varela is a phenomenal journalist who can explain what pushed people to take to the streets and demand a change in leadership. find it wherever you get your podcasts and don't forget to rate and review while you are there. that is "all in" for this evening. a special edition of "the rachel maddow show" starts now. i would like to welcome you to benson, arizona. benson, arizona has about 5,000 people. it's the home of kerchner carvern state park. a big cave complex you can go see. it looks very cool, doesn't it? i'm claustrophobic. i'm not sure i could totally handle it but that's cool. it was founded as a rail terminal for the southern pacific railroad in the late 1800s. it still has a lot of pride in being a rail depot and in its railroad history. if you go to the website for the

benson, arizona visitors center, as you are poking around on their website, you will note if you look closely that the curser for your computer mouse has turned into a little locomotive engine. look. as you are scrolling around the site, you no longer have, like, a little arrow or whatever, it's a little train. it's very cool. and if you go in person to the benson, arizona visitors center, there you can operate a real model train around 96 feet of track. you can use the controllers in the control room and it's got a camera on the front of it. very cool, right? lots to recommend. benson, arizona a lovely looking little place. again, population around 5,000 people. the owner of the arizona diamondbacks baseball team wants to build a new housing development in benson, arizona, which would be 28,000 homes. think about that for a second. there are 5,000 people there now, but they want to put 28,000 houses into that town.

plus golf courses. golf courses, plural. multiple golf courses plus the 28,000 houses. and although benson, arizona is in a lovely little corner of that state in arizona, it's not, like, the most lush place on example. for example, you think about what's necessary to keep a golf course, let alone multiple golf courses watered and green. i mean, this is the desert plains of arizona. water is more valuable than the views. water is more valuable than the open space. water is more valuable than even the cool state park tourist attractions with the caves and the rollicking history of southwestern rail depots. water is everything. where is the water going to come from to support 28,000 homes and multiple golf courses in a sleepy little town that right now has just 5,000 people in it? nevertheless, the arizona diamondbacks' owner, who is a big republican party donor, he has wanted to build this huge

development in benson, arizona for a long time. the problem is the likely environmental impact of putting 28,000 houses plus multiple golf courses in this part of the state, in this little corner of the country, that as a matter of common sense just might not be able to biologically sustain something like that. i mean, the worry about this development in particular has been that it would so tax the groundwater in that area of the desert plains that it would considerably shrink the nearby precious san pedro river. and if you did that to the san pedro river, that would have an impact on all sorts of environmental concerns, including a whole bunch of threatened and endangered species which are protected by the federal government. and part of the reason we know about those worries surrounding that proposed housing development and golf development, part of the reason we know about it is in october of 2016, a month before the 2016 presidential election, the field supervisor for arizona at the fish and wildlife service made a decision about this gigantic proposed housing and golf development in benson, arizona,

this development that was being pursued by the guy who owns that major league baseball team. the field supervisor at the fish and wildlife service announced his decision, which was basically that this whole proposal was going to need a whole lot more detailed environmental scrutiny before it go ahead and get the necessary permits to allow the developer to build this absolutely gigantic thing out there in the desert. the field supervisor's quote was based on -- the field supervisor's report was based on the science, based on the protocols of the fish and wildlife service. but its bottom line was pretty simple. "direct and indirect effects to threatened and endangered species are reasonably certain to occur." and so we need more scrutiny before we're going to allow this to happen. so that was october 2016. then a funny thing happened the following month, which was november 2016. and that is that donald trump won the presidential election in november 2016.

