Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: June 22, 2018 Guest: Robert Pittenger, Natalia Cornelio Lee Gelernt, Bob Carey, Kevin Sieff, Jennifer Rubin, Karine Jean-Pierre, Enrique Morones
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like it or not, these aren`t our kids.
HAYES: The chaos and the cruelty continue.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: It`s a prison-like internment site.
HAYES: Tonight as the President sinks his own immigration bill, new confusion about reuniting the families Donald Trump ripped apart. And the Trump official with zero experience responsible for caring for separated children.
TRUMP: To hold big con job.
HAYES: And is Michael Cohen about to flip on Mr. Trump?
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: I`ll do anything to protect Mr. Trump.
HAYES: Like comedian Tom Arnold says it may have already happened.
TOM ARNOLD, ACTOR: He does know Donald Trump. Donald Trump does I care about him. He does not care about his family and it`s over.
HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. U.S. immigration policy is in chaos tonight thanks solely to President Donald Trump. After the humanitarian crisis he initiated would threw every federal agency involved from the Department of Justice to Homeland Security to Health and Human Services to now the Pentagon into pandemonium as over 2,000 children were for ostensibly no reason ripped from their parents and sent to facilities around the country scattered to the four ends and there are still no plans for reuniting them. Today with a casual tweet the President then blew up plans by Congressional Republicans who try to pass an immigration bill. There`s no coordination among agencies with confusion along the border as officials try to figure out what they`re supposed to do now. The only thing consistent about the President`s immigration policy is frankly it`s cruelty. The Washington Post is reporting on the difficulty of reuniting children with their parents.
Stay tuned that reporter of that story will join us later. Even as Homeland Security officials claim that five hundred children have been reunited since May, it`s unclear how many of those children are still being detained with their families. And a new report from Time Magazine reveals that U.S. Navy is preparing to build "temporary and austere tent cities to house -- listen to this -- 25,000 immigrants, plus more camps for a possible total of 119,000 people."
One local television station reporting on the site currently under consideration for this job noted the Kelso, Arkansas sites nearly 60 miles away from Pine Bluff and about two miles away from the Rohwer Relocation Center where more than 8,000 Japanese-Americans were interned between 1942 and 1945. New camps just down the road from the old Japanese internment camps. One Senator who toured a tent camp that has already been set up and is operational in Tornillo, Texas did not mince words.
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BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think it`s an internment site with tents. It`s a prison-like internment site.
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HAYES: Meanwhile, between whining about his own policy and blaming everyone but himself, Donald Trump has been hammering on the idea that Congress must pass new immigration legislation. And then today, literally as House Republicans were working on exactly that, Trump tweeted Republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen and women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solve this decades- old problem. We can pass great legislation after the red wave. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida is retiring from her seat which apparently gives her the freedom to honestly describe what it`s been like working with this President.
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REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R) FLORIDA: It`s such a schizoid policymaking by tweet that what you say on Monday may not last until Friday. Just fear that tweed in the morning saying oh no how many are you going to -- how many policies will you undo by the day`s end? Because the day`s not over. Heck, it`s only -- it`s not even noon yet. How many times can he change his mind?
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HAYES: For more on what happened today on Capitol Hill and join now by Republican Congressman Robert Pittenger of North Carolina. Congressman, do you agree with your colleague, it`s schizoid policy that it`s chaos, the President threw a grenade up to Capitol Hill today?
REP. ROBERT PITTENGER (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Well, I think the President has inherited a chaotic, lack of leadership that was demonstrated for several decades. And you know, President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, President Obama, talked about the issues related to illegal immigrants coming in this country, that they`ve got to address it. Nobody had the courage to do anything about it.
HAYES: But wait, Congressman let me stop you right there. I correct that in 2013 there was a bipartisan piece of legislation that passed the Senate by a margin of 68 to 32 the President endorsed?
PITTENGER: Yes.
HAYES: I am correct that the Republican --
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HAYES: Wait a second. Am I correct that Republican Speaker of the House did not allow that to come to a floor vote despite the fact that had majority votes?
PITTENGER: What we do have was a catch-and-release policy --
HAYES: But I just want to make sure that we`re on the same page about the facts of the matter. In 2013 you agree there was a Senate bipartisan bill that did pass 68 to 32 --
PITTENGER: Let`s get on the same page of reality. The reality is --
HAYES: Wait, no, I`m just making sure that we agree to the history here. You do agree with that right?
PITTENGER: The history is 1997, Judge Flores created this whole issue separating families. And today we have a President who`s trying to address the problem. Chris, let`s look at the reality.
HAYES: Wait a second. Wait a second.
