Updated
Summary
The House of Representatives today voted to establish the right to same-sex marriage in federal law in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning the Supreme Court opinion that established that right. The day after the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Governor Abbott relayed the official lie that Texas police did an heroic job quickly responding to the mass murder. Trump electors are targeted in a Georgia criminal inquiry. Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Ayman.
We had Dr. Bernard on this program at the very beginning of the story, when it was just a little story in the local news media, out in Indiana. It has become quite a story since then.
AYMAN MOHYELDIN, MSNBC HOST, “AYMAN”: Yeah, it is a large part to a lot of false information from Republican news organizations, or Fox News and all the right-wing echo chambers.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, they don`t want to face the Republicans who are forcing these laws on people. They don`t want to face the real implications of these laws and what they mean when ten year old girls get pregnant by rape. That is really what we are dealing with here.
Thank you, Ayman.
MOHYELDIN: Yeah. Thank you, my friend.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Well, it has long been the official position of this program that if Donald Trump is to become a criminal defendant, the most likely place where he will be charged with a crime or crimes is Atlanta, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis is conducting a grand jury investigation in which the breaking news of the night is that every one of these 16 Republicans who falsely claimed to be Georgia`s elected members of the electoral college are now targets of that grand jury investigation.
That news was revealed in a court filing in which the criminal defense lawyers for 11 of the Republicans have asked the Georgia judge to quash their subpoenas to testify to the grand jury. The motion says that for over two months, the district attorney`s office told the criminal defense lawyers that the fake electors, quote, where witnesses, not subject for targets of the district attorneys, and the grand jury`s investigation into the 2020 election.
The motion goes on to express, surprise, that on June 28th, 2022, quote, special prosecutor Nathan Wade informed us, for the first time, all of these 11 nominee electors were suddenly targets, stating, as our investigation has been short, and new evidence has come to life, in a spirit of integrity, we feel it only fitting to inform your clients status as changed to target.
The criminal defense lawyers` motion to quash the subpoenas to their clients says, quote, the abrupt, unsupportable, and public elevation of all 11 nominee electors status wrongfully converted them from witnesses who were cooperating voluntarily, and prepared to testify in the grand jury, to persecuted targets of it. In light of the escalation, counsel advised the elector nominees to invoke their federal and state constitutional and statutory rights not to provide substantive testimony to the grand jury, advice they have reluctantly accepted. The unavoidable conclusion is that the nominee electors change of status was not precipitated by new evidence, four and honestly held belief that they have criminal exposure, but instead an improper desire to force them to publicly invoke their rights as, at best, a publicity stunt.
Now, with 16 named targets of the grand jury, if Donald Trump is charged with a crime in that investigation, he will probably not be the only one. District Attorney Fani Willis has said she is investigating the possibility of conspiracy charges, which, by definition, means multiple defendants.
The breaking news from Georgia tonight came after another day of revelations of shocking unprofessionalism by the Secret Service that, now, could involve criminal conduct. The Secret Service has never been suspected of breaking the law before.
So you would think that, after what is now almost a week of damning revelations about the Secret Service, the director of the Secret Service, James Murray, would have, by now, publicly stepped up to a microphone to assure the White House and the Congress, and the country, that`s the Secret Service will get rid of anyone in their ranks who has not fully complied with the law.
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But instead, while the director of the Secret Service remains absolutely silent and hidden, we now know the Secret Service has gotten rid of all of its text messages from the most important day in the history of the Secret Service since November 22nd, 1963.
That was the day that we lost to the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, two and assassin`s bullet because the Secret Service had not yet figured out how to protect the president of the United States in a motorcade. The text messages for January 5th and January 6th, 2021, that the Secret Service deleted, under director James Murray, are the most important text messages in the history of the Secret Service. It`s as simple as that. Secret Service cell phones never produced more important evidence than what those cell phones produced on January 6th and the Secret Service as deleted all of it.
The Secret Service has been lying about this since Thursday when the story broke about the Secret Service, and the Secret Service spokesperson insisted that there were no — there was no malicious intent in the leading those text messages, and that any text messages that were relevant to the January 6th committee`s investigation or certainly preserved in some form, and would be easily delivered to the committee.
