Summary
The Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is asking the FBI for security assessment after former President Trump calls for protests. Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Ireland`s newest folk hero Patrick Murphy publicly told Vladimir Putin and the Russian navy to stay away from Irish fishing grounds when conducting their war games at the end of this coming week. John Hume was a noble and brave politician.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
And you look fabulous. Let`s just start with that and stay with that, but in solidarity, I heard your announcement at the beginning of this hour about how you didn`t have any way to do makeup tonight, basically because you don`t know how. And which is another thing America learned about Rachel Maddow tonight.
But in solidarity with that tonight, Rachel, you might want to stick around throughout the hour, you know, at home watching this, because anything could happen. I am working without any product in my hair tonight. Just in solidarity with your makeup.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": Has there been a collapse in that particular supply chain? What happened?
O`DONNELL: No, really, I willfully decided to kind of join this, to join the amateur look. This is my hair with nothing, which is really wicked close to my hair with something. It is now -- my hair is now at the age where it behaves itself.
MADDOW: I don`t know. I think there is an extra sort of (INAUDIBLE). I think it`s got a carefree, a little laissez-faire, we should feel a little looser.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, it`s that just drop to the surf board look and ran into the camera. That`s where we`re going.
MADDOW: Thank you very much, Lawrence. I have all the feels. Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.
Well, and now there are two new reporting tonight indicating there are now two versions of an executive order prepared for Donald Trump to seize any and all voting machines that Donald Trump felt like seizing after the 2020 election. We already have reporting indicating that such a memo directed -- executive order memo directed the Defense Department, and the American military to seize the voting machines.
And tonight, CNN.com is reporting that another version of that executive order ordered the Department of Homeland Security to seize the voting machines. No word on who, within the Department of Homeland Security would do that. Was it going to be the Coast Guard? Who are they going to send in the Department of Homeland Security?
And so, the incriminating evidence against Donald Trump continues to pile up. And now, Fulton County, Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis, has put in writing. In a letter yesterday, she said, quote, I am conducting a criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.
She has never said those words before. District attorney Willis has made it clear that she is conducting a criminal investigation about the presidential election in Georgia, and possibly the interference with it, but she has never said, I am conducting a criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump. Never said that until now. And she said that because Donald Trump is dangerous.
The letter is addressed to the special agent in charge of the FBI`s Atlanta field office. The letter asks the FBI to quote, immediately conduct a risk assessment of the Fulton county courthouse and government center, and that you provide protective resources to include intelligence and federal agents. On January 6th, when Donald Trump told his followers to go to the Capitol and fight like hell, thousands of them did exactly that.
And that is with the District Attorney Willis fears after Donald Trump told a rally audience in Texas to stage quote, the biggest protests we have ever had. Those were his words. The biggest protest we ever had. That means bigger than January 6th? And he said to enlarge those protests against prosecutors in Atlanta, New York, Washington, D.C., who are investigating Donald Trump.
[22:05:05]
This is the clearest statement yet of just how fully terrifying Donald Trump`s of Fani Willis and other prosecutors investigating him in New York and Washington. District Attorney Willis`s letter tells the FBI what they already knew.
Quote: Security concerns were excavated this weekend by the rhetoric of former President Trump at a public event. District Attorney Willis`s letter quotes, the passages of Donald Trump`s speech out of the Texas rally that were specifically threatening to her and other prosecutors.
Donald Trump said, quote, these prosecutors are vicious, horrible people.
Because District Attorney Willis along with the district attorney in Manhattan, the attorney general of the state of New York are African American, Donald Trump, of course, called them all racists. And in a classic bit of even more of what psychiatrists call projection, which is when a patient projects their issue on to others, Donald Trump said quote, they`re mentally sick.
District attorney Willis`s letter quotes Donald Trump making this campaign promise for what could be his next presidential campaign: If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.
That clearly suggests that Donald Trump would give pardons to anyone who commits a federal crime in attacking any of the prosecutors who are investigating him. That campaign promise of pardons also adds some clarity to Donald Trump`s intent and motivation on January 6th, offering pardons to the participants in the insurrection of the capital. Adds to the evidence that Donald Trump really meant it literally when he told them to go to the Capitol and fight like hell.
