Updated
Summary
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre discusses the White House agenda. The January 6 Committee hearings focus on Donald Trump`s big election lie. How much did Donald Trump con out of his supporters for an election defense fund that likely didn`t exist? Senators hammer out a framework for a new bipartisan gun reform bill.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on THE REIDOUT:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: He said more people voted in Philadelphia than there were voters. And that was absolutely rubbish.
RICHARD DONOGHUE, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY GENERAL ATTORNEY: And I said something to the effect of: “Sir, we have done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Lie, cheat and steal, testimony today at the second January 16, reveals that Trump knew he lost, but tried to steal the election anyway, while cheating his MAGA supporters out of their hard-earned money.
Plus, some are calling the gun reform framework a good first step. That suggests more is coming. Color me skeptical.
We will talk about all of that and more with Karine Jean-Pierre in her first live prime-time interview since she made history, becoming the new White House press secretary.
But we begin with day two of public hearings by the House January 6 Committee, today showing how Donald Trump deliberately launched the big lie to convince his own voters that he won an election he lost, using claims of nonexistent fraud, and then seeking to corrupt the Justice Department, his own campaign team, his donors, and our court system, in an effort to cling to power.
And if you think he cooked up that plan after the election as a Hail Mary because he simply couldn`t accept defeat, understand that Donald Trump went into the election already planning to lie about the outcome, having laid the groundwork for months.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they`re cheaters. When you do all mail-in voting ballots, you`re asking for fraud.
The only way we`re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that.
I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.Get rid of the ballots and you will have a very trans — we will have a very peaceful. There won`t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.
This is going to be a fraud like you have never seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And then, on election night, despite being told by numerous advisers, all die-hard Republicans whose testimony we heard, that it was too early to declare victory since votes are still being counted and the predicted outcome, frankly, didn`t look favorable for him, Trump did it anyway, falsely claiming that the election was stolen.
Today, we learned more about who was advising him to make that claim from former campaign adviser Jason Miller, including this revelation about that individual`s condition at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JASON MILLER, FORMER TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: The mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I did not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president, for example.
Effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying, we won it. They`re stealing it from us. Where did all the votes come from? We need to go say that we won, and, essentially, that anyone who didn`t agree with that position was being weak.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: An attorney for Rudy Giuliani denied he was drinking that night. But we heard Giuliani on tape telling the committee he did speak to the former president several times on election night and in the days that followed.
The increasingly farcical claims by Rudy and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell took center stage in the former president`s mind, despite being told the truth by basically everybody else, from his numbers guys to his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and his own White House lawyers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL STEPIEN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I didn`t mind being characterized. There were two groups of them. We called them kind of my team and Rudy`s team.
I didn`t mind being characterized as being part of team normal, as reporters kind of started to do around that point in time. I didn`t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time.
ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ATTORNEY: What they were proposing, I thought was nuts. The theory was also completely nuts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Even his extravagantly loyal Attorney General William Barr told Trump that there was no fraud, specifically adding that false claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which have since gotten Giuliani and Powell sued, were ludicrous.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARR: I told him that the stuff that his people were shuttling out to the public were bull — was bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED), I mean, that the claims of fraud were bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he has become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff.
When I went into this and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never — there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.
[19:05:13]
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: In fact, Trump`s claims in the immediate aftermath of the election was so bizarre, former FOX News political editor Chris Stirewalt put it this way:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): After the election as of November 7, in your judgment, what were the chances of President Trump winning the election?
CHRIS STIREWALT, FORMER FOX NEWS DIGITAL POLITICS EDITOR: After that point?
LOFGREN: Yes.
STIREWALT: None.
The idea that through any normal process in any of these states — remember, he had to do it thrice, right? He needed three of these states to change. And, in order to do that, I mean, you`re at — you`re at — you`re better off to play the Powerball.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Despite knowing full well that his claims were a lie, Trump still began marketing the snake oil of a stolen election, starting from his first post-election interview, an interview Bill Barr referenced in his testimony.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Everybody said, this is over. I`m telling you, at 10:00, everybody thought it was over. And then the phony mail-in started coming in, Maya.
