Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: June 26, 2018 Guest: Cory Booker, Linda Sarsour, Jess McIntosh, Michelle Goldberg, Keith Ellison, Sonya Nazario, Karine Jean-Pierre
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: 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: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
HAYES: What began as a Muslim ban has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
TRUMP: It`s called I`m sorry you can`t come in, you have to leave.
HAYES: Tonight, what complete control of government looks like for the party of Trump and what Democrats plan to do about it with Senator Cory Booker? Plus, as a resistance to Donald Trump`s family separation continues --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are you separating families?
ELAINE CHAO, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: Why don`t you leave my husband alone?
HAYES: -- is a new Democratic protest movement taking shape. And Donald Trump`s messy breakup with an American icon continues.
TRUMP: I think the people that ride Harley`s are not happy with Harley- Davidson.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. Today, today was one of those days that crystallizes exactly what`s at stake in American politics right now at this moment. The political coalition that currently controls all three branches of the federal government just took a major step to consolidate its power leveraging a arguably stolen Supreme Court seat to validate the agenda of a president who we have to remember lost the popular vote, whose campaign was backed by in foreign our adversary possibly with his campaign`s help and who in word and in deed explicitly uses the power of his office, exclusively for the benefit of the minority of the country that supports him. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the President`s ban on travel from a list of mostly Muslim countries, the third version of a policy originally cooked up on the campaign trail.
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TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country`s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. We have no choice. We have no choice.
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HAYES: That was widely condemned at the time including by now Vice President Mike Pence. But today writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts shows to effectively ignore the President`s own rhetoric ruling that the newest version of the travel ban is "neutral on its face and falls within the President`s executive authority." He was joined the majority by none other than Justice Neil Gorsuch, surprise- surprise whom the president nominated last year after Mitch McConnell in an extraordinary feat of maximalism not to mention one might argue incivility blocked President Barack Obama from filling a vacant Supreme Court seat refusing to even so much as hold hearings on his nominee. Today McConnell got to pat himself in the back tweeting a picture of himself shaking the justices hand because well, he knew what was going on, everyone did.
With its decision on the travel ban today the Republican-controlled Supreme Court gives an effective green light to the president`s immigration agenda which I`m sure the President receives as more than just about this case. That immigration agenda let`s remember until last week including tearing migrant children away from their parents of the border as a kind of punishment and deterrence and reportedly in some cases holding those children as hostages to force families to drop their asylum claims. The family separation policy appears to have been halted after overwhelming public backlash, but and this is important the vast majority, the vast majority of those children right now as I speak to you have yet to be reunited with their parents. The President has been quite clear about how he wants immigrants and migrants to be treated going forward.
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TRUMP: Other countries it`s called I`m sorry you can`t come in, you have to leave. This one we have judges. If they step on our land, we have judges. It`s insane. It is a hodgepodge of laws that have been put together over years and we have to change it. It`s so simple. It`s called up sorry you can`t come in.
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HAYES: Think about that for a second. If they step on our land, we have judges. It`s insane. Oh yes, in America we have judges. I`m sorry you can`t come in. That`s the President`s immigration policy in a nutshell. Whether you`re talking about a student from Yemen or an asylum seeker from Guatemala or a doctor from Iran, in the eyes of this President and his allies people like White House aide Stephen Miller and Congressman Steve King, immigration poses an existential threat both to the nation`s identity, its racial makeup and crucially their own grasp on power.
Now to be clear, those people who view their mission as preserving and entrenching the political power of their overwhelmingly white base, they still make up a small minority of the political class and of the country in general. But right now at this moment, they are the ones in charge unless and until the bigger portion of the majority of the country mobilizes against them. I`m joined now by a member of the Democratic Party leadership, 2018 candidate for Attorney General in Minnesota, one of the few Muslims serving on Capitol Hill, Congressman Keith Ellison. Congressman, first your reaction to the majority opinion in which the Chief Justice basically says maybe he said some nasty stuff but you got to just look at this sort of terms of the four squares of what`s in there and it passes constitutional muster.
REP. KEITH ELLISON (D), MINNESOTA: Well it`s really kind of a surprising and shocking decision because it`s very clear that you can have a document that might be facially neutral but if it`s intent, purpose, and expected application are discriminatory, then that is not going to pass constitutional muster. Yet the Supreme Court said if they get a thin excuse for national security they`ll pretty much let the President do anything. That`s pretty disturbing because you can imagine how this can be applied in other areas. This seems to be a represent it comes to the President`s most odious and ugly discriminatory impulses.
