Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: October 28, 2016 Guest: Matthew Miller, Jennifer Granholm, Kellyanne Conway, Howard Dean, Cornell Belcher, Rebecca Traister
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ALL IN HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
HILLARY CLINTON, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump says he can still win, and you know, he`s right.
HAYES: Yet another October surprise, the e-mails are back.
CLINTON: Even Director Comey noted that this new information may not be significant, so let`s get it out.
HAYES: Tonight, Pete Williams on what we know about the FBI investigation, why we`re finding out just days before the election, and what Anthony Weiner has to do with all of this. Then, the campaign`s react.
DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The system is rigged. It might not be as rigged as I thought.
HAYES: My interview with Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and Jennifer Granholm from the Clinton camp. And how does this change the race with 11 days to go?
ANTHONY WEINER, FORMER MEMBER OF U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF NEW YORK CITY: It is a shame! A shame!
HAYES: Rebecca Traister on Hillary Clinton`s historic run caught up in yet another man`s sexual misconduct, when ALL IN starts right now.
Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Happy Friday. Every time, every time you think this crazy presidential campaign can`t possibly get any crazier, another stranger than fiction twist, drops like a bomb. Within the last hour, Hillary Clinton going before cameras to respond to today`s revelations that the FBI continues to investigate her use of her private e-mail server as Secretary of State, challenging the director of the FBI to release more information and telling reporters she does not believe it will impact the results of the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: You know, I think people a long time ago made up their minds about the e-mails. I think that`s factored into what people think and now they`re choosing a president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Today, just 11 days before Election Day, FBI Director James Comey, who announced in July, the FBI had completed its investigation into Clinton`s use of e-mail and determined that no one should face criminal charges, sends this very cryptic letter to eight republican congressional committee chairman, as well as the democratic ranking members stating, "In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of e-mails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these e-mails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation." Comey, who was assailed by house republicans in September for his decision not to charge Clinton, added in the letter, the FBI was not yet able to assess whether the new material was significant. But the media, political world and even stock market reacted as though their hair had caught fire. The market falling nearly one percent right after the news broke, seemingly on renewed fears of a Donald Trump presidency. House oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz, who earlier this week, said he was already planning to investigate Clinton for years if she became president, and also said that he would be voting for Donald Trump after saying that he couldn`t look his daughters in the eye and still back him, tweeted incorrectly that the FBI`s case had been reopened, more on that in a bit. As for Trump, he emerged late to campaign rally in New Hampshire to read a statement about the breaking news off a teleprompter, eliciting cheers of, you guessed it, lock her up, from his audience.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Hillary Clinton`s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Trump, who has sought to explain away his potential loss by claiming the election is rigged, said last night, that, "I think the biggest rigging of all is what happened with the FBI and the justice department with respect to Hillary Clinton." Today, he changed his tune.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It might not be as rigged as I thought, right? Right? The FBI, I think they`re going to right the ship, folks. I think they`re going to right the ship.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: A short time later, amid feverish speculation over what exactly had been found, NBC`s Pete Williams provided some desperately needed context, including the case was not being reopened because it had never technically been closed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE WILLIAMS, NBC JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: There`s sort of two questions here. And one is, would these new e-mails change the bottom line conclusion about whether crimes were committed. And if it`s just that the number of e-mails changed that instead - I can`t remember what the number was, but instead of 120, it`s 135, then that probably wouldn`t change anything. The second question would be, whether anyone was withholding evidence, but what I`m told by senior officials who are familiar with the thinking behind this letter, they don`t see any evidence of that. This is not a matter, they say it doesn`t appear that this - the campaign or the Clintons or the state department had e-mails and weren`t - and, you know, that they didn`t give to the FBI that the FBI somehow found them some other way, it`s not like that, they say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: In her remarks this evening, Clinton said FBI Director Comey needs to be more -- far more forthcoming than he was in his letter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: We are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes. Voting is already under way in our country. So, the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately. The director himself has said he doesn`t know whether the e-mails referenced in his letter are significant or not. I`m confident, whatever they are, will not change the conclusion reached in July. Therefore, it`s imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Clinton declined to address a twist that NBC News confirmed this afternoon, one that if this were a story in a screenplay, would have been cut out of the first draft for being too unbelievable. Multiple federal officials telling NBC News that the e-mails referred to in Comey`s letter were found as part of an ongoing investigation into former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who sources told NBC News last month is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for alleged sexts to a 15-year-old girl. Weiner is the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton aid, Huma Abedin. And sources said the e-mails were found on a laptop that Weiner allegedly used to send the inappropriate text messages. And that investigators discovered that Abedin had also used the same laptop to send e-mails to Clinton. And now, they are checking those messages to see if there are any classified information on them.
Joining me now, NBC News` invaluable justice correspondent Pete Williams. OK, Pete. First of all, this is insane. Second of all -- so take me through this. There is an investigation happening of Anthony Weiner pursuant to allegations in the press that he had had sex with underaged girls. And then what happens?
