Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: August 8, 2016 Guest: Molly Ball, Robert Reich, David Cay Johnston, Rick Wilson, Yamiche Alcindor, Soledad O`Brien, Ben Jealous
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Without security, there can be no prosperity.
(HECKLING)
HAYES: Trump interrupted.
TRUMP: It`s all very well-planned out, every couple --
HAYES: The Republican nominee attempts another reboot as his polling continues to drop. The Republican defections continue. And Clinton keeps attacking.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He`s got, I don`t know, dozen or so economic advisers he just named. Hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently.
HAYES: Plus, fact-checking Trump`s big economic speech with Robert Reich and David Cay Johnston.
Yet another Republican candidate launches a stop Trump presidential bid. The deep red state that looks like it could now turn blue, and if the games continue in Rio, while Hillary Clinton is out to a Katie Ledecky-like lead in Olympic ad spending.
DAVID LETTERMAN, COMEDIAN: These ties are made in where, China? The ties are made in China.
HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
Amidst tanking favorability and unceasing wave of negative poll numbers and more defections by prominent Republicans, Donald Trump today faced the biggest challenge of his campaign thus far when he attempted a reset by laying out his economic plan in a teleprompter speech that was notable mostly for the more than dozen times it was interrupted by protesters.
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(HECKLING)
TRUMP: It`s all very well-planned out, every couple. Without security, there can be no prosperity.
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HAYES: Today, Trump`s poll numbers continue to lurch towards blowout territory, polling averages not yet showing any softening. The large bounce Hillary Clinton received following the Democratic National Convention and it doesn`t include a new poll from Monmouth University that has Clinton 13 points ahead of Trump among likely voters.
Also, the continued tide of Republican revolt that includes a fresh new never Trump candidate. More on him later.
And this headline, 50 GOP officials warn Donald Trump will putting nation security at risk, to which Trump responded, "The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess."
So, today, the Trump was poised for yet another reset, with the candidates following -- candidate following a wildly self-destructive and tumultuous period with a big traditional campaign set piece. We, of course, have seen this before. Recall, after a disastrous week in earlier June, for example, when Trump had repeatedly attacked the Mexican heritage of a federal judge overseeing a Trump University case, Trump tried to crawl his way out by delivering one of his most conventional speeches ever, speaking on the night of the final Republican primary at his Westchester Golf Club in an uncharacteristically subdued manner with the help of teleprompters.
Today`s speech was even more conventional in delivery and with some exceptions on trade, utterly conventional in its Republican orthodoxy. There are also, like many GOP policy speeches, attempts at sounding compassionate. Trump`s claim of a plan to reduce the cost of child care was backed up with this.
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TRUMP: I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks that I have been working on with my daughter Ivanka, who is here.
(APPLAUSE)
Stand up.
She feels so strongly about this. And an incredible team of experts.
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HAYES: The mention of his daughter Ivanka might have been Trump`s attempt to deflect the criticism he has for naming a 14-person economic team that is all men at the moment, a criticism Hillary Clinton was more than happy to re-enforce.
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CLINTON: Today in Detroit, he`s got, I don`t know, a dozen or so economic advisers he just named, hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently. And so they wrote him a speech, and he delivered it in Detroit. Now, they tried to make his old tired ideas sound new. But here`s what we all know because we heard it again. His tax plans will give super big tax breaks to large corporations and the really wealthy, just like him and the guys who wrote the speech, right?
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HAYES: Today`s Trump speech was a success if judged by the fairly low bar of not insulting the family of a slain soldier or making a racist attack on a federal judge. And yet, the full Trump reset cycle isn`t complete until the success of a teleprompter speech is lost to a self-inflicted wound.
Like in March, soon after Trump`s big AIPAC teleprompter speech, he attacked the wife of his chief rival Ted Cruz, or the next morning after his big teleprompter convention speech where he now relitigated the Heidi Cruz tweet but also revived the conspiracy theory regarding Ted Cruz`s father and Lee Harvey Oswald.
So, who knows how long Trump`s reset behavior will ask this time around?
Joining me, MSNBC political analyst Michael Steele, former RNC chairman, and Molly Ball, political correspondent for "The Atlantic".
And, Michael, this just in -- the question about this, Trump tweets, "Many people are saying," which is always as soon as you see those words, you know something is coming. "Many people are saying the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton`s hacked e-mails", a reference to an Iranian scientist who did face the death penalty. An entirely specious claim as the man defected, the Iranians do, it had nothing to do with him discovering the e-mails. This is the sort of off script Trump we`re used to.
MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: We`re used to it. There is that back door way getting into what could be a very interesting story around Hillary Clinton`s campaign a little later on. We`ll see how that plays out.
But the fact of the matter is, look, Trump is trying his best to kind of move beyond where he`s been. He recognizes now, and really, simply, his recognition that he`s getting slammed in the polls. And that`s the ultimate driver. That`s the ultimate indicator of success, and so I think the reality for him has come home in a hard way.
