Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: October 3, 2016 Guest: Andrew Sullivan, Neera Tanden, Jared Bernstein, Sabrina Siddiqui, Jonathan Chait, Sherrod Brown
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I understand the tax laws better than almost everyone, which is why I am one who can truly fix them.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: The fight over Trump`s taxes hits the trail.
TRUMP: I have brilliantly used those laws.
HAYES: Tonight, as Clinton moves ahead in key battleground states, why Donald Trump`s tax trouble is just starting.
Plus, from the Saturday night meltdown.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R-NJ) TRUMP ADVISOR: Give me a break.
HAYES: To Sunday morning hot dates.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The man`s a genius.
HAYES: The state of the Trump campaign as their top surrogate gets ready to debate.
(OFF-MIC)
HAYES: And another decision ...
LEBRON JAMES, BASKETBALL PLAYER: And this fall, I mean, it`s very tough.
HAYES: LeBron James takes his talents to Brooklyn.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I was especially honored to receive the endorsement of LeBron James.
HAYES: I`ll ask Senator Sherrod Brown if the king can deliver Ohio when "All In" starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from Washington, D.C., I`m Chris Hayes. Tonight, Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, are both campaigning in battleground states ahead of tomorrow`s vice presidential debate, trying to rebound from the worst week for their campaign in months and possibly ever.
It`s been exactly seven days since Trump`s disastrous performance at the first debate followed by his voluntary feud with the former Miss Universe accusing him of mistreatment and attempts by his campaign to attack Hillary Clinton over her husband`s sexual history.
A bunch of new battleground state polls suggest this has all taken a toll. After watching her margins shrink in recent weeks, Clinton now holds sizeable leads in Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania and just barely North Carolina, enough states to deliver an Electoral College win.
Trump still holds the lead in Ohio. And after all of that, this weekend came the New York Times bombshell report on Trump`s 1995 tax return and the loophole that may have allowed him to avoid paying federal income tax for almost two decades.
Today, the Republican nominee tried to explain it away during a campaign south (ph) in Colorado using language echoing a key line from his convention speech, "Nobody knows the system better than me which is why I alone can fix it".
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TRUMP: Many so-called experts, due to their sheer size and complexity of the code, don`t have a clue what these pages represent.
I understand the tax laws better than almost anyone, which is why I am one who can truly fix them. I understand it. I get it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: According to records obtained by "The Times" sent in by an anonymous tipster, Trump declared $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax return, a deduction so enormous it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income tax for 18 years. Since Trump hasn`t made his tax returns public, we have no way of knowing if that`s what he actually did.
His campaign didn`t deny it. Though they said in the statement, "Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes, along with very substantial charitable contributions."
Again, we have no way to know if any of that`s true without seeing his tax returns. As for his charity, more on that in a moment.
Like Trump himself, some of his top surrogates are spinning the apparent tax avoidance and the nearly billion dollar loss and enabled it as a positive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTIE: There`s no one who`s shown more genius in their way to maneuver around the tax code and this is actually a very, very good story for Donald Trump.
RUDY GIULIANI, FMR. NYC MAYOR: Don`t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman? And the only thing she`s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Meanwhile in Ohio, Hillary Clinton is using "The Times" report to sell her broader argument about Trump`s character.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Here`s my question. What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in a single year? This is Trump to a T. He`s taken corporate excess and made a business model out of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Just as the tax return story is being published on Saturday night, about 36 hours give or take after Trump`s early-morning tweet storm, smearing his ex-beauty queen nemesis, the candidate delivered an unhinged performance of a kind we haven`t seen in, well, quite a while. Weeks at least. Since before the campaign`s new management figured out how to keep him on teleprompter, an attempt to save him from himself. It was a classic Trump off script, calling Hillary Clinton crazy, making wild accusations about her behavior, even imitating her fainting spell at the 9/11 memorial.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Here`s a woman, she`s supposed to fight all of these different things and she can`t make it 15 feet to her car. Give me a break. Give me a break.
Give me a break. She`s got bad temperament. She`s got -- she could be crazy. She could actually be crazy.
Let me tell you, Hillary Clinton`s only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself. I don`t even think she`s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth.
And really, folks, really, why should she be, right? Why should she be?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The tax return story and Trump`s own behavior have managed to overshadow a handful of other investigative reports that might have been campaign ending in any other election year.
The Associated Press talked to 20 former crew members, editors and contestants on "The Apprentice" who described lewd, sexist behavior by Trump behind the scenes, including rating female contestants by the size of their breasts and talking about which ones he`d like to have sex with.
According to Trump campaign, these allegations are without merit.
Another big story claims that Trump organization did business with an Iranian bank, later linked to terrorism, first, simply buying a building where the bank rented office space for them, keeping it as a tenant for another four years after the Treasury Department designated the bank as controlled by the Iranian government.
And Newsweek has a big scoop on how Trump sources these big construction projects reportedly buying steel and aluminum from manufacturers based in China instead of the U.S., today also brought consequences for Trump as a result of Washington Post reporter, David Fahrenthold`s dogged (ph) reporting on his charitable foundation. After Fahrenthold reported last week, the foundation lacks the proper certification to solicit donations in New York State.
Today, the State Attorney General offered order to Trump Foundation to cease raising money in New York.
