Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: May 31, 2016 Guest: Perry O`Brien, Steven Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader, Eric Schneiderman, Anthony Fauci (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The press is so dishonest and so unfair.
HAYES: Donald Trump lashes out.
REPORTER: Is this what it`s going to be like covering you if you`re president?
TRUMP: Yes, it is.
HAYES: Why it took a media investigation for Trump to fulfill this months- old promise to veterans.
TRUMP: Donald Trump gave $1 million, OK?
HAYES: Hillary Clinton responds in my one-on-one interview.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): It took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
HAYES: Her comments on Trump and the State Department report on her use of private e-mail.
Then, new documents released in the fraud lawsuit against Trump University.
TRUMP: He`s been a very bad judge. He`s been very unfair.
HAYES: And Ralph Nader is here to discuss the third-party impact, as a candidate emerges from this convention.
When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
In what was supposed to be a press conference about donations to veterans charities devolved into an omni-directional airing of grievances today, with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump berating political enemies in his own party, going after a federal judge for his handling of a lawsuit brought by former students of Trump University, and unleashing a torn of insults against the media for seeking to hold Trump to account for donations he promised to make.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I`m not looking for credit. But what I don`t want when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC. He`s a sleaze.
You`re a sleaze, because you know the facts and you know the facts well.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: About those facts. In January, when he was feuding with FOX News, Trump skipped a FOX-hosted presidential debate and with great fanfare held a competing event to raise money for veterans` groups.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: We set up the website, I called some friends. And we just crack the -- the sign was just given, we just cracked $6 million, right? $6 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Trump in that event publicly acknowledged some of the people who pledge or had given donations. One of them being the candidate himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Donald Trump, another great builder in New York, now a politician.
Donald Trump gave $1 million. OK?
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Trump says he wasn`t acting out of political interest and said today he would have preferred no one even knew about the donations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I wanted to keep it private. If we could, I wanted to keep it private because I don`t think it`s anybody`s business if I want to send money to the vets.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Trump`s way of demonstrating this preference for privacy is somewhat odd. After his January fund-raiser, he began handing giant publishers clearinghouse-style novelty checks to veterans` groups at campaign stops in full view of cameras.
But the pesky press corps still had some questions. Like, did veterans` charities really end up getting the $6 million Trump claimed? As of a week ago, "The Washington Post" could only identify $3.1 million in donations, about half of what Trump promised. Even more important was this, entering last week, there was no evidence Trump himself had actually personally donated $1 million to veterans` groups, as he had claimed to have done at the event.
Dogged by repeated questions about the missing money, Trump finally said last Tuesday that four months after the fund-raiser, he was now giving $1 million to a veterans` group. Asked by "The Washington Post" whether he had given the money only because reporters had been asking about it, Trump responded, "You know, you`re a nasty guy, you`re a really nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars I had no obligation to do." At today`s press conference, Trump claimed a total of $5.6 million have been donated to veterans` groups. NBC News has been able to confirm veterans` groups have received $3.82 million in donations as a result of Trump`s fund-raiser.
"The Associated Press" called the groups Trump listed today as having gotten money. It found that about half reported checks from Trump within the past week, typically dated May 24th, the day "The Washington Post" published a story questioning whether he had distributed all the money.
According to NBC calculations, at least $1.8 million of donations were distributed in the past week.
Now, Trump insisted today the delay in donations arose from the need to check out the charities before giving them money.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: You have to go through a process. When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you`ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: There are some reasons to be skeptical of that claim. The first is that Team Trump would have to be quite bad at vetting, because one of the charities he selected has a charity rating of "F" from Charity Watch.
Second reason is that the charity Trump took months to pledge $1 million to, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, had already received more than $230,000 from Trump`s Foundation and thus wouldn`t presumably need additional vetting. In 2015, in fact, Trump was one of the two honorees at that group`s gala.
This afternoon in an interview we`ll air in full shortly, I asked Hillary Clinton for her take on how this all played out.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) CLINTON: The problem here is the difference between from Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. You know, he`s bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating $1 million himself. But it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
(END AUDIO CLIP) HAYES: At his press conference today, Trump argued instead of trying to find out whether he followed through, the media should have simply hailed his efforts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Instead of being like, thank you very much, Mr. Trump. Or, Trump did a good job. Everyone`s saying, who got it, who got it, who got it?
And you make me look very bad.
I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job. I really think the press, look, the media, you know my opinion to the media, it`s very low. I think the media is frankly made up of people that in many cases, not in all cases, are not good people.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Trump`s press conference came in response to reporters asking fairly routine questions of a presidential candidate. Today, he vowed not to change.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REPORTER: Is this what it`s going to be like covering you if you`re president?
TRUMP: Yes, it is. Let me tell you something, I`m a person, OK, yes, it is going to be like this, David.
We have to read probably libelous stories or certainly close in the newspapers and the people know the stories are false. I`m going to continue to attack the press. Look, I find the press to be extremely dishonest. I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, Army veteran Perry O`Brien, who served as a medic in Afghanistan, who`s one of the leaders of a protest outside Trump Tower along with other veterans opposed to Trump.
It`s good to have you here.
PERRY O`BRIEN, ARMY VETERAN: Great to be here.
HAYES: You guys were outside in what was a general media circus, as one might have expected. Why are you out there? Why did you protest?
O`BRIEN: Well, I`m part of the Vets Versus Hate movement. To months, we have been trying to communicate to Mr. Trump he should not be using veterans as props for his political agenda. And I think this most recent chapter of the scandal of the missing funds is just further reinforcing the view of many veterans and many within the military community that this is just not a man of integrity that we can trust to be the next commander in chief.
HAYES: What do you say if someone says, look, the guy`s up to $5.6 million even before "The Washington Post" started making phone calls about the $3 million? Why attack him for the fact that net-net, a bunch of veterans` groups have more money than they did when this whole thing started?
O`BRIEN: Well, I mean, first, I think before "The Washington Post" article, the original fund-raise on the battleship was to get out of a debate on FOX News. But I think there would be a much greater benefit of the doubt for Donald Trump if he had shown any interest in veterans anywhere in his personal life before he decided he wanted to be the next president of the United States.
HAYES: Part of the it also is this question of who speaks for, quote, "the veterans", or the vets as Trump says. There are veterans who enthusiastically support Donald Trump, he was addressing a bunch of them over the weekend, there are folks onstage. There are folks like yourself and others.
How do you think about the political category that is being created in this campaign of the veterans?
O`BRIEN: Well, clearly, Donald Trump doesn`t take kindly to veterans speaking for themselves, about how many within the veteran community feel, we were out there last week at Trump Towers trying to hold him accountable for what had been revealed by "The Washington Post." and he took to Twitter to sort of try to discredit us. I don`t think he likes it very much when veterans aren`t good props, aren`t good mannequins for his political agenda.
And clearly, he`s not interested in genuinely supporting veterans or genuinely supporting the First Amendment, which is one of the many freedoms that so many of us enlisted in the first place to defend.
HAYES: I saw you holding a sign which I thought was interesting, going back, you`ve had a fascinating career after leaving the army. A writer, you`ve been an activist in different capacities. Talking about Muslims you`d worked with in Afghanistan, reaction to the idea of a Muslim ban.
O`BRIEN: Right. Absolutely. And that was certainly I would say the launching of the Vets Versus Hate movement, which has become a national campaign where veterans all around the country are rising up against this anti-Muslim bigotry that we`re seeing. I mean, so many who served in Iraq and Afghanistan served alongside Muslims. Interpreters, also American- Muslim soldiers, many of whom, you know, obviously supported our mission, risked their lives to support our mission, and unlike Donald Trump actually donned the uniform to serve their country.
HAYES: Do you imagine that this is going to go away? Or is this going to continue?
O`BRIEN: The bigotry?
HAYES: Well, this movement, this sort of -- this story about this specific kind of back and forth.
O`BRIEN: Between veterans and Donald Trump?
HAYES: Yes, yes. O`BRIEN: Absolutely. I think there is a growing sense within -- among veterans that -- everyone I know who served in Iraq or Afghanistan feels that it is increasingly clear that Donald Trump is not cut from the same moral fabric as the average veteran or active duty trooper.
HAYES: And, quickly, finally, are you associated with the campaign? Do you work for any campaign?
O`BRIEN: Not at all.
HAYES: This is not some prop situation?
O`BRIEN: No.
HAYES: Perry, it`s a great pleasure. Thank you for being here.
O`BRIEN: Thank you very much. HAYES: Joining me now, Steven Ginsberg, senior politics editor for "The Washington Post," which has made the effort in tracking Trump`s donations.
