Updated
Summary
The January 6 Committee gets set for its next public hearing. Steve Bannon loses his fight to delay his contempt trial. The White House makes a major announcement on reproductive rights. The ways in which the Supreme Court`s decision may be influenced by religion are examined.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on THE REIDOUT:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. STEPHANIE MURPHY (D-FL): We will lay out the body of evidence that we have that talks about how the president`s tweet on the wee hours of December 19 of “Be there, be wild” was a siren call to these folks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: The marshaling of the mob.
Tomorrow, the January 6 Committee is expected to show us how Trump`s inner circle coordinated with right-wing militia groups to put some muscle and violence behind their efforts to overturn the election.
Also tonight: Steve Bannon is a total loser in court in his last ditch effort to delay his contempt trial. No, Steve, there is no executive privilege for podcasters.
Plus, a major announcement tonight from the White House on reproductive rights.
But we begin tonight with the American white power movement once relegated to fringe or extreme, but which has now taken center stage in American politics, and which has declared war on democracy itself.
Democracy is a threat to white supremacy and vice versa. And we`re about to learn a lot more about the role such movements and groups had on the coordinated bid to agitate crowds into storming the Capitol on January 6. Like Donald Trump himself, these far right extremist groups are united in racism, sexism, and a thirst for violence.
Also like Trump, they`re a symptom of the collective freak-out on the right over the two-term presidency of Barack Obama. The Oath Keepers officially launched in April 2009 in the wake of the country electing its first black president.
Here`s their leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, Yale Law School grad and expert grifter. He apparently earned that eye patch by dropping his own gun back in 1993. He and fellow members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the Capitol attack. The citizen militia group claims to be defending the U.S. Constitution, but it`s actually one of the largest anti-government groups in the U.S.
Back in 2014, Oath Keepers, among others, poured into Nevada in defense of rancher Cliven Bundy, who would defy the federal government by letting his cattle graze on federal land without paying the proper fees. Bundy led an armed standoff against federal agents in the town of Bunkerville, where the agents had arrived to enforce the law and confiscate the cattle.
When the situation threatened to get violent, the government backed down and returned the cows to Bundy. The Oath Keepers capitalized on this victory, even though they reportedly fled the scene, angering other militia members. The group made headlines again in Ferguson, Missouri, when armed Oath Keepers held surveillance posts and roamed the streets during the unrest connected to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer.
The Proud Boys emerged years later, founded in 2016, the year Donald Trump ran for president, by the founder of VICE News by the way, Gavin McInnes, sporting some pretty blatant racist views. Here is their most latest leader who took over from McInnes, Enrique Tarrio, counterprotesting during a gathering to commemorate the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.
That`s right. He`s the guy for Derek Chauvin. He was also sent to jail for burning a Black Lives Matter flag that he ripped off a D.C. church. But what really put the Proud Boys on the map was when Donald Trump refused to condemn white supremacist groups during a presidential debate, and instead issued an unambiguous call for the Proud Boys to be ready.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: The Proud Boys made it crystal clear they had heard the message, with stand back, stand by becoming both a rallying cry and a logo for the extremist group.
Committee members say these two groups led the assault on the Capitol, an eerie connection further solidified by video of a meeting between Tarrio and Rhodes in a Washington, D.C., garage just 24 hours before the Capitol attack. Both groups will have a starring role in tomorrow`s January 6 hearings, as federal prosecutors reveal more on their ties to Trump`s inner orbit or even to Trump himself.
The AP reports that, after Oath Keepers stormed the Capitol, their leader called someone on the phone with an urgent message for Trump. This is based on what another extremist told investigators. New accusations also include an alleged Oath Keeper bringing explosives to D.C. on January 6, along with allegations that a co-defendant kept a death list with the name of a Georgia election official on it.
Tomorrow, we will hear from a former Oath Keeper spokesman, Jason Van Tatenhove, who will appear as a witness. He`s expected to speak about the group`s propaganda efforts and radicalization over the years, including how Rhodes capitalized on conspiracy theories to build membership and to make the money roll in.
Joining me now is John Wood, former January 6 senior investigator who`s now an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, Sandi Bachom, journalist and documentary filmmaker, and Kathleen Belew, associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.”
[19:05:10]
Thank you all for being here.
Mr. John Wood, I want to start with you. Welcome to the show.
