Updated
Summary
Staff writers for the Atlantic, Adam Serwer and McKay Coppins, join Hayes to discuss how the right`s Free Speech protest is all about taking control. Kevin McCarthy and the Republican leadership is facing fallout from the newly leaked audio of them worried that other Republican members` social media comments on January 6 could incite further violence. The January 6 Committee has been looking at Marjorie Taylor Greene`s discussions about invoking the insurrection act or declaring martial law. J.D. Vance is apparently moving the needle after getting former President Trump`s endorsement. The right-wing still continues to undermine public health and use COVID remedies that are not effective. The Biden administration says only 500,000 doses of COVID treatment Paxlovid have been administered far short of the 20 million doses the government has committed to purchase. Russia stepped up its assault on Eastern Ukraine.
Transcript
REP. VAL DEMINGS (D-FL): And that would be the case, why do we need to implement this secret force? To do what exactly at the polls? I don`t know about other voters —
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: More intimidation, I`m guessing.
But I know that Florida voters are determined to turn out and vote. We`re going to give them a good reason to turn out. They can turn out and vote for me for the United States Senate.
REID: OK. All right, well, I am — I am all over Chris Hayes` time, so I`m going to thank you. Congresswoman Val Demings who`s running for the United States Senate, thank you. That is tonight`s REIDOUT. “ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS: Free speech under assault in America.
JEANINE PIRRO, HOST, FOX NEWS: Free speech under attack all over the world.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He recognizes that free speech is under assault.
HAYES: Decoding the Republican free speech fear-mongering. Here`s a hint. It`s not really about freedom.
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): I don`t think Walt would appreciate what`s going on in this company right now. I`m sorry.
HAYES: Then, the January 6 Committee looks at Marjorie Taylor Greene`s martial law remarks. New fallout from the McCarthy tapes.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): It`s potentially illegal what he`s doing.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Well, he`s putting people in jeopardy.
HAYES: Plus, what everyone needs to know about the COVID treatment the Vice President is taking and what we know about the state of Russia`s military as the Pentagon gets bullish on victory for Ukraine.
LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Ukraine clearly believes that it can win. And so does everyone here.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. There is almost no more contested phrase in America than free speech. In fact, freedom of speech has been well, contested for millennia since the ancient Greeks first introduced the concept at least in the Western canon 2500 years ago.
And of course, the first amendment to our Constitution protects freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in practice, well, it gets pretty complicated. As legendary reporter A. J. Liebling wrote in the New Yorker 1960, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
It`s a pretty smart thing to say. It carried on through the decades because we are now seeing that exact principle play out before us. This act of desire to own a press to control freeing the press from some have the right to control who gets to speak and how under the guise of free speech. That is what the celebration a billionaire Elon Musk buying Twitter is all about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Twitter, it`s in Elon Musk`s hands, can you believe it?
JESSE WATTERS, HOST, FOX NEWS: Count this one as a victory for free speech.
GREG GUTFELD, HOST, FOX NEWS: And he may in fact, save the town square.
CARLSON: It could turn out to be a pivot point in our history. Elon Musk believes in free speech. He thinks everyone should be allowed to talk.
HANNITY: People should be free to say what they want to say without just being shut down, silenced, and canceled just because it doesn`t fit what, their far-left narrative.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: They want everyone to be free to say what they want to say even if, in the case of Donald Trump, they use the platform to incite a deadly riot, like Trump did before he got kicked off Twitter, but OK, fine. Everyone can join. Everyone can say what they want to say and speak out. But well, it goes beyond that.
Listen to this right-wing radio host suggesting Musk should fire the employees at Twitter, almost all of them, because of their views. They shouldn`t be able to say whatever they want, to believe what they believe. They should be punished for their beliefs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN SHAPIRO, HOST, BEN SHAPIRO SHOW: Musk needs to come in and he needs to fire everyone. I mean, everyone. And Twitter has hundreds if not thousands of employees. There have been studies done of the donations, the political donations that people working in Twitter. 98.7 percent of all donations from the people working at Twitter went to Democrats in the last election cycle.
He should review the employee list and figure out who is good and who`s bad, not purely on the basis of politics, but on the basis of performance. And the good news is, many of these employees are already sounding off on Elon Musk and they`ve given him good excuse to fire them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Oh, that`s interesting. A political purge but built on the basis of merit but also a political purge, but also if they sound off on Elon Musk, which is that they speak freely their views, ax them. That`s what it`s about, right? This shows it`s all about control. Control over speech platforms, control over institutions the right use to think were on their side, and now believer on the other side.
