Updated
Summary
As the Jan. 6th committee prepares for a primetime hearing on Thursday, we learn two former Trump White House officials will be key witnesses. It comes as the panel hopes to receive deleted Secret Service text messages as early as Tuesday. Plus, Steve Bannon`s contempt of Congress trial begins.
Transcript
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: That is tonight`s “LAST WORD”. TTHE 11TH HOUR with Stephanie Ruhle starts now.
[23:00:13]
STEPHANIE RUHLE, MSNBC ANCHOR: Tonight, kicking off a critical week for the January 6 Committee ahead of Thursday`s hearing, what was the former president doing during those crucial 187 minutes, as his supporters violently stormed the Capitol and what we just learned about the witnesses.
Plus, inside the scathing new report highlighting systemic failures during the Uvalde school shooting, and the fresh fury they`re experiencing tonight, and it`s not just mass shootings, it is everyday violence.
We`ll take a deep dive into the gun epidemic plaguing our country, as the 11th Hour gets underway on this Monday night.
Good evening. Once again, I`m Stephanie Ruhle. Two, two former Trump White House officials will be key witnesses at Thursday`s January 6 hearing on Trump`s 187 minutes of inaction during the violent riot.
NBC News has learned former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger will testify in person. He resigned after the insurrection and has already given closed door testimony to the committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEW POTTINGER, FMR. TRUMP DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: One of my staff brought me a printout of a tweet by the President. And the tweet said something to the effect that Mike Pence, the vice president didn`t have the courage to do what he — what should have been done. I read that tweet and made a decision at that moment to resign. That`s where I knew that I was leaving that day. Once I read that tweet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUHLE: Also appearing on Thursday, former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, she also resigned after the riot and testified to the committee behind closed doors already.
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SARAH MATTHEWS, FMR. TRUMP DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: We had all talked about at that point about how it was bad and the, you know, situation was getting out of hand. We thought that the President needed to tweet something and tweet something immediately. We all got a notification. So we knew it was a tweet from the President. And we looked down and it was a tweet about Mike Pence. It felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.
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RUHLE: The committee also hoping to get its hands on those missing Secret Service text messages. Chairman Bennie Thompson says he expects to get those messages tomorrow. He also said there will likely be two reports on the committee`s findings, a scaled back version and a final one.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are attacking the committee and they`re attacking the committee without right lies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-NY): The January 6 sham committee is so egregious, it is way worse than the impeachment witch hunt parts one and two. And the reason why it`s so egregious says there`s no Republican appointed members.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUHLE: That is an outright lie. For facts sake, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy decided not to appoint any GOP members after two of his choices were rejected. And the vast majority of the committee`s witnesses thus far are Republicans, most of which have been Trump appointees or employees.
This is also a critical week for one Trump ally and one time strategist, Steve Bannon. His federal trial started today. He is facing contempt of Congress charges for refusing to comply with the January 6 subpoena and another Trump ally Georgia Congressman Jody Hice, now facing a subpoena from the Georgia Grand Jury investigating possible 2020 election interference by the former president. He has now been ordered to appear tomorrow. Hice has asked a federal court to block that subpoena.
We`ve got a lot to cover, so let`s get smarter for the health of our leadoff panel. And you`re in luck. It`s a good one. Jeremy Peters, political reporter for the New York Times, author of the new book “Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They`ve Ever Wanted. Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney and former senior FBI official and Ryan Reilly, Justice reporter for NBC News.
Chuck, I got to go to you first. We now have two ex-Trump officials who are going to testify on Thursday. The committee already knows a lot of what they`ll say you saw they`ve already spoken to them. How do these witnesses strengthen the committee`s case?
CHUCK ROSENBERG, FMR. U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, in the following way, Stephanie, these are people who were around the president. And so if you want to know what the President thought, then you want to know what the President then new when you want to know what the President said then you have as witnesses people who saw and heard him.
[23:05:05]
You know, I heard really silly attacks against Cassidy Hutchinson, for instance, after she testified that she was just a low ranking official. That doesn`t matter. What matters is that she saw and heard stuff that were relevant to the committee`s inquiry.