You were an investigator on the committee. Give us a sense of what you expect them to do with the information they bring out about these violent groups. And do you expect them to attempt to connect those groups directly to Donald Trump or to his inner circle?
JOHN WOOD, FORMER SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL TO JANUARY 6 COMMITTEE: Well, I think that`s what people are going to be looking for, is how much of a connection there is between these domestic violent extremist groups and Donald Trump and his supporters.
I don`t want to raise expectations too much. I don`t know that there will be evidence of a direct coordination between them. But at the very least, I do expect that there`s going to be evidence that Donald Trump either knew or should have known of the existence of these groups and that these actions could inflame the situation because there were these radical supporters of his that could potentially turn violent.
REID: And, Ms. Bachom, you were filming a documentary. So I know you have got some video that you brought along with.
Tell us what you saw. We`re going to roll some of that as you talk about what you saw. You were near or with these groups, or at least some of them, on the 6th.
SANDI BACHOM, DOCUMENTARY JOURNALIST: Yes.
REID: What did you see?
BACHOM: This is Roger Stone being escorted back to the Willard Hotel with the Oath Keepers, which was unusual because the Proud Boys have always been his security for years. And I was really surprised to see them. They escorted him from the Willard and then back to after I filmed his speech.
I felt a speech at Freedom Plaza here.
REID: OK, what we`re seeing here is them enter the Willard Hotel.
BACHOM: Yes.
REID: We know that was sort of a war room of sorts for these the — I guess the planning of the insurrection.
Did you get a chance to talk to any of these Proud Boys/Oath Keepers? Did they say anything to you of note?
BACHOM: Well, I kind of know Enrique.
This was a third rally that most people are not aware of after Trump lost. My documentary deals with the two months after Trump lost. And he — like Rudy said, just say we won. So, on November 14, there was a rally called the Million MAGA March.
And thousands and thousands of people showed up with the Trump flags, insisting that the election had been stolen, because they had been feeding them this big lie for at least a year.
REID: And did get the sense that…
BACHOM: Yes, so there were two rallies.
REID: Yes, go on.
BACHOM: Go ahead.
REID: Well, did you get the sense in talking to Enrique and when you speak to him, that they believe themselves to be essentially an army for Trump, that they are Trump`s army?
BACHOM: Yes, there`s one — one part. They kept going. The second rally was on December 12.
And as the rallies continued, they became increasingly more Proud Boys and violence. In the December 12 rally, there were four stabbings involving the Proud Boys. So they were really ready for a fight by the 12th. But they kept going out to the Washington Monument, to the Mall and praying like they`re going to war.
And at one point, they say: We`re here to stand up for Trump against this stolen election, so we can do our work for the next four years.
So, yes, they were his army.
REID: And we know they were trading messages about also providing protection for at least one congressman, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson, who used to be a White House physician when President Obama was there. It`s a little bit scary to think about
Kathleen Belew, we know that based on the Southern Poverty Law Center`s numbers, their stats, white nationalist hate groups grew 55 percent in the four years that Trump was president. That`s according to the SPLC. We know that, since President Obama was inaugurated, you had at least four major hate groups that were formed, the 3 Percenters, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys, who`ve been involved in some level of violence, each of them.
Talk a little bit about the connection between the existence of President Obama and the growth of these groups.
KATHLEEN BELEW, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: So one mistake that we have made over and over again, from the inception of the white power movement in the late 1970s, is to put much more emphasis on the differences between these groups than on viewing this as a broad groundswell of people.
So I appreciate the impulse to sort of sort these out and trace trajectories. Certainly, the election of our first black president was a huge factor in recruitment in these groups, as has been COVID, as has been the George Floyd protests and BLM. All of this instability to what some of these folks think of as their traditional way of life has been an enormous soapbox for recruitment.
But the headline here is not only the ties between Trump`s inner circle and these groups, but their ties with one another. It is through major fact- finding efforts like the commission that we get the big picture of what`s going on.
[19:10:08]
And the historical archive tells us that that`s likely to be a broad groundswell and possibly one that`s not even in command of Trump, even though perhaps he wished it to be, but one that is a guerrilla army that is interested in the overthrow of America.
REID: Let me ask you this, because the thing that to me separates these groups, particularly the Proud Boys, from previous groups, going all the way back, as you said, to the 1990s, to the Clinton era, is there an overt act — participation in politics.
