Summary
President Trump is still shedding viral loads as White House announces plans to host a political rally. A Michigan sheriff suggests extremists charged in kidnapping plot were trying to arrest Gov. Whitmer. A new court ruling will disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin voters. Democratic candidates are polling well in surprising places.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: It's so great to meet you. Thank you for using your platform for something that's so important. So, I hope everyone will listen and work those polls. Get up there and help at the election. Thank you.
And that is tonight's REIDOUT. Thank you. OK, I'm sorry, I missed up the ending. That's tonight's REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The data speak for themselves. We had a super spreader event in the White House.
HAYES: The second debate is officially canceled, and the President is still shedding viral load.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's close to the period where he could be done shedding virus.
HAYES: Tonight, why Trump is now negotiating with himself on the COVID rescue. Then, a new defense of the plot to kidnap Michigan's governor coming from Michigan law enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are they trying to kidnap because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So, are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt?
HAYES: And why Lindsey Graham is refusing a COVID test in South Carolina as Dems set sights on Alaska. And Mitch McConnell complains to lobbyists that grassroots donors are overwhelming as candidates when ALL IN the starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. I will admit there have been moments in the past, probably honestly, too many to count, when it sure seemed like Donald Trump was on his last legs politically. I mean, just a few weeks of the campaign 2015 when he attacked Senator John McCain, who of course, since has passed, saying that he likes people who weren't captured, or the aftermath of the Access Hollywood Tape almost exactly four years ago, and then when he was caught red-handed, attempting to extort a foreign government into digging up dirt on his political opponent and got impeached for it.
And yet, Donald Trump, as you know, has defied political gravity. And here we are now, just 25 days to the election, people are already voting in multiple states. We have all been burned so many times. It can be hard to be clear-eyed about the situation. But let's just take stock of where things are at this moment.
The President of the United States is not on the campaign trail with less than four weeks until Election Day because he contracted the contagious and dangerous virus that has killed 214,000 Americans and sickened over seven and a half million. He is at the center of a cluster of cases of unknown size and scale that includes his campaign manager, one of his top advisors, three United States senators whose votes he will need very soon to confirm his handpicked new Supreme Court Justice, and his good friend and campaign advisor Chris Christie who right now remains hospitalized, his seventh night in the hospital with COVID. That's not to mention the head of White House security office who is also hospitalized with the virus and critically ill.
Tonight, word that one of the President's last best chances to gain political ground has been canceled. The Commission on debate said that each campaign now has announced alternate plans the date of the second presidential debate. That following the Commission's eminently sensible decision it would be conducted virtually. And it is now apparent there will be no debate on October 15, and the commission will turn its attention to preparations for the final presidential debate scheduled for October 22.
Now, we don't know if the President would be done shedding viral load on October 15. And the White House still will not say if he was shedding viral load at the last debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When was the President's last negative test prior to his diagnosis?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, we don't have that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, on that last negative test, you said you don't -- you said you don't have that. You don't know or you don't want to say?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, we don't have that. There's -- well, I don't personally know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me ask you this. Did the President at least comply with the Cleveland Clinic debate requirements to be negative tested in the 72 hours prior to that debate? Was that -- was the president in compliance with that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are very focused on looking backwards.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, they've been doing this for a week now. And the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the President did not actually test negative before he got in a room with former Vice President Joe Biden, a man of 77 years for last week's debate, That despite a negative test being one of the conditions for participating in that debate.
In other words, it appears we dodged an enormous bullet of having two candidates over 70 with the Coronavirus. And so Donald Trump right now is trapped in the White House while his aides engaged in a cover up of their own public health disaster. His friends and his allies and advisors are sick. He is taking the strong steroid the doctors say can cause mood swings and grandiose feelings. The election is 25 days away and he is polling the farthest below Joe Biden he has all year, all year.
The latest average from FiveThirtyEight puts him 10 points down. That's getting in the Carter-Hoover territory. And the virus he has seemingly turned himself into a spokesperson for is of course still ravaging, not just the White House where he works and lives, but the country as a whole.
According to the COVID Tracking Project, daily cases are spiking. You see the pink graph? 57,000 new cases today, the most in a few months, hospitalization is spiking too, 34,000 in that blue graph, and there were over 900 deaths again today. 900 Americans died today.
And so, Republicans are now looking at several Senate races that probably should not be competitive, as their candidates are suddenly fighting for their political lives in places like Iowa, and Kansas, and Alaska, and Texas, all won by Donald Trump in 2016. And the President of the United States who is down 10 points and desperately needs to persuade some of the people who are not part of the 40 percent of this country that constitute his hardcore supporters, he is spending multiple hours a day talking to right-wing media ranting and desperately seeking some kind of magic trick to spring him from the trap he has set for himself.
