i'll see you at noon eastern. am joy starting right now. >> sean, first let me say this, these allegations are completely false and misleading. more than that, it hurts me personally because i'm a father. i have one daughter. i have five grand daughters. i have a special concern for protection of young ladies. this is really hard to get on radio and explain this. these allegations are false. >> good morning. welcome to am joy. happy veterans day. roy moore is making it clear he's not dropping out of race. moments ago moore arrived a t a veterans day campaign event by birmingham. he was greeted by chants of "no more." this is moore's first public

appearance since the washington post told a story of a woman who said moore initiated sexual contact her when she was a 14-year-old girl and he was a 32-year-old assistant prosecutor. other women said he pursued relationships when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. many republicans say that moore should drop out of the race. quote, if the allegations are true. how would that be determined? the white house offered this response. >> 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. the president believes if these allegations are true, judge moore will do the right thing and step aside. >> how did we get to the point

where there was even a question of how to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct against a child? >> there was some better time in the past. i think what we are seeing are not lowering standards of behavior but improving standards of morality. >> how do you mean? >> a lot of things that we take these kinds of behavior more seriously today than ever before. that's a welcome change. i don't think people are behaving worse. i think people are being held to a higher standard. this may be one of the things i try to cheer myself up with a lot is maybe there's some gifts from the age of trump and standards intensify social condemnation of cruelty and bullying and sexual predigs. this may be something we'll take out of this period as a gift.

>> we'll see about that. if they're not acting worse, they're showing a rot in american culture that maybe was there all along. let me let you listen to an alabama vote who are is reacting to these claims against former judge roy. this is a alabama voter, republic republican. >> what strikes you as suspect about the allegations? >> the time iing. a lot of that going on right now. people that are against are really against him. i don't think they'll stop at anything to try to keep him out. >> there's a faction that is pushing people that if they have

such a belief that make them to discount these women, they would like to encourage them to keep doing this. this is last night at an event in south carolina. >> judge moore said today that they are finding some collusion going on. . is it just a coincidence these bezos, amazon, washington post did the bully bush hit and the hit on judge moore. just a complete random thing in the universe. judge moore, i'm standing with him. >> we have a systemic encouragement of people to believe conspiracy theories over little girls. >> look at the person who is in oval office. he spent a lot of time perpetuating a conspiracy theory that president obama wasn't born in this country. i think in a lot of ways what we're seeing is so many people believe that when donald trump

got elected that was their signal they could show and reveal their true selves in some of this awfulness we're seeing is very symptommatic of that. there's no accountability. there's no facts. no one cares about whether something happened or not. they care about the timing. doesn't matter if it happened to him. the timing is suspicious. why aren't accusations like this the end of the conversation. >> is it a coincidence the people you support are sexual predators. >> milo, trump, this guy. it's an interesting thing. beyond that, not only do you have people stoking this mind set amok republicans. people are out to get judge moo

moore. this is what a state representative of alabama. this is what he said about this. he said if they believe this man is preds predatory, i think som should prosecute and go after them. you can't be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion. unquote. what is that? that's a rottenness in the spirit but a tribalism among republicans. you explain. >> you know i'm not going to try to explain a local legislature in alabama. i can tell you the voters in alabama are going to decide the validity of these claims or the character of judge moore. what i found with my calls in alabama yesterday and this morning is i found a uniqueness

about the voters that all of the harvey weinstein, all of this is so distasteful, upsetting that people are starting to turn some of it off. that may be wrong. there's so much out there right now that's wrong. there's so much bad going on that certainly the courts are going to get it. the prisons are going to get the rejects. it's all out there right now. our society is all out there right now on right and wrong. this feels more like larry craig and anthony weiner that bill clinton or harvey wineberg. i get there's election right now. i get that people with president trump and everything around it.

my point is there's so much out there that there's a sense that the people are trying to turn it off. it's hard to deal with. it's hard to understand. i think the judge moore probably wins. i think the voters of alabama are tired of one what one told me this morning is outside noise. they'll deal with their own problems. we'll see how it works out. it feels more like larry craig who ended up resigning than it does some of the others. >> that sounds like outside agitators when people in the same region saying people coming down to the south to argue for civil rights for african-americans were outside agitators and they need to deal it with themselves. >> that remiended me of somethig judge moore said. he characterized the older girls with whom he had these associations as good girls. good girls. they were the one who is had said he had not had a

intercourse. i think the reveal of ed henry in you're seeing the structure of rationalization. there are good girls who he did not bother too much and the bad girls whose fault it was. >> let's listen to roy moore. we're watching this event he's at. this is judge moore trying to parse dating these good girls, as you just call it, that are teenagers when he's in his 30s. let's listen. >> would it be unusual for you as a 32-year-old girl 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, i'm not going to dispute anything but i don't remember anything like that. >> that's not very definitive.

are we see inging a cultural problem. not only is there a good deal of anti-semitism and racism but there's a component of it that's against women being too liberate ed and wants twoim be put in their place. does that go along with the idea of grooming good girls. is there something in it. >> i think david hit on an interesting point which is the idea you're seeing in the rhetoric from these people that well maybe some of these women are to blame. host ju if there's good girls. there must be bad girls and whatever happens must be their fault. there's this culture of the lack of empowerment of women and they look to normalize this behavior because it can't be roy moore's

fault. they have to find a way to rationalize standing by him. this is their way of doing it and going so far as to invoke the bible as a rationalization that this is okay. jesus and mary and joseph were of different ages and that makes this okay. i would like them to produce the birth certificate of mary and joseph. >> mary was a virgin all her life. she was not having sexual relationships. >> median life expectancy was 26. obviously most of the people having sex would be under 26. >> you have a few people pulling away from judge roy moore. not many. i find it interest mike lee said

he is withdrawing his support. i can no longer endorse his candidacy for president. you had mitt romney tweet out innocent until proven guilty is for elections. they only -- now that he's an alleged child molester, they are willing to walk away. when he was saying that homosexuality should be made illegal, they were okay with it. judge roy moore got thrown off the bench. he was okay then. there's an ongoing issue of the morality of having support him in the first place, no? >> i don't think so. i think judge moore got elected twice. he lost two races for governor. i think that in alabama it doesn't matter. they don't know who mike lee is.

alabama will make a decision between two candidates. the call i got in today, first thing they gave me west point graduate judge. so and so. i was a little shocked. the push back came really quick. i'm not exactly an outsider to my friends in alabama. the people in alabama are going to have to make this decision on whether they -- the allegations make them not vote or stay home. >> would it be fair for the rest of the country to make a judgment about the republican voters of alabama. the canadian reporter asked people. there were people who said if it's true, if he raped a 14-year-old girl, i don't care. i would rather have a child molester than a democrat.

would it be fair to look at alabama republican voters if they literally don't care if he, in fact, committed sexual assault against a child? >> i don't think that's fair, joy. >> people said it. people said it. >> that's one person. even if it's proven. >> he talked to official after official. he couldn't find anyone who would say, yeah, i would walk away from him. people were saying, i don't care. >> say a word on behalf of the voters of alabama. they were confronted with a terrible choice. this is a republican party structural problem. the republican party of alabama have been grip bidped by a terr sex and corruption scandal. we need to find some new faces with clean records. they said our response to this terrible scandal in the state of alabama is to come up with exactly the national.

