Summary
President Trump is losing, and the debate last night didn't help him. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is interviewed on the presidential race. President Trump, in the debate last night, continued a frontal assault on both the legitimacy election and the administration of it in a free and fair way, urging his supporters to go physically intimidate people at polling places.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Thank you so much. South Carolina Senate candidate J.B. Harrison, get your tech. I appreciate you, man. That is tonight's REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The question begins --
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Why wouldn't you answer that question? You put a lot of --
BIDEN: Because the question is -- the question is --
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: Will you shut up, man.
TRUMP: Listen, listen, who is on your list, Joe?
BIDEN: This is --
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Gentlemen, I think --
HAYES: A pathetic spectacle from a president losing his grip, and new evidence that Donald Trump will pay a price for his American carnage.
Tonight, Senator Sherrod Brown on why the Trump campaign of grievance and conspiracy isn't working and why the Biden message is resonating.
BIDEN: He cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election.
HAYES: Plus, Pennsylvania as attorney general on Trump's call for voter intimidation in his state and former Trump administration insiders, Olivia Troye and Elizabeth Neumann, on why they're risking everything to defeat Donald Trump, when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Well, what we saw last night at the first presidential debate was a 90-minute performance of our national catastrophe, and the immediate responsibility for all that lies with one person. As we all watched this pathetic spectacle unfold, lots of people were understandably mad at the whole thing. I mean, they blame the debate commission or the moderator, Chris Wallace, or even Joe Biden for not jumping in more. But there was one problem on that stage, one source of the whole debacle, and it is the same source of the national nightmare we're living through right now.
We have this one person who acts in profound ways that are profoundly sociopathic and damaging and disruptive, heedless of decency or empathy or even the basic reciprocity that keeps our civilization functioning. A person who has been rewarded for that behavior, bailed out for it for his whole life, and now holds the most powerful office in the country, maybe the world, that was the problem on display on the debate stage last night. That is the problem in this country right now as we watched the Coronavirus death toll continued to go up and up, more than 800 American deaths recorded just today eight months into this thing.
Now, the problem is bigger than that one man, of course. The problem is that with that one man, there is an entire political party aiding and abetting Donald Trump willing to do anything to keep them in power. Do you notice that the effect of the barrage of sociopathy on moderator Chris Wallace? It was it was a miniature version of what Trump and the Republican Party have done to the entire government and the entire society.
It happened at the Centers for Disease Control where Trump -- the Trump administration has tried repeatedly to steamroll their scientific medical advice often successfully, and at the Food and Drug Administration where the President has bullied and berated and pressured health officials to speed up a vaccine. And it's even happened at NOAA of all places. Remember when Donald Trump changed our hurricane forecast with a sharpie and then bullied the scientists to back up his claims?
People are so accustomed to dealing with someone who acts like this. They begin to placate and cower the way that you might with an abusive relative at the dinner table. And last night, it was Chris Wallace telling the president that he's going to like the next question. You're going to like this one. This will -- this will put you in a better mood, right?
It's like when members of the Coronavirus Task Force like doctors Deborah Birx and Scott Atlas have given Trump the happy talk he wants to hear about how the virus is going away except it isn't. And then thousands of people die because of it. We have lived with this for so long now nearly four years. I think there's a feeling of powerlessness, a feeling we just have to deal with the horrendously abusive family member at the dinner table, that we have to live with this horribly heartless person, this incompetent fool who has wreak such havoc.
But the fact is, we don't. We can get rid of him, and that is what last night was about. He is losing. He is the incumbent while there are people in lines for food banks and tens of millions of people out of work, and 200,000-plus Americans are dead from Coronavirus, and more than seven million have been sick. And in the midst of all that, he is trying to take health care away from millions of Americans and install a Supreme Court justice who he thinks will overturn Roe v Wade.
Donald Trump is more than seven points down in the national polling average from FiveThirtyEight, in a race that has been holding remarkably steady. In two new poll just out in red states, Georgia, and South Carolina of all places, the race is basically tied. The President is getting his butt kicked right now. And what we saw last night was the desperate play of someone who is attempting to reassert control of the situation that is totally out of his control.
Joe Biden's best moment the day came when he reminded us of that and reminded us that we can put a stop to it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote vote. If you're able to vote early in your state, vote early. If you're able to vote in person, vote in person. Vote whatever ways the best way for you, because you will -- he cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election.