Joining me now, Andrew Sullivan, contributing editor in New York Magazine, MSNBC political analyst, Michael Steele, former chair of the RNC, and Neera Tanden, president and CEO of Center for American Progress.
Well, I feel the way you sometimes feel at a big hotel breakfast, brunch, buffet, which is there`s so, so much. I`m not sure what to put on the plate first.
MICHAEL STEELE, FORMER RNC CHAIRMAN: How about we start with the sausage.
HAYES: Let`s start with the taxes because I think that`s ...
STEELE: And sausage.
HAYES: ... and I don`t want to talk about tax policy because we`ll talk about that a little later in the show. But, to me, the biggest thing here is, 900 -- it`s hard to lose $900 million in a year.
STEELE: Actually, it really isn`t, given -- I`m going to tell you, given the magnitude of the types of businesses and transactions he`s involved in, we don`t know if that`s a combination of, you know, losses that have added up to that, if that`s a single loss, we don`t know.
HAYES: Right.
STEELE: But the total is -- I mean, it`s -- and he has a lot of money.
HAYES: 2 percent of the reported losses (inaudible) in that year.
STEELE: But a lot of that was probably related to casino transactions that were going bad at the time in terms of the types of ...
HAYES: Which speaks to the point that at that time ...
NEERA TANDEN, PRESIDENT & CEO CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: When does the house lose?
HAYES: Right, in the mid `90s ...
STEELE: I mean, why are we sitting here and shocked that businesses lose money? They do. And, businesses lose a lot of money and when you aggregate it over a period of time, it can add up to a lot of money.
HAYES: Do you think -- Andrew, do you think this -- I mean ...
STEELE: I`m not shocked by the number, no.
HAYES: Part of the stick (ph) here is that this guy is a great businessman. That`s his essential selling point, right, I mean, the guy ...
STEELE: You can still be a great businessman and lose money.
HAYES: I don`t think the record supports he`s a great businessman.
ANDREW SULLIVAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR NEW YORK MAGAZINE: He was a terrible businessman. We actually look at the history of this and you look at how much he spent in Atlantic City, you see how he organized it, how crazy the organization was, how he himself was losing it the first week ...
STEELE: But that`s not all of his casino properties. That`s not Mar-a- Lago, that`s not a whole lot of more successful transactions.
SULLIVAN: The only excuse he had today was that we had a real estate recession in the early `90s. This was `95, OK, this is way after the worst.
STEELE: Right.
SULLIVAN: The more you look at his actual business record, the more completely cap-handed (ph) amateurs, it`s fueled entirely by his political connections and by leverage.
STEELE: But you can`t deny the successes that he`s had as well.
SULLIVAN: No, I ...
STEELE: So you want to focus on the negative stuff as well as ...
HAYES: Well, no, but I think ...
STEELE: ... and not take in the context ...
HAYES: I think he`s had one major unmitigated success and that was playing a successful businessman on television.
TANDEN: Absolutely.
HAYES: That was an incredibly -- that was -- it`s very successful. Other than that, he had four bankruptcies, he left a whole bunch of ...
STEELE: Out of how many properties that he owns and manages ...
HAYES: Oh, so many things that went out. I mean, he ...
STEELE: I mean, I get ...
HAYES: He lost money ...
STEELE: Chris, I get what you`re trying to do but I`m just saying, you got to keep it all in context here. I mean, you can -- there are -- you know what, I don`t know the man`s -- all the man`s business. I`m just saying what I`ve read and what I do know, and I piece it all together, he has -- there are pockets where there`ve been failures, obviously, but there are also pockets of success.
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: Michael, it`s because he used his political connections to get special ...
STEELE: Well, who doesn`t?
SULLIVAN: Well, I`m sorry, but when you`re working for a living and you don`t have those connections, you can`t get at it, and the man used his tax lawyers, let me finish in a second.
STEELE: What world do you people live in, you don`t think businessmen don`t use -- particularly in New York ...
SULLIVAN: I`m saying ...
STEELE: ... don`t use their connections?
SULLIVAN: ... the core of his entire world ...
STEELE: Come on.
SULLIVAN: ... is built on connections and ...
STEELE: Of course.
SULLIVAN: ... and leverage.
STEELE: Of course.
SULLIVAN: And incredibly risky leverage.
TANDEN: I mean, at the same time, can I just point out that we -- he has a consistent history of not paying the people who work for him. So, at the same time that he was bilking is basically using the tax code to not pay taxes, he was stiffing, you know, small business after small business after small business. Don`t tell me he`s a good business ...
STEELE: We don`t know if he has to pay taxes, you don`t know that.
(CROSSTALK)
STEELE: (Inaudible) actually do not know that. You cannot make that statement.
TANDEN: At the time he was not paying taxes.
So let me just say, he has made this claim that he`s a fantastic businessman, but he will not show his taxes to prove it. So we have no idea. You have no idea (inaudible). This is all a charade as far as we know.
STEELE: I`ve been saying since the beginning, I said from the beginning, release the taxes because ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
STEELE: ... otherwise we wouldn`t be having this conversation. Oh, wait, yes, we would because ...
TANDEN: No.
STEELE: ... we`ll find something and then think about his taxes.
HAYES: Well ...
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: ... lots of failures.
STEELE: Well, again, you say lots of failures, but he also has lots of successes.
TANDEN: How do you know?
STEELE: Because I look at the properties that are successful, I look at the casinos that are successful.
TANDEN: Really?
