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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  April 28, 2016 1:00am-2:01am PDT

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things like that because the tonal barrier is so large that people aren't going to get over that, but who knows we've been so wrong about so many things. thank you both. >> thank you. >> the rachel maddow show starts right now. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. the organ in the human body that maintains the balance of your blood sugar is called the pancreas. it's roughly here. here? here? it's kind of alongside the stomach. the pancreas not to be confused to the placenta regulates your blood sugar. now in american politics i am pretty sure there is only one person who has ever been called in all serious the patron saint
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of the pancreas and it is this man who in today's news you can think of as an earlier iteration of carly fiorina, but in his own lifetime he was richard swieker and he did some fairly heroic legislative work that led to our country having a national commission on diabetes and that led to the national diabetes act and those things ended up directing a bunch of federal resources to fighting diabetes in our country and so this anti-diabetes crusader was long called the patron saint of the pancreas. he was also the desperate hail mary path that ronald reagan through when ronald reagan was on his way that year to losing the republican presidential nomination to gerald ford. ford was the incumbent president. he became president after nixon resigned, but ford was due to
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run for a full term on his own terms and ronald reagan decided that he would actually be a better choice for the republican party, not the incumbent president so ronald reagan as a conservative upstart he fought president ford really hard for the republican nomination that year, fought him so hard that the republican party found itself heading into a contested convention in the summer of 1976. you know what? it is one thing to be heading into a contested convention behind as ronald reagan was in 1976. it's one thing to be behind in the number of states that you've won in the primaries, to be behind in the popular vote, to be behind in pledged delegates, it is daunting enough to be behind in all of those metrics as ronald reagan was heading into that contested convention in 1976, but to be behind like that in states and votes and pledged delegates, not just behind but behind in all those
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metrics against a guy who is beating you on all of those metrics and who is also the sitting president of the united states, with all of the power and sway that being a president can bring to a convention process, well, yeah, that was really daunting for ronald reagan in 1976. i mean just being behind heading into a contested convention you have a good chance of losing, but if the guy you're behind happens to be president, you are definitely going to lose, right? you are definitely going to lose unless you really shake things up somehow. so just before the republican convention in 1976 ronald reagan looked around that summer of 1976 he looked around for some way to shake this thing up and his eyes lit upon the patron saint of the pancreas.
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this little known, but well liked, fairly liberal republican senator from pennsylvania, who really had done some good work fighting diabetes, if he was known for anything it was that, as such he was a pick who would pose no risk of overshadowing ronald reagan himself as a liberal republican it was thought that dick could reassure people who were uneasy about how radical ronald reagan was as a candidate, but most of all what richard was in 1976 was a shock to the system. >> good evening. the news tonight begins with a big surprise. ronald reagan says he wants senator schweiker as his running mate if he gets the presidential nomination. tom brokaw was there when the announcement was made. >> regan's announcement came after interviews in which he said he had not decided on a running mate, but this morning he made a decision.
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>> since i now feel that the people of the delegates have a right to know in advance of the convention who the vice presidential choice would be i am today announcing my selection. i have chosen the distinguished honor able schweiker. thank you all very much for coming. >> reagan left immediately after the announcement he would not take questions on his decision. >> that was the end of july 1976. ronald reagan was on track at that point to lose the fight for the republican presidential nomination at a contested convention just a couple of weeks from then. this announcement, this surprise announcement that he pulled out of the hat about who his theorial running mate would be, it was a shock. it was a surprise.
