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The Rachel Maddow Show, Transcript 03/20/15

Guests: Soo Han

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Happy weekend, my friend. HAYES: You, too. You too. MADDOW: Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Happy Friday to you. I do not own a car that can park itself, but there are lots of cars out there that can park themselves. It`s weird. You take your hands off the wheel and your feet off of the pedals. In some cases, you take your hands off the wheel, but you leave your feet on the pedals. You somehow indicate to the car that there is a marking spot that you would like your car to get itself into and -- shazaam, the car parks itself. The first car that was sold with this kind of technology was more than a decade ago. In 2003, Toyota sold a compact car that did this in Japan only, starting in 2003. But the first car that could park itself sold in the U.S. was a Lexus. Lexus was first in the U.S. And now, lots of cars can do it. BMW has cars that do it, Audi, Mercedes, Toyota, Ford, Lincoln, lots of cars have this self parking dose feature. Cars have also, of course, been able to drive without you putting your put on the gas pedal for a long time now, for 50 years actually. It was AMC that was the car company that sold the first big American cars with cruise control starting in 1965. Cruise control was widely available on a lot of different cars by the 1970s. I have to say, I still find it a little spooky to be behind the wheel of a car that you are not actively propelling forward. It`s just going on its own. But you can always have to brake to make it stop, right? We`re pretty much use to cruise control as a concept now. And over the last few years, the concept of cruise control has evolved in some cars into what they call adaptive cruise control, where you just set the speed that you want the car to go, and it goes that speed without you touching the gas pedal, but your car can also sense when there is a car in front of you in the lane and your car will sense that car ahead of you and then slow itself down to maintain a safe distance from the slow poke who just pulled in front of you in the lane. And now that cars have the capability of electronically sensing what is around them, different car companies over the past few years have been introducing various little fiddly features that basically let the car take over more and more parts of the more and more difficult parts of driving. There are car options available now if you drift out of a lane, the steering wheel will shake itself to wake you up and get you back on the road. In some cars, if the car has a feeling you might want to change lanes soon, it will let you know by likes or some other kind of indicator if there`s a car you might not have noticed in your blind spot where you might be about to change lanes into them. I mean, in terms of blind spots, there should never be one directly in front of you, in the direction in which you are traveling, or directly behind you, or you all have a nice big clear window. But some cars now will automatically slam on the brakes if you`re about to hit something, and they think -- and the car thinks you haven`t seen it. And that feature works when you`re reversing and work when you`re moving forward. You don`t see something but the car does see it, and the car makes the brakes come on. And cars can park themselves, which will always be creepy. But now with all of those little evolutionary technological benchmarks, it should probably not be surprising to see what it has come to, but to me at least, it is still very surprising to see this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re on auto pilot mode now, much like cruise control, just turn it on. At that point, my hands are off of the wheel, my foot are off the accelerator, off the brake. The top camera is going to read that 30 miles per hour sign. It`s going to adjust the speed while navigating through the lane course, once again not touching anything. The car is driving itself. Bottom cameras are doing the light, top cameras reading signs, it`s going to thread 25 miles per hour sign. Once it strengthens out, it`s going to slow down automatically, I`m going to press the blinker, it`s going to initiate a lane change automatically, all by herself. And Model S naturally reaction traffic condition, so it`s going to sense the car up ahead, start slowing down, and once again I`m not touching anything. She comes, stops by herself. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is amazing. Truly amazing. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With your foot on the brake, and disengages, and just like cruise control, you`re back to driving yourself. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: I know, right? That is video from theverge.com. It`s one of The Verge`s reporter being given a preview of what they at Tesla are calling the auto pilot feature in Tesla Model S`s. We`re used to thinking of self driving cars, I mean, cars that only park themselves or cruise at a consistent highway speed, speed up, slow down, recognize traffic, go around curves, actually completely drive themselves? The idea of there being auto pilot for a car where you don`t have to drive and it takes you where you want to go, we`re used to thinking that kind of thing is like moon colonies. Or living to be 200 years old, or the Republican or Democratic Parties are going obsolete in favor of something less annoying. Cars where you hit a button that says auto pilot and it drives you home without you driving, it has -- yes, always seem theoretically possible. You always have a sense that engineers and car companies are working on bits and pieces of that, and in incremental way, but it apparently is here, it`s done, it`s ready to go. And this is the part that is kind of blowing my mind -- cars that already exist today, cars that lots of people already own, are