And in terms of whether or not when the votes are counted and are all counted, that will be accepted. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that'll be accepted. But by the way, if in fact, he says he's not sure what he's going to accept, well, let me tell you some, it doesn't matter. Because if we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He's going to go. He can't stay in power. It won't happen. It won't happen. So vote.
Just make sure you understand you have it in your control to determine what this country is going to look like the next four years. Is going to change or you get four more years of these lies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That's it. That's the core of our set of creed, right. That's what America is about. Democratic citizenship, we are the masters of our own fate. We have agency, we have the power to decide this election and determine the future of this country. Show up and vote, as Joe Biden says, and we can begin to recover from the ongoing national catastrophe.
For more on what we saw last night, what we can do about it, I'm joined now by Heather McGhee, co-chair of the board of Color of Change, a racial justice advocacy group, also the author of the forthcoming book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, and Mehdi Hasan writer, commentator, and broadcaster.
I want to get your sort of broad thoughts on it, but I thought I'd start -- Heather, I thought that moment was so important, because the sort of paralysis that comes from anxiety, the kind of doom loops that I think people find themselves in, particularly after 2016, to reassert people have agency and control over their own government and our country's fate seemed crucial to me.
HEATHER MCGHEE, CHAIR, THE COLOR OF CHANGE BOARD OF DIRECTORS: That's really right. I'm glad you played that again. It hasn't sort of risen to be one of the big sound bites in the takeaways. But it was one of the more powerful moments when, to go on with your metaphor, there was a sense you can leave this man, right? You can get away from this abusive relationship.
And there is nothing more important than asserting the sacredness of the right to vote, our need to fight for the right to vote, whether it's in Florida, where we know the high jinks that are going on with people with felony convictions being required to pay fines and fees that they don't even know what they are, that there's no actual record of what they are, to the idea that they won't actually count all of the ballots because they'll let -- they'll run out the clock, to pretty much every single state has some reason for people to be worried about the sort of automatic ability to vote and have their vote count. That said, that's the fight. There's absolutely the fight is for the sacred franchise.
The thing that was most worrying to me is that he put out a clarion call to summon armed white supremacists to the ballot. And we've already seen that Facebook has not actually put any kind of limits on that kind of rhetoric. There's been a post-up saying join Trump's army, enlist in Trump's army to defend the polls. And that's been up for a week and they're -- they've been unwilling to take it down.
So, you know, this is what's going to happen. They're going to be Nazis with guns, and we are going to have to see how, you know, big corporations, how Congress, how the media hold on, because there will be people who, you know, are in the movement who have a plan for that. But it's a scary thought. And it's the President of the United States who's enabling it.
HAYES: Well, there's -- the relationship right here between the fact that he is losing on the merits, right. He's losing the race. They know they're losing the race, like they do know they're losing the race. I think that, you know, Trump is such a narcissist that it's hard to kind of get that through to him but it's (INAUDIBLE). And those -- and basically a kind of like running against the election, discredit the election, marshal your army against essentially democracy in the election, Medhi.
And that and those two things are related, right? Like, Nate Silver I thought had a pretty good write-up today which is that the more perilous his election position gets, in some ways, the more desperate and possibly dangerous, his actions become.
MEHDI HASAN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Which is paradoxical in some ways, because if you think about it, if Joe Biden wins a landslide, if the poll gap remains big, and he starts winning state -- you know, you're talking about South Carolina and Georgia --
HAYES: South Carolina.
HASAN: -- it's polling neck and neck, states where Trump won by what, 14 points in 2016. If he's heading for a landslide, on the one hand, you're like, OK, well, that deals with all the issues about contesting the vote. It will be clear on the night. Biden wins Florida. Biden wins South Carolina which I think he will. But you know, it's over then.
On the other hand, he becomes more desperate. He doesn't want to leave. There's a whole criminal issue. You know what's going to happen to him after he leaves office, etcetera, etcetera. But if it gets closer, he's not trying to win when it's closer. He just wants to muddy enough. He wants a Bush v. Gore Florida 2000. They're open about it.
