is the answer to more democracy that can come up with the solutions to the challenges that we face. >> all right. beto o'rourke 2020 democratic presidential candidate. thanks for making some time tonight. >> thanks for having me on. >> that is all for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> thanks for being with us this hour. it's great to have you here. in 2016 there were so many people running for the republican nomination for president that year that for the republicans' first presidential debate in 2016 the fox news channel, that hosted that debate, they found themselves in a little bit of a pickle. fox was hosting the first republican primary debate. but there were so many people running in the republican primary that fox news felt just logistically that they couldn't put them all on the stage at once. they couldn't put all of the candidates in the debate. there were just too many candidates. and so in 2016 fox news decided

ahead of the first debate that they'd put a cap on how many candidates could be in that first debate. fox announced they would only invite ten candidates. they'd take the five most recent national polls, they'd average all the results together from those polls, and then they would only invite the candidates ranked one through ten in that national polling average. now, a the time they made that call, there were already i think at least a half dozen republican candidates running. it was clear that a ton more candidates were going to get in. they were probably going to go over the magic number ten that they had set for the debate. i mean, at that point we hadn't even gotten to the point when a first-time candidate named donald trump would float eerily down the escalator at trump tower to call mexicans rainist a rapists and drug dealers thus declaring he was going to run for the american presidency.

trump wasn't in when fox announced they'd only have ten candidates in the debate. neither were another ten people or so who ultimately joined in. fox could see it coming. they could see they were going to have this numbers problem. their dilemma was understandable. you know, what are you going to do? if there's going to be 50 people in the debate how are you going to conduct this? you can see why they worried. as much as you might empathize with their need to keep the debate a manageable thing, it was unavoidably a fraught business. who was fox news or any media outlet to decide only ten of the ultimate candidates would count for the debates? why not 15 in why not five? why not two? why not just pick the two they like the best if they're going to make themselves the arbiter. there was a lot of pressure on them about what they were going to do. then a few weeks before the first debate was set to happen, fox changed its mind. fox announced that they would open up a new debate, a 5:00 p.m. debate a couple hours

before the primetime debate they were already planning. they said that 5:00 p.m. debate would be especially for all the candidates who wouldn't make the cut of the top ten on the main stage later that night. quote, due to the overwhelming interest in the fox news debate and in a concerted effort to include and accommodate the now 16 republican candidate field, the largest in modern political history, fox news is expanding participation in the 5:00 p.m. debate to all declared candidates. and that announcement from fox after all that pressure they got about them putting their thumb on the scale and picking the number of candidates who would be there, that is how we got the undercard debates. remember them? ultimately they became widely known as the kids table debates. that's how we got the spectacle two days before the first debate of this sort of bachelor would you accept this rose ceremony when they announced who made the cut of the top ten for the adult debate. but then that was thereafter how

we arrived at this odd decision they made for the kids table debate where they didn't bother to invite anybody to watch it. i mean, despite the fact they planned to hold the kids table debate in a huge arena that seated over 20,000 people, they kept it empty for the under card. >> so i think anybody who's in the early debate who's unhappy about it should rise in the polls and get in the first debate next time. >> that's a very good point. now about 30 seconds away from this. we look forward to it. again, these debates changed and the polls by which we used to gain access to the entrants in the debate changed, too, based on these moving averages of polls. so someone not invited to a big one this time gets invited next time. this is a snap shot in time. >> that was a snap shot in time. they panned to a wide shot of a huge, empty arena, with the sad undercard debaters up in front of the room with nobody there to

watch them. republicans kept up with this undercard format actually for the whole primary season, for seven debates. if being relegated to the kids' table debate wasn't humiliating enough there were headlines and leads like these that really didn't help. underdog debaters get harsh question, why do you matter? quote, the sad side show of the republican undercard. for this lead, quote, the undercard republican debate was a lot like a night out at arby's. the three candidates served up plenty of red meat that no one really wanted to eat. that's mean to arby's. and that said, even after they ultimately phased out the undercard debates late in the process because people had dropped out of the race and so they could fit them all on one stage, the republican debates still had logistical problems. there was this memorable pile up back stage when they were trying to do the otherwise simple task of getting all the candidates on stage for a debate. that really didn't work.

