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Transcript: All In with Chris Hayes, 8/5/21

Guests: Ro Khanna, Ian Bassin, Rochelle Walensky, Rina Shah

Summary

Mark Meadows had helped introduce Donald Trump to DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark who is putting together a secret plan to oust Rosen, the Acting Attorney General, and force Georgia to overturn its results. The U.S. records the highest daily total of vaccination over a month. One-on- one interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on the pandemic, masking, and vaccines. Richard Trumka, the Secretary-General of AFL-CIO, died today very suddenly at the age of 72. President Biden sets a goal of 50 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030. Top Democrats across the party call for Gov. Cuomo to resign.

Transcript

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: And as it happens, there`s a name for what this brand of the American right has morphed into. You heard on this show earlier and from people like Mehdi Hasan and David Frum, and that word is fascist. And it`s time we started calling it what it is, because it`s dangerous, it`s in our midst, and it`s the absolute worst.

And tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight, on ALL IN. Donald Trump`s failed coup was even more serious than we knew.

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): This guy Jeff Clark was writing or drafting these types of letters to all the six states that ended up going for Joe Biden.

HAYES: Tonight, what we know about the other states Donald Trump and Jeffrey Clark were targeting and who else was helping them to do it.

Then, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on the surgeon vaccinations when Delta variant spread and the push for masks as kids head back to school.

Plus, Electric Jeep Day at the White House. What the new Biden push to phase out gas-powered vehicles means for you.

And the sudden death of an American labor giant. Remembering AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka when ALL IN starts right now.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He wasn`t just a great labor leader, he was a friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. When I was here in this chair last night, I started the show by saying that Donald Trump`s failed coup was worse than we thought. And 24 hours later, I am here to say once again, that the failed coup was worse than we thought last night. It`s because we`ve got another damning new bit of information since we reported last night on the roll that this man, former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark played in attempting to overturn American democracy.

Last night, we told the story of the letter that Clark had drafted to be sent to Georgia State officials and he wanted the acting Attorney General at the time, Jeffrey Rosen, to sign it. Jeffrey Rosen there in the background. That letter basically said the following. The Department of Justice is investigating voting regularities and well, you really can`t trust the results one way or another, so you in Georgia should call a special session, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and send your own electors to Washington."

Now, of course, since Georgia is run by Republicans, the ideas those electors would almost certainly be Trump electors, right? So, that would be a violation of Georgia State law, a violation of the will of the people, right? Donald Trump lost the election in Georgia by 11,000 votes. It would throw the post-election process into chaos. Thankfully, Jeffrey Rosen, the Acting Attorney General, refused to sign it. The letter was never sent.

Not for lack of trying though, because the New York Times reported that Jeffrey Clark even cooked up a plot with Donald Trump, met with him in person, for Trump to fire Rosen so that Jeffrey Clark could take over his job and send a letter. And it was only when a group of senior Justice Department officials threatened mass resignations that Trump pulled back. OK, well, we learned something new after the show last night. They weren`t just targeting Georgia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISHNAMOORTHI: It turns out that this guy, Jeff Clark, was writing or drafting these types of letters to all the six states that ended up going for Joe Biden. And I think that, you know, what we see is the beginning of the effort to overturn the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That was Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, and he sits on the House Oversight Committee which has been investigating Trump`s efforts to overturn the election and offered up that they were trying to run this operation six states. That`s based on another e-mail written by Trump`s personal secretary.

Now, I guess these states are probably Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. It was in the states that the Trump lost by the narrowest margin. And for Trump to win, he would have somehow have to flip at least three of those states.

So, for the first time in the development of this whole story through months of reporting and sort of patchwork bits of information, it`s clear, there was an actual cognizable plan to overturn the election. An actual strategy to get Donald Trump declared the winner of the election, not just throwing stuff against the wall and tantrum tweeting and easily dismissed fakakta lawsuits.

Now, it seemed like a concrete strategy yesterday when we first saw that letter, but it was incomplete because again, if they just overturn Georgia, which we know Trump was obsessed with, right, it still wouldn`t matter. Trump lost by more electoral votes than Georgia has. So, he needed more than that.

But if you`ve got the Attorney General sending that letter to six states, all of a sudden, the math could work. That could actually do the trick. You know, much of what Donald Trump, and we watched it in real-time and his cronies did publicly in the aftermath, the election was a, you know, cringe inducing. It was mockable, comical. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Lin Wood making outrageous ridiculous claims and getting laughed out of court after court and it all seemed impotent with no real like, path or strategy. And the case is, they kept getting thrown out. They`ve nowhere to go in the courts.

[20:05:07]

But now it`s clear that by late December, they had arrived at an actual plan in place they were trying to execute. And it wasn`t just Jeffrey Clark. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was also at the center of it. Mark Meadows is a man who also participated in an attempt on the life of American democracy.

