Summary
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani under oath for the Georgia election interference probe. Former President Trump reportedly having difficulty getting top lawyers to represent him following FBI search of Mar-a-Lago as he continued to be defiant, telling advisers top secret documents were his property. The data shows that police use more force and lethal force against Black Americans. After condemning Donald Trump, over one-sixth of most top Republicans retreated.
Transcript
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC HOST: What a queasy making book to have in your hands. Once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country`s history, not only that but married his daughter, how can anyone be expected to believe a word that person says?
It`s a very good point, Mr. Garner. A very good point. There`s so much more colorful language than that in that review. You`ve got to read the review. Don`t read the book.
Thank you for being with us this Wednesday. THE BEAT WITH ARI MELBER starts right now.
Nothing queasy about being with you, Ari. It`s not queasy making feeling to passing up to you. You know what it makes it feel? I feel inspired. I feel optimistic. Take the reins. Go for it, man.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: You know, John, I love a good mood board and a good verbal mood board from you. I take it all as inspiration. Thank you, sir.
HEILEMANN: Peace out.
MELBER: Peace out, and welcome to THE BEAT. I am Ari Melber, and we have a lot going today including Giuliani now going under oath after he was targeted for indictment. This is before the Georgia grand jury. Here was the scene on a momentous day one many would have not expected years ago given how he was once viewed in the legal community as the once prosecutor had the tables turned arriving in court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER PERSONAL ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: I`ve talked about this. It`s a grand jury and grand jury is as I recall a secret.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you believe President Trump is the ultimate target of this investigation?
GIULIANI: I`m not going to comment on the grand jury investigation.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What do you think their ultimate goal is here?
GIULIANI: Until I know more about it.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What are you expecting to talk about here today?
GIULIANI: They ask the questions, and we`ll see.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Will you be cooperative? I mean, an attorney in New York says you can`t promise how responsive you`ll be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Mr. Giuliani making his way inside. You will know one thing. If you watch the news, and if you`re hearing my voice I bet you do, you may recall over all those choppy waters, those months of the election drama that Mr. Giuliani would talk about all kinds of things. Out of pockets, sometimes against his own client`s interest.
What you just saw there was a different Giuliani. One who is a little more careful, more ready to avoid answering any questions and that may be because of the legal heat he`s under. We know he testified for about six hours, but we don`t have the details so we can`t tell you whether that was six hours of voluminous interaction or not unlike his client Donald Trump last week, was it perhaps many hours of repeating the same answer? We don`t know yet.
He`s the closest person to Trump to testify in the case. And it`s one of several legal headaches. Tomorrow you have a federal judge in Florida deciding on this matter, this question of whether to unseal any more information about the Trump search and the related warrant, the underlying affidavit, the DOJ fighting on that. They`re saying they already basically released more than usual, but there are operational security reasons not to release the underlying affidavit.
Trump is looking at a big legal fight and he is still searching for more lawyers. I know, some of these stories are familiar, but this is new reporting of a problem he has had before. Quote, "Everyone is saying no." Trump finding it nearly impossible to get represented. It would be unclear if his lawyers would ever get paid.
Any lawyers who Donald Trump does hire have to figure out, well, how to represent him and if they do care about being compensated for their time, how to do something that so many other lawyers have apparently failed to do even when they were on notice that he doesn`t pay his bills which is get a large enough retainer in advance or some regular payments. So that`s both the professional question most people don`t work for free.
And then the legal question, what`s the strategy going to be? You have reports that Trump was resisting advisers asking him to just give that material back, that it would have been one less legal headache. It`s not theirs, it`s mine, he reportedly told them. Now supporters are openly worrying about whether Donald Trump will be indicted. I emphasize supporters because that`s different than people rooting for.
