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Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 6/13/22

Guests: Adam Schiff, Raphael Warnock, Barry Berke

Summary

January 6th Committee holds hearing on Trump`s election lies; Second January 6th hearing turns focus to Trump`s false claim that 2020 election was stolen; Senator Warnock on January 6th Committee hearings The special coverage of the January 6th hearings.

Transcript

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: This is going to do it for us for right now, but I want you to know, we`re all going to have a very busy together. I will see you again tomorrow night at 9:00 Eastern for a rare Tuesday edition of "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW". I know.

On Wednesday morning, MSNBC will have special live coverage of the next January 6 hearing. The hearing Wednesday morning starts at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Wednesday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, we will all be right back here with another recap of the day`s hearing. We are pledging to do that the night after every one of the daytime hearings. Watch the hearing when it`s live. But come here to stay with us the night after those hearings, starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

We will recap what happened. You will not miss a thing. So much to do.

But, right now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".

Good evening, Lawrence.

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.

And we have Congressman Adam Schiff here with us tonight. We`re going to ask him your follow-up question about the Georgia investigation. And we have Senator Raphael Warnock. We`ll get his reaction to what he heard today about this state of Georgia in the January 6th hearing.

MADDOW: Go, Lawrence, go.

O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.

MADDOW: Thank you, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

Well, on the day of the second hearing in this historic series of hearings being held by the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, the most important words spoken in Washington today were not in the hearing room but at a podium in the Justice Department, when Attorney General Merrick Garland answered the question that I asked Congressman Adam Schiff after the first hearing last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: I wanted to ask you whether you had a chance to look at the hearings or watch the hearings on Capitol Hill on the January 6th by the January 6 committee, and if you`ve learned anything perhaps that that could be useful in the department -- Justice Department`s work?

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: So I am watching and I will be watching all the hearings although I may not be able to watch all of it live, but I`ll be sure that I`ll be watching all of it. And I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all the hearings as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: After today`s hearing, Congressman Adam Schiff who will be joining our discussion tonight made it very clear that the attorney general and his January 6th prosecutors are the target audience for the committee`s hearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): The Justice Department, they need to be doing their own investigation. They clearly are investigating many of the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, then those who organized or funded them. But as our committee has been demonstrating, there were multiple lines of effort to overturn the election. As the judge in California has said, some of those lines of effort likely involved criminal activity on the part of the president, that needs to be investigated by justice as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: The attorney general explained why he believes that he should not say anything more about the evidence that is being presented to him in these hearings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARLAND: I`m not going to be able to give response, you know, give you an idea of my own personal responses to this or the kind of evidence. That are coming out and, you know, I want to just explain a little bit more, although I did start explaining a little bit more I think the last time we were all together two weeks ago or so press conference. You know, the Justice Department`s long-standing position is that we don`t commenting -- we don`t comment on ongoing investigations. We do that both for the viability of our investigations and because it`s the right thing to do with respect to the civil liberties of people under investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Chris Stirewalt is the only American political reporter in history who has been fired for getting something very important very right. He told the committee today that the superior election modeling worked out by his team of analysts at Fox News allowed them to be the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Donald Trump was enraged when Fox called Arizona for Joe Biden because Donald Trump believed that Fox is not a news network at all and was supposed to be working at all times not in service to the news but in service to Donald Trump.

The fact that Fox worked in service to Donald Trump almost all the time was not good enough for Trump and as it turns out was not good enough for Rupert Murdoch who when the dust cleared after the election fired everyone involved in making the right call on election night that Joe Biden won Arizona. After Chris Stirewalt called Arizona for Joe Biden just before midnight on the east coast on election night, the campaign professionals on the Trump team never had another moment of optimism.

[22:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON MILLER, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: There are suggestions by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani to go declare victory and say that we want it outright.

BILL STEPIEN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days and it was far too early to be making any proclamation like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: But a drunk Rudy Giuliani had a different idea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that the vote counting stop, to falsely claim everything was fraudulent. He falsely told the American people that the election was not legitimate -- in his words, quote, a major fraud. Millions of Americans believed him.

BILL STEPIEN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: A few of us, myself, Jason Miller, Justin Clark and Mark Meadows gathered in a room off the map room to listen to whatever Rudy presumably wanted to say to the president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there anyone in that conversation who in your observation had had too much to drink?

