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tv   Deadline White House  MSNBC  March 26, 2021 1:00pm-3:00pm PDT

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hi, everyone. it is 4:00 in the east. i'm alex wagner in for niccole wallace. on the 56th anniversary of the cully nation of the selma to montgomery marches for voting rights republicans in georgia codified the big lie of a stolen election into law with one of the most sweeping set of voting restrictions in years. the bill signed by governor kemp behinded closed doors last night tightens voter i.d. requirements, shortens the early voting period, it curbs the use of ballot dropboxes even though governor kemp used one himself to return his ballot last november. the bill even makes it a crime to give food and water to people waiting in line to vote.
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that is an n a state where some voters waited up the eight hours the ballot last year and the law allows the legislature to appoint the chair of the state election board, previously the board chaired by the secretary of state. that's a chief opponent guy's efforts. in a statement georgia democrat and voting rights activist stacey abrams responded. quote when georgia ranks as the worst state for covid vaccination rates, georgia republicans are focused on reviving georgia's dank past and as the fbi continued to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about the elections republicans state leaders undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like. now more than ever americans must demand federal action to protect rights as we continue to
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fight against the unconstitutional efforts. president biden also weighing in this afternoon blasting the new law. >> an atrocity. the idea -- if you want any indication that it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency, they passed the law saying you can't provide water? for people standing in line? while they wait to vote? you don't need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive designed to keep people from voting. if you can't provide water for people about to vote, give me a break. >> governor brian kemp cited bogus fears about the integrity of the election in a speech last night. >> significant reforms to our state elections were needed.
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there were many alarming issues in the election and leads to the crisis of confidence in the ballot box here in georgia. >> here are the fact jesus from the ap, with ballots counted three times including once by hand georgia's certified totals show trump lost. officials found no evidence that trump won? as governor kemp signed the law a georgia lawmaker was arrested and removed from the capitol and later charged with two felonies for knocking on the governor's door. >> here's what i need. >> quit. are you serious? >> no. you are not -- >> she is not under arrest. for what? under arrest for what? >> why is she under arrest? >> for trying to see something
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that our governor is doing? >> why is she under arrest? our governor is signing a bill that is affecting all georgians? >> georgia senator warnock cast the protest in start contrast to the january 6th rioters that stormed the capitol in defense of the same big lie that georgia republicans are using to make it harder to vote. >> the video i saw she was knocking on the door. contrast that with folks who staged a violent insurrection on the united states capitol, police officers and others were killed and i want to know from those who are using the promise of that assault as the basis for a craven takeover of power in georgia why they're okay with
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that and somehow the actions of a state legislator knocking on the door of a governor who's signing a law that impacts her constituents, i have news for the state of georgia. we are going to keep on in various ways, keep on knocking on that door. >> that is where we start today. greg bluestein is here and also with us the reverend al sharpton and heather mcgee. rev, the image of parking on the door on the anniversary of the selma to montgomery marches, it is the clearest reminder that the civil rights era is not
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over. >> it is a very clear reminder that the civil rights era is not over. that's why i kind of cringe when people say back in the civil rights days like we are not in the day now. we are watching a woman elected by the citizens of georgia go to the door in the state capitol of georgia, of the governor, where she was elected to be in there and she's arrested, not resisting arrest, just knocked on the door and you can't help but think about how just a couple generations ago, the governor used to chase blacks out of the restaurant with an ax handle and now chasing out of the ballot box and if we dare have the elected representatives knock on the door to ask why or raise a question they're arrested and challenged and
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charged with felonies. all within 72 hours will be in minnesota for a policeman charged with lynching george floyd by knee. it's just a prolonged struggle and struggle we will. >> heather, i thought senator warnock did something powerful juxtaposing that imagery with that of white insurrectionists storming the capitol and some cases not having to see any action from law enforcement. it is just a stunning, stinning picture of the two americas we live in today. >> that's right. representative cannon is up to good trouble and she is now going to be someone whom we all know and look to, she was in stacy abram's former seat and doing something on behalf of black georgia but also doing something on behalf of a coalition of voters who waded
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through high water to do the impossible on january 5th and the thing that the republicans never seem to understand is that when they use a club to beat down the power of the american people, they're not just hitting their own voters. this is what happens time and time again. when the right wing attacks the franchise and the right to vote, it of course hits the target first and worst, black americans who are more likely to use early voting, more likely to use all of the different -- have the long lines that are now being targeted with this ridiculous making it a crime to give people water but also something that impacts voters of all races in georgia. everyone likes an early voting window. nobody wants partisan hacks to be challenging voters. this is the promise and peril of american democracy.
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all the votes have to count or effectively none of them does. >> to heather's point i imagine there's georgians who maybe not following the voter restriction bill and the progress through the state legislature and have been accosted with the images this morning, the juxtaposition of governor kemp signing the law going to disenfranchise voters of color, a black lawmaker getting arrested and find the whole thing distasteful, who have been awoken to the injustices. how's it playing in georgia? >> the arrest is a symbol of this legislation and i expect it to be brought up on the halls of congress as federal lawmakers are considering federal voting rights legislation. it overshadowed what was expected to be a victory lap of
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sorts for republicans who wanted to revel in the fact that this legislation had been signed into law and instead all the focus or a lot of focus last night on the arrest of representative park cannon and next few weeks this will play out in the campaign trail and the courthouse where a lawsuit is filed charging the constitutionality of the sweeping new restrictions. >> sounds like it's playing out in the business sector. there's pressure on businesses that do business, that have their businesses in atlanta, in georgia to rethink that. can you tell us about the latest? >> yeah. we are talking about coca-cola, home depot, delta. these are major atlanta-based corporations that played an outsized role in georgia politics and legislation for years. wading into debates in some senses and staying out of it in others and activists and
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advocates infuriated that some companies at least have tiptoed around the issue, not taken strident stances, not taken outspoken stances against the restrictions and there's even calls for boycotts and repercussions and i think why governor kemp hastily signed this into law worried there would be a larger pressure campaign and why these pieces of legislation they take days of vetting but signed within basically an hour of final approval in fact georgia senate and i think wanted to thwart a public pressure campaign. >> reverend, do you have the plane ticket to atlanta yet? i assume you'll be down there acting as a pressure point on the republican lawmakers. >> absolutely. we will be in atlanta, going to minneapolis for the opening of the trial and then atlanta. we have an office in atlanta. clearly this is what has to happen and the corporate world,
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you have major corporations there in atlanta and throughout georgia that has to take a stand. at the same time, we need to put pressure on the u.s. senate to pass which was hr-1 and 4 this bill to deal with federal voting laws. and i think that clearly we are where we were 40 years ago in the civil rights movement when i was just a little kid where you need federal law to supercede the state laws because what we're looking at now is states rights on voting. the senate must establish national voting rights laws at a federal level and talking to clergymen in west virginia of putting their pressure on manchin, talking about arizona, faith leaders and activists there. we cannot afford not to have federal law here. what stopped segregation is not
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state to state legislators. it was a civil rights act of '64 federal and the voting rights act of '65 so we need to be in atlanta and in washington and in minneapolis and put the pressure on. >> i think, heather, we would do well to all read your book but a point you make is while black and brown voters are often the most disenfranchised in this moment this affects anybody working, anybody who has to stand online for eight hours and might need water. that kind of need doesn't see skin color. that's just a basic human need? all of us are -- to the detriment of democracy to see these laws passed across the country. >> that's right. this goes back to the core quandary of american democracy, the founders broke with a european tradition of monarchy and bet on a radical idea and yet they compromised with their
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own ideals in the start. they left room for slavery and racism and the tension ever since. this is the opportunity, this is democracy's moment. for the united states senate to take up the for the people act and pass it, joe manchin, senator manchin irsed a letter this week that outlined the parts of the bill he could approve of but i want to be clear -- i applaud him. there's pieces of voting rights and disclosure he said i'm supportive of this and that's great. the last thing is to fight with democrats about some of the basic reforms. and yet, most of the provisions of that bill are super majority popular. campaign finance reform, nonpartisan redistricting, the idea that every american has the right to vote and that that should be enshrined in federal law and politicians shouldn't
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pick the voters. there's a super majority in support of democracy. the only thing the right thing wing has is a racist lie about election fraud. we have democracy on our side. >> yeah. i think that that point, senator warnock spoke to that. what do republicans have? perhaps this is the juncture to reframe the debate. we have been talking about where democrats are at. what they will do on the filibuster and forcing democrating into a defensive position and maybe to put republicans in a defensive position over what they plan to do for a more just democracy. listen to how reverend warnock posed that question. >> folks keep asking what we're going to do about the filibuster. i think they ought to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle what are they going to do about voting rights.
