tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC October 21, 2015 1:00am-2:01am PDT
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tidal wave of support for body cameras. i think people understand that this is not the panacea. this is not the answer but it's a key component in long-term answers. >> mark claxton and philip goff, thank you both. that is all in for this evening. rachel starts right now. >> thanks, my friend. thanks to you for joining us this hour. it was a liberal speech of proportions that no one expected. these are the canadian provinces, the ten canadian provinces and these are the canadian provinces in which the liberal party last night either swept up every single seat that that province has in parliament or they at least won the majority. and turns out when you take every single seat in all of the atlantic provinces and you take a majority of the seats in the big population centers of quebec and ontario, well, that's all you need. and than surprising liberal wave last night is how the great
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nation of canada ousted this guy after nearly ten years in power as a prime minister and they replaced him instead with this guy. 43-year-old liberal party leader justin trudeau whose party last night went from 36 seats in parliament to boing, 184 seats thus putting the liberal party solidly in the majority and thus drastically changing canada's political direction from fairly hard right which is was under stephen harper for almost a solid decade to the new government they're getting now under trudeau which is beak a center left government. there aren't just two major parties in canada like there are here. it's not a direct analogy, but basically canada was george w. bush and now any are -- now there's somebody in the american democrat party. we don't know exactly who.
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we'll see how justin trudeau ends up governing before we i think make our american analogy there 37 but in the short term, for the united states, this big unexpected change in the canadian government last night is going to have specific near term consequences for our country. first off, canada is going to stop participating in the u.s.-led bombing campaign in iraq and syria against isis. president obama spoke with the new prime minister in canada today by phone partly that's just a nice thing you do when a close ally gets a new leader. we're also told in that call the new canadian prime minister told president obama canada will be withdrawing its fighter jets from iraq and from syria from that campaign against isis. so all change. there's also going to be a change on environmental policy. these election results last night mean instead of canada being run by a guy who thinks that global warming is a hoax and a conspiracy ala senator james inhofe instead the new
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prime minister says he will personally lead canada's delegation to the big climate world summit that's going to happen in paris in a few weeks. there's some skepticism in many environmental circles as to whether or not trudeau will be good on client issues particularly because he apparently supports the keystone pipeline and other things that environmentalists are against both in canada and here. but you know at least he thinks global warming is not some nasty trick and at least he's pledging to be in on the discussion. so we shall see. this big change in canada last night also means at a personal level that canada is getting its first ever family legacy i leader at the top. because justin trudeau is the son of legendary canadian prime minister pierre trudeau who led the government from the 1968 to 1994. pierre trudeau was prime minister for 16 years except for one eight-month in the middle of his term in office which is too
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boring to explain. he was there for a long time. he was a very consciousal liberal leader in canada. now his son is going to be the new prime minister at the age of 43. i mean, in some countries, in this country, we have some experience with children following their parent into the presidency. we had john adams and then john quincy adams. george bush and then we had george w. bush. but canada never before has had the child of a former leader become leader himself. and because they're doing that now, it is therefore tempting to see parallel for our own presidential election for what everybody thought was going to be a bush iii versus clinton ii presidential race here. as it turns out, that is not what we've got here in terms of presidential front runners. at least not on the republican side, not unless fred trump was
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secretly president at some point and everybody has just forgotten. it turns out the closer parallel to this political stunner last night among our northern neighbors, the closer parallel for us here is not our presidential race. but instead, it's this contest. this is congressman paul ryan tonight being chased by reporters. and looking fairly miserable about it. as he and other house republicans started meeting tonight at the u.s. capitol. meetings at wit the new republican leader of congress might have been or might not have been chosen. current speaker john boehner surprises everyone three weeks ago announced he would quit as speaker. for a hot minute, it appeared he would be replaced by house majority leader kevin mccarthy but then mccarthy's bid disappeared into a puff of smoke and since then everybody and his sister has been floated as a potential speaker of the house. only problem being none of them appear to have the support necessary to get the job if they ran for it.
