tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC April 3, 2018 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT
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new york . it's great to be back. i had a couple of days off for which i'm very grateful, especially my friend, joy reid, who filled in so ably last night. thank you. lots of news today including breaking news tonight. this afternoon, the shooting that took place at youtube headquarters in san bruno, california, was the focus of a lot of attention. close to the san francisco international airport. from all the information we've got at this point it looks like this was the kind of shooting that would be classified as a workplace shooting, potentially a workplace shooting related to a domestic matter. neither of those things are unusual at all in our country at this point. however, in this case, it took
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place at a very very high profile company. the shooter was reportedly a woman. both those things are rare in terms of american gun violence. before shooting herself, the only fatality from this shooting would be this woman killing herself after she shot and wounded these three other people. police have not described any terrorist association and the intent of bringing a gun and live ammunition into a business and starting to shoot the place up. we'll tell you more about the youtube shooting tonight if we learn more over the course of this hour but so far that's pretty much the extent of what we know. i should also tell you looking ahead to the overnight, we are bracing ourselves for two expected news earthquakes. one economic, one political. the economic earthquake we're anticipating has to do with china. president trump today
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unexpectedly announced another $50 billion in tariffs against chinese products. china already said they are adamantly opposed to what trump has done and they will retaliate. everybody is watching the markets overnight and watching for chinese government pronouncements over the next day or so. that's the economic quake we're expecting overnight. the political quake we're anticipating has to do with yet another trump cabinet official. epa administer scott pruit had ethics troubles from the beginning but in the last 24 hours there has been a tidal wave of new allegations and new revelations about his behavior while in office and what appears to be misuse or at least a cavalier attitude toward taxpayer dollars. we'll have more on that coming up in just a moment amid honestly increasing expectations that scott pruit may be the next member of trump's cabinet who has to go. today was also of course a
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landmark day in the special counsel investigation looking into the russia scandal. today for the first time, a criminal case spawned by the special counsel's investigation has come to a close. we've seen a number of people charged by the special counsel's office and we've seen a number of people plead guilty but today was the first sentencing in the mueller investigation for anybody whose been charged in the case today was the first time that person was -- that any such person was sentenced. somewhat interestingly, the person sentenced to a prison term today is the son-in-law of a prominent russian oligarch which seems it should be more prominence than the attention given to the matter but we'll talk more about that later on in the show because as we were observing that information tonight about alex van der zwann being sentenced to prison, we also got naturally a very big breaking news story from "the washington post." do you remember james comey's pink slip?
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the short letter that donald trump sent via his body guard to fbi director james comey, the letter firing him in may last year? you might remember the way it was phrased because it had one very memorable line. it was memorable because that line was so out of place in a pink slip, in a termination letter. in the middle of firing james comey trump said quote i greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions i am not under investigation. also you're fired. love donald. when james comey testified before congress the following month, he more or less confirmed that he had indeed told the president that he was not personally under investigation. but what we heard from comey and from all the other government officials from whom trump tried to pressure what trump wanted more than anything was for senior law enforcement and intelligence officials to publicly state that the president himself was not under investigation. he was never able to persuade anybody to make a blanket
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statement like that. and every since the firing of james comey and appointment of robert mueller's special counsel, that has been an open question. the president personally under investigation. is the president of the united states himself personally the subject of an on going criminal and counter intelligence investigation by federal law enforcement? as of this evening, we have a big new piece of information about that. ""washington post"" reporting that in negotiations with the president's lawyers last month, so in february, special counsel robert mueller described president trump as quote a subject of his investigation into russia's interference in the 2016 election. a subject. the president is a subject of mueller's investigation. the post's report special counsel robert mueller informed president trump's attorneys that he does
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he consider him a criminal target at this point. in private negotiations in early march about a possible presidential interview, mueller described trump as a subject of the investigation in the 2016 election and prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges. the president, the post reports tonight has privately expressed relief increased determination to agree to a special counsel interview. the president said he's not a target of the probe and believes an interview will help him put the matter behind him however, legal experts say mueller's description of trump as a subject of a grand jury probe doesn't mean the president is in the clear. under justice department guidelines, a subject of an investigation is a person whose conduct falls within the scope of a grand jury's investigation. a target on the other hand is a person for which there is
