Updated
Summary
Joe Biden is set to address nation on threats to democracy in Pennsylvania where insurrectionist, Doug Mastriano, is running for governor. Secret Service Official Tony Ornato who`s at the center of the January 6 probe retires two days before his DHS interview. Former President Donald Trump promotes QAnon conspiracy theories on his site. Jackson, Mississippi is in water crisis after the main water treatment plant fails. Mark Joseph Stern of the Slate joins Hayes to discuss new details on the DeSantis election integrity stunt.
Transcript
BEN CRUMP, CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER: And it`s not just Louisiana, Joy Reid, it`s many other states across America.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: I want to say to Miss Davis, I am so sorry that you had to come on TV and talk about your personal health situation. We here at the show just wish you all of the best. We`re praying for you. And thank you for coming on. And thank you, my friend.
NANCY DAVIS, DENIED ABORTION IN HER STATE: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
REID: God bless.
CRUMP: This is a reason to vote.
REID: Thank you. Absolutely it is. Amen. That`s tonight`s “REIDOUT”. ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Don`t tell me you support law enforcement if you won`t condemn what happened on the sixth. For God`s sake, whose side are you on?
HAYES: As the Biden tour begins early, the acute threat to democracy in the state where it was born.
DOUG MASTRIANO (R-PA), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I did remind the president that we do have an alternate set of electors.
HAYES: Then, curious retirement of a secret service official at the center of a January 6 bombshell.
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, FORMER AIDE TO MARK MEADOWS: Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engle. And mister — when Mr. Ornato have recounted the story to me, he motioned towards his clavicles.
HAYES: Plus, the voter fraud stunt that is quickly imploding on the governor of Florida and why the governor of Mississippi is ordering citizens of an American State Capitol not to drink the water.
GOV. TATE REEVES (R-MS): The city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Today, President Biden was in Pennsylvania ahead of Thursday`s primetime speech to the public on what he is calling the continued battle for the soul of the nation. It looks like we`ll be carrying that speech live right here in this hour. The address will take place in front of Philadelphia`s Independence National Historical Park, a district which contains the Liberty Bell as well as Independence Hall where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed.
It`s a fitting location for a speech which will focus on the future of American democracy and on the acute threads brought to it by Donald Trump and the movement he has spawned. By the choice of venue actually serves a dual purpose. It`s not just symbolism, because Pennsylvania is a battleground state with two marquee statewide races in November`s midterms.
There`s the Senate race between the state`s democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Republican TV Dr. Mehmet Oz, and the gubernatorial race between the state`s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and a Republican state senator named Doug Mastriano. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that Mastriano is one of the most extreme candidates ever nominated to statewide office by a major party ever.
He has an anti-abortion hardliner, supports the total abortion ban without any exceptions even for survivors of rape and incest, and would be in position should he win to make that the law of the land and Pennsylvania. He said gay marriage should not be illegal, that Islam is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution that climate change is an academic hoax. He`s also associated with Christian nationalism, a far-right movement that believes America is an explicitly Christian country.
Earlier this year, he`s spoken to Pennsylvania political conference with ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Mastriano has also been photographed as you see there on the screen — this was just recently made public — wearing a Confederate soldier`s uniform. Not a great look for any politician, especially one from the north to proudly wear the uniform of treasonous army that took up arms to defend the institution of slavery. Also a very, very weird thing to do.
And it`s not like Mastriano is just some like real history buff either. Check this video, OK. This resurfaced this week. This shows Doug Mastriano affirmatively walking over to a group of men armed, waving the Confederate flag, apparently defending a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg from what they claim is the threat of left-wing agitators.
Now, you might notice there if you`ve been sort of following the fringes of American right-wing politics, a few of the men are even wearing shirts associated with the so-called Boogaloo Movement, those sort of Hawaiian shirts, which is a far-right fringe group which calls for a second civil war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got to stop calling them liberals because the liberal — a liberal is somebody who kind of like talk over it. You do your thing, I`ll do mine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You`re absolutely right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s the Marxist-Socialist-Communist nowadays.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they had these little Black Lives Matter logos on their flags like in Vermont.
MASTRIANO: Sick stuff. Thank you for being vigilant, gentlemen. God bless you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, the voice there of the man walking over to the armed group of people in front of the Robert Lee statue, right, with the Confederate flag, the voice saying yes, yes, thank you for being vigilant, gentlemen, that`s Doug Mastriano. All of that on its own would be disqualifying. Those are the kinds of people that Doug Mastriano wants more of. He thinks they`re doing the right thing, OK. But this is more than just like theoretical abstraction.
