Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: May 17, 2018 Guest: Jerry Nadler, Andrea Bernstein, Josh Barro, Tara Dowdell, Maria Hinojosa, Matt MacKowiak
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.
HAYES: One year of the Mueller probe and everyone now agrees, it`s bigger than Watergate.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Far bigger than Watergate.
HAYES: The Trump team starts year two with another contorted defense.
RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: If there was collusion with the Russians, they would have used it.
HAYES: Tonight, the collusion, the obstruction, and why this investigation is only getting bigger. Then --
MICHAEL COHEN, LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: I`ll do anything to protect Mr. Trump.
HAYES: The ongoing fallout from the New Yorker`s piece on Michael Cohen`s slush fund. Plus --
TRUMP: These aren`t people. These are animals.
HAYES: The full context and the massive problem with the President`s language on immigrants.
TRUMP: I referred to them as animals and guess what, I always will.
HAYES: And have you ever wondered what it`s like to meet Donald Trump?
BILL GATES, FOUNDER, MICROSOFT CORPORATION: When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said Trump hears that you don`t like what Trump is doing. And I thought wow, that you`re Trump.
HAYES: Tonight exclusive video of Bill Gates describing what happened the two times he met Donald Trump.
GATES: Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. Today, one year into the Mueller probe, Donald Trump is fundraising off the fact that he is mired in the worst criminal investigation of a president since Watergate. Trump e-mailing supporters today with this message. "On this anniversary of the greatest witch hunt in American history, I am asking you to renew your sustaining membership for the 2018 year to show the witch hunters that not a single patriot backed down from our fight." Now, fact check, some of the people who were burned at the stake would probably disagree with you there. But take that, witch hunters. Now, keep in mind that the supposed witch hunt has ensnared the President`s campaign chairman and his former national security adviser among others while his lawyer/fixer has seen his office raided and appears to be headed towards a serious indictment. That former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is currently wearing two ankle bracelets for his two looming trials and just a few hours ago tonight, we learned Manafort`s former son-in-law has pled guilty and will cooperate with the government. More on that in a moment. On the Senate floor this morning, Chuck Schumer pointed out the obvious.
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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: It`s not a witch hunt when 17 Russians have been indicted. It`s not a witch hunt when the some of the most senior members of the Trump Campaign have been indicted. We should all be aghast on this one-year anniversary of Mueller`s appointment at the smear campaign by the President and his allies.
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HAYES: Team Trump says that one year of Mueller is more than enough. Rudy Guiliani telling Politico, "Come on, they`ve had a whole year. We`re going to raise the pressure to try to get this thing over with. It`s gone on long enough." For the record, the Watergate probe lasted more than two years. And one year in, Richard Nixon was also getting antsy.
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RICHARD NIXON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.
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HAYES: Trump himself is a big fan of invoking Watergate. Who can forget when he made his baseless claim that will President Obama tapped his phones and added this is Nixon Watergate, bad or sick guy. This morning after Trump T.V. promoted the latest Devin Nunes counter-theory to emerge from the swamps, Trump said if true it`s "bigger than Watergate." Giuliani meanwhile is making another argument Trump couldn`t have colluded because he and his campaign never used the Russian dirt.
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GIULIANI: They never used it is the main thing. They never used it. They rejected it. If there was collusion with the Russians, they would have used it.
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HAYES: They rejected what now? That is extremely incorrect. The Russians are, of course, the ones that hacked the DNC e-mails. According to Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress, WikiLeaks dropped the Podesta e- mails less than an hour after the Access Hollywood tape came out and Trump sited them more than 150 times in his final 30 days of the campaign. Joining me now is Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Congressman Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York. First, Congressman, what do you think of the notion that a year is enough and it`s dragged on too long?
REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY), RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, a year historically has not been enough. The Watergate prosecution as you pointed outlasted two years. The Benghazi probe which came over nothing lasted three years and the fact of the matter is that we know that so far, the Mueller investigation has been leak proof but what we know is they`ve gotten 19 or 20 indictments, they`ve gotten a bunch of guilty pleas and they`re going forward. And by the way, this cannot be wrapped up at least the obstruction of justice part of it cannot be wrapped up till after the President is interviewed by Mueller. And if he wants it wrapped up, he`ll submit to an interview and won`t make them drag him through a subpoena which would take months and months before he would end up inevitably testifying.
HAYES: Rudy Giuliani, the President`s lawyer who we just learned is working for free has argued that because the DOJ guidance that the President can`t be indicted he, therefore, cannot be subpoenaed even, his testimony cannot be compelled, do you agree with that?