MILLER: Mayor Giuliani.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me more about that. What was your observation about his potential intoxication during that that discussion about what the president should say uh when he`s addressed the nation on election night?

MILLER: And the mayor was definitely intoxicated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And so, Donald Trump, a man who has never been drunk in his life followed the advice of the drunk in the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: This is a fraud on the American public this is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That is what the drunk Rudy Giuliani told Donald Trump to say. And so, a drunk sent a corrupt president of the United States on a collision course with democracy an attempt to rewrite American history, the American history that Joe Biden actually won the presidential election. They were trying to turn that into the drunk history that Donald Trump won.

Donald Trump was repeatedly told by campaign officials and in terms the president could clearly understand by his profane attorney general that everything that drunk Rudy Giuliani was telling Donald Trump was bullshit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: I told him that the stuff that his people were shuttling out to the public where bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I mean, that the claims of fraud were bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED), and, you know, he was indignant about that. And I reiterated that they wasted a whole month on these claims on the Dominion voting machines and they were idiotic claims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That word, of course, was not bleeped during the live delivery of the hearing this morning but there are those who believe you will be so painfully shocked by the sound of that word that they don`t want you to hear it.

When we see the Trump loyalists publicly saying stupid things and appearing deranged, we have a right to wonder whether that is all an act. But with Peter Navarro, we know it`s not an act, according to the testimony of Alex Cannon who was a campaign Trump campaign lawyer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When did you talk to Mr. Navarro?

ALEX CANNON, FORMER CAMPAIGN LAWYER: Mid-November.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Around the same time as Mr. Meadow?

CANNON: Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And tell me about that conversation.

CANNON: I recall him asking me questions about Dominion and maybe some other categories of allegations of voter fraud. And I remember telling him that I didn`t believe the Dominion allegations because I thought the hand recount in Georgia would resolve any issues with a technology problem and with Dominion or Dominion flipping votes.

And I mentioned at that time that the CISA Chris Krebs had recently released a report saying that the election was secure.

[22:10:03]

And I believe Mr. Navarro accused me of being an agent of the deep state working with Chris Krebs against the president. And I never took another phone call from Mr. Navarro.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And joining us now, Barry Berke who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Donald Trump`s first impeachment trial and chief impeachment council during Donald Trump`s second impeachment trial.

Also with us, Neal Katyal; former acting U.S. solicitor general and MSNBC legal analyst.

Neal, you`ve had experience in your career working in the Justice Department. That moment with Merrick Garland today was for me his most fascinating moment yet in what is Merrick Garland and what are his prosecutors doing?

What did you make of what he had to say about he -- the attorney general was watching every minute of the hearings and what he called the January 6th prosecutors are all watching all of the hearings?

NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, Lawrence. Merrick Garland is by the book, he always has been and that the remarks today reflect that. And you know, my hope has always been that Garland has settled on a strategy and the strategy is rooted in the fact that this is by no means a normal investigation in a normal investigation the Justice Department picks up the ball and runs with it right away.

But here, you`ve had a coordinate branch of government, Congress, that was attacked. Their own people died, their sacred soil was invaded, and Congress is always, of course, going to investigate what happened on January 6th. And so, Garland could have decided let them develop the facts have the hearings -- the hearings will also serve an important function of priming the public, socializing them to the case against Trump, and Garland could decide that that`s better to have that bipartisan congressional set of hearings first and only then have the Justice Department investigate.

And the way, Lawrence, I think about this is like when I do a Supreme Court argument. There`s three audiences. There`s the nine decision makers, the justices, there`s the public and most abstractly there`s the eyes of history.

And the same thing is true here. We focus a lot in the media, on the public audience, the 20 million viewers like more than the World Series and so on, but there`s two other audiences. One`s the one you`re asking about, Merrick Garland, and the others at the Justice Department, and the other is the eyes of history.

And the hearings today and this is why I think garland`s watching them so closely and everyone else is because they allow a way to bridge all three audiences. It`s not just a handful of prosecutors now, the tenth of Pennsylvania, but it`s another whole branch of government develop developing these facts and these facts show, whoa, Trump`s almost entire inner circle is now flipped against him. I mean, Barr -- Bill Barr was as team Trump as they come, I mean, far more so than Trump`s own wife or his own vice president and here from -- Bill Barr is putting the knife into Donald Trump. Hard for Merrick Garland to ignore it.

