can see on the diagram of the Capitol on the lower left side of the screen. The House managers added there to show just how close to the mob Vice President Pence was there when he was being evacuated. House manager Eric Swalwell actually played this video twice. It shows multiple US senators being evacuated down a hallway while police officers beyond them basically blocked the sight of those senators with their bodies.

The mob was on the far end of that corridor. The police officers put themselves between the senators and the mob, and the senators ran past to safety. Those reporting out of the chamber today that senators of both parties were seen pointing at that video while it played, apparently recognizing themselves and their colleagues as they were run down that corridor, just steps away from where the police was holding back the mob. They've never seen that footage before today either. This footage shows how Senator Chuck Schumer almost walked directly into the mob that day, House managers say he came within yards of the rioters and had to turn around.

They came up that ramp and then they went very quickly back down that ramp. His security detail turned, turned him around, ended up shutting those doors, using their bodies against those doors to keep him safe. Security footage also captured a group of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's staff members running into a conference room and barricading themselves behind two doors to keep safe. Just minutes later, that same security camera captured a throng of rioters coming down that hallway outside that very door, trying to bang down the doors that they were at that moment sheltering behind.

Here's that same group of Pelosi staffers today watching this video being played during the trial. They hadn't seen it before today. None of us had three of them holding hands as they watched. Whatever else happens here, however, the Republican senators vote and however this resolves politically, no matter what we hear from the president's defense on Friday and Saturday, the impeachment managers have given us a history that we did not have before, a factual basis for understanding what happened here, to stand up against the revisionism and the minimizing of this attack that is already happening, full tilt on the right and particularly in the conservative media.

That is what they did today, no matter its consequence in terms of the political fallout here, the ultimate vote, what they did today is indelible in terms of our history as a country. But the trial continues. We will be talking with senators who are in the room for it today when we come back. Stay with us. These attackers stood right where you are.

They went on that rostrum, they rifle through your desks and they desecrated this place and literally the president sat delighted.

Doing nothing to help us, calling one of you to pressure you to stop the certification, it can't be for the commander in chief can inside a lawless, bloody insurrection and then utterly fail in his duty as commander in chief to defend us from the attack, to defend our law enforcement officers from that attack and just get away with it.

Donald Trump abdicated his duty to us all.

We have to make this right.

And you can make it right. House impeachment manager Congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island today with a direct appeal to the senators in that chamber, of course, are both jurors and witnesses to the crime in this impeachment trial. Joining us now is Delaware Senator Chris Coons. Senator Coons, I really appreciate you making time to be here with us tonight. I will tell you, it was absolutely gut wrenching at home watching these proceedings today. Really interested to hear from you what it was like today in the room.

Rachel, it was a long and a very hard day. You've just shown some of the clips that were the most compelling, the moments where senators, myself included, for the very first time, saw a video clip of us running down the hallway and realized that we were just 50 feet away from an angry mob.

That clip you showed of Senator Mitt Romney walking directly towards the mosque and be turned around by Officer Goodman, I think for a lot of us, today was the first time we really put it all together.

And the House managers did an amazing job of giving us the time line, the order, the clarity, the forcefulness of these moments. This is a day we won't forget, we shouldn't forget. Are there conversations happening among senators? I have to imagine I thought I recognized you in that footage that we all saw for the first time today of being ushered down that that corridor. And I have to imagine when you and your colleagues are seeing something for the first time recognizing that you all were in a circumstance that you didn't necessarily appreciate before today, that it may make you want to talk with them about what you are seeing and what you are newly understanding.

Are those conversations happening among senators?

I've had some very forceful conversations with my Democratic colleagues. There's not been a lot of conversation across the aisle today, particularly this afternoon and evening.

You look honestly, I have a hard time racial understanding how anyone could watch what we've seen these last two days and not vote to convict president.

The objection that I saw today from Senator Cruz, who has his own story within this within this drama, was that he didn't feel that the president's actions would rise to the level of having him being criminally convicted of incitement to where he or he criminally charged with this and that that was reason enough to not convict him in a court of impeachment in the US Senate. What's your reaction to that?

