CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: He never bothered to join on any Republican principle you can sight. 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.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, on Rudy Giuliani, why do you think it`s appropriate for your personal attorney to get involved in government business?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You`ll have to ask Rudy.
HAYES: Democrats subpoena the President`s lawyer.
RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: Shut up, moron. Shut up.
HAYES: New reports that Mike Pompeo was listening in on the phone call with Ukraine.
MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE, UNITED STATES: I`ll think the White House will have to explain.
HAYES: And new reporting that the President asked Australia`s prime minister to help investigate the origins of the Mueller probe.
TRUMP: Australia is a fantastic country.
HAYES: Tonight, as the scandal grows, the Trump defense flails.
SCOTT PELLEY CORRESPONDENT CBS NEWS: And President Trump replies I would like you to do us a favor though.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): You just added another word.
PELLEY: No, it`s in the transcript.
HAYES: Mitch McConnell makes a big admission.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): I would have no choice but to take it up.
HAYES: And what the next steps look like with Professor Laurence Tribe.
TRUMP: Impeachment for that?
HAYES: All that and my exclusive interview with Rachel Maddow on her new book Blowout, when ALL IN starts right now
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HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. The scandal that is threatening to swallow Donald Trump`s presidency hole just keeps getting bigger. A ton of news today, first, the President`s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was issued a subpoena from House Democrats demanding he turn over documents related to his attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden.
Democrats alerting Giuliani to their demand, a letter pointing to "an investigation of credible allegations that you act as an agent of the president in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the office of the president."
Also today, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in that infamous July phone call in which President Trump pressured the Ukrainian president which raises new questions around the State Department`s role in both the crime and the cover-up.
A week ago, Pompey was asked about that very call and pretty much pretended he just knew nothing about it.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Trump pressed the President of Ukraine eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden`s son. What do you know about those conversations?
POMPEO: So you just gave me a report about a whistleblower complaint, none of which I`ve seen.
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HAYES: That`s just a report about a thing. I don`t know what you`re talking about. That`s not all. More news today. The New York Times reported that Trump pressed the leader of Australia to help his Attorney General William Barr gather information to discredit the Mueller probe. A Justice Department official later confirmed that report to NBC News.
Now, the propriety of this request, of course, is far from the abject abuse of the Ukraine call and the facts are on that. And presidents can ask for leaders to cooperate with investigations. But the investigation itself here looks like little more than a political vendetta based on conspiracy theories. That`s the one Barr is pursuing to undermine the Mueller report retroactively. And it`s another instance of President using the full force the presidency to pressure a foreign leader to advance his own political interests.
And just like with the Ukraine conversation the White House seems to have known exactly how bad all this look, reportedly restricting access to a transcript with a call to a small group. They didn`t want anyone to know what Trump was up to. And all this is happening as the politics of impeachment are shifting very rapidly.
Last week, a Quinnipiac poll had support for impeaching the president and removing him from office at just 37 percent. One week later, now, 47 percent. A split -- nearly half the country. And that`s not just an impeachment inquiry, that is a question about impeaching and removing the president, dragging the guy out of office, first time in American history.
And that`s a long way from where we are now. In terms of where we are at this moment, in another poll, 55 percent, a healthy majority support the impeachment inquiry itself. Public opinion is moving fast in part because Democrats are now united, and in part, because the facts are just so bad for the president. And the attempts to spin them away are just so transparently pathetic and flailing.
Every time the president gets near a microphone or a camera, he keeps admitting to the basic structure of the scandal. He personally intervened to stop nearly $400 million of congressionally appropriated military aid for Ukraine while his personal attorney badgered and attempted to bully the Ukrainian government into investigating his political foe.
And when that wasn`t enough, the President himself called the Ukrainian president up personally. And when the Ukrainian president said we really need your military aid, Trump responded, "I need you to do me a favor though." And then he told him to investigate A, a crazy conspiracy theory that gets Russia off the hook for the 2016 hacking and B, his chief political opponent. And for the record, Trump really did say the word "though."
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PELLEY: And President Trump replies I would like you to do us a favor though.
MCCARTHY: You just added another word.
PELLEY: No, it`s in the transcript.
MCCARTHY: He said, "I`d like you to do a favor though?"
PELLEY: Yes it`s in -- it`s in the White House transcript.
MCCARTHY: When I read the transcript --
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HAYES: That was the top Republican House Kevin McCarthy offering what can only be described as a disastrous attempt at defending Trump.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You say the President has done nothing wrong. I take that to mean that you find it appropriate that the President asked Mr. Zelensky for an investigation of his Democratic rivals.