We`re actually seeing this put into practice, not just the whining or ecstasies about Elon Musk, which frankly is like a little bit weird and parasocial, but in a way that is not just a violation of the First Amendment, but looks downright thuggish and authoritarian. And that`s in Florida, where this is being made into policy, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed into a law a measure passed by the both Republicans in the house — in both houses banning teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in early elementary classrooms.
Now, opponents dubbed it The Don`t Say Gay Law. It has attracted a lot of criticism, including from Florida`s largest private employer, Disney, which issued a statement filling to support efforts for the law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.
[20:05:06]
OK, so that`s just Disney saying we don`t like this law, right, free speech. Well, last week, Florida Republicans retaliated, revoking Disney World special tax status, a privileged Disney has held for 55 years, effectively allowing the company to self-govern its 25,000-acre Theme Park Complex.
Now, again, they didn`t even really pretend there was some other policy reason. This was pure payback. You criticized us, we`re taking away your tax status. And there`s a name for that, it`s viewpoint discrimination, an establish concept in First Amendment jurisprudence. The state cannot treat a person or entity differently simply because they don`t like what they say. If free speech means anything, it means that.
Let`s imagine if the Florida Legislature passed a law saying that anyone who publicly criticized the Don`t Say Gay Bill has to pay a special tax penalty or doesn`t qualify for certain tax benefits. Obviously, unconstitutional. Obviously completely inimical to the spirit of American democracy. But that is not really that different from what they did to Disney.
Again, this is a law. This isn`t people whining on Twitter, it`s not some private company saying, you know, you`re banned. And, of course, Ron DeSantis rush to sign that punishing bill, the one that punishes Disney so that he could dawn his populace costume and show off his performative anger at corporate America on the corporate media at Fox News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DESANTIS: They pledged themselves to mobilize their considerable corporate resources out of the coffers of this Burbank, California based corporation to overturn the rights of parents in the state of Florida to effectively commandeer our democratic process. And so, that obviously is something that we very much objected to. I just stand with the people. I stand against a lot of media and a lot of big corporations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, this is why he did it, obviously. Just to be clear, what Disney said was they were going to mobilize against the law in the political space, which again, Republicans and the Republican right-wing judiciary, the ones who give us Citizens United, granting like the fully unfettered ability of private entities to do whatever the heck they want.
But in their eager rush to penalize Disney, DeSantis and the Republican legislators apparently did not notice a pretty big issue with their punishment. Miami Herald reports that “an obscure provision in state law says the state could not do what legislators were doing, revoke Disney special tax status, unless the district`s bond debt was paid off.”
Disney, however, noticed and quietly sent a note to its investor to show it was confident the legislature`s attempt to dissolve the special taxing district was not legal. Another Florida law stipulates that if the district was dissolved by default, the county would assume its debt. So, the two Florida counties where Disney is located would inherit upwards of $1 billion in bond debt.
Now, let`s just be clear here. At the end of the day, big businesses and corporations, they have a reliable friend in Ron DeSantis. He recently touted how he`s “protecting the freedom Floridians need to do to business and drive economic success.” That is part of what makes us all so disingenuous, but also bewildering because again, it`s not about the concentration of corporate power, right, in corporate America, it`s not about free speech principles, it`s actually just a protection racket, straight up.
In MAGA conservatism, everything is run with the mindset of mafia bosses or autocratic leaders. You`re either with us or against us. We have the power, and we`re going to use that power to go after you unless you do what we say. And that is fundamentally offensive to basic core cherished American ideals. And it is everywhere and on the rise all over the American right.
Adam Serwer and McKay Coppins are both staff writer for The Atlantic. Adam`s latest piece is titled Elon Musk isn`t Buying Twitter To Defend Free Speech. And McKay is the author of book The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party`s Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest To Take Back The White House. And they both join me now.
Adam, you write about essentially along the lines of the monologue I just laid out which I said to our staff today and said that was the — you know, the A block in tweet form. But that free speech is a kind of code, not first sort of abstract principle to be aimed at, but essentially the kind of velvet glove or on the iron fist of controlling speech.
ADAM SERWER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, I mean, look, the issue here is that they want social media platforms to be an unfettered vehicle for right-wing propaganda. And if Elon Musk buys Twitter, if the sell goes through, it`s his to do what he wants with it. That`s how the system works.
