tv Politics Nation With Al Sharpton MSNBC August 11, 2019 2:00pm-3:00pm PDT
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week. thanks for joining us. join me here next saturday, sunday, 4:00 p.m. eastern. reach out to me on social media. i'll get right back to you. now i turn it over to reverend al sharpton and "politicsnation." good evening. and welcome to "politicsnation." tonight's lead, this week, sources close to president trump say they welcome democrats' charge that he's a white supremaci supremacist because they believe it will make him a martyr within his base going into 2020. they should pause to consider how much the president's own actions have played right into that characterization intended or not because this week, lat o
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latinos have been beset by two events with trump's stamp all over them. first, with the horrific shooting in el paso, texas, last saturday, that killed 22 people. many of them hispanic. the gunman admitting that that was the point in a manifesto that mirrored the president's own language about migrants. then as the president visited el paso four days later, immigration and custom officer enforcement agents executed the largest immigration raid in a single state. detaining hundreds of undocumented workers in mississippi. this morning, administration officials made the rounds on the sunday talk shows to defend the sweeps and the bad timing. >> given the emotions of the country right now, in hindsight,
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do you wish this raid didn't happen this week? >> the timing was unfortunate. >> the unfortunate nature of the timing was epitomized by that video of an 11-year-old girl whose father was detained in the wednesday raid. her tearful plea to have him released almost making an impression on the president's acting head of customs and border protection. >> it's not just a victimless crime that's going on here. i understand that the girl's upset and i get that, but her father committed a crime. >> also making the rounds this morning, democrats running to unseat the president in 2020. here's california senator kamala harris this morning on "meet the press." >> this administration has directed dhs to conduct these raids as part of what i believe is this administration's campaign of terror, which is to make whole populations of people
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afraid to go to work. children are afraid to go to school for fear that when they come home, their parents won't be there. >> joining me now, two strategists, artema amara, democrat, and sher michael singleton. let me go to you, first, shermichael. >> okay. >> those that are saying, sources that are saying that the president's team feels he'd be made a martyr, are they calculating this right? because many independent voters are very, very uncomfortable with feeling that they are voting for someone who is a racist and a white supremacist, particularly when you have someone writing a manifesto using the same language as the president saying this is an invasion. i'm going to target mexicans because it's an invasion. because let's not forget, this shooter lived in dallas where there's a large mexican community. he drove nine hours to el paso
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where he felt the invasion was only a mile or two away. so, i don't know if their comfort with this is exactly the wise decision politically, certainly not morally. >> i mean, i haven't spoken with anyone on the trump campaign or at the white house, but i'm going to assume what they're betting on is that a small percentage of independent voters who may, to your point, may not necessarily like some of the language of the president, but may also not like the president directly being called a racist, and so perhaps they're betting on a small percentage of those voters not necessarily voting for trump, but maybe staying home and not voting for the democrat. i, again, i assume, but i do think, to your point, also, that there is the chance that you do have some voters who actually do sort of believe or see a link or connection to some of the president's language to the most recent massacres and that may
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give energy, mobilization, for some of those folks to say, you know, enough is enough of this. i may not necessarily like who's on the other side, but if we can at least bring back some normalcy, that is enough to motivate me to turn out in 2020. >> atema, that point right there, i think, is something that i think is missing in a lot of the discussion. let us not forget, donald trump got 2.8 million less votes than hillary clinton and a lot of it was turnout that could have happened in michigan. i think he lost michigan -- he won michigan, rather, by only 11,000 votes. and wisconsin, it wasn't a large margin. pennsylvania wasn't. isn't the danger not only some independents saying i'm not going to vote for him this time but that he will call the turnout in detroit, in milwaukee, in philadelphia, that just wasn't that energized by mrs. clinton but that can't wait to come and vote for donald