MCCARTHY: A question before the House of Representatives is to impeach the president based upon a phone call that the Speaker never even heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Leader, with great respect to you, and I apologize for interrupting, but these are the White House talking points that were e- mailed to the Congress earlier this week.
MCCARTHY: I`ve never seen one talking point from a White House.
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HAYES: I`ve never seen a talking point from a White House. No talking points, no White House is here. That`s what it looks like when you try to defend this set of facts. Here`s Senator Lindsey Graham`s going it.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): This seems to me like a political setup. It`s all hearsay. We`re not going to try the President of the United States based on hearsay. I can`t believe we`re talking about impeaching the President based on an accusation based on hearsay. I`m not fine with this president being impeached based on hearsay. And the entire whistleblower complaint is based on hearsay and we`re not going to impeach a president based on hearsay as long as I`m around.
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HAYES: Hearsay, you say, we all say. It`s not hearsay, OK, no matter how many times Lindsey Graham says it. Most of it is in the public record. But most importantly, we have the call notes themselves for the love of God. That has to terrify the White House, really.
Everyone knows the Republican Party is scared to death of Trump`s base. But it`s also the case right now things are extremely dynamic. Tom Bossert who is Trump`s first Homeland Security Adviser had been publicly loyal to Trump until yesterday.
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ANCHOR, ABC NEWS: You know, the whistleblowers complain says that White House officials were deeply disturbed by the President`s phone call with Zelensky. What was your reaction?
TOM BOSSERT, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: Yes, I`m deeply disturbed by it as well. And this entire mess has me frustrated.
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HAYES: Also this weekend, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger described a Trump tweet as "beyond repugnant." He was referencing just one of the 46 tweets or retweets the President leaves yesterday. This one he was referencing quoting a Trump T.V. guest suggesting that a Trump is impeached, "it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation."
As the scandal deepens and support for impeachment grows, a cornered and desperate president with no actual defense to fall back on has been reduced to lashing out which in his case amounts to sitting in front of the T.V. and frantically typing out on hinge tweets.
Like for instance, that he wants Adam Schiff questioned for fraud and treason. Treason, a possible capital crime for a member of Congress who had the temerity to investigate him. And after the whistleblower, Trump has already suggested the whistleblower and the people who talk to him should maybe be killed like in the old days.
And now he says he`s trying to find out who the whistleblower is even though the whistleblower is protected by federal law and exposing them would be a felony.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, do you now know who the whistleblower is, sir?
TRUMP: Well, we`re trying to find out about the whistleblower when you have a whistleblower that reports things that were incorrect.
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HAYES: I`m joined now by freshman Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. You support this inquiry, I know that, and you`re on the Judiciary Committee. Have any of the arguments made by the President`s defenders made a dent to you either substantively or politically?
REP. JOE NEGUSE (D-CO): No, Chris, and thanks for having me on. Look, I think, you know, based on the clips that you just showed in your opening, it`s becoming more and more difficult for Republicans to rationalize the President`s egregious conduct.
And I would just underscore again the point that you made which is we have the call summary notes and the facts that have already been adduced to the American public over the course of the last week and a half show that the president betrayed the office of the presidency, he betrayed his oath in my view, and he betrayed the Constitution by directing a foreign power to target an American citizen, period.
So you know, they can -- some of them can try to come up with the rationalizations that they have but ultimately I think that the American public understands the gravity of the moment that we are in because they have seen the evidence for themselves. And I imagine there going to be more shoes to drop over the coming weeks ahead.
HAYES: You`re back in your district as are most members of the House except for those on the Intelligence Committee. And I`m curious about what political dynamics you`re finding. There`s a lot concern initially this year by Nancy Pelosi and folks in sort of front-line swing districts that this would be a distraction, or that it would be hard to explain to the folks back home. You`re not in a front-line swing district but what do you -- what are those conversations like for you?
NEGUSE: You know, Chris, the reaction I`m receiving is ultimately folks are very, very concerned about what`s happening in Washington and the President`s conduct. Ultimately, they recognize an abuse of power when they see it.
And I think last week as you know when the call summary notes became public, when the whistleblower`s complaint became public following the inspector -- excuse me -- the Director of National Intelligence testimony before the Intelligence Committee, it became clear to the American public that the President`s conduct was beyond the pale.
And so, the reaction I`ve gotten from constituents is that we need to continue to follow the facts and that we need to ultimately hold this president accountable. We are the Article One branch. We ultimately have a grave and solemn responsibility under the Constitution to do precisely that. And it`s why we`ve embarked on the path that we have.
HAYES: You`re a member of the House Judiciary Committee which has oversight of the Department of Justice. We got reporting today that William Barr had asked the President to ask the Prime Minister of Australia to help Barr on an inquiry that he is apparently overseeing with a former U.S. Attorney or a U.S. Attorney who is looking into essentially the origins of the Mueller Investigation.
