>> i think the people that ride harleys are not happy with harley davidson. >> when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. today was one of those days that crystallizes what's at stake in american politics right now at this moment. the political cloelgs that controls all three branches of the federal government just took a major step to consolidate power. leveraging an arguably stolen supreme court seat to validate the agenda of a president who we have to remember lost the popular vote whose campaign was backed by a foreign add ser vary possibly with his campaign's help and who in word and deed explicitly uses the power of his office exclusively for the benefit of the minority of the country that supports him. the supreme courtup head the president's ban on travel from a list of mostly muslim countries. the third version of a policy
refusing to hold hearings on his nominee. today mcconnell tweeted a picture of himself shaking the justice's hand because he knew what was going on. everyone did. with its don the travel ban today, the republican controlled supreme court gives an effective green light to the president's immigration agenda which i'm sure he receives as more than just about this case. that i amgration agenda let's remember until last week including g migrant children away from their parents at the border as a kind of punishment and deterrence and reportedly holding those children as hostages to force families to drop their asylum claims. family separation policy appears to have been halted after overwhelming public backlash but and this is important, the vast jority of those children right now as i speak you to have yet to be reunited with their parents. the pridt has en quite clear about how he wants
anything. that's disturbing because you can imagine how this can be applied in other areas. this seems to be a rubber stamp supreme court when it comes to the president's most odious and ugly discriminatory impulses. >> there's something else this court has done which it has struck down lower courts block rarejudicial redistricting plans including in the texas case. they've also upheld ohio's purging of people from the voter rolls. again, those were similar people on both sides of those issues in terms of the opinions. what do you see is happening in terms of how the republican party and the court and the president are using the power they have right now? >>ell, they're using their power to dominate the country even though they represent a minority of americans. they -- the decisions that we just saw the regarding voting were nothing short of disturbing.
they are hostile to the idea of representative democracy. and i'm telling you, they're pretty overt about this, pretty clear. you remember well the chris kovach commission that was going to study the false voting group that according to him fraudulently switched the popular vote to hillary clinton. i mean, and that's just the begin. we all know we're living under a gutted voting rights act. we still have not been able to pass the restoration of that. so that's what we're looking at, a minority that is trying to dominate a majority and is using the courts, legislature and the president to do it. >> what do you say to people saying they're doing a pretty good job right now. what do we do about it. >> i have to agree they're doing a good job. we've got to mobilize and get out there.
we've got go to low turnout districts and get folks out to the polls. and we've also got to argue is about an election but it's not only about an election. activism, engagement, participation in society really has to go up. you know, i tell you, sitting on the sidelines in this moment really it's not a protest. it's a surrender. and so what i'm asking folks to do is get out there and do something about it. i just left a rally in minneapolis in front of the federal courthouse. i can tell you people are energized. they're not demoralized. they're looking for things to do. people are running for office and getting involved. just the other day, we had the parkland students here in minnesota. they're organizing young people to register to vote making sure that the millennial vote turns out in november and people stay active throughout the year. that's what we've got to do about it. we can't simply assume things will get better because they usually do. in this case, they may not unless we act now.
>> do you feel like democratic leadership is sending a strong message what the sort of the agenda of the party is in resisting what you described as a kind of minority managing to exert its power over majority, how to resist that? >> i think that the democratic party leadership has shifted its focus, i mean right now we're not only focused on every four years. we're focused on every single day. the democratic national committee is thinking about how we can support candidates in municipal races, state legislative races, school board races all kind of races up and down the ballot. we do it every single race. so that is a shift in focus. we simply cannot have an approach where we raise money from a lot of rich people and buy ads every four years. that's not going to work. we need to engage people at every single level. you mentioned a few other cases. there's one that we're watching for tomorrow. and you probably are keeping occur eye on the janice case, as well. that has a lot to do with the shape and trajectory of our country as it relates to public employee unions.
we're keeping our eyes out, chris. >> keith ellison, thank you. >> thank you. my next guest is a long time republican strategist who just quit the gop after almost 30 years over the president's immigration policy. in a tweet storm last week, steve schmidt wrote this independent party will be aligned with the only party left in america that stands for what is right and decent. that party is the democratic party. and msnbc contributor steve schmidt joins me right here. >> good to see you chris. >> first i want to talk about that. the kind of breaking point for you. you've been a never trumper. that's been clear. tes a group of people that i think have very strong views about this individual, this president and his character. then there's a question at which point that becomes true about
everyone in league with him. what was the breaking point for you? >> i had the experience on june 5th standing on juno beach and spending time in the canadian cemetery spending time at pegasus bridge where the british 6th airborne went in and understanding the lue of the u.s.-led liberal global order that emerged from the aftermath of humanity's greatest tragedy which killed 80 million people and left the world in ruins. that liberal global order is worth defending. this president is an autocrat. he is not a small d democrat. he doesn't believe in liberal democracy. and what we're seeing here every day are five behaviors, one, he incites fervor in a base through constant lying. two, he scapegoats minority populations and he affixes blame for complex problems to them and
them alone. three, he alleges conspiracies that are hidden and nefarious and linked to those scapegoated populations. four, he spreads a sense of victimizations among those fer per vent supporters. and five, he an sers the need to exert heretofore unprecedented power to protect his victim class from the conspiracies and the scapegoated populations. through all of history, you understand totalitarianism, you understand how democracies fall. you will find those five behaviors. now, the republican party and the democratic party i would argue and you and i disagree on many many things but we are fidelitious to liberal democracy. >> that's true. >> that government of the people, by the people, for the people must continue.
>> that's incredibly well said. and when i think about this and you think about those behaviors and here you have today the court, this is what i found so fascinating about the court's decision today. if donald trump wasn't donald trump and president marco rubio on kay one puts in this ban, it almost certainly it's not even a question. the question is, does what this guy has said and the bigotry he's espoused taint in a kinds of unfixable way constitutionally this ban. we all saw it happen in realtime. it's remarkable you have gorsuch and roberts who is something you worked on his confirmation. >> i led the confirmation. >> beak doing a kind of sophisticated version of the paul ryan i didn't read the tweet. they all read the paper and so the facts of the case. >> the intent was perfectly clear. this was a religious test.
so the stigmatizing of good and decent people in the insult given to the muslim soldiers who have served this country, who have sacrificed, it is appalling. > the's also a similarity here that strikes me what's happening on the border and here. in both cases the president talks about ms-13 and i.c.e. those are two groups genuinely ivl. there's no real supports are of them. what he does picy se is people fleeing i.s.i.s. from syria and people fleeing the murders in guatemala trying to flee to this country, those are the people that end up caught in the gears of his demonization of those groups. >> you look at regression of democracy to an oughtocracy. all through history, when you look at violations of civil liberties they have always occurred through a prism of fear, fear is a contagion. it erodes democratic values and institutions but always in the name of security that civil lishes are col pro mized and
that lesson has been learned through history. and here we are repeating it again. and the moral shame that comes from internment camps and precisely what they are for toddlers and children who are stripped away, some of those children stripped away from breastfeeding mothers, it is a shame that will linger a stench that will linger around this vial administration and my view for a century. >> is there a -- is there a political constituency of vote in other words the country that feel the way you do? i really mean this. like i don't know if there is. there's steve schmidt. there's nicolle wallace. there's charlie sykes, people that exist in the world and bret stephens. are there vote who at what's happening and say i'm a republican and can't abide this. i don't know if they exist. >> i think there are acts of
it has secured the peace, it has lifted billions of people on the planet out of abject poverty into something approaching prosperity over the last 73 years. all of this is worth defending. it was architected by giants. conceived by fdr. built by a plain spoken man from independence, missouri, harry truman. stewarded from john kennedy to ronald reagan to barack obama and the departure from it by this president, his feather sizing autocrats from erdogan to putin to president xi is disturbing. our allies who we are connected to by shared history and values are rightly concerned. but i do believe that the american people don't want to
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still 2,047 separated children in their custody. and that is only six fewer than about a week ago, although we don't know if new children are coming in. now 17 states as the district of columbia are suing the administration to force the government to reunite those families. "the daily beast" reports some veterans and active duty ca troops disapprove of building camps on military bases to house immigrant children. all of which adding up to hundreds of planned protests on saturday across the country including a big march being planned in washington, d.c. karine jean-pierre is a spokesperson for moveon.org and sonya nazariyo of "enrique's journey," that's a fantastic book. sonja i want to read a new story about what is happening as the question of family ru funfication cks over everyone. the aclu says in a filing that
the border agent threatened to put an immigrant's daughter up for adoption if she did not essentially sign deportation papers. we've seen other reports from the texas tribune about essentially threats that unless you say you will deport and waive your right to asylum, we'll keep you away from your kid. what do you think of that? >> i think it's horrific. we are criminalizing people who are coming here and seeking refuge from the united states. we said after world war ii during that war we turned back a ship with 800jews and did not allow anne frank's family to come to this country. we were the leaders in saying this would never happen again and yet here we are doing this with vulnerable children. we shouldn't shouldn't be criminalizing these folks and not using children as bait and saying we're only going to give you your child back at the airport if you relinquish all your due process rights to asylum. there is a difference between an economic migrant someone coming
here for a better life and someone coming here because they are fleeing for their life and they're being persecuted in their home countries. i have spent a lot of time in central america in the worst neighborhoods. if you took el salvador and you took that murder level to new york city instead of fewer than 300 murders, you would have more than 5,000 bodies littering the streets of new york city. i remember an 8-year-old boy in a neighborhood in honduras who from the age of 8 was harangued by the gangs. he would collect cans in his bag to repsych to be able to eat. and he was told from the age of 8, you have to join us. you must join us. ultimately when he was 10 years old, they gang raped him. these are the options for children in these countries oftentimes. you join the gang or you flee within 24 hours. you pay the war tax or you flee within 24 hours. girls are told and i've interviewed many girls who say i was basically told i'm pretty, i was told to be the girlfriend of
the gang leader or they said they would exterminate my whole family. people running from harm, and we're not talking about huge numbers. so far in the first eight months of fiscal '18, we've had 59,000 of these families running from harm. 32,000 unaccompanied children. that fills one football stadium. for god's sake, the united states can afford that amount of compassion. >> karine, when you think these are the stakes for these people and you hear about the president not just the family separation but say eg doesn't want to grant asylum, he wants to get rid of due process, what degree do you think had public pressure matters here and protests like the ones that you guys are organizing for june 30th we've seen around the country? >> that's the only way we're going to stop this president and his awful policies is by the public pressure is by standing up and fighting back. the president backed down just a
little bit. i spent the day at the border. i joined aft and religious leaders. we started off in el paso where we were in front of the u.s. courthouse where the process begins for separating kids from their families. then we traveled to tornillo in texas where the detention center is and where kids are sleeping in cages at night. i learned two things. the first thing is you know what? this is not a political crisis. this is a moral crisis. this is a humanitarian crisis. and number two, nobody's talking about civility and who is left out of a restaurant or asked to leave at a restaurant. they don't care about that. they want to know what is the u.s. government, what is the trump administration doing to reunite these families, reunite these kids with their parents. that's what people want to know. and the thing about it, these are innocent children, chris. innocent. there was this one young girl in
el paso in front of the u.s. courthouse who held a sign that said what did i do wrong. that's what she was trying to convey, what did i do wrong. these kids are also being traumatized. there was a story that came out in the news today about a young boy ripped apart from his family, sent tnew york. he tried to jump off, jump out of a two-story building. this is what's going on with these kids. and we just can't have that. there is such a disconnect right now to what's happening in washington, d.c., and what's happening right here. no one here is talking about polls. nobody cares about donald trump's polls. nobody cares about winning or who is losing. nobody cares about votes. they want to know what are we doing and this is why peeking of activism, this is why i came out here with aft and the religious leader, are this is why move on with other parns are holding this big activism on saturday. >> we have 650 events across the country.
in 50 states in 350 house district congressional districts. and we're just not going to stop. over 300 i think 400,000 people have signed on. >> here's what i think. six children have been reunited with their families in a week. according to the hhs numbers if they're not getting new family separation abc i don't think they are based reporting on the border. that's not fast enough. that has to be tracked publicly. but that understanding where we are with that policy pre day that goes by of the utmost important, karine, sonya, thank you both for joining me. >> thanks, chris. >> should the left take on tea party tactics? the democratic debate how to handle the trump era after this.
i strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don't agree with you. if you disagree with a politician organize your fellow citizens to action. and vote them out of office. but no ould call for the harassment of political upons. that's not right, that's not american. >> senate minority leader chuck schumer represents one wing of the democratic party whether he it comes to confronting donald trump. nancy pelosi also in that camp with her call for "the unity from the sea to shining sea," but as we've seen the videos of protests and heckling of administration officials, the
democratic base or parts of it do not seem to be in sync with democratic leadership on this question. as michelle goldberg writes today, there's an abusive sort of victim blaming and demanding the progressive single handed lid uphold civility lest the right become more incivil. if they don't want to hear from angry citizens they're supposed to be, let them eat at trump grill. >> joining us the coclarity of women's march and jess mcintosh executive editor, former s adviser for hillary clinton's presidential campaign. i saw that column you wrote getting shared everywhere. it said something a lot of people were feeling. > i think a lot of people sort of harassed because there falsequiv leaptcy that has dominated so much of the coverage of the trump administration that basically equates an actor saying a bad word with white nationalists marching around with machine guns on their -- or semi-automatic assault weapons
on their back and says, oh, look, both sides are participating in the death of civility is maddening to people. it's also maddening to people to constantly to woy about not just kind of their own actions. and the results of their own actions but then how will their actions influence some imaginary trump voter who they're trying to win over in the midterms. i think people can't live like that. they can't live in this way in which we're constantly overly so lis to us of the feelings of these you know of these alienated white people and contemptuous of the feelingses of the majority of the people who find this administration intolerable. >> there's also the way in which people conflate a lot of stuff. something can be morally compelled and not great politics. it could be the case history
will look kindly on you if you stand up for absentgration in mississippi and you will be voted out of office. those two things don't always have to go together. >> civil disobedience is very american. that is a very american thing to do. >> let me stop you though. do you think this idea of getting someone's face in a restaurant or hecking them, do you count that as civil disobedience. >> i do. any civilian acting within their own daily life trying to gum up of the works of our slide into authoritarianism. that is a good thing. the trump administration has been a racist disaster since the beginning. in the lt couple of weeks, we have seen a dramatic turn and we have move down the steps of a slide into authoritarianism. it's not going to get better because that's how this works. for as long as they are allowed to do what they're doing, this is only going to get worse. that means we have to take what we can get. >> the question becomes i want to get to you, the question becomes, answer this too, lynnza, because you're doing a lot of organizing. it's like if god is dead
everything is permitted about that formulation. well if we're sliding into thor toretarianism, that can be dangerous. a guy tried to murder steve scalise. >> 10 1/2 months ago, heather higher got run over by a snazdy. that's why i'm talking about civil obedience. it is very important we do everything we can to make it uncomfortable for those enabling it within our country. we owe that to the communities we've built and the people in the future who ask what we did to try to stop there. >> i'm an organizer and activist. i engage in civil disobedience 20 times a year. this thursday about ending family separation and heing family detention. and dr. martin luther king warned us about people like chuck schumer. it wasn't the ku klux klan and white senior counselors who were the obstacles of justice. it was people calling forivelity
and people telling us how to protest. when we talk about civility, it is not civil to rip babies from their mothers. it is not civil to break up muslim families. it is not civil to take away health care from millions of americans. so you want to talk to me about civil lit, let's make're engaging in justice and ensuring every american has access to health care and housing, that there is no poverty in america. i was at laguardia airport and i recorded a video of children, i'm talking between the ages 5 to 8 being that came off a united airlines flight who were unaccompanied minors. i am distraught we live in a country talking about civility but don't see the same outrage about kids being strip interest their mothers. >> there's a little bit of a difference between the right and the left. >> really? >> see it in the people chanting lock her up at trump raleighs. there is not an equivalent. there aren't right now. and people have forgotten what the tea party revolt looked like
which a lot of people thought would be bad politics. this is kath castro a democrat in florida, take a listen what it was like at her town halls. >> >> you work for us. you work for us. you're our hear our voice, hear our voice. hear our voice. hear our voice. hear our voice. >> now, that was effective. but there's also an argument, that she says this is not a leftist tea partying because newly engaged suburban activists hail from the broad ranging from center to left. the foundation rebuilders in many communities are newly mobilized interconnected grassroots groups led by middle america's mothers and grandmothers. >> we need to be clear what we're talking about. i don't even think that anybody on the left is getting to that level of harassment that was
typical of the tea party. sarah sanders was politely asked to leave the red hen and had her cheese plate comped. we're not talking about the sort of like apocalyptic civil war threatening insurrectionary rhetoric that is the bread and butter of the right. we're simply talking about saying if you are a member of a white nationalist organization, we'll ostrasize you as such. i've met some of the same men that she writes about. i was recently in pennsylvania. i think they do care a lot about norms and decency. i mean, absolutely. but i think they are also terrified and outraged by what is going on in this country and are looking for leaders who will speak to that level of concern. they don't want to see chuck schumer going on about gas prices and how it's not -- they
want to see people who are as outraged as they are. >> i think the prime directive for most of the left is let's make things better for other people. that's why we go into the social safety net and spends all this time on politics. the prime directive forever right, right now is literally to make liberals angry. that is -- owning the lives is what they say their win is. of course, you're seeing tempermental differences. they scream in your face and call a snowflake when you suggest they keep it down and lecture us about civility. >> michelle, linda who just came from a protest and jess mcintosh, thank you all. >> does senator cory booker think it's time for a democratic tea party and why the president is worried about the aura of harley davidson. that's tonight's thing 1, thing 2 next.
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senator cory booker returned yesterday from mcallen, texas to see firsthand how our government is turning away asylum seekers without giving that i am hearing. booker also spoke out assuring that the travel ban gets a moral moment. let's talk about the border and specifically what you mentioned that i think is important and adjacent to the child separation, which is american officials turning people away at ports of entry from asylum. what do you think is happening? >> first of all, you know this calls to the darker chapters of our country where there was a group of -- a famous ship escaping from the holocaust. they came to the u.s. and turned back around where many were killed. they're turned away because we don't have, quote, unquote, the space for them. when i went into mexico to turn
around, the mexican official who was there told me, please don't go into the city, it's very dangerous for guys on foot. here i am from newark. i was already talking to the border patrol about how it doesn't reflect our values. we hear the president calling folks illegals. here are folks showing up ready to go through the legal process of seeking asylum and they're being turned away, often into conditions that aren't hospitable, and for me it gives some responsibility for safety and security when we push them out of our country. we need to increase the capacity to hold people seeking asylum and to process people seeking asylum. we need to end that process of border patrol to go out on the border away from the other side of the bridge where people are often being processed to try to
turn people away before they even get to our country. >> we are now on another primary night. there is a bunch of races in seven states across the country. there is sort of a lot of people, i think, thinking about the midterms in the wake of what's happening, family separation and the supreme court today. the white house thinks when they're talking about immigration, they're winning. when you're talking about sarah huckabee sanders, you're winning because it's jimmying up their base. what is your read on the politics at this moment, senator? >> i guess there are two things. i do agree when we're talking about sarah huckabee sanders, we're talking about the coat that melania wore, we're taking away focus on what's happening right now. jeff sessions working to undermine the protections americans have against being denied insurance because of a preexisting condition. that is being eroded, ended as we speak. and yet we seem to be talking about things that often distract us from really important things that both republicans and democrats agree upon. i'm trying to, in my energy,
trying to keep people focused on the things that matter. but i do not want major moral moments like ripping away families. i don't care if there's a democrat talking about immigration reform that will help us in the general election or help us in the 2020 election. there's got to be a time where we don't ask if it's politic. i don't know if folks who protested the vietnam war if it was muhammad ali or scott king stopped and asked if it was politic. they did it because it was the right thing to do. this is a time we need to stand up and do what is right. our untry has a president who is engaging in moral vandalism, whether it is the way he talks about muslims and the roots of what happened in the supreme court today are bigotry against muslim people. or what's happening at the border. this is a violation of our values. we shouldn't wait to see how this plays out in polling. we should do the right thing and stand up for who we are as a nation.
incivility blocked president barack obama from filling a vacant sprooem court seat refusing to hold hearings on his nominee. today mcconnell tweeted a picture of himself shaking the justice's hand because he knew what was going on. everyone did. with its decision on the travel ban today, the republican controlled supreme court gives an effective green light to the president's immigration agenda which i'm sure he receives as more than just about this case. that i amgration agenda let's remember until last week including tearing migrant children away from their parents at the border as a kind of punishment and deterrence and reportedly holding those children as hostages to force families to drop their asylum claims. family separation policy appears to have been halted after overwhelming public backlash but and this is important, the vast majority of those children right now as i speak you to have yet to be reunited with their parents. the president has been quite
political power of their overwhelmingly white base still make up a small minority of the political class and of the country in general. but right now at this moment, they are the ones in charge. unless and until the bigger portion of the majority of the country mobilizes against them. i'm joined by a member of the democratic party leadership, 2018 candidate for attorney general of minnesota, one of the few muslims serving on the hill, congress man keith ellison. your reaction to the majority opinion in which the chief justice says maybe he said nasty stuff but you have to look at the four squares of what's in there and it passes constitutional muster. >> well, it's really kind of a surprising and shocking decision because it's very clear that you can have a document that might be facially neutral but if its intent, purpose and expected application resolution discriminatory, that is going to pass constitutional muster. yet the supreme court said if they get a thin excuse for
were nothing short of disturbing. they are hostile to the idea of representative democracy. and i'm telling you, they're pretty overt about this, pretty clear. you remember well the chris kovach commission that was going to study the false voting group that according to him fraudulently switched the popular vote to hillary clinton. i mean, and that's just the begin. we all know we're living under a gutted voting rights act. we still have not been able to pass the restoration of that. so that's what we're looking at, a minority that is trying to dominate a majority and is using the courts, legislature and the president to do it. >> what do you say to people saying they're doing a pretty good job right now. what do dobo it. >> i have to agree they're doing a good job. we've got to mobilize and get out there. we've got go to low turnout
districts and get folks out to the polls. and we've also got to argue it is about an election but it's not only about an election. activism, engagement, participation in society really has to go up. you know, i tell you, sitting on the sidelines in this moment really it's not a protest. it's a surrender. and so what i'm asking folks to do is get out there and do something about it. i just left a rally in minneapolis in front of e federal courthouse. i can tell you people are energized. they're not demoralized. they're looking for things to do. people are running for office and getting involved. just the other day, we had the parkland students here in minnesota. they're organizing young people to register to vote making sure that the millennial vote turns out in november and people stay active throughout the year. that's what we've got to do about it. we can't simply assume things will get better because they usually do. in this case, they may not unless we act now. >> do you feel like democratic
leadership is sending a strong message what the sort of the agenda of the party is in resisting what you described as a kind of minority managing to exert its power over majority, how to resist that? >> i think that the democratic party leadership has shifted its focus, i mean right now we're not only focused on every four years. we're focused on every single day. the democratic national committee is thinking about how we can support candidates in municipal races, state legislative races, school board races all kind of races up and down the ballot. we do it every single race. so that is a shift in focus. we simply cannot have an approach where we raise money from a lot of rich people and buy ads every four years. that's not going to work. we need to engage people at every single level. you mentioned a few other cases. there's one that we're watching for tomorrow. and you probably are keeping occur eye on the janice case, as well. that has a lot to do with the shape and trajectory of our
country as it relates to public employee unions. we're keeping our eyes out, chris. >> keith ellison, thank you. >> thank you. my next guest is a long time republican strategist who just quit the gop after almost 30 years over the president's immigration policy. in a tweet storm last week, steve schmidt wrote this independent party will be aligned with the only party left in america that stands for what is right and decent. that party is the democratic party. and msnbc contributor steve schmidt joins me right here. >> good to see you chris. >> first i want to talk about that. the kind of breaking point for you. you've been a never trumper. that's been clear. tes a group of people that i think have very strong views about this individual, this president and his character. then there's a question at which point that becomes true about
everyone in league with him. what was the breaking point for you? >> i had the experience on june 5th standing on juno beach and spending time in the canadian cemetery spending time at pegasus bridge where the british 6th airborne went in and understanding the value of the u.s.-led liberal global order that emerged from the aftermath of humanity's greatest tragedy which killed 80 million people and left the world in ruins. that liberal global order is worth defending. this president is an autocrat. he is not a small d democrat. he doesn't believe in liberal democracy. and what we're seeing here every day are five behaviors, one, he incites fervor in a base through constant lying. two, he scapegoats minority populations and heixes blame
for complex problems to them and them alone. three, he alleges conspiracies that are hidden and nefarious and linked to those scapegoated populations. four, he spreads a sense of victimizations among those fer per vent supporters. and five, he an sers the need to exert heretofore unprecedented power to protect his victim class from the conspiracies and the scapegoated populations. through all of history, you understand totalitarianism, you understand how democracies fall. you will find those five behaviors. now, the republican party and the democratic party i would argue and you and i disagree on many many things but we are fidelitious to liberal democracy. >> that's true. >> that government of the people, by the people, for the
people must continue. and the republican party abdicated, conservative mix has become synonym mus with obedience to the leader a leader who says i am the law. i am above the law. i will define what truth is, truth is what the leader says it is. not what we would have recognized months ago as objective truth. so the republican party has become a threat to liberal democracy and all over the world, we see a regression in poland, in hungary, the rise of far right eth-nationalist parties and the last time this happened, it unleashed a tragedy the likes of which the world has never seen. and i think there's a real lack of imagination in this country about how fragile these institutions are and about how dangerous a president is unprepared as authoritarian as ignorant as he the damage that
he would be able to cause. >> that's incredibly well said. and when i think about this and you think about those behaviors they eem so obvious. and here you have today the court, this is what i found so fascinating about the court's decision today. if donald trump wasn't donald trump and president marco rubio on kay one puts in this ban, it almost certainly it's not even a question. the question is, does what this guy has said and the bigotry he's espoused taint in a kinds of unfixable way constitutionally this ban. we all saw it happen in realtime. it's remarkable you have gorsuch and roberts who is something you worked on his confirmation. >> i led the confirmation. >> beak doing a kind of sophisticated version of the paul ryan i didn't read the tweet. they all read the paper and so the facts of the case. >> the intent was perfectly clear. this was a religious test. this was a religious ban.
