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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  March 21, 2014 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT

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book, now i know who my comrades are is a great book. good evening, rachel. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. big show tonight. we begin tonight in an arkansas office building a little bit over a month ago. this is a press conference held by a conservative political group in arkansas. it's not clear from the video they posted online how many reporters showed up for this press conference, you don't see any reporters in the video, you don't hear any questions from many reporters. i can tell you it may be that there were no reporters there, or maybe that the reporters were crowded out of the camera's view by the large array of stunt groceries that the group used to style their set. in theory, though, this is a press conference. >> i want to thank everyone for coming out today. we're announcing the launch of a new set of ads that we're going to preview in a couple of minutes.
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but we're going to first preview the ad and then we'll have some remarks. >> people don't like political ads. i don't like them either. but health care isn't about politics, it's about people. >> although this woman says that she does not like political ads, it is likely that that is not true. because it appears that she earns her living being paid to act in political ads, so it would be weird if she hated them. stop thinking about politics, she says at 2e67d of the ad, she says stop thinking about politics, start thinking about people. people like me who are paid to say this in a political ad. that was a misstep by the people who made these ads. the way this whole soft focus direct to camera, low confrontation empathetic female subject thing works in ads is that it's supposed to have kind of an emotional appeal, you're supposed to connect with the authenticity of this woman's personal story.
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so when you later hear that isn't an authentic story, it's a woman who's paid to feel this way. it can actually boom raerang one people who are behind these ads. this is a group funded and founded by the billionaire conservative coke brothers, charles and david coke. when you inherit an oil and chemical company from your dad, you can afford to pay people in ads. the coke brothers group has been running versions of that same ad all around the country, months and months and months before the midterm elections happen. you can see that same empathetic actress in vain against democratic candidates in colorado and in louisiana and in new hampshire and in minnesota and in north carolina, and in florida. and of course in arkansas. where polls show the democratic incumbent senator mark pryor is running dead even with his
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republican challenger, tom -- the coke brothers are spending enormous amounts of money on ads for these midterm elections. they have spent $30 million already and we have barely just rounded st. patrick's day. it should be noted that they also spent enormous amounts of money in the last election of 2012. the coke brothers raised $400 million in 2012. it took until 2014 for reporters to count it all up. the koch brothers spent $122 million against democrats in 2012. what did they get for it? bumpkiss. republicans lost the white house again, republicans lost ground in congress and republicans failed to win back the senate. if the koch brothers spent $400
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million on the 2012 elections that was $400 million they might as well have poured in a trash bin and set on fire a really big trash bin. and these guys can't really afford to spend $400 million on fire just to watch it burn. i think it's unlikely that the kochs enjoyed their 2012 experience. they went home into skort of a dark night of the soul. you may remember, they had to put off their beloved annual secret fund raising retreat in the california desert. they launched a top to bottom review to try to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it so that the next time they spent hundreds of millions of dollars it would lead to them winning and not losing. after that review, they came back with what they always had. buckets of money, buckets and budgets of money. that was the old strategy, that's the new strategy too.
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"the huffington post" -- groups linked to the kochs versus every group spending against the democrat democrats. the green bar on the left is the koch spending, the blue one, the much masmaller blue bar is the spending of all democrats. nine contests around the country tkochs lead almost across the board. this is them versus everyone on the other side. but the usual bucketings and baskets and front loading bulldozers of money are not all the kochs have brought for 2014. money is not all of politics and it's not all that the kochs have desicided to buy with their mon this time.
