Updated
Summary
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers searing rebuke to “MAGA Republicans.” Former President Donald Trump accuses Biden of being “divisive” and calls FBI and DOJ “vicious monsters.` Trump allies challenge voters eligibility in Georgia in bid to disrupt election. President Biden celebrates American workers on Labor Day. President Biden addresses steel workers on Labor Day.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Today in hour two of this special edition of THE REIDOUT.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Vilifying 75 million citizens as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state. You`re all enemies of the state.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: He`s an enemy of the state. You want to know the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Without a hint of self-awareness, Donald Trump accuses President Biden of being hateful and divisive, and the MAGA crowd is so upset to be called semi-fascist. We`re going to look into whether you actually even need the “semi.”
Plus, the new attacks on voting rights in Georgia. The Trump team is trying to cancel as many voter registrations as they can before election day.
And we begin this hour with President Biden`s optimism in the face of MAGA extremism. We are awaiting Biden`s second event on this Labor Day — on this Labor Day holiday from midterm battleground — from the midterm battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Earlier today, the president was in another state, on the frontlines of the fight for American democracy, Wisconsin, ramping up his push, entering a critical nine weeks of campaigning before November`s midterms, reminding voters once again what`s at stake.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I want to be very clear up front. Not every Republican is a MAGA Republican. Not every Republican embrace that extreme ideology. But the extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress have chosen to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division. But together, we can and we must choose a different path —
(APPLAUSE)
BIDEN: — forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: This hour, President Biden- will speak in Pittsburgh in his third visit to Pennsylvania in just the last week, including his speech in Philadelphia, highlighting the threat posed by those MAGA Republicans.
The center of that threat, the former president, was also in the keystone state this holiday weekend, speaking at a rally for Pennsylvania`s MAGA Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, and Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Trump basically went full fascist, denouncing the FBI as vicious monsters despite recent actual attempts by his fans to attack federal law enforcement and calling President Biden an enemy of the state.
In his Philadelphia speech, the most vicious, hateful, divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, it`s pretty rich, coming from Donald Trump, while the MAGA Republicans are leaning into their perennial self- portrayed victimhood or being called out as threats to our democracy, a reminder that this is what the former president said about Democrats in a campaign speech in Minnesota in 2020.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Destroy our Second Amendment, attack the right to life, and replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. Left-wing. We`re going left-wing all the way. Fascists. They are fascists. Some of them. Not all of them, but some of them. But they`re getting closer and closer. We have to win this election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Of course, the former president did not win that election, and his speech over the weekend proved that President Biden`s claims about the MAGA philosophy is 100% accurate. Trump even throwing in a threat, a threat of a backlash to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the likes of which nobody has ever seen. Here`s how Congressman Jamie Raskin explained exactly what this philosophy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Two of the hallmarks of a fascist political party are, one, they don`t accept results of elections that don`t go their way, and two, they embrace political violence. I think that`s why President Biden was right to sound the alarm this week about these continuing attacks on our constitutional order from the outside by Donald Trump and his movement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Joining me now, Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for “The Nation,” Dean Obeidallah, host of “The Dean Obeidallah Show” on Sirius XM, and Sudan del Percio, Republican strategist and MSNBC political analyst, along with Dana Milbank, political columnist for “The Washington Post” and author of “The Destructionists: The 25-year Crack-Up of the Republican Party.” Thank you all for being here.
[17:04:50]
REID: I want to start with where we ended there because, you know, Jamie Raskin is a constitutional scholar and congressman and a gentleman, not somebody who just throws out ad hominem, is describing what fascism is. And a core component of fascism is the use of political violence, the use of some brown surrealism (ph). The Mussolini style of it was that as much as the Hitler style of it was.
Let me play a Lindsey Graham because he at first tried to somewhat walk back. His threat that the republican MAGA base would be in the streets rioting if Trump is ever charged with a crime. He decided to double down on it this weekend. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If it`s just about mishandling classified information, we`ve had a standard set when it came to Hillary Clinton. I said something I really believe. If he does what she did with classified information and he gets prosecuted, and she didn`t, it would create a problem.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Susan del Percio, this is Lindsey Graham trying to put a gentlemanly hat on the brown surrealism (ph) that he displayed last week, in which he said, violence is going to come if he is prosecuted. And let us just remind ourselves that Hillary Clinton did not take classified documents home, have empty folders full of classified documents in her house. She had a server that she was working from home on.
And James Comey himself, even when he blew up the election because she had that server, said she didn`t meet these four tests. Clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information. Nope. Vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an influence of intentional misconduct. Nope. Indications of disloyalty to the United States. Nope. Efforts to obstruct justice. Nope.
But you could say Donald Trump did all of those four things. So, that comparison, Susan, doesn`t wash. That dog won`t hunt, as Lindsey might prefer me to say. So, how is it that now you have what used to be mainstream Republicans — this was John McCain`s supposed best friend — is now justifying, saying that there will be blood in the streets, basically, if Donald Trump is treated the way every single person on this panel and in this country would be treated if they stole classified documents?
SUSAN DEL PERCIO, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: It just makes me wonder what Donald Trump has on Lindsey Graham because there is no way to explain it, honestly.