But the way that you know they`re not concerned about free speech, even in the sense that they mean it, is these demands for a mass political purge of Twitter`s liberal workforce. You know, they`re talking about free speech means, you know, you don`t get punished for what you say, you don`t gets shut down, you`ll get canceled, and then they are essentially demanding, you know, what in their terms would be a mass cancellation.
And so, what that tells you is that this is not about free speech. This is about the social media platforms using their power to serve the Republican Party, much in the same way that that conflict with Disney was about Disney using its power to serve the Republican Party. The only problem the Republican Party has with corporate power is if that power is not being used to further their ends.
They don`t fundamentally have a problem with the extent of that power over American life which is an actual genuine problem. But what they want is for the corporations to do what they want when they say to do it. As long as they do that, there`s actually no problem at all.
[20:10:47]
HAYES: Yes. I mean, I should just stay here. Like, I have no rooting interest in Disney. Like it`s just a massive, amoral corporation that`s going to throw away the throne as it — as it sort of projects his interests, right. It`s when those are interests rub up against the, you know, the political project.
And I think, you know, McKay, it`s interesting to me. Like, the Disney thing, it`s — there wasn`t even really much pretense. I think even the lieutenant governor was like, well, if they take back, you know, what they said, maybe we`ll get their tax status back. It`s like — and I saw, again, the sort of usual suspects in kind of the never-Trump, right, saying like, hey, guys, this is not what we do. We shouldn`t do this. This is wrong. But that`s a very marginalized faction of the American right at the moment. Most of them are like, yes, this is what power is for.
MCKAY COPPINS, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. If you want to follow kind of an interesting debate on this, just follow like a handful of National Review writers on Twitter right now, because what you see is like a few people who are, you know, George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney Republicans saying, wait a second, I don`t — isn`t this government overreach? Should we really be infringing on the rights of these private companies?
They`re still kind of playing the hits from the Reagan era, right? And they`re getting shouted down by the ascendant faction of the Republican Party, which is saying, no, this is about winning. And I think that what you said is so important. There really is very little pretense. Even, you know, the defenders of this, you know, gambit by Ron DeSantis are basically saying, we are not only trying to punish Disney and get them to reverse course, we`re also trying to make an example of them, right? We want to make sure that other companies don`t — you know, know that we can punish them with the state power that we have.
And it`s such an interesting reversal, from, you know, kind of the conservative ideas that were dominant, even just like 10 years ago, right? You know, not that long ago, Republicans, conservatives, felt that it was their job to protect corporate interests in part because it was, you know, part of their economic project, but also because they could reliably defend on large companies, or depend on large companies to have their backs, right? They were allied politically.
What`s happened is the cultural politics in this country have changed in the last decade or so, in a way that a lot of the people now running these companies and working at these companies have relatively liberal social views, right? And those are being expressed by these companies.
And now, these same conservatives who, you know, we`re big fans of Citizens United, are big fans of the conservative jurisprudence of the past decade or longer, are now saying, wait a second, now we have to — we have to go after these companies, because they`re not on our side anymore.
HAYES: Yes. And I mean, the nice thing about a six-three court, and we`ll see what, you know, gets tested here is that, you know, if you have people who are sort of, let`s just say limber enough, they can come up with justifications to use the First Amendment to protect who you want, and not to protect who you don`t want.
I mean — and that comes back to Musk here, Adam. Like, you know, you should go — you know, if you`re a Tesla employee or not even a Tesla employee, and you go on the lot of Tesla saying we should unionize Tesla, like, let`s see how long the free speech principle of Elon Musk will apply. Like, again, all this stuff rubs up against its interest boundaries very quickly.
SERWER: Right. I mean, look, the fact is that, you know, it doesn`t hurt Elon Musk if Twitter becomes a cesspool in terms of — it doesn`t necessarily — well, I mean, it might if he ultimately buys it. But you know, most of these guys are not — these billionaires are not affected by social media being a cesspool.
What they might be affected by is by their workforce unionizing, because that puts limits on their ability to spend their money to wield their power to throw their weight around. And it`s why whenever these guys talk about free speech, that talk halts immediately when it comes to allowing labor organizers in their workplace to unionize their workforce. And it`s not just a question of speech, it`s a question of power.
HAYES: In fact, the Supreme Court, this court recently found that like it was essentially a regulatory taking the law that required allowing employers — people to meet on company property. I also think, McKay, your point about the threat is really important too. Like, the dating on this as fascinating. The law eliminates this improving district, the Reedy Creek Improvement District by June 2023.
