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Democratic Rep. Katie Hill resigns. TRANSCRIPT: 10/28/19, All In w/ Chris Hayes.

Guests: Chris Coons, Mehdi Hasan, Tony Blinken, Sam Seder, Olivia Nuzzi,Christina Greer

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST:  And my best to get to his father and mother how proud you must be.  And that`s HARDBALL for now.  Thanks for being with us tonight.  "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST:  Tonight on ALL IN.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA):  We do have to honor our oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

HAYES:  The full House will take a vote.

PELOSI:  I think the President knows the argument that can be made against him and he`s scared.

HAYES:  Tonight, what we know about the vote on the impeachment inquiry that Nancy Pelosi just announced, and why Republicans are starting to complain loudly about what they have to defend.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  The impeachment of your president is a scam.

HAYES:  Then, growing concerns about what comes after Baghdadi.

MARK ESPER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, UNITED STATES:  His death marks a devastating blow for the remnants of ISIS.

HAYES:  Plus --

KATIE HILL, FORMER REPRESENTATIVE OF CALIFORNIA:  Some people call this electronic assault, digital exploitation, others call it revenge porn.

HAYES:  The unnerving details of Katie Hill`s resignation from Congress.

HILL:  As the victim of it, I call it one of the worst things that we can do to our sisters and our daughters.

HAYES:  And what kind of greeting should an unpopular president expect outside his self-imposed bubble?  When ALL IN the starts right now.

CROWD:  Lock him up!  Lock him up!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes.  So there is going to be a vote this week on impeachment proceedings.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House is going to hold a vote to push forward the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

That will start with a mark-up in the Rules Committee on Wednesday and then Thursday, there is expected to be a full House vote on the House floor, laying out the process going forward for the Intelligence Committee to refer its findings to the Judiciary Committee for the formal public impeachment proceedings against the president of these United States for only the fourth time in American history.

Now, this comes after a week of increasingly histrionic protestations from Republicans about the process.  And almost absurd set of arguments and stunts and included storming a secure facility and the capital known as a skiff, even though many of those members were allowed to be in there, and then ordering pizza and hoping to be arrested.

And then Senator Lindsey Graham circulated a resolution whining about the process in the house that originally failed to get eight Senate Republicans sign on, still does not have them all.  But the thing is, all these process arguments have been an obvious dead-end from the beginning because the process was always in its initial phases and was always going to move forward.

In fact, that`s something the President himself actually seems to have recognized.  Today, Trump just completely undermine Congressional Republicans who gone all in defending him on the process, telling reporters today "The process is good, but I think you ought to look at the case.  The case is very simple.  It`s quick.  It`s so quick."

He is right about that.  It`s a very simple case.  The problem for the President and his Republican defense is that his conduct is simply indefensible.  The very simple fact is we know from the White House`s own notes that after Ukrainian president said they needed more American weapons and funding for that, Trump responded, "I would like you to do us a favor though," and then asked him to manufacture dirt and his political opponent.

Now, that is just one small snapshot of what we have since learned was an enormous shadow operation within the U.S. government directed personally by the President using Rudy Giuliani kind of off books and others.  And the testimony so far continues to bear all that out.

Here`s what we have learned just since this weekend, OK.  The Wall Street Journal reports the lawyer for the U.S. Ambassador for the European Union - - remember Trump`s inaugural donor Gordon Sondland -- well, he says his client told the House impeachment committee yes, Trump`s you came pressure was a quid pro quo.

OK, NBC News reports that as early as May, the White House was told that Rudy Giuliani`s pressure campaign was concerning the newly elected Ukrainian president.  In fact, the White House was aware of Trump`s allies were unnerving the Ukrainians even before the Ukrainian president was sworn in.

Today, former Deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman defy the Congressional subpoena to appear for a deposition before the House.  House Democrats warning he would be held in contempt.

Last week, you might remember Kupperman filed a lawsuit basically asking the judge to decide whether he should listen to the subpoena or the White House orders he not testify.  Now, Kupperman is interesting because he would have been the first person on Trump`s infamous phone call with Ukraine`s president to testify.  Instead, that will be Tim Morrison who is the current National Security Council`s Europe and Eurasia Director who is scheduled to give a deposition this Thursday.

The Washington Post reports Morrison`s lawyer said, "Our plans have not changed.  If subpoenaed, Mr. Morrison will appear."  So the facts are bad and still getting worse for the President and Congressional Republicans who are scrambling to figure out what to do.

And an important note here I`m like the last two impeachments in the modern era of where when the impeachment began the president was popular, the basic brute fact about Donald Trump is that for the duration of his presidency, he has been unpopular.  He remains unpopular as he himself had to confront in a rare trip outside the Trump rally bubble.

On the day that Trump announced U.S. forces had killed the world`s most wanted terrorist, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump was confronted with his unpopularity when he showed up a game five of the World Series and they put them up on the jumbotron.

Listen to the difference in the crowd.  First, they show members the military on the jumbotron, then Trump, then members of military again.

