>> all right. that's "all in" for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts now. >> thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. doing the show in washington, d.c., tonight it's lovely here cherry blossom time, it's delightful. before u.s. presidents had term limits, franklin delano roosevelt ran for president four times in a row. and every time he ran, he won by huge margins, even though this is what the country looked like when he won. he won overwhelmingly every single time that he ran, there were two states that said no to fdr four times in a row. owl four times that he ran. those states were maine and vermont. the people's republic of vermont went 0 for 4 when it came to voting for fdr. for all of the 19th century and

most of the 20th century, the single most republican state in the union was vermont of all places. they did bring themselves to vote democrat for lbj in 1964. that year it was hard not to. after that, vermont went back to its old solid republican ways it was the most solid republican place in the union for the next election, they voted republican again and again and again and again. it was not until 1992 when vermont tipped and tipped for good. vermont had been the most republican state in the country, but when they tipped to start voting democratic in 1992 they never went back. by the time george w. bush was running for president in 2000, he won the country that year kind of but he lost vermont by ten points.

george w. bush ran again he lost vermont by 20 points, fewer votes were cast for george w bush in vermont than any other state that created a little bit of a dilemma for president george w. bush. because while he was president, he made a point to travel to 49 other states in the country. he went to freaking alaska four times. even though george w. bush was born in connecticut, grew up in massachusetts, vacationed in maine during his presidency, even though he had all of those connections to new england. throughout the entire eight years of his presidency, he managed to avoid visiting vermont ever. and by the time his presidency was coming to an end that was becoming an issue. because presidents do now at least try to get to all 50 states as a manner of -- matter of good manners if nothing else. bill clinton only barely did it, he finally made it to nebraska about a month before he left office. that was the 50th of the 50.

and he made it to every one of the 50 united states. george w. bush's father before bill clinton also made it to all 50 states. although there's a little bit of an historical dispute about that. looking at the record i think he did make all 50, and incidentally i think he like his son left vermont for last, i think vermont was the last state that papi bush made it to when he was president. when his son, president george w. bush, when he left vermont for last, he ultimately left it for too long because by the time george w. bush was at the end of his second term as president, and he was facing headlines like these ones about why he hadn't visited vermont by that time in his presidency, the great state of vermont had made george w. bush's decision for him. by that point two vermont towns had taken a vote that if president george w. bush did dare to step foot within their

city limits while he was still president, those towns voted to instruct their local police to arrest him and put him on trial. brattleboro and marlboro vermont said they would tell their local police to arrest president george w. bush if he came to visit. even republican officials said george w. bush should not come. one republican who did not want to be named spoke and said quote, why would george w. bush ever come here? just to get a bunch of crowds to boo him? he would be nuts to come up here. and so george w. bush never went in the course of his presidency he never went to the state of vermont. far as i know, he still has never been there. president obama is not making that same mistake. with his visit to south carolina a few weeks ago, that brought him to 49 states that president obama has visited as president. that means that there's only one state left that he hasn't been to, that state is south dakota. south dakota to which president

obama is now apparently on his way. >> let's talk -- you've been to every state but south dakota, are you going to come visit us? >> first of all, it's important to know i was there as a senator. >> are you coming to visit? >> the good news is may 8th i'm making news with you here finally by may 8th, there should be spring in south dakota. >> now we have some breaking news. >> i'm really looking forward to it. >> most presidents don't get to all 50 states even when they try. it's hard to do most who have done it, have only barely made it. most of the presidents who have done it barely made it. president obama is taking care of that business relatively early, earlier than -- in terms

of the end of his term than any other president ever has with this south dakota trip he's planned for may 8th. i don't know if that means he's eager to get this whole president thing wrapped up and get out of there, but president obama's presidential to-do list is getting shorter and shorter all the time. the race to replace president obama in the white house feels like it's getting going early this time around. but it really is already in full swing, with multiple candidates having formally declared their candidacies, it's already clear that this race is going to be nothing like we have ever seen before. the new poll that's just come out about the 2016 race shows that in a specific way. it doesn't say anything particularly determinative about any one individual candidate for president, but it says something truly remarkable about the race as a whole. look at those results, not in terms of their relationship to

one another, look at them in terms of their absolute value. not a single candidate polls above the single digits, there's a million candidates running, not a single one of them cracks 10%. scott walker tops the field in this poll at 9% but 9% is as high as anybody's support goes. this is the most open field we have seen in forever. this is as open a field as this guy, in an open field, sitting in a business suit in an open field with his headphones on and a laptop fired up. that is a national political reporter for the wall street journal, that is peter nicholas. someone took a picture of him today while the national press corps was on the road and on the move to find somewhere to file their stories about the hillary clinton for president campaign.

