The Rachel Maddow Show, Transcript 07/06/15

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Steve. Great job tonight. Hearing you talk about Christie and encapsulating the bridgegate story in terms of its current political importance, I was rapt. I was amazing. STEVE KORNACKI, UP: I had 12 hours to get ready for that. And I had a lot to say. MADDOW: Also a lifetime. KORNACKI: That`s right. MADDOW: Thanks, Steve. Well done. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Hope you had a good holiday weekend for the Fourth. I caught two rainbow trout and I got one big black fly bite. Also the puppy`s house training is coming along great. I had a spectacular weekend. I hope you did, too. Usually after a holiday weekend, the news is slow to start back up again the following Monday, right? That`s not the case today. That`s not the case with this Monday. This afternoon and evening, there has been breaking news on a bunch of different issues. The rape and sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby over the course of the last year plus, those a allegations piled up and piled up and piled up. Tonight, some previously sealed court documents have been pried loose by "The Associated Press" and with those documents becoming public the Bill Cosby story has taken a sharp and qualitatively different turn from everything else that happened previously in this story. So, we`re going to have that coming up. Today was also the day of reckoning for the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds in South Carolina. The legislature in South Carolina took that issue up today. The arguments in favor of keeping the Confederate flag flying in the state capital ended up being much stranger than anyone expected today in South Carolina. That`s coming up tonight, too. Also the final ratings came in late today for the women`s World Cup final last night. You know that the U.S. women won the World Cup last night. But the ratings for the game? They were not what anybody expected. That story is ahead tonight, too. So, there`s a lot going on tonight, including some politics news breaking tonight. That`s going to be an unwelcome development among Republicans who are running for president and, frankly, among anybody who wants one of the Republicans running for president to stand a good chance of actually being elected president in 2016. Tonight, after three weeks of simmering disgust and upset over the part of his presidential campaign announcement where New York real estate developer Donald Trump said Mexican immigrants to the United States are rapists and drug dealers and not good people, after three weeks of upset by those comments, three weeks of companies like Macy`s Department store and Serta Mattresses and NASCAR, and hair care company called Farouk Systems, and the parent company of this network, NBCUniversal, and Univision, and ESPN and, and, and -- after three weeks of companies dropping Donald Trump and severing their business ties with Mr. Trump because of those fairly rabid comments that he made about Mexicans and Mexican immigrants, tonight, Donald Trump released a 900-word statement repeating those statements about Mexicans and insisting that they are correct. This is from his statement. Quote, "They are in many cases criminal, drug dealers, rapist, et cetera. The worst elements in Mexico are being pushed into the United States by the Mexican government." He says, "Tremendous infectious disease is also pouring across the border." It`s a big long statement repeating and adding to the things he has said before about terrible, terrible Mexicans. And this is how he ends the big long statement. It ends this way, quote, "After my speech was made, there were numerous compliments and, indeed, many rave reviews. There was very little criticism. It wasn`t until a week after my announcement that people started to totally distort these very easy-to-understand words. If there was something stated incorrectly, it would have been brought up immediately and with great enthusiasm. The issues I have addressed and continue to address are vital steps to make America great again. Additionally, I would be the best jobs president that God ever created. Let`s get to work." Additionally -- that`s how he writes. Or that`s how whoever writes things for him writes things. That statement tonight repeating and expanding on Mr. Trump`s feelings about Mexicans and how terrible Mexican immigrants are, that statement comes on the heels of this now-deleted tweet from Mr. Trump over the weekend. He retweeted somebody else`s statements in which he basically attacked Jeb Bush, attacked one of his rivals for the Republican nomination on the basis of the fact that Mr. Bush`s wife is Mexican. This was said from Donald Trump`s Twitter account this weekend, on Saturday, but then it was later deleted. His campaign admits that this tweet went out, but they say it was an error. Error or not, that statement from Donald Trump tonight reiterating his insults against Mexican people, expanding on them, even, if nothing else, this ensures that the issue of how he feels about Mexicans and immigrants, that issue will stay at the top of Republican presidential politics. And that`s one thing if it`s only about this one candidate, if it`s only about Donald Trump and his chances of winning the Republican nomination. It`s a much wider issue than that because several of the other Republicans who are running for president alongside him, they`re happy to say they agree with him on this issue. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now, when it comes to Donald Trump, I like Donald Trump, he`s bold, he`s brash and I get that it seems the favorite sport of the Washington media is to encourage some Republicans to attack other Republicans. I ain`t going to do it. I`m not interested in Republican on Republican violence. CHUCK TODD, MEET THE PRESS: Rhetoric matters. CRUZ: You know -- TODD: Doesn`t rhetoric matter? CRUZ: I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration. The Washington cartel doesn`t want to address that. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Senator Ted Cruz on "Meet the Press" this weekend saluting Donald Trump for his comments on immigrants. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he disagreed with Mr. Trump but he said he also thinks he`s got a point. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think Donald points to a very important things, which we have a serious problem of illegal immigration in this country. While I don`t like the verbiage he`s used, I like the fact he`s focused on a very important issue. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: So, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz among the Republican presidential candidates trying for a little Trump-mentum themselves as his doubled, tripled, quadrupled down comments about Mexicans being rapist and drug dealers continues to drive the Republican presidential aspirant conversation. Other candidates including Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Jeb Bush have now started saying they`re offended by Mr. Trump and his remarks about Mexicans. Those criticisms of Mr. Trump include this one by Jeb Bush this weekend when he was speaking with CBS News. I should tell you before I play the comment that one of the things I find interesting and, in fact, very compelling about this is that this comment from Jeb Bush about Donald Trump also featured a new Jeb Bush human sound effect I have that never heard before. Turns out he has a million of these. Watch this. Listen to the little noise he makes. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a guy who was a Democrat for most of the last decade. I don`t think he represents the Republican Party and his views are way out of the mainstream of what Republicans think. No one suggests that we shouldn`t control our borders. I mean, everybody has a belief that we should control our borders but to make these extraordinarily ugly kind of comments is not reflective of the Republican Party. Trump is wrong on this. He`s just -- he`s doing this -- I mean, he`s not a stupid guy so I don`t assume he`s, like, he thinks that every Mexican crossing the border is a rapist. I mean -- so, he`s doing this to inflame and to incite and to get to draw attention which seems to be his organizing principle of his campaign and it doesn`t represent the Republican Party or its values. But politically we`re going to win when we`re hopeful and optimistic and big and broad rather than, you know, errr, grrr, just angry all the time. This is an exaggerated form of that and there is no tolerance for it. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Errr, angry. Donald Trump is a lot of things. I don`t think of Donald Trump as angry or sort of doing a performative the angry thing. I think of him as blustery. But I guess eye of the beholder, right? I do like hearing Jeb Bush anthropomorphize the feeling of anger into a kind robot sound. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: Rather than, you know, errr, or grrr, just angry all the time. Errr, grrr. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: I did not expect that this one of the awesome things about covering Jeb Bush running for president, but this is a surprising and kind of awesome thing that he does. He makes really weird noises. I mean, it started when he made the sound of Twitter. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: That will light up the Twitter. (LAUGHTER) The Twitter universe, there`s some heads exploding right now. It`s -- I can feel it. Like (INAUDIBLE) (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Just play the noise of the Twitter. Just -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (INAUDIBLE) (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: He makes great noises! They all sound like a turkey. Or another kind of bird. He did a different kind of bird when he announced. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: Hoo! (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Hoo! I didn`t think it would be like this covering Jeb Bush but this is part of the joy of covering him. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: Hoo, hoo. Err, grr. (INAUDIBLE) (END VIDEOI CLIP) MADDOW: I admit it, whatever you thought it would be like to have George W. Bush`s brother running for president, you didn`t expect that. And none of us expected this from the race, either. This is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders`s campaign stop in Portland, Maine, tonight. You can see it`s a big venue. They had to move this event tonight to the Portland pro-hockey arena after they got so many RSVPs for their first choice venue in Portland that they could have filled that other venue up four times over and that was a week out from the event. "The Bangor Daily News", their reporter estimated that the crowd Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking to tonight in Maine is at least 7,000 people. The staff at the venue in Portland is telling reporters that it`s probably close to 9,000 people packed in there. This is happened as we speak. This huge event tonight, the kind of event no other candidate is able to do anywhere. This is just the latest in a string of them for Senator Bernie Sanders. On Friday, he was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, between 2,000 and 3,000 people turned out in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to see Senator Sanders. That was Friday. That followed the 10,000 strong crowd that turned out to see Bernie in Wisconsin on Wednesday. Come on! I mean, this is starting to look like it`s not a fluke and it`s not a sidebar, either. Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist senator, right, having way more retail success on the campaign trail than anyone else in either party. Anyone. But now, here`s the next thing to watch, because although it still feels early in the process, we just had Fourth of July for crying out loud, I`m still getting black fly bites when I`m fishing, although it still feels early, we are getting to crunch time now in this process, because one month from tonight is the first Republican presidential debate, a month from tonight. And unlike other years, that doesn`t mean that, you know, in a month we`re about to have the first test of what the candidates are like on the debate stage. No. This year, it`s totally different. This year because of FOX News and the Republican Party and how they have decided to structure the process, one month from tonight, the Republican field will be culled. There are 14 major candidates who are officially running now. There will be 15 major candidates running as of next week when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gets in and then there will be a couple more after that. But FOX News and the Republican Party are only going to let ten of the candidates up there on the debate stage to actually compete for the nomination. It`s going to be 15, 16, 17 people running. They`re only going to let ten of them compete. If you`re not on the stage in the debates, honestly, you are not in the running. And right now, our rough guess of who makes that top ten, who`s in and who`s out, looks like this, looks like this is probably the field. But honestly, there is no statistical difference between the people who make it and the people who don`t. The margin of error on the last five national polls used to come up with this cutoff, the margin of error in those polls ranges from five points to more than six points which means there`s no statistically sound way of distinguishing not just between tenth place, hey, you made it, and 11th place, hey you didn`t make it. With a margin of error between five and 6.5 points in these polls that they`re averaging, there`s no statistically sound way of distinguishing between the guy who comes in 14th place and the guy who comes in sixth place. Bloomberg politics today had political science professors look at this and just marvel. Quote, "Methodologically, they might as well be drawing straws." Quote, "The microscope has not yet been invented that enables us to determine the difference between the tenth place person and the 11th place person. To a statistician, it looks like they`re just bumbling around in the dark, they are just throwing ingredients together and hoping it makes cake." But that`s how FOX News is doing it. That`s how they`re deciding who`s allowed to compete for the presidential nomination in the Republican Party and how is not allowed to compete for it. And the cull happens exactly one month from right now, which mean the candidates have one month from right now to goose their national poll numbers, to do whatever they can. To goose their national poll numbers enough that they makes the FOX News cull. And that means strategically that basically every single candidate on the Republican side has every reason to get out of the early states now. Stop bothering with Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, do whatever you can to make national news, because it`s not Iowa and New Hampshire who decides who gets to be on the stage competing for the nomination, it`s national poll respondents who will determine which Republicans are allowed on the stage and which ones aren`t. It`s not Iowa voters and New Hampshire voters or voters anywhere, it`s people who may or may not watch the news but who do answer the phone when the pollster calls. Tonight starts one month of every Republican who`s running trying to make enough national news to move poll respondents in states around the country. How would you do that if your political life depended on it? And would it involve the kind of tripling down on racist outrage that we are now seeing from the middle of the Republican pack? As of tonight, these guys have got one month to make it, sink or swim. Joining us is Frank Rich, writer at large for "New York Magazine". Frank, thanks for being here, it`s great to see you. FRANK RICH, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Good to see you. MADDOW: (INAUDIBLE) (LAUGHTER) RICH: He has a future in animation if this thing doesn`t work out. MADDOW: That`s right, or doing the sort of like -- I once had a bird call book where you could look at the picture of the bird and play the call. We could have Jeb Bush doing the owl. RICH: Big future, and lot of money. MADDOW: All right. So you`re John Kasich, you`re Carly Fiorina, you`re Rick Santorum, you`ve got one month to try to spike in the national polls or you are basically not allowed to run. You`re politically dead in the water. What would you spend the next month doing? How would you do it? RICH: I`d do what Stephen Colbert did, take over a public access show and do television. You know, half of Trump`s poll numbers are due to his - - the fact he`s a television star. What can they do? There`s no policy position they can have that will create a stir in the dog days of the summer. They could, I don`t know, commit a crime. They could come up with a more outrageous form of bigotry than Trump has. They could -- I don`t know. I mean, Carly Fiorina is very rich. She could give people cars like Oprah. MADDOW: Exactly. And you get a Pontiac. I do feel like you can buy media, right? You can start buying national ads and maybe some of them will do that. But media that you pay for has less of an impact than media that is earned, when people are talking about you on television because you`ve done something they want to talk about. It seems to me that provoking some kind of outrage is the only way that somebody who`s right now below the cutoff could get