This is just people around him who apparently think it`s more likely now than it may have been in the past. His lawyer also saying if Trump is charged, there would be mayhem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALINA HABBA, PRESIDENT TRUMP`S ATTORNEY: I think that would cause so much mayhem. That would be a monstrous mistake to have this insane raid. You know, it`s a sad thing for our country. It just doesn`t make sense to me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it doesn`t.
HABBA: As an attorney, I can`t make sense of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Let`s try to make sense of it. We are joined by BBC News U.S. correspondent Katty Kay and law professor Melissa Murray.
Melissa, I go to you first. Everyone has the right to be represented, including with all kinds of arguments. At least out of court they could say a lot. But just walk us through. Did we just hear a legitimate or legal argument from that Trump lawyer or is that more of just general, hey, this could be messy, take that for what you will argument?
MELISSA MURRAY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR: Well, it`s hard to say. I think she was speaking as a reporter or a commentator at that point, not necessarily on behalf of any particular client, but you`re right.
[18:05:07]
Under the Sixth Amendment all individuals who are involved in a criminal investigation or who are defendants in a criminal investigation or prosecution are entitled to a vigorous defense. The difficulty before the former president is of course he has a reputation for not paying his lawyers. That makes it very hard to retain counsel. But more importantly, as his legal exposure expands, I think there are a lot of questions among those in the professional community about whether this is a gamble worth taking.
We already saw that there were lawyers who advised him to return the documents that had been kept and he resisted. That`s very difficult as an attorney. If you`re representing someone who doesn`t want to follow your advice, it can also leave you open to professional liability, maybe even criminal liability if your client presses you to take stances that are either ethically or legally problematic.
So I think there are just a lot of questions for anyone thinking about representing Donald Trump at this point.
MELBER: Yes, and before I go to Katty, just to finish up on the defense there, I mentioned to viewers, I mean, this came can up earlier in other points in his life. It came up around the Mueller probe. There were times when people commented on just the shear absurdity that someone who was the sitting president, nuclear codes, the power that he has to say nothing of a fortune that even if he`s habitually exaggerated his fortune, there`s a lot of evidence that he has more money than most people who live in this country.
That someone in that position was having so much trouble getting even one good law firm on his team and it`s for the reasons you state. And so I`m curious, you know, we`ve spoken to some of his lawyers on THE BEAT, so people might remember that. I`ve also spoken to some of his lawyers off the record. So according to that agreement, I cannot convey the substance of what they say under that agreement, although I tried to encourage some to come back on, Melissa.
But I will say as a general matter, there are some lawyers out there who are working for him and who have generally said it`s not as bad or as tough as it may seem in public and they attack media coverage. And again I encourage them to come on for that counterpoint. But I want to serve that up to you. What do you say to those who say, you know, it`s not that fair. He sooner or later gets the lawyers he needs.
MURRAY: Well, he does manage to get lawyers that he needs, although I`d say in this particular case he needs someone with considerable experience in multiprong federal investigations. That doesn`t seem to be the full scope of those who are currently on his legal team and there are a lot of different matters that are being handled. But I think it`s worth noting MAGA is not just make America great again. It`s also making attorneys get attorneys.
And that has to weigh heavily on anyone who is thinking about representing him. And there`s also the ancillary reputational costs of being associated with someone who has so much legal jeopardy at this point in time.
MELBER: Yes.
MURRAY: And who also has this other background with inciting an insurrection on January 6th. There`s just a lot of reputational costs that have to be weighed.
MELBER: Yes. And that goes, as you said, to the conflicts between the lawyer and the client. Was it not a Trump ally Kanye West who said I`ve got a lawyer to keep what`s in my safe safe? And Donald Trump has lately evinced a lot of frustration that his lawyers didn`t keep the material in his safe. That they couldn`t basically execute his legal strategy which was to hold this stuff forever. He didn`t seem to understand who he was up against.