Now, four years ago, Donald Trump managed to pull off an improbable victory despite losing by three million votes largely thanks to James Comey -- James Comey's FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton that James Comey gave constant public updates on. And of course, famously, the help of an adversarial foreign intelligence services that create -- that committed criminal sabotage. And that's not to mention a campaign finance conspiracy that Donald Trump was engaged in to cover up payments to adult film star that resulted in Michael Cohen going to jail.
And now four years later, the President is looking for another magic trick. He's looking for a way out. And so he's now publicly hectoring his attorney general to just round up his political enemies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes that -- the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we're going to get little satisfaction unless I win. And we'll just have to go because I won't forget it. But these people should be indicted. This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama and it includes Biden. These are people that spied in my campaign, and we have everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK, just imagine -- I just want to take a second of what the President just said there. He says lots of stuff. A lot of it we ignore. This includes Biden, this includes Obama. What he's saying is he wants Bill Barr and Christopher Wray's FBI to roll up to the house of Joe Biden in Delaware and Barack Obama in Washington D.C. with the FBI jackets, and frogmarch Barack Obama and Joe Biden out in handcuffs and indict them.
That's what Donald Trump wants William Barr do right now. That's what he's telling him to do. And just in case that doesn't work, the President is also now desperately trying to come up with some plan to essentially buy his way out of his predicament.
I mean, just two weeks ago, he announced a plan without Congressional authorization, OK, to just out of nowhere send $200 prescription drug gift cards to seniors before Election Day. Here you go, vote for me. Today, after loudly announcing just days ago he was ending negotiations on that rescue bill, the President told Rush Limbaugh that now he wants even more money than Nancy Pelosi is offering.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering. I'm going to the exact opposite now, OK. I mean, I'm telling you this. I'm telling you something I don't tell anybody else because maybe it helps or maybe it hurts negotiations. I would like to see a bigger package. I'd like to see money going to people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes, he sounds -- he sounds pretty together there. The Republican Party has completely tethered themselves to this one man who has, I got to say, appeared to defy political gravity for five years. He has escaped and survived so much that would have taken almost anyone else out. So, what happens, what happens to the party if and when the magic stops and his luck runs out?
For more on the state of the race on the Republican Party, I'm joined now by former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. It's great to have you. And I guess I started with the political lay of the land now. I mean, he has -- he has so flagrantly violated his own CDC's health guidance. He's going to have some big rally on the South Lawn this weekend. And I just -- I look at, you know, Mitch McConnell and what he said, I look at the Senate candidates and I got to think like, this is -- continues to be a disaster and nightmare for them. Is that the right read?
CLAIRE MCCASKILL, FORMER SENATOR FROM MISSOURI: Yes, it is the right read. And you know, what's really interesting, Chris, is we're beginning to see cracks in the very firm foundation of all of his minions in the Senate that have R behind their name. When you hear Mitch McConnell's say in two consecutive days, first I wouldn't go to the White House because I disagree with the way they've handled safety at the White House, then the earth trembles a little bit.
And then second, there will be no stimulus before the election. I mean, that is gut-punch one and gut-punch two to the political power of this president. Then add on the whipped cream and cherry of Cornyn to an editorial board in a Texas paper and Houston saying, you know, the president probably should quit lying to the American people.
This is astounding. These are two senators that are leaders in their party that are from very red states that are scared. And I would use a bad word here, but it's something less. They are scared.
HAYES: And they're so turned around on this. I mean, this bizarre spectacle in South Carolina tonight, Lindsey Graham and Jamie Harrison, a dead heat race there. We're going to have a debate tonight. And Jamie Harrison said, look, you've been in the White House, you've been with Mike Lee, take a take a COVID test before we do the debate. Get it negative, we'll do the debate.
Eminently sensible. I get tested like two or three times a week now that I'm in 30 Rock all the time. I want to protect the people I love and the people I work with. I want to know, right, if I have contracted this. Graham refuses. And I think the reason he refused is because he wants to make sure that he can chair the judiciary committee hearing for Amy Coney Barrett next week. And if it gets a positive test, it's -- that might be hard. I mean, think about that.
MCCASKILL: It is -- it is really that they are all scared to death. The only hope they have, they are putting all their eggs in the basket of the hearing of Amy Coney Barrett next week. So, this is where it's going to be hard for all of us who are heartbroken about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and what this President is doing to that seat on the Supreme Court.
