CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: For ticket information, to go to this thing, go to the HARDBALL Instagram account -- the HARDBALL Instagram account if you want to go. That`s tonight`s HARDBALL. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): We`ll be doing a series of hearings in the Intel Committee on volume one of the Mueller Report.
HAYES: Democrats announce new hearings as Paul Manafort may move to Rikers Island.
PAUL MANAFORT, FORMER CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: That`s what I said, that`s obviously what our position is.
HAYES: Tonight, the latest on investigating the president amid more Trump world criminality and corruption. Then Senator Sherrod Brown on the Trump campaigns troubles in the Midwest, Stacey Abrams on her campaign to keep business in Georgia in the wake of the state`s new abortion law. And ahead of tomorrow night`s big Town Hall with Elizabeth Warren, Trymaine Lee reports on how some Trump voting farmers see 2020.
TRYMAINE LEE, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Will you be voting for Donald Trump again?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most likely no.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from Chicago, I`m Chris Hayes. Tonight there`s new movement on the investigations into the president as we learn more about the criminality and corruption of the people he has chosen to surround himself with.
The President`s campaign manager already a convicted criminal is headed to one of the country`s most notorious jails New York City`s Rikers Island where he`s reportedly expected to be held in solitary confinement.
Paul Manafort will be transferred in New York to face state charges for mortgage fraud, an effort to make sure he still serves time even if the president pardons Manafort for his several federal crimes as Trump has hinted publicly and privately that he might do.
The news of Manafort transfer comes one day after an informal advisor the Trump campaign and the White House was arrested on child pornography charges. George Nader, you may recall, was an envoy for the crown princes of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That`s him with Mohammed bin Salman. And he met with Donald Trump Jr. back in the summer 2016 explicitly to offer foreign help in winning the election.
Now, that offer doesn`t seem to have gone anywhere so far as we know, but Nader was reportedly embraced as a close ally by campaign advisers meeting frequently with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn. He also served as an intermediary between Trump world and Russia during the presidential transition.
Nader was the guy who set up that infamous Seychelles meeting between a senior Russian official and Erik Prince, another informal Trump adviser and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. After the inauguration, Nader stayed in touch with the President`s inner circle reportedly paying repeated visits to the White House as part of what was said to be a broader campaign by those two Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia, UAE to influence U.S. policy.
In January 2018, federal agents detain Nader at an airport outside Washington while he was, get this, on his way to Mar-a-Lago for a big party to celebrate the president`s first year in office. The agents were working with Special Counsel Robert Muller who reportedly went on to make a cooperation deal with Nader in exchange for limited immunity.
But when the agent sees Nader`s phones, they found something they were not looking for, 12 videos featuring young boys which Nader was taking with him on the way to Mar-a-Lago. Of course, Nader already had a long record, pleaded guilty to child pornography charge in 1991 after a previous case have been -- against had been dropped. And in 2003 he was convicted in the Czech Republic on ten counts of sexually abusing minors and sentenced to a one-year prison term.
That was the guy`s record already. He was finally arrested yesterday in New York. He will be transferred to Virginia tomorrow to face charges. And there are still a lot of unanswered questions about Nader`s involvement in Trump world, his role as a cutout for foreign influence. Foreign influence we see to this day.
Today, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff announced he`s holding hearings starting next week on exactly those kinds of questions focusing on the counterintelligence side of the Mueller investigation.
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SCHIFF: This began as an investigation through the FBI primarily focused on whether U.S. persons were acting as witting or unwitting agents of a foreign power. Now, that kind of activity may be criminal or it may not be criminal. There may be any number of other counterintelligence problems that were identified during the course investigation that because they didn`t go into a charging decision on the hacking operation or the social media operation are completely left out of the report.
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HAYES: Meanwhile, the President`s former fixer Michael Cohen is serving his federal prison sentence in upstate New York. And according to The Daily Beast, he`s being treated like a celebrity there. Though that`s silver lining aside, everyone around the President has to be worried right now about what fate awaits them with 12 mystery investigations that we don`t know the names of spun off from the Mueller probe now working their way through various DOJ offices and House Democrats bearing down on the White House.
In its latest attempt to head off that congressional scrutiny, the White House is now formally directing two former aides Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson former chief of staff to White House Counsel Don McGahn to ignore House subpoenas. I`m joined now by one of the House Democrats chasing down the President`s tax returns Congressman Dan Kildee of Michigan, a member of the Ways and Means Committee.
All right, we have seen now a very clear pattern from the White House which is no -- giving over no documents and instruct other witnesses who formerly work in the White House to ignore congressional subpoenas. What do you do?
REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): I think the President has a lot to hide and it`s obvious that he`s going to do everything he can to hide it even if it means ignoring a subpoena, even if it means directing people to not report to committees to give testimony when they`re asked to.
I think we have to press forward with every tool we have and that means going to court to enforce these subpoenas, to force the administration to comply with the law and not allow him to continue to simply ignore the constitutional role that the Congress must play.
Now the people around him including a lot of Republicans in the House seem OK with this. This is the thing that bothers me more than anything else. We expect Donald Trump to be self-centered and narcissistic, but what we don`t expect our members of Congress to rally around him because they happen to share his partisanship, because they think they`re better off defending him. That`s what frightens me more than anything, Chris.
This -- it`s not just about Donald Trump, this is about a Republican Party that is thrown in with this guy and they`re going to reap the whirlwind as a result of it.
HAYES: Well, let me follow up on that. I mean, is this -- I don`t want to say are you surprised the way people often do in online discourse it drives me crazy, but I mean, I guess the question is this behavior from a Republican colleagues in the House who you know and you work with every day like is it surprising to you that there are -- view themselves as protecting the president rather than the prerogatives of the -- of the branch of government?
Well, I guess, I wish it was a little more surprising. But you do expect that at certain moments in the course of the American experience, people rise above their narrow loyalties to party or to a person and follow up on the oath that they swore to the Constitution. You know, the framers expected someday a rogue presidency.
That`s why they separated the authority into these three branches. That`s why they expected Congress to exercise this oversight role. What they did not expect is that one party would be complicit with the rogue presidency. That`s -- in many ways, Chris, that`s why voters delivered a majority to House Democrats back in 2018. And I don`t think a lot of these Republicans have gotten the message.
And I`m worried about the implications for this. I`m worried that their -- that their continued insistence on protecting him, and this is particularly true in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell has essentially become a full plate -- a full-time employee of Trump Incorporated.
He has ceded his authority, his constitutional responsibility to the president not just in terms of oversight but in a commitment that he`s made to enforce the president`s directive that he will not work with us on anything until we stop performing this necessary oversight on him. Mitch McConnell has thrown in with the president and said he will not take up Democratic bills because he`s essentially becoming Donald Trump`s enforcer.
HAYES: On terms of the timeline, right, so that the idea is that you know, this is going to work its way through the courts and already there have been favorable rulings for House subpoenas in two different federal district courts. But do you worry essentially that this is -- this will amount to slow walking, right. The stuff can be tied up.
And in the meantime, people like yourself who are trying to do real oversight, right, trying to get to the bottom of a bunch of actual factual questions are just unable to do that in the interim.
KILDEE: I am worried about it. I don`t think that that we have a lot of time before the threads begin to unravel even further in the -- in this democracy. And we -- and I don`t mean to overstate that but this is really kind of an important moment.
And it`s for that reason, Chris, that somebody like me who has been very reluctant to entertain the idea of impeachment now after reading the Mueller report and seeing the very damning evidence that`s in the Mueller report and now seeing the president go further to try to obfuscate the facts and try to obscure our ability to investigate further, that may end up being the only choice that we have. And that`s the way we have to look at it.
I don`t believe we should rush to impeachment but I think we should not be afraid to use that tool if in fact, it`s the only tool that we have left to protect our democracy.
HAYES: Final question. You just came back from your district and I talked -- I`ve talked to some other Democratic candidates -- sorry Democratic members of Congress who`ve been in their district. What did you hear about impeachment?
KILDEE: Well, I think people, you know, like in my district for example, they don`t want to talk about -- it`s not the first thing that comes to mind because they`re worried about their own lives and their own experiences. But they do have this fear that we have a president who believes he`s above the law.
And what I`m hearing from people is that they don`t like the idea of impeachment, neither do I. But also they know that it may come to that. And if that`s what it takes in order to defend the Constitution, I get the sense that they will be willing to support it.
I think we have to be careful about it, but I can`t -- I just cannot take it off the table. I can`t justify it knowing that 20 years from now I may have to answer really tough questions from my grandchildren about what I did when the President of the United States trampled all over the Constitution.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Dan Kildee, thank you for your time tonight.
KILDEE: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: For more on the counterintelligence investigation, the questions still unanswered, I`m joined by MSNBC Legal Analyst Mimi Rocah, former federal prosecutor and MSNBC Political Analyst David Jolly, former Republican Congressman from Florida.
Mimi, let me start with you. I mean, obviously you know, it`s not a crime to you know, have someone being intermediary for foreign agents meeting with you who is also a pedophile which is appears to be the case of George Nader, but it does raise some very serious questions about both.