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substantial evidence linking him or her to a crime. so subject versus target as the president reportedly quite relieved he's not a target even as mueller confirms through his lawyers that he is a subject. this reporting ends with a quote, quote, there are plenty of instances where a guy walks into a grand jury as a subject. he gets out of that testimony and is told guess what? you're a target now. joining us now is carol, a "washington post" national reporter and bob kosta. thank you. appreciate you making time. >> thank you, rachel. good to be here. >> as of last month, i want to make sure i get the basics. he was told that the president was not at least as of then a target of the investigation but he is a subject of the
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investigation but he is a subject of the investigation. was that -- was that news to the president's lawyers? did they suppose that or guess that? was this an important advance for them and their understanding of the legal jeopardy? >> there is a lot to unpack in your great question, soon you can get a job in the justice department, rachel. i would say first of all, it is not a surprise to most people monitoring this case, that the president is likely is a subject. his conduct is under review and investigation by a grand jury. frs being told you're not a target and you're a subject while your attorneys are talking brass tacks with the leader of the special counsel's team is a significant development. it essentially means that if you're not a target, they do not have the evidence that moment to prosecute you to bring charges
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and there are many that believe with good reason that mueller doesn't have the power to charge a sitting president with a crime even if he had evidence. so this news is news and it's certainly delighted and relieved the president of the united states when he learned it. >> is there now any sort of unanimity between the president and his legal team? there's been fluctuation, john dowd leaving and another lawyer or two coming on board to represent the president and that didn't work out. do we know if the president has had a meeting of the minds with his current russia legal team as to whether or not he should sit for an interview or is there still disagreements there? >> so what we learned in our reporting and that is shared for the first time in this story tonight is that there was some fairly significant and sharp disagreement. john dowd, according to close friends of the president, was
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counseling the president that he should absolutely not do the interview all caps. do not do the interview with bob mueller's team. however, we're told that white house attorney ty cobb and co-council jay seculo, the president's personal legal team, believe the president should do this interview and now, my understanding is that they are leaning in that direction. dowd resigned as a result of feeling the president was not listening to him. >> bringing the two elements of your reporting tonight together, there always is the possibility even if somebody goes into testimony, not as a target of the investigation but as a subject being looked into somebody being looked into even though there isn't enough evidence to bring charges, there is the possibility during that interview a statement will be
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made, an assertion will be made of some kind, something materially will happen during that testimony that converts the subject of the investigation into a target. >> absolutely. in fact, you know, i've talked to a lot of ausas and former u.s. attorneys when i was doing reporting for this and asked them to keep this confidential until i posted it and said what do you think? what's important here? he can go from subject to target in a red hot minute and that is true of most witnesses. the only question here is does bob mueller, the special counsel authorized by the department of justice, believe he can charge a president with a crime if he finds evidence of it and that's a big open question. >> and that brings us to the other big piece of news that you and your colleague robert costa have broken tonight, which is about the special counsel's plans whether or not they end up charging the president, you report tonight quote the special counsel also told trump's lawyers he is preparing a report
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about the president's actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice. mueller's versions have indicated to the legal team they are considering writing reports on findings in stages with the first report focused on the obstruction issue under the special counsel's regulations, mueller is required to report conclusions confidently to deputy attorney general rod rosenstein and he would decide whether to release this information to the public. one person said quote they said they want to write a report on this to answer the public's questions. this is something that we've always known was a possibility. it sounds like you're able to report that it's in the works. >> so it's been a little bit of fraught reporting target because we've been hearing snatches of this conversation for awhile. various people who said they had information that mueller's team planned to write a report but
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now we reached a crescendo of people with a real reason to know and real front seat to have information indicating mueller's team told them look, we just want answers to these questions. we need this to write our report and this is our plan. now, keep in mind, bob mueller's spokesperson declined to comment and always does decline to comment and so they are not giving us any great insight but we've reached a point where now enough people have said this is what they have heard from the special counsel's team's lips that we feel comfortable saying so. >> wow. this is a big advance in our understanding tonight and a number of fronts. caron leonnig, "washington post" reporter with another big scoop on this subject. thank you for joining us on such short notice. >> you bet, rachel. recapping what we just learned from this breaking news story from "the washington post." the president's lawyers have