[20:15:14]
It does allow for districts to be reestablished, leaving an avenue to renegotiate the future of the deal. It allows the company to provide services such as zoning, fire protection. It really does feel like, boy, that`s a great special district you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
COPPINS: Well, right. And, you know, it`s funny. Like, when you — when you raise that question with fans of this bill, for the most part, you don`t even really get that much pushback. Like, I have raised this with conservative DeSantis fans and, you know, just kind of putting the question to them. And what they will say is, yes, you know, you`re right, right? These companies don`t deserve our, you know, special protection if they`re going to be against us.
Though I also think that what`s happening is that some of it is getting dressed up in like, you know, populist Teddy Roosevelt language, right? Like, it`s like, there`s this certain brand of Republican that is now saying, no, no, no, you don`t understand, we are the real populace. We`re for the working class. We`re against corporations and we always have been. And it just so happens that we`ve rediscovered our populist roots at a time when these companies are opposing our political project.
HAYES: Adam Serwer and McKay Coppins, thank you both.
SERWER: Yes, but I mean —
HAYES: Sorry, we got to go, Adam. But thank you for — thank you both, gentlemen.
Coming up, the fallout from the brief moment Kevin McCarthy took the threats made by his own members seriously.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCARTHY: Tension is too high. The country is too crazy. I didn`t want to look back and think we cause something or we miss something and someone`s got hurt. I don`t want to play politics with any of that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: How the totally appropriate rational response of the Republican leader had to the events of January 6 is now coming back to haunt him thanks to his radicalized caucus. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: The House Republican Conference is reacting to that leaked audio obtained by the New York Times which we played you at length last night in which Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other Republican leaders criticize members of their own party in the days following the January 6 insurrection.
At one point, McCarthy and his second in command, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who himself of course is the victim of a politically motivated attack when he was shot in 2017, singled out Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida for his conduct which they worried could incite further violence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCARTHY: I`m calling Gaetz. I`m explaining to him — I don`t know what I`m going to say, but I`m going to have some other people call him too but the nature of what — if I`m getting a briefing, and I`m going to get another one from the FBI tomorrow — this is serious shit to cut this out.
SCALISE: Yes, that`s — I mean, it`s potentially illegal what he`s doing.
MCCARTHY: Well, he`s putting people in jeopardy. And he doesn`t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Today, McCarthy addressed those comments in a closed-door meeting with Republicans. He reportedly told the conference the leaked audio was merely a distraction for more politically salient issues for the party, which is sort of predictable, apparently receiving a standing ovation when he finished, also sort of predictable. But not everyone was pleased.
NBC News reports that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia press both McCarthy and Scalise to apologize for their comments, neither of them did. And Congressman Gaetz, the subject to the least — leaked conversation asked Scalise to state which of his comments he considered illegal.
Scalise reportedly refused to provide specifics, but McCarthy tried to remind Gaetz of the real enemy. “McCarthy urged unity and said Republicans should be attacking Democrats.” Jackie Alemany is the congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post where she covers the fallout from the January 6 insurrection. Her latest articles how the January 6 committee is looking into discussions of Trump using the Insurrection Act and martial law.
Firstly, let`s just start on the sort of caucus dynamics as best as we can tell from your reporting and others, Jackie, about, you know, what — the kind of balance of power in this caucus, which seems to me to be much more weighted towards the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gates` of the world today than it was on say, January 10 of last year.
JACQUELINE ALEMANY, CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes. There is sort of an asymmetric balance here. The loudest voices in the room, Chris, are definitely Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. And they still hold the attention of a really important constituency for all House Republicans, and that`s Trump`s base.
But on the other hand, at this point, you know, these fringe members are being overpowered. And you know, the rest of the House GOP conferences are becoming exceedingly frustrated with their antics and some of their behavior. That`s why in the closed-door meeting this morning where House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy received a standing ovation for trying to sweep these comments under the rug and call for unity and for his members to focus on issues like inflation or the border, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were the only two who really protested.
And in the aftermath of that meeting, as we chase down members who were then walking to the Capitol, they didn`t want to get into what exactly those two members said but did sort of roll their eyes at Gaetz and Taylor Greene asking Steve Scalise to apologize and venting frustrations with what that leaked audio said about them.
