for too long the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people of faith. bullying and even punishing americans for following their religious beliefs. good morning and welcome to "a.m. joy." if you are spending this morning in a certain kind of christian conservative church rather than watching this show, you might have heard a version of that triumphant message. why? because donald trump handed the religious right that talking point this week when he signed an executive order on thursday. trump said his new order, which he's been promising since his campaign, protects pastors from the irs if they preach politics. something they are legally barred from doing if they want to keep their tax-exempt status under what's known as the johnson amendment. but hold up, trump fans, the

order doesn't undo the johnson amendment, which candidate trump promised to destroy. only congress can do that. in fact there's a lot that candidate trump promised that president trump didn't deliver in that executive order. so much so that the american civil liberties union didn't even bother to sue, calling it just a photo op and not worth spending much time or energy on since trump didn't do the things people really feared, like taking steps for making it easier for christian businesses to discriminate against gay people. still, the fact is no group is more supportive of donald trump than white evangelicals and some of those supporters seem perfectly content with one religious leader calling the executive order an unexpected delight and pleasant surprise, even as other christian writers expressed disappointment. but that's not the only way donald trump is doing constituent service in his first months in office. trump and his team are taking full credit for april's job growth, the 87th straight month of job growth, by the way, calling it great news. but who's to blame for the weak

economic growth figures released last week? not trump, he just got here. but he's been here long enough to repeal and replace the affordable care act to hear trump tell it. he celebrated the half-completed milestone with his fellow characters from the monopoly board last week. his and paul ryan's tax cut for the super rich posing as a health care bill. even the optics are exactly what you purchased, a reversal of the squishy multi-culturalism of the obama era and a return of the good old days when men were men and the robber barons ran the world. those are the good old days, right? the good times. the point is while the rest of us look at trump's week and saw the usual -- >> george w. bush said the reason the oval office is round is because there are no corners you can hide in. >> there is truth to that. there is certainly no corners. there's a certain openness but there's nobody out there. this is very ominous looking

because of the red button. >> what does that get you -- >> it gets you a pepsi. >> i want to know your opinion, you're the president of the united states. >> that's enough. thank you. thank you very much. >> how am i doing? am i doing okay? i'm president. hey, i'm president. can you believe it? >> that is not what trump supporters see. it's almost like they and the rest of americans are living in completely different universes. to probably most of you who watch this show, trump is already a failure, maybe even a economically obvious one. but to his loyal fans, he's already making them sick of all the winning. kristen hagland, e.j. dionne and national republican consultant katin dawson. it really does strike me when we talk about donald trump, particularly here on this network and the main street media and the rest of the worl 60% of americans who think that trump is doing a poor job as president, we are seeing a

different donald trump. because if you spend most of your time watching fox news and reading conservative websites, they don't even see that stuff. they don't see that at all. they are seeing donald trump and being told he is successful. >> and there are some conservative and republican news letters and radio talk shows that do say, hey, we were never for donald trump from the beginning of the primary season and we are willing to thought fully criticize the president as well. so there is a little bit out there but it's all about the optics and that's unfortunate. the media's job is to serve the truth to people and there should be a wide variety of viewpoints. i think at least for my generation, for younger political consumers in the 35 and under range, they are reading a wide diversity of material and taking both the good and the bad. people at the end of the day, they're only going to be in the optics for so long. they want results. if this health care bill does not work for them, they might not be as excited as they are now. >> you're making an important point because fox news sort of median viewer is even older than

msnbc. it's an older white man and to your point younger conservatives may be consuming something else. but evangelicals are the strongest group for donald trump. people were surprised that this guy who doesn't appear to have ever walked into a church, trump got 81% of their votes, hillary clinton only got 16%. if you look specifically inside of sort of white evangelicals, white catholics went 61% for trump. i mean approval. the general public only gives him a 39% approval rating. so to him in the pulpits that are not watching "a.m. joy" but are in evangelical christian white churches, they're being told donald trump is incredibly successful, a strong leader and he's just delivered salvation through his executive order, right? >> well, one thing you left out is white evangelical pro-life voters and that's what made that voter comfortable with donald trump, even in the middle of off

of the transgressions during the campaign. what he did was he firmed up that base and that's really smart politics. that's most likely from steve bannon and reince priebus, good advice. whether or not there are any teeth in the executive order or not doesn't matter. the optics are i delivered on that promise. so i do think that what you're seeing right now is a posturing for 2018. we're going to be talking about health care through 2020. the republicans right now in the house own it. they haven't bought the whole package yet. the senate will change it. but we're going to see a lot of health care coming through. that base is going to stay fairly solid because of what trump is doing. so politically, you know, a guy who went in as a very unconventional republican, who sort of told the republican party to go to hell early on in his campaign and then embraced them, he's in a pretty good place right now. >> e.j., telling the republican party to go to hell strikes me is not hurtful to the exact same base you're talking about. i remember speaking with sort of

conservative christian leaders back in 2004 who said, you know, we're all going to get behind george w. bush, but if he doesn't deliver the rollbacks on abortion rights and gay rights that he promised us, there's going to come a time where we're going to turn on the republican party. we want these things done. donald trump came in and he said he's going to roll back the johnson amendment. he can't do it, right? only congress can do it. but if you go through and talk about 401 wu1 c 3s not able to politic. talking about it is a signal to the voters that unlike george w. bush, who was a methodist, he's going to govern like he issage evangelical christian, right? >> well, you know -- >> i agree with that. >> e.j. and then katon. >> i was struck by a couple of things. first, this executive order was so weak contentless, that it evoked that aclu press release, have they ever announced

something they have done is so meaningless we're not suing. but there are a lot of conservatives who said this may leave us weaker, what is he doing here? i think when we talk about the trump base, i probably quoted him before. it's one of my favorite lines on politics, barney frank. the base are the people who are with you when you're wrong. and so donald trump has a base. the question is, is it 40% or is it 25% or 30%? because i think some of these stories chip away around the edges, that there are some evangelicals who look at this and will say it's meaningless. there are some people on obamacare who will look at their health care bill and say, wait a minute, i didn't think he was going to take away my health care. there was rush limbaugh of all people saying he can't even get his wall funded. so i think the question is does the base start to shrink. but some people with him stay with him right to the end. richard nixon had 23%, i think, right when he resigned. >> yeah. i've got to play this donald

trump because the way he even sort of talks about -- well, the way he speaks to evangelicals is sort of unique for a republican. this is donald trump back in july talking about getting rid of this infamous johnson amendment that not a lot of people pay attention to, but this is donald trump. >> we've been looking at this for years but we never think about it. you know, and it's like they got used to it. it's like something they wouldn't have brought up. but i brought it up. we're going to get rid of the johnson amendment. it's in our platform. i got it put in the platform of the republican party. it's in the platform of the republican party. and i'm very excited about it. i figure that's one way i'm getting to heaven. >> you know, katon, it strikes me this is one of donald trump's narrow casting approaches where the vast majority of people who heard it didn't know what he was talking about. the conservative tone most

