thanks to both of you. that's our time. "the reidout" with joy reid starts right now. tonight on "the reidout" -- >> like i said -- >> well, i have been a terrible liar on those subjects. i ran in 2020 for the same exact seat. for congress. and i got away with it then. >> that was george anthony santos back in february. today, a congressional subcommittee issued a scathing report on his lies and potential crimes. and the use of campaign funds for botox and onlyfans among other things. also tonight, fulton county d.a. fani willis moves to refolk the bond of one of trump's codefendants accusing him of trying to intimidate witnesses and his fellow codefendants. how very trumpian. but we begin tonight with the unholy trinity of the modern day republican party. kanye, elon, and trump. that is according to house judiciary republicans anyway who about a year ago cranked out the tweet that you see on the screen. the tweet stayed up for two months until december 2022 when republicans finally deleted it after ye appeared with sandy hook conspiracy theorist alex jones and publicly praised adolf hitler. that tweet did not age well. ye is now famous for having dinner with trump and white nationalists and holocaust denier nick fuentes, while elon musk promised to bring back right wing figures who were once banned including donald trump. he even recently endorsed a post attacking jewish communities and accusing them of promoting dialectical hatred against whites. as for trump, he took a break from scowling at a manhattan courtroom to host a rally in new hampshire where he vowed to root out his enemies. >> we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. >> that's right, dehumanizing your enemies and opponents by calling them vermin. atactic famously used by nazis, adolf hitler and mussolini. there's this weird confusing trend that has taken over american politics where folks once seen as icons of the left or at least public figures with broad appeal have moved to the far right. and are getting more extreme over time. you have ye, who went from george bush doesn't care about black people, to praising trump's dragon energy. there's trump, who millions tuned in to watch on "the apprentice" regardless of their political stance. as for elon musk, he's long had his billionaire tech entrepreneur cred known as the tesla guy who sold a million cars to a lot of left coast liberals before turning twitter into a hate speech free-for-all. in recent years all three of these men have shifted into a different form of celebrity, known more for emboldening white supremacists and for fueling racism and hate in the u.s. then for anything else. their rise represents a kind of chaos movement that has happened over the last ten years. in other times these are not people who would be seen as leaders of substance, but in the dangerous erratic world we now occupy, these are the people many americans are listening to. it's why we need to pay attention to robert f. kennedy jr. he's not exactly kanye or elon or trump, but he has his own anti-semitic and racist controversies to contend with. he also has some extreme views. and importantly, his independent run for the white house isn't as fringe as it seems. he's actually becoming a force in this election. according to a recent polling, he's at 21 points, only 16 points behind president biden. among young voters he's polling at 32%. like the others, fame came before infamy. robert f. kennedy jr. is the son of bobby and nephew of jfk. a champion of the environment, as close to a royal heir as americans can get. but make no mistake, he is dangerous. rfk jr. has spent years stoking fear of vaccines, he's risen to become a major figure in the anti-vaxx movement. all vaccines, measles, mumps, rubella. a crusade like this has real-life consequences, smg that likely keeps his family up at night. three kennedy family members even wrote a piece in politico declaring rfk jr. has been tragically wrong about vaccines. there's one last thing about this chaos candidates, something they all have in common. that is the money. susanne craig shares some fascinating details in her piece in "the new york times" about how rfk has turned his public crusade into a private windfall and how his crusades backed by the power of his surname have earned him tens of millions of dollars. susanne craig joins me now along with shermichael singleton, political strategist and host of the shermichael singleton show on sirius xm. i want to start with you. let's go through this because your piece is fascinating. one of the things it demystifies is how rich rfk jr. is. they call it praise without raise. he has the name and he has the fame. he doesn't necessarily have the capital, but these crusades that he's embarked on have made him a lot of money. tell us a little bit about that. >> right, and joy, i have to say, when i started this article and reporting for this story, i didn't know a lot about robert f. kennedy except he was a kennedy. and he had done some good work cleaning up the hudson river. and i started to dig into it, and i thought, this guy has got to be wealthy. he's got to have trust funds. one of the first things i noticed, there was a public filing, he was getting very little steady income off his trust funds. my sort of mission when i set out was to look at his money and how he makes it. then i thought there's a few other things. he's got these jobs and they're at nonprofits or environmental groups. they weren't throwing off very much money. you could tell just by google search that he had a fairly expensive liefrl. you didn't know if some of that came from other family money that i wasn't seeing. i just started digging. i noticed he had gone through a divorce in 2012. i thought maybe there's some documents in there, when there's a divorce, the depositions are about the finance. unfortunately, when people get divorced it's usually about the money. i ended up being able to review some of the documents from his divorce from mary richardson kennedy. it just opened up this door for me to understand how he makes his money. it was incredible to see behind this name and his image that you think he's working for a nonprofit, was this just incredible private hustle that he has been doing for decades. he's a lawyer, he gets money from that. but he also, he's got -- he's been able to intertwine his legal work with some of the nonprofit work that he has been doing. then there was just this incredible just -- it was just the pace of the speeches that he was giving, sometimes up to 60 a