Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: October 12, 2018 Guest: Kristen Clarke, Rick Wilson, Mehdi Hasan, Tara Dowdell, Howard Dean
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: Tune in Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We needed badly. We need this votes.
REID: The plot to steal 2018.
STACEY ABRAMS (D), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, GEORGIA: What we want people to understand is we`re fighting this.
REID: Tonight, the woman bringing the lawsuit to stop voter suppression in Georgia joins me live. Then, why the Trump reaction to a missing Washington Post Columnist is becoming a national security crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s his statement to U.S.-Saudi relations, sir?
TRUMP: I would say they`re excellent.
REID: Plus, inside the rapidly expanding tent city of migrant children in Trump`s America. And 25 days until Election Day. Why Democrats running as Democrats are making the biggest wave.
REP. BETO O`ROURKE (D), TEXAS: Are you with me?
REID: When ALL IN starts now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Good evening from New York. I`m Joy Reid in for Chris Hayes. In the immediate wake of Brett Kavanaugh`s confirmation to the Supreme Court, Republican messaging to the public was that the fight was a total win for them, that it turned things around for Republican candidates in the midterms, fired at the base and effectively shut down a blue wave. In other words, Republicans wanted you to believe that they are winning. But tonight with 25 days to Election Day, there are lots of signs that Republicans were either faking that bravado or were just wrong.
Polls show a majority of Americans still disapprove of Kavanaugh`s confirmation and a majority supports further investigation of the newly minted Associate Justice even if those investigations lead to his removal. And in states around the country, Republican candidates sure aren`t acting like they`re confident that they can win this November without extra help because across the country Republicans are working overtime to try and engineer an electorate that will keep them in power. By blocking people from voting if they`re not the kinds of people who tend to vote Republican.
The Republican majority Supreme Court just refused to block a voter I.D. law in North Dakota which disproportionately targets Native Americans who just happened to be a key part of the debate -- of the base for Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp who`s fighting a tough battle for reelection. Another voter I.D. law was just upheld in Arkansas and it was passed last year by the Republican state legislature. And in Ohio, a federal judge ruled against voters who were purged from the rolls by the Republican Secretary of State.
But nowhere is the fight over voting rights more in your face than in Georgia where access to the ballot could decide the state`s next governor. It`s now a dead heat between Republican Brian Kemp, the current Secretary of State and Democrat Stacey Abrams who will be the nation`s first black woman governor and the first ever governor of Georgia who is not a white man. Kemp is running a familiar southern strategy trying to scare his almost entirely white conservative base into voting for him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN KEMP (R), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, GEORGIA: I got a big truck just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself. Yes, I just said that. I`m Brian Kemp. If you want a politically and correct conservative, that`s me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Now Kemp is being sued for using his official role overseeing Georgia`s elections. Yes, he`s overseeing his own election to disenfranchise tens of thousands of people of color while he`s running for governor. The Associated Press reported that Kemp`s office has put 53,000 voter registrations on hold under the state`s exact match law passed by the Republican legislature and championed by Kemp himself.
According to the A.P., 70 percent of the voters whose registrations are on hold are black compared to Georgia`s overall population which is 32 percent black. In a race this close, those 53,000 votes could make all the difference. And that`s on top of 1.4 million voter registrations in Georgia already purged from the rolls since 2012 according to the A.P. A coalition of civil rights groups is now suing Kemp in federal court arguing his office is violating the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
And I`m joined now by the head of the organization leading that lawsuit, Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Kristen, thank you so much for being here.
KRISTEN CLARKE, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL LAWYERS COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW: Thank you for having me.
REID: So let`s go back through these 1.2 million people who are disenfranchised under this law. They`re not just black because you are suing on a coalition that includes an Asian American organization, a Latino organization, African-American organizations. So this seems to have been target essentially at voters who are not white.
CLARKE: Yes, absolutely. When we conducted an analysis of the scheme back in 2016, we have to remember this is not new, we sued Brian Kemp over the same exact voter suppression scheme in 2016 and found that it clearly had a disproportionate impact on African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans who are trying to make it onto the registration rolls. We sued Brian Kemp then and won and so it is remarkable to be here two years later where the state is seeking to resurrect something that they know is discriminatory.
We look again and find the same evidence. It has a disproportionate impact on minority communities and those are the very people who the state wants to lock out of the process. So it`s why we filed this lawsuit. We believe there should be a level playing field where everyone gets to have a voice.
REID: And if in fact, left only 9.8 3 percent of those pending for failure to verify applications or submitted by applicants identifying as white. Can you just explained how exact match works and how it is keeping people from being able to vote?
CLARKE: So how it works is somebody trying to register, completes a form that gets -- entered into a database by a county registrar and if there is one letter, one hyphen, one accent mark, one extra space that deviates from information in the state`s database, that individual is penalized and their form is not processed in the routine way that other people`s forms get processed. It is a process that is riddled with errors.