Joy, I was on your show a year ago. I said it plain and simple. We are seeing the Republican Party turned into a party of neofascism. I stand by that statement 15 months later. That`s what it is, when you see the call for violence in the streets with not believing in the election results, just like Congresswoman Raskin said.
This is a dangerous place. If we`re wondering, like, can it happen here? It already has. January 6th happened. And we could see something much worse come this November if Donald Trump does, in fact, try to rile up his army because that`s what it`s solely becoming and looking like.
You look at some of the pictures of some of the protests and rallies, they are dangerous. And we know that they come with literally guns. We heard that in testimony from January 6th. So, we`re not out of — we`re so not out of the woods.
And what Joe Biden has done, President Biden gave a really strong speech, and I loved it. I believe everything he said. I just need stronger messengers to deal with those independents and right or moderate Republicans because they`re the ones who we really need in these elections come November to keep a sane governance in order.
And right now, that`s the Democratic Party. We need to see independents, Republicans come out for the senate candidates that are willing to make our country work and put country above politics. So, I just want to make sure that we have the right messengers doing that.
REID: You know, and Dana Milbank, you know, you have had Adam Kinzinger denouncing direct attacks on the FBI, when MAGA — a MAGA fan literally went into an FBI office armed up, right? There`s already been threats. FBI agents are being threatened.
So, you have threats against law enforcement. You have an insurrection in which there was a violent attack on the Capitol in which they beat up police officers and left five people dead, eventually. You have the demands that the procreation be achieved at the behest of the state, essentially state-mandated birth. You have an anti-immigrant mania and you have a cult of personality.
If you look up fascism in the dictionary, you`re going to find all of those things. So, I`m really not sure what the Republicans are all upset about other than the fact that it was named.
DANA MILBANK, AUTHOR, POLITICAL COLUMNIST FOR THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, Joy, what they are in fact doing, Republican leaders now, is using a fascist technique to rebut it, and that is you make the ingroup feel as if they are the victims. So, they`re coming around and saying, President Biden is calling you, the average Republican, a fascist.
That`s not at all what they`re doing. This is like when Nancy Pelosi called Kevin McCarthy a moron and he made t-shirts labeling “moron.”
[17:10:00]
MILBANK: He thought Republican voters would want to buy it and identify with being morons. They don`t. Kevin McCarthy is the moron, not his voters. Kevin McCarthy and his colleagues are using — I don`t know if you want to call it fascist. They`re using fascist techniques.
That`s what a fascist does and they`re using it again to rebut this and turning around and say they are victimizing you, the in-group. They`re going after you. They`re coming for you. Classic textbook fascist maneuver.
So, I think it`s absolutely right that Biden calls them out, and all Democrats not be afraid to do it and say, we`re not talking about you, the Republican voters. You`re being bamboozled by these guys who are using fascist techniques. And it is un-American. This is not how we do things here in the United States of America.
REID: But it has been. Dean Obeidallah, you and I have — you know, we`ve been called, you know, out of our minds for saying “fascism”, you know. And like Susan del Percio, we`ve been saying this for like more than a year. We`ve been saying this for a long time, my brother, and getting beat up for it.
But the reality is you have to call a thing what it is and be definitional about it. The word MAGA doesn`t mean anything other than if you go back, it`s what fascists used to say, make America great again, right? And so, it`s very hard to escape it.
What do you make of the fact that Biden got there? Biden is the most Biden- y Biden person in the world, meaning, he never wants to offend anybody. He`s very — he tries to be inoffensive all the time. And the fact that he got there, do you think that is what maybe — I don`t know. What do you make of the fact that he finally got to where we have been for quite a while?
DEAN OBEIDALLAH, SIRIUS XM HOST: I think he was reading my tweets, Joy. I`m pretty sure that`s what did it. I`ve been tweeting for over a year, daily reminder, today`s GOP is no longer a political movement. It is a fascist movement that has embraced white nationalism and wants to impose its religious beliefs as law. Boom! Shorthand, we call it the GOP. That`s what we`re dealing with.
And look at — take a step back. You mentioned Hillary Clinton. When they were investigating Hillary, do you remember, uh-oh, they indicted Hillary. Hillary supporters are going to commit acts of violence. We didn`t hear that because that`s the normal way things go. If someone is indicted, then they defend themselves in court. Not Trump. Not the GOP.
Joy, I actually believe that after January 6th, and I don`t think I was naive, they were (INAUDIBLE) Trump. They said, okay, this guy made a terrorist attack. We saw Kevin McCarthy going before the House a week later, 10 days later, make it clear that`s where they`re going. Then they realized they can`t win without him.
And now we are at a point where CBS polls showed 60% of Republicans view January 6th not as terrorism but as an act defending freedom. That is —
REID: Yeah.
OBEIDALLAH: That should scare people. We`re dealing with a movement, as President Biden talked about, that political violence and cult worship is how democracies die. MAGA is how democracies die. I just said last week, I`m glad President Biden tried to sort of walk that gap between here are good Republicans and there`s still some, and then here`s MAGA.
So, it`s no longer Republicans versus Democrats. It is Americans versus MAGA. And that`s the fight and the framing I would like to see going forward.
