The Rachel Maddow Show, Transcript 6/29/2016

Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: June 29, 2016 Guest: Nancy Northup RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC ANCHOR: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. We`ve got a couple of exclusives coming up on this show tonight over the course of this next hour, stuff you will not hear anywhere else. First of all, we`ve got a new RACHEL MADDOW SHOW special report on Flint, Michigan, tonight. If you have wondered how Flint has been doing after the huge scrum of media attention they got a few months back when the country was briefly transfixed by that city getting lead-poisoned by Michigan state government. Well, now, we have gone back to Flint. And in our special report tonight, you will see that what has happened there in the last few months and what is happening there right now is stuff that will surprise you. That is coming up tonight. We`ve also got exclusively some brand-new polling data in the presidential race, data that nobody else has got. We are debuting it here, hot off the presses tonight. Now, you may have seen yesterday that the polling group, PPP, Public Policy Polling, that a whole bunch of new polls out in swing states. And that swing state polling that they released last night, it basically looked terrible for Donald Trump. I mean, these are the polls that came out last night from PPP. They polled six swing states -- Arizona, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And in five of those six swing states, Hillary Clinton is beating Donald Trump. Only in Arizona did they find a Trump lead. Last night`s PPP poll in Arizona had Trump up by four points in Arizona. But even that is pretty good news for Clinton. Reasonably speaking, Arizona maybe shouldn`t be considered a swing state. President Obama lost the state of Arizona twice, each time by nine points. It`s a very red state in presidential politics. So Hillary Clinton being down by four in Arizona, while she`s simultaneously leading in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Iowa and New Hampshire and Wisconsin, that is pretty good for the Democrats right now. So, PPP`s swing state polls came out last night. You may have seen those when those came out last night. But PPP has also done a new national poll in the presidential race, which we have got exclusively right now and we are about to debut. You have not seen these numbers anywhere else. And these new national numbers from PPP, they are okay for Hillary Clinton, but they`re not great. Nationally, the top line results, when they asked, generally speaking, if the election for president was today, would you vote for the Republican or Democrat? Nationally, the top line result is that Hillary Clinton is ahead in that top line by just one point, 45-44. But if you make a it a little more complicated, if you add in minor party candidate choices from the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, then Clinton`s lead goes from one point to four points. She leads him 45-41, as long as the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are included as well. So, big picture, any lead is better than no lead. But a lead this small, one point head to head, four points if you include Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, that is a lead that`s so small it may be worrying for the Clinton camp. So, again, we`re debuting these numbers right now, the first time this data is being publicly released. This new data from national poll will be compared this evening with the other poll that came out a few hours ago. FOX News has a poll tonight and that head-to-head poll is better news for Hillary Clinton. It shows her up over Donald Trump by six points. Here`s the great thing, though, about having a first look at polling data specifically from PPP as we do tonight. Because PPP is sort of -- eccentric is not the right word. Out of the box, that`s the right phrase. They`re not afraid to think outside the box. That`s the way we`ll put it. PPP is the polling company that is most likely to ask burning, if weird, questions that real people actually talk about and actually worry about, even if no other pollster wants to go there. For example, I know quite a few Republicans who have patiently explained to me, in recent weeks and months, that, yes, it is insane that their party nominated Donald Trump to be their presidential candidate this year. A lot of Republicans have said to me, what do you expect? The American electorate has been driven mad, insane by eight years of Barack Obama. What did you expect us to do? Anecdotally in my own life, I`ve had conversations with Republicans along those lines, not just in recent months and weeks, even in recent days. Well, PPP, in this new national poll, they called the question on that, literally. So, right, leave Hillary Clinton out of it. Is it true that this whole Donald Trump mess that the Republican Party`s gotten themselves into, frankly, it`s all Obama`s fault. Is it actually the repellant power of Barack Obama as president that has driven the electorate to Donald Trump? Well, you don`t have to worry about that or idly discuss that without facts among your friends because now PPP has asked the question. Quote, "Who would you rather was president -- Barack Obama or Donald Trump?" Turns out it is -- Barack Obama by a small landslide. Barack Obama by nine points. So attention all my Republican friends, you can blame President Obama for lots of things, you cannot blame him for Donald Trump. The country would much prefer Barack Obama to Donald Trump. It`s