it's interesting. i've only been here five months. people say what where's the health care? i've done in five months what other people haven't done in years and people have worked on health care for many years. it's a very complicated situation from the standpoint you do something that's good for one group but bad for another. >> good morning and welcome to "a.m. joy." five months into donald trump's term, republicans are closer than ever to repealing the affordable care act. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell plans to bring his bill, californiaed in secret by a handful of senate men, and reveal to the rest of us only last thursday, to a vote by the end of this coming week.

but it's not yet clear if it has enough support to pass. so far five gop senators have come out against the bill as it is now, four because it doesn't go far enough in rolling back obamacare and one because it goes too far. now, just so that you're prepared, know that washington and the media are going to spend much of the next week obsessing over process, wloefr these five senators will come around to help give donald trump his first major legislative win. so it's important that while this is going on that we put this ups predented rush to pass a bill with no hearings, none, and literally within a few weeks into some perspective. the debate that senate republicans are having is not about health care, not about health care at all. you heard that yesterday on this show when we talked to a republican congressman not about health care but about taxes. that's because this bill, both the house and the senate versions, is about one thing -- how much the safety net can be gutted in order to provide massive tax cuts for the richest people in this country.

some of the more honest republicans are actually kind of admitting it. at the same time that this bill slashes funding for medicaid, a program that covers 1 in 5 americans, including 3 in 5 disabled children, it cuts a trillion dollars in taxes with two-fifths going to the wealthiest 1%. 2 out of every 5 dollars. republicans know that. it's their bill. and presumably the white house knows it too. including the fact that americans hate this bill. which may be why this week we were treated to an increasingly rare sean spicer sound bite. audio only per the new rules. in which he gave this sales pitch. >> he's talked about having heart and he likes a lot of the reforms that have been in there. he's committed to making sure that no one who currently is in the medicaid program is affected in any way, which is reflected in the senate bill, and he's pleased with that. >> joining me now is senator sherrod brown, democrat from ohio. thanks for being here.

let's start sort of big picture then zoom in more on your state of ohio. medicaid covers 20% of all americans. it covers 49% of all births. it covers 60% of children with disabilities and 64% of nursing home residents. how are your colleagues on the other side of the aisle justifying giving tax cuts to the rich in exchange for hurting those people? >> well, they deflect attention from that. that's why your open was so important that you point out that this is primarily a tax bill, a tax bill should be going through the process as a tax bill, not as a health care bill. one thing -- the only thing you left out, joy, is that those meetings of the all white male senators in mckonl's office, the people you left out were the insurance company lobbyists and the drug company lobbyists and the medical device lobbyists. so while you say 2 out of 5 are tax cuts for the richest 1%,

true, there's huge tax cuts for the medical industry too. that's why those drug company and insurance company and medical device lobbyists were in there writing the bill too. you start with that. i don't know how they justify doing this, a huge tax cut, a huge wealth transfer from middle class, working class, working poor to the wealthiest people in the country as if the chasm is not big enough in the united states of america anyway. >> well, i think it's been difficult, you know, to get republicans to come on and justify. we had one come on yesterday that pretty much admitted he wants to make sure the taxpayers in his district don't pay for medicaid because he thinks it's unfair. so i think he's being honest about it. but let's stoom in a little bit. the opioid epidemic, which is acute in the state of ohio. medicaid accounts for, according

to the statistics, 24% of all opioid addiction treatment prescriptions nationwide. 1.2 million people who have been covered by the expansion of mental health and substance abuse issues. ohio happens to lead the states in fatal opioid overdoses. 4,149 ohioans died from overdoses in 2016, up 36%. i want to let you listen to your fellow senator, rob portman, talking before the bill's lease about his concerns about the medicaid expansion being rolled back and how that might impact the opioid epidemic. >> my concern is that some people are getting treatment currently under expanded medicaid in particular, which is the change in the affordable care act, might not be able to continue to get that treatment. we've made some progress but we're not there yet. >> would you vote for something that takes that away? >> so, senator brown, he did not

answer whether or not he'd vote for the bill. do you happen to know if he will? >> i obviously don't speak for him. our relationship is good. we fundamentally disagree on rollback of medicaid. i'm with governor kasich on this, a republican governor in ohio, who expanded under the affordable care act we gave him the opportunity to expand medicaid, he did, to 700,000 people. the key number in ohio and it shows the heartbreak in how sad this is and what a public health challenge it is, 200,000 people right now in ohio, 200,000 people in my state alone are getting opioid treatment but a they have insurance from the affordable care act. what republicans are going do is put a little pot of money in this bill, scale back medicaid, throwing those people off medicaid, they're going to put some dollars, a pot of money and say that's to take care of opioid addiction treatment. but you don't treat it with a grant. you wouldn't cut cancer treatment and say we'll give you

a federal grant to do cancer treatment. you want to insure people so they can get everything from education to prevention to counseling to medication-assi medication-assisted therapy. it needs to be a comprehensive health care program for each individual medicaid beneficiary and that's what medicaid does. a grant like this will do nothing. i'm hopeful that senator portman and capitoe in west virginia, they stick with the medicaid way of doing it because it's the only way to address this public health crisis. >> yesterday a republican on who's been working on these health care issues a long time, used to work with mitt romney, he's called this bill if it passes a positive revolutionary change because in his view replacing medicaid and medicaid expansion with refundable axe tax credits for people who are 125% of the poverty rate, giving

them refundable tax celts is a better way for them to access health care. what do you make of that? >> it sounds to me like somebody is deflecting the whole issue that this is a major tax cut for the 1% and for the major insurance, drug company, medical device companies. taking money from working class, the working poor and transferring it to the very wealthy and dressing it up in some kind of nicer package. and in the end, in the end it's absolutely a wealth transfer. it attacks the people who are under the most duress in their lives, whether it's opioid treatment or whether it's cancer treatment. keep in mind, joy, most of these people that are getting assistance under medicaid expansion are people that have jobs. they just don't have the benefits that you do at msnbc, the health benefits, or i do a member of the united states senate. what's particularly morally

reprehensible about this, you've got 250 or 300 members of the house and senate who have taxpayer financed insurance paid for by taxpayers, taking insurance away from so many others so they can give the wealthiest people in this country a tax cut. that's what's so reprehensible. i asked people to go to sherrodbrown.com, sign our petition to fight against this in these last three days. it's going to be a close vote and everybody needs to weigh in across the country with their house members and senators. >> senator sherrod brown, thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> thank you, joy. >> michelle bernard, columnist at roll call, jennifer rubin, opinion writer at "the washington post," and michael steele, former chairman of the rnc. michelle, asking for people to call in and wage this last-minute battle. this vote could come thursday. despite all we know about it, do you expect it to pass? >> you know what, i can't even tell you. i just don't know. it feels like it's not going to

pass. i hope people will call in and go into his website the way he asked. from a humanitarian perspective, the argument that we're having about opioid use and how to treat it is important from the perspective of an african-american, i have to tell you i'm reading all the articles, i'm watching the arguments. i just listened to sherrod brown. he used the word sad, heartbreak. there are other people who have said we can't arrest our way out of this problem. i'm hoping african-americans in particular are paying attention but a the health disparities are amazingly embarrassing, you know? i read somewhere that hoyer win use among whites increased 114% between 2002 and 2013, deaths 286%. no such discussions when black families are being ravaged by crack. the way the u.s. government responded to the crack epidemic was not treatment, it was not a bill, it was not any kind of bill or discussion about sadness and heartbreak. it was minimum sentences, how many people can we incarcerate.

