Updated
Summary
Donald Trump`s White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, just wrapped up more than seven hours of testimony to the January 6 Committee. The next live hearing of the January 6 Committee is set for Tuesday morning that will focus on the right-wing extremist gangs like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and their part on the insurrection. The Fox News Channel often acts as basically a kind of propaganda arm for Republican Senate campaigns and Mitch McConnell`s political arm. The German Chancellor said the country will not be reversing course on nuclear energy instead, but is turning to coal to bolster its supply.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Yes, it`s all very embarrassing, but it will be over soon. That is why Larry the Cat wins the week. Dana Milbank, Jesse Ross, thank you very much.
And that`s tonight`s “REIDOUT.” ALL WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now, my darlings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN. Donald Trump`s White House Counsel sits for a marathon interview with the January 6 Committee. Tonight, what we`re learning about what`s happening behind those doors. And the long strange trip of Patsy Baloney.
PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: The President has done absolutely nothing wrong.
STEVEN ENGEL, FORMER U.S. ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: At that point, Pat Cipollone said, yes, this is a murder suicide pact.
HAYES: Then, new reporting on potential new witnesses that could extend the investigation into August. And what we know about the next hearing and what Jamie Raskin calls the convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader MAGA movement.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
HAYES: Plus, why Joe Biden`s executive order on abortion today could have a real practical effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. And why on earth is Trump TV attempting to take out another Trump candidate for office?
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Is it true that Kari Lake was not – – was she an Obama supporter?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She donated to Obama, she endorsed for Obama.
INGRAHAM: What?
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Pat Cipollone, Donald Trump`s White House Counsel, just wrapped up more than seven hours of testimony to the January 6 Committee. Now, that interview took place on Capitol Hill behind closed doors was of course recorded on video. Committee member Zoe Lofgren says that Cipollone was cooperative and revealed new information that we will get to hear in upcoming hearings.
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REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): Mr. Cipollone and he did appear voluntarily and answer a whole variety of questions. He did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses. And I think we did learn a few things which we will be rolling out in hearings to come. So, I think it was a, you know, a grueling day for all involved Mr. Cipollone and the staff and the members, but it was well worth it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, new reporting suggests the Committee continues to collect more evidence and that more Republican witnesses have been coming forward so they may extend those hearings beyond next week. But this interview with Cipollone is one of the committee`s biggest breakthroughs yet. He is of course, a key witness who as we know from previous hearings, repeatedly tried to stop Donald Trump from going through with the coup. He has the potential to be the John Dean of this investigation, because well, in fact, Dean himself President Nixon`s White House counsel was the one who broke open the Watergate investigation 1973 and he had urged Cipollone to speak out.
And it really is an amazing turn of events that Pat Cipollone is now in this position. Donald Trump hired Cipollone at the end of 2018, and that was to replace his first White House Counsel, Don McGahn. Now, Trump became dissatisfied with McGahn after he tried to prevent the ex-president from committing potential crimes. Again, went on to cooperate extensively with the Special Counsel Robert Mueller`s investigation. And so, for his next White House Counsel, Trump wanted a true loyalist, a soldier.
He chose Cipollone, a right wing Republican conservative Catholic, who was Fox host Laura Ingraham`s spiritual mentor before her conversion to Catholicism. And for a time Cipollone played the part. He was Trump`s lead attorney in Trump`s first impeachment trial, which you will remember was about the ex-president`s attempt to corruptly misuse his power for his own political benefit. He solicited foreign help for the threat of extortion, essentially, to interfere in a free and fair election.
And the Democrats argued at the time that this was not someone who could be trusted with the powers of government because Trump refused to play by the basic rules of democracy. He refused to fundamentally at a core level, accept free and fair elections. In fact, he wanted to prevent them from happening.
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REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in that very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide and that the President was shun any further foreign interference in our democratic affairs? And the short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can`t. You can`t trust this President to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can`t. He will not change and you know it.
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HAYES: But Pat Cipollone, in his role as defender of the president, countered that it was the Democrats actually who were the ones imperilling democracy by trying to impeach and remove Donald Trump.
