Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: November 2, 2018 Guest: Bernie Sanders, Aisha Moodie-Mills, Glorida Steinem, Robin Morgan, Jane Fonda, Ben Rhodes
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They`re even taking our brave troops away from their families for a political stunt at the border.
HAYES: Four days out, the big finish has begun.
OBAMA: Don`t fall for the okey-doke. Don`t be bamboozled.
HAYES: Tonight, where the vote stands with Charlie Cook. Plus, as his former lawyer warns of untold racism, new evidence the Trump campaign of fear could backfire.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You`re creating violence by your questions.
HAYES: Then, new White House fears of Trump cabinet corruption.
OBAMA: I didn`t have anybody in my administration get indicted.
HAYES: Steve King`s last-minute ad buy.
REP. STEVE KING (R), IOWA: Stop it.
HAYES: And why women are poised to make history.
GLORIA STEINEM, JOURNALIST: This is the most enthusiasm I have ever seen.
HAYES: With Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, and Jane Fonda.
JANE FONDA, ACTRESS: That`s what I do, you stay on the fight.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. Just four days away from Election Day today brought into sharp relief the choice between the two major political coalitions in this country at this pivotal moment. On one side, the first Black President campaigning for the man seeking to be Florida`s first black governor Andrew Gillum and then heading to Georgia to campaign for Stacey Abrams who would be the first black woman governor in the nation`s history.
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OBAMA: The healthcare of millions of people are on the ballot, making sure working families get a fair shake is on the ballot. But maybe most of all, the character of our country is on the ballot.
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HAYES: And then there`s President Trump who`s closing argument is grounded in racism, fear, and lies. A man who has repeatedly used flat-out racist language according to both well, the public record and television cameras, and this one right-hand man Michael Cohen. Cohen telling Vanity Fair today Trump said to be named one country run by a black person that`s not a shithole and then he added name one city. Trump also saying reportedly according to Cohen, black people are too stupid to vote for me.
Now, it is always true that nobody knows what`s going to happen in an election. It`s in the future after all. This year with just four days left it is especially true. For one thing, there is unprecedented voter enthusiasm. More than 29 million Americans have already cast their early votes into 2018. In 2014 there were only 21 million early votes cast total. In some states including Texas the early vote is smashing records 213,000 first time voters have already cast ballots and in the 30 Texas counties that report voter totals, more people have voted early in 2018 than voted at all in 2014.
The lines to vote have also been long in Georgia where more than 800,000 people have voted early and whether there`s been a surge in turnout among young Black and Hispanic voters. So far the early vote has also been 56 percent women. Every pollster has to try to figure out what the electorate will ultimately look like and many races really could go either way.
The Cook Political Report lists House 29 races as toss-ups, 28 of them in Republican-held districts along with nine toss-ups in the Senate. And a shift of just a couple percentage points could mean an enormous night for either party in either direction which is why some Republicans are working very hard to suppress the vote. Eight states debuting new voter I.D. requirements this year including North Dakota where the laws forcing an estimated 5,000 Native Americans to get a new I.D. card that lists street addresses, not the post office boxes many have been using for years in order to vote.
In Dodge City, Kansas, County Clerk Debbie Cox moved the city`s only polling place from a central location in town, the Civic Center to the Expo Center a half a mile outside the city limits. The new location is not accessible via a sidewalk and there is no regular public transportation there. When the ACLU complained, she forwarded the e-mail with a comment "LOL."
Despite all that, a judge ruled that Cox does not have to open a second polling place. Though today some good news in Georgia where Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor has embarked on what many see is one of the nation`s most aggressive efforts to suppress the vote. A judge today ordered Kemp to lift voting barriers from more than 3,000 new U.S. citizens though nearly 50,000 voter registrations remain stalled.
With me now to offer his perspective on all this, someone who has been all around this country trying to get out the vote Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Senator, how are you feeling?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: I`m -- well, I`m feeling good. By Sunday night we`ll have been to 13 states, held 35 rallies and meetings. There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, Chris.
HAYES: How do you think about this Election Day and how do you think about what -- who needs to come out and how you -- what your best-case scenario for what happens on Tuesday?
SANDERS: I`m not much into speculation. We`ll know the results soon enough. But what I would say without being high -- without overstating it is I think this is the most important Midterm Election in the history of our country. What we are fighting for is not Democrat versus Republican. You`re fighting for the future of American democracy, you`re fighting against a president who has the base, the political process is a pathological liar, who is trying to divide the American people up based on where we come from, the color of our skin, our sexual orientation, our religion, unprecedented. And it is absolutely imperative that we have the largest voter turnout in a Midterm Election in American history.