I guess you`re someone who`s spearheaded a lot of the reporting that`s gone into this. Respond to the charge that essentially you`re taking someone who`s doing something good and unfairly tarnishing him.
STEVEN GINSBERG, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, we didn`t aim to tarnish anything. We aimed to find out whether he gave the $6 million he said he gave. Had he given the $6 million, he would have gotten a very positive story about it.
Our initial reporting found that he gave about $3.1 million. And then we came back at it and then it was $4.5 million. And it included $1 million from Donald Trump. That turned out not to be the case as you showed in that "A.P." story where a dozen checks were cut that night and in the end, he said today it`s up to $5.6 million.
HAYES: Have you ever in your career as a journalist encountered a situation like this in which as you`re trying to run a story down, that all of a sudden, the checks start to flow as the questions are being asked? I can`t recall an example myself.
GINSBERG: I don`t remember $1.8 million flowing from any story that we`ve done. But you do see those sometimes.
I mean, But Donald Trump knows a bad story when he sees one and he started to do something about it to try to mitigate it. He tried to do something else about it today by diverting everyone`s attention to attacks on the media. So, he understood what was happening and he`s tried to do something to correct it.
HAYES: To be clear here, the basics as have been established by your team and others at "A.P." is that $1 million which he said he gave was never given until last week after these stories had been initiated, correct?
GINSBERG: That`s correct. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told us last week that Donald Trump had given his money. But after that story, it turned out he hadn`t. And then he quickly did.
And in a follow-up interview, Donald Trump said that his campaign manager wouldn`t really know, and only he could say, and that`s when the money went out.
HAYES: Do you find Mr. Trump`s protestations that he wanted this all to be private, that this is essentially an invasion on the part of the press, credible?
GINSBERG: I mean, I think that speaks for itself. He held a big event on a stage on national TV. That doesn`t seem private to me. He handed out checks at campaign rallies in the days that followed. And again, I think what he was doing today and what he was saying and what he was doing in that press conference is just trying to divert everyone`s attention from the facts because the facts of this case don`t favor him.
HAYES: So what happens next with this? I mean, at a certain point -- he said he`s $400,000 short. I guess -- it seems almost crazy to say, well, have you gotten the receipts? I mean, have you established with these various groups that that money`s actually arrived?
GINSBERG: I think for the most part we have. That`s one way we reported this out was to call veterans` groups and find out if they got the money.
The Trump campaign wasn`t going to give us those receipts.
And at this point -- what we basically did hear and what we have done is listened to what he said, checked what he did. And he said he gave $6 million, and he didn`t. Now he says he`s given $5.6 million, and as far as we can tell, he has. We`ll keep on that and make sure that it follows through.
But as far as we know now, he is actually giving out the checks.
HAYES: I just want to be clear how this started. He made these claims, you presumably went to the campaign and said, could you let us know who you gave it to? Had they given that amount of money, it would have been a fairly easy bit of reporting and also, an easy story to write. They give you the names, you double-check, it`s there, you write the story.
The only reason you had to do the end run-a round is they never told you, right, the campaign stonewalled you?
GINSBERG: Yes. I mean, there`s nothing mysterious about what we did here.
A presidential candidate said he did something, we check what people say.
And the campaign didn`t provide the information so that`s not going to stop us. We went out and figured it out on our own. Ands then, it`s come back around.
HAYES: All right. Steven Ginsberg, great to have you at this time.
Appreciate it.
GINSBERG: Thank you. HAYES: Still to come, an up-close look at the predatory practices used by Trump University and the personal attacks Trump is making against the judge overseeing the fraud lawsuit against Trump University.
But first, my interview with Hillary Clinton, including her response to today`s spectacle and much more. That interview is in just two minutes.
So, don`t go anywhere. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: When I raise money for the veterans, and it`s a massive amount of money, find out how much Hillary Clinton`s given to the veterans, nothing.
I don`t want the credit for it but I shouldn`t be lambasted.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Donald Trump at his press conference defending his tardy donations to veterans` groups, lashing out at his likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, among many other targets, it must be said.
And I got a chance to speak with the former secretary of state by phone earlier today and I started by asking her for her reaction to the controversy over Trump`s donations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CLINTON (via telephone): Well, I think the problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. You know, he bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating $1 million himself. But it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
I, of course, over the course of my life, I`ve not only donated personally, but I have worked to provide hundreds of millions of dollars over time to help our veterans by what I voted for, what I`ve worked for. Actually, John McCain and I helped raise funds for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund to build a rehab facility at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio so that our returning wounded vets could get world-class treatment.
And ever since I was first lady and in the public eye, I`ve worked to help victims of Agent Orange, those suffering from the mysterious illnesses from the First Gulf War get help when no one else would listen. I worked on the Armed Services Committee to raise death benefits for families of the fallen from $12,000 to $100,000. I worked with Senator Lindsey Graham to expand health care benefits to the National Guard and reserve, and have worked in every way I could in my public capacity to honor the service and provide the benefits and support that our veterans deserve.
HAYES: Let me follow up on this aspect of it. There has been a tremendous amount of criticism directed at the V.A. for a variety of issues, chiefly wait times at V.A. hospitals, but a whole set of logistical challenges veterans could face.
You have talked about how you see yourself inheriting the Obama administration. In your mind, is the care and the performance of the V.A. under this president acceptable? Is it an acceptable performance from the V.A.?
CLINTON: Well, Chris, I`ve been clear for months that the problems at the V.A. are unacceptable. And I have been outspoken on that. I`ve obviously worked when I was in the Senate to help veterans and their families.
I think we`ve got to tackle some of the problems that have come to light.
I don`t agree with Republicans who want to use the problems as an excuse to privatize the V.A. and hand it over to the private insurance system to deal with terrible challenges like PTSD and traumatic brain injury and the like. I think we`ve got to -- in my plan I`ve put forward, provide for the V.A. to purchase more care from the private sector, but to act more as a guide and guardian for veterans, coordinating their care, ensuring their health outcomes. And I`ve been very proud and humbled to work with a lot of our veterans` advocates and activists to try to make sure that, if I`m fortunate enough to be president, I will come in immediately with a plan as to how we`re going to deal with the problems that we`ve unearthed in the V.A. and do it in a very focused manner.
HAYES: You have -- your campaign has canceled some events you were going to do in New Jersey, which, of course, votes on June 7th along with California, headed instead to California. There are people who are interpreting that as a campaign that is nervous about winning California on what is a sort of big final day, except for D.C. Are you nervous about California?
CLINTON: Well, I`m feeling, you know, very positive about my campaign in California. We are working really hard. I was proud to get Governor Jerry Brown`s endorsement today.
But I want to cover as much of the state as I possibly can. I will be in New Jersey tomorrow. I`m really looking forward to that, actually. I`ll be there for an event tonight.
So, we are competing everywhere. But I have been struck by some of the challenges California faces. Like the drought which Donald Trump said the other day didn`t exist.
And so, I am spending time talking with citizens, with experts, with people who have lots of good ideas. I really want to be a good partner, not just to California but the entire country. But I think California has some particular challenges and I`m going to be campaigning up and down California, meeting with people, and then putting forth my ideas about what I can do as president.
HAYES: Donald Trump and Republicans have been a great deal of both the I.G. report on e-mail use. But more than that, they`ve invoked the specter of the FBI quite often. So, I need to ask you if you have been contacted by the FBI about an interview regarding the e-mail situation.
CLINTON: No, we do not have an interview scheduled. And I just want to say a word about the recent report. You know -- actually, the report makes clear that personal e-mail use was a practice under other secretaries of state. And the rules were not clarified until after I had left.
But as I said many times, Chris, it was still a mistake. If I could go back I would do it differently. I understand people who have concerns about it. But I hope voters look at the full picture of everything I`ve done in my career and actually the full threat posed by a Donald Trump presidency, because if they do, I have faith in the American people that they will make the right choice here.
HAYES: One final follow-up on that. There`s one line in that I.G. report that stuck out to me, and I want to get clarification from you directly.
In which the I.G. found that subordinates of yours had told people to stop asking about your use of private e-mail, and that was a striking phrase.
Is that true, to your knowledge?
CLINTON: I do not know who that person is or what that person might have said, because it`s not anything that I am aware of. I e-mailed -- I e- mailed with hundreds of people. And I e-mailed department officials.
(AUDIO GAP) directly with my e-mail as other secretaries have done. I certainly never instructed anyone to hide the fact that I was using a personal e-mail.
HAYES: Right. CLINTON: It was obvious to hundreds of people, visible to the many people that I was e-mailing throughout the State Department and the rest of the federal government.
HAYES: All right. Madam Secretary, thank you very much for making yourself available today. Appreciate it.
