tv All In With Chris Hayes MSNBC January 10, 2025 5:00pm-6:00pm PST
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firefighters working nonstop to contain the fires raging through los angeles, including firefighters from mexico and canada, who are jumping in to help, and those incarcerated firefighters who are being forced to help and are also risking their lives. there's also pope francis, who appointed cardinal robert mcelroy as the next archbishop of washington, which is notable because cardinal mcelroy is a vociferous supporter of immigrants. as followers of jesus are supposed to be. and last but surely not least, the amazing new yorkers who helped finally hold donald trump accountable for his crimes. alvin bragg, the manhattan da, and his prosecution team who ignored the haters and did the work. judge juan merchan, who would not back down from the rule of law. and the 12 jurors who heard the evidence and found trump guilty of 34 counts of felonies. this whole amazing group of humans won the week. and that is tonight's reidout all in with chris hayes starts now. >> tonight on all in. >> never before has this court
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been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances. >> the criminal sentencing of donald j. >> trump, far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law. >> america's first felon president learns his fate. >> i'd just like to explain that i was treated very, very unfairly. and i thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. trump. >> tonight, former trump attorney michael cohen, a key witness who helped secure trump's conviction, will join me live. >> he was allowed to talk as though he were george washington, but he's not george washington. >> and as the fires just keep burning in los angeles, and the governor orders an investigation into the water supply, what we already knew about the climate that created the conditions for this nightmare. but all in starts right now.
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>> good evening from new york. >> i'm chris hayes. it is official. >> in ten days, for the first time in this nation's history, the united states will be presided over by a convicted and sentenced felon. >> that happened today. >> donald trump and his defense attorney streamed in virtually to the future president's sentencing this morning in a manhattan courtroom on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. >> these convictions stem from trump's attempts to conceal hush money payments to adult film star stormy daniels, payments to keep her affair out of the public eye. late in that, crucial as we will look back on for the rest of our lives. 2016 presidential campaign. trump did everything he could to avoid the moment that he had this morning, appealing up to the supreme court for a stay, hoping that his buddies would hook him up. he almost got there, but he got shot down by a slim one vote majority, 5 to 4. that included republican appointees chief justice john roberts and amy coney barrett. trump tried to block today's sentencing even though he knew going in, he
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wasn't going to see a day of jail time or really any penalty whatsoever. he seemed to desperately want to avoid a fate that, for him, was perhaps even worse being forced to listen passively as the prosecution blasted him for his crimes, his lack of remorse, his gangster tactics to evade responsibility. manhattan assistant d.a. joshua steinglass contrasted trump's attacks on the court and the rule of law with the words of the oath of office trump would be taking in ten days. >> instead of preserving, protecting and defending our constitutionally established system of criminal justice, the defendant, the once and future president of the united states, has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy. far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law. and he's
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done this to serve his own ends and to encourage others to reject the jury verdict that he finds so distasteful. the defendant has publicly threatened to retaliate against the prosecutors, who have sought to hold him accountable in this and other matters, and the courts who have endeavored to fairly and faithfully adjudicate these matters. such threats are designed to have a chilling effect to intimidate those who have the responsibility to enforce our laws, in the hopes that they will ignore the defendant's transgressions, because they fear that he is simply too powerful to be subjected to the same rule of law as the rest of us. >> denying his crimes, lacking remorse or reflection. spinning self-serving conspiracy theories about public servants out to get him. how did donald trump respond? >> yes. thank you, your honor.
