was born 210 years ago today. and that is our broadcast for this tuesday night. thank you so very much for being here with us. good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. by the rocket's red glare. every year, for the fourth of july, communities large and small across the country, they set off fireworks, of course, to celebrate the fourth of july. these are some of the fireworks that were set off for the fourth of july celebration in our nation's capital this past fourth of july. d.c. every year puts on a great huge fireworks display. and, you know, it looks like nowhere else in the country. there is the washington monument, right? it's on the national mall. as the nation's capital, fourth of july is kind of a meta holiday, right? it's a bigger deal than it is everywhere else in the country, and it's a pretty big deal everywhere in the country but it's the nation's capital. every fourth of july been there is the big fireworks thing in

d.c. there is a played through downtown with the, you know, bands and the uncle sam guy and the drum and all the rest of it. today president trump told reporters at the white house that he is considering a new idea that has just occurred to him. a new idea for america. which is that he is thinking over, he is considering that maybe from here on out there should be a parade and fireworks in washington, d.c. every year on july 4th. how about that? he mused about this idea to reporters today. he said, quote, we're thinking about doing something that will perhaps become a tradition. proposing fireworks for the fourth of july. even in d.c., it's a bold idea from the president today. presumably this will be followed by an executive order proclaiming that from here on out we're going to start a whole new calendar year every year on

the first day of january. what? also, he's going to declare that we're going to start a new american pastime, a ball game where one person holds a stick and that person runs around a series of bases to come home if the person with the stick hits the ball hard enough while others try to prevent the batter from rounding the bases and get home. the president will soon announce a name for that and that he has invented this game. also he's invented rap music and the idea of taking a vacation in the summer if you're a school kid. i kid you not, the president proposed to reporters from the white house in all seriousness that he's thinking there should maybe be fireworks and a parade on the fourth of july in washington, d.c. it could catch on. could become a tradition. i mean, the best news about this is that it's not actually a terrible idea to have a parade and fireworks in washington, d.c. on the fourth of july, as evidenced by the fact that we do

always do it every year and nobody minds. people sort of like it. but what's going on in the head of the president of the united states that he thinks this annual celebration should henceforth be attributed to him as if he dreamed it up? i mean, i try not to get caught up in this stuff and, like, generally in stuff he says, but, like, the weird vagueries of this presidency are honestly really weird. i mean, one of the stories that we are covering tonight, that we'll have an update for you later on this hour, is the question of whether or not we're about to have another shutdown of the federal government as of the end of the this week because of the president's demand that we should build a wall between u.s. and mexico. in the lead to that shutdown deadline, the president last night just started declaring overtly that he has, in fact, built this wall between the united states and mexico. he has already built it. he's just finishing it up now.

see, he got what he wanted. he won. eventually he will presumably just give tours on the border showing reporters and maybe his supporters what looks like a normal section of the border with no wall and he'll insist that actually it's there because he built it, and the reason you think you cannot see it, well, he meant that on purpose because he's so good, he not only built the wall, he built an invisible wall. and also he said it was always going to be invisible. don't you remember? you don't remember that? i mean, it's just -- it is -- it's -- it is easy enough. i do it most of the time. to just ignore what he's saying, particularly when it's patently not true, but it is just bewilledering, right? i mean, this isn't a dumb movie. this isn't, you know, an old tv show, this is actually our president now in our lifetimes. this is actually our government. it's our country. and this stuff, it does put us in sort of a weird position as

citizens. also for the president's political competitors and his opponents, right? it puts them in an odd situation, too. just around this latest shutdown threat, do you point out that he actually has not built any wall at all since he has been president? do you let him claim that he has even though he hasn't? because, i mean, maybe that is just easier. maybe if he says it enough, that he has built a wall, maybe he'll believe that he has built a wall or at least he'll believe it enough that that will become enough to stop the next shutdown of the federal government, that that will allow the government to stay open based on a weird hallucinogenic lie that we have bothered not correcting because may be it's easier. i mean, if we -- if we choose to apply that strategy, even to him saying he's already built the wall this week, i mean, do we -- do we apply that strategy to everything? do we smile and nod and let him believe what he wants to believe and say what he wants people to believe is true?