Yay, boo, yay!  One of the most fascinating parts aside from the President`s facial expression as he realizes how the crowd is reacting to him are the rictus grins plastered on the faces of the Republicans in the box with him.  The men and women whose own political fates are tied to this man as he enters an impeachment inquiry, and who were attempting to find their own way out to survival.  As Philip Rucker and Robert Costa of The Washington Post report, one veteran Republican senator says it feels like a horror movie.

Joining me now from one of the Presidents increasing political problems, two reporters who`ve been all over the story, the aforementioned Philip Rucker who`s the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post and an MSNBC Political Analyst, and Betsy Woodruff Swan Politics Reporter of The Daily Beast who`s been covering this and an MSNBC Contributor.

And Phil, let me start with you.  Your -- there`s a lot of fascinating tidbits in that but what I got was the Republicans are at least off the record not stoked to be in the position they`re in.

PHILIP RUCKER, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST:  And that`s an understatement, Chris.  I mean, they are dreading.  The eventuality in the Senate, at least, that they`re likely to have to vote in an impeachment trial about President Trump`s conduct in office and have to either convict him or acquit him.

And that is a decision that none of these Republican senators wants to make.  And it`s because they`re going to have to balance their conscience and the set of facts that have been arrayed through this inquiry against their political calculations, knowing full well how popular Donald Trump, President Trump remains within the Republican base.

HAYES:  One thing that keeps happening is that Trump and his allies make an argument and then Trump or the facts undercut it.  So it`s well, there`s no pro quo.  It`s like, well, yes, there is a quid pro quo but is an incompetent one.  Well, quid pro quo is fine, get over it.  No, we didn`t say that.  And then it was a week of process complaints and Nancy Pelosi today is like, we`re going to have rules vote for the Impeachment Inquiry.  So they`re -- we`re -- have at it with your process complaints.

BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR:  The President makes it extremely difficult for even his most enthusiastic defenders to defend him sometimes.  When it comes to this question of process complaints that Pelosi has brought up, this is something we`ve been interested in for the last couple of weeks.

And as I`ve been chatting with Democratic sources on the Hill while working on other stories, I`ve asked a handful of them why they believe Pelosi didn`t want to have this vote that she just now announced today.  And what I`ve been told is that within the House Democratic Caucus, there`s a view that this vote is actually not without political costs.

The concern especially for Democrats, like Elissa Slotkin or Abigail Spanberger, who won these Trumpy districts is that they could be voting for a Pandora`s box.  They don`t know the entirety of what`s in it.  They know a whole lot.  This is not a crazy difficult though for them.

But the investigations not done yet.  And they are preparing for the fact that Republicans will say you voted to give Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi a blank check.  And in some of these districts, that vote is not super-duper easy.

HAYES:  Yes, I think it`s not an easy vote.  Although the question here is, you know, you`re doing it anyway, right?  Like you`re going to own this vote.  I was just watching Matt Bevin -- Matt Bevin in Kentucky sending out a mailer that showed like his Democratic opponent in a governor`s race in Kentucky are like next to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like he`s the squad, like all of the politics here are being waged in this kind of full tribal moment anyway.  It seems to me that Republicans still don`t have an answer for an argument for what case they`re trying to make on the President`s behalf.

RUCKER:  That`s exactly right, Chris.  And what`s so frustrating for Republican lawmakers is they want to defend the president.  They want to be able to engage in the substance if they felt like there was a credible defense that they could give.  And so far, they don`t have that.

The White House has really been scrambling to try to piece together some sort of messaging argument.  They acknowledged privately that they`re losing that messaging battle to the Democrats.  And their argument so far has been so focused on the process.

And so it means when, you know senators are asked either back home in their -- in their states or by reporters here at the Capitol to engage with some of the really damning allegations that are coming out in the testimony over on the House side, they`re resorting to oh, it was behind closed doors, oh, there hasn`t been a vote on the floor yet without being able to really engage this substance because they don`t want to, as one person described it to me pour concrete over their ankles and get stuck.

HAYES:  And you`ve got a situation in which Democrats don`t know what box are opening necessarily, although the scope it`ll be interesting to see what this language says about the scope of the inquiry.  But Republicans don`t know either, right?

I mean, we`ve had several weeks of the first sustained kind of like deposed testimony about this President that we`ve ever really had.  All the Mueller stuff was completely behind closed doors, none of it came out.  And we`ve already learned a ton.  Like if you`re the Republicans, the downside risk is you`re going to learn even more.

SWAN:  That`s exactly the irony of the Republican criticism when it comes to process is the fact that the process was behind closed doors gave many of these Senate Republicans something of a get out of jail free card.  They could complain.  They could say, oh, we only know what we know from leaks.  It hasn`t been said publicly.  Why trust selective democratic leaks to the media?  And that`s not a totally invalid defense to make against commenting on these things.