Today, “The Washington Post” reports the U.S. Secret Service has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its January 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter.
The Secret Service`s first reaction to all of this last week was to lie. When the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, inform the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees that the Secret Service has deleted texts relevant to the inspector general`s investigation of the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
The Secret Service`s official reaction, immediately, was to lie. That is what`s Secret Service director James Murray authorized, the Secret Service spokesperson to do. Last Thursday night, while we were discussing the new revelation that the Secret Service emailed texts had been deleted, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi, with Secret Service Director James Murray`s full approval, issued a statement saying, quote, the insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously diluted text messages following the request is false.
None of the texts the inspector general was seeking had been lost. We now know that is a lie. They have all been lost, according to “The Washington Post” reporting. The director of the Secret Service, James Murray, lost all of the Secret Service`s text messages from January 6.
Director Murray allowed those text messages to be deleted. Why? What did he know those text messages would show?
James Murray is a Trump guy, by which I mean he was appointed director of the Secret Service by Donald Trump, not at the beginning of Donald Trump`s presidency, but the third year of the Trump presidency, after Donald Trump had been using the Secret Service for a few years, and knew exactly who he wanted in charge of the Secret Service for him, at what was the beginning of the presidential campaign of 2019. He wanted James Murray from New Jersey who had been in the Secret Service since 1995.
By that point in the Trump presidency, Donald Trump wanted nothing but Trump loyalists in his government. And he was getting rid of anyone suspected of not being a Trump loyalist.
We heard James Comey describe what Donald Trump said to him in the Oval Office about what he would expect of him to keep him on his FBI director. He said to James Comey, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty. That is what he was saying in the first days of his presidency.
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How did the conversation go with James Murray three years later? And Donald Trump`s discussion with him about making him the head of the Secret Service? What kind of loyalty, exactly did James Murray pledged to Donald Trump, and what kind of loyalty did James Murray actually deliver to Donald Trump, and what kind of loyalty is James Murray delivering to Donald Trump tonight?
James Murray has days left in his job as director of Secret Service. He is going to leave at the end of the month, and cash in his law enforcement chips for the big money, in corporate security, as the new head of corporate security for Snapchat.
Snapchat, no doubt, already does a better job of maintaining electronic records than the Secret Service does, under Donald Trump`s choice of Secret Service director, James Murray.
If you have been following the Secret Service story, and are only now hearing James Murray`s name for the first time, that is exactly the way James Murray wants it. He wants the news media to fall for the idea that the leading Secret Service text messages, the most important text messages in the history of the Secret Service, has nothing to do with the director of the Secret Service. The biggest failure by the Secret Service since they lost President Kennedy in a motorcade in Dallas, biggest failure since then, and the director of the Secret Service doesn`t want his name anywhere near it, and he is succeeding, so far, because almost no stories about this ever mentioned the director of the Secret Service, under whom all of this has happened.
Before James Murray gets out of town, the January 6th committee should issue a subpoena directly to James Murray for his specific text messages on January 6th. Was Murray texting directly into the car where Donald Trump was reportedly struggling with Secret Service agents, insisting on going to the Capitol? What text messages did the director of the Secret Service receive that day?
Did he personally delete his own text messages from January 6th? The Trump- controlled Secret Service has an avenue investigation that will surely keep the January 6th committee busy after its next big hearing Thursday night. The committee`s investigation into what happened at the Secret Service on January 6 is just beginning.
Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California. He`s chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is a member of the January 6th Select Committee, and served as the lead impeachment manager for the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight, as this important hearing approaches.
We are seeing in the Secret Service story your committee is still developing evidence that you didn`t know was coming your way, even as recently as a week ago. What is next in your investigation of the Secret Service text messages?
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, we did receive thousands of documents from them this week. As you point, out these did not include the text messages, at the heart of our interest, those that were said between Secret Service agents on January 5th and 6th, and the announcement of the Secret Service made when this first came to light, when the inspector general and department of homeland security made us aware these records may have disappeared, I think it was very misleading in seeing that no records relevant were destroyed, but acknowledging records were destroyed, if they were destroyed, how did they know they were not pertinent text messages?