If a bank gets robbed, you don`t call the president of the bank, you call the tellers. They may be lower ranking in station in office, but they were there when the thing happened. And so having Ms. Matthews and Mr. Pottinger, who were in the Oval Office were around the President, when this thing happened, makes them important witnesses.
RUHLE: Jeremy, given what we`ve learned over the last seven hearings, how critical is this upcoming one? It`s not an accident. It wasn`t random, that they chose Prime Time Thursday night, right back in the day, you`re in my youth. That`s when friends was on. Right. That`s silver spoons. That`s Growing Pains territory, that is the prime minister of the prime time. What do you think we can be getting?
JEREMY PETERS, THE NEW YORK TIMES POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, that`s a great question, because I think that leading up until now, what you`ve had from these hearings is basically a lot of information that we already knew with sensational details, kind of spicing it up.
I think that what from what I`m hearing coming on Thursday could be somewhere along the lines of what we heard a couple of weeks ago, when Cassidy Hutchinson testified and you have somebody who is actually physically in the room.
We know that Matthew Pottinger was in the room for a lot of what happened on January 6. He resigned that day saying he had just had enough whether or not this adds up to the kind of, you know, damning indictment of Trump that I think a lot of people have been waiting for in the seven years since he`s entered our political consciousness. We don`t quite know yet. But I think that it`s fair to say that this is going to be a pretty big deal on Thursday.
RUHLE: Sure is. There was a pretty big deal in Washington today, at least for Steve Bannon, his trial started, Ryan, you`re in the courtroom? What happened?
RYAN REILLY, NBC NEWS JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, so we`re going through jury selection and stay that they take away was that 22 jurors for qualified tomorrow, they`ll narrow that down by a jurors, the each side, we`ll get straight to do potential jurors, and we`ll, we`ll get a pool of 14, two of them will be alternates. And then 12, those individuals are going to decide Steve Bannon stayed here.
You know, there are a lot of sort of this town moments, I think, during the jury selection. The one that stuck out for me, there is the daughter of one of AC Shadow senators, meaning someone who`s elected but not seated, because DC doesn`t have — doesn`t have its own senators or representation in Congress, or voting representation in Congress.
There is, you know, a lot of people who are connected to the political world, but a lot of those people were disqualified. And what you realize is, you know, there`s a whole part of Washington that isn`t consumed by news 24/7, and just sort of have regular lives, regular jobs. And they`re – – the people who are mostly making up this committee in the end, you know, they`re just there — there`s a bus driver for special needs, children is going to be there, there is a technician for an appliance company outside of DC who will be on the panel.
So just sort of average folks who haven`t been following necessarily every single update might have a vague understanding of either the allegations against Mr. Bannon or the January 6 committee or what happened on January 6, but they don`t know a lot of these critical details. And that`s going to be they`re coming in sort of as a fresh slate. And we`ll be able to hear the case as it is presented by prosecutors. And here the defense as Steve Bannon`s defense lawyers lay out.
RUHLE: And what consequences could then and face here.
REILLY: Yes, so I mean, there`s two charges he could face and there`s a month is typically the minimum on one of these charges. I can go up from there, but there`s a cap on it. But you know, the in — what most people would do in this scenario would be to take a plea deal, but that`s not the path that Steve Bannon is, is choosing here. Of course, he doesn`t have that sort of getting out of jail free card in his back pocket because President Trump isn`t the current president.
And what`s interesting about this strategy is it`s not as though the time – – if he is convicted, and if a sentence is imposed, that time to serve that sentence isn`t going to be able to be delayed long enough to say get Donald Trump back in office. So the consequences are going to come around for this potentially before he has a chance to sort of get out of it as much as in the past.
RUHLE: Jeremy there`s reporting that Trump is eager to announce that he`s running for president because he thinks that`s going to allow him to avoid possible criminal charges.
