tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC September 21, 2016 12:00am-1:01am PDT
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>> they're bringing in, in many cases, this is cancer from within. >> donald trump's descent into darkness continues. >> we want to make sure we are only admitting people into our country who love our country. >> tonight, filmmaker ken burns on what he sees when donald trump speaks, and the dangerous logic behind the trump campaign. >> if we had a bowl of skittles on this table and 3 of the 1,000 in there were poisonous, would you take from the bowl? >> plus if you thought the donald trump charity looked like a slush fund before, wait until you hear the latest from "the washington post." then hillary clinton on the shocking tulsa shooting. >> maybe i can, by speaking directly to white people, say look, this is not who we are. >> senator sherrod brown on
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today's grilling of the wells fargo ceo. and you'll never guess which ex-president is now ready for hillary. >> excuse me, jeb. >> when "all in" starts right now. >> am i talking or are you talking? >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. donald trump and his surrogates have said so many offensive things in this campaign it can be easy to start tuning out each new outrage, to stop thinking about what's really being said and what's really at stake, especially if the new outrage is over something seemingly as benign as a bowlful of candy. in the wake of the bombings, the candidate's son and one of his top advisers tweeted out this image last night complete with trump campaign granding which wrote, if i had a bowl of skittles and i told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful. that's our syrian refugee problem. keep in mind, the man who allegedly planted the bombs was a u.s. citizen and not a refugee and he came to the country from afghanistan when he was 7 years old.
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also keep in mind the skittles analogy wasn't just an off-hand tweet, it is for donald trump jr., a talking point. >> we have to be able to vet people coming into our country. if we had a bowl of skittles oen this table and 3 of the thousand in there were poisonous, would you take from the bowl? you wouldn't until you could figure out which ones were bad. >> there's a glaring problem with this analogy which was pointsed out by the very people who make skittles who said in a statement, "skittles are candy. refugees are people." because a skittle doesn't care if you eat it or not. a human being like this little boy covered in dust and blood pulled from a bombed building in the syrian city of aleppo, he cares if you take him in, keep him safe from harm, maybe even give him a chance at a secure life. the logic being pushed by donald trump jr., it isn't new. for years the basic premise a body has been used to justify some other minority group with suspicion or fear or contempt, to argue, for instance, that
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because some black people are criminals and you don't know which black people are criminals, well, then, you have to treat all black people like criminals. white supremacists have specifically used this argument with a bowl of m&ms standing in for the skittles. we should be clear, it's the same logic at the heart of one of donald trump's signature policy proposals. >> donald j. trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. >> trump and his campaign sought to tweak or obfuscate this. they never recalled it or repudiated it this call for a complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states. it's still there on the trump campaign website. in the wake of the attacks, trump was wondering darkly about this menace. >> is this going to be like the trojan horse? we're letting tens of thousands of people flow into this country.
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they're bringing in, in many cases, this is cancer from within. this is something that's going to be so tough. and you know they stay together. so nobody really knows who it is, what's happening, they're plotting, they keep plotting. >> the logic that undergirds this kind of thinking is flatly the fundamental logic of bigotry, of ethnic, religious hatred. it has a dark history. in 1938 in germany, julius striker created a children's book called the poisonous mushroom. just as a single poisonous mushroom can kill a whole family, so a solitary jew can destroy a whole village, a whole city, even an entire volk -- people. striker, a close ally of adolf hitler was executed for crimes against humanity. donald trump is not a nazi, he's not espousing nazism, the horror of which has a singular place in history.
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but trump and his campaign are routinely trafficking in, the characterizations of entire groups as appearing on the outside to be harmless but containing potential poison within, of infiltrating people with their poison, with their cancer? that is dark stuff. it plays to the most elementally based instincts in human history, the fuel of fear and hatred that burn in the darkest chapters in human memory. that's what's powering this campaign right now as we live through this moment that feels to me like capital "h" history. here with me now, filmmaker ken burns, the ko director of "defying the nazis." an american couple that risked their lives to rescue jews and refugees from hitler's regime. there's this thing called goblin's law. you don't want to make analogies to hitler because arguments end up in these deadends, easy to invoke.