What are the sort of ways in which access to the president`s controlled and who gets in his ear on extremely important matters of state.
MIMI ROCAH, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean, you know, the fact that Nader had this previous conviction is troubling in and of itself. The fact that he apparently you know, this -- the previous conviction was 25 years ago. He didn`t stop for 20 years and then all of a sudden you know, just now when he -- when he went to the airport he happened to have child porn on his phone.
So he was -- this is clearly something he`s been doing over the years and isn`t even about the criminal convictions. The fact that he was doing it which makes him extremely blackmailable, right. And that`s one of the main problems with Trump and the people he surrounds himself with including Trump himself possibly. I mean that`s obviously what Congress needs to get out in the counterintelligence investigation.
But we know that so many people around him are involved in either explicit criminal activity or activity that they wouldn`t want public and that makes them subject, vulnerable to blackmail by foreign powers or even domestic.
HAYES: Yes, David. I mean, the counterintelligence part of this that Adam Schiff just announced today gets to this question not of the sort of narrow question of prosecutability or whether there`s statutory violation or crime was committed but just generally whether you can trust that the president and his circle are not compromised in fundamental ways.
DAVID JOLLY, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well you can`t. And look, there are counterintelligence investigations that are critically important and it`s a good thing the Intel committee is doing them. An investigation that kind of belabors the Mueller report though I think a lot of people`s patience has kind of worn thin on that.
It is clear that divided among Democrats but frankly a lot of independents who want to see oversight as well is between those who think impeachment is a constitutional requirement in the face of a crime regardless of the polls and the politics. And those as Nancy Pelosi articulates that believe that politics have to get there first. That it truly is an electoral question or calculus if you will.
Those two camps seem to be speaking past each other and at times you hear each of those camps articulated by the same member and they don`t realize they`re contradicting themselves. That`s where we find ourselves with the investigations. Now they`re about to be embarked upon on the Hill.
HAYES: Yes, but here`s the thing. It`s a live issue. And this to me is really important, Mimi. This is not stuff in the past. Here`s a reporting today that right after the murder of a Washington Post columnist, hacked to death at the orders it appears of Mohammed bin Salman that the Trump administration approves Saudi nuclear permits and they`ve done it twice after that.
We know that everything they have done in the region has been to further the interests of the Saudis in the United Arab Emirates and we do not know whether that are sound policy judgment which I might disagree with or fundamentally corrupt in their intent.
ROCAH: Right. And you know, I agree with David obviously in terms of the patience on this sort of investigate the Mueller report hearing type process you know is -- where patience is wearing thin on that. But I think that`s very separate from what Congressman Schiff is talking about doing which is getting to the bottom of the questions that you are raising, right, which are separate and apart and clearly were not addressed in the Mueller report.
And we don`t know that Mueller himself looked into them. In fact it seems that he referred them out to the FBI. Possibly there are some of these ongoing investigations. Possibly they`re just in the counterintelligence section of the FBI.
So I think on that side those that -- the counterintelligence side and Schiff, they need to actually be doing investigations. On the judiciary side, they need to have not investigative hearings but hearings to educate the public about what we already know.
HAYES: Right.
ROCAH: I frankly think this sort of demand about the unredacted report is -- I mean it`s not useless but it`s not the most important thing. What`s in a report that is already unredacted is plenty. So I think there`s two different tracks here and Congress needs to separate them in terms of one being investigation and one being about informing the public about what we already know.
HAYES: David, you`re not in your head.
JOLLY: Yes. Look, I think this position on impeachment articulated by Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and others that somehow the nation needs to get there. The irony is that the single person that could get the nation there is Nancy Pelosi herself.
Chris, imagine if Nancy Pelosi tomorrow asked to address the nation in primetime at 9:00 p.m. every network would cover it but for Fox News. Imagine if the Speaker said taking the Mueller reports narrative about Dan McGahn and the President telling McGahn to fire Mueller and then to cover it up constitutes the three elements of obstruction.
An obstructive act linked to an official proceeding with a corrupt intent and based on a thousand federal prosecutors including Mimi, the Congress believes that that rises to the level of impeachment under Article 2 Section 4 and therefore in 30 days we`re going to have a vote. And we hope that administration officials will cooperate with our invitation to testify, but if they don`t, we`re moving to a vote.
Nancy Pelosi can move the needle for the American people. Instead, we`re relying on rank-and-file members to try to do it. I`m not sure it will ever happen.