O`DONNELL: Barry Berke, what were the highlights of the hearing today for you?

BARRY BERKE, FORMER HOUSE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY CHIEF COUNSEL: To me, it was a continuation of the narrative. You know, it was Mark twain who said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth is lacing its shoes. And that is true. That`s why so many people have believed Donald Trump`s lie because it takes time to disprove it.

Today, the committee helped the truth catch up and surpass the lie. They did it the easy way rather than try to show the complex ways that this election was so fair, the lies of Trump so obviously fabricated, the conspiracies far-fetched. They had Trump`s own people say it, and not only explain why they all saw -- how they all told him.

So all in all, it was clear that they really showed through Trump`s own people the loyal sergeants who I experienced during the first impeachment, how they stood by him and defended the indefensible. Here, they said enough, a line has been crossed. We will defend democracy and they showed how Trump has defraud people about his defeat, their democracy and their dollars, which is also important because people respond to that. Democracy is complex and abstract, they`re dollars. They understand.

So I think all in all, it was a great day to really show the lie. And to Neal`s point, from the attorney general, they helped to show criminal intent which is often the biggest challenge particularly in this case where they have Trump`s own words on tape and tweets and interviews, and now, they know that he knew this was a fraud. He knew it because everybody told them where it was, all the people he relied on in his campaign and administration.

O`DONNELL: Let`s take a look at what the attorney general had today because he -- one phrase he used might be a criminal defense lifeline of that the president might want to use and that`s the notion that Donald Trump had become detached from reality. Now, let`s listen to this point by Attorney General Barr.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with -- he`s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.

On the other hand, you know, when I went into this and would, you know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never -- there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were. And my opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Neal, he says if he really believes this stuff then he`s detached from reality and then he goes on to say on the other hand, I mean, he`s making a counter point to this, and he says, whenever I told him about the truth about these things, he never seemed interested in the actual facts.

And it seems to me you could make the argument that if Donald Trump really believed this stuff and Bill Barr said it`s all bullshit, it`s all crazy talk, it`s all this stuff that billboard keeps saying, Donald Trump would say, but look at this, look at this, look at this, he would argue it out. He wasn`t attempting to convince any sane person that this was true.

KATYAL: Yes, Lauren. So Trump`s defense both legally and politically has always been, I genuinely believed I won the election and that`s why the testimony today was so significant. As Barry says, this is now not like the Democrats words or something like that. This is Trump`s own inner circle.

Bill Barr saying, dude, you lost and everyone told you you lost and every time you brought rumor after rumor to us about election fraud, we looked at them, we told you they were all bogus. And who did you listen to in the end? An inebriated Rudy Giuliani.

That is not going to be a defense to the extent there are criminal charges. There`s that`s not going to be a viable defense for Donald Trump except maybe I don`t know the insanity defense or something like that. But it`s not going to show that he didn`t have the intent to have an agreement because it looks very much like what prosecutors call willful blindness, that he just wanted to close his eyes and ears to the facts on the ground in order to claim that he genuinely believed he won.

O`DONNELL: Barry Berke, how do you see it? At this stage of the evidence, the president`s mind, are we seeing willful blindness as Neal just mentioned?

BERKE: I think Neal`s right. Willful blindness is the easy way. But I think you have more, because he -- the through line, going back to the Russia investigation, continuing through everything leading the campaign, the false claims, he is detached from any reality at all times when that reality is against his personal and financial interests. So I don`t think he`s detached from reality. He just refuses to believe anything that would go against him. So he refuses to accept it.

And that`s very common in criminal cases. People don`t want to believe things that hurt their chances. So his defense to a fraud can`t be, well, I wanted to believe it because otherwise, I`m a loser. Otherwise, I can`t shake down people for hundreds of millions of dollars.

That is not a defense and I think the line of witnesses who would be available at any sort of trial to lay out how they told them again and again and again, and the fact that today, he does it again and repeats the lie shows it because now we`re at a point where Sidney Powell, his chief purveyor of the falsehood, admitted in the Dominion lawsuit that nobody could believe that, that the Venezuelan dictator came out from the grave to affect the election. It`s crazy talk.

So I think in terms of a trial to take that on, you can show that he knew this wasn`t true, but he refused to acknowledge it because it went against his interest. And Donald Trump only wanted to do what`s in his personal and financial interests.

