Summary:
Johnson & Johnson had its first shipment of their single-dose
vaccine after the FDA granted their request for emergency use. Former
President Donald Trump seeks to control his party despite election loss.
New York Attorney General officially launches investigation into sexual
harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. President Joe Biden
released a video in support of workers voting on unionization.
Transcript:
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: It is. It was a wild, wild weekend. Fernand Amandi,
Sarah Longwell, thank you both. That is tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH
CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN. As a third COVID
vaccine is released into America, and daily vaccinations surged, tonight
how the case for optimism about the near future just got a shot in the arm.
Then, Colt 45. The disgraced, twice impeached ex-president resurfaces at
CPAC with the new grift.
Plus, news today that Andrew Cuomo will face a sexual harassment
investigation by the New York Attorney General.
And how Joe Biden made history with a two-minute speech to Amazon workers
in Alabama when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. We are
almost a year into this pandemic. And we are experiencing something strange
and vertigo-inducing and almost incomprehensible kind of inversion of where
we were a year ago. A year ago, you`ll remember we had political leaders
denying COVID was a problem. Public health officials and journalists and
people like myself warning and increasingly well, trill and urgent terms
that things were about to get very, very bad.
And until people saw others getting sick firsthand, it was hard to believe
how bad they could get as quickly as they did particularly when you had
messaging like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, the risk to the
American public remains low. As the President said yesterday, we`re ready.
We`re ready for anything.
LARRY KUDLOW, FORMER DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: We
have contained this -- we have contained this, I won`t say, airtight but
pretty close to airtight.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you know we have
thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better with just by,
you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work,
but they get better.
LAWRENCE JONES, CONTRIBUTOR, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: So, there`s a lot of talk
about this Coronavirus. And do you think that the Democrats are
politicizing this?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh 1,000 percent they`re politicizing it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re doing that only to try to attempt to make the
economy tank so -- in order to keep Trump President Trump from being
reelected.
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER DIRECTOR OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: There`s
nothing to worry about for the American people.
TRUMP: They have studied that they know very much. In fact, we`re very
close to a vaccine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Well, the vaccine did come relatively fast, actually. But now, I
would argue, sitting here in March of 2021, that we have almost the
opposite situation which is that it is hard to convince people of how
bright our future might be.
These are some of the first Johnson and Johnson vaccines shipping out today
to boisterous applause, which is appropriate. It was approved for emergency
use over the weekend after that meeting on Friday. Johnson and Johnson is
going to deliver four million doses this week. Remember, it`s a single dose
shot, so that is the same as like eight million doses of Moderna or Pfizer.
They`re going to deliver 20 million doses by the end of this month, by the
end of March. The company CEO says 100 million shots should be distributed
by June and a billion by the end of the year, with a B. That`s a billion
people worldwide. It could be vaccinated by just this vaccine by the end of
this year. Dr. Fauci says he "would have no hesitancy whatsoever taking the
Johnson and Johnson vaccine."
And the vaccination program in this country, the single most important
urgent governmental mobilization in recent memory that we are undergoing
right now with life or death stakes, it is improving, week by week, day by
day. I`m not sure people really have sort of gotten their arms around.
All right, listen to me. When Joe Biden was sworn in, we were averaging
around 900,000 doses a day, all right. Yesterday, it was 2.4 million doses.
The day before that it was 2.4 million doses. The weekly rolling average is
1.7 million, a record.
On this show, Dr. Peter Hotez, right, who`s developing his own vaccine down
in Texas at Baylor said the goal should be getting to three million doses
per day. We did 2.4 million on Sunday. We are not that far off. I don`t
know about you, but this is like the opposite of grimly watching new cases
tick up and outbreak spread.
Now, we`re looking at a chart and numbers that are going in the right
direction that you want them to go up, up, up, keep going. So much of the
news around COVID is finally what we have been waiting for. We have now
added a third vaccine.
There is also a massive rescue bill on the horizon. It`s already passed the
House. The Senate is going to take it up this week. It has checks for
millions of people, all kinds of actions to alleviate the economic crash of
the virus, and crucially more money to help speed up that same vaccination
process.
Also, we now have federally managed vaccination centers for the first time.
We`re beginning to hear the success stories from social media and from
folks I`ve talked to. On Twitter, Tom Gara described his experience. "I got
vaccinated at the new FEMA site in Brooklyn today. And one thing I didn`t
expect was just how good it would feel seeing the kind of mass public
mobilization that`s been missing for the last year. The site is running
like clockwork and just cranking through vaccinations. Must have done
hundreds in the 15 minutes I was there. It was staffed by a huge number of
really delightful National Guard people from all over the country. The
people who gave me my shot were from Georgia."