And you raise, I think, the appropriate question. Is this sustainable over an extended period of time like the next three months? Or is it something that a week from today we`re talking about something else that he`s gone off on? That remains to be seen.
So look, I will give kudos where kudos are due. The fact is that he did lay out an economic plan that we can discuss. I`m sure Hillary and her team will digest appropriately. He did -- I thought, very tellingly, withstand the urge to take on his critics in the hall today.
HAYES: That was clearly the most amount of sheer self-discipline mustered in the course, perhaps, of the Trump months. You could see on his face --
STEELE: Yes.
HAYES: Like a toddler who is contemplating doing the wrong thing. You could see it flitting across his eyes.
STEELE: If I could just blow them up. But yeah, I mean, so look. Baby steps.
HAYES: Here`s a thing, Molly. I think Michael`s phrase about coming home is interesting, rights, because what I found striking about the speech and I felt this way about other set pieces. It was essentially pretty much a Republican orthodoxy speech.
There`s the trade stuff, but aside from that, it was a fairly significant marginal tax cut at the top, getting rid of regulations, you know, this basic stuff. I just -- Donald Trump is such a lackluster salesman of Paul Ryanism. Right?
He is -- he just is not very good at selling a kind of conservative orthodoxy that is the kind of party`s bread and butter economically over many years which I think has some real problems in terms of its appeal, but I`m struck by that every time he tries to do it.
MOLLY BALL, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, I think Michael is exactly right, that it takes more than a single Trump speech to convince people at this point when we have been through so many of these groundhog day cycles of rinse and repeat. He acts disciplined for an hour and a half and goes right back to tweeting conspiracy theories.
And to your point about economic policy, I mean, I think this is a sign, as Michael said, that he knows he`s in trouble with the Republican base. He knows that the Paul Ryan faction of the party has significant problems with his approach, with his temperament, with the things he`s espoused.
But the irony, as you sort of alluded to, is that the people to whom Trumpism has come as a breath of fresh air is those members of the Republican base who were not satisfied by the sort of elite Republican dogma around entitlement reform and smaller government and lower taxes, which wasn`t doing anything for working class people whose wages have stagnated.
And so, he`s in this double bind where when he goes back to that, to satisfy Paul Ryan and his people, he`s not doing anything for the people who have powered him through the Republican primary, the working class voters.
HAYES: And to me, Michael, it also signals. You can already see how, again, these words we use, establishment, Republican elite, donor class. The folks who sort of hold the keys to Republican party economic orthodoxy. In some ways, Trump has given them a gift in certain ways in violating it and showing that there`s an appetite for an economic vision that isn`t just, you know, get rid of the estate tax and cut marginal taxes, but they don`t want to hear that, I think.
STEELE: And Chris, you put your finger on it. I think a very important point for the party going forward, beyond Trump. If nothing else, Trump has exposed the underbelly of concern that has been sitting there inside the party I know for a long time. And it`s around certain policies like, you know, taxes and so forth. I think Trump has exposed that.
You know, he`s trying to thread this needle where, yes, I`ll give you your tax cuts and do this and that, but then on TPP, on child care credits, on other things, I`m going to put mine in as well and we`ll see how that sells.
HAYES: That`s a tough philosophically, tough to thread that needle.
Also, Molly, I mean, the venue today, he`s in Detroit, but it`s a Detroit economic club, which is sort of like, you know, the key sort of Romney -- the kind of Romney voters, Romney donors, who are that part of the party that just are not cottoning to him, and I think partly because they think he`s a loser and they`re going to put their heads underneath the wave, hold their breath, and wait until November passes.
BALL: Well, it`s about donors.
HAYES: Right.
BALL: And those are the people, right? This is not a significant faction of the Republican electorate. You look at the polls and he`s consolidated most actual Republican voters.
And let`s face it, most people are content to let him sort of have it both ways as long as he has the "R" next to his name, even if they`re a little bit uneasy with him. But it`s the money spigot this hampers. It`s the donor class of the Republican Party that are very discombobulated by Trump`s nomination, and they`re the ones he`s trying to assuage with this type of speech, with positioning himself much more closely with Republican economic orthodoxy, which is the main thing that the donor class cares about.
HAYES: Michael Steele and Molly Ball, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Still to come, the stop Trump movement has another Trump up its sleeve. Can a presidential bid launched today do any real damage to Trump`s campaign? We`ll talk about that ahead.
But, first, it isn`t very often we get to evaluate Donald Trump on his actual policy positions as a presidential candidate, a Trump fact check after this two-minute break.
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HAYES: So, during a big speech unveiling his economic policy today, Donald Trump said the additional details would be forthcoming.
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TRUMP: In the coming weeks, we will be offering more details on all of these policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign website.
