Updated
Summary
The British Conservative Party gives Boris Johnson the boot. The typical profile of mass shooters is examined. A network of former Trump administration staffers is explored. Brittney Griner pleads guilty in a Russian courtroom. President Biden awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 Americans he says demonstrate the power of possibilities.
Transcript
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Great to be back with you here on “THE BEAT”. Thanks for spending time with us. You can always find me online @AriMelber on social media.
And I will see you right here tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID starts now.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on THE REIDOUT:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAJID JAVID, FORMER BRITISH HEALTH MINISTER): And, at some point, we have to conclude that enough is enough. I believe that point is now.
BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and, therefore, a new prime minister.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: British Conservatives give Boris the boot, in direct contrast to America`s Republicans, who not only never held Trump accountable, but still stand by him, despite all of his misconduct.
Also tonight, none of the existing think tanks ed them, so team MAGA has set up their own insurrectionists clubhouse. I will be joined by the journalist who revealed this MAGA snakes nest.
And we`re going to talk about the epidemic of mass murders committed by a particular demographic of young American, men who all seem to have the same set of disturbing grievances.
But we begin tonight with the story of two conservative parties separated by the Atlantic ocean, similar in many ways, but, today, we witnessed how truly different they are. And, sadly, we on this side of the pond are stuck with the party willing to gulp the Kool-Aid. It all goes back to 2016 and Brexit, Britain`s vote to exit the European Union.
It was a decision fueled by anti-immigrant hysteria. For many Brexiteers, the idea was to make Britain great again by saving British culture from demographic and cultural mutation by immigrants from places like the Middle East and North Africa, amid the war in Syria, and even from fellow European countries like Poland.
That vote in the summer of 2016 should have been our warning sign here in the U.S. to the ascendance of Donald Trump. From the first days of his campaign, Trump echoed the very same anti-immigrant propaganda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When Mexico sends its people, they`re not sending their best. They`re bringing drugs, they`re bringing crime, they`re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: The political chaos that ensued in Britain eventually led to Boris Johnson`s elevation to prime minister. He promised to finalize Brexit, to make it happen.
But Johnson, who, like Trump, is a spoiled scion of a wealthy family, was plagued by self-indulgence and scandals, creating one embarrassment after another for his Conservative Party, the Tories. And here is where we see the divergence between the conservative parties in Britain and here at home, or, should we say, between an actual functioning political party and whatever you want to call today`s Republicans, because when the Tories realized how much of a reputational drag Johnson had become on them, they revolted
More than 50 Cabinet ministers resigned this week to protest a series of scandals at 10 Downing Street, putting intense pressure on Johnson, who today announced that he would be stepping down.
Can you even imagine such a thing happening here post-Nixon? Of course, not, because, unlike Britain, or even the Republican Party of the 1970s, our modern Conservative Party more closely resembles a cult with Trump as their divine leader.
And another big difference from the conservatives across the pond is that this MAGA party comes equipped with its own armed faction willing to act on the orders of the party boss, and we`re going to learn more about that on Tuesday, as the January 6 Committee holds its next public hearing focused on this armed faction, groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and 3 Percenters and what they did on January 6 to nearly upend our democracy.
But joining me now is former RNC chairman Michael Steele. He`s an MSNBC political analyst. And NBC News senior international correspondent Keir Simmons, who`s live from London.
And, Keir, I`m going to go to you first, because I am fascinated by parliamentary government. I think in some ways it`s more stable, because the prime minister doesn`t report to the public, so much as to his party, and he serves in Parliament with them, and so they can oust him.
KEIR SIMMONS, NBC SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
REID: Can you just talk about the ways in which that dynamic made it possible for Boris to go?
SIMMONS: Well, Joy, I woke up this morning with commentators here comparing Boris Johnson to Donald Trump, in the sense that he wouldn`t concede, he wouldn`t say sorry, and then, just a few hours later, watched him here in Downing Street come out and make that resignation speech without ever saying the words “I resigned.”
It was, in a way, a triumphant resignation speech, claiming that he had a huge mandate from the British people. But here`s the point and why he had to go. He had to go because of scandal after scandal. He had to go because his own party decided he couldn`t win another election.
But it was possible for him to go big as he is not a president. He is a prime minister. So when he won that huge landslide election last election, as big as Margaret Thatcher, historic, it wasn`t him that won it. He was leading the party. It was his party that won it. It`s his party that had the mandate.
