the oklahoma justices ruling said the lingering impact of the massacre does not fall within the scope of our state public nuisance statute and they rule the state can continue to profit from tulsa massacre related tourism without compensating survivors. today's dismissal marks an end to the quest to see justice in their life time, something i got to speak to ms. fletcher about last year. what does justice look like to you? >> well, everything is beautiful and rebuilt and restored. you know, we think it is just time now that we have justice on all of that to where we can live all our life. >> and that is the "reidout". "all in with chris hayes" starts now. tonight on "all in" day >> people are saying to themselves, where we better off four years ago or are we better off now and it wasn't even close. >> the greatest confidence game ever played. >> voters believe they were better off during trump's term than biden's. >> we are not better off today than we were four years ago. >> tonight, from crime to the economy and beyond how a political party led by a criminal is conning america. then -- >> you, you are working for a felon. a felon. >> the maga scandal machine and today's contempt about for the attorney general. and the senate push to do something about the ethics crisis in the supreme court. >> the highest court in the land should not and could not have the lowest ethical standards. >> when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york, i am chris hayes. as we approach the first debate of a presidential election season, earlier than normal between joe biden and donald trump, it is clear that trump and the republican pitch to voters is fundamentally a con job. i mean that in the most literal sense. the term comes from so-called confidence man, fixtures in the late 18th and 19th century who swindled the victims with their confidence. right now that all's bravado is the defining feature of donald trump's attempt to win back the oval office. remember, this is the man who tried to destroy our constitutional republic live on national television and who utterly failed in overseeing the one national crisis he had to guide the nation through the pandemic. and yet trump and his surrogates are constantly telling voters to ask themselves a question, are you better off than you were four years ago? >> are you better off than you were four years ago? i don't think joe biden can run on the question of are you better off than you were four years ago. >> that is one question he is praying that he never hears. are you better under four years of joe biden were four years of donald trump. >> you know, people are saying to themselves are we better off four years ago or are we better off now and it wasn't even close. >> that, by the way, was all from the past week. we have been running a series on "all in" responding to that question because the events of four years ago were so shocking, unprecedented, and traumatic. i think a lot of people, i would say most people including myself, have blocked it out. again, i get it. i don't want to think about sitting inside trying to homeschool my kids or attending zuma for my dearly departed uncle or the images of packed hospitals and dying saying goodbye to their loved ones on ipads. of course the fact that most people don't want to think too much about 2020 is an enormous advantage for republicans and the trump campaign who are attempting to pull off this con job. their aim is to kind of magically replace her memory. to distract you from the fact that four years ago we were all living in the midst of disaster. >> tonight the country has reached another sobering milestone in the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing 2 million cases and this warning sign. hospitalizations are surging in many states. >> we will start our rallies back up now. we had a tremendous run at rallies. i don't think there has been an empty seat. i think one in texas. we are going to arizona. >> texas and arizona among nine states reporting a jump in hospitalizations, the best indicator of the viruses toll. >> we are really doing a financial comeback. the jobs numbers are fantastic. >> 1.5 million people filed front employment last week, almost 43 million since the pandemic began. >> i think the economy next year will be maybe the best it has ever been. we are already seeing the stock market going up, because you have a lot of smart people betting on exactly what i'm saying. >> a selloff from wall street amid new concerns about the continuing spread of covid-19. the dow plunging more than 1800 points, its biggest drop in three months. >> a very important time in our country. a lot of things are happening and i think when it all ends up it is going to end up very good for everybody. >> there is growing concern tonight that restricting restrictions is causing an increase in covid-19 cases. >> all lives are precious, not just the people infected by covid, but also the people who are being driven to this because of the lockdown. >> what is happening in some of those places. that shut down. the poverty rate is going up. what are people going to do if they don't have jobs to go to to earn a living in order to take care of their families? that is the main reason. all of these scare tactics, they don't work this time around. they will not work. >> i should note one week after herman cain made that appearance on fox news, he attended donald trump's indoor rally. a big, indoor rally in the midst of covid in tulsa, oklahoma and by the end of june he was hospitalized with covid and died on july 30 at the age of 74. naturally every time we do one of these segments i find that looking back at four years ago brings a lot of emotion. most people divide recent history into the before times and the after times, myself included. a lot of us feel nostalgia for the before times and that is exactly what donald trump and his allies are using to build their lie about what really happened. to erase our real memories and implant false ones. that is their project and it has been unnervingly effective so far. four years ago in june, 2020 while we were living through the pandemic donald trump's approval rating was 42%. and when a new poll, 47% of americans say