Campuses, in part because many students feel that going to an elite Undergrad Institution is not going to improve their chances in the economy. Eli stoeblckoles, heidi przybyla, and jason johnson. Tonight on all in. I got the white supremacist, the neonazi, i got them all. What the president did this summer. Kkk, we got kkk. I got em all. Response to charlottesville. Very fine people on both sides. The response in north korea. They will be met with fire and fury the response to ht hurricane. The intensifying Russia Investigation. My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a russian lawyer. The fights with his own disa. Where america stands after its first summer of trump. I dont think anyone is interested in having a shutdown. No chance, we wont raise the debt ceiling. No chance. Networ americas not going to default. We have to close down our government, were building that wall. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york, im chris hayes. This is normally the time of year, right after the labor day weekend, when Congress Returns to washington, after a slow and sleepy recess, and the news cycle finally starts to crank back up again. But this year, with this president , hardly a summer day passed by without some big bombshell story. Huge developments in the Russia Investigation, a near crisis with north korea, the infamous two sides response to the violence in charlottesville, steve bannon was fired, transgender troops were banned, sort of, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio was pardoned. And that was just in august. Most president s head into their first september hoping the wind at their back can help drive a
busy legislative agenda. This president ends the Summer Setting records with his dismally low Approval Ratings, including the lowest park ever for a president in his first year. By the end of last month, the president was at 34 . To help with the summer of trump in perspective, im joined by harry enton, senior Political Writer for 358, tara dowdel, and jess mcintosh, a former adviser for the Clinton Campaign and current Executive Editor of share blue. Good to have you here. Lets start with a snapshot of where the president is political my. Maybe ill start with you, because you do a lot of analysis of polling. How would you characterize where the president is politically . Lowest ive ever seen. Those numbers tell the story, dont they . Look at the president s disApproval Rating. Already in the high 50s. His net Approval Rating, more than 20 Percentage Points of the country disapprove than approve of the president. Weve simply never seen that. I guess if we had polling back with warren g. Harding we would,
watching the president. There was literally one day of an eclipse that was the one slowdown. And i remembered watching the eclipse News Cycle Play out, i was like, this is what news cycles used to be like. But instead, were all tuned into this. And of course, a small piece of his base is eroding every time he does something massively unpopular, really racist, really bigoted. Every time he fails to enact some piece of his agenda that his base was excited about doing. He hasnt done anything that they wanted and hes done so much that the rest of the condition didnt want. I think the polls are more important than usual, because america has this we need to know that there are more people who dont like this than there are. But i want to ask you this as someone who worked in the Clinton Campaign. Because i feel like im not saying this is not true. The polling is what the polling is. Hes clearly very unpopular. He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. So its not surprising in some ways, right . But there was also this sense that people said very similar things about him during the
campaign, which he ended up winning, right . Yes. That his Approval Ratings are in the 30s, hes incredibly unpopular, ya dada yada. Are you haunted in some part of your mind . Like we maybe got it wrong that time. I am haunted regularly, always. But, it was a hypothetical then and now its real. So youre saying thats the difference. The difference is between, im going to vote for this person and what im going to do is vote and then well see what hes like to this is what hes like. How many people voted for him because they thought he would drain the swamp. How many people voted for him because they thought he would keep out muslims and build a wall. Thats what they thought they would do, but hes not doing that. And its negative polarization. That is still with us. People are motivated by the people they dont want to see in the office. So the support that he retains, i think, when he has those flashpoint moments, thats when he retains it. Thats when the media is ganging
up on him and he can just say, its all fake news and were against them. But if we wipe away all the crazy headlines and the fog and the Nonstop News Soik here. What were seeing with the Trump Administration from the getgo is the same thing that republicans and libertarians criticized obama at in his second term, which is, its just a pen and a phone. There isnt a lot of legislation happening. Which is usually not whats happening in your first hundred days, first year. Particularly when you have congress, thats when you do it. And he has spent a lot of his capital burning his capital. Hes going after jeff flake and dean heller. Hes trying to primary people and reshape the Republican Party to be more trumpy. And this is making a lot of republican senators really unhappy. Thats not going to get tax reform done. Do you think that matters . So, theres two issues, right . Theres the general sense of how popular he is. And then theres how that connects to whi s ts to what ki influence, power, and capital he has to spend on capitol hill. How do you think those two relate at this moment . Ill play devils advocate a little bit here. I think with respect to trumps
