Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: May 24, 2016 Guest: Joe Conason, Robert Reich, Lisa Green, Elyse Steinberg, David Fehrenthold, Josh Kriegman (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
HAYES: The new onslaught from Hillary Clinton. If Donald Trump wins, you lose.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard-working families in California and across America to lose their homes.
HAYES: Tonight, the latest Clinton charge that Trump rooted for a housing crash. As Donald Trump recycles attacks from the `90s.
Then, the trial of a fallen American icon. The breaking news on today`s big Bill Cosby decision.
Plus, why Donald Trump is snapping at new questions over his charity promise.
TRUMP: I get nothing but bad press from the dishonest media.
HAYES: And the rise and fall of Anthony Weiner.
ANTHONY WEINER (D-NY), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: This is the worst, doing a documentary on my scandal.
HAYES: The documentary filmmakers join me when ALL IN starts right now.
WEINER: And for that, I am profoundly sorry.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
Hillary Clinton has found an issue that appears to distill her campaign`s portrayal of Donald Trump as a con man trying to put one over on the American public. Campaigning today in California, she hammered Trump for cheering on the real estate crash for his own profit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLINTON: Donald Trump said, when he was talking about the possibility of a housing market crash before the great recession, he said, "I sort of hope that happens." He actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard-working families in California and across America to lose their homes.
All because he thought he could take advantage of it to make some money for himself.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Clinton was referring to comments Trump made on a 2006 audio book from Trump University which is now of course facing three fraud lawsuits on behalf of thousands of former students who say they were cheated and swindled.
On the audio book titled "How to Build a Fortune," Trump was asked what he thought of speculation that the housing market was headed for a crash.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) TRUMP: I sort of hope that happens. Because then people like me would go in and buy. You know, if you`re in a good cash position, which I`m in a good cash position today. Then people like me would go in and buy like crazy. If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
(END AUDIO CLIP) HAYES: A year later in 2007, Trump told Canadian paper "The Globe and Mail", quote, "People have been talking about the end of the cycle for 12 years and I`m excited if it is. I`ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets." The Clinton campaign just released a web video hitting Trump for cheerleading a crash that, of course, plunged millions of families into financial misery and tanked the global economy, put us on the precipice of a crisis. And they`re pushing out the message to supporters and surrogates, including Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus, a Clinton endorser, who went after Trump today on the House floor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. DINA TITUS (D), NEVADA: I rise today on behalf of Nevadans to demand an apology from presumptive presidential nominee Trump. The crash of the housing market devastated my hometown of Las Vegas, which was one of the hardest hit in the country. We say to Mr. Trump, keep your short fingers out of the Nevada housing market.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Note the jab at what may be Trump`s most sensitive subject, his allegedly diminutive hands.
This afternoon, Trump responded to Clinton`s attacks in a statement, "I`m a businessman, I made a lot of money in down markets, in some cases as much as I made when markets are good. Frankly, this is the kind of thinking our country needs, understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation. Politicians have no idea how to do this, they don`t have a clue." Trump has bragged about having predicted the housing crash as he did in a phone interview on MSNBC last July.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: It was -- it was a bubble that was waiting to explode. It was a bubble that was, Joe and Mika, I told them it was waiting to explode, I told a lot of people and I was right. You know, I`m pretty good at that stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: But in fact, while he may have expected to profit if the housing market did crash, at the time Trump was betting on the opposite to happen.
In that same audio book cited by Clinton, he said he didn`t believe the real estate market was, quote, "going to take a big hit." The same year, 2006, Trump actually launched a mortgage company, Trump Mortgage, telling CNBC the market was right for new residential and commercial loans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I think the market is very good. I think it`s a great time to start a mortgage company. We`re going to have a great company, it`s Trump Mortgage, and TrumpMortgage.com. And it`s going to be a terrific company.
We are swamp with people that want mortgages and good financing, and we`re going to get them the lowest rate and they`re going to give us nice properties to lien.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: It turned out in the history of the United States, that was probably the worst time to launch a mortgage company, because within 18 months as "The Washington Post" reported, the company closed leaving some bills unpaid and a spotty sales record.
We all know what became of the housing market. In the meantime, Trump has continued to make pretty shoddy economic predictions like this one from 2012 resurfaced today by "BuzzFeed".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I have no doubt in my mind that President Obama made a deal with the Saudis to flood the markets with oil before the election so he can at least keep it down a little bit. After the election, it`s going to be a mess. Remember I said it -- if he wins, oil and gasoline, through the roof. Like never before.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: According to AAA, gas prices in the first quarter of 2016 were at their cheapest in 12 years. And that prediction, based on a conspiracy theory about the president secretly colluding with Saudis, tells you all you need to know about the attacks Trump is currently waging against Hillary Clinton. He seems to get most of his information from e-mail forwards sent by someone slightly unhinged great uncle.
Now, he`s going back to where that paranoid digital culture first began, in the feverish swamp in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton`s presidency gave rise to a kind of conspiracy industrial complex with the Drudge Report and World Net Daily and members of Republican Congress and their fact-checking antidote, snopes.com.
When asked about Vince Foster, the White House aide who committed suicide in 1993, Trump called theories of possible foul play very serious and the circumstances of Foster`s death very fishy. At the same time, Trump insists he`s above that kind of nonsense, telling "The Washington Post", quote, "I don`t bring Foster`s death up because I don`t know enough to discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don`t do that because I don`t think it`s fair." I`m joined now by Joe Conason, editor of chief of "The National Memo", author of the best-selling book, "The Hunting of the President: The Ten- Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton." Did you think this is where this would be, this campaign from Trump, this early?
JOE CONASON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE NATIONAL MEMO: Well, you know, I kind of assumed all the way, Chris, that if Hillary Clinton turned out to be the Democratic nominee, somebody would be bringing up old stuff from the `90s, just because, you know, it works with some Republicans. But I did not anticipate that it would be Donald Trump himself bringing up Vince Foster, which is one of the most discredited of all the Clinton mythologies.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, we should say, there`s numerous investigations that concluded this was suicide.
CONASON: Including Kennett Starr, and other prosecutors, there were federal investigations, there are investigations in the House and Senate, on and on. They all decided this was a suicide, that Clintons had nothing to do with it.
He was one of their closest friends. It`s very ugly to accuse them of this.
And I would say, Trump ought to go and ask Christopher Ruddy, who wrote the first book about Vince Foster, claiming that there was some kind of foul play. Chris Ruddy, who I happen to know, and he`s a neighbor of Trump`s in West Palm Beach, doesn`t believe this anymore. He said there`s nothing nefarious about what the Clintons had to do with Vince Foster.
So, the originator of the myth now no longer believes it.
HAYES: Here`s what`s so striking to me, Joe. Listening to you spool this out, right? You spent years reporting on this, and reporting on this sort of what was called the vast right-wing conspiracy, just insane theories that Clintons -- the president was running drugs out of an air strip in Arkansas.
CONASON: In Arkansas, yes. He`ll bring that up too.
HAYES: Absolutely. It`s just striking me to hear you sort of dive in first order right into the facts of this, right? To take a step back, we have the Republican presumptive nominee casually floating and sort of denying at arm`s length a theory that the former president of the United States and the current possible nominee for the Democratic presidency were complicit in a murder.
CONASON: Right.
HAYES: I mean, that is an insane thing.
CONASON: It`s totally insane. And what makes it even more insane, Chris, is that this is the same guy who spent years sucking up to the Clintons, invited them to his wedding, made Bill Clinton a member of Trump National Golf Club for free. Had his -- Clinton`s picture all over his golf clubs.
I mean, this is a guy who spent years sucking to him when he thought it was convenient for him. Now, he`ll blast any kind of lie out about them just because he`s running for president against her. No one should believe a word he says about any of this stuff.
HAYES: It`s a good point. This is someone -- he was defending Bill Clinton -- CONASON: Yes.
HAYES: -- in the late `90s. He was praising Hillary Clinton all through the -- CONASON: He said Clinton was the best president of the last five. He`s made all kinds they`re great people, Hillary`s very nice, on and on and on, in that mode. Now, it`s all changed because he`s listening to Roger Stone, his, you know, Nixon-era dirty trickster adviser. And Roger is telling, you have to go out there with all these --
HAYES: So that is a plausible theory of this, because I actually don`t think from a really sort of amoral, descriptive, political standpoint this particularly effective in winning anyone over.
CONASON: It`s hard to imagine but Trump is hard to imagine in a lot of ways.
HAYES: Do you think this is coming from Roger Stone?
CONASON: Oh, I know it is. There`s no question about it. Roger has written books about, you know, this stuff -- usually with some sidekick of his who`s a Holocaust denier. I mean, this is really in the fever swamps.
(CROSSTALK) HAYES: We should say, Rogers going on Alex Jones every day, there`s this pipeline that`s being built that sort of takes old pieces of this world that exist in the 1990s, Drudge Report which pioneered it, then connects it to Alex Jones, which is sort of like Sandy Hook -- (CROSSTALK) CONASON: They found like -- it`s an old supply of sewage that they`ve dug up and they`re pumping it out, you know, every day.
HAYES: And do you think a new audience to this -- I mean, where does this go from here? I guess my question watching the first eight days, OK, turn to 11, what are we going to do here?
