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All in with Chris Hayes, Transcript 8/4/17 The Trump transcript and what we learned.

Guests: Maxine Waters, Asawin Suebsaeng, Eliana Johnson, David Cay Johnston

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: August 4, 2017 Guest: Maxine Waters, Asawin Suebsaeng, Eliana Johnson, David Cay Johnston

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Are there any Russians here tonight?

HAYES: The counter offensive begins.

TRUMP: They`re trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story.

HAYES: Tonight, new details on the Mueller investigation as the White House attacks leakers and the President and his allies undercut the Special Prosecutor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last (INAUDIBLE) Mr. Mueller is hurting his reputation.

HAYES: Congresswoman Maxine Waters joins me for the latest. Then, beyond the red line.

JAY SEKULOW, PRESIDENT TRUMP`S LAWYER: And to look at a real estate deal from ten years ago, we would certainly object to that.

HAYES: What we now know about investigators following Trump`s money and about those transcripts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is this thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats?

HAYES: What we`re learning about President Trump from his private talks with world leaders.

TRUMP: Who`s going to pay for the wall?

HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. With Special Counsel Robert Mueller now issuing Grand Jury subpoenas on the Russia investigation, tonight the President and his allies are mounting a multifaceted counter attack, suggesting that it doesn`t matter what Mueller finds because his investigation is a fundamentally illegitimate attempt by the President`s opponents to overturn the will of the people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They can`t beat us at the voting booths so they`re trying to cheat you out of the future and the future that you want. They`re trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story that is demeaning to all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: (INAUDIBLE) is the claim that the so called deep states is out to destroy the President in part through selective leaks the media.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER UNITED STATES HOUSE SPEAKER: All of this stuff is the deep state. The deep state real. It`s a massive bureaucracy of people who believe in liberal big government and they see Donald Trump as their mortal enemy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Amid the daily drip of damaging news, the President have been pressing his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the same Jeff Sessions President Trump has repeatedly, publicly criticized for recusing himself from the Russia investigation to go after the leakers. And today, Sessions did just that saying, the Justice Department had tripled the number of criminal investigations involving illegal disclosures.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF SESSIONS, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERA: We will investigate and seek the bring criminals to justice. We will not allow rogue, anonymous sources with security clearances to sell out our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Notably, the President is also impressing Sessions to go after Hillary Clinton. Sessions hasn`t gone there yet but a group of House Republicans last week called for a second Special Counsel to investigate Clinton, James Comey, and Loretta Lynch and Trump Attorney Jay Sekulow has called for a Grand Jury to investigate Clinton as well. Last night in West Virginia, the President argued that he is not the one with the real Russia problem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: What the prosecutors should be looking at are Hillary Clinton`s 33,000 deleted e-mails and they should be looking at the paid Russian speeches and the owned Russian companies or let them look at the uranium she sold that is now in the hands of very angry Russians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That last part is not true. She didn`t sell any uranium. Also under attack in the Russia counter-offensive is Mueller, a Republican who enjoys a sterling reputation among Congressional Republicans and who is appointed to be FBI Director by George W. Bush. Despite that, the President`s allies are casting Mueller`s investigation as hopelessly compromised.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Mueller has put together a Democratic hit squad that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to let`s see, Democrats, including Hillary and Barack Obama.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is asking if Mueller is a "dirty cop" and Republican Congressman Trent Franks says he must resign. Mueller already over conflicts of interest. Last night on Fox News guest even argued against the very concept of Grand Juries which for the record are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGG JARRETT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: There`s only one other nation in the world other than the U.S. that employs a Grand Jury, it`s Liberia and there`s a reason why, because everybody now realizes that`s Grand Juries are an undemocratic farce.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The heart of the argument is this. The President is the target of an illegitimate subversion of democracy that is an assault not just on the President but crucially on the people who put him in the Oval Office who should rise up if and when indictment starts rolling in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: If they end up with an indictment against a family member just to, you know, just to get at Donald Trump when they couldn`t get at him, there`s going to be a real uproar, real uprising in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me now, Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California. It`s good to have you here.

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Delighted to be here with you.

HAYES: You know, Ken Starr said something this morning. He said, you don`t want prosecutors going to fishing expedition and a lot of Democrats laughed at that and cited irony because Ken Starr of course famously started investigating Vince Foster, and then he went to a land deal Called whitewater and then on Monica Lewinsky. But isn`t it true what he is saying in some respect that it can get out of hand if a prosecutor starts looking and ends up prosecuting for something they didn`t originally go for?

