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Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) makes her case. TRANSCRIPT: 6/6/19, All In w/ Chris Hayes.

Guests: Walter Dellinger, Amy Klobuchar, Andrea Pitzer

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST:  And that`s HARDBALL for now.  Thanks for being with us.  "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST:  Tonight on ALL IN.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA):  We believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.

HAYES:  The Democratic impeachment fight breaks out into the open.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  This is Pelosi.  I don`t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prisoned.

HAYES:  Tonight, what we know about Nancy Pelosi`s case not to impeach and what Democrats are doing to convince her.  Then, ALL IN 2020 with Democratic Candidate Amy Klobuchar, the ugly precedence for America`s growing migrant detention camp, new reporting on what looks like more open bribery at the Trump D.C. Hotel.  And the big takeaways from last night`s Elizabeth Warren Town Hall.

What do you learn from that exchange that made you want to end up going into politics?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  You don`t get what you don`t fight for.

HAYES:  When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes.  New reporting confirms that House Democrats are just as divided over the question of impeachment behind the scenes as they appear to be from the outside.  Dozens of House Democrats are ready to begin an impeachment inquiry right now potentially, and this is important, including the House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, the person whose job it would be to actually start the proceedings.

But Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently does not want Congress to take that on preferring to leave it to the American electorate and the criminal justice system to hold the president accountable.  According to Politico, citing multiple unnamed sources, Pelosi told Democratic committee chairs in a meeting Tuesday night "I don`t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison."

She appears to have been invoking the possibility the president could face prosecution once he`s out of office.  And one congressional source has now confirmed that reporting to NBC News.  Now, according to Politico, those comments came in response to a plea from Nadler who was pressing Pelosi to let his committee launch an impeachment inquiry against the president.  The second such request he`s made in recent weeks.

By coincidence, both Pelosi and the guy she`d like to see behind bars were in the same place today attending the 75th anniversary of D-Day at the American Cemetery in Normandy.  But while Pelosi chose to take the high road refusing to criticize the President on foreign soil, the president sitting in front of the graves of the fallen in one of the most solemn sites on the globe, took the opportunity to berate both Pelosi and Robert Mueller.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Would you mind if he testifies still?  Before you said you didn`t care if Mueller testifies.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:   Let me tell you.  He made such a fool out of himself the last time -- because what people don`t report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong.  But Nancy Pelosi, I call her Nervous Nancy, Nancy Pelosi doesn`t talk about it.  Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK.  She`s a disaster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Nancy Pelosi probably doesn`t talk about it because no one knows what you`re talking about because Mueller has yet to testify before Congress so how could he send them a letter correcting his testimony.  Speaking of which, despite the reported rebuff from the speaker, Nadler is forging ahead with his committee`s efforts to publicize Mueller`s findings, telling NBC News he`s confident that Mueller will testify publicly even if it takes a subpoena to overcome Mueller`s publicly stated reluctance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL:  There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress.  Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report.  It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.  We chose those words carefully and the words speaks for itself and the report is my testimony.  I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Politico is now reporting Nadler could subpoena Mueller within the next two weeks.  House Democrats also took formal stuff today to enforce previous subpoenas for two key witnesses, Attorney General William Barr who continues to both distort Mueller`s findings for the benefit the President and refused to appear before Congress and from the White House Counsel da McGahn who is at the center of some of the president`s most overt attempts to obstruct justice.

House Democrats today introduced a resolution to hold Barr and McGahn in contempt for defying their congressional subpoenas and to make it easier to go to court to get those subpoenas enforced.  The full House is now expected to vote on that measure next Tuesday.  For more on Democrat`s impeachment debate, I`m joined by former Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri and an MSNBC Political Analyst.

You know, there seem to be a bunch of issues that are getting conflated in this debate, but I`m very curious you were read on all this as someone who had to navigate representing Missouri and representing a state where Democrats were not necessarily the majority at all for many years and navigating the imperatives of what the party may want to do and what you had to go back and tell your voters.

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST:  Well, I think the way we have to look at this is how do we make sure the public understands and knows what`s in the Mueller report.  You know, we`re not going to -- the Senate clearly is not going to convict Donald Trump if the House impeaches him.  I think that`s pretty obvious.

Then won`t even look crossways at him when he does outrageously bad things.  So they certainly are not going to be part of convicting him on any kind of impeachment finding that the House may end up with.  So what is really the goal here?  The goal is to make sure the public is fully informed of what the President actually did to obstruct justice.

I think there is ways to do that including making Mueller testify and he knows how important it is that he publicly talk about what he found, again and again, to get through to the American people that this isn`t the president that was exonerated in no way shape or form.

HAYES:  You know, it`s everything you say that because to me the question here is what do people believe in the merits and I think that many of your former colleagues in Congress in the Democratic Party are just sincerely wrestling with that.  I mean, I think people are wrestling with the questions like what is our constitutional duty, what should we do, and then what will the political fallout be.

