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All In with Chris Hayes - Season Episode 104 engsub fullepisode⚡️ Secret Engagement
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00:03Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Well, America should be celebrating 250 years
00:09of independence from royal tyranny this weekend. But Donald Trump has turned the nation's capital
00:13into a royal mess. From the reflecting pool to the gaping hole where the east wing of the
00:18White House once stood to the bizarre hackneyed great American state fair, a MAGA inflected
00:24train wreck that is so empty, even Fox cannot make it look good. Trump wants to remake Washington,
00:31D.C. and the country in his image. That includes commandeering the nation's most famous July 4th
00:36fireworks celebration on the 250th birthday this weekend for his own personal glory. Now,
00:43in previous years, the fireworks would start around 930. This weekend, amid one of the capital's worst
00:48heatwaves in years, crowds will have to wait until 1030 or 11, maybe even later, later, because
00:54first, Donald Trump wants to give a big speech. This week, we look back on 250 years of glorious
01:03freedom, and we took so much time and so much effort. And by the way, on July 4th, it's going
01:11to
01:11be approximately 107 degrees out. And I'm going to go and I'm going to make a really long speech.
01:18Just to show that I can do anything. It's going to be 107.
01:25That's joking, not joking, right? Speech could be an hour, like the speech he gave right there,
01:30could be two hours, like he's been known to do. You can probably bet that it will be a lot
01:34longer
01:35than the most famous presidential speech in history, which is also one of the shortest. That,
01:39of course, the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln. It took only two or three minutes to lay
01:44out what American soldiers, Union soldiers, had died for on the Civil War battlefields and why the
01:50nation had to continue to fight so that, in his words, government of the people, by the people,
01:55for the people, shall not perish from the earth. In the 170 years since, no one's improved on that
02:02formulation. That's the American project in a nutshell. But it is not the America of Donald Trump.
02:07His is primarily a government by, of, and for the billionaires. Now, that's been said of our
02:14government before, particularly of the Republican Party, the conservative movement. It's almost kind
02:18of a liberal cliche, although with some real truth to it. But Trump has turned it into the most literal
02:25kind of reality. All week, we have told you about his personal corruption, his orgy of self-dealing,
02:32the billions from crypto deals bankrolled by foreign governments that have interests that
02:37might be different than ours. He oversees mining deals for companies with ties to his kids and
02:41Howard Lutnick's kids, the allegations of pardons for money, the gross gray area of industry that's
02:50risen up around pardons, the obsession with using his power to enrich himself and his family on a level
02:55that is really, quite literally, totally and absolutely unheard of American history. This isn't one of
03:01those ahistorical, this has never happened before. This really hasn't happened before.
03:06But it is not just his personal corruption. It is the oligarchy building up around him. This entire
03:12administration is oriented towards the people that Trump cares about. And that is the richest and most
03:19powerful. Those who are willing to throw their riches and power behind him. Trump has bragged to
03:25reporters about how the billionaire tech CEO is now grovel to him. They do it because he will use the
03:30government to break who he doesn't like and help whoever he does the way, well, a king would. In the
03:36new book, Regime Change, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recount a meeting
03:40between Trump and oil executives where the CEO of ExxonMobil asked Trump for help dealing with new EU climate
03:47regulations. Trump looked at Howard Lutnick and said, well, we'll just tariff them. Howard, add 10 more percent
03:52to wherever we were going to do the EU. Actually, add 20 percent. The executives couldn't believe their
03:58fortune. Suddenly, the cabinet room was like a funhouse. Regulatory regimes could disappear at a
04:03simple request. Now a CEO could simply ask for something and it was granted. By the way, do you
04:08think there's any connection between what those oil companies are doing and the heat that we're
04:12experiencing this year and the thousands who may have perished in Europe over the weekend because of
04:16it? According to Haberman and Swan, the price to get into Trump's good graces would be high.
04:22In conversations with a Republican fundraiser who acts as a go-between, Trump would dictate the
04:27number, the exact dollar figure he wanted her to extract from each CEO. Within days, they write,
04:32millions of dollars and then tens and hundreds of millions were pouring into Trump's various
04:37fundraising accounts. Worth considering for a moment, what are those fundraising accounts for?
04:42Can't run for president again. Can't run for anything. Where's that money going to go?
