CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: But I have to leave you on this eve of a big hearing with a thought as to the Republican mission tomorrow. A GOP member of the Judiciary Committee laid that out quite well. "We are going to reelect the President."
That`s HARDBALL for now. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.
HAYES: Donald Trump`s depraved behavior finally take center stage.
MUELLER: We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime.
HAYES: Tonight, the final preparations and the expectation setting as Robert Mueller will finally answer questions on his devastating report for the president. Plus, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries on how Democratic leadership plans to handle the fallout from Mueller, alarming new details about the MAGA bomber`s path to radicalization, and why the Trump administration is planning to kick millions off of food stamps as they throw billions at agribusiness.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We`ll use that toward the farmers and distribute it. This way nobody gets hurt.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. In just over 12 hours, we will hear from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller for not only the second time since the Russia investigation began. He will testify before both the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees tomorrow. And last night we learned the Justice Department sent Mueller a letter warning "any testimony must remain within the boundaries of your public report."
Today Attorney General Bill Barr who has misrepresented Mueller`s words in the past said that more asked for written guidelines. Today NBC News learned that Mueller requested that one of his deputies Aaron Zebley also attend the hearings tomorrow.
Tonight a spokesman for Mueller said "Aaron Zebley was the deputy special counsel and had day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by the office. He will accompany special counsel Mueller to the Wednesday hearings as was discussed with the committees more than a week ago.
Mueller`s 448-page report clearly shows conduct by the president that at the absolutely most charitable, if you really bend over backwards, demonstrates a profound failure to uphold his oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. At the worst, it constitutes not only high crimes and misdemeanors but actual crimes.
For all the coverage we`ve seen about how the American people haven`t read the Mueller report, and don`t care about it, and don`t know what`s going on, a Quinnipiac poll taken just after the report was released found that 57 percent of voters said Trump committed crimes before he became president. 54 percent said the Trump attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election. And 51 percent said the Mueller report did not clear Trump of any wrongdoing. But that was almost three months ago.
At a certain point, the idea tomorrow for this spectacle is really just to reset the basic truth. The basic truth that Donald Trump and his campaign actively sought out and encouraged and solicited foreign criminal sabotage in American elections that aided him and helped him to become president of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Russia if you`re listening, I hope you`re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And then when the Trump campaign and the criminal conspiracy overseen by him and Michael Cohen and the Russians all work together to get him to office, he then took several steps that could be easily construed as rewards for that criminal Russian assistance. He then also used the powers of the White House that he had won through those means to then subvert the investigation into the initial interference.
Even in the most generous interpretation, none of that is defensible conduct. The less generous interpretation is that there is the very least probable cause that Donald Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors as the Constitution calls them worthy of an impeachment inquiry.
Joining me now for more on tomorrow`s hearings Ian Bassin, former Associate White House Counsel to President Obama, now Executive Director of Protect Democracy, Zerlina Maxwell Senior Director of Progressive Programming for Sirius XM and an MSNBC Political Analyst.
Let`s just start zooming out for a second like what tomorrow means from sort of both political and legal -- not in the narrow legal sense but a rule of law sense, Ian.
IAN BASSIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROTECT DEMOCRACY: So today Donald Trump said that Article Two of the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants. He said that today. He believes that.
HAYES: To a room of teenagers.
BASSIN: To a room of teenagers who want to get involved in politics who are taking --
HAYES: That`s right. This was their civics education today.
BASSIN: That didn`t come out of nowhere.
HAYES: No.
BASSIN: Freedom House which is a center-right organization since the end of World War Two has been studying democracy around the world. And what they have studied and discovered is that democracies spread to more countries and improved in the countries that it was in, in a pretty much upward trajectory through the latter half of the 20th century until about 2005 when it started to go into recession.
And by their measures, the quality of United States democracy began going in recession at the same time. We see this in Turkey, in Hungary, in Venezuela. China and Russia led by autocrats are rising global powers. Donald Trump is stepping in on the day that Boris Johnson is becoming the prime minister of the U.K. at a moment when democracy itself is in danger.
So what we are at right now is a fulcrum point and Robert Mueller is not going to save us tomorrow or next year. It`s going to be up to us as Americans to save ourselves.
ZERLINA MAXWELL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I think one of the things that`s important to -- as a reset before tomorrow is there`s a narrative that`s been built that he has to go beyond what`s in the report somehow or break news and say something new and then that`ll be bad for the president as if what`s in the 448 pages is not terrible for the president.
And not just in the section where it outlines specific crimes but in the section where it`s a deep portrayal of American values, patriotism, his oath of office, and the entire country by working with the foreign adversary in volume one.
