JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: You will not want to miss it. Thanks so much for being with us. Don`t go anywhere, "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes is up next and he is including in one of his -- among his guests will be Bobby Rush, Congress and Bobby Rush. We just talked about him just a short while ago, so you do want to stay there for that. Thanks for being here.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN. Statues of racists toppled across the country as the President doubles down on the Confederacy and dominating protesters. Senator Mazie Hirono on her vote to remove Confederate names from military bases.
Plus, Symone Sanders on what Joe Biden plans to do as president and why he`s against defunding the police. Then, new Coronavirus spikes and the stock market plunges even as the president tries to pretend the virus has gone away. Former CDC head Dr. Richard Besser on the shocking federal response.
And police caught on camera lounging inside the office of Congressman Bobby Rush as looters ran free in Chicago. Congressman Rush will join me when ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. In the sixth month of the year 2020, America is finally moving, albeit faithfully, towards a consensus on banning chokeholds by police officers and toppling statues of racist traders. It`s a remarkable moment both because it has taken so long to get here, and also because it does represent very significant progress.
On Monday, after House Democrats unveiled a sweeping bill to reform policing that included a ban on chokeholds among other items, today, the top Republican in the House Kevin McCarthy says he agrees with that ban, and that his party conceptually agrees with much of what House Democrats proposed.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you support banning chokeholds?
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Yes, especially in the concept if you watch within the bill coming forward, the idea of someone that would have a chokehold when somebody is handcuffed or others, there should be severe consequences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: There should be severe consequences. That`s been true for a long time. That is not something Republicans were saying before the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Now, public opinion has dramatically pushed in the direction of police reform at the minimum, or something even more perhaps.
Also, today, we learned Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has spoken out against no knock warrants before is filing legislation to ban them nationwide. No knock warrants are the ones that led to the police killing of 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Police just showing up and knocking down, her door her boyfriend had no idea who it was.
Republicans still have yet to agree on unveiled their overall police reform plan and who knows where they will land. But it all does count as progress, incremental though it may be, as does the toppling of statues of racist traders, like this one of Confederate President Jefferson Davis which came down last night in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy.
I think these Confederate statues that you`re seeing come down were not erected in mournful commemoration of defeat, but it`s a kind of marking of a victory over the forces of black equality during the rise of the Jim Crow South decades or more after the end of the Civil War.
They were put there as a rebuke to black Americans after reconstruction, after their claims for equality have been beaten back, often violently by white supremacist policies and governments. That statue of Jefferson Davis that came down last night, it was erected by a so-called Confederate heritage group in 1907, 40 years after the war, during a period when thousands of black Americans were being lynched across this nation in the south particularly.
This bust of Confederate General and early KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest was put up in the Tennessee State Capitol in 1978. How`s that for history, 1978? These statues were not erected to some outpouring of grief and loss. No, they were explicitly at the time symbols of white supremacy. They said, we are back in charge and you will remember that every time you walk by this statue.
On Tuesday, Tennessee state lawmakers, most of whom are Republicans voted to keep that bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who`s really, by the way, one of the worst capitol building. And that is the thing. While we are seeing signs of progress, the Republican Party, the party that defeated the Confederacy, the party that was born to defeat the confederacy has become the home of the Confederacy`s last defenders.
That element of the party is a champion has a champion in the current president who says he will not even consider renaming military bases honoring Confederates, which why are there U.S. army bases named after traders in the year 2020, traders who killed American troops?
Of course, that is who the President is. He`s the guy who defended marchers at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 who were there to support a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, someone who chanted Jews will not replace us, and one of whom murdered a peaceful protester in cold blood the next day.
Donald Trump means a lot to racists and he knows that. There`s an undeniable racial component to the bond that he has in a certain part of his base. There is a reason why these guys in New Jersey who despicably recreated the image of George Floyd`s death while confronting Black Lives Matters protesters are proudly displaying a Trump flag. They know what that symbolism is. They know what that flag means and what it stands for.
The Trump flag in that context is not that different from a Jefferson Davis statue and the meaning to those men. It is not that different from the Confederate flag. They know what it means. It`s not an accident. And Donald Trump is supposed to be the person to offer some concrete solutions to racial inequities in America, or policing, or really anything.
Late this afternoon, the President held a roundtable on race relations in policing at a conservative evangelical mega church in Dallas. He alternated between reading awkwardly off his script and adlibbing about all kinds of stuff. It mounted to a whole lot of nothing, as per usual, just empty words.