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tonight on fox news with my friend bret baier, outgoing house speaker john boehner expressed high hopes that all this republican drama would be over soon. >> why should ryan even consider taking this job after the treatment you received as house speaker in this job? >> well, somebody has to have this job. and while i've taken my share of grief, i learned a long time ago you've got to play the cards you're dealt. i've plays the cards i was dealt every day. now, i'll tell you, i've had a lot of bad hands. and i never got a day where i had five aces in my hand. but i think paul ryan has the skills to do this job and i hope he does decide to run and if he does, i think he'll be elected. >> at this hour, we're told paul ryan is meeting with the house freedom caucus. talking with them, clearly an indication he's warmed to throwing his hat in the ring. do you know what paul ryan is
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going to do? >> no, but i do expect we'll know later on this evening what his answer is. >> it's funny, as soon as john boehner said that on fox news tonight, we'll know later this evening what his answer is, as soon as he said that, paul ryan's office came out and said that, no, no, that's not true. a spokesman came out and said thanks, speaker boehner as if i wasn't getting enough e-mails. we don't expect a final decision tonight. then again, one decision did kind of happen. i mean, the reason all eyes have been on congressman paul ryan in the speaker contest is it because of two very incompatible things that are either known or strongly suspected about this leadership problem that the republicans have. the first thing is that paul ryan has been very clear about the fact he doesn't want the job of speaker. the second thing has been that paul ryan is apparently the only republican who could conceivably get the job of speaker if he decided to run for it, not wanting it and being the only guy who can get it has been a difficult tension. and this is not the same kind you have decision as deciding
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whether or not to run for president, right? this is paul ryan deciding whether or not to run to be the leader of his party in the legislature. now, in canada, when you're the young, fit, 40 something guy who gets the job of leading your party in the legislature, you know, this is justin trudeau, by the way, his boxing career, if your party does well and you're the legislative leader of your party in canada, you get the prime minister job, the rough equivalent of the american presidency as your job. leading your party in the legislature leads to the top job if you're in a parliamentary democracy like canada. in the united states though, leading your party in the legislature doesn't ever get you a president-type job. it gets you a john boehner type job which he will be the first to tell you even tonight, it is not that good a job. it's not fun. even he when you have a huge majority in the house, it kind of stinks as a job and he's happy to give it up. john boehner has been very unshy about talking about how
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difficult it is to be speaker. and being speak erg particularly with this group of republicans it is not a glamorous job. it doesn't appear to be an aattractive job and has not appeared to be attractive to the only guy who apparently could take the job if he could be persuaded to want it. these house republican meetings were going on all night tonight in the capital. john boehner said we'll get a decision tonight. paul ryan's office said we won't get a decision tonight. but those meetings on capitol hill tonight did just wrap up a short time ago and congressman ryan did speak to reporters. and after all these days and weeks of saying he would not take the job and after his office saying tonight we wouldn't hear from him tonight whether he would take the job, tonight paul ryan came out and said yeah, he will take the job and run for speaker. but only if the whole republican party embraces him as their consensus candidate and only if they meet his other conditions for running. he says he wants changes to house rules. he says he wants changes for how
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the party can fire a speaker. which is the process called vacating the chair. he also said at some length that he will not give up family time to travel and raise money. >> i cannot and i will not give up my family time. i may not be on the road as often as previous speakers, but i pledge to try and make up for it with more time communicating our vision, our message. what i told members is, if you can agree to these requests, and if i can truly be a unifying figure, then i will gladly serve. and if i'm not unifying, that will be fine, as well. i'll be happy to stay where i am at the ways and means committee. >> joining us now live from capitol hill is frank thorp, nbc news capitol hill producer and op-ed reporter. anxious for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> so paul ryan all this time has been saying i don't want the job. and then john boehner said