going to suddenly develop the auto pilot feature in the next few weeks. People who have the Teslas already, the Tesla Model S, according to that car company, in a conference call their founder did yesterday with journalists, people who own a Tesla Model S are going to get a software update for their existing cars some time this summer and that software update is going to include a little green button marked auto pilot wherein if you hit it, the car will drive itself. It`s here. It`s ready to go, sometime in the next few weeks, right? And yes, there are definitely questions, maybe first and foremost about the law, a few states have made it legal for cars to travel on their roads without drivers, but that is mostly for testing, right? So companies can do research and development in those states. But with these software update coming this summer, driverless car technology, auto piloted car are going to be owned and operable by regular, if rich, Joe Schmoe Tesla owners by this summer. The analogy I keep thinking of is drones, right? Technically, nobody is allowed to fly drones in this country. The FAA has not given people broadly permission to fly drones and it is illegal in the United States. But drones are very widely available to people, anywhere from a couple of hundred bucks on up and people fly them for fun and people fly them as part of their businesses, and people make media out of them, and people use them for all sorts of good and stupid purposes. And yes, it is technically illegally, but the law has just not caught to the wide, commercial availability of this thing that people like flying around. Cars driving themselves on auto pilot, that feels like it may end up falling into that same thing -- that same sort of hole in the law that drones are in, the fact that it`s technically illegal but ubiquitous anyway. And that is going to happen very soon. There`s also questions about how widely people who have this technology will be able to use it. Tesla says, right now, that at least for the first iteration of its pilot his feature, this feature will only be usable on mayor roads like highways and freeways. The company`s founder said yesterday he`s not sure the technology will be safe enough to use on small suburban streets that have different signage, different kinds of markings on the roads, potentially more variables in terms of cross traffic than you would encounter on a highway. But, you know, the lift for your car being able to safely auto pilot itself on a highway, to your car being able to safely autopilot your kids to school and back, presumably that is just an incrementally technological matter of upgrades, right? Upgrades that will unfold pretty fast once people are regularly knitting and doing their filing in the driver seat while their car drives them down the highway to work. This is about to happen. And we do not yet know whether this will become in our cars technology that is more normal than not like cruise control is now. Or maybe it will become something that is required by regulators like air bags or seat belts, in case it turns out that robot driving is safer than human driving once more and more people do it. There is always a possibility that this will be a bust and people won`t like it, and auto pilot will become a kind of gee whiz feature which you can make your car do. The technology exists to have cars do this, but not many people have it because not many people see a need for it. But still, neat. This is one of those technologies, right? Like cars can do this. People can make their cars do this. They`ve been doing that for a long time. Neat, can do. Not a lot of people use it. But cars that will drive you around without you doing anything, cars that have an autopilot button, they are coming apparently this summer, and this might be a we`re tech flash in the pan, but this might change everything in terms of the ways that we get around and the ways that we organize all of our large scale physical space in this country. Technological change of this sort is almost always incremental. It sneaks up on you a little bit, right? With little advancements, little improvements, new little marginally improved features, until all of a sudden, cars don`t have steering wheels anymore. We`re also seeing that kind of technological slippery slope happen right now, all of a sudden, in media and journalism -- particular media and journalism about politics. Campaigning for office is supposed to be a retail business, right? Politicians like to meet as many people as they can, shake hands, takes pictures, kiss babies, glad-handing and backslapping are not just cliche adjectives we use when we`re talking about politicians. Those are actually skills that politicians have to have. They have to be able to glad hand and back slap and all the rest of it, to the extent that running for office means making in person, physical appearances with your public. But when it comes to big time political office, a very small proportion of people who are going to be voting for or against you as a candidate are going to meet you in purpose, right? The candidates are campaigning for office, everything they do trying to persuade people to vote for them is delivered through some sort of media filter, mostly that`s the mainstream news media. And that means satellite trucks and camera crews, and pooled camera feeds from multiple news organizations at major news events and speeches and debates. It means professional correspondents chasing politicians down the sidewalk and through parking lots, reporters sometimes being asked to ride along on the bus or on the campaign plane. That`s the traditional means by which most voters get access to politicians, that`s the means by which people get access to these candidates. And that`s how they form their impression of those candidates, which leads people to decide who they`re going to vote for. Candidates and their campaigns have always done what