Now, there`s some conflicting reporting about how Trump and Clark originally got linked up. But in this new book, Wall Street Journal`s Michael Bender writes, "Mark Meadows had helped introduce Trump to DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark who is putting together a secret plan to oust Rosen, the Acting Attorney General, and force Georgia to overturn its results.

And we know from e-mails released by the House Oversight Committee, at the end of December, beginning of January, that crucial period of time right before January 6, that Meadows was repeatedly pressing Rosen to investigate so-called voter fraud, including sending one e-mail. On January 1st, it read, "There have been allegations of signature match anomalies in Fulton County, Georgia."

I love the passive tense there. There have been allegations. Can you get Jeff Clark to engage on this issue immediately to determine if there`s any truth of this allegation? Now, Meadows is asking for him to call in Clark because he knows Clark is on the team. And the next day, Meadows arranged the call between Trump and George`s Republican Secretary of State when Trump infamously said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes, that`s one more than what do you needed."

So, Mark Meadows is in on the plot, obviously, and Clark and Trump together have a plan. And here`s what appears to have been. They were going to try to use the completely fabricated allegations of voting fraud and irregularities that had been pumped into the atmosphere by Trump and repeated by his allies and the right-wing media, and use that to have the Department of Justice officially send a letter to the six most closely contested states, five of which have Republican-control legislators and say, hey, this is the official blessing the U.S. Department of Justice telling you the results in your state are tainted, they can`t be trusted, we don`t really know who won. And by the way, you have the constitutional authority to call a special session, select a slate of Trump electors, and send them along to Washington.

Keep in mind, the Republicans running these state legislatures are a receptive audience. They`re the same people who in Michigan went like completely nuts over the governor`s public health measures, or the legislators in Arizona who are running the sham election audit, or in Georgia who just passed a law to make voting much, much, much harder. They`re all ears generally, much more so than the courts.

And so, finally, after flailing in those courts where they got nowhere, they realize there`s a much better avenue. Just have the Department of Justice give state Republicans the official green light to say, the election is tainted by fraud, we got to send our own electors.

Again, this is not Rudy Giuliani at Four Seasons Landscaping or Sidney Powell talking about the ghost of Hugo Chavez inhabiting the voting machines. No, this is an unnervingly plausible path to steal the election. Luckily, it took them a while to get there. And I frankly don`t have the words to describe what a cataclysm this all would have been if that letter had gone out and state Republicans have taken the signal in a number of these states and sent their own electors, because then you would have to slates elector that are sent to Congress in January 6.

All of a sudden, you have a real fight about which ones are legitimate. And there is now -- I mean, it`s fabricated, but there`s now a stronger case for Republicans to vote against Biden`s electors, a much stronger case for Vice President Mike Pence to accept their challenge. Suddenly, Mike Pence is given the fig leaf he needs to keep Donald Trump in power, or maybe gets thrown to the House under Electoral Count Act in the 12th amendment, and the 30 states of the Republican legislators vote for Donald Trump.

The plan fell apart three days before the insurrection when senior DOJ officials put their careers on the line to their great credit to stop it. But who knows what could have happened? There are all sorts of ways this could have played out and none of them good.

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and he joins me now. And Congressman, I want to start with this e-mail that`s an indicator of the -- of the scope of the plot that was unearthed by the committee that you serve on.

This is a an e-mail to Rosen and Donohue on December 28. And he explains the Georgia letter we reported last night that says,"Attached is a draft letter concerning the broader topic of election irregularities of any kind. The concept is to send to the governor speaker and president pro temp of each relevant state to indicate that in light of time urgency and sworn evidence of election irregularities presented to courts and the legislative committees, the legislators thereof should each assemble and make a decision about electoral appointment in light in their -- of their deliberations." That`s, that`s the Jeffrey Clark plot, it appears.

[20:10:15]

REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Chris, that is the smoking gun. It`s unnerving how close Trump came to using the full weight of the Justice Department to overturn the election result. What Clark was saying to the Georgia governor and legislature is not just you have a green light, but you should call a special session and say that the election was corrupt and overturn the result.

Now, here`s the shocking part. He says this is a concept that we can use in every other battleground state. It`s like a high school student doing a copy and paste assignment. I mean, there`s not even a pretense of looking at the individual states that if there was fraud committed, basically, let`s just use a copy of what we did in Georgia and send this to every other battleground state and tell them it`s corrupt, and they should have the legislature convene to have Trump electors. It is amazing how close Trump came to subverting our democracy.

HAYES: Yes. And we should note that Trump says this now, and you know, we got those famous notes from Donoghue, who`s serving as the deputy to Jeffrey Rosen during this period time. And again, I`m getting all this through the -- through the reporting and I and the documents. It seems fairly rock solid that Rosen and Donoghue really did do the right thing here.