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tonight paul ryan's going to say whether or not he wants the job and paul ryan's office said no, no, no, he won't tell you tonight. and then paul ryan came out and said, i do sort of want the job. but i probably won't take it unless do you this whole big long list of things. is that basically what just happened? >> basically. paul ryan basically said he would take the job if the republican conference agrees to these conditions he has. you listed them yourself. they involved his family. they involved some rule changes. they involved a big word he's been using over and over again is the idea of unity. he wants to unify the conference. the reality is he wants to do this. he's given the conference till the end of the week to decide whether or not think can unify around him. he's asked that the three major caucuses of the republican party come back and beak say okay, we'll endorse you as the speaker of the house. those three caucuses are the rsc, which is conservative
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republicans, the freedom caucus which is very conservative republicans and then the tuesday group which is more the moderates. and that's not a clam dunk. you know, the idea that the freedom caucus is going to coalesce around paul ryan here is not necessarily something that we can say is definitely going to happen. and one of the major hangups is the idea that he wants to change the house rules like you said, to take away the ability to vacate the chair, the ability to fire the speaker. he wants that done away with. and conservatives don't want to give that up. >> frank, in terms of that consensus factor, you described the republican study committee, can the tuesday group and the freedom caucus as these major caucuses in the republican party he wants support from. is he asking just -- when he says he wants consensus and a unified vote of support for him, does he just mean he wants the members of those caucuses to support him or is he actually saying he wants every single republican house member to support him?
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do we have a number attached to what he's thinking of as consensus? >> there's no number and no expectation he'll get every single member of the republican conference. there were members walking out of ha conference meeting today who said basically you know, he sold his story but you know, i'm still not going to support him. the idea is, though, that according to matt fuller a reporter for roll call who is kind of the describe of the freedom caucus, he says that they need a four fifths majority in the caucus to make any kind of policy announcements, any policy positions here they need a four-fifths majority to come out and endorse ryan. he already had some of the moderate republicans who said they would consider running for speaker say that they would drop out now that paul ryan is announcing he's going to do this. they're already behind this idea. the real question is whether or not the freedom caucus can get
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around some of the hangups they're going to have with some of these conditions. >> frank thorp, nbc's capitol hill producer and frank, thanks very much for this kind of an exciting night in capitol hill tonight. i don't know how this is going to end. >> we'll tell you tonight that one of those republicans who dropped out of the speaker's race when ryan said he would get in was jason chaffetz. he go the in if the race around the time kevin mccarthy started to look a little wobbly as the potential next speaker. paul ryan coming out tonight, he's clearly trying to persuade republicans to put aside objections to him and coalesce around his candidacy. maybe he's going to move some of them. the freedom caucus like this guy daniel webster in florida. they have to be persuaded to dump their previously stated support for one of their own guys and all move over to paul ryan in order for this 0 to work. we're going to get a lot of news from the beltway tomorrow that paul ryan is the next speaker. until those super hard line conservatives sign up with him in great proportion, this is not
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what i think it takes to unify this conference and to have a successful speakership. it's in their hands. i'll leave it up to my colleagues to decide if i am that person. >> paul ryan tonight coming out in a surprise move and saying he will be as speaker of the house if and only if nobody says no to him. if and only if his republican colleagues unite behind him as speaker. it's in their hands. and they need to decide by friday. and i hope they do one way or the other because ten days later, two weeks from tonight, november 3rd which is already marked in your calendar as election day, two weeks from tonight is also the date the cbo says is now debt ceiling day. so think about the time frame here. paul ryan says he wants a decision on whether or not he's going to be the next speaker by friday. thereafter, this he have to schedule some sort of vote and he has to become the new speaker. it all better happen in a rush because the following tuesday is
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there's news to get to on the 2016 front to get to today. there's exciting news on the democratic side which we're going to get to in just a moment. there's also interesting news on the republican side in terms of polling. but the juiciest piece of just plain gossip on the republican side today is what jeb bush's brother said about ted cruz.
