Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: September 12, 2018 Guest: Michael Moore, Zachary Reinhardt, Jia Ireland, Gabriel White, Samantha Magdaleno, Ariana Hawk, Nadine Jawad, LaShaya Darisaw, Darrin Camilleri
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: That`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes is up next. By the way, he`s got a special town hall tonight right away now with guest Michael Moore.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`re getting a little nervous in Michigan.
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: Michigan is going to be the linchpin.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Key state, unexpectedly is Michigan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On 11-9-2016, Michigan went for Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A 10,000 vote margin for Donald Trump in Michigan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the majority of people here didn`t vote at all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you regret not voting?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tonight, Michael Moore is back, and he`s got a brand new film which takes on Trump.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Stop resisting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Governor.
MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER: Governor Snyder, I got some flint water for you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And talks to the voters, and new candidates in the states that elected Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t give a (BLEEP) who you are, I`ll fight you in the damn street right now.
MOORE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All to try and answer the greatest question of our time.
MOORE: How the (BLEEP) did this happen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tonight, an ALL IN America special event.
TRUMP: I love Michigan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Michael Moore in Trump country. Now here`s Chris Hayes with Michael Moore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, from Factory Two in Flint, Michigan, I`m Chris Hayes, coming to you from the state that was at the epicenter of Donald Trump`s slim but seismic victory in 2016. Almost no one expected Michigan to vote for Donald Trump. The state hadn`t picked a Republican for president in almost 30 years since 1988. Heading into Election Day, poll showed Hillary Clinton with a fairly comfortable lead but in the end, Donald Trump won here by a margin of less than 11,000 votes. That`s the equivalent of just two votes per precinct.
The shock of Donald Trump`s victory has repeated itself almost every day of his presidency, the nation for the past year and a half at a perpetual state of crisis and upheaval. But way back before the election there was at least one person who saw this coming. Filmmaker Michael Moore, a Flint native who wrote in summer 2016 about the five reasons he thought Donald Trump would win starting with the President`s appeal in the industrial Midwest states like Michigan.
And now he`s got a new film examining just how he got here and what the stakes are this November. Please join me in welcoming Michael Moore.
MOORE: Thank you. Thank you.
HAYES: That`s what that`s a hometown welcome.
MOORE: Yes
HAYES: You got this new movie out. It`s really a remarkable film in a lot of ways and we were trying to sort of pick out the best part of the trailer but we couldn`t so we`re just going to play a big chunk of it because I want to -- I want -- I want some folks to sort of get a taste. So take a listen to a Fahrenheit 11/9.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m sick and tired of people telling me that America is the greatest country because we can whip your ass?
TRUMP: I hate some of these people but I`ve never (INAUDIBLE)
MOORE: How the (BLEEP) did this happen?
TRUMP: The American dream is dead.
Stop resisting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President`s powers here are beyond question.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen the last President of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You think that, last President of the United States?
MOORE: It`s possible.
HAYES: You really think that?
MOORE: I think it`s possible. Absolutely. I think that we have someone in the White House who has no respect for the rule of law, who dislikes democracy by an incredible degree which doesn`t make them really any that much different from other billionaires or CEOs because their businesses are not democracies. They rule by fiat, they decide, they make the calls, and they don`t like having anybody else having a say. They also like to take home the bulk of the money with them.
So this is -- putting somebody like that in charge of a democracy is a very dangerous thing especially it`s more dangerous with him because he has a complete lack of ideology. He doesn`t --
HAYES: You think it`s more dangerous because he doesn`t believe in anything?
MOORE: Absolutely. People say to me, well, if we impeach Trump, will have Pence. I go, great. At least he believes in something and I`m not afraid of having the debate with Pence over whether or not Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago.
HAYES: For the record, I don`t think Mike Pence believes that.
MOORE: Well, what he believed -- he believes that the Bible is the word and that is the way and the earth -- the earth is about 6,000 years old. He also believes that if you`re gay, you can be converted into being straight. I can have that debate with him too. I believe the American public will agree with me in that debate. We have a better chance of beating back this insanity with him than with who`s currently the White House because Trump`s only belief system, his only ideology is Donald J. Trump. That`s what he believes in, me, myself, and I. That`s a dangerous person to have in charge of a country.
HAYES: You know, I always had this conversation with people about with -- you know, where we`re at, what`s new, what`s different. That`s like the old the big question the Trump era. And I was thinking about that because the name of this film references a previous film which I remember going to see when I was 25 years old in 2004, or Fahrenheit 9/11. And that the reference Fahrenheit 9/11 which is about the Bush administration in the Iraq war and post 9/11, was a reference to a dystopic novel about a totalitarian future.
MOORE: Right.
HAYES: So what -- I mean, what`s different now? You thought the Bush administration was ushering in the end of democracy may be right or what have these sort of authoritarian leanings. Like is it worse now? Is there something novel and distinct about him compared back to those years in the Bush years?
