tv Alex Wagner Tonight MSNBC September 1, 2023 1:00am-2:01am PDT
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senate president could be looking at the sunday would give gop legislators a control. something else to keep in mind, the attorney for justice anita earls, thank you for joining us tonight, we will stay on this story. >> thank, you chris. >> that is all in on this thursday night,you, chris. >> that is "all in" on this thursday night. >> you have yourself a good evening, my friend. thank tuesday you at home for joining us tonight. today donald trump pleaded not guilty to felony charges for the fourth time in less than five months trump entered a plea of not guilty to all 13 charges against him in the georgia case and his alleged attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. the former president chose not to appear in court waiving his right to an arraignment. trump's lawyers also ask the court to officially separate his trial from several of his codefendants in that case who
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have requested their trials be sped up. the trump legal team offered a now familiar argument about not having enough time to prepare for a trial in the near future. today we also got our first look at the full transcript of the former trump chief of staff mark meadows after he took the stand for nearly 4 hours earlier this week. that transcript included meadows' explanation for one of the most curious and overtly political incidents in the whole georgia saga. after the 2020 election meadows made a surprise trip to a civic center in cobb county, georgia, where the state's ballot auditing process was taking place. no one's been able to explain what meadows was during there that day, but during his cross-examination on the stand mark meadows told the court that he showed up to that ballot counting facility uninvited. he said no one told him to go there. he just happened to be in the atlanta area at the time so he
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thought he'd show up. you know you're on vacation in atlanta you visit the coca-cola museum, you take a ride on the ferris wheel and then you drive out to the cobb county civic center and take in a nice ballot audit, a totally normal thing to do. prosecutors appear to have caught mark meadows in a lie about his involvement in the alleged plot to organize fake electors in georgia. quoting from the transcript the prosecutor says did you have any role, mr. meadows, in coordinating the various electors in the contested states for the trump campaign. meadows replies, no, i did not. prosecutor, no role at all? meadows, the only time i remember of an electors point is when somebody raised the issue with me and i referred it on the campaign. prosecutor -- so you had no role for the campaign or as chief of staff in coordinating those efforts across contested states? meadows -- no, as chief of
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staff, no i did not coordinate those efforts. prosecutor -- okay. got that? meadows said he had no role in the fake electors plot, none whatsoever. then just a few moments later when the prosecution asks meadows to read the e-mail he wrote to 2020 campaign staffer jason miller where they discussed a memo laying out the fake electors plot. mark meadows then tells jason miller in the e-mail, quote, we just need to have someone coordinating the electors for the state, end quote. fulton county district attorney fani willis made a point of emphasizing the fact meadows had not been truthful while under oath. here's what fani willis told the court. quote, after insisting he did not play any role in coordination of slates of electors throughout several states there defendant was forced to acknowledge under cross-examination that he had, in fact, given direction to a
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campaign official in this regard. joining us now former federal prosecutors. mimi currently serves as the district attorney for westchester, new york. thank you both of you for being with us. let me start with you on the meadows stuff. what does that amount to? this is kind of a weird thing because it was a trial before a trial because meadows is trying to not be part of this georgia indictment, but he said something and they flank everything else in this case, they pull up a document and have him read it, and it turns out what he just told them moments before was not true. now, in my world that's not true. in the legal world that's more serious. >> it can be, of course, ali, as you are hinting at. it can be prosecuted as perjury. perjury as i think we've discussed in the past is a very
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difficult charge to bring because you have to really parse again as always the intent and show that he was intending to deceive and that, you know, the question was specific enough the misstatement, the lie was particular to that question. d.a. willis seems in her papers to be asserting that it was, in fact, false. false doesn't necessarily mean perjury, believe it or not. there's more to it than that, but it certainly presents a problem. and really what it shows, ali, is the danger of, you know, mark meadows' strategy here of testifying in a pretrial setting. it's the same reason why we've talked about it will be problematic for the prosecution if there are multiple trials that end up going here because any time a witness testifies or
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defendant testifies, you know, people get to see a preview of what is going to be said at the next trial. or if it's at a hearing then what's going to be said at trial. so there's always inherent risk in taking the stand, and i think that's been sort of demonstrated here by mark meadows. >> paul, putting aside whether or not perjury can be proved in this instance, fani willis is using this is an argument not to have the case moved to federal court. what's the relevance one way or another? it is fascinating as mimi said. there's evidence here. he's actually talking about stuff in those indictments, but it's not really the trial. >> it's not directly relevant. it's more i think a tactic to scare mark meadows that if you go to trial and have the nerve to take the stand like you did at this hearing, i am going to crush you. i'm going to impeach you with