And so if the Democrats sort of lay that case out, this is a deep betrayal of the country, and then when we were investigating it like we`re supposed to, he tried to shut the investigation net down. And this goes to the core of the election because without that help, who knows what would have happened. So I think that that`s a compelling case. We need a reset to get back to that place.
HAYES: You know, what hangs over all of this is just the -- is the point about Congress` power right, their power under the Constitution to impeach the President of the United States as the sort of ultimate check on the executive, right.
I thought what Jerry Nadler said here was very interesting because he`s part of leadership. I don`t think he`s formally called for impeachment but he`s sort of been moving between the two. Take a listen to what he said about high crimes and misdemeanors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): I think there was very substantial -- well, the report presents very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, and we have to present that -- or that Mueller present those facts to the American people and then see where we go from there. Because the administration must be held accountable and no president can be -- can be above the law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: No president can be above the law, high crimes and misdemeanors. High crimes and misdemeanors is the inescapable subtext of the whole thing, or am I crazy? I`m not projecting that right?
BASSIN: You`re not. And in fact, it`s not just as high crimes and misdemeanors but as you pointed out earlier, it`s actual crime. So our organization Protect Democracy helped organize a letter of more than a thousand former federal prospectors who had served under both Democratic and Republican administrations that set a simple thing, who had prosecuted hundreds and hundreds of cases.
If any other American had engaged in the acts that Mueller describes Donald Trump have engaged in, they would have been in their way to prison? And in our system of government just because you`re the president, doesn`t mean you can get away with it.
HAYES: And the test here to me -- I mean, so there`s a sort of factual question but it`s interesting when you look at that polling. It`s like -- it`s not like the public doesn`t -- like they`re -- they are kind of -- they`re a plurality favored the opening impeachment inquiry.
This -- I thought Brian Beutler wrote this interesting thing today about basically the main access of dividing the large Democratic caucus isn`t ideologically, it`s just fight or accommodate. Essentially like is the way to deal with this person to accommodate him and you know you`ll see him in 2020 or is it to fight him?
MAXWELL: I think it`s to fight him because I think that when you accommodate, you normalize this behavior, and he`s obstructing still. He`s saying no to every single thing they`re asking for and that is -- that cannot be normalized because we need a functioning government. We need all of the branches of government doing what they`re supposed to be doing.
And I think that the Democrats not at least saying look, we can open an inquiry and who knows where it goes, but we need to take this seriously because as you said, there are actual crimes. We`re not just talking about the high crimes and misdemeanors that is outlined in the Constitution.
HAYES: There`s also the fact that -- I think there`s a case and people made this that he will -- that he`s taking on impeachment as an acquittal essentially, right. Like if the Democrats -- if the Democrats don`t impeach him, they`re basically saying like it wasn`t that bad. And that`s not a crazy deduction for the American public to draw.
BASSIN: No. And it`s one of the reasons why Congress needs to at least in the House put down some markers on what is not acceptable. Larry Tribe, the Harvard Professor had a piece recently where he talked about how the House of Representatives could draw conclusions after it conducts an investigation that says that we find as a House that this conduct is unacceptable, that this conduct violates certain norms. So there are steps that yes our government can take.
HAYES: Yes. What do you see as a sort of goal for the House Democrats tomorrow?
MAXWELL: I think that what they need to do is really just get Robert Mueller to say some of the most damning reports of -- the damning parts of the report out loud like Reading Rainbow, like full-on just like OK, can you read passage you know, page 85, right because some of the -- there are parts of the report that really read like a spy thriller.
Essentially there was a foreign government and their spies attacking us in the Trump campaign was having secret meetings and cigar bars, you know, having meetings in Trump Tower with lawyers and Russian spies.
I mean, this all happened. These are facts now. Robert Mueller is saying these are the facts and that`s the case that needs to be laid out for the American people.
HAYES: You know, we sit in second meeting, he`s talking about Reading Rainbow and it`s like oh do we have a shot for that which means can we play sound is it a full screen, is it text, and like there`s a big difference when we can play sound.
BASSIN: And it`s more than just the Democrats in Congress because after Justin Amash who has now become an Independent held a town hall recently, a woman was interviewed at the town hall who said I didn`t realize that the report actually didn`t exonerate the president. We all live in filter bubbles.
And so there`s a role for all of us and by all of us I mean not just us here but everyone watching this right now on television. We think it`s uncomfortable to talk to our friends, our co-workers, our family members about politics, but this is a moment where if we care about democracy the next generation, we need to do those uncomfortable things.