it's making its way through iowa, small towns on a road trip that is supposed to be made up of small scale events with a handful of voters. those small-scale events do trail the entire enormous belt way press corps around them, like cans tied to the bumper. hillary clinton unlike all of her republican rivals is not at single digits. she's so far ahead of potential named democratic challengers the fact that anyone is polling on it at this point seems like news. that's probably a source of comfort to the clinton campaign, they get time to do small visits with voters the luxury of a presidential primary level of attention without intra-party fighting and drama. they get their pick in terms of democratic talent in the country

in terms of operatives. they see themselves as the only game in town. and on a very base level, that has to be convenient for the clinton campaign. democrats as a whole have had some pretty serious issues about hillary clinton not having a tough primary fight to win, because the primary has a perceived role in toughening up candidates for the election. also because primaries tend to push candidates toward their base voters. all the republican candidates are staking out policy positions further and further to the right with each passing day now as they try to out conservative each other. if hillary clinton doesn't the have to go through a similar process in the other party, democratic liberals have worried about there being no equal and opposite force pushing her policy positions to the left, even as all the republican guys get pushed so far to the right in their primary process.

that dynamic, if it exists in the republican party and not in the democratic party, that could leave her in the center and all the republicans on the right it could leave liberal policy positions totally out of the discussion when it comes to a general election between hillary clinton and a far right republican challenger, and that worry is some of what has driven bernie sanders to potentially be interested in potentially running a primary campaign for president against secretary clinton and any other comers. same goes for martin o'malley who does seem quite interested in mounting such a run. that worry is what's been driving the liberal interest in the houmt massachusetts interest in senator elizabeth warren potentially running against hillary clinton for the democratic nomination for president. even as senator warren has continued to insist she won't make a run, the efforts to get her to run just won't stop. people trying to get her to run if not to win, then at least to meaningfully pressure hillary clinton from the left during the course of a primary, so hillary

clinton ends up running on a more liberal, more populous policy agenda than she might have if she was left to her own devices. honestly, though, being real at this point, mostly hillary clinton has been left to her own devices, and is it is therefore one of the surprises of this political campaign so far that secretary clinton does seem to be running at least ostensibly a less conservative, more democratic wing of the democratic party style campaign than what liberals have feared. it's happened on the more obvious stuff, she would have to be more open to gay rights, more aggressive in her support for marriage equality. she's done that already. but it's not just social issues like that. it's also unexpectedly happened in terms of her core economic message. >> i think it's fair to say that as you look across the country the deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top.

there's something wrong with that. there's something wrong when ceo's make 300 times more than the typical worker there's something wrong when american workers keep getting more productive, but that productivity is not matched in their paychecks. and there's something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that i saw on i-80 as i was driving here over the last two days. >> if you had been hoping for a bernie sanders presidential run or an elizabeth warren presidential run, because you wanted to make top tier democratic politics more like bernie sanders politics and elizabeth warren politics, hearing hillary clinton talk that way is probably music to your ears. that gave rise this week to the hard to spell but funny twitter hash tag hillelizabethwarren. crediting secretary clinton for giving voice to these more populous ideas that democrats have been looking for in a

presidential nominee for 2016 even beyond that, there was further surprise for hillary clinton when she started talking about the four part platform she seems ready to run on. it's not a criticism, it's just a fact. the first three parts could have have been anybody's, probably even most of the republicans that are trying to run against hillary clinton this year. she said she wants to build an american economy for the future and not the past. she wants to strengthen american families, okay, she wants to defend the country from threats, okay. and clearly she'll put meat on those bones and there will be fighting about what she intends to do to achieve those things and they won't sound like generic political slogans, i'm guessing. the surprise was the fourth thing that she put on this top four list of things she wants to get done the reason why she's running. when she got to the fourth plank in this platform she's been