we never clean up. we give people more of what made them sick the last time. roy moore who is a local add ball who doesn't win a lot of elections, doesn't have a lot of supporters in the state. he is different. if you give voters bad choice, don't be surprised that they then make bad choices. >> they have other choices. >> we have judge moore in the screen. i'm going to let you finish your thought. >> at the end of the day, joy, who you elect matters. how you elect them matters. the voters get to have their stay. it's about a democracy. alabama will make their choice. this involves george wallace on numerous occasions. this is a historic past that is very like most southern states.

very independent. very serious about their elections. i suspect a lot of people will turn out and we'll see what they say. i don't think it's fair to judge the entire state of the republican party by this one election but then again who we elect matters. >> i think at a certain point, i'm talking to people who are saying i don't recognize my party. i have a party now who standard bearers of the ilk and character level of donald trump and roy moore. this is becoming standard issue and that republicans writ large will not walk away from these people, not wash their hands of this personal low character. this is the party that used to claim to be the party of moral values and it's the party of roy moore and donald trump. do people feel proud of that? >> well, it's also the party of mike pence and mitch mcconnell.

>> who support these same people? >> again, we'll see. there's a democracy out there and the voters are going to get to have their say and we deal with who comes to washington. if this thing turns toout to be grejous as the people are making up then the judge won't stay there for long. i think he will get his chance to serve as united states senator. >> do you think the party recognizes, do people nsinside e republican party can only shrink from here. they cannot grow. >> they have boxed themselves in. the moment that donald trump became the republican nominee and every republican stood by, clapped like a seal, endorsed him, didn't distance themselves and say this is not the republican party that they were so concerned about winning one election they were willing to sacrifice the next two, three, four down the road. even though roy moore said some pretty ignoranting stuff, they

all stood by him. it took molesting a child to get some people to walk away from that. no wonder people this is the the party that is racist, ignorants, doesn't care about gun violence, minorities or people dying. this party has moved away from the quote, unquote, moral fiber they used to prop themselves up on that show it's really was just for show and not something they believed in. >> they've been quite successful electorally. >> yes and no. yes and no. the republican party looks very sf successful right now. it look likes the best year since 1928. the last time the republicans were this dominant back in the 1920s, they were dominant in the m major cultural centers of the united states.

today whether where ever product is envent that's where the republican party is absent. although they flip the coin and landed on the edge, dplags. i think there's a structural weakness here that is going to be extremely apparent. it's become apparent in virginia in 2017. it will be parent in congressional elections in 2018. you have to build, this is the part of enterprise and business. it has to be strong. >> i can't quote the statistics exactly and we're still listening to george roy moore. as a rough estimate, donald trump dominated in over 2,000 counties but they represent maybe a third of the gross domestic product of the country. hillary clinton won 500 counties but they represent two-thirds of the gdp.

the democrats are weak when you look at the map but if you look at the places where industry is happening, where innovation is happening, for all intents and purposes the republican party isn't there. they are not growing in the industrial centers of the country, the creative centers. they are demanding we bring back coal. i wonder if the party has taken a step back and said gerrymandering can keep us in power but where do we go from here? where is the party going? the country doesn't want this. >> i disagree with that. when i look at the elections for the last eight years of barack obama, we gained seats in the house and senates all over the country. we gained governorships. we're the party of individual responsibility. >> really. individual responsibility? >> well, this is where we're going to judge everybody that's

a politician. mind you, this thing cuts both ways in both parties, the morality issue and sexual issue. you can't just judge a party by one person. there's a whole lot more people. my answer to you is with all the demise the last guy just gave us, the elections and the people that are voting have been putting republicans for eight years in office. with that said, virginia, i get virginia. we didn't win virginia. we haven't won it in a while. that wasn't like losing south carolina or losing north carolina. we have been winning election, especially the local elections that matter to me more than the national elections. we have been winning on a pretty fast clip. whether there are rural americans or urban americans they both have the same vote. i get the theory of maybe they are not coming from these bases or maybe we're not progressive enough. we're attractive enough to where the voters are voting for us. >> the voters that are showing

up. that's the problem too. the rural voters show up. i'll give them that. >> it's the thing i agree with this in the opening of the show. if the rule is how a politician treats his or her intimates, if that's a important consideration, that rule has to be applied pretty broadly. that's not been the rule in american politics until the day before yesterday. i'm not a big believer in what aboutism. the story of bill clinton is an example. 15 years ago, 20 years ago people said that's not relevant how you treat your intimates. that's a new thing. that's a higher standard. it isn't that our culture is rotting. it isn't the world is worst, the newspapers are better. i think there may be something going on here. as process of achieving real as

opposed to legal equality for women has been a slow one. that's not the way human race has bewhat does it really mean that women are people? that means how you treat -- just as how you treat your staff tells the us what kind of leader you'll be. how you treat your wife and your children or your husband and your children or parents. that's a new standard. it's a welcome standard. it's a new standard. >> i should note about winning elections, if the republican party truly believes that they've got it over the democrats on ideas and values then why are they working so hard to provent people of color from voting. why the active, aggressive voter suppression. part of the reason it's the rural voters who show up is the door is open to white voters and republicans keep that door open and then they subsequently and simultaneously keep on trying to shut the door on the kind of voters who want to vote for the party of the urban centers. they are not exactly leaving

their thumb off the scale and say whose ideas will win. >> i think they are concerned what happened in california will happen nationally. 20 years ago california was a republican state. over time, as the party moved further to the right and got hijacked by the conservative right, the party with drew. now you have a super majority for the democrats. you have democrats in every state constitutional office because the republicans could not -- there are elections where they can't fill a republican to general in the general election. it's democrat versus democrat. republicans are terrified they can going down that path. >> i would to add frank schaffer.