HAYES: Yes, that`s a good point. David Jolly and Mimi Rocah, thank you both very much. Next, how the Trump campaign is signaling that any path to victory in 2020 may not go through the Midwest. Senator Sherrod Brown on Trump`s troubles in the Midwest in two minutes.
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HAYES: President Trump is reportedly looking to expand his path to reelection because the path he used in 2016 may not be there anymore. Politico reports the Trump campaign is putting resources into New Mexico, Nevada, and New Hampshire, states he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. His campaign needs more than one path to victory because "his own polling shows him falling behind in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Part of the reason he won those states in Electoral College in 2016 was over-performing in the industrial Midwest particularly among white voters without a college degree. And Democrats made some gains with those voters in the Midterm Elections in the Midwest and it seems like the most straightforward path for Democrats to win the presidency would be to win back those states in the industrial Midwest.
In another head-to-head battle with Trump, the question is what is the best message for Democrats in that part of the country. Joining me now, a Democrat who knows a thing or two about winning the industrial Midwest Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
You know, campaign to have these -- there`s reporting on campaigns are looking at this or that state all the time. A lot of times it`s misdirection, great assault, it`s 18 months out. I do wonder what your assessment of the political situation in your home state of Ohio and throughout states adjacent to it are at this moment.
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): Yes, I feel good about it. I talked to Bob Casey in Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Senator Stabenow and Peters in Michigan and I feel -- they`re competitive, they`re going to be hard but I think they -- I think working-class voters of all races -- I don`t just talk about working-class men or working-class white, working- class voters of all races understand that this president has betrayed workers.
They see he`s put people on the courts not just the Supreme Court, up and down the courts that put their thumb on the scales of justice to support corporations over workers and to support Wall Street over consumers.
They see what he did on the overtime rule three million Americans will get less overtime pay because of Trump`s actions. His refusal to raise the minimum wage, he`s refuse -- he`s stacking the National Labor Relations Board against workers. It`s -- and just look at -- look at his tax bill, 75 percent of them went to the richest one percent.
I mean, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives and that`s who surrounds the president, that`s who blows in his ear, and that`s the decision she makes.
HAYES: But there`s always this question right, about like those are all substantive parts of the President`s agenda, then there`s two other things right, people sort of affiliation culturally or ideologically, right. They like the president, like what he stands for, they like the coalition. But then the third thing I`m interested in is based -- the basic macroeconomics, right.
I mean, there`s this thinking particularly in the modeling of presidential elections like growth is high, unemployment relatively low. And I wonder the degree like at the ground level in a state like Ohio, is that penetrating or not? Does it look a lot like it looked three years ago?
BROWN: No, I mean people will say the economy`s going well. Well, people that say that or you know, are newscasters and pundits and successful business people and some people that are that are doing well economically. But I -- when I was thinking about the presidential race, I was doing my dignity of work tour in Nevada at a union hall. Their slogan at the Culinary Workers Union 226 is one job should be enough.
Far too many Americans hold two jobs. We see corporate profits going up. We see executive compensation exploding upwards. We see workers more productive every year than the year before and wages are flat. So people aren`t getting ahead even though the president brags about the economy.
So many people are -- most people were working. Many people are happy but fundamentally, you`re not seeing the kind of support for the president that what he says is a good economy should suggest.
HAYES: You know, your colleagues, the Republican Senate caucus had a lunch today. There are some representatives in the White House there to try to sell them on this New Mexico tariff that has been proposed. The reporting suggests that your colleagues are not that into that plan. How do you see this latest tariff escalation with Mexico? What`s your read on that and what it means?
BROWN: Well, the President doesn`t seem to understand that tariffs are a temporary tool to get to a long term policy. That`s how he bungled the China -- the China tariffs. Instead of working with our allies, he first attacked our allies with tariffs. Working with our allies, aimed at countries like China, specifically China, the serial cheater, the cheaters, the companies that cheat in making them play fair with a level playing field which he still hasn`t succeeded in doing.
And then now he`s taking tariffs which again should be a temporary tool to get to a long-term better trade policy to make China, stop China from cheating. He`s talking about tariffs now on a -- on a bankrupt immigration policy. So yes, it doesn`t work for our economy. It`s not -- it`s just not working for him.
And I think it`s a little like the hammer looking for the nail. I mean everything is -- every problem he sees is the hammer is a tariff that you can solve.
HAYES: Right.
BROWN: And it`s just doesn`t -- it doesn`t pass a straight face test.
HAYES: Well, it`s interesting because sometimes he argues -- he talks about tariffs as a tool to get to some policy, and then other times he talks about them as a good in and of himself. I mean, he will tweet about the how great terrors are. They`re going to fill the pockets of everyone and we`re going to get all this money.