americans hear at church services, but in a lot of evangelical churches they are hearing a political message anyway to the point where "the washington post" reported that 2,000 mainly evangelical christian clergy have deliberately violated the johnson amendment as a form of protest against it. only one has been audited by the irs. no one has punished. it's an issue that actually doesn't exist, but donald trump talking about it, narrow casts to people who know what that is and it signals to them even if this guy has never been to church, at least he's on our side, right? >> well, when i was campaigning with rick perry, and he was running for president against donald trump, we met with probably 400 pastors. and there was fear in every audience. and what donald trump realizes now as president is not just south carolina, let's move that off the board, ohio, one of the most evangelical states in the country, look at the rural map in ohio. the win of donald trump in ohio

had a lot to do with this base that's there. they're a base that will tolerate a lot. they vote. they have to have an alternative. so while everybody is talking about donald trump's demise, you have to have an alternative to beat donald trump that won. there won't be a republican primary. so when you look at electoral politics, donald trump is being pretty smart. >> the interesting thing about that of course is when you go by age, you have younger conservatives who don't vote as much as their parents and grandparents obviously, who don't listen religiously to fox news. who are they listening to? are they as strong a devotee -- you said they're getting information from different sources. is the devotion to donald trump as strong among the children and grandchildren of these diehard evangelical white christian voters as in their parents and grandparents. >> no, and the reason why is the church is changing as well. honestly so many young people are leaving the church if they hear politics because the church should not be about scoring political points. i'm a person of faith.

it should be about serving people, loving people and young people see that. unfortunately, this executive order, really all that it accomplished was allowing a base of his to be more politically outspoken. but i think that true leaders of the church, those that are not just there to score political points and to get influence, are going to hold the line and make sure politics don't influence them from the pulpit because they know their true influence is the dpagospel and service. that's why their true influence should lie and they're not going to be encouraged by this e.o. to speak more politically. >> could i say amen to kirsten. i think she's absolutely right about younger evangelicals and there are some very shrewd and committed evangelical leaders who know that in the long run, this is not good for the church. and just to make another bad prediction, i think donald trump could have a primary. and marco rubio might be the guy. so there, you can play this when i'm totally wrong.

>> and we will. we'll play it back. i suspect leaving out the lgbt stuff out of that executive order might have been because the christian generation is out there and they're trying to pay attention to them. stick around. we have a star-studded show today. neil degrass tyson is here. but up next, voters in france are at the polls today with their very own donald trump on the ballot, and she might have her own russian hackers supporting her. stay with us. happy one-year anniversary to "a.m. joy." your show every weekend, even though it is early for a weekend, is must-see tv. you've got to get up and watch it. i never miss it.

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but we've got the get tdigital tools to help. now with xfinity's my account, you can figure things out easily, so you won't even have to call us. change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. add that premium channel, and watch the show everyone's talking about, tonight. and the bill you need to pay? do it in seconds. because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. go to xfinity.com/myaccount tensions continue to escalate in france on the final

day of the most tumultuous presidential campaign in recent history. paris police have told nbc that an area at the louvre where centrist candidate emmanuel macron planned to celebrate has been evacuated due to a security threat. there was familiar controversy just before voting back when macron said his campaign e-mails were the targets of a massive and coordinated hack. joining me now is christopher dickey, world editor at "the daily beast," kim gaddis and back with me is e.j. dionne. chris, i have to reference the article that you wrote for "the daily beast." you say that the macron campaign may have gamed the hackers. >> they absolutely were doing that for quite a while. the hackers have been attacking them since december and they have been able to identify those hackers as basically fancy bear

or pawn storm or whatever we want to call them. it's the same group that hacked the dnc. that's well established. there's no surprise about that. whether those are the hackers who dumped these documents, that's not well established. but we know that they have been going after them, these russian-backed hackers. and what they did was, they would get these fake sign-on pages through phishing, various phishing and spear phishing attacks and instead of saying don't answer them, they would answer them but put in false information, false data and sometimes try to flood the hacker sites with stuff that they would spend hours or days trying to figure out. that was their counterattack. >> that's interesting because wikileaks even sort of was sucked in and fooled by it and they put out information that may have been false, which sort of discredits them too. very interesting tactic by the macron campaign. kim, macron has been characterized by the le pen forces as this wall streetesque corruptish figure, sort of similar to the way hillary

clinton was characterized in the u.s. election, but his platform is very interesting. maternity leave for all women, defending the right to abortion, he's a supporter of remaining in the european union, shorten the visa application process, meaning promoting talent visas for immigrants and no ban on the muslim vail for university students. he comes across as quite a liberal. >> well, this is europe, right? so the right in europe looks probably quite to the left of any american politician. even a very right-wing politician in the netherlands, for example, does support abortion, does support gay rights mostly. so you can't quite compare. i think that the comparison between le pen and donald trump doesn't always hold and the comparison between emmanuel macron and hillary clinton doesn't always hold. emmanuel macron is young, he is 39 but he is also part of the system. he was a banker, he was a minister in the previous -- in the cabinet of francois

hollande, so he's not exactly new, he's not exactly a real outsider but he's being presented as such and he's done quite well. what i think makes him stand out is the way that he talks about positions that other centrists or leftists have shied away from and he does it with a lot of conviction when it comes to europe, for example, when he talks about his belief in europe, about how france within europe can be strong, can be a world leader, about his belief in cooperation with other european countries, the need to set up joint defense, for example. this is unusual and that is something that, for example, hillary clinton in the u.s. wasn't very good at during the campaign. she was trying to please everyone and didn't always stand up for perhaps what she really believed in. he's decided that even though the eu seems to be polling very badly, he's going to come out and defend it because he believes in it. but his critics are right, that

he is not exactly an outsider, but he's being presented as such, and he's done quite well with that so far. >> it's fascinating. e.j., on the other side, when you look at marine le pen who has devoted her adult life to cleaning up her father's sort of nazi-sympathetic party, her platform feels very trumpian. cut immigration to 10,000 people a year, scrapping the 2014 law allowing same-sex marriage and replacing with civil unions, reconsidering france's place in the eu and ending birthright citizenship. i want to play you back from last november le pen on cnn talking about her don ppelgange in the u.s., donald trump. >> donald trump has made possible what was presented as completely impossible, so it's a sign of hope for those who cannot bear wild globalization. they say the policies that you, marine le pen, have isolate you. well, i feel less isolated today

because of the multi pillar world defended by donald trump but also theresa may and vladimir putin. i have a feeling it's mrs. merkel and mr. hollande who should feel isolated. >> that's the divide that you have, you have this globalist world who believe this interconnected community in the europe and the u.s. and these individual isolationists who want to band together in a team. do you sense that france is leaning in one way or the other? >> well, france seems to be leaning against that. on the one hand what's very disturbing about this campaign, even if macron wins by quite a lot, is how much better marine le pen and the national front will do in this election than that far right party with real roots in neofacism, they'll do better than they ever have before. but i think it's striking also that le pen has talked a lot less about trump as time has gone on, and there does seem to be a backlash against the tru

