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All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 09/03/15

Guests: McKay Coppins, Gabe Sherman, Joaquin Castro, Dave Zirin

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have signed the pledge. HAYES: Trump promises he won`t run as an independent candidate at a positively surreal news conference in New York. TRUMP: Do they like me in Indonesia? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Thank you very much. HAYES: Then, Bernie Sanders hits Iowa as Joe Biden stokes 2016 speculation in Florida and Georgia. Plus, jail time for the Kentucky clerk who wouldn`t marry same-sex couples. And upon further review, a judge throws out Tom Brady`s suspension and Pats Nation rejoices. ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. It`s official. Donald Trump is formally, more or less, at least for the moment a loyal Republican. After making waves at the first GOP debate for being the only candidate on the debate stage who wouldn`t rule out a third party run, today, Trump met with RNC chair Reince Priebus at Trump Tower, just up the street in 30 Rock, at a press conference I attended this afternoon. My first up close experience for the Trump show, the GOP frontrunner made a big announcement. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: The best way for the Republicans to win is if I win the nomination and go directly against whoever they happen to put up. For that reason, I have signed the pledge. So, I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party and the conservative principles for which it stands. And we will go out and we will fight hard. And we will win. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: There was a bit of snag with the official pledge document in which Trump vows to back the eventual Republican nominee. You may notice it`s dated August 3rd -- as Rick Perry would say -- oops. Fortunately, the campaign distributed a corrected copy, all is now right with the world. Trump`s change of heart comes as the top establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, is intensifying his attacks on the Republican front runner and this new national polling shows Bush falling behind while Trump and two other candidates, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, continue to gain ground. According to Matt Bruenig at Demos, for the first time in the campaign that anti-establishment block of Trump, Carson and Cruz has accumulative majority in "The Huffington Post" polling average for the total of 51.8 percent. Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican primary. Now, I got to see first hand, up close, the Trump show in all its bizarre and surreal, gory -- if you call it that -- ignominy. And the first thing I noticed during his press conference is that for a guy who`s got a reputation as a straight talker who shoots from the hip and answers any questions, he`s become relentlessly on message. It doesn`t matter what you ask. You get back one of five answers as I learned firsthand when I asked the first question at the press conference trying to get him to explain why anyone should believe he`ll stand by this pledge. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: You bragged in the past about how when it suits you, you have used bankruptcy laws, you joked to the audience in Alabama about taking lobbyist money and screwing them over afterwards. Why would anyone think this pledge means anything? TRUMP: This is a self-funded campaign. We have our heart in it. We have our soul in it. I don`t need money. I don`t want money. And this is going to be a campaign like I think no other. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Make America great again. The scene there was positively surreal. There was a crowd outside and inside, largely the kind of crowd that`s attracted by the crowd that you sometimes see in midtown. But then up near the front, a lot of young, very well-put together stylish people with -- men in suits, we would later learn part of an Indonesian legislative delegation standing next to each other holding the silent majority stands with Trump signs, and taking selfies and pictures. The silent majority in this case apparently being young fashionable New Yorkers and Indonesian legislators, one of whom would get a shout out from Trump later on. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very -- an amazing man. He is -- as you know, right, he`s speaker of the house of Indonesia. He`s here to see me. Setya Novatno (ph) one of the most powerful men and a great man, and his whole group is here to see me today. And we will do great things for the United States. Is that correct? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. TRUMP: Do they like me in Indonesia? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Thank you very much. TRUMP: Speaker of the house in Indonesia, thank you very much. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: I mean, honestly, what`s the dude going to say in that situation? No, they don`t like you. They have never heard of you. They liked your show. And this is the best part, they handed out this packet to all the press. The silent majority stands with Trump. That`s a press packet, you get at these events. I thought policy makers, maybe, some position, some articles about Donald Trump. No, no, entirely filled with polls, OK? The whole thing, and polls that look like they were designed by your mom on print shop in 1998 and then Xerox at Kinko`s color copier in the wee hours of the morning before a deadline. There`s this. There`s random screen shots of cable news like this one of John King in front of the big board for CNN. There`s even a Rachel Maddow full screen, un-credited I should note. All of which showed Trump in the lead. And later, to complete the circle, Trump would refer to the documents that had been passed out. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I love the Hispanics. I have thousands of Hispanics right now working for me. Over the years, I have employed tens of thousands of Hispanics, many from Mexico. I have unbelievably great relationships. In the package that we gave you, you will see there is a poll. I`m number one with Hispanics. You saw that. Number one with Hispanics. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Number one, OK, I have that poll. Trump was referring to it right here. Like much of what`s in the packet, it appears to be a screen grab from news broadcast. It`s blurry. This one from Univision of all places. Here`s the thing about this particular poll which comes from Public Policy Polling, a liberal leaning firm. You`ll notice the numbers add up to more than 100 percent, that`s because they represent the candidate`s favorability ratings, not their overall support. In other word`s Trump`s favorability is 30 points under water. About two-thirds of those poll don`t like him. Don`t really like any over people in the field either. What is not clear in the Univision graphic is the people surveyed were registered voters who self-identified as Hispanics. "Business Insider" talked to the director of Public Policy Polling in July about Trump`s continued misuse of those results, he told them, quote, "Several other Republicans do better head to head against Clinton with Hispanics than Trump does. It`s a pretty novel interpretation of poll results! On the whole his numbers with minorities are pretty terrible." Joining me now, McKay Coppins, senior political writer for "BuzzFeed", Gabe Sherman, national affairs editor at "New York Magazine." I seriously -- there were moments when I was like, am I being pranked? Is this a joke? Sometimes they make viral videos with a fake store and they record it. Like I felt it was like that for campaign reporters. Am I being -- is there a camera on me to see? I cannot believe this is real. MCKAY COPPINS, BUZZFEED: That was the whole time I spent with him last year when I ended up going to his compound in Florida, like it felt like it was all a cartoon in some weird way, I`m like -- it`s very surreal. What`s interesting is the way Trump commands it all. It`s a world of his own making and he occupies it so fully and so commandingly, that you just buy into it, you know? You can see how he`s sucked so many Republican voters to him in that way. HAYES: It felt like a camp movies Hollywood version of a presidential campaign. (LAUGHTER) GABE SHERMAN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: My favorite part is Reince Priebus had to go to Trump Tower. The optics of that -- HAYES: Yes, that`s amazing. SHERMAN: -- the chairman of the Republican Party walking into Trump Tower essentially to do Trump`s bidding. I mean, just the power dynamics there alone are fascinating. HAYES: I have heard speculation from sources that this was all engineered by Reince Priebus to make the RNC look good and on top of things and that they are actually in control. But it does not look that way. Reince Priebus has to go kiss his ring at his eponymous skyscraper in Manhattan, right? HAYES: Here`s the thing, three quarters of the time I`m watching this unfold. I`m like, this is bizarre. It`s like, it`s entertaining. He says some things that I think are funny. And then a quarter of the time like this is very ugly. There`s something very ugly here. Let me give you an example. There was a protest by people protesting his comments on immigration. There`s a provocative protest on the sidewalk. People dressed as KKK. People saying make America racist again. That`s coming right at him, right? This is not a guy who shirks from this. And then, apparently, one of his security guards took a sign from a man and this ensues. Take a look. (VIDEO CLIP PLAYS) HAYES: Sign back. He`s grabbing onto him. He gets cold-cocked in the head. So that was the scene today after that whole thing, after the short of bizarre, surreal and somewhat humorous events went down. That`s on a public sidewalk. Just a straight-up punch in the face. You know who that guy is. COPPINS: That`s his personal body guard who`s been with him a long time. He was a former NYPD detective. I spent time with him. What`s interesting is he struck me out of all -- HAYES: What`s the name? COPPINS: Keith Schiler (ph). Out of Donald Trump`s yes men, his aides, he struck me as the most loyal. He really, really wants to protect Donald Trump. And, remember, Donald Trump surrounds himself with people who try to imitate him, who try to inhabit his kind of persona. This is the ugly side of that. HAYES: I mean, that is also -- am I mistaken that`s the guy that threw out Jorge Ramos? COPPINS: I believe so. HAYES: We remember in that moment when he was asked why he threw him out, Trump said, I don`t know. The security came -- as if he didn`t know who the dude was. SHERMAN: Well, here`s another interesting point, as much as Trump has now pledged to back the eventual nominee, the other candidates in the race have essentially pledged to back him. If he somehow emerges as a nominee, Jeb Bush on down have to back Donald Trump. And I think that is a reckoning that the Republican Party hasn`t grappled with. They have committed to backing Donald Trump. HAYES: This is the point Jonathan Chait made I thought in a very good piece the other day, where he said, look, the problem for Republicans is one of two options. One, he bolts and runs third party which is electoral doom in the general. The other is you keep a man by essentially embracing him and saying this guy is a Republican. And the more you do that, can we show the approval among Latino voters? It`s true. He has higher than the other approval than the other people. Jeb Bush is 31 percent. Ted Cruz at 30 percent. Marco Rubio at 29 percent. I mean, this is that -- those are disastrous numbers and that`s the problem. And now, we have footage of his body guard punching what appears to be a Latino man, cold-cocking him in the head after the event. COPPINS: I mean, the thing about Donald Trump, I mean, look, your question was right. This pledge doesn`t mean anything in terms of, you know, Donald Trump`s word is not stronger than oak. He`s not going to follow this. But there are reasons for him to sign it. And one of the big ones -- right after the FOX News debate, one of the only things, arguably the only thing he did that seriously brought unfavorable opinions from Republican voters if you looked at focus groups and talked