LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
And you can`t be serious, I`m speechless, I think is a reasonable response to so much of the Trump administration over these years. It could be so many people`s book titles of their memoirs working in this administration.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": When we got that email, I remember thinking, like, oh, breath of fresh air. Somebody looked around at what was going on with Ukraine, what the president got impeached for, and was like, hold on, wait a minute, no.
I mean, her bluntness, especially as the acting comptroller of the Pentagon, people like that aren`t necessarily expected to put exclamation points on their emails. It did feel like a real moment, but now, of course, she`s out.
O`DONNELL: Yes. And, Rachel, you remember when Congress and the Trump administration was rushing trillions of dollars to economic relief to businesses, to workers, all of which made sense, but the corruption is in the details. Many of us are wondering how much went to Donald Trump, how much went to his family and friends?
And of course, as you know, the treasury secretary who is in charge of that is refusing to disclose any of it.
Congresswoman Katie Porter is trying to get those answers. She`s going to join us later in this hour. We`ll see what she can do at this point.
MADDOW: That is exactly the right person to talk to about these things. Thank you, Lawrence. Well done.
O`DONNELL: Thanks, Rachel. Thank you.
Well, the United States Senate made history today by convening what I believe is the senate`s first Judiciary Committee hearing in history. Concentrating on and provoked by police use of deadly force. And I`ve been keeping a close watch on that subject in the Senate since I wrote a book about police use of deadly force in the 1980s and I testified in a House hearing, not a Senate hearing, a House hearing in 1983 about police use of deadly force.
I then worked in the Senate for several years, and I never saw the Senate turn its attention to a tragic American way of death, police killing unarmed black men, until today.
The case of deadly force that finally got the Senate`s attention was what prosecutors are now calling the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis three weeks ago. New testimony emerged today from a witness to the killing that we have not heard from before.
We know about the killing of George Floyd in detail, and we can all make our judgments about what happened there, thanks to the video that was recorded by a 17-year-old girl, Darnella Frazier, who we have spoken about before on this program. She`s the most important witness for the prosecution, and has supplied the prosecution with its most important evidence, which is her video recording that captures every second of the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that George Floyd was dying with a police knee on his neck, preventing him from breathing.
There were several other witnesses on the street who were telling the police to stop and prosecutors have spoken to many of them. But someone else was watching. A police department 911 dispatcher was able to see a live video feed of what was happening on the street, and she became so concerned that she called a supervisor.
The dispatcher and the supervisor have not yet been publicly identified. The city of Minneapolis released an audio recording of the dispatcher and the supervisor showing that the dispatcher did not like what she was seeing.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DISPATCHER: I didn`t know, you can call me a snitch if you want to, but we have the cameras up for 320`s call.
I don`t know if they had to use force or not. They got something out of the back of the squad and all of them sat on this man. So I don`t know if they needed you or not. But they haven`t said anything to me yet.
SUPERVISOR: Yeah, they haven`t said anything yet, it was just a takedown, which doesn`t count, but --
DISPATCHER: OK.
SUPERVISOR: -- I`ll find out.
DISPATCHER: No problem. We don`t get to ever see it so when we see it, we`re just like, well, that looks a little different.
SUPERVISOR: OK.
DISPATCHER: All right. Thank you. Bye.
SUPERVISOR: Talk to you guys. Bye.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: In police world, that is a very brave dispatcher. She begins by saying, you can call me a snitch if you want to, and no one in police world, including the dispatchers, want to be called a snitch. I don`t know if they had to use force or not, she said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee today was sure that they did not have to use force the way they used force against George Floyd. All of the Democrats on the committee expressed their outrage at what happened to George Floyd. But political history was made when the Republicans made their opening remarks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): We all know that -- about the brutal and senseless killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There`s no excuse nor can there be for what the police did to Mr. Floyd.
SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA): It should never happen.
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): We all understand there`s a problem and we need to act on it.
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): The murder of George Floyd.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Mr. Floyd died for a $20 bill. You see the video. He was in handcuffs. He wasn`t threatening anybody. How do you go from that to dead is just amazing.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Here`s one proposition I believe everyone in this hearing room agrees with -- what happened to George Floyd was horrific. It was unconscionable. It was clearly a grotesque abuse of police power. And the officers that carried it out are rightly being prosecuted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: We have never seen anything like that in the United States senate. Most Republicans in the Senate have never found anything to be a grotesque abuse of police power. Until today.
