All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 09/17/15

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think she`s got a beautiful face. SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Short, tall, fat, ugly. TRUMP: I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there`s plenty of subject matter right there. HAYES: Debate number two is in the books, and in between the insults there were untruths. JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As it relates to my brother, there`s one thing I know for sure, he kept us safe. HAYES: Tonight, debunking the top three falsehoods from the Reagan Library. Then, is it finally time to sell high on Donald Trump? PAUL: I think America is about done with him. HAYES: Plus, the Ahmed Mohamed story keeps getting bigger. AHMED MOHAMED, STUDENT: I didn`t think I was going to get any support because I`m a Muslim boy. HAYES: Tonight, my interview with the Irving police chief who is standing by the arrest. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s a very suspicious device. HAYES: Of course, there is backlash to the backlash. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does anyone think it did not look like a dangerous weapon out of a "Die Hard" movie? HAYES: ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. We`re going to get to the fall out from the second Republican debate very soon. But, tonight, just moments ago, a really surreal and disturbing event just took place. Iconic, I think, event in this campaign so far. The first questioner in a town hall meeting for Donald Trump in Rochester, New Hampshire, made some outrageous statements that appear to going un- rebutted by Donald Trump. Questions and comments not only included the now year`s long paranoia about President Barack Obama being a Muslim. Question or comments also included to be what seemed to be a call for ethnic cleansing. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: OK. This man, I like this guy. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m from White Plains. Amen. OK? We have a problem in this country. It`s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he is not even American. TRUMP: We need -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Birth certificate, man. But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That`s my question. When can we get rid of them? TRUMP: We`re going to be looking at different things. And, you know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We`re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Just to be clear, when can we get rid of them, that`s the question? Now, charitably, I guess, when can we get rid of the fictional Muslims in training camps or maybe all Muslims? And the answer from the frontrunner of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, who is now polled in more than a dozen polls consecutively on top was, "We`ll be looking at a lot of different things." Now, the nonsense about Muslim training camps came up a few questions later. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The FBI knows all about that. TRUMP: Right. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America has also guns pointed at ordinary citizens here. One of them -- TRUMP: Don`t get nervous. You`re on about seven television networks! Don`t get nervous. Don`t choke! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One is the Bureau Land Management -- TRUMP: Go ahead. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- and the agriculture. They`re going into different ranches, shutting them. TRUMP: Right, that`s right. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Call them regulation, but they seem to be pointing a gun to make sure they get their fees. This is our own government putting us at siege. How can we get in there and stop them? TRUMP: So many things are going to change. You know, these are regulations but so many things. That`s one. You know, one of the things being in real estate we have army bases, navy bases, so many are for sale and so many have been sold over the last short period of time. You say, how many can we sell? I see it all the time. They come across my desk. So many. Things are going to change. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: All right. Joining me now, NBC News correspondent Hallie Jackson. Hallie, you were in that town hall. I got to say, I watched that, it really seemed like a chaotic atmosphere and it seemed that Donald Trump got out of there quickly. It seemed like it was -- I don`t to be exaggerating, but it felt like the crowd was getting more and more riled up the longer it went. HALLIE JACKSON, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, this was intended to be a rally, right, Chris? This was something where Donald Trump wanted to come out after the debate and fire up the supporters. So they were fired up. It was certainly ruckus, as often Trump events are. This one is different that he took questions from the members of the audience, something that we do not see him do. He also did not hold a media availability, anything with the press, which is a little bit different. He`s usually somebody who comes in, talks to the press, and goes and does his events. So, I -- you know, the first question you ran a minute ago, it was very interesting. People really sort of stopped and listened and listened to what Donald Trump had to say. It harkens back a little bit to the moment in 2008 where John McCain, you remember, running for president, corrected somebody who called President Obama a Muslim or an Arab. He said, no, no, that`s not correct. We didn`t see that from Donald Trump this time. There was a heckler in the crowd behind Trump at one point. And the crowd that booed down the heckler and Trump sort of brushed it off. He got out quickly. One of the things that we`ve seen during these events though is the kind of mob scene surrounding Donald Trump as he goes at these events. His motorcade or his caravan of cars pulled off. All the way from