Summary
The January 6 Select Committee subpoenaed Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. A January 6th defendant who insisted he will defend himself on the court wound up admitting to two more felonies that he started out with. Today, President Biden gave a speech addressing the supply chain issue but also touting the fact that part of his Build Back Better agenda is an investment in ports, investment in infrastructure, investment in domestic manufacturing. Cheerleaders demand NFL release the full workplace inquiry.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Josh Shapiro who`s been at the forefront of the fight against the big lie joins me in his first national interview since launching his campaign for governor. Thank you all for joining us tonight. That should be a hot one. Vote, vote, vote in Virginia. Vote in Virginia. It`s very important. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN. Big news from the January 6th Committee on the man at the heart of Donald Trump`s coup attempt in the Justice Department.
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): He`s the central person in this saga, and at some point, his testimony is going to be obtained.
HAYES: Plus, how federal judges are stepping up and leading the way on the prosecution of January 6th insurrectionists.
Then, the White House addresses the shortage of everything.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today we have some good news. We`re going to help speed up the delivery of goods all across America.
HAYES: Tonight, from backed up ports to flights on planes, to workers walking off jobs. America`s search for a new post-pandemic normal. All that and the Washington football team cheerleaders still seeking justice in the wake of Jon Gruden`s firing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s high time that this was exposed and that the NFL takes action.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Just hours ago, the January 6 Select Committee issued a brand new subpoena. This one for Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. We`ve talked about Clark before on this program. He is a key figure.
Clark is a lifelong Republican lawyer, served in private practice and the George W. Bush DOJ. Nothing particularly remarkable about his career. He became the acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ`s Civil Division which is a very big job at the very end of Donald Trump`s term. That was when a lot of people were fleeing, right?
Once Trump lost the election, Jeffrey Clark became one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice, pushing the Justice Department to play its role in Trump`s attempts to overturn the election. Clark even reportedly plotted directly with Trump to oust the Acting Attorney General, that was Jeffrey Rosen at the time, and take his job.
The Senate Judiciary Committee detailed some of Clark`s actions in that bombshell report last week. They pointed out that he met with Trump personally, then urged the Department of Justice leadership to intervene in the Georgia election. He drafted a kind of template later, a letter for the Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, to send to Georgia titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" basically telling them, look the DOJ is investigating voter fraud, and you should just hold off on signing your electors or maybe tell the state legislators that they could sign whatever electors they want. And then he suggested if he replicate it in each relevant state.
This was basically the DOJ using the power of the Department of Justice of the United States government to intervene in the states and give them cover to overturn the election and send Trump electors to Washington.
By early January, Clark`s pressure had turned into this crazy outright threat, his own kind of coup within a coup within the Department of Justice. Again, according to the Judiciary report, Clark eventually informed Acting Attorney General Rosen, again, this is his boss, that Trump had offered to install him in Rosen`s place and told Rosen he would turn down Trump`s offer if Rosen would agree to sign that proof-of-concept letter.
Clark has denied he plotted to overthrow Rosen, but according to the report, Trump and Clark only backed off -- there were a number of meetings, a three-hour meeting at one point, after several senior Justice Department leaders basically banded together and said we will all resign in protest if you do this and the fallout from that will overshadow what you`re trying to do.
In fact, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen who whose role in all this has been fascinating to see -- you remember, William Barr just like handed him this flaming wreckage of the Justice Department and peaced out with a letter about how great Trump was. Rosen just testified to the January 6 Select Committee today voluntarily. He didn`t have to be subpoenaed. He went and answered questions. It looks like it was about eight hours.
Well, now, the Committee wants to hear from Trump`s apparent pick to replace him. That would be Mr. Jeffrey Clark. And so, they sent Clark a subpoena today asking him to produce documents and appear before the committee itself on October 29th. If he does appear, it would shed a whole lot of light on what exactly happened to the Justice Department in the last days of the Trump Administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WHITEHOUSE: Obviously he`s a person of interest. He`s the central person in this saga. And at some point in the committee, before a grand jury someplace, his testimony is going to be obtained.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, the Senate Judiciary Committee -- you saw Sheldon Whitehouse there talking to Rachel. He`s a member of that committee. They says they tried -- they say they tried to get Clark to sit down for a voluntary interview with them over the summer but he did not respond.
According to Politico, he also has yet to field questions from Congressional investigators scrutinizing Trump`s final weeks in office. His lawyer declined to comment on the subpoena.
Betsy Woodruff Swann reported out the Jeffrey Clark story for Politico, broke the news of Jeffrey Rosen`s testimony today and she joins me now. Betsy, this was uh not necessarily unanticipated but still a big deal and this is a very big central figure in this entire thing, and I think someone who`s going to not be cavalier about violating subpoenas if I had to guess.
