breaking news as it happens. you can find me on twitter and instagram, and facebook. joy reid is next. stick around for that. have a great night. [ chanting ] this was the scene outside senate majority leader mitch mcconnell's office on thursday after he revealed the new republicans health bill. one a small handful of senate men concocted in secret. they are calling it a repeal bill, but what it does is

devastate medicaid, the largest health care program in the country. in exchange for a massive tax cut for the rich. like the house version, the senate bill would cap medicaid spending for the first time. they haven't scored the senate bill yet, but it predicted that the house bill would cut more than $800 billion for medicaid over ten years. $800 billion. that's nearly a quarter of the medicaid program. again, republicans want to cut a program that covers 20% of all americans. a program that covers half of all births in this country. it covers 60% of children with disabilities and 64% of nursing home residents. a quarter of that program, gone. millions of the most vulnerable americans left without access to medical care so republicans can give enormous tax cut to the rich. the hundreds of billions of dollars cut for medicaid would fund hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. 40% of which will go to the richest 1% of americans.

how can republicans justify voting for it? we have republican congressman tom reid of new york. i thank you for coming on to talk about this bill. it's not easy to get republicans to come out and sort of support it. i wanted to ask you to tell me how you can justify the fact that you have a bill that would cut billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to medicaid that get the cuts that are as follows. the richest would get $207,000, the richest 20% would get $2,700, and everyone else would get $265. how can you justify cutting the health care for the poor, elderly and children to pay for that? >> i reject your premise. what we're doing is reforming med medicaid, because your premise is just false. medicaid is on the path of unsustainability. i support medicaid, and my fellow republicans do too. for you to suggest that's why

we're taking on medicaid is just false. >> can you explain what is medicaid? explain what is it? >> for lower income folks that are struggling amongst us, our colleagues, our peers, our family members, our friends, and making sure there is a safety net there. i support that. my fellow republicans support that too. >> they can reimburse hospitals to care for the poor. if there is less money being paid for states to care for the poor, how does that reform the program that is based on money to pay hospitals to care for the poor? >> because that money is hard-working american taxpayer dollars. that's not an endless pot of money. we're running deficits, and $20 trillion of national debt. hard working americans cannot afford it anymore. >> you're saying that taxpayers can't afford to pay for health care for the poor, so the poor should simply receive less health care? that's the logical conclusion to what you are saying.

>> no. >> i want to show you what the senator for american progress has looked at this bill. they said by 2026, 18,000 to 27,000 additional americans would die. this is based on data showing immortality for the uninsured. 15 million are uninsured and on the high end, 23 million. they can't get health care. so what you are saying is taxpayers are more important? >> we need to make the program sustainable, and you have to change the way we domed ka medi and we have to reward quality, not expand the service, and reward states for how much they get paid. from our perspective, we have to do better, and i have to be part of the effort believe to make

sure the status quo will move forward because that will save americans. we need to save this and fix this. >> in addition to the fact that what you are saying is you will fix medicaid by giving it less money, essentially, starving it of money, and when you have talked about, when you yourself, and your colleagues have talked about this bill, you haven't talked about reform. i have a memo here that was put out by the members of the new york delegation, and this is for people to see. the plotting of house proposal that included a provision that one of your colleagues got put into the bill. and here's what that bill is. from the buffalo news, the gop health care bill would bar new york from charging upstate counties for medicaid. no money would come from upstate counties. you support the amendment, and praised him for getting that amendment through, and in your

praise, you talked only about taxes. you said essentially that you have pushed this item for local property taxpayers for the region that albany was very proactive in pushing thistaxpay faso only talked about the environment. this is to eliminate and save new york 19 property taxpayers millions of dollars. if this is about reforming medicaid, why are and you your colleagues only talking about tax cuts? you're praising tax cuts. >> i wholly support john faso and mr. collins' amendment. here in western new york, people are leaving in droves because they can't pay their bills and take care of their homes. what we should do is put the burden on the state capitol because they control how this program is delivered at the local level.

