All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 02/23/15

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN. GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: I think the president and the mayor can speak for themselves. HAYES: Taking a page from Sarah Palin, Scott Walker refusing to answer easy questions from the lamestream media. Tonight, Michael Steele and Howard Dean on the first media fire storm of 2016. Then, al Shabaab joins the propaganda arms race, threatening mall attacks in America. But should anyone take the bait? Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar joins me live. Plus, the story of a climate denying scientist who forgot to let everyone know he was funded by fossil fuel interest. And, the politics of Oscar. DONALD TRUMP, BUSINESSMAN: It was a great night for Mexico, as usual. HAYES: An ALL IN Oscar wrap-up you just have to see. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don`t have to say it. HAYES: ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Wisconsin governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott Walker, who is facing major blowback for his unwillingness to say whether he believes President Obama is Christian or loves his country, today met with the president himself at the White House. A sit down that Walker described as, quote, "a good meeting." Walker was at the White House in conjunction with the annual winter gathering of the National Governors Association in Washington, and on Saturday, he was asked once again if he wanted to repudiate Rudy Giuliani`s comment made at a close door dinner last week with Walker, that the president does not love America. Once again, he punted. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WALKER: I think the president and the mayor can speak for themselves. I know I know America and I know there`s people all across the political spectrum, from Republican to Democrats, who certainly do, but that`s something that the mayor and president have to talk about. They certainly can comment on themselves. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Though, the 2016 campaign is still in its infancy, it has already been a roller coaster for Walker who has rocketed up the standings after a wildly praised speech in Iowa last month, before falling back to earth after a series of what appeared to be embarrassing gaffes in which he failed to answer what seemed to be simple, non-controversial questions. Do you accept the theory of evolution? Does the president love his country? And is the president a Christian? If Walker had just answered yes, yes and yes, you know, those aren`t very hard. There is no story. Instead, he has punted over and over. As this weekend, if the president is Christian, Walker responded, I don`t know, telling reporters, quote, "You`ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven`t had a conversation with about that." Essentially, Scott Walker appears to be claiming he can`t comment on somebody`s religion unless he had discussed it with them first, which presumably means if you would have asked him, say, is the pope Catholic, he had to take a pass. Walker has embraced punting so unapologetically, he even acknowledged he was punting when he declined to discussion evolution earlier this month in London. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WALKER: For me, I`m going to punt -- I`m going to punt on that one as well. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, really? WALKER: That`s a question a politician should not be involved one way or the other by that. So, I`m going to leave that up to you and -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any British politician right or left would laugh and say of course evolution is true. WALKER: To me, I said, it`s just one of those where I`m here to talk about trade, not to pontificate on other issues. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: There is another possibility here, that Scott Walker`s punting isn`t a gaffe at all, but actually part of the strategy designed to endear him to the Rush Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party. Evidence for that theory comes in the form of a fundraising letter Walker sent out Sunday, attacking the small, petty and pale ideas that the gotcha headline writers for the liberal media, L and M both capitalized, want to talk about. He is also reportedly planning to bring up his media detractors and their gotcha questions in remarks tonight to a Christian media convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Walker seems to be positioning himself as the only potential GOP presidential candidate who can bring together the Republican establishment and his base, while his punt early, punt often strategy maybe satiating the far right, it won`t win over an establishment that wants a candidate who can at the very least offer simple answers to simple questions. Joining me now, MSNBC political analyst Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, and MSNBC contributor Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Good evening, gentlemen. Good to have you both. MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey. HAYES: Michael, let me start with you. STEELE: Sure. HAYES: What is going on here? The two theories, he`s doing this on purpose. The other is, he`s kind of bumbled his way into it and he is reverse-engineering a strategy around it after he did it. STEELE: I think it`s a little bit of both. I think it is -- this is a reflection of what happens when you have early handlers around you that are trying to isolate and insulate and protect a candidate who`s not even announced for office. And so, you sort of get into this vortex and you wind up sort of spinning out of control a little bit. And I think that`s what`s happened here. Look, Marco Rubio says it should have been a lay up. Just answer the question and move on. So, at the end of the day, that`s what should have happened. Look, I can take exception. Why are you asking me questions about evolution and all of this, you know, I`m a