CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: Well, what will Republicans do to cleanse their party of the racial divisiveness that Donald Trump has stamped so boldly into the GOP legacy? 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.
REP. VICTORIA ESCOBAR (D-TX): Victims still in the hospital as they grab my arm and tell me to tell him not to come here.
HAYES: Protests in Dayton and El Paso as the president comes to town.
NAN WHALEY (D), MAYOR OF DAYTON, OHIO: I think it was a good decision for him not to stop in the Oregon District.
HAYES: Tonight, the political world comes to terms with what we`re dealing with.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It`s both clear language and in code. This president`s fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.
HAYES: And the president and his apologists pretend there`s no problem.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: White supremacy, that`s the problem, this is a hoax.
HAYES: Then Congressman Al Green on his push to impeach the president for racism. Plus what we know about the online breeding ground for white supremacists terror, and why the solution of mass shootings always involves surrendering civil liberties and more guns.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Have one armed guard on every floor of every school.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. President Trump spent the day shuttling between the sights of the two latest gun massacres in America and hurling juvenile incites -- insults at his political opponents while in transit from one to the other.
After a stop in Dayton, Trump then visited El Paso, Texas where the shooter expressed his explicit intent to target and kill Hispanics to stop what he called an invasion, echoing the exact same word the President himself has used repeatedly.
This afternoon, Democratic presidential frontrunner Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he pointed out the insidious double game the president likes to play.
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BIDEN: It`s both clear language and in code. This president`s fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation. His low-energy, vacant-eyed mouthing of the words written for him condemning white supremacist this week I don`t believe fooled anyone.
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HAYES: It`s not just the president who spews hate, and racist, fear- mongering without dealing with the consequences, it`s Trump T.V. as well specifically Tucker Carlson doing the exact same thing though admittedly with a defter touch night after night after night.
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CARLSON: How precisely is diversity or strength. Ilhan Omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.
Mexico was helped in citizens to break our federal laws. It has done it for years. That`s what it looks like when a hostile foreign power interferes in your democracy. They don`t buy Facebook ads that nobody sees, why would they. They try to change the demographics of your country.
What about us? What about our country. We`re being invaded.
It`s going to overwhelming our country and change it completely and forever and our viewers should know that.
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HAYES: It`s not at all surprising that Carlson finds a very receptive audience among people like for instance the neo-Nazi web site The Daily Stormer whose found Carlson literally our greatest ally. Hearing the praise of former KKK leader David Duke who tweeted just today, "Tucker is right. White supremacy is a ZioMedia conspiracy theory."
Tucker Carlson tells his overwhelmingly white audience the country is theirs. Diversity is a threat. Immigrants are invading and then turns to stay with a straight face, white supremacy, what white supremacy?
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CARLSON: If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns or problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It`s actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would able to fit inside a college football stadium.
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HAYES: Carlson, like the president that he apologizes for knows what he`s doing. In this case, it`s a clumsy little bait-and-switch in which he argues the only problem is the relatively small number of people that are members of a white supremacist organization.
But as far as we know, the killer in El Paso wasn`t a member of an organization, and the killer the Pittsburgh synagogue wasn`t a member of an organization. And the people throughout this country who get up in the faces of immigrants and people of color and scream at them to go back to their country, who berate people in gas stations because they`re speaking Spanish, those people aren`t members of organizations.
The problem isn`t white supremacists as some distinct category that only includes David Duke, it is the ideology to which the president and Tucker Carlson himself subscribe, which is that those people don`t belong in this country, that it`s not theirs, that diversity is a threat, that white people are being replaced.
Now, I should say, in Carlson`s defense, it`s not an act. He really believes these things. If you want a textbook definition of what over white supremacy looks like, it`s this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How could you salvage Iraq at this point?
CARLSON: I don`t -- you know it`s beyond our control. I mean, if somehow the Iraqis decided to behave like human beings or something. Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of you know, semi-literate, primitive monkeys.
But I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture, a culture where people just don`t use toilet paper or forks.
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HAYES: Yes, it`s a deliberate, primitive monkeys. It`s not people with Swastika tattoos or white hoods that are the problem. It`s the belief system that this is a country for white people and that white people are better than non-white people.
An act of violence of mass murder in support of that ideology like the massacre in El Paso creates real waves of fear throughout the country far surpassing the one person who did it. In the wake of this, people are coming forward with their stories of harassment and intimidation and fear that is flowing from this racist ideology.