But now that it`s going to be public, it`s going to be harder.  And Republicans have had a difficult time talking about the basic substance facts here.  It was a couple of weeks ago that Ted Cruz said on one of the Sunday shows that it was -- to paraphrase he said, obviously, it`s not OK for a president to ask for government.  That was a really important moment.  And he spoke for a lot of his colleagues when he said that.

HAYES:  Well, Philip, I mean, that seems to me the way -- the way that makes sense to thread the needle for Republicans who don`t want to convict in the Senate is to say this was not OK, what the President did was wrong but it`s not impeachable.  But my sense is that if they say that, the President is going to go ballistic on them.

RUCKER:  Yes.  They`ve not, Chris, been given the cover yet from the White House to be able to say that.  That seems to be where they want to go.  That seems to be where the consensus is headed, especially as we get closer to -- into 2020 on the calendar that they can make an argument that this conduct was improper, it was wrong, that President shouldn`t have done it, but impeaching him removing him from offices such an extraordinary thing to do.  We`re not willing to do that.  We want to wait until November and let the American people decide in the election.

That seems to be according to my reporting where the consensus within the party is headed but they`re just not comfortable saying that quite yet.

HAYES:  Yes.  I mean, look at -- look at what they did to Mitt Romney after he said a few things that were critical.  He didn`t even endorse the President`s impeachment.  That is coming for all of them the moment they start talking like that.  Phil Rucker and Betsy Woodruff Swan, thank you both.

RUCKER:  Thank you.

HAYES:  Joining me now for more on the President`s lawless behavior, Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Obviously, it`s a different House than yours, but obviously, should this go through you will -- you will be part of this process in the Senate.  Are you glad to see the announcement there`s going to be some sort of formal codification of this process over the House side?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE):  Well, Chris, I do think it`s a positive step forward for there to be a vote in the House that lays out specifically how they`re moving forward with public testimony.  But even more than the process, I`m interested in the substance.

As the two folks who were just on with you were laying out, it`s going to get harder and harder for defenders of the President to explain why they`re defending him as the details of what I think are the underlying motivations behind that call.  President Trump memorably had with President Zelensky of Ukraine come out.

As a lawyer, one of the things that is a common saying is, if the facts are -- excuse me -- if the law is on your side, argue the law.  If the law isn`t on your side, argue the facts.  If the facts aren`t on your side, pound the table.

And what I thought we saw last week with that very awkward incident where a group of House Republicans sort of storm the skiff was pounding the table because they`re gravely concerned that neither the facts nor the law are on the -- on their side.

And as the House moves towards public hearings, this space will get even tighter and more uncomfortable for my colleagues.

HAYES:  Yes, do you think ultimately -- because I think -- again, we have the call notes.  I mean, this is not -- we`re not, you know, we know what happened more or less.  The question comes to me about whether your colleagues move to the position that is not just defensible, perfect in the President`s words, to essentially extort a foreign leader for the personal political game against an American citizen and opponent to meddle in American election and whether you see them being able to look at themselves and make that argument.

COONS:  Well, as you know, I`ve worked hard to develop some meaningful friendships with my Republican colleagues in order to be able to legislate on a wide range of issues.  This is the first time in my nine years here that no one is talking about this.

We are having no meaningful conversations about what`s the path forward about the President`s conduct with regard to Ukraine.  When I`ve tried to open conversations about this, my friends change the subject.  And I think that`s because many of them know that his conduct was inappropriate.

The position that I think Senator Portman if I`m not mistaken took publicly which is this is wrong, but not impeachable is I think that position many of them would prefer to be able to come to.  But as you said earlier, Chris, when President Trump himself says, don`t defend me on process, defend me on the facts.

If they are true to our basic values, which is that we shouldn`t have a president misusing his office for personal political advantage, that`ll be a very difficult place for many of them to land.

HAYES:  I want to ask you about something you said earlier today.  We played that clip of the president being booed at the Nationals baseball stadium.  You talked about -- you weren`t a big fan of it.  You think the Office of the Presidency deserves respect.  And I guess my question is this.

I don`t think it`s hyperbole to say that the test of a free society in some cases is whether you can lustily boo the head of state at a public stadium, right?

COONS:  Of course.

HAYES:  I mean, that exactly is the thing that we almost kind of fought a revolution that you could do that.

COONS:  Well, Chris, to be clear, I think if folks want to express their displeasure, their disapproval of the president, of course, that`s a constitutionally protected free speech right.  And as you just said, that was sort of one of the foundations of our society.  I do a lot of work here in Congress and around the world, advocating for human rights and one of those most fundamental rights is the right of free speech.

What I thought I was speaking to this morning was when I heard chance of lock him up.  I had a visceral negative reaction to that because when Then- Candidate Donald Trump started leading chant of lock her up, that struck me is just wildly inappropriate for Candidate Trump to be threatening to lock up his political opponent.

I frankly don`t think those of us who are opposed to President Trump`s actions and values should mirror his behavior and lead chants of lock him up at democratic rallies.