governor of a state doing X, Y, and Z? But that`s because the conversation largely in certain circles within the party has denigrated to that. So, now, every candidate on some point to ask that. You know, I would love to hear Democrats and maybe Hillary can talk about how Joe Biden puts his hands on the secretary of defense`s wife`s shoulders a little icky, but that`s not where we are. (LAUGHTER) STEELE: This is the space we`re in now and Republicans have got to give pass this and move to the substance of the argument against this administration and potentially Hillary. HAYES: Michael, I like that response, and even the parenthetical that was ably put in there about Joe Biden and Secretary Carter`s wife. I mean, hey, look, that is a legit question to ask Hillary Clinton, right? STEELE: Yes. HAYES: I mean, the problem for Republicans right now is unlike Hillary Clinton who I think is making the calculation that she has the field to herself and doesn`t have to do all these public events, they all have to talk to the press all of the time because they`re competing for oxygen. So, they`re getting asked things. And, Howard, I sort of wonder if you have any sympathy as a former candidate yourself, as a person on the receiving end of the so-called gotcha questions for the idea this is essentially a game of gotcha. HOWARD DEAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it is a game of gotcha. And my view after I went through it is, look, this is the most important office in the world. If you can`t survive a little gotcha from the press which I grant is very unattractive and makes you mad as a candidate, what are going to do when Vladimir Putin demands Alaska back? So, this is all just part of the deal, right? We`ve got to put up with it. I mean, you better be tough enough to figure out. You know, I always thought that Scott Walker was a rookie and he was in over his head as governor and I can`t imagine him at president. I hope I don`t ever have to. This is an example of that. He doesn`t have an inner compass. What he`s doing is catering. And I agree with Michael. This is some of both. Some of it, he`s been gotcha`d and some of it, he`s catering to the right wing. The trouble with that is he`s going to have the same problem that Mitt Romney did. He`s going to say some things that are hard to live down because the average American voter wants to know they want to know that he thinks he respects the presidency and you can`t respect the presidency if you think he is not a Christian, and he was born in Kenya, and all of this other crazy crap. He is now catering to the crazy wing in the Republican Party. That`s great in the primary but it`s going to come back and bite him in the general election. HAYES: Yes, I mean, we should note that he hasn`t been asked -- DEAN: It`s also going to make him -- if he`s not careful, he`s going to be unavailable for vice president. Now, I think he could beat Jeb Bush, but I also think he doesn`t want, he doesn`t want to go too far out there. He`s not going to be accepted on the ticket at all. HAYES: Well, I should note, A, you mention the Kenya thing, he has not been asked that, but, Michael, my sort of dream of this is a thought experiment in which you ask him increasingly ludicrously obvious questions so that you get to the point you`re like, Governor Walker does the earth revolve around the sun? STEELE: Right. HAYES: Right. And ask the non-political ones. Come on, give a yes - - (CROSSTALK) STEELE: Exactly, Chris, that is the unfortunate part of where we are right now. I would like to see us move beyond that because I think the substance of what these governors have done in their states is worthy of the debate and that`s what they need to get to. HAYES: OK. Let`s talk about the man that kicked all of this off, Rudy Giuliani, and again, this is no ones -- I`m sympathetic to -- I`m really genuinely sympathetic from the right and the left, gotcha questions, et cetera. But let`s be clear, this did all start really with Giuliani saying something that he himself said was horrible and then going around and essentially doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling down on it. Here he is again, he has an op-ed saying, I cannot read President Obama`s mind or heart, and to the extent that my words suggested otherwise, it was not my intention. This is in "The Wall Street Journal". Come on, Michael, what do you think of that? STEELE: You know, look, again, he is trying to pull back after going very, very far out on a limb on this, and it`s unfortunate because I think a lot of us, no matter what your stripes are in the GOP, have such admiration for the mayor, that it really was surprising to hear him go there, because he was the guy who always criticized other Republicans who went there. And so, that was very disappointing in many respects and I think he is trying to recover a little bit from it. And it`s going to be hard for him to do. And now, you got another talking point or rather a sticking point that candidates for the office of the presidency over the course of the next few months are going to have to answer because he opened that Pandora`s Box. HAYES: That`s right, Howard. We made a handy dandy chart on the "does the president love America?" So, we got America Obama hearts USA, Obama does not heart USA, and who the heck knows. Imagine the shrug emoticon there. That is comprehension chart. So for on the record, in what has emerged amazingly, Howard, is kind of an early dividing issue among the Republican field. DEAN: Well, I mean, Rudy is getting a little like Ed Koch did after he was out of office for a while. They both always said whatever came into their mind when they were in office that made them very popular. After awhile, you start to say things that you probably shouldn`t say and I think that`s where they`re all -- you know, I think that`s where we are now, and I think, you know, Rudy realized it and he tried to reel it back in. But he`s not a guy who wants to back on anything, that is not in his nature. So, we are where we are. But this is the kind of stuff that`s going to bug the Republicans. This is the hard part. There is a whole wing of the Republican Party, most of whom are going to support Jeb Bush, who would like to put all this nutty stuff behind them. Does Obama love America? The antigay stuff, the anti- immigration stuff. You know, the women have a class of wine and get fertile and all of that crazy stuff, rape, whatever. They just don`t want to talk about that any more. But this is the kind of stuff that raises that and the media is going to pounce on it and blow it up. HAYES: Yes. Well, you know firsthand how crazy they are, the media, I mean. Howard Dean and Michael Steele, thank you both. STEELE: You got it, Chris. HAYES: How is a video made by a group that has only attacked targets in East Africa saturate U.S. news media? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEH JOHNSON, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: I`m not telling people to not go to the mall. I think there needs to be an awareness, there needs to be vigilance, and, you know, be careful, obviously. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The threatoric versus the reality of threats, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: In the depths of February, with terrorism and war dominating the news, the world can seem so crushingly bleak. But every so often, something happened out of the blue to restore your faith in humanity. On Saturday, that`s something happened in Oslo, Norway, where over 1,000 people gathered around the main synagogue to form a human shield, to what participants called a ring of peace. The event was organized by young Norwegian Muslims and was meant as a response for the attacks against Jews in Paris and Copenhagen. One of the organizers told the crowd, quote, "We want to demonstrate that Jews and Muslims do not hate each other. We do not want individuals to define what Islam is for the rest of us." (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Modern terrorism has been defined as a kind of asymmetric warfare, where one guy with a suicide vest has the power to do extraordinary, disproportionate damage. And now, thanks in large part to the sophistication and brutality of ISIS propaganda videos and the willingness of American media to amplify the threats they contained, we appear to be engaged in what you might call an asymmetric war. Witness the video attributed to the Somali militant group al Shabaab that appeared online this weekend, calling for attacks on Western shopping centers, including the Mall of America in Minnesota. Now, unlike many ISIS videos, this one did not show hostages being brutalized or killed. All it apparently took to produce was a decent enough camera, the cost of a katia (ph) and a camouflage jacket, some archival footage and a few minutes of someone`s times to shoot and edit the thing together and put a few graphics on it. And with that, presto, this one video by a group that`s unfamiliar to most Americans and has never carried an attack outside East Africa has managed to completely dominate the news cycle for the past 48 hours. It`s caused law enforcement to step security at the Mall of America and other public places and it`s even led the secretary of homeland security to sound the alarm. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOHNSON: Anytime a terrorist organization calls for an attack on a specific place, we`ve got to take that seriously. I would say that if anyone is planning to go to the Mall of America today, they`ve got to be particularly careful. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Regardless of the heightened rhetoric, the U.S. government says there is no evidence of a specific credible plot against the Mall of America or any other commercial sites. Today, a State Department spokesperson called out the video for what it really is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEN PSAKI, STATE DEPT. SPOKESPERSON: Our view is it`s propaganda. Of course, we need to remain vigilant, as is always the case, but the point of this video was to instill fear. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota, where the Mall of America happens to be located. Senator, what do you -- how am I supposed to understand, how is anyone in Minnesota, anyone else to suppose to understand Jeh Johnson saying, if you go to the mall be careful? What do I do with that? SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: Well, I think first, Chris, I think you`ve heard, not just Jeh Johnson, but other homeland security secretaries always talk about being vigilant in public spaces, airports, malls, you`ve heard that before. I think what`s key here is that the FBI had issued a statement saying that people should go on with their lives. You heard the State Department. And Jeh Johnson himself had said people should feel free to go to the mall and feel secure going to the mall and our security has been up there. But I will say this -- for us, you may think it`s some obscure group. We`ve had 20 indictments in Minnesota for people that have aided al Shabaab. We are very proud of our Somali population. We have half of the Somalis in the country in Minnesota, and they have worked incredibly well with law enforcement. But I want you to know, al Shabaab is not an unknown name in Minnesota, because they have tried with other videos -- numerous videos to recruit Somalis in Minnesota to go fight with their terrorist group. HAYES: That`s right. I`m not saying that al Shabaab is obscure in any way. In fact, they`ve been dominant force in the failed state of Somalia for a long time. They`re obviously behind the mall bombing in Kenya, which was brutal and horrific. What I am saying is, they put out this video and there is no, as far as I can tell, public or classified demonstrated capacity to do anything to carry it out. And you have an endless loop of 48 hours of people running around, as if we should take this incredibly. KLOBUCHAR: I think that`s always a good point about things can get exaggerated. But for the people in our state, the