Updated
Summary
Freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn remains under fire both within and outside the Republican Party. Russia bombs Kyiv during a high-level diplomatic visit. Do Russia`s TV commentators seem to be encouraging nuclear conflict? The threat to women in red states grows, with Oklahoma passing a Texas-style abortion ban. Thirty years ago, the acquittal of the officers who brutally beat Rodney King led to a week of rioting in Los Angeles.
Transcript
ALICIA MENENDEZ, MSNBC HOST: That does it for me.
You can catch me on “AMERICAN VOICES” weekends 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
“THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID” is up next.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, everyone.
We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with what sure looks like a growing civil war inside the same political party that is doing more than just a little flirting with insurrection. We are awaiting news from the January 6 Committee that is investigating round one of that attempt to replace American democracy with something more authoritarian.
The committee is expected to issue letters to at least three Republicans asking them to testify. The committee is also moving forward with plans to hold its first public hearings in June.
But the last few weeks have been — they have been full of signs of something — something odd happening inside what had felt like an entirely unified Republican Party united, particularly around Donald Trump and around fixing what went wrong in round one of the attempted coup.
There are the leaks, leaks, and more leaks of Kevin McCarthy saying one thing and doing another, which seem to be coming from inside the House, with a lot of finger-pointing over precisely who the source or sources might be. But it also seems like Republicans are trying to cull at least one insurrectionist from the herd.
And that would be Madison Cawthorn, the freshman congressman from North Carolina. You will recall that he said this on January 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MADISON CAWTHORN (R-NC): The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: OK, so that lie and the exhortation to fight are not why Cawthorn seems to be a target right now.
Now, I`m not even going to get into the latest revelation, because it`s just too weird, frankly, nor of any of the youngest member of Congress` other antics cause Republican ire. The Hitler bunker vacation. Nothing. The allegations of sexual misconduct in college. Nada. Or more recent stuff like calling the president of Ukraine a thug. All fine and all good with the Republican Party.
It wasn`t until young Madison started flinging around accusations of colleagues inviting him to orgies and offering him cocaine. Sorry, I know, this is a family our. Sorry for throwing it out there. But it was only then that his fellow Republicans and Republican leadership said, hold up, Madison.
Kevin McCarthy gave him a talking to and said that he had lost his trust. North Carolina Senator Richard Burr called him and embarrassment at times. The other North Carolina senator, Thom Tillis, said: “I want a delegation that works together. I don`t want a delegation that gets together minus one and talks about the challenges that that member is causing,” clearly meaning Madison Cawthorn.
And it appears that Madison is now in the proverbial finding out phase, with leak after leak after leak of salacious allegations and repeated calls for ethics investigations. In other words, Republicans can discipline their own when they want to, while circling the wagons around the other loudest insurrectionists, Paul Gosar, Margie Greene, Lauren Boebert, and others. It is very, very weird.
What Republicans do seem to agree on 100 percent is that they are all in on getting it right if and when they repeat the coup next time. That is the warning for retired conservative federal Judge Michael J. Luttig, a longtime star of the legal right, a perennial Supreme Court short-lister and Ted Cruz`s former mentor.
He also — also advised former Vice President Mike Pence against overturning the 2020 election. And now Michael Luttig is sounding the alarm about the Republican blueprint to steal the next election.
He writes that lies about voter fraud are — quote — “the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year-and-a-half now to distract attention.”
“Trump`s and the Republicans far more ambitious objective,” he writes, “is to execute successfully in 2024 the same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.”
Luttig calls 2020 a dry run for the next election and lays out step by step their intentions, writing: “As it stands today, Trump or his anointed successor and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to steal from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claimed the Democrats stole from them in 2020.
“But there is a difference between the falsely claimed stolen election of 2020 and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats` theft claimed about Republicans, the Republicans` theft would be in open to defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people, poetic, though tragic irony for America`s democracy.”
[19:05:07]
And joining me now is Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School.
Professor Tribe, it`s always good to talk with you.
