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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  January 12, 2022 1:00am-2:00am PST

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disturbing. >> adam mackay, it's a great movie, you should check it out if you have. and thank you so much. >> thank you, chris. always a pleasure. >> that is all in on tuesday night, the rachel maddow show starts now. good evening rachel. evening, chris, thank you, my friend, much appreciated. thanks for joining us this hour. we've got a lot going on tonight. after president biden's big voting rights speech in georgia, and all the fallout from that. we'll talk to a senator who was there at the speech, and has a bit of an inside track on whether or not the senate is actually going to deliver on what vice president harris and president biden called for today. this is a senator who has been with the president all day. she's going to be joining us live in just a few minutes, after she touches back down in d.c. on the air force one flight back from georgia. very much looking forward to that conversation. we're also going to be speaking with one of the leading voting rights activists in the country,
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someone who, to be honest, has actually given president biden a really hard time on this issue. who has been really confrontational with president biden and the biden administration on this issue. he's been pretty relentless in saying president biden needed to do more, say more, go further to make sure everything possible was being done to protect voting rights. this activist told us today that he thinks president biden in atlanta today hit it out of the park. that this is exactly what he was hoping to hear. so we'll hear from him in a few minutes tonight as well. he's got a really interesting perspective on this stuff. we're going to get to all of that. briefly, though, before we get to all that, i do want to tell you about a new interesting development in a story that we have been chasing for a little while now. and it suddenly seems like we are starting to get somewhere with this, and i want to give you an update. we first talked about this on the air last month, just before christmas, when we obtained this document from wisconsin.
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this document is a forged document. it purports to be the official slate of electors chosen by wisconsin in the last presidential election, but it's not. in wisconsin, joe biden defeated donald trump which means the state chose democratic party electors to cast votes in the electoral college. but last month, we reported on this document that was created by republicans in wisconsin after the election. they actually sent it into congress, they sent it into the national archives. they tried to pass it off as an official document, as if they were the real electors, and they were casting wisconsin's electoral votes, and they were casting them for trump and pence. so we talked about that forged document from wisconsin on the show last month. and we did that in the context of this sort of ongoing open question in wisconsin as to whether or not anybody's going to get in trouble for that.
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whether or not the state election board or in fact state prosecutors in wisconsin are going to signers of that fake document, potentially on forgery charges. so that is sort of where this story started for us. and, boy, did we hear from you, the viewers, on this story. when we started covering it. we got a lot of feedback, a lot of people expressing concerns about how serious this seemed to be. and, you know, it's a big story. you know? wisconsin republicans taking the whole election denial thing one step beyond. actually sending the national archives and congress a forged document, it's a fascinating story. and i understand why a lot of our viewers were disturbed by it and contacted us about it. that was where we were last month. then last night, thanks to reporting from politico.com, the reporter nicholas wu, we were able to show you additional forgeries from additional
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states. turns out it was not just wisconsin. republicans in michigan and republicans in arizona also created forged documents after the election where they tried to pass themselves off as the real electors for those states. when in fact they were not the real electors for those states. and again, they didn't just prepare these documents for, you know, home scrapbooking, how i wish the election had gone. right? they actually prepared these documents, made them look as official as possible. they cited u.s. law, they proclaimed themselves officially to be the legal representatives of the state. and they sent these things in to the government to be counted. pretty astonishing thing. right? we first got the forged documents from wisconsin last month. and last night, we showed you similar forgeries from michigan and from arizona as well. now, if you watched last night's show, do you remember how i said, when i was talking about this story, raise your hand if
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you think there will be more of these? yeah, that didn't take long. turns out there's more. and let me show you this at the outset. this is what the real one looks like. this is what the real document is supposed to look like. when a state finalizes and certifies its election results, they know which candidate won the state, that tells you which candidate's elects will cast that state's vote in the electoral college. if trump won, it will be trump electors, if biden won, it will be biden electors. this is a real process. here's what it looks like for real. here, for example, this is michigan. and all the states do it a little differently in terms of presentation, but the basic point is to convey all the same official information. so, here's the real elector certificate from the state of michigan. it kind of looks like a diploma, right?
