We have been covering the story on the state of missouri where the State Government is trying aggressively to shut down the last Abortion Provider in the state and make missouri the first state in america that does not have any legal Abortion Providers. First time that happened since roe vs. Wade in 1973. Tomorrow there will be a Court Hearing in state court in missouri about whether or not that last clinic can stay open. The doctors at the clinic are fighting tooth and nail to stay open as the State Government shuts them down. The judge is due to weigh in and we will be watching it closely. That does it and we will see you again tomorrow. Its time for lawrence odonnell. I was so, so happy for you at 5 27 p. M. Today when the transcripts came into our hands
here. I thought shes got three hours. A little more than three hours with the transcripts. This is gonna be great and i was right. It was great. It was almost enough time to kaftan actor. You know what i mean . No, thats not why we are watching, rachel. No, its all about rachel reads the transcripts. Thats the show. I have to work on different voices for different people. No, you got it. I learned a lot. For this Job Doesnt Work Out for me, i might stand on a Streets Corner and see if somebody will pay me to do this. Its working out pretty well for you and good enough to help the ratings of this tv show. Thank you very much for that. We will be joined by three president ial candidates beginning with cory booker and including the republican president ial Candidate Running against donald trump in the republican primaries. Yes, there is one. Former Massachusetts Governor bill weld and joined by last nights Big News Maker from illinois. We presented it as Breaking News at this hour last night when the congresswoman announced on twit theyre she now supports impeachment of President Trump. Many of you saw us here last night, wonder being whether the congresswoman checked with nancy pelosi before she made that announcement. Did Speaker Pelosi try to talk her out of it or encourage her to do it. Tonight we get to ask the punish who knows the answers to all those questions. She will join us at the end of a day when the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of former white house staffer hope hicks testimony and she refused to answer 155 questions in her testimony yesterday. She did say that she believed President Trump when me told George Stephanopoulos in a tv
interview, i think id take it. Meaning the president would illegally accept information about his Campaign Opponent from a foreign government. Hope hicks told the committee i dont think that was a joke. Our first guest tonight, senator cory booker today announced a new proposal to offer clemens tow 17,000 federal prisoners for nonviolent drug offenses. Senator booker calls it the most sweeping Clemency Initiative in more than 150 years. Senator booker can implement this plan under the president s constitutional power to Grand Partons and clemency without consultation with congress. He will give us more details on the proposal in a moment, but we will begin our conversation with the sharp disagreement that e resulted between cory booker and joe biden that began with reports of what joe biden said
at a fundraiser that was open to the press. He described his experience working in the senate and working with political opponents. I was in a caucus with james o. Eastland, mr. Biden said, briefly channelling the late mississippi senators southern drawl. He always call mead son. Mr. Biden brought up a deceased georgia senator and one of the meanest guys i ever knew. You go down the list of all these guys. Guess what. At least there was civility and got things done. We got things done. Cory booker issued a statement saying you dont joke about calling black men boys. He used words like that and the racist policies that accompanied them and Strip Black Americans of humanity. Im disappointed that he has not issued an immediate apology. He should. Then this happened. How does it feel that your democratic rivals are implicitly saying you have issues talking about race . They know better. You going to apologize sf. Apologize for what . Cory booker called for it. Cory should apologize. He knows better. There is not a racist bone in my body. I have been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period, period, period. Senator and president ial candidate, cory booker. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I want to get your reaction to what we heard joe biden say. I know you had a phone call after he said that. Before the phone call when you saw him say that and said cory should apologize, what was your feel being that . I said my peace yesterday. He said i should know better. I feel strongly what i know is that joe biden should not need to be explained to about why that word is so hurtful. Why what he said would be something that people would find offensive and harmful and not advanced like we should hope for a nominee or for the leader of our party to advance the cause of racial reconciliation and getitous a point where we feel mutually invested in healing a lot of these Racial Disparities that exist in our country. I am glad we had a good constructively conversation last night. The call came after all of what we just saw. Joe biden called you up. Right. Again, he said i should apologi apologize . Did he say it on the phone call . No, on the video. He did not that was a bit too far. Look, at the end of the day, its not about me or him, but where our country is. We have real race issues in our
