tv Richard Engel on Assignment MSNBC November 10, 2017 9:00pm-10:00pm PST
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tonight on "all in" -- >> you remember dating girls that young at that time? >> not generally, no. >> roy moore speaks out. >> i don't remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother. >> tonight roy moore's selective defense and the republican party trapped between roy moore and corporate tax cuts. then -- >> lock her up, lock her up. >> explosive new reporting that president trump's national security adviser may have been secretly bribed on behalf of a foreign government. >> general flynn is a wonderful man. >> and from roy moore to louis c.k. as allegations against powerful
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men multi-pply, why the "if it' true" response isn't enough. >> good evening. i'm chris hayes. the republican party finds itself trapped in a roy moore dilemma. moore stand accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. three other women say moore pursued them when they were teen-agers. moore denies the on-the-record allegations first reported yesterday by "the washington post," while republicans on capitol hill seem to be hoping they just go away. >> senator mcconnell, do you believe the women who made these accusations against roy moore? >> senator mcconnell, do you believe the women who made these
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accusations against roy moore? >> thank you. >> on taxes -- >> >> that was on ameeting at the republican tax plan for which roy moore could provide the crucial vote. mitch mcconnell has called on moore to withdraw from the race if the allegations are true. no word yet on what they're willing to accept as proof or whether the post reporting with four women on the record about their encounters with moore, including the mother of the 14-year-old girl, plus over 30 other sources, whether that meets the threshold. that caveat, if true, would seem to leave a whole lot of room for moore's claims that the allegations are false. moore denied even knowing the 14-year-old but did not rule out the possibility of having had relationships with other teen-agers while in his 30s. >> i don't know miss corfman
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from anybody. i've never talked to her, never had any contact with her. allegations of sexual misconduct with her are completely false. i believe they're politically motivated. i've never known this woman or anything. with regard to the other girls, you understand this is 40 years ago and after my return from the military, you dated a lot of young ladies. >> would it be unusual for you as a 32-year-old guy to have dated a woman as young as 17? that would be a 15-year difference or a girl 18. do you remember dating girls that young at that time? >> not generally, no. if i did, you know, i'm not going to dispute anything but i don't remember anything like that. >> i do not generally know but if i did, i'm not going to dispute it. mitt romney tweeted "innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, no
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elections. i believe corfman. moore should step aside. senator john mccain and virginia comestock said moore should not serve in the u.s. senate but moore has made it clear he has no intention of dropping out of this race. his name will almost certainly be on that ballot, which means the only personal standing between moore and the ballot is jones. moore supporters have been circling the wagons, portraying the judge as a victim of a politically motivated smear campaign. his brother said "it's kind of like when jesus christ was hung on the cross. i'm not saying roy's like jesus christ. i'm saying the way they're treating him is like what they
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did to jesus christ. "if they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty, i think somebody should go after them." rush limbaugh is calling one of the victims a whacky woman on his show. and the white house for its part repeated the "if true" caveat, adding a bit of extra wiggle room. >> like most americans, the president believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago to destroy a person's life. however, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, judge moore will do the right thing and step aside. >> you hear that part, "mere allegation," a mere allegation with four stories and 30 people on the record, and all the people who have accused the
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you're donald trump and they're not. right? i said, what do we do? i said let's go have a rally. >> steve schmidt is a republican strategist and msnbc political analyst. that appears to be the strategy of bannon and his wing and the alabama republican party. as someone who has worked your whole adult life in republican politics, what's your reaction to that? >> i don't have the words to express my shame. it's disgraceful. what we're talking about here, chris, is a 14-year-old little girl. roy moore is a pedophile. he's a child molester. that's what's alleged here. this story is immaculately source. there are 30 corroborating sources that are contemporaneous to the accounts of the woman from the time and the years after. it's obviously true. the notion that this is some
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sort of conspiracy that's been built, designed by satan, in the words of roy moore, over many years is pure nonsense talk. this whole notion of if the allegations are proven true, there will be no trial here. there will be no judge to render a verdict. this is not a court of law. these are credible allegations. the republican national committee should sever all funding relationship with this campaign. every republican member of the united states senate should signal that should he be elected that he'll refuse to -- that they'll refuse to caucus with roy moore. every withone of them should can him to drop out of this race. they should repudiate it. the moral rot in the republican party, the rot, the stench, the cancer of bannonism is a plague on this country. it is a sad, sad day. ronald reagan, abraham lincoln,
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dwight eisenhower, teddy roosevelt, they're rolling over in their graves tonight. shame on mitch mcconnell, shame on paul ryan for not speaking out, not doing the right thing here, shame on them. >> you know, there's these two camps, the bannonite camp and the alabama republicans rallying around him and folks on trump tv saying it's fabricated, women make things up and then people like mitt romney and barbara comstock saying this in and of itself is disqualifying. and then there's the other category of i'm not sure. today you had mike lee first asking for his name to be pulled off the fund-raising document, the picture of him with roy moore. first he wanted his picture removed. later after the interview, he rescinded his endorsement, as did steve danes of montana rescinded their endorsement. is that enough?
