SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to, you know, start off slower and build up, and build up, and build up. But we`re looking forward to a very vigorous campaign. We`re starting to do some planning for the debate.
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC HOST: That is HARDBALL for now. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: President Trump has indicted himself.
HAYES: The drumbeat for impeachment gets louder.
BIDEN: Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation, and committed impeachable acts.
HAYES: As the evidence of corruption and a cover-up grows.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You`d have to ask Rudy.
HAYES: Tonight, leaked State Department e-mails that demonstrate just how many people knew the Ukraine aid was being held up for corrupt purposes but officials look the other way. Then, as Trump world spins --
JOE DIGENOVA, LAWYER: This is regicide by another name.
HAYES: Inside the Democratic strategy for executing the impeachment inquiry. Plus, the uproar over Facebook`s decision to let the Trump campaign lie in its ad. And as the bombs begin to drop on the Kurds in Syria --
TRUMP: They didn`t help us in the Second World War, they didn`t help us with Normandy.
HAYES: Outrage across the political spectrum at the President`s decision.
TRUMP: With all of that being said, we like the Kurds.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. The President`s political position is eroding remarkably quickly. A new Fox News poll just out today shows 51 percent, a majority of registered voters believe Trump should not only be impeached but removed as well, 51 percent.
And this is happening because the President`s misdeeds are clear and indisputable. We already know that President Trump corruptly uses power to coerce an occupied country into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent. We know that from documents the President himself is released.
Remember, I would like you to do us a favor though. And from things the president has admitted, and from things the president has done in front of us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, what exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call?
TRUMP: Well, I would think that if they were honest about it, they`d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It`s a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But what we continue to learn every day is the sheer scope of the enterprise and the consciousness of guilt of nearly everyone involved, that this whole enterprise was directed by the President.
CNN report said as early as May, two months before his now-infamous phone call with Ukrainian president, President Trump told Energy Secretary Rick Perry and two senior State Department officials including U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland -- remember him -- to deal with Trump`s private attorney Rudy Giuliani about planning a meeting with Ukraine`s president. If they can satisfy Rudy, they can satisfy the president, a person familiar with the meeting said.
Rudy, of course, was running around trying to manufacture dirt on the President`s enemies. The president told a cabinet secretary and two senior State Department officials to work with his attorney on the scheme to seek foreign help to undermine his political rival. And then two months later, he told the President of Ukraine the same thing. Remember in the call notes, I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call.
All this was happening in such a way that people involved knew how wrong it was. And it`s incredibly important to hold on to that simple fact as the President and his allies attempt a kind of massive Jedi mind trick to just wave it all away, convince everyone that what the President did was fine. But it wasn`t fine and they knew it wasn`t fine.
The Washington Post reported last month that President Trump directly ordered his acting Chief of Staff to hold back the $400 million in military aid to Ukraine passed by both houses. And now, the New York Times reports that when the Trump administration finally released the military aid, American diplomats were advised to downplay the decision and treat Trump`s initial hold of the release of the funds as an administrative matter.
One State Department official even wrote in an e-mail, I`m quoting here, "Keep moving people. Nothing to see here." Now, nothing to see here is just unbelievably inculpatory. Because nothing you see here means I know this is a big scandal, I know this is a crime, and I know this is wrong, and you all know it too so I`m going to make a joke about it because we can`t talk about the fact that we are now in mesh in wrongdoing.
Again, and again, and again, we see consciousness of guilt and awareness by many parties of what was happening. That continues to be the theme here. Remember the whistleblower`s first memo shows people in the White House knew how wrong it was.
"White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. Well, now, today, CBS has a different memo from that same whistleblower written after speaking to a White House official who heard the entirety of Trump`s phone call.
The whistleblower writing, "In the official`s view, the President had clearly committed a criminal act, a crime. I just witnessed the president commit a crime." What can you say to that? Well, the President and his defenders are basically trying two arguments. One is that what President Trump did was totally fine, a perfect phone call.
And the other is a kind of non-stop fire hose of ridiculous process claims. Adam Schiff is this, Nancy Pelosi is that, a kangaroo court, yadda, yadda, yadda. The whistleblower only had secondhand knowledge. None of that matters because the facts are already in the light. We have them.
There are documents, and text, and admissions by the President, they`re all there including the crime. And I say crime, advisedly, I`m not the independent observer of the crime, it was a White House official who works for the President who listened to the phone call that led the whistleblower to write in the official view the president had clearly committed a criminal act.
The whistleblower also puts one question rest while only raising a whole host of new ones. "The standard White House practice for presidential level phone calls with world leaders to the White House Situation Room to produce a word-for-word electronic transcript that memorializes the call. In this case, the official told me, such a transcript had indeed been produced and was being treated very sensitively in hardcopy only."