Ted Cruz said just less than 24 hours ago, you know, we need a ninth justice to decide the election. He said it openly. They're not hiding this stuff. They like Bond villains. They're giving away the plan before and they're not hiding it all. It's happening in plain sight. And therefore, yes, I'm like Heather, I'm deeply worried. The big moment of last night was this call to arms.
People keep saying, he didn't denounce the proud boys. Much worse than not denouncing them, he said, somebody has to deal with these left-wingers.
HAYES: Yes.
HASAN: That was the green light to the proud boys. I mean, it was just not condemning, that would have been one thing. No, no, he was egging them on. And no President, not George W. Bush, not Richard Nixon, I've never seen any president get up on the debate stage and do anything comparable to that.
HAYES: Yes. And there was also something about you know -- I mean, obviously, it was it -- was it was in some ways, you know, it was a train wreck. You couldn't -- you kind of couldn't watch it and couldn't look away at that at the same time. And I do think -- I mean, Heather, all the data we have, right, suggests that like, there's -- people again, have psyched themselves out, I think, that you're watching him and you're like, am I wrong or is this -- watching -- this person is coming off like an insufferable, unbearable jerk? And like, the data says, like, no, you're not wrong.
Again, the majority of the country doesn't like it. We've all been like, Jedi mind tricks so much for years about whose votes counts and who's a real American, but like, you are not wrong. Your instinct is not wrong when you were seeing that.
MCGHEE: That's right. I mean, he has a 60-plus percent unfavorability rating, you know, coming out of the -- out of the debate. You know, the flash polls from Ipsos are showing that, you know, it's worse by about three points, you know, in the last 12 hours. And so, that's clear, right? People don't like him. But people didn't like him before and voted for him.
And this is what worries me. It's another piece of data, Chris. It's the data in a study from Larry Bartels, the political scientist that found that almost half of Republican voters, right, this is not just Trump's voters, these are Republican voters, agreed with some authoritarian statements about use of force, bending the rules, taking the law into their own hands, essentially, in order to preserve the traditional American way of life.
75 percent of Republican voters said, it's hard to trust an election outcome when millions of people will just vote for a handout.
HAYES: Right.
MCGHEE: Basically, they're saying I don't really trust a democracy where I have such disdain for the other people. And of course, the people who felt the most strongly about this were the ones that Bartels said had ethnic antagonism, which is a nice new political science euphemism for racism.
And so, you know, what worries me is the fact that he's giving that message and that there are so many willing recipients for it, and that our biggest platforms, Facebook, Fox News, talk radio, are the ones that are blaring at 24/7.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, the sort of anomalous nature of him personally is married to the fact that he is expressing a kind of core anti-democratic feeling that is quite popular among the base, Mehdi. I mean, that is -- you know, you've got Republican lawyers like volunteering to help them with this plan. You got Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, all these people are saying this all out loud, like there's a lot of enablers to basically the project that they're engaged in now which is, you know, we rule not the people.
HASAN: Yes. And I think Heather makes a good point about the voters. You make a good point about the elected officials scratched the surface. You know, how thick was that commitment to democracy to begin with? Oh, when we -- you know, it's like when they talked -- they talked about Obama as a tyrant. It turns out, they didn't really have a problem with executive orders or executive power or executive overreach. They had a problem with a Democrat and a black man doing that.
If your guy is in power, you know, oh, it's unitary theory of executive power. We can do whatever we want. There are no limits on what we can get away with. And I think that is a real problem now. You're right, the enablers has always been the issue. Trump couldn't do anything without his enablers, especially in Congress helping him.
I know, we have very, very short memories in 2020, but this year, there was a chance to remove the President of the United States. One Republican senator voted to do so, Mitt Romney, although that same Republican senator a few months later now says it's fine for him to pick a Supreme Court justice. So even him, I wonder about his commitment to democracy as well, sadly.
HAYES: Remove him on the grounds that he had abused his office in pursuit of essentially putting his sum on the scale so that there could not be a free and fair election. That's the grounds under which he was impeached, precisely about the nature of state power intersecting with how an election is run, and now here we are. Heather McGhee and Mehdi Hasan, thank you so much.
Next up, what 2016 Candidate Trump had that 2020 President Trump does not? I'll talk to Senator Sherrod Brown about the big flaw in the President's closing arguments, such as it is, just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: So, amidst the chaos and everything, there was one striking difference to me between last night and the first time that Trump ran for president. Because for all the craziness in 2016, there's a lot of that, Trump did actually end up delivering something of a message that actually related to specific policy agenda items.
