Summary
The FDA and CDC are pausing the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after some recipients of that vaccine experienced extremely rare blood clots. "New York Times" reports that the indicted associate of Matt Gaetz is cooperating with the Feds with information about Matt Gaetz. Today, Sen. Warren wielded the gavel as chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee at a hearing on student debt. Tomorrow, President Biden will formally announce his plan to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: That`s tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I believe your question is did we pull the trigger too soon on this.
HAYES: America puts a pause on the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
FAUCI: We want to get this worked out as quickly as we possibly can. And that`s why you see the word pause.
HAYES: Tonight, my exclusive interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Then, breaking news from the New York Times, the indicted associate of Matt Gaetz is cooperating with the feds with information about Matt Gaetz.
Plus, while the outrage over the police killing of Daunte Wright affect the outcome of the Chauvin trial?
Also my exclusive interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren on the day she takes the gavel of the Banking Subcommittee, and Senator Chris Murphy on President Biden`s new commitment to end America`s longest war.
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. We`ve got a lot -- a lot to get to tonight. It`s a big show. We`ve got the third night of protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. That`s a live picture there. That`s over the police killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Of course, that`s what`s happening against the backdrop of the George Floyd trial in Minnesota. We`re keeping an eye on the situation there. This was the scene less than half an hour ago.
We start tonight with the big news that startup -- kicked off the day in the fight against the pandemic. Now, it has been a remarkable first 83 days in the Biden administration`s COVID vaccination program. But today, the first real big issue.
You probably saw this news. The FDA and CDC are pausing the administration of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine after some recipients of that vaccine experienced extremely rare blood clots. Now, as of yesterday, more than 6.8 million people had received the Johnson and Johnson shot so far. The number of people who have been found to suffer from this rare clotting disorder is six, literally less than one in a million.
We know that all six of those folks were women between the ages of 18 to 48, that one woman died. Another in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition. Now, today, officials from the FDA and CDC stressed the pause was out of an abundance of caution. But they expect it to last only a few days while they reviewed the situation and came up with recommendations to treat blood clots if they do occur after vaccination, especially, and I think this is key, because in this particular case, the standard treatment for blood clots could actually make things worse with these clots that have been developing in these six patients.
In a statement, Johnson and Johnson said that no clear causal relationship has been established between the vaccine and the blood clots. And then, in a later statement, the company added it was delaying the role of the vaccine in Europe and pausing vaccine clinical trials while awaiting guidance.
Now, again, six people out of nearly seven million folks have gotten the shot. As many pointed out today, it`s a very small risk compared to for example the risk of blood clots from taking certain birth control pills or from actually getting COVID. Here are the numbers. The chances of blood clots from the Johnson and Johnson vaccine based on what we know now are less than one in a million. For certain birth control pills, according to the FDA, the chances of blood clots are closer to six in ten thousand. The chances of blood clots if you are hospitalized with COVID itself are about one in twenty.
And just to put this news into some perspective, Politico is reporting Biden officials are bracing for the possibility of a weeks-long disruption to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine supply which comes or could come on the heels of that factory mix-up, the one in Baltimore that ruined up to 15 million doses of the vaccine a couple weeks ago.
That said, White House COVID Response Coordinator Jeff Zeints said today no matter what happens to Johnson and Johnson vaccine, the Biden vaccine plan remains on track.
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JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE COVID RESPONSE COORDINATOR: We believe there`s enough vaccination -- there`s vaccine in the system Moderna and Pfizer for all Americans who want to get vaccinated by May 31st to do so.
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HAYES: Now, not long after we made those comments, the CEO of Pfizer piped up to say that his company can deliver 10 percent more fisher doses than previously agreed to by the end of May which should help make up for the shortfall. Keep in mind, those extra 10 percent doses are more than Johnson and Johnson has -- have been administered altogether, OK. Johnson and Johnson has been a very small sliver of American vaccination thus far.
The pause on the use of Johnson and Johnson vaccine was technically just a recommendation from those government agencies, but most states immediately halted use of the single-dose vaccine along with major pharmacies, U.S. military. Most Americans with Johnson and Johnson shots scheduled in the coming days saw them canceled or rescheduled. Some states quickly switching those people to other available vaccines.
Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that anyone who got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine more than two weeks ago should be in the clear.
