Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: May 6, 2016 Guest: David K. Johnson, Bob Kinkaid, Jennifer Rubin, A.J. Delgado, Bob Inglis, Cornell Belcher
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
MODERATOR: Do you agree this is Donald Trump`s party?
REINCE PRIEBUS, RNC CHAIRMAN: No, it`s the party`s party.
HAYES: Donald Trump`s takeover turns hostile.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Paul Ryan? I don`t know what happened. I don`t know.
HAYES: Tonight, the latest defections and escalations in the Republican civil war.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death.
HAYES: Then, reinforcements for Democrats.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Fired up, ready to go!
HAYES: How the president entered the 2016 campaign today and what that could mean in the fall.
Plus, guess which ex-candidate went from calling Trumpism a cancer to now a V.P. hopeful.
FORMER GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: Oops.
HAYES: And playing chicken with a global financial crisis.
TRUMP: I would borrow knowing if the economy crashed you could make a deal.
HAYES: Inside Donald Trump`s plan to run America like his own business.
TRUMP: I am the king of debt. I do love debt. I love debt, I love playing with it.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
If Donald Trump was expecting GOP elites to rally around him once he became the party`s presumptive nominee, the last 48 hours have been a rude awakening indeed. The growing number of prominent Republicans announcing not only will they decline to endorse or campaign for the GOP`s new standard-bearer, they`re not even going to vote for the guy.
It is unprecedented in modern political history. The latest, two of Trump`s former presidential rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, current South Carolina Senator Lindsey graham, who both said they won`t vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Bush, who was routinely humiliated and effectively chased out of the race by Donald Trump, wrote on Facebook today, "The American presidency is an office that goes beyond just politics. It requires of its occupant great fortitude and humility and the temperament and strong character to deal with the unexpected challenges that will inevitably impact our nation in the next four years. Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character."
Graham likewise cited Trump`s temperament as well as his lack of conservative credentials.
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GRAHAM: I just don`t believe Donald Trump is a reliable conservative Republican. Good luck with Paul Ryan trying to find a conservative agenda with this guy. I don`t think he has the temperament or judgment to be commander in chief. A lot of my colleagues will vote for him enthusiastically, some will hold their nose. I just can`t go there with Donald.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump mocked Bush and Graham on a campaign stop in Nebraska today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I won`t talk about Jeb Bush. I will not say -- I will not say he`s low energy. I will not say it. I will not say it. And I won`t talk about Lindsey Graham, who had like one point. He gets out-dealt at all levels of the campaign. He leaves a disgrace. He can`t represent the people of South Carolina well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The most recent Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who tore into Trump in a speech in March, said last night he doesn`t intend to support either of the major party`s candidates. Bush, Graham and Romney joined the last two presidents, also named Bush, at least one sitting governor, and one other sitting senator, and most significantly, the highest-ranking Republican office holder in the country, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who have all declined to jump on the Trump train.
Today, less than 24 hours after Ryan said he wasn`t ready to endorse his own party`s presumptive nominee, his office announced that Trump will meet with the speaker and house GOP leadership next Thursday along with RNC Chair Reince Priebus, quote, "To begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November."
Trump sounded off on Speaker Ryan and the meeting next week. In a statement to "The Washington Post", quote, "I told Reince I thought it was totally inappropriate what Paul Ryan said and thought it was good for me politically. But Reince feels and I`m OK with that, that we should meet before we go our separate ways."
He may have a point about this helping him politically, listen to the crowd`s reaction when he mentioned Paul Ryan at his rally today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Paul Ryan, I don`t know what happened.
(BOOS)
I don`t know.
I figured routinely, he`d be behind it. And he the other day in a big surprise, because I`ve had so many endorsements --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Reince Priebus gets to play the unenviable role of go-between trying to broker an alliance between the party`s most powerful elected official and its candidate from the nation`s highest office. And it`s clear how much he`s enjoying himself.
At a political breakfast this morning, Priebus was asked about a tweet Trump sent out yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MODERATOR: The tweet says, "Happy #cincodemayo, the best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower grill, I love Hispanics."
(LAUGHTER)
PRIEBUS: He`s trying. Honestly, he`s trying, and I`ll tell you what. I honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way we`re going to win.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, conservative columnist and Trump supporters, A.J. Delgado, and Jennifer Rubin, opinion writer for "The Washington Post" "Right Turn Blog", who opposes Donald Trump.
All right. Here`s what I`m trying to figure out. And maybe I`ll start with you, Jennifer.
To the degree that this civil war that we`re seeing, this is unprecedented, right?