yes, sir, you won the popular vote, sir, by a record. your poll numbers are sky high and north korea gave up its nuclear weapons just like you said they would. and campaign finance felonies, those aren't really crimes. michael cohen probably doesn't know anything about what you did, nor does paul manafort, nor does your accountant, allen weissleberg, nor does david pecker, your friend at the "national enquirer." the president flatly proclaims alternate universe things all the time. because of that, you have the option to ignore it, but that doesn't change the fact that he's president. when he says stuff that isn't true repeatedly and you have to reck with that strategically as to whether or not it should be corrected, it can be hard to get your bearings as to what we must insist is true, right? and what you might just let go

because everybody knows it's fake but the president is saying it anyway and who is going to stop him? i mean, here's another one about the trump inaugural committee. as you know, the trump inaugural committee was subpoenaed last week. federal prosecutors sent a subpoena seeking detailed records and information on donations to the inaugural and spending on the inaugural and whether the twains shall meet. it has been this troubling thing about the trump presidency from the very, very beginning. president trump followed into office an immediately previous president who had the largest swearing in festivities by a mile. president obama brought an absolutely unprecedented sea of people to the nation's capital to see him sworn in. it was literally the largest assemblage of human beings in the history of the district of columbia. and to handle those giant festivities, that giant inaugural event, the obama inaugural committee raised and

spent a huge new record amount of money, just over $50 million. as inaugurations go, that was ma' mammoth. you can see why they maybe needed to raise and spend that much money. it was something like we'd never seen before. then the next president was elected, our current president, and his swearing in was smaller. and it was small, actually not just compared with his immediate predecessor, trump's inauguration was small compared to most other recent presidents' inaugurations as well. i'm not saying that to be mean. i'm not saying it to be insulting. i fully believe if i were sworn into anything in any city in the country, less than half of my own family would show up for the swearing in, let alone the parade. you don i don't mean to say this says something bad about him as a president or i guess a candidate soon to be president at that -- president-elect soon to be president at that point. i don't mean it in a mean way. what i mean is that mathematically there was something weird about the trump

inauguration. the numbers, whether or not you have feelings about them, they just didn't make sense. i mean, for the giant inauguration for obama, the biggest ever, they raised and spent, again, about $50 million. for the comparatively tiny one that happened after that, they spent twice that amount. they spent more than twice that amount. i mean, given what actually happened at the trump inaugural, how on earth do they account for raising and spending over $100 million on this? i mean, if you take president obama out of it, because that was such a historical anomaly. you can take the george w. bush inaugurals. those? normal size. nothing all that unusual about them. the person who ran george w. bush's second inaugural told pro publica, they had 1/3 of the staff we did and 1/4 of the events we did and they spent at least twice as much as we did? so the question is, the obvious

question is, where did it goer if obvious question. good question. now the trump naug rat committee has been broadly subpoenaed by federal prosecutors who presumably will get answers to those questions. if you regularly watch this show, you'll remember that we have reported on this trump inaugural story for a long while. just because from the very beginning it seemed like something was mathematically wrong, something was fishy with the trump inauguration, and the numbers that we could observe around it. one of the things we noticed in our own early reporting on the trump inaugural is that some of the inexplicable and ultimately unaccounted for money that flowed into the trump inauguration came in late, came in after the fact, and that's not necessarily a sin, let alone a crime, but it is a little funny because by the time the trump inauguration was, you know, an hour into it, let alone over, anybody who donated money to that thing clearly would have realized they just paid 50 bucks

for a $2 jaw breaker. i mean, it was clear as soon as the tractors rolled down the parade route and deejay ravi drums kicked off the concert of random buskers who they brought to the national mall. it was clear that they had overraised, right? they had raised way, way, way more money than this thing could have conceivably cost to put on. i mean, by that point, even the trump inaugural was promising they would give some of the leftover money to charity because it was so obvious there should be tons of leftover money. even despite that, some really big fat donations to the trump inaugural came in way after the inaugural was over, weeks and months later. like, for example, this donation of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ceo of the largest coal company in america, robert murray, who runs murray energy, directed this donation in mid-march after the inaugural had happened in january.