You can imagine for people entering the information into the state database or on the county level, they are making errors all over the place. And what we find is that people of color have names that are a little bit less typical and that`s where the errors are at their highest. Brian Kemp knows this, the state knows this, and they knew it in 2016. He is a repeat offender seeking to race forward with this discriminatory scheme once again. And so we`re in court now to stop him.
REID: Yes. And I spoke with a state civil rights official this morning to talk about somebody whose name is Devin who was caught an exact match because the Registrar wrote Devon, so little thing like that. Just -- I want to have you explain to people if you`re on that list of 53,000 people, what should you do and should you still show up to vote on November 6th?
CLARKE: You should show up. The state has sent out a notice to these individuals that`s not clear that likely got overlooked. But those individuals should absolutely show up on Election Day. They should be given the opportunity to vote. The only thing is that they may be subjected to a stricter I.D. requirement than other individuals.
We hope that we can provide relief before Election Day. We encourage people to call our election protection hotline at 866-OURVOTE. We have trained legal volunteers that are on hand providing information to make sure that people know what they need to participate on Election Day and we`ve been getting tons of calls sadly from people across Georgia.
REID: Yes. I mean, the important thing is do not give up your right to vote easily. Make sure that you fight to get to vote. Not provisionally but to usually vote.
CLARKE: That`s right.
REID: Kristen Clarke, thank you very much. Thank you for what doing.
CLARKE: Thanks for having me.
REID: I appreciate it. Well, for more on the stakes of -- over battle -- in this battle over voting rights in Georgia and beyond, I`m joined by New York Times Columnist Michelle Goldberg who is now officially an MSNBC Contributor, congratulations and Republican Strategist Rick Wilson.
Rick, I actually want to start with you. I usually would do ladies first but Brian Kemp, his response to the fact that you have this civil rights organization leading a lawsuit of five Georgia organizations. This is a Georgia Asian-American organization, a Georgia based African -- Georgia based African-American, Georgia based Latino organizations, one that was created by Joe Lowery, the Reverend Joe Lowery, he has responded to this lawsuit by calling them outside agitators. And that`s a phrase that will be familiar to anyone who has studied the civil rights movement. That`s the way that he`s playing this.
Please explain to us as somebody who`s been in the Republican Party who understands the southern Republican Party why is it that they feel comfortable being this open about running an old-fashioned Southern Strategy to say to Black and Brown and Asian-American people you may not vote.
RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, Joy, this is a two-point race basically according to all the -- all the surveys which in the state of Georgia, one of the reddest of red states in a lot of ways is terrifying to guys like Brian. And so they`re going to pull out every trope in the old catalog and they feel a lot more free to do that in the era of Trump to sort of signal, blow that dog whistle in the era of Trump and they`re terrified because it`s a two-point race. He should be a generic Republican, should probably be up seven to ten points right now without breaking a sweat and you know, they`re fighting it Stacey Abrams and here fighting it down till the last dog dies.
So he`s definitely feeling on attention and pressure here. And these are the tactics of a base only election. He`s willing to burn any chance of African-Americans or Hispanics or anybody else in these growing Georgia populations. You know, Georgia`s 30.6 percent African-American if my numbers are correct and so he`s willing to play this game very aggressively. And in a way that also seems to me -- you know, I haven`t studied the lawsuits per se but it seems to me that these things are just fraught with legal jeopardy for him to have them overturned. And you know, based on the election, he`s going to scrap for every vote and try to keep everybody else off the playing field. It explains it but it doesn`t excuse it.
REID: Yes, you know -- and Michelle, you wrote a piece on this question of and I`ve been thinking a lot about this idea of minority rule that you have you know, a white population of conservative Christians who say we are going to rule this state, this county, this city, this country and it really doesn`t matter who becomes the majority or what they want. You will be ruled by us period, end of story.
And you write part of the reason this country is sliding into minority rule in structural. The Senate and the electoral college both gave disproportionate power to white rural voters, that the right is also gaming the system to try and stop changing demographics from changing the country`s balance of political power. It`s very open now.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Right. It`s very open, it`s very obvious. I mean it`s essentially the legislative version of the people marching around Charlottesville saying you will not replace us.
REID: Yes.
GOLDBERG: You know, and Stacey Abrams is this remarkable candidate who basically is trying a new sort of Democratic campaign in a southern state. And I remember when she first told me about it last year of this idea that you know, Georgia is only a little bit under 53 percent non-Hispanic white, right? It`s a very diverse state. It`s a very kind of thriving state, you know, with like a lot of young people, of technology. And so it`s a state where the demographics are changing in ways that are favorable to the Democratic Party.