>> florida senator marco rubio. >> former florida governor jeb bush. >> ladies and gentlemen, the republican candidates. >> and dr. ben carson please come out on the stage. he is standing there as well. dr. carson. >> just standing there, too, isn't he? who's that other guy? did we ask him to come out? did anybody -- do we have a podium for him? what number is he? how did a huge field -- it is complicated. it can make for a great race, but honestly it creates logistical problems. the biggest republican field ever was that field of 17 who ran in that party's nominating contest in 2016. that contest ultimately produced

nominee donald trump who then went on to win the general election and go to the white house. that was from their biggest field ever. the biggest democratic field in a presidential primary was originally 1972. democrats ended up with 15 candidates that year vying for the democratic nomination. ultimately south dakota senator george mcgovern became the democratic nominee in '72. he went on to lose by a landslide to incumbent republican president richard nixon. then, of course, watergate happened. nixon resigned by '74. the '76 election produced another huge field for democrats. they actually beat their previous record and 16 democrats ran that time around in 1976. that 1976 primary the democrats' biggest ever was super competitive. it went on and on and on. they ultimately landed on georgia governor jimmy carter as their nominee and he of course won in the november election in

1976. so 1976 thus far, before now, was the largest democratic field running for president. this year that record is not only beaten it is destroyed. i mean, today we have, i mean, i can now do this like it's a memorized poem from grade school. beto bernie booker biden bennett. just the alphabetical sorting of male candidates with "b" names. in addition you can flesh out the whole rest of the alphabet, right? klobuchar, warren, williamson, yang? we have seven senators, four members of the house, six women, a self-help author, a former tech executive, three mayors, two governors, one former governor, three war veterans, a former vice president, and that's not even everyone. it seems like we might not even

be done. might be more getting in. starting in the very beginning of this new year, i started to get the opportunity to sit down with some of these many, many democratic candidates. not all of them to be sure but a lot of them. and what i have been having are these one-on-one conversations with them. i have not been bringing them on to fight with each other. that part of the con techt test here yet. i've been getting them on the show to find out who they are, why they're running, how they are running and what they would do with the honor and privilege of being president of the united states if the american people gave them that job. no two of these conversations have been the same. my impression thus far in terms of all the candidates i've talked to is this is both a diverse and pretty compelling group. i mean, if you want my personal opinion, i'm a terrible pundit and you shouldn't believe anything that i say on these terms, but my personal opinion is that i think every one of the candidates i have interviewed

this year would have beaten any one of the also ran republicans in 2016. honestly. but this race is for 2020. and it's not against any of those also ran candidates from 2016 who donald trump beat. it's against an incumbent president who is running on locking up his political enemies, on using what he believes is his justice department and his attorney general to launch investigations and prosecutions against his opponents, and against the democratic party, his private lawyer is already openly soliciting help from foreign countries to help trump win against whoever runs against him by trying to gin up foreign investigations against any potential democratic opponents for trump. trump is already claiming that vote counts shouldn't be trusted, that orders from democratic appointed judges don't necessarily need to be followed. he's repeating somewhat insist tently. he says he's joking now but keeps saying it over and over again that he doesn't think the normal limits should apply to him in terms of how many years a

president is allowed to stay in office. this is not going to be a normal election. so who are the democrats going to put up against that? who's best equipped to win that kind of a battle? well, let's see. in june, 2016, when it was reported that you were being considered as a potential running mate for hillary clinton, i asked you in an interview what i thought was the most important question for a potential vp. i asked you if you believed you were ready to be president right then right now if it came to that and you looked me right in the eye and you said one word answer. you said yes. it made me wonder thinking back on that today if you have been planning on running yourself ever since or if you knew then that actually you could have run in 2016. that maybe you were ready for this all along. >> it's not a question of are you ready. it's a question of what the country needs.