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We actually heard that same thing two years ago, which is why he wanted to run for a second term. But as one of the real reasons, if he announces that he`s running, it will force other Republicans to kind of galvanize around him and support him. Because right now, over the course of these hearings, Republicans have been largely silent. And then a couple has spoken out against him.
PETERS: I think you could expect them to remain silent as long as they believe that Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. I think Donald Trump has been running since the day that he lost the election, because he believes in his head that he was grievously wronged and he is the victim of some, you know, false injustice here.
And that is where, you know, Steve Bannon and his trial kind of ties into all of this, as Ryan was just talking about, like, the Bannon`s trial is interesting, because it will put on display a member of Trump`s inner circle, who knows his deepest flaws, and isn`t quite fully bought into the lie of the election — of the stolen election.
We know that it`s like — I have reported this, others have reported this, Steve Bannon did not fully believe that Trump was going to be able to overturn the election. So this whole of the audits, the recounts the decertification, that was never a real possibility in his mind, and in the mind of many Trump strategists. What they were trying to do from day one was delegitimize Biden before he ever became president. That was the purpose of all of this stuff. And that was the purpose of January 6, until it got way, way out of hand, out of hand is probably a euphemism here.
But I think that when you look at Trump and where he is right now, still the leader of the Republican Party, show me somebody who is an elected official who is willing to stand up after all of what we have seen. After all of the committee has revealed, I — there is no one, not a single Republican who has said, you know, what, enough is enough. I`ve seen it. This committee showed me just how it opened my eyes. I don`t think that that`s going to happen. And as long as they believe Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, that will continue to be the case.
RUHLE: Well, there`s a couple Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. But they`re in their own category. Chuck, let`s talk about these deleted Secret Service messages. Because let`s be honest, there are not a lot of people out there who are buying that it was just a regular old system upgrade. That`s how they all got deleted. The fact that the committee may get these messages tomorrow, how damning do you think they could be?
ROSENBERG: Well, first, definitely let me back up a bit. I`m actually one of those people who believe it`s much more likely ineptitude than malevolence. I mean, when you hear hoofbeats, typically horses, not zebras look for the most logical explanation.
What I really think it was, was a failure of leadership by the Secret Service at the very top to understand that there was a phone upgrade program going on, and that the phone upgrade program might have erased really important stuff, given what happened on January sixth.
Put that aside, what will it show us? Well, you know, lots of times what people are actually thinking and doing at the moment are reflected in their text messages. If the texts are recoverable, and they might be, will have it. And if they`re not, Stephanie, you`re still going to have the testimony of the people who sent and received the text messages.
So, there are ways to get this stuff. One is to try and recover the data. The other is to simply talk to the people who sent and received it, it could be really important because often, what we immediately think is what we write, and what we write is typically preserved.
RUHLE: And if the Secret Service doesn`t comply with the subpoena, what should that tell us? I mean, this is a government agency.
ROSENBERG: Yes, it`s hard for me to believe that they`re not going to comply with a subpoena for goodness sakes, not only the government agency, Stephanie, they`re a law enforcement agency. We don`t, you know, we forget that sometimes. We think of them as just providing protection. But they are special agents of the United States Secret Service, just like DEA or ATF or FBI agents. They are a badge carrying, gun carrying, men and women who have a duty to uphold the law and have sworn an oath to do so.
So it`s really hard for me to process the notion that they will not comply with a congressional subpoena. I expect they will.
RUHLE: Well, we`ll soon find out. Chuck Rosenberg, Jeremy Peters, Ryan Reilly, thank you all so much. We`re going to leave it there.
[23:15:00]
Coming up, the stunning and crushing report out of Texas, detailing the enormous failure in responding to Uvalde school shooting. How poor decision making led to chaos despite nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushing to the scene, 400.
And later, the Democratic operative who discovers stars in her party, and what she`d advise them to do right now with democracy on the line. The 11th Hour just getting underway on a Monday night.
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[23:20:07]
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want to add more security officers to your current staff. Get the current staff is incompetent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not one was man enough to go in there 77 minutes. 77 minutes.
