♪ ♪ good morning. it is saturday, april 24th. i'm ali velshi. coming up this hour, arizona republicans can't get over the fact their team lost on election day. now they've enlisted the self-proclaimed cyber ninja to help push the big lie. it doesn't get weirder than this. you don't want to miss the story. plus, crucial developments on the fight to get americans vaccinated and why some republicans threaten to set us back. also, the long republican senator that voted against a bill fighting anti-asian hate crimes. but we begin this hour with what comes next. what comes after the sight so many were waiting to see, derek chauvin convicted on all three counts in the murder of george

floyd being led away in handcuffs. this is accountability, but many say it still falls short of justice. on thursday i spoke with black minneapolis residents about what it has been like over the last year living in the shadow of this police murder and what the verdict means to them. >> thank you. >> i want to play for you some of the conversation that i had with some of those residents when i did ask them what was going through their mind when they witnessed that conviction. all right. i will bring it to you in just a moment. on thursday, just two days after the chauvin conviction, i did sit down with people in minneapolis. george floyd's family attended the family of daunte wright that day. daunte wright, as you know, is the 20-year-old unarmed black man shot and killed by a police officer in brooklyn center, minnesota, last week. it is just a short distance from

where the chauvin trial was taking place. the reverend al sharpton once again delivered the eulogy, another eulogy at another funeral of an unarmed black person killed by police. >> next time you get ready to pull your gun, next time you get ready to bend your knee, put in your mind the picture of the man taking the handcuffs and making chauvin put his hands behind his back and walk into a penitentiary and learn that you will pay for the crimes you commit. >> in columbus, ohio, outrage following the police-involved shooting death of a 16-year-old girl on tuesday. this newly released neighbor's security video shows the officer arriving on the scene, exiting the vehicle and shooting ma'khia bryant four times after she held a knife to another teenager. ma'khia would later die at the hospital. the officer has been placed on

administrative leave. overnight, new developments in north carolina where seven sheriff's deputies are on paid administrative leave following shooting of a black man on tuesday. officials say he was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies when they went to serve search and arrest warrants. the city's mayor will be holding a news conference about the situation later this morning. msnbc will bring it to you live. meanwhile, democratic lawmakers renewed their pledgor push for the george floyd justice in policing act which has already passed in the house. the hill reporting that democrats have raised pressure on senate republicans to pass the bill which would prohibit racial profiling at every level of law enforcement, ban chokeholds, and no-knock warrants, institute a national police misconduct registry and overhaul legal protections currently afforded to law enforcement known as qualified immunity. joining me is my friend and colleague, reverend al sharpton,

host of "politics nation" and the author of "rise up, confronting a country at the crossroads." rev, good to see you this morning. thank you for being with us. you have been talking about the specific things that we have seen in the last week, the very specific reforms and changes we need to policing. you have been talking about it for many, many years, decades, in fact. does it feel different to you? does it feel like we are moving toward change that could result in fewer people dying at the hands of police? >> i do believe that we are in a different kind of environment where change clearly seems possible. when we see people of all races now marching and standing up and when we see that there are those demanding legislation to really deal with what we've been engaged in, in demonstration, i

think that it will catapult us into a new level of police accountability. as i spent the time with the floyd family and other families down through the years and was with the fwamly when the verdict came in the other night, i thought about how it was jimmy lee jackson and his killing in marion, alabama, that was the spark that led to the voting rights act. dr. king did the eulogy at his funeral. james reed, a white unitarian preacher, was killed during that march. sometimes out of these tragedies we can turn our pain into power. i think that when i see mothers like eric garner's mother and tamir rice's mother and other mothers trying to get justice, it is their persistence that will make change happen. there will be those going for face time and then there are those going for real social

change, and that's what we must do now. >> rev, you work at every level of this. you are right on the ground when people are killed. you lead marches. you deliver the eulogies at funerals, but you also ran for president. you work at 50,000 feet, too. how important is this justice for policing act named after george floyd? what difference will it make if we get a few republicans on board and this thing passes? what changes do they make to the things that you have witnessed in your career? >> well, the changes it will be is that states can no longer be the last end all, let me put it that way, on how policing is done. the problem we've had is if you go to new york, you have one state, state laws for policing. then you go to the cities, they have different policies that they follow. california, something different. owe mayo is something different. if you have federal law that

