Summary
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis goes to war with Disney World for opposing the state`s don`t say gay bill. Capitol Police send an alert telling people to evacuate due to a suspicious aircraft. Ukrainians continue a desperate last stand in Mariupol, as a local commander says they are in their final days, if not hours. Jared Kushner`s relation with Mohammed bin Salman is examined.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, everyone.
We begin THE REIDOUT tonight in Florida, where tourism is king. When it comes to that particular sector, Disney rules the world. Now, remember, Disneyland opened in Southern California in the 1950s. But then, in 1964, Walt Disney the man decided that he wanted to open another park and began buying millions of dollars worth of Central Florida farmland.
Orlando was a backwater town before the Magic Kingdom came along. Miami and Key West, it was not. We`re talking mud and alligators and flatlands. Well, Disney changed all that, welcoming its first guests more than 50 years ago, and transforming the swamp into an entertainment empire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NARRATOR: Opening day drew about 10,000 visitors to Disney World, not a very large crowd, possibly because the children are still in school. But an estimated 10 million visitors are expected this next year. How much will they spend? Well, that depends upon where they come from.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: But people came, as they say, and, today, Disney World is the number -- is the world`s number one tourist destination visited and Instagrammed by millions each year.
It isn`t just Orlando`s largest employer. It is Orlando. But now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is determined to make the happiest place on earth a living hell. The baby MAGA is mad that Disney opposes his don`t say gay bill.
So, today, the Florida Senate voted to revoke the privileges that have allowed Disney World to govern itself since the theme park opened its glittery doors, meaning the Trumpy Republican governor who signed anti-gay and anti-trans legislation designed to censor and punish educators and erase the existence of people`s lives is going after this private company who dared to contradict him because, A, he`s an authoritarian on the fascist spectrum and, B, he thinks that will make him president.
Wow, Ron, you really do live in fantasyland, don`t you? Or, rather, critter country.
But here`s the thing. You can cast this office one dumb strategy by one very dumb governor. But Desantistan strategery is fanning out nationwide. Republicans seemingly everywhere all at once are targeting a group that is already fighting to exist in public life, LGBTQ young people, introducing and in some cases passing legislation that excludes trans women and even little kids from competing in sports ,branded as fairness in women`s sports bills, as if "The Handmaid`s Tale" party really gives a toss about women.
There`s legislation that would bar LGBTQ issues from being even brought up in schools branded as parental rights bills. Well, don`t fall for that either. We are talking hundreds of bills filed this year alone seeking to impose government control over sexuality and gender, from restricting bathrooms to the right to receive gender-affirming health care.
It is a coordinated national campaign, bolstered by conservative operatives obsessed with stamping out anyone who doesn`t look, live and vote like them, while pouring gasoline into the fake outrage machine to score points at the ballot box.
And because the Republican Party has now fully absorbed the QAnon cult, words like groomer and pedophile being hurled against anyone, anyone who dares to disagree with any conservative policy stance, which is what happened when a Republican state senator sent out a fund-raising e-mail containing a completely made-up and frankly defamatory allegation that a Democratic colleague supported grooming and sexualizing kids.
That Democratic state senator, Mallory McMorrow of Michigan, responded to her Republican colleague in a speech that lit up the Senate floor along with Twitter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STATE SEN. MALLORY MCMORROW (D-MI): I didn`t expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd District had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an e-mail fund-raising for herself.
So, I sat on it for a while wondering, why me? And then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme, because you can`t claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of -- quote -- "parental rights" if another parent is standing up to say no.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow joins me now, along with Florida State Senator Shevrin Jones.
Thank you both for being here.
Shev, I`m going to go back to where we started here and go -- and go back to Florida for just a second. As a state legislature, what do you make of this attempt to essentially pass a bill that attacks one company, just one company, Disney, by revoking its self-governing rules, which would essentially, I don`t know, increase taxes on the people in Orlando, could drive Disney out of Florida?
[19:05:03]
The governor of Colorado has already welcomed Disney if they`d like to do Mountain Disney and move to Colorado, saying they won`t have this kind of authoritarian socialism there. Your thoughts on this bill?
STATE SEN. SHEVRIN JONES (D-FL): Well, we just voted -- first of all, good after -- good evening, Joy.
We voted on this today in the Senate. And in the middle of debate, the question was asked -- yesterday -- excuse me -- unfortunately, it was, asked, what will happen to the debts that are already owned by Disney? Would that be absorbed into Osceola County and Orange County? The answer was yes.
Here`s what`s happening. What we`re seeing is that the governor is continuously doing what he does best. And he is ensuring that people who go against what he says, he will punish them. It`s just not Disney, which I remind you, is the largest employer of Floridians here within the state of Florida.
But he`s doing the same thing with elected officials, making it clear that, if you go against me, I will primary you.