and that arizona diamondbacks owner, who wants to pile these 28,000 homes and multiple golf courses into little benson, arizona, it turns out he gave quite a lot of money to support the trump presidential effort. he was named, for example, an as official sponsor of the camouflage and cuff links fund-raiser, which was time to coincide with the trump inaugural. that camo and cuff links event, hats and boots welcome. it was originally supposed to be hosted by president trump's two eldest sons. that was before ethics officials noticed that was technically selling access to the president and his family in exchange for money so maybe don jr. and eric shouldn't come to that event, but the arizona diamondbacks guy, now that was fine. this decision in arizona about the little town of benson and the mammoth development proposal, when trump was elected, remember, this was

done. the month before trump got elected, there was a decision made there was going to have to be lots more environmental scrutiny, lots more looking at this before any permit would be issued, right? this was a decision about land in arizona. and the fish and wildlife service, which is part of the interior department, they weighed in at the field supervisor level. they got a decision. lots morph assessment about the environmental impact of this thing. the federal government has made its decision. not long after trump was sworn in in the summer of 2017, a number of things happened to change the course of events. and this has been pieced together by some really brilliant journalism starting with "the arizona daily star" and their work -- their initial work on this, very good work on this was picked up and advanced ultimately by the associated press at the national level. cnn has also done some additional very good work advancing this story themselves. and what we have learned from all that very good reporting is that in august 2017, the number

two guy in the interior department under trump, a guy named david burnheart. he had been a mining company and oil lobbyist who trump gave the number two job at the interior department. we know that he, david burnheart took a secret meeting at the montana huns lodting lodge with arizona diamondbacks. i say this was a secret meeting because david byrnehardt is the number two official in this agency. it's subject to requests under the freedom of information act. this particular meeting, though, when he meet the diamondbacks' owner at this hunting lodge, that was left off his official calender. nevertheless, thank you, journalism. it was turned up that that meeting took place. the company run by the diamondbacks' owner ultimately confirmed that, yes, the meeting happened. they have also admitted that what they talked about at that meeting was, of course, that big

housing development and golf course development that this guy wanted to build in benson, arizona. the one where he had just been told right before the election that it wasn't going to happen. that more environmental work needed to be done before he could get the permit to go ahead because the scientists in the federal government looked at it and said, you know, there really might not be enough water there to do this. you could really end up screwing that whole part of the state, that whole part of the country if you do it. he'd already received the no from the federal government. gives tons of money to support trump. takes a secret meeting with the number two guy at trump's interior department. so that meeting takes place the summer of 2017. at a hunting lodge in montana. it's left off the calender of the number two guy at the interior department. they talk about the development. then wouldn't you know it, what happens next is that the field supervisor in arizona for the fish and wildlife service, the guy who had made the determination that there couldn't be a permit for this big development, that there were big environmental concerns that

needed to be sorted out, he got himself an alarming phone call. according to "the arizona daily star," that dpish and wildlife supervisor said he got a call from interior department headquarters, someone who he knew who worked at the d.c. headquarters, said she received word from a higher up at the agency that he needed to change his stance on the permit for that development. "if he knew what was good for him." it would later emerge as reporters from cnn and "the arizona daily star" put this together that right before that call and right after that call, the lawyer at the interior department who called the field supervisor in arizona and told him he needed to change his mind on that permit, right before her call and right after her call, she personally was paid a visit by david bernhardt, by the number two official at the whole agency, the guy who had taken the secret meeting with the trump donor who wanted that development and wanted his permit to do it. so that lawyer at the interior

department gets paid a visit by the number two guy in the agency. right after that visit she gets from him that day, right after she picks up the phone and calls the field supervisor in arizona and tells him, hey, someone high up at the agency wants you to change this or else. after she places that call to the field supervisor guy, she once again checks back in with bernhardt, meets with him again. back home in arizona, the field supervisor who got the call, who found himself in the middle of all of this, he ultimately went to the local press to explain what had gone down and what was so wrong about it. he told the daily star that he "got rolled." he said that the political pressure he experienced in this instance was the first he ever experienced in 34 years with the federal government, including 29 years with the wildlife service under five different presidents going back to george h.w. bush. this is not business as usual. this has never been done before in his career, but it happened now that trump's in office. it happened now that david

bernhardt's at the head of the interior department. under that kind of pressure, something he had never experienced before, that supervisor from the fish and wildlife service, he did reverse his previous call to instead say, okay, maybe the permits are okay. he was told to do that and he did so. soon thereafter, he resigned from the service and soon after that he started talking to the local press to basically conif fess and explain what happened. david bernhardt, the number two fish at the interior department who seems to have engineered this pressure has since been promoted. he is no longer the number two guy at the agency. he's now in the cabinet as secretary of the interior. see, there was an opening for him to take that job because the previous trump secretary of the interior ryan zinke, he had to resign while it was revealed that he was under investigation for his own corruption scandals.