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bine informed by robert mueller the president is a subject of mueller's investigation into mueller's interference and the president is relieved to learn he's only the subject of the investigation and not yet a target of the investigation. the difference being whether or not mueller's investigators at the time of the advice to trump's legal team believed they had enough information to bring criminal charges. that of course is complicated by the legal fight whether or not anybody can bring criminal charges against a serving president to that end. carol and robert further report tonight that special counsel robert mueller is preparing a report about the president's actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice. noting just they just note late in the piece quote some of trump's advisors warned white house aides they fear mueller could issue a blistering report about the president's actions meaning don't be psyched about this, guys. that's important news. that's just broken. the president is a subject of
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mueller's investigation. i want to alert you to one other thing that happened today that we learned from a court filing. late last night after joy reid finished sit income for me in the middle of the night we got a new court filing from mueller's prosecutors that related to the paul manafort case and you probably heard something about this today, big headline out of that filing today was that in addition to the publicly available document that set up the special counsel's office and hired robert mueller and laid out the scope of mueller's investigation, we learned from this new court filing there was also, subsequent to that public statement establishing the mueller investigation, there was also another bit of instruction. august 2nd last year, another basically sheet of instructions from deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to bob mueller's office explaining to him, confirming in writing a list of specific stuff that mueller was cleared to look into as part of his investigation. this is the document. it's just been released as part
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of this filing and that's it. you see the big black boxes? that shows you is almost all of this memo from august 2nd is still redacted. those big black box are places where presumably rod rosenstein wrote about mueller being cleared to investigate specific people and look at specific lines of criminal inquiry. the one part they left unredacted and allowed to be seen in this court filing were the specific instructions from rosenstein saying that robert mueller was cleared to look into paul manafort's business interest in ukraine. paul manafort's business of course led to dozens of criminal charges that are currently pending against him and presumably that's why those specific instructions from rosenstein were cleared as part of the court filing today. that's interesting. we didn't know rosenstein gave that direct very specific instruction to mueller as to what he was allowed to look at. it's also interesting because it probably torpedos paul manafort's fairly hopeless argument that he should be sprung and have charges against
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him dropped because there was something wrong with mueller being the special counsel, manafort's argument was basically that mueller was running off on a wild goose chase and nobody was controlling him and he was an unaccountable prosecutor. in this case now we have a direct memo showing whatever you think about him, he's a very accountable prosecutor. he's answering to the deputy attorney general what he's pursuing but here is the thing i want you to know, something else from this filing that looks to me like it's something really important. it's from deep in this file on page 42. mueller's prosecutors give us a couple new pieces of information here. they tell us that the charges brought against paul manafort weren't just brought by special counsel robert mueller's office alone. the charges against manafort were signed off on by main justice. they signed off on some of the charges and the tax division of the justice department signed off on some of those charges.
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really? that's interesting. robert mueller is not acting alone in bringing these charges in the russia investigation. he's getting sign-off, from in manafort's case, from the other two divisions at the justice department for bringing these criminal charges. and then mueller's team also basically makes the case that if somehow magically robert mueller was disappeared and the special counsel's office was no longer allowed to be involved in the investigations, nevertheless, these investigations would persist. this seems very important to me. page 42 of the filing. quote, the senior assistant special counsel in charge of this prosecution is a long time career prosecutor with the internal authority to conduct this prosecution separate and aside from his role in the special counsel's office. now, it looks from this filing the senior assistant is long-time justice prosecutor working with mueller but we actually checked with the special counsel's office tonight
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and carol was right moments ago when she said the spokesman never confirms anything. the special counsel spokesman did tell us tonight there are a number of people involved in the special counsel's investigation that have that title. senior assistant counsel senior assistant special counsel, including andrew weissman as one of them, that meaning they are asserting if robert mueller goes away and gets raptured and if the whole special counsel's office gets wrapped up and thrown away, these prosecutions will continue. the senior assistant special counsel in charge of this prosecution say long-time career prosecutor with the authority to conduct it separate and aside from the special counsel's office. we think that's about weissmann but we think that can be any of the senior attorneys. you make the special counsel's office go away, they still have authority. you poof robert mueller somehow, this investigation will continue.