JENNIFER RUBIN, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes.
RUBIN: You don`t have prominent folks like the most powerful office holder of the Republican Party not immediately backing the party`s nominee. I can`t tell if this is a principled fight over substance and what the Republican is, a personal revulsion at Donald Trump, or essentially just a bet the guy`s going to lose.
RUBIN: I think it`s the first two. I think there is a genuine horror, a sense of shock, that someone of this ilk, someone who crude, so vulgar, so nasty, so misogynistic, so xenophobic, could be leading a major party. And there are some people who simply cannot get past it no matter what fuse he would profound.
I think that`s sincere. I think that`s deep. A lot of the people who have come out that way are themselves people who have a kind of courtly and old- school manner about them and they are genuinely horrified.
I think the other part of it is, it`s not just that he doesn`t have a conservative agenda. He has nothing appearing to be an agenda other than random thoughts that pop into his head. You quite rightly, Chris, at the start of the show with a series of these very disturbing comments, one of which is essentially he`s going to default on our sovereign debt, just like he dealt with the banks on whittling them down when he went bankrupt with the casino. It`s stuff like that that sort of horrifies them.
Frankly, if they thought -- if they were certain he was going to lose, they would probably just be quiet about it. I think there is genuine concern, however, that it`s not just he`s going to lose, it`s that he`s going to forever smear the image of the party, he`s going to take the party someplace where they do not want to go.
And I think they`re very concerned. I think that`s why you see Paul Ryan coming out with an agenda for the Republican Party just before the convention. When has that ever happened? The primary is supposed to have (AUDIO GAP).
HAYES: Let me get A.J.`s response to that.
A.J., you and I have spoken about this before. And my sense is that, and you`re someone whose politics tend to be more the sort of Pat Buchanan type, you think this is substantive, that this is -- that Donald Trump`s victory is a substantive victory for a certain ideological wing of the party over another ideological wing?
A.J. DELGADO, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: It is. What you have here are a small group of sour grapes in the Republican Party who are in shock, especially Paul Ryan, because their brands of George W. Bush conservatism has been rejected by the voters, resoundingly. And so, there foreign globe-trotting and this looking the other way on amnesty, looking the other way oil legal immigration that is that George W. Bush style of conservatism has been roundly rejected, and they`re having to come to terms with that. They`re in shock right now.
Do I think they will ultimately unify with us? Yes, because as Ari Fleischer recently tweeted, and he was Bush`s press secretary, there are a lot of things I don`t like about Trump, but I would certainly never vote for Hillary either. So I will support him.
So, I think we will see everybody come together. They`re in shock right now.
RUBIN: This is the problem. This is not how a presidential candidate and a presidential supporter talks. They have to unify the party. He`s still talking like he`s on the campaign trail insulting his fellow competitors. And we saw a terrible example today of punching down.
He was hitting at Paul Ryan. He was hitting at Reince Priebus, he was hitting at Lindsey Graham, and this in this kind of nasty, condescending tone. He can`t get by with that. He needs Republican turnout.
Right now, he`s at about 80 percent. Mitt Romney had 93 percent. Mitt Romney also had women. This guy doesn`t have women.
HAYES: Jennifer, let me ask you --
RUBIN: He had married women. He doesn`t have the people he`s going to need in the election.
HAYES: Jennifer, I want to get A.J.`s response but she said, which is this -- how much of this is the Republican Party never coming to terms with the absolute failures of Bushism, the absolute failures of the "W." presidency, when what it meant for the party, for the party`s brand, its self-identity.
And now, here you have, it struck me today, you`ve got three different Bushes saying, we`re not going to vote for the guy. A certain percentage of the Republican Party saying, great, you`re the people that destroyed this party.
RUBIN: Right. I think your timeline is too short. And for people who don`t have a firsthand memory of the Reagan years, I think the problem goes back really that the party has been ossified since the 1980s.
There are still people who want that top marginal tax rate to be where it was when Reagan was, why? Because it was there when Reagan was in office.
I think it goes beyond the Bushes. I think the Bush era didn`t address, didn`t modernize the party.
And so, I think Donald Trump took the party by storm, not only because he`s a demagogue and he knew how to manipulate the mainstream media, but because there was this hole at the center of the party. There was not an adequate agenda that was contemporary, that was meaningful.
And frankly, the agenda that actually lost in this race was the Ted Cruz agenda, was the far right agenda. It wasn`t the Bush agenda.
HAYES: No, that`s right. Well, they both lost.
DELGADO: They both lost.