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the krgs och brothers -- that was in arkansas where they have also been doing fund bakes and field offices, they have got people knocking on doors, they have got ground game to follow up their huge ad war in is that state. the kochs really can spend all they want on watch parties and booths in the local fairs. they may get tired of adding zero after zero after zero to all those checks, that's basically the only restraint they've got. if they're willing to funnel millions and millions of dollar -- year crowned
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professional class ground game in the state that is most want to win, how does anyone fight that? how are democrat goesing to respond? over the past couple of weeks the outlines of the democratic response have at least started to become clear. first democrats have decided on a strategy of naming the koch brothers funded ads as coming from the koch brothers. >> first it was a d.c. actress pretending to be an alaska, now ads attacking mark begich on a -- who's behind the attacks? >> the koch brothers. >> the billionaire koch brothers. >> we played that begich ad when its first came out because i think it is an unusually good democratic ad. when we played this a couple of weeks ago, as an example of a good democratic ad, i wondered if anyone else would get one of these. the answer, i can tell you now
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is yes, other people are getting ads like this. >> take a closer look at those ads against mark udall, this woman, she's an actress, those behind the attacks, insurance companies and out of state billionaires, spending a million supporting cory gardner. why? gardner woulded a -- forcing seniors to pay $6,000 more a year. the more we learn about congressman gardner, the more troubling it is. senate majority pac ask responsible for the content of this advertising. >> it's part of an ad by the senate majority pac, they have just started running those ads in essence naming and pointing out the out of state bill joione billionaires. and yeah, compared to what the kochs are spending, it's a pun
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any little ad buy, the koch brothers lose that on the couch on a good friday match. still, though, it's amazing, the kochs are deeply offended that the democratic side are even tries to hit back at what they're doing. the koch spokesperson said today that the ad buy naming the koch brothers as the finance years behind the other ads, the spokesperson told us that this is part of a continued attempt to silence private citizens who dare to disagree with the majority leader, harry reid and the current administration. but democrats do seem to think there is a real advantage for them in just pointing out when that ad tells you that obama care isn't working is brought to you by a couple of billionaires who themselves will never, ever have to worry about doctors bills. so the democrats are putting $3
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million into that effort and maybe it will help democrats stay competitive in races that are totally swamped by koch money at this point in the race. maybe. even so, that doesn't solve the democrats biggest problem in 2014. president obama said this at a fund racer yesterday in miami, according to remarks that were post bid the white house. he said this. the problem is not that the american people disagree with us on the issues, the challenge is that our politics in washington have become so toxic that people just lose faith and finally they say i'm not interested, i'm not going to bother, i'm not going to vote. and he says that is especially true during the midterms. the president went on to say, during presidential elections, young people vote, women, blacks hispanics are more likely to vote. and we do pretty well in presidential elections, but the president said, in the midterms
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we get clobbered. that's president obama speaking yesterday in florida at a closed press event to raise money for congressional elections this year, but also to make that bigger point about turnout, specifically that fact that in midterm elections, votered who help democrats win presidential elections do tend to stay home in it's just the midterms. do tend to go missing when it comes time to just pick members of congress, members of senate and a whole lot of state officials. key democrats go missing in the midterm elections by tens of millions. and in the emerging picture of how democrats are planning and trying and hoping to blunt the koch brothers enormous spending advantage, it's turnout, it's good old-fashioned voter turn out is where they're trying to direct their efforts. they're going to try to match them ad for ad where they can, but they can't. what the democrats are trying to hang on to their majority in the
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senate with, is a turnout gain. the democratic senate campaign, are planning on spending $60 million trying to find and motivate every last possible democratic voter who could possibly be persuaded to head to the polls in november. this isn't just ads and stuff, inns the expensive and difficult daily work, they're planning on 4,000 staffers -- but in an election year like this one. it may be their only chance, but it is what they're trying to do. but democrat have to turn and to save their senate majority and at least not get clobbered in the highways. they have to reverse the structural dynamics of voter turnout it which are in play before anybody ever spends a dime on campaign ads. at base level, it is a dollar
