Really happy to have you here. One quick note before we get started tonight. Right now it is Monday night, which is when you are used to seeing me here on the TV machine. Your eyes are not deceiving you. Here is but this week I will also be here on Friday

We're doing a special edition of the Rachel Maddo show at the end of this week on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern and then at 9 p.m.

eastern on Friday right after right after the Rachel Maddo show we're going to be

showing my new showing my new documentary which is

called from Russia with Lev it is about the first Trump impeachment and

what was both so terrible and equally so stupid about that entire scandal.

So in case you want to pop it in your calendar or set the DVR right now, again, I am here tonight as normal, but then you will get a second

Rachel Maddo show this week at 8 PM Eastern on Friday. And then right after that special

Rachel Maddo show at 9 PM Eastern on Friday, you can see my new movie from

Russia with Lev.

But we start tonight in this fraught and unnerving place that we are in American news and politics and frankly in American life right now.

The last time there were multiple assassination plots

against a president or presidential candidate

in such quick succession.

It was nearly 50 years ago.

It was 49 years ago this month in fact in September 1975.

President Gerald Ford was in a park in Sacramento, California when a fanatical follower of Charles Manson pulled

out a 45 and pointed it at him, then not even three weeks later, also in California, but in another city in San Francisco,

another woman actually did fire two shots at President Ford in close proximity at a hotel in San Francisco.

Both of the shots that she fired from her 38 special

went wide after a gay US marine combat veteran

saw what she was trying to do, saw her pull at the gun, and he knocked her arm while

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