MOORE: Yes. Again, Bush believed in something. I didn`t agree with him but he actually had a belief system. That`s not what`s going on now. And what`s the difference between 2004 and right now is that well, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a movie basically about the Iraq war and how we got into it with someone who was not elected by the people of the United States of America. We are now in a situation where we have someone in the White House who once again was not elected by the American people. But I don`t believe --
HAYES: You mean, he lost the popularity vote by three million vote, yes.
MOORE: Well, that`s the only way you can mean it, really.
HAYES: Right, right.
MOORE: I mean, let me just --
HAYES: It`s not tennis sets.
MOORE: You know, quick democracy lesson. The person who gets the most votes wins.
HAYES: Right, yes.
MOORE: That`s it.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: And that`s not the system that we have because we have not taken out of the Constitution, one of the last vestiges of the slave era, the Electoral College which was created to appease the slave states. We haven`t done that. The Democrats have not led the fight since War One to get that out of the Constitution or to support a national popular vote referendum in enough States so that we -- whoever gets the popular vote would win.
HAYES: There`s some kind -- it`s interesting to think about that continuity, right? 2,000, the shock of Bush v Gore and the fact that the person who didn`t get the most votes still got to be President. It happens again, right? Six out of the last seven elections Democrats have won a majority.
MOORE: That`s right. The Republicans have only won the popular vote once since Daddy Bush was elected in 1988. That`s 30 years that the American people other than one time have said we don`t want the Republicans in charge. We want the Democrats in charge. And yet the Democrats hold no power, not the White House not the Senate, not the Congress, not the Supreme Court, our state capitols, 50 state capitols the Democrats control, fully control eight of them.
So how can this be? And this is -- this is what`s so insane. If we call this a democracy, the majority that people want the Democrats and yet they can`t -- they can`t find their way into the White House even when they win.
HAYES: But there`s two aspects of that. I mean you talk about this in the film. One of them is who shows up to vote on election day, right? So take aside the popular vote, you think about state elections, you think about Rick Snyder here in this -- in this state here in Michigan where we are. In Midterm Elections there`s been very low turnout, in the 2016 election, you`ve got this crazy statistic in the film. There were 87,810 Michiganders in 2016 who went through the trouble of going to the polls --
MOORE: Stood in line for an hour or two.
HAYES: Stood in the line, went to the polls, went to the elections, went into the voting booth and didn`t mark president.
MOORE: Right. They voted for every other office on the ballot, all the way down to the two lowest offices we have in our counties in Michigan, our Register of Deeds and drain commissioner, all right. These people voted for drain commissioner and left the top box blank for president. And you look at the ballots, it`s mostly they were voting for Democrats. So these are people generally would lean liberal, lean to the left, and then went in there and that`s the way they wanted to make their statement that they were not going to vote for the person that they didn`t think was going to represent them. And as you said nearly 90,000 Michiganders did that. And that`s amazing --
HAYES: In this city, I mean this is the site of one of the perhaps the worst failures of governance in America in recent memory. I mean, Porto Rico is up there right now.
MOORE: Yes.
HAYES: This city as you record in the film, is a place where you can`t blame people for feeling jaded and cynical and pretty pissed off about their government.
MOORE: Right. Let me put it a different way. This -- where you`re sitting right now, Chris, you`re sitting in the city that created the middle class. Before the great sit-down strike of 1936-37 in Flint, Michigan, there was no middle class. There were -- there was the rich and then everybody else worked seven days a week including their 12 and 14- year-old children. That`s what it was until this town said no more and the workers took over the factories for 44 days in the middle of winter.
GM shut off the heat, they shut off the water, they brought in all these -- they got the National Guard to come in. There were machine guns lining these -- right outside this building here. And the people of Flint would not give up. They would not relent. At the end of 44 days, they got the first major contract ever for an industrial -- a corporation, you have to recognize a union. And because of that, because we got the union and this town, it was like dominos all over the country. Everybody else started striking. Everybody else got unions.
And by the time of the next generation, the children of these men and women, they had full and free health care, no deductibles, no co-pays, full and free dental care. They had -- they had free eyeglasses and vision, right? If you were a member of the UAW, you got a free lawyer if you ever needed a lawyer, you got a free lawyer from the union. I mean, they got to send their kids to college. Everybody got to buy a house if they wanted to. They had a couple cars. They had a cottage up north. And all without -- maybe not even a high school education. They created the middle class of this country right here in this town.
So that`s where we`re sitting, OK? What happened here was not the fault of the governance of the people here in the city. These were elected mayors and elected city councils in Flint, Detroit, Pontiac, Benton Harbor, a few others, majority black cities, and the Governor, this governor, Snyder, came in and said as a person who doesn`t like democracy about as much as Trump doesn`t like it said I`m taking over, declared an emergency, and all of a sudden the mayors and the city councils were gone and he installs his own cronies who don`t have to answer to the people of this city.
HAYES: And this is the democratic crisis that happens here and the result, people poisoned, which we`re going to talk about in just a bit, I think you argue convincingly in the film is a future that America faces if things don`t change. I want you to stick around, and I want to bring into the conversation some people that political journalists never talk to, ever. Everyone`s obsessed with Trump voters. We`re going to talk to some non- voters. I think it`s like the first time ever on T.V.