NADLER: That`s frankly nonsense. Every man`s evidence is available to the courts and to justice. Whether the President can be indicted by the way is debatable. There are office of legal counsel opinions that say he cannot be, there are opinions from Ken Starr`s office and Leon Jaworski`s office that says he can be. I personally think he can be because to say he cannot be indicted is to say that he is above the law and that the framers set up another king which they were rebelling against which is inconceivable. But he certainly can be subpoenaed and as President Clinton was subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case and as Nixon was in his case.
HAYES: The tapes were subpoenaed specifically just to note that.
NADLER: There`s no difference between subpoenaing documents and testimony.
HAYES: The other argument that I`ve heard from Rudy Giuliani is that essentially that Mueller is running a sort of shadow impeachment campaign because Democrats don`t have the House and this is -- this is what this is all about, that they don`t have the House and so this is -- Mueller is essentially trying to do what Democratic politics can`t do.
NADLER: Well, that`s ridiculous. Again, there`s been no leaks from this investigation. All we know are the people who have been indicted, we know the people who pled guilty and we know the court filings. And they don`t indicate anything about the investigation other than that it seems to be very thorough and rapid. And the fact of the matter is that three things have to happen. The President has to testify which he will sooner or later. The Special Prosecutor has to write a report which he will, I assume. And we have to make sure ha that report is given to the public so we know what`s going on. And based on the evidence that comes out in that report, then Congress will have to make decisions about what if any action to take. But key is that -- is that all of that has to be public and that we have to insist that that report comes out before the election that our Republican colleagues join us in making sure that that report becomes public. And if they do not, that will be an election issue.
HAYES: I just heard something there I don`t think I`ve heard before. Insist it happens before the election. Do you have concerns --
NADLER: No, I didn`t say that. No, I didn`t say that. I said if the report comes out before the election insists that it be made public.
HAYES: Oh, I see. So if the report is completed, what you`re saying is it must be the case that upon completion and transmission to Congress, that be made public more or less immediately particularly if there`s a question about whether it would be public before or after the election.
NADLER: Well, whether it`s -- whenever the report comes out whether it`s before or after the election, it should be made public. And what I simply said if it`s before the election, I would hope Our Republican colleagues would join us in insisting that it be made public at that point.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Jerry Nadler, thanks for being with me.
NADLER: You`re welcome.
HAYES: Mueller investigation is just one year old but the FBI investigation into Trump dates back to the summer of 2016 in the heart of that campaign season. Really fascinating new New York Times report sheds light on the origins of that investigation known by the code name Crossfire Hurricane. And just how far the FBI went to keep it quiet, for one thing, agents considered them rejected interviewing key Trump associates which might have sped up the investigation but risked revealing the existence of the case. The FBI did of course, we should note, reveal its investigation to Hillary Clinton, talked quite a bit about it with then-Director James Comey even announcing shortly before the election he was reopening the case. A move that many argued cost Clinton the election. For more on the investigations, I`m joined by MSNBC Justice Analyst Matt Miller, former Spokesperson for the Department of Justice, also with me MSNBC National Security Contributor and ace New York Times Reporter Michael Schmidt. You have been reporting on this quite a bit and I want to start with what the President said this morning because it`s based partly on reporting of The New York Times, right? So the President says this morning, wow, words seem to be coming out that Obama FBI spied on the Trump Campaign with an embedded informant, Andrew McCarthy says, quoting Fox And Friends. There`s probably no doubt they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign. If so this is bigger than Watergate." How would you characterize what your reporting found?
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, MSNBC NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, that`s not what we found in our reporting. What my colleagues put out was a story on how the FBI went to extreme lengths at the beginning of its Russia investigation looking at Trump ties to Russia to keep it secret. Certain folks at the Justice Department that normally would have been told weren`t. They as you were just pointing out held back on taking some investigative measures thinking that going overt would shadow on this thing when they didn`t know. I think that people don`t appreciate how early they were on in the investigation, how little they knew and they knew they would not be able to solve this by Election Day. They knew that counterintelligence investigations especially complex ones like this could take years to figure out. And they were trying to get to the bottom of it but knowing -- but trying to do so in a fashion that would not taint the political process.
HAYES: In some ways what`s relayed in that article and that care they took there is I think proper and admirable because for precisely the reasons they feared, right? You don`t want an FBI investigation to cast a cloud over a person in a way that changes an election.
MATT MILLER, MSNBC JUSTICE ANALYST: Yes, that is exactly --
HAYES: But --
MILLER: But, I know. I hate to pick at that scab but you -- but you brought it up. That is exactly the way you`re supposed to handle an investigation of this sensitivity. And when you compare it to the Clinton case, everyone talks about you know, the situation Comey was in where if they had the Clinton -- if they had the Anthony Weiner laptop and if you know, they had to look at it, then he had to go notify Congress. The important comparison here is they didn`t have to look that laptop before the election. They could have made the same decision they made with the Trump investigation which is to delay any overt investigative steps because there was no reason to. The only reason you would need to is evidence is going to be destroyed, witnesses are going to flee -- are going to flee, none of that was at stake.