04:47Trump has again and again and again openly sided with billionaires against measures that can make
04:52Americans safer. In May, this is just one example and I could spend the rest of the week telling you
04:58examples. He was poised to sign an executive order requiring government safety reviews of AI models
05:03before they released publicly. And whatever you think about the substance of that, here's the thing
05:09you need to know about how policy gets made. He canceled the signing after Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and
05:15former White House AI czar David Sachs, himself a very, very wealthy man with many business interests
05:21in AI, personally urged Trump to reverse course in private phone calls. That's who he listens to.
05:28Completely coincidentally, this week it was reported that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT,
05:33is in talks to give the Trump administration a 5% stake in the company. You've heard a version of
05:38that
05:39story over and over again. Look at Paramount Skydance billionaires Larry and David Ellison,
05:44who acquired CBS News, and are remaking it for Donald Trump. They just got government approval,
05:49surprise, to merge with Warner Brothers Discovery, which would put them in charge of CNN as well.
05:54Now get this. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's love affair with the Ellisons
05:59began after Larry Ellison gave roughly $45 million to a political non-profit group supporting Trump's
06:08election efforts in 2024. To be clear, this is an enormous chunk of money that has not been
06:14previously reported. We didn't know about it. It's not subject to disclosure rules.
06:18He has since given Trump's millions more, according to the Journal. And do we know all the money that's
06:23traded hands? I would bet that we don't. Of course, Trump has actively traded millions in
06:28Ellison's company, Oracle, this year. And today, Trump was asked about all this again. And once again,
06:33he deflected. I think we shouldn't be surprised that your businesses are doing well. But how would
06:40you counter critics that say you're using the presidency to enrich yourself and your family?
06:47Well, in a lot of ways, if you think about it, the stock has got up so much. The stock
06:51market today,
06:52it's up 500 points. It's up to almost 53,000. Do you worry that if they take, if the Democrats
07:00were
07:00to win the house, that there's going to be endless investigations of you and your administration?
07:05Well, you know, I don't do anything having to do with my business. My kids run it. Anything we do,
07:10I want to be number one in. And we're number one in crypto. And we're also number one in AI.
07:15In the disclosure this week, the amount of money that you and the family made in crypto,
07:19it was an outsized number. I was just asking, did you, were you know about the crypto venture? So,
07:26that was just something. By the way, I could know about it. I didn't. I mean,
07:31there's nothing illegal. There's nothing wrong with it. I could know.
07:35Oh, there's nothing wrong. You sure there's nothing legal? The $2 billion you're making from
07:41this business with backing from a foreign government that looks like a direct transfer
07:47from your investors into your pocket. Nothing illegal or wrong about the stock trades you've been
07:51making at a record clip that no president has ever been making? Or the stocks that you bought
07:57right before you announced a pause to a tariffs that then sent the value of those stocks shooting
08:03up? You sure there's nothing illegal about that? People do go to jail for fact patterns remarkably
08:08similar to that. It's not just that he's getting wealthy. It's that there is this crew of people that
08:15the whole United States is explicitly being run for. It is for them, for the people at Mar-a-Lago
08:22and the people around the White House and the oligarchs that lavish Trump and his family with
08:26gifts and contracts and contributions. The foreign emirs and the crown princes, the Ellisons and the
08:32Bezoses and the Zuckerbergs and the Musks, the Lutniks and the Wyckoffs and the Kushners.
08:38Our government is being run explicitly for this oligarch class. Full stop. That's what he cares about.
08:44That's who he's looking out for. He's part of that class and you ain't.
08:50And it's a total, complete desecration of what makes self-governance, our very birthright as
08:58Americans, so precious. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, joins me now. Senator,
09:06I wanted to talk to you about this topic because I said up at the top, this notion of buying
09:11for the
09:12billionaires has been part of the discourse for a while. And I think there's all sorts of ways
09:1710 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you could point to concentrated wealth infiltrating
09:22the political system. And you've been making that critique for a long time. And yet it still feels
09:27to me as someone who's been covering politics for 25 years, there's really nothing been quite like
09:33this, that this is a new level, that it's more concentrated, more in your face, more vulgar.
09:40Did you think, is that fair characterization?
09:43Absolutely. Look, the simple truth of the matter is, is that never before in American history,
09:51our 250 year history, have so few people held so much wealth and had so much power.
10:00Today, you have more income and wealth inequality than we've ever had, much worse, as you know,
10:06than the Gilded Age, more concentration of ownership, more corporate control over the media.
10:12And, you know, Chris, as you talk about quite often, as a result of the billionaire-owned super PACs,
10:18we're seeing huge amounts of money coming into the political system, undermining our democracy,
10:24and electing candidates who will continue to work for the wealthy and the powerful.