There`s also reporting that Barr personally asked foreign officials to aid that inquiry into the CIA, FBI activities in 2016. Now, on its face, you know, they can -- the leader of the U.S. can ask another leader for cooperation of an inquiry, but do you trust that this inquiry is on the level?
NEGUSE: I don`t. I mean, you`ve already heard a number of national security professionals talk about the unprecedented nature of what the Attorney General is currently engaged in, this notion of asking foreign intelligence services to investigate American intelligence services and the intelligence apparatus in our country clearly to undermine the conclusions reached by the special counsel.
At the end of the day, that is unprecedented and it could have profound ramifications for the rule of law in our country. And of course, it underscores what many of us have said for many months which is that the Attorney General really is functioning more as the President`s personal attorney than as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, and ultimately that is deeply troubling for as I said the rule of law and the way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to function.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado, thank you for making some time tonight.
NEGUSE: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: For more, I`m joined by former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele and former Republican Congressman David Jolly of Florida, both MSNBC Political Analysts. Let`s just start with the sort of spin we`re getting, David.
I mean, you know, there`s the Jedi mind tricks scene in Star Wars where you know these are not the droids you`re looking for. It does seem like really -- like lame attempts at Jedi mind trick. You know, it`s all hearsay. Well, we have the notes. No, he never said he never has to investigate Biden. No, he did. It`s in the notes. What do you make of the haphazard nature of how the pushback has happened so far, David?
DAVID JOLLY, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first on his face, let`s say Kevin McCarthy`s interview over the weekend was shameful, scurrilous, pathetic. You can see in his eyes, he didn`t even believe his own words. And he hadn`t read the report or at least he was denying that he knew what was in it.
Chris, I think what`s going on and the spiral in your scene is not just at the White House it`s behind closed doors in the Republican Conference, Republicans know what most of us have figured out. Donald Trump is going to be impeached. He will be impeached. And based on the news that drops every day now, the question is will other high-ranking officials also be impeached.
Will we be looking at -- now that we have a glimpse into what is this widespread corruption that has metastasized beyond the president`s office, now to the Secretary of State, to the Attorney General, to the OMB Director, to the Vice-President, how far does this reach?
And I think it is worth considering, Chris, for House Democrats to reconsider their decision on whether or not to pass House resolution initiating the impeachment inquiry because if they did so, they could name not just the office of the President, but the Vice-President, the OMB Director, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State.
This would be of historic proportion to do so and would capture the attention of the nation exactly where it needs to be which is on this administration`s corruption.
HAYES: You know, Michael, I`ve been -- I think there`s this sense among people that watch the news a lot particularly among sort of Liberals and Democrats that you know, nothing can shake the Trump base, nothing can shake the loyalty the Republican Party.
To him, whether that`s I think largely born of fear and I think that`s all correct and descriptively. But I also feel like things are pretty dynamic and kinetic right now and I`m curious what you think. Like it does seem to me the future is not yet written.
MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that`s absolutely right. And I think that there is a certain dynamism to it. There is a kinetic nature to it. But it`s right now it`s very small because I think to Congressman Jolly`s point, the folks are trying to figure out exactly how do we do this narrative, how does this play out, how do I sit in front of a camera and say oh, well, you added a word "though." It was like OK, it`s in the document, oh I didn`t know that. So everybody`s kind of in this space.
But here`s the part, Chris, that I find the most fascinating. I was listing to your set up for our discussion tonight and it occurred to me small things. Everybody fixated on the big thing, the Mueller thing. This was the thing that was going to take Trump out. This was the thing. Oh my God, we got the whole Russia escapades etcetera.
It`s the small thing. It is a phone call between the President and one other individual that everyone -- that 12 people took notes on and listened to that now seems to be the undoing of everything that Trump has been trying to hide, collude about, obfuscate and ignore. And that to me is the most fascinating part and I think that`s what`s going to trip Republicans up because it`s the small thing that the American people are paying the most attention to.
HAYES: I completely agree in this respect to your point there. The facts here are not hard to get your arms around. I mean, the facts of the Russia investigation particularly because it was done behind closed doors and didn`t leak, and so the leaks came from other people who were subject of the investigation, there were a million characters that I, a professional, does at 16 hours a day couldn`t keep track of by the end of. This is just the phone call and the efforts by Giuliani in public to browbeat this country into going after his political opponent.
But David, it also to me there`s continuity to Michael`s point. He actively solicited and welcomed foreign interference to sabotage his opponent last time around and he is now doing it this time around with the full authority of the U.S. government.
