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MS NOW's Rachel Maddow previewed one of the side curiosities about President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address: the designated survivor, or the sole member of the Cabinet who is hidden in a safe room during the speech, to be sworn in as president in case there is an attack that takes out the Capitol building.

It's normally a fairly mundane Cabinet official, Maddow noted — but the problem for Trump is, even his most mundane Cabinet officials are steeped in scandal this year.

President Donald Trump's insistence on raising taxes because the Supreme Court told him not to is going to wreck his party, former Trump administration DHS staffer Miles Taylor told MS NOW's "The Weeknight" on Monday.

Trump has already signaled his intent to use other statutes to restore his voided global tariffs — even though analysts are skeptical he has sufficient legal footing.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told MS NOW's "The Weeknight" on Monday that "life after Donald Trump" is finally in sight for America — and everyone from our institutions to the voting public to Republican lawmakers are starting to shift as a result.

Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in Congress, has become well known as the co-author of bipartisan legislation that forced public disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files — an affair that is continuing to damage the president week after week.

A CNN host was taken aback on Monday night after new details about Nancy Guthrie's abductor were revealed.

New video footage obtained by law enforcement shows that Guthrie's abductor visited the home a few days before she disappeared in early February. The alleged abductor can be seen in the video without his gun or the backpack that investigators have focused on in an attempt to identify the person.

Fox News host Jesse Watters was buried in mockery on Monday after he claimed that he doesn't like having a president who "struggles to read."

Watters, who co-hosts "The Five," was responding to comments California Gov. Gavin Newsom made during a public appearance alongside Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, both of whom are Democrats. Newsom said he is "just like" the people in the audience because he got a 960 on his SAT test in high school. Some MAGA commentators used the clip to attack Newsom.

A lawyer warned on Monday that President Donald Trump appears to have cooked up a "bad faith" scheme to meddle in the midterm elections.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration dispatched FBI agents and the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to the Fulton County, Georgia, election office to retrieve data about the 2020 general election. The raid was predicated on an affidavit from an FBI agent who claimed there was evidence that the election was unfairly conducted. In response, Trump administration officials collected more than 700 boxes of data, including the election ballots and the county's voter rolls, which courts had denied them access to.

A legal expert warned on Monday that a federal judge's "egregious" ruling showed she has an absolute bias toward President Donald Trump.

Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida issued a ruling on Monday permanently preventing former special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his investigation into Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 general election from becoming public. In the ruling, Cannon compared Smith's report to other special counsel reports that had been released after an investigation concluded, and argued that releasing Smith's report would unfairly damage the president's reputation.

President Donald Trump is more desperate than ever to win the approval and friendship of celebrities and the pop culture sphere, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace on "Deadline: White House" — and Hollywood is in a quandary about just how to respond to his cajoling and threats.

This comes as Trump does his utmost to cultivate rap star Nicki Minaj's new sharp turn into the MAGA world.

Mark Epstein, the brother of disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, abruptly ended an interview on Monday after he was asked about the victims of his brother's crimes.

Epstein joined journalist Piers Morgan on his eponymous YouTube show, where he was asked about the latest release of files from the FBI's investigation into his brother. Epstein claimed the files added credence to his theory that Jeffrey was murdered while in jail. He also claimed that the FBI has been playing "games" to portray his brother's death as a suicide.

Another MAGA lawmaker said on Monday that she's lost all faith in the Trump Department of Justice to hold anyone in the U.S. accountable for the crimes of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) discussed the renewed calls for Trump's DOJ to arrest and prosecute people who aided in Epstein's crimes on a new episode of "Piers Morgan Uncensored" on Monday. Mace's comments happened at a time when authorities in the United Kingdom appear to be ramping up efforts to hold Epstein associates Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson accountable for their actions.

Count current and former FBI officials among those who were appalled watching FBI Director Kash Patel chugging beer and partying with the Olympic hockey team in Italy, as if he had some part in their 2-1 overtime victory over Canada.

According to MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian, Patel claimed he had important business in Italy, and it was just a coincidence that the Winter Olympics, awarded to Milan in 2019, happened to be running concurrently.