HAYES:  Fair enough.  I would it was -- it was satire.  The phrase didn`t come out of nowhere but I hear where you`re coming from.  Senator Chris Coons, thank you very much.

COONS:  Thank you, Chris.

HAYES:  Next, what the death of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi means to the region and for the terrorist group that could some fear can be making resurgence.  That in two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  There were two things that happened this weekend.  The first was a very big deal, an actual event.  The U.S. forces in cooperation with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials managed to track down and raid the location of the world`s most wanted terrorist, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  He detonates a suicide vest while facing capture killing him and three children.  That`s according to the President.

Now, Baghdadi`s demise is I think it`s fair to say good for humanity.  He was a rapist, a murderer, a war criminal.  He oversaw a caliphate that murder tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslims.  He pursued ethnic cleansing, genocide against religious minorities.  He engaged in mass rapes, have captured women.  He made brutal punishments including stoning women to death for alleged adultery and throwing gay men off of high buildings.

That was one thing that happened.  The other thing that happened is that the President took a victory lap despite the fact that his Syria troop withdrawal actually complicated plans for the raid at least according to reporting in the New York Times.  The President delivered a typically bizarre narcissistic political performance in which he tried to bask in the reflected glory of special operators before getting a rude awakening that very evening when he was loudly booed at the World Series.

But that`s just the president being who he is.  That part of the story is now over and it`s not really what truly matters.  What must be reckoned with now is the impact of the death of the ISIS leader both in the region and beyond amid fears of an ISIS resurgence driven by the President`s decision to effectively greenlight that Turkish invasion by withdrawing U.S. troops.  We then redeployed to guard Syrian oilfields but the President seems to think are hours but are not ours.

For more on the meeting and what actually happened, I`m joined by Mehdi Hasan, a Columnist and Senior Contributor of The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed Podcast.  Also, Tony Blinken, former National Security Advisor in just a second.

Mehdi, let me start with you.  Obviously, there`s a profound symbolic and sort of human justice angle to this, which is that ISIS under Baghdadi really was one of the most evil war criminal enterprises of our lifetime.

MEHDI HASAN, COLUMNIST AND SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, THE INTERCEPT:  There`s no doubt about that.  And good riddance to him, and I think you`re right to say the world is a better place without him.  And this is a blow to ISIS.  There`s no debate about that.  I mean, they`ve lost their calif and their caliphate both over the last year.

But at the same time, Chris, over the last year, while they`ve been on the run, while they`ve lost their caliphate, perhaps because they lost their caliphate and switched back to being a transnational terror outfit, they`ve carried out some horrific attacks across the world from five people killed in a Christmas market in France to 250 people killed at churches in Sri Lanka, to 90 people killed at a wedding in Afghanistan.

This is a group that still has the capability to carry out mass-casualty attacks.  And that`s with or without Baghdadi in charge.  And unfortunately, Chris, we`ve also seen the script before in 2006, as you know, the Bush administration killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor group to ISIS.

And they, in 2010, they killed Baghdadi`s predecessor.  In 2011, Barack Obama killed both Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.  At every stage, we were told, these are big victories in the war on terror.  It turns out 18 years after 9/11, we`re still fighting the war on terror and always given all these more and more terror.

HAYES:  I want to bring in now Tony Blinken who is the former Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy National Security Advisor, and now advising the Biden campaign on foreign policy.  Tony, let me ask you about the timing here and then I want to get to this bigger question about sort of where we are in the "war on terror."

The timing -- the time sort of solved the puzzle for me, which is why is this happening now?  And the time seems to suggests from their reporting that essentially the was rushed because of the withdrawal and the closing window to be able to carry out the operation.  What do you make of that?

TONY BLINKEN, FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE:  Look, deeply upsetting.  It`s great that we got Baghdadi.  He deserves what he got.  But at the same time, we have to understand that when you look at what happened, why did this succeed?  It succeeded because we had forces on the ground, small numbers of special operators.  President Trump wants to pull them out.

It succeeded because we were working closely with allies and partners who gave us intelligence starting with the Kurds.  The President has betrayed them.  And it succeeded because our own intelligence community is so good at developing the information necessary to find this guy and yet they are denigrated every single day by the President.

So I`m glad he gave the OK to do the operation.  But the truth of the matter is, it happened in spite of him, not because of him.  And the fact that it had to be rushed because there was so much concerned that he was going to pull everyone out we wouldn`t be able to carry out the operation, is unfortunately, the icing on this on this cake.

HAYES:  I saw -- let me follow up on that and then I`ll come back to you, Mehdi.  Tony, I saw several folks in the region including some Kurdish activist and writer who I follow and folks who are in Syria saying, look, Baghdadi was a brutal butcher but this doesn`t make our lives any better.  Like the region is still mired in war and chaos.

I mean, you have the Iraqi Government firing on protesters, killing dozens of them.  The same kinds of heavy-handed tactics that led to ISIS getting support in the first place.  What do you -- what do you say about the sort of broader critique of what exactly is the U.S. doing in the region and is it bringing us towards a more peaceful tomorrow or perpetuating this kind of cycle of violence?