trumpian backlash. you saw it in austria, you saw it in the netherlands and if the polls are right, you're going to see it again tonight. i think macron did something important, he didn't back away from his positions, he aggressively defended them. the challenge for him if he wins is there's a drama between a part of him that's the investment banker and the part of him that's a mild social democrat who does believe in social protections. and it's going to be interesting to see how these two pieces of macron pro capitalist but also pro social protection, how that plays out. >> chris dickey, to that point should europe and the west breathe a sigh of relief if macron wins or is this just one blip of good news against the tide against the idea because the banking sector reeked on the

global economy? >> look, if macron wins this afternoon or tonight, it will be afternoon new york time, then everybody should pop some champagne corks in the west. but if he's unable to deliver on the kinds of promises he's made, if he's unable to help reform the european union and make people feel that they're participating in a prosperous enterprise, a united europe, then marine le pen will win five years from now. so i think he's going to have a very tough row to hoe, but i think he's the guy to do it. at least i think a lot of french people will come to that conclusion. >> kim, you know, marine le pen also referenced theresa may who is pioneering brexit in britain. it does almost feel like -- i read an article in "the guardian" today that you could see emerging a europe that with stands the tide and u.s. and britain that become the two sort of isolated powers, isolated from the rest of the west. is that what we're looking at? >> well, it's possible and that's certainly what an opportunity that some people see in europe, that if macron wins

and you have merkel coming back, then they will see an opportunity to, you know, bring together a strong europe that can lead in the world while the u.s. is not keen on that and while the uk is very busy with brexit. i think that what we'll have to watch if macron wins and all signs do indicate that he will win is how he's going to go ahead forming a transition government, because you have parliamentary elections coming up in about a month, and how he and his movement will do in the elections then. that will be the real test, whether he'll be able to gain a majority and then govern with a majority or whether you'll have to have a coalition with other parties that will undermine his ability to reallyeliver on those changes that he has promised. so even if he wins tonight, it's not done for him yet. the road ahead is quite tough. i think that one of the key

differences between the u.s. and france, and the reason why his -- the caricature of macron as a banker and elitist doesn't exactly resonate with french people at large is because the french still look to their president and they want to see in general someone who knows more than them, someone who can be a real leader, someone who reminds them perhaps of the past where they were glorious and they had an empire and in the past they had a king. it's very different. they don't want necessarily a leader with whom they can go for a beer with the way that americans like to choose their president. and i think that that undermines marine le pen's position a lot. i think what we'll have to watch also is the margin of victory that we'll have tonight. it's not going to be anything like 2012 or 2002 rather when there was a landslide against marine le pen's father. >> i like that. >> it was true. it had the benefit of being

true. thank you very much, chris and kim. e.j. is sticking around. the health care backlash is on. that's next. i have asthma... ...one of many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept coming back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways

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innovation and you. philips sonicare. save now when you buy philips sonicare. you cannot do this to us and to our children. you're doing a death panel. >> you're killing us! you're killing us! shame on you. >> i mean i really question if you read this book. when you come out and say that the opiate epidemic that we have in our economy is the number one priority and yet you vote for a law that takes that out of the mandate, that they don't have to provide it. explain that. >> on thursday, 217 house republicans voted for trumpcare and told the american people exactly what they thought about their right to quality affordable health care coverage. and now that congress is out of session and those representatives are heading home, the american people are talking back. new york congressman tom reed faced the music yesterday at a

town hall in a rural community where outraged constituents gave him a piece of their minds. that came a day after idaho republican raul labrador was shouted down by an audience in his home district after this exchange. >> you are mandating people on medicaid accept dying. >> no. no one wants anybody to die. that line is so indefensible. nobody dies because they don't have access to health care. >> i guess it's a good thing those gop members of congress make sure that they always have coverage, but that's going to leave a mark. more on this with my panel, next. ♪ everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don't stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. that goes beyond assuming beingredients are safe...ood to knowing they are.

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it's not true. >> shame on you! shame on you! >> that was the response saturday to one of the republican congressmen who voted to pass trumpcare. as he and his colleagues made their walk of shame, presuming

they're capable of shame, back to their districts. let's bring back my commentator, kirsten hagland, ali velshi. ali, i want to talk to you about this very issue. you and i both interviewed the gentleman from the heritage foundation and i thought that he made a really sort of interesting commission when we were talking to him on a show yesterday, which is who this trumpcare, ryancare bill is intended to help and it's really focused on what they see as the cendan the fluent, the young. i want to show you the other side of that equation, the people trump said he was running to help. this was an air force veteran at tom reed's town hall. >> i'm a veteran of the uz air force and it has saved my life

four times. we have to get the profit. we have to get the property. these are human beings. we have bodies, we have minds. we are not property taxes. that's how you boil down. we are not money, we are a nation. >> it's fascinating to me, ali, because donald trump ran for that demographic, that person, that sort of midwestern -- i'm sorry, it's a lady, she's a veteran, that sort of salt of the earthish sort of white working class person is what he said he was for but this health care bill is for the young and affluent. >> i appreciate the intellectual honesty, yesterday he said there were about 25 million people who are in the individual market whose premiums have gone up under obamacare. now, that is a fact. and that was the group that this

legislation is meant to help. what this womanho just spoke said is something that's ver interesting in that there are two industries which should not be profitable. one of them is health care and the other one is prisons. because the incentive is perverse. in health care you want people to be healed from their sickness, but insurance companies don't want to pay for sick people. so the problem here is it does help those people who were not all that sick, they were young, they were healthy, and affluent, getting taxed by obamacare. this is a real benefit to them. >> yep. >> but that's not intellectually why we decided to do obamacare. obamacare was about the fact that of developed nations, america has the greatest proportion of uninsured and this was supposed to help solve that. it didn't fully. joy, you know i love you but i am a capitalist and this is not something capitalism can solve. that's why the woman is right, take the profit motive out. >> the whole point is if you're going to have -- >> it works for some things, not

other things. >> but the interesting thing here is you, as the young and affluent demographic that literally paul ryan only cares about, he's made it very clear that what he is doing is attempting to cut taxes for affluent people. he cares about that younger generation and he wants to give a massive tax cut to them, massive tax cut to corporations, even to their parents who are super, super, super rich. what they are transparently saying is they don't care about the sick and the old, but that's who donald trump said he cared about. who wins in that republican contest of wills? >> well, no one has won yet and we know right now we'll see the american people are losing in this whole debate. the good news, something we can all be optimistic about, is the fact this bill is going to the senate. you have a lot of republican senators, senator john mccain, senator tom cotton who understand their states got a huge expansion of enrollees

under medicaid. they don't want to be face to face with those people who will lose insurance. what they did from medicaid is change it from an entitlement program to a grant program. what republicans didn't factor in is over the last eight years, a total shift has happened in the mentality of americans both on the right and the left in that they see it as a right and they want the government to help provide that right. so it's going to look a lot different after the senate gets done with this bill. i think that what you see in the gop version right now is going to be totally out the window. >> katon, i'm not sure i believe that. maybe i'm wrong, you are the republican strategist, i will ask you about this. it feels to me like there are a couple of different incentives that are in competition with each other. one of them is undo things obama did. this is the most powerful incentive in the republican party. that thing is called obamacare, it has to be rooted out, root and branch. i don't see how mitch mcconnell doesn't think that's the most important thing to do. thing two, get a giant tax cut through, $800 billion that allow you to do the trillion tax cut