talking about this week since she declared her candidacy, i don't think anybody saw this coming. >> we need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment. we have to get rid of the unaccountable money flooding into our political system, even if it takes a constitutional amendment. >> this is going to be a $2.5 billion presidential campaign, maybe. there is about a 98% chance hillary clinton is going to be one of the two candidates in the general election in this $2.5 billion campaign. atr as such i'm not sure anybody expected that an anti-unlimited money in politics plank, even a constitutional amendment anti-money in politics plank would be one of the first things she would put in her

platform but she has. that's a political surprise and a really interesting new question about this giant terrible structural problem we have now in our democracy, which is the legalization of unlimited anonymous money and how it has crowded out and devalued the participation of everyone else in the political process who can't compete at that kind of a financial level. it's such a huge problem in our politics. it's almost like the weather, it's the ambient atmosphere in which all politics happens, and in polite and mainstream politics, it's almost seen as not worth talking about, because the problem is so big. and because it seems to be unfixable. in recent polling, 96% of americans say they believe it's important to reduce the influence of money in politics. 96% think we ought to do that. but the proportion of americans who think that is likely to happen, is not 96%, it's 9%. everyone knows and thinks it is a huge problem, nobody thinks it can be fixed. that's a recipe for never talking about it. that's led to a style of activism around the issue of money in politics, that

reflects its sort of flinge -- fringe status in mainstream discourse, in terms of the tactics and tone. today's latest point was from a 61-year-old florida mailman named doug hughes who taught himself to fly a teenie tiny little ultralight gyro copter that's a bicycle with wings he put on his mailman suit, put a postal service insignia on the side of his gyro copter. loaded up mail bags containing letters to every member of congress demanding that they support real reform to get money out of politics, and today he flew that into restricted airspace in washington, d.c. into the no-fly zone at the u.s. capital. he purposely landed his gyro copter on the west lawn of the capital. he told his hometown paper the tampa bay times in advance about his plans explaining he meant no harm, he's neither suicidal or

homicidal, he hoped he wouldn't get shot down, he recognized at a certain level it is nuts to fly into a no fly zone and try to land at the capital, in order to make a political point but it was the only thing he could think of to try to get attention to this issue that otherwise doesn't get any mainstream attention, to try to spark something in washington to fix this problem. >> change the government to build a wall of spragsseparation, to build a wall between the government and big money. so government will represent the people. there are these problems and these problems and these problems that are much more important than campaign finance reform, those won't get addressed until we fix campaign finance reform. >> i don't believe that the authorities are going to shoot down a 60-year-old mailman in a flying bicycle. i'm going to give them plenty of

warning, well over an hour in advance of me getting to the no-fly zone. so they know who i am and what i'm doing, and that it's intended to be non-violent. i'm defenseless, they could knock me down -- a boy scout with a bb gun could shoot me down. i don't believe anyone wants to personally take responsibility for the fallout that would result from publicly executing somebody for an act of dissent. >> doug hughes taped that with the tampa bay times before he embarked on his solo flight to the capitol lawn. he did it. he was not shot down, he was not forced down out of the sky by a fighter jet or something. appears to have not been hurt in this landing, he was arrested once he landed on the capitol grounds. they did bring in a bomb squad to make sure it was a flying bicycle and not something more

dangerous. coinciding with the start of his flight, he posted a big explanation for what he was doing at this website democracy club.org. you can read the letter he wrote to members of congress. he links to a bunch of groups who he says are working in a smart way on campaign finance reform this issue he was trying to highlight with a stunt today. his flight into the no fly zone was his personal attempt to try to get big money out of american politics. it was all he could think to do as a citizen. but if that cause becomes as mainstream as you can get, if that cause also becomes the hillary clinton for president cause, if this is not a futile tilting at windmills activist effort but something that gets taken on at the highest level of american national politics could something actually get done about it? and is the hillary clinton campaign starting to answer the concerns of the parts of the democratic party that worried about her grabbing the nomination without a progressive

push to get her there? one of the potential progressive candidates hoping to push her there joins us next. ♪ [upbeat music] ♪ defiance is in our bones. defiance never grows old. citracal maximum. easily absorbed calcium plus d. now in a new look. most of the products we all buy are transported on container ships. before a truck delivers it to your store, a container ship delivered it to that truck. here in san diego, we're building the first one ever to run on natural gas. ships this big running this clean will be much better for the environment. we're proud to be a part of that. ugh... ...heartburn. did someone say burn? try alka seltzer reliefchews. they work just as fast

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joining me next right here on set, right here is one of the real life candidates who appears to possibly be gearing up to take on hillary clinton for the democratic presidential nomination, maybe, that's next. don't go anywhere.