But this, of course, has Trump saying I don`t expect you to do that. Meaning, I don`t expect you to overturn the election, just say the election was corrupt, leave the rest to me and Republican Congressmen. So, they -- that`s December 21. Like, at that point, they really did have a plan. And I think that this has been a little slow to dawn on the American people, and it`s kudos to your committee for unearthing this, that there really was a plan. It was not just the wheel spinning, you know, cringe-inducing carnival that was Sidney Powell and Lin Wood and Rudy Giuliani.

KHANNA: There was a plan. And the reason it matters to look backwards is because they could try to use this plan in the future. I mean, their plan is to say that state legislatures can overturn the popular will. And in Bush versus Gore, Rehnquist`s opinion basically says that it`s not people who have the right to elect a president, it`s the state legislatures who have the right to elect a president.

And what Trump was saying is we`re going to have the Justice Department cast aspersions, say it`s corrupt, and then have Republican state legislatures vote for a slate that would elect Trump. The really scary part, Chris, is what if Republicans do this again in the future and try to defer to state legislatures to elect a Republican candidate even if the Democrat wins overwhelmingly the popular vote in those states.

HAYES: So, this is unearthed by the House Oversight Committee. My understanding is, as of today, this investigation is being moved over the January 6 committee. But I got to say -- first of all, so A, I want to know that`s right. But B, I got to say like, I think Jeffrey Clark should be under oath tomorrow. And I think Mark Meadows should be under oath tomorrow.

And I think we should hear from these people who should answer some questions, you know, under penalty of perjury about the role they played in attempting a coup.

KHANNA: Absolutely. I think they both need to answer questions. I do think they that we need to coordinate with the Justice Department because I think in Clark`s case, there`s criminal exposure. I mean, if really what he was doing is sending copy and paste letters to states with no underlying even differentiation that needs to be done.

So, the Oversight Committee is still going to be involved, but the Speaker is doing the right thing by consolidating it in the Select Committee. And the oversight staff that have been exceptional will be working with the select committee to get to the bottom of it and the facts.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you so much for making some time with us tonight.

KHANNA: Thank you.

HAYES: I want to bring in Ian Bassin, former associate White House Council to President Obama, Executive Director at the nonprofit Protect Democracy. First, Ian, this is a question that I`ve asked a bunch of people at different points which is the kind of, you know, glass half full, half empty, right? I mean, the terrible thing about this is that they had a plan to try to overturn election. The good thing is that it didn`t work and they -- and they met with the resistance that you would hope for at the upper echelon of the Justice Department, even handpicked, you know, people that Trump had installed. What`s your takeaway?

IAN BASSIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROTECT DEMOCRACY: I mean, look, we survived basically a category two political hurricane last fall. But the category five political hurricane is the one that`s coming, because as Congressman Khanna just pointed out, past year is prologue. There is now a plan afoot by an autocratic faction in this country to put in place mechanisms to be able to succeed in overturning a future election and the ways that they failed in this past election and involves three steps, right?

Step one is create enough mistrust, doubt, and suspicion in the system that you can create chaos and an opportunity for on toward action. So, the entire big lie, the fake audit in Arizona is all about flooding the system with distrust.

Step two, is make it harder for voters who would oppose your sort of autocratic factions to be able to vote. And then step three, is give hyperpartisan loyalists greater power over the administration of elections so they can intervene. And as Congressman Khanna suggested, decide who they think should win regardless of who the voters pick.

[20:15:34]

HAYES: Yes. And the ultimate -- this is slightly technical, but I think it`s worth taking a second with this, this sort of ultimate version of that is a theory that is in my humble non-lawyer review, nuts an out there, but was essentially subscribed to by William Rehnquist in that Bush v. Gore with two Republican-appointed justices signing on to it.

And we think there`s some openness to it among current justices, which basically says, because the Constitution gives to the legislators -- legislatures, you know, that`s the term they use, the sort of selection of the electors as they determine, that that means that they can kind of -- even if the way they determined is to pass a law in the state of Michigan that it goes to the winner of the election, they can then Trump that later under a constitutional authority and say, like, no Pennsylvania voters, you don`t get to decide, we do at any time. Am I -- do I have that right?

BASSIN: I think you have the beginning parts of that right. But you made a leap that I don`t think it`s going to actually pass muster in the court, which is that, yes, a state legislature under the Constitution can choose how to select the presidential electors. But for more than 50 years, every state in this country has chosen that the way to do that is to allow the people to vote.

Once the state has chosen that, it cannot go back on that for a number of reasons. And the national Task Force on election crises which is a cross- ideological group of Republicans and Democrats and those conservatives all made this clear last year, which is two things. One under federal law, Congress has said that states pick their presidential electors on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every November. That`s the date. So, once that happens, the state legislature can`t pick another day down the road.