And had this come from a liberal jurist, somebody who sort of aligned themselves ideologically with Democrats, that would be one thing. But Michael Luttig is the conservative`s conservative. He`s been on the short list for Republican Supreme Court nominations ever since I have been sentient and paying attention to Supreme — to the Supreme Court.
I mean, this is a conservative. And let me just read you one of what the things he`s arguing, because it`s scary. There are three points. Here`s point number one.
He writes: “The cornerstone of this plan is to have — was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known independent state legislature doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the wait for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act.”
Can you explain what that means? What is the independent state legislature doctrine and how might it be exploited?
LAURENCE TRIBE, PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Before I get to that, let me reiterate what you just said about Judge Luttig. He is a conservative`s conservative.
He served as a federal judge on the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He was seriously considered by George W. Bush to be chief justice of the United States, and, if not that, to take the seat that Sam Alito took. So he is authentically a conservative. He`s not a radical. He`s not an ideologue, but he`s a principled conservative.
Now, he points out in his piece that there is this strangely named independent state legislature doctrine. It`s cleverly named, because it sounds innocuous. State legislatures are independent. But it`s made up.
The doctrine, supposedly, is that when a state legislature, regardless of the state`s Constitution, regardless of anything that the state`s highest court might say, when the state legislature has rules laid down, even if the rules say, for example, we will disregard the popular vote or whoever won it, we are simply going to come in and name our own slate, that that`s the last word that really would give the state legislature of each state the authority basically to erase democracy, wipe out a Republican form of government, and do its will.
Now, state legislatures are defined by the state Constitution, going all the way back to the beginning of the republic. Whether you`re an originalist or any other kind of ist, you have to recognize that this doctrine, so-called doctrine, is just made from whole cloth.
But without getting into the weeds, the point is that this made-up doctrine, a brainchild of John Eastman, which finds some language in a concurring opinion by then Chief Justice Rehnquist in Bush vs. Gore, but it wasn`t an opinion of the court, that is being bandied about as the technique that they hope to use if they get Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Alito and Thomas on board, that they hope to use to take the next election, regardless of who wins.
But that`s only four justices. They need a fifth. I don`t think they`re going to have Chief Justice Roberts in that camp to steal the election. They`re counting on Amy Coney Barrett. But there`s no particular reason to think that she is unprincipled enough to buy that idea.
So you might think, so why worry? But none of us can predict for sure what Amy Coney Barrett will do. And there are other ways they could steal the election. There are local officials that don`t have the backbone of a guy like Raffensperger who might just — quote — “find” — unquote — the votes they need to win.
There are all sorts of ways to steal an election, more ways to steal it than you might imagine. And there is this law going back to 1887, the Electoral Count Act, that is probably the worst drafted law I have ever read. It`s got one ambiguity after another, one loophole after another.
And it can be used in all kinds of ways. They tried to use it to strong-arm Mike Pence into either declaring Trump the winner, even though he wasn`t the winner, or, failing that, basically punting to the House of Representatives. There`s a procedure by which that can happen. And in the House of Representatives, each state has one vote. And 26 of the state delegations in 2020 were controlled by Republicans.
[19:10:07]
Now, dissecting all that happened in 2020 is an interesting exercise. We will learn more about it when the January 6 Committee holds its public hearings. But, as Judge Luttig points out, it`s not what happened in 2020 that we need to worry about. It`s the way 2020 was a dry run, a dress rehearsal for 2024.
And the Republicans are methodically putting in place a system for winning, even if they lose. That`s really scary. And there are things that need to be done to reduce the risk. We need to amend the Electoral Count Act to get rid of some of those ambiguities.
We need to shoot down that crazy so-called independent state legislature theory. There are all sorts of things we need to do. But all of us need to get busy and take the risk seriously. As he put it, being forewarned is being forearmed, but not if you lay down your arms in advance.
REID: And just to clarify, if they — if the Supreme Court, because I don`t trust Amy Coney Barrett — let`s just be honest about where I stand on this — that, if they got a 5-4 ruling, because nobody expected Bush v. Gore to happen either, but it did, and then they claimed it wasn`t precedential.