they can to try to have a little bit more control over what people see about them, rather than leaving it just up to the media. For decades they have allowed approved documentary filmmakers to see -- to make and see behind the scenes footage of their politicking. Campaigns have shot their own footage of their candidates, both stuff that supposed to seem kind of candid, look, here`s Mitt working on his speech. And also stuff that is very slick and is designed to put their candidate in the best possible light. Within the last new few news cycles, it`s also become politics 101 for opposing campaigns to send video trackers to politicians` events, so you don`t just shoot your own candidate`s campaign rallies because maybe you want to repurpose that footage for an ad, or you want to post inspirational clips on YouTube, or you want to feed that out to the local media as a video press release. You not only shoot your own candidate campaign, you make sure you send a staffer to shoot the guy you`re running against, in the hopes that he might say something stupid on camera. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. GEORGE ALLEN (R), VIRGINIA: This fellow over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is, he`s with my opponent. He is following us around everywhere. Let`s give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: And then, George Allen was not in the Senate anymore. That was a tracker he was calling out with an inexplicable racist epithet. And that was it for him. So, running for office, campaigning for office, anywhere a candidate goes, he or she knows that someone who wants to make them look bad could be filming them at that event. If they`re smart, they`ve got somebody from their own side who wants to make them look good filming them too. If they`re really interesting, if they`re running for a really big office, they will also know that the news media will be there covering them to see whether they look good or look bad or just otherwise they look newsworthy. In this last national election cycle, we also saw the dramatic impact of citizen cell phone video, where not professional trackers, or campaign staffers, or professional journalists, but just average Joes with the incredible photographic power of your average cell phone were able to capture moments on the campaign trail as they happened. And even though whoever shot the video didn`t work for anybody who had a, you know, skin in the game, or they didn`t have an editor breathing down their neck to get some news story posted, that individual who shot the footage on their individual cell phone camera recognized that they caught something newsworthy and then they either fed it to a news organization or they themselves uploaded it online and waited for the fire storm to hit. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MITT ROMNEY: There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are a victim, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that`s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Mitt Romney`s infamous 47 percent remarks from the 2012 presidential election, shot by a bartender at that event, on his cell phone. Candidates now know that they might be recorded at anytime. Somebody might have a cell phone running. If they believe, if that person believes that something that the candidate said is inflammatory, or dangerous, or otherwise newsworthy, that person will be able to take that tape that they recorded on their phone, and upload it to the Internet, link to it online, tell everybody what they found. Candidates know that now. But now, now we have had an additional incremental technological development that itself doesn`t feel like a huge revolutionary leap, it is really an incremental development, it`s something that has been, you know, pointing in this direction for a very long time -- but what has just happened is something that a lot of people in politics feel like is the equivalent of the car without a steering, the self-driving car. Yes, we had cruise control all of these years, but there is something qualitatively different between setting your speed on the freeway and just hitting auto pilot and your car takes you home. In media technology, that leap that just happened, is that anybody with a cell phone can now, for free, broadcast live video of what they are seeing at the impact moment they are seeing it. So, what used to take a satellite truck and an uplink in terms of broadcasting a live political event now instead looks like this, and specifically looks like this. There have been more complicated versions of this technology in the past. There is a thing calls UStream. The Web site YouTube had a variety of this. There is something called String Wire that we have used at NBC. But what has happened now that has landed with such huge political splash is that everybody with an iPhone can really super easily broadcast live video. I mean, at least it`s pretty easy. It`s an app called Meerkat. If you, right, here we go, if you follow me on Twitter right now, you should be able to see what my cell phone is streaming right now. With this technology, you can show everybody in the world, far free, digitally everything you are seeing right now. Hi, Jackie. Hello. Hello, folks. There`s folks hello -- hi, you guys over there in the dark. Here`s what the rest of the studio looks like. Here, look, I`m wearing jeans and sneakers, can`t see that on TV. Can`t see that on TV. Can see that on Meerkat. And when you`re done streaming whatever you`re looking at, you, on your phone, can keep a record of it on your phone, but everybody else who was watching it them while you just did it saw it live and then it sort of poof, it just exists as an ephemeral thing, it goes away. But whatever you recorded on your phone, you can keep. So, from here on out, once this app, Meerkat or whatever else, that`s just like, that will be invented now, once it spreads across the country