Updated
Summary
Fallout after New York hits Trump with sweeping fraud case adding to Trump`s legal crises in D.C., Georgia, Florida and New York. Trump made amazing claim in an interview that he could declassify documents just by thinking it. Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen joins THE BEAT with Ari Melber to talk about Donald Trump and his children hit with a massive case of fraud in New York. The acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson joins THE BEAT with Ari Melber to talk about the attacks on science and truth roiling in U.S. politics.
Transcript
ARI MELBER, MSNBC ANCHOR: Evil crises that are coming together for Donald Trump right now. It`s been a week of setbacks for the former president. The big one is the New York attorney general taking him to court, demanding sanctions, a quarter billion dollars specifically, in penalties. Attorney General James saying that the Trump family and organization have committed massive and repeat fraud.
And we`re going to walk through this. You may have heard the news yesterday, and a lot of it focused on the law, her powers, what she`s doing. There hasn`t been as much time to really make sense of the evidence in her 220-page filing. And so just briefly here to start the broadcast I want to do that with you.
Look at Mar-a-Lago, which of course is in the nexus of multiple legal issues, and we`ll get to those tonight. But in the New York case, which deals with Donald Trump`s fraud in more than one place, Mar-a-Lago down in Florida has an actual property value of $75 million. What you see on the left there is what Letitia James says is, all things considered the rough actual truth, a value of $75 million.
Now you might notice when you look at this bar chart here that it seems really kind of low, and that`s because of what you`re about to see. To leave room for the Trump claims you really have to build a giant chart where the Trump Organization made claims legally binding that this was worth $739 million. That`s not a bit above or double. It is, as you see, about nine times more than, according to the case, what the AG says it`s worth.
So it is false as best as anyone can tell. It certainly has never fetched $739 million or anything close to that in a sale. What you`re seeing on your screen in simple form, which I`m leading the newscast with because it`s this important is a piece of evidence for dismantling the Trump Organization. If this evidence holds and a judge signs off on it, then you could see Trump and his family banned from running any corporation in New York.
OK. Consider that exhibit A. Now let`s go to Trump Park Avenue apartments. A unit there reportedly worth about $750,000. Again, you`ll notice, and I`m showing you this because it matters, and we didn`t even have time to get to it in our breaking coverage yesterday, it looks like a sliver. You might say, well, why is that, Ari? Well, we`re going to show you why. Trump claimed it was worth not double, triple. No. $50 million.
All right, you`re starting to get the pattern. We`re not going do this forever, but let me show you 40 Wall Street. You don`t have to ever set foot in New York to know that Wall Street is a coveted area. And yes, you can sell things for a lot of money there. The idea that a building goes for $220 million, I mean, in most towns in America, that`s unfathomable right there. So that`s a lot of money. That`s what it`s roughly worth according to the new case.
But Trump pushed and pushed it up to half a billion or more, $530 million. Now, each of those instances I showed you broken out, those are some of the more egregious. I will say as a matter of precision and fairness there are other examples in the case that are not quite that strong or egregious. But when you count them up it`s not five or 10 of those or even 20, where a company might plausibly say to the judge, hey, you know, we do a lot of deals. This is 20 out of 1,000. Yada-yada.
No. This new case putting this heat on Trump and his family has about 200 alleged instances of this kind of fraud with receipts, and that`s part of why the worst news for Donald Trump isn`t even in the AG`s office. It`s in the other offices that she sent to. Criminal referrals for this kind of chicanery if you will. To the feds in SDNY, that`s in the New York federal office, and the IRS.
So that is just a sampling of the evidence. Yesterday we showed you a lot of the law, what this means. Tonight we lead with the evidence and we go to someone who knows exactly how to sift this evidence, Asha Rangappa, former FBI special agent and counter intel, a lawyer, and a Yale University lecturer.
Welcome back.
ASHA RANGAPPA, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Thank you, Ari.
MELBER: I mention those, and our producers were working to take the data out of the case and turn it into those charts. And we can put one or two of them back up.
RANGAPPA: Sure.