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things you said on the record that were not true. in terms of the motion to remove to federal court, that's mainly a legal determination that the judge seems to think maybe there's a case to be made if the judge asks for briefing. under the law if you're a federal official and you're charged with crimes and you say that what i'm charged with is based on my federal responsibility, you don't get out of jail free, but you do get to have the case moved from state court to federal court. the legal questions that the judge has to ask is are the things you're accused of doing actually part of your federal responsibilities? to a lot of us it seemed like the answer was no. first of all, mark meadows says i was just helping donald trump. well, the president under the constitution has no specific responsibility, really no responsibility with regard to the administration of federal election. so, again, those are mainly
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legal decisions for the judge. this, i think, today is more just to make meadows think a little bit about either pleading and/or cooperating with d.a. willis. >> and mimi, we can talk for an hour about the mark meadows stuff, but really the question here is if mark meadows succeeds to getting his case removed to federal court, there are others who will want to do this using perhaps not the same argument but some arguments that they had responsibility under federal law, dubious as paul says though those claims might be -- maybe jeffrey clark can say he was going to be attorney general of america and he had a reason to be doing what he was doing. but what's the consequence if any of these people succeed get tried in federal court? by the way, do they get tried? is it automatic if they remove their case there's still actually a federal trial? >> yeah, i mean the case would proceed in federal court as if it were in state court.
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if you remember, you know, donald trump actually tried to do this in new york with the d.a. in new york's case, and that motion was denied. obviously if meadows does successfully get his case removed that would be a precedent for others to try. although i still think it's individual and fact based analysis, fact and law based as paul says. and so one person getting it removed doesn't necessarily mean all of them because it's very specific to each person's actions. but ironically, you know, as plenty of people are attacking this d.a. as being political and trying, by the way, to interfere with her independent and just independence and discretion, you know, there have been attempts to try and cut funding to her office. there's this movement to create this prosecutorial commission
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now in georgia with all these new standards, so they're calling her political, and yet it is sort of the height of political interference in a d.a.'s independence, which is hugely important. i mean she is an independently elected official like me, like d.a.'s across the country, and, you know, the removal to federal court issue is this claim that they're getting out from under this political prosecution, but really the political interference here is coming in the other direction of people trying to interfere with her ability to bring cases that she's entitled to bring. >> paul, let me ask you about the idea under georgia's fairly expansive rico laws, everything that is alleged in those indictments do not have to be -- does not have to be a crime in and of its own right if it is in furtherance of the underlying
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conspiracy. does it help these unindicted coconspirators if they get removed from being tried as part of the conspiracy because then a bunch of things they did, a particular text message or i don't know mark meadows hanging out at the cobb county counting center, if they're not part of a conspiracy perhaps they're not crimes. >> under rico if you participated in any way in helping the crime go down, then you're culpable. you're liable. that's why prosecutors love to charge rico. but in this case we're seeing all these different kinds of motions from different defendants. so people like sidney powell and ken chesebro, they want speedy trials. donald trump wants an unspeedy trial. other defendants want to sever the case or as we've been discussing move their case from state court to federal court. and ali, what fani willis loves
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about this is that it's every defendant for him or herself. so it's not like it's fani willis versus 19 defendants and 19 defense teams. every person's looking out for their own interest, so two things will flow from this. one is that almost certainly some of these 19 defendants will plead guilty. the other thing is almost certainly some of these 19 defendants will implicate the former president, as we saw mark meadows do when he said everything that he did was directed by the former president. now, that's not a defense for meadows, but it sure is incriminating for trump. >> and we've seen little traces of that show up with some of the other people who either try to get their cases moved to federal court or severed. thanks to both of you. so enlightening to talk with you both. just a reminder that all four indictments against donald trump and his codefendants will be available complete and
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unabridged in a brand new book edit asked introduced by me. the trump indictments comes out on september 25th. it is available to be ordered now. we've got much more to bring you tonight. senator bernie sanders is here to talk about republican efforts against american workers and what the biden administration is doing to counter it. but first the supreme court justice clarence thomas finally acknowledging publicly the gifts he received from one of his billionaire republican friends. the senator joins me next to react. friends the senator joins me next to react. that's some bad luck brian. and i think i'm late on my car insurance. good thing the general gives you a break when you need it. yeah, with flexible payment options to keep you covered. so today is your lucky...day [crash] so today is your lucky...day for a great low rate, go with the general.
