CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: They are required to report old case of such wrongdoing as well and any old cover ups. "In order that these and all their forms never happen again," the pope declared today. A continuous and profound conversion of heart is needed, tested by concrete and effective actions that involves everyone in the church. Well, let`s hope this all leads to change.
And that`s HARDBALL for now. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Don Jr.
HAYES: First real crack in Trump`s red wall.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was very surprised to see my son --
HAYES: Tonight, Senator Richard Blumenthal on the uproar over the subpoena for Donald Trump Jr.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): IF he fails to answer, he ought to be put in jail.
HAYES: And why the leader of Democrats agrees we are in a constitutional crisis.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The President is almost self-impeaching.
HAYES: Then --
TRUMP: Well, I was a businessman, very successful.
HAYES: The Trump ghostwriter who was there for all of those massive losses joins me live. Then, the growing assault on women`s rights in states across America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No motion was made --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Excuse me.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t care what the (INAUDIBLE)
HAYES: And he is the co-founder of Facebook who was calling for it to be broken up.
CHRIS HUGHES, CO-FOUNDER, FACEBOOK: I`m angry at Mark and I`m angry at a lot of Facebook`s leadership.
HAYES: Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes joins me live.
HUGHES: I also think he has too much power, and I don`t know if we`re going to be friends after this.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from Chicago, I`m Chris Hayes. Just a day after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the Russia investigation was case closed on the floor of the Senate, we learned that Republican Senator Richard Burr, was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to the President`s oldest son Don Jr.
Now, this comes amidst this epic showdown that Nancy Pelosi is now described as a "constitutional crisis" where the Trump White House is essentially telling Congress that they are entitled to nothing. Keep in mind as we said yesterday and as continues to be true, they have given Congress no documents, zero.
They are invoking executive privilege. The House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the House hold the Attorney General in contempt and yet the sort of saving grace of the White House in all this is that Republican members of Congress have 100 percent fallen in line as we`ve come to expect. Except now there`s this break in the ranks and they are furious about it.
Today, some GOP senators rushed to show their own loyalty to Donald Trump. The Kentucky Senator and one time self-branded establishment bucker Rand Paul tweeted apparently, the Republican chair at the Senate Intel committee didn`t get the memo from majority leader that this case was closed.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz who has called Donald Trump a sniveling coward, a serial philanderer, and a pathological liar, tweeted today, "The Mueller report found no collusion. There`s no need for another subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. It`s time to move on and focus on issues Americans care about. Bold.
Now, we don`t know what the subpoena is for. We do know however that Donald Trump Jr. has been really slippery with the truth. A little example, here he is back in 2016 responding the Clinton camp claiming that Russia was interfering to help Donald Trump win. Keep in mind what you`re about to see is just a month after Donald Trump Jr. personally got an email informing him the Russian government was helping his dad and then met with Russians in Trump Tower to further their aid.
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DONALD TRUMP JR., SON OF DONALD TRUMP: Well, it just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they`ll say anything to be able to win this. I mean this is time and time again lie after lie. You notice, he won`t say well, I say this we hear experts. You know, his house cat at home once said that this is what`s happening with the Russians. It`s disgusting. It`s so phony.
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HAYES: Disgusting, lie after lie, they`ll say anything to win. Or that time in March of 2017 where he told the New York Times -- and I quote him here. Did I meet with people that were Russian, I`m sure -- I`m sure I did. But none that were set up, none that I can think of at the moment, and certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way shape or form.
OK, we know none of that is true and there`s evidence that Don Jr. didn`t tell the truth to the Intelligence Committee either which appears to be what they`re after. Senate Intel vice-chairman Mark Warner strongly implied as much in an interview with Kelly O`Donnell this afternoon.
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SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): I would point out that when we had all the witnesses in, we reserve the right to bring back witnesses if there were inconsistencies that we had other questions. Many of the witnesses we`ve already brought back, even members of the Trump family have willingly come back. Some of the representations made by some Trump Junior`s lawyers or allies, I don`t think fully fit the facts.
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HAYES: Senator Richard Blumenthal who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee which also interviewed Donald Trump Jr. was more vocal with his frustration.
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BLUMENTHAL: He truly misled the Judiciary Committee and now he needs to be held accountable. Those answers about the Moscow Trump Tower meeting, the meeting with Russian agents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happens if he doesn`t comply?
BLUMENTHAL: He ought to be held in contempt and there is no question with Donald Trump Jr. about any sort of privilege to avoid this kind of questioning. If he fails to answer, he ought to be put in jail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Connecticut joins me now. He attended the Senate Judiciary Committee`s interview on Donald Trump Jr. in September 2017. Follow up on that last thing, if he -- if he won`t come, he should be put in jail. What do you mean by that?