HAYES: You know, there`s something else this Court has done which is it is struck down lower court`s blocking racially prejudicial redistricting plans including in the Texas case. They`ve also upheld Ohio`s purging of people from the voter rolls. Again, those were similar people on both sides of those issues in terms of the opinions. What do you see is happening in terms of how the Republican Party and the court and the president are using the power they have right now?
ELLISON: Well, they`re using their power to dominate the country even though they represent a minority of Americans. They are -- you know, the decisions that we just saw regarding voting were nothing short of disturbing. They are hostile to the idea of representative democracy and I`m telling they`re pretty overt about this. They`re pretty clear. You remember well the Kris Kobach commission that was going to study the false you know, voting the group that according to him fraudulently switched the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. I mean, that -- and that`s just sort of the beginning. I mean, we all know that we`re living under a gutted Voting Rights Act. We still have not been able to pass the restoration of that. So that`s what we`re looking at, a minority that is trying to dominate the majority and is using the courts, the legislature and the President to do it.
HAYES: What do you say the people are saying, well, they`re doing a pretty good job right now? What do we do about it?
ELLISON: I have to agree -- I have to agree that they`re doing a good job that about at it but what we`ve got to do about it is mobilize and get out there. We`ve got to go to those low turnout districts and get folks out to the polls and we`ve also got to argue that it is about an election but it`s not only about an election. Activism, engagement, participation in society really has to go up. You know, I tell you sitting on the sidelines in this moment really is -- it`s not a protest, it`s actually a surrender. And so what I`m -- what I`m asking folks to do is get out there and do something about it. I just left a rally here in Minneapolis in front of the federal courthouse and I can tell you people are energized, they`re not demoralized.
They`re looking for things to do. People are running for office and they`re getting involved. Just the other day, we had the parkland students here in Minnesota. They`re organizing young people to register to vote. They`re making sure that the Millennial vote turns out in November and people stay active throughout the year. That`s what we got to do about it, Chris. We cannot simply assume that things are going to get better because they usually do. In this particular case, they may not unless we act now.
HAYES: Do you feel like Democratic leadership is sending a strong message about what the sort of agenda of the party is in resisting what you described as a kind of minority managing to sort of exert its power of majority, how to resist that?
ELLISON: Well, let me tell you. I think that the Democratic Party leadership has shifted its focus. I mean, right now we`re not only focused on every four years, we`re focused on every single day. The Democratic National Committee is thinking about how we can support candidates in municipal races, state legislative races, school board races, all kind of races up and down the ballot. And we don`t just do it every four years we do it every single race and so that is a shift in focus.
We simply cannot have an approach where we raise money from a lot of rich people and then buy ads every four years. That`s not going to work. We need to engage people in the every single level. And you mentioned a few the other cases where there`s one that we`re watching for tomorrow and you probably are keeping your eye on the Janice case as well. That has a lot to do with the shape and trajectory of our country as it relates to public employee unions. So we`re keeping our eyes out, Chris.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Keith Ellison, thank you.
ELLISON: Thank you.
HAYES: My next guest is a long-time Republican strategist who`s worked at the highest levels of that party who just quit the GOP after almost 30 years over the President`s immigration policy specifically family separation. In an impassioned tweet storm last week, Steve Schmidt wrote this independent voter will be aligned with the only party left in America that stands for what is right and decent and remains fidelitous to our republic, objective truth, the rule of law and our allies. That party is the Democratic Party. And MSNBC Contributor Steve Schmidt joins me right here. Great to have you here.
STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Good to see you, Chris.
HAYES: So first I want to talk about that, the kind of breaking point for you. You know you`ve been a never Trump or that`s been clear. You have -- you know, there`s a group of people that I think have very strong views about this individual, this president, and his character and then there`s a question at which point that that becomes true about everyone in league with him. What was the breaking point there?
SCHMIDT: Well, I had the experience on June the 5th standing on Juno Beach and spending time in the Canadian cemetery, spending time at Pegasus Bridge where the British 6th Airborne left in and understanding the value of the us-led liberal global order that emerged from the aftermath of humanity`s greatest tragedy which killed 80 million people and left the world in ruins. That liberal global order is worth defending. This president is an autocrat. He is not a small d-Democrat. He doesn`t believe in liberal democracy. And what we`re seeing here every day are five behaviors.