And, as you said in your introduction, Governor DeSantis is doing exactly what he knows best. And that is, he is going across the country, going through the state of Florida, pushing a narrative that he knows is not real, creating issues about -- over nonissues. And that`s where we are in the state of Florida right now.
REID: And just to stay with you just one moment, because it always seems that Ron DeSantis` authoritarian impulses also seem to align with his campaign donation strategy, right?
His views on COVID just happen to benefit one of his biggest donors that had a treatment for COVID that he then did pop-up shops, saying, you should go get your treatment. Don`t worry, go ahead and get COVID. We`re not going to stop you. We`re going to have no mask mandates. But if you get COVID, you need to go to this pop-up shop where like my biggest donor is.
He gave out the vaccines through Publix, which happens to be one of his biggest donors. Everything seems to align with this.
This particular thing, where is the payoff to DeSantis? I`m sorry. Everything that he does, I`m always looking for where the money goes back into his campaign coffers. He has now targeted the cruise industry, which is one of the other biggest tourism benefactors financially to the state of Florida. He`s attacked Planned Parenthood. We get that. That gets the right-wingers all tweaked up.
School districts and teachers, a huge voting bloc that he`s now attacking, and Disney, how does he think that that benefits him politically? Because that`s the only reason he does anything.
JONES: Well, it`s because my colleagues, they continue to give into it. They bow down to the governor.
And, listen, that`s what happens with bullies. When you allow bullies to continue to move and do what they want to do, they continue to come back, because they know they can win. You attack Disney. If Disney give in, he`s going to know that he can do this with other companies.
He did it with the cruise industry. And ,again, he`s doing exactly what the individuals who are in his party -- Governor DeSantis is playing the governor, he`s playing the legislature, and he`s also playing the Supreme Court of Florida. That is what we call authoritarianism.
REID: Yes.
And it`s authoritarian socialism, because it`s essentially saying the government is going to control even the thoughts of companies.
JONES: Yes.
REID: Think about that, you all.
And what they`re also doing -- and I`m just going to put this out to our audience before I bring in our other wonderful guest. Whenever they do this, you guys, follow the money. You have all these people attacking Disney, but what do they want to do? Here`s The Daily Wire, one of these right-wing outfits. They said they`re going to make their own kids shows to rival Disney.
They think they`re going to make people turn against Disney, but they`re going to buy their little shows. God knows what their little children`s shows are going to be like. You have Ted Cruz saying this ridiculousness, attacking Disney.
Let`s just play it again. This is cut two.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): There are people who are misguided trying to drive - - Disney stepping in saying, in every episode now, they`re going to have Mickey and Pluto going at it. Like, really?
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for that image, Senator.
(CROSSTALK)
CRUZ: But it`s just like, come on, guys. Like, these are kids.
And you can always shift to Cinemax if you want that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: I guess he had a Cinemax account that was actually really pretty tawdry back in the day.
Senator McMorrow, you have now been the victims of this kind of game- playing, where they`re now trying to take Disney and turn people against it, and turn people against people like you, to say that, if you are not right down the line on right-wing evangelicalism, then you are a groomer, you are pro-pedophile.
They did this to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. You better be a right-winger, or we`re going to use this -- the most vile kind of accusations against you to try to take you down, to try to silence you.
Talk about your experience in the state of Michigan.
MCMORROW: Yes.
And I want to say it`s not even if you`re not a right-winger. It`s if you are anybody who dares to stand up and point out that what they`re doing to any marginalized community is wrong. Then it`s the attempt to marginalize you and turn you into one of them, because it can`t possibly be that a white, suburban, Christian, married mom from the suburbs doesn`t stand up for hate of the LGBTQ community, of the black community, that we have to teach slavery and accurate history in schools.
[19:10:12]
I mean, it is absolute madness, and it`s disgusting. So, it hit me. A fund- raising e-mail directly accused me by name of grooming children and sexualizing kindergartners. And I am the mom of a 1-year-old. And it is -- it was disgusting. It was disgusting. And it was unfounded.
And it`s horrifying. And that is the playbook for everybody who dares to stand up for what is right.
REID: Have you considered an action here? Because that is slanderous. Legal action.
MCMORROW: I have been asked that a lot. Yes.
And where I have come down on it is, if I did that, great, but you know who can`t file a lawsuit or sue for libel? Every trans kid, every gay kid, everybody who`s lower income who get hit with these attacks every single day can`t fight back.
So what I would prefer to see happen is, I`m not going to file a lawsuit, but I want more straight white, middle -- middle, upper-middle-class suburban moms to stand up and take the hit too, because then it doesn`t mean anything. And it`s revealed for the hateful bull that it is.
REID: Yes.