BLUMENTHAL: Well, he ought to be treated the same as any other witness who refuses to obey a lawful court order. But that is the last stage in a process that needs to begin right now. Remember Chris, that this subpoena has to be enforced. If he refuses to come before the Intelligence Committee, he would be held in contempt, and that contempt citation needs to be voted on not only by the committee but the full Senate.
And so my Republican colleagues are now going to be tested. The Republican Chairman Richard Burr is doing his job because there`s no case closed on Russian attack on our democracy. We need to know the facts.
HAYES: Well, I`m going to make this argument that I want to hear your response, and the argument goes like this. The Mueller report is out, redacted, but the -- but the bulk of it, and the findings and are in the first volume about collusion are what they are. Why does it matter? Why chase down Don Jr. for what he said to the committee when the facts are already established and out in the Mueller Report?
The facts, in fact, may not be fully established by the Mueller Report. There are a lot of open questions that remain to be answered as Mark Warner just implied, and the Mueller report raises many of them.
In fact, we sent a letter members of the Judiciary Committee on the Democratic side to the powers that be asking for Mueller to appear because we have about 60 questions about not only obstruction but also Russian collusion. And remember, the attack on our democracy continues and those facts need to be known.
HAYES: I`m curious what you make of the internal caucus dynamics among your colleagues across the aisle. Obviously, a lot of Republican senators are very mad at Richard Burr, lots of primary threats online and such. This is from New York reporter Nick Fandos on what happened at the closed- door lunch today.
In the closed-door GOP lunch, Burr walked through the backstory of the subpoena for Don Junior, defended his investigations work for people directly familiar. McConnell also spoke up offering his support for Mr. burr and his handling of the committee. What do you think`s happening here?
BLUMENTHAL: The Intelligence Committee is doing its job. The Trump Junior contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik or other Russian agents, the probation of polling data by Paul Manafort, the negotiations on Trump Tower Moscow, the meeting at Trump Tower in New York, his dealings with his father on the statement that obviously was misleading and deceptive and explaining that meeting.
There are a slew of questions that the intelligence committee has to be focusing on. I`m not on the Intelligence Committee so I can`t speak for that committee or Richard Burr but he is doing his job.
HAYES: One question. He didn`t have contact with Konstantin Kilimnik as far as we know right, you were saying that about Paul Manafort.
BLUMENTHAL: Paul Manafort had the contact, Donald Trump Jr. may have known about it.
HAYES: I see. Final question. You did have him before your committee, Judiciary Committee. And I think I`ve asked you this before, but given now that you`ve had time to look through the whole report, do you think he lied to you when you had him before your own committee?
BLUMENTHAL: There are very, very serious question about his credibility and his factual accuracy which is why I have said from the outset that he should be called back before our committee to explain why he gave seemingly inaccurate and misleading answers. On -- for example, whether he knew about those Trump Tower Moscow negotiations. He said that he had only peripheral awareness.
Well, the Michael Cohen testimony indicates exactly the opposite. He was in the thick of it. And those kinds of potentially misleading and inaccurate statements, I`m not drawing conclusions about perjury, need to be explained. He needs to go back before our committee.
HAYES: What are the odds that Lindsey Graham calls Don Jr. back for the Judiciary Committee in the Senate?
BLUMENTHAL: I think there will be growing pressure on the Judiciary Committee just as there has been on other members of the Senate because America is under attack and we`re talking about accountability to stop that attack.
HAYES: All right, Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you.
BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.
HAYES: Joining me now for more on the potential legal woes of the other Donald Trump are Cynthia Alksne, who`s former Federal Prosecutor, now an MSNBC Legal Analyst and Elie Mystal, Executive Editor of Above the Law and Contributor to The Nation.
Cynthia, what do you make of this subpoena which the timing of which and the target of which are fascinating and disruptive given what we`ve experienced recently?
CYNTHIA ALKSNE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the first thing I would say about the subpoena is it seems unlikely to me that Don Junior will ever testify. And the reason why I say that is because almost any lawyer that I know would recommend that he asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege.
And the way that would work would not be that he comes into the hearing room and raises his hand and he asserts it. That`s not the way generally it happens at justice. Maybe that they`ll decide to do that in the Senate, but generally a justice, if a lawyer calls you on the phone and says my client is going to assert his Fifth Amendment Right, it`s over.
You don`t call them in because the idea behind that is we don`t force people to be humiliated by asserting their constitutional privileges that we hold so dear. So my guess is that`s what`s going to happen in this case in the after all the fighting the over.