this was what he said it was. we should take him seriously when he says things. and so this is as un-american a policy as we have ever seen. we have freedom of religion in this country. and this is also true. this decision harms the national security of this country in a profound way. the forces of islamic radicalism of extremism are real and dangerous. but the only force that can defeat it is moderate islam. this was a gift to the extremists. this was a fulfillment of bin laden's strategy which was to precipitate a global conflict, a war of civilizations between the west and between islam. we don't want to be at war with a billion muslims all over the world in a 21st century crusade.
so the stigmatizing of good and decent people in the insult given to the muslim soldiers who have served this country, who have sacrificed, it is appalling. > there's also a similarity here that strikes me what's happening on the border and here. in both cases the president talks about ms-13 and i.c.e. those are two groups genuinely ivl. there's no real supports are of them. what he does policy wise is people fleeing i.c.e. from syria and people fleeing the murders in guamala trying to flee to this country, those are the people that end up caught in the gears of his demonization of those groups. >> you look at regression of democracy to an oughtocracy. all through history, when you look at violations of civil liberties they have always occurred through a prism of fear, fear is a contagion.
it erodes democratic values and institutions but always in the name of security that civil lishes are col pro mized and that lesson has been learned through history. and here we are repeating it again. and the moral shame that comes from internment camps and precisely what they are for toddlers and children who are stripped away, some of those children stripped away from breastfeeding mothers, it is a shame that will linger a stench that will linger around this vial administration and my view for a century. >> is there a -- is there a political constituency of vote in other words the country that feel the way you do? i really mean this. like i don't know if there is. there's steve schmidt. there's nicolle wallace. there's charlie sykes, people that exist in the world and bret stephens. are there voters who at what's happening and say i'm a republican and can't abide this. i don't know if they exist. >> i think there are acts of
kindness and decency that take place every day in this country. i think about the las vegas 33-yr-old african-american , runs into a hail of gunfire. he saves 33 people's lives. he's running towards a group of school kids to save them and he's shot twice in the neck. and then a white cop runs into the gunfire to save johnny smith's life. that is also america. the author alex haley had a saying, he said find the good and praise it. nobody can compete with donald trump in a vileness contest. he's the most vial. nobody can compete with donald trump in a dishonesty contest. because he's the most dishonesty honest. we have to find the good and praise it in this country. free market american capitalism is worth defending in my view. liberal democracy is worth defending. the u.s.-led liberal global
order despite all of its flaws, it has secured the peace, it has lifted billions of people on the planet out of abject poverty into something approaching prosperity over the last 73 years. all of this is worth defending. it was architected by giants. conceived by fdr. built by a plain spoken man from independence, missouri, harry truman. stewarded from john kennedy to ronald reagan to barack obama and the departure from it by this president, his feather sizing autocrats from erdogan to putin to president xi is disturbing. our allies who we are connected to by shared history and values are rightly concerned. but i do believe that the american people don't want to live in trump i stan.
they want to continue living in america. this is a fundamental question in 2018. this is the most important midterm election income american history. because if this is not repudiated in november, this country's going down a track of not just decline but a fundamental change that will be very, very difficult to change the trajectory that we're on. >> steve schmidt, it's great to have you here. thank you very much. >> good to see you. after the break, 17 states are now suing the trump administration for its family separation follows as over 2,000 children separated from their families still remain in the custody of the u.s. government. resistance to that in two minutes. what about him? let's do it. ♪ come on. this summer, add a new member to the family.
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still 2,047 separated children in their custody. and that is only six fewer than about a week ago, although we don't know if new children are coming in. now 17 states as well as the district of columbia are suing the administration to force the government to reunite those families. "the daily beast" reports some veterans and active duty ca troops disapprove of building camps on military bases to house immigrant children. all of which adding up to hundreds of planned protests on saturday across the country including a big march being planned in washington, d.c. karine jean-pierre is a spokesperson for moveon.org and sonya nazariyo of "enrique's journey," that's a fantastic book. sonji want to read a new story about what is happening as the question of family ru funfication hacks over everyone.
the aclu says in a filing that the border agent threatened to put an immigrant's daughter up for adoption if she did not essentially sign deportation papers. we've seen other reports from the texas tribune about essentially threats that unless you say you will deport and waive your right to asylum, we'll keep you away from your kid. what do you think of that? >> i think it's horrific. we are criminalizing people who are coming here and seeking refuge from the united states. we said after world war ii during that war we turned back a ship with 800jews and did not allow anne frank's family to come to this country. we were the leaders in saying this would never happen again and yet here we are doing this with vulnerable children. we shouldn't shouldn't be criminalizing these folks and not using children as bait and saying we're only going to give you your child back at the airport if you relinquish all your due process rights to asylum. theris a difference between an
economic migrant someone coming here for a better life and someone coming here because they are fleeing for their life and they're being persecuted in their home countries. i have spent a lot of time in central america in the worst neighborhoods. if you took el salvador and you took that murder level to new york city instead of fewer than 300 murders, you would have more than 5,000 bodies littering the streets of new york city. i remember an 8-year-old boy in a neighborhood in honduras who from the age of 8 was harangued by the gangs. he would collect cans in his bag to repsy to be able to eat. and he was told from the age of 8, you have to join us. you must join us. ultimately when he was 10 years old, they gang raped him. these are the options for children in these countries oftentimes. you join the gang or you flee within 24 hours. you pay the war tax or you flee within 24 hours. girls are told and i've interviewed many girls who say i
was basically told i'm pretty, i was told to be the girlfriend of the gang leader or they said they would exterminate my whole family. people running from harm, and we're not talking about huge numbers. so far in the first eight months of fiscal '18, we've had 59,000 of these families running from harm. 32,000 unaccompanied children. that fills one football stadium. for god's sake, the united states can afford that amount of compassion. >> karine, when you think these are the stakes for these people and you hear about the president not just the family separation but say eg doesn't want to grant asylum, he wants to get rid of due process, what degree do you think had public pressure matters here and protests like the ones that you guys are organizing for june 30th we've seen around the country? >> that's the only way we're ing to stop this president and his awful policies is by the public pressure is by standing
up and fighting back. the president backed down just a little bit. i spent the day at the border. i joined aft and religious leaders. we started off in el paso where we were in front of the u.s. courthouse where the process begins for separating kids from their families. then we traveled to tornillo in texas where the detention center is and where kids are sleeping in cages at night. i learned two things. the first thing is you know what? this is not a political crisis. this is a moral crisis. this is a humanitarian crisis. and number two, nobody's talking about civility and who is left out of a restaurant or asked to leave at a restaurant. they don't care about that. they want to know what is the u.s. government, what is the trump administration doing to reunite these families, reunite these kids with their parents. that's what people want to know. and the thing about it, these
are innocent children, chris. innocent. there was this one young girl in el paso in front of the u.s. courthouse who held a sign that said what did i do wrong. that's what she was trying to convey, what did i do wrong. these kids are also being traumatized. there was a story that came out in the news today about a young boy ripped apart from his family, sent to new york. he tried to jump off, jump out of a two-story building. this is what's going on with these kids. and we just can't have that. there is such a disconnect right now to what's happening in washington, d.c., and what's happening right here. no one here is talking about polls. nobody cares about donald trump's polls. nobody cares about winning or who is losing. nobody cares aut votes. they want to know what are we doing and this is why peeking of activism, this is why i came out here with aft and the religious leader, are this is why move on with other parns are holding this big activism on saturday.
>> we have 650 events across the country. in 50 states in 350 house district congressional districts. and we're just not going to stop. over 300 i think 400,000 people have signed on. >> here's what i think. six children have been reunited with their families in a week. according to the hhs numbers if they're not getting new family separation abc i don't think they are based reporting on the border. that's not fast enough. that has to be tracked publicly. but that understanding where we are with that policy pre day that goes by of the utmost important, karine, sonya, thank you both for joining me. >> thanks, chris. >> should the left take on tea party tactics? the democratic debate how to handle the trump era after this. . . oh! just sign up online and we'll alert you if we find your social security number on any one of thousands of risky sites. that sounds super helpful. how much is it? well, if you have a discover card, it's free.