Mastriano was also one of the most fervent supporters of Donald Trump`s attempted coup of any elected official in the nation. He spent months loudly pushing the big lie of a stolen election. He was even the Pennsylvania point person on Trump fake electro scheme which is being criminally investigated in both Georgia and we believe by the Department of Justice. And that is the same scheme that Mastriano publicly touted many times.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MASTRIANO: Governor Wolf didn`t look into any allegations and blew them off. Secretary of State Boockvar blew off all the allegations of shenanigans. Our Attorney General, you know, declared a winner before one vote was counted. And so, the whole process has been corrupted. Nobody cares to see if there was shenanigans, cheating, fraud, and disenfranchisement, and so we`re going to rise up and say, look, constitutionally, we have the final say on who the electors are. So, we`re going to reassert our authority here, and then try to do the right thing here and correct that this entire disaster that has happened over this election cycle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Of course, the claims about the election, they`re all complete and utter nonsense. The election was looked into. None of the claims set up. It was all ridiculous. It was all lies. That interview by Mastriano was approvingly shared by Donald Trump on his official YouTube channel when he had one. Mastriano says he spoke with Trump at least 15 times between the election and the insurrection about plans to overturn Trump`s loss.
Of course, those plans ultimately failed. And when they did, Mastriano helped organize buses to take angry Trump supporters from Pennsylvania to Washington D.C. on the January — on January 6. Mastriano even marched to the Capitol himself with the armed insurrectionist mob that would go on to bash in the brains of cops.
Doug Mastriano is a hardcore election denier. He stands opposed to democracy, which is of course, the principle that people get to choose their leaders and don`t have leaders shoved down their throats by force. He would govern along those lines. As governor, he would have the authority to appoint Pennsylvania secretary of the Commonwealth who oversees elections. What do you think that person is going to be like if Doug Mastriano appoints them?
Mastriano even explicitly says he will direct the appointee to reset the state`s voter rolls, which is to say wipe them utterly clean and require every single eligible Pennsylvanian to reregister to vote. And if there are any lingering doubts about Mastriano`s intentions, listen to this conversation live-streamed by a supporter during his victory party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you want to tell us tonight as you`re about to clinch victory?
MASTRIANO: We`re going to send a message to the United States of America that things are changing in Pennsylvania. When Pennsylvania changes, things will change. It will be fantastic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 20 electoral votes as well.
MASTRIANO: Oh, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Di you catch that, 20 electoral votes as well? Now, you can say well, we`re going to make sure Donald Trump or Republican wins, right? But given what Mastriano has on the record stating earlier this block when he says it`s our right to appoint the electors, 20 electoral votes as well, in that context, sure sounds like if Mastriano controls the state, the results of the 2024 election are predetermined.
It sure sounds, again, given what he has advocated for publicly, like he`s saying Pennsylvania`s electoral votes, of which there will be 19 in 2024, not 20, we`ll just go to the Republican candidate, presumably Donald Trump, regardless of the actual outcome. I know that sounds batty but that is what he was on the record advocating.
Some people have been dismissing Mastriano as a fringe candidate, and at some level, that`s understandable. He is not a person who should be within 1000 mile miles of the seat of power. But he can win. I mean, people said the same thing about another right wing extremist, Donald Trump, who also defended armed thugs trying to protect Confederate statues.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016. He only lost about 80,000 votes in 2020. The latest polling only has Mastriano down about three points against the Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro, which is in the margin of error. It is a toss-up race. Doug Mastriano can absolutely win in Pennsylvania. He can absolutely become governor and ban abortion there. He can absolutely become governor and cultivate support from the kind of armed thugs who stand outside the Robert E. Lee statue, which is what makes President Biden`s speech there on Thursday all that more relevant.
The President is going to lay out what is at stake, highlight how even with the many attempts to protect our democracy, our rights and freedoms are still at risk, not in some abstract way. Remember, we all watched the build up to January 6 happened in real-time. No, he wasn`t really hiding it. He was out saying, it`s rigged, it`s rigged, right?
He didn`t do it overnight, a month-long fight unfolded directly in public. The same thing is happening now for 2024 in front of all of our eyes setting the groundwork in these state races. The only question is will enough voters rally to stop it.
