Show: THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL Date: September 20, 2016 Guest: Mark Thompson, Rick Wilson, Timothy O`Brien, Rosemary Fei, Mike Murphy, Tom Steyer
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST:
That does it for us tonight, we will see you again tomorrow, now, it`s time for THE LAST WORD with Lawrence O`Donnell, good evening, Lawrence.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: A stark choice and less than 50 days to make it --
MADDOW: Yes, seriously --
O`DONNELL: Things are getting tense, Rachel --
MADDOW: I know, I feel tense right now.
O`DONNELL: Thank you very much --
MADDOW: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Well, Donald Trump gave a speech today in a town named for a slave owner, owned a big plantation in that town. And he somehow forgot that slavery ever existed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our identities do not have to be defined by putting someone else down.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We have people coming into our country we have no idea.
OBAMA: We have to have the empathy --
TRUMP: They`re coming in from the Middle East, we have no idea who they are.
OBAMA: The day a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself.
TRUMP: We will build a wall.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can the controversy, courtesy Donald Trump`s son.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to say the apple doesn`t fall far from the tree.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The opening a bag of trouble comparing refugees to skittles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a pretty rotten apple.
STEPHEN COLBERT, COMEDIAN & TELEVISION HOST: On Friday, Mr. Trump made what he called a major announcement.
TRUMP: President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.
COLBERT: OK, that`s what`s called a firm grasp of the obvious.
(CHEERS)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don`t (INAUDIBLE) rhetoric society for years and decide when it`s over.
TRUMP: I finished it, you know what I mean.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s certainly not over after a 30-second statement in the middle of a hotel commercial.
TRUMP: You knew damn well I was a snake, you knew everything about me before you took me in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m not sure the guy who holds fake press conferences has a fake university, a fake foundation, fake hair and a fake tan should be the one in charge of deciding what`s real.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Richard Cohen has been a columnist with the "Washington Post" since Jimmy Carter`s administration. He`s seen it all. But what he has never seen is a major party candidate for president who he would compare to Hitler until now.
Richard Cohen`s latest must-read column is entitled "Trump`s Hitlerian Disregard for the Truth". Hitler had his own truth. That is Richard Cohen`s point. Everything Hitler said about the Jews, he believed. So it is, says Richard Cohen with Donald Trump.
He doesn`t think that Donald Trump is lying about President Obama`s birth place. He thinks Donald Trump believes that President Obama was not born in the United States.
And that, in Trump`s mind, he was only lying when his campaign staff forced him to say that the president was born in the USA.
The reason he did not apologize for having so long-insisted otherwise is that an apology would have crossed his personal red line. Like a child, he had his fingers crossed.
Donald Trump said something tonight about African-Americans that is stupid and untrue and every child in every American school that observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day every year knows that this is untrue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they`ve ever been in before, ever. You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education.
You get no jobs. You get shot walking down the street. They`re worse. I mean, honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: What do you think you just saw? What do you think all those white people sitting behind Donald Trump were just listening to?
Were you watching an exploitive politician who knows better, who doesn`t believe what he`s saying is true?
Or were you watching the most ignorant person in the history of American presidential campaigns who is so deeply ignorant of our own history that when he extemporaneously invents lies like that he believes what he is saying.
Which one of those were you watching? And which is worse? Which is more loathsome and more dangerous? The sociopath who would say that knowing it`s not true, or the sociopath who would say that, believing it is true?
Richard Cohen, who as I said, has seen it all, including the presidential candidacy of a segregationist, George Wallace is worried. He is very worried because Germany was not some weird place when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, came to power.
Richard Cohen sees the Germany of that time as being not all that different from other countries. And he is worried because "in 1933, Germany chose a sociopathic liar as its leader. If the polls are to be believed, we may do the same."
We are now only 48 days away from possibly electing a president who thinks that African-Americans were better off in slavery than they are today. Who thinks that African-Americans were better off when segregation was legal than they are today.
A president who apparently has no idea why we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. No idea what Martin Luther King Jr. achieved what he suffered, how he risked his life and lost his life in fighting for the most basic rights for African-Americans.
Donald Trump doesn`t seem to know that African-Americans were not better off when they didn`t have the right to vote.
That none of us were better off when African-Americans didn`t have the right to vote because we lived in a country that tolerated and legalized egregious immorality.