country and we need leaders, plural, president ial candidates or not, that can bring folks together and deepen understanding and empathy and get us to a point where we can work on a lot of the issues that have deep scarred legacies in our country. When i go back to a black and brown neighborhood, you can see the legacy of this past. For him to dredge it up in the way that it harms and hurrs, we had a constructively conversation about that. I let him know he is someone i respect. You said that yesterday in your comments. You respect him. That was not the issue. No, i have love and gratitude for him. These are tough times for a lot of people, especially given the climate we have where you see a rise in racebased attacks and a rise in violence thats going on in our community. How long did you talk . 15 or 20 minutes. Did either ask the other for an apology. I dont want to characterize a private conversation. Joe biden should explain to people because its not about me. I dont feel like i want an apology to me. This is something he should speak to the public about and i think he has an opportunity here. You said it was a constructively conversation. I would interpret ta to me he said things to you that clarified what he was trying to say . I had an opportunity to explain to him further how and why africanamericans, men who have been called boy before. Why racist senators like those would look at him and call him son as seeing themselves in him. See in a black man and call them boy because they dont see
themselves, but see someone they are dehumanizing or degradindeg. Having conversations like that is the dialogue that is a constructively thing. I appreciate that. Did you feel better understood by him at the end of the conversation . Absolutely. Did you come to a better understanding of his side of the experience . Think i understood very well even before the conversation. I understand where his intentions were and his heart was. Its not about me or him. He said things that are hurtful and harmful and i believe he should be apologizing to the American People in having this discussion with all of us and there is an opportunity here now for someone who is a former Vice President and is seeking to be the leader of the party and the nation. For him to speak to these issues. I waited for almost a day for him to do that and he did not do that. Thats why i felt the need to speak out. We have real issues that are related to what we are about to talk about. We have a Criminal Justice ds system that is no different for blacks and whites, but blacks are more likely to be criminalized for it and even for our children. The same infractions in schedule schools. Blacks are more likely to have an out of School Suspension and black kids being shot by police because they were perceived as a threat. We have real racial problems in this country and even in health care. Black women almost four times more likely to die in childbirth, Maternal Mortality rates are so much higher based along racial lines. You can go through income, health care, housing. You can see how implicit racial bias and scars and policies of the past that walled off communities like the one i live in. Red lining and disinvestment. We have real challenges because
we need each other. We really do. We need to deepen understanding and have a more courageous empathy. We dont need folks to say im not a racist. We need to be antiracist and be allies of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. We need to do a better job of standing up for each recollect or harming or dredging up things from the past. One more point about where you and joe biden are. Could you run on a ticket with joe biden . I dont think there should be two men on a ticket. I think given the field we have, extraordinary people, we should have tickets with racial and gender diversity. We are a party that should talk to who we are as a nation. We are a nation with extraordinary. You will get a lot of delegates who agree with ow that. Would either one of you, do you
think, have a struggle endorsing and campaigning for the other if the other is on that ticket . Im going to say this with as much gravity as i can communicate. Whoever comes out as our nominee, everybody, everybody should join ranks and support them and help them. In any way, in dialogue that we have been seeing, not just me but others in the Africanamerican Community have been speaking out, i hope it makes and is a learning process. I believe in a kindness and i have friends across the aisle that i can write desertations with. I believe in kindness and decency and civility, but i also believe that truth must be told. We should hold folks accountable and you shouldnt try to gloss over or cover over when there is something hurtful or harmful. You do a disservice in the face
of something that is disrespectful or harmful or hurtful. Especially when it goes to the deep scars that exist in our society and manifest themselves today. What would you say about what its like working in Mitch Mcconnells senate . I have to say in my own experience as a senate staffer, my feeling is once you are about two years out, you have no idea what that senate is like. The dynamics change in ways when i look at your senate, i have no idea how it works except what im saying is something that doesnt work. Joe biden has not been working in the senate in a while. The Vice President as a role, but you are there every day in what is a senate controlled by Mitch Mcconnell. What doesnt joe biden understand about that that was contained in what he was talking about of this older period where working with opponents was something more likely to occur . It wasnt that many years ago that he was the Vice President of the United States. He has a good understanding of the senate and thats some of the things on his mind and for me to speak the state of his mind, i will tell you what i have seen. Thats an erosion of the institution. Majoritarian culture where the tribalism we see in the politics, Zero Sum Gain politics is beginning to infiltrate a body that used to have more comity and sense of consensus. We are seeing the Judiciary Branch which used to be a place where you saw a moderation. Now you are seeing a Branch Lurching to the extremes and people trying out for the judiciary, waving extremism and writings and speeches that they give trying to show how extreme they are. The trump judges that dont need