[20:10:14]
Congressman Ruben Gallego, Democrat Arizona serves as the head of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Special Operations. And he joins me now. And Congressman, you`ve been one of the more outspoken members of Congress about the threat to democracy. What do you make of the president seeming now to talk about this much more explicitly, much more clearly using terms like semi-fascist to describe the most hardcore supporters of the MAGA movement? Are you — are you glad to see that?
REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): I`m glad to see that. I think the President has been holding back and I think he`s been holding back because you know, he is a man of goodwill and wants to give people the benefit of doubt. But, you know, I saw the Republicans for who they were. They were on January 6, not all of them, but what we saw happen on January 6 can tell you a lot.
I also saw them while they were here in Arizona trying to actually take away the right for us to vote for U.S. senators back in 2011. So, this has been kind of the creeping level of slow-moving fascism that has been really injecting the Republican Party for a while. And, you know, unfortunately, the portion of the Republican Party, the McCain`s of the — of the Republican Party, that were, you know, really believing in the idea of democracy have been pushed up by the party.
And this is why we are at a situation where there`s a lot of people that may vote for Republicans not knowing that they`re voting really for someone who may want to not have proper elections anymore.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, do people know that, I guess? We`ve seen the polling and the NBC News poll showing democracy and the fate of democracy front of mind top issue for voters. We know the President is obviously trying to highlight it to get to he has pivoted to talk about it more. We had the January 6 Committee. Do you think that message is getting out or do you think people still just sort of think, well, you know, I`m upset about this or that issue, and this is the opposition party, and I`ll give them a vote?
GALLEGO: Look, I think they`re the message is getting out, but we have to be very clear that the message, unfortunately, is not just the Mastriano of the world, it`s other politicians that will also be quietly complicit and help out the Mastriano of the world. Notice there`s not like a very groundswell of moderate Chamber of Commerce Republicans that are out there and attacking Mastriano.
In this state, we have the trifecta of crazy with Kari Lake. You know, I can`t remember, an Abe who`s running for attorney general. And then, lastly, a fake cowboy named Finchem. And everyone, of course, is focused on them. But also we have candidates like, you know, (INAUDIBLE) down in southern Arizona, who quietly will probably support overturning elections, who will probably will support impeaching Biden as a lot of his colleagues are — or future colleagues are starting to say.
HAYES: Yes, you`ve got a race there. I mean, I think the two most high- profile — to me, the most obvious acute threats to the clearest path to a constitutional crisis is Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona. Both of them support — essentially supported the coup. Both of them have, to this day, say that the election was stolen, right? They support the big lie. And both of them would be in power, in position. They`re both in basically 50-50 states. That`s — Katie Hobbs is the Democratic nominee there. Like, these are both conflict races and if either of them wins, Lord knows what they do if and when 2024 rolls around.
GALLEGO: Well, look, and again, they are very important. You know, crazy Kari cannot get elected. She will focus so much on trying to destroy the elections systems in Arizona. That would actually end up destroying our economy. But you also can`t forget the other two that will also be there backing up. You know, Mark Finchem who essentially held up government — take government hostage until they got this fake audit ended up ripping off U.S. citizens to the tune of millions of dollars.
You have, you know, this gentleman running — I hope I actually shouldn`t use that word — running for (INAUDIBLE) name Abe who is threatened to actually arrest politicians if they certified the election of 2020. This is not normal. These aren`t normal Republicans. The Republican Party has been taken over and they are a threat to democracy, these very radical, radical, I would say, fringe Republicans that unfortunately now have power within the Republican Party.
HAYES: What do you think the most effective message on that is? I mean, obviously, I think the theory that Joe Biden had in the beginning was the idea is to show the government can work to try to craft some bipartisan legislation which he has managed to get past and to lower the temperature and to basically isolate them more fringe elements. In the intervening two years, those fringe elements have metastasized, I think it`s fair to say, and now control the party.
I mean, they sort of did before, but even more so now, even more with Trump, you know, railing on his you know, his budget platform. So, the question then becomes like what`s the message that you think people need to hear?