But just so you understand, I got 74 million votes. It was over. And then mail-in started happening and glitches started happening. This election was rigged. This election is a total fraud.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And after months of those lies, by January 6, the train had left the station. And millions of Trump supporters had been infected by the big life, with a mob primed and ready to march on the Capitol.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two hundred thousand people that weren`t even registered voted; 430,000 votes disappeared from President Trump`s tally. And you can`t stand there and tell me that it worked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t want to tell you that what we`re doing is right. But if the election being stolen, what is it going to take?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Joining me now is Yamiche Alcindor, anchor and moderator of “Washington Week” on PBS and an MSNBC Washington correspondent, Jill Wine- Banks, former assistant Watergate special prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, and Kurt Bardella, adviser to the DNC and the DCCC.
Thank you all for being here.
Yamiche, I want to start with you.
We did here today at least that Merrick Garland has stated that his prosecutors are watching, they are paying attention to what`s going on. My question is, how much of Capitol Hill, particularly Capitol Hill Republicans, are paying attention to this?
We know FOX News actually did carry this today. And we know that`s what plays in their TVs in their offices. If significant numbers of Republicans were watching, what`s been the reaction?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, NBC NEWS WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, from my conversations with Republicans today, people are watching.
This was really a black box being opened into the White House, with people really hearing from the people that were closest to President Trump, who were warning him that his lie could not metastasize, and then watching it metastasized.
And you also heard from people, this shrinking inner circle, that basically said, I can no longer be part of this. So I was texting with one Trump aide in particular who had literally traveled to different states, trying to convince people that the election had been rigged. Today, he told me that this really looked like President Trump was — quote — “extremely culpable.”
And also it made him seem as though he`s someone who is now chasing a fool`s dream, that anybody who`s going down this road with President Trump is continuing to really just believe in things that are not going to be happening at all, and that it`s actually pretty dangerous.
I also want to note really quickly that this was also a fund-raising aspect of this. President Trump has become a fund-raising giant. So a lot of the Republicans I talked to pointed out that this is still politically viable for President Trump and the people who are sticking with him to support this lie.
That being said, there are a lot of lies, but I don`t know that they`re going to be a lot of minds changed, Joy.
REID: Of course, because they`re also using it as an excuse to pass restrictive voting laws. The big lie has been helpful for all Republicans up and down the aisle — or up and down the ballot.
But, Jill Wine-Banks, the other thing I think that`s very important to note here — and we sort of got into that a little bit in the open — is that it`s not as if Trump suddenly woke up after the November 3 election and started to believe the big lie. He was already setting up to do the big lie. And, in fact, it`s his history, right? It`s what he does.
He says that any election where he doesn`t like the outcome was stolen. He claimed that it was undocumented immigrants who elected Barack Obama. That wasn`t real. Now, with Hillary Clinton, he was already setting up to say that this election was going to be stolen.
He even said that the election in Iowa, when he lost a Ted Cruz, was stolen. He said, Ted Cruz, that was — that was stolen, that was fraud.
So it is a pattern. So there`s no way that any Republican or anybody, other than, I guess, his voters, could say that this was something new, right?
JILL WINE-BANKS, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: You cannot say it`s something new.
And I think what was shown today was very compelling evidence that proves that he knew that it was a big lie, he knew the truth. And he can`t use his lack of knowledge as a defense in this case.
[19:10:02]
The jury, if there were a criminal case, would be instructed that willful ignorance of the facts is not a defense, and especially when the only person or persons who were giving him the information that it was OK, that he hadn`t lost, was an inebriated Rudy Giuliani and Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, whereas everybody else from his campaign, his attorney general, all of the people that were surrounding him who had a reason to be advising him, who were actual employees, all said, you lost, and there is no fraud.
So it`s not a defense. And that`s very important what they did today.
REID: And, Kurt, listen, Donald Trump was not listen to the people who were tippling on the ripple, allegedly, because he had no choice, and he was desperate. He was doing it because he wanted to, right?
I mean, you go through — let`s go to Bill Stepien, because I think this will — his testimony, to me, was very important, because he came into the campaign when they were already worried they were going to lose. They already had problems. He wasn`t the original campaign manager. Here`s what he said today:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPIEN: I inherited a campaign that was — the day I was hired was, I believe, President Trump`s low point in the 2020 daily average polling against President Biden.
It was a campaign at a low point in the polls. It was structurally and fiscally deficient. I — there was a great deal wrong with the campaign in both of those — in both of those areas. Most of my time was spent fixing the things that could be fixed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And, by the way, this is also the same campaign manager, Kurt — you and I both are very familiar with campaigns — who told, it will be a bad idea to downplay and to get his voters to hate mail-in balloting, because usually mail-in balloting is good for Republicans.