But, suddenly, it`s precedential. Every time we turn around, they`re pulling things from Bush v. Gore to use again against our democracy. So let`s say this — that enough state legislatures are controlled by Republicans, because enough of them win elections or hold their seats, so that they just decide, we don`t like the slate that was sent by our state in whatever state.
We`re going to — instead of sending the Democratic slate for Biden, or whoever is the Democrat, we`re going to send the slate for Trump or whoever is the Republican. Is there anything that anyone could do about it? Because Congress, presumably, if it`s in the control of Republicans, would say, great, we`re going to — we`re going to go with that.
TRIBE: Well, the thing that can be done about it, first of all, is not throwing in the towel in advance and assuming that we`re going to lose at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The other thing that can be done about it is take advantage of the bipartisan agreement that seems to exist now about closing loopholes in the Electoral Count Act that virtually everyone agrees is flawed. It has this bizarre provision, for example, that says, if there`s a failed election, then the state legislature can step in.
Well, what`s a failed election?
REID: Right.
TRIBE: We need to clarify that.
That`s got to be some terrible natural disaster, but not just an election that fails to produce the result that you like. Those are the things that can be done. We can also make every effort to ensure that the people who are elected to lower positions, like secretaries of state, the people who will count the votes, that they`re more honest and pay attention to those elections, and not just to the midterm elections.
So, there are a lot of things that can be done. We cannot afford to throw in the towel.
REID: Yes, indeed.
And that is a sign and a message to everyone, a clarion call. You must vote all the way down the ballot.
TRIBE: Right.
REID: Pay attention to those state legislative races. Pay attention to those secretary of state races. They are key, because Republicans are relentlessly trying to install and elect people who are pledging in advance to throw the election to Trump should he run, or whatever Republican, and to never let another Democrat win an election for the president of the United States.
This is scary stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
REID: Professor Laurence Tribe, it is always a pleasure. Thank you, sir. Really appreciate you.
And up next on THE REIDOUT: no end to the Russian savagery in Ukraine, as bombs fall on Kyiv during a high-level diplomatic visit. And does Russia`s TV commentators seem to be encouraging nuclear conflict?
Plus: the growing threat to women in red states, with Oklahoma passing a Texas-style abortion ban, which has already had devastating consequences.
And it is seared into our collective consciousness 30 years ago today, when the acquittal of the officers who brutally beat Rodney King led to a week of rioting in Los Angeles.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:18:55]
REID: Russian forces struck in the heart of Kyiv on Thursday as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrapped up a meeting with President Zelenskyy, an attack the mayor of Kyiv described as Vladimir Putin`s way of giving his middle finger to the United Nations leader.
The attack came after commentators on Russian state television called on Russia to strike Ukrainian railways while transporting foreign diplomats like U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and the prime minister of Bulgaria. Today, President Zelenskyy said that there is a high risk that peace talks will end without a positive outcome.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Russia is not threatening anyone with nuclear war, but, rather, it`s Western nations that are talking about such things, except that the nuclear brinksmanship has been coming from Lavrov himself, as well as those on state TV, who even went so far as to say that a nuclear war could be a good thing, because those dying for the motherland will skyrocket to paradise.
Moments later, Lavrov threatened Moldova, saying that they should be worried about their future, which sounds — which the previous comment sounded a lot more like what ISIS leaders would say which — then what would normally come from the United Nations Security Council member.
[19:20:08]
All this comes as the European Union is discussing ways to wean itself off of Russian oil. Bloomberg reports that Germany is prepared to attempt to back a gradual ban on Russian crude. Berlin would support a phased approach to targeting oil, rather than some of the other options that have been discussed, such as a price cap on payment mechanisms to withhold parts of Moscow`s revenue.
This is a significant shift for Germany, which has argued against taking those measures, for fear of what they would do to the European economy. The E.U. is currently working on its sixth sanctions package, with an official proposal expected next week.
With me now, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, senior adviser for VoteVets and author of “Here, Right Matters.”
Thank you for being here.
I want to circle back. I flipped it, bungled it, but where the Russian state TV talking about a nuclear war being a good thing, because the motherland, people of the motherland would go to paradise, I mean, that is not something we would normally hear from state TV in a sort of normal country.