the second he stepped off from the podium to the car. He was surrounded by people. It was a crush of body guards, staffers, folks wanting autographs. People who wanted him to sign their book, to sign their "Rolling Stone", for example. So, it`s an atmosphere unlike many you see in politics. HAYES: All right. Hallie Jackson, thank you so much for joining us and for being there. Joining me now, Charlie Pierce, writer at large for "Esquire", Ben Domenech, publisher of Federalist and host of the Federalist radio hour. Ben, let me start with you. OK. So, you know, people show up to events and I`m not -- you know, you can`t hold the candidates` views. But that guy said the president is a Muslim. He`s not from this country. The Muslims are trying to kill us and said when can we get rid of them? I mean, you know, that`s about a explicit of a call for something like ethic cleansing as I`ve heard campaign event for president in a long time. And Donald Trump just says we`re looking at a lot of things. That strikes me as off the table. That`s off the table. That`s not -- I mean, I think you`re laughing because what else can you do in the face of that? But -- BEN DOMENECH, FEDERALIST: It`s mostly this, Chris, it`s rare you have an opportunity to have a single event vindicate everything you think about what is kind of underneath the excitement about Donald Trump, but I think that`s what this was. It`s an indication that as much as we might like to say that the support for Donald Trump comes from people who are -- who have an ideological agenda when it comes to one issue or another. I think the truth is it`s a lot of disaffected Americans who are not particularly political. What we`ve seen in polls is that his support is largest among people who don`t even vote in Republican primaries or don`t even vote generally. And I think that that`s what you really saw here, which was kind of an Internet comment come to life. And Trump himself, I think, realized this. It`s one of the reasons he got out of there fast. HAYES: Yes, Charlie, Trump usually takes questions for a long time. But you could sort of see -- I could kind of see on his face him needing his fans and I don`t know if it was a dawning awareness of what that means, but it felt like he made for the exits pretty quickly. CHARLIE PIERCE, ESQUIRE: Yes, I have to admit, but I didn`t even factor in as the Trump phenomena has gone along this summer, I didn`t factor in the possibility that, you know, the lingering birtherism might be one of the fundamental dynamics behind it. I`m going to have to recalibrate my own thinking based on tonight. Frankly, it just never occurred to me. I was one of those people -- you know, as Ben was talking about who thought it was just people who want someone outside of politics. But, I mean, I thought the birtherism had been wrung out of the -- you know, public discourse when the president embarrassed him in front of all of official Washington a few years ago. I was wrong. HAYES: Ben, your -- the birtherism being wrung out, I think it went sort of underground. It was a reminder in the moment when the guy -- let me play this again. I want to play it one more time. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: OK. This man, I like this guy. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m from White Plains. Amen. OK? We have a problem in this country. It`s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he is not even American. TRUMP: We need -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Birth certificate, man. (CROSSTALK) UNIDENTIFEID MALE: But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That`s my question. When can we get rid of them? TRUMP: We`re going to be looking at different things. And, you know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We`re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: And, Ben, he did rise to prominence the Obama era as a birther. And this was a reminder of where those roots are. DOMENECH: You know, the funny thing about Trump is that he -- you know, there are at lot of people around him who have worked with him and maintain he`s not a racist. That he`s not anti-Semitic. He`s not someone who puts the issues sort of forward and yet there seems to be a lot of excitement and support for him that comes from a faction of the American population that does have these kind of race based ethnic based priorities. I`m not sure that Trump himself even understands the kind of phenomena that he`s created in terms of this conversation, and the population of people who are excited by his presence in the race, I think the real problem sort of is, how do you deal with that, how do you sympathize that? How do you deal with that that doesn`t result in some kind of violence or urging on, the things you`re talking about here today the deportation of people because of their religious believes or you suggested ethnic cleansing. I`m not sure that`s even -- I don`t want to get into that guy`s head, let me just put it that. HAYES: Let me just say this, Charlie, I mean, you know, if someone gets up at a campaign event tomorrow and says to a campaign we`ve got a problem in this country to a candidate. We have a problem in this country with the Jews. That candidate responds by saying we`re going to be looking at a lot of things, that candidate is done. That is over. PIERCE: I was going to say one of the things -- DOMENECH: I should hope so. I should hope so. PIERCE: One of the things you`re going to be looking at is the want ads. HAYES: Exactly, and rightfully so. Just to be clear about what was just exchanged -- what we saw. I mean, in some ways, you know, replace any group you want in there. But I cannot imagine that this is not -- I mean, people have been predicting the death blow but what do you think, Charlie? PIERCE: Well, I mean, what was Jefferson`s wonderful image about slavery? It was like holding a wolf by the ears. I think Donald Trump realized all of a sudden that he`s holding a wolf by the ears and he can`t let