She was convinced that rather than running the way people usually run in southern states which is to find a slightly less conservative white guy, she could kind of harness the power of this potential new electorate. And it looked like she was getting really close to doing that. I mean if you just -- if you look at the polls, if you look at all these new voter registrations, but that depends on this new electorate actually being allowed to vote for her.
REID: Yes. And I mean, Rick, I`m old enough to remember when Republicans used to say that if you`re in a demographic situation where there`s this rising tide, let`s say of Hispanic voters in your cohort, if there are more Asian-Americans coming around, I remember there used to be a lot of courting of Arab-Americas. They said you know, we need to try to eat into that constituency because we`re losing the demographic battle overall. They said -- even try to get African-American voters based on common social conservative ideas. That is gone. Republicans have said nope, we -- are Republicans behind closed doors comfortable with this idea that they are willing to rule a hostile majority as long as they rule.
WILSON: No. Actually a lot of them are terrified of it because an awful lot of Republicans even today the ones who are all you know, bowing down to Trump recognize for years that we`ve been insufficient in our efforts to reach African-Americans and insufficient in our efforts to reach Hispanics, and insufficient in our efforts to reach Asians. And now what`s happened in the era of Trump is you have to have this assertive position that says, nah we don`t need you. We want 55-year-old white guys who watch Fox News, that`s it. That`s the base. We`re going to play to that audience. That`s where we`re going to go.
And you know, as every political strategist in history has said, you cannot get to a majority by subtraction. You just can`t get there. And right now you know, you`re looking at an argument where the Republican majority in Georgia is under demographic challenge and so instead of saying hey we`re going to have different candidates, we`re going to flex a little bit, we`re going to do a little better at outreach, it`s no, we`re not going to play. We want our base to turn out, that`s it, and that`s the game.
REID: And that only works, Michelle Goldberg, as long as white women play along as long. As a majority of white women go along and add themselves to this white male sort of dominance, it works.
GOLDBERG: Right.
REID: But my question is in the wake of Kavanaugh, how solid can that? I mean, it`s maybe 50 percent, but can they keep it being 53 percent.
GOLDBERG: I don`t know. I mean, I think that you know, obviously Stacey Abrams is going to do I think really well with single women who took constituency that she`s specifically targeted, and you know there are a lot of these wearing women, I`ve met them in Georgia who weren`t particularly politically active, you know had a PTA moms who woke up after Donald Trump was elected and were scared and traumatized and are now out there organizing like nothing anyone has ever seen.
Whether there`s enough of them, you know whether there`s enough of them who sort of see their self-interest in being women and citizens as opposed to their self-interested being part of the vanishing white majority, that remains to be seen.
REID: That is the trillion dollar question. Michelle Goldberg, welcome to the family.
GOLDBERG: Thank you.
RIED: Rick Wilson, thank you very much. Congratulations on that book, man. Great to have you both. And up next, how Donald Trump`s non- committal response to the potential murder of a Washington Post Columnist is creating a national security crisis. Mehdi Hasan and Malcolm Nance joined me to talk about the latest on missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi in two minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is a very serious thing and we`re looking at it in a very serious manner, OK. And we`ll see you. We have a big crowd.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you spoken to the King of Saudi Arabia about this matter?
TRUMP: I have not. I have not.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have plans to see him, sir?
TRUMP: I will. I will be calling him. I will be calling at some point King Salman.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Donald Trump is under renewed pressure tonight after a series of non-committal responses to the disappearance of a Washington Post columnist in Turkey last week. Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul late Tuesday and hasn`t been seen since. Turkish officials say they`re confident that Khashoggi was murdered. And now businesses including CNBC are pulling out of a Saudi investment conference this month as a result.
Notably, the CEO of Uber is among those dropping out of the future investment initiative conference in Riyadh. That`s especially significant because the Saudi Arabians sovereign wealth fund is a major Uber investor. But do you know who`s still planning to attend the conference? The U.S. Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVEN MNUCHIN, TREASURY SECRETARY, UNITED STATES: I am planning on going at this point. If more information comes out and changes, we could look at that but I am planning on going.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Here to help me understand what`s going on as Mehdi Hasan Columnist and Senior Contributor at the Intercept and Host of the deconstructed podcast and MSNBC Terrorism Analyst Malcolm Nance. Thank you both for being here. Mehdi, I`m going to start with you because I think it`s confounding to a lot of people. This seems pretty simple. This is a U.S. resident, wrote for The Washington Post, he`s thought dead, presumed dead, perhaps murdered inside this consulate. Donald Trump can`t bring himself to say unequivocally this is a terrible thing. We`re going to get to the bottom of it. Why?