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FAUCI: So, someone who maybe had it a month or two ago would say what does this mean for me? It really doesn`t mean anything. You`re OK. Because if you look at the frame, the time frame when this occurs, it`s pretty tight from a few days, six to 13 days from the time of the vaccination.
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HAYES: Dr. Fauci is actually going to be joining us right here in just a few minutes to discuss all this. So, right now we`ve got three vaccines available in the U.S. Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, as you might know, they use this new kind of technology called messenger RNA, mRNA.
It basically is like computer code injected into our body that teaches our cells how to make a little protein that triggers the immune response to get our body making the antibodies to fight off COVID. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is not like that. It`s like the attenuated virus of traditional vaccines, right. And it, along with a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford which is not available here, but is available in Europe, they do not use mRNA.
Now, here`s an important thing. Regulators in Europe have seen similar and similarly rare blood clot issues with that AstraZeneca vaccine that resulted in temporary halts and the use of that vaccine last month in many European countries.
All right, so now we`re in a holding pattern waiting to see the results of this pause, waiting to see if this is isolated and rare as it appears or if maybe there`s more cases. Now, the decision to pause the use of Johnson and Johnson vaccine was made, it appears, fairly independently by the FDA and CDC. Get this. In fact, the White House COVID Response Coordinator, that guy, Jeff Zients who`s, you know, responsible for all this, said today he only found out about it last night.
You got to imagine that was not a great call to get if you`re Jeff Zients. That independence, we should note, right, reflects a kind of promises kept on the part of the Biden administration which campaigned on restoring the independence of scientific agencies, generally a good thing.
At the same time, one of the most difficult challenges facing officials from the very beginning of this pandemic, and that goes back to late January, early February of last year, right, how to make high-stakes decisions under conditions of uncertainty with incomplete information, no clear roadmap. It`s not easy.
You could argue, this is the right decision that allowing Johnson and Johnson vaccinations to continue what have resulted in more people having serious complications and also in more vaccine hesitancy across the board as, you know, inevitably stories started to get out about the folks that had experienced this particular side effect and the FDA doing nothing.
You could also argue on the other end, right, that this enormous announcement, you know, phone notifications and whatnot, calling attention to side effects for what at this point is an almost infinitesimally small percentage of the population will only serve to amplify vaccine concerns and ultimately make things worse. Not any easy calls in either direction.
There`s one person in the whole wide world you want to hear from in this situation, it is Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Chief Medical Advisor of President Obama and President Biden. And we are very lucky to be joined by him tonight.
All right, Dr. Fauci, let`s start with this. Who makes this call?
FAUCI: The call was made unquestionably by the FDA and the CDC working together. So, it was based purely on the scientific and public health considerations.
HAYES: But even if that`s the case, right, there`s some balance of trade- offs here. There`s costs and benefits in either direction. What`s the -- what`s the matrix for that decision? What`s the process by which you evaluate the sort of risks and costs on either end?
FAUCI: Well, what had happened is that there were a couple of cases that had been picked up in the surveillance of the J and J vaccine administration. And then it became three, and then four, and then five, and it reached six. The FDA and the CDC said, you know, we better just take a pause here and take a really close look at this. A, are there any more cases there are a lot more that we`re missing and b, what is it, what are the details about this. We need to learn more about it.
The other thing that was important that we mentioned today in the press conference is that it`s a message to the physicians out there because if particularly young women who may have been vaccinated come in with this syndrome and need treatment because it`s really quite -- it`s rare but it is quite a severe syndrome that the general thing -- and you mentioned this yourself, Chris, running up to the show, where the treatment in general for clots is an anticoagulant called heparin.
Heparin would be contraindicated in this case because it would make matters worse. So, you really want to alert the physicians out there, hold on folks, we have an issue here. We`re going to try and sort it out. It may be nothing. We may go back to where we were before, but let`s just pause and take a really close look at this. That`s what this is all about. And that decision was made purely on a public health and scientific basis by the FDA and the CDC.
HAYES: So, I just want to push on this a little bit to sort of understand the risk calculation here, right? So, you know, there`s this phrase abundance of caution which has become a kind of cliche. It was -- it was used today, right, out of an abundance of caution. And every time I hear that phrase, I think, well, I don`t want an abundance of caution. I want the correct amount of caution, right?