[20:25:19]
HAYES: Yes. I mean, what I thought was interesting is — I`m going to play some sound from Scalise who was asked about this. I mean, he sounds apologetic here, right? I mean, there`s a little bit of an upside-down here. Like, their concern is, people just died, we had a near threat to democracy, we were holed up, what you guys are saying is wrong. And here`s Scalise talking today about like basically telling Matt Gaetz like, I`m sorry, kind of. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCALISE: So, I shared that with Matt. I`m sorry that those comments cause him problems, because it was things that was conveyed to me from a number of places that we were — and look, you can go back to those days after January 6, there are a lot of reports floating around. Some turned out to be true, some not.
And so, you know, as you`re having private conversations commenting on those things, you know, ultimately, you know, the concerns I had were that there were members getting death threats. And that was something that I surely wanted to be vocal at pushing back on, but he and I talked about that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You know, I`m thinking here the distinction between what they`re doing here and what they`re doing with Madison Cawthorn. I mean, Madison Cawthorn, guns are blazing, right? They are out. The knives are out for him. Tom Tillis today was tweeting about his insider trading.
And his sin was telling a podcast about coke orgies that he says he`s been invited to and that members of Congress are participating in. And it`s like, they`re loaded for bear for Madison Cawthorn. In some ways, it`s like they`re showing how they can go after someone if they want to, I guess is my point. And they`re not really going to do that with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz even if they roll their eyes.
ALEMANY: Yes, Chris. And what we just heard there from Steve Scalise was half revisionist history. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz continue to propagate the same conspiracy theories and double down on a lot of the rhetoric that they were peddling ahead of January 6, 2021. And, you know, most recently, just a few months ago on Steve Bannon podcast said that they had no shame for any of their actions and their contributions to potentially, you know, the — however, many people died in the January 6 insurrection and said that they had, you know, walk through again, a lot of their plans and some of the legal avenues that they were exploring.
And so, you know, the leadership wants to sweep this under the rug for obvious political — issues of political expediency. But their members, we should be very clear, continue to believe and disseminate these really dangerous claims.
HAYES: Quickly, just on your latest reporting of the January 6 Committee. You say that they`ve been looking at discussions about involve — invoking the insurrection act or declaring martial law. Of course, that`s what Marjorie Taylor Greene said members were urging in that text using presidential powers to justify seizing assets of voting machine companies using the military to require a rerun of the election. What can you tell us about that?
ALEMANY: Yes, I think what is important about these leaks that we saw this week from the January 6 Committee about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that a lot of members were calling to — for the former president to invoke martial law is the sort of the broader context here. It wasn`t just GOP members. This was a lot of — this was, you know, people out — Trump`s outside legal team, people who were presenting these actual proposals to the former President in the Oval Office.
There were many different players who were throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to get the president to use extraordinary — take extraordinary measures to strong-arm his way into overturning the election. And the committee is certainly interested in that and also trying to determine the extent that the former president was actually seriously considering these proposals.
HAYES: Jackie Alemany, as always, thank you so much.
ALEMANY: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Still ahead, as Republican candidates across the country fall over themselves to align with Trump, why a Trump endorsement doesn`t mean the same thing in every race? That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I`m very pleased to introduce the man with by far the best chance to defeat the radical Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate this November. And you know what? You know what? He`s a guy that said some bad shit about me. He did. But you know what? Every one of the others did also. In fact, if I went by that standard, I don`t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country – – you want to — they all said bad but they all came back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: When he`s right, he`s right. There`s no question that Donald Trump`s personal endorsement of candidates still holds a lot of weight in Republican primaries. The Trump endorsement of the Ohio Senate candidate he was introducing there, J.D. Vance, is apparently moving the needle.
Vance was in third place with just 11 percent in a Fox News poll last month, about half the support of the other two leading candidates, Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons. Last week, that was all shaken up when the ex- President endorsed Vance more than doubling advances support from primary voters propelling him into first place with 23 percent of the vote.
But then there are cases like Georgia where Republican governor Brian Kemp is generally full MAGA in worldview except for he failed to support Trump`s attempted coup after the 2020 election. And for that sin, he is hated by Trump. And Trump is running a scorched earth campaign to destroy a Kemp, which does not seem to be working.
[20:35:16]
The Incumbent governor is trouncing Trump`s handpick primary contender, former Senator David Perdue, who`s basically campaigning on the Big Lie. Purdue trails Kemp by 26 points in the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll with less than a month until voters decide which man will be the Republican nominee for governor.