[20:05:35]
BETSY WOODRUFF SWANNM, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: It`s -- the January 6th story is very much in terms of this particular episode a tale of two Jeffs. We know a ton about Jeff Rosen`s perspective. He`s actually been unusually forthcoming regarding just about everything he knows from his time running the Justice Department through a historically chaotic moment.
We know based on -- I know based on conversations with folks throughout the day that one of the key focuses now for the January 6th Select Committee, one thing that they really pressed Rosen on when he was testifying was Clark`s role. Lots of questions about who Clark was working with, whether he was working with people in the Justice Department as well as who he was working with outside the Justice Department. Questions about the way Clark was connected to strategies to try to get the Supreme Court to step in and overturn the election as well, of course, as lots of questions regarding this effort to tell the state legislatures falsely that the FBI had found meaningful evidence of voter fraud so that those state legislatures would somehow try to step in.
Clark is really the key next figure for the Select Committee to talk to. What`s really interesting about him though is that several months ago, Trump actually greenlit Clark`s testimony to Congress. He wrote a letter a couple months back saying that a number of senior DOJ officials, Clark included, that he would be OK with them testifying, that he would not try to use executive privilege to block their testimony.
Trump said in that letter, I`m only going to be OK with it if there aren`t other future violations of executive privilege etcetera, etcetera. But there`s on paper, there`s a letter from Trump saying Jeffrey Clark can testify. And it`s still a bit of a head-scratcher to me why that testimony from Clark hasn`t happened, especially now that the clock frankly, there`s just less time than there was a couple of months ago to get that interview set up.
So, I would certainly expect the Select Committee to move as quickly and aggressively as possible if Clark doesn`t comply with their subpoena in part because they`ve got it in writing. Trump is saying that he`s OK with Clark testifying.
HAYES: All right, Betsy Woodruff Swan, great reporting. Thank you very much.
I want to turn now to Harry Litman, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice, host of the Talking Feds Podcast as well as the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania along with Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Harry, let me start with you on Clark and compliance here. It does seem to Betsy`s point, there`s no real colorable claim here of executive privilege, particularly when the President has already written a letter saying not so. And, you know October 29th, like, someone`s going to have to -- as Sheldon Whitehouse said, someone is going to have to hear from him.
HARRY LITMAN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Yes. First, I`m not sure that`s right. I mean, we have eight conversations documented with Trump before the big showdown on January 3rd. They strike me actually unlike many of the other conversations at issue like Steve Bannon as having a fairly good claim of executive privilege. And it doesn`t matter what Trump said before. He will take it back.
But Clark has a lot more pressure on him than these other guys. He first of all is go is being pilloried now from all corners. He lost his job in the last couple days. Rosen testified for 10 hours and you can bet he absolutely crucified him. Same with Donoghue, the Acting Deputy Attorney General.
Everything is going to be pinned on him. He`s not -- look, he has potential liability for violating DOJ rules, as you said. There`s an inspector general investigation. BAR rules, there`s a BAR complaint. He could lose his license which he`s too young to do, and criminal.
So, if he let`s everyone else do the talking and stays quiet, it`s -- he`s in the soup. On the other hand, if he comes forward, he`s in all kinds of trouble too. It`s obviously not going to be a friendly committee. You could see that from Sheldon Whitehouse. So, I think the pressure on him is greater though the initial claim of executive privilege is stronger.
HAYES: Yes. So, there`s a lot of moving parts on this too. You`ve got the White House now reiterating again, Barbara McQuade, that they`re -- you know, they -- and to be clear, the White House has upheld executive privilege in a whole bunch of areas in which -- that essentially protect Trump.
I mean, there`s some stuff having to do with the Mueller report that they have upheld executive privilege, but they are very specifically -- Dana Remus, council of president saying look, we don`t assert privilege here, reiterating that again today. The President maintains his conclusion on assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interest of the United States.
These are documents in the Trump administration, Barbara. It seems like those are going to be moving on their way soon as well barring some unforeseen intervention.
[20:10:23]
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: I think that`s right, Chris. The executive privilege belongs to the sitting president not to a prior president. So, Donald Trump can recommend that privilege be asserted as to these documents or as to testimony. But ultimately, the decision belongs to the current president.
And the decision isn`t to protect the interests of any person who served as president but to protect the office of the presidency and the republic. And of course, as we learned in the U.S. versus Nixon case back in the Watergate Era, the executive privilege is not absolute. And it must yield when there is a greater interest.
PresidentBiden has said that there is a greater interest here in learning what happened in the January 6th insurrection than any executive privilege. So, I think ultimately we are going to hear from people like Jeffrey Clark and others about what happened in those days leading up to January 6th.
HAYES: There`s also a big showdown scheduled for tomorrow on Bannon, Harry, and I wanted to talk about this. So, there`s four people that were initially subpoenaed, Meadows, Dan Scavino, Kash Patel, and Steve Bannon, right?