MOORE: Yes.
HAYES: Stick around. Much more to come from Flint, Michigan, including a look at the city`s water crisis, and we`re going to talk to those folks that were decisive in the President`s victory here, not the base, not the swing voters, non-voters. Don`t go anywhere, we`re coming right back.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Had we had an inspiring candidate in 2010, I dare say we wouldn`t have Rick Snyder. So if we can -- if we can make sure that we have candidates that actually speak to people, we won`t have to worry about our republic.
HAYES: But isn`t it -- but inspiring doesn`t -- the difference is whether people get poisoned or not. Like I don`t -- who cares if they`re inspiring? Like isn`t the -- no, I`m serious.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So in Flint the number is something like 8,000 African- American voters who voted twice for Obama chose not to vote. Hillary lost in Michigan by two votes per precinct on average, two votes per precinct, 10,000 and some votes was it. So where are we left?
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HAYES: Michael Moore`s new movie Fahrenheit 11/9 comes out September 21st. It deals with a shock of Donald Trump`s presidential win which kicked off an overcorrection if you ask me an election coverage which has led to the news media`s near obsession with Trump`s base. But his base, those who appear to support him through hell and high water did not win him that election. It was swing voters who`ve gone from voting for Obama to voting for Trump and crucially nonvoters, registered voters who stayed home on Election Day and a significant number of people who showed up on Election Day but did not cast a vote for president.
It is those folks the nonvoters and the under-voters that no one ever talks about. With me now are some voters who sat out 2016, at least one who did not, Zachary Reinhardt from Lansing, Jia Ireland from Flint, Gabriel White who is also from Flint, and Samantha Magdaleno from Southwest Detroit. Let me start would you, Zachary. Why didn`t you vote?
ZACHARY REINHARDT, RESIDENT, LANSING, MICHIGAN: Well, it`s a kind of complex reason. But I think the -- I mean there`s a law in Michigan for instance that makes it really hard for college-age students to vote and I think that`s many -- we actually have a lawsuit from the College Federation of College Democrats that`s going against that law right now.
HAYES: So I mean, I remember this in college and this has happened to lots of states. They don`t -- Republican officials particularly don`t love having a lot of students votes.
REINHARDT: Absolutely.
HAYES: So they tend to put it as many obstacles as possible.
REINHARDT: Yes, I mean, it`s really hard for college students to go home and vote on that day when they have classes the very next day or you know anything like that. And then there`s another -- there`s other reasons as well. I mean, being frank, the candidate wasn`t inspiring to me and you know, I`ve seen the devastation that -- like the any blue will do kind of mentality will have. I mean, it was -- I`ve grown up in this city and I`ve seen as trade deals decimated this city, every job, and frankly those policies were implemented by Bill Clinton and they weren`t repudiated by Hillary Clinton as they should have been.
HAYES: There are -- there are people who are watching this right now who are like throwing things in the television.
REINHARDT: Oh, I`m sure.
HAYES: No, I`m just -- I`m not saying -- I`m just saying like I want you to respond because they are shaking the screen being like not inspiring enough. Like this is not a performance for you.
REINHARDT: You know, and the thing is like I think that that mentality goes really well if you and your life right now you`re doing great and like to you the election doesn`t matter because to me like, it`s not enough to say that you`re not as bad as the other guy. I need real change and for me, Democrats hadn`t offered that and they weren`t offering.
HAYES: Do you feel differently now? I mean, on election night that night, in the last two years --
REINHARDT: I feel -- I feel more convinced that I need to. In fact, that`s the reason that I`ve gotten it so involved in Michigan politics is because I feel like with without a change in our party we won`t -- It`s going to continue to happen.
MOORE: Please listen to the rest of what he said because as a non-voter, people say, oh, they`re apathetic, they don`t care, they don`t -- you know, they`re ignorant, they`re lazy. No, what it`s done for him is he`s gotten involved politically and he`s now fighting that wall we have here. Let me just make the walk clear. If you are a student at Michigan State in East Lansing, in the southern part of the state, but your home is in Houghton or Marquette in the Upper Peninsula, you have to go through this -- essentially you have to leave and drive 600 miles --
HAYES: To go vote.
MOORE: To go vote. That`s how they set it up because they don`t want young people voting because they know where young people lean.
HAYES: Jia, let me ask you as something -- you did vote, and you`re active politically. Like how do you -- were the people in your lives that didn`t vote, do you -- do you talk to folks? How do you think about people that didn`t vote in that last election?
JIA IRELAND, VOTER ENGAGEMENT ACTIVIST: I think it`s about having an open dialogue and actually listening to what people have to say instead of projecting your views on people. And I feel like we`ve had a major disconnection with listening and actually listening with the intent of hearing them out and trying to figure out what are ways that we can improve our political system on whether you`re a Democrat or not so we can actually be inclusive and people will willfully vote for you instead of you happen to guilt-trip them. So --
HAYES: How about you, Samantha, what was your -- what was your headspace, what are you thinking 2016?