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buried in this filing that came out late last night, this say blunt assertion here from the special counsel's office this investigation cannot be stopped if you stop robert mueller. now i don't know why mueller's prosecutors felt the need to publicly assert that today on page 42 of this filing. doesn't seem totally relevant to the argument specific to paul manafort and his trying to get the charges thrown out but they have spelled this out now clear as a bell. i don't know if that means they are expecting to be tested on this or warning they shouldn't be but this is a clear statement nobody can fire this investigation out of existence. take that with the washington post reporting tonight that the president has been told he's a subject of the mueller investigation, and make of it what you will. we'll post page 42 online tonight at maddowblog.com in case you haven't seen it. we'll be right back. we're about to move. karate helps... relieve some of the house-buying... stress.
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month that at that point although the president was not a target of the special counsel's russia investigation, he is a subject of the that investigation and the mueller team wants to interview him for that reason. according to the washington post tonight, mueller's team is preparing a report on its findings thus far specifically pertaining to the president and the issue of obstruction of justice. we have never heard before that they are doing that so that seems like big news. at this point "the washington post" is out ahead and alone on that story from reporters carol leonnig and bob costa. nbc news has not confirmed reporting but everybody is chasing that story. it's not like today isn't otherwise a busy day. today was the first sentencing in the mueller case. and remarkably the first person who is definitely going to prison in this investigation is the son-in-law of a russian oligarch that is fantastically
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wealthy and known to be personally close to vladimir putin and it's interesting that by graphical fact about alex van der zwaan that got sentenced today, that fact is being treated in a lot of coverage like a corky and interesting human interest story about this unusual defendant. look at that guy in the nicely cut suit and fantastic british hairdo, british lawyer hairdo. weirdly enough he happens to be the son-in-law of a russian oligarch. isn't that weird? whether or not it is just a coincidence he happens to be the son-in-law of a russian oligarch close to vladimir putin, the fact that he is the first attorney go to prison in this investigation means it is probably worth considering whether the russian government might have feelings about that. once upon a time, about 15 years ago, the british oil company b.p. announced it would form a partnership in russia to drill
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for oil in the far east. this was one of the biggest deals in modern russia history and by my use of the past tense you can jump to the end in your mind because you can tell this story does not have a happy ending. it did not work out. it did not work out because three russian oligarchs who were b.p.'s partners in that deal, decided that the 50/50 partnership was no longer to their liking. they decided yeah, yeah, they signed this partnership but frankly they wanted either control or they wanted to be bought out at a handsome price. and those were the only choices. and they set about making life miss her basketball for bp until they got what they wanted. people close to b.p. at the time blamed the problems on one of the three russian partners on the deal, hermann conn. wikileaks released state department capabilities which included one
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particularly run down of what it was like to do business with hermann khan, a top b.p. official briefed the embassy. what was going on with this russian oligarch guy involved in this b.p. partnership. seems like he may have given the briefing to the embassy partially out of fear. quoting from that wikileaks cable, quote, tnkbp, the joint venture, chief operating officer provides insight into b.p. aar's negotiations. gives insight into the negotiations noting bp ceo is unlikely to return to russia. this is from the wikileaks cable and provides powerful background on the aar partners, in attackers herman khan. summers said he had a complicated and difficult relationship with khan.