CLINTON: Thank you. Great to talk to you. Bye-bye.
HAYES: Talk to you soon.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Still to come, the bitter legal fight over Trump University gets uglier. Donald Trump lashing out again at the judge as new documents are released. Ahead, New York`s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, on the new details of what he says is Donald Trump`s version of three-card Monty. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: The fact is you can`t win as an independent. For the most part, you can`t even get on Texas and various other states now. It`s too late. But, Bill Kristol, I`ve been watching this for two years. Trump isn`t going to run. Then I go into a race, we go into New Hampshire. Oh, he`s not going to win New Hampshire. I win in a landslide. Every place I went, I was not going to win but I win in a landslide.
Do you think maybe he doesn`t like me?
(END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Donald Trump went after influential conservative Bill Kristol at a press conference this morning after fielding a question about why he appears so worried about an independent candidate in this year`s election.
You see over the weekend, Kristol, the editor of "The Weekly Standard," sent out a tweet promising an alternative to Trump would soon emerge.
"Just a heads-up over this holiday weekend, there will be an independent candidate, an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance." Trump seemed to respond by tweeting, "The Republican Party has to be smart and strong if it wants to win in November. Can`t allow lightweights to set up a spoiler indie candidate, exclamation point." Third party candidates have occasionally had big effects on presidential races, though it`s the exception rather than the rule. And over the weekend, we got a new ticket that will be almost certainly on the ballot in all 50 states. Who was it?
Well, here`s a hint. One of them was on the same stage over the weekend with this guy, to tell you who he is.
Plus, we`ll reveal the person Bill Kristol has in mind to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, later in the show. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I have a judge who`s very, very unfair. He knows he`s unfair. And I`ll win the Trump University case. I could settle that case. I could have settled it, I just choose not to. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Just a small snippet of a fairly lengthy tirade from the presumptive Republican nominee earlier regarding Trump University, a nonlicensed for-profit, now out of defunct, institution which offered students courses on real estate and investing. Trump is currently mired in multiple lawsuits, including one from New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman who will join me in a moment, claiming that Trump University students were defrauded by the enterprise. On Friday, Trump while out on the campaign trail, blasted a California federal judge involved in a pair of class action lawsuits, one of which is scheduled to go to trial in late November. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: But I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He`s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel. We`re in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. The judge, who happens to be we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that`s fine... (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: For the record, Judge Curiel is an American citizen born in Indiana. He`s a former federal prosecutor, former state judge, and was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama, that part is true. His appointment so nonpartisan and noncontroversial, the senate confirmed it with a voice vote. Shortly after Judge Curiel was attacked by Trump on the campaign trail, he ruled that documents involved in the case were in the public interest, now that Trump is, quote, "the front-runner in the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue." Judge Curiel ordered that those documents be unsealed. Today, hundreds of pages of Trump University internal documents were released, including sales and marketing playbooks revealing pretty aggressive practices involved with the enterprise, from encouraging sales representatives to collect personalized information you can utilize during closing time, for example, are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food? To this helpful hint to Trump U pitchmen, you don`t sell products, benefits or solutions, you sell feelings. We reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the matter and invited the candidate to come on this program, the campaign did not respond to either inquiry. Joining me now, New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman who filed a lawsuit against Trump University in 2013 alleging the enterprise defrauded thousands of people out of millions of dollars. He`s also, we should say, someone who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It`s good to have you here. Let`s start with the way that Donald Trump has discussed this federal judge. I mean, I guess people don`t like judges when they rule against them. Is this like in your career normal, a normal thing that someone would talk about a judge in this way? ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN, NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: It`s certainly not normal. It doesn`t make a lot of sense, but it`s particularly bizarre for someone who`s running for president who wants to show that he has the temperament to appoint federal judges, to attack a judge based on his ethnicity. It`s not anything I`ve ever seen before in this context, no. HAYES: Explain to me -- I mean, obviously there`s a bunch of different suits, right. So, the ones that we`re talking about at issue here, there`s some class actions have been consolidated. They`re in California. Your suit is -- you have brought yourself. I mean, look, people sell stuff hard all the time. I mean, you could probably get at random 1,000 different sales playbooks from enterprises across this country that talk about closing in pretty harsh language. Why is this crossing the line? SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, there`s a difference between a hard sell and fraud.
And the law is pretty clear. And we have hundreds of years of case law drawing that distinction. And the problem with Trump University was that first of all it wasn`t a university and it`s just fraud. In New York State we`re sensitive about calling yourself a New York State registered university when you`re not. HAYES: You have to actually have some set of accreditations to even use that name? SCHNEIDERMAN: Yes. You can`t put up a sign saying Chris Hayes Law Firm, Chris Hayes Hospital, Chris Hayes University if you`re not in fact a lawyer, or (inaudible). We`re funny that way. And then when we looked into the actual representations that were made to students, we`ve already got the pitch videos from Trump saying, my hand- picked experts will teach you my personal secrets. He and the president of the university, who is also a defendant in our case, have testified under oath he never met the instructors, they weren`t his hand-picked, they weren`t experts, and he never saw the curriculum so they weren`t his personal secrets. The playbooks, some of which were produced to the public today, and we have similar ones that have come out in our lawsuit before, it`s really just a very cynical effort to take advantage of people`s needs. We`re talking about people who really believed they were going to learn his real estate secrets. We`re talking 2008, 2009, 2010, people in hard economic times... HAYES: When people were really desperate, we should just be clear, right. SCHNEIDERMAN: They were. And they -- as you noted, the playbook tells the pitchmen to get out there, and find out about their credit card information, and if they don`t have enough credit, ask them to get their credit card statements so they could read to them how much credit line they have, because they wanted to make sure these folks could pay for more Trump seminars. HAYES: I wanted you to response, he has attacked you personally for this lawsuit. Here he in San Diego on Friday. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Obama meets with this dopey Eric Schneiderman who hates our governor and he wants to run for governor, but I don`t think it`s going to happen. o up to Eric -- they go up to Syracuse, meets with Obama, and he files a lawsuit. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: All right, so the allegation is that you conspired with the president of the United States to file this lawsuit. Is that true? SCHNEIDERMAN: No. I saw the president. He was giving a speech on education policy in Syracuse. We talked for 90 seconds in the hall. In 2013, no one thought Donald Trump was running for president. Obama and I were talking about the bank investigation I was doing with his Justice Department. We had more important things to do than talk about Donald Trump. I know what`s hard for him to believe, but this was not based on a conspiracy by the president of the United States to go after this cheap con job of a university that he was running. HAYES: In fact, we had you on this program in 2013 when you announced the suit. I remember in the editorial of that meeting having been persuaded that this was not essentially a frivolous story, that there was something there. And here we are these years later.
New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman, thank you. Still to come, the spending food fight on Zika continues as the threat and the number of reported cases grows. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health on the climbing risks of inaction ahead. But first, a big addition to Donald Trump`s list of supporters today. I`ll give you a hint, the new support comes from one of the few countries on the planet that still get jazzed about Dennis Rodman. That story right after this break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: We have been keeping assiduous track at All In of endorsers of Donald Trump, from infamous basketball coach Bobby Knight to anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. Last week, we added the widely despised pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, also now the subject of a criminal indictment. But an update on that, in a very Trumpian move, Shkreli is now walking it back, saying that last week`s tweeted endorsement was a basically a joke and tweeting this, if someone put a gun to my head and made me vote, I would vote Trump over Hillary. This year I am abstaining in protest of crap candidate. But apparently joining the crowd of those praising Trump, the regime of Kim Jong-un, the internationally loathed dictator of North Korea. An editorial in the state media outlet DPRK Today reads, in my personal opinion there are many positive aspects to Trump`s inflammatory policies, wrote Han Yan-mook (ph) who introduced himself as Chinese-North Korean scholar. "Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn`t this fortunate for North Korean`s perspective?" The same editorial referred to Trump as a wise politicians and farsighted presidential candidate. But also out today, one of the world`s most respected, brilliant intellectuals has finally weighed in on the Trump campaign and you will be shocked. And by shocked, I mean the opposite of shocked, as to which column he ends up in. That`s in 60 seconds. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: So with support for Donald Trump coming from the likes of Bobby Knight, Mike Tyson, Joe Arpaio, and evidently now North Korean dictatorship, the nation turns its lonely eyes to Stephen Hawking. Yes, the world renowned physicist and cosmologist and creator of new scientific theories within Albert Einstein`s theory of general relativity, that Stephen Hawking was asked what he thinks of Donald Trump. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are a man who knows the universe, how do you explain the phenomenon of Donald Trump? STEPHEN HAWKING, PHYSICIST: I can`t. He is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Add Stephen Hawking to another list, those who can`t fully explain the rise of Donald Trump. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Here in New York City, according to health officials, there have been 109 reported cases of Zika, including 17 women who were pregnant when they were diagnosed, which is a big concern, because Zika has been linked to microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with small heads and often times brain damaged. Today, the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey confirmed a baby was born at their facilities with microcephaly as a result of the mother contracting the Zika virus internationally. The mother, who was visiting the U.S., is receiving care. Nationally, health officials are warning about the epidemic spreading during the summer travel season.