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in iowa this week on a platform of passing a constitutional amendment if need be to get big money out of the political system. coming out with that proposal right out of the box, not something i think anyone saws coming. perhaps it is a reaction to the democratic party's worries that hillary clinton running without a strong primary challenge will not push her hard enough from the left to come up with good ideas for how to lead the country. among those who have been thinking about challenging her in a primary is bernie sanders who joins us now. thanks so much for being here. >> my pleasure. >> i posit that hillary clinton has been slightly more liberal in what she's said she wants to do with her campaign. than what i expected. do you think that's true. >> it's hard to judge. she's only been out there for a few days. the issue to my mind is in this strange moment in american history, when our middle class

is disappearing, we have so many people living in poverty, when we have to deal with climate change, when we have to deal with the horrendous level of income and wealth inequality, how do we address these issues in a way that takes on the billionaire class? there's one issue for me, rachel, and that is do we as a people, not hillary clinton, bernie sanders, rachel maddow, are we prepared to take on the billionaire class now, where 99% of all new income is going to the top 1%? where they have significant control over the media, where they by and large determine the legislation that goes on in congress, and as a result of citizens united are prepared to buy the united states congress. million issues out there, the main issue is, will we retain a middle class? will we retain our democratic foundation or will we move to an

oligarchic society where this whole nation is run by a handful of billionaire families koch brothers and others? >> do you see your mission as the way to take on the democratic party? >> i have four kids and seven grandchildren and i want them to live in a great country. present trends that is not the case. the scientific community tells us if we don't deal with climate change, this planet is going to warm up substantially. what kind of planet are we going to leave to our kids? we have enormous problems, at the end of the day, if you want to raise the minimum wage, end the disgrace of america being the only country without a national health care program, you know what you have to do? you have to take on the billionaire class. you have to break up the wall street banks, you need real tax reform. i just introduced legislation the other day, we're losing $110 billion a year because the businesses stash their money in the cayman islands and in bermuda. you have to increase the minimum wage to a living wage.

to do all of those things we need a mass movement in this country. the likes of which we have never seen before. the only way we beat the billionaire class, is when millions of people organize and say, enough is enough, we want to go to college without going bankrupt. we're entitled to health care as a right, we don't want our jobs to go to china. wall street can't run this country. et cetera, et cetera mp. and the question is, do we have the courage to do that? >> do you think a potential presidential run, you running for president could be the sort of thing that would catalyze that kind of movement? is that part of why you're considering it? >> it's one of the things that i'm looking at. and i don't know the answer to your question we are looking, it's easy for me to give a speech. and we have huge turnovers all over the country. you tell me, do you think the american people are prepared to stand up to the billionaire class? people are so demoralized they've given up in the political process. 80% of young people didn't vote in the last election. can we bring people together and say, sorry, the billionaires

can't control the united states congress? we need fundamental changes in this country. i don't know the answer to that, i'm exploring that. the other issue that you touched on, it's frankly hillary and the republicans. you know how much money they're going to raise in the campaign? they're going to raise probably over a billion dollars. >> each? >> each. >> then the question comes, if a candidate is out there to represent working families, and relies on small contributions, can you win an election when you're so greatly outspent or is that over? will the only candidates we have, be those who have huge super packs? and billionaire backers? if that's the case, that's a pretty sad state of affairs. >> how will you make this decision? i've talked to you about this a few different times. if sounds like you're getting closer. >> it's going to be a gut reaction, getting a sense of whether or not there really is the support for people to roll up their sleeves by the

millions frankly and say, we need a political revolution in this country. and i mean those words advisedly. i have to make that decision shortly, and i will. the other factor, of course, is, when i don't get super pac money, how do we -- and we average $45 a contribution, you need a lot of $45 to raise a few hundred million dollars, can we raise that and i have to ascertain that. >> senator bernie sanders, great to see you, sir. thank you. we have a lot ahead tonight, including a cabinet secretary that is going to join us tonight for the interview on a subject that has received zero attention so far but is about to blow up. please stay with us. before earning enough cash back from bank of america to help pay for her kids' ice time. before earning 1% cash back everywhere, every time. and 2% back at the grocery store. even before she got 3% back on gas all with no hoops to jump through. katie used her bankamericard cash rewards credit card to stay warm and toasty during the heat of competition. that's the comfort of rewarding connections.