[20:15:14]
GALLEGO: The United States in the in the United States, we have universal values. And I think that still buying Democrats and Republicans, maybe not the politicians, but an understanding and appreciation of democracy I think will bind us. And we have to continue pushing that there is a threat to it. Let me tell you about one year ago, I was actually saying like, we need to be highlighting how bad the Republicans are right now and what their — what the threat they are to democracy. And I was told by the professional class, like that`s not what people want to hear. People don`t want to talk about that right now. Don`t bring that up, don`t bring that up.
I stuck with it. Because I still believe there`s universal values. And guess what, now it`s coming around to that. So we should never ever run away from defending democracy. It`s something that I think we`ll always be proud of. And I think in the end, the voters of this country will reward us.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Ruben Gallego, thank you so much for making little time with us tonight. I appreciate it.
GALLEGO: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up —
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUTCHINSON: Tony described him as being irate. The president said something to the effect of, I`m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: She said Donald Trump demanded the Secret Service to drive him to the Capitol on January 6. Now, the official at the center of that testimony is gone from the agency by the sudden departure next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: The Secret Service official at the center of bombshell January 6 Committee testimony who`s also involved in Department of Homeland Security investigation of deleted texts around the insurrection, that guy, just announced his retirement yesterday, literally two days before he was finally scheduled to share his story with DHS investigators at least according to the Intercept.
His name is Tony Ornato. He was a member of Donald Trump`s security detail who took a political job. At the same time he was serving in the Secret Service. He was actually quite highly ranked in the White House in the end. He worked as Deputy Chief of Staff, which is a very, very powerful position. And on January 6, he reportedly relayed a jaw-dropping story to White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson about the ex-president`s attempt to join the rioters to the Capitol. Hutchinson shared it at one of the January 6 Committee hearings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUTCHINSON: Tony proceeded to tell me that when the President got in the Beast, he was under the impression from Mr. Meadows that the off the record movement to the Capitol was still possible and likely to happen with that Bobby had more information. So, once the President had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby, he thought that they`re going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him, we`re not, we don`t have the assets to do it, it`s not secure, we`re going back to the West Wing. The President had very strong, very angry response to that. Tony described him as being irate.
The president said something to the effect of, I`m the effing president. Take me up to the Capitol now. To which Bobby responded, sir, we have to go back to the West Wing. The President reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engle grabbed his arm and said sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We`re going back to the West Wing. We`re not going to the Capitol. Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engle.
After that testimony, a single anonymous claim popped up insisting that or not would happily refute Hutchinson`s account under oath. Two months have passed and of course, not has not come to pass, no one came forward. No one has tried to refute the testimony under their own name on the record, certainly not under oath. It takes a whole lot less courage to pop off anonymously than it is to raise your hand and testify under penalty of perjury like Cassidy Hutchinson has done.
Now, that guy who was in the room as Cassidy Hutchinson said relaying this story, right, Tony Ornato is retiring. The question is, does that let them off the hook for these investigations? Joining me now is a reporter who broke the news of Ornato`s retirement, Kyle Cheney, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter for Politico.
Kyle, I should say that Ornato gave a statement basically saying that there was back and forth with the Office of the Inspector General about his testimony. They never said — they`d never identified the date. He was never scheduled to speak. But he`s going to cooperate and he`s going to continue cooperating with January 6 Committee and all the related investigations. What do we know about his retirement?
KYLE CHENEY, SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER, POLITICO: So, look, he became eligible to retire earlier this year. And the Secret Service in those two months, which you just described in which he hasn`t actually testified to the committee has become the center of this enormous tumult related to these missing text messages surrounding January 6, and a leadership crisis there.
So, it`s not surprising that we`re seeing turnover, but as you pointed out, he — you know, Tony Ornato was supposed to give this really, you know, highly anticipated testimony responding to Cassidy Hutchinson, and also may have some information about these missing text messages that also appeared to relate to January 6.
So, his absence, his departure from government, while it doesn`t get him off the hook for those interviews necessarily, it does change his posture, it changes the ability of for example of the Department of Homeland Security to compel him to answer certain things.
So, it`s a bit of a different dynamic with him as a private citizen as opposed to the currently serving member of the Secret Service.
[20:25:09]
HAYES: Right. My understanding is that there`s just different — that when you`re an employee, you can be compelled to cooperate with investigations, and when you`re not, you can`t, right? And we also know, if I`m not mistaken, that several people at issue here and I believe, Mr. Ornato, as Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, I think, indicated at some point, have retained private counsel to represent them as they go through these investigations.