So there is according to the whistleblower word-for-word transcript of Trump`s call -- phone call that we don`t have. The White House can stonewall all they want, they can fight on privilege grounds, they can stop people from testifying. The one thing that we have to see before this is all over is that word-for-word transcript of Trump`s phone call with Ukraine`s President.
Trump has no grounds to stop that. The President himself says it`s a perfect call. The President himself released the call notes. He`s waived any privileged. We must see the perfect call in its complete word-for-word version so that all of us, Lindsey Graham, members in the House, you and I can all marvel at just how perfect it is. They cannot hide that.
Joining me now for more on the White House`s stonewalling tactics, one of the members of Congress investing the President, Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois. He`s a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Let me start right there on that. Obviously, the president has released the call notes. Do you believe there`s an actual word-for-word transcript with more than what we`ve seen? And do you believe that Congress should have access to it?
REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D-IL): I believe it exists. I don`t know for sure that it does. And obviously, Congress should have a right to that. But I don`t want to get too bogged down with people thinking if you don`t have all of the details, all of the evidence you can`t go forward. Because I think the president will continue to stonewall, continue the obstruction.
I believe we have an extraordinary case to move forward with now. We`re not going to stop, we`re going to be diligent, but I don`t want the people to think that if we don`t get every last detail that we can`t move forward.
HAYES: So that was going to be my second question. Adam Schiff`s approach here as well as the other Oversight Committee chairs is essentially look, if they want on struck, they obstruct. Maybe we`ll bring an article impeachment on that, but we`re moving forward. And we have a sufficient evidence already entered into the record to drop articles of impeachment. Is that your view?
QUIGLEY: It is. And I think that the -- what we`re seeing is further deflection and distraction not just by the President but my House colleagues who are talking about process. They are attacking Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi on process. It`s extraordinary because if anything, the Intel committee under Adam Schiff has been extraordinary involved with the details following the letter of the law.
The whistleblower according to the Trump-appointed Inspector General, the Trump-appointed head of the Intelligence Community did everything right, followed the letter of the law. The only entity that`s not is the White House and they`re the ones complaining about process. The crimes have been committed and they`re in public view.
HAYES: The President has been insulting and criticizing the whistleblower leveling all sorts of claims along with his allies. Are you worried about the whistleblower being protected through this process as the law requires?
QUIGLEY: My first concern is the safety of the whistleblower. The President using terms like treasonous and traitorous and you know what we do with traitors or what we used to do with them, you know, I believe he`s put this whistleblower at risk. That`s most important.
Underneath that, but as important to a certain extent is the chilling effect it has on the whistleblower system as a whole. The Intelligence Community operates in secrecy. It has to, to keep us safe. But that only works in an open government. If a whistleblower system works and the oversight of Congress works, he is imperiled to all that.
Two bad things can happen when there`s no whistleblowers, bad deeds gun go unknown and unpunished and leaks happen. And when leaks happen, that threatens our sources and our methods. It puts people at risk and it makes us less safe.
HAYES: When you talk about bad deeds going on and unflagged, I want to ask your response to a story that just published and you may not know a lot about it, but it was just published in Bloomberg. It reports that President Trump pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to persuade the Justice Department to drop a criminal case that it had against an Iranian Turkish gold trader who happened to be a client of Rudy Giuliani.
This is a very high-profile case. It was brought by the Southern District. Three sources saying the President told Rex Tillerson to lean on the Department of Justice who dropped this case of a guy who Rudy Giuliani was representing. Rudy Giuliani in that same article admitting he may have talked about this with the President. Do you worry there are other corrupt abuses of power similar to what has been laid bare in Ukraine that are there and have not been flagged or reported?
QUIGLEY: I think it`s obvious the President never commits a crime once. And when it comes to the Justice Department, he thinks he has complete control. The long term impacts by this President, and we just won`t know until it`s all over, may well be extraordinary damage to the independence and the integrity of the Justice Department.
It is autocratic to think that the president can tell them who they can and they can`t prosecute. It is obvious he has said it publicly, openly, that he believes he has that power. And we see stories like this, they`re indicative of a president who thinks, again, he`s above the law.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois, thank you.
QUIGLEY: Thank you.
HAYES: Joining now for more of the president`s unlawful behavior, Lara Jakes who`s the Diplomatic Correspondent for the New York Times. She`s the author of The Times piece explaining how diplomats were urged to play down the release of the military funds for Ukraine. And Ned Price, former Spokesperson and Senior Director on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, and now an MSNBC National Security Analyst.
