Summary
Republicans embrace the big lie that the election was stolen because it is a useful lie for them and there is a financial reward for them. A militia member who was caught on camera inside the Capitol pled guilty of breaching the building, now reportedly cooperating with the government. There are more guns per capita in America than anywhere else in the world by far. The reason they wanted to stop immigration, limit it as much as possible is because they wanted to keep the country`s white majority. Punchbowl News reported the group of House Republicans including Georgia`s Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arizona`s Paul Gosar are forming an America First Caucus to protect Anglo-Saxon political traditions.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: That is tonight`s REIDOUT. Have a safe weekend. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight, on ALL IN. 100 days later, the big lie that spurred the insurrection is a Republican campaign slogan.
REP. MO BROOKS (R-AL): America suffered the worst voter fraud and election theft in history.
HAYES: Tonight, the politicians still pushing the big lie and profiting from it. Plus, a founding member of a militia gripe pleads guilty to breaching the Capitol. And General Russel Honore joins me on what needs to be done to protect the Capitol from further attack. Then --
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This has to end. It`s a national embarrassment. It is a national embarrassment what`s going on. And it`s not only these mass shootings that are occurring. Every single day -- every single day there is a mass shooting in the United States if you count all those who were killed out on the streets of our cities and our rural areas. It`s a national embarrassment and must come to an end.
HAYES: Another horrific mass shooting, another reminder of the exceptional violence in America. And the new America first caucus in Washington with what sure looks like an outright white nationalist agenda when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. It has been 100 days since the Trump mob insurrection and thousands and thousands of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol falsely claiming the election was stolen from Donald Trump. It happened on January 6th, and today 100 days later, we still all live under the shadow of the big lie, the lie looms over all of us because large parts of the Republican Party and the conservative movement have embraced it.
And I have to say, they have embraced it for a perfectly logical reason, because it is a useful lie for them. There is a financial reward to begin with for people like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who pushed the lie that led to the insurrection. Those two senators raised huge sums in the first three months of the year.
Senator Cruz brought in a whopping $3.6 million to his Senate reelection committee while Senator Hawley took in another $3 million. This money is their reward for lying to the American people and attempting to overturn democratic election to bring to an end 240 years of peaceful transfer of power.
So, they had done that and the short-term gain has been money to help them pursue more power. Again, it`s logical. Even supposedly fringe figures like Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene seen here in the Trump Won face mask, fact check, he did not, are cleaning up. She raised a staggering $3.2 million during the first quarter of the year, a record for a House freshman during an off year. And that`s because the base likes the lie and they financially reward people that carry the lie.
In fact, one of the first pillars of the deeply nativist America first caucus that Greene is now looking to launch with some of her colleagues is a range of lies about supposed election fraud and a promise of substantive investigations into mass voter fraud perpetuated during the 2020 election.
The big lie is basically integral to their caucus, which seeks to, and I quote here, "protect Anglo-Saxon political traditions. We have much more on that disturbing and well, outright racist new Republican caucus later in the show. But there is a very simple financial incentive for Republicans, right? If you continue to tell this lie, if you continue to undermine American democracy, you will be rewarded with cash.
And in fact, it`s more than that, right? The lie is now in the process of becoming a kind of litmus test for the future of the party. Do you remember the Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, right? This guy. The guy who refuses to steal the election for Donald Trump, he`s now facing a challenge from Republican Congressman Jody Hice who is basically running on the platform of yes, I would steal the election. You got to kick out the guy who didn`t.
But Hice is one of many Republicans who launched campaigns this year specifically built on the big lie.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROOKS: In 2020, America suffered the worst voter fraud and election theft in history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are strong and unanswered questions about statistically impossible election results, unanswered questions of video, of boxes of votes being pulled out and counted.
JOSH MANDEL (R-OH), SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: It might be months, might be years, it might be decades, but I think when we look back on this election, we`ll see in large part it was stolen from President Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All those men, those are all Republican Senate candidates. They are not the fringe. All of them could win and be in the U.S. Senate. That`s the party now, at least a huge chunk of it, right? And again, the big lie isn`t just useful to Republicans seeking power, like those men you saw there who are willing to debase themselves so that they can achieve power. It`s also a tool to change the rules and suppress the vote which benefits the broader Republican project, right?
