Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: September 25, 2017 Guest: Hillary Clinton
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: An acceptance that here on earth our job is to be good to each other. It`s not even heard of these days, certainly not from the White House. And that`s HARDBALL for now. It really is. 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.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Fired!
HAYES: The President attacks, and Hillary responds.
HILARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It`s quite telling that he is willing to attack black athletes.
HAYES: Tonight Hillary Clinton on the President`s response to Puerto Rico.
CLINTON: He clearly doesn`t want to talk about Puerto Rico.
HAYES: To health care.
Do you think the President has any idea what`s in any of these bills?
CLINTON: No. I don`t think he has any idea.
HAYES: To Russian collusion.
CLINTON: If it quacks like a duck, it`s probably a duck.
HAYES: All that and the Governor of Puerto Rico, when ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. There is breaking news tonight. The GOP`s latest attempt to pass a health care bill appears to be dead, at least for now. Maine`s Susan Collins becoming the crucial third Republican Senator to come out against the Graham-Cassidy bill citing Medicaid cuts harmed the people with preexisting condition and the prospect of raised premiums and reduced coverage for tens of millions. Now, her announcement coming just hours after police on Capitol Hill dragged disabled demonstrators out of the only hearing the Republicans plan to hold on the bill.
And the news caps off a remarkable 72 hours of the Donald Trump Presidency in which the President repeatedly called for professional athletes engaged in peaceful dissent to be fired, calling them a "son of a bitch" and prompting widespread protests and statements from NFL players and even many owners who either kneeled or locked arms in unity and solidarity. The President also disinviting Steph Curry of the NBA Champion Golden State Warriors from the White House, prompting this response from Lebron James.
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LEBRON JAMES, BASKETBALL PLAYER CLEVELAND CAVALIERS: We have to figure out a way how we come together and be as great as we can be as a people because the people run this country, not one individual and damn sure not him.
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HAYES: Meanwhile, the President taunted North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un as, "little Rocketman" and suggested he may not be around much longer. North Korea responding by saying that Trump had declared war and now threatening to shoot down U.S. planes. And this is all taking place while 3.5 million Americans remain in absolutely desperate situations in the American territory of Puerto Rico. As the island grapples with massive flooding, destroyed buildings, failing communications systems, the prospect of no power for months, residents now forced to scrawl desperate messages on the ground, begging for food and water from above. The President of the United States has not so much as mentioned Puerto Rico for days. And it is against this backdrop before the big health care news of Susan Collins that I sat down with the woman who lost the general election to Trump while winning three million more votes. I began by asking her to react to just the last 72 hours.
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HAYES: For all of us watching this, it sometimes feels like you can`t make heads or tails or you can`t keep up or you can`t process it and I wonder if it feels the same for you.
CLINTON: No, it feels different for me because every time I see him do or say something, I know it`s a deliberate choice that he is making at the expense of something else.
HAYES: You think that?
CLINTON: Yes, I do.
HAYES: This is a -- this is a point of tremendous contention in the world of Trump analysis.
CLINTON: No, I know. And you know, it`s like being a criminologist. You`re a Trumpologist but I`ve watched him quite closely. So let`s take what you just said.
HAYES: Yes.
CLINTON: He clearly doesn`t want to talk about Puerto Rico. You know, what, more than 3.5 million American citizens, along with the U.S. Virgin Islands, not interested, doesn`t say a word about it. Now, FEMA is down there. I`ve called on them to send the Navy, particularly the Naval Hospital Ship called U.S. Comfort. I really think that would be a big help. We don`t hear a word. And we don`t hear anybody high up in the administration. You don`t hear from the Vice President or anybody else.
So he doesn`t think that has any political relevance, and it`s certainly not personally important. He attacks black athletes as he did starting with his rally in Alabama, continued on Twitter and he attacks them for protesting peacefully for equality, for standing up for what they believe. And he does it once again to dog whistle to his base and to try to detract attention from other things that are going on. But it`s quite telling that he is willing to attack black athletes. He never says anything of an insulting manner towards white supremacists or neo-Nazis or Ku Klux Klaners or Vladimir Putin, right?
And then we`ve got North Korea, which is looming over us, and which has continued to escalate verbally with him sort of pushing it along. I don`t understand what their strategy is. And now we`ve got the North Koreans saying well if he is going to talk like that and essentially declare war against us, we`re going to believe we have the right to shoot down American planes. Now, all of this is swirling around at the same time but he is making choices. And his choices are to continue to stimulate, motive, and get the acclimation from his hard-core base that he saw in Alabama, and that he continues to reach out to. And it`s almost without regard to the consequences of trying to denigrate American athletes for exercising their constitutional rights, for continuing to pick rhetorical battles with North Korea. It is something that he instinctually, viscerally does but I think there is also a calculation to this.