To combat the virus, President Obama has asked congress for $1.9 billion.
Both the house and the senate have passed separate bills, both less than the funding requests. And the House version suggests cutting Ebola funding to help offset the cost of fighting Zika. Today, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, insisted that they are providing adequate money. His office releasing a statement reading in part, there is no funding shortage. There has been. Instead, the White House continues to politicize this public health crisis. Joining me now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And Dr. Fauci, Speaker Ryan basically says that this is a stunt by the white House, that there`s plenty of money across various accounts that can be drawn from first. And the House will then back fill those funds as needed to make sure that you and others can respond effectively. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH: Well, I disagree with that. I mean, the president asked for $1.9 billion, because we need $1.9 billion. That figure came from proposals that were put forth about how we at NIH and the CDC and other agencies would be able to respond in an expeditious way to this throwing threat. I mean, we know this is a very serious situation in South America. Puerto Rico is in serious trouble, on the verge of a -- what I would consider is going to be a very serious outbreak. We already have a considerable number of travel-related cases, almost 600 travel-related cases in the United States. And the concern that we have is that as we enter into the robust mosquito months in the next couple of months as we get into the summer, that there will be local outbreaks within the continental United States. Fortunately, we`ve not seen that thus far. It`s only been travel-related
cases. But these are the things that we need to move quickly on. On public health issues, on the development of a vaccine, so we do need the money. That figure that the president made was a figure that was based on things
that we need to do. HAYES: Is the expectation that the vector of infectious would be the mosquito itself throughout parts of the southern U.S.? FAUCI: Yeah, I mean, exactly what happens. What will likely happen, and we think this is more likely than not, that as we get into more travel- related cases and we have a lot of mosquito activity that someone will be in South America or Puerto Rico, come to the continental United States, have gotten bitten in South America or the Caribbean, and then go likely to the Fulf Coast states -- Texas, Florida, what have you, and one of those states, get bitten by a mosquito that`s here in the united States and then transmit it to someone else. That`s how you get local outbreaks. And it`s going to be our job to make sure that when we do -- and I think it`s more when than if, that when we do get those local outbreaks, that we can prevent them from becoming sustained and disseminated, which is what you don`t want to happen in this country. HAYES: All right. Dr. Anthony Fauci, thanks for your time, sir. Up next, today, a third-party candidate enters the race. I`ll talk to someone who knows just how much that could change the dynamics of the general election. Ralph Nader joins me right after this break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROSS PEROT, FRM. PRESIDENTAIL CANDIDATE: The principal issue that separates me is 5.5 million people came together on their own and put me on the ballot. I was not put on the ballot by either of the two parties. I was not put on the ballot by any PAC money, by any foreign lobbyist money, by any special interest money. This is a movement that came from the people. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Last time there were three candidates on the presidential debate stage during the general election was 24 years ago when businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate against both Bill Clinton and sitting President George H.W. Bush. And Perot, a very rich man, began laying the groundwork for his political run nine months before the general election, was able to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Getting ballot access in all 50 states tends to be the biggest obstacle for third-party candidates. If there`s going to be something like that this year, it`s less likely to be Bill Kristol`s recruit who, according to Bloomberg Politics, Mark Halprin and John Halman (ph) as National Review staff writer David French who just a week ago wrote a piece titled Mitt Romney run for president, and more like to be Libertarian candidate and former Republican governor of new Mexico Gary Johnson. Johnson, according to NBC News, is on track to make the ballot in 50 states. He was chosen as the Libertarian Party`s presidential nominee at their convention on Sunday. His running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld. With polling showing Johnson at double digits, there`s a good chance that he could make a fair bit of noise. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Are you ready for Donald Trump once you`re in this thing and he recognizes you, to give you a big punch in the nose for calling him a racist? GARY JOHNSON, 2016 LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that they`ve already started coming. So, you know, Donald? Mwah. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, a man who knows a thing or two about a third-party run, Ralph Nader, who ran for president for the Green Party ticket in 2000 as an independent in 2004. His book titled "Unstoppable." Mr. Nader, what do you think about this year and the prospects of a pretty strong showing from a Lbertarian third-party run? RALPH NADER, FRM. GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it looks like they`ve got a ticket of two governors, of New Mexico and Massachusetts.
They look like they`re going to be on 50 states. They`re not afraid to take on cheating Donald or militarist Hillary, which is one of the benefits of a third party. They don`t have that kind of compromise situation. They can call out truth to power. Whether you agree with their ideology or not, they can be much more candid.
But they`re going to be frozen out of the debate commission, which is a private company created in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties to get rid of the (inaudible) voters. And it`s very difficult for them to get on the national debates. And if they can`t, they can`t reach tens of millions of people. HAYES: Well, so the threshold, my understanding, is 15 percent this year.
And there`s got to be some threshold, right. Do you think that`s unfair? NADER: Yeah, it`s very unfair. The Appleseed Foundation had 5 percent back over 10 years ago. Assuming that the candidates were on enough ballots to qualify theoretically for an electoral college win of 270. By the way, Steve Silverstein and his crew are in the process of pushing interstate compacts to get rid of the electoral college by 2020. But imagine, Chris, this is a private corporation deciding who gets on the presidential debates, deciding who`s going to -- who are they going to sell hospitality suites to, is it going to be Anheuser-Busch, is it going to be AT&T, is it going to be Ford Motor Company, is it going to be General Electric? HAYES: Well, in other cases, if you took out that as the issue, right, so if you didn`t have the Commission on Presidential Debates, and obviously it playing -- you are correct 1,000%, the gatekeeping function there is a pretty intense one, right, there`s a lot of power there. But were you to take that away, right, I mean, wouldn`t it just be that the two parties would negotiate directly with each other, giving there less opportunity?
The Democratic and Republican parties without an independent entity, wouldn`t they just directly negotiate and never have anyone else on that stage? NADER: Not at all, because it all depends on the networks. There`s nothing stopping from NBC or ABC or CBS from hosting debates, or Fox, from hosting debates. There`s nothing stopping from 500 citizen groups with millions of members, church-related groups, consumer, labor, charitable groups, from sponsoring debates. What are we rationing debates for? HAYES: Oh, I see, like we`ve seen in primaries, and particularly happened in 2008 and lessin this primary -- although to a certain extent you had
different outlets essentially in a kind of bidding war for debates, proposing debates, and just getting the participants` assent as the means of producing it? NADER: Of course. People love debates. We should have dozens of debates. HAYES: People do love debates. NADER: They should debate. You know, cheating Donald should debate corporatist Hillary. HAYES: You`ve changed your sober kit for the secretary of state, you had militarist the first time, I will just note... NADER: We want nicknames that are factually based, not the kind that cheater Donald does with his Lyin` Ted or... HAYES: This is contagious now. Everyone I have on the show is making -- let me ask you this, I want you to respond to what Gary Johnson, in response to Trump calling him a fringe candidate, take a look at this. He was talking to Chuck Todd today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOHNSON: I think that Trump had it nailed today. I think we`ve been fringe candidates our whole life. Republicans winning in heavily Democrat states, being fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Hey, he nailed it today. Thanks, Donald. (END VIDEO CLIP) NADER: That`s not the way to define the fringe candidate. You define fringe candidates by their agenda. And the agenda, the Green Party under Jill Stein and Libertarian Party under Gary Johnson, Chris, they have many majoritarian viewpoints. They are for civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act.
They don`t want empire and endless wars. They don`t want crony capitalism or corporate welfare. They want to crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse. They want criminal justice reform. Those are majoritarian views held by the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. That`s the way you measure legitimacy. HAYES: well, that may be true. What I find striking about all this is that the so-called fringe candidates, third-party candidates tend to get coded as toward the end of the ideological spectrum. I mean, William Weld, you couldn`t find someone closer to the center of American politics than William Weld. NADER: Yeah, but he agrees with the list that i just gave. Now, a lot of them don`t agree with the more extreme positions of these third parties. But that`s true for the major party tyranny, the duopoly, itself, which can`t stand competition in American democracy. HAYES: Do you think you`ll be voting third party this year? NADER: Well, I`m certainly not going to vote for the Republican or Democratic Party. We have a corporatized election that`s off limits to Democracy. HAYES: All right, Ralph Nader, a great pleasure. Thank you, sir. 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: The press is so dishonest and so unfair.