it started the school to prison pipeline. we need to have our voices heard and demand that not only does it not pass but that people focus on health disparities so that communities of color, women and the most vulnerable, are not constantly tramped upon. >> it is interesting, michael steele, you have at the same time that we are having this, you know, really i think important discussion about opioid addiction and what to do about it, you have the attorney general saying we're going to arrest more people. to michelle's point, increasing the pipeline of black and brown people into prison at the same time we're trying to have this opioid addiction conversation. it is also interesting, michael steele, all of this discussion we're having about those important issues is taking place at the same time republicans are really trying to pass a tax cut here. tom reid, i give him great credit for coming on the show. we don't often get republican members to come on the show. this is tom reid yesterday talking about what i think is

the core issue in this bill, not what michelle is talking about, it's tax cuts. >> there is no doubt i believe in reducing the american tax burden and that include what we've done here in this bill. at the end of the day, who foots the bill is hardworking americans who are paying the cost those taxes are assessed back to. anything we can do to alleviate tax burdens is in the right direction for america's future. >> michael steele, it seems the success your party has had is essentially pitting taxpayers, homeowners who pay property taxes, people who don't like taxes, against poor people, old people, and sick people. that's working, righting? >> well, i don't know if it's working. we'll see how this all plays out in the end. i do accept the general premise that this is about taxes. it obviously is. congressman english of pennsylvania said essentially this is about getting the tax revenue issues off the table and one way they can begin do that

is by going through this bill the way they are. the problem i have with all of this is twofold, joy. one is this is not a very smart legislation. it is very bad public policy. and politically it's stupid. but a what you've done now is expose the party on an issue that they think will be gone, they think this time next year, going into the fall election, this won't be an issue. trust me, as a brother who brought the health care fight to nancy pelosi in 2009 and 2010, this will be an issue for republicans in 2018. but a of the impact it's going to have on everybody. and so it's not about just doing health care reform. it's about doing it right. and all the senate has to do and all the house has to do quite honestly is just take your time. do the very thing that you claim democrats didn't do in 2009 and 2010. bring all the stakeholders to the table, have the public

hearings, take your time and do the bill in a way that when it's said and done you can look the american people in the eye, more importantly, that mother who's gotten health care for her child for the first time, amend say you're protected, you're going to be okay. >> jennifer, to michael steele's point, one of the reasons the democrats suffered to much in 2010 is they did a whole summer of hearings. those senate finance committee hearings, most americans never heard of the senate finance committee. they watched these hearings all summer and republicans led by michael steele were able to make hay out of it and make the democrats pay for trying to expand health care. now you have this secretive process where essentially republicans are admitting we're willing to get rid of the medicaid expansion because we want tax cuts and the polls show americans hate it. when it comes to health care, this is the most recent poll, which party would do a better job on health care. 43-26. even democrat who is can't figure out how to win elections,

necessarily, could be able to make hay out of that. this doesn't feel like smart politics but it's much crueller public policy. >> it's real hi completely intellectually dishonest. remember the premise when we started way back? it was that the obamacare exchanges were not doing well enough, that they were dying, they were in a death spiral. put off to the side that's what's going on around the country's not true for just a moment. what does cutting medicaid and giving money to the very rich have to do with that problem? it's completely irrelevant. so the major part of this bill, which the republicans seem to love, the cutting the medicaid and giving it to the rich people, is unrelated to their argument over the last seven years that obamacare can't be fixed. then let's see what they're doing on the obamacare side of things. they said, well, we will fix it for a couple years and here's how we're going to do it, we're going to put some money in and then it will be good for a couple years. you know what, they could do that for many years and they could fix those exchanges. instead, they're giving tax cuts

to the very rich. >> at least in some cases admitting that's what they want to do. michelle, general federal regulators and michael will all be back. syria and north korea put donald trump's policy to the test. remember our special night? abdominal pain... ...and diarrhea. but it's my anniversary. aw. sorry. we've got other plans. your recurring, unpredictable abdominal pain and diarrhea... ...may be irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. you've tried over-the-counter treatments and lifestyle changes, but ibs-d can be really frustrating. talk to your doctor about viberzi,... ...a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage... ...both abdominal pain and diarrhea at the same time. so you stay ahead of your symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have no gallbladder, have pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation,

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as the trump administration faces a whole host of troubles on the domestic front, it's also facing major tests on the world stage. russia's threatening to treat american jets in western syria as targets after a u.s. navy aircraft shot down a syrian government jet last week. the u.s. says it was defending u.s.-backed forces in the area. it's the first time in more than a decade that a u.s. jet has shot down a hostile manned aircraft. tensions escalated further monday when a russian fighter

jet came within five feet of a u.s. air force reconnaissance plane over the baltic sea. all this comes as the trump administration's approach to north korea was made even more complicated by the death of otto warmbier, an american student who died monday just days after being released in a coma from a north korean prison. joining me now to discuss all of this is retired army colonel lawrence wilkerson who served as chief of staff to colin powell. thanks for being here. i want to start with the syria situation and what feels like an escalation going on outside of the public's radar? what do you make of what's going on including the buzzing of a u.s. jet? >> it is an escalation in my view and we're looking at a very, very troubling strategic situation and we're looking at it through, we, washington, are looking at it tactically. look at the euphrates river

valley and where it crosses the syrian border south and north of that, look at what us tactically trying to disturb what iran is trying to do and open a line of communication from damascus through baghdad and ultimately to tehran. my son served in kirkuk, iraq, and he can tell you the one thing that unites iraqis, particularly sunnis, who haven't gone away, by the way, is their distaste for, hatred for persians, iranians. this is about like my trying to build a super highway through the river and hope i never encounter alligators. it's nonsense yet we are disposing our forces in order to disrupt this. it's another testimony to our not understanding the region in which we're engaged. >> at the same time, i think a lot of people are sort of taking comfort in the fact that the pentagon is in charge. there was a great piece in "the washington post" that says why having madison charges a form of

disaster and this composite as trump essentially handed over authority to the pentagon to essentially run the show and decide what we're doing in terms of the way we're using our military in the middle east. is that comforting to you or disturbing? >> it's not comforting at all because ultimately the policy objectives, the strategic policy objectives have to be set by the civilians. so the turn things over to the pentagon is to do just what i intimated, to turn it over the people operating on a tactical basis, a day-to-day basis. the only strategic objective i can see in this is ensuring the security of israel. and i'll tell you right now that ensuring the short-term security of israel may be served by what we're doing, but the long-term security of israel, something netanyahu doesn't seem to be interested in, is not served by it. so that disabuses me even of the fact we might be doing all of this for israel. it makes no sense, and you just pointed out one reason why it doesn't, because there is no strategic guidance from the

white house. >> and i want to put that map back up of the middle east. all these things going on, saudi arabia, how close everyone is in. what does it say to you that donald trump is cozying up much more to saudi arabia, taking sides in the yemeni situation, seeming to take sides against allies that we've had for a long time where we've got bases we're using to launch our own military forces out, cozying up to the saudis and then sort of escalating in syria and rethreatening iran? do you worry that we could wind up getting sucked into basically a proxy sunni/shiite conflict in the middle east and the american mick never gets to debate it? >> we're already sucked into it, joy. that's my grave concern we'll be sucked in even deeper. you pointed out the disconnect between the white house and the policymakers and the strategists such as they are in the pentagon. h.r. mcmasters is not doing too much, it seems to me, to meld this all together. look at what's happening.