It`s kind of the thing that we hear terrorist groups say, right? It`s — what do you make of that kind of language being used regarding nuclear war in Russia?
LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: It`s a huge amount of loose talk, frankly.
And we have to remember, these are state-run news stations, and they`re carrying the state`s message. So there`s an objective here. The objective is pretty straightforward. It`s to warn off the West from continuing to provide support to Ukraine, to warn off additional sanctions.
They`re doing everything they can. They`re failing on the battlefield. And, at this point, they see that the signaling from the West, these $33 billion that the U.S. is contributing, all of their equipment starting to pour in is going to decisively put a period on Russia`s ability to achieve any significant military aims.
So they`re trying to go back to that old playbook of warning off through nuclear saber-rattling and things of that nature. The thing is that they have done this before. They did this before the war started with their nuclear exercise. They did it early on.
So, you have diminishing returns with this loose talk about nuclear war. It`s not going to — it`s going to be diminishing returns, in terms of the fact that people get bored of this conversation. They will — they`re going to be — they`re going to start — even people that are concerned about initially will start to come around to the fact that this is — this is just a bunch of saber-rattling that is unsubstantiated by really any concrete actions.
So that`s what we`re seeing unfold as just a flailing about to achieve some sort of outcome.
REID: So you don`t believe that Russia would become so desperate to have what looks like a win?
I mean, I know we`re coming up on May 9, which is a significant date within Russia, when you — one would think that Putin would want to or feel some pressure — or maybe doesn`t feel any pressure — to show something that looks like victory. You are not worried that they would be so desperate to have what looks like victory that they would use even tactical nuclear weapons?
VINDMAN: So, I guess I`m puzzled by the notion. It just seems illogical to me that they would look for some sort of victory through the use of nuclear weapons that threaten mutually assured destruction.
That does not seem like a prescription for any kind of victory at all. If anything, it`s a — and it takes what is a potential risk to the regime, instability due to, obviously, a lot of blame on Putin for this poor adventure — so that`s one kind of short-term risk associated with this military operation — and magnifies it into immediate kind of existential threat, due to the potential for nuclear escalation.
That is not a prescription for success. There are other things that they might try to do to try to — it`s a full-court press right now, with Gerasimov looking like he`s taking control of the battlefield in the east. That`s a potential play to achieve some success.
They might try to do savage attacks somewhere. But a nuclear escalation does not — that threatens the regime, ultimately, is not a prescription for success, as far as I can — I don`t see how it is.
REID: In your view, do you think it is time to declare Russia to be a state sponsor of terror?
VINDMAN: I think that comes with — that label comes with a certain amount of baggage and prohibitions.
So it`s not just simply calling it a state sponsor or terror, but it means that it`s isolated and treated appropriately as Iran or any number of other state sponsors of terror.
I think we`re there, frankly. But we should understand that this is not kind of like a rhetorical tool. This is a technical tool that then binds the U.S. to take some certain kinds of actions. I think Russia is a state sponsor of terror. We should go ahead and — there is no potential for normal relationships with Putin…
[19:25:02]
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: .. with the Russian regime under Putin.
So there`s no real cost, as far as I`m concerned, for doing it.
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: But there is a sequence of events that would unfold as a result of that.
REID: Let me ask you lastly about — there`s a U.S. citizen who has now died fighting for Ukraine. There are 20,000 foreign fighters there.
His name is Willie Joseph Kansel. He`s an American citizen, U.S. Marine veteran who was fighting in Ukraine. He was killed during the invasion this week, according to his family. He was only 22 years old. He had gone to Ukraine with a force from a private military contracting company. His mother said he`d been there since last month.
Does that — what does that do to sort of the way Americans will start to view this fight, in your view?
VINDMAN: Well, it`s interesting to hear. It`s interesting, frankly, to recognize that we maybe attach some unique kind of attention to the fact that an American citizen has died.
Frankly, a British citizen has died before that. Georgian citizens have died. But there`s a kind, of course, closer to home, because we`re Americans. But, in reality, I think the story is that there are, in fact, 20,000 volunteers in this foreign legion. So it`s a — really a story of people, former soldiers that spent their careers or a short stint in the military fighting for the defense of an idea, the defense of freedom, willing to put their lives on the line.