O`DONNELL: Barry Berke and Neal Katyal, thank you very much for starting off our coverage of the hearing tonight. Really appreciate it.

And coming up, Congressman Adam Schiff, a member of the January 6 committee, will join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:23:39]

O`DONNELL: Here is former Attorney General William Barr`s testimony on a meeting he had with Donald Trump three weeks after Election Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: The president said there had been major fraud and that as soon as the facts were out, the results of the election would be reversed. And he went on on this for quite a while, as he`s prone to do. And then he got to something that I was expecting which is to say that apparently the Department of Justice doesn`t think that it has a role of looking into these fraud claims. So I said, you know, that has to be the campaign that raises that with the state, the department doesn`t take sides in elections and the department is not an extension of your legal team and our role is to investigate fraud.

And if we`ll look at something, if it`s -- if it`s specific, credible and could have affected the outcome of the election and we`re doing that, and it`s just not -- they`re not -- they`re just not meritorious. They`re not panning out..

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California. He`s chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he`s a member of the January 6th Select Committee, and served as the lead impeachment manager for the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the Senate.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Mr. Chairman.

[22:25:02]

There was a an amazing amount of detail today from William Barr about all sorts of investigating that FBI agents were doing around the country, including in Georgia because the president of the United States was upset with the election result and so we see the attorney general calling the U.S. attorney in Georgia to talk about certain things and then he talks about this election. And then, suddenly, FBI agents are going to investigate election workers in Georgia and ask them questions because the president is perturbed.

Now, the attorney general reports back to the president that there`s nothing there. But we saw all of the machinery of the Justice Department going to work for this president in the aftermath of the election.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, Lawrence, that`s right. And I remember at the time that the attorney general said that he was going to look into these allegations, having serious questions about whether the party was doing this only because the president wanted the department to do it and to give some kind of, you know, substance to these bogus claims of fraud.

And I was particularly struck I have to say by the attorney general`s comments in that clip you just aired where he was relating how he told the president that the justice department wasn`t an extension of his legal team. Well, when he intervened in Roger Stone sentencing and when he intervened to make the case against Michael Flynn go away, he certainly seemed to be an extension of the president`s legal team.

But like so many people, Lawrence, in the Trump administration, they reached the point and Bill Barr got there very late, but he got there where he could go no further to, you know, to support the immoral acts of this president. So, he drew a line now, it was a very late coming, but I`m glad it came when it did, but yes, it was very controversial even what he did do in investigating these claims without really more than the president`s badgering as a primary motivation.

O`DONNELL: Earlier tonight in our coverage, Rachel Maddow was making the point to me about the references to the Georgia investigation into specifically this with former U.S. Attorney Pak who then there was this sudden and dramatic resignation that we didn`t understand at the time, in the -- in the aftermath of this election. He was suddenly out of there.

And Rachel specifically asked me to ask you if that is actually going to be a subject of future hearings, that are we going to hear more about U.S. Attorney Pak and how he left and more generally about the Georgia investigation.

SCHIFF: You know, it`s a great question, Lawrence, and I`m not in a position where I can tell the answer yet. We certainly have more information about the circumstances in which he was forced out of office or forced out prematurely, but I can`t comment into whether at what point we`ll be sharing that.

You know, I do think that this whole issue of the president`s claims about Georgia and, of course, other states, the degree to which when he didn`t get the answers he wanted his impulse was always to try to get rid of people, to get rid of this U.S. attorney, to get rid of the attorney general. Of course, there was a whole entertaining of the scheme to put Jeffrey Clark in the position of attorney general, but he couldn`t get the other leadership to do it.

So this is a president who would basically fire people when they wouldn`t follow his corrupt instructions.

O`DONNELL: Chairman Thompson indicated earlier tonight that it seemed like he had decided not to make any criminal referrals to the Justice Department after that became public. Liz Cheney tweeted the January 6 Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time. What is your understanding about that?

SCHIFF: Well, I think Liz is right. We, you know, we have from time to time I think in ones and twos talk with each other about this issue. But we haven`t really had a full committee discussion, let alone reached resolution on it. And this is the kind of decision we need to make as a committee. So I`m confident we will make that decision at the appropriate point and weigh all the equities.