That sense of national mobilization, we are finally seeing mobilization.
Finally, one year into this. A half a million Americans dead, finally
seeing mobilization on the scale the crisis always called for from day one.
It called for it a year ago when Mike Pence was saying that nonsense and
Larry Kudlow was saying that nonsense, and Donald Trump was saying that
nonsense, it called for it then, but it was never provided.
And if you want another reminder of the utter dereliction of duty by the
last administration, get this. We found out today that Donald and Melania
Trump got secretly vaccinated the White House in January and did not make
it public. Consider for just a moment how insane that is. Any other
politician, anyone else, anyone else in their right mind would get
vaccinated publicly, urge their supporters to do it, and also take a
political victory lap.
Think about how many more Trump supporters would have gotten a shot by now
if dear leader said it was a good idea and publicly got his.
Now, even though the future looks bright, in many ways, certain
fundamentals haven`t changed. Nothing has changed with the virus. The virus
is still out there, and it`s still stalking us. And it doesn`t care about
any of this. It just goes along reproducing occasionally, and mutating.
On a national level, the daily case numbers are as bad as the worst part of
the second wave last summer. Keep that in mind. The same precautions to
suppress COVID are still utterly necessary until we can get to herd
immunity. It`s even more urgent than ever that we collectively do not let
this thing get another final tragic wave of needless illness and death. And
we are so close, so close to something that looks like a finish line.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is responsible for vaccinating the 10.5
million residents of his state. It`s the ninth most populous in the nation.
And he joins me now.
Governor, it`s good to have you. How are vaccinations going in North
Carolina?
GOV. ROY COOPER (D-NC): Well, things are looking up, Chris. We are
vaccinating tens of thousands of North Carolinians every day. Our COVID
numbers are declining and stabilizing, getting around the five percent
number. We`re getting real help from the Biden-Harris administration
helping us with distribution.
We have one of those FEMA centers that is coming to North Carolina. They`re
going to do 3,000 shots a day, seven days a week, 12 hours a day for eight
weeks. We know that we can get the help that we need from Washington in
distribution, and we can get the leadership that we need.
To have a president who cares about this, who actually wears a mask, has a
plan, it`s just like night and day. And we governors across the country are
deeply grateful for the leadership of this administration.
HAYES: I want to follow up on the federal vaccination center because there
was that -- there was that letter from governors. I know, there`s a little
bit of frustration or miscommunication a few weeks ago about what the
federal government was doing and what the states were doing.
And this had been wholly distributed the states for so long. I think there
was a little turf question here. Are you happy to have one of those federal
centers? Is that -- is there communication there to make sure that there`s
not a doubling up of the duty here?
COOPER: Chris, we asked for it, and it`s a joint effort. We`re working
closely with FEMA. Unfortunately, in North Carolina, we`ve had to work with
FEMA a lot with hurricanes and tornadoes and flooding. But they have set
this up. They are also getting vaccines directly to our federally qualified
health centers, which help reach out to underserved populations, which is
something that during the early days of vaccinations across the country, we
did not hit enough of our people of color and underserved communities.
And that`s why in North Carolina, we`ve created our own database to have
100 percent vaccinations. We will know who those vaccinations go to. Our
goal is to get those vaccinations off the shelves and in the arms. But we
also want those arms to reflect the makeup of our population, making sure
that we get our vaccines to Black North Carolinians, to Hispanic North
Carolinians.
And we want to make sure that we do that and we`re getting help from the
feds now, and that it has been critical.
HAYES: I want to talk about vaccine hesitancy. A lot has been made of it.
And there`s been a lot of focus on African American, Latino populations.
But if you look at the -- if you look at this refusal chart in Axios, one
of the things you`re seeing is that vaccine hesitancy among Black,
Hispanic, Latino folks is coming down, among white Democrats come down.
White Republicans, it has not come down. That`s still 56 percent.
Obviously, you`re very closely divided state. You`ve got millions of folks
across the political spectrum. What is -- how are you thinking of this
issue about messaging to folks that don`t have the same politics? As the
governor of their state, you know, voted for someone else, have concerns
about the vaccine, how do you get through to them?
COOPER: I want all North Carolinians to get vaccinated. I`m proud of our
state because we`ve been listed trusted community leaders in our African
American churches, and our Hispanic communities. We`ve done television
commercials, having these leaders step up and say we want to take the
vaccine.