to voters and polls was his inability to commit to endorsing the eventually nominee. SHERMAN: This neutralizes an attack line going into the CNN debate this month where he can say I signed the pledge. Immediately, that`s off the table. HAYES: And the key attack against him will be, as we get further on, if you vote for this guy, he will get creamed by Hillary, right? That`s going to be the attack. That was the line against Howard Dean back in 2004. It wasn`t substantive. It wasn`t like I don`t care how you feel about this guy. If he`s our nominee, he will lose to George W. Bush. That`s a persuasive argument with people who are fairly savvy if they are voting in a primary. The question is whether it will work? You got the Carson, Cruz, Trump caucus now above 51 percent. SHERMAN: I mean, in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump is polling higher than the establishment candidates combined. It`s incredible. HAYES: As you can find out from the packet of blurry screen grabs we were given today. And, McKay Coppins, Gabe Sherman, thank you very much. COPPINS: Thank you. HAYES: Still to come we have learned a lot about Donald Trump this election season. Turned out, he`s a man of many passions. We`ll show you in just a minute. Plus, how the Kentucky county clerk that refused to give same-sex couples marriage licenses is turning into a litmus test for GOP presidential hopefuls trying to claw their way into Trump`s shadow. And later, sure the over-turned suspension for Tom Brady`s victory with Patriot fans, but I`ll tell you how the unions, yes the unions, won as well. Those stories and more, ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Up next, the presidential candidates coming to the defense of the Kentucky court clerk who is refusing marriage licenses for same sex couples. And we`re exactly sure where Donald Trump stands on the issue, but we do know this. He has a lot of love to give. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Love. And you what I love? I`m leading with Tea Party. Big. I love Tea Party. I love the Tea Party! Where are the children? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are off to the side here. TRUMP: Get them over here. That`s great. I love children. I love Iowa. I mean, I love you people. I love Iowa. Florida, I love Florida. I love Nashville. I love this country. I love my kids. Come here, kids. I love meeting the people. I love the people. I love people. I love the people of Mexico. I love the Hispanics. Nobody loves Hispanics like I do. By the way, I love Mexican people. I love China. I love the people of China. Just like in Mexico. I love the people. People said I don`t like Mexico. I love Mexico. Whether it`s Japan, Mexico, China, I love them. And now the Asians hate him. It`s true. But the Asians love me. And I love them. Do they like me in Indonesia? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. TRUMP: And I love the "New York Times." Oh, look, "The Art of the Deal". Come here, give me that book. I love that book. Nabisco, Oreos, right? Oreos. I love Oreos. I`ll never eat them again. Israel, I love Israel, by the way. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) TRUMP: You saw that. You know, I love the Bible. I love the Bible. I love the Bible. But I love the Bible. You hated to leave church, evangelicals. I love the evangelicals. I love them. They love me. They do love me. Why do they love me? You will have to ask them. Kanye West, you know what? I will never say bad about him. You know why? Because he loves Trump. Kanye West, I love him. Now, maybe in a few years I have to run against him, I don`t know. So, I`ll take it back. Love. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: A group of Republican presidential candidates, desperate for attention in the summer of Trump today took a stand against the rule of law, rallying behind Rowan County clerk Kim Davis in Kentucky, who in defiance of a court order has refused to issue marriage licenses to same- sex couples and was jailed for willful disobedience. She is set to be heard until she agrees to comply. Scene outside the courthouse today was intense, with same sex marriage supporters clashing with those supporting Davis who cited religious beliefs to refuse marriage licenses to same sex couples. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KIM DAVIS, ROWAN COUNTY CLERK: We are not giving licenses today. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why? Why? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why? DAVIS: Because I`m not doing marriage license today, we are pending appeal. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Under whose authority? Under whose authority? DAVIS: Under God`s authority. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: By same sex and opposite sex couples refusing to issue licenses the Supreme Court struck down same sex marriage bans nationwide in June. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re not leaving until we have a license. We`re not leaving until we have a license. DAVIS: Then you`re going to have a long day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`ll call the police. I will ask them to arrest you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do your job. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Call the police. Call the police. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do your job! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should be ashamed of yourself. Everyone in this office should be ashamed. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Faced with possible jail time, five of Davis` deputy clerks told the federal judge, they will comply with his order to issue marriage licenses in Rowan County starting tomorrow morning. But Davis`s lawyer said today the county clerk has no intention of backing down. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MAT STAVER, LIBERTY COUNSEL: Kim Davis may be behind bars for now. But her conscious remains unshackled. She`s still a free come woman. One of the things that she will not do is violate her conscience. She simply can`t. She can`t violate who she is and she can`t violate the God whom she serves. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz today jumped at the chance to support Davis. Cruz raising the specter of, quote, "judicial tyranny and claiming against all evidence that those who are persecuting Kim Davis believes that Christians should not serve in public office." Huckabee vowed to head to stand with Davis and added that, quote, "We must end the criminalization of Christianity." Then, there`s Rand Paul, who today said it`s, quote, "absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty." But, of course, that`s not why Kim Davis was put in jail. She was put in jail for defying a court order. And that stance puts Davis, as well as Republicans backing her in league with people like former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who refused to integrate Alabama schools despite court orders and who history, to put it mildly, has not judged kindly. Joining me now, MSNBC contributor Josh Barro, correspondent for "Upshot" at "New York Times." Should she be in county jail? JOSH BARRO, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. I mean, I -- look, I think something that Judge Bunning, by the way, who`s a George W. Bush appointee said if you let people pick and choose which court orders to obey that leads you to a very bad place. So, there weren`t many remedies available. He could put her in jail or he could fine her. The problem is that she has all these supporters who would line up to pay fines for her. That would not be an effective way likely of compelling here compliance. So, really, I mean, he can`t fire her. We`re seeing a lot of people on Twitter today saying, well, why not just fire her? A federal judge cannot fire a local county clerk. In fact -- HAYES: She`s elected. Let`s be clear -- the federal courts cannot say someone elected by the people locally is no longer in office. BARRO: Right. In fact, the only way she can be removed by the legislature which is not in session. The governor won`t call a special session. So, really, the only way the federal judge has available to him to cause his order to be obeyed is to put her in jail. I think the optics of it are not great. HAYES: What do you mean? BARRO: Well, because -- HAYES: That`s the thing I have seen people say. We are going to make her a martyr. This is a bad idea. BARRO: Yes. HAYES: Which I think there is something to it. BARRO: Yes, I think there is a sense among social conservatives that they are oppressed, that they are not allowed to follow what they consider to be their sincere religious beliefs. And this is a -- you know, obviously, she could resign her job and would not have to issue anybody a marriage license. HAYES: Which is a solution that`s a correct solution. BARRO: Losing your job is a significant hardship in your life. What she would like to be the county clerk and not issue gay marriage licenses. Now, obviously, that`s not allowed by the court. But I can understand why she would want that. So -- but I think it`s key to note, though, it`s not Judge Bunning`s job to think about good optics for supporters of marriage equality. His job is to get his court orders obeyed. And this is the remedy available to him to do that. HAYES: One thing that occurred to me is in some ways we made the comparison to George Wallace and the campaign that was called Massive Resistance throughout the South for years in defiance of desegregation. There was a question about how much resistance we`d see. We are focused on one person in one county going to jail for a few days and we don`t know how long it will be, says to me that actually, there`s -- it`s kind of the dog that didn`t bark. BARRO: Yes. It`s rare. There have been counts of, you know, two or three counties in some states. Most of the states that were the last state where is gay marriage was legalized. Every county is issuing marriage licenses. Although I would note this stuff could keep popping up in the future, because a lot of these counties -- BuzzFeed, I think, called around to counties in Texas and got some county with 2,000 residents and the clerk said, do you know marriage licenses we issue in a year total? Like two or three. HAYES: Right. BARRO: So, in a lot of these places, the purely theoretical question what would happen if somebody came in seeking a gay marriage license. We can see years down the road then when this becomes a practical thing, what happens with that. But I would note there is a broader discussion happening about a sort of opt out for social conservatives. Plan A was to impose a rule against gay marriage and when both public opinion and the courts fell away from that, there is now an effort to try to basically carve out a space to live in an anti-gay society within a place where the norms and laws are going to be pro-gay. And the questions are, what are the terms of the opt-out? And one question is, will government employees be able to keep their jobs and never be required to do things on gay marriage that they were opposed to, ideologically. And we saw in North Carolina, for example, pass a law saying individual government employees can`t be required to issue gay marriage licenses. Now, somebody still has to issue the license. It`s not like the situation in Kentucky where the employee can block anybody from issuing it. But this is a very much alive political question. HAYES: Yes. And the big question now is, do we see, is this a turning point, will people rally to her and it becomes bigger or is this kind of a dead end action. I would bet actually on the latter. Josh Barro, thank you very much. BARRO: Thank you. HAYES: Coming up, how one horrifying image may have awoken the entire world. Desperate refugee crisis unfolding in Europe, that`s ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REPORTER: The fact there was no more space did nothing to stop those struggling to reach the train doors. Children were passed overheads and then through windows. Others waited patiently, bewildered and confused. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: It`s the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Footage today showing refugees and migrants desperate to board a train which they hoped was bound for Germany. The train was later stopped by police and the people on board told they were neither going to Germany nor to Austria. At one point, a migrant family laid down on the tracks in protest, according to ITV News, when they were told they would be transferred to a Hungarian refugee camp. Some families were ultimately allowed to re-board that particular train, but at this hour, it is unclear whether it was going to resume its course. All of those people appear in limbo, still waiting. And that`s just one of the heart wrenching scenes out of Hungary, which has become one of the epicenters of a crisis involving hundreds of thousands of people, from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from Libya, Eritrea and Nigeria, fleeing war and poverty, which has become a political crisis in Europe as countries fight over what to do and who should take responsibility. And that crisis is no longer limited to the mainland Europe. In Britain, the picture of this drowned Syrian Kurdish boy now identified as 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi galvanized a call to action. And today, the British prime minister seemed to vow to that pressure, agreeing to allow more Syrian refugees into the country. The number not yet finalized. Canada also finds itself under scrutiny after the remaining family of Aylan Kurdi said they applied for and were denied asylum in Canada. The Canadian government says they have no record of that. The Kurd was from a city called Kobani, it`s where the Kurds made a remarkable, courageous stand against ISIS in Syria -- and here is what the city looked like before the war and what it looks like now. Again, before and after. So, the question is what would make a family risk their lives to flee to another country? This is what the answer is. A question of what other nations should be doing applies to every wealthy nation from England to Canada to the U.S. And joining me now, Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas. And Congressman Castro, as someone whose mother came to this country who comes from a lineage of people that moved one place to another, not fleeing war in that particular case, what is your reaction to watching this unfold in Europe? REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO, (D) TEXAS: Sure. Well, my grandmother came in 1922 as a young orphan. And the images coming out of Europe are just absolutely heartbreaking, many of them shock the conscience. The image of the 3-year-old boy who died off the Turkish coast and that soldier carrying his body, that was on the front page of so many newspapers today. And I think -- you know, I`ve got to imagine it played a part in the UK changing its tone and accepting -- agreeing to accept more refugees. And I think that the United States and Canada should follow suit. HAYES: Let`s press on that. Because we saw what happened politically in this country when there was a wave of arguably refugees or migrants coming from Central America, many of them children, many of them women. People freaked out. CASTRO: Right. HAYES: Should the... CASTRO: Yeah, no, Chris there is no question. The politics are very difficult. Even last summer before Donald Trump started stoking fears about an invasion of immigrants, the politics were tough even a year ago when 68,000 migrants, most of them women and children came from Central America, I think -- you know, this is where the politics and the political tone in the country really does make a difference, because a Donald Trump in the United States politics makes it harder for the United States government and for its leaders to accept more of these refugees, which I think morally they should. HAYES: OK. So, let`s -- I mean, I think there is a real -- there is leadership here that can be provided that 14 senators wrote a letter earlier this year saying we should be taking more. We took a thousand Syrian refugees last year. It looks like 8,000 in the coming year. How many should we be taking and who -- are you going to call for us to take more? CASTRO: Oh, absolutely. And consider this as part of that call. I think that, you know, of course congress has been out of session since July 30, at least the House of Representatives has been. But as soon as we get back on September 8, I believe that we should have hearings on this. And I think many of us will take action. And I think the United States should step up and take a stronger role in accepting thousands of these refugees. You know, when we think of a refugee today, I think part of the challenge for the country is that we are still thinking of people who are fleeing communist dictators in the `60s and `70s. You think about the thousands of Cubans who came fleeing Fidel Castro and the Vietnamese who came after the Vietnam war. And you know, in our minds we still think of people fleeing these communist dictators, but really the situation around the world has changed a lot since then, that`s very obvious. But I don`t know that that has made it into our consciousness. HAYES: You know, you talk about the political context, which I think is a great point. One thing that occurs to me is one of the things you hear from people on the other side of the immigration debate, particularly conservatives or Republicans is, look, we love legal immigration. We don`t like illegal immigration. We don`t like people coming not through the proper channels. This is an opportunity, it seems to me, to call that bluff and say, look, let`s actually legally expand the number of refugees we are taking, put in process to bring people, resettle them. We`ll know who these folks are. This is not just people coming willy-nilly. We can do that. But let`s actually step up and take lots more people. CASTRO: No, I think that`s absolutely right. Now, another part of the debate that we get into when you have refugees from the Middle East, for example, is the stringent security protocols that they have to go through to be allowed refugee status in this country. And there has been a push-back to allowing thousands and thousands of people to come here from the Middle East because of that. You know, there are FBI checks, homeland security checks, and so on and so on. And I expect that that will be part of the debate in the coming weeks. HAYES: All right, Congressman Joaquin Castro, thank you very much. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Right now at this moment, Bernie Sanders just started speaking at a campaign event in Burlington, Iowa, his third in the state today. Sanders continues to draw huge numbers of people to events across the country, even having to change venues for two of his events this week because of rising crowd estimates, according to his campaign. Two polls have put the Vermont senator ahead of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, another recent one put him within striking distance in Iowa, trailing Clinton by just seven points. A poll out yesterday, however, had him much further behind, Clinton doubling his support in the state. Sanders himself has refused to go after Clinton head on, but his growing popularity is being used often quite opportunistically as a sharp contrast to the former secretary of state. Headlines this week screamed of Clinton`s under water favorability numbers and giving aid to those desperate to construct a narrative of a Clinton campaign in free fall are the steady stream of email stories. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KRISTEN WALKER: This is yet another blow to the Clinton campaign. Her former staffer Brian Pagliano who helped set up the server that housed Clinton`s private email account is invoking his fifth amendment right refusing to answer questions about the emails before a congressional committee. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: That Clinton staffer was subpoenaed by house committee investigating Benghazi, the same committee that called Cheryl Mills, another Clinton aide to testify today behind closed doors rejecting Mills` own request to make that testimony public. Meanwhile, Clinton`s campaign today argued that Clinton`s 20-point national lead over other candidates puts her in a good position. But hanging over everything is Vice President Joe Biden who has been stoking interest, potential 2016 run. Right now, he`s speaking at a synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia. After making a series of public appearances at a Jewish community center and college in Florida, Biden didn`t address the 2016 speculation, but it has reached such a fevered pitch that even Donald Trump, who presumably has no inside information about the vice president`s plans, was asked to weigh in. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER: I think maybe he`s inclined not to get in the race. I think it`s going to do depend on what happens with Hillary Clinton. A lot of people think that she will not be able to make it legally from a criminal standpoint to the starting gate. I don`t know that to be true. But I think it depends on what happens with her. I think if she gets out he will get in. I think if she stays in, he might not. Who knows? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: You know, I`m no fortune teller but Hillary Clinton is not going to get out. Joining me now MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid. So, we have got this strange situation, it strikes me, where Sanders has this momentum. He`s got this tremendous grassroots support. There he is. You can see him. That`s a guy who has been campaigning all day. And if you -- can we listen to him for second. Just listen to him on the stump. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I) VERMONT: This campaign is about bringing people together. It`s about telling the 60 percent of Americans who did not vote last November that by not voting they are dishonoring their own kids and their own parents. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: So, you can hear the hoarseness in his voice. You can hear -- I mean, this is a guy who`s -- he`s got on the stump. There`s a reason people are coming out to listen to him. The bit question is like what`s the path forward? What do you think? JOY REID, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Well, it`s interesting, because you`re right, it is sort of multidimensional chess that you have. The Bernie people are devoted Bernie people. They are sort of -- are a mix of kind of the Occupy Wall Street anger at the Wall Street and the banks and also younger, sort of newer to the game, people who are not so steeped in politics, who are sick of politics as usual. My daughter is one of them. She likes Bernie Sanders. She likes him because he`s talking about making college affordable and going after the banks. They like that message. It seems un-Washington, even though he`s been in Washington for like 30 years. But they like that. And they are devoted to him. And I think they`re stuck. They`re going to stay there. But these are people who I think at the end of the day would vote for Hillary Clinton were she to become the nominee. I don`t think they`re diehards. You have that. HAYES: Right. REID: Then you have got the Hillary crowd, which when I went to Iowa -- Iowa is a much more liberal state, Democratic Party there is much more liberal. But people are very -- you know -- they take their politics obviously very seriously. The Hillary people I talked to were by and large women, particularly women over 50 who are very much about getting a woman in the White House. And the Hillary people are also... HAYES: Die hard. REID: Die hard. And I think we underestimate in the media because there is this media Schadenfreude about all things Clinton, and the media always wants them to go down, let`s just be honest. That we tend to underestimate how diehard the Hillary... HAYES: This is a very important point. And I think you`re right. One, it`s a missing part of the story about Hillary Clinton`s campaign, which is this sort of like a collective -- this atmosphere of sort of collective yawn that you get from the press, or like, oh, the Clintons again. Or, you know, that there are -- whatever you think of Hillary Clinton as a candidate substantively, political, as a candidate, put that aside. There are a lots of people in this country who are devoted diehard fans of Hillary Clinton and want nothing more than to see her elected president. And those people are not reflected