go. And if I can do a little cross presidential referencing. It`s LBJ to say it`s raining on and you`re on a highway in Texas. You can`t run, you can`t hide, you can`t make it stop. He`s lost control of whatever it is he unleashed. HAYES: That`s exactly, lost control of whatever that he wanted to do is exactly what that town hall looked like to me as I was watching that jaw slack. Charlie Pierce and Ben Domenech, thank you both. Up next, the inevitable embarrassment that comes with running for public office. We`ll have some choice moments from last night`s debate, and later the process of Ahmed Mohamed`s arrest has raised a lot of questions. I will talk to the chief of police in Irving to see what he had to say about the situation. Those stories and more ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: One of the essential truths about running for office is that in order to run for office successfully, you have to subject yourself to some humiliation at least some of the time. Last night was no different, when candidates were asked to come up with their own secret service code names. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: True Heart. GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Unit one. CARLY FIORINA (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Secretariat. GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R-WI), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Harley, I love riding Harleys. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: One nation. TRUMP: Humble. SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As a Cuban, I might go to Cohiba. SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Gator. SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Justice never sleeps. JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Ever- Ready, it`s very high energy, Donald. (LAUGHTER) (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Ever-Ready accepting Humble`s offer of a low five, perhaps a highlight of the evening. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Last night`s marathon second Republican presidential debate drew more than 23 million viewers, record for CNN, just slightly less than the first GOP debate on FOX, which drew 24 million viewers. Twenty-three million is a very, very large number. Last season Sunday night football averaged 2 million fewer viewers than last night`s debate, which helped why CNN charged 40 times the usual rate for ads during the three-hour extravaganza. But while the debate was good for ratings, it wasn`t good for us interested in the truth. Over and over, the 11 candidates in the main debate and the four in the undercard debate earlier in the day made claims that were misleading, deceptive and flat out false, some of them dangerously so. Donald Trump claimed he never tried to bring casino gambling to Florida. False. Marco Rubio said U.S. policies to combat climate change will do absolutely nothing to change the climate. False. Ted Cruz said the nuclear agreement trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves. False. I could on. We could literally spend the entire show fact checking the debate. But there were three untruths in particular that struck us as the most egregious, offensive and dangerous of the bunch. And joining me now to discuss them, Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at "The Nation". OK. I want to start with something Jeb Bush said last night that`s gotten a lot of attention. Bush is being attacked by Donald Trump said George W. Bush`s poor performance lead to the election of Barack Obama. And here is how Bush responded. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: You know what? As it relates to my brother, there`s one thing I know for sure. He kept us safe. I don`t know if you remember -- (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) BUSH: Do you remember the rubble? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Bush tweeted out that quote today along with his brother standing on the rubble on the World Trade Center site. Now, it is amazing it needs to be said, but apparently it does, the September 11th terror attacks occurred nine months into the presidency of George W. Bush, the deadliest terrorist attack in this country`s history happened on his watch. You could argue Bush should not be accountable for what happens in September 11th, but it takes real gal to claim that George W. Bush kept Americans safe, and that`s before you even take into account the thousands of Americans killed in the wars that Bush launched in Iraq and Afghanistan. And even if you somehow don`t count September 11th or the wars that Bush started, that fact is that 277 Americans died from George W. Bush, while 90 had died under Obama, according to the data compiled by Michael Zenko of the Council of Foreign Relations. I can`t believe they`re going with this. MICHELLE GOLDBERG, THE NATION: Yes, and they`re actually going with it. Do you remember the rubble? If you remember the rubble then you know he empirically did not keep us safe. I was amazed that actually Donald Trump who at least as a New Yorker didn`t fire back with something, because there used to be a climate of sanctimony around 9/11, right? Where we were supposed to pretend that George W. Bush did this heroic thing by going out with a bull horn. But that dissipated by now. It should be obvious to everyone that whether or not you kind of blame him for not reading that memo -- HAYES: Right. Exactly. Yes, right. GOLDBERG: Right. It just like saying the Secret Service kept John F. Kennedy safe. It`s just not true. HAYES: Right. Or one thing about FDR is like he stopped us from being surprise attacked. He did not do that. Like FDR did a lot of things. You could argue -- I am amazed and I`m also amazed the idea he kept us safe has become the weird epitaph to the Bush era to conservatives. GOLDBERG: Well, again, I think that that`s because the climate of sanctimony, again, that he was a sort of, you know, hero riding around in the ridiculous airplane as he did in mission accomplished. I think that dissipated for everyone else but maybe not dissipated for them. HAYES: All right. I want to talk about the most genuinely irresponsible one of the night. This is Donald Trump`s suggestion there`s a link between vaccines and autism. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: You take a little beautiful baby and you pump -- it looks like it`s meant for a horse not a child. We`ve had so many instances. People that work for me, just the other day, 2 years old, two and a half years old, a child -- beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever. Got very, very sick. Now is autistic. I only say it`s not -- I`m in favor of vaccines. Do them over a longer period of time. Same amount. MODERATOR: Thank you. TRUMP: But just in little sections. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Completely wrong. Disproven by literature. The initial article that had tenuously advanced had been retracted. The person published it banished into infamy. There`s empirical literature on bunching of vaccines. There`s nothing that suggests it`s unsafe. Not at all true. Two doctors on the stage stood by and refused to confront him. GOLDBERG: Right. I mean, that is like you said, I mean, people are going to be hurt because of this, because so many people were watching and because these untruths are so prevalent and so people are going to come away from this. HAYES: Twenty-four million people watched them say, yes, this horrible thing. GOLDBERG: Yes. And now we have a return of all these communicable diseases because there`s this hugely destructive vaccine epidemic. And yes, Donald Trump, you know, spouting conspiracy theories, perhaps there`s nothing to be surprised about. The thing that was shocking you have the two doctors who sort of kind of objected -- HAYES: Extremely gently. GOLDBERG: Right. So both of them said there really isn`t a link proven but there is a problem with the vaccines. HAYES: Too many. GOLDBERG: And Ben Carson talked about there being some sort of problem with big government pushing this stuff. Anyone who watched this took it at face value would come away thinking something sinister going on with the vaccine regime. HAYES: All right. Now, I want to talk about a moment that epitomized this debate for me. It involved Carly Fiorina in terms of style one of her strongest moments. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FIORINA: As regards to Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain. This is about the character of our nation. And if we will not stand up and force Barack Obama to veto this bill, shame on us! (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Heartfelt? Hugely misleading. There`s a grizzly image of a fetus on one of the videos. We don`t know where the footage came from. There`s no evidence. The footage she`s referring to had anything to do with Planned Parenthood. Indeed, it is identified as coming from the anti- abortion organization called the Grantham Collection. We asked Fiorina`s campaign for evidence and they sent us grisly YouTube video that show the same footage. But again, that`s not from those undercover tapes that were taken of Planned Parenthood. We don`t know the source of this and now, she`s not even -- she`s been called out. GOLDBERG: They`re not even claiming it`s from Planned Parenthood. It`s not that we`re seeing that it`s doctored. This is just stock footage that`s playing in these propaganda videos under somebody describing a scene of the kind of what she`s talking about. HAYES: Right. But the thing she describes is just to be clear like doesn`t happen in the way that she says. It`s not some undercover video of Planned Parenthood doing this ghastly thing while they have this ghastly conversation. And again, it`s like me like I saw, you know, I saw Carly Fiorina punch an old lady in the face and 24 million people say Carly punched an old lady in the face. Not really. But that`s now there -- GOLDBERG: It`s an empirical question. They`re going back and forth. Produce it. It`s not there. HAYES: Yes, right. Produce it it`s not there. You had something else to do about Fiorina myth-busting that you wanted to do. GOLDBERG: Yes, this I find so galling about Fiorina, the secretary, the CEO thing. HAYES: She said, I went secretary to CEO. GOLDBERG: Right. I mean, it`s all over her resume I think she owned secretarytoCEO.com. It`s just completely fraudulent, right? Her father was the dean of Duke Law School. He`s Nixon`s deputy attorney general. She works as a secretary during summers off from Stanford and then kind of joins AT&T after business school on a management track. I mean, it`s just -- HAYES: Whatever you want to say whatever you made it in a corporate world that was difficult for women to penetrate at the time you were doing it, et cetera. But this is not some rags to riches story. Let`s just be very clear. GOLDBERG: Right. What is so offensive she poses as a figure it proves anybody can do it. She uses it as a sort of cudgel against everybody else that`s not making it. HAYES: Although she did not inherit a real estate fortune from her father or a political dynasty. So, there`s that. In the relative scheme of things, she`s Horatio Algiers, although Ben Carson is actually that story. Michelle Goldberg, thanks so much for your time. GOLDBERG: Thank you so much. HAYES: Up next, we have a little exercise for you. Can you fare better than some of the Republican front runners? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MODERATOR: Earlier this year, the Treasury Department announced that a woman will appear on the $10 bill. What woman would you like to see on the $10 bill? PAUL: Oh, that`s a tough one. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Here`s a fun assignment. Name an American woman who you believe should be honored on our currency. All right. Got a name? Great. You`ve done better than roughly half the Republican candidates gracing the main stage last night who were asked the following question: Which woman should be on the $10 bill? The lone woman on stage said we should keep the currency as is. Her counterparts got a little more creative, some faring better than others. Scott Walker clicked Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. Rand Paul went for an iconic though not terribly original pick, Susan B. Anthony. While Chris Christie had this to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHRISTIE: I think the Adams family has been shorted in the currency business. Our country wouldn`t be here without John Adams and he wouldn`t be able to do it without Abigail Adams. So, I put Abigail Adams on the bill. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Praising that response led some of the audience and at home to think Christie was initially referring to a different Adams family. Not the family of America`s second first lady. Marco Rubio picked civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Ted Cruz also picked Rosa Parks but then one up Rubio by saying he`d put her on the $20 bill, not $10. Donald Trump picked daughter Ivanka but then ultimately settled on Rosa Parks. Two candidates could only come up with family members. I mean, they`re being asked, name a notable, celebrated American woman. Mike Huckabee chose his wife and Ben Carson selected his mother. Then, there was the candidates who neither pander to members of their family, nor could name a single American who contributed to the country in some noteworthy way. John Kasich picking Mother Teresa, the much admired religious figure born in what is now Macedonia. While Jeb Bush offered this selection. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: I would go with Ronald Reagan`s partner Margaret Thatcher, probably illegal but what the heck? It`s not going to happen. A strong leader is what we need in the White House and she certainly was a strong leader that restored the United Kingdom to greatness. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Great, OK. So, the final count is two foreigners, two family members, three Rosa Parks, three other American women of note, legitimately, and one pass from the only woman on stage. For the people hoping to become our next leader for our nation, the task of naming a woman whose accomplishes highlight the best of our democracy should not be that hard. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: A little more than 24 hours Ahmed Mohamed went from unknown Texas nerd to the internet`s favorite cause celebre. Lauded by business magnates, scientists and the president of the United States. All because a homemake clock he constructed in his bedroom workshop, an invention he hoped would earn praise from his engineering teacher instead got him pulled out of class, interrogated by police officers and ultimately arrested bringing what police called a hoax bomb. While the case was closed, no charges filed, Ahmed`s three-day suspension from school still stands. Last night I got the chance to talk with the 14-year-old about what happened in school on Monday after one of his teachers confiscated the clock saying it looked like a bomb. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: At what point did you find out that you were in trouble? AHMED MOHAMED, SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL: The point where I saw a police officer and the principal. HAYES: They came into your classroom? MOHAMED: Yes, and they took me out. I got all my stuff. HAYES: They said get your stuff, come with us and then where did you go? MOHAMED: I went to an interrogation room filled with four other officers. HAYES: An interrogation room in your school? MOHAMED: It`s a school resource room. I call it the interrogation room, because that`s where I got interrogated. HAYES: So, they put you in a chair and there`s five officers total and the principal. Did you ask them can I talk to my parents? Can I call my parents and tell them what`s going on? MOHAMED; Yes. HAYES: Ad what did they say? MOHAMED: They told me no you can`t call your parents here. You`re in the middle of an interrogation at the moment. HAYES: And what kind of things did they ask you? MOHAMED: They asked me a couple of times is it a bomb? And I answered a couple of times, it`s a clock. HAYES: And that didn`t seem to satisfy them? MOHAMED: No. HAYES: How long were you in that room? MOHAMED: About an hour 25 minutes, an hour -- around an hour and 25. HAYES: So what else were they asking aside from is it a bomb, if you were in there for an hour-and-a-half? MOHAMED: They asked me why I would bring to the clock to school. And I had explained to them that I brought it to show my teachers to impress them. HAYES: So eventually after an hour-and-a-half is that when they handcuff you? MOHAMED: Yes. HAYES: Did they say you`re under arrest or you`re being charged? MOHAMED: They told me I was under arrest and I asked them for what crime and they were like for a hoax bomb. HAYES: How did you feel? MOHAMED: I felt like I was a criminal. I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called. HAYES: What do you mean all the names you were called? MOHAMED: I was called -- in middle school I was called a terrorist, called a bomb maker, it`s because of my race and religion. HAYES: What, you`ve been called that before by just by kids in your school? MOHAMED: Yes. HAYES: And were the officers saying things like that to you? MOHAMED: One of the officers did comment on me walking into the room. HAYES: What did he say? MOHAMED: He got back in the reclined chair and he relaxed and he was like -- and he said that`s who I thought it was. HAYES: And what did you take that to mean? MOHAMED: I took it to mean that he was pointing at me for what I am and my race, and he took it -- he took it at me because I was just a student. I never had any contact with him. I never talk toed him. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: That was my part of my interview with Ahmed Mohamed. One of the details of his story that`s caught a lot of people`s attention is the fact that as Ahmed just said the police didn`t allow him to call an adult, either his parents or an attorney during his hour-and-a-half long interrogation at school. That may have directly violated Texas law. I got a chance to talk to the Irving police chief. And I asked him about just that. We`ll have his answer when we return. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Up next, I`ll ask the police chief of Irving, Texas why his officers arrested Ahmed Mohamed for bringing a clock to school. First, this programming note. Bernie Sanders is in New York right now. In just about 20 minutes he`ll be a guest on the Rachel Maddow Show right here in 30 Rock. That is going to be awesome. Do not miss that. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Three days after a 14-year-old Muslim student was marched out of a Texas school in handcuffs for making a, quote, hoax bomb that was actually a homemade clock, local police are standing behind that arrest. Irving police chief Larry Boyd announced yesterday no charges would be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, saying there is no evidence the high school freshman intended to cause alarm. But that pictures of the clock showed that it was, quote, suspicious in nature. Last night, Ahmed told me he was questioned in a room at a school for over an hour without being allowed to speak to his parents. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Did you ask them can I talk to my parents? Can I call my parents and tell them what`s going on? MOHAMED: Yes. HAYES: And what did they say? MOHAMED: They told me no you can`t call your parents. You`re in the middle of an interrogation at the moment. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Chief Boyd, speaking to press yesterday said he was looking into the matter. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that your policies when someone is detained they`re not permitted to call either an attorney or their parent in the case of a minor? CHIEF LARRY BOYD, IRVING, TEXAS POLICE DEPT.: You know, as stated earlier any high profile situation we`ll have further follow up on. I don`t have the answer specifically to your question as to whether he was immediately allowed to call his father or not. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Now boyd has not apologized for the way Ahmed`s arrest was handled and has said race played no role in the incident. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What would the police reaction and response been the same had this been a white student who brought that same exact device into the school? BOYD: Our reaction -- and you`ve seen the image. Our reaction would have been the same either way. That`s a suspicious device. We live in an age where you can`t take things like that to schools. Of course, we`ve seen across our country horrific things happen. We have to err on the side of caution. The reaction would have been the same regardless if a device like that is found under the circumstances that it was found in this school. HAYES: Joining me now is Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd. Chief Boyd, given a little bit of time to process all this, and I imagine you`re fielding a tremendous amount of press increase and the like, do you have regrets how this was handled? BOYD: You know, I think where we`re at right now is in the process of examining everything that occurred, all the decision points. What we want to do, what we`re about is looking out for the safety of all the students and the staff and the school that we`re talking about here at MacArthur High School. And we`re also about how do you make best decision for the student involved in this particular case and you have to weigh the balance of two of those. Clearly, as you said stated, there`s been a great deal of attention to this issue. I`m receiving a lot of feedback of course. And so what we want to make sure we do is, as we do with everything, we want to learn and go forward and ensure that we continue to make the best decisions for all the parties involved. HAYES: Is it standard operating procedure for five of your officers to interrogate a 14-year-old boy without his parents present? BOYD: Well, it`s not, you know, I`ve heard it reported as five -- what I`ve heard was four. What occurred in this case is at the school, at every high school in Irving there are two school resource officers assigned to that school. And so those two were already there, and because of the sort of the complicated nature of this, their supervisor arrived and he had another sergeant with him. And so there were four people there, ultimately. You know, their supervisors arrived as well. So it`s not a standard operating procedure. I understand how and why there were four people at this call. HAYES: Is it your understanding of, I think Texas law is a little unclear here. We`ve been trying to figure it out as -- is it your understanding your Texas law that a child like Ahmed in that position is entitled to have an adult present? BOYD: It`s not an entitlement. It`s not something that the law dictates you have to have a parent present. Certainly, you know, as a father I understand the desire to have parents involved, you know, in these sorts of situations. In this case when they arrived with the level of allegation and things they were trying to determine and what they were dealing with, you know, so that`s not dictated by law. HAYES: Here is one of the things I think people are finding confusing. Obviously if someone had brought an explosive device to a school that would be terrifying, everyone would be on high alert, everyone would understand extraordinary measures taken. But nothing was done to indicate that anyone actually thought this was actually an exploding device -- no bomb squad was called, there was no evacuation. Once it`s determined that this is just a clock or just a piece of electronics, why then the arrest and all of that? That`s hard for folks to understand. BOYD: Right. And