And the only other thing I would say is the timing of it makes a big difference whether you know, as far deciding whether or not Burr is really bucking the system. If it was issued several weeks ago before the Majority Leader made his comment about how the case was over, then it doesn`t really mean he`s bucking the system at all.
So I`m not hopeful. I`m bordering on depressed about any chance that we`re going to hear from him.
HAYES: Yes. I think the team taking the Fifth seems entirely reasonable. What do you think, Elie?
ELIE MYSTAL, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ABOVE THE LAW: Yes -- no, he should take the Fifth. But this is this white privilege silver spoon treatment has to stop. He needs to be put in a chair and raise his hand and invoke his Right to -- against self-incrimination so for the whole country to see that.
That is actually an important part of this process. It`s no longer about humiliation, it`s about finding holding -- finally holding the Trump family accountable and at least publicly -- putting them publicly on the record for what they are doing and what they`re trying to do.
We have to stop -- look, a congressional -- a congressional subpoena is not spam, all right. Don Jr. can`t crumple it up and say I`ve destroyed their only copy. Like he actually has to pay attention to it and there are two options that he has.
He can go in front of the committee and testify truthfully or as Cynthia has said exactly right, he can show up to the committee and take the Fifth Amendment and then we can all know that he`s invoking his constitutional rights. But it`s got to be one or the other. This pocket ignoring of law has to stop.
HAYES: Yes, and I mean, I don`t think Cynthia -- to Cynthia`s point, I think you probably right that Burr he`s told he`s going to get the Fifth amendment will probably not make him come out there and go through that production particularly because there is clearly unbelievable pressure in just one day being brought to bear on Burr.
I find it fascinating to watch this given the fact that to Cynthia`s point and Elie, your point that he can just take the Fifth. Like who cares, right. You can just have him take the Fifth. No one is going to make him testify. That`s his Constitutional right.
It is fascinating to me the amount of pressure being brought to bear, the anger at Burr for doing this. This is what Donald Trump, the president had to say about his son earlier today.
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TRUMP: My son is a good person. My son testified for hours and hours. My son was totally exonerated by Mueller who frankly does not like Donald Trump, me, this Donald Trump. And frankly, for my son, after being exonerated, to now get a subpoena to go again and speak again after close to 20 hours of telling everybody that would listen about a nothing meeting, yes, I`m pretty surprised.
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HAYES: What do you think, Cynthia?
ALKSNE: Well, you know, first of all the Mueller report did not exonerate him. The Mueller report said as a matter of law they didn`t think he mentally could form the intent. This is a section of the Mueller report that I find to be a big mystery because quite frankly it lays out to me like a conspiracy. And I am looking forward to hearing Bob Mueller explain this to us.
I think he should be looking in my opinion, should be looking at charges you know, for lying to the Senate, for trying to do this campaign finance violation with the Russians, and he should be looking at charges for the campaign finance violation with the Stormy Daniels and the entire financing that by the way, you know, Cohen`s in jail for and he is doing -- and nothing`s happening.
So I am outraged about the way he`s treated. And of course, the problem is that there isn`t ruling right now a Justice Department, you know, because Barr is at the head of it and there`s nobody to enforce anything. My level of depression is extremely high.
HAYES: Elie?
MYSTAL: But can we say that this isn`t just about the Mueller report. Like, I don`t understand why Republicans are so freaking out about this if they have any faith at all in their -- in their guy, Trump and his family. Michael Cohen blew Don Jr. up in public testimony. He all but called him a liar. He pointed out massive inconsistencies with his testimony.
If the Trumps were telling the truth, Don Jr. should be rushing to the Senate to correct that record and to put his word against a known liar`s word and I think Burr was trying to help him, and the Republicans are freaking out.
HAYES: Right.
ALKSNE: Here`s the problem, Elie, here`s the problem -- I mean, I agree. Here`s the problem when -- as in terms of putting witnesses on and going forward with cases. Michael Cohen is a convicted perjurer. I mean you have to have other evidence besides Michael Cohen. I think he has great credibility but -- and maybe he would do fine in front of a jury, but you have to have a United States attorney who`s willing to go forward with it.
And right now, because Barr is in charge of all the United States attorneys, there isn`t anybody to go forward with it. That`s why it`s such a problem and it`s so circular.
MYSTAL: But Jr. should be willing to go up in front of the public and the Senate and the Congress and say Michael Cohen was lying. And if he can`t do that, that actually accrues to Michael Cohen`s credibility, not Don Junior`s credibility.