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trump who said there were fine people on both sides of charlottesville and african nations are s-hole countries and on and on and on. he may end up being his own worst enemy in terms of the campaign because he will give a turnout that will really turn the electoral college a different way this time, possibly. >> yeah, absolutely. i think what we've seen, saw in 2017, in virginia, where i'm from, a larger wave than was expected in seats that we flipped going into 2018 elections, the largest participation ever and close to 100 years, i believe, of almost -- close to over 100 million americans who participated in the midterm elections. highest ever in a long time. because people are much more motivated, i expect going into the 2020 elections it's going to be the same. i mean, trump's rhetoric for, by in large, everybody has said, and i agree, ever since he came off the escalator in 2015 is spewing white supremacist
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rhetoric and the fact that the white supremacist activity, race-based terrorism is almost all, if not all, white supremacist based, those are reports that have come out of 2018, is because they think that they have a leader in the white house, someone who tacitly or more openly, quite frankly, supports a lot of what of what they do, you know, when they feel emboldened, they feel energized. people feel quite scared. i know that from a very personal level. my mother is a black immigrant woman. naturalized citizen. been here over 40-plus years. the first time she's gotten politically active to call her two u.s. senators has been because what she has seen in the last few weeks has concerned her. she's like, what are you politicians doing to confront this in our country? >> and shermichael, i think that a lot of the republican strategists are not looking at the fact, you got people, republican congresspeople, in districts that they won, barely won, that are now announcing i'm not running again because they are afraid he's tipped the
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scales, which would also affect the race. i think that really we're looking at a strategy that they may think will work but could be the real backfire that they never expected which we saw in '18. let's remember when they had the special election in alabama and donald trump went down there for the republican, you had a turnout for the democrat in alabama that was larger than they had for barack obama among black voters. >> sure. i mean, i think, you know, the administration and the re-election committee is obviously putting all of their bets on this one gamble here and i'm not certain that they are considerate of how this could negatively impact down-ballot candidates. to your question of republicans retiring en masse, you have states like texas now where a lot of pollsters, conservative and democratic leaning, are saying texas could potentially change in a direction that we
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haven't seen in over 20 years. >> right. >> that should be alarming to many republicans. i also think to your point about folks in alabama, you are seeing individuals who are, to atima's point, like her mother, who haven't always been directly involved and engaged in the political process. they've always observed and watched but never sort of felt the need to, i guess, organize, if you will, go out to register other people to vote. now those individuals are making phone calls. they are registering other people to vote. they're talking to their family members and friends. i think the administration has to be concerned about that, rev. to your point, the margins that the president won in 2016 were not by significant numbers. i mean, you're talking about 74,000, 77,000 votes total, and those 3 key electoral swing states. with the right individual that the democrats could potentially nominate next year, that could raise alarms for the administration because what you will see is no longer a decrease in turnout of voters that hillary clinton couldn't turn
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out, but you could see sort of that obama coalition, a more diverse, more younger, voters coming out en masse to vote against donald trump. again, it's not necessarily to say, hey, we're voting because we love this candidate that's running, it's to say we don't like the direction of this country, we don't like the words of the president and we don't like what he symbolizes and we want this gone. and that could really impact him and also impact republicans. >> now, atima, in that regard, the democrats have to make sure that in the primary process that they don't eat each other up, what i call political cannib cannibali cannibalism, and get in his way. i mean, old minister once told me, if you see a guy at the edge of the cliff, don't get close because you'll turn a suicide into a homicide. i think that they got to be real careful that they don't kill each other or overplay this and come up with a candidate that will not only deal with this right on race but deal with this