UNIDETNIFIED MALE: A lot of these children that survived one of my nieces included, are afraid to go back to school. They`re terrified to go back. They don`t want to. They don`t trust anyone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUHLE: Absolute justified outrage tonight after the Texas House committee`s preliminary report found, quote, systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making in Uvalde. One of making many shocking findings, a total of 376. I`m going to say this again, because I don`t want there to be any confusion. I want to make sure you have it right when you`re talking about it tomorrow. A total of 376 law enforcement officers were at the scene.
The report notes, quote, the scene was chaotic without any person obviously in charge or directing the law enforcement response. New body cam video from Uvalde Police Department offered a glimpse into the chaos and delays and the investigations they are not over. The Texas Department of Public Safety is now reviewing how dozens of their troopers and Rangers responded at the scene.
So let`s discuss with us tonight, Brian Chasnoff, Reporter with the San Antonio Express News. He has covered the Uvalde shooting extensively, and Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence.
Brian, the Texas House committee`s investigation found failures, almost like on every possible imaginable level, can you walk us through the most shocking findings and how it matched your reporting? I mean, I just can`t get my head around the fact that there were 376 people there.
BRIAN CHASNOFF, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS REPORTER: Right and no one clearly manned out of all those officers who were there. To me, the most shocking part of this was that some of those officers knew that there were injured victims inside of those classrooms, trapped in those classrooms with the shooter, and still they waited for more than an hour to go in and confront him and ultimately kill him.
And the report acknowledged. Some of the witnesses who were interviewed in the report acknowledged that the reason they did not go in that classroom was because they were waiting for better equipment, better shields. One officer asked for mirrors to look around corners, instead of just going in and ending the threat and providing medical care to these children and teachers who were injured.
RUHLE: Meanwhile, if they allowed them any one of those parents would have torn into that classroom with their bare hands. But of course they couldn`t. Frank, for years and years we have been told this line a good guy with a gun saves the day. There were almost 400 members of law enforcement, good guys with guns in Uvalde. What in the hell happened?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI, FMR. FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERINTELLIGENCE: Yes, it`s a notion. It`s a mantra. We keep hearing, particularly from the NRA and its supporters, but the data doesn`t support it, Stephanie. In fact, it`s interesting. The studies show that the more guns on the street, the more guns that are purchased, and we`re at a record number of gun purchases right now means even more shootings. And we`re at a record number of mass shootings right now.
In fact, the Journal of American — the American Medical Association last year released a report on school shootings specifically, you know what they found, they found in the presence of armed school resource officers, you have more school shootings, not fewer.
So, it`s extremely rare for the good guy with a gun like happened in the Indianapolis area Mall over the weekend. It`s extremely rare to see a good guy with a gun effectively, accurately take out a mass shooter. And in those most of the cases where that happens, it`s an off duty police officer or a security guard.
So, unless America decides that we all want to walk around in an armed encampment, environment, there`s no data to support that that would make us safer.
RUHLE: Let`s talk about that incident in Indiana, Frank, because people are making that good guy argument, a Good Samaritan who was at a shopping mall shot and killed a suspected gunman. But can we hang our hat on that? I mean, when you think about probability and statistics, is it better to be a country awash with guns in hopes that a really brave good citizen who happens to be an excellent shot will be at the right food court in the right shopping mall at the right time? Is that the right trade off we should be making?
FIGLIUZZI: Luck had a lot to do with it. And it`s I`m hearing from the description of the incident that he also was skilled. That`s great, but I have to tell you something.
[23:25:01]
You know, police officers at the Academy trained for weeks, even months the same for the FBI Academy, you`re shooting every day, half a day, all day or every other day. And then you do it and qualify four times a year for the rest of your career. You have to in a split second consider cover concealment, acquiring your target, who`s behind the target that you might hit? What are the ways people can get hurt with what you`re doing, all in a split second.
So, it`s extremely rare that that even a trained officer can hit someone accurately in a split second, let alone have it happened with a civilian in a crowded shopping mall. It was a miracle, quite frankly.