And this one individual represents countless other Americans, really hundreds of thousands of Americans that are there fighting for this freedom, fighting for this idea of freedom, fighting for democracy, fighting for the preservation of American values and interests in a different land.
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: I think that`s the real important story.
And we should — of course, we should honor these individuals that are continuing to serve…
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: .. in these overseas contingencies…
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: … like American service members did in World War II before we joined.
REID: Yes.
VINDMAN: That`s what we should be doing.
REID: Indeed, including a good friend of this show, who we interviewed not too long ago.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, thank you, sir. Really appreciate your time.
And up next: Oklahoma becomes the latest red state to pursue a Texas-style abortion ban, turning citizens into bounty hunters, with abortion providers in the crosshairs.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:32:05]
REID: Yesterday, the Oklahoma legislature advanced two bills modeled after the Texas bounty hunter law.
The Senate bill bans abortion at six weeks, before most patients even know that they`re pregnant. And the House bill outlaws virtually all abortions. They both allow civilians to enforce the law by suing doctors or anyone who aids or abets an abortion, with awards of at least $10,000.
They will go into effect immediately once they`re signed by Governor Kevin Stitt, though Planned Parenthood has already sued to block the Senate bill.
This all after Stitt had already signed a separate law making it illegal to perform an abortion, except in medical emergencies. But that won`t go into effect until this summer.
Oklahoma had become a refuge for patients from neighboring Texas after it passed its abortion law, with a 2500 percent increase in Texas patients seeking care at Oklahoma Planned Parenthoods, compared to the same time period the year before.
And now patients will have to travel even further if the Oklahoma bill goes into effect. This bill is just one of many copycat bounty hunter bills. In an interview that will air Sunday on Showtime, Paola Ramos of VICE News talked to the architect of that Texas law about how he came up with the loophole that allowed Texas to circumvent Roe v. Wade.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAOLA RAMOS, VICE NEWS: The bill specifically bans state and local officials from enforcing the law, right?
STATE SEN. BRYAN HUGHES (R-TX): That`s right.
RAMOS: Was that a legal maneuver to protect the state from being challenged?
HUGHES: We realized that by, doing this, this could allow the law to go into effect more quickly than other pro-life laws in the past. So, yes, you bet.
RAMOS: And, when you design this bill, did you ever imagine that it would have such a ripple effect across the country on both the Republican and the Democratic side?
HUGHES: So we knew that it would work on paper? But, of course, we didn`t know until we passed the law, until it took effect.
So…
RAMOS: Were you surprised?
HUGHES: We were — we have been encouraged. It`s been — it`s been more effective than we expected it to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: I`m joined now by VICE News host Paola Ramos.
Paola, it`s great to be here.
I mean, talk about a ripple effect. He sounds like he felt very clever for having come up with this loophole. It has now exploded anti-abortion bills, 31 anti-abortion bills in 14 states with copycat language, 17 additional anti-abortion bills with similar mechanisms, the private right to action and the private right to sue, 22 similar anti-LGBTQ bills.
And, also, it`s being used for — to stop — quote, unquote — “Critical Race Theory.” So is the sense here that the right has found a way to end abortion, regardless of whether Roe v. Wade disappears?
RAMOS: Exactly.
So the real threat here goes beyond discussing the morality of these abortion laws, right? The real threat is that it is fundamentally changing the government`s mechanisms and democracy in this country, right, because they are literally deputizing vigilantes, bounty hunters, extremists to take these laws into their own hands.
The reason why this is happening is because that legal mechanism, that very unique loophole stems from S.B.8. S.B.8 specifically says that the state is not responsible for enforcing the law, right? In fact, it completely absolves the state.
[19:35:12]
And that`s because Texas Republicans understood that, if it is private citizens who enforce the law, it is almost impossible to challenge these bills in federal courts. You can defy constitutional rights, as you just said. You can defy democratic norms. And you can defy democracy as we know it. And that is exactly what`s happening.
