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All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 2/10/2016

Guests: Molly Ball, Michelle Goldberg, Linda Sarsour, Ezra Klein

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: February 10, 2016 Guest: Molly Ball, Michelle Goldberg, Linda Sarsour, Ezra Klein

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We`re going to win so much. You are going to be so happy.

HAYES: Trump takes New Hampshire. Now, can anybody stop him?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That will never happen again.

(CHEERS)

HAYES: Why last night`s results could not be worse for the Republican Party.

TRUMP: You started it. Remember, you started it.

HAYES: Then, Bernie`s big win.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A huge voter turnout, and I say huge.

HAYES: Will Team Clinton change course?

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know I have some work to do. We`re going to fight for every vote in every state.

HAYES: Plus, the candidates calling it quits. And the real story behind one of Twitter`s top trends last night.

HAYES: And Bernie sandwiches.

ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.

And if you had to come up with the worst possible result in the New Hampshire primary from the perspective of the people who run the Republican Party and the donors who fund it, you could not top what actually happened last night. After Donald Trump`s second-place finish in Iowa put a dent in his gold-plated armor, Republican elites dared to hope the Donald passed his peak.

But New Hampshire voters handed Trump a resounding victory last night, beating the competition by a margin of almost 20 percent, even bigger than the latest polls had predicted.

At a rally tonight in South Carolina which holds the next Republican primary on February 20th, Trump basked in the glow of his first ever electoral win.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: New Hampshire, what a great place. What a great place. And we won it big. We won it big. We won by a lot. Really a lot. And -- and the reason is that people are tired of losing in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Exit polls from last night suggest Trump`s unique brand of politics has become bigger than the candidate, himself. With 65 percent of New Hampshire Republicans, including many who did not vote for Trump, saying they`d support a temporary ban on Muslims who are not U.S. sent citizens entering the country. An idea roundly criticized even by fellow Republicans as flirting with outright fascism.

At the same time, exit polls show Trump supporters picked their candidate early and stuck with him, unfazed by his loss in Iowa and his unorthodox New Hampshire campaign. A full 68 percent cited a vote for Trump before the last few days, leading up to the primary -- the highest proportion of early deciders of any candidate. That number would seem to suggest Trump supporters are by in large more than other candidate supporters a fixed group. He`s not doing a lot of persuading and most of the people going to vote for Trump are already with him.

If Trump has a ceiling, as many have suggested, the only way to take him down will be to cull the field until there are two options left, Trump and not Trump. Among party elites, the hope was New Hampshire would go a long way in advancing that process. But besides Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina who both suspended their campaigns today after coming up short in the primary, the dynamics of the race are almost completely unchanged as the cycle moves on to South Carolina, which is just about the worst outcome for the anti-Trump, not to mention the anti-Cruz forces.

In New Hampshire, second place went to John Kasich, Ohio governor who arguably would make a strong general election candidate but whose lack of funds and a clear constituency within the Republican electorate make his path forward in the primary a pretty difficult one.

In what may have been the biggest upset of the night, third place went to Ted Cruz, the only candidate that establishment Republicans may loathe more than Donald Trump. And after outperforming in a relatively moderate state, Cruz is arguing not without credibility that he`s the guy to take on Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: One of the most important conclusions coming out of these first two states is that the only candidate who can beat Donald Trump is me. What we`re seeing is conservatives uniting behind our campaign. I think Iowa and New Hampshire together played a critical role in that and then South Carolina is going to play an even more critical role.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Jeb bush`s fourth-place finish last night seems to have been just enough to carry him through to South Carolina where his extraordinarily well-funded team is planning a repeat of their Granite State strategy. Bush`s super PAC is reportedly putting in an additional $1.7 million into South Carolina on top of the $10 million they already spent there.

While the campaign is prepping a scorched earth attack against Kasich and Rubio, according to an internal memo obtained by "Politico", today, the super PAC put out a new radio ad featuring the man Jeb apparently considers his secret weapon.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: This is President George W. Bush. We live in troubled times with the military deployed around the world. We need a strong leader with experience, ideas, and resolve. There`s no doubt in my mind that Jeb bush will be a great commander in chief for our military.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: But perhaps the most consequential result last night certainly the most devastating for the donor class and beltway elites was the fifth-place finish of Marco Rubio who`d been well on his way to consolidating the anti- Trump and Cruz vote after coming in a strong third in Iowa. Then came the debate Saturday night and Rubio`s inability to stop repeating the same scripted talking points about President Obama. Exit polls suggest that moment may have helped send New Hampshire Republicans running in the other direction with 63 percent of Kasich voters picking their candidate in just the last few days.

After consistently refusing to even acknowledge his slipup, even attempting to convince reporter after reporter that he was, in fact, thrilled with his performance, Rubio tried a different tact last night after the results came in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: I want you to understand something. Our disappointment tonight is not on you. It`s on me. It`s on me.