HAYES: Particularly when Michael Cohen went before -- went under oath before the Congress and said what he had to say while he was facing jail time, and he`s now in prison. Cynthia Alksne and Elie Mystal, thank you both.
Next, so what was Donald Trump doing while he was losing $1 billion over ten years? Would you believe flipping through fabric swatches? The ghostwriter who is embedded with Donald Trump for those years paints a picture of a board failing businessman. He joins me here in two minutes.
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HAYES: In the wake of this week`s New York Times piece detailing Donald Trump`s billion with a B business losses over a mere decade, there`s been a big question, one we`re still wrestling with, is the president a colossal tax cheat or just a stunningly bad business person?
Well now in a Yahoo exclusive, we have new insider information. Charles Leerhsen, the ghostwriter for Donald Trump`s 1990 book Surviving At The Top shared his observations from that era such as Trump`s apparent deep occupation with fabric swatches.
"Trump`s portfolio did not jive with what I saw each day which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Some days he would do it for hours. The main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone. Whereas for example the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn`t."
Here with me now is Charles Leerhsen, the ghostwriter for Surviving At The Top who wrote the Yahoo Exclusive, Trump the billion-dollar loser. I was his ghostwriter. I saw it happen. Charles, I thought it was a fascinating piece because it comports a little bit with the way that I think he is a president. What were your impressions of him as your -- this guy is at the top of his game at this point when you sign on to do this project. He is the outsized Trump of the public imagination. What did you see?
CHARLES LEERHSEN, GHOSTWRITER, SURVIVING AT THE TOP: Well, you`re right. I came into it -- this was the sequel to the Art of the Deal and that`s -- I was an outsider and that`s the impression of Trump that I had. You know, a lot of people say Mark Burnett on The Apprentice created the fictional Trump that so many people voted for. But actually, ironically, he came from a book because I mean, here`s a guy who`s written more books than he`s read but his image was actually shaped by a book the Art of the Deal.
So I came into it thinking he was golden boy, a young business genius, and boy it was -- it was very hard. You know, it took me 15 or 20 sessions to realize. I was working at Newsweek at the time and I`d go back to the office and I say oh, I can`t believe it. You know, I mean, he just didn`t -- he just -- he was the Trump that we know. The uninformed, you know, ignorant Trump that we know. But people were already on board and propping him up and thinking he was a genius.
HAYES: Well, what did he actually do? When you say he was like spending his time on fabric swatches because that`s what he could kind of get his head around, what do you mean -- what do you mean by that?
LEERHSEN: Well, this plays into what -- you were exactly right. This is the way he runs the country now. I mean, he -- you know, he sits in his office there with Mick Mulvaney and there`s a whole lot of stuff happening all over, but you know, but he`s oblivious to it. You know, he can`t even spell Kentucky and he`s not even thinking about the whole rest of United States, or there`s Department of Agriculture or he`s -- he doesn`t know what it goes on there and he doesn`t care.
It`s the same thing with these businesses that he acquired, the Plaza Hotel, and the Trump Shuttle, he would -- he would buy them and then there`d be a lot of hoopla. He was interested to that point, and then he had no interest in running them on a day-to-day basis, and no knowledge of how to do it.
So he focused on the fabric swatches I think because -- well, for one thing, it played into his germophobia. You know, he was always replacing the carpets and the -- and the drapes and he and he was always talking about deep cleaning the airline seats you know, and so that`s what his life became. He was -- he would say, how do you -- what do you think of this piece of velour here, you know. And I feel it and you know we`d talk about it. And at the center of all this chaos was this man feeling fabric.
HAYES: You said this. One of his aides once told me that every room in the plaza could be filled at the rack rate, list price every night and the revenue still wouldn`t cover the monthly payment of the loan he had taken out to buy the place. In other words, he made a ridiculous deal.
Neither he nor the banks that had done the math beforehand or perhaps Trumps knew it because someone had told him but didn`t want to think about it. The one thing he`s above average at is his compartmentalization.
Did you get any sense that either any business acumen or insight at all? And if not, what is your theory of how this man has managed to get through 40 years conning people?
LEERHSEN: Well, you know, I think what -- the nuts and bolts of it was at that period of his life, that the banks were caught up in the whole Trump image thing and they were -- they were believing the Art of the Deal over what they saw on his balance sheets and what came out of his mouth.
And he also for a while was successful in Atlantic City so he had this like cash cow. The casinos were churning out money, and they were covering his other mistakes. But then just for a few months, Atlantic City went south and it`s like a guy who`s in over his head with his home mortgage and then he loses his job. He can`t be can`t pay the bill and he quickly -- he quickly cycles down.