You know, we obviously have a different responsibility than the Justice Department, but there are appropriate times where we do make criminal referrals, we make them when people are in contempt of Congress but even more broadly than that we have on occasion made referrals where we have discovered evidence that we think a crime has been committed and that should be related to the Justice Department. So I think it`s still very much a matter for the committee to deliberate and decide at the appropriate point.

[22:30:00]

O`DONNELL: I want to take a look at Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon and his testimony about a conversation he had with Vice President Pence that he described, let`s listen to this conversation he had with Vice President Pence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX CANNON, FORMER CAMPAIGN LAWYER FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: He asked what I was doing on the campaign, and I told him that, we were looking into some of the issues related to voter fraud. And he asked me, I don`t remember his exact words, but he asked me if we were finding anything. And I said that I didn`t believe we were finding it or I was not personally finding anything sufficient to alter the results of the election. And he thanked me. That was our interaction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That is quite a contrast between the vice president and the president to the same information.

SCHIFF: It absolutely is. You`re the Vice President, is asking you, what have you learned? He gets an answer. He thanks the person for the answer, of course, you`ve got a very different reaction from Donald Trump. But as Attorney General Barr indicated, when Attorney General Barr said that he found no, they`re, they`re effectively and Donald Trump, obviously wouldn`t take that for an answer. And we see this played out time and time again, I think Barry Burke, who you just spoke with had it exactly right. Donald Trump is guided by two things, his personal interest, his financial interest, anything that comes into conflict with, he won`t accept. Now that doesn`t mean he doesn`t know fact from fiction.

I think it means that he`s just going to state it as he would like it to be, disregarding the contrary information, lie he needs to, lie if it helps him. And frankly, I think in Trump world and his mind, anyone who doesn`t lie like he is, is just a sucker and a loser

O`DONNELL: Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you very much for joining us after your very busy day. We really appreciate it.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

O`DONNELL: And coming up Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock will join us with his reaction to new revelations today about the FBI`s investigation of the presidential election in Georgia. That`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:00]

O`DONNELL: The day before the January 6th attack on the Capitol was Election Day in Georgia with two Senate seats at stake. Reverend Raphael Warnock was the first Senate candidate to be declared a winner in Georgia at 11:13 PM, by the time Jon Ossoff, was declared the winner of the next day giving Democrats control of the Senate. The joy of victory and the excitement of going to Washington to work in the Capitol was eclipsed by the madness and violence of the Trump mob attacking the Capitol and attacking democracy in itself.

In his new book, Senator Warnock writes the racist overtones of Trump`s claim that the election was stolen are clear, African Americans, many of whom were newly registered, showed up at the polls in unprecedented numbers for both the November 2020 presidential race and the Georgia Senate races and those votes played a crucial role in unseating and incredulous Trump in sending me and Jon Ossoff to the Senate.

The former president continued claims of widespread voter fraud are just his way of saying that the votes of certain people don`t count, can`t count, and can`t be real because the election outcome was not consistent with the myth of white supremacy.

The day of my runoff election, and the day afterward both tell us critical things about America today, January 5th represents the hope of an America moving closer to our ideal, but January 6th reveals the dark, ugly underbelly. Both are true.

And joining us now is Democratic Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock of Georgia, his new book, A Way Out of No Way, A Memoir of Truth, Transformation and the New American Story is out and available for purchase tomorrow. Senator Warnock, thank you very much for being here.

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Thank you.

O`DONNELL: First time in studio. Very exciting.

WARNOCK: Thank you. Good to be here with you in person.

O`DONNELL: So, Georgia was a small piece of the testimony today in the two hours, but crucial piece. There`s the testimony of former U.S. Attorney pack Republican appointed U.S. attorney being asked by William Barr to investigate what Rudy Giuliani is saying about Georgia, which sounds crazy to Barr and they actually send FBI agents out to talk to those election workers in Atlanta, which had to be a pretty intimidating moment for those election workers.

And it gets reported back that there was nothing wrong down there. But it seems like that this power - this grab of the election was coming not just through Brad Raffensperger and the phone call to him, but they were trying to go through FBI agents from the Justice Department.

WARNOCK: Thank you so much. It`s great to be here. And listen, we`re in a serious moment. Our democracy is on the line and I`ve had the privilege as I see it, to be in the fight and engaged in this moment. As you point out, we saw this violent attack on the Capitol January 6th.

