Summary
Georgia Republican congresswoman peppered with martial law questions in court amid challenge to her reelection. Democratic member of January 6th Committee on the upcoming public hearings where former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani expected to testify next month. Chai Komanduri joins THE BEAT with Ari Melber to talk about Donald Trump endorsing J.D. Vance. President Joe Biden is confirming he's considering a move to reduce the student loan debt but the Republicans are opposed to it.
Transcript
WALLACE: And to all of you, thank you so much for letting us into your homes on this Thursday. We are so grateful. THE BEAT WITH ARI MELBER starts right now.
Hi, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Hey Nicolle. Thanks so much. Welcome to THE BEAT. I am Ari Melber.
The January 6th Committee is holding at least eight public hearings this summer in June, beginning on the 9th. One member of that top committee says the hearings will, quote, "blow the roof off of the House." The chairman tells NBC News they will be reaching out to Republican senators for interviews soon. And that brings us to a special guest coming up shortly. Congressman Adam Schiff is live here in this segment, as we say on the news and our top story. He'll be joining me live. We're going to get into it. So that's in a couple moments.
What's going on with the committee? Well, the House panel's chairman says Rudy Giuliani is on the short list here to next go under oath, and that comes amidst the revelation that Trump considered using martial law as a way to try to basically stage a coup. If you were to invoke martial law for no reason or for illicit reasons that would be part of the abuse of potential law enforcement or military power.
Now to be clear, that didn't happen. I bet we'd remember it. If it did it would happen in public. But the January 6th Committee is investigating this focus on abusing emergency powers that was considered by Donald Trump including declaring martial law, according to the "Washington Post" reporting. The president cannot just declare martial law when he chooses without a reason, without a standard. So the consideration of that is more signs that there was the consideration of coup-like activities.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is under a lot of heat. There's an open question about whether she will even be legally allowed to run for re-election. That's unusual in American life. There's also something unusual. How she as an incoming congressperson was texting the chief of staff of the outgoing administration as late as January 17th, saying, "In our private chat with members, several are saying the only way to save our republic is for Trump to call for," what she thought was marshall law, like federal marshals. That's a misspelling. She continues, "I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him."
Now this matters for several reasons. One of which, as I mentioned, there's the open suit which involves her testimony under oath, where lying can be criminal about what she did and didn't do related to the insurrection. And as you may have heard me say or mention in some of our interviews, it's a high bar to try to legally kick someone off a ballot. It's not yet clear that that burden has been met.
But is she lying along the way to stay on the ballot? That is an open question right now given the mounting evidence and giving her recent and new denials of advocating what you just saw, potentially, in that text.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Which of your Republican colleagues thought about wanting President Trump to declare martial law three days before the 2021 inauguration?
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I'm sorry, I just don't recall.
Well, those are reportedly my text messages. I think if people read them for themself, if those are my text messages, they clearly say that I wasn't calling for that. I actually said that's something I don't know about. I don't recall ever advocating for martial law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: And that is a nuance, that is fair when it comes to evidence. The text says, "I want you to tell him about the push for Marshall law." It does also say "I don't know," and these are the kind of matters that are not academic, they're not just up to public debates. They are the evidence against her that will ultimately determine if she can run for office again.
We begin our coverage now with Maya Wiley, she's the incoming president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and as some may remember, has been an analyst for us in her previous roles.
Good to have you back.
MAYA WILEY, INCOMING PRESIDENT AND CEO, LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Great to be with you, Ari.
MELBER: I mentioned the high legal bar there because, A, it's true, so that's just the system we have. Most of the time even very objectionable people are allowed to run for office. The courts patrol that as a pretty high bar, as I mentioned. Two, I mentioned it in fairness, because she is trying to make her case, and ultimately there will be a resolution of that aspect of the case.
Having said that, she's not told the whole truth about this. I think that's clear. In my role as a journalist, I can observe that. So what do you see here both in her dissembling about aspects of this and then the second and higher order question of whether she might actually be kicked off the ballot?
