MSNBC Host Lawrence O’Donnell says the only chance Senate Democrats might have of thwarting President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick to replace outgoing justice Anthony Kennedy is if two key Republicans vote no.

O’Donnell, who joined Greater Boston Monday, said Democrats are short on options in a fight that could reshape the court for a generation to come.

“There’s absolutely nothing the Democrats can do procedurally on the Senate floor, O’Donnell, host of The Last Word told Jim Braude. “I worked on that Senate floor for seven years and I can tell you there is no parliamentary trick. A lot of people are throwing around these ideas on Twitter; you can ignore every one of them.”

O’Donnell added that if Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were pressured enough into voting against whoever Trump nominated, it could provide cover for vulnerable Democrats — Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — to also vote no. All three Democrats voted last year for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee to the country’s highest court.

Kennedy’s retirement gives Trump the chance to pick his second supreme court justice, which could lead to major changes on issues like gay rights, abortion and possibly even deadly force by police officers — a standard the court has ruled on in the past.

O'Donnell also discussed with Braude his decision to republish his 1983 book, "Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill."

In "Deadly Force," O’Donnell recounts his father’s successful fight for justice for an unarmed black man, James Bowden Jr. of Roxbury, who was shot and killed in 1975 by Boston Police.

“He knew right away, with the information that he had on it, that this was a bad shooting. That’s what his gut told him,” O’Donnell said of this father, a lawyer and former Boston Police officer. “He was very much that way. He could look at the tip of the iceberg of evidence and have a gut feeling about a case.”

O’Donnell says the subject of police-involved shootings has “come back to life in a new way” due in part to cable news and video. He says the case of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, inspired him to republish the book in paperback.

The book is out now with an updated preface and afterward.