workers that worked there, I just spoke to them last night in an event with 500 of them there, they want to snow that our government is behind them. And I was able to tell them what the FBI said. I was able to tell them what Homeland Security says. But do remember that this is coinciding with the debate about funding for homeland security, where we have what we call a clean bill, a bill to fund our first responders, a bill to fund Homeland Security, and we have been dealing with extraneous amendments, and poison pills, and things about immigration that don`t belong on there. And when those workers looked at me last night, Chris, they said, I want to make sure the government is behind us and that we`re going to fund the people that are protecting us at this mall. And so, I do think it is relative in that way, and we want to make sure we`re giving people the protection they need. So, a threat, we don`t know how serious these threats can be at times. It`s very hard to judge. I trust our law enforcement on this. I know when they say they want to up security, they want to up security. And if we`re not giving them the funding to do that, that`s a major problem. HAYES: Is that -- explain to me what the tangible difference between a funded DHS and a non-funded DHS is in the context of the Mall of America. KLOBUCHAR: A number of the workers would have to be furloughed and would have to work without pay, and some of them would actually not be able to work. So, you have people on homeland security workers, you have security people, you have all kinds of workers, and there`s a list that you can probably put up on the air tomorrow night if you like showing who would be furloughed, who wouldn`t be furloughed. But why are we sending that message? However obscured this video is, why are we sending this message to the rest of the world with what we saw in Paris, what we saw with the computer cyber attack in North Korea, why would my colleagues on the Republican side want to send that message to the rest of the world? I don`t think they do. I`m hopeful we will be able to resolve it this week. But all I know is that we`re five days away from shutting down Homeland Security, and that is not the message our country wants to send to whoever produce this video. HAYES: Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you. KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. HAYES: Up next, some breaking news out of Texas. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Do you think you`re going to get a stay? RODNEY REED, GRANTED STAY OF EXECUTION: I`m optimistic. I mean the evidence is there, it is just if the courts are willing to acknowledge this, you know what I`m saying? I really, I`m optimistic, and I have faith that it is possible. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Rodney Reed`s optimism is rewarded. Ten days before he faced execution for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Stacey Stites. What he told me about his appeal from death row, ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Just hours ago, the Texas court criminal appeals granted a stay of execution to death row inmate Rodney Reed just less than two weeks before he was scheduled to be put to death. Reed was convicted from the 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Stites was found strangled to death off the side of a rural country road in Central Texas. Investigators cleared dozens of suspects, including Stite`s then- fiance, a rookie police officer, and the person who is last believed to have seen her alive. Then after the case almost went cold for a year, they got a break. Authorities matched DNA found inside Stites at a time for death to DNA from a local resident named Rodney Reed. It took a jury just hours to convict Reed to rape and murder of Stacey Stites. To this day, Reed maintains his innocence. And tonight, responding to a filing from Reed`s lawyers at the Innocence Project for a new look at the forensic evidence, the Texas court has halted his execution. Just earlier this month, I spoke with Rodney Reed on death row in Levenson, Texas, about his experience there. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Were you scared? I mean you are told you`re being sent to go live with the worst monsters in Texas. The people who have done the most heinous acts and you`re going to be around them. REED: No. I can`t say that I was scared. I can`t say that I was scared. I didn`t want to come here, but I -- I used to fight. I used to be a boxer. And you know a man is a man. A man is going to defend himself. So I was curling up and balling up, and I`m going to defend myself, you know what I`m saying? I was prepared to do that because you know what I`m saying, I was coming here. But once I got here, I mean, some of these guys are like looking at the big picture. Some of these guys were someone else`s neighbor, they`re someone else`s brother, someone`s cousin, someone`s father. You know what I`m saying? You don`t know what may have happened in their lives that brought them here, you know what I`m saying? And just like my situation, I had nothing to do with this case, but I`m here. But as me being on death row, I see there are some guys that have strong innocence claims, and I can`t look at them as the worst of the worst. I just can`t. HAYES: Do you think you`re going to get a stay? REED: I`m optimistic, I mean, the evidence is there. If the courts are willing to acknowledge this, you know what I`m saying? I really, I`m optimistic and I have faith. That it is possible. I don`t entertain the thought of being executed. I don`t, you know? If it happens, it happens, you know? But I`m not looking for that to happen. I mean the evidence speaks for itself. The state knows, they know, this evidence has always been out there. It should not have taken this long. When you have a prosecutor with unlimited resources and the county, your law enforcement agencies, the Texas Rangers, all of these people involved in this investigation and you tell me this evidence wasn`t compiled in the right fashion to where you would know the truth. It`s not right. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Well much more of my interview with Rodney Reed on death row and an in-depth look at his case on "All in America" special report next month, asking the question a Texas court will now be looking at. Is the state of Texas trying to execute a man for a crime he did not commit? You do not want to miss it. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: The 87th Academy Awards hit on equal pay, civil rights, privacy rights, prison reform, immigration reform, suicide, Alzheimer`s disease and ALS, as well as giving us an awful rendition of Everything is Awesome. Before we get to the Oscars, my favorite moment last night, and I really mean this, actually happened on the red carpet. For me it turned out to be the most real interaction I have seen on television in a very long time. Melanie Griffith was asked whether she would see 50 Shades of Grey" which, of course, stars her daughter, Dakota Johnson, who is standing right beside her, having invited her mom to be her plus one at the big ceremony. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MELANIE GRIFFITH, ACTRESS: I don`t think I can. I think it would be strange. DAKOTA JOHNSON, ACTRESS: No, I don`t think so. I think it`s fine. I think that one day you can see it. GRIFFITH: But she`s a really good actress. I don`t need to see that to know how good she is. JOHNSON: All right, you don`t have to see it. I`m like, you can see it, and you`re just like no -- LARA SPENCER, ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST: She doesn`t, you know, there is that red room. JOHNSON: Yeah, but I think it`s okay, it`s a movie, she knows that. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Mom! As for the Oscars themselves, Race Under pinned the very first joke by host Neil Patrick Harris and was directly and dramatically addressed by best song cowinner John Legend in his comments about incarceration. NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, ACTOR: Tonight we honor Hollywood`s best and whitest -- sorry, brightest. JOHN LEGEND, MUSICIAN: We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: That`s true. Joining me now is Jason Bailey, film editor of Flavorwire.com, author of The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion. Rebecca Traister, senior editor of The New Republic, and Rembert Browne, making his triumphant debut appearance here, staff writer at Grantland. Great to have you here man. REMBERT BROWNE, GRANTLAND: You too. HAYES: So, I mean, you could spend hours talking about the racial dynamics of that entire three-and-a-half hours. Partly because, going in you have basically the whitest set of nominees in a very long time. REBECCA TRAISTER, THE NEW REPUBLIC: In a year where there was a great movie about civil rights. HAYES: Yeah, so there in this year with Selma, right? Then you have the joke to start out by Neil Patrick Harris -- JASON BAILEY, FLAVORWIRE.COM: First joke of the night. HAYES: Okay, how do we feel about that joke? Pro, Con? BROWNE: I`m pro that joke if it doesn`t turn into a terrible ceremony after that. I thought it was going to set up a really biting commentary filled thing, but what happened after that made that whole joke feel very short sided. HAYES: Like we got it out of the way kind of thing. We are acknowledging -- BROWNE: Checkbox. HAYES: Yeah. TRAISTER: The structural planned events did not further address race, except for Glory, except for the performance of the song. But the rest of Neil Patrick Harris, all of the commentary about race then came from people who got on stage and made comments. BAILEY: And to some degree from the people who were in the audience. There was a lot of really interesting writing today about the way that we saw some push back just in the front of the audience in the sheer number of standing ovations for Selma related events. And the idea that we tend to think, Mark Harris, actually, at Grantland, wrote a wonderful piece today where he said we tend to think of The Academy as a sort of monolithic entity, when in fact it is a group of people and there are clearly some people not happy with how that film was treated. HAYES: And Jay Smooth, the great Jay Smooth, had a video today about how is it the case that like, these people who seem so self aware about race in certain ways are so unself aware in other ways, and part of the answer is that they are two different sets of people. Like I`m not sure that John Legend is in The Academy, right? BAILEY: Absolutely. BROWNE: The thing that stuck out to me was when that moment happened, the almost two minute standing ovation for the Selma performance -- HAYES: Which was... Something about it was really magical. TRAISTER: It was incredible. BROWNE: It was magical and it almost made the jokes about the whiteness feel like too real. It was like all right, we`re all admitting that this Selma thing that people from The Academy said wild things. They said like it wasn`t art. They said all of these things about it, but when that reaction happens to a performance like that, it kind of throws salt in the wound about how it was treated in the academy awards. HAYES: And you saw the actor there, David Oyelowo, like sobbing at the end of it, and it felt like there was a bunch of stuff in those tears. I mean not to like, try and read his mind. But he didn`t get nominated for what I thought was a tremendous performance. And then there`s also like, Oh this is too real, this moment is sticking out precisely because -- and then, there is also the fact that it was noticeable how diverse the presenters were, which -- you`re laughing, it`s like okay, I see you guys, I see what we`re trying to do here. And like, okay cool, but then also is this trying, is this just packaging? TRAISTER: And there was failures in the packaging, too. Like using Octavia Spencer as this prop in this ongoing gag that Neil Patrick Harris had which fell completely flat and which used Octavia Spencer in an absolutely -- it was just terrible. HAYES: Neil