CONASON: Well, I mean, it`s like -- you know, I feel like Michael Corleone. I`m being dragged -- I wanted out, I`m being dragged back in.
So, actually, Gene Lyons, my coauthor of "Hunting," and I put out an e-book that takes a lot of the stuff from "Hunting" about Hillary called "The Hunting of Hillary." And we`ve put this out for free.
So -- and we, you know, 20,000 people have come and gotten it from National Memo`s website and it`s there, and it tells this story in some detail. The truth.
HAYES: All right. We`re going to have to go bone up on that, I guess. Joe, thank you for your time. Joining me now, Robert Reich, he`s former labor secretary to Bill Clinton, now professor of public policy at University of California-Berkeley.
And, Robert, I thought that -- Clinton going after Donald Trump on the housing stuff today was interesting for a number of reasons. I think it sort of distilled down a kind of essential message. I mean, we should be clear at one level that in the thousand people most responsible for the housing crash, Donald Trump is not among those thousand people.
And yet, what do you think this attack says about him, says about where this race is?
ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: Well, basically, I think, Chris, what the Hillary Clinton campaign is trying to do is to say effectively that Donald Trump is a -- he`s not a populist. He is not anti- establishment. He is sort of notorious member of the establishment who has used every gimmick in the book, including eminent domain, getting the government to take property for his behalf, getting subsidies from government, paying off politicians, and predicting the housing crisis and using the housing crisis.
And this is -- this is the worst aspects of the establishment. This is the power-money structure at its worst.
HAYES: You know, there`s also the fact that there is news out today for the first time ever that sort of millennial youngest demographic cohort more likely to live with a parent than with a romantic partner. And as I was watching Hillary Clinton today, you know, we talk about the recovery.
And obviously, there`s been a recovery, and it`s much better than other say developed countries`.
But it remains the fact that even eight years later, that crash is the kind of great trauma for this economy and it hangs over everything about our politics in many ways.
REICH: It does. It`s a huge, huge trauma. And in fact, if you look back, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, both on the left and the right, both emerged from the bailout of Wall Street.
I mean, that crash not only was traumatic in economic terms, it was traumatic in political terms. And many people in the middle class, many middle-aged people and elderly people, are really living and bearing the scars from that crash right now because they don`t have enough savings.
They had assumed that their homes would be worth much more. They had assumed their savings would be worth much more. So people -- that`s an everyday reality for people. That crash, that economic downturn.
HAYES: And here`s the ad I want to play for folks to see what this case is being made here, take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, POLITICAL AD) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an economy that can`t find the bottom of bad news.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ten years of saving, completely gone. Vanished.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The biggest crash of household wealth that we`ve ever had in the United States.
TRUMP: I sort of hope that happens, because then people like me would go in and buy. If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Here is the thing I found particularly interesting in her remarks she did two different events, she talked about Dodd-Frank, a contentious subject in the primary about the degree to which it has rectified the problems that were there.
Trump said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank. Clinton sort of pivoted off this into some sort of substantive policy, which can be hard to do when running against Trump, attacking him for that as well.
REICH: Well, it`s interesting. Assuming, as I think many people do, that Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee, we are actually at a very interesting juncture here, because both of them are using and paying a lot for negative research. It implies and suggests that over the next three or four months, we`re going to see the most negative campaigning.
You know, the stuff dredged up about Trump, stuff dredged up at least trying to dredge up about Hillary Clinton or both Clintons. And where do the big issues that we`ve tried -- we just tried to struggle with. I think Bernie Sanders has put on the centerpiece of American politics.
Where do they go? I mean, they suddenly disappear.
HAYES: That, of course, is the fear in this. I think that to the extent that Hillary Clinton, if she is in fact the nominee, can manage to keep those issues intertwined with this, that is going to be to her benefit ultimately politically.
Robert Reich, thank you very much, appreciate it.
REICH: Thanks, Chris. HAYES: All right. Coming up, Hillary Clinton will be speaking live in Riverside, California, this hour. We will keep an eye on that event for you.
Plus, late-breaking news: the reporter investigating Donald Trump`s veterans charity promise joins me with an update. Why he couldn`t find evidence of Trump`s personal donations ahead.
But, first, after allegations of sexual assault that span 50 years, Bill Cosby will go to trial where he could face up to 30 years in prison. What happened today in a courtroom in that case, in just two minutes. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: After allegations of sexual misconduct by more than 50 women involving incidents spanning five decades, Bill Cosby will now stand trial for three counts of aggravated indecent assault relating to one woman`s allegations. The felony counts each carry a sentence up to ten years in prison.
Today, after a three and a half hearing and following about 10 minutes of deliberation, Judge Elizabeth McHugh of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, ruled the case will move forward. Cosby will not have to appear at a formal arraignment on July 20th, and his plea of not guilty will be automatically entered. A date for trial has not been set.
Cosby, through his legal counsel, has repeatedly denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. This particular case stems from a 2004 incident between Mr. Cosby and Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University.
It was an incident that spawned a civil lawsuit by Constand in 2005, a lawsuit that was ultimately settled out of court, but which procured the deposition of Cosby himself. And it is that deposition, conducted in 2005 and 2006 by Constand`s lawyer that was excerpted in legal motions that were sealed for nearly a decade but made public by a judge in response to a request by the "Associated Press".
Here`s an excerpt from that deposition regarding a night in which Cosby allegedly gave pills to Constand.
Question: can you tell me what you recall of the night you gave the pills to Andrea?
Cosby`s answer: Andrea came to the house, I called her, we talked about Temple University, we talked about her position, I went upstairs and I got three pills. I brought them down. They are the equivalent of one and a half. The reason why I gave them to Andrea, which she took after examining them, is because she was talking about stress.
In that same deposition, Cosby answered questions regarding an alleged sexual encounter between him and Constand. Here`s part of that exchange. Question: then what happens?
Cosby`s answer: I don`t hear her say anything. I don`t feel her say anything. And so, I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.
Cosby`s defense released a statement today which reads in part, through the complainant`s own written statements admitted in court, the fact of multiple consensual sexual interactions was established as was the fact that complainant communicated with, returned to the home of, had dinner with, and gave gifts to Mr. Cosby after the alleged assault occurred. Mr. Cosby is not guilty of one single crime and not one single fact presented by the commonwealth rebuts this truth. Joining me now, to make sense of this all, legal analyst, Lisa Green, managing director of Sard Verbinnen and Company. Lisa, all right. Let`s start with this. There`s going to be a trial, a criminal trial, that`s what the judge said today. They`ve cleared this very low bar to get the thing thrown out?
LISA GREEN, LEGAL ANALYST: Exactly right. Cosby`s heading to court.
HAYES: OK. They`re heading to court. Now, my first question as a layperson is just, you`ve got this deposition, which seems quite incriminating. Is that going to get into this criminal trial? That seems to me a big part of the ball game here.
GREEN: It`s a big part of the ball game. Unbeknownst to even the most ardent Cosby followers, last month, a three-judge federal panel heard arguments by Cosby`s lawyers seeking to reseal the deposition. And in essence, I know, even a non-lawyer can appreciate this, the judges pulled out and not from their law books variations on the toothpaste tube analogy as in, the toothpaste is so far out of this tube, it`s like that morning when you wake up and you`re like, I`m rolling the toothpaste tube, maybe there`s a little bit of toothpaste.
I don`t think that`s going to go well. They haven`t ruled but in a practical -- as a practical matter in 2016, you and I have access to this deposition. How are we going to take it back?
HAYES: I just read that on national television, right? It is too far gone. The question then becomes -- so there will be a fight, right? An evidentiary fight as to whether that`s admitted. I would imagine his lawyers will try to get it kept out.
GREEN: They`re trying to get it kept out and it`s likely that this appellate panel, this federal judicial panel, thinking about just one aspect of the case, I know we`ll get to others later, is going to say, that comes in. And that`s powerful evidence because that`s Cosby`s own words. Of course, significantly, he says or seems to say it was consensual, I was not stopped. That`s why what you`re really going to see the battle royale about, Chris, obviously, are other women. Can other women testify about their experiences with Bill Cosby?
HAYES: So that`s the other big thing. Because again, evaluating this as just a citizen watching this all play out, when I think of this case and I`m not making a legal determination or a journalistic one, but just watching as a person you think one accusation, OK. Fifty accusations, you draw conclusions about 50 very, very, very, very similar allegation realize your imagine a jury would do the same and Cosby`s lawyers will fight like hell to make sure they never see them. GREEN: They`re going to fight hard and they have powerful law --
HAYES: On their side. (CROSSTALK) GREEN: -- federal rule of evidence 404, to be technical. Pennsylvania has a similar law. Prior bad acts are not admitted just to prove you`re a bad guy. But --
HAYES: What`s the exception?
GREEN: The exception and it`s a big one potentially in this case, if you can show that there`s sort of an M.O., a pattern of behavior, that`s significant, right? And sometimes judges decide in a sexual assault case that drugs, alcohol, loss of consent, may be not specific enough of an M.O., but here you can see what a difference it will make if the judge in Cosby`s trial decides, this is relevant, it`s prejudicial, sure. But the probative value, the importance to the jury of seeing this pattern, makes it important for the jury to hear it and decide.
HAYES: That`s going to be fascinating.
GREEN: Really powerful.