Four years ago very low turnout. Republicans won a sweeping victory. We need a massive turnout and I`ll tell you, who must be coming out, young people and working people. People can`t make it on eight or nine bucks an hour, people who have no health care, people who are worried about the future of our planet if we don`t come back climate change. Women who demand to control their own bodies rather than having the government do it for them. The Latino community in the immigrant community who are being hit hard and lied about every single day.
We need a massive uprising in this country of people coming out and voting and ending this terrible one-party rule which now exists in Washington.
HAYES: It`s been very interesting to me to watch the way the Democrats have run and we`ve been covering a whole bunch of races, and it was summarized today as Democrats don`t -- refuse to take Trump`s homestretch bait. And what`s been striking is Democrats have run as if they`re running essentially against Paul Ryan. They have been running on basically we`re going to protect Medicare and Social Security, we`re going to protect the Affordable Care Act which they tried to repeal the tax cuts went to rich folks. They haven`t been focusing on what makes Donald Trump so odious to so many voters are so polemical and so polarizing. What do you think about that strategy?
SANDERS: Well, I think it`s not an either/or. I think you cannot ignore the ugliness of what is taking place in the White House. And I think that there are a lot of conservative Republicans who would disagree with somebody like me on every issue, who understand that it is hard to raise their kids in a nation when you have a president who lies all of the time and it was essentially a bully. So I think you know, you cannot ignore who Trump is and what he is doing. On the other hand, it certainly is not good enough just to run an anti-Trump campaign.
We have got to be talking about health care for every man, woman, and child, in my view, through a Medicare for All System. You`ve got to be talking about raising the minimum wage to a living wage 15 bucks an hour. You`ve got to be talking about climate change and the transformation of our energy system. You have to be talking about the demand that the wealthy and large corporations in a -- in a time when we have massive income and wealth inequality start paying their fair share of taxes. I think those are not only good policy issues, I think it`s good politics.
HAYES: You`ve been in politics for a long time. You`ve won races, you`ve lost races, you know that politics isn`t beanbag as the saying goes. They get -- they get nasty down the stretch. Have you ever seen anything quite like what this president is doing in this moment?
SANDERS: No. No. I have not, you have not, and nobody in this country has. You know, and it doesn`t give me any pleasure, Chris, to define him as a pathological liar. You know, I have conservative friends who are not liars. To talk about -- to talk about this president as somebody who is trying to divide our people up when you will remember after 9/11 George Bush, very conservative president he went to a mosque to say this was not an attack by Muslims, it was an attack by a handful of terrorists. Remember that?
HAYES: Yes.
SANDERS: This guy is something different who will say anything, do anything in order to gain power and while he`s dividing us up he`s also busy giving huge tax breaks to the rich and trying to throw millions of people off the health insurance that they have. So I think it is imperative that we rallied the American people not only against Trump but around a progressive agenda which demands the government works for all of us, not just wealthy campaign contributors.
HAYES: All right, Senator Bernie Sanders, thanks for making a little time tonight.
SANDERS: My pleasure.
HAYES: Joining me now from one of the Midterm Elections, NBC News Political Analyst Charlie Cook, Editor and Publisher of the legendary and eponymous Cook Political Report whose latest asked if there has been a late nudge towards Democrats. First, that that piece right there. What evidence do you see of that?
CHARLIE COOK, NBC NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: We`re talking to all kinds of pollsters, consultants on both sides, and watching a lot of data, and what we saw was there was one reality last summer, then we saw the Kavanaugh fight move things over towards Republicans and it looks like maybe after Pittsburgh we`ve seen a comeback, not pre-Kavanaugh but back towards that general direction. And as you said at the top of the show, there`s so many really close races out there that just a half a point one point, makes a big difference at a bunch of seats.
HAYES: I mean, I got to say, I have no idea what`s going to happen Tuesday night, no one else really does, and we are -- we are in pretty genuinely in uncharted territory just in terms of who is going to be this electorate on Tuesday night.
COOK: Right. But we were looking at -- I mean like take the House for example, you know, it`s going to be between 20 and 50. It`s probably Democratic net gains. They gain 23. It`s probably going to be between 30 and 40, you know, 35. So it would get Democrats a gavel, it gets them able to schedule a floor, but not -- you know anything under 46 is not enough -- it`s not as many seats as Republicans have today and they`ve had a hard time getting anything done.
HAYES: Yes. Although I`ll just push back on that. I mean a polling error in the direction and we saw polling errors of correlate. That was the problem with the Midwest in 2016 right, correlated among certain populations in certain areas. A systematic polling error in to say the direction of three points in either direction massively changes those outcomes.
COOK: Right. But the polls that were so wrong were Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. National polls, you look at the average, it was not intensive a point off.
HAYES: That`s true.