No one testifies against Donald Trump better and more effectively and Donald Trump. Donald Trump is dangerous, and Donald Trump is also stupid, and that makes Donald Trump a danger to himself, especially a danger to himself legally as his criminal lawyers well know.
Fani Willis has sought no public attention for her quite investigation of election fraud. It took Donald Trump`s public stupidity to force District Attorney Willis to say publicly, I am conducting a criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump`s public stupidity let him down another road this weekend that his harmful Donald Trump as evidence to the criminal investigations of election fraud. Because Donald Trump is banned from Twitter, yesterday, he released a written statement seen by members of the news media and we are not sure who else, that has created more legal jeopardy for Donald Trump.
A statement says that the legislative efforts now underway to clarify the Electoral Count Act of 1887 means, according to Donald Trump quote, that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn`t exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!
And there is Donald Trump saying that he wanted Mike Pence to do was overturn the election. Not to clarify the true winner of the election, but to simply overturn the election. Donald Trump used criminal language in a statement that he alone thought was so clever.
That statement can now be shown to Fani Willis`s grand jury. To show in Donald Trump`s own words that he was trying to overturn the election. Think of how profoundly and relentlessly stupid a person under criminal investigations for possibly attempting to overturn an election has to be, to publicly say he wanted to overturn the election.
Unfortunately, for Donald Trump, stupidity is not a criminal defense. Today, NBC`s Garrett Haake got Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney`s reaction to the promise of pardons for the over 700 people charged with attacking the Capitol for Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARRETT HAAKE, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Congresswoman, when the former president floats the idea of pardoning people who are convicted of crimes on January 6th, what message does that send?
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Well, look, you know, some of those people have been charged with things like seditious conspiracy.
[22:10:02]
And he says it at the same time that he also says he acknowledges that he was attempting to quote, overturn the election. He threatens prosecutors. He uses the same language that he knows caused the January 6th violence, and I think that it tells us that he clearly would do this all again if he were given the chance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: And tonight we learned that Vice President Mike Pence`s chief of staff Marc Short who was with him at the Capitol on January 6th has testified to the January 6 Committee. NBC News reports that Marc Short was deposed by the committee on Wednesday.
Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He served as a House impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
In that second impeachment trial, would it have helped for you to have Donald Trump`s written statement that he released this weekend saying that, of course, he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the election?
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Yes. We ask for it, Lawrence. And he did not come in. He did not provide any statements. That would have been a gift to show his criminal intent.
It is a gift now. I would just say you characterized it as a harmful statement. It is only harmful if we still care about the rule of law. If we still care about law and order, because right now, frankly, Donald Trump is undefeated against prosecutors in America.
Look at the Russia investigation and the 2016 election. He said the election was going to be rigged, so the intelligence community backed off, and held back on the evidence they had that Russia was trying to help Trump. With the Mueller investigation, he put this artificial timetable out there and said do not touch my finances. What did Mueller do? He opted up to quicker, and he never went after the finances.
And now, you are also seeing, I am afraid that he may be given the benefit of the doubt because he was a former president. And so, you know, kudos to the prosecutor down in Georgia who is leaning in, but if only the rule of law matters does a statement like that matter.
O`DONNELL: Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of the Republicans on the January 6 committee said this, he could have -- quoting Donald Trump, he could have overturned the election, this is an admission, and a massively on American statement. It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side, Trump or the Constitution. There is no middle on defending our nation anymore.
And, Congressman Swalwell, the problem on the Republican side of politics is not Donald Trump, because, every other Republican has an opportunity to isolate him and condemn him, and they refuse to do so.
SWALWELL: It would work, Lawrence. And it`s worked before. As a student of the Senate, you know the 1954 censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was fellow Republican Prescott Bush who said that McCarthy had created such dangerous divisions among the American people that no one could have an honest disagreement with him, and that you are either fully with McCarthy, or you were labeled a communist.
That type of solidarity among people in their own party against McCarthy worked. The difference here is, Donald Trump is a former president, he is more powerful than McCarthy. Also, McCarthy at least stood for the principle of being anti, quote, communism, Donald Trump only stands for the principle of himself.
