Updated
Summary
January 6th Committee showed video of Trump unable to say election was over and condemn Capitol rioters. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon slammed January 6th probe while another FOX anchor and two conservative newspapers criticizing the former president. Comedian Lizz Winstead joins Ari Melber to talk about Josh Hawley facing red state backlash over January 6 scandal. Retired Navy Admiral Steve Abbot just wrote about what he calls Donald Trump`s dereliction of duty in the New York Times, and he joins Ari Melber to talk about the Secret Service facing lethal risk sparked by the president that they protected.
Transcript
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: Hoarse voice, we heard that in the video we played earlier in our program. A stage of recovery familiar to just about all of us who have contracted COVID-19 over the last 2 1/2 years. Another familiar thing, how much the company of one`s dog can help when you have COVID. The White House tweeting this photo of President Biden earlier still in isolation, taking his morning calls with Commander right there on the couch. Caption reads, “Man`s best coworker.”
Thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. We are grateful. THE BEAT with Ari Melber starts right now.
Hi, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Well, Nicolle, sometimes the best doctor`s advice is just woof-woof.
WALLACE: I — I spent a lot of the pandemic with my dog, too, when I was isolating from my family. They slept in the twin bed with me where I was —
MELBER: Right, you had —
WALLACE: Right where I had been exiled.
MELBER: You have to be careful with people, but then you have your best friends. So it`s relatable.
WALLACE: Totally. Have a good show.
MELBER: I`ll see you soon. Thank you. Thanks to Nicolle, and thanks to you for joining us. This is THE BEAT. I am Ari Melber. And let tell you, we`re tracking several stories as we kick off a busy week.
The January 6th Committee has dropped new evidence today. You might think, well, wait, why wouldn`t they include it in the hearing? But they had so much stuff that there are big things like what you see on your screen that didn`t make that hearing. This image is of a draft of Trump`s speech the day after the insurrection, the edits show his opposition to doing his actual constitutional job, take care that the laws be fatefully executed because he was crossing out any reference to prosecuting those blatant lawbreakers. And then there`s this new testimony.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you recognize what this is?
IVANKA TRUMP, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: It looks like a copy of a draft of the remarks for that day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you recognize the handwriting?
I. TRUMP: It looks like my father`s handwriting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like here that he crossed out, that he was directing the Department of Justice to ensure all law breakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, we must send a clear message, not with mercy, but with justice. Legal consequences must be swift and firm. Do you know why he wanted that crossed out?
JARED KUSHNER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: I don`t know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He also has crossed it, I want to be very clear, you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement. Do you know why he crossed that language out of the statement?
KUSHNER: I don`t know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That is the audio there, Jared Kushner taking the “I don`t know” defense while Ivanka Trump, for what it`s worth, seemed to be more direct about what that was. And of course you don`t need to draw a lot of inferences to understand, given the context, that Donald Trump even when pressed by his own aides and speechwriters to say the bare minimum about those people who broke the law and stormed the Capitol didn`t want to say it. And those are legal inferences that will be drawn.
Meanwhile, Congressman Schiff argues Congress wants to take the relatively rare step of trying to put Secret Service agents under oath.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, you know, I think if they`re hiring criminal defense counsel then they probably have a concern about their potential criminal liability. We want to hear from these witnesses. Some we want to hear from again. We want to put them under oath if they weren`t previously under oath so that we can understand exactly what was happening on January 5th and January 6th.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That`s how the committee is approaching its probe. Meanwhile, new signs that the Justice Department criminal probe is picking up steam, the top aide to Mike Pence cooperating, we believe, with a subpoena to face the DOJ`s grand jury, and based on the public evidence right now that would make him the highest ranking Trump official to go in and face what is a criminal grand jury impaneled to deal with potential crimes.
When they start interviewing people inside the White House, well, the question is, what are they asking about? And do they think there were crimes in the White House?
I want to get right to our guests, given everything going on. I`m joined by David Corn, Washington bureau chief for “Mother Jones,” and speaking of the law, Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and the deputy attorney general for the state of New York.