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the question is not where do i stand on the filibuster. that's a senate rule. the most fundamental question is where do you stand on voting rights? we wouldn't have this debate about the filibuster at least on this issue if the folks on the other side would do the right thing and stand for voting rights and vote the bill up. they can vote the bill up. why won't they stand up for voting rights? >> rev, maybe that's what needs to happen here. make them endorse and disavow. >> i think that that will certainly -- we will be doing a roll call to find that out. i think that we need to do both and. not one or the other. i think we need to really call the roll on the republicans and challenge them on voting rights and we need to hold the democrats accountable. let's not forget we had a record
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turnout of american voters of all races and record turnout of blacks and browns that voted in november. they voted for something. they didn't vote because they were fan club members. they voted because they wanted to protect voting rights and police reform and a lot of these things. this is what the democrats promised and they must deliver. at the same time we can challenge the republicans on what do they stand for? but we should not choose between. the history of civil rights movements have always been you had to hold the kennedys and the johnsons accountable while you challenge the goldwaters and the nixons. you do both because we are fighting for our very existence. if we can't vote we are going to be in an even more precarious position than we find ourselves now. >> all options on the table. greg, one wonders if the
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republican game here is to dampen turnout, one wonders whether this has the opposite effect. large number of voters turned out, more so than most runoffs and whether you look at the lay of the land could this do the same thing for another election, efforts like this? >> you saw that debate in the 2018 election between abrams and kemp where she was worried i think at first about talking about some of the voting suppression efforts to dampen turnout. her bid was about education, health care. more broader topics. brian kemp's measures that he took. so i think the same thing. i think democrats are seizing on
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this and seen it in georgia. 2022 potential candidates including stacey abrams latched on to this as a mobilizing, as a rallying point for next year's elections in georgia where democrats try to sweep the field. >> cutting off your nose to spite your face and democracy. greg, al sharpton, thank you for starting us off. heather mcgee is sticking around. democrats with lawsuits in georgia and beyond. more on the effort in court to dismantle gop-backed voting restrictions. a shape shichting right wing disinformation machine pivots from the big election lie to a big vaccine lie, how fringe groups like the proud boys are putting covid recovery at risk. with real crises on the docket like gun violence and that thing, a global pandemic, why 19 republican senators are
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last night on the efforts by republicans influenced by the big lie to control the vote in states through sweeping legislation and the lawsuits where elias is helping to file. one in iowa, a latino civil rights group says a new law creates an undue burden on minority, elderly and disabled voters. the other filed last night in georgia by several voting rights groups that argue the measures of a brand new law there quote operate to impose unconstitutional burdens on the right to vote and deny black voters in georgia an equal opportunity to participate in the process and elect candidates of their choice. joining our conversation is dale ho and heather mcgee is back with us. dale, in terms of this georgia law i think a lot of folks don't realize there's more pernicious elements of this law that were stripped out before passage,
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including limiting i recally voting to one sunday at most. we'll talk about in a second. rolling back no-excuse absentee voting. to me the fact that the gop and the legislators who drafted this bill understood that they were operating on perilous territory if you will legally speaking. >> i think that's absolutely right. it speaks to the power of activism that some of the worst elements of the bill was stripped out before it was passed but keep in mind what did pass here. the georgia legislature made it a crime to hand out water to voters waiting in line. something which a former appeals court judge, one of the most respected and conservative judges in the country said no court in the land would uphold. i can't think of anything more radical than that and i hope he
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is right. georgia saw waiting times to vote in the primaries more than five hours. in the last decade the electorate grew but the number of polling places in georgia declined by 10%. nine counties in atlanta have nearly half of the state's voting but 38% of polling low kagss and black georgians wait longer to vote than white voters. this is a direct attack on the levels of black participation that we have seen in georgia in recent elections. >> i was surprised that was in there because it seems so clearly wrong on the face and that wouldn't stand up in the court. >> i'm very surprised it made it into the law. the georgia legislature said they want to prohibit voters from being harassed voting at the polling place but when the
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state can't even administer the elections in such way where voters are in and out in minutes and have to wait hours in line and want to put people in jail for making that experience mur more tolerable. >> again this is where republicans vote early. republicans vote by absentee ballot. this again -- we keep saying cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, this is where their voters are at, too. >> yeah. this is the thing is that when you have a small electorate, when you have working and middle class people who are not paid to vote, right? they're paid to do their jobs. the people who make our economy go. whether they're white, black or brown and you're asking them to basically make it their full-time job for a day to vote,
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you are lowering the voter participation of the community and who wins when that's the case? who wins is the donor class, the political and economic elites that don't want government to work in the public interest. what are the republicans actually afraid of that black voters will do if we exercise our right to vote? we vote for things like well-funded public schools, higher taxes on the wealthy, universal health care. things like $2,000 survival checks for families struggling. this is not a racial revenge politics at the ballot that black voters clamoring for. black voters want justice, fairness, equality and a decent life for all people and so frustrating about this and where you see when you find out and
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you look to find out who is winning from a system like the jim crow system where there's such low turnout, where there's so many barriers to the ballot is only the privileged elite that win with total access to legislators' ears. >> when you look at the education system in the south compared to other parts of the country the racial disparities is a distinct outcome in sort of the public sector. everyone suffers from the racism that is structural down there. >> that's exactly right. >> dale, georgia is not alone. iowa preproceeded georgia and restrictions put into law and for people not following that among the things that have been placed into law, cutting early voting period down by nine days, tightening the timeline for
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absentee ballots and who can mail back an absentee ballot. from a legal perspective, what is your assessment of how well this stands up in court and who is leading the charge on fighting the restrictions in iowa? >> it is tough to say what the courts do with these lawsuits. the courts have changed a lot over the last four years. normally i would say that a new restriction on voting shouldn't be able to be implemented unless the state can show that it has a good reason for it but we have seen a wave of new laws being proposed. there's a catalog of more than 260 proposed bills in state legislatures across the country this year which is i think unprecedented. and a direct response to the record turnout we saw in the 2020 presidential election. nearly 160 million americans cast ballots. a higher turnout rate than seen
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in any election since 1900. these restrictions target registration, limitations on voting by mail. it's really challenging environment right now and for those that defend the democracy. >> there is a lot of money poured in by outside groups like heritage action to keep the newly passed laws in place. heritage action is spending $10 million across the states. all places where their efforts to restrict the vote are mobilizing workers. dale, you are at the aclu. do you feel outgunned, outmanned in this fight? >> what i like to say is i think the aclu punched above our weight. over four years my colleagues have been at the forefront of a number of most important civil
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rights fights of our time whether family separation, lgbtq rights. my team, we filed about 30 lawsuits last year trying to protect the right to vote in the pandemic and you can be sure we'll respond. >> the president a few moments ago said that the department of justice is going to look at what's happening in georgia. do you think that that could be a new front opening up? >> that will be a welcomed change. the trump administration filed one lawsuit under the voting rights act during the four years in power, something that i think no previous presidential administration had such a weak record on voting rights, such little activity so my hope is that the department of justice which is historically under democratic and republican administrations been much more active coming to protecting the right to vote will once again