But it strikes me the Pelosi comment is sort of the reverse, right?  I mean, the idea that you know you want to see him in prison is kind of neither here nor there to whatever the constitutional duty before Congress says.

MCCASKILL:  Well, I think the constitutional duty is oversight.  And if it`s called an impeachment inquiry and therefore it makes discovery easier, in other words, the process of getting the documents, getting the testimony, does that make the courts more likely to enforce Congress`s will in getting the information out of the executive branch that they are stonewalling them on right now, it might.

And does it help for the public to have it laid out more clearly through witnesses testifying and documents that are actually obtained?  I think so.  Is that a positive thing in terms of constitutional duty for oversight?  Yes.  But we can`t turn this guy into a martyr.

And we know that you know, the Republicans are afraid of him in the Senate.  I mean, smart, courageous people have gone AWOL in the Senate.  My former colleagues who I liked and who were smart guys and women, they are all afraid of standing up to this guy.  So we know that he`s not going to be removed from office.

So then the goal is oversight and making sure that the American people are fully informed when they decide who to vote for next November.

HAYES:  But to that end, right, so I`ve seen this argument man I think it`s a -- it`s a persuasive one, right.  You will not remove the guy from office.  Obviously, Mitch McConnell is not going to oversee a conviction for the first time I would note in American history, right?

MCCASKILL:  Right.

HAYES:  We`ve had two impeachments before and even Andrew Johnson didn`t get kicked out of office, right.

MCCASKILL:  Right.

HAYES:  But, that the politics of it, if the fear is political overreach, the politics are actually good for Senate Democrats.  Ezra Levin of Indivisible made this point today.  I want to get your response sort of interesting, right.

So this is Trump`s approval ratings by state underwater by 14 points in Colorado, by 12 in Iowa, by nine in Maine, six in Arizona, four in North Carolina.  His point is look, put all those Senators, Republican incumbents up for re-election in cycle on the record defending the guy who`s just been convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors.  What do you think of that?

MCCASKILL:  Well, I think they are on the record.  They are defending them every day.  I mean, you have plenty of ammunition to run against any of those candidates that they are totally 100 percent in the tank for a president who did the unthinkable today.  And that was to ride a war hero with the graves in the background on foreign soil on a sacred day in our nation`s history.

So -- and here`s the thing.  I mean, I think Lawrence Tribes piece in The Washington Post was pretty illustrative today.  He basically was saying you know, let`s do the impeachment inquiry but that doesn`t mean you have to refer to the Senate.  Use it as an exercise in aggressive oversight under the aegis of impeachment but rather really educating the American people what`s in the Mueller report because we all know, Chris, people have not read the Mueller report especially the people who are in the information bubble on the right wing side.

HAYES:  That`s absolutely the truth.  Claire McCaskill, thank you.  I always really appreciate listen your insights.  Thank you.

MCCASKILL:  Thanks.

HAYES:  I want to turn now to Walter Dellinger, the aforementioned former acting assistant solicitor general, former head of the Justice Department`s Office of Legal Counsel who does have a new piece out today.  You proposed the House you say could effectively hold its own trial.  What do you mean by that?

WALTER DELLINGER, FORMER ACTING U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL:  Oh that`s actually my good friend and colleague Lawrence Tribe.

HAYES:  Oh, I`m sorry.

DELLINGER:  It`s Lawrence Tribe.  It`s OK.  I would love to take credit because I think --

HAYES:  Walter, I spent three straight days on planes and I`m mortified that I did that.

DELLINGER:  You`ve been on the road.  I know.

HAYES:  You`re both extremely aghast and --

DELLINGER:  Don`t be mortified because I`m wanted to bring it up and say I wish I had written Larry`s piece because I think he does show you know, where we should be.  And I think you know, I listen to people like Senator McCaskill and Speaker Pelosi and have the highest regard for them but more and more I have come to think that each party in this proceeding needs to do its own job.

Mueller`s job is done.  He has told us what he believes I think making him come up and be a pony on a leash being led around to restate what he`s already said.  The House needs to do its own job and not worry about the Senate.

The House`s job -- and it`s a solemn responsibility.  No one should undertake impeachment either lightly or for political reasons.  You have to have a profound reason for doing so.  But the Mueller report clearly lays out and Mueller himself anticipated that the House would proceed to an impeachment inquiry.

Now, the speaker says that we shouldn`t start down that road until the country is behind impeachment.  But the country is not going to get behind impeachment but until they know the facts.  If I could ask you a question.

HAYES:  Please.

DELLINGER:  It would -- it would seem to me that there would be four more deep and intensive media coverage if there were a special committee or judiciary an impeachment committee to engage in impeachment hearings would get far greater depth of coverage than these half a dozen other committees having various hearings with various -- sometime no shows.  What`s your sense of that?

