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Transcript: All In with Chris Hayes, 6/22/21

Guests: James Clyburn, Sherrilyn Ifill, Michelle Goldberg, Heather McGhee, Anthony Fauci

Summary

Republicans on Tuesday blocked the most ambitious voting rights legislation to come before Congress in a generation. Donald Trump wanted to send sick Americans to Guantanamo rather than treat them here according to a new book about his response to the pandemic. Vaccine rates lag far behind in some parts of the United States. Delta variant is the greatest threat to ending COVID.

Transcript

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: And that is tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" is going to be great tonight and it starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I`ll be opposing the For the People Act.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do not support this bill.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I shall cast my vote against this flawed bill.

HAYES: An expansion of voting rights in America is blocked in the Senate. Tonight, Congressman James Clyburn on next steps for Democrats, and Sherrilyn Ifill on Republican minority rule.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We support S.1, we support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and the fight is not over.

HAYES: Then, the growing outrage on the left over Senator Sinema`s filibuster defense.

And as we learn about Donald Trump`s idea to send COVID patients to Gitmo, Dr. Anthony Fauci on today`s big concession on vaccinations by the White House when ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. It was a very, very big day for the future of American democracy. We will get to that significant action in a moment. But before we do, just give me a second here to go back to the context of what happened in the last election. Because I think -- honestly, I think has been obscured by the sabotage and the disinformation and, of course, the violent insurrection unlike anything we`ve really seen before in the history of the country stoked by the former president.

But remember this. Last November, right, once in a century pandemic, we got a glimpse of what a full or fuller participation version of our democracy would look like. Because due to that pandemic, state after state, jurisdiction after jurisdiction, and I should note, this is both Democratic and Republican, there were some fights over this, but across the board, more or less on the hole, in the aggregate, all these places did something praiseworthy and novel. They took steps to make it easier to vote.

They did this by expanding eligibility for mail-in voting, and early voting, and adding drop boxes for ballots, right? There`s a public health concern. You don`t want everyone crowding in on election day. And so, people found ways to just make it easier to vote so you wouldn`t have that. And the results were clear. It worked. Turnout was the highest it had been in 120 years, nearly 67 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot.

And also, there was no uniform drubbing of one party by the other. It was not a blowout. It was a competitive election. Yes, Joe Biden won by a healthy margin, seven million votes, 70-plus Electoral College votes. But remember, Republicans gained seats in the House. They won some key Senate race, right?

Now, rather than looking at that outcome and thinking, wow, we can be a competitive party even in high turnout elections, which would have been a totally irrational conclusion. Republicans said, no, oh, God, never again. We want fewer people to vote. We need to do everything we can to manipulate the very mechanisms of American democracy to give ourselves a competitive advantage where it`s over for us.

Now, today, the Senate had the opportunity to stop that assault on democracy, to rebalance the playing field as it were with a vote on the For the People Act. And what that bill would do, and there`s a lot of parts of them, but if it not been killed by a Republican filibuster this evening, would be create a permanent national floor for voting access kind of similar to the rules we saw across the country during the pandemic that led to that historic turnout, the highest levels of democratic participation we have seen in our lifetimes.

But of course, Republicans view that, you know, expanding voter access in the aggregate, right, as a purely partisan exercise. And think of this. That is because in their heart of hearts, in their deepest souls, they do not trust their own message enough to appeal to a majority of Americans in a high turnout election. Ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even called it a power grab.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to advance Democrats` transparently partisan plan to tilt every election in America permanently in their favor. By now, the rotten inner workings of this power graph have been thoroughly exposed to the light. It`s a recipe for undermining confidence in our elections or remaking our entire system of government to suit the preferences are one far end of the political spectrum.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: OK, obviously laughable bit of projection. What McConnell claims Democrats are doing is exactly precisely what has happened in state after state controlled by Republicans. Earlier this year, in Georgia, sweeping voter restriction law passed with just Republican votes, transparently partisan, you might say, in the State House and in the Senate, signed by a Republican governor.

In Iowa, Republican legislators approved new election restrictions including just knocking an hour of when you can vote on Election Day for no reason, and again on a party-line vote, signed into law by a Republican governor, transparently partisan. In Montana, two bills changing election law passed the Republican-controlled legislature almost entirely on a party-line vote. The governor, of course, also a Republican. In Texas, another restrictive bill passed in the Senate, party-line vote, transparently partisan Democrats -- before the House Democrats walked out and killed it, but they`re not done yet.