HAYES: They both lost to the Buchanan agenda is basically what happened, right, A.J.?
DELGADO: Yes, absolutely.
And two things, Jennifer, that you mentioned, about the rhetoric. It hasn`t been Trump`s rhetoric that`s been a problem. As Chris reminded us in the intro, it was Rick Perry, for instance, who said that Trump was "a cancer on conservatism." He`s now supporting him.
So, the bad rhetoric and harsh rhetoric if a primary, it`s gone both ways, it hasn`t only been Trump --
RUBIN: No, but he`s the nominee --
(CROSSTALK)
DELGADO: Excuse me. You mentioned Romney. You mentioned Romney. Donald Trump, please check the numbers, has more votes than Romney had at this point.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: Let me say one more thing -- can I say one thing? The people who are going to vote for Trump, Dick Cheney and Bob Dole, which is a little bit of a curveball, probably makes A.J. uncomfortable because Dick Cheney is a neo-con in chief for sure --
DELGADO: Right. I`ll take it.
HAYES: She`ll take it.
But my question for you, Jennifer, is -- you look at these men, Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush, who say they`re not voting for him, they signed a pledge saying they would. Is that -- I mean, they`re on -- they signed a pledge when this thing started. Fair`s fair, we`re all-in.
Is that essentially a betrayal, a double cross?
RUBIN: You know, I think Donald Trump has gone back on so many things, I think you get to a point where this ridiculous piece of paper that Reince Priebus was waving around that Donald Trump ignored seven times from Sunday, you know, it kind of fades by the wayside.
Listen, there`s a moral code here, a moral standard. If you have someone who is insulting women, insulting minorities, I think that takes a little higher precedence than a piece of paper from Reince Priebus.
DELGADO: He`s not insulting women or minorities. I`m a woman and a minority and I`m 100 percent behind him.
(CROSSTALK)
RUBIN: He has ads are full of insults --
HAYES: Look, if I may, answer with the polling, you are in a minority, both those groups, maybe that will change.
A.J. Delgado and Jennifer Rubio, thank you both.
DELGADO: Thank you.
HAYES: All right. I`m joined now by former Congressman Bob Inglis, Republican from South Carolina, now executive director of a nonprofit dedicated to free enterprise solution for climate change.
And the reason I wanted to have you, Bob, on is that you -- I feel like you got the first wave of the thing that made Trump, which is you got primaried in 2010, you got kicked out, you were in a conservative district, a conservative Republican with a conservative voting record who believed in climate change and you got primaried and you lost.
How do you now understand what is happening six years later with this nominee?
BOB INGLIS (R-SC), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: Well, I think it`s a little bit different actually, Chris. I think what I got tossed out by was the RINO concept and it was a purity caucus, somehow there was going to be this purity as to what a Republican is.
The one good thing, and I`ll tell you, it`s hard to find one good thing about Donald Trump. But one good thing you can say about him is that he`s busted all that loose. There`s no telling. There is no telling what a Republican is now.
Are we isolationist? Are we interventionist? Are we protectionist? Are we free traders? Are we pro-life, are we pro-choice?
It`s anybody`s guess. It`s whatever he had for breakfast this morning as to what we are today. And so, in a way that`s good, though, Chris, because the work we`re doing on climate change, it sort of strangely helps us.
HAYES: Here`s where it doesn`t. Let me just say this. Here`s where I see a through line. This is back in 2012, this is Trump.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive."
Now, we`ve talked about the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump either believes in or floats. But we have to keep in mind that institutionally, as a political body, essentially the entirety of the Republican Party at this moment believes that thousands of independent scientists across the globe, working in hundreds of different languages, have together conspired to create the hoax of a robust empirical result that finds the climate is warming. That is a crazy belief and that is the institutional belief of the Republican Party.
INGLIS: Well, I think -- that`s what I`m saying, I think this is a good thing, because what we`re seeing is that it won`t be the institutional belief, because people realize when you`ve got a guy that cites "The National Enquirer" as his source, perhaps this isn`t a guy you want to listen to. So, if he keeps on saying things like China invented this, it would be actually helpful for our cause. Because the more he makes it the hoaxsters look absolutely unhinged, to quote Jeb Bush, it really helps us, because it causes people that want a free enterprise solution to a huge challenge to come forward and say, you know what? We`re for these reasonable people and we don`t want to be painted with this terrible brush of reading "The National Enquirer" and deciding that`s a good source.
HAYES: This is -- the metaphor here is that Donald Trump is like a hot wet rag applied to an infected wound that is drawing up, right, all the stuff that you want to concentrate, that`s the hope?