So he sort of dug his own grave by doing that. Your thoughts on the way that this played out today and what we learned?
KURT BARDELLA, DNC AND DCCC ADVISER: Well, I think that the key headline here is that the big lie was nothing but exaggerated clickbait nonsense designed to drive up profit and donations for Donald Trump grifting his own supporters.
The last thing that we saw in this hearing today, when Zoe Lofgren articulated what the committee had found in terms of where the money went that they raised, $250 million, and that none of it went to any kind of election defense fund or any type of voter fraud investigative unit, it tells us that the motive of all of this from day one, the minute that the polls closed in November of 2020, was making money from his supporters, was grifting the die-hard Trumpers, the same way that Steve Bannon grifted his supporters through that build the wall fund that was never used for anything like. That was ultimately found to be a crime.
That`s what this was all about, that Donald Trump profited from the big lie, that everything that we saw, from listening to drunk Giuliani, to ignoring all of his advisers, to ignoring the attorney general, was all about grifting, keeping the grift going forward.
And it`s mind-numbing to me, Joy, that, even now, all this time removed from the election, there are still Republicans who are bending over backwards to try to get this guy`s support, following his lead, keeping him at the top of the Republican Party, despite all the things that we know.
Watching these proceedings, for any Republicans out there who still follows this guy, you`re following drunk Rudy at the same time. Just keep that in mind.
REID: Well, and including — let`s not leave out Bill Barr.
I have to say this. I will go to you on this, Jill. Bill — William Barr is attempting to sort of do a great laundry deal here. He did testify under oath. That`s good that he`s telling the truth and that he told Trump the truth. He did an AP interview in which he said: No, I told him that this was all hunk — it was crazy. It`s not true. It was crazy stuff. It was B.S.
This is what he was saying before the election about mail-in balloting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARR: The mailing out universally of ballots, what I have said is that opens the floodgate to potential fraud and coercion.
We`re a very closely divided country here. And if — people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government. And people trying to change the rules to this — to this methodology, which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion.
Liberals project. The president is going to stay in office and seize power and all that (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I have never heard that crack. And I`m the attorney general.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: This is the, oh, the irony, Jill.
I mean, this is the guy who lied about the Mueller report, who did a fake investigation that`s still actually going on about the origins of the Russiagate investigation, attacked voting by mail, called COVID lockdowns the greatest intrusion civil liberties in American history, promoted the theory of the deep state.
I could go on, but we don`t have the time, Jill Wine-Banks.
[19:15:00]
What do you make of the idea that he then becomes the number one witness so far, as used by the committee, against his boss, his former boss, Donald Trump?
WINE-BANKS: I`m very happy that he`s telling the truth now. I think he owed it to the country to tell the truth when it mattered…
REID: Yes.
WINE-BANKS: … when there was an impeachment going on, when something could have been done that would have barred Donald Trump from ever running for office again.
So, while I applaud his doing it now, I can`t applaud him or hold him to any high standard, because he failed. And he didn`t do his duty as a public servant. He was obligated to do that.
So, better late than never, I guess. But it`s — and, again, it would have been even more powerful if he had testified in person. I would like to see more live testimony, because I know from the Watergate trial that a live witness just has much more impact on a jury than recordings.
REID: Yes.
WINE-BANKS: Even the recordings of the president saying — committing crimes on tape is not as effective as hearing a witness say, this is what I heard. This is what I did.
REID: Yes.
WINE-BANKS: So we need more of that.
REID: And, very quickly, Yamiche, this was Republicans against Republicans. They can`t — no one on Capitol Hill could possibly be saying this was partisan attacks on Trump, right?
ALCINDOR: Well, of course, Kevin McCarthy is saying that.
But, at the end of the day, you have a bipartisan group of lawmakers saying that President Trump did something that no other U.S. president in history has done. And that is to try to subvert the Constitution and stay in power unlawfully.
And I have to also note that President Trump put up this 12-page statement tonight, talking about the fact that this hearing is made up and this committee is unfair.