So, the central question in this year`s Republican primaries is just how much a Trump endorsement is worth really. Natalie Allison is a national political reporter for Politico. She`s been covering Senate races across the country, including Vance in Ohio. And she joins me now.
Let me just start with that open question because I do think it`s a sort of complicated one. And obviously, there`s a lot of factors at play. It does seem that everyone wants to kiss the ring. Everyone wants Trump`s endorsement. People don`t speak poorly of him. But it also seems like the actual endorsement itself sometimes really helps, in other places doesn`t.
NATALIE ALLISON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: That`s right, Chris. You look at a place like Ohio where J.D. Vance for months — for months and months and months was really near the back of the fold. He was near the very end. And suddenly he gets his trump endorsement. Not only does it result in a groundswell of people coming out to campaign for him, but immediately $5 million into a super PAC that was backing him.
He was nearly out of money. Largely funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, some others as well. But the moment he got that Trump endorsement, those people felt like they had the clearance to put more money behind them because it actually meant he had a chance of winning.
And even in his own mind, you know, I talked to him last week in Ohio, and he said, a week before he got the Trump endorsement, he didn`t think for sure he could win that race. And then everything changed the moment he got that.
HAYES: Yes. We should note that, as you noted, the working class here, J.D. Vance here, the populist speaker upper for the overlooked Americans as being backed by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor, as well as Tucker Carlson, the dinner food air. And I think that it`s also worth noting that in other places, that same endorsement has fallen flat, not just in Senate races, in the gubernatorial race, we mentioned in Georgia in a few house primary races, it looks like Trump`s handpick candidate is going to lose. I wonder how you think about where it does and doesn`t matter.
ALLISON: Well, it makes a lot of difference in a place like Pennsylvania too. They have a primary coming up just after Ohio`s where Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz. Similarly to Vance, this is despite a pretty intense campaign by Oz`s opponents to try to get Trump not to endorse. But Oz is a person who he`s not from Pennsylvania. He hasn`t lived there. He hasn`t been involved in politics in the state.
And for someone like that, you know, it`s really necessary to have Trump`s endorsement to give Republicans voting in that primary permission to vote for someone who`s being attacked by tens of millions of dollars on the air right now, saying he`s a liberal RINO, he`s out of touch, Hollywood elitist, things like that. And so, in that case, that makes a lot of difference.
Now, you look at a place like Alabama where Trump endorsed Mo Brooks. Mo Brooks is someone that everyone knew there. So, the Trump endorsement doesn`t really put them — put Mo Brooks on their radar. And of course, as we saw, because Mo Brooks wasn`t performing very well, Trump ultimately withdrew that endorsement.
HAYES: Yes, we should note about these three Senate endorsements he`s made with J.D. Vance, Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker in Georgia, which he basically kind of almost created that campaign. I mean, the real consistent worldview is that he likes people he sees on TV or who are famous. And did that`s the three things those people have in common, which I think is maddening to many people who have, you know, I spent a long time in the conservative trenches, but like, you know, that sort of is what it is.
It also means that he`s generally endorsing people that already have high name recognition, and hedging the bets a little bit in terms of the win- loss.
ALLISON: That`s right. In the case of J.D. Vance, though, it`s interesting because J.D. didn`t have particularly high favorability ratings. He has been pummeled for months by the Club for Growth, which is spending a lot of money in Ohio to remind people of what J.D. Vance has said in the past about Trump. You know, calling Trump an idiot, saying he was never-Trumper, bragging about how he wasn`t voting for Trump.
And so, that for months has really hurt J.D. Vance`s favorability in the state. And so, they`re having to do really some last-ditch campaigning to try to tell people. Now, Trump is OK with J.D. Vance. He`s changed. He`s a different person than this guy you`ve been seeing an ads for months.
HAYES: It`s amazing how much it`s all about this sort of individual psychodrama in the end. Natalie Allison, thank you very much.
Up next, why is the brand new treatment the Vice President has taken for COVID being ignored by most of the country? It`s out there. You can get it. That`s ahead.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: If we have learned anything about COVID in the last two years, it`s that the virus as a way of reminding you of its presence even when you want to forget it. For example, I`m a huge Chicago Bulls fan, and Zach LaVine, the team`s number two scorer, is missing tonight`s playoff game due to COVID safety protocols. It is the third time the virus has kept LaVine living on the sidelines since the start of the pandemic.
[20:45:04]
Of course, the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, has also tested positive for COVID. Thankfully, she is vaccinated and double boosted which prevents the worst outcomes of the virus. We of course wish her a speedy recovery as well as Zach LaVine.