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: He uses his brand. You don`t know what he owns.
STEELE: Well, that`s success, isn`t it?
(CROSSTALK)
STEELE: If you could take your name and plaster it on a building and someone gave you $100 million, you wouldn`t call that success?
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: If I lost a billion dollars in a year, I would not be telling the American people I`m a great success. I would be saying, I`m a failure.
STEELE: He does, I mean ...
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: No, no.
HAYES: No, but this is the point. To me, what he`s been most successful at is presenting himself as a success and the guy has gone through nine lives. I remember growing up in New York City and the tabloids were ...
STEELE: Success, very success ...
HAYES: ... and there was a point -- exactly.
STEELE: Right.
HAYES: It washes out and he was washed out again and he kept coming back.
The biggest thing that made him really come back after a big stream of really bad embarrassing failures, I mean, you know, the down and out (ph) Donald Trump was The Apprentice.
TANDEN: That explains ...
HAYES: And the thing that he was best at, the thing that he has been best at in this campaign, he was really good on that show. That felt rated, that made money. And in this campaign, we have seen him able to successfully project success, which is part of the reason I think a lot of people think that he doesn`t want to release his taxes.
TANDEN: Yeah.
SULLIVAN: The only reason he didn`t crash and burn was because of his name. OK? And because he was too big -- let me finish. He was too big to fail. He got the banks around, they realized if they let him fail as he should have, they would have gone down, too.
STEELE: That`s right.
SULLIVAN: The amount of special breaks this man has gotten from his entire life ...
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: Don`t claim you`re a champion of the middle class and working people when you basically used a rigged system to advance yourself and don`t pay the people you owe.
HAYES: Let me ask you this, let me ask you this, Michael. So, we have the great teleprompter period, OK?
STEELE: Yes.
HAYES: Which was right around -- two things happened, right? That and Kellyanne Conway come on, Hillary Clinton faints at the 9/11 memorial, there`s the deplorable comment and Trump spends about three weeks on prompter.
He`s doing things like ...
STEELE: I know.
HAYES: ... boring, normal stuff, like he did an education day where he`s like, this, we`re rolling out our school choice policy." And it`s like, "Oh, you`re --, right, OK, I sort of know how this game goes."
That`s the -- I mean, that`s the thing to me that in some ways is most notable about this past week is, in the wake of the debate performance, all of that seems gone. Like, he`s got the phone back, he`s doing impersonations at the podium ...
TANDEN: (Inaudible).
HAYES: ... and that to me has to be the thing that if you`re a Republican down-ballot or Republican in the RNC, that`s the most terrifying.
STEELE: Well, let me -- number one, just -- there is no down-ballot problem the way everyone projected it would be before. I think ...
HAYES: There`s less, I agree.
STEELE: There`s less voters ...
HAYES: Yes.
STEELE: ... voters have bifurcated this race ...
HAYES: Yes.
STEELE: ... in a way and will continue to do so over the next 40 days.
You`re absolutely right, however, though in the turn that we`ve seen to have happened in this past week where he`s gone back into manic Trump, where he`s got to respond to everything and fixate on one person for seven days.
HAYES: Which -- and I got to say like, again, just to keep our eyes on the ball here, that is -- you can say, "Well, that`s bad politics." It`s unnerving in the person that wants to be ...
TANDEN: Yes, I ...
HAYES: ... the most powerful person in the world.
STEELE: I`m not disagreeing with you. Don`t get me wrong.
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: It`s incredibly unnerving, it make -- it sends waves of anxiety through me and through a lot of other people. The idea that someone this unstable, this unable to be controlled even by the people around him whom he trusts could possibly be president of the United States. But it`s also, Michael, it`s also sickening. When does a presidential candidate mock another person`s illness?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
SULLIVAN: And what -- where will he -- how low ...
STEELE: I don`t ...
SULLIVAN: ... will this awful ...
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: ... stoop?
STEELE: We always find a new one, don`t we? We always find a new low to reach. So ...
HAYES: I think that was a new one.
STEELE: So the bottom -- but we do, because -- we, too, because you look at where the polls are and you look at where this election is, if it was that offensive, if people were that turned off, this would be a 30-point race, it will be a 50-point race. This would be a very different race than the one that we have now.
So, I get the frustration and anxiety we have with Trump, but this is also kind of a looking at ourselves and looking at the opponent that he has, that is not generating that kind of ...
TANDEN: Can I just say, first and foremost, we are in day seven of the meltdown. Polls are moving. We`ll see what it`s like in a few days on ...
STEELE: Oh boy, you know, we`ve been -- how many times have we been in day seven about Donald Trump meltdown.
HAYES: It is, you know, day seven of ...
(CROSSTALK)
TANDEN: OK, OK, OK.
STEELE: Do you ever post convention?
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: No.
STEELE: Do you ever post ...
HAYES: Yeah.
STEELE: ... GOP debates?
TANDEN: Yeah, and you know what, those (inaudible), too.
I -- my point is, I think in about a week or two, people are actually going to be voting and I think the real challenge ...
STEELE: They already are.
TANDEN: And the real challenge here is that we are seeing what he would be like under stress.
STEELE: Right.
TANDEN: This -- you know, essentially, he just got baited by Hillary Clinton. You know, foreign countries try to bait as well.
STEELE: Yes.
TANDEN: And the reality is ...