Invite a neighbor over to watch tomorrow night. Talk about what`s happening. Share the stories. It`s up to us.
HAYES: All right. Ian Bassin and Zerlina Maxwell, thank you both.
MAXWELL: Bring alcohol.
HAYES: Joining me now, one of the members of the House Intelligence Committee who will be questioning Robert Mueller tomorrow Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois. Congressman, what do you see as your job tomorrow?
REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D-IL): I think your guest has spelled it out pretty well. We`re overcoming the misleading -- dramatically misleading statements of the Attorney General and educating the American public. I think there`ll be a variety of means to list exactly what the key points of that report are coming from the special counsel.
I think that if you read the report or watch tomorrow`s hearing, an educated understanding person will come to the conclusion that the Trump campaign was filled with conspirators, crooks, profiteers, liars, and people who were using Russians attack on a democratic process to profit themselves, and only a carnival barker, that P.T. Barnum would be proud of the Attorney General could say otherwise.
HAYES: Have you -- have you coordinated -- what are the sort of different lanes as you see them between the House Judiciary Committee and your own House Intelligence Committee?
QUIGLEY: Look, obviously the Judiciary Committee is going to be focused on obstruction and the Intelligence Committee will be focused on the Russian interference and those that cooperated with them to move forward their goals. Aside from that, most congressional hearings require some preparation. You`ve seen that work to a certain degree sometimes other than others.
I don`t know that I`ve ever seen a time where I`ve seen the members so focused, so determined to do this the right way to again educate inform the American public as to what took place and why it matters.
HAYES: Do you think -- you know one of the summaries that both the Attorney General United States in his press conference prior to the release of the full report and the president and the president`s allies and supporters in Trump T.V. they say no collusion no obstruction. Is collusion or that concept for what it means important to you to talk about tomorrow or get Robert Mueller to talk about?
QUIGLEY: Well, it is to an extent. I think a broader question for him on that because collusion as says you know, isn`t a legal term.
HAYES: That`s right. He says that explicitly.
QUIGLEY: Even if you believe that the special counsel`s collusion was correct, and I don`t, that there wasn`t the sufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy, getting the Attorney General to admit that it was horribly wrong using the colloquial treasonous for those that were involved to do the things they did, you know Manafort passing on polling data to Kilimnik, someone tied to Russian intelligence, the president welcoming talking about WikiLeaks actions. I think in the last month of the campaign he talked -- he referenced WikiLeaks over 100 times. This is horribly wrong. The American public needs to know what took place.
HAYES: What do you expect -- your committee has had some remarkable moments over the last two years since Donald Trump became president particularly when Devin Nunes was the chair of that committee. What do you expect from your Republican colleagues?
QUIGLEY: I think the best way to put it is the Russians attacked our country. To a certain extent, the Republicans joined in on that attack, right. They didn`t call the FBI when these things happen, they attacked the FBI. And I suspect that`s what you`re going to see tomorrow.
They have done permanent damage to the entire Intelligence Community and its integrity. They`ve also done a great deal to hurt and it continues the independence of the Justice Department or the Justice Department holding press conferences to defend the president, the Justice Department saying -- telling the Attorney General what he can and can`t say before Congress. It is legal fiction, it is dangerous, it is misleading.
HAYES: Final question. I believe you are on the record supporting the opening of an impeachment inquiry. How do you see what happens tomorrow in relationship to the fundamental constitutional question of impeachment?
QUIGLEY: I think an impeachment inquiry has took place under the Watergate process, the Watergate hearings is the right way to go. And in the final analysis, the American public is the jury, it`s not just the Senate, right. This has to come organically from the American public forcing their lawmakers to do the right thing.
Tomorrow, hopefully, will take a giant step forward educating the American public and letting the Senate know they can`t just brush this off.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Mike Quigley, thank you so much your time.
QUIGLEY: Anytime. Thank you.
HAYES: Next, the day before our Mueller`s public testimony, the NAACP votes unanimously in favor of impeaching the president. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries on the civil rights rebuke and the divisions in the Democratic coalition in two minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Today the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the country voted unanimously to support the impeachment of the President of the United States. The leader of the NAACP saying in a statement "Trump needs to know he`s not above the law and the crimes that he is committed and he must be prosecuted.
The NAACP came -- vote came after months of internal conflict among Democrats around the issue of impeachment, and it came one day after the organization heard from two of the leading voices on either side of the impeachment debate. Rashida Tlaib who came to Washington D.C. vowing to quote impeach this MF`er and Nancy Pelosi who once said of impeaching the president "he`s just not worth it.