Republicans cite the big lie to claim that they are just addressing legitimate concerns about election security. So, when they push voting measures across the country to create hurdles for tens of millions of voters, the Brennan Center Reporting legislators have introduced 361 bills restrict provisions in 47 states.
When they do that, right, they defend these bills by claiming they just want to restore the American people`s faith in our elections. There`s a lot of questions out there, a lot of doubts. We got to do something about it. The only reason so many people questioned our elections in the first place, of course, is because Donald Trump and Fox and Republicans keep lying to them over and over, like those men you saw there before, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud and sowing the seed of doubt. It`s all circular. It`s all a ploy.
It`s their excuse to pass laws designed to keep them in power. Look at Texas where Republican lawmakers have been pushing voter suppression laws targeting Democratic strongholds. Now, texas Republicans have a new bill that would require people to register to vote twice, once for federal elections and then separately for state elections. And the idea, according to the folks at Democracy Docket, is to evade federal rights protections that could pass into law this year with voters in state elections able to ignore federal requirements.
The Trump mob insurrection we saw 100 days ago was eventually turned back before the insurrectionists could overthrow our democracy. And make no mistake, the spirit of that insurrection lives on within the Republican Party. You could even argue it`s the guiding principle of the party. You could see it in the candidates who continue to push the big lie, the candidates who raise money off it, the lawmakers who vote for voter suppression bills, and the officials who profess fealty to the man who almost ended more than 230 years of American democracy.
So, the insurrection itself may be over, but the big lie endures. And it endures as the justification Republicans use to seek power by any means necessary. The big question now is whether they will succeed where those insurrectionists failed.
I`m joined now by a man whose job it is to beat back the Republican assault on our democracy, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison. Jaime, if we went back 100 days to January 6th, we were -- we had fresh in our minds what we had just seen which we all watched happen in real-time. Would you have expected the party to have the relationship to that day and to the big lie that prompted it that it does have now, which is to basically make it kind of part of the canon for what it is to be a Republican?
JAIME HARRISON, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: You know, Chris, I think back to that day quite often. You know, I used to work on Capitol Hill right in the U.S. Capitol on the third floor of the Capitol. My window looked out to the mall. I could see the Washington monument.
I loved that place and I loved the building. I love it because of the promise that it has, the promise it makes to the American people. what we saw that day broke my heart. It made me furious. It made me angry. But what was even worse than the insurrection itself were the members of Congress, the Republican members of congress -- let me be specific -- who, in essence, took their oath of office to protect and defend the constitution of the United States and ripped it up and tore it into pieces.
It is shameful, absolutely shameful what they have done to this democracy of ours. And they don`t deserve to be in power. And this -- I`m not saying this in a partisan sense. I`m saying this in terms of the future of our democracy, the future of this country, which is to protect and defend the constitution of the United States, to work on behalf of the people of this great nation. These people have betrayed that trust and they no longer deserve to be in power.
HAYES: But that -- I mean, I wouldn`t disagree, right. But they are not going anywhere. I mean, this is -- this is the reality we`re all wrestling with, I think, in this country right now, right? Because you have -- you have two major parties in America, two major coalitions. They`re -- you know, it`s not like it`s a 70/30 country. It`s you know, even when Democrats are doing very well, it`s a 55/45 country, something like that, 52/45, right?
So, I mean, they`re not going anywhere. And in fact, their numbers are going to proliferate. Like, what do you see as the Democratic Party`s response or your role, right, in battling that and preserving the basic integrity of American democracy?
HARRISON: Well, part of our role, Chris, is to make sure we are addressing the needs of the American people. And we`ve been doing that and doing that successfully. We see that Joe Biden is enjoying popularity in numbers like we have not seen in a very, very long time. We`ve seen that the numbers of people who are identifying with the Democratic Party is at an all-time high. And that is because the American people are waking up.
You know, the Republicans love to talk about people being woke. Well, ding, ding, ding, the American people are waking up, and they see that the emperor does not have on any clothes. They see that this is a party that only cares about its own political power and its own political relevance and not about the people and the things that they`re dealing with on a day- to-day basis.
So, what we are going to do as Democrats is to continue to make sure that we`re addressing their needs. The ARP put money in pockets, people back in their jobs, vaccines in arms, kids back into schools. The Jobs Plan is going to rebuild the infrastructure of this country. So, we`ll do those things and deliver on the promises we made to the American people.