JOLLY: That`s it. And the impeachable offense is abuse of power. And this is very critical. You laid it out plainly, Chris, and it`s important that Democrats lean in and fully control this narrative. It`s rare in the Trump administration honestly for Trump to have lost the narrative but he has in this point.
HAYES: I agree.
JOLLY: And we can`t let Republicans distract us with quid pro quo, with attacks on Hunter Biden, or attacks on the whistleblower. The President at the U.N. last Monday said, of course, I pressured them to investigate corruption. The transcript identifies one person. He asked the Ukraine to investigate, and it`s Joe Biden and his family.
They have what they need. The importance is to keep it clean. And I think if you had a clean impeachment on abuse of power on exactly what you laid out, Chris, you send it to the Senate, Republicans like Mitt Romney and the other 29 Republican senators who are not in cycle in 2020 are going to have to look twice at that very clean article.
HAYES: That`s a great point. McConnell is saying that the Senate would have to hold a trial if the House impeaches. Jeff Flake, former senator of Arizona saying, fellow Republicans there`s still time to save your souls. I don`t know, Michael. I expect a lot of sort of like road to Damascus moments of conscience here. But it does strike me that that is a tougher hand to play for the Republican Senate than people are realizing.
STEELE: Yes. And I think McConnell knows that too. I mean, look, you can sit back and sort of block a president`s choice for the Supreme Court, and you can make it hard to get certain appointments through and passed with no problem others, but this we know that.
Again, it is so simple and it is so obvious and it speaks so concretely to our democracy and our republic about what we are that it`s going to be hard for McConnell to sit back and play the stonewall here and say, well, you know, we just don`t have to take up this matter that just came from the House. This is a big deal.
HAYES: Yes, this is a big deal. Michael Steele, David Jolly, thank you both for being with me.
JOLLY: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Still ahead, my exclusive interview with the one and only and very brilliant Rachel Maddow, my dear friend on her upcoming book Blowout. You do not want to miss that. And where does the impeachment inquiry go from here? We`ll take a look at what happens next in two minutes.
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HAYES: We know that there`s a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump and that the House Intelligence Committee and others have drawn up a list of witnesses and main document requests including a subpoena for the President`s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani issued today.
Now, we don`t really know anything after that. There have been a few impeachment proceedings in history and each one is different and distinct in its own way, and there`s a huge mental attitude in how it can go.
Today, legendary constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe writes in The Guardian his take on how he thinks impeachment should go and a piece entitled "The House must flex its constitutional muscles to get to Trump," and he joins me now.
Professor Tribe, what do you think is the key here in the House conceptualizing the process it`s going to use and the portfolio, the sort of scope of what its inquiry is going forward?
LAURENCE TRIBE, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: I think the key is simplicity. Just as Jolly and Steele mentioned in the earlier segment, rather than getting lost in the details, it`s crucial to focus on one central point. This president has abused the power of his office to get foreign governments to help him get reelected not just in the past but in the present.
And he`s using his military muscle, he`s using his foreign policy authority to hold up $400 million of desperately needed aid from a vulnerable ally in order to benefit not only himself by digging up dirt on Joe Biden, but to benefit his benefactor Vladimir Putin because Putin is the aggressor against Ukraine. That`s a simple story. It doesn`t have to go into 100 different directions as the way the Mueller report did.
HAYES: There`s a really interesting question to me about the showdown that will now take place over testimony and documents from people like Rudy Giuliani. This is Rudy Giuliani saying, I have received a subpoena signed only by Democrat -- Democratic chairs who have prejudged this case. It raises significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional legal issues including inter alia, attorney-client, and other privileges. It will be given appropriate consideration.
How do you see the legal arguments going now that the House is going to try to compel testimony and documents from people that are going to resist with everything they have?
TRIBE: No longer is it going to be a protracted fight in the courts. Adam Schiff has made clear as I think the Intelligence Committee and the other committees will that from now on its showdown. That is if they try to resist the subpoenas on the basis of phony attorney-client privileges which for example, in this case, don`t apply, Rudy was not acting as Donald Trump`s attorney, and anyway the attorney-client privilege doesn`t cover criminal conspiracies.
If they resist instead of being taken to court, they will simply be told, all right, we`re going to draw all the inferences against you. This is going to become another article of impeachment against the guy who is stonewalling and telling you to resist.
So that in the past it was all very polite, yes please answer, here`s another nasty letter. Now it`s all -- it`s all going to be showdown time. And it`s going to be quick and that`s important.
HAYES: There`s also a question now about the Department of Justice and real concerns -- there`s been concerns from the beginning of Barr`s tenure about the independence of that particularly the way in which he sort of massage the release of the Mueller report. But there`s out real concern about whether the President is asking him to investigate people, whether that William Barr is actually heating those requests.