The GOP understood that. And that is the heart of what I think is — are all of these different culture — culture war bills.
REID: And I misspoke, saying they have found way to end abortion. They won`t end it. It`ll just make it illegal in enough states that they will make it almost impossible for a woman to get an abortion.
I mean, the distance that women would have to travel, if you can`t go to the neighboring state, the distance is pretty strong. I think we have a list here that shows just how far here. I think it`s 666 miles for women in Louisiana, Florida, 575 miles, Texas, 542 miles.
And we`re talking about women happened to travel a long way. And then they`re also in some states trying to find a way to make it illegal to leave the state to get an abortion.
Is the anticipation here, when you spoke with this gentleman, that they feel confident, right, that they`re going to — that they`re going to be upheld by the Supreme Court, right?
RAMOS: Completely.
I mean, in fact, already, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to sort of suspend the law. And it didn`t. And so the question is, what message does that send to other states? It says, all right, we`re going to do it as well. And that is why a lot of these culture war were bills, beyond just the abortion one, right, anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, anti-CRT bills, at its core, is once again, many of them, private citizens doing what typically is the state`s responsibility.
REID: Yes.
RAMOS: That`s exactly what`s happening in Florida with the don`t say gay bill, right?
REID: Yes.
RAMOS: That`s what`s happening with the WOKE Act bill.
It is encouraging parents to sue schools.
REID: Right.
RAMOS: That`s what happened with Governor Abbott`s anti-transgender directive. You mandate citizens to report parents…
REID: Right.
RAMOS: … if they suspect that their transgender kids are taking these gender-affirming medical treatments.
And that is the GOP understanding, that the only way to stop what, is in my eyes, inevitable, right, which is this country becoming majority- minority…
REID: Right.
RAMOS: … this country leaning into their rights, this country leaning into their constitutional rights, the only way to pause that is by using these loopholes.
REID: The irony is, the previous time that has — this mechanism has been used was the Fugitive Slave — the two Fugitive Slave Acts. And they`re making it illegal to teach that in school.
I want to play a little piece of an interview that you did with a trans teenager about the Texas law that has a mandatory requirement to report any families that are seeking this sort of care. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAMOS: Cass, what was it like for you when you heard about the governor`s directive?
CASS JACKSON, TEENAGER: I have sort of dealt with feeling like the world and people around me, like, dislike me, distrust me. But to have that, like, actualized, and then to see neighbors, friends, family members support that publicly, it`s definitely the worst I have felt probably ever before.
Like, I felt like I needed to take myself out of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: “I felt like I needed to take myself out of the world.”
That`s pretty stark.
RAMOS: It`s traumatic.
That family, Joy, literally had to flee from their home state of Texas. They drove thousands of miles. They spent days on the road to reach to Maryland, because that was the place in the state where they felt safe at that point, right?
You just heard — that`s Cass. Their mom, Carrie (ph), was too scared to remain in Texas because she thought that she would be recorded. So the only alternative she had was to move.
It goes beyond this witch-hunt culture that is being created, right? It goes beyond this — these vigilante bills. The real crisis is the trauma that this is inflicting on young people.
REID: And the last question I will ask.
You interviewed this man who sort of came up with this clever way of getting around Roe v. Wade? Is — did he express to you what their endgame is for LGBTQ people? Is it re-closeting? Is it that they want people to go back to sort of the era when people existed in the closet? Is that what will satisfy them?
RAMOS: So, just to be clear, I spoke to Senator Bryan Hughes. And he was the legal architect of that…
(CROSSTALK)
REID: Oh, I`m sorry, for the abortion bill, yes.
RAMOS: That`s separate.
REID: Separate.
(CROSSTALK)
RAMOS: Right, from the abortion bill.
But that`s a question I had. It`s separate. But his answer was very clear, right? He told me: The way that we designed the bill was specifically for it to be a legal maneuver to go around the federal courts, to go around constitutional rights.
So he sees this as a legal, legal maneuver, as a strategy to get away with what they want.
REID: Yes.
It`s great reporting, fascinating reporting, scary reporting.
Paola Ramos, we do say scaring is caring around here, so we appreciate you bringing that reporting to us.