REID: It`s called quarantining. He`s trying to quarantine this group of people, some of whom are his voters, but these are the people who are willing to essentially kill and die to keep Donald Trump or to make Donald Trump president, I guess, president for life? I guess that`s what they`re looking for. It`s a cult of personality. He`s quarantining them even from other Republicans.
And Joan Walsh, those polls that Dean just mentioned, it is pretty frightening. This is a CBS poll, and they ask a few questions. This is a wonderful director. In the generation, the U.S. will be more or less of a democracy. Fifty-four percent said it would be less of a democracy. Same as it is now, only 27%. More of a democracy, only 19. Less of a democracy, 54%, including 56% of independents and 64% of Republicans saying the U.S. will be less of a democracy.
One more poll, and I`m turning it to you. CBC poll on the future of political violence. Sixty-four percent believe political violence will increase. Sixty-four percent, Joan.
JOAN WALSH, NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, THE NATION: Wow! You know, I hadn`t seen the one about — the fact that it`s Republicans who think there will be less democracy and, you know, it seems like a lot of them are cheering for it, right? And I personally believe there will be more political violence. How could there not be? You know, we`ve been — we`ve just been seeing this uptick.
You know, I want to go back to something Susan said because I do think we need independents and even moderate Republicans. I totally agree. But I also think something Biden is doing right now, the president is doing right now, is roaring, revving up his base. His base has been dispirited. Progressives, Black Democrats, people haven`t seen enough until recently. Things have gotten better recently. Enough of that fighting spirit. And so, I think that is definitely important.
[17:14:49]
WALSH: The other thing I think again, Joy, is we are being let down by a lot of our colleagues in the media because they nitpicked Biden`s speech, they nitpicked the coloring, they nitpicked the marines, and they have, again, created this kind of false equivalence between his, you know, naming of extremism and Trump`s rhetoric, and there`s no equivalence.
And so, you know, to the extent that I worry about democracy, which is actually a lot, part of it is that we don`t have — we still do not have a media establishment that is rising to this moment of — this threat to democracy.
And the final thing I`ll say, because you and I have been through a lot of Twitter wars together about a lot of things, and sometimes it might be about race, and somebody — some white — let me just say, some white person, me, did something maybe kind of racist, and then you`ll see these white people pop up and they will be, like, well, not all white people.
And I always want to say, if people aren`t talking about you, then don`t answer. Accept they`re not talking about you. And that`s how I feel about the Republicans who are, like, oh, he`s calling us fascists. If you`re not a fascist, he`s not talking about you. So, lighten up. Don`t take it personally. But, you know, it`s all about grievance, so there`s no way for them not to take it personally.
REID: 100%. It is the whininess, right? Maybe it`s not neo-fascism. It`s whiny fascism. And Susan, I think it`s an excellent point because part of the thing that doesn`t get put in when people talk about fascism is that it isn`t just not believing in elections and wanting to have a strong man who remains leader forever and is unquestioned and elections don`t matter.
There was an aspect, particularly of Mussolini-style fascism, of demanding that women bear for the state, right? Bear more children for the state, particularly white European women. Bear more children for the state. We literally even have that. And that is being aggressively pursued by Republicans in state after state after state in a way that is even scaring some Republican women and saying, whoa, hold on a second, this has gone too far.
When you have all these aspects of it, talk about the extent to which that abortion question has motivated Republican women to maybe rethink their blind loyalty to the party.
DEL PERCIO: Oh, I think it`s having a huge effect. And if we look at Kansas and we saw the referendum go down there, it was by Republican women. Republicans voted in that primary. But we also need to make sure we don`t confuse the fact that it`s not that those women were pro-choice.
REID: Correct.
DEL PERCIO: It`s that they`re anti-extremism. They don`t like where the party has come down. They don`t like the fights that they`re seeing in the state legislatures about complete bans.
I came to — with the party, up in the early `90s, where all I saw was pro- choice Republicans from the northeast. It was a very common thing. I think that a lot of Republican women and even, you know, moderate Republican men are just shocked by how extreme this issue has come. And even some pro- choice — pro-life members or elected officials say, oh my gosh, incest? How can you be — how can you prevent that? It`s just horrible.
And I think going forward, the Republican Party is going to have some big regrets over how this decision played out. That`s not to say that pro-life people don`t, you know, are fine with it, but don`t confuse the two. There are those who are pro-life and there are Republicans who do have a problem with it.
REID: And Dean, you know, you talk about this a lot, that, you know, you come from a community, the Muslim community, who get branded with whatever the most extreme person who claims to be a Muslim, who are usually perverting the religion and don`t know anything about it, and then the whole community is told, you need to condemn that person, you need to condemn that.
It feels like what Biden is doing is saying, no, that doesn`t just apply to communities who are minority communities and minority religious communities. That applies — if you guys are going to say that, like, for instance, about the Muslim community, say that to each other.
If you have people in your life who are saying elections shouldn`t be real and Trump should be elected whether he gets 10 or 40 million fewer votes, we don`t care. Nobody should be allowed to vote who doesn`t vote for MAGA. Shouldn`t other Republicans be told, yeah, you should condemn that?