Welcome to both of you. I want to go to David first, not on the law, but on the mounting evidence. This committee hearing late last week clearly captivated the nation. We have more details on the data on that later in this program. And then you see something that frankly in any normal hearing would be a big deal. Draft of a presidential speech not given, giving aid and comfort, potentially, to insurrectionists, obtained only after you won a fight with the Supreme Court to get those kind of records.
And yet they had so much, David, that that news, new tonight, is what was on the cutting room floor.
DAVID CORN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, MOTHER JONES: And we`re going to see other outtakes as well. They`re still investigating. They promised more hearings in September. They`re even going to do a preliminary report I think before October, maybe in October, to get things out there and then probably spend the time after the elections to do something more comprehensive because they are drowning in material, eyewitness testimony, in factual documents and so on.
[18:05:12]
So there`s a lot more to come here. And I think we`ve seen their presentation, the way they`ve organized the story has been very compelling. I think up to now there were a lot of different strands of the January 6th story, fake electors, what happened in Georgia, John Eastman and his plan, Mike Pence, of course what happened on January 6th itself, and Donald Trump`s tentacles in all these various elements.
And they went through it step by step by step and landed the big hearing on Thursday night with the biggest fact. It`s undeniable. You don`t need evidence for it. When the country was under attack, when the government was under attack, he did nothing. He took a powder. And there`s only one reason why he would do that, because he liked what was happening. So there`s more to come, but they`ve done a great job so far of organizing the way we as a country think about what happened.
MELBER: Danya, what does it mean when Trump White House aides are inside that grand jury box? Do we have Danya? Did we lose both of them or just Danya?
Hey, David. I still got you, right, David? Great. Well, it`s still —
CORN: I think so.
MELBER: It`s still a pandemic Zoom era so we`ll try to get Danya back in. But since I have you, I`ll table that question and show you something you mentioned, that we also wanted to ask you about, which is these rather controversial outtakes, things Trump said that didn`t go out at the time. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: This election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don`t want to say the election is over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election is over, OK?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: David?
CORN: He can`t accept reality. And that goes up until today. That was on January 7th, 2021. In the last couple of days he has asked for Wisconsin to decertify, to pull back its electoral votes. He thinks that somehow he can regain the election. And, you know, he said — he refused to accept the reality on that speech. He refused to go along with his aides who are basically beseeching him, including his family members, to declare that there would be a peaceful transition and to recognize that the election was done.
And, you know, that speech that you showed with his edits a few moments ago, I thought was key when he said — someone wrote a line for him regarding the rioters, you do not represent me. He cut that out. It would seem to me that in a case like that you`d want to distance yourself from the rioters, the domestic terrorists, the insurrectionists. He would not do that. Just the way he said we love —
MELBER: Yes, can we — can we pause on that? You make such an important point. And these standards have been so diminished. I`m old enough to remember — and I don`t know about you, David, because I don`t speculate on anybody`s age, but I`m old enough to remember these ridiculous unending exercises where candidates would be asked, do you denounce and decry something that somebody said over here at a civil rights rally that they weren`t at? Or somebody said with some other level of controversy.
I know Obama and Hillary Clinton were put to that standard. Multiple interviews, multiple debates. And to be clear, sometimes it was words that were very objectionable to many people. And they would denounce, decry, rebuke. They weren`t even linked to these people. Here you have violence, crimes, national security emergency, by the people he summoned, and as you point out — and I just want to make sure this is breaking through the nation.
As you point out, he can`t say anything negative about them because apparently, David, he thought they did represent him.
CORN: Well, they are his people, and we saw that day people waiving Confederate flags, wearing Nazi T-shirts, Christian nationalists who are not what I would call Christian, they were all — QAnoners. They were all out there. I mean, these are the dregs of far-right fanaticism. And he`s out there on that dais saying we love, you`re great people. And then when he was given the chance to distance himself, even to say something like you don`t represent me when you attacked the Capitol, he can`t bring himself to do that because these are his people.