I want to play this testimony from May 1st of this year where he got a direct question on this from Senator Kamala Harris and his not answering and get your reaction to those concerns. Take a listen.
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SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Has the President or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone? Yes or no please, sir.
WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL, UNITED STATES: The President or anybody else.
HARRIS: It seems you would remember something like that and be able to tell us.
BARR: Yes, but I`m trying to grapple with the word suggest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What are -- do you have concerns about Attorney General Barr particularly as we go forward and he seems to be pursuing this counter investigation quite strenuously?
TRIBE: Concerns puts it mildly. The fact is that he`s on a mission, an international mission. He`s talked to leaders in Italy in the United Kingdom. He`s talked to leaders in you know, all over the world, and now Australia is being brought in.
He doesn`t admit that he talked to Ukraine but we`ll learn about that later. The fact is he`s going around the world to undermine our intelligence agencies and the Mueller report. And the irony is the Mueller report is the thing that he pretended exonerated the president. Why would you want to undermine it if it exonerates the president? It`s all a terrible mix.
And the Attorney General and Rudy Giuliani are serving as alter-ego Roy Cohn`s for this president. We are in a complete tailspin. The administration is melting down. And what scares me is that this president when cornered is capable of anything.
He`s threatening a civil war. He`s threatening to bring the country down with him. He`s calling out his investigators for treason and fraud. He`s trying to unmask the whistleblower. He`s violating one law after another. And who knows what he`ll do next? It`s really quite frightening.
HAYES: All right, Laurence Tribe, thank you. Don`t go anywhere.
TRIBE: Thank you.
HAYES: Rachel Maddow joins me to talk about her new book and what she reveals about Vladimir Putin`s influence in Ukraine of all places, right after this.
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HAYES: All right, here`s a question, what is the most powerful and dangerous industry in the entire world? Bunch of contenders: weapons manufacturers, for one, near the top. Given the last financial crisis and the misery that caused across the globe, you can definitely say big banks and finance. But I think when you really think about it for more than a few minutes, the answer is almost certainly fossil fuel companies.
I mean, among other things they are the ones driving the climate crisis. And they control almost everything that happens in our global economy in an almost literal sense -- every tank, every car, every plane, most power plants all depend on their product. It is also an industry that has profoundly given to co-option and corruption of national governments.
In her incredible new book "Blowout" Rachel Maddow looks exactly at how that works from Oklahoma City, where they`ve seen a surge in Earthquakes linked to oil drilling, to Equatorial Guinea, a tiny oil-rich country that vast oil wealth, but is still one of the poorest nations on Earth, to Chapter 19 in the book, Ukraine where Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to wield Russian energy as a way to exert influence over the fledgling democracy, and that is of course the center of everything we are currently experiencing in U.S. domestic politics at this moment.
Rachel writes in the book, quote, "even after the Orange Revolution and the election of Viktor Yushchenko, Russia still managed to keep a hold on the reigns of Ukraine`s economy and its politics, which was perfect, as far as Putin was concerned. The infinitely corruptible energy business allowed Putin to pick and choose who would be rich and who would be powerful in Ukraine."
Joining me now in her first TV interview, not ever but about this book -- about her new book "Blowout" -- is Rachel Maddow.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC ANCHOR: Thank you, man.
HAYES: The book is fantastic.
MADDOW: Thank you.
HAYES: It`s a great read. You do this thing -- you are just such a -- you are a -- you need to hear this, but you`re an incredible storyteller. And it really pulls you through.
Let`s -- maybe let`s start on the Russia/Ukraine stuff, which I learned a lot about, which is the degree to which resource fights and sort of questions about who would dominate energy were at the kind of core, the like platform over which the conflict was having between Russia and Ukraine?
MADDOW: Yeah, and I -- I will say at the outset -- first of all, thank you. This is the first time I`ve talked about the book. I`m super nervous about it. I realize this is kind of a hard sell, like it`s kind of a tough topic for a lot of people, you cover the oil and gas industry, and particularly climate stuff, like way more than I do. You`re more well- versed in this stuff.
I ended up here because I was interested in Russia. And for me, I had this question that I kept sort of hitting this wall trying to imagine things from Putin`s perspective, from Russia`s perspective, like why are they throwing all these wild pitches all over the world.
I mean they`re really -- I mean, lots of countries are bad actors, right. Russia is a particularly malignant weird actor, why? And what I came up with as the sort of missing link was the fact that they have a really screwed up economy. And then, well, that doesn`t really make sense either, because they float on a sea of oil and gas, so why shouldn`t they have actually a good economy since that`s so remunerative, and then you get to the particularities of the oil and gas industry, which is that it often screws up your country. It very often co-opts and screws up any hope at good government. But in the hands of an unsavory dictator, it can also be used to deliberately create corruption and to turn the lights on and off at will in other countries, and that`s how Putin has manipulated Ukraine.