HAYES: This is really interesting to me because I think this is a central analytical question about how this individual operates because there is this kind of two theories of him. One is that there`s this kind of -- he`s this kind of accidental maelstrom that the sort of variety of factors in broader American life have put him in this position and the other is that he is quite a canny manipulator.
CLINTON: I`m with the second.
HAYES: You are with the second? And --
CLINTON: Yes. Now, sometimes his canny manipulation gets out of control.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: Even he goes too far. But he was a canny manipulator when he became a birther. That was not accidental.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: That was deliberate. He was a canny manipulator when he started his campaign basically insulting immigrants and calling Mexicans rapists and criminals and you can go on and on. It was designed to really attach himself to enough of a core of Republican voters that he would get the nomination and then he would go from there and along the way he would say things like we`re not going to touch Medicare, we`re not going to touch Medicaid, all of which he had, you know, no real allegiance to. So --
HAYES: As one can see what`s happening today.
CLINTON: As we can see in real time. And so, therefore, I think he was manipulating on behalf of himself, and he wanted to plug into -- look, the dark underbelly in American politics. It`s been there forever. It`s not a new phenomenon but what we have done over time is to try to contain it and prevent it from you know, being too big a voice in our politics.
HAYES: It`s funny you say that because there was this quote today that was sort of perfectly I think buttons this up. This is someone talking to White House Reporter Jim Acosta that says, Trump adviser tells me POTUS is winning the cultural war. This is after this weekend in which he`s fighting the athletes. "Just made millionaire sports athletes his new Hillary Rodham Clinton."
CLINTON: I don`t know who would have said that to Jim Acosta, but I`m sure that`s what a big slice of his advisers, both inside the White House and now outside the White House believes.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: Because his whole campaign --
HAYES: But does it work?
CLINTON: Well, it worked well enough to get him the nomination with the help of James Comey and the Russians. It worked well enough to get him elected as I write in my book, because, yes, I think that the way he positioned himself and his, you know, really outrageous language, his insults, and attacks, all of that, you could not take your eyes off of him. I mean nobody could figure out what he would do next, which by definition kind of controlled the audience, right? And so he was able to keep slamming. And so everything bad that was said about him, everything that you know, anything reported about him, whether it was bankruptcy or defrauding elders or defrauding students, the whole nine yards.
HAYES: Or the ads that you guys ran of his own words.
TRUMP: Using his own words.
HAYES: Look, the argument was.
CLINTON: Right.
HAYES: Prima facie, this is not a person who should have (INAUDIBLE)
CLINTON: Well, yes --
HAYES: I mean, you literally --
CLINTON: Yes, somebody you know, who tweets, right?
HAYES: And yet -- and yet, I mean, that`s the question, right, because it all seems like he`s playing these 40/60 politics. Meaning 40 percent of the public is with him, 60 percent is against him. Which shouldn`t work in a majoritarian democracy and yet it is somehow working.
CLINTON: But think about this, Chris, his first goal is to try to control the Republicans as much as he can. And so what he is doing with that 40 percent, which still remains a super majority of Republicans is to control the party, control his chances going forward, try to discipline or jettison Republicans who don`t agree with him by threatening to get them primary opponents or threatening to support the most radical Trump loyalists in a race. So he`s trying to maintain that Republican core.
HAYES: But, I guess the question here is like --and I`ve read your book and enjoyed it quite a bit. It`s got a sort of tone that is rare in these kinds of books. It`s this sort of intimacy to it.
CLINTON: Thank you.
HAYES: That there`s this sort of push and pull even within your understanding of what happened, the degree to which this was a fluke or not a fluke. I mean, when you say absent Comey and the Russians, right? (INAUDIBLE)
CLINTON: Right.
HAYES: So there`s -- it`s like at one level, there is something he`s doing that is really rewriting the rules of American politics.
CLINTON: I agree with that.
HAYES: And it`s also the case that he was the beneficiary of a bunch of (INAUDIBLE) shocks.
CLINTON: Right.
HAYES: And so, I guess the question is when you think of where he is now politically, how do you read his political strength? Because those two frameworks still seem to me you could bring to bear. You could make an argument for either one, that he is strong or weak.