10:31So, you know, that is where we are today. That's the bad news. But I think there's some pretty good
10:36news. And that is that people all over this country are catching on. We've seen some great
10:42election victories in the last six months. We have seen people standing up at fighting oligarchy
10:51rallies, at no king's rallies, by the millions. And I think people understand, as Lincoln reminded us,
10:59that people fought and died so that we would be a country of the people, by the people, for the
11:06people, not a handful of billionaires, or in Musk's case, a trillionaire.
11:12Let me show two data points, I think, that back this up. One, your point about billionaire money in
11:17politics. And again, to the extent we could document it, and we don't even know that we're documenting all of
11:21it. We just found out about 45 million from the Ellison's a week ago. This was a chart put together
11:26by the Washington Post. And you can just see, it looks like a, you know, it just shoots up, right?
11:31In 2000, they were basically, billionaires were not spending, were not noticeably contributing as
11:36donating to federal elections. It's now 1.1 billion. That number is going to go up in 2026, and it'll
11:41probably go up in 2028. And then I want to get your thoughts on this. This is the Data for
11:45Progress ran a
11:46poll of likely voters last week. And it showed that billionaires and corporate landlords are seen as
11:52the most harmful to society and economy, just ahead of sports gambling marketplaces, AI and crypto
11:59companies. What do you make of that? What I make of it is that the American people are catching on.
12:07Look, I don't care if you're a right wing Republican or a socialist or a moderate, who in their right
12:13mind thinks that it is a good idea for this country to say one guy, Elon Musk, could put $270
12:20million
12:20to elect Donald Trump president, or billionaires on the Republican side or Democratic side can run
12:27these super PACs, often with undisclosed funding to defeat candidates who stand up for the working
12:33class. Nobody believes that that makes sense. And all over this country, Chris, people are demanding,
12:39A, that we get rid of these super PACs, that we get rid of Citizens United, that disastrous Supreme
12:45Court decision, and that, by the way, we get moved toward public funding of elections. There is no
12:52political issue more important than getting billionaire money out of the political process.
12:59You got to, I mean, I am very sympathetic to that view. One of the things we've seen from this
13:06court, and this is the Citizens United Court, and again, they just had yet another deregulatory
13:11decision this week that allowed even more coordination and higher limits on donations.
13:18The court has to be dealt with, right? Like, for that project to happen. Basically, what the court has
13:22said is, the court's jurisprudence is, you, Bernie Sanders, or anyone that agrees with you on this issue,
13:27can't do anything. If you try to pass along the next administration doing something about this,
13:33we're going to, we're going to strike it down. So the court, like, it does seem to me the court
13:37is
13:37the crux of the obstacle there, not the politics of it, which I agree with you, I think are quite
13:42favorable. Right. Well, I certainly do agree. I mean, the court is, this court that's given us
13:50the overturning of Roe v. Wade, given us Citizens United, overturning the Voting Rights Act,
13:56etc., has been a total disaster, and in many ways working for the very wealthiest people in this
14:01country against our democracy. It's a complicated issue, but it is an issue that has to be dealt
14:07with. There are various ideas out there as to how we can deal with it, but we do have to
14:11deal with it.
14:12But on the other hand, what I would tell you, Chris, as I go all over this country, which I
14:16do,
14:16is it is not just Trump that people are worried about, as disastrous as this administration is.
14:24Ordinary people today are hurting. Sixty percent live in paycheck to paycheck. You've got a health
14:31care system, which is totally broken, wildly expensive. You've got a child care and educational
14:37system in deep trouble. People can't afford housing. And what is really upsetting is that in the wealthiest
14:44country in the history of the world, while the richest people, as you just mentioned, become much
14:49richer, everything being equal, unless we change it, our younger generation will have a lower standard
14:57of living than their parents. They will own their first home 12 years later than their parents.
15:04That is crazy. And the American people understand, they really do, that we need to not only get rid of
15:10the citizens united, but we need a government which begins to represent all of us, not just the few.
15:19I was really gobsmacked this last week on the, you mentioned housing, and that's obviously, I think,
15:23really near the top for so many people. Polling shows it, conversations you have. I'm sure that when
15:28you're out campaigning, like this is like, can I, as a young person, can I get a home, right? Can
15:33I,
15:33that Congress actually passed this law, bipartisan, huge bipartisan majorities, worked for years
15:40on it. And I was just so gossiped. The president comes out and basically says,
15:45it's a big yawn. I don't care. Maybe I'll sign it. Maybe I'll not. And I, you couldn't ask for
15:54a
15:54clear articulation of the man's priorities. Both parties, 85% of the Senate, 85% of the House.