we've got saudi arabia with a new line of succession, a new crowned prince, a new king, ultimately, and we've got the situation with qatar that you just pointed out with turkey support kag tar, with ohman and kuwait trying the only sensible people in the region trying to negotiate, and we've got the saudis doing what they're doing because we're there and because we're backing them. they would never be doing this. they would never be causing this consternation in the gcc p if we weren't there ultimately backing them up. our presence there is not only destabilizing and making an even biggers me out an already messy situation, there is no way out but just ways to get deeper and deeper buried in this region. >> and meanwhile, while we're already scaring the bejesus out of people early this morning, let's go to north korea because that's the other situation that seems to be brewing sort of off the radar of the american people. you have the otto warmbier situation where he went to north korea, 22-year-old student, comes back in a coma, now since

died. this was donald trump on tuesday, talking about otto warmbier. let's listen to donald trump. >> it's a total disgrace what happened to otto. that should never, ever be allowed to happen. and frankly if he were brought home sooner, i think the result would have been a lot different. he should have been brought home that same day. the result would have been a lot different. but what happened to otto is a disgrace. >> now, the trump administration hasn't been making as threatening noises toward north korea. they seem to be outsourcing donald trump the sort of whatever to china, but the overall goal of denuclearization in north korea, are you concerned that we could wind up with an escalation there as well? >> absolutely. i was a member of the north korean working group for a couple of years when i was at the state department, probably one of the most effective, successful interagency groupings i've ever been involved with. i know north korea. first thing is donald trump should have never made a comment like that because we simply do

not know what happened to this young man. we don't know if it was negligence on the part of the north koreans. it very well could have been. we don't know if there was a pre-existing condition. we don't know what happened to this young man. so making him a cause celeb or a cause on the peninsula is ridiculous and the president has no business, but this is trump's way of operating, tweeting and such. he has no business making comments from his pedestal of power about such things. and north korea is a very difficult situation. i like the fact that jim mattis has pointed out again and again that it is a difficult situation, that we don't need a war there and so forth. but as you've intimated, you know, the whole theory of conservation on the enemies that you don't want any more than you can handle at any given time, we seem to know nothing about. >> where's congress, then? it's sort of baffling to me and i think the media has a lot of responsibility for not making the american people aware of this rg we're not having the debate we had in the lead-up to iraq, but where is congress in terms of weigh in on these

conflicts? where are the authorizations to use military force or the debate about them? are they mia here? >> you see, mia is the best description, but you see a bipartisan effort by jeff flake and tim kaine of virginia, trying to get a bill passed in the congress, the bill is there, to essentially say the authorization for use of military force post 9/11 is now dead, it's been dead for a long time, and you can't use that, mr. president, any more to justify the use of american military. so you have to have a new law, a new resolution, a new something from the congress to recognize its constitutional power to authorize these things. and yet they don't seem to be able to get anywhere. >> yeah. it is a frightening situation. it is good, though, to be able to talk to you about it. colonel lawrence wilkerson, thank you for your time this morning. >> thanks, joy. >> coming up, mitch mcconnell is five votes away from destroying obamacare. our all-star conservative panel weighs in. when you booked this trip,

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coming up, could five republican holdouts keep obamacare and medicaid alive? we'll discuss next. i was on the go. i kept on top of things. then the chronic, widespread pain slowed me down. my doctor said moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. he also prescribed lyrica. fibromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves. lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. woman: for some, lyrica can significantly relieve fibromyalgia pain and improve function, so i feel better. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worse depression, unusual changes in mood or behavior, swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects: dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica.

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this bill, this bill is currently in front of the united states senate, not the answer. it's simply not the answer. and i'm announcing today that in this form i will not support it. >> my problem is insurance companies already make there are 15 billion a year. i don't think the taxpayers should give them any money. so i really am opposed to the idea of giving insurance companies money and say willing you lower your prices. >> needs 50 votes plus mike pence's tiebreaker to pass the senate version of the obamacare repeal bill this week. with five gop senators including dean heller and rand paul already coming out against it, albeit for opposite reasons, its like the mitch mcconnell bill

may not have the range. michelle bernard and michael steele and jennifer rubin from "the washington post" and curt b bardella. where to begin. let's talk about the two holdouts so far. the most vulnerable senators according to cook political report, are jeff flake of arizona and dean heller of nevada, at least the most vulnerable republicans. so that might be why they are insent vise ei incentivized to say no. michael steele, if heller claims one of the two waivers that mitch mcconnell has to give, who would claim the other and do you think that mitch mcconnell can get the rest of the votes that he needs if he's definitely got a no on heller? >> great question. i think the other would be claimed by rand paul. i don't think that there's too much that they could do beyond a wholesale rewrite of this bill, particularly with respect to the insurance provisions that rand paul would be comfortable with.

so i suspect those are the two. the other three will likely capitulate, and i use that word deliberately, because mcconnell has that ability to get these guys to do that. but rand paul has always been a little bit of an outlier and not necessarily a follower in the senate. and heller also given the political realities in his state and his re-election, will probably stay closer to where his governor is, governor sandoval, and where the people of thhis state are. that's still, i think, joy, is not a guarantee on the other three. for these other folks, they do have some real issues with the substance of this. this bill does not repeal obamacare. it just doesn't. and so republicans cannot with a straight face go out and say that because there are still elements of obamacare that are part of this bill and how they make that argument to their conservative base is going to be the real challenge. >> at the same time, jennifer,

on the other side of that, then they also have to explain to people who can no longer afford nursing home care for their moms why they took away the part of bom care that helped them pay for that. you wrote a piece where you talked about it being a no-brainer for heller, essentially saying no to it should be an easy no for him. hillary clinton did win nevada 48-46 over donald trump. if you take him off the table, let's talk about the other side of that argument, and that would be the rand paul side where essentially you have a block of republicans saying no, this isn't cruel enough, we want all the subsidies that people get for buying health insurance gone, we want the mandate gone, we eventually want no assistance from the federal government for people to buy health insurance. explain that argument to me and where that comes from. >> they believe that the federal government should not be guaranteeing health coverage for anyone. they want to go back to pre-obama -- i guess they want to go back to premedicaid. so it's not an argument that has any sell with the american people, but for them and their narrow constituents, this

carries weight. i do think that mike lee is the other problem, and i also want to stress that there are other moderates out there who really may come through and say no. that would be susan collins of maine. again, they have a terrible pope yac -- opiate problem there. west virginia, they have not only an enormous opiate problem but one of the largest expansions of coverage of any state under obamacare, both through the exchanges and through expanded medicaid. so she has to go back to her state and explain how we're going to take care of these people, who's going to pay for this, and what services at the state level will have to be cut in order to absorb this cost. >> or taxes raised in order to cut it. i want to go to you on this. the interesting thing here, donald trump, the way he ran was sort of unlike the way republicans normally ran. he ran as the working man's republican even though he lives in a golden penthouse, which is weird. he said i won't cut medicaid,

we're not going to hurt people, we won't have coverage. if you look at states that took the deal, took the expansion, that's theoretically where the trump base lives. so you have states like arizona, arkansas, colorado, indiana, iowa, where he keeps going, kentucky which actually expanded and the new governor kind of pulled it back. louisiana, montana, ohio, where rob portman has to make a decision, go back to that list of republicans if we could from the expansion states. so, curt, those republicans, what's going to be more powerful of an argument for them, the idea that the conservative part of their base says you have to repeal anything with the word obama in it, so obamacare has to go, or the populist part of their base that says, wait a minute, i want to chemomy medicaid expansion? >> again, i think it's all fun and games until it's actually your health care, your coverage, your bottom line. and all of a sudden everything becomes a lot more real.

