Summary
Former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn said in a QAnon Convention that what happened in Myanmar should happen in the U.S. Democratic state lawmakers in Texas staged a walkout to block voter restrictions being pushed by the state`s Republicans. DeSantis` culture war on vaccine passports threatens to sink Florida`s cruise industry. President Joe Biden is in Oklahoma to honor the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre on the 100th anniversary of that deadly attack.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: What he left out though is what should be done for those living survivors and that robbed community. Something to think about. That`s tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He won the popular vote and he won the Electoral College vote.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration day to set.
HAYES: Trump world delusions keep mutating as Republicans keep rigging the game to keep power. Tonight, the growing alarms that a slow-motion insurrection is happening right now.
Then, two of the Democratic legislators who stopped sweeping voting restrictions in Texas with a dramatic exit from the State Capitol. And Beto O`Rourke on why the fight in Texas is much bigger than Texas.
Plus, how the DeSantis anti-vax culture war could sink Florida`s cruise industry and what the federal government is now saying and doing 100 years after Tulsa.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My fellow Americans, this was not a riot. This was a massacre.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. The specter that haunts American politics on this June 1, 2021, is the one that we saw in all its ugliness on June 1, 2020, one year ago today when amidst widespread peaceful protests against police brutality in the Nation`s Capitol in Washington D.C., President Donald Trump ordered the forces of the state to attack protesters entirely unprovoked using physical violence, including assaulting these Australian journalists to clear them from the park across from the White House so that Donald Trump could have a photo op featuring a Bible.
On Trump`s orders, the police chased away American citizens with what appeared to be tear gas. Trump`s White House denied they use tear gas on protesters. And it was not until last week that a lawyer of the D.C. police admitted in court that well, yes, yes, they did use tear gas.
Now, if there`s a silver lining from that moment, it`s that that moment led to one of Donald Trump`s lowest polling numbers. Look at that dip following the attack on peaceful protesters. It was real widespread revulsion at it because most of the country still does actually believe in democracy. The majority of our fellow Americans reject this authoritarianism. And that`s why this guy was rejected by voters by seven million votes.
But that authoritarian impulse on display there has not gone away with that man`s exit. In fact, it is being revealed in a kind of high definition grotesqueness because that individual is no longer the central figure in it.
This weekend, backers of the QAnon conspiracy theories held a conference in Dallas, Texas. And several aspects of the totalitarian thinking, the malleability of truth, things that have become the dominant and Republican Party are on full display.
For instance, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert. You see him there, that is a picture of the man, an active member, sitting member of Congress, right. He spoke in the event on Saturday. He downplayed the horrific attack on the Capitol, suggesting it wasn`t just right-wing extremists, a claim for which there`s absolutely no supporting evidence. And if it were true, you can have a commission to find it out, though he voted against it, before his office tried to tell a local reporter that Congressman Gohmert was not at that event. Even though there is video and there are photos, and there are eyewitnesses who were in the room with him.
Now, the star of the weekend was Trump`s first national security adviser, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, a somewhat infamous figure now. Of course, he was fired by Donald Trump after less than a month on the job as National Security Advisor for lying about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador, and have Trump pardoned on his way out the door after Flynn plead -- pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Michael Flynn who himself has promoted elephants of the QAnon conspiracy theory, appeared at the event in front of a QAnon slogan. When an attendee at the event asked -- got up and ask the retired general, a decorated general, right, a guy who was the highest echelons of the U.S. Defense System, got up and asked why the U.S. cannot have a military coup like Myanmar, this is how Mr. Flynn responded.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can`t happen here?
MICHAEL FLYNN, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: No reason. I mean, it should here. No reason. That`s right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You hear the crowd? The wild glee, right? Now, to be clear, you probably know this at some level following it perhaps that there`s a military coup in Myanmar. It`s resulted in a brutal crackdown on protesters as a New York Times reports that so far left thousands injured, more than 600 dead. Many of those killed have been young protesters. Their lives ended with a single gunshot to the head.
After the fact, Flynn posted a statement on social media saying in part, "Let me be very clear, there is no reason whatsoever for any coup in America. I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort."
He just said it on -- we saw it. We saw you say it, the same way we saw you -- Louie Gohmert at the event. He said it in a video. Now, he`s trying to tell us he did not say what we heard him say in this effort of his and his fellow travelers to cultivate this stab in the back loss cause narrative.