WILLIAMS: Well, I`m going to actually start you one step before that, and ask why these e-mails would be, as Director Comey says in his letter, pertinent to the e-mail investigation. And it`s not because the FBI knows what`s on them. That`s the thing to keep in mind here as we go through all of this. The FBI`s mission in investigating the e-mail case was to look at the universe of e-mails that were sent and received on Hillary Clinton`s private server. And they thought they had that universe. Now, it turns out, that there maybe may be additional e-mails that they need to look at. So, what they decided is to tell congress about this, and the reason is that, as you point out, the FBI was investigating whether Anthony Weiner was improperly sending explicit text messages and pictures to this underaged girl. They concluded that he used a laptop computer to send some of those messages. Then they discovered, after getting the laptop and starting to look at it, that Huma Abedin had also used that same laptop to e-mail Hillary Clinton at the private server e-mail address. So now, there`s potentially thousands of e-mails on that computer, backed up to that computer that they need to look at and see whether they contain classified information. In other words, they need to examine those e-mails just like they examined all the thousands of others. So, that`s the mission here. They now say they`re starting to do that. They`ll look through them, but they have no idea yet, whether they contain classified information or not. And another thing to bear in mind here, Chris, is that many of these could be duplicates, because the FBI looked at the e-mails, many e-mails already between Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton. So many of these on the - on the laptop could be duplicates and, of course, whether they contain classified information or not is to be determined.
HAYES: Quickly, from a legal perspective, I`d seen some idea that there might need a court order for this. Obviously, they have one investigation that has nothing to do with the other investigation. They happened upon this laptop for that first investigation. Do they need any kind of legal go ahead from a judge to say, "Yes, you can go look at those other e-mails?"
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I`m not sure about need because the legal experts I`ve talked to say, maybe not, but in any event, I`m told that the FBI is going to head -- did go ahead and get an additional search warrant just to be sure, because they were looking at the e-mails to see what Anthony Weiner did with that laptop, just to be sure they`re getting a separate or I guess have gotten a separate search warrant to look at the rest of it.
HAYES: All right. Pete Williams, amazing reporting today. Thanks for making time tonight. I appreciate it.
WILLIAMS: You bet.
HAYES: Joining me now Matthew Miller, who`s the former director of the Office of Public Affairs of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder as well as former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who`s co-chair of Hillary Clinton`s transition team. Matthew, let me start with you. So, you had been - we had you back on the program back when James Comey made his announcement. You`ve been very critical of how the director has handled this investigation. You were very critical today, playing devil`s advocate, investigator walks in yesterday and says, this is what we got, boss. What is he supposed to do? If he doesn`t say something and the election goes by, and they find out retroactively, he`s going be dragged before congress.
MATTHEW MILLER, OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS FORMER DIRECTOR: He should do what he would do in any other case involving any other individual, which is if there`s something they need to investigate and maybe there is and maybe there isn`t, but if there is something they need to investigate, you do it quietly, you do it - you do it as quickly as you can, and then when it`s -- the investigation is done, you decide whether there`s something you need to say. It`s true that he would have been attacked by republican members of congress afterwards, but you know what, that`s part of the job. You do the tough calls and then you make the tough calls, and then you take the heat for it afterwards. Instead, what he`s done is really, you know, made this really unprecedented disclosure, something I`ve never seen an FBI director or attorney general or the Department of Justice do in a case like this. And he actually hasn`t provided voters any information. They don`t know any more yesterday about underlying activity than -or any more today than they did yesterday. All they said was they`re looking at something and raised a bunch of questions to which, of course, there are no answers. It`s completely inappropriate.
HAYES: Jennifer, obviously, the Trump campaign is feeling very happy about the news, they`ve had their surrogates out all day. I have an interview with Kellyanne Conway in a little bit. This confirms, they say, in voters` minds their suspicions about Hillary Clinton. What`s your response to those who are saying, this is it, this is the October surprise, Donald Trump`s on the steam path to victory.
JENNIFER GRANHOLM, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN: We don`t know what this is. That`s the problem. I mean, Director Comey opened the door, put one foot out by putting this letter out there, and he has not gone through. This is what`s not fair about it. And this is where we have bipartisan agreement. Both sides want him to explain further what this means. We know it`s not about e-mails from Hillary Clinton, we know it`s not about her server, we know that they can`t -- they haven`t determined whether there`s any significance to this information. So what is it? You can`t put something out 11 days before a presidential election that has an impact on the election. In fact - I mean, Matt comes from the Department of Justice. I`m a former attorney general and a former federal prosecutor. And the rules related to how a prosecutor or an investigator is to act in the face of an election are really quite clear. You are to limit the impact on the election. If you - if you - by using your discretion, you - but in this case, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. And so, this -- if he`s going to open this door, he has got to come clean and present more information.