16:04And he did this a few minutes before they were assembling for a press conference to sign the
16:09damn thing. Look, I mean, as I think you've indicated, and I think most of the Americans
16:14know, this is an oligarch who feels that his main focus in life is to make his fellow oligarchs
16:21and his family even richer than they are. But what we are doing right now at the grassroots level
16:28is creating, I think, the strongest grassroots movement, certainly in the modern history
16:33of this country, which is going to demand that we address this income and wealth inequality,
16:40that we start taxing the billionaires, that we get rid of this corrupt campaign finance system,
16:46that we guarantee health care to all people as a human right, that we raise the minimum wage
16:51to a living wage, make it easier for workers to join unions, and instead of spending over a trillion
16:57dollars on the military and on endless horrible wars, that we invest and build 7 million units
17:04of low-income and affordable housing. Look, we are the richest country in the history of the world.
17:09We can do it. We can do it. But we're not going to do it with the crew that it's
17:14in Washington
17:15right now. We do need a political revolution. It's beginning to happen. And I feel confident
17:20about what you're going to be seeing in the next few months.
17:24Well, I'll say this. I remember reading the article about an independent self-avowed socialist
17:29getting elected to Congress when you first were, and that it was, the tenor of the article was like,
17:35basically, like, there's a horse who can talk. What a crazy thing. There's a guy who's a socialist,
17:40and he's in Congress. And, you know, there's probably going to be three, four, five, six,
17:46seven people that call themselves socialists in Congress. It's probably going to be the highest
17:50since, I would imagine, the early 19th century. So there's something happening there. Senator
17:54Bernie Sanders, who was the first in my lifetime, I'm pretty certain. Thank you for your time tonight.
18:00Thank you very much, Chris.
18:03Still to come, MSNOW's exclusive interview with Jack Smith, breaking his silence, warning for the
18:10midterms ahead, and America's birthday party is turning into a fiasco. And again, I'm trying to
18:15put my confirmation bias in check, but it's really a fiasco. It didn't have to be this way.
18:21The nonpartisan group whose plans were benched by the White House is next.
18:28So from my perspective, it is hitting exactly every mark that we had hoped it would hit at this
18:34point. I do think this weekend we're going to see massive, massive crowds. But, you know,
18:39my goal is that people can come and walk and experience it. And 150,000 people coming to
18:44celebrate the great American state fair over the last five or six days. I call that a huge success.
18:51The president has turned the nation's 250th anniversary into a laughable bust, just a
18:56grotesque, slapdash, surreal spectacle. This morning, for example, the secretary of defense
19:02hosted a ceremony honoring National Guard troops, which have been deployed to D.C. for almost a year.
19:08Hegseth showed up 30 minutes late to his outdoor event, only to shout about protesters in 100 degree
19:14weather. This background noise this morning is perfect. It's the sound of ingratitude of people
19:25who are so blinded by ideology they can't see law and order and common sense in front of them.
19:33I just want to be clear here. It didn't have to be this way. There was a plan for some
19:38really
19:39awesome, nonpartisan, unifying events this year. It was years in the making until Donald Trump just
19:44destroyed all of it. Congressman Jared Huffman is a Democrat of California. He's been investigating
19:49Trump's takeover of America's birthday for months. Today, he's out with a 55-page report accusing
19:53Trump of using the celebration for corruption and self-enrichment. And he joins me now.
19:58You know, Congressman, I've been sort of watching the spectacle, but I've been doing more reading over
20:03the last few days, partly because I've been talking to people my parents' age who really have
20:07wonderfully, like, lifelong fond memories of 76, like, can tell you things they did, remember events.
20:15And one of the things I'd like you to sort of talk us through is there was a bunch of
20:20planning before
20:21Donald Trump came along to have, like, a big celebration that wasn't just a kind of chintzy
20:28airsats MAGA rally, right? Absolutely. I was part of the Congress 10 years ago that set all of that in
20:35motion that stood up this America 250 commission in a very bipartisan, nonpolitical way, and that put
20:42guardrails in statute to prevent it from becoming a political weapon for anyone.
20:50What happened?
