Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: July 28, 2017 Guest: McKay Coppins, Olivia Nuzzi, Norman Ornstein, David Jolly, Lee Zeldin
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly people around him, maybe even President Trump, could end up happy to answer questions for the lawyer -- for the protester`s lawyers. So it`s not -- it`s not like a harmless thing.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Not no, not why. Thank you very much, Kurtis Lee, Jonathan Swan, Francesca Chambers, Sahil Kapoor, Ken Vogel, Ali Velshi, Erica Martinson and Michael Steele, a super panel. Thank you all for sticking around. That`s HARDBALL for now, thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN. ObamaCare is alive and the White House is in chaos.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Get over here Reince.
HAYES: Just hours after President Trump`s greatest failure to date, his Chief of Staff is out.
TRUMP: Reince is a superstar.
HAYES: And replaced with a general.
TRUMP: John Kelly, one of our real stars.
HAYES: Tonight a new low for the Trump Presidency after last night`s victory for the resistance. Where the White House goes from here?
TRUMP: They should have approved health care last night but you can`t have everything.
HAYES: And how Collins, Murkowski and John McCain may have saved ObamaCare.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: This is you know, clearly a disappointing moment.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. Reince Priebus is out, Anthony Scaramucci has ascended and the Trump administration is reeling after one of the most dramatic votes in recent Senate history brought an end, at least for now, to the GOP`s seven-year effort to repeal ObamaCare. We`ll revisit that historic moment shortly but first today`s big news. President Trump announcing he is replacing his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.
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TRUMP: Reince is a good man, John Kelly will do a fantastic job. General Kelly has been a star, done an incredible job thus far, respected by everybody, a great, great American. Reince Priebus, a good man. Thank you very much.
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HAYES: General John Kelly leaves his post as Homeland Security Secretary where he oversaw the Trump administration`s draconian crackdown on immigration. He will now occupy the most powerful staff position in the White House. There`s no replacement as of yet for that Homeland Security Post. The President first announced the news on Twitter where he offered kind words on Priebus, "I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to this country. We accomplish a lot together and I`m proud of him." A source close to Priebus tells NBC News he resigned last night, making his tenure 190 days, the shortest for any non-interim Chief of Staff in the history of the White House.
The move coming out for months of reports the President was considering firing Priebus in less than 48 hours after the new White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci, directed the FBI to investigate Priebus for leaking a Scaramucci financial disclosure form that was, in fact, a publicly available form. Scaramucci also, of course, went on that profanity list tirade against Priebus in an interview published yesterday on New Yorker, describing Priebus as "f`ing paranoid schizophrenic." Wall Street Journal Reports tonight the President was "dismissive of Mr. Priebus for not returning fire." Given the choice between the two men, President Trump chose Scaramucci. Tonight, Reince wants everyone to know, there`s no hard feelings.
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REINCE PRIEBUS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: This is not like a situation where there`s a bunch of ill will feelings. This is I think good for the President. I think it`s smart for him to pick General Kelly. I`m always going to be a Trump fan. I`m on team Trump. He has the best political instincts.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: But --
PRIEBUS: Hang on a second. He knows I think, intuitively, when things need to change. I`ve seen it now for a year and a half on this wild ride with the President that I love being a part of. But he intuitively determined that it was time to do something differently. And I think he`s right.
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HAYES: Joining me now, Olivia Nuzzi whose Washington Correspondent for New York Magazine, and McKay Coppins, Staff Writer at the Atlantic. Olivia, you wrote earlier that basically, everyone inside and outside the White House had come to dislike Reince Priebus. Why is that?
OLIVIA NUZZI, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, I didn`t say everyone, but there are certainly people within the White House who have not liked him, who disliked him for a long time, who disliked Republican National Committee figures more broadly, who are anti- establishment types. And I think partly it`s said you know, with Donald Trump, he is never going to look inward to blame himself for anything that goes wrong. And so, he`s likely to point the finger at somebody else. And that somebody else happened to be Reince Priebus. We just had this huge event last night with health care which was an embarrassment I think for this administration and yet another failure legislatively.
And I think probably that was the last draw when it comes to Reince Priebus. I think the timeline is a little mixed up. Everyone sort of reporting different things about when exactly this became the plan but it seems pretty clear that it -- there was a lot of buildup. And from the very beginning of this administration, people were fighting with Reince Priebus. Remember early on, there were a lot of reports about Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus getting along and not being able to work together. And they actually came out on the record in New York Magazine to talk to me and pretend like they were best friends and they told me that --
HAYES: I`m glad you said pretend because I was going to interject that if you didn`t.
NUZZI: It was -- They told me that they -- when I got them -- you know, at the beginning of the interview, they told me that they just had finished giving each other back massages and that they would falsely texting each. They did this whole performative sort of two men show to me and to other reporters as well. I believe they also did this with the Washington Post. The massage thing was pretty special, I felt that. You know, there has been a lot of conflict and -- with Reince Priebus.
HAYES: That sort of -- that look, what you`re saying there, part of the core, McKay, I mean, there`s a bunch of things going on here. To Olivia`s point, I mean, look, actually firing your Chief of Staff after one of the most sort of shocking and indeed humiliating legislative defeats I`ve sort of ever seen, which is last night`s Senate vote, that`s not (INAUDIBLE) in certain ways. I mean, what happened last night was really bad. It would be bad in any White House, but what`s striking to me is just the humiliation factor which you know, from early on McKay, you said that Trump has around him a cast mini-Trumps and the Trump organization functions where everyone is trying to sort of out-Trump each other and in comes Anthony Scaramucci who just seems to take that past any possible imagining.