at that moment, we were already down to the wire. we knew who our candidates were, and we were in the fight. and now, we're in a very different place. we've lived through two years of donald trump as president. we're to the point, we have lived through two years of one scammer and grifter after another running federal agencies running our federal government. it's like the thing is tilted badly in favor of the rich and the powerful and against everyone else. and the tilt is getting steeper and steeper. that's why we have to be in this fight. >> why so fast? why would you -- why are you willing to move on from this job so fast? you just got there. >> i was raised by a mother in particular who taught us that if you see a problem you don't complain about it. you do something about it. and when i look at what is going on in our country and the way that, frankly, there is an attack on not only the american dream but american values, and i

know that might sound corny but it's happening, here's my perspective. if you want to just take it to a more long term. years from now, members of our family, our children, our grandchildren, they're going to look at us and they're going to ask us where were you at that inflection moment? and they're going to want to hear and i think we're going to want to say something that is more than just how we felt. people are prepared to fight. and i am prepared to join that fight and if necessary and if folks will have me i am prepared to help lead that fight. >> is being a big city mayor better preparation for running the federal government than working in the legislature, than being in congress, being in the senate as some of your other candidates have? >> people ask me all the time every time i go to an event, they say we have a crowded field. what distinguishes you? i tell them i am the only former cabinet member basically federal executive. if you're president you are a federal executive in charge of the federal government, right? and that being mayor is all about getting things done. and people are tired of this

administration's incompetence, its inability to get good things done, and they want somebody in there that can hit the ground running, will be able to get things done. >> how can this giant primary be conducted in such a way that it's going to be putting a nominee forward who is as strong as possible who has the best chance of winning? do you have concrete ideas about that? or do you think it will work itself out? >> well i think it will work itself out. i know a lot of these people. i think they're good people. there is nothing wrong with having a competition of ideas. we should have a competition of ideas. we should see what democratic voters want and want to support. i agree with you that the essential question is going to be who can beat donald trump. that should be our number one question. we also go to the point of the state or fate of our republic. it's a shambles. we have got to figure out how to govern this country again. one of the reasons i got in was i came to believe that if you look at the last ten years of our political system, which was mostly a case of tyranny by the

freedom caucus, we got almost nothing done. if we have another ten years like that, my generation is going to be the first generation of americans to leave less opportunity not more for the people coming after this. in other words, i don't accept that we can continue to accept the degraded political conversation we're having in this country and a degradation of our institutions and expect that our exercise in self-government is going to actually work. that is not just a trump problem. he is a huge manifestation of that problem. but that existed long before he was there. it existed because of the tea party. it ex-iflted because of mitch mcconnell's strategic cravenness or craven strategicness. i do not believe the freedom caucus can be negotiated with. i do not believe they can be compromised with. i do not believe mitch mcconnell will ever do that unless -- when i think about mitch mcconnell i think of a guy completely immune

to give and take unless he is taking everything, which he often does. and he often has. over the ten years that i've been in the senate. but i represent a state that is one-third republican, one-third democratic, and one-third independent. i don't think its republicans and independents are represented by the freedom caucus in washington. i think the freedom caucus in washington is supported by a few billionaires in this country and by fox news and so is donald trump, by the way. and at a certain point we've got to find a way to beat them. we have to find a way to close over them. i think the way to do that is by isolating them and then by pursuing a set of policies that are popular to the broad swath of the american people. >> we've got elizabeth warren from massachusetts, kamala harris from california, julian castro from texas, kristen gillibrand from new york, who