HAYES: That`s a great point, right? You can make that -- you can make that sort of prudential decision. You can say look, it`s important that we don`t taint an American election with our activities and so we`ll push something off. The key detail though is this idea that an informant -- that a government informant talked to two people on the campaign, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
SCHMIDT: Yes, the stuff on Papadopoulos and Page that we have doesn`t comport with that.
HAYES: I want to be clear -- yes, right.
SCHMIDT: No --
HAYES: I want to nail down what`s --
SCHMIDT: And look, there`s a lot of different things that have floated out there about this investigation that having -- and some things that the FBI has made mistakes on and has been criticized for, the text messages between the lead agent on the case and the lawyer at the FBI. That`s a mistake that exposed -- has exposed the bureau to accusations of bias in the process and has done damage to them. Other accusations about what the FBI did, why they started is the investigation and such have turned out not to be true. So there`s a lot of different things that have floated out there because this is a political issue at this point. This is a massive investigation but at the end of the day it, involves the President and it involves politics.
HAYES: I want to talk about this quote about the government informant because that has been what the President is sort of building this on, what Trump T.V. have talked about. At least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current informer official said. That has become a politically contentious point of Mr. Trump`s allies questioning whether the FBI was spying on the Trump Campaign or trying trap campaign officials. What -- how -- what do you think?
MILLER: You know, this is one of the weird things. Every once in a while the Trump Campaign of the President himself will roll out an argument that he thinks that helps him, roll out fact -- roll out facts that they think helps him, they`re actually very damaging. The you know, Obama Administration tapped my phones at Trump Tower would have been extremely damaging fact if it were true because it meant that a FISA judge approved the search warrant -- or approve you know, wiretapping of his phone with serious evidence. This is another example of that. If there was an informant in the campaign who was talking to the FBI, it`s because that informant presumably saw evidence of a crime and wanted to report it to law enforcement. You know, they`re trying to twist that now and say that it`s spying of some sort but it`s a damaging fact. And there`s one last thing about what he said about the Obama FBI. There`s no such thing as the Obama FBI, just as there`s no such thing as the Trump FBI. And you know, this week which is you know, it`s police week in Washington, it`s a week that the week that law enforcement is being honored, the Attorney General two days in a row Monday and Tuesday said this is the Trump era, this is the era where we back law enforcement. Once again you see the President attacking law enforcement and trying to undermine them.
HAYES: This sort of attack on the FBI is escalating right now and it seems to me that this is only going to escalate. Rudy Giuliani said we`re going to bring pressure to bear. It seems like there`s really a plan across the board to try to bringing that pressure to bear.
SCHMIDT: I sometimes struggle to understand what Giuliani is doing. He`s thrown a lot of different things.
HAYES: You`re not alone, Michael.
SCHMIDT: I get paid to do it, and I`m struggling with it. He`s thrown a lot of different things at the wall about a lot of things from Stormy Daniels to stuff about the investigation and it`s hard to figure out whether he`s trying to confuse folks, he`s trying to put stuff out there by putting some of the Stormy Daniels that took some of the bite out of the disclosure the other day.
HAYES: That`s true. That`s a good point. Yes.
SCHMIT: You know, so they are thinking ahead in a way that maybe they weren`t before. But it`s not -- you know, the President wanted advocates out there. He wanted people who could go on cable television and push his line and I think Giuliani has done that this time.
HAYES: I will leave you with this bit of wisdom from Rudy Giuliani. He said -- he told Allan Smith of the Business Insider, he would be surprised if Trump knew about that Junes 2016 Trump Tower meeting, but if the President did know, Giuliani said, I would be surprised if he could remember. Smart. Matt Miller, Michael Schmidt, thanks for being with me. Ahead, if you`ve ever wondered what the Founder of Microsoft, one of the richest man in the world thinks about Donald Trump, tonight we have your answer. Bill Gates dishes an exclusive video obtained by ALL IN. Trust me, you will want to see this. And breaking news that Paul Manafort`s former son-in-law cut a deal with federal investigators, what that means from the Mueller investigation in two minutes.