HAYES: Donald Trump lashes out.
REPORTER: Is this what it`s going to be like covering you if you`re president?
TRUMP: Yes, it is.
HAYES: Why it took a media investigation for Trump to fulfill this months- old promise to veterans.
TRUMP: Donald Trump gave $1 million, OK?
HAYES: Hillary Clinton responds in my one-on-one interview.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): It took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
HAYES: Her comments on Trump and the State Department report on her use of private e-mail.
Then, new documents released in the fraud lawsuit against Trump University.
TRUMP: He`s been a very bad judge. He`s been very unfair.
HAYES: And Ralph Nader is here to discuss the third-party impact, as a candidate emerges from this convention.
When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
In what was supposed to be a press conference about donations to veterans charities devolved into an omni-directional airing of grievances today, with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump berating political enemies in his own party, going after a federal judge for his handling of a lawsuit brought by former students of Trump University, and unleashing a torn of insults against the media for seeking to hold Trump to account for donations he promised to make.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I`m not looking for credit. But what I don`t want when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC. He`s a sleaze.
You`re a sleaze, because you know the facts and you know the facts well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: About those facts. In January, when he was feuding with FOX News, Trump skipped a FOX-hosted presidential debate and with great fanfare held a competing event to raise money for veterans` groups.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We set up the website, I called some friends. And we just crack the -- the sign was just given, we just cracked $6 million, right? $6 million.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump in that event publicly acknowledged some of the people who pledge or had given donations. One of them being the candidate himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Donald Trump, another great builder in New York, now a politician. Donald Trump gave $1 million. OK?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump says he wasn`t acting out of political interest and said today he would have preferred no one even knew about the donations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I wanted to keep it private. If we could, I wanted to keep it private because I don`t think it`s anybody`s business if I want to send money to the vets.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump`s way of demonstrating this preference for privacy is somewhat odd. After his January fund-raiser, he began handing giant publishers clearinghouse-style novelty checks to veterans` groups at campaign stops in full view of cameras.
But the pesky press corps still had some questions. Like, did veterans` charities really end up getting the $6 million Trump claimed? As of a week ago, "The Washington Post" could only identify $3.1 million in donations, about half of what Trump promised. Even more important was this, entering last week, there was no evidence Trump himself had actually personally donated $1 million to veterans` groups, as he had claimed to have done at the event.
Dogged by repeated questions about the missing money, Trump finally said last Tuesday that four months after the fund-raiser, he was now giving $1 million to a veterans` group. Asked by "The Washington Post" whether he had given the money only because reporters had been asking about it, Trump responded, "You know, you`re a nasty guy, you`re a really nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars I had no obligation to do."
At today`s press conference, Trump claimed a total of $5.6 million have been donated to veterans` groups. NBC News has been able to confirm veterans` groups have received $3.82 million in donations as a result of Trump`s fund-raiser.
"The Associated Press" called the groups Trump listed today as having gotten money. It found that about half reported checks from Trump within the past week, typically dated May 24th, the day "The Washington Post" published a story questioning whether he had distributed all the money. According to NBC calculations, at least $1.8 million of donations were distributed in the past week.
Now, Trump insisted today the delay in donations arose from the need to check out the charities before giving them money.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You have to go through a process. When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you`ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: There are some reasons to be skeptical of that claim. The first is that Team Trump would have to be quite bad at vetting, because one of the charities he selected has a charity rating of "F" from Charity Watch.
Second reason is that the charity Trump took months to pledge $1 million to, the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, had already received more than $230,000 from Trump`s Foundation and thus wouldn`t presumably need additional vetting. In 2015, in fact, Trump was one of the two honorees at that group`s gala.
This afternoon in an interview we`ll air in full shortly, I asked Hillary Clinton for her take on how this all played out.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CLINTON: The problem here is the difference between from Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. You know, he`s bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating $1 million himself. But it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HAYES: At his press conference today, Trump argued instead of trying to find out whether he followed through, the media should have simply hailed his efforts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Instead of being like, thank you very much, Mr. Trump. Or, Trump did a good job. Everyone`s saying, who got it, who got it, who got it? And you make me look very bad.
I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job. I really think the press, look, the media, you know my opinion to the media, it`s very low. I think the media is frankly made up of people that in many cases, not in all cases, are not good people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump`s press conference came in response to reporters asking fairly routine questions of a presidential candidate. Today, he vowed not to change.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Is this what it`s going to be like covering you if you`re president?
TRUMP: Yes, it is. Let me tell you something, I`m a person, OK, yes, it is going to be like this, David.
We have to read probably libelous stories or certainly close in the newspapers and the people know the stories are false. I`m going to continue to attack the press. Look, I find the press to be extremely dishonest. I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, Army veteran Perry O`Brien, who served as a medic in Afghanistan, who`s one of the leaders of a protest outside Trump Tower along with other veterans opposed to Trump.
It`s good to have you here.
PERRY O`BRIEN, ARMY VETERAN: Great to be here.
HAYES: You guys were outside in what was a general media circus, as one might have expected. Why are you out there? Why did you protest?
O`BRIEN: Well, I`m part of the Vets Versus Hate movement. To months, we have been trying to communicate to Mr. Trump he should not be using veterans as props for his political agenda. And I think this most recent chapter of the scandal of the missing funds is just further reinforcing the view of many veterans and many within the military community that this is just not a man of integrity that we can trust to be the next commander in chief.
HAYES: What do you say if someone says, look, the guy`s up to $5.6 million even before "The Washington Post" started making phone calls about the $3 million? Why attack him for the fact that net-net, a bunch of veterans` groups have more money than they did when this whole thing started?
O`BRIEN: Well, I mean, first, I think before "The Washington Post" article, the original fund-raise on the battleship was to get out of a debate on FOX News. But I think there would be a much greater benefit of the doubt for Donald Trump if he had shown any interest in veterans anywhere in his personal life before he decided he wanted to be the next president of the United States.
HAYES: Part of the it also is this question of who speaks for, quote, "the veterans", or the vets as Trump says. There are veterans who enthusiastically support Donald Trump, he was addressing a bunch of them over the weekend, there are folks onstage. There are folks like yourself and others.
How do you think about the political category that is being created in this campaign of the veterans?
O`BRIEN: Well, clearly, Donald Trump doesn`t take kindly to veterans speaking for themselves, about how many within the veteran community feel, we were out there last week at Trump Towers trying to hold him accountable for what had been revealed by "The Washington Post." and he took to Twitter to sort of try to discredit us. I don`t think he likes it very much when veterans aren`t good props, aren`t good mannequins for his political agenda.
And clearly, he`s not interested in genuinely supporting veterans or genuinely supporting the First Amendment, which is one of the many freedoms that so many of us enlisted in the first place to defend.
HAYES: I saw you holding a sign which I thought was interesting, going back, you`ve had a fascinating career after leaving the army. A writer, you`ve been an activist in different capacities. Talking about Muslims you`d worked with in Afghanistan, reaction to the idea of a Muslim ban.
O`BRIEN: Right. Absolutely. And that was certainly I would say the launching of the Vets Versus Hate movement, which has become a national campaign where veterans all around the country are rising up against this anti-Muslim bigotry that we`re seeing. I mean, so many who served in Iraq and Afghanistan served alongside Muslims. Interpreters, also American- Muslim soldiers, many of whom, you know, obviously supported our mission, risked their lives to support our mission, and unlike Donald Trump actually donned the uniform to serve their country.
HAYES: Do you imagine that this is going to go away? Or is this going to continue?
O`BRIEN: The bigotry?
HAYES: Well, this movement, this sort of -- this story about this specific kind of back and forth.
O`BRIEN: Between veterans and Donald Trump?
HAYES: Yes, yes.
O`BRIEN: Absolutely. I think there is a growing sense within -- among veterans that -- everyone I know who served in Iraq or Afghanistan feels that it is increasingly clear that Donald Trump is not cut from the same moral fabric as the average veteran or active duty trooper.
HAYES: And, quickly, finally, are you associated with the campaign? Do you work for any campaign?
O`BRIEN: Not at all.
HAYES: This is not some prop situation?
O`BRIEN: No.
HAYES: Perry, it`s a great pleasure. Thank you for being here.
O`BRIEN: Thank you very much.
HAYES: Joining me now, Steven Ginsberg, senior politics editor for "The Washington Post," which has made the effort in tracking Trump`s donations.
I guess you`re someone who`s spearheaded a lot of the reporting that`s gone into this. Respond to the charge that essentially you`re taking someone who`s doing something good and unfairly tarnishing him.