We want to make sure that we are going out and get -- and targeting all of
these populations. And that`s being done. I`m going to be a governor for
all of North Carolina. I believe that as more and more people get this
vaccine, people see it`s working, see that it`s safe, I believe we`re going
to get strong uptake on the vaccine across our state and across the
country.
It`s critical that we do this so that we can turn the corner and we can
emerge from this pandemic stronger than ever.
HAYES: You know, I don`t need to tell you as a governor of a large and
complicated state, the governing is often extremely complex, cross
pressures, trade-offs costs and benefits. It just strikes me that
vaccination is one of those rare metrics for governing success that is
extremely and exceedingly straightforward and simple.
And I just wonder, is every governor in America and everyone in the White
House, like, do you wake up and you`ve got some, you know, some display
somewhere telling you how many shots you`re putting into the arms of your
citizens every hour? Do you go to night -- go to bed at night thinking
about that, because it seems really nothing is as important right now is
that?
COOPER: Every single day, I`m working on vaccine distribution in North
Carolina. It`s not simple, though, when you have millions of people who
need it, but not enough vaccine for all of them. But then you`ve got to
decide how to distribute it. We -- our motto is fast and fair. We want
those vaccines off the shelves and into arms before the next shipment
comes.
But we`re also holding our providers accountable, that we want those arms
to look like North Carolina`s population. And that`s not as easy as it
sounds, because we want to be fair about this, but the most important thing
we need to do is to make sure that we get those vaccines and arms and we
want more and more.
I`m so delighted that 80,000 doses of J&J vaccine with the one-shot coming
to North Carolina. We`re going to get those out there quickly. And
hopefully, get a lot of uptake on that as well.
HAYES: Yesterday, there were, if I`m not mistaken, 102,000 doses recorded.
At least that`s according to Bloomberg. I know these numbers can float
around. Your daily record is 149,000. Do you have benchmarks for yourself,
and do you have a sense of an estimation?
You know, every -- one of the things that I play with on the vaccination
tracker is the more you juice up the daily number, the shorter that
timescale to get us to herd immunity. What -- how are you thinking of that?
COOPER: So, first, we targeted our 65 and over population because that`s
where we saw more than 80 percent of our deaths. And we`ve just gotten a
report that North Carolina leads the way in a percentage of people 65 and
over vaccinated. We set that as a goal. We wanted to make sure that as much
vaccine came into the state as possible.
And our goal has been to make sure we get those shots off of the shelf
before the next shipment arrives so that we can tell the feds, you send us
much vaccine as you can send us, we will get it into arms in North
Carolina.
And the fact that we have more transparency from this administration -- we
told them hey, we need to know several weeks ahead what we can expect so
that we can get this vaccine to the right spot instead of the 24 to 48
hours we had with the prior administration. We`ve gotten that.
We`ve gotten the assistance. We`ve gotten 100 percent coverage for PPE and
for our National Guard soldiers that are helping us. These are the things
we need and the Biden and Harris administration has stepped up and said
we`re going to give it to you because they know this is the most important
thing that can happen right now, to emerge from this pandemic stronger than
ever, make sure our economy comes back, get our children safely back in
school. That is the priority.
HAYES: Governor of North Carolina Roy Cooper who along with 49 other
governors have their work cut out for them but doing a pretty good job, it
looks like, according to the numbers down there. Governor, thank you very
much.
COOPER: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right, did you see what happened in France today? In France,
they sentenced a corrupt former president to jail. That`s a thing that
could happen. A court found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- you
probably recognized him, right. He was serving while we were around. They
found him guilty of corruption today. He could face up to a year in prison.
You can imagine this has anything to do with the U.S. where our corrupt
former president is rearing his head again. But he should have a lot to
worry about, a lot, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We`re not starting new parties. You know, they kept saying he`s
going to start a brand new party. We have the Republican Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The disgraced, twice impeached ex-president effectively claims
squatters rights over the Republican Party this weekend. And the right-wing
activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC were very
much on board.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMERICAN CROWD: We love you. We love you. We love you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That is a lot of people chanting maskless inside a room. Trump`s
CPAC speech was exactly what you`d expect, rambling, discursive, filled
with narcissistic boasts, attacks on his political enemies. Trump trotted
out his usual anti-immigrant rhetoric, attacked mail-in voting, once again
pushed the big lie, the false election claim that resulted in an American
insurrection which he incited.
And while Trump said he`s remaining a Republican, he also told the CPAC
faithful to donate directly to him and his political action committee as
opposed to say the Republican National Committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There`s only one way to contribute to our efforts to elect America
first Republican Conservatives and in turn to make America great again and
that`s through Save America PAC and DonaldJTrump.com. So, go out there and
do whatever you can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I`m joined now by two of the reporters who covered CPAC and Trump`s
speech, Dave Weigel of the Washington Post and Elaina Plott of the New York
Times.