MCKAY COPPINS, THE ATLANTIC STAFF WRITER: Yes, exactly. Scaramucci is the best Donald Trump impersonator in the world. He`s better than Alec Baldwin, he`s better than anyone. I mean, he -- the reason that I think that he probably has a bright future in Trumpland at least for the perceivable future is because he has figured it out how to channel Donald Trump. He flatters him, he`s slavishly loyal to him, but he`s also like him. When Trump says that he surrounds himself with the best people, he means people like himself. Reince Priebus was never like Donald Trump. I mean, he was-he was added to this White House and given a prominent perch largely as a concession to the Republican establishment and to the Republican Congress in an attempt to use him to kind of push through legislation and bridge the two worlds, the Trumpworld the rest of the Washington Republicans. You know, and you`re right.
Look, Reince Priebus was the one, or one of the people who told Donald Trump that he should go for health care first and spend all of his political capital and all of his time coming into the White House on health care and it didn`t work. So he wasn`t necessarily wrong to fire Reince. My question though looking forward is, is this new Chief of Staff somebody who by the way doesn`t know a lot of Republicans in Congress, doesn`t know a lot of the Republican establishment. Is he going to make things better? Is he going to somehow advance the Republican legislative agenda that Trump wants to advance? I don`t know. It is not at all clear to me that this is going to fix our problem.
HAYES: Well, the question of what he wants to advance itself is a little odd right? I mean, so Olivia, you`ve got a situation out of McKay`s point. Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus were both connections to the institutional RNC. The sort of actual institutional Republican party, an organization to which he has a very strained, complicated strange alien relationship. He basically conquered that entity. He is the most important Republican in the country and yet the party itself and its agenda is a bit at odds length from him. So, one question is, does this signal -- and I`m talking about John Harwood my colleague reporting that one analyzing that he`s going to turn against essentially Ryanism, right? That he came and there`s a big question about, is this President going to take a new tact domestically and try to wedge the Democrats in infrastructure? And he went down the line with sort of GOP agenda. Does that change having gotten rid of Reince and Sean Spicer?
NUZZI: I mean, possibly. Certainly, they have fewer links -- fewer solid relationships to establishment republicans now. But Donald Trump we have to remember, he doesn`t have an ideology. His ideology is Donald Trump. And so I think, he is very much influenced by the people who he surrounds himself with. And you know, it`s interesting obviously people who are sharing a lot of Anthony Scaramucci`s older tweets on Friday and over the weekend after he was hired. This is someone who`s also been sort of all over the political map.
And so, it`s going to be interesting to see you know, how Kelly and how Scaramucci and how anyone else that he brings in, influences what`s they choose to focus on policy wise because you know, so far it has been pretty much the status quo in terms of things that Republicans are interested in and what they believe establishment wise. But going forward, if none of them were around, I think you know, it`s whoever -- there`s a saying about Trump is that the last person to talk to him is the one who wields the most influence and I think that will probably turn out to be true in this instance.
HAYES: There`s also this just the spectacle of this ritual humiliation which has become the theme. It was a theme from the very first debate. This is something that I think the President has -- he`s got a genuine talent for attempting to humiliate people. He has a genuine talent for sort of bringing out the worst in people. Those are -- those are things that he is sort of indisputably excellent at doing. And to have you know, to have Priebus sort of publicly (INAUDIBLE), the detail McKay that of the Wall Street Journal that he-that he-we know from the reporting, he likes watching his aides fight each other, he gets a kick out of that. It`s amusing to him. He sort of likes to sort of cultivate that atmosphere and that he looked askance at Priebus for not firing back at Scaramucci. And that was in some sense as the final straw. Does that ring true to you?
COPPINS: Absolutely. So many people who have worked for Trump or sort of Trump and in his orbit have told me that Trump gleefully and deliberately fosters an atmosphere that one person describes to me as like the Hunger Games. He wants his aides to bludgeon each to death to prove their supremacy and to win Trump`s affection. He enjoys that. He thinks -- he does believe that it brings out the best outcome because he thinks that the best person will eventually win. But I mean, I also think we have to --it just takes stock of the fact that Donald Trump, the day that the major republican legislative initiative was on the verge of either passing or imploding, Donald Trump was gleefully aching on a public knife fight between two of his top aides. That`s how it spend that --
NUZZI: I don`t think that it`s just that you know, he`s trying to figure out who`s the best and who will come out on top. I think it`s also that Donald Trump is easily bored and he --
HAYES: That`s a great -- no that is a great point and I genuinely revelatory --
NUZZI: It`s true. He --
HAYE: -- about how this country is functioning right now.
NUZZI: Thank you.
HAYES: No, I`m serious. That is --
NUZZI: He is easily bored. And he likes to preside over chaos. He is entertained by it. And when people stop entertaining him I think with their -- with their fights, then he moves on to the next one. And I think that we can really assess a lot of what`s going on in this White House with all of this so called palace intrigue by looking at it like that. It is sort of the apprentice west wing edition.
HAYES: Yes. To McKay`s point too, just Alex Burns from the New York Times had a very funny line last night where he said, well I guess the President is closing message on healthcare, that he`s mad at his Attorney General just couldn`t get over the top. Which is -- I mean, it is so true that it was -- I`ve never seen anything like it, the entirety of the healthcare process which is essentially pulled off like a heist where Mitch McConnell is trying to sort of sneak into the bank and crack the vault and get healthcare out before anyone could catch them.
And while they were doing that, as opposed to sort of publicly presenting the plan or saying affirmatively why it was good, the President had no obvious interest in, nor understanding of what was happening at a policy level, was both picking a fight with his Attorney General who he clearly wants to fire so he can (INAUDIBLE) the investigation into his associates and perhaps to himself. And also, as McKay said, egging on a knife fight, a profane knife fight between two aides. I mean, this is what he was doing in the most monumental day in the fate of the domestic policy agenda of the party of which he was the teacher or head.
