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tv   Andrea Mitchell Reports  MSNBC  May 20, 2019 9:00am-10:00am PDT

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very smoort thing art thing to hopefully somebody comes by to check on you and everybody can take care of each other. >> live for us down there in oklahoma. thank you. be safe the rest of the day. appreciate it. that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. chris jansing is taking over for andrea mitchell reports which starts right now. >> nice to see you. right now dissension in the ranks, the first republican lawmaker says donald trump engaged in impeachable conduct oso the president labels congressman a loser. >> i think anybody who knows justin's background knows he sometimes goes a different route than the rest of the republicans in our conference and this is clearly one of those cases. you don't see anybody else agreeing with him and i strongly disagree. end game. president trump with a twitter threat to end the iran --
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>> i'm not somebody who wants to go into war because war hurts economies and kills people. >> and standing o. while joe biden focuses on his crossover appeal to voters, mayor pete buttigieg gets a fox news crowd on its feet. >> i hope you will join me in making sure that that next era is better than any we have had so far. [ cheers and applause ] >> thank you, mayor and thank you -- a standing ovation. ♪ good day, i'm chris jansing in for andrea in new york. president trump and a rapid response team of top republicans are dragging four term gop congressman justin amash through
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the mud. his signature cover punch strategy on full display, a reaction to a baker's dozens of tweets detailing key take aways after reading the mueller report. among them, one that probably stands out amash writing mueller's report reveals that president trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that should meet the threshold for impeachment. the president is directing anger at the "new york times," pushing back on a front page story that details how multiple transactions in accounts controlled by the president and his son-in-law jared kushner raised red flags. joining me now kristin welker, eugene robinson and msnbc contributor barbara mcquaid,
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former u.s. attorney. let me start with you because i will put up congressman amash's initial tweets so you can see the points made that sparked the back lash. the comment on impeachable conduct. i want to go back two years to this interaction you had with him. >> reporter: congressman, if the comey memo turns out to be true will you call for impeachment? >> i have nothing further to add. >> reporter: whose word do you trust more, president trump or james comey? >> i have nothing further to add. >> reporter: do you think the president may have obstructed justice. >> i have nothing further to add. >> now, kristin, obviously, he did have something to add. mitt romney sort of defended amash. but is there concern?
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and how much concern that others will even follow suit? >> reporter: i have been talking to folks at the white house. what a blast from the past to see that exchange. it was almost two years ago. officials here at the white house make a couple of points. one, what you heard congressman steve scalise say he is the only republican saying that the president committed impeachable offenses. you don't see other republicans joining me. and this is someone who has been a frequent critic of president trump. he has broken with his party a number of times. that's why you have that sharp criticism from president trump calling him a lightweight and a loser and accusing him of just wanting to make headlines. will amash add fuel to democrats who are calling for the president's 350e7impeachment? that remains to be seen. how does the president feel about that? this is someone who even though
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it is the democratic primary that we are focussed on, he is very focussed on his own reelection and he sees all of this talk of impeachment as something he can use on the campaign rail to energize his core supporters saying i'm under threat here you got to get out to the polls. i think it cuts both ways. what we will be watching for is to see how democrats respond to this. >> this is not landing well with republican colleagues and leader kevin mccarthy said this yesterday. >> you have to understand justin amash. i think he only asked one question in all the committees that he has been in. he votes more with nancy pelosi than with me. it is a question whether he is in our republican conference as a whole. he wants attention in this process. >> so our friends at morning joe saw this on the 538 website. amash who is a five-term congressman votes more than 60% pro trump overall. in this new congress, he has
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really been on board, more than 90% support. mccarthy is just dead wrong on the voting record. is he right that this is political? is this principle? some people are saying why did he wait until now to say something about the mueller report. what is your take? >> justin amash represents a conservative district in michigan. and the idea that he would seek political advantage for himself in going after president trump in this way is ridiculous. it's ludicrous and nobody seriously believes that m. the primary challenge against justin amash. it's one that aims migmash migh defeat. so this is clearly a principled