i think that's really what we're talking about here. to this point, the trump presidency has been a lot more existential. there hasn't been a lot that's affected people on a very human, personal level, and now we're talking about people's health care and there will actually be consequences if this bill is passed and if the repeal obamacare is actually signed into law by president trump. then a year and a half from now, when people are going to be voting again en masse, there will be real consequences that they can measure this presidency to. and what people say they care about today is not going to be the same thing after this is actually implemented, after the consequences are felt, and that's what they have to keep in mind, not necessarily the temperature of the electorate today, how are they going to feel about this when in a year and a half it's revealed there are all these problems so, much cost, people's care goes down, the quality of care goes down, they can't take care of their families, and it's because republicans passed a bill that violated everything they said for last decade. it was written in secret, it wasn't transparent, they didn't deliberate it, the public didn't

have a right to know what was going on, what was in it. they didn't know what the full cost and consequences are. and then they pushed it forward, which is exactly what they spent the last six, eight years complaining about, nancy pelosi and obamacare how that happened, they've completely undermined their entire moral credibility with this process. >> it's interesting, you know, michelle, because republicans, conservatives have long made the argument the problem with liberals is they keep trying to tell people what's best for them without asking people what they want. in this case, they did exactly that. they said we 13 men are going to go, white men, behind closed doors and tell you what's best for you. you don't have to know what we want. it would be one thing if it was just mitch mcconnell. but donald trump has embraced 100% this bill. it is not mcconnell care. it's trump care. trump said i am very supportive of the senate health care bill, look forward to make it really special. then he goes on fox and friends and goes back to taking credit for the idea he said don't make it mean. listen.

>> your bill, not a health care bill, a massive transfer of wealth, it's going to harm americans, it's mean. what do you say to the former president -- >> using my term, mean, that was my term, because i want to see -- i want to see -- and i speak from the heart, that's what i want to see, i want to see a bill with heart. honestly, nobody can be totally happy, even without the votes. forget about the votes. nothing to do with votes. this has to do with picking a plan that everybody's going to like. i'd like to say love but like. >> copyrighting the word mean. your thoughts. >> can i tell you, it's pure insanity, you know. who really knows what's going to happen. think about it, this is the president who looked the public in the eye and he specifically said to african-americans, vote for me, what do you have to lose? well, aren't we finding out pretty quickly? and i won't talk about stats with the african-american community because the republican party doesn't care about their votes. but if we look at latinos, 27%

of latinos in the united states of america are in the medicaid program. we need that program. so it will be interesting to see what states like arizona and nevada do, particularly when they are courting the latino vote but they're also pushing all of these anti-immigrant show me your papers laws, you know, state after state all over the country. i think it was jennifer earlier this morning said that the republicans were being intellectually dishonest. and if you look at the components of the bill, she's absolutely correct. so they're saying shame on president obama, he told you what health care that you had to have and he said it was mandato mandatory. under their philosophy, what they're saying is the medicaid program is not efficient so, what they're going to do is they're going to have a cap rate, states are free to either fill the gap or cut out the expansion program completely and you have to fill the gap. well, if you have to fill the gap, isn't that mandatory insurance? it's the same thing. >> or you're going to have a separation, michael steele, between states if they do this, and we crumble the states into

50 different health care programs, then you'll have mean states and cruel states. it will further highlight the fact if you live in a republican state you're in kansas, basically, every state will have the meanest, cruelest, smallest block grant. you want to build the republican party when you were chair. how does this grow the party? >> oh, it doesn't. it doesn't. one of the lifelines i think that are out there are the states, the governors, the republican governors. we've had a number of them, john kasich comes to mind, who embraced the expansion. they understand because governing is sting that's very different than what you see happening right now in washington. so it'll be interesting to see in the next few days if any of these republican governors get up and speak out on this bill. they have been eerily psi leapt so far on this, and i think they need to be heard, so they have to say do you embrace this strategy of health care for the people in your state. >> last word to kurt bardella on this. it is interesting that the breitbart world has been i think fairly quiet.

haven't checked it in the hast couple days. where are they going to end up coming down on this? >> i think they'll carry the water for trump as they always do. like everybody, they're just waiting to see kind of where this really falls, will this happen, will the vote happen. if anything, breitbart is ademocrat at setting up who's to get credit for it or who's to blame if it doesn't happen. if for some reason it doesn't happen, i think they'll go after leadership and blame them for not delivering for president trump. >> they don't like paul ryan anyway. or they'll blame obama, because that's the go-to. we'll have you all back another time. coming up in the next hour, we introduce paul ryan to a constituent who could give him a run for his money in 2018.

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republicans hold 55% of the seats in the house of representatives. even though republican candidates only won 49% of the votes cast in november. in the electoral advantage is likely to continue. according to fair vote, even if voters nationwide went 50/50 for republicans and democrats in 2018, republicans would still win 237 seats to democrats 198, keeping that shiny gavel in paul ryan's hands, thanks to gerrymandering. now they're set to hear a case that could potentially stop political parties from redrawing district lines to guarantee seats for their own candidates or the court could make things even worse. joining me to explain, dale

hoeg, director of aclu voting rights project. thank you, dale, for being here. explain the case before the supreme court. >> this is a case challenging the redistricting maps in wisconsin. you mention disparity between national vote and representation in congress. wisconsin is a very extreme case. in wisconsin, republicans got about 49% of votes for the state legislature in 2012, got 60% of the seats. a massive disparity. get this. in 2014, a few years later, republicans actually got a majority of the votes but they got almost the exact same percentage of seats, so the precise number of votes ended up not mattering, the game was essentially rigged and the republicans were basically locked into the same percentage majority in the legislature. >> what is the argument on the other side as to why this kind of gerrymandering should be allowed to continue? >> the other side says part of the reason for this is that democrats tend to live in

tightly clustered urban areas and there's some truth to that. the other side argues that partisanship is part of the process. to be fair, has always been part of redistricting process to some extent, right. the question is how much is too much. the supreme court has always said you can do some of this, but at some point you get to a point where it is so extreme that maybe one party just gets locked into power, and nick stephanopoulos, professor at university of chicago on the plaintiff's legal time in this case has studied this. he found we have the most extreme party gerrymandering in our nation's history. >> you say that the votes don't matter. people say the votes don't count, in this sense they kind of don't. the other argument you hear for gerrymandering, it is the only way to guarantee people of color, minorities can win seats in congress or in state legs tours. what do you make of this. >> this is a tough issue. voting act requires that states and jurisdictions give minority voters opportunity to elect the preferred candidates, and that