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this has been a very terrible experience. i get indicted for business records. everybody should be so accurate. it's been a political witch hunt. it was done to damage my reputation so that i would lose the election. the fact is that i'm totally innocent. i did nothing wrong. they call it lawfare. never happened to any extent like this, but never happened in our country before. and i just like to explain that i was treated very, very unfairly. and i thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. trump. >> when judge juan merchan finally got the floor from trump, the very first thing he did was emphasize the future president was treated fairly under the law that his trial, in fact, was nothing special in a nation of laws. >> the trial itself was no more special, unique or extraordinary than the other 32 criminal trials that took place in this courthouse at the same exact time. jury selection was
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conducted. the same rules of evidence were followed. opening statements were made. witnesses called and cross-examined. evidence presented. summations delivered. the same burden of proof was applied, and the jury, made up of ordinary citizens, delivered a verdict added that trump's election to the presidency could not change the fact that he was guilty of his crimes, but it could get him out of hard time for those crimes. it is the legal protections afforded to the office of the president of the united states that are extraordinary, not the occupant of the office, despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections. one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict. it is clear from legal precedent which until july 1st was scarce, that donald trump, the ordinary citizen, donald trump, the criminal defendant, would not be
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entitled to such considerable protections. i'm referring to protections that extend well beyond those afforded the average defendant who winds their way through the criminal justice system each day. no ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections. it is the office of the president that bestows those far reaching protections to the office holder. and it was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections. >> before today, judge merchan had noted that jail time would have been an appropriate sentence for the crime. he could have leveled any kind of punitive sentence, even house arrest or a fine or probation or community service. but if he did that, no matter how light the punishment, it would have gone incomplete because in ten days trump would become president. the sentence would become impossible to enforce. the next option would have been called conditional discharge, in which a judge can say they will impose no punishment on the condition
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that the convict remains on good behavior. in trump's case, imposing that most basic condition would run into the exact same problem as a punitive sentence. it's unenforceable in ten days. and so the last option, the one the prosecutors, the defense and the judge agreed on was a was a discharge with no conditions. >> this court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge, which the new york state legislature has determined is a lawful and permissible sentence for the crime of falsifying business records in the first degree. therefore, at this time, i impose that sentence to cover all 34 counts. sir, i wish you godspeed as you assume your second term in office. >> thank you. >> so there it is. strange moment. weird moment. surreal.
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unsatisfying in certain ways. i think if i can editorialize for a second. but there it is. the case is closed pending donald trump's final appeals, of course, which could conceivably vacate the conviction if the supreme court feels like being sporting. in the meantime, as a convicted felon, he is now barred from purchasing a firearm in his home state of florida. now, it's important to note that someone else did get convicted in connection with the very crimes that donald trump was sentenced for today, that would be michael trump. michael cohen, that's trump's former longtime lawyer and fixer, a guy who spent more than a decade of his life by donald trump's side back in 2018. you remember he was prosecuted by the justice department under donald trump, and he pled guilty and served time for facilitating the very illegal payments that trump was, quote unquote, sentenced for. today, michael cohen is donald trump's former personal attorney. he's also host of the mea culpa podcast and the host of the michael cohen show on youtube. you can find all of those where you get your
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podcasts and your youtube. he joins me now. well, michael, i thought of you today because you did. you know, you pled to in federal court the very, you know, facilitating the very things that the former president and incoming president was convicted for before a jury of his peers. it was part of the sentence to which you agreed that you had to serve. donald trump was afforded these extraordinary protections, as the judge said, because he was elected the president. how are you feeling about it all? >> look, i'm obviously very torn between what i would have liked to have seen happen. >> don't forget, i received a six year sentence, three years of incarceration, three years of supervised release. in my entire legal career. i've never even heard of an unconditional discharge. i was so confused about it. i actually went to chatgpt, despite the fact that judge furman doesn't think anybody should go through chatgpt. right. and i looked it up and i was unable to find anybody in history who has ever
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gotten an unconditional discharge. now, i think that judge merchan was judicious in his decision, and he was also i think the decision was appropriate. i will turn around and say, however, that where i, i hate to say this, i agree with todd blanche, and i agree with donald trump in this. if there's no accountability and there's no deterrence factor because there is no repercussion for the 34 criminal counts, i don't see the point in having the conviction. they probably could have and should have just dismissed the case. all you know, in and of itself, and i know a lot of people are saying, well, it doesn't make sense. why would you say that? you know, i don't take solace in the fact that donald trump is becoming the very first president or former president of the united states to become a convicted felon. i mean, if it makes people happy so that they can now call him the felon president, okay,