I mean, we`re fighting a deadly pandemic, so it doesn`t -- you know it matters how many shots get into arms. You and I, I think, agree on that, right? And it matters whether people have the knock-on effect of reading this news and thinking, oh my word, you know, I don`t know about these vaccines. So, there`s -- there is stuff on the other side of the ledger here you would I think agree.
FAUCI: Yes, there is. But this is not a rare event when you`re following the potential for adverse events with a new product such as this vaccine where you pause take a quick look and then say OK, this is probably nothing and probably isn`t any more than you`d expect anyway, let`s move on.
That happens more frequently than you could imagine, Chris, because of the attention on this for reasons that are very obvious, we`re in the middle of a deadly pandemic. It becomes something that people pay a lot of attention to. But it`s not at all unusual to have pauses when you`re dealing with vaccinations.
HAYES: But even if it`s not at all unusual, I guess, I would say that, right, the messaging is in a different environment. I mean, I wonder how much you guys think -- and I think we`re trying to be very, very clear and responsible here on this program, right, about what kind of risk we`re talking about and what it means more broadly. But how much the general picture of vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, yadda, yadda, affects the overall picture or decision-making sphere in which all these folks are operating?
FAUCI: Well, you know, Chris, it goes both ways, really, because you know, you could say this is going to have a negative impact on the issue of hesitancy. But on the other hand, it may actually work in the opposite direction because people want to know that safety is a very important issue often when people are hesitant, they say I`m not really sure that this was really carefully looked, at is it really safe.
HAYES: Right.
FAUCI: I think what you see happened today was the fact that safety was put right upfront. You know, it might last just to pause for a few days and go back in, but at least the system worked. People were watching this very carefully and they saw something that was suspicious that might mean something and they said, OK, let`s wait a minute, and take a really careful look at this. So, I think it fortifies the whole concept that we take safety very seriously.
HAYES: I mean, it`s interesting as you say that now, right? It is a testimony to the surveillance efficacy that you can find the six cases out of seven million, right? I mean, that there`s -- that there`s enough tracking here of folks that that`s being reported up the chain, it`s getting integrated into the safety consideration.
I want to ask a sort of broader question which I think relates to this very strange moment we`re at a fraught moment in the pandemic`s life. We`ve got record hospitalizations in Michigan. We`ve got almost half of adults with at least one shot in arms. We`re doing a very good job in vaccination rates if you compare us to other large countries in the world.
And just about how you think about the next month and how you think about these balance -- these balancing fighting equities of people getting back to normal, seeing other people, keeping the vaccine at bay, and what your message is about navigating that very fraught period where there`s lots of different countervailing impulses and risks?
FAUCI: Right. So, yes, that`s a lot of questions there, Chris, but I think I could probably answer it by saying -- that`s OK. We can do this. It really is as I`ve described it is kind of a race between highly effective and safe vaccines, getting the population vaccinated as many people as you possibly can as quickly as you possibly can.
The rollout of the vaccines is really quite successful. You know, we vaccinated between three and four million people a day. Over the weekend, we`re as high as 4.6 million people in a given day. You mentioned yourself that we have now over 120 million people that have received at least one dose of the vaccine, that`s really good.
Now, at the same time, you have opening up. I mean, there are many states and cities that are pulling back on the public health measures. You know, understandably, everybody wants to open up. There`s a good deal of COVID-19 fatigue. And we`re seeing creeping up of cases. I wouldn`t exactly call it a big surge that goes up, but you know, we had a baseline of about 30,000 cases, then it went up to 40, 50, 60.
Last weekend, we had one day where it was 80,000 new cases in a given day. The more people you get vaccinated we vaccinate now -- the more people you vaccinate each day, you`re going to have three to four million people vaccinated, you get closer and closer to the vaccinated people being dominant as opposed to the virus itself spreading among people.
When that happens, you`re going to see and it`s going to happen reasonably soon, Chris, you`re going to see a diminution in the number of daily cases. And as more people get vaccinating, there going to be a loosening up of the restrictions, things that people who are vaccinated can do that they weren`t able to do before.
I believe we`re going in that direction. If we just stick to the public health measures at the same time that we`re vaccinating, if we just throw caution to the wind and declare victory prematurely, we`re going to really, you know, set back the effort of the vaccine by having a greater effort of the virus itself running rampant. And we don`t want that.