INGLIS: Well, it`s sort of like -- he is iconoclastic, he`s breaking up all the icons out there. And so, in a way that`s good. Because the worst thing for us might have been if Ted Cruz had continued this theological purity matter that you`ve not to reject the science of climate change on theological grounds. That`s harder for us to deal with.
But the Trump rejection, which is so clearly untethered to science, actually sort of is something we can work with. Because there are a lot of reasonable conservatives out there that say, you know, that`s not us.
HAYES: Are you going to vote for this guy?
INGLIS: No, under no circumstances.
HAYES: Bob Inglis, one of the most interesting voices out there in American politics. It`s always a pleasure having you on the show. Appreciate it.
INGLIS: Great to be with you, Chris.
HAYES: All right. Still to come, as Trump explains his troubling plans for the economy, reminder he was once so far in debt he was put on an allowance. You don`t want to miss that.
But, first, the best weapon Democrats have this fall -- President Obama. In case you`ve forgotten, he is at his best on the campaign trail. Some of his most memorable moments right after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: All right. President Obama today celebrated the 74th straight month of private sector job creation by taking questions knowing full well he would get questions about the presidential campaign.
It`s a reminder that this election will not just be Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton. It will be Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who at this moment has a higher approval rating than Ronald Reagan did at this point in his presidency, a man who if you had forgotten is a pretty good politician and campaigner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
OBAMA: There is not a black America and a white America, and Latino America, and Asian America. There`s the United States of America.
Together, we can finish the work that needs to be done and usher in a new burst of freedom on this earth. Thank you very much, let get to work!
Are you fired up? Are you ready to go? Fired up? Ready to go?
There`s nothing we can`t do. That`s why we started off this campaign saying "yes, we can".
(CHANTING)
And together with your help and God`s grace, we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on earth. Thank you, America. God bless you. God bless these United States.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HAYES: Joining me now, Cornell Belcher who served on the polling team of both of Obama`s presidential campaigns, the president of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies.
And, Cornell, I want to play the sound today of the president, you know, beginning to enter into the fray on this campaign, you`re starting to see it. He took questions knowing he would get questions about the campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I just want to emphasize the degree to which we are in serious times and this is a really serious job. This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What kind of tone and role do you expect we are going to see from him for the next six months as he intensifies his activity in the campaign?
CORNELL BELCHER, FORMER OBAM CAMPAIGN POLLSTER: Well, I think clearly there`s a role for the adult in the room. In the craziness that is our current political system. That`s something I think we`ve seen him play before.
But looking back at those clips that show him -- I almost got a chill. I think we forget what a good campaigner, you know, President Obama, then- Senator Obama, was. He`s got approval ratings now that are a little bit better than Reagan`s in a time where we are awfully polarized, where you don`t get many Republicans giving him credit for anything. So, it`s basically coming from independents and Democrats.
But on the big three of campaigners there, you got Reagan who, of course, emoted and was on American exceptionalism. Certainly, Barack Obama, very much in that continuum of Reagan, although Republicans will hate to hear it. They claim he never talks about American exceptionalism but he`s always talking about American exceptionalism, always talking about how American can be great, he`s always talking about the future, and he connected with people, particularly with young voters.
Chris, I don`t have to tell you that but you know Democrats do very well when younger voters make up a bigger proportion of the electorate than do seniors. They didn`t do that in 2010. And they certainly didn`t do that in 2014, where seniors made up a larger swath and Democrats did very poorly.
I think the Democrats are going to have to have him out there, you know, trying to pull back pieces of his coalition.
Bernie Sanders` predicate was he was going to bring a lot of people into the process and certainly he`s winning overwhelmingly young people. But the problem when you pull back some of that is, when you look overall, 20 percent down and turnout overall in Democratic primary right now, a lot of the Obama surge vote still sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what happens.
And this guy, because they weren`t Democrats, they weren`t strong Democrats, but they were Obama voters. The party`s going to need this guy out stumping to bring them home.
HAYES: You know, the two precedents you mentioned, the two precedents we have here is Reagan in `88 after two terms and George H.W. Bush running as his vice president, and sort of continuing his legacy, and Al Gore, vice president to President Bill Clinton, running in 2000. I remember that race, there was so much controversy, because post-impeachment there was this decision about the degree to which Gore should use the president.
And he sort of distanced himself from the president. A lot of people think that was a mistake. You don`t have that same kind of issue here.