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PITTENGER: 15,000 people died in 2016 because of heroin overdose. That is incredible -- those are real people. I had a little girl down the street from our house she got caught up in all of this. She`s a sweet girl played the violin. And she is --
HAYES: It is an absolute tragedy but can we just -- I`m sorry, that is horrible and what`s happening in opioids or horrible --
PITTENGER: If we have open borders --
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HAYES: OK. Let`s just -- let`s establish -- let`s just establish. You said that no one had the -- no one had the courage take it on. I just want to -- I just want -- all I want -- I really just want to agree on the facts of the matter so we can enter in new evidence. Do you acknowledge that in 2013 there was a bill that passed 68-32 in the Senate? I am not making that up, correct?
PITTENGER: Yes.
HAYES: OK.
PITTENGER: I do acknowledge that President Obama had a continual policy of catch and release --
HAYES: But Congressman --
PITTENGER: -- that we have open borders. We do have individuals --
HAYES: Congressman, let me ask you this.
PITTENGER: 15,000 illegal immigrants just in Texas alone --
HAYES: Congressman --
PITTENGER: -- who were affected. You know, that state with 675,000 criminal acts.
HAYES: Wait a second.
PITTENGER: You know, these are real people that are being affected because of the policies of President Obama. We`re trying to stop that --
HAYES: Congressman. You keep talking about problems with President Obama. The President of the United States is Donald Trump.
PITTENGER: And that`s what we`re trying to fix today so --
HAYES: OK, but what are you trying to fix? You keep saying fix. Let me - - let me ask you this.
PITTENGER: Open borders, catch and release.
HAYES: Open borders. Do you think the United States currently has open borders?
PITTENGER: Absolutely there`s open borders.
HAYES: Have you ever tried to cross the border, sir?
PITTENGER: Yes, sir. I`m from Texas, son. I know what it`s like --
HAYES: Let me ask you this, Congressman. Let me ask you this, Congressman. What does the Customs and Border Protection say about family apprehensions this year versus last year, are they up or are they down?
PITTENGER: Well, they`re discouraging counting because they see a President means business.
HAYES: Are they up or down?
PITTENGER: They are down because the President means business.
HAYES: They`re down four percent.
PITTENGER: What we`ve got to do is fix the border. 90 percent of all the heroin that`s coming across into the United States, Chris, comes from Mexico. 18,000 people --
HAYES: Congressman, that has nothing to do with children who are currently -- the heroin, sir, is not coming from 11-year-old Honduran children who are being taken across the river with their mother.
PITTENGER: And that`s a sad thing. Chris, I have ten grandchildren. These kids are precious. I had one of my grandkids, nine-year-old boy and washing with me today. Precious child, OK.
HAYES: That`s great. I`m glad he was with you.
PITTENGER: Yes, sir. I am too. But those children are a result of families wanting to come to this country.
HAYES: Correct.
PITTENGER: If you come to this country and you cross illegally, then you`re responsible to our laws. We`re a country that have rule of law.
HAYES: So you think they should be separated?
PITTENGER: No. There`s a bad ruling by a judge in 1997.
HAYES: No, the ruling did not require it. Let me ask you this. You just said rule of law. I want to ask you one last question here. Do you know what the federal penalty, what class of crime it is for first-time illegal entry which is what 91 percent of these people are being prosecuted for?
PITTENGER: It`s a misdemeanor.
HAYES: It`s a misdemeanor. Let me ask you this. Do you know what the federal class of crime it is to materially omit information on your SF-86 is?
PITTENGER: I don`t have that but what I do know --
HAYES: I can tell you, Congressman. It`s a felony. So could I ask you this? If you believe in the rule of law -- Congressman, if you believe in the rule of law -- OK.
PITTENGER: My daughter was hit by a drunk driver. A Latino who came across from Mexico came sailing through a red light and hit my daughter. If I hadn`t been in a position to buy her a very safe good car, my daughter have been seriously hurt or worse, OK. This was an illegal immigrant. It was totally inebriated who they come across our border. We need to protect and secure our country. Thank God for a President who gets it. Nobody else preceding him had the guts the courage to jump in where the sharks are and he knows that you and others are going after him every day because he`s in an area that nobody was to get into. It is not an easy issue to resolve.
HAYES: It has been -- it has been taken -- Congressman -- OK, Congressman, thank you for that. The history of the fact matter is it just George W Bush and Barack Obama tried to sign comprehensive immigration reform. I appreciate your time and condolences not your recent primary defeat.
PITTENGER: I`m more happy for the leadership of this president.
HAYES: Thank you very much.
PITTENGER: You`re welcome
HAYES: For more on the chaos stemming from the Trump family separation policy I`m joined by Lee Gelernt who`s been fighting family separation in the courts as the Deputy Director of the ACLU`s Immigrant Rights Project and Attorney Natalia Cornelio, Director of the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project. All right, where do things stand right now? You guys have attorneys on the frontline of child separation right now. The first question is has it stopped on the front line of the processing? Are they no longer doing separations?
NATALIA CORNELIO, DIRECTOR OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM PROGRAM, TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT: It appears that they are no longer doing separations.
HAYES: That`s good.
CORNELIO: As of today.
HAYES: Yes. So as of today, that part of it is not happening.