And, I mean, we have now had a Disney heir come forward, stand up and say that they regretted not standing up to the bill before. But people are afraid, Shevrin. I mean, what the right is trying to do is to take the most absurd possible claims, and claims that really come from QAnon, honestly -- they have -- they have adopted the QAnon belief system as their campaign strategy, to essentially make people so afraid to as -- as the wonderful state senator just said, to even stand up for LGBTQ people, lest you be lumped in and called a pedophile or a pedophile supporter.
That is fascistic. And I wonder how that is playing out inside of your state legislature with your colleagues. Are they OK with this, your Republican colleagues?
JONES: Well, obviously, they are OK with it.
But we`re seeing with this national movement that the Republicans are on is that, if I can`t win on the issues, then what I will do is, I will win on the backs of marginalized people, whether it`s black, whether it`s the LGBTQ people, whether it`s women.
And so that`s what they`re doing right now, because they`re not presenting any new ideas, because, while we`re in Florida right now dealing with a property insurance issue, dealing with an affordable -- affordable housing crisis, dealing with teachers leaving the classroom, we`re not dealing with that.
You know we dealt with today? We dealt with an unconstitutional congressional map in the legislature where the governor himself drew the map, when we should have been dealing with something totally different that makes sure that we put food on the table of families in the state of Florida.
So, across this -- across the country, Joy, across the country, we`re going to continue to see what we`re seeing right now, until more accomplices, not allies, like Senator McMorrow, stand up and say, not on the backs of the marginalized community.
REID: And, Senator McMorrow, right. And I think it`s a very good point that Senator Jones makes.
They`re doing this while also drawing gerrymandered maps to say, you know what, if you don`t like this ,too bad. You can`t vote us out. We`re going to gerrymander away your districts. We`re going to say that there can`t be majority-minority districts. Majority-minority districts are unfair to white people. Therefore, we don`t -- they don`t exist at all, poof, gone.
And so they`re doing that aggressively in Florida. Are you seeing a similar push to essentially lock themselves into power through attempts to use gerrymandering as a backstop to the things that they`re doing?
MCMORROW: Well, Michigan is the result of that.
So, Michigan votes pretty purple, 50/50 Democrats, Republicans. In 2014, Republicans probably got around 47 percent of the vote statewide, but had 72 percent of state Senate seats. The state Senate has been under Republican control since 1984.
We have independently drawn districts for the first time in history. So we voted in 2018 to create this independent redistricting commission. So Michigan is going to be the test bed, where we finally have fair maps on a partisan basis that go up against every test nationally or -- and are being held up as the gold standard.
And if you want to flank to the fringe hateful right, this is the test bed, where we finally get to test it out and see if hate doesn`t win. And we can`t let it win.
REID: Yes.
And what about Florida? Because my concern, of course, Shevrin Jones, state Senator Jones, is, Florida is so gerrymandered at this point, and it is so red -- it`s a red state at this stage. Is there a path, a Michigan-style path, for people who don`t want this, who don`t want to live in Desantistan, to fight back?
JONES: We did it. We passed it in 2010, which was the Fair District Act, where Floridians overwhelmingly said that they didn`t want maps gerrymandered.
[19:15:01]
As a matter of fact, the courts had to come in 2015 to say, you know what? We will draw the maps.
But you know what happened today? We went against all of that.
But let me tell you what is happening, Joy. What the Republicans are doing is, they are testing our democracy right now. They are testing to see how far they can go. And Governor DeSantis knows what he what he`s doing. He wants to push this to the courts and let the courts decide whether it`s right.
REID: That`s right.
JONES: And this is the blueprint for across the country, because, if Florida gets it done, other states are going to say, you know what, we can do this too.
REID: And much like the -- this Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who went from intern to lifetime seat on the court, ended the mask mandate, they`re just hoping that people will appeal that and they can get that to that 6-3 right-wing court.
Very quick question to you, Shevrin Jones. Any comment on the fact that the CDC now says they`re going to try to appeal?
JONES: I think -- I think the CDC, they are the scientists. They know what`s right.
And I think if everyone -- we have been doing this for two years. If everyone just followed the rules to stop acting like kindergartners, we would be just fine.
REID: State Senator Mallory McMorrow, who just lit up to the world with that amazing rant yesterday, and state Senator Shevrin Jones of Florida, thank you both. We appreciate you both.
And before we go to break, a very quick update on a frightening moment at the Capitol late today. Just in the last hour, Capitol Police sent an alert telling people to evacuate due to a suspicious aircraft. Moments later, the police said there was no threat and the evacuation was ordered -- was ordered out of an abundance of caution.
For more, I`m joined by NBC`s Tom Costello.
Tom, what is the latest?
TOM COSTELLO, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Joy what a -- what a night.
We were standing right here on top of the NBC News bureau across the street from Union Station -- right over there is the Capitol -- doing a live report for "NBC NIGHTLY NEWS." And just as we`re going on the air, we see a small plane coming in, a small -- it looks like a Cessna-type plane coming in right around the Capitol.