CHENEY: That`s right. And I think, you know, internally, look, the Inspector General, the Department of Homeland Security is looking into various matters related to January 6, and he`s disappeared text messages. And that`s one where, when you`re on the outside, it`s a lot harder for the agency to compel you to cooperate.
Now, he says he`s going to appear for this testimony according to that interview he gave — or according to that report in the intercept, but you know, again, he can walk out of there at any time and say, I`m not compelled, you can`t force me. Congress is a different story. The select committee may still be able to get him in and compel him to speak to them. But why that hasn`t happened in the two intervening months since Cassidy Hutchinson spoke, we don`t totally know.
HAYES: Well, so that`s — that, to me is really the chorus, aside from the missing text messages is, I have no reason to have any opinion one way or the other about Tony Ornato before any of this, right? I know that it was a highly unusual and indeed quite controversial when he was given a political position working as Deputy Chief of Staff while in Secret Service. That`s a line that`s essentially, I think, as far as we know, never crossed before, or very rarely crossed, right? So there`s some controversy around that.
But the thing that I just can`t get over is Cassie Hutchinson comes forward on television under oath and gives this testimony. And immediately, there was this obvious effort to knock her testimony down by folks that wouldn`t go on the record, that were anonymous on source, saying things like prepared to testify under oath. And yet here we are two months later, and that has not happened.
CHENEY: Right. And you know, there were a couple of days after she testified, where we all sat back and said, is her entire story going to fall apart, because you saw all this stuff kind of getting whispered about? And since then, I think, if anything, her testimony has gotten stronger because no one has, you know, on the record refuted it, as you said, but also other details have been corroborated. So, really, what`s — you know, it`s interesting that they foreshadow that, they forecast that, oh, we`re going to be on the record testifying under oath about this, because that really lends some credibility to the fact that maybe they were going to poke holes in her story.
Why that hasn`t happened? Again, I don`t know. I don`t know the status of negotiations with the Select Committee. But, you know, his departure before that actually happened raises more questions about that.
HAYES: Yeah, we should note, I believe Ornato has given testimony to the committee prior. I believe one committee member characterize him as not as — his memory not being as sharp and not as forthcoming as Cassidy Hutchinson. So, we`ll see if he gets back under oath, and we`ll see if we ever hear from him under his own name, and not behind the screens of other folks speaking for him.
Kyle Cheney, thank you very much.
CHENEY: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, as he awaits the latest DOJ filing about his theft of classified documents, Donald Trump really loses it on his knockoff Twitter account. He`s right to be worried and why next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:30:00]
HAYES: The ex-President spent the morning having a meltdown on his fake Twitter posting, reposting QAnon conspiracies insulting President Joe Biden, attacking federal authorities. It started just before 7:30 this morning by 9:01, Trump had already posted nearly 60 times which is impressive for a man his age, a little more than once every two minutes. That included posts like this one identified by NBC Senior Reporter Ben Collins as a QAnon conspiracy that is largely gibberish. It`s like an actual “cue drop” but briefly mentions the FBI.
According to Media Matters in the past day, Trump has amplified at least 12 different QAnon accounts a total of 18 times. Just to keep in mind, the big thing that QAnon is waiting for is for Donald Trump to give the signal to slaughter his political enemies, to put them and get more or to execute them. So, just that`s the background here.
Now, this meltdown is all happening as we wait on a filing from the Department of Justice rebutting the case Trump`s team has been making to appoint a special master to review those documents seized from his Mar-a- Lago residence. The judge granted DOJ 40 pages to make their case after the U.S. Attorney said the standard 20-page limit would be insufficient. The deadline for that filing is today.
Michelle Goldberg is an opinion columnist for the New York Times who`s written about the absurd argument against making Trump obey the law. David Jolly is a former Republican Congressman from Florida. And they both join me now.
You know, Michelle, I struggle with this, you know, seven years into covering this person. You know, at one level, it`s like, oh, well, he`s got his own, you know, little — his own little app that he`s like, throws his tantrums on. And then the other it`s like, the guy who was the front runner to be the nominee of the Republican Party in 2024 literally said yesterday the election should be revoked, and he should be just put into place as president.
And again, that seems newsworthy. But I don`t know what to do with like the level of insanity we`ve all sort of accustom ourselves to.
[20:35:00]
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: The way I think about it is that he is inciting violence as a sort of extortion against prosecuting.
HAYES: Yes.