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for dollar contest, but the democrats are trying to do a quantityively different thicker. they're the ones that tell you how many of your voters showed up because you knocked on their door at the right time and got them to the polls. joining us is john stanton, joining us now from buzz feed, mr. stanton, thank you for being here. they're never going to match them ad for ad? >> that's not possible. >> do the democrats conceivably have a smart enough idea and a well financed enough idea about turnout that they can mitigate some of the -- mitigate some of the problems caused for them in the face of the differential they're facing in the obvious? >> they're doing two things that i think are smart on the nestic side. they're talking about income equality which is helping to motivate some young voters and
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some women voters. they're attacking the koch brothers and making them the boogie men, that could certainly help them. but in tapping into the obama campaign's ground game, where they were able to go into for instance black barbershops and they had the barbers become captain. that one guy that didn't vote in 2008, he came out and vote in the 2012. if they do that, they could have a fighting chance. but the way things are, it's going to be quite difficult for them to maintain the size of their majority and it's going to be a tough fight to keep it at all. >> in terms of who's working on this stuff, you see the republicans know they're going to have a good year, or they think they are, they're really starting to crow about what the nrcc has put in place and we add to that what we know the koch brothers have paid for, which is a very expensive organization that's been around for months already, they feel confident to brag about that. on the democratic side, is it
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the smart kids who are working on this stuff? or is it the left year folks who didn't get in on the presidential year? >> there's some smart folks there. there's been some concern that a lot of the obama folks are starting to pivot toward 2016 and are looking at hillary and are not really playing very hard. and hillary and her people are a little bit concerned about this notion. but it didn't look like they're throwing their weight into 2014. there is a smaller bench, no doubt about it. but they do have some very smart people over there. but it's a very early story yet, so things could change dramatically. if they get away from some of the foreign policy issues, they could climb back out of this a little bit. >> it is interesting, for president obama to be making this tactics case, he keeps going to these democratic fund-raisers and these sort of friendly audiences and kind of giving people a hard time and saying, you know what? we're going to get killed here,
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2014 is going to be terrible for us, everyone is stacked against us, he's using blunt language and he's giving it to democratic donors and saying you're not doing this right. does he -- i haven't seen him do that before, except in campaigning for himself. sit likely to make a difference? are you seeing it resonate with the people in washington who have to get off their wallets to make it work? >> i think this is. the dccc in the house and the dsc have done very well in their fundraising. but he didn't just care about keeping the senate and trying to get the house. he cares because he's got two years left in power. if he goes into those last two years and he has a republican senate and a republican house, he's done essentially. even if he has a very narrow senate control, he probably can't get anything serious passed. and this is -- he now is very much motivated by self interest frankly and that's when he's at his best in putting the screws to some of the money people. >> if democrats can not figure out a way to run a national
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campaign against the john boehner congress, i would like to make the john boehner congress for every republican congressman in the country, then they, well, then they'll be democrats. john stanton, buzz feed's washington. thanks for being here. coming up, an unusually blunt one word answer in washington today. >> is the ukraine crisis prompting a fundament -- >> yes. >> the duh was implicit. a big fight just got bigger and that story is ahead. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ told ya you could do it. (dad vo) i want her to be safe. so, i taught her what i could and got her a subaru. (girl) piece of cake. ♪
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highly soluble, easily absorbed. on friday march 1, 2002, a man and his girlfriend were driving home from the mall in maryland. he was wearing a white cap, she was driving. a group of men in a white car pulled up to the pontiac and waved for the couple to pull over. didn't show any id of any kind. they were carrying m-4 assault rifle rifles. and the man reached to open the door, one of the men opened fire on him. joseph schultz was shot twice in the face, those men with no ids and no insignia, they were
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chasing a bank robber. the robber was not joseph schultz, but joseph schultz got shot anyway. what happens when the fbi agent shoots anybody is the agency that investigates what happened is almost always the fbi itself. these are records on 70 people who fbi agents have shot and killed over a 20-year period, from 1993, roughly to 2011. fbi agents shot and killed ee0 people in that time weird, in every one of those instances the shooting was reviewed by the fbi itself internally and in every one of those instances, in all 150 of those shootings, the fbi determined that the shooting was justified. they're 150 for 150. but when this white hat fib