NUZZI: Yes, I mean, think about it. He`s stuck in the White House right now sort of walking around in unfamiliar surroundings. He is someone who likes familiar surroundings. He likes to feel at home. He went home a lot during the campaign. He would fly home at odd hours just to sleep in his own bed. He`s in this strange place, in this strange city that is not his own, to which he`s not native. He probably misses New York, I`m speculating but that seems likely. And I think you know, he is just looking for ways to keep himself occupied. It`s not going base his policy certainly.
I mean, he didn`t -- people reported that he didn`t know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. So certainly he`s looking for other outlet for kind of how MC he must be. And he can`t -- he cannot act the same -- exactly the same way as he did on the campaign. I`m sure he has a lot more people telling him now that he has to act Presidential. And even though he does just say crazy things on Twitter, he will attack morning show hosts say for plastic surgery or other things. I think he`s still -- you know he`s not quite at the level of campaign Donald Trump in that respect and I think it`s probably making him look for other areas where he can be entertained.
HAYES: There`s also the fact that we have never -- we have not had thankfully, any major crises that this White House had to negotiated but one always goes to think about what will happen when that happens. Olivia Nuzzi, McKay Coppins, thank you, both for your time tonight.
COPPINS: Thank you.
NUZZI: Thank you.
HAYES: I`m joined now by Norman Ornstein Contributing Editor for the Atlantic and co-author for the forthcoming book One Nation After Trump, A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported and with me also former Republican Congressman David Jolly. And Norm, as someone who`s been writing about the structural nature of the Republican Party as an entity in American politics for several decades now, and about how unique it is and the sort of nature in which it sort of gone off the rails. Do you think there`s a connection between the kind of chaos and dysfunction that we`ve seen legislatively from the Senate that culminated last night and what we are seeing from Donald Trump in the White House?
NORMAN ORNSTEIN, THE ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: I`m sure there is. And while a lot of it preceded Trump and in many ways provided the ground work for Trump to emerge. This attack on government and on everybody in government that`s been going on at least since Newt Gingrich came to Washington. I think there`s little doubt that the dysfunction in Congress, that fact that you have a Republican Party that is not really focusing on solving problems but on trying to manage its way through with a large group of radicals and no moderates to speak of anymore, this is all connected.
And you know, I keep coming back to the term kakistocracy resurrected now, government by the least confident among us. And the more Congress is unable to do anything, both Ryan and McConnell failing at passing things on to Trump and what they hoped was simply that they would have a President who would just sign anything put in front of them. If they can`t put anything in front, they`re going to be under attack and Trump is going to go after them as well.
HAYES: You know, it occurred to me David, last night -- yesterday as I was watching the health care debate unfold which I found remarkable for a number of reasons. But the most remarkable thing and in some ways the most revelatory was that it came down to a moment in which a bunch of Republican Senators said the bill before us is a disaster and a fraud, I`m quoting directly. We`re going to vote for it as long as you promise the bill we`re voting for doesn`t become law. And I thought to myself, you know what that is? They miss Barack Obama. Because what they all miss, they all miss voting for stuff the President co-veto. They miss essentially playing legislator as opposed to actually being one and this is them attempting to kind of role play their way back in time where they can pass things that won`t become law. But that`s not how it works anymore and you saw last night, they`re not ready to actually legislate.
DAVID JOLLY, FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: Look, last night was a humiliating historical moment for Republicans and that press conference was just bizarre. Equally as bizarre was the President then going to Twitter saying, yes, please, I agree. Pass something that you actually don`t want to be enacted into law. We woke up this morning a deeply divided party. Understand for seven years, Republicans have promised this. This is a deeply divided party members of Congress are going to hear it from their conservative base. But to Norm`s point and yours as well Chris, we have been divided in different variations now for easily a decade.
And at one point, it was tea party versus establishment, now it`s kind of Trump world versus tea party and there is no place for Senate right if you want to call them establishment or not. There is no place for Center Right Republicans anymore in this current party. Frankly what we saw last night was the inability of this President, a Republican President, to lead the Party and lead to Nation on one the of most critical issues we face and one he had promised to reform on day one.
HAYES: But I want to press on the nature of that failure because the nature of that failure to me is all interconnected. The only reason the way that Donald Trump can win in a Republican primary was if enough voters didn`t care about policy mastery. And I remember watching -- I would watch debates where he be up there with governors. And these are governors who my own politics and world view are quite different than say Scott Walker for instance. And you would watch them, there would be parts of where there`s a debate of Planned Parenthood defunding. And every one of those governors could tell you with tremendous granular detail the ins and outs of how they went about say defunding Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump could not do that. But the voters chose someone who didn`t have that. And so it all seems to me to kind of come back around. Last night was the product of the choices that are being made by a base that don`t really seem to care in some deep sense about governing. Do you agree Norm?
ORNSTEIN: Absolutely I agree. And I think what you had was a Republican Party and it goes back certainly in this case to when Obama became President using for midterm victories in 2010 and 2014 a set of themes that it`s all corrupt, it`s all awful, it can`t get any worse than this. Trump comes along and says, what the hell have you got to lose? We`ll blow things up. And you had a lot of voters who said go ahead and do that. And you have a group of people in Congress who were not prepared to make a pivot with policy ideas that they had along with the President unlike anyone we`ve ever had who has zero knowledge of policy and no interest in developing any knowledge.
HAYES: Quickly, David. There`s some talk that the President is now going to pivot against the GOP Congress and essentially run against them. Do you think that`s likely?
