JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: What a difference four years makes, the man who literally positioned himself as Superman in 2016 is now running scared.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.
JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: It`s giving them a false sense of security.
TRUMP: Right now, I think it`s under control. I`ll tell you what --
SWAN: How? 1,000 Americans they are dying a day.
TRUMP: They are dying, that`s true. And it is what it is. But that doesn`t mean we aren`t doing everything we can. It`s under control as much as you can control it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: It is what it is. Well, in other words when the going gets tough, Trump gives up.
Trump`s frankly bananas interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios has underscored just how incapable he really is when dealing with a crisis. Among the many truly insane parts of this interview, Trump still insists with a straight face that the virus is under control.
And it would be bad enough if this were just a one-off but it`s a fantasy that we`ve heard from Trump many, many times before.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you been briefed by the CDC --
TRUMP: Yes, I have.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- of the worries about a pandemic at this point?
TRUMP: No, we`re not at all. And we have it totally under control.
We think we have it very well under control.
But we have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job.
And everything is under control.
It`s a very contagious virus. It`s incredible. But it`s something that we have tremendous control over.
Many of them have a little bit and they have it under control.
And we are, likewise, getting under control.
They`re going to have it under control really quickly.
That it`s going to be under control.
It`s under control as much as you can control it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: The Washington Post is now reporting that more than five months into the pandemic, Trump has grown exhausted by the dismal coronavirus news and just wants the issue to be behind him.
While Trump may want to shrug it off, the crisis is deadly serious. As we speak, the number of Americans who have been infected by the virus is fast approaching 5 million and the United States has the dubious distinction of leading the world in the sheer number of coronavirus cases.
Now, by comparison, countries like Spain and France reported zero new cases for the day yesterday, zero, while the U.S. reported almost 50,000. And yet Trump is desperately trying to spin his administration`s response as a success.
And he is cherry-picking data that he doesn`t even seem to understand.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Well, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories. We`re lower than the world.
SWAN: Lower than the world?
TRUMP: Lower than Europe.
SWAN: In what?
TRUMP: Take a look, right here, U.S. case deaths.
SWAN: Oh, you`re doing death as a proportion of cases. I`m talking about death as a proportion of population. That`s where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera.
TRUMP: You can`t do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Wow. Joining me now is Tim O`Brien, Senior Columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
Tim, we`ve talked a lot about Donald Trump in the past. Thank you for being here. I don`t know if you watched the whole interview but I cringed watching it, quite frankly. Mary Trump talks about Donald Trump as somebody who never really did anything on his own. His father helped his business career and then helped him when he started to sink the Trump family business. He actually had Roy Cohn helping him. He even had Vladimir Putin help him get to be president, like he`s actually never done anything on his own.
But what do you make of the way he seems to be floundering now, that he actually is in charge?
TIM O`BRIEN, SENIOR COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG OPINION: Well, I think, Joy -- and you`re right, we have been -- probably you and I have been talking about this now for five years or so, unfortunately. But he`s been floundering his whole life. That`s nothing new.
The fact that he constantly speaks towards being controlled, it is a reflection of the fact that he is completely out of control. He`s out control, intellect. He`s emotionally out of control. He`s emotionally damaged. He runs a chaotic administration. He ran chaotic business. He has lived a chaotic lifestyle. And he has pretended to be in control.
And I think he was able to spend decades with this faAade of control in front of him because the media, for the most part, didn`t really press him on this because they didn`t need to, and he wasn`t president then. Or in cases where they should have and didn`t often, it was because he was a business man or he was the host of The Apprentice.
But he positioned his whole business career and his celebrity career on the man who is capable and in control, when I think he is deeply insecure about his intellect. He`s an unsophisticated, ignorant man who, even though he`s insecure about, doesn`t realize how deeply ignorant and unsophisticated he is. And the presidency has outed all of this in a profound way because he is getting fact-checked in real-time on a day-to-day basis and he can`t escape it.
And that was the story up until 2020. He was eluding being caught even though he had been outed. You now have the coronavirus, which is an inescapable reality.
REID: And talking to Mary Trump and reading her book, one of the things that comes through is the complicity of everyone, of the entire country, of the media, of Mark Burnett, of everyone who colluded to cover up Donald Trump`s incompetence throughout his life, his business life. Everything was covered up because everyone, as you said, played along. You can`t play along now when there are nearly 160,000 people dead.