And, immediately, we saw four or so parachutists dropping out of this plane, which is obviously something that you don`t normally see around the Capitol Building. Now, it looked to us like these parachutists were not dropping onto the Capitol grounds, but rather onto the National field, the ballpark just probably a mile or so from the Capitol.
Sure enough, it turns out, as Capitol Police evacuated the building, said that they had an unauthorized plane in their airspace, they then come to find out, in fact, it was the Army Golden Knights parachuting team parachuting into Nationals Park, the baseball stadium, for a military appreciation night.
Somehow, they weren`t communicating with Capitol Police. Capitol Police had ordered the building evacuated. And, Joy, as you know, this place is always very concerned whenever anything unusual happens, given the history of attacks over the last 20, 30 years or so, right, not just January 6.
And so, with that, people became very concerned. Thankfully, very quickly, it became clear. We saw that Cessna take off, fly away. And we saw those parachutists drop over to the stadium. And the police gave the all-clear.
But it was a tense few moments. Everybody on top of the roof here said, what the heck? Parachutists? What`s going on here? Well, that`s what happened.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: Tom Costello, a tense world that we live in, my friend. That is just the world that we live in today.
Thank you very much for clearing that up for us.
COSTELLO: You bet.
REID: Really appreciate you.
COSTELLO: You bet.
REID: And up next on THE REIDOUT -- cheers -- Ukraine`s desperate last stand in Mariupol, as a local commander says they are in their final days, if not hours.
Also, Jared Kushner makes it easy to follow the money. The bread crumbs lead directly from the Saudi prince`s bank account right into Jared`s little pockets. And we have a pretty good idea why he`s getting all that cash.
Plus, artist, filmmaker and hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy joins me on this 4/20 to talk about the glaring problems with social equity in the rapidly expanding weed industry, following decades of racial disparities in marijuana-related prosecutions.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:23:05]
REID: We`re hearing desperate pleas today, as Ukrainian forces mounted last stand for what remains of the city of Mariupol.
President Zelenskyy said that more than 1,000 civilians are sheltering at the sprawling steel plant where the last Ukrainian forces are barricaded.
In a video, one of the remaining commanders there said his troops may only have days or maybe even hours.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAJ. SERHIY VOLYNA, COMMANDER, UKRAINIAN 36TH SEPARATE MARINE BRIGADE (through translator): This is our appeal to the world. This could be the last appeal of our lives.
We`re probably facing our last days, if not hours. The enemy`s outnumbering us 10 to 1.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: An estimated 100,000 civilians remain trapped in Mariupol.
Ukrainian officials said a planned humanitarian corridor was thwarted amid Russian shelling. The U.N. Human Rights Council says more than five million citizens have fled Ukraine since the start of Putin`s invasion.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department today rolled out another round of sanctions targeting businesses and individuals who`ve attempted to evade previous sanctions. And at a meeting with military leaders, President Biden touted the response of NATO members to Russia`s aggression, saying he didn`t think Vladimir Putin counted on such unity.
For his part, the Russian leader was full of provocation and outright lies. Today, Putin oversaw a test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile by videoconference, saying it will make those who threaten Russia think twice.
And in a televised propaganda-laden event, he repeatedly told lies, telling a 12-year-old girl from Eastern Ukraine that a tragedy in the Donbass forced him to launch the invasion.
Joining me now, Clint Watts, MSNBC national security analyst, who worked as a consultant to the FBI Counterterrorism Division, and Julia Ioffe, founding partner and Washington correspondent for the news site Puck.
Thank you both for being here.
And, Clint, where to begin. The Mariupol situation is terrifying. Reportedly, there are not just military people sheltering in that plant, but they are saying there are civilians in there too. They were asking for an extraction. They`re asking for someone from outside of the country to come and extract them.
[19:25:04]
Is -- what are the chances that could happen? Because, if not, I think you can only hear the worst.
Do we have Clint? We may not have. We may not have Clint.
Julia -- let me go to you, Julia.
The situation in Mariupol is so tragic and so repugnant. I wonder how Russian TV is explaining it and explaining the essentially elimination of that city to its audiences.
JULIA IOFFE, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Well, they have been telling their audiences from the very beginning that this is all the work of Ukrainian neo-Nazi bands that they call the Ukrainian army. They won`t - - they will rarely even say that Ukraine has a legitimate army. They just call them nationalist bands.
And this has all been portrayed as the work of Ukrainians who, in the spin of Russian propaganda, that they have parked artillery and various military objects in civilian neighborhoods, and that this is why they were bombed, or they were bombed specifically, civilian targets were bombed by Ukrainians in there, which is false, to make Russia look bad, twisting and turning every which way to exonerate Russia from basically erasing this city from the face of the earth.