Joining me now one of the key members of Pelosi leadership team Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus who will be questioning Robert Mueller tomorrow when he appears before the House Judiciary Committee.
I will begin with a question that I just asked your colleague Mike Quigley which is the relationship between high crimes and misdemeanors as a sort of constitutional threshold that you have to consider as a member of the House and the testimony tomorrow. Aren`t they inextricably bound? Isn`t it the case that you can`t be thinking of that in the back of your head as you talked to Robert Mueller?
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Well, they are certainly connected based on historical precedent. Of course, some of the articles of impeachment that triggered the resignation of Richard Nixon related to obstruction of justice and the article of impeachment that was passed out of the House of Representatives in addition to one or two others related to the impeachment of Bill Clinton which of course I opposed but also involved obstruction of justice.
One of the things that we need to establish tomorrow is that obstruction of justice is a serious crime under federal law that undermines the integrity of judicial system and prohibits investigators from seeking the truth on behalf of the American people.
I would expect that that is something that Bob Mueller will affirm and we`ll take it from there as it`s applied to Donald Trump and his behavior.
HAYES: I want to give you a theory of the ways in which you and Nancy Pelosi and others in House leadership sort of view this moment and get your response to it. So I think there`s some people who view the leadership as basically thinking that it is tactically unwise to impeach the President of the United States politically, that it`s just unwise, but that it`s hard to keep the reins on the caucus. And ergo the more derogatory information you uncover about Donald Trump, the harder it makes your job and leadership in restraining the caucus from wanting to impeach.
JEFFRIES: Well, our job is pretty simple. Follow the facts, apply to law, and be guided by the Constitution. That is what Speaker Pelosi has eloquently laid out. The case should be compelling, the evidence should be overwhelming. The case for impeachment and the sentiment around this should be bipartisan in nature.
And so we`re just marching toward undertaking our constitutional responsibilities as a separate and co-equal branch of government. Tomorrow will be an important step in that direction with the testimony of Bob Mueller.
HAYES: I want to ask about the budget funding deal that appears to be cut which looks like I think probably is a pretty good chance of passage. There`s lots of ways in which it is responsive to Democratic priorities on social spending particularly.
But there`s one question I`ve seen raised which is that it creates a debt ceiling time bomb in the first quarter of the next president of the United States, right. It gets rid of it for the rest of Donald Trump`s term and then let`s say a Democratic president were to be sworn in and Mitch McConnell was running the Senate, are you worried that you have handed Republicans a loaded weapon that they have already used once against Barack Obama back in 2011?
JEFFRIES: What we need to get through the week, let alone a month, the year, and the next election, and so particularly under this presidency --
HAYES: Is that the -- wait, is that the thinking though?
JEFFRIES: Well, listen, I think that it was important to remove the uncertainty of a potential debt ceiling explosion at this particular moment which could have had devastating consequences with an irresponsible president. And so the deal that was negotiated by Speaker Pelosi and leader Schumer was an incredibly important one.
It will elevate House Democratic caucus priorities in areas of investing in education and job training and infrastructure and affordable housing creation as well as childcare, and then we`ll deal with what we have to deal with in the aftermath of the next election. But there`s a lot of work that we have to execute upon before then and we`re going to continue to do that.
HAYES: Before the president`s tweets about four of your colleagues and them going back to their countries and the send them back chants, immediately preceding that, there was a quite open rift in the Democratic coalition and caucus. You know, the House Democratic Caucus official Twitter account tweeting at the chief of staff for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to keep congresswoman`s name out of your mouth. Tensions obviously very high and spilling out to the public. What is the current state of things in that caucus?
JEFFRIES: Well, we are a diverse caucus, we`re robust caucus, we`re very passionate caucus. But at the end of the day, we understand that we`re stronger together than we are moving in different directions. And so every single member of the caucus is incredibly important from Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez to (INAUDIBLE) and everyone in between.
The progressives are important, the new Dems are important, the Blue Dogs are important. And we have a job to do on behalf of the American people with respect to lowering health care costs and driving down the high cost of life-saving prescription drugs and acting a real infrastructure plan, and fighting for everyday Americans. And ultimately that`s what unites us.
HAYES: If those are the priorities as you just enunciate them, I just want to ask about today`s resolution that passed 398 to 17, a resolution opposing efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and the global boycott divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel. Why was that a priority given the priorities as you just enunciated them, giving everything that`s going on, why was that important for leadership to bring up for a vote now?
JEFFRIES: Well, you know, the decision was made to move that legislation out of the Foreign Affairs Committee which happened last week and a normal cost of regular order would be to bring it to the floor today. It obviously received an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote amongst both Democrats and Republicans.