means sometimes we have to take into account the demographic composition of districts, voting patterns in districts. that's fine and required by federal law. what's not perfemissible is whe you lock one party into power, doesn't matter how many votes one party gets, they always get a majority of seats. >> the other thing happening at the same time you have gerrymandering, locking republicans into power for decades, a decade, how long since this span is, you also have a new wave of voter suppression taking place, under the radar partly thanks to the media. brennan center reports 99 voter suppression bills introduced in 31 states this year alone. five states already enacted voter restriction, iowa, arkansas, north dakota, and in montana goes to voters by ballot. strict voter id and other ways to suppress the vote. wisconsin one of the worst players, 300,000 were not able to get ids to vote. one in four floridians can't vote because of a law that keeps

felons from voting. what is being done about that? >> we're seeing a new wave of laws making it harder to cast a ballot. 2011 to 2013, big wave of laws, started to die down in 14 through 16. since the election, another onslaught of laws making it harder for people to vote. some sense looks like folks are seeing that the 2016 electorate looked one way, want to try to lock that into place with laws that prevent demographic shifts happening in this country from changing voting patterns. the wisconsin gerrymandering case isn't the only case the supreme court announced they're taking on voting in the last month. they're taking a voter purge case from ohio, an aclu case. >> john hue stead. >> this is a practice in ohio, they initiate purging from voting if you didn't vote during a two-year period. more than half americans don't vote. talking a lot of people. 7500 people would have been

purged whose ballots would have been thrown away who voted in 2016 if not for our case. >> come back to talk about this more. very important topic. thank you very much. next up, the iron stash joins am joy. don't go anywhere. you don't let anything keep you sidelined. that's why you drink ensure. with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for the strength and energy to get back to doing... ...what you love. ensure. always be you. at crowne plaza we know business travel isn't just business. there's this.

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new charmin ultra soft is softer than ever so it's harder to resist. okay, this is getting a little weird enjoy the go with charmin i decided to run for office because not everybody is seated at the table and it is time to make a bigger table. i'm the best person to represent this district because i'm a working person. let's trade places. paul ryan, you can come work the iron and i'll go to d.c. >> welcome back to "am joy." house speaker paul ryan has at least one challenger to face in 2018. ran randy bryce, cancer survivor and wisconsin iron worker who goes by iron stash on twitter. he announced his bid for wisconsin's first congressional district monday by taking ryan to task for the republican health care bills and making one

of the strongest opening arguments of any democratic contender this year. but does he have a chance against the man who has easily won re-election in wisconsin's first district since 1998. joining me now, the man gearing up to challenge paul ryan in 2018, the iron stash himself, randy bryce. mr. bryce, thank you for being here. great to talk to you. >> thank you for inviting me, joy, it is a pleasure to be with you. >> thank you. let's talk about your opening ad. i think everyone agreed was really terrific. in it you're there with your mom, you talk about your family, you talk about yourself. what prompted you to decide to run for this particular seat, to run for congress? >> well, just my history. i'm a lifelong resident of the area and i've been -- i worked two full-time jobs for a period of time just to make ends meet after getting out of the army. i finally was able to join a union, get into an apprenticeship. that was my ticket to the middle class. after doing that awhile, i had

been doing that 20 years. in that last 20 years i have been able to drive around with my son, point out things that i literally built with my hands, helping the community, standing up for worker issues, especially recently in the state of wisconsin, which have been under attack. then i look over at what speaker ryan has been doing and he's been doing just the opposite. he's taking things away from us. he's not here and he's trying to pass this tax bill disguised as some means to take away our health care. and after seeing what he's trying to do and take away our health care, i've had enough because it is something that effects three generations of my family. >> let's talk about the district you're running in. donald trump edged out hillary clinton in the first congressional district, 47.2 to 46.9. paul ryan in that same election blew out his competitor who was a guy named ryan solin. he won with 65%. if you look at paul ryan's vote percentage, percentage of vote

he won going all the way back to 1998, they have been pretty much blowouts, won by 57%. lowest he got was 54.9 in 2012. he is usually in the mid-60s. what makes you think you can beat him? >> well, i would just look at the launch we had. i knew it was going to be success. . i had no idea it would blow up as big as it did. it is not some outstanding message that people have never heard before, but it is a message that people really want to hear. it's about bringing, you know, diversity of the district together to make sure that we all stand united as working people and everybody is heard. i talked about making a bigger table and this includes demanding that we have people sitting across from us that we're not used to seeing. so it is a message of uniting everybody and just the way it blew up across the country, not just in the first district. people are dying to be heard. with speaker ryan's absence over

600 days, people want to be heard. i'm more than willing to listen to people and speak out on their behalf. >> why would a voter in first district give up having speaker of the house. talk about being heard. if your congressman is the speaker, that's a lot of power. why would a voter give that up to elect an unknown who would not be in leadership? >> well, again, i would say paul ryan has gone full blown washington. he is not doing anything on behalf of first congressional district. he hasn't had a town hall in almost two years. yet he still has time to go around to big high dollar fund-raisers, have people pay $10,000 to have their picture taken with him. he's not doing anything for us, he is taking things from us that we need just to survive. >> speaking of high dollar fund-raisers, you have to believe that the republican congressional campaign committee is going to pull out all of the stops. you saw what they did to get

karen handel into tom price's seat in georgia, most expensive race in history. this would be more expensive at least on the other side. how would you be able to compete with what will be a huge fund-raising haul for paul ryan. the koch brothers, lots of people with a lot of money want him to stay there. how will you compete? >> i don't think there's any question that i'm going to be outspent, outraised. i would never ask for people to people to stand next to me and have a picture taken for $10,000. it is just making enough money, raising enough to get the message out so people know, come join us, our voices are louder when we are united together. >> i have to ask you, you made a little noise on twitter recently, revoked freedom fries offer to louise minimum much. a lot in the twitter. how did you fallout of love with luis? >> i paid attention to what she

would tweet. i saw her on bill maher show, i thought she had a little credibility. but it is wishful thinking, it is hopeful. reading a fairy tale, hoping you go to sleep and wake up and it is true. no, far from that. and if i ever run into you, joy, i would like to offer you a full fledged super size happy meal. >> i will break my diet to have that super sized happy meal with you, iron stash, if you follow me on twitter. >> absolutely. >> excellent. cool. randy bryce, thank you very much. good luck and come back. >> thank you. any time. any time. pleasure. have a great day. joining me, nbc political analyst joan walsh, jamal simmons, scott ross, executive director of one wisconsin now. none of whom are allowed to repeat i will have the freedom fries. it is not on the diet. you have to keep my secrets. joan, so what did you make of him. this is a guy who is an unknown. the money raised will be

humongous. getting national attention may help him but may attract more money against him. i wonder if we have done him a disservice talking to him. >> no, he needs to be nationally known. this race should be nationalized. i think his first ad was amazing, sounds exactly the right notes for that district for virtually any place actually. if i were him, i would tie this health bill, whatever health bill, whatever happens to it, hopefully it gets defeated, i would tie it to paul ryan. i would bring up the fact that he joked, joked, supposedly joked, that he was dreaming of slashing medicaid over keggers in college. i would just bring out what a heartless, soulless washington creature he has become. i don't think the district knows. made good points nice to have somebody in loieadership, but i they devoted their life to hurting people in the district,