JOLLY: Absolutely because look, your conservative base is going to blame Ryan and McConnell as being rhinos. The purge you`re seeing in the White House, Priebus and Spicer, the other establishment Republicans, this president`s only path forward is to go back to what he knows which is to surround himself by those who believe in Trump as the person, not as Trump as the Leader of the Party.
HAYES: All right. Norm Ornstein, David Jolly, thank you, both for joining me.
JOLLY: Thank you.
HAYES: We`ll have much more on today`s White House shake-up capping off a disastrous, unbelievable week really to the Trump administration, next.
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TRUMP: They should have approved healthcare last night but we can`t have everything. Boy oh boy. We`ve been working on that one for seven years. Can you believe that? The swamp but we`ll get it done. We`re going to get it done. You know, I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let ObamaCare implode.
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HAYES: Just before his Chief of Staff resigned today, President Trump spoke today in Long Island, that was just hours after Senate Republicans failed to pass even the skinny repeal, as they called it, of ObamaCare. Now, the President`s speech today before members of law enforcement centered on lurid depictions of terrifying violence as he often falls back on. The President also praised his Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly who just hours later, he announced as his new chief of staff. Joining me now, Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin of the first district of New York who traveled with the President today. And I believe that`s -- you`re in territory that`s adjoining your district today so you have this sort of hometown crowd today. The President once referred to the White House as a smoothly running machine. Would you say that`s the case?
REP. LEE ZELDIN (R), NEW YORK: Well, hopefully by putting an experienced General, it can become one. But I would say right now, they`re in a transition where, you know, hopefully identifying strengths and weaknesses of those who are there and possibly additional changes, they can get to the point where they are smooth running machine but I don`t know if they`re there at this moment.
HAYES: It seems that from people around the President, he blames Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus and I think probably blames people like and you and other folks in Congress for the failure of healthcare, It`s not his fault. He always says they which I think is interesting. They`ve been trying to do it for seven years. He hasn`t been doing it. Do you think it is Reince Priebus` and Paul Ryan`s and your fault?
ZELDIN: Well, I mean, I`ve spoke to the President about this today. I mean, he tweeted as well about you know, where he puts the blame of three Republicans and 48 Democrats in his opinion. And you know, I had a conversation days ago with a Senator and I asked, you have three or more moderate Senators in your conference who just won`t vote for any repeal no matter what it looks like, and that senator said yes. So I wasn`t terribly surprised by what happened earlier this morning. I was told yesterday that it was going to go a little bit different when Senator McCain changed this vote after that. But on the House side --
HAYES: So you thought -- wait a minute, that`s interesting. So you were told yesterday they had the votes.
ZELDIN: I was under the impression that they had the votes. You know, not -- I didn`t -- I didn`t think it was going to be much more than a 51, you know, a tiebreaking vote by the Vice President. But I wasn`t expecting it to go down by one. And you know, this -- whether you`re a Conservative Republican Senator like Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or a moderate Senator like Cassidy, Shelley Moore Capito, Dean Heller, they were trying to move the process along. But you know, his obviously wasn`t what I think the large majority of Congressional Republicans wanted to see get done as the final product. Because I mean, just -- it wasn`t the final product.
HAYES: You were at this event today, and I want to play you something the President said that`s gotten some attention. The President talking about - - he`s talking in front of uniform police officers, talking about how police officers treat suspects who of course have now been convicted of a crime and presumed to be innocent under the constitution, here`s what he had to say.
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TRUMP: When you see the thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in rough. I said please don`t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you`re protecting their head, you know. The way you put their hand like, don`t hit their head and they just killed somebody, don`t hit the head. I said you can take hand away, OK.
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HAYES: Do you support the President`s call for police brutality?
ZELDIN: No. I would say that the President is coming the area where we have people who, I have my own constituents, the high profile murder of four by MS-13 that brought AG Sessions here few months ago, two of my constituents, two were in Congressman King`s district. They were murdered by machetes. The nature of what we are going through right now is tearing apart families it`s ripping our communities.
HAYES: Those crimes are indisputably horrible and anyone who sees them will be. The question is, is it OK, even the context of that to instruct police officers to engage in illegal criminal activity which is assault or police brutality?
ZELDIN: Right. So you know, just finishing the thought, to you know, to answer that question is while it is deeply emotional, what`s going on, it`s very important for our law enforcement to be following their rules, the laws because people are innocent until proven guilty. We have a process here in our country to ensure that people have a hearing, right to counsel. What`s interesting though, is when dealing with Ms-13, you know, we have people who are illegal on many different fronts and that whole issue you know, is highly charged. But it is the best practice of all of our law enforcement to be following the local rules and regulations and understanding people are innocent until proven guilty.
HAYES: This is -- this is what the Suffolk County PD said, "has strict rules & procedures relating to the handling of prisoners. Violations of those rules are treated extremely seriously." Was it appropriate for the President to say that?
ZELDIN: No. I mean, I definitely have a different style than the President. I mean --
HAYES: But was it appropriate to tell police officers to engage in brutality?
ZELDIN: No. I don`t -- I can`t agree with that.
HAYES: Was it appropriate for the police officers on stage to applaud?
ZELDIN: You know, I didn`t know I was going to be here to referee this one sentence of the speech. I mean, there was -- they got into a whole lot of really important issues.
HAYES: But Congressman, you could understand. You know who Freddy Gray is, right?
ZELDIN: Sure.
HAYES: OK. His spine was snapped and he died in the back of a police van possibly because he was treated roughly in there and you can understand how, say, his family members were to see this speech where the President of the United States making a joke about treating prisoners roughly and seeing police officers applaud, you can understand how that would really be hurtful to those people, right?
