Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: November 27, 2018 Guest: Harry Litman, Marcy Wheeler, Mike Quigley
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: I believe that this president never got past that Access Hollywood Tape. People, most notably women, heard it, and have spent the last two years watching Trump live up to it. The payment for Access Hollywood came due early this month. And that`s HARDBALL for now. "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: WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.
HAYES: New reporting that Paul Manafort met secretly with Julian Assange.
PAUL MANAFORT, CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: If that`s what he said, that`s what I said, that`s obviously what our position is.
HAYES: As Robert Mueller appears to enter a final phase.
MANAFORT: Obviously we don`t know who is behind the leaks.
HAYES: Tonight, the new thinking about what the special council is planning, new incriminating e-mails from Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone, and what we know about Paul Manafort ties to WikiLeaks. Then --
TRUMP: If I`m elected you won`t lose one plant, you`ll have plants coming into this country.
HAYES: As General Motors lays off nearly 15,000 employees.
TRUMP: You`re going to have jobs again. You wont to lose one flat, I promised you.
HAYES: Michael Moore on Donald Trump`s broken promise. Steve Kornacki with the first results from the final election of 2018.
TRUMP: This is a woman that gets it.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. And at this hour polls have just closed in the final election of 2018, the Senate runoff in Mississippi in which Democrat Mike Espy is hoping for an upset against appointed Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith who`s running as an incumbent. The vote follows a string of incendiary comments from Hyde- Smith including that she would be in the front row for a public hanging if a supporter invited her to attend.
Steve Kornacki will be here to break down the first results shortly in the race that will close out the Midterm. And it has been an election cycle has been in brutal for President Trump and his party. And as the new Congress gets ready to put a check on the president, tonight, there is evidence the Mueller investigation has entered the endgame or at least a new phase. And if you`re Donald Trump the news does not appear to be good.
First, there was the head-spinning news that Mueller was ending his cooperation agreement with former Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort because Manafort had allegedly violated the agreement by lying to the government, by committing crimes in Mueller`s phrasing. Mueller`s team is vowing to lay out those alleged lies in detail before Manafort is sentenced. "The government will file a detailed sentencing submission that sets forth the nature of the defendant`s crimes and lies."
That filing crucially could double as a kind of de-facto Mueller report. A way for the Special Counsel to release explosive findings to the public without any meddling from Trump`s hand-picked acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker who appears to have been tapped to hamper the investigation. One of the big questions raised by all this is what Manafort could possibly have to gain from lying to the government at this point.
Some have speculated that manna fort was effectively acting as a spy in exchange for a future pardon. That Manafort has a joint defense agreement with Trump a lot which allows their legal team to share information. Today, Trump sent out a tweet that appeared to suggest he had inside knowledge of how Mueller`s team has been interacting with witnesses and targets. The President complaining about "how horribly and viciously the air treating two people."
If Trump and Manafort were, in fact, working together in some effort to play Mueller, their plan may also well adjust backfired in a spectacular way. There was also this today. The Guardian alleging that Manafort held secret talks with WikiLeaks Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Now, NBC News has not confirmed that report and WikiLeaks and Manafort are vehemently denying it. If it is true, it would appear to be significant evidence of collusion. We`ll have more on that ahead but there was yet another big development today as the pieces start to fall into place. This one involving former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone who appeared to have advanced knowledge that WikiLeaks would release the Clinton campaign e-mails that were stolen by the Russian government/
Stone and WikiLeaks allegedly communicated at least in part through right- wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. Corsi has now gone public with the story that he says he told Mueller and it`s a doozy. He maintained that he didn`t actually have any inside information at all. Corsi, he says he simply used his superior powers of deduction to figure out exactly what the Russians and WikiLeaks had planned. He just guessed and they told Roger Stone his guesses and happened to get everything exactly right. A true Nostradamus for our times.
JEROME CORSI, ASSOCIATE OF ROGER STONE: I said I bet what Assange has left is Podesta`s e-mails, and it was speculation it was deduction, I just happened to be right. I believe these Podesta e-mails would destroy Hillary. Now, why did I think they were coming out in October? Because I said to myself, if I had these e-mails I`d used them as the October Surprise.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you essentially told Stone exactly what was going up?
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HAYES: OK. Unfortunately for Jerome Corsi, that story fell apart almost as soon as he put it out. This afternoon NBC News obtained a draft court document prepared by the Special Counsel`s Office laying out what Mueller has on Corsi. It`s part of a plea arrangement that Corsi apparently has rejected and included in that document our e-mails from Corsi to Stone about the WikiLeaks e-mail dump and it sure sounds like Corsi wasn`t just speculating.
I quote, word is friend in embassy plans two more dumps, Corsi wrote referring to WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. One shortly after I`m back, second in October, impact planned to be very damaging.
Joining me now to make sense of all of this news, Journalist Marcy Wheeler who covers a national security and civil liberties and runs the blog Emptywheel and former Federal Prosecutor Harry Litman whose op-ed today is headlined what was Paul Manafort thinking. All right, Harry, maybe I`ll start with you on that. What is -- having sort of had a day to digest the news from Mueller yesterday, was your current theory about what exactly Manafort was thinking?