HAYES: We should be clear about these allegations. And I don`t have a categorical knowledge of every single one. But the ones that I have studied, and studied closely, there is an M.O. in the allegations.
I`m not saying it`s true but there is surely in the allegations, there is an extremely distinct M.O. in terms of how this allegedly went down.
GREEN: So, put yourself in the judge`s shoes, right? It`s important to prosecute criminals and make sure that justice is served. It`s also important to give defendants the right to a fair trial.
HAYES: Right. The massive sort of swamping prejudicial knowledge allowed in.
GREEN: OK, so let`s say you`re the judge and you`re going to look at dozens of similar complaints. How are you going to decide individually which ones are the ones you let in?
HAYES: That is really going to be interesting to follow legally. Lisa Green, thank you very much.
GREEN: Pleasure. All right. Still ahead, was Donald Trump caught red-handed flat-out lying about a million-dollar donation to a veterans group? There`s late-breaking news and the reporter who broke that story is here to tell us what it is.
So, you want to stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: We were looking live at Hillary Clinton`s event happening in Riverside, California. Things are still getting set up. We`ll keep you updated on that. But, first, one of the best movies about politics I`ve ever seen is right now in theaters. In a lot of ways, the film is a study in how contemporary politics works, how it`s driven by spectacle and showmanship, something we`re seeing play out in this year of Donald Trump.
The film is about a big-city mayoral candidate, a brash Democrat attempting an improbable come back, but who wound up conceding after receiving a mere 5 percent of the vote. It`s about a man embroiled in a sex scandal without any actual sex. A politician who came to be widely and almost universally loathed who never actually did anything criminal.
But one who admits that he has this, quote, "virtually unlimited ability to F things up." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why are they filming you?
WEINER: I don`t know. Most of the time, I don`t know why they`re filming me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you somebody who`s supposed to know? WEINER: If Republicans wrapping their arms around Republicans rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was an absolute pleasure to see a Democrat not cowering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Married to one of Hillary Clinton`s closest advisers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He never back down from anybody. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A photo of an anonymous man`s bulging underwear. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was tweeted from Congressman Weiner`s account.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have no chance to win anymore.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s apocalyptic right now.
WEINER:
At a certain point, you`ve got to say, look, I don`t quit.
This is the worst, doing a documentary on my scandal. Hi!
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The film is called simply, "Weiner", and it is riveting in large part due to the incredible, almost unfathomable amount of access the filmmakers got. Those filmmakers will join me live on set here in just a bit.
Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I raised almost $6 million for the veterans including putting up $1 million of my own money. I had no obligation to do anything or to do so.
And I get nothing but bad press from the dishonest media. It is absolutely disgraceful. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Back in January when Donald Trump was in a feud with Fox News he decided to skip a debate hosted by that network and instead host a competing event the night of the debate, a rally/fundraiser to raise money for charities serving veterans. He claimed to have brought in $6 million for veterans groups. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: We went out. We set up the website. I called some friends. And we just cracked -- the sign was just given -- we just cracked $6 million, right? $6 million. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Trump went on to hand out novelty checks to veterans charities at campaign stops, though questions quickly started to arise about just how much money was really being distributed. As of this morning The Washington Post had only been able to account for $3.1 million in donations, not $6 million. And on Friday, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski admitted the fund-raiser actually netted about $4.5 million, or 75 percent of what Trump claimed. OK, now Lewandowski claimed taht some of the people who initially promised Trump they would make donations failed to follow through and today said that the Trump campaign will distribute between $5.5 million and $6 million to vet group by Memorial Day. But there has been an even bigger question around the fund-raiser. And it has to do with this specific claim by Trump himself. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Donald Trump, another great builder in New York, now a politician, Donald Trump gave $1 million, okay? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Donald Trump gave $1 million. He said he personally had donated $1million to veteran charities, that was back in January. The problem was no one has been able to find the money. I mean, coming into this week, none of the charities that have received money from the fund-raiser have reported personal donations from Trump himself. And Lewandowski was pressed about the money this morning. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will Mr. Trump release exactly where he has given that million dollars to, which veterans organizations? COREY LEWANDOWSKI, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I mean, I`ll ask him to do that. But the bottom line is, he`s taken $1 million out of his personal account, he`s given it to charities that he felt was worthy, and any remaining money will be distributed before Memorial Day. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: OK, so that seems pretty crystal clear. He took it out of his personal account and gave it, in the past tense, he`s given it. Now, asked by The Washington Post if Trump had made good on his $1 million donation, Lewandowski responded, the money is fully spent. Mr. Trump`s money is fully spent. Asked to whom did Trump give and in what amounts, Lewandowki responded, quote, he`s not going to share that information. But late today, facing increasing media scrutiny Trump did in fact share that information and in doing so contradicted Lewandowski`s claim the money had already been distributed. Trump also appeared to admit to having been caught red-handed in a million- dollar lie.
"Trump said in an interview he pledged the $1 million to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation." He reportedly, "notified the group`s chairman, retired FBI official James Kallstrom, in a phone call sometime last night." OK, so in other words, Trump had not actually donated any of his own money or pledged to do so until just yesterday. Asked by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold if the donation was in response to questions from the media, Trump replied, quote, "you know, you`re a nasty guy.
You`re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do." And joining me now is that nasty guy, Washington Post national politics reporter David Fehrenthold who`s been all over this story and broke today`s news. All right, David, I feel like I`m missing something, because my understanding of this is so brazen it can`t possibly be true. But it appears to be the case Donald Trump claimed to give $1 million to veterans charities, did not do that for four months, and then yesterday gave them when you started calling, asking where the money was? DAVID FEHRENTHOLD, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, that`s right. He said in January, as you played, he had given in the past tense $1 million to veterans groups. Four months later, though, even after Lewandowski had said the money had been given out, it really hadn`t. And so yesterday I spent a lot of yesterday trying to sort of figure out where the money was, trying through social media to find a bunch of -- to ask about a bunch of veterans groups to see if they`d received any of the money. And in the process sort of tweeting about real Donald Trump who pays attention to his Twitter mentions. And so at the very end of yesterday after all this pressure was put on, Trump actually called up sometime after 8:00 and made this donation. So yes, for four months Trump had apparently sat on the money that he`d promised to give to veterans. HAYES: I know you`re being very careful, because you`re a scrupulous reporter. But let`s just be clear here, sat on the money. The money had not been donated. He said he made a million dollar donation to veterans groups to great fanfare and had done no such thing, is that correct? FEHRENTHOLD: That`s absolutely right, not until last night. HAYES: So then what happened? Do you -- I mean, was he just completely painted into a corner and then came through? FEHRENTHOLD: Well, it`s hard to speculate. But I`ll tell you this, the group that he called, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, it`s a very good foundation, but Trump knows them. Trump had given them money from his foundation in the past. They actually had a big gala in New York City where they gave Trump a giant award, the commandant`s leadership award, last year. So, when I asked Trump, you know, what took you so long, almost four months, to give them this money? Trump said, well, I`m vetting -- it was vetting the groups? I said, well, vetting, I mean you know these people, you`ve already given them money, they gave you an award. So it seems like in this moment he called people that he already knew really well and instead of giving out the money in pieces to a number of groups he just gave it all to this group that he already had a connection to. HAYES: All right. So I also want to give credit where due here, right. I mean, there is actual money that was actually raised by this event. It actually has gone to veterans organizations in millions of dollars of that has actually happened. You have definitively reported that out? FEHRENTHOLD: Yes. More than $3 million we know for sure was given by various donors to veterans groups.
You have to remember there was donors -- there were donors beyond Trump who gave money through Trump`s Foundation or directly. So at least $3 million given out. Now if Trump`s check clears, that will be $4.1 million that`s actually gone through. HAYES: And just to be clear, this was actual -- we`ve had other reporting I think actually in your newspaper about his charitable giving. These weren`t like rounds of golf or conservation easements? This was actual money that actually got to organizations that are serving vets? FEHRENTHOLD: That`s absolutely true. And for those groups they got -- some of them got $50,000, $100,000, or more. Some of them are pretty small groups in Iowa and New Hampshire. And this was a huge thing for them. And they were able to do much more. For some of them it was the biggest donation they`d ever received. HAYES: All right, David Ferenthold, thanks for being with me. I reall appreciate it. FEHRENTHOLD: Thank you. HAYES: All right, coming up Sheldon Addelson is trying very hard to get leading Jewish Republicans to support Donald Trump. One reason he might be having trouble just after the break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: For the past several weeks Donald Trump has been racking up the endorsements, including one from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It was an interesting move for the Republican megadonor considering just months ago when Adelson was backing Rubio, Trump tweeted, "Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree." Trump, however, showing his trademark ability to switch positions on a dime, of course embraced Adelson`s endorsement which he declared in a Washington Post editorial saying, an incredible honor to receive the endorsement of a person I have such tremendous respect for, thank you Sheldon. But Sheldon Adelson didn`t just endorse Trump, he worked behind the scenes to get the members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group he largely funds, on board. Writing to more than 50 Jewish Republican leaders in an email obtained by the AP, quote, "I`m asking for your support for Trump.