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take the rightful place defending our democracy. >> meantime a lot of people looking at the aclu to keep punching above its weight. thank you for spending time with us on this important news day. donald trump's cdc director is speaking out again and turning heads on the theories on the origins of the coronavirus. and tackle four things at once. so when her car got hit, she didn't worry. she simply filed a claim on her usaa app and said... i got this. usaa insurance is made the way kate needs it - easy. she can even pick her payment plan so it's easy on her budget and her life. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa. t-mobile is upgrading its network at a record pace. we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile,
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momentum with the election lies now that joe biden is president for 66 days, the same groups shift to another area to sow mistrust in the government. "the new york times" reports if the so-called stop the steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once president biden was inaugurated there's a new agenda. to try to undermine the government. these groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of government control, according to one expert, they rode the shift away from trump to what was happening with the massive ramp-up to vaccines to pivot from the failure of the previous prophesy to focus on something else. this misinformation comes with the claim that former chief rodfield said that he believes covid-19 escaped from a lab in wuhan and was spreading among the population as early as september of 2019. the w.h.o. said it is quote
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extremely unlikely covid-19 began transmission from a lab incident. joining us now is msnbc national security annual clint watts and dr. peter hotez, codrerk of texas children's center for vaccine development and founding dean of national school of tropical medicine at baylor. let's start with the comments from dr. redfield. where do you stand on this theory? >> it hasn't really been proven either way. my position is that we don't necessarily need to invoke that it came out of a laboratory accident. we know that sars in 2003, the original severe pandemic coronavirus, came out of southern china and then went to toronto. and china's the perfect mixing bowl for zoonotic animal horses
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and coronaviruses circumstance lat in bats across the face of china and no obvious reason to invoke an artificial cause or a coming from a laboratory accident. having said that, there's no strong evidence against it so possibly dr. redfield has evidence that's not in the public domain but from the public evidence i don't see a strong case to be made. >> there's already so much misinformation and pair naya i wonder if you have seen with the dovetailing of the stop the steal movement with anti-vaxxer crowd, one distrustful of the government. >> absolutely. it is a demand for disinformation, conspiracies to help fuel their movement. they have to have content to talk about. and really it just comes down to the theme to be anti-government,
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against the biden administration. and what is there to be against right now? there's also a convergence with other narratives and tend to merge and see in many of the forums lots of discussions about vaccines and the connections for or against different races and as the source of it or as the doctor jigs just said that it's a form of a bio weapon and like to add if you believe in one of these conspiracies and in these forums you tend to believe them all. they have to keep the momentum of the movement going and ultimately over the longer term it will be more damaging to america than what happened on january 6th because it has the ability to keep people from being vaccinated. the longer it takes to get to
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herd immunity the more americans will die. >> the fact that joe biden is in the oval office has disabused some qanon supporters from theories of a storm that kept trump in office and that the fallacy of joe biden's win would be revealed. i wonder if there's a similar event to occur to disabuse them of the idea that somehow the vaccine is bad. does seeing the friends and neighbors get the vaccine help sort of reveal the truth of all of this? what can be done? >> it does. i think there's several things that are positives for vaccine uptake. one, it is for the oldser generation and people want to respect the elders to a degree and seeing the older generation even in anti-vax communities with parents going to get the vaccine. second thing is getting back to work and getting the economy
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back going, this is a converse narrative. they said we need to open up, got to open up. this is a pathway to open up. and the other part is legal and really work limitations. we have certain schools already moving to demand vaccines before they come back in person. at the college level. and that will create a forcing function. the third one is vacations. many states still require quarantines out of the state or out of the country and they don't want to actually do that so i think several forces against it but i don't see the one moment like with the inauguration which actually pushes these conspiracies entirely away because penal want to have conspiracies, they want to believe the things as much as there is a supply to meet the
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demand. >> dr. hotez, hearing some things are spun up into wild conspiracies, how much is there trepidation to release information about the virus to be misconstrued? dr. redfield with the theory of originating in a lab in wuhan some people seize on that and run with it the same way that the federal government keeps track of people with the vaccine who have died and happen to have gotten the vaccination. those statistics are mined by groups as evidence somehow that the vaccinations actually cause death. when you guys in the public health sector think about releasing information do you have to keep this sort of flip side, this dark side of the moon, in your rear-view mirror as a cautionary kind of consideration? >> yeah. remember, this is red meat for the right wing extremists.
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it's important to understand the historical context. the link between the anti-vaccine movement and the republican party which is now become a mainstream platform of the republican party, a full-on anti-science movement, it began in 2015 when the anti-vaccine movement was floundering because a number of us in the community had debunked the links between vaccines and autism. they glommed on to the republican tea party in texas and oklahoma and when it began to expand creating political action committees like texans for vaccine choice. i'm a vaccine scientist and i have a daughter with autism and it is expanding ever since and then glommed on protests against masks and so this -- and
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unfortunately health and human services and the u.s. federal government made a decision not to try to counter act it thinking it will go away on its own and oblivious to the fact it is major republican donor money to support it. and now we have got think tanks now glomming on to this. and it's globalizing. we now have had the same protests in london, paris and berlin where there's an attempt to storm the reichstig and linked to qanon. so this is a full-on anti-science empire. maybe it is because i'm in texas, maybe i have a heightened sensitivity to it but i see this anti-science element that began
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out of the republican tea party expanded across the republican party as a threat and it's a killer. i like to say that the reason half a million americans lost the lives from covid-19, yes, the sars coronavirus but aided abetted by an anti-science movement that permeated the republican party and led to a massive disinformation campaign. >> clint, does the federal government urks does the medical community, science community need to be more forceful to combat this or does that give the conspiracy theorists a fight that they want? it is just so hard to know how to combat it exactly. >> yeah. people tend to believe four things. that which they see first, the most and without a rebuttal so we need dr. hotez for that and that which is from a trusted source. we need to debunk the sources trusted in these communities. i'm also the father of a
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daughter with autism and i leaned on his book as a reference to arguing against people that were very anti-vax toward me and point to her autism. his expertise is what i needed. i need something to point to so the other point is to think about the messenger. the thing to think about is how do we take the knowledge of dr. hotez, bring that into the communities? and that's really a social media campaign from people that look like and talk like the people that are spreading the disinformation. i think there are ways to help science win. there are ways to scale that science into the communities and we can do it in social media and the same way that they do it in terms of pushing the disinformation. really the civil society aspects and many ways to do this. we were having it done to us and time to push back and has to
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come from more -- can't rely on just dr. hotez to do that. we have to all do it and in our communities, too. >> clint and doctor, thank you both for your time and efforts. republicans are patrolling the southern border in armed boats. how they're taking republicans to task coming up next.