COOK: That`s actually closer than they had been back in 2012 when they showed the Obama Romney race closer. So you know, nine-tenths.
HAYES: Right.
COOK: That`s as close as they get.
HAYES: Although we`re in all of these districts and one of the things that has also been true, it was true in 2006, 2010 particularly is this sense that things tend to break all in one way right? I mean, you got say 30 toss-up matches in the House. You`ve got about eight toss-up matches in the Senate, probably four like completely deadlocked. You tend to see on election night things move in one way direction or the other.
COOK: Right. Again, we`re -- we were sort of led astray was a lot of public polls in state in -- in state. The campaign polling, the stuff that Republican and Democratic pollsters are doing, it`s pretty sophisticated and it`s not what people are picking up on the -- on the internet. And in the end, it`s --
HAYES: So you think they have in those campaigns and in those contested race --
COOK: Republican and Democratic consultants are seeing numbers that are suggesting that this thing`s has moved back.
HAYES: The last Democrats.
COOK: Right, right. Now, most campaigns have stopped polling.
HAYES: Right. At this point.
COOK: Yes, I mean, because at certain point it`s curiosity. You can`t really -- it`s not actionable but we were seeing some movement towards the -- towards the end that made us suggest that things were getting back towards where they were pre-Kavanaugh, at least in the House not the Senate.
HAYES: Yes, and the -- it`s sort of two different elections obviously because the terrain they`re being run on. Is there -- is there like a bellwether House seat that you`re looking at or there is specific House heat that you think like this will tell us a lot about how the night goes.
COOK: There`s not anyone but watch -- you know, just try to look at a basket of some Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania races and we`ll I think we`ll get a sense early in the evening not what the -- but just sort of the general trajectory. Are Democrats likely to clear 23 or they likely to come up short. And if they`re going over 20, is it -- is it -- it`s a lot up, you know, it`s way up or not and we`ll get an idea really. And they`re also just plenty of a couple you know, like five key statewide races early in the evening. You know the Georgia and Florida governor`s race, the Ohio governor`s raise, Indiana Joe Donnelly Senate race. They`re going to be some plenty of signs early in the evening to give us an idea of which direction the evenings going.
HAYES: And again, these Senate races, I mean, when you talk -- when you look at Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, I`d probably throw Montana in there too, and then our arranged sort of Tennessee, you`re looking at a bunch of Senate races that are pretty close within the margin error.
COOK: Right. In Tennessee, I think the public polls -- I mean it`s close and it`s moved since Kavanaugh, it`s moved over towards Republicans some. But I think the private polling is a lot closer than the five, six, seven, multiple --
HAYES: That`s another place where only voting has been very, very high.
COOK: Right.
HAYES: I see of course we don`t know who that House but we do know it`s been very high in Memphis particularly.
COOK: Right, absolutely.
HAYES: All right, Charlie Cook, thanks for being with me tonight.
COOK: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, new evidence the President`s toxic closing tactics are backfiring with some of the voters he needs to turn out on Tuesday. That`s next.
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TRUMP: Think of it. You`re an enemy of our country, you`re a general with war on your mind. You`re a dictator who we hate and who`s against us. And that dictator has his wife, have a baby on American soil. Congratulations, your son or daughter is now an American citizen. Does anybody think this makes sense?
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HAYES: No, that makes no sense at all. What the hell are you talking about? That was last night in Missouri and that -- well, can only be described as xenophobic idiocy is part of Trump`s closing message of racist fear-mongering for election day. The President clearly considers this tactic to be an effective method of motivating Republican voters. And the people in the room sure seem to like it. But there is growing evidence that other voters and not just committed Democrats are increasingly turned off by Trump`s behavior and rhetoric.
The New York Times published an interesting report today highlighting a backlash coming from suburban Republicans particularly educated, wealthier white`s, especially women who liked the party`s "pro-business policies but recoil from President Trump`s divisive language on race and gender." Yesterday MSNBC`s own Chris Jansing spoke with some of these voters in the Republican holy ground of Orange County, California.
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CHRIS JANSING, MSNBC SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You both have been registered Republicans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
JANSING: You`re an independent now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
JANSING: You are?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Democrat.
JANSING: What made you slip?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump. That was a big one.
JANSING: What specifically?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well I was horrified by what he`s like and he doesn`t seem to have respect for people. He seems to be very self-centered. So that and the fact that Republicans wouldn`t stand up, that was my hope. I really thought Republicans would stand up for themselves and for our country so I wouldn`t have to worry about Trump and that has proven not to be true.
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HAYES: Here to discuss the backlash to Trump`s rhetoric Democratic strategist Aisha Moodie-Mills MSNBC Contributor Sam Seder, Host of the Majority Report. So the way that you this gets covered in the press, every White House official will anonymously tell a reporter like if we`re talking immigration were winning. We like this. We love this. This is our closing message. But there are costs to that message it strikes me.