I support the effort to make sure that we denounce any efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel. There few members who have a disagreement but we can agree to disagree without being disagreeable on this issue and on many other issues.
HAYES: All right, congressman Hakeem Jeffries, thank you so much for joining me tonight.
JEFFRIES: Thank you, Chris,
HAYES: Ahead, new details about where the MAGA Bomber was radicalized and new details about the threat of white supremacist violence from the FBI director. Up next, Senator Amy Klobuchar on what she`s heard from Director Wray at his hearing today and what she expects to hear from Robert Mueller tomorrow.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: He was as super devoted Trump fan. Look, this is his Trump mobile complete with pro-Trump right-wing stickers plastered all over it. He said that attending a Trump rally was "like a newfound drug." His name is Caesar Sayoc, and as you may remember, this past year he was charged with sending explosive devices to 13 people including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Caesar Sayoc, the MAGA Bomber pleaded guilty to mailing those devices. Today, his lawyers filed with sentencing memo laying out in stark terms his descent into violent extremism, calling him quote a Trump superfan who truly believed wild conspiracy theories he read on the Internet.
He heard it for the present state, he saw it on Fox News which he watched at the start and end of his day. Sayoc`s lawyers explaining how the president and his propaganda network radicalized this guy. That comes as FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators at a hearing today that there have been about 100 domestic terrorism arrests just this year, majority of the suspects were motivated by some version of white supremacy.
I`m joined now by 2020 presidential candidates Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who serves on the Judiciary Committee and questioned Christopher Wray earlier today. What did you learn from the FBI director specifically about that, about arrests for domestic terrorism and their relationship to right-wing political extremism or white supremacy?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, he was pretty forthright about it and that he said there were increases. I`ve seen it in my own state, we`ve seen it across the country. We`ve seen bombing of mosques in Minnesota, we`ve seen of course horrible shootings at synagogues, and he -- I basically asked him, why do you think we`re seeing this increase? I have my own theories, of course, when you have someone in the White House who is constantly putting this of rhetoric out there, as you saw in this case, people who have issues come forward. When you have someone that says there are two sides to Charlottesville when the other side is the Ku Klux Klan, it gets people going.
He said that it could have been reporting, increased reporting, they don`t know.
I think the big question is what do we do about it? And my answer is that we need someone in the White House that isn`t constantly pushing the envelope and looking for divides and saying racist things and basically dividing our country. I think we need to bring people together.
HAYES: You had an exchange with the director about Russia and election interference today, a number of you did, including the chair of your committee, Lindsey Graham. What did you learn from him today?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, I was pushing on the fact that we need backup paper ballots, and we need some rules of the road for social media companies. And I was actually pleased by his answers.
First of all, he said that we do need -- that paper ballots are helpful, because they give us extra protection, and then he also said that when it comes to social media, more information is better. And of course I`m talking here about paid political ads.
And what I said today when a group of us got together with Senator Warner, here`s my problem, every step of the way, despite the FBI director`s warning about what`s happening in Russia and his testimony today that would be helpful to protect us to have backup paper ballots, every step of the way the White House has gut punched us.
The former White House counsel was literally making calls to stop the bill for the backup paper ballots. He did that. He called Republicans.
Mitch McConnell also wanted to stop the bill. We know that. It is a very clear fact.
HAYES: Wait, what is the articulated -- so you mean Don McGahn was lobbying for this behind the scenes?
KLOBUCHAR: Yes.
HAYES: So Don McGahn -- obviously Mitch McConnell hasn`t brought it up. You`ve got bipartisan cosponsors, right. The thing would pass, right?
KLOBUCHAR: I`ve got James Langford, not exactly a liberal, and I also have Lindsey Graham and we also had, of course, Burr, Richard Burr, the head of the intelligence committee.
HAYES: What is the -- is there a good faith stated rationale against the bill?
KLOBUCHAR: Oh, they argue that some states, secretary of states didn`t like it, some did, some didn`t. I`m telling you, it is very attenuated given that all we are saying is if you want the get federal money for elections, then you have to have got to have backup paper ballots. And we now still have 11 states. The Russians know which states they are, that do not have full paper ballots.
HAYES: You`re a former U.S. attorney, a former prosecutor. You serve on the Judiciary Committee now. I`m curious how you are looking at the testimony on the other side of Capitol Hill tomorrow from Robert Mueller.
KLOBUCHAR: Sure.
What I would like to see first of all -- I have one focus is on the tax returns. Did Director Mueller review the tax returns? Because I had asked AG Barr. And know what he said, he was tired at the end. He said go ask Mueller, on the record.