60 votes. Now you see the traditions being eroded as they are trying to change it. We are at a real problem in america. I see it in our media and in our politics. I see it in the senate where we are that tribalism that is caring us apart from what we need as leaders and systems that call us to a more beloved community. A lot of people talk about me because i talk about those words, beloved and loved. Patriotism is love of country and you cannot love your country unless you love your fellow Men And Women. Love is sacrifice and struggle. Love is standing up and saying your kids dont have a great Public Schools, my kids are less off. If you are facing injustice, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We dont have to like or agree with each other, but this is a moment in American History where
one of the causes of our moment is to try to resist the tribalism and speak to the common values and the common cause. As i travel and the blessing i have to be a candidate and travel from foreign country to inner cities to suburbs, i see from the Opioid Epidemic and high cost of Prescription Drugs and jobs without dignity and common pain that we have lost that senls se of common purpose. This election is not a referendum on one guy and one off. Its who we are and who we must be to each other. If we make it about that guy, beating him is urgent and believe i can do it, im in this race because thats a floor. Its not the ceiling. It gets us out of the valley, but we have to get to the mountain top because there is too much savage injustices from Public Schools who dont serve our kids all the way to that veteran who listens to us sing a song, Home Of The Brave and
literally on the streets homeless or considering suicide because they dont have their back. Billions of dollars and sending them overseas to fight and they dont have the resources. This is what we need and the empathy and revival of grace and a collective urgency to deal with the unfinished business. Lets talk about the proposal related to your disagreement with joe biden. There was joe biden talking about having to work with o ponens in the senate and work across the aisle. You dont have tro work with kbon this. Your idea is to use president ial power and the pardon and the clemency power to simply look at as many as 17,000 federal prisoners on nonviolent drug charges and say through president ial power after screening those cases, these people have served therere time. They can go. This is one of the proposals
that Mitch Mcconnell cant say anything whether he is in the senate or not. There are people incarcerated in the United States unjustly. Number one, we legalized marijuana all over the place and have people in prison for doing things that two of the last three president s admitted to doing. We have people in the United States on the Crack Cocaine and Powder Cocaine Disparity moved down to 18 to 1. That doesnt reflect science of the drug disproportionately affecting black and brown people. On a bill that i red r led with sdik durbin that said hey, we need to lower the mandatory minimums. We never made that retroactive. Someone was sentenced the day before gets a much longer sentence. If 87 senators agree that bill that the sentences are adjusting too long. It should apply retroactively. Marijuana crimes, crack Powder Cocaine Disparity and the ones
that should have been made retroactive and about 17,000 americans deserve to have their liberty and i want everyone to join me on this. This is not dione after you take the Oath Of Office and you go back to the oval office and do it, but you propose a scre Screening Commission to make sure they are as simple and clear as you think they are and pass them. Right. We want to make sure that nobody poses a threat and what happened to you. All that we will make sure. The most fundamental idea and the founders talked about that, this idea of liberty and to take liberty in an unjust manner is a cancer on the soul of our country. You and i sit here and 75 of the people in our jails have not been tried yet. This idea of money bail in our country is so offense testify me and people we have a debtors
prisons. For the people as president of the United States, i will use my power of clemency to liberate those unjustly incarcerated. No apology and no hesitation. Im proud that was because of the idea of libertiy is so sacred. I than Crack Kcocaine disparity the 181, that 96 of people were unjust lie incarcerated were black and latino. This is a system that is as Michelle Alexander calls it, the new jim crow. It is so against black and brown people. You and i know this. I went to stanford. They were not doing stop and frisks and raiding peoples homes to find adderall, ecstasy and marijuana. All these things were going on. We have a nation that everyone is moving to legalize mar