Dave, let me start with you as someone who`s covered many a CPAC. My
impression watching from the outside, and I`m curious what it was like
there, is that there was something retro about Trump in front of CPAC where
it was like, oh this guy is not the president anymore, he`s just like this
-- he`s a sort of like ridiculous conservative gadfly who, you know, is a
reality show guy and like he`s doing his hustle there again.
And I wonder if like that felt -- it felt that way in the room or it felt
like oh, this is -- this is Donald Trump ex-president.
DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, it felt
different because Trump at CPAC when he was president was triumphant. Every
speech, it was an audience that was not captive. It was wrapped with
attention that wanted to hear him and wanted to hear about his
accomplishments and want to hear about the people he`d beaten.
And remember, one CPAC was a couple months after the Kavanaugh
confirmation, the other was right after impeach -- the impeachment and his
acquittal the first time. So, there was -- there was just a sense of
victory that was not quite there this time.
And everyone who was there probably saw something similar that Republicans
could admit that Donald Trump was not president anymore but they could not
admit that he had lost the election. And I`m not trying to (INAUDIBLE)
people say there but in the conversations I had, it was hard to find many
Republicans apart from the people who`d voted not to challenge state`s
election results who`d say and he -- and he lost the election.
So, you saw in the Trump speech a framing that says, my presidency was a
huge success. It`s only over by an accident. And you saw a narrative
building that for Republicans to come back in 2022, Trump is still going to
be around so the narrative needs to be, he left behind a tremendous record
of success. He left something for Biden to coast on or screw up. That was
the messaging.
And I`m not sure it fully got across especially when Trump interrupted
himself with his obsession of denying the election results.
HAYES: Yes. That part of it too it strikes me like this -- the sort of way
in which you know, it`s canon now among conservatives that this election
was stolen in some way. There`s also a sense in which like, you can`t tell
who`s trapped with whom in terms of the Republican Party and Donald Trump
because, you know, when you look at that room, it`s like yes, people at
CPAC love him, yes, there`s tens of millions of Americans who love him, but
he`s never been a popular political figure. He lost the popular vote twice.
He oversaw the House and the Senate losing, and he`s a one-term president.
And yet, they can`t -- it`s like, they can`t quit him but it`s hard to see
how they make a majority coalition him, Elaina.
ELAINA PLOTT, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, Chris.
You and I talked about other day actually. I mean, the degree to which
state parties for example in this moment are more representative than ever
of the base of the party I think is an equally applicable analysis to CPAC.
I mean, look, in the past, you know, CPAC has represented a pretty, you
know, small faction actually of the broader Republican coalition. But the
polarization of Trump`s leadership that, you know, people like Dave and I
have reported on in the past four years means that so many kind of more
moderate members have fled which is to say that a gathering like CPAC
really is more emblematic than ever of the core of the GOP.
And I think that should be pretty scary to Republican leaders for a couple
of reasons. The main one being I can`t tell you how many voters I spoke to
over the weekend who said they did not consider themselves registered with
the Republican Party even if they technically did. They said they were
members of the party of Trump.
HAYES: Right.
PLOTT: And I had one woman say to me explicitly I will leave this party if
Trump or someone who doesn`t pledge to lead as he did is not the nominee in
`24.
HAYES: I also wonder too, Dave. I mean, I think it was Peter Hamby who is
at Snapchat now who wrote a pretty good piece about Sarah Palin as kind of,
you know, the sort of, you know, Trump before Trump in many ways.
And one of the things we saw with Palin was she had tremendous control, a
certain kind of charisma, fidelity from the hardcore. But you know, it`s
hard to keep that capital. It just kind of like goes away over time. And I
wonder whether you could sense that with Trump even though it`s only been,
you know, a month.
WEIGEL: Well, he`s being given that capital. There`s no real contradiction
of his authority or his agenda inside the party. There was some discussion
I saw after the conference of the straw poll and how he got 55 percent of
what should be a group of unanimous supporters. That I think soft pedal the
other poll results which -- of this audience found 97 percent approved to
his performance in the last year in office, and 95 wanted the Republican
Party to continue -- you have it on the screen now -- continue following
his policies.
And beyond kind of the flash of the conference, the way that Donald Trump`s
agenda and obsessions and policies have changed the party were really easy
to see. I mean, Republicans used to be a little bit more divided on whether
to say for example, you know, Democrats are opening the borders or any kind
of benefit that goes to undocumented immigrants is being taken away from
Americans, just saying the word Americans.