just that Republican primary voters decided that out of 300 million Americans, this really was the man they most want to be the next president of the United States. That is on you, Republican Party, that is not Obama`s fault. Of course, it`s not going to be Obama versus Trump in this year`s election. It`s going to be Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. And in a Clinton versus Trump match-up, as opposite as those two candidates seem, as different as they are, the Trump and Clinton campaigns do have one shared challenge. And this new data that we have, exclusively from PPP tonight, shows that challenge very clearly. And it`s basically this -- both candidates, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are really unfavorably viewed by most Americans, both of them are. The proportion of voters nationwide who have an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump in the new poll is 58 percent. For Hillary Clinton, it`s 54 percent. And when unfavorable numbers are so bad for both candidates, maybe that`s depressing, but you know what, it`s also something else. Because that is when you get cash money, jackpot polling data like this. This is truly amazing. Are you ready for what I believe is the greatest polling question yet of the 2016 race? Are you ready? I`m going to read it to you verbatim. This is exactly how it was asked for -- how it was asked for this nationwide poll of registered voters that we have got for the first time here tonight. Are you ready? Here it is. I am quoting directly. If the choices for president were Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump, or a giant meteor hitting the earth, which would you choose? The percentage of Americans who would choose Hillary Clinton in that circumstance is 43 percent. Those who would choose Trump, 38 percent, but the percentage of Americans who would prefer a giant meteor to crash into the either instead of either of those two, that proportion is 13 percent of Americans, which probably means the Libertarian Party should run a giant meteor careening toward the earth as their candidate this year because that giant meteor barreling toward the earth might have a better shot than Gary Johnson at making it into the general election debates. That`s a really good number, 13. Only need 15 to get into the debate. My favorite part of this question, though, is actually the very last part of this result. A full 7 percent of Americans say, given the choice of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or a giant meteor hitting the earth, 7 percent of Americans say, they`re not sure which they would prefer. (LAUGHTER) Who`s not sure about a giant meteor hitting the earth? Do you need to know more about the character of the giant meteor? Do you need to know exactly where it`s going to hit? Do you need to know whether the meteor has been endorsed by the NRA? Is it pro-choice? Seven percent of Americans say they`re just not prepared to make the call between the meteor and either candidate. And you know what, that may be as good an artifact as we will ever get from pollsters about the truly bamboozling effect of this year`s remarkable presidential election. At least so far. Today, Hillary Clinton did events and fund raisers in blue state, California. Her Republican rival Donald Trump was also in a blue state, he was Massachusetts this afternoon. He did a fund-raiser in Boston, about which Bostonians were not very pleased. After his Boston fund-raiser, Donald Trump headed further north into another blue state, where Barack Obama won by 18 points the first time around and 15 points the next time around. Donald Trump after his Boston fund-raiser went to the great state of Maine, where he was introduced as such. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What a crowd this is. I think this is bigger than the Republican convention a couple of months ago. I heard -- I heard Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren campaigning. (BOOS) You know Elizabeth Warren, right? (DOING WAR CRY) (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: That`s a right-wing radio host introducing a Donald Trump event in Bangor, Maine, today. Just in case anybody wondered how the Trump campaign was doing on the whole toning it down with the race stuff plan. The guy doing the war cry, making fun of Native Americans, then introduced the Republican governor of the great state of Maine, who is perhaps most nationally famous for claiming that one of Maine`s big problems is black drug dealers coming in from out of state to impregnate white girls in Maine. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. PAUL LEPAGE (R), MAINE: Guys with the name of D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty, this type of guys that from Connecticut, New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin and then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time, they impregnate a young white girl before they leave. Instead of saying Maine women, I said white women. If you go -- and I`m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that. Because if you go to Maine, you`ll see that we`re essentially 95 percent white. If you want to make it racist, go right ahead. Do whatever you want. I had to go screaming at the top of my lungs about black dealers coming in and doing the things that they`re doing to our state. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: That`s Maine`s Republican governor, Paul LePage, who appeared with Donald Trump in Maine today, and who thinks of himself evidently as kind of a Donald Trump kindred spirit. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) LEPAGE: Thank you. It`s a very great honor and a humbling experience to be up here today to introduce and to introduce you to the next president of the United States, Donald Trump. You know, many people say we`re a lot alike. He`s a little bit shy, but I`m working on him. (LAUGHTER) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: What a group. What a group. So beautiful. So beautiful to see. I`ll tell you. So beautiful to see. I want to thank our governor, because our governor -- I call him ours -- because he`s a great, great guy. Respected all over the country and we really love it, thank you, Paul. (END VIDEO CLIPS) MADDOW: About that respected all over the country thing, here`s something else that we`ve got exclusively tonight that you won`t see anywhere else. Took us months to get this, but we finally did. Paul LePage is actually one of the least popular governors in the country. By last summer, the situation in Maine, particularly around his governorship and his various gaffes and offending people, it got tense enough that there was talk of impeaching him last summer. In the middle of that impeachment scrum about Paul LePage, he decided, you know what, you know what, never mind you with your impeachment, if you want me to go, I`ll just go. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) LEPAGE: If the people of Maine want me, I`ll do the job. If they don`t want me, just ask me to leave, you don`t have to impeach me. HOST: Well, there was a woman who wrote you a note and asked you to resign. LEPAGE: Well, there was 1.3 million people. So far I`ve only got four people that have written me wanting me to resign. (END AUDIO CLIP) MADDOW: Four people have written me. That was last summer. Governor Paul LePage saying, "If the people of Maine want me to, if they don`t want me to, just ask me to leave, you don`t have to impeach me." He said only four people had written to him, only demanding his resignation. If the people of Maine want me to go, don`t -- you don`t have to impeach me. Just write me letters and I`ll go. Well, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking to see if anyone in Maine took him up on his offer. Asking a simple question, right? Did the governor ever receive more than those four letters asking him to quit when he said publicly that he would quit if enough Mainers told him that he should? Well, it took Paul LePage`s office nine months to answer that question for us. We were a little miffed. Nine months, right? How hard could this be to answer, right? The governor says it`s a simple thing. He invited letters from his constituents. We just wanted to know how many people sent him a letter. How hard could that be? You just have to count things that are already in your office. Why did that take so long? Well, I`m here to tell you. We finally got the letters and a couple people did write to him. So, now, we know why it took so long. And this is just the letters, it turns out, that came in, in the first month, after Paul LePage asked for letters from the people from the state of Maine to tell him if they wanted him to resign. By our count, more than 1,800 people, just in that first month, did actually take -- do you want me to keep going? Did take time to write to him and ask him to resign. Just in the first month after he asked. We don`t even have the letters that came in after the first month. This is just what came in, in that first month. And it`s interesting. Going through them, they are heartfelt letters, polite letters. There are a few rude letters. There`s a lot of hand-written letters. Most of them, though, are very short and polite and to the point. Here`s one. Dear governor -- do we have this one? There we go. "Dear governor, please resign." We`ve just pixelated the signature. It`s a guy who signed his name, a resident of mid coast Maine. Here`s another fairly typical one. This one came in by e-mail. "Dear Governor LePage, you have requested the opinion of the Maine people in regards to you resigning as the governor of this state. My opinion is, a very strong yes. Thank you for allowing me to express my choice." And so, thank you, Freedom of Information Act. Thank you, people of Maine for being polite and mostly not obscene in your epic tide of instant disapproval of your governor when he asked what you thought. And Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may look at Maine Governor Paul LePage and see a very well-respected governor. But you know what? Take that with a grain of salt. Take that from a Republican who thinks the place he needs to be campaigning right now, of all the states in the country, is the state of Maine. Lots to get to tonight. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, was open for business today. Look at these pictures. Remarkable pictures today, taken inside Ataturk airport, by NBC`s Richard Engel. This is just today, one day after a complex terrorist attack that killed 42 people and injured more than 230 people. An attack that today still left shattered glass and bullet holes and bomb damage in the international terminal of that airport. But shopkeepers who work in that terminal, they came back to work today and opened back up. They opened up, they cleaned up, got back to helping customers, amid the broken glass and bullet holes, one day after the deadliest terrorist attack on an airport ever. Ataturk is today just this remarkable case study in resilience. Resilience of a very basic, very human, very determined way. Lots more ahead tonight. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: The rest of the world does not get to vote in American presidential elections, but they do care. Pew Research Center has just released a survey from 15 other countries. And one of the things they asked about is the U.S. presidential election. They asked specifically whether people have confidence that a President Donald Trump would be able to handle world affairs. The results are not pretty. In nearly half the countries surveyed, Donald Trump polls in the single digits, in terms of people`s confidence that he could handle world affairs. The Greeks, for some reason, seem to be particularly dubious. Only 3 percent of Greeks think that Donald Trump could be up to the job. Our friends the Germans, our friends the Australians, are pretty dubious as well. One of the places where Mr. Trump actually fares the best is Canada. In Canada, only 80 percent of Canada expressed no confidence in Donald Trump`s capacity for global leadership. Globally speaking, that`s actually a pretty good job. Our actual president was in Canada today for a day of meetings with the Canadian prime minister and the Mexican president. President Obama then became the first U.S. president since Ronald Reagan to address a joint session of the Canadian parliament. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Democracy`s not easy. It`s hard. Living up to our ideals can be difficult even in the best of times, and it can be harder when the future seems uncertain. Or when in response to legitimate fears and frustrations, there are those who offer a politics of us versus them. A politics that scapegoats others, the immigrant, the refugee, someone who seems different than us. We have to call this mentality what it is -- a threat to the values that we profess, the values we seek to defend. It`s because we respect all people that the world looks to us as an example. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: President Obama today speaking to a joint session of the Canadian parliament about you know who. He did not mention Donald Trump by name but a significant portion of his remarks cautioning against Trump- esque politics. Well, thanks to this new poll, we know how Canadians feel about you know who, how they feel about Donald Trump. But thanks to the reception that President Obama got in the Canadian parliament today, it seems pretty clear how they feel about him too. Watch this. This is pretty incredible. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Canadians and Americans, allies and friends. Now and forever. Thank you very much. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) (CROWD CHANTING "FOUR MORE YEARS") (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: What you were hearing there is the Canadian parliament yelling "four more years, four more years," for our president. A remarkable moment that seemed to catch President Obama very much by surprise today. Lots more to cover tonight. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: So tonight, we do have some exclusive new reporting on a story that we have been following for a very long time. It`s a story that we had a role in breaking it nationally for the first time. It has since become a national story. Tonight, we are advancing that story. We have a RACHEL MADDOW SHOW special report coming up tonight next that I think will make some news on its own and will satiate your curiosity as to what has been happening in Flint, Michigan, these past few months. Our special report is just ahead, stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: OK, it has been five months since we went to Flint, Michigan, to do our big town hall event there, to talk directly with people who have been living through the manmade lead poisoning disaster that happened to the city of Flint, because of a terrible, reckless mistake made by the administration of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, by state employees who reported directly to him. In Flint, mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers told us directly about the skin rashes they had themselves and that they found on their kids. They were sure those were caused by the bad water because they`ve never had them before. They told us about the everyday physical job of searching for drinkable water for themselves and their families. It remains almost unbelievable, almost unreal that a good-sized American city doesn`t have drinking water. It`s additionally unfathomable that they still don`t today. The Snyder administration poisoned the town and wrecked the pipes in the town more than two years ago. But in Flint, that just means they`re in year three of this disaster. The injury in Flint is vast and the recovery has been very, very slow. This is the reality of this American city. Poisoned at the hands of an administration that remains in power today, in the richest nation on earth, the Snyder administration is still in power, right? But the Americans who live in Flint, Michigan, they still can`t drink their water. Their pipes still haven`t been replaced. But some things have changed in Flint since we did that town hall five months ago. A few days ago, the federal EPA announced that water filters fitted onto the faucets, the EPA said they really do make the water safe to drink for everyone. There had previously been a federal warning in place that said it was okay for everyone else to drink filtered water but kids and pregnant women shouldn`t. The EPA said a few days ago, that even kids and pregnant women can now drink water from the tap in Flint if -- if -- if that water is properly