So there`s a little (AUDIO GAP) you have (AUDIO GAP) since you were in the House 20 years ago, wrote a book on it. What do you make of where we are right now in this escalating trade war?
BROWN: Well, I think that -- yes, I think he does. I think he sees tariffs as an end of them -- end of themselves. I think he sees that as a long-term policy now because nothing he`s doing seems to get China to do what he wants them to do and in many cases what I hope they`re doing. I`m still a hawk on China.
I see what China -- we had a hearing today in the Banking Committee. China has finally agreed to stop sending fentanyl, the most deadly synthetic opioid that`s killing 14 people a day in Ohio. Most of those deaths are overdoses from late -- from in various opioids laced with fentanyl. Chinese said they`re not going to do anymore.
We`re still going to have tariffs ready aimed -- not tariffs, I`m sorry, sanctions aimed at Chinese pharmaceutical companies and Chinese chemical companies because we don`t trust them. They didn`t do on steel what they said. We`ve had that history. We`ll give them the chance to do that, right.
But I think you need China. China continues to cheat. We know they dump products in our country. We know they`ve not played fair. We need -- we need -- when China invests in this country we have to make sure it`s done properly not to jeopardize our national security. We have a law about that but also to make sure doesn`t jeopardize our economic security, our prosperity. We need to do all those things with China.
HAYES: All right, but then final question here and this is where this sort of rubber hits the road on the message because I think the President will continue down this path. And when it comes time for a presidential election, it seems like the Democratic critique of him particularly the industrial Midwest is maybe the right idea on the wrong tactics or the wrong execution, but that just seems like a kind a somewhat muddled message.
BROWN: That is a muddled message. That`s why you go back to this president. He`s betrayed, workers. He betrayed them at Lordstown on the GM plant. He betrays workers that are making $35,000 a year and working 50 hours and not getting a sun of overtime. He betrays workers with his court appointments where they decide for companies over workers and Wall Street over consumers. He betrays them by a tax bill where overwhelming amount of the benefits went to the richest people in the country.
People know their wages aren`t going up. They see the rich do better and better. They see corporations continue to move jobs overseas because of the tax bill and because he is -- he has failed on his trade policy.
HAYES: Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, thank you so much.
BROWN: Chris, thanks always.
HAYES: Speaking of winning back the Midwest, Senator Elizabeth Warren have veiled a big new industrial policy today focus on an idea that she calls economic patriotism. There`s a lot to get to in that.
And we`re going to be with her in Fort Wayne, Indiana tomorrow for a live Town Hall. Our first ever live candidate Town Hall as Warren tries to show that she is the candidate who can appeal to those voters industrial Midwest and win back states that Trump won. That`s live tomorrow night 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on MSNBC.
And next, Stacey Abrams joins me to talk about Hollywood threats to boycott Georgia in the wake of the state`s new abortion bills. Why she says studios should stay and fight next.
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HAYES: Behind New York and California, it`s the state of Georgia that has more film production than any other U.S. state. But that booming business is now in peril, because of the draconian anti-abortion law pushed through by the state`s GOP legislators and signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp. The law effectively bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant, and has criminal penalties for doctors who perform the procedure.
In response, companies including Netflix, Disney and our own parent company NBC/Universal have said they would consider polling production if the new law takes effect which would, of course, have severe economic consequences. Now Governor Kemp has postponed a trip to meet with film companies reportedly because he was worried about the fallout.
And so into the void comes the woman who ran against him in 2018, Stacey Abrams. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported yesterday that Abrams, along with the head of the abortion rights group NARAL, will meet with film executives in Los Angeles next week to discuss these issues.
And joining me from Atlanta is Stacey Abrams.
What`s the agenda, what`s the intent and goal behind this meeting?
STACEY ABRAMS, (D) FORMER GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, GEORGIA: Well, as you pointed out, the state of Georgia has 92,000 employees in the film industry, $9.5 billion in economic impact, but unfortunately we have a governor who has not only refused to go to Hollywood, he`s actually refusing to respond to requests from 15 of the largest companies in Georgia involved in the film industry to meet with them.
And so my goal is very simple, I want to protect jobs in Georgia. I want to protect women in Georgia. And having built relationships not only with the film industry, but other industries that are here in Georgia, I was asked to come and have a conversation about what the bill does, what the bill means, and how we can best support women and the film industry and I`m there to provide information.
HAYES: There are a lot of folks who are supportive of abortion rights who are horrified the legislation in Georgia and in Alabama and Missouri and those other places and wondering about what can be done. What is your view about the use of essentially pulling production as a kind of point of political leverage in response to this legislation?