And Katty, that brings us not to so much the law, but the shear attitudinal standoff now between Trump and Merrick Garland, someone who some people say Trump underestimated. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: People are like, well, let`s wait and see a little bit. And this is like the top of the first inning. I mean, remember Merrick Garland is like a pit viper. You know, he prosecuted the Oklahoma City case, the Unabomber case, the Olympic bomber case. And I think these guys are really methodical.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Katty?
KATTY KAY, BBC NEWS U.S. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, he -- you know, when Trump says or reportedly says about the documents, it`s mine, not theirs, I mean, he`s exposing -- I don`t know if that was some kind of confession. But it might be exactly the kind of reason why he`s having a problem getting lawyers to defend him at the moment because he has this habit of kind of saying the truth in some weird way, saying exactly what he`s thinking.
And he`s perhaps not reckoning against, you know, Merrick Garland who is being methodical. I know that there was frustration amongst Democrats. I have heard Democrats tell me that there was frustration amongst them early on in the January 6th investigation hearings that the DOJ wasn`t moving faster. But boy, could things not have moved faster this week.
I mean, every time I feel that I`ve got my hands around Donald Trump`s legal problems, he has yet another one. And he`s up against really serious opposition when it comes to the Department of Justice and Merrick Garland.
[18:10:04]
And he needs an A-class legal team behind him. At the moment, he doesn`t have anything like an A-class legal team behind him for the kinds of problems that he`s facing legally, but also the kind of adversary that he`s up against on multiple fronts.
MELBER: And Katty, that goes to of course his most visible lawyer in the 2020 efforts, which turned into an attempted coup, Mr. Giuliani. Do you feel just in the out of court public we`re seeing a kind of different version of Rudy?
KAY: You know, I watched that video of Rudy turning out today. I mean, we don`t know how he got there. Did he get there by Uber? I doubt it. I suspect he probably flew in the end even though his lawyers has said he couldn`t fly in the end. And his first reaction getting out of the car is that kind of slightly sort of snide chuckle. I mean, like this is all kind of a joke almost. And the guy then goes in for six hours.
We have no idea what he said during those six hours or what he didn`t say, what kind of privileges he claimed or he didn`t claim during the course of those six hours. But he had that sort of bravado about him. And there`s something about the way all of this is happening that points to something within the Trump administration, within Donald Trump and those around him, which is a sort of disdain for government and the organs of government itself.
Whether it`s hanging on to all of those documents, whether it`s the process that he went through in Georgia. But there`s something about -- Trump just didn`t believe, the way that he packed up in the last few chaotic days of the White House. It reminds me of my kid missing his deadline when he was meant to pack up from college because he didn`t want to really be leaving. And so he left (INAUDIBLE) night before on a hangover. And everything got thrown into the dustbin bags.
But that`s what it kind of felt like, but on Trump`s side, there is this sort of disdain, we know this, for the organs of government and for all the instruments of government. And you wonder whether some of that is what is behind the problems that Trump now finds himself in and the way that Giuliani got out of that SUV today kind of almost sort of shrugging and laughing at the whole process.
They just don`t respect the organs of government. And that seems to have gotten them into trouble particularly around these documents at Mar-a-Lago.
MELBER: I think you put that really well. And they certainly have sometimes with low odds gotten out of jams. So it`s kind of a question of whether you keep betting against the house, and thinking, well, I`ve won before but what are the long-term odds on that? Particular for people who are not the former president, which we`re following.
So, Katty and Melissa, my thanks to both of you.
I want to tell everyone what I`m doing next. It`s one of our special reports. We work hard on a lot of different projects around here. When we come back after our shortest break, in 60 seconds, we`re going to go through the breakdown of why Trump is not only wrong and dangerous in his approach to this search and these ongoing probes, but why the history of the Republican Party`s call for people to just comply and why America`s white supremacy is all wrapped up in something that needs to change now. When I`m back in one minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Turning to our special report right now. On the rule of law and following the law which Donald Trump refuses to do. The FBI searched Trump`s Florida home because they said Trump was illegally holding top secret property and it violated lawful orders to return it. And a judge agreed. And then as everyone now knows, that search unearthed some of that very property which he said he was illegally holding and illegally refusing to provide back under subpoena.