It appears, and we are still looking at this, it`s early in our investigation into that matter, but it appears the agents were left to themselves to decide whether to preserve what they had on their phones or not to preserve, or whether it was relevant or not relevant. And asking interested parties without any kind of oversight through that, it is, I think, at a minimum, negligent, and maybe more than that.
We do hope to find out whether any of these messages may be retrieved technologically. We should also be able to figure out just how many messages were sent or received between agents, and then we will get a sense of the scope of what was destroyed.
[22:15:03]
I think that will help guide us into asking different questions of agents about what they were texting about and what was destroyed, and why it was destroyed.
O`DONNELL: According to the Secret Service`s own description of what it insists on calling a routine technological update, they left it to individual members of the Secret Service to decide what, on their phones, should be preserved as this update was coming.
That leaves the question of what did James Murray do? He had one of those phones, at least one of those Secret Service phones. Did he personally save anything on his Secret Service phone? Did he actually participate in effect in believing everything from his Secret Service phone?
Is that worthy of its own specific subpoena to James Murray for his phone records and his testimony?
SCHIFF: You know, I would hope and expect the records we`ve requested of the Secret Service would pertain to any one on duty that day, you know, all the way up to the director that may have text messages, emails, other communications in a variety of different formats that are responsive to our subpoenas. So, we should get that information. We are looking for any records that are missing, any records that would tell us that something is being withheld.
We are going to scrutinize this very carefully, particularly, after this gross disparity between what we are hearing from Secret Service and what we are hearing from the inspector general. I am confident, Lawrence, we will get to the bottom of what happened. I am less confident we will ever see those text messages, tragically.
O`DONNELL: I am going to assume or guess that, in Thursday night`s hearing, we won`t be hearing very much about this. This suggests your committee will have to have more public hearings in the fall concerning the Secret Service texts and possibly more material?
SCHIFF: You know, I think it is all the more sense that this will be the end of the first set of hearings. We don`t believe this will be the end of hearings. People continue to come forward on issues like this involving the Secret Service, also continuing to make themselves a parent and merit for their investigation. Many of those issues will warrant their own hearings. It`s too early for us to say. None of us feel this is over by any means.
And at the same time, we want to, in the fall, presents a recommendation about protecting the country going forward. I think that is where the of hearings as well. So, there is more to come. I think what you will see on Thursday will be significant in and of itself.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you very much for leading off our discussion tonight. I really appreciate it.
SCHIFF: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Joining us now is Gwen Keys Fleming, former district attorney for DeKalb County, Georgia, neighboring county to Fulton County.
Thank you very much for joining us again tonight, on this breaking news story about, clearly, now, 16 targets identified in your friend, the District Attorney Fani Willis`s investigation in Fulton County.
What is your interpretation of what we learned today through these legal filings?
GWEN KEYES FLEMING, FORMER DISTRICT ATTORNEY DEKALB COUNTY, GEORGIA: I think it demonstrates that, as she continues to have witnesses testify before the grand jury, her investigations expand. She has now come from 11 to all 16, and we will see what happens as witnesses come forward and just how broad she may take this investigation and how broadly this grand jury may make their — for what should be brought.
O`DONNELL: The criminal defense lawyers for those Georgia Republicans cited several reasons why they believe that these subpoenas for their grand jury testimony should be squashed. One of them does seem relevant, and is a practice in some jurisdiction. That is, now that they are targets, these lawyers say it is unusual to bring a target into the grand jury and question a target in front of the grand jury.
FLEMING: I think we will see what happens with that. As we`ve seen in other jurisdictions, they do have the right to invoke their right against the incrimination. There may be questions of things that are not incrimination, especially in front of the grand jury, and that the D.A.`s team might want to reach for more. And so, just as Judge Mitberne (ph) has done in areas, he may put guardrails or guidelines in place as to what topics can be covered, and where any witness might feel as though they need to prevent self incrimination.
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O`DONNELL: Then there are two we other prongs in this defense motion. One is that a district attorney in Georgia has absolutely no right to, in any way, investigate a federal election. That is one of their claims, that there is no jurisdiction for the district attorney here.