WILEY: Well, look, first, it seems pretty clear that she is not a credible witness.
[18:05:01]
So we're supposed to believe that she's having conversations with her colleagues, also members of Congress, about martial law and forgot about it? So, in the context of trying to assess truthfulness, I think she does not come off well, and to your point, that's not the same thing as evidence that she engaged in a conspiracy. And her point is her strongest defense. But I think on the larger issue, you know, and it's very hard. This is a very high burden of proof, so it's very hard to reach.
And I think the larger question here is the fact that this is an immigration with allies who are elected to Congress actively engaging and trying to figure out everything the president can abuse his power to do to keep himself there because when we're talking about martial law, we have to remember that what we're talking about is replacing the military for civilian government. That's essentially at its core martial law.
But in this case, to do the president's bidding, to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power according to the Constitution. And any discussion of that, any discussion of that in and of itself, should be deeply disturbing to us, and particularly when you put it in the context of the Insurrection Act. Because remember, Donald Trump was talking about the Insurrection Act related to Black Lives Matter protests.
This is something he himself explicitly and prior to the election talked about asserting, including -- including in September 2020 when he and Roger Stone and Michael Flynn were all tilling the soil to get people to believe that he would have the power essentially to substitute his will for the will of the electorate. And we must remember that history.
MELBER: And as you say, that was happening before what we now know was a peaceful transfer of power, but others had different ideas. It's part of what the committee is investigating. And as mentioned, I've got a committee member standing by so I want to thank Maya Wiley for kicking us off tonight, and turned directly to January 6th Committee member and investigator, Congressman Adam Schiff.
Welcome back on THE BEAT.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Good to be with you.
MELBER: Great to have you. When we hear this announcement about the upcoming hearings, does that mean that you are mostly done with the investigation, that it will be largely complete or reported out by June? How should we understand the status of the work?
SCHIFF: You know, I think we had hoped to do hearings even sooner than June, but witnesses led to other witnesses which led to other witnesses. It's kind of a nice problem to have on the one hand, but at some point you've got to start presenting the information to the public. So my expectation is we would love to get the interviews done by then, but we'll probably continue to be doing interviews and depositions even when the hearings begin. But I think we will have done a sufficient number of them where we're not going to compromise the investigation by going public with what we're learning.
MELBER: Understood. Some of the recent disclosures have been striking, and this is one of those times where different press outlets are pursuing their leads, but also -- and I don't think this is a mystery to everyone at this point -- sometimes relying on what the committee is finding or what has come out through that process. The court filings also end up having certain clues. "The Washington Post" has this reporting that's quite striking.
Amidst the talk of martial law, which we were just discussing, Giuliani, then acting as lawyer for the outgoing president, stoked conspiracy claims about voting machines. Trump seemed to signal his agreement.
What is it that the committee hopes to learn from Rudy Giuliani? And do you expect that he will come testify?
SCHIFF: Well, we're not commenting on witnesses that might come before the committee, so I don't want to speak about this in terms of him particularly or his testimony. But look, you know, I can say that any of the players who were involve in bogus litigation, involve in discussions at the White House over whether voting machines ought to be seized or what the authority was or the declaration of martial law.
You know, we want to bring them all in, and obviously I think Mr. Giuliani is a person who have a great deal of relevant information, but I can't confirm or deny whether he's (INAUDIBLE).
MELBER: Spoken like an investigator, but our job to ask the questions. Speaking about something that is in the public view, I'm just curious, Congressman, what you think people should take from the exchanges between, for example, Senator Mike Lee and White House Chief of Staff Meadows.
[18:10:03]
Let's put to the side the more difficult legal questions of when members of Congress might cross into criminal territory. As we've discussed in the program, there's a wider latitude when they're acting in their official capacities. But just as citizens of a democracy, it appears, from extended text messages, that he wanted to develop a way to have Republicans in states where Biden won just cancel out the votes with these alternate slates of electors.
That looks like a blueprint that they at least think could be used in a future election. Putting legality to the side for a moment, which I don't always do, what are we just to make of that? I mean, is the committee putting that out there and we're going to hear in June but that's really concerning, that it's wrong? Or you just look at this as fact evidence and people will decide for themselves?