I get that. I understand the concern and some of it has to do with exactly what you`re talking about. The officers pretty quickly determined they weren`t investigating an explosive device, what their investigation centered around is the law violation of bringing a device into a facility like that that is intended to create a level of alarm. In other words, a hoax bomb. Something that is not really a bomb but is designed and presented in a way that it creates people to be afraid. HAYES: Right. But he never called it a bomb. He just kept calling it a clock. I mean, it never came out of his lips that this -- he never did something where he started showing it around saying look at the bomb I have. He just said look at my clock. BOYD: Right. And we talked about this in a press conference that I had yesterday. There was definitely some confusion and some level of information that didn`t come out immediately. So certainly in the circumstance like that when the police arrive, you know, they`re probably not going to, in many cases say I confess. You know, this is not a bomb but I meant for it to look like a bomb. And so you want to look at what are their elements. What other pieces of evidence that go along with that to determine whether that happened or not. And so what they had at that time, they made the best decision they thought that they had at that point in time, then released him to the parent. And of course we followed up with additional investigation, got all the rest of the picture together and then determined that it didn`t meet the elements. HAYES: Chief Boyd, I know that you said that race or religion or ethnicity in this case had nothing to do with what happened. I want to play a section of my interview with Ahmed last night about something and officer said to him when he came into the room. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MOHAMED: One of the officers did comment on me walking in the room. HAYES: What did he say? MOHAMED: He got back in the reclined chair and he relaxed and he was like, and he said, that`s who I thought it was. HAYES: And what did you take that to mean? MOHAMED: I took it to mean that he was pointing at me for what I am -- my race, and he took it -- he took it at me because I was just a student. I never had any contact with him. I never talked to him. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Does that trouble you, Chief Boyd? BOYD; Well, so I would like to meet with Ahmed`s father. And we`ve talked about meeting. Certainly that was a comment I wanted to know more about. The officers have reported to their supervisors, which they reported to me the exact opposite occurred. And that is that when the officer went into the room it was a second school resource officer, as I understand it, went into the room made the comment that`s not who I thought it was going to be. And so it was the exact opposite of what he understood him to say. HAYES: I just got to say I want to give you one last opportunity to say what I think a lot of people watching this are saying is. Look, you have a tough job. You have got to protect these kids, everyone is on high alert all the time. We`ve seen horrible news stories of things that happened in schools and everyone understands that. But just to be able to say, yeah, we did not get this one right. It`s -- I think it`s hard to folks watching this from the outside, seeing of all this link up, seeing this kid who seems like a tremendously poised, bright, genuine kid, be put through this, to not hear from anyone in officialdom down there that, yeah, we didn`t get this one right. BOYD: Well, you know, I said as I started this interview with you that the officers made the decision they did with the information they had with what they thought was right at the time. We`re clearly going to review this. We want to always look at ways that we can enhance and have a better outcome. There`s a lot of decision points, there`s a lot of alternatives that they have available to them. And so clearly we`ll look at this and see what we can learn and ensure that, you know, as we move forward what happened then happened then. I can`t really change anything there. Now what I want to do is make sure that we have an opportunity to learn and improve and make good decisions. HAYES: All right, Chief Boyd, Irving poilce chief, thanks for joining me. All right, coming up we`ll get reaction to that interview. I`ll be joined by Congressman Keith Ellison. He is one of only two Muslim members of congress, don`t go anywhere. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: There is an eyeopening, if sadly predictable and depressing backlash going on right now against 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed after he brought home a homemade clock to school to show his engineering teacher. Conservative mainstay and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney tweeing a picture today of what appears to be Ahmed`s clock next to an image labeled training IED device sold to law enforcement. The Tweet reads, quote, "can you tell the two apart? I can`t #IstandwithBeth. Beth is Mayor Beth Van Duyne of Irving, Texas where Ahmed and his family live. She wrote on Facebook yesterday, I do not fault the school, the police for looking int owhat they saw as a potential threat. Van Duyne made national headlines earlier this year when she seemed to conflate a Muslims mediation panel with Shariah law courts. At the time the Dallas Morning News described her as, quote, a hero among a fringe moment that believes Muslims, a tiny fraction of the U.S. population, are plotting to take over American culture and courts. Joining me now, Joy Reid, MSNBC national correspondet, Democratic representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, one of two Muslim members of congress. And congressman, your reaction to this story, to what is happening down in Irving. Do the words you just heard from the Irving police chief. REP. KEITH ELLISON, (D) MINNESOTA: Well, obviously they`re