HAYES: Matthew, you worked for the Department of Justice, I mean, have you - this struck me today, and I, you know, haven`t been around that long, but just totally unprecedented in every conceivable way. Have you ever seen anything like this?
MILLER: No, absolutely not. And the governor is exactly right, which is a former prosecutor. You know, first of all, when the FBI conducts investigations like this, they`re not supposed to comment on them anyway and especially not so close to the election. There is a longstanding practice at DOJ that they go out of their way not to say anything close to Election Day. Usually, they define that as within 60 days, let alone 11 days. So, to come forward now and make this public statement, just flies in the face of everything the Department of Justice has done for years, and the way that prosecutors have always been taught to conduct themselves. And it`s really hard -- it`s going to be really hard for him to explain why this was an appropriate step for him to take. I think it`s - you know, I`ve heard from prosecutors all day, not just democratic prosecute -- but republicans, former colleagues of mine at the Department of Justice who are just appalled by what he did today.
GRANHOLM: And Chris, you know, I mean, we -- as we say, we don`t know what`s in these e-mails, but we do know that the aides to Hillary Clinton, their work e-mails have already been looked at by the FBI. If these are all duplicates, tell us.
HAYES: Right.
GRANHOLM: If they have a marker on them, which you could be able to see quickly, are they classified in the traditional sense, which means they have a marker on the top of them, you should be able to tell that. There are ways to at least take some things off the table if you have these documents in your hand instead of allowing it to impact the election in a negative way, either way.
HAYES: Matthew, quickly, now that - now that Comey is sort of half in, half out here, do you expect we`ll see anything from him before the election to bring some sort of closure to this?
GRANHOLM: I hope so. It`s really incumbent upon it. I mean, it`s an imperfect solution to a terrible problem. He never should done this in first place, but now that he has opened this door, he needs to come clean about what it is the FBI is looking at, what they know and what they don`t know. And if they don`t have any evidence, if they just look at this because they found some e-mails, but there`s no evidence, no question, no e-mail that looks classified, they need to come out and say that as soon as possible.
HAYES: All right. Matthew Miller and Jennifer Granholm, thank you both very much. Coming up, after deriding the FBI`s a rigged system, how does the Trump campaign reacting to today`s news? Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway joins me to talk about their reaction just after this two-minute break.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody`s hope that it is about to be corrected.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: A short time after the FBI said it would be looking into e-mails that appear to be related to Hillary Clinton`s use of her private e-mail server, Donald Trump praised the FBI for, "having the courage to right a horrible mistake." I spoke with Trump`s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tonight. I began by asking her how she reconciles her candidate saying yesterday the FBI investigation to Clinton was the biggest rigging of all time and what he said today.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, DONALD TRUMP`S CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Well, Donald Trump and I agree on this. Actually, today he also praised FBI Director Comey for doing the right thing based on what we understand to be new evidence, a different investigation, and I think Jim Comey was in a very tough spot here, Chris. If he had sat on the information for 11 day - you know, for the 11 days, people would have criticized him after the fact and said, "Wow, you - you know, you withheld evidence that would have been important to the voters who already call into question significantly Hillary Clinton`s trustworthiness and veracity. So, Donald Trump and I are in of a single mind on this. And it`s not so much as, you know, calling into question Jim Comey`s integrity and all of that, it`s listening to Jim Comey`s own statement after he decided not to move forward with prosecuting Hillary Clinton the first time where he seemed to have almost, you know, buyer`s remorse almost immediately when he said in congressional testimony, while she didn`t have one server - she didn`t have one device, she had 13, she had a server that she was not supposed to have, she destroyed evidence. They -- we know that they smashed them with - they smashed the phones, the devices with hammers. She did have National Security info, she did have classified confidential information. So, everything she said by and large in these five or six points that he laid out were not true. And so -
HAYES: Right. Yet he didn`t - and he chose - and he chose not to prosecute her, saying there was no precedent, no rational prosecutor could bring the case, and then Donald Trump has basically called for an investigation of that investigation and has repeatedly said that there was collusion there, that it was corrupt and rigged, not just that it was a poor judgment. And it seems to me it`s an important distinction whether someone makes a bad faith corrupt judgment or a good faith determination that goes against you. Your candidate has been quite consistent in saying it was a bad faith, corrupt and rigged, that`s his word, decision from this FBI investigator and that he should be investigated.
CONWAY: Well, Chris, in your whole line of questioning, I would call it line of attack, and I suggest that it`s Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton who`s under investigation here. So, let`s just remind the viewers very quickly, it`s Hillary Clinton who again is under FBI investigation. Number two and most importantly, what Donald Trump talks about every day is the rigged corrupt system overall, writ large. It works against the average man and woman, the forgotten man and woman. And today, we have another example of that. And look, everybody out there, I think they look crest fallen today. They`ve -- actually everybody`s celebrating.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: -- there`s another example of that, the rigged, corrupt system today?