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congressman joaquin castro are visiting the hhs facility which provides temporary care for unaccompanied minors. republicans, meanwhile, 19 of them, led by senators cruz and cornyn are touring the rio grande and look how they're doing it, armed to the teeth with bulletproof vests. let's bring in nbc's jacob soboroff. jacob, i will let -- i will read to everyone beto o'rourke's tweet on this. addressed to senator ted cruz. you're in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. the only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum as well as the occasional heckler. if you're looking for a crisis to cos play senator for, i'm happy to point you in the right direction. jacob, this is truly a tale of two parties as it concerns the border. who has the better strategy? >> reporter: well, the democrats aring looing at what's actually going on. i mean, i think it's fair to
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say. and republicans, what they're doing is preposterous if you ask me. i have stood -- it's not dangerous, by the way. i've stood on that dock. i've talked to those texas department of public safety agents. i have seen those boats and stood within feet, inches of them, myself. they're not meant for patrolling the river to look for unaccompanied migrant children seeking asylum. they're meant to interdict drug smugglers, and the idea that they would go out there just looking at them and approach young migrants, the obvious thing is going to happen. they are going to terrorize the children who are coming here to seek asylum in the name of a photo op, and i say it's dangerous because these children and minors are coming here to seek asylum, which is their legal right, not only under international law but under united states law, and if these republicans really want to find a solution to what is the true humanitarian crisis at this moment, at this hour, at this minute, they would spend time figuring out how to get kids out of border patrol custody where
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they shouldn't be and put them over to health and human services so they can have the expertise of a child welfare worker take care of them. >> you know, i, too, have been on that border in mcallen, texas, on the rio grande and it's inner tubes that we're talking about that are coming across the border. >> people go there and they ride ski doos in the water, alex. it's a place where people go to have barbecues and hang out in the park and have a good time with their family and the idea that 19 u.s. senators would show up and get in a gun boat is -- it's dangerous because of the message that it sends about who's coming into this country, that you need to approach minors, children, families armed with what i think -- i'm not a gun person, but .30 caliber machine guns? it is preposterous. >> but it's sort of the point, though, right? it is to suggest that these people are more dangerous. it's very rarely that you hear a republican, a republican senator even say the word, children, in the context of the border crisis
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because that reminds the public that we're talking about children here, not armed drug lords storming the u.s. border. and yet, jacob, one wonders about the political strategy here and whether it actually works for republicans in terms of animating their base. i mean, i guess the question is, on one hand, you have a unified republican party that is convinced its brethren this is an existential threat to the united states and our way of life and on the other hand, you have democrats who don't have quite the same unified message and who are genuinely, apparently, trying to solve the problem but that is not as neat and tidy and narrative and in that way, i wonder if it could be politically perilous. >> i do think it's a problem, problematic for the fate of the overall comprehensive immigration reform bill and also even if more narrow bills because there is mass confusion being stoked by republicans around the issue of who, you know, really, our conversation about immigration reform is about. there's a conversation about reforming the immigration and
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asylum system at the border to make it more fair and safe and humane and orderly as secretary mayorkas says and the president said yesterday at the press conference and there's an entirely separate conversation that of course is interrelated, but we're talking about distinct people, like farm workers getting a pathway to citizenship or the 11 million undocumented people who have been here and contributing to society for years. decades in many cases, getting a pathway to citizenship. and that is different, and it is distinct from asylum-seeking children at the border and the conditions that they are in and what the administration wants to do about that, and i do think that the clearer that they can be and part of that is, again, you know, i want to mention again, today, opening the facilities for reporters, especially local reporters who know these areas, who are there, who don't have to travel, you don't have as many covid considerations, to get in and see with their own eyes is why it's important so the administration can show what it is they want to change about the asylum system to preserve what they want to do about the larger undocumented community in the u.s. through legislation. >> jacob soboroff, your physical body may be in southern
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california but i know your mind and your heart are always on the border. thank you for sharing your expertise with us today. >> thanks, alex. after the break, a staggering new turn in the gop disinformation campaign to downplay the january 6th insurrection. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts right after this break. r of "deadline white house" starts right after this break. plaque psoriasis, the burning, itching. the pain. with tremfya®, adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis can uncover clearer skin and improve symptoms at 16 weeks. serious allergic reactions may occur.
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if you smell gas, you're too close. leave the structure, call 911, keep people away, and call pg&e right after so we can both respond out and keep the public safe. if you see wires down,
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treat them all as if they're hot and energized. stay away from any downed wire, call 911, and call pg&e right after so we can both respond out and keep the public safe. remember 1/6. you know why? because josh hawley wants you to forget what happened on january 6th. ted cruz wants you to forget how he was responsible, like josh hawley, for january 6th. >> while still churning up the
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same hate. >> donald trump wants you to forget about january 6th. they all do. never forget january 6th. because it can happen again unless we remain vigilant. >> hi again, everyone, it is 5:00 in new york, i'm alex wagner in for nicole wallace. the already raging fire of disinformation surrounding the events of january 6th just got a whole lot of gasoline poured on to it, courtesy of the former guy. in what can not even be described as downplaying but as instead of simply lying, donald trump last night on his favorite news channel took the whitewashing of the insurrection to dizzying new heights. we usually don't like playing something with such outright falsehoods in it but we will play it for you to understand what is being fed to trump's followers and how he and his allies are trying to rewrite the events of that day to diminish
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their own culpability. >> it was a zero threat right from the start. it was zero threat. look, they went in, they shouldn't have done it. some of them went in and they're hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know? they had great relationships. a lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out. >> zero threat? hugging and kissing the police? let's rewind the tape. this is what the radio traffic from capitol police sounded like on that day. >> cruiser 50, they are behind our lines. >> we need to pull back our resources. we need to go inside or pull back. if they're getting behind you, you don't have enough resources. >> if i give this up, they're going to have direct access. we got to hold what we have. >> here is video. we have to warn you, it is disturbing, that the fbi sent out last week to help identify suspects engaging in horrific assaults on police officers during the riot.