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today the supreme court justice clarence thomas officially acknowledged that in the past year he took three trips by a private jet owned and paid for by this man, billionaire donor harlan crow. according to the financial disclosure report crow also funded a trip for thomas to upstate new york presumably to the same private lakeside resort captured in this now famous painting. looks like a nice place. this is the first time in years that justice thomas has reported receiving any kind of hospitality from his friend crow. this follows changed to disclosure rules this spring and pressure from a series of bob shell reports that detailed
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lavish trips that thomas and other justices like samuel alito failed to disclose in the past. justice thomas defended, quote, there's been no willful ethics transgression and other prior reporting errors were strictly inadvertent, end quote. this comes as the supreme court justices face increased scrutiny of their financial dealings and lack of any enforcement codes. the senate judiciary committee recently advanced a bill that would have among other things give the supreme court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct. joining us now is senator sheldon whitehouse, the author of that bill. good to see you. thank you for joining us this evening. i want to start by going back about a month to something that samuel alito, justice alito, who's been a vocal critic of efforts like people like you in
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"the wall street journal" said. he said, quote, no provision in the constitution gives them the authority to regulate the supreme court, period. them being you or anybody else who thinks it should be done. he's not wrong on the face of it. there are no words in the constitution that speak about the regulation of the supreme court, but with that logic nobody has a right to regulate anything. >> yeah, and with that logic you would not have a judicial conference which oversees these ethics issues and was established by congress. and in fact the disclosure requirements we're still fighting with the court over were also pursuant to a law passed by congress and the recusal issues we've been concerned about thomas' refusal to recuse in which he had a personal interest again go back to a law passed by congress. and for year after year after year these are not new laws. the supreme court has accepted
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those laws, abided by them. indeed, the chief justice chairs the judicial conference. so the idea that congress has no role here is completely belied by both practice and the supreme court's own behavior. >> let's talk about what it is you are proposing. you've got a few key things. the supreme court ethics recusal and transparency act. it gives the supreme court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct. it allows the public to submit ethics complaints for review by randomly selected panel of lower court judges, allows for more stringent rules for disclosure and gifts and travel and requires justices to explain their recusal decisions to the public. where are you in this effort, and how likely is it that what you're trying to do will come to fruition? >> we are through the judiciary committee, and we are awaiting opportunity for a floor vote in
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this congress. at the moment republicans are not willing to participate in this effort, but we only know the very beginning of the mischief between the justices and the right-wing billionaires. as more and more evidence comes out i think a time will come when republicans will say, okay, we've got to throw in the towel, we held out as long as we could but let's look at a bill because even this reporting by justice thomas we've just seen is still very incomplete and full of maneuver and tricks by his lawyers. >> one of the things that may cause republicans to come to the table, there's a gallop poll august 2nd that showed a record low for support in the supreme court among american people, about 40%. it's touched close to that back in 2006. does that help your cause that we -- that's bad for america
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that that level of trust is so low. >> well, i think what really helps our cause is how disgusted the american people are with the behavior of these justices. i mean, around the country municipal employees, county employees, state employees, federal employees, and of course other federal judges all operate under codes of conduct. in rhode island you get three $25 lunches a year which have to be reported, and that's it if you're a municipal official. these guys were taking $250,000 secret vacations paid for by billionaires who are known to be involved in manipulating the court. indeed in the picture you're showing right now one of the chief court manipulators, leonard leo, is sitting there looking over at harlan crow and justice thomas. so the backdrop to this is an enormous amount of billionaire influence around the court, and
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this is a story that's going to continue to develop. >> and it is important the point you just made these are people thawho have some connection to court business. initially when asked about these cases the justices either prevaricated about why they took these things or knew about them or why they did it and then why these people potentially for business before the court. >> one billionaire's hedge fund actually did have business before the court. other billionaires are the supporters of front groups that file briefs and assert themselves into the business of the court. and several of these billionaires are involved in the longer term overarching effort to capture and control the supreme court and manipulate it and turn it into a captured weapon for their political influence. >> senator, good to see you. thank you for joining us. we appreciate your time. still ahead the right-wing effort to ban books and reframe history has reached classrooms and look at these empty shelves,
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libraries across the country. how do we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past while others try to make america great again? but first new prison sentences handed down in a seditious conspiracy case against january 6th insurrectionists. will those sentences signal something to the anti-government far right? we'll look at that next. r right? we'll look at that next. i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? also $9.95 a month. i just turned 80, what's my price?