At the same time, at the DNC, we`re going to recruit candidates to run against all of these knuckle heads on the other side of the aisle, the Looney Tune Caucus, and have a contrast so the American people can see there is a difference between one party that wants to address the issues people care about and the other that cares more about banning people getting a bottle of water standing in line just to exercise their right to vote.
So, there`s a stark difference between -- and a stark contrast between these parties. And my job is to make sure that the American people see that, that they understand that, and that when they go to the polls, they can express that they want somebody, and they want a party that`s going to fight for them.
HAYES: You know, back in 2015 and even 2016, I think there was a view that was fairly common among Democratic strategists and folks in politics that Donald Trump was a god sent to the Democratic Party because he was obviously going to be unpopular and easier to beat.
There is a view I think also that you saw -- I even saw it expressed in some articles, you know, a few months ago that folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene, right, or Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, these folks that have really extreme views and use rhetoric that I think is alienating to huge chunks of Americans, right, that they`re kind of a benefit politically to the Democrats.
But the other side of that is like, the more those people are empowered, the more the party drifts at that direction, there is more of an existential threat to the democratic project we`re doing here. Like, do you view those people as a political asset to you or would you rather see them not there and replaced by people that might actually be less polarizing and even more popular, but less committed to this anti-democratic vision?
HARRISON: Listen, before I`m a Democrat, I`m an American. And, you know, a threat to our democracy, a threat to the way we live is something that we all should have high on our priority list. You know, Dr. King in his letter from a Birmingham jail had a quote that lives with me. And he said, "We will repent in this generation, not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."
So, the question is, are the good people in the Republican -- and I believe there are some good people in that party, are they going to stand up to the fringe of their party that is taking control of their party? And that is the big question right now. And I hope that they do.
HAYES: Jiame Harrison of the DNC, thank you for being with me.
HARRISON: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Today, exactly 100 days after the attack, a militia member who was caught on camera inside the Capitol pled guilty of breaching the building, now reportedly cooperating with the government. The first time that`s happened as we continue to sift through exactly what happened on January 6th. One of the people tasked with keeping the Capitol safe from attack, General Russel Honore joins me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Today, we got the first guilty plea in connection with the January 6th Capitol riot. It came from a founding member of the group The Oath Keepers which is a far-right extremist group. His name is Jon Schaffer. He`s a guitarist and songwriter for the heavy metal band Iced Earth. If you`re a fan of that band, I hate to break the news to you.
You can see him here on that day wearing a blue jacket and a hat that reads Oath Keepers Lifetime Member. He is et first -- the first out of more than 400 people to publicly plea in connection to the riot. His plea includes a requirement for him to cooperate with the government. Meaning he could potentially incriminate other members of his far-right militia group.
In his plea deal, Schaffer admitted when he broke through the doors on the west side of the Capitol, he knew Congress had begun a joint session to certify the election results and that then Vice-President Mike Pence had announced he did not intend to stop it.
Of course, it was Donald Trump who was basically the only person to put pressure on Mike Pence that day to stop it, remember? Trump was the one that stood up in the rally before the insurrection and called out the Vice- President.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to re-certify, and we become president and you are the happiest people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: When Mike Pence did not do that, well, the mob, including the Oath Keeper charged the Capitol. Retired Lieutenant General Russel Honore lead the task force review securing the wake of the January 6th attacks. And last month, he released a 15-page report from his findings. He of couses was the person tasked by George W. Bush more than 15 years ago to lead the response to Hurricane Katrina.
And Lieutenant General Russel Honore joins me now. General, first, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what your findings were in this review.
LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE (RET), LEADING THE REVIEW OF CAPITOL SECURITY: Yes, Chris. We made about six substantial recommendations. One on intelligence, which we`ve heard a lot about the I.G. of the Capital Police spoke to that yesterday, increase staffing, increased process. And by the time we finished in six weeks, we had increased the intelligence processing.But they need more people, more trained people.
The next thing was staffing. We recommend an additional 833 officers. As it is, the Capitol Police are 233 short. We need a recruiting and retention program to fill the 233 that they`re short today, plus the additional 800 we recommended that they hire to buy down overtime. They spent $720,000 last year on overtime.
They counted about 300 officers that they would need. So, these officers that are on duty today are not spending six and seven days a week working 12 hours a day, which also affect their training. And we made a big recommendation that they need additional training.
We recommend the authorities to allow the Capitol Police Chief in emergencies to request assistance from the National Guard and other agencies without having to go through the Sergeant at Arms of the House and the Senate and the architect of the Capitol.
