Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: April 29, 2016 Guest: Mollie Hemingway, Julia Ioffe, George Takei, Lin-Manuel Miranda
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That was not the easiest entrance I`ve ever made.
HAYES: Another Trump spectacle in California.
TRUMP: Oh, boy, felt like I was crossing the border.
HAYES: As the general election fight escalates.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I`ve had a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak.
HAYES: Tonight, why Donald Trump is calling Hillary Clinton an enabler and why his defense of a convicted rapist is coming back to haunt him.
TRUMP: Frankly, I think Mike Tyson`s been railroaded.
HAYES: Plus, my interview with the writer getting death threats for writing about Melania Trump.
Bernie supporter George Takei on why he`s now ready for Hillary.
And my exclusive interview with the "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on the fight to save Puerto Rico.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, "HAMILTON" CREATOR: They need help. My island needs help.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from Washington, D.C. I`m Chris Hayes.
And today felt like a real preview of the 2016 general election. With six months until Election Day, it is already ugly. This was the tense scene outside California`s Republican state convention earlier today where Donald Trump was scheduled to speak, less than 24 hours after 17 people were arrested and property damaged in protests outside a Trump rally last night in southern California.
It is the kind of thing we can probably expect to see again and again as Trump continues to campaign around the country, not to mention at the Republican convention in Cleveland this July. Before Trump`s arrival at the GOP meeting today, in Burlingame, not far from San Francisco, protesters managed to break through a police barricade and rush to the hotel where the meeting was taking place. They succeeded in blocking Trump`s motorcade from driving all the way up to the site, instead, we`re seeing that make that U-turn, had to pull off the highway on to the side where Trump actually got out of the car, his security detail and his entourage all sort of getting into line.
And he proceeded to walk on foot along the concrete barrier, there he goes, descending down into the embankment sitting next to the highway, all of course being recorded by news helicopters. This was quite a spectacle today.
And as the security detail went down, Trump finally forced to basically, well, and somewhat ironically, hop a fence with the help of an aide before climbing back up to the road and making his way to the hotel`s back door.
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TRUMP: That was not the easiest entrance I`ve ever made.
We went under a fence and through a fence and -- oh, boy, felt like I was crossing border actually. They said, Mr. Trump, it would be really much easier, sir, if you just didn`t speak today and just left and go back immediately to Indiana. And I said, you know, we can`t let these people down, right?
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HAYES: Meanwhile in the emerging general election contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump is already taking the lead in making the race as substance-free, as nasty and as personal as possible, after accusing Clinton of playing the, quote, "woman card" and alleging she`d have much less support if it weren`t for her gender, today on Twitter, Trump continued with the personal attacks, quote, "Crooked Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most dishonest person to have ever run for the presidency, is also one of the great all-time enablers."
Trump has explicitly brought up Bill Clinton`s relationships before, responding to charges of sexism by Hillary Clinton against him a few months ago with some unproven statements about allegations against her husband.
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TRUMP: You are talking about many. If you read the book, the book has other ones that were really horrible. He`s campaigning for the wife. She said I had a penchant for sexism, but that`s what she said. She`s not a victim. She was an enabler.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Was an enabler?
TRUMP: She worked -- yes. She worked with him. Some of the women have been totally destroyed. Some of these women have been destroyed and Hillary worked with him. I mean, there`s no -- there`s no feeling sorry for Hillary in this situation.
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HAYES: You could expect to hear much more on that subject between now and November.
The Clinton campaign has responded to Trump`s sexist attacks as well, asking contributors to donate in order to get an official "woman card" of their very own, releasing a new web video, contrasting Trump and Clinton`s rhetoric around violence and bigotry.
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JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Will you condemn David Duke and say that you don`t want his vote or other white supremacists?
TRUMP: I don`t know anything about white supremacists. So, I don`t know.
Knock the crap out of him, would you? I like to punch him in the face.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.
CLINTON: If you see bigotry, you should oppose it. If you see violence, you should condemn it.
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HAYES: In an interview today, Clinton was asked how she plans to deal with Trump`s particular brand of personal insults which he has used quite effectively against his Republican opponents.
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CLINTON: I`ve had a lot of experience in dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in how they behave and how they speak. I`m not going to deal with their temper tam temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me. He can say whatever he wants to say about me. I couldn`t really care less. I`ll stand up for what I think the American people need and want in the next American president.
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HAYES: Here with me now, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor of "The Federalist" and MSNBC political analyst, Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for "The Nation."