SCHIFF: No, I think it really is very much, as Maya was describing. You know, there's one issue as you point out, is this criminal, is it prosecutable? But let's not forget, you know, we're supposed to hold our elected officials to a higher standard than, are they criminals?
MELBER: Right.
SCHIFF: We take oath of office to defend the Constitution. How can you meet that oath if you're essentially trying to overturn an election? If you're exploring with the president's chief of staff, well, how can we reverse this loss? How can we hold on to power? It should shock the conscience, and I don't think we're simply going present it and say, you know, this is business as usual in the Congress of the United States.
No, it will be presented in the context that there were multiple lines of effort involving multiple players at the highest levels of our government the election. Some of them involved the production of bogus certificates of elector. Some of them involved decapitating the leadership of the Justice Department. Some of them involved going into courtrooms around the country and making claims that they knew were patently false.
Some of them involved getting Kevin McCarthy to try to get House Republicans to vote to overturn the election without a basis. And others involved the pressure campaign on the vice president. So we want to, in this series of hearings, lay out all of these multiple lines of effort. January 6th was the violent culmination of these efforts, but there were many of them, and I think as Judge Carter in California illustrated, in some of these lines of effort, there is ample evidence of criminality, including criminality of the former president.
MELBER: Yes, and you mentioned that. I mean, Judge Carter was using the civil type probability standard because of the nature, procedural nature of that case, but the bottom line in plain English was he said, it's more likely than not that Donald Trump was involved in crime to steal the election. And then you have all these different avenues that your committee and others are revealing. So it's very significant. We know that you're busy and you --
SCHIFF: And Ari --
MELBER: Go ahead.
SCHIFF: If I could point out, you're absolutely right. He's using a different standard to make the decision that he needed to make in that case in California. But while to prove a criminal case requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to bring evidence before a grand jury, you just need to show that what you're bringing before the grand jury may lead to evidence that would reasonably lead to evidence of criminal conduct.
That standard certainly has been met by what Judge Carter has found, and I am concerned that in Georgia, for example, where the president, former president was on the phone trying to get the secretary of state to find 11,780 votes don't exist, but we don't see any evidence of a federal grand jury operating.
MELBER: Yes, which is your careful way of raising questions about what Justice Department and Garland are doing, given that they have, they say, opened the largest federal probe ever, but as you say, not taking that step.
Again, as I mentioned, a busy time and you were able to work with us on your schedule here to get into the top of the program, so thank you very much, Congressman Adam Schiff.
SCHIFF: Thank you.
MELBER: Appreciate it.
When we come back, we turn to politics. There's a big primary in Ohio and someone selling out for Trump. But there's more to the story, including some of the right-wing's media and tech hypocrisy exposed. Chai Komanduri is here on that.
And Biden confirming he may actually take action on student loan debt. It's the kind of story that could affect many people's lives soon. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:19:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY KIMMEL, LATE-NIGHT HOST: J.D. smelled which way the wind was blowing off the port of potty as today's Republican Party and he changed his tune. All of a sudden he decided not only isn't Trump noxious and reprehensible, he's now the greatest president of his lifetime and J.D.'s previous opinions he says were stupid.
J.D. VANCE (R), OHIO SENATE CANDIDATE: All of us say stupid things and I happen to say stupid things very publicly.
KIMMEL: Which is really a great qualification for a future senator.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel roasting a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio. That's J.D. Vance who recently surged to take the lead in the polls there. Critics say he is now the embodiment of the kind of fact and value-free Republican Party which sells out its own self-professed principles in a completely embarrassing sycophancy to Trump. Now this is a big deal right now. The Ohio primary is Tuesday, and right now we have a special look at MAGA, at this guy Vance, and where the Republican Party may be headed.
[18:20:06]
Ohio is a key state, and J.D. Vance has made a key evolution. He was very concerned about Donald Trump getting any power in America. He went so far in his private rebuke of Trump that what I'm about to show you is something to start this -- come back to me for a second. I'm just going set this up for a second.