SAMANTHA MAGDALENO, DIDN`T VOTE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016: I wasn`t going to vote for the lesser of two evils. Like that`s not something that I was going to participate and I was going to perpetuate in evil. Like either way evil is evil. So when I got to the to the box, there was no way that I was going to vote for either Trump or Hillary. I don`t regret that decision at all. And in fact, since then I actually ran for State Representative this past primary election. I didn`t win it but very similar to you I got involved in politics to the point where I was like you know what, I`m going to run.
HAYES: What do you -- if you`re running for office and you`re saying I want you to vote for me which you just did.
MAGDALENO: Yes.
HAYES: How do you say I want you to vote for me if you didn`t vote the last time?
MAGDALENO: Because well, I was door knocking, I door knocked over almost 10,000 doors, what I kept hearing from people is these politicians don`t reflect me. I went to elderly homes and I actually had a woman come up to me that had never voted in her life ever and she`s in a retirement home and she told me I`m going to vote for you because you`re like me. You speak like me. I heard that so many doors, and unfortunately, I entered the race very late, I only had three months and -- but that proved to me that the politicians that we have right now, they don`t represent us all over the country.
HAYES: Will you vote in 2018?
MAGDALENO: It depends on who`s up.
HAYES: Really?
MAGDALENO: Yes.
HAYES: How much you, Gabriel?
GABRIEL WHITE, NONVOTER, NOVEMBER 2016 GENERAL ELECTION: I chose not to vote in 2016 because just like Samantha, I couldn`t see voting for the lesser of the two evils. Donald Trump which we all have our own issues with him and you see the things that he says, he doesn`t represent the presidency before, as a child that was something to look forward to, as a president. That was something that some people didn`t inspire to. But now you have Donald Trump and it doesn`t even have a saying hold the same esteem anymore.
MOORE: Look at the primary in April of 2016. One of our largest turnouts ever in Flint, the primary between Hillary and Bernie, and Hillary wins in Flint but she loses the state. Look at how many people here voting in November. Usually, it`s the other way around, right? More people ought in general less than the primary. More people in Flint voted in the primary than the general. I would want to know if I were running the Democratic Party, why did people stay home knowing that the result was going to be possibly Donald J. Trump. That`s some serious anger at what the system has done to fail this city.
HAYES: How do you think, Jia, about the last two years? Like what -- like there`s a lot of people who feel -- in different sectors I talked to that we`re in a national emergency, and I think it depends on who you talk to, but when I talk to like immigration lawyers particularly as a group they`re like it`s never been this bad. This is all unprecedented. This is horrible. It`s a national emergency. If you talk to a lot of legal folks, they feel that way but not everyone feels that. Like, how do you think about it?
IRELAND: It is an emergency. It`s -- and in Flint, it`s a disaster zone. Four years later, today is a some 1,600 days since we`ve had access to clean suitable drinking water. So for us to be dealing with this for years later and we`re still waiting for pipes to be replaced, infrastructure to be fixed, we`re still -- people are still paying astronomical water bills, people are still losing hair, skin rashes, and other health elements, and people died from Legionnaires, in the meanwhile our politicians haven`t really done enough to actually meet the needs of the people, it does make people feel like we don`t matter. And then if you know, if we don`t matter, why should we vote for you and I hear that a lot. So what I do -- and I`m a -- you know, I`m a card-carrying Michigan Democrat.
HAYES: I mean, do you think -- given the origins of the crisis here which was initiated by an election in 2010, right? I mean, I think you would agree right? The crisis here started because of 2010 someone got elected, they took a bunch of steps, they passed laws, right, the emergency manager law, right? They passed the law. They took away the ability to govern yourself, right?
IRELAND: He took away democracy.
HAYES: Took away democracy, right, made a decision that no one here was able to veto that poison people. So those are the stakes of that election in 2010. Like, do you think of, Zachary, 2018 having similar stakes?
REINHARDT: Yes and no. I think they have similar stakes and I think that we need to not repeat the same mistakes we made in 2010 because had we had an inspiring candidate in 2010, I dare say we would have Rick Snyder. So if we can -- if we can make sure that we have candidates who actually speak to people, we won`t have to worry about Republicans.
HAYES: But isn`t it -- but inspiring doesn`t -- the difference is whether people get poisoned or not. Like I don`t -- who cares if they`re inspiring? Like even the -- no, I`m serious. The difference -- the government should not poison its people, so like it`s going to matter in America who has political power and wields it to poison or not poison people.
MOORE: Right. That`s why -- that`s why the people of Flint not even knowing who`s Snyder was, people of Flint voted for the Democrat, they didn`t vote for Snyder.
HAYES: I want to talk about specifically take a look at what happened in this city because you can`t -- we`re sort of talking about it here but I want to reset for people that are watching at home that don`t know where they heard about us. We`re going to talk about what happened in this city, how it came to be, and what has happened two years later. And the answers is that it is all worse than you thought. Stick around.