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stance and kristin welker is absolutely right. i don't anticipate some flood of republicans coming out to agree. if you were able to administer truth serum for the republican caucus, you would get some. what do democrats do? democrats who have been sort of tentative about moving, taking that ultimate step, does this somehow encourage the process on the part of democrats? >> does it give a little push to nancy pelosi? you are in congressman amash's backyard. >> i just don't agree with him. i don't agree with -- i think that the job that the president is doing -- i think he will want to help people with finding jobs
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and the economy. >> he read every single page. this is based on what he read, he believes that there is a case to be made for impeachment. >> if that's what he believes, then you need to stand up for what you believe. >> you are okay with it. >> i'm okay with him doing that. my belief is i don't agree with it. >> i wonder if you can get a real sense. i understand this is very much going into the coffee shop or restaurant and talking to people. do you get a sense that this will hurt him at home? is he going to pay a political price? >> it's really hard to say right now. to have the conversations with people who supported him, you have some like the lady in virginia who says that she doesn't like what aimash had to say but would consider him if they go on. you also get those who say absolutely no. this is the end. you are blocking president trump and his agenda and they don't like the fact that he is taking
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this step. local republicans here in michigan have really kind of repeated and mirrored what you heard from president trump saying amash is doing this for attention. you had one official say that amash committed a fraud by running as a republican candidate. there is not a lot of good will for him among republican establishment. among the people that i have been talking to, there is much more nuance there. people understand that this is a principled position for him. they understand that he believes this strongly. one gentleman said i disagree with this completely. you get a little bit of a mix of reaction as you talk to people here. >> i want to turn to the banks story. big front page. they say some of the transactions link the trump foundation to these question marks that set off alerts in deutsche bank's computer systems. now the new big story is that trump made a lot of money and
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buys everything for cash. where did he get all of that cash? could it be russia? no. i built a great business and don't need banks, but if i did, they would be there. i guess that's what he wants the explanation to be and that's what he wants to be the end of this. this is just more fake news fraumpt "new york times." >> the president defiant. he has described himself as a counter puncher and that's exactly what we are seeing here. we reached out to white house officials about this and it is the president himself who responds first. he sees himself as his own best communications person. the trump organization is also responding to the "new york times" and effectively saying they were not aware of any transactions that raised red flags. deutsche bank saying at no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious. firurthermore furthermore, the suggestion that
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anyone was reassigned. president trump is going to be heading to the battle ground state of pennsylvania a little bit later on today. as you know, sometimes he takes questions before he leaves. so we are going to try to get some more from him on all of this. >> barbara mcquaid, the story suggests that the folks at deutsche bank were kept from escalating it. they got no response did they feel like action was taken. we know the president's finances are getting a closer look in new york. this shines potentially a little more light on how some of his companies, some of the cushner related companies operate. do you see dangers here for the president? >> certainly, there are red flags. congress has served a subpoena on deutsche bank to get bank record and try to get a better understanding of president trump's entanglements with russia. we know he has filed a lawsuit
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to prevent that disclosure. he is clearly very concerned about what those records might show. so we know that deutsche bank paid $600 million settlement in january of 2017 for allegations that it was laundering russian funds, more than $10 billion in russian assets. so i think there are certainly some red flags here. it appears that the president trump is quite desperate to prevent the public from knowing what is in the records. >> this makes me think back in the good old days three years or so ago if a member of a cabinet or top adviser to a president found himself in the middle of a story like this it would go on for days and affect the things they were able to accomplish. jared kushner is the quarterback for so much of the white house agenda, immigration, middle east peace. do the optics of this matter at all in this world? >> apparently not. apparently, this would have been a huge story front page for days
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if not weeks. and now it's just another day in crazy town. so i think this potentially is a very significant story. deutsche bank had not only that problem in 2017, it's under current investigation in europe for money laundering. and at some point, the flows of money, russian money through deutsche bank to wherever that money ended up and however it swirled around at some point will be traced. that's something that the president seems anxious about. >> always good to see you, my friend. out there on the road for us. thanks to all of you. coming up, out foxed? mayor pete buttigieg rattled president trump in his fox news town hall slamming the president and name checking network hosts. how did the audience react?