MEHDI HASAN, COLUMNIST AND SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, THE INTERCEPT: You`re right. He won`t say unequivocally. He got more angry at the cost of Hamilton. He got angry at Nordstrom when they dropped Ivanka`s clothing chain. He doesn`t get angry when a permanent resident for the United States is murdered on foreign soil by an allied government. And they aren`t -- the answer, well, there`s many potential answers.
One of the obvious ones is, is he making money out of Saudi Arabia which is a question that`s being asked a lot now because we never got the Trump`s tax returns. We know that the Saudis spent a lot of money on his apartment. He bragged about it a couple years ago in the action campaign that they spent $40, $50 million on his apartment earlier this year, the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan, posted the first increase in revenue in two years in its first quarter thanks to the Saudi entourage with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman coming to stay.
It`s really odd. I mean this is a President with lots of conflicts of interest and a President who likes authoritarian leaders like the Saudi King and the Saudi Crown Prince, so it`s a perfect storm.
REID: Yes, absolutely. Let`s just actually play Donald Trump. He`s in Mobile, Alabama on August 21st, 2015 and this is Donald Trump talking about Saudi Arabia to your very point Mehdi.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Saudi Arabia -- and I get along great with all of them. They buy apartments for me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And Malcolm, it`s not just Trump, it`s also his son-in-law. You know, we all remember, you and I have talked about this many, many times when Jared Kushner went hand in hand over to the Mideast to Qatar and to Saudi Arabia looking to get that 666 Fifth Avenue building paid off. He made buddies with NBS, with the leader of Saudi Arabia. Is this just as crass as that, that the Trump family are in hock, they have moneyed interests with the Saudis and therefore this is just going to be let go?
MALCOLM NANCE, MSNBC TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, it`s quite possible that that`s true, that it is just going to be let go. And now to the chagrin of the Trump family, it`s probably not going to be Robert Mueller that puts that information out. If anything, it`s going to be the Alliance of the government of Turkey, Erdogan`s Turkey and the government of Qatar who have a grudge against the Saudi government for imposing a blockade against them, and they`ve created this sort of ad-hoc Alliance. And the Turks themselves have their own interests that they need from Donald Trump. One of which is the release or I`m sorry, not the release but the rendition of Fethullah Gulen, one of the ones biggest enemies who is a resident of Pennsylvania.
And so I think there`s going to be some Middle East blackmail, something which they`re very good at between the Trump family and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Erdogan in Turkey. Because if the real story gets out that it -- that it`s true that the Saudis did this murder and that the United States may have known about it, then you have a something that`s a crisis that could take down both government.
REID: Yes, and Mehdi, you know, it was your -- the news organization that you work for they put that did do this story that hints at the fact that Jared Kushner was very open. That he liked his father-in-law had very loose lips when in the -- when in the presence of foreign leaders whom he probably should not have been chatting to, right? And that he may have given information to the Saudis that was helpful to them in determining who was speaking about them out of turn. Is there -- I mean, what do we have to back that up?
HASAN: Well, I mean, the report from my colleagues also mentioned, you remember the Intercept that MBS himself bragged to others that he had Jared Kushner in his pocket. So the close relationship between these two -- these two princes if you could call them that, has been known for all. What`s interesting is what I -- what I always find so fascinating when we talk about Jared Kushner and MBS is they`re both so similar. They`re both kind of spoiled brats in their 30s, over-promoted and actually not very good at their jobs.
Everything MBS touches turns to dust. The war in Yemen, disaster. The blockade of Qatar, disaster. And now if he ordered this assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, I think it`s backfired in a way he never imagined. That maybe he thought that his great Davos in the desert conference would fall apart like this over the death of Jamal Khashoggi where all these U.S .media companies are pulling out of sponsors. Richard Branson is saying he doesn`t want Saudi money. You`ve got Arianna Huffington saying she won`t speak there.
I mean, one thing I would say though, I mean it`s easy to line up and bash Trump and we should. He`s the President but all these U.S. media companies and all these U.S. business leaders, the head of Uber, I mean why did it take the killing of Khashoggi for them to think again about how much they buddied up with the Saudis? I mean, the Saudis have been starving and blockading the people of Yemen for several years now.
REID: Yes. And it is a fair point you know, Malcolm, because just the people who are quitting that conference tells you who was going to the conference, right, and just how sort of cuddled up American businesses, international businesses were with the Saudis. How is it that we`re just now having people have a come -- you know, sort of a come-to-Jesus moment to mix all sorts of metaphors about who this government is.
NANCE: Well, you know, I lived over there for seven years and in the Gulf states and just recently returned to the United States. And the one thing that we can say unequivocally is they have ridiculous amounts of money. I mean, they`re not billionaires, they`re technically trillionaires that allow the state to hold on to their money. And they are developing lots of work and in the region and they have many, many lobbyists here in the United States. And so there`ll our guess is what everyone really wants. And that`s why Donald Trump scheduled his first visit to Saudi Arabia as his first state visit as President of the United States and was overwhelmed at the type of you know, money that they have and the luxuriousness of their buildings.