and everybody has this on their phone, everybody -- hi, hi -- end stream, yes, every time a politician from here on out because of this, every time a politician is outside their freaking bathroom, they`re basically on live TV. Anybody around them has a cell phone, that politician could be broadcast live right in that second to potentially an infinite number of people. Literally any time you`re anywhere other than the bathroom, and maybe in the bathroom if you got your own cell phone in there, got help us. MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt has gone through a lot of shoe leather as a reporter chasing politicians around. She`s kind of a correspondent who occasionally has to corner people in elevators, and badger them to sit down for interviews and she waits through their rallies, hoping they will say something interesting that she can then upload and put on the news. Well, today, Kasie Hunt conducted live broadcast interviews from her phone with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, as the political establishment pretty much collectively freaked out this week when this Meerkat app started blowing up and every iPhone in the country became the equivalent of a network satellite truck, providing a live feed of anything within reach of this very simple device that lots and lots and lots and lots of people have. Ek! Kasie Hunt joins us next. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KASIE HUNT, MSNBC POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, have you done this before? No? JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: No, this is officially my first Meerkat interview. And I guess Meerkat interview that anybody that press secretary has done. So, little early morning history. HUNT: A little bit of early morning history, and you have not joined the service yet? EARNEST: I have not joined the service yet, but we`ll see how this goes and maybe we`ll consider joining. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: MSNBC`s Kasie Hunt conducting the first over Meerkat interview, with a White House press secretary, with Press Secretary Josh Earnest today. She also today interviewed Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey using the same technology. This Meerkat thing is the newest way to live stream video from your cell phone to the world. It is sort of frighteningly easy, and very fast, and free to the user, and all of a sudden, this week, it has freaked out most of the political establishment by how big it has gotten so quickly. Joining us now is MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt. Kasie, it`s great to see you. Thanks for being here. HUNT: Thanks for having me, Rachel. It`s good to see you. MADDOW: How do you get Josh Earnest to be interviewed like that with absolutely no filter, not take-backs, it`s live immediately? How do you get him to do it? HUNT: Part of me still not exactly sure, Rachel. But no, it was actually -- it was pretty casual. I was at the White House briefing on Monday. And I Meerkated a little of it of the briefing itself. I really got a really good reaction. There are a lot of people, I surprise, who just felt like I was offering them a public service. You know, some said, I haven`t watched the White House briefing in years. So, I just sent Josh an email and I said, hey, do you want to do an interview on this new thing called Meerkat, and he came back and said, you know, hey, I think we`d be interested and the White House was willing to play ball with my pitch, which was, you know, hey, let`s do -- let`s try something new, let`s get outside of the box a little bit, talk about, you know, what the White House has done with social media, as well as some of the other implications that surround it. So, you know, my thanks to Josh Earnest for being game for trying something new, and, you know, obviously, we weren`t 100 percent sure how it would pan out necessarily. We had to jerry-rig some of the technology to sure we could even get a recording of it. But thankfully, it all worked out in the end. We had about 360-plus viewers at the peak. MADDOW: Which is not earth shattering, the number of people watching. But I feel like 00 I feel like the thing that is -- that t is hard for me to explain to people who don`t see the way the inside of the TV news business works, but you and I both know what it takes, both of terms of money, organization, organizational capital, persuasive power and occasionally just logistical luck to broadcast a live event out in the field. It costs a lot of money, and it takes a lot of work, and a lot of people being involved in it. This makes it possible for live events anywhere in the world to effectively be broadcast to an audience that could include millions of people. I feel like it`s substantially going to change what is accessible to the average viewer. HUNT: I think it`s really going to change the political system, Rachel. I mean, in many ways what you were outlining before about this being really incremental as compared to many other technologies is true. But it`s the confluence of all of these things, it`s a cellular network that can handle all this stuff, it`s a cell phone in everybody`s pocket, it`s the fact that we`re all networked already on Twitter and Facebook and connecting with those people is really easy. And it`s really going to change how these politicians operate. If 2012 was the Twitter campaign, I think that 2016 is really going to be whether it`s the Meerkat campaign or the Periscope campaign, or Stringwire, it`s going to be defined as an easy live streaming video. And the reality is that it`s not just reporters. As you were pointing out, this is going to be regular people as well. I mean,the Obama administration had, in fact, started taking away cell phones from some of its attendees at its fundraisers. They argue sometimes that it`s a security risk, but there also was that incident where the president when he was a