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>> no, it's not enough. there needs to be a repudiation. he needs to get ot of tut of th. he's accused of molesting a little girl. we're talking about a 14-year-old little girl. this is disgraceful. couldn't be more disgusting. this is predatory, criminal behavior. it's child molestation. the conspiracy theories that have run rampant on extremist radio, on extremist political tv today, certainly it shouldn't be defined as conservative. it has no connection to the conservatism that i grew up with. it has no connection with any rectitude or probity. it's a sad moment. the courage of this woman to
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come forward knowing what was going to come at her, we should all reflect on that. and i do think what you'll see in alabama, there's a lot of pessimism about doug jones' chances here. there's a ways to go in this race and i think certainly the democratic party should be all in on this race, all in for doug jones on this race. you'd like to see mitt romney, john mccain, some of the others who have been so principled on this, they ought to endorse doug jones in this race. >> that to me strikes me. that is going to be the choice. it's almost no way to get him off the ballot even logistically. it's going to be roy moore and doug jones and maybe a write-in candidate and if you believe that moore is unfit, then doug jones is the option. thank you. >>. >> my pleasure. >> barbara boxer is a former senator from the state of california. you saw those pictures of those men there, chuck grassley and mitch mcconnell, you served with
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these men for decades in the united states senate in some cases. are you surprised by the way they are reacting to this and not being more full-throated? >> truly i am and i am so thankful to people like steve schmidt. they give me hope for this country and john mccain and, yes, mitt romney and the others who read the story. and, you know, i held back until i read every word of that story. and if i could just ask the people of alabama, just read the story and follow your heart and your mind. and don't be blinded by anything else but that story. because we know it's real. you just have to read it. you can feel it as a human be g being, as a mom or a dad or as a victim. but let me say i am surprised, particularly at mitch, who i worked very well with toward the
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end of my tenure. i'm surprised because he went through the packwood case and this was another situation where bob packwood was re-elected to the united states senate, he had run on a very strong feminist agenda from oregon and right after he won, "the washington post" wrote one of these incredible in-depth investigate of stories like this one and named sources, about 15, 16 women who said he had abused them, no children -- by the way, that's a whole other thing we can talk about -- and mitch for several years there i had to fight so hard with bob dole and mitch mcconnell. and finally bob packwood's diaries came out. the truth will always come out. and in this case there were 30 people, as you mentioned, who really made this story real. so i'm shocked at the end of the
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day packwood left in disgrace, ron widen took his place and has been there ever since. mitch ought to know this isn't going away. they ought to send the ethics committee team out there. i served on the ethics committee, i chaired it for a while and then i was the highest democrat on there. send the team out to meet to these accusers. you don't have to talk to roy moore. just talk to the accusers, talk to the community and get involved. don't just say if it's true. find out for yourself if it's true. >> do you think there's any recourse -- i mean, mcconnell and the packwood case ultimately sort of came out against packwood. >> well, it took a very long time. let me tell you, it took so long and, truly, i was taken to task so many times on the floor because i wanted to open up the discussion of packwood and they tried to keep it quiet.