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that's on them. you know, i still have a lot of respect for the office of the presidency. and i am a firm believer that to commit a crime and have absolutely no punishment, no accountability, no deterrence factor, i just don't see the purpose. >> yeah, it's interesting you say that. i hear what you're saying fully. it's also, i mean, when you talk about the unconditional discharge part of this is so crazy is, you know, again, you're you're a felon officially. right. like, you know, that label. you know, that label applies to all kinds of people who have been who've done all kinds of stuff, including genuinely horrible things and things that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they, you know, they made a mistake under the influence of, of, of a bad addiction. i mean, i know people that are convicted felons who are amazing people who've rebuilt their lives. and part of what's so crazy about watching all this is like, we're in a country that puts so many people in prison, so many people end up doing bids young with
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real trauma and substance use disorder. and not a lot of like mercy and forgiveness from the court. not a lot of like well, they're special circumstances. so it's a little tough to swallow in the context of one of the most incarcerated countries on the planet. yeah. >> i mean, we are known for human warehousing, which i like to call it. you know, the thing i take somewhat offense to was really trump's allocution to some respect, where he's saying that i was allowed to speak like george washington, but i am not george washington. truthfully, i don't understand what he meant by it. it it doesn't make any sense at all. but when he also turns around and starts talking about how he's unfairly treated and this is lawfare, the weaponization of the department of justice, it was actually his attorney general who was probably the most guilty of weaponization of the justice
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department. i was unconstitutionally remanded back to otisville thanks to alvin hellerstein, removed from it because i refused to waive my first amendment constitutional right. and i would love to know. i still, after four plus years, have not been successful in getting any of my documents. of the 486,000 documents that exist, in order to turn around and to demonstrate how bill barr was involved and created this whole concept, as far as i'm concerned, of lawfare. so donald is wrong when he says that this is the first time ever that this is happening. and of course, he's the martyr for the entire issue. he is not. >> i'm first, let me just play briefly a little bit of what he had said to you, which i also was so confused by. i was asking the producers beforehand to get the context, but here, here's what he had to say briefly. >> and this is a man who's got no standing. he's been disbarred
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on other matters. unrelated, and he was allowed to talk as though he were george washington. but he's not george washington. he shouldn't have been allowed. >> i will say he. you are not george washington. that is that is a true statement. >> but it is clear i will turn around and say that my hair, my hair has definitely got my hair has definitely gotten gray like george washington's as a result of this. but no, i am not george washington. >> here's one thing that does stick out to me, and i'm curious to hear what you think about this. i mean, he's still pretty focused on you. you know, there's all this talk about an enemies list. there's talk about lawfare. there's, you know, there's evidence that william barr, i think there's good evidence that the department of justice did was essentially weaponized against you specifically, you know, from trump down to barr. certainly circumstantial evidence if we don't have the hard evidence. but it appears that that is a likely scenario. they're now promising. >> i think there's more. wait, wait, wait. chris, chris, i want to correct you on something. i think that it's not it's not that type of evidence.
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circumstantial evidence. it's factual. they gave to me a document that does not exist in the system. it was a counterfeit document that they created for me. i've actually posted it. i've given it to msnbc. it's a counterfeit document that required me to waive my first amendment constitutional right and not publish my first book, disloyal, when i refused to do it and asked them to tamp down the first amendment constitutional violating language. they had the marshals there who handcuffed, shackled me and put me back into solitary confinement, making it a total of 51 days. so yeah, i believe that accountability should be had. whether it's, you know, they turn around, they make trump in an unconditional discharge, make him go and even just serve soup at a soup kitchen, or food to the homeless or to the impoverished. make make there some form of accountability now. but that's not what's going to happen. >> well, let me ask you this. so
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there's already a record here, right? that that of using the justice department and having you in his sights. they're promising this on day one. you know, he's they're trying to get kash patel the fbi. like, how do you what is your expectation, your level of, you know, anxiety or worry about about essentially being targeted for unconstitutional and unlawful retribution by the government of the united states? >> well, it's why i actually put in a presidential pardon application. and my hope is that joe biden offers and presents me with the same pardon that he did for his own son. i think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. i have been targeted by the bar, by the bar department of justice. that's fact. that's not circumstantial. it is factual. judge alvin hellerstein himself acknowledged it was retaliatory that he had never seen anything like it. i think there are a lot of people that are on this, this enemies list.