But in the other political coalition in America, it`s a majority political notion at this moment, at least if you believe the polling, if you look at the 2018 results, if you look at the 2016 results in the presidential election. That coalition is genuinely multiracial and it doesn`t agree on everything at all. In fact, there is real sometimes vicious, intense, substantive debate and conflict happening over questions of racial equality and policing and racial hierarchy and reparations and making the country a new.
And the candidate nominated by that political coalition, who today presented his proposals for getting the economy back on track has also released a long list of reform proposals including a ban on chokeholds like the house legislation, the Federal Police oversight commission, and new standards for when police can use force. Last week, he said this in a speech addressing systemic racism.
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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We`ve had talked before, we`ve had protests before, we`ve got to now vowed to make this at least an area of action and reverse the systemic racism with the long overdue concrete changes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Joining me now for more on the dichotomy and attitudes on race between the President and former Vice President Joe Biden, Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor for the Biden presidential campaign.
Symone, it`s great to have you on the program. I guess, first, you know, the President went down and made this speech round table. Vice President Biden has addressed this multiple times over the last week or so. What do you see is the main contrast here for voters as they`re thinking about who to choose between?
SYMONE SANDERS, SENIOR ADVISOR, BIDEN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Leadership. Look, this is a tale of two presidents here. Over the last hour -- we would argue over the course of this entire election cycle, but definitely over the last week and a half, we have seen Vice President Biden step up for Donald Trump has not.
The Friday, where unrest had gripped this country and Donald Trump went to the Rose Garden to make a speech and everyone thought he was going to talk about Minneapolis and address the unrest that was happening in this country, he gave a speech that was about China, and was talking about Hong Kong and all these other things.
Meanwhile, that same day, Joe Biden not just released a statement but spoke directly to the American people live and address the pain that many folks across this country were feeling. He gave voice to the protesters. He gave voice to -- and how lighted George Floyd`s last words "I can`t breathe."
And then that following week, we have that Monday, you know, notoriously at this point, Donald Trump going to a podium proclaiming he is the president of law and order and he`s an ally of peaceful protesters, but peaceful protesters were being tear-gassed and dispersed right outside of the White House on a split-screen so Donald Trump could have a photo op in front of a church brandishing a Bible upside down that he, as Vice President Biden noted, should have been open.
The next day you saw Vice President Biden go to Philadelphia, the heart and the founding of this country and speak to the American people and give a presidential address that really gave us a roadmap for how to move forward.
He noted that George Floyd`s words and this unrest is not happening in a vacuum, that George Floyd`s last words reverberated across this country, across this nation, and it comes on top of the death of Breonna Taylor, on top of the horrific lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, on top of more than 100,000 deaths due to the Coronavirus pandemic, more than 42 million people file for unemployment insurance.
Chris, many of those folks are African American and Latino disproportionately. So there are compounding things happening here. And I just I guess would end by saying that Joe Biden has stepped up in a way that Donald Trump has never been able to step up. And he will continue to do so, Vice President Biden will, because that`s just the kind of person he is and that`s the kind of president he will be.
HAYES: Joe Biden, of course, has unveiled a bunch of reform measures, some of them in line with the House Democratic package. Some people have noted that Biden is an interesting fit for this moment. Joe Biden has a long career in public life. He has been a law and order kind of politician.
In many points in his life, he was the architect -- one of the architects of the crime bill. He`s been endorsed by the police union in his home state of Delaware. He`s called for harsher penalties on people that threw raids or things like that. I guess my question to you is, do you think -- has Joe Biden changed the way he views the American criminal justice system or policing, or have the times changed? How do you see that trajectory?
SANDERS: Well Chris, I really do not enjoy attempting to, you know, re litigate what was happening in the early 90s when I was like three years old. But I think context is important here. And --
HAYES: Well, you work for Joe Biden. I mean, he was there.
SANDERS: Well, you know, I mean -- but I mean, look, the context is important here, though, Chris. And I will tell you that at the time of the crime bill, there was rampant crime in this country. Mayors, pastors, folks all across the board were crying out for reform.
But here`s the important point here, that the only mechanism we currently have in this country to hold police officers accountable was a measure that was written into the crime bill pattern or practice investigation. That is the only measure that we currently have to hold rogue police departments accountable.