OBEIDALLAH: Absolutely. Look, during a time of Trump, how often do we hear the idea, oh, Republicans don`t speak out because they`re afraid? And I say, no. They don`t speak out because they agree with it. And I think we have to come to that point where we understand, this Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy, down, are on board with the fascist train if it delivers them power.
And yeah, if you don`t denounce terrorism, that means you agree with it. Well, Republicans, here`s your chance. Have a rally. Denounce Donald Trump. Why don`t you? Why don`t you reject the election deniers? There was a great article in “The Washington Post” recently about the battleground states, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
[17:20:00]
OBEIDALLAH: Over 60% of the Republicans who won the nomination in key positions that administer elections, over 60% are election deniers. If they win, they are democracy killers. Where are the Republicans speaking out about that?
Instead, you have President Biden speaking out. GOP is going crazy. The people hate political correctness. What is the PC — Joy, what is the PC term for fascism? I don`t know what you call it. Is there a nice way to make them feel good about themselves?
I wish the extremists would be drowned out in the GOP, but I think, honestly, the extremists are the GOP with a small exception because the good people for the most part have left the party.
REID: Yeah. That`s why the independents tend to sort of lean close to Republicans, because they were Republicans. They were, like, I`m out of here, and now they`re independents.
As we wait for Joe Biden in Pittsburgh, we`re just showing you that picture. He`s getting ready to roll, so he`s going to be rolling very soon. I want to thank Joan Walsh, Dean Obeidallah, Susan del Percio, and Dana Milbank.
Next on THE REIDOUT just weeks before the midterms, Trump allies in Georgia are moving their voter suppression efforts into overdrive. THE REIDOUT continues after this.
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[17:25:00]
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REID: With just 64 days to go until the midterm elections, allies of Donald Trump are actively trying to kick thousands of Georgians off the voter rolls. Reporting from “Bloomberg” shows the conservative group, VoterGA, is challenging the eligibility of more than 37,000 voters in Gwinnett County, a once solidly republican area of suburb of Atlanta that has voted democratic since 2016.
The group is founded by Overstock founder/Trump super fan Patrick Byrne and Trump`s former national security adviser, QAnon pledge devotee Michael Flynn, who you may remember twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Georgia, of course, was ground zero in Donald Trump`s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. These challenges would not only make it more difficult for scores of registered voters to cast a ballot, but also would place an even heavier burden on the already strained state elections officials.
Joining me now is state representative Bee Nguyen, the Democratic nominee for Georgia secretary of state. And thank you for being here, Representative Nguyen. This is frightening. Thirty-seven thousand voters challenged. It`s also weirdly familiar because I do recall that Brian Kemp, when he was secretary of state, did something quite similar, challenging more than 30,000 voters to sneak to victory as governor. Is this the same playbook or something different?
ST. REP. BEE NGUYEN (D-GA), GA SECRETARY OF STATE CANDIDATE: Thanks for having me on, Joy, and you bring up a really good point. This is not new in the state of Georgia, the attempts to influence the rules on who can show up and who can`t show up to an election.
And so, we know under Secretary of State Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger, hundreds of thousands of voters have been purged off of our voter rolls and in many cases erroneously. And we also know it impacts Black voters at a greater rate than any other voter.
And if you remember, in 2021, right before the two U.S. Senate runoffs, another Trump allied group, True the Vote, came in and challenged the eligibility of 374,000 (ph) voters in the state of Georgia.
Republicans responded in 2021 by passing Senate bill (INAUDIBLE) bill that now enables anybody to en masse, systemically challenge hundreds of thousands of voters all across Georgia, going to our local election boards and putting that burden on our local election boards, and requiring a hearing within 10 days of those complaints being filed.
REID: I mean, when this bill was called Jim Crow 2.0, Republicans howled. And yet this is literally Jim Crow. This is literally taking somebody who took the time to register to vote, challenging them, and making them justify being on the rolls.
Let me read a little bit from this “Bloomberg” story. Georgia law allows the state, as you said, to take over election boards if it finds them incompetent. Many clerks are worried that if they don`t do a quick vetting of these mass challenges or the challenges lead to longer lines on Election Day, they will face a state takeover.
One more bid. The Gwinnett challenges bring the total this election cycle to about 65,000, due largely to a 2021 overhaul of Georgia voting laws enacted in response to unfounded allegations of widespread fraud in 2020. The law effectively encouraged these mass challenges, as you just said.
This sounds like more than the margin by which Kemp won as governor. And so, I wonder, are you concerned that because these mass challenges are now perfectly legal under this law, that essentially Kemp is going to be — because of Trump allies, they`re going to be able to use subtraction to win, and that includes Herschel Walker?
NGUYEN: Right. We`re looking at a state in Georgia where in 2020, the margin was 11,780 votes. And so, all of these laws are intended to kind of way up that margin.
And when you`re look at these massive voter challenges taking place all across Georgia with no guidance from the secretary of state`s office, these local election boards, they`re scrambling, talking to their county attorneys, making sure that they are following the law, and they are in fear of being taken over if they feel like they`re not following the law as prescribed.