Patrick Harris all but handed her a broom. I mean the subtext of the skit was like could you be my helper, the way you would to like, a toddler. BAILER: But here`s what that entire Neil Patrick Harris element, when you put that joke, the opening joke that we discussed, up against that bit, it`s like, that is almost a weird metaphor for how Hollywood thinks, it thinks about racism. I.E. let`s acknowledge we`re not racist. I`m aware that there`s a thing but then I`m also going to do the sort of racist bit and not realize that I`m being sort of racist. BROWNE: Which was kind of the moment, I know there is a lot of back story about what happened with Sean Penn closing out the night, making a green card joke -- HAYES: Yeah, I want to talk about that. BROWNE: There is that kind of, like, I`m going to make a little funny racist jab but it`s fine because we`re all friends here. HAYES: Obviously, we`re Hollywood, there`s this kind of idea, and you saw it in of course that sort of infamous anonymous Hollywood reporter academy voter who said we`re not cretinous. Cretinous, rednecks? Yeah, the idea was like we can`t possibly be racist because we are Hollywood. TRAISTER: And there is a lack of, as you`ve said, there`s a lack of self understanding about how it comes off and that was also in the Patricia Arquette speech. HAYES: Yeah, I want to talk about the Sean Penn thing and the Patricia Arquette thing. Do we have the little bit of the Glory ending? Do we have that song? Can we show that and go out on that. (MUSIC) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) ANNOUNCER: If there has to be a debate about the reality of climate change, and there doesn`t, then there is only one mathematically fair way to do it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANNOUNCER: In the interest of mathematical balance I`m going to bring out two people who agree with you, climate skeptic, and, Bill Nye, I`m also going to bring out ninety six of the scientists. It`s a little unwieldy but this is the only way we could actually have a representative discussion. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: John Oliver would like TV news producers to please stop staging debates on the reality of global warming that make it seem like an equal fight, because, in reality, as demonstrated there, the vast, vast majority of climate scientists agree man made climate change is very real, caused by carbon emissions. and heating the earth. You may have seen a pie chart that demonstrates that very large consensus. You may have found yourself wondering who makes up the other 3%? Who are the people in that little sliver there? Who are the actual scientists publishing academic papers arguing that manmade climate change isn`t real? Well, I`ll will tell you. Climate change skeptics, if we`re being generous, or deniers, if we`re really being honest, are often not all they appear to be. Take for instance this guy. Doctor Willy Soon of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Washington Post called him the high priest of climate change doubters. He has taken his climate change skepticism to Fox news, as well as to the state of Kansas, where he told lawmakers that climate is not changing in a dangerous way. He has been praised by the likes of the U.S. Senate`s most famous climate change denier, Oklahoma republican, James Inhofe. Well, the New York Times reported this weekend that "though often described as a Harvard astrophysicist, Doctor Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. Doctor Soon is apparently a part-time employee of the Smithsonian, which jointly runs the center for astrophysics along with Harvard, and, according to the Times, he has to bring in his own funding. Well the folks at Greenpeace had the bring idea of submitting freedom of information act request where Doctor Soon`s grant correspondence and you will be shocked, shocked to learn where he`s getting a great deal of money. Quting the New York Times again, "he has accepting more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade, all failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. Doctor Soon has in the past denied that funding from the fossil fuel industry affects his findings, but its all pretty hard to take him seriously standing as he is against 97% of the scientific community. But now, there are 1.2 million more reasons to doubt his work. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PATRICIA ARQUETTE, ACTRESS: We have fought for everybody else`s equal rights. It`s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Patricia Arquette in her acceptance speech for best actress in a supporting role for her role in Boyhood, making a passionate call for equal pay while also setting off a bit of controversy. Still with me, Jason Bailey, Rebecca Traister and Rembert Brown. All right, I -- well, what do we think? I`ll shut up. I, should I mansplain this you, Rebecca? Do you know want you know what you did right and what you think? Let me tell you, here`s the thing you`ve got to understand about equal pay... You go first. You go first, Rebecca. TRAISTER: All right, well, first of all I should say that as she was giving that speech, as it was in process -- or immediately after it ended. I was with Meryl Strep. I was -- I very profanely tweeted my appreciation for that speech. There were some hinky things about it as it was... HAYES: That one sentence. TRAISTER: No, there`s more. She said women who give birth, I was like -- what about women who don`t give birth? There was a weird reference to taxpayers, and then there was a sentence about we`ve all thought -- but I chalked a lot of it up to nervous, locutions, accepting an Academy Award, and I was so happy. You know, people talk about politics at the Oscars, there has not often been righteous, passionate feminism at the Oscars, right. And Hollywood is a profoundly sexist business, and she wasn`t just doing anodyne, you go girl, she was talking about wage equality. And I was like -- yeah, right. Now, I woke up this morning. I saw what she said afterwards, which