Adelson told them he had met with Trump recently and is specifically convinced he will be a tremendous president when it comes to the safety and security of Israel." The RJC did release a statement today, but it was not an endorsement of Trump. I`ll tell you what it was in 60 seconds. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Earlier today, the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group largely funded by Sheldon Adelson, issued a statement concerning the troubling increase of anti-Semitic invective directed toward journalists. The statement goes on to read, "we abhor any abuse of journalists, commentators and writers whether it be from Sanders, Clinton or Trump supporters." The group which earlier this month congratulated Trump on his win in Indiana but stopped short of fully endorsing him made sure to include the supporters of all three candidates in their statement.
But as we`ve covered on the show, and as many journalists who have been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic invective referenced in the statement have pointed out, the abuse certainly isn`t coming equally from Sanders, Clinton and Trump supporters, it`s coming from Donald Trump supporters. The New York Times Jonathan Wiseman tweeting, "I for one have heard only from the last camp, referring to Trump, and boy have I heard." Steve Kastenbaum from Westwood One news wrote, "Hm, I only got some from Trump supporters. Anyone get anti-Semitic threats from Clinton and Sanders
supporters?" Meanwhile, Seth Mandel of The New York Post said, quote, "cowardly statement from RJC. I`ll let you know when Stormfront" -- the white supremacist group -- "attacks my family because they like Hillary or Bernie." (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Attorney General Loretta Lynch announcing today the Justice Department would seek the death penalty against the Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof. The 22-year-old is accused of opening fire during a bible study at the historic African-American Church Emanuel AME in South Carolina, killing nine people. Roof faces 33 federal charges including hate crime charges for allegedly targeting his victims on the basis of their race and religion. Last summer a stone-faced Roof faced the families of his alleged victims during a parole hearing -- bail hearing. He was met not with calls for his death or vengeance, but with remarkable grace, dignity, and at times forgiveness from people like Nadine Collier, whose mother was killed. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) NADINE COLLIER, MOTHER KILLED IN SHOOTING: I just want everybody to know, to you, I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again.
But I forgive you. A hand rested on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But I forgive you. I forgive you. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Dylann Roof is scheduled to stand trial in South Carolina in January of next year. His federal court date has not been set. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think? ANTHONY WEINER, FRM. CONGRESSMAN FROM NEW YORK: I don`t know. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you regret it? WEINER: This nasty jackass. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has anyone ever told you it`s hard to get you to talk about your feelings? WEINER: Let me ask you something, are there any -- there must be some specie of fly that stays on the wall and talks, but I`ve never heard of one. Usually isn`t the fly on the wall technique, isn`t that have to do a little bit of the notion of not being seen or heard, you just pick up what goes on around you? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Chances are you know Anthony Weiner less from his seven terms in
congress more from the underwear photos that he posted on his public Twitter account in 2011. That the scandal led Wiener to resign from congress only to resurface two years later to run for mayor of New York. And The New York Post had a field day with headlines like, quote, "Weiner`s second coming" and "Erect me, Mr. Mayor." Clever guys. But not long after the campaign got under way came even more revelations of explicit photographs and sexually charged messages. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Had there been multiple online exchanges with multiple people or was it just this one?
Can I just say multiple people? Or is it just this one? WEINER: I think you`ve got to -- I mean, there was more than one. So I think we`ve got to answer the question. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay. So, I`m going to say... WEINER: Yes. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was more than one. Do you believe you`re suffering from any sort of addiction? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: All of this is in the new documentary "Weiner" which gives us I think one of the most intimate portrayals of political life ever captured on film. And joining me now are filmmakers Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman, directors of the documentary "Weiner" which won an award at Cannes, it`s getting incredible reviews, I`ve seen it, and I think it`s absolutely incredible. So, congratulations on it. I should say full disclosure Elyse and I are friends from way back so you can all evaluate that. Let`s start with this. I mean, the first time that you -- when you see this film, your first thought is, why? Why did Anthony Wiener and his wife, Huma Abedine, who is -- probably the closest aide to Hillary Clinton, why did they allow you to film? JOSH KRIEGMAN, FILMMAKER: I`ve actually known Anthony for a long time. I met him working in politics as his district chief of staff when he was in congress. So, that`s how I got to know him well. And then I moved into filmaking and out of politics. And it was after he resigned from congress, after his scandal, that we started a conversation about the possibility of making documentary to tell his story in a way that gets past the punch line version that he became through the course of his scandal. And that was a conversation that went on over the course of a couple of years acxtually of going back and forth with him trying to see if it would be something that he`d be comfortable with. And then when he ran for mayor of New York City, he agreed to let us in and we filmed the campaign. HAYES: OK. But you`re there -- I mean, did he literally forget that you were there? There are moments in there where literally you`re watching this and you`re thinking to yourself I should not be seeing this. KRIEGMAN: Yeah. ELYSE STEINBERG, FILMMAKER: I think this question, Chris,is a question that we wondered about ourselves. And in the film it`s a question that we posed to Anthony. And Anthony does answer at the end when he says that he wanted to be viewed as the full person that he was instead of a punchline.
And that was our intention with this film. HAYES: Right. But literally, I`m asking you, were there moments where you`re standing there with the camera and you`re thinking to yourself, does he know that we`re here? KRIEGMAN: Well, he knew that I was there. I did most of the filming myself. It was me with a camera through most of the campaign. And there were definitely moments, really intense moments, where I certainly thought to myself, I can`t believe I`m here right now. On the morning that the scandal broke for a second time I was in the room with he and Huma and his staff and he actually askses his staff to leave but allows me to stay and film. And that`s a pivotal scene in the film. And I certainly thought to myself, I can`t believe that I`m witnessing this. HAYES: We should say there are moments where you do get kicked out which we see in the film. KRIEGMAN: Yes. HAYES: Elyse the film to me -- it`s funny, the film has very nuanced textured views of every single person in it. The one villain in the film to me is the media. The media is this sort of like implacable group of furies that just descend upon this.
What was it like to live inside this maelstrom while you`re making this film? STEINBERG: You know, you`re absolutely right. The media is a character in our film. And while it is about one person and one campaign, I think this film provides a look at how our politics today is driven by entertainment and an appetite for spectacle. And we don`t have to look far to see that being played out right now in our current presidential race with Donald Trump. So yes, while we were going through it, I mean, we really were just taken aback by the outsized nature of the media. HAYES: Yeah, the Trump comparison I think is interesting, because there`s a resonance here while you`re watching this in this year where you`re like, okay, the ratio of this to the coverage seems out of whack. KRIEGMAN: Yeah, he mentions in the film -- Anthony does, you know, there`s a kind of phoniness to the size of the outrage of the media. HAYES: Which he`s right about. KRIEGMAN: Yeah, in a way that stoked the story, made it bigger. But of course he is also careful to not blame the media. He does suggest that, of course,he`s responsible ultimately for what happened to him. HAYES: Well, and also to me, the reason this movie is so interesting coming now, is it`s a counter example of the idea that like attention made Donald Trump, because believe me, Anthony Weiner got tons of attention. If one thing comes through in your film it`s the ceaseless amount of attention the guy got. And in his case it didn`t help his poll numbers, it killed them. STEINBERG: Yeah, I mean, I think the parallel between Anthony and Trump, it`s there. While they`re very different politically and personally I think they both understood that in order to have a voice in today`s 24-hour news cycle you need to put on a show, and by being brash and having an air of authenticity you can get attention and win votes. HAYES: And also be accessible. See, this is the thing that`s so crazy about this movie both in the way that he conducts himself as a candidate and the fact the movie exists is he never says no. he doesn`t decline the filmmaker filming him, he doesn`t decline any interviews. I mean, in the midst of a time when people would locked down, this guy, I don`t if it`s compulsive or deranged or narcissistic, I don`t know what it is. But he just can`t say no to talking to the press. KRIEGMAN: Yeah, no, I think he certainly has a complicated relationship with the media and the camera, no doubt. And I think he really though wanted the possibility of a different version of his story told which is why he opened up his life to us. HAYES: Huma Abedin is a key figure. It`s Anthony Weiner`s wife, there`s a lot of kind of mystery around her, because she`s not a particularly public person. She`s in this film. I think she comes across actually quite well in the film. She has this really -- you get a sense from looking at her what it must be like to be a person who is a private person and have to be along for the ride in something like this. STEINBERG: Yeah, no, I think just as Anthony was reduced to a caricature and ridiculed, so is she. And you see the judgment that was placed upon her. HAYES: Totally. STEINBERG: And you know the judgment that`s placed upon women at the center of this. I mean, why should women be judged because of mistakes made by their flawed husbands? I mean, our film sort of questions those judgments and goes beyond them. HAYES: Has he seen the film? KRIEGMAN: He hasn`t seen it yet. We offered to show it to him. HAYES: I seriously -- can I just say this -- I do not believe that. KRIEGMAN: I mean, as far as we know. HAYES: I know you`re saying that, but like I just watched your movie where he spends the whole time pulling up clips of himself. There`s no way the dude has not seen the film. KRIEGMAN: We offered for him to see it a couple of times many months ago and he hasn`t wanted to see it yet. STEINBERG: He says he`s not eager to relive it, and we can certainly respect that. HAYES: I think he`s seen it. I`m just saying. He`s got some bit torrent or something. All right, filmmakers Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman. The film is Weiner. It is out in theaters. It really is a remarkable look at modern campaigning over an above Anthony Weiner. You get to see a lot of things about the way a modern campaign works you never get to see. Great work, guys. Thank you for coming. That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
HAYES: The new onslaught from Hillary Clinton. If Donald Trump wins, you lose.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard-working families in California and across America to lose their homes.
