Summary
DOJ and Trump`s lawyers were in court today for their first hearing before the newly appointed special master who is tasked with reviewing the classified documents the FBI seized from Trump`s retirement home in Florida. The Special Master questions Trump`s declassified claims. Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas yesterday announcing his office would open an investigation into the stunt pulled last week by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Sen. Lindsey Graham proposes a bill that would ban abortions after 15-week. Next month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin is traveling down to Arizona to campaign for Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joins Hayes to discuss the high-stakes on the Midterm Elections.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: NBC has a website for you. It`s called Plan Your Vote with a state-by-state guide to registration deadlines, voting rules, and mail-in, and in person voting. It`s at nbcnews.com/planyourvote. And very importantly, it is available both in English and in Spanish, so you have no excuse. Do it. That is tonight`s "REIDOUT". ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
ANDY WEISSMANN, FORMER LEAD PROSECUTOR, ROBERT MUELLER SPECIAL COUNSEL INVESTIGATION: He may be able to decide all of this without actually even seeing the classified documents.
HAYES: The first special master hearing not looking good for the disgraced ex-president. Tonight, Trump`s absurd argument for keeping classified documents and just where he was getting his legal advice.
TOM FITTON, PRESIDENT, JUDICIAL WATCH: As far as I`m concerned, Trump should get every single record they took back, not just his passport.
HAYES: Then, the lawsuit and criminal investigation into the Ron DeSantis stunt.
JAVIER SALAZAR, SHERIFF, BEXAR COUNTY, TEXAS: Somebody saw fit to come from another state, hunt them down, prey upon them, and then take advantage of their desperate situation just for the sake of political theater.
HAYES: Plus, Lindsey Graham doubles down on a losing political issue and the state of play in the Midterms with my guest Bernie Sanders when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Donald Trump`s lawyers were in court today for their first hearing before the newly appointed special master who is tasked with reviewing the classified documents the FBI seized from Trump`s retirement home in Florida. And in that courtroom, his lawyers were essentially tasked with defending the indefensible.
The ex-President claimed that he had a right to keep the roughly 11,000 documents removed from Mar-a-Lago, and that he has some privilege that confers ownership on him with respect to the 300 documents found with classified markings. That position that his lawyers argued today does not make any sense. Someone pointed out, it all boils down to Donald Trump`s belief that he is still as of today, here in September of 2022, President of the United States, that he still has the powers of the executive branch, that those documents, the vast majority of which are clearly covered by the Presidential Records Act should be government property, that those documents belong to him to do with whatever you wants.That`s the core point from which this whole dispute flows.
Of course, Trump isn`t the president because he lost the election in 2020 fair and square no matter what he says, no matter how much he whines about it. He is no longer president and he no longer has any of the powers that go along with that office. But Trump doesn`t care about that. He kept the documents anyway even though, this is key, his own lawyers warned him not to do it over and over and over again.
As New York Times reported earlier this summer, Trump`s deputy White House Counsel Pat Philbin tried to help the National Archives retrieved the material that Donald Trump took. But the former president repeatedly resisted entreaties from his advisors saying, "It`s not theirs, it`s mine." An email obtained by The Times last month shows that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone also determined the record should have been turned over to the National Archives.
Just yesterday, we learned that another Trump White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann "sought to impress upon Trump the seriousness of the issue, the potential for investigations and legal exposure if he did not return the documents. That was last year. It wasn`t one warning, it was multiple warnings from multiple lawyers about the same thing saying the same thing. The last one being this gentleman you see there, Mr. Herschmann. You may remember him from his role in the first impeachment trial when he was trying to convince all of us that Donald Trump had done nothing wrong and could be trusted.
He also delivered a compelling testimony to the January 6 Committee including this story about the advice that he gave coup memo author, John Eastman, after January 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: I said, I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on, orderly transition. And I screamed. I said, I don`t want to hear any other effing words coming out of your mouth no matter what other than orderly transition. Repeat those words to me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did he say?
HERSCHMANN: Eventually, he said orderly transition. I said, good job. Now, I`m going to give you the best free legal advice you`re ever getting in your life. Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You`re going to need it. And then I hung up on him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: We don`t have Herschmann is quite so tough when he`s actually in the midst of a conflicted situation. But you can imagine how the baseball bat of justice might have delivered the message to Donald Trump that he was violating the law and had to get the documents back. But it was surely a familiar scene for Donald Trump. Throughout the ex-president`s life and career, his impulse is always, always to do sketchy unlawful things, to cut corners to get away with stuff while the lawyers around him tell him he cannot do those things.