[20:05:08]
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CIPOLLONE: What they are asking you to do is to throw out a successful president on the eve of an election with no basis and in violation of the Constitution. It would dangerously change our country and weaken, weaken forever all of our democratic institutions. The election is only months away. The American people are entitled to choose their president.
Overturning the last election, and massively interfering with the upcoming one would cause serious and lasting damage to the people of the United States and to our great country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, Adam Schiff says Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. You can`t trust him. Pat Cipollone counters no, no, no, impeaching Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. Well, we know who turned out to be right, didn`t we, about the nature of Donald Trump and the real threat to democracy?
And Pat Cipollone, like so many before him, belatedly realized that he was on the wrong side too, because he watched in real time as the ex-President attempted to end American democracy as you know it, to use the power of his office to foment a coup to cause the first ever non-peaceful transfer of power. Cipollone was there in the White House as the first President in the U.S. History tried to prevent that peaceful transfer of power by inciting a violent insurrection.
And to be clear, and to his credit, this conservative Trump loyalists, the man who stood up at the first impeachment trial and preached about the threat to democracy, tried his best as far as we know to stop the coup. When it really happened, when it really counted, it appears that Pat Cipollone did nearly everything he could, though short of speaking out publicly, to stop it.
Over the past six committee hearings, we`ve heard how Cipollone push back against Trump`s efforts use the Department of Justice to support his claims of election fraud. This is Assistant Attorney General Stephen Engel describing Cipollone`s reaction when Trump tried to promote his loyalists Jeffrey Clark who was prepared to issue a letter falsely claiming the DOJ had found evidence of fraud.
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ENGEL: I said, Mr. President, I had been with you through four attorneys general, including two acting attorney general, but I couldn`t be part of this. The story is not going to be that the Department of Justice has found massive corruption that would have changed results of the election, it`s going to be the disaster of Jeff Clark. I think at that point, Pat Cipollone said, yes, this is a murder suicide pact this letter.
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HAYES: Cipollone also pushed back against Trump`s lawyer –Trump lawyer John Eastman`s coup memo laying out the scheme for Mike Pence to essentially unilaterally overturn the election on January 6.
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JASON MILLER, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: The way it was communicated to me it was that Pat Cipollone thought the idea was nutty and had at one point, confronted Eastman basically with the same sentiment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And last week, Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee how Cipollone warned her about the potential crimes Trump could commit if he led the mob to the Capitol on January 6.
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CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, ASSISTANT TO FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF MARK MEADOWS: I saw Mr. Cipollone right before I walked out onto West Exec that morning. And Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of, please make sure we don`t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We`re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): And do you remember which crimes Mr. Cipollone was concerned with?
HUTCHINSON: In the days leading up to the sixth, we had conversations about potentially obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral account.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Hutchinson also relayed to the committee what Pat Cipollone told her boss Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the Secret Service stop Trump from going to the Capitol, but the mob had made it there on their own.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUTCHINSON: I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, the rioters have gotten to the Capitol, Mark. We need to go now and see the president now. And Mark looked up at him and said, he doesn`t want to do anything, Pat. And Pat said something to the effect of — and very clearly has said this to Mark, something to the effect of, Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die the blood is going to be on your effing hands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: People are going to die and the blood is going to be on your effing hands. Well, he was right about that. Now, we have seen this particular script over and over and over again, a conservative loyalist goes to work for Trump realizes he`s a monstrous sociopath, and then comes around and tells the story.
The question that remains tonight, after hours and hours of testimony is did Pat Cipollone really come clean? Once again, I`m joined by David Rohde, executive editor of NewYorker.com where he has been reporting on the January 6 investigation. David, welcome.
We don`t know what happened inside that room. All we have is what Zoe Lofgren said. You`ve been reporting on this. What do you think we can — what conclusions can we draw provisionally from today`s testament?
[20:10:15]
DAVID ROHDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I think provisionally, this was an extremely bad day for John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jeff Clark, and the Republican members of Congress who requested pardons from President Trump. All of those people aren`t covered by executive privilege. And according to what Representative Lofgren said, you know, Cipollone seems to have corroborated the account of other witnesses about their actions, the absurdity of Eastman`s arguments, the murder suicide pact involving Jeff Clark taking over the DOJ.