WATERS: No, I don`t think so. I know, and we all know that he`s looking at the possibility of collusion and obstruction of justice. Now, when you`re doing those kinds of investigations, it is going to take you into some other areas and those areas could be very problematic, they could be criminal. And so if that happens, then he has a responsibility to follow up on it. It is not a fishing expedition.

HAYES: But wasn`t that the argument that people made in defense of Ken Starr when Democrats were saying look, you started on one thing and all of a sudden we`re now all the way here from Monica Lewinsky because you couldn`t get them on Whitewater and on you couldn`t get him on Vince Foster. Isn`t the shoe on the other foot if ends up being the case that they can`t get him on collusion, they can`t get him on these other things but they do end up with something and say past business practices.

WATERS: Well, the fact of the matter is, if the Congress of the United States feels, given all this information that something is wrong, that the President of the United States is out of bounds, he`s committed certain crimes, they can make the decision to impeach. The final analysis is with us to determine whether or not the information that we`re receiving, whether it is directly having to do with collusion or obstruction of justice, or we find that there was money laundering and we find that their crimes committed because of the business arrangements, we have a responsibility to make a determination about whether or not he should be impeached.

HAYES: What do you think about the idea that Mueller is conflicted, that people he`s hired are o public records have been giving money to Democrats. Do you think that compromises him?

WATERS: No, he`s not compromised. As a matter of fact, he has a sterling reputation. Not only does he have a sterling reputation of Democrats and Republicans, believe that if anybody is to do this kind of investigation, it`s him. Not only is he smart, not only has he done good work in the past.

HAYES: So you trust him. You think he has --

WATERS: I do. I trust him and we think that he`s staffing up the correct way. The people with the kind of expertise that can help bring about the truth to all that`s being looked at.

HAYE: Are you confident that that reputation would -- is going to hold? I mean, one of the things we`ve seen in this era is that, the President is able to convince a sizable chunk of the country and all the people in the party to zig if the other side says zag, do you think if it comes to a showdown with Mueller, that that reputation holds among Republicans?

WATERS: Mueller is going to win.

HAYES: You seem very confident.

WATERS: I do. But don`t forget, I`ve made some predictions in the past and I`ve talked about some relationships in the past and I have talked about my suspicions in the past and I want to tell you to drip by drip, people are finding out that there`s more to this than maybe some people thought. And of course, there`s a lot of smoke and even now, I think, people are believing that there`s some fire. So I think that not only is Mueller -- you know, the correct one. No, he is not conflicted, they are going to put their little team together, the right wingers and they`re going to roll out every day with a new accusation but it`s not going to hold.

HAYES: What do you think -- you know, that some colleagues of yours in the Republicans side of the aisle in Congress want to impanel -- they want a special counsel for Hillary Clinton. The President has called on Jeff Sessions for that. What would it mean constitutionally if Congress or the Department of Justice were to take that step at the President`s command?

WATERS: Well, it`s not going to happen to begin with. They`ve investigated Hillary Clinton and they`ve investigated Hillary Clinton. They`ve investigated Hillary Clinton and she has shown that she can stand there, sit there, and give them the information, answer all the questions, debunk all their theories, and she`s won. And so enough is enough and they can`t go there.

HAYES: Alan Dershowitz, he`s a prominent Law Professor I think (INAUDIBLE) he`s emerges as real defender for the President recently and he had something to say about the citing of the grand jury in Washington D.C. today that I want you to take a listen to this. This is Alan Dershowitz is talking about where the grand jury is located. Take a listen.

WATERS: Yes.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR: The second one is important because of where it is. It gives the prosecutor the power to indict in the District of Columbia which is a district that is heavily Democratic and would have a jury pool very unfavorable to Trump and the Trump administration. So it gives the prosecutor a tremendous tactical advantage.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HAYES: He went to talk about the ethnic and racial make-up of the district as stacking to get (INAUDIBLE) against Trump. Do you think it`s unfair to --

WATERS: It`s absolutely unfair. What he`s simply saying, you know, all those black people are there. They don`t like Trump and so he`s not going to get a fair trial. And so, they should take it out of that jurisdiction. It shouldn`t be there, to begin with. I don`t like that and I`m surprised that Alan Dershowitz is talking like that and we will not stand far, we will push back against that because that is absolutely racist.

HAYES: Maxine Waters, Congresswoman from California, nice to have you here --

WATERS: Thank you. Delighted to be here. Thank you.