We want it to stop. We want to do whatever we can with passion and purpose to stop his nomination. They are hoping that the emotion of that hearing somehow bleeds out negatively on Democratic candidates for the Senate. But there is one clear fact every single senator that is going to go to that hearing next week should have the test this weekend, everyone, Democrats and Republicans.
That's a reasonable requirement since McConnell has called off the Senate and told everybody to stay home because it's not safe to be in the Senate, then why the heck wouldn't it be required that every senator in the Judiciary Committee would take the test?
HAYES: I want to ask about also the President's sort of clear desperation, not just on the rescue package, but now this idea that, you know, he clearly wants -- he has been seeding the ground for a long time for some investigation of his political rivals. It's what he was impeached over. It's why he got William Barr to assign John Durham this sort of errand to go dig up dirt on the origins of the Russia case.
He's now just out there saying on television go indict Barack Obama, go indict Joe Biden. And I think everyone kind of rolls our eyes. But it is a pretty awful thing to have the President of the United States telling his A.G. to do 25 days before an election.
MCCASKILL: You know, file this under outrage fatigue. It is beyond outrageous that in the United States of America, a few weeks before the election, the President is asking his department of justice to arrest his political opponents, to jail them, to put them behind bars. We don't do that in America. We just don't do that in America, Chris.
And to say nothing of the fact he's having a political rally at the White House on Friday. We're so busy being mad about the lack of social distancing and the failure of this administration to respect science and doctors and kill people with their lies about this pandemic that we are forgetting that he is tarnishing our house.
This is not supposed to be a place for political rallies. It's supposed to be a place where presidents respect the norms of the presidency. So, there is so much to be mad about, we are just worn out with mad.
HAYES: Yes. It's also not supposed to be the place for like large, flagrant convening of possible public health disasters, but it has now become that place quite awfully. Former Senator Claire McCaskill, thank you so much.
MCCASKILL: You bet, Chris.
HAYES: To talk about the fight over that rescue package, I want to bring in Jeff Stein, White House Economics Reporter for The Washington Post, and Liam Donovan who's a Republican Strategist and Commentator.
And Liam, I want to start with you because you and I have been corresponding about this and I've been watching you talk about it, and you know, taking aside the substantive case for rescue, which I think is very strong, and we'll get to. Just from a pure political strategy deal-making case, how has the President played this situation?
LIAM DONOVAN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I think it's fair to say he's played it poorly. I mean, I think we know from where Speaker Pelosi came in with her original deal. There was a very kind of meeting the middle there where you can see the meeting, you know, kind of halfway with a sizable package in terms of the number.
And the issue was, for the CARES Act back in March, the stars align in a way where there was just profound fear in the marketplace. The Republicans didn't have any choice but to get behind something. But I think for a subsequent bill, it was going to take some leadership. Republicans are who they are. They're kind of confined in their ideological spaces. And it was going to take presidential leadership to get them to where they needed to go.
And in the leadership, vacuum, the apathy and ambivalence that the White House projected, they kind of scattered and followed their own individual interests. And that's led us to today where the President wakes up 25 days from political peril, and is trying belatedly to engage on a package that at this point, won't even save him or his colleagues.
So, it has not been the art of the deal. I'm not quite sure where it goes. Maybe Jeff can tell us where our checks are, but it has not been played very well so far.
HAYES: Well, that point about the 25 days. I mean, I think it relates a bit, Jeff, to the sort of strategy here and the strategy and the substance. I mean, the way that I've read this from Democrats I've talked to is, there's always a bit of cross pressure, which is that they really wanted a big package because they genuinely care about this money getting out to people that desperately needed, A. And B, there's lots of local governments and public sector workers are going to be imperiled.
At the same time, they recognize that passing a package like this, say two months ago, would probably help the economy in the run up to the President's reelection, and that might have political bad consequences. They're now in a position where they might be able to drag this across the finish line and not have to pay the political consequences. How do you see it right now?
JEFF STEIN, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think it's worth noting that there really is a chance that a lot of this money still gets out pretty quickly. There was a lot of skepticism, including from myself, on the CARES Act that was passed in March about how do they get those stimulus checks out.
But you look at it, they really got 80 million checked out in about two weeks. So, if they pass something very quickly, which again, is looking very unlikely, that could reach people in time for the election. I would say, you know, the human mistakes here are enormous. The consequences for the country, the consequences for tens of millions of unemployed people, the consequences for millions of small businesses and restaurants and hotel workers, airline workers, this is not an idle matter.