Chuck Grassley is the oldest Republican in the Senate and he called the knee in George Floyd`s neck, quote, the murder of George Floyd. Chuck Grassley has never accused a police officer of committing murder, until today.
George Floyd has changed the Senate. He has changed the language of the Senate. George Floyd has forced the United States Senate to finally face the problems associated with police use of deadly force, and George Floyd has forced some Republicans to stay things they have never said before in their lives.
But will George Floyd change laws?
The president of the United States flamboyantly issued an executive order today that orders absolutely nothing other than the creation of, quote, a database to coordinate the sharing of information between and among federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement agencies concerning instances of excessive use of force related to law enforcement matters.
And that might not sound like much, but it is more than the federal government has ever done on police use of deadly force. The American government collecting every conceivable statistic that exists, and is produced by this very complex population in this very complex economy. But the federal government has never, ever officially counted the number of people killed by American police.
And in the past, Republicans have actually blocked the government`s ability to even try to count the number of people killed by American police. When I started writing about this subject 40 years ago, we literally had to get scissors and cut newspaper articles out of newspapers from around the country and share them among the very few researchers who were interested in this subject to try to piece together a national statistical picture of police use of deadly force.
And now, finally, in 2020, the attorney general has today been ordered to create that database. That is the baby step that social scientists and criminologists have been asking for, for 40 years. Elsewhere in the executive order, the president refers very vaguely to the notion that Congress should take up legislation, but the president note what should be in that legislation.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has already started moving legislation that will be taken up by the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow. Speaker Pelosi was not impressed by the president`s executive order today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: First of all, I think what the president had today was a photo-op and he did say Congress should act. The Republican leader of the Senate said the House bill is going nowhere. We`ll have none of that.
It`s about making a big difference, taking a giant step forward and saying to the leader in the Senate, you call yourself the Grim Reaper? How aptly named you are.
When you see how many people have died, how many people have died, how much lack of confidence there is in whether there is racial -- systemic racism in this country, and clearly there is. But this is -- we have an opportunity for America. This is a time of reckoning, to say we`re going to make a change that is real.
Not cosmetic. Not perfunctory, not a photo-op, but legislation that is real.
O`DONNELL: In today`s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Senator Cory Booker asked the question of the day -- how many more people have to die for Congress to finally do something?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): I don`t believe that there`s going to be a time in America where we ban human practices like chokeholds and religious profiling and no-knock warrants. I believe there will be a time in America where we don`t treat mental health issues with police in America. I believe there`s going to be a time in America where black women is safe to sleep on their own bed, or a young man reaching for his cell phone won`t get shot dead.
I believe there will be a time in America when black parents, like mine, don`t have to fear for the safety of their child who just got their driver`s license. I believe there will be a time in America when we understand that public safety is not about simply the number of police on our streets, but about how the number of people who no longer live in poverty or safe to drink their water or don`t have to deal with addiction in prison but can get treatment.
There will be a time I know in this country, but if the arc of the moral universe is long and bent towards justice, we have to have the courage now to be the arc benders. The question is now, will we get there? The question is the time now, how many more people have to die in our streets to get us there?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. He`s a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I know that was a long workday in that committee hearing.
But were you as surprised as I was by the Republican side of the panel? I just want to begin with that, because I heard things today from Republican senators today in that hearing that I have never heard before.
BOOKER: You know, I think that this country has moved, and not that I give them (ph) credit to the Republicans or Democrats on that committee, I`m going to give it to the chorus of conviction filling our streets in all 50 states that are not letting this piece swept under the rug or ignored.
And so, there has been movement in Congress, but yet words are not enough. They`re important. They`re necessary even. But they`re not sufficient.
And so the question is, what will we do and what will Republicans do? Is it going to be lip service and commissions and studies or real teeth and accountability that will change policing in America, so that this kind of thing never happens again?
O`DONNELL: You made a very dramatic point in the hearing today, mentioning that you`re 51 years old, and literally during your entire lifetime, beginning right around your birth, this federal government has every five years, ten years been taking a turn and looking at this, but looking at it through commissions, like the Kerner Commission in the 1960s, and it was always in the aftermath of very dramatic urban unrest.