So that`s bad for Trump. His actions, though, are separate legally from whether he intentionally committed a new felony there. It may turn out that as far as the Justice Department is concerned, they subpoenaed the material, they view Trump`s lawyers as violating the order around that, and that they went back into his house primarily to just get the material.
[18:15:06]
And we know the attorney general said they had already tried less intrusive means and then only went in because Trump was not complying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible in a standard practice to seek less intrusive means.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That`s true. And Garland was basically telling Trump in public that Trump brought the search on himself by all that time refusing to comply. He had well over a year to return the material in general. He had many weeks after it was subpoenaed. He didn`t comply at all. That is striking because, remember, it is conservatives and many Trump allies who have been so quick to lecture you and Americans everywhere whenever this has come up in the past how if law enforcement asks you to do just about anything, then you have to go ahead and just comply.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Just comply. Please. Listen.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I don`t know why the gentleman didn`t yield when he was asked to yield.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Those are Trump allies telling in those cases victims of police brutality they should comply and yield. And that`s not any kind of just couple isolated examples. It is a standard piece of conservative refrains. In these clashes over law enforcement and policing, including when people are document as innocent or did nothing wrong or are facing very aggressive or even illegal police treatment, the line we hear over and over is just follow the officer`s commands and comply no matter what.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: If, in fact, the police officer gives you a command, please exit the car, you should say, yes, officer, no, officer, OK, officer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish he would have complied a whole lot earlier.
ERIC BOLLING, CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Bad decisions by a cop, but those decisions wouldn`t have been made if the perp didn`t run away.
GUILFOYLE: Just comply. Please, listen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Yes. Just comply. This frequent conservative claim goes well beyond complying with lawful police requests. I mean, listen to what we just heard. The demand is comply first, fully, no matter what. Yes, officer. Make any objections that may come up presumably later. And this logic, this argument, this talking point that`s come from conservatives over and over. So I`m showing you some stuff that`s on air, but this is in communities around America.
Minnesota has a police union representative, Brian Peters, who in that Daunte Wright case who was killed by an officer mistakenly drawing a gun, said well, still, they should have just complied. And he argued that it was the noncompliance that set off the chain of events that led to the death.
Houston Police has a union and they had a similar take when they said, quote, "Comply, don`t die. Live to have your day in court." Those are real examples. And that includes times where police were later found to make mistakes or according to court used excessive force sometimes even on tape. But that loud stubborn and often smug lecture comes from national political elites on the right and MAGA leaders and Trump allies all the way down to those police unions I mentioned. Comply. That`s even when innocent people were injured or beaten or killed.
That`s a context here for the recent legal problems for Trump because, again, this sometimes gets almost pushed out. There`s so much going on and that`s why it`s our special report right now because I want everyone to understand Donald Trump was given months to comply. But he didn`t. And Trump aides who have been given special elite treatment when asked to follow the law and testify have benefitted from that whole different approach.
There are Trump officials, though, who partially resisted and there are others, especially for the January 6th Committee, who fully resisted. No compliance. And I want to be clear. We`re talking about Donald Trump and other powerful, well-connected white people who have acted like they are above the law and their own past demands, some of which I just showed you, are really not about the rules. They are just telling others to comply.
And many of those other cases involve regular citizens who don`t have political connections and who are disproportionately back and brown people in America. So this is a documented double standard. Lawless resistance for these Trump elites, regimented compliance or violence for regular citizens, and especially regular citizens who are black and brown. And before I go any further, let`s bring it together.
We try to be clear here. We try to be as factual and clear as possible. This is the same premise which animated all those Trump fans on January 6th. They genuinely expected to go in and break the law, they genuinely seemed to operate with immunity to feel immune because of their privilege and world view, and they brutally attacked police because they never cared about police or blue lives to begin with.