Look, and they realize for the first time the Saudis, that a President of the United States is in play. He`s not going to lecture them on democracy, he`s going to want in on the deal. And if they can do that which mom had been Salman apparently is done with the facilitation of Jared Kushner, then you can -- if you can buy a President then you can essentially buy his silence. And by going this one step too far by possibly killing Khashoggi -- we haven`t seen the body yet and we`re probably going to hear the audio tape, then he has Donald Trump over a barrel and Donald Trump apparently seems to enjoy sitting over that barrel.
REID: Yes, indeed. Mehdi Hasan, Malcolm Nance, thank you both. I really appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. And after the break, with over 100 migrant children still, still separated from their parents as of the latest report, the Trump administration is reportedly considering options for a new process of family separation at the border. We`ll give you the details -- the details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: It has been nearly four months since Donald Trump was forced to reverse his policy of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents. Two weeks ago, the Trump administration reported that 136 of those children are still in custody, still separated from their moms and dads. That includes three kids under five years old. Today the administration invited reporters to tour its density in Tornillo, Texas where the government says it`s detaining migrant children who came across the border without a parent, so-called unaccompanied minors.
This is U.S. government video of the facility released today which was showing because the media were not allowed to film inside the detention camp. This tent city did not even exist at the start of this year and it was initially designed to house around 450 children. It`s been dramatically expanded over the course of the year as the Trump administration systematically reduced the number of children being released to live with relatives or sponsors.
Officials say the camp now has around 3,800 beds and that there are currently 1,500 kids age 13 to 17 being held there. They say children who pass through the facility are kept in the system at Tornillo or elsewhere for an average of 59 days, which is up from the 30 days that was common for unaccompanied children under the Obama administration.
And joining me now from outside the detention camp in Tornillo is NBC News national security and justice reporter, Julia Ainsley, who toured the camp today.
Julia, thank you for being here.
JULIA AINSLEY, NATIONAL SECURITY AND JUSTICE REPORTER, NBC NEWS: Thanks, Joy.
REID: We have a little bit of a delay. So, I was locked in Tornillo in the summer. And since that time, it has obviously expanded greatly. We saw that video. It looked very familiar to me.
I wonder if, as you were touring that facility, if unlike when we were there, when I was there before, they allowed you to talk to any children.
AINSLEY: Well, yes, you know, officially, we`re not supposed to talk to any children. They say that`s part of privacy reasons. A big part of it is because they want to show you that government narrative. They want those pictures out there. They wanted to show what is in a lot of ways normal teenage life, we saw kids playing soccer, we saw their arts and crafts projects, we saw, you know, people kind of getting together and going to school like you would see any normal teenager.
But we were able to talk to a few children on the sidelines, of course, we won`t disclose their names for their privacy reasons, they are minors, after all, but we really did get what was at the heart of that. There was a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala that I had a chance to talk to. And she said, when she left her home, Joy, she didn`t even know that the U.S. detained children. She thought as soon as she got to the United States, she would be able to join her brother, who`s an adult living in Texas, and that she`d be able to claim asylum, that`s what she was told when she left her home.
She got here, she was held for two and a half months in Miami and now she`s been in Tornillo about a month. And she doesn`t know when that day will come. She`s confused. She`s a teenager trying to navigate a really complex legal system.
And speaking to her, I think, really got to what`s at the heart of all of this.
REID: Yes.
AINSLEY: You can have a clean facility, you can have it air conditioned, you can teach school, but these are children in a very abnormal situation and it will affect them. The longer they stay here, child welfare advocates say these children need to be in their homes. And as you pointed out this policy where we require longer background checks, even of parents and of everyone in the household, is in large part to blame. The commander of this facility said as much today.
REID: Yes. And just to be clear, you know, when parents are sending these children unaccompanied, it isn`t that these children are coming here expecting to be on their own, there is a person at the other end of that circuit that the parent is sending them to this cousin, or this brother, or this auntie. And it is the U.S. that is creating this enormous tent camp. And instead of sending them to that person, they`re putting them in a camp. There`s nothing normal about detention in a giant military camp.
When you were there, did you get to see the phone facility? Because when we were there, there was a facility where kids could call their families. Are these children in any way in touch with their families in the U.S.?
AINSLEY: Yes, they are. We understand that they can make at least two calls a week. They say sometimes more. A lot of children have a phone number memorized because just like you said, Joy, they were sent here to reunite with someone that was going to care for them on the other side of the border once they got completed with that trip. So we understand, yes, they`re allowed to do that but we`ve also been able to get in touch with some of those parents and some of the sponsors who say, yes, we can hear from them twice a week but we are no closer to knowing when that day will be, when we can take these people into our homes.