GOLDBERG: Because you`re hearing from him and from some of his — some of the sycophants around him, is you know, certainly some people say he shouldn`t be prosecuted, he`s, you know, still president, he has access to whatever documents he wants, but as an argument you`re hearing from the smarter Republicans is this will start a civil war, there will be riots in the street, as Lindsey Graham said. And so stoking violence is for him an insurance policy against, you know, in terms of people who are maybe skittish about how inflammatory a prosecution of the former president was.
I think something we learned from the January 6 hearings is that sometimes Trump`s behavior that people right off is just being really chaotic and impulsive, I mean, it is that, but there is often a logic or strategy behind it, right? He really was working up to an insurrection. He wasn`t just doing a bunch — you know, it wasn`t just random tantrums. And so, I don`t know, but I would guess that there`s probably a similar internal logic to what he`s doing now.
HAYES: I think that`s very astute. I tend to agree. Last night on the program, we sort of made a comparison between his sort of arguments about the election all running out and then resorting to violence, and the arguments about Mar Lago kind of all dissipating and now this is what he`s left with, David. And I think that there is like, there clearly is some goading here.
There`s also — you know, you`re hearing less voluble defenses from, you know, bigger named Republicans as the facts of this come out, which is also I think noteworthy.
DAVID JOLLY, FORMER CONGRESSMAN FROM FLORIDA: Chris, I think the Republican posture is typical. They are hoping Donald Trump doesn`t do the things that he does, but they will be there to back him up when it happens. There`s no greater conviction today among Republicans than there was three years ago. And I think your question at the outset is the most important one. It is easy to dismiss it out Trump`s behavior as the rantings of the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving. But the reality is, he`s the single American who like to topple American democracy. And I think he has to be covered like that.
I mean, to your point, he may be the next Republican nominee for president. He may be president again. And this is someone who in the last 48 hours has suggested that the last election should be invalidated, he should be installed. Donald Trump amplified Lindsey Graham`s calling that there would be riots in the street. And he put a target on the faces of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Donald Trump is dangerous. He`s dangerous not just for inciting his followers, but he`s dangerous to the American Republic. And I think we have to continue to frame him that way.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, it`s funny, Michelle. I remember when he was finally knocked off Twitter and other platforms in the wake of January 6. You know, there was all this debate about it. And I understood why there is debate because obviously, it`s a big step to take and — but I mean, they have to be very grateful in some ways that platform is not there right now. You could look what it led to in January 6 and see what he`s doing now.
I mean, here are the responses of people on QAnon forums, right? Again, they have this kind of millenarian fascist fantasy of the –0 of the streets running with their enemies blood, but you know, he`s saying, like, wipe them out, sir. Plenty of people will be surprised. We`re already. Like, that`s the — that`s the vibe here, you know. Like, that`s the thing that he is cultivating right now.
GOLDBERG: And I think it`s significant him posting is you said “huge draw,” which are these missives, the sort of gibberish huzzle-like missives that are supposed to be from some person embedded in the government that are probably — you know — and he`s amplified QAnon in the past. He has alluded to it. He`s retweeted it. But I think posting one of the drops directly is just a new step of legitimization.
HAYES: Yes.
GOLDBERG: You know, Republicans, there`s — the conservative movement has been having a tantrum over the last few days because Joe Biden called MAGAism and Trumpism semi fascists. But the QAnon movement is a fascist movement that as you said, it, you know, wants to see the enemies of Donald Trump round it up and either imprisoned or assassinated. And Donald Trump has shown, I think, unequivocally that he stands with them.
HAYES: Yes. And of course, there`s this, you know, that what looms over all of this, David, and to Michelle`s point here, too, right, and Lindsey Graham`s comments which you play last night, right? This idea that like, if you do it, if you indict this individual, if you — if you subject him to the ordinary law, there will be hell to pay, there will be violence. And that — the threat of that as a veto over the actions against him.
JOLLY: Yes, look, the single lesson of January 6 is that the Trump regime will resort to violence to occur. complex things they can accomplish politically. And that`s a hard conversation to have to your point, Chris. You know, can you actually assert that if Donald Trump were to come back there would be an enemies list, there would be anti-democratic behavior, authoritarian behavior. But to say that there wouldn`t be requires us to suspend belief and deny history.