HARRY LITMAN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, you know, everything you think of, Chris, seems very implausible so you try to think of what`s the least implausible. We`ve had the resurgence of the afraid of the Russians theory and we`ve had also new supposition about a pardon. But I tried to go through them and just when you really break them down to their details, it seemed pretty implausible.
My best guess, he`s a really lousy poker player who got in over his head, thought he could was through some kind of partial half-truths and prevarication get away with it and was exposed and is now way worse often than he would have been. So that part is clear if he`s really a broken man and my best guess of why he did it is just because he initially thought he could slide by.
HAYES: So Marcy, you`ve been writing about a lot of this and you know, I want you to take me through what your best sort of educated guess or sense of what Mueller is doing here particularly the possibility of this next filing being an opportunity for him to enter facts into the record without interference.
MARCY WHEELER, JOURNALIST: So for the sentencing phase, he`s going to present a report. And since he has claimed that Manafort did not cooperate with the plea agreement, he`s got to lay out all of the evidence to substantiate that. And we`ve already seen with his plea deal. He released 40 pages of evidence of how Manafort ran campaigns in Ukraine which by the way is very similar to how he ran Trump`s campaign down to accusing his female opponent of breaking the law.
He also when Manafort -- when he was basically saying Manafort was witness tampering while he was being prosecuted, he not only presented an FBI disclosure to lay that out but he also included like the call records where he was texting and calling people and a Ukrainian.
HAYES: Right.
WHEELER: So that`s what we should expect to see in this sentencing memorandum. We should expect to see both the lies that he told, the lot -- the behavior he was trying to hide about the lies and the kind of call records another substantiative evidence that he would have presented if this had gone to trial. So we`ll see a lot I expect.
HAYES: Harry, there was a lot of people who felt that there were indications in the filing from Mueller yesterday that they had the goods on Manafort and that Manafort was in bad shape and Mueller was not. Barton Gellman is a great reporter who I really respect gave this opinion. I want to get your response. He says no way to know how bad this is from Mueller but it can`t be good. Manafort will be hammered but the public import seems to be the Special Counsel has lost evidence he expected obtain and anything Manafort did cough up may be tainted by new charges. He`s a lawyer -- liar. What do you think of that?
LITMAN: So I mean, there`s something to it. I think it depends how he wants to use the evidence. As Marcy says, he`ll clearly have now chapter and verse to show the lies. And by the way, it may now involve a rich mother lode of information about Corsi and Stone as well. Now, of course, having Manafort there to say it or any eye witness A, has that probative value but B, might make the evidence admissible in a way it might otherwise not be if he has to now proceed by jury trial.
All that said though, I think the -- what the paper really shows is he had the goods on Manafort already and he had them in some fashion. If he`s -- and remember, he`s automatically producing a report and so that information will find its way in there. So I don`t think it`s the outcome Mueller wanted but I don`t think he fears it either. If the -- if Manafort or any witness is not going to play it a complete straight hand, he`ll of no trouble walking away.
And rule number one, never try to guess what Mueller already has. It always seems to be richer and deeper than we suspected.
HAYES: Marcy, you`ve written about what you think might be the significance of Mueller waiting until the President had submitted his written answers until he did this, until he made this public. What do you think it is?
WHEELER: Well, as you said, Manafort`s lawyers and Trump`s lawyers continue to discuss what was going on the entire time he was supposedly cooperating. And so if Mueller when Manafort lied didn`t correct him, didn`t say look I`ve got these e-mails that show you`re lying to me, then Manafort may have led -- may have been led to believe as Harry said, that Mueller didn`t have the evidence that he actually has. So Manafort goes to Trump and says he doesn`t know about you know, us discussing the June 9th meeting on June 7th. That`s just hypothetical but it`s surely a question that Mueller asked about.
And so then Trump in his answers might have said oh sure, you know, the June 7th meeting we didn`t talk about you know Russians offering e-mails as dirt. So it raises the chances I think that what Trump just swore was the truth and handed into Mueller, it raises the chances that the stuff pertaining to Manafort is actually false.
HAYES: That`s a great, great point Marcy Wheeler and Harry Litman, thank you both for being with me. That was very clarifying. With me now MSNBC Justice Analyst Matt Miller, former Chief Spokesperson for the Department of Justice and MSNBC Legal Analyst Cynthia Alksne, a former Federal Prosecutor.
Matt, let me start with you. I want to talk about the Corsi developments. I`ve never seen anything like this and maybe I just haven`t been around the block enough. It appears that the guy, he`s rejecting a plea and he is I think making public -- we`re giving the journalist it appears I don`t know for sure his own rejected plea deal which states out a bunch of incredibly damning stipulations of fact that completely contradict his story.
MATT MILLER, MSNBC JUSTICE ANALYST: Yes. I`ve never seen anything like it either. I`ve seen -- I`ve seen people on Twitter kind of trying to come up with logical explanations for it but I think the best one is that Jerome Corsi is a bit of a crackpot. And crackpots do things that aren`t you know don`t always make sense.