OK, so that`s the scorecard on transparently partisan attempts to tilt the field, right? In terms of undermining trust in the system, I mean, come on, spare me. What are we doing here? Mitch McConnell Republican Party is the one whose leader undermine the election even before, and during and after, and then coming in and whipping up a violent insurrection. And then Mitch McConnell himself refused to vote to sanction to remove him.

And now, state after state is falling down the Republican Party`s conspiratorial rabbit hole. In Arizona, the ballot audit continues as a Pennsylvania State Senator who chairs a key election the committee now says he wants a similar audit in his state. In Fulton County, Georgia, a judge is deliberating over whether to allow an audit of their 147,000 ballots. Democratic state lawmakers in those states and all across the country have been watching this assault on voting rights.

480 of them signed on this letter to congressional leadership pleading with them to pass federal voting rights legislation. Some of those Texas Democrats who walked out of their own state house to kill that restrictive voting bill have been on Capitol Hill pushing for federal action. Arizona`s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs herself the target of threats and harassment and vitriol, right, called out her own state senator, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, for refusing to get rid of the filibuster that stands in the way of passing this Voter Protection Law.

Because full democratic unity is the only way to get this done. Senator Raphael Warnock, pastor, the same church as Martin Luther King, Jr. who spent a lifetime working on these issues long with preaching at the pulpit before being elected thanks to last year`s incredible turnout in Georgia, eloquently laid out the stakes today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Right now, across the nation, constitutional rights are being assaulted. And I fear that if we don`t act as a body in this moment, we will have crossed a dangerous Rubicon in our nation that will make it extremely difficult for the next generation to secure voting rights for every eligible American.

This is not our house. This is the House of the People. We are stewards of that trust. And we have to ensure that the voices of the people can be heard in their own house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: In the end, we ended up where we knew we would end up, the 50-50 party-line vote in the United States Senate tonight, a stark division one party that is radicalized against democracy and in pursuit of its own power. A party whose leader can count on every member of the caucus, no matter where they are, right, not to defect on the most elemental questions. A party that has come to rely not on winning over voters but on manipulating the machinery of access as Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson explicitly copped to yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RONNY JACKSON (R-TX): We have everything working in our favor right now. We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country. That alone should get as the majority back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Sorry, four days ago. That alone should get us the majority back. Why listen to the voters? Who cares what the voters want? We control the process for redistricting. That alone -- think about that phrase there, that alone. That alone independent of the will of the people, that alone independent of democracy, that alone gives us power. Who cares what these people think? You know, all this reminds me of 2016 and the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy of Antonin Scalia who had died suddenly.

And remember, President Barack Obama and the Democrats` plan was to choose a kind of compromise consensus candidate, someone who had been lauded across the aisle, had received votes and approval from Senate Republicans in the past, who have nice things to say about him. It was a way to sort of shame them into confirming him. But of course, that didn`t work. And there was no plan B.

Now, in the Democrats` defense, there wasn`t that much they could do. They did not control the Senate at the time. There was not much they could do to force the issue. But now, they`ve got 50-plus one votes. They have the power if they choose to wield it. That is the question whether they will choose to wield their power or not. There is no question about which choice Mitch McConnell would make if the shoe were on the other foot.

Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina is the House Majority Whip and he joins me now. What is your reaction to that vote today, a vote that didn`t have a lot of suspense because I think we suspected it would end up here?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, I feel very strongly that this begins the process. That`s all has happened here. And we are going to move forward doing what we have to do. The Vice President spoke eloquently to the fact that we are going to move forward with S.1. And we are going to move forward with the Voter Empowerment Act which is a part of S.1 and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights and Investment Act.

Now, you`re going to look at what Joe Manchin has put forward. And I think that Stacey Abrams has always already spoke favorably of it. And I too said that it is a great first step. So, let`s take a look at what he`s putting forward and not think that we ought to make a run at trying to get the votes that are necessary to get it. But if you don`t, then I think it`s time for us to take a hard look at the filibuster.

And let me be clear, I have never asked that the filibuster be eliminated. I do believe that we`re going to do for constitutional issues what we`ve done with the budget. Reconciliation is huge in order for us to maintain the full faith and credit of the United States of America. And we ought to use reconciliation to maintain democratic principles and move forward without our pursuit of a more perfect union.

So, I just feel very strongly that the filibuster can be maintained while at the same time not allow it to apply to constitutional issues just as we don`t let it apply to a bunch of this issue.