MELBER: It seems to me that a lot of people would give you kind of a pass, and people could become jurors, if you round up 10 percent, 20 percent, and a lot of people think about a car dealership like, OK, say, zero to 60 in four seconds. It was really six seconds. OK, is that fraud? This looks like James has evidence that the habit was not just a little roundup, but what you see here really ripping people off and lying to the government.
RANGAPPA: Yes, Ari, and I think what the complaint makes clear is that there were very deliberate financial shenanigans and misrepresentations and fuzzy math that`s going on.
[18:05:13]
So with the Mar-a-Lago building, for example, I`m not a forensic accountant, but I was able to follow generally what was happening behind the scenes based on what`s being described in the complaint. So Mar-a-Lago is a huge building, and basically Trump, in acquiring that, acknowledged that it could not be used as a residential property, right? And so this is why it is a club. And he personally signed off on this with the city.
And what`s happening is that, although he`s operating it as a club, he is valuing it as this enormous residential property. He also signed off certain easements to the city, which basically gives him a tax break but then creates other restrictions on what he can do with the property, which also lowers the value but then doesn`t acknowledge that those restrictions exist when he`s, you know, having the property valued for purposes of his financial statement.
And so he`s also double-dipping because he adds for Mar-a-Lago what he calls a brand premium because it`s operating as a club even though he`s listing it as a residential property. And so the net effect of all of this is that this gross inflation, I think your chart makes it clear, and more than that, that these representations are then being used to obtain loans.
MELBER: Yes.
RANGAPPA: To get insurance at different rates.
MELBER: And Asha —
RANGAPPA: And so the fraud —
MELBER: Asha.
RANGAPPA: Yes.
MELBER: It ain`t even my chart. Like it`s his numbers.
RANGAPPA: That`s correct.
MELBER: Go ahead.
RANGAPPA: Yes, so it`s — you know, it`s not just the false valuation. It`s the use of them for — to obtain financial benefits. And I think the big takeaways, if you look at all of these different valuations are a few things. First that Trump is directing, you know, the people under him to make sure the value of all his properties are going up. The second is that they have two sets of books that for many of these properties they`re getting official appraisals that are telling them that they`re valued at a low amount.
MELBER: Right.
RANGAPPA: And then representing that they`re valued higher. So the knowledge is there. And then in addition, his children, there`s a whole section at the end that they, too, are personally involved in creating these valuations and certifications as well.
MELBER: Right. I mean, look, everyone`s had a couple of years of COVID practice. If you don`t know you have COVID and you go somewhere and you become a super spreader, you go to work, whatever, you don`t know. Once you find out you have it, that changes everything, and you don`t find it out by thinking about it or, you know, sniffling. You get a test or you get a medical professional.
Where am I going with this? What you just said seems to be so damning for them in the case and what a judge is going to look at which is they`re actually told here it`s X and then they go out and represent it as Y. And that`s fundamentally different, right, than someone who wants to defend and say, I didn`t know, I put a number on it. OK, so sue me. Well, they are suing him. But sue me, I really didn`t know what it`s worth. It`s all a crap statement until you get — a lot of Americans have experienced in the homeowners market, right.
You say, well, what`s it worth? We don`t know. No, it`s the opposite. You knew exactly what it was estimated as and then you wildly lied about it.
I want to get your response to Laura Trump speaking out today. Here she goes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA TRUMP, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sadly this has become common place for all of us in the Trump family. This sort of treatment and investigation and these allegations that always end up being false. And you know what? We`re holding up fine because we know that there was no wrongdoing, that — you know, nothing happened here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: I would love for you to contrast or walk us through the difference between what she`s saying on FOX and as sort of, you know, a sort of a Maga snowflake bubble, where you`re not going to be triggered, you`re not going to be pressed, and shout-out to anyone who needs a bubble. You know, you can live in a snowflake bubble if you want. How do you contrast that to the fact Donald Trump fought ever answering any questions about the facts or whether there was anything wrong or what the details were.
And then James won, dragged him in and he had to plead the Fifth Amendment for criminal liability rather than just saying, again, it`s my — when I cover a case, I love to cover both sides. I love to be able to say, and their response is this.
[18:10:02]
We still don`t have much of a detailed response from him because he pled the Fifth. How do you contrast Laura`s PR message in the bubble to Donald Trump`s inability or unwillingness on the advice of counsel to even speak about what he was up to?