One, he incites fervor in a base through constant lying. Two, he scapegoats minority populations and he affects his blame for complex problems to them in them alone. Three, he alleges conspiracies that are hidden in nefarious and linked to those scapegoated populations. Four, he spreads a sense of victimizations among those fervent supporters. And five, he asserts the need to exert heretofore unprecedented power to protect his victim class from the conspiracies and scapegoated populations. Through all of history, you understand to totalitarianism, you understand how democracies fall. You will find those five behaviors. Now the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, I would argue, and you and I disagree on many, many things so we are fidelities to liberal democracy.
HAYES: That`s right.
SCHMIDT: Right? That government of the people, by the people, for the people must continue and the Republican Party has advocated. Conservatism has become synonymous with obedience to the leader, a leader who says I am the law, I am above the law. I will define what truth is. Truth is what the leader says it is not what we would have recognized months ago is objective truth. And so the Republican Party has become a threat to liberal democracy and all over the world. We see a regression in Poland, in Hungary, the rise of far-right ethno-nationalist parties and the last time this happened it unleashed the tragedy the likes of which the world has never seen. And I think there`s a real lack of imagination in this country about how fragile these institutions are and about how dangerous a president is unprepared, as authoritarian, as ignorant as he the damage that he would be able to cause.
HAYES: You know, I -- that`s incredibly well said and when I think about this and I think about those behaviors, right, they seem so obvious, right? I mean, the way this is -- and here you have today the court. I mean, this is what I found so fascinating at the court`s decision today because really the -- if Donald Trump wasn`t Donald Trump and President Marco Rubio on day one hadn`t said all those things and he puts in this ban, it almost certainly -- it`s not even a question, right? I mean, the question is does what this guy has said and the bigotry he`s espoused taint in a kind of unfixable way constitutionally this ban. We all know what it was about. We all saw it happen in real time. And it`s remarkable maybe that you have Gorsuch and Roberts who`s someone that I think you`ve worked on his confirmation, right?
SCHMIDT: I love the confirmation.
HAYES: Basically doing a kind of sophisticated judicial version of the Paul Ryan I didn`t read the tweet, right? Because like they all read the paper, they all know. It`s on the internet the facts of the case.
SCHMIDT: The intent was perfectly clear. This was a religious test. This was a religious ban. This was what he said it was. We should take him seriously when he says things. And so this is as un-American of policy as we have ever seen. We have freedom of religion in this country and this is also true. This decision harms the national security of this country in a profound way. The forces of Islamic radicalism, of extremism, are real and dangerous but the only force that can defeat it is moderate Islam. This was a gift to the extremists. This was a fulfillment of Bin Laden`s strategy which was to precipitate a global conflict, a war of civilizations between the west and between Islam. We don`t want to be at war with a billion Muslims all over the world in a 21st-century crusade. And so the stigmatizing of good and decent people and the insult given to the Muslim soldiers who have served this country, who have sacrificed it is appalling.
HAYES: It also, there`s also a similarity here it strikes me of what`s happening on the border and here, right? In both cases you`ve got -- the President talks about MS-13 and he talks about ISIS, right? And those are two groups that are both genuinely evil. There`s no -- outside of -- people of MS-13 and people in ISIS, there`s no real supporters of them, right? Then what he does policy-wise is people fleeing ISIS from Syria and people fleeing the murders of MS-13 from Guatemala trying to come to this country who are saying like, yes, they are horrible, please. Those are the people that end up caught in the gears of his demonization of those groups.
SCHMIDT: When you look at a regression from democracy to something less than two to an autocracy, but all through history, when you look at violations of civil liberties, they have always occurred through a prism of fear, that fear is a contagion, it erodes democratic values and institutions but always it`s in the name of security that civil liberties are compromised. And that lesson has been learned through history and here we are repeating it again. And the moral shame that comes from internment camps and that`s precisely what they are for toddlers and children who are stripped away, some of those children stripped away from breastfeeding mothers it is a shame that will linger, a stench that will linger around this vile administration and in my view for a century.
HAYES: Is there -- I mean, is there a political constituency of voters and in the country that feel the way you do? I really mean this, like I don`t know if there is. I mean, there`s Steve Schmidt, there`s Nicole Wallace, there`s Charlie Sykes, there are people that exist in the world and Brett Stevens, are there voters out there who look at what`s happening who we`re saying I`m a Republican and I just can`t abide this. Like, I just don`t know it as an empirical matter if they exist.