says, you can't do chokeholds, that qualified immunity is federally illegal, they have to, in fact, abide by federal law. that's why in the movement, in the generation ahead of me in the early '60s with dr. king, they did not fight state by state to desegregate. they got federal law, civil rights act. so i think that the george floyd justice in policing act will set federal law on what policing can and cannot do in municipalities and states and the like. but i also think at the same time some of us had a virtual meeting with judge garland, the attorney general yesterday, they must reopen specific cases. the eric garner case needs to be reopened. i certainly and the national action network would support the people backing up tamir rice's mother. these cases need to be reopened.

they were mishandled at various levels on the state level. these cases need to be reopend at the same time we talk about the george floyd act because they've been violated under the old act with no acts there. not only do we want to see the george floyd act, we want to see the cases that were not prosecuted to be prosecuted. you must remember eric garner's family, tamir rice's family, breonna taylor's family never saw a court room. >> right. >> they never had a shot at justice. that's unfair as well. >> i will be speaking to tamir rice's mother coming up. reverend al sharpton is president and founder of national action network and author of "rise up." he is the host of msnbc's "politics nation" which you can catch every saturday and sunday evening at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. as i mentioned i spoke with a group of six black mind societyans after the verdict came down. one man told me how viewing the

george floyd video affected every fiber of his being. >> we saw the look on chauvin as he, you know, put his neck on george floyd's neck, and i could not -- i could not watch -- i never watched the whole thing because i just broke down like at the beginning. sorry. when you saw the look on his face, it was so horrible. and to see that person just feel like they could do that, i don't even know what to say. like it just goes against my humanity and what i believe in. i'm just happy, you know, to see him behind bars now and i just hope that cops think about this, you know, before they do something like this again. >> that was mohamed mohamed. joining me is blair anderson, the chief of police in st. cloud, minnesota. he's the first black chief in the city of st. cloud.

he served eight years in the u.s. army. chief, thanks for your service. i just want to get your response to that. that young man told me he is scared of police. he told me he wouldn't call police for help, and that video just reinforced that for him. >> well, that's unfortunate because of the vast majority of police officers out here are doing the job the right way for the right reason. i understand the emotion and the fear. i was outraged, gut wrenched. i have shed tears watching that, as has everyone else who has seen it, but we need to keep in mind when we talk about total reform and with respect to training and qualified immunity, that what we saw derek chauvin doing was not a training issue. that was a character issue. we need to be mindful and a little bit more sensible before we start passing sweeping reform because what i think is going to

happen, and we have already seen it start to happen, is a lot of good men and women are going to walk away from this profession, and how can you blame them? >> how big a deal is representation? i was talking to the former detroit police chief, i know you are originally from detroit, ralph gotby, and he was saying representation is an issue. minneapolis is not a very black place, minnesota is not. it is 7% of the population. you are one of only 2% of the population who are actually members of police forces there, and you are the only black chief. you're not the only black chief, but you're the only black chief who has ever been in st. cloud. how big a deal is representation? if it is character, it doesn't matter all that much if there are that many more black people as police? >> well, one of the challenges we have you point out already. the state is 85%, 90% white. in minnesota, in order to be a police officer you have to have

at minimum an associates degree. if you think back in history and over time, most folks of color that were in college were not pursuing criminal justice degrees. of the 11,100 police officers in this state, less than 300 are people of color. so the representation issue is real, but there aren't any candidates or certainly not that many to spread around. now, of that 300, once you figure in minneapolis and st. paul, that accounts for probably two-thirds of that. so there are 100 folks of color spread throughout the rest of the state in law enforcement. >> wow. >> we're working really hard to recruit folks and help them understand that this is a viable career. >> how do you -- how do you change the part that is not about, as you said, bad character or police who are not going to do something bad because they don't want to end up in jail like derek chauvin, how do you change -- how do you