All right. Here`s my question for you, he has very effectively wielded this kind of insult comic shtick throughout the primary. And it`s done two things. It has helped him I think vanquish a series of foes, you know, little Marco and whatever his other subrogates have been, but it also pushed his negatives way up, right?
Does the shtick work here? I mean, clearly, he`s going to go with it, because that is what he does, I don`t -- you know? But do you see this working in a general?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST: I actually kind of think it does. Last week, we were talking about how Trump was going to be presidential and how he was going to start being more serious and put those insults away.
HAYES: Which was always preposterous, just to be clear.
HEMINGWAY: That was put forth by his campaign manager and he basically just completely dismissed that and said, absolutely not, I`m not going to be that way.
Well, this has worked well for him. The only thing that --
HAYES: What`s the evidence of that, though?
HEMINGWAY: I mean, just by how well he`s done thus far in the polls.
HAYES: Oh, you`re saying, obviously yes --
HEMINGWAY: He wants to now turn this into a race between him and Hillary and he wants to do that prematurely and he wants the media to help him do that. I mean, there was a poll that came out tonight showing that Ted Cruz is up 16 points in Indiana. This race is not over, but Trump wants it to be over, so he wants it to be portrayed as just between him and Hillary.
So, the more he forces that narrative by saying -- by bringing this new insult against her, which is a well-chosen, well-crafted turn against her and it`s the type of thing that will excite Republicans and make them say, you know what, maybe I can get behind him if he`s willing to go after this lady.
HAYES: That -- so that -- part of that is key. Joan, in all the reporting about the vacillations of the, quote, "establishment" has had with Trump or not, the thing they would say, like, wow, he`s really going to sock it to Hillary. That`s the thing that gets them excited about, even though they`re like, well, I really don`t think his abortion politics are my own abortion politics, you never know what he`s going to do, maybe he nukes a country, I don`t know, but he will sock it to Hillary.
But here`s the thing I found really interesting. The Clinton campaign`s put out two videos in two days. The one I just played today, the one yesterday or a day or two was very substantive, very like focused on policies, wages are too high, wants to build the wall, wants mass deportation, this seems like a fork in the road for how they are going to deal with this candidacy.
JOAN WALSH, THE NATION: I think that they`re going to deal with it. I think she personally has to deal with it in a substantive way and not descend to his level.
I think Mollie makes a really interesting point that in a way, he is acting like he is playing against Hillary but this is actually a smart base play to remind Republicans what they like about him and they like that he goes after Latinos, illegal -- people who are undocumented, they like that he goes after Muslims and they like that he goes after a certain kind of women.
But on the other hand, in terms of turning to the general election, I really think it`s going to be a disaster for him. One data point I have today, Chris, is that Donald Trump did for Hillary Clinton what none of her surrogates have been able to do. He pulled Elizabeth Warren off the sidelines, not with an endorsement she hasn`t done that, but she went at him today and she said he is attacking Secretary Clinton because he is afraid of strong women. She said he wears his sexism outside just like he wears his terrible hair. She went at him again and again.
I think this is what you`re going to see. You`re going to see people like Senator Warren, once the primary`s really settled. You`re going to see lots of her surrogates, male and female, take the humor to him, take the ridicule, and let Secretary Clinton only talk about the issues.
HAYES: So, I`ve also thought -- so, there`s a strange thing is happening which is this unification in negation. So, there`s essentially -- Cornell Belcher is on yesterday, he`s a pollster, who said Democrats should not just wait and sleep on Democratic unity and mobilization around Donald Trump. They have to lay the groundwork.
In the same way, I think people may be underscore the degree to which once it really is Hillary Clinton as the nominee, and once it is whoever, I think it`s probably going to be Donald Trump, people in the conservative base hate Hillary Clinton. They hate her. And there`s going to be a lot of people will never be Trumping until about September, October, when all of a sudden they start Trumping.
HEMINGWAY: Yes, I think, first of all, again, people will keep trying, particularly the base of the party are going to keep trying to stop Trump because Indiana is still taking place, Nebraska, California, there are tons of delegates are up for grabs.
HAYES: You think the Indiana race is more contested than we`re giving it credit for.
HEMINGWAY: I think it might be and I think that at the very least, you know, we have to wait and see how it goes.
HAYES: Right.
HEMINGWAY: But you`re seeing the establishment, for lack of a better term, Reince Priebus, it was reported, is gathering donors together and trying to get them onboard with this inevitability of Trump. So, I do think there is the issue that people don`t like Trump, but they maybe don`t like at the 95 percent level. They really don`t like Hillary at 100 percent level.
And since both candidates have such high negative, that actually can be in Trump`s favor.