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HAYES: He pointed people to his website, but this is what they got when they went there. Page not found, apparently because the tax plan, possibly the previous one when been deleted.
That said, Trump`s speech did provide a rare moment, a truly rare moment in this campaign to evaluate a set of his policy proposals.
Here to do that, Robert Reich, former labor secretary for President Bill Clinton, author of "Saving Capitalism", and David Cay Johnston, professor at Syracuse University College of Law and author of "The Making of Donald Trump."
And, Robert, I`ll start with you. Just my sense of this, I mean, the big things are reduce the tax brackets. We have seven brackets, down to three. It would be a top cut at the top, a big tax cut for everyone. Of course, most of the gains to the top. You know, a few other things.
This is -- this is basically like if you were to throw together a computer program that created a generic Republican tax plan, more or less that.
ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: Yes, that`s absolutely right, Chris. I mean, what this represents is a walk back from sheer lunacy, the sheer economic lunacy of the original Donald Trump plan to the normal garden variety nonsense of Republican supply side economics. So, you know, and it can be evaluated the way we have evaluated the normal garden variety nonsense of supply side economics for years.
I mean, we know that if you give big tax breaks to people at the top, nothing trickles down. The economy does not grow faster. The only thing that happens is people at the top do better. Everybody else just falls away.
HAYES: David, your thoughts on this as someone who has been a tax reporter for so many years. What`s your top line takeaway?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, COLUMNIST, DAILY BEAST: Well, the thing I love most are two elements. He wants to get rid of the estate tax to save the family farm, and I proved 15 years ago, no family farms have been lost. You can save nominally $11 million.
But I was meeting with a bunch of tax servers who say $11 million means we could move over a billion dollars to the next generation because of all the devices that are on it.
But the really great one is unlimited deduction for child care. If you`re rich enough to have three nannies for your kids when you fly them around in your private jet, you get a tax break.
HAYES: Right. We should -- we should -- we should note that because at some level, it`s one of those policies like from 30,000 feet, you`re like, cool, great. You know, he`s following up on the Ivanka speech. This is a real issue, particularly at the bottom end of the income scale. Households spending 40 percent to 45 percent of household income on child care.
But the way he`s doing it is totally screwy in terms of helping those people.
JOHNSTON: That`s right. And I wish he would come to Rochester, New York, where we have and we can show the best preschool day care in all of the United States, Canada, Europe. And day care is expensive. Quality day care, this much more. Didn`t hear that from Donald and haven`t heard it from Hillary either.
HAYES: Robert, David mentioned the estate tax. I love this so much. Someone today, there was a Jeb donor today who said something like, a Jeb donor who has come to Trump. He said, this is it -- Brian Ballard, former Jeb Bush donor. He says, a repeal of the estate tax is the linchpin of the conservative movement.
REICH: Well, it`s the lynchpin of the donor class, the big, big corporate executives and the billionaires. They would like the so-called death tax. They come up with that word to spook everybody.
But actually, only the richest about two people out of 1,000, wealthy people ever see any tax with regard to estates that are left to heirs. But more importantly, this entire plan kind of reeks of the typical Republican methodology of making it sound as if it`s one thing but actually sneaking benefits -- I mean, the same thing, Chris, with regard to the so-called getting rid of loopholes like the carried interest loophole, because what he said is he`s not going to give all of these hedge fund managers and these private equity people the benefits that they got before. But with the other hand, he says, well, but I am going to reduce business taxes and you guys are going to obviously be one of the big beneficiaries of this.
So, just like the -- you know, just like the benefit for child care. It looks good on the surface until you actually look at the details and it`s a big giveaway to the rich once again.
HAYES: That point about the carries interest is funny because he`s going to get rid of the carried interest loophole by basically making it available to more people because everybody can declare it business income.
(CROSSTALK)
REICH: More rich people, more rich people. That`s the point.
JOHNSTON: He`s also going to lower the tax you would pay when your ultimately pay it from a little under 24 percent to 15 percent.
HAYES: Right.
JOHNSTON: So I`m going to get rid of this, but I`m going to give you a tax break that applies to a tiny handful of people and creates no jobs.
REICH: Here`s the really interesting thing. He continues to pose as the champion of the working class.
HAYES: That`s right.
REICH: I mean, that is -- that`s the most amazing hoax. I mean, how long can it continue to do that? He threw in some stuff on trade, and that supposedly makes him a populist, but all of his economic tax plans, everything else that goes with it, is basically a sop to the very, very rich.
HAYES: There`s something particularly almost comically preposterous about coming before Detroit and to say this town, this city, run by Democrats, a place in ruins and falling apart, what this place needs is an estate tax repeal. Like, literally if you were to make a list of 100,000 things you could do for Detroit, David, estate tax repeal would not be in them.