STEVEN GINSBERG, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, we didn`t aim to tarnish anything. We aimed to find out whether he gave the $6 million he said he gave. Had he given the $6 million, he would have gotten a very positive story about it.
Our initial reporting found that he gave about $3.1 million. And then we came back at it and then it was $4.5 million. And it included $1 million from Donald Trump. That turned out not to be the case as you showed in that "A.P." story where a dozen checks were cut that night and in the end, he said today it`s up to $5.6 million.
HAYES: Have you ever in your career as a journalist encountered a situation like this in which as you`re trying to run a story down, that all of a sudden, the checks start to flow as the questions are being asked? I can`t recall an example myself.
GINSBERG: I don`t remember $1.8 million flowing from any story that we`ve done. But you do see those sometimes.
I mean, But Donald Trump knows a bad story when he sees one and he started to do something about it to try to mitigate it. He tried to do something else about it today by diverting everyone`s attention to attacks on the media. So, he understood what was happening and he`s tried to do something to correct it.
HAYES: To be clear here, the basics as have been established by your team and others at "A.P." is that $1 million which he said he gave was never given until last week after these stories had been initiated, correct?
GINSBERG: That`s correct. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told us last week that Donald Trump had given his money. But after that story, it turned out he hadn`t. And then he quickly did.
And in a follow-up interview, Donald Trump said that his campaign manager wouldn`t really know, and only he could say, and that`s when the money went out.
HAYES: Do you find Mr. Trump`s protestations that he wanted this all to be private, that this is essentially an invasion on the part of the press, credible?
GINSBERG: I mean, I think that speaks for itself. He held a big event on a stage on national TV. That doesn`t seem private to me. He handed out checks at campaign rallies in the days that followed. And again, I think what he was doing today and what he was saying and what he was doing in that press conference is just trying to divert everyone`s attention from the facts because the facts of this case don`t favor him.
HAYES: So what happens next with this? I mean, at a certain point -- he said he`s $400,000 short. I guess -- it seems almost crazy to say, well, have you gotten the receipts? I mean, have you established with these various groups that that money`s actually arrived?
GINSBERG: I think for the most part we have. That`s one way we reported this out was to call veterans` groups and find out if they got the money. The Trump campaign wasn`t going to give us those receipts.
And at this point -- what we basically did hear and what we have done is listened to what he said, checked what he did. And he said he gave $6 million, and he didn`t. Now he says he`s given $5.6 million, and as far as we can tell, he has. We`ll keep on that and make sure that it follows through.
But as far as we know now, he is actually giving out the checks.
HAYES: I just want to be clear how this started. He made these claims, you presumably went to the campaign and said, could you let us know who you gave it to? Had they given that amount of money, it would have been a fairly easy bit of reporting and also, an easy story to write. They give you the names, you double-check, it`s there, you write the story.
The only reason you had to do the end run-a round is they never told you, right, the campaign stonewalled you?
GINSBERG: Yes. I mean, there`s nothing mysterious about what we did here. A presidential candidate said he did something, we check what people say. And the campaign didn`t provide the information so that`s not going to stop us. We went out and figured it out on our own. Ands then, it`s come back around.
HAYES: All right. Steven Ginsberg, great to have you at this time. Appreciate it.
GINSBERG: Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, an up-close look at the predatory practices used by Trump University and the personal attacks Trump is making against the judge overseeing the fraud lawsuit against Trump University.
But first, my interview with Hillary Clinton, including her response to today`s spectacle and much more. That interview is in just two minutes. So, don`t go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When I raise money for the veterans, and it`s a massive amount of money, find out how much Hillary Clinton`s given to the veterans, nothing. I don`t want the credit for it but I shouldn`t be lambasted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Donald Trump at his press conference defending his tardy donations to veterans` groups, lashing out at his likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, among many other targets, it must be said.
And I got a chance to speak with the former secretary of state by phone earlier today and I started by asking her for her reaction to the controversy over Trump`s donations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLINTON (via telephone): Well, I think the problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. You know, he bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating $1 million himself. But it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans` groups.
I, of course, over the course of my life, I`ve not only donated personally, but I have worked to provide hundreds of millions of dollars over time to help our veterans by what I voted for, what I`ve worked for. Actually, John McCain and I helped raise funds for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund to build a rehab facility at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio so that our returning wounded vets could get world-class treatment.
And ever since I was first lady and in the public eye, I`ve worked to help victims of Agent Orange, those suffering from the mysterious illnesses from the First Gulf War get help when no one else would listen. I worked on the Armed Services Committee to raise death benefits for families of the fallen from $12,000 to $100,000. I worked with Senator Lindsey Graham to expand health care benefits to the National Guard and reserve, and have worked in every way I could in my public capacity to honor the service and provide the benefits and support that our veterans deserve.
HAYES: Let me follow up on this aspect of it. There has been a tremendous amount of criticism directed at the V.A. for a variety of issues, chiefly wait times at V.A. hospitals, but a whole set of logistical challenges veterans could face.
You have talked about how you see yourself inheriting the Obama administration. In your mind, is the care and the performance of the V.A. under this president acceptable? Is it an acceptable performance from the V.A.?
CLINTON: Well, Chris, I`ve been clear for months that the problems at the V.A. are unacceptable. And I have been outspoken on that. I`ve obviously worked when I was in the Senate to help veterans and their families.
I think we`ve got to tackle some of the problems that have come to light. I don`t agree with Republicans who want to use the problems as an excuse to privatize the V.A. and hand it over to the private insurance system to deal with terrible challenges like PTSD and traumatic brain injury and the like.
I think we`ve got to -- in my plan I`ve put forward, provide for the V.A. to purchase more care from the private sector, but to act more as a guide and guardian for veterans, coordinating their care, ensuring their health outcomes. And I`ve been very proud and humbled to work with a lot of our veterans` advocates and activists to try to make sure that, if I`m fortunate enough to be president, I will come in immediately with a plan as to how we`re going to deal with the problems that we`ve unearthed in the V.A. and do it in a very focused manner.
HAYES: You have -- your campaign has canceled some events you were going to do in New Jersey, which, of course, votes on June 7th along with California, headed instead to California. There are people who are interpreting that as a campaign that is nervous about winning California on what is a sort of big final day, except for D.C.
Are you nervous about California?
CLINTON: Well, I`m feeling, you know, very positive about my campaign in California. We are working really hard. I was proud to get Governor Jerry Brown`s endorsement today.
But I want to cover as much of the state as I possibly can. I will be in New Jersey tomorrow. I`m really looking forward to that, actually. I`ll be there for an event tonight.
So, we are competing everywhere. But I have been struck by some of the challenges California faces. Like the drought which Donald Trump said the other day didn`t exist.
And so, I am spending time talking with citizens, with experts, with people who have lots of good ideas. I really want to be a good partner, not just to California but the entire country. But I think California has some particular challenges and I`m going to be campaigning up and down California, meeting with people, and then putting forth my ideas about what I can do as president.
HAYES: Donald Trump and Republicans have been a great deal of both the I.G. report on e-mail use. But more than that, they`ve invoked the specter of the FBI quite often. So, I need to ask you if you have been contacted by the FBI about an interview regarding the e-mail situation.
CLINTON: No, we do not have an interview scheduled. And I just want to say a word about the recent report. You know -- actually, the report makes clear that personal e-mail use was a practice under other secretaries of state. And the rules were not clarified until after I had left.
But as I said many times, Chris, it was still a mistake. If I could go back I would do it differently. I understand people who have concerns about it. But I hope voters look at the full picture of everything I`ve done in my career and actually the full threat posed by a Donald Trump presidency, because if they do, I have faith in the American people that they will make the right choice here.
HAYES: One final follow-up on that. There`s one line in that I.G. report that stuck out to me, and I want to get clarification from you directly. In which the I.G. found that subordinates of yours had told people to stop asking about your use of private e-mail, and that was a striking phrase. Is that true, to your knowledge?
CLINTON: I do not know who that person is or what that person might have said, because it`s not anything that I am aware of. I e-mailed -- I e- mailed with hundreds of people. And I e-mailed department officials. (AUDIO GAP) directly with my e-mail as other secretaries have done. I certainly never instructed anyone to hide the fact that I was using a personal e-mail.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: It was obvious to hundreds of people, visible to the many people that I was e-mailing throughout the State Department and the rest of the federal government.
HAYES: All right. Madam Secretary, thank you very much for making yourself available today. Appreciate it.
CLINTON: Thank you. Great to talk to you. Bye-bye.