I did not -- I did not do well on Saturday night. So, listen to this, that will never happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Hoping to reverse his image as a so-called Marco-bot, Rubio took questions from reporters for about 45 minutes today in an off-the-cuff suggestion on his plane.

Now, as the remaining candidates all converge on South Carolina, here`s the thing -- the structural forces that made Donald Trump the front-runner for the past seven, eight months are still entirely intact. Unless something drastic happens, it`s hard to see the dynamics changing any time in the immediate future.

Former Senator Judd Gregg, a Bush supporter, summed up in an interview in "The New York Times," quote, "If four people come out of South Carolina, we`re into a brokered convention."

Joining me now, Robert Costa, national political reporter for "The Washington Post," MSNBC political analyst, Molly Ball, staff writer covering politics for "The Atlantic", and Josh Barro, correspondent for "The Upshot" of "The New York Times" and MSNBC contributor.

Robert, let me start you. I mean, as someone who is as plugged in as you are in the world of sort of the Republican political establishment, Republican political operatives and donors, is this read that I have on it, which is about the worst thing they could have hoped for last night, is that correct?

ROBERT COSTA, THE WASHINGTON POST: The calendar works in Trump`s favor, Chris. When you talk to people close to Trump and those part of other rival campaigns, there`s a sense that South Carolina state where Trump has led for about a year. And he has a double digit lead and he has a solid ground operation.

He`s been hiring people there since February of 2015. And there`s a sense that even if he doesn`t do as well as expected in South Carolina, he goes strong into the south on March 1st, the Deep South. You got Alabama and other states and other blue collar New England states like Massachusetts coming up on that day.

HAYES: You know, you just mentioned the ground game. I want to play this clip from Trump last night, he`s talking about the ground game like it was a two-word phrase that someone has whispered to him about 72 hours before the voting started in New Hampshire.

Take a listen to him talking about the ground game.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Boy, do we have a ground game. We learned a lot about ground games in one week, I have to tell you that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Molly, I mean, part of what makes last night`s victory all the more remarkable, frankly, is the fact that he really did eschew a traditional campaign infrastructure and there was a sense in Iowa that he paid for that, that he got outhustled on the ground. Last night in New Hampshire, it seemed to work out for him.

MOLLY BALL, THE ATLANTIC: Well, a ground game matters a lot less in a primary than a caucus. A caucus turnout is to low that you can really manipulate it by driving more people out to vote. In a primary, you have a lot of people who are going to vote no matter what and that`s going to be the case in South Carolina, too, where turnout is going to be higher just naturally.

Ground game is great especially in a primary but only gets you so far. What really wins elections is a big message that attracts a lot of voters.

And that`s what Trump has. He`s got these massive rallies. I spoke to his campaign director in South Carolina a few weeks ago who said, what would you rather have, knock on 50 doors and maybe some of those people come out and vote for you, or get 10,000 people to drive and hour or two from their house in the middle of the day to go to a rally and you got all these people`s information and they`re already probably pretty committed to you.

So, that`s the advantage they feel like they have.

HAYES: This message, Josh, I think you have been as sort of astute on the Trump message as anyone writing about the phenomena from the very beginning. You wrote a piece in "The Times" today about Jan Brewer as kind of presaging the Trump phenomenon.

Basically throw overboard the Club for Growth`s orthodoxy which is not popular with people, anyway. It`s popular with the Wall Street -- people who read "The Wall Street Journal" editorial page, embrace essentially ethno-nationalism in politics, build a wall, you know, and really aggressive rhetoric and be vague about policy.

JOSH BARRO, "THE UPSHOT", "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, I mean, Jan Brewer was interesting because she`s another figure neither the media nor the conservative establishment in Washington ever really understood. She was sort of laughed at.

The thing is in addition to outraging the left to what she did on immigration, she really thumbed her nose at conservative interests on the size of government. She raised the sales tax. She took the Medicaid expansion. She made a lot of conservatives angry and threw the RINO stuff which they usually do, which can work with moderates, but she was able to say, look, I`m no RINO, look how I outraged the left, look at me standing with you on immigration against the Washington establishment that does not want the hard-line on immigration.

So, Donald Trump has been able to do exactly that and inoculate himself against charges that he`s not conservative enough by being more conservative on the issues that conservative voters really seem to care about.

HAYES: OK. So, that`s the question then, Robert -- and I want to talk about South Carolina for a moment I wonder how much as we go to South Carolina, Cruz had a good argument last night. I think his argument paid, you want a Trump and anti-Trump, I`m your guy.

How much do you see the race in South Carolina resetting to what it was much more in Iowa, which is context over conservative orthodoxy? In New Hampshire, it was definitely not that. South Carolina is a more conservative state than New Hampshire is.

Do you think the race goes back to that point?

COSTA: It could, but I think we`re watching many races unfold at once. The establishment group of the race is as bloody as ever. You have Kasich and Bush and Rubio fighting for some piece of the pie in South Carolina so they can carry on.