HAYES: Joining me now Asawin Suebsaeng, he`s Politics Reporter for the Daily Beast, and Eliana Johnson, National Political Reporter for Politico. And I`ll start with you. You have sources inside the White House, what is the mood there? What are they sort of thinking of as it becomes clearer and clearer there`s a very real thing happening with Robert Mueller with very real and serious people and real subpoena power.

ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, THE DAILY BEAST POLITICAL REPORTER: Absolutely. But than what they`re concern about what will happen with regards to Mueller and his legal team is what senior aides in the White House are currently worried about, what the President of the United States himself might do in the coming days, in the coming weeks as he reads more negative coverage regarding, and watches more of it on cable news, regarding what`s going on with the Mueller investigation, how furious he gets about it. This could have to do with his various flirtations with regards to does he order the sacking of Robert Mueller as he has sort of flirted with in a much publicized New York Times interview that came out a while ago or even something as simple as does he set off a barrage of angry tweets about this that could easily be legally or politically complicated.

HAYES: So you made a great point Eliana, that I want to get your response to which is that we think of it as you know, the President`s defenders are rushing to his defense and telling the White House line in some ways but it also works in the other way around which is that the President of the United States watches a lot of cable news and watches a lot of Fox News and it can lead the case that he sits there and watch them attack Mueller and that actually is the thing that puts -- that plants the idea in his head that he should fire Mueller which is a very real possibility would seem.

ELIANA JOHNSON, POLITICO POLITICAL REPORTER: I do think that`s a real possibility. Well, Trump has proven himself to be something of a specialist in delivering self-inflicted blows and I think he watches cable television on it`s never more than you know, a little bit removed from his hourly or you know, five-minute consciousness and he sees vocal defenders on cable news and also people attacking his enemies. And that goes straight on his Twitter feed. It was at the root of his attacks on his own cabinet secretary, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And the real danger to the President right now is what he -- what he himself may do. I think the latest actions, the news of the impaneling of a Grand Jury show that Bob Mueller is deathly serious. What`s not clear is how close this may come to the President himself and if he could impose some discipline on himself, he may not be touched by this at all. That`s not clear yet.

HAYES: So to your point, is it your understanding that there are folks inside the White House actively trying to make sure he does not take steps like the ones you floated so that he doesn`t incur further legal jeopardy?

SUEBSAENG: Yes. Most importantly, first and foremost, they have been advising the President rather gently, but diligently, I should say, over the last few weeks and months, that ordering the firing of Robert Mueller would be a horrible course of action. In fact, there are bad words that I can`t use on the air right now in terms of how they used to describe what would happen that would be politically catastrophic if he were to do so.

But back to your earlier point about how angry the President gets when he sees this on loop, in the news, in print, on TV, in terms of Russia and Trump-related news, Mueller related news, as Eliana`s publication Politico and my publication, the Daily Beast along with my White House Reporter Colleague Lachlan Markay have reported previously, the President will literally yell at his TV screen when he sees more and more Russia-related news that he is displeased by. This is something that I don`t think can be understated, how furious and aggrieved he can feel when this comes across his -- whether it`s his Twitter feed or his cable news box.

HAYES: And Eliana, it seems to me, do you feel that the White House is sort of taking a turn in how they approach he this? The President sort of forthrightly -- well, not forthrightly but addressing it directly the idea that it`s fundamentally illegitimate. I feel like I`ve seen that narrative take cohere or take shape in a more aggressive fashion. Do you feel the same way?

JOHNSON: You know, the rally in West Virginia was really interesting this week. In a certain way, I think Trump has been hammering home on the same point whether it is-related to this Russia investigation or not, that the system rigged. And he`s coming back to it on this Russia investigation where essentially he`s telling his supporters that they`re out to find something. This is a fake story and they`re going to find something. Regardless, they`re trying to illegitimize his victory and to steal it not only from him, the President but from his supporters as well.

And what really has struck me is that I think -- you know, a core segment of his supporters, even if it were shown or demonstrated without you know, clearly that Trump was guilty of this, I don`t think it would make any difference to them because what Trump has suggested over and over again, is that however bad he is, he is a preferable alternative to Hillary Clinton and I think many of his supporters believe that and are simply immune to whatever might come out here. And that`s why you hear those raucous cheers from him at rallies because polls -- many polls show -- you know, most people do believe Russia interfered in the election. Most people do believe that Trump colluded in some hazy way and yet I think a lot of those people, the core Trump supporters simply don`t care. They still find him preferable to through the alternative.