i'm going to start with kareen first. we're talk about this question of -- oh. sorry. i think we're not going to start. let's go to the reverend. got a bit of confusion. we have this question about which party is the party of moral values. you have roy moore standing the up tlp here as a self-described arbitor of the country. i haven't seen too many evangelical leaders walking away from him. what do you think is going on? >> first of all, i heard a lot of what your panel said. true orthodox evangelicals would not be supporting roy moore and this extremism and republican religionism. white evangelicalism is connected to white nationalism, white supremacy. it's the backbone of racism that

has happened in this country. you understand why white nationalism, white supremacy that promotes racism. racism is twisted. this notion of white evangelical values is twisted any way. i call them republican religiousist are culprits in the moore defenses. they have given him and so many others cover on so many non-christian policies like blocking health care is a non-christian policy. blocking living wages is a non-christian policy. blocking and suppressing voting rights is a non-christian policy. hating gay people is a non-christian people. promoting gun s a non-christian policy. if you embolden these people by giving them support and trying to call their support on those issues christian, then it should not surprise us that they have

their emboldened in this issue. now you have people trying to compare this with jesus and the virgin mary and saying that he's under some spiritual attack like jesus was under spiritual attack and he's in a spiritual battle. a real spiritual battle would be addressing the fact that nearly in some counties in alabama, 40% of the people in poverty. there's 24% of children living in households that are poverty. that's policy pedophilia. you have 900,000 people in poverty. 20% with no health insurance. those are the things that christians should be dealing with if they were dealing with orthodox evangelicalism. it's a term they have hijacked like they hijacked the term the right versus the left. we get caught up in all these terms. they get to use the terms as if

they are valid. moore, himself, he got involved in trying to keep the state from over turning segregation laws. it's the alabama christian coalition. just because you use the name did you want make you christian. there are scriptures that say people can say lord, lord but their hearts are far from him. you have to understand the distinct connection between e n evangelicalism and how people can get this twisted in their moral aspects and perspectives that's so contrary to orthodox christianity and orthodox evangelicalism as it's laid out in scripture. >> you have judge moore's

brother essentially comparing judge moore to jesus himself. he says it's kind of like when jesus christ was hung on the cross. king said turn him loose. we have nothing against him. kill the other guy. now they crucified christ and he they ever did nothing. i'm not saying that roy is like christ. i'm saying the allegations t way they are treating him is like the way they treated christ. they just don't want to believe that god's in control of this. i wonder, frank, how people who call themselves evangelical christians, can say something like that and not be considered apostates? how can they say something like that? >> back in the day when my dad and my were going around the country establishing the religious right based on our anti-abortion stand, one i've moved a long way from since. the whole idea was bringing america basket to some moral stand. think about the republican party now. throw some words out that are

associated with them. mass shooting, milo, trump, moore, banning, rape, child molesting, neo-nazis, white supremacy. what is going on with the republican party? i'm not shocked by donald trump. i'm not shocked by roy moore. he's a loud mouth, gun toting fool. what i'm shocked by is the complicity. you read the subtitle of my book. that is not an overstatement. we are in a political climate that's built on one lie after another. i just want to say for the record, by the way, i believe a woman who stands up, which is very difficult to do and comes forward with a story like that. she was a trump voter. she's a republican. i believe her. i just want to say that as a father and grandfather and someone that respects women.

i believe her. let's say i didn't believe her. let's say she was lying. what are the republicans doing jumping to the defense of roy moore by saying things like, well, it's kind of like jesus. it's kind of like mary, who by the way, as you noted before was i was brought up on the virgin birth. i guess they're all unitarians now. we got a situation. we have a situation where the republican party has become complicit. milo, mass shootings, bannon, moore. donald trump would have been in jail if he was caught grabbing a woman by the crotch without her permission. that's criminal assault. the climate is so poisonous. it boggles my mind. if i was a bible believing,

evangelic evangelical. this is pitiful. disgusting. period. paragraph. that's it. >> because the leadership is completely unholy in the tank for both donald trump, a self-admitted sexual assaulter of women who will is on tape bragging about it. saying he walked in on teenage girls while naked because it's his pageant and people dismissing it. the leadership level is saying that's okay. this is an ordinary voter, our nbc reporter went down to alabama and talked to voters. hold on a second. let's go to judge roy moore. >> salary, which they distorted. about taxes that should have been paid on money we never got. we endured that. later they came out and endorsed

my opponent in this race. just two days ago the washington post established or published yet another attack on my character and reputation in a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for the united states senate. these attacks involve a minor and are completely false and untrue. about something that happened nearly 40 years ago. more being completely false and untry, th untrue, they are very hurtful. i've been married to my wife for nearly 33 years. we have four children. i have one daughter. i have five grand daughters. i have the highest regard for the protection of young children. when i returned 40 years ago after military service, i went to work in the office of the

district attorney. as a student of the law, i have served in public office on and off for the last 40 years. to be attacked for allegations of sexual misconduct, contradicts my entire career in law. i want to make it clear to the media present and the people present, i have not provided alcohol beverages, alcoholic beverages, beer or anything else to a minor. i have not been guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone. these allegations came only four and a half weeks before the general election on december 12th. why now? for 40 years, i have been closely scrutinized in the press and the public media. i've had investigations by the attorney general. i've had investigation by the judicial inquiry commission on more than one occasion.

i've had investigations by the court of the judiciary. i've been in five statewide campaigns in which they do opposition research. they do investigations that you can see and every one i've ever run. three county elections and two major controversies over religious liberty and the ten commandments and same-sex marriage. i've been investigated more than any other person in this country. to this that grown women would wait 40 years to come before, right before an election to bring charges is absolutely unbelievable. [ applause ] why now? the democrats and the republican establishment know the

importance of this election. in fact, most people in america know the importance of this election. they see it as a prelude to the elections coming in 2018. it may well determine the future of our country. my opponent is 11 points behind. that came out just days before this article came out. they are desperate. this article is a prime example of fake news. an attempt to divert attention from the true issues that affect our country like health care, military readiness, tax reform, immigration and national debt. we do not intend to let the democrats or the establishment republicans or anybody else behind this story stop this campaign. there will investigations going on. in the next few days there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of

this article. they will be brought to the publ public. we fully expect to people of alabama to see through this cherade. we do not engage in negative campaigning. i've been blistered in articles from the last two to three months on television and it will continue. i do not expect the washington post to stop. i think they have a political agenda. i think they are running that agenda and everybody in this room, every person watching on these cameras should ask themselves isn't it strange that after 40 years of constant investigation, people have waited to four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints. that's not a coincidence. it's an intentional act to stop a campaign.

may god bless you. bless the state of alabama and the united states of america. thank you. [ applause ] >> that was judge roy moore speaking to supporters in alabama. he called the allegations against him fake news. he called his own potential election the most important political race in the country. he said that the democrats and the republican establishment are coming after him. he claimed also he's been investigated, he, roy moore, more than any other person in this country. hillary clinton would probably like to have a word. i'm going to go around and let the panel disturb. your thoughts. >> wow. j just wow. you watch him and you're like i'm wasting my time and energy watching this guy because he's full of it. there's nothing he's saying that's at all true.

now the republicans are not only supporting a bigot, racist, and a lawless individual. he got thrown offer the bench twice because he couldn't follow the letter of the law. now they are supporting a pedophile. it's reminiscent of the access hollywood tape. it was a fake distance from the republicans and then after a moment, after a while, when he looked like he could win, they brought him right back in. it's just insane but not surprising because we have a president who is a sexual predator. more than a dozen women have come out and put themselves on the line and said this president has sexually assaulted them. there's another part of this which is the bannon component. the republicans are in this situation because of bannon. i cannot understand why you would allow a white nationalist who runs a racist website to be deciding who is going be the u.s. senator and who is not going to be a u.s. senator.