[19:05:20]
And it is their prerogative to be able to tell him, OK, it`s time to go. By the way, though, they are having to drag him out of that building with clinging on by his fingernails.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMMONS: And the edges of the British Constitution really got stretched.
There was talk by yesterday that perhaps he would threaten to call a general election, that the queen might have to decide to tell him he couldn`t do that, because his party still had a huge majority in Parliament, was perfectly capable of choosing someone else to be leader and therefore prime minister.
Also, Joy, one other point. It`s not to say that what`s happened to here hasn`t damaged Britain`s reputation around the world. There are many countries looking on and saying, well, is this how democracy works?
REID: Yes.
SIMMONS: Others of course, would say, well, democracy is messy.
But tonight, here in the U.K., it looks like democracy is holding.
REID: And I think the other thing — and thank you for explaining that — and, Michael, because the other issue is the queen`s name was called there.
In Great Britain, there is someone else around whom there can be a cult of personality, and it`s not the prime minister, right? You just don`t see these kinds of cults of personality. I mean, the cult of personality around Margaret Thatcher was in America. It was it was pro-Reagan people who worship Margaret Thatcher more than I have known anyone that I know in Britain sort of falling down in front of her like she was a goddess.
But, here, it`s the president. I want to show you scandals. Boris has scandals.
MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, yes.
REID: But they`re minor compared to Trump.
Look at — look at — we`re going to put up his bill of particulars. Everything from what`s happening in Georgia with his attempts to disrupt the 2020 election and criminal investigation, lawsuits from the NAACP and Eric Swalwell on using the Ku Klux Klan Act around the insurrection, Letitia James going after him on taxes, U.S. Capitol Police officers suing him.
I could go on and on. Mary Trump suing him for basically stealing her inheritance. E. Jean Carroll suing him for lying, claiming that she was lying about him raping her. I could go on, Michael.
And yet, unlike the conservative Tory — the Tory Party in Great Britain, Trump`s party refuses to ditch him. They refuse to back away from him. There is no embarrassment. Why do you suppose that is?
STEELE: Well, that`s where — yes, and I think that`s where Keir just really excellently pointed out some of the stark differences between the approach, even though at — near the end there, there was some evidence that Boris was probably looking for a way to sort of, as Keir put it, stretch the British Constitution.
But you`re right. The queen`s still sits atop all of that. And that`s not our system. What you see with the British system, that even with the most revered and popular prime ministers, Winston Churchill, for example, at some point, folks get tired of them, and they give them the boot.
REID: He got cashiered. Winston Churchill got tossed.
(LAUGHTER)
STEELE: And they move on.
REID: Yes, exactly. Churchill won the war, the greatest war ever. And five, six years later, people were like, OK, thank you very much.
That`s not our political culture, for sure. But what it does say, in stark relief, because of the similarities that do exist between our two nations, is that we have fallen much more on the cultish side of it. We — our parties are basically feckless. They`re inept. They do not have the same kind of power center structure to discipline, to enforce discipline, to move political players around the chessboard.
That`s rather old-school. That`s how I was brought up in politics in D.C. and Maryland was, it was a much more hands-on — you had more control. That`s not the case today. And a lot of it is because, particularly with Republicans and a little bit with Democrats, with the Bernie bros and things like that, you see this sort of cultural element that sort of swamps the political, that takes over the political and drives those narratives.
And, ultimately, two things happen. Either the party leadership enforces control and discipline and tries to rein it back, or they do what we have seen them do here in America, particularly Republicans, and that`s acquiesce, give in, and capitulate.
REID: And, Keir, I don`t want to make be the psychoanalyst of American culture here from London.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: But I wonder. I mean, there is something about American politics that gets fused with religion. It becomes a religion, particularly on the Republican side.
It has been completely fused with a certain kind of evangelical Christianity, whereas, in Britain, that religiosity isn`t even connected to the queen. It`s not connected to the parties. But Brexit was the closest thing I have seen Britain come to something like what American politics looks like.
[19:10:03]
It was ugly. It was racist. It was anti-immigrant. It had like a lot of the elements of Bannonism and Trumpism. Why do you suppose that, in Britain, that did not result in the kind of insurrectionist thinking and insurrectionist action there that it`s destroyed the political culture here?
SIMMONS: Well, I mean, one of the things to remember I think about Brexit is that it was swiftly followed by COVID and then, of course, the war in Ukraine.