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i want to make it clear that from the very, very beginning with the senate permanent select committee on intelligence all the way through this manhattan da criminal case, i have been subpoenaed to testify. and to be honest with you, based upon this unconditional discharge, to hindsight being 2020, if i knew today, what if i knew back then what i know today, i never would have appeared for any of these. i don't think it's fair. i don't think that that's the way our system should be designed. i don't think that it's right that somebody should be above the law. despite that, the supreme court has provided that presidential immunity doctrine, which again, to me is confounding. but if i knew then what i know now, i never would have appeared. >> michael cohen, who has spent a lot of time with a lot of lawyers, a lot of cases over the last after the last several years, making some time for us
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on this eventful and strange, strange day. i really do appreciate it. michael. thank you. >> good to see you, chris. >> coming up, even as donald trump becomes our first president slash felon, what could we learn from the special counsel's report on the other crimes he was charged with next? >> hey, ryan reynolds here for, i guess, my 100th mint commercial. no no no no no no no no no no. i mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. i mean, honestly, when i started this, i thought i only have to do like four of these. how are there still people paying 2 or 3 times that much? i'm sorry. i shouldn't be victim blaming here. yeah, i know it's still $15 a month, so whenever still $15 a month, so whenever you're ready. —sounds like you need to vaporize that cold. dayquil vapocool? it's dayquil plus a rush of vicks vapors. ♪vapocooooool♪ woah. dayquil vapocool. the vaporizing daytime, coughing, aching, stuffy head, power through
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1-800-290-7477 now or visit us at fund.com. >> on january 20th, a convicted felon will be sworn in as president of the united states. but donald trump's 34 felony convictions were once not the only charges he faced heading into the election. you may recall from previous episodes, thanks to a bailout from florida judge aileen cannon, who trump himself appointed as he was basically coterminously trying to plot an insurrection, as well as thanks to the supreme court that he helped handpick. two other cases were dropped. the american public never got to hear the department of justice arguments against the president elect or a trial. neither in the case of the highly classified documents he stole, nor the election interference case over his attempt to steal and
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overturn the 2020 election. but the doj has a report on that january 6th case and wants to release it. judge aileen cannon, however, has tried to block it. she says it can't be released until at least next week, so we are awaiting a potentially imminent ruling from the 11th circuit court of appeals on whether or not we can see that report much sooner. andrew weissmann spent years serving in department of justice, including as the lead prosecutor, mueller's special counsel office. judge diane kiesel recently retired from new york state supreme court bench, having previously served as a criminal court judge and as a prosecutor in the manhattan district attorney's office. they join me now. good to have you both here. let's start in the 11th circuit thing, which is actually, like, bizarrely, procedurally complicated. what do you think the outcome should be here? let's start with that. >> i think the outcome should be, and i will dare say i think the outcome will be that that we will see the january 6th part of the report. in other words, there's a january 6th part.