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and the secret service didn't think there was zero threat from the mob as the service rushed the vice president out of the senate chamber, which was a wise move, given the chorus of chants outside to hang mike pence. just hours after the former president spewed those dangerous lies on fox news last night, the network was sued by another election technology company for its role in spreading the big lie and falsely blaming the company's machines for committing election fraud. dominion voting systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit which reads, in part, fox engaged in this knowing and reckless propagation of these enormous falsehoods in order to profit off these lies. foxmented to continue to protect its broadcast ratings, catering to an audience deeply loyal to president trump. trump ratcheting up the disinformation as fox news is in hot water for its lies is where we start this hour. joining us now, jake sherman, founder of punch bowl news and msnbc political contributor. also with us, frank figliuzzi,
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former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence and olivia troye, former senior aide to mike pence on the coronavirus task force as well as an advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism. she's now the director of the republican accountability project. olivia, you worked with mike pence. when you hear president trump say there was zero threat, that there were people hugging and kissing police officers, you know what mike pence went through on that day. what runs through your mind as you hear the words of the former president? >> well, i hear the words, hang mike pence. and i think about that noose that was sitting outside the capitol, and i think about how the fear that his family felt that day and i think about the fear that everyone in that capitol building felt that way and just the fact that donald trump continues to double down on yet another lie and now he's flipping it on its head, right? but this is so classic donald trump, and what he does and the donald trump machine. they'll try one aspect of it.
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they'll incite people, create danger, push conspiracy theories, create danger in these networks, and then they'll flip it on their head and say, whoa, nothing happened, nothing to see sere, even though people died that day, many people got hurt that day and groups felt empowered that day. >> jake, when trump speaks, it's often like a word from the oracle and you see the, like, lesson learned among his flock, and i wonder, on capitol hill, how receptive an audience there is for this new line of -- this new talking point, if you will, that the attack wasn't so bad and it was just a few bad seeds but overwhelmingly it was a friendly, boisterous, happy crowd. >> i was there that day. i was in the same room in the capitol on the third floor for several hours, and i was escorted out by a s.w.a.t. team with machine guns, so i can tell you that i don't think there was no threat and neither did the police, the fbi s.w.a.t. team and all the other federal assets
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that were brought in from across the region. frank can talk about how rare that is. and i can tell you, definitively, that members of -- i know the president might have been protected by secret service and the white house and unaware, even though he said he was going to go down to the capitol, he didn't, thank god. but i can tell you that the members of congress, all members of congress, were escorted to safe rooms that were guarded by heavily, heavily, heavily armed officers. so there's literally nobody who is part of this world in which we are living in and who was a part of that situation, i mean, that door that we're seeing is a door that -- i mean, these -- this is a very real instance for all of us who were there that day, and every member of congress would agree with that. now, they were even sheltered a little bit because they were immediately evacuated to a safe room. i was in the capitol without any security for several hours while these people tried to get into the place that we were sitting in. these were not friendly people.
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they wrote "kill the media" on the front door of the capitol, feet from where i walk in every day, so there's nobody, unless they're living -- spending time in an alternate reality, there's nobody who would think this was not extraordinarily dangerous and frankly, alex, i would say, i was just talking to some colleagues in the capitol yesterday about this. i mean, it was about three inches from being a lot worse than it was, and only by grace of god there were police officers that, as we all know, directed the insurrectionists away from the senate chamber, got them away from the house and when assets were brought in from across the region, you can take my word for it because i was there, were able to get these folks out of the capitol. so, it is so untethered from reality that even trump's closest followers, i think, would have a hard time subscribing to it. >> to jake's point, the question is, how -- i mean, it could have been worse. but how did it get as bad as it was? "the new york times" is
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reporting today that parler, the platform, that parler went to the fbi and said that it had specific threats of violence that were being planned for january 6th. and these are people who are saying, we're going to go there, and it's not going to be a protest, it's not going to be a rally, it's going to be something else. given the specificity of that, why wasn't more done? i mean, are there questions we should be asking about the fbi's response? because one would imagine if that kind of language was coming from overseas, the cia would be taking it fairly seriously. >> well, of course. but let me -- i feel compelled, alex, just real quickly to respond to what the former president has been saying, because i was a law enforcement officer for 25 years. what he said about the lack of threat that day is a disgrace, and it's a disgrace that besmirches the memory of officer sicknick, his family, the officer that was trapped in that
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door, tactical gear on, screaming for help as he's being pulled in one direction, as his team's trying to pull him out the door. and then, the current acting chief of police or chief of police for capitol police department, she still has scars on her face from where she was struck with a stream of bear spray, so it's a disgrace, and let me tell you what's behind that, just real quick. this isn't just about the former president trying to reshape history been history's even written. he knows where this investigation is headed. he knows what the prosecution is looking like. every single day, we're getting further evidence that this is pointing toward sedition, even today, we see a report about person number one talking and calling long phone call conversation with the founder of oath keepers, planning what's going on that day. this thing's going up the chain in terms of conspiracy and sedition and the president is trying to shape the narrative because it may be aimed at him or people around him. with regard to the parler information, multiple social
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media outlets are saying that they have shared concerns about violence regarding january 6th, yes, we need an independent commission, and it looks like we're not going to get one any time soon, if ever, to ask the hard questions, but you know, you mentioned about what would happen if the cia got this, about an external threat. we need to understand that the laws and the rules of the road and the tools in the tool kit are very different for international versus domestic threats. we need that conversation. we need a domestic terrorism law, and we need some hard questions answered. >> i want to go -- i want to come back to you on this in a second, frank, but olivia, the law -- we talk about mendacity and we talk about the big lie around all of this. the courts seem to be one avenue to rectify the poison and the mendacity of the big lie, right? and fox news is now being sued by dominion for furthering this narrative, exploiting this lie that somehow the machines were rigged, the election was stolen.
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does that change the way fox news does business? i mean, we saw in the aftermath of them calling arizona for donald trump, people started flocking to different news outlets. where do republicans -- do republicans want the truth at this point? >> i'm not sure it changes anything for fox news. we've seen that time and time again, and we've seen them, you know, trying to follow these conspiracy theories and push these narratives that are fundamentally dangerous to our country, and we've seen this on some of the other networks that are even more extreme and more far right, i would say, and so this is where, though, accountability does matter. and i think it is important for dominion and lawsuits like this to come forward and i think it's important to call these people out, and i think it's going to really matter going forward. people cannot forget, don't let these republicans who enabled all of this and who repeated the lie, don't let them memory hole this, right? that's where it's going to come down to reminding people of what they said, what they did, and the actions that led to what
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happened on january 6th. and that's, you know, that is why, alex, i'm involved in the republican accountability project because it matters to me. it matters to me that we don't let them get away with this, and that we remind them and that we look at this in 2022 and we look at it in 2024 when it comes down to these elected officials who are part of this, that we need to make sure that we vote them out and we get them out of office. >> jake, you know, witnessing how sidney powell, for example, has handled her part of the lawsuit in the dominion case where she's being accused of defaming dominion, i mean, this is just -- it's extraordinary, if not comedic, that this is the defense. no reasonable person, her lawyer says, would conclude that the statements made by sidney powell were truly statements of fact. basically, oh, no, all of this is fake and everybody should have known that. i wonder, do the republican
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elite look at what's happening to sidney powell, do they look at what's happening to fox news and say, is there any trepidation about continuing down this line? i mean, do you get any sense the self-respecting members of the republican caucus on the hill will look at the comedy of errors, the legal implications of these lies and think, maybe i should pause? >> yeah, i just -- no, they don't. so, the reality of the republican party, whether you like it or not -- not you, specifically, alex, but whether republicans like it or not, it is a party where donald trump has somewhere, i would imagine, in the 60% to 80% approval ratings. i mean, most members of congress go home or went home in the last congress and heard from their constituents, why aren't you sticking up for donald trump more? not, why wouldn't you split with him more? and you know, that's what i hear and i spend every day in the capitol.