JOHNSTON: No, and Bob is exactly right. About 2 in 1,000 people who are subject to it. If you have good tax lawyers you can now move over a billion dollars because of these rules. But, you know, the reason I called Donald Trump the P.T. Barnum of our age, he keeps saying to people who are in economic terror, let`s be clear, the bottom half of Americans are living in economic terror. The bottom 90 percent, their income is the same as when you adjust for inflation as 1967, the year I finished high school.
And Donald is appealing to these people. The problem is what he would do will make it worse for them.
HAYES: And that, Robert, is sort of remarkable bait and switch here, is there is this kind of credibility he`s built up in certain circles as being this tribune of particularly white working class economic anxiety. And so to see him go before the Detroit Economic Club and basically give a Mitt Romney speech is really something else.
REICH: Well, it`s extraordinary. I mean, he did not once mention the bailout of GM. I mean, here he is in Detroit, and he doesn`t talk about probably the most important economic policy that affects Detroit and has affected Detroit corporations and Detroit workers.
HAYES: Robert Reich and David Cay Johnston -- thank you very much for that. Maybe we`ll get more -- you know, I was counting up the policy proposals right now. There are seven on the Trump campaign`s website. There`s 37 on Hillary Clinton`s. You got 30 to go. Maybe, we`ll get an opportunity to talk about everything from autism policy like Hillary Clinton has opioids.
Coming up, while the Never Trump movement is pinning their hopes on a guy you have probably never heard of who is just now launching his presidential campaign. I`ll explain just ahead.
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HAYES: If you`re one of the nearly 30 million Americans watching the Olympic gymnastics and swimming competitions last night, including Katie Ledecky`s absolutely bananas world record breaking gold medal which is incredible, and you should see if you haven`t, you`re likely to have seen this ad.
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CLINTON: I`m Hillary Clinton and I approve this message.
LETTERMAN: As a line of clothing. Where were these made?
TRUMP: These were made, I don`t know where they were made, but they were made someplace, but they`re great. Ties, shirts, cufflinks, everything, sold at Macy`s and they`re doing great.
LETTERMAN: Where are the shirts made?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bangladesh.
LETTERMAN: Bangladesh.
TRUMP: Well, it`s good. We employ people in Bangladesh.
LETTERMAN: Ties. Where are the ties made? These are beautiful ties.
TRUMP: They are great ties.
LETTERMAN: The ties are made in, where, China? They`re made in China.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That Clinton ad has been in heavy rotation in part of the $8 million the Clinton campaign spent on ads during the Olympics, just the Olympics, combined with the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, Team Clinton had $98 million of TV ads reserves between last week and election day, while the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America now had purchased less than $1 million. Trump campaign itself has yet to spend a single dollar in TV ads since locking up the nomination in May.
It`s possible the ad blitz is part of what`s been taking its tolls on Trump`s poll numbers. She has, of course, been pummeling him over the airwaves in the past seven weeks, an aspect of this race that has flown under the radar. But under the radar may be a key point of the Clinton playbook.
We`ll talk about this unique strategy coming up later in the show.
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DAVID FRENCH, THE NATIONAL REVIEW: The Never Trump movement is, you`re right, is flagging right now, but it would receive a massive steroid injection if Mitt Romney entered the race. That`s the key of the Mitt Romney choice. You give all of these people another option.
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HAYES: All right. That was the last never Trump flavor of the month, David French, who was possibly going to run, who didn`t, touting long-time Never Trump favorite Mitt Romney back in May.
The Republican plot to stop Trump has had many names associated with it over the past year, like former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who was briefly floated, along with Marine Corporal General James Mattis. There was the hard case being made for Nebraska Senator Ben Sass. Even reports at one point early on of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg getting in the race.
Of course, there was widespread talk surrounding House Speaker Paul Ryan, which reached such a fevered pitch, he had to go on television and explicitly take himself out of the running.
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REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I actually think you should run for president if you`re going to be president, if you want to be president. I`m not running for president. I made that decision consciously not to. I don`t see that happening. I`m not thinking about it. I`m happy where I am, so no.
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HAYES: And now, 91 days to go before the election, the Never Trumpers have once again maybe found their man. Forty-year-old Evan McMullin, he`s a former House Republican staffer. Before that, an undercover operations officer in the CIA, also a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, former associate of Goldman Sachs.
Today on a statement, McMullin declared his independent bid for the White House, issuing fairly boiler plate criticism of Hillary Clinton on the right and "Donald Trump appeals to the worst fears of Americans, many rightly see him as a threat to our republic. Given his personal instability, putting him in command of our military and nuclear arsenal would be deeply irresponsible."
Joining me now, Rick Wilson, senior adviser to Eric McMullin`s campaign.
Rick, good to have you in the studio.
RICK WILSON, ADVISER TO EVAN MCMULLIN: Evan, but.
HAYES: Sorry. See, that`s the problem.
