Defying Trump, Americans refuse to be denied their right to protest

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Thanks to you at home for joining us here this hour.

Really happy to have you here.

So

telling people not to go

didn't work.

Warning people not to go didn't work.

Trying to intimidate people not to go, that definitely didn't work.

Even a good faith, earnest, here's a really good reason not to go, kind of cajoling,

that did not work either.

Turns out we learned definitively in these past few days that people want to protest against this president a lot.

And no matter what you tell them, they are going to do it.

And a lot of people have been wrong about that, including me.

I sat here last week all earnest and serious telling you as if it was true that there definitely was going to be no protest in Washington, D.C.

this weekend, that protesters would be everywhere else in the country, but they definitely wouldn't be in Washington, D.C.

Boy, I was wrong.

The No Kings protest organizers had in fact said no, they were not going to protest in Washington.

They were going to protest everywhere else but there.

But plenty of people protested there in very large numbers.

And it wasn't just the No Kings organizers who were saying, oh, we're not going to D.C., don't go to D.C.

You might remember last week, Trump tried to threaten people against protesting in Washington this weekend.

He said last week that if anybody sort of, you know, dared show up to protest against his big birthday military parade, they'd be met with big and very heavy force.

trying to intimidate people into not protesting.

Turns out that didn't work.

Regular Americans said, you know what?

We're not listening to any of you.

We're Americans and we have the right to protest and that comes from our Constitution and not from any of you.

And so get out of the the way.

We don't care.

We're protesting.

Lots of people protested in Washington this weekend.

And there were no problems associated with it.

Protesters mostly did bug out of DC before the actual military parade started.

The military parade itself turned out to have really thin crowds.

In some places along the parade route, there was almost nobody in the stands.

Everybody in the president seemed kind of, I don't know, a little bored, maybe a little disappointed.

I don't know.

Ta-da.

It just wasn't a big thing that President Trump put on for $45 million.

But they got plenty of protesters when people, including me, said they wouldn't be there.

You might have seen headlines last week about the Brevard County, Florida sheriff last week who called a press conference to threaten that he would sick dogs on people and his officers would not just put people in jail, they would put people in the hospital.

He literally got up at a press conference and said, we will kill you, talking about violence he expected at any anti-Trump protests in Brevard County, Florida.

After that bizarre show of intimidation from that

sheriff in Brevard County, Florida, turns out people in Brevard County, Florida were not at all intimidated by what he said.

As you can see from local headlines like this one, quote, no kings, anti-Trump protests draw thousands in Brevard County, in Cocoa and Palm Bay.

I mean, the sheriff gets out there and says, we will kill you, and Brevard County, Florida is like, you know what?

We got a right to protest.

We have a right to make protest signs of any kind, including ones that show Donald Trump in a big wig made up like Marie Antoinette saying, let them eat cake.

And you are not going to stop us from doing it.

We are Americans.

We have the right to do this.

We will protest.

For the most serious possible reason, people were also told not to protest, not to go to any no-kings protests in Minnesota this weekend on Saturday, after news emerged of the political assassinations of a Democratic former House Speaker and her husband and the attempted assassination of another Democratic state legislator and his wife, and the even more terrible news on Saturday at that time that that assassin was still at large.

He has since been brought into custody.

But on Saturday, authorities advised everyone in Minnesota to cancel their plans to attend any any protest.

And that's a very different kind of thing.

That is a very, very serious thing.

But again, people said no.

People went out and protested in Minnesota anyway, despite those warnings.

Actually, in huge numbers.

Look, this is St.

Paul, Minnesota on Saturday.

Look at this.

Look at how many people went out and protested anyway.

And it is not that people didn't know what had happened.

You could tell that because a lot of the signs in the crowd were these heartbreaking signs honoring the former Democratic House Speaker in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, who were both killed by that assassin.

And even though people were told not to protest in that state that day because the killer was literally still on the loose,

apparently there was just nothing that was going to stop people from being there, from standing up, from showing up in huge numbers.