There`s a great piece of Mother Jones that David Corn wrote. I think it`s very personal (ph). I think everyone should read the whole piece. He writes, what is surprising is that Trump, perhaps the most self-interested man ever to reside in the White House, cannot see that his own and much cherished personal interests, notably getting elected, are aligned with the public interest of curtailing the pandemic. He could easily do what he`s always done, find a smarter, wiser, more powerful man, which is father was, which Roy Cohn was, which he always had in his back-pocket, and let them run the crisis, let them fix it for him.
What do you make of the fact that he`s refusing to even do that?
O`BRIEN: I think he made efforts of that when the coronavirus first erupted. He turned it over to Pence. He put him Jared in charge. Jared, who was yet to even earn his Junior G-Man (ph) badge, neither of those men were up to the task.
REID: Well, I mean somebody more powerful and more competent than him, right? Because you just named two people who seem to be at his level or less in terms of ability and competence.
O`BRIEN: But the thing is, his father always ran things or bailed him out until he died. Roy Cohn did the same until he died. Trump has never really been tested and he doesn`t understand how important it is to recruit strong people and to listen to them because he is profoundly narcissistic and he lacks empathy. The real danger here is he also doesn`t care about the consequences of any of those things.
I think he hasn`t reached out and taken control of this because it eludes him because he`s that damaged.
REID: Let me play one more piece of this interview. The whole thing is just -- the only word I can think of it is banana-rama-crazy. It`s absolutely bonkers.
O`BRIEN: Jonathan Swan was (INAUDIBLE) the reaction.
REDI: Every way he looked around, like what? Here is Donald Trump talking to Jonathan Swan where he wants credit for creating a test for coronavirus because Obama didn`t do that, because there was no coronavirus. Anyway, here is the piece.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SWAN: We`re testing so much because it spread so far in America.
TRUMP: We`re testing so much because we had the ability to test, because we came up with a test. Jonathan, we weren`t even -- we didn`t even have a test. When I took over, we didn`t even have a test.
Now, in all fairness --
SWAN: Why would you have a test? The virus didn`t exist. How would you --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Tim, I have likened this to trying to explain like trigonometry to like a toddler. Like, hypotenuse, do you understand that? Like I don`t know what --
O`BRIEN: You give him too credit, Joy. It`s like explaining (INAUDIBLE) to a toddler. It`s not -- it isn`t even trigonometry.
And he doesn`t understand that it isn`t even about the volume of testing at this point. It`s about how quickly the test results come back so we can do contact tracing. He is so apart from this. I mean, this is the same man that, A, that pronounced Yosemite in a public speech as, yo-semite, and referred to his admiration for the secretary of the interior because he really knows the interior. We have to come to grips with the fact that the president is a profoundly ignorant person and he`s not going to change. And it`s tragic, comic and dangerous, unfortunately.
REID: It would be hilarious if it weren`t so absolutely dangerous and so many people weren`t dead. It is absolutely shocking that this man is president of the United States, shocking.
Tim O`Brien, thank you for being shocked with me. I appreciate you sharing my consternation. Thank you so much.
Now, I want to bring in Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. And, Senator, you have a very serious and important job. You have constituents who are counting on you to look after the public health, to look after their safety. You all take this oath to defend the country against enemies at home and abroad. Every single one of you in the Congress, in the senate and the president take this oath. What do you make of the way that Donald Trump --
SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Some of us had to try to live up to it. Sorry, Joy. Some of us live up to it.
REID: Absolutely. What do you make of the fact that this president, he can`t get past the fact that in his mind, the problem is we`re testing too much, and that`s why it`s revealing how many people have coronavirus.
HIRONO: I completely agree with Tim O`Brien, everything he said about Trump. This is a very deeply flawed man how doesn`t know what he doesn`t know and he doesn`t care. So this is where we are. He said, it is what it is. Yes, he is what he is. He`s not going to change. He just creates chaos and pain wherever he goes.
And I think he does have a bromance with the tough guys like Putin. In fact, when you ask is there somebody strong, stronger than him to run things? That could be Putin but maybe Putin already is running a country.