same guy later also gave $1 million to a super pac supporting trump. there's been so scandal, some public scandal associated with mr. murray and his company and what he has received from the trump administration since making those big donations. "the washington post" was first to report that within weeks of the inauguration, but interestingly even before he cut that $300,000 check to the inauguration, bob murray had drawn up a detailed action plan for what he wanted the trump administration to do. everything from slashing the number of people who work at the epa to scrapping anti-pollution rules. by the anniversary of trump's inauguration, the one-year anniversary, "the new york times" was reporting that, quote, the white house and federal agencies have completed or are on track to fulfill most of the detailed requests in mr. murray's action plan, this wish list of like 14 or 16 different detailed requests that he was demanding the trump

administration perform. they just did them all. and if that story, that little scandal about murray rings a bell or at least doesn't come as a surprise, it's because we expect that to be the way of the world a little bit. we certainly expect that to be the way of this presidency. but in a democracy, in a republic where our elected leaders are accountable to the people who give them their jobs, namely the citizens, we the voters, in a real functioning democracy, of course, investigative reporting is a sacrament. constitutionally enshrined concept of a free press doesn't just mean you're free for say what's on your mind, it protects the freedom of us and our fellow citizens to figure stuff up even when it's unflattering or scandalous material about the people in charge. especially if that is what you dig up. so credit to where credit is due to the enterprising reporters who have just dug up this new jaw-dropping scandal about this white house and the government being put up for sale.

this is the tennessee valley authority, tva. dates to the 1930s. it's a federal agency that operates as essentially a gigantic mega utility in tennessee and parts of alabama, mississippi, georgia, kentucky, north carolina, virginia. well, now enterprising reporting has turned up the fact that the president personally has secretly weighed in with that agency, with the tennessee valley authority, that federal agency, to tell them that despite the agency's existing plans, despite that agency's own internal assessment of what's right for that agency, what's right for the states that agency serves, despite all that, the president has told them to not do what they otherwise intended to do, and instead he has intervened personally and directed them, told that agency that they got to use a coal plant, a coal-fired power plant that they were otherwise going to phase out. but he's telling them to keep that coal-fired power plant online. keep using it despite what's

happened at your agency that made you decide to stop using it. keep using it now because that's plant buys its coal from bob murray. from murray energy. from the president's gigantic donor, both to his super pac and the mysterious late donation to the inaugural. this is like the platonic ideal of simple corruption. murray pays trump, including after the fact those slush fundy -- murray pays trump then trump uses the presidency to direct a public agency to pay murray. to prop up murray's business. use federal resources. use the taxpayers' resources. use the country's assets to reward the guy who gave him money. and if what i just described is the way that we had learned about that scandal, if it in fact had been some enterprising digging investigative reporter who had turned that up as a

secret deal, that would be a pulitzer prize winning scoop for that investigative reporter who uncovered that scandal. but in our morally bewildering current environment, in fact, the way we learned about that scandal is just from the president's public statements on twitter. it was the president himself who just broke the news of this scandal. because he's just doing it all out loud on his twitter feed. this is his tweet last night directing the tva to use this one particular power plant, paradise number three, that gets its coal from his campaign donor. there's the tweet from last night. there's the headline response, goi agog that this is happening in the open. and, yes, this is the story of another destructive tributary of presidential corruption that is flowing through u.s. government policy out of this white house.

but it is also another element in this age of sort of moral bewilderment we are now in as citizens, right? because you can't run that story about what trump just did with the tva and his donor and demanding that they use this donor's coal plant, you can't run that story as an expose of the president's shocking behavior. if the president is happy to commit things like this in public. i mean, there is no way to embarrass somebody for doing something like this if they're happy to be seen selling the government in exchange for cash. if if you can't embarrass or shame anybody about it and you increasingly can't shock anybody about it then what do you do with it? i mean, how do you stop specific government actions like this, if there is no shame from public officials who are doing it? but also how do we become the kind of country where that kind of thing would at least be a scandal? if this doesn't get fixed, by the next trump inaugural, presumably they'll distribute a

menu. they'll have a u.s. taxpayer funded calligrapher draw up a menu to offer what you need to pay for what type of policy you expect in return. then they send somebody out like with the beer tray from the ballpark to go collect your funds. if it doesn't matter anymore, if we're not surprised and nobody's embarrassed, how do we not just become that? and this is a day in the life of what's going on in this presidency, right? this is a day in the life of this country in which we are citizens. at a time when a bunch of new leaders are competing to become the democratic party's nominee to run against this president, to try to make him a one-term president and replace him in the white house. and none of the candidates who are declared thus far are exactly alike. if you want my take on it, i think they all have a lot to offer. i think broadly speaking democrats have to be pleased with the depth and the

capability and the charisma and the ideas of the various contenders in this field that is starting to take shape, even if the sheer number of them is starting already to get a little bit daunting. but out of everybody who has said formally that they are running, in this age of bewilderment and moral despair, i think it is fair to point out that none of these able contenders approach politics and the issue of morality and despair in politics quite like and quite as directly as the presidential contender who is going to be our guest tonight, senator corey booker of new jersey. senator booker started life -- started off life in public as a contender to become mayor booker of the great city of newark. >> i have a philosophy campaigning, which is i walk every street that i want to represent. all i've been doing is in the evenings is walking the streets and talking to people like you. >> i can't even see you.