And that`s just kind of the de facto rhetoric at this point. Trade the same
thing. China is a threat, the same thing. There`s no one -- I was just
talking to a Republican today who`s running for Congress who is critical of
Trump. Going at point by point on the agenda, I didn`t find much of a
difference.
So, I see a lot of people complain and I think there`s some rationale here
why is the media covering this guy who`s not president, who`s not very
popular, who`s been disgraced. And as long as one party says that he is --
this is our identity, why wouldn`t we cover him?
HAYES: Yes. I also wonder too. I mean, one thing I just find amazing and
somewhat horrifying about this is that, you know, we`re sitting -- I`m
talking to you, right. We`re one year into a global pandemic. It`s the most
disrupted year in American life. We`ve never seen job loss at this scale.
It`s literally the deadliest year in American life quite literally.
I mean 76,000 people died in January, OK, just from COVID. And it`s just
nowhere, it just does not exist on the right. It doesn`t -- it only exists
as a pretext for shutdowns or tyranny. But the actual like fact of the
pandemic structuring all our lives, I`m curious if that was the vibe at
CPAC, this thing doesn`t actually exist anymore.
PLOTT: Yes. So, Dave mentioned that. Trump`s speech did feel different in a
lot of ways and I agree with that. Of course, it did. But one thing that
did strike me, Chris, by the end of the conference was how easily this
could have been the same one that I attended in 2020. That was sort of in
D.C. actually where the outbreak started.
But Mick Mulvaney, that was where he said that the coronavirus at the time,
just emergent coronavirus, was a trumped up you know media effort to
dismantle Trump or something. And that vibe was in many ways unchanged. And
you think of all that`s happened in the past year, racial reckoning, the
insurrection, I mean, all these things it was like they were totally erased
from history talking with voters just engaging with panels more broadly.
HAYES: Yes. That point -- I mean, I was -- the part that I watched and the
coverage I read was slicing that. You had this just the degree to which
this sort of hermetic bubble is there in honestly one of the most eventful
years in American life in generations. A lot has happened.
There was a pandemic, the largest protest against police brutality and
racial justice possibly in American history, half a million Americans dead,
and then an insurrection, and it`s like just play in the hits like it`s
2014. Like, nothing is changed. It`s really, really, really striking, Dave.
And I do wonder like how long that could be kept going.
WEIGEL: I don`t like to put an end date on things like that. And in terms
of an agenda for the party, now, there were some panels and discussions of
things Trump had done that had been fairly popular outside of his base like
criminal justice reform. But a big priority of the conference going in and
then trump really emphasized this is that Republican Parties in the states
need to restrict access to elections as a motivating feature of the party.
That you -- basically, there doesn`t need to be a change in what the party
ran on in 2020. There needs to be a restriction. And you`ve covered this a
lot in the show.
But the extent to which Trump focused on that and put that as a marching
order for the party, they were already going in that direction. But the
fight of this week is going to be with Republicans who did put up a fight
against the COVID relief bill, talked much less about that than what they
want to fight about this week which is H.R.1.
And so, that motivation as -- the country`s problems are fixed as long as
Democrats don`t get really a big open voting system with lots of early
voting absentee etcetera. That was probably the defining theme of the
weekend.
HAYES: That was -- that was a very astute and that that jumped out to me as
well. Dave Weigel, Elaina Plott, thank you both for being with me. Next,
why Republican congressman appearing at CPAC felt like he had to denounce
"white racism" after appearing in another conference hosted by a white
nationalist. That story next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Orlando this weekend just around the corner, there was another
gathering for those who think CPAC was a bunch of RINO sellouts. It`s
called AFPAC. It was founded by a guy that was thrown out of CPAC this year
for bragging his conference didn`t have masks or any gay speakers. Instead,
his conference featured white nationalist rhetoric and was headlined by a
Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona who then hours later spoke at
CPAC.
I`m joined now by Eugene Daniels, Political White House -- Politico White
House Correspondent and co-author of Playbook.
Eugene, I had not heard of this sort of adjacent conference until it
happened this year. What`s the deal?
EUGENE DANIELS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: It`s a conference
where as you said right there, the leader kind of embraces some of the
things that even at CPAC as far right as it`s gone over the last few years
even they wouldn`t touch, right? Fuentes, the leader of AFPAC talked about
how America is essentially screwed if white people are no longer in the
majority, if people don`t -- you know, basically, you know, talk about how
much they love Jesus all the time.