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by rattling the news cycle like that it was in fact an interruption to a news cycle and a political trajectory that was otherwise not going his way. the shock was not necessarily just because of who dick was, the shock was mostly about the fact that reagan was just picking anyone, that he had decided that he would announce his who his vice presidential nominee would be if he were nominated. random presidential candidates, someone like that is not really in a position to be naming a running mate. vice presidential nominees get announced by people who have clenched a nomination, not by people losing a presidential primary. that is what ronald reagan did when he picked the senator as his running mate. once they got to the convention reagan tried this further stunt where he wanted to force gerald ford to declare who his running
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mate would be before the delegates ever cast their votes for president. that stunt failed. frankly the whole running mate overall failed for reagan in 1976. it was weird. it was a disruption in his failing campaign against ford, but reagan still failed against ford and then in the fall ford went on to fail against jimmy carter in the general election and the legacy of that whole strange unprecedented running mate stunt from 1976 is such that nobody has ever tried it again, right? it doesn't go well. nobody else has ever again tried such a desperate and simultaneously arrogant pr stunt like that. until today when ted cruz pulled the same rabbit out of a different hat. in indianapolis today the ted cruz campaign put out word that senator cruz would be making a
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major announcement. most people assumed if he wasn't quitting, he would be announcing an endorsement. people starting looking for mitch daniels cell phone number. ted cruz ended up announcing his own 2016 version of the patron saint of the pancreas. he announced his running mate carly fiorina. >> some would ask why now? it's tradition that a vice presidential nominee is announced at the convention. it's unusual to make this announcement as early as we are now. i make this announcement today so that you the voters in indiana, the voters in nebraska and south dakota and across the country so you will know what you will get. the voters deserve to know -- i have come to the conclusion that if i am nominated to be president of the united states that i will run on a ticket with
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my vice presidential nominee carly fiorina. >> fiorina ran for president herself this year. she came in seventh place in iowa and then in new hampshire she came in seventh place again and then she dropped out. this was her second time running for office. she also ran for united states senate seat in california in the deep red republican year of 2010, but even under that year's favorable conditions fiorina lost that senate race in california by double digits, but the ted cruz campaign needs a new story.
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the ted cruz campaign needs a game changing stunt right now and they are apparently banking on this being it. they're telling republican voters in the states that have yet to vote, you may not have been sold on ted cruz so far, but try this on for size. if donald trump doesn't keep winning state after state after state, if donald trump doesn't go on to win the republican nomination and if the republican nominating process goes to a contested convention and then if they choose to honor ted cruz's choice of who you would like his running mate to be and if after that the republican ticket goes on to beat the democratic ticket in november and if ted cruz becomes president and ted cruz dies in office then carly fiorina will get to be president. if you haven't been sold on ted cruz before does that sell you on ted cruz? does the seventh place finisher from iowa and new hampshire hold
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that much sway over the remaining republican voters in the country. is this the key to unlock their hearts? honestly nothing against carly fiorina here and nothing against richard, but stunts like these are less about the identity and the characteristics of the person who gets chosen for a stunt, it's about trying to shake up a race that a candidate is losing. ted cruz might have named anybody. the point of doing something like this is just to try to change the news around ted cruz to be something other than the story of how badly donald trump is beating him in the race for the republican presidential nomination. 38 states have voted so far on the republican side. of the 38 states donald trump has won 26 of them, including his blowout wins last night in five states. his smallest margin of victory
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was 30 points in connecticut. that was the smallest margin and 30 points, that's how badly he beat john kasich in connecticut. donald trump's victory over ted cruz was 46 points. the big delegate prize last night was pennsylvania. donald trump not only one statewide in pennsylvania, he won every congressional district in pennsylvania. he won every county in pennsylvania. ted cruz's big claim to fame so far in the presidential race has been that he's been able to line up delegates even in states where he's losing. that's the way he's been able to stay seemingly competitive. in pennsylvania last night there was that big pot of 54 unbound delegates who were not going to be committed by the results of any vote. it turns out that big pot of 54 unbound delegates which you might think ted cruz would mon opposite lies it turns out they're going almost completely to donald trump.