If Pelosi let's this deal go, a lot of people blame the White House rightly so because of how long (INAUDIBLE). By if that could mean that there's no action until after the lame duck, we're looking at three months of an economic downturn, a spike in cases, and really the likes of which we haven't seen, you know, since March and April, so very, very scary moment for the American economy. And if you let politics get in the way, a lot of people are going to get really hurt.
HAYES: Yes. I just have to editorialize for a moment. I think that what they should make a deal. I mean, I think they should take the deal basically at this point. I think that the substantive stakes are just too high. And you interviewed a dairy farmer from Michigan, I thought was very interesting, Jeff, because it was kind of a mirror image of some of the kind of diner interviews we saw in 2016 about, you know, trade deals, or the fact of the recovery under Obama and Biden was too slow.
And this was someone who voted for Trump and was pretty -- in pretty bad shape and pretty frustrated. Tell me about that interview.
STEIN: This is a guy, Randy Meursault, a really nice guy. And he, you know, was a lifelong Democrat who felt abandoned by both parties. There was, you know, obviously a decline in worker incomes for 40 years. You've been at the end of the Obama administration that was not really addressed.
And in farm country, there's a long-running crisis among the dairy farmers that has been, you know, since been exacerbated by Trump's trade war. Meursault voted for Trump in 2016, in part because he felt neither party had really cared and he saw Trump as offending both parties. But now he's not sure who is going to vote for. He doesn't really think Democrats care about rural America. But at the same time, the trade war has helped drive him and his five-generation family farm out of business. Tragically, his son committed suicide in the middle of the crisis over his -- over his farm. And we're seeing the president trying to counteract the negative implications of number of his sort of chaotic policies by throwing money at it.
And you see a lot of people say the president mismanage the virus. It causes a huge problem on the economy. He's trying to brush money out the door as fast as possible. He's fallen far short of honoring his promises to rein in prescription drug costs. The President, as you mentioned, has this idea to spend $200 coupons. I think a lot of people say it's sort of chintzy and not really interesting underlying problem.
There's these frenetic brush farmers, seniors, money for Puerto Rico that is, you know, from what we can tell, been in part intended to negate the president's polling numbers with Latinos in Florida. And the thing is, it's not going to be enough to compensate four years of chaos, and (AUDIO GAP) like very possible the answer is no.
HAYES: And there's also the -- Liam, the dynamic here between -- that's been set up between McConnell and Trump is pretty fascinating in so far as if this were to pass, it would be McConnell bringing it to a vote and getting maybe, I don't know, 15 Republican senators to vote for it, maybe 20, and pass it with all the Democrats.
They don't -- I don't think McConnell wants to take it up. Like he -- I don't think he wants a deal at this point. And it may end up with a sort of showdown between the Republican senators and the Republican president.
DONOVAN: Look, I think leader McConnell's approach at this all along has been this has not been the -- you know, the CARES Act came together because I think they followed McConnell's strategy. I think the idea of walking into a room with a blank sheet of paper between Pelosi and Mnuchin was probably not the approach the leader would have taken.
But at this juncture, I think there's just not really a lot of legislative window to get this done and it would be to the exclusion potentially of the other priorities that the party has. And so, you know, I think he's -- if the President is willing to put in the kind of attention span required, the kind of effort required to twist those arms and get those votes that you just mentioned, you know, I think -- I think the leader would be open to it.
But as he said, I think it's very unlikely that can get done. The Senate's not even back until the 19th. And so it's just really tough to figure out how this gets done in the immediate future. And as Jeff said, it's really important, and it has to get done. But when you wait this long, it's just not -- this is not the way to do business.
HAYES: Yes, the country is going to be in even worse shape. It's in terrible shape now. It reminds me the last time a Republican president was president. But it's in terrible shape now and it's going to be in worse shape pretty soon. Jeff Stein and Liam Donovan, thank you both.
Coming up, new details about the men arrested on terrorism charges in Michigan yesterday and their ties to local law enforcement. We'll talk about that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: We're now learning more about the men arrested yesterday when the FBI revealed what they say was a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The state filed terrorism charges against members of a local right-wing group. Local television station WXMI in West Michigan reports that back in May, one of the men charged by the State's Attorney General appeared on stage at an anti-Whitmer protest in Grand Rapids with the sheriff of nearby Barre County was a guest speaker.
A porter at that station interviewed the sheriff who first said he wasn't very familiar with the case, but then it seemed to take a pretty striking position for a law enforcement officer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any regrets from being on stage with the guy who's now being charged in a plot to kidnap the governor?