And then second, even under the Constitution, once the state legislature is given that power to the voters, it can`t after the fact deprive them of their due process expectations to take it back. So, a state would have to basically come out before the election and say no, no, actually, we`re going to let the state legislatures --

HAYES: Right.

BASSIN: And Arizona tried to do that earlier this year. A bill was introduced to do that. Thankfully, it got defeated. But you know what? The legislator who introduced that bill is now running for Secretary of State of Arizona.

HAYES: Wow. Oh, my God. OK, Ian Bassin, thank you so much for your time tonight.

BASSIN: Thanks, Chris.

HAYES: All right, tonight, there are so many massive questions about what the next few months holds for the future of the pandemic. For instance, will the current surge in vaccinations helpful the Delta variant, when can kids under 12 get vaccinated, what happens when kids go back to school? Does everyone need a booster shot? If so, when?

Luckily for us, the head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky is here. We`ll get her best answers to all those questions more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:00]

HAYES: There is a surge in Americans getting vaccinated right now over the last 24 hours. 864,000 Americans got the shot, the highest total of more than a month. This renewed interest in vaccination, of course, can`t come fast enough as the Delta variant ravages throughout the country. The data on who is dying from color right now is very clear.

The Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed state level data from this year. They found the overwhelming majority of people who died from COVID between 97 and 99 percent were not fully vaccinated. I want to bring in the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Doctor, it`s good to have you on the program. I want to ask. Does the CDC have this data? Do you have comprehensive data that you`ve monitored about whether those numbers change considerably under the Delta variant?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY, DIRECTOR, CDC: Thank you, Chris. We are following these data very carefully. We`re in touch with each state. We`re in touch with many of the hospital systems and our results are consistent with what Kaiser Family Foundation is finding, and that is the overwhelming majority of inpatients, of people who are getting sick with COVID, and certainly people who are dying of COVID are those who have been unvaccinated.

HAYES: There`s a little bit of a numerator -- a denominator problem that I think everyone`s wrestling with right now in two different ways in terms of breakthrough cases and in terms of children. So, let`s talk about breakthrough cases. My sense is that the CDC stop monitoring breakthrough cases as a -- as a number in the aggregate in May. And there`s been some criticism that gives us a not the best eyes on the virus right now. Do you think that was a mistake? Do I have it wrong? And are you monitoring breakthrough cases now?

WALENSKY: Thank you so much for that. Let me clarify. We are -- we have self-reporting of people who are coming into the hospital and dying through our breakthrough cases. And that is one way that we are monitoring breakthrough cases. But the best epidemiologic way is to monitor this through cohort studies. And we are following now tens of thousands of people, thousands of whom are getting a PCR test every single week regardless of symptoms. And that is the best epidemiologic way to follow breakthrough cases.

So, we are doing both self-reporting, passive reporting, and that`s where we stopped collecting the outpatient data. But more importantly, we are doing cohort reporting, and that is the best way to follow and understand both the numerator and the denominator just as you note.

HAYES: OK, so you got -- you have a cohort, a large cohort that like is like a panel survey that you know, they`ll do in public opinion that you feel is statistically representative that you`re getting constant data from. Is that correct?

WALENSKY: We actually have more than one cohort. We have over 20 cohorts. And these are cohorts, some are essential workers, some are long term care facilities, some are health care workers, some are people that are just presenting to urgent care centers across the nation, tens of thousands of people that we are monitoring both the numerator and the denominator. And that gives us a really good picture of how our vaccines are performing over time.

HAYES: So, this leads to the children question. A lot of people are really concerned about this. I got three kids. You know, before Delta, I would say, look, I`m someone who professionally and also out of personal investment, looks at the data very carefully. And in the aggregate, we`re lucky that kids don`t seem to be that at risk.

There are exceptions, of course. It`s not zero risk. But in the grand scheme of things, there`s things that are more serious threats to children. Is that the top line of Delta? And do we have enough -- can you tell American parents, that`s still true with Delta?

[20:25:27]

WALENSKY: Here`s what I can tell American parents. The best way to protect your children from Delta who can`t get vaccinated yet is to get vaccinated yourself, to wear a mask and indoor public settings in areas of substantial and high transmission so you don`t bring Delta home, and to make sure when your kids are eligible to be vaccinated, that you get them vaccinated to protect them.

In our schools, we`re going to need to have everybody masked so that our kids can safely return to in-person learning.

HAYES: OK, I mean, I know that`s the guidance. But that`s -- and I understand that like, you can`t freelance here in your live television interview with me. But it`s also doesn`t quite answer the question, right? Because that`s the -- that`s the affirmative guidance about how to act in the world. And what I`m trying to find out is like, how do I do a risk assessment because we`re all making risk judgments here.