What is sort of remarkable, honestly, is that in most cases, Trump actually has kind of a fine-tuned antenna for just how close he can get to the line without crossing into outright easily provable crimes. That has saved him many times before. But this time, it appears that he stepped right over that line, the crystal clear line that his lawyers told him we`re there. And to understand why that finally happened, you have to look at who he`s actually listening to because he was ignoring his highly qualified White House lawyers Pat Philbin, Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann. Instead, he was reportedly taking the advice of this guy.
[20:05:42]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FITTON: We want to know about the deep state effort to overthrow the President of the United States. You know, in many ways, it`s remarkable the President is a crime victim. He was targeted illegally by the Obama administration.
If they doesn`t want to fire Mueller directly, maybe just pardon everyone. Everyone caught up in it either directly or indirectly, who`s the subject, the target, you name it, just pardon it all.
I think the raid was a fraud, an abuse, and a sham. There was no good faith basis to target Trump here with this outrageous array. And all those records he has are his records. And they should stop pretending that just because they think they`re presidential records and they think it`s classified, you know, that`s the -- that`s the final answer, and it isn`t.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, that`s a guy named Tom Fitton. He`s like a second, third tier conservative activist, head of the right-wing group of Judicial Watch. They`ve been around for forever. He`s somewhat ludicrous figure, honestly. I put them in the like, Genni Thomas category of the American right. Imagine a more senior James O`Keefe on steroids.
As Politico puts it, Fitton has made a career of suing the federal government over suspected bureaucratic corruption, irritating every president since Bill Clinton. That`s true. In fact, fitness organization has tormented the Clintons for nearly 20 years, uncovering documents on their scandals du jour from Whitewater, to Travelgate, to the suicide of Vince Foster.
So, he`s been at this a long time. Basically, a right-wing rabble rouser, but he found an enthusiastic booster in Donald Trump. Surprise, surprise. Now this is faded as it were considering Fitton has been boosting Trump for years. He actually takes credit for being one of the first public figures to criticize the Mueller investigation as corrupt and unconstitutional.
Now, I shouldn`t know here, Tom Fitton is not a lawyer. He`s just a dude with some big money right-wing donors, I guess. But he`s been giving Donald Trump a lot of legal advice that the ex-president is actually listening to. Since as early as February, Fitton has been reportedly been calling Trump, telling him it was a mistake to get the records from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives, that his team should have never left the archives, "strong-arm him into returning them."
Fitton said the records belong to Trump, citing a 2012 court case involving his organization that he said gave the former president authority to do what he wanted with records from his own term in office. He suggested to Trump that if the Archives came back, he should not give up any additional records. Trump "began obsessing over Fitton`s arguments, complaining to aides about the 15 boxes that were handed over, and even as Fitton at one point to brief his attorneys. I`m sure they love that one.
As one person close to the ex-President put it, "the moment Tom got in the boss`s ear, it was downhill from there." You know, it`s like the Overstock guy or the Pillow Guy. So Tom Fitton, professional right-wing scandal monger appears to have facilitated the kind of black and white commission of an easily provable crime that Donald Trump on his own had so far managed to avoid. It`s really an amazing feat of all people, Tom Fitton, who ended up putting Donald Trump in arguably the most acute legal power he has ever been in. Well played.
And that legal peril was on full display today at the Brooklyn courthouse where Judge Raymond Dearie, the newly appointed special master, heard the arguments from the ex-President`s lawyers who repeated Trump`s claim that he declassified the documents. Judge Dearie said the government gave him -- government gave him clear evidence these are classified documents, but as far as he`s concerned, that`s the end of it. Trump`s lawyers responded by basically saying they do not yet want to make their case about why the documents are not classified. Judge Dearie told them, he will go ahead and continue the business of the court. "You can`t have your cake and eat it."
Andrew Weissmann spent years working in the Department of Justice, most recently served as a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller Special Counsel Investigation. He was also in that Brooklyn courtroom today for the first hearing with a special master. And he joins me now here at the table. It`s great to have you.
WEISSMANN: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Give us a rundown of your impressions of the hearing today.