HAYES: That`s an important point that though the facts may come out in certain ways (INAUDIBLE) not changed. I mean, people may sort of change their views about the facts rather than their views about Donald Trump. Asawin Suebsaeng and Eliana Johnson, thank you, both for your time tonight.

SUEBSAENG: Thank you so much.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

HAYES: All right, next, Robert Mueller`s vast legal team appears to be crossing the President`s self-imposed red line as they turned his financial ties. David Cay Johnston on the expanding investigation. How the President might respond after the two-minute break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEKULOW: There`s supposed to be an investigation as it relates to Russia interference with the election and whether they were working with the Trump campaign. That was -- that`s kind of the general mandate here. So, to look at a real estate deal from ten years ago, which is when some of these reports came out I think from Bloomberg News or Business Insider or both, it would be way outside the scope of the mandate. We would certainly object to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Ever since President Trump agreed in an interview with New York Times that Special Counsel Robert Mueller`s investigation would cross a red line if it looked at his finances, the President and his surrogates have suggested that Mueller has limited purview in his investigation. But Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein`s letter appointing Mueller as Special Counsel gave Mueller authority to pursue and I quote, Any links and or coordination between the Russian government and individual associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump but also, Any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation and any other matters within the scope of the law.

There have in fact been headlines for two weeks now that Mueller`s investigation is looking into the President`s financial ties and just as Republicans appear ready to stop President Trump from firing or directing anyone to fire Special Counsel Mueller, there are now Republicans willing to dismiss any idea of the President drawing a red line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: I believe that the Special Counsel has a very broad mandate and he should follow the leads wherever they may be. The President can`t set red lines for Bob Mueller.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me now, Pulitzer Prize Winning Reporter, David Cay Johnston, Founder of DCReport, author of The Making of Donald Trump, someone who spent a lot of time reporting on Donald Trump and his finances in particular. So my question to you is, do you think he has reason to fear Mueller on that score?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, DCREPORT FOUNDER: Oh, I think he has tremendous reason to fear Mueller on that score. Remember that Donald`s principal bank is Deutsch Bank. Deutsch Bank has already been fined over $600 million for laundering money for Russian oligarchs. There`s a lawsuit in New York alleging that non authorized a quarter billion dollar tax fraud in which the profit from Trump`s SoHo and Donald owned 18 percent of the profits, ended up in an Icelandic Bank under the thumb of a Russian oligarch. He`s got a lot to worry about.

HAYES: Let me ask you this, this is someone who has been in public life for many years and he`s been the subject of a lot of attention and he has run into problems with civil suits, he`s been fined but he never has had any criminal convictions, never been indicted over any sort of financial irregularities and there`s something to be said for living your life in a spotlight that long and not bringing down the law upon you, right?

JOHNSTON: Well, yes. You know, I once had the Harry (INAUDIBLE) as the Mob`s number to a hit man in the western U.S. in my home and telling me about the people he killed which the FBI and local cops backed up his stories. And Harry was very proud of the fact that he had never been arrested for his crimes. Many people who cheat and he swindle and steal as Donald has done, never get arrested. That`s not a measure of anything.

HAYES: What do you think about the idea of kind of trip wires as they go along? I mean, seems to me that it is going to be the case, they`re going to start to look at the finances and start pulling on threads. And they`re very complex finances, whether their all above board or not, that seems to be one thing that is absolutely established. They`re very complex, right?

JOHNSTON: Yes. But the things that they`re going to be able to show are transfers of money. FinCEN, the organization that does this is mostly IRS people who does this, they are very good at finding a financial needle in the global hay stack of funds that are floating around. And once they uncover a few keys and get some people to cooperate, if there, in fact, were illicit flows of money and money laundering and what amounted to payoffs, they will find those things and remember they`re going to start with people on the outer edge, interview them in front of a Grand Jury, perhaps threaten some them with prosecution if they need to and leverage them as they move towards the center. And Donald is very worried that finally, he has an investigation he can`t compromise or run out the clock on, as he has done with numerous previous investigations of himself.

HAYES: That strikes me as important. You`ve reported on way other times that he`s had investigations looming over him and the steps he`s taken to essentially make sure they didn`t get to him. And it does appear, do you feel like we`re watching history repeat itself?

JOHNSTON: Here, I don`t think he`s going to be able to do what he`s done in the past which is either run out the clock, compromise the investigation, go and rat out other people. In this case, he`s got a team of incredible people going after him. And those 16 lawyers that have gone to work for Bob Mueller, they didn`t leave their million-dollar jobs at big law firms for a two-week job or for a lark. They were persuaded obviously by Mueller. This is important historic work and you need to be on the team.