The Proud Boys have essentially taken over the Miami-Dade Republican Party. Enrique Tarrio was the president of Latinos for Trump. So there`s a — is that unique, that these groups are now overtly not just anti-government, violent, but also politically involved and aligned with a political party?
BELEW: That`s not new, because we do have precedent there in things like David Duke running for president and statehouse races. We have other white power members running for office going back into the `70s and `80s.
I think what is new is the very real possibility that they might win this way, the idea that extremist groups could rise to power within our electoral system, and slowly move that system away from democratic elections and towards an authoritarian system.
Now, here, we want to be thinking about things like the BuzzFeed report that came out last fall that found that 28 sitting elected officials have donated or have held memberships in the Oath Keepers, which is, just to be clear, an unregulated, illegal private army. We shouldn`t say militia. It is not any kind of official body.
It is an unregulated, illegal private army. And it is one that has been embraced by some in our — in our elected office.
REID: And Mr. Wood, you are running for office.
BACHOM: Can I say something…
(CROSSTALK)
REID: Oh, please do. Yes, please do.
BACHOM: I just wanted to say a very interesting thing is that, after January 6, the Proud Boys, the white supremacists, the Groypers, Nick Fuentes, Patriot Front, which was reconstituted after Charlottesville — I filmed them in Charlottesville — they went into the anti-mandate movement.
And they started showing up at these marches. And one thing that I heard that was so chilling, pursuant to what you were saying about the political insinuating, one of them said that they were coming — he said, well, I just have a message for CNN, he said. We`re coming for your school boards.
And the next week, the Proud Boys started disrupting the school boards. And they had these signs saying something about the Nuremberg codes. And they use all this what I call fear porn. And so they have just morphed into whatever the next movement is, but they`re all the same people.
But it`s even more dangerous now, because they`re going into — the Patriot Front was at the March For Life, and they were recruiting young men, asking them if they were against abortion, family values. So that was something to watch out for.
REID: Wow.
Yes. No, it`s sobering stuff.
I mean, Mr. Wood, you are running for office in Missouri, which is a state that is not unaccustomed to white nationalist movements, Klan and others. How do you deal with this as a political matter? Because, at this point, there is a portion of the Republican base that is aligned with this, obviously.
This group was intending in — on January 6 to try to reinstall Donald Trump as president by force. They had a specific Republican agenda. And the Republicans have been not really excited about tamping them down, because they see it as at least a portion of their base. What do you do about that?
WOOD: Well, part of what`s so frightening about what`s going on in our political system today is that it`s — some people are accepting it as normal that violence is being glorified in politics.
And you can see that in my race for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, where the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, the former governor, Eric Greitens, recently came out with an advertisement in which he knocks down a door, goes in and throws a smoke bomb, and is carrying a long gun, and says he`s going to go RINO hunting, referring to Republicans in name only.
So he`s glorifying violence against members of his own political party, no less. And so this is very dangerous. And I`m not saying — I`m not equating what he`s doing to necessarily white nationalism, because I`m not saying it was a racist act.
But that advertisement clearly glorifies violence. And that`s really wrong and dangerous. And we need leaders who are going to help unite us, not pit us against each other and glorify violence in our political system.
REID: And, Kathleen Belew, this is called fascism generally, right, when you have a movement that is both political and violent, and also racist and misogynist, because Eric Greitens — I don`t know what his racial views are, but he certainly is dangerous to at least the women that have been in his life, allegedly. He denies it. But that is the allegation.
[19:15:11]
How much — are we not alarmed enough about the fact that we do have an active fascist movement that`s taken hold in our country?
That`s for you, Kathleen.
BELEW: We are not alarmed enough.
There is no level of alarm that is big enough for this moment. We are at a crucible. And we really — there`s only so many times we can raise the alarm. People need to take action in their communities. People need to think about how they can confront this problem.
It`s bigger than the January 6 commission, although it matters very much how we tell this story. This is a problem that is in our schools. It`s in our libraries. It`s in our communities. It`s in our grocery stores. It`s at our Fourth of July parades. This is everywhere. And this is all of us. And the time is growing short.
REID: Amen to that.
Thank you so much, John Wood, Sandi Bachom, and Kathleen Belew. Thank you all.