HAYES: So you would like to see one of your colleagues ask him that question?
KLOBUCHAR: Oh, very much so.
Alert, alert.
And you have this -- it`s the same day, of course, where the president is suing to not have his tax returns revealed. So what`s in there?
Second thing, those incidents of obstruction, which are very clear dangling pardons in front of Manafort and Cohen, how that connects with volume one and volume two, how that obstruction connects to the investigation. Did that obstruction stop Mueller in his investigation? Because I think it makes it very hard to get information if Manafort stops cooperating.
And then the final thing, which we started out with here is just him methodically going through what Russia did. We need to put pressure on the Republicans to make sure that we get the Honest Ads Act done, which is my bill, which would simply say, hey, social media company, tell us where you`re getting the money for these ads and tell what`s they are, as well as the backup paper ballots.
HAYES: That final question -- I`m sorry, the middle question there about obstruction is really interesting to me. So you`re suggesting that you want to know if the obstruction undertaken by the president, as you see it, was actually successful in preventing Mueller from getting to all of the facts.
KLOBUCHAR: Exactly. And I think that that will be a very good line of questioning. I`m sure someone will ask it. But remember, Chris, you still haven`t seen those whole reports, right? There is volume one, which is about Russia. Volume two is more on obstruction.
Volume two, which I was able to see the redacted versions of it, and that was enlightening. Well, guess what? I can`t even see volume one as ranking on the rules committee. They`re dividing us up. Intelligence gets to see the Russia part. We get to see the obstruction part on Judiciary. I`m sorry, these things aren`t divided. They are connected.
HAYES: All right. Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you very much.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. It was great to be on.
HAYES: Ahead, President Trump`s sneak attack should try and throw millions of Americans off of food stamps.
Plus, Britain gets their very own Trump. That`s tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, it was a little more than a year ago that Ivanka Trump was photographed with a Donald Trump impersonator also known as Boris Johnson, who as expected has today become the brand-new prime minister of Britain.
Ivanka Trump, one of our country`s foremost diplomats, reacted to Johnson`s victory today in classic Trumpian fashion, much like when her father tweeted about meeting the Prince of Wales, which was awesome, by the way. Ivanka today tweeted congratulations, Boris Johnson on becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingston.
Trump himself was very excited about Johnson`s election today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Good man. He is tough and he is smart. This ain`t Britain Trump. They call him Britain Trump, and people are saying that`s a good thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: They`re saying Britain Trump. Britain Trump. That`s what they`re saying, Britain -- the word Britain and the world Trump. Britain Trump. He is Britain`s Trump all right, especially when it comes to whether or not he can win the popular vote. And that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Less than 1 percent of registered voters in the United Kingdom made Boris Johnson the entire country`s new prime minister today. It wasn`t a general election. The Conservative Party`s 180,000 members got to choose their new leader, and Johnson won by 45,000 votes.
But strange hair and winning an election with just a slice of the electorate are not the only things that Trump and Boris have in common, they`re both born in New York. Boris Johnson has sometimes been called a bully.
As a member of parliament in 2006 at a charity soccer match, of all things, he weirdly plowed into this man. The press coverage later accused him of treating it like a rugby match. That`s a weird thing to do.
In 2015, as mayor of London during a friendly rugby game in Tokyo, he flattened this 10-year-old child who was fortunately unhurt. The child saying, quote, "I felt a little bit of pain, but it`s OK."
And like Trump, Boris Johnson was for a long time considered just too buffoonish, too much of a laughingstock to ever become the leader of the country.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BORIS JOHNSON, PRIME MINISTER OF BRITAIN: And I know that there will be people around the place who will question the wisdom of your decision.
TRUMP: This ain`t Britain Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: As of this morning, there was an 18-year-old American citizen, a rising high school senior on his way to soccer tryouts, who was detained in this country by his own country and put in the custody of immigration authorities for three entire weeks for no reason. Just hours ago, he was finally released. His name is Francisco Irwin Galicia (ph). He was not accused of a crime. He committed no infraction, other than having the wrong skin color and the wrong last name and the wrong family members. He was held without trial by the Trump administration for nearly a month because he`s Latino, because he has family members who are unauthorized. That`s the awful, but unavoidable truth.
Fancisco Irwin Galicia (ph) was on his way to a college soccer tryout when he was stopped at a border patrol checkpoint in south Texas, quote, "as many Hispanics do, he had brought with him numerous documents, including a birth certification that showed he was born at a hospital in Dallas."