The other claim is that nothing that they did, and nothing that you can be investigating is criminal. They are — I have never seen a claim quite like this, which is that there is no possible criminal conduct in anything they`ve done, therefore you cannot ask them any questions.
FLEMING: Well, again, let`s remember this all happened in Fulton County, which is clearly the Fulton County district attorney`s jurisdiction. But the call the former president received in the county, these electors met at the capitol in Fulton County. So, she does have jurisdiction to be able to investigate matters.
And, honestly, that is what investigations are about, to determine whether a crime occurred, if so what crime, and if so by who, so that is exactly what a district attorney should be doing, in looking into and investigating various facts, just as Fani and her team will do.
O`DONNELL: Gwen Keyes Fleming, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Your expertise on this matter is crucial to our understanding of it. Thank you very much.
FLEMING: Thank you so much for having me.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Up next, in a special joint appearance here in THE LAST WORD, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse will discuss how to deal with the United States Supreme Court that is now, for the first time in its history, in the business of revoking constitutional rights. That`s next.
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SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): Now, we have a court going wild. In a matter of days, the newly radicalized court overturned Roe v. Wade, manufactured new polluter-friendly legal documents, and threw out centuries-old gun safety regulations. All of it wildly unpopular with most people.
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O`DONNELL: Now that the Trump and Bush Supreme Court is revoking constitutional rights and forcing ten year old girls who are rape victims to then become the victims of forced birth laws in Republican states, the House of Representatives today voted to establish the right to same sex marriage in federal law, in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning the Supreme Court opinion that it established that right. Forty-seven Republicans joined all of the Democrats in the House in supporting the legislation, the final vote was 267 to 157, with 147 Republicans, voting against marriage equality.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told the Senate Rules Committee today in a hearing shared by Senator Amy Klobuchar how we`ve got the first Supreme Court in history that has decided to revoke constitutional rights.
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WHITEHOUSE: Far-right special interests turned their dark money guns on the federal judiciary. They funded a $580 million secretive network to pack the courts with judges selected to greenlight donor friendly policies, and to run multimillion dollar ad campaigns to keep those confirmations on track.
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O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She is the chair of the Senate Rules Committee. And Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. They are members of the Senate judiciary committee.
And this is what we at THE LAST WORD call a quorum. Thank you very much —
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Almost.
O`DONNELL: — joining us together tonight.
Senator Klobuchar, as chair of the Rules Committee, this is a fascinating intersection with both of your roles on the Judiciary Committee, because this is a point that Senator Whitehouse is making, repeatedly, in the Judiciary Committee about how we get the Supreme Court nominees we get.
And this is after decades of all of us focusing on what`s money in politics does for candidates. This focus broadens it considerably.
KLOBUCHAR: It does. And Sheldon has been leading the way on this now for years and making the point and, guess what? We ended up where he said we would, you are right. That is in all of this dark money coming in and funding the Supreme Court justices and the nomination process, that has gotten as these extremely out of the mainstream conservative justices who are now, for the first time in history, we have a Supreme Court, as you point, out that is taking away peoples rights.
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And so one of the solutions among many, and we know you know we are doing immediate work right now, doing everything we can, state after state after state to fight this decision in the Dobbs case to take away women`s rights, reproductive rights.
But at the same time, we`ve got to look for the long term. The long term, as Sheldon will tell you, is about making sure that we find out where this money is coming from, who these donors are.
People who make it — given over $10,000 of this dark money, we don`t even know who they are. That is what`s the Disclose Act is, that is what our hearing is about and 90 percent of the people in one poll, 85 in another one, are with us on this, Lawrence. We need this information, and we are going to be able to then better track what is going on in addition to winning the elections in the fall.
O`DONNELL: Senator Whitehouse, what is the short version of what the Disclose Act would do, and what happens to it if it ends up in front of this United States Supreme Court?
SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): Well, it would require the disclosure of political contributions in a race over $10,000. And it includes campaign advertisements for justices as well as campaign advertisements for political candidates.