And it was always a commission and the commission would then maybe present their findings to Congress, maybe not. But the commission would always end up being forgotten and ultimately legislatively nothing would happen and you wondered whether this was Groundhog Day and whether we`re actually doing all that again.
What is your sense? Did it -- by the end of today`s hearing, did it feel real, did it feel like there is a real opportunity here?
BOOKER: I mean, I think there`s a real opportunity, but the hearing, a lot of my Republican colleagues reacted against the idea of eliminating the qualified immunity that prevents people on the federal level from filing civil rights, civil charges. That is Section 242 on the criminal side that could actually be changed to hold those officers who violate our community values and the law that they could be criminally prosecuted at the federal level. There didn`t seem to be intention there. Even just the idea of cutting off grants to cities that are showing patterns and practice of bad behavior, that seemed (ph) they resisted.
So, understand this, behavior won`t change unless there`s a consequence for that behavior. But when police officers are shielded from civil suits or criminal prosecution on the federal level, if they`re shielded -- police departments are shielded from any consequence, we`re not going to have changes. So, that`s where the rubber is going to meet the road in our negotiations, is, are they willing to get on board with real, real teeth?
And something as simple, ban no-knock warrants so people like Breonna Taylor don`t get killed. Let`s ban chokeholds so Eric Garner or the carotid artery from the knee on the neck that we saw with George Floyd.
This is really what I want to see right now because the hurt and the sentiment and the -- just words, those are really good to hear, but if they`re not backed by real actions -- as Martin Luther King said so eloquently, I can never legislate you to love me, but I can legislate you to stop lynching me.
And we need real legislation to stop people from dying these awful deaths.
O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to what Mitch McConnell said today about the legislative effort.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: You know, they want to basically, as Senator Barrasso pointed out, federalize all of these issues, that`s a nonstarter. The House version is going nowhere in the Senate. It`s basically typical Democratic overreach to try to control everything in Washington. That -- we have no interest in that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Senator Booker, listening to the president today actually and listening to some of the Republican senators on the judiciary committee, I thought that you were closer together. And Mitch McConnell makes it sound like there`s no agreement at all. The president`s executive order encourages and incentivizes police departments to not use chokeholds. So that doesn`t sound as far apart as Mitch McConnell makes it.
BOOKER: Yeah, I sat on the floor and listened to my colleague, you know, there`s usually people in the Senate floor. I wanted to hear what Barrasso has to say.
And I just -- I couldn`t understand how he`s talking about nationalizing -- he`s using language that was repeated by Mitch McConnell that makes no sense.
Look, the Cato Institute and other conservative organizations have come out against, including Clarence Thomas speaking out against qualified immunity. How is that, to have the ability to file the 1983 civil rights charges against police officer, how is nationalizing it?
There are lots of folks from both sides of the aisle who have called for Section 242 to be amended. Let`s go to racial and religious profiling, in George Bush`s first speech before Congress he called for an end to racial and religious profiling.
So I don`t -- there`s nothing constructive at a time of national grieving, hurt, and tumult on the street. There`s nothing in that rhetoric that is good faith whatsoever. It is just partisan rhetoric trying to score political points. I`m tired of that, I really am.
The reality is that the murders, what we have seen, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, this can be prevented. We can do something, but not by the same typical rhetoric.
We need to get to business, we need to work together and do the right things that we know will work, so we don`t have yet another commission, another study and more deaths over the coming years.
(CROSSTALK)
O`DONNELL: Senator Cory Booker, thank you very much -- thank you, Senator. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
BOOKER: Thank you for having me. Thank you so much, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
BOOKER: When we come back, we have new developments in the police killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. The Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks in the back and killed him was previously reprimanded for use of force involving a firearm. An attorney for Rayshard Brooks` family will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: The Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks in the back in a Wendy`s parking lot on Friday night had prior complaints including a reprimand for use of force according to records from the Atlanta police department, shared with NBC News. Garrett Rolfe, who has been fired, quote, faced disciplinary action in 2016 for a use of force incident involving a firearm. The Rolfe`s record also shows one additional use of firearms incident in 2015, without note of any disciplinary action.
The disciplinary history from Garrett Rolfe`s seven years on the force also shows four citizen complaints filed against him and five vehicle accidents, two of which resulted in an oral admonishment and a written reprimand. No further details about any of the incidents were provided to NBC News.