Like there`s no ironclad rules. Everyone has got to -- like, Is it worth it to fly and go see grandma and grandpa, you know, all this stuff. Like, you know, two months ago, I`m like -- my thought was like, basically, they`ll be fine. I was worried about the seniors in my life. I`m glad that I`m vaccinated, my kids are going to be fine, basically. And I don`t know what to think now.

WALENSKY: Right. You know, we`ve seen -- we`re watching this very carefully. We`re watching what is happening. Of course, you`re hearing reports of children who are in the hospital who are sick with COVID. What we`re seeing in the -- in our discussions with states is that the places that have had to close camps, the places that have had challenge challenges with summer school have really been in areas that are not practicing the prevention strategies that we know work.

Places where you`re seeing the footage of lots of hospitalizations especially young people have been places in this country that have not -- that have lower rates of vaccination, higher rates of disease, and have not been implementing the prevention strategies that we know work.

HAYES: Yes. And I guess this is -- this is again a kind of denominator question, right? I mean, it all comes down to like, what`s your rate of community transmission? And, you know, again, a slim risk or a one in 1000 risk. If you`ve got 10,000 or 100,000 cases, that makes a difference in the aggregate.

Another question for you which sort of follows on all this which is just a criticism that I`ve read of the CDC. And it`s a criticism that`s not directed at you, but I think there`s continuity between before your tenure and during it and from people that are epidemiologists, Zeynep Tufekci in New York Times, which is that you`ve got a tough job making judgment calls under conditions of uncertainty with a novel virus you`re just getting data on, but a sense of the CDC has been behind and chasing the virus has been late on it.

In the case of Delta, India identifies the strain last year. The U.K. is warning in May about how transmissible it is. There`s cross-country data suggesting it`s very transmissible. We don`t get the guidance till months later. What do you say to those critics?

WALENSKY: Let me tell you how this went with -- in terms of the change of our guidance last week. We saw the first data on the potential for transmissibility among those who have -- were breakthrough infections. We saw those on a Friday. We corroborated those with other data from other situations, other countries over the weekend. And by Tuesday, we had updated guidance. By Friday, we have those data published. They were unpublished previously.

And within a week, not only had we updated our guidance, we had it published data on it. Since then, there have been at least two or three other published studies that have corroborated those data. We are moving at the speed of science. We`re delivering to the public messages for public health as we receive them, and then we are publishing those data in swift fashion for everyone to see.

HAYES: All right, Dr. Rochelle Walensky who does not have an easy job, just in case that wasn`t clear, I want to thank you for your time tonight.

WALENSKY: Thanks so much for having me.

HAYES: OK, still ahead, what made the President of the United States whip off his coat, jog across the White House lawn today? Could it have something to do with that kick-ass electric Jeep? The answer and why it`ll matter to you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:30:00]

HAYES: For all the fake populism that`s very in vogue right now particularly among the real estate fail sons and the frozen dinner heirs, Richard Trumka was the real deal. He grew up in a working class family in southwest Pennsylvania. He was a third-generation coal miner. His grandfather was a union man, his father was union man.

Trumka could put himself through college working shifts at the mine. He`d gone to get a law degree and worked full time in Washington. At the age of 33, he was sworn in as the president of the United Mine Workers, an of oath of office administered by his dad. He would serve as president for 13 years.

In 2011, in a profile in Esquire, Trumka was asked about returning to his mining roots after a brief stint as a big shot Washington lawyer. He said, "I developed a vision of what the union could be, what it should be, what the labor movement could be. You see the union with all its blemishes and you`re able to say that it`s still the best vehicle there is for social change."

It wasn`t long before Trumka became secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, a group of more than 50 labor unions representing millions of workers. During his tenure as Secretary, the war on organized labor was intense. We saw sustained attempts by reactionary forces to pry away white working people from the Democratic Party, from the labor movement and progressivism over issues of race.

In a fiery speech in 2008, Trumka was unflinching in his response.

[20:35:04]

RICHARD TRUMKA, SECRETARY-GENERAL, AFL-CIO: Look around this town. Nemacolin is a dying town. There`s no jobs here. Our kids are moving away because there`s no teacher here. And here is the man, Barack Obama, who`s going to fight for people like us, and you want to tell me that you will vote for him because of the color of his skin? Are you out of your ever- loving mind, lady?