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let's do another state. let's do the real elector certificate from arizona. yeah, the arizona one is very nice. the arizona one, i think, sort of looks like a medical degree. and not all of them are fancy like this. this one from georgia is all business, just the facts. same with the one from wisconsin. it's cold this time of year, don't have time for any periphery. just get to the point. most states are somewhere in the middle, somewhere between a diploma and a gas station receipt. here's one, for example from nevada. this is fairly typical. every state does it different, but they're all real. the basic information is the same. we the undersigned, being the qualified electors for the state of "x," and then the votes are cast, they have the signatures and all of the people who have the qualified elects, that's what the real ones look like.
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can we put those on the screen together? i think we have them from a bunch of different states. there's the five i just mentioned. as you can see, it's the same basic information on all of them. all these documents serve the same purpose, they all meet the constitutional threshold they need to meet in order to convey the information differently. but they all look a little different. they convey the information visually a little differently. depending on how the state felt about this particular topic and what kind of nice stationary they had laying around on foil seal. and i picked these five because thanks to the watchdog group american oversight, in all five of these states, republicans also prepared forged, faked documents sent to the government, proclaiming that actually, these are the
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electors, or the real electors from these states. and they were casting electoral college votes not for biden, but for trump. tell me if you notice something. these are the documents from georgia. in georgia, that's the real electoral vote document on the left, that's the forgery that was created by republicans on the right. now, let's do nevada. in nevada, that's the real one on the left. and that's the fake one on the right. here also is wisconsin, where we reported on their forgery last month. that's the real one on the left. fake one on the right. here's michigan, the real one on the left, and the forgery on the right. and lastly, here's arizona. the real electoral vote document on the left, and the fake one on the right. wasn't one state. wasn't three states where they did this. it was at least five states where we have now obtained forged documents created by republicans. and it's not like they, again, created these documents to,
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like, hold close to their chest and fantasize that this had been the real outcome. it's not like they created these documents just to keep as a keepsake. they sent them in to the government as if they were real documents. and it's not like they sent them in saying, hey, we know we're not the real electors because biden won here, but here's our names for posterity, here's our names for the records. but, no. they created these fake documents purporting to be the real certifications of them as electors. here it is in the forged document from georgia. look at the language. we, the undersigned, being the duly elected and qualified elects from the state of georgia, do hereby certify -- you are not the duly elected and qualified electors for the state of georgia. you are not. but that language, or language just like this is in all of these. you might have noticed something
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when i put them all up there, when i put the real documents up there. again, all the real certificates from the state, they're all unique, with their quirks, fancy or not fancy paper. decorations and seals. contrast that with the forged republican documents. look at them. they all match. exactly. same formatting, same font, same spacing. almost the exact same wording, all of them. now, you might remember on last night's show, we noted that the forged documents from michigan and wisconsin looked really similar. looked really alike. but the arizona one actually looked a little bit different. here's the amazing thing we discovered today about arizona. it looks like there were actually two sets of forged electoral college documents sent in by arizona republicans. there was the sort of hoopy
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different looking one that showed you last night with notary stamps all over it, obtained by politico.com. as of today, thanks to american oversight, we've obtained another one, also from arizona, also a forgery. a whole different set of republican impostors sent one in from arizona, and that matches exactly all of the other forged electoral votes from the six other states that we've found. excuse me, from the four other states that we've found. so this is kind of nuts, right? i mean, arizona alone. in arizona, they're so around the bend that two different sets of republicans sent the national archives and congress two different sets of forged, fake documents purporting to be the electoral college votes from the state of arizona. one of those forgeries was maybe, like, freelanced, let's get a notary to sign every page. that will make it look real. but the other one from arizona matches exactly in form, spacing, font, and language, exactly the forgeries sent in by republicans in at least four other states.