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two proud boys lieutenants who led the paramilitary group's capitol breach on january 6th were sentenced today for seditious conspiracy. the longest sentence of the day went to joe biggs with 17 years in prison, falling far shorter of the 33 years the government requested. a prosecutor argued biggs' actions that day include tearing down a fence between police and rioters were acts of terrorism that qualify for a longer sentence. the judge agreed, but biggs' lawyer offered a counter argument. the lawyer argued that the crimes committed by biggs on january 6 were, quote, overstated. and i quote, to treat these men as terrorists would be in my view the functional equivalent of the destruction of waco, end quote. the lawyer argued that an overly harsh sentence would be, quote, the equivalent of burning waco
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down. it'll create a martyrdom syndrome that will resonate just as waco did among conspiracy theorists in this country. waco, by the way, the deadly siege of a compound of an anti-government cult leader 30 years ago has become a symbol of government overreach on the far-right. waco is where donald trump held his campaign rally just before he was criminally indicted in manhattan. he told his supporters, quote, i am your warrior, i am your justice, i am your retribution, end quote. for the anti-government and white supremacist extremists who see waco as a rallying cry it's a signal. we've seen this kind of anti-government activity before, usually to preserve power for certain americans while blocking others from participating in our democracy, and it is present again today in 2023. interfering with our elections and our schools. more on that after this break. r. more on that after this break.
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i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month.
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this show has spent the past months reporting on right-wing efforts to literally rewrite historyp. we've seen florida rewrite a 1920 election day massacre, tainting classroom instruction. we've reported on how governor desantis' hostile take over of the state's public liberal art school, new college, has made the place inhospitable for students who want to learn about
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race and gender studies. and texas seizing control of the independent school district, libraries you're looking at repurposed into student discipline centers, the books largely removed. this is happening as libraries across the country have been gutted, books about gender, race and american history have been banned. it's no coincidence there is a right-wing battle to prevent people from learning about our real history and the losens that come with it. joining us now is a scholar who is been a target of this effort to rewrite books and history. activist of books including how to be an anti-racist which is among the most banned books in school libraries across the country. professor, it's a treat. a couple times this week you and i have had a chance to talk for all the wrong reasons. a couple months ago alex did a
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big piece on new college, and there's a guy involved in that named christopher ruffo. he's criticized you and your work as critical race theory, and in a tweet from 2021 he said envision a strategy to turn the brand critical race theory toxic, it will bring it into being through writing and persuasion. he setout to do this. he's the guy who got all crazy about critical race theory, and to some degree it's been effective. >> indeed it has. and to speak to actually rufo's ridiculousness, he actually framed me as one of the fathers or founders of critical race theory. and ali, critical race theory emerged in the late 1970s. some point to its origin in 1981
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at harvard. i wasn't born until 1982. >> however, this is an instance of redefining words, right? so your career has been spent on what words mean and how people communicate including your book, how to be an anti-racist. this is interesting. it's an interesting republican strategy, taking words and using them against their opponents, if i'm rubber you're glue argument. if you say they did something racist they respond. ramaswamy he said, no, you're the racist, you're like a kkk guy. they said that about you. >> indeed. and one of the reasons why they're able to say that is because they actually never defined the term racism or racist. they refuse to define those terms. if they were to go ahead and define racism as a collection of policies that are leading to racial inequities and are substantiated by ideas of racial
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hiarkry they would see they're supporting policies leading to inequity. they're blaming people as opposed to policies of inequities. when you don't define anything, you can call anything that. >> you spent a lot of time actually studying these matters so you can debate them, and you're prepared to debate them. is it interesting to you in the last few years the idea somebody disagrees with you, doesn't debate you, they just discount you or insult you, or they diminish you. why not debate if i don't agree with him? >> well, i think part of the challenge is oftentimes many of these individuals aren't really walking in facts and truth. and so when you are seeking to speak from the evidence and speak from truth and you're talking to someone else who is -- who is saying that the earth is flat, who's saying that
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water is dry, it's hard to engage with them. and i think that's been part of the challenge because even a debate is really going to be two people shouting at each other as opposed to really constructively dialoguing and figuring out which idea's the best. >> let's talk a little about these structures that you talk about or you'd like us to discuss when we think about racism. in an unrelated matter we received updated financial discloegzers from justice clarence thomas who is justice thurgood marshal's successor on the supreme court. given his concuring opinions in decisions like dobbs and student affair missions which ended affirmative action on base his legacy may be dismantling the very liberal policies that worked to get people like justice thomas to the bench. >> and i think that's one of the