See, brothers and sisters, we can`t tap dance around the fact that there`s a lot of folks out there just like that woman, and a lot of them are good union people, they just can`t get past the idea that there`s something wrong with voting for a Black man. Well, those of us who know better, can`t afford to sit silently or look the other way while it`s happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: A year later, Trumka was elected President of the AFL-CIO where he oversaw a real concerted effort to encompass a kind of multiracial solidarity including changing the group`s position on immigration. Richard Trumka died today very suddenly at the age of 72. It was news that reverberated like an earthquake through politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Rich Trumka died today from a heart attack. The reason I was a few minutes late coming out, and I apologize for that, I was talking to his wife and to his son who called. He was an American worker, always fighting for working people, protecting their wages, their safety, their pensions, and their ability to build a middle-class life. I`ve also believed that the middle class build America, but I know who built the middle class, the unions. The unions built the middle class. And there`s no doubt that Rich Trumka help build unions all across this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Trumka`s death comes at a time where seeing a revived wave of labor militancy, his old union, United Mine Workers had more than 1000 workers walk off the job in Alabama on April 1st. They`ve been on strike since demanding better hours, wages and benefits from their coal company. Last month, those workers had a huge showing of solidarity in New York with members from all over the labor movement filling the streets.

There was of course also the recent campaign in Bessemer, Alabama. The unionized workers at an Amazon warehouse there which the company fought tooth and nail, and it looks successful. The Union losing that election by quite a bit. Now, it looks like those workers are likely to get a second shot of forming a union because just the other day, the National Labor Relations Board recommended the results of the first election be tossed out, accusing Amazon of improper anti-union tactics.

Before the pandemic, data from Bureau of Labor Statistics showed U.S. workers were more likely to strike than in any other time in the last 30 years. And now, after the pandemic, a desire for dignity in the workplace is producing widespread grassroots labor actions across the country. That`s what Richard Trumka spent his whole life fighting for. If there`s one thing he taught us about the labor movement in this country, which has seen both good times and bad, is that it will carry on no matter how much the bosses wish to kill it off for good.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:40:00]

HAYES: There`s been a bunch of good news recently for electric cars and the companies that make them. Tesla just had its best quarter ever. The company`s net income in the second quarter of this year topped to $1 billion, ten times more than a year ago. That comes amid rumors this week Tesla may have completed its first prototype for an expected new model that will sell for just $25,000.

CEO Elon Musk announced a plan for that fully electric, fully autonomous vehicle last year although there`s a lot of justified skepticism about the fully autonomous part. That said, now legacy automakers are making big moves towards electric as well.

Ford says they`ve received more than 120,000 reservations, not like -- you know, people putting down money to reserve for their highly anticipated electric F-150 truck, which debuted in May and set to start delivering in the spring. And GM confirmed this week they`re planning to add two new electric vehicles to their commercial lineup, a full sized cargo van and a medium-duty truck.

The manufacturers are clearly on board with electric, so as the White House. You see President Biden taking an electric Jeep for a spin today ahead of signing an executive order that aims to have half of all vehicles sold in U.S. be electric by the year 2030. The Biden administration`s also setting stricter emission standards for cars that run on fossil fuels. The question is, what about the infrastructure to support all these new electric vehicles? Is it going to take -- what is it going to take to get built and what it will look like?

Phil LeBeau covers the auto industry for CNBC and he joins me now. Phil, first, let`s start with the policy from the Biden administration today. There`s been obviously the wrestling match, a strange one on the Trump ministration about fuel emissions in which you have the automakers actually saying they wanted better emission standards than the White House did. There was a lawsuit. There`s a back and forth. What is today`s announcement on that front mean?

PHIL LEBEAU, CNBC AUTO INDUSTRY REPORTER: Well, they`re all on the same page, finally. And the what happened with the Trump administration is that was more a fight between the Trump administration and the state of California over the question of who has the right to set vehicle emission standards. Ultimately, automakers were split. Some sided with the Trump administration, some sided with the state of California. Now, they`re all on the same page.

And theoretically, that should be better for the industry. They want one standard. They don`t want to have to do a patchwork of standards. And they`ll probably go with the California and the federal standard together.

HAYES: So, you know, I`ve covered this area a little -- quite a bit over the years. And it just seems to me like in the last year or two, some switches really turned on the electric car front in terms of the big automakers, big mainstream automakers. Like, they are -- they are doing it now. Is that a fair characterization and what happened to get them there?

[20:45:16]

LEBEAU: Well, I think they finally realized that the market is not just a possibility, that it actually is there. And for that, you can thank Tesla. Hats off to Tesla for showing the United States and really showing the world, there are a lot of people who want to drive electric. Now, at the same time, Tesla is primarily for those who want to pay a fair amount for an electric vehicle. The price is much above -- are well above what you see for an internal combustion engine vehicle.

So, the automakers need to get to the electric vehicle market. So, they`re going to pour in. Just think about this, Chris. Between the big three, they`re investing $99 billion dollars between now and 2025 to develop this market. And it`s going to take that plus a lot more in order to see as many vehicles sold as the Biden administration is hoping to see by 2030.

HAYES: Well, let`s talk about this. There`s two parts of that. There`s what the -- what the industry does and what the infrastructure does. Let`s talk about the industry. I mean, one of the things when I`ve talked to car folks is that, you know, you`ve got incredible economies of scale when you`re talking about the big three in Detroit and cross platforms, right?