We are joined now by Justin Miller. He is one of the attorneys representing the family of Rayshard Brooks.
Attorney Miller, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
What was your reaction to NBC News reporting on the disciplinary record of Garrett Rolfe?
JUSTIN MILLER, ATTORNEY FOR FAMILY OF RAYSHARD BROOKS: We thought that was very troubling. He shouldn`t have been out there. We would like to know what kind of remedial measures that the department took to make sure he was fit to have a hand gun and to be out policing the community like he was that night.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, it`s pretty striking to see in a seven-year career that many mentions of firearm use. The audience doesn`t know this because Hollywood has poisoned people with the idea of what police work actually is. But most police officers in a 30-year career are never involved in a firearms incident of any kind.
So the -- when you see this kind of thing, with your experience in dealing with these kind of police cases, do you expect that that`s going to be an important element of the evidence that is developed in this case, what his history is?
MILLER: Oh, we think it will be a big piece of the puzzle. He showed tendencies we often see in these kind of cases. It was very emotional, seems like he may have been embarrassed, different things that we saw.
Just with when he went for his weapon, and where Mr. Brooks was, just were very disturbing. And a lot of that goes right hand in hand with his history that we now know.
O`DONNELL: The Fulton County district attorney has said that the issue of the officers picking up the empty shell casings may be a piece of a tampering with evidence charge. Do you have any sense of what the district attorney might be developing as a criminal case here?
MILLER: We don`t. We haven`t spoken to the district attorney`s office about what exactly they will be charging, if anything. We heard the charges may be coming down tomorrow or the next day. So we`re just waiting like everyone else to find out what those charges might be.
O`DONNELL: And what about a civil proceeding here? Are you anticipating moving civilly against the officer or the police department? Is that something that would -- you would wait for the criminal process to run its course?
MILLER: Yes. We do, to get the maximum amount of information that we need, we always wait for the criminal process to conclude. But yes, there will be simple proceedings afterwards.
O`DONNELL: You`re now a few days away from the initial shock of this case, and the initial shock of watching these videos. What is your sense of where the evidence stands tonight? Have you developed -- has the evidence all developed in one direction for you?
MILLER: I mean, whatever the evidence is, what you see, and what you see is a scuffle and then a man gets shot in the back by a police officer. So there will be a lot of talk about different things and different items and different time stamps on the video. But at the end of the day, it is a police officer shooting a man in the back who does not have a deadly weapon and does not pose a threat to anyone around him.
O`DONNELL: At the White House today, the president invited families of people who have been killed by police. Was any of the Brooks` family invited to that?
MILLER: No, they were not invited.
O`DONNELL: And what would you say to the president tonight, if you could, about what he`s suggested today in his executive order and what you would open the Congress and the president could agree on?
MILLER: If I can talk to the president, I would tell him that what he did was a good start. It`s the beginning. It`s nothing to cheer about or to be overly excited about. There are many, many more reforms that need to happen, qualified immunity reforms, training reforms, psychological evaluation reforms, community involvement reforms for officers.
I mean, we have a laundry list of items that we would like to see. So those things, those items that the president talked about today were items that have kind of been on the table for a long time and should have been handled a long time ago. And are the, I guess, most basic of the items on the list that we have.
So there are many, many more items I would love to talk to the president or anyone else about those other items so we could get those moving, as well.
O`DONNELL: Justin Miller, thank you very much for joining our discussion tonight. Really appreciate it.
MILLER: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
MILLER: And when we come back after this break, Harvard Global Health Institute Director Ashish Jha will join us to discuss why coronavirus cases are on the rise in some parts of the country and tell us just how excited we should or should not be about reports of a drug trial in England to treat patients with severe cases of coronavirus.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: We have what might, I stress might, be some good medical news about a possible coronavirus treatment. At the moment, all we have is the summary press release of an assessment of a medication that has not yet been peer reviewed. Scientists at the University of Oxford in England said that a clinical trial found that a cheap and commonly available steroid reduced deaths in hospitalized patients with severe coronavirus. The Oxford scientists wrote, in a one page press release, that the medication reduced deaths by one-third in ventilated patients and by one-fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only.