WEISSMANN: So, the first impression was it was like landing back on planet Earth. It just felt so normal And having been in front of Judge Dearie, he was just quintessential Judge Dearie, low-key, firm, people who confuse his being polite with his not being firm, make a big mistake. And then he ran a really tight ship. He was supposed to start at 2:00. At 2:00, he`s on the bench. In 40 minutes, it was over. He put both parties through their paces. So that`s sort of the atmosphere. He was in full control.
[20:10:26]
And from the outset, as you noted, he was not having any sort of BS from either side. He made it really clear to I think the public that this is a civil case, meaning that the plaintiff in the case has the burden. This is not a criminal case where the government needs to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. And then he pointedly said, if you don`t present any evidence to me, Trump, then I am left with the records that I have.
I have evidence that these documents are classified. If you decide for whatever reason you do not want to present any evidence, that`s fine, you don`t have to. But he then went ahead and said, then this case becomes very easy. And I think that just means he`s signalling, I will then have a record in front of me where there is no dispute that these are classified. And he`s certainly not going to turn classified documents over -- the remedy, which is that he wants the documents to be turned over to him back to Mar-a-Lago is clearly not going to happen.
HAYES: Right. So, he says, as I understand it, look, we`ve got these documents which Judge Cannon who has created my position seems to think are disputed, right? So, the question is, OK, well, what`s the dispute?
WEISSMANN: Exactly.
HAYES: So, he comes before the party you sit at says, OK, one side, the government says these are our documents as is clearly identifiable by the fact they are marked classified.
WEISSMANN: That would be -- that would be as the judge said, prima facie evidence.
HAYES: He calls it prima facie evidence, right. If something`s marked classified, that is prima facie evidence, the government owns it.
WEISSMANN: Right.
HAYES: OK, other side in a dispute, right, like --
WEISSMANN: What do you got?
HAYES: What do you have? What do you say? Why is it yours? And they said --
WEISSMANN: So, one of the things they said, Judge, you know, it might be premature for us to actually have to come up with evidence. And the judge snidely, but politely said, and yet you managed to bring a lawsuit. Meaning, it doesn`t work that way. You bring a lawsuit when you have a claim, not because you were searching for a claim.
HAYES: Right.
WEISSMANN: So, the judge clearly is not going to have any of that. He`s going to say, look, you have the burden. Are you going to refute this or not? If you don`t refute it, the judge`s job is to decide a conflict. If there is no conflict, that`s the end of the story. And I thought one of the more telling things is, he said, you know, I may not need to actually see the actual contents of the classified documents. That becomes sort of irrelevant. Whether it`s Top Secret, Compartmentalized.
HAYES: Right.
WEISSMANN: And none of the parties need to -- obviously, the government can see it, but Trump doesn`t need to see it. If you`re not going to dispute that they are classified, then how do you get the remedy which is that these documents go back to you. So, that`s clearly the conundrum here for the Trump team.
HAYES: As I was reading -- I was actually reading your notes on this, which we were all sent today because you were -- you were there and they were extremely helpful. As I was reading it, I couldn`t wonder -- and obviously, this is speculative so you don`t have to weigh in on this. It`s like, did Judge Cannon create this situation so that she wouldn`t have to be the one to say what Dearie is saying, right? She`s basically outsourcing to this guy to just be like, so what`s the dispute here, because she could have said that herself. WEISSMANN: She could be doing all of this. There is no reason for her to have another federal judge. Remember, Judge Dearie is a sitting federal judge to do something that she could do, but the government lucked out that she decided to not have her fingerprints on this. This makes it a lot easier for her to sort of have plausible deniability and just to approve what happened.
Chris, the other thing that I thought was really interesting is that the judge made it clear that his timeline is actually faster than either of the parties. He started by saying that there should be sort of responsible dispatch. That was his quote. And he put out a sort of proposal to the parties that we haven`t seen yet, that it would be done in four weeks.
HAYES: Wow.
WEISSMANN: And that`s faster than either side wanted. Obviously, a lot faster than the Trump side, but it was even faster than the government was anticipating. And I think that`s because Judge Dearie being so experienced is saying, this is not complicated. Like, let`s move along and let`s like get from A to Z and get it done.
HAYES: What is the next step here, then? I mean, I guess the question is, like, can they throw a monkey wrench into the procedural works here without raising an actual claim or dispute on a specific document or set of them?
WEISSMANN: So, I think that the next thing that`s going to happen is we`re going to get a schedule. The judge is going to hear from both sides in very short order and he`s going to issue an order that sets out exactly what each side has to do. And at some point in that order, I anticipate it`s going to say to the Trump team, you need to make a motion.