CORNELIO: I believe so.
HAYES: OK. Now, the second part. You were in court today before a federal judge about your suit and you`re trying -- what is your lawsuit trying to do at this point?
LEE GELERNT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS PROJECT, ACLU: Yes, what we told the judge today was you know what, I said, we need an injunction very quickly to reunite the 2,300 kids who were still separated. And I asked if he would issue that injunction tonight because the children are suffering every day. He, unfortunately, has asked for more briefing but we remain hopeful. But I want to make one thing clear, the separations may have stopped today for a little bit.
We don`t actually think the executive order means we don`t need an injunction to stop separations going forward. And the reason is because there are explicit loopholes in the executive order. So we have asked the judge to continue with our case to lay down constitutional standards required when separation can occur in the future. But the immediate problem is getting these little children back to their parents.
HAYES: Did you talk in federal court today about the reunification process and what did the federal government say in a court of law about what they`re planning?
GELERNT: Yes, so this is the first time they`ve had to talk on the record in a formal setting. The judge pointedly said what`s the strategy, what`s the plan for getting these kids back. The lawyers said there is no plan. We`re just going to do what we`ve continued to do.
HAYES: No plan.
GELERNT: No plan.
HAYES: What are you finding as you attempt with your clients to get people reunited with their kids.
CORNELIO: That there`s no plan. I mean, that this is chaos resulting from an irresponsible abrupt decision to separate parents from their children. It`s unprecedented and the people that have been separated from their children, these parents, they have no right to an attorney. So one of the things that we`ve been scrambling to do is get them a lawyer so that they can have help in their immigration case and in finding their child being reunified with them. But that`s not an automatic process that is given to these parents that were separated from their children. I mean, this is -- the government had no plans to reunify these parents. There`s no infrastructure in place for them to be reunified.
HAYES: Is that -- is that clear to both you that the government -- I mean they had plans to do this we know that. We had a memo back from a year ago, right? They had plans to do family separation. They had plan for the capacity. They started putting out RFPs for contracts right? I mean, they had to have beds for them. Is it clear to you they had zero plans to reunite?
GELERNT: Yes, I think that`s right. I think you`re hitting the right point. This is not really a bureaucratic snafu, this was an intentional plan to separate and purposely no plan to reunite.
HAYES: Really? You really think that?
GELERNT: Oh, I think -- well, I don`t mean necessarily permanent separation but no plan for immediate reunification. So now when they claim they`re ending family separation, of course, there`s no plan to reunite because they never really have -- when I say no plan to reunite, no sort of strategy for doing it quickly now that we see how much harm these children are suffering you know. And I --
HAYES: No, I just -- I also want to know what happens next, right? So this is -- there`s the question about how to reunite that -- these parents, their families, you`re working on that. What happens going forward? They want -- they want to get out of Flores, they can do family detention, maybe put 20,000 people in Navy basis and tent camps, like is that going to happen?
CORNELIO: I certainly hope not. I mean, it`s absolutely absurd to think that the federal government is -- to know that the federal government is asking that parents and children, innocent children be locked up in facilities that have no requirements to meet under state regulations for detaining a child. That`s what the government asked for, for these families to be detained together moving forward and that they not have any licensing requirements, meet any standards, permits, nothing, just do it.
GELERNT: Right. And so one other thing I said to the judge is we need the government to submit a list of every parent and child that has been separated and for the government to immediately within one week tell the parents how to contact their children. I mean, that`s the most horrendous thing. The parents don`t know where the children are.
HAYES: And you`re asking -- you`re asking a court to rule and make that requirement.
GELERNT: We have to. I mean --
HAYES: Because in the absence the government is not doing.
GELERNT: Absolutely.
HAYES: All right, Lee Gelernt and Natalia Cornelio, thank you for sharing your time.
GELERNT: Thank you.
CORNELIO: Thank you.
HAYES: I should mention, Lee Gelernt was just our guest on our new podcast Why Is This Happening where we talk in depth about that ACLU lawsuit on the family separation policy. You can find that and our most recent episode -- or wherever you get your podcast. Ahead Comedian Tom Arnold says Michael Cohen might flip on the President of the United States. An explanation of that bizarre headline coming up. Tonight, meet the man President Trump put in charge of the thousands of children the government took into custody and who apparently has no plans in place on how to reunite them with their parents. That`s in two minutes.
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HAYES: As we were just discussing the government does not appear to have a plan to keep track of let alone reunite the families they`ve torn apart. A Washington Post highlights one legal organization, that`s the Texas Civil Rights Project which are representing more than 300 parents and has been able to track down only two children. The government agency at the center of this issue is the office of refugee resettlement, a division within the Department of Health and Human Services. And Scott Lloyd the person running this agency charged with resettling refugees has practically no experience resettling refugees but he is pretty good at pushing his own version of beliefs on people.