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HAYES: Donald Trump`s former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort is already wearing two ankle bracelets as he faces twos different Mueller indictments. And now, his former son-in-law and business partner just cut a plea deal with the Justice Department. Reuters breaking the news tonight that Jeffrey Yohai pled guilty to charges in Los Angeles stemming from a federal investigation into his real estate dealings. The plea deal requires him to cooperate with the other criminal probes two people with knowledge of the matter said. Yohai has not been specifically told how he will be called on to cooperate as part of the plea agreement but the two people familiar of the matter say they consider a possibility he will be asked to assist with the Mueller`s prosecution of Manafort. Here to help put this new development in context with all the other legal woes of Trump world, I`m joined by MSNBC Legal Analyst Benjamin Wittes, Editor-in-Chief of Lawfare and Andrea Bernstein, Co-Host of the Trump, Inc. podcast. Andrea, I will start with you here at the table. Former son in law Yohai was also a business partner of Paul Manafort`s, is that right?
ANDREA BERNSTEIN, CO-HOST, TRUMP INC: Well, we do know that they were involved in financial transactions in relation to Paul Manafort`s brownstone townhouse in Brooklyn. And this townhouse is at the center of the indictment. The allegation by Bob Mueller is that there was money, ill-gotten gains from the Ukraine laundered through this house in Brooklyn and that is one of the charges of money laundering that`s in the indictment. So there are court papers, there are loan documents on file in New York that show the two in some kind of financial relationship. There`s not a lot of details what that is, but clearly, this is leading very close to what Bob Mueller is looking at.
HAYES: Ben, I`m reminded of Judge Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia who sort of gave the government a hard time at a hearing of Paul Manafort where he says look, you guys are just trying to get Paul Manafort to roll on the President, you`re trying to squeeze this guy. And one thinks that indicting his former son-in-law who knows things about his business practices probably put some real pressure on Paul Manafort.
BENJAMIN WITTES, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Look, the indictment -- we don`t know the contours of the plea agreement. We don`t know the nature of the cooperation they`re seeking from him. Actually, according to the Reuters story, he doesn`t yet know, right, or at least the people who have talked to about it don`t yet know. So look, could there be a cooperation, a form of cooperation designed to exert pressure on Manafort? Yes, it could be that. It could also be the fact that this is a guy who has independent or quasi-independence legal problem. You know, this isn`t the -- a family that dots the Is and crosses all the Ts legally. And so, you know, you put a bunch of people under this kind of scrutiny, all kinds of things are going to come up. So I think it`s kind of worth waiting and seeing what the relationship between this and the Manafort case really is.
HAYES: Just one more note on this which is that Mueller did send a team of prosecutors to interview Yohai last June asking him about Manafort`s relationship with Trump, ties to Russian oligarchs, borrowing tens and against properties in New York and so that was in that report. We still know at Ben`s point whether this indictment will ultimately relate. I want to ask a question Ben, about a story that broke yesterday which was an amazing shocking story about a whistleblower who leaked a suspicious activity report that was the basis for all the reporting on Michael Cohen`s essential consultants and the payments he was getting from various entities and the -- what, precipitated him to do that was the fact that he said there were suspicious activity reports that missing in that database and he was worried someone had mucked with them. And there was a statement from FinCEN today which says, FinCEN will limit access to certain suspicious activity reports when requested by law enforcement authorities in connection with an ongoing investigation. What do you make of that?
WITTES: Well, so I make of it that in the context of a lot of -- first of all, I don`t believe that material went missing from this database or that the SAR is vanished or anything like that. I do think this is an area where there`s intense interest and therefore, the chances of leaks of SARs are nontribal and in fact have happened. And my guess is that somebody may have said hey, maybe we should restrict access to this for that reason. I don`t know what the reason was but I am very suspicious of the idea that anything went missing here.
HAYES: Yes.
BERNSTEIN: Well, I mean, I think that it`s such an interesting mirror image of your top story which is about President Trump`s charges that the FBI was after him and rigging law enforcement. And what we know about the suspicious activity report is it was leaked by a federal official that thought that was happening under the Trump administration.
HAYES: Right, in the other direction, right.
BERNSTEIN: In the other direction. Now, there are various explanations, one is that prosecutors removed it from view for whatever investigative reasons they had. This official thought maybe there was some kind of hanky-panky, we don`t know.
HAYES: Yes, it is interesting that part of -- part of what you`re seeing is this kind of like paranoia that has set in among everyone partly because of the times in which we live in and sort of how all the stuff is bound up. There`s also the fact that the actual content there, Ben, which I thought was interesting in that New Yorker Ronan Farrow report is that there are two other suspicious activity reports that have even bigger pools of money that appear to have been flowing through Michael Cohen`s essential consultants.
WITTES: Right. And so you know, if you take -- if you take both the FinCEN report and the New Yorker story as true, which is to say there are these two other reports that they blocked access to but not the ones that leaked last week, right? That suggests that there is some need to protect these other ones from an investigative point of view that is much stronger than the need to protect the ones that were not protected. And that suggests that there`s some really sensitive material in there.