AISHA MOODIE-MILLS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes. The thing that we`re not -- well, the thing that we should be talking about the fact that it even though he thinks he`s motivating his base which are a small group of rabid racist people, right, what he`s also doing is he`s motivating the Democrats and he`s motivating the Independents who are not interested in this kind of hate mongering and these dog whistles in this racism. And so what I think is going to be, the backlash, and what`s not going to pay off for them is the fact that Donald Trump was going to rile up a couple of people to come and vote for his candidates, but everyone else is coming out to vote against him like we just saw that lady say and that`s going to absolutely play to the Democrats favor.
SAM SEDER, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I mean, I hope --
HAYES: You`re more worried about this?
SEDER: I mean, I think look, I think there is without a doubt the -- that Trump is not just motivating people to vote, he`s motivating people to motivate other people to vote.
HAYES: Yes, right.
SEDER: So like it`s really about the depth of Allegiance. I`m hardened by the fact that in that report the woman said I thought the Republicans were going to act as some type of a bulwark against Trump and they clearly have not. They`re clearly a part and parcel of the same. And so maybe I can understand it. But you know, it`s not like we didn`t know who Donald Trump was years ago --
HAYES: Well, that the thing.
SEDER: -- and that this stuff is particularly new and innovative from him --
HAYES: That`s right.
SEDER: -- maybe the idea that Republican -- you can`t trust Republicans because this is actually who they are, that may motivate those people in those suburbs.
HAYES: I think the bet that he made in 2016 which bore out and the bet they`re making again is Republicans are going to come home in the end. They may not like it, they may -- they may complain, but in the end they`re going to come home the Republican Party and they`re going to come home to Donald Trump no matter how disgusting the rhetoric is. That`s the bet they`re making.
MILLS: Yes, and now we have literally blood on their hands right now. We have Donald Trump`s rhetoric and all the things that he`s saying inciting violence among white supremacist. Literally, we have 11 Jewish people who are dead right now because the sky is inspired by the kind of person that Donald Trump is and the kind of people that he associates himself with. And so I think that what voters are seeing is they`re saying look, we don`t want to be associated with this kind of like evil at this point.
It`s one thing when it`s sport. Oh, it`s political sport. Yes, the Democrats and their health care or whatever. But now we`re actually talking about a leader who is inciting violence and people are dying as a consequence of it.
SEDER: Yes. I mean, I hope that`s the case and I`d like to think it is the case. And there`s also you know, they may have been -- those Republicans who came home, a lot of them came home for two reasons, the Supreme Court and tax cuts.
HAYES: Right.
SEDER: And they managed to get those two things.
HAYES: Well they also came home -- I mean the other thing here is they came home because of Hillary Clinton and how they felt about Hillary Clinton and the Comey letter. And I think part of the thing that I think Trump is trying to rerun the script from 2016 which was a forced choice between him and clearly, Clinton whereas this election much more as a thumbs up or thumbs down on him.
MILLS: And here`s the thing, is that if tax cuts were such a big deal for the Republican base then they`d actually be running on it. Barack Obama said earlier today. They`d actually have campaign ads talking about --
HAYES: They do have such -- I should note, we have that --
MILL: -- the tax cuts and how these are -- but it`s not a fundamental part of their core messaging. The other thing around immigration too that`s backfiring especially among the women that you started this segment with is that it was all good and fine when it was just oh well, we don`t want people you know, coming over our borders. But you`re talking about taking children from their parents. That`s not sitting well with anybody. We`re yanking children out of the arms of parents, we`re trying to talk about people who are coming here in need and despair as if they`re malicious, that`s not really boding well.
SEDER: I mean, I -- and I agree with you and I think to a certain extent with the tax cuts, it could be you know, dog chasing -- catching the car essentially on some level. That`s why it`s not salient. You know --
HAYES: Yes, they got him.
SEDER: (INAUDIBLE) it`s already there. And so what do you -- what -- you know, what are you doing for me next. The other thing I find sort of disturbing that makes me still nervous is I look at like North Dakota and the idea that the Kavanaugh hearings and the way, I mean, if you look at the tape of Kramer out there in the way that he handled himself, I mean, to walk away watching his response to what was going on during that time and say oh this is going to --
HAYES: Help me.
SEDER: -- lead by ten points is unimaginable and it makes me feel like the way that I react to things may not be the way that a significant portion of the country does --
HAYES: Sam Seder, I think that`s a fair thing to think.