This is part of the dangerous, delusional, almost sad, frankly, alternate reality that Donald Trump`s foot soldiers are out peddling. According to New York Times Reporter Maggie Haberman, that delusion is shared by the man himself, or at least in telling a number of people he`s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August. Reinstated?
This is all being done in broad daylight. And they`re not hiding. I mean, they`re videotaping the conference even if they try to like tell you they didn`t see them. You have a former very high-rank national security official who was fired and prosecuted and pardoned by the ex-leader, appearing in a rally where he endorses a military coup to take back power for that ex-leader who`s living out his days in exile in Mar-a-Lago, facing criminal investigations on multiple fronts by multiple authorities as he cultivates this increasingly violent authoritarian movement that stormed the Capitol on his behalf, attempted to install him as the winner over the loser.
Nearly five months after the insurrection, we are still learning about the extent of the planning through court filings like the superseding indictment against a far-right militia group called the Oath Keepers that was unsealed just this weekend. These individuals are charged for the number of crimes related to that insurrection done on Trump`s behalf and at his invitation.
The latest filing alleges that just days after President Trump was defeated, the militia was planning for violence in D.C. "I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside and to stay fully armed prepared to go in armed if they have to. So, our posture is going to be that were posted outside of D.C. awaiting the President`s orders. We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection to call us up as the militia."
They were planning to be armed and waiting for the guy who lost the election, Donald Trump, to give them the green light. And it`s not just fringe groups like the Oath Keepers. A few weeks ago, far-right Web site Breitbart published a chilling letter supposedly signed by over 120 retired flag officers pushing the same election lies read by Trump and QAnon that you can find at that conference this weekend.
That kind of thing, coupled with voter restrictions that Republicans are passing in state after state across the country, led more than 100 scholars of democracy to sign an open letter of their own, calling on Congress to pass legislation supporting voting rights and warning, "Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do with this moment."
Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He negotiated the bipartisan agreement for commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection that was then voted down by a minority of Senate Republicans, and he joins me now.
Congressman, first, let me start on the note that we ended that with, the letter by scholars who talk in very clear and sharp terms about what they view as the stakes for American democracy. And I wonder if you share their view.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): Well, there`s no question about it, Chris. What those scholars say clearly represent, I think, a compendium of what they saw on January 6. That action, an insurrection that occurred, really is a test for our democracy. If we allow that kind of activity to continue to fester and foster in this great country of ours, we are in real danger.
And so, for four months, Congressman John Katko and myself fashioned out what we thought was a way forward for us to go. And I was happy to see a good bipartisan vote in the House. I ever -- I was really disappointed with what happened in the Senate. But Democrats in the House, we can`t allow ourselves to be disappointed. We have to move forward.
So, there are some options available to us. I`d like to see the Senate Leader Schumer to try again one more time to say to Leader McCarthy, say, you know, we`re going to give you and the Republicans another chance. If you don`t vote the right way this time, then I`m going to ask the House to assume some leadership in trying to get some solutions.
We can`t allow this insurrectionist activity to occur. And you`ve shown on the screen, Chris, exactly what occurred. You can`t convince people that Antifa or Black Lives Matter Movement did that. Clearly, it was Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Trump supporters, and others who ramshackle the United States Capitol. We can`t allow that to go forward.
So, I`m convinced that Speaker Pelosi will make a decision if the Senate does not move forward because we have to protect the citadel of democracy in this country, which is the United States Capitol.
HAYES: Let me ask you this. Louie Gohmert is a colleague of yours. Obviously, he serves in Congress where you serve. You know, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was a very praised and respected U.S. military official at a certain point in his career before he was -- he was fired. You know, what is it -- what`s your reaction to hearing that moment in that room where this individual who is the national security adviser to the United States of America says in response to a whooping crowd, why can`t we have a military coup, saying, there`s no reason we can`t, we should.
THOMPSON: Well, that`s a sad day that someone who held for a short time a national security position in this country, but he pled guilty to a felony. And his partner, Donald Trump, allowed him to go free with a pardon. But nonetheless, he is a clear and present danger.
Chris, you know, the First Amendment allows freedom of speech. But there are some things that Louie Gohmert and Michael Flynn, these other folks were saying, borders on sedition. And so, I`m convinced that we will look at that in due time, because they just can`t say anything and go on untouched.
And this is what`s false in this, just like, if Donald Trump thinks he`s going back into the White House in August, there`s something wrong with it. And if you look at the people who attacked the Capitol -- I was in the Capitol that day. It was not a two -- I was locked in for over two hours not knowing what was going on.