It is a -- it is a power that the Obama-Biden Justice Department exercise which resulted in consent decrees in places -- consent decrees in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. And once Donald Trump came into office, it was his Justice Department, first led by Jeff Sessions, that sought to undo specifically the consent decree in Baltimore.
So, what I`ll tell you is that Vice President Biden has been very clear about his vision for not just criminal justice reform, but true race or equity across the board in America. As when it comes to criminal justice reform, he says that we do need real police reform right now. He has detailed a number of measures, many of which that the House have written into their bill.
But he also talks about expanding that pattern of practice to include prosecutor`s offices, because prosecutors also need to be held accountable, and there`s currently not a mechanism to do that. So, I would just argue that Vice President Biden is actually extremely right for this moment.
He`s the only person that correctly diagnosed what this country was going through more than a year and a half ago when he said he was running for president to restore the soul of this nation, rebuild the backbone of this country, and unite America.
HAYES: The vice president said something to Trevor Noah that I wanted to play for you because it goes along with reporting people I`ve talked to in the Biden camp and generally I think Democratic circles have real anxiety about November, particularly as we look at what happened in Wisconsin, we look at what happened in Georgia, what the actual mechanisms and administration of this election will be. I want to play the Vice President`s comments and get you to elaborate a little bit. This is what he said.
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BIDEN: This president is going to try to steal this election. This is a guy who said that all mail-in ballots are fraudulent while he sits behind the desk and Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in a primary.
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HAYES: That word, steal the election, is an intense one. I don`t necessarily think it`s a crazy idea, given what the ways he`s attacked the administration of the election. What do you -- what are the fears are? What is the worry about specifically what this election looks like in November and what the President might do?
SANDERS: Well, look, Chris, I think that Vice President Biden was very on the nose and clear about this. We have seen the president over the last couple of weeks tweet about absentee ballots being mailed in places like Michigan and Nevada. Erroneously tweeting actually, because they weren`t building absentee ballots, they were mailing absentee ballot applications. But he is attempted to cast doubt on the vote by mail process when he himself voted by mail in this past primary, when his own press secretary has voted by mail 11 times in the last 10 years. So that is a true concern.
While there is real misinformation and disinformation happening out there around this election by foreign entities and foreign actors, there is an active move from the White House and some of our Republican friends to suppress the vote. And they`re saying the quiet part out loud, Chris. They believe that if turnout is up, if people go to the polls this November, that will spell the defeat of Donald Trump`s presidency.
And so, we are out to defend the rights for every American to cast a ballot, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green Party or whatever, because the cornerstone of our democracy are free and fair elections. And that was threatened in places like Wisconsin in this past primary, but also, we saw it just this week in Georgia.
And what happened in Georgia is unacceptable. And we have called on the governor and the Secretary of State in Georgia to ensure that they remedy those issues before November. We have election protection experts. We`re working with the Democratic National Committee across the -- in places and states across the country, because this election is just -- is just so important.
And even though this election yes is happening in the backdrop of a global pandemic, we still have to ensure that they`re safe in-person voting options for folks come this November,
HAYES: Symone Sanders of the Biden campaign, it`s great to have you on the program. Come back again. I appreciate it.
SANDERS: Absolutely, anytime.
HAYES: Joining me now for more on the President`s commitment to keeping the name of Confederate generals on American military bases Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii. She`s a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee where she co-sponsored the proposal to remove the names of Confederate officers from U.S. bases that was approved by that committee.
Senator, the president after it already passed out of the committee by voice vote urged Republicans not to vote for it, which was like 15 hours too late. But tell me how it came about, how did the idea germinate, and what was the receptivity of your colleagues across the aisles to the idea?
SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): I`m so glad that Elizabeth Warren decided to introduce this amendment to the NDAA. And I was one of the first people that she asked to co-sponsor which I did. But it just goes to show how fast things are moving, the momentum is building. And frankly, when we first talked about her amendment, I didn`t know whether we were even going to be bringing it for a vote. But the dynamics are such, the momentum was building outside of the Capitol and people here were listening.
And so at this pivotal moment, we were able to get this amendment into the NDAA very significant. And yes, it is a compromise but nonetheless, it says that we will not have the symbols and the monuments to the Confederacy to people who tried to -- well who fought against the United States and tried to preserve slavery, that we should not be honoring or commemorating those people. And I think it`s high time that we did that.
HAYES: You`re on the Armed Services Committee and there was a remarkable moment today with the chairman the Joint Chiefs General Milley.