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politico.com today naturally is the source for the high school locker room gossip story of the day which is that george w. bush, former president george w. bush speaking at a high dollar fund raiser for his brother's presidential campaign two days ago in denver apparently reportedly apropos of nothing volunteered to the assembled donors at that event that when it comes to texas senator and presidential candidate ted cruz "i just don't like the guy." so that's the news from the junior high part of the 2016 race. jeb's brother doesn't like ted. that said, we do have more substantive news including some really, really good news for one otherwise sad sack republican candidate. and that existentially good news for that candidate is coming up later on. stay with us. my cut hurt. >>mine hurt more. >>mine stopped hurting faster! neosporin plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria
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you've all made a few people upset over your political careers. which enemy are you most proud of? >> senator webb. >> i'd have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me but he's not around right now to talk to. >> all right. >> former virginia senator former navy secretary, u.s. marine combat veteran jim webb. announced today at a press conference in washington that he is dropping his bid for the democratic nomination for president. >> do you still consider yourself a democrat though? would you use that term to describe yourself?
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>> we'll think about that. >> reporter: should the polls hold up and hillary clinton becomes the nominee for the democratic party, donald trump becomes the nominee for the republican party, could you see yourself supporting one of these two candidates? >> i honestly, if we ran an independent race that worked and got traction, i honestly could see us beating both of them. >> by us he means i. senator jim webb never really seemed like he was running all that hard for the democratic nomination for president. now he says officially that he isn't anymore. unless he decided to not really run as an independent in which case he says he'll win, he'll beat both hillary clinton and donald trump which is hard to imagine. that's how he thinks of himself. jim webb gets out of the race at a time when he was polling at 2% nationwide. that's low enough for the "new york times" to dismiss him in a
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headline today as a "blip in the polls." it's better polling than two of the other candidates. jim webb at only 2% but that same poll has martin o'malley at only 1% and that same poll has lincoln chafee receiving the support of precisely one person telling pole centers they will support him. that's good enough for zero% in that poll with the world's saddest instance of numerical round package. there does continue to be speculation as to whether or not vice president biden will jump into the democratic presidential race late in the game. one union leader from the international association of firefighters who spoke to the vice president on friday and says he was left with the impression in that friday call that vice president biden will be running, today that same union leader tells andrea mitchell he has since spoken to the vice president again and he is now "preparing as though the vice president is going to declare his candidacy."
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and maybe vice president bide been declare his candidacy. we'll see. i don't know. and you don't know either. and nobody who says they know actually knows. unless the person telling you that is named joe biden in which case please call me. barring that, as of today, we are still waiting on vice president biden's decision. with jim webb's decision today we know if the vice president does decide to get in, at least the pool he'll be jumping into will be smaller by one. watch this space. [ female announcer ] when you're serious about fighting wrinkles, turn to roc® retinol correxion®. one week, fine lines appear to fade. one month, deep wrinkles look smoother. after one year, skin looks ageless.