SEDER: Yes, I know. But one likes to think that there are certain thresholds are our fellow Americans will say hey, wait a second, you`re going to put 12,000 troops on the border to deal with parents and kids who are walking, who are two months away by foot? That`s absurd! There`s no way, that`s going to go on my support. But I think we`re going to find out in a couple of days whether or not --
HAYES: That`s -- in some ways that`s---
SEDEN: That`s who`s -- part of the country is.
HAYES: That was so crucial about this vote. I mean, it`s a ratification of this strategy down the stretch. It`s a bunch of other things in terms of who actually controls government. But in terms of what our politics look like, the really -- I mean, it`s really been disgusting. There`s no other word for it.
SEDER: There`s no clarifying moment I think for a lot -- which way --
MILLS: So in the districts that are actually at play, in the 60 districts right now, like the swing districts at play, those are districts where it`s not North Dakota, right?
HAYES: It`s not right, yeah.
MILLS: Those are the districts where mothers, in particular, are saying, I don`t want to turn on the television because my five-year-old is in the room and this guy is like really disgusting, and this is not the moral compass, the moral center I believe in, and so that changing my dynamics. Also in many of those districts, and what we`re seeing nationally is going to play in 2020, you have people of color who are riled up
HAYES: Right now.
MILLS: Riled up right now who may not all sit in those districts but they`re looking at what`s happening in Georgia around voter suppression and they`re looking at Florida and the hateful racist Robocalls that are being pushed out, all Donald Trump endorsed, and they`re saying, yes we`re going to vote in our districts based on what we`re seeing.
HAYES: Yes, I think that`s absolutely true. Aisha Moodie-Mills and Sam Seder, thank you very much.
SEDER: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next, a white nationalist Steve King running scared in Iowa with no cavalry coming to save him, his dusting off the old playbook to try to keep his seat in the Congress. That`s story next.
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HAYES: White nationalist congressman Steve King is really having quite a run of it this time around. Prominent Republicans, after years of turning a blind eye, have started disavowing him, companies halted their financial support. His democratic opponent J.D. Scholten within a point of King in the latest poll from the deep red district, and he is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.
It is against that backdrop that King is finally going up with his first TV ad. He is joining the fight on television four days out. But as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report noticed the ad is four years old, yup, it`s a recycled ad from the 2014 race. And King couldn`t even be bothered or afford to scrape together a new ad. I guess he didn`t expect a photo finish. And if you think that`s bad optics, just wait until we tell you about Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, that`s ahead.
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BARACK OBAMA, 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let`s take a look at what they`ve been up to. They promised to take on corruption. Instead, they have racked up enough indictments to field a football team. You know, I didn`t have anybody in my administration get indicted. I mean, I just thought that`s how you`re supposed to do things.
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HAYES: Former President Barack Obama, one of the few people making an explicit case about the staggering amounts of corruption surrounding Donald Trump and his administration. This, as the Washington Post White House is worried Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke broke federal rules.
Earlier this week, the Interior Department watchdogs referred one of several probes to Zinke to the Department of Justice for a potential criminal investigation.
Of course, Zinke is hardly alone in this administration, which might be why The Daily Beast reports Trump`s aides are scared of possible Democratic-led investigations if the House flips.
Here to discuss the various strands of corruption throughout his administration, former deputy national security adviser, MSNBC political contributor Ben Rhodes.
I thought it was interesting to watch the president, President Obama, make that point because if you go to the House races and the senate races the president`s corruption has largely been absent. But it`s clearly somewhat personal to President Obama.
BEN ROADES, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Yeah. I mean, Chris, look, we had, you know, fake scandals, years of fulminating about the IRS when, in fact, we see all the time here in this administration deep embedded corruption. And just as people take the cue from Trump on hate speech, frankly this is how Trump operates, it`s pay to play, it`s corrupt. And you saw that at the EPA, you see it at the Interior Department now. We have seen it at HHS where these officials are willing to serve Trump are people who are out for themselves.
HAYES: Yeah, do you think there is a connection that a rule gets sent or a sort of benchmark gets set down -- we`ve had Tom Price had to resign under scandal, Scott Pruitt had to resign under scandal. People are talking about Zinke`s days in office in his position being short. You think that comes from them saying we can get away with this because the president gets away with it.
HAYES: Yeah, Chris, it`s how they operate, right, it`s how Trump does things. We`ve talked on this show about the Saudis, it`s how Jared Kushner approached his relationship with Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Frankly, what you have in this administration is a bunch of grifters. And they`re not, frankly, very competent grifters.
And what should worry people is that they`re running very important departments of the American people. You know, the Interior Department, how our land is managed; the EPA, how the clean air and water we breathe and drink is managed; HHS Department literally looks after your health care. We`ve got people who are in these offices doing these jobs that should be about taking care of the American people who are lining their pockets just like they`ve seen Trump and his family do throughout their time in public and private life.