One Latina immigrant telling the New York Times, it feels like being hunted. It`s the ideology that is being pumped into the minds of viewers that show on Trump T.V. every night.
Joining me now are Ana Maria Archila Co-Executor Director of the Center for Popular Democracy an organizing group working for racial economic justice, Michelle Goldberg Op-Ed Columnist at the New York Times and an MSNBC Political Analyst, Jelani Cobb Staff Writer at The New Yorker and professor of journalism at Columbia University School of Journalism.
I guess I`ll start with the sort of ripple effects of what happened in El Paso, right. Like I just have been really struck reading accounts in newspapers and on Twitter and talking to people through other means that it`s not just the 22 people were killed or the dozens that were injured, it`s that it does send a message which is what was intended by the violence.
ANA MARIA ARCHILA CO-EXECUTOR DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY: Absolutely. I`ll tell your story. I have a colleague. Her name is Sylvia. She`s from Chicago. Her family is Mexican-American of several generations. Her mother has to get her medication at Walmart. And she told Sylvia this morning that she was afraid to go to Walmart.
That is exactly what the person who shot 22 people in the Walmart in El Paso intended. That is exactly the kind of fear that President Trump wants to send to our communities when he says this is an invasion. We will round them up. We will send them home. We will separate their families. We will put them in cages.
It is exactly -- that message being received by the people who have the guns and are -- and are going to shoot regular folks who are doing their daily business inside a Walmart, and by the communities who are being terrorized.
President Trump made a point of making anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric the centerpiece of his political campaign that got him into office, and the centerpiece of his political program which is a white nationalist program.
It`s a program that`s intended to terrorize and exclude from power, from economic and democratic power, communities of color, not just immigrants, not just Latinos. He went on to do the Muslim ban.
HAYES: Yes. He has every African-American in every city apparently is living rat-infested and hell hole.
ARCHILA: He has at every step tried to erode the voting power of communities of color, African American communities in particular. He has a very deliberate political program that is centered around keeping men, white men like him in power to -- not to the benefit of all white men in this country but to the benefit of a very small slice of our population, the riches, the wealthiest, the corporate elite.
That is his program. Terrorize people. Make people fight each other so that they can keep a hold -- their hands in our pockets and hold on the power in our democracy.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: And I was just going to say, you know, I wrote -- it just so happened that Monday was the sentencing of Cesar Sayoc who was the terrorist who sent out bombs to a number of people that Trump had criticized, Democrats, media figures.
And it`s so interesting when you read the sentencing -- I mean, the defense memo that they submitted for sentencing for why the judge should go easy on him. And it was all about how -- look, he just believed the president, right.
HAYES: Yes.
GOLDBERG: He just watched Fox News and he believed the President, and he wasn`t savvy enough to pick up when they meant it and when they didn`t, you know. He thought that Democrats were going to hurt Trump supporters, were threatening, were -- you know, were as dangerous as they are painted every day in Trump`s speeches, and in on Tucker Carlson, and he took it seriously.
And you can`t imagine a sentence -- you can`t imagine that being an affirmative defense in any other kind of political context, right?
HAYES: Right.
GOLDBERG: Nobody could say you know, if there was say, somebody shot a policeman. You couldn`t imagine a competent lawyer saying, well he was just listening to Barack Obama, right, because those messages aren`t there. They`re not being transmitted.
HAYES: Right, yes. And that is also not the only one. The men that planned the mosque attack in Kansas, as far as I can tell also had similar sentencing filings basically be like look, they listened the president, they listen to Fox News.
There`s also the fact that like there`s policy behind this as a piece from CNN today about the White House rebuffing attempts by DHS to make combating domestic terrorism a higher priority, right. DHS is saying like oh there`s these warning bells going off which has been the case I think of most people -- the director ray saying it the other day, Christopher Wray, in front of the hearing, and then rebuffing it like there`s more than just words here.
JELANI COBB, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Sure. The House Homeland Security Committee had that -- those hearings. I guess that was about two months ago now. And one of the things they pointed out again and again and again was that when Democrats were in the minority, they had consistently requested that there be hearings on the rise of as they call it, the domestic terror which was their way of avoiding the kind of racial designation of white nationalism.
And so whatever category you want to put it in, but the domestic terror had been something that they`ve been trying to get on the agenda, and the Republicans that refused to touch it. And so it wasn`t until Democrats actually came a majority that they actually were able to have these hearings take place.
