And back to school. What that will even mean. What it looks like, what weve learned from other countries and for the love of god, when . When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. It has become clear, painfully clear the president has declared bankruptcy on the question of handling the coronavirus. He cant fix it so he is giving up. All you have to do is look at his twitter feed. He doesnt really want to talk about it anymore. Hes basically done with it. Est hes moving on. He wants america to open up and move on as well. Likely there will be thousands more deaths because of it. The only thing trump is worried about right now is whether he gets reelected and his response to the virus has been disaster. We are seeing that the public understands that. You see it in trumps poll numbers. His poll numbers about his handling of the virus are sinking, and he has been, according to multiple reports, increasingly worried and freaking out about losing reelection. So amidst this panic, the president is moving in an increasingly lawless direction to subvert the rule of law and the basic underpinnings of the integrity of the government. Keep in mind, he was already impeached for abusing the power of his office. Now at the time, this was house impeachment manager adam schiffs warning in his closing arguments. Now you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election . A lot. A lot of damage and you know you cant trust this president to do whats right for this country. You can trust he will do whats right for donald trump. Hell do it now. Hes done it before. Hell do it for the next several months. Hell do it in the election if hes allowed to. A lot of damage. He can do a lot of damage. Less than five months after congressman schiff said those words, its getting worse. Right now in front of all of us. Just in the last two day, lets take a sec to tick through where we are right now. In the last few days, trumps 2016 Campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort, you might remember who is indicted and convicted and refused to cooperate with investigators against trump, right . He got essentially a life sentence in his conviction. He was released from prison as a coronavirus mercy case even though he has not met the requirement for that case released by the bureau of prisons, which is part of the department of justice which is run by william barr. At the same time, trumps fixer Michael Cohen who was supposed to be released from prison because of the coronavirus in early may. Again, run by the bureau of prisons under the department of justice under william barr. That release was mysteriously delayed without explanation. At the same time, the department of justice is trying to drop the charges against the president s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn even though he literally pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi. The president has urged the prosecution at jailing of both president barack obama and his current opponent joe biden. Trumps current acting director of National Intelligence who is basically a professional twitter troll is leaking innocuous documents meant to foment a scandal around the last administration. Trumps allies in congress are saying theyre going to start hearings into the origins of the russia investigation, while the president hectors Lindsey Graham to call president barack obama. Trumps undermining of the law in the last few weeks is something you see in other countries, russia, turkey, and china, something were seeing here. And here is the key part of it. Trump never really has to order for any of this to be done. I mean, i dont know. We dont know one way or the other whether he told william barr or not. But he doesnt have to. People around him do it for him. Another example just today. The post office announced it is opening a review, interesting, a vie of its contracts of private companies he contracts with, among amazon, among others, which the president has been publicly lobbying for explicitly because the president of the United States does not like the First Amendment protected coverage that is done by the Washington Post which is done by amazons ceo jeff bezos. And trump wants to screw jeff bezos and screw the Washington Post, and he wants to use the post office to do it. And trump install his lackey to run things over there. And guess what . Look. They now made an announcement theyre going to review the contract. All of that is the necessary contract for the story of richard burr of north carolina. Richard burr seemed real, read shady after he dumped up to 1. 7 million in stocks right before the outbreak, right before the markets crashed. He did this while publicly talking about what a disasterer the pandemic is going to be even though publicly he said were prepare and well be fine. The more you look at the stock trade, the worse it got. This is a guy who had not done a lot of stock trading. This was the biggest trade in several years. And then get this. We also learned his brotherinlaw also dumped his stock on the same day. All of that is sketchy as hell ethically indefensible and the possibly illegal. Last night we reported the l. A. Times seized a cell phone as part of the justice departments investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the Novel Coronavirus first struck the u. S. Seizing a u. S. Senators cell phone is a big deal. A lot of peoples reaction is that senator burr had it coming, and i get that. On the merits, i think there is a strong case for him having it coming. After all, the fbi had to convince a judge there is probable cause to give him a warrant to do this but, but, but you also have to wonder about the timing of all this, dont you . About who is being targeted here. Lets remember senator burr ran the Senate Intelligence committee which is working on its own report on russias election attack. It did in a fairly bipartisan and fairly thoroughly manner. Just