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it was a very ugly thing. i wrote a book about it, i had a very different take on it than mitch. but the point is for two and a half years after that he was there and it did not do the republican party or the united states senate any good to have a predator among our group. now, look, in the whole country since we started, it's been less than 2,000 senators. please, there's got to be somebody better than this man who not only, in my mind after reading the story do i think he's a pedophile, but he's also just the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth, the biggest hypocrite who ran around saying how moral he was and how immoral everybody else is. i say to the people of alabama, they have this opportunity regardless what we say, it doesn't matter, it's what you want to do. what is the message you want to send? and there are so many other people, if you don't like the
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democrat, write in somebody. if you don't like that person, you know, write in your own name. you don't have to vote for this man just because he has an r behind his name, r for repulsive. that's what i would say. >> former senator barbara boxer, i really appreciate you being here tonight. >> thanks. >> tonight from harvey weinstein to roy moore and louis c.k. and on and on, we'll talk about this unprecedented social moment we're going through. and reports that special counsel robert mueller is looking into allegations about a deal involving michael flynn, $15 million and a turkish prison island. the details in two minutes. patrick woke up with back pain.
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throughout history, the one meal when we come together, break bread, share our day and connect as a family. [ bloop, clicking ] and connect, as a family. just, uh one second voice guy. [ bloop ] huh? hey? i paused it. bam, family time. so how is everyone? find your awesome with xfinity xfi and change the way you wifi. nbc news reporting special counsel robert mueller's office
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is currently investigating whether michael flynn who spent 24 days as national security adviser under president trump talked about cutting a deal shortly before the inauguration to forcibly remove a illegal resident and deliver him into turkey's custody? in exchange for a secret payment in upwards of $15 million. federal target was this man, a cleric living in pennsylvania who turkish had ties to erdogan blames for the last year's coup attempt. the discussions allegedly involved the possibly of transporting mr. ghoul -- gulen on a private jet to a turkish prison island of imrali.
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flynn's lawyers call allegations broadly false, did not address them specifically. reportedly under investigation are both flynn and his son, michael flynn jr., in march the elder flynn belatedly registered as a foreign agent after it was revealed the flynn intel group was paid $530,000 to secretly lobby on trump's behalf while he was working on his campaign. flynn op ed ran on election day hailing our allie turkey and seeking the expulsion of gulen. flynn cast as a radical islamist who may operate a dangerous sleeper new yorker. i am joined by political reporter carole lee. well, that's a heck of a story. what do we know about what investigators know? >> well, we know that they're looking into whether there were these two asks from turkey to michael flynn. there was the gulen one you walked through very well. there was another one that would essentially the request was to drop charges against an ally of president erdogan of turkey, who is jailed in the u.s. for helping iran avoid u.s. sanctions, among other things.