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working on this film, what you feel like -- how you're viewing this election with that sort of going through your mind. >> you wish that you could say you planned to do a film on refugees the day the president's in town talking about refugees. we worked on it for years and years. mark twain is supposed to have said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. and what's very clear is that we're hearing some rancid rhymes from the past. it isn't nazism, but the tropes are too similar to not put us or those of us who spend our time looking at history in an incredibly uncomfortable position where we have to sort of wave a flag and say, wait, wait, this is going on again. it may not be exactly the same thing, but we're poised to be in a position where these things can happen. so working on a film about people who have sacrificed their
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lives, who have given up their home life, you know, a middle class unitarian minister and his wife in wellesley, massachusetts, the most difficult thing is what they're going to say on sunday. they get a call from the church elders. a month later she's dodging gestapo agents, he's laundering money, they're writing in code, burning documents. they appeal to the better angels of our nature. this does not. >> when we think about refugees and people talk about the u.s. history of refugees and indeed our refugee policy is largely born of guilt of what we failed to do during that period. >> absolutely. >> people said replace the word "jew" in any of this language, and it strikes you in a different way. that's different. there's the islamic state and there's this single religion that's focused on terror. people had arguments back in the 1930s why it's bad to let jewish refugees in. >> you have irish and catholics and germans were demonized
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around the first world war. jews, everybody. but we made excuses about why we couldn't let them in, which makes the skittles analogy of today so fraudulent and so perilous. and we now have to just invoke those better angels. we have to say enough. this is not who we are. >> the subjects of your film are operating in a time when americans are not that into the idea of taking a lot of refugees. in some ways they stand out for exactly that reason. >> it echoes the period that franklin roosz velt and particularly eleanor roosevelt were so frustrated, clearly anti-semitic state department. laws passed by congress that were excluding quotas, the number of people that could be let in. so we're facing the same kinds of things today and we're watching ourselves go through that again. >> what do you say to someone who says, look, i'm not a bigot. i don't care -- >> but. >> well, no, but someone who
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says, look, i'm scared. it looks like this guy just tried to set off a bunch of bombs. there but for dumb luck we would be looking at dozens of people dead. >> right. >> and you know, sure, okay, most of them are fine, but i don't know. it makes me uneasy to think that one of them might not be. >> right. but you don't want to invent an entire superstructure of attitudes towards whole groups of people based on that one action. it's like saying all black people are. it just doesn't happen. you would turn around and, let's just take dillon ruff, the man accused of killing people in charleston a year plus ago. does he stand in for all white people? do we have to be very careful about white people now? of course not. we don't say that. we have to be very, very careful. >> does that word "cancer" that donald trump uttered, does that strike you in a particular way? >> it does indeed. my mother died of cancer. i did a film of cancer.
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for donald trump to be speaking in that way is himself the cancer. that's the problem right now. we do not wish these attitudes to grow in the united states here where we are an alloy. we are stronger because of all the things that have made us. that makes us the strongest nation on earth. once you begin accepting people your orwell's animal farm. all animals are created equal except some are more equal than others. >> as someone who has been making films about history in america and all different periods, particularly, famously, probably the most wrenching period in the civil war. how do the stakes of this election feel to you? >> i just finished a film out next year on vietnam. and i feel like that was the second civil war. and i sort of feel like we're in a third civil war right now. and i think that, despite all
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the divisions, besides the appeal to our basest instincts in this leaked, all of us yearn for the things that we share in common, yearn for those mystic cords that link in our first civil war articulated. i've been struggling all of my professional life but particularly now to find the words to describe how powerfully objective an awareness of the past can be for dealing with these things. to take the examples that we already know. we've been here before, folks. we know what this looks like. we don't want to go through that door. we want to go through this door. we want to bring people together and try to do things in common. and it's not a red state or a blue state issue. this is just an american issue. i would just refer people back to the constitution. it's very, very clear. it's not a beautifully written document. it's just an amazing machine. preamble is nice, go to the declaration for poetry, the gettysburg address for poetry. but if you want a mechanical
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manual for how to fix things, it's right there. just four pieces of parchment written in the 18th century that's able to adjudicate our most complicated problems in this, the new 21st century. the best thing there is. but you got to know it and read it and you got to be willing to say sometimes it doesn't fit in with the convenient binary approach to politics. >> ken burns, the new work airs tonight on pbs. come back any time. >> thank you. >> authorities said today that ahmad khan rahami, the man accused of setting off the bombs including the attack in new york city will be charged with federal counts of using a weapon of destruction. he's believed to have purchased the bomb making materials off ebay. he was carrying a notebook containing a ram bling missive that praised a slain al qaeda leader. they also learned that his father mohammed once branded him
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a terrorist during a family fight. the question by the fbi, the elder rahami said he made the statement out of spite and that it was not true. malcolm, let me start with you. first, let's sort of start with the numbers here in the sort of skittles analogy, then we'll talk about rahami. there are over 700,000 refugees that have been taken since 9/11. none have been linked to a deadly terrorist attack. the odds people put at 1 in 10 billion. we're talking about huge and massive numbers. from an intelligence perspective, why is this bad logic? from doing the job that you were tasked with doing and so many people are tasked with doing, protecting american lives, why not think like the skittles bowl? >> right off the bat, first off, it's racist.