That tells you that he`s watching. That tells you that he is sitting and stewing, because he realizes that the people that were closest to him are now on live TV with millions of people watching saying that he was lying and that they told him he was lying…
(CROSSTALK)
ALCINDOR: … and the fact he decided to listen to a drunk Rudy Giuliani over people who had been doing this for decades and who were looking at the data.
REID: Where did you put that on, TRUTH Social?
Kurt Bardella, last note here. It wasn`t — today wasn`t bipartisan. It was Republicans. These are Republicans, hardcore MAGA. Bill Stepien is right now working to unseat Liz Cheney, when he`s off maternity leave. Really quick last thought.
BARDELLA: From day one, the number one witness, the star of these proceedings were always going to be the Republicans who testify, the Republicans who give depositions…
REID: That`s right.
BARDELLA: … Republicans in their own words. And that`s just the bottom line.
REID: Yes, there was no Democrats involved. This was a Republican operation.
Yamiche Alcindor, Jill Wine-Banks, Kurt Bardella, thank you all very much.
Up next on THE REIDOUT: The big lie was also the big grift. How much money do you think Trump conned out of his supporters, as Kurt mentioned, for an election defense fund that never even existed? I will tell you.
And Karine Jean-Pierre is the first black woman and the first openly gay woman to serve as White House press secretary.
And there`s another first tonight, her first live prime-time interview since getting that important position. And it is right here with me on THE REIDOUT.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:22:48]
REID: Donald Trump spread the big lie to cling to power in the presidency, but it was also a grift, preying on the wallets of small-dollar MAGA donors.
According to the January 6 Committee, the Trump campaign sent millions of e-mails to supporters about how they needed to step up and protect election integrity, raising more than $250 million. And while they claimed that money was going to the official election defense fund, two Trump campaign staffers testified that the fund did not actually exist.
Instead, most of the money went to Trump`s new super PAC, and some of that money was funneled to the Trump hotel collection. Here`s what Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who took center stage at today`s hearing, said about the big grift.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LOFGREN: We will also show that the Trump campaign use these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn`t use the money for that. The big lie was also a big ripoff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Joining me now is Charles Coleman, MSNBC legal analyst and a civil rights attorney, and Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters.
Thank you both for being here.
I want to start with you, Charles.
Let me play a woman named Amanda Wick. She`s a senior investigative counsel for the House select committee. And they produced this clip which in which she described the money grift. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANDA WICK, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL: The Select Committee discovered that the Save America PAC made millions of dollars of contributions to pro- Trump Organizations, including $1 million to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows` charitable foundation, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a conservative organization which employs several former Trump administration officials, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection, and over $5 million to Event Strategies, Inc., the company that ran President Trump`s January 6 rally on the Ellipse.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: So, Charles, they collected all that money, $250 million.
Trump Chief of Staff Meadows got a taste. We got a little bit that employed some Trump staffers, got them jobs, Event Strategies, the fund-raising company that funded the Ellipse rally.
[19:25:00]
How is any of that legal?
CHARLES COLEMAN, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it`s not, Joy.
And the simple answer is, it`s important to understand that there are a variety of different audiences that the committee is talking to in terms of these hearings. And, obviously, no audience is less important than the Department of Justice.
What they`re doing here — and I`m speaking as a former prosecutor — is, they`re trying to give this — the results of the hearings, as much low- hanging fruit to the DOJ as possible. They want to take away any potential defenses that might scare the DOJ off from a prosecution against Trump.
And it`s important to understand that, sometimes, even though the headline is insurrection, and even though the headline is the Capitol riots, sometimes, it`s the low-hanging fruit that you end up prosecuting someone on. Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.
REID: That`s right.
COLEMAN: In this case, it very well may be the low-hanging fruit of actual felonious fraud that we`re seeing unearthed with respect to this money grab, this multimillion-dollar money grab that the Trump Organization benefited from.
And so they`re pursuing multiple avenues through what we`re finding through the hearings of what`s being unearthed that they`re basically handing over to the DOJ and showing, number one, not only was there nefarious intent. People stood to make a lot of money after what was going on.
REID: Yes.
COLEMAN: And it was very intentional.
And, by the way, I mean, Angelo. I mean, Trump`s entire presidency was in part a moneymaking grift. He made money off of everyone who swiped their card at his hotel that he was leasing from the General Services Administration, meaning us, the federal — the taxpayer.