We also authorized procedures for a QRF. That QRF would be provided by quick reaction force, I`m sorry, would be provided by the National Guard. The National Guard has done this throughout history. They`ve been protecting the Capitol since 1840. The National Guard after 9/11 provided 250 National Guardsmen for two years.
And we made infrastructure request recommendations, as well as an increase in dignitary protection. We needed about 200 officers to provide dignitary protection to the members of Congress.
HAYES: Let me ask about the openness of the Capitol because think this is something where there`s some -- there`s folks from across the ideological spectrum, I think, who feel and have felt you want the Capitol to be secure, but also it`s the people`s house, and it`s a great thing you can as an American citizen, you just walk up to the Capitol. You can go into the - - you know, you can go into the Capitol. You can go to your member of Congress`s office. You can walk into the receptionist and say, you know, I`m here and these are my concerns.
That obviously has all been essentially impossible in the wake of January 6th. Partly that`s COVID. But do you see a way forward to restoring that -- some kind of openness so we can go to the building as American citizens and talk to our representatives?
HONORE: Chris, on both sides of the House and the Senate, of all the committees we talked to, over a dozen of them on both sides, both Republicans and Democrats all emphasize that they want the people`s house to be open to the people. And that area has become the challenge, Chris. How do we keep the Capitol open to the public to a time many of them remember coming in the high school days visiting the Capitol, and at the same time how do we provide the protection to prevent something from happening that happened on 1/6, happened 100 days ago?
And that is the recommendation we made. We think we can do both. We`re a sophisticated nation. But it`s going to take the Congress to fund this at a bill right now on the supplemental is looking at $2 billion to fund the recommendations we made.
HAYES: You`re someone with obviously a celebrated and illustrious career. You served your country for decades. I think many of people first became aware of you outside the military on your role on Katrina. I wanted to ask you a little about there has been concerted set of attacks on the right particularly among the conservatives to paint you as some kind of, you know, lefty activist, that you`re a, you know, partisan ax-grinder, that you`re carrying some banner for one side ideologically or partisan wise. I`m just curious what your response to that is.
HONORE: Well, I`m not a Republican and not a Democrat. I`m a no-party. Over the years -- and I could tell you some war stories about this sometime, the Democrats think I`m a Republican and the Republicans think I`m a Democrat. I try to tell the truth. Look at the facts and give the report. And when something needs to be done, make it happen. That`s the mission and that`s my reputation in the army.
HAYES: I want to play a little bit of just an interview that we were able to do on NBC News with Lieutenant Rani Brooks about the experience of that day. And I think it speaks to some of your recommendations of being overwhelmed as the mob essentially was able to breach the line and enter the Capitol. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RANI BROOKS, POLICE LIEUTENANT, CAPITOL POLICE: Probably what sticks with me the most -- there were many, but what sticks with me the most is the inside the northwest terrace door, you know, the lock got breached. And I don`t know, maybe there`s 67, and I was trying to just keep them from getting in through the door. And it literally and figuratively, it was forever. I mean, it was just pushing, pulling, fighting.
I couldn`t get that close because at that point, I was tackled. And they stole my helmet. They took my helmet. They tried to get my gas mask. It was all these surreal things. Like, this cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That "this cannot be happening," I think was the general feeling that day among folks watching and people who were there. Are you confident we can stop it from happening ever again?
HONORE: Absolutely. We are confident it cannot happen again, will not happen again. There may be those that try, but the procedures that were left in place, and Chief Pittman and her staff along with the Capitol Police Board and the National Guard on hand, they have some temporary fencing up, and oh, by the way, Capitol visitors are still suspended because of COVID.
That COVID suspension to the public coming will soon be over, so some of these recommendations we need to be acted on so the architect of the Capitol can start to contract it. We need the supplemental approved and we need a better retirement system for the Capitol Police. We need that equal of the Park Police because right now the Park Police have a better retirement system than the Capitol Police, so as the D.C. Police. That needs to be fixed when they write this supplemental, Chris.
HAYES: Lieutenant General Russel Honore, thank you so much for making time tonight, sir.
HONORE: 100.
HAYES: Ahead, there is a new Republican caucus in the House of Representatives that even Republicans are calling nativist. The story of the American first Caucus ahead. Plus, another horrifying reminder of just how extraordinarily violent America is compared to other pure countries. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: There was another mass shooting in America last night leaving eight people dead.