Lara, let me start with you. Can you explain -- that e-mail has just really stuck in my mind, the nothing to see here e-mail. And it reminds me -- I reported on Enron, I reported on the housing crisis, I report on baseball during the steroids era, all sorts of places where people knew something was going wrong sideways and kind of joked about it. Can you explain the contact for that e-mail?
LARA JAKES, DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Sure. So in early August the White House notified the State Department that the aid to Ukraine from the State Department was going to be held. It`s about $141 million in Security Assistance. Congress had already approved it. And then a notice comes from the White House to the State Department saying we are putting a hold on this.
The e-mail traffic shows that people at the State Department, career diplomats were surprised. There wasn`t a reason for why the hold was put on the money. And then about five weeks later, a second set of e-mails comes through. And they say that the hold has been released, again no specific explanation. They said that there was a review that the NSC had undergone with the aid to make sure that it was being spent properly, but the money is now being released.
This is good news for the State Department career diplomats --
HAYES: Sure.
JAKES: Right. The career diplomats want to tell people that hey, the money is coming through. This is how the United States shows its commitment to Ukraine which as you know has been in a state of conflict since late 2013, and corruption years and years before that.
So the ambassador in Kiev, Bill Taylor wants to announce this. He wants to tell the president of Ukraine that the money has come through. Don`t worry. And he`s told, hold your horses, put some brakes on it. Let`s be very careful, the NSC has said we don`t want to announce this. We don`t want to make a public deal, a big deal of this.
And so just you know, let`s try to -- he didn`t say this but he said, let`s just try to move past it, don`t make a big deal out of it. And in your words, he said, nothing to see here, people. Let`s move on. I don`t think he was saying that this was a matter of wrongdoing. It seemed like more of an e-mail eye role in the context of the State Department`s e-mails.
Clearly, there was frustration that the State Department couldn`t do its job and tell the president of Ukraine that the money had come through.
HAYES: Yes. I think it`s a fair interpretation. Ned, what strikes me here is the sequence of events, the President keeps saying well, it`s fine and there`s no quid pro quo, but there`s all this sketchiness and dodging this.
Like if you`re holding up the money because you want Ukraine to investigate corruption, then you can just tell all the agencies that. If you`re not doing anything wrong, you could just tell the State Department why it`s being upheld. At every point in the process, they are covering up and being sketchy as hell.
NED PRICE, MSNBC NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, that`s right. And of course, the guidance that came from the White House was not to say this is about corruption. It was not to say this is about Ukraine getting its own act in order before he can provide these hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
The guidance that came from the White House was this was a routine review and it`s something that they hammered to the Defense Department, to the State Department, to OMB, and to others involved in this that they should stick to that.
You know, every time we see this phrase, there`s nothing to see here, of course, there is something to see. And I -- like Lara was saying, I don`t suspect this mid-level State Department official knew about the extorted plot that the president -- that the president was in on, but he also recognized and this person presumably has two eyes in two ears and presumably knew this was a big deal.
And it was a big deal because this flew through Congress, flew through both houses. It takes an act of God for many acts to do that. And so this is - - this is the time the White House should have been spiking the football, but then said the guidance that came not from the State Department but from the White House was essentially keep this low-key. There is nothing to see here.
And I think, Chris, we actually have to think about this in broad strokes as part of that cover-up. This is not just press guidance. This is not a routine matter. This is the White House directing the State Department to sort of keep an even keel here because they know that was anything but normal and they want to keep this under wraps.
HAYES: And Lara, to Ned`s point, I mean, it`s not just the mid-level State Department. The picture that`s emerged from your reporting among others is that almost everyone, Capitol Hill staffers, members of Congress of both parties, senators, the chief of mission, everyone is going, what the heck is going on with this money? It`s this big sort of like mystery sitting there in the middle of a vast community of people invested in the issue.
JAKES: Well, right. A lot of people had wanted this money to go through Ukraine has made the case that it desperately needs it to fight off Russian aggression in Ukraine`s East. The United States has maintained that it is going to be a steadfast ally of Ukraine and help Ukraine fight against Russian aggression.
So that`s why it was so surprising as Ned said when Congress signed off when, you know, the administration initially signed off when this was going to happen as expected and then it got held up.
HAYES: Final question for you, Ned. You worked on the NSC. Do you believe there`s a word-for-word transcript of that phone call?
PRICE: You know, I`m skeptical, Chris. And I -- you know, from this contemporaneous memo that we -- that was released today, we learned something we didn`t know before, namely that this call was interpreted, that President Zelensky was not speaking English.