discussed enough to bump somebody out of the top ten and get on to the stage. RICH: I think you`re exactly right. The only way to provoke outrage is to say something outrageous, as Trump has mastered, or take some crazily out there policy position that riles up the troops or to commit a crime or get involved in a scandal, preferably a sex scandal, although perhaps not one involving Bill Cosby. MADDOW: On the issue of what -- let`s say it`s not committing a crime or having a scandal, let`s say it was something where you`re taking a policy position that was so rattling the people, so unexpected that it got people talking about you. I used to feel like in the Republican Party that would mean taking a liberal policy stance. I now am starting to feel like in part because of Bernie Sanders, I`m now starting to feel like there`s actually nothing that could be said from the liberal side, even by a Republican, that would rattle people enough to earn you media. Like, I almost feel like the compass is so much different than we expected that a Republican saying a liberal thing would sound moderate. RICH: I think you`re right. And, look, George Pataki, who`s not a player but is technically a candidate, he`s pro-choice -- MADDOW: Yes. RICH: -- which is a liberal thing for a Republican to do. No one seems to care or even have noticed. MADDOW: Right. RICH: And even if he`s screamed it on MSNBC, I don`t think it would make a difference. And what position can they take? What liberal position? They`re sort of backing away now on same-sex marriage. They`re -- some of them are quasi-endorsing it except for three or four of the last holdouts. What -- they can`t top -- I don`t know what -- MADDOW: It has to be something so right wing that it gets -- they have to take a position that`s so right wing it`s shocking enough that FOX News talks about it and other Republicans feel like they need to either distance themselves from it or not. I mean, maybe that`s the effect. RICH: And I think you`re -- getting on FOX News is the key here. They`re setting the rules. Roger Ailes does control the air on that network. If you say something shocking that`s appealing to him, you will get airtime from the daily grind on the FOX circuit, but what`s left? I mean, they`ve taken such outrageous -- you know, self-deportation now seems like a moderate position in the Republican Party. MADDOW: We`re about to -- figuring out what`s left is about to become a very acute short-term question. It`s got to happen within the next three and a half weeks in order to pay off. RICH: They`ve used bomb Iran. MADDOW: Right. RICH: So they have to figure out -- maybe bomb Greece? Is that a position? (LAUGHTER) MADDOW: Frank Rich, writer at large for "New York" magazine -- Frank, it`s great to have you here. This is gong to be a fun month. RICH: I agree. MADDOW: All right. We`ve got lots more ahead tonight including, I think, the first ratings story, the first story about ratings we have ever den on this show that was not basically just a way of making fun of Bill O`Reilly. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: So, as I mentioned at the top of the show tonight, there is some late breaking news tonight on a story that has been slowly simmering over the course of the last year. It`s the rape and sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby. This story has taken a qualitative different turn tonight, and the reporter who broke that news joins us next. Please stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: So, this is a huge national story that has been unraveling over the course of the last year or so, month after month, allegation after allegation. But there are late breaking development, court records that are newly public tonight which have qualitatively changed the nature of this story. Everybody knows the name of the man at the center of all of this. For the past few years, but really in the fall and winter of last year, it seemed like every few days, a new woman went public with allegations against the actor and comedian and beloved entertainer Bill Cosby. Every few days, there were new ugly allegations that Bill Cosby had raped and sexually assaulted women, ultimately dozens of allegations from dozens of different women. And the incidents were alleged to have occurred over a series of more than four decades, starting in the mid-1960s, all the way to 2008. And although they spanned that very large stretch of time, all of the allegations were variations on the same terrible theme -- they all were basically allegations of sexual assault or rape, preceded by the woman being drugged. Three dozen women have come out publicly to tell a version of that story. But the very first one, the very first one, the very first women to ever publicly accuse Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her is a woman who worked for Temple University in Philadelphia. MSNBC is not identifying the woman by name. Temple University is Bill Cosby`s alma mater, he was on the board for many years before he resigned in the wake of these sexual assault allegations. He`s been a public booster for Temple. Well, in 2005, this Temple employee filed a civil complaint against Bill Cosby. She alleged that three years earlier, one night in 2002, she was at his house, she was getting career advice from him and she says that he gave her three blue pills. She thought they were for anxiety. She says she asked him whether she needed to take all three of the pills and she says Bill Cosby replied, "Yes." She says she took the three pills, she quickly felt dizzy and weak and says she needed help walking. She says she was barely conscious, she alleged Bill Cosby walked her over to a sofa in his home and sexually assaulted her. She filed her lawsuit against Bill Cosby in 2005. Her lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice and settled for an undisclosed sum of