He also carried, quote, his st ate ID issued in January by the Texas Department of Public Safety and his Social Security card.
According to his attorney, quote, Border Patrol agents were telling Francisco his birth certificate was fake, that he was Mexican. And with that he was taken into custody.
Now, it`s not really hyperbole to say that literally the cardinal principle of 1,000 years of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is that holding someone without cause is the very definition of lawless tyranny. Produce the body, habeas corpus, you much show the man you hold. You must state your reasons and allow him to petition for release.
And yet somehow, in America, in 2019, our immigration institutions are so corrupted, so corroded, that as of this morning this man was still in his 21st Century dungeon.
But it`s not just this one case, there have been others. And there`s no more chilling example of every day tyranny than free citizens being ordered to show their papers simply because of the color of their skin and their appearance, and yet that is the lived reality. It`s been the lived reality along the border for years before Trump, but it`s getting worse as the administration issues nonstop threats of enforcement, quite clearly meant to put people of color and in immigrant communities, authorized and unauthorized, under a permanent shadow of fear and contingency.
A free people will not allow this to stand. Just yesterday, the good folks of the Nashville neighborhood of Hermitage, Tennessee, modeled what effective resistance looked like when they formed a human chain to stop ICE from apprehending a father and his 12-year-old son. Eventually, the father and son were able to run into their home and ICE left.
One neighbor told Buzzfeed, quote, "they don`t bother anybody. Our kids play with their kids. It`s just one big community. And we don`t want to see anything happen to them. They`re good people. They`ve been here 14 years, leave them alone. To me, they`re considered Americans."
They don`t bother anybody. That`s true. Because that`s not why these people are being detained. And everyone knows it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: There are two items in the news today that represent the two sides of the same coin of Trumpism. First, the president, in a typically weird and oddly condescending tweet, took a victory lap bragging that he has managed to bribe America`s farmers with welfare, quote "farmers are starting to do great again after 15 years of downward spiral. The $16 billion China replacement money didn`t exactly hurt." Huh?
By the way, that $16 billion this year on top of $12 billion last year.
That`s one item.
The other item, also today, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would eliminate food stamps for some 3.1 million Americans. It`s a move that was too cruel even for Mitch McConnell. Last December, a bipartisan majority in the senate rejected this exact proposal in the farm bill. So the Trump administration is going around congress to kick 3 million people off of food assistance.
If you`re looking for Trumpism in a nutshell, that`s it. There you have it. Big agribusiness gets $28 billion in subsidies the president snatched out of thin air to make up for his own trade war while people getting around $120 a month to meet the basic necessity of nutritional intake get their benefits cut.
Joining me now to talk more about this, Sherrod Brown, senator, Democrat, from Ohio, a member of the Senate agricultural committee.
Let`s -- will you start out by laying out what this proposed rule does and why it cuts people off from benefits?
SEN. SHERROD BROWN, (D) OHIO: Well, we know that a huge number of people on food stamps are people who work for a living and make $8, $10, $12 an hour. They`re also -- I mean, many of them are on Medicaid. They are working families that their employers don`t pay decent wages and their employers don`t provide health insurance.
So the president, I think you have it exactly right, he helps -- he does that with farmers after hurting them with these tariffs. And tariffs as you know, Chris, are a temporary tool to -- to ultimately arrive at a long- term trade policy not to be used as the trade policy itself.
At the same time, the president`s getting some pressure, not a lot, from his right-wing base to do something about the budget deficit, which they blew a huge hole in. It`s more than 70 percent of the tax cuts, the $1.5 trillion tax cuts went to the richest people in the country, the 1 percent richest. So the way -- so he starts with that and goes after the people that are the most vulnerable.
It`s what he always does. It`s the mean-spiritness of this administration. We`re a rich enough country, nobody should go hungry. And these are -- again, these are mostly workers. The expansion of Medicaid and most of the food stamp beneficiaries in these cases are people who have jobs and simply aren`t making a decent wage.
HAYES: Yeah, I should just say that basically it gives states the flexibility for folks whose incomes fluctuate to keep the in this eligibility category so they`re not being penalized for getting a job, particularly if it goes away.
But so here is one just basic sort of institutional question. You and your colleagues explicitly rejected this in the farm bill. The farm bill is a subject of a lot negotiation. It`s a very important piece of legislation that gets passed through congress and there`s lots of deals that go into it. How are you going to just take them just doing an end-run around you?
BROWN: Well, I`m not sure they can, but like many things that Trump does, he thinks he has all power, he can issue an executive order or a rule, someone -- someone launches -- someone sues him about it and we end up in the courts and it costs a lot of taxpayer money, and in the end Trump usually loses.