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right in terms of the economy, in terms of foreign affairs, climate change, et cetera, et cetera, because it's not going to be that -- we all know that we've seen democrats also beat themselves. >> yeah. i mean, i think there's a lot of sensitivity after 2016 elections and how things were certainly handled there amongst a lot of activists and voters in the process. i think the beauty of the 2020 process having so many candidates who are running, quite frankly, and a lot of people have complained about it, but the dnc has had, i think, about 12 debates and you have a lot of candidates using that time. i mean, not only that, you have all of these organizations hosting forums. you have the gun forum in iowa. planned parenthood has a health forum. you is ahave all the opportunit to hear from the candidates and hear how they distinguish themselves on certain issues. obviously, the key for us is to look at candidates and be critical. who's going to be the best, you know, to mobilize a base but that lower turnout base that
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hasn't been coming out in recent years but is more likely to come out, inspired potentially by a candidate who would be the best person not only to beat trump but also pull together a coalition even bigger than the one that obama ran on and won with in '08 and '12. >> shermichael, we also have not heard this president address automatic weapons. he talked in his statement that we must be against hatred and white supremacy but he never said what they were going to do about it and he talked about mental health, but he never talked about the fact is that these both in the shooting in el paso and the shooting in dayton were automatic weapons, no matter how much hate they had, whether they had mental health issues or not, the fact that they could shoot that many people was because the weapons they could get. he never addressed that which means to many of us is he still afraid to deal with the nra and
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gun lobbyists? because he didn't do anything that they would be opposed to other than maybe how they deal with background check and even there we don't know how extensive he's talking about going there, if at all. he certainly hasn't called the senate back or urged mitch mcconnell to call them back. >> uh-huh. well, i mean, you're talking about semiautomatic weapons and one of the reasons why the shooter was able to shoot so many rounds so quickly was because he had a drum attached which allows you to load a significant amount of weapons. i happen to be a gun owner. i shoot pretty regularly. so i understand this to an extent. but i do think, you know, the president sort of spoke a little bit as well as mitch mcconnell from reporting that they're going to possibly consider strengthening background checks in september. potentially red flag laws. i'm not, to be quite honest with you, rev, i don't think we're going to see a ban on assault-style weapons. donald trump does, however, have a 90% approval rating with the republican party. i think if he really did want to
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move somewhat on this, he potentially could do so while maintaining a significant amount of support from republican voters as well as gun owners. even if it's against the nra's will. i also think it would be strategically smart for him to do so because a lot of people would like to see him do something on this issue. again, including those coveted independent voters which will be extremely critical in 2020 because i don't think we're quite sure yet how those folks are going to vote. >> well, we'll see. i mean, he said we're going to do something on background checks then the next day, he said he spoke with mitch mcconnell, he never said he told him to let's bring them back for a day from recess, and he said he talked to the head of the nra. so i don't know how much we're really going to see in september. he said this is an urgent matter, and by the way, i'm on my way to the hamptons to a fund-raiser then i'm going golfing for a couple weeks. doesn't sound to me like -- i think they're waiting on september hoping things calm down and many people committed that they don't. atima omara, hshermichael
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singleton, thank you. >> thanks, rev. coming up, white supremacist rallies in charlottesville began two years ago to date. yet, race relations in this country don't seem to be getting any better. we'll talk to virginia congressman donald meacham about the progress, if any, that has been made. always a catch. like somehow you wind up getting less. but now that i book at hilton.com, and i get all these great perks. i got to select my room from the floor plan... very nice... i know, i'm good at picking stuff. free wi-fi... laptop by the pool is a bold choice... and the price match guarantee. how do you know all of this? are you like some magical hilton fairy? it's just here on the hilton app. just available to the public, so... book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee. if you find a lower rate, we match it and give you 25% off that stay. when i walked through a snowthat's when i knewtte, i had to quit. for real this time. that's why i'm using nicorette. only nicorette gum has patented dual-coated technology for great taste. plus intense craving relief.