STEELE: Yes.
TANDEN: ... he is in a campaign where he is restricted by a vote and he`s completely unhinged. Imagine what it`ll be like as president when there is no vote coming up and I think that scares a lot of people.
HAYES: How does the (inaudible) respond to that?
That is the open question and we`re 36 days out and some polling shows that it matters to the margins, but you`re right, there`s a bedrock for whom it does not. And ...
SULLIVAN: But Clinton is not running and particularly goes camping (ph) ...
HAYES: Yeah ...
SULLIVAN: ... OK, debate but she could have knocked him out after the debate.
HAYES: Well, I don`t think there`s ...
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: ... any such thing as a knockout.
SULLIVAN: No. But this is a contest between two campaigns that are really bad and she`s not as bad as he -- he`s in a different category.
HAYES: (Inaudible) respectfully would say.
SULLIVAN: People want change. People really want change. He`s got that. People want an outsider. He`s got that. That`s why he`s a 45 ...
(CROSSTALK)
SULLIVAN: ... a terrible candidate. If Biden were running, he will be killing him like that (ph).
HAYES: Totally disagree, and I`ll just say the last point, the PBB polling that actually asks people about President Obama in Ohio had him running essentially equal with her, which I think is an interesting point to the sort of structural nature of this.
Andrew Sullivan, Michael Steele, Neera Tanden, thank you all very much.
Still ahead, campaign surrogates are scrambling to clean up Trump`s disastrous week. Well, what about when they make it worse. And what will the campaign`s number one surrogate be able to defend Donald Trump in his debate tomorrow. That`s ahead.
First, three pages of tax returns opens a massive Pandora`s box for the Republican nominee, the depth and breadth of Donald Trump`s tax problems after this two-minute break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Back in the 1990s, Trump apparently lost a billion dollars in a single year on bad investments and failing casinos.
Now, how anybody can lose a dollar, let alone a billion dollars in the casino industry is kind of beyond me, right?
But it`s just hard to figure. But as a result, it doesn`t look like he paid a dime of federal income tax for almost two decades.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Revelation from The New York Times that Donald Trump declared $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns undercuts one of Trump`s primary selling points, his carefully cultivated reputation as a good businessman.
Trump today did not dispute that he lost nearly a billion dollars, he argued that like pretty everything else, it just wasn`t his fault.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The conditions facing real estate developers in that early `90 period were almost as bad as the great depression of 1929 and far worse than the great recession of 2008. Not even close.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, that claim is ridiculous on its face. The brief recession in the early 1990s, which is followed by a long period of growth and prosperity was a minor blip compared to the great recession, which again, was driven primarily by real estate losses.
And Trump`s losses in the 1990s were truly historic. In 1995, Trump claimed nearly 2 percent of all the net operating losses on individual tax returns in the entire country. Think about that.
And, as Hillary Clinton noted, the guy was running casinos.
Trump likes to claim the system is rigged against ordinary Americans, but what a glimpse into his tax returns reveals is the massive degree where they`re actually rigged in favor of wealthy people like Trump. It seems to have exploited the tax code and managed to simultaneously maintain his extravagant lifestyle using his losses to deny the government revenue, and also whose tax plan would allow such practices to continue, while making changes that would likely benefit people like Trump and businesses like his own in a major way.
Remember, this is all based on just three pages of Trump`s tax records from 1995. Even after this weekend`s bombshell report, Trump is still refusing to release his tax returns which suggests, as her client points out, that whatever is in his returns is even worse than what the New York Times is telling the world is in his returns.
Joining me now, MSNBC chair (ph), Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
So let`s talk about the tax item. I`ll play devil`s advocate for a second.
JARED BERNSTEIN, FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST: Sure.
HAYES: When you have a loss, you can`t get negative taxes, right?
BERNSTEIN: Right.
HAYES: The government doesn`t cut you a check. So, the way this works, you get a loss, you get to defray over a number of years, and what`s wrong with that?
BERNSTEIN: Well, there`s nothing wrong with that if that number of year is just a couple of years. Now, here, we`re talking about 20 years ...
HAYES: Again, we don`t know if he used it. So just ...
BERNSTEIN: Right, but he has a -- because of these carried back losses and carryforward, you have 20 years within -- actually, 18 years within what you can claim these losses against your tax liability.
Now, basically, the way this loss thing is supposed to work is that if you`re a small business, a startup, or even a large company that hits a recession for a year or two, you can get hit by a down economy and then you actually could use that year or two to make up those losses.
What we`re -- what we see happening here is by 1995, by the way, and the real estate market had completely picked up, Trump has not only looked, not only like he`s continuing to tap these losses year and year out, he`s making new losses. That was something that was also in the report. There was a $16 million loss in 1995. So, he continues to generate ...
HAYES: Wait, and part of this, too, is just -- is distinguishing between actual economic losses and paper losses, right? I mean, part of the game here and part of the reason the tax code, particularly for -- in real estate which is very complex and very shot through with loopholes, part of the game is actually trying to get real economic gains while creating paper losses ...
BERNSTEIN: Correct.
HAYES: ... so you don`t have to pay any taxes.
BERNSTEIN: Correct. So the Trump play is a very simple one. First of all, you borrow a bunch to buy a bunch of buildings and you can write off the interest on that borrowing. So that`s play one.