But going back for a second to the thing about Tucker Carlson`s point about the stadium, it is a very curious kind of absolution because there were 19 hijackers on 9/11, and that response, it mobilized the entire infrastructure of the massive political, economic, military power that the United States has.
All of the people in the caravan that they were raising so much alarm about, you could have fit those people in a football stadium. You could have gone through all of these kinds of things. And then say, but now, this group of people who were tied to the most recent spate of violence against Americans, people losing their lives, innocent people being shot down and being leave haunted by the image of that woman covering her two- month-old baby with her own body.
So we`re now expecting citizens to display battlefield levels of valor to protect their children. All of this gets washed away under the banner of well, they`re only a handful of these people, we could fit them all in a stadium.
GOLDBERG: Right. As if -- as if they`re going to kind of form a brigade and go marching to the streets. I don`t think you could fit all of the existing members of ISIS into a stadium, right. I don`t think you could have put all of the members of al-Qaeda at the -- into its stadium. And it would have been preposterous if anybody had ever made that argument as a reason to discount the threat.
I mean, another thing that Christopher Wray said is that not only is domestic terrorism up or domestic terrorist arrests up in 2019 as opposed to 2018, but that vast majority of them are right-wing white nationalist domestic terrorists, right?
So it`s not just you know, head of Democrats who are out here saying that this is a threat, it is the head of the FBI saying that. And then there`s other people in the FBI saying that they -- that they have been stymied in making some of these arrests or doing some of these investigations because there`s essentially a political problem with targeting people that the President of the United States has likely to regard as part of his base.
HAYES: Well, here`s what Michael Savage who`s a friend of the President and a right-wing radio host said. He was very disappointed in the President attacking white supremacy. He predicts it will cost him thousands if not tens of thousands of votes.
There`s a kind of -- there`s this sort of real sort of gas lightly thing. I mean, we`ve saw it -- I was reminding myself in Charlottesville where he came out and he kind of did this half-hearted thing but he said both sides, and he came out and made another statement being like no white supremacy is evil, and then he came out again and erased that, and said what he really thought was like oh, there`s fine people on both sides.
Like he`s sending the message -- he wouldn`t condemn David Duke for a long time, he pretend not to know him because it`s important to him to send the message to those folks.
ARCHILA: I mean, he built his entire political career on the idea that there are people who are superior to others, that there are people who are not human that can be treated as inferior beings and it worked. And so they`re saying we must double down on this message. We must double down on -- we are -- we are sending the messages and people are receiving them and they are turning out to vote for us.
So President Trump is very -- he`s an ignorant man but he`s a very intelligent man. He is -- I know it`s a terrible thing to say about him, I know. But he`s a very astute politician who has been able to subvert the entire kind of status quo of the Republican Party and create a kind of political discourse that we have not seen in this country.
And if -- and I think it is important to talk about the organizations that are growing that the FBI needs to take seriously. It is important to label these acts as acts of terrorism, but we cannot just stop there. Because the reality is that under the underbelly of this country is one of entire denial about the fact that this country was built on a hierarchy of human life.
And that if we -- if we are not able to mean that and recognize that and actually have the conversations that are incredibly difficult to have, we are going to continue to see not only these forms of violence but a democracy that becomes a ghost of what it was or what it can be, and we will never have the promise of this country.
The promise of this country is one of constant struggle or the history of this country`s constant struggle of inclusion for more of us to be included in the promise of freedom and democracy. And Trump represents a resistance to that idea that people of color can actually be part of the center of this country that we can share power together, that women can control our bodies and decide our destinies. That gay, and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are equal. They are resisting each and every single one of these things.
HAYES: And the history there that you noted, the Department of Justice exists first as a kind of functional bureaucratic move. But the first thing that Department of Justice does is attempt to bring the Klan to heel in the South. What the Department of Justice did, the first it tasks --
COBB: That would be the first -- the first anti-terrorism law in American history is the Klan Control Act. When we talk about this especially like going back to the 911 thing where we said this is the first instance of terrorism in the United States, a lot of people said that after 9/11.
People were like, no, no, no, no. The first instance of terrorism in this country that was designated as terrorism was these ad hoc organizations in the south that had sent out to reverse emancipation. That`s where we start this conversation.
And so going back -- they`ve always been white men like Tucker Carlson in this country and they`ve always occupied a particular niche to serve as denial for people to be allowed to think they are the kind of great shimmering republic without any blemish whatsoever.