CLINTON: But look at what he is doing. What he is doing is trying to double down on what worked for him.
HAYES: Yes.
CLINTON: Take me out of it and thanks for the nice compliments about the book. But part of the reason I wrote it was so that people who care about our democracy and our future will read it and learn some lessons. And here are some of the lessons. He is doubling down on voter suppression. Now, he knows that if he can restrict the electorate and all of his Republican allies know, they will have a better chance of retaining control in the states and beginning to try to you know, expand that reach because they will have shrunk the electorate. This is one of the most serious insults that you can imagine to a democracy that is supposed to be one person, one vote, and which, you know, we have a Voter Rights Act which the Supreme Court gutted.
Secondly, they learned a lot from the whole Russian intervention. And we`re now learning a lot of what they learned. You know, what happened with Facebook. I mean, being paid in rubles was sort of hard to believe at first but now it`s become kind of emblematic of what was going on. They understood far better than I did because it was new that they could ally themselves with very big powerful forces like the Mercers and Cambridge Analytica and the Russians and WikiLeaks and that there could be a really, you know, very impressive strong coalition, all with the same goal, to help him and hurt me. And so, they were able to see in real time the results of that. And one of the things try to explain in the book, and I hope that we`ll get to the bottom of this eventually, is that the WikiLeaks publication of stolen e-mails were weaponized. They didn`t just go out into the atmosphere, they were weaponized. The worst case is the whole Pizzagate tragedy in Washington.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: And thank goodness nobody died when that young man showed up with his automatic weapon. So they`ve learned things that work. Double down on suppression, if you can, continue to get help from the Russians, and he`s got to be at least contemplating that, because he sure isn`t saying anything negative about them, but at least learned the lessons from them.
HAYES: So, I`m very curious to hear your honest gut version of what your theory is of this. And I`ll tell you what mine is first because I was a person who thought for a long time that the Russians and the Trump campaign had coincident interests, and because they had coincident interests, which they both wanted Trump elected, there was no reason for them collude because all the oars are rowing in the same direction. So the Russians are doing what they`re doing to elect Donald Trump, Donald Trump is doing to elect Donald Trump and if they`re working together. And then the Don Jr. e-mail came out. And for me, for my own sort of personal theory that I walk through my day with, it changed things because I thought to myself, well, you get an e-mail saying this is part of the Russian government. You believe there was collusion, right?
CLINTON: What I believe is that there was communication, there was ongoing contacts, which the Trump team went to great lengths to try to hide, which does raise questions. I believe that the weaponization of WikiLeaks was incredibly strategic and that there had to be somebody with good information advising where that all went on Facebook and beyond. So I think we have to wait and see what the investigations prove but --
HAYES: OK. But I want to push a little on that because that`s sort of a politician`s answer in the sense that you have -- well, no, I`m just saying, I feel like when I hear you give interviews on this topic, that I`m not asking you your definitive take, I`m saying, inside the mind of Hillary Clinton, when I wake up in the morning, do you think, did they include, I think?
CLINTON: Well, if it quacks like a duck, it`s probably a duck. But we only see --
HAYES: I understand that --
CLINTON: We only see feathers right now.
HAYES: Right. But you think they did?
CLINTON: I think that all arrows point in that direction. And I think that as we learn more every day, this latest Department of Homeland Security announcement about the probing into our electoral roles in all these states, and I`m still not quite sure what we`re not being told, because there were lots of gaps in the statement that was made, raises all of these questions. So we do know that Putin and the Kremlin wanted to help. We do know that rubles paid for ads on Facebook. We do know that WikiLeaks is a wholly owned subsidiary now, unfortunately, of the Kremlin in terms of what they`re willing to do for Putin.
HAYES: How do we know that?
CLINTON: We know that because there has been a lot of evidence of information that might have been damaging to Putin and oligarchs, none of which comes up. We know the Republican National Committee was probed. Some people think information extracted, we never saw any of that. So this is one of these arguments that you just build it brick by brick by brick. But I think what`s important is that the Congressional investigations, Special Counsel go forward. I`ll tell you what I would have done. If the shoes had been reversed, so to speak, and I had been the beneficiary by some foreign government -- I can`t even imagine what it would be -- I would have immediately launched an investigation, having a commission with full subpoena powers, leaving nothing unchecked because we don`t really know, do we, Chris?