DAR LEAF, SHERIFF, BARRY COUNTY MICHIGAN: Well, it's just a charge, and they say a plot to kidnap. And you got to remember that are they trying to kidnap, because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So, are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt because you can still Michigan, if it's a felony, you can make a felony arrest. And I think it's MCO764.4 or something like that, point-five, somewhere on there. And it doesn't say if you're an elected office that you're exempt from that arrest.
So, I have to look at it from that angle and I'm hoping that's more what it is. In fact, these guys are innocent till proven guilty. So I'm not even sure if they had any part of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: OK. The men arrested, that he was one of whom he was in a picture with at a rally, appear to have been embedded in a larger movement, both online and in real life of extremists that had been targeting the governor of Michigan. NBC News reporter Ben Collins has a piece out today that explores all of those connections, and he joins me now.
Ben, first, I just want to get your reaction. I mean, that -- you know, the sheriff saying, look, maybe they were just trying to make a citizen's arrest, and actually, that's fine because I've looked at the state law and the state law says you can and it doesn't matter if elected official, was a little striking but made me think that maybe this was something that had been in the discourse among the kinds of people who've been protesting the governor.
BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS REPORTER: Well, these people cosplay as people who are going to go kidnap people all the time. It's hard to know when exactly they're serious. They talk about this pretty frequently. In fact, in these texts, they didn't just have a vague plan. They said they're going to arrest her personally, citizen's arrest or -- which is like a whole militia thing, and drive her to Wisconsin, where they thought you would have a trial. And another guy said, hey, why don't we just go to our front door and shoot her?
That's the sort of rhetoric they were talking with right here. This was -- that guy is not correct. He's not living in reality with the rest of us. But it's because, you know, he has a compatriot there, basically. And these militia movements are trying to not just organize with each other but organized with local police to create, you know, a movement with within themselves.
They do this on social media, they do this in real life at these rallies. It's very dangerous and something that we're seeing constantly all throughout the United States.
HAYES: Yes. There's been -- there's been real alarm bells rung about sort of the kind of law enforcement and extremist intermingling or extremists inside law enforcement, the Atlantic had a piece about the oathkeepers which is one of those groups. What have you -- what have we learned about these -- the individuals who are -- who have been accused and charged in this particular case and what they're kind of worldview was?
COLLINS: Sure. So, they're from a hodgepodge of various different militias and like conspiracy movements that happen on the internet. Now, there's sort of an umbrella term for this called the Boogaloo. Now, the Boogaloo comes from a 4chan meme. 4chan is an extremist Web site, and the Boogaloo comes from the term Civil War II Electric Boogaloo. It sounds like a joke, it sounds very funny or whatever. It's not. This is a very serious thing.
A lot of militia movements have used this to recruit in these extremist spaces and on Facebook as well. And they take people who are just in like gun communities, or libertarian communities, and they try to sort of gain the algorithm to get people into these spaces.
So, a couple of these people were seen wearing Hawaiian shirts, just like a Boogaloo outfit, if you will. Two of them were actually at this Liberate Michigan Protests that happened a few months ago. You know, the president tweeted "liberate Michigan," and then there were these people on the, you know, at the Capitol.
Two of those people were at that exact thing. So, this is a real-life movement. It's an online movement, and it's sort of converging right now. And look, Chris, you know, I think, let's say the quiet part are allowed here. The worry is this is not going to go away. And you know, in November and December, it's going to get more and more dangerous.
And the more people you talk to who are extremism researchers realize that it's at a fever pitch right now. People are ramping up and they're very obsessed. So, we're all very scared, frankly. We're in this purgatory where we're about to see things -- we're really hoping we're not about to see things happening, but they keep talking about it in these -- in these spaces. And thankfully, now there are going to be some arrests.
HAYES: All right, Ben Collins who does great reporting on this beat, which is a tough beat in many ways, thank you so much for sharing your reporting.
COLLINS: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, a reminder of the stakes of this election not just with the presidency or the Senate, but with local state legislatures and the upcoming census. DNC chair Tom Perez joins me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: You might remember, the last big election 2018 midterms had a record-breaking turnout, a number of historic wins, one of those was Sharice Davids in Kansas. Former mixed martial arts fighter, became one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, the first openly gay person from Kansas to do so, and the first Democrat to win the third desk district in a decade.