And in order to say this is how we have slavery protected in a constitution that never mentions the words negro or slavery, like to euthanize it, to make it seem that this is not exactly -- we`re not seeing what we`re actually seeing so we begin gaslighting at the U.S. Constitution and we extend that, extrapolate that out to what Tucker Carlson is doing right now.
We know what that is and deep down the people who he`s talking to know what that is too.
HAYES: Everyone knows it.
COBB: That this is what plausible or rather implausible deniability and that`s what he`s selling.
HAYES: Implausible deniability. Ana Maria Archila, Michelle Goldberg, Jelani Cobb, thank you both -- thank you all. Next, what if anything can be done about the online breeding ground for white supremacist terror? Inside one of the most nefarious internet communities in two minutes.
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HAYES: In just the past five months, there have been three different mass shootings in which the killer is believed to a posted screed to a Web site called 8chan. 8chan describes itself as the darkest reaches of the Internet and encourages people to "embrace infamy." Conceived as the ultimate free speech zone, 8cham grew in stature when it was adopted by a group of people who were kicked off another infamous site 4chan for being too toxic for that site which many considered toxic itself.
It`s a receiving hive of pedophiles, and extremists, and white supremacist, some of whom push for violence, encouraging shooters to try to "get the high score by killing a larger number of people than previous mass murderers.
Now, the vast majority of people on these boards are just there for an illicit thrill, but the site can have a real radicalizing effect much like social media does for ISIS. As the New York Times reports, scholar seat stunning parallels between the rise of white nationalist terrorism and the rise of the Islamic state.
It can be hard to get rid of a site like 8chan. After the El Paso massacre, the internet service company Cloudflare severs ties with 8chan but may still return. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince writing, while removing a chain from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. It does nothing to address why mass shootings occur. It does nothing to address why portions of the population feel so disenfranchised, they turn to hate and taking this action. We`ve solved our own problem but we haven`t solved the Internet`s."
Joining me now Jessica Gonzalez Co-Founder of Change the Terms which is calling on big tech to prohibit white supremacist, and Kevin Roose Technology Columnist for The New York Times.
Jessica, let me start with you on the sort of broad point made by the Cloudflare CEO there which is the idea that it`s kind of whack-a-mole, right, that taking away web hosting services or deep platforming really vile elements of the internet particularly white supremacist areas, it just pushes them to some other site. What do you -- what do you think about that contention?
JESSICA GONZALEZ, CO-FOUNDER, CHANGE THE TERMS: I don`t think it`s a perfect formula, Chris, but I actually think it`s incredibly effective to de-platform these vile, racists, dehumanizing sites that are allowing white supremacists to recruit, fund, and normalize bigotry.
HAYES: 8chan is a really weird place. You wrote a profile the founder actually of it who now says it should be shut down. What -- where did it come from and why is it like this?
KEVIN ROOSE, TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: So it was as you said a splinter off of 4chan which was another kind of famously lawless message board. And in 2013, its founder Frederic Brennan who was the former administrator of a message board for adult virgins decided to -- it was too restrictive on 4chan so he was going to start a free speech utopian alternative to 4chan where any number of people could post anything they wanted to with basically no rules or moderation at all.
And it kind of struggled for a little while and then it got a gift in 2014 when a group of people affiliated with the Gamergate movement got kicked off of 4chan for harassing and doxing mostly women. They got kicked off of 4chan and they set up shop on the only place that would have them which was 8chan.
HAYES: This is like the worst actors on that message board get kicked out and go to congregate 8chan.
ROOSE: It`s not easy to get kicked off 4chan. Like you have to be a pretty bad actor.
HAYES: What do you think the sort of contours of this discussion should be, Jessica, in terms of how sort of corporate entities that are doing things like web hosting or hosting pages what the kind of lines they should be drawing are and who should be enforcing that?
GONZALEZ: Well, we think this -- the responsibility really is on the companies. They`re making money off our engagement and they have a responsibility to the public to not allow hateful activities on their -- on their sites. And by hateful activities, I mean these really violent, insightful, harassing, intimidating, and threatening types of content by people, by a very organized, and sophisticated, and internationally connected white supremacist movement.
HAYES: What -- that characterization, does that sort of jibe with what you`ve reported and observed?
ROOSE: Yes, I think there`s -- it contains multitudes, right. So I think there are -- there are various people who were on 8chain for various reasons. The place where most of the attention has been focused is on this politics board, Paul, where all of these mass shooters were going to post their manifesto.