HAYES: It`s a -- it`s really worth, I think, emphasizing this point for a moment, because there is at this point no conceptual coherence to the filibuster. There are two major exceptions, reconciliation, which again, is a sort of obscure budgetary process -- budgetary process but -- and then nominations, right, because we got rid of that up to an including Supreme Court justices and judges who have lifetime tenure.

There`s no reason -- that was not handed down by Moses in the tablets or conjured up by the Founding Fathers or delivered -- that`s complete happenstance. Those are the two catapults.

CLYBURN: That`s exactly right.

HAYES: Yes.

CLYBURN: In fact, when you started this issue, when you find out that there was an oversight, someone made a mistake, and it`s been used and turned into a tradition. And so, tradition means of itself that sometimes you got to have better laws or get beyond tradition. And look, its clear in Article One, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America that the federal government maintains control, must maintain control.

If you look at the Federalist Papers, it`s right there. Hamilton spoke to it eloquently. On three pages there he says that federal elections must remain with the federal government. What you see here is Republicans tried to turn over Congressional elections to states. That is exactly what is happening. And for Mitch McConnell to say this is a takeover on our part, it is just the opposite.

How many Democrats in Georgia voted for that deal that they passed down there, or in Texas, or in Florida, or in ours -- as you put just pointed out? Not a single democrat voted for any of these. So, to say that the law is no good unless you have bipartisan support, well, say to me that you don`t believe in the 15th amendment, because the 15th amendment that gave blacks the right to vote is passed by one party vote.

HAYES: It`s an excellent point, the 15th amendment, 14th as well, we should -- we should note. In fact, a big part of country is under military rule, but that it was -- it was a strange time in many ways. But the deeper question to me here, Congressman, is that is this idea of the sort of specter and to me kind of the code of federalizing elections when that is - - we`ve been fighting on that turf forever about who controls elections, and this is not a new argument.

CLYBURN: No, it`s not. And it has never been a real problem before. As you know, when I came along and voted, I could not vote until I was 21. We have now lower the voting age to 18. States didn`t do that. The federal government did that. It decided that we were sending young men at the age of 18 and 19, 20 years old off to war, and they ought to have the right to vote on whether or not that should occur. And that`s what the federal government, the Congress used to lower the voting age to 18. States came along later because they didn`t want to have two systems.

So, this argument is very clear. The history is there. The records are there. And I don`t know why Mitch McConnell would stand on the Senate floor and misrepresent what has gone on here the way he did. And that was the biggest misrepresentation I`ve seen from him in a long, long time.

HAYES: And not saying something. Congressman James Clyburn, always a pleasure to get some time with you. Thank you very much.

CLYBURN: Thanks for having me.

HAYES: Do you remember earlier this year there was a procedural vote in the Senate on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour as a kind of test vote, and Kyrsten Sinema quite infamously recorded her no-vote like this, a gesture that was equal parts glib and substantively wrong, which seems to describe a lot of her political ethos.

Today, she`s got a new op-ed defending her position on the filibuster that is the written embodiment of the thumbs down moment. We will take it apart ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): Today in ways that were unimaginable to me when I was in college, except when I read it in the history books, anti- democratic forces are stronger than any time since Jim Crow. And it`s true. That`s a fact. What I was reading about in the 1980s about laws that had been fought against in the 1960s, there back.

There are 250 or so of these laws that are being passed. And by the way, not a single one of those is being passed with a Democratic vote, a vote from a Democrat, in 250 legislatures. And you know what else doesn`t exist in any one of those legislatures? The filibuster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That was Senator Michael Bennet, Democratic of Colorado, talking about how Republicans blocking access to the ballot has a kind of familiar ring to it. This was shortly before Senate Republicans blocked having a debate on the For the People Act Election Reform Bill.

Now, there are advocates, there are lawyers who`ve been working on voting rights issues for decades, both legislatures and in the courts. And Sherrilyn Ifill, the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is one of the most prominent. In fact, she filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in January and in critical case concerning section two of the Voting Rights Act. That case has yet to be decided. And she joins me now.

I wanted to start with you Sherrilyn on the -- on the history here which Bennett alluded to and which Chuck Schumer alluded to, which I`ll play in a moment. But it really does seem to me that people don`t really know this history. And none of it scans unless you do, unless you understand this core fight as Congressman Clyburn referred to in the -- in the 15th amendment, and then the Voting Rights Act that has been going on around voter access, and bringing about multiracial democracy for the duration of the country`s history.