We want to get public health measures to control the virus at the same time as we protect more and more people each and every day.
HAYES: All right, Dr. Anthony Fauci, I can`t tell you how much I appreciate you making time on this very busy day. It`s really, really, really great to hear from you. Come back any time. Thank you.
FAUCI: Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you.
HAYES: We got breaking news from the New York Times tonight in the Matt Gaetz investigation. Remember that one? The Seminole County tax assessor, the IDs spread out on the table weirdly. Just who is reportedly cooperating with federal investigators and what they`ve been reportedly telling them about Mr. Gaetz next.
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HAYES: Breaking news tonight from New York Times on the Matt Gaetz case. The Times reporting that former Florida official Joel Greenberg has been cooperating with the Justice Department since last year, has disclosed to investigators that he and Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz had encounters with women who were given cash or gifts in exchange for sex according to two people briefed on the matter.
NBC News has not yet independently verified this reporting. This broke just about an hour ago. The Justice Department is investigating Greenberg and Gaetz for their involvement in recruiting women online and paying them for sex as well as crucially, in technical terms, the sex trafficking of a 17- year-old girl.
Congressman Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing. He says he has never paid for sex, had sex with an underage girl, or recruited women online.
Michael Schmidt is one of the reporters who broke this story at the Times and he joins me now. Michael, what can you tell us about what you`ve learned in your reporting?
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, look, Joel Greenberg has a massive amount of criminal exposure. He`s been indicted on 32 charges. He faces a mandatory minimum of 12 years in prison. And the docket of his, the court papers have been filed against him were just sort of a buffet of different types of criminality.
And when you`re in a situation like that, and you`re looking at a massive amount of time in prison, you have to figure out how to get out of that. And what Greenberg realized is that his only choice was to cooperate. So, he has been meeting with federal investigators for many months now providing them with details about his own encounters and Gaetz`s encounters with women.
And we expect here in the weeks to come for a formal plea agreement, cooperation agreement to be announced. And at that point, we`ll get a better sense of truly how much the government trusts Greenberg`s cooperation, how important is he to the investigation, how importantly they see him and will be willing to go to a federal judge ultimately to ask for a sentence reduction.
HAYES: Yes, that point about trust here seems crucial in terms of the framing that you yourself gave right, which is that this is someone who has incentive, strong incentive to flip, to give up other people and clear -- you know, in any administration anywhere, in any Department of Justice, any local U.S. attorney`s office, a prominent congressman, you know, that`s a big deal. So, there`s going to be a question about his reliability in all this.
SCHMIDT: Yes, look, this is a U.S. attorney`s office in Florida. We`re not talking about SDNY or EDNY or EDVA, these offices that came up during the Mueller investigation. We`re talking about an office that probably hasn`t had -- you know, isn`t doing a ton of high-profile complex cases. They did have a trial some years ago for the wife of the Pulse nightclub shooter on terrorism charges. They lost that case. That was an embarrassment for the government as the government usually wins terrorism cases.
And you do not want to move forward with any investigation but particularly one that is politically sensitive, involves a member of congress. And you know that if Matt Gaetz were to go to trial with the government, he`d be walking in with some form of a high-end defense lawyer, someone who`s really going to take the government on. And these cases are not simply just looking at documents and having an agent testify. You need to rely on people who were in the room and there are different credibility problems with, you know, different witnesses in this case.
HAYES: What does it mean that he`s been talking to the Feds this long?
SCHMIDT: So, what happens is that when you reach a plea or cooperation agreement with the government, the government knows what they`re getting themselves into because they have spent time with you. They have learned if you have admitted to them all of their -- your culpability, if you have -- what other information you have, how truthful are you, what kind of witness could you be. They do not sign that agreement without having that sense.
So, over many meetings the government will sit down and learn as much as they can from the witness. And that`s why there have been so many meetings that have gone on in the past several months.
HAYES: All right, Michael Schmidt, great reporting. Thanks so much for sharing that with us tonight. I appreciate it. Don`t go anywhere, my exclusive interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren who`s now chairing the Senate Banking Subcommittee. Today was her first hearing on canceling student debt. You do not want to miss Senator Elizabeth Warren next.