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the trump campaign bragging at least 39 of the 54 are pledged to donald trump, but those will probably vote for donald trump who has won almost every county in the state. overall last night there were 118 pledged delegates at stake in the five states. 118. donald trump won 110 of them. over the last two weeks there have been 267 delegates at stake on the republican side. of those 267, ted cruz has won 5. out of the last six states that have voted not only has ted cruz lost all six of the last six states, he has come in in third place behind john kasich in five out of the six states. and so, yeah, ted cruz needs a
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new story in the news about himself and his campaign as he heads into indiana, which his campaign all but admits he must win to justify staying in the race, but which the polls indicate he might possibly lose. if you were ted cruz at this point, imagine yourself as ted cruz, you would probably be willing to try something adushus on a day like this. it's not hard to imagine yourself in ted cruz's position today, imagine yourself concluding that maybe you should try to add to your personal appeal by simply grafting a second person on to yourself in your campaign that some people might like better than you. i know everything associated with ronald reagan by definition looks like a good idea to today's republicans, but this is one of those republican ideas, this is one of those reagan ideas that didn't work. this is is a reagan idea where
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even though the guy he picked was the patron saint of the pancreas an utterly unobjectionable choice, this is a ronald reagan idea that did not work out for ronald reagan. i know everything ronald reagan did is supposed to be perfect. the whole vp stunt he tried back in '76 when they wanted the news stories about dick, all the news stories ended up being about how desperate ronald reagan was and what a terrible stunt he just pulled. so what happened today? yes, this has happened once before in american politics. it did not work when reagan tried it in '76. i'm not sure anybody thinks it will work this time either, but we will see. you never know. we'll be right back.
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just one last point on ted cruz and carly fiorina. ted cruz.com is not what you think it is. if you type ted cruz.com into your browser, you do not find a ted cruz campaign website. instead you find this. it says support president obama immigration reform now. that's ted cruz.com. it has been since he started running for president and at least maybe before. because of that ted cruz campaign website has to be ted cruz.org which is probably uncomparable for him. if you went to carly fiorina.org that brought to you this website. it says carly fiorina failed to register this domain so i'm registering it to tell you how many people she laid off at hue
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let packard and it was this many and there were a thousand faces to show how many people she laid off. carly fiorina.org. well now that ted cruz and carly fiorina have joined forces in a fake ticket because neither of them have been nominated for anything, now that they have joined together their internet troubles have been joined and become a little more constructive because now if you go to cruz/fiorina.com where you find yourself is at a fundraising page for the leukemia society. somebody's putting that to good use. after that because it was inevitable, now when you type into your browser carly fiorina for vice president.com, that takes you straight to the donation page for planned parenthood. ted cruz and carly fiorina may not end up being the republican ticket in november, but because of their poor management of their online identities, they will advertise support for
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comprehensive immigration reform and president obama and the number of people that carly fiorina laid off and they'll raise money for leukemia research. we cannot say their political stunt is not helping. they're helping. they're helping. why do people put milk on cereal? why does your tummy go "grumbily, grumbily, grumbily"? no more questions for you! ooph, that milk in your cereal was messing with you, wasn't it? try lactaid, it's real milk, without that annoying lactose. good, right? mmm, yeah. lactaid. the milk that doesn't mess with you.
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your hair is still thinning. you may have inactive follicles. re-activate them with women's rogaine® foam the only once a day product, proven to regrow new hairs up to 48% thicker revive your va va voom and save on any rogaine® the bernie sanders campaign for president has won 17 states, 8.9 million voetsz in primaries alone not counting the votes
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he's gotten in caucuses. bernie sanders has raised a staggering amount of money for his presidential race. $182 million. puts that in your pipe and smoke it jeb bush. $182 million. the sanders campaign has been astounding to see especially when you compare it to initial expectations. after going one for five last night in the northeast with a lone victory in rhode island, the sanders campaign said they will begin laying off over 200 campaign staffers. they say this is a natural coincidence of the dwindling calendar. they say they're not giving up and on through to california and
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d.c. in june, but people have begun to ask senator sanders what exactly he wants for himself and his supporters and his movement in exchange for the possibility of him getting out of the race, what does the candidate for democratic change want from the democratic party. and so far what senator sanders has said is he wants to make the party platform for progressive. >> how much influence should he have on the platform? >> it depends obviously if you have a majority of delegates that will be platform. if we do not have a majority of delegates i would think that any smart presidential candidate will say millions of people are supporting bernie sanders and they want an agenda that goes beyond establishment economics and establishment politics and i'm smart. i'm going to listen to those people and in fact create a progressive adenda not just to apiece bernie sanders and his supporters, but to win this election. >> bernie sanders says he wants to change the democratic platform to be more progressive. is that really what he wants? after all of this? after all he's accomplished in this race what he wants is to change the party platform? i raise a skeptical eye towards that suggestion for one reason and by saying this i mean no disrespect, but party platforms are no one but the authors ever
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read. remember the 2012 platform. remember the higher education and training and for insourcing and outbuilding the rest of the world and a host of ideas of -- i'm sorry did i lose you sleepy puppy? is that really all that bernie sanders is aiming for, the party platform, which is not binding on anyone which changes nothing structurely in the democratic party. does he see in the democratic party platform a power that others have missed or is that just the first ask and there's something more substantial coming? i do not know, but at this crucial point in the democratic
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race i know one very smart person to ask and she joins us next.