But look, obviously, the big question here is Donald Trump. And my sense is that they were repeated breaks today, there was two or three of them where Cipollone left the interview, and then went in a separate room to confer with his lawyers. So, I think there is a chance that he was — he invoked executive privilege and didn`t want to talk about his statements to Donald Trump.
HAYES: Yes, the question of privilege is sort of loomed all over all of this. But your point, I think, is worth highlighting again, right? I mean, to the extent there`s concern about privilege, that`s communications he has with the President. There`s no privilege covering like John Eastman, who`s just like a dude who showed up in his inbox, and then his office, as well as those other — as well as those other people.
And presumably, also, I mean, we`ve seen this, right, time and time again, when we saw the lawyer for Mike Pence and others. There`s a little bit of an axe to grind for the people that were on Team anti-coup against Team coup that was happening inside that White House.
ROHDE: Yes. And that`s what — and they did. They fought hard. And I thought you did a nice job of this narrative of Cipollone. And I heard this from many sort of conservative lawyers, people close to Bill Barr, they did feel that Trump was — you know, the impeachments were unfair, and the Mueller investigation was outrageous, and they really believe that. But I think all of them were stunned about what he did between the election, November, and January 6.
I`ll say again, we talked about this, Chris, but you know, John Dean testified about crimes committed by the President. John Dean tweeted, you know, this afternoon that, you know, his — basically, like, Cipollone`s legal advice to the President could remain confidential, but I think there`s other facts. You know, Dean found a way to testify about witnessing the president committing crimes in the Oval Office. So, possibly, Pat Cipollone did say — frankly, hopefully, Pat Cipollone did that as well. But we just won`t know. The next hearing is Tuesday. And that looks like another blockbuster hearing.
HAYES: Yes. And the point about — I mean, I think there`s also an interesting point here, too, about the importance of Cipollone for establishing if there were to be prosecution of anyone — and it does seem like there`s some significant criminal exposure for Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, that Cipollone is a key witness for that independent of whatever he tells the committee because of precisely his level of knowledge. And that — you know, that`s another possibility that looms over all this as well.
ROHDE: Yes, that`s another effort about pressuring other witnesses to turn on Trump pressuring Eastman. And I think a person too, and I`m being honest, is Mark Meadows also. Obviously, Cassidy Hutchinson described some very heated exchanges between Meadows and Cipollone. I don`t think all of Cipollone`s conversations with meadows are privileged, either. And if there`s someone, you know, who could turn and I think, you know, should turn for his own legal future, that would be Mark Meadows.
So, again, even if Cipollone keep some things private about Trump, he puts pressure on a whole host of other witnesses who were talking with the President as well at this time.
HAYES: You know, this question of privilege hangs over a lot of this and it`s not — it`s a little amorphous to me to be honest, like what we`re talking about here. And I think it`s a morphus for legal practitioners which is why I think that we haven`t seen, for instance, the Department of Justice, you know, indict Mark Meadows, for example, right?
Meadows is claiming some privilege. He has a more plausible claim to that or some version of it in someone like Steve Bannon. There`s this report today from the Washington Post that Trump is considering waiving the claim of executive privilege for Steve Bannon, saying former President Trump is considering sending a letter to Bannon saying he is waiving his claim of executive privilege. It would say the former president is now willing to give up that claim if Bannon can reach an agreement on the terms and appearance before the panel. The letter is described by three people familiar with it who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That`s sort of an odd one to me, but it does seem like maybe Steve Bannon doesn`t want to go to trial and jail after all.
ROHDE: That could be. It could also be Donald Trump sort of unleashing, you know, one of his attack dogs at the committee. One of Trump`s, you know, frustration has been there`s no Republican voices, no MAGA voices defending him there, so he sends Bannon. But I`m not sure Bannon would fare that well against this committee. Frankly, Liz Cheney has been a very effective questioner and other members of the committee.
And I questioned the legal strategy here. He should be, I think, getting every ounce of executive privilege that he can. And so, I`m not clear — I don`t think this would necessarily work. And you`re right. It`s a very funny or strange privilege. I mean, the idea is that a president should be able to have private conversations with his closest aides about his policy decisions. I don`t think that should extend to crimes.