[18:20:10]
Now there are some people that day and the days after in America who are actually surprised by the Trump fans that day, or some said gosh, this is hypocritical given the past talk of blue lives.
You know who wasn`t shocked? All the MAGA people doing those crimes because that`s what they came to do. And you know who else wasn`t shocked? Their leader, who at the time was trying to lead a failed coup that was thwarted. Donald Trump was not shocked. He was elated, excited, juiced up, and he saluted them and called them special in real time because all those people together who many of them hadn`t met before, they already knew about this.
If you were surprised or someone you know was surprised, then someone you know was taking the blue lives talk at face value. But it was crap. And they all knew it was crap because it was about power and dominance and race. And those people view the law as a way to enforce a right-wing white supremacy, and if they can`t get the police to do that, which apparently they couldn`t on the steps of the Capitol, then they have little use for.
And that`s the deeper, more disturbing context for what we`re living through right now, which I guess is surprising to some people. So let it not be surprising anymore. You have to see facts before you can fix facts. That`s the disturbing context for this seemingly habitual political hypocrisy around the lawful search of Donald Trump`s home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-NY): The FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of its authority.
SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): The way our federal government has gone it`s like what we thought about the Gestapo.
SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): This is absurd. Think about it. This has been a witch hunt for six years.
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): What they`ve been doing to President Trump is political persecution.
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): It is Joe Biden`s DOJ. And they have weaponized this FBI at every turn.
GRAHAM: If you`re a Republican conservative, and you hear the FBI is going after Trump again, it sounds alarm bells.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Alarm bells. Well, alarms are for emergencies. If there are alarms here, I can tell you the response to people connected to Trump who have not been complying has been in a very slow, careful, sensitive pace. Take two of Trump`s former White House aides who refused to comply with lawful subpoenas. Bannon and Navarro. Well, they`ve had plenty of time. Bannon had weeks between refusing to comply and being held in contempt.
Another month until he was indicted in November. And even in a dispute over noncompliance, I want you to understand legally the Justice Department still arranged to give Mr. Bannon the opportunity to come in voluntarily, which he did.
Now Peter Navarro spoke openly about his efforts to overthrow the election, which brought legal scrutiny on him. He put out a book, he did interviews. Only after all that did Congress subpoena him in February. Then when he did not comply, he was held in contempt in April and indicted months later in June. Now after all that, unlike Bannon, the DOJ did not try, perhaps because they`re not naive, did not try to get him to come in voluntarily.
Similar to the legal process for Trump where you have to go to a judge, the DOJ determined Navarro was not legally trustworthy. That`s not an opinion. There`s actually a standard for that. So they asked a judge to approve what was the less intrusive approach. And that left Mr. Navarro outraged, rattled, and seemingly experiencing something that he did not think could happen to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS JANSING, MSNBC HOST: Former adviser Peter Navarro is at this hour in federal custody.
KATY TUR, MSNBC HOST: He was issued a subpoena in February to produce documents and appear before the committee in March but refused to do either.
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: What did they do? They intercepted me getting on the plane. And then they put me in handcuffs and bring me here. They put me in leg irons and they stick me in a cell. That`s punitive. What they did to me today violated the Constitution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: They did put him in handcuffs. Handcuffs are part of getting arrested. Just like going into the cell before an arraignment. Now Mr. Navarro then went on FOX News with those same complaints I just showed you, which is the same place where viewers had been lectured so many times on how to avoid exactly those problems with police. Just say yes, sir, yes, officer, and comply.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: If in fact, a police officer gives you a command, please exit the car, you should say, yes, officer, no, officer, OK, officer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That`s not how Navarro sounded when dealing with law enforcement or the officers with the subpoena, nor Bannon nor Trump, who is going well beyond the Hannity standard of yes, officer, and currently threatening retaliation.
[18:25:13]
But you could say, right, what`s the context? What`s the history? Those clips are from those reactions to police incidents with black Americans.