The drug did not appear to help patients who are not severely ill. The study has not been published, has not been peer reviewed. In the United States, as of tonight, there are 2,142,372 confirmed cases of coronavirus. And as of tonight, this country has suffered a total of 117,351 deaths from coronavirus.
New cases are rising in at least 20 states and Puerto Rico. Today, Arizona, Texas and Florida reported their largest ever one day increase of new cases. Florida today reported 2,783 new cases. Texas reported 2,622 new cases today. And Arizona reported 2,392 new cases today. Ten states have reported new highs for coronavirus hospitalizations, and President Trump is acting as if coronavirus is not a threat any more.
Today, as President Trump signed and announced his Executive Order on police reform, there was no social distancing among the people surrounding him at the signing in the Rose Garden. Not a single mask was worn at the event by any of the people invited by the President.
Today, businesses and residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against the parent company of the 19,000 seat arena where the President plans to have a campaign rally on Saturday. The lawsuit sought to enforce the wearing of masks and social distancing during the rally "to protect against a substantial imminent and deadly risk to the community."
A judge denied the injunction this evening, but the Trump campaign clearly knows that there is a substantial imminent and deadly risk, and that is why they`re making anyone who attends the rally accept and sign a legal waiver saying they will not sue Donald Trump if they get coronavirus at that rally.
Joining us now, Dr. Ashish Jha, the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. Dr. Jha, can we begin quickly with this new information from England and what we are to make of this possible treatment?
DR. ASHISH JHA, DIRECTOR, HARVARD GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE: Yes, Lawrence, thanks for having me on. So as you said, all we have is a press release, and this is not how we`re used to evaluating studies and looking at data. But the group that`s doing the research and their protocols are public, and they`re pretty good folks and they do high quality work.
And so, I am cautiously enthusiastic. This is a cheap drug, it`s widely available across the whole world, and the impact was pretty large, big effect. So I`m cautiously enthusiastic, but I want to actually see the data before I know whether this is going to end up been a really important part of the therapy or not.
O`DONNELL: I am confused about how to react to these rising numbers in Arizona, Florida, Texas, because even with the rising numbers, when you do the per 100,000 people measurement, Arizona ranks 19th, Florida even with the increase in cases ranks 35th in the nation per 100,000 population, and Texas ranks 38th in the nation per 100,000 populations.
So they are still overall, for the size of their population, their total number of cases, say in Texas and Florida, are relatively low. But is it - is the worry that that doesn`t tell you what`s going to happen tomorrow?
JHA: Yes, the pattern of this disease is really all about trajectory. It`s about the momentum and how many cases they have had in the previous three and five and seven days. And when I look at Arizona and Florida and Texas, as well as the Carolinas and Arkansas and Alabama, and a handful of other states, I get seriously worried, because what we`re seeing is really pretty sustained substantial increases in the number of cases.
There`s a temptation to say it`s all because of testing; it`s not. And I am worried that the cases really represent an outbreak of infections across these states that we`re going to have to deal with pretty aggressively.
O`DONNELL: What`s going to happen in Tulsa, Oklahoma if the President fills up an arena with 19,000 people and they`re all kind of anti-mask people, shoulder to shoulder?
JHA: Yes, we know that large gatherings are a problem. And of course, people love to point out that protests have also had large gatherings, which is true. But what really worries me about the Tulsa rally is that it`s indoors, which is much higher risk.
I doubt very many people, if anybody, is going to be wearing a mask, which substantially increases the risk, and people are going to be stationary in one place. And so, you can`t predict any one event with certainty. But, I would look at that and I think that`s about as high risk as you can get. I am not sure why the President is subjecting his supporters to that kind of risk.
O`DONNELL: Quickly, doctor, how risky it is for Donald Trump himself? I assume he will separate himself as much as possible up on a stage far away from these people, but how much risk is there to himself?
JHA: Yes, the President has made sure that anybody who comes near him gets tested that day. Whether he`s going to be able to do that at the rally and whether he`s going to make sure that everybody who is near him at all is tested, I don`t know.
Obviously, it`s really important to protect the President. And if he can`t get everyone around him tested, I think this is a risky situation. So he`s going to have to be very careful on - in Tulsa on the 20th.