But Cruz wants this to be an ideological race. When you talk to Cruz allies, his ally super PAC, when you talk to his campaign and the candidate, himself, he speaks of the conservative movement as something that must be protected and that the nominee should be someone coming out of the movement right.

What Trump`s challenge is to the system, he`s not running an ideological campaign. He`s running, as Josh said, it`s a non-ideological enterprise that`s based on nationalist instincts and that`s what`s really the battle in the Republican Party right now. It`s not about people. It`s about ideas and whether ideology should be at the core of the GOP.

HAYES: Yes, I would say he`s running an ideological campaign, it`s just not the ideology of basically the Club for Growth and the kind of -- and the Heritage Foundation, essentially.

Molly, the Rubio result last night was about as bad as it could be essentially. And I have to say, to me it was one of those open questions, we all watched the debate. I had the reaction of that`s a bad moment. That`s a really bad moment. Particularly the fourth time he said it when the crowd booed which was a really bad moment women is left out of the super cuts.

But sometimes, you know, we can all convince ourselves we know something and then the voters are like, actually, I didn`t care about. They cared. I mean, it now seems to be what we thought it was essentially.

BALL: Well, after that happened, I went back to my notes from the Rubio events I had been to and what I saw was a lot of voters who were interested in him primarily because they thought because of his electability argument.

HAYES: Right.

BALL: But were concerned about his lack of experience. Concerned about whether he`d been tested.

And so, the reason that was so devastating is it played into the qualms that a lot of sort of establishment Republicans who wanted to find someone to coalesce around, those were the worries that they already had and he sort of dramatically illustrated why he might not be prepared for a really high-stakes contest.

I think also in politics, you can survive almost anything except mockery. And when you become ridiculous, it`s really, really, really hard to get credibility back in the eyes of voters. And with that clip playing on loop, you know, I went to bed after the debate thinking, well, you know, maybe the voters won`t care, and I woke up and I looked at it again and just thought, man, this is awful.

HAYES: And the point you make there is key because I`ve talked to people about Rubio and I keep using this metaphor that it`s like certain kind of establishment Republicans, like, it`s like them willing a toddler to do a difficult task the way a parent stands over -- just like, can you do it? Like that`s the way it feels. There`s so much pressure. Sort of, like, Marco Rubio`s our salvation, he can run against Hillary Clinton.

But it`s live by electability, die by electability, right? I mean, if the argument you`re making is this kind of meta argument that you`re the best person at this set of skills called politics, if you stumble politically, you have damaged quite deeply your argument to run.

BARRO: Yes, no, I mean, it`s exactly the sort of thing where it`s all about confidence and if people lose confidence in him with -- because the only reason to believe that he was going to be electability was everybody said he was going to be electable, and then you have this emerge and it`s sort of, you know, the emperor has no clothes moment. I think that`s exactly why it was so devastating.

HAYES: I also think -- I had seen him, talked to enough people I trust who say he does have tremendous political talent. I think that the weaknesses of that were exposed.

But let me just close by this. We talk about brokered convention. Can we show that the delegates right now, keep in mind, this is a score right now, OK, 17 for Donald Trump, 11 for Ted Cruz, 10 for Marco Rubio, 5 for John Kasich, 4 for Jeb Bush, 3 for Ben Carson.

I mean, if people stick around, like this idea of brokered convention which everyone always talks about every year --

BARRO: I think this is the thing establishment Republicans are telling themselves now, it used to be he was going to lose in Iowa and cause him to lose --

HAYES: You think --

(CROSSTALK)

BARRO: Yes, the states start being winner take all. The supposed ceiling he has keeps getting higher and higher. He doesn`t need to get to 50 percent. People assume that, you know, everyone who`s not for him is going to vote for somebody else, I don`t think that`s true.

HAYES: All right. Robert Costa, Molly Ball, and Josh Barro, thank you all.

Still to come, following Bernie`s massive huge win in New Hampshire, he faces a new challenge in South Carolina. What that is.

Plus, where does Hillary Clinton go from here? A look at the decision her campaign now needs to make.

And later, the frightening reality people watched unfold last night, Trump`s first victory in the primary.

Those stories and more, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: A lot of that has to do with stagnating wages in the middle but you see that play out in different ways in both Trump`s particularly closing message and railing against pharmaceutical companies and the like and Bernie sandwich`s -- Sanders` message from the beginning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: You may have noticed last night during the New Hampshire primary coverage I called the winner of the Democratic contest Bernie sandwiches.

Now, when I got off air, I wondered if anyone noticed. I checked my phone. It became clear, yes, people definitely noticed. My colleague Kate Snow quoting per 10-year-old daughter on Twitter, "Mommy, did you hear that guy say Bernie sandwich?"

Apparently others had more or less the same thought. Bernie sandwich trended on Twitter for hours. Became fodder for memes galore. Some more appetizing than others.

As this NPR headline emphatically complained "Bernie sandwich" was the hashtag meme of the night. Well, you`re welcome, America.

As I learned my slipup was really a public service announcement, as @darth tweeted, "Thank you for reminding me, Chris, I have not eaten all day to be honest."