So the trouble is that, economically speaking, the impact is clouded. It`s hard to tell. There are — for example, I have the experience of trying to get some medicine, for example, for my kids, and not being able to get it, and thinking that — I think that`s Brexit, but I`m not sure. Is it Ukraine?
So I do think that the verdict on Boris Johnson will be made by the historians. Listen, he`s been in power for less than three years, but he has been incredibly influential as a politician and, in some ways, in the same way, as President Trump. There are many, many differences, but he has been the kind of politician who seemed to be able to kind of walk on water, to defy political ground gravity, and to do things that no other politician could.
I do think there is a culture here in the U.K. of ruthlessness in politics, a lack of respect, which in a way has some benefits. There was an old left- wing politician called Tony Benn here many years ago who used to say, the first thing I want to know about a politician is, how do I get them out?
(LAUGHTER)
SIMMONS: And if Boris Johnson has to go here, you will see the removal trucks outside this door very, very fast.
There is a debate tonight about whether he will even make it to the fall, as he says that he wants to, in — by the time a new leader is elected.
I should just say one thing. We just should be careful comparing systems, because circumstances change. Systems creak in different circumstances.
REID: Yes.
STEELE: Right.
SIMMONS: And we have certainly seen the British democratic system struggle, particularly when there`s not a clear majority in Parliament.
That`s an issue with the parliamentary system. Joy, in France, they have got Macron as a president who is — now there`s a political paralysis, because that Parliament has gone the other way.
REID: Yes.
SIMMONS: So, difference — every system has its challenges and also its strengths.
REID: Yes. And every system has its Trump, because they have got Marine Le Pen in France, who is equivalent to what Trump is doing here.
STEELE: Right.
REID: So it`s kind of everywhere in Europe.
And, Michael, but, here, we just have a different toxic mix. We have guns aplenty, like guns everywhere. You have armed factions that can easily threaten the republic physically. And then you have this particular power that the administrative state has.
I mean, we have got this story about the IRS. It`s very hard to imagine that both Mr. Andrew McCabe and Comey both get these super audits, and that`s now sparked an investigation. There are — there are ways that you can do retribution from the White House here — we don`t know that that`s what happened, but the sure is what it looks like — that you really can`t do in a lot of other countries.
The presidents have a lot of, I guess, power that they can use individually.
STEELE: Well, that executive authority is primary.
And it was one of the big issues with our founders about the checks and balance between that executive authority and the legislative authority overseen by a judiciary. And what we have seen in modern times, certainly post late 20th century and early parts of this century, is a reflective reaction, if you will, to that administrative state, which is what Trump came in talking about going after it and beating up on it.
Reagan sort of mused about it and had some nice quips about it, but when he got to the presidency, pretty much kind of used it the way other presidents were had used it. Same with other Republican presidents. But with Trump, it was really about deconstructing that administrative state, which is not something that we have seen in European history, recent history, at least.
So, there are — to Keir`s point, there`s some real big differences that you can`t overlap and say, oh, one-for-one comparisons, because what drives us beneath are a Constitution and bills of rights and so forth that are driven around abortion and guns and things that are enshrined one day and maybe, as we have just learned, not so much the next day.
REID: Kicked out — yes, yes, yes, and kicked under the bus the next day.
STEELE: And that drives the body politics.
REID: Well, when this all happened and we heard the Boris news this morning, there were two people that I wanted to talk to. And the two of them are sitting right here on either sides of me on the screen.
Keir Simmons and Michael Steele, thank you both for being willing to do it, because you guys are the very people that I wanted to speak with.
STEELE: Thanks, Joy.
REID: Thank you very much. Much appreciated.
[19:15:00]
All right, up next on THE REIDOUT: inside the insurrectionists` clubhouse. Membership is not exactly exclusive, but the names will all sound familiar.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: The January 6 committee hearings have made a familiar — have made familiar a rogue`s gallery of obscure Trump world figures who aren`t actually that obscure at all in right-wing circles.
Take longtime Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell, who was central to Donald Trump`s efforts to overturn the election. She was also in the news this week as one of the seven Trump allies and attorneys subpoenaed by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, and the investigation of election interference there.
[19:20:12]
It turns out Cleta Mitchell is still working to disrupt the next election and the one after that. In May, “The New York Times” reported that Mitchell is recruiting and training an army of poll watchers through an effort ironically called the Election Integrity Network, a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute.