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in these five states, one of the two forgeries from arizona, and the four other states, the forged documents all match. this would therefore appear to be some kind of a coordinated effort, or at least someone gave republicans in all these states the same template for creating these false records. because they all have the same font, they all have the same language, they all have the same spacing, formatting. that doesn't happen by accident. who organized this in these five different states? we have learn a lot in the last year about all the things former president trump and his associates did to try to seize power, to try to falsify the election results and prevent the newly elected president from taking over. now we're starting to figure out that those efforts appear to include someone, somewhere coordinating an effort in at least five states to have republicans create and submit to the government forged
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documents in which they claim to be the real electors from their states when they were not. elects for trump, even though these were all states that biden won. this was not a clear and coordinated effort before, but now we know it was. who coordinated this effort? now, at the time this was happening, pennsylvania republicans, pennsylvania is not one of the states we've been talking about here, they actually put out a statement saying the trump campaign had asked them to create and certify, like, within the republican party, a republican set of electors for pennsylvania. as they explained in their press release at the time, though, the pennsylvania republicans didn't forge a document to make it look like they were the real electors. they created a new document that said they would become the elects if a court ever ordered that the republican side had actually won the election in pennsylvania. they didn't forge a document saying they believed they were,
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they were purporting to be the official electors from pennsylvania. they created a document that said if a court ever says republicans won in pennsylvania, then we'll be the electors. now, they say the trump campaign advised them to create that alternate slate. we're trying to track down the claims in that statement, if in fact the trump campaign was recruiting republicans to not just create contingent elects, in case it was reversed by courts, but if the trump campaign were commissioning them to forge official looking documents in multiple states where the wrong elects purported to be the real electors, well, we'll do our best to get to the bottom of that. but here's something else to note. after these forged documents were created and submitted to congress and the national archives, from these five states, where fake slates of electors said we're the electors
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from our states, five states, after that happened, at least one trump loyalist at the department of justice, the u.s. department of justice, was aware that republicans had done this in multiple states. now, one of the trump officials who has pled the fifth, invoked his fifth amendment rights against self-indiscrimination to avoid testifying to the january 6th investigation, his name is jeffrey clark. clark, he's the one trump reportedly tried to install as attorney general right at the end. best we can tell from public reporting, trump seemed to like the cut of his jib after jeff clark drafted a letter that he insisted must go out on justice department letterhead to some of the states that trump lost, including georgia. this letter that was reportedly drafted by jeff clark was addressed to the state government in georgia, it was reportedly going to be sent to multiple other states as well.
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and this letter falsely stated that the u.s. justice department was investigating serious credible claims of fraud in the election in that state. and that the state legislature should therefore consider holding back the state's electoral college votes. jeff clark drafted this letter from the u.s. justice department to go to georgia and other states. and because the rest of the justice department wouldn't sign off on it and do it, trump tried to install jeff clark as attorney general so jeff clark could send that letter and sign it attorney general. now, had that happened, think about it, had the u.s. justice department jumped in the way trump wanted to, the way jeff clark proposed, had the u.s. justice department told republican-led states in formal letters don't send in biden electors on advice from the u.s. justice department you
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better not do that, how do you think republican legislatures in those states would have acted? it's one thing to get, you know, an off the wall call from trump berating you. right? it's another thing for the u.s. justice department to formally advise you over the signature of the united states attorney general that you must not send in your electors because there's real problems with the vote in your state. how would republican legislatures have responded? we would be living in a different country right now. i'm not sure all of us would be living in the same country as each other anymore, had that letter gone out. that was just insanity. that would have been as radical as trump's plan to send the national guard to seize election information. to intervene to stop the administration of the election in that way. here's the thing, that insane draft letter written by jeff clark, which made trump want to install him as attorney general,
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that insane letter was apparently created last december. dates december 28th, 2020, that letter explicitly describes these forged slates of electors from multiple states. it says in the middle of the letter, the department believes that in georgia and several other states, both a slate of electors supporting biden and a separate slate of electors supporting trump gathered on december 14th at the proper location to cast their ballots and that both sets those ballots have been transmitted to washington, d.c. to be opened by vice president fence. pence. in fact, i don't know why the justice department believed that to be true, but that was correct. we now know, republicans in multiple states had sent in false assertions, forged documents claiming to be the electors for their states. that draft letter was dated december 28th. how did that guy, that trump guy at the justice department know that two weeks earlier,