HAYES: All right, David Cay Johnston, thanks for your time.

JOHNSTON: Thank you.

HAYES: Coming up, an incredible look into how President Trump operates when he thinks nobody is listening. More fallout from the leak of Trump transcripts with world leaders and what the President`s please tell us about how he views his own voters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: So much of what we know about the Trump administration has come from leaks to the press especially concerning the Russian investigation. Consider the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn who was forced out in February for failing to come clean about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador during the transition. In the early days of the administration we remember, after learning Flynn had been lying about the conversations, then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates alerted the white House Counsel multiple times, going through proper channels to warn the administration. But one of its Top National Security Officials might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail and yet nothing happened. Flynn remained on the job.

It was not until weeks later after anonymous officials leaked to the Washington Post that Flynn had, in fact, talked the Russian Ambassador about sanctions, something Flynn had denied, the Vice President had not told the truth about, that the President finally asked his National Security Adviser to resign. But the President and his defenders enraged over the Russia probe, the leaks are the real problem and Attorney General Jeff Sessions is at least partly to blame. Last week, the President attack Sessions on Twitter accusing him of taking a very weak position to on Hillary Clinton crimes where e-mails on DNC server and Intel leakers. So today the Attorney General responded announcing a new Justice Department crackdown on leaks which could include severe repercussions for journalists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SESSIONS: Since January, the Department has more than tripled the number of active leak investigations. The FBI has increased resources devoted to leak cases and created a new counter intelligence unit that manage these cases. One of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas. We respect the important role that the press plays and we`ll give them respect but it is not unlimited.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: This comes a day after one of the most astounding and controversial leaks of the Trump Presidency so far, those transcripts of the President`s calls with foreign leaders coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We are stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth. We are cracking down strongly on sanctuary cities, and in order to stop the drugs, gangs, and traffickers, we are building a wall on the southern border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Watching Donald Trump perform before a crowd as he did last night at a campaign style rally in West Virginia, you can`t help but wonder what he is like behind closed doors as he carries out his presidential duties. Is the public Donald Trump, the bombastic persona the same guy who shows up to international summits and situation room briefings?

And we now have at least a partial answer to that question thanks to leaked transcripts published yesterday by The Washington Post of the president`s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia shortly after his inauguration.

In many ways, those transcripts reveals the same Donald Trump we`ve come to know: braggadocious, obsessed with his election victory, and uncomprehending about even the basic points of policy.

But the president also showed another side, displaying a striking cynicism about the promises he made to his voters and suggesting he was in on the con.

On the borer wall, for instance, he repeatedly pressed the Mexican president to get their story straight, quote, "the fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall. I have to. They`re going to say, who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President to both of us. And we should both say we will work it out. It will work out in the formula somehow."

The wall was arguably the president`s most central campaign pledge, but listen to how he described it on that phone call: "believeit or not, this is the least important thing that we`re talking about. But politically, this might be the most important we talk about."

I`m joined now by Matt Taibbi, contributing editor of The Rolling Stone.

What did you make of that?

MATT TAIBBI, THE ROLLING STONE: I mean, it is hilarious. I mean, it shows Donald Trump in his unvarnished natural state. And it`s exactly as you say, he`s exactly the same person except with this sort of extra layer of craven cynical self-interest, and it was a fascinating read.

HAYES: He also has this, you know, he`s talking about -- they`re sending drugs to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, up in New Hampshire. I won New Hampshire, because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den. It is coming from the southern border.

It`s like, I would never call -- I mean, I would never call -- like, you wouldn`t in a normal conversation, it`s just a normal gracious person talk about a place like that.

TAIBBI: Well, he repeated -- one of the things that`s a constant theme in these conversations both with Pena Nieto and with Turnbull and that he constantly talks about where he won and why and by how much. And to be fair, in New Hampshire he did constantly talk about the drug problem. In his mind, this is what it sounds like when he doesn`t have a crowd in front of him. New Hampshire is a dump, that`s why I won.

HAYES: Right, exactly. And in the Turnbull conversation, there`s also this sort of amazing back and forth where basically, Turnbull -- the U.S. has agreed under Obama to take a certain number of refugees. And Trump hates it because it`s bad for his brand. And Turnbull is trying to actually explain the -- just the underlying policy of why they do what they do -- and he just doesn`t get it, in a very basic way he doesn`t understand what he`s being--

TAIBBI: Turnbull is actually trying to help him out. He is basically trying to say, look, we can both come out looking good with this thing, because you don`t have to take anybody, all you have to do is say that you`re going through the process.