So had it been in place during the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett proceedings, we would have known who wrote checks as big as $17 million, one check for $17 million, to pay for the ad campaigns for a Supreme Court justice. What do you bet, whoever wrote that $17 million check has business in front of the court? And we should know that. Citizens should know that.
And so we`re going to fight very hard for this. It is going to be difficult for the court to address this issue because they are the court that dark money built and their loyalties to dark money have been made clear in the Americans for Prosperity Foundation case.
But the premise of Citizens United of the justices who signed off on Citizens United was that dark money, anonymous money in politics is corrupting. They have said that, they have said 8 to 1 point of that decision. And so they`re going to be hard-pressed to walk back too far from that point.
KLOBUCHAR: Exactly. And in fact, Scalia, this is a quote from Scalia, I know you like when I quote Scalia, Lawrence. He said, in this decision, because as the Citizens United, of course, has been a very bad case, and in another case, he did say, “I do not look forward,” this is in 2010, Dobby Reed (ph), “to a society which, thanks to the Supreme Court campaigns anonymously hidden from public scrutiny, and protected from the accountability of criticism, this does not resemble the home of the brave.”
Why I bring that up is that on 8 to 1, the justices did say in the past, it`s legal to put these kinds of rules in place for disclosures and disclaimers. So that`s why when you asked what would be the fate of this bill, after we pass it in the Senate, after we win this election in the fall, I think we will stand well, only because, even the conservative justices acknowledge that you could put these rules in place.
O`DONNELL: Now, I can remember the days when Justice Scalia was considered the extreme right edge of the Supreme Court.
WHITEHOUSE: The good old days.
O`DONNELL: And it strikes me now, Senator Whitehouse, that he`d be somewhere near Roberts in this mix.
WHITEHOUSE: Yes. The difference is that Justice Scalia was, perhaps, an extreme conservative, but he was a real conservative. The new justices, the Trump justices, the Federalist Society justices are different. They are not conservatives.
They are activists and they are doing the bidding of very big special interests, the special interests that used millions and millions and millions of dollars in dark money to put them on the court. It`s capture that has happened here, not conservatism.
O`DONNELL: Senator Klobuchar, going forward in the judiciary committee, is there any way short of legislation to continue to press this case the way we have seen Senator Whitehouse press it? There is a sort of Don Quixote quality to it in these confirmation hearings where —
KLOBUCHAR: That`s what I — when I look of you, that`s who I think of Sheldon. Ok. Continue, Lawrence.
(CROSSTALK)
WHITEHOUSE: Which makes you Sancho Panza (ph).
(CROSSTALK)
O`DONNELL: He just keeps charging with that dark money sword and —
KLOBUCHAR: He does. And he`s right.
O`DONNELL: Go ahead. Go ahead.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, first of all, judiciary committee, of course, we`ve been pushing, that John Lewis bill and other things. Remember, it`s not that long ago that we had that Freedom to Vote Act vote, remember? All the Democrats signed up on that bill, every single one of them. There are a few that wouldn`t lift the filibuster.
But we are close to moving forward on major election reform. I am not giving that up, one bit, when you look at all the games that are being played in the states, and laws that are being passed to limit the right to vote.
Well, part of this, and by the way, this Disclose Act was part of that. But this Disclose Act can stand on its own. So as chair of the Rules Committee that has jurisdiction over elections, that`s where we are going to push this bill forward, and of course, we can get it to the Senate floor for a vote.
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KLOBUCHAR: And Senator Schumer has committed to Senator Whitehouse for that vote. And we want to see that vote.
WHITEHOUSE: And in — and in Senator Klobuchar`s hearing today, he committed again in his public remarks. So it is a good — good day.
O`DONNELL: The team of Klobuchar and Whitehouse — Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Thank you both very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it.
KLOBUCHAR: It was great. Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, children in Texas public schools fear for their lives. And every one in Texas fears tonight that they might not have air conditioning tomorrow because of the weakness of the Texas power grid, thanks to the bad choices made by the Texas Republican governor and the Republican legislature.
Can a Democrat fix that? The Texas Democratic candidate for Governor, Beto O`Rourke joins us next.