HAYES: I will note, just as a side note, that executive privilege, which appears very early and in the tradition of American jurisprudence, I think there`s a case that first establishes it with George Washington himself, appears nowhere in the Constitution. It appears as much as abortion rights, and yet, courts seem to take it quite seriously, including this one.
David Rohde, thank you very much.
ROHDE: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: So, what`s next for the January 6 Committee now that they`ve got Cipollone on the record? What we know about what`s happening in the hearings next week coming up.
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[20:20:00]
HAYES: The next public hearing of the January 6 Committee is set for Tuesday morning. That hearing will focus on the right-wing extremist gangs like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and their alleged plans to violently disrupt the peaceful transfer of power during the insurrection, which resulted in multiple charges of seditious conspiracy from members of both groups.
We have also been multiple reports of another yet unconfirmed hearings scheduled for next Thursday. Those reports initially indicated that hearing, the Thursday one, would end the public hearing portion of the committee`s investigation. But as the Washington Post reported today, the committee “may continue to hold hearings beyond next week, as more Republicans have come forward and are expected to continue coming forward.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for the New York Times, where he worked on the paper`s excellent video investigation into the Proud Boys` activity during the insurrection. And he joins me now.
Alan, it`s great to have you. I have to say that your reporting on this has been very clarifying for those of us following this closely, just about the degree to which so much of the violence that happened on that day really starts with these groups, is precipitated by them, is initiated by them, and then people sort of follow behind. Tell us a little bit about just generally what your reporting found about that.
ALAN FEUER, REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Sure. So, you know, this video that I helped do with the fantastic people in the Times visual investigations team and, you know, using a lot of open source intelligence from lots of other online researchers, kind of had a central finding which was that the Proud Boys on January 6 were tactically maneuvering on the ground to kind of instigate, you know, violence and advances and breaches of the building, and then kind of receding into the background, so as to let the crowd around them fill the space and almost disguise their tracks in a way. So you know, it`s a sort of a fascinating, you know, like, operational move that they did over and over and again during the capital attack.
HAYES: Yes, and I think for me — and this was true from your reporting, and then also the presentations that we saw on that first hearing, that`s one of the biggest differences between how it looks in real time and what we kind of know now, which is in real time, it looks like a kind of spontaneous eruption of rage, and then next thing you know, they`re in the building. And when you look at what actually happened on the ground, it`s quite specific and quite planned and they`re doing a lot of it.
FEUER: Sure. So, there`s a couple of thoughts about that. One, the Proud Boys before January 6 and in the run-up to the — to what happened at the Capitol purposely made a decision not to wear their traditional black and yellow uniforms. They made a decision instead to go incognito, as their leaders called it. And that had the effect of disguising how many Proud Boys were actually involved in key moments of the breach and key advances of, you know, the storming of the building.
And so, that really was only apparent — you know, it couldn`t be seen necessarily in the moment. It took the fullness of time, and the slow grinding release of thousands of hours of video from that day, whether it meant you know, video from people`s cell phones, that they took themselves and posted online, or it was CCTV, you know, surveillance footage from the Capitol infrastructure, or even body camera footage from the police officers that day. It took time to get it, analyze it, synthesize it and kind of figure out what actually happened on the ground.
HAYES: The hearing on Tuesday where we understand is about precisely this, the Oath Keepers too. Stuart Rhodes who`s facing trial for seditious conspiracy said he wants to speak live before the committee which I doubt will happen given the fact that he is under criminal investigation. That would be a massive mistake.
What are you looking for on Tuesday? What are the sort of unanswered questions or evidence that you`re going to be looking to someone who`s reporting deeply on that?
FEUER: So, there`s a couple of things. One, I think it`s just important to mark the moment that Tuesday`s hearing will bring as to, you know, what you can think of as the main event, right, the actual mob violence on the ground on January 6.
[20:25:08]
Up until now, we had a flavor of that in the first hearing. But we`ve really kind of spent a lot of time in these — in the hearings leading up to Tuesday in the back rooms, in the — you know, in the office suites with the people with the suits and the ties. And what we`re going to find on Tuesday is we`re going to be, you know, dealing with people in the boots, not the suits.