So what`s the -- what`s the game here, right? Like there`s some level at which you guys, the folks who have been opposing Trump, who I admire in so far as these are people who have doing this entirely out of principle. They oppose the guy and they`re taking him on.
What`s the sort of tactical approach here?
WILSON: Look, there`s a desperate need in the country right now for a third option. You have two people that the American populous basically dislikes for different reasons. On one side, they view Hillary Clinton as untruthful and probably corrupt. On the other side, they view Donald Trump as an eccentric and strange guy with some mental instabilities that are more and more manifest every day.
So, you have got the choice between corrupt and crazy, and a lot of people are looking for a third option. And, yes...
HAYES: But that`s been true for months, right. I mean, the problem is you guy have got to get on ballots, right? You`ve got to like...
WILSON: Well, here`s the thing. We have got a very aggressive team of legal experts, ballot access experts, state political experts across the country. We`re going to have a wide ballot access in the course of this campaign. We`re going to be on a lot more ballots, including in states where the calendar has passed because there are mechanisms to access those ballots.
I`m not a ballot expert, but we have a bunch of guys who are -- if there are 20 experts in the country on it, they all work for us and they`re out there beating down the various legal barriers to work on this to get ballot access across the country.
HAYES: Now, Mr. McMullin seems like a perfectly accomplished individual at 40 years old. He has an impressive resume. I saw his TED Talk, which was super interesting. But at some level, he`s not running to be president of the United States. I mean, in some sort of fully realized sense.
WILSON: I disagree with that, Chris. I disagree with that, because this is a guy who at the age of 40, has served -- he served for 11 years as CIA officer. On 9/11, he was training at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley when those planes went into the towers and the Pentagon.
This is a guy who then volunteered to serve his country in North Africa, in the Middle East, and in South Asia in the most dangerous and difficult counterterrorism assignments that are available in this country. He volunteered for these positions. He`s a guy who went out and served his country boldly in the highest risk environments.
And this is the kind of person that`s a real contrast to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a guy who has always sought the spotlight and personal self aggrandizement. Evan has never sought the spotlight until this moment because he served his country and he chose to serve his country in a way that was selfless and at personal risk to his life and himself.
And it`s a moment where we can show Americans that there is something else out there in the public space. He`s not a career politician. He`s not an experienced media star. He`s not somebody who has been around the block on all the whys and wherefors of the political game for years and years, but he is somebody with a strong moral compass. He is somebody who is a center right conservative, who has great fundamental principals. And he`s going to work his tail off to become president of the United States.
HAYES: So one thing people talk about, a scenario of Utah. He is a Mormon. He went to BYU.
WILSON: He did.
HAYES: We know that -- how can I saythis? Mormons showed a certain sort of allergy to Donald Trump in the primaries.
WILSON: You mean because his values are repulsive to all right thinking people?
HAYES: Well, I mean, like there was even -- there was actually analysis of this where you correlated a county`s percentage of Mormon voters with Trump`s share of the vote. And it was inversely correlated.
WILSON; Well, you could also make that correlation with educated voters and voters across the country looking for...
HAYES: But do you think he could -- I mean, do you see like some sort of geographic targeting of Utah for him for a?
WILSON: Well, look, it is his home state. He`s going to work hard there. He`s going to open our campaign headquarters out in Salt Lake. And we have got tremendous support and tremendous friendships out there, relationships. But we`re going to be traveling this country. We`re going to be getting on the ballot across the country, and campaigning everywhere.
I mean, we think this message -- although he is a Mormon and although Mormons have had an adverse reaction to Donald Trump, to put it mildly, that`s not the centerpiece of this campaign. The centerpiece of this campaign. The centerpiece of this campaign is offering Americans a third way between the corrupt on the one size and the crazy on the other.
HAYES: I should note for folks that feel the way that you do, although I don`t necessarily endorse those characterizations, but for folks that do feel it, there are also Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on the libertarian ticket, there is Jill Stein and the Green Party. So, there are some other options as well.
Rick Wilson, thanks for joining us.
WILSON: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Appreciate it, man.
Still ahead, the red state in the deep south Hillary Clinton could turn blue. We`ll look at that ahead.
But first, Donald Trump`s selective hearing. What Hillary Clinton actually said versus what Trump is pretending she said after this break.
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HAYES: All right. Thing one tonight, there are ten seconds of a Hillary Clinton speech that the Trump campaign thinks exposes the Democratic nominee`s true intentions to raise your taxes. So I want you to hear it for yourself. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I`m telling you right now, we`re going to write fairer rules for the middle class and we aren`t going to raise taxes on the middle class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, what did it sound like to you when she said that? If you were in that room, what might your takeaway have been? Probably that she says she is not going -- aren`t going -- to raise taxes on the middle class. If she were, why would she excitedly announce that a rally? And why would everyone there cheer for that?