ZELDIN: Sure. I would also say that you know, there are whole lot of people who watched this speech who live in my area who are very pleased that the President is taking the aggressive approach that he is on combatting Ms-13 because they lost their son as a result of an attack with a machete. So --
HAYES: But the question -- the key point here is there`s a question between one and the other, right? Because I think what seems important as someone who is a lawmaker or someone who is a President and enforcing the law, is to understand that the engaging in protecting people from MS-13, and prosecuting crimes, right, does not necessitate the police engaging in extra judicial violence. That seems like an important line to establish that one doesn`t have anything to do with the other because we`re a nation of laws and we pursue people like MS-13 lawfully.
ZELDIN: And -- I mean, you know, it`s one of those particular questions where you know, it`s kind of impossible to, you know, to be -- can play devil`s advocate and again, law enforcement has to follow their local regulations. They have to follow their laws and people are innocent until proven guilty. You know, I would say that there`s -- you know, there`s an emotion that is felt when it is a --
HAYES: I respect that.
ZELDIN: When there is a killer who -- you know, just murdered someone with a machete that you know, we`re going -- they`re not in this country legally and that goes on and we`re worried about you know, making sure that they, you know, they don`t bang their head.
But one of the reasons why you set those standards is that you don`t want anyone to take matters into their own hands and then you have an issue that becomes more complicated. So, I get it. And it is impossible to argue the other side of it. And if I was up there, I wouldn`t have said it.
But there was so much more to the speech and also so much more to the back story of what we`re going through here and something police sent out their tweet afterwards to reiterate what their policy is. And I`m sure that their people are going to get the message.
HAYES: I want to play -- you know, these crimes obviously that have been committed there are horrifying and we should also be clear that violence that gangs like MS-13, which was actually started in the United States, exported back to El Salvadore from American prisons, have wrecked unbelievable pain and suffering in Central America as well. So, these are groups that have really left a long toll of violence.
The president describing what it is like in the district adjoining yours had this to say to get to your point about the broader themes in the speech. Take a listen.
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TRUMP: Since January 16, think of this, MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful young lives in this area on Long Island alone. They beat them with gloves. They slashed them with machetes, and they stabbed them with knives.
They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood stained killing fields.
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HAYES: Given how horrific these crimes are, and they have been or horrific, and it has been concentrated geographically, but do you think about the place you live and the place you represent, the adjoining district, as blood-stained killing fields? Is that an accurate characterization of the place you reside?
ZELDIN: When these incidents take place, there at that moment, absolutely. These are -- I love Long Island. This is our home. I wouldn`t want to live anywhere else, especially this time of year, we have a lot of people who come visit us. The weather is beautiful for those who are watching and want a good place to vacation.
But at that moment when you`re outside of that bar and there was a small skirmish inside that results in someone taking a knife and basically ripping out -- I don`t want to say it on the show, but what happened, one of the other incidents that happened, and it is not, they don`t use guns in many cases because they don`t want too quick of a death and they want other people watching what happens.
So at that moment, it is just happening too much and it is also human trafficking, it`s drug trafficking, gang rape. We talk about the murders but we don`t talk about all the other stuff that`s going on as well.
HAYES: All right, Lee Zeldin, I really appreciate you taking the time tonight. Thank you for sticking around.
ZELDIN: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right, next, the dramatic scenes from last night`s vote, gasps on the floor, the stare down, all the reactions. We`ll break the whole thing down for you. You don`t want to miss it. Next.
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SEN. CHRIS MURPHY, (D) CONNECTICUT: This process is an embarrassment. This is nuclear gray bonkers what is happening here tonight. We are about to reorder one-fifth of the American health care system and we are going to have two hours to review a bill, which at first blush stands essentially as health care system arson.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: To understand the absolutely stunning drama that unfolded on the Senate floor last night, you have to start just minutes before 10:00 p.m., when Senate Republicans first posted the text of their health care bill, an eight-page repeal written that day over lunch.
Now, Democrats would have two hours to review it before a midnight vote, the possibly of reordering America`s health care system in the dead of night with Americans asleep.
Immediately, Democrats rose one after the other to speak out against the bill and the idea of jamming it through Senate overnight. After McConnell first introduced the bill, just one Republican Senator would take to the floor for the GOP. That was the Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming who intended to hold to floor at all costs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does the senator yield to the question?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Disregarding.
SEN. MIKE ENZI, (R) WYOMING: I think this is under my time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I can just respectfully ask the chairman, since we`ve only had this bill for an hour and we have, as you can see, a number of Senators who want to speak and I just would respectfully ask if there`s any time that we will have between now and the vote to make any comments, since we have just had the bill for a very short amount of time that we`ll be voting on and will obviously impact millions of Americans?
ENZI: Well, I think the answer that I gave was perhaps your time might be better spent taking a look at the bill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As the clock ticked toward midnight, Vice President Pence arrived on The Hill to the Hill to potentially cast a deciding, tiebreaking vote to chants of shame from protesters.
The first vote of the night began at 20 minutes after midnight, the last lever Democrats could pull, which was a request to send the bill to committee for debate.
Now, that vote would certainly fail and it did. But, here`s the thing, even with all the votes counted for that first vote, McConnell kept that first vote open talking to Vice President Pence on the floor. And it was becoming clear, he was stalling.
Nearby, John McCain was talking to two senators who had criticized the bill, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Then Pence was talking to Mccain.
McConnell did not have the votes and the vice president was trying to change that. And they kept the vote open for over an hour.
The clearest foreshadowing happened shortly after 1:00 a.m. when McCain walked over to a crowd of Democrats, they were joking around and smiling, McCain even put his arm around Diane Feinstein.