base, while maybe there are portions of it that have evoed roded, theres a lot of talk about sort of the Working Class people that voted for him. But a lot of very wealthy people in this country, a lot of educated people this this country voted for donald trump. The best oneword summary of who voted for donald trump is republicans. Republicans voted for donald trump. Like, if youre trying to figure out republicans voted for donald trump by overwhelming margins. Particularly a slice of people that didnt like him in the primary and maybe arent crazy about him now. So i think those people are eroding, but with respect to his core base, and i call them fans, he has a cultlike following in this cub. And he is putting on the greatest reality show hes ever put on. This is what hes doing. Hes entertaining these people, they like the fact that some people actually like the fact that nothings happening. Because they wanted him to quote unquote blow up washington. And thats exactly what hes doing. So some people have sort of bought into that rationale and they use it to justify
continuing to support him. So i think that we shouldnt underestimate the strength of who hes performing for. Hes performing for those fans and those fans still support him. I think theres an important distinction there. There are some people who Support Trump or support him in spite of the antics and the personality. And there are some people who support him primarily because of that. And its the latter category that i think are the fans and the base that are the 30 or what. Its the more marginal voters who are the people that are where a lot of the political leverage is, particularly when republicans on capitol hill are thinking about it. Ill say two things. Number one, trumps Approval Rating among republicans in the latest gallup weekly poll was below 80 . Thats amazing. You would expect your Republican Base to be overwhelmingly support you, not just four out of five. The other thing i pointed out, the Pew Research Center had a great question. How do you approve of the president s not just his performance, but his attitude and conduct in office . And only 14 of americans said
they liked it. In fact, the plurality of republicans said they had mixed feelings. They do not necessarily like this show. There are some people who certainly do, who want to burn everything to the ground. But most people who voted for donald trump were hoping that he would actually do something. And if you look at the legislation passed so far, i think the opinion is he really hasnt. And that brings us to whether he has any sway on capitol hill. We saw he really didnt during the health care fight. He did a little bit in the house, i think theyre a little more responsive to him, those are gerrymandered districts. Those are districts where a primary from a trumpbacked perp could spell the end of your political career. But in the senate, not only does he not have any sway, he doesnt appear to have the tools or comprehension necessary to make a Policy Argument to people, which actually do matter. He didnt try. Like, he never tried to have policy sway. Every time he gives a speech or a rally, its about himself. Hes never i mean, he tried to give a tax speech just last week and it was about himself and eventually an attack on claire mccaskill. I did not walk away from that speech knowing what his tax plan
was going to be. And i think that the republicans on the hill had to have been really disappointed in that. Hes just not hes not able to and hes not willing to learn how. But lets separate the legislative trump agenda and what tara is saying. The guy has control over the kpes Executive Branch of government. And hes doing things or trying to do things, some of which i like and the rest of you may not, in terms of reforms at the food and drug administration. Hes got people who are working on Regulatory Reform in a lot of different places you were right the first time. I saw you catch yourself. But, so, that is happening apace and some of the only legislation thats opinion passed by Kopg Ththe Congressio Review Act For The Second And 14th Times in history. Thats different and a real thing thats happening. Its gotten way undercovered because we Pay Attention to flash grenades. And to me the most significant is whats happening with dhs and i. C. E. And whats happening with immigration. Its very different in terms of
whos being detained and how often. And doj with Jeff Sessions, who hasnt done every terrible thing he wants to do, but wishes he could. But ultimately, you get judged by legislative accomplishments, both at the ballot box thats not true. You get judged by how peoples lives are going. And right now the economy continues to hum along. Do you if you had to make a prediction about whether he can get people onboard for any big bills passed this fall, what do you think . I think hes going to have a really tough time doing so. Because trumps worst enemy is trump, right . So he he misses to your point, he misses opportunities. When he does have the bully pulpit, but he cant help himself and he has to use it to attack someone. I want to make another point, though. With Trump Supporters, because i think that we have to not underestimate trump, as a democrat, i think we have to be very careful that we dont underestimate. There also was a poll that came out that said a massive number of republicans think that the media is a bigger threat than white supremacists. White supremacy yes that is clearly trumps influence. 