Just a few minutes ago, we got the names of those victims Matthew R. Alexander age 32, Samaria Blackwell age 19, Amarjeet Johal age 66, Jaswinder Kaur age 64, Jaswinder Singh age 68, Amarjit Sekhon age 48, Karli Smith age 19 and John Weisert age 74.
This shooting happened at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. Officials identified the suspected gunman as 19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole. Scott shot and killed himself before police arrived.
FedEx confirmed he was a former employee at the facility.
That tragedy came the same day the police in Chicago released the disturbing brutal video of an officer shooting and killing a 13-year-old boy named Adam Toledo.
The officer chased him down an alley yelling at him to stop and drop his gun. When Toledo raised his hands and turned around in a quick motion. The officer shot him in the chest.
That came one day after a Maryland state trooper shot and killed a 16-year- old boy named Peyton Ham. That`s him right there.
The trooper was responding to 9/11 -- two 911 calls about a person acting suspiciously with a gun. And that turned out to be the boy who had an airsoft toy gun and a knife according to police.
All of that happening this week, as the city of Minneapolis, of course, grapples with the ongoing murder trial of Derek Chauvin in the aftermath of the police killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
At one level, of course, these are all distinct stories. But they are all also, I think, part of the same story about America, which is that this country is an exceptionally violent place.
There are more guns per capita in America than anywhere else in the world by far. More than twice as many as any other country. Look at that.
There are more guns than people here in the United States that it`s not true anywhere else. We also lead the world in the number of people incarcerated. We have more prisoners per capita than any other country, democracy or dictatorship.
The homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is among the highest inside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is a group of 37 member countries committed to democracy and economic process -- progress.
We are not as bad as Colombia and Mexico, which are very, very violent places, but among rich, wealthy democracies, we`re near the top along with Lithuania. We also saw a sharp increase last year.
And then of course, on top of that, the United States also sees extremely high levels of police violence, police killed over 1,100 people here last year.
In the U.K., police killed 22 people over the entire last decade.
Today, President Biden spoke about this pattern of violence, calling it an embarrassment to our nation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It`s not only these mass shootings that are occurring every single day, every single day. There`s a mass shooting in this young -- in the United States, if you count all those who are killed out on the streets of our cities in our rural areas. It`s a national embarrassment and must come to an end.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I think that all of this violence are represent faces along the same cube. America is of course a country born of violence, although that`s true. Most countries they`re born of violence. But it`s born specifically the violence, subjugation of people the eradication of people than the violence of slavery, and the violence of Jim Crow and the violence of segregation.
And we live with that set and institutions and traditions and if it feels sometimes, like it is just overwhelmingly difficult as an undertaking to change all that that`s because it is, but all the more reason why it`s worth pursuing.
Josie Duffy Rice is president of the news site The Appeal which focuses on criminal justice system, and co-host of the podcast Justice in America, and she joins me now.
Josie, I think oftentimes in the discourse, the high levels of justice in America, and she joins me now.
Josie, I think oftentimes in the discourse, the high levels of interpersonal violence in the United States and police violence, they`re sort of played off each other in a weird way, this kind of like false choice of, Oh, you want, you know, if the police retreat, well, then people are just going to shoot each other as opposed to being I think, in some ways, part of the same story about how this country is.
And right now, it feels particularly bad. How do you -- how do you see it?
JOSIE DUFFY RICE, PRESIDENT, THE APPEAL: Yes, I think that`s absolutely right, Chris. I think that traditionally, in this country in America, we have seen patterns of violence, both from the state and from, you know, civilian violence, interpersonal violence, as you put it, that far exceeds most countries, especially most countries that we would consider comparable to us, right?
And the reason I think that that matters is that violence can`t just be kind of isolated to one source or one part of, you know, the government or the people. The point is that they feed each other.
And the more police violence we see, it`s unsurprising that we see more violence on the street, right? The more guns the fact that there are 120 guns for every 100 people in this country. It`s not surprising that violence proliferates the way that it does.
So, I think you`re absolutely right about that.
HAYES: And also, I mean, it forces some difficult, like, places where different imperatives are in tension with each other. I think on guns is a great example, right?
Like, at one level, there`s an impulse to increase gun regulation and gun laws to increase the criminalization of holding guns illegally, right? As a means of trying to crack down on that.