made some of those hinky things about the speech, she expanded on them. And what she did was basically make the argument that women have stepped up for people of color, and gay and lesbian fights for equality, and that now has to come to into it. And this was an error in several ways. A, it`s time -- now, wait, there is a valid critique with deep historical roots about the order in which social progress has taking place. In fact -- and it goes back hundreds of years. And in back... HAYES: All the way back to the Hillary, Barack Obama primary. TRAISTER: All the way back to Hillary and Barack. HAYES: Which is obviously the source of all of this. TRAISTER: By the way, in addition to fights over the 14th and 15th amendment, second wave feminism was born in part out of the frustrations of women in the other social movements -- the anti-war movement, the student movement, the civil rights movement, who felt forced to take a seat behind other struggles and have their own movements for equality put second. So this -- there is a history of this. However, when you want to make reference to it -- and I`m not even sure that she really meant to, or should have, you don`t put people in groups like that. It`s not women, and people of color, and gay and lesbian. HAYES: The line that struck me when she said it -- and I also thought it was great, but the line about like we`ve been doing it for -- well, what do you really mean by that. And then the sort of explanation afterwards. The question to the, though -- so that here is the question, right? Like, however you feel about how that cashes out, it`s like what is the right reaction to that is sort of my feeling? Is it like a glass half full or a glass half empty, right? Are you like hey, awesome, let`s work on the kind of other stuff or is it like what`s your deal? BROWNE: My take on it is I think we are so used to now the world that happens where someone says something that isn`t spot on, and then we`re like well this is a learning moment and we can all have a dialogue and move forward... HAYES: That is a generous way of characterizing about what happens. (CROSSTALK) BROWNE: I think that is the reality of... HAYES: I`m going to tweet, this is a learning moment. BROWNE: But taking a phrase that gets said a lot on the Internet, a funny phase is when people just got never tweet. It`s one of those things where it`s like sometimes I need to just bring it back a little bit, maybe like do a little reading before I get out there and start making... HAYES: And like -- so you`re saying before we jump into the Patricia Arquette outrage cycle is part of your feeling? BROWNE: No, I`m saying... HAYES: Oh, you`re saying Patricia Arquette never tweet. (LAUGHTER) BROWNE: That`s more of what I`m saying. And I do like the fact that on our biggest stages we want people to make these statements, but I would rather them be made correctly than not be made at all. BAILEY: I feel like any time you can get someone in front of a worldwide audience that`s that vast, and they`re talking about the pay gap, it`s ultimately in that win. And it`s also important to note that this is also an industry where that gap is a big, huge thing where one of the few sort of I think positive things that came out of the Sony hack was that we`re hearing stories now about actresses who are using the information about how they`re not getting paid the same to get equal pay. TRAISTER: Except that if you are going to apply this critique to Hollywood specifically, the wage gap, you`re also not looking at an industry where even that argument about we`ve been there for people of color, because there is huge racism in Hollywood, so that doesn`t even... HAYES: And actually also a wage gap there. TRAISTER: And a huge wage gap exacerbated by being a person of color and a woman, right? so it doesn`t track, especially in Hollywood. HAYES: What were you going to say? BROWNE: Yeah, I think one thing that it does highlight is this idea of, you know, your heart is in the right place, but you haven`t thought about everyone. It`s like, oh, like I`m passionate, I`m focused, I`m excited to like make a stance on something, but you only thought about this group, and this group, and this group and you haven`t really gone around the full circle before you make that stance. HAYES: We don`t have time to play the Sean Penn joke where he basically announcing the best director who said who gave this son of sonofabitch a green card, the Mexican director Inarritu -- did I get that right? BROWNE: No. HAYES: OK. Adele Azim (ph), I believe, was the winner of that? BAILEY: Inarritu. HAYES: Inarritu, there you go. But I thought that joke -- just for the record, I thought the joke was funny. I thought the joke was very obviously a send up of anti-immigration sentiment insofar as he was saying he was parroting the voice of an anti- immigrant person, being like who gave this guy a green card in the moment where it was the most manifestly evident that this immigrant had brought this tremendous talent and value to the country. BAILEY: But here is the problem, there are few people on the Earth less humorous than Sean Penn. HAYES: That`s totally right. That`s why it doesn`t read. BAILEY: Leading up to the joke, he had the disposition and good cheer of a man waiting for his colonoscopy. So the problem with the sort of light-hearted jab at that buddy, the former collaborator, it`s just not going to go over because he is such an essentially humorless human being. HAYES: I actually could have done an entire hour on the Oscars, I now realize. Jason Bailey, Rebecca Traister and Rembert Browne from Grantland, thank you all. All right, up next Glenn Greenwald joins me live to talk about his own Oscar moment. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HARRIS: The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LAURA POITRAS, DIRECTOR, CITIZENFOUR: The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed don`t only expose the threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself. HARRIS: The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris`s treason joke right after Citizenfour won for best documentary fell flat for many people. The film, of course, centered on whistleblower Edward Snowden`s revelations about government surveillance. I`m joined now by Glenn Greenwald, the cofounding editor of The Intercept who collaborated with the team behind Citizenfour, and was the prime journalist dealing with and reporting on Edward Snowden. He was there at the Oscars last night standing on stage. So, you had this great account. This is a bit meta, but I think it actually is important. You had this great account of -- there is a Buzzfeed article today, Glenn Greenwald blasts Neil Patrick Harris` treason joke. And I want you to tell the back story behind that. GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: Yeah, I hadn`t heard the joke. I actually went off stage and people told me about it. And I almost tweeted something light-hearted about it, and decided it was too inconsequential even to tweet about. I mean, this is like a sitcom actor who had literally been parading around in his underwear moments before. I really didn`t think it was particularly significant. A couple of hours later at a post-Oscar event, a Buzzfeed reporter saw me and asked me a bunch of questions, one of which was, hey, by the way what did you think of Neil Patrick Harris`s joke. And I laughed about it. I said you`re going to get me in trouble, I`m trying not to say anything about it, but I actually since you asked, even though it was just a joke, I thought it was pretty irresponsible and stupid since Edward Snowden wasn`t even charged with treason, let alone convicted of it, and it`s a pretty serious thing to accuse somebody of that in front of a billion people. Buzzfeed took that one comment, blasted into the headlines to make it seem like I was sort of on the warpath. All day people are saying, no Glenn Greenwald is so humorless. He`s always outraged. And I just thought it was a really interesting anecdote about how sort of internet age media that motivates everybody to take out these single quotes that generate interest and outrage and debate really can distort thing in such a significant way. HAYES: I want to talk more about the significance of this award for Citizenfour, and sort of what it says, but more important than that, what was your tux situation last night? Did you go the rental? You buy? Was there some sort of custom situation? What were you wearing? GREENWALD: Yeah, that is, I think, the most pressing question which I`m thrilled that you`ve asked about. Actually, it was just an emergency -- American Airlines actually lost our luggage, which had our tuxedos in it. So we had to run to the store the night before and sort of do emergency tuxedo buying. So that was the story. HAYES: Was it a -- you weren`t one of these people who is lent some kind of garment that you then had to return. GREENWALD: We were actually lent some and didn`t like any of those, and so we went out and bought it. And for the record it was Ralph Lauren. HAYES: Ralph Lauren. Well, thank you. I`ve now gotten it. This -- I`m hoping this will also be a Buzzfeed article about who Glenn Greenwald. GREENWALD: It will be for sure, no doubt about that. HAYES: What did you think about the significance of the win? I mean, last year -- I remember there were sort of some Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill`s, really incredible film sort of about the global war on terror, was nominated. It did not win. I think 20 Feet from Stardom won, which was about backup singers, which was also great. What was your understanding of the significance of this? And what was that moment like when you get up on stage at the Oscars? GREENWALD: I mean, I think it is a testament and the tribute to the film making genius of Laura Poitras, to be honest. I thought it was more of a cinematic award than a political one. But at the same time, I mean, I do think it underscores the fact that people can think a lot of different things about surveillance, the extent to which we ought to be watched and monitored by our government, but I think we all should be able to agree that we shouldn`t have government doing the most significant things in the dark without us knowing and that the debate that this provoked was one that everybody can support, regardless of where you fall into it. I mean, as for being in the Oscars, it`s this disgusting ritual of extraordinary opulence and extravagance. I mean, it`s... HAYES: Oh, stop it, Glenn Greenwald. GREENWALD: No, it is. HAYES: You humorless scold. GREENWALD: But at the same time, you know, it was very surreal. You know, we began the reporting, kind of thinking that our source is going to prison. We were being threatened by the government. And so to be standing there in that setting, and to have that be one of the outcomes of what we did was definitely very bizarre. HAYES: Yeah, I want to reiterate what you said about the artistry of the film, which really is an incredible cinematic achievement, just visually as sort of movie story telling, whatever -- like detach it completely from the politics, even just a story about a person in truly extraordinary circumstances, being documented in real-time, it was, it is incredibly gripping film work. GREEWALD: Yeah, and I mean, we kind of appreciated from the very beginning the human drama of the situation: the fact that there was this 29-year-old kid, very ordinary in every way, who whatever else you think of him, undertook some extraordinary actions that have all kinds of provocative question about ethical duties as a citizen, what you do when you confront something that you think is an injustice, the risk that you`re willing to take as a human being. I think these are all fascinating questions that Laura`s film really brilliantly explores. HAYES: Glenn Greenwald, thank you for your time. If you had Ralph Lauren in the Glenn Greenwald tuxedo bingo, you win. That is All In for this Evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts now. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END