HAYES: Although here is the thing, right? The negatives, they both have high negatives. Trump has historically high negatives. They`re considerably higher than Hillary Clinton`s whose negatives are high and would be historical if it were not for the presence of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
But there`s also just the -- we`ve talked about this yesterday. I mean, I watch all this and think there are ways to go after Hillary Clinton. I mean, he`s flirted with them before. He`s talked a little bit about NAFTA. You could go after her on Libya. You could even -- I mean, this is never going to happen in a million years, say that her college plan is unworkable. But the woman card is the most, frankly, alienating sink -- like the fact that this woman is nothing but her gender seems like the clumsiest possible way in which one could attack Hillary Clinton.
WALSH: Well, nothing but her gender and then her husband, you know, had some problems and somehow she should be blamed for that. The combination of those things is really historic. I`m not sure about what Mollie is saying about.
I mean, are there people who are going to be 100 percent anti- Hillary, that`s for sure. But I think we will see a lot of Republican women. I won`t put numbers on them. I`m not going to say it will be huge, but I think we will see a number of Republican women who are Republican women for Hillary in the fall. I do.
HAYES: Let me say it, if the tenor goes on like this for six months, I think that`s true.
HEMINGWAY: But there is something also to this. We sit here and say this is a crazy thing to make this insult against Hillary, but on a way it works on a very high level that Trump is this brilliant communicator who works around typical media gate-keeping. And it does remind people that a lot of her campaign is built on her idea that she is a female.
HAYES: Mollie Hemingway and Joan Walsh, thank you both. Appreciate it.
While Trump is going after Clinton for playing the, quote, "woman`s card," she is in fact, female, true, would be the first woman president in history. This week, he`s been campaigning in Indiana with famed basketball coach Bobby Knight who is known for, among other things, throwing a chair across the room in a game and for a peculiar remark he made in 1988 interview with Connie Chung on NBC News. He was asked with how he deals with stress and adversity. This was his answer.
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BOBBY KNIGHT, BASKETBALL COACH: I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it. I mean, that`s just an old term that you`re going to use. The plane`s down, so you have no control over it. I`m not talking about -- I`m not talking about the act of rape. Don`t misinterpret me there.
But what I`m talking about is something`s happened to you. So, you have to handle it.
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HAYES: If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it which is not, I will say, an idiom I`m familiar with.
And at the same event in Indianapolis on Wednesday, Trump touted another endorsement from a famous athletic figure.
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TRUMP: Mike Tyson endorsed me. I love it. He sent out a tweet, Mike, Iron Mike. You know, all the tough guys endorse me. I like that, OK? When I get endorsed by the tough ones, I like it, because you know what? We need toughness now. We need toughness.
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HAYES: Trump failed to mention the fact that a couple decades ago, Tyson was convicted in that very same city of raping an 18-year-old girl.
Carly Fiorina campaigning with Ted Cruz after he picked her as a running mate sat up and took notice.
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FIORINA: You know, Donald Trump saying, wow, all the tough guys are endorsing me. Sorry, I don`t consider a convicted rapist a tough guy and I think it says a lot about Donald Trump`s campaign and his character that he is standing up and cheering for an endorsement by Mike Tyson.
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HAYES: Trump was asked about Fiorina`s comments in a radio interview moments ago. He declined to change his stance on the endorsement.
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TRUMP: I noticed that Mike Tyson endorsed me over the Internet. And we will take the endorsement. Look, he is a tough cookie. He had difficulty. But a lot of people had difficulty.
But Mike Tyson did endorse me and what does she want me to do? Tell him I don`t want his endorsement? Should I do that? You think I should do that? I don`t think so.
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HAYES: Trump`s initial remarks also caught the eye of the prosecutor in that 1992 case, a guy named Greg Garrison, who`s now a host on Indianapolis talk radio.
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GREG GARRISON, RADIO HOST: Well, Mr. Trump, tough`s one thing. A serial rapist is quite something else. A 17-year-old girl, the fact that her brother and her father were huge Mike Tyson fans made her feel that she would be absolutely safe with him, and, boy, was she wrong.
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HAYES: Trump and Mike Tyson have had a long relationship, going all the way back to the 1980s. And as it turns out, after Tyson`s rape conviction, Trump went to bat for him, arguing he shouldn`t do prison time and casting doubt on his victim, who`s then a beauty pageant contestant.
"NBC Nightly News" reported the story in 1992.
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REPORTER: One of the leaders of the effort to keep Tyson out of prison is Donald Trump, the casino owner who could lose millions if Tyson is unable to fight at his resorts.
TRUMP: It is my opinion that to a large extent, Mike Tyson was railroaded in this case.