Known as CPI, it`s not just home to Cleta Mitchell. It also employs former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and its related groups are home to a slew of familiar MAGA world names that are now even more familiar due to the January 6 Committee investigation.
The CPI-funded Center For Renewing America employs Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department lawyer who tried to install himself as attorney general to do Trump`s bidding, and former Trump Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel.
Meanwhile, its associated America First Legal Foundation is run by — wait for it — Stephen Miller of child separation policy and suing to prevent black farmers from receiving government assistance fame. The CPI is led by a figure with long ties to right-wing policy — the right-wing policy echo chamber, former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a Tea Party hero who left the Senate to run the Heritage Foundation, only to get the boot for being too close to Trump.
It`s no surprise then that the CPI has close ties with version 2.0 of the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, co-founded by none other than Mark Meadows during his days in Congress. Several members of the Freedom Caucus have already been subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs, in other words, a lot more names that we will likely hear again as the January 6 Committee investigation continues.
A new report from Grid News looked into the many ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute that have made it a veritable clubhouse for insurrectionists.
Maggie Severns, policy reporter for Grid, joins me now, along with Kurt Bardella, adviser to the DNC and the DCCC.
Maggie, thank you for being here. My social media producer actually shared this with the team, and I was fascinated by it, read it, and then reread parts of it.
Talk about the CPI. Who are they? And what about this clubhouse that they`re running in D.C.?
MAGGIE SEVERNS, GRID NEWS: Yes, thanks so much, Joy.
This is really a story about, I would say, the organization and the money that`s been behind a lot of things that we have seen in the lead-up to January 6, on January 6, and after in these efforts to push back against the January 6 investigations.
We looked and we found 10 different organizations all connected to a single townhouse on Capitol Hill that is being leased by CPI. But there are, as you mentioned, a bunch of different groups and PACS — the House Freedom Caucus runs its PAC out of there — that all kind of lead back to one place.
REID: Now, they got money from Donald Trump, this sort of slush fund that he created, the $250 million that we have discovered through the committee. They got like a million of it.
So who — do you know who else are their donors?
SEVERNS: Yes, we know a little bit about their donors.
As you just noted, Trump raised a whole lot of money after the last election. He gave a million dollars to CPI, which actually makes him one of the largest known donors to the organization. And then there are a couple other really big-name GOP donors, like Richard Uihlein, who has backed Trump and some other pretty far right candidates in recent years.
He`s put millions and millions of dollars into elections. He gave CPI $1.25 million, we know. A lot of this, CPI and the affiliated organizations, are — some of them are what you would call dark money groups. So they aren`t actually required to (AUDIO GAP) their donors.
We do know that it`s grown in pretty short order to being a $20-million plus organization over the last couple of years.
REID: And, Kurt, what`s interesting, it`s also kind of a home for the B- list level, if I can be unkind for a moment, of people who work for Donald Trump, who, when they left, didn`t get picked up by the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute or sort of the traditional places that people leave after they leave a White House.
They wind up here. And so this place is like scooping up people who, let`s just face it, would not be like presidents of universities after leaving the Trump White House. What do you make of this kind of — it`s like the collection of the Matt Gaetz friends club.
KURT BARDELLA, DNC AND DCCC ADVISER: Yes, I think if it`s — if you`re the B-list and the Trump world, that means you`re probably the D-list everywhere else. And that`s exactly what this group is.
And, really, let`s call it for what it is. It`s a safe harbor for domestic terrorists who wanted to help lead and incite an insurrection and are plotting to do so probably again in the not-too-distant future. And, all the while it`s also a mechanism to keep the grift that is Donald Trump going and to have another satellite, another tentacle for him to continue to raise money, funnel money, and watch people enrich themselves off of Trump.
It always astounds me, Joy, that people send this guy money, because all he does with it is turn it around and either give it to himself or just give it to his staff, and nothing actually happens with it.
[19:25:02]
It is the ultimate grift. And that`s why these entities really exist. And, in many ways, too, it`s just the — almost the legal defense fund in waiting for these people who are coming under the microscope and examination of the January 6 Committee.
REID: You know, and, Maggie, I mean, speaking of that, I mean, a lot of people are running podcasts out there, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz.
Like, they`re using this building in D.C. to basically kind of run other little mini businesses and media entities, right?
SEVERNS: Yes, I think that`s an important aspect of our story, is that really this is part communications machine, right, for a lot of people that you`re seeing out there, people like Lauren Boebert, who takes her podcast there.