But in Trump`s case, the difference was though that the banks came to his rescue because their reputations and they are very solvency sometimes was dependent on them saving him and propping him up. So instead of you -- instead of were closing, they figured out some way to make it work.
HAYES: Right. You know, I thought about -- I was reading your account I thought about the president tweeted about how I think they`re bringing fireworks back to Mount Rushmore if I`m not mistaken or some national park. And Maggie Haberman of the Times tweeted that he has been obsessed with this and talking about it for six months.
This has been a big project for the president. And I thought well, he`s found his fabric swatches, that this is the thing -- this is the thing that he`s well equipped to handle.
LEERHSEN: Right. He`s a little -- he`s a little bit of a Rain Man thing going on there with him. He gets focused on something and fascinated with something and it`s hard to get him away from him.
HAYES: What have you been thinking as you have watched this all unfold having had this experience before?
LEERHSEN: Well, I`ve thought about how it was different and I was the same. It was different in that in those days the stakes were a lot lower. He was -- he was a real estate guy. And yes he was hurting people, contractors, and he wasn`t renting to minorities, and he was doing bad things. That was kind of off to the side.
I wasn`t a witness to that although I believe it happened. And so -- but mostly he was inconsequential. He didn`t have his finger on the button. He wasn`t -- he wasn`t running the world.
HAYES: Right.
LEERHSEN: But now, the Trump I see their eye in the White House and the Oval Office from what I can see is exactly the same guy. He just shows up every day and tries to kill the time until you know, in a play that`s pleasant for him until you know, his next T.V. show comes on or something like that.
So now it`s watching television and hanging around. And then every once in a while he would rant, he would rant when he got some -- somebody would come in and tell him the Plaza Hotel was you know $250,000 last week and he`d get excited about that for a few minutes and then -- but for him the difference was it didn`t matter. He was able to compartmentalize until that became public. Until those failures became public, then he felt really bad about it.
HAYES: All right, Charles Leerhsen, thank you for joining me.
LEERHSEN: Sure.
HAYES: Next, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes writes today in The New York Times that Mark Zuckerberg has become too powerful and there`s time for the government to break up Facebook. Chris Hughes joins me to explain why next.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Is there an alternative to Facebook in the private sector?
MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, FACEBOOK: Yes, Senator. The average American uses eight different apps to communicate with their friends and stay in touch with people ranging from texting apps to e-mail --
GRAHAM: OK, which is the same service you provide.
ZUCKERBERG: Well, we provide a number of differences services.
GRAHAM: Is Twitter the same as what you do.
ZUCKERBERG: It overlaps to the portion of what we do.
GRAHAM: You don`t think you have a monopoly?
ZUCKERBERG: It certainly doesn`t feel like that to me.
GRAHAM: OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Facebook is the largest social media network on the planet. It`s really unlike anything else with a community of monthly active users, bigger arguably than any human institution perhaps ever, bigger than the Catholic Church, but it finds itself increasingly besieged by critics and regulators and skeptical politicians and citizens, and it`s amidst a seemingly end of stories about privacy invasion and data manipulation, duplicity in official pronouncements, and at the very best, utter carelessness with a platform that can be used for truly horrific ends.
Today, a new critic emerged calling for the company to be broken up, one of Facebook`s co-founders. Chris Hughes was a Harvard roommate of Zuckerberg. His name is on the patent for Facebook`s original newsfeed. And today he wrote in the New York Times that, quote, "we are a nation with a tradition of reigning in monopolies no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark`s power is unprecedented and un-American. It is time to break up Facebook."
Joining me now is Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes.
Chris, why now? What`s your trajectory that now in 2019 I think seven years after you left the company, after it has grown enormously, and has had huge amounts of negative press over the last two or three years, why now have you come out with this?
CHRIS HUGHES, CO-FOUNDER OF FACEBOOK: Well, I am first to say I have been on a journey myself. You know, the scandals happen in the 2016 election with the Russian hacking, then the Cambridge Analytica scandal the following year, and then there`s been scandal after scandal nearly every month, if not every week, since.
So, as time has gone by, I`ve become increasingly convinced that Facebook is too big, that Mark is too powerful, and that there`s a reason that we keep having this pattern of mistake and then outrage and then eventually disappointment and resignation, and it`s because there is no real competition in social networking, so that`s why I think we need to break up the company, separate it into Facebook.com, Instagram and WhatsApp, and create a new regulatory agency to safeguard user privacy, guarantee interoperability and set guidelines around harassment, bullying, and the like.