And eventually, state leaders, I think, realized that there was nothing that they could do to stop people from turning out.

Minnesota's state attorney general Keith Ellison decided to go himself.

He spoke in St.

Paul before that huge crowd.

He spoke about his friendship with Speaker Hortman.

He spoke about what it felt, what it felt like to lose her.

And he also spoke about the civil rights movement and other martyrs we have had in our country for our democracy.

We owe it to him.

We have to do it.

We must be there on behalf of the people of this country in this hour when a dictator who wants to be a king is trying to run over the rights of the people.

We must be there.

We must stand up.

We must be strong.

We cannot waver.

We will not be intimidated.

We are not scared of his jail.

We are not scared of anything about this guy.

We are not afraid.

And we will not let fear rule the day.

We will not let him weaponize fear against us.

And I'm telling you now

that he had his goons arrest the senator when he was just trying to ask a question.

Senator Padilla wrongfully treated.

He had his other goons prosecute and charge Congresswoman McIver in New Jersey.

Had him arrest the mayor of New Jersey,

threatened to arrest the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles.

This is the behavior of a dictator.

And the only question is, what are we going to do about it?

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison speaking in St.

Paul this week.

And I should tell you, Keith Ellison and also Senator Alex Padilla are both going to be on live tonight in this next hour on MSNBC with Lawrence O'Donnell

on the last word.

So you're going to want to see that.

This hour, we're going to be speaking with Minnesota U.S.

Senator Amy Klobuchar.

I'm sorry to say she was also reportedly on the target list for this assassin who shot these two elected Democratic legislators and their spouses this weekend.

Again, that alleged assassin is now in custody.

We're going to be speaking with Senator Klobuchar about what's happened in Minnesota tonight, the reaction of the people of Minnesota.

I should tell you that Senator Klobuchar was also friends with the murdered House Speaker, Melissa Hortman.

Senator Klobuchar had been with her just on Friday before the speaker was killed on Saturday.

So we're going to be speaking live with Senator Klobuchar in just a few minutes.

In addition to those huge crowds, despite everything in Minnesota on Saturday,

some of the big protests this weekend were really, really big.

Huge crowds in Philadelphia, which you see here, which of course was the kind of flagship protest site for the whole country this weekend.

I thought the fact that there was going to be a big protest in Philly might have meant a smaller crowd in New York because they're not too far apart, but nope, I was wrong about that too.

Wrong again, Matto.

New York turned out to be huge.

In the city of Chicago, protests were also absolutely massive this weekend.

In Boston, the Pride Parade was also going on at the same time as the No Kings gathering, the No Kings rally and march in Boston.

Even before it was done, local press was crowing that the crowd in Boston was north of a million people, and that would really be quite something.

I don't know if it was over a million people, but that's what local headlines were calling it in Boston.

Atlanta had a really, really big crowd.

You might have seen some of the footage from Atlanta, Georgia this weekend.

You might have seen this at sort of the head of the crowd.

They had it spelled out, that big spelled out sign, Trump must go now.

You might have also seen headlines about guys from the Proud Boys, the pro-Trump paramilitary militia group showing up in the middle of that Atlanta anti-Trump protest.

You might have seen headlines about that, but did you actually see how that turned out?

I'm going to show you just a few seconds of footage here and you'll get it immediately.

It involves tubas and trombones.

Just watch this for a second.

You will see stuff.

There's the Proud Boys and there's the other protesters and the cops standing between them.

And you'll see stuff is kind of starting to get tense.

Stuff is starting to feel like maybe it's going to boil over.

And then, what's that?

Hey, Tubas to the rescue.

Watch.

Now my favorite part about this is that they're just like, this is a very relentless brass band.

They just go on and on and on.

They're just rocking out.

And you can see like some of the Proud Boys are still trying to argue and kind of fight with people.

But this brass band is unstoppable.

See, like even when they take like a pause, it's just a strategic pause because

they're still going.

And by the end, nobody can really help themselves.

By the end of it, even the Proud Boys themselves are kind of clapping along.