filtered. And you know, this isn`t nothing. The ultimate goal in Flint is still to replace the pipes that the Snyder administration wrecked because those wrecked pipes are what`s leaching lead into the water. But in the meantime, until that apparently politically impossible job is done, it would make daily life in Flint easier if people could drink safely from the filtered faucets at home, instead of having to get every drop of water everything every day out of a plastic both. But that instruction to use a filter, that`s not just to wave a magic wand and it happens. It`s a serious logistical endeavor to get filters on every single faucet in every single home, and then to make sure they`re properly installed, and to make sure they`re using the filter correctly and changing the filter on time. Filters don`t last forever. You have to change them out after you`ve used them for a certain period of time. With 30,000 roughly occupied homes in Flint, we`re talking tens of thousands of filters that all need to be present, properly fitted, used right and changed in a timely manner indefinitely. The health of Flint now depends on that gargantuan and granular, complicated, house-to-house, faucet by faucet undertaking. And as we`ve seen so often in Flint, it is the people of Flint who are taking on that gargantuan task themselves. God bless them. Over this weekend, some local volunteers brought our producer Caitlyn Tierney along with them to see how this painstaking house to housework is going even now to try to save this poisoned town. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WENDELL THOMPSON, VOLUNTEER: We`re in the neighborhood, making sure everybody has water filters and faucets. RESIDENT: I don`t have one. THOMPSON: You don`t have a filter? I mean, a filter? RESIDENT: At all? FRANKLIN D. JACKSON, FLINT RESIDENT: You know, they said on the news last night you got a filter, you can start drinking that water, and I know they`re lying. There ability no way in hell you drink that water just that quick. (LAUGHTER) BOB BROWN, FLINT COMMUNITY PARTNERS: We went over a year of making Kool-Aid for our son and for his friends, making coffee, cooking with it. So -- and there`s no way to go back. THOMPSON: So when you want to run the cold water through it, you turn it down like this, when you get that green light. So all you need is a replacement filter? RESIDENT: Right. THOMPSON: If it`s turned -- have it turn -- have the light turned red yet? RESIDENT: Yes. THOMPSON: When the light turn red, you have to change the filter. RESIDENT: Oh, OK. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I use bottled water when I make a dish when it comes to potatoes or noodles, I used bottled water. Filtered is filtered. SANDRA JONES, GREATER HOLY TEMPLE, FLINT: They told us two years ago that the water was safe when they switched from the Detroit water to the Flint water. So, the level of trust is not there. Do I see that changing? No. If -- how do I know? Because every single day at our church, we are servicing a minimum of 150 to 500 and some cars per day. BROWN: When we test, it was down to zero. So even knowing that, it`s hard, though, to just open the faucet and take a drink out of it, because we were poisoned for so long. JONES: The trust is not going to be there, until we see the pipes dug up, replaced in the homes, hot water heaters are replaced in the homes. When we see that, the trust will come back, but not until then. And not until we stop with the theatrics of somebody coming in, drinking a glass of water. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: When they replace the pipes and the hot water heaters, then the trust will come back, not with these theatrics. The theatrics she means there, first of all, Governor Rick Snyder, hauling away Flint jugs of water to drink at home and in his office and then President Obama last month, drinking a glass of Flint water when he took a visit there himself. Even as life for thousands of families in Flint is still lived one bottle of water at a time. You heard a bunch of people say there, they do not trust the water for more than washing dishes, maybe rinsing off food. They do not on some cases trust it for showering. They do not drink it themselves. They`re not giving it to their kids. They tell us they were poisoned for so long while everybody in authority told them it was safe, that now, frankly understandably, they feel like they can`t trust the water and they can`t trust what they are told about the water. Not until the pipes that were ruined, that have been putting the lead in the water all this time, not until those pipes come out of the ground and new pipes take their place. Well, the good news in Flint is that legislature, finally, in year three of the crisis, they have finally sent Flint actual money to dig up and replace the first few thousand of the 9,000 or 10,000 pipes that might need replacing. The bad news is that when the city asked contractors to bit on doing that work, the initial estimates that came in from contractors were much, much, much higher than Flint was expecting. Flint officials met this week with contractors again, trying to get a better deal for the city. They asked the contractors to submit new bids by tomorrow. Presumably what they`re hoping for is more affordable bids. Just as we were told in Flint this weekend, Flint`s Mayor Karen Weaver knows she has to get those pipes out of the ground. She has to get new pipes into Flint if people are ever going to trust their water again. It is an enormous job, and forgive me, but she is not helped at all in that