SCHMIDT: I think that there are acts of kindness and decency that take place every day in this country. And I think about the Las Vegas shooting where Johnny Smith 33-year-old African-American runs into a hail of gunfire and he saves 33 people`s lives. He`s running towards a group of school kids to save them and he`s shot twice in the neck. And then a white cop runs into the gunfire to save Johnny Smith`s life. That is also America. You know, the author Alex Haley had a saying, he said find the good and praise it. Nobody can compete with Donald Trump in a vileness contest. He`s the most vile.
Nobody can compete with Donald Trump in a dishonesty contest because he`s the most dishonest. We have to find the good and praise it in this country. Free-market American capitalism is worth defending in my view. Liberal democracy is worth defending. The U.S.-led liberal global order despite all of its flaws, it has secured the peace, it has lifted billions of people on the planet out of abject poverty into something approaching prosperity over the last 73 years. All of this is worth defending.
It was architected by giants, conceived by FDR, built by a plain-spoken man from Independence, Missouri Harry Truman, steward it from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama and the departure from it by this president. His fetishizing autocrats and dictators from Erdogan to Putin, to President Xi, it is disturbing. And our allies, the people in the world who we are connected to by shared history, by shared values are rightly concerned. But I do believe that the American people don`t want to live in Trump stand. They want to continue living in America. And this is a fundamental question in 2018. This is the most important midterm election in American history because if this is not repudiated in November, this country is going down a track of not just decline but a fundamental change. They`ll be very, very, difficult to change the trajectory that we`re on.
HAYES: Steve Schmidt, it`s great to have you here. Thank you very much.
SCHMIDT: Good to see you.
HAYES: After the break, 17 states are now suing the Trump administration for its family separation policy. Is over 2,000 children separated from their families still remain in the custody of the U.S. government, the resistance to that in two minutes.
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HAYES: The Department of Health and Human Services today refused to say whether it was still receiving immigrant children taken from their parents even as resistance to family separation intensifies. On the call with reporters, HHS officials did say there are still 2,047 separated children in their custody. And that is only six fewer than about a week ago. Although again, we don`t know if new children are coming in. But now 17 states, as well as District Columbia, are suing the administration to force the government to reunite those families. The Daily Beast reports some veterans and active-duty troops disapprove of building camps on military bases to house immigrant children and all of which adding up to hundreds of planned protests on Saturday across the country including a big march being planned in Washington D.C.
Karine Jean-Pierre is a Senior Advisor and Spokesperson for moveon.org which is helping to organize those protests and Sonia Nazario is a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist, Author of Enrique`s Journey: The Story of a Boy`s Dangerous Honesty to Reunite with His Mother. That`s a fantastic book. Sonia, let me start with you. I want to read a new story about what is happening as the question of family reunification hangs over everyone. The ACLU says in a filing that the border agent threatened to put an immigrants daughter up for adoption if she did not essentially sign deportation papers. We`ve seen other reports from the Texas Tribune about essentially threats that unless you say you will deport and waive your right to asylum, we are going to keep you away from your kid, what do you think of that?
SONIA NAZARIO, AUTHOR, ENRIQUE`S JOURNEY: Well, I think it`s horrific. We are criminalizing people who are coming here and seeking refuge from the United States. We said after World War II during that war we turn back a ship with 800 Jews. We did not allow Anne Frank`s family to come to this country and we were the leaders and saying this would never happen again and yet here we are doing this with vulnerable children. We shouldn`t be criminalizing these folks. We should not be using children as bait and saying we`re only going to give you your child back if -- at the airport if you relinquish all your due process rights to asylum.
There is a difference between an economic migrant, someone coming here for a better life and someone who is coming here because they are fleeing for their life and they`re being persecuted in their home countries. I have spent a lot of time in Central America in the worst neighborhoods. If you took El Salvador and you took that murder level to New York City, instead of fewer than 300 murders, you would have more than 5,000 bodies littering the streets of New York City. I remember an eight-year-old boy in a neighborhood in Honduras who from the age of eight was harangued by the gangs. You have to -- he would collect cans in his bag to recycle to be able to eat and he was told from the age of eight, you have to join us. You must join us.