he had to go for the criminal investigations into his corruption. that's how bernhardt got kicked upstairs into the job that he now enjoys. only the best people. david bernhardt's actions and -- now david bernhardt's actions in this after-school special would could be titled "corruption for dummies." happy to mess up basically anyone or anything as long as it helps their donors. this little paragone of how corruption works. his actions are being investigated by congress, the oversight committee in this part of the federal government. it is chaired by congressman raul grialva, who is from arizona and who knows these things and has proclaimed himself to be mystified as to

why the number two official at the interior department might have been interested and personally involved in the permitting decisions on this one land deal in arizona if it wasn't just to help out a trump donor with something hugely reimmunerative that he julgt wi otherwise should have been blocked from doing for the good of the country. now interior secretary david bernhardt, the oil company and mining company lobbyist who president trump entrusted to shepard america's public lands, he's just announced plans to move a whole biggest swath of his agency, to move the bureau of land management out of interior department headquarters, out of washington. specifically he's just announced that he's telling the employees of that agency that they need to move out of d.c. and into western colorado right near his hometown. should be a boom for that part of -- i mean, this is the part of the interior department that oversees the use of federal lands. presumably employees of that

agency will now be given the same ultimatum that was just given to all the scientists at usda, right? never mind the hardships. an employee dealing with ms and serious medical treatment issues for ms was told that was not a hardship that would be considered to keep the employee off the roster of those who are moving. an employee in the middle of chemotherapy was told by usda that was not a hardship that would result in the agency taking that person, taking that scientist off the list of people who are being forcibly moved or you lose your job. they're doing that with the scientists at the usda right now. now they're trying it with the bureau of land management under the interior secretary under investigation by congress to appearing to intervene the permitting process for a land development in benson, arizona on behalf of a major trump donor who he met with secretly and off the books. and congressman raul grialva and his committee are on that.

they are on that -- this david bernhardt scandal and this arizona diamondbacks owner, trump donor, they are on it. on the usda and on the destruction of the science function of that agency, democrats in congress, particularly in the senate, have been pounding away on that, too. >> you basically gave 547 employees 30 days to decide if they were going to move halfway across the country and take their families. this is not a relocation, it's a demolition. >> katherine green is unable to relocate to kansas city. katherine green expects most of the institutional knowledge on organic agriculture will be lost when she is forced to retire. >> for what? it's still unclear to me what problem the usda is trying to solve with this move. do you truly believe that you're not going to lose significant expertise in areas of research, agricultural research, dr.

hutchinson, with this move? >> of course they know they're going to lose specific expertise. of course they do. that's the point. hollow out these agencies, as senator stabenow put it, let's demolish these agencies. these agencies do inconvenient things, they do science. to keep us focused on his outrageous behavior because he thinks that's good for him, because he thinks that's better for him politically than if we're talking about anything else, i will just say, now more than ever, you know, watch what they do not what they say. i mean, now more than ever, there is a lot of news out there, and there's a lot of stuff the trump administration is not only doing. in some cases they're getting caught for it. do not play requests. do not be manipulated. watch what they do. ignore what they say. i mean, we're going to look back one day at this time in this presidency and be astonished at what they were doing. we will all want an answer for

what we were doing, too, and the fact that we were paying attention. and not always to what they wanted us to. lots to come tonight. stay with us. do you have concerns about mild memory loss related to aging? prevagen is the number one pharmacist-recommended memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. dto experiencer gthe luxury you desire on a full line of utility vehicles.