So, you can create modular battery systems, for instance. So you`ve got -- you`ve got -- you know, you can -- you can scale those batteries depending on the model. You don`t have to reinvent the wheel each time. And you can push those costs down so that they can -- they can sell cars that are better cost-competitive.

LEBEAU: That`s true. But that is going to take some time. And if you look at the cost advantage right now that Tesla has over the traditional automakers, it`s substantial. It`s going to narrow over the rest of this decade. And you`ll see the overall cost of batteries coming down as well. But the key here is it takes time. Battery technology is not something that can be developed over the course of a couple of months or even a couple of years. It takes time. And that`s going to mean several years. That`s what`s going to bring down the cost of batteries.

HAYES: And then the question is about the charging infrastructure. Obviously, we got gas stations everywhere in America.

LEBEAU: Right.

HAYES: It took a number of years to make that happen. What are -- what it means to happen at the policy level, what are the -- what`s the sort of near term and medium-term projection for that?

LEBEAU: Let`s be clear, most people who have an electric vehicle charge it at home and they charge it overnight. And for them, the range of the vehicles is not an issue. Most Americans drive 40 miles or less. I think 80 percent drive 40 miles or less per day. These vehicles have plenty of range for just getting around the neighborhood and getting around wherever you are.

It`s when you want to take an extended trip. That`s where the problem lies. There needs to be more charging stations installed, whether it`s along highways, other key points so that, you know -- so you can drive great distances. And it`s not just that, Chris, these need to be fast-charging stations. You cannot tell somebody to go from Chicago to Denver and say, hey, by the way, you`re going to stop and charge every 250 to 300 miles for, I don`t know, two hours, three hours. No, that`s not going to work.

HAYES: Right.

LEBEAU: You need to be able to say, boom, 10 minutes, you`re ready to go.

HAYES: And that`s also the question as we start to get into -- I mean, what we haven`t scaled up to is the truck problem. And the truck problem is a huge amount of missions, and that`s a big question right now where you`ve got people driving truck 12 hours. That`s going to be the sort of next rung up. Phil LeBeau, thanks so much for joining us tonight. I appreciate it.

LEBEAU: You bet.

HAYES: Ahead, what Republicans still standing by Donald Trump can learn from the near-unanimous rejection of Andrew Cuomo by Democrats. That`s next.

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HAYES: The damning sexual harassment investigation to Governor Andrew Cuomo has left him under huge amounts of pressure and condemnation from his own party. At least four Democratic district attorneys are conducting criminal investigations into his conduct. There`s an ongoing impeachment effort in the democratically led state house. He just lost the support of the head of the New York Democratic Party. Both of New York`s Democratic senators have called on him to resign, as has the President of the United States.

It`s an avalanche and it shows what can be done against a very powerful politician who spent years ruling through dominance and intimidation. As Maggie Haberman in the New York Times points out, what we`re seeing from Democrats when it comes to Cuomo is a taste of the kind of thing that would have happened in the alternate universe where Republicans abandoned Trump instead of continuing to fear him.

To discuss the similarities and differences between these two dynamics, I`m joined by Sam Seder, hosts of the Majority Report and reported both on NBC streaming platform Peacock. And Rina Shah, a former Republican Strategist who served as senior aide to Republican Congressman (INAUDIBLE) and Jeff Miller. She`s now an adviser to the nonpartisan Renew Democracy Initiative.

Sam, you and I have covered Cuomo for years. And it is -- it is fascinating the kind of rains it pours. Obviously, you`ve got an official investigation with official findings that are very damning. But the dynamics here are interesting. And it really shows that like, it`s like if you`re going to come to the king, you best not miss. And if everyone`s going to do it, they better all do it together.

SAM SEDER, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely. I mean, that`s definitely what`s going on here. I think everybody`s sort of decided it was time. And I do think like look, there`s an aggregate of things about Cuomo that I think folks have been waiting and stewing about for frankly for years.

And he there`s so many disparate constituencies that are looking for an opportunity. And so, I think everybody just jumped at once, and that`s -- and that`s what you`re seeing. I mean it`s a huge pile on. I don`t know how he can withstand this, to be honest with you.

HAYES: I don`t either. And Rina, what I -- what I thought was interesting was Maggie`s point I thought was quite incisive to what Sam was saying. It`s like, we know that there are tons of Republicans who absolutely hate Donald Trump`s guts. I mean, just at a personal level, right? They`re just like, they don`t like him. They would love for there to be payback. And they have never taken the leap together collectively to do this, even though they`ve been candid moments like January 6.

But this shows to me that it is -- it is -- it couldn`t be done. There is a universe, I`m not saying it`s going to happen, in which you couldn`t do it.