And ultimately when he was ten years old, they gang-raped him. These are the options for children in these countries oftentimes. You join the gang or you flee within 24 hours. You pay the war tax or you flee within 24 hours. Girls are told and I`ve interviewed many girls who say I was basically told -- I`m pretty I was told to be the girlfriend of the gang leader or they said they would exterminate my whole family. People are running from harm and we`re not talking about huge numbers. So far in the first eight months of fiscal 18, we`ve had 59,000 of these families running from harm, 32,000 unaccompanied children. That fills one football stadium. For God`s sake, the United States can afford that amount of compassion.
HAYES: Karine, when you think about these are the stakes for these people and you hear about the President not just the family separation but also basically saying like he doesn`t want to grant asylum, he doesn`t want an immigration judge, he wants to get rid of due process. What degree do you think public pressure matters here and protests like the ones that you guys are organizing for June 30th that we`ve seen around the country?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, SENIOR ADVISOR AND SPOKESPERSON, MOVEON.ORG: That`s the only way we`re going to stop this president and his awful policies, is by the public pressure, is by standing up and fighting back. And we`ve seen that in the past week when the President did for the first time back down just a little bit. Look, Chris, I spent the day at the border. I joined AFT and religious leaders. We started off in El Paso where we were in front of the state, in front of the U.S. courthouse where the process begins for separating kids from their families. Then we travel to Tornillo in Texas where the detention center is and where kids are sleeping in cages at night and I learned two things. The first thing is you know what, this is not a political crisis, this is a moral crisis. This is a humanitarian crisis.
And number two, nobody`s talking about civility and who`s left out of a restaurant or asked to leave at a restaurant. Nobody is talking about that. They don`t care about that. They want to know what is the U.S. government -- what is the Trump administration doing to reunite these families, reunite these kids with their parents. That`s what people want to know. And the thing about it, these are innocent children, Chris, innocent. There was this one young girl in El Paso right in front of the U.S. Courthouse who held a sign that said, what did I do wrong? That`s what she was she was trying to convey to us. What did I do wrong? And then let`s not forget, these kids are also being traumatized. There was a story that came out in the news today about a young boy who was ripped apart from his family, sent to New York, he tried to jump off -- jump out of a two-story building.
This is what`s going on with these kids and we just can`t have that. There`s such a disconnect right now to what`s happening in Washington DC and what`s happening right here. No one here is talking about poles, nobody cares about Donald Trump`s poles, nobody cares about winning or who`s losing. Nobody cares about votes. They want to know what are we doing. And this is why, speaking of the activism, this is why I came out here with AFT and the religious leaders. This is why MoveOn with other partners are holding this big activism on Saturday. We have 650 events across the country in 50 states, in 350 House District, congressional districts, and we`re just not going to stop over 300 -- I think actually 400,000 people have signed on.
HAYES: Here`s what I think. There`s -- six children have been reunited with their families in a week according to HHS numbers if they`re not getting new family separations and I don`t think they are based on the reporting we have at the border. That`s not fast enough. I mean, that has to be tracked publicly and there has to be pressure put on that and many other things but that -- understanding where we are with that policy every day that goes by of the utmost importance. Karine Jean-Pierre, Sonya Nazario, thank you both for joining me.
PIERRE: Thank you.
NAZARIO: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Next, should the left take on tea party tactics? The Democratic debate on how to handle the Trump era after this.
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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D) NEW YORK: I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don`t agree with you. If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents, that`s not right, that`s not American.
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HAYES: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer represents one wing of the Democratic Party when it comes to confronting Donald Trump. Nancy Pelosi also in that camp with her call for, quote, "the unity from the sea to shining sea." But as we`ve seen the videos of protests and the sorted heckling of administration officials, the Democratic base, or parts of it at least, do not seem to be in sync with Democratic leadership on this question.
As Michelle Goldberg writes in The New York Times today, "there`s an abusive sort of victim blaming and demanding the progressive single- handedly uphold civility lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn`t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don`t want to hear from the angry citizens they`re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill."
With me to discuss this is Michelle Goldberg; columnist for The New York Times, Linda Sarsour, executive director of Empower Change, co-chair of the women`s march; and Jess McIntosh, executive editor of Share Blue media, former senior adviser for Hillary Clinton`s 2016 presidential campaign.
I saw that column that you wrote getting shared everywhere and people -- it said something that I think a lot of people were feeling.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I think a lot of people feel sort of harassed because this false equivalency that has dominated so much of the coverage of the Trump administration that basically equates an actor saying a bad word with white nationalists marching around with machine guns on their -- or semi-automatic assault weapons on their back and says, oh, look, both sides are participating in the death of civility is maddening to people.