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it's just plain, straight out, flat out racist. i cannot operate in the middle east and the rest of the world in fish bowl of 1.6 billion innocent people whom we're assisting as war fighters and intelligence officers who are our partners in this fight who we have shed blood for, who we have fought together with to get rid of this scourge of isis and al qaeda. that being said, i need everyone in the united states and our allies to work together with this. and if you separate this 10,000, you know, syrian refugees or however many people and you say they're a plague and they've got poison in them and they're coming to this country and doing that, right now you've condemned, as ken burns so eloquently put, our history of immigration. but you're taking resources from me. you're taking people -- >> who can tell you things. >> we can use every person
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that's fluent in syrian dialect arabic right now. >> refugees are the most vetted people who enter america. >> this is, of course, the irony. >> exactly. it takes about two-year process. if anybody can squeeze in are the illegal immigrants. they're the ones that can -- you know. but refugees, they're the most vetted. this is the best way to enter the country. the safest people are the refugees, actually. >> we get in this very interesting territory where the father said at one point he thought he was a terrorist. there are questions that loom in mind why wasn't he caught. you talk about ideological vetting this kid came as a 7-year-old kid. you come from a part of the world, you once lived in iraq, that has been torn asunder by brutal violence perpetrated by isis among others. in that part of the world is
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conversation about this is very different. >> the conversation about that part of the world is very different and the damage -- the damage mr. trump has done is actually very long-term damage in the middle east. >> what do you mean by that? >> for example, public sentiment in the middle east believe that isis has been supported by america. this is conspiracy theory very popular in the middle east. muslims believe that. >> the leader of hezbollah, in fact. >> but normal people believe that. but when mr. trump goes on tv and says it's been founded by president obama and mrs. hillary clinton, this all of a sudden makes it real. and that's long-term damage in america. >> this is essentially -- i saw the leader of hezbollah saying in a speech, look, presidential nominee has said what we've said all along, isis is an american creation. >> it damages american reputation on the long haul. the second thing is we try to
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fight isis from within the middle east. this is a destruction of our own country. and unless we own that problem, then we keep on blaming each other for it. >> this is part of what's so perverse here. isis is the most universally loathed group by people of all faiths, all creeds. they've attacked and killed people of all faiths and creeds and as you said, you want as many people in the pool trying to figure out how to stop them. >> you don't -- osama bin laden himself said the reason he didn't want to go to a caliphate was it would bring the world crushing down on it. i don't know who donald trump is getting his intelligence from, but isis is on the verge of destruction. okay? pay attention to the news. we're about to do a major offensive on mosul. raqqah is surrounded on three sides right now. in another year there will be no physical caliphate. egypt has slaughtered them. libya has kicked them out.
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so to do this, we need as many allies as possible. >> yes. >> if i may, and beyond that there are only 1% muslims in america. i'm one of them. only 1% muslim. according to the fbi, more than 80% of all terrorist attacks in america has happened by non-muslims. >> yes, this is an important statistic. >> you are three times more likely to die of a car accident in orlando than a terror attack. let alone the 1.6 billion muslims around the world have been characterized as one identity, you are bad. people are scared. they are scared for their lives right now, the muslims of americans. >> thank you so much for your time tonight. really appreciate it. really do. still ahead, donald trump reportedly used money from his charity to pay off his legal settlements. much more on that report ahead.