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that's what i hear every single day, and you can see it. the middle of the party is -- there is no middle anymore. i mean, the members of congress, especially the house, that are be anti-trump, you can count on one hand. liz cheney, adam kinzinger is basically it and in the senate, even the people who are leaving, roy blunt, rob portman, they were pro-trump, they just are generally speaking, without talking about either of them, i think, they would say they're generally speaking frustrated with the institution and where it's gone. so, i think the constituency, the anti-trump constituency among the republican base and republican-elected officials is extraordinarily small at this point. doesn't mean it's not going to change. these efforts are -- could help foster some sort of republican base outside of that. but you know, not speaking about the dominion case, i mean, that's lunacy, but just generally speaking about the republican party but just generally speaking about the republican party and where the elected officials are on capitol hill.
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>> frank, where do you think -- what do you make of this defamation lawsuit on behalf of dominion? can it hold up in court? >> indeed. not only do i think it can hold up in court but i think as an extremely effective tactic, we live in a capitalistic society. how do you change the behavior of corporations, including media corporations? you hit them where it hurts. in the bottom line. throughout my fbi career, when we indicted and convicted large corporations of white-collar crime, what did we do? we fined them, we seized their assets to the tunes of millions, even billions of dollars. that changes behavior moving forward. i like this as a tactic to change the conduct and quell disinformation and lies. >> we have to leave it there. i just want to note for everybody who heard the words of the president that there was zero threat, there are bulletproof door now being installed on the house chamber to make it a safe room. frank figliuzzi and olivia troye, thank you.
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jake sherman is sticking around. when we return, apart from making it harder to vote, georgia's new voting restriction law also gives the state legislature much more control over how elections are run. and that means the days of an election official like brad raffensperger standing up to a president asking him to find the votes, those days may be over. that's next. plus, in the wake of two mass shootings in a week, president biden is now considering what action he can take on his own to enact gun safety measures. and why that stuck ship in the suez canal is a big warning flag about globalization and climate change. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break, so please don't go anywhere. after a quick break, so please don't go anywhere. we started with computers. we didn't stop at computers. we didn't stop at storage or cloud. we kept going. working with our customers to enable the kind of technology that can guide an astronaut back to safety. and help make a hospital come to you, instead of you going to it.
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republicans, motivated by a lie, we must remember, are not only suppressing the vote where they can, they are finding ways around the very last line of defense that ultimately prevented donald trump from stealing the 2020 election. one part of the bill georgia's governor signed into law yesterday allows the state's republican-led legislature to take over control of elections from those elected to safeguard them. people like georgia's secretary of state, brad raffensperger, remember now firm he stood against a dangerous president trying to change the election with no evidence or right to do so? this conversation, this one coming up, could have gone a lot differently if it was, say, someone chosen by republican lawmakers. >> the 2,236 in absentee ballots, i mean, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, et cetera.
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and even if you cut them in half, cut them in half and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need. >> well, mr. president, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. >> it's not social media. i don't care about social media. i couldn't care less. social media is big tech. big tech is when you sign, you know, i don't even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election and you're a republican. >> we believe that we do have an accurate election. >> joining us now is pennsylvania's attorney general josh shapiro. i listen to that conversation between former president trump and brad raffensperger with a certain amount of anguish, knowing that the landscape has just changed for brad raffensperger, right? this new georgia election law, we focus a lot on the public-facing things like you can't give people food and water when they're waiting in line for eight hours. the absentee, early voting is being curtailed but there are
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deeply pernicious things happening behind the scenes in the election machinery for the state, among them, removing the secretary of state from the state election board chair, allowing the state election board to delay certification, allowing the state election board to replace local election officials. when you read those, what runs through your mind? >> well, alex, it makes me angry. it makes me angry to hear that conversation that you just played between the former president and the former secretary of state. it makes me angry that we have elected officials who seem to want to just suck up to the former president as opposed to following the law. that they'd rather disenfranchise voters than allow their voices to be heard. so i'm angry. and i will tell you, i'm the pennsylvania attorney general. we're talking about this matter in georgia, and i think it's important that we are, because this can happen anywhere. in fact, it happened here in pennsylvania a few years ago when we had a republican governor. they passed voter i.d. as a
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means to try and disenfranchise voters and prop up republican elected officials. thankfully, now, in pennsylvania, even though many of the same bills that have just passed into law in georgia have been introduced here in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, thankfully we have a democratic governor here who will veto it. we have to make sure that we maintain that. but it's important for us to note that this can happen anywhere. they're trying to take away the power from the people and instead vest it with themselves, the insider politicians. that's wrong, it's unjust, and we have to fight back against it. >> i mean, i think a lot of people remember in the days and weeks that followed the election, these singular republicans who stood in the way of their party that otherwise wanted to overturn the results of the election. i mean, you know, people -- names we -- brad raffensperger was not a name anybody knew until it was revealed that he was basically atlas holding up the democracy in the state of georgia. and there were similar people in
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michigan. i remember in pennsylvania, there was real movement inside the republican legislature to do away with the results. so, now that these heroes have basically been put in the cross hairs, i mean, what are the implications for free and fair elections? i mean, do you ultimately think these efforts are going to be successful from a legal standpoint? >> well, first off, let's just take a moment and acknowledge those heroes, those secretaries of state and people like al schmidt in philadelphia, a republican who ran our elections and with stood the pressures coming from the trump administration, the attorneys general and governors who stood back and beat back those attempts to make sure certain votes didn't count, which was the goal of the former president, but of course we made sure they counted here. i'm deeply concerned. the conduct that is happening in georgia, the efforts that are happening in harrisburg, our state capital, are designed to make sure that certain people's voices don't count. and let me be very clear. they're not trying to make
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people who look like me not count. they're trying to make our black and brown communities not count. as stacey abrams properly said, this is jim crow 2.0. we have to be vigilant against this and the way we can do this is by making sure we've got people, or heroes as you call them, in these positions of authority to make sure that every single legal vote counts, regardless of the outcome. we should be about enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement. unfortunately many of these republicans across the country recognize, seemingly, that their path to victory is not by listening to the people and letting the people's voices be heard but by silencing the people and limiting those who can participate in the process. >> you know, up until this moment, republicans would say, oh, these tricks are the same ones that democrats play when they have power, but the reality is, hr1, the bill that's going to the senate, this voting rights act, is trying to strip partisanship from the electoral
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process, right? we look at gerrymandering, right, democrats have now reached the point where they're like, just take the drawing of districts out of political hands. make it nonpartisan, because it has been so bastardized over the course of the last two decades, largely by republicans, i guess i wonder if you think elections are going to be the new rezrikting. i mean, are we now at a stage where in the way the districts are gerrymandered, elections are going to be gerrymandered. >> they're certainly trying to jerry commander it. it's on us to make sure that doesn't happen. the best way to do that is by electing people who are not going to participate in this sham of a process. electing people who are going to protect your right to vote from governors on down. that's critically important. when it comes to gerrymandering, just look at the last few years in pennsylvania. we needed our state supreme court to step in and say to the republicans that those