So he has a bromance with the people like Putin, Duterte, Ergodan, because he has a pathetic need to be seen as a tough guy and he exhibits that need by going after people who can`t defend themselves. That`s what he does. He`s bully, a very insecure bully.
REID: Yes. Are you worried that somebody who sits on the Armed Services Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee? Donald Trump came out today and referred to the explosion that we saw in Beirut earlier, just pretty scary pictures, but no one knows if this was an attack of some kind, but he referred to it as an attack, that tendency to go right to the idea that this is some of an attack. Are you concerned what he might do, because he is cornered man at this point?
HIRONO: Of course, I`m concerned. And, in fact, he just recently placed that the person the Senate Armed Services Committee was likely not going to be able to confirm at the number three spot and DOD. And he pretty much said, okay, you go over there and do it anyway. This would be (INAUDIBLE), and he is not qualified. He`s a racist. He`s all kinds of things but certainly not someone who Trump should place there.
But this is what the president does. And I`m concerned with the decisions he makes withdrawing 12,000 of our troops out of Germany without really talking to anybody, and everybody has to run around trying to explain things in some sort of rational way. And so we have a president who is basically, as I called him before, just a spoiled brat who thinks that the rule of law does not apply to him and he can do whatever he wants. Well, he can`t.
REID: Yes. I want to play a piece of sound for you. And I apologize for the part of it that is offensive, but I want to ask you this, because not only are you a United States senator but as a member AAPI community. I just want to let you listen to this. This was Bruce Lavell, who is the -- believe it or not, he is the executive director of Donald Trump`s National Diversity Coalition. He was on AMJOY last weekend with my friend, Tiffany Cross, and here is how he talked about the coronavirus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TIFFANY CROSS, MSNBC ANCHOR: So you think 146,000 dead Americans was an appropriate response from this?
BRUCE LAVELL, DIVERSITY COALITION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: We as a country -- we as a country.
CROSS: We as a country, yes, but I`m asking about Donald Trump.
LAVELL: The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and we as the country, Tiffany, have done a marvelous job and a wonderful job combating this China virus that has taken over our economy.
CROSS: So, I just want to correct you. I don`t know. You lead the Diversity Coalition and you`re calling -- you`re using these racist terms like the China virus.
LAVELL: It came from China.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: He is not the only one. Bruce Lavell was not alone. The trade executive for Donald Trump is doing the same thing, got kicked out of the CNN interview for it. What do you make of that, in the midst of all this death and suffering, for his administration to smirkingly insist on disparaging Chinese people as part of their response to the coronavirus?
HIRONO: Of course, it`s racist and it`s one of the reasons that we`re seeing hate crimes against Asian-Americans rise. But it`s yet another example of so many where it`s so clear that Trump does not take responsibility for anything.
So we have three crisis on our hands. We have a pandemic, a healthcare crisis, we have an economic crisis, we have systemic racism in our country, and he has done an abysmal job addressing all three of these crisis and but he will take no responsibility.
In fact, the truest thing Trump said about this pandemic was, it`s not my responsibility. That`s one of the few things that he has lived up to, to the detriment of the millions and millions of people in our country that are now suffering because he did such a dismal job and still is doing a dismal job.
It`s just amazing, as you said. It`s really crazy. He lives in a total different fake reality of his own mind, such as it is.
REID: Yes. We have 4,756,642 people infected with the coronavirus, 157,517 dead. It`s shocking.
Senator Mazie Hirono, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you.
HIRONO: Thank you.
And up next -- cheers, thank you.
And up next on THE REIDOUT, remember Donald Trump, the guy who portrayed the world`s savviest dealmaker on The Apprentice, well, about that, plus -- perhaps history wasn`t required at reform school in New York, so I am going to take Trump to school in tonight`s craziest damn thing. Here is a hint, cutting off your nose to spite your face by lying to your own supporters.
Back with more of THE REIDOUT after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I will bring America to a new level. I will negotiate deals that nobody can negotiate like I do.
Once again, I have been in business. I`ve made a lot of money which I`m going to do for the country now. I have been focused on jobs and money and deals and that`s what I do. And that`s what the country needs.
It`s supposed to be you get along with Congress and you cajole and you go back and forth and everybody gets in a room and we end up with deals.