Now, Bannon, you know, wasn`t even -- like, wasn`t a part of the White House. He was an informal advisor. He`s saying there`s an executive privilege claim by the ex-president to a guy who wasn`t formally part of the government, very, very weak. He has not been in contact with the committee, says basically I`m just going to violate your subpoena.
Raskin today saying, I`m looking forward to Steve Bannon`s deposition tomorrow receiving all the testimony evidence we subpoenaed. This is a legal order as well as a civic duty to share info about the most sweeping violent attack on Congress since the war of 1812. Something`s going to happen tomorrow one way or the other, and then it`s going to be a question of what the Department of Justice -- what the Committee does and what DOJ does if he doesn`t show up, right?
LITMAN: Yes, but then what the courts do? Something is going to happen. I`ll tell you what it is. Bannon won`t show up. And Barbara is 100 percent right about the law. It does belong to the sitting president. But the point is, are they able to play roll the same slow game that they did with the impeachment.
Bannon is a very good example. he`s got a very weak claim as you say. It`s been years since he was even in the department. But if he goes to court, we have this terrible disconnect between the natural timeline of a case, 18 months to two years, and the natural timeline of an investigation.
So, what matters now are not the bona fides of the claim, but if they can get away with slow-rolling it in the courts. That`s the question. What I was saying before about Clark is he has less reason to do it, more incentive maybe to come forward. But the issue is not what -- who has privilege. The issue is can they get into a court?
HAYES: Well, and Barbara this is where it strikes me that pressure, maximalism, maintaining it, pushing ahead, doing what you need to do, if you truly believe what the folks in this committee say they believe which is that they`re investigating the worst act on the capital since 1812, the most you know, egregious violation of democratic transfer of power since Fort Sumter, that you have to use the means at your disposal to get the testimony you need.
MCQUADE: I think that`s right. And Congress has three methods for compelling testimony when someone defies a subpoena. You know, one is this inherent power calling upon the sergeant of arms. That`s the one that William Barr joked with Nancy Pelosi about where are your handcuffs. I think most of us know that`s not going to happen.
There`s been a lot of talk about criminal contempt of actually charging with a crime and getting the Justice Department to do that which is a possibility. But I think what you really want is the testimony. And the most effective way to get that I think is through a civil suit as Harry says, asking court to act with some urgency because the penalty there is he could be jailed until he decides to cooperate and testify.
HAYES: He always sort of wait out the 18 months on a Chinese billionaire`s yacht. Harry Litman and Barbara McQuade, thank you very much.
LITMAN: Thank you.
HAYES: Here`s a piece of advice just for me unprompted should you find yourself in court and you have a thought I bet I could represent myself better than a lawyer could. And the judge literally tells you, I don`t think this is a good idea. You should probably listen to judge or you could end up like one January 6th defendant who insisted he defend himself only to wind up admitting to two more felonies that he started out with. The wild details from that hearing and the judges holding rioters accountable after this.
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[20:15:00]
HAYES: Nine months have passed since the January 6 insurrection and more and more of the nearly 700 people charged in connection with it are starting to get their day in court. Here`s one individual. For instance, Brandon Fellows. He`s a 26-year-old from Albany, New York. He faces a felony charge for obstruction in connection with the riot.
He showed up to the January 6 insurrection dressed like this wearing a fake red beard and a USA coat. And here he is inside what prosecutors say is Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley`s office where, according to his criminal complaint, he smoked marijuana which is not too different from what he told the CNN reporter at the scene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We spoke to some people who broke into the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Literally just what happened in there. Tell us what happened.
BRANDON FELLOWS, CAPITOL RIOTER: Yes, we went in there and then I walked in and there`s just a whole bunch of people lighting up in some Oregon room. I don`t know if it`s an -- just tons of Oregon paintings but they were smoking a bunch of weed in there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So that guy was in court this week trying to get his bond status revoked. And against the advice of the judge, he chose to represent himself. He then accidentally admitted to two additional felonies. In cross-examination, a lawyer for the government got him to admit under oath that he had climbed into the Capitol through a broken window and that he had tried to get the previous judge on the case removed by putting that judge`s wife`s phone number as his emergency contact, and that he had missed court-ordered mental health and drug testing appointments.
At the end of this nearly two-hour episode, the judge in question told him "you`ve engaged in a pattern of behaviors that shows contempt for the criminal justice system. The judge ordered Brandon Fellows back into the custody of a D.C. jail.
Zoe Tillman is a senior reporter for Buzzfeed News who just published a database of documents in connection with the first hundred guilty pleas in the Capitol insurrection, former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner who served on the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts for 17 years.
Zoe, let me start with you. You`ve been doing really excellent reporting on this along with Ryan Reilly, two of the people I`ve been following along with Scott McFarland. You`ve got this database of the first hundred pleas here. What are -- what`s your take away from the data we have so far of the first 100 individuals who to plea out in their -- for their role in this?