Now, right now, she's the state's only Democratic member of Congress. Just recently, a local Republican leader laid out a plan to defeat Congresswoman Davids in November, not by running a good candidate against her, no, but by redrawing candidates for congressional districts in such a way that in the future, she can't win.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SUSAN WAGLE (R-KS): So redistricting is right around the corner. And if Governor Kelly can veto a Republican bill that gives us four Republican congressmen that takes out Sharice Davids up in the third, we can do that. I guarantee you, we can draw four Republican Congressional maps. But we can't do it unless we have a two-thirds majority in the Senate House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, get out there because we can just get rid of that Democrat not by beating her but by drawing the map. So, another reminder what the stakes of this election are so high, not just for the presidency or the Senate or the House, but for every local state legislature, because whichever party wins their state legislature, they get to draw the congressional maps that will last for the next 10 years.
I want to bring in someone who is keenly aware of those stakes and have been very focused on them, Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee. Chairman, I know -- I know, it's not surprising to you that this is how folks think about this, but I've never heard it stated quite as clearly as in this case. What's your reaction to hearing that having seen how often this tactic has been used?
TOM PEREZ, CHAIRMAN, DNC: Well, I'm not surprised at all because Republicans have been doing this, Chris, for some time. You remember in North Carolina, when the Republican leader there was asked why did you have 12 out of 15 seats Republicans, and his answer was because I couldn't figure out a way to get to 13. That was what his answer was.
And you know, every 10 years, this election -- this election in 2020, has a ripple that last 10 years. We picked the worst possible year to lose at scale, and that was in 2010 and that was the bad news. The good news is we're making so much progress, Chris. You know, in 2017 when Trump took office, we only had 16 governorships. We now have 24.
We've now flipped 10 legislative chambers in 17, 18, and 19. If we flipped 48 seats in 10 legislative chambers in this November, we flipped those chambers, I'll be in Arizona this weekend, two in the House, three in the Senate, and we flipped those two chambers. That's huge. And that is why it is so important.
Donald Trump gives us enough reason to vote plainly and simply, the worst and most dangerous president in American history. But folks, we can go -- we had 31 out of 99 legislative chambers when I took over at the DNC. And if we flip those 48 seats in those 10 legislative chambers, we're basically 50-50. And the Democratic legislative Campaign Committee is an unsung hero in this movement. They're helping at those state levels. We're proud to assist them.
Make sure you vote up and down the ballot because state governments as you just heard in that message there, that's where so much action is at and that is where the redistricting action is. And I got word for the folks in Kansas. In 2021, we're going to have two Democratic members of the House from Kansas because Michelle De La Isla, the mayor of Topeka, is going to win that race. So, we will have a Latina and Native American representing Kansas. What's a matter of Kansas? Not a damn thing. They're electing Democrats.
HAYES: Well, that's right. There is a -- there's a competitive congressional race there. We've been talking a lot about sort of voting, the sort of obstacles and mechanics to voting. It's something that I've been very focused on. You've been on the show a number of times talking about it. I wanted to ask you a follow up out of Wisconsin.
There have been a lawsuit to extend the deadline in Wisconsin for absentee ballots to make sure that if they were postmarked before election day, even if they got their little late, they'd still be counted. That was successful at the first rung of its court hearing. It's going to federal court, and at a federal appellate court has struck it down two to one.
And the dissenting opinion by the federal judge there is pretty striking. She says, "the inevitable result of the court's decision today will be that many thousands of Wisconsin citizens will lose the right to vote despite doing everything they reasonably can to exercise it. In the midst of a pandemic and significantly slowed mail delivery, this court leads voters to their own devices. Good luck and God bless, Wisconsin. You're going to need it."
What's your reaction to the court's decision? What happens next?
PEREZ: I was obviously very disappointed. We're the plaintiff in that case, along with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. I will note the dissenting opinion you just refer to Chris, that is a Reagan appointee who wrote that dissenting opinion.
And so, last April in the run-up to their primary, we went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they gave a green light on the rules of engagement for the primary. And the rules of engagement allowed absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and received within five days or so to be counted. I hope they will do that again. And we will continue to fight for that.
In the meantime, Chris, we have been organizing early and organizing everywhere and 650,000, roughly 650,000 absentee ballots have already been received in Wisconsin as a result of our work. That's -- that is over 20 -- that's roughly 20 percent of the vote. We expect a little over three million people will vote.
People are motivated there. We are not going to let any court or the Republicans stop us. The determination of voters across this country, we're seeing similar results in Florida as well, people are motivated, we have multiple ways to vote. Early in person voting is starting at a lot of places. Vote by mail has already started. We know that. People need to make a plan, go to IWillVote.com.