You`re supposed to gather people around and make great deals. I want to make great deals from my side of the equation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Donald Trump, deal maker or so he claimed. Well, federal unemployment benefits related to the coronavirus ended last Friday. So with Congress and the White House at a stalemate over how to ease the economic pain of millions of Americans, what is Donald, the deal maker, up to? According to The New York Times, not very much.
Three months before he faces voters, the main role that Trump appears to have embraced in assembling an economic recovery package is that of sniping from the sidelines in ways that undercut a potential compromise. White House officials described Trump as interested in the talks but from a distance, adding that he is expending little energy of his own to move the ball forward.
For more, I`m not joined now by Anand Giridharadas, Publisher of the brand- new newsletter, The.Ink, and Kurt Bardella, Senior Adviser for The Lincoln Project.
Hmm. So, let`s look at some of these numbers right now. The total unemployment rate in the United States is 11.1 percent. That`s the overall unemployment rate. The unemployment rate for white Americans is 10.1. And it goes up from there, 13.8 percent for Asian Americans, to 14.5 percent, African-Americans at 15.4 percent.
Kurt Bardella, typically, this close to an election, something like 90 days to an election, even Republicans would think we should do something about that. It would help us if we did something about that. But what we`re seeing is that Republicans are still following Donald Trump and saying, maybe we should just do nothing about that.
What do you make of this?
KURT BARDELLA, SENIOR ADVISER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT: Well, first of all, Joy, we have seen that Donald Trump has spent more time on the golf course than in the negotiating room at the table with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell.
As far as art of the deal goes, it seems that the American people are seeing that all of that was just a con.
From the Republicans, what we have seen is this ridiculous posture that $600 a week is too much to give people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus, that it`s Republicans who -- it`s not a negotiation, it`s a hostage crisis. They are taking the welfare of the American people hostage and trying to convince Democrats that $200 a week is a living wage in this country, that they can get by while they`re out of work, while they`re not getting a paycheck, while they have no sources of income, all the while this coronavirus pandemic rages on because of the Trump administration`s incompetence and the Republican Party`s enabling of that incompetence that has put us all in jeopardy.
So, I think that we`re all waiting to see whether or not Republicans are going to wake up to the reality that the American people want them not just at the negotiating table. They want them to make a deal and to give them the resources they need to get through this pandemic.
REID: You know, Anand, there`s a sense that it`s not happening to our people, right? We have had that reporting that Jared Kushner`s attitude toward the coronavirus was, well, these aren`t our people.
And then, once it started hitting red states, they went, oh, our people, we should pay attention. You`re seeing the unemployment rate spiking among African-Americans, disproportionately hitting black, brown and indigenous folks, as is the coronavirus.
But an our people only strategy can`t work in a place where our people and their people, whatever you want to call -- are mixed in these states. I don`t understand this whole idea of saying, no more $600 extra benefit, nothing more for you.
The Alabama Senate candidate is saying, no, no more $600. And he`s ahead in the polls. I don`t understand it. Do you?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, PUBLISHER, THE.INK: Yes.
Well, there was this rhetoric at the beginning of the pandemic, if you remember, which was that this is the great equalizer, no one can be immune from this kind of thing. And, of course, it`s true in a certain way.
But the pandemic turned out not to be a great equalizer. It turned out to be a magnifier of the divides of this country, the preexisting divides. And it turned out to be an accelerant of some of the great mega-trends.
So we can talk about employment -- unemployment crisis, and employment relief, and whether a deal can be made, but I think we have to take a historical view, where, for 40 years, the project of the Republican Party, pre-Trump, right, before he was even a Republican, has been to defund, defang and delegitimize the state in -- anywhere possible, and to leave people to their own defenses.
And the darker your skin was, the more defenseless you should be left. And so, as with so many things in the pandemic, it is like a truth serum for the reality of this country. But it is not a departure. And even Trump, much as -- as loathsome as he is -- I mean, what is really novel about Trump is that he`s semi-literate, the ways in which he operates like a fascist.
But, on this kind of thing, he is a Republican, taking the idea of austerity to its logical, bitter end.
REID: And you know what, Kurt? You were a Republican for quite a long time.
And I want you to speak to that, because the idea that Trump is some new thing, right, is a thing that I think Republicans will fall back on when he`s gone, that, oh, this is aberrant thing that came along.