BERNSTEIN: And given what we already know that a Russian oligarch linked investment fund paid Michael Cohen which is sort of explosive news on its own, you have to worry -- wonder what is in the other reports that somebody wanted to keep under wraps.
HAYES: We should als0 say that a swathe of destruction has been cut behind this. A person lost their job at AT&T because of having to do with Michael Cohen contract, Novartis fired its general counsel so more information also has sort of ripple effects throughout the world.
BERNSTEIN: Well, they`re clearly trying to get ahead of it and they`re probably doing a pretty good job because what they`re trying to say is look, we were duped, we made a mistake.
HAYES: Benjamin Wittes and Andrea Bernstein, thank you both.
BERNSTEIN: Thank you.
WITTES: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next, the President doesn`t back down from his animals remark yesterday. Hear what he had to say. Plus, ALL IN exclusive footage of Bill Gates talking about avoiding the President, bizarre questions about vaccines and Trump style stunts.
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GATES: He went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice. And then in like 20 minutes later he flew in a helicopter to the same place. So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.
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TRUMP: I`m referring and you know I`m referring to the MS-13 gangs that are coming in. These are animals. They`re coming into our country. We`re getting them out. They come in again, we`re getting them out. We need strong immigration laws. We have the weakest laws in the entire world. We have laws that are laughed at on immigration. So when the MS-13 comes in, when the other gang members come into our country, I refer to them as animals and guess what, I always will.
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HAYES: The President today attempted to clarify the immigrant animals comments he made a day ago arguing he was referring only to immigrant MS-13 gang members, not all immigrants who are incidentally also human beings. But if you heed the Republican Party suggestion and take a minute to watch the full context of Trump`s comment yesterday which you should do, what you might discover is the President really likes to conflate all immigration issues and immigrants with violent criminality. It`s something he`s been doing his entire political career.
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MARGARET MIMS, SHERIFF, FRESNO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: There could be an MS-13 gang member I know about - if they don`t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
TRUMP: We have people coming into the country or trying to come in and we`re stopping a lot of them. But we`re taking people out of the country. You wouldn`t believe how bad these people are. These aren`t people. These are animals. And we`re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that`s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast. We get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It`s crazy.
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HAYES: To talk more about the President`s dehumanizing rhetoric, I`m joined by Republican Strategist Matt Mackowiak and Maria Hinojosa, Anchor and Executive Producer of NPR`s Latino USA.
Maria, you were shaking your head during that clip. Your thoughts?
MARIA HINOJOSA, NPR: So, Chris, look, I`m going to remain calm, right, because we`re on national television. But seriously, as somebody who was not born in this country, and I refuse to allow this president to kind of define good immigrant, bad immigrant because the litmus test at this point is simply that people who were not born in this country are animals.
So I`ll remain calm, but seriously our hair should be on fire because I was in Rwanda and so I spoke to journalists who spoke to me me about what happened there and how the Tutsis were referred to as cockroaches.
So the terms that people use really have a connection. I mean, there`s such a clear connection to what the president is saying.
And then reading about fact that children are now going to be separated from their mothers when they`re trying to come to this country to seek refuge. So, first of all, there are no gang members that are coming here in droves to seek refuge, OK, these are women and children. Second of all, MS-13, dear Mr. Trump, is an American gang. You know about American gangs? Like we`ve had them? Have you watched the movie, you know, Gangs of New York? MS-13 is an American gang.
So, we don`t have an immigration problem regarding MS-13, we have a criminal problem that has nothing to do with immigration. And sadly, Chris, we have to then spend our time talking about this and trying to break down something that the president has created. The beauty is, is that people are taking control of that narrative. You know, now when you see something, say something, when people see someone being talked to disrespectfully because they`re an immigrant or being treated like an animal or speaking in Spanish and being disrespected, that`s when you have to say something, that`s when you see something.
When you see something like people being treated like animals because that`s what the president is calling us, you say something.
HAYES: Matt, do you understand why the president`s rhetoric doesn`t give him a huge amount of benefit of the doubt when he talks about MS-13 and such?
MATT MACKOWIAK, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah, so I`m reminded of that brilliant insight throughout the campaign that the mainstream media takes Trump literally, but not seriously and Trump supporters take him seriously and not literally.
I admit that his vocabulary is not the broadest and widest vocabulary of previous presidents. And so he often likes to use specific phrases. They`re comfortable phrases for him to use. And on the issue of race, there have been times when he said things certainly that have created problems and controversy and that some people have seen as racist. I totally understand that.
In this case, I don`t think that fighting over whether MS-13 is a scourge in this country that creates real problems. 10,000 MS-13 members in this country. They`re famous for machete attacks. Their famous for their motto "rape, control, kill."