By the very end of it, everybody's like kind of basically dancing a little bit despite themselves, which makes it hard to keep up with the fighting.

Oh, well, you win your...

When all else fails, get yourself a trombone and a tuba and a sax player and apply liberally.

Solves most problems.

But the protests were literally everywhere this weekend.

Trump had his little birthday thing in Washington, but then across the country, I mean, organizers and crowd counters say there were somewhere on the order of 5 million people who turned out to say whatever the opposite of happy birthday is to him.

I mean, here, let's go top row to bottom row, left to right.

Upper left-hand corner starting there, that's Oklahoma City.

Then Los Angeles, huge protests in los angeles then kalamazoo michigan seattle is really big protest in seattle eugene oregon boise idaho that's the left side second row there look how huge it is in boise then kansas missouri kansas city missouri that was another big one then denver big one in indianapolis they've also had anti-trump protests outside the nbi nba finals in in indy uh san francisco was huge austin texas was really big then it's anchorage alaska as i said chicago that is next.

Huge anti-Trump protests in Chicago.

Atlanta with the brass band World Peace Demonstration and really big numbers.

Houston, Texas.

Albany, New York.

Hello, Cleveland.

There's Cleveland there.

Charlotte, North Carolina was a very big one.

And then second from the right on the bottom row there, that's Little Rock, Arkansas.

And then the lower right-hand corner there, that is Miami, Florida.

And I'm as impressed by big turnout in big cities as I am by people turning out in smaller places where you would not expect it, including some places that I have to look up how to pronounce, and you'll forgive me if I don't get them exactly right, right?

Right.

Protests, for example, this weekend in Augusta, Maine, also in Baltimore, Maryland, also in Bennington, Vermont.

We saw protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in Cincinnati, Ohio, in Colony, New York.

Columbia, South Carolina got a good crowd.

In Dallas, Texas, it was big.

We had a big group in Dallas of people dressed out of the handmaid's tail.

We, the people, were not meant to kneel.

This was Des Moines, Iowa.

We had a big crowd.

Durham, North Carolina had big numbers.

We saw protests in Fairfield, California, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In Freeport, Maine, they were out in the rain.

At some points, the pounding rain in Freeport, Maine.

This was Frisco, Colorado.

Hey, Taco, our country is Nacho Kingdom.

Here was Golden, Colorado.

Here was Greenville, South Carolina.

Here was Gunnison, Colorado.

Here was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Here was Guam.

Hello, Guam.

Guam, the U.S.

territory.

At this point, the staff of the show is going to kill me.

This is like me just pulling random sites out of the F and G and H part of the alphabet.

I could go on.

Let me put up another 20 box in the hope that this doesn't break the control room.

All right, we're going to go top to bottom, left to right, 20 of them.

Ready?

Here we go.

Put it up.

Yes.

St.

Louis at the top left, then Phoenix, then Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Then we got another view of Dallas, Texas, Grand Junction, Colorado.

Next row, look how big San Diego was.

Second row, left side.

See that?

Mm-hmm.

Then Arlington, Virginia, Buffalo, New York, then Joplin, Missouri.

Then there's another look there at Philly, which was so huge.

Next row, it's Olympia, Washington.

Another look at New York City.

That big one I mentioned in Sacramento, California.

Another look at St.

Paul, Minnesota with those remarkable circumstances.

Then it's Portland, Oregon.

Then that bottom row, it's Savannah, Georgia, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Milwaukee was only the biggest of 50 different simultaneous protests in the state of Wisconsin.

Then Rapid City, South Dakota.

Then it's Springfield, Illinois.

And then in the bottom right-hand corner, that is Tampa, Florida.

This one's, make a smaller box.

Yes, okay.

This one's easier to see them one by one.

These are anti-Trump protests this weekend.

Upper left is Pocatello, Idaho.

Tucker, Georgia, then Alton, Illinois, Concord, New Hampshire, Centennial, Colorado, Beaufort, South Carolina.

And hold me back, I got a ton of them.

I got a ton of them.

They're infinite, honestly.