they want to do. those are their two biggest things. health care is like a distant third. don't you think at the end of the day mitch mcconnell jams this thing through anyway? >> no, i don't. mitch mcconnell is a very pragmatic leader and very effective and knows how to count votes and knows how to keep his caucus together. i think what you're seeing right now is mitch mcconnell obviously has his eye on 2018. there are 33 seats up, 25 democratic so-called seats, eight that the republicans should be able to win to be more effective in the senate. so i think that he will be a little more risk averse than they were in the house. i'm sure house members that i talked to understand that this is going to get cleaned up. as a political operative, i'll tell you owning health care thing gave us with barack obama a tremendous leg up back home running for office, and that's what the democratic party in their hands. i'm not sure they know what to do with it and i'm not sure that

what i have seen in elections right now is the donald trump effect is much like arnold palmer effect. people followed arnold palmer when he was playing golf. people follow donald trump when he owns something. that's when his base shows up. so in 2018, this is what i have all confidence that senator mcconnell will have how this is going to play out. you're not a winner if you own health care right now no matter which party it is. proven point is, the last eight years was president obama. >> i thought it was political malpractice to bring this up at all because it's the one fight that destroys your party every single time. the one thing that people on the left do know how to do is troll. so paul ryan got trolled. he did a photo op with someone and they had a naughty t-shirt on to sort of troll him. but it isn't clear to me that the democrats know what to do with this to katon's point. that they have a plan to do to the republicans what the

republicans did to them on health care. do you detect such a plan? >> you know, i thought when nancy pelosi said this will be tattooed on your forehead and you will glow in the dark, i think that gave you an indicator because one of the things you can't do in american politics easily is take away a benefit from a whole lot of people. and for all of this talk of fiddling with the individual insurance market, this bill whacks $880 billion out of medicare. it takes another $300 billion out of subsidies to pay for tax cuts. there will be a lot of americans, many of them donald trump supporters, in states like west virginia, kentucky, louisiana, arkansas, who would really, really be hurt by this republican bill. and i think democrats have said and should keep saying if you want to fix the problems with obamacare, even barack obama says he wants to fix the problems with obamacare, let's

go ahead. but a demolition job that throws people off health insurance is just not going to fly with voters. >> yeah, i think the fundamental tension right now in the republican party is that the paul ryan base is different from the donald trump self cultivated base. they are completely diametrically opposed and who they care about is completely -- who they claim to care about is completely diametrically opposed. thank you very much, ali velshi, who we might kidnap and never let him leave. e.j. dionne already kidnapped and katon dawson, thank you very much. we appreciate you guys all. coming up, i'll be joined live right here in this very studio by neil degrasse tyson and i promise i will try not to hug him. you don't want to miss it. >> the most fun i have on tv is saturday mornings with joy reid. what i do during the week is work. when i show up for joy's show, it is a joy.

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energy lives here. this morning a major break in the kidnapping of more than 300 girls by the militant group boko haram three years ago. nigeria's president says 82 of the girls have been released as part of an exchange of detained boko haram suspects. the girls are being reunited with their families this morning. u.n. oiffficials say it's uncle how many girls of still enslaved by the militant group. hopefully soon we can bring back all our girls. up next, the one and only neil degrasse tyson. thing, so we know how to cover almost anything. even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, two-thousand-nine.

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>> hope you're ready. it's going to be here any minute. >> is that a rifle? >> you don't know what a rifle looks like. >> swords are your thing and guns were mine. i guess we're both doing guns now. i just didn't know that.

that's intense. whoa! >> millions of moviegoers flooded theaters this weekend to see marvel's guardians of the galaxy 2. this is two weeks after thousands marched for science after americans' interest in science and science fiction seems to be at an all-time high. joining me now live in the studio is neil degrasse tyson, author of the new book, astrophysics for people in a hurry. thank you for being here. >> happy anniversary. you've been around the sun for a million miles. >> a full revolution. >> this book, congratulations, number one. we were talking in the break, on amazon. >> completely crazy. >> but i think it's not crazy because i feel like there's a hunger and reinvigoration of the

intellect in science as it feels under attack from the other side. >> i'm glad you said it that way because i think there always was a little bit of a hunger but there's nothing to feed it, it kind of languishes there. i think of it as an ember and if you fan it and feed it, it can burst back into flames and create an energetic surge in science and it manifests in multiple ways. i think i would directly credit this rise in interest in science to people's appetite for well thought out science fiction films, movies like the martian. science was its own character basically. >> absolutely. >> you just want to find out how much science he knew to not die in that movie. >> yeah. >> so it was a science thing. >> i grew up on star trek, the original one which is the best one, sorry. >> you are not that old. don't even go there. >> black don't crack. and of course what i loved about it, apart from everything about it, is the fact that it did sort

of take science and put it into the realm of the future possible. there were actual innovations people made. think about the flip phone which used to actually be cool. >> now it's old. >> now it's old. but you saw the evolution of possible technology and also sort of looking at space as something searchable. >> it's because the creators of it, eugene roddenbury at the top of that pyramid thought about what was plausible versus we don't know if we'll ever get there. you have a machine and you put in a card and food comes out hot. i remember seeing it and thinking, no, that will never happen. >> let's talk about the other side of it. to some people science is an amazing thing and to others it's frightening. astrophysics, because it involves the birth of the universe, the sort of where did it all come from, it competes with a religious notion of that in a way that frightens people, right? >> i don't think it's only that. i think people are frightened of what they don't understand

particularly if what they don't understand has power, a kind of mysterious power. part of the mystery is the absence of understanding. so i, as an educator, always sort of look back in the kindergarten through 12 trajectory and ask, it's one thing to just feed people knowledge, even in the form of science, but it's another thing to learn how to think about information and process information and be -- and learn how to embrace new discoveries so that you have a sense of curiosity that will get you to -- that you'll be self-driven to understand it. once you understand it, yeah, let's go with it, let's do it. >> when people meet you, when people are in a hurry and they meet you and they have 60 seconds, what's the question people most ask you? >> it's a bunch. where did it all come from. it will almost always end up, is there god. they usually put a few questions in the middle. >> but that's where they're going. >> yeah. they usually land there. so, but i monitor this and i look to see, when do people's eyes brighten when they ask a question or when i answer, and i

process that. what i found is that not everyone is equally interested in all things, but what i did was digest that which people are most taken by. so this is a curated offering of the most mind blowing things in the universe. >> i guess the fundamental -- two questions. number one,an god and evolution exist together, coexi coexist? >> it depends which god. is it zeus, krish na. typically in the united states people are referring to the judeo-christian god. if you use the bible as your science textbook, no, there is no reconciling these two. but enlightened modern religious people recognize their holy text as figurative accounts at a time when people had no other way to think about it and they embraced science but they used the bible for their own spiritual

fulfillment and enlightenment. galileo even knew about this. he was a devout catholic. he's famous for saying the bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. >> it is literalism in all religions that appears to be the enemy. i have to ask you this, are we alone in the universe? >> not likely. if you look at the numbers, how long the universe has been here, the fact that our ingredients that comprise life, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, they're the most common ingredients across the universe everywhere. plus on earth, life got under way almost as quickly as it possibly could have in single cell organisms, so life is the most complex kind of chemistry we know, but nature apparently had no problems, windowi workin in its own lab. as we look for life, probably the first life we find will be microbial.

it will probably be rarer to find complex life. and of course who defines us as intelligent? >> we do. >> who knows whether other intelligent beings will think the same about as us as we do. >> and then the aliens eat us all up, like in the movie. >> tasty bits. >> neil degrasse tyson with that wisdom. up next, the plot thickens on trump's favorite news network and my one-on-one with the creator of the new netflix series. more "am joy." to dig a hole to china. at&t is working with farmers to improve irrigation techniques. remote moisture sensors use a reliable network to tell them when and where to water. so that farmers like ray can compete in big ways. china. oh ... he got there. that's the power of and.