They do TV hits out of CPI. And you have just a chorus of people like Mark Meadows, who have very large Twitter followings. At times, you can really see folks pushing back against things that we`re seeing, kind of in concert. And it`s interesting, because you feel like all these voices are coming from different directions.
And one thing we noticed in our story is that sometimes it`ll be for people who work for different organizations underneath CPI, right? So it feels like all these disparate voices, but it`s really kind of a chorus coming from one place.
REID: Right.
And I was saying in the break, Kurt — and I say this to my poor team all the time — that I think one of the biggest stories that the media did really miss was the Tea Party and the way that this Koch-funded sort of fake grassroots network really ate up the Republican Party. And now it is the majority of kind of the base of the party, and now MAGA is the new version of it that`s taken it over as well.
You have now got Mark Meadows, who is the O.G. Tea Partier, trying to start a House Freedom Caucus in Georgia, trying to sort of metastasize that same way of doing politics into the states. We know Arizona has already been gobbled up by the same kind of MAGA weirdness.
Why do you suppose the Republican Party is — they are so efficient at taking extremism, marketing it, and then shipping it out to the states and these kinds of bizarre ideas taking hold? Democrats don`t really do that.
BARDELLA: Yes, I always say that there`s more of us than there are of them, but the little amount that they have is so organized.
And it`s a playbook that we saw, like you pointed out, in the earlier part of the 2010 decade, where it was kind of from the ground up. They would work at the state and local level. They work with big entities that would fund them, like the Koch Foundation and the Koch brothers. And they were able to transform really the Republican Party, beneath all of our noses, really.
And now that they have the reins of power in so many places and statehouses, they`re now reduplicating that playbook and applying it to the here and now. It`s why they`re targeting — why MAGA candidates are endorsing school board candidates now. I mean, that`s how granular this really gets for them.
And it`s something that Democrats are going to have to contend with in the future. No matter what happens in the 2022 election, there is a whole giant effort right now that`s organized that`s targeting every down-ballot races in every major state that we care about.
REID: Yes.
BARDELLA: And if we don`t match up with that, we`re going to have major problems going forward, and we`re going to continue to see this pattern of extreme minority views being imposed on the majority of us.
REID: Yes, DeSantis is on that school board thing, where he`s trying to decide who`s going to be on the school boards in Florida.
Last word to you on this, Maggie. You talked about some of the things that they`re behind, attacking Critical Race Theory, some of the usual stuff. Is there a sort of coherent set of things that these folks that are connected to this organization want, that they want done to society?
SEVERNS: You know, I think you could ask that same question about kind of the broader Republican Party right now, like you said, we see a lot of kind of anti-wokeness out of these groups.
We see a lot — some suits around trans rights or immigration, kind of a social policy there. But I think that a lot of this — a lot of the messaging we`re seeing come out of CPI right now is really kind of an anti- messaging, more than being pro a lot of things.
REID: Yes.
SEVERNS: You see a lot of people arguing against the January 6 Committee, arguing against what happened in the 2020 election and then starting to also build some building blocks — you mentioned Cleta Mitchell`s group — towards the next election and what I think they would call election integrity, but some people fear will be interference in the election or attempts to.
REID: Yes, that`s the difference between that — them and the Tea Party, because the Tea Party, basically, it was a set of like people that were out there protesting, but, in the end, they really wanted what the Koch brothers why, which is deregulation and tax cuts for the rich.
That`s what they actually wanted. They just did all the theatrical stuff for show.
Maggie Severns, excellent reporting. Thank you very much for being here. Kurt Bardella, my friend, thank you very much.
Still ahead: What do you get when you blend narcissistic, alienated young men carrying social grudges with easy access to assault rifles? Our modern American society, that`s what.
And that`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:34:23]
REID: In 2015, Dylann Roof killed nine black parishioners at an historic Charleston church, leaving behind a white supremacist manifesto proclaiming that — quote — “Someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world. And I guess that has to be me. I have no choice” — unquote.
After the shooting, columnist Tom Nichols labeled Roof as a lost boy, one of the failed-to-launch young men who carry weighty social grudges incubated in the shame environment of social isolation and prolonged adolescence.
He warned that: “When society breeds too many narcissistic males determined to get even with a world that denies them their due, the fame recognition or sexual mate they think they deserve, we are all in danger.”
[19:35:06]
Well, that could not have been more prescient. Since then, the mass shootings have continued, many perpetrated by young men furious at a society that they feel has left them behind, motivated by racist rhetoric, hatred of women, and a fascination with violence.