A country that normalized vicious immorality toward African-Americans on a daily basis. That was the country Donald Trump was born into. Segregation was legal when Donald Trump was in elementary school and high school.
He never raised his voice against it. Donald Trump was in college when young men and women were leaving their colleges to go south as freedom writers to join the fight for civil rights, he didn`t join them. And apparently, he never even thought about them.
Even after some of them were murdered. Because Donald Trump said tonight that things were much better then, for African-Americans back when they wouldn`t get shot walking down the street as he claims they do now.
Donald Trump forgets the thousands of lynching African-Americans suffered. He does not know the crime rates are down, that murder rates are down.
They are lower than they were in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s or whenever in Donald Trump`s dreamscape things were better for African- Americans.
Or maybe he does know. Maybe Richard Cohen is wrong and Donald Trump is not the same kind of liar that Hitler was, maybe. But then we`re still left with the question, which one is worse? Joining us now, Rick Wilson; Republican strategist and contributor to the website "Heat Street".
He`s an adviser to the Evan McMullin independent presidential candidate. Also with us, Mark Thompson, host of "Make it Plain" on "Sirius Xm" radio. Mark, as soon as I heard what Donald Trump had to say, I just said we got to get Mark in here.
It`s just -- you know, I -- it`s a painful thing to listen to and to see that crowd`s reaction listen to it. And we don`t know, they were silent during that part of it. We don`t know how many of them believed that to be true, how many of them think it`s a lie.
How many -- I don`t know what their reaction to it is.
MARK THOMPSON, RADIO HOST: It was always, Lawrence, thanks for having me. Your words were profound, he is truly ignorant. But he is historically consistent in his ignorance. Reverend Bob in North Carolina as matter of fact and I often preach the same sermon, we won`t say who stole -- who stole the sermon from whom? But --
O`DONNELL: Well, listen, I was preaching Richard Cohen`s sermon just now, so, I want to give Richard all the credit for that --
THOMPSON: Indeed, and God bless Richard, I know him well. The period after reconstruction was known as reclamation. And so, during reconstruction, we got the right to vote.
Thousands of African-Americans elected throughout the south in local positions, even in the house and Senate, former slaves in the house and the Senate.
The first congressional black caucus. What was the reaction of the white supremacists? It was to criminalize us -- and Dr. Sean McIntyre(ph) wrote a book about it, "Criminalizing Race". And we were run down and talked about, and the movie "Birth of a Nation" came out.
We lost the right to vote. Dr. King himself talked about that on the steps of the Montgomery capital at the end of the march in Selma and Montgomery. How white and black were divided purposely at that time.
Dr. King`s own words, "African-Americans were fed the Bible, whites were fed Jim Crow." What Donald Trump is doing is not showing concern at all by saying we`re worse off than ever. The words he uses are very specific and very strategic.
He`s criminalizing us again. He`s speaking to the alt-right. Don`t know how many alt-right people were in that audience. But the audience he`s really talking to is the alt-right. African-Americans are no worse off than we were doing.
So, we all -- we all know that. However, and let me just say the new numbers came out, the economy has improved for everybody under President Obama including African-Americans. We also know that we are living in an era of modern day lynching by the police.
So, again, what Trump is doing is exploiting that atmosphere, criminalizing us, we have no good jobs, no good schools, no education, violence, get shot every day, that is a way of criminalizing us while the police are shooting us down.
Someone concerned about us as Hillary Clinton said on the Steve Harvey show is going to talk about what happened to Terence Crutcher over the weekend. It`s going to talk about some of the other things that are affecting us.
Anybody who is putting us down, in fact, putting us as victims down any further is not our friend. And Donald Trump isn`t our friend and all, and he keeps reciting that poem, the Al Wilson song --
O`DONNELL: Sure --
THOMPSON: Soul single "The Snake". Again, he`s been fretting again because he Donald Trump himself is the snake.
O`DONNELL: Yes --
RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
THOMPSON: Yes, absolutely.
O`DONNELL: Rick, go ahead.
WILSON: You know, I mean, look, the arc of Donald Trump`s idiocy is long - -
O`DONNELL: Right, yes --
WILSON: But bent (INAUDIBLE) towards infinite stupidity. I mean, this is a guy who -- you know, I would love to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he just didn`t think it through.