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welcome back to "am joy." it's no secret that donald trump loves fox news. so it was no surprise when an internal fda e-mail circulated on twitter explained to employees that the administration had ordered that all televisions be switched from cnn to fox. the fda confirmed that the e-mail was sent by the office of

facilities to employees but denied that there was any directive from the administration to switch to all fox all the time. although, a source within the fda told the "washington post" eric wimple that the tvs are tuned to fox. there's no denying that the trump administration relies heavily on fox news to disseminate its alternate reality. trump is a professed fan that he spends hours watching when he's not playing golf. on fox, trump has exceeded all expectations. his questionable claims are validated and his performance is described as decisive leadership. it's an alternative reality that serves at the pleasure of trump. meanwhile, the real reality of fox news is where a woman allegedly was booted off the air after she wrote about her inf infertili infertility, thus decreasing her sex appeal by her bosses who require all the women to be hot, where managers allegedly forced

black employees to arm wrestle freedom employees for their amusement and a black recepti receptionist was called by bill o'reilly as hot chocolate. statements are often replaced by alternative facts. the question remains, can this alternate reality sustain itself under a new lawsuit in an ongoing investigation by the feds. back with me is conservative commentator kirsten hagland, letitia james and tamara holder who settled with fox news over a sexual assault case. thank you for being here, ladies. this "new york times" piece that talks about your settlement really is unique first of all in the fact that you were able to get fox to include the words sexual assault in the joint statement that they put out and that they settled with you. >> correct. i really think that fox did the right thing here and are trying

to do the right thing moving forward. they're cleaning house. they obviously got rid of roger ailes less than a year ago. they got rid of the top guy who produces all the advertising dollars, bill o'reilly. they got rid of bill shine. i think that they are trying to show that they did the right thing in my case and just as a network as a whole. >> your case was more extreme, as bad as these other cases were of sexual harassment and untoward comments and lewd advances. your case was a case of sexual assault. it was quite serious. the person was fired. and in addition to that, your management, the people who were your talent management, your agents, instructed you not to say anything. >> right. and that's where i really want people to understand why people don't come forward, why women don't come forward, whether it's at fox news or anywhere else. it's fear, it's fear-based. i was told that i would be toxic if i went to fox. and then they closed the door on me. they stopped doing work on my behalf. they refused to help my lawyers.

this is a major agency. this is icm. we're not talking about some people that don't know how to do business. >> you, in fact, did disappear from tv, you stopped being on tv and most of the women have. >> sure. they made me toxic. and yes, the other thing is that it's interesting that the women who have attacked other women publicly, their careers seem to be okay. they're the ones who are still on tv, but the women who are actually hurt are toxic and no fault of our own. >> did you get any support from the women, the female employees at fox when this happened to you? >> that's a very interesting question, no. >> not a one? >> no. >> either on the air people or off the air people? >> i got support from one of my friends, jemu green. she's a friend of mine. other than that -- and she knew what was going on. other than that, no, nothing. the men, i did hear from some of the men. >> kirsten, that's sort of the bigger picture, bigger than fox and the way they make all the

women have giant hair and look fabulous. but the creation of a world in which it's sort of a playground for men, particularly for white older men who can have this bevy of young, hot women around them, say whatever they want to them, treat them any way they want, where the black people are marginalized. it is creating a right wing universe where women can't support each other. >> it's disheartening and heartbreaking to have seen all this because i think there are a lot of people at fox who didn't necessarily know this was going on. some kept quiet who should not have. as someone who has an entertainment background and was miss america, i see this across cities but i think it's really generational. you have older men who think they can do this. even politicians, i've been in their office on capitol hill talking about eating disorder

and they pat their stomach and say you certainly don't look like that. this is a mind-set that needs to cross generations and women are finding their voice to stand up for themselves and show a generation of young women coming up that they're worth more. >> thank you for saying that. you come out of the pageant world which donald trump was very much involved in and we know his history there of preying on teenage girls and treating them as a commodity. >> it's awful. >> on the other side of this, beyond the horror for the way that women have to exist in 2017, there's still a legal case here. tell us the status. your office brought an action in regard to the lying to shareholders aspect of this case, the fact that these settlements that were paid to women, settlements that were paid were hidden from investigators. >> first of all, congratulations on your anniversary. >> thank you. >> there were 15 cases against fox news and one case was a class action involving 13 separate individuals alleging

racial discrimination. >> right. >> so the cases are still ongoing. in addition to that there's a federal investigation focusing on the payments, the accounting of tayments and how they were paid and whether or not they were reported as income or settlement. in addition to that, there's the human rights commission in the city of new york which is continuing to investigate the climate and the culture within fox news. >> and i should read the statement that fox news put out jointly with tamara's lawyers and this was published via the "new york times" in the story that they put out on march 8. it said in a rare public disclosure, fox news released this joint statement and it said immediately after ms. holder notified fox news of the alleged incident, the company promptly investigated the matter and took decisive action for which holder thanks the network. so there at least was some action in that but the bigger question at least in the federal probe is this question of whether or not the parent company of fox news, whether or not there was lying about the payments. federal prosecutors are looking into whether they tried to

disguise $3.51 million in payments to an employee who said she had a 20-year affair with the network's former chairman, roger ailes, according to the investigation. the fact that this goes all the way up to roger ailes who ran the network says something about the culture overall. >> when you disclose to shareholders, you're supposed to disclose the risk. all of these lawsuits that have been filed against fox news again create this atmosphere or this notion that fox news is not being subject to all these harassment claims when we know that that's not true. so they lied, they misrepresented and they materially failed to disclose to shareholders and a lot of those shareholders are new york city retirees and in fact these lawsuits were not going on and this climate and culture within fox news was not going on in that corporation. last but not least, right now they're trying to acquire another news outlet and obviously that is impacting them because one of the determinations is whether or not they're fit and proper and

clearly based on these allegations, 15 claims, racial discrimination, class action, they're not fit and proper at all. >> that's a really important point. i want to go to kirsten about the climate and both of you have talked about the climate. there's an investigation also being looked into as to whether roger ailes used prominent investigator beau deedle to probe the threat perceived to either mr. ailes or the channel. there's a question of people actually feeling threatened not just by their agents but actually threatened by being investigated. >> there was definitely a climate of control but i think that they really do want to change that and i think that the changes that are slowly being made are good for all organizations. this is a win for everyone. and i do want to point out as well that janice dean recently came back and she's a meteorologist at fox. she had neck surgery, plastic surgery that didn't go well and she was very open about that and that plays into this whole