Up next on THE REIDOUT: If Steve Bannon thought that by finally agreeing to testify before the January 6 Committee, he could avoid a contempt trial and a possible two-year prison sentence, well, a judge has set him straight on that today.
The REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:20:59]
REID: It was a bad day in court for America`s most infamous pro-Trump podcaster, Steve Bannon.
A federal judge would not delay Bannon`s contempt of Congress trial and rejected his defense that he thought he was covered by executive privilege. The podcast host, who was at one time and adviser to the former president, but had been nowhere near the White House for years, suddenly and dramatically offered to reverse course and testify to the January 6 Committee on the eve of his day in court.
The offer was accompanied by a letter from the twice-impeached former president, rescinding his claim of executive privilege, while also totally complaining, completely coincidentally, I`m sure, that the committee isn`t presenting anyone to defend his honor.
That purported claim of executive privilege is not valid and never was. Even the former president`s attorney went to the — with the Mariah Carey route, “I don`t know her,” confirming in an interview with the FBI last month that the former president never invoked executive privilege over any particular information or materials and provided no basis for Bannon`s total noncompliance with the subpoena.
Prior to today`s hearing, prosecutors pulled no punches, dragging Bannon`s change of heart. They called his sudden wish to testify not an effort to fulfill his obligations, but — quote — “a last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.”
Meanwhile, in his ruling that Bannon`s trial can move forward next week, Trump appointed Judge Carl Nichols ruled out all sorts of novel defenses Bannon wanted to present, including the executive privilege canard, leaving Bannon`s attorney asking a court, what is the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses? I mean, come on.
Joining me now, Barbara McQuade, University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney, and Kurt Bardella, adviser to the DNC and DCCC.
And, Barbara, I will not insult you by asking whether or not it is possible for a podcaster to get executive privilege years and years after he left the White House. I will just move on to what the judge said.
Well, actually, Justice Department prosecutor said: “Well, the defendant`s reported desire to testify does not erase his past contempt.”
By saying he would testify, does it have anything to do with helping Bannon out on this contempt charge?
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: No, Joy, I think this is all a gimmick.
The Justice Department correctly labeled it as an opportunity and a desire to just try to erase the crime he committed back in October of 2020 — 2021, when he refused to testify pursuant to a subpoena. A witness doesn`t get to it say a week before his trial on criminal contempt is to start, oh, now I will testify.
And this letter from Donald Trump that says he is now waiving executive privilege is, as you said, a made-up defense. He never had a privilege. If there was one, it wasn`t covering Steve Bannon. And even if there were, it would have been outweighed by the committee`s interest in investigating January 6.
So this was just a last-ditch effort to feign cooperation in an effort to confuse the jury in his trial next week, and the Justice Department has seen through it. We hope the judge will too.
REID: A gimmick? Steve Bannon? No, say it ain`t so.
Kurt, you know this guy. I mean, look, he — Steve Bannon is either like a really good guesser, or he`s like the Christopher Rufo of archvillains. He`s like a Scooby-Doo villain, announcing all of his plans publicly before they happen, right? I mean, that`s his strategy, right? Like, this is what we`re going to do to Critical Race Theory. Let me just tell you what we`re doing.
This is what we did. Let me play this. This is Steve Bannon on January 5, the day before the insurrection. Here he is on his podcast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It`s going to be moving. It`s going to be quick.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Well, so, which is it, Kurt? You know this guy.
Is he a really good guesser, or is he the Christopher Rufo of Scooby-Doo villains?
KURT BARDELLA, DNC AND DCCC ADVISER: I think it`s the latter, Joy.
And it`s typical of this arrogance that he exudes, this feeling that he is above the law, that he is smarter than everybody else, that he can outplay this system, that he cannot maneuver everybody. And now it`s kind of catching up to him here, as we see this last-ditch desperate effort to try to pretend like he would cooperate.
[19:25:00]
Listen, it`s not just the fact that he ignored the subpoena, that he didn`t testify for the last year-and-a-half. It`s also that he didn`t turn over any documents, any e-mails, all the things that the subpoena would have required. He`s not actually going to cooperate. He`s never going to cooperate.
Steve Bannon is the type of guy — and I think Eric Swalwell put this best last night when he was talking about this. This is someone who interviewed Bannon as part of the impeachment proceedings. And he said, interviewing Steve Bannon is like interviewing the Joker. That`s what you`re going to get from someone like Steve Bannon.