And the interesting thing there is that these manifestos were not directed at the president, or the general public, or the media. They were really --
HAYES: No, it`s on other people on the board.
ROOSE: -- directed at other 8chan users.
HAYES: But that to me says like 8chan is radicalizing people into real- world violence. They are performing for the community that they have met there to be like look what I`m doing and all the stupid, disgusting in- jokes and all that -- all that stuff is because they want to impress the other members of the community.
ROOSE: Exactly. They`re just flexing for each other in this really sort of pathetic and derivative way. And I think that is part of the reason why I think shutting it down could be effective. I mean, there`s been some research done on what happened after Reddit a few years ago, banned some of its most toxic communities.
And it turns out that a lot of those people just didn`t come back. They didn`t -- you know, they didn`t go raid other parts of Reddit and you know spread hate to those parts. They -- some of them just kind of went away and it did actually improve this site. So I think there`s some -- there`s some evidence that there`s actually --
HAYES: That it`s not whack-a-mole really. That like taking that stuff away actually can have a really positive effect.
ROOSE: Well, there`s a core and there`s like a hardened core of people who will probably follow you know, 8chan wherever it goes, but the sort of casual person exploring 8chan stumbling onto one of these message boards and deciding to read some more and then getting sucked in, there`s like an on-ramp effect that I think you do get rid of if you shut down 8chan.
HAYES: NBC News reporting that it`s options are rapidly dwindling, no indication it`ll disappear for good so we don`t know what its fate is. But I guess, Jessica, I want you to respond to an argument I keep seeing more and more from Republicans and Conservatives which is basically the tech companies are now going to be the arbiter of what`s fair and foul in terms of speech and they have an anti-conservative bias and one day it`s white supremacist, and next thing you know it`s going to be all conservatives.
GONZALEZ: Yes, Chris, this is a red herring. Look, it`s not hard to know who`s a white supremacist. We look on Twitter, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is on Twitter. Get that guy out of here. It`s not -- it`s not that hard. There`s a difference between white people and white supremacists. The line is very clear.
Folks who are you know, advocating or inciting violence against historically oppressed groups don`t deserve a platform. They don`t deserve amplification. They have a right to free speech and the government can`t restrict that, but they don`t deserve for these companies to be amplifying them. And the companies ought not to be profiting from hate. That`s very foul and needs to stop.
HAYES: Where do you see this sort of discussion going into, because the politics of it are as Jessica sort of alluding to, really complex?
ROOSE: Yes, I think this is likely to stay sort of where it is right now which is that private companies are going to be the ones making decisions about where to draw the line. So in this case, it was Cloudflare, but it could have been you know, Facebook or Twitter. It could have been a web host.
We sort of -- in the absence of any meaningful federal you know, standard on where to draw the line on this, which I don`t think is a bad thing necessarily, I think these private companies are going to sort of remain the police of what`s allowed and what`s not allowed.
HAYES: All right, Kevin Roose and Jessica Gonzalez, thank you both for joining me.
GONZALEZ: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, Congressman Al Green makes the case that the President`s racism is grounds enough for impeachment. He joins me next.
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HAYES: As of right now, 118 House Democrats, that`s more than half of the 235-member caucus, either supports impeachment or supports starting an impeachment inquiry against the president.
Today, the House judiciary committee filed a lawsuit to enforce a subpoena to get former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify about his time in the Trump administration.
Democrats on the committee view McGahn as a key figure in the obstruction of justice cases that are outlined in the Mueller report. The Trump administration is preventing McGahn from testifying.
And there is a lot of calls for opening an impeachment inquiry that have revolved around that obstruction of justice case as well as the president`s corruption, reports of him profiting off the presidency and more. But there is a school of thought that the president`s racist language itself is enough to trigger impeachment. That`s the theory put forth by Texas Congressman Al Green, who in an impeachment resolution voted down just last month specifically cited Trump`s comments attacking four Democratic congresswomen of color and Trump`s language -- labeling immigrants as invaders, as a high misdemeanor warranting impeachment, trial and removal from office.
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AL GREEN, (D) TEXAS: In all of this, the aforementioned Donald John Trump has by his statements brought the high office of the president of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace, and disrepute and has committed a high misdemeanor in office.
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HAYES: Joining me now is that congressman, Al Green, Democrat from Texas.