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i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! thoabout energy efficiency.re teaching the whole school we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. i strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don't agree with you.
if you disagree with a politician organize your fellow citizens to action. and vote them out of office. but no one should call for the harassment of political upons. that's not right, that's not american. >> senate minority leader chuck schumer represents one wing of the democratic party whether he it comes to confronting donald trump. nancy pelosi also in that camp with her call for "the unity from the sea to shining sea," but as we've seen the videos of protests and heckling of administration officials, the democratic base or parts of it do not seem to be in sync with democratic leadership on this question. as michelle goldberg writes today, there's an abusive sort of victim blaming and demanding the progressive single handed lid uphold civility lest the right become more incivil. if they don't want to hear from angry citizens they're supposed to be, let them eat at trump
grill. >>. joining us the coclarity of women's march and jess mcintosh executive editor, former s adviser forilla clinton's presiden campaign. i saw that column you wrote getting shared everywhere. it said something a lot of people were feeling. > i think a lot of people sort of harassed because there falsequiv leaptcy that has dominated so much of the coverage of the trump administration that basically equates an actor saying a bad word with white nationalists marching around with machine guns on their -- or semi-automatic assault weapons on their back and says, oh, look, both sides are participating in the death of civility is maddening to people. it's also maddening to people to constantly be told to worry about not just kind of their own actions. and the results of their own actions but then how will their actions influence some imaginary
trump voter who they're trying to win over in the midterms. i think people can't live like that. they can't live in this way in which we're constantly overly so lis to us of the feelings of these you know of these alienated white people and contemptuous of the feelingses of the majority of the people who find this administration intolerable. >> there's also the way in which people conflate aot of stuff. something can be morally compelled and not great politics. it could be the case history will look kindly on you if you stand up for absentgration in mississippi and you will be voted out of office. those two things don't always have to go together. >> civil disobedience is very american. that is a very american thing to do. >> let me stop you though. do you think this idea of getting someone's face in a restaurant or heckling them, do you count that as civil disobedience. >> i do. any civilian acting within their
own daily life trying to gum up of the works of our slide into authoritarianism. that is a good thing. the trump administration has been a racist disaster since the beginning. in the last couple of weeks, we have seen a dramatic turn and we have move down the steps of a slide into authoritarianism. it's not going to get better because that's how this works. for as long as they are allowed to do what they're doing, this is only going to get worse. that means we have to take what we can get. >> the question becomes i want to get to you, the question becomes, answer this too, lynnza, because you're doing a lot of organizing. it's like if god is dead everything is permitted about that formulation. well if we're sliding into thor toretarianism, that can be dangerous. a guy tried to murder steve scalise. >> 10 1/2 months ago, heather
higher got run over by a snazdy. that's why i'm talking about civil obedience. it is very important we do everything we can to make it uncomfortable for those enabling it within our country. we owe that to the communities we've built and the people in the future who ask what we did to try to stop there. >> i'm an organizer and activist. i engage in civil disobedience 20 times a year. this thursday about ending family separation and heing family detention. and dr. martin luther king warned us about people like chuck schumer. it wasn't the ku klux klan and white senior counselors who were the obstacles of justice. it was people calling forivelity and people telling us how to protest. when we talk about civility, it is not civil to rip babies from their mothers. it is not civil to break up muslim families. it is not civ to take away health care from millions of americans. so you want to talk to me about civil lit, let's make sure we're
engaging in justice and ensuring every american has access to health care and housing, that there is no poverty in america. i was at laguardia airport and i recorded a video of children, i'm talking between the ages 5 to 8 being that came off a united airlines flight who were unaccompanied minors. i am distraught we live in a country talking about civility but don't see the same outrage about kids being strip interest their mothers. >> there's a little bit of a difference between the right and the left. >> really? >> seet in the people chanting lock her up at trump raleighs. there is not an equivalent. there aren't right now. and people have forgotten what the tea party revolt looked like which a lot of people thought would be bad politics. this is kath castro a democrat in florida, take a listen what it was like at her town halls. >> >> you work for us. you work for us.
you're our voihear our voice, h our voice. hear our voice. hear our voice. hear our voice. >> now, that was effective. but there's also an argument, that she says this is not a leftist tea partying because newly engaged suburban activists hail from the broad ranging from center to left. the foundation rebuilders in many communities are newly mobilized interconnected grassroots groups led by middle america's mothers and grandmothers. >> we need to be clear what we're talking about. i don't even think that anybody on the left is getting to that level of harassment that was typical of the tea party. sarah sanders was politely asked to leave the red hen and had her cheese plate comped. we're not talking about the sort
of like apocalyptic civil war threatening insurrectionary rhetoric that is the bread and butter of the right. we're simply talking about saying if you are a member of a white nationalist organization, we'll ostrasize you as such. i've met some of the same men that she writes about. i was recently in pennsylvania. i think they do care a lot about norms and decency. i mean, absolutely. but i think they are also terrified and outraged by what is going on in this country and are looking for leaders who will speak to that level of concern. they don't want to see chuck schumer going on about gas prices and how it's not -- they want to see people who are as outraged as they are. >> i think the prime directive for most of the left is let's make things better for other people. that's why we go into the social safety net and spends all this time on politics. the prime directive forever right, right now is literally to
make liberals angry. that is -- owning the lives is what they say their win is. of course, you're seeing temperntal differences. they scream in your face and call a snowflake when you suggest they keep it down and lecture us about civility. >> michelle, linda who just came from a protest and jess mcintosh, thank you all. >> does senator cory booker think it's time for a democratic tea party and why the president is worried about the aura of harley davidson. that's tonight's thing 1, thing 2 next. specially formulated with key nutrients plus vitamin d for bone health support. your one a day is showing. look for new one a day women's with nature's medley.
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>> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> after being shown around this plant, it seems to me i've come to hog heaven. >> get it, hogs, hog heaven? it seems every republican wants to be seen with a harley even if it wasn't moving. visiting the harleys can help with your red blooded american image. failed candidate mitt romney got a harley escort in ohio, his campaign bus got an escort. four years later, mike pence rode a harley across the state of indiana. in 2016, bikers for trump became a thing. i talked to a few at the convention when trump became president, harley got an early invitation to visit the white house. now harley is the enemy and the question is will the bikers for trump choose their harleys or their trump? that's thing 2 in 60 seconds. eo.
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so after president trump revved up his trade war and harley davidson said it was moving some of its production overseas because the eu's retaliatory tariffs president trump is now at war with the iconic american motorcycle company. surprised that they should be the first to wave the white flag, their employees and customers are angry they moved. the aura capital a, of course, will be gone and they will be taxed like never before. how this will go over with the bikers for trump remains to be seen but threatening sky high taxes out of vengeance would be unconstitutional. we know how much this president cares about the american ideals of oh, never mind. >> no ride, mr. president. >> boy, would you like to see me fall off one. would that be a story? i am all about living joyfully. ♪
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if a horrible thing happened and we weren't lucky enough to have henry nguyen, you know they wouldn't talk about it. they would say donald trump suffered a major, major defeat in the great state of south carolina. it was a humiliating defeat from donald trump, so please get your asses out tomorrow and vote. >> it is another election night in america, including south carolina, where donald trump is hoping to avoid that humiliating defeat, a candidate he campaigned for is now in the runoff of becoming the gubernatorial nominee against warren john warren. he also endorsed sitting president john donovan as the republicans see as a prime
candidate. everyone knows that there is trump's challenger. served time in prison. >> mm, very civil. like a boy. m msnbc will be monitoring that race in returns across the country tonight, so stay with us for that. coming up, cory booker and his trip to the border and how to resist trump in 2018, next.
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moment. let's talk about the border and specifically what you mentioned that i think is important and adjacent to the child separation, which is american officials turning people away at ports of entry from asylum. what do you think is happening? >> first of all, you know this calls to the darker chapters of our country where there was a group of -- a famous ship escaping from the holocaust. they came to the u.s. and turned back around where many were killed. they're turned away because we don't have, quote, unquote, the space for them. when i went into mexico to turn around, the mexican official whofls the whofwho was there told me, please don't go into the city, it's very
dangerous for guys on foot. here i am from newark. i was already talking to the border patrol about how it doesn't reflect our values. we hear the president calling folks illegals. here are folks showing up ready to go through the legal process of seeking asylum and they're being turned away, often into conditions that aren't hospitable, and for me it gives some responsibility for safety and security when we push them out of our country. we need to increase the capacity to hold people seeking asylum and to process people seeking asylum. we need to end that process of border patrol to go out on the border away from the other side of the bridge where people are ten ing processed to try to turn people away before they even get to our country. >> we are now on another primary night. there is a bunch of races in seven states across the country. there is sort of a lot of
people, i think, thinking about the midterms in the wake of what's happening, family separation and the supreme court today. the white house thinks when they're talking about immigration, they're winning. when you're talking about sarah huckabee sanders, you're winning because it's jimmying up their base. what is your read on the politics at this moment, senator? >> i guess there are two things. i do agree when we're talking about sarah huckabee sanders, we're talking about the coat that melania wore, we're taking away focus on what's happening right now. jeff sessions working to undermine the protections americans have against being denied insurance because of a preexisting condition. that is being eroded, ended as we speak. and yet we seem to be talking about things that often distract us from really important things that both republicans and democrats agree upon. i'm trying to, in my energy, trying to keep people focused on the things that matter. but i do not want major moral moments like ripping away families. i don't care if there's a democrat talking about
immigration reform that will help us in the general election or help us in the 2020 election. there's got to be a time where we don't ask if it's politic. i don't know if folks who protested the vietnam war if it was muhammad ali or scott king stopped and asked if it was politic. they did it because it was the right thing to do. this is a time we need to stand up and do what is right. our country has a president who is engaging in moral vandalism, whether it is the way he talks about muslims and the roots of what happened in the supreme court today are bigotry against muslim people. or what's happening at the border. this is a violation of our values. we shouldn't wait to see how this plays out in polling. we should do the right thing and stand up for who we are as a nation. >> senator cory booker of new jersey, it's always a pleasure to have you. thank you for being with me tonight. i appreciate it. >> thank you very much. before we go, i want you to know we have a new episode out
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
everybody has gone home. a few hours ago, this was a pretty bumping party. democrats really felt like they had a shot here tonight. it the last 48 hours of this race, everything seemed to be breaking their way. the republican candidate stumbled into a gaffe about franklin county the night before the election started. their candidate had been all over the place in national and local media. they felt like they were fighting out the last few days of this campaign on democratic issue turf talking about health care, they were talking about protecting it social security. that's one of the reasons that democrats nationally by the way like what they see here today. they like the issue set that was fought over in this campaign. they're also going to like the enthusiasm a lot. you talked about that big franklin county number, 65% of the vote. you saw that reflected around this district over the last couple days. core democratic voters were fired up to vote in this race, fired up to volunteer out
knocking on doors out in neighborhoods, out making phone calls. i talked to a lot of voter who's said they have never been as engaged in a congressional election as they were in this one. some folks said they were volunteering for the first time. i spent most of my time today with the democrats. i have to say from the republican point of view here, if there is a silver lining to this narrow what looks like it might be a victory, it's that to some degree their formula worked. you talked about running up the score in some of those rural areas. in a lot of places around the country that look like this, that is what republican republicans have to do, they have to juice turnout in their as a areas with donald trump or adds with nancy pelosi, and hold on and hope this democratic enthus yap wave doesn't knock them off their peshlgs. i do think we saw a little bit of a blueprint how it will work. the resources and money and time
won't be the same when there's 435 house races happening instead of one on a random tuesdayner i august. >> a superb election in the dead of the summer. my kind of night here i guess you could say. garrett, great reporting. thank you for joining us outside what was the o'connor headquarters outside columbus. former republican congressman david jolly from you florida, john pod or ritz and kimberly atkins, columnist for the "boston herald." david, let me start with you. i'm looking at the story from this district. i'm seeing three different stories looking at we showed there franklin county. clinton won it and tonight you saw the energy was there for democrats. the support level for o'connor was higher than it was for clinton by will ten points. turnout level was higher. i'm thinking that story is trouble for republican members of congress, barbara cop stock
right outside washington, d.c. from the suburban areas highly educated, trouble for them when you see that. >> a lot of my former colleagues in congress will have hard conversations with party leadership in the next month or two. the party may begin to pull resources from districts. they might be too vulnerable incumbents to hold toes seats. we're also seeing this trend away from republicans almost at large. these are districts that trump won, states trump won. we're seeing a contrast between the trump effect in a general election which is the special election in ohio is essentially a general election. also the influence of trump in primaries like we're seeing in kansas, move to washington and you're seeing the negative wins that trump brings to those rays. au in all, a good night for democrats. we'll know in ten days balderson probably wins. the trend is getting away from republicans. they're in a lot of trouble when
these races are fought in competitive districts in november. >> the trend we should say. trump by 11 points in this district tonight, one point if this holds. >> if i have this number right, so democrats need 23 seats to take control of the house. there were 24 districts. there are 24 hillary clinton districts. >> up to 25 with that pennsylvania. >> there are 25 districts republicans are sitting in that hillary won. okay. and then there's the question whether or not there are other districts like this one where trump wins by 11 where it gets close. if you look at this you say to yourself, the vast majority of those seats that hillary won those guys are in deep deep deep. >> you're saying a wave. >> if -- i mean, think about this number. so this guy o'connor who is like a nobody out polls hillary in a hillary area.
right? by ten points. so we could be seeing that district after district after district after district. in other words, the democrats could already have pretty close to having the house in their pocket. >> i think they do. i don't think there's a scenario tonight where we would say republicans can hold the house. steve, i have republican colleagues of mine friends who have been in the field. they're incumbents in the field for a year. over the last 90 days, seeing the precipitous drop in support for republicans. that's why you see republicans spend money early. even in majority republican districts, you now have a lot of vulnerable members. >> and i have to say when you sit down, you can do examiners sometime or make the map yourself and start flipping districts and you start out with the number 23 and say democrats got to pick off 23 republicans. maybe republicans are fortified here. it goes fast. kimberly, look, republicans will say bottom line, we won. it wasn't pretty.