disturbing, they show a startling lack of willingness to take a responsibility for this obvious failure. I mean, you know, you take a kid and you put him in cuffs. They know this was not a bomb because they did everything to indicate they didn`t believe it was a bomb and yet they cuffed him, and interrogated him. You know, this, to me, indicates that, you know, that they`re trying to generate a climate of fear even among 14-year-old kids. And when you think about the behavior of the mayor earlier this year, it lends itself to the idea that there is a very bigoted culture emerging. And I think the good people of Irving need to stand up and say that this is not us that we are a tolerant inclusive community. HAYES: Joy, you`re a parent. You have a 15-year-old son? JOY REID, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. My youngest song is 15. This young boy reminds me -- you know, the monotone. I recognize so much about a 15- year-old boy. And at that age, number one, you don`t want to stand out in a negative way, right, you are trying to fit in with your peers. This is a kid who is doing exactly what we, as parents, want our kids to do. He`s being curious. He`s being interested in science. We`re trying to get more STEM research among young kids of color. He`s doing it all right. And then he`s basically made a spectacle of, humiliated. His now first experience with police is to be handcuffed in front of his friends, dragged into a resource office. As a parent I have real problems with the idea of interrogating a child, my child`s age without me there., without his dad there. I think as a legal matter, his parents need to look into that because we do have a constitution. It does apply. He is not an adult. He`s a minor. His parents should have been called at minimum. But the idea of what has done to this child`s psyche is something that we all need to be concerned about as parents. HAYES: Yeah. I mean, as a parent if you got that phone call you would be -- I would be out of my mind with rage. REID: Out of my mind! HAYES: Congressman, I saw -- my colleague at The Nation Ali Garib (ph) wrote a piece today. He said Barack Obama should stand with Ahmed and he should stand with Ahmed by visiting his mosque. And he pointed something out. George W. Bush is the only American president to have visited a mosque. What do you think of that idea? Do you think this president, despite his tweet yesterday, has he done enough to combat what I think is undeniably a very dark rising tide of Islamophobia in this country? ELLISON: You know, I really do believe that the president can make a really constructive difference in this situation. I remember when the whole debate took over when he talked about race in a very definitive, honest, sincere way. We need to talk about religious tolerance in this country. The president has been the target of anti-Muslim hate as much as anyone even though he`s a christian. HAYES: Right, exactly, that`s right. ELLISON: But the fact is I think this is a moment where leaders have to stand up and say that, look, you know, this is an inclusive country and you don`t get to demonize a minority group. So I would be very pleased to see it. I`ve actually asked the president himself about this and I`m hoping before he closes up he will visit a mosque. HAYES; I want to play, again, I watched the undercard debate last night from the Republican Party. And it was -- they were talking about Islamic terrorism, radical Islamism, then the main stage. Now, it`s true they`re not saying all Muslims, but they`re also not going out of their to say this is a small group of extremists who blah blah blah. As even George W. Bush did, and then you see this. I`m going play this again from the Donald Trump town hall today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: OK, this man. I like this guy. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...from White Plains, amen, OK. We have a problem in this country. It`s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he`s not even an American. TRUMP: We need this question. It`s a... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anyway we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That`s my question. When can we get rid of them? TRUMP: We`re going to be looking at a lot of things. And you know a lot of people are saying that and are lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We`re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: I want to say the Trump campaign response when asked to elaborate on that initial response -- one of the NBC News reporters, he said Christians need support in this country, their religious liberty are at stake. REID: Our children are at stake. Children should not be interrogated by police without their parents, children should not be stigmatized, our Muslim-American children are American children. They need to be brought into the body politic and embraced. The are our kids. This is a little boy. HAYES: Congressman, is it getting worse? I feel like the fever pitch is getting worse. The things I hear people get away with saying about Muslims are shocking to me. ELLISON: Well, you know, it ebbs and flows. Right after 9/11 it was not this bad. Then the lights of Frank Gaffney and others well financed anti- Muslim hate machines got pretty ugly. I`ll never forget some of the things said last presidential election. And now it seem the like we`re ginning up the hate machine again. You know, what Donald Trump did there is perhaps as much as any time I`ve ever seen him, he has shown how utterly unqualified he is to be a leader in this country. HAYES: Yeah. ELLISON: I mean, he has demonstrated that he has no moral courage, and it`s shocking the way he responded to that questioner. HAYES: Joy Reid and Democratic Representative Keith Ellison, thank you both. That is All In for this evening. And the Rachel Maddow show starts right now with a big interview that I`m going to run up to my office to watch. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END