[20:15:20]
HAYES: Right.
WEISSMANN: There is no motion right now to return property. You need to make that. And pointedly, one of the things he seemed to have said is why should I even hear it or Judge Cannon? Why isn`t that going back to the magistrate judge who decided this matter? So, I think that`s really the next step. But I think it`s going to all happen very, very quickly. The people who thought this was kind of going to be a speed bump, I think that seems right in terms of where we`re going to be two months from now. We`ll sort of look back on this and say, you know, thank goodness for Judge Dearie sort of moving this along.
HAYES: Dearie said, the Justice Department have presented evidence several documents were classified, noting they are marked as such, pressed Trump`s lawyer, James Trusty, to explain why he should question the government`s determination. They are prima fascia classified. What business is it of the court? I guess my larger question here, there`s a piece of political today with all the kind of like conservative legal scholars and unitary executive people being like, well, actually, under our theory, you don`t get to touch this. I guess the question is, is classification reviewable thing by Article 3 branches?
WEISSMANN: So, you know, the government very politely, they basically didn`t do a lot today. And frankly, when you`re -- when you`re ahead, that`s the right strategy.
HAYES: Right.
WEISSMANN: Exactly.
HAYES: Don`t appeal favorable rulings?
WEISSMANN: Exactly. You can only -- it will only can go bad. So, they did make the point to the judge, though, that their view is that it is the executive decides what is classified and what they can do with it. So -- and Judge Dearie said, I totally understand that`s your view. I think if there was a dispute as to whether these were classified or not, then he would have a different role. But that`s why --
HAYES: You have to make an affirmative case.
WEISSMANN: Exactly. And just remember, Trump is the plaintiff here. So, that is going to be his burden. And so, Judge Dearie was very loudly saying, you know, put up or shut up, and he did it in a judicial way.
HAYES: Andrew Weissmann, thank you so much.
WEISSMANN: You`re welcome.
HAYES: Coming up, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wanted to show he could be mean to immigrants, and now that could be blowing up in his face.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SALAZAR: Here we have 48 people that are already on hard times, right? They are here legally in our country at that point. They have every right to be where they are. And I believe that they were preyed upon. Somebody came from out of state, preyed upon these people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Some strong words from the law enforcement in the county of Texas where those folks were recruited. The latest on the new investigation into the cruel stunt next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SALAZAR: As we understand it, 48 migrants were lured -- I will use the word lured -- under false pretenses. They were taken to Martha`s Vineyard from what -- from what we can gather for nothing -- for little more than a photo op video up. And then they were unceremoniously stranded.
When you`re playing with human lives of people that are already in a desperate situation, people that, again, had every right to be where they were, but were lured under false pretenses, that does tend to bother me quite a bit. Suffice it to say, we will be opening up a case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was the Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas yesterday announcing his office would open an investigation into the stunt pulled last week by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That`s when agents of the state of Florida appeared to lure approximately 50 migrants from Texas to board a plane that briefly stopped in Florida and then dropped them off in an island and Massachusetts.
Now here`s the thing. There are a bunch of outstanding questions about just what happened that the folks in Bexar county will most definitely be digging into. Chief among them, as Josh Marshall with Talking Points Memo writes, is who is Perla? Perla is the woman that migrants arriving in Massachusetts said, recruited and paid them $200 for the flight.
So, who hired her? Who paid her? Where did she come from? Did anyone talk to her? How exactly did she get these 48 people on that plane and what did she tell them?
Marc Caputo is a national political reporter at NBC News Digital. He`s been reporting on the migrants lured from Texas by way of Florida, and left in Martha`s Vineyard, and he joins me now. So, Marc, I feel like the initial reaction here, there was a lot of talk about like the optics of it and it`s done and all the stuff like that. But it does appear there`s like some pretty big, outstanding questions about just the facts at issue here.
DeSantis goes on last night, and he refers to the vendor, OK, the vendor that the state contracted with? Like, it`s like, you know, they`re ordering food for the cafeteria at the capital. Like, who`s the vendor? Who do you Google at the state of Florida that would be like, we need the vendor that goes and tells migrants to get on a plane to go to Massachusetts.
MARC CAPUTO, NBC NEWS DIGITAL, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, we`ve asked that question. We`ve asked for a copy of the contract. We`ve asked for names. We`ve gotten none of it. Florida has a general pretty broad and generous public records law, but so far, the governor`s office has not given the public records up.