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stay with us. when we go to philadelphia in july, we're going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen. >> senator bernie sanders at a big rally in indiana today saying he wants to use the many delegates he has won in this contest, the many votes he has one and the influence he has proven to change the democratic party platform. joining us now is joy reed. >> great to be here.
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>> the sanders campaign announced their laying off more than 200 staffers. i understand you have some reporting about how this went down. >> apparently it was a brief phone call. i spoke with one soon to be former sanders staffer who described it as five to ten minute call. it was jeff weaver on the call and it was like a conference call and they had lots of staffers on to announce to them that they would no longer be on the campaign, that people's travel was going to on hold and the staffers said there were many people upset, people who believed very much in the sanders campaign who were disappointed that the senator didn't get on the call.
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it was jeff weaver that led the call. i have an e-mail into the candidate to find out if the candidate plans to reach out to the staffers and some of them are upset. they said they were getting paid $15 an hour and they had planned to the campaign going until june 1st. some upset for the campaign that the campaign is ending. >> do you have any insight into why they're doing it? the one thing i felt like we understood about the sanders campaign is they were made of money. >> this is a campaign that's taking in enormous amounts of money, but they're spending enormous amounts of money. i think what you're seeing is the campaign marshaling its resources to push toward california. they want to go all the way to the end and that last state of primaries that includes new jersey and california, those are expensive media markets. i think they're going to hold
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their money to push for advertising. >> rather than dumping these 225 staffers -- >> some are willing to move. people may be off and then recalled and sent to other states. that's not atypical of a campaign to suspend things early and i've spoken to some staff that may move over. >> let me ask you also about the way that the sanders campaign is talking about its influence. i'm casting a side eye at the importance of the party platform because i went back and looked at the last two party platforms it's not a substantive thing in terms of controlling politics. are there more significant things that the sanders campaign
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could be going for or might go for with the influence that they've gained? >> i've been thinking about this over the last month or so when it's become clear that the math is not going to change for bernie sanders. it's been a while since the math has been going in one direction and he's a photo negative jessie jackson. in 1984 jessie jackson amassed a huge number of delegates, but he only got 40% of the delegates he was due so he negotiated with the party rules that included the current proportionality. he went to the party and said i can't win 20% of the votes and get 9% of the delegates. he made an act that to this day has changed the way the democratic party operates. >> that change heavily democratic districts wouldn't be penalized for having democrats concentrated in a small area, they would get more representation. when you win a city you don't get penalized for it. >> if they operated the way the republicans do hillary would be way ahead. getting rid of super delegates, something like that. it's going to be tough because i think the clinton's campaign position has hardened somewhat because of the negativity over the last several weeks, but that would be something they would want to look at. if you change these rules, it would hurt the next campaign.
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those rules helped bernie sanders. >> you want a campaign that pushes -- he's going to want a
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the only once a day product, proven to regrow new hairs up to 48% thicker revive your va va voom and save on any rogaine® so this whole campaign this whole year the republican presidential front-runner donald trump has been saying make america great again, make america great again, it's been a sea of make america great again of shirts and signs and hats. today we have detected a change in the force field and it means we're going to need new hats. that's next. we talk a lot about the big crowds presidential candidates have been able to draw this election season.