He`s just dumb as a sack of hair, but honest to God, with the guy, he`s been so divisive, he`s been so determined to open up a racial chasm in this country.
And in part because he`s a guy who`s backed in large measure by a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis and fraud, mean idiots.
And he`s proud of that. He loves those people, they are his base, they are his core, they are what Donald Trump loves most. So, I`d love to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was just being dumb.
Because you could obviously make that assumption about almost anything he opens his cakehole on. But the fact of the matter is, I have to see there`s something darker about Donald Trump. And when he makes statements like this, he`s appealing to -- he`s not appealing to African-Americans.
O`DONNELL: Yes --
WILSON: He`s not trying to sell them. He`s trying to sell anxious white voters who smell the racism coming off this guy and they loathe it, they`re nervous about it. But he`s a guy who can`t acknowledge slavery. He can`t acknowledge that Klan is a bad group.
He can`t acknowledge David Duke as an evil human being. This is a guy who is way too deep, he`s hip-deep in this stuff and it`s really hard to give him a -- give him a pass on it.
O`DONNELL: So, Rick, just so I can clarify here and put you down in the right column. On the Richard Cohen notion, the theory that Donald Trump actually believes his lies.
Are you in the "he believes the lies because he`s so stupid", or he knows they`re lies and he`s telling otherwise --
WILSON: No, I think he knows they`re lies --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
WILSON: And look, I don`t give him a pass on anything regarding race or anti-Semitism or any of these other games he plays.
Because they have been too consistent over time. And for Trump, white supremacist support is not a bug of his program, it`s a feature.
O`DONNELL: This is the -- today, President Obama addressed the United Nations. This is his last time as president addressing the United Nations. Our next president will be the next U.S. president to do it.
I don`t suggest anyone imagine Donald Trump doing this while we watch President Obama do it. That would be too painful an exercise, but let`s watch what the president had to say today at the U.N.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Our nation began with a promise of freedom that applied only to the few but because of our Democratic constitution, because of our bill of rights, because of our ideals, ordinary people were able to organize and march and protest and ultimately those ideals won out.
Opened doors for women and minorities and workers in ways that made our economy more productive and turned our diversity into a strength. That gave innovators the chance to transform every area of human endeavor. And made it possible for someone like me to be elected president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Mark, two major party candidates for president, one of them understands all of that, and one understands not a single word of it.
THOMPSON: Again, Donald Trump wants to do what those did back at the turn of the century during reconstruction.
They wanted to reverse the election of the first congressional black caucus. He and his minions went to reverse the election of the first African-American president.
And listen, man, I`m hearing that people at the U.N., not far from here are talking about this. They are horrified. I mean, this is taken over the whole conversation. Can this man be president? That`s what they`re asking.
And looking at us, saying, are you all really about to elect this crazy man? Because --
WILSON: Well --
THOMPSON: He`s a -- he`s a --
WILSON: Yes --
THOMPSON: Wildcard, nobody knows what he`s going to do. It is a horrifying --
WILSON: That`s exactly what --
THOMPSON: Experience --
O`DONNELL: Go ahead, Rick --
WILSON: I think that`s exactly --
THOMPSON: Yes --
WILSON: My target --
THOMPSON: Yes --
WILSON: I think Mark is on target. There`s a great deal of anxiety about the temperament you need as president.
O`DONNELL: Yes.
WILSON: And no matter what you think about Donald Trump as a showman, a performer or reality TV star, a pitchman, a guy who sells weird steaks and bad water, this is a guy who does not have the temperament --
THOMPSON: Right --
WILSON: To go and deal with the international problems and crises this country faces. Because basically, he doesn`t understand those problems except to the limbs of how do they make Trump look.
And he doesn`t understand how to proceed in any way that reflect the best values of this country. He proves that every day.
O`DONNELL: Rick Wilson, thank you very much for joining us, and Mark Thompson, thank you.
THOMPSON: Thank you, man --
O`DONNELL: For joining us --
THOMPSON: All right --
O`DONNELL: Once again, I appreciate it --
WILSON: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Coming up, Donald Trump used other people`s money and pretended it was his own for charitable contributions.
And now, thanks to David Fahrenthold who has discovered he used some of that charitable money as payment in court cases.