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ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D-TX), STATE SENATOR: This governor hasn`t been in Uvalde since the 29th of may, hasn`t gone back, hasn`t been to one single funeral, has failed as every step in so far as helping these folks with trauma relief, and everything else that you could imagine. We have systemic failure at every level in Texas. It goes way beyond Uvalde. But Uvalde is the grossest and most disturbing version of that failure that exemplifies what is going wrong in Texas.
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O`DONNELL: The day after the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Governor Abbott relayed the official lie that Texas police did an heroic job quickly responding to the mass murder. Our next guest, Beto O`Rourke was there that day to demand the governor take real action.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sit down. You don`t know —
BETO O`ROURKE (D), TEXAS GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: — shooting is right now and you`re doing nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
O`ROURKE: You`re all bringing up nothing. You said this was not predictable, this is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, you are out of line. Sir, you are out of line. Sir, you are out of line.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please leave this auditorium.
O`ROURKE: I`m standing up for the kids of this state to stop this from happening again.
This is on you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can`t believe you are a sick son of a bitch who would come here like this to make it a political issue.
(CROSSTALK)
O`ROURKE: This is on you until you choose to do something.
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O`DONNELL: The Republican politician who tried to shut down Beto O`Rourke calling him a sick son of a bitch that day is the Republican mayor of Uvalde who is now fighting with Republican Governor Abbott over whether the state police who far outnumbered local police at the school are more responsible for the police failure that today.
Beto O`Rourke`s attention has been on the families of the victims.
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ANGEL GARZA, STEPFATHER OF UVALDE VICTIM AMERIE JOE GARZA: Since this has happened, Governor Abbott has yet to reach out. I mean, Ted Cruz has yet to reach out.
We have had Beto O`Rourke coming actually to our private meeting, ready to fight with us.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He marched with us.
GARZA: He marched with us. That means something to us.
O`ROURKE: The first thing you`ve asked of me, everyone who is here, is that we not forget the names and the lives and the memories of those who were taken from us.
The second thing that you have told me is there must see justice, there must be accountability. We must know the truth for what happened and why it happened.
And with every thing that I have heard from every single parent, they don`t want any other mom or dad in this state or in this country, to ever feel the way that they do right now. We need action today.
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O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Beto O`Rourke, Democratic nominee for governor of Texas. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. And I have to ask you, after reading this report from the Texas House of representatives that finds fault with the entirety, as they — the phrase they used was the entirety of law enforcement, that were involved in this, response to this school.
What would you do on day one as governor in sitting down with whoever you would put in charge of the state police?
O`ROURKE: I would do everything in my power to make sure that we empower the state police to help us guarantee this does not happen again in another school.
And first and foremost, in a situation like this, that means that those DPS troopers, those school district officers, those local police officers go into that classroom and put themselves between that gunman and those kids.
I think all of us, to a person, understand that no one more so than those parents right now. Even more importantly, we`ve got to make sure that we don`t have the availability of these kinds of weapons to 18-year-olds who were able to buy two AR-15s, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and be better armed than many soldiers around the globe are, and use those military grade weapons against children, against teachers, against people who are completely innocent.
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O`ROURKE: To see this happen in Uvalde, to know that it happened a few years ago in El Paso, Santa Fe High School, Sutherland Springs, Midland, Odessa — so many places across the state of Texas is to know that this will continue to happen until we change course.
The common ground is there and it is obvious to all of us. Universal background checks, a red flag law. Safe storage laws for those who have firearms to keep them locked up if you have kids in your household as well.
That won`t solve every incident of gun violence, but it will go a long way to solving many of those that we have seen happen in Texas and many that will happen in Texas until we take action. We need a change in the leadership of this state to make that happen.
O`DONNELL: As you read the report that the House issued, a bipartisan report, you are turning pages in the middle of it where you are reading about this 17-year-old boy, eagerly awaiting his 18th birthday. So that he can take the money that he has hoarded and go buy two AR-15s which he does immediately upon turning 18.
And as you hold that, as you read that, you`re just reading a law that rights itself that makes that moment illegal on your 18th birthday that delays that kind of right to buy weapons to at least 21. It seems like the most obvious thing for the governor of Texas to come out and support that.