20:53Donald Trump happened. When Donald Trump came in early last year, he first tried to take over
21:00this bipartisan, nonpartisan commission because he wanted America's birthday to be about him,
21:07about his vanity projects, about his political and religious programming that he wanted to move
21:14forward under the banner of America 250. And he wanted to do things that enriched himself and his
21:20cronies. And so this report that we've released today tells the details of how he made that happen.
21:28There is. I want people to understand this. There's this kind of really insidious bait and
21:32switch. So there's America 250, which was statutorily created. Here's an announcement
21:36from August 1st, 2024, that announces President Bush and Obama first ladies as honorary national
21:41co-chairs. And then they come in and you say in the report they first attempted to bend America
21:48250, which was like the real commission that was going to do this to its purpose, demanding spectacles
21:54focused on promoting Trump rather than the country while forcing partisan content, campaign style
21:58fundraisers and favorite contractors. When America 250 would not yield, the White House created a
22:03replacement Freedom 250 LLC. So they have created a parallel organization they control that's now
22:10basically running the celebration. Absolutely. They sidelined America 250. They siphoned off at least
22:18a hundred million dollars of public money into this shell company. They housed it within a trusted
22:24charity that has been working with the Department of Interior for 50 years, the National Park Foundation.
22:29That was to confuse people, but also to give them the benefit of total secrecy so that they could
22:36proceed to award themselves huge no bid contracts to have all of this radical partisan and religious
22:43programming as part of Freedom 250. And of course, to enrich Donald Trump himself in several cases.
22:51This is a crazy detail from your report. So according to sources familiar with the matter,
22:56prospective donors and sponsors, right? People are raising money. You're saying, oh, I want to give.
23:00I love America and I love I want to celebrate the 250th anniversary. They've been told by the
23:06administration they do not have a green light to donate to America 250. Donors who intended to donate
23:12to American 250 were instead given wire instructions with Freedom 250's banking information, including
23:20its routing number and account number, meaning you're strongly suggesting that donors who wanted to
23:27donate to the actual commission, the actual organization, were given the routing number of the
23:35like parallel Trump controlled one without their knowledge. We have this from whistleblowers and
23:42we are going to continue following through on this investigation. It's an open investigation. But if that
23:48proves up, it has all the hallmarks of wire fraud. Yeah, I mean, you said I'm a lawyer and I
23:56know
23:56better than pronounce that a crime has been committed, but I do know the elements of fraud and there is
24:01elements of all those, you know, there's all those elements here. I want to say what the
24:11spokesperson for Freedom 250 said, just so you can respond to it. This is the Washington Post
24:15reporting on a report. This so-called report is nothing more than a partisan smear from politicians
24:19who would rather manufacture division than celebrate America's 250th birthday alongside the rest of the
24:23country. The spokesperson also criticized America 250, saying the bipartisan organization had nothing
24:29to show for its 10 years of planning and spending. Freedom 250 was created because the American people
24:33deserve better. Is that true that they just dropped the ball, America 250? Not at all. No. Under the
24:40chairwoman, things were really moving forward in a unified way. And that's why when the Trump team
24:46tried to strong arm four Republican commissioners into dropping off the commission so that they could
24:51do their hostile takeover, the commissioners refused to go and the whole hostile takeover kind of blew up in
24:57their face. So that's when they went to plan B. They set up this shell company and they started doing
25:02all of this siphoning of funding and setting up of all of these other operations. It was
25:08incredibly craven. And, you know, they wrecked our national birthday, Chris. And you're absolutely
25:14right to point out 1976 and the bicentennial. I was a 12 year old kid and I remember what a
25:20wonderful
25:22unifying moment that was. And, you know, we had a president at the time that was in a tough race
25:28for
25:28his political survival, Gerald Ford. He wouldn't have dreamed of politicizing or hijacking this
25:35important moment of national unity. Nobody would have thought of it. But Donald Trump is very different.
25:41Yeah. And also, we're not talking about I mean, the things that were made in preparation for that
25:47aren't, you know, some stage that got struck like the Washington Metro opened its first line
25:53in in 1976 as a as a part of the celebrate. There were, you know, the reflecting pool that's outside
25:59the Capitol, I believe, opened in the run up to the sculpture garden that's on the on the mall, like
26:03huge, big projects to, you know, the big national projects, not whatever the heck they've put on that
26:11mall. And we could have had that again. We were on track to have a really unifying, wonderful national
26:18celebration. And the programming and content was going to be developed by serious people like
26:23folks at the Smithsonian. Instead, what we got are these freedom trucks that are running around the
26:29country, proselytizing and pushing a fake history developed by PragerU.