get police to understand that people like mohamed are scared of them even if there are, as you say, many police who would never give mohamed reason to be scared? >> that's a great question and i'm glad you ask. i can speak for myself, i can tell you what i have done with my agency. we have an entire division dedicated solely to community engagement, and we start with the youth. we cover every spectrum of our community. we have a community outpost and tom emer has put forth a bill on the house floor so that the doj can appropriate funds to start houses all over the country, because a lot of meaningful engagement goes on there particularly with kids of color and people of color. it is one of many ways that we are trying to bridge that gap because we do understand that that fear exists, but we want them to know that we are here in service of them. >> chief blair, thanks for your

service. thanks for being with us this morning. chief blair anderson is the chief of police in st. cloud, minnesota. well, power was held to account for the murder of george floyd, a rare outcome in police killings. samira rice, the mother of tamir rice, is renewing her quest for justice for her 12-year-old son killed at the hands of police. she joins me. plus, what is going on in arizona? believe it or not, the state is still recounting ballots from the 2020 election, and it is being over seen by the company that traffics in conspiracy theories. also, johnson & johnson gets the okay again, but the pause on the vaccine may have caused more harm than good. "velshi" is back after a quick break. "velshi" is back after a k break. 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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♪ ♪ breaking news this morning on the fight against covid-19. an advisory panel for the cdc has recommended that the united states resume using johnson & johnson covid-19 vaccine. last week the fda and the cdc

asked states to pause administering this particular vaccine following reports of the rare blood clots, but health officials now say the benefits outweigh the risks, and this is key because the single shot -- this is just a one-shot vaccine, it is a critical element to getting these vaccines to underserved neighborhoods, rural areas, people who have difficulty scheduling a follow-up vaccine. joining me now is sam brock, who is at a fema vaccination site in miami for us. sam, good morning to you. thanks for being with us. we are now in a place where the big challenge is not supply, because we got enough vaccine, it is getting it to underserved areas, getting it to underserved people, convincing people who might be hesitant to get the shot. talk to me about how important it is that this johnson & johnson vaccine is back in the game. >> reporter: ali, i think that's exactly right. good morning. good to be with you. it seems like there are two aspects of the j & j pause that feel to be particularly material. one of them you already talked about, which is the fact it is a

single-dose shot, and also it doesn't need to be stored at sub arctic temperatures to get it into the community. the other fact is, is it contributing, this pause of ten days, to vaccine hesitation in general to women. there are 15 cases of severe blood clots associated with j j & j. all were women, 15 cases, three deaths associated with it, seven still hospitalized this morning. one of them is the rate for this is happening, for women 18 to 49 it is 1.9 cases for those per million doses. it is extremely rare but it doesn't mean it isn't causing some folks pause. i interviewed muriel and margaret, to women who came to this site to get the pfizer vaccine.

i asked their thoughts on j & j. 0.9 cases per mill doses, it doesn't calm your nerves? >> somewhat, but i don't want to be that exception. that's my only reason. >> uh-huh. >> i don't know when my number is up. i don't know if i'm that rare case. the numbers are there, but i don't want to be that statistic that says, okay, yes, i'm that seventh person or that eighth person. >> reporter: now, the fda and the cdc had suggested, ali, it could be as early as this morning that j & j shots would be going back into arms, but i just spoke with the head of public information officials for the state of florida who are monitoring the vaccines. they said right now the florida department of emergency management hasn't signed off on that, and you may be seeing similar mechanisms in states across the country. ali, back to you. >> sam, thanks very much. nbc's sam brock at miami-dade college's north campus.

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♪ ♪ derek chauvin will be sentenced to prison on june 16th for murdering george floyd last summer, but there are so many more black families who lost loved ones unjustly to police with zero accountability. take for example the family of tamir rice. if you recall in 201412-year-old tamir was killed by a white officer in cleveland after he was seen brand issuing a toy gun at a local park. as soon as police crews arrived on scene, an officer hopped out and within seconds fired shots at the boy. he later died. at that moment he did not have a toy gun in his hand and nobody was near him. the entire event was captured on surveillance video. attorneys for the rice family along with a delegation of lawmakers are urging the u.s.