And so in this case, we have seen what Donald Trump is capable of. We have seen what Lindsey Graham and other enablers do when they refuse to stand up to his behavior. And I think we have to call that out. And I think what you`re seeing Joe Biden do in these last eight weeks is realize he needs to make a calling to the nation, not just the Democrats, to the nation, to independents, mainstream Republicans, as he said last Thursday. I think that`s what we`ll hear in Philadelphia later this week from the President.
[20:40:48]
HAYES: Yes, you know, the sort of stoking violence against the FBI or threats against it while, you know, posting essentially like deranged fascist conspiracy theories. Like, I don`t — I continue to believe that is not a like, majority position in American life, as strange as our nation can be. So, the question is, does the majority get a say in the end.
Michelle Goldberg, David Jolly, thank you very much.
Still to come, Florida`s governor cracks down on people voting after his administration said they could vote. Why Ron DeSantis` so-called voter fraud crusade is already a misfire next.
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[20:45:00]
HAYES: The largest city in Mississippi is the capital city of Jackson. It`s located in the southwestern part of the state in Hinds County. It sits in the Pearl River. The population of Jackson has been steadily declining since 1980 with white residents largely moving to the suburbs in droves after a very long drawn-out battle over school desegregation.
Now, Jackson, Mississippi is now home to about 150,000 people. Over 80 percent of the city`s residents are Black, nearly a quarter live in poverty. For years, the citizens of Jackson have been dealing with major problems due to failing infrastructure, especially that city`s water system. The situation got significantly worse this week when the pumps at the main water treatment plant failed.
According to the city, recent heavy rains and widespread flooding of the Pearl River exacerbated issues of the plant, which was already operating on its backup pumps. So, now, all 150,000 residents of the entire city of Jackson are without reliable running water indefinitely.
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STEPHANIE GOSK, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The entire city is facing a Boil Water Notice again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re told don`t wash your hair with the water. Don`t brush your teeth with the water.
GOSK: Keisha Leland (PH) worries about her 8-year-old.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is she going to walk over to a water fountain and drink from that water fountain?
GOSK: To be safe, signs are up at the middle school. They`ve been there a long time.
You can`t remember a time when the kids could use the water fountains in the school?
GEORGE STEWART, TEACHER: I can`t remember. I honestly can`t remember.
GOSK: George Stewart has taught here for six years, a predominantly Black, low-income school. On top of all the other challenges, water quality and water pressure are a constant battle.
The problem here, like so many other places, is failing infrastructure.
This is one of two water treatment facilities in Jackson and the one largely to blame for the most recent city-wide Boil Water Notice. And officials still can`t tell people when the water will be safe to drink again.
In 2020, an EPA report cited a long list of problems with the water system, including failure to replace lead pipes, faulty monitoring equipment, inadequate staffing.
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HAYES: That was 2020. Of course, you might have noticed in that 20 — now it`s 2022. Last night, Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency and said that he does not know how long it will take to get the water back on.
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GOV. TATE REEVES (R-MS): Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale. It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires to reliably flush toilets and to meet other critical needs.
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HAYES: Jackson has also had to close its public schools sending students back home for remote learning. Health care facilities without air conditioning in August in Mississippi after low water pressure caused the system to shut down. And at the Capitol building, lawmakers now have to use these porta potties, which is quite a reminder for the Republican state controlled government of its utter failure to serve its constituents.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: Two weeks ago, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida announced with great fanfare their first fruits of his new million-dollar election Crimes Task Force. They arrested and charged 20 citizens with a crime of voting or being a convicted felon. Now let`s keep in mind that`s 20 people out of over 14 million registered voters in the state. It was as I said at the time a despicable stunt.
Coming four years after Floridians overwhelmingly voted to reinfranchise felons, DeSantis and his fellow Republican lawmakers have been working to undo that change ever since adding qualifications and complications to the law, leaving many people utterly confused about whether or not they could actually vote.
One of the leaders of the movement to restore voting rights for Florida felons is a guy named Desmond Meade, and he shared his outrage about the situation with me.
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DESMOND MEADE, PRESIDENT, FLORIDA RIGHTS RESTORATION COALITION: Let`s be clear, Chris. The burden is on the state of Florida to determine whether or not someone is eligible before they issue a voter identification card. And so, if people are given the impression by state officials that it`s OK for them to vote and they go ahead and vote because they feel it`s their civic duty, they go ahead to vote because they feel that it`s a great feeling to be a part of something greater, how dare the state respond by arresting them?