Upper left, that's Alameda, California.

I showed you Frisco, Colorado before with the nacho country thing.

That was Frisco, Colorado.

This is Frisco, Texas.

Upper right, that's Rangeley, Maine.

Lower level there, lower row, that's Prescott, Arizona.

And Rangeley, York, Pennsylvania, excuse me, and Asheville, North Carolina.

Beautiful, resilient little Asheville, North Carolina.

Oh, you think we're done?

Ha!

We're not done.

Here's Sitka, Alaska.

Upper left there, Waterloo, Iowa, Newton, New Jersey.

Menifee, I think is how you say it.

Forgive me if that's not right.

Menifee, California, Clarksville, Tennessee, Huntington, New York, again out in the pouring rain.

Did you turn out to protest this weekend in Jacksonville, Alabama?

If so, I see you up there in the upper left-hand corner.

Hello, Jacksonville, Alabama.

Same to you, Staunton, Virginia, and Montpelier, Vermont.

I know some people who are up there in Montpelier, Vermont.

Eagle River, Wisconsin, Statesville, North Carolina, Bremerton, Washington.

This was Phoenix, Arizona.

This was a mom there with her daughter.

The daughter's sign says, leave your MAGA husband.

I want to know the whole backstory and I want to write a a TV show about it.

This was Austin, Texas, quoting Benjamin Franklin, I believe.

Where liberty dwells, there is my country.

This was Hillsboro, North Carolina.

No Tyrantosaurus Rex.

Tyrantos getting in the king thing with Rex, get it.

This was Lexington, Kentucky.

First they came for the immigrants and we said no.

New Orleans, Louisiana had a pretty big turnout for their protests this weekend, including this gentleman.

I fought for my country at 19.

Now I'm 81 and have to fight my country.

This was West Palm Beach, Florida this weekend.

Hey, Merrill.

Hey, Mar-a-Lago.

Aren't you nearby?

West Palm Beach.

This was Santa Monica, California this weekend.

Stephen Miller can never come home.

Santa Monica is where Stephen Miller is from.

This is a group of

90-plus-year-olds in T-Neck, New Jersey, who we've seen protesting for weeks now.

They were out in T-Neck this weekend.

Another super senior here

in Pepperpike, Ohio.

You see her sign there?

In World War II, my brothers fought fascism.

Now it's my turn.

And on the...

other end of the age spectrum, here's this young man in Squim, Washington.

Not my tyrant, not my future.

This was Los Angeles, where I mentioned huge protests in Los Angeles.

Members of the Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot with this sign, it's beginning to look a lot like Russia.

Essentially, a message of warning from the Russian opposition.

I mean, we could go on and on, right?

From Truckee, California, where there is only one king, and it is definitely Elvis, to Tempe, Arizona, where they packed the overpass, no kings, to Oklahoma City.

This one stuck with me.

Not a paid protester, but my senators and representatives are supposed to be no kings.

And like I said, I could go on and on and on.

I am leaving out more than I am including by a large measure.

When there are more than 2,000 simultaneous protests in the country, against the president all at once.

It is hard to keep track of them all.

It is hard to go through them all on a cable news show.

But there have now been so many thousands of protests involving so many millions of Americans.

Now I think it's time to start having a national conversation of a different type, right?

The strategy and the character of the opposition to Trump is not only

self-evident as the most important story in the country, I think it's finally being recognized as the most important story in the country, which is nice.

And

you have the president clearly just fundamentally politically unable to contend with the depth and breadth of feeling against him, right?

So these must be paid protesters or invaders from somewhere else or they must all be violent criminals or whatever.

No, actually, this is St.

Louis, right?

This is America.

No kings.

Yes, queens, right?

Like this is just us.

It's who we are and this is how we feel about you.

I mean, this is Joplin, Missouri.

This is Louisville, Kentucky, where thousands of people turned out.

This is McHenry, Illinois.

This is High Point, North Carolina.

It is literally everywhere in this country.

Americans in surprising numbers, in surprising places, turning out again and again and again and again to say, no, nope, we are not doing this.