He wanted them there. You know, he was on the phone that day. You know, this is one of the unanswered questions from Thursday night`s hearing. He was phone that day twice with Rudy Giuliani who`s goal in life was to delay the certification. What were they saying, what were they plotting, what were they planning? They were using these people. Right? They were exploiting the violence because they were hoping to delay whatever was going to happen and then see what to do next. So these were his ground troops.
MELBER: Yes.
CORN: These were his terrorists.
MELBER: Right. No, I think you laid that out. Now, David, I don`t know if you`ve ever been on one these Zoom pandemic birthday calls or something where the person has to redial, Danya has done that for us.
[18:10:07]
Thank you for hanging with us, Danya. I see you`re back. Teeing up the same question from earlier, David and I were talking just while you were getting back in with us about the outtakes, about Donald Trump`s culpability, about what he refused to say. But back up to the question I asked you, the highest ranking aide we know of in the White House, Marc Short, facing the DOJ grand jury. What does that mean?
DANYA PERRY, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SDNY: I think, you know, David, early on before I unfortunately Zoomed out, used the metaphor of, you know, drowning in information, a couple of the committee members have talked about the floodgates opening, the dam beginning to break. So a lot is coming out, and the effect, one of the effects of the committee`s investigation is prying witnesses loose who otherwise were reticent, and as Merrick Garland himself has said and as the “New York Times” has reported, it has had a way of jolting the Department of Justice to some extent.
And so clearly that investigation is heating up, and witnesses seem more willing now to come forward both with the committee and with all the extra tools that the Department of Justice has to come forward in that grand jury investigation.
MELBER: Yes.
PERRY: So I think this is the beginning, but we`ll see.
MELBER: Yes. So that`s —
PERRY: You know, there`s a trickle and it will be applied.
MELBER: Yes, that`s the fed, then can we talk about Georgia?
PERRY: Yes. That`s —
MELBER: So you`ve got this news —
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: Yes, you got this news that the governor of Georgia is headed in, in that D.A. probe. That`s a big deal. Of course he did at times clash with Donald Trump over some of these illicit or possibly illegal demands. Here`s the headline. “Georgia Governor Kemp will testify in probe over Trump`s bid to overturn the election.”
What do you see going on down there? And is it past the point of no return legally where it looks like somebody is going to get charged with something, or is it still possible that they go this far and stand down in your view?
PERRY: It`s certainly legally possible, but by all indications, Fani Willis is going somewhere and doing something. And there has been a blizzard of target letters and subpoenas within the past few weeks. It`s not a narrow focus. It seems quite wide. Seems like it might encompass even racketeering charges, not just obstruction or, you know, election interference. And so I think it would be surprising just having been around these kinds of investigations for so long to see a thud at the end of this.
I think she has her eye at least on some targets. Remains to be seen, of course, how high up the targets will go.
MELBER: And finally, what does it mean and why send target letters like that?
PERRY: You cut out. What does what mean?
MELBER: I said — no, don`t — hang with me. I just said why would someone send, the D.A. send a target letter like that?
PERRY: I think it certainly is a signal of what she`s doing, and I think it certainly makes — it gives notice of course to potential targets and it shows how focused she is, and how far-ranging her investigation is. And I think it has the same effect, perhaps, as some of these hearings that we have been seeing, it will pry witnesses loose, give them cause for concern. And so it might have this salutary effect of bringing people out of the woodwork and encouraging them to testify.
MELBER: Yes, understood. Danya Perry and David Corn, my thanks to both of you. We have our shortest break right now. We`re going to turn to what Steve Bannon did and why he did it, running to Tucker Carlson after his conviction. We`re back in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:15:11]
MELBER: It may seem like a while ago, but we headed into the weekend Friday night with Steve Bannon getting convicted. The Trump aide was basically found guilty of everything he was accused of. So the first thing he did was go on Tucker Carlson`s FOX News show afterward, and that`s a MAGA audience there that may not have seen the hearing the night before unless they flipped around. FOX wouldn`t air it, and got this version of the events.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX HOST: The idea you would send someone to prison because you don`t like his political views, there`s no allegation that you organized January 6th, that were there to storm the Capitol. This is fully insane. I didn`t think this could happen, we`ll start there. Did you think this could happen?