the thing about is bannon is not a king maker. he's a blow hard. >> he's not shown he can do anything other than jump on a primary that was a fore gone conclusion and pretend he created the result. there's no proof he has any special skills when it comes to elections. he is just riding whatever the most extremist, most racist, most sexist band wagon that will grow the alt-right and managed to new york times to running clinton cash of conspiracy theories about hillary clinton which is the one coup he has pulled off. >> he's a mast eer propagandais. you go back to the 2014 senate races, they tried to influence every single one. kentucky, kansas, mississippi, they lost all of those. he attaches his wagon to a horse that's riding first place. that's not some magic campaign

voodoo. it's he's betting on the right horse at the right time and it just so happens it works. even a broken clock is right twice a day. that's a steve bannon story. >> the neo cosplay thaer that w running to be the governor lost there. judge roy moore said he was the most investigating man in country. his first suspension came in 2003 when he was ordered to take down the a statue of the ten commandments. he campaigned saying he was going to install the monument. he's been thrown out and he was elected to jeff justice of the supreme court and ousted again in 2016 permanently after he urged state judge to defy the supreme court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage. he believes that homosexuality

is akin to bestiality and it's an inherent evil to which children must be protected. protector of children. >> the roy moore we heard speak to sean hannity is a man with weak memory. he couldn't remember whether he dated teenagers in his 30s. he couldn't remember whether he met people or not met them. he had a very fallible memory. for that man who is so uncertain about what he can remember and what he can't remember to go out and deliver a statement like that today, i guess his memory has gotten a lot better in the last 12 hours. those are a series of categorical statements. yesterday when he was speaking the statements all were punctured with escape hatches. every single one of them. >> absolutely. he actually was trying to find a way to not admit, to avoid lying about being a 30

something-year-old man who wanted to date teenagers including having spoken in a civics class and trying to date one out of the students. >> the cover up is worse than the crime. that depends what the crime is. >> frank, i want to go to you on this. the reason that involves depriving people of health care, which when you elect these people you are going to get the defunding of your state's public education system. you're going to get the killing off of medicaid for your poorest people. you're going get policies that may even hurt these same actual voters. this is a window into why in these red states, in places in the deep south for the most part but places like kansas, they keep voting for these people any way. this is a voter who spoke with our own gabe in alabama about this election. her name is sheila. she is talking to gabe. >> i don't think it's true.

i don't think that he did what he's being accused of. s >> you plan to vote for roy moore in the election next month? >> yes. >> why do you support him? >> i like his christian beliefs and values and his wife's. >> frank, how can that be? she's imparting christian values onto man who is accused of molesting a little girl. >> listen, what we're watching here is a massive shift in politics and religion. american white evangelical christianity that i grew up in, is now part of a white supremist movement that wants to hold onto power whether it's by gerrymanders, voter suppression, white supremacy or violence. they know the gun lobby is making a fortune selling guns to people that shouldn't have them. they will go along with this as

long as it's part of their party platform that keeps them in pow we are the dollars that flow to candidates and the rest. we're talking about a morally bankrupt religious movement. we're talking about a country that, thank god, faces a hopeful future because as a speaker before said the california trend of ethnic diversity, less racism, tolerance, accepting homosexuality as a normal, human behavior, these things are on the acentu -- ascendant. that's last clingers, these liars, it's like the last days of hitler's bunker. a bunch of white generals clustered around the table, looking at maps trying to hold onto a shrinking part of berlin as the allies move in from all sides. that's our future. it's going be a good future in

america. it's going to be one of creative redempti redemption. it's something we can look forward to. we're facing just the lowest, scummist moment of american history i can remember as a 65-year-old man. we have a credible person who claim s a pedophile standing up in front of a room full of people going that's right. what is he defending. a charge of pedophilia. we have a president that tells us 12 women, 20 women, that said he molested them, assaulted them. they are liars. he hadn't sued them yet bauds he would have to do depositions in court. of course what they are saying is true. we're in pit. this is what hell looks like. a country where people talk about morals, defending someone. that's about as low as you can get. this is where we are. i've seen it in my lifetime

coming from my e evangelical backgrou background. the point is the redemption is coming and coming because of people like you who speak of. it's coming because of the folks on the show who is bringing sanity to the discussion. that's the future. this bozo in a cowboy hat is the past. thank god for that. >> frank, powerful words. bishop, do we still have you? >> you do. >> frank brought up on the issue of guns. i was struck last week that an op-ed in the federalist, we would love to know who funds that. wrote an op-ed in which he said that the people inside of that texas church in sutherland springs who were slaughtered by a madman who murdered little

kids that the people who were murdered in that church had their prayers answered by god because he wants us to be delivered out of this evil world and into paradise. if a muslim aman said that, we would compare them to isis. he wasn't ignoring their prayers, he was answering it by sending them to paradise viol t violently. your thoughts. >> it's where we have been for quite a while. the part of my concern is we don't stop calling these people white evangelicals. we don't stop calling them evan jell ca -- evangelicals. i'm an evangelical. there's a tradition of those who have taken orthodox christian viewpoints to fight against

injustice, stand against sl slavery, to support gay people, to support justice in this world. what you have is a hoax. it can take on the semblance of religion. all she thinks christian values and i pray for her, somebody ten commandments and somebody against gay people. the reality is you're looking at the continual manifestation of slave master religion that was used in all kinds of ways to justify wrong. you're looking at the manifestation of the spiritual mobilization campaign. big money put a lot of money behind it. you're looking at the same kind of religion that said that segregation was christian. that was the same kind of language they told poor whites

if you fought in the civil war and died it was actually a blessing kind of death. it has been -- what we're dealing with is the audience that's been cultivated for years and particularly around this roy moore piece for the a massive hoax. the problem is it's a true christian thought would not have supported roy moore before all of this. that's the point. before all of this, he supported programs that hurt children. he denied health care, he denied living wages. those hurt your children. now, on top of this you've got all these people trying to make this right. what if this was obama? you watch these political people

attempt to twist this and make it all right, when the fact is the so-called white evangelicals -- i call them republican extreme religionists now -- who are supporting these kind of backwoods un-christian policies, they have created a place for this kind of twisted theology. i'm not saying this as a religion person on the left or on the right. i believe in the prophetic moral center. i'm an independent by voter registration. we are seeing a non-christian movement being perpetrated as a massive hoax on the american public. and it is as old as the magicians against jesus, as old

as what frederick douglass called the slave master's religion versus the religion of christ. it's always been a part of the american construct that we misinterpret. >> on that note, i want to bring in jason johnson, who is politics editor of theroot.com. at a certain point what i think a lot of people don't understand is how raw self-interest doesn't over come this. these are the same people who are cutting out health care, who are taking away living wages, who are denying minimum wage increases, who are saying we will leave you poorer. we refuse to let you have higher wages. you cannot have health care or medicaid. the same people saying we will now boldly cut the richest people's taxes and raise yours so we can afford it for them. when does raw self-interest overcome this decamping to a

religious dictate? >> that's something on the left and even on the right don't seem to understand. i'm a political scientist. people say they vote their pocketbooks. no, they don't. they vote with their values. when i talked about policy, it didn't work. when i started talking about black people, that's when they started stamping their feet. that's what drives people who support roy moore. it's not just religion. you have to fundamentally hate women to not believe a 14-year-old girl who says i was assaulted because this guy goes trolling for dates at custody hearings when he's a lawyer. we've always had this element in society, we've always had sick people, loathesome people. we're in a free country, everybody can have that belief system. let's stop trying to convince these people to join the rest of

moral society and focus on the people who uplift and recognize what the future needs to be. >> democrats vote their values and not their pocketbooks. if you live in new jersey, new york, or connecticut, you are affirmatively voting to raise your own taxes constantly because the values of the party you prefer are more important to you than your pocketbook. neither party vote their pocketbook really. >> it's this myth. the economy could be terrible next year and you'll still have tons of people vote for donald trump. how many different pointless, cl cloying stories can we read about poor ohio voters. yeah, i didn't think trump was going to take all this stuff away from me but i'm going to vote from him anyway. >> they will say we know he's not reopening the factory.