Play two is you can then start to deduct losses, which we`re seeing now. And part of those are just kind of a straight line depreciation that goes on in this -- in the real estate code, and even if the building is actually appreciating in real term, so you`re reeling in income ...
HAYES: Right.
BERNSTEIN: ... you can claim depreciation in paper losses and what his tax lawyer say that this is precisely what Donald Trump was doing back there in the mid `90s, he was building his income significantly while he`s claiming his losses.
HAYES: That`s the key, right? Because when you look at someone who says, you know, there`s a story that apparently he told about like 22 homeless guy thing, you know, that guy is worth more than me. I`m worth negative $900 million.
But the point is, he`s not on the street at this point. He`s living extremely well because there`s actual dollar income coming in.
BERNSTEIN: Correct.
HAYES: It`s just hidden by the paper losses.
BERNSTEIN: Right. So when you want to talk about carrying these losses in a way that`s actually kind of reasonable in the code, you can talk about a year or two either way while you`re actually really hitting hard times. But in this case, you`re talking about claiming losses in a period where you`re accumulating significant income.
HAYES: Right. You`ve also got the sort of ...
BERNSTEIN: Most people can`t do that.
HAYES: Right. The policy aspect of this is, of course, there are huge breaks for the top in his tax plan. About an average of about $120,000, I believe, for the top 1 percent.
There`s also getting rid of the estate tax. And the reason I find that so fascinating is, part of the play here is, if you can just hold on to your buildings and stuff and never sell them, you never have to essentially pay out the taxes. Then, if you could just -- when you die (inaudible) your family ...
BERNSTEIN: Right.
HAYES: ... and there`s no estate tax, you get away with it all.
BERNSTEIN: Right.
HAYES: Let me try to get rid of (inaudible).
BERNSTEIN: And that`s right. So getting rid of the estate tax takes care of that part. But there`s something else going on here. You may notice that what he`s done here in this tax return from 1995 is he`s taken his business losses and he`s brought them over to the personal side of the tax.
HAYES: Right.
BERNSTEIN: So it`s called pass-through income. His other play in his plan is to take the pass-through rate down from its current, you know, 40 percent, which is a top rate for a guy like him, to 15 percent.
HAYES: Right. So -- OK. So in his own world ...
BERNSTEIN: Basically (ph) huge ...
HAYES: ... he has smuggled a huge amount of income that would then be tax reduced under his plan.
BERNSTEIN: Yeah.
HAYES: Jared Bernstein, thanks for your time tonight.
BERNSTEIN: It`s my pleasure.
HAYES: But first, LeBron James says he`s with Hillary and why his announcement is much more than a celebrity endorsement. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown joins me to discuss, ahead.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it`s real.
TRUMP: I did not ...
CLINTON: I insist ...
TRUMP: I do not say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were not asked about climate change the last Monday`s debate, but the fact that Clinton brought up the issue on her own and then Trump falsely denied having deemed climate change a hoax was very revealing. Because particularly for young voters, this is an issue that matters, wrong (ph). And Trump who want to eliminate the EPA is very much on the wrong side of it.
Polling of Millennials in one (ph) of battleground states over the summer found that three-quarters of millenials are more likely to support a candidate who wants to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy.
Poll also found nearly half of those millenials wrongly felt there was no distinction between Clinton and Trump on the issue, which goes to why Clinton so often raises climate change on the campaign trail.
And as for Trump`s running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, he is only recently acknowledged that human activity has "some impact on climate". Pence has consistently fought legislation to address climate change and long question the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R) INDIANA: I`m keeping an open mind about the science of all of this, but, you know ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you convinced that climate change is manmade?
PENCE: Well, I -- look, I don`t know that that is a resolved issue in science today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And tomorrow night`s vice presidential debate, Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, Tim Kaine, will likely press Pence on climate issues, though that maybe the least to Pence`s problems.
Pence is going to have to defend not just his own far-right record, but also all the things that Donald Trump has said and done over the course of this campaign, heck, in the last week.
The excruciating task facing Mike Pence in the debate stage, ahead.
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CLINTON: You know, it`s a great day to be here in Ohio for a lot of different reasons. One is, I am so thrilled that LeBron James has endorsed me and joined our campaign.
Now, one thing I know -- I`ll just say it, because I know it`s for sure, I hope to be elected president but I know, here in Ohio, LeBron will always be the king.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Hillary Clinton was quick to tout an endorsement from LeBron James today on her first trip to Ohio since Labor Day. James, one of the most popular athletes on the planet, perhaps the most beloved figure in the swing state of Ohio wrote an op-ed yesterday that stated, quote, "only one person running truly understands the struggles of an Akron child born into poverty. That candidate is Hillary Clinton."
James`s enthusiastic endorsement could help Clinton expand the electorate in Ohio, which enabled Barack Obama to win the state twice. And while a new Quinnipiac swing state poll out today finds Clinton ahead in three of those swing states, she trails Trump in Ohio by five points.
This is due in some part to Ohio`s demographics -- older, whiter, less educated than the nation at-large and continues to favor Trump. So today just in time to draw attention to the state`s voter registration deadline next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton delivered an economic speech indirectly at Trump support in Ohio
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I oppose TPP now. I will oppose it after the election. I will oppose it as president because it is one-sided and unfair to American workers. As president, I will appoint tough, independent authorities to strengthen anti-trust enforcement and really scrutinize mergers and acquisitions.