And you know when you look at everything about Jerome Corsi and his kind of intersection with the Justice Department here, you know, it is kind of you know, an example of -- you know, it`s sort of similar to everyone in Trump`s orbit where you have this culture that`s really from the President on down of people who just lie all the time. People who lie when it makes sense, some people who sometimes lie when it doesn`t make sense.
And what you`re seeing is what happens when people with you know, who just live for a living in Jerome Corsi`s he literally does lie for a living. He`s made his job -- his career selling books that are you know, based on lies and you know -- you know, selling access to his website based on lies. When they -- what happens when those people interact with a Justice Department where lying is a crime and that`s what you`re seeing right now I think in Jerome Corsi`s case.
HAYES: Cynthia, this e-mail -- I mean, basically what`s laid out in the document that was -- that NBC has obtained is Mueller stipulation that they have e-mails of basically Corsi -- of Stone telling course he get in touch with the WikiLeaks folks. Of course, he then doing that and then reporting back and basically saying here`s what`s coming down the pike even as Corsi he maintains I just guessed it. This is the e-mail again, word his friend and embassy plans two more dumps. That`s pretty unambiguous.
CYNTHIA ALKSNE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Right. There -- in the documents obtained by NBC News, there are three instances where Mueller identifies that Corsi has lied to him. And the amazing thing about it is that he writes these e-mails and then he deleted the e-mails right? And then his defense is I forgot about the e-mails.
OK, it`s one thing to forget about an e-mail that`s a grocery list that didn`t have anything to do with what the entire world has been talking about for two years. But these were the emails that are central to what we`ve all been talking about. And he deleted his. He deleted them. And then he said oh I forgot and he tries to come off as this cute little grandfather figure. And let me tell you what he is a venal crackpot if he`s a crackpot because he`s the one who pushed the birther conspiracy about President Obama.
And now to just try to get away with I`m just a grandpa and I just forgot, it doesn`t work with me and I`m sure it`s not going to work with Mueller.
HAYES: Well, again and here`s -- having read the documentation that we`ve obtained from the Mueller team both the plea and the sort of stipulation of what they say happened, the statement of offense, Matt, he seems to be in the same situation as Manafort which he seems caught dead to rights. They got him deleting his e-mails, they got him lying about things, they got him lying about things in amended statements right? So they said you can come back to us and refresh your memory if I go back to e-mails and he still lies to him. And he`s now -- he seems as caught as Manafort seems.
MILLER: Yes, he`s absolutely caught and that makes you wonder why it is that he`s backed out of this plea agreement that seemed to be on track as you know, as late as last week. And you know -- and you know, it`s again you have to ask the same question about Paul Manafort.
One of the possible answers of course if you look at what Jerome Corsi said publicly today, he`s had a joint defense agreement with the President, he`s been sharing information with -- or his attorneys have been sharing information with Rudy Giuliani, the same way Manafort`s attorneys have so you wonder if at some point in the discussions the president sent this signal oh I`ll take care of you.
You know, for Paul Manafort, that kind of a signal wouldn`t really make sense because state charges would still apply for some of the money laundering and tax charges that he was exposed to. For Jerome Corsi, this is very much a federal crime lying to these federal investigators. There would be no you know, analog state charge to prosecute him on.
So if he was promised a pardon or just dangled the possibility of a pardon, maybe that explains why these plea negotiations would break down because otherwise, it makes no sense that the document that he released today makes clear. As you said Mueller has him dead to rights on false statements.
HAYES: Cynthia, you know, just in terms of the 30,000 foot view of this, I mean, what seems striking to me is that Mueller has established allegations in his you know, in the in the criminal indictments of a criminal conspiracy to subvert the American election to tip it over towards Donald Trump away from Hillary Clinton engineered by a foreign agent Russia on the direction of Vladimir Putin.
The open question is, were there American participants who aided and abetted that conspiracy, remembers the conspiracy to commit that federal crime as laid out in the indictments. And what since clear now is they are clearly zeroing in on some people that they think did that.
ALKSNE: Right, exactly. And remember this. The e-mail that you put up on the screen at the beginning on August 2nd where they`re talking about the information from Assange, on August 3rd, the day after, Stone has said he called and spoke with Trump on the phone. So what happened in that phone call? And it`s very important to sort of get an overlay of here`s all the e-mails from Stone and Assange and Guccifer and Manafort and then look at the Twitter comments and look at the phone calls and that`s where we`re going now.
HAYES: Yes, that that timeline starts to line up pretty incriminatingly in early August right there if you look at Stone, Corsi, Stone talking to the President, Stone then talking about what`s coming down the pike. Matt Miller and Cynthia Alksne thank you so much for your time.
Joining me now Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley from Illinois, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. As someone who sat through hearings circumscribed as they were and sort of disrupted as they often were, is the information we`re learning now surprising to you, expected, what do you think?
REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D), ILLINOIS: You know I don`t know if anything surprises me anymore. You said this is new to you. Maybe you just haven`t been around the block enough to have seen someone like this. Let me assure you, no one has seen anything like this and I had a ringside seat to the testimony of everybody we`re talking about with the exception of obviously Mr. Corsi and it is a very sad chapter in American history. And today`s bizarre circumstances, I`m thinking of Hunter Thompson, the great gonzo journalist. What comes to mind is when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
We`ve got some strange people there. Your -- the word crackpot was used. I`m not going to use the word crackpot. These are very odd characters.
HAYES: And there are --
QUIGLEY: And some -- and somehow they found each other all under the Trump campaign working with an entity which for decades had been our greatest adversary, the Russians and somehow that all work together toward the Trump victory in November of 2016. It`s just beyond belief.
HAYES: You`re on that Intelligence Committee. Of course, the inquiry that was pursued was controversial, to say the least. Many felt that it was circumscribed, corrupted, subverted. I saw this bit of news today that the House Democrats plan on going after a sort of very obvious red flag, a piece of information which is that after Don Jr. sets up the meeting with Emin Agalarov, the famous Trump Tower meeting, he gets on the phone with Emin Agalarov, they set up the meeting. He then makes a call. That call was to a blocked number and the Republicans, the majority, when they`re running the committee didn`t want to know what that number was. My understanding is you do. What do you do about that?
QUIGLEY: Look, I think -- let me quote of all people Steve Bannon. I think in the book was it Fire and Fury he said there was zero chance that dad didn`t know about this meeting one manner or another. I don`t think we leave our common sense at the door when we investigate these things right? This is not a weak father-son relationship. So it`s all the more reason for us as an independent separate government to conduct and regain our oversight authority.
And in January under Democratic control, when we have subpoena authority, subpoena the documents like this and keep people to come back under subpoena because they didn`t have to answer our questions and often they didn`t. They didn`t have to appear and they were often allowed to follow the White House gag order. This was an investigation of an independent sort. It was obstructed from its very beginning.
My Republican colleagues, unfortunately, were complicit with the administration and obstructing the investigation and working hand in glove with them to make us as difficult as possible. And not just that, but to attack the ability and the independence of the Justice Department and the intelligence community to do their job.
In the final analysis what we may say about all this is what the Russians did to our country was an extraordinary attack. Mike Morell called it the political equivalent of 9/11. But the Trump Administration`s response may have a greater long-term impact on the rule of law in our country.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Mike Quigley, thank you so much.
QUIGLEY: Any time. Thank you.
HAYES: Next, what to make of the potentially massive reporting that former Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. We will go through all of it in just two minutes. Don`t go anywhere.
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HAYES: Tonight there`s a new report from the Guardian and if it proves to be accurate it would be a kind of smoking gun for Robert Mueller and for the entire Russian affair. Now, we cannot confirm the report and the sourcing is a little bit opaque so I want to sit -- make clear what the Guardian is reporting.
According to the Guardian, former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on several occasions. The most recent of those meetings happen right around the time that Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March of 2016. The Guardian reports Manafort`s acquaintance with Assange goes back at least five years to when Manafort was advising Ukraine`s pro-Moscow president. And they add "a separate internal document written by Ecuador`s Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian list Paul Manafort as one of several well-known guests it also mentioned Russians.
Now, Manafort, Assange, and WikiLeaks all strongly deny any meetings occur. Here to help figure out what to make of this report, Ken Dilanian, NBC News National -- Intelligence and National Security Reporter and Natasha Bertrand Staff Writer at the Atlantic and an MSNBC Contributor. Ken, what do you make of this report?
KEN DILANIAN, NBC NEWS INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Chris, I have to say my confidence in this story waned as the day went on. I spent all day reporting on it talking to current and officials including people who held very senior jobs and I couldn`t find anyone who was in a position to confirm this report. Here`s what I do know that the British had this Embassy under close surveillance so they knew everybody who went in and out. And they would have shared that information had they logged Paul Manafort`s presence at some point with the U.S. government.
Not necessarily in 2013 because who was Paul Manafort in 2013 but certainly in the fall of 2016 when they were trying to figure out what had happened with the Russians and the Trump campaign. And it`s pretty clear to me that the intelligence side of the House was not aware of Paul Manafort being in that embassy. But the reason we haven`t knocked it down is because what I`m told is that the FBI may have known about it and kept it to themselves because Manafort is a U.S. person and their rules about sharing names of U.S. persons across the government, particularly with the CIA.
So we haven`t knocked the story down. And if true it`s a game changer obviously and it`s plausible for any number of reasons and you -- people might wonder why would Paul Manafort be meeting with Assange in 2013 before Donald Trump was ever running for president. Well, Paul Manafort was representing a Ukrainian politician who had -- who was aligned with Russian interests.
WikiLeaks by 2013 was essentially an agent of the Russian government according to the U.S. officials and was acting at the behest of Russian interest and was leaking things that benefited Paul Manafort`s Ukrainian clients. So that may have been one reason that Paul Manafort could have been meeting with Assange in 2013, Chris.
HAYES: Natasha, what do you think?