[20:20:12]
ZOE TILLMAN, SENIOR REPORTER, BUZZFEED: For the most part, what we`ve seen are early plea offers going out to some of the lowest hanging fruit from January 6th, the folks who posted online I was there, here`s a photo of me inside, but who didn`t do much else besides go into the building which itself on its own is a federal crime.
So, the vast majority of plea deals have been for low-level misdemeanor crimes carrying no more than up to a year and usually only up to six months in prison. They`re hoping to, you know, avoid jail time entirely that hasn`t been completely successful for some of them.
And then I think it`s important to note that the other smaller subset of plea deals have gone to individuals with a connection to some of the broader conspiracies that we know the Justice Department is looking into.
It`s gone to a handful of people with ties to the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to attack the Capitol, to stash guns in a hotel in Virginia in case they needed weapons for whatever happened on January 6th. So, you know, there are really two buckets here. It`s your low-level misdemeanor please and it`s the cooperators as the Justice Department builds some of these larger investigations.
HAYES: And there are still hundreds more. And there`s been something that`s been happening, Nancy, that I really wanted to talk to you about as someone who serves as a Federal District Court Judge which is what these judges in question are. They`re trial judges, they have these cases, this huge amount of processing that has to happen.
This is judge -- district judge -- U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan who said the following. It`s become evident to me in the riot cases that many of the defendants who are pleading guilty are not truly accepting responsibility. They seem to me to be trying to get this out of the way as quickly and in as inexpensively as possible and stating whatever they have to say in guilty pleas and hoping to get probation and leave.
We`ve also seen judges actually chastising DOJ for not asking for larger sentences. How do you think about this question of accountability in the context of a plea when you are a federal judge?
NANCY GERTNER, FORMER FEDERAL JUDGE, U.S. DISTRICT COURT MASSACHUSETTS: Well, it`s hard but having a show of remorse is really rarely, you know, something that is coming sort of flowing from the person`s heart. You know, I mean, there isn`t a defendant that was before me -- there were certainly some for whom it was a, you know, a real feeling, but most of the time, people were -- knew what they had to say in order to get out of there.
The problem with judges chastising the Department of Justice is the Department of Justice is in a little bit of a pickle. There are what, so many hundreds of people that have been arrested. They really have to determine -- they have to allocate their resources.
So, what Zoe said is right. They got the low-hanging fruit which are the people who just, you know, went in and there are, you know, they`re literally wrongfully parading charges. Then there are other people who are getting obstruction of a proceeding. The proceeding being the certification process. And then there`s sort of an intermediate category about people who assaulted police officers and actually had weapons.
But I mean, I understand the frustration because this is sort of more than an ordinary, you know, demonstration gone bad. But ultimately, the prosecutors had to pick their cases.
HAYES: Yes.
GERTNER: And there`s really nothing a judge can do.
HAYES: Yes, it`s a good point also about the fact that so much of the way that the system, the machinery of American criminal justice system which is one of the largest in the world and puts more people in prison than basically anywhere else is just constantly this sort of assembly line with like Lucy and the Chocolates. That that`s the way the whole thing works. It`s not law order. It`s not Perry Mason. It`s not like trials with -- you know it`s like how much can we get done in what amount of time. And that -- you know that`s true here. It`s part of the deeply systemic flaw of the entire system.
GERTNER: Right. And who can cooperate -- who can cooperate. What you can hang over people`s heads so that they can get to the people who are actually organizing it. But the prosecutors were making those decisions and they`re very hard to second guess. If the government tried for more, people talked about, you know, seditious conspiracy. These cases would have taken a very long time and many of them likely would not have succeeded.
So, they`re doing -- they`re taking what they can prove.
HAYES: Yes, it`s a really good -- it`s a really good point. This is all other elements of American criminal justice embedded in the scale of a system which is just sort of constantly grinding on in the background under underneath overwhelming numbers actually unlike anything else in the developed world. Zoe Tillman and Judge Nancy Gertner, thank you both.
GERTNER: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming, up from the massive traffic jam at shipping ports on the shortages of everything, to people quitting their jobs at record rates. Is this part of the post-pandemic normal? What it`s like on the other side of a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe? After this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:00]
HAYES: There are certain things you never hear about in an evening news broadcast unless something has gone terribly wrong. You`ve probably been hearing about one of those things a lot lately, the "supply chain." As my colleague Benjy Sarlin put it, supply chain is in that category of things you don`t ever read about unless something real bad happened along with fellow 2021 winner electric grids.
It is not news when it`s working. It is big news when it stops working. This is video of the Port of Los Angeles today where along with the port of Long Beach, 40 of all shipping containers entering the United States make landfall. At the beginning of this week, there were 62 of these giant container ships burst at those two ports and 81 ships sitting offshore waiting for a spot to come in and unload. That`s according to the marine exchange of Southern California.