HIRONO: Yes.
HAYES: He of course famously appeared by the presence side in the now infamous walk for to St. John`s Church after the protesters had been assaulted to clear the room. He was then around the streets that night again, in his uniform. It caused tremendous anguish among the lots of folks I`ve talked to, veterans, active service members, and others about seeing that image.
And I want to show the apology he issued today which was really a striking moment. Take a listen to what he said.
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GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: As many of you saw, the results of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week, that sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.
As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I`ve learned from. And I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What is -- what do you make of that?
HIRONO: It was a very clear apology. And knowing how the hierarchy of the military is and the fact that the President is the commander in chief, to have General Milley come forward in such a strong clear way is remarkable, and I hope it is -- he is not the last person to speak out against the dangers of using the military to dominate peaceful protesters.
But that`s the picture that was given. That`s the kind of picture that Trump wants to continuously portray. He wants to dominate people who are exercising the First Amendment rights. He doesn`t care. All he cares about is himself and how he looks.
So I`m glad that the kind of commentary that`s arising out of the military and others is welcome at this point. And the one person who just doesn`t get it is Trump.
HAYES: What is your takeaway from the last week or so where we`ve seen the president urging American troops into the streets both -- he said that publicly and behind the scenes that there were standoffs around it, that Esper and Milley push back on that, at least according to reporting.
Where we are right now coming out of these few weeks in terms of the rule of law, and peaceful democracy, and the military as a non-partisan actor in American domestic political affairs?
HIRONO: I think the military leadership has to make really clear that they are not there to be politicized by this or any other president. And the rule of law, as far as President Trump is concerned, is out the window, aided and abetted by his Attorney General Barr. So the two of them only care about one thing, and that is the President`s re-election.
So the appalling statements that he continues to make, including, by the way, going after the 75-year-old protester who gets knocked down and starts bleeding, that he`s some sort of terrorists, that is how low the President will go. But you know, as General Mattis said, the President has spent the last three years dividing this country from the moment he got elected.
This country needs to be brought together, but we are going to do it without the president. And one of the ways we are going to do it is by passing that justice and policing act, really pushing for consent decrees that will basically tell the police departments to clean up their acts by imposing national standards for police behavior.
And we need to support free and fair elections, in spite of the fact that the President doesn`t even want to support the post office. He wants them to go under so that we can`t submit our ballots by mail and that we can`t turn in our census from. The kinds of suppression that this President engage in the kind of divisiveness is just so overt that more people are getting it.
As somebody said, you know, and I agree, we don`t all wake up woke, but when we are woke, we better do something about it. And that`s what we`re doing with this amendment that we got into the NDAA. And we`re going to keep going because you`re not going to ferret out the kind of persistent, institutionalized racism that has existed in this country for way, way too long. With one bill, one measure, we have to persist.
HAYES: Senator Mazie Hirono of the State of Hawaii, thank you, Senator, for taking time.
HIRONO: Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, Coronavirus spikes across several states and stocks plunged and the White House turns a blind eye. Former acting CDC Director Richard Besser on the Trump administration`s refusal to adequately address the continued Coronavirus outbreak and what we need to do about it next.
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HAYES: U.S. Stock Markets dropped today with the Dow Jones plunging nearly 2,000 points after reaching these crazy peaks for weeks now. And that`s partly because of a pessimistic forecast by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell who just warned that the labor market could take years to recover.
But it is also partly because it appears to have dawned on Wall Street all at once that the Coronavirus did not really leave. I mean, we`ve been through this exact thing before. Remember, when the Coronavirus first came to our shores in February, we did not have enough testing and when it started to achieve community transmission, the President was not focused on the virus, he was just focused on the economy, particularly the Stock Market because he wanted to get reelected.
So as the virus was spreading and preparing to infect and kill more than 100,000 Americans, the President was saying stuff like this.
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TRUMP: Because of all we`ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.
It`s going to disappear. One day, it`s like a miracle, it will disappear.
If you take a solid flu vaccine, you don`t think that would have an impact or much of an impact on Corona?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
TRUMP: You have to be calm. It`ll go away.
The virus that we`re talking about having to do you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.
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HAYES: Typically, it`ll go away in April. Donald Trump thought he could just happy-talk his way to a better economy like he was like selling a condo, and the market will come back. In fact, on March 13th, do you remember this, he held this press conference right as the Dow was going to close. With a bunch of CEOs, he declared a national emergency. He brought them all out. It sent their stocks rallying into the close.