So, if we are going to successfully beat back Trumpism, and the authoritarian streak that that would bring to our country, we need more Kinzinger`s, and Cheney`s. More people like Prescott Bush.
O`DONNELL: At this point, we are hearing nothing from the Republican leadership, certainly about this. And, we focus on Donald Trump, and it makes perfect sense to do that, and especially as a possible criminal defendant, he should be focused on as an individual. But nothing he does wouldn`t be threatening in any way to the rest of us if he didn`t have the support of the Republican Party.
SWALWELL: And, Lawrence, I think that is why every candidate on the Democratic side, and every honest reporter needs to ask Republican candidates and the House, and the senate, are you with pardoning the cop killers, or are you going to side with the cops of January 6th? Do you acknowledge that Joseph Biden is the president of the United States? Can you disavow violence as a senator in the state house in Michigan said they need to be locked and loaded going into the next election?
We need to make them answer these questions. I think that what you will see is that one party prefers voting, and one party prefers violence. And we need to make that election voting over violence.
O`DONNELL: And as we go forward, what is the schedule that the January 6 Committee has to keep an eye on just in terms of getting the work done before bumping into election campaign, reelection campaigns, taking over in Washington?
[22:15:11]
SWALWELL: Of course, recognizing to get one shot at this. And ideally, that shot takes place in primetime, so that working class Americans, shift working Americans can, you know, view the evidence. And if they do it once they have interviewed people like Marc Short, and they give people like Vice President Pence every opportunity in the world to come forward, so that they can animate for the American people how Donald Trump decided this mob against capital to overturn every American -- every American`s vote, and to put it in the hands of a person rather than of the hands of people.
And that is, frankly with this upcoming election is going to be about, is that one party believes in majority rules, and that means that on climate, on women`s rights, they can make their own health care decisions, that means on childcare, tax credit, the majority will decide whether we have those things or not. One party believes in violence. One party believes in not in a ruling, but in ruining.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you very much for starting off our discussion. We appreciate it.
And coming up later in the hour, we will be joined by Kenneth Branagh, with his extraordinary new film "Belfast", which reflects more on the current state of the American condition than it should.
But first, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, will join us with his analysis of how many state and federal crimes Donald Trump might have confessed to this weekend, and what Attorney General Merrick Garland should do about it.
Professor Laurence Tribe is next.
(COMMERICAL BREAK)
[22:20:57]
O`DONNELL: I am conducting a criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump, wrote Fani Willis, district attorney, in the first sentence of her letter addressed to Mr. J.C. Hacker, special agent in charge, Atlanta field office, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The letter request additional security because of Donald Trump`s public threats against District Attorney Willis, and other prosecutors investigating Donald Trump in New York, and Washington. Fani Willis letter is CC`ed to 19 people, all of them, Georgia government officials except a person whose name appears at the top of the CC list, the Honorable Merrick Garland, United States attorney general.
Our next guest says that Donald Trump`s public comments are, quote, daring the attorney general to seek a grand jury indictment against him for seditious conspiracy and forgiving aid and comfort to an insurrection to overturn the election.
Joining us now is Laurence Tribe, university professor of constitutional law emeritus, at Harvard Law School. He has won 35 cases in the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Tribe, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
And could you give us a review of what criminal liability is you think increased for Donald Trump as a result of his recent public statements?
LAURENCE TRIBE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: He essentially confessed publicly, and openly, without any coercion, without any pressure, to having committed the crime of conspiracy to engage in sedition. Seditious conspiracy, because the United States government, punishable by 20 years in prison, because he quite specifically said that he thought he had a right to overturn the election, and that Vice President Pence had better straighten up and overturn the election for him.
He also confessed publicly to inciting and fomenting, and more importantly giving aid and comfort to an insurrection, which is punishable by ten years in prison, and importantly by permanent disqualification from ever again holding office under the United States.
There are other less serious crimes to which he confessed, but just take a step back and recognize how extraordinary this is. He basically is daring the United States government, and the attorney general, and the Justice Department, to enforce the rule of law. He is saying make my day, if you come after me, I am going to stir up my angry mobs, and you will suffer. He has been so threatening to the district attorney in Atlanta, that she now has formally announced that she is criminally investigating him, and needs FBI protection.