i'm getting laid off and i still support him. >> literally i have it pinned on twitter. trump supporters will never leave him under any circumstances. i think his core party, the core support that he has, that 25-30%, they're nihilists. they already think america is done. they just want to go down swinging. he's their temper tantrum. >> there is an apocalyptic element to it. there's the sense that they're already in this cosmic struggle speeding towards the apocalypse. to a certain extent jason is right, there are people for whom these issues are secondary to that apocalyptic vision anyway. >> if you look at the theology of some of the white evangelicals that support trump -- let's start with him because that's the big story. their vision of the future is a very grim one. and essentially their ideas that they are a persecuted remnant of true believers and now you mix

in a racial element after an eight-year black presidency that denies everything that their core racist believes -- beliefs hold onto. this kind of slave master theology, that has been denied in a documentary sense to them that has enraged them. i completely agree, their view is not to build a healthy future. look, the healthy future is sitting around that table with you. there are black faces there, white faces, asian faces. you've got one token old white fart here who repentsstupidity. i look at what's around your table and say if two lines were forming, i would be running in that direction. that's the healthy, hopeful redemptive future. >> here's a challenging message. you never change the mind of the base. the way you win elections is by moving people from the middle.

this is what you're going to see happening or not happening in alabama. roy moore is a weak candidate. if the national democratic party had let doug jones run as a moderate not a liberal, this seat would be winnable. >> we'll see. thank you guys. great panel. up next, more a.m. joy.

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and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of ra, even without methotrexate. ask your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. i don't think anybody knows it was russia that broke into the dnc. she'srussia, russia, russia. it could be china. it could be sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay? >> donald trump has never believed that russia meddled in the election. he's never believed the conclusion of the nsa, the krci. you know who he does believe? vladimir putin.

he believes president vladimir putin. he told reporters, he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. he did not do what they're saying they did. every time he sees me he says, i didn't do that. and i really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. he says i didn't do that. i think he's very insulted by it. it's very hard to read donald trump's words because of the syntax. donald trump -- did you think that you would live to see the day when the president of the united states would take the word of former kgb agent and russian autocrat, vladimir

putin, over the word of his own u.s. intelligence services? >> joy, it just makes you ask who is he not willing to betray over this issue as long as it perpetuates the myth that russia had nothing to do with electing him. he's betrayed the intelligence community that put the report together. he's now betrayed, i think, his oath to protect and defend our country and our constitution. he's siding with a foreign adversary. it is an absolute betrayal. and i think it's just a devastating message to those who toil away here in the united states and abroad to protect our country, that he is siding with vladimir putin and taking him just at his word. >> what do you expect to hear from your colleagues on the other side of the aisle in response to that? normally the republican party for a long time have felt they own these national security issues. they were the party for peace through strength during the reagan era. now you have a republican president of the united states siding with a foreign adversary

over these intelligence services that work so hard and defend this country. do you expect to hear any outrage or umbrage from the other side of the aisle? >> i don't have to predict what they're going to do because i saw just this past week what they will do. we were in a judiciary committee hearing and legislating around the section 702. that's foreign surveillance. it was our first time in a long time to update that. and taking a lesson learned from our own investigation into the russia interference, i wrote legislation that said if we observe any foreigners trying to meddle in our elections, we immediately have to notify congress. i wrote this because i think one of the failures of the obama administration is they didn't tell congress soon enough, they didn't tell the public soon enough. i thought this was one way to make sure that congress knows if something like this were to happen again. every single republican voted against it. the chairman of the committee said he wouldn't support it because it was a partisan amendment.

what is partisan about just wanting to know if foreigners are meddling in our election? i'm afraid they've buried their head in the sand because any talk of election interference i >> you now have to put partisanship in the mix when you talk about questions of basic national security. >> yeah. >> did you ever think you'd see the day when an american president would side with vladimir putin, former kgb agent, over the american intelligence services? >> never. my last job was in the obama administration. i was the deputy assistant secretary of defense responsible for russia and eastern europe. we had republicans and democrats, i mean, i think understanding what the policy was toward russia. we didn't have a breakdown along party lines. we got it a little bit wrong because we thought we could cooperate with russia. we didn't understand that

vladimir putin was really going to be an adversary to the point where he would do a high risk operations against the united states elections. once that became public, once we knew that -- i mean, i continue to be shocked that the president can maintain this position that somehow the intelligence community is wrong. you know, the only people who know what russia did are the russian intelligence agents and our intelligence agents. so it's apaling to me that they try to dismiss it. the russians, of course their mow ddus operandi is just keep going, pretend nothing happened. they're in violation of a nuclear treaty with us right now. they lied about invading crimea and ukraine and then later admitted it. they lied about what they were doing in the rest of the crew cran -- ukraine. putin lies time and time again. >> should the obama administration have been more aggressive about telling the

public about what they knew was going on in terms of russian interference even though republicans like mitch mcconnell threatened the white house and said if you go forward, you're just trying to swing the election. >> what i was worried about -- i was no longer in government during this time period. i was worry about the obama administration was not informing congress in the fullest fashion they could. it turns out they were but at least on one side of the aisle they weren't interested in the truth. i think the public needed to know more. i would have advocated for telling the public more, had i been in the administration. i also understand the various things they were juggling in the white house, the various other considerations. they didn't want to make it seem political, et cetera. >> and donald trump had said that the election was going to be rigged. to the obama administration's credit, they didn't want to play into that bogus claim. >> i totally get that. this russian operation was

incredibly successful in that they managed to place as national security advisor of the united states somebody who had taken a check from russia, taken a check from the leadership there in russia. it also turned out that michael flynn was taking checks from other folks. this is a pretty shocking story. it turns out that robert mueller is investigating mike flynn's alleged role in a plot to kidnap, to forcibly remove a muslim cleric living in the united states and deliver him to turkey in return for millions of dollars. this cleric is a political rival of the turkish president erdogan. flynn and his son are essentially accused of a kidnapping plot for cash that he would have been plotting while the sitting national security advisor of the united states. your thoughts? >> well, it's simple.

i mean, if this is proven, you're going to see the indictments very soon. what i think you'll see is the former director of defense intelligence, the former national security advisor to the united states, arrested for participating in a plot to abduct a u.s. resident and rendition him privately for money to a foreign power. you know, this goes hand in hand with everything else that was going on with mike flynn and his son, his involvement with russia, his seeming involvement with the russian foreign minister when we were kicking out spies from the united states. this is so incredible that what we have here -- and it goes to donald trump's remarks to vladimir putin -- we have moved so far away from them being a whole bunch of innocents abroad and just looking out for their own personal interests, that i'm really flabbergasted. i really think we are at a national level benedict arnold

moment going on here. we have a president literally on veterans day insulting the entirety of u.s. intelligence and siding with a former director of the kgb, fsb. but all of this together taken as one team shows me that there was a continuing criminal enterprise and russia is at the center of it and the president has violated his oath by maintaining this fraud that none of this is true. when it's borne out, it's going to be well past impeachable. >> on this question of vladimir putin being able to say to the president of the united states, no, i didn't do it, i didn't interfere in the election, and that's good enough for the president of the united states on veterans day. your thoughts?