So let`s get into it. Some of what I showed you was the reaction to when an unarmed man Walter Scott was running away from an officer who shot him in the back and killed him, that was found to be illegal force because it was secretly caught on tape otherwise we`d never know about it. Many critics still assailed Mr. Scott seen there not posing a threat for not complying. He`s dead.
Many times police use force even when people are seen complying. Terrance Crutcher had his hands clearly above his head, surrounded by officers and a cop car, when an officer still shot and killed him. That officer was acquitted.
Now we`re hearing talk about how agents searched Donald Trump`s home under a warrant or how they executed that arrest warrant for Mr. Navarro. Now remember it was a no-knock warrant, just not the least intrusive means, that was used in an operation that led to the police shooting a hospital EMT Breonna Taylor, shooting her to death while she was asleep. That operation did not afford her a chance to comply.
Or take a recent case involving Mr. Jacob Blake. Now he had not complied with an arrest warrant. So that`s what we could call Peter Navarro territory. But when police approached, he was not ever seen threatening or attacking. He was documented walking away, and that`s when police shot him in the back seven times paralyzing him.
A rush to use force in this disturbing scene.
(VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: We are not showing the entire video under our standards of practices. Now every example is not the same. But some of the commentators are. We just showed you Trump ally and lawyer Lindsey Graham, who actually recently blew through and did not comply with an ordered court appearance in Georgia. We`ll see if he eventually shows up.
Now in this report, we showed him insinuating that a, quote, "gentleman should have complied." Should have yielded when asked. I just showed you Mr. Blake. That was Senator Graham talking specifically about Jacob Blake.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM: I don`t know why the gentleman didn`t yield when he was asked to yield.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: He didn`t yield when he was asked to yield, Mr. Graham says in response to the shooting. That`s the wrong answer legally. Graham, a lawyer, knows it is illegal for police to use lethal force on a person simply because the person is fleeing. Resisting arrest is illegal, so is speeding, so is tax evasion. I could read you a lot of laws.
Those things in America under the law and Supreme Court precedent are not punishable by a shooting or a summary execution. So the hypocrisy and the double standard here matters. It is political and it is racial. And the point is not that police should be using even more force against whomever suspects. The point is today`s right-wing politics and a very long strain of white supremacy in America views police as the muscle for that supremacist power structure.
And it does not view police as stewards of independent fairness or accountability for all. It is a thuggish authoritarian and supremacist mentality. And it predates Trump, though he tapped into it and has helped animate it and make it worse. But that also means, according to what we know, would likely endure well past the Trump era or any single politician.
Now, they don`t always teach this in school. So consider class in session here on the news tonight. Ibram Kendi has documented this wider history where many Americans made genuinely but mistakenly believe police violence is caused by just a lack of compliance rather than the violent remnants of slavery. And this is about facts and data, which show that American police escalate interactions on a racial basis.
Police use more aggressive and less respectful approaches to black Americans in traffic stops, which are a very common first order interaction between random people and police, and also police use more respectful and deescalating approaches with the majority of white Americans in the same stops.
[18:30:00]
Data shows police sometimes even apologize for having to do this job or the interaction at all. That data overlaps with class discrimination. Yvonne Abraham writes in the Boston Globe that when you tie it together, for many conservatives, Blue Lives mattered only when they were policing black ones. So, a lot of this is interrelated.
And if it sounds hard to hear from some people who feel like they want to support police, or at least the honest police, or think better of America, I get it. I hear you. There`s facts and emotion, the emotion you have for the officer down the block or someone you had a good interaction with, or how you want America to be, that`s understandable emotion, I get it. But I`m here reporting the facts for you.
And the history of white supremacist violence and the way it relates to our current moment is a fact. So, it`s one that needs to be dealt with. There`s more than one implication. For the lives of many real people, the less intrusive measures that were used in these examples to search Donald Trump or to peacefully arrest Steve Bannon, they can actually be deployed more often, more uniformly, and more fairly.