new york is one of the only states that puts it on the taxpayers to foot the bill. from my perspective, this is a great amendment that needs to be supported and reduce the -- $145 million in my low income areas across this district are going to be relieved. that's the right thing to do. >> it's not a low income district. we're essentially talking about a more affluent district -- >> that's wrong. >> put back up the faso tweet because it talks about the amount of money they would save. this is significant amounts of tax money, meaning these are affluent homeowners. wouldn't it be more honest so say, we don't want tax dollars, our tax dollars to go to pay for low income health care? we just don't want it to happen, and it isn't about reform. it's about what you have praised. making sure that taxpayers don't have to pay for low income

health care. >> that's absolutely false. in my district, the average is alary is about $30,000 a year. to say that's affluent is hogwash, and you don't know the facts. we are talking about a program that is unstable and going bankrupt, and it's crushing our local american taxpayers across the board. we need to do better than that, joy. i'm all about trying to put the pressure where the pressure needs to be. the powers decide how this operates and they need to bear the pressure and burden of making sure they are doing the most efficient and effective way possible. >> you're right about your district. i stand corrected on that, but the amendment that you supported is that essentially, you are saying that you don't believe that taxpayers should pay for it, which by the way, is not going bankrupt. impeerically, it's not. what you are saying is you want to take the money out of medicaid. the plain fact here is this is not about medicaid reform. you, sir, believe that medicaid

should just receive less money, and it shouldn't be getting its money from property taxpayers, right? >> absolutely not correct. it will be a taxpayer-funded -- >> with less money in it. >> having a hard time. of course. what you have to do is make sure you don't reward inefficiency like we do now. this is what the problem of the program is. the more they serve, and the more money they spend and get from the american taxpayer. we need to change that formula, and make sure that the form rewards doing more with less, and not encourage us to do more ineffective, inefficient delivery of health care. >> let's talk about the medicaid expansion because this has become one of the sticking points. this isn't about whether or not medicaid spends more minute. this is literally about adding millions of people to the eligibility to get it at all. if the medicaid expansion is rolled back, the people that fit into the new formula, they get

medicaid at all, that means that group of people just doesn't get medicaid at all. what should happen to those people? how should they get health care? >> that's exactly -- when you are talking to people of 100% of the poverty level or less will get medicaid. >> you want to get rid of the expansion. what what happens to those people? they won't have insurance. how do you believe those people should get health care? >> we have to make sure we design the tax credits and health care system that delivers lower cost and get the cost of health care under control so that health care cost go under control and people have act sce to health care. >> the people before the expansion didn't have a policy at all. they didn't have an insurance card to go to the doctor. more efficiency in the system won't change anything. they won't have insurance. how will those people get health care at all? >> absolutely, and that's where

the republican plan puts the tax plan in place to provide them health insurance and the whole idea is to get the health care cost under control. that's the third step of our process. >> these are not people who are itemizing reduction. you're talking about the 25% of the populous. that's not a lot of money. >> actually, joy -- that's wrong. these are refundable tax credits where folks get them up front, and they can relieve the premium cost that they will be absorbing in that policy. as we phase out, that is what we're replacing it with. >> just so we understand, you want to give a very substantial tax cut, in your case. you don't want to taxpayers in your district to fund medicaid at all. you're rolling that back making it unlawful to fund medicaid, and cutover all cost, which

means they get less money, and give them tax credits. that's the plan? >> that's the fundamental essence, is empower people. rather than expanding government to where it's not sustainable. american taxpayers can't foot this bill because they are tapped out. >> all right. i'm sorry. one second. we have a guest here who is whispering to my ear that she wants to ask you a question. i'm going to let one of my guests in. you seem to have a question for the congressman, and if you don't mind, i want to let her ask that question. >> well, the tax credits are less under the senate bill, so they are lower, so while you're taking away medicaid for those people, they won't be eligible for the same level of tax credits they would have been eligible for before. you're giving them less. >> because where we're going to end up, they have to do their amendment process. our tax credits in the house were based on age. the senate took a step in the right direction when you