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how would you handle the insults and the attacks and the tweets and all of that? >> the tweets are -- i don't care. we need to make sure that we're changing the channel for this
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show that he's created because it matters. it's mesmerizing. it is hard for anybody to look away t. is the nature of grotesque things that you can't look away. >> if you want to make a splash in a crowded field of democrats, maybe a nationally televised town hall on the president's favorite network could help your cause. take it from mayor pete buttigieg who was very well received by the audience. certainly, it got the attention of president trump who tweeted that fox was wasting air time on mayor pete. i want to get the inside scoop from msnbc contributor. monica alba, nbc news political reporter in pennsylvania. nbc news national political reporter. jeremy, mayor pete got a standing o last night on fox news. then he was taking heat from some progressives for even appearing on the network. as you know elizabeth warren put out a whole series of reasons
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why she refused to go on the network. i wonder is this a lost opportunity for democrats? what's their strategy here? >> i don't think that it ever helps a political party to pick fights with individual television networks or journalists. maybe in some isolated cases it really revs up the base. remember, the republican national committee tried to do this with msnbc and nbc four years ago. they ended up having a debate on cnbc. it faded into the wind. so i think -- >> what might stay is some of the things that he said and how he handled these questions, right? >> that is the crucial thing is the message. it's not the medium. it's the message in this case. in mayor pete's case, what he has done is kind of cracked the door into that whole disaffected
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trump voter world where there are people who are just not going to vote for trump again. the question is whether or not they can stomach the idea of voting for a democrat. a lot of them are not quite there yet. by going on fox, that is one way to reach them. it's not the only way, of course. you combine that with his language and his really i think warm attitude toward them, this kind of welcoming posture he has taken saying i'm not writing you off or discrediting you. and more importantly speaking their language in terms of issues like faith i think that's really important because the democrats -- look at the last few democrats who have won elections. barack obama, bill clinton, they have done so by getting a larger share of the white evangelical vote than hillary clinton got. >> and they talked about faith which is something that mayor pete does. he didn't shy away from the controversy, by the way.
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he actually went after some of the fox news hosts on their own network. i want to play that. >> especially when you see what goes on with some of the opinion hosts on this network. when you have tucker carlson saying immigrants make americans dirty and laura ingram comparing detention centers to summer camps, then there is a reason why anyone has to -- >> you might think that is kind of a bold move from mayor pete. are there persuadables not just in that studio audience, but in the larger audience who actually were watching fox news last night? and he could win them over.
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this is still the primary. we haven't had a vote cast yet. >> i have seen some democratic numbers. it's a small slice of independents and democrats that make up the fox audience. let's not forget that research shows the vast majority of committed republican fox news viewers believe global warming is not man made. it's still in an election that could matter as the last one did with a handful of votes in various select states. i think that this is where you want to be if you are a candidate like pete buttigieg. >> meantime, joe biden you spent a lot of time with him, kicked off his campaign in philadelphia. key battle ground, a place where he has been popular, a place democrats have to win in 2020. trump going there today. biden's message was one of unity, a different path for all voters. take a listen.
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>> if american people want a president to add to our division, lead with a clinched fist, a closed hand, a hard heart to demonize your opponents, spew hatred. they don't need me. they have president donald trump. a different path. >> different path. you just wrote about this, about different strategies for nbc.com. tell us about it. >> it's interesting. the sense you got watching joe biden speak at this rally is that he can only fast forward this entire election campaign to the general election and to the race with donald trump he would. he also recognizes that he has to get through bernie sanders and some of these other democratic candidates first. you did see him focus primarily on trump and begin to speak to the divide. you need to be the angriest candidate to win the nomination.
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i think democrats want to unify the nation. we also see every time the president engages with joe biden, the joe biden campaign cheers because this really helps this idea that he is the most electable candidate and donald trump is afraid of him. the question has been is donald trump going to be impulsive or strategic as he goes after other candidates? everything he has done is showing that perhaps he is worried about joe biden because joe biden is winning over the kind of voters donald trump knows he needs in order to be re-elected. >> it's hard to sugar coat the numbers in places like pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin. polls show those rust belt states slipping away from the president. what are we expecting tonight? >> reporter: exactly, chris. folks i talked to here have been lined up taking shuttle buses to the rally behind me. some camped out overnight. these are the voters that you guys are talking about here in central pennsylvania who hope to hear a message from the president that focuses on the
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economy. they hope he also talks about immigration. curiously enough, joe biden did come up and they said they hoped the president keeps his tough talk against him they want to hear about all of that. the mayor is expected 10,000 people to go to the rally tonight. this is a critical battle ground state. they talked to a mother/daughter duo who said we have seen snow days and other weather-related days. all schools are actually cancelled in the area. today in central pennsylvania, it's a trump day. >> it's also really interesting to hear you mention maybe trump supporters are worried about the challenge that biden provides, as well. thank you so much. much appreciated. and coming up, direct threat. iran responds to president trump who tweeted that the country would meet its end if it wanted to fight. that's ahead right here on andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc.