BELCHER: No, no -- well, one, if you ask a lot of the people working on the Gore campaign, like Donald Brazile, they`d say they won that race.
HAYES: Yes.
BELCHER: But you`re right, you`re absolutely right, and he took a lot of flack internally, from insiders on that, thinking that was a bad move because, you know, Bill Clinton, again, a great campaigner, emoted, he connected with people in a way that you saw that weakness with Al Gore. But Hillary has been very straightforward about embracing the president every chance she`s got.
And I think Sanders, frankly, some of his statements distanced him from the president early on in a way that certainly thought it made it harder for him to win minority votes.
HAYES: She has certainly run on continuity much more in the primary itself, which has been effective insofar as she`s winning and also has been very effective among voters of colors so far if that`s the message they`re responding to, I think it`s one of them.
BELCHER: But the problem I think is all those voters were for change. I think that is the fundamental disconnect. I mean, so far, she has been sort of the practical candidate and sort of straightforward, you know, reasonable answers, get things done.
But you`ve got to -- those young people who are looking for revolution, as Bernie`s talking about. The other thing I`d say here, Chris, is that, you know, the last time those young people wanted also dramatic change, their candidate won. And so, they came back through the process out of the primary. I think we`re going to have to spend a lot of time are working on these young people --
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: People that came in, if their candidate isn`t the winner, getting them to continue.
Cornell Belcher --
BELCHER: Right, because they`re not Democrats.
HAYES: Yes, good point. Thank you very much.
BELCHER: Thank you.
HAYES: A quick programming note on that score, Rachel Maddow has a one-on- one interview with Senator Bernie Sanders tonight at his home in Burlington, Vermont, and you absolutely want to make sure you see that. Stick around. Do not miss it.
Coming up, the truth behind the seemingly devastating attack on Hillary Clinton as the candidates fight it out for coal country. That is in just 80 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Have you heard the one about how Hillary Clinton hates coal? Wants to put coal miners and coal businesses out of business? Of course you have. Because variations on that theme have pretty much been everywhere this week.
At the center of the controversy, comments Clinton made during a town hall back in March noting her administration will, quote, "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." Those were not her full remarks on the subject but that`s the part that got picked up. And those words found their way into a political ad for a local conservative judge running for state Supreme Court in West Virginia.
Clinton herself was confronted with her remarks by an unemployed coal miner at a campaign event in West Virginia earlier this week. Clinton apologized, knowing her comments had been a misstatement. But protests followed as she campaigned in the state ahead of next Tuesday`s primary.
The anti-Clinton cloud included at least one familiar face, coal baron Don Blankenship, guest on the show formerly. The former CEO of Massey Energy, sentenced to a year in prison for federal mine safety vices. In 2010, 29 coal miners died in an accident at one of Massey`s West Virginia mines.
A number of protesters not only expressed their anger at Clinton but pledged their support for another candidate in the race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re all Trump supporters! We want to make this country great again! We`re tired of all the darn handouts and nobody taking care of us!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, it should be no surprise that Donald Trump was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd in Charleston, West Virginia, yesterday. Trump now has an endorsement from the West Virginia Coal Association, put on a hard hat and pantomimed using pick ask shovel.
After vowing to get put miners back to work and get those mines opened, Trump moved on to Clinton.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And how about Hillary Clinton? I was watching her three or four weeks ago.
(BOOS)
See, I`m going to put the miners back to work. And she said, I`m going to put the miners and the mines out of business. And then she comes over and she tried to explain her statement. That`s a tough one to explain, wouldn`t you say?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, if you listen to what Donald Trump cherry picked, it sounds pretty devastating for Hillary Clinton.
Ahead, we will play you her remarks in context and you can be the judge.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Donald Trump holding court yesterday in Charleston, West Virginia. He vowed to put the miners back to work and attacked Hillary Clinton for comments she made about putting coal mining companies out of business.
But that`s not the whole story. Back in March, Clinton was asked at a town hall to make the case why poor white Republican voters should support her economic policies. Clinton, who has a $30 billion plan to help coal communities with clean energy job training and infrastructure improvement took note of the serious economic problems that many parts of the country face.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, 2016 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let`s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved, poor communities. So for example, I`m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean, renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we`re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim, and we`re going to make it clear that we don`t want to forget those people.
Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives, to turn on our lights and power our factories.
Now we`ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels but I don`t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now from Charleston, West Virginia, Bob Kincaid, radio host and co-founder of the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Campaign.
And Bob, I was watching you on our monitor returning here as you listened to that. And I couldn`t make out what your face was. So, what`s your reaction and what is the reception Hillary Clinton is getting in coal country?