sexuality and attractiveness and women getting older and all that and they highlighted her op-ed and it was really celebrated. so i think the right mind-set is going into trying to change this but it's been far too long coming but there definitely is a change of culture. >> i think it's because they want to make that acquisition and they want to clean things up. the women running it was the enforcer of the miniskirt poli y policy. what's your advice where people feel threatened? you were brave, especially without any support. in this business where agents can determine whether you work again and where you could just vanish off tv and that's a part of your livelihood gone, do you think that women should still take that risk? >> absolutely. it's scary. i can tell you that i spent almost a year and a half in my closet crying with ptsd and depression because i was so

afraid that the people who i thought were going to support me and have -- they had my best interest at heart with regard to a career, they thought they had a vested interest in my career, tell me to shut up. it's a horrendous experience and place to be. however, whenever you go through anything in life, you come out stronger. and i hope that women out there listening and men too understand that, number one, women don't report for many, many reasons. my mom was dying at the time, i was told not to. i'm a criminal defense attorney. >> right. >> and i still was afraid to go to the police. >> yeah. >> so i understand the fear. and on top of that, lawyers didn't take my case because they said i wasn't gretchen carlson or -- >> not a big enough star for them. >> i wasn't a big enough star, and the person who assaulted me was not roger ailes or bill

o'reilly. so i understand where it comes from, where the fear of i'm not big enough, i'm not good enough and what's going to happen to me, is my husband going to believe me, are my friends going to believe me, are the investigators going to believe me. i want women to know that if i can do it they can do it too. >> i think it's a message to these women who are the big enough stars that it would be nice if they supported other women in this situation because sometimes the person with the power is the person that can help the women coming in behind her to succeed. you're a very brave woman for doing this. you're a defense counsellor. you should be on tv. i want to invite you back on tv and do your legal analyst also. >> i'm from fox years, i have seven years of opinions. >> we will resemble these women because they are some of our favorites, my power panel, you guys will all be back. coming up, the resistance fights back against donald

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i was enchanted by the story of america because i would always ask my teacher when i was 8 or 9 years old, i was like, teacher, what does lady liberty have on her notebook, because that's what i thought it was. what is written on her notebook. my teacher told me, it's give me the weak, the poor, the huddled masses yearning for freedom. i knew lady liberty was talking about my family, my community. i knew that in my heart. i felt welcomed and special.

>> my name is -- >> my name is -- >> i'm year, undocumented and unafraid. >> that is a scene from "forb "forbidd "forbidden", one of the many films celebrating this country's amazing diversity that you can see at the second annual define american film festival this thursday in charlotte, north carolina. joining me is the founder and my friend. jose, thank you for being here. it's always a pleasure to be here. but i got to ask you, why north carolina? >> i think it's really important, especially at a time like this, i think roger ebert said -- the great film critic, roger ebert, said that a film is an empathy machine. a film is an empathy machine. and i think more than ever empathy is really to me like one of the chief goals, and that's one of our chief goals at the define american film festival. i think the fact that donald trump actually won north carolina, the ct that i think we're probly going to attract

quite a few trump voters and supporters at this film festival. as you just noted there, we're showing films that really represent not just the diversity but how inclusive the issue of immigration is. it's not just one thing. it's all of these things. >> it's a bit depressing to think that we still have to develop empathy for immigrants in a country built by immigrants. it's the thing we do for decades and decades. i want to play a couple trailers from some of the films that will be screened at the festival. let's start with one called "between us women" and let's look at a little bit of that film.

>> this talks about the special difficulty of being both undocumented and transgender. >> in north carolina. >> in north carolina. talk about that. >> actually, joy, in looking at the films, we were trying to find, is there a documentary, is there a feature film on undocumented trans women, and we couldn't find one. so define american, we actually produced that short film ourselves in durham, north carolina. we spent a couple of weeks in durham, north carolina of finding this community of undocumented trans won. i have to say by the way, i'm really proud that we're having this film festival at the harvey gant center, named after the first black mayor of charlotte. and our goal is to really say that this film festival is for everybody. >> yeah. >> it's for everybody. >> i have to play one more trailer that's particularly close to my heart as being the daughter of an african

immigrant. this is a film called "am i too african to be american or too american to be african." take a look. >> african booty scratcher. >> african boot ey scratcher. >> you get called everything on the list. >> in high school i didn't see anything positive about identifying as african. >> the impression of what africa is and where i must have come from was completely different. >> growing up as a first generation child in america, kind of live like a double life. >> it's something we don't often talk about because we try to define young people or kids as being sort of the enlightened generation, but as somebody who grew up the child of immigrants, you know that children can be the most cruel when it comes to people who are different and immigration as a difference is particular, particularly for africans and the children of african immigrants. >> this is how you and i first

connected many years ago. whenever we talk about immigration, it's always about mexico, about latinos. the reality is the undocumented population, the documented and the undocumented population is incredibly diverse. in north carolina alone by the way, there's an estimated 350,000 undocument inco documed carolinians. as an undocumented person myself, i wanted to have this film festival in charlotte to say that undocumented north carolinians are welcome at this film festival. trump voters are welcome at this festival. >> we also don't talk about white people who are also undocumented. we had a guy from ireland who talked about coming to look for his people. i just want to play a little bit of the film that you made back for mtv a little while ago that was at the festival. >> so we're doing a film for mtv

on what it means to be young and white. >> okay. >> okay. ♪ >> you say the wrong thing, then suddenly you are a racist. >> trying to be careful here. >> i don't want to offend people. >> i feel like you guys are attacking me now. >> if i bring up any sort of race issue with my parents, they immediately assume that i'm demonizing them. >> give me a hug. >> jose, how do you get those people to come to the film festival? >> please check out "define american filmfest.com. we shot that documentary also in north carolina a couple years ago. and the whole goal again here is how do we have these uncomfortable conversations together, like how do we make sure that when we're talking about immigration, we're acknowledging how it intersects with race, women's rights, lgbtq rights, the black lives matter

movement. i'm really proud by the way, on the last day of the film festival we're having a panel called stories we tell, how immigrants pertain to popular culture, immigrants and muslims. we have a women called april rain, she's going to be there to talk about how it's not just black and white. black, white, latino, muslim, all of that. >> i keep telling you you're probably the bravest person i know. thank you for always coming on and best of luck with the film festival. >> thank you, joy. up next, black lives matter in the age of trump. stay with us. liberty mutual stood with me