But, no, my mother got laid off during Ronald Reagan because the `83 budget cut the program she worked for, which was a nutrition program for children, right? That was too much money. They don`t want to spend on that. The whole welfare queen idea, that`s Reagan, right?
BARDELLA: Yes.
REID: A lot of these ideas that Trump is putting forward are just extreme versions of what Republicans have been doing, dividing the country along racial lines.
Well, that`s Nixon as well, right? It`s Reagan as well in his opening in Philadelphia, Mississippi. So, isn`t it true that all Trump is doing is really exposing something that already existed in the Republican Party?
BARDELLA: Absolutely, Joy.
I mean, let`s be very clear and honest here. Republicans for a long time, well before Donald Trump, were asking working Americans and minorities to do more with less. It wasn`t Donald Trump who came up with the idea to defund things like school lunch programs and food stamp programs. It was the Republicans.
They have been doing that for decades. I remember, when I worked in Congress in the better part of the 2000s under both W. and Obama, it was Republicans who, time after time, were saying, we need to cut more from the budget, we need to be -- under the guise of being fiscally responsible and having fiscal restraint, we need to take more money from people, and all under this ridiculous guise that everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, that you don`t need to live off of the government, that there`s somehow givers and takers in this equation.
That`s been the Republican orthodoxy for a very long time, all before Donald Trump came into the picture. What Trump is doing right now is doubling down on that philosophy to justify really putting forward suffering on the American people during this pandemic, and making the excuse that this is the reason why he has to be tough at the negotiating table, why they can`t give $600 a week to people who have lost her job.
It is the natural conclusion of what Republicans have been talking about for a very long time.
REID: Yes.
I mean, Anand, I struggle to see what would be different if Paul Ryan were doing this negotiation, other than Donald Trump, right, or if Mitch McConnell -- I don`t see the difference.
But on the other side, given that fact, Mitch McConnell is now saying, oh, I might have to go to the Democrats and get a deal. What should Democrats then be asking for? He needs them to get a deal. He needs a deal in order for his reelect to go well.
What should Democrats be asking for? Because Democrats have tended to ask for very -- not ask for a lot, right, and ask, just give us enough that we get a deal through. But what would you advise Democrats to actually put on the table, to give us this, if you want a deal?
GIRIDHARADAS: Chemotherapy, not a Band-Aid.
And a lot of the things in discussion, I mean, even the most -- some of the most ambitious Democratic proposals are like high-class artisanal boutique Band-Aids. There`s still Band-Aids.
This pandemic, it`s easy -- it`s easy to fetishize the pandemic, as grave as it is, the way it`s upended all of our lives. We`re all in this terrible Zoom TV things right now. But the reality is these mega-trends that I spoke of a moment ago have been hurting -- a lot of people have been living in a kind of pandemic, living in a kind of fascist order for a long time.
And so, if you`re a Democrat, instead of thinking about temporary relief alone, you should be thinking about the transformation of this country, so that employment is not tied to health care, one of the reasons being, when something like this comes along, so many people won`t lose their health care, so that you have housing security for people.
REID: Yes.
GIRIDHARADAS: And eviction is not the issue it is.
This symptom treatment cannot be the outer limit of the position of a party that wants to truly care for people in this bleak time.
REID: Yes, absolutely.
I want to congratulate you, by the way, on The.Ink. And it was fun being your first guest. So, I hope everybody will check that out and subscribe.
Anand Giridharadas, thank you very much, my friend. Kurt Bardella, my friend as well, thank you guys. Really appreciate you.
And a quick reminder: There is still time to vote in primary elections being held today in Washington state, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and Michigan, where Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is facing a serious challenge from Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones.
Now, if you haven`t already, get your butt out there and vote. And if you`re not registered, register.
And up next: Trump`s infuriating dismissal of the late Congressman John Lewis and his lifelong devotion to civil rights.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: I now want to play you perhaps the most insane part of an overall bonkers interview that the president of the United States gave to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN SWAN, AXIOS: How do you think history will remember John Lewis?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don`t know. I really don`t know. I don`t know. I don`t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose -- I don`t -- I never met John Lewis, actually, I don`t believe.
SWAN: Do you find him impressive?
TRUMP: I can`t say one or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive. But, no, but I didn`t go...
SWAN: Do you find his story impressive?