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republicans in at least five states had in fact created these forged elector documents? did the trump justice department know about it, because they helped republicans in those states do it? we don't know. but somebody helped them do it, because they all filed the exact, same document in the same font, in the same spacing, with the exact same language that somebody helped them do it. we are working on figuring it out. i'll also just tell you one other thing about this. in a lot of these states, for whatever reason, the forged, fake elector votes, the documents that were sent in, they also, in addition to the assertion that these were the duly elected electors from these states, which was a lie, a lot of them also included a bunch of substitutions. meaning the people who were originally supposed to be trump electors from the state had trump won, the originals had
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their names dropped and they were replaced with other names, with other republicans who did sign these documents. so when the fake documents were created to try to pass these off as the state's electors, some of those who had been slated to be trump electors, weren't the people who signed them, they were replaced. they were substituted at the last second. in almost every state that did this, people who were originally supposed to be trump electors got replaced with others before the forged documents got sent in. why is that? we're trying to get to the bottom of that, too. but i can tell you that at first pass, that in at least one state, at least one of the republicans who was substituted for, whose name was dropped as an elector, one republican who was replaced by somebody else before that forged document was signed and sent in, that republican told us this evening that that substitution was deliberate. that person had their name taken off the list and replaced because that person did not want to be part of that effort to
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forge a slate of electors that was not the real electors from that state. one of the republican electors who was replaced in georgia. that person told us this tonight. quote, i knew the meeting was taking place, but i did not wish to attend. i did not wish to give my electoral vote knowing that president biden had already been certified by the state. that you'd hope would be the reaction by every republican approached to sign their name as if they were a real elector in a state that was not won by their candidate but in fact was won by the other guy. you would hope that would be the reaction from everyone approached to forge a document like this, and sign their name to it under circumstances like this. but in at least five states, we know they filled out a full slate of fake electors who were willing to put their names there. there was at least one republican we know of who
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balked who knew this forged elector thing was going ahead, who didn't want anything to do with this. there are at least a dozen other republicans who were also substituted out, for whatever reason they had their names replaced, and other republicans signed instead. we know at least one decision was a matter of conscience and patriotism. for one georgia republican. we will see if we can find out about the others. now, as we reported here in december, there is an open question in wisconsin as to whether the forgery there is going to be pursued by the state election board, or indeed by state prosecutors. those people in wisconsin said they were the state's electors and they were not, and they tried to pass themselves off that way. that would appear to be against the law in wisconsin. there is an open question as to whether or not that is going to be pursued as a criminal matter by the state election board. this is new. in michigan, the detroit news has just reported that the
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matter is part of an ongoing information by the attorney general's office. here's "the detroit news" new reporting, a spokeswoman for the michigan attorney general declined to discuss the legality of the republican certificate in detail, saying it was part of an ongoing probe. saying that is part of an information into election related matters. we're not in a position to share specifics as the review remains ongoing. so, in terms of whether or not the people who did this are individually going to get in trouble -- open question in at least two states. i don't know about the others. but this is a thing that happened, and apparently in five states at least. this is a new element we didn't previously understand about the way trump world maneuvered to try to falsify the election results to try to stop the transfer of power. it may have put in individual legal jeopardy all of the republicans who put their names on these forged documents in at least five states.
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now widening on, a little bit, the basis for all of these efforts they made to throw out the real results in the states were these, you know, false claims of fraud, which, frankly, they started hyping even before the election. they're still hyping them now. they're still hyping them now, both to justify new restrictions on the right to vote, and trying to subvert the reality of the last one. and that's a connection that in atlanta today, president biden argued loudly and clearly. >> here's how they plan to subvert the election. the georgia republican party, the state legislature, has now given itself the power to make it easier for partisan actors, their cronies, to remove local election officials. think about that. what happened the last election? the former president and allies pursued, threatened, and
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intimidated state and local election officials. election workers, ordinary citizens were subject to death threats. menacing phone calls. people stalking them in their homes. remember what the defeated former president said? quote, i just want to find 11,780 votes. pray god, he didn't say that part -- he didn't say count the votes. he said find votes. that he needed to win. he failed because of courageous officials, democrats, republicans, who did their duty and upheld the law. but with this new law in georgia, his loyalists will be placed in charge of state elections. what is that going to mean?