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he was shot six times. the shooting was captured on video and sparked protest. the d.o.j. said their investigation did not show that the officers had wilfley violated sterling's civil rights. sterling's family says they will continue to fight for justice. >> he's no longer here, but his voice still will be heard through us. so stay behind us because we lovalton and we don't want this to end. remember his name. >> i'm just asking everybody to step forward so we can continue to get justice because it can't stop right here. we deserve it, if nobody else, we deserve it. >> louisiana prosecutors will now investigate to determine whether to bring state charges against the officers. meanwhile, the former officer who killed walter scott in south carolina in 2015 pleaded guilty to federal civil riekts charges this week. the officer, michael schrager, shot scott who was unarmed in the back as scott ran away following a traffic stop for a broken taillight. that shooting was also caught on cell phone video. slager faces up to life in

prison but is expected to be sentenced to 20 years or less. the federal charges brought against him were filed during the obama administration by the obama era justice department. also on friday, the police officer who shot and killed a 15-year-old boy near dallas last week was charged with murder and released on bond. police originally said that the car jordan edwards was riding in was backing up toward officers, but body camera footage showed the car was driving away from police when one officer opened fire. the officer was fired before being charged with murder. after the break my panel weighs in on what's next for the movement against police brutality in the age of sessions and trump. stay with us. ♪ hi, i'm frank. i take movantik for oic,

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some sort of bad acts on their part that caused an officer to shoot multiple rounds into a vehicle occupied by five

teenagers, there can be -- there is no, there will be no justification. >> even while demanding justice for their 15-year-old son, jordan edwards' family has urged their community not to stage protests in his name. edwards was shot and killed by a police officer last saturday outside of dallas. the officer was fired and charged with murder after body camera footage revealed that he fired into the car edwards was in as it drove away with him. thank you all for being here. charlene, i'm going to come to you on this first. i think when the election in november came out the way it did, one of my first thoughts was, oh my god, what happens to black lives matter because particularly once we knew that jefferson sessions was going to be the head of the justice department, this is sort of the worst case scenario for anyone who would dare go out into the street and protest. there's no calvary coming. so what does happen now to black

lives matter? >> well, i joined you, joy, along with millions of people across the country in shock and awe the night of the election, and that night i also told myself, you know, you're going to have to double down on the work that i do every single day with people across this country. so what this means for us is that we're going to go deep into the things that we know work, like consciousness raising and building local power. i think some of the best examples of that are the recent victory we just saw in jackson, mississippi, knowing this is a long, protracted struggle and it takes years for change. while, yes, we are concerned with the hyper criminalization of our people and the violence that our people experience with impunity every single day, we also understand that we have to build collective power in order to create the type of world that we want to live in. >> beyond the concerns for the sort of physical bodies of the protestors who would dare go out in the street, who knows what

the feds would do if they showed up now under sessions. there's also the question of whether or not we're going to be able to really know what's going on, whether or not this justice department is going to participate in these ideas of trying to create police reform, whether jeff sessions even believes in the idea of police reform. >> that's exactly right. i know that one of the great scandals alongside of each one of these tragic incidents was that the fbi couldn't tell us anything about how many people were getting shot. now, it so happens the fbi was supposed to launch use of force database project in january. we haven't really heard anything about it since. so what i will say is exactly in the way that charlene said, this stuff, as shocking as it was for the nation, it's not like it's new to black folks. there has been a bunch of efforts to push to institutionalized to say let's pass something different to the next generation. the tech sector has gotten in and we're at the stage in reform where justice needs nerds. the nerds have gotten involved. police chiefs understand that even though there's not a national picture, not a federal push, that they need to find works to work collaboratively to

be more transparent on data and not just on data sharing but on analysis. we got to answer the questions. you can't just have the raw materials laying around with nobody having a sense of what that actually means. >> they know that people like you are out there. there's an independent sort of extra federal kind of activism that can take place without help from the justice department necessarily, without their support. so what does it do now? >> we always knew that the threshold for getting the federal government involved was high, even under the obama administration. getting justice there was sometimes really hard. the best justice we can get under the current set of laws that we have in this country is at the local level. and that's why we've focused on district attorney races. there are 2400 district attorneys around the country. nearly 85% of them run unopposed. 90% of them are white. less than 1% are women of color. we are concentrating now on really changing the incentive structures for district attorneys, recognizing that they're not just answering to the fraternal order of police or

this idea of law and order but to the principles of safety and justice. communities around the country, black and brown communities, have been standing up. charlene's organization and mine, we stood up through our political organizations and fought back in chicago to get a new d.a. in places like orlando, color of change and local advocates stood up to get am ris ial la elected. in houston we changed the d.a. who's pushing for changes in bail reform. if we don't get the type of changes and results we need in dallas and other places we will work to get new d.a.s in place and hopefully start raising the floor on what's acceptable and pushing up the ceiling on what's possible. that's how we channel the movement energy, the presence of these issues into the power to change the rules. >> and that is, i guess, the sort of crux of it, charlene, is that you're going to have this ironic federalism where you have black and brown communities now looking not towards the white house and the justice department but towards state and local. you guys have been quite good at that by the way. do you see the larger black

lives matter movement focusing on local politics in this way? >> yeah, so our movement has always believed in using multiple tactics for a broader strategy. and in this particular moment where we understand that this administration is in a long line of administrations that don't serve our people's best interest, that we have to double down on local politics. and not just for the sake of having more black people in office. it's about building independent black political power that is committed to divesting from policing and prisons and investing in things that create real safety like quality public schools and good jobs and jobs that don't kill the planet. that's something we're really invested in and in order to do that we have to invest in our people, divest in the things that don't serve us, and really look into how do we even think about conflict and harm and violence and deal with them with systems outside of what this administration tells us we should or even local politicians like rahm emanuel tell us we

should deal with these things. >> and yet, phillip, you have headlines like this, jury convicts woman who laughed at jeff sessions during a senate hearing. convicted of disorderly conduct after disrupting sessions' confirmation hearing by laughing when a senator said sessions had an extensive record of treating all americans equally under the law. you can focus on the local law but you have the potential for a vindictive judiciary to do whatever they want, in this administration, literally do whatever they want. >> there's not really a solve for this without a broad electoral politics. there are moments where even in the face of that where brock turner gets a couple of months and someone can get a year for laughing at the attorney general. there's still the ability to reshape the fundamental reality at the local level that allows us to scale up. charlene was talking about budgets. i had a conversation with the police chief that was stunning for me recently where he said i want to have less money. i have never heard a police chief ever say that, a sitting police chief.

because i like him i'm not going to mention him, but he literally said i want to have less money and that money needs to go to social workers, drug rehab, diverse programs, youth contact, because we understand that as a community we're handling this the wrong way. when the federal government says they want law and order, when the federal government says that we need to be harder on criminals and the local folks say by a 15-1 margin, we would rather have education, by a 10-1 margin, we would rather have jobs and by a 3-1 margin, i was the victim of a violent crime and i don't want my attacker in jail, when the local communities say that it's difficult for the federal government with impunity for a long period of time say we're working on behalf of the american people. these are outside and reverse of the values we're bringing to light and i think the budget, local activism and again those local nerds doing analysis is going to allow us to push back. >> nerds are going to save us. i want to acknowledge that edward crawford for our viewers who remember him and he had this iconic photo that he was the subject of during the ferguson

protest was found dead. it's ruled it was a self-inflicted gunshot. police believe it was a suicide but i think we should acknowledge that on this day. thank you very much. coming up, the director of the wildly popular "dear white people" joins me live. you don't want to miss it. >> happy, happy, joy, joy. happy show aversery, dear heart. you're killing it, must see. you make me proud to work here, to be your colleagues and psyched to see what you will do next. you are a national treasure, y joy-ann reid. you keep going.