[22:40:00]

The night before my election was called January 5th and both say something important about America.

On January 5th, Georgia did an amazing thing. And it`s a deep honor for me that the people of Georgia stood up, sent their first African American senator to the United States Senate, a kid who grew up in public housing, and also its first Jewish Senator to the United States Senate and in one fell swoop, I think somewhere in glory Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel are dancing because when they marched in Selma, another moment of struggle, in which we had to move closer towards our democracy - when Rabbi Herschel and Dr. King marched, they marched alongside one another,

Rabbi Heschel said I felt like my legs were praying. And that`s what we needed a moment like this. We need people engaged in the struggle, because as you know, the next day a violent assault on the Capitol, racist and anti-Semitic signs traffic through our Capitol. Police brutalize and this is just another America moment, where we got - where we get to decide are we going to give in to the forces of division, people who have no vision engage in division, they don`t know how to lead us. And so, they`re trying to divide us, trying to chop us up.

My work has always been about bringing us together, creating and building a way out of no way. And that`s the work that all of us have to do it a moment like this.

O`DONNELL: What was it like for you, you have that enormous victory and huge win at 11:15, 11:20 PM on January 5th, about 14 hours after that. Your new workplace that you haven`t reported to yet.

WARNOCK: Right.

O`DONNELL: But you`ve grown up your whole life looking at that building, as we all have, from our distance, it`s under attack. What was that like for you as a newly elected senator to be in Georgia and watching that on television?

WARNOCK: Well, the night I was elected, I was thinking about my mom, she was sheltering in, down in Savannah, Georgia, we didn`t want her to come up because of the pandemic. And here I had been elected a United States Senator and I was thinking about my mom, because she grew up in Waycross, Georgia, and picking somebody else`s cotton, somebody else`s tobacco in the 1950s. And here are the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else`s cotton and somebody else`s tobacco. In this new emerging, America could pick her youngest son to be a United States Senator. And so yes, I was disturbed as I saw what was unfolding the very next day.

But when I think about my mom and people of her generation, when I think about John Lewis, who was my parishioner, which is why I talk about him so much in the book, and I was his pastor, but he was my mentor. I feel like even as difficult as these days are, this is what I`m clear about. We have no right to give up. We have no right to give in to the forces of cynicism and division that are trying to take hold of our democracy. We`ve seen dark and difficult days before.

But the Scripture tells us that the light shines in the darkness, it`s not that the darkness won`t come, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness overcometh it not. Democracy is not a noun. It`s a verb, we got to fight for our democracy, which is the highest expression of our collective humanity as an American people, you pluribus unum, out of many, one, all of the things that we care about happen within the framework of our democracy. People have to have a voice.

I sometimes say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children. And our prayers are stronger when we pray together. So, we have to keep the faith, keep trying to make a way out of nowhere.

O`DONNELL: Well, one thing I realized, as you say that that where it is similar to prayer is prayers are not answered immediately. They`re not answered instantly. Prayer is a patient process.

WARNOCK: Oh, absolutely. Here again, I think about John Lewis, I had the honor of presiding over his funeral at my church where I still preach every Sunday, Ebenezer Baptist Church without King preached. I presided over John Lewis`s funeral while I was running for the Senate. And as I was preparing for that, I was watching the footage of him crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge, nine Americans struggle for the basic right to vote. And I asked myself, what was John Lewis thinking, young man with a trench coat on, knapsack on crossing this bridge, police officers with billy clubs on the other side of the bridge.

I don`t know what he was thinking. But here`s what I know. He was not thinking that at the end of his life, he`d have a grand funeral.

[22:45:00]

O`DONNELL: Right.

WARNOCK: And there`d be three American presidents there on both sides of the aisle. He wasn`t thinking that he`d be the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I think he was just trying to stay alive that day in order to fight the next day, and somehow by some stroke of destiny mingled with human sacrifice and determination, he was able to begin the moral arc of the universe toward justice.

This is another one of those moments, it`s a moral moment. We need people who are not thinking about themselves. We need politicians who are not thinking so much about the politics of the next election. But the stakes of the next generation.

O`DONNELL: I want to keep this conversation going. But I owe the network a commercial break. Please stay with us. We`ll be back with Senator Warnock right after this.