HAYES:  Well, I think that`s exactly correct.  And I think that -- and we`ve seen it twice before, right.  Michael Cohen coming and testifying before Congress focused attention.  People watch that, it was carried live on both all the cable networks.  I think networks might even broke in, Robert Mueller coming to speak.  Again, carried line of all three cable networks.  I think some of the networks broke in.

Impeachment hearings, if they were called impeachment hearings, would rise to a level of newsworthiness to your point other hearings don`t have because you know, we haven`t had a lot of them in the history of the Republic.  Like it is -- it`s a big deal.  This idea that -- this idea that it doesn`t matter what you call it I think to your point is really belied by the actual history and the facts.

DELLINGER:  That`s exactly right.  And I think what we would find is that the politics of this are very -- are so uncertain that we should put them aside.  When we`ve had three sort of impeachment processes in our history, any scientist would tell you that three is too small a number to do any good extrapolation to conclusions.

And if the House were to have impeachment hearings and lay out how the Russian sought to interfere the president, welcomed that interference and then did everything he could to prevent an investigation into Russians, what Russian did in this ongoing influence, and then crafted very precise articles of impeachment.

Had the House vote on those, as Larry Tribe has pointed out, those articles of impeachment can conclude that the president is, in fact, guilty of having committed these grievous wrongs.  And then if the members of the -- of the Senate want to vote on a party-line against what are well-developed articles of impeachment, that`s their issue and that`s their problem.

HAYES:  Yes.  I thought you just laid out this sort of three-prong case.  I thought Elizabeth Warren last night did a pretty good job of laying out a sort of capsule summary of the Mueller report and why it should result in her patient impeachment.  Take a listen.

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WARREN:  I got to the end and there were three things that are just man, there`s no avoiding it.  Part one, a hostile foreign government attack our 2016 elections for the purpose of getting Donald Trump elected.  Part two, then-candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help.  And part three, when the federal government tried to investigate part one and part two, Donald Trump as president, delayed, deflected, move, fired, and did everything he could to obstruct justice.

If he were any other person in the United States based on what`s documented in that report, he would be carried out in handcuffs.  I get that this is politically tough.  I get it.  But some things are bigger than politics.  And this matters for our democracy not just now but under the next president and the next president and the next president.  We have a constitutional responsibility here and that`s two starts as impeachment proceedings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  On that last point, Walter, do you think there is a precedent issue here?  I mean again, there`s so much of this to talk in the -- in the context of politics and that makes sense.  But there`s a real question about like what precedents get set, what behavior gets marked off as not proper and appropriate, and what doesn`t, and this seems to me one of the key parts about the magic of that word and the proceeding itself.

DELLINGER:  I totally agree.  I think where we -- where we to step back and say that it is not the kind of grievous high crime and misdemeanor for a president to engage in efforts to obstruct justice, not efforts to obstruct justice about a matter involving a sexual relationship he might have -- you know, he might have had but to obstruct an investigation into a hostile foreign powers, interference in our election.

I just don`t see how we would -- we would ever use this process again and what message that would send to future presidents about the free reign they have to shred the Constitution.

HAYES:  All right, Walter Dellinger, thank you so much for your time, sir.

DELLINGER:  You`re welcome.  Up next, 2020 Democrat Amy Klobuchar joins me live and there`s some breaking news from former Vice President Joe Biden who just announced he is now reversing his position on the Hyde Amendment.  That breaking news and Senator Amy Klobuchar next.

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HAYES:  As you might have seen in our town hall last night, I asked Senator Warren about her response to former Vice President Joe Biden`s position that he would not support the repeal of a Hyde Amendment which bars federal funding for abortions for Medicare, Medicaid, and other services.  Well, today Joe Biden just made a bit of news.

We have Mike Memoli on the phone who covers Joe Biden for NBC News to tell us what happened.  Mike, what just happened?

MIKE MEMOLI, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Yes, Chris, so Joe Biden is speaking tonight at the DNC`s I Will Vote Gala here in Atlanta.  He`s actually still on stage and he began his remarks by going off script.  He actually has a teleprompter set up but he was reading from prepared remarks indicating that this was a very late decision by the campaign.

He explained his past support for the Hyde Amendment saying that it was part of legislation, funding legislation that was a traditional part of the government funding that he had to support.  But also that his position has changed now because in a situation like this one today he said where Republican governors, in particular, are directly insulting women`s health, are making it impossible even for the most vulnerable citizens to be able to afford abortion services that he could no longer support the Hyde Amendment, any amendment that prevents this kind of services.

So this is in direct response to what we`ve seen, the first real moment where other Democratic candidates have seized on a moment to attack Joe Biden.  Cory Booker today at a similar DNC event here in Atlanta saying this was a direct assault on the most vulnerable women in society.  So Joe Biden in the first real reversal of his campaign doing so tonight here in Atlanta.

HAYES:  All right, Mike Memoli, thank you so much for that.  I want to turn now to Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota.  She joins me now.  She is also running for president of the United States this year.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Thanks, Chris.