This is someone who will never act in good faith. And any time he does anything, we should all just be screaming as loud as we can, it`s a trap, because it usually is.
REID: Yes, like the Joker, except less interesting.
Here, this guy is so, as you say, Kurt, arrogant.
But, Barbara, I want to put this to you, because between saying all hell`s going to break loose and then describing in detail, it`s going to be quick, it`s going to move this way, this thing is going to happen, it`s not going to go like you think it`s going to go, he said that on his podcast the day before the insurrection.
He then also, two nights before, reeled back a little bit on the 6th — he was trying to actually bail Enrique Tarrio on the 4th of January out of jail, where Tarrio had been placed because he had stolen that Black Lives Matter sign.
Why would this guy want to bail this particular person, a leader of the Proud Boys, out of jail? And it kind of makes no sense. And then why would he then turn around and say it`s going to all break loose? He may not be the brightest bulb in the fixture, but it does sound like he is a material witness of some kind, right, Barbara?
MCQUADE: It does.
What happened at that Willard Hotel war room I think is really what`s crucial now to the January 6 Committee and to a Justice Department investigation. One option that the Justice Department has is to convict him at this trial, and then use a grand jury subpoena to make him tell his story at a grand jury.
There, they can compel him to testify by either serving him with that subpoena and, if he were to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination, they could use, use immunity to force him to testify.
So that`s the way they treat mobsters. That`s the way they should treat Steve Bannon.
REID: Yes, it seems logical.
Let`s play Representative Zoe Lofgren, who is a member of the January 6 Committee, ruling out this ridiculous request for Bannon to go live with the committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): I expect that we will be hearing from him. And there are many questions that we have for him.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Would it be a public hearing, or would it be behind closed door?
LOFGREN: Ordinarily, we do depositions. This goes on for hour after hour after hour. We want to get all our questions answered. And you can`t do that in a live format.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Kurt, what might have been in have wanted to do with a live hearing moment?
BARDELLA: Oh, we have no question.
If Bannon were to get the form of a live hearing, he would use it to just make a complete mockery of the process. He would use it to attack the committee, trying to undermine the credibility of the committee and its members. He would lie. He would do everything he can. Basically, he would turn his committee hearing into one of his podcasts, I suspect, which is why Congresswoman Lofgren is so right that that`s not going to happen.
That`s not the way that this works. Everyone knows who works in investigations that you never just throw witness out there live without having pre-vetted them in the first place. And when you`re dealing with someone like Steve Bannon, you know he`s not a good faith factor.
REID: Yes.
BARDELLA: You know that he`s a liar. You know that, frankly, he is a criminal if not for the pardon that his benefactor gave him.
They`re not going to put him out there like that.
REID: And, by the way, a criminal who literally bilked Trump supporters with a fake build the wall scam. He bilked Trump`s own fans, and they still like him.
Let`s do a quick turn here, Barb. Lindsey Graham has now been ordered to testify in front of the Fulton County special grand jury in this Trump election probe. Wow. He must testify on August 2. What does that mean? What do you think?
MCQUADE: Well, like all the rest of us, he is compelled to provide testimony to a prosecutor who is seeking it in — with a subpoena. He has no special privileges. He has no special treatment just because he is a senator.
A judge has found that he`s a material fact witness here because of the calls he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. And so I expect he will have to testify. I think he`s tried to use some political bluster to get out of it. But I think the law is going to make him show up.
REID: Yes.
And, Lindsey, sorry, senators, much like podcasters, do not have executive privilege either. You have to testify, buddy.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: Barbara McQuade, Kurt Bardella, thank you both very much.
Still ahead: The Biden administration offers a tiny, tiny glimmer of hope on women`s reproductive care, as conservatives on the Supreme Court steadily chip away at the once-sacred separation of church and state.
More on that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:34:17]
REID: It`s been more than two weeks and six religiously conservative Supreme Court justices upended 50 years of precedent and ripped constitutional rights away from American women.
Late this afternoon, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services took a dramatic step toward protecting the last vestiges of women`s rights. Secretary Xavier Becerra issued new guidance to hospitals across the country that, under federal law, they must provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk, adding that federal law on emergency treatment supersedes state laws barring abortion without exceptions.