And so there`s been a lot made of the fact that when you actually read the transcript, it doesn`t amount to 30 minutes. It amount to 15 to 20 minutes. And I think that simultaneous interpretation explains that. When we were on the NSC and we would refer to the transcript, we would actually refer to the document that the White House appears to have released.
I think you know, there have been some theories out there that there may be more, that there are ellipses, that there are oddities in this transcript, but I would be skeptical. I have heard that the Ukrainian redoubt is largely tracks with what the White House has put out. And now there`s an explanation for the relative brevity of this.
I think there is so much that`s damning in this transcript and so much that speaks to betrayal that we really don`t have to look any further. We don`t have to be conspiracy theorists to think that there has to be something else out there. This could well be it.
HAYES: Lara Jakes and Ned Price, thank you both.
JAKES: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next, after enabling every whim of the Trump presidency, why some of the administration`s biggest supporters say his Syria decision has step too far. That`s story in two minutes.
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HAYES: It is extremely rare in American politics in 2019 to find a front and center policy issue on which there is near total not just bipartisan but trans-ideological support from Noam Chomsky to Bill Kristol. Such as the case with the condemnation of the Trump administration`s actions that essentially green-lighting Turkey`s invasion of Kurdish territory in Syria.
People who are neocons, and hawks, people who are anti-war and anti- imperialist all view this as a grave mistake. Essentially a wink, wink, nudge, nudge incursion of a crime and a betrayal and it is happening as I speak to you right now.
Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish territory in northern Syria cross border incursions by Turkish troops, civilians, hundreds of thousands of them in the path of this assault fleeing, and also the first civilian deaths. And all this after Trump withdrew U.S. troops from part of Syria and allowed Turkey to attack.
And there are something just truly revolting about watching people who have done everything in their power to facilitate, empower, and shore up the strength of this president knowing full well who we was and the way he makes decisions, knowing that he`s highly conflicted, you can`t trust anything he says there does, express their moral outrage at this.
Senator Lindsey Graham, chief among them who calls the impeachment inquiry a witch-hunt, wants a loyalty oath sworn by Republican senators who today sends his prayers to "our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump administration and who`s co-sponsoring with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen sanctions against Turkey which we can expect to get nowhere because Trump block it."
Lindsey Graham, and Congressman Liz Cheney, and all the Republicans, they are the ones who have empowered this guy. What do you think he was going to do? You knew he was a snake when you took him in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What if some of these ISIS fighters escape and pose a threat elsewhere?
TRUMP: Well, they`re going to be escaping to Europe. That`s where they want to go. They want to go back to their homes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, Democratic Congressman from New York Max Rose, an Army Veteran who was a combat platoon leader in the war in Afghanistan where his wounded, earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for his service. good to see you, Congressman.
REP. MAX ROSE (D-NY): Good to see you too, buddy.
HAYES: Do you share the view of the vast majority of your colleagues about what is happening here?
ROSE: I do. But it`s interesting to ask why. You know, I`ve been a supporter actually of this president`s effort to get out of Afghanistan.
HAYES: Yes.
ROSE: I want to see us reduce our footprint and end our forever wars. And how do that? The way that we do that unless we`re naive isolationists is we partner with people, we partner with entities such as the Kurds to be the tip of the spear to fight really incredible fundamentalists who threaten the homeland like ISIS. What we can`t do is send the message that after you`ve done our bidding, we`re going to abandon you which is exactly the message that we`re sending.
You know watching your program right now is my platoon sergeant from Afghanistan, a guy named Lloyd Taylor, deployed five times in the 21st century. I don`t want to see him deploy again. The only way we`ll do that without threatening the homeland is by these types of partnerships.
HAYES: Well, and we should also note, as Justin Amash your colleague in the House now, an independent and also a very strong advocate for U.S. withdrawal from active military zones, no one is coming home. There were 50 special ops troops who were there in that area who just got moved to a different place.
ROSE: Right.
HAYES: Like it`s not like there`s going to be some big homecoming right now.
ROSE: Right. And you know, the President had an opportunity to lead. He received a call in advance, advance warning that this was going to happen. And for all intents and purposes, he greenlit (ph) it.
I respect Turkey`s issues with its border. Turkey is deserving of border security just like any other nation. And the way that we would achieve that without perpetual war is with American leadership, bringing people to the table for a negotiated peace.
HAYES: Yes. Someone said today that there`s -- jumping out the 40th story window and exiting out the front door are both ways to leave a building but they`re both pretty different -- they`re pretty different.
You represent a district that is a district with Democrats and Republicans and Independents. It was a district that was held by a Republican, who voted for Donald Trump. I`m curious like it`s been striking to me to watch Republicans on this issue. They are really upset about this in a way that I haven`t seen them upset about other things that I find as morally salient.