He said he was going to drain the swamp, right. Take on the corruption of D.C. because he wasn't beholden to the big donors unlike Hillary Clinton and all his opponents in the Republican primary. He said he's going to crack down on immigration, and that he was going to rewrite our trade deals.
And it seems like that 2016 message broke through, I mean, especially with voters that Trump needed to win in the greater industrial Midwest. Some of it was complete B.S., some of it he's done. Like, they have restricted immigration. But just try to recite the 2020 version of that message. Like, Donald Trump's message this year is what, the answer is that you can't. Because for 90 minutes last night, this is what we got from Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We've caught them all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that because we caught you in a sense. And President Obama was sitting in the office, he knew about it too. So don't tell me about a free transition.
Why is it, just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow's wife gave you some $3.5 million dollars?
BIDEN: That's not true.
TRUMP: What did he do to deserve it?
Take a look at West Virginia, mailmen selling the ballots. They're being sold. They're being dumped in rivers.
You know, in Europe, they live their forest cities. They call forest cities. They maintain their forest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That is not the messaging that got him success in states like Ohio in 2016. Joining me now is a senior senator that state, a Democrat who's consistently won reelection in a state that hadn't been trending increasingly towards Republican, Sen. Sherrod Brown. Senator, it's great to have you.
You know, I was just -- I'm really been struck by this because I think that even if a lot of it was a huge amount of it was snake oil, and fundamentally a con, but like that message on, you know, trade, immigration, corruption was pretty effective, and it just feels like it's not there right now. And I wonder what your read of it is from your perch in Ohio and the fact that you've got voters there that you're in contact with all the time in order -- you know, that are your constituents.
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): Yes. And Biden is going to win voters that voted for Trump in 2016. And the reason -- I mean, Trump -- I'm not sure what to make of that what you just showed because I don't know what Trump's message was about that can help Ohioans in the Mahoning Valley or Dayton or anywhere else. But I do know that Biden is the most pro-worker nominee we've had in a generation.
And I make the contrast between Biden's dignity of work that he will govern through the eyes of workers contrast that with Trump's betrayal of workers. And that's why -- that's why people who voted for Trump, Trump in '16, enough of them are moving over Hillary. That's why we're going to win the state. And that's why, as you were talking to Heather especially, why with all the, you know, the third of the voters that are pretty lost and not small D democrats, particularly that winning in a landslide, so important. And that's the electoral college landslide is very possible when you look at the numbers in my state and around the country.
HAYES: Biden is actually in Ohio. I mean, the debate was in Ohio and Biden's doing this kind of whistlestop tour. And it's kind of through precisely the sort of areas where Democrats have worse things, have been trending away from Democrats, sort of like, you know, traditionally had been predominantly white, working-class places that have trended towards Trump and the Republican Party more broadly. And I wonder how much -- like, what's going on here? Is it reversion to the mean? Is it a rejection of Trump specifically? Is that the fact that people's economic prospects right now are not very good? Like, there are tons of layoffs being announced today. Like, how do you -- how do you see what's moving the needle here?
BROWN: Well, it's his message to all workers. It's not just white male union workers. It's essential workers, especially. Essential workers are more women than -- the essential workers during the pandemic more women than men, more disproportionately people of color, generally moderate to low income workers. There are people that go to work every day. While some of us get to work at home, they go to work every day, being exposed to the public and potentially Coronavirus. They go home at night. They're anxious always about passing this illness, this virus on to their loved ones.
And those are the people that Biden is talking to, and those are the people Biden empathizes with. And Trump doesn't -- he certainly doesn't know their names. He pays no attention. As I may have said on the show before he -- my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote is Lincoln said, I got to go out and leave the White House and get my public opinion bath. Biden has done that through his career. Trump and McConnell have never done that. That's why he's going to win this state. It's the contrast between dignity of work and all of that together. And that's why I'm optimistic.
HAYES: You know, that you've got a state where again, it had a powerful Republican Party, it's gone towards Republicans at a state level in terms of gubernatorial races in the state house. And there are a lot of folks who oppose legalized abortion in your state. But I thought his answer on justice last night was fascinating.