I think in the coverage. REID: At all. Remember, back in 2008 there were women, particularly, who were Hillary supporters who were vowing not to vote for Barack Obama and to exit -- right, and to become Republicans, the Pumas, if she didn`t get the nomination or if she didn`t get on the ticket. And there are still those people out there. Now, there also are other little pieces that are in the puzzle which we in the media don`t pay attention to. There are some people from `08 that still hold a grudge against the Clintons, particularly African-Americans, particularly African-American women that I spoke with that still are not ready to embrace Hillary and that`s a problem for her. But where do they go? HAYES: My own reporting and conversations I`ve encountered that same thing. And at the same time, if you look at polling, she`s doing very well with people of color. The thing Bernie Sanders has to figure out, because he can`t -- he has got no path forward without voters of color in a Democratic primary. Now, the other thing is, if you show Joe Biden, who`s speaking right now, who has been doing a kind of tour of American Jewish centers, synagogues, talking to the Jewish community about the Iran vote, you just covered him down in Florida. What was it like? I mean, here he is doing a routine event down there, right. But it`s routine under the (inaudible) of he might get in the race. REID: Yeah. And just FYI, these events were planned way before. These are not spontaneous events that are some sort of, you know, mystical thing where he is doing a campaign thing. He already had the fund-raisers planned that he was doing weeks ago. Debbie Wasserman Schultz invited him down. So, these were pre-planned events. I didn`t get a sense of Bidenmentum on the ground. I`ll be honest with you. I didn`t get that sense. People are saying it`s his own decision, but people who love Obama people, Obama people, love him. They want him to get in. HAYES: That is where things get very interesting. Joy Reid, thanks for all your reporting, for being on the trail. REID: Thank you. HAYES: Still ahead, Patriots nation celebrates today as Tom Brady`s suspension is overturned in what becomes yet another loss for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and perhaps and probably a win for working men and women. I will explain ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: You know, one of the things that I`m honored about is that so far everybody that`s attacked me has gone down the tubes. You have Perry attacked me, now he`s out of the race now. He was at 4 or 5 percent, now he`s getting out of the race. He was at zero. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Donald Trump just sort of offhandedly today declaring that former Texas Rick Perry is now out of running for president, this after Rick Perry lost his entire campaign staff in New Hampshire. His political director in that state defecting yesterday and Perry`s team in Iowa has since been whittled down to one paid staffer while in South Carolina Perry staffers were kicked off the payroll and asked to continue working for free. When asked about it today, Rick Perry insisted he`s still in the race while epitomizing why his candidacy is on the rocks. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS: Is Donald Trump right? Are you getting out of the race? PERRY: You know, a broken clock is right once a day. So, the bottom line is I`m still here and I`m still working. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Fool me once, shame on you -- fool me -- can`t get fooled again. We`ll be right back. (COMMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Huge victory today for Tom Brady and the Patriots nation as a federal judge over turned the NFL`s four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback over the Deflategate scandal. The base of that ruling seems to be that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did not treat Tom Brady fairly. Back in May, the NFL announced that Brady would be suspended for four games following an investigation that said, quote, based on the evidence it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities including the release of air from Patriots game balls. It was at this time that a future presidential candidate made crystal clear whose side he was on. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: If I were Tom Brady I`d sue the hell out of the NFL for defamation. $250 million. Sue them, Tom. They`ll settle so fast your head will spin. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Your head will spill. Instead of doing that, Brady along with players union decided to fight the suspension through the court system. Today, as part of a 40 page ruling, federal judge Richard Berman wrote you can`t suspend a person just because he may have been generally aware of wrongdoing, writing, quote, no NFL policy or precedent notifies players that they may be disciplined, much less suspended, for general awareness of misconduct by others. This ruling appeared to question Roger Goodell`s understanding of the NFL`s collective bargaining agreement struck with the union and served as a reminder the power to punish players is not unlimited. There is, of course, great celebration in New England today, including at one Dunkin Donuts where Judge Berman will never have to pay for another Coolata. But the controversy isn`t over for Brady or for the NFL. Dave Zirin is fired up. And he`ll be here next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Joining me now, Dave Zirin, he`s sports editor at magazine The Nation, also host of Edusports on Sirius/XM. All right, Dave, how should I feel about this? I`m conflicted. I`m cross pressured. DAVE ZIRIN, THE NATION: Yeah. HAYES: I`m a staunch labor guy. I like collective bargaining agreements. I like an employee taking his employer to court and winning. On the other hand, it`s Tom Brady. And I`m not part of Pats nation. so, guide me about how to feel. ZIRIN: OK. Well, let me explain like this. The highlight of my day was amidst all of the social media celebration in Patriots Nation was seeing all of them visibly recoil off of Twitter when they realized that Donald Trump