Cases that he lost, and that is a clearly illegal use of charitable money. Also, Hillary Clinton supporter Tom Steyer(ph) will join us tonight on a LAST WORD exclusive.
He will make a major announcement right here about how he intends to help the Clinton campaign in the battleground states.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: David Fahrenthold is reporting that the "Washington Post" has delivered another breakthrough, a report of possible illegal use of funds in the charitable -- in the Trump charitable foundation.
It looks like a clear legal violation. The lawyer will take a look at it with us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Today, the most oblivious candidate in the history of presidential campaigns, the only one in history to be facing coast-to-coast fraud charges in courts while campaigning for president said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It`s called OPM. I do that all the time and this is called other people`s money. There`s nothing like doing things with other people`s money because it takes the risk.
OPM; other people`s money.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: He was talking about that absurdist piece of his foreign policy in which he will of course force other countries to pay for things that he wants them to do. That ridiculous Donald Trump fantasy that will never happen.
Unfortunately, using and abusing other people`s money unlike everything else he does is not a Trump fantasy, it is a sad and at least one case illegal reality.
David Fahrenthold has another major breakthrough report on the Donald Trump charitable foundation that is filled with other people`s money including $500,000 donated by Nbc during the run of Donald Trump`s television show on Nbc in which Donald Trump then pretended to be giving away his own money to charities.
David Fahrenthold reports that Donald Trump used $258,000 from his charitable foundation to settle two legal cases. Remember, this is the same Donald Trump who says he never loses lawsuits, and he never settles lawsuits.
In fact, he is frequently defeated in court and frequently settles. In one case, he used $100,000 of other people`s money deposited into the Trump Foundation for charitable giving, used that to pay a settlement in a court case.
And in the other one he used $158,000 to settle a court case. That is a clear violation of law to use charitable funds in cases like this.
This is exactly why the Attorney General of the state of New York announced that he is taking a very close look at the Trump Foundation.
Joining us now Rosemary Fei, an expert in private foundation and charity law, and Timothy O`Brien, executive editor of "Bloomberg View".
He`s also the author of "Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald". And Tim, I just want to go first to you because you`ve been studying this guy`s operations for so long.
Your surprise level at discovering this latest twist in the story.
TIMOTHY O`BRIEN, EDITOR, BLOOMBERG VIEW: Zero --
O`DONNELL: Yes, zero, yes --
O`BRIEN: Zero --
O`DONNELL: OK --
O`BRIEN: Yes, I think other people`s money will probably be his epitaph.
O`DONNELL: Yes, and Rosemary Fei, give us the legal picture of what you see when you look at these transactions?
ROSEMARY FEI, EXPERT, PRIVATE FOUNDATION & CHARITY LAW: Well, as you said, I look at it from the tax law perspective. The private foundation is tax exempting and it`s got charitable status, so when people give, they get a deduction.
And then typically, someone will start a private foundation because they want to be generous, and they want to use that private foundation to accomplish charitable things in the world with their money which they put into the charity, then it becomes a charitable asset and then it`s used to accomplish charitable things in the world.
What seems to be going on with the Trump Foundation is a little different. I haven`t personally investigated his foundation or looked at the documents from the reporting I`ve seen and what I`ve heard in the news.
He hasn`t given to the foundation in years, and he`s actually, instead raising money from other people, and then when he gets to give it out, because he controls the foundation, it comes as a gift from the Trump Foundation with his name on it.
Now that wouldn`t be illegal. But when he uses the Trump Foundation money, these charitably charged assets that are for the benefit of the world or society or the public, however you want to put it, and he uses them to essentially pay off his debts, either his debts to charity or sometimes his settlements of lawsuits.
That is what`s called a self-dealing transaction. It`s prohibited for the private foundation. There -- and it can result in heavy fines, and if it`s a repeated, flagrant or ongoing thing, it can actually cost the private foundation its tax-exempt status.
It would have to be terminated.
O`DONNELL: And Tim, this obviously, the Attorney General of New York is going to find this because it was delivered to him today in a newspaper article.
O`BRIEN: That`s correct.
O`DONNELL: He`s already looking at the Trump Foundation, but this is probably the smokiest gun in there so far.
O`BRIEN: And remember, there`s a long history of this. The smoking gun, Billbab Stone(ph) site over ten years ago looked at his charitable giving to the foundation and traced years of non-existent contributions from Trump.