What they have essentially done is they`ve done a work around the federal voting rights protection that does not allow mass purging 90 days before an election. And they`re doing it, as you said, with just seven, eight weeks before a major election cycle.
[17:29:58]
NGUYEN: And so, what they have done is they`ve created new laws to try and prevent people from showing up because they know the margins in Georgia are going to be close.
REID: What can voters do if they — are they notified that they being purged? Do people even know before they show up to vote? You`re running for secretary of state. What would you advise Georgia voters to do today?
NGUYEN: Check your voter registration and check it often. If you are being targeted like these voters have in Gwinnett County, that 37,500 voters in Gwinnett County, you will receive a letter in the mail. What I`m also concerned about is when you look at a county like Gwinnett, it is extremely diverse. It is a population of black voters, Asian voters, and Latino voters.
And oftentimes, these notices, they are sent in English only, so this is an all hands-on deck moment in which you`ve got to check your voter registration. If you get anything in the mail, you`ve got to call voter protection and make sure you`re taking all the right steps to make sure that when you show up in November, you can actually vote.
We are a state that does not allow same-day voter registration. So, if you are removed from the roles after October 11th, you will not be able to vote in Georgia.
REID: Can the Department of Justice — I know when Eric Holder was attorney general, they were suing states for doing stuff like this. Any word from the DOJ?
NGUYEN: Well, I know that there`s litigation pending around this very same provision, specifically litigation that came to light right after true the vote came in and tried to remove those 364,000 voters. And according to federal law, you cannot systematically remove large numbers of voters within the 90-day blackout period.
So, I believe that we will see litigation move forward, given the federal protections that we have in place. But again, in a state like Georgia, where it`s this close to an election, is that litigation, the results of that, is probably not going to be before this November election.
REID: And it is not coincidental that the ticket, the Democrats who are running, are yourself, Representative Bee Nguyen, running for secretary of state. Stacey Abrams running for governor, who, as you said, came within a hair of Brian Kemp when he became governor after purging more than — I think it was something like 35,000 people from the rolls. And of course, Senator Raphael Warnock, who`s running against Herschel Walker. How concerned are you that this will not be a free and fair election?
NGUYEN: Well, I`m very concerned, not just from the standpoint of these voter eligibility challenges, right? So, we`re looking, again, at a state with a very slim margin. And that 98-page voter suppression bill, it does take away a voters` ability to use drop boxes that we saw helped voters` ballots get in time.
It does also chop away at the time period in which a voter can request and receive an application to vote by mail, and we have seen the rejection rates increase on the application side, and when the voter actually receives the ballot in hand, we`ve seen the rejection rate increase as well.
And then we`re also looking at these inane provisions like criminalizing handing out a bottle of water to a voter waiting in line, in a state like Georgia where people had to wait up to 11 hours in 2020. And then we`ve got this new rule about having to vote in your precinct on election day, even if you are in the correct county, you are no longer able to vote by provisional ballot.
So, it`s all those things added together that creates a situation in Georgia where there`s voter intimidation, voter suppression, a voter subversion, and we know that all of those things are going to add up.
So, we, on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, we know we have to outorganize. We know we have to turn out our voters like we`ve never turned they would out before, because we`ve got to make up for these little margins here and there because of these new voting laws in place.
REID: This is Jim Crow, period. It just is. Georgia state representative, secretary of state candidate Bee Nguyen, thank you so much for being here, and alerting us to this. We`re going to send this — we`re going to post this on our social media so you guys can share it with all of your friends and family in Georgia, because folks need to know what to do. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you being here.
Oh, well, coming up, still ahead, President Biden will be here — will not be here, but he`ll be celebrating American workers at a steel-workers picnic in Pittsburgh, P.A., and we are going to be covering it live. After this.
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[17:35:00]
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REID: Any moment now, President Joe Biden will take the stage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he will deliver remarks on unions and the dignity of the American worker. This is Biden`s third road trip to his home turf in recent weeks, coming just days after his primetime speech in Philadelphia on the threat of MAGA extremism.
And since Labor Day traditionally kicks off the final stretch of the midterm campaign season, the president is joined by Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate, John Fetterman.
Covering the president in Pittsburgh is NBC News White House correspondent, Mike Memoli. Back with me is Dean Obeidallah, host of the Dean Obeidallah Show on SiriusXM. And do we have — there`s Mike Memoli. What are we expecting to hear today? Is Biden going to reprise some of the themes in Philadelphia, or is he really going to be focusing on the issue of the American worker?
MIKE MEMOLI, NBC NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Joy, when I talked to White House officials about sort of the way in which President Biden is approaching the midterms, they talk about it as sort of a two-pillar strategy.
The first, we saw very clearly on Thursday night with President Biden offering that very stark warning about what was at stake in this election if that so-called MAGA extreme wing of the Republican Party is put into power after November.
[17:39:55]
Today, you know, we talked about that Thursday night, right? The burden President Biden has felt as having to govern almost, by himself, without Republicans in office. Today is much more of that happen warrior Joe Biden that we`ve seen so much over the years. He`s making what is a much more optimistic case to the American people about some of the successes of his administration on the economy.