was on their side and was also supporting Tom Brady. HAYES: Well, that`s also part of it. I mean, what am I supposed to do with that. ZIRIN: I know, but that`s part of it is that we have to understand that it`s -- with the workers always, with Tom Brady sometimes is a generally good philosophy going forward. But I`ll tell you something, one thing about Donald Trump, say what you will about him, he doesn`t like being associated with losers. And one thing that Roger Goodell is right now, and all of the bosses who have decided to put their trust in Roger Goodell in the National Football League, this is a losing horse and a losing proposition. This is the fifth straight court case that the owners lost as Roger Goodell led them to court. And yet this case is different from the others. The others were the New Orleans Saints Bouncygate, Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, those other four at least Roger Goodell could say, I`m on the side of Rice, on the side of cleaning up this league at factuous and as dimwitted as it was it was at least a line he could sell to owners, to the public and to their corporate partners. You can`t sell that in this case. All you can sell is I make George W. Bush look like Disraeli. That`s the only thing that Roger Goodell has going for him right now. HAYES: Well, I have not -- it has been hard to understand the logic of this entire thing from the beginning, right. I mean, the conspiracy theorists at the beginning of this said, look, Kraft is buddies with -- the Patriots owner Robert Kraft is buddies with Roger Goodell, and one of his closest friends. Tom Brady is, if you were to pick one person who is the face of the NFL it`s got to be Tom Brady, right? I mean, the guy is a superstar, model handsome, married to a model, five-time Super Bowl winner. I mean, this guy is everything. Four, five times? How many do they have now? ZIRIN: Yeah. And also let`s not forget white as the driven snow in a majority black league that they are selling to a majority white audience. The thing about Tom Brady to me is that he`s like Dorian Gray. Somewhere there is a picture of just a decaying soul yet Tom Brady just gets more and more handsome every today. HAYES: Well, that`s the thing like why did they pick this fight? That`s what makes no sense about this whole thing, why did they pick this fight? ZIRIN: It makes sense because if you understand it less as a battle between labor and the NFL ownership and more as a battle in between owners. The New England Patriots a decade ago were one of the lowest valued franchises in the National Football League. Today, they are second only to the Dallas Cowboys. And there are a lot of NFL owners who feel Robert Kraft and the Patriots have gotten rich by skirting the rules whether it was Spygate, whether it`s fudging injury reports, whether it`s Bill Belichick and all the various machinations other owners feel he does. So, there are a lot of owners who feel like because of Kraft`s cozy relationship with Goodell that Robert Kraft has gotten rich on their time. And so there were a lot of owners who looked at Roger Goodell and said, hey, dude, you make $40 million a year, because of us not Bob Kraft. We want to see you go after him for this deflating of the football thing. They didn`t care what it was, they wanted to take a shot and puncture the Patriots` balloon. HAYES: But here is part of it, too, like it is one of these things -- you know, there is this sort of reactionary phrase where they talk about a court system he got off on a technicality, right. And it`s sort of meant to be like obviously the guy is guilty, but like our no good constitution got in the way. And I have to say I feel a little bit that way about this. Like it really does seem like they were up to no good. And they didn`t essentially have the evidence procedurally to nail them for it. And I respect that because I respect process and labor law and collective bargaining agreements, but I`m left feeling they probably were doing this. ZIRIN: Well, but part of the problem, though, is there is a huge gap between what we originally thought about this and what now we actually know is the truth. I remember coming on your show, first time we talked about this, and I said give the Superbowl to the Seahawks. I want a parade in Seattle with Richard Sherman holding up the trophy. They should have to vacate it. And one of the reasons why I said that was a widely spread report by ESPN that 10 of the 11 footballs were deflated. And that was a shocking number. It`s like, whoa, that looks like a systemic effort to game the game. And yet now we know that it was one or two footballs and that the variance might actually can be explained by barometric pressure. Basically Roger Goodell totally overshot on this thinking his good buddy Bob Kraft and Tom Brady would go along for the ride and just play ball precisely because Brady is the face of the league and all the rest of it and seemed to have a lot to lose by fighting back. But I will say this for Tom Brady, and I know this from talking to a lot of people in the NFL Players Association today, is that he did not go down as the person who made it labor precedent in the NFL to just hand over your personal cell phone. He didn`t want to be that guy. And there`s something to say for that. HAYES: he fought the law and the law didn`t win. ZIRIN: That`s true. HAYES: Or the law did win in his favor. Dave Zirin, thanks so much. ZIRIN: Thank you, sir. HAYES: Final thought for the Patriots fans celebrating, remember this moment the next time you hear about how those evil Teachers` Unions won`t let us fire the bad teachers. It`s the same thing. The same process that ensures people get a fair hearing that kept Tom Brady and keeps those teachers. That is All In for this evening. Don`t miss tomorrow night where I will be joined by Donald Trump`s former top adviser Roger Stone and I`ll also be joined by the protester who got knocked in the head during a scuffle with the Trump security guard outside Trump`s press conference today. It`s going to be a great show. That`s tomorrow night. Right now it`s time for the Rachel Maddow Show. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END