And he`s used charitable giving as one of the foundations of this campaign. That he`s a generous philanthropist, that he`s a big supporter of vets and there`s no evidence anywhere that he`s been a benefactor of veterans.
O`DONNELL: Yes --
O`BRIEN: And --
O`DONNELL: Go ahead Rosemary --
FEI: Well, if we had his -- if we had his tax returns, we would know how much charitable giving he has done personally, because that would appear on his tax returns, but of course those numbers are missing in action.
O`DONNELL: Yes, and the foundation shows no contributions from him and where he -- when he did do charitable contributions in the past that we have any awareness of, they were to the foundation.
Rosemary, what do you expect the New York Attorney General`s reaction to be when he examines the facts that have been presented in the "Washington Post" article?
FEI: Well, the laws that I was discussing were actually federal tax laws which would be enforced by the IRS using an audit.
And the New York Attorney General is charged like attorney general -- attorneys general across the country with protecting charitable assets.
And I think justice, there`s a tax law violation. It also seems likely that this is a diversion of charitable assets from their charitable purposes. They`re being used to benefit his reputation, make him look more generous than he really is.
Fulfill his personal pledges, pay off his debts, et cetera. So, that is likely to be problematic for the New York Attorney General.
O`DONNELL: So, Tim, we`re now -- we now have a case of interest for the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York, a possible IRS case and then also the state Attorney General.
O`BRIEN: Yes, on multiple fronts.
O`DONNELL: Yes --
O`BRIEN: And I think one of the things, you know, I`ve seen Trump`s tax returns. I saw them in --
O`DONNELL: And by the way, Donald Trump wants to be the man who appoints the next federal prosecutor in New York with jurisdiction over this very question.
O`BRIEN: Well, and the entire Department of Justice --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
O`BRIEN: You know, should he be elected --
FEI: I think --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
FEI: I think he`s also --
O`BRIEN: And I think one of the things that really comes into play here is that you have the latest example of how abysmal his judgment is --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
O`BRIEN: On the one hand and how willing he is to flout the law on the other.
O`DONNELL: Rosemary, a quick last word.
FEI: I think he also would expect to control who`s in charge of the IRS, which, obviously --
O`DONNELL: Yes, that`s right --
FEI: Would affect --
O`BRIEN: Yes --
O`DONNELL: He appoint -- he does appoint the director of the IRS. Rosemary Fei, Tim O`Brien, thank you both for joining us tonight, I really appreciate it --
O`BRIEN: Good to be here.
FEI: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Coming up, Republican war room veteran Mike Murphy will take a look at the paths to victory in the electoral college, that`s next in the war room.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the last word on campaign 2016.
O`DONNELL: Time for tonight`s Campaign War Room. Hillary Clinton`s campaign manager is reassuring Clinton supporters in a private memo obtained by NBC News. The memo says, "Here`s the story that no poll can tell. Hillary Clinton has many paths to 270 electoral votes while Donald Trump has very few. Hillary Clinton is nearly certain to win 16 Blue States including Washington D.C. which will garner her a 191 electoral votes.
If we add the five states that fivethirtyeight.com gives Hillary a 70 percent or greater chance of winning. Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin Hillary only needs 10 more electoral votes."
The memo lays out how Hillary Clinton can pick up those ten electoral votes by winning Florida, North Carolina or Ohio or by winning any two of Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada. The memo says, "Donald trump on the other hand must win six of these seven states, including Florida, North Carolina and Ohio. Those aren`t great odds for Donald Trump."
With just 48 days left for the campaign war room, is joining us tonight in the Last Word War Room is Mike Murphy, Republican Strategist and veteran of many campaign war rooms. He`s the host of podcast, Radio Free GOP. Mike, what do you make of the Robby (ph) memo? You`ve read many memo`s over the years about paths to victory in the Electoral College. What do you make of this one?
MIKE MURPHY, REPUBLICAN POLITICAL CONSULTANT: I think the facts in the memo are basically correct. The democrats have a generic advantage now in the Electoral College. And if you look at the demography of the states and the kind of internals of the polling, the Clinton campaign is right to say that they have an advantage in an easier path in the Electoral College.