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. so who are your friends and who are your enemies? >> well, i've learned a lot. i have to tell you. part of the book -- i'm going to be writing a book. i don't know why i'm on the show, except we want to get you good ratings. >> how generous. >> i said to faith you're going to get major ratings. >> tell the rest of the story. i saw you at the celebrity center here in new york. >> what a kiss. >> you kissed me on the lips in front of the paparazzi. i said that will cost you, i'm booking you on the show. true story, correct. >> the kiss was so good and it was so open and nice. she is a fabulous woman. >> so open and nice, what are you -- >> her husband is a handsome devil. i'll tell you, he's a good guy. i think he had his back turned at the time. so we had a good time. >> that was the man who is now president of the united states bragging in 1992 to a studio

audience about the nice open kiss. i think he means open-mouthed kiss that he unexpectedly planted on a married woman while her husband's back was turned. that interview aired on a sipped kated daytime talk show called "a closer look." hosted by longtime journalist faith daniels. that bit we aired about trump sneaking up on faith daniels and kissing her when she least expected it, that was not a one-off creepy comment in a run of the mill interview. that's basically what the whole thing was seen. >> you are seen in the company of lots of beautiful women, donald. >> i like beautiful woman. you are beautiful. i really do sleep well, and i think -- >> you don't lie awake at night and chew your nails and worry thaub this? >> no, i don't. and some people -- some people have an ability that they really don't worry about things too much. i would say i have that ability. if i did, i probably would have been in a corner wealth ith my

in my mouth going, mommy, take me home. >> you certainly aren't doing that. >> someone else's thumb in my mouth. >> could you see yourself pulling a perot? >> i don't think so. i'm so controversial. i love beautiful women. i love going out with beautiful women and i love women in general. somebody would say, that's a horrible thing. what would you say if you love women? i agree, i love women. >> we've already gone through all the scandals. there would be nothing left to uncover. >> you might be right. >> do you have a question you'd like to ask donald. >> yes, if you could have your choice, who would be one person you'd date? >> wow. >> or the three most beautiful women. >> well, how about lady di? that would be an interesting one. she's going to be available. >> she's married. >> why not? >> that would be your choice? >> i think my choice my be you. look at the legs on her, boy. >> i think it would be safe to say you take beauty over brains. >> no, i like beauty coupled

with brains. i prefer a beautiful woman to a nonbeautiful woman. i know that's discriminatory. does anybody disagree with me? >> yeah, i know that's dreamtory. come on, men. in the lead-up to that interview, a team at "closer look" actually sent one of their camera crews to mar-a-lago to shoot a profile piece on trump that proceeded that interview showcasing his life as a newly divorced man, having just split from his wife ivana. in the footage, a lot of the women here are apparently -- were cheerleaders for the buffalo bills. turns out they were in town for a game against the miami dolphins. trump is the host of the party. there is footage of him at one point grabbing one woman by her waist and then later patting her on the rear end. but one of the reasons this footage is appearing now, one of the reasons that msnbc dug it up all these years later is because one of the guests who can be

seen in this footage is jeffrey epstein. the same jeffrey epstein who just this past week was charged on -- charged in federal court on child sex trafficking charges. that's epstein there in the jean shirt. if this newly uncovered tape trump is seen personally welcoming epstein and some other guests as they arrive at the party. later trump and epstein are seen on camera sort of gawking at the women on the dance floor. trump appears to tell jeffrey epstein, look at her back there, she's hot. after that he whispers something in epstein's ear that causes epstein to double over in laughter while they keep looking at the woman. it would be one thing if there was just this newly rediscovered piece of tape showing our current president ogling women with a man who is now a convicted sex offender, who is now on trial on very serious sex trafficking charges, but there is more. in the same year that donald trump hosted that party, a florida businessman says he was tasked with organizing an

exclusive calender girl competition at mar-a-lago. that organizer told "the new york times" that he was surprised to learn that there were only two extra guests who were invited to attend a party with the more than two dozen girls who were in the competition. it was the 28 girls, 28 women from the competition and only two other people at the whole party, donald trump and jeffrey epstein. over the past few weeks, pictures have emerged of donald trump and jeffrey epstein hanging out at mar-a-lago. here is them in 1997. here is them in the year 2000. in this later photo you see donald trump standing by melania, who was his girlfriend at the time and would become his wife. next to them are jeffrey epstein and a british socialite who now stands accused by several of epstein's alleged victims of having recruited the underage girls who were basically groomed to have sex with epstein. she has denied any wrongdoing. there is also the "new york" magazine professor of jeffrey epstein from 2002 in which donald trump talks about what great pals they are and how