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the war of words with iran is intensifying with president trump ramping up rhetoric after a rocket in baghdad tweeting if iran wants to fight that will be
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the official end of iran. today iranian foreign minister fired back tweeting never threaten any iranian. try respect. it works. joining me now a former senior state department official and msnbc senior foreign affairs analyst. it's good to see you. the president didn't elaborate after his tweet. what is the message he is sending to iran? >> well, a year ago he said the same thing on twitter but used all caps. i don't know if that is a signal he is trying to de-escalate things. i think the public tit for tats isn't helpful. there is increased threat stream from the iranians and the administration acted in a way that deterred any attacks against us. i think that is the right thing to do. i think you want to try to keep it measured. there is a broader issue of policy and what the objective is. president trump in an interview last night on fox news suggested
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the only issue to him is the nuclear issue. he is surprised that the iranians have not come to the table. the policy is not designed in a way to get them to the table. there is a bit of incoherence in the policy. i think we will continue to see the tensions increase. nobody wants a conflict but the risk of accidents and n misunderstandings is pretty serious. >> he said things can get triggered accident ly. >> with the iranians, you want to apply multi lateral pressure. we don't have many allies with us. once we pulled out of the deal we lost a lot of the ability to really kind of rally the world and isolate the iranians to focus on the most maligned activities. you want to have allies with you. the president's tweet also talking about basically ending the official end of iran. i'm sure this was not a well-considered statement that was clear through the
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interagency. you want to focus on the malign activities of the iranians external operations. there is 80 million iranians. there is a risk here that you fuel iranian nationalism and that the people really rally in a significant way to the worst elements of the regime. >> i wonder if this adds to it. he says the fault lies with the iranians and not the united states. if the iranian threats are activated we must deliver an overwhelming military response, stand firm, mr. president. what do you make of that? >> again, these are public threats. there is a number of ways to deter potential attacks against us. there is private messaging. that's been very effective in the past and made clear to iran. they know through private channels if you dare attack us, the consequences will be extremely serious. they get that message through private channels.
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there is the public messaging which leads to increased tensions throughout the region and sometimes events can spiral out of control. it seemed over the weekend until last night that things were it's clearly about trying to establish a back channel. the iranian foreign minister is in tehran today. the american side is trying to open diplomatic channels. all the channels were severed. so now president wants them to get back to the table and i think it's going to be difficult. we want multi lateral pressure and want allies working in concert with us. i think the president and others will have to try to get that moving. right now is moving in a different direction. >> always good to have you on the program. thanks so much. coming up, new wave. another restrictive abortion bill. the state's democratic governor
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says he will likely sign it. it is the latest in a flurry sweeping the country. saturday night live's leslie jones has a few thoughts about that. >> this is how it starts. i'm out livering ing my life. i see states are trying to ban abortion and tell me what i can and can't do with my body. what made me so mad was seeing the alabama senators who voted for the abortion ban. this looked like the casting call for a lipitor commercial. you can't tell me what to do with my body. you can't make me small or put me in a box. i'm six feet tall and 233 pounds. ain't no box big enough to hold me. pounds. ain't no box big enough to hold me. at average risk. honey have you seen my glasses? i've always had a knack for finding things... colon cancer, to be exact. and i find it noninvasively... no need for time off or special prep. it all starts here... you collect your sample,
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you might or joints.hing for your heart... but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. protesters are taking to the streets after a number of states are rushing to restrict abortion. in alabama on sunday we saw demonstrations after the governor signed the country's most stringent abortion law. in missouri protesters tried to stop lawmakers from passing a bill to make abortion illegal. it did pass later that day. now louisiana, the latest state considering sweeping limits to abortion. stephanie gosk is in baton rouge. what would this legislation include? what does it look like?
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>> reporter: so it's what they call a heart beat bill. there are four states in the country that have passed it. louisiana would become the third. it basically bans abortions at around six weeks. a lot of advocates say most women don't know they are pregnant at that point. that is what they are talking about here tlmpt would be no exceptions for rape or incest. there would be exceptions for the health of the woman. the woman wouldn't face any charges for getting an abortion. the doctor would face a $1,000 fine and up to two years in prison. that's not as tough as some of the other laws we have been talking about in the last couple of weeks. >> is there any real doubt about whether or not it is going to pass and the governor will sign
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it? >> reporter: there is very little doubt. it isn't going to be voted on until next week. that is mostly because the legislative agenda is packed. there is not much opposition. this is a very religious state and conservative state. it does have a democrat as a governor. as you mentioned, he has always considered himself in his word pro life. and that's his platform has always been. he is going to sign this. >> thank you so much, appreciate the update. president trump tried to distance himself from the new alabama law on abortion tweeting over the weekend as most people know and for those who would like to know, i am strongly pro life with the three exceptions, rape, incest and protecting the life of the mother. the radical left with late term abortion and worst is imploding on this issue. we must stick together and win for life in 20 to.