Saying Bernie sandwiches was an honest slip of the tongue, as I explain last night on Twitter. In my defense, I was literally watching people being served dinner when I said Bernie sandwiches.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I know I have some work to do, particularly when young people, but I will repeat again what I have said this week.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Even -- even if they are not supporting me now, I support them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Going into last night`s New Hampshire primary, it was plausible to think that despite the polling average, Hillary Clinton could at least finish within single digits of Bernie Sanders, thanks to her momentum out of Iowa. Her efforts in the ground in New Hampshire where she won in 2008 despite polling behind my nearly double digits, and the structural advantages that come with being -- well, Hillary Clinton.

Instead, she got absolutely trounced. Losing to Sanders by a whopping 22 points, with Sanders winning among virtually every demographic subgroup including women, young voters and the working class.

Now, as it moves into the second phase of the campaign, the Clinton campaign faces a choice -- stick to its plan despite underperforming in the first two states of fundamentally change course. The case for sticking to the plan starts with the fact those first two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, are not exactly representative of the Democratic coalition.

New Hampshire and Iowa rank as the fourth and fifth whitest states in the union. Nine out of ten residents of those two states are white. That`s the case for only about 62 percent of the nation overall.

And as FiveThirtyEight notes, polling indicated Sanders trails Clinton among non-white voters by nearly 40 percentage points nationally.

Sanders is now aggressively reaching out to nonwhite voters as we`ll discuss later in the show. There`s also a case to be made, there is a potential fatal flaw in Clinton`s message. Clinton campaign is grappling with the realization Sanders seemed to inspire and motivate voters more effectively. Clinton, herself, seemed to acknowledge that this weekend while getting in a dig at her opponent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I know that it`s maybe not the most appealing or charismatic message to say, hey, guys, be angry, and then let`s roll up our sleeves and get to work. Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is not a plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Fundamental question facing Clinton and her campaign after New Hampshire is this, do they have a genuine messaging problem on their hand? If so, how do they fix it?

Joining me now, "Slate" columnist, Michelle Goldberg.

Michelle, you have a great piece in "Slate" today about basically you used to hate Hillary Clinton, now you`re going to vote for her. I think you`re a straight shooter on the sort of strengths and weaknesses of her.

What`s your read of this? I mean, which of those two paths if you had to choose, hey, it`s okay, these states aren`t representative, just do your thing, or something has to change here?

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, SLATE.COM: Well, both I think. I mean, on the one hand, she`s still clearly the favorite and, you know, although there hasn`t been any recent polling in South Carolina and some of these other states, the most recent polling shows her ahead by, you know, kind of overwhelming margins and I haven`t seen any sign that that`s about to change within the next couple of days.

HAYES: I should note it`s bizarre there has not been a very recent South Carolina poll. We were looking today. It`s been, like, three weeks. We`re little flying blind.

GOLDBERG: So, you know, on the one hand, the worst thing that they can do is completely panic, bringing someone in like Mark Penn, start wildly attacking Bernie Sanders.

I think it would alienate a lot of people who like both are -- who like both of them, who are inclined to support her out of kind of pragmatism but don`t like the side, the triangulating side of the Clintons. You know, she`s at her worse when she sort of doing this kind of demagogic pivot that she`s done throughout her career, when she feels like she`s being boxed in, you know, when she feels like she`s under attack she does insincere demography.

You know, you could see it on anything from her, co-sponsoring the flag- burning amendment back when she was in the Senate, to voting for the war in Iraq, to, you know, kind of saying 9/11 during the debates when she -- to justify her Wall Street ties. You know, she`s not good at it and it infuriates people.

What I really wish she could do, I don`t know if she`s an agile enough politician to pull it off, is take a page from Trump and kind of level with people or appear to level with people and say, I know this corrupt system inside and out, you know --

HAYES: Right. Yes, this system`s corrupt and no one knows it better than I because I had to operate it.

GOLDBERG: I don`t think she`s an agile enough politician to be able to pull that off. I really wish she could in part because I think it has the virtue of being true.

HAYES: I think that, yes, that is true. Part of the problem here, there`s one thing is I think there`s a definite message they shouldn`t go with which they flirted with which is, you guys are dumb for thinking, for believing all this rhetoric. Like, I think --

GOLDBERG: Right. Right. "No, we can`t. No, we can`t" is not a good message.

HAYES: No, we can`t, exactly.

GOLDBERG: Even though I actually sort of think that also happens to be true.

HAYES: I think a lot of people think it`s true. I think it`s a bad message.

GOLDBERG: The thing is, she has a message about working families. She has a message about fairness. You know. And I wish that she would make it less about herself, although I also -- to contradict myself -- I also think that, you know, young people who revile her for all sorts of reasons don`t know the Hillary Clinton who spent the `90s being accused of being a Marxist radical feminist, you know, and kind of don`t -- there`s a reason that those were the attacks.