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but back in 1941 the man who was drawing massive crowds all across the country, one of the most important political forces
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in politics, was not a candidate for anything. he was charles linberg. over 4,000 people turned out to see him in fort wayne, indiana. 15,000 people turned out to see him in new york and what he was saying in these speeches was that america should not get involved in the war in europe. america should not get involved in world war ii even though france had fallen and england was fighting germany alone and would lose, america shouldn't even offer any help to england because america had no national interests at stake in some war against hitler. these speeches he gave were on behalf of a movement called america first and all kinds of people belong to the america first committee. some estimates now are that it had 800,000 people in it. people opposed the u.s. getting
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involved in world war ii for all sorts of reasons, but charles belonged to the america first movement was that he had come back from several years in europe during which time he had become quite friendly with the third reich. he got himself a nazi medal. he wrote about protecting the west from quote the infiltration of inferior blood. in a speech he gave he told a crowd that forces were conspiring to drag america into the world and chief among the forces were the american jews. he said the latest danger to the country. he drove people away from the movement, but by the time of the attack on pearl harbor, the american first movement had become identified with the chief spokesperson and high profile charles linburg. and so after world war ii no
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politician really wanted to have anything to do with it until 50 years later when my old friend pat bu cannon decided to shock everybody. >> when we say we will put america first, we mean also that our christian values are going to be preserved and our western heritage is going to be handed down to future generations and not dumped on to some landfill called multiculturism.
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>> the direction i will outline today will also return us to a timeless principle. my foreign policy will always put the interests of the american people and american security above all else. it has to be first. it has to be. that will be the foundation of every single decision i will make. america first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration. >> donald trump today using america first as the organizing principle, the slogan embodying his entire foreign policy approach. this is a weird moment in american politics. >> i have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for england regardless of how much assistance we send. that is why the american first
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committee has been formed. >> joining us now is the presidential historion. thanks for being here. what does a presidential historion hear when a presidential candidate invokes america first. >> what i hear is the echo of a movement in looking back at 1940 and 1941 had been discredited because if they got what they want we would not have sent military goods to england a help them resist hitler. hitler probably would have defeated england and been on our shores very soon thereafter. we might have lost world war ii if america first would have gotten what they wanted. people were saying that there were groups in america, including british agents and parts of the roosevelt administration and jewish-americans who were trying to yank the united states into war for their own selfish purposes. i can't imagine that donald trump would want to link himself
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to that. >> was it just bad sloganeering? >> i think if you're trying to cast aspeshs on people who want certain things for american foreign policy, using something like america first for those americans who remember it or at least have studied it it's one way of doing it, but i think it connects with other things he said and this connects with his argument about trade deals that sell out the united states. that's been something he's been saying for a long time. when he was thinking of running in 2000 that was part of what that platform would have been. >> the speech today the setting
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wasn't designed to be notable, but as far as i can tell this is what used to be the nixon center, which of course got me thinking about where donald trump as the republican presidential front-runner whether you can locate him along a sort of number line of republican foreign policy over the generations or whether he does stand significantly apart. >> i think he would be the first to say, he wants a big departure and a lot of the people that were the brunt of his criticism were people like george h bush and george w. bush and ronald reagan. he was turning against policies in iraq, failure to keep north korea from nuclear weapons and certainly barack obama he thinks did some of that, but so did the two bushes and to some extent ronald reagan. >> thank you for talking to us about this tonight. even before i heard the speech i knew i wanted to ask you what you thought of this. >> it will be fascinating to watch it unfold. >> thank you. we'll be right back.