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before i was old enough to date, i'd already experienced a dozen glorious romances. i also had known the terror of going down with the titanic, the triumph of the little engine that could and the thrill of solving a case with sherlock holmes. reading was my passion then. still is. you see, the more you read, the more you know. the better you do in school, the better you do in life. that's a promise. >> thank you, betty white. the more you know. it's the venable long-standing memorable psa campaign from our
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parent company nbc. now, our redheaded step child had cable news version of it is called you know more now. ♪ >> thanks, nick. when a news story has a cliffhanger and then we finally do get answers to that big news mystery, then. ♪ you know more now. in may, we reported on a strange story in which a bunch of u.s. states appeared to be trying to buy drugs from a mysterious somewhat shady character in salt lake city. and by salt lake city, i do not mean utah. i mean the other one. salt lake city, india. one of these i'm not kidding, one of the strangest on going dramas in u.s. law enforcement over the past few years has been dilemma created in death penalty states when mainstream companies that ma make prescription drugs stopped being willing to sell those drugs to american prisons. once united states drug companies cottoned to the fact that prisons were not buying some of these drugs to use in the i remember firmry but to
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kill prisoners in legal executions, drug companies opted out and stopped doing it. when that happened, that created this sort of amazing case study in targeted activism but it's also has serious nuts and bolts consequences in this country over a period of years, including right now. just last night, the state of ohio announced even though they've got 25 people with execution dates and the handsful of people they were planning on killing in the next few months, the state of ohio is not even going to try to kill anybody in their prisons until 2017 at the earliest now not because they don't want to kill those prisoners bau because they can't get their hands on the drugs they need to kill their prisoners. and so john kasich running for president has to go through the awkward exercise of signing basically gubernatorial reprieves for all these murderers on death row whose
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executions he would otherwise be potentially overseeing. ohio can't get the drugs. that was just last night. today, in oklahoma, the head of that state's prison system and the warden of the specific prison where they kill people in oklahoma both of those officials were reportedly today testifying under oath to a grand jury as the state of oklahoma continues an investigation into what went wrong recently when the wrong drug was packaged up and sent to the site of a pending execution last month along with the syringes. when they realized it was the wrong drug, they called that execution off with less than two hours to spare. thereafter though, oklahoma realized that the same wrong drug had been shipped to the site of another oklahoma execution this past january. and in that case, nobody noticed and they actually killed that guy with that drug. they were not legally allowed to kill people with. by all accounts, the warden and the corrects commissioner oklahoma were furious about being forced to testify to this grand jury today but they got subpoenaed and that testimony
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reportedly happened today behind closed doors in oklahoma. in the state of nebraska, it's been even more fascinating because in nebraska, there's been a political uprising around this issue that has happened alongside all of these logistical difficulties. in the weird awesome nonpartisan unicameral nebraska legislature, this he voted this year to end the death penalty, to take it off the books in that state. nebraska's governor, however, wanted to keep the dealt pathy and he has led a successful petition campaign now to get the repeal put on hold until next year until nebraska residents get to vote yes or no on whether the state should have the death penalty next november. what that means in terms of the repeal being on hold, it's like a queued rupel negative. for the next year, nobody knows if nebraska has a death penalty or not. they had it on the books but hadn't killed anybody in 15 years. when they were getting close, this he took it off the books.
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the process of taking it off the books has been paused for a year. there continue to be ten people on death row and capital murder trials in nebraska in which prosecutors theoretically could seek the death penalty if it exists but who knows if it exists. and through all of that political chaos, the staunch supporter of the death penalty who sits in the state house in nebraska, the governor has wanted to prove all along that the logistical concerns were not going to be what stops capital punishment in nebraska. he has been insistent if he can just get the politics to go his way, nebraska will have no trouble killing its prisoners were purposeful overdoses of legal pharmaceuticals used for something other than their fda approved purpose. the question is how to get those pharmaceuticals and that is how we ended up learning that there is a salt lake city in india.