And folks, you have a choice. You have the power within your hands. And as Chris correctly illustrated, we can win up and down the ballot. We can have half -- roughly half the state legislative chambers come January if people show up. Texas House of Representatives, nine seats we flip, that changes redistricting overnight.
HAYES: We should say, NBC -- you said IWillVote.com, NBC.com/planyourvote. And I would say this anyone who's watching. You're obviously -- you're the chair of the DNC, but to whoever you are with whatever ideology you have, and whatever political party you support, you should plan to vote. You should vote early if you can, early in-person, or if you're going to vote through mail, you should do that as soon as possible. Go to nbc.com/planyourvote, but get on it now. That's the best time to do it. Chairman Tom Perez, thank you for your time tonight.
PEREZ: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, the surge in grassroots donations to the Democrats and how Alaska suddenly competitive Senate race. That's all coming up.
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HAYES: We are now just 25 days from Election Day. Millions of people have already voted. But it's still really hard to get a firm grasp of the state of the electorate of the country sometimes because everything we're living through is so unprecedented. And two recent pieces of polling data jumped out to me, because they kind of encapsulate how strange and unpredictable the terrain is.
So, the first of these surprising polls is when the President himself touted. It's the old question, are you better off now than you were four years ago? And the Gallup poll found that 56 percent of registered voters say yes, now during the pandemic, which seems surprising and kind of insane.
The only plausible explanation I have for this other than it being some kind of error is that $2.2 trillion stimulus bill called the CARES Act we talked about at the top of the show which is passed back in March, really did work for a lot of households in this country.
I mean, the country's personal savings rate actually hit a record, thanks in large part to an injection of cash from the bill combined with the reduction of household spending. Anyway, that's my best guess. But honestly, who knows. I'm open to theories.
The other stat that jumped out of me has to do with the favorability rating of Joe Biden. Generally, what happens in a national election is that both candidates are beating up on each other for the length of a campaign. And it's rare you see either one of them going up that much in favorability.
For example, last election, the Gallup poll, Hillary Clinton was at 43 percent favorability in July 2015, and also at 43 percent November for the election. Donald Trump was at 31 and ended up at 34, not much different. But something really fascinating is happening with Biden's favorability recently. It seems to be skyrocketing.
In September, not that long ago, Biden had a 42 percent favorability rating according to Priorities USA, a Democratic polling firm, slightly underwater. Now, he's plus-eight points with a 51 percent favorability rating. He appears, at least in this poll to be getting considerably more popular at just the right time.
Now, Biden's favorability rating is just one piece of a mounting pile of data that suggests there is some serious trouble for Republicans beyond just Donald Trump. We'll talk about that next.
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HAYES: Recently, I feel like I come on every night to highlight a competitive Senate race that I certainly didn't think would be competitive and very few people thought would be competitive. So, last night, we were talking about Texas, right, where democrat MJ Hegar is giving incumbent Republican John Cornyn a very, very serious race.
Tonight, I want to talk about Alaska, which for a while just wasn't really on anyone's radar, but polls now show Democrat -- Democratic-backed incumbent independent Al Gross within striking distance of first term Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.
Now, Gross recently announced his campaign raised $9 million over the past three months and infusion of cash being described as a money bomb. And it's not just Alaska, across the country, there's been this unbelievable grassroots surge of volunteers and small-dollar donors.
Get this. More than 600 and $50 million has been donated Act Blue, a small-dollar fundraising platform for Democratic candidates just since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, which was just three weeks ago. $615 million raised in three weeks. It's no surprise that Mitch McConnell is complaining that Republican Senate candidates are being financially overwhelmed because of Democratic small-dollar contributions.
I'm joined now by Zerlina Maxwell co-host of Signal Boost on Sirius XM radio and the host, of course, of the new show Zerlina on the Peacock Streaming Service. And with me is Maria Urbina. She's the National Political Director and Chief of Staff of the progressive group, Indivisible. It's great to have you both.
Zerlina, I want to get your response to that McConnell quote, because I felt, you know, there was such profound grief and despair three weeks ago on this -- on Friday night when we learned of the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg both personal despair and grief over her passing and also what it meant for the country. And people like what can I do? And they had -- like, one thing they've done is give a lot of money through Act Blue that has actually materially changed the playing field of the Senate races.
ZERLINA MAXWELL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I think what's happening in this Trump era, and especially since the beginning of COVID, is everybody maybe they have more time or they feel more a sense of urgency to try to get involved to change the current state of things. And I think the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg really got a lot of people shook to the core because the future is at stake.