HAYES: How much does it matter who controls congress for that? Because you say they`re not that competent, but in some ways they have gotten away with it, right. I mean, price got pushed out and Pruitt got pushed out. But they got a lot done while they were there. And Zinke`s still in position. What does congressional control mean to that?
RHODES: This is an overwhelming opportunity for Democrats. If they get in charge of even one House of congress, if you have subpoena power you can compel documents, you can compel testimony, you can compel a spotlight on all this corruption, and the Republicans know that. And that`s going to matter not just for the next two years, it`s going to matter to the presidential election in 2020.
This is what people know is that this will shape the political dynamic heading to 2020 if the story is about their corruption.
HAYES: OK, so that`s interesting to me because we`ve had a lot of corruption and that has not been the kind of culminating story down the stretch. You think that the House control is a major sort of toggle in that, that if the Democrats control the House that will drive that story more?
RHODES: 100 percent, Chris.
You know, there`s a lot of complaints about the media, what do they cover? They follow the caravan. The media loves a good congressional investigation and oversight story.
HAYES: You know that firsthand, yeah, right.
RHODES: I know it firsthand. But when congress can compel documents they can keep these stories going. They can breathe oxygen into it. And frankly, this is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel finding corruption in the Trump administration. There`s lots of opportunities from Zinke to the EPA to the relationship with the Saudis.
I think Democratic chairs of committees are going to have a lot of work to do if the Democrats take back the House. And that`s going to shape the political dynamic in this country in the presidential election. That`s going to matter a lot to who gets elected in 2020.
HAYES: Final question, which is slightly off topic, but since I have you here, and it`s in the news today, you know, the president has mobilized these troops to go to the border, it`s 5,000, it could be up to 15,000, unclear. Reporting today that Pentagon has basically shot down, to use a metaphor, a request from DHS to compel troops to engage in emergency law enforcement, et cetera. What do you make of that?
RHODES: Well, this is an unprecedented use of military for a political stunt. And the reality is, there`s no mission for them down there. This is not what the finest trained military in the history of the world is supposed to be doing, engaging in this kind of border enforcement. It`s not necessary to deal with the caravan that is 1,000 miles away. It`s not necessary to deal with asylum seekers. It`s not necessary even to secure the border, that`s why we have a border patrol.
So, the Pentagon has been given a mission that frankly it isn`t built to carry out. And I think people should keep a careful eye after election day on what exactly these troops are doing. Because I think it will quickly become apparent how much this was a political stunt when they`re down there with nothing to do.
HAYES: All right, Ben Rhodes, thanks for being here.
RHODES: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan on the pivotal role of women in the upcoming election and while they -- why they all still have hope in the Trump era.
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HAYES: We don`t have a Thing One, Thing Two tonight, we just have this one thing, and it`s a bad thing. It`s election season, so of course everywhere you look there are yard signs, sometimes, unfortunately, people do bad things to yard signs. It`s a fact of life.
In Lincoln, Nebraska, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry is running for election, that`s Fortenberry. And, well, this week some rascal went and vandalized one of Jeff Fortenberry`s yard signs. Someone else posted a photo of it on Facebook. And some other people on Facebook had a little laugh in what was done.
Now, as you can see the first thing they did was they covered the congressman real eyes with some ridiculous over-sized googly eyes. And then a piece of white tape was applied to turn the "o" in his name to an "a," resulting in a just really juvenile joke about flatulence.
And you can decide for yourself if that kind of thing is funny to you. I know I`ve made my decision.
And then down there at the bottom it says strong families, strong communities, strong odor. See, that would be a reference back to the part where his name was changed to Fartenberry. So, yeah, that`s the kind of thing you`d see on Facebook and maybe if you have a juvenile sense of humor, chuckle, click the like button.
Here`s where the story gets really crazy. Because one of the 100 or so people that liked this post on Facebook is a college professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln named Ari Cohen. And some time after he liked it on Facebook, the professor got a phone call from the United States Capitol. It was Congressman Fortenberry`s chief of staff, a man by the name of Dr. William "Reyn" Archer III. And he was not happy.
When he couldn`t reach Cohen, Archer emailed the chair of the political science department, and the dean, and then the chancellor of the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
When Professor Cohen and Chief of Staff Archer did finally speak on the phone for nearly an hour, the professor recorded the conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARI COHEN, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN: You`re going through and seeing what i have liked on my private...
WILLIAM "REYN" ARCHER III, REP. FORTENBERRY CHIEF OF STAFF: What you`re liking...
COHEN: On my private Facebook page.
ARCHER: I know, but what you`re liking is vandalism.
COHEN: No, it`s not.
ARCHER: Yes, it is.