That said, things are not going particularly well for Mrs. Clinton right now. She`s kind of gotten in the way of her own campaign a bit. The generic forces behind her are proving to be stronger than her success as a candidate. That`s something they`ve got to reverse. And this memo is kind of a function I think of nervousness in the democratic ranks. But the substance of it is basically correct. They do have that advantage.
O`DONNELL: There`s a new NBC news tracking poll which uses kind of a massive sample. And then it shows nationally, likely voters, Hillary Clinton at 45, Donald Trump, 40, Gary Johnson, 10 and Jill Stein, 4. What does that tell us, Mike?
MURPHY: Well that`s an interesting poll because it has a massive sample size of about 13,000. But it`s basically an internet poll there. It`s kind of a brute force poll. So it`s interesting but I wouldn`t bet my life on it.
I think if you look at the average of the polls now, Trump is still stuck in his demographic cul-de-sac of grumpy old white guys like me while I`m not a Trump supporter. But that`s kept him in the low 40s, so he has ticked up for about 41, 42 to more like 43 to 44 while Hillary has dropped down from the middle or upper 40s, 48, 47 down to about 45.
She still has a lead in most polling. But it`s within the margin of error. I just caution everybody that all these public polls are a very good snapshot of what happened yesterday.
So, you know, maybe there`s a tied race for President on September 23rd. But the full force of the decision people have to make comes after a lot more campaign. So, it`s still a fluid race. She still has the demographic advantages. But right now for the last two weeks, she has not had a performance advantage.
She has not -- her campaign has not kind of been in control of the dialog. And the debate coming up next week will be the first really big moment since the conventions. And it will have an impact.
O`DONNELL: She does have a huge advantage in TV Ad spending and the capacity to do TV ad spending. Let`s listen to Donald Trump`s reaction to that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They`re saying that our expenditures on advertising, our expenditures on people, our expenditures on everything are tiny fraction. And yet we`re minimum tied and we might probably, actually be winning, spending a tiny fraction.
Now in the old days, and for the business people of which we have many, if you spent less, had fewer people, did less advertising and at one state I think they said we did one-50th, one-50th, spent less advertising and were winning. They used to give you credit for that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Mike, your reaction to that?
MURPHY: Well, I think he may rue the day. He said all that because the internal numbers are still better for her than him. And I think, you know, what we all focus on and I think we over focus on these media polls every day is the horse race number, the 42 versus 44 kind of step which while interesting, you`re looking at which candidate has the more likely path to 47, 48, 49, depending on how the Independent Candidates do.
And so, if you look at the kind of voters between both of these candidates and a higher number, they look more like democratic voters. So I`d rather have the advertising advantage that Hillary Clinton has. Though I think the Clinton campaigns needs to start using some of that advertising not just to make Trump unpopular. Trumps already done that. But instead to make a better case for why Hillary Clinton. That`s where I think they are in trouble.
O`DONNELL: And Mike, when you look at the third and fourth party candidates there should Hillary Clinton be trying to pull voters away from them?
MURPHY: Well, it`s interesting, you know, one it gets very hypothetical now because the third party voters are not famous enough to really be known by the electorate enough that you get a completely reliable test in a poll this early. So there`s a debate between pollsters that do you put them on the polling or not.
I think if they were in the debates and you`d kind of cooked the food a little more and you could then poll it better. That said, the data we have indicates that they take votes from both of them. So, any third party that has favorable opinion of Hillary and there are some, she ought try to get back. But I don`t it`s her biggest problem.
Her biggest problem is, people are just rejecting her. And I think she needs to use the debate. I mean I`m, you know, I`m for neither of these candidates, frankly. But if she were to use the debate, she has to break through the caricature of being this robotic, untrustworthy politician. And she -- that`s what the debate can do for her and we`ll see if she can take advantage of it.
O`DONNELL: Mike Murphy, thanks for your experience in the real war rooms. Thanks f you for joining us in ours.
MURPHY: Thank you..
O`DONNELL: Coming up, in the Last Word exclusive Hillary Clinton supporter Tom Steyer has a major announcement to make right here on how he plans to help the Clinton Campaign in the battle ground states.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: There are many reasons why the United States of America has never gotten the full respect that it wants at the United Nations. Most of those are illegitimate but some are sadly true. Like the United States of America`s tendency to jump into unnecessary and unjust wars from Vietnam to Iraq.