are your colleagueson presumably get along well with. all of those people are from the edge of the country and you are running from the center of the country. it seems to me that must have factored into your decision to run. like you say you like all those people. you think someone kneads to rne from the middle of the country. >> i do and when you look at what happened in the last election, incredible victories in places like kansas. i spoke at their democratic dinner where laura kelly won. who thought that was going to happen? but she was so strong. wisconsin that we beat scott walker. you look at all of the victories in those congressional races all over the country and a lot of that was about people unifying, a lot of the focus of course was pre-existing conditions and the republicans' attempt to repeal the affordable care act and kick people off their health insurance. but we worked together as a party. much of that was going on in the midwest. we wanted to take back that spirit of the democratic party

in the midwest. minnesota is a great place to start. >> there is this gigantic field of democratic candidates literally like two baseball teams at this point. you guys could play each other. besides you and tulsi gabbard there aren't democrats running who have military experience. you enlisted at 26 or 27. >> around that. >> after grad school. >> yeah. >> why did you pick the navy? what was going on? >> there's always been a family military tradition but i always had an excuse for not serving at any particular moment. when i was in college i was in college. when i had the chance to stuldy overseas i was tied up in that though there were several americans at oxford dollar in my class of rhodes scholars who were graduates of the naval academy and i admired those people so much it made me think a little harder. the thing that put me over the edge was a campaign visit. i was knocking on doors as a volunteer for barack obama in very low income, rural counties in iowa, and was blown away by how many times i would knock on the door, talk to a young person

on their way to basic training or to recruitment. i began to realize just how stark the class and regional divides had become that i could count on one hand the people i knew at a place like harvard who had gone on to serve and i began to feel like i was part of a problem. so i went in for the commission and in intelligence in 2009. i thought, i had studied oishic. i thought it might be useful. it later came back that the recruiter wrote down that i studied aerobics. >> which would also be useful. >> i ended up as a command fitness leader. that would have been useful. i'm really glad i did get the chance to serve. it helped me connect with very different americans, people especially when i was deployed to afghanistan who had almost nothing in common with, different politics, different generation, different racially, different regionally. you learn to trust each other with your life because that's what the job requires. >> what would a president swalwell do on day one with gun violence? >> ban and buy back assault weapons. there are 15 million of them out

there right now. if democrats -- democrats agree and a lot of republicans too we should ban future manufacturing and sales. i think you already recognize why they are so dangerous. the pistol grip, the ability for the shooter to spray a crowd. it leaves people with no chance. >> if you run on climate change what are you most worried you are leaving out? you are trying to run as a single issue candidate. what do you most regret thinking isn't going to be on your agenda because you're running as this one issue guy? >> fortunately we don't have to do that because i've demonstrated in my state we can advance the climate action agenda while doing all these other things. our economy is getting ravaged by climate change right now. the forest products industry is burning down. we're losing tourist dollars because of floods. houston's flooded. miami beach. we have to invest money in raising the roads instead of our schools. so this is an economic issue. it is a health issue. the asthma our kids are having is traumatic for families. if you've ever heard a kid wheezing you know climate change is a health issue.

it's a national security issue. so it really is an all encompassing issue and we cannot solve our other problems unless we do feed climate change. >> the sort of radical transparency approach that you took specifically in your senate campaign against ted cruz that was so effective, you've carried some of that into the presidential campaign as well essentially sort of showing everything that your a he doing all the time so people get to see you in every aspect of this campaign. >> right. >> made me wonder if that makes the whole town hall experience sort of different. when you're interacting with potential voters in the early states and stuff they are people who have seen you skateboard around a park. they've seen you drive to the dentist. i wonder if that changes the way people get to know you. >> it might. i think you are seeing a super engaged, very involved electorate. i think some feared with 21 plus candidates you'd have folks tuning out. instead, they're tuning in. they're coming out to these town halls asking really informed

questions. sometimes, yes, they are referring to i saw you in a town hall in iowa and you were asked about x. here's how it applies in new hampshire and i wonder if that changes your opinion of the issue. so i love that level of engagement. it's why we hold these town halls. if i had all the answers, i wouldn't need to show up and listen to and learn from people. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin and relief from symptoms caused by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. like those from buddy.