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we've got a report coming up next on what i think is a sleeper issue. a big issue that is about to come around the bend in national politics, particularly because of the start of the 2016 presidential campaigning. this is something that the right has been working on quietly but conservatively for the past year or so. they've mostly been under the radar, they're just now starting to surface. they're working on something that has been way out there on the fringe of conservative thought. way beyond the realm of the possible in terms of policy. they're working this year to bring that fringe thing into the mainstream and to get it done in part through 2016 presidential politics. what they're proposing would be a radical change for the country but republicans are quietly coalescing around this idea. i think democrats and people who don't want this radical change

have not been paying attention to this and they don't know it's coming, so therefore they are not prepared for it. but that report and that story is next. ♪ during its first year, a humpback calf and its mother are almost inseparable. she lifts her calf to its first breath of air, then protects it on the long journey to their feeding grounds. one of the most important things you can do is help the next generation. at pacific life, we offer financial solutions to accomplish just that. ask a financial advisor about pacific life. the power to help you succeed. ♪ ♪ you know i tried one of those bargain paper towels but i had to use so many sheets per spill... the roll just disappeared. i knew i should've bought bounty. bounty is 2x more absorbent and strong when wet. just look how much longer bounty lasts

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part of the deal we made with people to serve this country in the military, if you are a veteran, our country agrees to take care of your health care needs. when the continental congress created the country in the first place, they passed a law to help disabled american veterans. one of the very first things, the first u.s. congress did was to pass a law to help disabled veterans. as a country we have pledged from before the beginning of the beginning that one of the core functions of the government of the united states is to care for veterans. it's part of the deal that we make with americans who serve in the military, it's not a controversial idea, and until this point hasn't ever been one. >> it's about how we treat our veterans every single day of the year. it's about making sure they have the care they need and the benefits that they've earned when they come home. >> america must and will keep its word to those men and women who have given us so much.

veterans have been promised good health care when they're sick and disabled. they must be treated with fairness and respect. >> we honor our veterans as well. and abraham lincoln's words, who shall have born the battle. >> i've said before that america's debt to those who would fight for her defense doesn't end the day the uniform comes off. for the security of our nation, it must not end. >> it is not a controversial idea in american politics, it is not a partisan idea at all. or at least mostly. for a while now, an idea has percolated on the right. to scrap the va. to scrap the va, turn it over to the private sector and let veterans try their luck there, this thing has simmered out there as an idea on the right for a long time. it's always been seen as too fringe, too radical to get anywhere in real mainstream realistic politics. in his 2008 presidential

campaign john mccain briefly pitched to a veteran's group veterans groups were not receptive, that idea went nowhere, and then it was over. a couple years later, republican colorado u.s. senate candidate ken buck said he wanted to privatize the v.a. he got slammed by veterans groups and pretty soon his spokesman was saying definitively ken is not for privatizing the va hospitals. the next year mitt romney briefly suggested a privatizing voucher system for the va, veterans groups came out strongly against it and said he was just kicking around a hypothetical, didn't mean it at all. this year, though, something different is going on. at least three of the major candidates are probable candidates for the republican presidential nomination, jeb bush, rand paul and marco rubio have all in quick secession suddenly come out in support of privatizing some or all of the va. why is this happening all of a sudden? why all of a sudden not just one of these guys here or there, but

all of those three guys all deciding now that is newly politically palatable to suggest something that just a couple years ago was a real third wheel? two things are going on here. one of them you already know about, one of them is that the va has not been doing itself any favors recently. it's been buffetted by scandal after scandal, including the wait times and the va fudging the data about those wait times, that's a scandal that led to the resignation of eric shinseki. for those who would like to abolish it, the defenders of the va are in a situation where it's politically difficult to defend the va because it's had so much bad press. and then there's the second thing. there was something the founding fathers did not foresee when they thought about our nation's sacred need to care for our vets. they maybe did not anticipate were a couple guys called the koch brothers. last year in june, a group