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he was a difficult person to work with. they had flown out to khan's hunting lodge was like a four seasons hotel. at dinner khan told a stunned summers his favorite movie was "god father" and watched it every few months because he considered it to be a manual for life and came to dinner armed with a chrome plated pistol. he got a copy of "god father" and watched it himself. so he could better understand khan and his aggressive business tactics. but simple business style was russian where multi million dollar deals were made in smoky rooms and later turned over to accountants to see if it made sense. it was not a style that meshed well with b.p. khan never felt bp treated him with sufficient respect and that apparently ends up being a dangerous thing. bp employees part of this joint venture started getting harassed. more than 100 of them had their
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visas revoked. the ceo of the enterprise was managing things on the bp side, bob dudly just didn't want to come back to russia for no reason. he was followed. he was threatened. he was poisoned. he had his visa revoked. he ended up sneaking out of the country in the dead of night fearing for his life. when the telegraph newspaper in britain obtained the state department cables they wrote up this guy like he was a bond villain. quote, one b.p. executive contended he might be certifiably deranged. that is alex van der zwann's father in law. hermann khan's daughter married mr. van der zwann in an apparently a very lovely ceremony last year. mr. khan's granddaughter is now alex vander van der zwann's wife and she is expecting their first child at the end of this summer. before alex van der zwann turned
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up as a surprise defendant in the mueller investigation, his father-in-law, herman khan, turned up twice before in relation to the u.s. attack and intrigue surrounding it. his company alpha was the subject of mysterious reports about unexplained communications between a computer server in moscow and a computer server in trump tower. those mysterious communications between the two computer servers during the campaign remain unexplained. they may have been a fluke or unrelated to everything else going on in russia and the trump campaign but that was an early mention in the scandal. he then appeared in the christopher steele memos published by buzzfeed in january. mr. khan's name mentioned as an oligarch particularly close to putin, one on good terms enough with putin that favors continue to be done in both directions. well, now his son-in-law has just been sent to prison in this country as the first person
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imprisoned in conjunction with the special counsel investigation into interference in the election. i think one might expect that that could have political reverberations in russia. alex van der zwann is an unfamiliar figure to american audiences but has a specific gravity among very specific, very influential russians. i should tell you we just got in just tonight, the transcript from van der zwaan's sentencing today. you might have heard about the sentencing today but i'm not sure anybody else published what happened in the transcript of the hearing, what the judge actually said. it's dramatic. at one point the judge says to alex van der zwann, lying would be wrong in any criminal investigation but this investigation involves important questions of great national and international interest and involves our countries and other country's national security and the prospect of foreign interference and the democratic processes fundamental to our freedom. there is not much good you can say about the nature and
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sirksz circumstances of the offense. to be fair, the defense doesn't talk about them much at all. the defense has asked for a sentence that consists of a fine so you the defendant can return to your wife and start visiting your mother again. those facts i've been asked to consider don't differentiate this defendant significantly from the people that stand before me every day. there are people forced to accept severe and mandatory consequences of non-violent criminal activity, activity that didn't involve dishonesty and may have been created by greater financial pressures or the lack of opportunities and upbringing that this man enjoyed. i often find myself sentencing individuals with ailing parents, pregnant wives and needy children but few have resources to sustain itself. i've been told the defendant has been punished enough because his life has been shattered but this glass was dropped on a very thick carpet and it's cushioned the blow. quote, i just can't say pay your fine at the door and go given the facts and report concerning this defendant's assets and assistance he's being provided
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now. i'm not sure it would be felt. the judge said the assistance he's provided now, the assistance van der zwann has been getting since he got fired, we think the assistance he's getting is from his father-in-law, a multi-billionaire russian leader. the judge says even if every dollar were you own, we're not talking about a traffic ticket, this was lying during the course of a criminal investigation, writing a check and walk away would not fulfill the function of deterring others and send the exact wrong message to impose a fine or probation sentence alone would be contrary to the policies and principles that people with your advantages were getting probation and others weren't. people with your advantage were getting favors and others weren't. this criminal justice system isn't supposed to favor those with means and while it's true you plead guilty and would not be fair to treat this defendant more harshly because it's a high profile investigation, the judge says i have come to the conclusion the offense warrants
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a period of some incarceration. first custodial sentence. that was the sentencing today of alex van der zwaan, may be totally incidentally is the son of hermann khan, a russian oligarch but if that's inmaterial to the response, i will be surprised. stay with us. a heart transplant... that's a whole different ballgame. i was in shock. i am very proud of the development of drugs that can prevent the rejection and prevent the recurrence of the original disease. i never felt i was going to die. we know so much about transplantation. and we're living longer. you cannot help but be inspired by the opportunities that a transplant would offer. my donor's mom says "you were meant to carry his story".