HAYES:  Senator, your position on the Hyde Amendment. 

KLOBUCHAR:  Well, I am on the bill that says that we should reverse the Hyde Amendment and with a number of my colleagues.  And this has been the position of our party for a reason.  And that is because it is not fair to poor women.  In my own state which has tended to be sort of a purple state that Donald Trump almost won, for years we have had funding of abortion for poor women because of a court order, the Minnesota Supreme Court made a decision.

And I think it`s important to note that while this has been going on in over a dozen states in the -- including major states, we`re still seeing, Chris, a reduction in the reported numbers of abortions due to having contraception more available, having contraception available because we were funding Planned Parenthood and the actions of the Obama administration.

I`m not surprised the Vice President made that announcement in Georgia since it is Georgia is one of the states that is severely trying to curtail women`s rights and there is a huge backlash when they`re trying in states like Alabama to put doctors in prison which is exactly what their bill says.

HAYES:  This is slightly technical but we`ll go there anyway because I genuinely like -- would like my --

KLOBUCHAR:  You like technical.

HAYES:  Well, I would like my grasp of this to get better.  So it`s not like there`s some federal law like the Affordable Care Act that`s like sign in law that is the Hyde Amendment.  It`s a rider attached to appropriations that get passed all the time that`s just the standard language copied and pasted year after year after year.

Which means that you and your colleagues end up voting for the Hyde Amendment, right, as a necessary precondition to funding big parts of the government right now, correct?

KLOBUCHAR:  That`s what`s been going on for years because otherwise the Republicans often including with the language that had to be inserted in the Affordable Care Act law,  a lot of us would have liked to see different language, have insisted that we see there.  And in the Affordable Care Act, that was agreement for other reasons.

But that is -- that is what we`ve seen especially lately when the Republicans control the Senate and when they were controlling the House.  So yes, if we have a Democratic president and we are able to take back the Senate, this is a real possibility that we could finally change this language.

But I do want to stress that what these guys are doing is completely the opposite way.  They are literally trying to put doctors in prison, take away a woman`s right to choose.

HAYES:  Are you -- are you glad that the vice president changes position on this?

KLOBUCHAR:  Yes, I am.  I`m not surprised.  I think it would have been a big problem for him.

HAYES:  That`s interesting.  It says something about the dynamics of where the party is on reproductive choice because this is obviously something that`s Hillary Clinton -- that was part of her platform repealing the Hyde Amendment.  She came out strongly for that.  But prior to that, it had sort of been treated if I`m not mistaken as a kind of settled issue among Democrats.

KLOBUCHAR:  Well, I think that is because again, in order to get things done in the Senate, you had a lot of Republicans pushing back, you had just the politics of the whole thing.  But over time I think the country has seen they even in those states right, where you have the ability of poor women -- a lot of women of color to be able to make their own reproductive choices because of state decisions either by court or laws.

You have still seen reductions in abortion, major reductions, lowest reported levels ever.  Why?  Because of education because of the availability of contraception, because of the funding of Planned Parenthood.  And you have a president in the White House right now, Chris, that wants to reverse all of that.  He has made this very clear that he wants to take away funding from Planned Parenthood.

So this is the irony, the tragic irony of what they`re trying to do.  On one hand limiting women`s rights to have an abortion and then the other limiting their rights to contraception.  It is an all-out assault on reproductive rights.

HAYES:  You unleashed a mental health plan today as part of your campaign and picked up an endorsement in Iowa over it.  What are the broad contours of the plan?

KLOBUCHAR:  Sure.  I had actually put that out a few weeks ago and I picked up a very important legislator Ruth Ann Gaines who has her own personal story with her family of mental illness and that`s why she was drawn to supporting me in Iowa.

And what the plan is about is about the fact that we have done nothing when it comes to mental health to help people.  People across this country say what am I supposed to do.  One out of five people have some kind of mental health problem in their lifetime, and one out of two addiction has touched their family or someone close to them.

So I put out a plan for more beds.  Iowa itself, do you know how many beds are our public beds for mental health, Chris, in the whole state Iowa?

HAYES:  How many?

KLOBUCHAR:  64, only 64 beds.  That is what we`re dealing with, and similar numbers across the nation.  We went from a system of state hospitals to community-based mental health care for a reason, but then we`ve done really nothing to implement the work that Paul Wellstone did on mental health parity, more needs to be done there, and also more needs to be done on getting counseling and medical professionals.

HAYES:  It seems to me one of the -- one of the sort of most acute crises particularly as it relates to addiction and opioids but also generally is that there`s just not enough capacity.  Elizabeth Warren talked about this last night.  There`s -- I know there`s -- a bunch of people are sort of a consensus position that there is just massive lack of capacity for the treatment needs of the population at this point.