That headline is something else, so I want to make sure we have some context. He made a private rebuke of Trump that managed to offend all at once, victims of the holocaust, any honest historian, and of course Donald Trump. This person now running for the Republican primary outlandishly likened Donald Trump's leadership to the genocidal death camps of the Nazi's holocaust.
We'll take a look at that headline again because that's the context for what you see here. He told friends in early 2016 he thought Trump might be, quote, "America's Hitler," unquote. Offensive. Ridiculous. But also quite an extreme view to walk away from if you start over there.
Now knowing that was his private view, behold the tension between J.D. Vance's original Trump critique and what has become a shameless fawning as a Republican candidate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: As somebody who doesn't like Trump myself, the elites were right about Donald Trump, right? I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him.
He's the best president of my lifetime and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else.
I can't stomach Trump. I think that he is noxious and is leading the white- working class to a very dark place.
I think that he was a good president. I think he made a good decisions for people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I take it you're not a Trump supporter from what I've read, am I right? Is that a fair assessment?
VANCE: Yes. I didn't vote for Trump.
All around he was a great president. I'm 37 years old. Certainly the best president of my lifetime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Now, before you get to the broader conversation or even a fact check, just within the world of Republican politics, this is already leading to criticism. Take Mark Levin saying Vance is not MAGA, America First, or conservative. That's certainly the read from what he was saying there. While the Club for Growth has attacked Vance as well, a right-wing group.
Vance, though, is doing something that matters. It may matter in this Ohio primary on Tuesday and matter in much larger ways, which is why we have this special report. He's trying to turn his own political weaknesses on the right into these punitive assets.
Now, there's more for you to know than just this Trump fault lie. Consider how Vance's professional bio is basically a hit list for today's right-wing grievance culture. He was a coastal banker and a venture capitalist, an Ivy League elite from Yale Law School. A self-styled literary intellectual who mused about the dangers of right-wing extremism in magazines like "The Atlantic."
And then -- I'm out of fingers on this hand. And then, he pursued a perch within the coastal media elite, pushing a trendy book where he claimed to explain the rustbelt and the Midwest while writing from the coast, and then taking that tome, "Hillbilly Elegy," to go spend as much time as he could talking to his fellow media elites about what were his coastal observations about the troubled rest of the nation.
And by the way, many reporters were interested to hear him. Many actually treated him pretty fairly and largely accepted his claims at the time as honest, although now he's built a campaign trying to convince his own Ohio voters to ignore who he hung out with and what he said before.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: We sat down recently with J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis." It is a great read.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS' "THIS WEEK": It's author J.D. Vance joins our discussion now. It's great to have you here at the table.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, FORMER NBC NEWS HOST: This is a remarkable work you've done here. You're a great writer. You're a great writer.
MELBER: That wasn't that long ago, and you could see where he wanted to be. He has money and influence. He chose to put himself out there, he chose to try to be that kind of mainstream media pundit or whatever you want to call it. And he used that perch at first to warn about Trump. I'm not going to repeat the offensive comparison he made but he also called him cultural heroin warning that this would be a quick high that would eventually lead anyone who supported him to eventual come down.
Vance at the time clearly thought he was diagnosing others. Now it looks more like a mix of confession and projection. What may have been warnings about someone he assumed would lose now have him on the wrong side of his pursuit of power.
[18:25:05]
And where now Vance is boosting Trump, funding right-wing companies like Rumble, which is used by the Bannonites and marketed to people who can't stay on YouTube. Rumble also did a partnership with Trump's Truth Social app which has needed all the partnerships and help it can get. Vance also deleted his old tweets that slammed Trump as, quote, "reprehensible," and arguing that God wants better for America than Trump.
So Vance who touted his humble origins with a lack of access to what we called social capital now is supplying the financial capital to fund all kinds of social media companies and of course he spent his time building his -- what he would call social capital by socializing with media elites as he would put it.