And it`s also maddening to people to constantly be told to worry about not just kind of their own actions, and the results of their own actions, but then how will their actions influence some imaginary Trump voter who they`re trying to win over in the midterms.
I think people can`t live like that. They can`t live in this way in which we`re constantly overly solicitous of the feelings of these, you know, of these alienated white people and contemptuous of the feelings of the majority of the people who find this administration intolerable.
HAYES: There`s also the strategic -- there`s also way in which people conflate a lot of stuff. Like, something can be morally compelled and also like not great politics. Like it could be the case that like you are -- like history will look kindly on you if you stand up for integration in Mississippi in 1956, and you will be voted out of office. Like those two things don`t always have to go together.
JESS MCINTOSH, SHAREBLUE: First off, civil disobedience is very American. That is a very American thing to do.
HAYES: Let me stop you there, though, do you think this idea of sort of like getting someone`s face in a restaurant or heckling them, do you count that as civil disobedience?
MCINTOSH: I do. I think civil disobedience is any civilian who is acting within their own daily life trying to gum up of the works of our slide into authoritarianism. And I think that that is a good thing.
I think we saw -- I mean, the Trump administration has been a racist disaster since the very beginning, the campaign was before that, but in the last couple of weeks, we have seen a dramatic turn. We have move down the steps of a slide into authoritarianism.
And it`s not going to get better, because that`s how this works. For as long as they are in power and allowed to do what they`re doing, this is only going to get worse. And that means we have to abandon normal channels and take what we can get.
HAYES: OK, well, but then the question becomes -- and I want to get to you in a second, but for the question becomes -- and I want you to answer this too, Linda, because you`re doing a lot of organizing. It`s like there`s a little bit of -- if god is dead, everything is permitted about that formulation, right, which is like well if we`re sliding into authoritarianism like, well, then you can do anything. And like that can be super dangerous. We are a country that -- where a lot of people have guns. We have seen political violence. A guy tried to murder Steve Scalise. Like, there is concern about...
MCINTOSH: 10-and-a-half months ago, Heather Heyer got run over by a Nazi.
HAYES: Exactly. And there is concern that like...
MCINTOSH: That`s why I`m talking about civil obedience. And I think it is very important that we do everything we can to make it uncomfortable for those who are enabling authoritarianism within our country. I think we owe that to the people that we love in the communities that we`ve built and to the people in the future who ask what we did to try to stop this.
LINDA SARSOUR, EMPOWER CHANGE: I`m an organizer and activist. I engage in civil disobedience like 20 times a year. In fact, the Women`s March and our partners are organizing the largest women`s civil disobedience this Thursday about ending family separation and ending family detention.
And Dr. Martin Luther King warned us about people like Chuck Schumer. He said it wasn`t the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen Councilors who were the obstacles toward justice, it was the people calling for, quote, civility, and people that were telling us when to protest, at what time, and how to protest.
And I need to let people know that what -- when we talk about civility, it is not civil to rip babies from their mothers. It is not civil to break up Muslim families. It is not civil to take away health care from millions of Americans.
So you want to talk to me about civility, let`s make sure that we`re engaging in justice, ensuring that every American has access to things like health care and housing, that there is no poverty in America, and that children are with their mothers.
And I was at the airport yesterday, LaGuardia Airport, and I recorded a video of children, I`m talking between the ages 5 to 8 that were being -- that came off a United Airlines flight who were unaccompanied minors. And I am distraught that we live in a country talking about civility, but we don`t see the same outrage about these kids being stripped from their mothers.
HAYES: Let me ask you this, too, because I think there`s a little bit of a difference tempermentally between the right and the left and like...
MCINTOSH: Really?
HAYES: Well, I mean, you see it in the people chanting lock her up at Trump rallies, like there is not really an equivalent of that. There just isn`t right now in terms of the cultures of these two. And people have forgotten what the Tea Party revolt looked like, which a lot of people found alienated and thought would be bad politics. This is just like one at random, this is Kathy Castro who is a Democrat in Florida, take a listen what it was like at her town halls.
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CROWD: You work for us. You work for us. You`re our voice. Hear our voice. Hear our voice. Hear our voice. Hear our voice. Hear our voice.
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HAYES: Now, that was effective. But there`s also an argument -- Theda Skocpol makes it, and she`s been writing about this in interesting ways and doing field work, that -- she said this is not a leftist Tea Party -- writing about sort of resistance activism -- because newly engaged suburban activists hail from across the broad ideological range from center to left. The foundation rebuilders in many communities across most states are newly mobilized interconnected grassroots groups led for the most part by middle America`s mothers and grandmothers.