>> it's the same thing that trump has been doing and that putin has been doing for the beginning, which is continue yulely l -- continually lying about this and also being quite blatant. trump asked putin to give the hacked hillary clinton e-mails to him, promised he'd be rewarded. there's no shame here, no sense of propriety, legality. i think malcolm said it well. we are well past the point of a typical impeachment process. we're at a historical juncture. >> the question is whether or not this is merely distasteful and i think particularly to any veteran it should be distasteful that the american president would side with a foreign autocrat over the intelligence

services that work hard every day to protect this country. whatever you individually think of the cia or the nsa and their history, these are professionals that are working. they are americans. at minimum, side with the americans over the russians. he doesn't want to do with that. the issue is whether there is going to be criminal liability attached to donald trump, to michael flynn. wilbur ross, the commerce secretary of the united states, has his own ties to putin's cronies. he also led a private bailout of the bank of cyprus which has long been regarded as a haven for wealthy russians. you have senior members of this administration with ties to putin. you have trump with ties and believed putin. at what point does the distasteful cross into criminal? >> when they lie about it, when they fail to reveal it when

they're asked, when they lie under oath. pretty much every trump campaign operative who was asked did you have contact with the russians says no. and then we found out it's not true. this week it was carter page. last week it was george pa papadoplos. why is trump lying? again, he was able to say that no one in my campaign contacted the russians, there were never any discussions. we know that is absolutely not true. the question is what's trump trying to cover up, or is he just so clueless that he doesn't know his campaign officials are doing this highly unorthodox thing of meeting with russians to try to elect donald trump as the next president of the united states. >> we do have one instance in

which donald trump is personally intervening to fix the story of his son as to why he's taking that meeting with somebody who then turns out to have been using talking points that were connected to talking points in russia in which they were supposedly being promised dirt on hillary clinton. i think the question for a lot of people who tune in is, at what point does the criminal liability attach to him? there are lots of people who seem to be in some trouble. paul manafort, michael flynn and his son, maybe even jared kushner, who knows. at what point does trump have liability? and can he be prosecuted for this? >> i think mueller is looking at obstruction of justice charges. steve miller, who's in the white house now, had a little sitdown to talk about this letter that he ginned up about why comey should be fired. apparently it was too transparent because it admitted that it was about the russians. the white house counsel made

this move of going to rod rosenstein at the justice department. if you're trying to impede an investigation about russian interference in your campaign that's a federal crime. what mueller is doing now -- >> then there's the question on the national security side obviously, do the intelligence services at some point push back and say, wait a minute, we're right here? >> they should. but the problem is you've seen pompeo be very cautious. he's been very cautious. frankly speaking, the dni, dan coates, he's also very quiet. so we don't really see them pushing back publicly at least defending the intelligence community. hopefully they're doing it in private. >> in fact, pompeo was meeting with a conspiracy theorist who was giving an alternate theory.

should democrats be more explicitly pitching to voters that your party needs control of the house of representatives in order for there to ever be a meaningful investigation of russia-gate. >> a poll came out earlier in the week that i shshowed over 6f the country is concerned about president trump and his contacts with russia. if we pitched this to the american people that this is not about the last election, it's about our freedom to choose in the next one and that we will have the checks and balances to hold this administration accountable and that we always protect the democracy, i think they're going to give us the responsibility to lead. of course, we have to supplement that with health care and make sure that we're on their side when it comes to middle class tax cuts, but i really do believe this freedom to choose is what this is all about. they're with us. we just have to show them we're for them. >> i would suspect that the majority of american people

believer american intelligence services over vladimir putin. donald trump is not among them. appreciate you all. up next, the great lawrence o'donnell joins me live. can i give it to you straight? that airline credit card you have... it could be better. it's time to shake things up. with the capital one venture card, you get double miles on everything you buy, not just airline purchases. seriously, think of all the things you buy. great...is this why you asked me to coffee? well yeah... but also to catch-up. what's in your wallet?

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i've been investigated more than any other person in this country. to think that grown women would wait 40 years to come right before an election to bring charges is absolutely unbelievable. >> here to help me fact check roy moore's defense this morning is my friend lawrence o'donnell who has a great new book

entitled "playing with fire" in which he answers the question of whether donald trump's election was the most unusual in history with a big old no. great book. we're going to talk about a book in just a second. but i have to talk to you about roy moore. last night you went through the attempts by sean hannity to save him from himself and the failure. what do you make of roy moore's defense this morning? >> he didn't offer any real defense this morning. it's been clarified to him -- actually sean hannity clarified it for him for the first time in his life that in sean hannity's world it is weird and inappropriate, to put it mildly, for a 32-year-old assistant district attorney to be dating 17-year-olds and 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds. and roy moore had actually admitted to dating them in the sean hannity interview before

sean told him, i don't like that, i have daughters that age and i wouldn't like that. and then roy moore went, oh, okay, i wouldn't like it either. so there are two different interviews that sean hannity did yesterday, one before the commercial break and one after the commercial break. you might call it the resets if it was a courtroom. lawyers do what they do during the recess. they figure out how they're going to rehabilitate their witness. so roy moore before the recess, before the commercial said, for example, of debbie gibson, i knew her as a friend. i knew her as a friend. do you know how he met his friend? in her high school civics class where someone thought it's a good idea in civics class, let's bring in local assess taistant district attorney to talk about the court system. great idea unless it's roy moore, because he's going to ask

a 17-year-old out on a date. that's how he knew her. he was using debbie gibson's story, dating her when she was 17, saying that she didn't have sex. that's her story, they did not have sex. saying she contradicts the 14-year-old who says that we did have sex. in the first part of the interview he used every other part of the "washington post" story as fact to contradict the 14-year-old. sean then comes back from the commercial and leads him through this thing about dating teenagers when you're 32 is inappropriate. and only then does he say well i don't really recall dating them. unfortunately a lot of people are reducing this interview to i can't recall dating them. that's not true. he did recall dating them. he said i date add ld a lot of

ladies before he knew he wasn't supposed to say that. >> i'm old enough to remember gary hart was turfed out of a presidential campaign for merely having a woman not his wife sitting on his lap. when larry craig was turfed out of congress for having his foot touch another man's foot in a bathroom stall, how do we go from infe deidelity being enoug end your political career to people in alabama saying even if it's true that he had sex with a 14-year-old, i don't care. >> because up to the age of trump, politicians did not get the presumption of innocence ever. the benefit of the doubt never went to a politician. we have been schooled, i think rather wisely, to as a fundamental default point, do not believe politicians.