I mean, he basically says -- oh, it's -- Biden tried to say, look, Roe is on the ballot because Roe is popular. It's a 65-35 issue. He says rose on the ballot, and Trump says, oh, I don't think it's on the ballot. There's nothing happening here. And it struck me that they understand they're on the wrong side of the politics of this even in a state like we represent Ohio which is, you know, a divided state on that issue in some ways.
BROWN: Yes. And this legislature is so terrible on that issue, on guns, on so many things. I think that what's happened in this country is Republicans realize they can't -- they can't win on popular vote on abortion. I mean, that's not on the ballot, but per se. They can't win on the affordable -- they can't repeal the Affordable Care Act through the legislative process, so everything is through the courts. And I'm not a lawyer, but I've grown up for years.
Republicans and conservatives will say, we're just strict constructions. We don't want the court. We don't want to the court to be making laws. We're just interpreting. Well, now they do because they can't win from the democratic small-D process, so they go to the courts. They go to the courts on abortion, they go to the courts in the Affordable Care Act. They go to the courts overwhelmingly to shift power from individuals to corporate interests, from workers, to their corporate paymasters for want of a better term.
So, it's clear that they -- they know they don't win on a democratic playing field. It's all about the courts. That's why a landslide so -- an Electoral College landslide so important this year.
HAYES: Are you confident about some of these folks that you're -- that are running foe -- to take the Senate back from Mitch McConnell? I mean, it seems to me that Biden's fate and the Senate Majority fate in the Democratic Party are probably more correlated than they've ever been just because of the sorting of polarization. But how tantalizingly possible does that seem to you to go -- be back in the majority soon?
BROWN: I think as Biden surges, our candidates surge and we're seeing that everywhere. We're seeing in South Carolina where -- at the beginning, people didn't give Jamie Harrison much of a chance because it's such a hard state. We're seeing north coming. You can just name the states where our candidates are running. They just run close to Biden because Biden is going to win Maine, Biden is going to win Colorado, Biden is going to win Arizona. Biden is probably going to win North Carolina. And Biden is going to possibly win Iowa and our candidates running ahead of him. In South Carolina, our candidate is running ahead of him.
And I just think that this year, people see through this pandemic that government can play a positive role for 40 years. People listen to the go to the echoes of Ronald Reagan, the government was the problem. People see during this pandemic, if we had another $600 a week unemployment benefits, we'd have milk. 10 million people in poverty, 10 million more in poverty. So, people know the role of government.
McConnell's cynicism is notwithstanding. People know the role of government. That's why they're going to vote for Democrats this year. That will put government on their side and public health, government on their side and public works, governing on their side on public education, all the issues that matter to people's lives every day.
HAYES: You're more publicly confident than just about any Democrat I've heard. So that was -- that was bracing and interesting to hear. Senator Sherrod Brown from the state of Ohio, thank you.
BROWN: See what's happening Ohio in the last few months. So, thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right, be well. Next, why the president encouraging his supporters to go out in Election Day and intimidate voters is no idle threat. His latest attack on a free and fair election after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Will you pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified. President Trump, you go first.
TRUMP: I'm encouraging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. I am urging my people. I hope it's going to be a fair election. If it's a fair election --
WALLACE: You're urging him what?
TRUMP: -- I am 100 percent on board. But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The worst moment in last night's debate I thought was the president continue a frontal assault on both legitimacy election and the administration of it in a free and fair way, urging his supporters to go physically intimidate people at polling places, which is just not an idle thing to say. I mean, the Trump campaign is already actively organizing this effort recruiting able-bodied men and women to do it.
Now, there is a long and ugly history of this kind of tactic being used particularly to intimidate voters of color all the way back to the reconstruction south. In fact, there were voter intimidation tactics in use for so long by Republicans that courts had to ban those tactics for decades. But in 2018, Republicans won a court battle to overturn and get out from under those legal protections.