TRUMP: He didn`t come -- he didn`t come to my inauguration. He didn`t come to my State of the Union speeches. And that`s OK. That`s his right.
And again, nobody has done more...
SWAN: Right. But back to...
TRUMP: ... for black Americans than I have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Sorry, what?
OK, person who clearly didn`t listen in history class at that military academy your parents shipped you off to, a brief review of what various presidents have done for African-Americans.
Emancipation. Reconstruction. The New Deal, though he didn`t exactly set black Americans up for success, while he was excluding them and handing off giant economic goodies to the newly created white middle class.
Desegregating the military. Sending the National Guard to help desegregate schools and the 1957 Civil Rights Act, though the whole highways mowing down black communities thing was kind of a problem.
The Civil Rights Act of 1963, which became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights and Fair Housing acts. Record economic prosperity. Black president, oh, and also Obamacare, and saving the economy from George W. Bush.
You, on the other hand, Donald the Trump, you have given us a Muslim ban, locked up migrant children, a toppled border wall that Mexico didn`t pay for, cuddled marching neo-Nazis, attacking the Postal Service, whose workers are disproportionately black, disparaging black athletes for not enjoying police brutality, because what`s not to enjoy, threats to take Obamacare from 20 million people.
A record-shattering pandemic that`s disproportionately killing and bankrupting black, brown and indigenous people, and unleashing anti-mask activism, and unleashed vicious racism everywhere we turn in Trump`s America.
Did I mention cuddled neo-Nazis?
So, yes, you have done a lot. Not a lot that`s good, but a lot.
And, no, John Lewis did not attend your tiny little inauguration ceremony, and he called you illegitimate. But you know who else`s inaugural he skipped? George W. Bush`s. And he opposed Bush`s misguided war on Iraq.
But you know where W. was on the day of Congressman Lewis` burial? He was inside Ebenezer Baptist Church eulogizing John Lewis, alongside Presidents Clinton and Obama. Why? Because whatever else George W. Bush is, he`s also an adult.
And are you really legitimate, I mean -- and are you really an adult?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Take a look at some of these charts.
SWAN: I would love to.
TRUMP: OK? We`re going to look.
SWAN: Let`s look.
TRUMP: Here`s one right here, United States.
SWAN: Let me look.
TRUMP: You take the number of cases.
SWAN: OK.
TRUMP: Now look, we`re last, meaning we`re first.
SWAN: Last? I don`t know what we`re first in.
TRUMP: We have the best...
If you take a look at this other chart, look, this is our testing, I believe. This is the testing. Yes.
SWAN: Yes, we do more tests.
TRUMP: Now, wait a minute. Well, don`t we get credit for that?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: No, you`re not.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: The police department in Aurora, Colorado, says it is sorry, after putting an innocent black woman and four girls in handcuffs.
Officers mistakenly believed that they were riding in a stolen car. The group of all white officers initially approached the car with their weapons drawn.
The driver, Brittany Gilliam, and the four girls, the youngest just 6 years old, were ordered to lay face-down on the ground, with three of them placed in handcuffs.
Some of the incident was caught on tape. And I will warn you, it may be hard to watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CRYING)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want my father.
(CRYING)
(SCREAMING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: This is the same police department that was responsible for the 2019 death of Elijah McClain after he was stopped by police while walking home from a convenience store.
Joining me now is Maya Wiley, university professor at the New School.
And, Maya, this one is personal for me because I grew up just outside of Aurora and seeing these little kids screaming, I realized that could have been me. That could have been my mom. That could have been us when we were little kids driving in our station wagon. This is shocking and terrifying.
I want to read you the statement they put out. Here`s the statement from Aurora police. We have been training our officers that when they contact a suspected stolen car, they should do what is called a high risk stop. This involves drawing their weapons and ordering all occupants to exit the car and lie on the ground.
We must allow our officers to have discretion and deviate from this process when different scenarios present themselves.
I don`t know. Different scenarios like a little kid -- three little kids are in the car. I -- is this statement good enough for you?
MAYA WILEY, THE NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: No, it`s not good enough for any of us. There should be no one in this country satisfied with that statement. And the reason is because those little girls, they`re not just traumatized in the sense that they should be offered victim services which I know the police chief offered.