Lloyd wrote a memo last year explaining why he was against letting a teenager under his care who said her pregnancy was the result of a rape, why he wanted her not to get an abortion. We cannot be a place of refuge while we`re at the same time a place of violence. We have to choose and we ought to choose to protect life rather than to destroy it. Joining me now the person who headed up the office of refugee resettlement under the Obama administration Bob Carey who had decades of experience managing refugees issues. OK, ORR have the capacity to do what they need to do which is to match across agencies 2,600 children in their custody with their parents?
BOB CAREY, FORMER DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT: You know, over time that can be achieved. What is clear is that there was no prior planning. ORR was not the architect of this policy change and the business of that office is to reunite primarily adolescence with sponsors, usually family members of the United States. You`re used to serving traumatized young people but not people who`ve been traumatized by their own government.
HAYES: They`re also used to serving people who are like verbal and can speak for themselves and you know, 13 year-olds, 14-year olds, 15 year- olds. I mean, this is a population of five-year-olds, four-year-olds, in the cases eight-months, nine-months, 12-months. That makes a big difference.
CAREY: They can`t articulate their needs. They can`t -- you know, they`re traumatized. They`ve been separated horrifically from parents they`ve never been apart from most likely. They can`t communicate their needs. They`re being flown or bussed across the country. So you know, they`re deeply permanently traumatized kids. And this is -- you know, for the people are working with them, they didn`t go into this work to be --
HAYES: Be a part of this.
CAREY: -- part of this process. No.
HAYES: You`re saying at ORR.
CAREY: At ORR, no. These are social workers who went into this work because they care deeply about the welfare of children and refugees and migrants.
HAYES: I want to bring in Kevin Sieff. He`s Latin America Correspondent for the Washington Post who wrote that piece today on the chaotic effort to reunite immigrant parents with their separated kids. Kevin, it looks like Politico is breaking a story now that HHS has just put together a task force on reunification, just literally just published a few minutes ago so I don`t know if you`ve seen it and it`s going to be run out of the undersecretary there or the deputy secretary who does essentially emergency management. They`re kind of tasking their emergency teams. That that`s the first concrete step we`ve seen from the agency to do anything right?
KEVIN SIEFF, LATIN AMERICA CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, I mean to date it`s just been a total black hole. So I mean, attorneys have been calling a toll-free number which has been distributed to some of the detainees, some of the detained parents. When you call that number, you wait sometimes for over an hour, sometimes no one answers.
When they do answer, you get almost no information. Often lawyers are just told that there -- that the detainees` child is in the United States somewhere. So the effort to find information for the detainees who have lawyers, and again not all detainees have lawyers, is just incredibly, incredibly difficult.
HAYES: Do you think -- I mean, does this have to -- if you were in government right now, what would you be doing? Like what needs to happen to have this happen quickly?
CAREY: Well, you need to -- you need to move quickly. You need to coordinate among different federal agencies which clearly did not happen when this policy was changed. You know, they were not prepared to intake small children and have systems in place to ensure that they could be reunited quickly with their parents. That should have been part of a pre- planning effort if this policy was vetted through the different branches of government in advance which clearly was not the case.
HAYES: It also seems to me that if you have to coordinate between agencies, you -- then you have to have the White House really taking a leadership role on this. It`s the White House and the President and his chief of staff and his cabinet secretary who have to be invested in reuniting these kids or it`s not going to happen.
CAREY: Exactly. Yes. It indeed requires leadership from the top which --
HAYES: Because interagency stuff is messy.
CAREY: It`s very messy. It`s very messy. And it requires a lot of will to make it happen. And that will usually come from leadership at the top or it doesn`t happen.
HAYES: Do you think, Kevin, in the cases where they have been successful, how has that success happen?
SIEFF: I mean, as far as I know -- I mean, I talked to lawyers yesterday that represent over 400 parents of detained children, as you said, two of those -- only two of those cases have the attorneys even been able to locate the children let alone reunify. So I mean I`m not hearing too many success stories frankly. I mean, what I`m hearing more of our cases of parents who have already been deported whose children remain in the United States, often remain in parts of the United States that they`re not even don`t even know exactly where the children are.
So I`m hearing far more sort of far more failures than I am success stories. I don`t know how to explain the families that have been reunified frankly. And I also haven`t seen too much reporting on that. I know there was you know, an announcement from DHS saying that they`ve reunified a certain number of families but I mean, where are the details of those reunifications?
HAYES: You know, there`s -- there are two competing interests here. You`re dealing with minors so there`s a privacy interest and I get that but this has been a black hole from the beginning for us reporters for the public even for like members of Congress. It seems to me transparency is actually the friend of the agencies at this point if they actually want to reunite.
CAREY: Yes it`s important to maintain the privacy and security of children but it`s also important to be transparent. And when I was at ORR, we did frequently have tours of facilities available on my appointment to journalists and congressional representatives and maintained an open-door policy with their regard. I think that`s concerning. It`s important that you know, the care of children and small vulnerable traumatized children is of paramount concern and systems and oversight is critical to be part of that.