[19:40:00]
And everybody should take a look at that special.
Still ahead: marking 30 years since the acquittals of four white police officers sparked by — six days of deadly riots in Los Angeles.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: It boiled down to the tape, what became one of the most lasting images of the 20th century, a grainy video showing four Los Angeles police officers brutally assaulting a black man, Rodney King, images that shocked some Americans, while confirming for many black Americans what they knew all too well about how police too often treated them, all culminating in a closely watched trial and its verdict.
[19:45:14]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Find the defendant Laurence M. Powell not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury and with a deadly weapon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And one by one, the several counts against each of the four officers were read by the foreman of the jury. And each time, the verdict was not guilty.
And the hush that had been nervous anticipation turned to silent surprise and then relief for the defendants. After the beating whose videotaping shocked the world, the officers were found not guilty on every count, except the one where no decision was reached.
And among black leaders who had gathered to watch the verdict today were tears and then a plea for calm in the city.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Almost immediately after that moment, a wound opened, erupting into buyers, protests and violence in Los Angeles. More than 60 people were killed and thousands were injured.
Property damage totaled $1 billion as fires spread across the county. Some business owners formed arms community teams in the absence of a police presence. Footage shown in the fantastic documentary “LA 92” captured what was described back then as a war zone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This number is staggering. I don`t know exactly how to tell you this, but 916 structure fires are burning in the Los Angeles area, 916.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What a mess.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks like a war zone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a war zone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is a war zone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: It was a turning point for Los Angeles and the country, setting off a reckoning that continues today.
What`s changed, but also what hasn`t, from two civil rights leaders during this crucial moment in American history.
That is next.
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[19:51:39]
REID: Thirty years ago today, a jury acquitted four LAPD officers in the beating of Rodney King.
Six days of riding ensued in Los Angeles, an outcry aimed at police brutality, racism, and a broken criminal justice system. Organizers and community members stepped up, as they so often do, to find healing in the aftermath.
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REV. AL SHARPTON, HOST, “POLITICS NATION”: I`m angry, but I`m not mad. I`m angry enough to change things. I`m angry enough to call for change and demand self-respect and demand self-empowerment.
I`m angry, but I`m not mad.
ANGELA E. OH, CIVIL RIGHTS MEDIATOR: I did not see on the national coverage of what was happening in L.A. the truth. I saw black and white. That is not what happened in L.A. It`s just simply not.
Asians and Latinos were clearly missing from that picture. And I don`t know why threat is country persists — I mean, I do know why — that`s a rhetorical question — in doing this, but the images that they portray are just — they`re not real.
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REID: Joining me now are the very two people you just saw in those clips from 1992, 30 years later still fighting the good fight, Reverend Angela Oh, attorney and civil rights mediator, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network and host of “POLITICS NATION.”
Thank you both for being here.
Rev, I am going to start with you, because I thought that what Reverend Oh said in that clip is so true, that the picture that we too often draw, this binary picture of everything in this country just being black and white, the subtlety was missing.
And I want to point you first to the case of Latasha Harlins, because it — that was the seeds of — before Rodney King was even beaten, of the anger in that community that started early, which was an issue between black people and Korean people. She was a Korean-born merchant who was at a shop, had accused Latasha of stealing a bottle of orange juice.
Latasha was then shot and killed. Your thoughts on that seeding that was ignored?
SHARPTON: I think that the seeding of what happened was something that the media intentionally did not cover and did not build up to what really we saw had built up in the community.
And that was a lot of anger, a feeling of disempowerment. And it exploded when you saw four policemen were acquitted that had been videotaped by a white person that was videotaping, by the way. And people said, how much can we take, when we have these incidents all the way through, and we always end up with no justice and no accountability?
REID: And I should note that Latasha was a 15-year-old kid that that happened to. And there was a lot of anger.
And, Reverend Oh, thank you so much for being here, because I thought what you said back then in that clip was so true, because it — the producer who produced this segment really pointed out in our meeting this morning that Korean Americans really had no voice. The media just literally skipped the Korean American community, even though there were literally Korean Americans demonstrating on the street.