GOLDBERG: Right, and so -- I think that we need to be clear what we`re talking about. Because I actually don`t even think that anybody on the left is getting to that level of harassment that was typical of the Tea Party.
I mean, right, Sarah Sanders was politely asked to leave the Red Hen and had her cheese plate comped. I mean, we`re not talking about the sort of like apocalyptic civil war threatening insurrectionary rhetoric that is the bread and butter of the right, we`re simply talking about saying that if you are a member of a white nationalist organization, we`re going to ostrasize you as such.
And -- so I`ve met some of the same women that Theda Skocpol writes about. I was recently in Pennsylvania. And I don`t necessarily -- I think that they do care a lot about norms and decency. I mean, absolutely. But I think they are also terrified and outraged by what is going on in this country and are looking for leaders who will speak to that level of concern.
They don`t want to see Chuck Schumer going on about gas prices and how it`s not -- they want to see people who are as outraged as they are.
MCINTOSH: I think the prime directive for most of the left is let`s make things better for other people, like that`s why we go into the social safety net and we spend all this time on politics, that`s what we go for. The prime directive for the right right now is literally to make liberals angry, like that is -- like owning the libs is what they say their win is. So, of course, you`re seeing tempermental differences in there.
They scream in your face and then call you a snowflake when you suggest that they keep it down and then lecture us about civility.
HAYES: Michelle Goldberg, Linda Sarsour, who just came from a protest today, and Jess McIntosh, thank you all.
Still ahead, does Senator Cory Booker think it`s time for a Democratic Tea Party? He joins me to talk mid-terms and more ahead, and why the president is worried about the aura of Harley-Davidson. That`s tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, Harley-Davidson is an iconic American brand. And what`s not to love? It`s pure muffler rattling red-blooded American toughness, classic all-American cool. And so it`s no wonder Republicans have been falling all over themselves to be associated with that brand long before Donald Trump ever heard of one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.
RONALD REAGAON, 40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES; After being shown around this plant, it seems to me I`ve come to hog heaven.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Get it, Hogs, hog heaven?
It seems every Republican wants to be seen with a Harley, even if it wasn`t actually moving. Just visiting the Harleys can help with your red-blooded American image. Failed candidate Mitt Romney got a Harley-Davidson escort in Ohio -- well, actually his campaign bus got an escort.
Four years later, Mike Pence one-upped him and as vice presidential candidate rode a Harley across the state of Indiana.
In 2016, Bikers for Trump became a thing. I talked to a few actually at the convention, and so when Trump became president, Harley-Davidson got an early invitation to visit the White House.
But now, like everyone else who falls out of favor with Donald Trump, Harley is the enemy. And the question is, will the Bikers for Trump choose their Harleys or their Trump? That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: So, after President Trump revved up his trade war and Harley- Davidson said it was moving some of its production overseas, because of the EU`s retaliatory tariffs, President Trump is now at war with the iconic American motorcycle company. "Surprised that Harley-Davidson, of all companies, would be the first to wave the white flag. Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country, never. Their employees and customers are already very angry at them. If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end. They surrendered. They quit. The aura" capital A, of course, "will be gone and they will be taxed like never before."
How this will go over with the Bikers for Trump remains to be seen, but threatening sky high taxes out of vengeance takes it to a new level. That would be unconstitutional We all know how much this president cares about the American ideals of -- oh, never mind.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No ride, Mr. President
TRUMP: Boy, would you like to see me fall off one. Would that be a story?
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If a horrible thing happened and we weren`t lucky enough to have Henry Nguyen, you know they wouldn`t talk about it, they would say Donald Trump suffered a major, major defeat in the great state of South Carolina. It was a humiliating defeat from Donald Trump, so please get your asses out tomorrow and vote.
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HAYES: It is another election night in America with primaries in seven states, including South Carolina, where Donald Trump is hoping to avoid that humiliating defeat, a candidate he campaigned for, sitting governor Henry McMaster, is now in a runoff to become the GOP`s gubernatorial nominee against challenger John Warren.
Trump is also hopeing to avoid humiliation in New York`s 11th congressional district on Staten Islane where he endorsed sitting representative Dan Donovan, who the GOP sees as its strongest candidate, in a seat Democrats view as a prime pick-up opportunity.