Merrick Garland has said that he will not stop just with the people on the ground, he will follow the evidence where it leads. But he does not have to follow a trail of bread crumbs here.
As Jamie Raskin pointed out, Representative Raskin, the impeachment manager for the second impeachment, as he pointed out the other day, this is a smoking gun. You do not have to look any further. Yes, more evidence could be gathered, the evidence could be tightened, but you have the final conclusion that the January 6th Committee has been leading up to, and trying to prove, namely, that the president wasn`t simply exercising freedom of speech, but he was organizing an attempt to overturn the election.
[22:25:05]
The initial plan, I call it plan A, was to overturn the election simply by sending in phony identical, phony certificates from seven different states claiming that they were the real electors. I am the real electors for Donald Trump, even though he lost those states. That was the plan.
And the plan was to twist the arm of the vice president, tried to persuade him that under the Electoral Count Act, he had this magic power to toss out the electors who were certified by the states, and except these alternative slates, and send the matter back to the states and ultimately have the election result for the president.
That was an attempt to overturn the election without violence. A bloodless coup. If that had succeeded, we would not have necessarily seen officers crushed in some cases, severely injured in the Capitol, because it would have all succeeded without the insurrection.
But plan B, which he ended up having to resort to, plan B was this sacking of the Capitol, and the attempt through violence to seize power. And he`s now made it very clear that he has given aid and comfort to that violent insurrection after the fact, by offering that if he gets elected, he will basically pardon the people who sacked the Capitol. That is aid and comfort to a violent insurrection, which under 18 U.S. Code Section 2384, and 2383, this nullifies him from ever holding office again, just a section three of the 14th Amendment contemplates.
Just think about what it would mean if the attorney general just sits still now, having promised to pursue right to the very top, whoever might be guilty of trying to overturn the election of 2020, what it would mean to the people of the United States if he says, well, we are not going to do anything, or if he does not say anything. That will feed into the Trumpian narrative that he is entitled to have it his way no matter what the people of the United States vote for. And he has said as plainly as possible, he is going to do it again.
I don`t think that this attorney general can afford simply to lay down and play dead in front of the domestic terrorist. That is what this is, domestic terrorism. No former president has ever done it. And we simply cannot let this go on any longer.
O`DONNELL: What do you make of Donald Trump`s point that the fact that Congress is considering clarifying the electoral vote count law, that that proves that in fact Mike Pence did have the power to simply give the election to Donald Trump, and now they are trying to take that power away from the vice president for the first time?
TRIBE: Well, he cannot really needed, because that would mean that Kamala Harris would have the power to resolve the next election. I don`t think that is really what he means.
What he is trying to do is say that because an effort is underway to clarify the language of this terribly ambiguous statute that was passed in the 19th century, and plug is loopholes, and leave absolutely no doubt about the role of the vice president is simply to preside ceremonially over the counting of the electoral votes, that because we are trying to clarify, somehow it follows that the Electoral Count Act magically gave the vice president the power to pick the next president.
It didn`t do that. It obviously didn`t do that. But if it had tried to do it, that would have clearly violated the Constitution. So, it is a ridiculous argument. But it is typical of many of his arguments.
But we shouldn`t forget the fact that they are stupid and ridiculous prevent us from seeing the danger that it poses. It is a danger that requires action now.
O`DONNELL: Professor Laurence Tribe, thank you very much for joining us once again. We always appreciate it.
TRIBE: Thank you, Lawrence.
[22:29:36]
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, when they get around to building a statue to Patrick Murphy at Cork Harbor in Ireland, the inscription should say, "We`re not moving." Those now famous words by Patrick Murphy, the leader of a group of Irish fishermen forced Vladimir Putin and the Russian navy to back down. You`ll hear what Ireland`s newest folk hero Patrick Murphy said when he accepted Vladimir Putin`s surrender.
That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: As promised, here on MSNBC Friday night, the Irish violets did not shrink.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATRICK MURPHY, CEO, IRISH SOUTH & WEST FISH PRODUCERS ORGANIZATION: We are not adverse to danger in our industry. We`re not shrinking violets, and it`s something that is just ingrained in us.