HAYES: Tonight, the latest Clinton charge that Trump rooted for a housing crash. As Donald Trump recycles attacks from the `90s.
Then, the trial of a fallen American icon. The breaking news on today`s big Bill Cosby decision.
Plus, why Donald Trump is snapping at new questions over his charity promise.
TRUMP: I get nothing but bad press from the dishonest media.
HAYES: And the rise and fall of Anthony Weiner.
ANTHONY WEINER (D-NY), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: This is the worst, doing a documentary on my scandal.
HAYES: The documentary filmmakers join me when ALL IN starts right now.
WEINER: And for that, I am profoundly sorry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
Hillary Clinton has found an issue that appears to distill her campaign`s portrayal of Donald Trump as a con man trying to put one over on the American public. Campaigning today in California, she hammered Trump for cheering on the real estate crash for his own profit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Donald Trump said, when he was talking about the possibility of a housing market crash before the great recession, he said, "I sort of hope that happens." He actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard-working families in California and across America to lose their homes. All because he thought he could take advantage of it to make some money for himself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Clinton was referring to comments Trump made on a 2006 audio book from Trump University which is now of course facing three fraud lawsuits on behalf of thousands of former students who say they were cheated and swindled.
On the audio book titled "How to Build a Fortune," Trump was asked what he thought of speculation that the housing market was headed for a crash.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: I sort of hope that happens. Because then people like me would go in and buy. You know, if you`re in a good cash position, which I`m in a good cash position today. Then people like me would go in and buy like crazy. If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HAYES: A year later in 2007, Trump told Canadian paper "The Globe and Mail", quote, "People have been talking about the end of the cycle for 12 years and I`m excited if it is. I`ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets."
The Clinton campaign just released a web video hitting Trump for cheerleading a crash that, of course, plunged millions of families into financial misery and tanked the global economy, put us on the precipice of a crisis. And they`re pushing out the message to supporters and surrogates, including Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus, a Clinton endorser, who went after Trump today on the House floor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DINA TITUS (D), NEVADA: I rise today on behalf of Nevadans to demand an apology from presumptive presidential nominee Trump. The crash of the housing market devastated my hometown of Las Vegas, which was one of the hardest hit in the country. We say to Mr. Trump, keep your short fingers out of the Nevada housing market.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Note the jab at what may be Trump`s most sensitive subject, his allegedly diminutive hands.
This afternoon, Trump responded to Clinton`s attacks in a statement, "I`m a businessman, I made a lot of money in down markets, in some cases as much as I made when markets are good. Frankly, this is the kind of thinking our country needs, understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation. Politicians have no idea how to do this, they don`t have a clue."
Trump has bragged about having predicted the housing crash as he did in a phone interview on MSNBC last July.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It was -- it was a bubble that was waiting to explode. It was a bubble that was, Joe and Mika, I told them it was waiting to explode, I told a lot of people and I was right. You know, I`m pretty good at that stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But in fact, while he may have expected to profit if the housing market did crash, at the time Trump was betting on the opposite to happen. In that same audio book cited by Clinton, he said he didn`t believe the real estate market was, quote, "going to take a big hit."
The same year, 2006, Trump actually launched a mortgage company, Trump Mortgage, telling CNBC the market was right for new residential and commercial loans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think the market is very good. I think it`s a great time to start a mortgage company. We`re going to have a great company, it`s Trump Mortgage, and TrumpMortgage.com. And it`s going to be a terrific company. We are swamp with people that want mortgages and good financing, and we`re going to get them the lowest rate and they`re going to give us nice properties to lien.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: It turned out in the history of the United States, that was probably the worst time to launch a mortgage company, because within 18 months as "The Washington Post" reported, the company closed leaving some bills unpaid and a spotty sales record.
We all know what became of the housing market. In the meantime, Trump has continued to make pretty shoddy economic predictions like this one from 2012 resurfaced today by "BuzzFeed".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I have no doubt in my mind that President Obama made a deal with the Saudis to flood the markets with oil before the election so he can at least keep it down a little bit. After the election, it`s going to be a mess. Remember I said it -- if he wins, oil and gasoline, through the roof. Like never before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: According to AAA, gas prices in the first quarter of 2016 were at their cheapest in 12 years. And that prediction, based on a conspiracy theory about the president secretly colluding with Saudis, tells you all you need to know about the attacks Trump is currently waging against Hillary Clinton. He seems to get most of his information from e-mail forwards sent by someone slightly unhinged great uncle.
Now, he`s going back to where that paranoid digital culture first began, in the feverish swamp in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton`s presidency gave rise to a kind of conspiracy industrial complex with the Drudge Report and World Net Daily and members of Republican Congress and their fact-checking antidote, snopes.com.
When asked about Vince Foster, the White House aide who committed suicide in 1993, Trump called theories of possible foul play very serious and the circumstances of Foster`s death very fishy. At the same time, Trump insists he`s above that kind of nonsense, telling "The Washington Post", quote, "I don`t bring Foster`s death up because I don`t know enough to discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don`t do that because I don`t think it`s fair."
I`m joined now by Joe Conason, editor of chief of "The National Memo", author of the best-selling book, "The Hunting of the President: The Ten- Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."
Did you think this is where this would be, this campaign from Trump, this early?
JOE CONASON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE NATIONAL MEMO: Well, you know, I kind of assumed all the way, Chris, that if Hillary Clinton turned out to be the Democratic nominee, somebody would be bringing up old stuff from the `90s, just because, you know, it works with some Republicans. But I did not anticipate that it would be Donald Trump himself bringing up Vince Foster, which is one of the most discredited of all the Clinton mythologies.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, we should say, there`s numerous investigations that concluded this was suicide.
CONASON: Including Kennett Starr, and other prosecutors, there were federal investigations, there are investigations in the House and Senate, on and on. They all decided this was a suicide, that Clintons had nothing to do with it.
He was one of their closest friends. It`s very ugly to accuse them of this.
And I would say, Trump ought to go and ask Christopher Ruddy, who wrote the first book about Vince Foster, claiming that there was some kind of foul play. Chris Ruddy, who I happen to know, and he`s a neighbor of Trump`s in West Palm Beach, doesn`t believe this anymore. He said there`s nothing nefarious about what the Clintons had to do with Vince Foster.
So, the originator of the myth now no longer believes it.
HAYES: Here`s what`s so striking to me, Joe. Listening to you spool this out, right? You spent years reporting on this, and reporting on this sort of what was called the vast right-wing conspiracy, just insane theories that Clintons -- the president was running drugs out of an air strip in Arkansas.
CONASON: In Arkansas, yes. He`ll bring that up too.
HAYES: Absolutely. It`s just striking me to hear you sort of dive in first order right into the facts of this, right? To take a step back, we have the Republican presumptive nominee casually floating and sort of denying at arm`s length a theory that the former president of the United States and the current possible nominee for the Democratic presidency were complicit in a murder.
CONASON: Right.
HAYES: I mean, that is an insane thing.
CONASON: It`s totally insane. And what makes it even more insane, Chris, is that this is the same guy who spent years sucking up to the Clintons, invited them to his wedding, made Bill Clinton a member of Trump National Golf Club for free. Had his -- Clinton`s picture all over his golf clubs.
I mean, this is a guy who spent years sucking to him when he thought it was convenient for him. Now, he`ll blast any kind of lie out about them just because he`s running for president against her. No one should believe a word he says about any of this stuff.
HAYES: It`s a good point. This is someone -- he was defending Bill Clinton --
CONASON: Yes.
HAYES: -- in the late `90s. He was praising Hillary Clinton all through the --
CONASON: He said Clinton was the best president of the last five. He`s made all kinds they`re great people, Hillary`s very nice, on and on and on, in that mode. Now, it`s all changed because he`s listening to Roger Stone, his, you know, Nixon-era dirty trickster adviser. And Roger is telling, you have to go out there with all these --
HAYES: So that is a plausible theory of this, because I actually don`t think from a really sort of amoral, descriptive, political standpoint this particularly effective in winning anyone over.
CONASON: It`s hard to imagine but Trump is hard to imagine in a lot of ways.
HAYES: Do you think this is coming from Roger Stone?
CONASON: Oh, I know it is. There`s no question about it. Roger has written books about, you know, this stuff -- usually with some sidekick of his who`s a Holocaust denier. I mean, this is really in the fever swamps.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: We should say, Rogers going on Alex Jones every day, there`s this pipeline that`s being built that sort of takes old pieces of this world that exist in the 1990s, Drudge Report which pioneered it, then connects it to Alex Jones, which is sort of like Sandy Hook --
(CROSSTALK)
CONASON: They found like -- it`s an old supply of sewage that they`ve dug up and they`re pumping it out, you know, every day.
HAYES: And do you think a new audience to this -- I mean, where does this go from here? I guess my question watching the first eight days, OK, turn to 11, what are we going to do here?
CONASON: Well, I mean, it`s like -- you know, I feel like Michael Corleone. I`m being dragged -- I wanted out, I`m being dragged back in. So, actually, Gene Lyons, my coauthor of "Hunting," and I put out an e-book that takes a lot of the stuff from "Hunting" about Hillary called "The Hunting of Hillary." And we`ve put this out for free.