That's where the story is larger than Vance or even Tuesday's primary because when it comes to tech billionaire media elites, they are increasingly a Trojan horse within the far-right's supposed war on tech media elites, enemies from within. We're witnessing a movement that struggles with facts and often reasoned discourse that demands more than re-tweetable slogans.
And now this movement is increasingly unwilling or unable to figure out who is even on its side. That can be weirdly fascinating to watch or concerning for honest democracy to see how quickly these Trumps and Musks and now Vances of the world, who by the way are all cosmopolitan media elites, are able to draw crowds who will then cheer on their own subjugation.
Now when Vance has been pressed on some of these associations, this admittedly very smart educated writer has largely struggled to offer much of a logical rebuttal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: Cultural outsider. I didn't come from the elites. I didn't come from the northeast or from San Francisco.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're out in San Francisco now, right?
VANCE: That's right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And working for Peter Thiel?
VANCE: Yes, I work at one of the venture capital funds that he co-founded.
The things that I care most about are not in San Francisco, they're not in Silicon Valley. One thing led to another, I found myself in Silicon Valley. If you think about the folks who are really building the future, building really great and cool companies. And I just wanted to be involved in that.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: He's a Yale educated lawyer, a great student, you know, went to Yale, got a law degree.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Now, we cannot read minds on the news, but Vance would appear to have a mind smart enough to know these are just tricks, and he already confessed what was on his mind about Donald Trump, which is how you know he knows he's lying when he talks about the last election being stolen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: And I do think that basic human honesty, even though it may not pay off in the short-term, tends to pay off in the short term, it tends to pay off in the long term, or at least if you're not honest it tends to pay off negatively in the long term.
I'm sick of the big tech companies censoring conservatives, shutting us up, and let's be honest, ladies and gentlemen, stealing the 2020 election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That false claim is what matters most to Trump. The loser of that very election, 2020, cannot change reality. Trump lost. Trump is the loser. He's not president. Everyone knows he's not president. So now he is almost wholly focused in the public on a kind of make believe, a naked emperor who gets a thrill every time new minions pretend he is clothed.
A J.D. Vance or a Kevin McCarthy, they will join in their own public defenestration, shrouding this dethroned loser of the race in the very finest big lie linen. And while that may seem like an odd exercise, you have to remember, it apparently feels all the softer, all the more velvety, all the better to Trump when those minions have been forced to publicly convert in their humiliation show of his sway.
The more obvious, the more powerful Trump feels, which is vital to someone who lost in public and is currently so governmentally powerless. That's probably why Donald Trump, if you haven't seen this yet, just endorsed J.D. Vance and then went way out of his way to note Vance's criticism of Trump in that new endorsement.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: A guy that said some bad (EXPLETIVE DELETED) about me. He's a fearless MAGA fighter. And most importantly, J.D., you're supported by me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Most importantly. We are joined by Obama campaign veteran Chai Komanduri on all this when we're back in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the past, you've said quote, I'm a never Trump guy, quote, my god what an idiot, and quote, god wants better of us. Why should Trump voters, Trump supporters vote for you?
J.D. VANCE (R-OH), SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, look, I mean, all of us say stupid things and I happen to say stupid things very publicly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That's J.D. Vance's best defense. And now we turn to a deep dive political conversation which takes place on a special day around here on THE BEAT. It's known as Chai Day because of the political strategist Chai Komanduri. He's worked three presidential campaigns including Obama's, and he has supplied some of the insights we just ran through in that piece. It's called Chai Day because of -- well, your name Chai and the cartoon we made. Welcome back, sir.
CHAI KOMANDURI, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Good cartoon. Glad to be back, Ari.
MELBER: Good to have you, sir. You look at this. People may have heard a bit about J.D. Vance. But the voting is on Tuesday, the Trump endorsement would appear to matter over there. The video is devastating. Will that matter and what does it say about where the Republican Party is headed?