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HAYES: In the week since, Governor DeSantis` disgusting Crime Task Force announcement we`ve learned even more outrageous details about the circumstances of a bunch of these arrests. As Mark Joseph Stern notes in the Slate, “it turns out the individuals ensnared in DeSantis` dragnet had no idea they could not lawfully vote. It was the governor`s own appointees who flubbed their legal duty to stop them from registering.
These people were trying to do the right thing. They told no lies. They didn`t hide anything. They made an honest mistake with the help of Florida State officials. And now, Ron DeSantis wants them to spend up to five years in prison.
[20:55:26]
Mark Joseph Stern is a senior writer for Slate where he has been covering this story, and he joins me now. So, I still can`t go over the fact these – – a lot of these folks, they got voter registration cards. They applied. The state said, here`s your voter registration card. I can understand why they thought they could vote. Whose job was it to tell — like how did that happen in the first place?
MARK JOSEPH STERN, SENIOR WRITER, SLATE: So, under Florida State law, the job of screening would be voters to determine if they have disqualifying felonies falls squarely on the Department of States and the Division of elections. Guess who appointed the head of both of those agencies. It was Ron DeSantis. Those agencies have access to a database against which they are obligated again, by state law to check for felony convictions.
They failed to do so for all 20 of the defendants who were arrested some by SWAT teams at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. Now, the governor has sent these police to go arrest and prosecute them even though the state of Florida green lighted their registration, and then sent them card saying Congratulations, you are now a registered voter and you can participate in Florida elections.
HAYES: So, all 20 people got successfully registered in violation of the duty that was on state election officials appointed by Ron the census to actually check whether they were eligible or not.
STERN: That is exactly right. Now, DeSantis`team has tried to shift blame away to county supervisors who run elections on the ground. But those supervisors have attested that this job has never been within their wheelhouse. And in fact that they have been told by state officials, including the individual in charge of Ron DeSantis` election police force that they had no way of determining that these individuals couldn`t vote, that that responsibility fell squarely on the DeSantis administration. And it was the administration that messed up.
I want to just take a second to read two of these examples, so people get a get a flavor of this. Ramona Oliver registered to vote in early 2020 at the Hillsborough tax collector`s office. She was asked if she had a felony conviction. She said yes, OK. She`s not lying. The woman helping her with the form submitted it, Oliver said. She said she was never asked specifically if a right to vote had been restored.
So, she`s not — she`s not going in there. She`s not trying to get over on anyone. Here`s Nathan Hart. Nathan Hart said he was at the DMV two years ago when someone approached him asking if he was registered to vote. I told him no, because I`m a convicted felon. I`m pretty sure we can`t vote, Hart explain. And he said they passed a law a few years ago. Now you can. I said, are you sure because it`s a pretty severe felony. He said worst case scenario, you fill it out, you get an ID card or you don`t. These are now two of the individuals facing up to five years in prison right under prosecution.
STERN: That`s exactly right. Although I am skeptical that these cases will even reach a trial or result in any kind of conviction because the law they have been charged with violating requires prosecutors to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that each voter knew that they were violating the law and knew that they were voting illegally.
How in the world can prosecutors prove that when these defendants can show the jury the voter registration cards that were sent to them by election officials? I do not know. HAYES: Right. So, you have to have the intent here, right? You have to have some corrupt intent, which is to get over, right? To do something you know you`re not supposed to do. And it`s so wild to imagine like the endless conversations we have about Donald Trump`s intent, like what`s his state of mind about the various and sundry things he`s done that appear flagrantly lawless to have these people who, almost by definition, because they — I mean, unless you know, they`re lying.
Like, they all went in. They all got their cards, did the right thing that they would be people prosecuted for this in this country at this moment when Donald Trump is like chilling in his retirement home.
STERN: And these folks, some of them are basically neighbors of Donald Trump down in South Florida Of course, DeSantis picked heavily Democratic counties for his first round of arrest to make a point. And look, this is all about making a point, right? This is about chilling voting rights for former felons. It is about putting a target on the back of every ex-felon and telling them if you even try to participate in our democracy, you may get dragged away by a SWAT team at 6:00 a.m.
HAYES: Mark Joseph Stern who`s been writing about this for Slate, thank you so much. That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. Anya, David Ryan, I love you. If you`re still watching, go to bed. “ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT” starts right now. Good evening Alex.