And I`m looking for a couple of things. We`re probably going to hear, you know, a significant amount about Proud Boys who went in to the committee and gave recorded interviews. There have been several. We will likely hear clips of their interviews, including from the — from the former chairman of the group, Enrique Tarrio. We are — we are also likely to hear the committee try to tie groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to people in former President Trump`s inner circle, folks like Roger Stone, his longtime political adviser, and possibly even Mike Flynn, his one-time National Security Adviser.
And so what we`re probably going to hear is the way in which January 6 didn`t start on January 6, right? It really started in — right after the election. There were — everybody kind of elides over the fact that there were two massive pro-Trump, you know, election fraud rallies in Washington that preceded January 6. One was on November 14, 2020, the other on December 12.
And so, we`re also likely to hear how the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and I think another right-wing paramilitary group called the First Amendment Praetorian played roles in those three events all together, oftentimes as participants, speakers, but also as security guards and bodyguards for VIPs. So, I think we`re going to hear a bit about all of that stuff on Tuesday.
HAYES: All right, Alan Feuer who will be covering that hearing, thank you very much.
FEUER: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, a Republican candidates so bad, even Fox News doesn`t think she should run for office. That`s next.
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[20:30:00]
HAYES: The Fox News Channel often acts as basically a kind of propaganda arm for Republican Senate campaigns and Mitch McConnell`s political arm. And they know when they have a uniquely bad candidate on their hands.
Someone who`s so extreme that should they win the primary, they would gravely endangered Republican chances against Democrats in a general election.
And so, the job of Fox News in those circumstances is to sort of take out that candidate in the primary.
So, an example, we saw Sean Hannity do it too far right candidate Kathy Barnett in the Pennsylvania Senate primary. I mean, segment after segment about how Kathy Barnett hasn`t been vetted steer clear for please don`t vote for her.
And now, Kari Lake of Arizona is the latest in the Fox News spotlight. Now, Lake is a former local news anchor who`s running to be the state`s next governor. She has been endorsed by Donald Trump. She insists the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from Trump and even more unnerving. She says she would not have certified the 2020 results if she were a governor. Imagine if she were governor in 2024.
And in April this year, nearly a year and a half after the election. Kari Lake tweeted “decertify Wisconsin now and Arizona”.
Now, of course, Donald Trump eats it up. All that plays really well with the MAGA base, but it also makes her a bit of an uphill climb in a general election in the state that is purple.
So, when Fox News had Lake on last month, they made sure to bring up her past support of drag queens.
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BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: The Washington Post has a story today. It says Arizona GOP candidate who criticized drag queens was once a fan according to a drag queen.
This is the quote: “Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake who has attacked drag queens as dangerous to children attended the shows of drag queen Richard Stevens for more than 20 years, and once hired him to perform at her home.” Do you care to address?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Are you now or have you ever been a fan of drag queens?
Last night, Laura Ingram had Lake`s opponent on. Clearly, the Fox News preferred candidate. Appearing in front of a human backdrop of supporters all together in the campaign as one to attack Kari Lake.
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LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Is it true that Kari Lake was — was she an Obama supporter? I keep thinking that can`t be true because President Trump endorsed her. And I don`t know her, she could be the greatest person ever. I have no idea. I know she says a lot of very kind of conservative things now but did she support Obama?
KARRIN TAYLOR ROBSON (R), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE OF ARIZONA: She did. She donated to Obama, she knocked doors for Obama.
INGRAHAM: What?
ROBSON: Her political life and career has been quite interesting from Democrats, independent, Republican to Democrat and quite frankly, she found God guns in the GOP about a day and a half before she decided to run for governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: It is a riot to watch them try to lead their audience to the water, right? Like, come with me, what do we think about Kari Lake?
Now, Ingraham only asked that question to other softballs. So, the question here, I can`t quite figure out is what the actual state of play in Arizona is where the Republican nominee will again likely have a very good chance of being the next governor.
[20:35:12]
HAYES: Laurie Roberts is a columnist for The Arizona Republic who says “Karrin Taylor Robson versus Kari Lake has now become Doug Ducey versus Donald Trump”, and she joins me now.
You know, Laurie, it was the Ducey endorsement that got my attention in this race. Could you give us a little bit background first about Kari Lake and her opponent as well in terms of their backgrounds and centrality in Republican Party politics there?