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i call it fraud because i got tired the of the euphemisms a long time ago. i think the american people did, too. this is 5300 employees. wells fargo calls them team members. 5300 team members forging signatures, stealing identity, social security numbers and customers' hard-earned cash so as to hang on to their low-paying jobs and make money for the high paid executives at wells fargo. >> ohio senator sherrod brown at a hearing today on capitol hill called to investigate the massive systemic fraud of wells fargo uncovered by the consumer financial protection bureau. over a five-year period more than 5,000 wells fargo employees opened up accounts for customers without the customers'
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knowledge. the scheme yielded $2.4 million in fees but drove the stock price up, made hundreds of millions of executives the, none of whom have been fired. but this morning the ceo of wells fargo had a pretty rough go of it. >> okay. so you haven't resigned, you haven't returned a single nickel of your personal earnings, you haven't fired a single senior executive. instead, evidently, your definition of accountable is to push the blame to the low level employees who don't have the money for a fancy pr firm to defend themselves. it's gutless leadership. >> joining me now, senator sherrod brown, ranking member of the senate banking committee. this is such a -- the malfeasance here and the fraud seems so brazen. what were you trying to learn in this hearing in terms of -- i think a lot of people when this first broke thought, well, how do you get 5300 people independently doing the same thing without this being a bigger problem up the chain?
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>> well, a couple things we wanted to do. one is i wanted to make the contrast that 5300 employees who were fired mostly who were, you know, they said things they shouldn't have, but they were under great pressure from management to meet goals that wells fargo has rescinded those goals because they were just too unattainable. 5300 people fired. 90% were nonmanagement, only 10% management. they were making $13 an hour as tellers, 15 or 16 or $17 an hour as personal bankers. at the same time the head of the section who had just retired at the age of 56 and she was begin up to a $120 billion bonus. bank executives make more and more money and bank rank and file workers are still stuck at 12, 13, and $14 an hour. the second thing is what's wells
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fargo going to do to begin to claw back some of this compensation? they have the right under the law to claw back -- meaning to strip some of those -- that $129 million package from her saying, frankly, you engaged in malfeasance, you didn't do good performance, you didn't meet our standards, you shouldn't get this kind of good-bye package. we didn't get an answer from the ceo about that. he said i'll just follow what the compensation committee would do. he didn't say he would advise the copensation committee to claw back those dollars. >> i want to be clear. we have a bank management design structure that's incentivizing the management structure is amiss when 5300 people independently are doing the same kind of gaming. so there's a management structure here that seems deeply at issue that doesn't stop at the 5300 people who did it, one would assume.
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>> yeah, some of the -- in addition to 5300, there were hundreds, maybe thousands that just quit because they didn't want to live like this. maybe they had another opportunity. so they moved on because of that or they just quit because they didn't -- they just didn't think they could live under this kind of asking them to do whatever it takes including breaking the law. but when you look at this company, nobody -- no top managers, top executives, all of them making multiple millions of dollars a year none of them had any deductions from their pay while low wage workers lost their job. and hundreds others quit because they just didn't want to cheat, didn't want to be called to do these things. >> i want to be clear. as of now for this scheme that was basically uncovered, there is no financial penalty paid by anyone except the lowest level workers and a few people in management. >> that's exactly right, chris.
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and that's compounded by these firings have been going on for five years starting -- >> right. >> at least five years, starting at least in 2011, maybe earlier, a thousand a year, 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15 roughly a thousand a year. the ceo didn't know this was going on until the consumer bureau came in and then "the l.a. times" wrote about it. but he found out about these firings in these unauthorized accounts, apparently, he says, from the consumer bureau, not from this woman who was directly under him whom he says he met with once a week for the last eight years. he didn't find it out from her that they had fired a thousand people a year for this kind of opening these unauthorized accounts. so something's amiss. we don't know enough yet. >> senator sherrod brown, thanks for your time tonight. >> thanks, chris. the story about donald trump a charity golf tournament and
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so there's this charity golf tournament at donald trump's course in westchester, new york, back in 2010, hosted by former nba star alonzo mourning. like lots of those tournaments, there's a huge prize on the par 3s if a player can hit a hole in one. the prize at trump national that day was $1 million if the player hits an ace on the par 3 13th, the course's signature hole. it's listed now as 120 yards from the white tees. guess what? one player put it in the hole. a guy named martin greenberg who got his picture here with alonzo mourning.