RANGAPPA: Well, I think what you say under oath matters a lot, and there are — in the complaint, it states certain questions to which Trump, you know, claimed the Fifth. And these were pretty direct questions. For example, did you direct Weisselberg to make sure that the value of your properties increased every year? I plead the Fifth. I mean, that`s an easy no if you didn`t do it, right? And so — and that goes to the heart of his own participation and knowledge of the scheme.
I think it`s also just the sheer number of properties. This isn`t even just a one-off of, you know, just Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago. This is across, this is a pattern and practice of how he`s doing it. And Ari, don`t forget that just a few years ago, New York dissolved his charitable foundation because of financial mismanagement. That they were taking in charitable donations and spending it on portraits and appropriating it. And that was dissolved. His children actually had to go to financial remedial training to learn how to become trustees. Obviously that didn`t work very well.
MELBER: Can you — that raises the deeper question. Can you be taught to be charitable if it`s not in your nature?
RANGAPPA: Yes. It`s more that they don`t understand how to be fiduciaries to act within the rules. And I think it`s a microcosm, when you read this complaint it`s really a microcosm of what we saw over four years in the government. If you`ve been operating your whole life where you can just make up your own rules and live in your fantasy world, this is what got translated into the Oval Office. And trying to bend laws and reality, institutions in order to create what he thought it should be as opposed to what our norms and laws and Constitution says it is.
MELBER: Yes. I think you lay it out very clearly, and it`s why the big story here, the pressure on them and a very real case, and the Fifth, which can be used as an adverse inference in a civil case. All really striking.
So, Asha, thanks for being here.
RANGAPPA: Thank you.
MELBER: Absolutely. We have some updates on many stories tonight. If you look on your screen, we`ve been teasing two special guests. We have new details coming out of the January 6th Committee, including the news about Clarence Thomas` wife, and conspiracy theories versus science and facts.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is our special guest tonight. We`re going to get into the truth. Why he says you can acknowledge more than one truth, but you need science in government, not religion. And a lot of other interesting stuff in his new book. So I`m telling you, he`s here.
But first, an individual who got a shout-out from the New York attorney general as she unveiled this massive case. The one and only Michael Cohen is here with receipts and more. Next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: I think they took my will. I found out yesterday. I said where is —
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Am I in it?
TRUMP: I think they took my will. Could cause a lot of problems —
HANNITY: No. I know.
TRUMP: That could cause a lot of people, a lot of problems if that gets published and people that won`t be so happy or maybe will be very happy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:18:03]
MELBER: Donald Trump is facing this legal heat from several directions, and we are joined, as mentioned by Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney and Trump Organization vice president. I`m going to tell you exactly why he`s here and more, but let me also tell you everything that we`re balancing. You have the attorney general making this massive fraud case. We`re going get to that because as mentioned Mr. Cohen in public to Congress and here at times on THE BEAT has laid out some of the case that led to that.
But we`re actually going to begin with the story we haven`t hit yet tonight, and that is Donald Trump`s other big problem down in Florida around what are, according to the Justice Department, stolen top secret documents. Now, Trump has Truth Social and speaks in certain ways, but he gave a more lengthy television interview which he actually has not done lately. You may remember when we talked about some of the fissures over at FOX News? He hadn`t done one of these in a while.
So he spoke with Sean Hannity making a range of claims. Some might work for PR but were not 100 percent true. Others were bizarre and would probably get dunked on in court, like the idea that a president can formally declassify top secret documents which can involve human intelligence, spies lives or deaths. A president might be able to do that just by thinking it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: A president has the power to declassify.
TRUMP: Correct.
HANNITY: OK. You had said on Truth Social a number of times you did declassify.
TRUMP: I did declassify, yes.
HANNITY: OK, is there a process? What was your process to declassify?