Congressman, do you see precedent in the U.S. and history for bringing articles of impeachment, article of impeachment against the president for the kinds of things that he says routinely, like you noted in your previous resolution?
REP.AL GREEN, (D) TEXAS: Well, thank you for having me.
And if I just may share these thoughts about the incident that has...
HAYES: Please.
GREEN: ...that has caused a lot of harm. I just want to let the people know in both cities that they have my deepest sympathies and my prayers. But I intend to do more than give prayers and sympathies, I want to move to impeach the president.
To answer your question, I happen to have in my hand the actual articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson. So I will read to you what it says. And it`s very brief because it`s not a theory, it is fact. Andrew Johnson was impeached for doing very much the same thing that this president has done.
Here`s what it reads, this is in article 10 of the articles of impeachment. It says that "said Andrew Johnson has brought the high office of the president of the United States into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace to the great scandal of all good citizens whereby said Andrew Johnson, president of the United States did commit and was then and there guilty of a high misdemeanor in office."
So the language that I`ve used is language that the framers would have had me use and it`s language that was used when Andrew Johnson was impeached by the radical Republicans.
We need some radical Republicans and Democrats who are willing to take on this president to the same extent that the persons in 1868 took on Andrew Johnson.
He was impeached for his bigotry, that was the underlying reason. And I`ve read to you the language in article 10, which went before the congress. It was voted on, and he was impeached; not convicted, but impeached. But that left an indelible stain on him. He could not get re-elected as a result thereof.
We need to do this with this president, Mr. Hayes, because if he we don`t do so, we will deny history what it richly deserves. And that is to say that in this country, we will not allow the level of bigotry that he has perpetrated and that is causing harm to society. We know that bigotry kills now. We are not going to allow this. We won`t stand for it, therefore we will impeach him.
HAYES: That`s interesting. Part of what I hear you saying is that the president`s behavior and his language -- we`re talking not about obstruction of justice, we`re just now focusing on this. And I should note that Andrew Johnson, there were 11 articles of impeachment, 10 of them had to do with the violation of the Tenure of Office Act. But this one, the one you`re mentioning, the 10th article, is about what he said and the kind of language that he used and what the feelings he incited.
That what you`re saying is essentially the president`s bigotry, and the way that he talks, has to be essentially marked at this moment for history for all to see throughout history as being aberrant, as being outside the bounds of proper discourse by the president of the United States.
GREEN: Absolutely correct. But I would also add this, not only does he simply speak in terms of racism and homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, all of the various invidious phobias, he also infuses it into policy -- the Islamic ban, that was policy that he tweeted, kicking persons who are trans out of the military, that was policy. When he said that comment or made the comment about the s-hole countries, he was at that time producing immigration policy, and then went on to try to create a policy that would have made it more difficult from persons to come from African countries to the United States.
HAYES: But let me just respond to that, because I think there are many legal theorists and constitutional theorists say it`s important that impeachment, and the bar for impeachment, be abuse of office and not just policy disagreements. That, for instance, the president`s decision to say, rescind TPS for Haitians, which I think is one of the things you`re making mention to, the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, those are policy differences. The bar has to be higher, that a high crime and misdemeanor clears some threshold other than a policy disagreement.
GREEN: Well, first of all, it doesn`t have to be a high crime and misdemeanor, as I have evidenced with this article 10. It can be a high misdemeanor.
And then secondly, it does not have to be a crime. Federalist 65, I hate to get into the weeds. In Federalist 65 we find the words of Hamilton, the words of Madison and Jon Jay, and they call to our attention that it`s the harm the president causes to society. The president is comparable to the CEO of a major corporation. You can fire the CEO of a major corporation if he does harm to the corporation. The framers gave us the ability to fire a president in midterm.
HAYES: Right.
GREEN: Immediately upon taking office if he causes harm to society, that`s what this is all about, that`s what was done at article 10, and that`s what we need to do with this president.
HAYES: Congressman, I always appreciate the incredible thought that you have put into this process every time you`re on the show. I really appreciate you taking time tonight.
GREEN: Well, thank you. Thank you. You`re very kind. Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, how to think seriously about the threat of mass shootings and domestic terrorism, without, without succumbing to the fear they seek to impose.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, democracy has never been pretty, but more and more lately it`s seemed downright ugly, which may be why the video from Tucson, Arizona, has captured all of our imagination this week. The city council had just formally approved putting a citizen initiative on the ballot to declare Tucson a sanctuary city. Not everyone was happy with that decision, but the right to protest is a fundamental part of democracy.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The city does not change or defy immigration laws and it`s congress` job...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shut up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...to change immigration laws.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shut up!