LAURIE ROBERTS, COLUMNIST, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: What you have to know about Kari Lake is that she is Donald Trump in stilettos swinging around a sledgehammer at whatever she can hit. It is a campaign infused by anger. It is — the Trump loyalists love her. She`s been endorsed by Trump. There is nothing that she could do that would change that. There`s about 35 percent of the state`s likely Republican primary voters who would be in the camp.
Enter stage right or left, I don`t know which it would be is Karrin Taylor Robson who is traditional old line Main Line Republican candidate comes from a long line of Republican candidates in the state is trying her best not to appear as a traditional. The campaign blanches every time you use the word establishment, but that really is what she is. And she is their best hope to become the next governor of Arizona for the Republicans.
HAYES: I mean, do you think Kari Lake will be a liability in a general election there in Arizona?
ROBERTS: Oh, yes. I mean, what you do in an Arizona election is you go far, far to the right if you`re a Republican and a primary and then you come to the center. But Kari Lake has left no room to do that.
I saw a recent poll that said 38 percent of the state`s Republican primary voters have an unfavorable opinion of her.
So, at the very time when she should be trying to expand her base and you know, bring more people in to her side in a deadlocked race, what did she do this week? She put out a campaign ad that showed her at the border blowing stuff up.
I don`t know if she came off as unhinged. Does unhinged help you get votes at this point from undecided Republican primary voters? I don`t think so.
HAYES: Well, and clearly, you know, both Fox News and Doug Ducey have made the same calculation here. I mean, Ducey endorsing Karrin Taylor Robson just a few days ago.
I do wonder whether — what Donald Trump`s level of engagement in the races, how much does endorsement matters, but it does seem like it`s going to be a pretty close race between these two as the front runners.
ROBERTS: Well, Donald Trump has never gotten over Doug Ducey certifying the 2020 election. This whole Kari Lake phenomenon is all about the 2020 election. He can`t just move on.
HAYES: Right.
ROBERTS: And in fact, this week after Doug Ducey announced his endorsement, which everybody expected, Kari Lake went on one right-wing radio show and immediately started with, well, you know, if I lose this election, or hinted to the fact that if I lose this election, it probably means the election is stolen.
I mean, haven`t we seen this movie before? And I think that, even though Donald Trump is wildly popular in this state, three out of four of the Republican primary voters will tell you they still like him. They`re not all following anymore.
And so, about a third of the voters are within, about a third of the voters are going to go with the more traditional. The question is, what are the other third going to do?
And I don`t see Kari Lake doing much to help herself in that regard, which of course, makes the Doug Ducey crowd very happy. But the real only chance to maintain control of the governor`s office is to get Karrin Taylor Robson to be their nominee.
HAYES: And we should just note, I mean, I watched that clip and the debate where Kari Lake sort of challenged Taylor Robson about the election and said, I think it was stolen and it was illegitimate. And Biden`s illegitimate and raise your hands if you think that and the other candidates did and she did not.
My sense is that on this fundamental question about the legitimacy of democracy in America, she is on the side of the correct side. That like, Joe Biden won the election in Arizona.
ROBERTS: She can`t really say it, because if you say it, you might lose a few votes. And in a close election, what can you do?
So instead, she says, well, I don`t think the election was fair. I think conservative voices were repressed and the media wasn`t fair. And there were judges that did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but that didn`t really happen in this state in terms of judges doing anything.
So, in fact, what they did do actually helped Republican voters. I think it`s simply what she has to do to, you know, you got to — you may not be a far righty, got to play one on T.V. kind of thing. You got to play one in the primary election, or you lose votes.
So, you will see her true colors, I think, come out in a general election.
[20:40:04]
HAYES: That`s interesting, but still not encouraging that she can`t just say the obvious truth and where we are in 2022. Laurie Roberts —
ROBERTS: You know what, this is Arizona.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: Insights into Arizona politics. Appreciate it.
All right, two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, President Biden finally takes action. But will his plan actually protect abortion access and for how many? That`s coming up.
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[20:45:08]
HAYES: Combating climate change is perhaps the greatest civilizational challenge of our lifetime. Well, certainly of our lifetime, and perhaps of all humankind.