incorporate income, and that has to be the corner stone, and that's a sweet spot to the finish line. >> you're acknowledging for those people who won't be eligible for medicaid anymore, that the tax credit they receive is less, this would put a greater financial burden on them in terms of purchasing insurance. >> no. they will have -- they will have access to a tax credit that they can access themselves. >> that's lower. >> and find thainsurance that ws for them. it's through government and themselves as individuals. >> i think we understand where you are going with this. you want people to essentially -- it is a rollback of medicaid. it's a decrease, and i want to ask you this question in the end. do you stand by, in the end, the idea that the wealthiest people in this country, as a result of this bill, if it is signed into law, will get a tax cut, if that if they are in the richest 1% is

more than the average in your district? the richest will get $37,230? is that fair to get acted into law? >> there is nothing wrong with reducing the tax burden, and that what we have done here in this bill. and you know what foots the bill, are the hard working americans, and from my perspective, anything we can do to alleviate tax burdens is the right direction. >> you have made it clear. congressman tom reed. thank you for doing this. we appreciate it. >> i appreciate the debate. thank you so much. >> when we come back, tara and the rest of my panel weighs in. you don't want to miss it. a million times. and you always laugh like you're hearing it for the first time. at lincoln financial, we get there are some responsibilities of love

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elizabeth warren had choice words about her colleague's new health care bill. >> medicaid is the program in this country that provides health insurance to one in five americans. to 30 million kids to nearly two out of every three people in a nursing home. these cuts are blood money. people will die. let's be very clear. senate republicans are paying for tax cuts for the wealthy with american lives. >> now let's bring in my panel political marketing consultant tara, investigative reporter david k. jonston, and president of the foundation for research and equal opportunity and former health care policy adviser, mitt romney. i'm going to start with you on this. i applaud congressman tom reed for coming on. it's hard for them to come on,

and he came on, and i thought in the end, he was quite honest about something. which is that if you are a middle class sort of homeowner taxpayer in upstate new york, and your congressman says to you as they did in this e-mail praising their compromise they gave which said it would be unlawful, essentially, to tax those middle class homeowners to pay for medicaid for the urban poor. if you are that homeowner, you're saying, if my congressman is going to give me $265, and i don't have to pay for those people, i don't even know, you might actually say that's a fair trade-off, that all you personally care about is your little $265 tax rebate that your taxes will go down, that you don't have to pay for those people. isn't what the republicans are doing essentially is pitting americans who may not need, not have a catastrophic health emergency now. so right now to them, it's, like, yeah. get rid of medicaid. they only find out that a refundable tax credit may not be great when mom goes in a nursing home five or six years from now,

but by then, mitch mcconnell will have passed his bill, right? >> i think there were a lot of factual deficiencies in the discussion with the congressman. it's important to understand that $882 billion in reductions in medicaid spending, 85% of that comes from the phase-out of obamacare's expansion of medicaid. it doesn't touch the traditional medicaid. there are reforms as well. we can get to that. but the vast majority of that dollar figure is the phase-out of the aca's expansion of medicaid which is replaced in this senate bill, with robust refundable advanceable tax credits that are structured similarly to the affordable care act's exchanges. pretty much the same kind of mechanism to deliver coverage to that same population. that was on the medicaid expansion before. so in texas where i live, there are going to be millions more with health insurance as a result of this bill because texas didn't expand medicaid, but these tax credits will be available to everyone in texas

who is under 100% or 138% of the poverty line. >> how does the cbo get to the fact 20 million fewer will have health insurance? most of that figure, the medicaid expansion if you repeal it, the raw number of people were made eligible for it become ineligible. they lose their medicaid card. so if what you're saying is no, they are just trading in their medicaid card for a different kind of insurance that's a tax credit, how does the cbo get to 20 million people losing their health insurance? >> we don't of course have the score of the senate bill yet. >> the house version is similar. >> right. i think so too. and the vast majority of the cbo's coverage score is driven by one thing, joy. it's the repeal of the mandate of the 23 million who will lose coverage, about 18 million of that is accounted for in the cbo's model by the fact you are repealing the mandate, i.e., 18 million of those people