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: A hundred percent I think it`d happen. It appeared they took away every possible defense from somebody who could have defensive law. OK. That`s why we didn`t even put on a defense.
CARLSON: How do you feel about going to jail? Are you confident you would be safe there, for example?
BANNON: First off, if I go to jail, I`d go to jail. I will never back off. I will never back off. I support Trump and the Constitution, and I`m not backing off one inch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: But the claims you heard there, fact check, true. It is true that Bannon was not charged or convicted of anything relating to storming the Capitol itself. Whether he hid evidence because of his worry about that exposure, no one knows. But he was convicted of simply not participating in any way in the process, of defying the committee at a time when so many loyal Trump aides and his own children cooperated to some degree, even though at times people took the Fifth.
Tucker Carlson also making basically sympathetic arguments so what he`s saying in those selections we showed you are not things that are false, but are designed to present the idea of Bannon as some sort of victim. It is a wholly sympathetic view of the Trump world in this probe.
That is only one part of FOX News. And here`s what`s interesting tonight. There are other Trump friendly outlets taking a very different tack, including two newspapers in the same FOX News parent company run by Rupert Murdoch. The “New York Post” condemning Trump now based on all this new evidence saying, quote, “There`s now no defense for the refusal to stop that violence.” Or the “Wall Street Journal,” influential in both conservative and business circles of course, saying about Mr. Trump, quote, “Character`s reveal in a crisis. Mr. Pence passed his January 6th trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
And there are media outlets separate from, say, MSNBC, which full disclosure is on the news and has its own relationship with FOX, but I want to show you other headlines here, saying it`s clear that Murdoch is tired of Trump, and there are basically condemnations coming from these Murdoch companies. Meanwhile, on FOX News itself, where millions of conservatives still get their news, which is also owned by Rupert Murdoch, there may be further splitting. Tucker`s going to Tucker, but take a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRETT BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Laying out all of these 187 minutes makes him look horrific. It really does. The president`s inaction and the vice president`s action getting on the phone is very telling.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: You`ll notice the banner underneath him said, “Why Trump waited to stop the riot,” like they were going to explain, but that anchor there, Mr. Baier, saying it all looked horrible. Meanwhile, Americans are paying attention to this evidence. We see local papers here, this is far outside of the beltway or New York, talking about what they`ve learned from the evidence. Trump`s broken pledge, the words he was never able to speak, and the carnage wrought by that president on that violent day and everything that led up to it.
As for Americans, they continue to follow this closely. We live in a time of great cynicism and sometimes fact-free speculation, but what you see on your screen is a tail of sustained interest, not a drop-off. On the far left, you have at opening hearing dropping a whopping 20 million people combined, plus whoever reacted and watched further clips online. That was the primetime hearing.
The daytime hearings you see drawing 10 million, 11 million. And you go back here to that final hearing and it`s up in the same realm, over 17.5 million, plus everything else the people heard as they discussed it over the weekend and online.
So you take it all together, and what do you have here? Something that might not be cool to say, because everyone likes to kind of play cool and say nothing matters anymore, there`s kind of this weird nihilism that you hear across the political spectrum these days. But here`s the facts whether it`s cool or not. Tens of millions of people are watching this. The evidence matters. And even on the right, let alone people who don`t have a preconceived commitment to this particular ex-president, there is a dealing and a concern and a reckoning for the evidence, evidence that shows a president trying to end American democracy.
[18:20:04]
We have a very special guest on why this matters and where we`re headed after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): It`s not just me that is saying that Donald Trump is unfit for office. It`s other entities owned by Rupert Murdoch, it`s the “New York Post” and their editorial on Friday. It`s the “Wall Street Journal” said the same thing after our hearing on Thursday night, so I`m going to continue to be guided by making sure I do my duty and making sure that the American people understand the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[18:25:08]
MELBER: Liz Cheney speaking on FOX about this split. We`re joined now by an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and progressive advocate, Michael Hirschorn.