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well, the chances for chaos and subversion are even greater, as partisans seek the results they want no matter what the voters have said. no matter what the count. the votes of nearly 5 million georgians will be up for grabs if that law holds. it's not just here in georgia. last year alone, 19 states, not proposed, but enacted 34 laws attacking voting rights. there were nearly 400 additional bills, republican members of state legislatures tried to pass. and now republican legislators in several states have already announced plans to escalate the onslaught this year. the end game, to turn the world of voters into a mere suggestion. something states can respect or
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ignore. jim crow 2.0 is about two insidious things. voter suppression, and election subversion. it's no longer about who gets to vote. it's about making it harder to vote. it's about who gets to count the vote. and whether your vote counts at all. it's not hyperbole. this is a fact. >> voter suppression and election subversion. president biden speaking today in atlanta, trying to rally the country in support of strong new federal protections for voting rights and for the technique that cattic nonpartisan administration of election. he's rallying the country. he's speaking to the country today, but it's 100 americans in the united states senate who will make or break this issue. who are both the intended audience, and the instrument on which this tune has to play. whether or not it can be done,
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whether or not it can be changed, in terms of two conservative democrats who are blocking the possibility of this happening. we'll get into it next with senator amy klobuchar. stay with us. senator amy klobuchar. stay with us
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i've been having these quiet conversations with members of congress for the last two months. i'm tired of being quiet! state legislatures can pass anti-voting laws with simple majorities. if they can do that, then the united states senate should be able to protect voting rights by a simple majority. today, i'm making it clear. to protect our democracy, i support changing the senate rules whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights. when it comes to protecting
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majority rule in america, the majority should rule in the united states senate. >> president biden today making this forceful public case for voting rights. for changing the senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed in order to allow the senate to pass voting rights protections with a majority of the u.s. senators, the majority of the senators in the u.s. senate voting for it. he said he was tired of being quiet, tired of negotiations with legislators. now here's the million dollar question. will the senate act? what effect does this kind of public clarion call have on the holdouts among democratic senators who have said thus far
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however just the cause they're a no. joining us now, senator amy klobuchar, chair of the rules committee. one of the lead sponsors of the freedom to vote today. she just returned to d.c. aboard air force one with president biden. senator, it's really great to see you. i know it's been a long day. thanks for being here. >> thanks, rachel. >> go ahead. >> before we get into what is going on in the senate which is the key question, i did want to say president biden's speech was wonderful tonight as was vice president harris'. but there was this moment when he talked about how there was a moment in time, and this has happened through history, where time basically stops. he brought up the bomb blowing up in the church in birmingham, when john lewis crossed that bridge, and he got hit, and people got killed, and people got injured. and he brought up january 6th. there are those moments, and this is one of those moments. it didn't begin or end on january 6th. it's been a concerted effort. as you know and you just talked
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about on your show, over 400 bills across the country, many of them passed to take people's rights away to vote. as reverend warnock has said repeatedly, some people don't want some people to vote. this is a moment when time stands still, and this is the argument we're making to these two senators. >> i was also struck, senator klobuchar, with the argument that the president made about the way the partisan shift on this issue has changed over time. the way he went out of his way, speaking in atlanta, speaking in blue dot atlanta, in blue state georgia, in front of a supportive audience. but talking about how republicans until quite recently, all but unanimously supported voting rights, and the voting rights act. people like george w. bush and
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strom thurmond. he talked about thurmond, the anti-civil rights icon, who in the end supported the voting rights act. this is something that even republicans found necessary to do by massive margins in the past. that is both an indictment of republicans but also of democrats who won't do what needs to be done in order to get it passed. i wonder about what your reflections were on him talking so much about how the partisanship on this issue has calcified in a way we've never seen before? >> well, i think it makes the case, right? for many of us, as you know, i cherish the work i've done across the aisle. i've passed a bunch of bills, as i've mentioned many times. but the point is, they're not playing on this right now. even though, and that's why i think he felt it was important to make the case, in the past, democracy triumphed. it's more important than any divides between us. but right now, because of the large shadow of donald trump over the republican party, there are very few people that are willing to stand up like you're seeing with liz cheney, with the
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january 6th commission, that she's willing to stand up, over in the house. and there's just not that happening right now in the senate when it comes to voting rights. and the case i've made in those rooms to my colleagues, where we want it to happen, to quote "hamilton," the filibuster has -- it is unbelievable, changes to the filibuster are not radical. they have happened 160 times, rachel. changes have happened where bills have been passed without the 60 vote, 1977 national gas policy, 1980, selective service, 1987, national defense bill, 1995, endangered species bill. the bush tax cuts. the trump tax cuts through reconciliation. what just happened with mitch mcconnell and the debt ceiling. history is riddled with exceptions and changes that were made. it was robert byrd himself, and i've said this to senator manchin several times.