ABRAMS: I support and understand the emotional and the political pull of a boycott call. I grew up in the deep south, boycotts have long been part of the civil rights have advanced. But we also have to have a long-term understanding of what`s happened. Republicans spent 40 years building a narrative, but also building the capacity to push these bans across the country. And simply taking down or taking away jobs is not going to solve the fundamental problem of political power.
And so my intention is to stay and fight, to build the political power to not only fight back against these bans and fight back against forced pregnancy, but to build the political capacity to not have the fight against for 40 more years.
We are in an inflection point in this country where the power to make progress is real, but we have to have the investment and the foresight and the strategy to bring it to fruition.
HAYES: How central was choice and access to abortion and abortion rights in the race that you ran with Brian Kemp in that state?
ABRAMS: There could not have been a clearer contrast. He said in response to a bill that passed in Mississippi that he wanted to have the strictest abortion law in the country. I very clearly and very repeatedly spoke about my sport for choice in the state of Georgia.
But it`s not just about the right to an abortion, it`s also about the ancillary health care choices that are being made. Georgia has the highest maternal mortality rate for black women in the nation and one of the highest overall in the country. We are losing doctors. We are losing hospitals. And when you have a state where more than half of the counties do not have an ob-gyn, this kind of bill is really crippling, it is fatal.
And so my push is to say that we have to be thinking not just about the politics, but the people. And this is a very clear issue for me. We have been -- I have been unequivocal about my support for reproductive choice, and it is a choice that women should have. It is a choice that should be upheld by the courts and upheld by our legislatures. And my mission is to make certain that we have leader who respect that choice.
HAYES: You are running a group right now I think called Fair Fight Action. You stayed very involved in Georgia politics. There was news the other day about your campaign, your 2018 campaign, handing over a bunch of documents to the state ethics office, I think it is the office in response to essentially a subpoena investigation. What is that investigation? What`s going on there?
ABRAMS: So Fair Fight Action had two pieces of news last week? Number one, we received a response from a federal judge on our motion to dismiss - - or sorry, the Republicans` motion to dismiss that would have eliminated our challenge to the voting system in the state of Georgia. And in an 85 page decision, Judge Steven Jones refused the motion to dismiss and said that and our claims were colorable (ph) and needed to move forward.
And what we believe is as part of a political vendetta from Brian Kemp and others, he has empowered David Amadi (ph), the ethics -- and it`s not actually an ethics office, but the campaign finance chief to investigate my campaign.
We have responded with 3,600 pages. We`ve responded to every real claim. But they also asked for personal correspondence that had nothing to do with the campaign, and we have refuse to give them that information until they give us the legally required supposition that says that this is necessary information.
This is a political vendetta. And it`s part of Brian Kemp`s pattern. He targets communities of color. He targets groups that push forward voting rights. And he uses his power and the power of his cronies, to try to suppress voices and suppress votes. And we will not stand for it either through Fair Fight Action or through my former campaign.
HAYES: So, you view this fundamentally as in bad faith? I mean, this is the enterprise of this investigation is essentially political in your mind?
ABRAMS: Absolutely.
I mean, look, the campaign finance office has absolute right to ask for financial records. And we provided 3,600 pages. They have a right to inquire as to whether or not we operated in bad faith. We did not. And we have provided proof of that. What they do not have the right to do is try to target black and brown organizations simply because of their affiliation with my campaign. They do not have the right to ask for information that is outside the scope of their authority, and they do not have the right to politicize a process that should not be partisan.
When Republicans won in year`s past, they never took this type of unprecedented action against their opponents. And worse, what`s happened is this repeats behavior from Brian Kemp who when too many Koreans were being registered by an organization, he raided their offices. When too many African-Americans won seats in Quitman -- in the Quitman School Board, he arrested them.
He allowed his cronies to have share of (inaudible) African-Americans in counties where they saw too much voting. He has consistently used the power of his office and those of his allies to target black and brown communities. And unfortunately for him, I have both the agency and the wherewithal to fight back.
HAYES: All right, Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for sharing your time tonight.
ABRAMS: Absolutely. Thank you for having us.
HAYES: Still to come, the special report from Trymaine Lee on the Trump effect on Indiana`s farmers. In tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, can you imagine if it was your job to go on national TV and tell your viewers the thing they are seeing and hearing with their own eyes and ears was actually something else?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And here comes Ivanka and John Bolton and some security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The national security adviser and Ivanka Trump walking across together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does that sound like some booing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, it does. And it`s not for Ivanka, it`s for John Bolton, and he loves it.