BLINKEN:  Yes, Chris, you`re exactly right.  And, you know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, we`ve seen this story before.  And the politics of this are just as important as anything that`s happening militarily.  If you`re creating conditions or you`re not doing anything to prevent conditions from a rising that make groups feel marginalized and then more susceptible to extremism and terrorism, then the problem is going to perpetuate itself.

And of course what`s deeply unfortunate too, is the only thing apparently that could convince the President to stick with anything in Syria was this notion that we would stay there for the oil, which is, of course, exactly what the narrative of ISIS has been that were out there to get their oil.

HAYES:  Mehdi, let me ask you about that.  I mean, here`s bizarre, the President talking about the oil, we got the oil fields.  He even said we`re going to make a deal with Exxon.  The Geneva Conventions are actually quite explicit on this.  You just can`t go take people`s resources in a war of conquest.  Not that that stops anyone.

But what do you make of the president sort of taking -- he seems to have a knack for taking leftist anti-imperialist critique of American foreign policy and then --

HASAN:  Yes, exactly.

HAYES:  -- making it the proud center of what he does?

HASAN:  It`s almost -- it`s beyond parody.  And he is he`s almost like a Bond villain who also tells you his whole master plan before he tries to kill you.  He just says out loud.  And as you say, this is going to be -- he`s a recruiting surgeon for ISIS, Chris, in so many ways.

Tony mentioned the whole oil argument which is obviously been a narrative for a long time.  He also is someone who is an Islamophobe which obviously helps group fight ISIS recruit disillusion, angry young men from across the world, not just from across the Middle East.  He`s featured -- he`s been featured in ISIS recruiting videos.  And his Muslim ban has definitely been a recruiting ad for ISIS.

So in many ways, he helps "the enemy."  Just one thing on the U.S. President and the region.  I do worry now that people are saying, oh, well, look, this is the importance of keeping U.S. forces on the ground.  You know, take a step back, big picture.

HAYES:  Right.

HASAN:  The president that Tony worked for, Barack Obama, said in the interview with Vice a few years ago, he admitted it.  He said, you can draw a direct line between the invasion of Iraq and the creation of ISIS.  Let`s not forget that ISIS did not exist in Iraq until the U.S. invaded Iraq illegally in 2003.  In fact, Baghdadi some experts believe was partly radicalized himself in a U.S. prison in Iraq.

So let`s not forget the big picture about you know, the root causes about foreign policy, and even Donald Rumsfeld, who I hate to quote, but 16 years ago, this very month, October 2003, he sent a famous memo to his aides at the Pentagon saying, and I quote, "we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror.  Are we killing, capturing more people that are being recruited to fight against us?"  It`s a great question still never been answered in my view.

HAYES:  All right, Mary Hassan and Tony Blinken, thank you both for your time tonight.  It was great.  Next, the stunning and unnerving resignation of freshman Congresswoman Katie Hill who tonight says she`s a victim of a revenge porn scheme.  What we know after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  California freshman Democrat Katie Hill announced this past weekend that she is resigning from congress.  And the reasons for that decision are both complicated and unnerving.

Last week, the House ethics committee initiated an investigation into Congresswoman Hill, because of an allegation that she had a  romantic relationship with congressional staffer.  She has denied that allegation.  She has admitted, however, to a romantic relationship with a campaign staffer.

But the reason that we know all of this, the reason this has all come to a head, is that Congresswoman Hill is in the middle of an acrimonious divorce from her husband, Kenny Heslep, who she alleges was both abusive to her and also the source of the images of her -- the intimate images of her -- that have been posted to several sites now, which she`ll notes in her statement, is illegal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KATIE HILL, (D) CALIFORNIA:  I will fight to ensure that no one else has to live through what I just experienced.  Some people call this electronic assault digital exploitation, others call it revenge porn.  As the victim of it, I call it one of the worst things that we can do to our sisters and our daughters.

I am grateful for all of you who have spoken out about this in recent days.  As I have before, I will stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, because there`s one thing I know for sure: I will not allow my experience to scare off other young women or girls from running for office.  For the sake of all of us, we cannot let that happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  The reality is this appears to have successfully forced Katie Hill, a very promising young member of congress, from office. 

Here with me now, someone who has studied public opinion in American politics, associate professor of political science at Fordham University Christina Greer.

We don`t know what we don`t know in terms of relationships with staffers.  She`s denied the relationship with the staff in congress and she acknowledged one of the campaign staffers, so sort of putting aside that is not great and problematic and maybe there`s more of that.  But it really seems like the bad guys won here, to oversimplify.

CHRISTINA GREER, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY:  I put it at the feet of certain journalistic outlets, or -- yeah...

HAYES:  I mean, if you can call it that.