You are not taking over our country and turning us into a dictatorship.

You are not going to be a king here.

And so with all that proof in the pudding, right?

With all of that evidence of where we are, it's now sort of time, if we haven't had it already, it is now time to really have a serious national conversation about where this all goes.

Because

this is not just like the resistance to Trump, right?

Like this, this is the opposition to Trump.

This is the other side.

And

if we're thinking about the two sides of this fight, well, politically, we're at a point where Trump, and I don't mean this in a mean way, but as a political figure, he looks sad and small.

Nobody came to his $45 million military birthday party.

He is a laughingstock on the world stage.

He's being treated at the G7 right now like he's Putin's intern.

The White House just announced tonight that Trump is coming home early from the G7 meeting tonight after so embarrassing himself there today.

I mean, this is a president whose signature economic policy, his supposed tariff policy, is a punchline even among Republicans.

I mean, someday 30 years from now, the whole lecture hall full of Econ 101 students is going to laugh out loud when the professor gets out the chalk and writes taco on the chalkboard and has to explain what the acronym taco meant in the Trump years for his signature economic policy that he thought would work so well for him both politically and economically.

It is a punchline.

I mean, this is a president who appointed a madman to be the nation's health secretary and who in turn, he has just put like a QAnon conspiracy chat room in charge of the nation's vaccine schedule.

This is a president who is selling coins and gold trinkets with his face on them from the White House.

This is a president who can't persuade the first lady to live with him.

This is a president whose supposed best friend says he should be impeached.

And by the way, he's in the Epstein files.

I mean, this is a president whose approval ratings are more underwater than any other president ever at this point in his term.

He has already rushed right to the part where he tries to turn the military against the civilian population, where he tries to turn the force of the American military against the American people.

And that is something that neither the military nor the people have an appetite for, and he is going to learn that soon enough.

He has rushed right to the end because he has no idea how to play cards against opposition to him that is this big,

this sustainable, this broad, and this correct.

He hasn't done anything as president that would win anyone over to his side.

And the number of people who voted for him or supported him otherwise, who are now regretting it, grows by the day.

And they don't just grow privately, they grow on the headlines every day.

Everybody against him is getting stronger and more confident.

Everybody with him

is starting to get a little worried about how long they can stay with him as they see their numbers dwindle and they see him fail and flail over and over and over again.

So for a would-be strongman, he's not strong.

He is a remarkably weak and feckless political figure.

who is nevertheless trying to overthrow the American form of government while pushing incredibly unpopular policies and executing everything incredibly poorly with a laughing stock full of a terribly, terribly staffed administration and cabinet.

I mean, who's in the Trump administration who you think, like, mmm, skills, right?

Or you think, mmm, popular.

Or you think, mm, growing political capital for this president by the day.

Honestly.

And on the other side, the opposition against him is big, deep, growing, confident, and increasingly unstoppable.

And so the question now is efficacy.

What does that opposition need to do if it is going to be effective?

Their stated goals are to save the republic, to save democracy, to stop this unpopular, weak, feckless president from overthrowing the Constitution and trying to hold power as a dictator.

What does the increasingly powerful, increasingly large, buoyant, confident opposition need to be like from here on out?

What do they need to do next and going forward in order to maximize their prospects of success?

After this weekend's protests by millions of Americans tonight, there was a follow-up phone call to talk strategy and next steps.

I don't know if they expected this many, but 60,000 people got on that phone call tonight after the No Kings protests.

60,000 people on one call.

So we're going to talk tonight about what we know about

what works, about how opposition movements of this size have succeeded or stumbled in the past in this and in other countries.

And as I mentioned, we've also got Senator Amy Klobuchar joining us live from Minnesota.

There's so much to get to tonight.

It's a really big night.

It's a really big moment.

Stay with us.

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Brand new polling from NBC News shows that more voters disapprove of President Trump than approve of him by double digits.

He's underwater by 10 points.

And this is interesting.