SHERRILYN IFILL, PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND: Yes, I want to even go a step further than I heard Representative Clyburn go and I heard you reference, Chris, both the 14th and the 15th amendments to the Constitution being passed not on a bipartisan basis at all, with the votes of only one party.

But I want to -- I want to just draw attention to the structure of the 14th and 15th amendment, both of which include enforcement clauses that give Congress the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment. Why did they do that, Chris? They did it because they knew, the framers of the 14th and 15th amendments knew very well that white supremacists at the state level would continue to try to subvert the full citizenship of black people.

And so, they gave Congress the power to enforce the 14th Amendment, which ensured that black people were citizens and entitled to equal protection of the laws and the 15th Amendment which prohibits denial of the right to vote based on race. So, this is Congress` power. And it`s from that power that, of course, Congress has the power to pass something like the Voting Rights Act.

In other words, it was understood that we would need the federal authority to step in to enforce the rights that the framers of the 14th and 15th amendments articulated to ensure that black people newly freed and free who had been stripped of citizenship by Dred Scott would be full citizens. So, the idea that the federal government is somehow stepping in in some inappropriate way, that old saw from Jim Crow, that old saw from massive resistance after Brown, that is exactly what the framers of the 14th and 15th amendments contemplated that Congress would step in to protect black people as citizens from what they knew would be the actions of white supremacists in the states.

HAYES: In fact, when white supremacist terrorists under the Klan were terrorizing black voters, the act passed to basically bring them to heel is called the Enforcement Act precisely drawing on the --

IFILL: Also know as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Yes.

HAYES: That`s right. And drawing on precisely that constitutional power. I want to play for you with Chuck Schumer said today about echoing this as well. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHUMER: My colleagues, my colleagues, if senators 60 years ago held that the federal government should never intervene to protect voting rights, this body would have never protected -- pass the Voting Rights Act. The Republican leader uses the language and the logic of the southern senators in the 60s who defended states` rights. And it is an indefensible position for any senator, any senator, let alone the majority leader -- minority leader to hold.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: And that`s really what we`re seeing here. Although, again, it comes down to the question before the country and the Democrats of whether they can hold the caucus together to take this step that is a big -- would be a big step. What do you think about the Clyburn idea which I think is interesting, right? I think Congressman Clyburn is not a radical in any way. He`s a pretty institutionalist kind of guy, a very kind of like, you know, reformer I`d say.

And him saying, look, look, look, we don`t got to scrap the whole thing. Just let`s -- you know, we got -- we`re allowed to do the budget. Let`s be able to do this kind of thing with 50 votes.

IFILL: Look, I`ve been in these conversations, and I have been very clear, and that`s why people should not, you know, panic about today. This is the first step. I have said there is no excuse not to come to the table and hammer something out. It`s called legislation. Nobody gets everything that they want but there are some things that have to happen that have to happen given what is happening in the state.

We know that we need preclearance provisions. We know we need the John Lewis Voting Rights Enforcement Act -- Advancement Act. But we also know that we need protections for early voting, for absentee voting. We need a law that keeps, you know, jurisdictions from allowing you to stand on line for nine hours and then not be able to get water while on that line. We need access to absentee voting and automatic registration.

There are elements -- what are the elements that we think are necessary? Let`s package those elements together. Let`s make it happen. Let`s let them pass. Let`s not forget, Chris, that it was the abdication of Congress for 100 years after the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendments. The refusal to use that enforcement power to protect black votes that left black people in a position something akin to slavery throughout Jim Crow for 100 years until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That was Congress` failure to use their power. They must use this power now and it is -- the Supreme Court has said the right to vote is preservative of all rights and fundamental. They said that in 1880. It is more fundamental, more powerful than any Senate rule including the filibuster. And both Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have to do their duty as members of the United States Congress and use that power that the framers of the 14th and 15th amendment set forth for them to use to protect fellow citizens who are being overrun by white supremacists, voter suppression laws.

This is a serious moment in our democracy. And if we want to have a democracy going forward, we need to see some courage and we need to see some clarity. And we need to get away from all of these historical arguments about the filibuster and get real about the moment that we`re in this country.

HAYES: Sherrilyn Ifill, as always, thank you -- thank you so much for making time tonight.

IFILL: Thank you, Chris.