And it`s really difficult. I mean, getting from where we are right now in our current state to the carbon free future by when we have to, which is like 15 or 20 years is hard in a million ways.
But there is some low hanging fruit, some basic things we can do. Don`t go backwards, don`t go out of your way to increase carbon emissions. OK, fairly straightforward.
And yet, we can`t seem to do that either in countries abroad or here at home.
In Germany, they made the awful decision to begin scaling back the use of nuclear power in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, which happened a decade ago.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2011, 17 nuclear power plants were still on the grid. Now, only three remain active. They`re supposed to close down by the end of the year. But the war in Ukraine and surging energy prices could affect the timeline, but the German Chancellor made it clear that there won`t be any changes to the nuclear shutdown.
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HAYES: Full speed ahead. Now, nuclear energy makes up a tiny fraction of Germany`s overall power supply, but every little bit counts when you`re dealing with a potential energy crisis as basically all of Europe is in response to the war in Ukraine.
And while yes, nuclear energy is far from perfect, it is a crucial tool to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
The German Chancellor said the country will not be reversing course on nuclear energy instead, get this, this country is turning to coal to bolster its supply.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Germany, which was pushing for a faster exit from coal to fight emissions now says it`s needed. The Economy Minister said in a statement that is painful but it is a sheer necessity in this situation to reduce gas consumption.
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HAYES: Today, Germany`s Parliament formally voted to reactivate shuttered coal plants. Coal, one of the worst pollutants on Earth.
I mean, yes, nuclear energy is not the ideal fuel of the future. Sure. But the decision to start burning more coal than you were before is objectively a nightmare from a climate scenario.
At the very least, Germany and other European countries profess to care about carbon emissions.
Here at home, the right-wing is now fully masked off about attempting to use government policy to take a crowbar to kneecap the little clean energy infrastructure we do have.
Get this, in North Carolina, Republicans recently introduced a bill to supply $50,000 in government money to destroy free public electric vehicle charging stations. I`m not making this up.
The bill says public charging stations cannot exist unless the state also includes free gas for combustion engines, which obviously is not going to happen, because there`s a clear difference between the infrastructure required for electric cars and gasoline powered cars.
Putting in a gas pump is an enormous and costly piece of infrastructure. Installing an electric charging station is not, that`s one of the big advantages.
Oh, but it doesn`t stop there. The proposed legislation would also require private businesses with electrical vehicle charging stations like restaurants to include line items on the bill telling customers how much their money is going to the cost of operating the charger, which would be a preposterous logistical and accounting nightmare.
But Republicans love insane burdensome regulations when they`re designed to hurt people and ideas they do not like.
And hearing these two stories together are pretty depressing. I get that. But here`s what I would say in some ways, the glass is half full in this respect.
We know the easiest thing we could do. The easiest way to start fighting climate change is to not actively institute policies that would make things worse.
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[20:53:24]
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Some of the states don`t allow for exceptions for rape or incest. This isn`t some imagined horror. It`s already happening.
Just last week it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim. 10 years old. Just imagine being a little girl, 10 years old.
Does anyone believe that this Ohio`s majority view that that should not be able to be dealt with? Or in any other state in the nation?
A 10-year-old girl should be forced to give birth to a rapist`s child. I can tell you what I know. I can`t think of anything as much more extreme.
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HAYES: Two weeks after the Supreme Court took away the constitutional right to an abortion, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to protect access to reproductive care while acknowledging that only Congress can restore the rights of Roe v. Wade.
The executive order ensures emergency medical care for people experiencing pregnancy loss and seeks to protect access to contraception and crucially medication for abortion for people living in those states that want to ban abortion or already have.
Biden can do that because the federal government has supremacy under the Constitution. Federal law takes precedence over state law. And the federal government in our system is the final arbiter of declaring which drugs are safe and effective for Americans to use.
The fact that drugs used to induce medical abortion are available for Telehealth and should be able to be mailed and distributed as needed is a huge deal for women in those states.
[20:55:03]
HAYES: Because in a country where CDC data show that over 42 percent of abortions are induced by medication, securing access to that medication in states where abortion is criminalized is absolutely key.
It sets up a fundamental showdown however an abortion access that we`re going to soon watch unfold probably in the courts.