O`DONNELL: Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
JHA: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you. And when we come back, how much of your money is Donald Trump giving to himself and his family and his friends? Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin do not want you to know the answer to that question. But Congresswoman Katie Porter is on the case, and Congresswoman Porter joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: How much of your money has the President of the United States given himself and his family? Donald Trump`s Secretary of the Treasury says that you have no right to know that. Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are refusing to reveal who got half of a trillion dollars in federal relief money that was supposed to go to so-called small businesses.
The Treasury Secretary is technically in charge of handing out that money. And when Congress was voting on the massive financial relief bill to help businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump and his administration promised that they would tell us everything about what happened to that money, they would account for every single penny.
Now, they are refusing to account for that money, and it seems the only way we will find out how much money Donald Trump took from that fund for himself and his family and his friends, and how much of that money Donald Trump is still handing out to his friends. The only way we are going to find that out is when and if Joe Biden appoints a new Treasury Secretary in January.
Joining us now is Congresswoman Katie Porter, a Democrat representing the 45th District of California. She`s a member of the Oversight and Financial Services Committee. And Congresswoman Porter, I have a feeling you don`t want to wait until the Biden Treasury Secretary pulls back the curtain and reveals all of this. How can you find out before them?
REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): There is nothing at all stopping Secretary Steve Mnuchin, our Secretary of the Treasury from disclosing to us how our taxpayer dollars are being used in the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP, tonight.
He could do it tomorrow. He could do it the day after tomorrow. The only thing in his way is himself. And the suggestion that he might be open to discussion about this is utterly insufficient. We need this data, we need to know where our money is going and whether it`s having the desired effect.
O`DONNELL: He made a statement saying that the reason that they cannot give out this money is that - I`m going to quote him now "We believe that`s proprietary information and in many cases for sole proprietors and small businesses, it is confidential information." What`s your reaction to that?
PORTER: That`s just dead wrong. Let me give you three quick reasons. First, the SBA is a matter of general policy discloses the loans that it makes. So when people borrow from SBA and this is the assumption, we already do this for other kinds of loans, why would we want to do less transparency over these kinds of emergency loans?
Second, the thing is that the application for the PPP actually stated that your name and other information about your business would be disclosed, so there`s no expectation of privacy here.
Third, this is a $650 billion program, the size of the program demands a level of transparency that matches. And while I`m at it, I`ll top it off with a fourth reason, which is we`ve already seen some abuses and some concerns about how this money is being used.
So there`s really a track record here for needing to see all of the loans and being able to understand is this program helping, is it working as intended, or is it being abused?
O`DONNELL: As we watch them try to get away with these things, including the IRS Commissioner not handing over Donald Trump`s tax returns to House Ways and Means Committee as the law insists they must, they all know that they are about now four and a half months away from possibly Joe Biden winning on Election Night and completely changing this dynamic.
I mean, the next administration is going to reveal all of these things. Donald Trump`s tax returns are going to be immediately sent to the House Ways and Means Committee. And do you get the sense that they know what`s going to happen when there`s a new administration?
PORTER: Well, whether they know or not, we can`t afford to wait four and a half months. This is a program that right now is a vital lifeline to our small businesses. And I`m hearing from constituents, they are asking whether we`re going to extend this program, whether we`re going to revise the criteria, and those are not questions that we can answer in a rigorous way, we can`t keep putting taxpayer dollars at risk without having basic data to understand who`s getting this money and whether they`re using it inappropriately.
So we can`t afford to wait around to do something about this. That`s why I have a bill, the PPP, Paycheck Protection Program Transparency Act, which would mandate as a matter of Congressional law that secretary Mnuchin should do what he should do, and what is already in his power already, which is give the American people information about where their hard earned money is going.
O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Porter, I want to take you back to a kind of dramatic moment that you had of many dramatic moments you`ve had in hearings, and this was what the Director of the CDC where you got him on the spot to commit to basically free testing for anyone who needs it. You yourself report that you have been tested and you got a bill for your test.
PORTER: Correct. I got sick at the end of March. I called my provider. I was directed to wait at home, monitor my temperature. When my temperature spiked, I was asked to come in for a test. What I got from my insurance company was the coronavirus test itself was covered, but the flu A and flu B tests, which were part of the hypothetical that I put to CDC Director Redfield and were absolutely necessary tests in order to conduct a COVID test.