But congress spoke about this very strongly and very definitively. We got 87 votes on the farm bill, I believe, 87, 88, more votes than we`ve ever gotten on a farm bill. It`s a nutrition bill. It`s an economic development bill. It`s a bill that dealt with keeping Lake Erie clean, the Great Lakes. I mean, we had a lot of things in it and it really made sense by and large for our country. One of the things we did was protect food stamps from the right wing wanting to cut it.
HAYES: So where -- where are you and where are the farmers in your state on the state of play right now? It is such a strange situation to watch it unfold. The president sort of unilaterally using a national security rationale to from his perch in the executive slap tariffs on China, an escalating trade war that has had real material effects for farmers across the country, particularly in places that grow a lot of soy and export a lot to China, and then replace the income with these checks that they`re just writing from the White House and bragging about it. Like how sustainable is this?
BROWN: Well, it`s clearly not sustainable. On top of that, you can`t ascribe any one weather pattern to climate change, but you can certainly look at the influence of climate change and all the weather patterns around the country and around the world.
Farmers in Ohio, in western Ohio especially, farmers, soybean and corn farmers, usually have pretty much 100 percent of their crops planted by June 20th, June 21st, July 1st at the latest. This time those numbers were about 20 percent for soybeans...
HAYES: Wow.
BROWN: ...I`m sorry, for corn, about 30 percent for soybeans. Now it`s too late to plant, so they`re losing money because they can`t get their crops in. And then they`re losing money that there`s not -- they just can`t -- they can`t sell this stuff the way they could because of the tariffs.
So there is beginning -- I talked to Senator Stabenow tonight, the senior Democrat on thing a the AG committee. We were talking earlier this evening. And she really begins to see, as I do, in Michigan and Ohio, some farmers are having second thoughts about this president, not in huge numbers, but those are areas that Democrats don`t do well in. We will do a little better if we pursue -- if we talk about the dignity of work and honor the work and respect the work that farmers do and at the same time point out how Trump has betrayed agriculture as he`s betrayed workers.
HAYES: This big spending bill just -- it looks like it`s going to pass. It got hammered out sort of between Pelosi and Mnuchin.
And I just wanted -- I thought this was remarkable -- you talked about this at the top, sort of blowing this hole in the deficit and that kind of revealing, I think, what the revealed preferences of the party are.
I wanted to get your response to this. I thought it was fascinating. Of course Donald Trump one of those people who was saying they should use the debt ceiling as leverage back in 2011. And Trump recently told West Wing aides that Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told him no politician ever lost office for spending more money. Two people confirmed McConnell did deliver that message in a June phone call.
I mean, it`s probably right, but it`s a little tough to square with the rhetoric for the entirety of the Obama administration.
BROWN: Well, you -- I read The Wall Street Journal editorial page most days. And January -- up until January 20th, 2017, the worst thing in the world was budget deficits and all of a sudden in came Trump, the tax cut was the most important thing and budget deficits don`t matter anymore. I mean, they`re hypocrites about it.
They always use the threat of the size of budget deficits to cut spending on programs that affect people`s lives, on Medicaid and housing vouchers and food stamps and investment in higher education and investment in medical research and infrastructure, so it`s a ploy for them.
Some of their base cares about it, but in the end they don`t. They`d rather have the tax cut and that`s what they did, blowing $1.5 trillion hole in the budget, of course.
HAYES: You mentioned the dignity of work from our own sort of marginal improvement with some of those rural voters, say in Ohio. You had toyed with the idea of running for president. There was an interesting piece about you I think it was in The New York Times about of where you are at and your wife Connie Schultz who is pictured there as well. Do you regret not running?
BROWN: No, I don`t regret it at all. I love the senate. I love what I`m able to do. I think I`m having some impact on this presidential race. I think you`re seeing more and more of the candidates talking about honoring and respecting work and the dignity of work.
It`s not just a slogan in even how you run a campaign, it`s how we govern in 2021. If you govern through the eye of workers -- you know, it`s a false choice that you either talk to the progressive base or you talk to workers. You talk to workers in a way that you don`t compromise on civil rights or to the gun lobby or concentrate -- and you don`t ever -- you don`t -- you don`t simply compromise on those issues that matter to progressives, but you fight for workers whether you swipe a badge or punch a clock or whether you work for tips or whether you`re raising kids, and that`s how we will govern come 2021.
HAYES: No Eugene Scalia probably in a Democratic administration at DOL.
Senator Sherrod Brown, thank you for making time.
BROWN: Got it.
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