26:37It's really beyond. I have to say, I watched a video today of a local report with a woman or
26:42husband who are there and they appear to they had Trump hats on. So they appear to be, you know,
26:47fans, the president, and they got so hot because there's no air conditioning inside the halls that
26:51she felt like she was going to have a heat stroke. And so she found reprieve in the baptism tent
26:57they
26:57have set up where there was a pool of water that she jumped into to stop herself from having heat
27:03stroke. Apparently, there's a baptism tent. Well, I'm glad that it was used for something
27:12that was needed. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Indeed, Congressman Jared Huffman,
27:20co-author of the upcoming book, No Prophets, The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism
27:24with Congressman Jamie Raskin, also author of this report, which you should definitely go check out
27:28because I learned a ton from it. Thank you, Congressman. Thank you, Chris.
27:33Still ahead, Jack Smith is speaking out exclusively on MS Now. Next.
27:37Next. Special Counsel Jack Smith, you remember Jack Smith, the man that charged Donald Trump with
27:45multiple counts of attempting to subvert the 2020 election after his loss to Joe Biden,
27:49a man that was leading the separate case against Trump for unlawfully squirreling away boxes upon
27:54boxes of classified documents in the ballroom, in the shower, in the closets of his Florida
27:58retirement home. I wonder where's a carpet in that bathroom. Those cases look like they might result
28:03in serious consequences for Trump until the Trump majority in the Supreme Court rode to his rescue
28:08and invented an entirely new legal doctrine out of thin air. Jack Smith hasn't given any interviews
28:14in the nearly two years since it was clear his investigation would be shut down. Today,
28:18he finally broke his silence on MS Now, speaking exclusively with Nicole Wallace
28:22about Donald Trump's ongoing threat to democracy and the coming election.
28:27I'm very concerned of what's going to happen in the next election.
28:30My personal view is I think the state attorney generals have a tremendous role to play here.
28:35They can make sure the rule of law functions in their state. And I would also say that I think
28:41a thing that all of us can do is support election workers and election officials. The last time around,
28:48we saw that those people stood firm and they were in many cases the difference. We need to show them
28:54that we have their back. I think those two things are central to getting ready for the elections that
29:01are coming up. I would be ready to litigate everything. I would brainstorm. And I think they
29:05are. I get that sense. Every possible permutation. And don't let reason be a limitation. Imagine
29:15everything that could possibly be tried.
29:16That Trump will do.
29:17Yeah. And I also think it's important for them to be proactive and, you know,
29:23initiate litigation where it's appropriate.
29:27Tim Miller is a writer at large for the Bulwark, served as spokesman for the Republican National
29:31Committee. Doesn't really do that anymore. He joins me now. I thought that line from Jack Smith,
29:39it was a fascinating interview. It's online. I'm going to play another clip in a second. But
29:44don't let reason be a limitation was really stuck with me as as a really important way for everyone
29:52to think about the run up to this election and dealing with Trump generally.
29:56Yeah. Well, you know, I hate to bring up sadness and melancholy and looking back. But you're hearing
30:03from Jack Smith today. One example of that where, you know, I don't think the opponents of Trump and
30:11MAGA were creative enough in their thinking was how the Biden administration acted when they took
30:17over in 2021. Jack Smith probably should have been hired day one. Maybe he would have had time to
30:23actually do his work had he not been hired immediately. And that was just a failure of
30:27imagination. There are failures of imagination all over the place with Trump. And and so I think
30:32that is wise counsel from him. And, you know, unfortunately, like the other element that struck me
30:37about that interview that made me kind of melancholy today watching it on Nicole was just the Supreme
30:42Court ruling this week makes it very hard for us to have Jack Smith type figures going forward.
30:47And they basically have said that the the president can now fire anyone at will. And, you know,
30:54that would include special counsels, inspectors general, et cetera.
30:58Yeah, I mean, I want to be precise here because I'm not it's slightly unclear. There's sort of two
31:04things about independent commissions and the civil service and whether it's not quite clear that the
31:09independent commissions means he also gets to do that civil service, although that's clearly going
31:13to be teed up and he's already doing it. So we'll see. But yes. And I think to your point,
31:19your first
31:19point, like the reason that that line from Jack Smith stuck out to me so much is like that's hard
31:24won wisdom because he was in the middle of it. Right. Like, I don't think they thought that the MAGA
31:30court would invent a presidential immunity doctrine, ex nihilo, out of nothing to bail
31:35them out. Like, I think that caught them by surprise. For sure. And I mean, I think that he
31:43recognized he was coming in late and it was hard and they did what they could to kind of rush
31:46to move
31:47stuff forward. And timing was part of this. But I think the Supreme Court decision was a surprise.