Incidentally, Charlie Crist, his Democratic opponent for governor, has filed a public records request. That hasn`t been responded to either.
HAYES: So, I mean, again, Florida law -- most -- I`ve never been a reporter in Florida, but I do know it has very good Sunshine laws. Like, you can`t generally -- you know, the bureaucracy of state government is that it`s not that easy to just like throw money around for like, an off-books operation. Like, you got -- you know, you got to get bids, and you got to get contractors, and there`s all these rules. I mean, presumably, we will find out, right, at some point, like, who was Perla, who -- how much did she get paid and what was she told?
[20:25:22]
CAPUTO: Yes. And, oddly, it looks like the law enforcement route might be the fastest way to do it. The Bexar County Sheriff who you just referenced. If he does investigate, according to the reports we`ve seen from the migrants who landed in Martha`s Vineyard, they were given cell phone numbers, phone numbers of Perla or these other people who said, hey, contact me if you have any problems. And then of course, these folks arrived in Martha`s Vineyard, and suddenly the numbers didn`t work.
So, there`s phone numbers there to find for the phone company and ways to track people down. So, yes, information is going to be discovered. The question is, what are we going to find out and when. I don`t want to bet on that.
HAYES: Yes, one of the items that came across too is this brochure. I`m sure you`ve seen that was given to these migrants. Now, again, what sort of gross here is that? What clearly happened is someone printed off some section of the Massachusetts State refugee information about things available to refugees, but these people weren`t refugees. It`s a different legal category, and none of the stuff on the brochure applied to them, right?
CAPUTO: Right. I wrote about this yesterday. Actually, it`s the Office of Immigration and Refugees in Massachusetts. They finally answered my question today, the Massachusetts office. They said, look, this brochure didn`t come from us. So some agents of the state or a vendor, to use DeSantis word, decided to pull this information apparently online and put it in a brochure.
And to your point, a migrants seeking asylum is part of a process. A refugee is an immigration status. An asylum-seeking migrant, an asylum seeker is not a refugee and therefore doesn`t qualify for the benefits that`s listed in the brochure which is stuff like housing assistance, cash assistance, the job assistance and the like. And that`s kind of the core of the complaint from the various lawyers who are representing the various migrants in the suit is they`re saying, look, this is sort of the smoking gun document showing that people were misled.
Now, the governor does say that people weren`t misled. He had said that these flights were humane. People were found homeless. They were fed. They were housed for a day at the expense of the state, and then flown again, from San Antonio, Texas, ultimately to Martha`s Vineyard, and they were taken care of here. That`s his position.
HAYES: Yes. He says it was all consented too. There -- you just mentioned the lawsuit, which I should mention, there is now a lawsuit, class action suit brought by three of these individuals, defendants and their unidentified accomplices designed and executed a premeditated fraudulent and illegal scheme centered on exploiting this vulnerability of the migrants for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial and political interest.
I do wonder -- I mean, the weirdest thing about this to me, and I have sort of struggled tonight to not take the obvious bait that this entire spectacle was. Greg Abbott and Doug Ducey are border state governors. They have people showing up in Arizona and Texas. And they are dealing with that and in some places, I think, you know, being quite sort of trollee in the way they`re busing them to Chicago and not actually letting city officials know. But those folks are actually showing up in those states.
These people had no connection to Florida, right? Am I missing something here? Like, there`s some -- like, what does Florida have to do with any of this?
CAPUTO: I`m going to -- I`m going to answer just from what DeSantis said because I don`t want to venture a guess on my own. His claim is since -- and most of these folks were from Venezuela.
HAYES: Right.
CAPUTO: That the state research showed that as much as 40 percent of those who are coming across the border from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua ultimately will wind up in Florida. Therefore, we should kind of proactively go and get them. Again, that`s the state`s argument. Now, you`re talking about how does the governor get this money? There`s a line item in the state budget. It`s called proviso because it`s not just a line item, there`s language with it, that appropriates $12 million in interest accrued from unspent COVID relief money, which set up the "unauthorized aliens program," which enabled the governor to do this.
Now, if you -- if you accept the idea that the migrants were asylum seekers from Venezuela, they technically weren`t unauthorized aliens. Again, this is a term that`s used in the state budget. My former coworker and friend Gary Fineout who works with Politico, he wrote yesterday that during a budget debate, unrelated language, one of the state senators, Republican state senator had said, look, Venezuelans aren`t on authorized aliens.
HAYES: Wow.