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jews will not replace us! jews will not replace us! jews will not replace us! >> today marks two years since the beginning of the unite the right rally that led to the horrific and tragic events in charlottesville, virginia. hundreds of white supremacists descended on the town in a unite the right rally. armed with flaming tiki torches and mounds of hatred. it eventually led to one woman, heather heyer, losing her life amid the chaos. after a white man plowed his car into a large crowd of counterprotesters. that man, james fields, was recently handed two prison life sentences for committing federal hate crimes. with that, i'd like to bring in democratic congressman donald mceachin of virginia. congressman, two years later,
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your reflections on two years ago and where you think we are today. have we made any progress? have we moved forward? or are we where we were two years ago? >> two years ago, reverend, was horrible. by the way, thank you for allowing me to come on your show. but to be honest with you, rev, i think we're moving backwards. i think things are worse now than they were two years ago as we witnessed these mass shootings and in a weekend as we witnessed the proliferation of guns all across our country. >> when we look at the open hate, the open anti-semitism, "jews will not replace us." all kinds of things being said openly and loudly. and the fact that they were rallying to preserve the statue of a confederal general who was guilty of treason trying to overthrow the government of the united states to preserve
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slavery, and the president of the united states said there were fine people on both sides. the purpose of it was to defend the confederate general statue who was guilty of treason then two years later we see this president dealing with a manifesto of a shooter that used his language about an invasion. how much of this do you lay the tone of us going backwards, using your analysis, on the feet of the president, to the feet of the president? >> well, the president has to own this. you know, in the past we've had democratic and republican presidents stand up and articulate american values and push back against hate, but this president hasn't done that. this president has used the buzzwords, the dog whistles, and whatnot, to make sure that fol s know it's okay to behave in the manner that they're behaving. he's allowed this dark underbelly, if you will, to come forward and now we see the consequences of his words.
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>> now, in the two years that we have just marked today, we've had the black face scandal of the governor of your state and other office -- other officeholders there. we've had other tensions. we've seen police cases around the country from sacramento to houston, none of which have we seen an aggressive move by this president. what can the congress do to deal with this seemingly regression and, again, quoting you saying we're going backwards, in terms of racial justice and fairness because, clearly, it does not seem after 2 1/2 years going into 3 years that this white house intends to do anything, if anything, they have given oxygen to those that are supremacists. >> they absolutely have fanned the flames. look, the house already passed a resolution condemning hate, condemning bigotry. we'd love to see the senate take
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up that resolution and pass it, but the chances of that are not high. but the house has done that. what we really need to do is grab the bull by the horns and institute common sense gun safety measures. universal backgrounds checks. banning high-capacity magazines. that is the attachment that goes onto these assault weapons that carry the bullets and banning assault weapons. >> i said on this show last night that the banning of assault weapons is really a pro-police measure because policemen are running into danger's way if there's a mass shooting and they're being outgunned, and if you really love police, why would you want to put them in that position? when you look at the shooting in dayton, ohio, the police showed up in one or two minutes and nine people were already dead, so you can't say that if everybody had a gun, they could defend themselves. the guy in el paso went in
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walmart in a carry state where everybody can carry a gun and walmart sells guns and he had no fear. so all of these excuses and rational -- rationalizing why we don't need to ban assault weapons, i think these two cases last weekend, alone, wipes a lot of that off the table, congressman. >> oh, you're absolutely right, and, you know, we have done it before. we actually banned assault weapons. joe biden led the way. wrote the bill. that banned assault weapons in 1994, i believe, and high-capacity magazines. it lasted ten years and the congress deliberately in 2004 let it expire. >> and the fact is that in that period from the '94 crime bill, which parts of it i opposed and marched on, but they did have a banning of assault weapons in that bill that joe biden helped engineer during the clinton years, we saw mass shootings go down in that ten-year period.
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and they let it expire. and we've seen almost the normalizing of mass shootings in the last couple of years. >> absolutely. it goes to show if you remove the weapon from the equation, you get results. we did that with assault weapons. we saw the results. crime went -- the mass shootings went down as you said. and, of course, when it expired, we've seen the mass shootings come back to life. >> and none of us are downplaying there needs to be resources and mental health, there needs to be some of the other things the president did say, but if somebody's holding a gun to me, i want the police to come in and first disarm him before we figure out whether they have a mental health problem or they're a hater, and as long as they have the arms, this arm inside of one minute killed nine people in that bar in dayton, ohio, and the police got there right then and there were nine already dead. there's no reason for people to have those kind of weapons that
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could execute that quickly. >> none whatsoever, and to be absolutely truthful with you, reverend, if the police had not already been in the area, there would be more than nine dead. >> congressman donald mceachin, thank you for being with us. and after five years, yet another tragedy. the death of michael brown at the hands of a white cop. not much has changed with regards to policing in ferguson. coming up, i'll speak with brown's mother, lesley mcspadden, and civil rights attorney benjamin crump, about where things stand now. be right back.