Mini Timmaraju who served in the Biden administration last year before becoming president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and she joins me now. It`s good to have you on Mini.
First of all, take us through the significance of the actual executive orders. I don`t think there`s that much the government the executive can do unilaterally. But what are these orders do and will it make a difference?
MINI TIMMARAJU, PRESIDENT, NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA: You know, I think the biggest thing that an executive order can do is set the values the tone, and use the bully pulpit to direct a whole of government approach to a crisis.
That`s what we saw President Biden do, you know, with many other issues in his first year, and it`s critical that he did this now. You know, I think we understand the frustration that this could have happened faster. But now we`re here.
And he`s been very, very clear and unequivocal about really making sure the attorney general, Health and Human Services, even the FTC, which I find remarkable, and really, really wonderful, frankly, are going to be deeply engaged in providing access, ensuring privacy rights, and many, many more goals with this executive order.
And I think this 30-day period we`re going to have for the Secretary of HHS to promulgate a report and be really clear about what else they can do. Perhaps even a public health emergency, which many of us have been calling for, is going to be an important time period for us to watch and advocate for.
HAYES: Well, what was the — there was reporting today that they considered a public health emergency and then, — and dropped it. I don`t even — what would that do if that were to be declared?
TIMMARAJU: So, a public health emergency, we`ve seen it with COVID. But there`s a couple of different things that could happen.
So one, I`ve definitely seen the reporting that it was dismissed. However, we heard in the White House briefing that it`s not off the table, and we are continuing to push for that to be an option.
So, when the Secretary of HHS does his 30-day review and puts out his report, they can in fact decide they want to have a public health emergency declared. And that could in the course of that declaration, and that review, they could, for example, say unfettered access to medication abortion is critical to public health.
So, that`s an example of what they could do. And then it would allow, as you said, the setup for the fight about preemption, etcetera. But it would be an important step to clarify what the FDA role is in this work.
HAYES: OK, that`s the big question to me right now, because I don`t actually understand what the terrain is, right?
So, we don`t have individual — you know, the FDA, we have a federal system that we declare drug — we say drugs are safe and effective. And in the day that the DOD`s decision overturning roe came out, Merrick Garland issued a statement basically saying, like, you know, the FDA is the authority here on medical abortion, but I don`t know what the status is if you`re in Louisiana, like, can you get a Telehealth, you know, appointment and get the drugs mailed to you? In Mississippi or North or South Dakota, like or Ohio, what is the status? And who will resolve that ultimately?
TIMMARAJU: Well, I think you just nailed it. There is no clear status. So, states are banning abortion, states are banning access, there is an assumption that also covers medication abortion.
And until there`s clarification from the federal government, and in this case, the FDA, we will not — this will be an unsettled question that will create a lot of chaos and access.
So, right now, you know, clinics and Telehealth, telemedicine facilities are advising patients to go to the border or go right across the border and get your telemedicine legally in another state.
Organizations are doing creative ways around state bans and state laws. But a lot of this is not the enforcement mechanism for how states are going to prevent folks from having access to things like telemedicine and medication, abortion by mail.
It`s really murky. It`s really unclear. And this is why what the president did today asking HHS to dig into this and what advocates are asking for with a public health emergency could help clear a lot of this stuff.
As you said, it will likely end up in the courts.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, all of this is going to be intensely litigated. Obviously, we are — we`re in for that.
What do you think about the president`s message today about basically electing two more Democratic senators, and we will codify Roe. That was basically the pitch.
TIMMARAJU: You know, we`re in agreement that voting in this election is going to be critical. I would like to see this House of this Senate try to give it another shot at the Women`s Health Protection Act.
You know, the House passed it last year, the Senate came up 49 votes, one vote short. But since the DOD`s decision, we`ve heard Senators Collins, Murkowski and even Joe Manchin indicate an interest in codifying Roe.
[21:00:03]
TIMMARAJU: The challenge what I have is none of them — none of them are talking about whether they would eliminate the filibuster. So, I think we have to fight and push hard. If they won`t, then yes, we have to let two more senators.
HAYES: All right, Mini Timmaraju, thank you very much for your time tonight.
That is ALL IN on this Friday night. “MSNBC PRIME” starts right now with Ali Velshi. Good evening, Ali.