Well, Senator Cruz is a clever lawyer, but I don't see the relevance because the Constitution gave us the obligation as senators to use this one important constitutional mechanism for accountability for a president who utterly abdicates his, of who just denies the responsibilities that a president has. And I think, as you just showed, Congressman Cicilline laid it out so clearly, the President Trump did nothing to help the members of the Congress to help his own vice president when an angry mob was chanting, hey, Mike Pence.

And the idea that maybe if he were in a criminal court of law, there'd be a higher standard, he wouldn't be convicted.

I just think it's some clever way of avoiding accountability for delivering consequences. That's why we're here. We're here as a court of impeachment. President Trump was impeached while he was president. And I think it's undeniable under the language of the Constitution. This is our job. We should do it. Delaware US Senator Chris Coons. Senator, thank you for making time tonight. I know this is a really emotional and very busy time. Thanks. Thank you. All right.

Let's now bring to the conversation our friend, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is also in the room today and who I believe I also recognized in that same footage being ushered down that corridor, not more than 50 or 60 feet from the mob just on the other side of this Capitol Police officer, Senator Klobuchar. I'm really glad you could make time to be here tonight.

Thank you. I have to ask, was that did you learn things today about the peril that you, yourself and you and your staff were at that you didn't know before seeing some of that footage today? Well, I had staff because I was leading the fight against Ted Cruz actually to uphold the Electoral College votes, and I had just made the case after he spoke when all this happened. So I had staff that was in a room right where they entered in a closet with the two of them were there for two hours.

So I had heard it from their perspective. And I actually didn't think as much about the senators. We were protected by the police. It's the police that I think people saw strikingly today, the officer shrieking, trying to defend our democracy. The story of the police officer who went into the rotunda when it was all done after having these rioters use the N-word against him 15 times and turned to another black officer and said, is this America? Those officers, they're the ones that were on the front line protecting us to think that one of them died because of his wounds and to think that another two of them committed suicide shortly after this happened.

I think it's pretty sobering to think of what they went through and the fact that President Trump would not even send a tweet to defend our democracy while that officer was shrieking in pain at the door trying to defend it.

I was struck by the argument at the close of tonight's presentation that President Trump never called in the National Guard, never did anything to lend any backup to those officers as they were being overrun. And so many of them were being injured and one of them was killed. That just stark statement that there's no evidence that even though the National Guard was eventually called in, no evidence that President Trump had anything to do with that. Also, the stark statement, and maybe this is a simple thing with a stark statement earlier in the day that President Trump never once on the day of the attack, condemned the violence at the Capitol.

He ultimately did the next day. But while it was underway on January six, he didn't he didn't condemn it. And just that that stark presentation about what the president didn't do, it left me feeling shook today at the end of this, not just what he did.

And we all know that it's leading up to it, the assault on these election officials in the month before. It is what he didn't do that day. I thought that was the most compelling case, the strongest evidence that it took hours to send even a tweet. And then he still commending them, calling them patriots, saying he loves them, his own family members asking him to do something. Governor Christie pleading with him to do something. Kevin McCarthy going on Fox News and saying this has to stop all the people that call the National Guard, including his own vice president, the National Guard, the head of the National Guard published who called him and it wasn't Donald Trump.

So when you go through all of that, it just simply is to me, it was enough by what he said when he incited the rioters, told them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue. But the final piece of evidence, I don't think you need more than that, is that he did nothing to really stop it with Republicans crying for him to do it over and over again. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, again, thank you for making time, and I know this is difficult and at least just watching at home, it's a gut wrenching time having you with us tonight.

A real blessing. Thanks.

All right. We've got much more to come tonight. Stay with us. One of President Trump's key defenses focus on what he said for a few seconds, 15 minutes into the speech.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. In a speech spanning almost 11000 words, yes, we did check that was the one time, the only time President Trump used the word peaceful or any suggestion of nonviolence.

The implication of the president's tweets, the rally and the speeches were clear.

President Trump used the word fight or fighting 20 times, including telling the crowd they needed to fight like hell to save our democracy. We know how the crowd responded to Donald Trump's words and he knew how they responded to his speech.

Eleven thousand words in that speech, former President Trump said the word peaceful once in those eleven thousand words, if you're counting. He told the same crowd 20 times in that speech that they needed to fight. Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg News reporting tonight that when the former president's defense lawyers have had their turn at bat, are going to have their turn it back excuse me, they intend to lean heavily on his single use of that phrase peacefully and patriotically in his January 6th speech.