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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): I`m now going to go vote, so I`m going to hand over the gavel to our ranking member Senator Kennedy who I think will be calling on Dr. Baker.
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): Madam chair?
WARREN: Yes.
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HAYES: It was quick. You may have missed it. That was Senator John Kennedy, a Republican, addressing Senator Elizabeth Warren as Madam Chair. That`s because today, Warren wielded the gavel for the first time in her new role as chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee at a hearing on student debt.
One of the more under-appreciated elements but most important of the Senate Democratic majority that is empowered by those improbable Georgia wins is that some of the chamber`s most crucial economic committees are now being run by some of its most progressive members. Those members are now able to sort of dictate the flow on issues and legislation on things like say, student debt cancellation.
Joining me now is Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Policy at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
It`s great to have you, Senator. Your hearing today was on student loan cancellation and student debt which is usually been pushing for very hard. We`re 83 days in. What are the prospects for that? What`s your prognosis?
WARREN: You know, my prognosis is we`re going to get this done. President Biden could cancel $50,000 worth of student loan debt basically with the stroke of a pen. Student loan debt has been canceled by President Obama, by President Trump, and already by President Biden. He`s been canceling about $5 billion of student loan debt every single month in the accumulated interest that he`s canceling.
But look, the reason we`re going to do this is because it is so critically important. One of the things we face in this nation is a Black-White wealth gap that has been with us now for generations and generations. By canceling $50,000 of student loan debt, the president would have the ability to close the Black-White wealth gap among borrowers by about 25 points. And for Latinos, that would be about 27 points. Talk about something that would be transformative in this nation. We could do that.
HAYES: OK, so let me ask about the distributional point. The sort of average amount of U.S. student loan debt and whether you`re using the median or average it moves around, it`s somewhere around $32,000. OK. You know, the argument that has been made is that canceling 10 or $20,000 has progressive distributional impacts.
But when you get up to 50,000, you`re canceling the debt of a dentist who`s doing pretty well, or a lawyer who`s also doing pretty well. And why would you, you know, why would you cancel the debt of people who have taken out loans for relatively high earning jobs afterwards?
WARREN: So, remember that the proposal is to have income caps on it. So, it`s not canceling student loan debt for people who are making a bazillion bucks. And by the way, the median -- according to the latest data from the Department of Education that they just released today, it`s closer to about $40,000 worth of debt.
Keep in mind what that would mean is for about 84 percent of the people out there who have student loan debt. It`d be free and clear. They`d be done. They`d have no more student loan debt. And also, remember who these folks are. I know everyone wants to talk about, you know, the person with the fancy diploma or whatever. 40 percent of these folks never graduated from college. So, they`re wrestling with student loan debt and what you make as a high school graduate. It`s time to turn them loose.
HAYES: You have been quite outspoken and I think forward-thinking in the realm of taxation. And there`s a big tax debate happening right now in Congress about these infrastructure pay fors, about raising corporate taxes. I mean, it seems a little like we`re chasing our tails around the tree which is that the Republicans are never going to agree to any taxation on corporations or people at the top full stop. Like, it`s the only thing that holds the caucus together at this point. Am I crazy or is that just -- it just seems obvious to me.
WARREN: So, which Republicans exactly do you mean here, Chris? If you mean Republicans all across this nation --
HAYES: Right.
WARREN: In fact, they support a wealth tax. The majority of Republicans across America supported wealth taxes to the majority of Independents and the majority of Democrats. It`s the folks in the Senate and the House who say no, no, no, because they`re the ones who are beholden to the giant corporations, to the billionaires, and their big promise is that they are the tax cut people so that the rich can get richer.
And somebody`s going to have to pay to keep this government going. And they`re willing to just keep shoving that off onto middle-class folks, working-class folks, doing it through cuts, they managed to shove it off onto poor folks. And what this debate is really about is about talking about forms of taxation that are truly progressive, forms of taxation that raise a lot of money and put some basic fairness in the system.
Now, you know me. Give me a chance and I`ll talk about the wealth tax. Two cent tax on fortunes above $50 billion -- $50 million, we can raise $3 trillion over the next 10 years. That`ll pay for a lot of preschool and child care, a whole lot of infrastructure just that one piece alone.