Consider the recent examples we`ve seen of egregious corporate behave. Look at Wells Fargo, one of the nation`s biggest banks, bullying thousands of employees into committing fraud against unsuspecting customers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And joining me now is Senator Sherrod Brown, Democratic from Ohio.
Senator, I`ve got to start with LeBron James because the obvious metaphor here is that Hillary Clinton has been trailing in Ohio poll after poll after poll, I think somewhat surprisingly, a little surprisingly, but then of course the Cavs were down 3-1 and it looked like they had no shot. LeBron James comes riding in to save the day. His big endorsement yesterday, do you see a political repeat this year?
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D), OHIO: Well, and I remember, too, being on MSNBC when LeBron signed back with Cleveland. People are excited about it here. And I think that LeBron will help with voter turnout. I think LeBron will help with young voters. And he`s committed to this. I mean, he`s a very public, spirited man.
I mean, he`s an athlete. Most athletes are not considered particularly engaged. And you can look at his charitable work in Akron, you can look at what he stands for. You can look at his commitment to civil rights and equal rights and I think LeBron just cares about people and I think you can see that something more than a professional athlete here and I think people will listen.
HAYES: There`s a story in Newsweek today that caught my eye. And I see that Hillary Clinton has now spoken about it, particularly given the context of Trump over-performing in a state like Ohio where manufacturing, trade, loss of jobs in industries like steel have been very front of mind. The fact that Trump himself has used Chinese steel it seems in two recent, big projects, Kurt Eichenwald reporting on this in Newsweek. What`s your reaction to that story?
BROWN: Well, my reaction is it`s all a game to Donald Trump. It`s always about him. It`s always about his bottom line. He buys his suits and his ties in China and Mexico. The suit I`m wearing, I bought 11 miles from literally made 11 miles from my house by union workers. I can tell you exactly where he can get steel about five miles from my house. He can buy aluminum about ten miles from my house. He can go to Toledo and buy his glassware in Archibald, Ohio and buy furniture.
I mean, for him it`s always about money, it`s always -- it`s about outsourcing jobs. The only thing made in America that Donald Trump -- that ever gets close to him is his hat that says Make America Great Again. I don`t know that he`s ever cared about this.
You and I have talked about this before, Chris. When I`ve worked against bad trade agreements for 20 years and I`ve never, ever seen Donald Trump weigh in and add to that chorus or help us organize to defeat these bad trade agreements. He just wants different trade policy now that he`s running for president.
And people in Ohio are starting to see that and people that make things in Ohio -- and we`re a state that makes things -- are going to increasingly move towards Hillary because they see through Donald Trump`s hypocrisy that way.
HAYES: Yeah. well, watching her in Toledo today was interesting. She was talking about Wells Fargo and about regulation, the importance of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She also talked about anti-trust and competition and this sort of need to have the government sort of actively manage competition to avoid large monopolies, large domination of market sectors.
It`s something I haven`t heard a lot about in this campaign, but is actually a pretty huge issue. And there`s an argument it`s actually been a bigger part of what has happened to economies in places like Ohio than even the particulars of the trade deals.
BROWN: Yeah. What happens is small business gets squeezed, supply chain gets more expensive, driving up the price of whatever product is at the end product there and Ohio workers lose jobs so often and it`s partly outsourcing and trade agreements, it`s partly tax policy, which if you shut a company down in Akron, Ohio, or Canton, Ohio, and move it to Beijing or Wuhan (ph), you can actually get a tax break for doing that. That may be one of the things that Donald Trump is hiding in his taxes that he`s benefited from moving products offshore. There`s a lot of evidence for that.
And it ultimately hurts our small businesses. It hurts our workers. And it means the tax base is undermined. So a community -- I mean, come to most cities in the industrial Midwest, maybe the whole country, and you see infrastructure that`s decaying, you see police and fire is inadequate, just not enough police and firefighters, not enough teachers in the schools because of what happened to communities, because of trade policy and tax policy.
Donald Trump`s benefited from that. He`s shown no interest ever in joining the fight back on making those policies work better for working America.
HAYES: Let me ask you this. Barack Obama carried the state of Ohio twice. You`ve been elected and then re-elected in that state. You`ve got a situation right now where Donald Trump is polling ahead in that state. Rob Portman, which people thought that would be a competitive race with your Democratic colleague, of course, the former governor of Ohio, that that race doesn`t look that competitive.
Is Ohio fundamentally changing in some deep way away from the Democrats?
BROWN: Ohio maybe not -- Ohio is not particularly changing. I mean, the country`s getting less and less white, for want of a better term. Ohio is pretty much the same ethnic breakdown as it was half a generation ago. I mean, we were about 20 percent people of color, maybe 80, 81 percent white. We`re not changing as fast as North Carolina or Georgia or Virginia or Colorado in terms of immigrants, we`re -- you know, a, some Asians are moving in, some Latinos moving in, but not in huge numbers.
Part of it is we`ve turned the corner in Ohio, though, bringing young people back. And young -- we are blessed in this state with some of the best small college, four-year liberal arts schools dotting our states, lots of big universities who are starting to keep those graduates in Ohio. That`s going to fundamentally change the state.
But ethnic breakdown, the people of color moving in is not as rapid as other states by and large.
HAYES: All right, Senator Sherrod Brown, always a pleasure, thank you, sir.