You have to rule out flu A and flu B along your way to diagnosing COVID. I was charged for those. I have since heard from the insurance company, and they have reprocessed my claim. But I want to know how many other people this happened to. It is not enough they are fixing my insurance, I want to make sure that they are going back retrospectively and taking care of these kinds of charges for any American.
O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
PORTER: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: When we come back, Mexico is not paying for the wall and Kim Jong-un is not in love with Donald Trump, no matter how many times Donald Trump says that he is in love with the Korean - the North Korean dictator.
North Korea is now sending troops to the border with South Korea and has demolished, physically demolished, reduced to rubble, the one and only symbol of improved relations between North and South Korea. Donald Trump`s failure with North Korea is now total and complete. Ambassador Wendy Sherman joins us next.
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O`DONNELL: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has once again rejected and humiliated Donald Trump. But no one humiliates Donald Trump in his relations with the North Korean dictator more than Donald Trump himself.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: Then we fell in love, okay? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they`re great letters. We fell in love.
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O`DONNELL: Other than the beautiful letters, the only tangible achievement of the Trump approach to North Korea was the building of a liaison office in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, liaison office with South Korea.
And now, North Korea has demolished it, reduced it to rubble. Now that symbol of diplomacy is literally just a pile of rubble. This evening, North Korea announced it will redeploy troops to sites near the border with South Korea.
Joining us now is Ambassador Wendy Sherman. She is the Former Undersecretary of State in the Obama Administration. She is now an MSNBC Global Affairs Contributor. Ambassador Sherman, your reaction to the developments in North Korea.
AMB. WENDY SHERMAN, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS: Well, I think we`ve seen this movie before, Lawrence. North Korea always wants to get attention. Ostensibly, this was about defectors in South Korea sending through balloons literature that was anti-Kim and USBs and other things like that.
But I think it`s really to get the U.S. attention through South Korea. It`s also to deal with the economic problems that North Korea is facing by saying there`s an enemy out there. And finally, I think this is the entrance, the next entrance of Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong- un the current leader in an anticipation that someday North Korea may have a protectorate for Kim Jong-un`s young son, who will in fact rule the country as a woman.
O`DONNELL: We just had the video on the screen beside you of showing this demolition, and it`s a pretty dramatic one. It looks kind of explosive the way it was taken down. Is that - was that visual deliberate for North Korea to make sure that message went out that way?
SHERMAN: Yes, absolutely. It was meant to be spectacular. North Korea doesn`t like to do anything halfway. This was a liaison office that was set up out of a 2018 agreement between the north and the south. Really the closest thing they had gotten to sort of a non-aggression pact.
It had started to fall apart. The office was closed, in fact, because of the COVID crisis in January. But this was a way of saying, we`ve not only cut off communications, which they did a few weeks ago, but now we`re going to blow up the last symbol of our relationship, and now what are you going to do about it?
And as you said, now they`ve said they`re going to move troops at on sea and land to the frontline again and really try to provoke some reaction, sort of crazy as you said when we have this ostensible love fest in Singapore just about two years ago.
O`DONNELL: Well, we can see the Biden campaign commercials about North Korea. We can write them sitting right here with the "I love you" stuff and the "beautiful letter" stuff, and ending with the explosion there that we just saw on the screen. What are you - it`s hard to anticipate this President to say the least, but what can Donald Trump possibly do between now and the election to redirect what has happened with his so-called South Korea - North Korea policy?
SHERMAN: Well, a very interesting thing is going to happen tomorrow. Secretary Pompeo, along with Deputy Secretary Steve Biegun, who is in fact the envoy for North Korea, the one who`s been trying to find a way to negotiate with North Korea, will be in Hawaii to meet with the State Councilor Yang Jiechi of China.
Ostensibly, the Chinese asked for this meeting, though I don`t know whether that`s true. I`m sure that both China and the United States are trying to hold on to the President`s quasi trade deal, which seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth and really not helped out the soybean farmers in the way the President promised it would.
But we`ll see whether in fact the Trump administration can get China to intervene here in some way, and I think Steve was a last minute addition to this meeting, which is happening without press. And I think you all only knew about it because it showed up on their daily schedules.
O`DONNELL: And we will be watching. Ambassador Wendy Sherman gets tonight`s last word. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
SHERMAN: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you. That is tonight`s last word. "The 11th Hour" with Brian Williams starts now.
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