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who once said, you know, you change the rules when there are changed circumstances. well, rachel, an all-out assault on our democracy is a changed circumstance. >> we're going to see if we believe senator schumer about the timing here. as soon as tomorrow, as late as monday, martin luther king day, we are going to see a vote in the senate. is there anything else we should look for ahead of that vote in terms of conversations, events, pronouncements? or just wait to see how it will go when the roll call happens? >> there's a lot of drama right now. i'll give you that, but i think that's good. that's democracy. we are negotiating. we're talking to both senators, groups of people. our whole voting group that has been there from the beginning, including senators schumer, merkley, king, padilla, warnock, it is a group that is not giving up.
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and as other senators have been involved in meeting with senator sinema. people feel so strongly about this. and i want to make clear to your viewers today, this is not a liberal/moderate divide. there are two senators who are working through this with us, but there are a whole bunch of moderates and people from states like senator tester of montana who have seen good democracy rules. and then suddenly, after 15 years, you've got same-day registration taken away in that state, yet thousands of people have relied on that. just one example you that don't always hear about that is this all-out assault on democracy across the country. when you look through history, and we were there in georgia, where history happened, the federal government responds. they may not do it right away, but we can't do it anymore. the federal government responded with civil rights violations, the federal government responded throughout history when things have happened and it's on us right now. and we're just making the case
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to these two senators as vociferously and i'm giving you the arguments all the time. this is not a radical change. what is radical is people who are undermining our democracy. we can always have differences of opinions, democrats and republicans. but our job is to make sure, as you pointed out earlier in the show, that votes are counted fairly. that people aren't doing sham audits and fake certificaions and they're not throwing people off election boards and they're not dismantling these election boards. this will be solved through the freedom to vote act. >> senator, thank you for joining us tonight. as you say, a lot of drama here right now. we look to you to understand it. thanks for being here.
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>> okay. thank you, rachel. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us
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there's one thing every senator and every american should remember. history has never been kind to those who sided with voter suppression over voter's rights. and it will be even less kind with those who side with election subversion. so i ask every elected official in america, how do you want to be remembered? at consequential moments in history, they present a choice. do you want to be on the side of dr. king or george wallace? do you want to be on the side of john lewis, or bull connor? do you want to be on the side of abraham lincoln or jefferson davis? >> some of the most pointed remarks from president biden today, as he urged a change in the rules of the senate if need be in order to pass voting
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rights protections. his speech came amid pressure from activists all over the country urging to do more to protect voting rights. and the direct action over the course of the past year has included hunger strikes, rallies, marches, and nonviolent civil disobedience. including this outside the white house last fall when civil rights and religious leaders were all arrested. the man you see in the t-shirt right there, that's ben jealous, that's one activist hard on the administration, on president biden to do more on this issue. mr. jealous has taken part on five such protests outside of the white house on this issue. he was arrested four times, spent a night in nail, to try to push the president to do more when it comes to voting rights protections. ben jealous was there today. he joins us now. president of the progressive group, people for the american way, former president and ceo of
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the naacp. thank you for being here to take time to be here tonight. i've been dying to talk to you, my friend. >> thank you, it's good to be here. >> i honestly did not know what you thought of president biden's speech today. i know you told our producers that he thought he hit it out of the park, that you heard what you wanted to hear from him. he hit it out of the park. i wanted to hear your take. >> first of all, i appreciate you showing so many clips. what we needed to hear wasn't just that what we saw in georgia was outrageous, but he had a plan for dealing with it. he presented the plan today, and frankly, he made the case to everyone in his party, even the more conservative members about why they needed to get on board and get onboard now. i have every faith that he will follow up and do what happens after something like this, which is to go push hard in the senate publicly and in private. frankly, today looks like the beginning of a winning presidential push.