HAYES: Still ahead, the bad politics of Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema choosing the filibuster when democracy is on the line. That`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Have you noticed how often Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are mentioned the same sentence. We`ve done it multiple times tonight as if they are two sides of the same Democratic so- called moderate coin. And there`s good reason. They are the two Democratic senators who openly and repeatedly have been on the record opposing majority rule in the Senate.

In fact, Senator Sinema just published an op-ed in the Washington Post last night reiterating her opposition of the majority rule with a bunch of well, in my opinion, tendentious and totally historically inaccurate arguments. But we should be clear, Senators Manchin and Sinema aren`t really in the same category in a political sense. I mean, Joe Manchin is a unicorn, OK. He won his 2018 reelection race by three points in a state Trump won in 2020 by nearly 40 points. There is no one like him in the entire caucus.

Sinema, on the other hand, won her Arizona race in 2018 against Martha McSally by a little more than two points in a state that Trump lost by 0.3 percentage points in 2020. So, she outperformed them by little. And also in the same state where another Democrat, Senator Mark Kelly, won against the same opponent McSally by nearly two and a half points. So, Arizona is right now at least, a blue state.

Indeed, Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock who won their races in Georgia, and Senators John Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and even outspoken progressive Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, they all represent states either as narrowly divided or leaning more Republican than Sinema`s Arizona.

So, it`s worth considering that what Senator Sinema is doing, the position she`s taking out, isn`t because she has to for political reasons, or not purely for that reason, but because it`s also, I think, it`s what she believes. The problem is that what she believes is just really wrong.

Michelle Goldberg is a columnist from the New York Times who earlier this month wrote a piece about Sinema and Manchin`s nihilistic bipartisanship. And Heather McGhee is chair of the board of directors for Color of Change an online racial justice organization, and author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Sum of Us which is like a Rosetta Stone for all modern politics that you should read. They both join me now.

Michelle, you -- I liked your call about this. And I`m one of the reasons I liked it was that again, I don`t think -- I think the starting place for analysis of understanding this is to understand that Kyrsten Sinema believes these things and isn`t making a third-order calculation. I mean, Mark Kelly is not doing the same thing. He`s got the same electorate to face, right? Tammy Baldwin is not doing this. Like, this is just what she - - how she thinks things should be.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I think that Kyrsten Sinema believes in herself as a quirky Maverick more than she believes necessarily what she`s saying about the filibuster, right? She was an opponent of the filibuster as a Green Party activist. She -- and so many -- so much of what she writes in this latest Washington Post op-ed is just transparently not true. She says that without the filibuster, when Republicans are in power, they would be able to defund agencies that Democrats care about. They would be able to privatized Medicare.

But Republicans can do that under the rules we have right now. They can do that under reconciliation and any -- you know, quick fact check would have said that this is just incorrect. You know, similar to what she said when she defended the filibuster in the past is something that the Senate created to encourage comedy.

So, I don`t know if it`s just that she believes facts that are wrong about the filibuster as much as she believes in maybe being the fulcrum of power in the Senate, and sort of not being just another loyal Democrat.

HAYES: Yes, I think that`s also a good analysis. Your point there, I think -- that that point in the op-ed, Heather, you know, the one thing that I think people who defend the filibuster, you know, the one nontendentious to this argument is look, you will open up the path for more aggressive efforts and narrower majorities of the other side to do stuff. So -- but the problem is, you know, as Michelle said on the -- on the ACA, it was like we needed 60 votes to pass it, as the Democrats would say, and then 50 votes to repeal it, as the Republicans would say, right? Like -- it`s like, well, we already got -- we got a lot of symmetry already baked in there.

HEATHER MCGHEE, CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS, COLOR OF CHANGE: Right. And it`s here to stay. I mean, this is where this is not a good political argument because what Democrats want to do, address climate change, invest in infrastructure, provide more health care to Americans, childcare, jobs, debt-free college is wildly popular. Root out corruption in our election system, again, wildly popular.

And so, what has happened, we don`t have to look far in the past to when the Republicans held the majority and tried to do unpopular things and couldn`t. We have to trust the majority of the people in this country. And that`s what`s on the line as the majority rule.

HAYES: They couldn`t repeal the ACA not because of the filibuster but because people did not want it. And not only that, if you want to talk about recent examples, Michelle, they came into office and pass the American rescue plan quickly on a party-line vote. And you know, in two weeks, 92 percent of households in this country with children are going to start getting monthly checks.