HAYES: Bob Carey, Kevin Sieff thanks for joining us. After the break, the President`s personal attorney learning that Donald Trump loyalty only runs one way. Will Michael Cohen flip? Some bizarre news on that front that involves comedian Tom Arnold next.
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ARNOLD: Michael is doing his best. He`s running, running, running, and then he got to sit over his head. Funny he realized that. His wife helped him realize that. He`s like, oh my god, when I got to take care of my family because this guy is the worst. Donald Trump is not. He`s done. Donald -- he know Donald Trump. Donald Trump does I care about him, he does not care about his family, and it`s over.
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HAYES: It`s over. That`s the message that actor Tom Arnold said he got from Michael Cohen when the two met yesterday and took this picture which understandably set the internet ablaze. It was even retweeted by Kellyanne Conway`s husband who`s sort of gone rogue against her wise employer. Arnold is working on a documentary series about hunting for the infamous alleged Trump P-tape. Yes, that is the world we live in. That`s a sentence I just uttered on my news broadcast and he says he and Cohen are now on the same side. Arnold telling NBC News this dude has all the tapes.
This dude has everything. I say to Michael, guess what, we`re taking Trump down together and he`s so tired he`s like OK and his wife is like OK "F" Trump. Cohen has been sending clear six smoke signals his famous loyalty to Trump has finally reached its limit reportedly complaining he`s been frozen out by the President, expressing frustration that Trump isn`t paying his legal bills, telling friends he`s moving closer and closer to flipping on his longtime boss.
And then on Wednesday, Cohen resigned from the RNC Finance Committee which by the way he was still on. He was still somehow deputy finance chair. And in his resignation letter, he somewhat randomly included a pointed criticism of Trump`s decision to separate migrant kids from their parents "as the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor."
The images and sounds of this family separation policy is heart-wrenching. While I strongly support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be used as bargaining chips. With me now for more on Trump-Cohen relationship and the legal situation both now face I`m joined by Julie Ioffe, newly minted Correspondent for G.Q. Magazine, MSNBC Justice and Security Analyst Matt Miller, former Spokesman at the DOJ and MSNBC Legal Analyst Barbara McQuade, a former Federal Prosecutor. And Barbara I`ll start with you. Two interesting thing about Michael Cohen aside from palling around with Tom Arnold, one is that he seems desperate to cooperate. I mean, he sent every signal that he`s interested in it, and two, as far as I can tell he still hasn`t had a queen for a day or a proper session with any U.S. Attorney. What do you make of that?
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, it`s hard to detect a coherent strategy behind what he`s doing and what he`s saying but I think a couple things. One is I`ve heard from defense attorneys and criminal defendants that the waiting is often the hardest part when you know that there`s another shoe about to drop, either you`re going to be charged or you`re awaiting sentencing is a really difficult time for defendants. They have an urge to do something and yet they have to wait. And so it can be very difficult and that may explain what`s going on.
But my guess is that the Southern District of New York doesn`t want to reach out to him or make a decision about whether to charge him or whether to seek his cooperation until they know all of the contents of the search from his office in his home. And they`re still going through that attorney-client privilege review. And so I think until they are sure that they know the full scope of any misconduct he might have engaged in, they`re not ready to sit down with him.
So, I know they`re working through that as quickly as they can, but they have got the third party special master, retired judge, involved in the review. I`m sure she`s working as quickly as she can. But I think until that is resolved, they are not going to be prepared to make a decision about how to treat him.
HAYES: Matt, what do you make of it?
MATT MILLER, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: You know, this is so difficult, because one of the problems we have here with a lot of people in the Trump orbit, not just Michael Cohen, is deciding who`s a rational actor, because you know you look at people that behave like this and you might think, well, he`s pursuing some kind of strategy here. It might be he`s trying to send a signal to the prosecutors that he`s trying to make a deal, it might be that he`s trying to send a signal to Trump -- hey, boss, look, I`m under a lot of pressure here and I`m getting close to flipping, pay attention to me. You know, send a signal that everything is going to be OK and you`re going to pardon me or give me a pardon now and maybe I`ll think differently. That might be a strategic move they would be making.
But the other explanation for all of this is these are just irrational people who do irrational things and say things publicly and do things like -- you know, like talk to Tom Arnold who then appears on TV saying a bunch of crazy things.
I mean, this is not the first time we`ve seen people in the Trump orbit show up on television or intermediaries of theirs show up on television, Sam Nunberg is a great example, doing things that appear to make no sense at all.
HAYES: Julia, you just wrote a great profile for GQ about Don Junior. And, you know, one of the things that comes through in this and other literature in this sort of genre is like loyalty to Donald Trump Sr. is a one-way street, even when it`s family members. I mean there is an insane story in this profile about the president basically when he`s going through a divorce with Ivana bluffing that he`s going to steal his son, essentially, and calling her and bluffing and her calling the bluff and be like, fine, take him. And then as his son watches, he just sends him back.