BROWN: Good to be with you, Chris. Thanks.
HAYES: Still to come, defending Donald Trump, a tumultuous week for campaign surrogates as Trump`s top surrogate prepares to take national stage. More on that ahead.
But first, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two right after this break.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I`m putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they are going back. They are going back. I`m telling you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, Donald Trump has made his feelings about Syrian refugees very clear, keep them over there, even them send them back into the maelstrom of the worst war happening in the world right now.
His xenophobic fear about what the highly vetted refugees might bring into the U.S. is shared by his runningmate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana. Before Pence became the Republican vice presidential nominee, he issued a directive to block the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R) INDIANA: I directed all state agencies in the state of Indiana today to immediately suspend all resettlement efforts for Syrian refugees until we can receive the absolute assurance that individuals coming into our state do not represent a threat to our people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: It was a position shared by at least 30 other state governors, but today a huge setback to that position and a scathing denunciation to Mike Pence, perhaps as remarkable as the smackdown is just who was behind it. That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: So one day before the big faceoff between Tim Kaine and Mike pence, a huge appellate court ruling came down. The timing, we can assume, was coincidental. The message was deliberate and clear. Indiana Governor Mike Pence has no legal authority to stop the resettlement of Syrian refugees in his state, according to a ruling by a three-judge panel in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court sharply criticized Pence`s rationale for banning refugees due to terrorism saying it was evidence-free, quote, nightmare speculation. Judge Richard Posner writing, quote, "that`s the equivalent of his saying, not that he does say, that he wants to forbid black people to settle in Indiana, not because they are black, but because he`s afraid of them. But that of course would be racial discrimination, just as his targeting Syrian refugees is discrimination basis on the basis of nationality."
The three-judge panel, which unanimously ruled against Mike Pence`s discriminatory stance on Syrian refugees is also notable for this reason: all three judges are well-known conservatives appointed by presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and one of them, Judge Diane Sykes, is on Donald Trump`s Supreme Court short-list.
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GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) NEW JERSEY: No there`s no one who has shown more genius in their way to maneuver around the tax code. And this is actually a very, very good story for Donald Trump.
RUDY GIULIANI, FRM. MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: Don`t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman. And the only thing she`s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Two of Donald Trump`s most prominent surrogates tried their darndest to spin possible tax avoidance and a massive, almost billion dollar loss as something positive for the Republican nominee. Needless to say it`s been a rough week for Trump`s big supporters who once again find themselves defending an increasingly erratic candidate on a whole host of issues. Former, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani not only defended Trump for possibly not paying taxes for 18 years, but also backed up Trump`s recent attack on Bill and Hillary Clinton`s marriage.
Giuliani, whose second wife learned he was separating from her at a press conference while he lavished praise on his third soon to be third wife was asked by my colleague Chuck Todd whether he was the right person to level those kinds of charges.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK TODD, HOST, MEET THE PRESS: With your past, you have your own infidelities, sir.
GIULIANI: well, everybody, does. And, you know, I`m a Roman Catholic and I confessed those things to my priest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Giuliani`s defense aside, other Trump surrogates feel differently. Newt Gingrich, who as House Speaker led the charge to impeach President Bill Clinton on obstruction and perjury charges during the fallout over Clinton`s affair with Monica Lewinsky, now advises Trump it`s totally the wrong direction to go. He should not them bait him into a swamp where they can revel in the mud.
A little bit o a mixed metaphor.
Trump`s New York co-chair, Carl Paladino (ph), more succinct in his critique, quote, "I`m not sure anyone gives a hell about Monica."
While today congresswoman Marsha Blackburn on Tennessee dispensed this advice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN, (R) TENNESSEE: I think this is one of those things where he would be well-served not to talk about Mrs. Clinton, her relationship with her husband, talk about Miss Universe and focus on the issues.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Ah, yes, focus on the issues.
Of course, that last bit of guidance may have come too little too late. The Republican nominee spent the better part of last week attacking former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, even declaring without evidence she participated in a sex tape and you should check it out.
All this, of course, has unraveled ahead of the biggest night for Donald Trump`s number one surrogate, his runningmate, Mike Pence. Just which of Trump`s many issues he could be forced to answer for and what else we can expect in tomorrow night`s vice presidential debate is next.
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HAYES: He`s had to answer for Donald Trump and his campaign for nearly three months. And now, ahead of the only vice presidential debate, what will Mike Pence have to defend tomorrow night?
Joining me now to ponder that question, Sabrina Siddiqui, political reporter for the Guardian. Jonathan Chait, writer for New York Magazine. His latest must read, a conversation with President Obama titled five days that shaped a presidency. It is fascinating, fascinating rating.
So I mean I`ll start with you, Jonathan. So I think if you`re gaming this out from the Clinton side, you don`t care about Mike Pence and Mike Pence`s record much, right? I mean, you want to make Mike Pence have to defend Donald Trump.
JONATHAN CHAIT, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: I think you do but on the other hand this is a real opportunity for Democrats to hammer home some issues that have been obscured by the personalities. And I think the Democratic Party feels pretty good about the way it can stack up in a standard D versus R debate about tax cuts for the rich, health care, you know, abortion. And Pence is pretty far right on some of these issues -- climate change.
HAYES: That`s fascinating, right. So, what you`re saying is here you have the opportunity to basically run the generic R versus generic D debate that we`re really in many ways not getting at the presidential level because of the uniqueness of each of these candidates.