HAYES: And then vet them. He says you get to vet them.

TAIBBI: You get to vet them. You could have none come in, and Trump is like, it doesn`t penetrate to the absolute inner center of his brain, it doesn`t get that far. All he knows is it will look bad in the press to a certain audience.

HAYES: Right, that his brand is the guy who turns away refugees.

TAIBBI: Right. I`ll look like a dope if we have to do that.

HAYES: You know, you just wrote this piece about the -- saying there`s no way to survive the Trump White House. And I wonder if you think, if there`s a relationship between degree to which this is an individual really doesn`t care about policy, it doesn`t have any real governing vision or principles other than the brand of the candidate and the amount of insane back biting and fighting we see in the White House.

TAIBBI: Absolutely. I mean, to me it`s a little bit like what Kissinger`s little quote about academia, you know, the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low. In the case of Trump, there`s no organizing principle. People aren`t fighting for any good reason. They`re just fighting. And he`s -- and there`s no, he is just sowing chaos and he`s he basically bored, that`s the governing principle of this White House is that he changes his mind constantly. People fall in and out of favor at an incredibly rapid pace. And that`s the only thing that`s really going on in this White House.

HAYES: Do you think he enjoys the drama?

TAIBBI: Well, it`s what I thought was really interesting that when Priebus -- when there was that whole back and forth between Scaramucci and Priebus that he apparently was sour on Priebus because he didn`t fight back. He was acting like a reality show producer. On the one hand, he`s the president. He should want absolute quiet and a lack of distraction, and rancor coming out of White House. But he wanted rancor coming out of that White House which is so bizarre.

HAYES: We also have reporting that it is not the transcripts that indicate sort of similar sort of themes. This is from the Washington Post report on the debate over Afghanistan policy. This is one of a Trump confidante saying I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for half a page.

There is another piece just told us by Politico that basically says he chose Christopher Wray to be the FBI director because he basically got bored of the search and the last person he talked to wanted it to be Wray.

TAIBBI: Yeah, absolutely. And, look, to be fair, we`ve had presidents before who have had short attention spans. You know, Bob Woodward`s famous book Veil talked about how Ronald Reagan couldn`t read anything and they had to make videos for him.

But Trump takes it to an extreme. You know, the White House is--

HAYES: It`s like the smartphone era version of that.

TAIBBI: Exactly, he can`t even for a second. He`s in the Twitter era, where you know a millisecond is too long for him to attention to anything, even weighed decisions like choosing the FBI director.

HAYES: How do you think it plays out ultimately? There`s two schools of thought. People that are, opposing the president, are both kind of happy that it`s incompetent at some level, because he can`t push his legislative agenda, but at the same time he is the individual who is the president of the United States, has the nuclear codes, et cetera.

TAIBBI: I think the problem is that the Trump`s personality is so mercurial and explosive, he just won`t ever be able to achieve true stability. I think this move with Kelly is very typical of what he`s trying to -- in a moment of clarity, perhaps, right, he sees that he has to somehow try to impose discipline, but inevitably he will tire of Kelly. And then there will be an upheaval and then we`ll see an absolute repeat of all the craziness that just happened just last week.

And I think we`ll see ever tighter cycles of purges and recriminations.

HAYES: Yeah, Scaramucci cycle, things keep shrinking down. We should say New Hampshire, just as a factual note, the president won the primary there, but did not win the general.

Matt Taibbi, thank you very much.

TAIBBI: Thank you very much.

HAYES: Still ahead, President Trump`s director of strategic communication clarifies what the president meant when he called the White House, quote, a real dump.

And an update from Pharma Bro on Thing One, Thing Two next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Thing One tonight, Martin Shkreli, often referred to as Pharma Bro, was found guilty of fraud today in federal court. He was convicted of three of eight security fraud charges related to two hedge funds he founded and now faces up to 20 years in prison.

Shkreli earned the title of most hated man in America two years ago when he bought Daraprim, which is critical for HIV treatments and immediately raised the price by 5,000 percent. Pharma Bro seemed to bask in the negative attention, publicly boasting about his profits as well as how many date solicitations he claimed to receive.