CROWD: (BOOING)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: American citizen, American citizen! Respect our laws! Respect our laws. You`re in direct violation to the United States constitution, Mayor Rothschild.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ...illegal aliens sanctuary city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re in direct violation of being a jackass.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Recall Mayor Rothschild. (inaudible)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the face of that anti-immigration protest, the infectious, historical laughter of the man in the green shirt, warmed the hearts of millions across the Internet, which is why green shirt guy was trending nationwide all day.
Green shirt guy`s name is Alex Kack. He is a 28-year-old field organizer who worked on that sanctuary cities measure. And maybe he is laughing because he just won, or maybe it`s because he knows if you want to be heard at a Tucson City Council meeting, you got to bring something more to the show.
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HAYES: Banjo guy is Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: So thanks to #greenshirtguy, the world got a look into local democracy in action at the Tucson, Arizona city council meetings. And wow, they seem like fun.
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HAYES: It`s better than about 90 percent of congressional hearings.\
Now this whole situation may seem odd, but local NBC reporter Nick Vanzandt, who captured all this amazing video said, quote, "to be honest, none of this is particularly unusual for a Tucson city council meeting.
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HAYES: That was the scene last night just before 10:00 p.m. in Times Square, New York City. Mass panic in a crowded public space when people thought they heard gunshots and started running. It turned out it was just a motor bike backfiring.
This is now a feature of American life, the haunting thought in the back of one`s head while in a public space. The kinds of mass shootings we`ve seen in El Paso and Dayton are now grim, ritualized parts of American society, same goes for mass shootings like the one in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where one person was killed and 11 injured on July 27.
Now, those don`t get as much attention, but they terrify people just as much, they leave just as much trauma and grief and mayhem.
And here is what is so perverse, the very fear created by gruesome public displays of gun violence often serve to advance the interests of gun manufactures. There is evidence that gun sales rise after mass shootings. I saw this firsthand in the wake of the mass shooting in San Bernardino in 2015 when we went the talk to a gun shop owner the day after the shooting.
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HAYES: How has business been?
UIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally the business increases after things of this nature.
HAYES: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People, you know, my phone has been ringing off the hook this morning about handgun purchases and things of that nature.
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HAYES: What`s more, the public fear these mass shootings precipitate can be clay in the hands of demagogues as President Trump himself demonstrated after San Bernardino when he said this.
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TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country`s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
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HAYES: And when the NRA and politicians called for arming teachers after Parkland, and when Sean Hannity called for a dystopic militarized panopticon to be erected around every school in the country after this week`s massacres.
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SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: I would like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured, by retired police, which you are, retired secret service, which you are, military. Have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside of every hall of every mall.
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HAYES: Schools across the country now routinely subject children as young as 4 to lockdown drills, where we collectively traumatize an entire generation. It`s sheer madness.
If our society continues to commit itself so strenuously to the sacred principle of easy access to guns, then the climate of fear that mass shootings create will be channeled to ever-more draconian impingements on other liberties.
The guns stay, but we want the state to guard every school like a garrison, monitor every chat board, involuntarily commit those with mental health problems and on and on and on.
I`ve watched what collectivized fear has done to law and policy in the post-9/11 era, when again, people had good reason to be scared. There`s much in that record that serves as a cautionary tale.
So the challenge for us as a culture and citizens and political leaders and those in the media, as we choose how and when to cover these incidents, is how to be clear-eyed to the threat posed by gun violence and white supremacist extremist violence and the dark nihilistic spree shooters without succumbing to the very sense of fear and paranoia and panic they seek to impose.
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HAYES: Missed calls from some corners for more guns, more security, more surveillance, more involuntary confinement, how should we think seriously about the threat of mass shootings and domestic terrorism while not succumbing to the paranoia that will produce bad policy.
Here to talk about that Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, who has covered guns in America extensively; Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Is that a thing that you think about from your perch, having litigated in the wake of the war on terror, when you think about how our society deals with what we have now?
VINCE WARREN, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: We think about it all the time. And there are times of panic where all of a sudden, everybody needs a solution to a problem.
Now, here`s the reality, if you have a problem of mass shooting, the solution is restricting gun use. If you have a problem of white supremacist, the solution is to keep the president from inciting it, right?