Among people who like Donald Trump, who really, really like him, they're starting to not like him as much anymore.

Among Republicans, the percentage of them who say they are most enthusiastic about Trump, they're thrilled by Trump, that number of Republicans has dropped seven points since the last time this poll was taken in April.

Even among self-identified, not just Republicans, but self-identified MAGA supporters, the percentage of them who call themselves thrilled with Trump has dropped nine points.

just since April.

People who really like him don't even like him as much anymore.

There's a significant gap in enthusiasm right now between the people who are fired up in support of what Trump is doing and the people who are really fired up against him and also ready to go out into the streets to say so.

The question is,

what's the best strategy for this opposition movement going forward?

Is there something that we can learn from other countries or from our own history that can help?

At the flagship No Kings protest in Philly on Saturday, more than 100,000 people turned out in Philly alone.

Historian Tim Snyder addressed the crowd.

He urged everybody who came out to protest in Philly, not to view protesting itself as the end goal, but to view it as the start of something bigger and more sustained.

We make a new friend here today and we do something with them tomorrow.

We meet somebody we admire today and we do something with them tomorrow.

We meet somebody who's a little more courageous than us today and we do something with them tomorrow.

Today no kings, tomorrow freedom.

There is a better America out there.

There is a better America underneath.

There is a better America that we can see.

There is a better America that we can make.

History is in our hands.

No kings.

No kings.

Joining us now is Timothy Snyder, history professor, the author of On Tyranny and several other books about the rise of authoritarianism and indeed on freedom.

Professor Snyder, it's really nice to see you.

Thank you for being with us tonight.

So glad.

Given your scholarship on authoritarianism and on the democracies that have gone the way of authoritarian overthrow, what's your take on the state of the opposition?

to Trump right now in the United States, the strength and the

healthiness of this movement?

So I would say we were a little bit slow out of the gate.

For the first few months, it was, let's face it, foreigners and bond markets and the internal contradictions of the Trump position.

But I think we turned a corner in April.

I think we're gaining speed now with these last protests, which if they weren't the biggest in U.S.

history, were awfully darn close.

We had about 5 million people out,

which is 50 or probably 100 times as many as Trump had out at his birthday parade or whatever that was.

I think we're at a moment where, as you say, we've got people, we've got energy, we have creativity, we've got some courage, and it's time to think about what to learn from the past and what to do next.

And what should we learn from what we've done as a country in the past from what other countries have done facing similar challenges?

Is there, I know every circumstance is unique and every would-be tyrant has his own spin on things, but is there, are there sort of, I don't know, bright lines that we should be aware of in terms of what works, what doesn't work,

better directions to head at this point

in the evolution of this kind of a movement?

Yeah, one thing is that the unpredictability is part of the solution.

So it's going to look ways that no one person foresees.

Neither you nor I, nor any of the specialists on this are going to predict exactly what it looks like.

And the unpredictability is actually part of the winning strategy.

You can't plan everything.

You can't button everything down.

New and interesting things are going to happen.

That's one thing we learned from the history of social movements.

They don't move like robots.

They move like collections of human beings doing new things.

And that's a second point.

It has to be about the future.

It can be about the present to some extent, right?

Like the no-kings, you're against something, but it has to largely be about the present.

You have to give people a sense that things can get better, much better.

Because, and that's true, they certainly can.

A third thing to remember is that these things work as coalitions.

So it's not us and them.

It's people, it has to be people that we don't agree with about everything.

It has to be people where they're

protesting for their first time.

It also has to include some people

who were on the other side, who voted for Trump.

Those are some basic things.

And the coalition point comes through very strongly from U.S.

history.

In U.S.

history, when we have become more democratic, like with the women's suffrage movement or with the civil rights movement, there have been people responding to a crisis, and then they had allies who listened to them.

In terms of nonviolence, obviously we all know that nonviolent movements are more successful than violent movements.

There's not going to be a civil war in this country, and this isn't going to be settled by military force.

Talking about building a sustainable commitment to nonviolence and building up people's skills and resilience in terms of being nonviolent, especially as Trump tries to increase the specter of violence being associated with political dissent.