Oh please what? You deny there`s 10,000 of them?
HINOJOSA: Seriously? We`re talking about immigration and now suddenly we`re talking about you`re talking about certain gang members who have done horrific acts, but you`re talking about that within context of immigration? That`s exactly what you`re trying to do. And that`s exactly what sadly journalists like I now have to confront and say you cannot put the two together.
It is absolutely important when we say that MS-13 is a gang that was born in Los Angeles. I`m not going to allow you to say that this is some kind of immigrant imported gang. It`s not true.
MACKOWIAK: Maria, does MS-13 prey on immigrants? Yes or no.
HINOJOSA: Absolutely. Let me tell you something, but what I said is that this is not an immigration problem, this is a criminal problem that has nothing to do with one thing or the other. You and the president want to put the two together. Myself as someone who was not born in this country, who reports on immigrants, will refuse you -- will refuse anyone who attempts to make that happen because it`s not true.
MACKOWIAK: Understand that in this case, he was responding to something that a sheriff in Fresno County was saying, which is an important point to make. I`m sorry, Chris, go ahead.
HAYES: No, no, no, finish that, because I want to follow up on that.
MACKOWIAK: Yeah, I just wanted to say, look, again, I recognize that on immigration he has not always used language that is specific and that is careful. That`s part of the reason why I think he is seen as such a bold speaker and able to get the attention of the media and of his supporters. So, I recognize that. I do.
I would also admit, I would also put on the table the fact that he put a path to citizenship on the table for the DACA kids, which is farther than any other elected Republican has gone. So, I think if you want to talk about immigration, we can talk about that in a broader sense. In this case, I think this was about MS-13.
HAYES: Let me say this -- I think that that position was bad faith, so let`s just put that aside. You know, this was an interesting case. So, there`s this idea, right, about the sort of criminalization, right. They`re all gang members, gang affiliated. The specific question of the sheriff was she`s frustrated she cannot unilaterally deem someone MS-13, right. She says, "I know," quote, "they`re MS-13."
But lots of things people know aren`t true. This is a federal judge, a Bush appointee, smacking down ICE in court because they tried to deport a DACA kid who they said was gang affiliated who was not gang affiliated. Reading here, "most troubling to the court was a continued assertion Mr. Ramirez is gang affiliated despite providing no evidence specific to Mr. Ramirez to the immigration court in connection with his administrative proceedings and offering no evidence to this court to support its assertions four months later."
This, Matt, strikes me as precisely the issue. When you say the sheriff was saying -- what the sheriff was saying was I`m frustrated with the process, the due process that is being demanded of me to deem someone a gang member.
MACKOWIAK: Well, I guess the question I would ask back to that is, was there no due process before Trump was in office? I think that`s the question.
HAYES: In immigration courts, not much.
MACKOWIAK: Well...
HAYES: I don`t know how much time you spend around immigration courts, but not much.
MACKOWIAK: Sure. I worked at the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2004.
What I would say is that there`s no question you can bring up an example here or there that makes the government look back, that makes due process look bad, I have no doubt about that.
I think you also have to recognize that this -- this criminal gang, MS-13, is a very serious threat particularly in New York and Virginia, throughout the northeast, yes in Los Angeles. They operate in 40 states. 10,000 members around the country.
I`m not sitting here and saying every single one of their members is an illegal alien. I don`t know the numbers. I don`t know the numbers...
HINOJOSA: Did you just say illegal alien -- did you just say illegal alien on national television?
MACKOWIAK: I said they`re not, Maria. I said they`re not.
HINOJOSA: Are you serious? I`m sorry. So you just labeled immigrants, aliens, and you`re calling human beings illegals? I remind you illegals is not a noun. We are not illegals and it is not a noun.
You know what the thing that you said, Chris, is you said Trump likes to use comfortable language for him, that comfortable language.
HAYES: Matt said that, yeah.
HINOJOSA: OK, that is a problem what is comfortable for this president. What is also comfortable for this president, sadly, as a journalist we have to recognize, is that he lies on multiple occasions, which filters down to his -- to parts of his administration. So, that ICE is lying.
This is not the first time that ICE has lied. Latino USA broke the story of Estrella who was an undocumented trans immigrant, taken from a court room and ICE said that they weren`t there. The videotape proved that they were lying.
HAYES: I want to give one last piece of data here, 143,000 overall arrests from ICE in 2017. Of those, 796 MS-13. That is, of course, less than 1 percent.
Whatever you think about MS-13, a lot of people being pulled out of this country have nothing to do with it.
Matt MacKowiak and Maria Hinojosa, thank you very much.
MACKOWIAK: Thanks.