job by the stubborn refusal and the excuse-making and the inexcusable, inexplicable, infuriating delay by state lawmakers and the governor and congress, to help get the enormous job done. Yes, no hurry, right? The people of Flint did not bring this on themselves. They didn`t do anything wrong here. Through note fault of their own, they were poisoned by their state`s government screwing something up. But yet it`s still basically on them. It`s on Flint residents themselves to go door to door, even now, to find old people who still after all this time don`t have a water filter on their faucet, to tell people how to change their water filters that never have. It`s still on Flint residents themselves to figure out if they something up. But yet it`s still basically on them. It`s on Flint residents themselves to go door to door, even now, to find old people who still after all this time don`t have a water filter on their faucet, to tell people how to change their water filters that never have. It`s still on Flint residents themselves to figure out if they can get the pipe replacement done. You know, sorry we poisoned you, Flint, now you figure it out. The irony was not lost on Flint this week when the water in a congressional office in D.C. tested a little bit high for lead. Not toxic waste high the way it happens in Flint, but a little higher than recommended. Congressional staffers were immediately notified they would be getting bottled water immediately. One congressman from Florida is demanding answers stat, ASAP, this is an emergency. Right? OK, yes, when the threat of an irreversible neurotoxin is swirling around in your coffee cup, it does tend to focus your attention, if you work for Congress. Back in the hit of national attention for the crisis in Flint, "The New York Times" editorial asks if the governor wouldn`t do what it takes to fix, then honestly, the Army Corps of Engineers should be sent in. Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to dig up Flint`s plumbing, replace the pipes. And when the work is done, send the bill to the state of Michigan. They did it, they should pay for fixing it. If they don`t have the will to do it, the country will get it done and bill the state of Michigan. At the time, when "The New York Times" editorialized that way, I think a lot of people thought the paper might be getting ahead of things. Might be a little hyperbolic. But we`re now in year three of the Flint lead poisoning crisis and the pipes are still in the ground with no one trusting the new promises about the filtered water, and donations of bottled water drying up. Local pastors who have been handling donations of water, say their only solution is for people to pray for some way out of this. Since the politicians can`t fix it, maybe God can. Bottled water is drying up. People don`t trust the filters. No idea when Flint will have plain, safe water out of the tap like the rest of the country and like they used to have, with some families just now getting their first filters, with countless others getting them fitted properly for the first time, or are told for the first time when they need to change those filters, three years into this. And the whole country, led to believe by the initial flurry of media attention, that Flint got saved, at least a little bit with those door-to- door bottled water deliveries. Remember that, got all the media attention months ago? Honestly, the state never got it together to do that again. Except for that one week when every media outlet in the country was paying attention to the Flint crisis. In front of the cameras, they arranged door-to-door deliveries in Flint for that one week and then they never did it again. What happened in Flint is not Flint`s fault. What happened there was done to Flint by their state government. Looking at how hard Flint residents have fought for themselves and what they have been through and how tough they are, I would not put it past the people of Flint to get their own town fixed on their own. But for now, not fixed. Nobody is sending the army corps of engineers. Anyone checked your filter for you, sir? Oh, do you not have a filter yet? Just tonight, the local county medical society in Genesee County announced, actually, despite what the EPA said the other day, they think pregnant women and young children should not drink the water, even if it is through a filter, regardless of what the EPA says. The doctors locally are worried about random lead still floating around in Flint`s water system from its destroyed pipes which haven`t been replaced. So, they, locally, at the county level are warning that pregnant women, nursing moms and young kids, do not drink the filtered water again, even though the EPA just said they could. And meanwhile, the pipes are rotting in the ground through another summer right now. I wish I had better news to report about Flint, but I don`t. It`s infuriating. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: We are not in agreement on every issue. That was made clear during the primary. We are in agreement on more issues that we are in disagreement. REPORTER: Senator, why do you have difficulty using the word "endorsement" when you talk about your support for Governor Bush? MCCAIN: I endorse Governor Bush. I endorse Governor Bush. I endorse Governor Bush. I endorse Governor Bush. I endorse Governor Bush. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: For some reason, a political endorsement sometimes loses its punch when you add a little dance move to it. When politicians pretend to be friends and they don`t mean it, you can tell. Today that dynamic was on full display in very dramatic parliamentary fashion. That is ahead. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: This week marks one year since the Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to block gay people in this country from getting married. That was a year ago. But still, it was in the last couple of days, that the great state of Mississippi finally felt compelled to tell its court personnel and its court clerks that they do actually have to treat gay people like other people when they come in to get married. It takes a while. Even after a nationally applicable ruling about what is constitutional and what is not constitutional. Even a really clear national ruling, it takes a while to ricochet around the country. It takes a while for unconstitutional laws to get challenged and for them to fall. But inevitably, in state after state, fall they do. Fall they must. Even in Mississippi. And that process, which we`ve spent a year going through on civil rights, that process is about to play out on abortion rights. Two days ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled unequivocally that two of the benchmark measures that Republican legislatures and governors have implemented over the past decade to block access to abortion and shut down clinics, those measures are clearly unconstitutional. Just in the past five years, more than 160 clinics have been shut down in red states across this country. Well, starting now in fits and starts, but starting now, some of those laws are about to start falling. Which ones fall first? Which ones are already going or gone? And how is this going to go from here on out? Joining us now is Nancy Northup. She`s president and CEO for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which spearheaded this ruling this week, which brought this case that has resulted in this landmark change for abortion rights jurisprudence. Nancy, congratulations. Thanks for being here. NANCY NORTHUP, CEO AND PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: Thank you. MADDOW: Are you -- I imagine that you`re very pleased with the ruling. Did you have any idea it was going to be this sweeping? NORTHUP: We thought it should be, because we thoughts the facts were with us, the law was with us, but we are over the moon. I mean, this is a complete and total win. It changes the tide. It pushes back on what we`ve seen, the hundreds of laws that have passed. These restrictions on access to abortion that have been shutting down clinics. And so, you know, this is day one of turning around exactly what you`re saying. We`re going to make sure that these laws get off the books. MADDOW: Obviously, the Texas laws directly are struck down immediately. What should we look for in terms of pacing? Do you have in mind sort of a first tier, second tier, third tier in terms of vulnerable laws or laws that are clearly unenforceable now and sort of what the timing will be? NORTHUP: Well, we`ve already seen, you know, right now, in effect. You know, Mississippi was trying to get their law has been blocked, one of their TRAP laws, they`re trying to get the Supreme Court to review that. They said, no. Wisconsin, same thing. The Supreme Court said no. And the Alabama attorney general dropped their ability to -- or their decision that they were going to try to defend their trap law there. So, you`re already seeing action. There are a lot of cases that are going on around the nation. I mean, we have, over a dozen cases that are going on now. We`re going to be right back into those courts saying, hey, here`s the new ruling from the Supreme Court, and you need to follow it. And we`re going to be looking across the nation to see what else we need to be suing on. And it`s not just about filing lawsuits, because it`s also about the public putting pressure on their elected officials. They now have a clear decision that says this tactic of passing so-called, you know, health and safety laws, was totally bogus. And they can -- you know, even this year, before the decision, the Oklahoma governor didn`t veto -- did not sign a law that had been passed in that state, because of the pressure that was put on, even an anti-choice governor the Oklahoma. So, it`s important for us to go in court, but it`s also important for people to look at what`s happening in their state and say, enough is enough. MADDOW: Part of the reason I raised the allegory of the same-sex marriage ruling is because I think about the bar around those issues. I think about gay and lesbian legal advocacy groups. I think about the willingness of big expensive law firms to do pro bono work and put their associates working on cases like that, civil rights cases. Are there institutional or structural challenges for the reproductive rights bar, for legal advocates in this field, if you are going to now be pursuing -- you`re going to be pushing on an open door, but you may need to be bringing cases in dozens of states around the country and all of these different kind of laws and figure out which TRAP laws are actually susceptible to this ruling. NORTHUP: Right. Well, what has been a sort of benefit of going to the brink at the Supreme Court at this time, and luckily, again, we were saved from the brink, is that we have had unbelievable support from the private bar. So, you know, there were 45 amicus briefs, friends of the court brief, bringing perspectives into the court. And the majority of those were filed by, you know, major leading law firms in the United States. So, they`re ready for the challenge. They were excited about being part of this case. And so we`re going to have the firepower to be able to go after these state laws. MADDOW: Nancy Northup, president and CEO for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is the prime mover that made this happen in the court this week -- you really did, you not only changed jurisprudence on this, you absolutely changed decades of political trajectory on this issue with what you did this week. Congratulations. NORTHUP: Well, with thank you. MADDOW: It`s good to see you. Thanks. NORTHUP: Thank you. MADDOW: All right. We`ll be right back. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: First of all, can I thank the gentleman for his generous remarks. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As my right, honorable friend has said -- CAMERON: I certainly join my honorable friend. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know that my honorable friend would be pleased. CAMERON: The honorable gentleman is absolutely right. (END VIDEO CLIPS) MADDOW: British Prime Minister David Cameron was in the House of Commons today facing his weekly prime minister`s question time. As you might imagine, there were several questions for him. But it all seemed very quintessentially British, very civilized. And then this happened. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEREMY CORBYN, BRITISH LABOUR PARTY LEADER: I thank the prime minister for that answer. Last Thursday, Mr. Speaker, was a rejection of the status quo. A status quo that clearly isn`t delivering. There are now 13.5 million people living in poverty in Britain. The prime minister has two months left. Will he leave a one-nation legacy? CAMERON: Where I would agree with the right honorable gentleman is, of course, we need to do more to tackle policy. We need to do more to spread wealth and opportunity. But to try to pretend that last Thursday`s vote was a result of the state of the British economy is complete nonsense. We all have to reflect on our role in the referendum campaign. I know the honorable gentleman says he put his back into it. All I`d say is I would hate to see him when he`s not trying. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Things from there escalated, after labor party opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn pressed the prime minister to apologize to British children and families living in poverty. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CAMERON: There are 300,000 fewer people in relative poverty since 2010, half a million fewer people in absolute poverty since 2010. Look, if he`s looking for excuses about why the side he and I were on about the referendum, frankly, he should look somewhere else. And I have to say to the honorable gentleman, he talks about job insecurity and my two months to go. It might be in my party`s interest for him to sit there. It`s not in the national interests and I would say, for heaven`s sake, man, go. (CHEERS) (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: British Prime Minister David Cameron is himself going. He announced his resignation last week in the wake of the leave the E.U. vote. And then he moved the timetable for him leaving from October up to September. Tomorrow, we`re going to find out which candidates have officially thrown their hats into the ring to replace him. You know how it takes months for to us figure out who the potential nominees are in one of our parties. They do it all in one day. Cameron`s Conservative Party started accepting nominations today. It ends at noon British time tomorrow, which is 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time. That said, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, is also being blamed for losing the Brexit vote. More than two-thirds of his own leadership team quit in a span of just three days. Members of his party in parliament took a no confidence vote on Jeremy Corbyn just as their leader yesterday. The vote was devastating, 172 votes against him, 40 votes for him, for him to stay on as Labour Party leader. Despite that, though, he might not be going. He released a statement after that vote saying, quote, "I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60 percent of Labour members and supporters. And I will not betray them by resigning." His leadership team wants him gone, his second in command has called on him to resign, the leader of his country just yelled at him to go, for heaven`s sake. He says he is not going. But he says, "I won`t betray them by resigning." But what if they quit him, though? At the end of the prime minister`s question time today, Prime Minister David Cameron drew that very distinction. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CAMERON: I`ve never felt greater support from my party and I`m leaving. And I`ve never seen an opposition leader with less support, and he`s staying. It`s a very -- as -- you know, as someone about to enter the political graveyard, perhaps I could misquote my favorite band and say, let`s meet at the cemetery gates. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Five points for the Smiths reference. I don`t know how they do that at question time. But at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow, we`ll know who the candidates are for prime minister. Watch this space. That does it for us tonight. We`ll see you again tomorrow. Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL." Lawrence, I apologize, I`m in a new studio and I didn`t know where the clock is and I`ve gone even later than usual. I`m very sorry. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END