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[22:50:00]

O`DONNELL: Senator Raphael Warnock is once again running against a pro- Trump candidate. In a recent poll, Senator Warnock leads former football player Republican Herschel Walker by five points 50 to 45 in Georgia and Senator Warnock is back with us. In your campaign, are you worried in this next election about what you`re learning in the January 6th committee hearings about what Republicans have been trying to do to the vote?

WARNOCK: Well, I`ve been working on this issue of voter suppression for a very long time. My church registers people to vote, because I see it as a spiritual undertaking as well. And I think we have to remain vigilant. Our democracy goes through these moments where it expands and sometimes it contracts. But even contractions open the possibility for new birth, a new world, in this case, a new emerging American electorate, which sent me and Jon Ossoff to the United States Senate. And so, we just have to remain vigilant.

O`DONNELL: Your campaign last time, I was the first - my first specific knowledge of it was seeing a campaign ad from you. And it was just so very direct. And so, it was a very clear presentation of you as a human being and a politician at the same time. You`re running as Herschel Walker, who I`ve heard public comments from, and I haven`t understood one. I haven`t understood a single thing he said. What kind of challenge does that represent? Because running against a traditional candidate, you can actually take things they say about a specific policy, and counter that. What is the counter to the Herschel Walker candidacy?

WARNOCK: I think the people of Georgia have a real choice in front of them, about who`s ready to represent them in the United States Senate. And on that score, I`m proud of the work that I`ve done. To pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill is the largest infrastructure package passed in the generation. We passed the largest - the single largest tax cut for working and middle class families in American history. And right now, I`m focused on lowering the cost of insulin in a state where one in 12 people have diabetes, one in $4, in our health care system is spent on somebody with diabetes.

And so, this is not theoretical stuff for me. I told you, I go back to my church, and I still preach and lead that congregation. So, when I`m trying to cap the cost of insulin, I`m thinking about the families I`ve sat with first, as a pastor, when diabetes was not managed, a lot of people are rationing their insulin. So, I`ve been there when people have gotten the sad news that they have to have an amputation because of complications related to diabetes, or they have to go on dialysis. And I`ve tried to bring that kind of compassion and commitment to the work I do in the Senate and I`m honored to do it every single day.

O`DONNELL: When I was working in the Senate for years, I saw many senators deliver their first Senate speech, and it`s not something they do right away, you usually hang back sometimes for several months before standing up there and doing that for a Senate speech. For every senator, I saw do it most imposing moment of that person`s life. When I think of you going into that imposing Senate chamber for that first speech, I wonder, what was more imposing standing on that floor for the first time to deliver a speech or standing in the pulpit that used to be occupied by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his church, where you became pastor, and you have to deliver a sermon there. And I won`t even say attempt to fill those shoes, but attempt to fill that church of all churches with your message.

WARNOCK: There`s no question that Dr. King has been a leading light of inspiration for me. I was born a year after Dr. King`s death. But in a real sense, I went to Morehouse College, his alma mater, largely because that`s the school Dr. King attended. My folks couldn`t really afford it. The year I went, the tuition room and board was equal to my parents income, but I was determined to go to the school that Dr. King attended. I had no idea I`d end up leading the church that he led. And in that church standing in that tradition, some would see it as a burden. For me, it`s been a foundation and strength to do the work that I care about anyway.

We`ve continued to focus on voting rights, criminal justice reform, standing up for poor people, making sure working people have a livable wage, standing up for a sustainable planet and a just country.

[22:55:00]

And now I get to do that work in the United States Senate to move from being preacher and protester to make Republic policy. For me, it`s one continuing work. And it doesn`t matter whether I`m in the pulpit or on the floor of the Senate. If you ask my friends, it all sounds like a sermon.

O`DONNELL: I should have left this up during the entire discussion, because when you want to know more about everything Senator Warnock has to say about his life and his experience. It`s all in this book, A Way Out of No Way. That is Senator Warnock`s new book, it is available tomorrow. Thank you very much for joining us. Please come back whenever you can. Really appreciate it.

WARNOCK: Thank you.

O`DONNELL: Thank you. We`ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Senator Raphael Warnock got tonight`s last word. His book is titled A Way Out of No Way and it is available tomorrow. The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle starts now.

STEPHANIE RUHLE, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, from the big lie to the big rip off, damning new testimony from Trump.