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joining me now is margaret carlson and nbc political correspondent. margaret, are the democrats imploding on this issue? >> i think the worst thing that could happen to trump is for roe v wade to be overturned. he campaigns on the issue. he was pro choice until he ran for president. but this issue rests in some kind of balance which a majority of people favoring roe v wade. to overturn this is to make this a much bigger issue than trump wants it to be in this election. he became pro life in order to placate evangelicals who didn't like other things about his character. he didn't do it to create this
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kind of turmoil on such a delicate social issue, one that will overcome the attorney. >> it's never been a decisive issue or anything close to that. there is some sense that this year might be different, that at least brought in with some of the other sort of social issues that it could be critical. what's the republican and the president's strategy here? >> i think that is why you are seeing so many republicans, the president was just the latest to come out and say i'm actually for some exceptions. these bills are not just passing in alabama with no exceptions for rape and incest, it's also in mississippi. it's also in georgia. what we are talking about here is ending abortion in the first trimester because i think
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margaret was really smart to tell people what roe means. under roe which is current law, you already had a lot of bans in 43 states abortion is banned after a certain point. in many states it's after 20 weeks. the debate we are having right now is really about the first trimester. even as the president is trying to distance himself from something that is very unpopular, national polls tell us among a lot of republicans he is stoking it based on our reporting. the president himself has been beating the drum. it's almost become a standard line at a lot of his campaign rallies accusing democrats of wanting to execute babies. he is talking about a virginia law and really distorting it. it has to do with viability of fetuses that are born that are nonviable in the third trimester. he is calling that executing babies. we caught a fundraising e-mail that went out about abortion. he is screening anti-abortion
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films at the white house. even though with the one hand he is trying to distance himself and his party from the measures that are viewed as extreme, he is stoking this battle to try and get this question of person hood and ending essentially all abortion before the supreme court. >> and there is no doubt that there is a small part on the right that -- small group of voters for whom this is the issue. it has been the issue not just for years, but for decades. this focus on abortion, on gay rights and other social issues has worried a lot of republicans. i was talking to a republican mayor, the sixth largest city in colorado. she is a self-described conservative. she thinks republicans are not just playing 2020 politics wrong but driving more people away from the party overall. >> i talked a lot about do i stay a republican? i think the gist of it is that i firmly believe that my core
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values are republican. for example, my daughter is gay. i'm perfectly fine with that if that's what -- if that's where she is and that's who she is, great. there is a lot of republicans out there who really take a totally different stance and they bring in religion or they bring in these other values that have no place in politics. >> what i hear from her and from a lot of other republicans who are concerned about this is we have a good message on the economy. why aren't we using that for 2020? so why aren't they? >> it mystifies me. trump steps all over his messages all the time. you know, it's 10,000 votes in michigan can be made up by women alarmed by this turn. it is a voting issue for the right. it hasn't been a voting issue for the left because the left has felt that the framework of roe in that trimester division has worked. it's kept the country in equal
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poise over a very delicate issue. and to explode that makes no sense politically unless you have a kind of death wish. a few pilates classes, women's studies groups at the university of michigan and you have women out there turning those 10,000 votes over. >> to be continued. thanks to both of you. coming up, tip of the iceberg. the trump administration identifies another 1,700 children who have been separated from their families at the border. how did this happen? the lead aclu lawyer joins me ahead here on andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. l n andreal reports only on msnbc. [ alarm beeping ] wake up! there's a lot that needs to get done today. small things. big things. too hard to do alone things. day after day, you need to get it all done. and here to listen and help you through it all is bank of america. with the expertise and know-how you need to reach that blissful state of done-ness.