That`s quite true, literally, as a matter of law in policing if the innocent, Breonna Taylor, had been policed under the standard used for the guilty Steve Bannon, she would be alive today. And when I say guilty, I`m referring to his conviction, not an opinion. Just use the convicted Bannon standard and she`d be alive.
If the unarmed no threat Walter Scott had been later apprehended by the standard used for the indicted, not complying Mr. Navarro, then Mr. Scott would be peacefully apprehended in handcuffs for a day in court, not shot in the back. The list goes on. And I can tell you, as a legal reporter, and lawyer, it is a very long list. I am not going to go through all of it tonight.
This is about the type of policing which impacts the largest number of Americans, if you just made those changes if you just afforded what I refer legally to as the convicted Bannon standard for those other people, many of them innocent. Then another key implication goes to the empty core of this right-wing project. That`s the effort to control and corrupt any prospect of equal justice under the law.
In America, it is an effort to use or get law enforcement to be used as a tool of white supremacy and right-wing political persecution. Lock her up. That campaign is bad for most Americans. It undermines public safety. It is undemocratic. And it is also very bad for honest police because honest police officers don`t want to be pulled into that political racial project.
So, when you hear a right-wing politicized framework about compliance, which you may when subjects turn, and there`s a debate about a different incident that doesn`t involve them, and their heroes, know that that framework is most of the crap, and the trick. And then some of the people peddling it also know that while others may just be repeating what they hear.
A law requires compliance, but it does not mandate injury, let alone murder, to achieve compliance. And so, it may seem sometimes like everything runs together, and we live in a mediated environment where you can link almost anything. But these are not links we`re drawing in observation. These are the roots of the justice system, and for people who care about justice and want the system to better pursue it.
These are pieces of history of violence of state violence, of state murder that we have been working on for a very long time. And if you think it feels hopeless, you have to remember, the reason that so many people lie about the justice system is that even they, in their cynicism, know the truth can still matter.
They seem to think if enough people knew the truth, maybe their efforts wouldn`t work as well. So, they keep lying to you. Don`t let them get away with it. Keep your eye on the ball and on these facts, because justice is still possible. We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:39:25]
MELBER: Election results came in last night and Liz Cheney did lose in a landslide. Why? Because she opposed Donald Trump`s attempted coup and has taken a big investigative role in the January 6th probe of that coup. Cheney said she understood the risk in her concession address.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY), JANUARY 6 COMMITTEE VICE-CHAIRMAN: Two years ago, I won this primary was 73 percent of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump`s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.
[18:40:00]
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MELBER: It`s all true, we`re so accustomed to this political spin we hear from politicians, especially in moments where they`re trying to pivot or explain something. That was just true.
And what she`s also referring to, is that she knows, and Republican voters and Americans know how many other people are doing just that, even when at various points early with Trump`s rise, or when people hit certain moments, they thought it was their breaking point or the violent insurrection or the attempted coup. They said it out loud, so everyone knows the score.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president bears responsibility for Wednesday`s attack on Congress by mob rioters.
MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The president needs to understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): The president`s language and rhetoric crossed the line.
MCCONNELL: The mob was fed lies.
CRUZ: It was reckless.
GRAHAM: All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.
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MELBER: Rarely has the words enough is enough been either uttered on the Senate floor with such self-canceling hypocrisy. Mr. Graham was mentioned higher in our broadcast tonight because he is going as far as blowing through required testimony and not complying to defend Donald Trump on the very issue of trying to overthrow the election.
So, it`s much larger than politics. Indeed, there are historians who study this in other countries not looking at this as red, blue, but as how a democracy can give way to something else. Take the expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat who says, high Republic -- high-level Republican enablers contribute to the consolidation of an authoritarian climate in America. She is our special guest next.