CONWAY: That Hillary Clinton has a different set of rules for herself than the rest of us. That there are more devices we don`t know about, more e-mails that are relevant to her time as Secretary of State, it would seem. That`s basically all we know about it. And, you know, whether it`s the last couple of days, the information that there`s a Bill Clinton, Inc. Desperately always wanting to enrich in with more and more millions and millions of dollars. They went from, "famously being dead broke to making a quarter of a million dollars. They didn`t hit the Powerball, they didn`t bring a company publicly, they didn`t invent anything, and yet, they`ve been selling access, they`re selling government favors, they`re selling speeches. That`s fine with the American people. What`s not fine with the American people all (INAUDIBLE) know why that is. So, the (INAUDIBLE) of system goes back to, do you -- can you trust this person who`s already mishandled national security information, already is pretend - 39 times, she couldn`t remember what she did? And so, is that person fit or qualified to be president? The answer is no.
HAYES: But I guess the reason I`m sort of focusing on Comey today because obviously, he`s made the news, and obviously how this plays out really depends on him. I mean, this guy is a very powerful and important figure, he`s the director of the FBI. And I guess, my question to you is if the FBI were to produce further documents, right, or come forward in the next few days and say, actually they all clear on this, would you be willing to accept that? Since you`ve been praising his judgment and integrity today?
CONWAY: Well, praising, I think, is a little bit much. I said that was courageous of him only because - I`m saying it`s courageous of him, only because I think he`s in a very difficult position, and I saw tonight, democratic officials criticizing Jim Comey, which is kind of funny now since they were praising him all along. But criticizing him not just for withholding information, as they say it, but also for "interfering with an election," that`s a pretty significant charge. Look, we had a great day here in the Trump campaign, we had a great few days here, we had a great week, and it had nothing to do with this investigation. We were going to win anyway. But this certainly - this certainly deepens the doubt among many voters as to why they`re reluctant to say Hillary Clinton - it`s why she`s always stuck at 46 percent in the state polls, it`s why majority of Americans, including your NBC polling, Chris, say that they don`t trust her. That actually - you know, the trustworthy number only got worse since Jim Comey decided not to prosecute her. So, it wasn`t as if his decision exonerated her veracity problems within the American mind. It`s actually - it`s just never gotten better. And I think events like today don`t help. I thought her press conference was terrible, if you can call it that, the statement she made, 3 minutes and 47 seconds, that`s like the length of a B-side of a record. And then she takes like one or two questions, seems defiant, it seems, you know, --
HAYES: I know. What`s interesting to me is that she only took two questions today, but it has been 93 days since Donald Trump has taken any presence in a press conference. Do you think we`ll see a press conference from him in the next 11 days?
CONWAY: Maybe.
HAYES: OK.
CONWAY: But he`s out there every day taking his case to the voters.
HAYES: Right. You guys - you guys seem -
CONWAY: You know, that`s what he does.
HAYES: I know, I saw you guys made a lot of the fact that Hillary Clinton didn`t give press conferences, and we did, too. Actually, frankly, I think it`s bad when candidates don`t give press conferences. There`s 11 days to go. There is this one thing that Donald Trump has promised to release his tax returns when the audit is finished, but there`s 11 days to go. You guys are going to get through Election Day without the - without the tax returns being released?
CONWAY: Until the lawyers and accountants tell us to release them, we`re under audit absolutely. I do find it really - I mean, I - well, I find it predictable but a little bit funny that that`s what we`re conflating today. I know people are trying hard to divert attention away from what is a significant setback.
HAYES: Oh, no, I think - I think the e-mail story is utterly fascinating, which is why we spent 90 percent of our time talking about it.
CONWAY: Well, I mean, fascinating, she may be -- the woman may be indicted and then convicted or impeached. I mean, it`s like more than fascinating.
HAYES: What information do you have that suggests that?
CONWAY: I don`t. That`s why I said maybe. I`m not under FBI investigation and most people I know are not, let alone twice within the same year or so. I mean, it`s pretty remarkable for someone. And look, when Donald Trump talks about all the shenanigans the first time, he also always points to specific examples. He points to the complete disconnect between Jim Comey`s own testimony -
HAYES: Right.
CONWAY: -- under oath, and then - and then five people associated with Hillary Clinton including her lawyer Cheryl Mills, including the guy who called Hillary Clinton`s server, you know, he knew what he was doing, they all take the fifth. She hates the second amendment, loves the fifth amendment.
HAYES: That`s a good line.
CONWAY: Sometimes like the first amendment it seems. So, no, it`s not just a good line, it`s the truth. So, there`s a disconnect and then there`s a disconnect with Bill Clinton getting on, jumping on the plane on the tarmac in Arizona, jumping on Loretta Lynch`s plane, the Department of Justice. I mean, it`s as if - it makes people wonder.