His public image proved especially problematic for his legal team who struggled to find jurors who weren`t already biased against him. And at a press conference following the verdict, his lawyer addressed his client`s reputation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN BRAFMAN, SHKRELI ATTORNEY: There is an image issue that Martin and I are going to be discussing in the next several days. Martin is a brilliant young man, but sometimes people skills don`t translate well. So we will have some good discussions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That`s an amazing moment. While his lawyer planned to have that discussion in several days with his client, within an hour of the press conference, Pharma Bro was beer and live streaming his analysis of the case on the internet. His musings of playing Xbox at Club Fed are Thing Two in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN SHKRELI, CONVICTED OF FRAUD: There`s a good chance there`s no jail sentence at all. You know, if it is a year, that`s four months at -- they call it Club Fed. I`ll play basketball and tennis and Xbox and be back out on the streets very quickly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: These streets.

That was Martin Shkreli live streaming his prediction for his upcoming sentencing shortly after he was found guilty of fraud today. He also spoke with a reporter, perhaps an attempt to rehab his public image, depicted his life as rather modest with a focus on philanthropy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHKRELI: You know, this is the kind of life I live. I don`t buy fancy things. I donated 2 million to the Wu Tang Clan.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You donated money to the Wu Tang Clan?

SHKRELI: I got an album.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SHKRELI: I got a mixed tape in return. It was a wonderful investment. I viewed it as a donation. You know, people may see that as splurging, but I don`t think they`re making the world I would patronize hip-hop (inaudible) I have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Today, President Donald Trump headed to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey for what has been billed it as working vacation while the White House gets some much needed repairs. Politico reporting that, quote, along with installing a high volume air conditioning system, the work may include replacing worn carpets and addressing other issues.

And the president leaving his official residents just days after Sport Illustrated quoted him as saying, "while at his Bedminster golf course, no less, and he was spending time away from Washington because that White House is a real dump."

The president called the story, quote, "fake news" and, quote, "totally untrue," but the reporter pushed back pointing out that Trump`s comment was made in front of a group of eight or nine people and telling MSNBC that White House director of strategic communications, Hope Hicks, essentially confirmed it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN SHIPNUCK, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED: I talked to one of the people who was part of the original conversation. They recalled it in vivid detail. So, I understand why the president felt compelled to try and skate away from his remarks. But the fact is he said it. Now, you know, Hope Hicks called and we had a kind of a spicy conversation.

UNIDENITIFIED FEMALE: Spicy?

SHIPNUCK: First she said it was a lie, and then when I laid out all the facts to her, she said, well then he must have been joking.

I said, well, I didn`t say in the story what his tone of voice was, I just reported what he said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now, the president will get to spend 17 days from Washington at the very club where he reportedly called the White House, quote, "a real dump."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: So I just wanted to say I`ll probably do sort of three buckets of stuff.

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Right. I one of them climate?

HAYES: Yes. One of them is climate. One of them is sort broadly like how politics are different now than they were, say, 15 years ago. Citizens United, the -- I`m interested to hear your thoughts on that. And some 2016 stuff.

GORE: OK. Well, I`m not going to--

HAYES: You can decline. I know you`re not going to--

GORE: I`m not going to commit news.

HAYES: But I`ll try and get you too.

GORE: But we will talk about climate.

HAYES: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to feed the beast, Mr. Vice President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That conversation about feeding the beast and about the topics of an interview I was getting ready to do with Vice President Al Gore two years ago made it into his new movie, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power."

We did end up talking about climate change back in 2015, as promised, and of course politics. And this week I got to talk with Al Gore again about the realities and the politics of climate change and why he`s hopeful about possible solutions to the crisis like investment in renewable energy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GORE: The difference between solar electricity, unsubsidized, being more expensive than fossil fuel electricity and less expensive is not a trivial difference, it`s like the difference between 33 degrees and 32 degrees. That`s a difference of more than 1 degree, it`s a difference between ice and water.

And in markets, the difference between the new alternatives being more expensive and cheaper than existing energy is the difference between markets that are frozen up and markets where there are liquid flows of investments.

For the last seven years, Chris, on a global basis, the investments in new generating capacity from renewables have far outstripped the investments in fossil energy. In this country last year, 75 percent of all new electricity generation came from solar and wind and virtually none from coal. The balance was from gas.

HAYES: So, that brings us to me the sort of central issue here, which is politics, right? Because there`s the technology is going in certain ways, but the mechanisms are all -- the forcing mechanisms are all about politics. And they`re about global politics and domestic politics.

And so I want to ask about, there`s a moment in the film where you talk about that 2000 election. And it made me think about it in these terms more starkly than I had before, which is, you know, Kyoto, the U.S. was going to be a party to Kyoto, and then this very close election in which of Democrat wins more votes in the popular election, does not become the president of the United States, the Republican gets in, pulls out of an international climate treaty. We have literally recreated that, 16 years later.