KLOBUCHAR:  There is.  And that`s why I also actually showed how I`m going to pay for it, $100 billion.  And you know who should pay for it?  And that is the companies that have been getting people hooked on opioids, the pharma companies.  Massive lawsuits going on, conservative estimate you can bring $40 billion in a -- in a settlement.  You`ve got a milligram tax.  New York just at this that you can put on per milligram on the opioids.

And you can bring in enough money to not just fund the treatment for opioids but to put a stop to what we`re seeing across the country which is an enormous increase in suicides, 30 percent, 30 percent in just 15 years.  We`ve got farmers in northern Minnesota killing themselves because they can`t keep supporting their soybeans.

We`ve got people in Iowa, you`ve got people all over this country, students, veterans, and they just can`t get the help they need and that`s why I`ve been willing to take this on.

HAYES:  All right, Senator Amy Klobuchar a 2020 Presidential Candidate, Senator for Minnesota, thanks for making time.

KLOBUCHAR:  Thanks.  Thanks very much.

HAYES:  Up next, disturbing new details about the state of America`s detention camps where thousands of migrants are currently being held.  That`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  The Trump administration is currently overseeing an unprecedented growth in a system of camp detention for migrants seeking asylum, extraordinary in both its size and its scope with more than 19,000 immigrants currently in custody. Many of those people are being held in, frankly, shocking conditions as pointed out over and over by the detainees themselves, their families, lawyers, and even the government itself.  One report from a Homeland Security watchdog this week, internal IG report, called the conditions at two centers, quote, egregious.

It`s gotten so bad that some migrant children are sleeping on concrete benches or outside of border patrol stations because of overcrowding.  The administration is  even canceling English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children in federal shelters.

The Trump administration says the surge has tied their hands.  And there has, let`s be clear, there has been a surge in apprehensions at the border with more than 144,000 people detained or found inadmissible at the southwest border just last month. 

But there are two issues to consider here.  First, migration in the U.S. unauthorized migration and apprehensions began shooting up in January as the president began his bloody political fight over the wall.  And it`s unclear if there is a connection between him starting that fight and a bunch of people  thinking the door was closing and coming towards the border.

And secondly, there is no need, to be clear, to detain many of these people in the first place as the overwhelming vast majority, including obviously children, pose absolutely zero public safety risk.

So, what happens when a country decides to put tens of thousand thousands of people into camps?  What can history tell us?  Here with me now, author Andrea Pitzer, who literally wrote the book on the subject.  It`s called "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps."  It came into my consciousness just a few days ago.  And I have gotten it and started reading it, and it`s excellent.

Andrea, thank you for joining me.

ANDREA PITZER, AUTHOR:  Thanks so much for having me on, Chris.

HAYES:  So, I guess let`s start with this.  I mean, people think of camps, right, they think of the iconic example being the Nazis and concentration camps.  One of the things your book spells out is different governments, even democratic ones, have used camps as tools of detention in various contexts throughout history.  Tell me about that.

PITZER:  So, when people think of concentration camps, they tend to think of Auschwitz and death camps, because looking back from today, it loomed so much larger than everything else that`s happened in history, as it should.  We should remember it first.  But I really wanted to look into how we got to that point.

So, I started with when that phrase emerged, which was in Cuba in the 1890s.  And from there, I looked at how this idea of rounding up a whole bunch of civilians, non-combatants, and putting them in detention without trial.  How did that get to be seen as a good idea?  And it turns out it has been tried all over the world again and again.

HAYES:  Has it been tried with immigrant populations, particularly, that like the populations we are seeing now, people who don`t have any -- there`s no reason to suspect they are dangerous in any way, they just are people seeking asylum and unauthorized in the eyes of this administration?

PITZER:  Yes.  There are a few different examples, probably the closest one I can think of in the moment is that in -- and during Spanish civil war, hundreds of thousands of refugees from that conflict fled Franco when they started losing.  And they headed north into France.  Hundreds of thousands of people across a really small border.  And the French were suddenly dealing with this huge influx of people.  And it was politically unstable at that time, so they decided they would put them all in these very distant locations without much access to anything and with no food.  And of course people got very, very sick and started to die.  And so this idea of the refugees doesn`t deserve very much, but  maybe they deserved something maybe has the same roots there.

I think it`s worth noting that those camps later were used by the French to put a lot of Jews that fled Nazi Germany, they put them in the same camps later.  And then when France fell, the Nazis deported the Jews that were still in them and sent them to Auschwitz.  So, one of the things I`d like to say is camps don`t always end up where they start, either.

HAYES:  What do you mean by that?

PITZER:  That very, very frequently -- another example we could say would be Guantanamo.  In the 1990s, Guantanamo was used as a migrant detention camp for refugees, for tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Haiti and Cuba, and really serious political instability there.  And they were held there -- they were held long without knowing what was going to be happening to them.  There were riots.  HIV positive patients were segregated without medical help or legal help.  And eventually the courts had to intervene.  And that whole story is really how we ended up with post 9/11 detention at Guantanamo and all that that became, which was quite a different thing then it had started out in the 90s.