40 total thought the news media was more a threat than white supremacists. And for trump voters, its 75 . Look how much stronger trump is against the news media than he is against white supremacists, of course they think that. And i want to talk about that. Stay with me. Because in two minutes, i want to talk specifically about the president s response to charlottesville. Thats right after the break. Coming up later in the hour, we have a special retrospective, a look at the incredibly shrinking administration. The era of the pajama boy is over january 20th and the alpha males are back. Im Milissa Rehberger with your top stories. Ahead of the president s expected announcement tomorrow on 800,000 young immigrants, some republicans in congress are calling for him to keep the daca program. Republican lawmakers like James Langford of oklahoma say its wrong to hold children accountable for their parents decision to bring them to this
country. And aaa says average gas prices this Holiday Weekend are up about 12 cents a gallon after Hurricane Harvey knocked refineries offline. All all in with Chris Hayesai after this. Aggressive styling, so you can break away from everyone else. The bold lexus is. Experience amazing. Club in new jersey, the president gave his first remarks on the attack, saying he blamed for both sides on what unfolded. The comment drew swift criticism. A day later, he gave another statement, a scripted condemnation of the hate groups involved. But then tuesday came, and in an impromptu prmess conference, donald trump reached what may have been the lowest point of his proteesidency. Ive condemned neonazis, ive condemned many different groups, but not all of those people were neonazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both side sides. Why that the postcharlottesville moment, more than any moment, of all weve talked about, the news cycles of trump, seemed to hit something. It seemed to strike some core
nerve in people. And theres evidence of that. Theres some evidence in the polling, but also in terms of the business groups leaving and being denounced. Why . He sympathized with nazis. Weve never had an american president do that before in our lifetime. I think its that simple. Those arent american values, any can quote the secretary of state, his own secretary of state. America does not condone those values. America fights nazis. And here we have this person who is giving the exact inverse of what he said about mexicamexica that first day that he announced his candidacy for president , he said, theyre sending racists and some, with i suppose are okay. He said the exact inverse about nazis. There are a lot of good people in there. Some are obviously bad, but overall i think some people on the right kind of scared themselves. I think some even who identified in the altright scared themselves. Theres a good piece in the new York Magazine about the end of the nazi is over because they
actually marched and actually had arm bands on there, like, oh, ive got a tiki torch and outside a black church, What The Hell am i doing . Scared themselves. Thats a very interesting idea. This harkens back to a speech in warsaw, it was really weirdly apocalyptic about how the west will never ever, ever fall. And he was going to defend us against this sort of imminent fall. And who were the people that were going to undermine this apparently fragile west thats been pretty successful over the last 250 years . It was obviously islamic terrorists. But it was also faceless bureau cat accurates who dont understand our value or in the language cherish our history. So theyre trying to make us all this kind of one person. That kind of sense of apocalyptic clinching of a narrow view of what Western Civilization is, he has that in common with the protesters in charlottesville, even if thats im not saying that, well, hes a racist or a white supremacist, but thats a common trope on the white, at this moment. And a lot of people who realize
that and have, including a lot of republicans, like, oh, crap, this is where were going with all of this. I think im curious to get your feedback, too, on one of the things that was so revealing about it was, the initial reaction, he ad libbed both sides. He had a prepared statement. He ad libbed both sides, and then came out with the scripted statement, and then that tuesday press conference. And another Breaking Point was, i think in peoples imaginations, like, dont believe anything anyone writes for this guy. Like, dont just dont chalk it up to him. Right. Just only listen to what he says when hes unscripted. Because thats when youre actually getting him. Exactly. And heres the thing. He was so angry that he did not get a positive reception to his remake of what he had said. And thats why he came out. Because he didnt want to make those scripted remarks, he didnt want to make against his will, thats right. He didnt want to make those remarks. So then he felt justified when he Wasnt Given ItWill Adoration Ande Edand Adieulatio giving those remarks. I want to show this, when he was in phoenix, like, hes the victim. What more do you want of me . Ive gone after all of them. Take a listen. I hit em with neonazi, i hit em with everything. I got the white supremacist, the neonazi, i got em all in there. Lets see. Kkk, we have kkk. I got em all. Just literally checking boxes. Hes checking boxes. And its all about him. This is the thing, right . If you look at the preelection polling, over 50 of the American Public thought that racist was a correct adjective to describe donald trump. And i think there were so many people preelection polling . Preelection. And he was still able most of the people who voted for him didnt think that. But remember, he lost the popular vote. Although, lets be clear, there were some who did. There were s