And if we don`t know, and we have a government that is woefully just painfully indifferent, hostile to knowing, it`s going keep happening. And you know, it`s one thing to say, OK, well, I didn`t vote for Hillary Clinton so that`s OK. If the Russians helped defeat her, fine. It will not stop there. I mean, the point that Putin is trying to make is that democracies are unstable, unpredictable, that there are divisions within democracies that we get -- we paper over with, you know, quaint concepts like the rule of law. And that he wants to undermine us, undermine Europe, undermine the Atlantic Alliance, that has been his life`s work.
HAYES: But there`s -- So there is a psychological aspect to this that I would like to hear you respond, to right? Because part of the problem with this argument is that ultimately the people that made the decisions are American citizens who went and pulled a lever in one direction. And I`ve seen you talk about the ways in which you feel that this was weaponized against you in favor of Bernie Sander, particularly with the typing of the DNC attack, the way it was weaponized against you in favor of Donald Trump. But do you recognize why -- how hard it is to tell people fundamentally they were manipulated when they feel like, and I think justifiably and rightly whichever decision they made, they made the decision because the decision they made, right? I mean, it seems like part of the problem with this argument is not only do you have to say well, the Russians did all this nefarious stuff, but also you American citizen, you were a dupe. You got duped.
CLINTON: No I don`t think that`s how you say it at all, Chris. That`s not how I say it. I don`t blame voters. I don`t blame voters who woke up and saw that Jim Comey was reopening an investigation and didn`t know what to think and I know very well that stopped my momentum and cost me votes and I think was the determinative factor of my defeat. I don`t blame voters who are searching, googling, trying to find out information that will help them make a decision, who are being told that the Clinton Foundation, one of the most highly regarded charitable organizations by all of the groups that make these ratings was, you know, stealing money, paying for my daughter`s wedding, these total lies. Propaganda is meant to influence people.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: And sometimes the people are really trying to understand, and they`re not getting contrary information. And if it`s on your Facebook feed, if it looks like a real news story, and you get it over and over again, who`s to say --
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: -- that you`re supposed to immediately disbelieve it?
HAYES: Right. But I guess what my point is that you can understand why -- because if that`s the case, if I feel like, well, I was successfully propagandized, me as a citizen, right? That`s a hard thing to wrestle with. What do I do with?
CLINTON: But we`ve done it for years with negative advertising --
HAYES: Right, sure. Of course.
CLINTON: -- without any help from Russians, and you know, all kinds of negative ads --
HAYES: Of course, right.
CLINTON: -- have been very successful. That`s why people keep pouring money into them. Negative ads are one thing. You know, we can bemoan, you know, what one side says about the other. That`s fair game and then you respond. But when you don`t even know that stolen information is being weaponized.
HAYES: That`s right. The origin of it.
HAYES: When there is no disclaim that this is really a piece of propaganda on behalf of Trump and his campaign, then I don`t blame voters for you know, saying, well, maybe there is something to that.
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HAYES: Still ahead, much more from Hillary Clinton on the Russia investigation, plus what she really thinks about Republican efforts to kill ObamaCare.
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HAYES: Do you think he has -- the President has any idea what`s in any of these bills?
CLINTON: No, I don`t think he has any idea.
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TRUMP: By the way, folks, just in case you`re like, curious, no, Russia did not help me. OK? Russia, I call it the Russian hoax.
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HAYES: How closely do you follow the news on Russia, the Mueller Investigation? Are you sitting there going --
CLINTON: Well, no. I follow it -- I follow it really closely because I consider it a real threat to our democracy. And like a lot of threats, it has sort of insidiously approached us. And I can again agree with you that there are a lot of people who are saying, well, you know, what did they do and how did they -- what does this mean?
HAYES: It can be hard to track as a story --
CLINTON: It`s hard to track.
HAYES: -- And hard to tell as a story.
CLINTON: Yes. And so, I`m waiting. I mean, I think that you know, when these investigations hopefully give us some real information, I`d like to see more public hearings, I`d like to see more people have to answer questions about what they knew and what they did. But at some point, we will see the pieces begin to fit together. And I want to make this point really -- because it`s very important. Let`s say that your original question to me that OK, so, the Trump campaign is on this track and the Russians are on this track and they don`t converge but they mutually reinforce each other. OK, fine. So there is no criminal conduct, there is nothing that would lead to any kind of indictment. But we know they interfered. So despite the fact that we may never really believe or accept that there was cooperation or criminal --
HAYES: Or establish that.