attorney general merrick garland to reopen the seven-year-old case and consider charges against the officers involved. the family notes the official doj investigation was opened under the obama administration but not completed before the end of his term and then falling under the trump justice department. federal prosecutors said late last year they would not bring charges against the two officers involved. they claimed the video of the shooting was too low quality for them to conclusively establish what had happened. attorneys for rice additionally said that their case was later hampered by, quote, political superiors. the family's latest letter to the department of justice reads loud and clear, quote, the truth in this case is tragically simple. tamir was black and the cleveland police like many departments across the country engage in precipitous, unlawful and unjustified use of force in communities of color, frequently with immunity. joining me is the mother of tamir rice, samaria rice.

mrs. rice, thank you for being with us this morning. >> thank you. >> i can't imagine that this gets easier for you, and, frankly, in this last week where we've seen the conviction of derek chauvin and the burial of daunte wright, what are you peeling right -- what are you feeling right now? >> i'm feeling sad about daunte wright and that young lady, ma'khia bryant, but i am relieved that george floyd, derek chauvin got convicted in minnesota, found that george floyd's human rights was violated as well as tamir's human rights was violated. i'm hoping that we can get a conviction for tamir. >> in the last hour i spoke with deborah watts, who is a cousin of emmett till, who has been fighting since back then for justice for emmett till and no one has ever been held

accountable for his kidnapping and death. she said she is looking forward to reaching out to you and providing you with some support in this effort. i asked her whether she had any words for you. let's listen together to what she told me. >> continue to fight. continue to use all of the resources that you have available to you to make sure that they listen. you know, the voices of those that are closest to the pain need to be heard, and so that has happened in the past. that's the blueprint that emmett till's mother laid is a pathway forward for all of the mothers, tamir rice's mother as well. i know that there's grief and there's hurt and there's pain, but she is built for this. she is built to fight for her son, built to fight for the rest of those that are coming after him as well, those for the future. >> i know you and deborah watts and the floyd family and eric garner's family and michael brown's family are part of a club nobody wants to be in, but it does seem that you have

support in this effort. >> i do have support. a lot of national support and the people support me and, you know, my family. it is just sad that my son had to lose his life because of the policing in america and understanding that it is infiltrated with white supremacy. they have a committee genocide on american citizens for so long, over 401 years now. it is just quite sad that america is continuing to keep us oppressed and murdering black and brown, people of color, and allowing these people to come in our community that don't understand our community and take our loved ones. >> are you hopeful with the conviction of derek chauvin that

your son's case might get a different look, that the department of justice or maybe just under this new president that they may take this more seriously and look at it again and maybe gather a grand jury? >> i am hopeful. i am. i'm hoping that derek chauvin gets a substantial amount of time, because time and time again we see officers -- not time and time, but it has -- it's been a while. i think the last officer i seen was in the walter scott case. he got 20 years. and then some other cases, you know, we see 18 months, we see five years. we want substantial amount of time for these murders in how these officers have destroyed our lives. you know, 25 years plus for derek chauvin is a good start,

and timothy lowman, he can go to jail for life. you know, my son was 12 years old, he was a baby, and his human rights was violated and he should be in prison. as of right now he is a civilian walking around in ohio and, you know, he went to his last -- what is it? his last court appeal process and no judge in ohio let him get his job back, and i am happy about that as well. but he needs to be in jail for the murder of my son for life. my life is destroyed. my family's life is destroyed, and i just have to, you know, continue to do what i need to do to build tamir's legacy. i have a whole foundation. i am a ceo and the founder of, i have tamir rice cultural center which i purchased a building in

cleveland, ohio, to offer after school programming. my son benefited from being in after school programming and mentoring and counseling, things of that nature. you know, when you are a single parent you have to put things in place to make sure your children succeed, make sure they win. you know, you have to invest in them. i have invested in my children, i have invested in the community. so, you know, my fight always continues, you know, it always continues. it is when they kill -- you know, keep killing us like this, it just keeps opening up the wound bigger and bigger and bigger. it never gets a chance to heal at all with all of these murders across the united states. it is really pathetic and it is pitiful. i really need the biden administration to make things right for us black and brown americans, us latino americans, and the ones that been born in this country and things like that. you shouldn't have to come to america, even if you not -- you shouldn't have to come to

america and get murdered, you know what i'm saying? america is supposed to be the land of the free, the land of opportunity, and they do not hold up to that. they do not hold up to that measures. how do the police bill of rights trump the constitutional rights? so america has a lot of fixing to do, a lot of fixing to do. i do not want to see this country in a race war. i do not want to see my people slaughtered in the streets. we need to fix it. there can't never be a better america again, you have to fix what you have already done. that's how i feel about, you know, everything. we could always talk, you know what i'm saying, but it is just a lot that i have seen in the last 70 years because i thought i was an american citizen. i was just living my life and i got a knock at the door and my life just changed, it changed like a 360 like real quick.