i'm talking to a screen, but i'll just let you know, i'm running for mayor, and the reason why i'm running. three reasons real quick, okay? >> newark faces real challenges. we have a murder rate that is twice the bronx. we have almost 1/3 of our people living below the poverty line and we graduate only about 40% of our kids from high school. there's no excuse for this. this city can be doing so much better for the people that live here. >> what are you doing? >> i'm trying to get people to vote for me. are you going to vote for me? >> yeah, i'm going to vote for you. >> are you going to vote for me? >> what does vote mean? >> it means participating in democracy. trying to make your community better. >> that's a clip from a documentary called "street fighter. really good documentary made about corey booker's run to become mayor of newark, new jersey. to try to oust a corrupt, shameless forever mayor of that city. someone who really felt like he was going to be there until he

was dead. a mayor snaharp james. and booker initially lost to james and the james machine in newark, but he came back and he won. and he became mayor and james ended up serving a long term in federal prison. in newark, cory booker as mayor, he faced all of the challenges of a big city mayor in a working class city and then some. but in a way you had never really seen before from any mayor of any city of any size, mayor cory booker also ended up making national news over and over again, not necessarily for the stuff that he was like, announcing that he was doing for mayor, the things that he was trying to shape his candidacy around, but literally for being a guy who seemed committed to just personallificing stuff on a day-to-day basis, especially when there was like, a snowstorm or something else that put sizes out in a way that they weren't necessarily used to. for example, the case of the shivering dog. dog left outside in newark at

night in cold weather. don't just tweet about how sad it makes you to see that. if you really did see that, give up the address because the mayor will go get that dog personally and he did. you complaining online about how much snow got dumped by the storm at your family's house and your family can't dig out. it's too much to deal with. here comes the mayor personally. he will help you. you better not be complaining about something you yourself will not do. this is from the "new york daily news" coverage of that incident. quote, booker also responded to a call from assistance from newark resident bonds. bonds tweeted an expletive-laced post about the amount of snow he needed to shovel. tweeted skepticism that mayor booker would show up like he said he would. booker not only showed up to help the snowed-in family to shovel out personally, he responded online to the guy who had been complaining and swearing at him about the snow. quote, wow, the mayor said, wow, you should be ashamed of yourself. you tweet vulgarities and i come

out to help and it's your mom and sister digging? where are you? then they apparently met because the mayor tweeted next, quote, thank you for coming to talk to me face-to-face. you're a good brother. we need to be positive in the face of negativity. the man responded online, you're correct. i got to channel my emotions. that happened as newark was dealing with snow and ice. i think along the same lines, when it comes to a burning building. this was mayor cory booker in april of 2012. >> mayor cory booker rushed to rescue a next door neighbor on hawthorne avenue whose apartment building was on fire. three residents made it out of this building but flames and smoke trapped one woman on the second floor. >> two detectives went with the mayor trying to slow him down a little bit and they went through a kitchen fire. the kitchen was fully involved and the fire was spreading with a lot of smoke. the mayor then started calling

out for the individual. >> mayor booker and the detectives who are part of a security detail heard a woman screaming for help in a back bedroom. >> the mayor immediately, initially being held back by detectives responded, look, we got to save her. she may die. she may die. went in, grabbed the woman out of the bed and carried her through the -- through the fire with the assistance of his detectives down stairs. >> mayor booker suffered smoke inhalation and second-degree burns to his right hand. the woman he rescued had burns on her back and smoke inhalation as well. both went to the hospital. >> this sort of thing happened often enough when cory booker was mayor of newark, new jersey that it eventually became something he almost had to live down. unless you can actually fly, in terms of people's expectations for you, it is not necessarily a good thing in politics when people start calling you superman. cory booker was ultimately elected to the united states senate from new jersey in a special election held after the death of incumbent senator frank

laughtonberg. he was elected to a full term in 2014, which means he is coming to the end of his first full term as a u.s. senator. he has a national profile. he is a progressive senator by any measure. he also has a notable record of across the aisle friendships and legislative collaborations, which is why we have rare pick torl evidence of charles grassley being hugged by another adult human. of course that colleague is cory booker. of course it is. senator booker was a driving force behind the major criminal justice reform legislation that was brought forth by both democratic and republican senators and signed into law by president trump in december. senator booker has now announced his run for the u.s. presidency. in the interest of full disclosure, i should tell you that i have known him personally since he had hair. i knew senator booker when we were in college. we overlapped both in college and in grad school. we knew each other in school and we were friends at that time.