COHEN: How do we know that the thing that I clicked on, how do I know that that`s actually something that happened in the world rather than a PhotoShop?
ARCHER: You don`t. You are trying to manipulate the dynamic of the conversation. And frankly, we have a first amendment opportunity to basically put you out there in front of everybody and put this clearly as why is a professor like willing vandalism? We can do that publicly. Would you like that? That`s our first amendment right too.
COHEN: I think it would be a terrible idea for you if I`m being perfectly honest.
ARCHER: How so?
COHEN: Because the optics of this are terrible, Reyn.
ARCHER: My name is not Reyn, it`s Reyn.
COHEN: My apologies.
Let me go with Dr. Archer, that will be easier.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All jokes aside, that`s the chief of staff to a current serving United States congressman using the power of the office to threaten a college professor for liking a photo on Facebook. Yeah, I`d say that`s bad optics.
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HAYES: One the biggest stories of the Trump era is the massive political mobilization of women. From the very first day after the inauguration when millions participated in the Women`s Marches to the record number of women running for office in year`s election.
Earlier today, I got to sit down with three women who have been pillars of the feminist movement for decades: Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan, the co-founders of the Women`s Media Center, to get their unique perspective on this moment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: We`re a few days away from an election, and it feels like this year women`s political activism is the driving story. How does it feel to you as someone who has watched many fluctuations in sort of capital F feminism in America this year?
GLORIA STEINEM, CO-FOUNDER, WOMEN`S MEDIA CENTER: In my very long life, this is the most enthusiasm I have ever seen.
HAYES: Really? You really mean that?
STEINEM: Absolutely. Absolutely. I`ve never seen anything like it. And I`ve never seen so much worry about the process of voting.
So the good news is the activism and the consciousness and the anger and the caring, and the bad news is what`s going to happen to them at the polls.
HAYES: You would say that the activism now, the sort of awakened the -- you know, the degree to which people are mobilized is more than even the sort of peak iconic moments in the 1960s?
STEINEM: Much more. I remember that that -- that was huge consciousness and activism and the wake of it was about maybe a third of the country. Now, it`s the majority of the country, and certainly the majority of women.
But there is a third of the country that is opposed to losing their old hierarchical identity by sex and by race and they are mad, right, and they are restricting the vote in many cases.
HAYES: You`ve been doing a lot of stuff on this ground.
JANE FONDA, ACTRESS: I have.
HAYES: You have been out there. I wonder what it looks like.
FONDA: Spent a lot of time in Michigan the last two years with Lily Tomlin, trying to get a measure on the ballot for one fair wage that would raise the minimum wage to $12 and include tipped workers in that which is unusual.
HAYES: ...carved out in minimum wages.
FONDA: Right. And we did it. We got it on the ballot, and then the Republican legislature took it off the ballot and voted it into law, making it very clear that they would gut it after the election. And they did it as a form of subtle voter suppression.
HAYES: They were scared of it.
FONDA: Yeah. They knew the people who were unlikely voters would be coming to the polls to vote themselves a raise, so they took it off. So I was with Taraji P. Henson and Patrice Cullers traveling all over Michigan last weekend talking to people about this and about the importance of going to the polls. And the people seemed energized.
People are woke. Every woman I know is asking me where do we go, how do we get out the vote, how do we canvas. I don`t know anybody that`s not involved.
ROBIN MORGAN, CO-FOUNDER WOMEN`S MEDIA CENTER: That`s the encouraging part. You know, I was thinking about this last night at the awards, at the -- because obviously we`re very proud of the Women`s Media Center. It`s 11 years and well, grown hugely and stuff. But I was thinking there are literally two factors now in this country on which democracy itself depends. And if we can begin to take back democracy here, there will a ripple effect across the world with places like Brazil, just like there was a ripple effect in the negative on the right wing.
And one of those factors is a free, strong press. And the other factor is the rising visible political force of women, both of which we`re seeing in this country. And I got suddenly so proud because I realized the Women`s Media Center stands right at that intersection. And, you know, I (inaudible).
HAYES: Well, you know, because there is this sort of interesting thing happening representationally right now, right, in both those spheres. So, in media, The New York Times had this piece about sort of the #metoo movement and all these powerful men who have been, you know, have lost their positions and often replaced with women.
So there is a kind of representational change happening slowly and painfully, but surely. And its same thing at the candidate level.
MORGAN: That`s right.
HAYES: You know, you are just seeing more women candidates than we`ve ever seen before.
MORGAN: Well, it`s not only -- I mean, I worried as an old organizer that after the Women`s March it might fade. People would think I marched, I had a pussycat hat and they`d go home, but again sustaining it is always the hard part.