i had to reeducate myself again. i had to do everything because america has sold me a dream. like it is like a nightmare and i haven't woken up yet. i always say that sometimes. it is a nightmare and i don't wish this on anybody. like i don't wish this for nobody, not to be fighting in this country. >> yes. it is hard, but as deborah watts said to me, you're built for it. i'm sorry that you have to go through it. >> thank you. >> samaria rice, thank you for joining us this morning. samaria rice is the mother of the late tamir rice. happening in arizona, ballot audit of the 2020 election. are we in the twilight zone? the group overseeing the recount is not a government entity. it is a private cybersecurity firm that has peddled the big lie. s peddled the big lie. the bowls are back.

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♪ ♪ we are almost 100 days into president joe biden's first term in office, yet state senate republicans in arizona are still trying to keep the big lie alive. a ballot recount is under way in maricopa county, the state's largest county with 2.1 million votes. it is not being carried out by a government agency or official body in arizona. instead, republicans brought in a private security firm called cyber ninjas to carry out the process, and conveniently cyber ninjas is a company whose ceo pushed and peddled the same

theories as the former president. the associated press reported in march that doug logan retweeted a response to a post by arizona republican party chair kelly ward in which she questioned the validity of 200,000 maricopa county ballots. it was just one of the many instances in which he was seen promoting disproven or unsupported allegations of the election. as one would expect the disgraced former president issued a statement praising the process. quote, thank you, state senators and others in arizona for commencing this full forensic audit. i predict the results will be startling. the results will not be startling. the recount has been criticized heavily by voting rights advocates who say the process lacks independent oversight and could be used to further propagate the lie. the state party and county supervisor filed a lawsuit on thursday to halt the process, but ultimately the judge required that the party pay a $1 million bond to delay the

recount. the party decided not to pay meaning the recount goes on. what is startling about this is the political nature of the story, that arizona republicans are using the recount to further the baseless claims about the 2020 election. donald trump is the biggest sore loser of our life times, and the way he and his cronies handle defeat has major ramifications in the trust of elections going forward. i'm joined now by hayes brown, writer and editor of the msnbc daily online news letter and christina greer, south korea professor of political science at fordham university in new york. thank you for being with us. professor greer, this is having an effect. this big lie nonsense is having an effect. i want to share with you a poll about the drop in support for democracy in the way of no-excuse or early absentee voting. in october 2019 -- 2018, i'm sorry, 57% of republicans supported no-excuse early or

absentee voting. it has now dropped to 38%, a drop of 19 points in two-and-a-half years. christina, this is working. >> it is. first things first, ali, i want to thank hayes for his clear and concise writing about this, just help contextualize where we are. sadly donald trump continues to just repeat a lie time and time again where his claims have just reached local, state and federal levels. so we have organizations like fair fight who have been mobilizing people across the country. arizona was one of the states where they were helping to mobilize people who -- citizens who should be able to vote, but the problem is if we decrease americans' faith in elections moving forward, it is not going to just affect 2024, it affects 2022. this affects local elections where now we see republicans who lose elections fair and square, all they have to do is continue to say, well, they cheated and i

actually won. they can hold it up in the courts, and then it actually does erode confidence in our electoral process, especially for someone like me who is consistently trying to get young people involved in the electoral process and vote and see how their vote actually affects overall american democracy. that's what is really worrisome to me as well. >> hayes, the problem here is that there are, like, virtually -- there's virtually no voter fraud in this country. instead of having a good conversation about safe voting that is accessible to more people, we are vul a fully partisan conversation where increasingly republicans just think they want to limit voting. in most of the states, by the way, there were republican legislatures and governors who put these making-it-easier-to vote things in place. now that they're losing they decide to change it. >> absolutely. i wish we could have an honest, good faith conversation about how to make sure elections are secure moving forward, how to improve election technology, how to improve access to voting.