All of these things that you hear and are criticized for being said by
white supremacist, and things that are concerning for Republicans who are
there are still some Republicans who don`t want to be seen as a party of
white supremacists and racists but it has -- you know this is festering
within the party and festering in frankly the former President Trump`s
base.
HAYES: Yes. There was also Steve King was a speaker there as well who did
his sort of Steve King thing. But it is striking there was a Republican
sitting Republican member of Congress Paul Gosar. You know, Gosar was one
of the big sort of stop the steal promoters of the big lie. He tweeted a
kind of threatening tweet on January 6th about, you know, hand in your
resignation to Joe Biden. Don`t let me -- let me come over there with a big
crowd.
I got to imagine this brings -- Gosar is not the same high profile as
Marjorie Taylor Greene or some others, but he -- I got to bring this. I
think it`s going to bring a lot more scrutiny towards him.
DANIELS: I think so too. One of the things is that you know Gosar and Ali
who was one of the people who, you know, led the stop the steal, talked
about the fact that Gosar helped him. He said Gosar helped him kind of do
and create that January 6th rally. And so, I think that`s exactly what
you`re going to see.
You`re going to start seeing people pay him a lot more attention especially
as, you know, he went to AFPAC and had to go -- you know, he went to CPAC
and kind of backpedaled exactly what he said, right? He said, I want to
tell you, you know, I denounce white racism that`s not appropriate, which
isn`t exactly what was being spoken about at AFPAC by many of the other
speakers.
And I think something that these congressmen are finding that is when you
flirt with these elements, you know, of the -- that are kind of in the
president -- the former president`s base, it can go left or I guess right,
really quick. You can end up having to try to backpedal from people who
have felt emboldened by leaders of the party because they`ve allowed these
thoughts and things to fester over the years.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, one of the -- one of the things that was striking is
that, you know, one of the -- one of the or the organizer here was at the
Capitol. I don`t know if he entered actually, but he was definitely at the
Stop the Steal rally. There were people with his sort of branded signs. He
talked at the conference about how great it was that day to see everyone.
You have like -- you know, there was a violent insurrection to stop the
peaceful transfer of power and there are zero apologies for that. And in
fact, at this conference, a celebration of it with a congressman who, you
know, played a part in at least planning the rally, if not the actual
invasion.
DANIELS: Yes. Fuentes said he didn`t go into the capital but he watched
everyone. You know, he talked about like, I saw the police retreating. I
heard that politicians were scurrying to the underground tunnels. And he
said to himself, "This is awesome," right?
And so this isn`t someone -- he celebrated those but eventually he said
that he disavowed violence and vandalism and -- which those two things
can`t -- direct conflict, right? You can`t at once say that you were so
excited to see people -- the police retreating and seeing congressmen and
women and other lawmakers having to scurry as he put it, and then denounce
it right after.
And it shows that and continues to show that the big lie that was
perpetrated by President Trump saying that this election was stolen from
him from day one, right -- it wasn`t just something he did on January 6th.
There was something that he said on November 4th at 2:00 in the morning
when he came out at the White House, and that continued.
And this is a part of the party now, and you saw at CPAC how the embrace of
that lie is going to continue to be an issue for the party. We`ve said,
I`ve said, you know, there`s a civil war in the Republican Party but what
it seems like is that the war is over and that former President Trump and
people that believe him and follow him have won.
And what that means for the Republican Party after -- you know, during 2022
and after is going to be something we`re going to have to watch because I
don`t think anyone knows how that`s going to shake out.
HAYES: Yes. It`s also worth pointing out as you just did there but, you
know, these sort of denunciations pro forma -- I mean, the president of
course himself famously said like you should go patriotically and
peacefully after getting the crowd to say we have to go in there and stop
them. There`s a certain kind of like, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge to
all this rhetoric we`ve seen from president on down which we saw displayed
there and I think also by Paul Gosar.
Eugene Daniels, great to have you on. Thanks a lot.
DANIELS: Thanks so much.
HAYES: Ahead, the governor of New York accused of predatory behavior will
now be investigated by a state`s attorney general. And within the past
hour, there are new allegations reported by The New York Times. The latest
turn in the Andrew Cuomo saga next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Just moments ago, New York Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, a Democrat,
called on New York Governor Cuomo to resign. The time has come, she says,
the governor must resign. That comes after a third woman has now come
forward to tell the New York Times Cuomo made unwanted advances to her at a
wedding, touching her bareback and asking if he could kiss her. That is the
picture of taken at the moment of the moment in question.