let's think twice. >> tell us about the district. it is after lunlt, that likes tax cuts, that paul ryan dreamed since college of getting rid of social programs, wants to voucherize, or is it open to a working class guy saying look, i want that office to be caring about regular people. >> joy, i mean, democrats have represented the first congressional district before, and for substantial periods of time. now, it has some dark red and has some dark blue. i think the big thing for these candidates who are challenging paul ryan is they have to make sure the media here in wisconsin is covering what paul ryan is doing out in washington, d.c. when you don't have real races for 18 years, you don't get a lot of coverage about what the impact of what you want to do is. i think now that paul ryan is no longer a fresh face, he is a 20 year embodiment of folks that want to take away your health care so you can give tax breaks to rich people, his defense of

donald trump has shown if he can msness and career politician rather than an earnest policy wo that wants to change policies. paul ryan was scrutinized by people of wisconsin, when he was a vice presidential nominee. he not only lost his home ward and his home city but he lost his home ward two to one. when paul ryan gets covered, the people that live next to him don't like him. >> interestingly enough, that is interesting, but democrats have one special skill, that is losing. >> that's not fair. >> i know. >> and then blaming themselves, kicking themselves and punching themselves in the face for years afterwards. there have been a lot of races, people like scott walker, people thought this guy tried to take away health care of public sector workers in wisconsin was a sitting duck. democrats tried to recall him,

couldn't get it done. tried to defeat him, couldn't get it done. in a state like wisconsin, union state, blue collar state, you would think democrats could win, you know, is there a chance from your point of view, mr. democratic strategist. >> i think democrats have to have a certain level of expectations when it comes to taking on somebody as powerful as the speaker. but i'm old enough to remember 1994 when a speaker named tom foley was beat by a guy interneter cut, he pinned him down on dysfunction happening. this is the thing. paul ryan is in charge of the dysfunction. he has to defend that happening in congress, number one. number two, mr. bryce, randy bryce can campaign every single day, every single week, while speaker ryan has to be in washington dealing with whatever the issues are in washington. and the third thing is if nothing else happens, it will make ryan have to go back to wisconsin and campaign and keep him from being on the road and

able to raise money for other republicans. this is very dangerous. this ad and this candidate is really dangerous to the speaker of the house and republican majority. >> i have to say the ad reminded me of one really good ad of the 2016 cycle for donald trump, the man of steel ad which ran for him in a lot of rust belt states, talked about bringing back steel, something that's never going to happen, but it was good from an outside group. scott, thinking of outside groups, how much money is on the table from the koch brothers, bradley foundation, people you and i talked about dark money and wisconsin has a lot of it, and reince priebus is from there. all the stops will be pulled out for ryan, right? >> oh, yeah, all the money in the world. here's what i think is unique about this particular race. you mentioned scott walker, reince priebus, you mentioned paul ryan, think of guys like marco rubio and ted cruz. these are generation x republicans. these are the guys that you went to high school with, right, and democrats a lot of times are

putting up people that look like the teachers who taught you when you were in high school back then. i think there's a big huge shift, and randy is part of that. he will be able to talk about those issues that face genx and baby boom voters. the demographic has been social security, medicare, my employer provided pension may be under threat, critically important issues. for 43 million with student loan debt, it is that monthly payment. randy can connect with those kind of issues as well as others in the race. paul ryan is literally the face of stopping you, for instance, from being able to refinance your student loan like a mortgage, something that 500,000 in wisconsin alone would benefit from. >> one of the most important things he said when you interviewed him is that paul ryan hadn't done a town hall in two years in his congressional district. that's going to sting if people take that into account. >> out of time this block.

bringing joan and jamal back. scott roth, thank you very much. disappointed you didn't wear a cool jacket from the '70s. thank you very much. appreciate it. next up. the cbc rejects donald trump and the honorable omarosa belt. stay with us. at lincoln financial, we get there are some responsibilities of love you gotta do on your own. and some you shouldn't have to shoulder alone. like ensuring your family is protected, today and tomorrow, no matter what the future brings. ask a financial advisor how life insurance from lincoln can help start protecting your family's financial future now.

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turned white house aide, omarosa. wednesday after she extended invitation last week to all 49 members, signing it, they century grets. cedric richmond joins me. congressman, why did the cbc turn down omarosa man i gold's invitation to meet with the white house. >> when we met with the president the first time, we left him a 130 page policy document outlining our priorities for minority and underrepresented communities, both rural, both white and black, and we really took time to articulate all of our concerns and then made a specific request that he make cabinet secretaries available so that we could do the same that we did with him, which is educate them and give them our priorities and our solutions to problems that we see in the

country. well, we didn't get a response to the 130 page document. we didn't get a response to the subsequent 8 letters we sent, and have yet to meet with any of the cabinet secretaries. we didn't think it would be a substantive meeting, especially with 49 people. and if you want to have any questions about how or what we feel, go refer to the document we left you with. we're not here for photo ops, we're not here for anything except to advocate for our constituency, and we think we did that by communicating with him, meeting with him the first time, leaving him a substantive policy document. >> yeah. omarosa has responded to the decision not to show up. people have been having fun with the invitation with the honorable signature, whether or not she should be using that. there's the letter she sent you. she also followed it up with an interview, very solicitous interview on fox, this is what she had to say about you guys refusing to meet.

>> they're show boating and shorting out their constituents that they committed to represent by not coming to meet with the president. it is obvious they had no intention of ever sitting with the president. in fact, they called the invitation a social gathering which nowhere in my letter did it say it was social. that goes to show you they're not serious. >> how do you respond. >> if they read the policy document or other substantive letters we sent them, also we looked at their budget. if you want to know what someone is thinking, look at the budget they propose. they propose cutting everything from work study to pell grants to food stamps to medicaid, $800 million, so you can't justify another meeting until you take some action or respond to the first meeting.

49 people is not a working meeting. we just dismiss it. they also talked about the invitation of betsy devos. the white house has to get the facts right. two, this is not a reality show, this is people's lives. this is real life and it has real consequences and we're not just here to be participants in a reality show, we're advocating for our constituents which is why we left them a policy document that they can refer to any time they need. >> and april ryan, my friend, probably could call me, it is not her job to call all of to you get meetings with the white house, but she has been tweeting about tensions between the congressional black caucus and the white house, some of them. she says according to a source, white house is trying to start fights with you, specifically, congressman, for months. they contend the white house person wanted to go around head

of the cbc yourself by inviting all 43 members for a meeting, that the efforts are to stir up trouble, never caught your attention, you didn't engage. many members want individual meetings with the president, but attempt for a 43 person meeting was attempt to target you specifically. what do you make of that? >> well, the first invitation was for 49 members and congressional black caucus decided it would be the executive board. this invitation, congressional black caucus, not myself, decided that we would decline. that was voted upon in a meeting. look, i take my leadership seriously but i take the will of the body just as serious. i took it for the team, went to the inauguration, represented the congressional black caucus. we went to the white house on behalf of the cbc. the caucus members said we have not heard responses, haven't met with any of the cabinet members, so we're not interested. they may get one or two or three

members to go over to the white house for individual meetings, but as a congressional black caucus, there was just no interest and the will wasn't there to go over to the white house to meet with president trump. >> and you mention the policy document you left with the white house. give us a sense of, a quick summary of some of the most important policy items that were in that agenda item, that agenda document. >> we talked about hbcus, talked about health care, talked about cdbg, how to restore inner-city communities, talked about summer jobs, how they improve the high school graduation rate and reduce crime in specific areas. we talked about voting rights. we talked about civil rights, consent decrees. if you look everything happening in the department of justice, can't say they take rights of minorities seriously from jeff sessions' act of rolling back smart on crime initiative, and