And I just think like a person that can do that, if you`re Michael Cohen, he`s not going to be loyal to you if he can do that to his own son.
JULIA IOFFE, THE ATLANTIC: I have to say, well, first of all, it kind of explains the surprise that Trump experienced when people were so upset about the child separation, right? Maybe he doesn`t care about being separated from his own kids.
As for Michael Cohen, you know, I have to say this is the least surprising development. It`s easy to bluff and say, you know, I`d take a bullet for him, I would do anything to protect Mr. Trump. And then when the bullet is, you know, barreling down at you, you know, things look a little different.
And I think he`s just trying to save his own skin and he knows his boss better than anybody. And he knows that, you know, he`s -- that bullet is coming.
HAYES: So you think that he knows that that loyalty is asymmetric, that he is...
IOFFE: For sure.
HAYES: That he has seen it up close enough that he understands that that`s a constant?
IOFFE: Well, and I think he`s a similar kind of guy. I think people in this orbit know what they`re dealing with. They`re trying -- I think often laboring under the illusion that they can get some kind of loyalty back, that, you know, when Trump shines his orange sun on them, they think that there is a loyalty going in the other direction too, but I think when push comes to shove, they remember what is actually the reality, which is, as you said, that the loyalty goes one way. And, you know, you only have one life to live. You don`t want to spend the rest of it in prison. I get it.
HAYES: There`s also the possibility, Matt, that it just -- its turn from - - you know, to war, right? I mean, that basically he`s -- the president hasn`t kind of risked going to war against Paul Manafort. He`s sort of expressed sympathy for him. He`s kind of distanced himself, but we do know that, like The National Enquirer ran this in April saying that Trump`s fixer`s, secrets and lies, right. And we also know that is a hit job basically from the White House because The Washington Post has been reporting that The National Enquirer sent stories about Trump to Michael Cohen before publication all through the campaign, so it was essentially a kind of propaganda arm of the Trump campaign.
There is the possibility that this could get very ugly, it seems to me, Matt.
MILLER: Yeah, look, this entire group of people, it`s a viper pit, and the vipers will turn on each other at some point. I think if you`re the president, you probably look at Michael Cohen right now and there`s no reason to go to war with him. All the incentive is to keep him friendly, maybe you want to send a few shots.
But if Michael Cohen does eventually flip and does cooperate, and let`s be honest, unless there`s a pardon, that is the way these cases almost always end, you know, 99 percent of federal defendants plead guilty. And with the pressure he`s under, you have to think that`s where he`s going to go.
And if he does, the incentive he has is to give everything he can about the president, because the more he gives, the better -- the lighter sentence he`s likely to get if he gets a sentence at all.
So at some point, his incentives change and the incentives for him are to turn on the president. And at that point, that`s when the president`s incentives change. And you see him doing things like he`s starting to do a little bit with Paul Manafort. Oh, this is a guy I didn`t know. He didn`t work with me really. He worked for a lot of other people. You can see him distance from Cohen and even turn and start attacking him.
HAYES: Barbara, given the bar that you would have to get to cross to search Michael Cohen the way they did, are you confident that they have enough to indict him probably now?
BARBARA: No, I don`t know that.
HAYES: Huh, interesting.
MCQUADE: I mean, all we know is that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime was in his office. And it may not even be that he was the one who committed the crime. So I don`t think so. I think that that is something that the prosecutors in the southern district of New York are looking at.
But I do think that one of the things that Michael Cohen is doing, though, is could be damaging himself as a cooperator. The more public he is, the more he aligns himself with people like Tom Arnold who are determined to take down President Trump, it sort of harms his credibility as a potential witness.
And so I think most lawyers would advise Michael Cohen right now, despite the temptation to be out there, that you should just be quiet right now because anything you say could be seen by people as creating a bias against President Trump if he ultimately does cooperate against him.
HAYES: All right, Julia Ioffe, Matt Miller, and Barbara McQuade, thanks so much for being with me.
Ahead, the ugliness that came out of the Republican Party this week and the resistance that met it.
Plus, just some Trump loving folks trying to find love in a Trump world. That`s tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the enthusiastic partner in Trump`s immigration debacle, is discovering just how unhappy people are with what she has done this week. And if you`re wondering just how she sleeps at night, good question. There was a crowd of protesters was outside her house in the early morning hours blasting the audio of the sounds of migrant children crying and chanting no justice, no sleep.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No justice.
CROWD: No peace.
CROWD: No justice.
CROWD: No peace.
CROWD: No justice, no sleep. No justice, no sleep.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Earlier this week, Nielsen went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant of all places and, well, you probably saw what happened there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: End family separation! End family separation! End family separation!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If kids don`t eat in peace, you don`t eat in peace.