HAYES: OK. But that`s a perfect - Kellyanne, that`s a perfect example, right? Let`s talk about the plane for a second, right? So, at one level, you`re saying we don`t understand what`s going on, your candidate`s saying it`s rigged, it`s corrupt, it`s part of this collusion. You just raised Bill Clinton jumping on the plane. The implication there is that this was improper, right? I mean, let`s just be clear about what`s being alleged, and maybe you`re right. I`m not saying it`s wrong, but you`re alleging that there was a corrupt and improper interference in this investigation from the beginning, that the integrity of the chief law enforcement office of the federal government has been compromised and that`s in the case throughout in order to tip the election to Hillary Clinton. That is the contention of Donald Trump and has been for months.
CONWAY: So, we`re talking about two separate investigations here. I don`t want them conflated at all let alone when I`m addressing them. So, the first investigation that we`re talking about is the one that was supposedly wrapped up on July 5th when Comey said I`m not going to prosecute her. Oh, but by the way she lied about this, that, and the other, and she was reckless and careless, practically.
HAYES: Right.
CONWAY: That`s the one where the -- Hillary Clinton`s husband, who happens to be a former president, jumps on the plane of the - yes. And (INAUDIBLE)
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: And the implication is that he improperly manipulated an investigation, gave the order to Loretta Lynch, who then gave the order to James Comey and lied about it later -
CONWAY: I didn`t say that.
HAYES: -- when under oath, he said that no one had talked to him about it. That`s the chain of event that`s being alleged.
CONWAY: I didn`t say that. Nope, I didn`t say that. What I`m saying is I would probably find other things to talk about other than, "grandkids" for 39 minutes. If I was -
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: So, you`re saying he lied?
CONWAY: Nope, I didn`t say that. I just said that this is - look, what I`m telling you is this is part of what holds so many of these voters back from going for Hillary Clinton. Everybody has tried as hard as they can to make sure she becomes the next President of the United States, and this woman just can`t do it.
HAYES: My thanks to Kellyanne Conway. Still to come, Rebecca Traister is here to talk about Hillary Clinton`s historic campaign interrupted yet again by another man`s sexual misconduct. You don`t want to miss that interview, just ahead.
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HAYES: Election Day is still 11 days away, but already almost 10 percent of all registered voters have cast their ballots thanks to early voting. One such voter is Katrine Russo of Walpole, Massachusetts who visited her polling place yesterday, amazingly Russo is 96 years old, knowns as Kat. She has two daughters and four granddaughters, one of whom just happens to be ALL IN digital producer Rachel Simon. To her grandkids, Russo goes by babbu. She was born on February 23rd, 1920. Six months later on August 26th of that year, the 19th amendment was formally adopted to the U.S. constitution giving women the right to vote in all American elections. According to babbu, she has voted in every Presidential Election since she became eligible, casting her very first vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yesterday, 96 years since women won the right to vote, she cast a ballot for the person she hopes will become the first woman president of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Coming up next, Rebecca Traister on the unprecedented role gender has played in this election.
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HAYES: I don`t think there`s ever been a presidential race in the country so completely centered on issues of sex and gender, fair to say. We have the first woman nominated by a major party, the potential first female president, running against at thrice married former beauty pageant owner and self-proclaimed sexual predator.
And not surprisingly, it corresponds with a massive gender gap in polls. While men favored Trump over Clinton by a four point margin in the last Pew Research Survey, women favored Clinton by a margin of 16 points, that`s a 20 point gap.
Consider just the past three weeks of the campaign. Three weeks ago, the Washington Post published a 2005 tape that features Trump bragging about kissing and grabbing women without their consent.
And just two days later we witnessed the spectacle of Trump trotting out some of the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct, a clear attempt to humiliate his opponent headed into the second debate.
At that debate Trump insisted the actions he described on the tape were just words, so called locker room talk. But since then, 12 women have come forward alleging he did to them almost exactly what he told Billy Bush he likes to do to women he finds attractive.
Now there`s today`s news that FBI underdirector James Comey turned up new emails potentially related to its investigation into Clinton`s private email server. The source of those new emails, an unrelated investigation into elicit text messages exchanged between a 15-year-old girl and Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton`s closest aide, Huma Abedin.
So, on the eve of an election that could give us the first woman president of the United States, how fitting the race has become all about the sexual habits of three men.
I`m joined now by Rebecca Traister, writer at-large for New York magazine. And you had this piece earlier in the year where you said, of course, it`s Donald Trump, of course it would have to be Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton to be the first woman would have to hurdle over kind of like the Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs, this cartoonish misogynist.
And today you and I had an email exchange where I said to you, well, of course, of course it would be the case that down the stretch Anthony Weiner of all people, would appear to possibly derail that.