And again, do we want people to having more guns out there when the data tells us that more guns means more stolen guns, more lost guns, more guns getting into the hands of very young children who think their toys and end up shooting their siblings. That`s what the data tells us.
RUHLE: And Brian, Texas is a big gun state. I want to understand everything happening in Uvalde is deeply important to that community, obviously to those families. It`s also a hugely important national news story. But take me to your average Texan outside Uvalde community. Are they focused on this?
CHASNOFF: Absolutely. I mean, this has dominated local news coverage across the state for ever since it happened. And I expect it to continue to dominate coverage. I mean, there`s so many elements to this, the failed police response, so many so much politics now are starting to come into it with a Texas Department of Public Safety finally forming an internal committee to begin investigating how its own officers responded to the scene.
You know, you said there were nearly 400 officers who responded, well, nearly 100 of those officers were with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is an arm of the state.
RUHLE: But they`re putting this committee together two months after the shooting, what`s taking so long?
CHASNOFF: Well, I mean, I think that this report probably created pressure on the governor and the state to actually take account of its own police force. You know, as I said that the report was very specific with the number of DPS officers who responded and 91 of them responded, that`s a big number. It was the second most, the second biggest number in the report of officers.
I don`t see how we see, how we look at that number and not wonder what 91 DPS officers were doing exactly what they were doing and when they were doing it throughout the course of this ordeal, which lasted more than an hour. 77 minutes.
RUHLE: More than an ordeal. Frank, you`re a 25-year law enforcement veteran. Last week, when you saw just a clip of that surveillance video, you said this may be a crime by police. Now that you`ve heard all of these awful details in this report. Now, what do you think?
FIGLIUZZI: Yes, I wrote this column for MSNBC daily right after I saw the video in its entirety from inside the school and nothing I`ve heard since then in the state, Texas State House report has talked me out of what I`m asserting, which is it`s time to start thinking about criminal charges.
What might they be? I cite in the column two Texas statutes that could apply. They both apply to children. One is abandonment and endangerment of a child under the age of 15. It includes reckless omission, meaning it`s not just what you do, but it`s what you choose not to do. Second one is actual injury to the child, when you leave them in an imminent place of danger, serious bodily harm, death, physical or mental impairment, either one of those might apply here and I think it`s time for accountability and consequences.
I think a grand jury should be convened. If it hasn`t already, we should consider whether the DEA locally is even qualified to do it. By that I mean she works every day with those police officers in a very small town, in a very small county. She may need to recuse herself, but it`s time for accountability. And I`d start with that school district police chief.
RUHLE: Brian Chasnoff, Frank Figliuzzi, thank you for joining us tonight for your reporting and your expertise. I appreciate it.
When we come back, it is not just mass shootings, there is gun violence in this country every single day. Kate Snow joins us with an in depth look at the stunning toll it is taking on our country when the 11th Hour continues.
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RUHLE: This country saw another weekend of gun violence across so many major cities. Just to list a few from local reporting, three people killed in Indianapolis. One person killed 10 injured in New York City. Two people killed seven injured in Newark, New Jersey to dead five more injured in Jacksonville, Florida, and at least seven people killed and 15 injured in Chicago.
In a special One Night in America, NBC News reporters went to four cities in one night for an in depth look at gun violence epidemic plaguing our country. Here`s a look at what they found this Saturday night.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Later one of the family members learns their 31 year old relative is gone. Their pain unbearable.
GADI SCHWARTZ, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: It`s now 3:30 in the morning, we just got back to the hotel we thought the night was over, but I got a text from somebody in an adjoining Houston County, it`s county jurisdiction. And they had quad homicide, four people shot and killed that brings the total number of people that we know of to six killed in the span of five or six hours in the Houston area.