It`s that there`s been no statement about how this gets changed. This isn`t just a matter of training. These are police officers who, if they rolled up on a minivan with mothers and young children in the car who are white, do we actually believe they would have come out of their police cars with their guns drawn forcing those children hands down on the tarmac?
No, we wouldn`t and we need to be honest about that. This is fundamentally about how discretion gets used to endanger people who are black and brown. And the changes don`t just come by saying you`re sorry. The changes come by doing exactly what those kids were asking for which is who keeps us safe, when we`re not safe from you.
REID: I don`t know if any of those children ever in their lives would ever trust police. Then people are shocked saying why don`t black people trust police? You have William Barr saying, well, why don`t black people trust police? Well, that`s why. Because you see your mom and yourself being treated like an animal.
Another item here. This is "Washington Post". Two black moms took their kids to the mall. A thing we all remember back when the world was normal. Secret Service officers confronted them with guns. They said a Secret Service cruiser had driven into their front left bumper. Within seconds a uniformed Secret Service officer was pointing a rifle at them yelling get out and put your hands in the air.
More officers surrounded them with guns pulled, the woman said. I could have been another Breonna Taylor, Winston said. I could have been another innocent woman who has no record and got shot.
They were also told their car have been reported stolen. They were handcuffed for 45 minutes, their two infant children remained handcuffed and crying in the back of the car. Little kids left in a hot car.
People get mad when people say defund the police, but this is why people want to take money away from them, right? The idea that police operate -- they have their cameras are on. They know that they`re being recorded. Sometimes they have their body cameras on and they don`t feel any fear to treat people this way.
What is the answer if they`ll do this on camera?
WILEY: Yes, all any of us want is to stay safe, right? That`s a shared goal for all of us. And I think what the American public has been seeing increasingly is these experiences are not new and we are saying mothers who are, by the way, playing children`s music in the car. The music blaring out of the car when the cops came out with the rifle drawn were nursery songs.
And yet children don`t keep you safe from being seen as a criminal and all of that means that we have to actually invest in radically changing what we call policing. Transform it. Invest in communities so that they have the resources and support they need to get a job and not a gun, to get healthcare, not a jail cell, and frankly to be seen as the full people that we are in communities and police have to be curtailed. Wee have a federal legislation pending that says that there should be support for the Justice Department to go after racial profiling and policing.
It is stalled in the Senate. That is outrageous when we keep seeing videos like this. No matter how much we protest. It will only change with leadership and it will only change if we continue to demand it.
REID: Yeah. Even being a kid doesn`t protect you. Tamir Rice was a little kid and they shot him within seconds of driving up, rolling up on him in Cleveland. It is -- it`s frustrating to have to keep talking about this but I`m very glad that you were here to discuss it with me.
Maya Wiley, thank you so much, my friend.
Up next, the craziest damn thing in the world.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: Do you know what`s crazy? Trump is scared of losing in November so he spent an inordinate amount of time over the past few months baselessly attacking mail-in voting, while praising absentee ballots, even though they`re exactly the same thing.
But the problem is, he may actively be suppressing his own voters. "The Washington Post" reports that his unfounded attacks on mail in balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice. A Republican county committee in North Carolina literally had to write a Facebook post in capital letters, warning their voters, quote: Attention, if you receive an absentee ballot mailer like shown in this picture, please know that it is legitimate, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
Do you know what`s even crazier? Trump is trying to have his cake and eat it too, as long as it involves his voters. He tweeted today that whether you call it vote by mail or absentee voting, in Florida, the election system is safe and secure. So, in Florida I encourage all to request a absentee ballot and vote by mail, exclamation.
Apparently, Florida is special. Here he is moments ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Why does that apply to Florida and it doesn`t apply to mail in balloting across the country?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Florida has got a great Republican governor and it had a great Republican governor. It`s got Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, two great governors, and over a long period of time, they`ve been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. Florida is different from other states.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Nope, nope, that makes no sense, literally none. And that is today`s craziest damn thing in the world.
(LAUGHTER)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: Welcome back.
Several black staff members and athletes have left Virginia`s Liberty University after earlier this summer, the school`s president, Jerry Falwell, Jr., tried to mock mask wearing to stop coronavirus and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Twitter, with a mask that depicted the racist imagery from Northam`s medical school yearbook page.