And no one is going to not like that. There`s no one -- no one is going crazy about that. There`s no like, there`s no big Tea Party protests against that. Like, that`s -- you just pass popular stuff on whatever party line vote.

GOLDBERG: And I think you could argue that Democrats -- it would be fine to sort of call Republican`s bluff. I mean, in some ways, the filibuster protects Republicans from the unpopularity of their agenda, right? I have no doubt that when Republicans are back in power is they will be. They will pass things, you know, like the Trump tax cuts which by the way, you didn`t need 60 votes to pass. But they`ll pass things that Democrats abhor.

But right now, they kind of -- they can`t pass their agenda, except for the financial stuff, which is what they really care about the most, the financial stuff and judges. They can`t pass the stuff that they promised to their base, but that most of the country would reject. If there was no filibuster, they would actually also have to make good on some of their campaign promises and the American people could judge them accordingly.

HAYES: It`s a really good point. And it comes down, I think, to this like faith in democracy, small D democracy and what your agenda is. And I think, Heather, you`re so right, that -- I mean, the Republicans are showing tremendous, almost contempt for their own platform the way that they are going about things right now.

And one of the things your book, I think, points out is like, doing popular things that benefit a lot of people is good politics. And you should trust that to be the case more than whatever procedural gamesmanship you get up to.

MCGHEE: That`s right. And it really is a multiracial democracy that`s on the line here by choosing the filibuster right, a Jim Crow relic, over the not very long history of actually having a functional, multiracial democracy in this country which has only existed in real terms since 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. She`s was on the wrong side of history. She`s on the wrong side of the majority of American voters who actually understand that the filibuster is blocking progress and it`s contributing to gridlock.

Republican voters are happy about that. But they know it doesn`t promote bipartisanship. They know that it promotes gridlock. And double-digit majorities of Americans want to see it eliminated or curtailed for different types of legislation.

HAYES: And the cynical reverse, Michelle, of what you said of getting rid of it and making Republicans go at a defense of say, six-week of abortion or 20-week abortion ban, which is one of the things Democrats successfully filibustered. Is Democrats getting to say like we tried, which there`s some -- I think there`s -- honestly, I think there`s a little bit of incentive for that too, like, gave it your all, what are you going to do?

GOLDBERG: Yes, no -- I mean, I think, you know, it`s been widely reported that although Sinema and Manchin are the ones out there defending the filibuster, that there`s some other kind of senators who are not unhappy with the status quo. But you know, the Democratic Party, the people who put them in power are unhappy with the status quo, and it`s really becoming increasingly intolerable.

HAYES: Michelle Goldberg and Heather McGhee, thank you so much for coming on tonight.

GOLDBERG: Thank you.

MCGHEE: Thank you.

HAYES: Next, the early pandemic solution floated by President Trump that we would have -- would have sent infected Americans with COVID to Gitmo. Dr. Anthony Fauci on how far we`ve come, how far we still need to go in just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: We knew, we knew, we knew, we knew from the very beginning of the pandemic that Donald Trump wanted above all else to keep the reported infection numbers, the numbers, not the actual disease low. We knew that because on March 6 of last year, when American citizens with COVID were stranded on a cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco, he was asked what we should do about them. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They would like to have the people come off. I`d rather have the people stay but I go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather because I like the numbers being where they are. I don`t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn`t our fault.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: I don`t need to have the numbers double. At the time, Donald Trump`s solution to a once-in-a-century pandemic was to keep Americans with COVID stranded on a ship to suppress the numbers. Well, nearly six months since he left office, we continue to learn just how callous and determined he was to keep those numbers down.

According to a new book about his response to the pandemic, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, his White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care. President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil. Don`t we have an island that we own? The President reportedly asked assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020 before the U.S. outbreak would explode. What about Guantanamo?

Donald Trump wanted to send sick Americans to Guantanamo rather than treat them here. It would be almost funny, I suppose, if it was not so horrifying. And this was -- this is the core, it`s the original sin of the response of Donald Trump himself and COVID, right, from the very beginning. Americans did not need a president to come with crazy out-of-the-box ideas on how to suppress the numbers, like to keep people on a boat or ship them off to our naval base in Cuba. We needed good decisive leadership that was focused on suppressing the virus itself, not tricking everyone into thinking everything was fine for the sake of his reelection.