Like is this something that people in your district worry about, that you`re having conversations about? Like what is it that you think has lit the fire under your Republican colleagues?
ROSE: Well, I think that you saw the same reaction from people like Cheney when the president discusses withdrawing from Afghanistan. So I don`t know --
HAYES: Part of its act, right.
ROSE: So I don`t know how seriously I take it that this is when they raise their hand. And they certainly when it comes to protecting the Constitution, they certainly will not raise their hand to criticize this president under any circumstances. They`re hawks in every way shape and form.
So I don`t think that this is an opportunity to justify or legitimate their worldview. But in this one particular instance, when you see what the Kurds have done for us over the last five years, we had a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and we saw the rise of ISIS as actually a land holding entity. And it was with partnership with the Kurds that we were able to beat them back.
Right now, there`s over 11,000 ISIS prisoners. God knows what is going to happen to them. If you had told me a month ago that the president would be openly seeking China`s help to -- in his next election and aiding and abetting ISIS prisoners, I would have said you`re out of your mind. But here we are.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, we should note that Lara Seligman who`s the Pentagon Correspondent for Foreign Policy tweeted that U.S. official tells me all defeat ISIS operations have been halted. They`re halted right now. We also know there`s like, as you said, 11,000 ISIS fighters who are currently being held in detention by these forces.
Like the President today was asked about well what happens and he said, well, they`re going to go back to Europe.
ROSE: That`s a completely naive worldview. It`s a completely naive interpretation of the threat. Part of what ISIS did was they not only inspired the movement of fighters, but they also inspired an ideology here at home.
And to have 10,000 prisoners stream out and potentially reconstitute an ISIS regime will be incredibly inspirational. And you`ll see that message since throughout social media. We cannot allow for ourselves to have another chapter to this story.
HAYES: Last question here. Do you see Congressional action? Obviously, there`s a Van Hollen and Lindsey Graham, something on the Senate. Can you imagine a world in which say sanctions against Turkey, there`s some bipartisan support for that the House?
ROSE: Well, what we actually have to do -- look, sanctions can help, and I do think that they can be appropriate right now, but that`s a band-aid. What we have to do is look at the entire region. We can no longer look at these issues in silos and we`ve got to actually bring people to the table.
Turkey is deserving of security, but they cannot take it into their own hands in this regard. And we should not be standing on the sidelines just allowing for this to happen. So I`d like to see a real leadership. And I haven`t lost faith that that is possible. But what we`re seeing right now is certainly not OK.
HAYES: Congressman Max Rose of the great city of New York in Staten Island and Brooklyn, good to see you.
ROSE: Thanks, my man.
HAYES. Next, the Trump campaign drops millions on Facebook ads. They have the green light from the social media platform to post just outright lies. Those details next.
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HAYES: Just a quick correction before we proceed, Max Rose, the congressman I was just speaking to, is a Democrat from New York`s 14th district, not a Republican as we had chyroned him. Apologies for the error.
All right, right now, one of the top political spenders on Facebook ads is Donald Trump. His re-election campaign is paying Facebook about a million dollars per week to run ads on the platform. And what the campaign has been paying to do is flood Facebook with bogus, flatly false ads about Joe Biden.
One such false ad, released last week, has already been viewed 5 million times on the site. But despite claims -- complaints from the Biden`s campaign, Facebook is refusing to take down the false ads. Biden`s leading rival for the Democratic presidential nomination right now, Elizabeth Warren, is now accusing Facebook of essentially buckling to a direct pressure campaign from the president himself.
In a series of tweets on Monday, Warren noted that Trump and Facebook had Mark Zuckerberg met just a few weeks ago in the Oval Office. That`s them right there. Warren also noted after that meeting that Facebook reportedly quietly changed its policies to allow false political ads.
Now Facebook denies changing its policies, but it admit it that it allows false political ads. In a speech just two weeks ago, after Zuckerberg`s meeting with Trump, Facebook`s head of global policy and communications Nick Clegg (ph) said, quote, "we don`t believe it`s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician`s speech from reaching its audience. That`s why Facebook exempts politicians from our third party fact checking program."
Now Warren, as you may remember, has announced a plan to break up Facebook and other tech giants. Monday she pointed out that Facebook helped get Trump get elected in the first place in 2016 in part by allowing Russian trolls to run rampant on the platform. This time around she said, quote, "they`re going further by taking deliberate steps to help one candidate intentionally mislead the American people."
I should note that some of those same ads now running on Facebook have been rejected from networks because they are so patently false.