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there's the mar-a-lago classified documents part. i think that aileen cannon's order, by its own terms, ends in three days. i think now it's two days. so by monday, we should be able to see that the 11th circuit may also issue an opinion sort of chastising her, because obviously they disagree with her view, because they just denied the application by the two co-defendants to say they wanted an injunction and they said denied. right. so i think we'll see the january 6th part. the reason we may not see the publicly the mar-a-lago part is frankly, not going to be just judge cannon, because i think her part, that part of it, i think is going to go away. it's that merrick garland has the view that because he's seeking to reinstate the charges against the two co-defendants, that it would be unfair to issue a report that talks about their criminality. even as a side issue, because they would suffer that if and when they went to
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trial. the problem with that, of course, is they will never go to trial. right. >> let me ask you about just to go back to the sentencing for a moment, because you were a colleague of judge juan merchan, served in that same court system. it felt to me that this entire last few years was kind of a test of the equal justice under law, a sort of almost like law school hypo. right? like what if what if the president commits a bunch of crimes, the ex-president, and he's rning for reelection? and how do you balance these different equities? the law says this, but there are these extenuating circumstances. and it seemed to me like one of the only people who conducted themselves as if it really is the case that the law applies equally. was judge merchan throughout the trial. and today, what do you think? >> i would agree with you. >> i would give judge mershone an a for the way he's handled this. he'd get an a plus if he had only, i think, allowed some cameras in the courtroom because i think because he behaved in
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such an appropriate, judicious and evenhanded manner, the public should have seen that. >> interesting. >> yeah. yeah. >> and even today, there are a lot of restrictions on cameras in the courts in new york. so it is difficult, although some parts of a trial can be televised. but today, the sentencing, there should have been cameras in there. we should have seen in real time how measure he was and what the district attorney had to say about what this meant to the rule of law and how donald trump continued to undermine that. and frankly, they should have seen what trump had to say, too, because he once again had the same grievances. the public should have heard him say it again. >> can we just take a step back? like you and i have been on air together now for however many years, particularly for the last few years. with these legal, we call them trump legal segments. you know, trump legal. do trump legal and be i think well, it's the end of the road for that that genre. i mean, there will
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be legal issues with the president. united states i think he may even commit some more crimes. if you had to ask me if i had a betting market on that, i'll take that action. what do you what are you what's your conclusion at the end of this road? >> well, i do think this sort of tie in to judge gershon. i do think that this is been a test of our legal system and a test of our democracy. and i think certain people have fared well. judge gershon being at the very, very top. and other people around around him in the state system. but there's a lot of other blame to go around. if you think about other countries that have managed to have fair, procedurally correct trials of senior leaders up to and including their top leader. yeah. they've managed to do it, and we have not. it's in that sense it's really a disgrace. and it's and the fact that we
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are now having somebody who, as you said, who is a convicted felon leading this country is something that not just changes sort of who we are historically, but i think how we're seeing around the world. >> i mean, the other thing i thought about, i was just saying this with michael cohen, like, it's just and i kept trying to sort of set this in the context for all of this that we're talking about is like, this is not a country or a system that is particularly restrained about putting people in prison or punishing people. like it's literally the most incarcerated country on a per capita basis in the earth. one quarter of all prisoners in the world are in the united states. the jails are literally overflowing. often there are consent decrees because they are so packed, because the conditions are so terrible. so it's not like this is a you know, we have lots of procedural protections in the law and in the constitution. but as you know, the realities of the criminal court system, and i
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think you would agree with me, is a little like lucy and the chocolates. >> yes. >> right. i mean, that's it's like they're coming through. and there was just something. so this happened in another universe to that. is that fair to say? >> it is. >> but it also shows you that if you've got lawyers who know how to slow walk things, and the trump lawyers were excellent at that. >> i mean, every possible wrench they could throw along the way, they did. and, you know, it may also say something about the legal system that it was allowed to happen. >> yeah. >> it's worth noting also race and money. yeah. you know that if you are a wealthy white person, you get disproportionate justice. not that. and it's not that that's bad. it's that other people do not get that. >> you get as much process as you can afford in the united states of america. andrew weissman and diane kiesel, thank you both. >> thank you. >> still to come, it not only