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so the special counsel is looking into whether these two things, at least those two things were proposed to flynn and flynn send that if he was able to accomplish these tasks once he was in the white house that there would be a payment indirectly or directly of upwards of $15 million. we also know that they're looking at whether this discussion about this occurred at a meeting in december of 20 -- 2016 at the 21 club restaurant in new york and whether flynn and senior turkish officials had this discussion there at that particular meeting. we also have learned that they're looking at what, if any, role michael flynn's son may have played in such a deal. >> so i just want to be clear, because what we do know, what was revealed is that he is working during the campaign while his adviser is working as a foreign agent to the tune of a half a million dollars. this focuses after the period, the transition into the actual time he's serving in the u.s. government in one of the most
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high ranking security posts. correct? >> reporter: correct. and if you -- the contract that the flynn intel group, which is michael flynn's lobbying firm, had with turkey ended the day after the election. so then soon after he was named national security adviser. he obviously took a number of meetings, phone calls and discussions with foreign leaders and other you know dignitaries and things like that. this is what the special counsel is looking into whether this was different, whether these conversations had a different tone and potentially involve something highly illegal. >> an election day op-ed about gulen as opposed to go vote for donald trump, of which you are the senior adviser on that
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campaign looks a lot like someone that thought he was running out of opportunities to monetize that relationship to a candidate as opposed to a guy that feel super strongly about turkey on election day. >> reporter: you know, this issue that gulen issue, is president erdogan is obsessed with. he brings this up with u.s. officials all time and pressed them to extradite this cleric and he clearly, you know, saw if this allegations turn out to be true, you can envision turkey seeing someone like flynn, that they had a relationship with as somebody they may propose something like this to. >> thank you. with me now nbc legal analyst and attorney nick ackerman, a team that prosecuted watergate. i mean talk about whoa if true. >> this is unbelievable. i mean, this borders on quid pro quo bribery. it borders on a huge conflict of interest. i think it's a part of the same pattern that you've seen in this administration where people are in this for themselves and not in it for the good of the american people, they're trying to line their own pockets.
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so this is all a part of the same pattern that we've seen right across the board. >> it's a good point. manafort, one of the most incriminating e-mails manafort sent was turning around to his assistant in ukraine after he gets to be appointed on the campaign and says, how do we use to make whole? how do we monetize this position? we know that flynn was monetizing his position essentially during the campaign. the question is, was he trying to do it a it is national security adviser of the united states of america? >> it certainly appears that way. first of all, he was lying to the fbi at the time. he was questioned about his meeting with ambassador kislyak the russian ambassador. he did not tell them about the sanctions, which was a continuing theme also, that started right with the trump tower meeting june 9th with don jr. and continued through to the president, which is why congress voted a law that basically and cuffed the president. so this was an issue that runs
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true in a lot of respects. the real question is, if he took $15 million and was willing to take $15 million to pull what was basically kind of a james bond escapade to take out this cleric from pennsylvania -- >> was eight kidnapping, or forcible removal? however you want to characterize it, it's a remarkable thing to consider. >> it's not an extradition. >> there is judicial process. >> you go into court and have papers. >> we should be clear the reason this man resides in the poconos, pennsylvania, it is a weird story a man who is an exiled cleric who runs a spiritual social movement in turkey the government blames happens in the poconos. the reason he is still there is, he is not extraditable by the normal judicial procedures. >> that's right. that's way it works in this country. another theme running through this administration is that they had no regard for the rule of law. and this is just another example of that. and if they're doing it for $15 million, that's even worse. >> he already prior to this
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seemed to have exposure on the foreign agent registration and the reason that i thought of that was, one of the counts of the indictment against manafort is about filling a register, right? >> and there's good reasons why you want people to register. it's because you are disclosing to the world and u.s. government, yes, i'm acting on behalf of this government. here, it was all hidden. it was hind when he met with -- it was hidden when he met with people to talk about getting gulen out of the country. it was hidden when he purposely decided not to let this operation in raqqa go forward and it basically set the u.s. military back several months. >> you are referring to a reporting earlier in the year that he was a key decision-maker about the timing of essentially the final assault on raqqa and delayed it. >> because he did not want the turkish government, didn't want the kurds involved in this, you know, whole expedition. >> well, the turkish government really doesn't like the armed
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forces effective in fighting isis. they essentially would take raqqa and take the lands that would give them a strangle the hold the turks are incredibly skeptical of. >> even though the turkish government doesn't have the wherewithal to do it themselves there you got, so many questions about who exactly michael flynn was working for and at what moment. if any part of this story ends up being true, we will learn about it. it is absolutely explosive. >> why was it that donald trump said to james comey, you got to drop this investigation? that's the big question. >> about michael flynn. that's a great point. thanks for your time tonight. >> thank you. ahead the mueller probe digs deeper as steven miller reportedly faces questions about the firing of james comey. that's next.. ....there was a single site... ...where you could find the... ...right hotel for you at the best price? there is. because tripadvisor now compares... ...prices from over 200 booking... ...sites ...to save you up to 30%...