It`s actually part of a message she regularly hits in her stump speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I will repeat today what I have said throughout this campaign. I will not raise taxes on the middle class.
So I have made a pledge, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.
I will not raise taxes on the middle class.
I will not raise taxes on the middle class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, we don`t know if that will happen, but that`s what Clinton says. And the fact that Clinton has constantly made that pledge, did not stop the Trump campaign from spreading what amounts to really just a blatant lie. Last week, we showed you this web video sent out by the Trump campaign of that same speach, but with subtitles reading we are, when Hillary says we aren`t going to raise taxes on the middle class.
The Trump campaign also sent out a press release with that video titled, in case you missed it, saying in case you missed it, Hillary Clinton vows to raise taxes on the middle class.
It was a shameless bit of distortion. It was pretty quickly debunked. But that didn`t stop the and today, that didn`t stop the video from being posted all over social media. And today, it didn`t stop Donald Trump from taking it even further. And that`s thing two, in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: OK, so the Trump campaign claims Hillary Clinton is vowing to raise taxes on the middle class. And they are doing it with a deliberate misinterpretation of this part of her speech last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I`m telling you right now, we`re going to write fairer rules for the middle class and we aren`t going to raise taxes on the middle class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: While the `nt gets a little lost in there, she clearly says we aren`t going to raise taxes, as she says, at nearly every one of her stump speeches. The website PolitiFact even did a phonological analysis of the clip, which of course, showed she was saying aren`t.
But with some incorrect subtitles and the power of suggestion, that turns into this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I`m telling you right now, we`re going to write fairer rules for the Middle Class and we aren`t going to raise taxes on the middle class.
And we aren`t going to raise taxes on the middle class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All right, so even though Clinton is contantly saying she will not raise taxes on the middle class. And that video, which the Trump campaign sent around has been condemned as false, the campaign and its surrogates think it`s a great message to run with.
Take former New York City Mayor and current Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FRM. NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Did she short circuit when she said she`s going to raise taxes on the middle class? Well, first of all, she is going to raise taxes on the middle class. I actually think that`s the only truthful thing she said in about three weeks.
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HAYES: And today, in Donald Trump`s big economic policy speech, he decided to make the case himself.
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TRUMP: Recently at a campaign event, Hillary Clinton short-circuited -- you know this, you have heard this one -- Hillary Clinton short-circuited again to use a now famous term, when she accidentally told the truth and said that she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.
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HAYEDS: So for the record, this is not a story of Clinton accidentally short circuiting or accidentally telling the truth. It`s one of Donald Trump deliberately telling a lie. And all you need is a pair of working ears to tell the difference.
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TRUMP: Oh, we love Georgia. We had a big, big victory in Georgia just a little while ago. We`re going to have another one. Thank you very much, everybody.
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HAYES: All right, a surprising new poll released today shows Hillary Clinton up, get this, seven points over Donald Trump in a four-way poll in Georgia. This, right after a poll was released on Friday, that by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the big paper down there, that showed a four- point difference between the two in a head-to-head contest with Hillary Clinton coming out on top.
It also shows Clinton beating Trump among independents, a block that typically votes Republican in Georgia.
Now, a Democrat hasn`t won Georgia since 1992. Barack Obama failed to win it. And it was won last time by Bill Clinton when he beat President George H.W. Bush.
Mitt Romney won that state by seven points in 2012. But if you have been watching our show, the latest polling numbers shouldn`t come as too much of a surprise.
Two years ago, I traveled to Georgia to take a look at what we call the Georgia map, the factors that could turn that red state blue.
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HAYES: It`s a simple matter of arithmetic. Ben Jealous, former president of the NAACP, walked me through the math.
BEN JEALOUS, FRM. PRESIDENT NAACP: There are 600,000 unregistered black people in the state and 230,000 unregistered Asians and Latinos on top of that. And if we could just sign up 750,000 of them, it would be almost impossible for the Republicans to win again.
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HAYES: Now, the question remains, can the Clinton campaign and other allied forces push the state over the final hump?
Joining me now again, Ben Jealous, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and MSNBC political analyst. We should say he`s a former Bernie Sanders surrogate who has since endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
And Ben what do you make of the polling coming out of Georgia?
HAYES: Look, you know, what it shows you is that Donald Trump is dealing a death blow to black support for the GOP. I mean, even David Duke is polling higher than Donald Trump with blacks in his state right now. And so this gives us a real opportunity to make the future come faster for Georgia.
HAYES: Yeah, so there`s three prongs here, right? There`s the fact that Trump`s numbers among black voters nationally are terrible to the point of, you know, 1 percent support. So you have an even bigger margin than normal. You have got a changing demographics of the state, which is getting more black and brown over time, and you have got big defections by essentially women, white Republican women in the suburbs.
JEALOUS: Right.