What is so maddening about this current moment of the pandemic is that while the return to normal crowd has indisputably won the political and policy debate — there`s no more masks on airplanes, thanks to a Trump- appointed federal judge, there`s basically no restrictions on public life at all at this point, OK, we`re still overlooking very obvious easy things that could help reduce risks from the virus.
And since the start of the pandemic, people have been touting all these false cures, these quack treatments like Ivermectin use both in humans and livestock as an effective anti-parasitic drug. Now, the FDA warned against it`s use to treat COVID arguing there is no evidence it works. But that didn`t stop anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists from pushing Ivermectin as a miracle cure.
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JOE ROGAN, RADIO HOST: Because there is this treatment in Ivermectin — and there`s other treatments, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
ROGAN: Because of this, there`s a lot of pushback against potential treatments and pretending that they don`t really work or that they`re conspiracy theories. This is the — this is the grand conspiracy, right? The grand conspiracy is the pharmaceutical companies are all in cahoots to try to make anybody who takes this stuff look crazy.
CARLSON: The problem is, you can`t get Ivermectin in this country even if a doctor prescribes it. Pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens, they`re not scary or anything, reportedly refusing to fill the prescriptions because why? It was totally cool to give like opioids to drug addicts, but Ivermectin, you can`t have that.
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HAYES: No, there`s a reason. It`s not why, it`s because it doesn`t work. At the time that the FDA warning us that it did not work to treat COVID, well, guess what, there`s been more study and we have really concrete large-scale study showing it doesn`t. This most recent study out of Brazil looked at Ivermectin and determined it is effectively useless as a COVID treatment.
“Treatment with Ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to hospital due to progression of COVID-19 or prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of COVID- 19.”
And that doesn`t matter even. Some people are still pushing it. Like, this week. Here`s Trump`s hand-picked candidate for Arizona governor last Friday touting the drug as a miracle cure and apparently calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be arrested for saying otherwise.
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KARI LAKE (R-AZ), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: We shouldn`t have to feel like drug addicts trying to go out there to buy Ivermectin. I`ve taken it. It`s a wonder drug. And it`s outrageous they kept that from us. It was Anthony Fauci who kept that from us. I`m encouraging any law — any lawman here, and I`m talking sheriffs. I don`t think it`ll happen in Maricopa County, but I`m looking for someone tough like maybe Sheriff Lam to issue a warrant for Anthony Fauci`s arrest out of Arizona.
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HAYES: I give up. I swear to God, I give up. OK, first of all, Fauci has nothing to do with it. He`s not on the FDA. But that`s not here nor there. Here`s the most egregious thing about all this. And this really does drive me totally crazy. We have a pill that treats COVID. It`s like — it`s like Ivermectin, but real.
It`s like the real version of the therapeutic, the people like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and Kari Lake wanted Ivermectin to be. In fact, they should just name the damn thing Ivermectin for the love of God. But it`s called Paxlovid, OK. And it`s been shown in clinical trials to dramatically reduce hospitalization or death rates for COVID patients as much as 89 percent.
Now, it`s not perfect. It`s not a miracle cure. But there`s real evidence behind it. In fact, Vice President Harris announced she is taking the antiviral. But the drug is still widely ignored in this country by patients. It`s not really their fault, by the health care system, by doctors, even as the White House pushes to expand its use.
The Biden administration says only 500,000 doses of the treatment have been administered far short of the 20 million doses the government has committed to purchase. Meanwhile, hundreds of people have COVID die of COVID every day in this country, OK.
So, again, we all want to return to normal. We basically have — that is what it is. We should take advantage of the actual tools we have to fight this virus, two really obvious ones. It means getting a booster shot if you have not done so. Only 30 percent of eligible adults have. And it means if you know someone, you, someone you love get a case, you`re talking to a doctor. There are effective therapeutics called Paxlovid. Talk to your doctor about them if you do contract the virus.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: Just over two months into Russia`s invasion of Ukraine, there`s an open question about the current state of the Russian military. Is it degraded? What is the best definition we have for that given that Russia is a nuclear power?
The Kyiv Independent has published estimates of Russia`s losses based on numbers from Ukraine`s Armed Forces, which of course should be taken with enormous grain of salt. This is fundamentally Ukraine Ministry of Defense propaganda. They show that as many as 22,000 Russian troops have been lost. It just incalculable staggering number along with over 900 tanks, over 400 artillery units.