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sho fbi shooting happened in -- in the joseph schultz case, a number of subtle but important differences surrounding the details of the case. joseph schultz sued and five years later he was awarded $1.5 million for being wrongly shot in the face for doing nothing wrong. but the government admitted no wrong doing in the shooting. 150 shootings, zero admission of wrong doing. last may, this young man was shot and killed in his apartment in orlando, florida while being interviewed by fbi agents and massachusetts state troopers. at first it seemed like kind of a local story, something weird had happened in florida with a guy who had connections to crime in massachusetts. then it seem likes a sidebar story to the boston bombings when we learned that the man who had been shot was friends with the older suspect in the
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bombings, tsarnaev -- there hadn't been any other witnesses, but they said that he lunged at agents with a knife. another leak said forget the knife and the blade, actually it was a bloom stick. another leak said it was a ceremonial sword or actually another leak said he overturned a table and threw a chair. that was why he got killed. one more leak, he was a confessed murder. he was just about to write down his confession to a triple murder in massachusetts before he went crazy and he had to be put down. the leaks contra zikted themselves. but they were all exkulpaory for those who shot him. we still have no official evidence or testimony about what
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happened in that shooting. no official explanation, even the autopsy report is still being blocked from public release by the fbi. the only reason we know that he was shot seven times, including once in the back of the head is because his friend took photos of his body at the morgue when he was called in to identify the body. those unsanctioned and less than official true details, right? and utter lack of any transparency from the fbi have led to some public outrage in this case and some media attention. reporters and editorial pages in the boston press have been sharply critical of authorities, along with the aclu and the family in russia have all called for an independent investigation. that's why it was a really big deal in august when the state attorney in florida, named
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jeffrey ashton announced that his office was going to conduct it's own independent investigation into the killing of ibrahim. this is a state level prosecutor in florida. there were no witnesses outside of the fbi agents and massachusetts state troopers who in the room, who were interviewing him when he was killed. they came that he was going to confess to a triple murder. we haven't seen any written confession, we haven't seen any recording of the interview, we haven't heard or seen any reliable account other than from anonymous sources who always seem to say that the agents did nothing wrong. so the florida report is going to be hugely important here. it may be the only independent information we get on this. we have been waiting for that report since august. late last month it was announced that the investigation results would be completed by the end of this month. it was believed to be tuesday would be the big day, next
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tuesday. law enforcement leak, another big leak in the story, wouldn't you know it, a big self-exculpatory leak. law enforcement officials unnamed of course, not only will the department of justice not charge anybody in the fbi, that the shooting has been ruled at the federal level justified that the fbi needed to use deadly force that day. we're also being told, again, by anonymous sources that that investigation by the independent source in florida, by the state prosecutor of florida, that one we were expecting to not hear anything about until next tuesday, we're also hearing from self-exculpatory anonymous sources that will investigation will also clear the fbi. these leaks purport to say what's going to be in that official report that's released on tuesday. we asked, did those leaks come from investigators in florida? is what those anonymous leakers saying true? is the fbi absolutely in the clear here?
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the state prosecutor in florida actually told us no. sources inside the office investigating the todashev shooting say they have not made a determination yet about whether to charge anyone in the todashev shooting is unfair and unaccurate. so a mysterious, messed up and completely opaque incident of deadly force got even weirder today. will authorities in florida find the fbi's use of force was justified here? we don't know that yet. we're going to know next week, when an actual independent report on the use of lethal force is officially released to the public. [ male announcer ] ortho crime files.
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here's the latest news on the missing plane, malaysian airlines flight 370. there is no news on the missing plane. today is day 14 of the search, there are no developments to report, other than another day has gone by without more nice, that's it. we'll let you know if that changes, but we'll not change the lack of news into something that sounds like news when it isn't, we'll be right back.