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memories. what we deliver by delivering. some disturbing new numbers about the real-world impact of the president's hastily implemented zero-tolerance border policy. his own administration now says at least 1,700 more children may have been separated from their families at the border. that's in addition to the nearly 3,000 we already knew about. those staggering numbers emerging after a new court-ordered effort to reunite migrant children with their parents. the latest chapter in a major
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court battle led by the aclu over family separations. and now just this morning, border patrol officials say a 16-year-old guatemalan boy died in custody at a border patrol facility in texas. joining me now is the deputy director of the aclu immigrants' rights projects. so, obvious question is, how does the government not know these numbers? how is it just coming to light now? but i'm guessing there's nothing that surprises you about this additional 1,700? >> you know, i think that i was surprised. and i knew we weren't getting the whole story and i knew the government didn't track people, but this many more that were unaccounted more. >> it surprised even you? >> it did surprise me. and i've been doing this for a long time and seeing bombshell after bombshell and this surprised me. we're talking about 1,700 additional may have been separated. but that's not the end, because they're still going through the files. they knew they were more people separated, they just never went and and figured out how many or who
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they were. so now we're playing catch-up again. >> do you believe the administration is doing the best job it can to try to reunite these families? the guy who was in charge, commander jonathan white, of spearheading this reunification, said pretty bluntly, this could take years. >> yeah, i think some people are. i think commander white now is doing what he can do, but did the government overall deliberately separate these children and inflict real cruelty on them? yes. did they fail to track them? yes. did they want to reunite them immediately? no. i think only now with the court case are we seeing any action. but we're still -- i mean, these kids were separated as far back, potentially, as july of 2017. >> and they're still apart from their parents. still apart from their families. >> maybe some have gotten back together through self-help, but we have no idea. the government is telling us, we have no idea how many there are, who they are, and without a court order, we would still be going on dish mean, this is a
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situation where the public needs to know that family separation is very much still going on, because we have all of these past separations we need to figure out, but they're still separating families, despite the court order. so we will have to go back to court to stop that. >> what's ahead in your court fight with the administration? is there anything outside from, you know, the people who are working on it internally, is there anything that can be done to speed this up? >> i think the public needs to keep the pressure up. when we had last summer an enormous public outcry and it really helped. and i think that's going to be critical, because we are trying to find these kids from the past. we are trying to stop future separations. so it's still ongoing. the administration needs to hear that they need to stop doing separations. they're trying to get around the court order, with all of these clever ways. we will be back in court, but they need to hear from the public that family separation is abhorrent, just like they did last summer.
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>> are there things you have learned from discovery, things you have learned in filing these lawsuits that even surprised you, beyond the sheer numbers that we're seeing now, what do people need to know about this? >> i think they need to know how far back it went, even way before zero-tolerance policy that in july of 2017, they were already separating. the age of the kids, babies, toddlers, how long the children were taken. but ultimately, the numbers are staggering, but it's really the cruel little human stories that are so horrible. kids being dragged away, screaming, please don't take me away, just no empathy at all. seeing it up close is just horrible. >> thank you so much and thanks for the work that you folks continue to do, even as the public outcry has subsided a bit. and coming up, what a graduation gift. billionaire robert smith pledges to pay off student loans for the morehouse college class of 2019. two graduate reactions right ahead here on andrea mitche"and report
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when 400 graduating seniors at morehouse college in atlanta came to their commencement ceremony sunday, none of them expected this from their keynote speaker. >> on behalf of the eight generations of my family who have have been in this country, we're going to put a little fuel in your bus. this is my class, 2019.
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and my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans. >> gives you chills. billionaire investor and philanthropist robert f. smith surprising everyone when he pledged to pay off every student loan for the class of 2019 at that historically black college. the commitment could cost up to $40 million. but speaking just a short time ago here on msnbc, morehouse grads spoke about their plans to pay it forward by donating $100,000 back to morehouse by the time they're just 32 years ol old. >> a special $100,000 club of morehouse alums that have donated 100,000 and we got to meet a bunch of these alums and we said, we need to be a part of this club. >> for us, it's very important that we're able to have like, a foot -- a step forward, basically, like a step ahead of
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the game, to be able to save money and be able to donate it back to our institution. >> how can you not love them? that's going to do it for driana mitchell reports. "velshi & ruhle" is in now. you're tearing up. >> you know -- >> those guys, it's like, something great can come from any donation, but then when the tentacles go out, it's just remarkable. >> he changed their lives and they're paying it forward. >> changing the world. >> without a doubt. and you know what, an individual can change the world. you think only institutions can. no, you can, right now. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> so glad you did that story. hello, everyone. i am stephanie ruhle. my partner, ali velshi on assignment. it is monday, may 20th. and we begin with breaking news. thousands of people could be out of a job by the end of summer. today, ford announced it would cut a total of 7,000 jobs by august with more than 2,000 of them right here in the u.s. by this friday, 500 u.s.