GREER:  Yeah, exactly, who published these photos.  I mean, this is a form of technological  domestic violence in some ways, especially if the soon to be ex-husband is behind this.

I mean, we know that there`s persistent gender bias in the workplace.  I mean, you can ask almost every single woman who has been in the workplace, and we know there is some serious differences between how women and men are treated.  But we know in the house, as of January 2019, there are 102 women out of 435, the largest class ever.  There are 25 senators out of 100, the largest class ever.  We know that we have a long way to go for gender parity and gender equity on a whole host of levels, and so this is yet another example of we`ve seen men time and time again be able to ride this out.  We have men who are currently in her own state who are waiting just to see if it passes over.  They didn`t resign.  I`m thinking of Duncan Hunter.

HAYES:  Duncan Hunter...

GREER:  I`m thinking of Newton Leroy Gingrich who had multiple affairs on his first wife and multiple affairs with his second wife, both with staffers and campaign aides, right.  And so these are ways that men in so many ways get a pass by the press, they get a pass by their colleagues, they get a pass by their party.

I know with Katie Hill, we`re dealing with multiple issues simultaneously, ethically and also legally, but something doesn`t sit right with a lot of Democrats, and something doesn`t sit right with a lot of women this evening with how this all sort of shook out.

HAYES:  Matt Gaetz, who is obviously a very conservative member of congress and very polarizing and polemical figure, defended her a few days ago.  And I think there`s -- I mean, we should say for apples to apples, Joe Barton, who is a Republican Texas congressman did have images -- intimate images of him posted and published.  He did not resign, but he announced he was retiring, so that is a thing that has happened recently, which, again, I felt at the time that it was messed up for people to publish that.

GREER:  Right.

HAYES:  Like, we should say, Red State and Daily Mail I think are the two outlets that published this, and like that decision  to me is just utterly and completely indefensible.  You are essentially complicit in a crime, a statutory violation.

GREER:  But not just complicit, you are making it now a story.  And it`s a titillating story. 

HAYES:  That`s the other thing you can`t get around, exactly.

GREER:  And this is something that`s not appropriate.  It has nothing to do with the other part that we should be addressing.

HAYES:  You could also report on that without posting the images which seems to me like part of what is happening.

The other thing someone on the All In staff raised today that I thought was a great point was like, Katie Hill I think is around 34.

GREER:  32.

HAYES:  32, right.  There is an entire generation of Americans who have been taking selfies and images of themselves in various contexts, whether in parties or in intimate relationships, with consenting adults, and those images -- like there`s going to be a generation of members of congress and politicians where there are thousands of images just around.  And it`s like we`re going to have to decide as a society if we`re going to let that be some permanent source of blackmail that every person who has a grudge out for you the rest of your life, that you dated in college and then could go on to be a Democrat and they`re a Republican, is going to be able to like bring you down with.

GREER:  These are real questions that I have with my students, right.  I mean, we talk about they are a generation where  to be on their phone, to take pictures and  to share them with sometimes total strangers, is a very normal process.  And I walk them through Gary Hart (ph) being on a boat called The Monkey Business, even doing monkey business, to you know Bill Clinton sort of phone calls before he became the president, with Anthony Weiner and, you know, DMs on Twitter.  And now we see sort of running to the full -- it`s not even the extreme of the line, because we don`t even know what`s beyond this going forward, which is quite worrisome, because we don`t want to lose a future generation of leaders to this type of nonsense.

HAYES:  Christina Greer, thank you very much for your time.

Still ahead, what happens when a leader who only surrounds himself with adoring fans decides to walk amongst the normies.  A popping of the Trump bubble coming up.  Plus, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  Thing One tonight, among the mammals this president seems to have a problem with, there`s something particular reply weird about him and dogs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP:  A lot of people choke, they choke like dogs, they can`t breathe.

They choked.  He went away.  He choked just like a dog.  He choked. 

I`m watching Marco sweating like a dog on my right.

And he was sired like a dog.

Throw you the hell out like a dog.

She lied like a dog.

I see her barking like a dog.  She`s barking like a dog.

And he was run out of office like a dog.

He died like a dog.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  The guy hates dogs.  Why?  We don`t know.  But he is the first president in a century to not have a dog at the White House.  Of course, he is also the first president to salute a North Korean general, so, you know, he`s a special snow flake this one.

This weekend, Donald Trump finally had something nice to say about man`s best friend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP:  Our canine as they call, I call it a dog,, a beautiful dog, a talented dog.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  You call it a canine, I call it a dog.  The hero canine is Thing Two in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  Among the heroic figures, the Baghdadi raid was apparently the military dog who accompanied Delta Force soldiers on their mission, Trump is captivated by it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP:  Our dog was hurt, actually the canine was hurt.  Went into the tunnel, but we lost nobody.  Our canine, as they call, I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog, was injured and  brought back. 