are only signing up for coverage because they are forced to by a fine. >> you're saying 20 million do not want to be covered by health n. >> that's what the cbo says. >> i don't think so but let's david respond. >> can we step back out of the deep weeds here? >> please. >> think about health care. donald trump once said to me, health care should be like the roads. we already have a rube goldberg machine. let's simplify all of this. we need to reform health care. no reasonable student of this fails to understand that our health care system isn't a health care system. it's a non-system, sick care system. it kills people, it's inefficient, and allows people to game the system. and let me give a simple number. we spend 6 percentage points of our economy more than the french who have the best health care system in the world with no out-of-pocket costs or virtually. if we had the french system it would be the equivalent of

everybody who makes less than 5 $500,000, a year paying no income taxes. that's how much we would save. if tax savings is the goal here then let's go adopt the french system and transfer into it and we can eliminate the income tax for 99% of all americans. the idea that we're going to these tax credits, why are tax credits always the solution to every problem? why not have a simple system. you're an american, you have a card, you need health care, you go and get health care. and then the debate is simply how robustly do we want to fund it. are we going to make people wait two hours to see a doctor or two days? and that's a debate that's easy to have. and by the way -- >> what's important to know -- >> i do want to ask that question of you because we had debates about other issues. typically, your response to what you would say reforming systems in the country, whether it's health care or others is tax credits, meaning that people spend out the money out of their pocket i'm assuming, then at april 15th tax time -- >> no. >> they fill out and get money

back. or sending people a check? tax credits are the go-to sort of conservative solution for everything. >> joy, this is a really, really important point. i'm glad you raise this. the subsidies that people get in the obamacare exchanges to buy health insurance are tax credits, they are advanceable refundable tax credits. and so why i think this bill is such an advance, is just to david's point, i agree with him. i like the swiss model, but not the french model. but we have a lot to learn from europe. this is a system that switzerland has. instead of medicaid and the exchanges, you have to disenroll and enroll with different doctors and different networks and different co-pays. put them on the same system, where if your income goes up and down, you're on the same exchange, with the same tax credits. maybe your financial assistance goes up and down based on income but otherwise you're in one system. that's going to provide better care to these individuals, going to allow them to stay with one physician and one set of people who are caring for them.

and i think that's going to be a much better, have much better health outcome as a result of that continuity of care. that's one of the reasons this bill is better than the status quo. >> let me ask you this one question, tara. you were a business owner in addition. and one of the targets for republicans, one of the reasons that i think they are sort of succeeding in pitting different elements of society against each other and the poor and the elderly and the sick and children don't really have -- they aren't the most powerful constituency in the world. they are on the losing end of this battle. on the winning end not just the homeowner who wants his $265. i don't care what happens with those people far away from me. you have business owners who the one place i will give -- agree with ovik in some of the people that would lose health care, i talk to small business owners who feel it is a burden on them to have to provide health care to employees. so if you have somebody who's got 20 employees and they don't want to foot the bill under the obamacare mandate, they, in

theory, could free 20 people in their mind. quote/unquote free them because they we have to pay for their health care. so isn't that what is happening. it's pitting people who may not want to do this, they may not want to provide this care to employees against people who needed. >> right. well no, that's exactly what this is. this is all about picking winners and losers, right? and pitting people against one another and also playing on people's fears, right? and also misinformation. so for one thing, i am a small business owner who has purchased a gold plan recently on the obamacare exchange for one of my employees where i cover 100% of the premium of that cost and there's no deductible on the plan. so let me be clear about where i stand on that. but, with respect to small business owners, if you have 50 employees or fewer, you do not have to comply with the mandate. so if you have 50 employees or more, then you are doing very well. i have, i'm in the 10 employees or fewer range of this. so that's number one. so a lot of small business owners don't have to.

if you choose to provide it as i have, i am eligible because i have 25 employees or fewer to receive a tax credit which helps me as a small business owner. the other point here is with the individual mandate, this is something i think is missing here. when you take away the individual mandate what's going to happen is healthier, younger people are not going to sign up. that is why it was put in place. so by definition, costs will go up without them helping to subsidize the sicker people who need to sign up. >> this is a great debate. i think we should bring you guys all back and do it again. it's hard to get around the data that's coming out of the cbo that says empirically, ovik, saying 20 voluntary get off but you're talking about medicaid that i don't think there is any one who is on it that wants to lose it. we can continue to have the debate. and i appreciate you guys doing it. tara will be back later.