They`ve given their information to the FBI, or they`re waiting to give their information to the FBI, but they really feel like they don`t have control over this process. And I will point out, some of these tent facilities did exist for a temporary time under the Obama administration, primarily in 2014, when we saw an influx of children coming across the border just like we do now. It was actually much higher then. That was more of the record numbers. We`re about at a three-year -- or a third record high this year.
But the reason those existed was for a very temporary part. They only held them 30 days and got them out very quickly.
Now, HHS says that under those policies, they couldn`t be sure that the children were going to a safe home and that there was a handful of people who came forward claiming to be parents when they weren`t. But I think a lot of advocates would tell you the majority of these parents are telling the truth and that the child should be in the home with them. And no matter how much communication they might have with them, it`s not like having them under their roof, putting them into a routine and getting them into school where they actually get credit.
Here, the school we saw today, a teacher stands in front of the room, there are English slides on a projector. Most of these children don`t speak English. And they`re really just there just to take up time and keep them busy while they wait in this purgatory to find out where they`ll go next.
REID: Yes. And, of course, the administration is now weighing on starting family separations again. We`ll have to talk about that another time.
Julia Ainsley, thank you very much. Really appreciate you being here with me.
And still ahead, Democrats gaining ground in red states, not by blurring the political lines but by running, get this, as Democrats. Why the National Party should take note as they look to 2020. Coming up.
Plus, tonight`s Thing 1 Thing 2 is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: Thing 1 tonight, you`ve probably heard about Kanye West`s little visit to the White House yesterday. An appearance which most people thought was quite unusual.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KANYE WEST, MUSICIAN: His hero`s journey right now. And he might not have expected to have a crazy (INAUDIBLE) like Kanye West run up and support, but best believe we are going to make America great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: But not everyone thought was -- not everyone was put off by that. Fox News thought it was awesome.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: It was an amazing moment in the Oval Office today when pop culture icon, rapper extraordinaire, Kanye West met with President Trump.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Kanye West said some genuinely interesting things this afternoon, things we ought to be talking about in public.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All he wants is answers, all he wants is solutions, all he wants is opportunities.
INGRAHAM: Sometimes unlikely figures emerge in American history to play important roles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was awesome.
INGRAHAM: I enjoyed --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If that make my mind not wanted to curse so much, but the freedom --
INGRAHAM: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- of thought that no one`s going to tell me who to be, how to act, I am my own person, and I like success, and I want every American to be successful. That part, I loved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: I`m sure they`re so into hip hop over there. I know they just always like, damn (ph), hip hop. I know they just -- they`re so into it.
Conservatives everywhere rallied to Kanye`s defense because they are, you know, so into celebrities voicing their political opinions. The Daily Caller`s Benny Johnson even took to Twitter to praise Kanye as a man, "born impoverished and into a broken home who became a millionaire -- multimillionaire, and dares to think different politically to the chagrin of liberals."
OK. But here`s the thing. Kanye West, in fact, grew up in the middle class. His mother was a professor. His father was a photo journalist. Kanye grew up in the suburbs. News flash, not all black people are poor.
Conservatives really seem to love to assume that black life is just one long horror movie. Until, of course, you make it big in sports or hip hop or become one of Donald Trump`s African Americans. And just wait until you hear the right`s take on the latest actual horror movie. That is Thing 2 in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: So, the new Halloween movie is coming out next week featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, once again, being chased around by her serial killer brother, Michael Myers. And Fox News apparently has a problem with the film because real life Jamie Lee has advocated for gun control measures and movie Jamie Lee uses the guns against the psycho killer. Oh, the hypocrisy of that make-believe movie character.
As that hot take went viral, Jamie Lee Curtis herself responded in an interview with USA TODAY, saying she supports the Second Amendment and has absolutely no problem with people owning firearms, if they`ve been trained, licensed, a background check has been conducted. Curtis adds, "If I had my -- made my career as a pacifist actor, I would have never worked, ever. But I have always proud to represent women who fight back ad fight back with intelligence, cunning and creativity, and who fight for their lives and for their families lives." I just hope that no one at Fox has seen "Freaky Friday".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I`m like the Cryptkeeper.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. That`s enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: Given that we are in the age of man`s fury at women`s insolence, it`s fitting that we`re finding out that John Kelly, the man who lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson to try and get her to quiet down, also thinks that Senator Elizabeth Warren is an uppity gal.
Back when Kelly was secretary of Homeland Security and Trump had, soon after taking office, imposed the first of several illegal travel bans targeting Muslims. Senator Warren spoke to Secretary Kelly on behalf of constituents illegally barred from the country. And in an e-mail recently obtained by BuzzFeed News, Kelly described their phone call this way.