The President then signed the printout of the stock market charts for Fox Business hosts Lou Dobbs. Like mission accomplished. Look at that. Because that`s so he understands this. That is the way he always has. And then things got so bad with Coronavirus. He had to take it seriously for about a month. Then he got bored with it. And we were right back to where he`s telling everyone everything is fine.
Everything is not fine. Coronavirus infections are on the rise in at least 20 states things are looking particularly bad in states like Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah and Florida. Donald Trump made this mistake before. He pretended the problem was not there. He tried to happy talk his way through it. He focused on spinning the economy and it cost tens of thousands of American lives, and I am afraid we are watching it happen again.
Joining me now to talk about this Dr. Richard Besser, the former Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control under President Baraka Obama. He co-wrote an op-ed titled "We ran the CDC. Here`s how to talk to the public in a health crisis." And let`s talk about that.
Every public health expert I`ve talked to says Unified Messaging is so key. And right now, the messaging from the White House is everything is fine. Get back out there. What effect does that have?
RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: You know, that is one of the biggest challenges I`m seeing Chris. When I -- when I was running CDC during the -- during the start of the swine flu pandemic in 2009, one of the things that was the most important tools we had was communication, being able to talk to the public every day through media about what we were learning, what people could do to protect their health. And the messaging we were hearing from politicians was we want you to follow the public health science.
And what we`re seeing now as states are reopening is this conflict between public health and what public health says to do and the economy, when in fact, following good public health advice is the road map to sustained opening of the economy and economic growth.
Without that, the same groups that have been hit the hardest here, Black Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, they`ve been hit by the pandemic, they`ve been hit by the economic downturn the hardest, they`re going to continue to get hit as more economic activity is going on, because the systems won`t be in place to detect these outbreaks and to be able to respond to them very quickly.
HAYES: The one big difference -- so I feel like I`m taking crazy pills because I`m watching this happen all over again. And it happened from the beginning of the pandemic in China, where the Chinese Communist Party basically wanted to not -- wanted to pretend they didn`t have an outbreak on their hands. And they tried to sort of sweep it under the rug and it blew up in their faces.
I can`t believe we`re watching this happen in June with political leaders being like, don`t worry about it. The big difference though, here is we do have so much more testing capacity. We have eyes on the virus in a way we didn`t back in February that was so fatal to us. Does that matter enough? I mean, basically, can you keep an outbreak at the controlled but growing level that Arizona has it and not end up overwhelming your hospital system? Should that even be a public health goal that a lot of people get sick, but it`s not terribly catastrophic?
BESSER: Well, you know, until there`s a vaccine, the biggest weapon we have against this are these kinds of measures of wearing masks and washing hands and social distancing. And as the economy opens up more, there will be an increase in cases. But you have to make sure that everything is in place so that you`re able to detect those quickly.
So yes, we`re seeing case counts, and we`re seeing more testing, but we`re not seeing data broken down by race, by ethnicity by zip code. You may be doing very well across the state as a whole or in a city as a whole, but there may be particular neighborhoods that are being underserved.
And if you`re not collecting that data, and you`re not out there testing and you`re not working with those communities, and when you look at so many of the public health recommendations that were being made, Chris, so many people can`t follow them.
Imagine if you`re living in a household with your grandparents in a two bedroom and you`re told to stay away from other people in order to protect them. You have no option except to infect your loved ones.
HAYES: Quickly, I guess, is there a role for the CDC here, which seems to have gone totally AWOL, at least in its public facing role?
BESSER: You know, the CDC is putting a ton of stuff out there on their website, but without talking to the public every day and walking it through, they`re not able to galvanize the national spirit to follow all these things. So it is a critical, critical deficit right now.
HAYES: Dr. Richard Besser, who was the acting head of the CDC, thank you for making time tonight.
BESSER: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Later, the Chicago police officers caught on tape lounging around eating popcorn in a congressman`s field office as looters had their way with the city. Congressman Bobby Rush on this unbelievable scene ahead.
And next, has the pain on Main Street finally caught up to Wall Street? Explaining today`s bill sell-off and why the Trump`s administration reluctance to spend could be costly, next.