CAPUTO: So, it turns out, not only were these folks according to the budget, supposed to be sent "from the state, which is Florida, and therefore not Texas, but they were not considered unauthorized aliens if they happen to be from Venezuela or asylum seekers from these other countries.
[20:30:12]
HAYES: Jesus said, come with me and I will make you fishers of men, but he did not mean it in this way. Marc Caputo, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
CAPUTO: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, why Republican attempts to restrict abortion are so unpopular even Republican voters can`t get on board. Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The only thing I got going for me is every pro- life group in America and about 70 percent of the American people. So, I don`t apologize for being pro-life. I think the pro-life movement has found a position that most Americans would agree upon. There`ll be plenty of pro- choice people will say at 15 weeks, we should ban the late-term abortions, exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. The people are with me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Those aren`t late-term abortions, Senator. That was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina digging in continuing to defend a bill he introduced that would ban abortions nationwide after the 15th week of pregnancy. It`s a bill that even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators have refused to support not because they oppose abortion bans, obviously they support them, but because they know proposing a federal abortion ban for the first time in this country`s history right now, just weeks before the Midterm Election, almost certainly would further galvanize voters who support abortion rights.
Case in point, back in August, we saw what happened when Kansans tried to take this right away through a ballot measure and how it mobilized voters. In November, Michiganders will vote on a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. And take a look at this new poll out of Michigan showing the ballot measure has the support of 56 percent of voters, 23 opposed, 21 undecided.
Here`s the really revealing numbers. Republicans are split down the middle on this measure in Michigan, 36 percent supporting, 36 percent in opposition. You can see why many Republican candidates are trying to soften their positions on abortion or just not talk about it like Ron DeSantis before the Midterms, or even better, avoid the topic altogether.
Joining me now Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, co- chair of the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. Cecile, I wanted to talk to you tonight because you have watched this play out over the course of your political career, and get your sense of where things are right now post-Dobbs and how they`re different than they might have been, say, a year or two ago or five years ago.
CECILE RICHARDS, FORMER PRESIDENT, PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Sure. Well, I think the important thing, Chris, is that the Republicans have now frankly, they`re the dog that caught the bus. I mean, they have been trying to ban abortion. It`s been in their platform. And now, of course, they`ve been able to jam enough people under the Supreme Court to do this. And the consequences are becoming real.
And it`s interesting. I just saw a poll from last week. 97 percent of voters in this country know that Roe was overturned. That`s more important than any other issue that I can imagine in my lifetime. And the Republicans have frankly handled this so poorly. You see someone like Lindsey Graham saying this is a state`s issue, then introducing a federal abortion ban.
Every single candidate, you know, in the most competitive states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, all for abortion bans on those states, they`re wildly unpopular. And you showed that in Michigan, right, we`re seeing right now that Republicans are split evenly on the ballot initiative there. And in the state of Kansas, you know, the reports, they`ve just now done the analysis on who voted in that important test case, really, there in a state where by almost -- by almost 20 points, we won a ballot initiative, legalizing abortion, and 51 percent of the voters at were Republicans. So, thousands and thousands of Republicans voted to protect safe and legal abortion in the state of Kansas.
I was so struck by Graham in that -- in that sound that we played where he said I`m proudly pro-life and I don`t make no apologies for it. He reminded me of what Mike Pence said and that VP debate in 2020 when he was pressed on this. And you can see they all fall back on this term, like, I`m pro- life, and we`ll -- because that polls well, I think, probably. I mean, who doesn`t like life? And it also just doesn`t point to anything specific or concrete about like, are you going to prosecute people and what if a woman has a fetal abnormality that shows up at 16 or 17 weeks? What`s she supposed to do then?
All that stuff just wiped away. But they can`t run away from those specifics by just repeating their prolife over and over? Unless -- I mean, I guess that`s what they`re going to try.
RICHARDS: Well, no, I totally agree. And of course, a woman stood up and asked Senator Graham that exact same thing. And we are seeing this now, the reality of what it`s like to live in a state or a country that bans abortion. Now, as we have 13 states that have banned abortion, the stories are coming out. I think everyone now has heard the story of the 10-year-old girl in Ohio who literally had to go to Indiana. The 16-year-old in Florida who was denied access to illegal abortion, because the judge said she wasn`t mature enough to make that decision, yet somehow mature enough to be required to continue an unintended pregnancy. And the horror epic stories of women who are forced to leave their state to access safe and legal abortion.