"Absolutely most insulting conversation I have ever had with anyone. What an impolite, arrogant woman." He ended his description of Warren`s call with the words "blah, blah, blah."
The Warren trashing didn`t end there. A Homeland Security senior counselor responded, "Too bad Senate Majority Leader McConnell couldn`t order her to be quiet again." The again was a reference to McConnell, just one day before forcing Warren to stop reciting the words of another woman who did not want to be shut up, Coretta Scott King, on the Senate floor.
Warren had been trying to make a point about Attorney General Nominee Jeff Sessions` history of hostility to African-American voting rights. McConnell defended his actions with this infamous comment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), KENTUCKY: She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: So now that Kelly`s testy e-mail had surfaced, Warren, never one to pipe down just because some guy said so, responded. In several tweets today, she said that then Secretary of Homeland Security Kelly wouldn`t return her calls and that when she finally got him on the phone, she insisted on getting his cellphone number. And she concluded that, "Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump can`t shut me up, and neither can John Kelly."
And that, "There are some men who can only hear "blah, blah, blah" whenever a woman`s talking. But there`s nothing impolite about people`s right to speak and hold their government accountable. And sometimes people are right to be angry."
Coming up, we`ll discuss why maybe just what America needs right now is a fed-up woman.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ANCHOR: Let me get you on the record on Judge Kavanaugh. Would you have voted to confirm him?
REP. BETO O`ROURKE (D), TEXAS: I would not have. We need a Supreme Court justice who believes in voting rights. In a state where you can be fired for being gay, a Supreme Court justice who believes in civil rights, a state that`s the epicenter of the maternal mortality crisis, a justice who believes in a woman`s right to make her own decision about her own body and have access to the health care that ensures that she can. He fails the bar on each and every single one of those tests.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: OK, when I saw that moment watching from home the other night, I have to admit, but just for the second, after Chris asked the question, I braced for a political answer. Instead, Beto dropped that big no, wouldn`t have confirmed him. And I thought, OK, now, this is a different kind of Democrat running in Texas.
Beto O`Rourke, who`s challenging Ted Cruz for his Senate seat, is looking to upend the way Democrats run for statewide office in the south. And he`s not the only one. Stacey Abrams is running as an unabashed liberal in Georgia, trying to become that state`s first democratic governor since 1998 and the country`s first black woman governor ever. Then there`s Andrew Gillum, and his outspokenly progressive campaign for governor of Florida.
If Democrats can make Republicans fight tooth and nail in three southern states by running a straight no chaser liberals, then why not think boldly about 2020? Why not lean into the moment and nominate an all-woman ticket to challenge a president that has been accused by at least 19 women of sexual misconduct and who put a man accused of sexual assault on the Supreme Court?
Joining me now to talk about how this would play out is Tara Dowdell, democratic strategist, and Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. All right, I`m going to come to you first because in the break, Tara, we were talking about the fed that you and I did agree on something during 2016.
They had Hillary Clinton double down and gotten (ph) big and picked Elizabeth Warren. People would have thought she was crazy, but it would have helped her a lot. And so this idea of doing the unexpected thing and saying, you don`t like this woman? Here`s two. It feels like this is a moment for Democrats to potentially go big. What do you make of it?
TARA DOWDELL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think Democrats need to go big or go home. This is a moment to be bold. This is the moment to be unabashed. This is a moment to embrace everything that the Democratic Party stands for and to double down on those things. And so I think that, yes, I think two women would be great. I think that people said Andrew Gillum couldn`t win.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: No one was going to pick a black man to win -- you know, to win even the primary.
REID: Yes, that`s right.
DOWDELL: Let alone he`s ahead in the polls in the general election. People thought that Stacey Abrams would not -- she was not the party`s primary choice --
REID: She was not.
DOWDELL: -- for that race. And look at how well she`s doing in the face of massive voter suppression --
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: -- I might add.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: And so I think that the Democrats need to stop saying, telling voters who they won`t vote for.
REID: And, you know, Howard Dean, a really wise man once said back in 2004, I am coming to represent the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. His name was Howard Dean. And you at that time were trying to tell Democrats stop pretending to be for (ph) Republicans.
HOWARD DEAN, FORMER CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Right.
REID: Tara just laid it out. The people that the party wanted to win these primaries didn`t. They didn`t think any of these three had a chance. All of them have a great chance of winning. Should Democrats take that same attitude into 2020?
DEAN: Absolutely, yes. I don`t -- you know, I mean, I think it`s too early to say we should have all women or whatever. You know, it`s going to be 15, 20 people running and I hope we pick the most qualified person. But the most qualified person is a stands up -- person who stands up for who she or he is as genuine. People are so sick of canned politicians. And if we nominate one, we`re going to lose to Donald Trump for a second term. We have got to stand up for who we are and what we believe in. That is what`s so unbelievably attractive about the candidates that you just talked about.