I mean, literally turning the lights of in Ukraine when he feels like it, but also creating a corrupt power structure there using Russian natural gas supplies, which flow through Ukraine into Europe, in order to create the richest people in the country and to fund the political parties that he supports, and to create morasses of corruption that he can use against his enemies.
HAYES: You know, what I was -- Lawrence Lessig, who is a Harvard Law Professor, and has written about corruption -- and I was at a corruption lab with him, and he talked corruption as an improper dependence, which I thought was always a good phrase, like things that should be independent, or dependent on things like the will of the people, create a dependence that`s improper.
And I kept thinking of that phrase in this book, because there are all kinds of improper dependences, right. So, all these people that should be steward`s of Ukraine`s bounty, instead, have an improper dependence on Vladimir Putin. All these national governments and the people around them who should be looking out for the people instead have an improper dependence on Exxonmobil, right. That like everywhere you go, what is it about this industry that creates this kind of vortex of corruption in almost every place it operates?
MADDOW: Well, it`s -- I mean, extractive industries tend to do this, right. So there is this thing called the resource curse, which is that if you are a country that discovers resources that can be extracted and sold internationally, you are subject to the sort of paradox where you -- the revenues that you get from that ought to help you out.
HAYES: Right. It`s like all this money. It`s money. It`s raining money.
MADDOW: Except what it tends to do is create a stream of money to the elites and to the government that is going to allow extractive industries to come in and take that stuff out. That elite and those government ministers then end up having no purpose on earth other than keeping themselves in power to cash in on that stuff. And it makes the government essentially serve only that one purpose.
So Equatorial Guinea, which you mentioned, they see, you know, $25 billion poured into that country in less than 10 years when they discover oil. $25 billion in a little poor country like Equatorial Guinea should have been like winning the lottery, right. And instead, infant mortality goes up, poverty goes up, health care and education go down, and the son of the president buys all the world`s Michael Jackson memorabilia, and they build three new capitol cities, and he becomes the longest sitting president in the world. And I mean, that`s the sort of influence that oil and gas companies can have in small countries. They can also do that in big countries.
HAYES: Yeah, I think it was actually today in the AP that the cars taken from the leader`s son were sold for $25 million.
MADDOW: They were. Nice cars.
HAYES: There`s the fleet of the ill-gotten oil.
And there`s -- the other part of this, of course, is the fossil fuel companies themselves, who, you know, sort of throughout the book operate in this kind of like ruthlessly amoral space.
MADDOW: Yes, that`s a perfect way to put it.
HAYES: Where they -- you know, they`ll deal with -- if you`re the governor of Oklahoma, they`ll deal with you. If you are a desperate son, they`ll deal with you. If you`re Vladimir Putin, like, we`re just going to partner with you to get that stuff out of the ground and make our money.
MADDOW: What they want is, in Rex Tillerson`s memorable words, contract sanctity. They will operate anyway, anywhere, and in any environment as long as their contracts are honored.
And what they need is stability and assurance that they don`t have to do too much more for one-stop shopping when it comes to something that they need in your country. And it`s not that oil and gas companies seek to install dictators, but if there is one there, that`s actually going to be quite convenient for them in most cases.
HAYES: It`s simplifying.
MADDOW: It`s simplifying in terms of who do you bribe, in terms of who OKs things for you, and if you have some sort of local uprising that needs putting down, well, you know, exactly who to go to.
And so there`s no -- it`s not a coincidence that you end up with a sort of corrosion of democracy in places where oil and gas companies have sway. And I think that we can see that close to home. I think we can definitely sort of more easily see it a broad.
But in Russia, I think, it contributed to them having this real weak spot in terms of what they can do to sway other countries and what Putin can do to get his way in the world. He ended up using oil and gas as a weapon, especially in Ukraine. It`s directly connected to what`s going on with the impeachment crisis right now.
But he also knows that unless he gets these sanctions lifted, unless he can get Exxon and Shell and BP and all these western companies in to help him drill, Russia`s one economic asset is something he`s not going to be able to get out of the ground.
HAYES: Yes. And there is a kind of desperation there.
MADDOW: Yes.
HAYES: I mean.
MADDOW: He`s at the end.
HAYES: Yes. And I also reading this was thinking about the fact that like the two sketchiest relationships the president has with world leaders are with Mohammad bin Salman and Vladimir Putin, both places where the resource curse is in like full flower.
MADDOW: Yeah.
HAYES: Both places run by extremely despotic regimes with these very corrupt oligarchies around them, engaging in lots of sort of malfeasance and mischief and really bad acts around the world at the time.