KOMANDURI: It's unlikely to matter. And I think it's unlikely to matter because we have to understand the journey of the Republican Party and how it mirrors the journey of J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance sort of mirrors a journey where the Republican Party has gone from a political party to a cult of white male anger. J.D. Vance began as a traditional mainstream Republican. He started his life basically, in -- I think, in many ways modeling himself to be a Republican Obama. You know, he came up from a difficult chaotic childhood, rose to success, graduated from an Ivy League law school, wrote a critically acclaimed book about the experience.
But while Obama's journey turned him into an idealist, J.D. Vance became a nihilist. And I think that is, I think, a key difference between the two. J.D. Vance in 2016, I believe, oppose Trump, not because he sincerely believed it. He opposed Trump because he thought Trump was going to lose, he was taking a political bet, he was being a calculation that Trump was going to lose, probably lose big, and then he will be the recipient. And he saw how Obama sort of made a similar bet in 20 -- in 2002, to oppose the war, at a time when it was very, very popular in the polls, Obama made a brave stand, took a bet said this is what I believe, and it turned out to her down to his benefit.
This particular bet did not redound to J.D.'s benefit. So, what he did is he turned on a dime. And he became exactly a character that he wrote about in his book, he became a white male from Appalachia, who was very angry and prone to throat tossing out conspiracy theories. That's exactly what J.D. Vance became. And that's also why Trump endorsed him. They are kindred spirits. At heart, they don't believe in anything.
MELBER: You make a very compiling case. And it's interesting when you put it that way, Chai that the book was saying, look at how those people are and here's their problems. So, at some level of observation or analysis, he had some familiarity with that. And then when that became the winning rather than his view, the losing irrelevant group. Now he's cost playing them, and he's acting as them in that way. And then you have his link with the power structure he won over Trump, as we saw, very telling that Trump wanted to bring up the fact that he had to recant everything and eat his words.
And as I said, prepare the finest linen for the naked dethroned emperor, which is of course the big lie. That's better than Jivan Shi, a big lie robe, you know, can cover anything, Chai. And then you have the Tucker relationship. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS: This is not false flattery. I don't think I've ever met anybody who understands both worlds as well as you do.
VANCE: You have elites and the ruling class that have plundered this country that --
[18:35:00]
CARLSON: You really, I think understand what's gone wrong with the country.
VANCE: This is a country that I know you love, I love.
CARLSON: I probably shouldn't say so I'm really glad you're doing it. J.D. Vance, I admire you and I wish you luck. Not embarrassed to say I admire J.D. Vance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Chai, I probably shouldn't say this, but I'd like for you to tell us your thoughts about the relationship there.
KOMANDURI: Yes, I think that Trump, Tucker, and J.D. Vance are all the same. They all are nihilists. They don't believe in anything. And I think all three of them understand something that's very important, which is in politics, believe it or not, not believing in anything can actually be an advantage. Somebody who's a true believer can -- is often weighed down by their beliefs. While someone who doesn't believe in anything who's a nihilist can sort of turn on a dime, they can see what works, they can be political day traders and they can adjust accordingly to fulfill their ambitions.
You know, there's a very famous line of The Big Lebowski, where Jeff Bridges his character encounters the character of Oli (PH) and declares himself to be a nihilist. And Jeff Bridges says, oh, man, that must be exhausting. Well, the reality is for J.D. Vance, for Trump, for Tucker, it's not exhausting. It's actually energizing. You can see it in their faces as a sort of day trade, different ideas, different messages, to see what works, and the response and reaction they get from those messages. That's exactly what all three of them are doing. That is their model of leadership. And the GOP is kind of all in on it.
MELBER: Yes, and as you say this, the stakes are low for them. Because if it is truly meaningless, then that's what you do. And it becomes a content exercise. As for the things that he diagnosed or learned, which ended up being perhaps self-diagnosis. Just one passage from again, the book we showed some of the way he sounded when he was on book tour. But he talks about birtherism and how it had taken hold them in the right in 2016 quote, if a third of our community questions Obama's origin, despite all evidence to the contrary, meaning he knew it was a lie.