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>> you do have a voting record in the senate that has a distinction, a sharp distinction which is that you appear to be the senator who has voted against the president, voted against the trump administration more than any other. is that deliberate? did you set out to do that? >> well, i looked at every nominee on the merits and frankly each nominee i looked at wasn't worthy of my vote. they either had an agenda that was so contrary to our values and what i believe in or they just weren't plain old qualified. betsy devos was not qualified. she did not have the acumen and background to help fix our public schools, which should be a right in this country that no matter what block you grew up on you can get a good education. i looked at each nominee. scott pruitt. i voted against him because i knew he would spend his time

just polluting the environment and the air and the water, letting polluters pollute and having no oversight or accountability. he did exactly that. so for each nominee i looked at the merits and decided is this person going to move our country forward and help or not and for the most part president trump has lined his cabinet with people who are absolutely uninterested in helping american people. >> we've got a question from a constituent of yours today because we advertised the fact we were going to have you. her name is mary lucas johnson and she asked us about the lawsuit from 16 states challenging the president over his national emergency for a border wall. your state has not joined that. she said curious why washington did not join the lawsuit against trump's national emergency declaration. is that related to the governor's presidential bid? >> no. we are going to sue the president as we have on at least 16 occasions or 20 by now and we've been very successful. i'm glad we were the first to shut down the muslim ban. we've had a great attorney general and i am proud to be the first governor to fight against it. but in this case we will sue him

the moment that he purports to take a dollar out of our state. >> you want standing. >> we want to have standing and make sure we win. there is a concept in the law you have to have standing to be able to bring the lawsuit. we want to make sure we win that. when we have standing the moment he says he is going to take a dollar out of this for his vanity bumper sticker project on the southern border we will sue. the complaint has already been drafted. so be confident we will continue to be very aggressive protecting our rights. >> you talked about texas not as a blue state or a red state but a nonvoting state. and that, a, it's true and, b, it's also got national resonance. i think that diagnosis to me was striking and moving. i still don't know how you fix it, though. i know you intend to if you want to run the biggest grass roots campaign in history you intend to get a lot more people voting than otherwise intend to. how do you do it? >> you're right. in terms of texas being 50th in the country in voter turnout

that's not an accident of partisan affiliation. it is by design. people based on the color of their skin, their country of national origin, drawn out of districts to diminish the power of their vote. the likelihood we would hear their voice. and the answer to that was not just going to every one of the 254 counties of texas but going to every community within those counties and bringing everyone into the conversation. doesn't matter how blue. we're not going to take you for granted. doesn't matter how small, how red, how rural. we're not going to write you off. everyone is important and everyone counts. at the echbd the day more votes than any democrat has ever received in the history of the state of texas. young voter turnout up 500%. won independents for the first time in decades and 500,000 republicans in texas also joined that movement. so a movement comprised not just of expanded democratic electorate but a movement comprised of democrats, independents, and republicans alike. and now for the first time in at least my adult lifetime, maybe since 1976, texas and its 38

electoral college votes have been unlocked. they are in contention. and we will have a seat at the table. >> we've got a president who is revoking security clearances against his political enemies, in which he is talking about banning muslims from the united states, and campaigning on that. doing sorts of things that are unimaginable even in a fiction version of american governance but we are living it now. especially when the republican party is now led by donald trump and his supporters, that feels different than it might coming out of president obama or any other recent time. the idea of abolishing the electoral college as you suggested. the idea of expanding the supreme court to 15 seats with a different method of picking judges. i feel like those are bold, structural ideas about protecting our democracy. it also feels like we're balanced on tiptoe in terms of

our constitutional inheritance and a time when we might not be able to take a shove in either direction. >> it sounds like a paradox but in many ways those observations go together. it is at moments when the soundness of our democratic set up especially at its seams, moments when it is being tested, that we need to pay the most attention to the structure. the question before us is can our democracy accommodate the forces that are hitting us through the 21st century? i think it can. but to get there we got to use some of the most elegant features built into the constitution, like the ability to amend it to make our country stronger. i think we ought to have that level of ambition. the difference between us and this president is we're proposing using the constitution's processes for a kind of self-healing if we realize that this would be a fairer place if everyone's vote counted the same and if the way we picked our president was to tally up all the votes and give it to the person who got the most votes. now is a moment to make that change through a process that is