they approve of the job that trump did as president. it is not much, but those five points are basically the margin of the entire election and they are accomplishing that through flat out lies about what is actually happening. take a listen to missouri senator josh hawley doing this today. >> he's going to run on his record from four years ago versus biden right now. gas under president biden, up 55%. groceries, up 40%. wages down 3%. that is the campaign. that is before we get to crime, before we get to the border. >> sorry, josh hawley. wages are up. average hourly earnings are actually up 17% from may, 2020 two 2024 in nominal terms, like groceries and stuff. wages have also outpaced inflation for the past 13 months as the washington post pointed out today. crime is way down. look at what has happened with the homicide rate. in 2020 when donald trump was president, he ushered in under his presidency the largest ever one year jump, spiking 30%. by 2023 the homicide rate had tumbled 19% to 5.3 per 100,000 people. new data shows the rate continues to drop dramatically, down another 20 -- another 26% in the first quarter from the same time period last year. gas prices, are, i will admit, overall higher than they were in the summer of 2020. why were they low then? no one was traveling anywhere. okay? that is why there were cheap gas prices. refrigerator trucks full of cadavers, yeah, the gas prices were low. and they spiked up in the early part of the biden administration with the war in ukraine, but they have been trending in the right direction and continue to fall even as the summer travel season heats up. grocery prices are coming down. not just with inflation which cooled to 3.3% today, but retailers are actually slashing prices on thousands of islands. -- of items. again, they spiked during the pandemic like they did everywhere in the world, but they are on the right trajectory now and all of this is happening under the incumbent, joe biden. and we are not losing thousands of americans per day to a deadly pandemic. we do not live in a nation in the throes of constant disorder. this time four years ago we were living through the televised murder of george lloyd and the protestant police response that followed while then president trump called for sending in troops. >> across the country was started as peaceful gatherings protesting the death of george floyd evolved into destruction. from new york, where police and protesters squared off in the streets, to portland where the mayor issued a state of emergency and a city curfew. >> the nation erupted into scenes of chaos. violence. and widespread destruction into the early morning hours. in some of the nation's biggest cities, the night spiraled out of control early. >> we had to run -- rubber bullets. my cameraman has been hit. we have also seen tear gas being used. here we go again. this is exactly what it looks like. >> oh. >> whoa. >> can you hear us? >> are you okay? >> reporter: we are surrounded by the police and you saw the way that they dealt with my cameraman. we don't know who they are targeting at the moment. >> i said you have to dominate the streets. you can't let that happen and we are doing it with compassion, if you think about it. we are dominating the street with compassion. >> all that happens under the watch of president donald trump. we cannot say or hear that and if he returns to power i am telling you it is a safe bet that we will return to trauma and chaos. she is a democratic strategist who served as an advisor for the 2020 campaign. they both join me now. doug, i wanted to talk to you because in some ways history and recent history is part of what is being contested in this campaign. the legacy of the first trump year, trump term, and particularly 2020, the four years ago in the famous formulation, as a historian and historian and presidential elections, how do you see it? >> i think january 6 is such a seminal event and for the days after it seemed like trump was toast. everybody was furious that insurrectionists, but lo and behold suddenly mitch mcconnell came back to trump and lindsey graham and they sort of built this coalition and what is it? it is really anti-federal government. that is what trump represents now. that is why we are seeing the american flag hung upside down by conservative justices. and biden is trying to be part of a tradition, presidents club, of all of the other presidents. you saw on june 6, where ronald reagan is. by then saying i represent all of this and trump is sort of the anti-federal government, anger over covid. and that people still feel that their lives became topsy-turvy and they are going to punish whoever the incumbent is. so it is hard for biden to get traction even though as you said, numbers on the economy are good. we are much better off. he has shown great leadership, but communicating that to the people when there is this much frenzy on social media and hatred toward the federal government, it is an uphill battle for biden to get reelected. >> i was thinking about 2010, the elections in which of course democrats lost. the tea party uprising. a lot of that was something similar was happening. which is people were frustrated with the aftermath of the financial crisis ushered in by the republican party. democrats were the incumbent party and they took it out against the democrats and it was sort of classic like we don't like the status quo because things are bad and they were bad, but the reason they were bad is because what had been passed on. there is something similar here where the things people don't like him a totally understandably, the shocks that came out of covid were not the doing of joe biden. subsequent administrations had to fix that and people still feel frustrated with the pace that is happening. >> it's interesting that you bring up what happened in 2010 because i think of the history of the democratic party. to clean up the miss of the republican party and as democrats clean up the miss they have to message against republicans who are acting as if they want the party that let estate into it. four years ago donald trump was telling people to drink leach to cure covid while he was having superspreader events. four