And clearly, there is a way forward for the House representatives. We have to secure the Capitol. We have to defend our Capitol Police who put their lives on the line, protecting us that day. And clearly, if we allow this kind of activity to go forward, then every election that`s held in America is at risk.
HAYES: That`s right.
THOMPSON: That means that if my mayoral candidate didn`t win, I`ll tear up the city hall. So, you know, we have to -- we have to do something.
HAYES: That is very, very, very well said and a very good point. Congressman Bennie Thompson, thank you so much for your time tonight.
In Texas this weekend, you might have seen this news, a large group of Democratic state lawmakers staged a walkout to block voter restrictions being pushed by the state`s Republicans. And it worked for now. Beto O`Rourke is a former Democratic Congressman from Texas. He founded powered by people, a grassroots electoral action group. He`s launching a statewide tour to inform and mobilize Texans around voting rights and this legislation which may rear its ugly head again, and he joins me now.
Beto, do you -- do you feel amongst Texas Democrats, for instance, across sort of wide swath, right, grassroots folks, everyday voters, the people that you know in political circles, their feeling of the kind of -- the kind of stakes as articulated by those 100 historians or experts in democracy feel about this moment?
BETO O`ROURKE, FORMER TEXAS DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN: Absolutely. A few weeks ago, when Senate Bill 7, the anti-voter elections bill that was working its way through the Texas House and Senate was being debated, we convened a rally outside the Texas Capitol in Austin. And on 24 hours notice, we were able to get the largest crowd of this year of this legislative session standing up for voting rights and speaking out against voter suppression.
So, the people of Texas, more so than just Democrats, are fired up about this. They understand it is about our democracy. And what you see in Texas, what passed in Georgia, in Florida, in Iowa, in Montana, this could spell the end of multiracial democracy that was guaranteed in 1965 by our fellow Texan, LBJ, when he signed into law the Voting Rights Act.
So, I think people understand just how precarious and important this moment is. And then it calls upon all of us to do all we can while we still have this window to act. Thanks, by the way, to the Texas State House Democrats who stopped that voter suppression bill, bought us a window of time. We may have about the month of June within which to get the For the People Act passed in the U.S. Senate. And that puts an end to what they`re trying to do in Texas, Georgia, in about 45 other state legislatures across the country.
HAYES: Yes, as someone who is, you know, served in Congress and knows the way -- knows how sort of the sausage gets made a bit there, right, and the compromises and the difficulty of rallying the caucus around and the fact that you pass things out of the House, and the Senate has its own arcane and byzantine procedures.
Like, what do you see now as someone who`s inside, now back in Texas, not elected official right now, when you look at this traffic jam around these sort of crucial pieces of legislation and the filibuster and that?
O`ROURKE: I want the Senate Democrats and President Biden to take a page from the Texas House Democrats, from Jessica Gonzales, Rafael Anchia, Nicole Collier, they are in the minority. And yet they were able to stop this awful voter suppression bill in Texas. Democrats in the U.S. Senate are in the majority.
And let`s be very clear about what Republicans want to do. Not only do they not want to investigate, the January 6 insurrection where five people including a Capitol Police officer were killed, they want to roll back the right to vote in almost every single state in this country. And Chris, you`ve got to understand this in Texas, that bill was going to allow for the overturning of elections based on just the allegation of fraud.
So, you can imagine in 2024, a Democrat wins the 40 Electoral College votes in Texas, Republicans could allege fraud and overturn that election just as we know they`re going to try to do in Georgia and Florida and other states unless we have the For the People Act. So, this is a time for Democrats to act. This is our moment of truth to step up and stand up for this country. And we lose this moment at our peril into the peril of American democracy.
I really think it is make or break, do or die for America right now. So, we`ve got to have those Senate Democrats and President Biden come through for us.
HAYES: Yes, I`m glad you made that -- there`s an important distinction here between sort of voter suppression, right, things like making it harder to drive people to the polls or changing the hours of early voting or making people jump through additional hoops or striking people at the voter rolls all bad, right? That`s one category.
But this category that we`ve seen emerge in states, and we saw it in Georgia, taking power away from local election boards, or secretaries of state who think are disloyal are creating the mechanisms to actually overturn election outcomes. To me, that`s a difference on a whole other plane and we`re seeing that crop up too.