She has this history of engagement with the problems of particularly families, women and children in poverty. You know, I wish there was a way for her to try to draw some sort of a line between that and the policies that she`s putting forth now on things like paid leave.

HAYES: I think they have tried to do that but I think part of the problem is resume is for some, whatever reason now, not particularly gripping.

I also think, I think the most powerful message they have is the one they can`t articulate which is, do you think for a second that half a billion dollars in negative advertising will not annihilate Bernie Sanders in a general election? Like, and that`s a strong argument and Bernie Sanders who --

GOLDBERG: Someone else has to make it.

HAYES: Someone else has to make it. Not the argument they can make. It`s a plausible argument.

The version of the argument they can make is no one is more tested facing the slings and arrows than I am.

GOLDBERG: But she has made a version of that when she talked about Citizens United. That was a good line. Do you remember what Citizens United was about? It was about attacking me.

HAYES: Right.

GOLDBERG: The one thing, what`s so, I think, frustrating as kind of a leftish progressive/liberal sellout as I am, on the one hand -- you know, I love Bernie Sanders and I love his politics, but because I -- because the base of the Democratic Party does love Bernie Sanders and love his politics, there is nobody out there putting forward the kind of attacks that are inevitable.

HAYES: And if she does that, she looks like --

GOLDBERG: If she does that, she looks like a villain.

HAYES: Right.

GOLDBERG: If David Brock does that, it gets tied to her. But as a result --

HAYES: People should think about what that looks like.

GOLDBERG: He`s just not -- right, and he`s not getting the kind of vetting --

HAYES: Michelle Goldberg, thank you very much.

GOLDBERG: Thank you so much.

HAYES: All right. Still to come, Chris Christie suspends his campaign after a disappointing finish in New Hampshire. Now, he`s back in New Jersey to face the political quagmire he left behind. That`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Less than 24 hours after polls closed in New Hampshire, not one, two Republican candidates have exited the race. Just hours after Carly Fiorina suspended her campaign saying she has no plans to endorse, Chris Christie officially ended his campaign for president as well following hours of swirling rumors throughout the day.

So tonight, spare a thought for the former future of the Republican Party, the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. The man who won his reelection in a blue state handily just 2 1/2 years ago, a man who Republicans were just five years ago desperate to get into the presidential race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: They urged, they pleaded, some even begged Chris Christie to run for president of the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some are literally begging him to run.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have people begging Chris Christie to come in so they can save the GOP.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Republicans literally begging Governor Christie to reconsider his decision to enter the race.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Well, tonight we are a very, very long way from 2012.

Chris Christie returns home to New Jersey today after destroying Marco Rubio, the establishment favorite in Saturday night`s debate, leading Rupert Murdoch to call him a, quote, "suicide bomber." Only to finish behind Rubio in New Hampshire in sixth place with a meager 7 percent of the vote after spending 70 days campaigning in the state.

The poor showing and lack of delegates effectively ending his candidacy, ensuring he`s a persona non grata in the establishment circle for years go come.

He returns home after being humiliated on the national political stage to an equally hostile environment in New Jersey. He is loathed by a significant portion of his constituents and his approval ratings in New Jersey are at all-time lows, hovering at 31 percent in mid-January.

He will be greeted by a Democratic opposition in the legislature that is prime to destroy him and emboldened by his sagging political capital in a state where he spent less than half of his time over the past year.

So, with more than two years left in his term as governor, one wonders if Chris Christie ever really wanted to be president or if he was just looking for a ticket out of the Garden State.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: After the first two contests were held in states where nearly nine in ten residents are white, the presidential campaign now moves to Nevada and South Carolina, which have much higher populations of people of color and more closely resemble the makeup of the Democratic Party nationally.

The thinking here goes that Hillary Clinton should be able to count on those demographics to stop Sanders` momentum.

Recent polling indicates that Clinton continues to lead Sanders nationally among nonwhite voters by a significant margin, almost 40 percent among black voters and more than 20 percent among Latino voters.

The numbers show an even greater disparity for black voters in state of South Carolina. The Clinton campaign is doing everything they can to keep those margins, and picked up a big endorsement today, the congressional black caucus formally announced they will endorse Clinton tomorrow.

The group will then disperse its African-American lawmakers to states where black voters are crucial, states like South Carolina where the Clinton campaign is running an ad featuring the country`s first black attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC HOLDER, FRM. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: When Republicans weren`t going after President Obama, they were coming after me, his attorney general. In the cabinet I served with Hillary Clinton, and I`ve known her for almost 25 years. If you want to make sure Republicans don`t take us backward, help Hillary move us forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now, the ultimate test of the Sanders campaign, in fact a make-or- break test is whether they can maintain momentum and begin to chip away at Clinton`s support among people of color.

Last month Sanders began running ads on black radio stations in South Carolina and touring historically black colleges. And as the Boston Globe recently pointed out, the Sanders campaign is paying more than 100 African- American organizers $15 an hour to go door to door.