His lawyers, quote, are all also assembling more than a dozen videos with what they hope will be a stronger argument after the rambling presentation by attorney Bruce Castor during the first day of his impeachment trial, a performance that was widely panned. In addition to that news, we also know in part from Jennifer Jacobs is reporting that former President Trump has been very unhappy with his defense team's performance thus far. Joining us now is Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter at Bloomberg News.

Miss Jacobs, it's great to see you. Thanks very much for making time to be here.

Thanks, Rachel. So a significant swath of the country, I think it's fair to say, is pretty riveted by the impeachment managers presentation of their side of the argument. What have you been able to report so far about how things are going on the other side and how the former president feels about his his defense and how it's shaping up? Well, I can tell you that they are riveted as well. I know for a fact, just from talking to my sources today, that his allies, the president and his allies have been watching the live coverage.

Trump is, of course, watching from his private quarters at Mar a Lago. He's got a very small crew around him, including just a few advisers, including Dan and Brian. Jacques was always down there. I know he's been watching. I know he has grown increasingly aggravated as things have gone on. Of course, today was all about the House managers building their case against Trump. And there was less of a focus, of course, on the president's defense.

And I know that he had some conversations today about wanting more of his allies to be appearing on television. So that's one of the things that has been frustrating him. There's also some concerns in the inner circle, I've been told, about who Democrats go after next. Is there a possibility that they would go after some of the people who were around the president on January six, some of the lower tier aides that helped organize that rally on the Ellipse?

So there's various various concerns. But I know the president was engaged today. I'm told I'm planning his strategy for Friday when they begin their defense and very much planning out what that's going to look like. It sounds like they may have some concern, maybe I'm reading into this, but it sounds like there obviously is still this open question as to whether or not witnesses will be called. It sounds like if they're worried about people around the president potentially being dragged into this, it sounds like they would have a strong preference that witnesses not be called if the House managers indeed decide to go that route.

I think part of the concern is what happens after the impeachment trial wraps up, whether Democrats start taking action or calling in some of those other Trump aides and allies. But I've been told multiple times that I keep asking this. Are there is there any chance at all that the former president comes up to D.C. to be a witness? And I've been told repeatedly, no, that's just that is not going happen.

What about the potential vote here, we've seen lots of reporting that the Republicans in general, that President Trump perhaps specifically is confident that there will be a vote to acquit at the end because you're not going to get 17 Republicans. On the other hand, we've got Senator McConnell signaling to Republicans that a vote to convict Trump will be seen as a vote of conscience. It will not be a whipped vote. They do not expect people who voted not to go ahead with the trial to necessarily vote to acquit.

In the end, are our President Trump and his his crew there at all concerned about the Republican votes? Well, I was told I have been asking his his team and people around to people familiar with it, what they're planning on arguing and how they're going to they realized they had a very bad day on their opening day. And so they've been trying to prove that they've got a bunch of videos planned. They're part of their strategy, as you mentioned, is to keep repeating that that phrase that he did during the January six speech say something about peacefully and patriotically gathering.

They're really going to lean hard on that. They also have some arguments, I'm told, to expect something about it, arguing that a judge can't be a juror at the same time, like the presiding officer, Senator Patrick Leahy is doing that. Some other arguments lined up about constitutional standing. I don't think that they're terribly concerned. And in fact, I know that people around the president keep reassuring him, don't worry, there won't be enough Republicans to convict.

They do not think that there will be a conviction.

And I was told today that they are pretty certain they didn't hear it directly from Senator McConnell, but they doubt that Senator McConnell would vote to convict. So as Trump grows more and more frustrated, I know that people around him have been trying to reassure him just fine how everything is going just just wait for the eventual outcome, which is going to be an acquittal. Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter at Bloomberg News, just been doing phenomenal work and for a long time, but particularly in recent weeks and months.

Jennifer, thanks for being with us tonight. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. It's a big night here at MSNBC. I want to let you know we're going to be live until 2:00 a.m. tonight. We've got lots to come. Stay with us.

We'll be right back. The House impeachment managers made their case for just under six hours today. They had up to eight hours available to them. They didn't take all of their time. They'll have that eight hour window available to them again tomorrow. They will start their case midday, but we'll see how tomorrow goes. I'll see you again tomorrow night.

The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.