called concerned veterans for america convened a summit on privatizing the va. john mccain was there, former speaker gingrich was there, the point of this summit by concerned veterans for america, was to celebrate the release of that group's big report on fixing the va, and their big proposal for the va was to privatize it. concerned veterans for america, wants to privatize much of the va system for health care. i should tell you that concerned veterans for america, is not some scrappy grassroots group. it's reportedly funded just about entirely by the billionaire libertarian brothers charles and david koch and their network of doanars. the koch donor network almost literally created that group, that is not my characterization, that comes from the group's ceo. this was him speaking at a koch donor conference last june. [ indiscernible ]

>> exposing and driving this crisis from the very beginning. driving it. that audio was obtained by an online outfit called the undercurrent, published by the nation. we have not independently confirmed it. we contacted mr. hagstaf this evening to ask if he talked about it. he designedr declined to talk to us and also say where his group gets his money. what we do know just from watching the politics as they play out is that their push to privatize the va is working right now. i mean, it used to be a fringe idea that the politician might float, but then drop. all the leading republican hopefuls for president who have been asked about it have so far all jumped on board, lots of them all at once. part of the reason for the surprise mainstream of this formerly fringe idea is that now it is supported by this much

larger and much richer campaign. >> we have broadened the debate to include big government dysfunction generally. concerned veterans for americans and the koch brothers network and the republican presidential candidates, they're taking an issue that used to be an absolute third rail but now

when they find themselves pushing on this issue, they're pushing on an open door in part because it's a door they opened themselves. the va is in such bad shape, none of the defenders feels like they can stand up for the status quo, even though, and this is key, the va health care system gets better ratings than the private health care system on just about every metric. not just better outcomes, but higher satisfaction rates among their patients. privatizing the va, i'm telling you, is a sleeper issue for the 2016 campaign. the republican candidates are lining up in support. and the democrats and supporters of the va, do not appear to have any strategy to respond to what is happening on the right. there is a concerted but as yet low profile push from the right right now to kill the va. are we at risk of losing it? the va secretary joins us next. ing for pain? i have bayer aspirin. i'm not having a heart attack, it's my back. i mean bayer back & body. it works great for pain. bayer back & body provides effective relief for your tough pain.

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with every group i engage, i make this point. at va, our mission is clear. it's to serve veterans. there is no higher calling than that mission. >> joining us now for the interview, very happy to say, robert mcdonald, our nation's secretary of veterans affairs, it's a real honor to have you with us. thanks for being here. >> great to be with you tonight. >> i think there's something going on politically, that hasn't received a lot of national attention yet, i feel it percolating, which is a concerted effort to end the va in terms of its core functions providing health care to our nation's veterans. nine million veterans are getting health care through the va. do you think that such a movement is afoot and how do you feel about it? >> as i went through my confirmation process, some members of the senate asked me to do an analysis of this, and i'm a business guy. so coming in, i did an analysis and what i discovered was not only do veterans needs the va, but american medicine needs the

va, which means america needs the va. let me explain what i mean, did you realize that 70% of u.s. doctors are trained by the va? it's our residencies that train doctors. >> wow. >> did you realize that we have the largest nurse force in the nation? who's going to train the doctors and nurses if it's not the va? secondly, research. we send $1.8 billion a year on research. we invented the nicotine patch, the first liver transplant. the first implantable pacemaker. it was a va nurse that came up with the idea of using a bar code to connect patients with charts and records. the electronic medical record was invented by the va. third, of course is our clinical work. many of our doctors do things on all three legs of that stool, clinical work research, teaching. and that makes a difference for our veterans. it also makes a difference for american medicine. >> there has been part of what's underlying this political dynamic is that the va has had so much trouble over the last

few years. complaints about veterans waiting to get into care, even more trouble and complaints about the va more or less systematically fudging the numbers to make it look like that problem wasn't true and screwing veterans over in the process, i know you have been prioritizing trying to fix that problem. is there any sense in which the agency is just too large to fix? that it is too big, it does too much, and that it's too unwieldy to be responsive and responsible? >> i don't think so, i think the va should succeed, and i think the va succeeds by running like a business, any organization that loses sight of its customer, and i think we lost sight of our customer becomes very inward looking during the time of crisis and is not outward looking. improving our results, and delighting our veterans. that's what we're about. >> do you feel like the turn around efforts on the weight times issue and on the honesty