But there is another reason that predates those wars and that predates the United Nations. It is this country`s treatment of indigenous people. The 500-year crime that we have committed against the people whose only crime was to be here thousands of years before us. And so, for Native Americans, it was 500 years too late, when in 2007, the United Nations passed a resolution on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It`s said, "Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence." The vote on this resolution in the United Nations was 144 in favor and four against. The United States of America was one of the four countries that shamed themselves by voting against the rights of indigenous peoples.
In 2007, the United States of America voted the wrong way on genocide in the United Nations. In a vote unnoticed by most of us here in the United States, but seen very clearly by every other country at the United Nations. The bush Administration`s Ambassador to the U.N. voted no that day.
In what was sadly a morally consistent position for a country that had in fact committed genocide for hundreds of years, against its indigenous peoples. When President Obama sent Susan Rice to the United Nations as our next Ambassador, she changed our vote. And so, the United States joined the countries who got that genocide vote right the first time.
Today, the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe testified in Geneva, Switzerland, to the United Nations human rights council in a hearing on indigenous people`s rights.
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DAVID ARCHAMBAULT, CHAIRMAN, STANDING ROCK SIOUX TRIBE: My name is Dave Archambault. I am the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Our tribal nation is a sovereign nation located in the United States. Our sovereignty is recognized by the United States through the legal -- legally binding treaties of 1851 and 1868, signed by our traditional Lakota government, Oceti Sakowin, then passed by the United States Senate and proclaimed by the President of the United States.
I am here because oil companies are causing the deliberate destruction of our sacred places and burials. Dakota Access pipeline wants to build an oil pipeline under the river that is the source of our nation`s drinking water. This company has knowingly destroyed sacred sites and our ancestral graves with bulldozers.
This company has also used attack dogs to harm individuals who try to protect our water and sacred sites. We call upon the Human Rights Council and all members -- all member states to condemned the destruction of our sacred places and to support our nation`s efforts to ensure that our sovereign rights are respected.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: The United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, which the United States of America now finally officially supports. Recognizes the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous people, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources.
People around the world know what we try to forget. That the United States of America has never respected words on a piece of paper, when those words are about Native-American tribes, especially treaties with those tribes, which we violated almost as soon as we signed them. And now we`ll find out how much the United States of America respects the words on that piece of paper that our U.N. Ambassador finally voted for on the rights of indigenous peoples.
But this time, thanks to Chairman Dave Archambault and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the uprising they have lead the whole world is watching.
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O`DONNELL: Here`s what Hillary Clinton told Steve Harvey today about America`s latest case of obviously, unjustifiable killing by police, obvious only because it was completely caught on video.
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HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We`ve got to tackle systemic racism, this horrible shooting, again? How many times do we have to see this in our country? In Tulsa, an unarmed man with his hands in the air?
I mean, this is just unbearable, and it needs to be intolerable. And, so, you know, maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people say look, "This is not who we are. We`ve got to do everything possible to improve policing. To go right at implicit bias."
There are good, honorable, cool-headed police officers. We`ve seen them in action in New York over the last, you know, 48 hours because of the terrorist attacks.
We can do better. We have got to rein in what is absolutely inexplicable. And we`ve got to have law enforcement respect communities and communities respect law enforcement because they have to work together.
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O`DONNELL: We`re going to take another look at this from another view from street level.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shots fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O`DONNELL: Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said Officer Betty Shelby encountered Mr. Crutcher and his vehicle while en route to another call and requested backup because he was not cooperating. Chief Jordan has confirmed Terence Crutcher was unarmed. Officer Shelby has been placed on administrative leave.
The Department of Justice has opened an independent investigation, and we would know none of this tonight, and we are virtually certain that there would be a completely different police story about this if we did not have videotape telling us the story. Donald trump surely knowing that his white supremacist supporters don`t want to hear about this case has unsurprisingly said absolutely nothing about it.
And up next, we`re going to have an exclusive interview with a man who has a big plan for helping Hillary Clinton in the final stretch.
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O`DONNELL: Now last word exclusive, a Hillary Clinton supporter is here with a major announcement. It comes as the Wall Street Journal reports that billionaire donors Sheldon Adelson and Joe Ricketts are creating a new super PAC to specifically target Hillary Clinton in battleground states. Sheldon Adelson is expected to donate $5 million, Joe Ricketts is expected to give at least a million dollars.