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you can see z signed the photo, saying 1 mill. but he never got his money. the insurer backing the event refused to pay up claiming greenberg's required 150-yard shot had only traveled 139 yards. greenberg sued. his lawyer telling the "daily news" the markers at the tee were not set at the right yardage, that the course owned by trump in this case, traditionally sets that distance. it was set up too short for the player to actually be eligible to win. donald trump settled that lawsuit and agreed to pay $158,000 to the charity of greenberg's choice, but the story doesn't end there. because according to a new bombshell report by "the washington post's" david farenthold, it went trump who paid that settlement. that story is coming up. oh, taking some time off. no, i'm scheduling time to go to the bank to get a mortgage. ugh, you're using a vacation day to go to the bank? i know, right?
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protests in tulsa, oklahoma, again today following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed blackman terence crutcher. this is helicopter video released yesterday by tulsa police. crutcher is seen here with his hands raised next to his suv which is in the middle of the road. we don't know why the car is in the middle of the road. according to tulsa police spokesperson, they said that crutcher did not follow commands. they continued to talk to him he continued not to listen and follow any commands.
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as they got closer to the vehicle, he reached inside the vehicle. at that time there was a taser deployment and a short time later there was one shot fired. as you watch this video ending with crutcher falling to the ground, you can judge for yourself if that appears to sync up with what you see there. tulsa police chief chuck jordan confirmed there was no gun on terence crutcher nor in his car. the officer who killed terence crutcher with one shot, officer betty shelby, has been placed on leave during the investigation. the family of terence crutcher does not agree with the claim that tulsa police that crutcher was noncompliant. they say through their attorneys they do not know if crutcher was under the influence of alcohol or drugs as has been suggested by the lawyer for officer shelby. but even if he was, they say, the deadly police response was not warranted. a tulsa police official said that they found pcp in
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crutcher's vehicle, but we don't know if he had any drugs in his system. he was the father of four. his twin sister tifftony has asked that protests remain peaceful. in a radio interview hillary clinton had a strong reaction to the shooting. >> we've got to tackle systemic racism, this horrible shooting again! how many times do we have to see this in our country? in tulsa, an unarmed man with his hands in the air? i mean, this is just unbearable, and it needs to be intolerable. and so you know, maybe i can, by speaking directly to white people say, look, this is not who we are. >> joining me now ben jealous, center for american progress. he's endorsed hillary clinton. i feel like we're at the point in one of those stories -- and it seems awful to say one of these stories, but there have been many of these -- where we get the initial sort of oh, my
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god, i can't believe it happened, watch the video, then some detail comes forward and you get people saying, well, there was pcp in the car or, well, he didn't listen to commands or, well, whatever the explanation is for what we think and see is unjustified when we first see it is justified. >> meanwhile, in new jersey you have a man who planted bombs in multiple places. >> that's a fair point. >> who shot two officers, and the police shot to wound him and took him away. so it begs the question. how are our police officers being trained and why aren't they told, if you have a man who has his hands in the air who has been walking backwards. you see him, you know. he appears to be responding to some command. walking slowly. why do you need to shoot to kill? and why does this only seem to happen to men of color at least 95% of the time? and just why? but then you have to get to, as a country, yes, it needs to be
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intolerable. you know what? we need to see chiefs of police lose their jobs, mayors lose their jobs, d.a.s lose their jobs if they cannot get these situations under control and hold people accountable for murdering their fellow citizens and we have to admit other countries are doing this better. we have no national standards for use of force, we have no national standards for use of force training. the average department in this country, the standard for use of force training is one day at the academy. meanwhile, in england, they have no guns. most officers. and they're trained every six months. yes, they have national standards. >> yet, in all those other countries, the thins that strikes me is they're not awash in guns. so if you're a police officer walking around in england or denmark or belgium or japan, it is not in the back of your hand all the time that a citizen may pull out a gun. >> exactly. >> that's to top all the other kind of spigs. >> and the militarization of our
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country that's been pushed by the radicals inside of the nra that control the place, because the nra is not controlled by the average nra member, let's be clear. who pays a price for that? the militarization -- >> the arms race that happens. >> yeah. >> black men with their lives. >> unarmed. there's this exchange that happens in which the pilot -- the helicopter pilot looks down at this individual that we see there and says, that looks like a bad dude. that phrase -- now, we should be clear that the cops did not hear that. that's independent of the cops. that phrase, i thought why? that seems like the whole thing in a nutshell. >> you have a suburban man in a t-shirt who is a father of four, frankly looks like one. and his suv breaks down. what a nightmare that your father gets murdered by a police officer because they're afraid of what he looks like. and you're getting me a little bit raw tonight. because it's like one case too many.