weeks ago, that committee confirmed that russia aimed to help trump back in 2016. They crossed the white house by doing things like subpoenaing the president s son. Today senator burr announced hes stepping down as chair of that committee, and some of the president s biggest propagandi t propagandists on twitter are gloating about the fact that burr got it because he crossed the president. Timing around this is very important. Just last week the president said the jury is still out on fbi director chris wray. That followed news reports about increasing pressure in trump world to fire him. Now chris wray is a smart guy. He can read the paper. He sees that. He knows there is pressure building to fire him. Trumps already fired one fbi head. And chris wray is the guy who heads up the fbi. Donald trump does not have to order that the fbi go after richard burr, the department of justice do it but presumably chris wray likes his job. And doesnt want to lose it. I mean, thats where we are. Part of the dangerous reality is the president has created is you cannot just on good faith trust things done by this administration, trust that theyre on the level. I want to stress, this may all be on the up and up, maybe the Postal Service reviewing amazon. Maybe Paul Manafort got out of jail for perfectly good reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with his connection to the president that he refused to roll over on. We know trump is vindictive and loudly vindictive. We know trump himself said the jury is still out on wray. Thats a message sent. We also know somehow a Law Enforcement official leaked this warrant within 24 hours. Thats where we find ourself now. This is the unsteady state were in as the pandemic ravages our country and our economy. Over 85,000 dead, 36 million unemployed. The worst crisis for the nation in generations. A president who cannot do the job and has as much chance of fixing the problem as if you shoved me in the Nuclear Reactor control room in chernobyl on the night of the accident. And a president who is now determined to do whatever it takes to save himself from his own failures. Joining me now senator richard blumenthal, democrat of connecticut. He sits on the Judiciary Committee whose chairman Lindsey Graham announced he is opening a wide ranging inquiry into the origins of the russia investigation. I want to ask you first about your colleague richard burr, who you have served with for some time and the warrant. Do you think what is your reaction to both what he is alleged to have done, the fact that there is an investigation and the context of this administration and this department of justice . What hes alleged to have done, chris, is pretty troubling. These allegations of Insider Trading go to the core of our integrity particularly using a classified briefing to trade stocks. And you are absolutely right a judge had to sign a warrant. But the fact of the matter is that as important as those specifics is the question youre asking. Its a real question. The fact that youre asking it and that the department of justices credibility and trust is so undermined and has been so perverted and shredded by this administration, by donald trump himself calls into question all of what the department of justice is doing when it makes these kinds of judgments. I was there on the floor of the senate when adam schiff posed that question about what President Trump would do. It was chilling then. Its more chilling now. I think there is always a question on the president is it getting worse . Weve gone through three years of occasional news cycles hes melting down. Hes getting worse. It does seem to me, the steps with flynn, the fact that he was able to get the department of justice to drop those charge, what we saw with manafort, the fact that Michael Cohen is still in prison, there does seem to be a level that the department of justice and other places have been corrupted or subverted. Richard grenell at the head of dni that is worse than it was say two years ago or a year ago. Far worse. When we ask ourselves about some hypothetical, whether the Trump Administration would sink to that level, we kind of say no, he couldnt go that low and then we turn on the news and find that its done exactly that. So the use for example of obama gate as a complete distraction from the lack of any strategy on testing, any strategy on reopening the economy, any strategy on containing the spread of the virus if it comes back in the fall, this bankruptcy as you have referred to it so well, is a bankruptcy that is a matter of life and death to people who will be affected by it and he can talk about obamagate and say well, you know what im talking about, which would be farcical, ludicrous for anyone else, but its the president of the United States, which makes it depi despicably dangerous. To me, it is sort of a sign of political weakness your Committee Chair is going to hold hearings about this stuff as thousands of people die every day as were through the worst Great Depression it seems like waving the white flag in some ways. Other stuff seems more important right now, but i dont know, maybe im wrong. Well, you know, this hearing is simply a platform for attorney general barr to spread the fearmongering and demagoguery that have brought us to this point and to seemingly justify his dropping the prosecution of william flynn. But there is some glimmer of hope because the judge there, judge sullivan said hes going to have a hearing, and there will be some disclosure other than our hearing, and i think that the possibility of his keeping open a prosecution, dismissing it without prejudice, or saying there seems to have been some criminal contempt here offers some glimmer of hope that perhaps the rule of law will prevail. But right now, the Trump Administrations contempt pour the rule of law is a sliding cascade bringing us to new low levels. I want to play something for you the president said today about testing, which also seemed to be a kind of admission. The president lies a lot, but he also will say unexpectedly true things sometimes. This is what he said about testing, which is sort of why he doesnt love testing. Why testing in someways is bad because it makes it look bad. Take a listen. So we have the best testing in the world. It could be the testing frankly overrated. Maybe it is overrated. Dont forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world, but why . Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didnt do any testing, we would have very few cases. What is your reaction to that . My reaction is that the American People really deserve better. Facts are stubborn things, particularly when it comes to a pandemic. Because the truth is necessary to avoid death. And so, again, we can ridicule, we can make fun of it, but it has really deadly consequences, and thats why the testimony before the house today and other testimony that shows the truth, dr. Faucis testimony, can make such a difference in informing the American People and making them understand that we need more testing. We need contact tracing. It is the only way that we can responsibly protect peoples lives. Even as we put people back to work. Ultimately, people will vote with their feet. No matter what the president says, if they feel unsafe, they are not going back to work or restaurants. Senator richard blumenthal, of the state of connecticut, sits on the Judiciary Committee, thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it. Thank you. I want to bring in david plouffe, Campaign Manager for president Barack Obamas 2008 campaign. He tweeted earlier today, quote, our current president is calling for his predecessor around his current challenger to be jailed in america. The only story out of his sideshow b. S. Is this. The entire enterprise is over the line. It is unprecedented and sick. Expand on that, david. That has stuck with me what you said there. What do you mean . Well, i think we get numb to his circus act but you now, we never had a president. Nixon didnt do this. No president has done this where hes suggesting not subtly they not just be investigated but they be jailed. In the middle of pandemic where were headed to over 100,000 deaths and probably a Great Depression. So the scale of this, the irresponsibili irresponsibility, the narcissism, its dangerous. To the extent there is an electoral strategy, in the public polling and private, theyre starting to see hemorrhaging with people that voted for trump. So he figures ill go back to my trusted distraction deep state attacks and ill get some of those people back. The politics of this more broadly, though, cannot be more stupid. People are worried about dying. Theyre worried about the job they lost. Theyre worried about the economy, and he wants to pick a fight with a popular expresident on b. S. And nothing. It is curious to me, but it could not be more dangerous. And i hope thats what the story is, people not covering Michael Flynn or obamagate. It is he is threatening to jail his current challenger and a former president bizarrely. I mean, what is unnerving to me here is that the president was impeached for what ended up ultimately being unsuccessful attempt to outsource an attempt to get a criminal investigation going and announced against his likely opponent, right . Clearly he thinks this is a key part of winning. There is an fbi investigation against hillary clinton. He is going to try to run the same playbook. He was impeached for that. He was not removed from office. And now he has william barr in the department of justice. He is saying out loud, prosecute. Cutting out the middleman. Hes going to insource the job, bring the back and let an american do the job. William barr, go please prosecute my political enemies. Yeah, well hes got no range. Hes got one move and this is it. Its what he goes back to. So he had lock her up back in 2016. Well have lock him up or lock them up this year and again, i just think, you know, until the middle of a historic pandemic, where really the only question voters have is who can we trust over the four or five years to dig us out of it. I think the i think hes bored quite frankly. Hes tired of this. He wants to move on from the pandemic. I think it is. He knows he messed it up and paying a price for that in polls but hes bored and wants to move on. I think hes bored and i also think what i said in the intro is true. If you put me in the control room of the Nuclear Reactor and at chernobyl the night of the accident and tell me to fix it, i just couldnt. I couldnt do it. I cant. He does not have the ability. At the deepest level, he doesnt have the ability to do the job, to do the thing necessary here, and so if you dont have the ability to do the job, what there is not much for him to do other than this. Yeah. Im kind of at the point now can we just make to it election day january 20th . Can we hold on . Because i think hes going to test that. I think its been laid bare he is not up to the job. There is no question about that. You look historically, i mean, this is, you know, we had roosevelt with the depression on world war ii and lincoln during the civil war. Wilson during world war i. I wouldnt put 2008 and 2009 in that category, but barack obama had to deal with the crisis. We had one of the most top four or five historical challenges and this guy that is not only up to the job but doesnt want to do it and shredding every norm we have. Listen, this is a little dramatic, but you only have to be an amateur student of history to understand the ways of government and empires dont last forever. Were getting tested in a way. Today really for me was a breaking point, which is saying something given everything weve been through. But i assume its only going to get worse from here. I think your point here is well taken. I tend to agree with you. The tuning out, part of the tun