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HAYES: They`re saying Boo-urns (ph), that was Brian Kilmede (ph), co-host of Trump TV and Friends. And to be fair, he was just following the lead of the executive editor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: As far as the protests, I have to tell you, because I commented on it yesterday, we left the prime minister, the queen, the royal family. There were thousands of people on the streets cheering. And even coming over today, there were thousands of people cheering. And then I heard there were protests. I said where are the protests? I don`t see any protests. I did see a small protest today when I came, very small. So, a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, we don`t spend a lot of time fact checking Donald Trump, unless it`s particularly entertaining to do it. So, that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: It`s hard to choose which part of President Trump`s statement was the more egregious lie, the part when he says thousands of people took to the streets to cheer for him today in London...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We left the prime minister, the queen, the royal family. There were thousands of people on the streets cheering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were tens of thousands of people, or thousands of people, out there greeting him. There were thousands of people on the streets. They were protesting Trump, not celebrating his arrival. So the fact that he saw that is it that he really believed this?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes, the smash fascism sign I`m sure was to cheer the president on.
The streets over the way to Buckingham Palace were all but empty. There was approximately no 1,000 people there to cheer Trump. But there were people, huge groups of people, you could see it from about a mile away. And maybe they were that small groups of protesters Trump spotted, along with a giant blimp of baby Trump wearing a diaper and holding a cellphone soaring through the skies of London.
And the 16-foot tall animatronic Trump on a golden toilet saying things like I`m a very stable genius, and you`re fake news.
Now, the crowds themselves were in the thousands -- 75,000, according to the Stop Trump Coalition -- they gathered in Trafalgar Square in the center of the city, marched on to Whitehall and finally Parliament Square, to allow the president of the United States to stand before the world to say this didn`t happen, well that would be more obscene than anything on display on the streets there today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Say it loud!
CROWD: Donald Trump`s not welcome here!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Say it lout!
CROWD: Donald Trump`s not welcome here!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: For the past two months, intense flooding has devastated community after community across the Midwest. This is a home in Conway, Arkansas, one of dozens of towns that have been ravaged by rising waters. The homeowners there used more than 10,000 sandbags to stop several feet of water from swamping their home. The Mississippi, Missouri and Arkansas Rivers are all flooded to near record levels. And that has had a huge economic impact across the whole region.
Yesterday, a USDA report showed corn planting across the U.S. at just t67 percent complete, way behind the five-year average of 96 percent. And all those red states you see are below average. This is the era of climate emergency that we now live in. These effects will be everywhere and intensifying, and under President Trump U.S. federal government is doing very little to prevent further catastrophe. In fact, it`s working actively to make things worse.
But today, two Democratic campaigns are out with big new climate plans: former Vice President Joe Biden announced what he called a clean energy revolution that includes investing $1.7 trillion in clean energy with the goal of getting America to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren rolled out a detailed plan to invest $2 trillion over 10 years, including manufacturing, research and trade.
But for now, the flooding continues. Each one of the dark circles on this map represents major flooding in the heart of the country.
And one of the great ironies of this political moment is the president, who won with huge margins throughout rural America, and loves to talk about our great patriotic farmers, is content with the status quo in which said farmers are seeing their livelihoods ruined by flooding and the president`s trade wars.
We`ll have a closer look at how one farmer turned his back on the man he voted for right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Tomorrow, we`ll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a town hall with Elizabeth Warren, a state that Donald Trump carried by almost 20 points. Now, there`s no real sense Indiana itself will be a swing state next time around, and Trump`s supporters continuing to support Trump has become a kind of micro-genre of political reporting in this era.
But it is also the case that at the margins, adverse policies from the Trump administration, particularly the escalating trade war, are having a very real on the ground destructive effect across rural America. And some farmers are getting fed up.
All In correspondent Trymaine Lee went to Gaston, Indiana to talk to one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRYMAINE LEE, MSNBC NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Who did you vote for in 2016?
JASON MAUCK, GASTON, INDIANA FARMER: I voted for Trump.
LEE: Did you believe that Trump would be good for farmers?
MAUCK: It was just the lesser of two evils in my opinion.
LEE: Jason Mauck is a fourth generation farmer. He grows corn and soybeans on the 3,000-acre farm in northeast Indiana that his family has owned for nearly 80 years.
MAUCK: my grandpa spent his entire life paying for each one of these silos, paying for tractors, paying for land. there`s a big part of that as we just don`t want to change. We just want a president that comes in that allows us to keep doing what we`ve always done, because I`ve done this for so long, and by golly that`s what I do.