Are there any sort of guardrails or bright lines that we should be thinking about in terms of how to build that?

Obviously, we have the recent history of the civil rights movement to draw on with its richness and its spiritual basis in terms of teaching that and leading in that way.

Yeah.

I mean, I just want to say a couple of comforting things here.

The first is that they know that the moment that they reach out in that direction, they're going to lose.

This is not a society where you can seriously imagine that using the military or using other organs of force to kill Americans is going to lead to something good for Donald Trump.

He knows that.

The armed forces know it.

We all know that that's a losing strategy, not just a horrible.

moral catastrophe, but also a losing strategy.

The second comforting thing that I want to say is that nonviolence, it isn't an absence.

It's a presence.

It's a way of being.

It's the little bit of courage which gets you out there doing something unfamiliar.

It's a little bit of courage that allows you to talk to somebody you didn't know before.

It's that little bit more of openness that you have in a moment like this rather than a little bit more of being closed.

So nonviolence isn't just stopping yourself from being violent.

It's also a kind of openness to participate in things, which leaves you feeling better afterwards.

Timothy Snyder, history professor, the author of On Tyranny.

Tim, it's really nice to see you.

Thank you very much for being here tonight.

Good luck.

All right.

More news ahead here tonight.

Stay with us.

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As I mentioned at the top of the show, we are continuing to follow news out of Minnesota, where over the weekend, a gunman shot and killed a Minnesota state legislator, former House Speaker, and her husband.

and seriously wounded another state legislator and his wife.

Authorities have now arrested a 57-year-old man who's believed to have been behind these shootings.

He's been charged with two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder at the state level.

He also faces six federal charges, including both murder and stalking charges.

The FBI alleges that he first shot and wounded Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman.

The suspect reportedly showed up at their home disguised as a police officer.

He then, after those shootings, went to the homes of two other Minnesota state legislators, but was unable to carry out attacks at either of those locations.

Eventually, he went to the home of Minnesota's House Speaker Emerita, Democratic Representative Melissa Hortman, where he shot and killed both Representative Hortman and her husband.

Police have not yet publicly identified a motive for the shooter, but officials say he made hit lists that included more than 45 elected officials, all of whom were Democrats.

Friends have described him as deeply religious and conservative and a Trump supporter.

He had a history of public comments criticizing abortion.

I mentioned that his first two victims, State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, were both wounded in the attack but are expected to recover.

Last night we got a harrowing update on their condition from Minnesota U.S.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, who shared a text message that she received from Yvette, Hoffman and the wife of the couple.

It reads, quote, John is enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods.

He took nine bullet hits.

I took eight.

And we are both incredibly lucky to be alive.

We are gutted and devastated by the loss of Melissa and Mark.

Joining us now is Minnesota U.S.

Senator Amy Klobuchar.

She was personal friends with Minnesota's House Speaker Emerita, Melissa Hortman.

She had dinner with her just hours before she was killed.

Senator, I really appreciate you being here.

And let me just start by saying how sorry I am for you losing your friend.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She was, I mean, you would have loved her.

She was such a leader.

When you think of all the Minnesota miracle of things that just happened the last few years with the school lunch and the work done on paid family leave.

The governor's talked a lot about it.

He did a lot of work.

And Melissa was in the center of all of it, negotiating, bringing people with her, just an incredible leader and a good friend.

And actually her kids just put out a statement for the first time.

And I thought of this when I was watching all those incredible rallies that really buoyed my spirits from across the country, from Alaska to North Carolina.

Her kids said, it was a longer statement, but they just said this.

They were the bright lives, their parents, bright lights at the center of our lives.

Their love for us was boundless.

We miss them so much.

The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.

So as I watched those rallies and read this, I thought about, of course, Melissa, but she deserves a better democracy, and that's what she always stood for.

I have to say, when I heard

the news this weekend and I heard that people were being advised in Minnesota because this killer was still at large at the time that nobody should go out to any protests, that anything you're planning on doing publicly on Saturday, this is obviously a person who seems to be politically motivated.