He just — the golf stuff. He just constantly made money off being president. But some of what he did also was dangerous. It did foment ultimately insurrection. This isn`t even — this is worse than scamming his supporters off build the wall, which his buddy Steve Bannon did.
Let me play a guy named — his name is Al Schmidt. He was the lone Republican member of the Philadelphia City Commission that was overseeing voting, the vote count in 2020. This is what he said today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL SCHMIDT, FORMER PHILADELPHIA CITY COMMISSIONER: After the president tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic, and included not just me by name, but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you can imagine.
That was what changed with that tweet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And those kinds of attacks were amplified by all of right-wing media, not just on Twitter.
There`s a whole right-wing media ecosphere that you follow that contributed to what turned out to be not just violence on January 6, 2021, but also violent threats toward anyone who stood in the way of Trump staying in office.
Your thoughts?
ANGELO CARUSONE, PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA: Yes, without a doubt.
I mean, so, the thing that keep in mind is that the seeds of doubt in the election were sown well before the whole Stop the Steal effort, even Election Day. I mean, 6 percent of Donald Trump`s posts in 2020 were about the election being stolen.
And almost all of those were before Election Day. And the right-wing media would amplify that concern, just like we heard in the previous segment about Bill Barr, right, casting doubt on all these — on the mechanisms that were letting people vote.
I mean, they were building the foundation for what later became the scaffolding for the attack on January 6. And I think what you get to is actually the incentive structures that get created here, whether you`re identifying a target like Donald Trump did in those tweets, or even talking about the big grift with the $250 million.
What you create is our new feedback loops and behaviors. One of the things I found really disturbing — and the committee didn`t bring it up to date, but it`s relevant — is that not — only once you sort of built the muscle memory — muscle memory in for people to raise money off that, one of the things that we saw is, a year after the 2020 election, there were still 46 separate organizations and entities, many of which were actually Republican candidates, that were running ads on Facebook targeting people to give them donations, all based on the election being stolen, right?
So you actually create the conditions where others then take the ball and run with it. You build and inspire new feedback loops, either to lie and amplify misinformation, or actually to operationalize that misinformation by targeting individuals, be they public officials or otherwise.
REID: And, Charles Coleman, how is any of this legal? It sounds like a pyramid scheme.
COLEMAN: In a lot of ways, it`s not, Joy.
And I think that the committee and what we`re going to continue to see from the committee is that they`re doing a good job of connecting the dots directly to Trump. What we have seen previously from this administration, and particularly from Donald Trump, when he was president, if you look back at the first impeachment hearings, there was this sort of plausible deniability of like, I didn`t know that this was that wrong, or I didn`t know that this was that bad.
They are taking all of that off of the table. And so, like I said, when they`re sort of trying to hand over this package of evidence to the DOJ, they`re doing so by eliminating so many different excuses that this campaign, that this former president and anyone associated with him might try to offer around sort of not knowing.
[19:30:01]
They are really hammering home this intent. And this was a brilliant sort of piece to unearth with regard to the level of money that stood to be made, because that takes away any question around how intentional this was or was not.
REID: Yes.
How can it be that — I mean, FOX News is culpable too, right, Angelo. I mean, the — and not just them. You have got a whole — as I said, it`s a whole ecosphere. But you do have a major network that is named by name in these hearings?
CARUSONE: Yes, with good reason.
After the election was called by FOX News and other networks, there was actually a couple of days where FOX News did not challenge the results. And then, all of a sudden, on a dime, a few days after November 7, 2020, they then spent the next two weeks doing 774 — just over that two-week period, 774 segments about the election being stolen, conspiracy theories about the voting machines switching votes, would report fake reports about these trucks coming in with ballots, ideas that Joe Biden was paying kickbacks to people.
I mean, they took every lie from the right-wing fever swamps, and they laundered it through their national brand in that two-week period. The landscape would be very different and January 6 would have been very different if FOX News did not spend that two-week period in November 2020 actively and promoting — promoting misinformation and flat-out lies about the election being stolen and helping incentivize and legitimize, at least for that audience, the right wing, the attacks.
REID: Yes.
And, by the way, let`s not forget an entire documentary produced by their biggest and most popular host lying about January 6 itself.
Charles Coleman, Angelo Carusone, thank you both very much.
Still ahead: Senators hammer out a framework for a new bipartisan gun reform bill. What`s in and what`s out? And will it actually prevent more mass shootings?