[20:30:04]
Now, before the pandemic, we didn`t show you images of this port because it was rare for even one ship to have to wait. The stuff just came in and got unloaded. The kinks in the global supply chain have been getting worse and worse.
Today, President Joe Biden convened a meeting with shipping companies retailers, port operators, and unions and delivered a speech about his plans to ease the backlog. We`re going to talk more about that. But before we do, I think it`s kind of important to first take a step back because the supply chain issues which sounds sort of technical and weird are just one small aspect of something much bigger and much more profound.
It seems almost silly to state this obvious fact, but we have lived through, are still living through a once-in-a-century catastrophe. We have lost 720 000 of our fellow Americans more every day. This pandemic has affected every aspect of American daily life unlike anything since I think at least World War II.
It has also affected every country around the globe. It has created disruptions to social life, and economics, government, politics business in every single direction. But I think maybe because we`re still in it and maybe because humans are very good at acclimating to new things, many of us had an idea of how this would go that hasn`t quite turned out to be true. I`ll admit myself included here.
The best hope we had, this trajectory we saw was that we had our old lives and then the pandemic came and then they would solve it with max vaccination and restore normalcy. And in some ways, I think that vision of a return to normal powered a lot of the Biden campaign and ultimately a victory. I mean, we had a president who was, say what you will, deeply abnormal and who egregiously mismanaged a once-in-a-century pandemic.
With Joe Biden at the helm, a lot of people could see a normal future, free of the explosive upheaval of the Trump and COVID years. It becomes clearer and clearer by the day, we will not just get people vaccinated and all move on and close the book on this chapter. We are living through an epochal change. We are all processing it in a bunch of different ways, personally, psychologically, socially.
And the effects of the pandemic are going to reverberate out throughout our entire society and throughout the globe. The backlog in the Port of Los Angeles is just one small example of that. I mean, over the past year, we have also seen an enormous rise in what might very broadly be called antisocial harmful behavior.
You may have seen the statistics about homicides up nearly 30 percent in 2020 compared with the previous year and the largest single year increase ever recorded in the country according to FBI. Drug overdoses in the us hit a record high this year over 96,000 in a 12-month period ending in March according to data from the CDC. It`s a nearly 30 percent jump over the preceding 12 months.
A recent study shows that depression rates in this country are up three- fold since the start of the pandemic. There are a lot of examples of the effects of all this. I mean, we`ve all seen the viral videos of people acting out in really weird ways in public places, like this recent one showing at anti-mask protesters, yelling at parents and children as they enter a California elementary school.
Incidents of unruly behavior on airplanes have skyrocket. In 2019, 146 investigations were initiated by the Federal Aviation Administration. So far, in 2021, that number is 727. That`s not just viral videos, those are - - that`s the data. I mean, there have been so many threats and violent episodes at school board meetings at the national school boards association had to ask the federal government for help. Heck, there`s even a shortage of youth hockey referees in Massachusetts in large part because they have been berated so much at games no one wants to do it.
I think it`s safe to say people are really angry and wound up and upset. And you know, I guess that`s not that surprising right, given what we`ve all lived through, what we are living through. Given the disruption, and the tension, the pressure, the grief, we`re also seeing something remarkable happening in the economy and in labor markets.
Particularly in August of this year, nearly three percent of the nation`s entire workforce quit their jobs. That was a record. Right now, there are three major strikes pending this month, a total of about 90,000 workers called -- being called striketober. And it`s not like anything I`ve ever seen having covered the labor movement for several decades.
Union organizing is happening in all sorts of places like the service industry where many people are just utterly fed up with and broken by the experience of the pandemic. And they don`t want to go back to the former normal. The overall economy is weird right now. It`s probably weirder than it has been in decades.
Of course, the great recession was bad, it was terrible, but financial crises are recognizable entities. They happen from time to time. There`s a long literature about what happens after them. What`s happening now is far stranger. I mean, over several decades, we have built up this system in the global supply chain with something called just-in-time inventory. Companies receive goods just as they need them for production which leaves very room -- little room for error or resiliency.
And then a global pandemic hit. It created all sorts of kinks in all sorts of places along the chain. It started with toilet paper but it has since spread to all sorts of industries.