REBECCA TRAISTER, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It`s like the festival of problematic men. I mean, this is how we`re going to mark the election of the first woman president is really kicking off, remember in the primaries, in the Republican primaries that Donald Trump was the candidate who actually went on stage and talked about the size of his penis in a debate, and that we`re concluding coming into the last lap, right, into the final 10 days with a man who is under completely separate investigation having nothing to do with the campaign for sending pictures of his own penis. This is -- and these things...
HAYES: To an underage...
TRAISTER: To an underage...
HAYES: We should note, which is why there`s a criminal investigation.
TRAISTER: Right.
And in between that, somewhere in there, you also have Bill Clinton, you have Rudy Giuliani who is out there talking about Donald Trump, you have Newt Gingrich. I mean, this is like a parade of sort of garbage guys -- sorry.
There`s also -- but I want to make a serious point which is we tend to take this whole category of stuff, right...
HAYES: Right.
TRAISTER: The penis-related stuff --
HAYES: Yes.
TRAISTER: From the alleged sexting of an underaged girl, to allegations of sexual harassment, groping, bragging about groping to actual allegations of assault and rape.
HAYES: Right. All of which -- I want to be clear and I want to make sure that we`re -- no one interprets us as making light of this. All of which are on the table here and all of which are extremely serious.
TRAISTER: Right. OK. And we tend to take that whole category of stuff and put it in this sort of sordid corner of bad male behavior, right?
But I want to make a point, which is that it is completely appropriate and not coincidental that all this stuff is somehow in play either directly or tangentially within this election if where we are going to do this thing that the United States has never done before...
HAYES: Perhaps.
TRAISTER: We may do this thing that the United States has never done before, which is elect a woman president. That stuff is not in some little silo of sordid male behavior, it is related to the kind of imbalance of power, the way that male public, political power has been associated with sexual power and power abuses, the way that women have been viewed and treated as objects having less power, less equality than the men who have behaved toward them in this way. And that those are the bigger forces that have contributed to the kinds -- to the reasons why we haven`t had a woman president yet, right? This is not unrelated. This is very related to the kind of bias that kept the presidency male for our entire 240 years of American presidential history.
HAYES: The society of America and patriarchy and the roles of gender that have produced a cadre of men who have risen to the very top of their respected fields and become public figures with tremendous power and who have also been alleged to have engaged in this wide variety of misconduct...
TRAISTER: Of sexual power abuses.
HAYES: Sexual power abuses against women.
TRAISTER: Right.
HAYES: It is not an accident that the same society that produced that cohort of men who we have seen has also failed to produce a woman president. That those two things are deeply and...
TRAISTER: Deeply connected. We are looking at the same patterns.
HAYES: So, it`s not -- in some weird way, right, like I mean, everybody`s line today about I went into a subway, I got into a subway when it was the Comey letter and I came up over ground when the Weiner news broke, because everyone is like -- and I was like, this is a joke. This is not true.
The whole thing today was like this was some overwritten cosmic spectacle that this is the Weiner problem has been brought back in. But in some ways it is perfectly fitting because on some level like this whole campaign`s subtext, and particularly the last month, in a way that`s been brutal and I think emotionally taxing particularly for women I`ve talked to is just about -- it`s just watching sort of slog through this morass of horrible male behavior basically.
TRAISTER: Right. And that the result, let`s tie it to the other half of this, which is that it`s about more exposure of emails, right, that Hillary Clinton, the first female candidate, we have read tens of thousands of these emails, all these exchanges between her and Huma, between her campaign staff, between members of her family. This has been between email server and the hacked John Podesta emails, I mean, think about also the other set of issues.
HAYES: Exposure.
TRAISTER: Just the exposure, the sorting through the underwear drawer, right, of this person who is a first in America`s history.
HAYES: We have never -- I think it`s safe to say, between the emails that were turned over to the State Department and then published, which were the official emails, and the emails of Clinton world through the stolen emails, the hacked electoral sabotage that was committed against John Podesta and that are published every day, we have never pried more privately into a candidate`s doings than Hillary Clinton it`s fair to say.
TRAISTER: No, we have never had.
HAYES: Which is the grand irony here.
TRAISTER: Right.
The notion that she`s somehow secretive, that she`s trying to hide something from us. We -- she has less hidden from the American public...
HAYES: It`s possible she is secretive and has not been effective at it. I mean, I don`t think those two cancel each other.
TRAISTER: I think her impulses are secretive but it has not worked. I mean, there is no political candidate that I can think of from whom, you know, from whom we know more than we do from Hillary Clinton.
HAYES: That also feels weirdly not accidental. Rebecca Traister, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.
Still ahead, what impact simply having the words Clinton emails in the headlines can have on the election coming up.
But first, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Tonight, a bonus Thing One, Thing Two without the commercial break in the middle.
Republican Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois in a tough reelection battle made a major political statement back in June announcing he would not support Donald Trump. Kirk was the first Republican to unendorse Trump in the wake of the Republican nominee`s attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel claiming Curiel`s Mexican heritage presented an absolute conflict in presiding over his Trump University lawsuit.