CLINTON: Establish that. The fact that they did this to us and the fact that they were trying to do it to the French, and the French, because of my defeat and the Dutch because of my defeat and the Germans because of my defeat were much better equipped to push it back and prevent it from influencing their voters. I think that should be a rallying cry for anybody Republican, Democrat, or whoever.
HAYE: There`s a story today that when I read it, my first thought was, I want to see what Hillary Clinton says about this. Which is a story about Jared Kushner --
CLINTON: Yes.
HAYES: -- using personal e-mails in the White House. Of course --
CLINTON: Must have gotten a hundred copies of that.
HAYES: Did you mean people text and e-mail you that story?
CLINTON: Yes, yes.
HAYES: What is your reaction to it?
CLINTON: Well, the first thing I would say is, look, if people still have questions about my e-mails, I hope they`ll read the book and read the whole chapter because every question that was asked, we answered, OK. And I`ve been the first to say and will say again right here on your show, it was a dumb mistake, but it was a dumber scandal. And it was promoted by and really turned into a partisan weapon against me along with the tragedy of Benghazi. And I think that they were -- the other side was quite successful in sort of ginning that up and getting people to believe things that were flatly not true. So now we have this story about Kushner, and apparently, others in the White House and I am waiting to see the outrage on the part of Republican members of Congress about this. And you will not see it, you will not find it.
HAYES: Here is a question for you. Well, you know, I actually have this question for you.
CLINTON: Yes.
HAYES: Do you think people like Jason Chaffetz and others who were the sort of inquisitors of yours, do you think it was fully bad faith, which is to say if they took a truth serum, they will be like, yes, there`s not much here, or do you think they convinced themselves that they were on the track with this e-mail for instance of some huge scandal?
CLINTON: I think the leaders, it was totally bad faith.
HAYES: You really do?
CLINTON: I absolutely do. I mean, I have Kevin McCarthy, you know, quoted in my book saying, "Gee, her numbers were so high." You know, I come out of the state Department with 69 percent approval and we brought her down. You know, we set out to bring her down and we brought her down. And you know, I take responsibility for not figuring out how better to respond. I testified for 11 hours in the Benghazi Committee and that`s really where all the e-mail action was. They threw everything they had at me, and I walked away unscathed. But they never let it go. And they, unfortunately, you know, again convinced a lot of people that there was something there that they had to find.
HAYES: I have a theory about this. No, I have a theory about this and I really want to hear what you think. So I think that part of what that did was demonstrate to people that if you elect this woman president, it`s going to just be an absolute quagmire disaster. Meaning, sure, Hillary Clinton is president, and day one is Benghazi hearing, e-mail hearing and I know a lot of people that voted for you whose anticipation of a Clinton presidency wasn`t getting stuff done on opioids, it was just basically holding the line against this insane inquisition.
CLINTON: Yes, but you know what, I want to -- I want to respond to that because I`ve heard that and I`ve seen that batted back and forth and you know --
HAYES: I think it helped Trump. I really do because it --
CLINTON: I think the Comey letter helped Trump because that did raise in the minds of voters the fear that oh, my gosh if I vote for her, you know, she might go to jail. I think that was a very real connection. And again, I don`t blame voters. What were they to think? But on the broader question, you know, you stop and you think about how this election, you know, played out, and who was on what side, and what they were saying. When I`m in office, people work with me. I write that in the book.
You know, before I got to the Senate, I get elected in 2000 here in New York, and Trent Lott, then the Senate Majority Leader says oh, well maybe lightning will strike and she`ll never throw -- never show up. And by the end of my time there, he was saying, wow, you know, you can really work with her and all the rest of it. So the reality of who I am and what I can do and how I can get things done, it`s one of the reasons why President Obama supported me so strongly because he saw me in action. So I knew all that noise would be out there and I knew they would be, you know, baying at the moon as they often do. But I had every confidence that I could contain it.
HAYES: Which is in the book and is -- and is really a striking part of the book. Because basically, I think you`re very -- it`s like a very honest -- I mean, it seems as honest, I don`t know, maybe it`s totally deceptive but --
CLINTON: I did my best!
HAYES: It reads as a very honest -- no, reads as a very honest articulation of how you understand governing and the theory of change which is like, you get stakeholders together and you find areas of agreement. You take problems the country has, whether it`s opioids or whatever and there are ways to get people to get over. You know, you`re a scary Hillary Clinton and it`s convincing to a certain extent in the book. But then I watch what`s happening in the Senate and I think to myself that seems divorced from the reality of the nihilistic struggle that is American politics of this moment.
CLINTON: But, let`s take the health care --
HAYES: Right, because it`s a good example.