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in 1982 the great state of texas elected a woman as state treasurer. the first woman to win statewide office in texas in 50 years. eight years later that same woman ran for texas governor and won. a woman democrat, texas governor. it was as much of a riot as you would expect. >> i came over here because they said y'all were getting kind of rowdy. [ cheers ] >> i don't know if you can see that bill but it says a woman's place is in the dome referring to, of course, the dome at the state capitol of austin. >> i want to tell you how things look. [ cheers ] >> it looks like as barbara jordan said the people of texas are back. >> if you look in the background of this shot behind the great mighty ann richards, you will see somebody else who is now
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this was the state capitol in oklahoma today. the huge teacher strike taking part in most of the state. thousands of teachers swarmed the capital by 10:00 a.m. state troopers started turning people away. they couldn't fit any more people inside the statehouse rotunda by 10:00 a.m. educators in oklahoma walked off the job yesterday to protest their very low pay and cuts to education funding in oklahoma. last week, the legislature did rush through a bill to not do much for schools but to raise the teacher's pay a bit. they hoped enough to get the teachers to stop this rebellion. but the teachers were not appeased. they don't just want their own raises, they want school support staff
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to get paid a living wage and more state funding for text backs and fixing building infrastructure and want oklahoma to start actually funding education and so they are in the streets and it's not just oklahoma. state capitol of kentucky looked the same yesterday. thousands of kentucky teachers and supporters showing up, so many they spilled out the doors of the state capitol in kentucky. teachers are protesting changes to pensions and protesting further deeper budget cuts for schools. and you can see the kinds of turnout and the kinds of heart felt stuff that comes up when you start talking about funding schools and teachers. my teacher walks for me. this teacher holding the sign that says my students are worth it. i walked in 1990, i walk today. if these look familiar these protests in oklahoma this week come a few weeks after the nine-day long statewide teacher strike in west virginia that lasted until they got a a 5% raise they were looking for. the largest teacher strike and all 55 counties in west virginia
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refused to work until they were able to get what they came for. the trump era is not old. it's like 14 or 15 months, right? one of the things that this era will be remembered for is something the president is not the author of. big time american activism, we're seeing play out in right now in kentucky and oklahoma, these teacher strikes and not just about teachers, parents and students organizing and participating here. west virginia last month, all kinds of school personnel and teachers, bus drivers, cooks, maintenance workers, those protests are an emotional expression of need but good organizing. hard work well done. these are incredible organizing needs. teachers are a sliver of it. considering the massive marches against gun violence organized by kids, high school kids. we seen them protesting their member of congress in the trump era calling on the local member of congress to hold town halls
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meet with their constituents and calling on their members congress each and every day to meet with them. groups like indivisible organizing rallies to get the attention of local members of of congress at home in 30 district. local individual chapters throwing local congressmen or congresswomen a retirement party and serving champagne when they do in fact retire. as more african americans have died at the hands of police officers across the country, protests continued to organize effectively against police violence, slowing down traffic, causing towns to come to complete standstills, blocking people from attending events and protesters make people understand the reality of police violence in communities of color. in this era, the breakdown of what was long considered normal. people particularly women feeling less afraid and more empowered to make clear there will not be tolerance for sexual harassment or sexual assault in the workplace no matter how
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powerful the perpetrator may be. we're having a little golden age of american progressive activism and accountability. that's one of the ways the first part of trump era will be remembered. it's happening right now in many different ways. we saw it take full form in day two. those women's marches. 2.5 million people participating across the country and across the world the day after that inauguration. the biggest crowds we've seen in protest in this country. grass roots effort was one of the largest single day protests in history. one of the people, the organizer of the women's march turned to help them organize such a monumental undertaking was an experienced activist group called planned parenthood to support reproductive health care across the country. they were the biggest sponsor the day after the inauguration and help make planned parenthood as successful as it is today and make it an absolute political stronghold in support of reproductive rights in the
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united states is planned parenthood president, cecile richards, she has just written a book, what she's most famous for but more substantively and at a level of granular and instructive detail she's wrote a book how to live your life as a political activist, how to live your life as a political activist who keeps clocking up wins all the time in surprising circumstances, even when the odds are stacked against you. this is something she knows a lot about. young organizer helped lead a campaign to unionize janitor staff in l.a. she and her family helped launch a grassroots effort to help ann richards become the first woman elected governor of texas in the bush years when progressives were searching for a platform to coal bat the george w. bush administration, she got 42 of the largest progressive organizations to work together on a big voter registration
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effort. as the president of planned parenthood, she's fended off a real threat from republicans and democrats alike that got very close to banning insurance coverage for abortion in the u.s. as part of the affordable care act that ban would be in obamacare. but the reason it's not is because of cecile richards. when republicans tried to kill the affordable care about, cecil helped make sure that wouldn't happen keeping democrats and some republican women, too, in line to ensure the aca would survive. cecile richards is famous because of planned parenthood but she's a living road map how to do activism way more than people think you can. joining us now is planned parenthood president, cecile richards, the author of "make trouble." speaking up, standing up and having the courage to leave. hi. good to see you. >> nice to see you, too. >> am i right to see this as a model for how to live an
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activist life? >> well, i think it's a little bit of a call to action and it's a book i wrote because so many people after the last election said what do i do? the answer is do more than you ever thought you could. but i hope it's also, yes, a story about being an activist, you can make change. you can make people's lives different. i hope it inspires people to do something they never thought they would do before. >> i felt the one take away i learned that isn't just an axiom it really helps to win. winning helps. it attracts more people to do what you're doing. b, it's fun and c, it creates an idea even if you only win a small thing it creates an idea another path is possible. you spelled that out.