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>> you write in your new book about attorney general eric holder placing a sort of intimidating phone call to you in 2014. you were attorney general of the state of california and he asked you essentially if you would like to be attorney general of the united states since he thought his time in that office should be coming to an end. i can't imagine as a state attorney general or as any level of lawyer saying, no. but you said no.

>> yeah. it was a very difficult decision. and something i thought about a lot and talked about. but essentially i was at a point in my career as attorney general where i had embarked on creating a statewide initiative at re-entry around former offenders and it was becoming a model. i started an open data initiative called open justice where i was for the first time of any public of justice publicly sharing arrest data. we were in the middle -- i created a bureau called the bureau of children's justice because there was no state agency focused on the needs of children and their rights. i wanted to see that through. frankly at the point at which general holder approached me i was concerned that given the state of what was happening in d.c. i wouldn't have as much of an impact and i wanted to see my job through. >> let's speak truth.

>> she's counting on a strong showing in south carolina. senator kamala harris takes her case to the voters and joins lawrence o'donnell for a special town hall live from this critical primary state tomorrow at 10:00 on msnbc. after a week of epic stories donny deutsch separates the news from the noise bringing his branding instincts to politics and breaking down the key strategies heading into 2020. "saturday night politics" saturdays at 8:00 on msnbc. ♪ you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase sensimist relieves all your worst symptoms,

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>> the majority of voters in the democratic party and the majority of voters in america are women. after hillary clinton's loss to donald trump in 2016 nancy pelosi is standing there as the most powerful woman in american politics. she is the most powerful woman in american politics ever. for you to be shooting at her i think made women mad. i mean, i think there's been a response against you on that, a response against tim ryan on that, that is going to be a foundational thing for you both running for president now. i wonder just how you -- obviously you're unafraid and you are unafraid about going at this stuff straight on but with women voters being mad about women at the top of the democratic party getting shots from within, how do you regain trust? how do you build it? >> you know, you showed a picture of my town hall. there were about a hundred people there. there were 20 to 25 protesters. i know you got a good clip where the protesters were speaking up but i can't tell you how many women have come out and said we

want generational change in our party as well. we want to make sure that there is a new generation able to step up and lead. these amazing women who are an incredible part of this class, you know, of the 40 seats we flipped to take back the house, 21 of them were endorsed and supported by my serve america group. a lot of them were women. they are the new leaders in the party. many of them pledged themselves to vote against pelosi in order to win. >> pelosi has a 70% approval rating by democrats. >> i'm not disputing the fact she is doing a good job right now. i'm talking about the future. >> the part of the premise i don't agree with is the idea that you were channelling a ground swell of anger and upset about pelosi being a problem in the democratic party. >> it changed. there was a ground swell for that change before the election. and then it changed afterwards and a lot of people changed their position. >> there's been a flurry of stories particularly in "the

huffington post" and "buzz feed" saying you are an exceedingly tough boss, maybe too tough and resulted in turnover in your senate office and your temperament with your own staff members is beyond demanding. how do you feel about those stories? >> well i love my staff and i wouldn't be up on the stage like i was yesterday without a great staff, without a great campaign we have put together and also without a staff that helped me to pass all the bills and worked with me over the years. a number of them, i wish those stories also i know will come out, my chief of staff has been with me for five years. my state director for seven years. my campaign manager for 12 years. i was teasing president obama the other day. the white house hired over 20 of my staff members. you only have about 25 in a senate office. a number of them have come back after they were over there. so that is my story. i know i can be too tough