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:36:31]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID HOGG, PARKLAND SHOOTING SURVIVOR: As we gather here today, the next shooter is already plotting his attack, while the federal government pretends it can do nothing to stop it.
No matter if you are a gun owner or a Republican or not or Republican, we all agree we must act to stop this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Over the weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in hundreds of marches across the country to push lawmakers to take action on gun violence in the wake of recent mass shootings in places like Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
Almost fittingly for a country with an average of a mass shooting a day, there was even a moment of panic at the march in the nation`s capital, where a gun scare caused people to momentarily run for safety.
And over the weekend, there were 12 more mass shootings across the U.S. However, there is news that this bipartisan group of senators has negotiated a framework of new gun legislation. It includes incentives for states to implement red flag laws, enhances background checks on gun buyers under 21 years old, closes the boyfriend loophole on domestic violence, and provides more funding for mental health services and school safety provisions.
What`s not in the framework? A ban on semiautomatic weapons or high- capacity magazines, raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy an assault weapon, and universal background checks, all overwhelmingly popular ideas.
While this framework already has received the support of the 10 Senate Republicans needed to bypass any filibuster, it should not be surprising that none of them are facing voters this year. In fact, four are retiring. In other words, no Republicans are taking political risks. No, no political Republicans are doing so to save your kids from gun violence.
There has been some positive reaction to the framework from groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, with some calling it a good first step, which suggests that something more is coming, which it probably isn`t, unless Democrats were to get 60 reliable Senate votes of their own.
Joining me now is Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida and a Pulse nightclub shooting survivor in Orlando, which happened six years ago yesterday.
And I know that anniversary is still raw for you, Brandon. So thank you for being here.
And I want to get your take, as a survivor of a massacre, the thing we`re trying to prevent. What do you make of this framework?
BRANDON WOLF, EQUALITY FLORIDA: Well, it is a difficult day. But I appreciate you continuing to have this conversation.
I think a few things can be true at the same time here. It is true that, for the first time in decades, a sizable group of bipartisan U.S. senators have signaled that they might be open to doing something after the mass murder of innocent children. That is true.
And it is thanks to advocates and activists who have relentlessly organized in their communities. You heard from David Hogg there, and that they have assured politicians that they`re not going anywhere. It`s thanks to parents of gun violence victims who bravely bared their souls over and over again for the world to see. It`s thanks to survivors like my friends and others who have courageously shared the stories of the worst days of their lives.
Those who have been organizing and mobilizing are to thank for the fact that we have a framework to discuss at all.
But it`s also true that this framework is entirely insufficient and not even close to a finish line. Forgive me if I take the assurances of Republican politicians with a bit of a grain of salt, but I just want to see the receipts. I want to see a bill. And I want to see the yes-votes to go along with that bill.
And, also, forgive me, because I am not a Republican member of Congress, which means it`s not my job to carry water for their proposals that fail to address a majority of what Americans broadly support.
[19:40:03]
This framework does not solve our Swiss cheese approach to background checks. It doesn`t raise the age of purchase to 21. It doesn`t implement a national red flag law.
If this framework becomes law, don`t get me wrong, it will save lives, but it will not solve our crisis. I`m an advocate…
REID: Yes.
WOLF: … which means, first and foremost, it`s my job to fight for the needs of my community, to fight for policies that will make our lives better and safer.
And that`s why I`m still here and I`m still fighting for us to do much more than this framework.
REID: Right.
I mean, I think about the fact that it is — as you said, none of the Republicans who are involved this or taking any risks. And a framework — we have seen frameworks before that never became legislation and that people bailed on when it came down to actually voting. So, as you said, we need to see. The proof is in the votes.
But we have also seen — like, some of the solutions they want are to do with schools, hardening schools, and in some states giving teachers access to having weapons in schools. We had that just pass in Ohio. But you and I both know that, in my former home state, in your home state currently of Florida, you just had, at a charter school in Parkland, the principal had guns in the Parkland charter school, same town that the Parkland massacre took place, left the guns around.
And thank God they weren`t found by students, but they could have been. And there`s no training really involved in the Ohio law. So are we taking this seriously enough legislatively, in your view?
WOLF: Well, the answer is no.
And we have known that for a long time. Congress has for a very long time coasted from crisis to crisis, they have sort of waited us out, telling us it`s too soon to talk about it, and then proposing sort of absurd solutions to the crisis that aren`t going to do anything and probably won`t go anywhere, waiting for the news cycle to move on to something else.