CROWD: If kids don`t eat in peace, you don`t eat in peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And as tragic as it is to the social life of the Homeland Security Secretary may be, turns out there are a lot of Trump administration employees with trouble in that department. That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: So when Donald J. Trump took the oath of office, the deplorables declared victory, came to Washington, D.C. and became the undateables apparently. Politico interviewed more than 30 millennial staffers from the Trump White House and across the administration and found, qutoe, "Trump supporters swipe left, meaning don`t even bother trying. It might be the single most common disclaimer on dating app profiles in Washington."
In a town where only 4 percent of residents voted for Trump, Politico reports that "young staffers have had to develop a keen sense of just when to have the talk with romantic partners." Sometimes they never make it that far. One trump millennial reported getting this message: "just googled you, go blank yourself."
At times, it`s hard to just get out the door, quote, "I have gotten yelled at a few times walking out of work," lamented one White House staffer.
So what`s a young, single Trump employee to do? A common coping mechanism, reports Poltico, is go on intra-administration double dates. The real kicker, one young former health and human services official confides that rebellion, a southern themed establishment farther north near U Street is one of the few closet Trump bars in town.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: It has been a rough few days for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Today marks one week since he was sent to jail over allegations of witness tampering, and the same judge who locked him up just rejected a bunch of requests from his legal team.
Earlier today she denied a motion to dismiss one of Manafort`s money laundering charges, affirming he will have to forfeit related assets to the government if convicted.
Just yesterday, the judge denied a separate motion to suppress all the evidence seized from Manafort`s storage locker. And that trial in Washington, D.C. is set to begin in September.
Manafort is, of course, facing another trial in Northern Virginia, that starting just a month from now. And his only real glimmer of hope is to get a jury pool full of Fox News viewers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: I believe that this is the end of Mueller`s investigation effectively. And the president of the United States, my friend and a great president who`s off to a terrific start, is going to be vindicated that this is a witch hunt with no evidence and nothing else but a bunch of people who hate him, hate Republicans, hate anything that he stands for, and vowed to get him no matter what.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So that appears to be just what Robert Mueller is afraid of, not what Rudy Giuliani said, but that potential jurors are watching that.
In a motion filed yesterday by one of his top prosecutors, the special counsel argues that, quote, the nature and scope of the publicity surrounding this matter raises a substantial danger potential jurors may already have formed opinions about the defendant`s guilt or innocence and may have developed views about the special counsel`s investigation or may otherwise be affected in their ability to consider the case impartially.
To remedy that, Mueller asked the judge in Virignia for permission to use a written questionnaire for prospective jurors including a question about where they get their news.
Still ahead, the right`s dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrant children and the wake-up call for all of America , that`s right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: So here`s what happened this week. In the midst of a national moral emergency over the government`s policy of tearing migrant children away from their parents, the president of the United States referred to those very same migrants as vermin, tweeting that they want to, quote, "infest our country." He`s talking there about mothers and children desperately seeking asylum in the U.S.
This morning, Fox News rationalized the president`s rhetoric and his policies with the following argument.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like it or not, these aren`t our kids. Show them compassion. But it`s not like he`s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country. And now people are saying that they`re more important than people in our country, who are paying taxes, who have needs as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Also today, Iowa Republican Steve King, who has espoused white supremacist views on this very show, and who recently retweeted propaganda posted by an actual honest to goodness Hitler admiring Neo-Nazi, had this to say about a group of detained migrant boys. "Young boys, all old enough to be tried as adults, or serve in the military, are prime MS-13 gang material and certainly grew up in the culture of one of the top 10 most violent countries in the world."
When it comes to immigration, the GOP is Steve King`s party.
For more on how we got here and what it means for immigration policy going forward, I`m joined by MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin, columnist for The Washington Post; Enrique Morones who is founder and executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Border Angels; and Karine Jean-Pierre who is spokesperson, senior adviser at MoveOn.org.
And Jennifer, I`ll begin with you, I should say that Killmeade walked that back. He said I didn`t mean to make it seem like children coming to the U.S. illegally are less important, because they live in another country. I have compassion for all children, especially for all the kids separated from their parents right now.
That said, I have been truly aghast at the vileness of the rhetoric of dehumanization that we have seen this week. What do you think about it?
JENNIFER RUBIN, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yeah, in the past they`ve been more careful about their language quite frankly. But this is what you have to do, if you`re going to intern children and mothers and fathers, you have to have the population subdued by the notion that these are less than human, they are not us, they are subhuman. That`s why you use words like infestation, like vermin.
Trump has been doing this for a while now. And he`s had to turn up the volume because his offenses against these people have also gotten worse. So you are now seeing in its full glory, in its full fashion, what the face of fascism, what this looks like, what this deep racial animus. And he has to keep going because he has to keep feeding this to his base. He has to keep repeating it to himself.
And frankly, the Fox guy can take it back all he wants. That is exactly what he meant. He meant they are lesser individuals. You can`t just say oh, well, I didn`t really mean it. No, he did mean it. That`s the premise of all of this.