on the wait time issue is satisfactory to you thus far? >> we're making progression, but we're not where we need to be. 20% of our appointments are same day. 97% of our appointments roughly are within 30 days of desired time, so we're making progress, but we still need to hire more doctors, more nurses and we still need to create more venues, more buildings in order for veterans to get in. since i've been secretary, we've hired 800 doctors, a thousand nurses. we now have permission from congress and funding to build at least 27 new facilities. so there was a case where the demand was much greater than the supply. vietnam era veterans had their peak demand year in 2014. the reason for that is peak vietnam veterans became older, like me i'm 61 years old.

when i was young and i was in the 2nd airborne division, i parachuted. i lost three disks in my lower back, but i could run marathons at 28. now that i'm 61, i can't sleep through the night. in 1975, we had 2 million veterans over the age of 65. 2017, we're going to have 10 million veterans over the age of 65. the va is like the canary in the coal mine. we see things in the american health care before the rest of the public sees it. we see the aging population, we see the need for family care and primary care doctors. we see the need for mental health professionals. this is a role we play in terms of informing american medicine. >> one of the reasons i want you to be here tonight, mr. secretary, is because i do feel like va is about to have political challenges that it has not faced in at least a generation if not more. and veterans groups have been able to hold off some of those challenges in the past. in part because they had a lot of political backup. i'm not sure va has the political backup right now to fight those battles and,

honestly, i'm here because i want to sort of raise the flag that this is coming and i want to thank you for being here, too, because it's been hard to talk to the va, hard to get anybody to talk about. >> that's why we're here. we want to get out. we want to be transparent. we now publish our data every two weeks online. transparency is a great benefit to it. we're going to do our share. we're going to improve the results of the va. we're working very hard to do that. hopefully veterans will be happy with the care we provide them. it's the most exciting mission we could possibly have. >> robert mcdonald, our nation's secretary of veterans affairs, real honor and a pleasure to have you here. >> my pleasure. >> i'm telling you, this is coming. nobody is talking about this in 2016 yet, but this is on the way in a bad way. stay with us. we'll be right back. ty fuel economy rating... the lincoln mkz hybrid. and who has one starting price for gas or hybrid? mkz hybrid again. mm-hmm.

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debunktion junction, washington edition. u.s. senator jon tester of montana is famous for two unusual physical traits. one is his hair cut. immaculate in his flatness. you can balance an egg on top of his head. the man was born to do head things. you can store things on top of his haircut. he has a perfect and amazing flat top air cut. -- hair cut. the other physical thing that senator jon tester is famous for is that he only has seven famous fingers. he lost three fingers to an accident on his family's farm when he was 9 years old. if you know nothing about jon tester, you very likely know about his hair and the missing fingers on his hand. today it was reported his body man, the guy who he spends more time with on his staff than anybody else also only has seven fingers. senator tester and his executive

assistant reportedly only 14 fingers between them. is that true or is that false? did i make that up? seriously, they are not only both missing fingers, they are both missing three fingers. they have both missing the same three fingers. both of them are missing those same three fingers on their left hand. it's a match made in heaven or montana. hard to tell the difference. senator tester tells roll call today, and i quote, we tell people now that when i hired him, he had ten fingers, and i made him cut three of them off, because that's part of the stipalation if you're going to be my executive assistant. the two seem to like each other very much. senator tester realizes this whole thing between him and his seven-fingered assistant might not last. quote, he's been with me a couple of years and, you know, he'll go at some point in time and then we'll have to get somebody else and have to cut their fingers off. and then we'll move on.

senator jon tester of montana, and his executive assistant, 14 fingers between the two of them. they're both missing the same fingers on their left hand. true. i swear it's true. meat grinder that cost him the first three fingers in the first place. that's the most jon tester fact of all time. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. >> now you have me sitting here wondering what i'm doing with all these extra fingers that i apparently don't need. >> exactly. i feel like gosh, i can't be a neither with ten, he could do it with seven. martin o'malley took his first swipe at hillary clinton today without, of course, mentioning her name. and the district attorney who put aaron hernandez away for life will join me. but first, there is a new report