Remember that one?
Senator Kirk specifically cited Trump`s ethnically based attack, writing I have spent my life building bridges, tearing down barriers, not building walls. That`s why I find Donald Trump`s belief that an American-born judge of Mexican descent is incapable of fairly presiding over his case is not only dead wrong, it is un-American.
Kirk put it more bluntly in a radio interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK KIRK, (R) ILLINOIS: I do not support Hillary Clinton and I told the public that I do not support Donald Trump either. I think he`s too bigoted and racist for the land of Lincoln.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You see, Senator Kirk was planting his flag as the anti-racist wing of the Republican Party standing up to Donald Trump. There`s just one problem with that, evidence during last night`s debate with his Democratic opponent Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth. And that`s Thing Two.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TAMMY DUCKWORK, (D-IL) CANDIDATE FOR SENATE: And I want to be in the Senate. You know, my family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution. I`m a daughter of the American revolution. I`ve bled for this nation, but I still want to be there in the senate when the drums of war sound because people are quick to sound the drums of war and I want to be there to say this is what it costs, this is what you`re asking us to do, and if that`s the case, I`ll go. Families like mine are the ones that bleed first.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Kirk, 30 seconds to rebut.
KRK: I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What? That from the supposedly anti-bigoted wing of the Republican Party.
Senator Kirk suggesting that since his Asian-American opponent was born in another country that she must be lying about her ancestors in America.
Congresswoman, Duckworth who lost both her legs surviving in Iraq was born in Thailand to an American father and a mother of Thai and Chinese descent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DUCKWORTH: There`s been members of my family serving in uniform on my father`s side going back to the Revolution. I belong to the William J. Ppenny Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution right here. And if you go to Mount Vernon, Illinois you`ll see a statue of me put up of me put by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
HAYES: Here`s a photo of Duckworth pictured next to that statue.
After the debate, Kirk tweeted his sincere apologies to an American hero, Tammy Duckworth, and gratitude for her family service.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: This was the scene near Cannonball, North Dakota yesterday evening. At least 141 people arrested, some after being pepper-sprayed, following a months long conflict in which protesters from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have tried to halt completion of a pipeline they say will threaten their water supply and harm their land.
The tribe had sued the operator of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, and recently lost on appeal. Activists have camped out for months no private property protesting nonviolently, but tensions escalated last night. Officials say they were attacked. We don`t have any independent confirmation of that. Officials said protesters were not being asked to leave a second camp a few miles away on federal land, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, we got a verdict yesterday in the trial of another federal land occupation: armed anti-government protesters led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, had occupied a federally owned wildlife sanctuary in Oregon for almost six weeks with a demand the federal government, under surrender the 188,000 acre property to local control.
We should note this conflict ultimately did end up with forces moving in, and one protester was killed following a police chase in January.
But in this case the prosecution said it was simply about the armed seizure of public property. All seven defendants yesterday on federal trial were acquitted. The Bundy brothers` attorney reportedly grew belligerent when the judge informed them that the brothers would not be released because of pending charges in Nevada.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s when U.S. marshals, about a dozen of them, moved in. They tackled attorney Marcus Mumford. They even tased him. I can tell you that computers went flying, also papers went flying. That`s when the judge ordered all of the media and all of the people watching the trial out of the courtroom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So seven folks acquitted, the Bundy brothers remain in custody pending their other charges. I suppose the 141 folks facing charges in North Dakota who have been protesting nonviolently, the best they can hope for is a little bit of the Bundy treatment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: All right, there are two basic ways of looking at a presidential race. One is that it`s remarkable stable in the sense that Donald Trump`s polling average is about the same now as it was months ago when he wrapped up the nomination.
The other is that it`s been a roller coaster ride with one twist and turn after another starting with Donald Trump`s feud with Judge Gonzalo Curiel, then FBI director James Comey`s July`s announcement of no charges for Hillary Clinton over her use of private email. And the party convention leading into Trump`s feud with Khizr Khan. Clinton`s health problems on 9/11, remember that?
The first debate, followed by Trump`s bizarre feud with Alicia Machado. The infamous Access Hollywood tape, and now 11 days before the election, the question is will what happened today affect what happens on November 8.
Joining me now, Cornell Belcher, a former DNC pollster, president of Brilliant Corners, research and strategies, and MSNBC political analyst Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee and former governor of Vermont.
Cornell, let me start with you because I feel like there`s like pundits and journalists and folks in the sort of consulting world who view the campaign as like pivoting on these key moments. Then there`s like the data nerds who are basically like, you give me five facts about a person I`m telling you how they`re voting. It`s all stable. It`s all demographics, all this stuff you guys freak out about doesn`t matter.
What do you think?
CORNELL BELCHER, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Well, I think it`s problematic for the Trump campaign, and I listened to the interview you gave earlier with the Trump campaign manager.