O`ROURKE: And it`s about to be enshrined in law in Texas. As you know, though, Texas House Democrats won the day on Sunday and won that battle, the larger war is still being waged. Governor Abbott will call them back into a special session. And there`s a very good chance that that provision is not only in the newly proposed voter suppression bill, but there will be others that are -- that are much worse.
I think we actually saw the best of what we could expect from Republicans. The Democrats defeated. We need the Senate to pass the For the People Act. I just think it is that simple. That`s the solution. And Senate Democrats have to step up and get it done.
HAYES: All right, Beto O`Rourke in Texas there, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I appreciate it.
O`ROURKE: Thank you.
HAYES: So, as you heard Mr. O`Rourke just saying, the governor of Texas is now very angry that a bunch of Democrats ruined his plan to cut back voting rights in the state. In fact, he is so angry he is now trying to defund the legislature that gotten his way.
In just ahead, I`ll talk to two of the lawmakers the governor is threatening about why they walked out and what happens next.
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HAYES: Lawmakers in Texas rarely protest the passage of a bill by breaking quorum, just literally walking out so that there are not enough members present to conduct business. It`s a kind of break glass sort of move. It`s happened just four times in the last August 120 - 175 year history the Texas Legislature. In 1870, it happened when 13 Texas senators walked out in protest of a militia bill. They were arrested by the governor`s forces.
In 1979, a group of 12 senators hid from the State House for days to prevent a quorum on two bills related to primary elections.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Again, this morning, texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby called senators to order. And once again, no quorum. The killer bee is gone as they have been since Friday. The 12 fugitive senators have eluded to 50 full-time state patrolman, investigators, and Texas Rangers. Police even searched by helicopter and in Mexico. But patrolman failed and so were nicknamed the bumble bees.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: It happened again in 2003 when 50 Democrats fled to Oklahoma breaking quorum in the face of a Republican Party plan engineered by Karl Rove to redistrict mid-decade, which was totally novel, violate the very long-standing norm of that being a once in a decade undertaking.
And then it happened again, as you just heard from Beto O`Rourke this weekend when Democrats walked off the State House floor to keep the sweeping voting restrictions bill from passing. Democratic Texas Representatives Jessica Gonzalez and Rafael Anchia both participated in that walkout and they join me now.
Maybe I`ll start with you, Representative Gonzales. If you can tell us the objections your caucus had to this legislation and how this came about as a way of dealing with.
JESSICA GONZALEZ, DEMOCRATIC STATE REPRESENTATIVE, TEXAS: Yes, well, from the get go, I serve as vice-chair of the Elections Committee. And you know, for the entire process, the bill was trying to be rushed though committee. You know, we were not known as committee members when we`re going to actually vote on the bill. You know, there was conversations that were being had behind closed doors. There were agreements as far as amendments, Democrat amendments, when the bill hit the floor initially, and those amendments got stripped out.
Ultimately, the drafts and the bill kept changing and changing. And we didn`t really -- we didn`t get a copy of it until like the 11th hour close to midnight, the day before it was going to come to the floor. The bill added additional provisions that were in either -- in either version, whether it was in the house version or the Senate version. And you know, there were just blatant attacks on the Black and Brown community.
HAYES: So, what -- how did you -- how did you and your colleagues, Representative Anchia, how did you guys figure out or decide to do this collectively?
RAFAEL ANCHIA, DEMOCRATIC STATE REPRESENTATIVE, TEXAS: Chris, it`s good to be back. And it`s good to be on with my colleague Jessica Gonzalez. This is something that we`ve been working on really all session and it culminated in the walkout. We`ve fought hard against the prior versions of this bill. And when it finally was dumped on us at the 11th hour, as Jessica said, we knew we had to kill it. We were going to kill it one way or another.
We were either going to talk it off or debate it off the calendar. We were going to kill it with points of order or other procedural maneuvers. And if all else failed, we were going to walk off the floor and break quorum. I`m proud that Democrats did that and I`m proud that we protected this -- protected the voting rights of Texans.
HAYES: Representative Gonzales, the governor is very angry. He`s threatened to defund the legislature, to veto the bill that actually provides your funding. My understanding is you guys make about $8,000 a year and then a per diem in session. So, you`re not making like, you know, NBA basketball player salaries over there. But what`s your response to the governor floating this?
GONZALEZ: Yes, it`s unfortunate that, you know, the governor resorted to make it a threat because we just followed rules that were passed by this body. I`ve seen rules that Republicans have used this entire session to rush legislation through. We saw that happening last week. And these are rare, rare moves that, you know, that will be in the Senate as well.