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coming up, i'll be speaking with lesley mcspadden, mother of the late michael brown, on the fifth anniversary of her son's death in ferguson, missouri. did ferguson police learn their lesson in the aftermath of that avoidable tragedy? where do police reform efforts in ferguson stand in the age of trump? and will brown's family get a new investigation years after grand jury exonerated the officer who shot and killed him? civil rights attorney benjamin crump will also join us with more as we mourn michael brown
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forced to learn how to cope with his absence, i would never guess the fact that my son would no longer be heard and justice has not been served. >> five years ago, the police shooting death of michael brown jr. set off a chain of events that made ferguson, missouri, a shorthand for racial unrest. the question of whether ferguson police officer darren wilson was justified in killing the unarmed brown after he allegedly resisted arrest was played out in the courts, the media, and in the streets of ferguson. over more than a year of protests. prompting the obama justice department to get involved in reforming the city's embattled police department. but that push has all but died as the trump justice department has dismantled police reform efforts in ferguson and other cities around the country. regardless on friday michael
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brown's father, michael brown sr., called on the current county prosecutor to re-open the investigation after wilson was not indicted for his son's death. five years later, michael brown is still gone, but i join his father and my next guest and the families in promising that his death will never be in vain. joining me now is the mother of the late michael brown, one of the leaders of mothers of the movement, lesley mcspadden. and attorney benjamin crump who represented the family five years ago in this case. lesley, let me go to you first. you, i remember five years ago, your father called me the day michael was shot. he was still laying on the ground there. four hours. and by the time i got to ferguson on monday and joined you and the family, there had been unrest, and all you wanted was justice and fairness for
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your son. and you've turned into an activist. you've run for office. you never stopped one day since then. how do you see ferguson and the issues surrounding your son's killing today, five years later, friday marking the exact five-year mark? >> thank you for having me, rev? how are you? >> i'm good. >> five years later, there isn't much that i could say has been changed. any time you say it's not been much, it means it definitely has not been enough. so we don't see a change. nothing for the lives that have been lost. the people around him, the people that were out there to see children laying in the street that day. we see different faces in the department. these are people that come from different parts of the world who have proclaimed to change their department and change their community for the better. and what i don't understand is if that's so, why do we continue to see the killings happening? why do we continue to see the
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police kill when they don't have to, when these people are unarmed, and why are our black and brown children continue to be targeted? i don't see a change in ferguson at all, and we heard congressman clay in a luncheon over the weekend, they have several events, say that that consent decree that came down from eric holder has been sealed and cannot be touched by the trump administration. ferguson has work to do, not only work, they have catch-up work to do. we're waiting and watching and won't stop watching until we see the change that should be made, should have been made five years ago, that was absolutely exposed in the ferguson commission and the doj report. >> absolutely. i know that many people that were there five years ago have come and gone, but you are stayed on it. the family stayed on it. some of us have been in and out
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staying on it with you. and some have just gone on to other things. but this has to be dealt with. the whole question of police reform, lesley. you bonded with other mothers who have the same situation around the country and whether it's on the front page or not, they want to see justice and change and some of us are in this for the long haul. >> yes, you've definitely been in this for the long haul, rev. i'm sorry you weren't here to receive your award. i know you're not in this for you but all of us. i couldn't have done it without you. i thank you very much for being a fighter for our rights. >> thank you for saying that. benjamin crump, let me ask you, as lesley talks about this, and you know her integrity and her standing up and the whole family, michael sr.'s called on a new investigation, nationwide under hthis age of trumping whether it's been in sacramento, whether it's been in houston,
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we've seen these cases keep coming, and this justice department is not moving at all to address these issues. >> that's correct, reverend al. unfortunately, since august 9th, 2014, over 1,000 black people have been killed -- >> wow. >> -- in america by law enforcement. and so we see all these tragic killings like in el paso and dayton where there are young white men who are mass murderers and and they're taken alive. people like lesley and mike's son who haven't killed anybody, for whatever reason, always seem to be killed and they are unarmed, and when they're killed, even though they are unarmed, for whatever reason, you have the intellectual justification of discrimination that always seems to allow the