candidate was caught on cameras making remarks about guns, God and religion that ultimately came back to haunt him, and that was something that was theoretically closed to the press. And when you think about all of the people in the vicinity of these candidates over the course of essentially an 18-month campaign, we are looking at a lot of live streams and a lot of potential pitfalls. MADDOW: Exactly. Nothing will ever be closed to the press ever again unless you can remove people`s cell phones from them, which most people feel like they`re grafted to their bodies anybody. HUNT: They are. MADDOW: I think this is a big deal. It`s going to change our jobs a lot, but I think it`s gong to change the sort of democratization of information around politics really fast. MSNBC political -- HUNT: I mean, I think -- MADDOW: Yes, go ahead, Kasie. Sorry. HUNT: No, I was just going to say, I think the one thing is that it might not necessarily be 100 percent positive, either. Just because we have this ability to broadcast in this sort of democratic way doesn`t necessarily mean we`re going to get more transparency from these candidates. I think if anything, Twitter drove Mitt Romney for example who I cover very closely in 2012, that drove him further away from reporters, and I think many reporters that saw that documentary and recognized that person, but were sort of unable to communicate that to the broader public, in part because they were so afraid all of the time that these tweets were going to go out and push them off message. I mean, they were so focused on that. I think that in many ways, this is going to prevent people from getting that sense of authenticity from being very close to a candidate because people are going to be so concerned about this technology. MADDOW: It will make them put up their guards, but it will mean that there is no place where they can be assured they`re not on live TV. HUNT: Right. MADDOW: It`s a huge deal. MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt, really appreciate it. Thanks. Congratulations on that scope today. HUNT: Thank you. MADDOW: All right. Lots more ahead tonight, including one of the most powerful advocacy videos I`ve ever seen, and a presidential candidate who this week forgot something really, really, really important. At least I think he forgot it. Plus, the Friday night news dump. All ahead -- stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: When Eric Holder announced back in September that he was stepping down as attorney general, he was the fourth longest serving attorney general in U.S. history. The longest one is this guy William Wirt, who was attorney general for more than a decade. Second longest serving A.G. was Janet Reno, who served the whole time, Bill Clinton was president. The third longest serving A.G. was Homer Cummings who served under FDR. And then, there was Eric Holder. But Eric Holder has now been waiting so long for his replacement to be confirmed by the Senate that he`s moved in the ranking. Yes, he now beats Homer Cummings, and is now the third longest serving attorney general in history because the Republican-led Senate refuses to hold a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as his successor. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is no place I would rather be in my closing days as attorney general than here, with you all, or at least what should be my final days. Given the Senate`s scheduling and delays, and considering about Loretta Lynch`s nomination for a vote, it`s almost as if the Republicans in Congress have discovered a new fondness for me. I`m feeling love that I haven`t felt for some time. And where was all of this affection in the last six years, you know? (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Attorney General Eric Holder speaking earlier this week. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate, he had said that Loretta lynch`s confirmation vote to succeed Eric Holder would happen this week. It did not happen this week. Now, the number two Republican senator, John Cornyn, says his party feels zero pressure to confirm Loretta Lynch as the next A.G. Literally, that was his quote to reporters. Reporters asked them how much pressure Republicans feel to finally vote on the new nominee for attorney general, his answer was, quote, "zero". Zero pressure. Why worry? It turns out they like Eric Holder and they`re like keeping him around indefinitely. Today at the White House, "Huffington Post" reporter Sam Stein got President Obama on the record about this unprecedented delay for an attorney general nominee. Watch what president says here about how Democrats in Congress ought to handle this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The fact that she has now been lingering in this limbo for longer than the five previous attorney general nominees combined makes no sense. We need to go ahead and get this done. SAM STEIN, THE HUFFINGTON POST: What do you think is behind it? OBAMA: Well, you know, the Senate dysfunction is part of it. But part of it I think is just a stubbornness on the part of Republicans to move nominees, period. STEIN: Well, they say they got -- they`re holding up her nomination until they get to the human trafficking bill with a controversial abortion provision in it. Would you encourage Democrats to let the bill go through so you can get a confirmation? OBAMA: You don`t hold attorney general nominees hostage for other issues. This is our top law enforcement office. Nobody denies that she`s well-qualified. We need to go ahead and get her done. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: You don`t hold attorney general nominees hostage for other issues. That has been his policies, no-hostages policy with the Republicans, on shutting down the government, on shutting down the Homeland Security Department, on hitting the debt ceiling and all the other things where they have tried to force his hand, the Obama strategy for Republicans taking hostages is no, no, we don`t play that. We wait you out. You get nothing by threatening to harm parts of the country or government. The answer is no. And tonight at the White House, he told Senate Democrats to take that same strategy on Loretta Lynch. No games. No trades. Do not play. Just get a vote on her. You don`t hold the attorney general nominee hostage for other issues. Loretta Lynch was nominated for this gig 132 days ago. Next week, the Senate plans to tackle the Republican budget plan. A week after that, Republicans tell us that they plan to go on vacation for two weeks. The whole Senate is going on vacation for two weeks after next week. Republican aides telling "Politico" today that they do not expect any movement on the Loretta Lynch confirmation vote until maybe the middle of next month, at the earliest, and she has already waited longer than any attorney general nominee in history. And so, Eric Holder is now creeping up on Janet Reno`s record for his -- in terms of the amount of time that he has served in office, because the Republicans who hate him more than life itself, they won`t let him go. Stranger than fiction. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Coming up, we got a stunt, a political stunt so effective that the other side is howling and wants people arrested for having what they just did. What they just did is one of the most effective advocacy videos I have ever seen on any subject. And that`s next. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Last week, in one of the most painfully hip neighborhoods in New York City, someone redid a store front. They put signs on the window offering pistols and shotguns and rifles for sale. They hang up a shingle that said gun store. And in came people. New York has had tough laws on guns going more than a century. In New York City, they even had strict limits on toy guns for 60 years since the 1950s. But last week, all of a sudden, up popped this new gun store with signs for pistols, shotguns, and rifles for sale in New York City. And people came in to see what`s in stock, the handle the guns, talk about what they might want to buy. But those conversations with the guy in the store got weird pretty fast. The whole thing got weird fast. And they were taping while it all happened. And here is some of what they got. Watch this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, how are you doing? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, how are you doing? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re interested in a gun, right? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, cool. You look for something for like target practice or -- UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Protection. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More for protection. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just safety. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m pro-Second Amendment, you know? So, it`s like it`s hard to find that around in New York City, you know? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like I was showing your wife. The first gun I showed her was this revolver, it`s the easiest gun we use. You know, it`s our most popular one. A .22 caliber, six inch revolver. It`s also a gun that a five-year-old found in his parents` bedroom went down and shot his nine-month-old baby brother with it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you said shooter, five-year-old kid, what is that -- (CROSSTALK) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the one. This is the one that the kid used? Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Collectors love this one. Adam Lanza`s mom had this in her collection too, until he took this and several other guns and killed her and went down to Sandy Hook, killed six teachers and 20 innocent children -- 20 little kids gone like that. He walked into a McDonald`s in San Diego, killed 21 and injured 19. It`s one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. A.09 millimeter, semi-automatic, 40 caliber compact, 45 caliber, 9 millimeter sub machine, 12 gauge pump action shotgun. Why don`t you have a closer look? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was pretty blind sided by just the entire history of every gun in the store. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It made me actually think I`m not going to buy that gun. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It made me think twice, and I would not buy one. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Every gun has a history, let`s not repeat it. Just a remarkable stunt that they pulled off in New York City. And the guns rights groups are freaking out about this. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is calling for a criminal investigation. They said the guns in that store looked illegal to them. They say they want people arrested. People did not have gun licenses and they were handling guns in New York City, which was a felony. These people in this gun shop, they were breaking the law. But the group that pulled this off, they apparently knew what they were doing. They`re called States United to Prevent Gun Violence. They say the guns in the store were not actually real guns. They were fake, realistic fakes. They say they followed all of the laws. They had someone from the NYPD watching all of the time. They set it up as an experiment to make a point, all right? So they would not run afoul of taping people without their consent, they didn`t let people just randomly walk in off of the street. They recruited people who were expressed an interest in buying a gun. Those people did want to buy a gun. They were told they were taking part in a marketing experience, and those are the people they sent in to that shop. But these were those folks` real reactions. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It made me actually think I`m not going to buy that gun. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It made me think twice, and I would not buy one. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: States United to Prevent Gun Violence posted this video three days ago. Nearly 2 million people have watched it online already. And now, the NRA is freaking out, calling for an investigation, wanting people arrested, who appeared in this video. The real reason the NRA is freaking out obviously is not because they are horrified by people handling guns in New York City. It`s because they`re freaked out by the new approach they`re going to have to contend with politically in this video, right? We`re used to seeing messages about gun safety that put us in the position of victim. This ad puts you in the position of the shooter. If you`re thinking about buying a gun so you will be safer, then this ad want you to imagine your hand on the same trigger that the Newton killer pulled. It wants you to imagine your hand on the same trigger where a little kid killed his sister by an accident or a toddler killed her mom in Walmart. This is super aggressive advocacy. Changing laws about guns in this country has been really hard to do, recently it`s been impossible. But something like this aims to change not laws but individual minds about the wisdom of buying guns. Maybe they can. The NRA seems pretty worried that they might. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: A long time ago in an office not all that far from this studio, when I wore glasses all day long because I was not on TV, I had these guys. I had these little dusty Mexican wrestlers with inadvertently webbed hands and feet and they sat on my desk, and they just sat their all day watching me work. And I think they born themselves into my mind. Well, now, they have a chance to fulfill their true and righteous purpose. Right here, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: OK, Mexican wrestlers still to come, I swear. But first, one more thing. This is the time of year that governors all across the country introduce their state budgets. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is finishing up his time as Louisiana`s governor. He very obviously wants to run for president, but one of the problems for both of those things, his time as governor and his wannabe time as president is that his state, Louisiana, has a terrible budget crisis right now. Bobby Jindal is heading toward the exits, but he is leaving his state short on cash by more than $1.6 billion, which is a lot of money for a state of that size, and among other things, it is embarrassing for him to talk about on the campaign trail. And so, in these last months of his governorship, while he is running for president, he`s cutting everything he can, which has now raised an interesting question as to whether or not one of the things he can cut is Louisiana`s participation in picking the nominees for president next year, because Governor Bobby Jindal in his new budget has forgot to include any money for Louisiana to hold a presidential primary for 2016. There is no set appropriation for paying for that primary and he has cut the amount of money he gives to the secretary of state`s office there by so much that the secretary of state says there is literally not enough money in the budget to pay to run those primaries. You know, Bobby Jindal isn`t exactly a front runner in the 2016 race, but if he was going to have a chance at winning any state, it would be his own unless his own state just won`t be voting at all because Bobby Jindal made it so they can`t afford to. As with most things involving Governor Bobby Jindal, this is either the dumbest possible thing anyone could do while running for president, or it is somehow secretly genius, and we mere mortals just don`t understand it. I`m betting on the former, but hoping for the later. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Are you ready? Are you ready? Because it`s happening. Time for the Friday night news dump. Producer Julia Nutter, who is playing this evening? JULIA NUTTER, TRMS PRODUCER: Tonight, we have Soo Han from Carmel, Indiana. He emigrated to the U.S. from South Korea at age 10. He grew up in Amish Country in Pennsylvania, and he`s a high school orchestra teacher. MADDOW: Oh, Soo, it`s very, very nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. SOO HAN, CARMEL, INDIANA: Hello. I`m freaking out. This is awesome, and a dream come true. So nice to see you. MADDOW: I have to ask you what the orchestra teacher part, how many of the instruments in the orchestra can you personally play in order to like have the kids be competent. HAN: I have to play enough to teach them. My advanced orchestra students kind of cringe when I start reaching for an instrument to play for them, so -- but enough to teach them and they`re amazing kids, so I need to do very little. MADDOW: Well, that`s awesome. I was in orchestra when I was in junior high and it was really fun, until all the kids in the band, which is a much more bullying culture, picked up our orchestra teacher`s car and put it on the tennis court. They physically picked it up and put on the tennis court, and he couldn`t get it out. He was very sad and that was the end of it. HAN: I love you even more now that I know you were in orchestra. I didn`t know that. What did you play? MADDOW: I played everything poorly. Anyway, you know how this works. Three questions, if you get two right, you will win, Julia? NUTTER: This very fancy mini cocktail shaker. MADDOW: Woo-hoo! And if you get all of the questions right, or if you don`t really get very many right at all but you need extra credit or a consolation prize, we do have something that we found in our office, but tonight, it`s a little weird. Julia, what is tonight`s random swag? NUTTER: Soo has two options. He can take these little action figures that you used to have on your desk at Air