Arming teachers is a terrible idea. And it`s also an experiment that I`m just not interested in testing on young children. We don`t know that it would solve any of these crises. We do know that it would make gun manufacturers extremely wealthy by pumping more guns into the system.
And I have said this before, and I will say it again, that if we continue to double down on this idea that our only answer to the gun violence crisis in this country is to harden our environments, to put more police officers on more street corners, more guns in more hallways and classrooms, then we have resigned ourselves to the fact that gun violence is unavoidable.
And that`s simply not true. We can solve this crisis. We know what we have to do to get there. We have the tools to do it. We are lacking political willpower.
REID: Indeed.
One of the most powerful voices for gun reform in this country, Brandon Wolf, always appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much, my friend. Really appreciate you.
WOLF: Thank you.
REID: And up next — cheers — Karine Jean-Pierre joins me in her first live prime-time interview since becoming White House press secretary to talk about the January 6 hearings, gun reform and so much more.
Do not miss it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:47:34]
REID: There are so many things going on in this country right now that we need to talk about.
Fortunately, for us, we have the perfect guest for that.
Joining me now in her first cable news interviews taking on her new role, the Biden administration`s brand-new, history-making and amazing press secretary, the great Karine Jean-Pierre.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: It is so great to see you.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, that`s so kind, Joy. Thank you. And it`s so great to see you.
REID: We both have different hairstyles, so…
(LAUGHTER)
JEAN-PIERRE: I know, since the last time we saw each other. This is how it goes. This is how it goes.
REID: We got to keep them guessing.
JEAN-PIERRE: I love it. I love the spring-summer do. Looks good.
REID: I love yours as well.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: Well, let`s get into it.
So, these January 6 hearings took place today.
JEAN-PIERRE: Yes.
REID: And I`m quite sure the White House was watching.
What is the administration`s take on what should be done afterwards? Because, obviously, this is not a — this is not a legal proceeding. This is really something that`s going to perhaps result in ideas for changing the way our system is to make sure that it doesn`t happen again.
JEAN-PIERRE: Well…
REID: Is there a White House official position on what should be done to stop this happening again?
JEAN-PIERRE: Well, Joy, let me just first say, the president has been very clear about his support for the vital work of this bipartisan Select Committee on January 6.
He has said over and over again and we have said that day was one of the darkest day of our democracy. Our democracy was attacked .Our law enforcement officers were attacked. And so he thinks it`s really important to make sure that the American people remembers what happens. And, also, we — I would reiterate what Kevin McCarthy said a few days after that attack, that we cannot sweep this under the rug.
As far as what happens next, that is up to the Department of Justice. As you know, Joy, one of the things, one of the major issues that we saw during the last presidency, as you covered very closely and watched very closely, is how much the Department of Justice was politicized.
And that is what we saw from the last president. This is a president — President Biden has been very clear about making sure that we give back the independence of the Department of Justice. That is one of the reasons he selected Attorney General Merrick Garland, because of his loyalty to the Constitution and to — and to the law.
And so that is what is important here. But we leave that to the Department of Justice.
REID: Well, we know that one of the reasons that President Biden said that he ran for president, he was in — was the Charlottesville racist march and attack there and the violence that broke out there.
[19:50:05]
We have just recently seen in the state of Idaho a group of white nationalists arrested who were preparing to potentially attack a pride march. I mean, this is Pride Month around the country.
There is still an extreme threat of white nationalism and white nationalist domestic terrorism in the country. Does the administration feel that the Justice Department has been proactive enough and that enough is being done, including by DOJ and by lawmakers, to protect the country against this threat?
JEAN-PIERRE: So, Joy, he has complete confidence in Merrick Garland and the work that he`s doing at the Department of Justice. Again, it`s an independent agency, and we have to leave that to be — continue to be independent.
And you`re right. We have seen an increase of domestic terrorism, white supremacy in this country. There`s been — it`s been reported. We have heard that from the Department of Justice.
And when the president — to your point, when the president decided to run, he talked about the soul of the nation. He wrote an article around Charlottesville. And I know we talked about it many times on your show “A.M. JOY,” which I love and miss, but “A.M. JOY,” and those days afterwards.