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list of acceptable halloween costumes, a pirate, slutty nurse, any of our first 43

presidents. top of the list of unacceptable costumes, me. winchester couldn't get through 2017 without black face? >> dear white people is the new series based on the 2014 of the same name that's making a splash on netflix. it follows a diverse group of black students as they navigate the racial tensions in a predominantly white fictional ivy league university. this week it scored the coveted 100% rating on rotten tomatoes. given the race's backlash and campaign that erupted when a 30-second teaser trailer was released in february. apparently just seeing the words dear white people on screen was enough to send trolls from the internet into delusions of white genocide. accompanied by the cries of why isn't there a dear black people. it's got us asking is there going to be a season two. joining me perhaps with an answer to that question, the creator of dear white people, justin simien. great to see you again.

it's been a while. >> i'm so happy to be here. >> thank you. congratulations first of all on the series. i loved the film. i thought it was great, funny, irreverent and it takes you back if you want to a predominantly white institution, ivy league institution as i did. but this series is great because you get to delve into each of the characters a little more. how did it come about that you were able to take that film and turn it into this series? >> it really was this kind of organic process. i started tinkering with the idea in the back of my head while we were touring with the film. i just felt there was so much that was kind of left on the floor, so many stories that had to get cut out for time, so many characters that i didn't get to develop. going around the world frankly and having conversations with people, it just inspired so many more stories and narratives that i felt i had to bring to the culture. lion's gate asked me have you been thinking about a show and it just so happens i had. >> what are you doing justin, got anything to do? do this series. it's also prophetic. it's funny that people freaked

out about this film as if it's just sort of an outrage upon white america when, in fact, in real life right now you guys opened the film and it sort of centers around this black face party that's held by a white fraternity type organization on campus. the "washington post" reporting at baylor university one of their fraternities held a cinco dedrink co party and every year at halloween we have to reremind cleb celebrities that they can't dress up in black face. why do you suppose she is issues remain perennial among the younger generation that we keep saying are so evolved on race? >> i think we have this sort of historical -- i feel like part of this is the educational system. we have to come up with an understanding of what happened with slavery, after slavery, and how it frankly still reverberates in our culture to this very day and very palpable

demonstratable ways. i think that if all you know of black people is sort of what you see on tv and that's what you replicate, this is what you're going to get frankly. >> absolutely. you know the other ways in which you guys are very timely and topical, you have an episode in episode five and i am binge watching the heck out of this show. reggie is confronted at a party by a campus police officer. let's take a look. >> i'm going to need to see your i.d. >> why you need to see my i.d.? >> son, i said i.d. >> reggie, do what he says. >> i said show me some i.d.! >> that's sort of the fear of every black parent basically, that their son who they've dressed up and sent off to college and they're paying tuition for won't come home because of an encounter with a police officer who's having a bad day. >> absolutely. it was one of those things that i just felt i had a responsibility to tell that story about what it feels like to be a young black person in this country. you're just walking through the world, minding your black

business, and then no matter who you are, no matter what class or city or level of education you have, you know, it's fatal to be black, it really is. and that's something that, you know, i think a lot of people have to deal with and confront in an honest way. our show runner, yvette lee bowser, she was telling us a story about how she was on the phone with her husband while they got pulled over by a cop and she was terrified for a moment that is she going to hear, you know, the end of her husband and her son's life. these are things that we actually deal with on a day-to-day basis. >> is it depressing to think that in 2017 this is still where we are, that we still have this fundamental fear of the police even among college, collegiate black people, you just had this 15-year-old boy killed in a driveway after leaving a party because he thought the party was too rowdy, that you're literally not safe anywhere.

does it ever depress you that this is still the story that you have to tell? >> oh, my god, it is profoundly depressing, to be honest. the only thing that gives me some sort of good feeling is that i believe what's unique to my generation is we do have a voice. a guy like me wouldn't be able to voice these things just a generation before, and i have to take that, use that platform to say something about this stuff. of course it's profoundly traumatizing. every single day when you wake up and you see somebody's name or some city hashtag that's trending, the heart stops. like who did we lose this time. what family has been destroyed this time. >> and this happens -- your film takes place at a predominantly white college but this happens in a week where no only is betsy devos going to speak at ba thune but you have donald trump questioning whether the key funding for black colleges is

even constitutional. what do you make of the real world where the president of the united states brings all the black colleges in for a photo op and says, i may not fund you. >> what do i make unfortunately it's nothing new. black people have been used to sort of help politicians since time in memorial. and you know, i think it's this source -- he talks about this sort of kind of like guilt that sort p happens in the oppressive class of a community. i think all of this is really still a backlash from the obama administration, don't know how else to interpret it. >> i hope everyone will check out "dear white people." you have something in common with the show, it is your birthday. >> it is. >> happy birthday to you. >> happy hanniversary to you. >> thank you. congrats on your show. >> there is much more birthday am joy after the break. (vo) my name is bryan.

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earlier this week we celebrated our first anniversary as a show at "am joy." here's behind the scene images you and i have not seen because my team tricked me. >> we look great. we do look good. there's my uncle. look at that. >> adorable. hi, marina. >> the team. aw.

london. malcolm. >> is that ed sheeran in the picture? yep. mr. spock. ♪ aw, my hubby. wow, that is awesome. oh, my! oh, my --

[ applause ] >> you guys are the best. you guys are so tricksy, oh, my god. you guys are excellent at surprises. first after all one of the most attractive seen i've ever seen in television. everybody looked amazing. the most wonderful team in the history of tv. thanks for making this the coolest job ever. give the guys on coko camera tor mommas can see they looked so beautiful. they dressed up so nice. get your faces on tv. i want to thank the team also for getting all of those promos together, we did not have any idea that chris and rachel and katy tur and all of the guys who did those promos, it was so sweet and lawrence, love you guys, this is the greatest job in the world. i have the most wonderful team, the greatest producers ever and the most awesome bad as crew, you don't get to see them behind the scenes an amazing crew both in the control room and in the

room here behind the scenes and taking care of us and making us look good. be sure to join us next weekend for more "am joy." thomas roberts has the latest on france's high stakes presidential election next but does he have cake? more news at the top of the hour. ♪ if you've got a life, you gotta swiffer poallergies?reather. stuffy nose? can't sleep? take that. a breathe right nasal strip instantly opens your nose up to 38% more than allergy medicine alone.

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everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..." through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald's helps more people go to college. it's part of our commitment to being america's best first job. ♪ >> hey, everybody, i'm thomas roberts in new york. high noon on the east, 9:00 out west. we start with politics. new reaction from the trump administration, it's pushing back on criticism of the republicans health care bill as it now heads over to the senate side. here's what the health and human services tom price told my colleague andrea mitchell on the issue of the nearly $1 trillion in medicaid cuts earlier on "meet the press."" >> so what we're trying to do is improve theed