HNAYES: I found your analysis very interesting, because you`re sort of at pains to say you like Mark Zuckerberg, you admire him, you call him a good and a kind man. You say you don`t know -- you`ve said you don`t know if you are going to be friends after you publish this. But basically your analysis is the best human being in the world with this much power would still be a problem, that the problem fundamentally is that this one individual controls 60 percent of shares for something that 2 billion people use. It`s just too much concentrated power, is that what you`re saying?
HUGHES: Exactly. Mark is a good person. He`s a human, like you, me, you know, like all of your viewers. He makes mistakes though. And we all make mistakes. The problem is, is because he has so much power, he alone controls a platform that 2.4 billion people use, and he has no boss. I mean, Facebook`s board is effectively a board of advisers. He controls 60 percent of the voting shares, so it`s not like he can be fired. He`s not really accountable to users, because there is nowhere else to go. Last year when there was outrage, there was the delete Facebook movement, and according to Pew one in four of Facebook users deleted the app from their phone, and then Facebook reported numbers and user numbers were literally the exact same. And everybody was like how did this happen? And it`s pretty clear, there is nowhere else to go.
I mean, I had friends of my own who were saying I`m so tired of Facebook. I`m just thank god for Instagram, not realizing that Instagram is part of Facebook.
So, it`s not that Mark is not a bad person, but it is true that his power is too big, and it`s up to government to step in, break up the company, and regulate it.
HAYES: You know, when I`ve talked to people from Silicon Valley and they are very skeptical of the government`s ability to navigate these waters. They think it`s a bunch of idiots, basically, generally that they sort of view them with contempt. Why are you confident that government can pull this off, that can rationally break up these companies and foster the right regulatory environment?
HUGHES: Well, I think that view that you described plays into this cynicism, which has been a part of our culture, I think, for decades now. That`s the idea that in general markets are dynamic and productive and government is bureaucratic and gets in the way. And that was unfortunately I think the conclusion a lot of people took away from Mark`s congressional testimony last year.
I think in reality that markets are only dynamic and fair when government steps in to structure them and make them that way. And just as we regulate airlines and pharmaceutical companies and guarantee a base level of protection, so, too, should we do the same thing for private tech companies.
So, I think a lot of folks in Silicon Valley want to say, you know, don`t mess with us, don`t bother with us, but the time is up. There have been too many scandals. There have been too many problems, and now it`s up to the FTC and congress to say enough is enough and we`re going to invoke our power and, you know, the view of the government to regulate these folks.
HAYES: What is your fear if things keep going the way things are going?
HUGHES: I worry that Facebook will grow bigger and bigger, more and more powerful, because it will collect more and more data about everything that we are doing. And it will grow increasingly difficult to separate the companies out and break them up.
Until January, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook were largely administered separately inside Facebook as a parent company, now Facebook is racing to try to integrate them, not only to avoid this antitrust conversation, but also to consolidate all the information they have about you across the different platforms.
So, I think as more time goes by, it will become more difficult, not impossible, but it will be more difficult to break the company up and spur the competition that I think most people want to see.
HAYES: I guess final question, it`s a personal one about how you think Mark Zuckerberg,m who you consider a friend, is receiving this, or if you know.
HUGHES: You know, I don`t know. I haven`t talked to him since the piece came out. I think there is some of the parts about regulation that he might agree with. He himself has said that he has too much power and there should be some kind of regulation. I doubt he agrees with the idea of breaking up Facebook.
But in some sense my -- the whole point in writing the piece is that Mark Zuckerberg can`t fix it. Ironically, this is the one problem he can`t fix, it`s up to government to step in.
HAYES: All rig ht, Chris Hughes, thank you very much. I really -- I enjoyed the piece.
HUGHES: Thanks for having me, Chris.
HAYES: Today, an all male group of Republican men tried to sneak a bill criminalizing abortion past the state senate and chaos ensued. A full-on assault on women`s rights happening in states across America ahead.
Plus, the congresswoman conservatives just can`t leave alone, that`s tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two, next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, what is at the bottom of your kitchen sink, a regular old drain or big hole with spitting metal teeth which can eat all your food scraps and stuff? Where you live might determine the answer. Kitchen sink garbage disposals are common in many parts of the country, but some other places just do not have them.
In much of New York City, where I grew up, garbage disposals were actually banned from the 1970s until 1997. There were concerns about the water mains and the sewers being able to handle all that soggy, chopped up food. That`s a gross sentence.
And most old departments have never gotten a sink lift making garbage disposals a top tier amenity to this day.
I personally -- this is true -- did not see a garbage disposal until I came to visit my cousins here in Chicago as a kid, at which point I saw it and I thought it was terrifying and weird and kind of gross.