HAYES: Final question for you is about the news today in Afghanistan. I know you`re on the Armed Services Committee and I saw your statement on this. I`m going to be talking to Chris Murphy in a little bit who`s also quite invested in this issue. President Biden appearing to announce tomorrow a withdrawal that`s not conditions based of all troops by September 11th of this year. Do you support it?
WARREN: I strongly support President Biden on this. It is time for us to get out of Afghanistan.
HAYES: Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, thank you so much for making time tonight. I appreciate it.
WARREN: Thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, another day of big headlines from the Chauvin trial, another day of protest as a police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright has resigned. Will she be charged? We`ll talk about all of it next.
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HAYES: The third night of protests in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota where the community is struggling with grief and anger after a 20-year-old Black man named Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer over the weekend. That shooting happening just 10 miles from where former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is currently on trial for the death of George Floyd last year.
In fact, earlier this afternoon, the families of Daunte Wright and George Floyd came together to hold an emotional press conference.
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NAISHA WRIGHT, AUNT OF DAUNTE WRIGHT: They murdered my nephew. She killed my nephew. He was loved. He was ours. He came from us, my brother and my sister`s heart. Like I said, this is no broken home, this is no broken home. This is 23 years of love, 23. My nephew was 20. Did you all not see my little great-nephew? Did you all not see that beautiful baby? He is fatherless, not over a mistake, of a murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Daunte Wright`s aunt who you just saw there also revealed a connection between the two men, George Floyd`s girlfriend who used to be Daunte Wright`s teacher. Shortly after the press conference, officials announced that both the police officer identified Wright`s shooting and the Brooklyn Center Police Chief resigned. This comes after the city council of Brooklyn Center voted last night to fire the city manager and give the mayor a control to the police department.
All these changes in response to the unnecessary death of a 20-year-old Black man, and of course all happening against the backdrop of the trial of Derek Chauvin where today his defense team began laying out its case, calling several witnesses who seemed to do little to undermine the video evidence we have all seen.
One of the defense witnesses was former law enforcement officer named Barry Broddwho testified that the use of force was justified. The prosecutor spent an extended period of time getting him to admit that Derek Chauvin should have known he was causing George Floyd unnecessary pain and should have been aware enough to stop what he was doing.
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STEVE SCHLEICHER, PROSECUTOR: From this point forward, right, from this point and to the point at which the EMTs arrive, then tap on the defendant`s shoulder, and take Mr. Floyd and place him onto the gird. From this point to that point, Mr. Floyd wasn`t resisting, was he?
BARRY BRODD, WITNESS: No.
SCHLEICHER: The defendant maintained the same general position.
BRODD: Yes.
SCHLEICHER: Force must be reasonable at the start of the force, correct?
BRODD: Yes.
SCHLEICHER: Throughout the continuation of the force and at the end of the force, correct?
BRODD: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Right. So, is it reasonable to continue using the force on the limp body of a man who has taken his last breath underneath you? Clearly, there is nothing reasonable about the force Derek Chauvin used against George Floyd. And even the defense`s witnesses have been forced to admit as much.
For more on that and what we learned today in and out of court, I`m joined by Rachel Paulose, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, now professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law.
Let`s start with your analysis of the testimony today was multiple experts put on by the defense to basically argue this was a justified and legitimate use of force by Chauvin. What do you think of those witnesses?
RACHEL PAULOSE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY FOR MINNESOTA: Well, I think unfortunately for the defense, the line the jury is most likely to remember is Mr. Brodd`s line that if only George Floyd had been resting comfortably, compliant with the police officer`s directions, none of this would have happened.
And his direct quote was that he could have been resting comfortably. As a mid-Westerner, Chris, this reminded me of Bobby Knight`s line years ago that if a woman knew that rape was inevitable, she should just lie back and enjoy it. It`s not possible for a woman to enjoy assault just as it`s not possible for a man to rest comfortably when three grown men are on top of him and one is on his neck.
HAYES: And do you think when you say that moment stuck out in terms of the jury, I mean, do you think that -- in which way do you see that cutting?
PAULOSE: Well, I think that it showed remarkable lack of sensitivity, which is at the heart of this case, a lack of empathy, the lack of judgment, the lack of understanding of what was being done to take human life. As a legal matter, the notion that you can`t believe what your own eyes are telling you, I think again is not going to bode well for the defense because the jurors do have common sense, they do have judgment. They can see what`s happening for themselves on that video.