Of course, under Lindsey Graham`s legislation, a federal abortion ban supported by the Republicans, women would literally have to leave the country. This is not what the American people want. It is incredibly unpopular. And it really goes to the very heart of freedom in this country, the freedom to make your own decisions about your pregnancy. That`s something that people do not believe politicians should be deciding, and particularly someone like Lindsey Graham who, frankly, will never be pregnant and will never know the consequences.
[20:40:37]
HAYES: Yes. And it`s striking too -- the public opinion is shifting so much in reaction to how concrete this all is. Graham is trying to get back to what they think is a good polling base, which is 15 weeks. And I thought this was interesting that the -- a poll conducted in March found that most Americans favored laws banning abortions after 15 weeks. A poll in August found the opposite, right? So, there are -- you already see movement. Once the thing just isn`t an abstraction, it`s concrete. They`re trying to run back and say, well, how about -- how about this 15 week deal? And people are like, no, we look -- we know what abortion bans look like and we don`t like it.
We`re going to see this continue to play out in the next seven weeks and after that, Cecile Richards, thank you very much.
RICHARDS: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Still to come, even though history is not in their favor, Democrats have a real chance to make actual gains in the Senate to gain senators in the Midterms. Senator Bernie Sanders joins me on that after this.
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[20:45:00]
HAYES: Back in 2021, Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin ran what at least on the surface looked like an old-school Republican campaign. The kind common during say the George W. Bush era. He campaigned as a genial businessman and a sweater vest with a focus on so-called kitchen table issues. He presented himself as something of an anti-Trump. That was all just surface level stuff.
Trump endorsed him. Youngkin in turn paid lip service to Trump`s big lie of election fraud, calling for an audit of the results. And today, that is just the reality for a lot of Republicans, especially those running in a blue state like Youngkin. They tried to have it both ways, though that position is ultimately untenable. Eventually, you`re going to have to choose a side.
Now to be clear, there are some very successful blue state Republican governors who rejected Trump. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Phil Scott of Vermont are among the most popular governors in the entire country. But they are basically Never Trump Republicans, which means they have no future in national politics, at least as far as we can see from here.
Glenn Youngkin wants a future in national politics immediately. He clearly has ambitions to run for president one day. And right now, that means embracing Donald Trump. So, despite his apparent initial reluctance to be a Trump supporter, Virginia Governor Youngkin has gone all in on Team Maga.
Case in point, next month, Youngkin is traveling down to Arizona to campaign for Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. He`s using his image as a supposed moderate to lend legitimacy to one of the most extreme pro-coup candidates running for office this cycle, the kind of person who says just wildly untrue stuff like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`ve called Joe Biden an illegitimate president. What does that mean?
KARI LAKE (R-AZ), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: He lost the election and he shouldn`t be in the White House. We had a corrupt election. The reason we have inflation, high -- sky-high inflation, we can`t afford our gasoline, we can`t afford our groceries is because we had a rigged stolen election. The facts are there. The forensic audit proves it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The forensic audit proves no such thing. To the extent it proved anything, it was that Joe Biden won the state of Arizona. Now, it`s sad to say but in our current state of affairs, you have to assume all Republican politicians are essentially pro-coup until proven otherwise. Glenn Youngkin is simply the latest to choose fealty to Donald Trump over loyalty to our democracy.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: There are a whole bunch of competitive Senate seats this year, some of which are within a few points that are going to determine control of the chamber. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats right now have a 71 percent chance of holding the Senate. Their model appears to show Democrats could pick up as many as seven seats. So, that would be a winning the lottery kind of night, right?
Now, this isn`t a year where even just six months ago, it sure looks like Democrats were screwed, no hope. But now the Democrats have a shot what would it look like to have a majority of Democratic senators who could, for instance, override the filibuster move on popular legislative priorities like guaranteeing the right to an abortion? What possibilities are there if Democrats buck history in the Midterm elections?
Joining me now is Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont, Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee. Senator, first let me take your temperature on how you thinks things -- how you think things are looking for retaining control of the Senate, these tough contested races in an environment that historically has been very difficult for the party that controls the White House?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Well, I would say that things are better than they were a few months ago. But as you indicated, there are many, many seats out there that within the margin of error, so we don`t know how these things will end up -- end up. But to my mind, Chris, to answer your question, if Democrats are going to do well in 2022, in my view, they`ve got to stand up very firmly for working families, make it clear that we are seeing unprecedented levels of corporate greed, unprecedented levels of concentration of ownership in this country all the while working families are struggling, in many instances seeing a decline and their standard of living.