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police officer to escape accountability, and i'm so proud of lesley mcspadden. reverend al, you would have been so proud at her rainbow of mothers foundation where they acknowledged you for all your tireless work and helping them. you have mothers from around the country who lost their children to police killings say we're going to stand up and even though we can't bring our child back, we can uplift their legacy and try to make sure we help those families in the future that will, unfortunately, be impacted by police killings by having mental health counseling. she met with the president of twitter, james dorsey, to talk about trying to provide a platform on social media where communities can get mental health counseling because this is devastating to our community, reverend al. >> lesley, i know you met with the president of twitter, done other things, been to new york three months ago, the mother of
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eric garner. we all went to the cemetery with her. you have a passion that you're going to, as we say, michael, rest in power, you're not going to let this go and i thank you have really shown the kind of dignity, integrity, that a mother should show as well as michael sr. dealing with this. something has to change where we feel people are being treated fairly. it's not anti-police. it's about fairness and justice. >> absolutely, rev, and i know these are uncomfortable conversations for some, but we run comfortable. we've been uncomfortable for hundreds of years and until we can get to a comfortable space, everyone will be uncomfortable. >> all right. benjamin crump and lesley mcspadden, thank you, both, for being here. and love back to you, lesley. >> thank you. >> thank you, rev. a recent study shows the white men are drastically overrepresented on state supreme court benches, but the amount of diversity these benches are
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we've been banging the drum about one of, if not the most dangerous aspects of president trump's domestic agenda, and as with most things with this administration, race is at the heart of it. according to an analysis by the brennan center for justice last month, 24 state supreme courts do not have a single justice of color at present, and 13 of them have never had one at all. this includes even some states with majority minority populations. now, mind you, president trump did not begin this trend. this is america, as the song says. but when you consider how aggressive republicans under trump have been in packing the courts with conservatives, it's arguable the real legacy and damage of this presidency will
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come from the bench. joining me now, alicia bannon, managing director of the democracy program at the brennan center for justice. i read your op-ped piece, and it was just stunning as one that heads a civil rights group to think the data that i just read, and you can give more, of how we are stacking the courts with white men, some states only white men have ever been on the state bench, and this is where most of the crimes are dealt with on a state level. >> that's exactly right. 95% of all cases are filed in state court. and state supreme courts, the courts that we looked at, are the most powerful courts in these states. they're the final word in interpreting state law and they're making decisions in criminal justice, the death penalty, abortion rights, the environment. they're hearing multimillion
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dollar commercial disputes. when you look at who's sitting on the benches in these courts, they look nothing like the communities that are being affected by these decisions. >> now, how are these state supreme court justices appointed? >> well, so it's a mix. in some states, the majority of states that use judicial elections -- >> right. >> -- then in some states the governors are appointing -- appointing these justices to the bench. >> so while we focus on issues, and particular incidents like ferguson we just did, or like eric garner or other cases, the fact of the institutional racism and lack of diversity has far longer impact because it goes in front of state courts that are not only male, mostly, but white male. and those governors that are elected are those that slate the
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state supreme court justices because they're usually done by the party leaderships in these states. those are not people that go out campaigning door to door. they're slated by state parties. they have no problem with, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're your friend, i'm talking about liberal as well as the numbers we found were astonishing. 24 states right now have all white state supreme courts. >> right now. 24 states. almost thankful country. >> and 18 states that have never had a black justice on their state supreme court. right now 17 states, only one woman on the state supreme court in benches 5 to 9. >> 17 states where there's only one woman. >> only one woman on the entire state supreme court. in 2019. and one thing we looked at was judicial selection and how that