A South Carolina state lawmaker told "The Globe" that what Sanders is doing here has forced the Clinton campaign to step up their game and understand they cannot take the votes of this state for granted.

Today, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argued in "The Nation" that Hillary Clinton doesn`t deserve the support of black voters, largely because the policies Bill Clinton enacted and Hillary Clinton supported decimated black America, particularly mass incarceration.

Today after his huge win in New Hampshire, Sanders met with the Reverend Al Sharpton in Harlem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL SHARPTON, MSNBC HOST: You had a great victory last night.

SANDERS: We did.

SHARPTON: And you are now moving into Nevada and South Carolina. How do you intend, because clearly New Hampshire and Iowa are mostly white states, if not nearly white. How do you intend now to deal with a diverse populous in both South Carolina and Nevada?

SSANDERS: Well, I think we have the agenda in Nevada and I think we have the agenda in South Carolina that once the word gets out who I am, what we stand for, we`re going to just fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me is the Reverend Al Sharpton, host of MSNBC Politics Nation and the head of the National Action Network.

All right, rev, you met with -- you had breakfast with Bernie Sanders and you had just met with Hillary Clinton as well, right?

SHARPTON: Well, Hillary Clinton and I talked. She`s meeting on next Tuesday.

HAYES: Okay.

SANDERS: With the leaders of four of the major civil rights groups and I`ll be part of that meeting.

HAYES: What was the breakfast like today with Sanders?

SHARPTON: We talked about issues that affect African-Americans and Latino- Americans. The fact is that now that we`ve come out of New Hampshire and Iowa, which are basically white states, and dealing with a more diverse kind of electorate, we`ve got to address issues just like every constituency group in this country.

We have particular problems that we need to know specific policy positions on.

HAYES: One thing that struck me as just even before getting to South Carolina, even with the campaigns taking place in largely white states that are very underrepresented of the Democratic coalition, there has been pretty progressive policy markers laid down by both candidates on specifically criminal justice reform, voting rights, things like that. Is that your sense, too?

SHARPTON: I have a sense that certainly Sanders has brought up mass incarceration and other issues and Mrs. Clinton went to Flint last Sunday.

I think, though, what the devil is going to be in the details. How do we implement? What kind of attorney generals are you going to look for? What are you going to look to do in terms of when you talk about income inequality. What about the race factor in there? Because the middle class is not monolithic. Blacks by every study still don`t have the same wages, same accessibility to employment.

HAYES: Particularly wealth. I mean, the gap there is enormous.

SHARPTON: And the wealth gap.

So I think that the details have to be laid out, and that`s the job of civil rights leaders to force that front and center, which I think Bernie Sanders doing this today right after such a big win sends a signal that he`s have the same wages, same accessibility to employment.

So, I think that the details have to be laid out, and that`s the job of civil rights leaders to force that front and center, which I think Bernie Sanders doing this today right after such a big win sends a signal that he wants to engage in that serious conversation as Mrs. Clinton.

HAYES: There is something -- I`m not quite sure the right way to phrase it, there`s something somewhat odd or it almost feels kind of clumsy, this like well we`re done with white states, and now let`s talk to you, black voter.

SHARPTON: And that`s what we don`t want. It`s not -- it shouldn`t be we`re done with this and now we`ll talk to this, and then you`re done with us and talk to somebody else...

HAYES: That`s the fear, right?

SHARPTON: That`s the fear.

So we want it all out as one, this is how I`m running. That`s how President Barack Obama ran.

HAYES: right.

SHARPTON: And we want it all the way across the board and committed.

HAYES: Although in certain ways Obama had an advantage that these two candidates don`t, right?

SHARPTON: Or a disadvantage according to which way you look at it.

HAYES: a disadvantage generally but an advantage I think in connecting with black voters particularly in South Carolina. He was behind at first but was able to really connect with them particularly after that Iowa win.

It is an interesting situation to think about the Obama coalition in the post-Obama era with two white people running for president.

SHARPTON: but that is also part of what alarms a lot of us in the civil rights community.

HAYES: Right.

SHARPTON: First time in American history, we are going to see a white succeed a black president. We don`t know how America or how we`re going to feel.

HAYES: That`s right.

SHARPTON: And what that looks like which is why we cannot let them rush past some real problems.

South Carolina, you have the Walter Scott shooting. Videotape, shot in the back. And then the Charleston nine, which deals with gun control.

The unemployment. The health conditions. The fact that governor won`t sign on in terms of a lot of the health situations that affect people there.

Right there, South Carolina, and then you`ve got this all over the country.

You mentioned before personnel and attorney general. Today a huge day for the Department of Justice and Loretta Lynch who as you point out, she`s bringing suit against Ferguson, which is a surprise to a lot of people. People thought the Ferguson police department after that incredibly damning report on their practices would seek a coordinated consent to create reform. They are obstinate apparently.

Loretta Lynch is suing. What do you think?

SHARPTON: Obstinate. And it is consistent with how they behave from the beginning.