[20:55:30]

RINA SHAH, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Chris, to the point made earlier, has everybody decided it`s his time? That`s the thing. All politics is local, and I`m looking at New York State. And we don`t know yet whether New York State Democrats are ready to do the thing, the thing being impeachment. We`re seeing the can sort of kicked down the road right now. We`re not fully sure where everybody`s going because the reality is this. Cuomo`s tentacles are long.

There are people in the assembly who are directly tied to him. Their donors are Cuomo`s donors, and they are one in the same. So, Cuomo holds that grip over many of them. Of course, let`s talk about seats in play for a second. That remains to be seen. But when you`re looking at the New York State Court of Appeals, for example, you see the chief justice, you see a recent appointment by him.

You see people that are Cuomo people. Are they going to impeach? That`s the question. Until the speaker calls the vote for impeachment, this is receiving the same treatment that Donald Trump received from the very Republicans who should have been calling him out.

SEDER: Chris, you know --

HAYES: Nobody -- I mean, well, right, until they do. But I think they are going to call it. I mean, that`s the point is that like, yes, he will make it as painful as possible. But at this point, I think they have --

SHAH: Sure.

HAYES: That`s my point. They`ve walked out far enough together, Sam, I think, on the plank that they can`t get back. Like, that`s the key dynamic here.

SEDER: Yes. Well, I think so. And I should also say like, this is not a perfectly analogous situation, right? Because Cuomo has a transactional relationship with all those people in New York that were just referenced, and Trump didn`t really. Trump had the Republican voter --

HAYES: Yes, that`s true.

SEDER: -- in a way that Cuomo doesn`t. I mean, he`s popular, but he`s not deeply popular.

HAYES: That`s right.

SEDER: And his politics, let`s face it, are much more about the early 90s than they are about the early 2020s. And so, I think like, you know, his trajectory in terms of the relationship with voters is going in a different direction. And so, there isn`t the same sort of popular appeal that Cuomo has. All of his appeal is transactional.

And again, that`s one of those situations where it really is when you come for the king, because it`s really a question of like, the king has the purse strings in this situation, and really has a lot of transactional relationships that he`s leveraged in the past, at least, and he`s going to try now.

HAYES: Right, but we`ve seen -- I mean, what`s -- I totally agree with those differences. But we`ve seen is that there have been other -- there been moments with Cuomo -- and again, I want to say that like, inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government is to me a more grave offense, particularly in, you know, in a historical sense, which is not at all to minimize what Cuomo has found to have done by the Attorney General.

But there was this moment -- I mean, what`s interesting to me is the sort of crowd dynamics of politicians hurting. There was a moment -- I was on air, Rina, when it was like the news was that McConnell might vote for impeachment. And there was this thought of, OK, maybe the dominoes fall, maybe the dominoes fall. They just rid themselves of this guy. They disqualified him.

And I guess my point is like, they could have actually done that. We`ve gotten so used to them not doing it that we think it`s not possible, but they could have. They could have done it. They could do it now. They couldn`t turn on him if they so choose.

SHAH: Well, you know, we don`t want to draw too many parallels, right, because in Trump`s scenario with Stormy Daniels, for example, he had a fall guy. That was Michael Cohen. There weren`t receipts. I mean, when you look at the situation with Cuomo, and that report is publicly available. I hope people go read it. It is nauseating. It makes my stomach turn. It is so disgusting.

There are messages, texts, I mean, pictures. It`s just the kind of situation that`s a nightmare that we would think would cause this governor to say, you know what, it`s my time. I want to leave with dignity. But instead, he`s doubling down. He`s flat-out lying. I mean, these are 11 credible accusers. And I`d be remiss if I didn`t say, Chris, I`m so proud of these women.

I`ve been in the halls of Congress, and there are equal opportunity offenders on both sides of the aisle. I know what it`s like to be in the company of powerful men and want to just do your job and have unwanted advances and have to deal with those. This is serious. They are putting their livelihoods on the line. So, I commend those women. I commend Tish James for what she did as well.

I mean doing her job but line by line really calling this what this is. But at the end of the day, there`s one big reality here. Republicans are afraid of their voters, Democrats not so much. Because what we are living in is that post-January 6 world Chris, and this world means that Republicans in elected office have to fear voters coming for them to hang them. It just makes -- it gives me goosebumps. I spent nearly two decades in politics and this is where we are at with the Republican Party. So the fear of voters is what Democrats do not have and I hope the y use it to their advantage.

HAYES: Yes, I think the fear -- the fear of political violence does diffuse a lot it.

SHA: And if Gov. Cuomo, if you`re listening tonight, live the moment. Do the right thing. Resign, please.

HAYES: Sam Seder, Rina Shah, thank you both. I`ll talk to you soon.

That is ALL IN on this Thursday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts now with Nicolle in for Rachel. Nicolle, good evening.