When this came about we just said simply all we want to do is fish. These are our fishing grounds. This is where we fish and we don`t see any reason why you`re suddenly interested (ph) coming in to the grounds that we are the ones that has to make way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
[22:34:54]
MURPHY: So that is our stance. And we said then that it would be our protest. It`s that if the Russian fleet came in and they wanted to do exercises and we were fishing and they said go. Our protest was no, we are just going to keep fishing here and you have to leave. You have to go away.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: That was the now legendary Patrick Murphy on "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" Friday night at the end of more than a week of publicly telling Vladimir Putin and the Russian navy to stay away from Irish fishing grounds when conducting their war games at the end of this coming week.
The Russian navy planned to invade the fishing grounds which are technically on international waters. When the Irish fishermen`s protest led by Patrick Murphy became worldwide news the Russian ambassador to Ireland met with Patrick Murphy and other fishermen.
But after the meeting, the Russian government insisted that they would continue their war games as planned without any changes, to which Patrick Murphy said memorably, we are not moving.
And now we can expect an Irish fight song to be written about Patrick Murphy titled "We are not moving", because on Saturday, after Patrick Murphy stood his ground on MSNBC Friday night, Vladimir Putin surrendered to Patrick Murphy.
On Saturday, the Russian ambassador to Ireland announced that the Russian navy would indeed stay far away from the Irish fishing grounds, quote, "as a gesture of goodwill with the aim not to hinder fishing activities by the Irish vessels in the traditional fishing areas".
On Saturday, after accepting Vladimir Putin`s surrender, Patrick Murphy said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MURPHY: There`s enough families around here that have lost their loved ones to the sea, you know. and that`s enough of a danger to be facing without going out facing a military exercise.
Now at the same time, they`re forced to go out there because that`s their fishing, that`s their job, you know. And so they`re going to be relieved. It`s a simple as that. I was delighted for this. This is a very good result (ph). We were questioned about it and you know, in the interviews, everybody made a joke of it. Do you actually expect the Russians to move away if you ask them? Well, they did and they have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: No, they are not shrinking violets. We have more from Ireland coming up.
Up next in an expansion of our "House Divided" series where we have discussed the new books that suggest the possibility of a new civil war in the United States. We will be joined tonight by someone who lived through the kind of civil war that both books described. The political violence that erupted in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and lasted 30 years.
Kenneth Branagh was there. And his new autobiographical film about a little boy trying to dodge the bullets and explosions in Northern Ireland. It`s called "Belfast". It has received several award nominations already, and my personal focus group of Academy voters suggests that "Belfast" will be among the Oscar nominees announced next week.
Kenneth Branagh will join us next.
[22:38:11]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: John Hume was a noble and brave politician. And I don`t use those words lightly. He was a public school teacher in Northern Ireland who entered politics with the sole mission of bringing peace to Northern Ireland. And he saw that peace come in his lifetime.
And one day, walking through his district in Derry, he said to me a line that I have never forgotten that explains so much of Irish history.
Just off the top of his head he said, "The Irish never forget, and the English never remember." Kenneth Branagh is Irish, and so he remembers.
You have heard our discussion of the 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland in our segments discussing the new surge in books and articles that consider the possibility of a new civil war of sorts in the United States in this era of sharp political division.
Our next guest was a little boy in Belfast, Northern Ireland when violence broke out in his neighborhood in 1969. He has captured his feelings about that time in a masterful new film called simply, "Belfast", which will probably be acknowledged in next week`s announcement of this year`s Oscar nominees, if there is any justice left in Hollywood at all.
Here is a quick look at Kenneth Branagh`s Belfast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And why the heck not?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know she`s a Catholic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are looking to cleanse the community. You wouldn`t want to be (INAUDIBLE) tomorrow night in the street.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was that our side that burned all that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is no our side and their side in our street. Everyone used to be (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are in the midst of a war. This is the time to make a new start.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is five-time Oscar nominee Kenneth Branagh, highly likely to be an Oscar nominee again next week. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this film. I just want to begin, though, with the way your film begins with these beautiful shots of Belfast that were inconceivable as recently as the early 1990s. Cruise ships in Belfast harbor.