great jeffrey epstein is as a buddy. "i've known jeff for 15 years. terrific guy. he's a lot of fun to be with. it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as i do, and many of them are on the younger side. no doubt about it, jeffrey enjoys his social life." a golf magazine published an article recounting the time epstein showed up late for a ride on trump's private plane. shows no fewer than 15 different ways he had to get in contact with donald trump. 15 different numbers he had for trump and people that worked for trump that could put him in touch with him. then there are the more serious allegations connecting the two men. in a deposition in a 2010 lawsuit that accused him of child sex trafficking, epstein declined to answer a question about his relationship with trump and whether they had ever socialized together. "in the presence of females under the age of 18." when epstein was asked about that, here's how he responded.

"though i'd like to answer that question, at least today i'm going to have to assert my fifth, sixth, 14th and 23rd amendment rights." in 2016, an anonymous woman sued donald trump alleging that she was 13 years old when trump raped her at a party hosted by epstein. that lawsuit was later dropped just before the election. trump denied doing anything wrong. all of that has been hanging out there in the public record for years, but it was catapulted back into our consciousness when federal prosecutors charged epstein with sex trafficking charges in federal court in new york. and now anybody with ties to epstein may be freaking out a little. prosecutors made it abundantly clear that their case is, in their words, only getting stronger. "after seven days of this case being public following months of a covert investigation, the evidence is already significantly stronger and getting stronger every single day. many individuals identifying themselves as victims and witnesses have contacted the government and we are in process of receiving and corroborating

this additional evidence." there is a general sense that the blood pressure in the white house has been running higher than normal since epstein was arrested. and it is not possible to know if this is just the new crazy. this is just newly how it is or if it's a deliberate effort to try to distract from something, right? could this be the president hitting the panic button to distract from something else that is coming down the pike? >> some people have an ability that they really don't worry about things too much. i would say that i have that ability. if i did, i probably would have been in a corner with my thumb in my mouth just going, you know, mommy, take me home. i want to do that. >> well, you certainly aren't doing that. we saw evidence of that. >> somebody else's thumb in my mouth. else's thumb in my mouth.

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"dateline" st. petersburg. april 25th, 1903. this report has been taken across the border for transmission in order to escape the sensor. "the anti-jewish rights in

kirsch yev are worse than the sensor will permit to publish. a well laid out plan for the massacre of jews on the day following easter. the general cry of kill the jews was taken all over the city. the jews were taken wholly unaware and slaughtered like sheep. the scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description." that was 1903. a report from what is now modolvo, back then was part of the russian empire. what happened that day was not a one-off. deadly organized anti-semitic attacks were happening all over czarist russia at the time. they ripped through city after city, killing thousands of people, forcing thousands more to flee for their lives. one of the people who escaped at that time was a man named wolf leak glosser. g-l-o-s-s-e-r. he lived in a shack in the country we now call belarus.

not long ago, his great grandson told the the story of their family's escape. and took his chances in america. he set foot on ellis island on january 7th, 1903 with $8 to his name. fluent in polish, russian and yiddish, he understood no english. the glosser family started a business, selling goods from a horse and buggy. eventually opened up their own haberdashery and a whole chain of supermarkets that ultimately was listed on the stock exchange. in the span of some 80 years, this family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become prosperous merchant, scholars and most important, american citizens. the reason we know about mr. glosser and the generations of his family who have gone on to thrive in america is because that family history was published last year as an op-ed, but it was basically an open letter from the uncle in that

family to his own nephew. the nephew being the white house senior adviser stephen miller. architect of some of the president's most dakkian anti-immigrant policies like the muslim ban, like the family separation policy that results in babies being taken away from their parents. stephen miller's own uncle called stephen miller an immigration hypocrite whose policy ideas would have wiped out their own family. well, now stephen miller has cooked up a new idea for immigration policy in the trump administration. politico.com reporting that mr. miller is now leading a new effort to try to make it the trump administration's new policy to stop all refugees from being allowed into this country. not reducing the number of refugees or making it harder for refugees to come here. they're talking about ending the practice of people receiving refuge in america. full stop. that is stephen miller's big new idea for trying to end as much immigration, legal or otherwise, that he can into this country. even if his own path to becoming