year, charging upwards of $250,000. and then he was on advisory boards and boards of directors. he ended up in 2005 getting involved with a major venture capital firm out in california called vantage point. that netted him millions of dollars. then he also was on the boards of a number of companies connected to vantage point. all of this added up to a huge amount of money, but he at the same time we learned through the divorce documents was leading an incredibly extravagant life. you felt like he was just treading water and he was telling friends he was broke. he told a friend he was broke and he got set up with a board position there. it was really incredible to get this window into his world that was just years of this sort of behavior. >> did you get the sense in doing this research that the anti-vaxx stuff, because he was more known for being an environmentalist and people on the left revered him. is the anti-vaxx stuff a grift, to be blunt, and is the run to be president a grift? >> the anti-vaxx stuff, there's a wrinkle in that. that's that he joined this organization called the children's health defense. you know, in recent years, and he's the chief legal officer and the chairman. he went from almost no money to half a million dollars. and he gets paid more than three times the president. he's a prolific fund-raiser for them. there could be an argument there that he should be paid more. we could debate whether that was too much. what he did there in addition to getting a huge salary from a nonprofit, he then went out and says he got permission from the nonprofit to do this, but he established relationships with law firms where he was bringing -- he could participate in lawsuits, potentially bring some in the door that he could participate in against pharmaceutical companies, some related to vaccines. and then he could get paid for that. he says that the children's health defense fund, the nonprofit, is getting some money back for that. but it was just fascinating to see even there, he was saying half a million dollars is not enough, so i need this other thing. then we found out a little bit, he along the way, you see this with rich people, i covered wall street for a long time, and it just was interesting to see, we found out that he had taken a free car from lexus. and also, even one of the homes on the kennedy compound that you would think was his, he actually leased it for years from a wealthy friend and then bought it at a rate that he had agreed ten years before the same rate. and he was also eve one of the nonprofits that he worked for, and i found this quite troubling, he had agreed -- he had an agreement with them that they would pay for the air fare for his children to fly with him on longer trips. i talked to him about that. he said sometimes i was away from my family for a week or two and i was out of the country, so they would pay the air fare. i don't know many people at corporations that have that sort of agreement, but it was sort of just accepted that that would happen. >> he kind of sounds like claires thomas. he does. there is a thing where, i mean, he has this advantage of the name, the surname is gold for politics. people have the perception that he's this fabulously wealthy man, so he's unbuyable in their mind, sort of the way people thought trump was a billionaire when he wasn't. it feels like what he's doing is making himself really famous, trading on that, and it's actually working. there are a lot of people who want to vote for him. donald trump versus joe biden versus robert f. kennedy jr., he gets 21%. >> he's doing better against the sitting president than ron desantis, the governor of a large state, is doing against the former president, which is really quite unprecedented when you really think about it. you would think that should be in the reverse. with that said, i read through the article twice. a fascinating story. what it appears is kennedy really has built a career financially off the name. i'm not necessarily against that, necessarily, but the amount of money and how he made it, where the money was coming from is quite astonishing. he used his name in many of these law firms and nonprofits for them to go out and sue individuals with kennedy on the board. >> isn't that what republicans are trying to impeach hunter biden for? >> i knew you were going to go there, joy. look, i'm not against it, but i could see how republicans may want to politicize this against hunter biden because we're in the midst of an election. i'm not certain if it's going to move the needle for democratic voters. maybe it might move the needle for right leaning independents, perhaps, but i haven't seen data that convinces me it's going to benefit republicans. >> my question is what is the appeal? is it just name id, or is it just a hunger for an option and a choice besides biden and trump? >> joy, i'm going to be honest. i don't think it's just name id a loan. most young people aren't aware of the legacy of the kennedys. >> they know who the kennedys are. >> but i don't think that's enough to move the needle. i think it's that people are starving for somebody else. you look at the approval ratings of president biden are not very well. you're seeing a groundswell of young individuals, particularly individuals of color protesting across the country right now because they don't like the position the administration has taken when it pertains to israel and hamas. over 10,000 innocent palestinians have been killed. it seems the white house is on the wrong side of a lot of issues lately, and voters are looking for someone else to speak to that. i'm not convinced robert f. kennedy is the person to accomplish the goals they're looking for, but when you're starving you look for something anywhere to feed you. >> it is fascinating that he is clearly benefitting from some kind of hunger that people have for a figure that is tied to a history that felt -- that america had a more coherent story. he's clearly benefitted from that financially and politically? >> he definitely has and he's invoking that on the came pain. i don't think you can underestimate not only the power of having kennedy as your last name and being part of that family. i saw it over and over again where he just was able to fund-raise for these organizations, he was able to get on boards. his job in some sense, in some of the advisory positions i saw, was simply to make connections for people. and i think that people are attracted to that. i don't think there's any doubt about that. the other thing i think