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HAYES: We had a weird thing happening for the last month or so. We`ve had essentially unprecedented levels of economic pain, and at the same time unprecedented stock growth. Things look very scary, uncertain to most working people, but to business TV, Donald Trump, Wall Street traders, everything looks great.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY KUDLOW, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC ADVISER: We`re going to have a fantastic third quarter and fourth quarter, and going right into 2021 could tremendous, tremendous comeback year.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The stock market is absolutely soaring. We saw with the S&P that it had its greatest 50 day rally in history. The Dow, likewise, is also booming. The markets clearly have confidence in President Trump.
TRUMP: We`re going to be stronger than we were when we were riding high. And our stock market is almost, it`s just short of an all-time high.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And then today things were suddenly not so great. Stock markets plunging for their biggest one day loss since March.
And to explain this weird disconnect and what is maybe changing, Alexis Goldstein, former Wall Street professional, now a senior policy analyst of the non-profit Americans for Financial Reform where she thinks and writes about Wall Street.
First let`s start with the disconnect, Alexis. You and I have talked about this before. It is so bizarre, right? We watched like 42 million people are unemployed, all of this devastation, the economy shut down and the stock market just roaring away. What is the explanation for that disconnect to your mind?
ALEXIS GOLDSTEIN, AMERICANS FOR FINANCIAL REFORM: I think the important thing to remember is that the system broadly, but especially the financial system, is set up to rescue capital and not to rescue human beings, right?
So when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell went out in late March and said, you know, the Fed is going to do whatever it takes, the market went game busters because the market just assumed that whatever it takes literally meant, as you said on your podcast recently with academic Sally Amaroba (ph), anything goes.
And so people were speculating that the Fed might even buy stocks if they needed to,m to boost the economy. And, you know, Wall Street is a herd mentality. And a lot of people have been very upset about the direction the market has been going, including, you know, analysts on Wall Street.
But one of the sayings on Wall Street is the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And so I think a lot of this irrational exuberance was part -- you know, the result of the Fed chair saying we`re going to do whatever we need to do.
And I think the disconnect is we don`t have an equivalence symmetry with lawmakers going on TV and saying we`re going to do whatever it takes to make sure you don`t go bankrupt, you don`t go hungry, we`ll extend UI if we need to, we`ll extend SNAP if it runs out, so there is this real focus on preserving capital and preserving the markets, and I think people believed that from the Fed for a long time, that they would do whatever they needed to do.
HAYES: And they have taken extraordinary steps. And many of those extraordinary steps, I think you and I have slightly different views on this, right, so many of these extraordinary steps I think have shored up things that could have spiraled into something much, much, much uglier and darker than what we have seen, right -- huge cascades of basically banks failing and huge cascades of companies going under.
But in terms of what turned today, I mean, you have Powell saying, look, not so fast. There are a lot of people losing their jobs that aren`t just going to get it right back. Like, the labor market is going to be in pain and duress. He`s calling for the federal government, the congress and the White House to do more.
And it also seemed like everyone has just been like, well, we`re done with this Coronavirus thing and that kind of realization that that`s not done.
GOLDSTEIN: Well, I think it`s hard to pinpoint why a market goes up or down, right. The market goes down when there`s more sellers than buyers, that`s the only reason the market goes down.
But I think it`s actually less that people are listening to Jerome Powell warning that we need to do more and more that the market had already p riced in that they were going to do things like cuts rates to negative and he did not do that yesterday, right. He said we`ll keep it at zero as long as we need to.
But this just goes into this sort of systemic asymmetry that we see, right. The Federal Reserve is taking all these actions and not putting any conditions on the money that corporations get, not saying you can`t lay off workers, not saying you can`t put out dividends, congress also said -- you know, declined to put that requirement in.
But there is really strong restrictions on these programs aimed at individuals and small business, right? Like the PPP program, you could not apply for that if you were in default on your federal student loan. So there is real asymmetry in terms of who gets conditions and who does not get conditions.
HAYES: On that asymmetry, the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, said he would be disclosing nothing about where rescue money from the federal government to large corporations went. And not only that, in the PPP program, we`ve covered that before, that`s for small businesses who retained some of their -- retain their payroll, right, they got a forgivable loan from the government, that that also wasn`t going to be disclosed. That basically, we as citizens can`t know who the government gave money to.
GOLDSTEIN: And what`s the most ghoulish, I think, thing about that is we will have no way of knowing if there is racial discrimination baked into the PPP program unless we have that data. And we are facing, you know, an uprising in this country, right, like grocery store workers and health care workers don`t have PPE, but cops have all the gas masks that they need, you know, to defend white supremacy and property when they tear gas protesters.