According to Newsweek, “these numbers are likely inflated and yet independent estimates still report significant losses for Russian troops as well as (INAUDIBLE). So, even though they are now entering a harder phase of the war in Ukraine because the battles are concentrated in the eastern region where Russia has a significant vantage, the seemingly endless supply of military support from the West, which is now pitted against a Russian military that has seen substantial losses, means it is not clear who holds the upper hand in the next phase of this invasion and war.
[20:55:17]
Joining me now is Helene Cooper. She`s a Pulitzer Prize-winning Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times. And Helene, you`ve been writing about this, this sort of next phase of the war, which is, you know, I think all parties to the war see it as the next phase that, you know, they stopped trying to encircle Kyiv, they now have this battle concentrated in the — in the south in the east. What is the Pentagon`s assessment of how much Russian military capabilities have degraded and what it means for who has the upper hand in this battle?
HELENE COOPER, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, hi, Chris. Thank you for having me. It`s a really good question that you`re asking. And at the moment, the Pentagon is pinning a lot of hopes on the Ukrainian military`s ability to continue to stymie Russia.
This is — this new phase now of the war, this concentration in the Donbas means that instead of trying to enter cities, which is what the Russian military tried to do in the first two months has spectacularly failed by and large to do, they`re going to be fighting now trying to fight over much more open plains, more open territory.
But this is also territory where you could — the Ukrainian military has been digging trenches ever since 2014. They`ve been fighting for that long there. And they`re in these entrenched defensive positions. Their tanks are in trenches, and they`re able to, you know, pop up — they`re able to dig in, and then pop up on these defensive positions, take a shot at the Russians, and then go back down.
The Russians, on the other hand, are the ones having to come over these open fields. They`re going to be doing a lot of pounding with artillery fire. They`ve already started doing that, and then following up with their tanks and their troops. But it`s a harder fight for them than if you`re in a defensive position. You could just imagine that kind of a battlefield position.
So, it`s an open question at this point how the Russian military will do. I think we`ll know a lot more about their performance in the next few weeks. But the Pentagon is pinning a lot of hopes right now that the Ukrainian military will continue to perform as they`ve been performing.
HAYES: Well, I saw — you know, a question that we`ve been sort of wrestling through and reporting on the show throughout, right, is this question about like the outcome, and like battlefield victory, what it would mean whether it`s possible, right? And I think in the beginning, the collective judgment of Western intelligence services, the U.S. intelligence service was not — was that battlefield victory was unlikely.
Maybe it would be difficult, maybe it would take a little while. There`s a shift — I mean, you saw the Secretary of Defense Austin saying this, right, in the — in the video that we played. We think they can win. Everyone here thinks they can win. What winning means to be determined, but it also seems like that determination, contention is matched up with a larger flow of weapons, and that there`s going to be a response from the Russians on that. And I wonder what the Pentagon is calculating about that.
COOPER: Absolutely. That`s where it starts to get really sticky then because what does winning mean? You know, the Biden administration hopes that winning means that Vladimir Putin then goes to the negotiating table, much more serious than he has been in the last two months when he said operatives there, when he sent dignitaries and Russian officials to negotiate, that he actually then is put in such a bad position that he`s willing to negotiate in earnest.
But that`s about as much as they can — as they possibly hope for. That`s their definition of winning.
HAYES: Yes. And I think, too, I mean, the other question here is, you know, there`s some talk about how mobilized the Russian military can be as long as the message back home is that this is a special military operation. In fact, it`s illegal to call it a war in Russia, right? To the extent that, that Russia and Putin mobilizes essentially mass opinion through the state media to say, no, this is a war now, that can also be another factor in what resources they are able to call upon for this phase of the battle.
COOPER: Absolutely. It becomes — it gets — but then, it gets politically risky for Putin.
HAYES: Right.
COOPER: Because he`s been telling Russian people that it`s a special military operation, as you say. He is not completed with them that this is an all-out war. If he goes to national mobilization where he`s — and which is what he will have to do if he`s pushed back because he`s basically has – – he`s expanding now — about all of his ready combat power is being expended now.
So, if this goes a lot longer and a lot deeper and spreads, he`s going to need to go to some sort — he`s going to need to go back to the Russian people with some sort of national mobilization or another conscript. And that`s a whole different political story for him.
HAYES: Helene Cooper, as always, great to have you on. Thank you very much.
That is ALL IN on this Wednesday night. “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.