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in so many months and so many years. but the reality is that the fop needs to stop -- they need to find a way to train officers. they need to find a way to correct officers. this slandering of victims is outrageous. and by the way, people on pcp don't look like that. people on pcp, they kind of have superhuman strength, massively aggressive. there's nothing aggressive there. >> ben jealous, thank you for your time. still ahead, the latest revelation about trump's use of found's money that may be the most shocking yet. but first, thing one thing two right after this break.
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when he rolled in as the anti-jeb candidate. >> he has failed in this campaign. it's been a total disaster. nobody cares. >> this is a tough business to run for president. >> i know, you're a tough guy, jeb. >> and we need to have a leader. >> two days ago he said he would take his pants off and moon everybody, and that's fine. nobody reports that. >> my mom is the strongest woman i know. >> she should be. am i talking or are you talking, jeb? >> i'm talking right now. you won't be president of the united states by insulting everybody. >> i'm at 42 and you're at 33. you interrupted me again. are you going to apologize, jeb? >> standard operating procedure to disparage me. >> spend a little more money on the commercials. >> that helped trump secure the nomination, it appears to have cost him the vote of at least one prominent republican and that's thing 2 in just 60 seconds.
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treatment of jeb bush during the primaries, jeb's father. politico reported today that president george h.w. bush plans to vote for hillary clinton. posting this photo from the facebook page of kathleen hardington kennedy townsend. daughter of the late rfk. the president told me he's voting for hillary. andrea mitchell confirms that townsend confirmed that he is indeed with her that bush 41 did tell her that he planned to vote for hillary clinton. not to expect a public endorsement. the vote president bush will cast as a private citizen in some 50 days will be just that, a private vote cast in some 50 days.
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hillary clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the united states. >> donald trump and other republicans have long accused hillary clinton of misusing the state department and the clinton foundation for personal enrichment, but while scores of reporters have published dozens of stories on potential conflicts of interest, the clinton family's various roles, they have all failed to produce a smoking gun. imagine, if you will, that it turned out that hillary clinton had, say, used over $250,000 of the foundation's money earmarked to buy aids medication for children in a developing world to settle her own personal legal problems. might cause a biof a scandal. that is basically what donald trump has done, according to "the washington post's" david farenthold. ten years ago trump sued the town of palm beach, florida, over fines on an 80-foot-tall flag at his club mar-a-lago.
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the suit claimed a smaller flag -- i'm quoting here, failed to appropriately express the magnitude of donald trump's patriotism. they waived the fine for a donation to charity. this is a copy of the check turned up by the "post." not from trump himself but from the donald j. trump foundation. then there was donald trump's golf course bait and switch, the case of a man who won a million dollar prize for a hole in one at trump's club in new york city. only to find out later you had to hit the ball 150 yards to win and that particular hole fell short. the man, martin greenberg sued the golf club. the parties eventually agreed to a settlement requiring the club to donate to a charity of greenberg's choice. that money, $158,000 to the martin greenberg foundation came from the trump foundation which reported it in a 2012 irs filing. the greenberg foundation reported no contributions from
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either trump himself or his golf club. just to be clear here, it is illegal to derive personal benefits like, say, fulfilling one's legal obligations from a charitable foundation, a practice known as self-dealing. on top of that as farenthold has reported donald trump hasn't given any of his own money to the foundation. it's funded almost entirely from other people's money including nbc universal, our parent company, in 2012. david farenthold is investigating this along with two other reporters. coming up those two other reporters.