BOB KINKAID, CO-FOUNDER APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY HEALTH EMERGY CAMPAIGN: Well, Chris, good evening. All we`re getting in coal country is the clip about we`re going to put miners out of work. And the fact of the matter is, the government doesn`t have to do that. The coal companies themselves have done a more than adequate job of it. They`ve moved from the labor- intensive practices of underground mining to mountaintop removal mining that takes not nearly as many people.
And even the entirety of that clip, Chris, makes me cringe. As an Appalachian person, if I get called "those people" one more time I think I`m going to, I don`t know, kick furniture.
HAYES: I understand that. And I got a lot of that -- I don`t understand it but I hear what you`re saying. And I got a lot of that when we were down in coal country doing reporting.
Is there a message that any candidate -- and I want to get to Trump in a second, any candidate who is saying, we need to put coal out of business, frankly, because it`s destroying the Earth, is there any possible message that`s non-condescending to deliver to the people of your region that wouldn`t be rejected?
KINKAID: I think there`s a way to do it in a non-condescending fashion, Chris.
But we do sooner or later here in central Appalachia have to come to grips with our own reality and a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have been mined for 125 years and the little elves under the ground aren`t going to make any more coal. We`re largely mined out.
But what they`re going after now are seams that they can blast away and our heritage of 100-man crews or 30-person crews is just not coming back. And that`s business, that`s not government, that`s a corporate model. That`s what we`re seeing with these bankruptcies with Peabody and Arch and Alpha Natural Resources. They`re retooling for a leaner, meaner coal mining approach.
HAYES: So then let me ask you this...
KINKAID: And that`s the hard reality we really need to face here.
HAYES: But so -- okay, and again, having talked to some folks down there, been in regular contact with some folks down there, people know what the score is. I mean, they understand where the business is heading and what it`s been. So when Donald Trump gets up there and says, I`m going to bring the mining jobs back, I`m going to bring the miners back, we`re going to have a coal boom in Appalachia. Do people believe that?
I mean, what is -- why is that selling down there?
KINKIAD: People here will clutch at any straw that has a semblance of hope to it. There are people who buy into this notion of a war on coal even though it is entirely -- it`s a PR a campaign and not an actual governmental tactic.
But there`s also that overt or perhaps covert, even, sense of the transition of this state into a more right-wing mindset. And frankly, if - - frankly, if Hillary Clinton had come here and said that everybody was going to get ice cream for the rest of their lives, the coal industry would have opposed her on it.
HAYES: Does Bernie Sanders` message there...
KINKIAD: Because she`s not -- I was going to say, she`s not -- Bernie does, I think, Chris, because this is an older population. And as a result of that, there are a lot of us here -- my parents were Depression-era children. And so I grew up learning about the New Deal, learning about FDR.
So a lot of us look at Bernie and there`s nothing radical in what he proposes. We see what we`ve heard about from our parents and our grandparents who told us that FDR and the New Deal kept them from starving to death.
HAYES: All right, Bob Kincaid from Appalachia, one of the best voices coming out of that part of the country. It`s always a pleasure to have you on, thank you.
KINKAID: My pleasure, Chris.
HAYES: Still to come, the latest head-scratching endorsement from one of Donald Trump`s former opponents, and the answer to the question should you expect to be tapped as a vice presidential runningmate for a campaign you repeatedly called cancerous? That`s next.
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HAYES: Shortly after Donald Trump entered the presidential race last summer, former Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry blasted Trump as a threat who would drive the entire Republican Party into oblivion.
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RICK PERRY, FRM. GOVERNOR OF TEXAS: He offers a barking carnival act that can best be described as Trumpism, a toxic mix of demogoguery and mean- spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Perdition.
Not only did Perry suggest that Trump was corrupting the conservative movement, he declared him an incurable problem for the party in a speech titled "Defending Conservatism Against the Cancer of Trumpism."
And I"m not reciting that from memory, I`m reading it off of Perry`s current campaign website where a transcript of the entire speech is still online. The address is Rickperry.org/defendingconservatismagainstthecanceroftrumpism.
Well, reading it is one thing, there`s nothing quite like listening to Rick Perry denounced Trump as a malignant force.
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PERRY: Let no one be mistaken, Donald Trump`s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded. I will not go quiet when this cancer on conservatism threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics that will send the Republican Party to the same place it sent the Whig Party in 1854: the graveyard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, if you think it would be pretty tough to take back calling someone`s candidacy a cancer, you`d be wrong.