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tragedies, and indeed he largely was -- is doing his job. the only reason why he even was appointed to the supreme court was because he was a black face who would support the attack on black people. and unfortunately he's done that over the course of his supreme court career. he's been well-rewarded for it over the course of his career. and, unfortunately, people who look like him have suffered as a result of his supreme court career. >> when this country has made progressive strides in the past, we've discussed this, there's always a backlash like the crack down on voting rights in georgia after the state flipped to democratic control in 2020, like the book bans and education restrictions we keep talking about. this sort of backlash does have disproportionate impact on not just minorities but the people whose stories have not been told, the people whose efforts we're undertaking to tell these
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stories. tell me what you see happening here. >> i think that's been one of the most difficult aspects of the last three years, of i didn't live through the 1960s, you know, like my parents did. you know, i didn't live through the 1860s like my great, great, great-grandparents did, but i did live through 2020. i was able to witness tens of millions of people in the smallest of towns and largest of cities collectively recognizing that police violence was a problem. racism was a problem, that it was tearing us apart, that people were needlessly dying because of the color of their skin, and many of those people shouted black lives matter. many of those people decided they were going to strive to be anti-racist, and so as a result instead of us coming together,
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you know, as a human community to abolish racism once and for all like we did chattel slavery, instead those who wanted to conservative racism made anti-racism the problem, made black lives matter the problem, made those people who were demonstrating against police violence the problem. >> you wrote -- that book was published in 2019 before george floyd. and after that there were a lot of people who said it's not my job to educate the public about this, but you took a different view. your view was read the book. you can maybe help sort this thing out for yourself, and still they don't want to do it. your book has been targeted for a ban or most books in this country. a book called how to be an anti-racist. if you wrote a book how to be a racist, i would not fight against thembenning it but i might understand it.
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you wrote about them being anti-racist. >> yeah, a book about the importance of racial equality. a book about the importance of valuing people no matter their skin color, a book about ensuring that we as human beings share power, that we eliminate inequity and injustice, that we make sure that a briana taylor or george floyd will never be murdered in the way they were, you know, in 202. but, you know, unfortunately, ali, an old white supremacist talking point is that anti-racism is anti-white. and that idea goes all the way back to even andrew johnson, the president of the younnes in 1866 who vetoed the first ever civil rights act which granted people black citizenship because it was anti-white.
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it didn't have anything to do with white people. it granted people who were denied citizenship, you know, their rights. >> thank you for being with us. a prolific arthur with some very important words it's important we all read. thank you. professor kendi will be my guest on the podcast. his episodes airs in october but the first three episodes of the velshi banned book club are outright now. when we come back as the summer of strikes turns into labor day weekend, the biden administration rolls out a proposal that could give millions of workers more money. we'll get reaction to the policy and politics of all of it with senator bernie sanders after this. director: cut! jordana, easy on the gas. force of habit. i gotta wrap this commercial, i think i'm late on my payment. it's okay, the general gives you a break when you need it. yeah, we let you pick your own due date
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labor day weekend is upon us. what a summer it has been for american labor. the summer of strikes has affected everyone from delivery workers and amazon workers to hollywood writers and actors. and the biden administration is now rolling out a proposed change that could affect millions more workers. right now people who make less than $35,500 a year are eligible for over time pay if they make more than 40 hours a week. the labor department wants to extend the threshold for eligibility for over time to workers who make less than $55,000 a year. that would add about 3.6 million
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workers. the biden administration touting 13.4 million jobs created in his term thus far. it appears things may be looking a little brighter for the average american worker. senators, good to see you. thank you for being with us. i did that setup to ask you because labor and the worker is essential to the things you think about. about the state of the american worker right now, we are in summer strike. there are a whole lot of americans on the pickup lines right now. american airlines pilots have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if they don't come to a deal with the airline. where are we right now in your opinion? >> i think what's going on now, ali, is that workers are catching onto the fact that in america we see an unprecedented level of corporate greed. in company after company we're
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seeing record breaking profits. we're seeing more income wealth inequality than we've ever seen in the history of this country. and yet today the average american worker in real inflation accounted for dollars is actually earning less than he or she 50 years ago. so workers are saying you know what, maybe in this economy we deserve a fair shake, and we're going to stand up and fight for it. and i think what the teamsters did in their contract negotiations with ups, great step forward. they stood up, they were prepared to strike. they told ups making billions of profits treat us like good, decent human beings and that's what ended up happening. they won that conflict. and we've got to see that all over the country. >> i want to correct something i said, it's the flight attendants at american airlines who have voted to authorize strikes, not the pilots. you're right. when i spoke to the head of the teamsters, and i said ups is a