again, it's too close to call but certainly you'd rather be balderson with the numbers than o'connor. republicans will say if this holds, we won this thing. that's all that counts. that's the story of the special elections besides pennsylvania a couple months ago, there were a lot of close calls but we won. is there anything besides the bottom line you think they can hang their hats on at all? >> that's a tough thing to say. we saw the president calling this a win. it sort reminds me of a regular season game when you know the playoffs are coming and you know that the teams will make a lot of adjustments leading into that. i think you're going to see that here, some of the things you were pointing out like not really growing the republican -- the suburbanen support for republicans having that slip a little bit. it's just, it may not be enough to overcome those -- to for even in those areas where you have that really inelastic support
for trump in the rural areas if they really are not winning the suburbs and not winning the more urban areas. if the democrats continue to mobilize, they mobilized in the middle of august, think what's going to happen in november. i think it's going to be already really bad news for republicans when it comes to playoff time. >> okay. so republican political consultant made the point that there is oner in lining for republicans which is to say that balderson defeat could have led to a stampede for the exits by not only by voters but by donors by people who have to pone up at the end, gin up enthusiasm. the idea if this had gone the other way, it probably won't, if this didn't look the way it did now, it would have been mass. >> the psychology of actually losing versus. >> the other way to look at it is like the first act of "the walking dead" and the zombies come and don't get in then but
then in three months, the zombies get into your cave. it may just be staving off the inevitable. >> i'm just former republican congressman, you ran. having to deal with donald trump a little bit. if you were running right now as a republican just trying to survive, in terms of -- what's the strategy you try to employ? >> you can't survive a 50-50 district. one of the take-aways from balderson's race is interesting. he was not fully in with donald trump. he occasionally said the right things. i think he wanted to bid the wall. this was an entrenched establishment republican candidate. this was not a make america great again candidate. trump would say he should have been more trump. i'm a product of special elections. my first race was a special election. to john's point, one of the things the party apparatus has to do is convince the high dollar institutional donors they can win these rays. i saw it in my election abconversely, i was running
during the implementation of obamacare and it provides an opportunity in my case for democrats to message test. at the time it was unpopular. the rollout was a disaster. republicans were trying to find their footing on obamacare and frankly they couldn't. republicans rights now are doing exactly the same thing trying to find their footing with donald trump. where is it? they haven't figured it out but they can go back to their donor base and say we at least know how to win. that's about all they can say tonight. >> kimberly, maybe this is sort of a bigger picture thing about the state of politics, the american divide. looking at that map, the one other thing jumps out at me, democratic energy in and immediately around columbus, the energy there the support for the democratic candidate there, you go to the rural parts of the district and these are places that obama won one of the keens in the rural part of this district and it went to trump by 30 points in 2016. there was interesting suspense there tonight would there be erosion for republicans in the
trump country part of this district and there wasn't. this is a turnout might not have been great. balderson was getting trump level support does make me wonder if that's getting to a bigger picture thing where republicans are casting their lot with that america and that sort of the future in the past for democrats. >> i think it depend how each of these districts look. if you have districts with more rural support like that, they will benefit from that inelastic support donald trump has had that we've seen in polling since inauguration day. a lot of these districts are drawn in ways there's a little bit of suburbia other things that come into play some that get closer into urban areas. this might be one way that some of the gerrymandering that's taken place to skim off urban areas to dilute that vote may come back to bite republicans in some ways if we see democrats turning out in those places.
so it's really going to be interesting to see how that plays out moving forward. >> kimberly atkins, thanks for joining us. coming up, other results and analysis from a bunch that we had ohio, we will kansas, michigan. other results, other races to tell you about to break down all the numbers and the latest in today's other big political story, the paul manafort trial. ken dilanian and henry lipman will join us. stay with us. est time to buy. you ready for this, junior? yeah, i think i can handle it. no pressure... ...that's just my favorite boat. boom. (laughs) make summer go right with ford, america's best-selling brand. and get our best deal of the summer: zero percent financing for sixty months on f-150. right now, get this special offer on f-150: zero percent financing for 60 months - during the ford summer sales event. hundred roads named "park" in the u.s. it's america's most popular street name.
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>> we must elect more republicans and we must elect troy balderson. we have to elect troy. >> well, president donald trump at a rally on saturday for troy badderson, republican candidate in that special election in ohio's 12th district tonight. the race as we've been telling you, we are currently saying too close to call. balderson leading democrat danny o'connor by less than a percentage point. voters will not learn the final vote till all the absentee and provisional votes are kouned. maybe the reason we have such suspense, maybe there's a recount as mandate bid state law. the president has already declared victory. earlier tonight he tweeted when i decided to go to ohio for troy badder son, he was down 64-36. that was not good. after my speech on saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. he wins a great victory during a tough type of the year for
voting. he will win big in november followed by another tweeting congratulations to troy badder son on a great win in ohio. balderson is not the only candidate trump's endorsement appears to be helping. he tweeted his support for chris kovach in kansas's republican primary for governor. here's the result, kobach leading by 952 votes, jeff colyer, that's the incumbent republican governor, he had been the lieutenant governor, sam brownback left colyer takes over sort of an unelected as governor at least, here's the key though to keep in mind. the outstanding vote in kansas is almost all in johnson county. we talk about those more upscale suburbs, college changed all that stuff. we talked about them in ohio right outside kansas city. colyer leading by 13 points. certainly on paper you look and
say maybe colyer despite being behind but a very close race. joining me now jason johnson, from the root.com and msbc contributor. john podder ritz and jason. the president will try to find a way to declare victory with any of these. he's doing it in ohio tonight. maybe the republican party will be happy with that one. in can is if kobach were to win this thing, that is something the republican establishment doesn't want to see. >> the president is still the biggest loudest voice for the republican party. he can claim victories tonight and he has proven he can be successful in moving people in primaries. apparently trumpism only works for donald trump. people who push that kind of attitude, that kind of behavior, kobach with all the controversies in his background and the corruption and everything else like that, being
a trumpist works well in a republican primary. it may not be the best thing for you in a jen election. this is really important to understand sort of mathematically as a political scientist. the vast majority of special elections are in gerrymandered districts. it's generally not a swigs where in a special election you can beat the incumbent party. democrats haven't won very many federal elections. they've been winning at the state level. when you can break down a margin from 10 to 16 points to single digits knowing there will be a rematch in two months, every single republican has to be concerned heading into the fall and donald trump can't visit all the districts he needs to visit in order to stave off a blue wave. >> it's interesting. we talk about the trump effect. the obvious trump effect is the fact we had a competitive race in the 12th congressional district a democrat hadn't won since 1980. in terms of the result, the president going in on saturday making noise in this one, how do you look at the results in a way
the trump effect on this one? >> the way, trump is causing democratic enthusiasm. right? this election is -- ohio election is kind of a joke like it's happening in august. they have to run again in november with this recount stuff. >> september we may have an answer. >> who knows when the winner will be sworn in. he'll be for six weeks and run again, right? so the whole thing was a proxy. whether or not garrett haake said they were talking about social security and issues and that you will. nobody was fooled. it was a proxy race. right? so two things happen. so the democratic enthusiasm was huge and there was a trump effect almost certainly positively pore balderson. so the question i would have for dave jolly in this circumstance is, you're in trouble, you're a republican in trouble even if it's a district that looks pretty you know, split, maybe you want trump. maybe your only hope is ginning
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
i was willing to accept the consequences. if you're barbara cop stock, you can't distance yourself from the president but you don't have to embrace him. >> from a democrat candidate's standpoint, it sounds like the president wants to be very visible this fall. if you're one of those democrats trying to unsaefrt a republican and the president is coming to your district a week or two out, are you saying uh-oh, he's going to get the republicans fired up or saying oh, he's going to get the democrats fired up. >> you're saying this is going to raise me money and i have a good chance he does as much damage as he does good. you saw this in the 12th district and you've seen this in other places. donald trump shows up wherever you want to go. you may not be in a position of being able to ask him to show up because a president decides when he wants to show up. sometimes he names the wrong candidate when he cops to a district. i don't know that if it's two weeks in october if you really want to be the person bringing
donald trump. he may not show up. he may not stay on record or message and worse, what kinds of messaging sacrifices will you have had to make at the altar of trump in the previous three weeks to make yourself attractive enough he's going to want to make that swing? i probably wouldn't want to bother with him. you work on the fact you've been an incumbent and care about the local community. you don't want to make this a national race if you're a republican right now. >> whatever the ultimate result in ohio 12, there is plenty of reason for democrats when they're cutting 12 points off trump's margin. the bigger picture coming up. you right now that i♪ ♪i believe, i really do believe that♪ ♪something's got a hold on me, yeah♪ ♪oh, it must be love
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we have been focusing all night on a special election in the 12th district in ohio. believe it or not, there's a lot more when it comes to elections tonight. a bunch of other big races happening around the country including michigan where the democratic state senate leader gretchen whitmer has won the democratic nomination for governor in that state. this according to "associated press." there's been a little bit of chaos in the vote counting out there for the secretary of state site. those are the numbers you see up on the screen showing you a low apartment in. whitmer the favorite of the establishment of the party. you're seeing in the a.p. count winning with 51% of the vote. she defeats apparently former top detroit health official abdul he will syed. he was backed by both bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. they campaigned on his behalf ahead of this race.
joining us is democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. let me just ask you. >> good evening. >> you're trying to pick off 23 republican seats in november. how do you feel at this moment? >> very good. there are 79 sees more competitive than the seats where it's still too close to call with danny o'connor as our candidate. michigan, the contest you just referenced more democrats showed up to vote there. people are energized but when you get out of primaries and get to the general election and independents and republican voters can cross over i think we're in a better position. >> are you looking -- are you thinking at all that this word wave gets tossed around a lot. is it a disappointment for democrats if they barely hit that number? are you starting to think in terms of getting a more robust
majority that might have a little bit more clout in power there? >> we're not taking anything for granted at all. when you look at the conor lamb race or how close it is with danny o'connor's race, we believe in each of these competitive races it will be 1,000 plus or minus votes. that's why it's so important that our candidates are able to appeal not just to the democratic base but to maybe disenchanted republican voters independent voters. so we know how important this is and we're going to stick to making sure that they understand that their health care costs are going up. pay collects do not have certainty and that the corruption in washington needs to be addressed. we think that will be the margin of victory. >> one of the biggest messages from republicans against danny o'connor and if they do hang on and win, if balderson does, republicans will say what saved them at the end was running against the idea of speaker nancy pelosi because o'connor
had -- they ran the ad with o'connor on this network saying in the end he would vote with democrats for at the pel. do you expect nancy at the pel to be the democratic leader after this november's election? >> i do. and again, that's the message that shows the bankruptcy of their values that they're not talking about what they're for. they'll have a real problem if danny o'connor is coming within 1500 votes right now and there's 79 districts more competitive. they'd better come up with something more appealing to the values that voters have in their districts. >> eric swalwell, thank you for joining us. our panel is back with us. david jolly, john podhoretz, jason johnson johnson. i'm interested in the question about nancy pelosi. we've seen so many democrats in districts just like this, ohio 12. part of that portfolio is saying i'm not going to vote for nancy pelosi. if democrats get the majority
and it's slim and 20 or 30 candidates show up in washington pledging not to vote for nancy pelosi, can she be the democratic leader? >> she can. but here's the other thing. this works both ways. in the ohio district 12, remember, o'connor's campaign was saying hey, is balderson going to vote for jim jordan if he runs for a leadership position with the controversy going on with ohio state right now. there are lots of different things that can come into play. if the democrats win the house by a reasonable margin, nancy pelosi will initially step aside. dealing with donald trump is not the same thing as george bush. it's not the same thing as barack obama. the democrats need a wartime consigliere, younger more aggressive kind of leadership in order to keep pace with the excitement and enthusiasm of their base. i don't know if nancy pelosi and james clyburn can continue doing
that. >> you got a name in mind? >> so i have said for a long time, i think tim ryan will try something. i think swalwell. there are several members of the congressional black caucus thinking about it right now. i'm fairly confident the new leadership with the democratic party will be a much more diverse leadership than perhaps in the past. >> do you expect nancy pelosi to be democratic leader come january? >> i question whether pelosi is a figure as radioactive as other -- as other political leaders in congress have been to help the other side. like she's not newt. newt was you know, very useful. she's not dole. she's not -- so i think the hope of republicans is that they can somehow threaten republican vote ares to might stay home with the possibility that nancy pelosi will be speaker and a lot of low information voters will say who's nancy pelosi.