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TRUMP: You know, Rick Perry, he was rough on me, right? He got up, remember, he went to Washington and made a speech for half an hour, a speech about Donald Trump. He said I`m a cancer on the Republican Party. Now, that`s the bad news. Let me tell you the good news...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Up next, one of the most remarkable about-faces in recent memory, or to put it another way, Rick Perry is opening to joining the cancer ticket in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: A short time after Rick Perry`s portrait was unveiled today in the Texas state capitol where he will be immortalized without his black-framed eyeglasses, Perry explained how he came to endorse a man he once called a cancer.
We are competitors, he said, and so the rhetoric is in the heat of battle, it`s in the chaos of a presidential bid. We compete and then we let bygones be bygones.
Perry made news yesterday when he told a CNN reporter by phone, "I believe in the process, and the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee, and I`m going to support him and help him do what I can. He is one of the most talented people who has ever run for president I have ever seen."
And when he was asked if he`d consider being Trump`s running mate, Perry said, quote, "I am not going to say no."
As for Donald Trump, he is happy to have the endorsement and seems to have genuine affection for the vanquished Perry, except for that one time Perry called him a cancer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I like him. I do like him. I forgot about the one hour where he went wild, okay?
But he said, one of the most talented or brilliant or something, candidates ever to run for the presidency in the history of the presidency. So you have that statement, and then you have this statement. There`s a big difference. That`s a big gap.
But I appreciate it. And I like Rick Perry. And he`s a good man. And I appreciate that he did that.
(END VIDOE CLIP)
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HAYES: And Donald Trump has often argued his skills as a businessman -- his talent with managing money -- prove that he could effectively run the U.S. economy.
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TRUMP: I will be the greatest jobs president that god ever created, I tell you that.
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HAYES: What he doesn`t tell you is that he was once put on an allowance, though an allowance for Donald Trump isn`t the one you`d give your 10-year- old.
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TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS: $10 million, of course, is a lot of money. But it`s not enough to cover Donald Trump for a full two years. He manages to go through more than half a million dollars a month for just personal expenses.
So today when a group of banks came up with $20 million in loans to help him through his business difficulties, they put him on a personal allowance of sorts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That`s right.
As Tom Brokaw and the NBC News team reported back in 1990, the banks bailing Trump out at the time didn`t trust him to handle his own finances. And they had a pretty good reason.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In one recent month, Donald spent $583,000 on personal expenses. He also spent -- and these are not included in the new restrictions, $246,000 on his personal Boeing 727, $841,000 on his yacht, and $2.1 million for interest on personal loans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump says he made a great deal, a fantastic deal, that his empire is intact, and he`s running it. But the bankers have another story. One of them told me, "in our view he`s in bankruptcy, but instead of the courts presiding over a restructuring, we`re doing it."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump is well acquainted with bankruptcy, of course. And yesterday he gave an interview in which he suggested his economic plan for the country could involve bankrupting the U.S. economy, which he cast as a good thing. The terrifying world of Trumponomics next.
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HAYES: When the president`s presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party Donald Trump talked about our nation`s debt recently, it is fair to say his views were colored by his particular personal relationship to both debt and bankruptcy.
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TRUMP: I am the king of debt. I do love debt. I love debt. I love playing with it, but of course now you`re talking about, you know, you`re talking about something that`s very, very fragile.
Look, I`ve borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts. And I`ve done very well with that.
Now of course I was swashbuckling and it did well for me and it was good for me and all that. And you know, debt was sort of always interesting to me. Now we`re in a different situation with a country but I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal.
And if the economy was good, it was good. So, therefore you can`t lose. It`s like you make a deal before you go into a poker game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK. When the CNBC host pressed him on the notion he might not pay back U.S. debt, 100 cents on the dollar, basically an unthinkable prospect for what is the national global security, Trump did seem to back off, kind of.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I understand that you`ve done this in business deals but are you suggesting we would negotiate with the U.S. credit in such a way?
TRUMP: No, I think this, I think there are times for us to refinance. We`ve refinanced debt with longer term.
No, I don`t want to renegotiate the bonds but I think you can do discounting. I think depending on where interest rates are. I think we should refinance longer-term debt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Nevertheless, the exchange was remarkable enough to prompt this from The New York Times, "such remarks by a major presidential candidate have no modern president.
Experts also describe Mr. Trump`s vaguely sketched proposal as fanciful saying there was no reason to think America`s creditors would accept anything less than 100 cents on the dollar regardless of Mr. Trump`s deal- making prowess.