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might eboo effecting diversity on the bench. during elections there were huge racial disparities. who had the most support from outside groups, overwhelmingly epipoo e people of color were facing hurdles at every step of the process. >> so as ewe go to an election year, should we be raising this to national candidates as well as the governors asual as the state part as that want the votes of people in this community that they're running these totally white male states for the state supreme court and those states running or being appointed by governors. should this be a major issue and a major ask, as they say in terms of who we're going to support for governor? >> absoloutly. the public should be demanding mor. white men are tlesz than 1/3 of
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the american population and they makeup an overwhelming majority of the justices. if a person is in handcuffs we have a huge crisis. if a group of men are sitting around deciding the future of reproductive rights of women in america, we have a huge problem for our system of justice. our our elected officials, from our parties that diversity on the bench should be a priority. >> and the final say on a state level, whether it's reproductive rights, sentencing, whether it's appealing. we're going to all-white men asking them to understand at best understand things that they have no life experience with. at worst they may have some kind of of bias, gender bias or race bias and it's unthinkable that this is not more of the conversation we're hearing
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politically. year talking 24 states in 2019. there's only 50 states. we're talking half the country. >> a story that sticks with me is about a dk aide ago on the u.s. supreme court they heard a case involving a 13-year-old girl that was strip searched in her school because they thought she had snuck in a couple of advils in her class. they strip searched a 13-year-old girl and during the oral argument and this is a time when ruth bader ginsburg was the only woman on the u.s. supreme court. several of the justices were talking about locker rooms in junior high school and justice ginsburg said no, you don't know what it's like the be a 13-year-old girl, you don't know how humiliating that kind of experience is. aknew 8-1 in the end that was an illegal search. having diversity on the court is
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essential for public confidence and the development of the law and an increasingly diverse america. >> thank you very much for being here tonight. >> thank you so much for having me. nk you so much forav hing me -guys, i want you to meet someone. this is jamie. you're going to be seeing a lot more of him now. -i'm not calling him "dad." -oh, n-no. -look, [sighs] i get it. some new guy comes in helping your mom bundle and save with progressive, but hey, we're all in this together. right, champ? -i'm getting more nuggets. -how about some carrots? you don't want to ruin your dinner. -you're not my dad! -that's fair. overstepped.
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women and black and brown people. and i've been hearing people say you remind me of guys 15/20 years ago. thought of a story of martin lutherer king iii told me about a young man who was an a student in school. she the teacherer told a class to write a book report a report on their pet at home. when he handed in his paper, he got an f. he was devastated. he went to the teacher and said why did you give me an "f. "the grammar was right, the pros was right. she said everything was excellent but you forget i had your brother and you described your pet the same way your brotherer it described the pet and the young man smiled and said the reason we had the same descriptions is because we had the same dog.
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if we sound a like, what many activists and leaders sound alike 15/20 years ago is because we are fighting the same problems. whether it's putting migrant children in cages in texas, whether it's denying people the right to vote, whether it's stacking up state supreme courts with all whites, ignoring police misconduct in staten island, new york or ferguson. maybe to some it's stuff you heard before with but maybe it's because it's stuff we never resolved that some of us sound like we're just copying stuff from the past. no, year trying to deal with and remedy what you never got straight in the past. and some of us are going to keep making those reports until change comes. thank you for watching. that does it for me. i'll see you back here next saturday at 5:00 p.m. eastern. until then, coop the
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conversation going. like us on facebook.com/politics nation and follow ous on twitter. @politics nation. up next "meet the press" with can chuck todd. this sunday a nation on edge as two communities mourn. >> we need heal. we need love one another again. >> president trump lashing out at his critics. >> they're very dishonest people and that's why i think he got zero per sent. >> and guns, race and white supremacy. >> he's a big hit with white supremacists. >> this is white nationalism. will this lead to new legislation on guns. >> mitch mcconnell's getting a little bit worried. my view, he oo
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