So -- and we, you know, 20,000 people have come and gotten it from National Memo`s website and it`s there, and it tells this story in some detail. The truth.
HAYES: All right. We`re going to have to go bone up on that, I guess.
Joe, thank you for your time. Joining me now, Robert Reich, he`s former labor secretary to Bill Clinton, now professor of public policy at University of California-Berkeley.
And, Robert, I thought that -- Clinton going after Donald Trump on the housing stuff today was interesting for a number of reasons. I think it sort of distilled down a kind of essential message. I mean, we should be clear at one level that in the thousand people most responsible for the housing crash, Donald Trump is not among those thousand people.
And yet, what do you think this attack says about him, says about where this race is?
ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: Well, basically, I think, Chris, what the Hillary Clinton campaign is trying to do is to say effectively that Donald Trump is a -- he`s not a populist. He is not anti- establishment. He is sort of notorious member of the establishment who has used every gimmick in the book, including eminent domain, getting the government to take property for his behalf, getting subsidies from government, paying off politicians, and predicting the housing crisis and using the housing crisis.
And this is -- this is the worst aspects of the establishment. This is the power-money structure at its worst.
HAYES: You know, there`s also the fact that there is news out today for the first time ever that sort of millennial youngest demographic cohort more likely to live with a parent than with a romantic partner. And as I was watching Hillary Clinton today, you know, we talk about the recovery. And obviously, there`s been a recovery, and it`s much better than other say developed countries`.
But it remains the fact that even eight years later, that crash is the kind of great trauma for this economy and it hangs over everything about our politics in many ways.
REICH: It does. It`s a huge, huge trauma. And in fact, if you look back, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, both on the left and the right, both emerged from the bailout of Wall Street.
I mean, that crash not only was traumatic in economic terms, it was traumatic in political terms. And many people in the middle class, many middle-aged people and elderly people, are really living and bearing the scars from that crash right now because they don`t have enough savings.
They had assumed that their homes would be worth much more. They had assumed their savings would be worth much more. So people -- that`s an everyday reality for people. That crash, that economic downturn.
HAYES: And here`s the ad I want to play for folks to see what this case is being made here, take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, POLITICAL AD)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an economy that can`t find the bottom of bad news.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ten years of saving, completely gone. Vanished.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The biggest crash of household wealth that we`ve ever had in the United States.
TRUMP: I sort of hope that happens, because then people like me would go in and buy. If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you could make a lot of money.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Here is the thing I found particularly interesting in her remarks she did two different events, she talked about Dodd-Frank, a contentious subject in the primary about the degree to which it has rectified the problems that were there.
Trump said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank. Clinton sort of pivoted off this into some sort of substantive policy, which can be hard to do when running against Trump, attacking him for that as well.
REICH: Well, it`s interesting. Assuming, as I think many people do, that Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee, we are actually at a very interesting juncture here, because both of them are using and paying a lot for negative research. It implies and suggests that over the next three or four months, we`re going to see the most negative campaigning.
You know, the stuff dredged up about Trump, stuff dredged up at least trying to dredge up about Hillary Clinton or both Clintons. And where do the big issues that we`ve tried -- we just tried to struggle with. I think Bernie Sanders has put on the centerpiece of American politics.
Where do they go? I mean, they suddenly disappear.
HAYES: That, of course, is the fear in this. I think that to the extent that Hillary Clinton, if she is in fact the nominee, can manage to keep those issues intertwined with this, that is going to be to her benefit ultimately politically.
Robert Reich, thank you very much, appreciate it.
REICH: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right. Coming up, Hillary Clinton will be speaking live in Riverside, California, this hour. We will keep an eye on that event for you.
Plus, late-breaking news: the reporter investigating Donald Trump`s veterans charity promise joins me with an update. Why he couldn`t find evidence of Trump`s personal donations ahead.
But, first, after allegations of sexual assault that span 50 years, Bill Cosby will go to trial where he could face up to 30 years in prison. What happened today in a courtroom in that case, in just two minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: After allegations of sexual misconduct by more than 50 women involving incidents spanning five decades, Bill Cosby will now stand trial for three counts of aggravated indecent assault relating to one woman`s allegations. The felony counts each carry a sentence up to ten years in prison.
Today, after a three and a half hearing and following about 10 minutes of deliberation, Judge Elizabeth McHugh of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, ruled the case will move forward. Cosby will not have to appear at a formal arraignment on July 20th, and his plea of not guilty will be automatically entered. A date for trial has not been set.
Cosby, through his legal counsel, has repeatedly denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. This particular case stems from a 2004 incident between Mr. Cosby and Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University.
It was an incident that spawned a civil lawsuit by Constand in 2005, a lawsuit that was ultimately settled out of court, but which procured the deposition of Cosby himself. And it is that deposition, conducted in 2005 and 2006 by Constand`s lawyer that was excerpted in legal motions that were sealed for nearly a decade but made public by a judge in response to a request by the "Associated Press".
Here`s an excerpt from that deposition regarding a night in which Cosby allegedly gave pills to Constand.
Question: can you tell me what you recall of the night you gave the pills to Andrea?
Cosby`s answer: Andrea came to the house, I called her, we talked about Temple University, we talked about her position, I went upstairs and I got three pills. I brought them down. They are the equivalent of one and a half. The reason why I gave them to Andrea, which she took after examining them, is because she was talking about stress.
In that same deposition, Cosby answered questions regarding an alleged sexual encounter between him and Constand. Here`s part of that exchange.
Question: then what happens?
Cosby`s answer: I don`t hear her say anything. I don`t feel her say anything. And so, I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.
Cosby`s defense released a statement today which reads in part, through the complainant`s own written statements admitted in court, the fact of multiple consensual sexual interactions was established as was the fact that complainant communicated with, returned to the home of, had dinner with, and gave gifts to Mr. Cosby after the alleged assault occurred. Mr. Cosby is not guilty of one single crime and not one single fact presented by the commonwealth rebuts this truth.
Joining me now, to make sense of this all, legal analyst, Lisa Green, managing director of Sard Verbinnen and Company.
Lisa, all right. Let`s start with this. There`s going to be a trial, a criminal trial, that`s what the judge said today. They`ve cleared this very low bar to get the thing thrown out?
LISA GREEN, LEGAL ANALYST: Exactly right. Cosby`s heading to court.
HAYES: OK. They`re heading to court. Now, my first question as a layperson is just, you`ve got this deposition, which seems quite incriminating. Is that going to get into this criminal trial? That seems to me a big part of the ball game here.
GREEN: It`s a big part of the ball game. Unbeknownst to even the most ardent Cosby followers, last month, a three-judge federal panel heard arguments by Cosby`s lawyers seeking to reseal the deposition. And in essence, I know, even a non-lawyer can appreciate this, the judges pulled out and not from their law books variations on the toothpaste tube analogy as in, the toothpaste is so far out of this tube, it`s like that morning when you wake up and you`re like, I`m rolling the toothpaste tube, maybe there`s a little bit of toothpaste.
I don`t think that`s going to go well. They haven`t ruled but in a practical -- as a practical matter in 2016, you and I have access to this deposition. How are we going to take it back?
HAYES: I just read that on national television, right? It is too far gone. The question then becomes -- so there will be a fight, right? An evidentiary fight as to whether that`s admitted. I would imagine his lawyers will try to get it kept out.
GREEN: They`re trying to get it kept out and it`s likely that this appellate panel, this federal judicial panel, thinking about just one aspect of the case, I know we`ll get to others later, is going to say, that comes in. And that`s powerful evidence because that`s Cosby`s own words.
Of course, significantly, he says or seems to say it was consensual, I was not stopped. That`s why what you`re really going to see the battle royale about, Chris, obviously, are other women. Can other women testify about their experiences with Bill Cosby?
HAYES: So that`s the other big thing. Because again, evaluating this as just a citizen watching this all play out, when I think of this case and I`m not making a legal determination or a journalistic one, but just watching as a person you think one accusation, OK. Fifty accusations, you draw conclusions about 50 very, very, very, very similar allegation realize your imagine a jury would do the same and Cosby`s lawyers will fight like hell to make sure they never see them.
GREEN: They`re going to fight hard and they have powerful law --
HAYES: On their side.
(CROSSTALK)
GREEN: -- federal rule of evidence 404, to be technical. Pennsylvania has a similar law. Prior bad acts are not admitted just to prove you`re a bad guy. But --
HAYES: What`s the exception?
GREEN: The exception and it`s a big one potentially in this case, if you can show that there`s sort of an M.O., a pattern of behavior, that`s significant, right? And sometimes judges decide in a sexual assault case that drugs, alcohol, loss of consent, may be not specific enough of an M.O., but here you can see what a difference it will make if the judge in Cosby`s trial decides, this is relevant, it`s prejudicial, sure. But the probative value, the importance to the jury of seeing this pattern, makes it important for the jury to hear it and decide.
HAYES: That`s going to be fascinating.
GREEN: Really powerful.
HAYES: We should be clear about these allegations. And I don`t have a categorical knowledge of every single one. But the ones that I have studied, and studied closely, there is an M.O. in the allegations.