This is just one small step in the wake of a decision that has plunged the country and the future of reproductive rights into total chaos. Take, for example, Pennsylvania. Late Friday night, the state House and Senate passed a bill that would ask voters to amend the state Constitution to declare that there is no right to abortion in Pennsylvania.
[19:35:08]
The bill must pass the legislature in two consecutive sessions before it goes to voters as a referendum. That`s right, women of Pennsylvania. They`re coming for you too, if you let them.
In Virginia, recently elected Republican Governor and probable presidential candidate Glenn Youngkin said he was looking into doing the same, telling CBS he thinks he can pass a 15-week ban.
On the other end of the spectrum, there were two critical rulings. In Utah, a district judge preliminarily blocked the state`s ban on most abortions, siding with Planned Parenthood. And another Minnesota district judge issued a permanent injunction, finding that a number of the state`s laws restricting abortion access, including a waiting period, parental notification, violate the state Constitution.
In New Jersey, the state`s attorney general launched a privacy strike force to protect women`s personal health data and reproductive rights.
In Michigan, more than 750,000 citizens signed a petition that would insert permanent protections into Michigan`s Constitution for abortion and reproductive health services, including miscarriage management, birth control and IVF.
The petition delivered close to double the amount of signatures that the state requires for ballot initiatives and is the most ever collected in the state.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, where a trigger law that prohibits abortion in nearly all circumstances was reinstated on Friday, a New Orleans gynecologist was unable to prescribe a medicine to a patient because the pharmacy could not be sure that it wasn`t being prescribed for an abortion, even though they were assured that it wasn`t. The medicine in question is commonly used to facilitate the implantation of IUDs and helps induce labor for women who are pregnant.
In Texas, where there`s a total ban on abortion, a pregnant woman who was ticketed for driving in an HOV lane, suggested that the Supreme Court`s decision granted her access to the lane because her fetus was a human being and therefore she should not be cited for breaking the rules. She is fighting the citation. And well she should.
A Texas House legislator tweeted that he would introduce legislation that would clarify that discrepancy. I wonder how that`s going to work. Can any woman just claim that she`s pregnant? I mean, how will the cops make sure, ask for a license, registration and a positive pregnancy test?
Back in Maryland, a French pharmaceutical company is asking the FDA for permission to sell a birth control pill over the counter. Approval could come next year. But the move is sure to anger anti-choice activists, who ultimately believe that contraception keeps God`s will from happening.
A doctor in California is proposing a floating abortion clinic in federal waters off the coast Gulf of Mexico as a way to maintain abortion access for women in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama.
Friends, this is what chaos looks like, chaos brought to you by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. On Sunday, President Biden told reporters that he`s considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access, even though the White House has said it doesn`t seem like a great option.
Let`s just be honest. Nothing the White House is considering could or would reinstate the protections once afforded to women under the court`s prior Roe v. Wade ruling.
And you know what makes this even worse? The court`s capricious, ahistorical and dubious legal justification sure does look like a pretty thin cover for an agenda that belongs in Sunday services, not in the highest court of the land.
And that is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:43:06]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO): The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.
That is not how our founding fathers intended it. And I`m tired of this separation of church and state junk. It`s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Tired of it, are you now?
Well, Lauren Boebert may sound like she`s preaching from outer space, but comments like those are no longer fringe in the Republican Party. As “The New York Times” points out, the religious right has long supported conservative causes, but this current wave seeks more, a nation that actively prioritizes their particular set of Christian beliefs and far right views, and that more openly embraces Christianity as a bedrock identity.
And while it may seem new, it is an effort that has been under way for decades. A former leader of an evangelical group has said that he recruited and coached wealthy volunteers to wine, dine and entertain conservative Supreme Court justices while pushing conservative positions on abortion, homosexuality, gun restrictions and other issues.
That group became a part of the Liberty Counsel, whose chairman told Politico that he knows of nothing like that, that happened in the past. The group is also facing additional scrutiny after their vice president, Peggy Nienaber, was recorded by a livestreamer self-described as an independent journalist saying she has prayed with the justices.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
PEGGY NIENABER, VICE PRESIDENT, LIBERTY COUNSEL: I run a ministry behind the court.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you have a church behind the court? Can I have your card?
NIENABER: It`s not really a church. We`re a ministry center for the justices.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow. What does that mean? You pray with the justices?