an adviser to the american president, to becoming an american at all started in a dirt floor shack in belarus and a man who fled terror and came to ellis island with $8 in his pocket, which is how stephen miller got here in the first place. and stephen miller's uncle joins us next. stay with us. ♪ that a speaker is just a speaker. ♪ or - that the journey can't be the destination. most people haven't driven a lincoln. discover the lincoln approach to craftsmanship at the lincoln summer invitation. right now, get 0% apr on all 2019 lincoln vehicles plus no payments for up to 90 days. only at your lincoln dealer. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, plus no payments for uhmm. exactly. so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? not again. limu that's your reflection. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ dr. david glosser says it's been awhile since he has spoken to his nephew, but this probably did get his attention. "stephen miller is an immigration hypocrite. i know because i'm his uncle." now that stephen miller's big new idea is to stop refugees from enters this country at all and now that we've had a renewed national convulsion over the condition that asylum seekers and migrants are being held, we asked dr. glosser if he might want to come in and talk about this. dr. glosser's a retired neuro scientist.

it's a pleasure to have you here. >> good to be here, rachel. what should we talk about? >> did you ever get a response from your nephew? >> no, i'm persona noncommune caught owe. >> you were so strong in your telling of the not only your personal criticism about the trump administration's policies but how it relates to your family and what it would mean for stephen miller. i imagine you thought you could maybe touch his heart, because otherwise the need to make it personal must have just been difficult and painful. >> listen, i think people understand cruelties are being enacted but people don't respond much to a list of sadistics. people respond to a personal story. what hope i had of my nephew being touched by his own history was not very strong to begin with. what i hope to do is i hope to raise other people who have the same history i do, and which i suspect you do too, frankly, all these people who have come into

this country. the question is why did i -- isn't really why did i write this piece, why isn't everybody writing this piece? >> there is renewed national concern right now over the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers, particularly kids being held on the border. >> yeah. >> obviously some of those stories are devastating, but i imagina imagine it might be heartening to you to see renewed concern, to see investigative work helping, people protesting, people holding vigils. >> people care, as it turns out. once you break it away from the idea of thousands and thousands of people are being damaged and injured and hurt, break it down to individual people and individual cases, it touches people and people will stand up and do the right thing if they have the -- if they have the essential moral values and they know what to do, they'll do it. >> i wonder given your family connection to mr. miller and his identified role as the sort of draconian leader of the most hardline policies here. i wonder what you make of what appears to be the political

calculation, presumably by your nephew, definitely by the trump administration as a whole, that harshness towards immigrant, deliberate cruelty towards immigrants, terrible conditions in which immigrants are being held redounds to the president's benefit. >> let's break it down to the simple political calculus. as it has recently come to the attention of the supreme court with regard to voter suppression action taken by the republican party. the republican party has made the observation, as have demographers, that within the next 20 or 40 years the united states will go from being a white majority country to being a white plurality country. so it makes -- as it turns out, the people who are not predominately of european background are less likely to vote for republicans than for democrats. this, of course, makes it problematic for them if they anticipate remaining in positions of power in order to advance their particular agenda. accordingly, it is not worthwhile for them to allow people into the country or to allow people to gain citizenship who may not be members of their

party in the future. this is not very hard to figure out and it kind of all boils down to that. >> the part of it that i find hard just to stomach just viscerally is the idea that you would not just be trying to deny the numbers in terms of immigrants who would eventually get citizenship and the right to vote, but that you would somehow galvanize native-born american citizens and specifically white americans. to excite them to vote for people who are being deliberately and performatively cruel towards nonwhite people. that it would sort of tap some latent racist hate mongering among a white population that might make it easier to elect a republican president. >> what's equally repugnant is the assumption apparently among the trump administration that somehow the majority of white americans are racist when i don't believe that to be the case. but that being perhaps their own personal motivations, they may project that belief on to other people who do not share those