So, I think now is the time if you want to win an election to say you know what, I`m on the side of the vast majority of Americans, Black, White, Latino. I`m prepared to take on greedy, powerful corporate interests who are enjoying record-breaking profits while you Americans can`t afford health care, can`t afford to send your kids to college, and are working for starvation wages. That to my mind is how you go forward and win.
[20:55:19]
HAYES: One of the big accomplishments of the unified Democratic governance was the announcement of the President`s cancellation $10,000 of student debt, 20,000 for those who are getting Pell Grants. You know, you can chart a clear trajectory from your presidential campaign that champion that issue along with Elizabeth Warren to it actually happening. And there was a lot of back and forth, is this going to cause a backlash? Are people going to be resentful? Because my -- you know, I had to pay my loans.
What is your sense of the outcome of this in terms of what it`s meant for how -- what it`s meant for people`s lives, and also what it`s meant politically?
SANDERS: You know, I have the radical idea that good policy is good politics. And it is good policy to cancel student debt in this country. I cannot tell you, Chris, how many young and middle-aged people I have talked to who have hesitated having children, can`t afford to buy a house, whose lives are in economic trouble, because they`re paying off these huge student debts.
So, what Biden did was the right thing. I would have gone further. It`s what the people want. I`m not going to tell you it`s 100 percent popular, but it is what the people want. And you know what? If you do what the people want, and not what the corporate world wants or billionaire campaign contributors want, you win elections. If you raise the minimum wage to a living wage, you win elections. If you expand Medicare to include dental and hearing and vision, which recently in a poll had only 87 percent support, you win elections. If you build housing and create jobs, you win elections. If you give tax breaks to the rich, you`re probably not going to win.
So, my own view is there is an agenda out there and the cancellation of student debt is one part of it. But we`ve got to go further and show working families we`re on their side.
HAYES: There are people on the other side of it. Ted Cruz has been plotting with folks to try to challenge it in court. Republican legal challenges are expected to start once the application start rolling out. Legal experts say it`s possible the administration`s plan could be frozen by a federal judge. What do you think about this plot to try to find someone that is standing to block this in court?
SANDERS: Well, I think it sounds to me very much what happened with the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of the American people think it is women who have the right to control their own lives, not the Republican Party. A strong majority of the American people think we should cancel student debt. And if Senator Cruz and others want to challenge that, I think that`s going to hurt them politically. It`s the wrong thing to do and I think it hurts them politically.
HAYES: One of the most striking features of the last two years, which had been strange in many ways, obviously, coming out of the worst parts of the COVID pandemic -- pandemic is still with us, inflation high, labor market is very tight, has been this raft of union organizing, unlike anything that we`ve really set -- seen in I think it`s fair to say decades. The NLRB showing the union elections one by mid-year, you can see that spike there and 2022. It`s been about 20 years since we`ve seen this. What what do you think`s going on here?
SANDERS: It isn`t hard to tell you to figure out. Workers are working, in many instances, longer hours for low wages. And with inflation, they`re falling further and further behind. You want to know what`s going on in the last 49 years? Real wages today are lower than they were 49 years ago despite an increase in productivity. Almost all of the new income and wealth is going to the people on top.
And while working people are saying, excuse me, I can`t afford to buy a house, I can`t afford to send my kids to college, and yet, during the pandemic, the billionaire class saw a $2 trillion increase in their wealth. That`s what`s going on. People are standing up, fighting back. We`ve been involved in many of these strikes. We`re involved in this railroad situation right now where you`re seeing the most ugly type of corporate greed imaginable.
Railroads -- five major railroads made 20 billion in profits last year. Meanwhile, over the last six years, they laid off a third of their workforce. And when workers get sick, and they have to stay home, they are off in a position to lose their jobs. So, what you`re seeing right now our work is saying enough is enough. You know, you guys on top, you can`t have it all. We need an economy that works for all of us. Unions are one vehicle that help people get decent wages and working conditions.
HAYES: You know, I have to say, as someone who, you know, covers this kind of stuff, it came as news to me that railroad workers don`t get sick days. I think it came as news to the President of the United States. Hopefully, that`s going to change. We`re going to see if they`re going to ratify this new contract but that appears to be one of the changes.
Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
SANDERS: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. "ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT" starts right now. Good evening, Alex.