REPORTER: Tyson`s victim, Desiree Washington, went public almost immediately after the verdict. She is on the cover of "People" magazine and tonight on ABC`s "20-20" broadcast she will say she was offered a million dollars to drop the rape charge against Tyson.
TRUMP: You have a young room that was in his hotel room late in the evening at her own will. You have a young woman who was seen dancing for the beauty contest, dancing with a big smile on her face, looked happy as could be.
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HAYES: Just remember, everyone, no one cherishes women as much as Donald J. Trump.
Still to come, my interview with "Hamilton`s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has pleaded lawmakers as Puerto Rico braces for economic catastrophe.
Plus, even though actor George Takei has been feeling the Bern, he`s starting to feel the turn to Clinton. I`ll ask him about his message to his fellow Sanders reporters.
But, first, the journalist being targeted with horrendous anti-Semitic abuse and threatening messages because of profiles she wrote on Melania Trump. She will join me to talk about her experience right after this break, right at this table. So, do not go anywhere.
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HAYES: Over the course of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump`s wife Melania has remained somewhat of a mystery. The Slovenian former model rarely speaks at campaign events with her husband. She spends much of her time presumably in New York with the couple`s son, Barron.
She did however give an interview with Julia Ioffe, frequent guest on this show. The fruits of that interview and original reporting from Slovenia were published this week in "GQ" magazine.
Melania Trump however was not happy with the piece which focuses on her family and her early years in Slovenia. In a rare move, she took to Facebook on Wednesday to express her displeasure saying, in part, quote, "The article published in `GQ` today is yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting. Julia Ioffe is a journalist who is looking to make a name for herself. Clearly had an agenda when going after my family."
Many apparent Trump supporters also did not take kindly to the piece. The Republican front-runner who has refused to distance himself from former KKK leader David Duke and has repeatedly retweeted neo-Nazis on Twitter, has developed quite the white supremacist following particularly online. Some of those supporters apparently took particular offense to the profile and its author, inundating her with vile, upsetting, anti-Semitic messages.
Yesterday, Ioffe, whose family left the Soviet Union, fleeing anti- Semitism, retweeted several of the message she received, including this one of her appearing on TV with the yellow star of David Jewish people were forced to wear in Germany photoshopped onto her shirt.
Some other message were frankly far too disturbing for us to show you. Ioffe also received several threatening phone calls, including one from a blocked phone number that played Hitler speeches when she picked up.
Joining me now, Julia Ioffe, contributor at "GQ" magazine, where she published her profie of Melania Trump, on her rise, her family secret, her political views nobody will ever know.
It`s good to have you here.
JULIA IOFFE, GQ MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: I want to talk about the piece, which is fascinating. The phone call, I mean, look, there`s all sorts of levels of online trolling and harassment. But you are a he getting phone calls on your cell phone. This one -- there are some others you`ve gotten?
IOFFE: I got some phone calls about inquiries I had allegedly placed about coffins. I get several could have been vendors calling me saying I had contacted them. I got several crime scene clean-up companies calling me saying that I had ordered a homicide clean-up at my address.
Some of these coming at like 1:00 a.m. You know, every campaign has its level of crazy. This is -- it`s crazy there are supporters and it`s Twitter but this is a little -- the flavor of this is a little different.
HAYES: You said something that I thought was interesting in a "Guardian" piece about something you had only encountered when you had written about Putin before. And people have sort of felt like there is some similarity between this kind of world of sort of white supremacists trolling for Trump and trolling for Putin.
IOFFE: Well, Russia has a very anti-Semitic past. Any time I wrote anything about Russia, I got comments saying, you know, "you dirty little Jew", what do you know about Russian history, et cetera? I never expected to see those in the States. I had a lot of friends from Russia writing to me from Russia saying, wow, we don`t even have this kind of stuff here.
HAYES: The piece about Melania Trump, I think is largely pretty flattering actually. She comes across fairly interesting person, certainly like someone who is not, there`s a line like someone like an empty suitor bimbo, right?
IOFFE: She`s not.
HAYES: It`s very clear in the piece.
But it also activates real family secrets about her father and half brother and paternity suit, essentially. There are some non-crazy Nazis who feel that you crossed some line in writing about these sort of essentially private family members of her. What do you say to that?
IOFFE: I think that`s a fair criticism, but I don`t accept it. She is the wife of the front-runner for the Republican nomination, at this point probably the presumptive Republican nominee. Very little is known about her.