America. MADDOW: Yes, they`re Mexican wrestlers. They`re very poorly made and they`re a little dirty. NUTTER: Yes, this one has a little cape. It`s cool. Otherwise, Soo can have these posters that we made as props during the government shutdown in 2013. MADDOW: OK. Soo, I will tell you, even though the props aren`t awesome, one of them does have a really nice T-square attached to the back of it that you would also get to keep. HAN: Great. MADDOW: We also need to brick in the disembodied voice of Steve Benen from Maddow Blog. Steve determined if you get the right answer. Steve, meet Soo. Soo, meet Steve. STEVE BENEN, MADDOW BLOG (via telephone): Good evening. MADDOW: Good evening. HAN: Good evening. Love you articles, Steve. BENEN: Thank you. MADDOW: All right. Soo, first question, here we go, we`re going to go right to it. Monday, we described a brand new Gallup poll which asked people what they think is the most important problem facing the country today. In that Gallup poll, what did the highest number of respondents identify as the most important problem that our country has right now. What is -- HAN: Government. MADDOW: -- (a), the threat of terrorism, (b), income inequality, (c), the government, or (d), the zombie apocalypse? HAN: I wish it was d, but it`s not. It`s c, the government. MADDOW: Steve, did Soo get that right? BENEN: Let`s check the segment from Monday`s show. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: The highest percentage of respondents say that biggest problem in the country is the government. (END VIDEO CLIP) BENEN: The correct answer is C. And Soo is one for one. MADDOW: All right. Well done. You`re 100 percent so far. We`re going to go to question two. We have had an eye on the U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran all week. I should say happy Iranian new year, by the way. On last night`s show, we did report that as the Iranian nuclear talks are getting down to the nitty-gritty, another U.S. official has recently been seen at the talks taking a leading role alongside Secretary of State John Kerry. Who is that other U.S. official who suddenly is very visible in those talks? Is it (a), Attorney General Eric Holder, (b), Ernest Moniz, (c), Vice President Joe Biden, or (d), Vice President Emeritus Dick Cheney? HAN: I was traveling yesterday and yesterday`s show was the only show I missed. Ahh! I`m just going to pick my favorite person on that list and say (c), Vice President Joe Biden. MADDOW: Steve, what`s the right answer? BENEN: Let`s check out the tape from last night. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: All of a sudden, we`re not just seeing John Kerry leading things for the U.S., now, who is that guy on the left? Now, we`re seeing the only man in U.S. government with hair better than John Kerry`s hair, also involved at the talk level. Our energy secretary, who is himself a nuclear physicist, Ernest Moniz. (END VIDEO CLIP) BENEN: Yes, I`m afraid Mr. Cheney is not involved, and Mr. Biden is re not involved. Mr. Moniz is, and the correct answer is b. And Soo is not correct. MADDOW: All right. Soo, you totally had a good reason for missing that one. You got one last chance. This one is a visual one. So we`ve never done this before. Hope it works. Today`s show, we reported on Republican Aaron Schock and his somewhat shocking resignation from Congress in the face of lots of questions about his finances related to his travel. One of the things that reporters have used to track his travel spending is his rather legendary Instagram account, which he now seems to have deleted I should mention. But before he deleted it, we were able to capture some of it. Which of these images was not an image from his Instagram account? Was it (a), this one, which makes him look like an extra for "Magic Mike"? Was it (b), this one, which shows him surfing in Hawaii? Was it (c), this one, shows him, I don`t know, maybe ice climbing or something? I don`t know. Or was it (d), this one which shows him being shaved by another dude? Which one of those was not from his Instagram account? HAN: Oh, my gosh. This is tough. I`m going to say (a), because I think that a was a shoot from a magazine, that cover he did, not his Instagram. MADDOW: Steve, do you have the answer for us? BENEN: Let`s check the segment from Tuesday. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Also a famous star turn, yes, that`s him, on the cover of "Men`s Health." Congressman, really? (END VIDEO CLIP) BENEN: So, (a) was the magazine cover photo, just like Soo said, and he is correct. MADDOW: Soo, not only did you get that right, but you got exactly the trick of it right. That was spectacular. Julia, did Soo win the cocktail shaker? NUTTER: Yes, he wins the cocktail shaker? HAN: Yes. MADDOW: And because you have not only the right answer but you have the right explanation, do you want either of the cruddy items we found in our office? HAN: I would love both. I used to listen to you on Air America when you first came on. MADDOW: Thank you. HAN: But just so that I can hang it up for the entire world to see, I`m going to choose the sign. Rachel, can I please ask you to sign it before I get it? MADDOW: Oh, yes, I will sign your sign big time. And we`ll send you the T-square, will even throw in a few more of these signs if you wish. Soo, thank you so much for playing. It was great to meet you. If you want to talk about the viola clef, anytime, I`m available any time. Thanks, Soo. HAN: Thank you. MADDOW: Thanks. Yay! That was great. If you want to play the most awesome game in basic cable news, or rather the only one, send us an e-mail, Rachel@msnbc.com. All you have to tell us is who you are, where you`re from and why you want to play the news dump. The stuff we`re finding around the office is getting weirder and weirder all the time. But it could be yours. First, though, I`m told the warden wants to see you. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END