It was approaching 1:30 when the main crucial climactic vote began. Collins vote no. Mukowski voted no. But McCain didn`t answer when his name was called. He`d walk in seconds later, stand in front of McConnell and ask for the clerks attention.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Peters?
PETERS: No.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) ARIZONA: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As BuzzFeed noted, you can look at this one moment like a renaissance painting, what each person was doing when that third Republican vote was cast to kill the bill, something several Democrats have told All In they did not know what would happen for sure until they witnessed it.
Bernie Sanders nodging Senator Jeanne Shaheen the vote was coming. Amy Klobuchar and Bob Casey on their feet waiting in anticipation. Then Sherrod Brown slapping the desk. Elizabeth Morning leaning to see what would happen and then unable to resist cheering for McCain`s vote.
Minority leader Chuck Schumer, look at that, trying to quiet his exuberant colleagues as the audible gasps and smatterings of applause. And of course, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, arms folded, staring at McCain, watching him walk up the floor knowing the bill was dead.
As the crowds outside would find out seconds later.
(CHEERING)
HAYES: After that vote, Leader McConnell addressed the senate saying it`s time to move on and acknowleding the defeat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCONNELL: This is clearly a disappointing moment. We worked hard and everybody on this side can certainly attest to the fact we worked really hard to try to develop a consensus for a better way forward.
So yes, this is a disappointment, a disappointment indeed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
Senator, what was it like to be in that chamber last night?
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY, (D) OREGON: It was an incredible amount of drama, because what we understood was that it was essentially a tie and the health care for 16 million people was going to depend upon one hand movement, John McCain`s hand. Was it thumbs up or thumbs down?
HAYES: So you had an indication while you were just talking among your colleagues. You knew that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were nos and you needed one more vote and there was an indication that had been sent to you that you understood that McCain might be a no? Did you know that walking in to the Senate chamber?
MERKLEY: We knew it was in question. We knew that the Arizona governor had talked to him. We knew he had given a speech who said this process is not the right process. On the other hand, he had voted to get on to the bill and he had indicated some willingness to send to it a conference committee? So, it really was hanging in the balance.
And then, on the floor, the vice president comes out on the floor and instead of taking the seat, he goes to talk to John McCain, well, that`s a good sign. And then the vice president disappears. That`s not such a good sign. And then the vice president comes back and goes out with John McCain, probably to hold a conference, maybe to talk to the president, and then we were really worried. So it was right down to the last moment.
HAYES: So, you`re describing -- I mean, I was watching the same scene. I wasn`t in the room and I was drawing the same inferences as you just described, meaning that you were watching that unfold in real-time trying to draw clues from all this like he have one else was.
MERKELEY: Yes. And and in the middle of it, John McCain came over to the Democratic side and four or five of us huddled around him. And he had a question about the Bird rule, that is we were contesting, or potentially contesting the last section of the eight-page bill saying it didn`t seem to fit the rules. We told him we would set that aside. He asked some questions about whether we would be willing to proceed to the Defense Authorization Act and facilitate that so that we didn`t have a long drawn out mark-up of that act on the floor. We said we were happy to do that.
So, that felt pretty positive. And he -- it sounded like he was about to go with us, but we still weren`t 100 percent sure.
HAYES: How did you and the Democratic colleagues feel last night when this was all over?
MERKLEY: Tremendous relief. We have been engaged with grassroots America saying, hey, we have to work with you, because you have the ability to say what is really going on in the ground to your Republican senators, that in fact the expansion of Medicaid is working really well, that the exchange has empowered hundreds of thousands in your state to get health care, that the health care bill of rights makes a lot of sense, and that blowing all of this up really would be a terrible thing to do.
We needed the citizens in every state to tell the senators that. We needed the health care stakeholders to say that. We contacted governors in these states to have them convey that, but still what you saw was this solid determination to get something passed, even if it hurt the people of America, so it was a real battle, and a huge relief that we aren`t going to blow up health care.
And now, we`re just hoping that our Republican colleagues will finally say, OK, enough with the politics, we know things need to be fixed. We will work with you. The Democrats have had a list of things that need to be improved. I`m sure the Republicans have some. Let`s work together to make this system work better.
HAYES: Is that an actual -- Senator McCain is flying back for chemo and further treatment for brain cancer, which means his vote is not on the table for the rest of August. I think it`s unlikely that McConnell can move anything on this, particularly for the rest of the month.
But I guess the question is, how confident are you that this not -- that we`ve seen the end of this kind of unilateral push on this piece of legislation?
MERKLEY: Well, here`s the challenge. The Republicans were doing things to deliberately undermine the marketplace exchange. They were proceeding to sabotage reinsurance, which enables a company to go into a new marketplace and get insured against the risk of having a disproportionate share of really sick people.
Then they proceeded to have the president hold the cost-sharing payments, so the companies didn`t know what they`d be paid, so a lot of them said, hey, we have to bail out. We don`t know what we`re going to be paid and if we don`t know how much we`re compensated.
And then they shortened the period for application and reduced the budget for advertising, he open sign-up period. That hurt and so forth.
We needed them to get out of that mode and say quit sabotaging the exchange. This was actually your all`s idea, this was the Republican right-wing think tank`s idea, a marketplace which essentially there were private options, private insurance companies. And yet, ironically that`s the part that they`re really trying to blow up now.
So, I hope they can get out of that mode and say, OK, yes, we can -- we want to quit sabotaging and we can make things work better.
HAYES: Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Thanks for joining me.
MERKLEY: You`re very welcome. Thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, the unbelievable week in the Trump administration that started with the president making public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions as it ending with a new chief of staff.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: This has been a notably rough week for President Donald Trump. It started with the president relentlessly attacking his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions, calling Sessions beleaguered, asking why he wasn`t, quote, looking into Crooked Hillary`s crimes and Russia relations.