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MOORE: The Department of Defense sadly under President Obama deciding to use Flint as target practice, as training for the U.S. Army. And with no notice to the people in Flint, one night they just start bombing Flint.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOK-HAWKINS: The normal number is 3.5, and anything over a 3.5 is considered a high lead level -- six, six, five, six, five, five, six, seven, 10, six, eight, six, six, 14.
MOORE: Not a single number that says 3.5 or lower.
COOK-HAWKINS: No.
MOORE: That means every child on this sheet of paper has an elevated level of lead.
COOK-HAWKINS: Yeah. And us just left to call the parents and retest and they said, no, we can`t do that. Just put them in as a 3.5 then.
MOORE: And so the parents aren`t able to start taking immediate action to help the child that`s got lead poison.
COOK-HAWKINS: They think their child is fine. My child tested low.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: If there was one part of Michael Moore`s new film, Fahrenheit 11/9, that most filled me with wrath and rage it was the poisoning of the people of this city in Flint, Michigan. It makes me want to know who is being held accountable.
And ALL IN reporter Trymaine Lee came here to try to answer that question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARTHUR WOODSON, FLINT RESIDENT: Everybody that had their hand in it, that signed a permit, that signed the application, needs to go to jail.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are other people that were involved that are not being charged. If they were a person on the street and they poisoned a whole town of people, or even one person, they will be put in jail.
JULIA LUSTER, FLINT RESIDENT: For me, of course, the governor is where the buck stopped.
LEE: Governor Snyder.
LUSTER: Governor Snyder, he has to be held accountable.
LEE: Are there people who you believe committed crimes that have yet to be charged?
TODD FLOOD, MICHIGAN SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: We have charged 15 people. We`ve had several pleas. People have already been adjudicated. We have had people that have been bound over to trial and to the circuit court.
LEE: Among those 15 people charged, a pretty high profile name, Nick Lyon, right. Is this unprecedented in terms of the head of the health department being charged with manslaughter?
FLOOD: The simple answer to your question is yes. So I don`t know of any other government agency director that has ever been charged in our country at this level.
Here, what`s unprecedented in the United States is when the government pays for the defense, the defense experts, the witnesses, their lawyers. I`ve never seen this much money ever. I`m going up against Goliath.
LEE: Clearly, you believe, because Nick Lyon is charged with manslaughter, that he played a role in the poisoning of this city.
FLOOD: I charged Nick through a system where I had peer review. And we did that, and a judge found that our charges merited probable cause, that a crime was committed and he committed it.
LEE: So the people of Flint have been looking for justice for a very long time. Are they finally getting it?
FLOOD: Justice is going to be 12 people sitting in a box, a jury box, making a decision one way or the other. And justice will be what those 12 people decide.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: And ALL IN reporter Trymaine Lee joins me now, along with Michael Moore, and Ariana Hawk whose son was literally the poster child for the poisoning of Flint`s children on the cover of Time Magazine, and April Cook-Hawkins, the Genesee County Health Department whistleblower who you saw in that movie clip.
And Trymaine, let me start with you. This it`s a high profile trial in which the head of the state health department has been charged with manslaughter.
LEE: Two counts of manslaughter. People in this community can tell you stories about family being affected, people who died. And the state will say that a dozen people died, but there`s evidence to suggest many more died. So while people here know what happened, they also know there was a coverup. There`s an email trail. They know exactly who should be held responsible.
Nick Lyon is a big name, but perhaps just the tip of the iceberg. The idea that for more than a dozen months people in the city were poisoned. And the frustration and anger you hear in people`s voices, because not only has it affected and their children, but that as of now, no one has really been held accountable.
HAYES: Ariana, your son Sincere (ph), right -- as someone who has lived this firsthand, seen it firsthand, how do you feel about the prosecutions, about accountability and whether anyone really has been held to account?
ARIANA HAWK, FLINT WATER ACTIVIST: I`m angry. It`s taken way too long. If this would have been a normal person on the street, they would have been tried by now, they would be in jail by now, and they will have justice. So, for this to be going on for so long, it makes me angry, but, you know, the lawyers are sitting up, sucking up all this money that we are still suffering, our pipes are still not replaced.
You know, this is a problem.
HAYES: People are watching this. There are some people who are watching this who kind of remember about the Flint water thing, and then maybe it`s drifted away from their mind, like, you`re living this every day. What can you tell them about what the reality is here now four years later.
HAWKS: Four years later, my son, for example, we still can`t safely use our water, we still can`t -- he take a bath without telling me it burns. His rashes are back. You know, things are not better. I`m still scared to use the water. I don`t want to let my younger kids use the water.
I have an 11-year-old who`s facing memory loss. He`s 11. He can`t remember what happened yesterday. These are the reality of the things happening to our babies right now.
HAYES: Still?
HAWKS: Still, to this day.
HAYES: People in here, you -- are people using their water at home?
CROWD: No.
HAYES: You still don`t have clean water here?
CROWD: No.
MOORE: There are people in here who once a week, if they have a relative in Detroit an hour away, take their children for their once a week shower an hour away just to take a shower.
HAWK: That`s true.
HAYES: You worked inside the state agency, or I guess the county agency.