feelings. mr. trump obviously owns that brand. he's proud of it. he's not ashamed of it. he doesn't know what shame means. i'm old enough to remember, you probably are not. the last time a major presidential candidate ran on an overtly racist platform was george wallace back in 1968. i thought we somehow as a nation had grown and repudiated it, but now we see mr. trump and his minions have legitimatized race hatred as a means of gaining political power and influence. which, by the way, is not a really new phenomenon in this country either or in other european countries. >> dr. david glosser is a retired neuro psychologist. he's the uncle of stephen miller, white house adviser. sir, thank you for coming in. i really appreciate it. i know it's not an easy thing to talk about. >> thanks for having me. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. ll be right back stay with us -not this. ♪ -oh, what am i into?

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pick a place anywhere in the country. all you need to know is the state to start. pick somewhere you're familiar with or where you live now or where you grew up. start with a state. let's say south carolina. then add the county. let's say for our purposes here, charleston county. put those in, just click "submit" and, look, this amazing new tool shows you which

distributors were getting pills from opioid manufacturers and distributing them in your county. it also shows you which manufacturers were also shipping pills to those distributors in your county. but then look at the next column. pharmacies. you can also go drugstore by drugstore, individual drugstores, and if you want to know how many pills they're distributing, you can literally go store by store by store, drugstore by drugstore, pharmacy by pharmacy, if you want to make sense of the number of pills being distributed by store, here is an easy distillation of it. how many highly addictive opioids and pain ills were these companies pushing into your town? from this database you can tell the number of pain pills per person per year were being distributed into your county, and you can do this right now

through the website of "the washington post." you can do this for any county in the country. the reason you can do this now is it turns out there is a database of every single legally sold opioid pill in this country, every pill, down to the one. it's a list maintained by the dea. it tracks every pill from the manufacturers to the distributors to the individual pharmacies all across the country and it exists so the dea can supposedly track suspicious sales. well, the big pharmaceutical companies and distributors are required to report each transaction involving an opioid pain pill to the dea and that's how this database exists, but who has access to this database? it has always been kept secret, it's always been kept hidden from the public view until now. a team of intrepid reporters from "the washington post" and from the gazette mail in charleston, west virginia have been trying to get access to this database for years now. "the post" originally filed a freedom of information request.

it was denied. perhaps more importantly, the drug companies really, really didn't want to made public. they repeatedly told the courts as people tried to pry this information loose that if this information about what pills went where was made public, that might give their competitors -- might give the other drug companies an advantage in the marketplace. yeah, their competitors might find out where the hungeriest most addicted markets were. that's valuable information. do you know how many pills you can sell in some of these little towns? we can't let that information out there. so the drug companies have to submit information that ends up in the database, but then the database is kept secret. these reporters were trying to get the database made publicly available, made public to them and their news papers. they kept getting rebuffed in the courts on this. but "the washington post" and the gazette mail ultimately saw a window in ohio with the federal judge who has been overseeing the largest ever civil action in history, which is about opioids.

it's consolidated about 2,000 different cases all brought by state and local governments against the big pharmaceutical companies that make and sell these pills. that federal judge that previously allowed some of the plaintiffs in the case to themselves access some of the data from this big important mind-blowing database. but it was under a protective order. so that even though they could see it for their own purposes, they couldn't tell anybody about what they could find there. in a legal proceeding, that's what's known as a good place to start. and so the good folks of "the washington post" and the gazette mail tried to build on that and filed to intervene in that case saying, listen, if you can let these localities see this stuff under a protective order, we as news organizations and through us the public, we should be able to get access to this database, too. and initially that federal judge told the journalists no. the newspapers didn't accept that answer. they appealed the judge's ruling. lawyers for "the post" argued it