And while we still don`t know the motive for the Highland Park shooting, it is not at all surprising that the 21-year-old gunman was steeped in some of that rhetoric, leaving behind an online trail full of violent imagery and tributes to past mass shootings.
I`m joined now by Tom Nichols, contributing writer at “The Atlantic.”
And, Tom, I read an old piece that you wrote years ago. That piece that you talked about — that I just — we were just discussing, where I said, wow, that is so prescient, it was almost like prophecy. And that is what I said to you.
Talk a little bit about this, because we do have a demographic similarity between many, not all, but many of the mass shooters, young, white, armed with an AR-15, and angry at women and people of color and immigrants.
TOM NICHOLS, “THE ATLANTIC”: Yes, I was struggling. I mean, that was seven years ago, and I was struggling back then to figure out, what is common about these young men?
And they are all men, and they all seem to be linked by a combination of a towering amount of narcissism, coupled to an immense amount of insecurity and grievance and perpetual adolescence.
Joy, in your intro, you mentioned that they think the world has left them behind. I think it`s worse than that. They think the world has not paid them their due. The world does not respect them as much as they think they should be respected, which is out of all proportion to anything they have actually done.
These are just ordinary people. Ordinary people live ordinary lives. And these young men, you can see it in the things they say. They really believe that they are heroes, that they are the people that are going to change society. And add to that they are just awash in easy access to guns, and it`s a really dangerous phenomenon.
But I think the narcissism is really the thing that`s at the root of it all. And I will just say that, when I wrote it, I must — I was a practicing political scientist back then. But I`m not a social psychologist. I was struggling, as an older man, to try to figure out what was going on.
And after I wrote it, I got a call from some folks at the National Counterterrorism Center who were working on similar things. And they said, we`d like to talk more with you because we`re struggling with the same thing. We think there`s something here, but we can`t get our arms around it either.
And so I think that a lot of people who look at this problem are coming to that conclusion as well.
REID: I mean, we have always had grandiosity, right? There have always been people who think more of themselves. They think that they shouldn`t just be driving a Ford. They should be driving a Lamborghini. They think they should have the beautiful woman, and they can`t get a date. Like, they have always had that.
But something has definitely shifted, right? There was a point in our history in this country where people who thought they were on mission, particularly when it was race-related, could get together and they would do things like lynchings and overrun places, cities, or New Orleans, or places where they wanted to just kill a lot of people. Like, they could commit those kinds of things.
But what you`re seeing now is that people are doing it alone. These aren`t groups of people getting together to lynch someone, this is one person that is a sort of one-man lynch mob against crowds.
NICHOLS: Yes.
What`s interesting about this is that this is a phase I think that all young men go through: I am the only person who understands everything.
It`s adolescent, right? I mean, that`s why they`re — the word is an adjective itself. It`s adolescent. It`s adolescent fantasizing. But the difference is that in — I think in previous eras, young men are socialized out of this, or, to put it another way, they grow up, that young men who have adolescent fantasies about power and playing soldier and rescuing the world eventually grow out of that.
They learn that they have to get a job, they have to get up in the morning, they have to wash their face, and brush their teeth and do things that ordinary people do.
And what`s common among so many of these young shooters, again, as an impression my part, is that they just don`t seem to have ever internalized that. I mean, it`s almost like they`re waking up every day and saying, why aren`t I Tony Stark? Why aren`t I the star of a Marvel superhero movie?
REID: Yes.
NICHOLS: And it is really — it`s childish, but it is incredibly out of proportion to the way they live their lives.
And then this anger builds up and they start shooting people.
REID: And they have got easy access to guns.
There`s also the excuse-making, right? I mean, you have got Tucker Carlson, who had tried to blame the shooting in Highland Park on women being mean to men and telling them they have privilege. You have even the dad of — well, we had Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an idiot, trying to say that it wasn`t even real, it was a false flag, sort of making up just bizarre excuses for a shooting that was obviously what it was.
[19:40:01]
And then you have the dad. I was struck by the father, Robert Crimo Sr. This is what he said about his son. He said about his previous threats he made to the family to kill them: “I think that was taken out of context,” he says.
Police were called for, but he`s taken out of context, because the son said he wanted to kill everyone. It`s just like a child`s outburst, whatever he was upset about, and takes — he took no responsibility. He said he has good morals, and he`s the one who sponsored him to get the weapon. What do you make of that?