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count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. does your mouth often feel dry? a dry mouth can be a side effect of many medications but it can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath. that's why there's biotene. available as an oral rinse, toothpaste, spray or gel, biotene can provide soothing relief, and it helps keep your mouth healthy, too. remember, while your medication is doing you good, a dry mouth isn't. biotene -- for people who suffer from dry mouth. >> the big eggs stock exchange in the world is here in new york. the value of the new york stock exchange is over $13 trillion. hundreds of billions of dollars are traded every day in this city, which also happens to be home to the second largest
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exchange on the planet, the nasdaq, you have two exchanges, you have the tokyo exchange in japan, the ftse exchange in lontd. those are the big name stock exchanges, but the big ones are not the only ones. this is the russian stock exchange which operates out of moscow. i think i'm saying that right. it's worth about $750 billion as opposed to $13 trillion traded in new york. but the myse is the main stock market in russia, today it cratered. it lost nearly 3% of its entire value today. what happened in russia today, the equivalent of that happening here would be if the dow dropped 500 points in a day. the reason the russian stock exchange cratered today is apparently because of sanctions, the wrench that's now being tighteneds around russia's economy in the united states and europe. obama announced the third
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escalation of the sanctions in russia. in making that announcement, president obama said he was also prepared to escalate sanctions even further to include whole sectors of the russian economy. it now appears that those sanctions and the threat of new sanctions are having at least some of their intended effect. "the wall street journal" today reporting that russia's blue chip stocks, the ones that are always supposed to perform so well, they saw a decline because many of those companies are of those people newly added to the sanctions list. in addition to adding politically connected russian zillionaries added to the sanctions list yesterday, president obama also made the unilateral decision to cut off the russian bank of the russian's elite. it's own by a businessman in the west as vladimir putin's personal banker. that bank was immediately starved of the global currency that is american dollars and
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today the american credit card companies visa and mastercard announced that they would immediately stop servicing the bank. vladimir putin preferenced that on the day his government formally annexed crimea. he was going to immediately open a new bank account at the plan listed bank, he said he would have his presidential salary sent there. it was a little unexpected when at the same time vladimir putin was publicly trying to laugh off this new round of sanctions, the sanctions are already taking a toll on the russian economy russia will have to cancel plans to borrow funds abroad. and as both the s&p ratings alg cities go to downgrade russia's credit status, is price of our bonds could rise, and in addition to curtailing their foreign borrowing, they might have to cut down on the domestic
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form of it. too the rubble is already down 10% against the dollar this year meaning that rubbles buy 10% less than they used to, that phenomenon is considered likely to get worse. but even before today's big drop in the stock market, russian stocks on average were all down 10% before today, since putin declared that russia had the right to invade the ukraine. most of the sanctions have come from executive orders signed by president obama. with the expectation that there is more to come. in addition to the u.s. sanctions, though, before today, the european union has sanctioned 21 people, but today they added more. the thing about sanctions is they are evadable if you know they're coming. if you have money in accounts overskaes or otherwise stashed overseas, you can transfer those assets home before you get
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sanctioned. you just withdraw it or you move it somewhere else. if you know sanctions are coming, they might not hurt. so the europeans today took sort of extraordinary measures to keep the new sanctions secret until the similar last moment. a the meeting where they decided the 12 names they were going to add to the list of sanctioned russians today, it was only national leaders allowed in the room. no aides, no staffers, no wi-fi in the room. the idea was to keep the list totally secret so financial institutions could act on the list. european leaders also said today they were formulating a plan to quote, wean themselves off of russian oil and gas, hoping to have a plan formulated by mid year to bye energy from nonrussian sources. the energy sector of course is russia's biggest economic driver and cutting off energy sales would potentially land the
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hardest blow against that country. there have never been sanctions like this on russia since the end of the cold war. george w. bush didn't do anything like this when russia insladed georgia for example while he was president. what's being done against russia is unprecedented and it seems like it's going to keep going. if it's not going to be a military war, it's going to be an economic war. how do we expect russia to react, given today's fresh evidence that even as they try to laugh off the sanctions, they're already beginning to have their intended effect. joining me is michael mcphal thank for being with us. >> president obama announces two rounds of sanctions, is threatening a third. is what he's doing scaleable in a way that we should understand that there's more to come and that we should have expected the kind of economic response that we saw today in russia?