But you know, what it really affects is, you know, our staff who work many, many hours to make sure that the Capitol is up and running.
HAYES: So, then, now, Representative Anchia, I have -- I have a thing for Texas politics. So, I follow it quite closely. You guys have -- you got a strange thing every other year. There`s sessions, but then there could be special sessions, and you`re always up against the clock. The governor can now call a special session as expected. Like, where does this now go? This is not dead yet.
ANCHIA: Well, the governor can call a special session at any time and we`ll see if he does. If he wants to have a conversation about stripping voting rights from Texans, I`m ready to have it. You know, I`m a first generation American in this country. My mother left Mexico that had one-party rule for 70 years. My dad from northern Spain literally left dictatorship.
So, I`m ready for this fight. I was born ready for this fight. And candidly, they came to this country for the ideals that she represents. I mean, voting rights are fundamental to our democracy. And if Greg Abbott wants to put on a special session, the fact that he`s going to strip away voting rights with no evidence including statements from his secretary of state that we had a safe, secure, and successful election, we can have that conversation. Because it`s not just going to be 67 Democrats, we`re going to be joined by thousands of Texans.
People like Beto O`Rourke and many, many others were going to come here to the Capitol and make sure that the eyes of America, the eyes of the world are on us. We`re the ninth biggest economy in the world. We need to have a robust democracy, not one where it`s harder to vote.
HAYES: Texas State Representative Jessica Gonzales and Rafael Anchia, both of whom walked out, broke quorum, and that bill will not be passed. We`ll see what happens next. Great to have you both on. We will keep following the story. I appreciate it.
Next, the COVID gambit that backfired in Florida. How Governor Ron DeSantis might end up killing his state`s cruise ship industry in order to own the libs after this.
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HAYES: For the second time in just over a week, Florida`s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is getting all big government on private businesses. Last Monday, you might recall, DeSantis signed a law that would punish big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter if they ban political candidates for their platforms. Its constitutionality is really unclear.
And you may also recall the law had a whole hilarious carve out for media companies who happen to own theme park parks, because of course, Florida depends on Disney and Universal, and so they were exempted from his stunt law, which means he doesn`t really even believe in his own stunt law.
Well, now, he`s got a new law that says businesses who ask customers for proof of vaccination will be fined up to $5,000 for each customer they ask. And of course, this has become a problem with the cruise ship industry, which is one, largely based in Florida, and two, trying to make a comeback with fully vaccinated cruises.
And many lines now require adult passengers to be vaccinated after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told cruise companies that vaccine are fast-tracked resuming. With 95 percent of passengers and crew vaccinated, lines do not have to run test cruises before they can take paying passengers out.
So, as Ron DeSantis potentially kills the cruise ship business in Florida, even Republicans are asking, in what universe are these conservative moves? Marc Caputo is a senior writer at Politico who covers Florida, and he joins me now.
Marc, I guess, first, let`s just start with the cruise industry in Florida, which is a -- is a big deal down there. And obviously, even before a COVID, like notoriously a vector of infection. It`s like this is like a thing people know about cruises, like a norovirus. Like, this is not new to anyone. Everyone understands you put these two things together, that that`s an issue.
MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR WRITER, POLITICO: That`s true. I think you hit on it pretty well in the intro is what`s surprising here is the cruise ship industry usually gets everything it wants out of the Florida Legislature and the Florida Governor`s Office. For instance, tucked in a different bill is legislation that would undo a voter-approved referendum in Key West to limit the size of mega cruise ships because the big mega-ships ruin the harbor.
So, what you`re starting to see more and hear more people talk about is, this is a new type of conservative that DeSantis is representing. It`s kind of more of a statist where he doesn`t mind the government interfering or more seriously regulating different industries if they happen to cross the desires or wishes of the head of the state here, and in this case, it`s DeSantis.
Now, that said, I really don`t think knowing what I know about how much money is on the line here, that an accommodation won`t be worked out. Now, what kind of an accommodation will it look like? Some of the things we`re hearing about, for instance, would be maybe the cruise ship could require everyone to get a rapid test. And if you don`t want to take rapid test, you could get out of it by showing a vaccine. That`s one possible way to save face.
But in the end, if they do wind up saving face, it`s going to defacto be a vaccine passport anyway. And there`s only so much face that`s going to be saved, but it could save some people from potentially getting or spreading infection.