You know, when Barack Obama was running for office, people dug into his family. People went to Africa and found all kinds of relatives that I don`t know that he knew about all of their existences, about his father, what he was like, what he was involved in. This is what happens when you run for president.
I know that Melania Trump in the course of my reporting I learned is an intensely private, shy, reserved person. She`s been like that since childhood. Everybody who remembers her remembers her being very quiet and reserved. So I understand --
HAYES: This is a nightmare for her.
IOFFE: Yes, this is a nightmare for her. I`m not --
HAYES: She also apparently didn`t want him to run for president for this reason.
IOFFE: That`s right. So, I understand that she is intensely uncomfortable about this. It was not my intention to cause her discomfort, to cause her family internal strife. But she is the wife of the Republican front-runner and I think people have a right to know where she comes from and what her family is like.
It was actually very revealing. I think people sometimes have a question how are women married to Donald Trump. Well, in the course of my reporting, I found that she grew up with a man that is a lot like Donald Trump.
Her father is a lot like Donald Trump. He looks like Donald Trump. He behaves like Donald Trump. He fights women in court like Donald Trump. He goes into explicit detail about sex and their menstrual cycles.
So, that is I think something revealing.
HAYES: And you interviewed her. I mean, you got access to this.
IOFFE: Yes.
HAYES: You and her had interviews.
IOFFE: And I have to say, first of all, "GQ" -- neither "GQ" nor I have received any specific quibbles about facts and factual inaccuracies. Second of all, the paternity suit, we got archival documents from the courts in Slovenia. We showed them to Melania Trump. She had, we shook this thing, up and down, back and forth, ran it by legal, fact checking. We had Slovenian lawyers take a look at it. Nobody seems to have a problem.
HAYES: Julia Ioffe, thanks so much for joining us.
IOFFE: Thanks for having us.
HAYES: Still to come, actor George Takei will join me. Why he is for Bernie Sanders but against the Bernie or bust movement. That`s just ahead.
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HAYES: Not only is Puerto Rico a U.S. territory. In the throes of a massive financial crisis, that crisis is not getting the attention it deserves. So, it helps when one of the biggest pop culture phenomena in recent years, Lin-Manuela Miranda, talks about it as he did on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."
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MIRANDA (rapping): To recap: Three-point-five million American civilians are on the hook for billions, vulture funds are circling and lobbying for payouts, there`s nothing left to tax or cut, we`re stuck, we need a way out. Allow them to restructure, there`s no structure for what happens, if you let this crisis play out, when May is less than a day out!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Coming up a little later, my interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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HAYES: Without saying it, Hillary Clinton seems to be acknowledging her presumptive nominee status. Today, her campaign announced it`s placing a first wave of campaign staffers in general election battleground states, including setting up directors in Florida, New Hampshire and Colorado.
The announcement coincides with Clinton`s planned campaign swing through Appalachia next week where she is scheduled to stop in another battleground state, Ohio.
Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders admits his path to nomination has diminished to very little. He seems to be focusing on making policy changes to the Democratic Part platform.
Yesterday, in a piece called `What Bernie Sanders wants," Politico pointed to a series of concessions the Vermont senator likely expects from Hillary Clinton, like support for federal $15 an hour minimum wage, a suggestion that more primaries should use an open format.
Today, Clinton supporters told "The Hill" she plans to take a hard line and that won`t bow to many demands from Sanders.
While in this week`s primary in Pennsylavnia, the vast majority of Democrats said they would probably or definitely vote for Clinton in November if she`s the nominee, there are those, like actor George Takei who want to remind Democrats that Bernie or bust is a mistake.
Joining me now, actor and human rights activist George Takei.
Mr. Takei, you -- I feel like you have a sort of special vantage point to view the rise of Trump particularly as it looks like he is most likely the nominee. What have your feelings been as you`ve watched all this unfold?
GEORGE TAKEI, ACTOR: Well, it -- I think, you know, we all should support the candidate that we feel closest to. And in the primary, we need to support the candidate that we find to be the best one.
And I respect Bernie`s supporters and libertarians and Green people, but when we get past the primary, I think we should start looking at the larger picture. We want -- well, we don`t want Donald Trump to be the president of the United States. And elections have consequences.
So we need to look at the common ground that we share and vote so that we as Democrats prevail.
Elections have consequences. And when you look beyond the November general election, then it`s a whole different America that we`re looking at. I want it to be the kind of America that I love and the largest common ground we share is as Americans. We don`t want a fearmonger, someone who wants to build walls on the southern border, ban Muslims, all the things that we don`t want our country to be.
I love America and I don`t want that to be the America that we`re going to be living in after November.