Like, they could have gone up to anyone there and asked, but there weren`t enough people who spoke in the language of the immigrant part of that community, people who were not born in this country and maybe spoke Korean. Like, there just seemed to be an erasure.
And talk about whether — what has changed in that score in the way that we cover issues in California and issues like police brutality?
[19:55:06]
OH: Well, I think, out of the experience of the implosion in L.A., a lot has changed.
Certainly, in your own profession, you see more people both in front of the camera and behind the camera. You see people (AUDIO GAP). You see columns being published.
And, of course, it`s a little more complex now, because we have social media coming into the picture. You have a new generation of ethnic Koreans that have a different kind of political sensibility. They embrace the complexity.
We have internally in the community an understanding that we have to understand what the history is of this country with regard to race and the legacy — the legacy of slavery, and those who are the generations of enslaved people here. And where that fits into our national narrative is all still very relevant.
It makes — you`re catching me on a day when I`m at a judicial conference here in the state of California speaking to the issue of the bridging that courts need to do with communities, because you`re here to serve the public`s interests.
And it`s very easy to get disconnected from the reality of the suffering that people continue to face, especially now. The economy is not where it we`d like it to be. Our social relations have been isolated because of the pandemic. We have a level of politicization.
All you needed to do is look at the hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson and how she was treated during the process of her appointment. It was a situation where I thought to myself, 30 years later, the more things change, the more things don`t change.
REID: Yes.
And, Reverend Sharpton, it does feel like there are all these different sort of interconnected conversations between communities of color. Again, it`s not just this binary black/white conversation, because you have had all these issues around the violence against Asian Americans and whether or not anti-blackness has sort of crept into that conversation, rather than dealing with some of the issues of poverty and mental health and all of the other things.
Are we getting better at talking about race in this country as something beyond just black and white?
SHARPTON: We are getting better, but the question is, can we then come together and change where society is better?
Let`s not remember — let`s not forget, rather, that it was just a few days ago I did a eulogy in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a young black man shot in the back of his head and killed by a policeman, because he wanted to question him about some tags on his car. And it took days for us to even get the policeman`s name released.
Now, this isn`t the same time that we did see policemen convicted for what they did the George Floyd in Minneapolis or what they did for Daunte Wright in Minneapolis. So we`re beginning to see cases where we can win, but the systemic problem is still there of how we hold police accountable.
And we`re beginning to see people understand, whether they`re black or Asian or Latino, that they are dealing with white supremacy, the people that feel they`re superior to all of us that are not white. And how do we deal with that in an institutional and legal way? How do we get federal law?
We must remember those same police ended up going to federal court. Now we can`t get, 30 years later, a George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed. So, doing better doesn`t mean we have arrived. I think it was Malcolm X that said, if you have a six-inch knife in my back, pulling it out three inches may look like progress, but you still have three inches of knife in my back.
REID: Yes.
Reverend Oh, and I will say — but you mentioned COVID, Reverend Oh, and, ironically, George Holliday, the man who filmed the video, the Rodney King beating video, he actually died of COVID. He was not vaccinated. He died after being on a ventilator.
For Asian Americans in this country, has the conversation changed, do you think, in these past 30 years? We have, as you said, more visibility. But we also have issues that don`t necessarily make it to the top of the newscast. We saw what happened in Atlanta to young Asian American women.
Do you think we have changed enough since `92?
OH: Well, life is a constant unfolding. And for Asian Americans, we`re still a very small segment of the total population in this country.
And within that very small segment, which is still single digit, we have a great deal of diversity. So, we not only have the issues around not being white, but we also have migration or immigration, anti-immigrant sentiment.
REID: Yes.
OH: We also have class differences. We also have the differences that have to do with our ancestry at odds.
REID: Yes.
OH: And those are going to work themselves through.
REID: Indeed.
OH: And it`s — like I said, the word is complexity, complexity.
REID: The word is complexity.
I have got to go. I`m into Chris Hayes` hour. I want to thank you, Reverend Angela Oh, Reverend Al Sharpton.
That is THE REIDOUT tonight.
“ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts now.