don't believe every word the car dealer says, do not believe politicians. so whenever they approach the doubt zone, the voter always used to go the other way. and now in this age, you have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. if you don't have videotape of donald trump doing what he personally confessed to doing as a sexual assaulter, if you don't have that videotape, donald trump gets the benefit of the doubt from that minority of voters who were able to get him through the electoral college. >> in addition to the very famous access hollywood tape in which donald trump admits that he just goes up and starts kissing women and he can grab them by the genitalia because he's famous. even before that, donald trump admitted to peeping at teenage girls when they were naked because he had a pageant. this is donald trump admitting that, admitting he peeps at naked teenage girls on the

howard stern show. >> i'll go backstage before a show. everyone's getting dressed and ready. and no men are anywhere and i'm allowed to go in because i'm the owner of the pageant. i'm inspecting it. is everybody okay. they're standing there with no clothes, is everybody okay. and you see these incredible looking women. i sort of get away with that. >> you have james woods who went after a movie about gay people and then had his memory refreshed that he tried to proposition very young girls. there's a cultural problem with the hollywood scandals, et cetera, but there is this particular cultural problem of these men thinking that girls 14, 15, 16, 17 or eligible. >> donald trump was the roy moore of beauty pageants. imagine if roy moore could have been in donald trump's position. roy moore is working the high school civics class and donald trump gets to walk in when these

teenage girls are dressing during a beauty pageant. that world laughed their way through that along with the stern show reaction. and to put the stern show in context, howard stern did not think he was interviewing a politician. he thought he was interviewing a show business wiseguy . that's the context of the segment he thought he was in. it turns out this was revealing a truth about donald trump that -- as i say, that minority of voters who were properly positioned geographically to get him through the electoral college are okay with that. >> 1968 i personally think is a mome moment momentous in american history. >> george wallace, his campaign

manager in this book telling me that when he listened to donald trump campaigning, he was listening to wallace on every level. on the voter he was appealing to, on the racially coded language that he was using to appeal to them. wallace said in 1967 when he was gearing up for his independent campaign for 1968, he said having been steam rolled by the kennedys and integrating university of alabama when he was a staunch segregationist, he said, i don't talk about segregation anymore, i talk about law and order. nixon heard that and a couple months later nixon was talking about law and order. every republican candidate since then is the law and order candidate. wallace did something in his rallies that no one had ever seen before and the next time we saw it was donald trump. whenever he got these liberal, as he would call them commie

protesters, he would always fight them because he loved showing how tough he was. and if you put him in there, he's going to fight the people that you hate. the wallace campaign was about hate in both directions. it was about wallace expressing the hatred of the other side that his voters felt. trump did exactly the same thing. you would see a protester at a trump rally and very quickly trump caught onto, oh, this is the good part of the rally, this is the part where i get to say i want to punch him in the face. that was pure wallace. not that trump has the vaguest notion of history, that it had been done before. he had exactly the same sense of kind of vulgar showmanship that wallace did. >> i just want to very quickly ask you part of what made this such an insane wild election, and the way you tell it in the

book it is a page-turner, but the president of the united states choosing not to run. can you see trump doing that? >> yes. we've never seen it before. johnson was heavily favored when he just decided to drop out because he was challenged on the left and couldn't figure out how to deal with bobby kennedy mostly. the next time we may see this is donald trump just saying, i can't take it. lbj was a much tougher, more ruthless politician than donald trump could ever be and he dropped out. >> at least he knew to be privately vulgar. thank you for being here. >> thank you for your kind words on the back of this book. >> i endorsed it on the back. it is a fantastic book. "playing with fire, the 1968 transformation of american politics." up next, dan rather will be

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when i was 17 years old, signed up for the united states army and i started serving and i now get to serve the customers of pg&e. i get to help other families. and that's what it's all about. when i came back from iraq, couldn't find work. then i found pg&e's power pathway program. here at pg&e i'm successful living in eureka with our two beautiful kids with a brand new career all because of the power pathway program. if you are a veteran, go to pge.com/powerpathway and hopefully your life will change like mine did. together, we're building a better california. democrats are eyeing the 2018 midterms with renewed optimism after tuesday's elections gave them reason for hope for the first time in an entire year. ralph northam's victory was the big prize in virginia. it puts them within spitting distance of wresting back

control of the chamber. the blue wave swept across the country, with democrats winning in new jersey and after winning a key state senate race, control of the government in washington state. the party also puts wins on the board in a series of local races. among the newly elected democrats are a number of historic firsts for women, people of color and transgender candidates. none of which means that it's time for democrats to pop the champagne cork yet. it remains to be seen if they can continue to ride that wave right into 2018. joining me howard dean and democratic pollster. thank you for being here. i have to go to howard dean first even though i usually do ladies first. i wonder what lessons do you think the democratic party took out of tuesday, howard dean, and are they the right lessons? >> there were a bunch of them.

i think they most likely were the right lessons. the first is that there is a substantial sort of decency about the american people that they are not going to put up with a lot of the stuff that trump and the republicans are trying to get away with. it is a swing state, but to win by nine points is extraordinary. most of the grassroots stuff like all the delegate races happened because of the under 35, under 40 generation mobilizing. that's the key to the future of the democrats. these kids are not democrats. they are people who believe what the democrats believer in, but they're not institution lovers. they build their own. our trick and challenge is to get them to see themselves as part of the institution that creates these kind of values in the country. >> judith, i wonder if democrats

noticed the demographic outcome. despite the fact that you did have this sort of big wave of liberal voters, of democratic voters, of young voters. there's a particular kind of voter that voted more democratic than usual. black women went 91% for northam over gillespie. white women went 51-48 for gillespie. white men went 63-46 for gillespie. even when you go down the age scale to voters all the way under 30, for white voters there's still a preponderance of republicans. what i don't see frankly a lot of democrats doing is registering more voters of color or registering voters at all or fighting voter suppression. >> they better get the memo. how many times do they have to

see black women coming out in record numbers, turns out for hillary clinton, now in virginia. and that's for a moderate democrat who was running. but the other thing is that down ballot, right, so you have all of these wins, like the black woman who won in charlotte, a black man who won in st. paul, minnesota. black votered ha es handled the business. it's up to the dnc to figure out whether they're going to lean into the diversity of their party and embrace it and also know that black people voted against trump, what he stands for and against white supremacy because we don't want to go backwards. they're going to have to recognize that's what people want and people want new kinds of candidates. >> it's interesting. there was an incredible variety. i think there were three transcandidat