Because if you`re growing up with somebody like that makes those kinds of excuses for you, well, not as surprising that you would be the kind of guy that he is.
NICHOLS: Well, if you`re growing up with someone like that, you`re not growing up. That`s part of the problem, that the first thing I thought when I read that is, wow, how could a young man end up with this outsized sense of entitlement and inability to take responsibility?
And I think that lengthening of childhood and adolescence is something that really we couldn`t afford to do as a society until about 30 or 40 years ago, which is a strange actual unintended consequence of affluence. There was a time when young men just simply had to get out of the house and go to work, because that`s just the way it was.
Now, I don`t know in any one circumstance what creates these young men, because they come from different backgrounds. A few of these shooters, by the way, have been young black men with the same kind of towering kind of narcissism.
There was one mass shooter who was an young African-American man said he wanted to talk to Hillary Clinton the phone. Better get her on the phone. Again, that sense of: I`m very important. People need to listen to me.
But these kinds of young alienated losers, I often wonder about the family situation, where people have been making these kinds of excuses for them, and then providing them with weapons. This is shades of Sandy Hook, where you had a very emotionally disturbed young man, and his mother decided that the solution for him was to take him to a shooting range with powerful weapons.
There`s something very wrong going on here at this level of society, and I think we`re not really confronting it yet.
REID: Yes, I mean, we talk about the easy access to guns, which is a huge problem, the technology where people are sort of watching murder porn.
There`s — it`s all combined, but there`s something deeper socially that`s taking place. And I wanted to talk to you about that today, Tom Nichols. So thank you for making the time. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Have a great evening.
All right, and up next: Brittney Griner pleads guilty in a Russian courtroom. Now, it`s not like she had any other choice, of course.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:47:16]
REID: In a Russian courtroom today, WNBA star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty under duress to drug possession charges.
Griner has been detained in Russia since February, when authorities claimed they found vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage. Griner is one of about 64 Americans, according to the James Foley Foundation, who are wrongfully detained around the world.
The vast majority of them are held by governments with whom the United States has complicated relations or none at all. The definition of wrongfully detained means that these individuals are closely monitored by the State Department`s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, effectively the government`s chief hostage negotiator.
That list also includes Paul Whelan, who has been detained in Russia since 2018. His family expressed frustration to NBC News that his case was being overlooked because he doesn`t have celebrity status. A representative from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow spoke with Brittney Griner after her trial and delivered a letter from President Biden that she read.
This is just a day after President didn`t president spoke with Griner`s wife to assure her that he is doing all he can to win her release as soon as possible.
A Russian diplomat has warned that increased criticism of Russia`s detention of Griner and dismissive comments about their judicial system — quote — “makes it difficult to engage in detailed discussion of any possible exchanges.”
Despite her plea, Griner`s trial will continue next week, and her detention has been extended through December, December 20.
With me now, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. He`s an MSNBC international affairs analyst.
And, Ambassador McFaul, this is a tough one, because it`s terrifying just to think about this young woman stuck in Russia. She of course, had to plead guilty. I can`t see how anything else could happen.
How possibly does a deal get done to get her and also Paul Whelan out of there?
MICHAEL MCFAUL, NBC NEWS INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, like you said, we have a special negotiator for those tasks at the State Department.
And they did do a deal just months ago to get Trevor Reed out of Russia. They handed over Konstantin Yaroshenko is his name, somebody who had been in prison here for a long time. And if you read what the Russians are saying and people close to the Kremlin are saying, they think a deal can be done for another criminal, a real criminal.
Brittney Griner is not a real criminal. This guy`s a real criminal. His name is Viktor Bout. He`s serving a 25-year sentence here in the United States. And once she`s been convicted and sentenced, right — and that`s why I think they decided to plead guilty just to speed up the process — I think there`s some hope that there might be a deal done for her.
And I know the Whelan family would hope that he would be part of that deal. And there`s also one more American. Marc Fogel is his name, who also has been charged with laundering marijuana, that he might also be part of that deal as well.
[19:50:08]
REID: Right.
And Paul Whelan, we should note, has been incarcerated in Russia since 2018. This happened under Trump. And his family tried to go to the Trump administration, who didn`t want to hear anything with the word Russia in it. And so they felt they didn`t get any help. So they have got to be doubly frustrated, because he supposedly was so friendly with Putin, but didn`t do anything for Mr. Whelan.