[20:35:31]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Starbucks is the latest company to fall victim to supply shortages. The coffee giant says that they`re going to vary by location. But according to social media the shortages range from pastries, to iced coffee.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The worst chlorine shortage the country has ever seen is set to rock the summer pool season. Chlorine prices is set to soar 70 percent this summer. In some parts of the country, prices have already doubled.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chicken wars continue to rage. Restaurants are feeling the heat from higher prices and tighter supplies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tyson Foods, the nation`s largest chicken producer says rooster is not breeding and the winter storms in Texas this year have led to a shortage of chicken. That shortage made worse by the lasting effects of the pandemic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you have looked for a new used car lately, you`ve probably experienced some sticker shock. On average, used car prices have risen an unparalleled 17 percent since last year due to a microchip shortage.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rental car companies are facing shortages nationwide just as many people are gearing up for summer travel. The shortage fueled in part by decisions made last year when business plummeted at the start of the pandemic. Many cash-strapped rental companies sold off much of their inventories.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, after all these spot shortages which come from all sorts of different sources, we have what Derek Thompson in the Atlantic is calling the everything shortage where Americans are settling into a new phase of the pandemic economy in which GDP is growing but we`re also suffering from a dearth of a shocking array of things.
As a result, these stops along the supply chain are slowing down at the very moment when Americans are demanding that they work in overdrive. I`m going to talk to Derek Thompson about how we can solve the everything shortage and what Joe Biden is doing about next.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: Massive issues we`re seeing with the global supply chain like the backup of container ships at the Port of Los Angeles point to the fact the pandemic is still having all kinds of effects. It`s changing us the way we live and do business in all sorts of ways. President Biden`s plan to deal with all that is huge campaign progress. A slogan that we heard over and over and over to build back better it`s become almost a punch line because it`s been repeated so often.
But the idea is to create some new vision of American life, economy, society, a version that`s better than what we had before on the other side of this mass tragedy. That starts with putting out a million different fires that the Biden administration inherited, things that honestly make me grateful I don`t work in the White House. But that is what they got elected to do when will they have to deliver on. That`s the job when you are in power.
Today, President Biden gave a speech addressing the supply chain issue but also touting the fact that part of his Build Back Better agenda is investment in ports, investment in infrastructure, investment in domestic manufacturing. It`s also changing our relationship to the global supply chain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, we have some good news. They`re going to help speed up the delivery of goods all across America. After weeks of negotiation and working with my team and with the major union retailers and freight movers, the Ports of Los Angeles -- the Port of Los Angeles announced today that it`s going to begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We need to think big and bold. That`s why I`m pushing for a once-in-a- generation investment in our infrastructure and our people with my Infrastructure Bill and my Build Back Better Act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: We really do have a once-in-a-generation, maybe a once in a century opportunity for a profound reassessment of what normal is and what it should be. This is the time to seize that.
Derek Thompson is a staff writer at the Atlantic where he covers economics. He wrote this week about how America is running out of everything and he joins me now. Derek, I really like the piece. There aren`t easy answers but what`s the best way to explain why we are in the situation we`re in, why there`s 80 ships with container goods docked outside the Port of Los Angeles?
DEREK THOMPSON, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. The image that comes to me is a pinched hose. So you know, when you turn on the hose and the water comes into the hose and you pinch it for a while, when you let it go, the hose goes crazy. So, the pandemic pinched the hose of economic activity of global supply chains of interpersonal relations.
And now over the last six-nine months we`ve been slowly letting the hose go, and we`ve seen this sort of crazy hose effect all over the place. We see it in the supply chain crisis with the containers that are bobbing off the shore of Los Angeles and Long Beach. We see it in the great resignation with three percent of Americans resigning or quitting last month, seven percent in restaurants and hotels.
And we also see it I think not just the great resignation but you alluded to this earlier, the great rudeness. People are being terrible to each other. We`ve forgotten how to be around strangers who don`t live in our house. And so, I think that as the hose has come unpinched, you`re still figuring out exactly how to deal with its craziness.
HAYES: Yes. And it`s -- that`s well said. I mean, on the supply chain issue, I think about these two -- there`s another metaphor here but two modes of traffic when you`re stuck in a traffic jam. If you`re stuck in a traffic jam and you see an accident, there`s like -- it`s legible and there`s a single cause. You think like, OK, we`re going to get the accident, the accident clears, traffic is going to back up.
But the more enraging kind of traffic is where there`s no explanation and there`s no thing to wait for. And it does seem like the supply chain, because it`s so complex and because there`s so many choke points, it`s more of the latter thing. There`s not like well, there`s a big fire in this place so there`s one thing. It`s a lot of stuff that`s built up.
THOMPSON: Right. Everyone is sticking their head out of the car on the freeway saying why is no one moving their car? Why is no one driving? They can`t see exactly where the chug points are. And that`s partly because there are just so many choke points. You have a container problem. There aren`t enough containers and we`ve had a container shortage for a while.
There`s a trucker problem. There`s a trucker shortage of 60 000 truckers that`s gotten worse during the pandemic because we have job openings that aren`t being filled in a lot of industries. Rail is being backed up because they can`t take their stuff off the trains and put them onto containers because there`s a blockade essentially at Los Angeles and Long Beach.