31:51I think for some people, Trump running again and having so much success was a surprise. Right. I mean,
31:57they would have they would have had all the time on their hands, you know, had this not happened.
32:01You know, you hate to go do recent history on the show, even though I did watch interview with Maggie
32:06and John Swan and we share an obsession with the carpeted bathroom. But, you know, kind of looking
32:12back like the other lesson is Trump's first, you know, his reelection campaign or whatever,
32:17his third reelection campaign was start was an announcement at Mar-a-Lago that his family didn't
32:21even show up to. Right. That's where it was when it started. And so I think that there's like a
32:26sense
32:26that there's going to be time for justice to do its, you know, for justice to be served. And
32:32obviously that didn't happen. Here's what he had to say about some of the kind of prosecutions of
32:38critics that we've seen, which, you know, I think is one of the most troubling aspects of the country
32:43right now. Take a listen. From my perspective, I've seen a number of cases. James Comey, Letitia James,
32:50Jerome Powell. I mean, right. There's not criminality here. I mean, seashells. I mean,
32:58so the only reasonable explanation is the president has it out for these people and he has people who
33:05his former personal lawyers who are going to do what he says, regardless of the facts or law.
33:11Again, that's not a novel insight, but it is also just so important to hear people say it because
33:16what's happening is so outrageous. Yeah, it is. I guess the only silver lining I'll offer on this
33:24segment is all the people he listed are still walking free. And I think that this the DOJ has
33:29been pretty incompetent at going after their political foes. They've tried and that's bad
33:34and concerning. It's the type of thing that you see in autocratic countries, but they've not been
33:38successful. I'm a little more alarmed at what's happening with regular people. And, you know,
33:43obviously, this is the case with the former U.S. Olympian, a canoer who got who is being alleged
33:48to have done whatever damage to the reflecting pool. Absurd. You know, this is sort of in the
33:54vein of the sandwich throwing guy from D.C. last year. But Janine Pirro has a press conference.
34:00The U.S. attorney has a press conference today saying that this person deserves 10 years,
34:0310 years in prison. I know a lot of examples of this that we could talk about. And I think
34:08that
34:08that's particularly alarming when you talk about going after protesters, you know, going after
34:13people expressing their First Amendment rights to criticize the administration.
34:17Yeah, she did a whole big dog and pony show today about this guy, this vandal, who an individual that
34:23we actually had on this program. There's zero evidence that he vandalized the pool. And you're
34:30right. Like he's got he's got to now deal with the force of the state targeting him. And it's it's
34:37a
34:37nightmare. I mean, if that's like that's what happens in unfree countries all the time. And
34:43and and here it is right in front of our eyes. Tim Miller. Great to have you. Thank you.
34:48See you, Chris. Still had the Democrat running to flip one of the most important house seats in
34:54the entire country. Next. Right now, all the data we have, particularly the generic polling where people
35:03are asked if they're going to vote for a Democrat or Republican in their congressional election
35:06indicates the Democrats are poised to win the House back. But it's not by any means a foregone
35:12conclusion because Donald Trump's unprecedented mid decade gerrymandering from the Republican
35:19states with an assist from the Supreme Court has massively boosted Republicans margins. And there
35:24are only about 15 toss up races. There's 435 House seats, 15, one, five toss up races across the
35:31entire country. Every one of them is precious and can be very hard fought with probably no bigger
35:36opportunity than the 17th district in New York state. The Hudson Valley district went for Kamala
35:41Harris by a slim one point in 2024 in the presidential. Since 2022, it has been represented
35:47by Republican Mike Lawler, who has beaten back other challenges. Last week, residents in the 17th
35:54district voted for the Democratic nominee in that seat, Kate Conley. She's a decorated special
35:58operations army veteran who later served in senior roles for counterterrorism and cybersecurity in the
36:03Biden administration. Joining me now is Kate Conley, the Democratic candidate for New York 17.
36:09I like to ask folks who run for office because it is such a upheaval to a person's life.
36:16When was the moment that you were like, yes, I'm going to do this and why?