And at both points, I mean, that was a big moment, a fork in the road for the planet and for the country. Why did it happen again, I guess is my question.

HAYES: Well, I don`t think very many people voted for Trump on the basis of the climate issue. Actually, a plurality of his voters wanted us to stay in Paris, a majority of Republican voters, two-thirds of the American people.

And the pattern we were talking about--

HAYES: But that, what is key about that, right, is that is that preference wasn`t strong enough to override other things in the fate of this issue.

GORE: That`s right. But another big change in the last decade, in addition to the technological developments making clean energy and sustainability far more affordable, the other big change is that the climate-related extreme weather events have become far more serious, far more destructive, far more common.

HAYES: And evident.

GORE: And evident.

Yesterday in Miami, seven inches of rain in two hours. We`re seeing these rain bombs now on a regular basis because the water cycle is being disrupted by 90 percent of the global warming heat going into the oceans and evaporating much more moisture, which comes over the land and causes these extreme events.

And the ice is melting and raising sea level and the tropical diseases are moving northward and the droughts are deeper, and you know the whole story.

So people are feeling this now. And in politics and in social movements, the pattern we were talking about in technology also is sometimes evident there. I`ll give you a quick example. You could take the civil rights movement, or abolition, or women`s suffrage. In the anti-apartheid movement, Nelson Mandela once said, it`s always impossible until it`s done.

Take the gay rights movement. If someone had told me even five years ago that in 2017, gay marriage would be legal in all 50 states, accepted and honored and celebrated by two-thirds of the American people, I would have said, well, I sure hope so but that`s wildly unrealistic and naive. But it happened, because the straw men were pushed aside, and people finally focused on the central choice between what`s right and what`s wrong.

That`s the point we`re at with the climate movement.

HAYES: So, it`s fascinating you say that, because there is a theory about the resistance we`ve had. Climate is a culture war issue. When people talk about it and the opposition to it, its opposition is is a very culture way, it`s why you`ve become this kind of bete noire for opponents of it, right, because they`re not really talking about science. They`re not talking about prudential approaches to risk, they`re talking about "those liberals" who aren`t like you who want to tell you what to do, who are associated with a whole bunch of cultural baggage that you shouldn`t like.

And I guess the question is, like that defines all our politics but nowhere to me is it stronger and more sort of hard to defeat than in this place, because you need to motivate people to do stuff that`s very difficult to do.

GORE: Yeah, there`s an old saying in Tennessee where I grew up that if you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be pretty sure it didn`t get there by itself. When we see the United States as the only country in the world with these persistent levels of denial, among a shrinking minority but still there, we can be pretty sure it didn`t happen by itself.

The large carbon polluters have spent between one and two billion dollars taking the playbook from the tobacco industry, which responded to the scientific consensus linking cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases, they hired actors and dressed them up as doctors and put them on camera to falsely reassure people that there were no health risks to smoking cigarettes. And 100 million people died during the interim before policies were finally changed.

They`ve hired the same PR firms, and it`s deeply unethical. And the good news is people are beginning to see through that.

So this culture war that you`re talking about, if you put it in the larger context of what`s happening to people`s wages, and to their lives, we`re seeing huge changes in the global economy and in the American economy. Wages have stagnated for middle income families for decades now. And there is a lot of understandable unrest. And elites were slow to recognize it because the increasing inequality kept the elite incomes going up.

Meanwhile, hyperglobalization flung jobs to low-wage venues. The addition of intelligence, to automation started hollowing out a lot of jobs in retail, for example. And so people began to question the reliability of experts who had charted this globalization path and the policies that were supposed to improve their lives.

HAYES: You were one of them.

GORE: Yeah, absolutely. And I will own up to that, although I think in the `90s, we did a heck of a lot better job than what followed, because we respected the social contract that even as we recognized the inevitable changes that are driven by technology and the economy, we have an obligation to those who are hurt and damaged by it, to have the education and job training and the creation of new opportunities by working together through the instruments of self-government, where the market`s not going to take care of it itself.

Surrendering everything to the market and abandoned the options that you have with policies to remedy the excesses and heal the damage, that`s what`s really caused this tremendous unrest. And so a demagogue comes in and says, we`re going to return to the past. Everything`s going to be fine. That has an understandable appeal. It`s not working, because it was never based on reality.

HAYES: All right. Vice President Al Gore, it`s great to have you. The movie is called "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power."

GORE: Thank you very much, Chris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: And that is All In for this evening.

END

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