I`m not saying it`s true but there is surely in the allegations, there is an extremely distinct M.O. in terms of how this allegedly went down.
GREEN: So, put yourself in the judge`s shoes, right? It`s important to prosecute criminals and make sure that justice is served. It`s also important to give defendants the right to a fair trial.
HAYES: Right. The massive sort of swamping prejudicial knowledge allowed in.
GREEN: OK, so let`s say you`re the judge and you`re going to look at dozens of similar complaints. How are you going to decide individually which ones are the ones you let in?
HAYES: That is really going to be interesting to follow legally. Lisa Green, thank you very much.
GREEN: Pleasure.
All right. Still ahead, was Donald Trump caught red-handed flat-out lying about a million-dollar donation to a veterans group? There`s late-breaking news and the reporter who broke that story is here to tell us what it is. So, you want to stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: We were looking live at Hillary Clinton`s event happening in Riverside, California. Things are still getting set up. We`ll keep you updated on that.
But, first, one of the best movies about politics I`ve ever seen is right now in theaters. In a lot of ways, the film is a study in how contemporary politics works, how it`s driven by spectacle and showmanship, something we`re seeing play out in this year of Donald Trump.
The film is about a big-city mayoral candidate, a brash Democrat attempting an improbable come back, but who wound up conceding after receiving a mere 5 percent of the vote. It`s about a man embroiled in a sex scandal without any actual sex. A politician who came to be widely and almost universally loathed who never actually did anything criminal.
But one who admits that he has this, quote, "virtually unlimited ability to F things up."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why are they filming you?
WEINER: I don`t know. Most of the time, I don`t know why they`re filming me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you somebody who`s supposed to know?
WEINER: If Republicans wrapping their arms around Republicans rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was an absolute pleasure to see a Democrat not cowering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Married to one of Hillary Clinton`s closest advisers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He never back down from anybody.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A photo of an anonymous man`s bulging underwear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was tweeted from Congressman Weiner`s account.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have no chance to win anymore.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s apocalyptic right now.
WEINER: At a certain point, you`ve got to say, look, I don`t quit.
This is the worst, doing a documentary on my scandal. Hi!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The film is called simply, "Weiner", and it is riveting in large part due to the incredible, almost unfathomable amount of access the filmmakers got. Those filmmakers will join me live on set here in just a bit.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I raised almost $6 million for the veterans including putting up $1 million of my own money. I had no obligation to do anything or to do so. And I get nothing but bad press from the dishonest media. It is absolutely disgraceful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Back in January when Donald Trump was in a feud with Fox News he decided to skip a debate hosted by that network and instead host a competing event the night of the debate, a rally/fundraiser to raise money for charities serving veterans.
He claimed to have brought in $6 million for veterans groups.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We went out. We set up the website. I called some friends. And we just cracked -- the sign was just given -- we just cracked $6 million, right? $6 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump went on to hand out novelty checks to veterans charities at campaign stops, though questions quickly started to arise about just how much money was really being distributed.
As of this morning The Washington Post had only been able to account for $3.1 million in donations, not $6 million. And on Friday, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski admitted the fund-raiser actually netted about $4.5 million, or 75 percent of what Trump claimed.
OK, now Lewandowski claimed taht some of the people who initially promised Trump they would make donations failed to follow through and today said that the Trump campaign will distribute between $5.5 million and $6 million to vet group by Memorial Day.
But there has been an even bigger question around the fund-raiser. And it has to do with this specific claim by Trump himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Donald Trump, another great builder in New York, now a politician, Donald Trump gave $1 million, okay?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Donald Trump gave $1 million. He said he personally had donated $1million to veteran charities, that was back in January. The problem was no one has been able to find the money. I mean, coming into this week, none of the charities that have received money from the fund-raiser have reported personal donations from Trump himself. And Lewandowski was pressed about the money this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will Mr. Trump release exactly where he has given that million dollars to, which veterans organizations?
COREY LEWANDOWSKI, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I mean, I`ll ask him to do that. But the bottom line is, he`s taken $1 million out of his personal account, he`s given it to charities that he felt was worthy, and any remaining money will be distributed before Memorial Day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, so that seems pretty crystal clear. He took it out of his personal account and gave it, in the past tense, he`s given it.
Now, asked by The Washington Post if Trump had made good on his $1 million donation, Lewandowski responded, the money is fully spent. Mr. Trump`s money is fully spent.
Asked to whom did Trump give and in what amounts, Lewandowki responded, quote, he`s not going to share that information.
But late today, facing increasing media scrutiny Trump did in fact share that information and in doing so contradicted Lewandowski`s claim the money had already been distributed.
Trump also appeared to admit to having been caught red-handed in a million- dollar lie.
"Trump said in an interview he pledged the $1 million to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation." He reportedly, "notified the group`s chairman, retired FBI official James Kallstrom, in a phone call sometime last night."
OK, so in other words, Trump had not actually donated any of his own money or pledged to do so until just yesterday. Asked by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold if the donation was in response to questions from the media, Trump replied, quote, "you know, you`re a nasty guy. You`re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do."
And joining me now is that nasty guy, Washington Post national politics reporter David Fehrenthold who`s been all over this story and broke today`s news.
All right, David, I feel like I`m missing something, because my understanding of this is so brazen it can`t possibly be true. But it appears to be the case Donald Trump claimed to give $1 million to veterans charities, did not do that for four months, and then yesterday gave them when you started calling, asking where the money was?
DAVID FEHRENTHOLD, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, that`s right. He said in January, as you played, he had given in the past tense $1 million to veterans groups. Four months later, though, even after Lewandowski had said the money had been given out, it really hadn`t. And so yesterday I spent a lot of yesterday trying to sort of figure out where the money was, trying through social media to find a bunch of -- to ask about a bunch of veterans groups to see if they`d received any of the money. And in the process sort of tweeting about real Donald Trump who pays attention to his Twitter mentions.
And so at the very end of yesterday after all this pressure was put on, Trump actually called up sometime after 8:00 and made this donation. So yes, for four months Trump had apparently sat on the money that he`d promised to give to veterans.
HAYES: I know you`re being very careful, because you`re a scrupulous reporter. But let`s just be clear here, sat on the money. The money had not been donated. He said he made a million dollar donation to veterans groups to great fanfare and had done no such thing, is that correct?
FEHRENTHOLD: That`s absolutely right, not until last night.
HAYES: So then what happened? Do you -- I mean, was he just completely painted into a corner and then came through?
FEHRENTHOLD: Well, it`s hard to speculate. But I`ll tell you this, the group that he called, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, it`s a very good foundation, but Trump knows them. Trump had given them money from his foundation in the past. They actually had a big gala in New York City where they gave Trump a giant award, the commandant`s leadership award, last year.
So, when I asked Trump, you know, what took you so long, almost four months, to give them this money? Trump said, well, I`m vetting -- it was vetting the groups?
I said, well, vetting, I mean you know these people, you`ve already given them money, they gave you an award.
So it seems like in this moment he called people that he already knew really well and instead of giving out the money in pieces to a number of groups he just gave it all to this group that he already had a connection to.
HAYES: All right. So I also want to give credit where due here, right. I mean, there is actual money that was actually raised by this event. It actually has gone to veterans organizations in millions of dollars of that has actually happened. You have definitively reported that out?
FEHRENTHOLD: Yes. More than $3 million we know for sure was given by various donors to veterans groups.
You have to remember there was donors -- there were donors beyond Trump who gave money through Trump`s Foundation or directly. So at least $3 million given out.
Now if Trump`s check clears, that will be $4.1 million that`s actually gone through.
HAYES: And just to be clear, this was actual -- we`ve had other reporting I think actually in your newspaper about his charitable giving. These weren`t like rounds of golf or conservation easements? This was actual money that actually got to organizations that are serving vets?
FEHRENTHOLD: That`s absolutely true.
And for those groups they got -- some of them got $50,000, $100,000, or more. Some of them are pretty small groups in Iowa and New Hampshire. And this was a huge thing for them. And they were able to do much more. For some of them it was the biggest donation they`d ever received.
HAYES: All right, David Ferenthold, thanks for being with me. I reall appreciate it.
FEHRENTHOLD: Thank you.
HAYES: All right, coming up Sheldon Addelson is trying very hard to get leading Jewish Republicans to support Donald Trump. One reason he might be having trouble just after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: For the past several weeks Donald Trump has been racking up the endorsements, including one from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It was an interesting move for the Republican megadonor considering just months ago when Adelson was backing Rubio, Trump tweeted, "Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree."
Trump, however, showing his trademark ability to switch positions on a dime, of course embraced Adelson`s endorsement which he declared in a Washington Post editorial saying, an incredible honor to receive the endorsement of a person I have such tremendous respect for, thank you Sheldon.
But Sheldon Adelson didn`t just endorse Trump, he worked behind the scenes to get the members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group he largely funds, on board. Writing to more than 50 Jewish Republican leaders in an email obtained by the AP, quote, "I`m asking for your support for Trump. Adelson told them he had met with Trump recently and is specifically convinced he will be a tremendous president when it comes to the safety and security of Israel."
The RJC did release a statement today, but it was not an endorsement of Trump. I`ll tell you what it was in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Earlier today, the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group largely funded by Sheldon Adelson, issued a statement concerning the troubling increase of anti-Semitic invective directed toward journalists. The statement goes on to read, "we abhor any abuse of journalists, commentators and writers whether it be from Sanders, Clinton or Trump supporters."