And he week ended with the president`s humiliating defeat on health care in the wee hours of Friday morning.
Now, Republicans have promised their voters Obamacare repeal for seven years. But the bill was derailed by thumbs down from Senator John Mccain of Arizona, once ridiculed, of course, by the president for getting captured during Vietnam.
And in between those sign posts, there was what you might call a series of unfortunate events including the previously mentioned ban on military service by transgender people and the instantly infamous Boy Scouts Jamboree speech that sounded more like a political rally and prompted the Boy Scouts themselves to issue an apology.
And of course, Anthony Scaramucci`s profanity-laced interview with The New Yorker in which the new communications director attacked then chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon, topping all that off of course was the ouster of Priebus and the appointment of a new chief of staff, also by Twitter.
Joining me now are Anna Galland, executive director from MoveOn and Republican Strategist Matt MacKowiak.
Matt, you`re -- I would say you`re not a never Trumper. You`re not really like on the Trump train. You`re sort of somewhere in between as a sort of Republican guy, a Republican operative.
If I were a Republican operative, I would be feeling pretty low right now. What is your feeling?
MATT MACKOWIAK, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I certainly felt that way after last night. I mean, the sense of failure with the Senate effort to do something on health care to keep the vehicle moving was profound. and there`s a lot of blame to go around, honestly. Seven years, not getting consensus behind one bill, letting this process become such a mess, the product itself became a mess.
So, look, I think the question now is can Trump have a successful final six months of his calendar year. Next year, we have an election year. It is going to be very difficult to get much done. I think the likelihood of passing tax reform probably increases with health care failing. I think the need is there. You had the big six up on Capitol Hill agree on principles this week on tax reform.
So we`ll see where it goes from here. And I think more order and less chaos out of the White House will go a long way to helping them move their agenda forward in the final six months of this year.
HAYES: So, that`s interesting, Matt. Anna, we have seen the death of a health care bill so many times. In fact, in editorial discussions, I was like well what do we call it? There are only so many times we can come on air and say the health care bill is dead. So, you`ve got to be very hedge.
I don`t know, maybe it comes back in a few days.
What is your thinking? MoveOn obviously, one of the groups that mobilized strongly against it. What is your understanding of what just transpired and where you are in these first six months?
ANNA CALLAND, MOVEON.ORG: Oh, well, man, I mean, Thursday was unbelievable. First of all, let`s be really clear what happened. A moral atrocity became a political liability for Republicans, it became toxic politically. And on Thursday night the resistance movement, which had a massive uprising over the course of six months, not just this week, but over six months, a massive resistance movement, succeeded in killing a terrible idea that would have killed Americans.
We`ve killed it. It`s a zombie. It has arisen before from the grave and if it arises again we`ll kill it back into its grave, that`s the work we have to do.
I think you`re seeing people celebrating this week rightly because of the incredible victory that we have seen. And no one is resting on their laurels, everyone is getting ready to fight again as much as we need to to keep this terrible, destructive, cruel idea from ever seeing the light of day.
HAYES: So, this -- what Anna just said, Matt, connects to what something you said about moving on to tax reform. There is not going to be the same level of moral vehemence in resistance to a tax bill that there is to health care for a whole variety of reasons. There will be opposition to it, and strong opposition, and taxes are hard. But I guess my question to you is, do you think they will actually move on? I mean is the idea, OK, this is finally -- we`ve taken a bunch of L`s. This one we`re going to take and move on for exactly that reason?
MACKOWIAK: Yeah, I think they will move on. I mean, look, there`s going to be a lot of finger pointing as to why health care did not pass the Senate. There`s going to be a lot of doubt and sort of Monday morning quarterbacking the strategic decision to start with health care, which is traditionally been Democratic terrain, rather than starting with tax reform, which has been traditionally been Republican terrain.
Tax reform is an issue Trump understands better. It`s an issue that his team understands better. And I think there`s broader unity and consensus on tax reform than there was on health care.
So, the question is moving forward now, particularly with the new chief of staff in place, can this White House start operating with focus and discipline with strategy, with communications, all -- everyone all on the same team, all on the same page working together. And I think that the necessity is there.
HAYES: Matt, I have some news for you--
MACKOWIAK: --they`ve got to get major items through.
HAYES: Matt, I have some news for you. I mean in all honesty, I just don`t think that`s going to happen. I mean, I think that the way that they`ve conducted themselves is apparent. I mean, maybe it will. And maybe Jake Kelly is a miracle worker.
But I think the chaos I think is interesting because for folks like Matt and for allies on the Hill, the chaos is maddening. But I also think, Anna, you know, I heard from so many folks that I report on who are working in the trenches, whether it`s Democratic Hill staffers or Republican hill staffers, the chaos for people fighting the bill was also hard, because they felt like there was a lot of distraction.
It`s interesting that both the president`s allies and the president`s opponents both find the chaos maddening in different ways. Do you feel like the chaos ends up making -- no seriously -- do you feel like the chaos has made it harder to actually mobilize in opposition to the president`s agenda?
GALLAND: It`s a great question. I mean, it`s also worth noting as a side note, by the way, that chaos is a kind of authoritarian ruling strategy, right. So, I think all of us need to keep our eyes on both the kind of traditional politics that are happening here around trying to defeat a health care policy bill but then also the craziness, what seems to be an intentional strategy by this White House to keep people off balance.
Let`s be aware of what`s happening.