NIENABER: Yes. We`re the only people that do that.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
REID: The woman speaking did not know she was being recorded at the time. She originally denied to “Rolling Stone” magazine that she had made those comments, but after their story was published, Nienaber acknowledged her remarks and conceded she has prayed personally with Supreme Court justices.
But despite speaking in the present tense on the livestream, Nienaber: asserted: “My comment was referring to past history and not practice of the past several years.”
[19:45:07]
The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. And the Liberty Counsel`s founder, Matt Staver, strenuously denied that the in-person ministering to justices that Nienaber about exists.
But the influence the group has over the court is undeniable. In the justices` decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the majority cited an amicus brief from the Liberty Counsel that made the ludicrous argument that abortion supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African-American population.
With me now, Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for the nation, and Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.”
It is great to see you both.
Robert, I am familiar with the Liberty Counsel. They go back a long way to a lot of fights, including over gay marriage and same-sex marriage and abortion and even those monuments in front of federal buildings. How influential are they? And does it surprise you that they may be directly ministering to Supreme Court justices?
ROBERT JONES, CEO, PUBLIC RELIGION RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Well, it doesn`t surprise me.
I think we have seen efforts like this, and very deliberate efforts, I should say. These are programs stood up to kind of go into this kind of influence. What`s really troubling to me is the use of prayer clearly for political influence here.
If you think about prayer, there`s this adage I grew up with, the family that prays together stays together, right? And that`s because prayer creates a kind of intimate connection of inviting the divine into a human relationship and basically says, we`re on God`s side together. And it`s only a half-step from that to saying, God`s on our side, right?
And I think that`s what I find so deeply troubling about this, and connected to an organization that`s also filing amicus briefs with the Supreme Court and one that, as you say, is cited, making this kind of outlandish accusation about eugenics being involved in motivating supporters of abortion.
So, there`s a kind of clear link here. And I think this is deeply troubling. And this connection between the conservative justices here, it certainly makes you recoil a bit and think, OK, well, this is really this use of public prayer for power and influence and the highest court of the land in unelected positions that are lifetime appointments.
REID: You know, and, Elie, it`s not all religions that they`re talking about, the use of prayer. Lots of different religions pray.
But this Supreme Court has seemed to side very specifically with one religion, right-wing Christian religion, not even just regular Christianity, just a very specific kind. And they have ruled for them almost all the time. I think their success rate is something like in the 80 percent range. Pro-religious outcomes in Supreme Court cases under John Roberts, it is 83 percent.
Even under Rehnquist, who was a far right guy, it was 58 percent. That is where we are, Elie. It is not all religion, there are no — there are not a lot of outcomes for Judaism or for Hinduism. It`s all for right-wing Christianity.
ELIE MYSTAL, “THE NATION”: Yes, they don`t really need to bring in outside groups to pray, because they`re — the zealots are already on the Supreme Court, right?
the call is coming in — from inside the house. And if you go back to the Dobbs decision, people need to understand that the premise that life begins at conception is an overtly religious belief. It is a Christian fundamentalist belief, it is not shared by many people of the Jewish faith. It is not shared by many people of the Islamic faith, or the Hindu faith, or the Buddhist faith, or any of these other faiths that make up our country.
We have tried doing the new world the way Lauren Boebert suggests. You know where that got us? To the witch trials. You know what happened? People die. But in this — with this court, we are not far away from that again. We are not far away from one of these Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene-type people saying, I saw Goody Mystal speaking with the devil and helping women across the border.
Like, that is where they are going with all of this. And it`s not just Dobbs. It is a slew of cases that they issued last term that pokes holes in the separation of church and state and allows for the government to establish Christian theocracy over all else.
REID: And the thing is that, Robbie, I`m not a lawyer, but even just reading, as a layperson, the decision that Alito wrote, it`s rife with, like, references to like old sort of Christian barristers and things and ideas, to Elie`s point, that really strike me as very uniquely far right- wing Christian ideas, because even like sort of the mild Christians don`t believe this stuff.
And it is frightening to think that you do have a court that is making — that is deciding what is constitutional based on their religious beliefs, rather than on the law and the Constitution.
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And to go — just to go a little further in the politics as well, this is a guy named Doug Mastriano, who`s running for the United States Senate right now. And he said this in Pennsylvania. “The separation of church and state was a myth,” he said. “In November, we`re going to take our state back. My God will make it so.”