At the same time, those are the very same means by which policing extends and the criminal justice system extends. And we see the negative consequences of that as well. And resolving that tension seem very hard to me at this very moment.
RICE: I think it is very hard. I think that the fact that we think these issues can be solved just through policy is a fallacy. It`s a pipe dream.
I think that what we have in this country is a history of using the state to subjugate people of color, to subjugate women, to subjugate poor people with violence.
And we have a history of gun worship in this country, most gun owners in this country, you know, are not killing anybody, right?
But we have a history of worshipping violence and gun use in this country in a way that makes it impossible or at least close to impossible for me to imagine how this is a cycle we get -- we easily step out of.
HAYES: Here`s someone who works in the -- for publication that covers a criminal justice system, from the perspective of, you know, a pro-reform or an opposition to mass incarceration. I think the perspective of the organization you work for is that we put way too many people in prison.
What do you say to people that are making the argument now of like, look, crime is going up, and homicides are going up, and people are scared, and this is bad and, you know, it`s folks like you, it`s you, reformers and this reformer D.A. in San Francisco. You have brought this about with your your crusade to limit incarceration and scale back the criminal justice system.
RICE: Yes, that -- yes, I hear that a lot, as you may imagine. And my response to that is that we actually (AUDIO GAP) how to address crime. We know how to solve problems of violence.
We actually know that when you invest in people on the front end, when you ensure that they have jobs that allow them to put food on the table, when you make sure that they`re not facing eviction, when you ensure that they can send their children to quality schools and their parks and after school programs that their kids can go to. We know how to address crime.
The history of this country has made us think that we can rely on a back- end solution to solve a front-end problem, but that`s not how it works.
And if incarcerating people address crime in this country, there would be - - there would be no crime. we incarcerate more people than any country in the world, right?
That is not, you know, punishment. And state violence is not the way to address behavior that we want to change, especially on the level that we`ve done it.
And the reality is that people just don`t want to do what we know works within numbers show works, which is that you invest in people on the front end, and then you don`t have to worry about violence in the same way that you do if you just were rely on a carceral system.
HAYES: Those pictures there folks in Chicago this evening a day after the release of that just awful video of the shooting killing of a 13-year-old boy Adam Toledo.
Josie Duffy Rice at The Appeal, which is a great publication I recommend you check out. Thank you, Josie. Appreciate it.
RICE: Thank you so much, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, the New America First Republican caucus with an explicitly Anglo-Saxon agenda, that`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: One thing that was always clear about the Donald Trump`s Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, immigration vision was it was never really about "illegal immigration", right? It was always just about immigration in total.
The reason they wanted to stop immigration, limit it as much as possible is because they wanted to keep the country`s white majority, full stop.
Sometimes they were more or less explicit about this, but a lot of the time, they would, you know, try to gaslight everyone and claiming to support legal immigration while they attacked it on all fronts.
One of the places they did this was with refugees, which really should be the least controversial form of immigration.
I mean, refugees are already going through an incredibly arduous process paperwork, extremely high levels of vetting, it takes multiple years. All to leave places that are too dangerous to live in. I mean, these are people fleeing some of the worst places on earth, right?
The Trump administration did not want them, because Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and people like Tucker Carlson or Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, they view refugees simply as non-white people who will not vote for Republicans and will therefore take the country away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): This administration wants complete open borders, and you have to ask yourself, why. Is it really they want to remake the demographics of America to ensure there -- that they stay in power forever? Is that what`s happening here?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I mean, first of all, they don`t want open borders. But this kind of idea, you start from Ron Johnson, it`s embodied in the explicitly racist white supremacist theory called the replacement theory. It`s what Ron Johnson`s kind of referring to there what Tucker Carlson has been parroting.
This replacement theory, the great replacement theory, it`s -- honestly, it`s almost too stupid to explain. But basically, they think the Democrats are like, intentionally recruiting bringing in immigrants so that Republican votes count less.
Now, there`s a bunch that`s dumb about it. It relies on viewing the current total of voters at any given moment, like right now, as like the sacrosanct number that constitutes the nation in that moment, by their logic, if that nation is threatened by any new voters that could dilute the weight of each individual vote.
I mean, like anyone being born or turning 18, it`s a very, very, very dumb way of looking at what a nation is, since at one level replacement is the necessary end of every human life, right? Like, we`re constantly replacing people in the great cycle of life. There are different people making up America now than yesterday and the day before that, and 10 years before that.