Now, I want to raise one more question, Trump continually conflates these people with criminals. He did it again today, visiting with the parents. The children who have been scattered to the winds are not criminals. Their parents are not criminals. This is not the origin of MS-13. This is a human tragedy. And for Trump to associate them with criminals and the rest of them to associate them with criminals is also a fascistic move.
HAYES: Enrique, I wanted to talk to you because you`ve been working on the border in Arizona in one of the most dangerous parts for crossing in the entire country. And you try to help administer to and help migrants who are crossing illegally.
And you interact with them. And I wonder like what do you make of the tenor of the rhetoric, what you`ve seen in this country both from the president, his supporters, and also people who are saying no, this is absolutely outrageous?
ENRIQUE MORONES, BORDER ANGELS: Well, Chris, good to see you again. We`re based in San Diego. We do do work in Arizona, but our base is in California. Today, we had 40 people out in the desert putting water in California where we`re based here in San Diego. And Donald Trump`s rhetoric is hateful. He started his campaign attacking me. I was born in San Diego and I`m 100 percent proud to be Mexican, of Mexican roots. He said I was a criminal and a rapist, now he`s saying that we`re animals.
Hate words lead to hate actions. We`ve seen a raise in hate crimes, even though less people have been crossing than the last 40 years. Nowadays, there`s a rise in the detentions, the deaths out on the border. It`s a horrific situation.
Donald Trump, without a doubt, is pure evil. No country in the Americas has a wall besides the United States, a third of the 2,000-mile border has a wall, 700 miles, that has caused 11,000 deaths since 1994 and the Republican congress of back then.
No other country in the world separates children from their parents. That hasn`t happened in this country since the time of slavery and this this world since the time of the Nazis. And those are groups that Donald Trump, I can see him working with those types of groups. He`s admitted it. He admitted it in Virginia. He says that some of them are good fellows, including the person that killed Heather Heyer who was the young lady that was killed that said -- if you`re not outraged, you`re not paying attention. We`re outraged.
I was just at a detention facility two hours ago with Senator Kamala Harris. It`s unbelievable what`s going on. It`s the worst of the American spirit. And there`s only one person to blame, and that`s Donald Trump.
Not enough of us came out to vote in November of 2016, and the world is paying the difference.
HAYES: On the other side of this, the politics of this, Karine, is that 71 percent of Americans say that immigration is good for the country. There has been a kind of backlash to Trumpism. That I think sometimes political observers overestimate how deep or broad -- I shouldn`t say deep, how broad the appeal of Trumpism and the Trumpist line on immigration is -- it`s a vermin infestation.
What is your organization seeing in response to this? I know you guys have an action called for June 30th, big march on Washington, actions around the country. What have you seen on the other side in terms of the countermobilization to this?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, MOVEON.ORG: Well, it`s been pretty -- it`s been pretty intense. I mean, people are angry. We`ve hit rock bottom this week. And actually, we say that a lot. Oh, we`ve hit rock bottom. Every week I feel like we say that all the time. But when you go after children in the way that he did, in the crisis that he created, this inhumane moral crisis that he created that no one else, but the Trump administration did that, because he thought he could get away with it, with the dehumanizing of what you guys were talking about, because he`s done that and it`s been two years of being a racist and a bigot. He thought, OK, well, I can get away with this. No one is going to say anything, my base is going to love this.
And what happened is people said oh heck, no, we`re not taking this. We`re going to fight. We`re going to continue to fight. We`re going to double down. And Trump for the first time in his administration slightly backed down, slightly, which we`ve never seen him do before. And we`re going to continue to do that.
As you just mentioned, I`m going to be going to the border on Monday and Tuesday. And then on Saturday, the 30, we`re going to have a major march across the country, 50 states, 300,000 sign-ups. And we`re going to continue. We`re going to double down.
HAYES: You know, Jennifer, I feel like there`s this sort of savvy view among pundits that this stuff plays better than it does, but remember the Virginia gubernatorial race where it was basically a referendum on MS-13. I mean, that`s -- Trump tweet on it, Ralph Northam, running for governor of Virginia is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs and sanctuary cities. Vote Ed Gillespie. And Northam won relatively handily.
And I feel like that political lesson has not permeated or penetrated the political class of D.C.
RUBIN: You`re exactly right. And I try to bring some perspective in talking about this, but Trump is -- the more intense he becomes the harder he churns on the cesspool of his base, the more intense they get, but the harder it is for everybody else to go along with it or to ignore it.
So you do have Northam. You have a whole slew of elections in 2017 which went the Democrats` way. You have over 40 seats in state legislatures that flipped from Republican to Democrat. So I think there is a backlash, and I think there is also a recognition that people didn`t get off the couch and didn`t go vote in 2016. And if they make that mistake again, we`re in a heck of a lot of trouble as a country because we do have an opportunity to yank them back a bit.
HAYES: Jennifer Rubin, Enrique Morones, and Karine Jean-Pierre, thank you all for joining me.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now.
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