HAYES:  What are you informed by your research, what are the concerns about the system that is being put in place right now?

PITZER:  Well, I have several concerns.  One is that my research showed pretty conclusively that these camps don`t close themselves, that outside the end of a war that marks the end of needing to detain what you see as a foreign or hostile population, outside of being overthrown or serious political outside force being overthrown or serious political outside force being used, they don`t just end, because they are useful.  They serve as a target of undesirable people.  You can point these people are the problem and see we are doing something about it.

And so, a, we shouldn`t expect them to close any time soon.  I would say they also will get bigger and conditions in them are going to get worse.  All the reports we`re getting are that conditions are already worsening, and the numbers are now driving, as you noted already, this calendar year particularly in May, have going higher and higher and higher.

They don`t seem to have a plan on how to deal with this other than to punish the refugees, the asylum seekers, or to demand that Mexico take care of it.  I don`t think either one of these is a realistic solution.  I expect to see contagious diseases, malnutrition in some cases, and mental health crises.  I mean, we are going to have that all very soon.  There might be reports already coming of that.

HAYES:  Andrea Pitzer, thank you so much for sharing those essential insights with us. I really, really do appreciate it.

PITZER:  Thank you for having me on.

HAYES:  Still ahead, new reporting on what looks like bribery in plain sight at Donald Trump`s D.C. hotel, that`s coming up.

But first, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  Thing One tonight, I`d almost forgotten, I have to say, that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was one of the two dozen or so Democrats running for president, even though his launch roll-out included a memorable Trump attack video where he tried to make "conned on" (ph) a thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DE BLASIO, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY AND 2002 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Hey, "conned on" (ph), I saw your video and you looked low energy and again your facts are wrong.

(END VIDE OCLIP)

HAYES:  It has not really become a thing.  But it`s not just Donald Trump that de Blasio is going after, yesterday he took a shot at front-runner Joe Biden, quote, when it comes to supporting American women on issues like repealing the Hyde amendment, Joe Biden is Dr. Jekyll.

There were a lot of responses to that, but I think Jonathan Drake summed it up best, "I`ve got to admit, Dr. Jekyll was the bad guy, too, until I read the book at about age 12."

Dunking aside, Mayor de Blasio does have a lot of executive experience, unlike a lot of candidates, and he is currently running this nation`s largest city where we have problems like nowhere else in the world.  Operation: Ice Cream Truck meltdown is Thing Two in 60 seconds.

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HAYES:  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is celebrating a big crackdown today against a criminal scheme plaguing the city of New York: unpaid ice cream truck parking tickets, quote, "this seizure marks the end of the road for these scofflaw ice cream vendors."  Oh, and he is serious.

Over the last 24 hours, city officials have seized 46 ice cream trucks from around the city, locking them away for evading fines.  Apparently, the truck had been racking up thousands of  traffic  tickets for running red lights, parking near fire hydrants, and blocking crosswalks.  The truck operators were then allegedly re-registering the trucks under new shell companies to avoid paying the fines, fines which added up to more than $4.5 million going all the way back to 2009.

They call it Operation: Meltdown. 

And if you think that pun is bad...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Operation: Meltdown.  New York  City puts a freeze on dozens of ice cream trucks.

UNIDENTIFIED  MALE:  New York trucks today scooping up ice cream trucks, dozens of them towed away and taken into custody.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  The sheriff says some owners are playing dirty with the trucks full of sweets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  The headline inside says justice, a dish best served cold.

UNIDENTIFIED  MALE:  I scream, you scream, the city screams for ice cream trucks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  New evidence tonight of what sure looks a lot like bribery in plain sight.  Reporters of The Washington Post un-earthed Trump organization records that show foreign interests with an open agenda of what they want the U.S. government to do for them, funneling money to the president.

The Post obtained the VIP arrivals list to Trump`s D.C. Hotel and learned a wealthy Iraqi a sheik who openly advocates for U.S. military strikes against Iran, spent 26 nights in one of the hotel suites just last year, more than anyone else on the list.

The suites at the hotels start at about $1,000 a night, meaning the sheik likely spent at least $26,000 a Trump`s hotel last year.

And he is just one name on a list of more 1,200 individual VIP guests.

Joining me now, David Fahrenthold, one of The Washington Post reporter who is broke the story.  He covers the Trump family and its business interests and won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Donald Trump`s questionable history of charitable givings.

David, how did you -- what are these documents you got your hands on?

DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, THE WASHINGTON POST:  These are -- they`re called VIP arrivals list. So, every day the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. tells its staff here are the important people coming in, people you should keep your eye out for, either because they are important or they`re spending a lot of money, or they`re staying a long time, so it`s a list of faces and names and often a little explanation of why they are important.