But I think, yeah, it`s made it harder and it`s made it all the more remarkable that the resistance movement just killed the top priority of this administration and of the GOP, the thing that was supposed to be passed on day one was just beat back by a movement of people that started mobilizing in December, that flooded town halls, that showed up every time a senator or a member of congress would possibly show their face back home, they were confronted by people saying hell no, you are not going to do this to us.
And they`re not going to stop wtih health care. One thing I want to be clear on, if tax reform comes up, yes, that`s a different issue than health care, but people are fired up to stop this entire toxic agenda.
HAYES: No, I--
GALLAND: Thanks for making time.
HAYES: I wouldn`t under count that.
Anna Galland and Matt MacKowiak, thanks for both making time.
GALLAND: Thank you.
MACKOWIAK: Thanks.
HAYES: Joining me now is my colleague Lawrence O`Donnell, host of the Last Word which is on tonight live at 10:00 p.m.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC: I`m stealing your instruction for this segment, because the entire idea of tonight at 10:00 p.m. was the worst week yet in the Trump presidency.
You just did it in, what, like 72 seconds, you captured the whole thing.
HAYES: Here`s my -- you -- so you worked in the Senate and been sort of in the room at various times, what -- have you seen something like that happened last night?
O`DONNELL: Never. Never.
No, no, listen. And I`ve seen, you know, votes decided by that one vote on the Senate floor at 2:00 in the morning. I`ve been there. I was there one night when Bob Kerrey did it as a Democrat. He cast the vote that decided the whole thing. But never with this kind of suspense. And one of the reasons for the suspense, frankly, has been the inconsistency of John McCain.
So, John McCain comes back from his surgery -- and by the way, it`s kind of inconceivable that someone gets off the bed from surgery.
HAYES: He had a tumor taken out of his head.
O`DONNELL: --for brain surgery, and that you would then you would fly across the country to take health care away from tens of millions of people. That just becomes conceptually impossible to imagine off the bat.
But I listen to his speech when he came back, and I said right away, this speech indicates he`s going to vote against anything that Mitch McConnell proposes.
And so then he confused people, because he cast the procedural votes with McConnell--
HAYES: To get to--
O`DONNELL: --which didn`t surprise me, because in the old days of the Senate, they didn`t have votes on motions to proceed. There were none. You automatically proceeded to the debate.
So, McCain was using the old tradition there, and I kept saying wait, wait, wait, wait until he votes on a substantive piece of legislation, and both times that came up, he voted no.
So, I was not one of those Democrats on the Democratic side of the floor last night where you heard them gasp. You heard this audible physical reaction from the Democrats when McCain voted with them.
They wouldn`t have been so surprised if McCain had been consistent over the last few years of matching his rhetoric to his votes. That was the problem -- because his rhetoric was completely clear and I believe Mitch McConnell knew all week that he didn`t have McCain.
HAYES: You -- I have to say that you were -- as someone who follows you on Twitter, you were right about this and there were a few people who basically heard that speech and said wait a second, this is him giving the signal and there was a lot back and forth procedurally.
Here is my other question about how the president relates to congress, which I think is fascinating at this moment. You`ve got people saying that, OK, now the president is going to go after the GOP congress, that he`s gotten--
O`DONNELL: Does he think there`s a third party in the congress that he can--
HAYES: Donald Trump.
O`DONNELL: Can he work with them?
HAYES: But I don`t think that`s implausible that he does that. I mean you can tell he`s angry at them and I think he thinks well I had this thing going that was mine and I let myself get dragged into this thing that they had. I don`t care about it. Why did I allow myself to be tarnished by--
O`DONNELL: So, here`s why nothing is implausible in the Trump White House and remains even more in the zone of nothing is implausible. They now are bringing in a White House chief of staff who knows absolutely nothing about politics.
The White House chief of staff`s job first of all is politics. It`s the most political job in the White House. He is a complete incompetent on that front. Whatever you think of Reince Priebus, he knows more about politics than General Kelly is ever going to know about politics.
General Kelly is now going to work with the most incompetent people he`s been near in his life. He comes from a world of competence where all the people under him of every rank knows what they`re doing, the people above him know what they`re doing. They`re professionals within the military. He`s leaving all of that behind to a world of chaos, and he has a measurement for failure. He has a measurement for failure on his first day. And that is exactly how many hours does it take him to yank Scaramucci`s credentials off of his neck and ban him from that building, because if he can`t do that he has a White House out of control, totally out of control, on day one, and he is a failure on day one because his job is control of the White House.
HAYES: Yeah, the issue -- I mean, we all sort of chuckle about getting on the same page. And the issue is that the president doesn`t want it on the same page. I mean, fundamentally that is the issue, right, organizations take on the attributes of their leaders in many respects. And this White House is a manifestation of the man at the top.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, no White House has ever had a president saying to this one, hey, go out and publicly attack the chief of staff, go out and publicly attack Sean Spicer, there`s never had this madness. So all of the madness begins with Trump, all of it.
Everything is his fault in that sense. And the bringing in of Scaramucci, which is simply a crime against the government payroll. I mean, this is -- the American taxpayer is going to pay for this guy`s madness, this guy who belongs in a straight jacket now has these White House credentials around his neck?
This man is unemployable in county government on Long Island, in any city hall anywhere in America.
HAYES: He`s very successful in hedge funds.
O`DONNELL: There`s exactly one government office that would employ this raving lunatic and that`s Donald Trump`s White House.
HAYES; And he`s got the job.
Lawrence O`Donnell, thanks for being on.
O`DONNELL: It`s great to see you.
HAYES: That is All In for this evening, though. Stay with MSNBC tonight. On assignment with Richard Engel is coming up next. And then this Lawrence O`Donnell is back here live at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. So, do not go anywhere. I`ll see you back here on Monday. Good night.
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