And I worry that a lot of Russians do believe this, because they don`t want to think that their country is capable of such evil. These are things, these kinds of psychological phenomena that we see mirrored elsewhere, including in the U.S.
REID: And do you see evidence of this reporting in Bloomberg that there are alarms inside of Russia about the war?
This is the Bloomberg reporting: "A small, but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years."
Well, no kidding. It`s going to set this country back for years. They will -- they are now a pariah state. I can`t imagine any decent country ever dealing with them or doing business with them. European countries are now looking to by the end of the year just end their imports of Russian oil.
Is there any inkling that there is a growing discomfort with the war inside the higher -- upper echelons of Russian governmental society?
IOFFE: Well, this report claims to have found some.
But it also makes clear -- and I think that is very important -- that even these people who are in the higher echelons of Russian -- of the Russian government or the Russian elite themselves do not believe that they have any real impact on Putin`s decision, that his circle of advisers has shrunk -- according to this same Bloomberg report, has shrunk even more from the circle of hawkish advisers that had advised him to go into Ukraine.
And that same piece makes clear that Putin is still counting on pretty high popular support for the war and for this kind of national sense that Russians will suffer and are willing to suffer economic setbacks and economic hardship for his vision of national imperial greatness.
So, that piece, even though it does have that little grain of hope that maybe there is fractures -- there are fractures emerging in the elites, it doesn`t make clear that they likely won`t change anything, and that Putin is not listening to them and not planning to.
REID: Yes.
And, by the way, just for our audience, "The Washington Post" is reporting that one of the people who maybe in that small circle is the Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox leader. According to "The Washington Post," his sermons echo and in some cases even supply the rhetoric that Putin has used.
He called a leading author of one of the -- he`s called one of the leading author of one of the ideological foundations of this war, a doctrine known as Russkiy Mir, or Russian World. Scary.
IOFFE: He also has...
REID: Again, it`s ISIS-like.
Let me bring Clint Watts in.
Clint, the calls from Mariupol for an extraction, to get them out of there, the fact that there may be -- that there are apparently civilians and military and soldiers inside of that giant facility, what are the chances that somebody is going to come to their rescue?
CLINT WATTS, MSNBC NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Joy, I think none.
To be quite honest, Mariupol is pretty much dead center in the middle of Russian control at this point. They`re surrounded on all sides. And to the south of Mariupol is the sea, the Sea of Azov, which is fully in control of the Russians at this point. It`s basically a Russian sea. They have surrounded it.
And, if nothing else, I think we should all admire what the Ukrainian military and the civilians have gone through there in Mariupol. Every day that they endure, every day that those Ukrainian marines endure there, they`re tying up Russian forces that would not be advancing and cannot advance towards the Donbass.
[19:30:01]
They will be redeployed. Those Russia forces will be redeployed to the north. And this is providing essentially time for the rest of the Ukrainian military to do a couple things, one, humanitarian evacuations from that Donbass region, any remaining ones that can be pushed essentially back out to the western part of Ukraine, but, separately, digging into defensive positions, repositioning some of this new military equipment that`s coming in.
Those in Mariupol, their bravery has really given their country even more of a chance for this next wave of the fight.
REID: And I wonder if you think -- just if you feel the sort of frustration, Clint, as you watch this happen.
You have Janet Yellen and others walk out of a G20 meeting with Russia, sort of turning their backs on Russia as a sort of normal power. But there is a sort of, and so what? It doesn`t seem that the dictator of Russia cares whether the world thinks that he`s the devil incarnate. He`s just going to keep doing what he wants to do.
And I wonder if you see an endpoint, of something that the world can do, other than what it is doing now, to bring this man -- to make him stop, because it seems that he is so bloodthirsty and so narrowly focused, that nothing will stop him.
WATTS: Yes, I think there`s a couple things to take note of.
First, we always have this idea in the West that any time any bump in the road occurs, the adversary might pull back. That`s definitely not the case with Vladimir Putin. He`s worried about his place in history. He is not worried about casualties. And he`s not worried about expenses.
And, to a degree, he`s somewhat stabilized the Russian economy. And you see other countries like China kind of stepping in and providing some support to him. He will be able to endure, at least over the near term.
I think, when it looks out two, four to six months, he could be somewhat at risk. But he has a firm grip on power and control. And I don`t think anyone in Russia was planning or preparing or thinking to step into that role.
Separately, there`s probably need for a strong discussion in the West about, would we help our work with President Zelenskyy to try and get to a quicker truce between the Ukrainians and the Russians? Every day this goes on, every day this continues, more people die. And, ultimately, we could reach a stalemate that could go on for years, or even push Putin to something like short-range tactical nuclear devices.