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congressional districts that you drew a few years back, they were gerrymandered in an unconstitutional way. and when they drew the maps in a fair way in districts that were exact and contiguous, then all of a sudden we got an equal balance in our congress. and what do the republicans do in the wake of that? they put forth a constitutional amendment to now gerrymander the courts to get them to be in a position to overturn the will of the people. we need to speak up about this. i'm so grateful that you're spending time on this, on air. this is something that impacts every single american. as i said before, georgia may be in the news today, but this is happening in pennsylvania. it's happening in other states. and we've got to be vigilant against it. >> let me ask you, because you're the attorney general, how strong is your belief that the courts, which have changed in terms of make-up under the last president who greatly reshaped the judiciary, how confident are you that the courts can remain
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the last bulwark for free and fair democracy? >> well, here's what i know. 19 times before last november's election, donald trump and his enablers went to court to try and make it harder for people to vote. and 22 times after election day was over, they went to court to make sure that certain people's votes didn't count. i tell you that because we went to court to defend pennsylvanians and the courts held. judges who are elected as republicans, judges who were elected as democrats here in pennsylvania, they did the right thing. they upheld the law. republican-appointed judges at the federal level, democratic appointed judges at the federal level, didn't matter. they upheld the law and they pushed back on the lawless former president and his enablers and they said, you know what? we're going to make sure that the people's voices are heard. that the will of the people is respected. i was pleased when we went to court to know that at the end of the day, the judges would uphold
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the rule of law, and that is something we need to celebrate in this country, no matter how hard the president and his enablers worked to abuse and destroy the institutions of our democracy, they held. now, a lot of damage happened. there's a lot of people who think joe biden wasn't duly elected. there's a lot of people who think voter fraud was a huge issue in pennsylvania. by the way, we had three cases, and all three of them, those people tried to commit fraudulent acts to vote for donald trump, and i've prosecuted voter fraud. i know what it is when i see it but there's real damage that's been done to our democracy, even no our institutions have been held and we have got to make sure that we repair that by doing some truth telling and making sure that the right people are in positions of authority to defend your voice and your vote. >> celebrate the heroes and celebrate the wins where you have them. pennsylvania'sgeneral, josh shapiro, thank you so much for your time. when we return, with congressional action on gun safety looking unlikely,
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if you see wires down, treat them all as if they're hot and energized. stay away from any downed wire, call 911, and call pg&e right after so we can both respond out and keep the public safe. in the wake of the tragic shootings in atlanta and boulder, the crisis of gun violence in this country has once again been thrust on to center stage, and with republicans in congress showing no willingness to take any action on gun safety reform, president biden is currently weighing several executive
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orders on guns, a move that would bypass the house and senate and avoid certain failure while the filibuster remains in place. but as calls to ditch the filibuster grow louder, might gun reform be different this time? to quote from an op-ed in the "washington post," the big is whether the pile-up of proposals like this, ones such as gun reform, voting rights protections, climate legislation, et cetera, falling victim to the filibuster, whether that's finally enough to force democrats to reform or eliminate it. let's bring in matt viser, white house correspondent for the "washington post," and jake sherman is back with us. matt, what can you tell us about the executive actions that the president is thinking of to deal with the gun safety issue? >> so, there are a couple things, alex. one of them, a lot of focus seems to be on so-called ghost guns, which are guns that can be sort of homemade using 3d technology, where they're looking at regulating those the way that we regulate firearms that are purchased somewhere. so, that is one thing that the
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administration is looking at in terms of things that biden can do through his own executive orders, strengthening background checks a little bit is another, as well as some funding for community violence intervention programs. so, these are, you know, relatively smaller steps compared to what they would like to do and what the house legislation that was passed two weeks ago would do where the background checks would be more significant. biden also mentioned he had some comments earlier this afternoon upon arriving in delaware where he was telling reporters where he's looking at imported weapons, which is another potential thing that he could do with executive action. but again, there's -- they're not as sweeping as i think that this white house would like to do. >> jake, what's the appetite -- i mean, you're a creature of washington. everybody on the hill, i think, has expressed sorrow and grief, rightly so, over these gun tragedies.
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at the same time, they have gimlet eyes as far as the likelihood of actual passage of any gun reform legislation. is the executive action route ultimately the route democrats are going to acquiesce to in terms of gun safety reform? >> well, matt kind of said this and i'll say it even blunter. we've kind of exhausted the executive action route in this country in that -- i mean, these massacres aren't being -- aren't being undertaken with ghost guns, guns that people are producing at home, or i'm assuming, i don't know this, but stemming firearm purchases from -- countries is not a big avenue for these killings. i will say this. there's a lot to digest here. there are some avenues, legislatively, where -- that could get, i would imagine, somewhere in the range of 50 to 60 votes. there is the red -- so-called red flag laws which would give the government the ability to take away weapons from people
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who have been flagged for either hurting themselves on the potential to hurt others. that's number one. then there's strengthening background checks, very difficult. so there's two avenues, not eliminating the filibuster, which limits your votes, need republicans. then there's blowing up the filibuster. i would say this, even if they blow up the filibuster, they might not be able to get this done. if you're not getting ten republicans, you're probably not getting joe manchin either and i think a lot of progressives and democrats are not understanding that, not listening to joe manchin and pretending that there's, for some reason, there's going to be some sort of -- he's going to have some sort of revelation in which he changes his opinion on these matters. he's not. so, i just think that if you want to look at what could get done, the lowest common denominator is joe manchin or alternatively, you could try to beat him in two or four years. i know that's not a popular thing to say but he's a senator with a vote that's as powerful as elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. so, that's just the congress. i find myself saying this all the time.
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joe biden has to work with the congress he has, not the congress he wants. the congress he has has joe manchin and kyrsten sinema, two relatively conservative democrats, and if you're not getting republicans, you're probably not getting them on most issues too. >> that's really important. that's a really important reality, i think, a lot of people don't think -- you still need to get 50 democrats. you still need to get 50 democrats, even if you do away with the filibuster, but matt, i mean, every data point of the last couple weeks is another log on the pyre that is burning around the filibuster, is it not? this is an extraordinary amount of pressure to put on these democrats, joe manchin and kyrsten sinema, you know, we're talking about racial justice, the future of the democracy, gun safety reform, literally everything then rests on their resistance to getting rid of a mechanism that is widely accepted to be a vestige of jim crow. i mean, how -- do you get the sense that the white house is communicating with these democrats, is talking to these
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hill democrats, and making the case? i mean, what is the back and forth between either end of pennsylvania avenue? >> you know, somebody told me a couple weeks ago that the only democrat that the white house is on the phone more than chuck schumer with is joe manchin. you know, so i think there is communication, but not on this issue. they're talking about a lot of things, but i think the criticism from gun control groups has been that this white house has not prioritized gun control early in the administration. we were just talking about executive orders and the white house entered with a plan. they entered with ten days filled with executive orders, none were related to guns. you know, so they have prioritized other things. you heard biden yesterday talk about how timing is the most important issue, i think, to him and the timing of gun control has not been at the forefront, so they're prioritizing other issues that they view as more
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politically realistic, and i think, you know, thinking back to biden and his own role on guns throughout his career, and in the aftermath of the sandy hook shootings. you had children shot in an elementary school, you know, sort of the most vivid aspect of guns that you can imagine, and that didn't do the trick. biden was unable even then to push this stuff forward. so, i think that that's a little bit of how he's approaching this is it's something that he would like to do and that they'll do things that they can, but it's colliding with some of the other things that are on his agenda, frustratingly, i think, to some groups. >> yeah, anybody who was in the obama administration and witnessed newtown and what didn't happen in the wake, i think, has a fairly depressed view of what's possible on gun safety reform. matt viser and jake sherman, thank you both for your time. when we return, why that massive container ship grounded
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in the suez canal should be a bright red warning sign to the rest of us. our friend, chris hayes, will join us after a quick break. has join us after a quick break. ♪ and a little bit of chicken fried ♪ ♪ cold beer on a friday night ♪ ♪ a pair of jeans that fit just right ♪ ♪ and the radio up ♪ get 5 boneless wings for $1 with any handcrafted burger. only at applebee's.