now announcing he wants to go back to failed war on drugs in terms of crack and cocaine but we have this open, loving approach, mental health approach and substance abuse approach to opioids, which opioid response is correct, but should have been the same for crack and cocaine and other things that ravage inner-city communities. so he wants to go back to the failed war on drugs in inner cities for crack and cocaine but for opioids wants to take a more nurturing, loving approach, which by the way is the right approach, but you can't have it both ways. those are the types of things it is very frustrating for us, but we will continue to do what we need to do which is to advocate in congress to work through a budget process that is fair and moral and just like we did with the last budget in which hbcus and inner-city communities want, and we will continue to do that. we also sent the president our proposed budget which by the way

had in it 1 trillion dollars for infrastructure investment around the country, which means sewer and water, roads and bridges, broadband, all of these other things that would help the country which he says he wants a trillion dollars in infrastructure, without a real proposal. so we gave him one, but we have not heard anything substantive from this white house. and we just don't have a will to be part of a reception, a social gathering, or an unorganized meeting of 50 or 60 people. >> congressman cedric richmond, head of congressional black caucus. thank you for your time this morning. really appreciate it. >> thank you, joy. >> keep us posted on whether or not any further developments happen with the white house. thank you. coming up, the gop's magic words for beating and terrifying democrats, nancy pelosi. that's next. just imagine if all the machines at work

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up next, why the house democratic leader is under fire for some of her own party. speaking of parties, last night, ashley williams, one of our very own producers at "am joy" taped the democratic leader getting down at a party in prospect park. check it out. ♪ go schumer, go schumer, go schumer. we'll be right back. look closely.

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you want me to sing my praises? is that what you're saying? i'm a master legislator. i am a strategic politically astute leader. they will augt make a target. senator daschle was a target, speaker o'neal was a target. but i think i'm worth the

trouble. thank you. >> go, girl. nancy pelosi reminded haters and critics of her credentials after a number of democrats called for her to step aside after her starry role in republican "the ed show," led some to conclude she was to blame for ossoff's defeat in georgia. >> you see commercials that tie candidates to leader pelosi week in and week out. you have to beat the republican and carry this toxic democratic brandon your back, too. that's a tough thing to ask a candidate running for congress. >> it seems as if republicans have mastered the art of the jedi mind trick because on the subject of nancy pelosi's leadership, democrats are suddenly sounding a lot like republicans. take, for instance, this guy back in 2010. >> are we going to fire pelosi? are we going to retire harry reid? are you going to take back your government? are we still we the people? >> the guy in the fetching red

t-shirt, former rnc chairman michael steele who joins me now. you have a friendly panel. i'm going to give you credit. you took an ordinary person, a woman with a fabulous wardrobe, successful getting reelected and raising money and turned her into the leader of the democratic party as minority leader of the house of representatives, not even the senate, and you did it in part by turning her into a zombie queen. i know you didn't make the ad. i'm going to play this. this is an ad from 2010. guy named john dennis made it. this is zombie pelosi. >> at attention.

>> john dennis. >> nancy? >> that was john dennis did that ad. another crazy ad from may of 2010, a giant 50 foot attack pelosi. >> now gorged on taxpayer dollars, defying the will of the american people, who has the power to stop her. who can save america, you, the pennsylvania voter. >> she's enormous. michael steele. how did you manage to trick democrats into adopting exactly that view of nancy pelosi and saying because y'all said she's a zombie hoarding demon, enormous and giant floating over the city that they should drop her as their leader. >> the art of the brand. no. you know, it was a big battle inside the party because i was hell bent in not making the 2010 election about barack obama.

many of my party did. they wanted to take this fight directly to the president. i said no, you need to take this fight directly to the people. and the people's house is where this war needs to be waged, not at the white house, but in the people's house. so we went on, we talked about if you want to take back control of your government, you want to take ownership in decisions you make, the only person stopping you from doing that is nancy pelosi. whether you run for dog catcher or governor of your state, the goal was to tie it all back to how you as an individual or family or community could reempower yourselves by taking control of congress. the only way you can do that was by firing nancy pelosi. it is a gift that has kept on giving apparently because it seems to have worked in this last election cycle, in the special elections as well, and people still make that connection to the house through her for some reason. it is very effective i think.

>> ordinary people, probably don't know who nancy pelosi is. >> that's not true. >> ordinary people. the republicans have gotten democrats convinced that every person on the street is walking around in terror of nancy pelosi, including this guy, tim ryan, who wants her job. and he lost. here is tim ryan on "meet the press" talking about nancy pelosi going into 2018. >> we're talking about health care for everybody today because of the work she has done. so this is completely unfair. but the reality is the the fact that we have to go into 2018 with a leader who has been damaged. >> could republicans possibly have been successful at saying nancy pelosi, the minority leader of the house is the democratic party and market her to every person without the help of democrats? >> absolutely not. i was in the sixth district. i disagree with michael. nancy pelosi was not the factor there.

they did run "the ed shosome ad. they had bernie sanders. it is ridiculous to let republicans choose our leaders for us. the fact that i am on your segment not talking about health care but defending nancy pelosi is ridiculous. we should be fighting with one voice, one aim to defeat this horrible bill. instead, we're debating is it time for her to go. i think it is outrageous. >> one of the things, jamal, a lot of democrats envy about republicans is that if there was a republican nancy pelosi, they would fight like hell, they would fight you in the street if you said anything bad about her. they defended guys that beat up reporters, defended guys that made comments about legitimate rape. they will defend their people. they have people that went down in sex scandals, then got in office with the full support. they don't allow you to beat up their people, they defend their people. they're men, but why are democrats so quick to throw their own people under the bus?

>> you know, that can get into a sociological exercise why people choose to be democrats in the first place. we can have that over coffee later. first of all, i want to say i'm worth the trouble, use that in the next 360 review in work. i am worth the trouble. nancy pelosi is actually a fantastic leader. she's the one got the bill through house of representatives and made sure it would happen. for democrats to throw nancy pelosi overboard would not be the smartest move. i will say also though a little more tim ryan messaging would help the democrats. in the earlier segment we did with mr. bryce from wisconsin kind of lays into that. we have to have more talk about the economy and more talk about things that unite us as a democratic party and hold the flag on things like immigration, equality, criminal justice reform. >> and the thing is, michelle,

republicans are adaptable, learn about the politics piece. governing part, eh, the politics part they're good at. donald trump has picked up the ball. michael, give him credit, he started this idea. you tag her, she's the leader, boss of the democratic party, she's the face. here's donald trump picking up the ball, taunting democrats with it in a way of talking to republicans. >> i hope she doesn't step down. i think it would be a sad day for republicans if she steps down. i would be very, very disappointed if she did. i would like to keep her right where she is, our record is extraordinary against her. >> the record includes barack obama being elected and reelected while she was speaker and house majority leader. her powers don't extend to every race. she has been successful. she gave rahm emanuel the job for which he got the credit for electing people to the house. >> exactly.