Now, that news breaking tonight just hours after New York`s Attorney
General Letitia James announced her office will move forward with an
independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by Cuomo
promising that "the findings will be disclosed in a public report."
Over the weekend, a second former aide had gone on the record on the New
York Times accusing the governor of sexual harassment. Cuomo denies the
allegations he released an apology on Sunday saying, "I now understand my
interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my
comments given my position made others feel in ways I never intend."
Cuomo and his administration were also under investigation by the FBI and
the U.S. attorney for under-counting New York`s COVID deaths in nursing
homes. A New York assemblyman who criticized the governor`s handing of --
handling of nursing homes, a perfectly legitimate policy criticism says
Cuomo then threatened to destroy him.
All this together is an avalanche of negative press for a governor who
spent the last year billing himself as the very model of leadership in the
coronavirus era. But independent of any specific allegation against Cuomo
about sexual harassment or policy failures or allegations of covering up
data, Andrew Cuomo`s style has been well known for years.
He relies on intimidation and strong-arming and vendettas against people
who cross him. He`s a bully. That is just how he has operated. It`s not a
secret. I mean everyone who`s covered him knows this. But in some ways,
this reckoning shows the limitations of that style of politics. It`s a
style with no specific political party or ideology has ownership over.
In my time covering politics, I`ve encountered people across the spectrum
with that approach. I mean, many people accuse Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
of being a bully during his time in office and I think that was a pretty
fair charge. Certainly, the ultimate example is, of course, Donald Trump.
There are officials and staffers and voters occasionally even some of the
press who could confuse intimidation and projections of authority with
actual strength. You see that sometimes. You know, they`re getting stuff
done. My advice though is don`t vote for bullies if you can avoid it.
Now, Andrew Cuomo has been returned to office time and time again by the
voters. And it`s not like he hasn`t been covered negatively. This is not
his first bout of negative press, OK. But voters don`t have to just accept
the description of being hard-nosed or tough is good enough in leaders.
People can`t be kept in silence through intimidation forever. And with
political leaders, their public words and the messages they send do matter
tremendously.
Case in point, the new president who just delivered a historic message, the
likes of which we haven`t seen maybe ever from an American president, that
remarkable moment ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: This weekend at CPAC, we saw the increasingly auditious con from
Republicans who lately have been working really hard to sell themselves to
the party of union folks and blue-collar workers aligned against the point-
headed elites of Silicon Valley and corporate America.
But you will notice as we pointed out on this very program a few weeks ago,
that right now there`s a highly pitched union battle between Silicon Valley
and workers playing out right now in the state of Alabama. There have been
no words of support for those workers from Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz or well,
really anyone from the Republican Party or conservative movement we`ve been
able to track down.
But last night, someone did rise up to offer support for workers in Alabama
and their right to seek to form a union. It was the President of the United
States in what labor historians have called the most forthright endorsement
of collective bargaining of any president in recent memory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have long said America wasn`t
built by Wall Street, it was built by the middle-class, and unions built
the middle class. Unions put power in the hands of workers. They level the
playing field. They give you a stronger voice for your health, your safety,
higher wages, protections from racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
Unions lift up workers both union and non-union and especially Black and
Brown workers. So, let me be really clear. It`s not up to me to decide
whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear, it`s not
up to an employer to decide that either. The choice to join a union is up
to the workers full stop, full stop.
Today and over the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and all
across America are voting in whether to organize a union in their
workplace. The law guarantees that choice. And it`s your right not that of
an employer. It`s your right. No employer can take that right away. So,
make your voice heard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, those words were just basically just reiterations of the basic
foundations of American labor law, but they hit a little different. If
you`re a worker worried right now about a retaliation from your employer
amidst a very pitched union organizing campaign.
We wanted to find out how the president`s words sounded to the folks in
Alabama in the midst of that organizing fight happening right now. Jennifer
Bates is a worker at the Bessemer, Alabama Amazon facility where the union
vote is currently in progress. And Randy Hadley is the president of the
Retail Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union Mid-South Council. And
both join me now.
Randy, let me -- let me start with you as someone who`s with the union in
the midst of this fight there. What the kind of rhetoric on the ground
sounds like and what it`s like to hear that from the president?
RANDY HADLEY, MID-SOUTH COUNCIL PRESIDENT, RETAIL, WHOLESALE AND DEPARTMENT
STORE WORKERS UNION: Well, first of all, hearing that from the president is
just heartwarming. And it`s about time that we had some help. During the
Trump administration, all he did was attack labor, attack middle class, and
attack working men and women.