We had nobody even hurt.  And that`s why the dog was so great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  There`s a lot of, of course concern about the canine, or the dog, the canine dog, its health after that.  Thankfully, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the canine was, quote, slightly wounded and fully recovering.  Tonight, Trump posted a dog photo on Twitter.  He says it is a declassified photo of the, quote, wonderful dog.  He says the dog`s name is still classified.

The dog already has an invitation to the White House, quote, whenever he can get over here.  A senior official saying the president wants to meet him.  And maybe a good boy wants some hamburgers.  You want some hamburgers, good boy?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  Last week on Monday night,k I was joining you live from Los Angeles, where we had our second live WITH pod tour date in L.A. at the beautiful theater at the Ace Hotel.  I had an incredible conversation with writer/director Adam McKay and fiction writer Omar el-Akkad, about the struggle of representing climate change.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ADAM MCKAY, WRITER/DIRECTOR:  When I saw, mankind has never been alive with this much CO2 in the atmosphere, and then that led me to read about the atmosphere.  And what you realize pretty quickly is the atmosphere is almost like the human eye in the sense that it is a miracle that it exists.  And it is one of the top three preconditions for life, for the entire existence of planet Earth.

Now at this point, when I`m reading about this, my wife is really sick of me.  My daughters are now avoiding me at this point.  But I`m scared.  I`m like legitimately frightened and I get to the place that you`re talking about, which is how do you express this without seeming crazy?

(END AUDIOD CLIP)

HAYES:  It was such a fun night.  Both Omar and Adam were fascinating guests.  The crowd was absolutely electric.  And if you were not able to be at the theater at the Ace Hotel last week, you`ll be happy to know that episode is just hours from being available.  Go to wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe to Why This is Happening now.

Also some good news about our next date, which is November 12 in Chicago with author and historian Ibram Kendi, author most recently of How to be an Anti-Racist, and MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient, and New York Times Magazine domestic correspondent Nicole Hannah Jones, who conceived the 1619 project about the legacy of slavery.

We`ll be talking about race, slavery and anti-racism in the Trump era.  Tickets to that event sold out extremely quickly, but we`ve just added some standing room only tickets.  You can get those by going to MSNBC.com/withpodtour.  We were psyched to see you there in Chicago.

And we`ve got a December date coming up in New York City we`ll be announcing soon.  Stay tuned for details.  And you can be part of that audience.

Speaking of audiences, this was no MAGA rally in D.C. last night, what it sounded like and what it meant for the country to see the president leaving his bubble, meeting the majority of Americans that just don`t support him next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER:  And we`re joined by the president and first lady of the United States.

(BOOING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  It is an iron law of Donald Trump`s presidency and his image management that his staff make sure he is never brought into direct contact with members of the public who do not like him. He does staged events with handpicked supporters, enormous rallies with his most ardent base.  If there`s a brief protester that punctures the atmosphere, they get shouted down.

And the rare instances where he does venture outside his safe spaces, like his appearance on Friday at Benedict College, a historically black college in South Carolina, his people work extra hard to  make sure all criticism will be kept away.

According to the state newspaper, quote, "students were told to stay in their dorms while President Donald Trump is on campus."

The Washington Post`s Josh Dawsey (ph) reported on the number of students who actually showed up to the event, quote, "nine students were confirmed, but two had ROTC training, meaning seven attended."

Which is why the moment at last night`s world series game in D.C. was so remarkable.  The rarest of instances in which the very unpopular president, likely soon to be impeached, had direct contact with the public that doesn`t like him much.  And in addition to all the boos, some people unfurled "impeach Trump" banners in the middle of the game.  So Donald Trump had last night an unscripted moment in front of the approximately 55 percent of the country that is not a fan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD:  Lock him up.  Lock him up.  Lock him up.  Lock him up.  Lock him up.  Lock him up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Joining me now to discuss the president`s relationship to the majority of the country that disapproves of him, Olivia Nuzzi, she`s Washington correspondent for New York Magazine, she got a a great story about Joe Biden titled "The Zombie Campaign" which is out this week, and Sam Seder, host of The Majority  Report and an MSNBC contributor. 

And since you`re here, Sam, let me start with you.  I mean, it really is striking like all politicians have managed events.

SAM SEDER, HOST, MAJORITY REPORT:  Right.

HAYES:  It`s just like part of being a politician, particularly presidents.  But there`s almost a kind of Truman-show-like quality around Trump where he just never -- it was true on the campaign, other people were doing rope lines, taking questions at town halls, never, ever, ever interacts with the majority of the country that does not like him.

SEDER:  Right.  And this is not exactly a one-to-one situation.  He`s in a sky box and there`s just a stadium full of people.

Yeah I mean, I think it was pretty healthy.  I mean, you know, this is obviously an organic thing, this is not a situation where, you know, Nancy Pelosi is standing in front of the crowd on the field saying, you know, trying to whip up -- I mean, because that`s what it`s been compared to in certain instances, and it seems like a fairly ridiculous comparison.

I mean, the issue here is that Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world, and the fact that he comes out of the kingdom and the castle and gets some tomatoes thrown at him, or potatoes, that`s just, you know, it comes with the territory.