And so what that all says is that the trends we have already seen in Georgia are, you know, frankly are starting to move faster. People are coming to this place where you have people of color and white women really defining the future of the state. And for each of these races, what this is going to come down to is turnout.
You`re going to see the GOP try to push towards voter suppression, and you`ll see the Dems start to run ads in the state, but this will really be won by those who, by which party decides to invest in turnout the most, the biggest.
And this is quite frankly why what the new Georgia project -- this is why what the new Georgia project is doing is so important, because they have gone out there and signed up 70,000 folks all by themselves.
HAYES: Wow.
JEALOUS: Now, if -- you know, now, if the Dems would just decide, hey, we spent enough on television, let`s go invest it in signing up new voters. Let`s go invest it in taking back this state, this looks like the year we could actually do it.
HAYES: Yeah, this point used to be talked out, 600,000 unregistered I think it was black and brown voters when we talked two years ago. You know, there was a sort of mini version of this back in 2014, but you know, essentially the tide was too high and it`s so hard pushing that rock up the hill in midterms.
If you`re going to do it, if you`re going to see a state sort of move from one category to the next, given the way that turnout works now, it`s probably going to be in a presidential year.
JEALOUS: Right.
Well, and quite frankly, with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. What he`s proving is that kind of 6 percent, 8 percent, 10 percent of black voters who tended to vote for the GOP actually are really important to them holding on to keep that state.
HAYES: That`s fascinating.
You never think of that margin as actually keeping anyone in power.
JEALOUS: No, that`s exactly right. And yet, that`s really the history of the struggle in the deep south, right, is that these folks who people want to say don`t matter, like blacks in the GOP in the 21st Century actually do. And I guess that`s why David Duke talks to them, but Donald Trump has decided not to. He`s decided to really convince people, I guess, maybe some people feel comfortable with David Duke because he`s like the past of the KKK, but apparently we have decided that Trump is the future of the KKK. So, we won`t even give him the support that a few of us have been willing to give David Duke.
HAYES: Ben Jealous, thanks for your time tonight. Appreciate it.
JEALOUS: Still to come, why Hillary Clinton`s campaign is happy to leave the headlines of Donald Trump, the Clinton campaign strategy after this break.
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CLINTON: So we`re going to fight for these next 90 days, because the election is three months from today.
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HAYES: Well, Clinton was the campaign trail in Florida today. That`s a sentence you`ll probably hear me say a lot over the next three months. One can begin to piece together Clinton`s campaign strategy by just looking at the states and counties she`s been recently targeting. Beginning in Miami, Florida, where the Clinton-Kaine ticket officially launched last month, that event was followed by the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where they kicked off a three day bus tour before heading west visiting the cities of Hatfield, Harrisburg, Jonestown and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio.
Last week, Clinton held a rally in Omaha, Nebraska, to tout the endorsement of local boy made good, billionaire investor Warren Buffet, but also to make a play for a single electoral vote handed out to Nebraska`s second congressional district, a more moderate section of a reliably Red State, then came stops in Colorado and Nevada, but today Clinton back in Florida, first visiting the city of St. Petersburg in Pinellas County, a swing county that President Obama carried in each of his elections. George W. Bush narrowly won the county in 2004.
She just wrapped up another rally in Kissimmee, Florida. And tomorrow, she heads once again to Miami where she is expected to visit discuss the threat of the Zika virus. In a head-to-head matchup against Trump, Clinton is up by six percentage points in Florida.
And as Clinton camp pulls back ad dollars from states like Virginia and Colorado, which had seen recent polling show her up 15 points in states like New Hampshire will we see Clinton continue to put her focus on states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio?
Joining me now, journalist Soledad O`Brien, CEO of Starfish Media Group, and Yamiche Alcindor, national reporter for the New York Times. Welcome to you both.
And so there`s the geographic element of the strategy, right, which is like basically when you take all the stuff off the table, he has got to sweep Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And so -- and the more...
SOLEDAD O`BRIEN, STARFISH MEDIA GROUP: Three months -- when you startedwith that, three months to go before the election. So, yeah, she`s sprinting and she has to sprint, because she`s at a time where I think you`re exactly, she`s focusing on these states that really could be in play for her.
HAYES: And you`ve also got the strategy -- I mean, people keep saying to me, like, what`s Hillary Clinton doing since the convention? And it`s not like she`s not doing things, like she is doing things. Every day, there`s lots of events.
They just seem pretty content to hand over the headline or the A-block of the cable news program.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, NEW YORK TIMES: I think what they`re trying to do is say, look, if Donald Trump is going to implode in some way and people -- and he`s going to be doing things that are grabbing headlines, and they kind of want to that let that play out.
But I should also say that I think Hillary Clinton is double downing on her constituents. She is going to this place, this grassroots community center that she is going to is run by -- is a grassroots community was started by local Puerto Ricans. So she`s going to these places like Detroit, even though she`s going to be giving this economic speech. It`s a place that she`s visited very much. She went to Flint. She made that a big political part of her campaign.