So, all these things are fitting together in this sort of you know terrible puzzle and that is essentially why Christmas is being delayed and people are walking into stores and realizing that half the shelves are empty.
[20:45:35]
HAYES: So, here`s -- all this stuff is -- it`s weird. We don`t know where we are in this story. And a lot of it I think is probably temporary. But there`s -- one thought I had today was look, the global economic neoliberal model that we basically got from China`s entrance to the WTO to today is the following things, lots of cheap goods, huge uh you know global -- outsourced global manufacturing, very low labor power and stagnating wages, and very low inflation.
All those things basically obtained for about 30 years, and that was the pact, right? Like, you didn`t get a lot of raises, huge inequality, but like you could always get a big flat-screen TV and you can get all these goods. We`re seeing a complete reversal of that, high amounts of labor power, right, worker shortages, wages going up, higher inflation, shortages of goods, the cheap stuff is in here. And I wonder like how much -- it`s just a different model of what the economy might look like.
THOMPSON: It`s interesting. I remember I wrote -- three years ago, I wrote a piece that said America has lost its mojo. And I defined mojo by business dynamism, how many companies are being created. I measured it by quits, how many people were quitting their job to start something new. That`s a measure of mojo. I measured it by migration. How many people were moving.
I said, Americans aren`t doing any of this stuff anymore the way we used to in the 1960s and 1970s. Well, now with the crazy hose effect, it`s all coming back.
HAYES: That`s fascinating.
THOMPSON: Americans are moving more, they are quitting their jobs more, they`re starting way more companies. The business formation rate absolutely spiked last year. And if you believe that entrepreneurship is good as I do, that is certainly a silver lining of the crazy hose effect.
So, I do think you`re right. I think that if you go into a store and you see that the shelves are empty, it is reasonable just like if you rubber neck at the car that`s broken down the side of the road to say, that`s bad, I`m pointing at it. But there are subtler things that are happening here that aren`t just horrible. They`re actually sneakily good things that just need to be played out a little bit over time as the hose settles down.
HAYES: I think that`s a great -- it`s a great point. Yes, like, prices going up for particularly goods people need is not good, and shortage are not good, and particularly, when you`re pushing up against a frontier productive capacity where everyone could be doing better if the goods were there.
But on the other side, I do think this -- like, this idea that there`s a new model maybe on the other side with more worker power, with not the model that we had for 30 years. It`s like really promising and people starting businesses and moving and saying like, they don`t want to maybe do these service jobs that they had to do where they were not willing to do it for $12.00 an hour, but do it for $20.00. Like, that`s a -- that to me is an exciting future that we might be entering into.
THOMPSON: I think you`re right. I think it is an exciting feature. I think a lot of things that are happening right now especially if you look at where wages are going, they`re growing among the lowest-income workers, people who work in hotels and restaurants. That`s a fantastic thing.
I think that would offer a synthesis which is that at the same time that we`re seeing a critique of 30 years of neoliberalism, we`re also seeing a critique of liberalism. Liberals think about an equality agenda. How do we redistribute goods already created. We need an abundance agenda. How do we make stuff so we can distribute it later.
HAYES: All right, Derek Thompson, great reporting, great discussion. Thanks so much.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, so, where did those e-mails that got Jon Gruden fired come from anyway? The nightmare story of the investigation that got an NFL coach fired and the NFL cheerleaders who are still seeking answers. And one of them joins me in just ahead.
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HAYES: So, you may have heard earlier this week, Jon Gruden, head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders who just lost to Chicago Bears this weekend, a former analyst for ESPN`s Monday night football that he resigned from his job as head coach of the Raiders after the New York Times detailed a number of e- mails where Gruden used racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language.
Also in that report, there was another detail. The Times revealed the following. "Gruden exchanged e-mails with former Washington Football team general manager Bruce Allen and other men that included photos of women wearing only bikini bottoms including one photo of two Washington team cheerleaders. That seems like a not really awesome thing to do.
Now, we now know those photos and the e-mails that were released actually came to light as part of a completely separate investigation that had nothing to do with Jon Gruden. As the Daily Beast explains, the e-mails involving Gruden were some of the 650,000 that investigators reviewed during a continuation of an investigation into the workplace culture at the Washington Football team ordered by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell himself, a topic of some of Gruden`s crude insults last year.
That investigation began after this truly disturbing expose by the Washington Post, incredible piece of investigative reporting found rampant sexual harassment at the Washington Football organization among. Other things, it revealed that according to one former staffer, a 10-minute video of lewd outtakes from a photoshoot with the team`s cheerleaders was made without their knowledge for Washington Football team owner Daniel Snyder. Snyder denied and acknowledged the video but the Washington Post obtained a copy of the 2008 video from another former employee.