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because nebraska apparently hatched a plan months ago with a purported drug seller in india who apparently told nebraska he could legally get the state of nebraska huge quantities of lethal injection drugs that no other state has legally been able to get. this purported drug seller said he could not only get the drugs, coship nebraska the drugs, ship them huge wasn'ts of the drugs and it will all somehow be legal. and the brass in nebraska apparently bought it. nebraska apparently sent him $54,000 worth of taxpayer money to buy these miraculously legal and easy to obtain lethal injection drugs. who is this magical source for lethal drugs that nebraska found? how is he able to promise these drugs to nebraska when no other state in the country is able to get them really? as the whole death penalty process in the united states is basically grinding to a halt because nobody can get the drugs to kill the prisoners, who is this salt lake city, india
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connection who says he can take care of this whole problem? no questions asked. just please pay the cash up front. good folks at buzzfeed must have just gone to salt lake city, india to figure this out. joining us now is chris mcdaniel heading up death penalty reporting at buzzfeed news. he and his colleague reported the story together. tas people in went to the india. what they reported is fairly jaw dropping. chris, congratulations on the scoop. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> who is this tool good to be true source? >> the too good to be true is chris harris. he runs a company called harris farma. it's basically just him. he sold execution drugs to states illegally a few times in the past. >> illegally under u.s. law. >> illegally under u.s. law, therapeutic. there's no fda approved manufacturer of sodium thiopental. it's illegal to import unapproved substances that
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haven't been fda approved. this time what was different though is that he claims he is a manufacturer. this is a guy without a pharmaceutical background. he has more of a sales call center background. >> in previous instances he had said or you guys at least have been able to follow the trail to figure out he got drugs in manufacturers who were legit manufacturers and sort of redirected them to the u.s. market. >> yes, those manufacturers allege he lied in getting their drugs and said they were going to africa and instead sold them for a profit to states that would use it for the death penalty. >> and now he says he's making them. >> he listed himself as a manufacturer. he has twos business addresses and my report her my co-worker went to these two facilities. the facility that he registered with the fda we found is just a small office studio that he rents. in salt lake city. in calcutta. >> it's not a factor? >> no, it is not a factory.
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>> it's like just a cubicle arm like a little office. >> correct, just a tiny office. we spoke to people who work in the building and they were like no, of course not. drugs are not being made here. the other office that he lists on da forms as where harris pharma is located tas neen went there, as well. it is just an owed apartment building he used to live at. we spoke to the landlord and some neighbors, found you the out that harris had moved out a couple of years ago and had not paid the landlord for a lot of the rent. >> oh, wow. okay. and that's the -- those are the drug manufacturing operations. >> those are the two the facilities that we know about. >> so you guys have published a photo of sodium thiopental with the harris pharma label on it. that's presumably what he's marketing to all these states. do we have an idea where it really came from. >> no, we answer aid lot of questions if the story but it raised so many more.
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harris was not interested in speaking with us. we worked on the story for four months consistently he did not want to speak with us and he would not answer where they were coming from. >> fascinating. the number of states who have a mess on their hands in terms of not having a way too kill the prisoners they want to kill is an interesting story. but the states that have turned to this guy as the solution to this problem, it's fascinating. thank you so much for moving the ball so far forward on this story. it's been fascinating from the beginning. this is the most interesting part so far. congratulations. chris mcdaniel heads up death penalty reporting buzzfeed news and he's really good at it and good on buzzfeed news for having a beat reporter on the death penalty. it is one of the most amazing stories in american policy right now. it's uncovered and each new bit of it is more explosive than the last. lots more ahead. stay with us.
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committee, the day after tomorrow on thursday, tonight, her publisher announced that the chapter on benghazi from her last book from hillary clinton's last book is being made available free to everyone on the web as of tonight. so if you want to read what simon and schuster calls the fullest distillation of her role in the events being investigated by the house and you want to read that distillation before she appears before that the investigation in the house on thursday, that is chapter from her bookish "hard choices" is online for free tonight. they set up a brand-new website for it. hillary clinton memoir.com. and then the first interview that secretary clinton is going to do after that full day of benghazi committee testimony on thursday. the first interview after that testimony is going to be right here on this show. right here in this room friday night at 9:00. just saying. lots more ahead. stay with us. apid wrinkle repair
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still got news ahead about one republican presidential candidate who had a spectacularly great day today. best day yet of his whole campaign. that story is sti ahead. but here is one to watch in the news over the next 24, 26 hours. because when the clock strikes midnight tomorrow night, the attorney general of the state of pennsylvania, that state's top lawyer, she will no longer have an active license to practice law.