COOK-HAWKINS: For the county.
HAYES: Right, you worked for the county. And you saw this unfolding. Do you think there`s sufficient accountability?
COOK-HAWKINS: I feel like people need to be held accountable down even to the health department.
HAYES: Do you think crimes were committed?
COOK-HAWKINS: I do.
HAYES: Why were you -- do you feel you were told to lie?
COOK-HAWKINS: Yes.
HAYES: And why do you think they tried to cover it up?
COOK-HAWKINS: On the health department level I believe there was not enough people. They didn`t have the capacity there to handle such a case. So with two caseworkers, that`s all they had.
HAYES: And so they just said mark them down to 3.5 and move on?
COOK-HAWKINS: Correct.
HAYES: I`ve got to imagine, Michael, let`s say -- let`s say something happened where the resources were brought to Flint to actually clean the water, OK? They clean the water. They got fresh water back, using the Great Lakes, which is 84 percent of the world`s fresh water, the most incredible fresh water supply known to humans on the Earth. The trust that has been disrupted here, I just can`t imagine how anyone can trust anything they are told, ever again.
Like how -- they lied and poisoned you.
MOORE: Right, and covered it up.
HAYES: And they covered it up.
MOORE; Covered it up, and they tried to get -- even the lowest workers on the chain, like April, to lie for them. How they thought they were going to get away with this is amazing. And it`s -- and they`re not going to. And...
HAYES: But are they? That`s my question. I mean, you say this in the movie that this was the microcosm in some ways where this was the test run for what can someone get away with? The American city we are sitting in right now was poisoned by its own government.
MOORE: Yeah.
HAYES: Not its own government, the state government, was poisoned and there`s a few prosecutions, but like, I don`t know, everyone else is going to ride off into the sunset.
LEE: Nick Lyon is still running the state health department.
HAYES: He`s still running the state health department facing manslaughter charges?
MOORE: He`s indicted for manslaughter...
HAWK: If that was me I wouldn`t have my job.
MOORE: Snyder is still in office. He still sits in the governor`s chair today, and Snyder`s attorney general, his Republican attorney general, is running for governor in this November`s election.
And let me just say this, let`s say when they decided to take Flint off the pure glacial waters of Lake Huron.
HAYES: Which they did, it was there and they decided to stop doing that.
MOORE: And we didn`t have a mayor, so the manager, the dictator, said this is the way it`s going to be. You`re going to drink from the Flint River. And that was that. And nobody had any say in it. And so let`s say they didn`t know that that was going to poison the people, even though I could take you down to the river right now and you`re not a scientist and you will figure out you`re not going to drink from that river, no matter how many freaking filters I put on that water for you, all right.
So, let`s -- and at a certain point after a few days or weeks of hearing complaints, and then the governor sent somebody quietly to Flint. And then he reports back, oh, you`ve got to switch back to the Lake Huron water. This is going to -- you`ve got to get into damage control. This is all -- and he does nothing.
From the moment that he and his staff knew that the people of Flint were being poisoned, even if they didn`t set out to poison them, if I saw somebody slip some arsenic into your tea a half hour ago and I just sat here and said nothing and did nothing, I am guilty and I can be arrested, because I knew you were going to die, because you were going to drink that tea.
HAYES: People would vaguely know. They know what happened with the water in Flint, or vaguely know about it outside of Flint, I think something they don`t know at all is something that appears in the film that I think a lot of people if they see the movie are going to walk out being like what the hell was that? So, I want to play this footage from the film. It`s footage of Flint, the city that we`re in, Flint, Michigan, something being done to Flint, Michigan. I want to play it and have you explain.
MOORE: For context, this is 14 months after the poisoning began. So, the people have already been poisoned now for 14 months and then this happened. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s going down like a (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What the hell was that?
MOORE: That was the federal government now, the Department of Defense, sadly under President Obama, deciding to use Flint as target practice, as training for the U.S. army. And with no notice to the people in Flint, one night they just start bombing Flint. It`s Lowell Junior High School. You all remember Lowell. They just fired a missile into Lowell. They started -- they went into the old Michigan National Detroit Northern Building firing guns. And the people -- and some of the people are here that took some of the video footage -- said to the police what`s going on here? Are we under attack? It looked like a terrorist attack, and it was our own U.S. army.
And the army guy said, no, there`s just so many abandoned buildings here. We thought it would be great for target practice.
And so they just started bombing these buildings.
HAYES: Do you remember that night?
HAWK: Yeah, I remember hearing those loud bombs and not knowing what the heck was going on or where it was coming from and just like following my friend who was just up here like -- if I wouldn`t have followed her feed I wouldn`t have known about it, because we were just like what is going on? Something is happening? Like what is happening to us?
HAYES: Do you guys -- was that just one night you started hearing gunfire?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, literally.
MOORE: It went on for 10 days.
HAWK: Yeah, it went on for about a week and a half, yeah.
MOORE; It went on for 10 days, wasn`t covered in the national media. You couldn`t get away with that stuff in the old days. Here, you can do that, but you could also do it because this is a majority black city, and it`s the poorest city in the United States.