thank you. we'll bring you guys back. up next, the pelosi blame game. stay with us. (vo) pro plan bright mind

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i think our message is under every roof in america, are the dreams that every family has for their kids, for their job and their health care, and we're for you. and we just need to do a better job of communicating that. >> the other way to look at this is, look. candidates matter. you had a very young candidate, a charismatic one. but he didn't have the longest resume. he can't live in the district, so that was a challenge. >> there is no question millions of dollars were spent in tying the democrat candidate in georgia to nancy pelosi and i think that was a significant factor in the final result.

not the only thing. >> republican karen handle's victory of the special house election in georgia turned democrats into armchair quarterbacks. liberal dem leaders had a host of reasons for what went wrong. to the party's candidate 30-year-old jon ossoff and some even reached all the way to the house of representatives to blame the party's minority leader in that body, nancy pelosi. her supposedly toxic image weighing down democrats. what's often lost in the blame game however, is the political reality of a republican district that hasn't sent a democrat to congress in 39 years. back with me at the table joining me is jimy williams, and strate strategist jason johnson, so this is, like, the perfect panel for this. i do believe all you, he's not going to win. but the main he's not going to win guy is my buddy jimmy. what happened? you said he wasn't going to win. you want to say i told you so for three minutes or explain what happened?

>> no, simple. it's a very republican district and it doesn't matter how much money -- what is it? $20 million? the dccc spent 6 million in that district and ran ads with pelosi. set the pelosi thing aside. that may have had an influence. that's not my problem. my problem is the dccc blew its entire like bank account but you get my point, on a race of a 30-year-old who didn't live in the district, who had never run for office before, against a very bad candidate, and by the way, the campaign put out a postmortem memo that said ossoff never went below a 50% approval rating. he lost. why would the dccc spend $6 million on that race when on the same day, about 150 miles

away in south carolina, in the old john sprat seat, archie parnell was running he lost that race by 2700 votes. eight votes per precinct. how much did they spend there, around $275,000. they sent out mailers, none of which had archie's name on them. did radio, they did tv, they did facebook. they did all kinds of things. heck, they even wired $145,000 to the south carolina democratic party who then proceeded to wire it back to them for some unknown reason. i don't understand that. what i do understand is this. >> mm-hmm. >> what i do understand is this. the democratic party, the dccc and the leadership, made a huge massive mistake, they could have elected at least one democrat last week, and they made the mistake and didn't do it. >> or the other way you could say is that they lost the ossoff race. they could have lost the ossoff race for free is what you are saying. >> that's right. >> i wanted quickly -- you wrote what i thought, before i get to your piece just the stats, the political report

looked at the rating of the georgia six race and it's r plus 8. 71 republican held districts have a smaller gop lean than that, and democrats need 24 seats to take control of the house. to the point that was made, the ossoff campaign put out a memo where they did a postmortem. georgia 6 a deeply red district. tom price was consistently elected by double digit margins. i think 23 points last time. there are twice as many republicans as democrats. there is no path to victory here without independents and some republicans. in this environment, fighting right wing groups. your thoughts on that postmortem? >> i thought it was reasonable. there was one thing that they were missing, joy, the lesson that could have been learned from south carolina. there's this crazy idea that like when you want to win an election you should spend money on your own people and not trying to convince people who don't like you. the ossoff campaign if there is one mistake they made, they didn't spend enough money in the african-american and latino

community in georgia 6. it's not a guarantee they were going to win but they left that to a lot of outside groups. now the reality is with so much early turnout and so much attention being paid, republicans came out and voted early. the right-leaning independents came out and voted early. ossoff overperformed and you speak to anybody there and that's what they say. they still missed the boat, you need to focus on black men, black women, latinos and single people. more because that's the future of the democratic party. not a bunch of soccer moms that are never going to vote for you. >> jason did write, it's a great piece if anybody hasn't read it. white people generally don't vote for democratic party in georgia or any other southern state. three need to team up with black voters to send a message to trump from georgia. it was a fantasy created by the blue screen, and cgi who wanted a happy ending to the trump narrative. democrats are crying over losing in montana, kansas, south carolina and georgia.