NATASHA BERTRAND, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: So initially after this bombshell came out, I think we were all very quick to leap on it because of course it is a huge revelation and it made sense. Fitting in the timeline, it just made perfect sense that Manafort who had all of these ties to the Russians maybe would have gone to the Ecuadorian Embassy to meet with Assange and say hey, look I`ve gotten this heads-up from the Russian side that they have Hillary Clinton`s e-mails because of course, they stole the Democratic National Committee e-mails in 2015. And then maybe he was trying to broker some kind of deal with Assange whereby he would release them at strategic moments throughout the election. So it all seemed very plausible.
But on the other hand of course, as Ken just laid out, the sourcing is very thin. We don`t know exactly where the Guardian got these individuals said they saw Manafort actually leaving the embassy. But you know, there`s also the question of I`ve been told that the Guardian sources that they used for this story are actually sources that they`ve used before for past stories that have not been challenged, have not been questioned so they are good sources. But it almost seems like it would be too good to be true. I mean this just came totally out of nowhere. We were all focused completely on Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and their ties to WikiLeaks.
But then again Roger Stone is a very close associate of Paul Manafort and has been for decades. So there`s a link there as well. So we just don`t know as of right now. But I will note that they did not really come out and knock down this story until well after it was released. Paul Manafort originally said that he did not have knowledge of the hacks themselves, released a statement much later. So either they really -- either the Guardian was wrong about this or Paul Manafort just does not think they have proof that would you know, that they could come out and say that he was definitively there.
HAYES: All right, that -- I think that clarifies a little bit. I should say the last little things that we do know the Manafort met with the new incoming president in Ecuador in 2017. There`s some reporting today that Mueller might be looking at that. That at least is a confirmed meeting though is ostensibly about a Chinese investment project. We`ll see if that bears out. Thanks to Natasha Bertrand and Ken Dilanian.
Next, polls just closed in the last election we think of 2018. Do Democrats have a chance in the deep red state of Mississippi? Steve Kornacki will break down the first results next.
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HAYES; Polls closed a half hour ago in the last major race in the midterms, the battle for Mississippi senate. Right now, the race between Democrat Mike Espy and incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith is too early to call.
More on the first results we`re seeing out of Mississippi, we head to the big board where Steve Kornacki is on top of it all.
Steve, what do we know?
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC: It`s very early, so I just wanted to show you what`s starting to come in and what to keep an eye on. You see overall here, just south of 6,000 votes coming in statewide. Here is one where you`ve got some precincts, DeSoto County, this is actually one of the largest counties in the state, this is basically the Memphis suburbs. And this county embodies the challenge that Mike Espy faces in trying to win this thing as a Democrat.
You can see right now in precincts in, it`s basically50/50 here. This is a place where Hillary Clinton got about 30 percent in 2016, or Obama in 2012 got about 30 percent. One of these few places where you`ve got these sort of college-educated swing voters, white swing voters, you talk, about nationally moving to the Democratic Party, not many pockets in Mississippi where you have those voters. But for Democrats tonight, they need huge black turnout and they need to swing some white voters.
This is probably the biggest place to look in the state. It is early, but you see Espy in the early votes we`re getting out of there, he is doing that in the early votes, it looks like. The question, though, is where exactly in the county is this from? What will it look like as more precincts report? So, obviously keeping an eye on DeSoto and keeping an eye statewide as the numbers start to come in here, Chris.
HAYES: All right, Steve Kornacki, thank you for that. You`ll be at the board tonight as the results come in.
I want to bring in Cornell Belcher, Democratic pollster and strategist and MSNBC political analyst. What are you looking for tonight? I mean, obviously, there`s a question of who wins. An Espy win I think would be a shocking upset, frankly. But there`s a big difference between Espy losing by 15 and losing by two or five in terms of the shape of what`s going on down there. What do you think?
CORNELL BELCHER, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: I think when you look at what we saw, and Steve pointed this out, when you look at those suburban counties, you know, and that sort of white college-educated vote, I mean that was a big deal for Democrats nationally, especially winning college-educated white women, and Hillary didn`t win college-educated white women last time around.
You saw that sort of on the national scale. That helped Democrats. I think you`ll see less of that in Mississippi.
And then you look throughout the south, you saw less of that happening in the south, or lesser margins than you saw overall nationally. And there`s less of that sort of vote in places like Mississippi. And truth of the matter is, you know, the Democrats have struggled with the vote a quarter of the white vote in places like Mississippi.
And, you know, the last time around, you know, Espy and leading into the runoff I think he got 15 or 16 percent of the white vote, and the last Democrat to run for Senate there I think got roughly somewhere between 15 percent and 17 percent of the vote.
So, that white vote is locked in, and is locked in and polarized along old historical racial lines. I mean, race is still, to me, front and center in all of politics in the south. Even when they try to cloak it, race is still front and center.