Welcome back.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN, ISH ENTERTAINMENT PRESIDENT AND CEO: Thank you so much, Ari.
MELBER: There`s something happening here. What is it?
HIRSCHORN: It`s possibly the signs of a Republican crackup about to happen. I`m struck by one of the things that is not yet happening, which is prominent Republicans, Republican politicians turning on Trump. That has not happened. And I think that they may want to ride this ride all the way down. And I`m really curious, at what point are they going split out and split from Trump?
MELBER: Well, they obviously still try to get on Tucker Carlson, which is why we showed that. Here`s a little bit more of Mr. Bannon and him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BANNON: The Democrats are completely lawless, and look how they`ve run this committee. There`s no ranking member. There`s no minority counsel. It`s not like the traditional hearings that have galvanized the nation in the past, and Tucker, I think it`s one of the reasons that it hasn`t really had that big an impact. You know, when they interview the people on the trial, I think almost all the working class people didn`t even know what`s going on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Fact check, false. I mentioned, Michael, that some of the claims — well, I just mentioned earlier in the program, some of the claims they made were true about the process. I guess Bannon needs that audience to believe this is not important or irrelevant. And yet it has broken through in all these ways. So A, your reaction, go ahead and finish the thought you were going to share, but B, the question I want to pose to you is, since you`ve been such an insider, how does this work? Is there a way that Mr. Murdoch or other executives are opening more conscious space in these companies?
HIRSCHORN: Well, I would discount a little bit the op-eds in the “Post” and the “Wall Street Journal.” I don`t think op-eds have as much influence as they used to, if they ever did. Clearly FOX News itself is doubling or tripling down, both on the Bannon nonsense and on MAGA, and it`s unlikely to turn any time soon. That said, all you need is to peel away 5 percent or 6 percent of the Republican electorate from Trump and something profound has happened.
MELBER: When you look at that final hearing, what did you think of the way they concluded what they say now is sort of book one or part one, they`re going to come back to it. But they really ended with the physicality. I guess there are some people who are going to tune this out, but if you are any kind of open-minded listener or patriotic American and you hear Secret Service agents talking to each other about how they have to bid their families good-bye because they`re bracing for something lethal and they`re not easily shook.
And you see in the evidence that lethal thing that they were going face down, Michael, was organized by the president they`re sworn to protect.
HIRSCHORN: I think the problem is that for the hardcore MAGA people, the violence and the cruelty is part of the appeal. Right? If you look at all authoritarian wannabe fascist movement, anti-state violence, anti-police violence — I mean this is what Hannah Aaron wrote about so eloquently — is in fact part of the appeal. So hearing this audience for the 20 percent or 25 percent of the hardcore MAGA types is going to be a turn on frankly rather than something that`s going to turn them off.
The question is, can you find 5 percent or 10 percent of the people on the margins who are going to look at this and go, OK, this is disgusting. This is just too much. And I don`t really know the answer yet. What was exciting about the hearings last week —
MELBER: Then how can you —
HIRSCHORN: — was —
MELBER: Michael.
HIRSCHORN: Yes, go ahead.
MELBER: How can you be a pundit if you won`t just blindly predict an answer?
HIRSCHORN: Well, I`m going blindly predict one thing and then change my mind next week. So — because there`s no accountability for us in the pundit class, and that`s awesome. But I would say that what I found really powerful about Thursday`s session was they continue to generate fantastic memable moments, right? Political discourse now is not about what`s on the op-ed pages, it`s about the ability to create really powerful participatory moments like the Josh Hawley video, like the Trump outtakes, like the audio from the Secret Service.
And then eventually those moments start to kind of crowd the info space and kind of overwhelmed things. And I think that`s the time in which you can change people`s opinion.
MELBER: I have to tell you, Michael, I know what you mean.
HIRSCHORN: Yes, look, I think — I think it`s exciting as a progressive to see our side finally fight back with the weaponry that has been used against us now for the past six or seven years. So, I think as a kind of guidebook for how progressive and Democratic politicians should prosecute politics, this is really a fantastic playbook.