But everyone knows that the Trumpiest candidate in the race is Donovan`s challenger, former Congressman Michael Grimm who recently served time in prison for tax evasion and infamously threatened a reporter back in 2014.
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MICHAEL GRIMM, FRM. REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: Let me be very clear to you. If you ever do that to me again, I`ll throw you off the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) balcony. No, no, you`re not man enough, you not man enough. I`ll break you in half like a boy.
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HAYES: Very civil. Like a boy. MSNBC will be monitoring that race and the returns from across the country tonight, so stay with us for that.
Coming up, Senator Cory Booker on his trip to the border and how Democrats should resist Trump in 2018. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Senator Cory Booker returned yesterday from McAllen, Texas where he crossed back and forth into Mexico to see firsthand how our government is turning away asylum seekers without giving them a hearing. Booker also spoke out this morning against the Supreme Court decision, affirming Trump`s travel ban, arguing both issues have the nation now facing a quote, moral moment.
And joining me now for more on that and how to resist Trump in 2018, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey.
Senator, let`s start about your trip to the border and specifically that issue you mentioned, which I think is important and adjacent to the family -- the child separation, which is American officials turning people away at ports of entry from asylum. What do you think is happening?
SEN. CORY BOOKER, (D) NEW JERSEY: First of all, you know this calls to the darker chapters of our country where there was a group of -- a famous ship coming from -- people escaping the holocaust -- got to the United States, were turned back around, back to Europe where many of them were killed.
These are folks who are escaping extreme violence. They come to, as I saw in one of our bridges and are told it cannot enter, because we don`t have quote, unquote, the space for them.
And so this is the challenge. We have people who come to these bridges -- when I went into Mexico to turn around, the Mexican official that was there told me, please don`t go into the city, it`s very dangerous for you walking there on foot. And here I am this big guy from Newark, and yet they`re turning women with children, small babies back into that enviornment.
And so I`m already talking to Customs and Border Patrol about this practice and how it does not reflect our values, nor does it reflect the law. When we tell people if they come to this country -- and we hear the president calling folks illegals -- here are folks showing up ready to go through the legal process of seeking asylum and they`re being turned away, often into conditions that aren`t hospitable, and for me it gives some responsibility for safety and security when we push them out of our country.
We need to increase the capacity for us to hold people seeking asylum and to process people seeking asylum. We need to end that process of Customs and Border Patrol going out on to the border away from the other side of the bridge where people are often being processed to try to turn people away before they even get to our country.
HAYES: We are now on another primary night. There is a bunch of races in seven states across the country. There is sort of a lot of people, I think, thinking about the midterms in the wake of what`s been happening, particularly family separation in the Supreme Court today.
And there`s one argument that goes that the White House thinks that when they`re talking about immigration, they`re winning. When you`re talking about, you know, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you`re winning because it`s ginning up their base. What is your read about the politics at this moment, senator?
BOOKER: Well, I guess there are two things. I do agree that when we`re talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when we`re talking about the coat that Melania wore, we`re taking away focus on what`s happening right now. Jeff Sessions working to undermine the protections Americans have against being denied insurance, because of a preexisting condition. That is being eroded, ended as we speak, and yet we seem to be talking about things that often distract us from really important things that both Republicans and Democrats agree upon.
And so I`m trying to, in my energy, trying to keep people focused on the things that matter. But I do not want major moral moments like ripping away families. I don`t care if there`s a Democrat talking about immigration reform or not it`s going to help us in a November election or help us in a 2020 election. There`s got to be a time where we don`t ask if it`s politic. I don`t know if folks who protested the Vietnam War, whether it was Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King stopped to think is this politic. They did it because it was the right thing to do.
And this has got to be a time where we stand up and do what is right. Our country has a president who is engaging in moral vandalism, whether it is the way he talks about Muslims and the roots of what happened in the Supreme Court today are bigotry against Muslim people, or what`s happening at the border. This is a violation of our values. We shouldn`t wait to see how this plays out in polling, we should do the right thing and stand up for who we are as a nation.
HAYES: All right, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, it`s always a pleasure to have you. Thank you for being with me tonight. I appreciate it.
BOOKER: Thank you very much.
HAYES: All right, before we go, I want to let you know, we have a new episode out of our podcast called Why is This Happening with Vox edito at large Ezra Klein. And talk a lot about where we are at this moment in American politics. How bad is it, is the question we keep asking each other. It`s a really interesting conversation. Find it whereever you get your podcasts.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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