Other people from the Bronx apparently have made it into their 20s without ever seeing one.
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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, (D) NEW YORK: OK, everyone. I need your help because I just moved into this apartment a few months ago and I flipped this switch and it made that noise and it scared the daylights out of me.
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HAYES: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discovers the garbage disposal and the right wing goes nuts again. That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: This week, the freshman Democratic congresswoman who drives Republicans out of their minds posted I found an endearing and goofy little video. After living her whole life in a city which banned garbage disposals, she apparently discovered one in her new D.C. apartment.
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OCASIO-CORTEZ: I need your help because I just moved into this apartment a few months ago and I flipped this switch and it made that noise and it scared the daylights out of me. I am told this is a garbage disposal. I have never seen a garbage disposal. I never had one in any place I ever lived. It is terrifying. I don`t know what to use it for, or what its purpose is.
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HAYES: Now, there are all sorts of theories about why conservatives, especially conservative men, are so obsessed with Congresswoman Ocasio- Cortez and why something like that video about her garbage disposal was so wildly offensive to them.
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GLENN BECK, CONSERVATIVE RADIO SHOW HOST: Who are doesn`t know what a garbage disposal is?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only thing I can think of is maybe she`s lived her life as a moron.
BECK: It`s not that she never had one, it`s just like she`s like I don`t know what this is? This is a foreign thing.
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HAYES: Hilarious stuff. Then there is the guy who bills himself as the, quote, first YouTuber to run for office who made, and I`m not kidding you, a 10-minute long video to complain about her one-minute Instagram story.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this girl in 6th grade or something? By the way, guys, like this video. Don`t dislike this video, because I see a lot of times I do these reaction videos and people dislike it because of the video that they`ve seen, so like they would normally dislike her, but like like me.
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HAYES: A wild scene in the Alabama State Senate State Republican as state Republicans thee attempted to basically ram through by voice vote legislation that would make it a crime punishable by up to 99 years in prison for a doctor to perform an abortion.
Democrats objected, and this ensued.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All those in favor say aye.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no, no -- hold...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Motion passes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, there was no motion. There was no motion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a motion. He made a motion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn`t even make a motion, Mr. President. He did not make a motion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He made a motion to table.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He did not make a motion. There was no motion from the other side.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He made a motion to table.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heck no. He didn`t even make a motion!
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HAYES: So that motion has now been tabled, but it will be back and it is likely to pass and then be signed into law by the state`s Republican governor.
Now this comes the same week that Georgia became the fourth state in 2019 alone to pass a six-week abortion ban. Keep in mind that many women don`t know they are pregnant yet at six weeks.
And because of language about so-called personhood of the embryo, the Georgia law could also make women criminally liable for things like going out of state to have an abortion in a state in which it`s not banned, or for having a miscarriage.
Meanwhile in Ohio, Republicans are pushing legislation to ban abortion coverage from private insurance, which could restrict access to some contraception as well. And the bill`s main sponsor explained that women with ectopic pregnancies, a potentially life threatening condition, would have to have the pregnancy re-implanted in the uterus, a procedure that does not exist.
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STATE REP. JOHN BECKER, (R) OHIO: Part of that treatment would be removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus. So that`s defined as not an abortion under this bill.
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HAYES: Again, that is not a real medical procedure.
Now, all of this legislation is, of course, unconstitutional flatly under both current law and Supreme Court precedent. But the whole point of this onslaught is that now with Brett Kavanaugh sitting on the court where Anthony Kennedy once sat, they can overturn that precedent. And the Alabama folks are clear on this, the bill sponsor telling The Washington Post it`s purpose is to spark litigation that would force the conservative majority to reconsider Roe V Wade.
When we return, the argument that overturning Roe and criminalizing abortion is the cement holding together Donald Trump`s entire coalition.
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CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the women?
TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.
MATTHEWS: 10 cents, 10 years, what?
TRUMP: That I don`t know. That I don`t know.
MATTHEWS: Why not ?
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HAYES: And then candidate Donald Trump made those comments back in 2016. Establishment Republicans and anti-abortion activists rushed to explain that he was confused. Of course, that wasn`t their position.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, women shouldn`t be punished. Look, you know, I think probably Donald Trump will figure out a way to say he didn`t say it or he was misquoted or whatever. But I don`t think so. I don`t think that`s an appropriate response.
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HAYES: Well, here we are three years later with President Trump in the Oval Office, two of his conservative nominees sitting on the Supreme Court and members of his party in Georgia just enacted legislation that could do exactly as Trump said: punish a woman for having an abortion.