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special counsel robert mueller's investigation is methodically work, its way through the inner most sanctum white house. they have interviewed steven miller citing unnamed sources familiar with the investigation. miller's chief relevance may be in the firing of james comey, miller wrote a memo largely dictated by the president himself, citing president trump's reasons for firing then fbi director james comey, one of the president's lawyers reportedly stopped the release, he found it angry and problematic.
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mu mueller, though, reportedly has a copy of it, reportedly in the hands of rod rosenstein when he drafted his own now infamous letter which formed the basis of comey's termination. it's impossible. it's like having your cake and eating it too. ask your broker if they offer award-winning full service and low costs. how am i going to explain this? if you don't like their answer, ask again at schwab. schwab, a modern approach to wealth management.
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within hours of the mass shooting in sutherland springs, if you were to search youtube, you might come across a video by a right wing shock jock elmer t. williams, there you might find a monologue full of false claims and posted soon enough to take advantage of news interest and become temporarily prioritized by youtube's own algorithm. on sunday night after the texas shooting, williams told his subscribers and anyone that stumbled on his video after searching, the suspect was muslim or black. he posted he could be a bernie sanders supporter and probably a member of the left wing group antifa. >> this is the millennium, meaning he's probably a bernie sanders supporter.
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almost all of the antifah people are in love with bernie sanders because he's a socialist. frigging idiot. we see all of these church shootings and there doesn't seem to be any outrage. >> when asked youtube about his account, all of williams' youtube videos were turned down, because of hate speech. williams had 90,000 subscribers, sometimes posting 20 times a day, until they took them down, monologues peppered with gross falsehoods. >> this is breaking news that nobody has this story but your doctor. they said this particular man that donald trump has implemented on the muslim affects your former president barack hussein obama. it appears that some left wing cook, it was actually rand paul's neighbor, he decided to put one of those football
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tackles on rand paul. i bet you his neighbor is a bernie sanders or hillary supporter. >> the "new york times" business and tech columnist who wrote the piece on the rapid response partisans joins me now. it's a fascinating piece. there is a bunch of things happening here. let's talk about something uploading to youtube is fine, the most troubling part is this sort of algorithm elevating it, you search for sutherland springs and you get this. >> i think five or six of the first ten videos that showed up were these conspiratorial shock jocks who upload these videos. they do it very quickly. youtube has an algorithm that weighs things according to credibility and page size and before the major networks could get their videos up, there were dozens of these kind of videos out there. so they're playing like a speed game essentially and they're
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winning. they've learned how to outgame the algorithm. >> this happens on google news and other platforms as well, right after an event like this, the stuff that's rising to the top is the most conspiratorial. >> it's engaging. you can see why people watch it. it's much more interesting that you stumbled into a guy with a conspiracy theory than a news story, so there has been a weaponization of the algorithm and platform to convey these conspiracy stories. >> how big are the audiences? info wars is ultimate or conspiracy channel on youtube is a massive reach. but there's a huge ecosystem beneath that. >> elmer williams, i called him. he lives in houston. he has made something like 10,000 video, 20 a day sometimes, he has been doing this eight years. he says he's gotten 200 million views on his video, 90,000
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subscribers. and he's sort of a marginal subscriber. he's not the top alex jones, he's big enough that youtube allowed him into the partner program, which allows him to show ads on his videos. >> he says if youtube didn't punish me, i could easily be making over $30,000 a month. >> i don't know if that's true, if he's exaggerating. the fact he is being paid or was until youtube shut down his account. i think that's the difference than what we see on facebook and twitter, in those cases, some of the misinformation specialists are having to pay to place ads to get their message out there. in the case of youtube, they're getting paid to do this. >> the similarity is this question of are you a printing press or newspaper? if are you a printing press, someone says, make a thousand of these flyers, you make them, you don't look at the content at all. if you are a number, you say is
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this true? all the of the platforms, youtube, facebook, twitter are caught in an uncomfortable place between the two. >> they are like printing presses in a way, they're platforms where anyone can upload anything. i think that's good. they've also taken on the responsibility of showing curated algorythmicly sorted front pages to people. that's what brings in the editorial judgment that they have, thus far, not been able take on? >> it's a stamp of approval, if you partner with them that shows up in some way, that's some kind of judgment they're making. it's unclear what the content of that judgment is? >> i think they do it in various ways, youtube is available to all pages above a certain size. i think in this case they made a mistake by letting them into his -- their program. because he shouldn't have had an account at all. he had been previously banned from another account. he's sort of a repeat offender. there are lots of guys that aren't technically breaking the rules. >> it's a great piece. thanks for coming by.