And we talked about how devastating that was. And he talked about how devastating it was to see what we saw marching in the streets of Charlottesville. So, we still — we understand there`s still a lot of work to do. We still have a long way to go. He has talked about that. And so he`s going to continue to fight the fight.
But, as it comes to the — relates to the Department of Justice, they are independent. And we`re going to leave it as that. We`re not going to do, again, what the last president did by politicizing it.
REID: And I will note that, just for our reporting for our audience, I mean, there is reporting now that a lot of the violent intent is shifting from the MAGA cause and the — quote, unquote — “Stop the Steal” cause to attacks on LGBT Americans. That`s become a fixation. So I know that is something that is of concern around this country.
But I want to talk about another concern. And it kind of relates to also what we saw happen in Buffalo, that mass shooting, these anti-woman sort of iterations that we`re seeing, not on the violence — just on the violent side, but on the legislative side.
Roe vs. Wade is about to fall.
Let me play for you what Elizabeth Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren, had to say about what she would like to see the administration do about that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): It starts with making sure that there`s more access to medication abortions.
Right now, there are restrictions on the availability of that drug that are not medically necessary. They`re politically necessary. OK, let`s get rid of those.
Another part that we can make sure is that people who receive Medicaid for their medical care get the full range of services that, by law, are supposed to be available to them, including choice of provider.
And that means enough of these states deciding Planned Parenthood can`t operate within their borders.
REID: Yes.
WARREN: We want the administration to explore, what can be done with federal property within the states that are hostile? How about if the federal government looks into the possibility? Can they have clinics there?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And I said legislative side. I meant Supreme Court side.
Any support inside the White House to do any of the things you just heard?
JEAN-PIERRE: I don`t have anything right now to preview or talk about specifically as Senator Warren just laid out, which is someone we truly respect here and we have worked closely on many issues this past year-and- a-half.
Look, this is an issue when it comes to a woman`s right to choose, a woman`s right to decide when she can start a family, it is an important issue to this White House. It is an important issue to this president. It is an important issue to the vice president. And we`re taking this very seriously.
We — clearly, we all saw the leaked document that came from SCOTUS. And so it`s something that we are watching very closely. And the president has — as it relates to women`s health care and things that can be done, the president has asked his HHS agency to look at different things that can be done. I can`t speak to the specifics of what the senator laid out.
But the president believes in codifying Roe v. Wade. He has constantly — consistently asked Congress to act. And he`s going to continue to speak to that.
REID: What`s — I mean, Supreme Court decisions are coming out on not just abortion, but guns, religion, climate change.
And we know that the wife of one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, was deeply and intimately involved in the insurrection. Does the White House believe that the Supreme Court still has credibility?
JEAN-PIERRE: So, look, I can`t speak to those reportings about the Supreme Court justice and their spouse. That is something that SCOTUS, the Supreme Court justice has to speak to directly. It`s not something that I can speak to from here.
[19:55:04]
What I can say is that the president is going to continue to speak out and speak up as it comes to Roe v. Wade. He is going to continue to speak out as it comes to making sure that we really deal with the public health epidemic as we look at gun violence, which is a very — it`s tearing up our communities. It`s tearing up our schools. It`s tearing up in the situation that happened with Buffalo with the grocery store, which is unbelievable, unfathomable…
REID: Yes.
JEAN-PIERRE: … to think about when people are doing every — things that we do every weekend, to go to the grocery store.
And so these are the things that the president is making a priority. We have to remember one last thing, is that the president has taken more executive actions on dealing with gun violence and gun reform than any other president at this time of his presidency.
And so that shows you how much he`s made this a priority…
REID: Yes.
JEAN-PIERRE: … and how serious he is about this.
REID: Well, we will have to have you back.
JEAN-PIERRE: Absolutely.
REID: Karine Jean-Pierre, congratulations again on the new gig. You`re doing a great job.
And happy Pride. And great to see you. Hopefully, I will see you in person sometime soon.
(LAUGHTER)
JEAN-PIERRE: Happy Pride.
REID: It`s great to see you.
JEAN-PIERRE: Thank you, Joy. I appreciate you.
REID: Thank you.
JEAN-PIERRE: Hopefully, I see you in person next time.
REID: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much.
Don`t go anywhere, everybody.
We will be back right in a moment with my colleagues Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O`Donnell, Ari Melber for a full team recap of today`s dramatic January 6 hearing.
Stay with us.