TRUMP: There doesn`t have to be a process as I understand it. You know, there`s different people say different things, but as I understand it, there doesn`t have to be. If you`re the president of the United States you can declassify just by saying, it`s declassified, even by thinking about it. Because you`re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you`re sending it, and there doesn`t have to be a process. There can be a process, but there doesn`t have to be. You`re the president. You make that decision. So when you send it, it`s declassified. We — I declassified everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[18:20:05]
MELBER: Now, there was a lot sandwiched in there, I`m going to play just the key part. And if you were doing an interview and you were independent or objective, you would ask them, I don`t care what part in there or anything else, there`s so many (INAUDIBLE) this, you would follow up and say, did you just say that thinking is the way you declassify, which raises the question how would anyone else outside your brain know? Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you`re the president of the United States you can declassify just by saying it`s declassified, even by thinking about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Think about all of it. We are joined as mentioned by Michael Cohen. He is the most of “Mea Culpa” podcast and the author of the soon-to-be released “Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice Against His Critics.” That`s coming October 11th.
And Michael, as you may know, sometimes the books as we mentioned do OK here. So people can go learn about your book. Welcome back to THE BEAT.
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Good to see you, Ari.
MELBER: We`re going get into all of it, more than one thing, including the case that I mentioned you sparked. But first your reaction to what we just heard from the president.
COHEN: You know —
MELBER: Or former president.
COHEN: Watching him on Hannity, it actually saddens me because it`s so ridiculous. I mean, he was always odd and he was always different. He was an enigma. But this is just nuts. And there`s no way to describe it. I`m thinking it, therefore it is. You know who has that sort of ideology? A king, a monarch, a dictator, a supreme leader. I thought it therefore I can do it.
It almost reminds me of like in the “Ten Commandments,” Remember, Ramses, you know, so what has been said so it shall be done? He`s able to declassify things with his mind. It`s truly an amazing thing. I personally think that there`s something wrong.
MELBER: Well, shout-out to the Ramses reference.
COHEN: Yes.
MELBER: You know. Sunday school perhaps.
COHEN: That`s correct.
MELBER: When you did work for him, did people play along with this kind of thing? It`s almost like — to pick a less important example — someone thinks they ordered coffee, the waiter says, no, you only ordered eggs. You didn`t order coffee, but some waiters go, oh, I must have not heard your order because that`s how they kind of smooth through it. And a little things that may not matter, is that the style or does this remind you of how he was when you worked for him?
COHEN: No, this is whole another level of insanity. Yes, he would turn around and say, you know, to the girls, get me a Coke. And he would yell it out. He wouldn`t turn around and try to do it through telepathy. Right? I mean, that`s basically what he`s saying here. Through telepathic powers. I have the ability to declassify top secret documents and it`s really scary that he`s even able to find time on anything other than his own Truth Social network within which to pass this nonsense.
MELBER: Then they went back and forth about the FBI. He has been all over that issue, at times really speaking in ridiculously offensive or even dangerous ways. But then he tries to as you know, to sometimes bring it back. So here`s an exchange about the FBI.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I really believe that most of the people within the FBI out of the top groups, most of the people at the FBI they probably voted for Trump. I don`t want to have anybody hurt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: What did you hear there?
COHEN: Again, Donald Trump playing the victim. Boohoo, right? Let`s all sit there and cry. The FBI raided him with a valid warrant. What else did he say about the FBI? I think they may have planted the documents. I mean, this is the stuff that, oh, he doesn`t care if they`re Republican or Democrats but if they obviously voted for me I don`t want them to get hurt. He doesn`t care about anyone. It`s all, again, self-serving. Everything that he does is self-serving.
The fact that he took documents, that`s a crime. But then he didn`t take them. But he did. And they do a warrant, they take it, then they find all of these blank jackets of top secret information. We know one is definitively nuclear. We don`t know which country. For all you know it could be Israel and it could have been given to Mohammed bin Salman. Now I`m hypothesizing.
MELBER: Yes, you don`t know that.
COHEN: Of course not. But I`m just using it as an example. You know why I don`t know? Because nobody knows. And the point is we`re not supposed to know.
MELBER: Right.
COHEN: That`s the whole point. We`re not supposed to have this conversation, Ari, about what top secret documents this lunatic took from – –
MELBER: Yes.
COHEN: You know, from the White House against the Presidential Records Act, hid in the basement. We`re not supposed to be thinking about things like this.