i wish that could be the conversation we are having. in states like arizona, in georgia, in texas, across the country what we're seeing is a response to donald trump losing, and we are seeing like even as donald trump -- we're not sure if he is going to run in 2024. we are not sure what his plans are for the republican party. not sure if the republican party even is going to put up with trump and his antics for that much longer. we just don't know these things, and yet republican elected officials are assuming that's what the people want. not just their base, but that's what the party as a whole want. so they're making these moves without thinking far enough into the future as to what happens next, what happens for the next candidates on run, what happens for whenever donald trump is no longer going to be on the ballot or a topic of conversation. so by hitching their wagon to him in rearranging their state's votings laws we see things like what is happening in arizona where they're making it up on the fly. they're following trump's lead and making things up as they go and hoping it works out for them in the end.

it rarely does in those situations, yet they're going to keep on trying. they're going to try and show that somehow two other audits of the ballots in maricopa county were wrong and that donald trump actually did win by however many thousand votes he lost by. so i'm really curious to see how this goes given the absolute snafu that is going on in arizona right now. >> it is really remarkable. we didn't get into all the details, but it is quite detailed. stick around for me. hayes brown and christina greer, we have more to discuss. the city of minneapolis is changed by the derek chauvin trial, particularly the bystanders who carry the burden of having watched george floyd's murder. i'm joined by tiffany cross, host of "the cross connection" here on msnbc. you will be talking to the bystanders who witnessed the trial. >> that's right. we will be talking to donald williams. he is the guy who testified, the

mma fighter who the defense was questioning him and saying, hey, you called this police officer a bum, you said these things. he looked the defense attorney in the eye and said, yes, i said it, yes, i meant it. his testimony was one of those things, as you remember, it wasn't necessary crucial to making the case, but it was a symbol of defiance and liberation for a lot of people in the community. so i'm very excited to talk to him. and we are going to get into some poverty issues. we have the newly minted hud secretary, marcia fudge, who left congress to take up the seat with the house of congress. we have a lot to talk about. >> i watched every second of donald williams' testimony and it was riveting. i look forward to it. i will see you later on. "the cross connection" starts in a little bit at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on msnbc. up next, republican senator ron johnson asks the question,

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i see no reason to be pushing vaccines on people. what is the point? the science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective, so if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not? what does a few -- you've got a

vaccine, and science is telling you it's very, very effective. so why is this big push to make sure everybody gets the vaccine? >> what's the point? i think the point is to avoid more death. more than 575,000 people have died due to the covid infection in the united states. back with me, hays brown. christina greer, associate professor at fordham university in new york. i don't understand what happened to ron johnson, christina. he wasn't like this before but he seems to have managed to have found himself on the wrong side of a wedge situation. there are pregnant women, immunocompromised people, the point of herd immunity is we're not giving it to people who can't get vaccinated. >> absolutely, ali. we still don't know everything about this virus. the more people vaccinated helps us get back to normal. we can go to restaurants, go out

in public, help the economy. the fact that ron johnson doesn't believe in science and i think he is one of the senators that does exhibit that trumpism is a disease. where we have taken people who were once somewhat real be and they have turned themselves into these true believers that whatever the president has said in the past, even though the president has flip flopped, even though the former president has taken a vaccine, you see someone like senator johnson just completely ignore what is good for the american people and that is quite frightening. i think the citizens of wisconsin will see him at the voting booths because of his irresponsible words and deeds over the past few years. >> so i wonder if that's motivating to him? i think it's motivating him the wrong way. as you pointed out, the republican party either can't detach itself from donald trump or from trumpism. ron johnson seems to be taking a page out of the song book that

josh hawley's reading from and ted cruz and lauren bovert and louie gomert. he's going to say outlandish things. >> yeah, and am i working for him? we're talking about him. the fact that we're even discussing senator ron johnson right now is proof that there's some little bit of method to his madness, but, i mean, the fact that he is out there saying these things, i mean, it's not the first time that he has proven that he is not exactly one of the intellectual pettibones of the senate. we'll put it that way. he believed donald trump to -- when trump was lying to his base, he said so many outlandish things since joining the senate that his 2022 race is going to be interesting to say the least. i believe that he's out there much like josh hawley, are following the ted cruz playbook. they want to be iconoclass.