And it is interesting to see, you mentioned John Fetterman, we just saw the two men, the president and the lieutenant governor, potentially the future senator from Pennsylvania, together for the first time since Biden was last in Pittsburgh a few months ago. This was pre-primary. This was before Fetterman`s stroke.
There`s been a lot of talk about which candidates are appearing and not appearing with the president as we approach the midterms. That was something we did see and will see — or actually, Fetterman is next up in the speaking program here.
But when you talk about the importance of Pennsylvania, not just to this president but to this party, you see in the governor`s race, which Josh Shapiro versus Doug Mastriano, a real emblematic race about what is at stake in terms of a Democrat who is running very much on the warning about abortion being overturned, a complete ban being put in place in Pennsylvania, versus him, who`s willing to protect women`s health — reproductive rights. Mastriano is somebody who was at the Capitol on January 6th, an insurrectionist. You have in the senate an example of Democrats potentially being on offense here.
It`s no mistake, Joy, that the president was in Wisconsin before this and Pennsylvania today, just now, because those are two states where Democrats actually think they can pick up Senate seats. And then you look at the House races that are four toss-up races in Pennsylvania, according to the Cook Political report, Democrats feel that — yes, they still face some political headwinds, but there has been a real reversal in fortunes here.
So, the president, when he speaks in just a few minutes, is going to be talking about the ways in which he thinks he is the most pro-union president in American history, the importance of working people to this country, and a lot of those economic agendas successes we`ve seen over the past year. The Infrastructure Law. The CHIPS Act. The Inflation Reduction Act.
I was talking to Connor Lamb, Joy, and then I`ll send it back to you before at the parade today, earlier today, and he said, listen, Democrats need to grapple with the fact that Donald Trump is energizing Republicans at this moment. He, of course, has run in a race twice with — in a district that is Trump-friendly, and he`s managed to succeed.
But he said, we all — we saw every time Trump came into the state, which he was here in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the numbers for Republicans went up, so he said, we`re prepared for it this time. But Joe Biden needs to be out here energizing union workers, women, the pillars of what they call the Biden coalition just as much as Donald Trump is now out there energizing Republicans. And Conor Lamb said, you do that by talking about the economy, so that`s what the president is focus on here today, Joy.
REID: And don`t go anywhere, Mike, because I do want to come back to you in just a second. But Dean, I want to bring you in here as well, because you see Fetterman up there, and John Fetterman kind of represents the, you know, the very — sort of, working class vibe that is very similar to Joe Biden`s, to be honest with you. Biden is originally from Scranton, you know, he`s there in Pittsburgh. A
And you see all those union shirts around him. That is one of the battlegrounds between Trumpism and Democrats, right? Is that union worker. I remember interviewing a bunch of union workers back in 2016, and was surprised how negative they were about the Democratic Party, about the Democratic candidate, and open they were to Donald Trump. They — he used that, like, steel worker, man of steel kind of message to start to lure those folks over. Is there a sense that Biden is winning them back?
DEAN OBEIDALLAH, HOST OF THE DEAN OBEIDALLAH SHOW ON SIRIUSXM: You would hope so, because look, I`ve never seen a president more pro-union than President Biden. As Mike was saying, talking about a championing what`s known as the pro-average past the House to help organize unions, and we`ve seen a real-world impact of this, Joy.
We`ve seen a big spike in petitions to the national labor relations board to form new unions. You see it at Amazon, Google, Starbucks. You`ve seen unions now at the highest reading by Gallup, 71 percent in decades. And I think it`s part of President Biden.
I`m a union guy. I think unions should be the backbone of the Democratic Party. The GOP has somehow stolen them away in the past on other issues. The GOP wants to destroy unions, because unions level the playing field. They help you negotiate with your employer to make sure you get more wages and more benefits. So, I`m hoping we can get some of our union voters back to us. We are the party of the working class.
REID: And Mike, we`re still waiting on Biden. John Fetterman just got off the stage, Mike. And that is a big deal for Joe Biden, right? I mean, it`s a big part of his origin story is, you know, the unions have organized for him in every race that he has won, right? How important is that community to Biden himself and his politics?
MEMOLI: Yeah, absolutely, Joy. I mean, you talk about Pittsburgh as sort of central to the Joe Biden political story. I was here four years ago when he had something of an audition for his 2020 candidacy, marching in that Labor Day parade. You can`t really march in parades much more as President of the United States. He would have liked to have been there this morning.
[17:44:58]
But I talked to Biden four years ago, and he talked about being labor from belt buckle to shoe sole. That is very much how Joe Biden considers himself to be within the Democratic Party.
And, so, we saw Liz Shuler, who is the head of the AFL-CIO nationally, replacing Rich Trumka, of course, who had that job for a long time. It`s a good time to be the head of the AFL-CIO with Joe Biden as president because she joined him earlier today in Wisconsin. Flew on Air Force One with him here to Pittsburgh.
And when she was speaking to this union audience earlier, she said, listen, we need to get back to basics. We need to get back to the grassroots. We need to be talking to our fellow union members about successes. And she rattled off that list. Things that happened only because Joe Biden is the one in the White House, a pro-union president. And that`s something that they are keenly aware of. The union vote has been very much up for grabs of late and they`re determine to keep it on Democratic side.