But there is going to be no way to make sure that there isn`t systemic racism in the PPP program if they don`t disclose which companies are getting it. And, you know, that would be hard anyway because of existing regulations, but journalists could do the work to back into it. And so to me that is the biggest problem among a huge host of problems about how unfair that is.
HAYES: There is also half a trillion dollars that we don`t know what -- a lot of it didn`t get used, apparently. I mean, even just as like -- forget the moral part of it, but just as an informational question of how the policy worked and whether it worked seems important for all of us to know like as we figure out how to get through the pandemic, particularly if we head into more lock-downs in the future if things get work.
Alexis Goldstein, thank you for making time.
GOLDSTEIN: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Still to come, the unbelievable story behind this image of Chicago police officers caught just kicking back, hanging out, napping in Congressman Bobby Rush`s office while nearby businesses were being damaged during the protests.
The congressman joins me to respond ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Less than two years ago, September 2018, Nike released an ad starring Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick, of course, sparked a movement of NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem in protest of police killings of black people and racial inequality.
At the time, of course, that was highly, highly controversial. And of course so was the ad. There`s a whole backlash where people burned their Nike sneakers, pledging to never buy the brand again.
And it`s a marker of just how quickly things are changing, that now less than two years later NFL commissioner Roger Goodell himself is saying Black Lives Matter. And thousands of brands, everything from Doritos to Paw Patrol to Maybelline are expressing their support for the movement.
I think it`s hard not to feel torn about these branding efforts. On one level, it is better than the opposite. It is better than all of corporate America coming out to say we stand with Derek Chauvin, back to blue, law and order. You can imagine that world. That`s a world that could exist. And I`m glad that`s not happening. I`m glad the the brands feel that the way that the wind is blowing is that they have to respond in this way.
At the same time, it can feel disingenuous or just symbolic lip service, or at its worse cringe-inducing or frankly manipulative. This week we saw an example of the most crass cooption, commercialization of the moment, from an ad agency called McCann and its client Microsoft. An artist named Shantell Martin posted the e-mail she received from them asking about partnering with her as a black artist in the New York City community to fill the space on their boarded up 5th Avenue store with a mural in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement, noting they are hoping to complete the mural while the protests are still relevant and the boards are still up.
In the caption, Martin wrote, quote, "here`s an example of what it`s like to be, a, reminded of my blackness, b, how black pain and oppression is comodfied with performative allyship, c, what systemic racism looks like within corporations, and most importantly, d, apparently the folks at Microsoft and McCann Erickson feels that Black Lives Matter Movement and protests will not be relevant after this weekend.
Microsoft`s chief marketing officers replied, apologized for the insensitive language. The CEO of the ad agency also apologized, calling the email flatout wrong.
In a statement to Art Net News, Shantell Martin responded it goes without saying that capitalizing on what could arguably be the biggest civil rights movement in the world is unacceptable from corporations, especially when there is a lack of real action and support behind their motivation.
It is an cliche, an old cliche, but, man, is it true right now, action towards racial equality, toppling racial hierarchy, speaks a whole lot louder than words.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: There`s an absolutely gob-smacking story out of Chicago tonight. I almost can`t believe what I`ve seen, but it involves Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush, who has served in congress for nearly 30 years, is a former leader of the Black Panthers. Last week, the congressman got word that his office in Chicago had been burglarized, but when he went to look at the surveillance tape, this is what we found, a group of up to 13 police officers helping themselves to coffee, making popcorn, even napping in his office while outside stores were being damaged and robbed in the aftermath of the protests over the murder of George Floyd.
At a press conference with Congressman Rush today, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sharply criticized the officers promising that they would be held accountable.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT, (D) CHICAGO: These individuals were lounging in a congressman`s office having a little hangout for themselves while small businesses on the south side were looted and burned. Their conduct will confirm the perception that too many people on the south and the west side were left to fend for themselves. These individuals did indeed abandon their responsibilities and their obligation and their oath to serve and protect. We should all be disgusted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Congressman Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois joins me now. Congressman, thank you for joining me. I know that you just came from the wake for your sister and I want to offer my deepest condolences on her passing.
REP. BOBBY RUSH, (D) ILLINOIS: Thank you, Chris. It`s always good to be with you. We`re very proud of you here in your hometown Chicago. And I want to thank you once again for having the town hall meeting on violence here in Chicago a year or so ago.