[22:44:47]
O`DONNELL: And as someone who was there in the 1970s myself, those images were absolutely inconceivable. And you go from this current peaceable place back to that time that was considered a civil war.
Let`s begin with how did we get to this beautiful technicolor Belfast that`s there now that`s used as a place to shoot movies, and house crew ships at the docks?
KENNETH BRANAGH, ACTOR/DIRECTOR: Well Lawrence, as you know very well, you are there it is a complex situation. You quoted and spoke about a really very, very impressive man who was in the middle of all of that, John Hume.
Part of the reason to try to write something about my experience of Belfast, my lived experience as a nine year old was to try to find the macro part of it. In talking about Irish experience, it is often so overwhelming because it is so vast and so complicated. So I wanted to concentrate on one boy, one family, one street, and see whether politics, which is we kind of understood it on the ground then which was men then in suits on television talking about these kinds of things, and trying to see how ordinary people dealt with it as traumatic change occurred.
But I would agree with you, you put it so eloquently just then, the miracle in my lifetime, I`m 61 years old now, this kicked off -- it was brewing to kick off when I was nine, 30 years and 3,700 deaths later and much more damage to the larger reaches of that part of the world as well.
Later, the Good Friday agreement happened and from 1998 to now, although imperfect and flawed, and always and always, always at risk with the peace meeting to be won every day, there has been this extraordinary effort, sometimes very, very delicately and hard one, to find a way back to, as we do it in the beginning of the film, celebrate the amazing absolutely gargantuan leaps in terms of economic growth and societal development across those 25 years. It is the Yin and Yang of an incredibly powerful extraordinary 50 -- 60 years.
O`DONNELL: You know, my first moment in Belfast, I took the ferry over from Scotland in the summer of 1971 and I had just bought a British motorcycle a BSA. I was driving down Belfast streets for the very first time, had this problem with my chain, and I pulled over, and this guy on a motorcycle pulled over beside me to help me up.
I ended up going home and living with him for quite awhile. His Protestant neighborhood, very similar to yours, it was an adventure unlike anything, I mean you can imagine, I just want to say how that part of my own personal life experience, I never, ever expected to see it on film.
Those barricades on those blocks that you show. Those explosions, the car bombs. You know, you would be falling asleep at night, you would hear the explosions going off.
The British troops everywhere. And the way you captured it, with a relatively tight frame on it all, I think it delivers more than we have ever seen about what that life was.
BRANAGH: Thank you Lawrence. I mean your story, I mean, that`s an only in Belfast story. Also you were a very brave man to be riding around the streets of Belfast in 1971 on your motorbike because there`s plenty of places you could have broken down in that, you know, might have provided a different kind of experience.
But suddenly going home and being suddenly hunkered in with that particular new friend, new host, it is part of the kind of ordinary and extraordinary nature of a place that really does -- it is interested in other people. The Irish just generally, you know, can talk, as you know, they can talk about football and philosophy. They are ready to leap into any kind of discussion. And they take people to their hearts.
And it is an intense experience that you have. And that is what we had. And even in the midst of those troubles where everything you just described so well with that play, with our playground, the streets suddenly overnight -- not overnight within a matter of a few hours turning into a fortress, still with every step of the way, every step of the social experience from that point onwards, was trying to find what the Irish love by way of coping mechanism as I`m sure you experience much of it.
Laughter, music, ad hoc parties, dancing, everything that affirms and seizes life in the midst of such an extraordinary situation. There is a line in Shakespeare at the end of "Love`s Labour Lost", where Baron (ph) is charged with making people laugh in hospital and he says -- to move wild laughter in the throat of death, it cannot be, it is impossible.
Back in those dark days of the troubles, the Irish somehow made it possible.
[22:49:53]
O`DONNELL: You know, I took notes last night on my third watching of the film. And here is the entirety of my notes.
Belfast: a love story. Marital love. Puppy love. And love of place. Love of family. It is such a love letter to this place, Belfast, which has been resurrected during your lifetime.
But to see that grandparent marital love story, the parent marital love story, and then this little boy and his very first love, which is as far as I can tell, simply the best capturing of the first love of a little boy and a little girl that I have ever seen.