REID: And --
DEAN: And I think each one -- I think we can win all three of those races. I have no doubt in my mind that we can do that.
REID: They can win, because the reality is one of the things that Stacey Abrams is doing, and remember, the party wants Stacey Evans, the other lady, (INAUDIBLE) white (ph) Stacey, right?
But what she is saying is no, it`s not about conversion. There are voters out there who haven`t been touched. They haven`t been registered. They haven`t been motivated.
DEAN: Right.
REID: She`s going out to these rural places.
DOWDELL: Right.
REID: Where there are actually black people and brown people. So is Beto. He`s like, I`m going to way out in the middle of nowhere where no one ever goes. You can do it by adding more people. And, you know, when Howard Dean says we`ll hope we pick the most qualified person, that`s what Democrats say and it`s smart. But Republicans say, you know, Sonny Bono wants to be, you know, Cooter from, you know, that --
DOWDELL: Yes.
REID: -- from the TV show. Yes, we`ll take heavy diamonds (ph). And it`s a very different mindset.
DOWDELL: Right, and exactly. And so another thing that all of these three candidates have done is they engaged young voters early.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: Not just engage young voters --
DEAN: Right.
DOWDELL: -- they engage young voters early.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: And so what Democrats have a tendency to do, and this is not -- I`m not looking to indict the Democrat -- I`m a Democrat, but Democrats have a tendency to wait too late in the game.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: To engage young voters and then later say, well, young voters don`t come out to vote. We need to give them a reason to come out to vote. And a lot of people want to dismiss --
DEAN: Yes.
DOWDELL: -- younger voters.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: A part of why they`re not coming out is because we have not given them a reason. And then we asked for their vote at the last minute. And that is not lost on younger voters. And so I think you`re seeing them with this riding this wave of support. And it`s a multiracial big tent wave of support.
REID: Absolutely, absolutely.
DOWDELL: And so it is the winning coalition for the Democratic Party is a multiracial big tent coalition, and they have engaged that coalition.
REID: Yes, absolutely.
DEAN: Hey, (INAUDIBLE) --
REID: Go on, go on, Howard.
DEAN: I think they`ve learned that lesson. If you look at what happened in Virginia, it was extraordinary, 69% of people under 30 voted for Ralph Northam who I would call a really good guy but a boring centrist. He`s certainly no Bernie Sanders. But the rest of the ticket was all -- was 11 out of 15 women. There were a large number of people of color. The first Hispanic woman ever elected to the legislature in Virginia, gay people, transgendered people. And that`s what the Democratic Party looks like, and that is what our ticket has to look like.
REID: Yes, and it`s interesting because, right, you`re giving people a sort of a panel, you know, sort of a panoply of people who look like them. And the other thing that all of places that you may have just been talking about are in the south.
DOWDELL: Right.
REID: The Democrats, and, you know, Howard, you got it -- your people picked on you for saying, we got to go down to the south.
DOWDELL: Right.
REID: The Democrats are rediscovering, that`s where most of the people are. That`s where -- their people are in the south. You can win down there.
DOWDELL: Exactly.
DEAN: Right.
DOWDELL: And on top of it, so the -- so there`s large black population in the south, but there`s also demographic changes in the south where people are moving from the north --
DEAN: Yes.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: -- who have traditionally voted democratic.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: And now they`re moving into southern states for whatever reason, there`s --
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: -- a number of different reasons. So that`s also --
DEAN: But there are also -- there are also a lot of southern young people that are willing to vote for Democrats now --
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: Right.
DEAN: -- because they`re disgusted with Trump.
REID: Yes, absolutely. And by the way, Elizabeth Warren --
DOWDELL: And these states aren`t doing well. Remember a lot of these states, I mean, Texas aside, a lot of these states are not doing so well.
REID: Right.
DOWDELL: So, they have not been served well by Republican Party leadership.
REID: Yes.
DOWDELL: So it`s not as if people are doing extraordinarily well and the Republicans have been -- they`ve benefited from Republicans, they have not.
REID: Yes, absolutely. So, Warren Harris or Harris Warren?
DOWDELL: I`ll take either.
REID: And so Howard, Warren Harris or Harris Warren? Pick one.
DEAN: The primary voters will decide.
REID: Oh, Howard. Rediscover your boxing politician. Don`t be a politician. Tara Dowdell, Howard Dean, thank you for joining this All In - -
DEAN: No, I`m interested -- as long as they`re under 50, I -- you know, I love Elizabeth, but I want to see -- we need to have a young person out there.
DOWDELL: Please, I think she`s young in spirit.
REID: That`s all for ALL IN this evening, Chris will be back on Monday. Until then, you can catch "AM JOY" tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END