sometimes and i can push too hard. that's obvious. a lot of it is because i have high expectations for myself. i have high expectations for the people that work with me. >> as recently as a few years ago you were not in favor of universal background checks and i can understand some of the other policy distinctions even among democrats on guns issues but the background check issue to me feels very black and white. how as recently as a few years ago could you have believed you shouldn't have to get a background check to get a gun? >> i've signed bills. i've vetoed a lot of bills relating to guns in my six years as well. i've been asked to lower the flags by both presidents trump and obama 53 times in total. over a quarter of those were for mass shootings. when i drop off my sixth grader this year when he started school, he learned his first week where to go. if an active shooter comes. no sixth grader should have to deal with this. i started looking at it as a

public health issue more than even a political issue. public health issue, gun owners don't want guns to get in the wrong hands. universal background checks now make sense to me. and ultimately they make sense to the majority of americans. gun owner and not. >> let me ask you about immigration as well. i was struck you were asked about some of these same dynamic, some of these same changes over the course of your career in an interview on "60 minutes" not long ago and essentially said you were embarrassed about your previous position on immigration. tell me about that. >> well, i don't think it was from my heart. i was calloused to the suffering of families who want to be with their loved ones, people who want to be reunited with their families. i recognize as we all do that immigration and diversity is our strength as a country and has always driven our economy. it's the american story. so looking back i just really regretted that i didn't look beyond my district and talk about why this is an important part of the united states story. and why it's an important part of our strength.

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how it still punishes entire communities and jeff sessions is a guy who stood against constructive reforms that would have made a difference. not only that but against voting rights and against protecting lgbtq kids. we knew and i've now seen it happen that the justice department would pull back from defending voting rights, civil rights, to fighting against a criminal justice system broken and even just police accountability measures. things that were happening all around our country holding police accountable. and making sure we have police departments especially in police involved violence that are doing -- >> dropping the consent decrees. >> yes. >> let me ask you about the man who is likely to be jeff session's replacement. am i right you voted against william barr in committee in terms of him being confirmed as the next a.g.? >> yeah. that wasn't very hard when he literally wrote the book, he wrote a book called "the case

for mass incarceration" or something like that so he is one of the architects of the tough on crime movement that has devastated communities. let's be clear. already villanova says we'd hav poverty in america if we had the same as the land of the peer. one out of every three incarcerated women. doing things that two of the last three presidents did. you can't get a jobs, you can't get business licenses. it economically devastates you, as well. voting rights taken away from people disproportionately african-americans. blacks are four times more likely almost four times more likely to be incarcerated for it. for me someone who is not calling out that system that's so broken that wouldn't even when i asked a question about implicit racial bias in policing something big city chiefs talked

we need to do something about bias, he didn't know enough to say it even exists. for these reasons and more, he can't support him. he did come to me. i said to him after the hearings, would you meet with me. he came with others. usually staff meet all around. i said can i meet with you one-on-one in my office. i wanted to make a heartfelt appeal to him from my own experience as a young black man growing up my run ins with the police. >> how did he react. >> he didn't say what i wanted him to say. i felt i wasn't getting through. i gave him a book, "new jim crow" and asked him to please read. one of the most fact-based books, objective evidence about our biased system. it was honorable that he would sit and listen to me one-on-one with the issues. i'm a prisoner of hope always but i'm ready and poised to keep fighting the trump justice department as they continue to

do attacks on voting rights or failure to defend voting rights and civil rights. >> good evening. breaking news tonight from washington. d evening. breaking news tonight from washington

il acknowledge at the outset that this is an awkward question. i was a rhodes scholar, too. i went up in 1995, you went up a decade later. so i was the first openly gay american rhodes scholar and i got there and i had come out in college. so ida applied for the scholarship as an openly gay

person. i learns i was the first american that had ever been out. that was a decade before you. you went through college and then the rhodes scholarship process and getting the scholarship and going to work for mckenzie and abjoining the navy and going to afghanistan and coming home and running for mayor and getting elected before you came out at the age of 33. i bring this up, it's a difficult question, not because it's bad you didn't come out till you were 33. i think it would have killed me to be closeted for that long. i think about what it takes as a human being to know something and have to bifurcate your public life. for you to have had all those experiences and to be aiming as high as you were and not coming out till your early 30s, i just wonder if that was hurtful to you? >> it was hard. it was really hard. >> coming out is hard but being in the closet is harder. >> that's what i mean.