CLINTON: Right, OK, so, assume I run the White House, none of this would be going on. That doesn`t mean Republicans would be whining up but we would support a bipartisan process such as what is occurring and what is called the Health Committee with Senators Alexander and Murray, working to find some common ground on some of the concerns that both parties legitimately have. Not the crazy stuff that we`re seeing right now. So that wouldn`t be going on. Now, can I sit here and say oh, boy, you know, we would have solved all the problems of affordable care.
No, but I can tell you we would have every single day had smart, effective people in the Congress and outside working and I would have known everything that was going on so that my intervention, which I would have done. That`s the way democracy is supposed to work. I mean, part of what is so troubling to me about what`s happening right now are these ideological claims, these powerful interests on the outside who are forcing members of Congress on the Republican side to do things that with a straight face they can`t defend, they can`t even explain.
You`ve had some of these people. You ask them, so how -- what does this you know, Graham-Cassidy thing do? They have no idea. Or -- and you have one senior member of the Senate saying well, I don`t think it`s a very good idea but we said we would do it. How absurd. So The president has to be a kind of referee as well as a -- you know, a convener. And it goes day by day by day to get things done that are actually going help people.
HAYES: Do you think he has -- the president has any idea what`s in any of these bills?
CLINTON: No. I don`t think he has any idea. I think that -- you know, he has such a need to try to defeat President Obama, who he didn`t even run against, so he is constantly attacking me or attacking former President Obama. And so the fact that it`s the Affordable Care Act that was signed by President Obama, that`s enough. He has no idea. And everything he has said up until now shows that he has no idea because he contradicts himself endlessly.
When the first version came to the floor and John McCain killed it, along with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, all of a sudden Trump is saying well we`re going get a better deal and it`s not going to hurt anybody, and it`s going to be wonderful. He has no idea.
But it almost doesn`t matter to him because he`s just trying to keep the energy among his base on all these things. They don`t have any idea either. And to keep the Republicans in line. That`s his mission for this year.
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HAYES: All right. Still to come, Hillary Clinton on the conspiracy theories sold to voters during the campaign, and whether she still is optimistic in the era of Trump. Do not go anywhere.
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HAYES: 11 days before the election, FBI Director James Comey re-ignited the Clinton email inquiry, pointing to potential new evidence on a computer belonging to top aide Huma Abedin`s husband, Anthony Weiner.
The reason the FBI had Weiner`s computer was because of sexually explicit messages he sent an under-aged girl. Today, just hours before I sat down with Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
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HAYES: I want to ask your reaction today to news about Anthony Weiner. It`s hard to ask about because it all seems so horrible, like so awful and sad in every direction. But he is someone that -- has been close to you and close to people that you love. He is also someone whose criminal prosecution was the precipitating incident for James Comey`s re-entrance into the race. And I wonder how you feel about him.
CLINTON: Well, I write about the moment in the campaign when I heard about Comey sending the letter to members of congress. The Republicans obviously turned right around and made it public. And the horror-stricken look on Huma`s face, because as she says, I quote her in the book, he`ll be the death of me.
I have nothing more to say. I think it is a terrible event. And, you know, I hope that his family, you know, is able to go forward.
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HAYES: Coming up, how Hillary Clinton makes sense of the reaction to this infamous video and the obsession with her health.
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CLINTON: Even if you say something terrible about somebody and it turns out to be totally untrue, there is a lingering vestige in your head. And if you`re on the public stage, that affects how people view you.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New questions tonight about Hillary Clinton`s health, that after her doctor confirms that she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. It turns out her campaign never said a word until she was caught earlier today on video.
HAYES: You mentioned this sort of Benghazi and emails, but there was one nor scandal in the campaign that I thought was in some ways most illuminating. The source of the scandal was that Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia and attempted to work her way through it. No, it was a scandal. She tried to work her way through it and she pushed herself to attend a memorial for 3,000 murdered people and got sick there. If you look at the polling, it hurt your polling.
CLINTON: It did. It did.
HAYES: And I`ve always thought, well this is sort of -- because we clear away all the brush of Benghazi and emails, and ultimately there was no thing in the middle, no first order scandal.
CLINTON: No, no.
HAYES: What -- how do you understand how it could be the case that getting sick in public cost you ten points in two weeks?
CLINTON: Well, I recovered those, because I recovered them in the debates and all the rest of it, so it was temporary. But I agree with you, it had a really negative...
HAYES: I remember watching the polls.