But the solution is not, and really can never be, to give law enforcement more tools around...
HAYES: But that`s what they want. I`ve seen them all over the TV saying, we need more tools, we need more tools.
WARREN: But there`s never been a time in American history when law enforcement hasn`t wanted more tools, but there have been plenty of times in American history when we actually regret giving them more tools, 9/11 being one of them.
HAYES: Mark, what do you think about the way to think about the phenomenon of spree shooting that we have seen, that is clearly now such a macabre, grotesque part of just like American society and consciousness.
MARK FOLLMAN, MOTHER JONES NATIONAL AFFARIS EDITOR: Yeah, well, I think, look, this is a complex problem, Chris. And it requires a lot of different policy ideas towards a solution. And I think the good news here is that there are policy ideas and tools that can be used effectively to try to prevent these attacks. There`s a field called behavioral threat assessment that`s growing and getting more attention now that combines mental health and law enforcement expertise to, you know, deal with the warning signs that often proceed these cases.
But I think for these tools to work, we have to look at them seriously and understand the nuance of them, dispense with the false stigmatization of mental illness, I mean, that`s just wrong for President Trump to say, you know, mental illness pulls the trigger.
You know, look, I`ve studied a lot of mass shooting cases over the last seven years, and there`s research documenting this, too, the vast majority of these cases do not involve people with clinically diagnosable mental illness. Sure, they have serious mental health issues, they have behavioral problems, but these cases are coming from people with personal grievances and anger and rage who are acting on that rage. And they know what they`re doing. And there are ways to deal with this, I think, in terms of legal policy, that can be looked at much more seriously now. And fortunately, people are starting to look at that more seriously.
HAYES: I want to get your sense of what those are in just a second. But I want to ask you first, Vince, one thing that`s perverse, it seems to me, if you hold constant the guns, right, we have 4 percent of the world`s population, 40 percent of the guns, more guns than people, and then you try to approach the problem, you`re going to have to have like bigger and bigger incursions on civil liberties to try to work your way around the gun issue, rather than just dealing with the gun issue.
WARREN: Well, you know, I`m not actually -- yes, I mean, I think that the incursions around civil liberties become really, really key. I mean, you know, when we talk about white supremacy and law enforcement, we have to understand that -- two things, one is that you can`t actually have white supremacy without the military, without law enforcement; two, you can`t have white supremacy without laws that enforce these types of things.
So what we don`t want to conflate is we don`t want to conflate the nomenclature of domestic terrorism and say, wow, we actually need to create a whole new paradigm for the law enforcement tools that we have. The law enforcement tool really isn`t the question, the question is really around the political will and about our values.
HAYES: Right, OK, so I just want that make sure I`m understanding. The toolkit is there. The legal authority is there. The things that are needed to address this, to perhaps make sure that you can find folks that may be on the verge of this or planning this, you`re saying they`re there legally and in the hands of law enforcement, what`s lacking is the will to do so?
WARREN: That`s exactly right.
HAYES: What do you think are the policies that you have sort of come to believe can make a difference here, Mark?
FOLLMAN: Well, so there`s been a lot of talk many recent days about these so-called red flag laws, which we have seen started to see spread across various states. And understanding what that is is important. This is not at about mental illness, per se. There`s a case from last year in Pennsylvania, we can look at, that illustrates how this should or could work. There was a guy who went to a court building in Pennsylvania and shot four people. He was in the middle of a very bitter, angry divorce proceeding with his wife. There was a restraining order against him placed on him by the judge. He violently attacked his wife already, and the judge at the same time refused to take away his firearms. That`s the kind of case where a red flag law could potentially be very effective. And I think people need to understand what that is. This is a -- done right, with rigorous oversight and judicial review, could be an effective tool, in my view.
HAYES: And so -- just to be clear, the red flag law, there was one passed in New York state, as well, that there`s some sort of adjudicative process, some sort of official determination and has to happen in which it`s said that like, your guns are taken away or you can`t proactivelybuy one?
FOLLMAN: Right, so it varies by state. But the gist of it is that either family members, or in some cases law enforcement can go to judge and have a judge decide in court whether or not a person can have their guns removed because they`re dangerous. And that`s got to be set on a number of factors of dangerous behavior. So, there is a process here to do that.
HAYES: All right, Mark Follman and Vince Warren, thank you very much for that.
FOLLMAN: Thank you.
WARREN: Thank you.
HAYES: That does it for us here on All In 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