HAYES: Yes, it`s interesting you say that because, I mean, it just -- this is such a common-sense item. I mean, I really feels like if there`s a single place, right, like a single place that can demand vaccinations, it`s cruise ships, OK. Like that -- I mean, even if you think generally, oh, well, you shouldn`t have to get a vaccine to teach kids or you shouldn`t have to get -- like, one place.
And the second thing here, just to your point about the sort of ideological underpinnings here, I saw someone make the joke that like, if Carnival Cruise were to say they have a religious objection to unvaccinated people on their ships, the entire conservative movement would be behind them. Like, they wouldn`t take that to the court on their behalf.
CAPUTO: You know, I don`t know anymore. I mean, what we`re seeing in the era of Trump is kind of really scrambled alliances and the like. I would not have thought I would be discussing a Florida Governor imposing more regulations on the cruise industry. I just wouldn`t think I would have seen that, but there we are.
HAYES: To your point about the sort of politics of this. I mean, DeSantis strikes me as someone who has very deftly played the politics of this moment for two reasons. I think he has -- he understands that sort of picking these high-profile national fights probably helped him with the base. He has a fairly good job approval in the state. He`s not -- he`s not unpopular, I think, by any means.
I mean, but this seems like a place to your point about the accommodation where it`s not just like a theoretical thing. Like, they`re going to have to figure out how to get the cruise industry running. And the CDC has its guidelines. The cruise industry wants to get vaccinated customers on there. And something is got to give here.
CAPUTO: You`ve right. I can`t see what could give except for in these cases where you got to come up with a sort of -- some sort of cosmetic way to save face for the governor. But to your point, the governor early on, he was very deft in his first year in picking fights with different, let`s say, groups or different people to whom the Republican base is now opposed.
For instance, they ban sanctuary cities in Florida. Well, Florida doesn`t have sanctuary cities, but now we banned them.
HAYES: Right.
CAPUTO: So, at least in this case, like some businesses, presumably cruise ships want to do vaccine passports, so it`s actually a law that was designed to stop something from happening. They`re not talking about stopping Critical Race Theory from being taught in schools. My wife is a public school teacher. She doesn`t have time to teach Critical Race Theory. I mean, they`re teaching, you know, these other things. I think that stuff is in college, but maybe I`m showing myself as being a dinosaur here.
So, there have been a number of cases where DeSantis has just been very apt in seizing the moment. Now that said, this is in keeping with his brand of conservatism. I mean, he came of age politically, so to speak, when Obama was president, and there was that kind of anti-Obama reactionary conservatism, and he embodies that quite well.
And the other thing is that the states -- you know, if you look at the metrics, the state`s COVID response when it comes to death and when it comes to the economy, it`s probably about five on a scale of 10. We`re middle of the pack in death rate, for instance. Same with, say, unemployment.
If you believe a lot of the critics, you would have thought that Florida`s response to COVID was a one or a negative one. If you believe to Sanders, it`s a positive 10. But the reality is he is benefiting from those low expectations that have been set for him. Things look pretty good economically right now in Florida. The real estate market is booming.
So, he`s reaping the rewards of the fact that the economy, at least in the eyes of many voters, is doing rather well and they`re rather happy with him.
HAYES: Yes, it`s going to be an interesting, I think, as we come up against midterms to see how those state economies and federal economies sort of balanced against each other in terms of people running on those various records. Marc Caputo, thanks so much for making time tonight.
CAPUTO: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, the thrilling tale of Senator Rand Paul and the cocaine quails. That`s right. Cocaine quails and their sex habits. Don`t go anywhere. That story is next.
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HAYES: On the very same day that Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom what happened on January 6, he spent some time engaging in the age of old political tradition of grandstanding about the scourge of wasted taxpayer dollars, particularly research funded by the federal government, a favorite target of Republicans for frankly, as long as I can remember.
And in this case, the study of the sex life of Japanese quails on cocaine. And what is the price tag, you asked, for studying the sex habits of Japanese quails on cocaine? $356 million. Well, that does sound like quite a bit. But wait a second. What is going on the right side of that decimal? Did Senator Paul`s staffers add an extraneous zero there to make a $356,000 grant seemed like a $356 million grant? It sure looks like it.