[18:30:00]
MELBER: Interesting. Well, we wanted to get your views on all of that, including some of your right sensibility. We appreciate it all. Michael Hirschorn, thanks for being here.
Coming up, later tonight, we have a Navy veteran here who`s speaking out about how Trump failed on that fateful day. But Michael mentioned memes in Josh Hawley, I actually have a breakdown on Josh Hawley getting busted both why it matters, and why we are going to be visited by an MSNBC favorite and co-creator of The Daily Show. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:35:21]
MELBER: The reckoning continues for Senator Josh Hawley. He was exposed to those primetime hearings for first cheering the Trump fans the morning of the insurrection. You see here before they stormed the Capitol and then running from them as soon as the heat was on. The committee showed him quite specifically sprinting away.
Hawley also did more than any member of Congress to tangibly advance the plot to overthrow the results on the Senate floor. He was the first senator break with McConnell to join that challenge, which did change everything as we`ve been reporting. Then he was scurrying, fearing the very — apparently scary people that he had claimed to support and cheer. Instead, Hawley ran over now to a conservative conference using, well take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): I just want to say to all of us liberals out there. I do not regret it and I am not backing down. I`m not going to apologize. I`m not going to cower. I`m not going to run from you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Whether he is just going full trolling or not. He is certainly running, running, running away as the classic Pharcyde song put it. And running away from his own actions. But this goes beyond what we were talking about earlier in the program, memes and ridicule. Two of the biggest newspapers in Missouri are not just criticizing him or calling out that kind of rhetoric.
They`re saying he should be out. Kansas City Star says he is a fleeing coward and now a laughingstock. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes that the entire sprint shows his quote, core cowardice and he should resign. That is beyond bad press that is a full-blown political scandal.
And as mentioned, for many Hawley fleeing does bring to mind that Pharcyde classic Runnin` or Fatlip explains, quote, I must admit, on some occasions, I went out like a chump or something to that effect. Respect, I used to never get. And the chorus can`t keep running away, can`t keep running away.
The difference here is that while everyone can see Hawley running, he continues to deny running or cowering. One more twist on a story of endless hypocrisy. We now turn to a friend here on THE BEAT. The comedian, Daily Show co-creator, and noted Pharcyde fan, Lizz Winstead. It`s nice to see you.
LIZZ WINSTEAD, CO-CREATOR, THE DAILY SHOW: Nice to see you.
MELBER: Your thoughts on something that would be a joke if it weren`t so serious?
WINSTEAD: Well, I do have to say it was hawliarious (ph) because no one has said it`s hawliarious. yet. So, I`m going to throw the pun in there just —
MELBER: We`ll take a pun. We take puns around here.
WINSTEAD: You know, I`m a big — I have no punching. I`m into it. You know —
MELBER: Look, I will say let`s briefly, I didn`t know you were going to start the interview by Joshing around, but that`s fine.
WINSTEAD: You know, um — that`s me. That`s me. You knew. You brought me on. You knew. So, you know, he — I — took at Josh Hawley`s entire career and, you know, as somebody who`s also an abortion rights advocate — I followed him for a long time in Missouri, right? And, you know, when he was A.G. in Missouri, his staff purged because it was such a disorganized mess.
He — he was, you know, read a brief in the Hobby Lobby case against, you know, employees getting birth control coverage. He`s one of those classic people, I feel like, that is going to be so awful so that he can hate you first so that he doesn`t have to deal with people not liking him because he`s incapable of being likable. I mean, that clip from — from that turning point conference, and he had his Anderson Cooper black T-shirt on, trying to look all hard ass, it was like, oh, dude, what`s happening, you know?
The fact that anybody bought a fist bump in the first place from a guy in a red tie. You know, just like in his suit, it`s like, oh, my goodness, you and your dockers and your suit and your solidarity. You know, it`s sort of like — if the insurrection is where the worst theme park in the world which I feel like they created like a racist white supremacist theme park. Josh Hawley could be their mascot. You know, just walking in that suit and doing that.