so if i'm right about that, then she doesn't have to be turned out because she won't be a figure, a lightning rod of controversy. it's not clear to me the democrats are responding to pelosi in the way they are because they're worried she is useful to republicans. it's nor like she's owed, she's been there a long time. let people that we're more simpatico with have the job. i think she was actually a pretty good speaker when she was tem speaker technically speaking. i'm not sure you should throw her aside for somebody untested. >> the whole drama there, joe crowley seemed in position if pelosi were to step aside. he's not anymore. jason johnson, david jolly, john, thank you all for staying up late on a very fun election night. coming up next, good news for democrats hoping for that blue wave in november. going to break down some of the top tier democratic targs this november. they may be more favorable turf for party than we saw in the
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lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don't start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts, and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests before you start and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. don't let another morning go by without talking to your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. all right. welcome back again. officially still too close to call out there in ohio 12. even if democrat danny o'connor ends up falling short there there may be something for democrats to look forward to in november. potentially in that district. but maybe elsewhere too as the cook political reports david wasserman tweeted tonight, there
are 6 republican held house seats less republican than ohio 12 according to the cook political partisan voting index. and there are also 119 less republican districts than that pa1 seat that democrats won back in march. the magic number for democrats to win the house, they need 23 to do that. we thought we would take a look at some of those districts that may be top tier target for democrats. why don't we look at this. this was the last one, the last special election it started all the way back in april 2017. since the 2016 election heading into 2018, these are all the special elections for the house. so many great memories. how many nights did we stay up like this. some of these were very suspenseful. clearly a pattern emerged. this is around wichita. this was mike pompeo's district. trump won by 27. the republicans did win the seat
in the special election but that was a move to the democrats of 20 points there from 27 to 7. you saw it in montana. entire state, that's the one where the republican candidate body slammed the reporter the night before the election. again, he did win that election. he might be in trouble this fall but that was a shift of 14 points for democrats. the one big exception on this list, it was georgia 6. it was the suburbs north of atlanta. that's the one thing when republicans, boy, if they want to be optimistic they can say hey, somehow that's going to be the rule here and everything else will be an outlier. but otherwise, look, double digit gains for democrats utah is a weird one. there was a third party candidate in the presidential race. trump's margin there. beak this, coming into tonight, the average gain for democrats versus 2016 was 10 1/2 points.
they beak gained 10 1/2 points tonight. if things hold, a little bit less than a point, we'll call it a point, republicans by a point there. bottom line, take a look at it this way. we say 23 is the magic number. we talked about where o'connor ran up is the magic number. hillary clinton won the one county where she won in 2016. he did 10 points better than her and the turnout was through the roof. who are the most nervous republicans right now? these 25. the republicans here all represent districts that were won by hillary clinton. i think these republicans, if they are looking at that hillary clinton portion of ohio tonight, they got to be worried. there's a lot of demographic similarities in some of these districts. the clinton district republicans i think have to be worried when they see a result like this tonight. coming up, today's other big political story, the trial of paul manafort. still nervous about finding a new apartment?
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thousands he admitted to embezzling from manafort. though paul manafort is facing charges from before his time as trump campaign chairman, today in court the trump campaign was also discussed. >> it was a tale of dueling narratives at the paul manafort trial today. the star witness rick gates was on the stand for hours accusing manafort of corruption, of tax evasion, of faking loan documents, of bank fraud. then gates came under withering cross examination by manafort's lawyers. the person for whom this is really bad is donald trump, because these guys were running his campaign and they both from the evidence in the trial, whatever the conviction or acquit tatal is, they both appe to have been sleaze bags. he parked millions of dollars in
foreign bank accounts outside the irs. he has not refuted that at the trial. his only hope is to say it was not intentional and therefore not a felony. gates has admitted to massive crimes including tax evasion, bank fraud and stealing from paul manafort. today it emerged he had a secret life, a mistress at a crash pad in london. it was an interesting trial, day in court today. manafort's lawyers did damage gates' credibility, but they didn't challenge sort of the overall assertions that he made in the morning, buttressed by documents that the prosecution introduced, some of which were e-mails from manafort clearing showing his involvement in shady behavior. joining us now harry litman, former federal prosecutor and deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton. ken is saying there it sounds
like gates's credibility was damaged by that cross examination today, the defense team really going after him. ultimately, do you think that matters? >> well, maybe a little. he did get beat up some, but that was to be expected. the important thing is not whether he's done sleazy or criminal things. it's whether the jury now believes he's telling the truth. and what he said is, look, here's my plea agreement. if i tell a lie, i lose it all. i'm incentivized for it. the defense made a textbook error. they said to him, well, if you're done so many lies, should the jury believe you now. he said yes. and they said why? and you learn in trial 101 don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. he was prepped for it and he said, because i'm here to tell the truth, paul manafort had the same choice, he chose another path. i think that hit home. the important thing is not what
he's done in the past but whether as he's sitting there they have reason to believe him. that is not just his word, but all the corroborating evidence that the government has introduced. so they scratched him up some, but i don't think in any critical way. >> i'm curious too what you make of the judge in this case. there's been some coverage, some attention to his behavior in the courtroom, some withering criticism really of the defense team, telling one of the lawyers, saying, i see tears in your eyes, essentially saying, maybe i made you cry. what do you make of what the judge is up to here? >> he actually said that to a prosecutor, a lead prosecutor. >> i'm sorry. i said defense. >> that's all right. i've been in front of him as a prosecutor. he does take a special relish in sort of slapping you around. but he's gone farther here. there's not only what you just
said, which at least was out of earshot of the jury. but within the jury's earshot when gates testified that manafort was on top of everything he did, judge ellis volunteered apropos of nothing, well not everything, obviously, since he didn't know about the money you were stealing, this in front of the jury. that's really improper. you know, ellis is known for being feisty, but this is the kind of thing that can prejudice the united states. i don't think it will, but if it does, there's no appeal. if there's an acquittal here, the united states can't reverse it because of double jeopardy. >> if there is a conviction on the other hand in terms of mueller's investigation, look, this case is officially -- it's about the business practices of paul manafort. the trump campaign came up today in the court, but this has not primarily been about the trump campaign. but in terms of mueller's
investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election, the trump campaign, if he gets a conviction, does it in any way feed into that? is there a connection there? is there a next step if he gets this connection? >> yeah. so i think in a few ways. first, as you mentioned, it does have a little bit to do with the russia stuff even in the trial. of course, manafort and gates, as you mentioned at the top, during the campaign in the thick of it, manafort's losing several hundred thousand dollars a month, in fact. but i just think more generally, trump has so invested in the notion this is a rigged phony probe and a decisive win here by mueller just strengthens his hand, strengthened rosenstein's hand and weakens trump's commensurately. >> the drama is going to continue inside that courthouse. we've got accounts from our
reporter and those court drawings too we get to put up on the air. always fun to get to show those. we'll be right back. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely. but allstate actually helps you drive safely... with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can't do anything about that. now that you know the truth... are you in good hands? it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes,
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Chris Hayes discusses the day's top news.
we expect those also break democratic enough to erase a 1754 lead? no, but could it be enough to cut into that 754 enough that balderson's advantage which is 0.9 right now over o'connor if that ends up at 0.5 or less, state law says guess what, we got to have a a recount here. you could potentially, i wouldn't say it's the likeliest scenario but you could see that happening. there are also 5048 what they are calling uncounted absentee ballots, that were mailed out to voters in some cases weeks ago and they haven't been mailed back. a lot of them probably aren't going to be mailed back. some of them a small number probably military ballots maybe still making their way. some of them probably a small number are voters you had to have them postmarked yesterday. if they sent it out yesterday, it still comes in, that vote probably still going to be
district, the areas that currentlied to trump, the turnout wasn't as high but the vote, the margins that balderson ran up here were trump-like. did you not have much democratic support out here. o'connor didn't make inroads there. maybe he wanted to. the key was delaware county. this is the wealthiest county in ohio. suburban, it is more almost urban when you get down close to columbus, more clackly suburban. trump got 55%. not great for republicans. the question was would balderson do worse? he did 54. he had to be a little lower than that i think. there needed to be more erosion in the delaware county for him to lose. doesn't look like quite enough erosion for o'connor to pull this off tonight. too close to call. still the chance of a recount. no matter how many days they drag this out now, these two get to do it all over again in november when they're one of 434
other rays around the country. that is the lay of the land there. garrett haake it on the ground at o'connor headquarters wes terville, ohio. it looks quiet behind you. what was it like to be out there tonight? i'm the last man standing. they've turned off the lights. everybody has gone home. a few hours ago, this was a pretty bumping party. democrats really felt like they had a shot here tonight. it the last 48 hours of this race, everything seemed to be breaking their way. the republican candidate stumbled into a gaffe about franklin county the night before the election started. their candidate had been all over the place in national and local media. they felt like they were fighting out the last few days of this campaign on democratic issue turf talking about health care, they were talking about protecting it social security. that's one of the reasons that democrats nationally by the way like what they see here today.
they like the issue set that was fought over in this campaign. they're also going to like the enthusiasm a lot. you talked about that big franklin county number, 65% of the vote. you saw that reflected around this district over the last couple days. core democratic voters were fired up to vote in this race, fired up to volunteer out knocking on doors out in neighborhoods, out making phone calls. i talked to a lot of voter who's said they have never been as engaged in a congressional election as they were in this one. some folks said they were volunteering for the first time. i spent most of my time today with the democrats. i have to say from the republican point of view here, if there is a silver lining to this narrow what looks like it might be a victory, it's that to some degree their formula worked. you talked about running up the score in some of those rural areas. in a lot of places around the country that look like this, that is what republican republicans have to do, they
have to juice turnout in their as a areas with donald trump or adds with nancy pelosi, and hold on and hope this democratic enthusiasm wave doesn't knock them off their perches. i do think we saw a little bit of a blueprint how it will work. the resources and money and time won't be the same when there's 435 house races happening instead of one on a random tuesdayner i august. >> a superb election in the dead of the summer. my kind of night here i guess you could say. garrett, great reporting. thank you for joining us outside what was the o'connor headquarters outside columbus. former republican congressman david jolly from you florida, john pod or ritz and kimberly atkins, columnist for the "boston herald." david, let me start with you. i'm looking at the story from this district.
i'm seeing three different stories looking at we showed there franklin county. clinton won it and tonight you saw the energy was there for democrats. the support level for o'connor was higher than it was for clinton by will ten points. turnout level was higher. i'm thinking that story is trouble for republican members of congress, barbara cop stock right outside washington, d.c. from the suburban areas highly educated, trouble for them when you see that. >> a lot of my former colleagues in congress will have hard conversations with party leadership in the next month or two. the party may begin to pull resources from districts. they might be too vulnerable incumbents to hold toes seats. we're also seeing this trend away from republicans almost at large. these are districts that trump won, states trump won. we're seeing a contrast between the trump effect in a general election which is the special election in ohio is essentially
a general election. also the influence of trump in primaries like we're seeing in kansas, move to washington and you're seeing the negative wins that trump brings to those rays. au in all, a good night for democrats. we'll know in ten days balderson probably wins. the trend is getting away from republicans. they're in a lot of trouble when these races are fought in competitive districts in november. >> the trend we should say. trump by 11 points in this district tonight, one point if this holds. >> if i have this number right, so democrats need 23 seats to take control of the house. there were 24 districts. there are 24 hillary clinton districts. >> up to 25 with that pennsylvania. >> there are 25 districts republicans are sitting in that hillary won. okay. and then there's the question whether or not there are other districts like this one where trump wins by 11 where it gets close.