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thing one, we told you last night about some of the extraordinarily unqualified people that president trump has nominated for his administration and for federal judges, including four judicial nominees dubbed unqualified by the american bar association, which is extremely rare, two were voted unqualified, that hasn't happened since 1976. that nominee was withdrawn. that was with drawn. >> that second person there, he practiced law for you want to take a guess? three years. he's practiced law for three years. brett tally has also never tried a case. but at 36-years-old, he is now up for a lifetime appointment to
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the federal bench. his rabidly partisan beliefs have been on full display less than two weeks at the sandy hook massacre, he invited readers to join in and suggested hillary clinton should be jailed. so that is who is nominated t.. the senate judiciary never tried a case. three years out of law school. every single democrat voted not to confirm him to a lifetime position on the federal bench. can you guess how each of these republicans voted? that's thing two in 60 seconds. all those laxatives, daily probiotics, endless fiber-- it could be wearing on you. tell your doctor what you've tried, and how long you've been at it. linzess works differently from laxatives. linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. it can help relieve your belly pain and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements
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that are easier to pass. do not give linzess to children less than six and it should not be given to children six to less than eighteen. it may harm them. don't take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain, especially with bloody or black stools. the most common side effect is diarrhea, sometimes severe. if it's severe, stop taking linzess and call your doctor right away. other side effects include gas, stomach-area pain and swelling. ask your doctor if 90 days of linzess may be right for you. >> mr. tally graduated from law school ten years ago. what's more, in a senate questionnaire, he stated, i have not tried a case. he has been nominated for a lifetime appointment as a federal district court judge but has no trial experience.
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>> a ranking member of the judiciary committee diane feinstein at the confirmation hearings for one of president trump's judicial nominees, 36-year-old conservative blogger brett tally. yesterday he was approved on a party line vote. every democrat opposed him. not a single republican objected. so now senator mitch mcconnell will hold a full senate vote. every senator must decide whether a blogger unanimously calls not qualified, who tweeted about hillary rotten clinton should receive a lifetime appointment as a federal judge . ? you never just get one offer. go to lendingtree.com and shop multiple loan offers for free! free? yeah. could save thousands. you should probably buy me dinner. no. go to lendingtree.com for a new home loan or refinance. receive up to five free offers
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several of them. and today he said, quote, these stories are true. it's the latest in a very, very long spring of men recently accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault. the flood began last month when dozens stepped forward to accuse harvey weinstein of rape and abuse. >> tonight a bombshell new allegation against kevin spacey. >> legendary film producer harvey weinstein is fired. >> the company suspended its entertainment chief roy price amid sexual harassment allegations. >> also breaking tonight, comedian louis c.k. accused of sexual misconduct. >> we are reporting charges against our friend mark halperin. >> porsche degrassi claims she was exposed by steven segal. >> dustin hoffman, jeremy piven
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and the chief of npr news. >> it's a singular moment that we're in the midst of right now as more and more women and many men, too, speak about their experience of sexual assault and about how hard it is for them to be believed. >> that is about perhaps the core question now in the alabama senate race, roy moore is reporting sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl. what does it take for people to believe these accusers as lawmakers and media moguls call them liars and opportunists. that's next.