One of those former staff members joins me now. Keyvon Scott is a graduate and former online admissions counselor at Liberty University.
Thank you so much for being here.
I read the story and was fascinated by it, so I`m glad you were able to come on.
And, Keyvon, first, I want to ask you, what made you enroll at Liberty in the first place?
KEYVON SCOTT, FORMER LIBERTY UNIVERSITY ONLINE ADMISSION COUNSELOR: Well, my grandparents have a house down there in Lynchburg, Virginia, so I wanted to be close to my house, which is like three hours away. And plus kind of like -- I guess you can say I grew up in Lynchburg, going down to Lynchburg like every holiday and just seeing liberty university. I just wanted to be close to home.
REID: Yeah. And you ended up actually taking a job working for them as an admissions counselor. Why?
SCOTT: I guess one of the reasons why because of the benefits. I definitely needed the benefits and plus I wanted to get my masters degree, as well. Of course, liberty was going to pay for that. So I was like OK, cool, awesome. So basically that`s the main reason I took the job.
REID: Yeah. And I don`t know if you were involved in athletics, but part of the slate story about Liberty and about athletes leaving a lot of black athletes leaving. It says Liberty University poured millions into sports and now black athletes are leaving. That was the headline.
There`s a tension that`s been growing at the school between a culture of subtle hostility towards minorities and the president of liberty`s desire to turn the athletic program into one of the nation`s best, depending on the recruitment of talented black athletes.
Can you talk a little bit about that, even as a recruiter, of the university clearly wanting to be, you know, a tier one athletic school and recruiting black athletes, but then how black people felt when they were actually there?
SCOTT: Yeah. I do know a lot of black athletes left and are still leaving. And as a recruiter, it`s kind of hard to recruit minorities, whether it`s to come, you know, play for like the football team or basketball team or anything like that. It`s hard, because me just going there and being in an environment where I don`t feel welcome, it`s hard to recruit minorities.
So, you get to my side of like how can I explain Liberty, even though it`s a Christian university, but the diversity there is lacking.
REID: Yeah. Let me play you Jerry Falwell, Jr., and he`s a big Trump supporter. So here is some sound of him doing that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JERRY FALWELL, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY: President Donald Trump does not have a racist bone in his body. I know him well. He loves all people. He`s worked so hard to help minorities in the inner cities.
He could be more polished and more politically correct, but that`s the reason I supported him, because he`s not. We`re just so thrilled that you have stunned all the political pundits and just said the things that so many people have been longing for their political leaders to have the guts to say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Is there something specific that he did or that happened at the school that made you feel uncomfortable? Is it just the Trumpiness of the place? Or what was it that made you feel uncomfortable there?
SCOTT: Not only was it like him supporting Trump or, you know, him like even funding Trump, it`s just the atmosphere there. It`s very judgmental.
And even just working at Liberty, you know, people say there`s always room to grow. For myself, there was no room to grow. I remember some people who came like after me, to become an admissions counselor moved up while I was still, I guess you can say kind of like at the bottom. And I felt disrespected.
And even, again, just going there, it was a lot of judgmental -- I was the only black person in the classroom in 2019 about to graduate. Nobody wanted to work with me on projects. I was sitting in the back of the classroom. It felt like I was back in the 1950s and `60s and that hurt.
REID: Right.
SCOTT: It`s kind of like how do you maneuver being in a Christian atmosphere, but also being looked at like you`re nothing?
REID: Yeah. And you talk about being judgmental. Here`s a picture of Jerry Falwell, Jr., on his Instagram account, belly showing, pants unzipped, belly showing. He`s part of his beard painted, his arm around a young woman, this picture is going all around.
And, you know, S.E. Cupp said there`s so many good reasons not to entrust your kids to Jerry Falwell Jr.`s learning institution. The unzipped pants yacht photo, the least of them.
What do you make of that? Of his own personal behavior?
SCOTT: I actually saw that, and I was really disturbed and I`m thinking to myself, why would you post a picture like that? You`re supposed to be a president of the largest Christian university, apparently in the world, and yet you`re posting pictures like with your pants unzipped, holding a female, and to me, that`s sort of disrespectful, because you`re not showing the Christian aspect.
REID: Yeah. Keyvon Scott, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. Best of luck to you.
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now. Thank you.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END