CHAIT: Right. And I don`t have any reporting that suggests that`s what they want to do, but it seems logical to use one of your four debates to remind people of the general, ideological policy stakes of the election.
HAYES: Yeah, particularly on taxes, particularly on minimum wage, things like that, environmental protections, regulation.
SABRINA SIDDIQUI, THE GUARDIAN: I think LGBT rights will be a big one, too. You have to remember, Mike Pence as Indiana governor signed that controversial religious freedom law that kicked off a lot of the protests to similar bills in other parts of the country.
HAYES: And the very similar version of that bill in North Carolina appears to be a real drag on Republicans there who were sort of swimming upstream.
I want play this sound that just came in of a debate with Kelly Ayotte and her trying to explain Donald Trump and it`s the classic Trump squirm, which is what I think we`ll see a lot of tomorrow night. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you tell them to be like Donald Trump? Would you point to him as a role model?
SEN. KELLY AYOTTE, (R) NEW HAMPSHIRE: I -- well, I think that certainly there are many role models that we have and I -- I believe he can serve as president and so, absolutely, I would do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I mean, you can imagine Tim Kaine saying to Mike Pence, like, do you think we should check out the sex tape? Which, like, -- he`s going to be sitting across from him. Do you think...
SIDDIQUI: Yeah.
HAYES: Do you think she put on too much weight?
CHAIT: Let me roll the clip.
HAYES: Didn`t she put on too much weight, Governor Pence?
SIDDIQUI: Why is a nominee tweeting about a former Miss Universe at 3:00 in the morning.
HAYES: Right.
But that`s -- I mean, I think that Jonathan`s point here is that can also get played out very quickly right. I think obviously there`s also this possibility that the RNC today sort of put up this web video where they are going to go after Tim Kaine because he was a criminal defendant -- I`m sorry, a criminal -- criminal defense attorney.
He also commuted some sentences while he was governor.
I think it`s one of the most admirable parts of his career.
SIDDIQUI: Right. Well, look, at the end of the day, Tim Kaine was doing his job and opponents tried this when he was running for governor and when he was running for senate and voters found this actually to be unfair to point to his record as a criminal defense attorney where of course you have to defend criminals who have committed some very serious crimes...
HAYES: Yes, it`s right there in the name.
SIDDIQUI: It`s right there in the name. But the problem that Republicans face is that Tim Kaine is very well-liked even by conservatives. He had a lot of conservative votes when he ran for office in Virginia. He has a fairly centrist record in the senate. Where I remember when he was named as Hillary Clinton`s VP, everyone from Jeff Flake to Lindsey Graham to Marco Rubio, I went asked them about Tim Kaine as the pick and they said I don`t want to criticize him. He`s a great guy. You know, we hope he comes back to the Senate, basically. We hope that Hillary Clinton loses was their response.
HAYES: I`m particularly interested about trade and whether trade is a big focal point, Jonathan. Because you`ve got a situation in which Pence has been an extremely pro-trade deal legislator. Kaine has been fairly pro-trade deal. You`ve got -- now they`re both got tickets where -- that are opposed to TPP, they are both on tickets where sort of skepticism of these kinds of trade deals are the kind of guiding light. And particularly for Pence, I think, for really -- this has been something that he was really hammered home. Like, he`s going to have to explain that, I imagine.
CHAIT: That`s right. And it`s just like anyone layer of hypocrisy on top of an issue where everything is completely hypocritical to begin with. Where, you know, Hillary Clinton has already -- you know, has this very hard to defend disingenuous stance of I used to love TPP and now I hate TPP and Donald Trump, you know, didn`t care about this until five minutes ago.
HAYES: right.
CHAIT: You can`t name one thing that any of these laws have ever done.
HAYES: Ever.
SIDDIQUI: And Tim Kaine took the moment he was selected as her runningmate, that`s when they said, OK, well Tim Kaine will follow Hillary Clinton`s position on TPP. So, if she opposes it.
HAYES: You can have a disingenuousness off between these two candidates on this issue.
The other thing that I think is sort of interesting here is, when you talk about the sort of talk about the generic R/generic D is it -- you know Mike Pence in some ways represents the former future of the Republican Party.
CHAIT: Yeah.
HAYES: Like he was the person who was in the ideological sweet spot that I think a lot of people thought would be what we would see. And has been so moved to the side but is in some reassuring for certain parts of the Republican establishment.
CHAIT: I think it`s worth noting, as Sabrina mentioned, that he`s very conservative and Donald Trump had to reach out to the arch conservatives to reassure them that Pence would have his hands on the policy and Trump would just kind of be the blowhard in front whereas Clinton went more to the center. So, if you put these two against each other, you have got one of the more moderate Democrats versus one of the more extreme Republicans which is possibly advantageous.
SIDDIQUI: I also think that Mike Pence has just run this fascinating parallel campaign to Donald Trump where he said something completely different about Vladimir Putin, taking a completely different stance on...
HAYES: And he may try the same weird like gaslighting thing of like, oh yeah, I don`t know, yeah...
SIDDIQUI: Donald Trump is not the nominee...
HAYES: I`m Mike Pence and I`m running for president.
Sabrina Siddiqui, Jonathan Chait, great to see you here in person in our nation`s capital.
That is All In for this evening live from Washington, D.C.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END