And here`s the fundamental problem is she`s making the case that Hillary Clinton is not trustworthy and she`s corrupt, right? Which in a regular campaign season is probably a fairly strong argument to make against candidate. But Donald Trump is fundamentally poorly positioned to take advantage of that because it`s not like he is seen as more trustworthy and as more liked.
And in fact in the USA Today poll that came out this week, I mean, he`s 30 points underwater on his fav/unfav. So, it`s really problematic.
And it`s not like this is a new narrative. I mean, he`s been driving this narrative for the last several months, right. And it`s not necessarily a winning narrative. And no time in the last several months has he taken sort of a consistent lead over her.
I don`t know if this does that for him. I think it re-energizes some of the votes that are already there for him that want to think that she`s crooked and that there`s some there there with the email.
But for those college educated white women that he`s had a long-term problem with, I don`t know if this is a new narrative that helps him.
HAYES: Yeah, Howard, what`s your feeling on it?
HOWARD DEAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I think we`ve got another shoe to drop. I think highly of Comey, but what he did here, he only did halfway. He has to reveal the rest of what he`s got. You cannot start an investigation, publicly announce it -- first of all, they`re supposed to wait 60 days before an election -- I mean, and not do this 60 days before an election. Second of all, he`s got to tell everybody in America now in fairness what he thinks he`s got.
And if the Clintons don`t know what he`s got, and I don`t think they do, then he probably doesn`t have much. He`s probably got a lot of stuff that Huma was copied on on Anthony Weiner`s computer. That`s not going to get very far.
HAYES: I don`t think they know -- I don`t think the FBI knows what they have. I mean, I think the idea here...
DEAN: That`s a big problem. You should not do this 11 days before an election unless you know what you`re talking about.
HAYES: Right.
I mean, I guess from the -- right. So there`s the whether we get -- when you say another shoe to drop, the idea is this like is an open parenthesis and do we get a closed one, right, on this chapter, which is to say do you get some event three days from now where Comey says, look, we`ve gone through it, there`s nothing to see, investigation reclosed or whatever the heck the proper terminology is.
But even without that, Howard, I mean, what I saw a lot of Republicans sort of gleefully saying today was I think they think -- most Republicans think Donald Trump is going to lose, even after today. But they think the margins matter a lot for their senate candidates, and they were very excited today because they`re seeing, oh, maybe we`re going to save Roy Blunt`s bacon in Missouri who has got Kander nipping at his heels, and you know, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.
What do you think about that thinking?
DEAN: Here`s the problem with that argument, if this had happened three weeks ago I would have said maybe. But the problem was these guys are on their own. These senators now have gotten a lot of attention. People are paying attention. So what Hillary did with the big lead after the Trump womanizing stuff got them on the radar screen. Now they`re on their own radar screen. Now people are going to make individual judgments about Jason Kander regardless of what happens to Hillary Clinton.
So I think that unfortunately for the Republicans they`re out of time and out of luck on that one.
HAYES: Yeah, I mean, Cornell, one of the things that I think you`ve always got to keep coming back to when you think about the fundamentals here, right, is that Hillary Clinton needs to reproduce the Obama coalition to win. It`s a coalition that`s come out twice to win. It`s not just a thing you can snap your fingers and can do, but through all the perturbations of this election cycle there have been people on the ground in those battleground states essentially executing that.
BELCHER: No, that`s right.
And, look, when you look at the ground what they`re doing on the ground in some of these battleground states like Florida and Ohio and these other places, you`re going to see that what they`re doing now is actually what we did in the Obama campaign in 2012 where a lot of people don`t realize is that we actually registered more people in 2012 than we did in 2008. And what you`re seeing is that ground operation actually does make a difference when you bringing new registrants in, when you`re bringing new registrants in to places like Nevada and you`re bringing new registrants in to places like Florida.
I think you see them running a professional campaign there.
So, you know, she is not going to completely get the Obama coalition, but I think she`s going to -- she`s building up sort of that new coalition that she can have of her own.
But also Donald Trump has a problem with his coalition, right? If you look at sort of, again from polling, he`s running eight or nine points off of Republican performance where she is with Democratic performance, so it`s not like he has consolidated the Republican coalition either, even though it`s a losing coalition, he`s yet to consolidate that.
HAYES: Yeah, and Howard, quickly, do you expect any more surprises with 11 days to go after all we`ve been through?
DEAN: In this I expect a lot of surprises. Who knows.
I do think Comey is going to have to come out and say, look, none of this stuff is classified. We`re going to continue to investigate but we`re not investigating Hillary Clinton.
And that`s true. CBS, for example, misspoke when they did their lead. He has not reopened the investigation of Hillary Clinton, he is looking at other people`s emails. It`s very different.
I`m not surprised he did this because he sort of had to with 11 days to go. What I`m very surprised is he didn`t do the whole truth, and that`s too bad.
HAYES: Cornell Belcher and Howard Dean, thank you.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END