years ago people were in their homes watching what you just did in a montage, but we were watching that every day for 24 hours, not knowing when we would see our loved ones and then trying to figure out who we were going to vote for when it comes to the president to get us out of this. you know, policy for people to feel it in their pocket books takes a very long time and while you mentioned some great reports for the biden administration, even the global economic report this week that said the global economy is strong because the u.s. economy is getting strong, but people are not feeling that yet. that is not the fault of president biden. that is the unregulated corporations that republicans are blocking anything democrats want to do around this. this debate coming up, president biden will have to figure out how to message that as well as the surrogates and people talking about this between now and election day so people understand how they are not feeling this, even though these historic numbers are bringing us back to a place that the american people really want to be. >> you know, doug, i think that before times nostalgia is powerful and i think there is another thing in play here and i would like to get your thoughts on it. my view of trump was always that this is a person who is so unsuited to the job above all else that if and when a crisis comes it will be the worst possible response and then covid happened and it was borne out. i think a lot of people think 2020 is a mulligan. it was a meteor that hit earth and they sort of blocked out the degree of insanity in the crisis management that happened that year and i wonder if you think it is possible to remind them or people are so resistant to thinking about it. >> i think you can and it is going to be imperative that joe biden reminds people, particularly during the upcoming debate with trump. trump has gone through so many legal jeopardy moments and years have gone by and we are running it on television all the time and you have the 34 felony conventions -- convictions. even when that happens some democrats were saying don't rub it in trump's base. of course you have to rub it in his face. you have to call him a felon. biden has struggled i think with messaging in the sense of this economy that has been building. he called it a transitory pain we were having at one point and then it was bidenomics. instead they have to lay out that our economy is doing well. yes, i feel your pain at milk, groceries, gas, but he has to be the happy warrior like fdr. at times he does that. i felt that when he was in france, talking about freedom and democracy, but other times he gets in a bit of a defensive crouch. you can't be gerald ford with whip inflation now buttons. you can't be jimmy carter, the malaise or crisis of confidence. presidents get reelected with a sense of victory and optimism and better times are yet to come and obama when he ran, he had the killing of osama bin laden which gave him the foreign policy credential that people clearly understood. the revenge of the 9/11 disaster. >> the sort of past versus future -- obviously you have two individuals, one is who is 78 and the other is 81. in some ways donald trump is the recent past and i do wonder if because the past four years have been so dramatic and disruptive, people want to go back in time and that is part of the allure. >> i think people want to go back in time when there was what they felt was more certainty. with covid there was such uncertainty. the racial unrest and then we saw january 6. hindsight is 2020 and for some reason some people as though they -- people feel as though they were better under donald trump. that wasn't the case. i think we have to make sure that president biden, and i hope his campaign is listening, that he simplifies his message. he has always been the comforter right next to president obama. be that president and then talk about the ways not only has it gotten folks out of this, but he will continue to do so if they give him four more years. along with a congress and senate to keep doing this work. >> alencia johnson and doug brinkley, thank you both. coming up, the hunter biden narrative backfires on republicans and now they are going after the attorney general instead. that is next. next. impossible. we're solving the meat problem with more meat. for moderate to severe crohn's disease skyrizi is the first il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to. liver problems may occur in crohn's disease. control of crohn's means everything to me. ask your gastroenterologist about skyrizi. ♪ control is everything to me ♪ learn how abbvie could help you save. why would i use kayak to compare ♪ control is hundreds of travel sites at once? i like to do things myself. i can't trust anything else to do the job 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spending... x marks the spot. do it all on the network made for streaming, and bring on the good stuff. donald trump and his henchmen in congress have for years chased joe biden's only living son hunter biden in what is to me a bad effort to use him to go after his father. yesterday hunter biden got convicted in federal court. the scandal machine has basically run out of fuel and now out of desperation republicans are demanding attorney general merrick garland release the audiotape of president biden's interview with special counsel robert hur. what? even the republicans already have the transcript. today they voted to hold the attorney general in contempt. congressman joe neguse of colorado is assistant democratic leader and member of the judiciary committee and joins me now. congressman, what was this all about? >> good evening and good to be with you, chris. unfortunately it is a sad state of affairs in washington, d.c. as extreme house republicans have once again found a way to weaponize what are very constitutional and serious tools that the congress has at its disposal. in this case, as you articulated, they pursued a baseless contempt resolution against the attorney general. by way of background as many of your viewers already know, the attorney general fully complied with the requests made by the congress. the department of justice produced over