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attorney general kathleen kane in pennsylvania has been decided for allegedly leaking embarrassing information from a grand jury investigation to what she says are sexist, racist and pornagraphic work e-mail habits of certain public officials in pennsylvania. since being indicted for those alleged leaks, kathleen kane has promised that she will release the porny and racist e-mails she collected in her investigation with names of public officials still attached. she has in fact, started doing just that. she is fighting back. she's also not resigning. but since she is under indictment, the state supreme court has ordered her law license suspended effective 12:01 thursday morning which means midnight tomorrow night. now, having your law license suspended does not remove her from office. she will not resign as attorney general but that raises an interesting question. how can you be the state's top attorney without a law license? apparently that is a question kathleen kane herself is now trying to figure out, as well.
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her spokesman says tomorrow she's going to be meeting with her own legal team to determine what legal duties she's allows to still carry out. and which legal duties she has to give up because of the oh no law license thing. he's going to be sending around a memo which charts the so far uncharted territory that explains what an attorney general can do once they're no longer allowed to practice as an attorney. that's all going to come to pass or it's at least going to come to a head tomorrow night at midnight. nobody knows what it means or what it's going to look like. there's no precedent for anything like this in pennsylvania or as far as we know in any other state either. in politics there's supposed to being in new under the sun but this, this is new. stay with us.
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this will be the third one. after the last debate, after the second one, two interesting things happened to change the dynamics of the republican race for president. the first one, the most dramatic was that scott walker dropped out. the second thing that happened after that debate is that one candidate got a huge boost in the polls. nobody got a bigger bump out of that last debate than this candidate, carly if yes or no that. remember, they had to change the ed bait criteria at the last minute in order to let her into that debate, but people thought she did so well in that debate her poll numbers went through the roof thereafter. that appears now to be over. new national cnn polling out today has carly fiorina dropping from 15% in their september poll after their debate, down to a miserable 4% in that same poll today. carly fiorina's numbers have just collapsed. she did, inarguably, get a big boost out of that second debate, but for whatever reason she could not sustain it and now she's done in, like, chris christie territory. that said, there's some good
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news here, which is that even though 4% is terrible for carly fiorina, 4% is actually spectacular news for chris christie. i mean, not only is that a really high number for him, but he really needs it right now. there's only one more day for any more qualifying polls to come out to determine which candidates are going to make it on to the stage for the next republican debate. and as i say, that 4 prgs is terrible for carly fiorina. it's terrible in absolute terms as a polling value, but for somebody doing as terribly as chris christie has been doing in his run for the presidency, that 4% is golden. that 4% might be enough to guarantee that he makes it on to the main stage in next week's debate. and the same joy applies to our old friend rand paul who in this same cnn poll pulls in a whopping 5%, which ties rand paul with mick huckabee, and hopefully for senator rand paul, it pads his polling average enough so he, too, will make it into the republican presidential debate main stage next week. also good news in this new poll at the top for the man who's becoming the prohibitive, if not the permanent front-runner for
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the republican presidential nomination, donald trump. donald trump is still in this new poll, leading by a mile. leading by more than he's ever led by in the cnn poll he was leading by 24%. he's now leading with 27% in the cnn poll. in the nbc wall street journal poll out this week and the monmouth poll out this week, donald trump is leading with the biggest numbers he's had in the entire campaign thus far 37 donald trump is not fading opinion he's doing great. so much so, in fact, that the republican establishment freakout, which we talked about on last night's show, the republican establishment freakout that donald trump looks like he really might win the nomination, that establishment freakout has now apparently solidified in a specific plan to try to stop him from getting the nomination. a conservative website called the washington examiner