But not only did they sustain it, people have been adding to it. The teachers who are walking off, you know, in state after state, 80 percent of teachers are women. The high school movement, anti-guns and so forth, over half women. One fair wage is basically women.
HAYES: I mean, if you go to any Democratic...
MORGAN: And there are guys involved, I mean I don`t mean that -- and they`re terrific. But I mean, it really is for the first time women`s leadership, and it`s continuing. And it`s just -- women who are just too damn pissed off at this point.
FONDA: One of the things we know is economics is at the root, health care and economics. People are having to work, I don`t care about what the paper say wages, people are having to work two and three jobs and are still living below the poverty line, and most of them are women are women of color, and it is -- it`s just unconscionable.
But a lot of the Millennials are going to the polls because they know if they don`t, they`re going to be having to living with the consequences longer that we do.
HAYES: Well, one of those consequences, I haven`t gotten a chance to talk to you since the Kavanaugh confirmation. I mean, one of the consequences is there is now this majority on the Supreme Court and a real question about Roe`s future. What -- how did you feel watching the Kavanaugh confirmation play out?
FONDA: Well, obviously he was somebody that was not even on the first list of candidates. He was there because he believes in the power of the presidency over the Supreme Court. He was there for a specific purpose.
But obviously I believe the accusations against him. But even if you didn`t, if you saw him on television refusing to let his wife talk, or she sat there the entire time, and finally the interviewer asked her a question, and he answered. I mean, she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. He honed right in.
STEINEM: That says it all, right? The one thing worse than having him on the Supreme Court is to be married to him.
MORGAN: But clearly, it lit a fire, a prairie fire.
HAYES: Do you think it did? Because there was all this talk about, oh, this is really energizing Republicans because they think he is being treated so unfairly and that`s going to show up on election day.
MORGAN: Well, I don`t know how they can think he was treated unfairly, but we won`t go there, that involves logic. But there were women on street corners talking to each other about it, just furious, absolutely furious. There are two new best sellers out about women and rage, being not afraid to be angry anymore, and what a progressive political force women`s anger has been if you look at the real history.
So yeah, I think that the Kavanaugh hearing, and I`m an eternal optimist, so I`m thinking well, maybe we can impeach him once we have a little power, anybody. But starting with Kavanaugh and maybe moving on to other people.
HAYES: How do you -- I know a lot of people who have had a very hard time kind of emotionally over the last few years, it just is exhausting. It`s exhausting, even if you don`t do it every day for a living, just being a citizen.
I mean, you guys have been in the fight for a while. How do you -- what do you tell people who feel...
FONDA: That`s what you do, you stay in the fight.
HAYES: Yeah.
FONDA: I remember right after the 2016 election, I felt like I had been run over by a truck. We had to go to Atlanta and speak to 1,600 women. It was hard.
HAYES: Was it like the day after?
FONDA: Yeah.
But -- and then I went to Standing Rock, and I was renewed. When you`re actually doing something that you know can make some kind of difference, it really helps. It really helps. And being in community with other people, mostly women.
STEINEM: That`s the key, actually, you only despair if you are alone. But as soon as you are together, you reinforce each other and it actually becomes boring not to do it.
MORGAN: It`s like value-added. But the other thing is when we say this is the most important, you know, election, and some people say, oh god, we`ve been saying that for the last decade. But this is, because -- and it`s true for comparisons with the `60s and `70s, this time the clock is ticking on the planet. And that`s a different thing all together. I mean, we`ve got to really wake up and be very serious now because it`s not as though people can grow into this and take their time developing it and there is a real.
STEINEM: Existential crisis.
MORGAN: Thank you.
STEINEM: ...is right there. And the environment does not change back, no matter what the so-called president says.
HAYES: Are you hopeful?
STEINEM: Yes, because hope is a form of planning. I mean, you can`t let them take your hope away. That`s the energy.
FONDA: Yeah.
MORGAN: That`s what they want to do is take the hope away. So we will not permit that.
FONDA: Hope is activism.
HAYES: Yeah.
STEINEM: And if our hopes weren`t already real inside us, we couldn`t even hope them.
HAYES: It`s the necessary precondition to making the world better.
MORGAN: I want to imagine waking up in the morning and feeling good about things and going out on the street and seeing people smile at each other and give each other high-fives and see kids running around and old people sitting on benches and laughing and spontaneous circle dances breaking out and realizing oh my god, it`s November 7 and we actually -- we need to imagine it to get back to that place, or forward to that place.
HAYES: Well, there is no one better to give this kind of advice than you. Thank you very much for making time.
FONDA: Thanks for what you do.
MORGAN: Everything you do all the time.
HAYES: Jane Fonda, and Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan, really, really thank you so much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: That is all All In for this evening. 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
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