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part of the way you win is by being good at strategy and part of the way you win is surviving, enjoying yourself and having more fun than the other side. >> never giving up. if you're fighting for things that are hard you will lose more than you doin. when you do win you have to chaim that victory and move on. i think i was here maybe a year ago after the election and the chances planned parenthood could stay open with the trump administration. no one thought we had a chance to win and people turned out in droves, folks who never had been to a town hall meeting or called congress were coming to washington, d.c. wing that was everything. i think it was instructive to all of us on so many issues we could win. >> that point about the threaty the perceived threat and the peril that planned parenthood has been in over the past year
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raises important questions for me about why you are leaving planned parenthood right now? will you hold on for a moment? >> sure. >> her new book is "make trouble." we'll be right back. of me. i discovered the true meaning of paperless discounts... and the indescribable rush of saving drivers an average of $620. why does fear feel so good? i fell in love three times -- once with a woman, once with a country, and finally... with myself. -so, do you have anything to declare or not? -isn't that what i'm doing?
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when you buy any new samsung. xfinity mobile. it's a new kind of network designed to save you money. click, call, or visit an xfinity store today. back with us is planned parenthood president cecile richards who is the author of "make trouble: standing up, speaking out and finding the courage to lead," which is just out. cecile, thank you again for being here. congratulations on this. you were just talking about the fact that planned parenthood a year ago you might not have been able to say with confidence that
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planned parenthood would still be here, given the attacks on it from the political right in this country. given the peril that planned parenthood is in an ongoing way, are you taking a big risk by leaving now? is that part of the reason you're leaving? >> oh, god, no. and i feel like look, planned parenthood has been around 100 years. we'll be around 100 more. and this administration will go away at some point. i think the important thing is actually and ironically for some of the reasons that you were mentioning earlier, i think planned parenthood is stronger today than it has ever been. in fact, we've added of course more than a million and a half new supporters since the trump administration came in. many of them young people that have never been involved in politics or advocacy before. so i feel really strongly that the organization is in good shape. and that it's important for folks like me. i've had this job for 12 years. it's been the honor of a lifetime. i think it's important that we make room for a new generation of leadership. i feel good about this. i will give you this one statistic, which i love. we now have more than 11.5
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million members, which is more than twice the size of the national rifle association. so i'm feeling good about that. >> this book i think will broaden people's understanding about your activist chops and your organizing chops. it makes me think that you would be -- this makes me think you're going to run for office. are you going run for office? >> don't have any plans to run for office. but i learned early on never to say never. but i am completely focused on making sure that we elect every single progressive and woman that we can in november as we're seeing record numbers of women running for office. and that is really exciting and inspiring to me. and i think i can do a lot to help them. >> cecile richards, good luck on this next chapter. >> so good to see you. thank you, thank you. >> the book is called "make trouble: standing up, speaking out and finding the courage to lead," cecile richards. it is just out. we'll be right back. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently.
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called a supreme court race in the great state of wisconsin. it might sound like small potatoes for national news. but this is a race that had received a bunch of national attention. eric holder and barack obama >> good evening, rachel. and democrats are sometimes accused of not paying enough attention to races like that. it look likes this one did get the right level of attention. >> it's interesting. there were a bunch of national endorsements here. rebecca dallet had an endorsement for joe biden and from the barack obama group and from lots o
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