So, we`re going through this list of VIP arrivals for a particular day in November of last year, one of the ones we got leaked, and we see this one guy, Nahro al-Kasnazan, staying for 26 days, which was -- of all the 1,200 stays we documented, his was the longest, which made us interested in finding out, well, who is this guy and what does he want.

HAYES:  Who is he?  And what does he want?

FAHRENTHOLD:  He is the leader of a Sufi order of Muslims based in Iraq.  He is in the world of Iraqi politics, a minor player who wants to be a really big player.  He would like to be president of Iraq.  And he also would like the U.S. to launch military strikes against Iran who he sees as sort of his main rival.

And that`s the same thing he has been coming to Washington to lobby for is talking to the National Security Council, to the Department of State, calling for U.S. military strikes on Iran.

HAYES:  You know, he`s of course not alone.  I mean, one thing that strikes -- I want to get to the others -- one thing that struck me is the VIP list itself is important, because if someone -- if what you are trying to do is influence the Trump administration, right, like they have to know you are there and spending a lot of money on them.  It doesn`t work if you`re doing it anonymously.  But the fact that he`s on the VIP list means that someone fairly high up in the organization do know who the big spenders at the hotel are.

FAHRENTHOLD:  Of course.  Every day there is between 10 to 30 of these people who are VIPs.  And, you know, some of them are just people visiting from out of town, people who, you know, have no affiliation with the government, don`t want anything from Trump`s government, but some of them do. 

A few months ago, we documented T-Mobile, right, T-Mobile announced this merger that needs Trump administration approval.  The next day, nine of them checked into Trump`s hotel.

So, you see patterns like that of people who really need something from Trump`s government making this public show of spending money with Trump`s business.

HAYES:  We have also got Saudi-funded lobbyists who paid for 500 rooms at the Trump hotel, story I believe you broke.  ProPublica has broken stories about folks in the payday lending industry down at Mar-a-Lago spending a million dollars.  Do we have -- there is no central repository for us in the public to actually have a sense of who is paying for what in what Trump properties who have might have whatever interest, correct?

FAHRENTHOLD:  No, there`s nothing like that.

HAYES:  What would it take to get that?  I mean, this is all just being done piecemeal, right?

FAHRENTHOLD:  Right, through leaks, through looking at public records.  The only thing that is sort of like that, the effort that`s being made, are these emoluments clause lawsuits filed by Democrats in congress and by the D.C. and Maryland attorneys general.  And those are sort of narrowly focused.  They are focused on the D.C. hotel and saying Trump organization, tell us just who your foreign government clients are, forget about T- Mobile, forget about people who want something that aren`t foreign governments, just tell us who your foreign government clients are and how much they`ve spent.

They`re asking for that, but they`re a long way from getting it.

HAYES:  All right, David Fahrenthold, more excellent reporting.  Thank you so much for making time tonight.

Coming up, it was a big night in Indiana last night.  The top takeaways from the Elizabeth Warren town hall next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS:  I`m not here to talk about other Democrats, I`m not here to slam other Democrats, I`m just telling you how I see it.  This is the fight that I believe we need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Last night we held a town hall in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, with Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.  Warren is right now trying to pull off something I think is pretty interesting, which is trying to win a presidential primary with a campaign grounded in an almost comically wonky and substantive agenda.  She`s trying to make news also to sort of be in the news cycle day after day, but to do it with actual policy.

Last night, you got to see that approach in real-time with real voters.  And so far, it seems to be working pretty well.  Warren has been slowly and steady rising in the polls.  She now sits in third in the Realclearpolitics average of national polls behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Joining me now from more on what we saw last night, MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki, and MSNBC political analyst Nick Confessore, political investigative reporter at The New York Times.

Here`s what I find really interesting about Warren and what she`s doing is, news cycle, the candidate news cycle is a brutal beast, because everyone`s looking to make news and often that`s on, like, little trivial stuff, like, oh, respond to this -- you know, Pete Buttigieg, the president called you out, like, what do you say about it?  And she`s trying to make news every day by just like releasing a new policy every day which is an ambitious way to do it.  And so far it seems to be kind of working for her.

STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST:  Yeah, I mean, look, she`s gotten -- I wouldn`t overstate what she`s done in the last month, but she`s gotten some traction.  And I think she faces a challenge, and it`s a challenge similar to what Buttigieg faced when he broke out about two months ago I would say, and that is that demographically right now...

HAYES:  Yeah.

KORNACKI:  ..her appeal is still highly concentrated among college educated, especially doctoral post-grad is what I`m trying to say there, higher income, tends to be whiter.  And we`ve seen that constituency emerge before on the Democratic side.  The question is for her, as it is with Buttigieg, can she broaden that out.

HAYES:  Well, this was exactly why, right, that she released this new industrial policy.  I think last night for for was a kind of demonstration project to be, like, look I can talk to folks.  And then, you know, on Trump TV they`re like praising her for her economic nationalist agenda, because I think one of the things she has to do is expand her appeal, and also convince other Democrats that she`s a good politician.