I`m joined now by a man who has done some great reporting on this, Judd Legum. He`s founder and writer of the newsletter Popular Information, covers politics and power. He`s also research director for Hillary Clinton`s presidential campaign back in 2008.
All right, Judd, so your reporting has indicated this change in the Facebook policy, it`s what Elizabeth Warren pointed to, and I think she was pointing to your reporting. Facebook says there is no change, it`s always been this way. What do you say?
JUDD LEGUM, POPULAR INFORMATION FOUNDER: Well, that`s not true, there was a change. There`s a written policy. Facebook has a written ad policy. Anyone can Google it and find it. It`s something I`ve paid a lot of attention to. And a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that there was a big change. They used to have a section under misinformation. And it said you could not run any false or misleading ad. There were no caveats, there were no limitations to that, it was a blanket restriction.
Then I noticed that that section had been removed and it was replaced with a section that said you can`t run an ad that was deemed false by any of our third party fact checkers. Facebook partners with Politfact, Factcheck.org, a few others, to fact check different things that end up being popular on Facebook.
So, I contacted them and I noticed that that Biden ad that you were referring to had a claim that had been rejected by two or three of their Facebook`s fact checkers. And that`s when Facebook told me that actually even that, there is an exemption for political candidates.
So what Facebook is saying, well, we never enforced their old policy, which I can`t really say if that`s true or not because I`m not in the room with them as they enforce it, but there was a change. And I think that`s why people have kind of gotten pretty upset about this and are raising a stink, because people didn`t know this before.
HAYES: Well, part of the context here, too, is what the Trump campaign has been doing on the platform. How invested have they been in Facebook and Facebook ads?
LEGUM: Hugely invested. In fact, they`ve ratcheted it down a little bit, but as of last week they were spending upwards of $1.6 million per week on the platform. And many of these ads are false and misleading. Even in your first segment, you were talking about how the Trump campaign has not released a transcript. There is an ad that was released today by the Trump campaign, there`s dozens and dozens of variations targeting voters all around the country. And the very first line in the ad is we`ve release the transcript.
So, this is -- the context is they`ve got a candidate who is spending millions of dollars to Facebook to spread this kind of misinformation, and we`re more than a year out. So I think you can expect that the intensity of the spending and the intensity of the message is only going to increase as we get closer to election day.
HAYES: Part of the context here is there`s been a real right wing push against Facebook. Earlier claims in 2016 that they were rigging things, that they were biased against conservative publishers. There was a big meeting that Glen Beck, among others. There`s now Republican senators from Josh Holly to Ted Cruz saying they`re biased and they should have legal and political protections taken away for that reason.
Do you see a concerted effort here to kind of work the refs to make Facebook more amenable to the kinds of things that the Trump campaign is running?
LEGUM: Absolutely. And I think that`s the important context for this policy is that it wouldn`t really be a big deal, except you have a campaign that is pushing all of these false ads. And I think they`ve really been successful in building into the consciousness, the idea that Facebook has a liberal bias. But really if you look at the people in charge, the person in charge of the D.C. office is a Republican operative, Joel Kaplan, you may have recognized him. He was sitting behind Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
So this isn`t a company that`s really run by liberals for liberals. In fact, it`s setting some rules that are providing some fairly significant advantages to Trump in advance of 2020.
HAYES: All right, Judd Legum, great reporting. Thanks for joining us.
LEGUM: Thanks.
HAYES: Ahead, what`s the play for Democrats leading impeachment and the White House says they have no plans to cooperate. The strategy coming up.
Plus, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, Donald Trump`s safe space these days seems to be the podium at special White House events where he can ramble on in front of the gathered guests, which is exactly what he did this afternoon ahead of signing some new executive orders.
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TRUMP: We`re going against California and they make their cars so light it`s papier mache and you get in an accident, it`s very, very dangerous.
Same thing with the light bulb, the incandescent lights. Aside from the fact you look better -- of course, who cares about looks -- but you do better with incandescent.
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HAYES: He`s had these events almost daily and each one is weirder than the next.
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TRUMP: Digital is becoming a very big factor in the world.
They even have signs, make China great again, make Hong Kong great again. I`m saying get those signs.
A lot of American flags, a lot of Trump signs.
It`s a very powerful wall. It`s got everything you can have. We had mountain climbers literally come in, which is the hardest one to climb.
You can`t impeach a president for doing a great job.
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HAYES: That was last week, October 7. It was the day he made sure to wish happy birthday to the prime minister of Japan multiple times.
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HAYES: I want to start by wishing my very good friend Prime Minister Abe of Japan a very happy birthday. He`s 39 years old today. So please extend my wishes to the prime minister.
Please, again, wish Prime Minister Abe a happy birthday. He`s a very special man.