You know, you have Donald Trump engaging in, you know, violent rhetoric and emboldening white supremacists. Also, you have a raging pandemic, but you also have a situation where America's demographics are shifting wildly away from a majority white electorate to an electorate that is black and brown.
And I think that one of the things Mitch McConnell understands that Democrats are, I guess, quickly understanding as well, is that you know, why they want to put Amy Cony Barrett on the Supreme Court so quickly is because they do not have the majority of the electorate going forward. And in certain states now, they're already struggling.
So, I think this is trying to enshrine, you know, their power in the courts because they don't have it in the electorate.
HAYES: Maria, when, you know, Indivisible was started right after Trump's election as a means of sort of channeling people's anger and angst and desire to oppose what Trump stood for and what he was doing in concrete ways, when people come to you, and they're like, you know, after say, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or as they watched the COVID crisis get worse seven months in and say like, what can I do, what is your answer for them?
MARIA URBINA, NATIONAL POLITICAL DIRECTOR, INDIVISIBLE: Well, Chris, it's a great question. And what's really exciting to us is that certainly there's nothing like creating action around deadlines. Certainly, there's always going to be a last-minute push around fundraising. They're important metrics. The day that Justice Ginsburg -- Justice Ginsburg vacancy happened; we broke a record. Half a million voters were contacted in one day through our voter contact program. So, the enthusiasm metric is very accurate from our perspective.
But we launched this program nine months ago, because we knew there was a growing energy around holding Republicans accountable in the Senate and making sure that the McConnell majority was no more. So, this is something that we've seen, I think something that I'm noticing and I'm really excited about is that indivisibles across this country have been priming rural districts, suburban districts and growing the blue reach that we have now in areas that we just hadn't seen progressive infrastructure before. So, we're exactly right for the opportunities we're seeing in this expanded Senate map.
HAYES: Well, one of the things, Zerlina, that we've learned, I think, you know, over the last 10 years particularly, is how much these sort of national political environments rise and fall together. And so, when you have a very unpopular incumbent, and the country in objectively terrible shape, you start to see competitive races pop up in places you wouldn't expect, Alaska being one of them.
The other one that I was just looking at today is Kansas. This is a new poll out today. This is the Democratic challenger Barbara Bollier is at 55 percent and State Senator Roger Marshall is at 42 percent -- 45 to 42 percent. That's in -- that's in Kansas where there is a Democratic governor. Like, that's a -- that's suddenly a competitive race.
MAXWELL: Look, I think the Democrats looked at the slate of things, especially after 2018, and its success in places that they were not successful in 2016. And they looked at it as a template for how to win in those places in the future. You actually have to try, and you also have to invest early. So, what I think is smart in terms of what I'm seeing in the late stages here.
This week very much felt like Access Hollywood week and the destabilizing nature of it. And so anything can happen in the next couple of weeks. But I think Democrats are smart to make sure they have their base as the foundation and they're reaching out and investing in these new areas to try to get a majority in the Senate because they know that is going to be necessary to get anything done.
And the things that Joe Biden is -- Joe Biden is promising that activist had been fighting for can't get done without the legislative votes in place.
HAYES: Yes. McConnell's Senate is a disaster. I mean, McConnell's Senate is a disaster. We've seen what a McConnell Senate does. And I wonder, Maria, like, you know, everyone has been -- heads have been spun around so much. What -- there's a combination of anxiety. The one thing, and tell me if you think this right, I don't see a lot of complacency among people in this sort of broad pro-democracy, anti-Trump coalition in America right now. Is that your sense?
URBINA: Absolutely. I mean, our volunteer shifts are increasing every week. We are so excited. And I would say not only are we not complacent, we are doing everything possible to grow our phone banking. So, your viewers tonight are watching these polls, and they're cautious, and they want to figure out how they can really make the most of these opportunities, come on over and continue to help us reach millions of voters because none of us can afford to take anything for granted even as we continue to see a release in terms of -- I was going to say a steady race and that we're continuing to see Democrats make gains and hold their gaines across the map.
And so, we welcome everyone to come join us. You know, I'm an organizer so I have to make an organizing pitch to your viewers who are tuning in and following the polls. 2020.indivisible.org.
HAYES: Yes. Well, I'm just -- I'm just the son and brother of organizers so I understand that.
URBINA: So, you got it. I had to come on and make an ask, Chris.
MAXWELL: I'm an organizer. That's how I started.
HAYES: You're the best. Zerlina Maxwell and Maria Urbina, thank you all so much. I appreciate it. Have a great weekend. This is -- that it ALL IN for this Friday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now with Ali Velshi in for Rachel. Good evening, Ali.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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