It's a good bet other conspiracies have brought our currency that he quotes that kind of idea. We can't trust news or our politicians. And he admonishes that at the time, Chai, saying you can't believe these things birtherism, denialism, and quote, participate meaningfully in society. Chai?
KOMANDURI: Yes, that was a different J.D. Vance. Speaking to a different Republican Party. It was a Republican Party that really was a party, say of Mitt Romney. Now it's a party of Madison Cawthorn. I think what J.D. Vance at the time, and I talked about -- we talked about this a few seconds ago, was really thinking of himself as a Republican Obama. I think, unfortunately, however, he decided his ambitions lay in being the next Donald Trump. And I think that's sad for the Republican Party, that San Frans State of Ohio side of the country.
MELBER: How likely is his victory Tuesday in the primary?
KOMANDURI: Well, the polls look very good for him. And it should be pointed out that even his internal polls showed him down in fifth place, and now show them in first place. And I think the reality is that this is a primary we're going to have a lot of voters who are very loyal to Trump, and in a multi-party, multi-candidate race, that's probably going to be enough to win the primary.
MELBER: Interesting, running over on time, but we do appreciate Lebowski's is referenced there. And you might also remember, Walter was shomer Shabbos, which is a belief system.
KOMANDURI: That is true, very true.
MELBER: Fact check. True. It's almost Friday. Chai Komanduri, good to see you. Coming up. We welcome back another friend Michelle Goldberg from The New York Times on both birding and more. Plus, fact-checking Mitch McConnell, and why he doesn't want to help out students drowning in debt. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:43:05]
MELBER: Turning to a challenge affecting 10s of millions of households across the nation, the student debt problem. Well, today President Biden is saying he's looking at reducing student loan debt. Republicans have been opposing this and are trying to push a bill through the Senate that would formally block it. The debate is one of these moments that does expose the kind of rifts we have in Washington, you know, we cover the politics of it. We've been talking about the investigations. There's of course foreign policy.
But when it comes back to what to do in this economy with high inflation and a post COVID environment that's uncertain. Republicans simply do not want to address the idea that there's anything to do or fix about student loan issues in America. Now, when they were in power under Trump, they did spend about $2 trillion, mostly on tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthy. So, when it comes to affecting the budget, the Republicans are willing to spend empowered included $17 billion that went to millionaires, a tax break for stock buybacks. And the board of richest families in America ended up with a lower tax rate from all of that, then well, half the country.
That all sounds familiar, it's because many of these problems are long- running. And then recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose lead on this issue, told us right here on THE BEAT, that this all comes down to fairness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): The United States government is one of the most aggressive debt collectors when it comes to student loan debt. You know, you can go into bankruptcy and you could deal with your credit card debt. You could deal with your car loan, you could deal with your home mortgage, but not your student loan debt. Are we going to invest in people who are trying to get an education or not?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: I'm joined now by a New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. Welcome back. One point that came up there beyond the kind of -- hi. Beyond the like fairness in general, is also the fact that we have a system in this country where businesses and individuals with other types of problems can afford themselves of bankruptcy in a way that you can't for student loans. What do you see here in this issue and the Biden administration saying they want to act?
[18:45:00]
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, look, obviously part of the reason that the Biden administration wants to act is because they've been so hemmed in by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and the sort of collapse of Build Back Better. This is one thing that at least theoretically because there's going to be some court challenges. But theoretically, Biden can do with the stroke of the pen. And although there's some debate about how much student debt, he could, or he will potentially cancel, you know, he promised to -- in his campaign to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt for each borrower. And so, you know, this is a way that he can do that.
And right now, we're in a situation where there's the politics of this are sort of catastrophic for Democrats. Because, you know, people haven't been paying their student loans since the beginning of the pandemic, and all of a sudden, they're going to restart with just months before the midterm elections, right? I mean, this is really, really bad for Democrats. And so, it's both, you know, there's both the kind of substance of it, and there's also the politics of it to at least make good on one campaign promise that was really important to a lot of the young supporters that are now somewhat disengaged.