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[18:46:40]
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CRUZ: This man is a pathological liar. Donald, you`re a sniveling coward. The man cut cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. The man is utterly amoral. Donald finds it very hard to lose that he finds that very difficult for him.
GRAHAM: I think he`s a kook. I think he`s crazy. I think he`s unfit for office. I don`t believe he`s a Republican. His policies are really bad for the country. He`s a jackass. You know how you make America great again, till Donald Trump to go to hell.
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MELBER: We`re joined by NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. The receipts, the evidence shows they know, they knew, and they know. What do you draw from that and are there historical parallels that suggest there`s a role for other leaders to confront or enable a slide towards authoritarianism?
RUTH BEN-GHIAT, HISTORY PROFESSOR, NYU: Well, one of the incredible things going on is we`re living through history where the GOP is remaking itself day after day as an authoritarian party. And one of the signs of that is you`re not allowed to have dissent anymore within the party. So, all of those sound bites you nobody`s saying that anymore. In fact, when Ted Cruz didn`t obey the party line about January 6th, he said it was a domestic terrorist operation.
Tucker Carlson hauled him on Fox News and berated him and humiliated him publicly. And so, it`s incredible the speed at which this is going on, like Liz Cheney, you know, she said, just two years ago, she won with 73 percent. What`s happened since then is the big lie has become literally the party line. So, the GOP has a party line, like an authoritarian party.
And everybody can now, you know, be a mini Trump and have their own big lie, their little lie. And so that`s very appealing. And who`s -- so you have conservatives out. And you have extremists coming in, including people who are members of the Proud Boys at the local level or the Oath Keepers.
They`re actually the politicians now. So, all of this is why older school, you know, politicians of the GOP, Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham, they`re not saying those things anymore.
MELBER: Yes, take a listen to Liz Cheney here last night.
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CHENEY: No House seats. No office in this land is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect. I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office. And I mean it. I love what our party has stood for. But I love my country more.
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MELBER: Do you see any examples in foreign history where someone like her actually can do something to affect the other side or this is, yes, she has her life to lead, but she doesn`t move the other side now that she`s out of their party.
BEN-GHIAT: The issue with America is we don`t have the flexibility of other countries because we`re a bipartisan system. Now, there was just an attempt to found a third party, but it doesn`t seem to be taking off because in other countries, you can have, you know, an attempt from outside to kind of, you know, didn`t neutralize the party leader. But here it`s not possible because the GOP is Trump`s party still.
[18:50:00]
MELBER: Right, which speaks to the stakes of this and why we wanted to get your broader historical perspective tonight after that primary result. Ruth, thank you. We`ll be right back.
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[18:55:00]
MELBER: Jon Stewart had his moment of Zen here is tonight`s moment of Oz.
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MEHMET OZ, TELEVISION PERSONALITY: And my wife wants some vegetables for crudites, right? So, here`s a broccoli, that`s two bucks, a ton of broccoli here. There`s some asparagus that`s $4. Carrots that`s four more dollars. There`s $10 of vegetable there. $6 must be a shortage of salsa. Guys, that`s $20 for crudites and this doesn`t include the tequila.
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MELBER: Oz trying to share how he shops. This is from April but now it`s a campaign issue. His Democratic opponent Fetterman posted it again and says in Pennsylvania they call it a veggie tray. And then a photo of veggie tray with label. Oz is now trailing Fetterman by nearly nine points. And the debate here is over. Well, who really gets the veggie vote? We wanted to share that little bit of light. I don`t know if it`s full then.
And as always, you can tell me what you like on your veggie tray or whether you call it crudites. Really, as long as you`re eating healthy, we`re happy for you. You can find me at AriMelber.com. The best way to reach me as always, AriMelber.com. In fact, I`ve heard from some of you there from your comments. So, find me on AriMelber.com, or @AriMelber. Tell me what`s in your veggie tray. Yes, I just said that on T.V. And thanks for spending time with us. "THE REIDOUT" with Tiffany Cross is up next.
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