money the following year. And, yes, since then there have been dozens of women who have come out to describe a similar alleged experience with Bill Cosby. But their allegations have been just that, just allegations, even though there have been a lot of them. Bill Cosby has never been found guilty of those allegations in a court of law, and until tonight, Bill Cosby had always strenuously denied consistently all, all of the many, many, many allegations against him. Well, tonight, thanks to "The Associated Press" doggedly staying on this story and not taking no for an answer from the courts and going to court to force the release of these documents, thanks to "The A.P.", tonight we got this. These are the documents in that deposition during the accuser`s lawsuit against Bill Cosby back in 2005. These are the records of that very first sexual assault lawsuit against Bill Cosby. In the course of that lawsuit, Bill Cosby admitted that he obtained prescriptions for drugs, specifically for Quaaludes, which are powerful sedatives. He got those drugs specifically to give to women for the purpose of having sex with them. Quoting from the deposition, this is a lawyer asking Bill Cosby. "When you got the Quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?" Bill Cosby answers, "Yes." The rest of the documents that were made public tonight are fascinating. I mean, just to get a sense of the aggressiveness with which Mr. Cosby`s legal teams fought these allegations in court, they aggressively fought the release of these documents as well. They made the case that it would be, quote, "terribly embarrassing" for Bill Cosby if the public knew what he admitted in that courtroom that day in 2005. They say it would be terribly embarrassing. The avalanche of sexual assault and rape allegations against Bill Cosby have no doubt been terribly embarrassing. But even with this new newly public admission by Bill Cosby that he gave prescription sedatives to young women in order to have sex with them, is there any chance whatsoever that there could be consequences for Bill Cosby beyond terrible embarrassment? I mean, that`s just been the story all along, right? There are these allegations, but will these allegations, and now, will this new news about Bill Cosby have any legal ramifications? Remember, this lawsuit was settled. She filed in 2005. She settled in 2006 for an undisclosed amount of money. I mean, if there is no legal consequence here specifically for this, should there be a policy consequence? I mean, many of the women who made sexual assault allegations against Mr. Cosby have run up against the statute of limitations for crimes like that. They`ve been told he can no longer be charged with the crime because the alleged crime happened too long ago. It`s simply the passage of time that makes this an un-prosecutable thing. Does that need to change? Could that change? How does tonight`s bombshell scoop by "The A.P.", this admission, how does it change what happens next? Joining us now is Maryclaire Dale. She`s a legal affairs reporter for "The Associated Press", who broke this story earlier this evening. Ms. Dale, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for being with us! MARYCLAIRE DALE, ASSOCIATED PRESS LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER: Thanks for having me. MADDOW: Let me just ask. In the way I sort of thumbnailed that, did I get that wrong or is that basically the way that you understand this has all happened? DALE: I believe it`s right. The only thing I would tweak is I believe the sexual assault happened in 2004 in his home. MADDOW: 2004 not 2002. OK, thank you for that. DALE: Right. MADDOW: So, how were you able to get these documents from this case? My understanding is that the court initially resisted and that his legal team fought very hard to keep these documents under seal. DALE: They did. The judge had only issued a temporary seal in 2005 when the case was under way and the case settled before he ever ruled on a permanent seal for some of these documents, which contained excerpts from Cosby`s deposition. We certainly don`t still have the full deposition. We really only have a very small fraction of it, we think. The deposition went on over two days. But at any rate, back in 2005, "The A.P." tried -- or in `06 when it settled, we tried to get the documents unsealed and we lost. We tried again now and had the benefit of the law on our side because the law in federal court in Pennsylvania is that after two years, documents should be unsealed unless someone provides a good reason not to, a good legal reason. Cosby`s lawyers saying that it was going to be embarrassing for him was not enough reason the judge found and the judge also noted that Cosby had gone out, gone around moralizing on his soap box, and therefore, that it was the -- within our interest to show how his deposition statements compared to his public moralizing. MADDOW: In terms of the content of what you have now made public from this deposition, does this at all affect whether Mr. Cosby could ever be charged criminally, either for these allegations or any of the other related allegations? Will this factor into any case or potential case concerning him? DALE: In terms of criminal cases, on the sexual assault allegations, I wouldn`t think so. I think most of them are too long ago and the criminal statutes have run. It could possibly come into play in the libel lawsuit, the defamation lawsuit in Boston where three of the accusers are suing him for defamation, saying that when his agent said that their stories were not true, that they were drugged and sexually assaulted, they said that basically Cosby through his agents were accusing them of being liars. So, this -- again, the snippets of the depositions that we have tonight certainly don`t show whether the sexual assault allegations are true, but they do show that Cosby