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reporting today that the one group that has been running anti-donald trump ads so far, a group called club for growth, may not only think that their anti-donald trump ads have softened the support for him in iowa, they're now pitching to republican donors that the anti-donald trump effort they have been running on the airwaves needs to be radically expanded. they want to take the template of those two anti-trump ads they've been running in iowa and they want to double down on them. actually, they want to quintuple down on them. they're seeking establishment republican do nations to run five times as many negative ads against donald trump as they're already running in iowa and they want to expand those ads to include not just iowa but also new hampshire. so in terms of today's news, it was definitely a very bad day for carly fiorina. for donald trump, he got good news from the polls today, but his polling numbers might be so good now they ultimately turn into bad news for them because they may be activating a huge anti-trump effort within the republican party. at the bottom of the republican ticket, rand paul and chris
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christie, they got a little boost out of their polling numbers today at a time they really needed it. further down, even towards more of the bottom of the bottom, bobby jindal got an asterisk in the cnn poll today, which is a nice way of saying he either got less than 1% or he flat-out got 0% but we don't want to be rude. that seals his fate as a gutter ball candidate who doesn't have a prayer of making it on to the main stage. he said if he's confined to the kid table debate, governor jindal might not even bother to show up. that would presumably be the end of the bobby jindal presidential campaign. but who knows. maybe he has a secret plan we don't understand to win the nomination any way without making it into the debates. i don't know, maybe. here's the really big news,
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though. i said earlier there was one presidential candidate who got an absolute triumph of today, an existential triumph of in today's news. it's almost impossible to overstate in importance to this one candidate and to his one campaign. and here is that spectacular news. for that republican debate next week, we've been focused on the 2.5% polling average cutoff that candidates need to meet in order to make it on to the main debate stage. that 2.5% threshold is the threshold that candidates like rand paul and chris christie, even mike huckabee, they've been flirting with in terms of whether or not they were going to make the main debate stage. it now looks like all of those three candidates are going to clear 2.5%. they are going to make the main stage. that's been an interesting drama to watch. but there's another qualifier. there's been one other qualify ing threshold for next week's debate that has not gotten as much attention. that helps lindsey graham. in order to even be able to make it to the kid's table, you also had to jump one hurdle, one teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny,
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teeny, tiny little hurdle.. you didn't have to get any poll average, you didn't have to sustain any level of support for any amount of time. you just had to get in one poll, any one poll, just once, you had to pop at 1%. and before today, these were the results for the qualifying polls for lindsey graham, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, and 0%. seven straight polls lindsey graham shooting the moon. batting 1.000, absolutely perfect, if by perfect you mean
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complete purity of 0% failure. well, today thank you, cnn, lindsey graham, triumph of, 1%. finally got 1% in one poll, which means he's into the kids table. we've looked into the internals of the cnn poll. we tried to figure out the exact math. we're pretty sure this existential victory for him to continuing to exist as a candidate instead of being exiled even from the kids table, with we're pretty sure this golden triumph of under a double rainbow for lindsey graham is thanks to four people. four individual human beings who were polled somewhere in the country by cnn. four people, maybe five, who told cnn their first choice for president is lindsey graham. he should buy them all a house or a car or give them a little shoulder massage or something. presidential campaigns are a big deal. these candidates are competing to become leader of the free world, but sometimes presidential campaign of life or death comes down to opinions of a group of randomly selected american citizens who are small
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enough to fit comfortably inside a nissan sentra. congratulations, lindsey graham, you had the best day in american politics by far. it's wednesday, october 21st. right now on "first look," congressman paul ryan is jockeying for the perfect position to assume the speakership. while vice president joe biden has given even more hints that he's going to challenge hillary clinton. the american cancer society's new guidelines on breast cancer detection. we'll dissect the concern and confusion. we've got the brand-new consumer reports surveys on the best and worst cars and suvs. so how does yours stack up? "first look" starts right now. good morning, everybody. thanks for joining us today. i'm betty nguyen. we saw them go head-to-head for the title of vice president in 2012. well now this morning, both men can be on their way to major political fights of their own. we'll start with new developments in the fight for house speaker and congressman
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