MELBER: Right, because exactly, it`s a level of danger that you shouldn`t have from someone who had that job. The last one on this, and then we`re going to turn to James. And I really want to get your latest views. But at one point Hannity starts to wonder whether Trump was suggesting that he, Trump, secretly had Hillary Clinton`s e-mails. I know it sounds hard to follow. After you watch this clip it won`t be any easier to follow, but here we go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There`s also a lot of speculation because of what they did the severity of, the FBI coming and raiding Mar-a-Lago. Were they looking for the Hillary Clinton e-mails that were deleted but they are around some place? Were they looking for the —
[18:25:05]
HANNITY: Wait, wait, you`re not saying you had it?
TRUMP: No, no, they may be saying — they may have thought that it was in there.
HANNITY: That you did. OK.
TRUMP: And a lot of people said the only thing that would give the kind of severity that they showed by actually coming in and raiding with many, many people is the Hillary Clinton —
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Did he land that Hillary Clinton jujitsu or not?
COHEN: No. It`s typical Donald Trump deflection. It`s never me. It`s not the fact that I gave back a box, I had my lawyer attest to the fact that there were no more at Mar-a-Lago. They somehow figure out that there is documents still there. They get a valid search warrant. They execute it through the FBI. They come in, and guess what? They took documents that he wasn`t supposed to have on top of that, in unsecured location.
And this is a real serious problem because it jeopardizes our national security. And that`s a problem when you have a president that truly doesn`t want to be the president.
MELBER: Right.
COHEN: He wants to be the king.
MELBER: Now next we`re going to turn to why Donald Trump is probably more upset with you than just about any other person.
COHEN: Sorry.
MELBER: From the new case that was unveiled yesterday. We have our shortest break of the hour. I don`t think anyone is going leave on us right now, Michael.
Michael stays. We have a one-minute break, and then we get into the James case, and the shout-out she gave Mr. Cohen. We`re back in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LETITIA JAMES, NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: I will remind everyone that this investigation only started after Michael Cohen, the former lawyer, his former lawyer testified before Congress and shed light on this misconduct.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Attorney General James citing Michael Cohen, my guest. One point she was making is that she`s following the facts and you unearthed some of them, rather than the attack that somehow she set out to do this. Now that she`s landed this case yesterday, and she says it started after your testimony, what do you see in it? Does it follow the leads that you provided?
COHEN: Absolutely. I mean, the problem that prosecutors have always had as it relates to Trump, the Trump Organization, is that there are only a handful of executives in the place, and they never were able to figure out, it`s a privately held company. Regardless of whether it`s a billion or as he would say, it`s $10 billion. It makes no difference.
Understanding how the Trump Organization works, the methodology that`s used in the inner workings of the company, that`s what I provided, along with, more importantly, documentary evidence. Remember, the 2011, `12, `13 personal financial statements I provided them the road map into what they were used for and that I believe is part of the basis of this 200-page indictment.
MELBER: Yes. A road map, and you mentioned that there`s a finite number of people. Mr. Weisselberg now convicted. Here`s what else she said. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES: Mr. Trump and Mr. Weisselberg would meet to review and approve the final statement every year. Mr. Trump made known through Allen Weisselberg that he wanted his net worth reflected on the statements to increase. A desire Mr. Weisselberg and others carried out year after year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Does that match your experience?
COHEN: Yes. And I discussed it with them at length and I provided them documentation, including the personal financial statements. That was obviously important for them, because what it did is it gave them the ability to take the documents that I provided, not just to them, but to all the various different congressional committees, the House Oversight Committee that it was posted live on, and what they did is they tracked it back.
For example, the craziness about his triplex apartment. 33,000 square feet, the highest price ever, ever attained. In fact, the whole building is not worth that amount of money, and it`s never seen that type of money. They then did what Seven Springs, they did with Mar-a-Lago, they did it with virtually every single property, including his golf courses. So that`s the big problem.
MELBER: When you see her act, where others have not, including the D.A. case, which famously got to Weisselberg, but not beyond. Do you think it`s something different about James, do you think she has been better because as you just mentioned, you`ve cooperated with more than one probe?