i want to quote a famous philosopher, chance the rapper who once said you can take them to church but you got to have a choir. nancy pelosi needs a choir. also it is not even her job. this is not her job. john ossoff did not lose because of nancy pelosi, if he won, she would not get the credit. i go to an event tuesday hosted by three groups, they're celebrating electing ten women of color to congress and have a goal of 100 coming up. the whole anti-san francisco valley rhetoric we're seeing by republicans and democrats, i know you will agree, is ridiculous. con well harris, classmate, she's taking it to jeff sessions every day of the week. >> let me play the next potential target. if michael steele wants to start a new project for the rnc, here

is donald trump attacking one elizabeth warren. take a look. >> i actually think she's a hopeless case, i call her pocahontas, that's an insult to pocahontas. i think she's just somebody that has a lot of hatred, a lot of anger. >> has a loud microphone. >> she does. i don't think she has the kind of support some people do. i think she hurt hillary. i watched her campaigning for hillary, and she was so angry. hillary would be sitting back, listening to her, trying to smile. there were a lot of people in the audience going wow, is this what we want? >> would you be surprised if the next thing we hear from progressives is elizabeth warren needs to stand aside. >> she can't run for president, she's too angry. i don't think there's a coincidence talking about women, including hillary clinton. there's also a subtle -- the whole battle in the party now which is a false battle in my opinion but there between

identity politics, so-called, and class politics. that's being fought here, too, but in ways people won't say. pelosi is associated with gay marriage, being from san francisco and being staunchly for it, associated with feminism and with things people think should be down played, rather than focus on the base of the party which is women and particularly women of color. >> joy, i was going to say, one thing about the 2010 cycle that was very important to understand is that i never thought it was credible to go after nancy pelosi personally. i have known her a long time. she's a baltimore girl and i know, i respect her game. she's good at this game. i figured i had to be tactical and strategic with her on policy, not personally. and that's the big difference. what the president did with elizabeth warren was personal. the name calling is not how you get people on your side.

it is going to be sound policy arguments that people can identify with. >> jamal, that's the point. if she wasn't good, they wouldn't attack her. this is because she's effective. trump is right saying he would be sorry if she went, who would coral the votes in the house. >> the challenge for democrats is a challenge nationally is that our policy brand is shallow. people don't have a lot of things to attach how the democrats make lives better for working people in this country, so that's the thing that democrats have to hit more importantly and harder so it makes it harder to go after an individual like nancy pelosi. you have a shallow brand when it comes time to make people's lives better. attack somebody personally, get everybody fixated on that instead of talking about what the real agenda is. that's why democrats have to change to win in 2018. >> you have to stand for something. why would anybody want to be down with a group of people that won't back you up in a fight.

>> courage and vision. >> you have to have courage and have some vision. amen. that's why i am stepping off the soap box. thank you guys. for more on my thoughts on anti-pelosi liberals, check out my column this week in the daily beast. coming up at the top of the hour, what's driving donald trump's policy making. is it about destroying president obama's legacy? uh-huh. up next, more "am joy." i'm leaving you, wesley. but why?

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in detroit, two men that beat vincent chin to death because they thought he was japanese were indicted on charges of violating chin's civil rights. >> it charges auto plant foreman ronald evans and his stepson violated the civil rights of vincent chin by beating him to death with a baseball bat because of his race. chin was killed by evans outside his detroit area restaurant after evans blamed the chinese american for costing auto workers their jobs. >> that was indeed the sentiment in 1982 metro detroit, booming japanese imports were stealing auto industry jobs, fueling a wave of anti-asian racism that cost vincent chin his life. it is because of you that we're out of work, one of the men allegedly said before following chin, the chinese american, to a parking lot and fatally beating him in the head with a baseball bat. chin died four days later, days before his wedding date. his killers never served a day

of prison time. 35 years later, his death resonates as trump paints china as job stealing boogie man and as anti-asian hate crimes surged. joining me, anchor richard lui and jenny yang, co-founder of disoriented comedy. thank you for being here. this is a case a lot of people don't know about. >> that's right. >> shocking that there's no jail time, didn't spend a day in jail. >> they did not. the criminal charges never came through. that did not happen because there was a plea deal. $3,000 equals that man's life. that's what happened. not a day in jail. >> it's really shocking, jenny. it comes as now we are facing resurgence in hate crimes against lots of groups of americans, muslim americans are obviously facing it. but donald trump has been saying a lot of things that sort of refocus americans right back where we were in this period of the 1980s of this fear of job

loss by foreigners, by china. let's play a little of donald trump doing that and bashing china on the subject of jobs. >> we want to create jobs. they go to china. they go all over the place. china makes our product. china cheats us. look what china is doing to our country in terms of making our product. they're devaluing their currency. they devalue their currency to such extent, they're the single greatest currency manipulator that's ever been on this planet. >> do you worry that sort of atmosphere is being created again, jenny? >> yeah. i mean, here's the problem. donald trump is not being a leader, he's being a coward. when you blame other groups like china or muslims or immigrants, you're taking away accountability for leading and investing in our own country. >> richard, the thing is that we're in an atmosphere when you have a sort of empowered far right, euphemistically called at right, the white nationalists dressed up wing of the far

right, and the focus has more been on what muslims are facing as a result of that, but asian americans are facing sharp increase in hate crime. >> and often the same community, muslim americans are often asian americans, and so when we look at hate crimes or hate incidents that have been reported just in this year, the numbers newly out in the last couple days, we're trending at an annual rate of 500. joy, that's the same amount after post 9/11, one-year period after 9/11. those are heard by this community when we see the anti-muslim rhetoric out there and effects thereof, that's this community. >> jenny, i feel like a lot of the time the asian american community does not get heard, it is not as organized as, for instance, the african-american civil rights community is or the latino community is becoming. is there an organizational impetus to try to create a collective voice for the asian american community that's so

diverse even within it? >> yeah, because of vincent chin murder essentially it galvanized an asian american movement. unfortunately as asian american, we have a super power of in visibility when it comes to mainstream media. we're here to say we actually exist. there are political asian americans. we have been part of the movement. we stood on top of the amazing shoulders of black and brown civil rights leaders and we are still fighting. there's a movement to support black lives, to support trans lives. what we heard in 1982 and what happened then could easily happen in 2017 because it is a justice system that's still prioritizing certain lives over others. asian americans are part of fighting for justice. >> it is interesting, the cloak of asian invisibility doesn't haunt republicans, korean americans were specifically targeted for voter suppression in georgia in voter registration numbers. richard, one of the reasons we

are seeing this atmosphere gin up again is this idea of bringing back jobs that are no longer there, coal jobs, steel jobs, the auto industry, exporting jobs which they're still doing, even with donald trump there, carrier and others are still exporting jobs. how do we change the conversation away from being xenophobe i can. >> when you look at the problem and schematics, it is clear to say this group of asian americans part of the civil rights movement, part of this intersection alternate rou intersectionality, they're more integrated than we may understand. asian american owned businesses in america. largest number of employers when you look at the minority groups. it is part of building american companies. the largest number of entrepreneurs when you look at the other groups. they're very much american. >> and targeted by alt right. we're going to talk about this more. have to have you back. thank you very much. richard, full report on vincent

chin, 35 years later, airs today at 4:00 p.m. don't miss it. watch it, dvr it. that's important. that's the show for today. join us next weekend for "am joy." alex witt takes over top of the hour with the latest prognosis for the senate health care bill. stay with us at msnbc. last year, he said he was going 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. he's happy.t's with him? your family's finally eating vegetables thanks to our birds eye voila skillet meals. and they only take 15 minutes to make. ahh! birds eye voila so veggie good

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