HAYES: Talk to you soon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Still to come, the bitter legal fight over Trump University gets uglier. Donald Trump lashing out again at the judge as new documents are released. Ahead, New York`s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, on the new details of what he says is Donald Trump`s version of three-card Monty.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The fact is you can`t win as an independent. For the most part, you can`t even get on Texas and various other states now. It`s too late.
But, Bill Kristol, I`ve been watching this for two years. Trump isn`t going to run. Then I go into a race, we go into New Hampshire. Oh, he`s not going to win New Hampshire. I win in a landslide. Every place I went, I was not going to win but I win in a landslide.
Do you think maybe he doesn`t like me?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Donald Trump went after influential conservative Bill Kristol at a press conference this morning after fielding a question about why he appears so worried about an independent candidate in this year`s election.
You see over the weekend, Kristol, the editor of "The Weekly Standard," sent out a tweet promising an alternative to Trump would soon emerge. "Just a heads-up over this holiday weekend, there will be an independent candidate, an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance."
Trump seemed to respond by tweeting, "The Republican Party has to be smart and strong if it wants to win in November. Can`t allow lightweights to set up a spoiler indie candidate, exclamation point."
Third party candidates have occasionally had big effects on presidential races, though it`s the exception rather than the rule. And over the weekend, we got a new ticket that will be almost certainly on the ballot in all 50 states. Who was it?
Well, here`s a hint. One of them was on the same stage over the weekend with this guy, to tell you who he is.
Plus, we`ll reveal the person Bill Kristol has in mind to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, later in the show.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I have a judge who`s very, very unfair. He knows he`s unfair. And I`ll win the Trump University case. I could settle that case. I could have settled it, I just choose not to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Just a small snippet of a fairly lengthy tirade from the presumptive Republican nominee earlier regarding Trump University, a nonlicensed for-profit, now out of defunct, institution which offered students courses on real estate and investing.
Trump is currently mired in multiple lawsuits, including one from New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman who will join me in a moment, claiming that Trump University students were defrauded by the enterprise.
On Friday, Trump while out on the campaign trail, blasted a California federal judge involved in a pair of class action lawsuits, one of which is scheduled to go to trial in late November.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: But I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He`s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel. We`re in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge.
The judge, who happens to be we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that`s fine...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: For the record, Judge Curiel is an American citizen born in Indiana. He`s a former federal prosecutor, former state judge, and was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama, that part is true.
His appointment so nonpartisan and noncontroversial, the senate confirmed it with a voice vote.
Shortly after Judge Curiel was attacked by Trump on the campaign trail, he ruled that documents involved in the case were in the public interest, now that Trump is, quote, "the front-runner in the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue." Judge Curiel ordered that those documents be unsealed.
Today, hundreds of pages of Trump University internal documents were released, including sales and marketing playbooks revealing pretty aggressive practices involved with the enterprise, from encouraging sales representatives to collect personalized information you can utilize during closing time, for example, are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?
To this helpful hint to Trump U pitchmen, you don`t sell products, benefits or solutions, you sell feelings.
We reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the matter and invited the candidate to come on this program, the campaign did not respond to either inquiry.
Joining me now, New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman who filed a lawsuit against Trump University in 2013 alleging the enterprise defrauded thousands of people out of millions of dollars. He`s also, we should say, someone who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It`s good to have you here.
Let`s start with the way that Donald Trump has discussed this federal judge. I mean, I guess people don`t like judges when they rule against them. Is this like in your career normal, a normal thing that someone would talk about a judge in this way?
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN, NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: It`s certainly not normal. It doesn`t make a lot of sense, but it`s particularly bizarre for someone who`s running for president who wants to show that he has the temperament to appoint federal judges, to attack a judge based on his ethnicity. It`s not anything I`ve ever seen before in this context, no.
HAYES: Explain to me -- I mean, obviously there`s a bunch of different suits, right. So, the ones that we`re talking about at issue here, there`s some class actions have been consolidated. They`re in California. Your suit is -- you have brought yourself.
I mean, look, people sell stuff hard all the time. I mean, you could probably get at random 1,000 different sales playbooks from enterprises across this country that talk about closing in pretty harsh language. Why is this crossing the line?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, there`s a difference between a hard sell and fraud. And the law is pretty clear. And we have hundreds of years of case law drawing that distinction.
And the problem with Trump University was that first of all it wasn`t a university and it`s just fraud. In New York State we`re sensitive about calling yourself a New York State registered university when you`re not.
HAYES: You have to actually have some set of accreditations to even use that name?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yes. You can`t put up a sign saying Chris Hayes Law Firm, Chris Hayes Hospital, Chris Hayes University if you`re not in fact a lawyer, or (inaudible). We`re funny that way.
And then when we looked into the actual representations that were made to students, we`ve already got the pitch videos from Trump saying, my hand- picked experts will teach you my personal secrets. He and the president of the university, who is also a defendant in our case, have testified under oath he never met the instructors, they weren`t his hand-picked, they weren`t experts, and he never saw the curriculum so they weren`t his personal secrets.
The playbooks, some of which were produced to the public today, and we have similar ones that have come out in our lawsuit before, it`s really just a very cynical effort to take advantage of people`s needs. We`re talking about people who really believed they were going to learn his real estate secrets. We`re talking 2008, 2009, 2010, people in hard economic times...
HAYES: When people were really desperate, we should just be clear, right.
SCHNEIDERMAN: They were. And they -- as you noted, the playbook tells the pitchmen to get out there, and find out about their credit card information, and if they don`t have enough credit, ask them to get their credit card statements so they could read to them how much credit line they have, because they wanted to make sure these folks could pay for more Trump seminars.
HAYES: I wanted you to response, he has attacked you personally for this lawsuit. Here he in San Diego on Friday. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Obama meets with this dopey Eric Schneiderman who hates our governor and he wants to run for governor, but I don`t think it`s going to happen. o up to Eric -- they go up to Syracuse, meets with Obama, and he files a lawsuit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All right, so the allegation is that you conspired with the president of the United States to file this lawsuit. Is that true?
SCHNEIDERMAN: No. I saw the president. He was giving a speech on education policy in Syracuse. We talked for 90 seconds in the hall.
In 2013, no one thought Donald Trump was running for president. Obama and I were talking about the bank investigation I was doing with his Justice Department.
We had more important things to do than talk about Donald Trump. I know what`s hard for him to believe, but this was not based on a conspiracy by the president of the United States to go after this cheap con job of a university that he was running.
HAYES: In fact, we had you on this program in 2013 when you announced the suit. I remember in the editorial of that meeting having been persuaded that this was not essentially a frivolous story, that there was something there. And here we are these years later.
New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman, thank you.
Still to come, the spending food fight on Zika continues as the threat and the number of reported cases grows. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health on the climbing risks of inaction ahead.
But first, a big addition to Donald Trump`s list of supporters today. I`ll give you a hint, the new support comes from one of the few countries on the planet that still get jazzed about Dennis Rodman. That story right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: We have been keeping assiduous track at All In of endorsers of Donald Trump, from infamous basketball coach Bobby Knight to anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona.
Last week, we added the widely despised pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, also now the subject of a criminal indictment.
But an update on that, in a very Trumpian move, Shkreli is now walking it back, saying that last week`s tweeted endorsement was a basically a joke and tweeting this, if someone put a gun to my head and made me vote, I would vote Trump over Hillary. This year I am abstaining in protest of crap candidate.
But apparently joining the crowd of those praising Trump, the regime of Kim Jong-un, the internationally loathed dictator of North Korea.
An editorial in the state media outlet DPRK Today reads, in my personal opinion there are many positive aspects to Trump`s inflammatory policies, wrote Han Yan-mook (ph) who introduced himself as Chinese-North Korean scholar.
"Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn`t this fortunate for North Korean`s perspective?"
The same editorial referred to Trump as a wise politicians and farsighted presidential candidate.
But also out today, one of the world`s most respected, brilliant intellectuals has finally weighed in on the Trump campaign and you will be shocked. And by shocked, I mean the opposite of shocked, as to which column he ends up in. That`s in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: So with support for Donald Trump coming from the likes of Bobby Knight, Mike Tyson, Joe Arpaio, and evidently now North Korean dictatorship, the nation turns its lonely eyes to Stephen Hawking. Yes, the world renowned physicist and cosmologist and creator of new scientific theories within Albert Einstein`s theory of general relativity, that Stephen Hawking was asked what he thinks of Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are a man who knows the universe, how do you explain the phenomenon of Donald Trump?
STEPHEN HAWKING, PHYSICIST: I can`t. He is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Add Stephen Hawking to another list, those who can`t fully explain the rise of Donald Trump.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Here in New York City, according to health officials, there have been 109 reported cases of Zika, including 17 women who were pregnant when they were diagnosed, which is a big concern, because Zika has been linked to microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with small heads and often times brain damaged.