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last month a little girl from flint, michigan sent a letter to president obama. she told the president in her letter that meeting him quote would really lift people's spirits. well this week which marks two years since flint was lead poisoned because of the actions of the government, this week president obama wrote her back and said he's on his way. president obama has put a trip to flint, michigan on his schedule. he'll be there next week on wednesday. this will be his first trip to
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flint since the lead pointing crisis started there. he says he hopes to meet with officials and this little girl who is apparently known around town as little miss flint. i will say no matter what you have read or heard, going to flint changes how you see the crisis there. president obama is it going there one week from today. we'll keep you posted. going there one week from today. we'll keep you posted. i'm going 100 miles per hour. a branch catches me here. you think that stopped me? i was about to be the first 3rd grader to jump the cook county creek. jump 50 feet over the rapids and i crash land. mom patched me up. check out my scar. there's nothing there! you didn't jump the creek! what? now there's a new neosporin antibiotic that keeps her protected and minimizes scars. new neosporin plus pain itch scar
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among everything else that happened in today's news, today turned out to be a huge day at the corner of crime and politics, which is a terrible corner. never leave your car there unlocked. the former republican governor of virginia got his day at the united states supreme court today. he is fighting multiple felony corruption convictions and this
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unusual appearance at the united states supreme court today was his last chance to avoid prison. the governor has already been sentenced. he's already been charged and convicted and sentenced, but he's appealing to the united states supreme court to throw out his conviction and give him a new trial. now, many legal observers, people who saw the oral arguments today, many people said today that the oral arguments did seem favorable to the governor so he might get a new trial, but there's one looming wrench and that's the united states supreme court is shorthanded right now. if the supreme court gets stuck in a tie that would mean that he can't get a new trial. the lower court ruling in his case would stand and that would
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mean he would be expected to start serving his federal prison sentence immediately, but wait, there's more just in today's news because a prison sentence is also looming for democratic congressman of pennsylvania. something amazing happened to him last night. he became the only member of congress this whole year, the only member of congress is is either party anywhere in the country to lose his seat in a primary this year. republican and democratic members of congress have been primaried all over the country this year. every single incumbent has won and held on to his seat so far except last night in pennsylvania. that's remarkable because in our political system incumbents are so protected and a seat in congress is so hard to lose even if you do have a 29 count criminal indictment looming against you, but last night philadelphia voters turfed him out. he lost his congressional seat in the democratic primary last night in pennsylvania just in time for his criminal trial to start in 19 days on those 29 counts. but the biggest car crash at the corner of criminal and political today happened in chicago where the longest serving republican speaker of the house, former
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congressman denny hastert led the house of the republican party from 1999 to 2007, today he was sentenced to 15 months in prison. denny hastert admitted financial crimes related to him paying hush money to a man that says denny hastert sexually molested him when he was a high school students. today the judge in his case three times described denny hastert to his face as a serial child molester. in open court he acknowledged that he did sexually abuse multiple boys when he was a teefrp and wrestling coach. he apologized in court today, but he will serve 15 months in prison. he'll have to pay a fine that will go to the crime victim's fine, but there are questions of what will happen to denny hastert. he really was second in line to the presidency for eight years and not all that long ago with this prison sentence today he
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has become one of the highest ranking politicians to be sentenced to prison time. the speaker of the house did have the decency in november to remove his portrait. that happened after he was charged, but now that he's been not just charged, but convicted and sentenced to prison there remains this interesting political question as to why the house of representatives has not had anything else to say about this very recent former speaker of the house. members have been reprimanded by
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the house for crimes less serious than denny hastert's. but so far the republican leadership of the house has taken no action other than taking down his portrait. the current house speaker has said that his behavior is not befitting of a former speaker, but there's been no formal move at all by the house to address it even today as he heads off to start his 15-month prison sentence. there is just one other trailing end when it comes to denny hastert and that actually interestingly remains the hush money part of what he did and how he go the caught. the reason denny hastert got
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caught all these years later, all these years after these alleged crimes is because of the way he withdrew money from his bank acts in order to pay off one of his alleged victim. that alleged victim is identified as victim a. they say he came to an agreement with denny hastert that hastert would pay him $3.5 million in cash have having molested him as a teenager. hastert paid about $1.7 million to individual a before he was caught by the fbi and charged with official crimes for what he did. one of the amazing trailing ends in this story is that individual "a" in civil court has now sued denny hastert to get the rest of his money. denny hastert promised him $3.5 million. he only paid half of it. individual "a" wants the rest. the story of the longest serving republican speaker of the house ever in american history turns out to be upsetting and
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disgusting and tragic, but it also turns out not to be over yet. watch this space. that does it for us tonight. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. >> it's thursday, april 28th, right now, the donald gets knighted as the front-runner. sets his sights on indiana while ted cruz tries to control the day with his vp pick who offered the crowd this unusual little number. ♪ i know two girls that i just adore ♪ ♪ i'm so happy i can see them more ♪ then to new york city and the largest gang take down in the big apple. facebook controls an hour of every user's day as mark zuckerberg got $4 billion richer. mother nature had a rough week. "first look" starts right now. good mog,