When you go home tonight to the shooting victim to go home with you in a way?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, every single time we tried to separate work from home life, it`s a very tough thing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We saw you gather for prayer. What was your prayer?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heavenly Father, pray for peace first of all. That`s it. We`re all here because of love. And so let love travel from one to another. Let there be unity, let people`s — let everybody here stick together.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It does take a toll on Pastor Donovan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This one took a lot out of me because it was a lot of opening up your spirit opened up my spirit, opening up just kind of feeling the situation. I`ve been blessed to be loved. It`s important that I love now. If they get love, and I never get love again, that`s cool because I know what comes after this. Can you love them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On your drive home tonight, do you think you`ll think about the patient who passed away?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course. You always think about — you think about all of them at some point.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see it every day. This this is just one night in America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is correct. This is one night in one city and the richest country in the world. How can this make any sense?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUHLE: That was just one average Night in America. I want to bring in one of the most valuable people at NBC News. My friend and colleague Kate Snow, anchor of Weakened Nightly News. Kate, thank you for doing this. Take us there you are on the ground in Chicago lay out for us. What did you see in here.
KATE SNOW, SUNDAY ANCHOR WEEKEND NIGHTLY NEWS: So my job that night was to follow one person really. I followed Pastor Donovan Price who you just saw there, he calls himself a street pastor, Steph. He is a man of God. He is more than that though. He tries to help families who`ve gone through the devastation of gun violence.
So what he does is he sits around, wait doesn`t sit around much. He`s busy all the time. But he`s listening to the police radio, looking at apps, looking at social media to find out where the next shooting is. And then he goes there on purpose to try to meet with the families and make sure they`re supported. Whether they`re at the scene of the crime or whether they`re at the hospital, which is where we followed him on Saturday night.
His whole job, he says is to make sure they have what they need. They can talk to police. They can deal with their grief. And sometimes he ends up doing things like planning funerals. Stephanie.
RUHLE: You asked him about solutions. And I told you — and he told you the most important thing is to start to get Americans to focus on what happens every single day in communities like his. Watch this.
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SNOW: Your concern that people just aren`t paying attention, right?
PASTOR DONOVAN PRICE, STREET PASTOR: It`s a pick and choose. You know, when it happens over there, man, what happens over here? That`s them. That`s what they do. That`s how they live.
SNOW: Do you mean when it happens in a big way mass shooting at a school or somewhere more affluent? It gets more attention.
PRICE: They`re different.
SNOW: Predominantly places — people of color?
PRICE: That`s the way it is. Unfortunately have worked out.
SNOW: Do you think that has something to do with the lack of attention?
PRICE: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUHLE: What`s missing from the conversation when we talk about gun violence?
SNOW: So much. I think, you know, the point he`s making that we the media, pay attention to big mass shootings. We don`t necessarily pay attention to the granular, everyday violence and that`s what the pastor is saying there. He`s saying, until we all collectively start to pay more attention to the problem, we`re not going to be able to get to the solutions. We know what works. He said to me, mentoring works. For example, you know, we`re trying to get young people to stay on the right track and not get in with the wrong crowd and maybe not join gangs because that`s a huge part of the situation in the neighborhoods where he works in Chicago is gang violence.
[23:40:12]
But until we`re all dedicated to that, and given the resources to that, he says, We`re not going to get there. He can`t get there with just his community alone.
RUHLE: Kate, I am so grateful that you did this. You led this reporting your executive producer Matt Frucci, but it wasn`t just Chicago, you are in Baltimore, Houston, Philadelphia, was there a collective takeaway at the end of this experience that you all felt, this is what America needs to know.
SNOW: I think exhaustion. I think frustration, exhaustion, the sense that it`s the same every day over and over, we got that in every location we were at. You heard police officers, you heard hospital, doctors and staff and nurses. And you heard the pastor say the same thing, which was, this has to stop. We are living the same, you know, actual like situation over and over again, every night. We`re going to the same kinds of scenes. We`re living the same kind of thing. In the hospital, they`re getting the same kinds of cases in every single day. And it`s exhausting. And that was the common theme that I took away.
RUHLE: Then what inspired you to do this? Is it that we forget everyday gun violence, because we give enormous attention to these awful mass shootings. And we`re overlooking what`s happening every day.