Today, the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey confirmed a baby was born at their facilities with microcephaly as a result of the mother contracting the Zika virus internationally. The mother, who was visiting the U.S., is receiving care.
Nationally, health officials are warning about the epidemic spreading during the summer travel season.
To combat the virus, President Obama has asked congress for $1.9 billion. Both the house and the senate have passed separate bills, both less than the funding requests. And the House version suggests cutting Ebola funding to help offset the cost of fighting Zika.
Today, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, insisted that they are providing adequate money. His office releasing a statement reading in part, there is no funding shortage. There has been. Instead, the White House continues to politicize this public health crisis.
Joining me now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
And Dr. Fauci, Speaker Ryan basically says that this is a stunt by the white House, that there`s plenty of money across various accounts that can be drawn from first. And the House will then back fill those funds as needed to make sure that you and others can respond effectively.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH: Well, I disagree with that. I mean, the president asked for $1.9 billion, because we need $1.9 billion. That figure came from proposals that were put forth about how we at NIH and the CDC and other agencies would be able to respond in an expeditious way to this throwing threat.
I mean, we know this is a very serious situation in South America. Puerto Rico is in serious trouble, on the verge of a -- what I would consider is going to be a very serious outbreak.
We already have a considerable number of travel-related cases, almost 600 travel-related cases in the United States. And the concern that we have is that as we enter into the robust mosquito months in the next couple of months as we get into the summer, that there will be local outbreaks within the continental United States.
Fortunately, we`ve not seen that thus far. It`s only been travel-related cases. But these are the things that we need to move quickly on. On public health issues, on the development of a vaccine, so we do need the money.
That figure that the president made was a figure that was based on things that we need to do.
HAYES: Is the expectation that the vector of infectious would be the mosquito itself throughout parts of the southern U.S.?
FAUCI: Yeah, I mean, exactly what happens. What will likely happen, and we think this is more likely than not, that as we get into more travel- related cases and we have a lot of mosquito activity that someone will be in South America or Puerto Rico, come to the continental United States, have gotten bitten in South America or the Caribbean, and then go likely to the Fulf Coast states -- Texas, Florida, what have you, and one of those states, get bitten by a mosquito that`s here in the united States and then transmit it to someone else. That`s how you get local outbreaks.
And it`s going to be our job to make sure that when we do -- and I think it`s more when than if, that when we do get those local outbreaks, that we can prevent them from becoming sustained and disseminated, which is what you don`t want to happen in this country.
HAYES: All right. Dr. Anthony Fauci, thanks for your time, sir.
Up next, today, a third-party candidate enters the race. I`ll talk to someone who knows just how much that could change the dynamics of the general election. Ralph Nader joins me right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROSS PEROT, FRM. PRESIDENTAIL CANDIDATE: The principal issue that separates me is 5.5 million people came together on their own and put me on the ballot. I was not put on the ballot by either of the two parties. I was not put on the ballot by any PAC money, by any foreign lobbyist money, by any special interest money. This is a movement that came from the people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Last time there were three candidates on the presidential debate stage during the general election was 24 years ago when businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate against both Bill Clinton and sitting President George H.W. Bush.
And Perot, a very rich man, began laying the groundwork for his political run nine months before the general election, was able to get on the ballot in all 50 states.
Getting ballot access in all 50 states tends to be the biggest obstacle for third-party candidates. If there`s going to be something like that this year, it`s less likely to be Bill Kristol`s recruit who, according to Bloomberg Politics, Mark Halprin and John Halman (ph) as National Review staff writer David French who just a week ago wrote a piece titled Mitt Romney run for president, and more like to be Libertarian candidate and former Republican governor of new Mexico Gary Johnson.
Johnson, according to NBC News, is on track to make the ballot in 50 states. He was chosen as the Libertarian Party`s presidential nominee at their convention on Sunday. His running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld. With polling showing Johnson at double digits, there`s a good chance that he could make a fair bit of noise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Are you ready for Donald Trump once you`re in this thing and he recognizes you, to give you a big punch in the nose for calling him a racist?
GARY JOHNSON, 2016 LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that they`ve already started coming. So, you know, Donald? Mwah.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, a man who knows a thing or two about a third-party run, Ralph Nader, who ran for president for the Green Party ticket in 2000 as an independent in 2004. His book titled "Unstoppable."
Mr. Nader, what do you think about this year and the prospects of a pretty strong showing from a Lbertarian third-party run?
RALPH NADER, FRM. GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it looks like they`ve got a ticket of two governors, of New Mexico and Massachusetts. They look like they`re going to be on 50 states. They`re not afraid to take on cheating Donald or militarist Hillary, which is one of the benefits of a third party. They don`t have that kind of compromise situation. They can call out truth to power.
Whether you agree with their ideology or not, they can be much more candid. But they`re going to be frozen out of the debate commission, which is a private company created in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties to get rid of the (inaudible) voters. And it`s very difficult for them to get on the national debates.
And if they can`t, they can`t reach tens of millions of people.
HAYES: Well, so the threshold, my understanding, is 15 percent this year. And there`s got to be some threshold, right. Do you think that`s unfair?
NADER: Yeah, it`s very unfair. The Appleseed Foundation had 5 percent back over 10 years ago. Assuming that the candidates were on enough ballots to qualify theoretically for an electoral college win of 270. By the way, Steve Silverstein and his crew are in the process of pushing interstate compacts to get rid of the electoral college by 2020.
But imagine, Chris, this is a private corporation deciding who gets on the presidential debates, deciding who`s going to -- who are they going to sell hospitality suites to, is it going to be Anheuser-Busch, is it going to be AT&T, is it going to be Ford Motor Company, is it going to be General Electric?
HAYES: Well, in other cases, if you took out that as the issue, right, so if you didn`t have the Commission on Presidential Debates, and obviously it playing -- you are correct 1,000%, the gatekeeping function there is a pretty intense one, right, there`s a lot of power there. But were you to take that away, right, I mean, wouldn`t it just be that the two parties would negotiate directly with each other, giving there less opportunity? The Democratic and Republican parties without an independent entity, wouldn`t they just directly negotiate and never have anyone else on that stage?
NADER: Not at all, because it all depends on the networks. There`s nothing stopping from NBC or ABC or CBS from hosting debates, or Fox, from hosting debates. There`s nothing stopping from 500 citizen groups with millions of members, church-related groups, consumer, labor, charitable groups, from sponsoring debates. What are we rationing debates for?
HAYES: Oh, I see, like we`ve seen in primaries, and particularly happened in 2008 and lessin this primary -- although to a certain extent you had different outlets essentially in a kind of bidding war for debates, proposing debates, and just getting the participants` assent as the means of producing it?
NADER: Of course.
People love debates. We should have dozens of debates.
HAYES: People do love debates.
NADER: They should debate.
You know, cheating Donald should debate corporatist Hillary.
HAYES: You`ve changed your sober kit for the secretary of state, you had militarist the first time, I will just note...
NADER: We want nicknames that are factually based, not the kind that cheater Donald does with his Lyin` Ted or...
HAYES: This is contagious now. Everyone I have on the show is making -- let me ask you this, I want you to respond to what Gary Johnson, in response to Trump calling him a fringe candidate, take a look at this. He was talking to Chuck Todd today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: I think that Trump had it nailed today. I think we`ve been fringe candidates our whole life. Republicans winning in heavily Democrat states, being fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Hey, he nailed it today. Thanks, Donald.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NADER: That`s not the way to define the fringe candidate. You define fringe candidates by their agenda. And the agenda, the Green Party under Jill Stein and Libertarian Party under Gary Johnson, Chris, they have many majoritarian viewpoints. They are for civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act. They don`t want empire and endless wars. They don`t want crony capitalism or corporate welfare. They want to crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse. They want criminal justice reform. Those are majoritarian views held by the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. That`s the way you measure legitimacy.
HAYES: well, that may be true. What I find striking about all this is that the so-called fringe candidates, third-party candidates tend to get coded as toward the end of the ideological spectrum. I mean, William Weld, you couldn`t find someone closer to the center of American politics than William Weld.
NADER: Yeah, but he agrees with the list that i just gave.
Now, a lot of them don`t agree with the more extreme positions of these third parties. But that`s true for the major party tyranny, the duopoly, itself, which can`t stand competition in American democracy.
HAYES: Do you think you`ll be voting third party this year?
NADER: Well, I`m certainly not going to vote for the Republican or Democratic Party. We have a corporatized election that`s off limits to Democracy.
HAYES: All right, Ralph Nader, a great pleasure. Thank you, sir.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now.
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