it was and it wasn't. it took me plenty of time to come out to myself. i did not the way did you or the way my husband did figure out at such an early age. i probably should have. there are plenty of indications by the time i was 15 or so i could photo back, yeah, this kid's gay. i guess i needed to not be. there's this war that breaks out i think inside a lot of people when they realize that they might be something they're afraid of. and it took me a very long time to resolve that. i did make sure as a kind of final way of coming out to myself to cop out to at least a couple of people in my life before i took office because i knew that i didn't want to have that kind of psychological pressure at least not being out to somebody. >> you swore them to secrecy. >> they understood this was a very sensitive thing. they also pointed out as your friends do, patting you on the back i hadn't made it easy on myself. at that point professionally, had i two things in my life that

mattered to me professionally. one of them was being an officer in the military in the reserve and the other was being an elected official in indiana. neither of which is exactly lgbt friendly. bowing of which i assumed were totally incompatible with being out. both of which were very meaning ifful. one of the risks i think people with meaningful jobs have, especially people in politics, because your job is meaningful, a lot of meaning in your life comes from your job which is a real problem because part of what is needed to be good at your job in politics is worth more to you than winning. i have to be willing to walk away from the job to deserve it. it was so demanding. i almost didn't mind for an inordinai inordinantly long period of time i didn't have much of a personal life. i didn't have a dating life while he was closeted. the city kept me busy. it was the deployment that put

me over the top. i realize you only get to be one person. you don't know the how long you have on this earth. by the time i came, i realized i've got to do something. >> were you sure at the time when you came out, it would cost you re-election? >> i was pretty sure it was going to be a big complication. i felt like things were going well in the city. i felt like had i done a good job by the people of south bend and i had some level of trust i would be rewarded for that with a re-election. there was no way to know, no executive in indiana had ever been out. so it was kind of a leap of faith. i had -- i wrote it down, put it in an op-ed. dropped into the south bend tribune and woke up and saw what happened. >> and got reelected with 80% of the vote. >> the there you go. you trust people and at least in this case, they reciprocated that trust. that was more than i got elected in the first place. so i guess it's one thing that gives me a lot of encouragement. don't get me wrong, there's

plenty of ugliness from all over the place but most people i think are even supportive or enthusiastic about the idea of the first out person going this far. or they find a way to let me know they don't care. that's historic, too. one day, the way this will work is if the pair's trying to figure out how to come out, you go to the next rubber chicken dinner you're going to and your date's the same sex. that's that. right? people figure it out and get on with the evening. it didn't feel that way in indiana in 2015. one of the things i think i can do before the first vote is cast is maybe make it a little easier by being here for the next person who comes along. >> you've written a history in some ways how to do it and next person gets to live it. >> there are about two dozen candidates vying for the democratic nomination for president this go around. it's a remarkable bunch actually. and you know the contest between them has barely even started. it's already like watching an

all-star game except unlike an all-star game in this case, boy does it really, really matter who wins. the first democratic debate is less than a month away already. june 26th and 27th in miami. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> good evening on this memorial day. we are one month away from the first democratic presidential debate which will be broadcast right here on msnbc. we are just one day away from our live town hall with presidential candidate senator kamala harris in the key primary state of south carolina. 10:00 p.m. tuesday night. we have interviewed many of the democratic presidential contenders. we'll feature highlights from some of those tonight. tomorrow night it will be the voters turn as democratic voters get tote ask senator harris their questions live starting at 10:00 p.m. right here. polls have shown that the most