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>> well, first, i want to underscore something you just said about how unprecedented this is. this kind of sanctions, this targeted sanctions against individuals and now one bank is not something we even did during the cold war. this is quite unprecedented. it's a new instrument of foreign policy. practiced by the obama administration when i was there against iran and now you're seeing it with targeted individuals from russia and you're seeing the results that you jut described. what the president made clear in his statement when he announced this is what you see today is the punishment for annexation. it doesn't mean he thinks putin is going to leave crimea, he doesn't think it's going to change putin's calculus, president obama said there would be punishment if this happened, there was punishment. the new executive order that he
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signed secondly, that is meant oz a deterrent for president putin from going into the ukraine. i thought president obama made that clear, if there is more escalation of violence, then he will go in that direction. >> does that mean, just to be clear, that the punishment phase of this over, absent further russian action, the u.s. won't do anything else? >> i'm not sure. i do not know that. i know that from my previous time in government, putting together these lists, you have to make a case, you have to do due diligence, and i wouldn't be surprised if there would be more names with respect to the punishment phase. i don't know for sure. >> how would you expect russia to react, president putin publicly is making noises about not wanting further retaliation, i don't tend to believe anything he says in public, and also their past behavior suggests that they don't just sort of mirror western actions, they tend to react more strongly to
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anything we do rather than trying to have an equal and opposite reaction. what do you think he's going to do? >> there's putin reacting to the threat of sanctions and there's a lot of other russians reacting to the sanctions that are already there. with respect to pugh tictiputin listened closely to his speech earlier today, i'm ready too believe that he does not have a plan to invade eastern ukraine, but i also don't think he had a plan to invade crimea, what happened was, there was a crisis, there was an event that triggered that, that was the fall of the government in kievk so he lashed out in a tactic going into a crimea, and that's what i fear the most, if there's violence in eastern ukraine, ukrainian young guys with guns, going after russian young guys with guns.
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but if that happens and its escalates and there's fighting and an action reaction process, then putin will be tempted to act because he said, i'm going to protect russian citizens, russians, not russian citizens, russians living abroad. that's the scenario that scares me the most. >> when the national security advisor susan rice was asked the russian military exercises that are going on right near the ukraine and russia, she essentially scoffed, and said we don't think those are just military exercises, essentially being skeptical about what's going on there, that that may be a planned invasion. >> we saw earlier things on the eve of crimea. moreover, these are act ticks of coercion, these are tactics of threats. the russians still want to
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destabilize ukraine, of course, that's part of their objective right now. and this is part of their strategy. >> michael mcphal, former ambassador to russia, thanks for being with us tonight. instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos, i'm saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall. oh, i like that one. it's so quick! it's just like my car insurance. i saved 15% in just 15 minutes. i saved more than that in half the time. i unfriend you. that's not how it works. that's not how any of this works.