BRANAGH: Well, thank you Lawrence. It is certainly what my experience was of the primacy of that quality. Maybe because of the sense of being under assault by the forces at the time. It was a kind of sense of quite frankly not unlike our current experience of the pandemic, where introspection has forced us, you know, to look inward sometimes.
The worst part of that is the polarizing. It`s the tribal nature of it. But maybe at least in what I experienced and what we tried to put into this film was that it`s -- at its best it could produce this understanding of that which is precious and which in a time like ours where we are uncertain of the future just as we were back then. Where Life is very unsettled and uncertain.
And hen there are few givens, few constants, but one of them if you are lucky enough to experience it is either the example of love. I certainly saw that in my parents. It was a passionate love. It was full of fizz, it was full of occasionally crockery flying across that kitchen, you know, in the moments of passion.
You know the Irish. Quick to love, quick to laugh, quick to fight, quick to argue. Beautiful qualities. But it`s always electric. And what it produces sometimes is a sense of love and passion that is very, very vital and restorative.
O`DONNELL: Yes. You didn`t shy away from the realities of marital love and what kind of stress can occur in that. And that house is just exactly the house, you know, that I was staying in as a house guest.
What was it like for you to be spending all that time in effect back in your old house with a camera?
BRANAGH: It was time travel, Lawrence. It was time travel when I went first to the backyard where my granddad had his kind of Willy Wonka junk shop factory. Every piece of ad hoc piece of mangled wired bottles, pieces of wood things he could make stuff, turn his hands to and it became this informal men`s lounge in these tiny houses. I don`t know if that was your experience.
But in order sometimes to pretend that there was a separation between sexes, the men would step outside. My grandfather would sit on the outside loo and my father would sit on one of these mad pieces of sort of Willy Wonka/Heath Robinson equipment that my grandfather was building. I would sit and listen.
And we would be in this kind of separate area, which of course was being entirely listened to and monitored by the people who really run it -- my mother and my grandmother.
But to go back there in this film and see what was recreated by Jim Clay, our production designer. And also see Ciaran Hinds (ph) who plays the grandfather who was brought up half a mile from me, walked into and said my god, these rooms are small, aren`t they?
And of course -- but to me they were huge. As you know, they were tiny, but one of the things that worked was that everybody in that street was absolutely the same. You know, we had same economic opportunities, same size of houses, same levels of employment in that street because we had the worst level of employment in the whole of the U.K.
And so whether you are a Catholic or Protestant, the kind of rules of the game in most ways were the same. To go back and sort of taste it again was quite a sort of emotional experience.
O`DONNELL: Yes. And I`m so glad that it shows just how much interaction was still survivable between the populations then even with all the stresses. Most people were not involved with the violence and were not affected by the violence and lives went on in so many normal ways at the time.
Kenneth Branagh, you and I could go on and on about this, but a commercial beckons. They insist that we stop at some point.
And so it`s painful for me to say, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really an honor to have you here.
BRANAGH: It`s been a pleasure, Lawrence. Thank you so much.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Tonight`s last word is next.
[22:54:37]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: We have breaking news from the "New York Times" at this hour under the headline "Trump had role in weighing proposals to seize voting machines."
The "New York Times" reports "President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer Rudolf W. Giuliani to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to asked the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states."
Three people familiar with the matter said the "New York Times" has more reporting on this, which you will be hearing in "THE 11TH HOUR".
And I have to apologize if I somehow gave the impression that you have to be Irish to love Kenneth Branagh`s new film, "Belfast". Yes, Kenneth Branagh is the kind of writer who can deftly slip in a line from William Buckley Yates in the normal flow of conversation. And if you know the Yates line and the poem, that deepens the moment a bit, but if you don`t, you still experience all the emotional dimensions of that beautiful line, "too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart".
[22:59:45]
O`DONNELL: The three generations of love stories told in this film are universal. We`ve all experienced some of what we see in those stories. And the near collapse of civil society that Northern Ireland experienced and then survived takes on a whole new importance for our consideration after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
And then, there is Van Morrison`s music, which we did not even get to end our discussion. When you see "Belfast" you will laugh, you will cry, you will learn. That is tonight`s LAST WORD.
More of tonight`s breaking news on "THE 11TH HOUR" which starts now.