But somehow, it`s still the same country like that`s how it works.
Those parroting this both racist and as I said incredibly stupid theory, are also admitting something kind of amazing like Ron Johnson there, admitting republican policies would never attract enough voters to even this out. Like, why would that be the case?
Donald Trump won the Rio Grande Valley for the love of God. But it is a theory behind the action of destroying the Refugee Resettlement Program in this country.
See, when you look there, if you can guess where Donald Trump`s policies on that front took effect in that chart, just drops off a cliff. Fifth ends at 15,000, the lowest level in many, many years.
So, President Biden, right, had campaigned on returning those numbers to where they had been in the Obama administration. But today, the administration announced they were leaving the cap on refugees at Trump`s astonishingly low numbers.
But frankly, it would be a concession to the racist propaganda we saw from Tucker Carlson and Ron Johnson. And that announcement was rightly met with widespread pushback from across the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it completely and utterly unacceptable, adding upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump administration, including the historically low and plummeted refugee cap is flat out wrong.
Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate tweeted say it isn`t so President Joe, this is unacceptable.
Well, late today, the White House released a statement blaming confusion about the plan, and saying, "We expect the President to set a final increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15th."
So, all eyes on that. We don`t know how it will turn out. But failing to increase the number of refugees is a gift to people who agree with Trump.
In fact, just today, some of those people announced a new caucus to celebrate European heritage. So, if your ears are ringing from the dog whistle, you`re not alone. We`ll talk about that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Here`s a little missive House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted out today that may have had you scratching your head if you did not have the full context. OK, I`ll read it.
America is built on the idea that we are all created equal and success is earned through honest hard work. It isn`t built on identity race religion.
The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, the party of more opportunity for all Americans, not nativist dog whistles.
Why on earth would Kevin McCarthy feel the need to declare the Republican Party is not built on race and rejects nativist dog whistles?
Well, maybe because this morning Punchbowl News reported the group of House Republicans including Georgia`s Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arizona`s Paul Gosar are forming an America First Caucus to protect Anglo-Saxon political traditions. If that kind of thing sounds familiar, it`s probably because that`s what the former leader of the KKK David Duke has been saying to anyone that would listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID DUKE, FORMER KU KLUX KLAN MEMBER: I love my people and my heritage. I want to preserve my heritage like every people does. But I also believe --
BILL O`REILLY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Preserve your heritage, what does that mean?
DUKE: How about European heritage?
O`REILLY: What does that mean?
DUKE: Look, I`ll tell you what, you don`t know what European heritage is? You don`t know what Mozart is and Bach and Beethoven, you don`t know --
O`REILLY: They`re people, they come from different countries.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: (INAUDIBLE) good Bill O`Reilly there (INAUDIBLE). No, they are not white supremacist. No, they just want to protect European tradition from some non-European threat, I guess.
This new Republican caucus organizing document also contains language advocating for "Weeding out those who refuse to abandon their old loyalties and plunge headfirst into mainstream American society." It literally want to weed out people who do not conform to their idea of American culture.
How concerned should we be of this new Congress? I`m joined now by Adam Serwer, a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest piece is titled Restoring the Soul the Nation Means Taking in Refugees, and Jia Lynn Yang, national editor of the New York Times. Her book, which has gotten incredible, incredible reviews One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over Immigration. 1925-1965, it will be out in paperback next month.
And Jia, I want to start with you, because your book, right, book ends in 25-1965. In 1965, there`s a huge piece of immigration legislation and that`s like one of the targets of this caucus, they say an important distinction between post 1965 immigrants and previous waves of settlers is that previous cohorts were more educated, earned higher wages, did not have an expansive welfare state to fall back on when they could not make it in America, and thus did not stay in the country at the expense of the native- born.
That`s -- what is that -- as someone who studied this, like, what are the - - what are they going on about there?
JIA LYNN YANG, NATIONAL EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: They weirdly really understand what they`re going after, which is after 1965, that`s when the law changed in the U.S. to allow many, many more immigrants from outside of Europe at a level that the country had never seen before, after 1965. That`s when the law changed in the US to allow many, many more immigrants from outside of Europe at a level that the country had never seen before.