HAYES: You know, we should note, there is, I believe, a statewide elected democrat in Mississippi, the attorney general. So there has been -- there`s some statewide wins, I think, in Mississippi, unlike some states that have no one statewide. But it is striking to me that when you look at Georgia, right. So Georgia is a very different place, and Georgia has a lot more of the kind of college-educated white women, particularly, in the big metro areas booming around Atlanta yet to provide a margin, but there is a recipe that comes into view, if you look at Georgia, if you look at Texas, it happened in Alabama, which is a bit of a fluke, which is like if you mobilize young voters, you mobilize voters of color, you really get a lot of them turned out, and you can get enough of that white vote, you can cobble enough to just get pretty close to 50.
BELCHER: The...
HAYES: Not in Mississippi, maybe, but other places.
BELCHER: No -- and also you know, there`s a difference between so the federal Dem and the non-federal Dem, right, so let`s not -- but on the federal Dem side, look - - Democrats, and I`ll take heat for this, but Democrats have not been able to give a narrative around race that makes moderate whites have skin in the game.
HAYES: That`s interesting.
BELCHER: And until moderate whites feel as though have some skin in this racism game...
HAYES: That`s interesting.
BELCHER: It`s going to be hard sliding. We sort of avoid the narrative at all, but until those moderate whites, who are uncomfortable with racism, they feel as though they have skin in that racism game, that their children are not going to benefit, or their children are going to fall further behind, or their state is going to fall further behind and pay a price for that, until moderate whites have a skin in the racism game, Democrats will struggle to get a quarter of the white vote.
HAYES: We`ll see what those numbers bear out tonight. Cornell Belcher, thanks for joining us. Still ahead, Michael Moore on the president`s broken promises, thousands of GM employees lose their jobs.
Plus, Thing One, Thing Two`s most frequent flyer is back. The latest entry for Scott Pruitt next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, do you remember Scott Pruitt? Of course you do. Who could forget he was the EPA director who rented a D.C. apartment from the wife of an energy lobbyist for 50 bucks a month, and spent crazy amounts of money on first class air travel and had his staff try to get his wife a job at Chick-Fil-A and spent $1,500 on pens, and had his security agents drive him around to Ritz Carlton hotels looking for the lotion he liked, and he tried to buy that used Trump mattress.
That guy was getting away with all those scandals for a good long time until he found himself face to face with mighty Ed Henry.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED HENRY, FOX NEWS: The average rent in Washington is over $2,000 a month.
SCOTT PRUITT, FORMER EPA ADMINISTRATOR: Not for what I rented, not for what I -- this was like an AirBNB situation, Ed.
HENRY: It`s a block from the Capitol. So, you only paid for the nights you were there?
PRUITT: That`s exactly right.
HENRY: So, that`s kind of a sweetheart deal, because your house in Oklahoma, you pay a mortgage on that. And when you don`t sleep there, you still pay the mortgage, right?
PRUITT: Not when I`m not -- yes, but this is a tremendous difference. I wasn`t using the facility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As surprising as it was to see Scott Pruitt get a tough interview on Trump TV, no one was more surprised than Scott Pruitt himself. Why that is is Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: No matter how much swamp scum Scott Pruitt got himself into when he was director of the EPA, he could always find friends at Fox & Friends, Trump`s favorite show on Trump TV. In fact, the friends were so friendly they even gave Pruitt the questions they were going to ask him, thanks to actual journalism from The Daily Beast, which reviewed emails obtained in a FOIA request by the Sierra Club, we now know that Pruitt`s team chose the topics for interviews and knew the questions in advance, and that led to Fox fun journalism like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Now that you`ve got approved, now you`re ready to go. What`s your big announcement today?
Tell us a little bit how the Trump administration is looking to create a red team, because in the military they do the red team, blue team thing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re talking about memos and what`s happening in the White House, this is what the American public really needs to be focused on, right, jobs...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our personal safety.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...our personal safety, protecting our kids from cancer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump wants to build this wall. He`s going to have trouble getting funding from Republicans, but he also might have some trouble with environmentalists who think building a wall might hurt, I don`t know, the iguana perhaps.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jaguars...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jaguars that allegedly are on the border.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, yeah, when you become accustomed to being treated like royalty by the court of the Kirby (ph) couch, it is no wonder that a surprise tough ones knocked him for such a loop.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Your house in Oklahoma, you pay a mortgage on that. And when you don`t sleep there -- yeah, when you don`t sleep there you still pay the mortgage, right?
PRUITT: Not when I`m not using -- I mean, yes, but this is a tremendous difference. I wasn`t using the facility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thanks to the Trump administration, there are more children detained in a tent city than there are inmates in all but one of the nation`s federal detention facilities. That improvised camp in Texas now houses more than 2,300 boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 primarily from Central America.
The population has swelled well beyond the 364 children originally sent there. And that`s due, in large part, to the intentional policy to the Trump administration, to detain people, even minors, who come unaccompanied as long as possible.
When the government announced that it was opening the Torneo Camp back in June when we were covering it, the advocates we talked to voiced concern that kids were being detained on federal land in order to avoid state-based regulations for people who work in facilities that house children. Now those fears have been confirmed.