Don't protest on Saturday, don't go out, to still see thousands of people go out and protest and say we're going to do it anyway.

It was just overwhelming to see.

I have to ask you how you feel about how the people of Minnesota have reacted in these few days.

They've been incredible and I have to say I agreed with law enforcement on that front.

They had to focus on this biggest manhunt in Minnesota's history and they were still, they were really beautiful, peaceful protests.

It was fine.

but I think the bigger volume would have been an issue and as you said they were still out there in a good way that being said what law enforcement did here is we've learned today that this madman actually visited two other lawmakers homes state legislators homes between the two shootings he shot the Hoffmans as they still are hanging on to their lives and then he went to another legislator's house who was out of town.

Then he went to another legislator's house and the police had already shown up there.

And then they saw him and he drove away and then he went and killed Melissa and Mark.

So what we know, if the police hadn't gone to Melissa and Mark's home and while they weren't able to save her, the Brooklyn Park Police, they were able to get the information they needed to track this guy down or he would have killed many more people.

So what the people of Minnesota feel right now is, of course, shock, but they also have great appreciation for the work that law enforcement did.

And I think this we political violence is sometimes just like buzzword right and it's numbers and we've seen these huge increases in threats but for us this is real you look at Melissa's face you think of the kind of person she was and how she was willing to work with Republicans get stuff done she believed in a cause larger than herself and she died in that way but we must do everything we can to bring down the tone and these people that say this bad stuff like Mike Lee did, they got to look in the mirror at what they're doing when they're just making fun of this or encouraging this.

And then of course the stuff online, you know I'm a big believer in putting some rules of the road in place and then just making sure there's protections for elected officials.

And I appreciated Senator Schumer and Senator Thune and what they did this weekend.

Minnesota, U.S.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, again, I'm really sorry for the loss of your friends, and I appreciate you being here to talk about it.

I know it's not the easiest thing.

I thank you.

Come back soon.

Thank you.

Thanks, Rachel.

All right, we'll be right back.

Stay with us.

President Trump has a nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration that you should know something about.

He just had a Senate confirmation hearing a few days ago.

Trump would likely not have needed to nominate a new head of the FAA had his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, not led a public campaign to force the last FAA head to resign.

But anywho, that's how things go now.

Your donor wants the guy out, so he's out, so we need a new FAA leader.

The FAA has been without a leader for months, during which time, of course, we have had a slew of fatal plane crashes and terrifying near-misses.

Needless to say, it would be really good right now if we as a country could have someone actually running the FAA, preferably someone who could really inspire confidence.

You can see where this is going, right?

Yeah.

Headline.

Trump's FAA pick has has claimed commercial pilot license he does not have.

Quote, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the FAA long described himself in his official biography as being certified to fly aircraft commercially.

Records examined by Politico show that he does not hold any commercial license.

Brian Bedford's biography at Republic Airways, the regional airline where he has been CEO since 1999, said until Thursday that he, quote, holds commercial, multi-engine, and instrument ratings.

But the FAA registry that houses data on pilots' licenses does not list any such commercial credentials for Mr.

Bedford.

The aviation news publication The Air Current appears to have been the first to raise questions about Mr.

Bedford's pilot credentials.

They wrote in April, quote, Bedford is a pilot himself, although not a commercial pilot.

as he has sometimes claimed to be.

Politico says Mr.

Bedford did not respond to multiple attempts to request comment.

So what should we make of this?

How is the Trump administration going to explain away Trump trying to install someone as the head of the FAA who has fake pilot credentials?

How are they going to explain this?

Statement from the Transportation Department to Politico, quote, Brian never misrepresented his credential.

It was an administrative error that was immediately corrected.

Immediately?

The agency did not respond to questions about what the error was or how it had been fixed.

They're just going to call it an administrative error.

And you can tuck that in with your lap belt right before you take off, right before you put your trade table up.

It's an administrative error, don't worry.

That'll do.

Watch this space.

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