As you know, I was there from day one when the family called me in Ferguson, and these people have been inflexable and that is why it`s important the next president of the United States be firm and clear that they will not tolerate these cities and those other states like Michigan with Flint, that are back to a state right kind of mentality.

HAYES: It`s a perfect window into just the power of that office in terms of civil rights just to look at what`s happening right now.

SHARPTON: If the power is used properly.

HAYES: That`s right. Reverend Al Sharpton, thank you very much.

SHARPTON: Thank you, Chris.

Still to come after his decisive win in New Hampshire, a reminder about just what Donald Trump has thus far promised to enact if he becomes president. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOY REID, MSNBC: 19.

HAYES: 19.

Ready for Hillary. HRC On the board. HRC.

No. Chris Christie.

ANNOUNCER: Chris Christie. From the shadow of the George Washington Bridge comes the pugnacious politician from Piskataway (ph). He loves the Cowboys, Springsteen, and telling people to shut up.

CHRSITIE: Sit down and shut up.

ANNOUNCER: He`s stronger than the storm but is he born to run?

CHRISTIE: Shut up.

He`s New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

HAYES: I think that`s my favorite one we`ve seen so far, Chris Christie.

REID: You know what, I feel like yelling at a teacher, that`s how angry I am.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Well, we have some shocking, indeed, upsetting news in the world of the 2016 fantasy candidate draft update.

Today, we learned that one of our contestants has zero draft picks still running for president. That contestant would be our good friend, Joy Reid.

Today`s Chris Christie news has ended Joy`s draft journey, just 377 days after her draft show first aired.

She had quite a run with her five randomly selected picks, an all-star lineup of George Pataki, that P-A-T-A-K-I, Jim Webb, Rick Perry, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee.

We reached out to Joy for comment on this matter. Here`s what she told us, quote, "let`s dispense with this notion once and for all that I knew what I was doing when I made my draft picks. I knew exactly nothing about what I was doing."

Her fantasy draft quest appears to have come to an end with 5,300 points. Give it up for Joy Reid, folks.

Now, that still puts her ahead of Josh Barro who was also dealt a devastating blow today with the news of Carly Fiorina dropping out. He`s in back of the pack.

But still in this with Ted Cruz at 4,300 points. Sam Seder with Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton has 5,300 point. Michael Steele, fresh off a Bernie Sanders New Hampshire victory has 7,800 points but our lead with the Donald Trump whammy pick is Jess McIntosh with 7,900 points.

Of course, with just 272 days to go until election day, that`s right, 272, it`s still anyone`s game including Joy Reid`s because tomorrow former democratic senator Jim Webb and one of Joy Reid`s draft picks will announce whether he will launch an independent bid for the White House.

Now the question becomes can Jim Webb save Joy Reid?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Last night, Donald Trump won New Hampshire and along with that win came a raft of commentary about its significance.

But as crazy as last night was, we have seen something like this happen before, exactly 20 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Having rolled a live hand grenade into the living room of the Republican Party, rebel Pat Buchanan today taunted the party establishment.

PAT BUCHANAN, FRM. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They had that movie Sleepless in Seattle, they could call this establishment in Washington of both parties Clueless in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Buchanan predicted that party leaders in a panic would rally around Dole to try to stop him.

BOB DOLE, FRM. U.S. SENATOR: This now is a race between the mainstream and the extreme. It`s a race between hope and fear. It`s about freedom and it`s about intolerance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: And Pat Buchanan, who came in a close second in Iowa then won New Hampshire, beating the main establishment candidate, Senator Bob Dole. Buchan was, of course, Trump before Trump, channeling populist, nativist sentiments about immigration and trade. Buchanan was beaten and definitively beaten back in South Carolina, but he was running against a Republican Party establishment that was orders and magnitude stronger than the current one, an establishment that back then apparently had much more trust from its base.

Fast forward 20 years, Donald Trump is going to South Carolina as the clear favorite. The obvious favorite in the SEC primaries that soon follow. This man, the possible nominee of the Republican Party, has done the following: explicitly called for the murder of families of terrorists, one assumes that would be women and children, explicitly calling for barring of Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the U.S. until the country can, quote, figure out what is going on. That`s a proposal with which two- thirds of New Hampshire Republicans agree according to exit polling.

A man whose adversarial stance towards protesters has led him to joke about them being roughed up at his events and who have experienced violence at several of his events.

And one day before the primary a man who called his opponent, Ted Cruz, an expletive because Cruz was insufficiently full-throated in his support of waterboarding which is torture.

Now, underneath the undeniably entertaining spectacle of the Donald Trump show is something that for a lot of Americans watching is very, very dark, an argument for why people should be scared of Trump. Just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: And joining me now, Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab Association of New York, co-founder of the first Muslim online organizing platform, Empower Change; and my good friend Ezra Klein, founder and editor-in-chief of Vox.com, starts a new podcast this week The Ezra Klein Show.

Linda, let me start with you. As a proud Muslim-American woman, a woman who wears a hijab, who works in the space of sort of MuslimAamerican political power, your reaction to last night?