Joining me now, David K. Johnson, distinguished visiting lecturer at Syracuse University college of law and Whitman School of management, national columnist and columnist for USA Today.
David, I can`t even figure out what he`s talking about. I mean, I`m serious in that it really seems to evince no actual understanding of the way that American debt works and the way the Federal Reserve works and how those two sort of work together in some ways.
What do you make of this?
DAVID K. JOHNSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: Well, I think this is further evidence that Donald has not a clue to what he`s doing here, just as when he was he was in the casino business, his competitors used to sit and tell me stories about how he didn`t understand the casino business.
If Alexander Hamilton were alive, he would be yelling at Donald. It was Alexander Hamilton who persuaded the country that although speculators in Revolutionary War debt and Articles of Confederation debt would make a lot of money, we should pay back 100 cents on the dollar. And because of that the democracy, the Republic, flourished, because of Hamilton.
And he`s now proposing to undo that, to raise the cost of borrowing and to make the dollar no longer the world reserve currency.
HAYES: That`s the key thing here.
JOHNSON: The Chinese, by the way, I`m sure are applauding this, Chris.
HAYES: The dollar is the world reserve currency for the reason that people when they flee to security, they flee to treasuries, because if there`s one entity after all of humanity has been brought to its knees that will pay its debt, and to the United States government, that is the thinking, that is what the markets price in.
So, to casually give an interview and say, I`m going to do to U.S. credit what I did to Donald Trump`s credit, which is go through four bankruptcies is a pretty astounding thing to say.
JOHNSON: Well, and let`s remember the only reason Donald is a viable candidate today is that in 1990, when he couldn`t pay his bills, even though he claimed to be a billionaire, the state of New Jersey casino control commission took his side against his bankers. So, it was government intervention in the market that saved him. And yet he`s going around saying he`s in favor of markets. Not quite.
But this is truly appalling.
You know, we had a technical default back about 30 years ago where we didn`t pay interest quite quick enough because of computer problems, supposedly, and it caused a brief increase, a little spike in federal borrowing rates.
And if the markets take seriously what Donald said, the federal government`s borrowing costs will go up and we will be worse off.
But this is indicative of how Donald has no respect for contracts -- not marriage contracts, not lending contracts, not contracts to pay people who do work for him.
HAYES: There`s also the fact that he is running in a party that has made a fetish of the national debt, reducing the national debt, and that debt is bad. And it`s actually a fetish that I disagree with. I actually think that there are cases -- as Donald Trump himself argued -- sometimes debt is good. Sometimes it`s good for a nation to take out debt in large quantities during certain periods of time. Debt can be great. Debt has done well for Donald Trump in certain ways.
But it`s just very hard to square that ideological circle. Like, these are the people that are saying, oh, Obama`s terrible because he`s added to the national debt. And this guy is saying, I am the king of debt, now I shall be your president.
JOHNSON: But Chris, there is no ideology here. I mean, Donald is a narcissist. You and I exist only to worship Donald or to be foils for him. The fact is that while we have enormous national debt because we`re demanding more government services than we`ve been willing to pay for through our elected representatives, interest rates have been falling.
The Federal government`s borrowing rate was 6 percent when George Bush took office. It`s now around a little over 2 percent, which tells you about the faith people have in the American government that Donanld Trump is now attacking.
HAYES: So, what do you think this is going -- how is this going to play out?
I mean, this is one interview, and there is -- you know, The Times wrote a -- I thought The Times piece was interesting because they tried to basically say, this is bonkers, but they couldn`t quite say this is bonkers.
How does this continue to play out as we go forward here?
JOHNSON: Well, I think the big part of that question is how does the news media treat this? There mean, there are all sorts of things about Donald that are in the public record that are not being examined.
We`re covering this as a horse race, we`re not covering it as a policy issue. And in policy, the fact is Donald doesn`t understand even how the constitution works. Look what he said to Paul Ryan. No piece of legislation can move unless the Speaker of the House wants it to. And he basically dismisses and disses Paul Ryan. This suggests Donald think the president is a dictator. And maybe that`s what we should be discussing. Is Donald really hoping to be elected so that he can say as what happened in Rome in 63 BCE, take over?
HAYES: Well, I`m not sure that there`s anything that sophisticated afoot. I just think that he tends to think that everything will work the way that the head of an enterprise with his name on it works, which is a set of unilateral decisions, which of course is not the way the American constitutional system works.
David K. Johnson, always a pleasure. Thank you, sir.
That is All In for this evening.
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