So, I think she`s really trying to not only say, hey, Donald Trump, I`m going to let you have whatever it is that you`re doing in the media. She`s also saying while I`m at it, I`m going to remind people that they should turn out and that we should not get comfortable with the numbers.
O`BRIEN: And I`m going to make sure that I appeal to Puerto Ricans, because they`re going to be wildly important in the state of Florida. I`m going to make sure that I`m going back to my constituents whether it is the black and Latino journalists at the conventions, or it is Latinos in general. I mean, I think that that`s -- African-Americans. So, I think she`s consistently trying to stay there.
And also, like, why be part of the crazy?
HAYES: Right.
O`BRIEN: Clearly, you just stay -- when someone is being crazy, I think it`s not a terrible strategy to stay out of it. And I noticed when the whole Melania Trump at the RNC happened, right, people were saying what`s Hillary going to say about it?
HAYES: Nothing.
O`BRIEN; Not a thing.
HAYES: Of course you say nothing. Exactly right.
O`BRIEN; But you say, of course that`s true. That`s not actually an of course.
HAYES: Right, that`s true. That`s true. That`s a debate, right? Are we going to say something about this?
O`BRIEN; That was the beginning of keep your mouth shut and play a game that`s a very straightforward game. And don`t have any unforced errors.
HAYES: Can I think if she does engage Donald Trump, it`s going to be on kind of showing a rebuttal to his speech today. She`s probably going to be -- they`re probably going over that speech line by line and saying, look, Donald Trump says this, I`m going to say this. Because at the end of the day she did lose Michigan to Bernie Sanders.
So, there`s this idea that his argument about trade and creating jobs through infrastructure could actually kind of resonate with some people there.
ALCINDO: Yeah, that`s what`s been strange about this map, right. So, he`s sort of -- well, right now he`s underperforming everywhere, but when he wasn`t so bad, he was overperforming among sort of -- you know, in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio and underperforming in places like Georgia and Arizona, which is all about the racial demographic composition of those electorates.
O`BRIEN: Right, you were talking about that. Georgia is going to be a majority minority state in what is it 2025, 2023 or something like that? The demographics of America -- I`ve been saying this now for -- the demographics of America have been shifting, and they`re at that point where it is actually going to play a role in all of these things.
One, a lot of people are freaked out about it. I think a lot of the unhappy, unpleasant undercurrent in this election is about shifting demographics that are scaring the crap out of some people, but also at the same time you`re seeing real potential opportunities for those who can appeal to these certain constituency groups.
HAYES: And what you said about sort of touching home base, like the Zika - - the Miami community center is like the ultimate Hillary Clinton campaign event -- it`s very specifically focused on like a policy thing. It`s not a big set piece. It`s going to a community center.
O`RIEN; Not a lot of risk.
HAYES: No. Exactly, not a lot of risk. Not a lot -- right.
ALCINDOR: And there`s that and this idea that when we talk about shifting states, when we go back to that point of doubling down on your base and when we talk about switching Georgia, we`re talking about -- they`re going to be reaching out to over 1 million black voters, infrequent voters. They`re not talking about -- I interviewed them and interviewed the people that are heading up this strategies in Georgia. And they say we are note even worried about registration, we`re worried about people who are already registered who don`t vote frequently and kind of asking them to mobilize and go out and vote.
So, really, to me that was very interesting, because they`re saying if they can get black turnout up by nine percentage points, then they feel like they can switch that state. So, I think when we talk about switching states, a lot of times people don`t understand what that means in terms of like going in. But a lot of these states are really going in and getting black and brown voters to turn out in higher numbers.
O`BRIEN: An interesting thing, a corollary if I can, it`s hard to push people and engage them in turn out when you play the nice, quiet, safe let`s talk Zika in Miami.
HAYES: Right, right. That`s a great -- those two strategies are intentioned is what you`re saying.
O`BRIEN: Right. And I think that might be problematic, right? So, of course, on the Republican side you`ll be interested to see how many people run to the polls as an against vote. But it is very hard to feel like did you hear that speech about Zika today in Miami?
HAYES: Right. Like the more sort of like small board granular, keep your head down where you are.
ALCINDOR: But part of -- but I should say as someone who again covered Bernie Sanders, part of the Clinton machine is stuff that you don`t see. It`s the fact that they`re going out door to door.
HAYES: In Nevada, for instance.
ALCINDOR: They`re getting your aunt to call you. They`re getting -- like the way they`re doing Georgia, they`re going out to these local events and they`re sending out all types of -- thousands of voter registration workers and they`re going out.
So, it is not going to make big headlines that someone showed up to the annual cookout for your church, but that`s the way you get people to turn out.
HAYES: Interesting. Soledad O`Brien and Yamiche Alcindor, thank you both for joining me.
All right, 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