SNOW: Yes, I worked Sunday Nightly News. So I`m in every Sunday morning, right. And we always hear about the gun violence that happened overnight. And we always hear you know, there were this many deaths in this city and this many, that`s here. And frankly, Stephanie, we can`t cover it all. There isn`t enough room in the broadcast to cover everything that happens.
So we thought if we could just maybe zero in one night and dedicate the resources to really watch and then we spent about half of our broadcast showing the audience what we found. We thought that might be productive just to kind of put a lens and a light on something that maybe goes unrecognized too often.
RUHLE: I`m grateful that you did. Kate Snow thank you so much.
SNOW: Thank you.
RUHLE: Coming up, she got the — she has got the eye for good candidates and fierce messaging. And tonight strategist Liz Smith is here with us. She tells us how Democrats should be shaping the conversation as democracy hangs in the balance.
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[23:47:12]
RUHLE: Democrats on the Hill are facing an uncomfortable reality these days with abortion bills stalled. The only real path to codifying Roe lies in the hands of voters this November. And that makes efforts to protect abortion rights a whole lot harder.
And so let`s discuss with Lis Smith, political strategist democratic kingmaker. And now author of the new book “Any Given Tuesday, a Political Love Story,” which is out tomorrow and quickly going to be your August must read.
All right, Lis, welcome. Congratulations on the book.
LIS SMITH, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Thank you.
RUHLE: I`m giving you a big challenge. If you were running the show, how would you want Democrats to talk about abortion right now?
SMITH: Well, the most important thing to say is that Republicans want to take healthcare decisions outside of the hands of women and doctors and put them in the hands of politicians. That`s the most important thing. They want to criminalize doctors and women for abortions. They want to force women who are the victims of rape, incest, or whose lives are at stake to give birth. And this is a life and death issue.
And it is why we need everyone, everyone to go out and vote, no matter how they — how enthused they feel, no matter how they feel about Joe Biden, this is a life and death issue for this country.
RUHLE: Go beyond abortion. Should Democrats be looking at this primary not as an election that`s about Republican policies versus democratic policies? Should they be telling America this is about democracy?
SMITH: Well, absolutely. I mean, we see that weekly with the January 6 hearings, when the President tried to incite an insurrection. And now and I was here a couple of weeks ago talking with you about this, Stephanie.
Now we have gubernatorial candidates across the country and Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, who don`t — who are election deniers and who would not acknowledge the 2024 elections if a Democrat were to win their states. So yes, democracy is absolutely on the ballot.
RUHLE: You write in your book that you see your role as someone who helps candidates be themselves. If you`re advising Joe Biden right now, he`s been on the world stage for decades. How would you apply that? How would you help Joe be Joe?
SMITH: Well, this is where some of Joe`s strengths come in. Joe Biden is an extremely empathetic person, and we know that the American people are feeling a lot of pain right now.
[23:50:00]
They`re feeling pain from the fallout of the pandemic, from high gas prices, from inflation. And there`s no one who feels their pain more than someone like Joe Biden. So he needs to get out, you know, away from the White House, and among the American people and communities across the country where they are feeling this pain and speak to them directly.
RUHLE: OK, then perfect. I`m so glad you brought up gas prices, because I want to give you a messaging challenge. We know inflation is a huge problem. One of the biggest drivers of inflation is gas prices. But we just learned today that gas prices are 50 cents lower than they were at the peak in June. If you`re Joe Biden, if you`re Democrats right now, how do you get this message out there?
SMITH: Well, we need to continue to talk about it and the progress that we`ve made, but it`s not far enough, right? It`s still in California, you see gas prices 5.90 a gallon. So we can`t, you know, spike the football quite yet. But we should be talking about the progress that he`s been able to make and how we are producing more oil under his administration to alleviate costs than almost any time in history.
RUHLE: Can the Democratic Party you know how difficult it is fit under one tent? I think back to the infrastructure bill, now a law, a massive, massive win for Democrats. But they didn`t really spend any time running a victory lap and showing that to America, because they have more ambitious plans with build back better.