And I also wonder how much -- you don`t talk about this this much, although in the end you sort of do, which is that like they`re going to have to stop pulling this stuff out of the ground. I mean, you set the table and this has been the case for these industries, right. They have been operating in all kinds of places. They`ve been corrupting governments, they`ve been having these like illicit deals. They have enough to basically melt the entire world and they`re going to have to leave a huge chunk of it in the ground. It`s like what happens then?
MADDOW: I think -- I mean, where I ended up with the book is a place also I did not expect to be, which is I`m a little bit hopeful but also I sort of feel like I need to put it like heads up everybody. I`m hopeful because I do think the solution is democracy, like I think that when you look at, for example, the example of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, that`s a very positive example in the book in terms of...
HAYES: Because people are like, what`s going on?
MADDOW: And it`s not that Oklahoma became a blue state or Oklahoma became some environmental haven, it`s just that democracy turned on in Oklahoma in a way that made them constrain this industry that had otherwise really captured their government in a way that I really feel like is a model for the country and in some ways for the world, like Oklahoma kind of shows the way to do it, even staying as a conservative and Republican controlled state.
So democracy works. The problem is that what democracy is going to accomplish soon is the end of the oil and gas industry, because of climate change. And when that happens, and it may happen suddenly, it may not be a decrescendo, it maybe falling off a cliff, we should be prepared for the fact that that is going to have much geopolitical impact.
That`s going to move the borders of countries because more than we appreciate, it is oil and gas industry, and western oil and gas majors, that are propping up all sorts of governments around the world, and indeed whole systems of government. And when their market share disappears and when their influence goes away, the world is going to change.
We can all imagine what that might mean for the Middle East, but it is going to change America, it`s going to change the globe, it`s going to change everywhere that oil is produced, because they have such an impact on who is in power everywhere. When they go, the whole world will change.
HAYES: There is also this question of the soft landing versus a hard landing, right, about how long does it take for markets and everyone to realize this. I mean, right now we kind of do this thing where like Wile E. Coyote off the cliff and the legs are cycling. And we say, well, yeah we`re going to -- we`re all in Paris and we`re going to reduce, reduce, but like we`re still extracting a ton of fossil fuel every day all over the world. We`re still -- emissions are going up. They`re really going up in places like China and India.
I guess the question is like are you confident they really will have to stop and how quickly will everyone realize that`s happening.
MADDOW: They will have to be stopped. They will never stop themselves. The oil and gas...
HAYES: Yeah, they`re not going to volunteer.
MADDOW: ...is marketing themselves as these technological wizards that are going to think our way out of these problems, but like their big idea was natural gas. Great. So, like, you know, 45 percent of our carbon emissions right now are burning oil, 31 percent are burning natural gas. That`s not a great bridge to the future, that was just another fossil fuel for us to burn.
The oil and gas industry won`t to stop itself. It will have to be stopped by democratic means.
And the question of when it happens is going to depend on science, innovation and democratic power. The revelation for me about the oil and gas industry that I have no inkling of before I started working on the book, is how bad they are at their own game, how much they can`t do that`s even really the stuff that`s in their wheelhouse.
Like Putin really thinks that he needs western oil companies to come help him drill the Arctic. Western oil companies have no idea how to drill the Arctic.
HAYES: Right.
MADDOW: And they can`t think their way out of it. They can`t innovate their way out of it. They`re not actually that good at what they do.
The people who are good at what they do are the people who are going to get us out of this mess.
HAYES: Yeah, they`re subject to the resource curse, too.
The book is phenomenal. It`s called "Blowout." It is out now. It comes out tomorrow.
MADDOW: I`m so nervous.
HAYES: You made your second book, Rachel Maddow. And we`ll see you on air in a few minutes.
Thank you so much. That was awesome.
MADDOW: Thank you so much, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thanks.
HAYES: Still to come, Trymaine Lee reports on the new push to get non- voters to the ballot box. And, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, now the president has been exposed violating his oath of office in a corrupt abuse of power, it has been a rough few days over at Trump TV as the channel struggles to cover the story and the cracks are starting to show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS: It is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think Judge Napolitano is a fool.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Attacking our colleague on our air in our work home is repugnant.
ED HENRY, FOX NEW: So you`re OK with a president asking another president...
MARK LEVIN, LAWYER: Hold on now. Hold on.
HENRY: To dig up dirt on a candidate. You`re OK with that.
LEVIN: First of all, your question is not honest, so I don`t give yes or no...
HENRY: That`s a quote from the transcript, sir.
LEVIN: Let me finish, Ed.
JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS: You know, just listening here, I think, boy, those talking points, they`ve made the rounds because the reality is...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does that mean?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What does that mean. Are you saying that I got talking points, Juan? You`ve got to answer to the accusation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know the libel law.
GIULIANI: Shut up, moron. Shut up. You don`t know what you`re talking about, idiot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So it`s going pretty well over there. Trump is not happy about the feeding frenzy which might explain this tweet in his feed yesterday morning. Amen, Mark Levin. Preach, brother. You shut down Ed Henry and the pro-shark media with the facts.
OK, I`m sorry, the what? The pro-what media? That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: So the president has really not been handling the last few days very well and it certainly doesn`t help when he sees people on Trump TV like Ed Henry doing anything other than blindly defending his obviously corrupt activities.
And so yesterday morning, on the drive to play golf, the president pretty clearly just searched on Twitter for the name Ed Henry and then just started re-tweeting everything negative he could find.
There was a tweet from one account, though, that he probably didn`t mean to re-tweet. And no, it wasn`t for a white supremacist this time. It was from Trump, but about sharks, which is an automatic Twitterbot that takes the president`s actual tweets and makes them all about sharks, like "the greatest feeding frenzy in the history of our boat." "The shark apologists are trying to destroy the Republican Party." "And make the beach great again." You get the idea.
And then there`s this one, which was actually something that Trump had already retweeted and then bot picked it up and then sharkified it and then Trump didn`t realize that and then he retweeted the shark version. Oh my god, how is this what I`m talking about.
Now, the origin of why a Trump, but about shark`s twitterbot exists in the first place goes back to an anecdote about his fear of sharks in an interview in InTouch Magazine in which Stormy Daniels tells all about her affair with Donald Trump. And I`ll tell you all about that, but I would much rather be eaten by sharks.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: It`s an exciting night here at All In because we have some big news to share with you all: our Friday night live audience shows are back. Starting this Friday, we are doing three Fridays this month. The 4th, the 11th, the 18th. Tickets are free and available now. We have a link on our website, AllIn.msnbc.com. So, head there for tickets. I hope to see you soon.
Now you know what you don`t need tickets for? Late Night with Seth Meyers. And if you happen to turn it on tonight at 12:35 a.m. Eastern, you`ll catch me and Seth talking about impeachment and the president`s perfect call with Ukraine. We had a lot of fun, as always.
As it happens, I also had a chance to talk about the president`s phone call with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the first stop for our fall podcast live tour. The whole interview with the senator was a trip, but after some pressing, I got him to admit at the very least the president asking about Biden was not a good look.
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SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) TEXAS: I will readily acknowledge the Biden part is more troubling. It is not on the face of the transcript a quid pro quo, and it`s certainly not an illegal quid pro quo.
But, look, in the legal world there are principles of conflict of interest and there`s also a question of an appearance of impropriety.
I would have wised the president had not gone down that road.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Obviously, Senator Cruz and I disagree on a lot of things, what he said about the quid pro quo there being one of them, but I have to say we have got some really interesting points in that interview. I hope you check it out. That episode of Why is This Happening? out first thing tomorrow morning. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER, CO-CHAIR, POOR PEOPLE`S CAMPAIGN: If those who suppress the vote and those who block immigrant rights and those who try to block health care and block living wages and cut taxes for the wealthy and raise problems for the poor, if they are cynical enough to get together, we have to be smart enough to come together.
We are siloed no more. We understand these are interlocking injustices that require a moral/intersectional response.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was Reverend Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People`s Campaign, which just launched a 20-state tour to rally and inspire voters in 2020. Today, they march in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Our correspondent Trymaine Lee was there to witness it. Trymaine, what did you hear from Reverent Barber and the marchers today?
TRYMAINE LEE, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: I`ll tell you what, Reverend Barber and many of the marchers I spoke with today said their message is quite simple: we are stronger together. While there is a lot of pain in terms of folks living in poverty, there is also power, an untapped voting bloc of upward of 100 million people, many of those folks who didn`t vote in 2016.
So, they have hoping through this tour, 22 states that will culminate next year in June in Washington, D.C. for a march and rally. Along the way, there will be moments of civil disobedience. They will be organizing.
But I spoke to one gentleman earlier who said it`s about freedom, that being impoverished and all the complications associated with living in poverty is like being enslaved, the same way poverty wages are like enslavement.
And when I look behind me at this crowd today, there was black, brown, young, old, white, every color you could imagine, all kinds of folks said you know what we`re here together. Again, we`re stronger together and they`ve been divided too long, Chris.
HAYES: It`s really interesting that they`re going after non-voters. I want to sort of keep our eyes on those attempts. Trymaine Lee, thank you so much for that report.
That is ALL IN for this evening. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END