And it is important to remember that Donald Trump knew the virus was deadly from the beginning. He told reporter Bob Woodward so much. "You just breathe the air and that`s how it`s passed. So, that`s a very tricky one." So, he knew Americans would die. And his attempt to try to hide the COVID numbers for his own political benefit, I think, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In fact, a study published in the medical journal earlier this year found about 40 percent of the nation`s Coronavirus deaths could have been prevented. If the United States average death rate matched other industrialized nations, 40 percent. Donald Trump got hundreds of thousands of Americans killed who did not need to die. And I will be damned if that is going to go down the memory hole.

If all goes right in the world, the first paragraph in this chapter the history books would be a president who knowingly oversaw the catastrophic response to a plague that killed over 600,000 people. That is the true legacy of Donald Trump. That legacy lives on now in many states, particularly conservative states, states who voted for Donald Trump where people have died at the highest rates and where people are not getting vaccinated in even close to the rates in blue states.

We`re starting to see case numbers tick up in exactly the places you would expect from looking at those vaccination rates. We`re seeing the effects of the toxic devastating legacy of Donald Trump right now in the places that support him the most. We`ll talk about the impact of that legacy and how to want to do it with Dr. Anthony Fauci next.

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HAYES: New York City had its biggest concert in over a year in Madison Square Garden over the weekend where the band Foo Fighters performed for an all-vaccinated crowd. It even included a guest appearance from Dave Chappelle. It`s the venue`s first full capacity concert since March of 2020. So, in some states, things aren`t going well. But things are also headed the wrong way in states with low vaccination rates where the highly contagious Delta variant is getting a foothold.

At the beginning of May, President Biden announced an aggressive goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults by July 4. Today, the Biden administration announced the country will narrowly miss that goal. The question now is how to keep pushing against what looks worryingly like a kind of vaccine ceiling in many parts of the country.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the chief medical adviser of President Biden, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institution of Health. Earlier today, he warned the new Delta variant is the greatest threat to eliminating COVID-19 in the United States. And he joins me now.

Let`s start with that right now. You know, a few months ago, I started taking up a kind of fairly bullish banner on COVID because the vaccines look so efficacious. And particularly as deployment got better, it really felt like OK. The first time that I`ve started to feel bearish again is in the last few weeks, and it`s because of these numbers. This is 14-day COVID changing cases in the states with the highest change. Missouri 55 percent, 53, Arkansas 46, Utah 24, Arizona eight. How worried are you about that?

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I`m quite concerned at states and people who don`t get vaccinated, Chris. The situation is so clear. The data affirm. If you get vaccinated, you are protected, even with the Delta variant, which by the way, has a greater capacity to spread from person to person. And when you`re infected, it has a greater likelihood of giving you serious disease. We know that as a fact, from our own country, but particularly from the experience in the U.K.

The vaccines we have do protect well against the Delta variant. So, if ever there was a reason to get vaccinated is right now because we`re seeing this Delta variant double every two weeks. We`re up to 20.6 percent of the isolates now, or Delta variance. A few weeks ago, it was like two or three or four percent. So, we`ve got to get the job done.

I mean, it`s really unfortunate and somewhat puzzling when the data are right in front of you and you know exactly what you need to do to protect against these types of numbers, which you showed on the screen, and yet some people still not getting vaccinated. That is very frustrating.

HAYES: Yes. I mean, I guess the question is what to do about it, right? So, one of the things I think that is important in predicate terms of risk here is that there`s a kind of -- there`s two parts of the risk, right? There`s vaccination, and your -- and your health and age profile, and then there`s a rate of community transmission. But once community transmission starts going up, you know, your risk is going up. That`s true even for vaccinated people, but really true for young non-vaccinated people, I think, who a lot of have felt fairly immune from this or fairly, you know, in these places. Like, we saw in the U.K. We saw hospitalization among young people go up in a way that was really quite distinct and worrying.

FAUCI: Right. Well, first of all, you know, we are doing very well among people who are -- who are adults. I mean, if you look at 30 and over, we have greater than 70 percent of those people have at least one dose of a vaccine. So, that group were doing well.

HAYES: That`s interesting.

FAUCI: But you`re absolutely correct, Chris. Yes, you`re absolutely correct. We need to focus on the 18 to 26-year-olds because that`s the group that in England, you`re absolutely correct, if you look at the Delta variant that has now surged in England, it`s predominantly among younger people. So, you know, it`s kind of a mixed bag. If you look at the totality of the picture, the emphasis on vaccination that President Biden has made has been, quite frankly, overall very successful.