Philip Bump is the National Correspondent for The Washington Post. He`s written on the various dishonesties in Rand Paul`s cocaine quail presentation, and he joins me now. This is a whole bit with Rand Paul, Philip, you -- as you discovered in your reporting. Take us through Rand Paul and the coked-up Japanese quails.
PHILIP BUMP, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Sure. It`s sort of hard to live up to that headline, but I`ll do my best. Yes, I mean, so he made this presentation on Thursday. The sort of interesting thing about it was that he`d made the exact same presentation two days prior with totally different numbers. On Thursday, he used the finger that he showed $357,000 thereabouts. A couple of days earlier, he`d done one that was actually about $875,000.
And it turns out that if you go back in time, you can see that he`s been doing this same presentation for years and years. He did it in 2018 using that same $357,000 number. Well, it turns out that if you actually dig into it, what he`s doing is he`s actually quoting a document that was produced by Senator Tom Coburn back in 2012 looking at this study of Japanese quail and cocaine use.
The study itself ended in 2016. So, this hasn`t been done at any point in the past five years. But not only is he using this outdated data, he`s also using this number, this 356-whatever-dot-140. The 140 isn`t a cent. It`s not as though he`s trying to inflate the scale of this. It`s actually a footnote marker from Tom Coburn`s original report pointing to footnote 140, which explains where that dollar figure comes from.
So, not only is it not exaggeration of millions, it`s just a typo which is, you know, just sort of the icing on the cake.
HAYES: Oh, it`s so good. So, there`s a 2011 Tom Coburn report on some study that actually was funded right --
BUMP: By the NIH.
HAYES: -- by National Institute of Health, which funds a lot of basic research. I don`t know. Maybe that would be useful to know what the, you know, coked-up quails are like when they`re having, you know, sexy times. Maybe that`s interesting and important. But this is a 2011 item. They copy and pasted it wrong, adding the 140. So, it wasn`t actually what I thought it was, which I was like, oh, you sly staffers adding an extraneous zero to a decimal to inflate the number. It`s just a copy and paste error that has been carried over for 10 years?
BUMP: Yes. Apparently, yes. I mean, you know, the fact that this is going on so long -- when this first was introduced in Coburn`s what`s called waist book in 2012, Scientific American actually did this extensive report saying here`s actually why it`s useful to look at quail and cocaine use. We learn more about cocaine. Quail had this very particular mating pattern, which is not ever something I`d thought I`d say on MSNBC. But apparently this is something of import.
But Rand Paul has been running with this thing for so long. I mean, Tom Coburn died last year but he lives on in this report that Rand Paul can`t get enough of in part, obviously, because of that graphic of the quail with his head and the pile of powder is too irresistible.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, you got to -- look, I`m a -- you know, I make TV for a living, so I get it. I get it. It`s a visual media. I understand why it`s irresistible. To me, what was striking too about this was like weird -- on the same day they`re blocking the January 6 Commission, it did seem like it was teleported from a different era of like -- this is the kind of deception fact-massaging that I associate with a kind of politics that seems incredibly almost remote in antique increasingly.
BUMP: Yes, I mean, I have a pet theory which I really can`t say is valid. But I think that the fact that this was -- so, I`m going to just say it on TV. No, but I mean, I think the fact that this was NIH funding is important. Because keep in mind that Rand Paul has been in this battle with Anthony Fauchi for months now over the Coronavirus. He is, you know, a fixture at the NIH. I think there may be an element here of just sort of retribution in that regard.
HAYES: Philip Bump who did tracked all this down. Thank you so much.
BUMP: Of course.
HAYES: Coming up, President Biden`s speech marching -- marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, and Dorothy Brown on the administration`s new initiatives to narrow the racial wealth gap after this.
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HAYES: Just under 100 years ago in the aftermath of the Tulsa Massacre, this was the front page of the Black Dispatch, an African American-owned newspaper in Oklahoma City, loot, arson, murder. The picture shows the former Black Wall Street on Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa reduced to rubble like a scene from a European city after World War I.
And that`s after a gang of white man attack the district from the ground and the air just throwing hundreds of Black-owned businesses, burning homes to the ground, killing at least 300 people. The massacre started on May 31 and it lasted for two days.
This is how it was covered in the white-owned morning daily Tulsa world as it unfolded on the morning of June 1st. Two whites dead in race riot. By the second edition, the headline read, many more whites are shocked. By the third edition, the headline read, state troops in charge.