And I think they`re going to be asking themselves, is anyone possible -- is it possible for anyone to rest comfortably on a sidewalk with police officers on top of you?
HAYES: There was another moment where this expert, Mr. Brodd sort of talked about Floyd becoming more compliant. Again, kind of like that resting comfortably line. I want to play it because it was so -- it`s so striking in the context. Take a listen.
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SCHLEICHER: In your view of the clip that we just looked at, just focusing on the subject behavior, what is Mr. Floyd doing? What he was he doing in that clip?
BRODD: He`s becoming more compliant.
SCHLEICHER: Well, is there any noncompliance you were able to see in that clip?
BRODD: In this clip, no.
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HAYES: When he refers to him becoming more compliant, that`s the man taking his last breaths. I mean, he`s -- yes.
PAULOSE: He`s dying. And if the -- if the argument of the defense is, as they suggested last week, that even saying "I can`t breathe" is an act of resistance, I think they face the dangerous possibility that the jury is -- this is going to backfire with the jury because the jury is going to say this is completely unreasonable, and this just shows how excessive the force was in this case.
And if this is any clue as to Derek Chauvin`s mindset and not just the theories of his defense attorneys, then he deserves conviction on one or more counts.
HAYES: We should note that Mr. Brodd also appeared as an expert witness in the Defense of Jason Van Dyke. That would be the Chicago police officer who`s convicted of murder for shooting and killing 17 year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014. People probably have seen that videotape as well.
What`s striking to me here and one of our producers pointed this out earlier today and it sort of stuck with me all day is when you see what`s happening inside the courtroom, it`s literally exactly what you hear from certain corners of particularly right-wing media after one of these incidents about, well, he had excited delirium, he had -- he was on drugs, he has super strength, he was resisting arrest, he was this dangerous, almost bestial force for the officer.
I mean, it`s -- there`s no difference. It`s the same line being pursued by the defense attorneys inside that courtroom as how it gets tried in the court of public opinion.
PAULOSE: Absolutely. And so that is why I think this inability to hear people, which a lot of people thought was what was most disturbing about that video, Derek Chauvin`s lack of response to both Mr. Floyd as well as to the crowd around him is being echoed throughout this trial. And I don`t think that bodes well for the defense.
HAYES: Rachel Paulose who served as U.S. Attorney there in Minnesota, thank you so much for making time with us tonight.
PAULOSE: Thank you.
HAYES: All right, coming up, Senator Chris Murphy on the huge announcement from the White House that can finally mean the ends of our longest war. The senator joins me ahead.
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HAYES: Tomorrow, President Biden will formally announce his plan to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks which would finally bring the longest war in U.S. history to a close. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and he joins me now.
First of all, your reaction to this news.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): It`s the right move. It`s a recognition of facts on the ground. It`s a recognition that arguably our mission in Afghanistan was accomplished a decade ago. We went to Afghanistan in order to take out the Taliban, to remove the ability of al-Qaeda to use that space as training territory and operating territory through which they could plan attacks on the United States.
And what our counterterrorism officials tell us today is that while al- Qaeda is not completely gone from Afghanistan, they`re down to, you know, maybe 200, 300 fighters, and that they no longer have the ability to use Afghanistan to plan large-scale attacks against the United States.
What we`ve been engaged in really over the last decade has been nation- building. We have been working with the Afghan government to clear the Taliban out, put the Afghan government in charge of the security of that nation. We`ve given them every opportunity to be able to uh stand up their own defenses and their own government structure.
And I think at this point we have to recognize that, you know, if we were to stay for another 15 years, we likely wouldn`t be able to completely rid that country of the Taliban, but having accomplished the main goal which is degrading al-Qaeda to the point that they cannot attack the United States directly again from Afghanistan. It`s time to bring our men and women home.
HAYES: There`s a split -- an interesting split among Republicans I saw interviewed today. Folks like Lindsey Graham very angry and upset at this news, others with more equanimity. Mitt Romney saying he was sort of not sure, others saying yes. Ted Cruz I think is saying, basically it`s time to bring them home. Do you think pressure -- political pressure or pressure from the Pentagon which is successfully, let`s be honest, rolled administration after administration on this question, is going to build in advance of this actual withdrawal?