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nutrafol is life changing for me. >> get growing at nutrafol comm. >> since the end of the last world war, there have been basically two kind of competing visions of america's role in the world, at least among the two major parties. there's an international, liberal international view that that human rights should matter, that there should be a uniform standard globally that applies to every nation, including us,
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the us and our allies, a regime of international norms and most importantly, international law like real international law that the us could shape and strengthen. now, to be clear, i wasn't born yesterday. i'm not completely naive. yes, that standard is one that is very, very often only given lip service to while the us pursues pursues pure power politics. but it is a meaningful and important standard, as is the aspiration towards reaching it and the people that advocate holding it as a standard. so that's one vision. and then there's a kind of standard reactionary vision, right wing vision, which is that might makes right. universal norms are fictions that can never really constrain us. we're the greatest country on earth, and because we are the greatest nation, it's just definitionally impossible for us or our allies to be on the wrong side of international law, which doesn't exist. and that view is strong and has a very long tradition. you could say it might have peaked or reached its apogee in the cold war under henry kissinger, who sold successive
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administrations on dirty wars and proxy wars and funding, training and arming right wing militaries to oppose left wing governments or activists who enabled deadly terror in chile and argentina and south africa and indonesia. where, to be clear, kissinger's support for a right wing dictator dictator led to the genocide of 200,000 east timorese people by a us equipped army. one of the great moral stains of us foreign policy in the last 60 years. in el salvador, where us backed forces fueled a civil war and murdered catholic bishops, catholic nuns and social workers, an outrage that led the carter administration to suspend military aid to the nation. and as the cold war finally wound down, there was one lawmaker who made an indelible contribution to rolling back these abuses and attempting again, attempting to set a standard for american behavior abroad and the behavior of our allies that we armed.
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that was senator pat leahy, democrat of vermont, in 1997, the so-called leahy law expands our current law and seeks to ensure the united states assistance does not go to individuals who abuse human rights, to do everything possible to ensure that in our efforts to support foreign security forces, that we respect human rights, we also prevent those who abuse human rights from receiving our assistance. seems straightforward. leahy law barred the pentagon and the department of state from transferring us arms to countries that we thought were committing human rights abuses, and that is what i keep thinking of as i process the news that on the way out the door, the biden administration is going to transfer $8 billion more in weapons to israel, including fighter jets and attack helicopters, bombs, warheads and artillery shells. $8 billion in weaponry given over to an ally, waging what i think can only be described as total war in gaza.
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that has, according to, i think, multiple independent experts and reports, reporters and ngos have been committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing. according to a former israeli defense minister, where israeli soldiers say they have been ordered to target and kill innocents arbitrarily, including children, and that they have used palestinians as human shields for their operations in gaza. as whistleblowers and detainees say the israeli authorities regularly torture palestinian prisoners. the un says israel is using using starvation as a strategy in gaza. amnesty international says israel is committing a genocide. dozens of doctors, nurses and paramedics who volunteered in gaza and were there and saw up close told the new york times. they'd seen, as you see the images there in front of you, multiple children who were shot in the head or chest, in the head or chest bullets, and they even brought
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back the x rays you're seeing right now to prove it. so people would believe that they had seen children with bullets lodged in their skulls. as congresswoman katie porter pointed out in a house hearing last year, the us ban on arms transfers to human rights abusers. the leahy law has one big exception. >> state department says that aid should stop immediately if there's a problem, does it? >> it totally depends on the circumstances and situations. >> does it depend on the country that's getting the aid? >> it also depends on the country receiving the aid. yes. >> so what country does aid not stop immediately under leahy, i'd have to go back and look through my notes. you don't know what country that is. it's only one in the entire world. guess what? >> except for israel. >> even now, former senator pat leahy, who's no longer in the senate, says israel is getting a pass in violation of the spirit,