REID: I want to note that the president of the Pittsburgh steel workers union is who is speaking right now. He is the man who has been tasked with introducing the president, so we should be seeing President Biden walk up to that podium any moment now, because this is going to be his moment.
Do we know how long of a speech it`s going to be, Mike? Wait a minute — never mind. Here comes President Biden. He`s taking the stage, and we`re going to take a listen now.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It`s good to be almost home. Well, I`ll tell you what, you know, this is a pretty critical election, to state the obvious. Before I start, I want to say a word about a few good friends that we lost. A guy named Jack Shea, some of you knew, and Pat Gillespie. Both, good friends. People I work with my whole career.
They had an attitude that could be summed up in one word, in my view. A little bit like my dad would say. Everybody, everyone, no matter what your background is entitled to be treated with dignity. With dignity. With respect.
And you know, I want to thank the elected officials here today. Bobby Casey`s been a close friend of mine for a long time. His dad and I were friends as well. As a matter of fact, we are — our age is split. His dad is much older than him and I — me, than I am to Bobby.
And we raised the same neighborhood in Green Ridge about five city blocks away. Went to the same grade schools. I moved because when coal died in Scranton, there weren`t any jobs. My dad was in sales, not in mining, but we moved back down to Delaware where he was from. Moved to a little steel town called Claymont, Delaware.
Claymont used to have — steel. Used to have almost 5,000 steel workers. Whole community was built, a company town, literally. And steel died. It was dying, and there`s not a single steelworker left. But know what happened was, about midway through, my — I got elected — I got very engaged, in my case, in the civil rights movement.
And as a kid, I was — I worked a lot in the movement and worked — and I got deeply involved in the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party in Delaware was a southern Democratic Party then. We were more a southern state than a northeastern state.
And I got involved and one thing led to another. And one day, a group came to me, of the senior members of the party, and said they wanted me to run for the Senate. I said, I`m not old enough, and I wasn`t. I was only 29 years old.
And a former chief justice, whose family had more United States senators than any family in American history, looked at me, and he said, you obviously didn`t do very well in law school, Joe. He said, you don`t have to be 30 to be elected. You have to be 29. You can be 29. You just can`t get sworn in until you`re 30.
And so, one thing led to another, and I ended up deciding to run. But I was having great difficulty getting support, even though people liked me, or at least the labor guys liked me. They didn`t think I could win. Until I got brought up to Pittsburgh by the local leader of the steelworkers in Delaware, and into Pittsburgh, and came to here and met with the then- president of the steelworkers and he endorsed me about nine weeks out. And I won by 3,100 votes. So, the fact is, you guys own me.
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BIDEN: You know what you`re going to be getting. And look, folks, Bobby, Representative Boyle, Representative Lamb, Mayor Gainey, your county executive, who`s a hell of a guy, and John. If I have to be in a foxhole, I want John Fetterman in there with me.
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BIDEN: I tell you what. I want John in there with me. I mean that sincerely.
[17:49:58]
Look, there`s a whole lot of folks here. I don`t want to keep you standing much longer, but let me just say a couple things. Number one, the — you know, I started my campaign because Tom jumped in and convinced me — didn`t convince me — made the case I should run, because that train ride, I was campaigning for Democrats. I was out of office. I was campaigning for Democrats.
But you know what? This is not your father`s Republican Party. This is a totally different party, man. These guys are different. I`ve worked with a lot of Republicans, conservative Republicans I worked with. Got a lot done, but there was also something decent about the work.
But then we moved to this place where all of a sudden, the reason that made me run, I decided, was when you saw those people coming out of the fields down in Virginia, carrying torches, literally coming out of the fields carrying torches with swastikas, chanting the same anti-Semitic bile that was chanted in, literally, the same anti-Semitic bile chanted in Germany in the `30s, accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan, and the guy that I beat in this last election.
And when they asked what he thought, he said, there are really fine people on both sides. I said, something`s really wrong. Something`s changing. And that`s when I talked to Tom and others about helping me out. They`ve decided to help me out.
Because look, folks, here`s where I think we are, and I`m going to be brief. The fact is that I think there are periods in history where we reach certain inflection points, where everything is going to come after is going to change what`s been before for the next generation, and we`re at one of those points. It happens every six or eight generations. Things are changing. They`re changing rapidly. You see everything from what`s happening in Europe, and India, from Russia, China. Things are changing. And the United States has to regain its footing and remember who we are.
And so, one of the things that I concluded was that, you know, those inflection points are the places where you look back two, five, ten years later and realize it`s just not what it was before. It`s either better or worse than it was before. Not the same. You`re not going back to the same.
And I`m absolutely convinced, and I mean this. No one`s ever doubt, I mean what I say. The problem is that I sometimes say all that I mean. But all kidding aside, one of the things that was clear to me is that this new group headed by the former president, the former defeated president, we found ourselves in a situation where we were either going to look forward or look backward, and it`s clear which way he wants to look. It`s clear which way the new MAGA Republicans are. They`re extreme.