The Wall Street Journal reports that it is unclear if they will run commercials directly promoting Mr. Trump. Joining us now for an exclusive interview Tom Steyer, founder of Next Gen Climate, he is a business leader, philanthropist and environmentalist and supports Hillary Clinton for president.
The billionaires lining up finally for Donald Trump? They`ve been reluctant. They --
TOM STEYER, BUSINESSMAN, ENVIRONMENTALIST: Yes they have.
O`DONNELL: Yes, they know a fraud when they see one I guess. Hillary Clinton needs help on those battleground states. You have an announcement to make about what you`re going to do.
STEYER: Well, what we`ve been -- we haven`t just gotten into this. The programs that we have been working on we`ve been working on for over a year. Basically, two big programs, one of them is in conjunction with four national unions, where we`re putting in, we`ve been working on that for this entire year, basically going door to door in eight swing states, trying to do eight million door knocks, focusing on over two million sporadic voters to talk to them on the issues we think they care about the most which is economic justice, environmental justice, racial justice and good schools.
And that`s a program in which we`re putting in $20 million or we`ve put in $20 million in the overall program.
O`DONNELL: When you say "we", don`t we mean you, Tom Steyer out of one of those pockets? $20 million, this "we" is just kind of a modest way of saying this?
STEYER: Well, the program --
O`DONNELL: OK.
STEYER: -- is $55 million. So the -- my organization, which is not just me, but which is largely me --
O`DONNELL: Yes.
STEYER: -- is $20 million so that`s $55 million. So, that`s something which you can`t do if Sheldon Adelson wanted to do a field program knocking on doors in eight swings states, he couldn`t decide to do it now, because you have to hire people, you have to organize them, you have to work with existing organizations. It`s an actual, you know, organizational task requiring a lot of work.
So we`re doing something completely different from what you`ve just described. Because what you`re talking about is shooting TV commercials --
O`DONNELL: Right.
STEYER: -- and putting them on the air, and in this case, I think you`re describing doing negative commercials where they`re targeting Secretary Clinton.
O`DONNELL: Yes, it sounds like they won`t even talk about Trump, It`s just going to be attack, attack, attack.
STEYER: And we`re doing something really absolutely diametrically different. Which is to say we`re trying to engage voters on the issues they care about the most and show them in extended conversations with peers why what they care about matters, how their vote matters, and why they should participate. That is a very, very different and traditional American democratic process.
O`DONNELL: And what you`re doing sounds effectively like a turnout operation, because you`re going to knock on doors. You`re going door to door to engage directly with a voter.
STEYER: You are not going to change someone`s opinion about their relationship with their government and their society in a 15-second TV ad.
O`DONNELL: Right. Right.
STEYER: You may be able to destroy their opinion about an opponent. But you`re certainly not going to engage them in the way that Americans have engaged in the democratic process since the 1700s.
And the other thing that we`re doing is we`re going to be on well over 200 college campuses doing the exact same thing with millennials in swing states and in California to say care about climate, get the facts about the candidates on climate, understand what`s going on. You already care about this. This is your number one issue. Be aware about how important your vote is.
That is a very, from our standpoint, it has to do with the broadest, most perfect American democracy that we love and respect.
O`DONNELL: Tom Steyer, really, really impressive effort, I have to say. This is not the billionaire just dropping in some money to buy ads. Very, very impressive.
STEYER: Yes.
O`DONNELL: Thank you very much for joining us.
STEYER: Thank you for having me.
O`DONNELL: Really appreciate it. We`ll be right back.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.
STEPHEN COLBERT, TELEVISION TALK SHOW HOST: No, not period, question mark (bleep) exclamation point.
Here`s the deal. Here`s deal. You don`t get to flaunt this issue for five years and then act like you`re correcting everybody else. We`re not crazy. We were there. We all saw you do it. Even the people who support you saw you do it. It`s why they support you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Stephen Colbert gets our Last Word tonight. MSNBC`s live coverage continues in The 11th hour with Brian Williams. Brian has a one- on-one interview with Donald Trump`s running mate Indiana Governor with Mike Pence. The 11th hour with Brian Williams is live and it is next.
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