if you look at this you say to yourself, the vast majority of those seats that hillary won those guys are in deep deep deep. >> you're saying a wave. >> if -- i mean, think about this number. so this guy o'connor who is like a nobody out polls hillary in a hillary area. right? by ten points. so we could be seeing that district after district after district after district. in other words, the democrats could already have pretty close to having the house in their pocket. >> i think they do. i don't think there's a scenario tonight where we would say republicans can hold the house. steve, i have republican colleagues of mine friends who have been in the field. they're incumbents in the field
for a year. over the last 90 days, seeing the precipitous drop in support for republicans. that's why you see republicans spend money early. even in majority republican districts, you now have a lot of vulnerable members. >> and i have to say when you sit down, you can do examiners sometime or make the map yourself and start flipping districts and you start out with the number 23 and say democrats got to pick off 23 republicans. maybe republicans are fortified here. it goes fast. kimberly, look, republicans will say bottom line, we won. it wasn't pretty. again, it's too close to call but certainly you'd rather be balderson with the numbers than o'connor. republicans will say if this holds, we won this thing. that's all that counts. that's the story of the special elections besides pennsylvania a couple months ago, there were a lot of close calls but we won. is there anything besides the bottom line you think they can hang their hats on at all? >> that's a tough thing to say. we saw the president calling this a win. it sort reminds me of a regular season game when you know the
playoffs are coming and you know that the teams will make a lot of adjustments leading into that. i think you're going to see that here, some of the things you were pointing out like not really growing the republican -- the suburbanen support for republicans having that slip a little bit. it's just, it may not be enough to overcome those -- to for even in those areas where you have that really inelastic support for trump in the rural areas if they really are not winning the suburbs and not winning the more urban areas. if the democrats continue to mobilize, they mobilized in the middle of august, think what's going to happen in november. i think it's going to be already really bad news for republicans when it comes to playoff time. >> okay. so republican political consultant made the point that there is oner in lining for republicans which is to say that balderson defeat could have led to a stampede for the exits by not only by voters but by donors by people who have to pony up at
the end, gin up enthusiasm. the idea if this had gone the other way, it probably won't, if this didn't look the way it did now, it would have been mass. >> the psychology of actually losing versus. >> the other way to look at it is like the first act of "the walking dead" and the zombies come and don't get in then but then in three months, the zombies get into your cave. it may just be staving off the inevitable. >> i'm just former republican congressman, you ran. having to deal with donald trump a little bit. if you were running right now as a republican just trying to survive, in terms of -- what's the strategy you try to employ? >> you can't survive a 50-50 district. one of the take-aways from balderson's race is interesting. he was not fully in with donald trump. he occasionally said the right things.
i think he wanted to bid the wall. this was an entrenched establishment republican candidate. this was not a make america great again candidate. trump would say he should have been more trump. i'm a product of special elections. my first race was a special election. to john's point, one of the things the party apparatus has to do is convince the high dollar institutional donors they can win these races. i saw it in my election and conversely, i was running during the implementation of obamacare and it provides an opportunity in my case for democrats to message test. at the time it was unpopular. the rollout was a disaster. republicans were trying to find their footing on obamacare and frankly they couldn't. republicans rights now are doing exactly the same thing trying to find their footing with donald trump. where is it? they haven't figured it out but they can go back to their donor base and say we at least know how to win. that's about all they can say tonight. >> kimberly, maybe this is sort of a bigger picture thing about the state of politics, the
american divide. looking at that map, the one other thing jumps out at me, democratic energy in and immediately around columbus, the energy there the support for the democratic candidate there, you go to the rural parts of the district and these are places that obama won one of the keens in the rural part of this district and it went to trump by 30 points in 2016. there was interesting suspense there tonight would there be erosion for republicans in the trump country part of this district and there wasn't. this is a turnout might not have been great. balderson was getting trump level support does make me wonder if that's getting to a bigger picture thing where republicans are casting their lot with that america and that sort of the future in the past for democrats. >> i think it depend how each of these districts look. if you have districts with more rural support like that, they will benefit from that inelastic support donald trump has had that we've seen in polling since inauguration day. a lot of these districts are
drawn in ways there's a little bit of suburbia other things that come into play some that get closer into urban areas. this might be one way that some of the gerrymandering that's taken place to skim off urban areas to dilute that vote may come back to bite republicans in some ways if we see democrats turning out in those places. so it's really going to be interesting to see how that plays out moving forward. >> kimberly atkins, thanks for joining us. coming up, other results and analysis from a bunch that we had ohio, we will kansas, michigan. other results, other races to tell you about to break down all the numbers and the latest in today's other big political story, the paul manafort trial. ken dilanian and henry lipman will join us. stay with us.
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we have to elect troy. >> well, president donald trump at a rally on saturday for troy balderson, republican candidate in that special election in ohio's 12th district tonight. the race as we've been telling you, we are currently saying too close to call. balderson leading democrat danny o'connor by less than a percentage point. voters will not learn the final vote till all the absentee and provisional votes are counted. maybe the reason we have such suspense, maybe there's a recount as mandate bid state law. the president has already declared victory. earlier tonight he tweeted when i decided to go to ohio for troy badder son, he was down 64-36. that was not good. after my speech on saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. he wins a great victory during a tough type of the year for voting. he will win big in november followed by another tweeting congratulations to troy badder son on a great win in ohio.
balderson is not the only candidate trump's endorsement appears to be helping. he tweeted his support for chris kovach in kansas's republican primary for governor. here's the result, kobach leading by 952 votes, jeff colyer, that's the incumbent republican governor, he had been the lieutenant governor, sam brownback left colyer takes over sort of an unelected as governor at least, here's the key though to keep in mind. the outstanding vote in kansas is almost all in johnson county. we talk about those more upscale suburbs, college changed all that stuff. we talked about them in ohio right outside kansas city. colyer leading by 13 points. certainly on paper you look and say maybe colyer despite being behind but a very close race. joining me now jason johnson,
from the root.com and msbc contributor. john podder ritz and jason. the president will try to find a way to declare victory with any of these. he's doing it in ohio tonight. maybe the republican party will be happy with that one. in can is if kobach were to win this thing, that is something the republican establishment doesn't want to see. >> the president is still the biggest loudest voice for the republican party. he can claim victories tonight and he has proven he can be successful in moving people in primaries. apparently trumpism only works for donald trump. people who push that kind of attitude, that kind of behavior, kobach with all the controversies in his background and the corruption and everything else like that, being a trumpist works well in a republican primary. it may not be the best thing for
you in a jen election. this is really important to understand sort of mathematically as a political scientist. the vast majority of special elections are in gerrymandered districts. it's generally not a situation where in a special election you can beat the incumbent party. democrats haven't won very many federal elections. they've been winning at the state level. when you can break down a margin from 10 to 16 points to single digits knowing there will be a rematch in two months, every single republican has to be concerned heading into the fall and donald trump can't visit all the districts he needs to visit in order to stave off a blue wave. >> it's interesting. we talk about the trump effect. the obvious trump effect is the fact we had a competitive race in the 12th congressional district a democrat hadn't won since 1980. in terms of the result, the president going in on saturday making noise in this one, how do you look at the results in a way the trump effect on this one? >> the way, trump is causing democratic enthusiasm.
right? this election is -- ohio election is kind of a joke like it's happening in august. they have to run again in november with this recount stuff. >> september we may have an answer. >> who knows when the winner will be sworn in. he'll be for six weeks and run again, right? so the whole thing was a proxy. whether or not garrett haake said they were talking about social security and issues and that you will. nobody was fooled. it was a proxy race. right? so two things happen. so the democratic enthusiasm was huge and there was a trump effect almost certainly positively pore balderson. so the question i would have for dave jolly in this circumstance is, you're in trouble, you're a republican in trouble even if it's a district that looks pretty you know, split, maybe you want trump. maybe your only hope is ginning it up. >> that's the question. the governor there made it sound like balderson maybe didn't want trump.
what had you have said in his position? >> we need to dissect president trump's tweet. based on electoral science it's absurd. it's important to understand early voting is a demographic all to itself. donald trump did not shift this election. i knew in my first race i was going to lose the early vote because i knew the performance of early voters versus those on election day. this is fascinating because donald trump might say, and we may see the numbers that he created enthusiasm and brought more republicans out. you have to measure how many democrats cape out out of concern and anxiety to the oppose donald trump. the reality is, trump's impact on 2018 is obvious. republicans are losing. republicans are having to compete where they never have before. republicans are underperforming by 5 and ten points because of donald trump. the donald trump effect is not winning close races like tonight. it's losing and undermining what has been ten years of successful republican politics. >> my question is, you've got
two weeks to go, barbara cop stock in the virginia suburbs and maybe not the right candidate for this, two weeks to go. you're down three or four. your only hope is somehow ginning up republican turnout. you've got to gin it up. the trump effect may be there. the trump effect is already stimulated the democrats. if you're one these moderate sort of like establishment republicans, that's what i'm asking, do you want him there last week of october. >> i don't know. i'm just saying. > it depends on the district, not the candidate's ideology. the best course would be to were silent on donald trump. and just not ask him to come to the district. i was actually a republican who stood on house floor, called for him to drop out of the race and
said he's bad for the country, i'll never support him. my republican base will never let me live that down. that's fine. i was willing to accept the consequences. if you're barbara cop stock, you can't distance yourself from the president but you don't have to embrace him. >> from a democrat candidate's standpoint, it sounds like the president wants to be very visible this fall. if you're one of those democrats trying to unseat a republican and the president is coming to your district a week or two out, are you saying uh-oh, he's going to get the republicans fired up or saying oh, he's going to get the democrats fired up. >> you're saying this is going to raise me money and i have a good chance he does as much damage as he does good. you saw this in the 12th district and you've seen this in other places. donald trump shows up wherever you want to go. you may not be in a position of being able to ask him to show up because a president decides when he wants to show up. sometimes he names the wrong candidate when he cops to a district. i don't know that if it's two
weeks in october if you really want to be the person bringing donald trump. he may not show up. he may not stay on record or message and worse, what kinds of messaging sacrifices will you have had to make at the altar of trump in the previous three weeks to make yourself attractive enough he's going to want to make that swing? i probably wouldn't want to bother with him. you work on the fact you've been an incumbent and care about the local community. you don't want to make this a national race if you're a republican right now. >> whatever the ultimate result in ohio 12, there is plenty of reason for democrats when they're cutting 12 points off trump's margin like this. the bigger picture coming up. the nature of a virus is to change. move. mutate.
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we have been focusing all night on a special election in the 12th district in ohio. believe it or not, there's a lot more when it comes to elections tonight. a bunch of other big races happening around the country including michigan where the democratic state senate leader gretchen whitmer has won the democratic nomination for governor in that state. this according to "associated press." there's been a little bit of chaos in the vote counting out there for the secretary of state site. those are the numbers you see up on the screen showing you a low apartment in. whitmer the favorite of the establishment of the party. you're seeing in the a.p. count winning with 51% of the vote. she defeats apparently former top detroit health official abdul he will syed. he was backed by both bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. they campaigned on his behalf ahead of this race. joining us is democratic congressman eric swalwell of california.
let me just ask you. >> good evening. >> you're trying to pick off 23 republican seats in november. how do you feel at this moment? >> very good. there are 79 sees more competitive than the seats where it's still too close to call with danny o'connor as our candidate. michigan, the contest you just referenced more democrats showed up to vote there. people are energized but when you get out of primaries and get to the general election and independents and republican voters can cross over i think we're in a better position. >> are you looking -- are you thinking at all that this word wave gets tossed around a lot. is it a disappointment for democrats if they barely hit that number? are you starting to think in terms of getting a more robust majority that might have a little bit more clout in power there? >> we're not taking anything for granted at all.
when you look at the conor lamb race or how close it is with danny o'connor's race, we believe in each of these competitive races it will be 1,000 plus or minus votes. that's why it's so important that our candidates are able to appeal not just to the democratic base but to maybe disenchanted republican voters independent voters. so we know how important this is and we're going to stick to making sure that they understand that their health care costs are going up. pay collects do not have certainty and that the corruption in washington needs to be addressed. we think that will be the margin of victory. >> one of the biggest messages from republicans against danny o'connor and if they do hang on and win, if balderson does, republicans will say what saved them at the end was running against the idea of speaker
nancy pelosi because o'connor had -- they ran the ad with o'connor on this network saying in the end he would vote with democrats for at the pel. do you expect nancy at the pel to be the democratic leader after this november's election? >> i do. and again, that's the message that shows the bankruptcy of their values that they're not talking about what they're for. they'll have a real problem if danny o'connor is coming within 1500 votes right now and there's 79 districts more competitive. they'd better come up with something more appealing to the values that voters have in their districts. >> eric swalwell, thank you for joining us. our panel is back with us. david jolly, john podhoretz, jason johnson johnson. i'm interested in the question about nancy pelosi. we've seen so many democrats in districts just like this, ohio 12. part of that portfolio is saying i'm not going to vote for nancy pelosi. if democrats get the majority and it's slim and 20 or 30 candidates show up in washington pledging not to vote for nancy pelosi, can she be the democratic leader?