HAYES: There`s been a bunch of people writing recently about the way that they`ve experienced the democratic primary, those are folks who are on the center left, contention, arguments on Facebook, things like that. What has been your experience of it? Can you take me through your thinking as you`ve gone through this primary?
TAKEI: Well, I`ve heard from particularly the passionate Bernie supporters. And you know I share a lot of common issues that they support. I was there with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I believe in the minimum wage, $15 minimum wage. I believe we need to fund Planned Parenthood. I believe we need LGBT equality. The struggle is still in front of us, even after November. And we need to come together so that we don`t have someone like Donald Trump as a president.
You know I, as a child, experienced an America that was quite different from the one we have today. I grew up behind the barbed-wire fences of American concentration camps. And that was because the nation was swept up by war hysteria and the fact that we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor.
And I don`t want to kind of America to return. And what we hear, the fear mongering from the Republicans, is chilling and I know how horrible that can be. And so I say to the Bernie supporters, the libertarians and the Greens, we must get together, because we do share a common ground and ultimately the most common ground we share is as Americans.
And we don`t want that kind of thing to happen ever again in America.
HAYES: George Takei, thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate it.
TAKEI: Thank you for inviting me.
HAYES: Coming up next, since tomorrow marks Obama`s final White House Correspondents Dinner, we`ll look back to one of his greatest roasts, it happens to be of a current presidential candidate. We`ll play that just ahead. Don`t go anywhere.
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OBAMA: He learned English...
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HAYES: This weekend will mark President Obama`s final appearance at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Donald Trump has attended the dinner before, but will not be there tomorrow. And there is a real question about the degree to which President Obama will joke about a guy who has become to many people a legitimately scary representation of the some of the xenophobic, racist even fascist strains in American society today.
We can expect this year`s host, Larry Wilmore, may have a thing or two to say say about Trump. He is a big target, something Seth Meyers took advantage of when he hosted in 2011.
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SETH MEYERS, COMEDIAN: Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.
Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks. Though, unless the blacks are a family of white people, I bet he`s mistaken.
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HAYES: It was at that same White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011 when President Obama famously got the best of Donald Trump and we will play that in just 60 seconds.
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HAYES: One of the most remarkable aspects of President Obama`s 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner performance is that he had just one day before given the order for the raid on Osama bin Laden`s compound in Pakistan, a raid that would take place less than 24 hours after his speech.
Despite that looming mission, the president kept a poker face throughout the night and during the speech. This is part of the president`s thorough skewering of the birther in chief and would-be commander-in-chief Donald Trump.
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OBAMA: No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that`s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter -- like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggy and Tupac?
All kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example -- seriously. Just recently in an episode of "Celebrity Apprentice," at the steakhouse, the men`s cooking team did not impress the judge`s from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around, but you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately you didn`t blame Lil Jon or Meatloaf, you fired Gary Busey.
And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.
Well handled, sir. Well handled.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Yesterday, was possibly the best and the worst day of 21-year-old Laremy Tunsil`s life. Tunsil is a highly touted college football player, projected to be one of the top picks in the entire NFL draft. And just minutes before the draft kicked off last night, a video appeared on Tunsil`s own Twitter account showing him inhaling from a bong attached to a gas mask.
Almost immediately the video became the biggest sports story of the day. It was referenced repeatedly on ESPN, which was broadcasting the draft. In real time Tunsil`s draft stock plummeted, and the ESPN cameras focused on him waiting to be selected.
It took a while. Tunsil wasn`t taken until the Miami Dolphins, who had the 13th pick, selected him. The video had apparently cost Tunsil dearly with estimates he lost more than $7 million in salary as a result of his draft plummet due to the video.
The Dolphins said the video was two years old and that they at least had been aware of it before the draft. The video wasn`t even the end of it, right after Tunsil was picked, someone posted text conversations to Tunsil`s Instagram account in which Tunsil allegedly asked Ole Miss football staffers for money to cover his rent and pay his mother`s light and water bill.
The NCAA does not allow players to be compensated other than through scholarships. And Ole Miss now says it is investigating possible NCAA violations.
After his selection yesterday, Tunsil addressed what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAREMY TUNSIL, MIAMI DOLPHIN DRAFTEE: Man, somebody hacked into my account. Man, you know, I made that mistake several years ago and somehow somebody got on my photos and hacked my Twitter account. And apparently somebody just hacked my Instagram account, so it`s getting crazy.
(END VIDEO CILP)
HAYES: Asked if he had taken money from a coach, Tunsil seemed to say yes. And soon after he was hustled off stage.