MELBER: Yes, you`re mentioning the way that so much of this is contrived. It would be understandable for anyone to run from those people. We saw what they did. But the contrivance is that he claims to support them but deep down he knows he probably isn`t really for them which in some ways is even worse or equally bad. And he appears to believe or not want to take the risk that they`re really for him.
[18:40:00]
And yet, as you mentioned theme parks and that sort of prism, I want to show that he`s still dealing merch here. I mean, this was a criminal attack on the Capitol and he still has up here. This fist pump image here — photo taken by Politico, by the way, that he is, with his trolling emoji, selling on mugs, quite tasteless. He`s also Hawking this what he calls masculinity leadership. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAWLEY: The left`s attack on America leads directly to an attack on men. Men are in crisis, Tucker. It`s time that we say to young men in particular, we need you, we need you to be responsible. I think the liberal attack, the left-wing attack on manhood says to men, you`re part of the problem. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues, things like courage and independence, and assertiveness as a danger to society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: I don`t know who wants to say courage is dangerous, Lizz.
WINSTEAD: I also don`t want to say that courage is necessarily masculine. You know, like, there`s toxic masculinity, and there are courageous people of all genders, turns out, but as we know, for Josh Hawley, he does not understand the gender — the gender spectrum anyway, and got schooled on that as well in a hearing about, you know, the post-Roe America, as far as him not understanding that trans men can get pregnant.
He`s a mess. And I think that he is the classic example of — of, you know, just one more — just flame on the gaslight, right? It`s just yale, you know, everything that he purports that he hates, he is and trying to connect with — where he took this wild turn to become the — the iconic coffee cup fist pumping troll, instead of a path he could have gone down. He could have — he could have been a Ben Sasse-er.
He could have been any of those people. He`s not dumb, you know. He could have just been a garden variety Republican person who does — that really enjoy helping poor people. Instead, he became — he threw his hat in with grifting, white supremacist. And is it that important to be like that it doesn`t matter how awful the people are?
And I guess Josh Hawley is the poster child for that, you know. The person who`s really excited about it is Ted Cruz, quite frankly. Ted Cruz is like, oh my God, finally, someone more hated than me. This is awesome. I can take a breather.
MELBER: Right. Well, you`ve broadened — you`ve broadened our view of a story that has these angles and layers. I just think it is also striking that he`s really catching so much blowback at home, because again, this is a breakthrough type of story, not just for the image, although it captures a lot, but for the substance. Lizz Winstead, thank you.
When we come back, we`re going to get into how cool is usually operate. They involve the military. So why was it in the peak of January 6th, that Donald Trump was afraid to do anything with military force and it took McConnell and Schumer to call in the help. We have a Navy veteran here when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:48:22]
MELBER: This last interaction hearing got many Americans focused on the role of force in our democracy or as one guest put it earlier tonight, violence. We looked at how the Secret Service was tested. How our nonpartisan military stood up on a tough day. And we turn now to a special expert in this field. Retired Navy Admiral Steve Abbot. He just wrote about what he calls Donald Trump`s dereliction of duty in the New York Times.
That was of course explored in the last hearing. Trump AWOL during a national security emergency at the Capitol. At one point, it was the other branch of government, congressional leaders who held a bipartisan call with military leaders about whether the Capitol could even be secured and the votes certified that same night. That was around 4:45 p.m. on January 6th. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): We`re not going to let these people keep us from finishing our business. So, we need you to get the building cleared. Give us the OK so we can go back in session and finish up the people`s business as soon as possible.
CHRISTOPHER MILLER, FORMER ACTING SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: (INAUDIBLE) Amen, sir.
MCCONNELL: Mr. Secretary and Senator Schumer. Some people here in the Capitol police believe it would take us several days to secure the building. Do you agree with that analysis?
MILLER: I`m not on the ground, but I do not agree with that analysis.
MCCONNELL: So, what is the earliest state we could safely resume our proceedings in the Senate and House chambers?
MILLER: I would say best case, we`re looking at four to five hours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Admiral your view of then President Trump`s conduct that day and why it seemed to take others to fill the vacuum.