According to an inspector-general`s report obtained by the Associated Press, quote, "none of the 2,100 staff are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks." The director of office of refugee settlement, Scott Lloyd, gave the green light for this policy, quote, "granting a waiver to staff up Torneo without the required child abuse and neglect checks, which raise a red flag about any potential employee who has a record of hurting a child."
So there are no FBI fingerprint background checks for employees staffing this overcrowded tent city for desperate, unaccompanied minors who have come here from Central America. And just as there was a deliberate policy to separate mothers from their children, just as people were tear gassed on Sunday, as they tried to cross the border, many of them mothers and children, it`s all part of a spectacle, one that is frequently lawless, always resolutely cruel, and always designed to send a message about the kind of America Trump and his base want us to be.
All right, there is breaking news, I`m being told, in the Mississippi senate race. As results are coming in, let`s go to the big board and Steve Kornacki. Steve, what is the latest here?
KORNACKI: Yeah, Chris, still early, just starting to come in. We have a complete county. I just that is going to give you a sense of what we`re starting to see. Warren County here, you see in blue, this is Vicksburg. Let me show you what we see here. You see statewide, Espy slightly ahead in our count right now.
Espy, with all the vote in in Warren County, 54 percent of the vote here, just to give you a sense of what that means, compare that to what Democrats typically do here. Hillary Clinton got 48 percent here in 2016. The interesting one is in 2012, Barack Obama -- 2012 was kind of the high water mark for Democrats in Mississippi, Obama got 44 percent statewide. So, the thing you want to keep in mind as these county results come in tonight, is Espy running 6 -- on average, is he running 6 points or better above what Obama did in 2012?
So, you see Warren County there. His improvement there for Espy over what has been sort of the high watermark here for Democrats, it`s 4. On average, he needs to get six. So, there`s improvement there, it`s not 6.
But then look up here, we flagged this one earlier, about 60 percent of the vote in in DeSoto County. This is one of the largest counties in the state. This is a very Republican county. This is the suburbs of Memphis now. Take a look here at what we`ve seen in the past. This is a big jump here. Clinton`s 31 percent last time around, Espy at 46. That high water mark for Democrats, Obama in 2012, 33. Espy at 46.
We`re trying to find out exactly what precincts have come in to DeSoto, what`s left to come there. Are they more tilted to Republicans, what`s to come back.
But, again, starting to get a picture -- and you can see just a little bit more vote has come in as I`ve been talking about this, but starting to get a picture here of the votes coming in about -- only a couple hundred votes between them right now. Interesting early picture, we`ll put it that way.
HAYES: Yeah, that`s useful. I mean, we`re seeing some indications, I remember when I was in Texas on election night, where you started to get early indications. And things weren`t exactly going along the groove lines of sort of easy blowouts that had happened before, which is what I`m hearing from you now here.
KORNACKI: Yeah, it`s very early. This could, you know -- but I`ll tell you, it`s -- especially in DeSoto, and I want to see more votes come in here -- put it this way if all of DeSoto comes in and Espy is still sitting somewhere around 46 percent, I think things get very interesting. If this slides back as the rest of DeSoto comes in, I think that`s more kind of what we would have expected coming into tonight. So, we`ll see.
HAYES: All right, Steve Kornacki, thanks for that. We will keep our eyes on that.
Meanwhile, nine days before the 2016 election, President Trump made this promise in Warren, Michigan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If I`m elected, you won`t lose one plant. You`ll have plants coming into this country. You`re going to have jobs again. You won`t lose one plant. I promise you. I promise you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was just over two years ago in Warren, Michigan. This week, General Motors announced it was shutting down production at their factory in Warren, Michigan, and four other factories in North America, laying off almost 15,000 workers.
Joining me now, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and activist Michael Moore. Pretty stark what`s going on in Warren, that pledge and the news today.
MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER: Well, Obama, you know, he saved -- he saved General Motors. We paid for it. And now General Motors is doing what they`ve always done. This is the thing about Trump is that he -- he doesn`t understand how he`s been played by GM. GM has been doing this for a long time time, where give us tax breaks, give us tax abatement so we don`t have to pay property taxes, and we`ll create all these jobs.
That particular plant in Detroit, it`s call the Poletown plant, Detroit (inaudible), they promised 6,000 jobs. There is about 1,600 that work there. They never -- they never got the 6,000 jobs. They never followed through on the things they promised on.
So if Trump had any sense of history, if he had studied anything about corporate America, which he should have, because here`s the thing with him. His indignation today, it sounds right.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: But he should know better. He gave them a historic -- all the corporations, a historic tax cut last year.
HAYES: well, that`s the thing that Sherrod Brown pointed it out today. I mean, GM, like all American corporations, saw an enormous tax cut. Their tax rate dropped, what, 15 percentage points?
MOORE: Yes, they made last year -- their profit was $6 billion, General Motors.
HAYES: Wow.
MOORE: This is not a company that`s hurting. So, so -- I`ve wondered in these two years why corporate America and Wall Street have been kind of quiet about Trump, because he has never been one of them. He -- in fact, remember when he first ran he was going to make those hedge fund guys pay more in taxes. He hates Wall Street.