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big part of american gdp, are you worried a strike could have an impact on it, he said straight up it is what it is. we go on strike and a big chunk comes out of american gdp, we have to do what we have to do. >> look, people are catching on that the inflation we have gone through really had not all that much to do with the war in ukraine or broken supply chains. it had to do with the fact that corporation after corporation whether it's the oil industry, the food industry raising their prices and workers are organizing. they want to join unions. when they're in a union they're fighting for a decent contract. in terms of the campaign that's coming. we've got to ask ourselves a simple question. how does it happen that somebody like donald trump who's been
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impeached twice, indicted four times is a pathological liar, and i think most americans understand is corrupt, you know what he's running even to biden in the polls. what's that about? and what that's about to my mind is they've got millions of working class people out there who say, you know, i understand trump was a phony buzz he claims at least to be standing for us. who cares about us, and what we have got to do, what the democrats have got to do is begin to engage in class politics to understand that we've been in a class war now for decades and the wrong class is winning. they've got to be clear in standing up for the working class of this country, raising the minimum wage, passing labor law, making it easier for workers to join unions, reforming our health care system so we move to a universal health care system not of 85 million
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uninsured or underinsured, build the affordable housing that we need. we need to start standing up for the working class, not just the big campaign contributors and the 1%. >> all right, so you and have met, many talks about universal health care and why it's so weird america doesn't have it. we have made some people say a very big step, in the grand scheme of things a small step and taking these ten prescription drugs and negotiating the same way cost ko negotiates peanut butter because they're a bulk buyer. everybody is out there calling communism and socialist price-fixing, it's a meaningful step. >> ali, it's not everybody. it's just the ruling class. it's just the pharmaceutical industry that makes tens of billions of dollars every single year, it's the big corporations.
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oh, my god, imagine that the government is actually doing something for working people to lower the cost of prescription drugs. this must be communism. this is awful and horrible. 80% of the american people support medicare negotiated prices. so it's not everybody -- the vast majority of the people understand that the pharmaceutical industry is incredibly greedy. but wave got to go further. this as you indicate it is a very tepid state florida. it says you know what, in america we should not be paying ten times more for the same drugs as canada or europeans are paying, we're going to pay the same prices, and i'm sure the industry will go crazy and put all kinds of 30 second ads on tv, but bottom line is that's what the american people want. our health care system is totally broken. it should not be employer based health care. what you and have chatted about many times as canada and others do, health care is not a
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universal privilege. we should not be spending $13,000 for every man, woman and child. >> i will say as a guy who gets accused of being a communist a lot, how do you explain to people what this bill is about prescription drugs is causing people who wish to sell into medicare which is a major distributor of drugs to negotiate a price, not government control of the manufacture of drugs. and if you don't want to negotiate a price sell it on the free market. >> this is such a radical idea, ali. it's what every major country in the world does, everyone. we're the only country in the world that says, oh, you want to charge half of -- this is really crazy stuff. half of the new drugs now coming onto the market you know what their treatment is, the numbers cost over $200,000.
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it's insane. it's absolutely insane. people can't afford it. medicare is going to go bankrupt and premiums are going to go soaring, so what we have got to tell the pharmaceutical industry is we want research, we want develop, we want alzheimer's, diabetes research. but the function of pharmaceutical industry is to help cure disease, not to make billionaires even richer. >> is it your sense democrats are doing enough to tell people they're working for them. i heard a little earlier you don't think they are. >> i don't think the average worker out there thinks let's give more tax breaks to billionaires or republicans who want to cut social security, medicare, medicaid, they don't believe that. but they don't believe the democrats are standing up and
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fighting for them and taking on the corporate greed that exists out there right now, and that's what it democrats should be doing. and if they do that, biden is going to win this election in a landslide. >> thank you for spending time with us tonight. that is our show for tonight. alex is going to be back next week. you can catch me this weekend at 10:00 a.m. saturday and sunday. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. let me just say this, you know, these are the distractions that get you to lose elections. the last time we were talking about special sessions here in the state of georgia, just a few weeks later the republican majority lost two u.s. senate races. and i can tell you that as long as i'm governor we're going to stay focused on the issues that help all georgians. that is the way you win races. that is the way you move forward, not focusing on the past or some grifter scam that somebodies doing to help them rais
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