and, you know, you never expect somebody you know to run for president. like, that's just, i mean, maybe if you're like born a kennedy or something, you expect that, but, like, for normal people, it's such a weird thing to think that somebody you know might end up being president or running for president as a serious candidate. and that's true in general, but i will tell you, from my personal experience in life, honestly, now senator cory booker is so different than anybody i have ever known on earth. he is such an absolutely unique embodiment of moral energy and moral earnestness that he might be the only person i have ever met and known in a personal context over the course of my 45 years on earth for whom it might actually make sense that he's running for president it it's definitely not true for anybody else i ever grew up with or knew in any other context, but for him, he might be the one for whom it makes sense. since he announced he's running, i have not yet had a chance to talk to him. this is about to be his first

cable interview since he's declared his candidacy to become the next president of the united states. senator cory booker joins us next. states senator cory booker joins us next too little too late ♪ ♪ a sock-a-bam-boom ♪ who's in the room? ♪ love is dangerous ♪ but driving safe means you pay less ♪ ♪ switch and save ♪ yes, ma'am excuse me, miss. ♪ does this heart belong to you? ♪ ♪ would you like it anyway? [ scatting ]

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we are americans! we are a nation of love, not a nation of hate. we are a nation of decency and kindness. we're a nation of civic grace. we're a face that sees each other and loves each other and works together. and so i -- i want to win the next election, and i believe we will. i want to bring the best policy ideas. i believe our party will. but i want to heal this nation with you. i want to bring folk back together with you. i want to call to the common decency of a nation and have us all stand and work and fight together because this nation not -- is not yet a place with liberty and justice for all, and every generation has an obligation to honor their ancestors and join the fight to make this nation more fair and more just, to make this nation a

more perfect union. thank you, everybody. >> joining us now for the interview is democratic senator cory booker from the great state of new jersey. senator booker has been a member of the u.s. senate since 2013. before that he was the mayor of the great city of newark. before that, a member of the newark municipal council. as of right now, he is running to be the democratic nominee for president of the united states. senator, nice to see you. >> it's good to see you. >> i was talking to my friend chris hayes today about our shows. we met literally at the water cooler. >> okay. >> he was like, i think you need to break the fourth wall and talk about the fact that you knew cory booker as a person. i've talked about that before but i don't know that anybody believes me. >> you talked about one of the most embarrassing moments of my radio interviews. we have a long friendship. i still remember hoping those clips from the radio interviews will never be found because there is a lot of personal stuff you talked about overlapping. >> you realize you just directed every oppo research in the country to go find that stuff. listen, i've never said anything bad about you because i've never

known anything bad about you. but let me ask you, coming from that place -- >> yes. >> when you were mayor and the possibility arose of you running for the senate, i remember having a conversation with you just as people who knew each other just as friends, where we were talking about whether that would be a good job. not about whether or not you could win. not about what it meant in terms of party politics but maybe whether you wanted to try to become a u.s. senator. two different components. number one, it meant you'd be going from being the guy in charge, the number one person in charge of city government. >> right. >> to being 100 out of 100 in terms of seniority in the u.s. senate. >> right. >> number two, it meant going to washington. i remember talking to you about whether or not there was anything worth doing as a human being in washington, and you didn't know the answer to either of those, but you did decide to run. >> i had a lot of doubts about being a united states senator. you were actually really good because you directed me to people that you really liked. one of them is a guy i have a lot of respect for, another potential presidential

candidate, sherrod brown. gave me his phone number. i went down with their some skepticism because so much cynicism was surrounding washington. the woman in the projects who i lived in her building for about a decade who first elected me is the reason why the map of the central wards is behind me said don't forget where you came from or the people who got you into office. i've remained in that neighborhood, but more importantly, i went to work on the tougher problems that affect people in communities like the one i live in, inner city, low-income communities. i tell you, it's been one of the most rewarding jobs i've had because i've been able to get a lot of good things done, and last congress, a couple of very big things done. one is criminal justice reform, which literally is going to liberate thousands of people. just the crack cocaine powder cocaine disparities making it retroactive will release thousands of people, 90% of them black. if you look at the tim scott, who is a republican from south carolina, he and i sat and