about, why the story was important for me, for "the new york times," is because i think robert f. kennedy is not only a force right now. we'll see if he can get through. it's going to be a very difficult process for him to get on the ballot as an independent candidate, but i don't think we have seen the last of robert f. kennedy jr. if i have in my life covered a lot of politicians, there are few that i have encountered when i have talked to people who know him that feel that he has a sense of destiny and that he should be in the white house, that this is his moment and that this is where he is meant to be and this is his path. >> very quickly. >> perhaps he can't get to the white house, but remember jill stein against hillary clinton. it's enough to move the needle. >> and he ain't jill stein. he will get 19, not 3, because he's a kennedy. americans love nothing more than to elect people from familiar families. people love dynasties. susanne craig, great reporting. shermichael singleton, thank you, my friend. up next on "the reidout," there are growing calls for george santos' expulsion after the house ethics committee released a scathing report concluding he broke multiple federal laws. go figure. this guy? really? stay with us. i was on a work trip when the pulmonary embolism happened. but because i have 23andme, i was aware of that gene. that saved my life. look, we all know that the republican party is trump's party from snout to tail. but no one embodies the trumpian ethos quite like george santos. a man who fashioned his political persona on donald trump right down to the lying, the performative outrage and self-victimization. today, the house ethics committee released a scathing report after amassing overwhelming evidence of congressman santos' lawlessness. this report stated what the law, the media, law enforcement, the constituents of new york's third congressional district, what everyone already knew. which is that he was a liar, a fraud, and a crook. they even uncovered additional crimes that they referred to the department of justice, which included falsely reported loans received by his political action committee, and using campaign funds for personal stuff. what did he spend other people's money on? you know, the usual stuff like ferragamo shoes, botox, onlyfans payments, a weekend trip to an atlantic city casino, a honeymoon weekend in vegas, and cold hard cash. they also noted that santos did not cooperate with the investigation and evaded straightforward requests for information, which could come as no surprise. the ethics committee decided to forego recommending sanctions because that process would have taken too long. miael guest of mississippi opted to support the motion to expel george santos from congress instead. the movement is a signal to other republicans that they should join the push to expel. santos called the report a disgusting politicized smear and said that he would not stand by as he is stoned by those who have flaws themselves. but he concluded that he would not seek re-election because the scrutiny was too much or probably because he wouldn't win. the house could vote on his expulsion as soon as it returns from the thanksgiving holiday. joining me is david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones and someone who has reported a lot on santos. what's in the report? >> we know the headline already. it's the details that are delicious. i mean, the report just says he lies about everything. every aspect of his personal background, you know, where he went to college, connection with the holocaust and his family, all of that stuff. >> whether his mom died in 9/11. >> also a remark that he took every opportunity possible to exploit financially his congressional campaigns and his stint in congress. and i want to know when the guy slept. because this report shows scheme after scheme after scheme. and we know there are schemes that it doesn't even cover. like the dog charity that didn't exist, they don't go into that. it shows there's this money flow again and again and again, where he's sticking money basically from his campaigns and other political operations he's running, and he's using them to buy botox, and here's a $20,000 check, goes into his personal bank account, which has no money at the time, and then he starts writing his rent check, going to atms at casinos and taking out money. this is just happening constantly. while he's doing this in 2020, he is telling his treasurer, who has pleaded guilty to assorted crimes, to declare that he's made $80,000 in loans to his campaign. has he? no. he's only loaned it $3,000, but the campaign pays them back $30,000. so he is just sucking money out with these fake loans. it goes on and on. you know, they gathered 170,000 documents in this investigation, and at the end, they say we still don't understand all his finances. there are $240,000 in money that went out. we don't know what he did with this. there are transfers of money in the tens and huns of thousands of dollars. we don't understand that either. so at the end of the day, we have so much, and there's even more. they could do a whole other report. i don't think they're going to, but i do think it's at least 50/50 after this, the justice department that basically -- the prosecutors have indicted him twice, they still have time before the next -- before the trial starts in a few months to add more stuff to the indictment. he was like a nonstop grift machine while lying all about the personal stuff. you know, he makes the incredible talented mr. ripley look like a piker. >> it sounds like this whole purpose for being in politics was to raise money in order to achieve a lifestyle that he couldn't afford. and i do have a specific question. was he paid to watch onlyfans or was he on onlyfans? >> they said there were small payments made to onlyfans, which suggests to me he was using the site and paying for content. i don't use it, but i imagine when they say small amounts of money, $100, $200, whatever. i mean, i'm reminded of the wonderful mel brooks movie, the producers, where they discover in the original that actually, you can make more money with a play if it's a flop. you can sell more than 100% shares and no one expects their money back at the end. you can pocket that. i kind of think that he thought, i can run for congress. i can make a lot of money, and if i don't win, no one is going to really know. you never look through the financial campaign forms of people who lose. and so -- >> and the fact is he won in a district th