LINDA SARSOUR, ARAB AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK: I mean, I was -- I wasn`t shocked but it reaffirmed for me that Donald Trump is not a joke and there was over 100,000 fellow Americans that walked out of their homes and voted for an anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, sexist, misogynistic fascist and that really scares me that he has the actual platform and he can potentially be the next president of the United States of America.

HAYES: Ezra, you wrote this piece that I thought was excellent about why you think Trump is scary, and there`s this great line says "Trump`s other gift, the one that gets less attention, but perhaps is more important is complete lack of shame. It`s easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics, but shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery."

What do you mean by that?

EZRA KLEIN, FOUNDER, VOX.COM: I think there are two things that set Trump apart. And I think the Buchanan example is interesting here, because it shows a way in which they`re different. Trump inspires a lot of comparisons to Buchanan, because there`s a way in which their ideologies map on to each other very well. There`s a sort of economic nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-establishment vibe to both of them.

But something about Trump is that he`s unbounded by the normal ways that we constrain politicians and so one piece of that is shame as I mentioned in the piece. Trump has this reality television star`s ability to not be here to make friends. He does not care what you think of him. He does not care what party elders think of him. He does not feel, as most politicians really do feel, a sort of shame and upset when the media says he`s lying or when policy experts say that his policies don`t make any sense.

He enjoys backlash and he is fine with it.

But the other thing, and I think this is also important, is he is not connected to any of the institutions of his own party.

HAYES: That`s right.

KLEIN: He doesn`t care about the Chamber of Commerce, he doesn`t care about Paul Ryan. And this kind of mixture, the sort of human feeling of shame and the sort of social network within political parties that allow us to put a lot of social conventions on politicians who might otherwise go off in directions that are really dangerous.

Part of why Trump has done so well is he just doesn`t care so he can say things that other politicians cannot. But by the same token, if he was actually elected he could do scary things that other politicians could not.

HAYES: You know, one of the -- a trivial example of the shamelessness. The other night I saw him talking about the debate. And he told the people there that he was the one that interjected when Rubio was repeating the line. Literally millions of people saw Chris Christie do that. Like, we all saw that. That was just the most obviously falsifyable lie imaginable and he was just saying it, I don`t know, knowing it was a lie, thinking it was true. That`s an example of the sort of, like, the boundaries.

Do you have -- two things I want to ask you, Linda. One, there`s an argument this is just shtick and he`ll completely change if he wins the general election. Does that make you feel any better?

SARSOUR: It absolutely doesn`t. I mean, the fact that -- I`m talking about -- I`m not talking about Donald Trump, I`m talking about those 100,000 people that went and voted for him in New Hampshire, thousands that came to his rallies, and, you know, root him on when he talks about banning Muslim immigration, and talks about killing women and children, the family members of whatever, ISIS.

I mean, people are rooting him on. I mean, he`s talking about building a wall to keep out immigrants or even immigrants who want to leave our country right now.

So, what scares me about him is the fact that he can have executive power. He`s going to be the most powerful man in this country. And he`s not being held accountable. He has no shame in what he`s saying. He knows that banning Muslim immigration is unconstitutional. He knows he really can`t implement that. But he does not care what you think.

And I think he keeps saying I want to make America great again and what he means, it`s code language. And I think it`s cold language for white supremacists that says we want to take our country back to being less diverse, being less tolerant, being less (inaudible), that`s what he`s saying.

HAYES: When you said white supremacist, just, he has occasionally retreated explicitly white supremacists. He just retweeted the Twitter using white genocide, someone he retweeted before. He has retweeted White Genocide before.

And Ezra, this strikes me as a perfect example of the sort of thing you`re talking about. One of the conventions of American politics in the year 2016 is you don`t consort in any way avowed white supremacists. It doesn`t mean that there`s no operational white supremacy in American life or racism is extinguished, but it`s a convention, it`s a convention that most politicians adhere to.

KLEIN: for good reason.

HAYES: For a good reason. And here`s a perfect example of that being violated.

KLEIN: It is hard to know what to say about the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president retweeting a Twitter user called White Genocide.

We are in a space with Trump that I think is a bit dangerous because I think we`ve become slowly acculturated to him.

HAYES: That`s right.

KLEIN: Trump is a rally television star. And I mean that in a very real way. He was literally a reality television star. He had a show, it was on NBC. It was a big deal. He was very good at it. It went for many seasons. And he has a reality television star`s ability to operate without shame, not be here to make friends, but also to be entertaining.

And I think that`s something that is really important in the media`s understanding of Trump is that there`s a way in which Trump as an entertainer and Trump as a driver -- and I run a news site, Trump is a driver of traffic, of clicks. He has been good for business.

It allows us in a way to sort of laugh at him and it allows us to get used to what we`re seeing as a kind of television show but it isn`t, it is not political entertainment, it is actual politics and he could win.

HAYES: Linda Sarsour and Ezra Klein, thank you both tonight.

That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.

END

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END