acknowledges that he used Quaaludes during the course of sex. You know, what`s left unresolved is whether or not he claims the women were doing it consensually. That question -- in other words, whether they knew they were using these drugs recreationally or otherwise. That question was asked and not answered and that is why the lawyer for the Temple University woman during the deposition had to go to court to get Cosby and his legal team to cooperate for the deposition. They were really running -- they were stymieing the answers he provided by, and so, she ultimately took 50 of her question, went to the judge and said, "They`re just not answering and I need help here." And I believe then the depositions did proceed. That have, the case settled. MADDOW: Maryclaire Dale, a reporter for "The Associated Press" whose work here to get these documents unseal really have had made this case take a major turn. Thanks for helping us understand your reporting tonight. I appreciate your being here. DALE: Thank you. MADDOW: Thank you. All right. We still have a lot more to get to tonight, including a big development in the effort to try to get rid of the Confederate flag on government grounds. Please stay with us. (COMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: If your job is making stock images that people can pay to use for their own purposes, it`s got to be a little weird, right? You make these images, you make tapes, videos, then you sell them to whoever wants to buy them. You don`t know how your stuff will be used. For example, these stock video models, maybe they expected their faces would end up in like, you know, an ad for life insurance or real estate or something. But if there is there is an award for the most unexpected use of the stock video that`s titled, you can see the title here, "African- American Parents Giving Children Piggyback Rides," if there is an award for most unexpected use of that stock video, my nomination far award is this pro-Confederate flag video in South Carolina, which really does feature that stock video of those black parents giving the piggyback rides. Southern heritage, Southern pride, Southern culture, African-American parents giving children piggyback rides. Seriously. These poor models in that stock video, right, now starring in our national debate over what we should do with our old racist symbols. That debate is moving very, very fast tonight in one American state and that story is coming up. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: The biggest newspaper in Mississippi is "The Clarion-Ledger", which is based in Jackson, Mississippi. This weekend, on the occasion of the Fourth of July, "The Clarion-Ledger" ran this as their full front page -- look at this. Basically shaming every lawmaker who has refused to answer one simple question put to them by this paper, quote, "Do you support legislation to remove the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi state flag?" The Mississippi state flag includes the Confederate flag, basically. And when the local paper asked lawmakers when whether that flag should be changed, turns out 106 Mississippi lawmakers wouldn`t answer the question, 106 of them. And now, all of their names and photos are front page news in the biggest paper in the state on the Fourth of July weekend. It`s not because of what these lawmakers think about that issue. Their front page news, they`re being publicly shamed because they have been afraid to say what they think on this issue. Now, in Mississippi, none of those lawmakers technically has to take a stance on the issue just yet, despite the public shaming, the Mississippi legislature isn`t in session right now. There`s been noise, there`s political proposals to maybe take the Confederate emblem off the Mississippi flag, but there`s no bill there. They`re not facing an imminent vote on this question. They`re not back in session until January. In South Carolina, though, unlike Mississippi, right now in South Carolina, it`s on. Today was the day that South Carolina lawmakers had to vote. They had to go on the record about whether or not to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of their state capital. The Senate voted on that flag issue today in South Carolina. It was an unexpectedly huge vote. In the Senate today in South Carolina, the vote was 37-3 to take down the Confederate flag from state capital grounds. And I don`t know exactly why it was so lopsided, that vote. It may have had something to do with the arguments for the losing side which, at the end here, forgive the editorial, but at the end here the arguments for the losing side, the arguments to keep the flag went a little (WHISTLING). This weekend a pro-Confederate flag group calling itself the Conservative Response Team, they started making robocalls to South Carolina residents, arguing that South Carolina should keep the Confederate flag flying at the state capital because of ISIS. ISIS? ISIS. (BEGIN AUDIOP CLIP) ROBOCALL: Don`t think the PC leaders will stop if Governor Haley gets her way and the Confederate memorial is taken down and hidden away in a museum. Just like ISIS, Obama`s haters want our monuments down, graves dug up and schools, roads and counties renamed. They`ve even taken "The Dukes of Hazzard" off TV. (END AUDIO CLIP) MADDOW: Graves dug up? So, that was one argument for keeping the flag up in South Carolina. If we take the flag down off the state capitol grounds, Bo and Luke Duke will join ISIS. I always worried about Bo. Also in the state Senate today, one of the three senators who voted to keep the Confederate flag at the statehouse, Senator Lee Bright, unveiled this impassioned rationale for keeping the Confederate flag flying at the state capitol grounds. He said it should keep flying at the state capitol because of gay marriage. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STATE SEN. LEE BRIGHT (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Our governor called us in to deal with the flag that sits out front. Let`s deal with the national sin that we face today. We talk about abortion, but this gay marriage thing, I believe, will be one nation gone under like President Reagan said. If we`re not one nation under God, we`ll be one nation gone under. We can rally together and talk about a flag all we want, but the devil has taken control of this land and we`re not stopping him. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: So, on the side of the Confederate flag staying at the state capitol we`ve got "The Dukes of Hazzard", ISIS and gay marriage. That side lost. That`s the side that lost today by an unexpectedly large margin of 37-3. Tomorrow, the South Carolina Senate is expected to hold a final vote on this measure. If it passes as expected this means the whole issue could reach the South Carolina House as soon as Wednesday. Now, right now we don`t know for sure if the bill will be fast tracked in the House, the way it was in the Senate or if they`ll slow it down and make it go through the committee process. Instead of putting it right on the floor. If they do, that it could drag the debate out much longer. But if they go fast, they really could go fast. Here`s something else we don`t know, though, about the House. We don`t know if the bill to lower the flag on the state capitol grounds will pass as easily in the House as it did in the Senate today. They need 82 votes to pass the bill in the House. Right now, according to an informal whip count being taken by the "Post and Courier" newspaper, it looks like they`ve got 83 votes. So, they`ve got one vote of wiggle room if the newspaper`s whip count is accurate. If the House approves this bill, though, and if they fast track it the way they did in the Senate, if those things like up, the Confederate flag could be off the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol as soon as Thursday. But a lot of things have to happen and fall in place in order for that to happen. Joining us now is South Carolina House minority leader, top Democrat in the legislature, Todd Rutherford. Representative Rutherford, it`s nice to see you. Thank you for being with us tonight. STATE REP. TODD RUTHERFORD (D), SOUTH CAROLINA: Thank you for having me. MADDOW: In terms of how I explained that process, is that what`s on the table? What we`re waiting to find out over these next couple of days? RUTHERFORD: You`re exactly right. The bill passed the Senate today, got second reading. It has to get third reading tomorrow and then it will come over to the House. Once it does, there`s procedural moves that will put it on the calendar in the House as early as Wednesday. We hope to get final vote as early as Thursday and send it to the governor to get it taken down. It must get the two-thirds vote on third reading. It doesn`t necessarily have to have it on second reading, but according to the statute, it has to have it on third reading and there`s some debate been whether it needs it on that, as well. MADDOW: There was obviously a very lopsided vote today in the Senate. More lopsided than I think many people thought. My feeling about that is that it may have been the arguments on the other side collapsed into self- parody by the time it came time to persuade people in their vote. I don`t know what actually happened. But watching what happened in the Senate, does that give you more confidence that you`ll get a bigger vote than you might have otherwise been expecting in this House? RUTHERFORD: It does. And Reverend Jesse Jackson came and addressed our Democratic caucus today. He said in South Carolina we are better than our politics. And we are. It was disturbing to watch some of the debate in the Senate by the pro-flag supporters. I anticipate a little bit of that in the House. I am told there are 50 Republicans trying to come up with a compromise, some other flag to go up on that pole. But as Democrats, we are going to stand firm. We don`t want any other flags. We don`t want the pole, we simply want it down. MADDOW: In terms of the compromise they`re proposing, we`ve been hearing rumors they might want some other form off confederate emblem that signifies the confederacy but doesn`t have the same sort of visceral punch as that Confederate flag we see flying out there now. Is that what they are proposing? Do you expect that there is going to be support for something like that? RUTHERFORD: I think there will be support. As I said, I think they have about 50 co-sponsors on the bill and they may be gaining a little ground, but they need more than that and they`re not going to get it, I don`t believe. I think it`s important that South Carolina show we are moving forward, that we`re looking forward to the 21st century, not looking back toward to the civil war. It`s important that this flag that flies right now in South Carolina did not fly during the civil war. There`s a lot of talk about their ancestors fighting under this flag. That never happened. This flag didn`t come about until after the war ended. So, what right now we`re ready to move forward. We don`t want other flags flying. We`re ready to keep our monuments. We hope they tell the truth but right now, we`re not going to take any monuments off the grounds. That`s one of their biggest concerns. So, we`re not going to accept any flags and we`re not going to move for anymore monuments to be removed. MADDOW: South Carolina State Representative Todd Rutherford, right in the middle of this big decision in South Carolina. Thanks for helping us understand tonight, sir. Good luck. RUTHERFORD: Thank you. MADDOW: Thank you. Still ahead, we will do our first-ever story on ratings that isn`t about making fun of Bill O`Reilly. That`s next, coming up. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: They`re back. They`re back! They`re here. They just landed. This was the scene at Los Angeles International Airport just moments ago. This happened within the last half an hour. The U.S. women`s national soccer team has just arrived back in the United States, following their epic, heart-pounding, historic, world cup win last night in the World Cup finals over Japan. The team has apparently just gotten off the plane. They are returning to a nation that was absolutely glued to their World Cup run. The numbers have come in. We`ve got early numbers this morning. We got the official numbers tonight. And the official numbers showed the number of people who tuned into that game last night and they are sort of astounding. And we`ve got details on that, straight ahead. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Have you ever wanted to quit your job? Have you ever wanted to quit your job in the baddest way possible? Meet Yanis Varoufakis. Yanis Varoufakis just quit his job, sent out a couple of defiant tweets, walked out of the finance ministry where until this morning he was the minister of finance for his country. He pushed his way through a throng of reporters. He got on his big motorcycle, put on his helmet, got on his big motorcycle, his wife hopped on the back of his big motorcycle and they drove off. And they went to a bar. Now, that`s the way you quit. Boom, done, I`m out. Bottom`s up, get me another. If you had been the finance minister for Greece the past few months, you might need a stiff drink before noon, as well. Banks in Greece are about to run out of money, literally currency, bills to give out. A week ago, the country declared a bank holiday. They closed all the banks. Anybody who wanted to get cash could still go to an ATM. But the ATMs have been limiting each person in Greece to 60 euros a day as the max makeup withdrawal. A handful of banks did stay open for retirees too go collect their pension payments or what`s left of them, pensions like government sears and pension fund having been slashed in Greece. This bank holiday, which sounds like a vacation, but really means the banks are closed, that bank holiday was supposed to end tomorrow, but now, the government has extended it until at least Wednesday. They`re keeping the banks closed. They`re also considering lowering the daily amount of cash that people can take out of their accounts, so it might even be less than 60 euros a day. If you`ve heard about the Greek economic crisis in the last few days, it`s because the country could really have no money left in a matter of days. It`s really that acute. And now a decision has to be made. I mean, Greece could ditch its currency, could ditch the euro. They could invent a new currency. No country has ever ditched the euro before after they signed on to it. Europe could give Greece the euros that Greece needs, presumably in exchange for more budget cuts and austerity measures. That could happen, as well. Or there could be some sort of in between, there could be some sort of managed bankruptcy, some mix of old and new currency and IOUs while everybody try to transition a country out of a monetary union that was supposed to be a permanent thing. This has never happened before. There`s never been a country using the euro that crashed and burned and stopped using it. I mean, nobody knows how bad it can be. Nobody knows which of the bad outcomes would be worse at this point. But the thing to watch for -- you need to watch for in very short order because a decision needs to be made in the next 24 to 48 hours. Doing nothing at this point would pretty much guarantee a complete economic collapse and Greece running out of cash. Greece`s prime minister is presenting a new plan to European leaders tomorrow. And the guy who was in charge of Greece`s finances is now out of the picture, probably three sheets to the wind. We are in unprecedented times. But in terms of watching this story, 24 to 48 hours is going to be when this happens. Watch this space. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: All right, you know the basics, four goals in rapid succession in the first 16 minutes of the game. Three of those four goals same from superstar midfielder Carli Lloyd, and one of her goals came from the midfield line. It was like the world`s greatest half-court trick shot in basketball. It was unreal. No way is that ball going to actually make it in, but it did make it in. Goal USA. That was the U.S./Japan World Cup last night which the U.S. won 5-2 to make them world champions. And you know that. You know that already, because you were watching. And I know you were watching, because number one, why wouldn`t you be watching? Number two, I know it, because statistically speaking, you were watching. Essentially everybody in the country was watching. Last night`s game was the-most-watched soccer match ever in American history, men, women, everybody. Most watched soccer game ever in the United States, so says Nielsen, the ratings people. The game averaged more than 25 million viewers. And the numbers climbed throughout the match. There were 18 million people watching at 7:00 when it started. It climbed and climbed and climbed to 30 million people watching by the end. Just for context, last night`s game beat every game of this year`s NBA finals. It beat every game of the 2014 World Series, including game seven. It also beat the primetime average of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. In other words, the whole country was watching last night. Congratulations. Congratulations to Team USA. We`re actually hoping to have a few of the players on the show later this week. I know! That does it for us. We`ll see you again tomorrow. Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL". Good evening, Lawrence. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. 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