>> she can. but here's the other thing. this works both ways. in the ohio district 12, remember, o'connor's campaign was saying hey, is balderson going to vote for jim jordan if he runs for a leadership position with the controversy going on with ohio state right now. there are lots of different things that can come into play. if the democrats win the house by a reasonable margin, nancy pelosi will initially step aside. dealing with donald trump is not the same thing as george bush. it's not the same thing as barack obama. the democrats need a wartime consigliere, younger more aggressive kind of leadership in order to keep pace with the excitement and enthusiasm of their base. i don't know if nancy pelosi and james clyburn can continue doing that. >> you got a name in mind? >> so i have said for a long time, i think tim ryan will try something.
i think swalwell. there are several members of the congressional black caucus thinking about it right now. i'm fairly confident the new leadership with the democratic party will be a much more diverse leadership than perhaps in the past. >> do you expect nancy pelosi to be democratic leader come january? >> i question whether pelosi is a figure as radioactive as other -- as other political leaders in congress have been to help the other side. like she's not newt. newt was you know, very useful. she's not dole. she's not -- so i think the hope of republicans is that they can somehow threaten republican vote ares to might stay home with the possibility that nancy pelosi will be speaker and a lot of low information voters will say who's nancy pelosi. so if i'm right about that, then she doesn't have to be turned out because she won't be a figure, a lightning rod of
controversy. it's not clear to me the democrats are responding to pelosi in the way they are because they're worried she is useful to republicans. it's nor like she's owed, she's been there a long time. let people that we're more simpatico with have the job. i think she was actually a pretty good speaker when she was tem speaker technically speaking. i'm not sure you should throw her aside for somebody untested. >> the whole drama there, joe crowley seemed in position if pelosi were to step aside. he's not anymore. jason johnson, david jolly, john, thank you all for staying up late on a very fun election night. coming up next, good news for democrats hoping for that blue wave in november. going to break down some of the top tier democratic targets this november. they may be more favorable turf for party than we saw in the 12th district in ohio. that is next.
12 according to the cook political partisan voting index. and there are also 119 less republican districts than that pa1 seat that democrats won back in march. the magic number for democrats to win the house, they need 23 to do that. we thought we would take a look at some of those districts that may be top tier target for democrats. why don't we look at this. this was the last one, the last special election it started all the way back in april 2017. since the 2016 election heading into 2018, these are all the special elections for the house. so many great memories. how many nights did we stay up like this. some of these were very suspenseful. clearly a pattern emerged. this is around wichita. this was mike pompeo's district. trump won by 27. the republicans did win the seat in the special election but that was a move to the democrats of 20 points there from 27 to 7.
you saw it in montana. entire state, that's the one where the republican candidate body slammed the reporter the night before the election. again, he did win that election. he might be in trouble this fall but that was a shift of 14 points for democrats. the one big exception on this list, it was georgia 6. it was the suburbs north of atlanta. that's the one thing when republicans, boy, if they want to be optimistic they can say hey, somehow that's going to be the rule here and everything else will be an outlier. but otherwise, look, double digit gains for democrats utah is a weird one. there was a third party candidate in the presidential race. trump's margin there. beak this, coming into tonight, the average gain for democrats versus 2016 was 10 1/2 points. they beak gained 10 1/2 points tonight. if things hold, a little bit less than a point, we'll call it a point, republicans by a point there.
bottom line, take a look at it this way. we say 23 is the magic number. we talked about where o'connor ran up is the magic number. hillary clinton won the one county where she won in 2016. he did 10 points better than her and the turnout was through the roof. who are the most nervous republicans right now? these 25. the republicans here all represent districts that were won by hillary clinton. i think these republicans, if they are looking at that hillary clinton portion of ohio tonight, they got to be worried. there's a lot of demographic similarities in some of these districts. the clinton district republicans i think have to be worried when they see a result like this tonight. coming up, today's other big political story, the trial of paul manafort.
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day six of the united states versus paul manafort. during his second day of testimony, rick gates who is cooperating the robert mueller testified that he falsified tax and bank documents at manafort's request. during cross examination, manafort's lawyers pressed gates about his lies to the mueller team and the hundreds of thousands he admitted to embezzling from manafort. though paul manafort is facing charges from before his time as trump campaign chairman, today in court the trump campaign was also discussed. >> it was a tale of dueling narratives at the paul manafort trial today. the star witness rick gates was on the stand for hours accusing manafort of corruption, of tax evasion, of faking loan documents, of bank fraud. then gates came under withering cross examination by manafort's lawyers. the person for whom this is
really bad is donald trump, because these guys were running his campaign and they both from the evidence in the trial, whatever the conviction or acquittal is, they both appear to have been sleaze bags. he parked millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts outside the irs. he has not refuted that at the trial. his only hope is to say it was not intentional and therefore not a felony. gates has admitted to massive crimes including tax evasion, bank fraud and stealing from paul manafort. today it emerged he had a secret life, a mistress at a crash pad in london. it was an interesting trial, day in court today. manafort's lawyers did damage gates' credibility, but they didn't challenge sort of the overall assertions that he made in the morning, buttressed by
documents that the prosecution introduced, some of which were e-mails from manafort clearing showing his involvement in shady behavior. joining us now harry litman, former federal prosecutor and deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton. ken is saying there it sounds like gates's credibility was damaged by that cross examination today, the defense team really going after him. ultimately, do you think that matters? >> well, maybe a little. he did get beat up some, but that was to be expected. the important thing is not whether he's done sleazy or criminal things. it's whether the jury now believes he's telling the truth. and what he said is, look, here's my plea agreement. if i tell a lie, i lose it all. i'm incentivized for it. the defense made a textbook error. they said to him, well, if
you're done so many lies, should the jury believe you now. he said yes. and they said why? and you learn in trial 101 don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. he was prepped for it and he said, because i'm here to tell the truth, paul manafort had the same choice, he chose another path. i think that hit home. the important thing is not what he's done in the past but whether as he's sitting there they have reason to believe him. that is not just his word, but all the corroborating evidence that the government has introduced. so they scratched him up some, but i don't think in any critical way. >> i'm curious too what you make of the judge in this case. there's been some coverage, some attention to his behavior in the courtroom, some withering criticism really of the defense team, telling one of the lawyers, saying, i see tears in your eyes, essentially saying, maybe i made you cry. what do you make of what the judge is up to here?
>> he actually said that to a prosecutor, a lead prosecutor. >> i'm sorry. i said defense. >> that's all right. i've been in front of him as a prosecutor. he does take a special relish in sort of slapping you around. but he's gone farther here. there's not only what you just said, which at least was out of earshot of the jury. but within the jury's earshot when gates testified that manafort was on top of everything he did, judge ellis volunteered apropos of nothing, well not everything, obviously, since he didn't know about the money you were stealing, this in front of the jury. that's really improper. you know, ellis is known for being feisty, but this is the kind of thing that can prejudice the united states. i don't think it will, but if it does, there's no appeal. if there's an acquittal here,
the united states can't reverse it because of double jeopardy. >> if there is a conviction on the other hand in terms of mueller's investigation, look, this case is officially -- it's about the business practices of paul manafort. the trump campaign came up today in the court, but this has not primarily been about the trump campaign. but in terms of mueller's investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election, the trump campaign, if he gets a conviction, does it in any way feed into that? is there a connection there? is there a next step if he gets this connection? >> yeah. so i think in a few ways. first, as you mentioned, it does have a little bit to do with the russia stuff even in the trial. of course, manafort and gates, as you mentioned at the top, during the campaign in the thick of it, manafort's losing several hundred thousand dollars a month, in fact. but i just think more generally, trump has so invested in the
notion this is a rigged phony probe and a decisive win here by mueller just strengthens his hand, strengthened rosenstein's hand and weakens trump's commensurately. >> the drama is going to continue inside that courthouse. we've got accounts from our reporter and those court drawings too we get to put up on the air. always fun to get to show those. we'll be right back.
the dodgers also extend their lead atop the nl west to 10 1/2 games over the second place san francisco giants. they have the day off. elsewhere in the nl west the arizona diamondbacks opening a four-game set in san diego with a 3-1 win over the padres. the diamondbacks move to one game out of the final playoff spot in the crowded field. meanwhile the washington nationals dealt a blow to the red sox playoff push. could not make it out of the fifth inning in the second start back from a shoulder injury. the sox lost the nats 10-7 dropping 2 of three to the last place nationals. the nats have been a better team the last couple of days. the red sox will look up to make some ground in a three-game series against the slumping yankees starting tonight in the bronx. it would make sense for the yankees to studly start playing
yochelson: what was also significant about the crime scene -- there was a bucket found upside down that had a shoe print on it. the shoe print was unusual. it turned out to be an avia aerobic shoe, i think size 10 1/2 or size 11. detectives question family, business associates, and neighbors, but found no suspects. linedecker: it's almost unimaginable. the investigators had to know that this was going to happen again because this is a homicidal maniac. you have to wonder about the kind of mind and motivation. ♪ jordan: ricardo leyva ramirez was born february 29, 1960, in el paso, texas,
then he has more time to take with a woman. >> when law enforcement arrives at the crime scene, they discover a 45 caliber handgun and a bullet. >> was also significant about the scene, there was a bucket found upside down with a shoe print on it. the print was unusual. it turned out to be a aerobic shoe, size 10 1/2 or 11. >> detectives questioned family, business associates and neighbors but found no suspects. >> it is almost unimaginable. the investigators had to know this was going to happen again because this was a homicidal maniac. you have to wonder about the kind of mind and motivation.
asks after their kids by name. mixed couples are common. there's an easy familiarity between people here. - the 2017 mountview high school... - bang-bang on three. one, two, three. all: bang-bang! - get down! [dynamic music] ♪ ♪ - so very much a west virginia tradition, coal mining and the military. - yeah, here for 10 1/2 years. navy, but i've been around and back. - you've been around and end up back here. - back here. - monica barner is a mountview alum. her husband, sly, is a coach. her sons, elijah and eliffe, are on the team. her daughter, elisa, is a cheerleader. so it's personal for her. - born and raised here, went to school here. wouldn't have it no other way. [overlapping chatter] - a 78-yard run. [cheering]
he -- los angeles says that they are a sanctuary city. so do you agree with what governor abbott is doing is this. >> what i don't independent with some of the debates with moving people, if you go to the san antonio airport, there are hundreds getting flown all over the country. so other cities have to continue to help deal with the crisis. and i remind people this started under donald trump and now it is worse under joe biden. it takes 10 1/2 hours to drive across my district. and these communities have been dealing with it before covid. and now they are having
i didn't stay out of any kind of loyalty to the leader. i didn't stay even out of any loyalty to the belief system at that point. i stayed because i was scared, and i couldn't figure out how to leave. so, i was in for about 10 1/2 years. people do go through a very deep psychological change that is brought about by the indoctrination methods in the group. and the group really believed that they were training for this trip to outer space. >> they said, "we want to be part of a crew, a crew which acts as a whole." and they looked at "star trek" and said, "that's it." >> captain's log, stardate 41153.7. our destination is planet deneb iv, beyond which lies the great unexplored mass of the galaxy.