and they are acting as if there was some way they could have won when this they, to jason's point, are paying sole attention to flipping white voters who are republicans. >> right. and so you know where i stand on this, joy. you know we had this conversation many times. i am a big believer in, if you cannot maximize turnout which jon ossoff did, i don't want to -- but if you cannot maximize fully turnout among your own people, then it is pointless to then -- if you can't convince the people who are already ideologically, primarily aligned with you, and just may not be motivated to vote, you're going to have a heck of a time trying to convince people who are not predisposed to your position. so i do think that the thing the democrats need to focus on in my mind is massive voter registration and i think that let the outside groups do what what they do but you need have your campaign need as process for that as well. voter suppression is still an

issue in this country and it's not getting enough attention and it's only getting worse. so you have jerry -- gerrymandered districts already in an uphill battle. combine that with the fact they are active and aggressive efforts going on to disenfranchise people and black, brown, asian, but not just that, white voters who align with the democratic party are having trouble. college students are not being able to use student i.d., gun owner's permit is eligible. early voting being cut. there is a massive assault on voting rights in this country and that's something that democrats need to aggressively attack. >> jason, to that point the thing the democrats do in that vain is say john lewis or do an ad or have barack obama cut a radio ad and then don't do anything in terms of mobilizing black voters. >> exactly. in john lewis is great and everybody heard his stories and he is wonderful but there is this problem. this is the difference, what they did in south carolina. it was very experimental. let's be fair.

if the democrats have focused on south carolina it would have gotten blown out. the reason they did well is it stuck up on the candidate. what they decided to do is develop more targeted messages for african-americans. he didn't just talk about the aca, but you said look, this affects heart disease which affects the black community. turnout has to be specific tike the people that you're talking to. and all too often democrats seem to think that telling black folk and telling hispanic hey there is an election is enough. that is the lesson that should be learned. it's not nancy pelosi's fault, not jon ossoff's fault. it had nothing to do with him living outside the district. it had to do with the basic facts. one last thing, when you poll someone out of congress to join your administration you only poll from safe districts. trump wasn't going to pull anyone from a purple district. >> i think that's the other point. bringing nancy pelosi into it assumes that voters are sort of helpless victims of propaganda like you can just say nonsay employee say, and they say, oh, my god.

i can't vote for them. isn't it also the case, you talk about ina lot, nationalizing these elections isn't also the way to go. you need to pick the district. who fits the district, run somebody and spend some money. right? >> let me follow up on something jason said. the dnc did do that money to south carolina '05 and it worked pretty well. to that point though, yes, look, nancy pelosi you can blame her all day long. if i have hemorrhoids, it's not nancy employpelosi's fault. however i'm also never running for an office no matter what so no one is going to be able to blame nancy pelosi for that fact. in georgia that did work to a large degree. in south carolina, even if south carolina, the democratic party here, had spent that money before they sent it back that would have never shown up on the fec reports until the middle of july well after archie parnell

had been sworn in as a member of congress, so -- the pelosi effect wouldn't have mattered in south carolina. it simply wouldn't have. you do have to -- listen. tara is right. jason's right. voter registration, calling out suppression, that stuff has to be a priority for the parties, building parties means building people. if you don't do that you can't win in south carolina, and so do the -- the dccc, they failed in both of these. >> i like the fact that you called out the dccc. they exist. nancy pelosi doesn't run these, it's the dccc's job to win these elections. and just one more editorial thing. spending all of that money on tv as opposed to spending it on voter registration and ground game might be a problem too. if you did have hemorrhoids i bet you nancy would send you a designer pillow. that's how she -- that's how you know, she's going to send you something. >> i have a designer pillow. thank you. >> you guys are great. tara, jason, wish you were all here. coming up, former actor or acting attorney general sally

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up next, sally yates takes on jefferson beauregard sessions. stay with us for "am joy" after the break. this is me when i feel controlled by frequent, unpredictable abdominal pain or discomfort and diarrhea. i tried lifestyle changes and over-the-counter treatments, but my symptoms keep coming back. it turns out i have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d.