So we should start thinking about, what is an exit plan for this? Is there a way we can bring it to a stop?
REID: This -- the world cannot, cannot be at the mercy of this man firing off ICBMs, trying to threaten the world. I cannot imagine a world that we have to be at his mercy. I cannot. I hope that is not the case.
Clint Watts, Julia Ioffe, thank you both very much.
Still ahead: A $2 billion side hustle with the Saudi government is raising big questions about possible influence by peddling perennial swampster Jared Kushner.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:37:27]
REID: Throughout Trump`s presidency, it seemed that, for any problems here at home or abroad, no matter how big or how small, the man who should never have been president kept turning to one person, Jared Kushner.
Kushner brought no actual experience to his job as senior adviser. His previous gig was working for his family`s commercial real estate business, which, to put it nicely, was not always thriving. But none of that mattered, because Jared was married to the daughter Trump loves in the creepiest way, Ivanka, who also landed a plum job in the West Wing.
Kushner became a de facto secretary of state, at least according to Trump`s first actual secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. A part of Kushner`s portfolio that kept raising eyebrows, Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
The two were reportedly communicating regularly and privately on platforms like WhatsApp. Kushner was reported to be MBS` biggest defender in the White House after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that bin Salman approved the killing of "Washington Post" columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Kushner was said to have advised MBS on how to weather the storm over the killing. According to The Intercept, MBS once boasted that he had Kushner - - quote -- "in his pocket."
Now it seems that close relationship is paying off with interest. Just six months after leaving the White House, Kushner received a $2 billion -- with a B -- investment for his new private equity firm from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince. And as "The New York Times" reports, it came despite objections from the fund`s advisers about the merits of the deal.
Those advisers questioned whether it was wise to take such a big risk on Kushner`s new firm, given that Kushner has no track record in that area. The $2 billion was twice the amount the Saudi fund agreed to invest with Trump`s former Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who also had a slimy new fund, but also an actual track record in private equity.
It merits the question, why would the crown prince overrule his advisers? "The Times" points out that ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of a potential payback for Mr. Kushner`s actions in the White House or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.
And now there are calls for the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into the deal.
And that is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:41:58]
REID: Following the news that Jared Kushner appears to have cashed in on his time in the White House with a $2 billion investment from none other than Saudi Arabia`s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, there have been calls from watchdog groups and top Democrats for a criminal investigation to be launched.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is urging the DOJ to get involved and take a hard look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Is there a role for DOJ or Congress or any entity to look into, this scrub this?
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): I think there`s a question that the Department of Justice should take a really hard look to see if that fits within any of our current -- I mean, it is a kind of shaggy dog version of how you get to what`s going on here.
Does it violate any of our criminal laws? And I would want to take a hard look at that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: With me now is Tim O`Brien, senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, and Vicky Ward, investigative journalist and author of "Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump."
Thank you both for being here.
And, Vicky, I want to go to you first.
I mean, give us some insight, if you can. Why would the Saudi sovereign fund, this Saudi fund, give $2 billion to Jared Kushner, who has no experience as that level of an investor? Why did they give him the money?
VICKY WARD, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Well, so, that is a great question.
As you say, it`s not because of his track record in private equity, because he doesn`t have one. What I reported in my Substack newsletter this week, Vicky Ward Investigates, is that there are questions about Jared Kushner`s role right at the beginning of the Trump administration in actually helping Mohammed bin Salman get his job as crown prince, from where he went on to do a lot of things, including the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the roundup at the Ritz-Carlton, the blockade of Qatar, where the United States has our air base, that could be deemed to be not only against American values, but against American national security.
But MBS was not crown prince when Trump came into office. I report and I have produced evidence in legal papers that Jared Kushner and MBS were discussing the fact that there was a problem around MBS succeeding in Saudi Arabia because the U.S. intelligence agency backed his cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, who has since been disappeared, who was -- who is an American hero, who was given a medal by the CIA for saving American lives.
This was the man who was crown prince. This was the man our intelligence agencies wanted to become the ruler of Saudi Arabia. He was a moderate man. This is the man who has since been deposed and now disappeared.
That could be a very big reason why Mohammed bin Salman might want to pay Jared Kushner $2 billion. And I think that questions should be asked.
REID: Yes, I think they absolutely should.
I wish I could say I was surprised, Tim O`Brien, to hear this about Jared Kushner. But this is a guy who -- one of the things that Vicky Ward talked about there was this blockade of Qatar.
[19:45:06]
I still am old enough to remember when Jared Kushner owed a billion-dollar balloon payment on 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, and didn`t have any way of paying it. And then, suddenly, Qatar, who was being asked to give him the money, demanded to give them the money, they get blockaded. And then, all of a sudden, after he does this little secret trip to Saudi Arabia, no one knew he was going, all of this happens to Qatar, and then, magic, he gets the money.