HAYES: Coming up next, a Republican congressman`s truly revolutionary climate change idea in tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two. Plus, All In exclusive video you do not want to miss. Hear one of the richest men on planet earth talk candidly about what it`s like meeting President Trump.
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BILL GATES, MICROSOFT FOUNDER: Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV, so I was able to explain those are rarely confused with each other.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, Congressman Mo Broosks of Alabama had a rough 2017. He lost the senate primary in his home state to Roy Moore, placing a distant third after spending nearly a million dollars in the race. Congressman Brooks endorsed Moore in the general election, and when allegations emerged Moore had sexually assaulted underaged girls, let`s just say Brooks didn`t handle it so well.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe roy Moore over the women?
REP. MO BROOKS, (R) ALABAMA: I believe that the Democrats will do great damage to our country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you still believe Roy Moore?
BROOKS: I believe that the Democrats will do great damage to our country on a myriad of issues.
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HAYES: Well, it`s been a few months now and it looks like Mo Brooks is back to his good old hot takes. In fact today he issued a literal hot take as in a take about heat. That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: Republican Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama is a well known climate change skeptic, but he took it to a whole new level in a hearing of the science, space, and technology committee yesterday.
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BROOKS: What about the white cliffs can of Dover, California where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines and time and time again you`re having the cliffs crash into the sea. All of that displaces water which forces it to rise, does it not?
DR. PHILIP DUFFY, PRESIDENT, JACKSON HOLE RESEARCH CENTER: I`m pretty sure on human time scales those are miniscule effects.
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HAYES: Yep, that was a U.S. congressman on the science committee arguing to a respected scientist sea levels are rising because a lot of rocks are falling in the water. But Mo Brooks wasn`t done yet.
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BROOKS: Would it surprise you to know that as global temperatures rise assuming for the moment that they do, that that actually increases the amount of ice that is collected on Antarctica?
DUFFY: That`s not true, sir. We have satellite records clearly documenting a shrinkage of Antarctic the ice sheet and acceleration of that shrinkage.
BROOKS: I`m sorry. But I don`t know where you`re getting your information, but the scientific data I have seen.
DUFFY: I have national snow and ice data center, International Aeronautics and Space Administration.
BROOKS: Well, I`ve got a NASA base in my district, and apparently they`re telling you one thing and me a different thing.
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HAYES: Do you ever wonder what people who have actually met Donald Trump, especially powerful, successful people in American business and beyond, who have had to try and interact with him because he`s the leader of the free world, say about those encounters behind closed doors?
All In has obtained some never before seen footage that gives you a good idea of what one of the wealthiest men in the world, Bill Gates, thinks of the president. Bill Gates took questions during a recent Gates Foundation meeting with staff and he talked about meeting Donald Trump. Here`s what he had to say.
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GATES: Yeah, so I`ve -- I never had met Donald Trump before he was elected. There was a thing during the election where he and I were at the same place and I avoided him. Anyway, then he got elected. And so I went to see him in December. He -- he knew my daughter, Jennifer, because Trump has this horse show thing down in Florida. In fact, he went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice, and then like 20 minutes later, he flew in on a helicopter to the same place. So, clearly he had been driven away, but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.
Anyway, so when I first talked to him, it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter`s appearance. But Linda didn`t like that too well.
Anyway, so I saw him at Trump Tower and I said hey, science and innovation is a great thing. You should be a leader who drives -- and that conversation was about a broad set of things in energy, in health, in education, you know, pick things you want to do that are big, HIV vaccine, you could, you know, accelerate that. Be associated with innovation.
And then the second time I saw him was the March after that, the March 2017 in the White House. In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren`t a bad thing, because he was considering a commission to look into ill effects of vaccines. And somebody whose name is Robert Kennedy Jr. was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things.
And I said no, that`s a dead end. That would be a bad thing. Don`t do that.
Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV. So I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.
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HAYES: Oh, but wait, there`s more, including how President Trump talks about himself, next.
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GATES: When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said, "Trump hears that you don`t like what trump is doing." And I thought, wow, but you`re Trump. So, I don`t -- you know, I didn`t know if the third party forum was always expected. Gates says that Gates knows that you`re not doing things right.
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HAYES: That was Microsoft Founder Bill Gates at a recent Gates Foundation meeting describing a meeting with President Trump in video obtained exclusively by us here at All In. We reached out to the Foundatio, of course, for comment but have not yet received a response. Joining me now to talk about it, Democratic strategist Tara Dowdell and MSNBC contributor; and Josh Barro, senior editor at Business Insider.
You wonder what those meetings are like, because obviously all these people have to go into the room with him and I think a lot of these people don`t respect him, don`t think very highly of him and have to kind of pretend to. What do you make of it?