Mastriano — a Mastriano victory — at a victory on primary night, he said: “If I read articles where you`re attacking Christians and painting us as a particular — in a particular picture that`s hateful or intolerant, we won`t have the time of day for you,” blah, blah, blah, blah.
But he agrees with Boebert. And they`re saying that there is no separation of church and state, but their church and state.
JONES: Yes, that`s right.
I think we`re hearing this kind of quiet part out loud being shouted from the rooftops here. And it`s — we see it in the data too, in our public opinion data. So, for example, we asked whether people envision this country as a promised land for European Christians who could set an example for the rest of the world, like that very white Christian nationalist idea, ask It that specifically. We have a majority of white evangelicals saying, yes, that is the vision of the country that I have.
When we ask them about a kind of ideal era in the country, they kind of agree with the court here, the court`s conservative majority. They tell us — for example, 70 percent of Republicans, two-thirds of white evangelicals say that things have changed for the worse since the 1950s, right?
And that`s really what we have here, is this kind of nostalgia-fueled gambit to drag the country back 70 years, right? It`s before Roe. It`s before Brown. It`s before the Civil Rights Act. It`s before the Voting Rights Act. It is into the early 1950s. That vision is one that people are telling us on public opinion surveys is one that they actually endorse.
And you see it in the opinion — one more point here — that it wasn`t just abortion, it wasn`t just school prayer that got attacked. It was the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment. And it was the actual underlying premise of the separation of church and state. And in its place in both counts — what I think is most dangerous is that the support substituted for each of those things this idea of history and tradition.
They explicitly say and they locate history and tradition in somewhere before the latter part of the 20th century. They explicitly say that in the decision.
REID: Yes.
JONES: And that`s what we`re really looking at, and that`s the America that`s in the vision.
REID: Public Religion Research Institute is, to me, the greatest polling institute in the world.
But I will make one suggestion. Ask them about the 1850s, because — ask them about that, because, to, Elie, the thing that they`re going back to is really the 1850s, not the 1950s. I mean, the time that people couldn`t have abortions, it was because black women were bearing property. And you couldn`t afford that because it was a property crime.
And black women who were midwives were taking midwifery work away from white midwives. And so that was a later era of saying that. So, even the racial arguments are steeped in a 19th century sort of nostalgia.
I want to ask you, comment on that, but also just on the upcoming stuff that they have got. They have got affirmative action coming, where they`re probably going to have Ketanji Brown. She probably will recuse, because she`s a good person who sticks up for what she claims she`s going to do.
But you have got affirmative action. You have got voting rights. You have got the Clean Water Act. All of that is steeped in some Christian lore.
MYSTAL: Yes, look, you — the colonizers came with the rod and the Bible and used both as they were going around the world subjugating people, right?
So this is nothing new in terms of their sectarian ideology, right? The problem that you have is that, when you set these Christian theocrats upon the court to do one thing, that one thing was to eat Roe v. Wade, what — it`s like an invasive species, right?
Once you set them loose, they don`t stop feeding just because they got the one thing they were set to do. And so what we`re going to see next term is this court continue to feed on vulnerable people, on minorities, on non- Christians.
Look, there`s nothing in the Supreme Court decisions that allow a football coach to lead students in prayer, lead players in prayer that tells me they`re going to allow a Muslim school teacher to pray five times a day towards Mecca.
REID: Yes.
MYSTAL: That`s that point about history and tradition. It`s only kind of white Christian history and tradition that they are again trying to impose on the rest of us against our will.
REID: And I`m going to note that Clarence Thomas will probably not recuse on the other case that`s coming up about whether they can legally do the insurrection.
You shouldn`t be able to predict the way a Supreme Court is going to rule based on what right-wing Christians poll in Robbie`s poll. If they like it, they`re going to rule for it. But now you can.
Elie Mystal, Robert Jones, thank you both very much.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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REID: WNBA star Brittney Griner will be back in a Russian courtroom later this week.
Over the weekend, Griner`s fellow players paid tribute to her at the WNBA All-Star Game. Every player came out to start the second half wearing jerseys with her name and her number, 42.
Griner`s presence was felt throughout the night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And selected as an honorary All-Star starter by the WNBA, a league MVP and WNBA champion, from the Phoenix Mercury, Brittney Griner!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Griner`s wife, Cherelle, sat courtside during the game.
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT.
“ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts now.