There`s a lot of nefarious stuff that appears, at least appearance-wise, looks shady and dirty. Your thoughts?
Uh-oh. I think Tim has frozen. I`m going to stay with you for a minute, Vicky, while we fix tins connection.
But I will say the same. I will ask you the same question. There`s a lot about the way that Jared Kushner operates, particularly when he`s operating with his friends in Saudi Arabia, and the way that he treated Qatar -- the way that they treated Qatar, that seems incredibly dirty.
WARD: Absolutely.
Well, in fact, you mentioned earlier, Joy, that MBS used to describe Jared Kushner as being in his pocket. When the Qatari deal went down, he told people he described Jared Kushner as the double-dipper, implication being that he was taking money from the Qataris, as well, allegedly -- Jared Kushner has always denied this -- from Saudi Arabia.
The big -- the big question here is, if there was a quid pro quo, when did it start, and could it be proven? And that is obviously what I think Elizabeth Warren wants the Justice Department to look into. But there`s no reason Congress shouldn`t look into it as well.
REID: Yes, indeed.
And Tim is back. Technical -- listen, this is the modern era. Technical difficulties happen.
But, Tim, I want to let you finish your answer, and also weave into it the fact that this was a guy, Jared Kushner, who couldn`t get a security clearance when he first got into his new job...
TIM O`BRIEN, SENIOR COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG OPINION: Well...
REID: ... he didn`t qualify for.
Go ahead.
O`BRIEN: And you mentioned 666 Fifth Avenue at the top of this segment.
And a reminder that was a disastrous investment. Jared Kushner does not have a strong track record as an investor. So there`s a real issue as to why the Saudis would put this much money behind him to begin with, and there`s only one reason. It`s influence peddling.
The Trump administration did a number of favors for the Saudis while Kushner was still an adviser to Donald Trump. They took the Saudis` side in the Yemen conflict. They overrode a congressional ban on arms sale to the Saudis. And then, as you mentioned as well, Jared Kushner coached MBS on how to deal with the fallout from the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
And they did that over WhatsApp, off standard government channel. They now have him basically in their pocket, I think. If Donald Trump runs for president again, which I think it`s highly likely he will, and he becomes president again, the Saudis now have a person in the White House who`s there to do their bidding. He`s already demonstrated he will.
They now have financial hooks into him. Early on, not only did members of Trump`s White House recognize Jared Kushner as a national security risk. There were -- there were leaked intercepts from a number of intelligence agencies in the Middle East who had all identify Jared Kushner as touchable.
He was someone that they thought was vulnerable, because he wasn`t particularly bright, because he wasn`t particularly shrewd, and he was an easy mark for them to put their finger on.
If what`s happened now with the Saudis looks like Jared Kushner is cashing in, it`s absolutely because he`s cashing in. Is it a payoff? That needs to be explored. The problem is, there are no clear laws he`s violated. The current ethics laws don`t prevent someone from leaving the White House and lobbying on behalf of a federal government.
They`re not allowed to represent other domestic interests, but they have free rein with foreign governments. So I`m not sure what law he`s broken. It begs us to establish an Emoluments Clause for this kind of behavior after people leave the White House.
REID: Well, the other Emoluments Clause has no power, because Donald Trump used the White House as his -- as a piggy bank the whole time.
O`BRIEN: That`s true.
REID: So did Steve -- Steve Mnuchin is out there cashing in. They`re all cashing in. I think we need to change a whole lot of our laws, because they ain`t working.
Tim O`Brien, Vicky Ward, thank you both very much.
And still ahead: Legal marijuana sales are expected to rake in -- get this -- $33 billion this year. That`s more than Jared Kushner got. But after decades of racial injustice and pot-related arrests, we`re left asking, who will benefit and who will be excluded from this new economic juggernaut?
Fab 5 Freddy joins me next. Don`t go anywhere.
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[19:54:03]
REID: Happy 4/20 to millions of Americans who smoke marijuana weed, ganja, or reefer, as our parents used to call it.
The medicinal plant has gone from an illicit drug purchased from some dude in high school to a multibillion -- with a B -- dollar industry. It`s so massive that legal marijuana sales in the U.S. are expected to hit $33 billion this year alone. That number could rise to $84 billion by 2028.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana. In 21 states, many of them conservative, it is legal for medical purposes.
A new CBS poll shows that two-thirds of Americans support legalization. The House passed a bill to decriminalize marijuana, but it`s expected to fail in the Senate because, shockingly, the vast majority of our white geriatric conservative senators refuse to do what the public wants them to do. It`s what they do.
Meanwhile, communities of color are left to pay for that inaction, as they are disproportionately policed and imprisoned for marijuana offenses. And it will not surprise you to learn that people of color remain in the minority when it comes to profiting from the booming legal marijuana business.