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if not the letter of the law that he helped pass. beginning in the early 2000, i wrote to successive secretaries of state about the failure to apply the leahy law to israel. the responses were either inconclusive or inaccurately claimed the law was being applied to israel, the same as to other countries, which the state department continues to insist today, leahy added. the state department's dismissive response not only beggars credulity, it also makes a mockery of the law. this is pat leahy, liberal senator, not a radical right, not a fringe voice in american politics. someone who knows this issue, who spent decades working on this issue and not just about israel, about all kinds of american allies. and yet here we are. president biden is going to hand a blank check for israel over to the incoming trump administration. i don't think it's coincidental that yesterday on capitol hill, the house overwhelmingly passed a bill to sanction officers of the international criminal court to punish them for moving to charge top israeli leaders, including prime minister benjamin
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netanyahu, with war crimes. keep in mind, the icc also indicted leaders of hamas for their war crimes appropriately and their holding of israeli hostages, which continues to this very day. and 45 democrats joined all republicans to support this bill. we know which vision of american global engagement the trump administration will carry out. but it isn't just trump, who this week is making an absolute mockery of every last lecture we deliver to the russians or the chinese or anyone else about respecting human rights and international law. it is president joe biden, too, leaving a disgraceful legacy. a liberal president doing untold damage to the doing untold damage to the liberal if you have heart failure or chronic kidney disease, farxiga can help you keep living life, because there are places you'd like to be. (♪♪) serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine
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and people impacted by it, it's hard to wrap your head around it. but we're in an area that's sort of a downtown area, kind of a main street of altadena. and i just want to show you some of what we've seen. this fire, this was not here a couple of hours ago when we first got here, but it has popped back up when you walk through this area, this community, you would be forgiven for thinking it's possible that you are in a war zone. because in so many buildings, so many places, you just see this walls minimally still standing and everything inside of it so charred. it's hard to make out what this business actually was. that's true of homes as well. come down this way and i'll show you where they're still working to put out all of these what are essentially hotspots. i mean, this area, there are fire crews all along here. they have been here for over an hour and a half trying to get these hotspots put out. and again, chris, this whole building, when we first walked by it 2 or 3 hours ago, looked like it was no longer burning and there were still pockets hidden underneath reigniting. so this is a situation of what fire crews and
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fire teams are dealing with on the ground here, areas where it seems like everything was controlled, things were okay and they could move on, change very quickly. and you can walk by these areas and you still feel the heat coming off of it radiating. but these firefighters are still very much in the thick of fighting this fire. this fire. the eaton fire, it's only 3% contained. but again, this is an area where a couple of hours ago, all of this pretty much okay, it's changed so quickly. over 150,000 people still under mandatory evacuation orders, the majority of them living in the areas near the palisades fire or the eaton fire, where we are here. a lot of people have been frustrated throughout the day. residents who have been told they can't come back into this area where there's a mandatory evacuation order, but local fire officials say this right here. this is part of why they are still fighting these fires, and they are still fighting pockets that just keep popping up as they try to get this contained, particularly in the window where the winds have died down before red flag warnings pop back up again on monday. chris.
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>> allison. barbara. thank you. that was a great report. that is i have not seen that. i have not seen details about these sort of reigniting hotspots, but that was really, really good. thank you very much. stay safe. okay. still to come, why the california wildfires are not just a california problem. the increasing threat of weather increasing threat of weather disasters across the power e*trade's easy-to-use tools, like dynamic charting and risk-reward analysis, help make trading feel effortless. and its customizable scans with social sentiment help you find and unlock opportunities in the market. e*trade from morgan stanley. ♪♪ with powerful, easy-to-use tools power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley use nerve. >> five nerves clinical dose of
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of change. >> in the same way that hurricanes have been happening in the gulf of mexico. since there has been a climate, right? wildfires have been happening in california for as long as there has been vegetation many, many, many, many years. right? and yet, as with hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the fires are getting more intense and more frequent because of hotter temperatures. writing in the new york times, climate scientist peter kalmus said that he moved his family out of california two years ago because he felt like his neighborhood in altadena would burn. quote. even if i didn't think fires of this scale and severity would raise it and other large areas of the city soon. those who have lost