So, a few things here. First off, let me say that whoever it is that tried to destroy this young man`s life, I hope they`re found and they are held to account. What happened to Tunsil offers a data point, also, on just how the NFL prices various infractions in its draft prospects. Being seen with a bong in a two-year-old video seems to have seriously harmed Tunsil`s draft stock, literally costing him millions of dollars.
But Jameis Winston, who was accused buy a fellow Florida State student of rape, was last year`s number one draft pick. Accusation didn`t seem to hurt him at all.
Winston was never criminally charged, but Florida State paid almost $1 million to settle a lawsuit from his accuser.
And then there was -- someone found a good way to mess up Laremy Tunsil`s life was to reveal that he needed money to pay his rent and his mom`s bills, money he only needed because the NCAA won`t let him be paid despite his work generating millions of dollars for them.
So, if you`re looking for a villain in this story, it is definitely not the young man who may have smoked some pot a couple of years ago and then wanted to help his mom pay the bills.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is in the middle of a $70 billion debt crisis, its government has laid off tens of thousands of public employees, raised sales tax, schools have been shut down, social services slashed. The financial uncertainty has prompted a record number of Puerto Ricans to move to the U.S. mainland further depleting the tax base.
And as the island copes with the outback of Zika virus, the first casualty they reported today, Puerto Rico is facing a humanitarian disaster.
Now, there are a whole host of reasons for why Puerto Rico got to this point. In the mid-90s, congress ended the large tax breaks they`d offered to corporations to lure jobs to the island, delivering a blow to the economy. Puerto Rico issued bonds to cover budget shortfalls but ultimately couldn`t pay off the debt.
And because of its political status as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico cannot declare bankruptcy like, for instance, Detroit did.
And so the only people who can deliver relief to the island of 3.5 million Americans are the men and women are the United States congress. A relief bill is in the works, but the terms are still being hammered out.
Complicating matters, a nationwide ad campaign from a dark money group characterizing a relief bill is a bailout, even though it would offer no direct financial aid.
Since, Puerto Rico has no repesentation in congress, perhaps the most prominent spokesperson to emerge on the matter is not a politician, but the creator and star of the Broadway musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
He`s lobbied elected officials he wrote a New York Times op-ed on the issue. And this week he explained the debt crisis through a performance on HBO`s Last Week Tonight directly appealing to lawmakers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, CREATOR, HAMILTON: It`s nonpartisan. The hard part is in convincing congress, but the people matter so their heart is in the fight for relief, not a bailout, just relief. A belief that you can pass legislation to ease our grief, Paul Ryan, co-hosting Hamilton at your house, I`ll dosey doe with Pelosi, I`ll wear my Hamilton blouse.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Well, Paul Ryan just happened to be sitting down to watch Game of Thrones a little early on Sunday, saw the performance and was surprised to get name checked. Ryan says that Congress is focused on relief for the island, but with the deadline for Puerto Rico to pay a big portion of its debt just two days from now on May 1, and terms of the relief bill for Puerto Rico still being negotiated in congress, a major default is all but assured.
Earlier, I sat down with my friend of 25 years, Lin, the son of report Puerto Rican parents, to discuss why he`s spoken out on the issue.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIRANDA: It`s super personal. This is not -- you know, this is not a we hope you`ll help our cause, this is my aunts and uncles and my cousins live on the island and the island is suffering in a very real and tangible way.
And it is a financial crisis and it is tipping into a humanitarian crisis and it is avoidable. It`s -- it is a pile-up of mismanagement and inaction by congress and the tidal wave that is coming is this May 1 deadline and these financial debts and the threat of lawsuits.
And, you know, this financial torrent that is coming, and it`s -- so it is just super personal. It`s not -- this is not, hey, won`t you help us with this cause. There is a million causes in the world. It is -- they need help, my island needs help.
HAYES: Your dad from (inaudible). And that`s a place that you used to go, you and your sister used to go -- I remember when you would tell me about summers in Puerto Rico.
Just give us a snapshot of like what does it mean, right? People think financial crisis and that it`s like, OK, this is what it means at the ground level. Like, what does it mean to people that are living on the island right now what is happening in terms of the financial crisis?
MIRANDA: It means that basic health and human services are being cut. A major hospital was closed. They waited for the surgeries to be done before they turned the lights off, but basically the way things are structured, debts being paid is taking precedence over basic essential services, that`s where we`re tipping into. Multiply that by the fact that the Zika virus is coming to the island. And you have a genuine humanitarian crisis on your hands.