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the guy who invented
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protesting military funerals because he hated gay people is no longer among us. and you'll be surprised to know that there is greatness in his legacy. seriously, i swear. this will make you happy, it's coming up right at
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>> with very few exceptions we do not no obituaries on the show. and we're not going to do one tonight. the way you can tell this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church is because nothing in this story will require me to say his name. the church became fascination and revulsion when the man who was the cult leard for this come pound in kansas decided in 1991
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is the way he should spread his particular version of the gospel was by trying very hard to upset people. by trolling the country, essentially. they first showed up with their big taunting cursing profane signs at the funerals of people who had died of aids. they also picketed the funerals of anyone gay who had died for any reason, including picketing the funerals of people who had been murdered for being gay. and their message was very simple -- they just hated gay people. they cited biblical justification for hating gay people. they wished all gay people were dead. they thought anybody who didn't hate gay people as much as they were did were essentially aiding and abetting the horrible crime of homosexuality and was equally damned because of it. and for that reason, that moindset let inexorably that made them famous outside of just their gay community. in their quest to, demonstrate their own depth of hatred for
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gay people, they started trolling the whole country, not just the gay community. their public demonstration strategy moved on from directly going after gay people to picketing funerals and picketing other events that celebrated anyone who was a beloved american. they picketed the funeral of bill clinton's mother. they picketed the funeral of al gore's dad. they picketed the funeral of coal miners killed in a mining accident. jerry falwell wasn't anti-gay enough for them. there's nothing to celebrate about america enough as a nation as long as america tolerates the existence of openly gay people. that's why they started targeting the funeral of soldiers. so say there's no such thing as an american hero as long as america is a place that doesn't stone gay people to death. they said thank god for the ied's that kill american soldiers. we pay for more american soldiers to die since that is god's way of showing his disapproval of a country that doesn't hate gay people enough.
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that has been their reasoning. a all along for years. and now that the founder of the cult who, not incidentally, is the biological father of a lot of people in the cult, now that he has died, it will be interesting to see if his 13 children and 54 grandchildren and his growing covey of great grandchildren evolve in their strategy, too, or whether the westboro baptist church cult will wither away. and on one level, who cares. it's like caring about whether or not world net daily is going to do another where's the birth certificate birth or whether or not donald trump really means it this time that he's going to have run for president. who cares. make a ruckus. we're a free freaking country. free enough for all of you. but there is something important, i think, and worth noting tonight about the westboro cowestbo westboro cult now that its founder has died.
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the cult has for the past 20 years been an american inspiration. as they try to show their own depth of feeling tom hurt the families of loved ones. they want to shock casually anti-gay religious people in this country into hardening their beliefs. stop being such squishes, right? stop tolerating a culture that recognizes gay people's rights. that's what they were trying to do. but instead increasingly over the years, people rose up against them to try to stop, or at least interfere with the hurt that they were trying to cause. in order to demonstrate their point. i think it probably started with the angels wings folks, the people who built those huge architectural angels wings for themselves hupg with white sheets to protect the family of matthew shepherd. the wings just blocked the view
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of those protesters. when they started picketing soldier funerals, the patriot guard on motorcycles formed a loud massive flag-carrying human buffer between the westboro people and the military funeral procession and the family. it's also occasionally been a one-on-one thing. and occasionally a very funny one-on-one thing. there's the god hates signs eare bu -- rebuttal. this guy, i, too, have a sign. god hates signs. mourn for our signs. god hates plastic bags. this one turns up a lot. god hates figs. and god hates yeast. there's biblical citations on the signs. it is true, that part of the gospel of mark, i looked it up today. it is really anti-fig. mark 11, jesus is adamantly anti-figs. there's also plenty of biblical justifications, god hates shrimp. god hates cotton poly blends.
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not sure what's going on with the pirate in the foreground. but i bet i'm for it. who they just used anti-gay signs as if their words are more like prefixes. homo sex is great! their ubiquitous god hates fags message has been rebutted by a dog who feels exactly the opposite. and also apparently by god himself, who begs to differ with the westboro cult. the cult despite itself has been an inspiration to americans all over the country wherever they' shown up. they have indirectly caused a lot of good works out of our own human revulsion out of their cru cruelty. when michael sam came out and they came to the university to protest their existence, thousands of college students
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kurn turned out in the gold and snow to make a human wall. this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church. he's gone, dead at the age of 80. but someone, despite himself, actually did bring out the best in meepeople, and endep being a very, very clarifying thing for all of us. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow night. have a great night. paul ryan takes it to the streets and gets fact checked. it's now morning in australia and the planes are back over the water for day 15 of this search. >> lost contact with a plane bound for beijing.