CLINTON: ...a negative effect.
Look, a part of this is the accumulated attacks on me going back so many years. And there is a lot of great psychology about this. Like even if you say something terrible about somebody and it turns out to be totally untrue, there is a lingering vestige.
HAYES: Absolutely.
CLINTON: ...in your head. And if you`re on the public stage, that affects how people view you. So that was part of what I was up against.
On the pneumonia front, as I write in the book, yeah, you`re absolutely right. I mean, I`d not been feeling good, finally got diagnosed on Friday. My doctor said, you know, take time off and stay home. I said I can`t. I kept campaigning. And then I went to the 9/11 ceremony. And the very first person I saw is my friend and now the minority leader Chuck Schumer, whose first words are, as I say in the book, guess what? I`ve had pneumonia and I`ve been home for a week. And I thought oh, man, I can`t stop, right?
And also remember there were also all these lies about my health.
HAYES: Right. But that`s my point. I`ve always wanted to know this. When we were covering that on the show and I remember it became this crazy thing. It was like people were in the fever swamps that Hillary is secretly sick. What was going through your head, though, when you knew that was out there, but also you had been diagnosed with pneumonia.
CLINTON: I thought I would power through it.
HAYES: Right.
CLINTON: I was on heavy-duty antibiotics and eventually a couple of days, it cleared it all up. So I just missed timed doing it.
HAYES: Right, but the crazy thing about it is all of the sudden, wait, was Alex Jones right about this? Because that`s what the timing ended up being.
CLINTON: It would have been the only thing he has ever been right about.
HAYES: Right. You have these people that are completely non-credible posting this conspiracy theory. And then it was like, oh, wait, she actually had pneumonia.
Anyway, I just think it was a fascinating look at the way that the media and the public interacts with the figure of Hillary Clinton, because there was no there there underneath it. No one did anything wrong.
CLINTON: But you know I write a whole chapter about being a woman in politics.
HAYES: Yeah.
CLINTON: And honestly, I really believe that a lot of the exaggeration is the double standard, and a lot of the challenges that I face being the first woman nominated, close to being president were just exacerbated by my being a woman.
HAYES: People who find themselves in these times find themselves sort of oscillating wildly between pessimism and optimism. Oscillating wildly between feeling like there is a sort of interesting civic renewal that has happened. People are engaged in ways they haven`t been before. And then thinking like, none of it matters and they`re still going to keep coming to try to repeal Obamacare.
What`s your takeaway?
CLINTON: Chris, you have -- No, you have described it perfectly. And I`m really glad you raised it, because here`s what I want to say.
Yes, they will never quit. I`ve been fighting some of these same people for 25 years on things like health care.
They are fueled by ideology, bipartisan advantage, by commercial advantage, by religious belief. They get up every day and they never quit, they never flag. They may have, you know, defeats, but that doesn`t discourage them.
And I think on our side, more broadly speaking, sort of the Democratic Progressive side of the ledger, it is so hard to believe that someone with a straight face could, for example, support a bill would end Medicaid, that would make it really difficult for nursing home residents and people with disabilities and other poor working people to get health care.
You sit there and you go wait, what am I missing here? And so we cannot grow weary while doing good in the Bible`s phrase. We`ve got to be committed to a sustainable political opposition.
And I write about, you know, this new group I`ve started called Onward Together which is aimed to do just that. To support Grassroots organizations, to encourage people to register and vote, which is the simplest of all citizenship responsibilities, but the most profound.
Because if we don`t win elections, we can`t defeat these terrible ideas, and these mean-spirited political platforms and policies.
So I hear this all the time where people say, you know, I`ve marched and I`ve protested and I`ve called, but, you know, I`m really tired. And I say, well, take a break, but then get back into it. Don`t quit. We need a sustainable opposition.
Now, obviously we`ve got to do a better job of describing what we`re for as well as what we`re against. I say look, we need both economic justice and social justice. It would be a mistake to jettison one for the other. But we`ve got to do more to say how they are connected and how they reinforce each other.
So I`m actually optimistic. I mean, I end the book on kind of an optimistic note because I think young people in particular are all in on the kind of world that is much more respectful of diversity and tolerant of different opinions and the like, but has a view about what will be best for them individually and for all of us together.
So, I just want your viewers in particular who care about these issues and kind of go up and down on Twitter and everywhere else all the time, don`t give up and don`t give in.
And I say this as somebody who has fought some of the very same battles over and over and over again. And we just can`t let the other side, which is a dark, divisive, negative version of nostalgia control our politics.