And what`s crazy to contemplate is that that wildly misleading false history, the massacre was some kind of race riot between two sides and a bunch of whites got killed and really who`s to say who started what that, that began the very day of the massacre 100 years ago. It ended up winning the narrative battle. It became the dominant view for almost a century.
100 years later, President Joe Biden was in Tulsa to commemorate the massacre and know how it -- note how it and many other events played a lasting role in the racial wealth gap that we see to this day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This story isn`t about the loss of life but the loss of living of wealth and prosperity and possibilities. Imagine all those hotels and dinners, a mom and pop shops that could been having passed down this past 100 years.
Imagine what could have been done for Black families in Greenwood, financial security and generational wealth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now is Emory Law Professor, author of the Whiteness of Wealth, Dorothy Brown. This is one of the areas of your expertise, Professor Brown. You study this. You wrote this fantastic book about it which I recommend. We talked about it on our podcast.
When you think about the ramifications, I mean, not just of the human suffering, right, the awful mass murder, right, the trauma inflicted, but what that meant for generations on. How does something like this reverberate through the years?
DOROTHY BROWN, LAW PROFESSOR, EMORY UNIVERSITY: Well, it`s massive and it`s never-ending. It`s the inability to pass on wealth to your children. It`s the inability to pay for college for your grandchildren. It`s the inability to pass on a legacy. And what`s so fascinating to me is there`s a lot of focus on Tulsa and Black Wall Street, but that was the exception, right? Most Black Americans did not have the access to this wealth that was ultimately burned to the ground.
HAYES: Right. That other forms of dispossession existed, not quite as specifically violent in the moment as that. But that existed throughout, obviously, throughout the Jim Crow South, that led to the Great Migration north to get out from these structures that had been created to produce essentially the outcomes that those three days in Tulsa produced.
BROWN: That`s exactly right. And you could see that the response to Black excellence was burning it to the ground.
HAYES: What do you say to folks that say, well, this was horrible, obviously, and it`s good that we`re commemorating it. But you know, it happened a very long time ago, and it was a one specific moment. And you know, we should -- maybe we should give reparations to just those families or we should make right to those families. But this wasn`t something broader than what happened there in those three days.
BROWN: Well, first of all, it was broader than what happened in those three days. There were dozens of other race assaults like this. So, we had one in Atlanta, there was one in Chicago. So, all over the country, we had these kinds of white riots in response to Black excellence. So, yes, there should be, you know, compensation for what went on there, but it wasn`t just there.
HAYES: And the compensation, I mean, we should note that there has been, as far as I can tell, no compensation for the victims of Tulsa, zero.
BROWN: Zero.
HAYES: There`s zero compensation. There were no arrests of any of the people that engaged in the mass murder. There were no -- there were no trials. And one question I have when I read your book is that the means by which wealth was real -- was sort of taken away from Black people in this country was so long-standing systematic and violent that it`s hard to imagine corrective policies that won`t be rather disruptive, because of what they`re making up for.
BROWN: That`s right. That`s right. If you get ill-gotten gains through disruption, then you really can`t complain if the solution is some different disruption, right? So, we have to think about, it was unfair, and we can`t just say well, it happened then, and I didn`t do it, therefore, I`m not responsible for it. But those of us living in the 21st century, particularly White Americans have benefited from this White supremacist system of wealth building.
HAYES: And how so?
BROWN: Well, what we see is FHA loans, for example, right? So, who could get FHA loan? So, you may be alive today because a grandparent who was white got an FHA-insured loan. My grandparent who`s Black could not have gotten it. So, even though you may not have done anything in 2021, you benefited from a system that helped your relatives build wealth simply because they were White.
HAYES: And did those -- does that -- is that still in effect today?
HAYES: When you say if it`s still in effect today, if I -- if I`m white and I inherit a house from a grandparent, right, who got this FHA-insured mortgage, yes, I am benefiting today. If I had a grandparent who`s an immigrant but was able to put together a business that one Black American who was here couldn`t do, and I benefit from that, then I am benefiting in the 21st century from systemic racism that is, you know, not too distant past.
HAYES: Yes. In the case of Tulsa, we should note that there is -- there are several survivors who actually lived through it. And then their children and grandchildren, the line is not -- it`s not so distantly removed that we can`t trace it back.
BROWN: That`s right.
HAYES: Dorothy Brown, that books called the Whiteness of Wealth. You should check it out. Check out our conversation on Why Is This Happening? The podcast we did that you can find anywhere you get podcasts. Thank you so much for your time tonight.
All right, that is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.