COHEN: Right. I think Letitia James is fantastic. I think she is an incredible attorney general, and an attorney general that I wish every single state in this country had. I actually wish Alvin Bragg had been a little more Letitia James, though, I`m going to give Alvin a little bit of leeway, as we now in October have the case against the Trump Organization. And you and I have talked about this that you cannot separate the Trump Organization from Donald.
MELBER: Well, it`s not Weisselberg Org.
COHEN: It`s a Trump Org.
MELBER: So, at a certain point, the authorities have to get in there. Final question to you knowing him well, where do you think his head and emotions are at today, when he sees the prospect that he could really be booted from New York business, not him or his kids able to run any business here?
COHEN: Yes, it`s not — it`s not the business that bothers him. It`s the loss of what will be the money. And one of the things you talked about at the beginning is that she`s seeking $250 million. That`s not accurate. What she said was the baseline of 250 million, knowing the documents the way I do, and knowing exactly the fraud that was going on, I see the number between 750 and a billion.
MELBER: Because you think that the penalties that she`s attaching to what has happened would actually go up?
COHEN: Yes. This is a baseline.
MELBER: Interesting. Mr. Michael Cohen, it`s not me saying it, it was the attorney general leading this probe saying, look, it`s not whether they like you or not, it`s that they found you and the evidence you`ve provided credible which kicked off her investigation, which now is a big deal. So, you`re a person back in the news. I appreciate you coming on THE BEAT, sir.
COHEN: And I thank her for it, I really do. And I thank you.
MELBER: Yes, sir. Mr. Michael Cohen. Coming up, a right-wing activist. Justice Thomas`s wife, Ginni Thomas is going to speak to January 6th committee. But first, I got to tell you, we`re going to get into so much space. Neil deGrasse Tyson on truth, science, and some politics on THE BEAT. Next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, ASTROPHYSICIST: If the alien came across the galaxy, and couldn`t land a damn spaceship, I don`t want to meet the aliens, these stupid aliens, all right?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:37:19]
MELBER: This is the news we deal in facts. And what I`m about to tell you is a fact. I`m joined by one of our favorite guests, the acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent decades exploring the mysteries of our universe and also explaining them in ways that we can understand.
Now he`s turned his attention to some of the problems in one planet on the universe — inside our universe, Earth. The new book, Starry Messenger urges us to really think critically and objectively about what we`re up to and whether we can keep this planet we have here. He writes, we sow hatred of others fueled by what we think is true, or what we want to be true without regard to what is true.
We`ve lost all sight of what distinguishes facts and opinions. We lob grenades at one each other — at one another when we could be sharing beers in pubs. Neil is here. Shout out to drinking together and finding facts. Great to see you.
TYSON: Actually, I lean towards wine, but beer is the —
MELBER: You wrote beer.
TYSON: Yes, I did write beer. I totally wrote beer there.
MELBER: We know you`ve been so many things, but you`re clearly taking the scientific rigor that people love about you. And I think sometimes learn from you and applying it to some really big topics. Why this now? What do you want us to think about?
TYSON: This book has been gestating within me for decades. Just — in fact, I can remember my first thoughts when I was scientifically literate, early middle school. I`d look around and I`d see adults saying things making decisions, commenting, holding opinions. It was like, what? Where did that come from?
Have you thought about it this way? Do you understand the data, the statistics? And it`s been gestating within me. And then the book was birthed whole. And I realized all of these parts of society could benefit from a dose of a cosmic perspective, just what does that look like from above.
But also, an infusion of science, literacy, and critical thinking, in a way where your argument that you thought you held firmly, and you thought you were opposite the person you were fighting with. In fact, from another perch, you could learn that you both actually agree more than you disagree.
Or you`re both equally wrong, and you`ll realize it together, OK? Either those are progress in any kind of — between any warring factions in modern society.
MELBER: Yes, you mentioned the faction. Some of this goes back a long way. People debating what is God, who`s got the right belief system. I mean, we — that`s old school stuff, right?
[18:40:00]
TYSON: Yes, that is however this country the United States was quite the fascinating experiment in that regard. It`s whatever is your personal truth, it`s welcomed, but you can`t tell someone else — you can`t require someone else have your personal truth. And they gave religion freedom to express itself in all stripes, in all varieties in this country. That`s remarkable.