O`ROURKE: It`s not just Democrats. It`s not just folks who`ve been advocating for gun sense legislation for years, in some cases. It is Republicans, it`s gun owners, it`s the Republican mayor of Fort Worth that is just one prominent example, who are calling for exactly what you just described.
At a minimum, let`s wait until someone is 21 years old. They`re going to have better judgment, their impulse is going to be under greater control. They are less likely to do exactly what we just saw in Uvalde.
The fact that the governor of Texas is going in the opposite direction, that after the El Paso shooting that took the lives of 23 people, he signed into law a bill that allows nearly anyone to carry a gun in public without a background check, without any training or vetting whatsoever. After in the previous five years, 38,000 people were prevented from doing that by our previous license to carry laws because police said this guy or this gal is just too dangerous to themselves, or to someone else that can`t be armed.
Those same members of law enforcement begged the governor not to sign this into law. He did so when he had turned his back on them. So as governor, you asked me this at the outset, I`m going to listen to law enforcement. They know that they`re very often outgunned by people like this 18-year- old. They know that they are putting the people in their communities that they were sworn to protect and to serve in greater harm.
We don`t have common sense laws on the books. We can do this. The majority of Texas is with us. We just need political leadership that will reflect that. And that`s why we are running in this race.
O`DONNELL: We have to squeeze in a break here. Please stay with us. If the power grid holds up in Texas after this break, we will be back with Beto O`Rourke. We will be right back.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m still leaning right. I`ve been engaged in Greg Abbott`s reelection campaign, right? But I like your idea like everything that you said, about the problems in the border, and everything. It`s very important to me, right, because I`m Hispanic, my dad is in an immigrant and stuff. You`ve got my vote, sir. I`m a first time voter as well.
O`ROURKE: First time voter.
We`re counting on you.
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O`DONNELL: And we`re back with Beto O`Rourke. You are in Texas, the power grid is holding up, at least through this interview. But this — you`re state is — should be the energy capital of the country. Its energy should be the taken for granted resource in the state of Texas.
You`ve got the lowest gas prices in the country. Your gas prices are 50 percent lower than the national average. But here you have a power grid with predictable weather strains in the summer, like the oppressive heat of Texas and it can`t handle it.
O`ROURKE: We had two conservation notices last week which, Lawrence, means that they ask all energy electricity users to conserve power. So that is in our homes, we have to set the thermostats a little bit higher.
But this is really important for the Texas economy. They are also asking industrial users to do that as well. And last week Toyota, which has a major factory in San Antonio, where they produce the Tundra that I drive all across the state of Texas, they reduced the hours and their capacity and their ability to turn out what we need.
So Greg Abbott`s inability to keep the power on in the energy capital of the world affects not just our ability to be comfortable in our homes, but exacerbates a supply chain issue that we have here, driving up costs and inflation.
And in fact, when you add to that the increase in property taxes that we`ve seen on his watch, $20 billion in Texas, the increasing electricity costs because when the grid broke down, the cost to repair it was passed on to all of us as ratepayers, average bill going up $45 a month for Texas ratepayer.
[22:54:59]
O`ROURKE: He is the single greatest driver of inflation in the state of Texas. And he still hasn`t fixed the grid.
O`DONNELL: How long would it take you to fix the grid as governor?
O`ROURKE: We could get to it right away. Some really simple solutions here. One, you weatherize and winterize the grid so it works under all weather conditions.
Two, you connect the grid into the national grid so that we can draw down power when we need it and sell it back up when we have a surplus.
And three, you make sure that this never happens again. The price gouging that we saw last February, where fuel traded for 200 times the going rate, and put some utilities into bankruptcy by having an independent market monitor on the beat.
Those three things, which all of us can agree on, we can get that done, fix the grid, and you can count on the lights coming on when you need them in Texas.
O`DONNELL: Beto O`Rourke, thank you very much for joining us tonight. You can turn off the lights in that room now and save the Texas grid some electricity. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
O`ROURKE: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you. We will be right back.
[22:56:09]
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O`DONNELL: Beto O`Rourke got tonight`s LAST WORD.
That is “THE 11TH HOUR” — “THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE” starts now.