We`re almost at the 70 percent of vaccination with one dose of adults when we reach the Fourth of July. If we don`t get it by then we`re going to get it within a week or so. But we don`t want to stop there. That`s an aspirational goal. The goal line is crushing the virus with as many vaccinations as you possibly can.

HAYES: Yes. And I just think this is where there`s two worlds that spool out before us which is, look, I`ve had you on the program many times now. I`ve been covering this as a just a journalist and not a public health expert for whatever, 15, 16 months. But I know one thing. It`s either going down or going up. The virus goes in one direction. Like, it`s really growing or it`s shrinking. Everything curves.

And so, when you start to see growing, then you start to think of a future in which the thing bops around in communities of low vaccination rates, sort of keeping this community transmission, maybe further mutations. And we also know what the last winter was like. And the difference between -- right? I mean, am I wrong about that? The difference between a fully vaccinated country and not going into the winter is massive.

FAUCI: Well, it`s important if you`re not vaccinated, if you look at the people, the states, the cities, the counties that are highly vaccinated, they`re safe. Their risk is extremely low. What we worry about other states you put up on the screen, and the people in those states who are at risk for a variant that`s quite problematic. That`s the -- that`s the situation, Chris.

If you`re vaccinated, you don`t have a risk. And that`s the reason why we say it`s as simple as black and white. You`re vaccinated, you`re safe, you`re unvaccinated, you`re at risk. Simple as that.

HAYES: You know, the data you just mentioned, I hadn`t seen broken out and it might be because the I got to say, the CDC data dashboard on this has gotten very good and I just might not have gotten through it. But you said, seven -- if you just take adult 30 and over, that you`re in the -- you reached that threshold, right, 70 percent with at least one shot. So, that really speaks to me that there really is a demographic group here that there has to be some messaging focus on. I mean, I don`t know what that looks like, but that seems like pretty important.

FAUCI: And that`s what we are doing, Chris. I mean, when you talk about our famous basketball analogies that we play with each other back and forth, this is a full-court press time. I mean, this is doing things -- I`ve been on TikTok with young people. I`ve gone with Mayor Bowser at knocking on doors. I was talking to the Conference of Mayors today of getting the mayor`s out in the streets, getting their constituents vaccinated, particularly concentrating on that younger demographic between 18 and 30 -- and 26, excuse me.

HAYES: What is the -- what`s the cost look like -- I mean, this -- so, we`ve got the Delta variant bopping around. The other thing I keep thinking about is this -- you know, this variant really does seem very distinct. We`ve had other previous iterations. But just the transmission, the mutation risk as we go forward, right? The question of whether this is something that we like, suppress and kill off or in sort of snuffed out both here in the U.S. and globally or we basically end up with this unending chain of mutations bopping around all the time, which is like almost too awful to contemplate.

FAUCI: Yes, Chris, you said it well. It can be said really simply. Viruses don`t mutate if they don`t replicate. So, if you stop the transmission and the replication, you`re not going to get any more mutations. If you allow the virus to spread and replicate, then you give it an opportunity to mutate. And that`s the reason why we have to shut it down. Shut it down throughout the country, in all age groups.

HAYES: Final question kids over 12, I think, right, are under the emergency use authorization for at least one of the vaccines. Do we have any thought of that age dropping down? Any timeline for that?

FAUCI: Oh, absolutely, Chris. We`re doing studies right now in children from 12 to nine, and then from nine to six, and then from six to two. They`re called age deescalation studies. We`re in the middle of that now. We anticipate by the time we get into the fall and early winter, we will have the capability because of the knowledge that we`ve generated to vaccinate children of most any age.

HAYES: That`s fair. That`s I think the most specific and concrete I`ve heard that said so far. That`s very encouraging.

FAUCI: Right.

HAYES: Final question.

FAUCI: That`s what we`re doing. The clinical trials are ongoing right now.

HAYES: Final question for you. How much is the mRNA technology which is debuted here at scale? How transformational is that? I keep reading incredible new avenues of research for other vaccinations that might happen on that platform.

FAUCI: Absolutely it`s transformative, Chris. It has been highly, highly successful with COVID-19. And right now, even as we speak, investigators are applying it to HIV vaccines, to malaria, to tuberculosis, to influenza, and even to cancer chemo -- immunotherapy. So, right now it was so successful with COVID-19. A lot of people, good people, good scientists are working on a number of other.

HAYES: That`s right. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a pleasure as always, sir. See you soon. That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.