LEE: This year has been tough for Indiana farmers. Heavy rain and flooding has saturated the soil, making it impossible to plant crops. And that`s on top of Trump`s trade war.
In 2017, Indiana farmers exported over a billion dollars of crops, like soybeans and grains, to China. A year later that dropped by 78 percent. And now Trump just bailed out farmers for the second time in six months.
When you think about the previous aid package and then $16 billion now, does that signal to farmers that Trump is good for farming?
MAUCK: I mean, you could put a monkey in charge and he can write checks.
TRUMP: I have directed Secretary Purdue to provide $16 billion in assistance to America`s farmers and ranchers. China has openly stated they`re going to use the farmer -- the reason is because I got the farmers` votes. You look at a map, it`s all red, meaning Republican, meaning Trump.
LEE: When you hear the president talking about $16 billion in aid, what`s the first thing that comes to your mind?
MAUCK: crumbs on the floor, food stamps, welfare.
LEE: You don`t like any of those things?
MAUCK: No, no. I mean, as a farmer we want to be independent and the perception of the public, it doesn`t look good. We feel like we don`t need it.
LEE: So the trade war may have complicated things, but also mother nature hasn`t been cooperating with you guys, right?
MAUCK: We can`t get a crop in the ground. We`ve had above average rainfall starting with a hurricane last September and we just have not dried out.
I saw a stat that the United States has had the most rainfall ever in the last eight months.
LEE: With all the uncertainty around weather and global trade, Mauck set aside a large part of his farm to develop innovative farming methods.
MAUCK: We`re all trying to work the best with what we have, but it`s different than it was 25 years ago. But I think that a lot of our policies are just trying to preserve and protect old ways instead of letting innovation happen and flourish.
LEE: 2020`s around the corner. Will you be voting for Donald Trump again?
MAUCK: Most likely no.
LEE: Why not?
MAUCK: It was just more of a defensive move last time. I just -- I felt like I was throwing my vote away, but now I just feel like that eventually we need change just away from the two-party system.
LEE: And you`re sending a message by voting in a different way?
MAUCK: Mm-hmm.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: And joining me now is Trymaine Lee. That was a great package, Trymaine. I learned a lot from that.
One factual question, so is he going to take the money? I mean, is there an actual check being written to farmers like this guy?
LEE: He reluctantly said he will be taking the money simply because if his competitor, his neighbors are getting the aid money then it gives them a competitive advantage, so he said reluctantly he`ll take it. But quite frankly, he sees these payouts and the aid and the subsidy the way farmers are subsidized today simply as stifling innovation.
So he`s taking it but he really in his heart of hearts I don`t think he wants to.
HAYES: You know, there`s one thing he said that really caught my ears. And when you look at the map, right, we`ve got historic flooding, National Weather Service saying there`s going to be more and more of that, hitting records. Innovation in terms of things have to change. Like is there an active sense that farming is going to have to change as we move into the era that we`re in now climate-wise?
LEE: W hen you see the issues with climate change and storms coming harder and more frequent, many farmers will say something has to change, but those numbers are small. Quite frankly, there seems to be an age gap. When you have the average age of a farmer is over 60, you know, much more than the under-35 crowd.
And so the younger folks who grew up on smartphones and are more aware of the climate concerns, not just the way they play politically, but how it impacts the actual farming, those voices are quite frankly dimmed. But he`s one of those young guys who he started out in farming his whole life, fourth generation, went away to be a marketer, but his father died young at 53, came back home to work the family farm. And he says the way things are run now simply not sustainable.
HAYES: You know, I wonder about people like Jason because, you know, we know that places like Indiana, which are strong politically supportive of the Republican Party and Donald Trump, how many Jasons are there out there, right, at the margins who just at some point if the trade war keeps going, if it keeps being bad, starts to really make an impact on how people think about their vote?
LEE: It`s hard to say at this point. I mean, Jason clearly has a strong libertarian streak, so he`s like you know we need to do away with both parties and find a new way that we can sustain ourselves, but otherwise it`s cultural, right? People have been, as Jason said, doing the same thing generation after generation, and it`s part of who they are.
And kind of going back to the idea of stifling innovation, there`s like crop insurance. When you can`t get your seeds in the ground by a certain point, you will get a subsidy, you`ll get paid out for that. But there`s nothing you can do with those crops, right. So you have this extreme kind of confluence of issues, and it`s not sure how it plays out politically yet, but Jason for sure says he`s not voting for Trump.
HAYES: All right, Trymaine Lee, thank you so much. That was great.
That is ALL IN for this evening. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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