And so — but that`s a particular kind of truth in the chapter truth and beauty. I go into this in great detail, but I had to split the word truth into three parts. Because there many people who, especially religions, they really attach themselves to the word truth, and I don`t want to take that away from them. So, there`s a personal truth? Is Jesus your savior? Is Abraham your — you know, in your — in your lineage?
Is Mohammed your last savior? Is ancestor — or your ancestors watching you? These are cherished beliefs. And it works provided that if you have that belief, you don`t then rise to power over laws and legislation and have those laws and legislation force others into that same belief system.
So, the pluralistic feature of this country, I think, is something that can and should be cherished. So, how does science distinguish — oh, wait, slip in a political truth. You know what that is?
MELBER: What`s that?
TYSON: It`s what becomes true simply because got repeated so many times. Our brain has this failure mode. Well, we think it`s a success mode, where you hear something so many times, your brain says must be true. But the scientific truth is what you established to be true, through experiment observations, repeated, rarefied.
And when that is done, it is true whether or not you believe in it. And if you`re going to base laws and — on something that has to apply to everybody, it seems to me the objective truth should be your primary motive.
MELBER: So, you say objective truth just then. Let me read from you on objective truth in the book. Objective truths of science are not found in belief systems. They`re not established by the authority of leaders of the power of persuasion, nor are they learned from repetition or gleaned from magical thinking to deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate, not to be ideologically principled. Explain that important split.
TYSON: That`s one of my best sentences in the book. Good finding there.
MELBER: Well, we found it. We found it. But explain that split because you do something that I think is very important. That sometimes belief and ideology, especially the way we`re tribally organized, what you also write about becomes its own test.
If you`re down with this goal, you got to be down with this other stuff. And then before you know what that means, being down with things that at one point you might have known were questionable or not true and now, you glom on to them.
TYSON: It`s a portfolio. It`s a portfolio belief.
MELBER: Walk us through that.
TYSON: Well, no, because science, one of the things that does best is unpack things that are otherwise glued together that you think all have to roll in one — in one coherent shape. You unpack and say, no, this works but that doesn`t.
Know I`m not going to ride with that, because you`ve attached it to this, but I`m not going to go with you on that. Because I`m thinking about this. What happens is, we like following leaders. And they — we let them do our thinking for us. And I can`t embrace that.
MELBER: No, that wouldn`t seem like your thing.
TYSON: I don`t mind leaders, but that doesn`t mean I have to agree with everything the leader says, OK? And so, what all it means is if you pose an argument, that might be holes in that argument, and you need to be a little bit open to that. And I don`t mean holes that I`m writing, you`re wrong, it could be a hole that, well, we`re both wrong. And here`s a new place we can agree on. And that`s when you go out and have a beer.
MELBER: So, I have a big question for you, because you tackle ethics, and there are different competing systems of ethics historically on Earth, many of them have involved some appeal to a higher power. This power or this God creates these ethics. Are their ethics in the nonhuman rest of the galaxy?
TYSON: I don`t know. You know, ethical — ethics as well as just sort of morality. I can tell you this, whatever ethics or morality we agree to have, as society progresses, and by the way, the ethos of today was not the same as 50 years ago, or 100 years or, you know, there would have been another day when I was — would been a slave, OK? And so, the ethics and morality evolves, and it evolves according to sort of rational discourse about what is right and what is wrong.
MELBER: Are there permanent ethics on Earth do you think? Can you point to any that are permanent?
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TYSON: I don`t know what`s permanent, but I do know that if you think something is permanent that`s usually not a good sign. To get you attached to it. And then as the world moves on, it could have a different outlook on that. I`m old enough to remember the Sunday newspaper had a section called the women`s section. That was sort of ethically the right thing because what a women do, they`re at home.
And in that section, where recipes and coupons and all the things` women did at home, and nobody — nobody critiques that for decades. And finally, we get into the 1970s, and the moving frontier of the second wave, women`s lib movement, and all that change.
But it took that long to do it. You needed an entire civil rights movement to happen first, and then it was — well how about the women. And that, so, I will not accept something as eternally true. Given that we continue to mature in this world.