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>> in terms of senator manchin and senator sinema who's really the two that we know are who are in the way, president biden isn't singling them out by name. he's not directing people to pressure them. but certainly, one of the effects of a clarion and public call like this, people are going to lobby and pressure and try to reason with those two senators to try to move them on this issue. are you optimistic that those efforts may ever succeed? >> i am. i am. you know, nelson mandela told us it's always impossible until it's done. and we've heard again and again, it would be impossible to get joe manchin on this bill. he said he would never support the for the people act. well, the freedom to vote act has 90% of the content of the for the people act, he's one of the principal authors. we heard him today say that he was actually -- would support
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rules changes but not ending the filibuster. well, you don't have to actually end the filibuster -- you don't even have to have a carveout in the filibuster. you can change the rules in ways to allow ultimately for an up or down vote. the filibuster is so bastardized over the years that you could do a lot short of getting rid of it changing rules that would allow for that vote. kyrsten sinema, i heard the president speak to directly, when he said, whose side you want to be on? connors' or king's? sinema is well aware arizona was the last state to support martin luther king day as a holiday. she doesn't want to extend that. and if manchin comes over and there is a lot of movement, if you -- many of us have become sort of students of manchin, watching him. he is moving in the right direction. once he crosses the line, she will fall, too.
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she does not want to be all alone. she does not want to be on the side of goldwater, which is, you know, in her state. >> ben jealous, people for the american way, former president and ceo of the naacp, thanks for joining us. i know it's been a long and intense day. i'm really, really glad you're able to be here tonight, my friend. >> thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us
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he was one of the first people that encouraged me to run for president, believing that despite my youth, despite my inexperience, despite the fact that i was african american, i could actually win. at the time, that made one of us. >> a friend in need, harry's voice was soft and gentle and praised himself, he was stone cold silent. pursuit of fairness and prosperity, his voice would echo and will echo for generations in this state. >> something to be eulogized by
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not one, but two, united states presidents. but that was president biden and former president barack obama eulogizing a lion of the u.s. senate, harry reid at his funeral in las vegas this past weekend. well, tomorrow, former senate leader harry reid will lie in state in d.c. under the capitol rotunda. this is a very, very rare honor. the service in his honor will start at 10:30 a.m. eastern. there will be speeches thereafter. it's going to be an elaborate event. you can watch that here live tomorrow on msnbc. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. highly recommend it! zifans love zicam's unique zinc formula. it shortens colds! zicam. zinc that cold!
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that is going to do it for us tonight. we are expecting a busy day particularly in washington tomorrow. again, harry reid, former senate majority leader, will be lying in state under the capitol dome tomorrow. capitol rotunda. we will have live coverage of that memorial starting tomorrow at 10:30 eastern. if you listen to senate democrats it's possible they
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could be taking up that vote on voting rights and whether they are going to carve out something from voting rights, from senate rules to keep voting rights protected through legislation in the united states senate. that could happen anytime. eyes open, heads up. busy time. now time for "the last word" "way too early with kasie hunt" -- "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. president biden makes his most emphatic case yet on voting rights telling republicans he's tired of being quiet. are lawmakers listening? plus as dr. anthony fauci fights the virus, republicans fight dr. fauci. with covid everywhere, is there a vaccine against wasting time on capitol hill. and a milestone, as the yankees tap the first female manager in the minor leagues. the question is, will we see other teams follow their lead? it's "way too