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do people do it for money, for political reasons? is that more common than people would think? >> oh, definitely. >> they will like to make money? >> undoubtedly. a lot of has to women, it's all about money. they bank on the fact that these corporations -- >> there are women that are victims of predators. >> there are. but very few and far between. >> so hard, so hard. laura bassett, senior political reporter of "the washington post," michelle goldberg, has written about the weinstein scandal and widening allegations of sexual harassment. where to start right now. i wrote my first book, i did reporting on the catholic church scandal and this feels like that but for all of society like where there were decades of trauma that people kept in and it just started to come out. >> i don't find it -- to me it's
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not liberating. it's like this kind of grim slog where on the one hand it's like our consolation prize for having this monster misogynist as president. it makes me despair about the prospects of gender equality. >> why? >> if this behavior is so pervasive, if you basically have to tear down almost every kind of cultural institution in america -- >> from academia to -- >> right. in order to have some hope of parity. and also the growing realization of how many men i interacted with that i actually had no idea had such contempt for women. >> you've written about this. you wrote this piece about the women that were asked him
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masturbate in front of them. what has it been like to cover this? >> well, people do understand this but it's worth pointing out that the stories that make the news are the harvey weinsteins and the louis c.k.s, it's because they're celebrities that it makes news. for most women i talk to, we've been sexually harassed in every job we've ever been in. the media, the fourth estate, supposed to be the police of institutionalized sexual misconduct and yet it's all over the media. we've all been harassed by men we work with. and the stories of random men masturbating in front of us throughout our lives. the first time it happened to me i was 5 years old. it's happened to multiple times to many of us. what we're reading about in news is the very tip of the iceberg.
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>> i understand the feeling of a grip slog, there's a lot of trauma and even i can feel it. but there is something about the standard of believing, belief, that seems to have changed in a palpable way in the last month. >> and it's why all these people are coming forward. a lot of these stories are known. there's a media figure who recently resigned. i tried to report that story a year and a half ago and people were not willing to talk publicly. and now they are because they know that they'll be believed, they know that -- and they know that these this is no longer considered acceptable. that's the other thing. there's sort of a question of some of this behavior was not harvey weinstein scale but maybe some of the lesser -- what's considered acceptable has changed extremely quickly and so now people have grounds to make
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complaints that just didn't exist previously. >> i'm also heartened by seeing so many men doing a lot of genuine self-reflecting and thinking really hard about how they contribute to rape culture all the time. i've had men in my life approach me and say, okay, if i want to hit on a co-worker, what is okay? is any office romance okay? on the one hand i'm frustrated that i have to explain on how to not sexually harass people. on the other hand, let's have those conversations. i'd rather have that. >> there's a lot of auditing that men are doing in their behavior that i think is useful and needed and overdo. >> i really worry as key conflate creepy direct messages with harassment and rape and conflate these sort of borderline cases with systemic harassment, i very much worry about the coming backlash. the reason that this is happening in left of center
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cultural institutions but not really in right of center cultural institutions, at least everybody left of center cultural institutions believes there's a problem, even if they're hypocritically. >> you even see that in the statement of weinstein. >> people are willing to act on a couple of people, a couple of credible charges come forward and people are very quickly losing their jobs, being stripped of titles, all those sorts of thing. i hope that continues to be the rule. i worry people are looking for an excuse not to have do that. >> and roy moore seems to be a test case right now. people are saying not only is it not true but, like, even if it is. >> right. the most stunning comment i read was, well, jesus and mary -- or joseph was way older than mary. she was a teen-ager when she had
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jesus so this in the bible says it's okay. >> and you've seen rush limbaugh talking about you're not going to be able to look at women's breasts. >> this goes to a different set of standards. on the one hand you have this clearly good evening. i'm lawrence o'donnell from washington, d.c. tonight. we have much to cover from roy moore to robert mueller and michael flynn and michael flynn's son. but today, a new witness emerged in the case against roy moore. and that witness was almost as damning as the women who told their stories to "the washington post." the new witness decided to tell his story to sean hannity.
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