Now, the formerly pro-choice Donald Trump is perhaps the most unlikely champion of the anti-abortion movement you could find in the entire country, and yet here he is, on the precipice of having his court nominees achieve a decade`s long goal of undoing Roe V Wade.
Joining me now to discuss what`s happening with the Republican push to eliminate abortion rights, Laura Bassett who has been covering it all as a journalist, and Carolin Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society, one of the nation`s leading progressive legal organizations.
Laura, let me start with you. Obviously, there`s been so much activism and activity around this issue in Republican states attempting to whittle away at access. This seems a newer strategy and a more sort of frontal assault. Is that what you`re seeing?
LAURA BASSETT, JOURNALIST: Absolutely. This really -- the wave of anti- abortion restrictions started in 2011 when the Tea Party swept the House after 2010. And so we`ve been seeing increasing amounts of abortion restrictions every year, and this year it appears to be the worst. The abortion laws are getting definitely a lot more extreme. We`re seeing all out abortion bans, or they might as well be the one in Georgia and the one in Ohio might as well be, these six-week bans before most women even realize they are pregnant
And I think the reason Republicans are so emboldened now because look, this heart beat ban, Republicans have been trying to pass this for years. Kasich a few years ago actually, he vetoed it because he said it was too extreme, now it is not too extreme for Republicans anymore because Donald Trump is president and there is a conservative Supreme Court and they think this actually could get up there to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe.
HAYES: So, Caroline, my understanding of the legal jurisprudence under Roe, is that obviously all these things -- like a six week ban, or a comprehensive ban like Alabama, are just flatly against the law. They are unconstitutional. They violate Roe.
What happens in -- what is the strategy they are pursuing in terms of the legal fight here?
CAROLINE FREDRICKSON, AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY PRESIDENT: Well, you know, I think clearly they kind of mistook the Handmaid`s Tale for a how-to manual. But they are trying to land this directly at the Supreme Court.
You know, it sort of -- they did used to kind of go around it and pretend that what they were doing was just reasonable limitations when they always have been aiming at the heart of Roe.
Right now, they are coming out of the darkness and doing it in broad daylight and saying that that`s what they are all about. They want to overturn Roe and they want the Supreme Court with Donald Trump`s nominees to do it for them.
HAYES: But I guess the question like just in a more technical sense, and maybe this is a boring but I just -- like there is a district court -- this is going to go to a district court. Someone is going to sue. It`s going to go to a district court judge who is going to strike it down, and then what happens?
FREDRICKSON: Well, I mean, they go to an appellate court, which also has been stacked with right-wing judges by Donald Trump, and then it`s -- you know, it`s on the express train to the Supreme Court. I mean, they`ve indicated, and we know that that`s what Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, they are ready and waiting and the rest of them, you know, have been signaling quite obviously that that the the direction that they want to go.
HAYES: Laura, do you think there is -- I think among women, particularly in women, who are support abortion rights and active, there is a real tangible fear that we are right, we`re standing at the precipice right now. Where are we, to your mind?
BASSETT: I think women are terrified right now from what I`m seeing, especially over the past couple weeks with the Georgia bill.
The Georgia bill is unlike anything we`ve seen. And we`re talking about a bill that defines abortion as murder. It would threaten women with up to life in prison, or even capital punishment for an abortion. 10 years in prison for going out to a different state to have an abortion and threatening women with jail time for even possibly a miscarriage.
Now we`ve got an Ohio bill that`s possibly banning the insurance coverage of birth control. I think women have gotten a bit complacent over the years in thinking, oh, you know, Roe V Wade is set precedent, it was set in the `70s. And now they`re saying, oh, this is serious. And we don`t have a Supreme Court that`s going to protect us. We might actually soon be put in jail for something that used to be a common health care procedure.
HAYES: Caroline, what do you think about where the Supreme Court is on this, and whether they would take a case on this? A full frontal just challenge to Roe, something like a comprehensive ban?
FREDRICKSON: You know, I think we might have thought differently until this term, but we`ve already seen the Supreme Court issuing some really I think radical decisions and moving in a direction that seems to contemplate going to Roe. I mean, people say that Chief Justice Roberts is very worried about the status of the court and proceeds incrementally. But I don`t think the others are there. And I`m not really sure that he`s there. I mean, we`ve already seen that they have indicated they are ready to undue a decision they issued just a couple years ago, which found law unconstitutional for putting some real constraints on women`s access to abortion. And I think it could happen any time.
HAYES: And you only need four votes to take the case, and then the wrangling begins.
Laura Bassett and Caroline Fredrickson, thank you both for joining me.
BASSETT: Thank you.
FREDRICKSON: Thank you.
HAYES: That is 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