You spoke about Trevor Reed. He actually — on June 6, he went to a rally for Brittney Griner after he was released. And he talked about some of the things that he dealt with when he was incarcerated. He said the food and conditions when he was incarcerated in Russia were medieval. He said they live in a cell that looks like it`s something out of the Middle Ages.
As Americans, you can`t imagine what the place looks like until you actually see that for yourselves. These conditions are what Brittney and Paul are living in right now as we`re having this conversation.
That is, I think, what scares Brittney`s family and the Whelan family, because she`s — it`s not like — American prisons are bad enough. This sounds horrific.
MCFAUL: They are. The conditions are very horrific.
There`s variation, by the way, but I have been to Russian prisons. You don`t want to be in a Russian prison. And you don`t want to be in a system where there is no rule of law, right? The appeals, the process, getting out, in terms of leniency, none of those things operate in Putin`s Russia today.
And that`s why I think the family rightfully thinks that the best way out would be some kind of swap, as I said, for this gentleman Mr. Bout.
REID: And would it be likely that Russia would — if they were going to make a deal to get back their bad guy, to give back Brittney Griner, that they would include everyone? Or are they going — are they now incentivized now that they have a celebrity, they have an WNBA star, to try to extract more bad guys for each of the people they have?
MCFAUL: Yes, that`s a great question, Joy. And I don`t know the answer to that.
I do think the case here is pretty unique. It`s a finite number of Americans. We`re not talking about hundreds of Americans in Russia. We`re really talking about three.
And Viktor Bout, remember, he`s a criminal. He`s a drug runner. He carried up arms around the world. But he also probably has close ties to Russian intelligence services. We don`t — I can`t say that for a fact. But reading about his background, he sounds like a guy who probably had a lot of close dealings with organizations that were successor organizations to the KGB.
Remember, Vladimir Putin also used to work for the KGB. He really wants this guy out of jail, even asking for him to get out of jail when I was ambassador in Russia several years ago.
REID: Yes.
And Megan Rapinoe today, when she received her Presidential Medal of Freedom, she had Brittney Griner`s initials like — put on her jacket. There have been people who`ve been trying to show — the WNBA has been really wonderful about trying to show support and — for Brittney Griner.
What can the public do? Because Russia is essentially threatening the United States and those of us in media that, if you talk too much about their awful system, that hurts her cause. And for a while, we didn`t talk about her at all, not because we didn`t care, but because we were worried that we would elevate her situation to hostage.
What do we — what should we do?
MCFAUL: Yes, my own view on that — I know that the deputy foreign minister that made that comment, we`re complicating things, no, they`re complicating things.
They arrested this person wrongly. They`re holding Paul Whelan for years wrongly. Paul — Marc Fogel got 14 years in prison. Those are wrongly held American citizens. And so we should do everything we can to keep this in the news.
It doesn`t mean it`s going to be easy. I want to — I want to keep emphasizing that.
REID: Yes.
MCFAUL: It`s going to be hard to do this deal. And our — there are forces in America that don`t want to do this deal, right?
REID: Yes.
MCFAUL: People in the Justice Department don`t want to give up criminals. They think it creates a precedent. I understand that argument.
My own argument is, it`s better to get them out of jail than not.
REID: Yes.
MCFAUL: And Viktor Bout has done a great deal of time in jail already. Let`s try to take this deal if we get it.
REID: Amen. Amen. Let`s bring these Americans home.
Former Ambassador Michael McFaul, always a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Up next: a palate cleanser for this day and this era. President Biden awards the Medal of Freedom to 17 Americans he says demonstrate the power of possibilities.
Back in a second.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:59:01]
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Extraordinary, extraordinary group of Americans up here on this stage that I have the honor to recognize today with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
This is America.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Today, President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation`s highest civilian honor, to 17 extraordinary people.
Among the recipients, two superstar Olympians, Simone Biles, the youngest person to receive the honor, and Megan Rapinoe. Also honored, Academy Award winning-actor Denzel Washington, who was unable to attend because of a positive COVID test, former Congresswoman and gun safety activist Gabby Giffords, and critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay, who was the first American to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Two veterans of the civil rights movement were honored Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and attorney Fred Gray, who represented Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
Three people were honored posthumously, Senator John McCain, labor leader Richard Trumka, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
And that is just part of the list. It was a much-needed, very, very good thing today. Congrats to all of the recipients.
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT.
“ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts now.