And democracy is really at stake. You can`t be a democracy when you support violence when you don`t like the outcome of an election. You can`t call yourself a democracy when you don`t, in fact, count the votes that people legitimately cast and count that as where you are. You can`t be a democracy and call yourself one if you continue to do what they`re doing.
And so, folks, look, we have a choice — when we — Trump and the MAGA Republicans made their choice. We can choose to build a better America, or we can continue down this sliding path of oblivion to where we don`t want to go. You know, under the American rescue plan — and I`m not going to go through all these things, but just to give you an example. We — you know, we created nearly 10 million jobs in my first 16 months, 10 million new jobs in America.
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BIDEN: An American rescue plan also created and saved millions of jobs. Why? Because here in the state of Pennsylvania and almost every state didn`t have enough money to keep teachers on the payroll, to keep firefighters on the job, to keep police on the job, to keep people — nurses and docs on the job.
And so, what we do? We, in fact, gave the money the make sure they did it. And this governor, your governor, spent it well, hiring thousands of firefighters and the likes.
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BIDEN: And what happened was, we found ourselves because of the greed of some companies. We found that an awful lot of union members were about to lose their pensions. So, we did something that hadn`t been done in 50 years, significantly for labor, we passed the Butch Lewis Act. The Butch Lewis Act.
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BIDEN: And they told me I couldn`t do it. They really did. Remember — and we didn`t get any Republican votes for it, but we got it done. We got it done because it`s just about basic decency and fairness.
[17:54:59]
And look, every single Republican voted against that. Every single one. The bipartisan infrastructure law, they`re building roads and bridges and ports. As a matter of fact, I`m going to be back here not too long from now, because we got $60 billion to rebuild that bridge that collapsed the day I came here not long ago.
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BIDEN: Folks, the money`s going to go to expanding the nearby — nearly 100-year-old failing lock and dam outside Pittsburgh — but it makes a big difference in terms of the economy. And so, we`re going build a new terminal at the Pittsburgh Airport. We`re doing this all over the country. All over the country. And it`s creating good decent jobs.
But the reason why I talk about unions is not just because it`s where I come from. It`s more than that. It`s more than that. I said I spoke to the business round table, the CEOs of the largest companies in the United States. The National Chamber of Commerce.
And I have been straightforward with them. I said, look, I`m a union guy. I support them for one reason because it`s in your interest. They look at me like, what are you talking about? You are the best trained, the most skilled worker in the world. No, I`m not just saying that. Most people don`t realize to join a lot of the trade unions you have to have four, five, six months — six years of training. It`s like going to college. You get paid while you`re there, but not very much.
But it`s — you`re the best in the world. And it makes a hell of a lot of sense for America to spend and companies spend a little more money to have something that lasts a whole hell a lot longer that it is to do something on the cheap.
Look, you heard me say it before, Wall Street didn`t build the middle class. Wall Street didn`t build America. The middle-class built America, and unions built the middle class.
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BIDEN: That`s just a fact. And by the way, the other thing that I found out, I would have been in the senate a long time and vice president. I didn`t realize there`s a law passed in the early `30s under Roosevelt, and the press is looking at me, like, what`s he going to say now? I going to tell them. That, in fact, said, buy American. That we — any money a president spent that was appropriated, he could insist that the money could only be spent on American products. Well, guess what? We`re buying American.
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BIDEN: And I get to spend, of your money, as president, I get to allocate over $600 billion, $600 billion every year, and they`re American made products made by American workers in America. And that`s why we`re moving.
Where is it written to say that we can`t be a great manufacturing hub in America — in the world again? We make sure we have now over 640,000 new manufacturing jobs. Where does it say we can`t do this?
So, I start off with the proposition that it`s about just basic decency. I`m not going to go on much longer, I promise. Here`s what`s happened. You know, we don`t have a tax system that`s fair at all. It`s not even close.
And that`s why, for example, I have been pushing for tax fairness for a long, long time. But guess what? They told me I couldn`t do that either. Well, there were 55 corporations in America in 2020 that made over $400 billion and didn`t pay a single penny in income tax. Not a single penny. Now they`re paying a minimum of 15 percent in their income tax.
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BIDEN: And guess what? We talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, and I`ve been fighting when I was a senator for a long, long time, fighting for the pharma companies, fighting until the Medicare could set the price they pay for Medicare and drugs, and negotiate for those drugs.
Well, guess what? Anybody of you — you don`t have to raise your hand, but any of you have a child who has type-two diabetes who needs insulin every day? Once a week? Well, guess what? It costs those outfits 15 bucks to make and package them. That`s all it takes.
You what they charge? They charge somewhere between 625 bucks a month and 1,000 bucks a month. It`s wrong. It`s simply wrong. They can make three and a half times a profit that it cost them to do it.
Well, they said it couldn`t be done. Well, guess what? We`re able to change it. So, allowing — we`ve been working for a long time, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. We pay the highest drug prices of any nation in the world here in United States of America.
And guess what? There`s no rationale for it. So, we finally passed, Medicare is now negotiating. No senior — because of what we did in the Inflation Reduction Act, no senior, no matter how big their drug bills, if they`re fighting cancer or other serious problem, and they`re spending thousands and thousands of dollars on treatment, guess what?