>> john birch society was certainly accused of racism. d anti-semitism -- anti-semitism come and they rejected. they saw evidence of communist subversion behind every move of government -- >> like john mccarthy? >> they accused marley 13 of being a communist agent. that sort of thing. they thought the u.n. was a jeweler bringing about a one world government. you hear a lot of this today in the tea party rhetoric. there is kind of a direct to the tea party. there are three other koch brothers. the eldest never went into the family business, frederick. he is a philanthropist and art collector who spent his life restoring a series of really fabulous historic homes around the world. including marie antoinette's bed. that is the rarest object in the house. >> did you get to sleep and it? >> no guest gets to sleep in it. unfortunately, no. david and bill koch are the youngest of the koch brothers. they are fraternal twins. in terms of the few that broke out between brothers, this is really what is fascinating about this family. these four brothe

he was a member of the john birch society and was pretty obscure. he made a career out of hating martin luther king and heaping scorn upon him. he was present, he was elected to congress in nearly 60s and always filing of these link the reports based on innuendo and character assassination and guilt by association. all of the mccarthy tactics. he had his hearing not only before dr. king was shot but interestingly after dr. king was shot he was all over the pages of the congressional record saying bad things, interesting stuff. the most king opponents, not all of whom were republicans and not all of whom were conservatives really kept their mouths shut on the floor of congress and elsewhere with some interesting exceptions. but bashis broken to need to go after king and stayed in congress until 1982, through most of the debate on the martin luther king holiday, the national holiday that was finally enacted after a four year struggle led by coretta king with some help from steve wonder and a host of characters who are traced in my story. but-brook kep

take you back a few a few decades just to fill in the blanks but so charles koch is it becomes the john birch society member and at a certain tier of the birch society you have a group of people that end up becoming involved with something called the freedom school which was run by a very colorful libertarian guru antigovernment guru named bob lafave from there he immersed himself in the fledgling libertarian movement of that era and decides that mainstreaming libertarian ideas is going to be his you know philanthropic legacy basically that's what he's done and what he's going to brazil's coke foundation which is now called the cato and so in the late one nine hundred seventy s. charles koch is actually asked. you know first if he wants to run on the libertarian party ticket. charles is a pretty private guy he also has a company to run he's not interested but he mentions it to his brothers bill and david david ends up going for it and the whole point of running david koch on the ticket or a coke in general is that these are wealthy men and they would be able to sell fund the campaign thereby

fred koch was a founding member of the radical right wing anti-communist john birch society. they did you want just adopt his ideas. over 40 years they built a group of think tanks, advocacy groups, political action committee and trade organizations, one that laid the groundwork for the tea party long before it had a name. joining me now is senior editor of mother jones and author of "sons of wichita" daniel shulman. before we get into this i have to reet the statement from koch industries. >> we've been aware of his book since 2012 and have had minimal participation. neither charles or david koch was interviewed for the book and we're in the process of reviewing this book and are reserving judgment until that time. congratulations. let's start, in your exhaustive research, has has the koch's political interests confirmed their political viewpoints. >> the one thing about the kochs is that a lot of people say they're really just trying to line their pockets. i spent more than three years looking at these guys and it's more complicated. they are kind of libertarian purists. th

whether it's this group or the john birch society or citizens commission on benghazi, a collection ofti-muslim activists and conspiracy they'rists that are providing grit for the benghazi investigations and fundraising mill and conservative media and in congress. there appears to be not much happening. we will continue to keep a weather eye on them. that wraps things up for the reid report today. have a great weekend. i'll see you back here monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern and be sure to visit us on-line at the reid report.nbc.com. you know what's coming up? cycle. how are you dwog? happy friday. >> hi. happy friday to you. we have a lot going on. it's going tore another great show. we're going to talk about tim geithner's book and about obama's upcoming west point address. we're going to have luke russert on and talk about his -- how his father's book about his -- luke's grandfather. we're going so to have the great willy randolph who also managed the mets. excited about that. i'm going to talk about harvard's movement toward privilege training for their kennedy school of government. folk

but i just want to advocate that that gentleman previous exemplified that the osfid dinosaur john birchomen are unhinged talk versus the soul of america. and fortunately that man is not going to inherit the earth. thank you. host: on any of that? guest: well, it was nice to have support. it's interesting that we're having this conversation right before mother's day. so i'm sure that tomorrow a lot of people are going to be calling their moms and sending flowers and taking her out to lunch and doing these things to celebrate their mothers. and we absolutely should do that next month we're going to celebrate our fathers. i would like us to see not taking one day or one week or even one month out of the year where we say the contribution of women as mothers and members of the society is important. let's be thinking about that all year round. women are half of the population. we're half the labor force. we're more than half of all voters. and so i think it's really important to think about things from multiple perspective and not just come at everything with the assumption that every worker

stating, quote, the disininformation campaign is being driven by the likes of fox news, john birch society of education says the report is a desperate attempt to marginalize common core critics. she joins us from lynchburg, virginia. they say that those are the ohm critics, when, in fact, it's bipartisan. there are teachers unions in chicago and here in new york state and they hate it, too. >> absolutely. this is a bipartisan outcry of concern, legitimate concerns that are being expressed. when you look at the facts, 35 states in the last legislative session that were promoting some type of legislative effort to either delay implementation or prevent implementation of common core and the mandatory park assessments. this is not just a fringe little group that is expressing concern. this is a national voice that is being expressed and it's definitely bipartisan. >> sure. it sounds like some of the political talking points that have been circulated on the left where whoever criticizes you, they're an extremist. you're going to hear extremist, koch brothers regarding politics, not common core.

they claim, quote, the disinformation campaign is being driven by the likes of fox news, john birch societyand joining us right now is the man who made that happen. the governor of the great state of indiana, mike pence, good morning to you. >> good morning. >> what do you think about that criticism? >> it's just unfortunate. the reality is throughout my public career, like i think most americans, i've always believed that education is a state and local function and the federal department of education was created by president jimmy carter. while 45 states just a few years back adopted the national standards known as the common core, we've got millions of americans that have been rising up and being heard, including in indiana and saying look, we want to right our standards and write our curriculum and choose our textbooks in our own state. i'm proud of the fact that indiana was the first state in the union to legally withdraw from common core and go through the process of writing our own standards. >> what is it about common core you don't like? >> well, at the core of it, if you will, is m

it says it is being driven by the likes of fox news, the john birch society, tea party factions and thees, angry parents, supporters of common core on this show discussing it and debating it. fox news is perpetrating these lies about common core? no. >> we had a huge supporter of common core on our show who took questions in our green room from facebook and twitter and e-mails. he stayed here for four hours. he missed church for crying out loud because he staid here doing it. the idea is that we need to make sure that there can be healthy debate. we want to make sure our kids get educated because they are our future. it seems like it's worth debating and should not be silenced. >> you can't have a debate if you presume people who disagree with you are not wrong but evil. you see this with harry reid, for example, where the people who disagree with him are not just wrong, they're unpatriotic or dry destroying the earth. the president makes this point constantly, the people who disagree with me want to hurt the poor. if you presume the people you're debating with are evil, it's not a deba