I think about how that affects tourism, which is the other major thing on our island. That is a bit, huge source of lifeblood to Puerto Rico, and that will be affected. So, it`s -- I can`t put it better than John Oliver put it on his show, which was it`s all the plagues that too thinky for the Bible. That was his joke.
And it`s true. And so what I`ve been calling for is I`m not trying to settle the status of Puerto Rico and its relationships to the island. That is something that needs to happen. And that is not my job, my job is to be the town crier on the beach saying there`s a wave coming and congress is in a unique position to be able to write legislation that says let us file bankruptcy like any other American city would be able to file, let us restructure this debt and give a measure of financial relief so that basic services can be provided.
HAYES: You made this point on the Oliver appearance and also in The New York Times op-ed, which is you are focused on the crisis right now, the crisis, though, partly does emanate from the strange quasi non-democratic status of fellow citizens of ours who live in Puerto Rico, 3.5 million people, who don`t elect president of the United States and don`t elect members of Congress. So, they are now in a position in which they are bound legally by how much they can do by U.S. law, but there`s no one sitting in the capital who is the U.S. representative or the U.S. senator from Puerto Rico.
MIRANDA: That is right. It is insane that I am a playwright and I have gotten more attention. It`s insane.
And I don`t mean to discount the amazing work that Nadia Velasquez (ph) has done and Chuck Schumer has done. You know, there are like Democrats and Republicans are talking. And Senator Gillibrand who brought me to The Hill, you know, so I have to give credit where credit is due. Those politicians have been working really hard to get a solution. And you know Paul Ryan said he would come up with a plan by the end of March, and he did. So, they are talking. And that`s not nothing as you know. The fact that Republicans and Democrats are talking and it`s on the table is a huge deal.
So, keep talking and please, focus on the people on the ground who -- businesses are closing. The minimum wage is -- and it`s a real crisis. So, I hope the solution gets to a place where the needs of the Puerto Rican people, the people who live on that island are prioritized.
HAYES: I think most Americans don`t know very much about it, if they know anything at all. There is already in advance of this a campaign by some entities to stop it, to stop the verdict and bailout. There`s a little old lady who bought Puerto Rican bonds, who is going to see her life savings.
And, look, this is familiar. Every time something like this happens, there -- the bond holders don`t like it, just the nature of the thing.
What do you tell people who think, are we bailing out the irresponsible, feckless, Puerto Rican...
MIRANDA: It`s literally not a bailout. It`s like -- taxpayers are not putting money into Puerto Rico. It is your tax dollars at work. It is allowing them to file bankruptcy and restructure the debt.
Will bond holders get 100 percent of their money back? They will not. But there -- where would you get the money from? I mean, honestly, it`s...
HAYES: Also, that`s what happens when you buy a bond. Like, you take out some risk when you buy a bond.
MIRANDA: I could get -- I can`t get into the particulars of that because that`s not my job.
HAYES: But that`s a key point. It`s not like there is $60 billion in the fiscal budget that comes from American taxpayer dollars that is currently on the table to be given to the people of Puerto Rico. That is not -- just so people are clear, that is not the...
MIRANDA: Yeah. Bailout is not a word that should be entering the conversation, that is what commercial will have you believe but it is just not the case.
And so, you know -- I just -- my goal is to just really keep the focus on our congressional representatives who are talking. Thank you for talking. And just to prioritize the needs of the Puerto Rican people who live and die based on their actions.
HAYES: May 1 is this big deadline. What has to happen? Congress has to pass a piece of legislation. It sounds like the White House has signaled their openness to signing it.
I mean, this is a doable thing if congress gets its act together.
MIRANDA: That`s right. It is on congress. The ball is literally in their court. When Hamilton performed at the White House, I got a tour of the Treasury Department. We spent exactly two minutes talking about currency and we spent a lot more time talking about Puerto Rico. And basically, echoing what you said, they are hoping congress gets it done, too.
And sort of getting the specifics of sort of the numbers on the ground and we`re all just sort of waiting for them to get it done.
And so, you know, here`s a reminder, please get it done.
HAYES: Well, the final question is the person who moves things through congress is Paul Ryan on the House side. He`s sort of made a funny comment, because he talked about -- you were on John Oliver, you -- you name dropped him and Nancy Pelosi and others. And he said that he had sat down to watch Game of Thronse and 10 minutes early turned it on and there you were rapping...
MIRANDA: Yeah, Westeros (ph) is fictional, Puerto Rico is real. And we need help a lot more than Westeros (ph).
HAYES: All right. Are you confident it`s going to happen?
MIRANDA: I`m never confident of anything. I`m a New Yorker. But I am very hopeful that they`re talking.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: My great thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda. And that is All In for this evening.
END