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acting attorney general when -- whom donald trump fired for refusing to support his muslim travel ban is once again taking on the administration. in an op ed she criticized sessions for ordering prosecutors to go back to seeking harsh drugs and he said it is only way to fight violent crime. yates write, that argument just isn't supported by the facts. while there is always room to debate the most effective approach to criminal justice, that debate should be based on facts not fearment and sally yates just joined twitter and

she's following colleague vanita gupta who civil and human rights and she joins me now. congratulations on being one of only three people that sally yates is following and eric holder ab preet bharara, why do you think that a.j. sessions is so fixated on saying that violent crime is on the rise and is it? >> well, you know the administration started on inauguration day talking about carnage in our cities and the country is at historic low in violent crime. there are a handful of cities that have seen a rise but this attorney general is using fear mongering to -- he wrote another op ed in the washington post i think as a result of criticism that he was getting, a lot from conservative colleagues who are pointing to evidence to the contrary, that actually violent

crime is down at historic lows and there is no evident that exists to establish that violent crime upticks in a handful of cities that we're seeing has anything to do with the fact that people with drug convictions aren't serving long sentences. it just defies the imagination, it seems like a highly politicized rhetoric that he's using and it has dangerous consequences. >> and i feel like it is very ideological. jeff sessions when he was in the senate was known to be fixated on immigration and some of the issues and this idea that there is all of the violent crime in the cities and the op ed that he wrote and that sally yates was responding to said it is time to get tough again and he is claiming that somehow the -- i guess he's presuming the previous administration was tough on -- soft on crime. let's listen to a may 25th speech that sessions gave in front of law enforcement officers in memphis, tennessee. >> every one of our citis, no matter who they are or where they live, have a right to be safe in their homes and in their

communities. safe from gangs and rapists and carjackers and drug dealers. we must act to reverse this surge in violent crime and keep our country and every single community safe. >> and he's also claiming that the federal government softened its approach to drug enforcement and crime surge saying that about the administration you are part of. how do you respond? >> you know, again, it is highly ideological. in fact, i would say that attorney general holder, when he instituted smart on crime, which was aimed at a reserve of federal law enforcement resources to prosecute the most serious crimes and complex crimes, was really actually following the suit of countless states in the last several years, red states, blue states, that had recognized that we needed to have more evidence and data-driven policies really driving our criminal justice system rather than a set of

ideology that promoted mass incarceration for the last several years and the smart on crime instituted at the justice department were aimed at the most serious offenses and about trying to take away the really harsh mandatory minimums that tied the hasn'ts of federal judges. you have federal judges resign over the fact that the inability to calibrate sentences according to the facts of any driven crime had just tied the hands of judges and resulted in a grossly unfair racially disproportionate system. and so to say that somehow this was soft on crime is really ignoring the fact that crime continued to go down even while the federal prison population started to go down. and that it is really important for a federal prosecutor to be able to have -- use their discretion to calibrate sentences and to not impose long, severe sentences for low-level drug crimes that has

been the case for far too long in this country. >> and i want to put up this chart that shows the violent crime rate in 1991, and now standing at 366 which is about cut in half. but as we close. are you concerned about the message that this sends to law enforcement, even though we are talking federal law enforcement, but local law enforcement. we just saw the fiphilando caste verdict come back and some pummelled by law enforcement officers ab are you worried about what this is sending to law enforcement about themselves and how they should behave versus the citizenry. >> i'm very worried about this. the attorney general doesn't just have a say so over federal law enforcement, he has a bully pulpit and funding dollars that go to state and local and his rhetoric is taking us back to 1980s policy and undoing the police reform work that has been so important. the good news is i think reform

is going to continue because people see the attorney general for what he is and we have to continue with data driven policies that make our communities safe. >> thank you. much appreciated. thank you. and that is our show for today. join us tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. for am joy. keep it right here on msnbc. card from capital one. with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on all of my purchasing. and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business... which adds fuel to my bottom line. what's in your wallet?

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washington post today dropped this huge story. it is more of a small book really. about the russian attack on our presidential election last year. and how the obama administration came to recognize that that was happening. what they understood about it. and importantly, how they reacted to it once they realized what it was. in just a moment, we're going to be joined live by one of the reporters who broke that story. and there is a lot to talk to her about. this story today at the washington post, it is like ten front-page worthy scoops all in one big story. and among those, among the