And for the president to just come out and just say hey, we need a level
playing field, we need a fair playing field. Amazon has done nothing but
threaten these employees, threatening to terminate them, threatening to cut
their wages and benefits since day one. And the people in Bessemer, Alabama
have stood up and they said enough is enough.
And we feel extremely comfortable in the direction that we`re going. We
feel positive. And we`ve always said around the RWDSU, without change,
nothing changes. Well, change is coming to Bessemer, Alabama, and the RWDSU
is bragging.
HAYES: Jennifer, I know you work in that facility in Bessemer. And
obviously, you`re supporting the union which is -- it`s astounding to think
of the kind of pressure that`s being brought to bear there. What has the
experience been like of being in the middle of this?
JENNIFER BATES, WORKER, BESSEMER, ALABAMA AMAZON: Well, experience has been
overwhelming. Excitement, I`ve been having butterflies, and nervousness,
and it`s been up and down.
HAYES: Why do you want to join a union?
BATES: Because I feel like we need an amplified voice. We`ve been talking
to Amazon by issues that we`ve had and they`ve ignored us. They`ve extended
our breaks longer than we need to. So, we need a sense of security and a
lot of voice, and better wages.
HAYES: What`s the conversation among your co-workers down there right now?
I mean, how pitched is this? Is it -- is it tense and fraud in the
atmosphere? What are those conversations like?
BATES: The conversations I`ve had lately are a lot of excitement. And
they`re looking forward to the union coming in. Of course, we`re going to
have some people who`s intimidated by Amazon after -- especially after
we`ve had those meetings. And they`ve come out talking to us about not
having the union.
So, a lot of them are intimidated because of Amazon telling them that
they`re going to take their benefits away, they`re going to lose, they`re
going to get less paid. So, it`s a little up and down. But right now,
there`s a lot of excitement. And today, just getting off my shift, we`re
excited.
HAYES: What do you -- what do you do in the facility, Jennifer?
BATES: I`m a learning ambassador. I work in the receiving department right
now. when the trucks come in to bring the packages in, that`s where I`m at.
HAYES: Now, Randy, Jennifer alluded to this. Amazon obviously is fighting
this tooth and nail. They`ve been fighting to get the the group of workers
that are going to be the unit to be as large as possible which a lot of
people saw as a setback for for the union in terms of the scale of that
unit that you`re trying to organize now.
They`ve also had brought in, you know, consultants. They`re running ads on
all sorts of platforms. How has that -- how is that playing down there?
HADLEY: Well, it`s not playing -- Amazon has been Amazon has hired a group
of union buster consultants that they paid each consultant $3,200 a day to
try to convince these people to vote against themselves. Amazon is not
scared of the union. Amazon is scared of the people out in Bessemer,
Alabama coming together and empowering yourself. And that`s what they`re
going to do. And they`re going to bring change.
You know, Amazon is no more than when we look at things down there. It`s a
sweatshop. And people are out there just working, they have to touch a
package. Every eight seconds, they have to touch a package. They`re only
allowed two 30-minute breaks a day. When Amazon employees call for the help
of the union back in June, we put together a team and we came out to Amazon
and where Amazon made their mistake is they thought we were just some
little union that was coming in
and was just going to be gone in a few days.
We have not left Amazon in Bessemer except for twice since October the
20th, and that was Christmas Day and that was Dr. Martin Luther King`s
birthday. And we`re going to stay there and we will be there through March
the 29th, and we will continue to be there after we win this election.
And the labor of movement is on a different move now. The middle-class
people have finally said enough is enough. So, the union movement is on the
rise and you`ll see a new beginning coming soon.
HAYES: Jennifer, finally to you. You`ve worked in union shops before is
that right?
BATES: Yes.
HAYES: I wonder how much that informs your support of the union this time
around.
BATES: Well, I`m very informed about it because I know about the
relationships that we`ve had on the job. One of the things that Amazon has
spoken out is that we will lose our relationship with them. And we -- my
experience with Amazon, we don`t have a relationship. We have a
relationship with the computer or an app on a phone.
My last unionized facilities that I have worked at, we were like a family.
They treated us (AUDIO GAP). We were still family. We still had
communication with them. So, it`s a big difference.
HAYES: Jennifer Bates who works in that facility in Besse2mer. She just got
off her shift in that Amazon facility. And Randy Hadley who`s with the
union there in one of the most high-profile union organizing drives in
recent memory. Thank you both. I really both appreciate it. Thank you.
BATES: Thank you for having me.
HADLEY: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Monday night. THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts
right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening Chris. Your show was so good
tonight, I can hardly stand it, Chris.
HAYES: Oh, thank you.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.
END
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