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as a result, the global economy is currently losing billions upon billions of dollars every few hours. joining us now is my old friend, chris hayes, the host of msnbc's all in. chris, what a topic on which we are reunited. i'm so thrilled to talk to you about what is a crazy, crazy thing. and i think your feed is frozen. is that right, control room? he is not hearing me. when we get him back up, we will continue this conversation. but in the meantime, we'll talk -- we're going to take a quick break and re-establish contact. and re-establish contact. t-mobile is upgrading its network at a record pace. we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile, we're turning up the speed. upgrading over a thousand towers a month with ultra capacity 5g
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the 400-meter-long cargo ship, the "ever given" is stuck in the suez canal and it is fouling up global trade and it is also apparently fouling up telecommunications between two tv hosts who just want to talk about the 400-meter-long "ever given" ship stuck in the suez canal, but i think my friend, chris hayes, host of "all in" we have you back up online. can you hear me, chris? >> i can hear you and i apologize for that, although a bit of a microcosm metaphor of the difficulties of all the things that run in the background in modern life and then when they mess up, they mess up. >> yeah, and actually it brings
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us beautifully to the, you know, first point i wanted to talk to you about this, which is, i think, the "ever given" reminds us of the, just, sort of thin line we are walking, at least from a business economics resources standpoint. i think most of us aren't most of us aren't aware of just how much global trade hangs by a thread. the fact that this ship being stalled in the suez is costing the globe billions of billions of dollars by the hour is a reminder that the systems we have in place are not particularly resilient. >> yeah. it's a great point. one of the things we learned during the pandemic, right, is how much these supply chains, how quickly they can get stressed. the broader lesson we're seeing with this ship stuck across the canal is there is a trade-off between efficiency and resiliency. the less slack there is, the less resiliency. the irony is the now dictator of
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egypt's project was to build a double channel which they have actually done for huge parts of the canal, not this part. but it seems like, why do you need two? this is the answer why you need two. that's true for huge parts of what we think of as a just in time global supply chain. toilet paper which was part to get during the pandemic, the era of climate change resiliency becomes a premium. we just saw this in texas as well. >> for people who aren't familiar with what just in time manufacturing is, it's basically relying on the internet and our global supply chain to give us the things we need when we want them as opposed to manufacturing a bunch of them and storing them in warehouses. i think every american understands the downside of that form of just in time manufacturing in the covid pandemic, right? at the beginning of this, there were no gowns. there was no ppe. we had just in time
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manufacturing for what would become life saving supplies in the middle of a global pandemic. i wonder if you think, you know, as the layman better understands the implications of all this whether we're going to see the systems change, or is it just kind of back to, you know, business as usual? >> it's a great question, right? so well, first of all, we should just say that you need the suez canal unblocked no matter what system of global trade you have. i mean, so i don't want to overbear the metaphor, which is to say the suez canal is very important. we've got ships going around the cape of good hope right now like they were in the 17th century. so you need that at any given moment. the question, though, becomes and it goes back to this idea of dredging a second channel there, right? do you make the capital investments in dredging a second channel in the suez canal or in weatherizing generators in texas for several standard deviations
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of, you know, of weather events or do you create a ppe warehouse for a once-in-a-chen sur pandemic. those are all difficult calculations to make. plan for tail risk events. we keep seeing that over and over again as we live through this year. that's the biggest tail risk event we've literally had in 100 years. what do policymakers and governments and governing global institutions do to prepare for that stuff absent immediate pressure for it because often there isn't once the crisis dissipates. >> well, but i would also say we are entering a century of violent change. and i mean the climate, right? >> yep. >> this ship was blown around by a sand storm. these sand storms happen. and i'm not going to draw a line between climate change and what's happening in the suez. but we know the world will get drier, the storms will get more
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violent. the patterns that we have built shipping routes around, that we have built trade routes around, they are all changing. >> yep. >> when you talk about resilience, part of figuring out how we do business is building in redundanies because things are about to get a lot more chaotic. >> that is exactly right. we are entering a crisis area, one in which emergencies and once-in-a-century events happen more often because we have shaken up the soda bottle that is the global climate so it will erupt more often. this ends up being a question for policymakers, right? because there is not that much business incentive to do it. at the level of insurance companies and re-insurance companies there is. but generally the questions we have for democratic societies and even non-democratic societies like egypt is basically where policymakers marshall the resources and the
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capital investment and the planning to think about these unlikely events and put resources into them and withstand the heat if the pandemic doesn't come or the ship doesn't get stuck in the canal or the winter freeze doesn't come, right? and that to me is the big question. that's sort of the question for all of us, not just global trade but also how this country mentions, how we all function in this sort of increasingly chaotic era. >> we have a lot of questions to ask ourselves. chris hayes, it is a delight and a relief to see you, my friend. >> i'm sorry. >> we're building in redundancies. >> i'm literally running off a generator right now. so thank you for making it happen. >> you built in redundancies. make sure to catch chris tonight, we hope, on "all in". >> we'll see. who knows? >> when we return, as we do every day, we will remember lives well-lived. lives well-lived balanced nutn for strength and energy. whoo-hoo! great tasting ensure with 9 grams of protein,
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her children used to wake up to classical music on the radio. when it was time to bed, they would often go to bed listening to string quartets playing in their living room. her son, one of five children, told us that he can't imagine having had a more fortunate childhood, a house so full of music and equally full of love. beatrice was an eternally positive person, a believer in the idea of you get what you give and she recognized, quote, that the grass is always greenest wherever you water it. she was an accomplished musician and a dj at a classical music radio station. in fact, she was so admired there that even after her passing in december, wmmr in connecticut says they still play recordings of her old broadcasts. her son told us that when beatrice was in the hospital, sick with covid, she refused to life saving measures because she
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didn't want to take them from someone else. that final act, so emblematic of a selfless, kind, loving woman who lived life with patience and with peace, with music in her home and with a song in her heart. thank you so much for joining us for "deadline white house." i have wonderful news. nicole will be back on monday. we missed you, nicole. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> good evening, alex. great seeing you this week. tonight you need to see this. because what you see here is an escalation by the republican state government of georgia cracking down on voting rights, literally arresting a state senator, who is black, which is relevant to the racially charged voter suppression now breaking out in the state, and she was arrested for knocking on the governor's door as he signed this new voting crackdown. >> what did she do? what d

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