MELBER: Yes. And something else, Senator Warren mentioned last night is there's a lot of public funding of education. The question is, where do you cut it off? A lot of European countries go further on that. And if you think of student loans with that, prism, you can think about ways to support or subsidize people getting an education in the country, right? Definitely cheaper than to pick the common example than incarcerating people, you spend a lot more on that at the back end.
While we're unschooling something that I know you care about and thought a lot about, is the whole way that we're seeing politics go back into the classroom. Republicans in Tennessee now, they have a bill trying to get public schools to require state approval for any books in the libraries. It's part of that wider push to limit school education on race, gender, sexual identity. One Republican admits, well, he would like to burn books that don't get approved when pressed in an exchange with a Democratic colleague.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JOHN RAY CLEMMONS (D-TN): Let's say you take these books out of the library, what are you going to do with them? You're going to put them in the street, let them on fire? Where are they going?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Representative Sexton.
REP. JERRY SEXTON (R-TN): I don't have a clue, but I would burn them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLDBERG: Something that is so frustrating to -- something that's so frustrating to me in the United States about the debate about free speech, right? We have a lot of debate about, quote, unquote, wokeness, political correctness. You know, there's been a huge debate about free speech in regards to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. And yet meanwhile, we are in the middle of this kind of a free speech crisis, the likes of which people haven't seen in a generation, you know, something that in many ways goes back to the Red Scare.
I think it's partly a problem. And you know, look, I'm talking to you from Brooklyn, I'm guilty of being you know, sort of an out-of-touch coastal elite. But I do you think it's a problem of journalists being too concentrated in places where this is not a problem. So, you know, so the people who are actually kind of dealing with really substantial government impositions on their free speech, you know, educators in conservative states are just underrepresented in the way we talk about this issue.
MELBER: Yes, I think it's a really important point that you raise, and the classroom side is in everyone's life, the tech side is very complicated. And we've explored that on this program as well. But we're talking about what hits people and what's going to affect what their kids grow up with or not. So, it's really heavy. I'm running over on time, but you mentioned your location. As you may or may not know, I think you probably do it was none other than Christopher Wallace, who famously said, where Brooklyn at. And that's where you're at it. Wasn't it your Twitter handle one point Michelle in Brooklyn?
GOLDBERG: It still is.
MELBER: Say again?
GOLDBERG: I said it still is.
MELBER: Still is. All right, so you can follow Michelle Goldberg, @michelleinbrooklyn on Twitter, but only if you support free speech. Michelle, good to have you as always.
GOLDBERG: Thank you so much.
MELBER: Absolutely. We're going to fit in a break, and when we come back, we have an update on foreign policy here amidst this war. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:54:00]
MELBER: The chief of the United Nations is in Ukraine's capital today discussing what they're calling this evil war by Vladimir Putin. Russian missiles struck the heart of the capital again today. Our NBC News crew heard from some of the first soldiers to respond at that scene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): When the first explosion happened, we ran over here. People were already scattered around under the rubble. We took the people out, applied tourniquets, and got them to the ambulance. We got the people and children from the basements. Those who were injured. Women -- put them in ambulances.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That's just some of what our cameras captured. While there is a major development where Ukraine is bringing its first form of war crime charges against Russian forces in Bucha. For the Wall Street Journal, a suit accusing 10 Russian soldiers of torture, they're documented in late March. There were bodies found that were hands bound, bodies littered in basements and the streets, as well as these mass graves that we've been reporting on. Ukrainian officials estimate 400 of more people were killed.
Meanwhile, President Biden is now asking Congress for another $33 billion to support Ukraine's resistance.
[18:55:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We either back Ukrainian people as they defend their country or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Before we go reminder that sometimes there is more beat than we can fit into this show. My new interview with music super manager Scooter Braun is now online on YouTube. You can go to @thebeatwithari or put Scooter and Ari into YouTube and find the whole 40-minute interview. You can always find me online @arimelber on social media or at AriMelber.com. Connect with me to where I keep up with a lot of BEAT viewers about the stuff that doesn't always make it into the hour. Speaking of that, time's up. "THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID" starts now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)