served the public need to know in fighting and understanding the opioid crisis to actually know which manufacturers and which distributors sent how many drugs where and which drugstore sold them. ultimately it was the federal appeals court that agreed with the news organizations on this and ruled in this favor. "the data will aid us in understanding the full enormity of the opioid epidemic and might there by aid us in ending it." and with that, six years of data from this massive database tracking every single opioid pill sold in america was made available to the public. and "the post" made this widget on this website that allows you to access it in this incredibly convenient way. that's why you can now get this individual data for any place in the country. the state first, pop it in and then the county next. if you pick the county that you know and you click on it, you will recognize the pharmacies

that pop up in that third column. now that we have access to that database for the first time, thanks to those reporters and their legal intervention here, we can now all see for the first time what's been going on down to the individual pill. as "the post" puts it, "the number of pills that the companies sold here are staggering. far beyond what has been disclosed in limited court filings and proceedings." turns out, turns out you might not want the country to know that you are shipping out more than 12 billion highly addictive pain pills in a year. 12 billion pills to a country with only 320 million people in it. yeah, i probably wouldn't want anybody downloading that data either. so what "the post" has been able to get their hands on is data from 2006 to 2012. that's the seven-year period. that's all that the reporters were able to get out of the courts for now. one of the amazing things here

is that so many more billions of pills were being shipped out than anybody knew about, but also it got worse and worse and worse over time. again, this is a seven-year period starting in 2006. and over those seven years from 2006 to 2012 as the opioid crisis lit the country on fire, right, and the death rate started skyrocketing and the country started freaking out about it, over the course of those seven years from 2006 to 2012, while 100,000 americans were killed by these drugs in that period, we can now tell they kept upping the number they were shipping every year. in 2006, they were at 8.4 billion pills. by 2012, they were up more than 50% from that at 12.6 billion pills. by 2012, that meant they were shipping out an average of 36 highly addictive pain pills for every man, woman and child and baby in the united states. and now you can check to see if your county was on par with that or maybe doing better than that. good for you. maybe you're one of the counties

where these companies really went whole hog. again, just for context here, the per person average as of 2012 that they were shipping out 36 of these pills for every man, woman and child in the country, 36. in norton, virginia, which is the smallest city in virginia up in the mountains, basically just a small town. up there they weren't ship 36 pills per person, they were shipping 306 pills per person. over course of just one year. it's astonishing. the other thing that's amazing about this database, though, is that it doesn't just tell us how many pills were shipping overall and to where and how they end up and up and up each year as the country got more and more addicted. they also tell us what the companies knew about their own behavior because this is what they knew they were doing. this is their own data that they plugged into this database. so they knew. so this company spec gx knew that they were shipping 4.7 million highly addictive pills that year into norton, virginia, into a town of 4,000 people.

4.7 million pills? walmart knew that it alone was distributing 3.4 million highly addictive pills that year in a town of 4,000 people. "the database reveals what each company knew about the number of pills it was shipping and dispensing and precisely when they were aware of those volumes year by year, town by town, and case after case the drug companies allowed the drugs to reach the streets of communities large and small despite the red flags that those pills were being sold in violation of federal law and being sold on the black market." they've also to their credit released it now for everybody to see and to search for your own community. you just click on your state, click on your county, see the exact number of pills per person that have been unleashed on your community during this time period. it's just a remarkable tool. we've got it for seven years. hopefully we'll get it for every year. a lot of powerful companies wanted to keep this secret but now we all have access to it thanks to the work of these journalists who kept fighting

and didn't take no for an answer. thanks to "the washington post" and west virginia's charleston gazette mail. i don't know if you love your local paper or if you hate your local paper or haven't read it in so long you don't remember, but regardless, do it anyway, subscribe to your local paper. your country needs you to. good evening. i'm ari melber. thanks for joining our extended special live coverage from tonight's democratic presidential debate. we already have highlights coming in as the debate, you might have heard, is almost wrapping up and there is a lot to unpack and discuss. we're going to have a full round of live postgame analysis right here on msnbc including brian williams coming up and chris matthews live from detroit. now, what's been going on? well, the candidates have been running right up until this debate in michigan, including beto o'rourke literally on a run in detroit this morning where he was swatting away some questions. meanwhile, pete buttigieg was focussing more on inside