they want to stand out on all issues, even if it doesn't make sense in the home state, even if it doesn't make sense logically. they want to be seen, they want to be heard and they are basically speaking their mind. in ron johnson's case. in cruz and hawley's case it's a bit more complicated than johnson who's speaking his mind. >> with cruz and hawley we know they're running for president, we assume they are. josh hawley made a comment the other day, he was the only senator who voted against a hate crimes act that was supposed to be designed to protect against hate crimes, particularly against asian-americans. he said, it's too broad. my view of it is it's dangerous to simply give the federal government open ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents. christina greer, he was even a standout amongst republicans for taking this position. >> yeah, but, you know, depending on what's going on in his state, that will actually

help him in a primary vote. keep in mind, these people are thinking about how to get re-elected and so something like that, you know, definitely goes with, you know, the trump believers who believe that the government has far too much oversight, far too much power and that's a stance that even though it's separating him from the herd, it helps with fundraising and keeping him in the eye and national attention from 2022 to 2024 and, sadly, republicans have seen this before, especially in statehouses. they'll take one sort of particular issue that almost everyone can agree on and find a kernel of that and say, well, you know, i would -- i would sign it but, you know, it's just either too broad or too narrow. we saw this with republicans who didn't want to fund the zadrogova bill haggling over minor details so they wouldn't have to support it and be on record. it's shameful and it does harm americans in the present and

obviously reaching into the future. >> well, in the case of that bill, people died while waiting for that to happen. you make an interesting point, hays. the fact that we're talking about ron johnson means there's something to it. i kind of worry about the fact we do on one hand but on the other hand, if we don't, we don't bear witness to some remarkable things that are happening in politics. some of these remarkable lies that are occurring. i wonder how you deal with this? you're an editor and you have to think about -- and curate what you write and what goes out there. how don't -- i guess we have to cover this stuff when it's that outlandish. >> yeah, we do. we have to call it out. we have to point out it's happening. they are national figures, there's no way around that. they do have an audience. they are reaching the audience that they want to reach so we are basically -- we're not really pushing it further. we are challenging it with the audience out here watching msnbc this fine saturday morning, but it's really interesting to go

back to josh hawley for a second. that point that he raised about it being overly broad. ironically enough, that is a truly conservative idea. it's a set of conservative buzz words that this bill is overly broad, et cetera. but he's deploying it in a situation where no one else agrees with him. no other conservative is looking at this very conservative argument that josh hawley is making saying, you know what, you're right. i will join you in this. so it just shows that he's so prone to -- people like him, cruz, johnson are so prone to bending the truth that it can be hard at some times to sift through and find what is actually true inside of their lies. there usually is some kernel of truth in there. vaccines are highly effective. once you get it, you are mostly protected, but then he takes it to this whole other level. that's what we're seeing with hawley and so many other

republicans. they start off at a place of some truth and they blow it way out of proportion or it's to gain supporting votes. >> thank you both this morning. hays brown is with msnbc daily and christina is at fordham university. she's the author of "black ethnics." that does it for me. catch me back here tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. eastern. i'm talking to white house national climate advisor gina mccarthy. don't start heading to brunch because the cross connection starts now. ♪♪ ♪♪

i was talking to one of the relatives and i said, well, why are they -- what are they trying to justify? they said -- one said, well, they saw some air fresheners in the back of his car. where we come today as the air fresheners from minnesota. we trying to get the stench of police brutality out of the atmosphere. good morning, i'm tiffany cross. a busy morning on "the cross connection." antiprotest laws sweeping the country. new guidelines on covid vaccines. we begin with the next steps in the fight for justice. reverend al sharpton delivered such a stirring eulogy thursday at the funeral for daunte wright who was killed at a traffic stop in minnesota. wednesday police shot and killed