The group which earlier this month congratulated Trump on his win in Indiana but stopped short of fully endorsing him made sure to include the supporters of all three candidates in their statement.
But as we`ve covered on the show, and as many journalists who have been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic invective referenced in the statement have pointed out, the abuse certainly isn`t coming equally from Sanders, Clinton and Trump supporters, it`s coming from Donald Trump supporters.
The New York Times Jonathan Wiseman tweeting, "I for one have heard only from the last camp, referring to Trump, and boy have I heard."
Steve Kastenbaum from Westwood One news wrote, "Hm, I only got some from Trump supporters. Anyone get anti-Semitic threats from Clinton and Sanders supporters?"
Meanwhile, Seth Mandel of The New York Post said, quote, "cowardly statement from RJC. I`ll let you know when Stormfront" -- the white supremacist group -- "attacks my family because they like Hillary or Bernie."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Attorney General Loretta Lynch announcing today the Justice Department would seek the death penalty against the Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof.
The 22-year-old is accused of opening fire during a bible study at the historic African-American Church Emanuel AME in South Carolina, killing nine people.
Roof faces 33 federal charges including hate crime charges for allegedly targeting his victims on the basis of their race and religion.
Last summer a stone-faced Roof faced the families of his alleged victims during a parole hearing -- bail hearing. He was met not with calls for his death or vengeance, but with remarkable grace, dignity, and at times forgiveness from people like Nadine Collier, whose mother was killed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NADINE COLLIER, MOTHER KILLED IN SHOOTING: I just want everybody to know, to you, I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. A hand rested on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But I forgive you. I forgive you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Dylann Roof is scheduled to stand trial in South Carolina in January of next year. His federal court date has not been set.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think?
ANTHONY WEINER, FRM. CONGRESSMAN FROM NEW YORK: I don`t know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you regret it?
WEINER: This nasty jackass.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has anyone ever told you it`s hard to get you to talk about your feelings?
WEINER: Let me ask you something, are there any -- there must be some specie of fly that stays on the wall and talks, but I`ve never heard of one. Usually isn`t the fly on the wall technique, isn`t that have to do a little bit of the notion of not being seen or heard, you just pick up what goes on around you?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Chances are you know Anthony Weiner less from his seven terms in congress more from the underwear photos that he posted on his public Twitter account in 2011.
That the scandal led Wiener to resign from congress only to resurface two years later to run for mayor of New York. And The New York Post had a field day with headlines like, quote, "Weiner`s second coming" and "Erect me, Mr. Mayor." Clever guys.
But not long after the campaign got under way came even more revelations of explicit photographs and sexually charged messages.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Had there been multiple online exchanges with multiple people or was it just this one?
Can I just say multiple people? Or is it just this one?
WEINER: I think you`ve got to -- I mean, there was more than one. So I think we`ve got to answer the question.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay. So, I`m going to say...
WEINER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was more than one.
Do you believe you`re suffering from any sort of addiction?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All of this is in the new documentary "Weiner" which gives us I think one of the most intimate portrayals of political life ever captured on film.
And joining me now are filmmakers Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman, directors of the documentary "Weiner" which won an award at Cannes, it`s getting incredible reviews, I`ve seen it, and I think it`s absolutely incredible. So, congratulations on it.
I should say full disclosure Elyse and I are friends from way back so you can all evaluate that.
Let`s start with this. I mean, the first time that you -- when you see this film, your first thought is, why? Why did Anthony Wiener and his wife, Huma Abedine, who is -- probably the closest aide to Hillary Clinton, why did they allow you to film?
JOSH KRIEGMAN, FILMMAKER: I`ve actually known Anthony for a long time. I met him working in politics as his district chief of staff when he was in congress. So, that`s how I got to know him well. And then I moved into filmaking and out of politics. And it was after he resigned from congress, after his scandal, that we started a conversation about the possibility of making documentary to tell his story in a way that gets past the punch line version that he became through the course of his scandal.
And that was a conversation that went on over the course of a couple of years acxtually of going back and forth with him trying to see if it would be something that he`d be comfortable with.
And then when he ran for mayor of New York City, he agreed to let us in and we filmed the campaign.
HAYES: OK. But you`re there -- I mean, did he literally forget that you were there? There are moments in there where literally you`re watching this and you`re thinking to yourself I should not be seeing this.
KRIEGMAN: Yeah.
ELYSE STEINBERG, FILMMAKER: I think this question, Chris,is a question that we wondered about ourselves. And in the film it`s a question that we posed to Anthony. And Anthony does answer at the end when he says that he wanted to be viewed as the full person that he was instead of a punchline. And that was our intention with this film.
HAYES: Right. But literally, I`m asking you, were there moments where you`re standing there with the camera and you`re thinking to yourself, does he know that we`re here?
KRIEGMAN: Well, he knew that I was there.
I did most of the filming myself. It was me with a camera through most of the campaign. And there were definitely moments, really intense moments, where I certainly thought to myself, I can`t believe I`m here right now.
On the morning that the scandal broke for a second time I was in the room with he and Huma and his staff and he actually askses his staff to leave but allows me to stay and film. And that`s a pivotal scene in the film.
And I certainly thought to myself, I can`t believe that I`m witnessing this.
HAYES: We should say there are moments where you do get kicked out which we see in the film.
KRIEGMAN: Yes.
HAYES: Elyse the film to me -- it`s funny, the film has very nuanced textured views of every single person in it. The one villain in the film to me is the media. The media is this sort of like implacable group of furies that just descend upon this.
What was it like to live inside this maelstrom while you`re making this film?
STEINBERG: You know, you`re absolutely right. The media is a character in our film. And while it is about one person and one campaign, I think this film provides a look at how our politics today is driven by entertainment and an appetite for spectacle. And we don`t have to look far to see that being played out right now in our current presidential race with Donald Trump.
So yes, while we were going through it, I mean, we really were just taken aback by the outsized nature of the media.
HAYES: Yeah, the Trump comparison I think is interesting, because there`s a resonance here while you`re watching this in this year where you`re like, okay, the ratio of this to the coverage seems out of whack.
KRIEGMAN: Yeah, he mentions in the film -- Anthony does, you know, there`s a kind of phoniness to the size of the outrage of the media.
HAYES: Which he`s right about.
KRIEGMAN: Yeah, in a way that stoked the story, made it bigger. But of course he is also careful to not blame the media. He does suggest that, of course,he`s responsible ultimately for what happened to him.
HAYES: Well, and also to me, the reason this movie is so interesting coming now, is it`s a counter example of the idea that like attention made Donald Trump, because believe me, Anthony Weiner got tons of attention. If one thing comes through in your film it`s the ceaseless amount of attention the guy got.
And in his case it didn`t help his poll numbers, it killed them.
STEINBERG: Yeah, I mean, I think the parallel between Anthony and Trump, it`s there. While they`re very different politically and personally I think they both understood that in order to have a voice in today`s 24-hour news cycle you need to put on a show, and by being brash and having an air of authenticity you can get attention and win votes.
HAYES: And also be accessible.
See, this is the thing that`s so crazy about this movie both in the way that he conducts himself as a candidate and the fact the movie exists is he never says no. he doesn`t decline the filmmaker filming him, he doesn`t decline any interviews.
I mean, in the midst of a time when people would locked down, this guy, I don`t if it`s compulsive or deranged or narcissistic, I don`t know what it is. But he just can`t say no to talking to the press.
KRIEGMAN: Yeah, no, I think he certainly has a complicated relationship with the media and the camera, no doubt. And I think he really though wanted the possibility of a different version of his story told which is why he opened up his life to us.
HAYES: Huma Abedin is a key figure. It`s Anthony Weiner`s wife, there`s a lot of kind of mystery around her, because she`s not a particularly public person. She`s in this film. I think she comes across actually quite well in the film.
She has this really -- you get a sense from looking at her what it must be like to be a person who is a private person and have to be along for the ride in something like this.
STEINBERG: Yeah, no, I think just as Anthony was reduced to a caricature and ridiculed, so is she. And you see the judgment that was placed upon her.
HAYES: Totally.
STEINBERG: And you know the judgment that`s placed upon women at the center of this. I mean, why should women be judged because of mistakes made by their flawed husbands? I mean, our film sort of questions those judgments and goes beyond them.
HAYES: Has he seen the film?
KRIEGMAN: He hasn`t seen it yet. We offered to show it to him.
HAYES: I seriously -- can I just say this -- I do not believe that.
KRIEGMAN: I mean, as far as we know.
HAYES: I know you`re saying that, but like I just watched your movie where he spends the whole time pulling up clips of himself. There`s no way the dude has not seen the film.
KRIEGMAN: We offered for him to see it a couple of times many months ago and he hasn`t wanted to see it yet.
STEINBERG: He says he`s not eager to relive it, and we can certainly respect that.
HAYES: I think he`s seen it. I`m just saying. He`s got some bit torrent or something.
All right, filmmakers Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman. The film is Weiner. It is out in theaters. It really is a remarkable look at modern campaigning over an above Anthony Weiner. You get to see a lot of things about the way a modern campaign works you never get to see. Great work, guys. Thank you for coming.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now.
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