So I`m in.
HAYES: Well, I really appreciate you taking the time.
CLINTON: Thank you.
HAYES: You can come back whenever you like. If you just want to kibitz about the news.
CLINTON: Yeah, it would be fun.
HAYES: Lots going on.
CLINTON: Yeah, there is.
HAYES: It was great to have you here.
CLINTON: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: All right. Still ahead, the governor of Puerto Rico joins us live.
Plus, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts right after this break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, President Trump called a radio show today to explain why he backs Alabama Senator Luther Strange over his primary opponent Roy Moore.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He will absolutely win against the Democrat, whereas Ray is going have a hard time. You know that. It`s going to be a hard race.
Luther wins automatically -- if Luther wins tomorrow, the Democrats will hardly fight. If Ray wins, they`re going to pour in $30 million like they did in Atlanta.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
TRUMP: I had to bring her -- we brought her over the line. We did a great job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But whether it`s Ray or Roy, Trump just gave Moore a big gift ahead of tomorrow`s vote, and that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: President Trump stumped for Luther Strange Saturday and how did he do? Well today, Strange`s opponent Roy Moore released an add using the president`s own words.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I might have made a mistake, and I`ll be honest, I might have made a mistake. And you know what? I told Luther, I have to say this, if his opponent wins, I`m going to be here campaigning like hell for him.
ROY MOORE, U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: And I can`t wait. (END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, (R) MAINE: There are many problems in the Affordable Care Act that do need to be fixed, however, it was clear to me that the Graham-Cassidy Bill was not the answer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And then there were three. Maine`s Susan Collins joining Rand Paul of Kentucky and John McCain of Arizona in rejecting the Graham-Cassidy Repeal Bill.
It drew lines of protesters to a Senate Finance Committee hearing today. 181 people were arrested there, many dragged from the room.
Now Republicans only have a few more days to pass some kind of bill on a simple majority, but with three GOP Senators now in the no call, Republicans look likely to fail yet again. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: More than 3 million people living on the island of Puerto Rico are American citizens and tonight they are desperate for action from White House and Congress. The White House insisting they are moving like never before, desperate for essentials on an island almost entirely without power.
Yesterday, Puerto Rico`s governor said they need more help and today asked for swift action from the Trump administration and Congress.
With me now by phone is the Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rossello.
Governor, I`ve heard people describe the state of your island as a humanitarian crisis. Is that a fair characterization?
RICARDO ROSSELLO, GOVERNOR OF PUERTO RICO: That`s what I started stating this morning and I think it could unravel into that. Right now we don`t have power. Certainly it`s been a devastating event here in Puerto Rico. The infrastructure has suffered severely.
My petition is, if we want to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the United States where 3.5 million U.S. citizens, proud U.S. citizens live, we need to take swift action in Congress to have a robust package for Puerto Rico, give us flexibility and allow us to execute properly.
HAYES: They are talking now about some kind of package within the next week or two. Is that too long to wait?
ROSSELLO: No, that`s the order of magnitude. What I think is important is that we realize that Puerto Rico is already under a fiscal crunch. As governor for the past eight months, we`ve been implementing the policies so that we can get the economy and attend to the fiscal limitations, but now the game has changed.
It`s been-- this catastrophe is going to bring with it significant hurdles and we need the resources to make sure we have a path forward in Puerto Rico that we can stabilize the situation, rebuild and rebuild stronger than ever.
HAYES: Two challenges I`ve been hearing from people I`m with touch with on the island. Portable water, lots of people without it. Is that correct?
ROSSELLO: Well, right now we updated today about 40% of the people do have portable water. We`ve been working tirelessly for that and we`re getting water, water supplies --
HAYES: 60% don`t have potable water, Governor?
ROSELLO: They don`t. 60% do not have portable water.
HAYES: And access to any kind of gas or money. I`ve heard that basically everything is broken down. No one has money. No ATMs are working.
ROSSELLO: 63 ATMs started working. We`re putting some of these efforts together right now but it is. It is a problem. We establish it before the storm hit Puerto Rico, we were going to be in a blackout phase. If this storm with the power that it came, the ferocity and weak infrastructure that we have hit the island of Puerto Rico, it was going to be catastrophic and, you know, it hasn`t failed in that direction.
HAYES: Governor, I want to talk to you throughout the week. Thank you for making time tonight. I appreciate it.
ROSSELLO: Thank you. I`ll be here for you. Thank you.
HAYES: All right. Thank you.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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