NICK CONFESSORE, THE NEW YORK TIMES:  Well, she`s not going to win Republican votes or moderate votes on cultural issues.  But her appeal is a person who actually isn`t that radical, who fundamentally is a believer in capitalism and the system, but thinks it is rigged.  A Sanders-type candidate says the whole system is terrible, let`s replace it.  She`s saying, I`ve studied this thing carefully, it can be fixed and made better for everybody.

And there`s no problem for her to have the second step when she actually hits her moment, she has all the other pieces of the campaign put together.  And I think for Mayor Pete and Beto O`Rourke, they had a splash.

HAYES:  Right.

CONFESSORE:  And then everyone was like, all right, where`s the beef?  And they didn`t have an answer.

HAYES:  Well, and part of that, too, is when you say, like, well, I don`t want to overstate, it`s like when there`s 22 candidates, if you`re three or four, like you`re way ahead of a lot of people, right.  I mean, what matters right now, I think if you`re running in this race, is to not be in the 11 of 12 people that are at 1 percent.

KORNACKI:  Well, and the other thing, too, is look you`re making the argument here from a policy standpoint she could break out.  But at a certain point I do think stage craft matters.  And I think one thing to say with Elizabeth Warren is, remember how her political career got started, her career in elected politics got started, it was a viral moment back in 2011.  She was at a fund-raiser I think it was in Concord, Mass.  And she basically started talking -- it was, you know, about the idea of, hey, you owe something to society, the greater good of society.  She made that.  It went viral.  It got her launched in the senate campaign.  It raised a bunch of money.

And think ahead to that debate stage.  She`s capable of when you`ve got 10 candidates on stage that kind of moment there.

HAYES:  This is the other thing as you saw last night, which is that reps matter.  I mean, they just really matter.  Like she`s doing a ton of town halls, talking to a lot of people.  You know, politicians, it`s like anything, right?  The more you do it, the better you get at it.  And I think that contrasts a bit to Joe Biden right now who is just not doing the kind of schedule that Warren and a lot of others are -- it`s not just Warren, I should be clear.

He came out tonight -- I want to play this clip, because it`s so interesting, so the controversy yesterday was the whole field basically has come out against the Hyde amendment, right?  Biden stands alone in his support for it.  Tonight he came out to reverse himself and this is how he did it.  Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN:  We now see so many Republican governors denying health care to millions of the most poorest, most vulnerable Americans by refusing even Medicaid expansion.  I can`t justify leaving millions of women without access to the care they need and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right.

If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes  that right dependent on someone`s zip code.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONFESSORE:  Chris, this is a guy who spent decades thinking about being president.  He`s had four years to think about this run for president.  And he`s writing his policy platform in front of a live audience.  It is malpractice, but it`s also a bit insulting to the voters to not have thought this through beforehand and have your principles and stick by them if you want, but it`s fascinating for me to watch this kind of a flop.

I will say, I think the voters don`t punish you that much for flopping towards them.

HAYES:  Yeah, yeah.

CONFESSORE:  Some (inaudible) is going to kill him.  But it`s fascinating to me...

HAYES:  I don`t think they do.

CONFESSORE:  He didn`t have that locked down beforehand.

KORNACKI:  It`s interesting, you watch him there, that`s Joe Biden back in the U.S. Senate.  That`s Joe Biden showing up in the middle of the day, here`s the thing his staff handed him, and he`s kind of reading it.

HAYES:  Right.

KORNACKI:  Butt I mentioned the beginnings of the origins of Warren`s political career, we think back to 21011, how strong she was in that moment and what that did for her.  I`m thinking back, how did Joe Biden ever get in this position to start with  where he`s a former two-term vice president linked to Barack Obama, this very popular among Democrats, former president, it was his debate performances in 2007-2008.  He stood out -- it didn`t get him many votes in the primaries, but what it did was it got him respect, and it got him a look, it got him a reassessment from the media and from Obama.  And I wouldn`t -- and it`s been 12 years, but I keep an eye on those debates.  I wouldn`t look at that moment and say that`s necessarily the Biden who is going to show up in a couple weeks.

HAYES:  You know, one thing that stuck out to me with Elizabeth Warren is, the questions that voters have are very different than the questions political press has, right.  Voters want very straightforward things like what are you going to do about opioids, right?  Reporters want to make news. 

The degree to which you can do that former thing reliably and communicate it in venues like debate matters a huge amount in a campaign.

CONFESSORE:  Look, a town hall is a great venue for that.  A small living room is a good venue for that.  And she has had the prep.  She had to keep doing it over and over again.  And Joe Biden is trying to race himself into shape, which is a harder strategy.

HAYES:  Steve Kornacki and Nick Confessore, thank you both for being with me this evening.

That is ALL IN for this evening.  "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now.  Good evening, Rachel.

  THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END