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everything in climate disasters, the apocalypse has already arrived. and peter kalmus joins me now. he's a climate scientist. he works for nasa's jet propulsion lab. peter, i know you are not speaking on behalf of nasa. i want to make that clear. that's just where you work. but just tell me, first of all, how you're feeling watching these images of someone who studies climate in the abstract, thinks about it professionally, thinks about it all the time, lived in that neighborhood. seeing the images from ellison barber just now and the other ones, i was devastated. >> i it's been a really tough couple of days. that footage, though, i was squinting and trying to see where it was because i lived there for 14 years and i just it's there's no words for it. i mean, what a it's just was the most beautiful place, great place to live. this is my worst nightmare. but it's actually not because the planet's still getting hotter is the problem. and, you know, i sort of did see this coming
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because los angeles, southern california was getting hotter and drier and more fiery. and there were smoke events. there was one fire that caught my family in a smoke cloud for weeks and weeks, but it's still getting hotter and it's still places like this are still getting drier and floods are still getting worse and hurricanes are still getting worse. and this will continue as long as we keep burning fossil fuels. and it's just breaks my heart that political leaders around the world today are still continuing to drill as fast as they can, expand fossil fuels as fast as they can. this is what's causing this. and i blame the fossil fuel industry. i know we all use fossil fuels, but the fossil fuel executives and lobbyists have known that this would happen for decades. and they covered it up. they lied, and they've been giving donations to politicians to block action. and that's all the receipts are there. it's very
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well documented. great reporters like amy westervelt and others have, you know, reams and reams of documents dating back to the 1960s that show that exxon and the american petroleum institute and other fossil fuel corporations have known for a very long time that this was coming, and they just wanted to keep their profits going. and now we're all paying the price. and it's devastating. it's surreal. i don't know if this doesn't wake us up. i honestly don't know what will. >> yeah. just to. in point of fact, you know, it's actually striking that some of those documents, it's not just they knew they were probably some of the most prescient. i mean, they didn't just know, you know, they have incredible scientists working for them. they understood the physics. they actually got their hands around it as early as almost anyone that we have now learned, you know, subsequently. >> that's correct. i don't understand why there isn't an amazing netflix documentary or an adam mckay film that, you know, kind of documents that
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incredible work that they did and how they must have been gaslit by their own executives and the boardroom discussions that must have happened to keep the profits going. i mean, i don't i don't know how these people can live with themselves. honestly. they must really rationalize hard, you know, you i want to i want to ask about california specifically and about climate more broadly. >> so you you saw some of the writing on the wall, and it seems to me, as i understand it, that the connection sometimes connections like hurricane stuff is actually fairly complicated modeling wise, the connection between hotter temperature heat leading to both drought and fires is pretty, is like a one of the more clear cut ones in terms of climate effects. >> yeah, absolutely. so i, you know, i, i'm a person who just doesn't like very intense heat waves. i feel in my body. and it really was getting hotter. there was this, you know, heat wave in 2020 right before the bobcat fire kicked off in september of
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2020, i experienced heat exhaustion for the first time and that heat and was like, i think it got up to 115°f in altadena that day, so it was just getting too hot for my body. and then subsequently i did start to study extreme heat because it's something that just i find really visceral and sort of terrifying, i guess. so i'm very curious to know more about how extreme heat is going to affect different parts of the planet, our bodies, different ecosystems. but yeah, it was getting too hot for me in california, so i decided to mov. when my wife got a job offer in north carolina. >> you're in north carolina. and that brings me to the second point that that i feel like is i don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that that that there's any judgment here or guilt that, like, you shouldn't sometimes be like, oh, you shouldn't be living in the gulf. you know, naturally, there's hurricanes there. you shouldn't live in these parts because there's x natural phenomenon. you know, we saw with asheville,
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north carolina, a place that i think literally had been marketed as a climate haven, getting absolutely knocked out that, that, that this is an unpredictable system we're in now. >> i agree, i don't think trying to find a safe haven is the right strategy here. i think what we need to do is collectively organize and realize that these are not natural disasters. these are disasters that have been perpetrated by one industry and then the supporting industries to like the banking industry that is still financing new fossil fuel projects, which obviously, like when we're in the hole, the first thing we should do is stop digging, right? so the science says the hotter the planet gets, the worse these impacts get. i think that what we're seeing in los angeles is an example of a tipping point. so you get like every year it's a little bit hotter, it's a little bit drier. you have normal fires and then suddenly you get yes, peter comas in north carolina, thank you very much for your time tonight. >> that is all in
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