[19:55:04]
According to "Insider," white men comprise 70 percent of the executive level positions in some of the largest publicly traded cannabis companies. Only 7 percent are black.
With me now, Fab 5 Freddy, hip-hop pioneer, street artist, filmmaker, cannabis advocate, and founder of B Noble, which is sold in partnership with Curaleaf, and my friend.
Fab, it is so good to see you.
And I want to -- I want to go there, because the thing about it is, black people are disproportionately policed for selling weed and are disproportionately in prison right now for having sold weed or even possessing it. But black people are not, not the ones making the big money from this industry.
Why?
FAB 5 FREDDY, HIP-HOP PIONEER: Well, I want to first say, great to see you Joy. Happy 4/20 to you...
REID: Yes.
FAB 5 FREDDY: ... to everybody in the legacy gang that`s been on the front lines, all the budtenders out there.
Yes, the fight is real. I learned a hell of a lot in the film I made a couple of years ago "Grass Is Greener" on Netflix about the business, about the history, about the culture. And I`m happy to say that I was motivated by the film I made, jumped into the business, started a brand, partnered with Curaleaf, called B Noble.
We`re selling in 10 states right now a two joint pre-roll, which is also going to give back 10 percent to help expunge records and fix some of the harm. This was inspired by a gentleman in my film that was given a 13-year sentence for two joints of cannabis.
So what we did is, we have packaging with messaging, a two-joint pre-roll, to inform people about some of this nonsense that we`re trying to fix, but it`s also high-quality cannabis. So, the fight is real.
We`re also in 10 states and also available in New York in medical dispensaries. So, the fight is real, and we have a long way to go.
REID: I mean, look, I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I`m from Brooklyn, but I grew up in Denver. I mean, Colorado is like a boomtown for weed.
FAB 5 FREDDY: Yes, it is.
REID: But the thing is, is that you notice like Five Points, which used to be the hood, like, Five Points was like where black people lived, and not wealth -- rich black people, like working-class black folks lived, is now completely gentrified.
And it`s weed that`s doing it. You have guys who are coming from California, from Silicon Valley. They have cash. And so they`re able to jump into this business, whereas a lot of people who have records for having grown and sold weed to those same kind of guys can`t get in the business, because so they don`t have the capital, and they don`t have the clearance, because you can`t have a record.
How do we change that?
FAB 5 FREDDY: Well, how we change that is, if the MORE Act, the Marijuana Opportunity and Reinvestment and Expungement Act, if that gets passed, then we can begin to fix once again a lot of the harm.
The system -- the system that we have now is, individual states come up with their own regulations. Some try to be more fair than others. New York state, I`m happy to say, recently passed legislation. We have the most progressive legislation in the country. And, hopefully, as is planned, lots of folks of color are going to get a shot to sit at the table and get a piece of the pie.
But the fight is real is all I have got to say.
REID: Yes.
FAB 5 FREDDY: So we can`t let up.
And there`s -- once again, it`s a disproportionate distribution of equity in this business, and it needs to be fixed and addressed.
REID: Yes.
FAB 5 FREDDY: And B Noble is all about doing that.
REID: And I want to note that there are some black folks, in addition to Fab, who are involved.
There`s NBA legend Al Harrington, a former Knick...
FAB 5 FREDDY: Yes.
REID: ... a former Denver Nugget. I forgive him for being a former Pacer. We going to go ahead and let it be that too.
(LAUGHTER)
REID: As a business as well.
But so there are high-profile people in. For somebody who is not high- profile, they`re not a Fab 5 Freddy, they`re not an Al Harrington, is there a -- walk us through. What do you have to do to get into this business?
FAB 5 FREDDY: Well, what you need to do, first and foremost, is understand what the regulations are in your state.
And so, once again, they vary from state to state. In the many states that have adult use cannabis, there`s a whole broad spectrum of what can happen and what cannot.
Luckily, like I said, partnering with the behemoth in this game, like Curaleaf that wanted to do the right thing, make an equitable deal with us, and then walk through -- like, the compliance dynamics are different.
REID: Yes.
FAB 5 FREDDY: But in terms of what the business opportunities are, one needs to lean in, get on that Internet, see what`s going on in your state.
And if it`s not an open door or as open as it needs to be, get at your representatives. We got to be loud. We got to make noise. We got to really articulate and, like, educate ourselves about what goes on and the change that needs to happen.
We need to get at our legislators and fight the fight. It`s real.
REID: Yes, absolutely.
And I will note that, in Illinois, there`s a community that`s actually using weed sales for reparations.
FAB 5 FREDDY: Yes.
REID: Like, there`s a lot of good that can be done when it comes to the weed game.
Happy 4/20 to you, Fab 5 Freddy. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you being here.
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT.
(CROSSTALK)
REID: Cheers.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.