But it is stunning that he`s never been able to do that.

HAYES:  Never.  I mean, this is the thing, Olivia, when reading your piece about the Biden campaign and part of it is about how the Biden campaign is fairly different than some of the other campaigns.  He`s a front-runner.  He`s a former vice president.  He does less fewer events and does less of this sort of like retailing campaigning, but still, he still goes to work for (inaudible), he still talks to people, he still takes pictures with people.  There`s still a world in which Joe Biden has to interact with citizens which is part of the way that we get politicians in a democratic society that Donald Trump never went through.

OLIVIA NUZZI, NEW YORK MAGAZINE:  No, he never did.  You know, early on in the campaign before Donald Trump had secret service, and before it was such a big thing, when people still thought it would never work and he still thought that.  T hey were a little more nimble, they would travel in one car.  A former White House aide told me once that Donald Trump used to like to stop at red lights and go hand people $100 bills which is sort of a weird thing to do.

HAYES:  Yes.

NUZZI:  Like to go through the drive through at McDonald`s.  And that is what he enjoyed.  But, no, he never went across to a rope line, he never took a thousand selfies with people who he didn`t need anything from in that moment besides their attention, their vote eventually, not the way the he does now in the White House where he kinds of owes everybody something who comes up to him to take a picture with him.

And he gets very tired of that.  I remember back at Christmastime, I reported a story about how he hated Christmas parties, because he hated having to stand there and take pictures and shake hands and play nice for two or three hours at a time. 

So this is just not what he`s good at.  And it really struck me listening to those boos, watching his face, that when you`re at a Trump rally, there`s a voice that comes over the loudspeaker before it begins and it tells his supporters what to do.  It says, if there`s -- I`m paraphrasing, but if there is a  protester, shout them down, don`t get violent.  Somebody will come and take them out if you shout at them enough and you raise your Trump signs in the air.

And in real life, that doesn`t happen.

HAYES:  Right.

NUZZI:  He can`t -- you know, he can`t just hope that everyone in that stadium who doesn`t like him is hauled out of there.

HAYES:  And there`s a deeper thing here, which is that, like, he is very clearly -- he`s the president of his 40 percent.

SEDER:  Yeah.

HAYES:  He doesn`t pretend to be representing all Americans.  He doesn`t speak to them.  It`s such a bizarre aspect of his presidency, this insidious sort of attack on the basic democratic culture we have, which is that he doesn`t even pretend -- they are written out of the story of Donald Trump except this, like, the enemy and the fake news.

SEDER:  I mean, that dynamic is not just with Donald Trump.  I mean, you know, we look at the storming of the SCIF the other day.

HAYES:  Yep.

SEDER:  Look, there was a time 10, 15 years ago where the play was, we have a narrative in the right-wing media and the key is how do we filter that into the mainstream media?  Now  there`s no attempt to do that.  There are two separate...

HAYES:  That`s a great point.

SEDER:  ...narratives that are existing. Certainly the conservative media does not need the mainstream, because they`ve now sequestered -- and that`s what`s so fascinating about that moment where Donald Trump steps out of that bubble, and that stream, into the normal people stream into, you know, the normal people stream and I wonder -- the real question in my mind is, how upset is he today?

HAYES:  Right.

SEDER:  Is that a shock to him?

HAYES:  Right.

SEDER:  Who is keeping him from these people?

HAYES:  That is my point about the Truman Show.  Olivia, there`s this amazing image of Tomi Lahren, who is a right-wing commentator, like, she posted on Twitter a page of, like, complimentary replies sent to the president that are clearly printed and hand delivered that he mailed her and it just made me think, like, it is a Truman Show operation, like it is a world that revolves around telling him that everyone loves him.

NUZZI:  Yeah, but I think that goes back to Trump Tower.  If anyone would go visit him there, a journalist, even if they weren`t nice, he sent me a note like that.  He sends journalists handwritten notes to say thank you.

I think it`s more about making people feel special and kind of playing to people`s ego, because he likes his own ego played to.  So, I didn`t read so much into that.

But I do wonder as well how upset he was today if at all, or if there is a part of him who thinks this is like pro-wrestling.  He understood what it was like when he was in the ring with Vince McMahon and shaving his head, but he opted not to be the enemy in that scenario, if anyone remembers that.  He opted to make Vince McMahon the enemy, because I don`t think he could hack it.

So real life, again, isn`t like that.  And in that arena, he was the enemy.

HAYES:  Olivia Nuzzi and Sam Seder, thanks for joining us.  This Friday, we`re back in studio 6a.  Our special show in front of a live studio audience.  This month we`ll be doing three Fridays in a row.  If you`re in or around New York City, you should come join us, completely new and unique way to experience the show.  Tickets are available right now.  You can find a link to them on Facebook and Twitter.  We`re releasing all tickets at once.  You get them for this Friday, November 1 or whichever date you can come.  Hope to see you soon.

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

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