MURPHY: Well, I think that this is no surprise to those of us who have watched Joe Biden over the years. You know, open reporting tells us that during the Obama administration, then-Vice President Biden was arguing for a more precipitous withdrawal of American forces because as a senator, Joe Biden had, you know, watched Afghanistan very closely, and knew that general after general had come up to Capitol Hill and we needed one more year, we just needed two more years. That the Afghan government, the Afghan military was so close to being able to take over and control things on their own. And of course, that never came to fruition.
In fact, the Taliban used the American presence there as recruiting fodder, and our presence there in fact was elongating the conflict, not bringing it to a close. So, I don`t know that Joe Biden is going to be dissuaded. I think he has been of this opinion for a long time that we needed to bring this war to an end.
HAYES: One to ten, how sure are you it`s going to happen?
MURPHY: Ten. Again, I just --
HAYES: Well, no. I mean, that`s -- there is a certain loosening the football quality here. I mean, you know, I`m 42 years old. I watched it for 20 years. I reported on it for, you know, however long, probably 16, 17 years I reported on Afghanistan and possible withdraw from Afghanistan and is the government, you know, yadda, yadda. So, I feel like I`ll believe it when I see it.
But you are close enough to this administration. I think you have your finger on the pulse. You say like, you see this as an actual thing that`s happening, that means something.
MURPHY: Well, I think -- I think it`s happening because this president is committed to the policy in a personal way. But also, because you know, he faces an array of threats that require reorientation.
HAYES: Right.
MURPHY: I mean, just this weekend, we have seen unprecedented saber- rattling from the Chinese in and around Taiwan. We have Russian forces mustering on the border of the Ukraine. We obviously have a number of new security threats in Africa and the Middle East. Right now, we need to put our focus, our money, our resources where the most threats to the United States exists. And right now, they just aren`t in Afghanistan.
HAYES: You have been a very outspoken supporter of the Iran Nuclear Deal, of getting back into it. Republicans and the Trump administration hated the deal, left it, and Netanyahu and the Israeli government under Netanyahu has hated it, has been clear about hating it.
There was a blackout attack on Natanz Nuclear Enrichment site in Iran a few days ago, a power failure that appear to have been caused by deliberately planned explosion struck the Natanz uranium enrichment site on Sunday, in what Iranian officials called an act of sabotage that they suggested had been carried out by Israel.
Obviously, Israel neither confirms nor denies it is. I think it`s widely viewed as likely something they did. Does this feel like an attempt to sabotage the just-starting talks between the U.S. government and Iran?
MURPHY: I can`t speak to the responsibility for the action. What I can say is this. It`s additional proof that there is no military pathway to divorcing Iran from a nuclear weapon. This attack, whoever carried it out, resulted in Iran making a decision to move even further forward with their nuclear research program, getting closer to the breakout time for a nuclear weapon.
And so, it`s just more confirmation that no matter how many different novel ways you try to attack their program, it`s not going to divorce them from a pathway to a weapon. It`s only diplomacy that is going to force the Iranians into a different disposition and posture.
I think the Iranians know this administration is serious about getting back in the JCPOA. I think time is ticking here. The Iranian elections are coming up. We, I think, have a short window to get back in compliance and force the Iranians back into compliance. A number of senators, about 20 of us, sent a letter to the administration recommending this compliance for compliance approach, and I hope that we`re going to see the JCPOA come back into effect very soon. It would be very important for the security of the region and the world.
HAYES: Isn`t the well irredeemably poisoned?
MURPHY: With respect to what?
HAYES: To Iran. I mean, they struck a deal. We walked away from it. Then, you know, their nuclear scientist are getting whacked left and right under the rules based international order. Like, come on.
MURPHY: No. And listen, I think, you know, all throughout the world, we are having trouble sort of recommitting our friends and adversaries to a diplomatic path because you know, they worry about what comes next. This sort of seesaw of American foreign policy makes it really hard for anybody to enter into negotiations with the United States.
But, you know, the sanctions that have been put on Iran are serious. They are crippling. And they are a mechanism to get them back to the table. So, no, I think there`s still a pathway to get back into this agreement.
HAYES: Senator Chris Murphy, thank you so much for your time. It`s great as always. That is ALL IN on this Thursday -- Tuesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.