transcandidattrans candida trans candidates. i think they all three might have won. the reason i've asked you that question is i get the sense that the dnc is very much interested in conversion, meaning that they would very much like, please, to go to donald trump voters and convert them or convert what normally are republican voters like white suburban women. plolitico put out a poll and 8 n 10 trump voters said they would do it again knowing everything they know now. i feel like the return on investment, democrats don't necessarily see r.o.i. in investing in community of color than they do in conversion. am i wrong about that? >> i think so. the dnc is an inside the beltway organization. they did have 40 people in virginia. they did their piece. but the real heavy lift among african-american and latino voters in particular were color

of change, which we did a great job organizing. those organizations -- and there were others. you know, the interesting thing about this is you can criticize the dnc and they'll say the right things, but the real change of all of this is coming from the grassroots. there are grassroots organizations of color that are unbelievably effective which need to be properly funded. >> i just was with one last night, black girls vote, which is incredible. they are in maryland. they registered i believe over 11,000 voters. there are these smaller grassroots organizations. they're a small organization with not a ton of money but they're actually out there registering the voters who vote for progressive policies. >> registering them, developing relationships with people. there's a group called black pac that was heavily in virginia, new virginia majority. the work that advancement project did for years trying to

restore the right to vote for people with felony convictions in virginia made a difference. that's what we have to understand. it's not just going to be about the party. it's going to be about these groups who are engaging people beyond elections but in everyday issues that people care about that are going to be the ones to be able to push the democrats over. again, only if the democrats understand that racial justice issues are important to people, that bread and butter issues are important to people and that they have to lean in to diverse candidates across the country that are down ballot. >> howard dean, health care was the other big issue. medicaid expansion going through in maine is a huge deal. leaning into health care probably isn't a bad idea either. >> you're absolutely right. health care drives everybody including some trump voters who will not vote for trump the second time. to get back to the point about diversity, this is not going to come from the democratic party down, it's going to come from the grassroots up.

imagine black lives matter getting somebody elected to the district attorney's office in philadelphia. >> that's right. >> it's going to happen. the democrats are going to be there, we're just not going to take the lead because we don't have to take the lead. finally communities of color are actually taking their own lead and they're going to be successful. what we have to do as allies is support them, not thrry to take the lead, support them. >> thank you both. appreciate it. up next, one of the giants of tv news, the great dan rather joins me live.

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we've defended other nations' borders while leave ours wide open, anybody can come in. oh, we're going to build the wall, don't worry about it. we're building the wall. wouldn't you love to see one of these nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say get that son of a [ bleep ] off the field right now, out, he's fired! a few days ago i called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. they are the enemy of the people. >> in the year since donald trump was elected, his attacks on immigration, the press and freedom of speech have threatened many of the core ideals and principles of this country. dan rather examines some of these principles in his new book, "what unites us, reflexes ots patriotism." and the great dan rather joins me now. dan, thank you so much for being here. great to talk to you. >> it's great to see you, joy,

thank you. >> thank you. well, you start your book because you are an intellectual with a quote. the greatness of america lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation but in her ability to repair her faults. do you think that america has shown such ability when we seem to have swung so quickly from having exalted in electing the first black president to electing the likes of donald trump given his character? >> well, i understand it's sometimes hard to see because there's an ebb and flow to politics. the reason i wanted to do this book, joy, quite frankly is to give some hope and inspiration about the country in some microscopic way. the tone and temper of the current presidency has confused some people, has angered a lot of people, so we need to keep in mind that we are a steady people. we go through unsteady periods. this is definitely an unstueady

period. but if we just hold on and remind ourselves of our history, the 1960s were very divisive. we got through that and steadied ourselves. certainly the great civil war in the 1800s was catastrophic. we're basically a steady people. and i have a chapter in the book on what unites us, point out that steadiness is one of the things that unites us. i think we began to see some signs of a new steadiness last tuesday, not because the democrats won. you can read it that way. but another way of reading it is the country having ososcillated if you will, pretty far right with the election and what president trump has done with his elective office, the country is steadying itself. now, i do think there's some danger the democrats are celebrating a little too early. and i'm not so much worried about democrats, republicans or the party. most americans see themselves as they want what's -- they want people in office who are doing what's good for the country, not

for their party and not for their own political benefit. so, you know, this is one small voice, united we stand, pointing out that we better unite because that's how we stand. if we listen to these voices of divisiveness, which is basically what the president has been preaching, he did so in his campaign and he's done so in his presidency, then we're going to slide from patriotism into some form of extreme nationalism, which can lead to nativism and tribalism. and if we go that way, i don't think we'll -- as you know, joy, i'm an optimist by nature and by experience, but if we go that way, we will not have the kind of country we have now. i think that's people are seeing and i think that's the reason i think that in the ebb and flow of our politics, things are flowing back a bit more toward civility, steadiness and a spirit of let's finally get something done rather than shout at one another, particularly shout in terms of bigotry.

>> and you know, dan, this is a country obviously that was formed out of the idea of separating from the king, and yet the presidency has really morphed into a very larger than life, almost a personality cult at certain points when you've had a person with a strong personality. donald trump has taken that to an extreme sort of almost auto contract level in a lot of ways. this is donald trump talking to laura ingraham about the fact that he has not built up the state department as the arm that speaks to the world for the united states. >> the one that matters is me. i'm the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be. >> that's napoleonic. how do you have a country that's united when the presidencies himself as almost a king-like figure and those who do not worship the king cannot possibly unite with those who do? >> here's how we do it. first of all sha, no president stronger than the country as a

whole. number two is just say no. listen, in our system of government, the american presidency makes the president both the head of state and the head of government, which gives him immense power but also gives him a tremendous amount of responsibility. americans from the very quinning, he don't believe in having a head of government or head of state who's seen as a descendant of some god or some autocratic figure. you saw president trump say he decides all, we don't need much of a state department, the answer is just say no. >> absolutely. well, dan rather, it's always such a treat to talk to you, such an honor. thank you so much, sir. "what unites us, reflexes on patriotism." thank you, dan. >> thank you, joy. >> check out my "daily beast" column. finally the real majority pushes back against the bitter third. that's my current column. now, i want to give a shoutout to black girls vote.

i had the pleasure of delivering their keynote address at their first annual celebration in baltimore last night. the grassroots organization encourages young women of color to participate in the democratic process. they're already working hard to prepare for the 2018 midterms. you guys do a great job, thank you very much for having me. that's our show for today. join us tomorrow for more "a.m. joy." in the meantime keep it right here on msnbc. my experience with usaa has been excellent.

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and it really shows. we've got auto insurance, homeowners insurance. had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. usaa was there hands-on very quick very prompt. i feel like we're being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. we're the webber family and we are usaa members for life. usaa, get your insurance quote today. good day, everyone. i'm alex witt here at msnbc world headquarters where it is high noon in the east, it's 9:00 a.m. out west. here's what's happening, roy moore in the spotlight and defiant in the face of sexual allegations brought against him. >> to think that grown women would wait 40 years to come before -- right before an election to bring charges is absolutely