In another 2004 incident, Snyder is alleged to have told a team cheerleader that he and a friend at a hotel room and suggested she and his friend, "go upstairs and get to know each other better. So, what did the NFL do? Well, they conduct an internal investigation and fined the team a record $10 million. It sounds like a lot of money but for a team valued at $4.2 billion, fifth highest in league, it`s not going to sting too much.
The NFL declined to punish Dan Snyder, the owner directly. He still owns the team after all that. This week, Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden resigned, rightly I would say, after his racist homophobic e-mails became public, but Dan Snyder who reportedly oversaw and participated a culture of sexual harassment bullying has faced very little real sanction. And the NFL has declined to make any sort of public report about their findings. Now, a group of former Washington team cheerleaders is demanding that report be made public.
[20:55:06]
Melanie Coburn was a Washington cheerleader for four years and the squad`s marketing director for 10. She started a petition in February to make the NFL`s internal investigation into the team public. As of now, it is closing in on around 40,000 signatures, and she joins me now.
Melanie, thank you so much for joining us. I want to start with just your experience of inside that organization as I was relaying the reporting that`s happening and these e-mails, how that jives with what personally you experienced there.
MELANIE COBURN, FORMER WASHINGTON CHEERLEADER: Well, thanks for having me, Chris. I really appreciate you sharing our stories. As you can imagine, it`s a male-dominated fields, coming into the Washington Redskins front office, and being involved in the organization from that side versus from the sidelines as a cheerleader was a totally different experience.
I was one of many cheerleaders actually, that was hired to be a full time staff person. There were many of us that were sort of handpicked and interviewed and offered positions in various facets of the organization. I do, you know, feel that we were maybe picked for the wrong reasons. Obviously, there was a lot of sexual objectivity in the office. There was, you know, a lot of misogyny as you can -- as you sort of alluded to in your introduction. But it was also a very intimidating and threatening work environment for many of us.
And, you know, I spent 10 years there, probably four years longer than I wanted to, because I felt like I was there to protect the women of the Washington Redskins cheerleaders, and keep them safe from the executives and sponsors and everybody else that was trying to have their way with them.
HAYES: Having had that experience, I mean, did that -- did that detail -- I mean, what was your reaction? So, you know, that this internal report gets commissioned, it`s not released publicly, it just sat on. And the next thing you know, it`s like, there are these e-mails that Jon Gruden sent and including topless photos of Washington cheerleaders.
And meanwhile, you and fellow cheerleaders have been asking for this report to be made public. And now this apparently is the first anyone seen of anything that happened in the course of that investigation.
COBURN: Yes. Chris, that`s all we`ve ever wanted is transparency and accountability. I will say that the women that were in those videos that you referenced, many of them did come together to fight back and they had a mediation that they settled with in December. But along with that mediation obviously came a lot of NDA. So, they were silenced.
However, that`s when I started being more vocal. I do not like public speaking, I was not a part of the story until I found out that they did this to these women right under my nose when I was working with them. I was at those calendar shoots. I know those compromising physicians that they were in. And we trusted those Redskins production crews to do their job and keep them safe.
It`s devastating. These women have been texting me for the last 36 hours wondering if their nude bodies or photographs are circulating through the inboxes of the NFL. It`s just triggered them. It`s reliving trauma that we`ve been reliving for the past 15 months. And it`s like an open wound.
HAYES: I have to say, you know, I`ve seen some folks on the right try to make this about like, you can`t say anything anymore, and what about your inbox? But you know, I can`t imagine anyone with any kind of like sense of decency thinks it`s fine to circulate the photo of a woman topless surreptitiously taken to other people around in an e-mail. Like, just so obviously disgusting behavior, whatever your politics or views are.
COBURN: Oh, yeah, it`s indicative of the toxic culture that existed within the Washington football team and around the league. It wasn`t just our team. These were e-mails from other people, other teams. So, it`s very disheartening and disappointing. And like I said, all we`ve ever wanted was transparency and accountability.
And I think that we deserve that. These women deserve it, all these employees, all the men and women I worked with for over the years. There was over 120 people involved in that investigation, and we`ve heard nothing.
HAYES: Do you have -- yes, it is strange that this is what ends up surfacing from this investigation that has been kept lock and key is like, Jon Gruden e-mails which again, like, I think it`s good that there`s transparency into the degree that the reporting is accurate, but it does seem like it`s high past time. Have you been offered money to settle on this and not talk about it?
COBURN: Yes, I was very vocal after the initial articles in the Washington Post came out. And I started that petition in February, mid-February of 2021. And yes, I was offered hush money. I did not entertain it. I didn`t even ask how much they were offering because this is not something that I am -- yes, I mean, I`m -- I`ve never wanted that. All I want is to speak up for the women that I admire and love and give them a voice when they don`t have one.
HAYES: Melanie Coburn, thank you very much for joining me. I really, really appreciate it.
COBURN: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: That is ALL IN for this Wednesday evening. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.