MELBER: We are living in a time of unparalleled technological advancement. And yet we`re saddled by all of this misinformation and stupidity. We`re seeing more of the galaxy, I believe, tell me if I`m wrong — than we`ve ever seen in previous generations.
You write, ranked by distance, sight is very important. The farthest thing visible to the human eye is a twin of our own Milky Way, the Andromeda —
TYSON: Andromeda.
MELBER: The Andromeda — see I knew I need help. The Andromeda Galaxy —
TYSON: Name for the woman saved by Perseus in Greek legend. Andromeda.
MELBER: Well, there`s a J. Cole song she don`t want to be saved. But that`s (INAUDIBLE) fine —
TYSON: OK. She was about to be consumed by the Kraken. So, I think she wanted to be saved.
MELBER: And you write, It sits two million light-years away, far beyond the stars of the night sky. What does it do for us in English, plain English, that we have gone as a global community, from seeing that far with, as you say, the naked eye to what we`re now seeing, just in the last years farther, through the galaxy and its own history?
What can we as a people, what is someone watching the program? What do they take from that day-to-day life that we can now see more of the galaxy than that?
TYSON: You can take one of the greatest of all cosmic perspectives that exist. And it`s the revelation that emerged mid-20th century, that the atoms of our body are traceable to the crucibles in the centers of stars that then later exploded, scattering that enrichment into pristine gas clouds that then formed star systems with planets, one of which was the Sun with Earth.
So, that we`re not simply in this universe alive, yes. The universe is alive within us. That is a gift of modern astrophysics, to civilization that borders on the spiritual. So, that when you stand out in the night sky and look up, do you say, well, I`m small and the Universe is big, you might say that it`d be true.
But a bigger fact than that is you have made of the same ingredients as those stars. We`re not just poetically, we are literally Stardust. That achieved consciousness to contemplate the extent of the universe in which we live. And so, the greater is that moving horizon. The more of this we find that we are a participant of in the great unfolding of cosmic events.
MELBER: Spending a little time with your mind is a joy. A joy. I think I got part of what you said. Neil deGrasse Tyson. The book, Starry Messenger is in bookstores now.
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[18:53:28]
MELBER: The January 6 committee is back with this public hearing coming next week and now a development. The conservative activist Ginni Thomas married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is speaking to the committee. Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden`s win. She was messaging with them.
She was discussing 29 Arizona state lawmakers and how to get them to potentially help overturn the election set aside Biden`s victory and just choose their own electors. She`s also known to be close with the Trump White House. So, there`s much interest in what the committee is gathering. What if anything, Thomas would say that is responsive or helpful. And what`s going to happen at this hearing.
Now I remind you, you can tune in to MSNBC on Wednesday starting at noon Eastern for special live coverage of the hearing, and then we have our special primetime coverage. The recap to get everyone you see on your screen, myself included.
And most importantly, the highlights which as you`ve noticed, we sometimes play at great length with analysis and fact-checking to understand where this investigation is going into one of the most horrific attacks on American democracy in the Capitol in our nation`s history.
I can also say well, we`re talking about the committee that many are awaiting not only the hearing, but its report and I am working with HarperCollins on one of several options of ways you can get the committee`s report.
It is the January 6 committee report with a foreword that I`m writing about the coup conspiracy. Here is the cover of that book and I can tell you, thanks to you. THE BEAT and MSNBC viewers that book is now the number one book in the country, not just among government reports or nonfiction but among all types of books on Amazon.
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So, thank you for getting it. If you`re interested. Thank you for supporting us. And if you don`t want to get the book or read it, that`s fine too. We will continue to cover what has been something that has yielded measurable interest. You see the interest in the hearings and the evidence and people like Miss Thomas who have kind of said, well, maybe they want to defend or explain why they were going to overturn the election, and then maybe they don`t.
As I`ve told you before when you have to go under oath. Well, that`s when you might find out a lot more about where people really stand. Thanks for watching THE BEAT WITH ARI MELBER tonight. “THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID” is up next.
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JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on “THE REIDOUT” —
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is what I call the bewitched defense that he somehow, he can sort of magically transform documents into unclassified documents.
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