36:21Chris, I'll tell you the why. And thank you for having me. It's the same reason after 9-11 that
36:26I went
36:27off to West Point and then served 16 years in the army doing six tours overseas. It is out of
36:32love
36:32for this country. And the moment that I made the realization that I belonged in this fight
36:37was when we saw this administration come in and appoint the most incompetent cabinet in our nation's
36:44history and go after our political opposition to weaponize the executive branch. And meanwhile,
36:53Congress, members like Mike Lawler who are there to check this administration
36:57were complicit. They did nothing. They enabled it. They justified it. And so, Chris, this is a fight
37:02for not just New York 17 and our community here in the Hudson Valley, but truly our country
37:07and getting it back on track and stopping the weaponization that you were just talking about.
37:14Mike Lawler there. You see him in an event with Donald Trump. You know, I think the pitch that he's
37:18made to
37:18well, he's made a few different pitches to folks in the district is, you know, you may maybe don't
37:24like Donald Trump or maybe you're not a MAGA person, but I'm I'm my own man and I'm independent
37:30and I'll look out for you and no one tells me what to do. You think that's an honest characterization?
37:37Chris, Mike Lawler is desperate to try to continue to put up that smoke screen, but I will tell you
37:43after spending the last 15 months in every corner of this district talking to voters across the political
37:48spectrum, people here are sick of it. They see through the smoke screen and the B.S.
37:53The reality is Mike Lawler votes one way. That is Donald Trump's way. And I will tell you that people
38:01here
38:01are feeling the consequences, whether it's the fact that we just had over 37,000 people lose health care coverage
38:08because of H.R.1, a bill that Mike Lawler was a deciding vote on, or whether it's the fact
38:14that it's just gotten
38:15harder for working families to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. And this
38:20is the question I ask voters. I'm like, since Mike Lawler was elected November of 2022, is your life
38:24better or worse off? And the answer is always worse off. So he can't outrun that record.
38:31Your district spans a bunch of different settings, you know, some sort of more exurban, some quite rural,
38:40and it's a diverse district in that way. It's got a bunch of different interests. Are you hearing the
38:44main themes of affordability like everyone else's? Are there things that you've been surprised to hear
38:49coming up a lot in your district that maybe when you started campaigning, you weren't quite on your
38:55radar screen in the same way?
38:58I would say it's definitely affordability and just the struggle that working families here are facing and
39:04the fact that government has failed to do anything to make it better, especially under this
39:08administration, where it is literally only gotten harder for families where they're making trade
39:14offs between do I pay for my prescriptions or my energy bill? Do I fill up the grocery cart or
39:21the
39:21gas tank to get to work? And the continued recklessness of this administration, that's just
39:26worsening it. I'll tell you the other thing that people are sick of is corruption, corruption in this
39:31government and dysfunction. And that is where Mike Lawler, as a 20-year political operative and
39:36politician, you know, we could not be more different as people. For the last 20 years,
39:40while he's been off trying to profit off of our democracy, I've been trying to fight for it and
39:44defend it. And here in this district, that is going to make a difference.
39:49There were some attacks on you in the primary that were interestingly also amplified by Lawler,
39:55and I think he was in some senses trying to kind of choose his opponent in that primary,
40:00having to do with contracts, consulting contracts with a company that worked with Palantir, which is
40:07a sort of notorious country and has done stuff on ice and deportation, and the Department of Defense.
40:12Are you, is there anything you feel like you need to explain to voters about your past work life or
40:17your associations?
40:20It was pretty sad. We saw Republicans so scared to face me in November that they spent $1.5 million
40:27in the final 10 days of my primary, literally lying about my work and misrepresenting it. I will tell
40:34you, I've spent my life defending this country and our families to include the companies I work with
40:39where we prevent terror attacks from hitting things like, you know, sports stadiums and our community
40:44centers. I am proud of that work. And to watch Mike Lawler spend the last six months doing
40:49everything possible to try to not face me shows you how scared he is about November and rightfully
40:54so, because we're going to give voters a choice, a true public servant or a political operative.
41:00Who do you want fighting for you?
41:03Kate Conley is the nominee to be member of Congress from New York 17th District. She'll be taking on
41:09incumbent Mike Lawler in what will be one of the most hotly contested seats in the entire country.
41:14Thanks for making a little time for us tonight.
41:17Thanks for having me.
41:20Stick around because in just a few minutes, Jen Psaki has a packed show with Andrew Weissman on
41:24Jack Smith. We'll be right back.
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