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HAYES: It`s so sweet, but it wasn`t actually Shinzo Abe`s birthday. Abe`s birthday was last month, but it was someone`s birthday: Vladimir Putin. And we know this because Putin did a little celebrating. And that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: Every year around Vladimir Putin`s birthday the Kremlin releases propaganda footage of him celebrating in some way. In 2015, it was a hockey match with former NHL stars and oligarchs. Putin scored just seven goals in that game.
It was a little less exciting this year for a 67th birthday. Please enjoy the following video. Vladimir Putin forages for mushrooms.
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HAYES: That is wholesome stuff, I`ve got to say. Putin enjoyed his birthday weekend in Siberian wilderness where he did fun things like drive a cool truck, pose with a big tree, enjoy a nice picnic and walk around a lot with a big stick.
Now, as we mentioned on Putin`s birthday, Donald Trump we think accidentally gave his best wishes to Shinzo Abe instead. The Kremlin says Putin did not receive a birthday call from Trump. But we doubt he`s offended. Putin gets everything he wants from Trump already.
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HAYES: No matter how the president tries to explain away his actions, there`s growing public support not just the impeachment inquiry, but also for the impeachment and indeed removal of the president. In that stunning new poll by Fox News I mentioned earlier, 51 percent of registered voters, not American adults, registered voters, surveyed say they felt the president should be impeached and removed. 4 percent supported impeachment but not removal, and 40 percent said he should not be impeached.
That`s not the only bad news for the president today. A new Politico morning consult poll found 50 percent of registered voters now support impeachment and removal of the president, 42 percent were opposed to removal and 7 percent were unsure.
Just to be clear, public support for impeaching Donald Trump is higher than it was for Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon when impeachment inquiries were launched against both of them.
Historian Kevin Cruz pointed out in Twitter, quote, "polls asking whether congress should impeach Richard Nixon and remove him from office didn`t pass the 50 percent mark until late July 1974. Nixon resigned two weeks later."
As FiveThirtyEight put it, quote, "as of Wednesday October 9, the polling consensus is clear: impeachment has gone from fairly unpopular to a near majority opinion."
The Democrats have won the public opinion battle so far. The question now becomes how they proceed. They have a big strategic choice to make. I`ll discuss that next.
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JOE DIGENOVA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: What you`re seeing is regicide. This is regicide by another name, fake impeachment. The Democrats in the House want to destroy the president. I refuse to call them whistle-blowers. These two non-entities are suicide bombers that the Democrats have unleashed on the democratic process.
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HAYES: Last night on Trump TV, two people intimately acquainted with Trump`s potentially impeachable offenses were on TV to defend the president.
Just a few weeks ago, Chris Wallace reported that attorney Joe diGenova had been helping Giuliani with his Biden oppo research. Last night diGenova described the clearly constitutional process of impeachment as, quote, regicide, which is truly bizarre because it would imply that we have a king and Trump is the king, and we very much don`t have a king. That`s the whole point of America. And also that someone is trying to kill him, which Democrats are not.
He also called whistle-blowers, as you saw, quote, suicide bombers.
This sort of approach here of Trump TV is to paint the impeachment proceedings as essentially an undemocratic coup or power grab, despite the fact it is literally in the constitutional as a constitutional option to deal with presidents who abuse the office in a democratic way. That is why the process exists.
So, the question for Democrats is how to deal with the White House`s stated intent to give them nothing. Do you fight it in court and try to get as much as you can with the risk that this could drag out, or do you just say we have what we need and move quickly? That appears to be what House Intel Chair Adam Schiff is trying to do.
To help ponder those questions, I`m joined by veteran of Bill Clinton`s impeachment in 1990s, David Brock, founder of Media Matters and America Bridge; and Mika Eoyang, former staffer with the House Intelligence Committee.
Mika, let me start with you. It seems to me that the House Intelligence Committee as chaired by Adam Schiff`s response to the White House unhinged eight-page letter we`re not going to give you anything is like OK fine, we don`t need it. Am I reading that right?
MIKA EOYANG, FORMER HOUSE INTELLIGECE COMMITTEE STAFFER: Yeah, I think Adam Schiff has a plan for how he will gather the evidence that he needs. And he`s going to stick that. And the White House refusal to answer and provide witnesses is something he`s just pushing through. He has got other witnesses scheduled to come in on Friday. There are other people in the State Department who are very clearly concerned about what was happening.
And the president has been revealing evidence both while standing on the South Lawn of the white house and releasing it in transcript form. And Rudy Giuliani is waving it around on television. So, there is a lot of information already out there. And the president has admitted the conduct that`s in question.