[18:50:00]
STEVE ABBOT, RETIRED U.S. NAVY ADMIRAL: Thanks, Ari. It was the — his conduct on that day but it was also a variety of other issues which had troubled those of us who watched the events after the election in November 2020. And were concerned, they spelled a problem for what we call the civilian-military relationship, which has been such a wonderful aspect of our democracy over the history of the country.
It`s worked well, all of us watch it throughout our careers. Work to protect democracy, and we were concerned after the election, that there were things occurring that were going to cause a stress on that relationship. So, that led as we know, to January 6th, which was, in our view, clearly a circumstance in which the president was duty bound by his oath, to defend the Constitution, that he failed to act.
And he was witting, of what was occurring at the Capitol, and, indeed, informed by staff and called by those outside the White House, all of whom were urging him to take action, and he failed to do so for three hours plus. And we judge that to be a dereliction of duty, but it was not the only thing that had occurred.
We were concerned because we understood that there were reports that consideration had been given to using the military during the period between the election and January 6th, invoking martial law, deciding that the voting machine should be —
MELBER: Yes, let me ask you about that, I think our viewers are up to date on those plots because they`ve been well reported. From your military perspective then, would an order to the Pentagon to go seize voting machines that are under the lawful control of the states or other entities? Would that be an illegal order?
ABBOT: Yes, in my view, it would be, and the individuals who to whom the order was given would face the decision of rejecting it, they would obviously push back. But ultimately, the president has the authority to fire anybody in the chain of command. You could certainly fire the Secretary of Defense if he didn`t accept the order. And there are very few avenues for a Secretary of Defense who doesn`t want to comply with an order from the president.
MELBER: Right. I think it`s powerful it would — it would tell people something if you had those resignations, and it speaks to your view from being there. While I have you, I did want to show some of the Secret Service reporting. You had Congress finding that Trump was told his fans were armed. He was watching T.V. They breached the Capitol around 2:13. But then he went on to hammer Pence for refusing to join the coup plot.
Sending a message 11 minutes after the breach you saw there. And now you have these new radio communications expose about what apparently agents viewed as a likely or inevitable fight with insurrectionists. Trump fans who they knew were armed to outnumber them that they were worried would turn fatal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`ve gained access to the second floor. And I`ve got public about five feet from me down here below. There`s six officers between us and the people that are five to 10 feet away from me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is smoke unknown, what kind of smoke it is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clear, we`re coming out now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The members of the V.P. detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There were called to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. It was getting — for whatever the reason was on the ground, the V.P. detail thought that this was about to get very ugly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Ugly or lethal, they were prepared to die. They put themselves through that risk as you and others have in the military. Does Trump bear responsibility for that and have you ever heard of anything like that in your service?
ABBOT: So, the answer is yes. That the president bears responsibility for that, was a chaotic situation. I, you know, don`t have the details, obviously, of the individual actions, but I thought that the security personnel conducted themselves well, and it was uncertain how serious it was going to go. But we all know that there were people who were chanting hang my Pence. So, it was understandable that his detail, were concerned and concerned if the protesters, the rioters, were, in fact getting very close to the vice president.
[18:55:00]
MELBER: Yes, really important. I know that you have a lot of expertise on which your views and conclusions are based, which is why we wanted to hear from you, Admiral Abbot. Thank you for making time, sir.
ABBOT: My pleasure. Thank you, Ari.
MELBER: Appreciate it. We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: I don`t know if you watch THE BEAT every night or occasionally. But you can visit me at AriMelber.com or at Ari Melber. On Friday, I shared with you that we were doing this Justice Summit over this weekend in New York, and not everyone can make it to New York. But if you go to our social pages, including @AriMelber on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram we`ve got updates from that.
We talked about prison reform, interesting conversation. I will say briefly, I met BEAT fans or BEAT viewers who said they came because they heard about it on the show. So that`s always great. As always you can connect with me directly at AriMelber.com. That`s the best way to find me online. That does it for us. I`ll see you tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Eastern. “THE REIDOUT” is coming up next. Jason Johnson is up next for Joy.