HAYES: Yeah, you were there. I think about that often. Lori Lightfoot was one of the panelists, who is now of course the mayor. At the time, I don`t think anyone saw that coming.
Can you explain to me -- I really never quite heard a story like this. You -- how did you find out a bout this? You came to understand your district office had been burglarized?
RUSH: Well, I got a call from my district director saying that my office had been looted, that it had been burglarized, and she said that she had the video. Once we looked at the video and then we saw this amazing sight of police officers, anywhere up to 13 police officers at one time or another, they were in my office sleeping, having coffee, on cell phones, putting their feet up on my desk, and one was -- had his hand out on one of the desks in my office fast asleep.
And to make things worse, we had the supervisor coming in and out of the office. And to add insult to injury, Chris, when they left the office, when they had rested enough, slept enough, they left a dollar bill on my -- on the table there in the office on the conference table, so that added insult to injury. And all in the same time, I mean, looting going on right next door, right around the corner, all up and down the shopping center, and these police officers didn`t give a damn.
HAYES: I`m so confused. Did they break -- is it your understanding they broke into your office just to chillax and -- what happened?
RUSH: Well, we -- on the video, I was told that there is a captain -- a segment that shows some teenagers breaking one segment of the window, and that`s the only segmented that been compromised, broken into, all right, but they didn`t come in, they didn`t do anything all right. No drawers opened, no tables, chairs out of place, nothing turned upside down.
So they came in -- or if they came in at all, they immediately left. They weren`t going to get anything. But the next thing we see is a group of police officers lounging in my office while looting and stealing and all kinds of uproar happening in this shopping center.
HAYES: I just want to be clear, you found this out because you looked at the surveillance tape, not because of the the Chicago Police Department at some point contacted you and said, by the way, we had a bunch of officers in in your district office?
RUSH: No, we -- the first I heard the police officers were in my office was when we saw them on the video taping security tape that we have.
We had a camera there in the office, a security camera, and it caught everything, it caught everything. And thank god we had that security camera in my office.
HAYES: You were the co-founder, if I`m not mistaken, of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party with Fred Hampton.
RUSH: Yes, right.
HAYES: He was a good friend of yours. Fred Hampton, of course, was killed in his home by Chicago Police.
RUSH: And the very next morning on December 5, my home in Chicago was raided in 1969.
So, if I hadn`t been home when they raided my apartment the very next morning, I would have been shot to death also. But so I have had a long time history with some of the members of the Chicago Police Department, not all members. I mean, there are some great Chicago police officers. I work with them every day in different capacities, so I`m not condemning all police officers.
But these police officers who were sitting in there sleeping, feet on my desk, popping popcorn and doing various other things, these people were not Chicago`s finest. As a matter of fact, they were just the opposite of Chicago`s finest.
HAYES: Given your roots in the Black Panther Party, given the fact that you have been in congress for decades and seen various moments of protest and claims for justice around policing and racial equality, what do you make of this moment?
RUSH: Well, I think that this is really a very low moment. It`s particularly given the time when we are really hurting. The police/community relationships across the nation are at an all-time low. I`ve never seen it this low, even during the `60s, even when Fred was murdered and they almost murdered me. It`s never been this very low on a national level.
And so I understand that these officers -- again, we have to root these kind of officers out. And I want to take my hat off, Chris, to our mayor. Mayor Lightfoot is an amazing leader, especially for these times. And she did not hesitate, not for one moment. Once I contacted her office and told her that I had these videotapes, she asked me to immediately come down to bring these tapes so she could see them. And when she saw them, you can tell she was angry, she was upset, she was torn. She apologized deeply, and she resolved, said she was going to make sure she found out who these officers were and that they would receive a consequence for their relaxing, for their repose, for their relaxing when their coworkers, their colleagues, other police officers was out on the streets getting pelted with rocks and bottles and putting their lives on the line.
We had these police officers found a cubbyhole and they went relaxing in that cubbyhole leaving their friends, their colleagues, their coworkers out to fend for themselves. What cowards. These are absolutely a bunch of cowards in blue uniforms.
HAYES: Congressman Bobby Rush, who represents the south side of Chicago, and has for many, many years, thank you so much for sharing some time with us tonight, congressman.
RUSH: Thank you so very much, Chris.
HAYES: 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