And this Anglo-Saxon language that they`re using is so important to pay attention to, you know, it`s not a dog whistle, it`s completely explicit. Because that language has been used to really change our immigration laws to explicitly ban people who are not from Europe. It`s been used before. And it`s an argument that keeps recurring and recurring, because if you can control where people come from, where they immigrate from, you can control the racial makeup of America.
And so, I think what they`re alarmed by is what`s happened since `65 when we changed our laws and said, you know, you don`t have to come from Europe to be able to come here, you can come from Asia, Africa, the Middle East.
And since that change, we`ve seen all around us how many more immigrants around the world are here, and it really has changed the country.
But I think for this group, it`s made them incredibly anxious. They have, I think, correctly assess that the `65 law was the moment everything changed. And they`re invoking very old arguments that have been around for over a century to say that Anglo-Saxon political identity is what makes America America and anyone who is not isn`t properly American.
They used this argument against Jews, Catholics, anyone who is not white, Protestant, and "Anglo-Saxon", people who have argued for many years don`t belong in America based on their race and their religion.
HAYES: Yes, when we use the term, Adam, White nationalism, which has been used a lot. I think, right, you know, understandably recently. Like, this is really at the core of it was this idea articulated by this guy, Nick Fuentes at, you know, who has a group called America First that Paul Gosar went to his conference, right?
If America ceases to retain that English cultural framework, the influence of European civilization, if it loses its white demographic core, it loses faith in Jesus Christ, it is not America anymore.
Like, that is what white nationalism sounds like. That`s is what it is. And that appears to be what`s represented here.
ADAM SERWER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, I mean, Fuentes, a nice, traditional Anglo-Saxon name. Look, Anglo-Saxon doesn`t actually refer to the actual Germanic people and habit in Britain in the Middle Ages.
Rather, it refers to this pseudoscientific idea that Americans are descended from ancient Germanic chieftains, and that`s what makes American society so great.
It`s an ideological belief in the superiority of a certain group of white people that has been used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, that`s used to justify slavery, manifest destiny in the like.
And eventually, in the 20th century, devolves into eugenics and it becomes the basis of immigration laws that, you know, as was just stated, targeted not just Africans and Asians and barred them from immigrating into the country, but also, if Jews and Italians people who were, you know, who today, you know, are generally considered white, but who at the time were considered inferior white races, who would dilute the pure Germanic blood that made America great.
So, when people do say Anglo-Saxon, it is not a dog whistle, it is a fog horn, it is the -- it is a nod to one of the most dangerous and destructive, pseudoscientific beliefs in the history of the world, and one that has led to mass murder all over the planet. It`s really disgusting.
And that`s why McCarthy is someone who is hardly friendly to immigrants, is saying, yes, I don`t want to have anything to do with this.
HAYES: That was striking to me. And I think also just the radicalism embedded in this in terms of its breath, Jia, which you sort of you wrote a book about but like, just to make this clear, like, the U.S. has basically explicitly white supremacist immigration structure until 1965 where basically said like, we want white people to come, we wouldn`t want non- white people to come.
They changed that to say that`s a mistake is to say to like, you know, a 60 year old Pakistani accountant or Filipino nurse or you know, oil engineer from all over the world, right? Like, we don`t -- we messed up by letting you come here. Like, these are people that a lot of them vote Republican and a lot of like, aren`t necessarily like, may have conservative politics.
Like, it`s an incredibly wide group of Americans to be attacking even if it`s being done in the fine print.
YANG: Yes, it`s -- it is the -- it is what is America now, right? I mean, if you just look at our demographics, a quarter of the country is either an immigrant or a child of immigrants. This is who`s here.
So yes, if you want to do this sort of Anglo-Saxon political Jesuit tradition, if you want to hark back to this very racist language, you`re basically saying to a huge portion of the country, our new -- the newest Americans here, we don`t want you here.
But that`s, in fact, what American political leaders have done before and they succeeded. 100 years ago, when they trotted out this Anglo-Saxon idea, they actually did stop immigration from eastern and southern Europe, they stopped Jews from coming, they stopped Italians, and that actually made it hard.
I would just say during the Holocaust, we were unable to admit Jewish refugees because our laws were so difficult for them.
So, this sort of language has great power and can really change the make up of the country. A lot is at stake with this.
HAYES: Adam Serwer and Jia Lynn Yang, again, that book is a fantastic book, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide, check it out. Thank you both. I appreciate it.
That is ALL IN on this Friday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now with Ali Velshi in for Rachel. Good evening, Ali.