SMITH: Look, I think the beauty of the Democratic Party, at least in my opinion, is that it`s a big tent party. And it is a party that should be a 50 state party, one that doesn`t impose purity test where West Virginia Democrat has to be the same as a New York Democrat.
But Mayor Pete and the administration are going out and making the case all across the country and media markets, big and small, that the infrastructure bill will create good jobs will rebuild roads and bridges will help underserved communities, and is a huge, huge investment in the future.
And I mean, think about how long, how long we have been talking about infrastructure and improving it. I mean, it felt like every week under Donald Trump was infrastructure week, and we`ve finally gotten it.
But it`s more than just that. We need to talk about what`s at stake in this selection. It`s – We`ve gotten this stuff done. But what happens if we hand the keys of power over to the Republicans? Well, one, they have no solutions to offer any economic relief to the American people. And when they get power, we know what they`ll do. They want to criminalize abortion, and they want to make it — and they want to make it impossible for a Democrat to get elected president.
And the only, the only agenda we`ve seen put forth thus far from Republicans is from Rick Scott. And it`s something that would sunset Social Security, Medicare, raise taxes on working people.
And so we`re going to be talking about that every day of the week. Because as Joe Biden had always said, and I remember in 2012, and I talk about this in my book any given Tuesday, he`s not running against the Almighty, he`s running against the alternative. And the alternative in the Republican Party is not a party that wants to help the American people and does not want to alleviate any of the pain that working Americans are feeling right now.
RUHLE: Ever skilled Lis Smith, you just how to eat up the time to give the name of her book and not give me the opportunity to ask if she thinks Secretary Pete is the next guy running for president. Very tricky. Lis Smith, I will bring you back here soon. I`m on to you. She doesn`t want to answer questions about Pete Buttigieg. Did you hear that?
Lis, congratulations on the book. Great to see you. And I`m thinking about that we need to accept our elected officials where they are a West Virginia Democrat is different from one in the state of New York. “Any Given Tuesday, a Political Love Story,” comes out tomorrow. Lis Smith, thank you.
SMITH: Sure. Thank you.
RUHLE: Coming up. The history making moment on the field and the inspirational message to end this Monday when the 11th Hour continues.
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[23:58:34]
RUHLE: The last thing before we go tonight, a little inspiring America. 28- year-old Carson Pickett recently became the first player with a limb difference to play for the U.S. Women`s National Team. NBC`s Kristen Dahlgren brings us her story.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
KRISTEN DAHLGREN, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Carson Pickett took the field for the U.S. Women`s National Soccer Team, it`s wasn`t just her dream on that field.
CARSON PICKETT, U.S. WOMEN`S NATIONAL TEAM: I think that that was like one of the coolest moments of my life. It`s just realizing that there`s so many people out there that are just like me and that are looking up to me and I can, you know, maybe show them the way.
DAHLGREN: Born without her left hand and forearm, Pickett recently became the first player with a limb difference to play for the national team. Not there because she`s different. But just like every player out there, the best of the best.
PICKETT: It was just an incredible moment just to take off, take it all in and realize where I was I was playing for the best team in the world and min starting for the best team in the world.
DAHLGREN: It`s not the first time pick it as inspired. In 2019, this moment, within one year old Joseph Tid went viral.
PICKETT: And I remember having a jacket on and I pulled my arm out of the jacket and he just started beaming and he was smiling and he was laughing and I was like oh my gosh, I cannot believe that he realizes that we`re the same.
DAHLGREN: Joseph also born with a limb difference is now four. And following in her athletic footsteps.
[00:00:06]
PICKETT: I would just say follow your dreams. I say it all the time but my dad has told me a million times never let anyone turn your sky into a ceilings.
DAHLGREN: Words to live by, as she helped the U.S. team to a to nothing win over Columbia while showing fans around the world what defying limits can look like. Kristen Dahlgren, NBC News.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
RUHLE: Never let anyone turn your sky into a ceiling, wise words for us all tonight.
And on that beautiful note, I wish you all a very good night. From all of our colleagues across the networks of NBC News, thanks for staying up late with us. I will see you at the end of tomorrow.