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we're going to get the gulf states to pay for safe zones. we'll lead the project like it's called opm, i do that all the time in business. other people's money. there's nothing like doing things with other people's money. >> donald trump at a rally in north carolina today being unusually candid. kirk eichenwald senior writer for "newsweek" who wrote a cover story on the conflicts presented by trump's business ties. and prize winning investigative reporter author of the new book "the making of donald trump." let me start with you first on what farenthold has found which seems to me like this is a real
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smoking gun. this is just on its face a violation of the law. you can't use the foundation to pay off your legal settlements like just -- i mean, this is it. >> this is the, by my count, eighth example of donald trump engaging in self-dealing, taking charitable funds and using them to cover his business costs or his personal obligations. that's sufficient for the irs to go after and revoke the charitable status of the donald j. trump foundation. if this were done by some politician out of favor with the majority in congress, there would be hearings about it. and your example i thought was perfect. imagine if hillary clinton had done twith any of the clinton foundation money, there would be all hell breaking loose about it. >> yes. i want to talk a little bit about -- because there's this sort of synergy here. you've got the foundation, you've got the business and you're about to possibly elevate this man to be the most powerful
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person arguably in the world. the sort of ability for self-dealing. one thing penny-ante with the foundation. all of a sudden you've got the federal government at your disposal. they've responded to your report by, well, we'll put it in a blind trust. don't worry about it. what do you think about that? >> well, it's a lie. every response they have given about how they're going to deal with the conflicts of interest presented by his very unsavory foreign business partners and his duties as national -- in terms of keeping charge of american national security has been a deception. and i think we all need to take a stand back right now and look at david farenthold's reporting, look at kevin j. johnson's reporting and my reporting, and it all has the same thing. donald trump is a fraud. he puts his money on other people's charitable contributions and uses it to buy himself out of legal problems. he puts his name for a fee on
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criminals' construction projects. when they go south, he says, not me. when they go well, he says it's all me. then everything that david details in this book. what's amazing to me is that most of the american voters have no idea who this man is. but when you start picking away at the scab, there's some very ugly things underneath. >> and you, david, one of the things that you've been saying from the beginning about the importance of the tax return which we're never going to see i think precisely because of what kurt is saying is this would at least lay it bare, right? this would let us know what we're going into. they are now saying -- i want to give you a listen of donald jr. for a while talking about there's a audit, that's why we can't. but this is a new line that's been trotted out which i think is refreshingly honest. >> he's got a 12,000-page tax return. that would create probably 300 million independent financial
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auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that will distract from his main message. >> there you go. asking questions that will distract from his main message. >> right. that's because the trumps don't believe in being held accountable. donald has flouted the law all throughout his life. he's cheated workers out of their pay, illegal immigrants, swindled investors. the thing you don't understand about donald trump is everything is a fraud. when you peel back just the surface on donald trump. and it is astonishing that the american public doesn't understand this, that they goes around saying workers are paid too much money yet i get e-mails from people every day saying donald trump will get elected, then i'll make more money. >> right. >> and part of that also is because he's had this role in american life including on "the apprentice" where he played the role of successful businessman. that's what people know about him. they've never seen his tax returns.
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>> they know the coin that he's a successful businessman. >> i've been following donald trump since '87. that was the first too many i spoke to him. and one of the thins that is in his way is just a long trail of people who have been conned. and i don't mean, you know, breaking the law, but they've been deceived. and all the trump supporters, they think they know who this man is. i promise you, they are the next marks on the biggest donald trump con of all. >> yeah, i think there's a sense, right, that people like, i think some people like the sense of he's going to break the rules, maybe lie, cheat and steal, that he'll do it on behalf of america, he'll do it on behalf of our voters and supporters. the fear is that he does it to them or to the american nation were he elevated to the highest office in the land.
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thank you both, appreciate it. that's "all in" for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> how did i know we'd get right now. >> how did i know we'd get around to the size of his flag pole. >> that was a choice detail. >> unsubtle from the news gods there. very unsubtle. thank you, my friend. thank you for joining us. good to have you with us. we have elizabeth warren here live in just a moment. that's coming up in just a few minutes. very excited to talk to senator warren. she had a huge day on capitol hill. we got an interview with new jersey senator cory booker who it is always good to get on the show but particularly in light of the bombings this weekend and the suspected bomber being shot and apprehended on the street in new jersey, it's particularly good tonight to have senator booker here. there's now federal criminal charges against that suspected bomber. now he has been charged federally for the bombings themselves.
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