HAYES: You know, my -- we saw for nine months that the White House, I think, very successfully sort of stymied and bottled up House oversight -- various oversight committees. They said you`re not getting taxes and you`re not getting this and you`re not getting that and now it`s in courts. It`s working its way through and you`re not getting any witnesses.
So things have changed a bit, I think, since this happened, but I do wonder whether you think there is a risk if you move quickly on this set of facts to impeachment that there are things that are left there that need to be get wrenched into light that don`t get wrenched into the light.
DAVID BROCK, FOUNDER, MEDIA MATTERS: I don`t think so. I mean, I think Nancy Pelosi put the strategy out there a couple of weeks ago when she said strike while the iron is hot. And I think people have a lot of confidence in her ability to navigate this in terms of timing.
So there is nothing to say these investigations can`t continue. But the danger I would say is you get bogged down in congressional process. Liberals are process oriented. And that to me is danger.
I think the most important thing Democrats can do -- two things, one, learn the lesson from Mueller, which two years of time where the Trump attack machine was able to portray them as partisan and unethical with no response, then they came out really forcefully outside the box. You have to say that and say no collusion. It was dishonest, again, by Barr, but it worked and two months to hear from Mueller and that was a dud. So, I think really be conscious of having to educate the public and continue.
You ran through the polls in your prior segment. There is more room to grow that. And I think the most important thing they can do is continue to educate the public about what Trump did and I think those numbers will even move more in their favor.
They need to look at this as everything to gain for them and everything to lose for the Republicans.
HAYES: Mika, you talked about more witnesses. I mean, again, as we`ve been saying since this started that the pertinent facts, the core of the issue, are already entered into evidence undisputed and attested to in the records and the president himself. But they are going to try to stop folks, Masha Yovanovitch, who was the ambassador of Ukraine who I think has quite a story to tell is called on Friday. It seems like they will intervene.
It does seem like they are going to basically try to shut down the rest of this. I guess the question then becomes like do you just say OK, fine, now we move to articles?
EOYANG: I think we have a couple more witnesses beyond that, right? You have not one but two whistle-blowers, one with direct knowledge who are willing to come before the committee. They haven`t heard from them yet. So that`s testimony that they can continue to gather.
There may be others who will claim whistle-blower protection to be able to come forward. We saw that it took people a little bit of time to work up the courage for that. We don`t know who else in the State Department will come forward.
And I do think there will be some challenges. But every witness that the State Department holds back, every person who refuses to turnover information, the House has made very clear you either come forward or that`s another count on obstruction. And so its sort of win-win for them, for the House as they go forward on this, because you either talk or you`re obstructing.
HAYES: One of the points, David, that you just made there is room to grow. And I think that`s because if you get total Democratic unanimity behind this, there is still higher up for the polls to go. And to that point, Joe Biden today actually came out for the first time and called for Trump`s impeachment. Take a listen.
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JOE BIDEN, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: With his words and his actions, President Trump has indicted himself by obstructing justice, refusing to comply with the congressional inquiry. He`s already convicted himself. In full view of the world and the American people, Donald Trump violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation, and committed impeachable acts.
To preserve our constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached.
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HAYES: This struck me as a big deal, because of who Joe Biden is and where the Democratic Party base is in terms of public opinion.
BROCK: I absolutely think he helped himself a lot today because this is obviously a popular position among Democrats.
There has also been a lot of chatter that Biden hasn`t really made as much of this, the fact that he`s in the middle of it, that his stature in some way, certainly his profile, has been increased, that he hasn`t been quite as out front, as powerful, as forceful as he could be in taking on Trump. And I think he did a lot of that today. I think there were some very powerful words in there. And I think that it helps for his on the ground organizing. And I`ve heard it will help -- I mean, I`ve heard even in the last two weeks, it will be an uptick in his fundraising, too.
HAYES: You know, someone -- Josh Marshall made this point today about the logical conclusion of the maximal polarization strategy of the president is that Fox new poll has his approval at 43 percent and 51 percent want him impeached or removed, right, like there is no middle ground. It`s like you approve of the guy or you want him gone tomorrow.
BROCK: That`s right.
HAYES: David Brock and Mika Eoyang, thanks both for making time.
Before we go, don`t forget we`re bringing the WITH Pod road show to Los Angeles October 21. Adam McKay and Omar El Akkad. It`s going to be amazing conversation. Visit MSNBC.com/withpodtour.
And for all your New Yorkers, our next two Friday shows will be live in front of the studio audience right here Rockefeller Center. You can be in that audience. We have tickets for this Friday, October 11 and next Friday October 18. You can get tickets for both by going to allin.com/allin.msnbc.com. Hope to see you then.
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