HAYES: Final thought here, as folks here in Flint, for people that are watching this, like what do you want to tell people about what you`ve learned over the last four years, and what does Flint need. What does Flint need from us and the rest of the country?
HAWK: It needs for people to be awoke. It needs for people to see that what happened in Flint could happen to your neighborhood. It can happen to your kids. It can happen to your family. Don`t take stuff for granted. Don`t take the water for granted. Some stuff you just have to open your eyes and see, you know. You can`t look at media and think that everything is OK in Flint like people have for the last past four years. We`ve been suffering.
MOORE: They`re always testing things out here. If we just close down all the factories, would the people rise up? Nope. If we destroyed their economy, what would happen? Nothing. Could we poison the water and actually kill people with Legionnaires Disease, and what would happen to us? Governor is still sitting there in the chair today. And could we just bomb this city and nothing would happen? It`s an underreported story. Thank you for reporting it on this show.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: We`re going to talk about the sort of stakes for what happens next in this coming election. I want to thank you guys so much for joining me. Stick around. Don`t go anywhere.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: In the film, you make I think an extremely provocative and it will be surely controversial, there`s a whole portion about the rise of the Nazis in Nazi Germany. You even have a section in which you have literally Hitler with Donald Trump`s voice.
MOORE: It`s funny.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Democratic Party should be recruiting extraordinary ordinary Americans that actually get on the same bus as their constituents, actually have kids in those public schools and understand what it feels like for a teacher not to get paid real salaries or lack of resources.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The definition of electoral insanity is trying to re- elect these same guys over and over again, and expecting our country to be any different.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re not ready to give up on the party, we`re just ready to take it over and let`s put some people in there that get it, because we felt the...
MOORE: Take it over?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take it over. Take it over, Michael.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: In the America of 2018, the vital questions are not only who is running, but who is voting. Who is active and who is not? And we will see whether, after watching two years of the Trump administration unfold, people in this city, in this state, in this country, feel like they have a personal stake in what`s happening on this election day.
Michael Moore is still with me and we`re joined by LaShaya Darisaw, a Flint water crisis activist who ran for office in the Michigan house, state representative Darrin Camilleri who ran as a first time candidate in 2016 for that position and won in a district which Trump also carried -- 25- years-old?
STATE REP. DARRIN CAMILLERI, (D) MICHIGAN: 26.
HAYES: 26.
And Nadine Jawad, a graduate at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Rhodes Scholar who is active in voter engagement in Muslim American community. Great to have you guys here.
NADINE JAWAD, VOTER ENGAGEMENT ACTIVIST: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Maybe I`ll start with you, what do you see as the stakes for what happens in 50 plus days from now?
JAWAD: Yeah, I mean, the stakes are obviously very great. And we need to make sure that we`re engaging the right populations. I feel that so often communities of color, youth, feel that they`re not represented by the current state of our democracy. And there`s a lot at stake right now. We need to make sure we`re mobilizing the right communities.
HAYES: You`ve been doing stuff with college kids. How is that working out?
JAWAD: It`s been awesome. So, Michigan spearheaded by a professor, Eddy Goldenberg (ph), spearheaded the Big 10 vote challenge. So, this upcoming midterm, there will be a competition across the Big Ten. Students will compete to see which school can have not only the greatest turnout, but also and greatest improvement. So, we`re hoping Michigan can win...
HAYES: Now, that`s interesting. So, like, literally like matched up against each other.
JAWAD: Yeah, so...
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: ...Michigan State?
JAWAD: Nope, it was Michigan.
HAYES: So, you won two years ago.
CAMILLERI: I did.
HAYES: That was the first time you were elected. Why did you run in the first place?
CAMILLERI: So, before I got elected I was a teacher. And I walked into my classroom on the first day of school and got appointed department chair at the age of 22. To me that really signaled to me how bad the state of our schools are.
HAYES: Oh, that was a bad day?
CAMILLERI: That was a bad day.
It wasn`t great. And so I saw that I had, you know, no textbooks, no curriculum, and I was teaching in Detroit. And for me that was the impetus that I decided that we need to have real change up in Lansing. And so I decided to run from a district that`s down river about 20 minutes south of Detroit where I grew up, and we won a district that Trump won by 12 points, and I won by 323 votes.
HAYES: You know, you -- there`s so much focus at the top of the ticket always, and it`s been a problem for the Democratic Party recently, particularly in 2010 and 2014, it`s been hard to get Democrats to come out to vote. They have been out turned out by Republicans, particularly older, whiter, more conservative constituencies have come out.
What`s your sort of -- when you`re going around trying to get people to come vote for you in a midterm, right -- so you won in 2016, now you`re trying to get in in a midterm, like the stakes at the state level of what state government means, because that`s true across the entire country. Like, what are you telling them?
CAMILLERI: The stakes are really high. This election is -- I always say it all the time, but one of the most important ones of their lifetime, that we have the chance to actually move the direction of our state in a positive direction.