TARA DOWDELL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: He said Gates knows you`re wrong.
I mean, here`s what we`re looking at. We`re looking at a president that doesn`t know the difference between HIV and HPV, but he has memorized Bill Gates` daughter`s appearance. So if he spent more time actually learning policy, if he devoted just a quarter of the time that he devotes to harassing women and gawking at women to actual policy, memorizing and learning policy, I think the country would be a lot better off.
So this is what we have. We have a president that spends more time...
HAYES: That`s where the mental energy is.
DOWDELL: ...gawking at women and memorizing their appearances than we do actually doing policy briefings or actual work.
JOSH BARRO, BUSINESS INSIDER: Although, I think one thing I learned from this is in this instance it`s a good thing that he wasn`t spending the time on policy, because this question he asks Gates about should I have a commission about these vaccine conspiracy theories, this was a thing that had been in the news at the time. There had been a meeting in January at Trump Tower before Trump took office, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who`s a leading proponent of vaccine conspiracy theories and spreads this nonsense about vaccines cause autism, whatever, he took a meeting at Trump Tower, comes down and says to reporters the president has asked me to chair a commission on vaccines, and people sort of freak out like what? Why is he going to do that?
And at the time the transition team said, well, no decisions have been made yet. And then in February of 2017, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes out and says, well, I`ve had a bunch of meetings and I`ve been exchanging papers with these people, and it seems that it wasn`t just Bill Gates, that there were other people around the president who said to him, you know, no, don`t do that and the inertia in the White House where a lot of things just don`t get done I think it`s a good thing that thing didn`t get done.
HAYES: Well, I mean, this is the thing, though, is that he doesn`t -- I mean I want to distinguish between two things, being not a smart person, which I don`t think is true of him, and not caring about details of anything. And just the latter is so evident in all of the accounts of him. It`s very evident here. And it`s very evident from Bill Gates who is a person who obviously -- whatever you think about Bill Gates -- is a person he does care about the details of things.
DOWDELL: Right. I mean, that`s exactly right. I mean, he is someone who -- first of all, he`s arrogant. Donald Trump, as insecure as he is, it drives this arrogance that he has as well.
So you`re right, he doesn`t care about the details, and on top of it you add to the fact that he thinks he knows more than people like Bill Gates. He is the first president in 50 years that has not nominated a science adviser, in 50 years in the United States, multiple Republicans and Democrats.
HAYES: I also -- let me play one more clip. Gates sort of -- it`s very interesting because you get to see a little bit also about how people like Gates think of the president. Here`s him describing him as a good salesman. Take a listen.
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GATES: So at one point in the conversation we were talking about all this scientific possibility, and you know, he -- he actually in a conversation like that wants to be friendly, wants to -- you know, he`s a good salesman. He`s mostly sold real estate historically.
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BARRO: I mean, you often hear from people who come out of his meetings and they say he`s very charming.
HAYES: Right, yes.
BARRO: And so it`s, you know, he is a good salesman. And then in terms of him not caring about the details of things, he`s convinced that he just has a fantastic gut intuition about all sorts of things, writes in The Art of the Deal about how this is how he does real estate, you just stand on the corner, you ask people if this is a good neighborhood or not, market research studies are crap. And, you know, this served him well at certain points in his career. He made a big bet on Manhattan around the time in the late 70s, early 80s.
HAYES: People thought it was crazy.
BARRO: When people thought the city was going to hell and he said, no, this is going to be luxurious and wonderful again. And that bet was correct. It doesn`t work so well on, say, vaccine policy to be like I`m just going to go by my gut.
HAYES: WEll, and also like there`s also just a way of conducting yourself here -- I mean, the detail about talking about his daughter and how it like skeeves out Melinda Gates, there`s also a lack of self-awareness that I find so fascinating.
DOWDELL: Oh, clearly. I mean, the fact that you would say that in front of both Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, given first of all even if you were that shady, which we know Trump is, the fact you that would feel so comfortable as to say that in front of this couple, this global icon couple and feel comfortable saying that and in detail...
HAYES: Let me tell you about the physical appearance of your daughter...
DOWDELL: Exactly, not offhanded.
BARRO: The president says things that make him sound creepy all the time. I mean, he`s talked on national television about how he might date his daughter.
HAYES: Yes, he does not seem to realize that.
Tara Dowdell and Josh Barro -- or doesn`t care -- thank you very much.
Don`t forget you can get this show All In as a podcast wherever you are. You can get All In with Chris Hayes straight into your ear holes. And make sure you check out all three of the episodes of our brand new podcast, supplementary special for you. It`s called Why is This Happening? And you can subscribe away. Three episodes waiting for you right now.
That is ALL IN for this evening. THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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