HAYES: Well, he says he hates -- I don`t know if he hates Wall Street.
MOORE: Well, he doesn`t. But they`ve always hated him. To corporate America to Wall Street, Trump`s been the trailer trash of the millionaire class. They never let him in to their club, their exclusive high-end club.
HAYES: Which is the source of a lot of seething resentment that he has.
MOORE: That he has.
HAYES: Which KI think he effectively channeled as a sort of faux populist thing.
MOORE: But he gets into office, and what does he do? He gives them a big tax cut. He eliminates federal restrictions for fuel efficiency, for air pollution. He does all the things they want him to do as their boy.
HAYES: Yep.
MOORE: And then this is what they go do. And then he`s all today like -- it`s like you`re such a fool, Trump, and you`ve been played again by these people who have never liked you.
HAYES: Well, here`s my theory on this. I have always thought that the thing -- the real Achilles heel of this president in this moment in some ways is the economy if it starts to fall apart, that basically, the generally good macroeconomic news, unemployment fairly low, there is a little bit of wage growth -- again, a lot of people hurting, the American economy is broken, a lot of steep structural ways, but cyclically in a decent spot, that if that starts to go away, that`s a real kind of Jenga piece in his support, particularly in a place like Warren, Michigan.
And then there are other people who say you`re out of your mind. It doesn`t matter what happens. What do you think?
MOORE: Three weeks ago tonight -- this is what I think, three weeks ago tonight, the people of Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were all part of this Rust Belt, they already knew that they weren`t benefiting from the Trump presidency. They already knew that, well, they had done the job I told you two years ago that they were going to do. They don`t like Trump in places like Michigan, but they saw him as their Molotov... HAYES: FU.
MOORE: Yes. To blow up the system. OK, message received. Everybody now understands the people in the Midwest and the Rust Belt have been hurting for some time.
So when they had a chance now to elect other people, to do the job better than I think other Democrats or running two years ago, now we`re going to see the change. And this is what happened with General Motors.
People in Michigan today are -- they`re angry at Trump and they`re angry at GM. They`re angry at both of them.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: They`re not going to tolerate this treatment anymore, and they`re going to elect people like the Rashida Tlaibs who is now our new congresswoman from Detroit who is going to fight for the workers in Detroit and not like the old guard that used to fight for General Motors and get their tax breaks through congress and keep the Michigan delegation, the Democrats who always vote against any bettering of the air quality standards, it was an embarrassment for Democrats.
HAYES: Right, because they were going to bat for GM.
MOORE: They were going to bat for GM, which meant they were going to bat for jobs. I think now, especially with the younger generation, they see the lack of future that`s in front of them, and they know it`s all a bunch of BS, and they are going to take out their revenge against both the company and the person who sits in the White House.
HAYES: You know, it`s also there was that carrier deal that happened in the transition, which was like a moment of kind of peak political deafness for the president which has basically been all downhill since. The whole thing turned out to be largely a con. There were already huge tax incentives from Indiana state that Mike Pence had shoved through. The actual job number was way lower, a bunch of jobs went away anyway. But as a sort of spectacle it was pretty effective.
MOORE: As a piece of TV, that he is good at.
HAYES: But we have not -- that has not been replicated in many ways. I mean -- and today is interesting, it`s interesting to watch him, like you say, sort of impotently flail against GM, having already handed them -- forked over billions of dollars to them.
MOORE: Right, after they have gotten all this from him, how would they do this to him? Are you crazy? This is what they`ve been doing to everybody. This is what they`ve been doing to the very people that you said -- there will not be another plant closing. And he says it right there.
HAYES: In Warren, Michigan, not one more.
MOORE: A mile down the road from the plant they closed today. This is...
HAYES: Here`s my thing, those people in that factory.
MOORE: Yeah.
HAYES: I mean, they`re -- my sense is reality outs in that situation, like people will be angry at him.
MOORE: Absolutely. Absolutely.
But don`t forget, he`s our current problem, but he`s sort of the bastard, you know, birth of capitalism.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: Where, you know, it`s ultimately we have a system with General Motors and these other companies that are calling the shots.
HAYES: Yeah.
MOORE: And that`s what we`ve got to get in charge of, that`s what these new Democrats in congress have to get a hold on.
Now, we`ve got to get back to Mississippi.
HAYES: There might be something out of Mississippi.
MOORE: We`ve got to get back to Kornacki.
HAYES; You`re not allow at the board.
Michael Moore, one last thing tonight, we are celebrating a new milestone. Today, we surpassed 5 million downloads of our podcast Why is This Happening?" It was...
MOORE: I don`t have that.
HAYES: Yeah. Today`s episode with Ta-Nehisi Coates put us up over the top. Check this one out as our first time recording the show in front of a live audience, a ton of fun, really enlightening. Wherever you get your podcasts, get this one.
MOORE: It`s a great one.
HAYES: If you would be interested in going to a show in your hometown tweet at us with the hashtag #withpod, and let us know.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now with Rachel.
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