If you do not vote, your voice is silent and you are not actually advocating for the values that we care about. So this year it`s about making sure that we maintain investment in our infrastructure, that we promote and improve our public schools, that we protect our clean water and that we provide families like here in Flint with clean water.
Because it`s not just here in the city of Flint. In my own district, I have Lake Eerie and Huron River. Just last week, we heard that the state has now told us do not eat the fish in our river because of PFAS contamination. So, clean water is an issue that is affecting communities all over the state of Michigan. And we need to make sure our state government is standing up to corporate interests who are doing all the polluting and not advocating for the people.
HAYES: How do you think about the stakes this midterm?
LASHAYA DARISAW, CANDIDATE FOR STATE SENATE IN 2016: The stakes are very high. We have a chance to really take over some things and making sure that we are keeping community first. So, we have to remember that this is not necessarily about the person, it`s about the community as a whole...
HAYES: You mean not about the person, meaning not the candidate.
DARISAW: It`s not about the candidate, It`s about the community as a whole and making sure that that person actually represents the community in which they come from.
HAYES: You -- that` an interesting point, right, so -- OK, so you`re saying like it`s not the person, it`s like who are they going to listen to when they`re in power?
DARISAW: Yeah, making sure they listen to their constituents and not just corporate interests.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: This -- there`s something kind of existential about this election. I mean, in the film, you make I think an extremely provocative, and it will be surely controversial -- there`s a whole portion about the rise of the Nazis in Nazi, Germany. You even have a section which you have literally Hitler with Donald Trump`s voice.
MOORE: It`s funny.
(LAUGHTER)
HAYES: It`s chilling. And I think there`s a real -- people are torn about that comparison for a lot of reasons. Donald Trump is not Hitler. This is not Nazi Germany. What is the point of that comparison? And what does it say about how much what happens in the fall matters?
MOOORE: The point is is that not so much about Hitler and the Nazis, which you`re right, it`s not that -- I wrote a book back in the 1980s that really inspired this film some almost 40 years later. It was called Friendly Fascism. And the person who wrote this book said that the fascism of the 21st Century would not come with concentration camps or Swastikas, it would come a smiley face and a TV show, and that`s how they`ll take over the people, just by wooing them in that way.
And I think that -- look, the good news here, you see it on this stage, is that this is what America is, and what it looks like.
(APPLAUSE)
MOORE: This is -- and I think all of them know, and I know they`re working on this.
Look, almost two-thirds of this country right now the people eligible to vote are either women, people of color, or young people between the ages of 18 and 35, or a combination of those three. That`s two-thirds of America. This is not the old white guy that you say about the vote...
HAYES: But it`s not two-thirds of the electorate. I mean, that`s the thing, right. That`s it. Who governs America depends on whether those people vote.
MOORE: Who shows up to vote.
HAYES: We have to run candidates that are going to listen to the people and represent the people, as the young man said in that clip. We need to run extraordinary ordinary Americans for office.
We want a leader who does inspires the masses to work for the greater common good of all.
DARISAW: He`s talking about somebody that`s ordinary, people that come from the community, somebody that`s already fighting for the community, that`s already there, that already knows our problems and already knows our struggles, and has already been there. Every day, people -- not somebody that just comes in, because they`re a father or somebody, or not because they need a job, but somebody that actually cares about what happens to all of these people that`s here.
You know, any one of these people, these water warriors that`s in here, these are the people that should be in office.
(APPLAUSE)
DARISAW: But because of how the politics is ran in this state, that`s not the case, because we don`t have the money. We don`t have the power. We don`t have the say so.
So just like all of these people that came and they constantly, constantly protest, we constantly knocked on doors and said we need help. We weren`t heard. Four years later, we weren`t heard. Where are all these politicians running for office? Where are all these people that`s actually in office, but haven`t seen any of these faces? How do you represent me if you`re never in the community?
(APPLAUSE)
CAMILLERI: One of the things I`ll say with that, one of the ways that we`re going to be successful, particularly for the new electorate, for young candidates, for people who are emerging as nontraditional candidates, you have to take your message to the people. You can`t just rely on TV commercials or the mailers.
HAYES: Even a state rep race.
CAMILLERI: You have got to knock on the doors.
So we knocked on 60,000 doors in my election. We took the message to the people, and that`s how you win.
HAYES: One thing I will say, having knocked on doors myself, and coming from a family of organizers, whatever your politics are, conservative, liberal, whatever, there is no better practice of democracy than knocking on a bunch of people`s doors. Seriously, whatever you believe, whatever you think.
You want to -- I`m not saying only do it if you`re liberal, like whatever you believe, go knock on doors, got talk to some of your fellow American citizens about what they`re interested in, you will learn a ton.
LaShaya Darisaw, Darrin Camilleri, Nadine Jawad, thank you all.
And my great thanks to Michael Moore.
MOORE: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for coming to Flint.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: That wraps up a special ALL IN America. Michael Moore, and thank you to everyone who joined us here tonight. Thank you to Flint and Factory Two (ph) for having us. And of course a big thank you to Michael Moore. Good night.
"THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts now.
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