And so, the Trump campaign is trying to do things like send poll watchers out in Philadelphia, even though as the Philly Inquirer reports, the Trump campaign has no poll watchers approved to work in Philadelphia at the moment. There are no actual polling places open in the city right now, and elections officials are falling Coronavirus safety regulations such as those limiting the number of people indoors. But that does not stop the president from lying about it during the debate last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: As you know, today, there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went into watch -- they're called poll watchers. They're very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Here to talk about the law actually says is Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. It's great to have you, Mr. Attorney General. I guess let's start with just what the law of your state says. Obviously, people can be poll observers. Both -- you know, both parties will often have those kinds of people. But the idea of like a group of people showing up to watch people at polls can also be intimidating. What does your state law say? What are the protections available for folks?
JOHN SHAPIRO, ATTORNEY GENERAL, PENNSYLVANIA: Well, I'm happy to get into the law, but first off, I just want to thank you for using the word lying, because that's exactly what the President is doing. He didn't misspeak, he didn't misrepresent, he flat out lied. And that's what he continues to do, float these crazy conspiracy theories that have been debunked time and time again.
You know, as the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, I deal with facts and evidence and the laws. So let's talk about that. The President talked about what happened in Philadelphia just the other day. Here's the deal. These voters were going to an early voting center. At an early voting center, the law doesn't afford any candidate or any party to have a poll watcher there. They're only afforded to go to the polls on Election Day.
And then the president goes out and spews this nonsense about how they were turned away. It's simply not true. It's also important to note, legally, the President has sued us in Pennsylvania to make it harder for people to vote, number one, and number two, to create an environment where people can be brought in from other counties to do poll watching in certain counties.
And let's be very real about what this is all about. This is about bringing people into black and brown communities to try and intimidate them. That's what the President of the United States and his enablers are trying to do. Let me be very clear about something, as the chief law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I sure as hell won't let him get away with that.
HAYES: There are a number of lawsuits right now that are being contested that -- a sort of alignment of the Trump campaign, the state GOP and state Republican lawmakers attempting, essentially, to make it harder to vote and make it easier to throw out ballots. I think those are the two sort of lines that they perceived.
SHAPIRO: I pursued it.
HAYES: Yes, right. So -- and I think that the folks on the other side have won a lot of those suits. They went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but they're not -- they're going to try to bring this all the way to the Supreme Court. Is that right? I mean, they're still fighting this stuff.
SHAPIRO: Well, let me just correct you. I want to make sure we're clear. We've won these suits. We've won in our defense of the statute. And by the way, I think it's really important to note that, while other states have been voting by mail, some for more than a decade, this is relatively new In Pennsylvania.
Under Governor Tom Wolf's leadership, we passed the vote by mail statute a year and a half ago. And guess what, Chris, more Republicans voted for that statute than Democrats did. This is a bipartisan effort that should bring people together until Donald Trump started speaking up and tweeting and scaring a bunch of Republicans on the ground. It really was a bipartisan effort.
And now he is in court, in our state courts and in our federal courts suing to try and make it harder for people to be able to vote. I'm just not going to allow that.
HAYES: There was some news today that was slightly stranger worrying because, you know, there's been some talk at the edges of fairly fantastical scenarios about the state legislature appointing its own slate of electors and big fights of people's ballots wouldn't be counted in. Republican lawmakers in your state convened a special committee today to look at like the electoral legitimacy. And I can't tell if this is -- it seems like you could -- maybe it's fine or maybe it's super insidious. What do you think about this?
SHAPIRO: Look, I think, Chris, there's been a lot of theater that's gone on, and there have been some people who are trying to curry favor with Donald Trump and his enablers. Let's focus on the facts and the law. And that is that counties run our elections, of course, lawmakers have some oversight responsibility, but they're not going to get in the middle of this. I certainly won't allow that.
I'm going to continue to defend our laws in Pennsylvania, as is my constitutional burden and duty. And I'm going to make sure that our votes are secured, they're protected, and they're counted. What the public needs to do is to remember that they're the ones who have the power in this process. In our democracy, the people get to vote. And we have fought for centuries to make sure that everybody's vote counts, women, and blacks, and others who historically have been denied that right.
I'm not going to let the President of the United States and his enablers come in here and try and take away the people's power. The power rests with the people here in Pennsylvania and across the country to determine the future of our democracy. And America is a hell of a lot stronger than Donald Trump. The voters are going to make the choice and that will be respected here in Pennsylvania.
HAYES: Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, really, really great to talk to you tonight. Thank you for making some time for us.
SHAPIRO: Good to be with you. Stay safe.
HAYES: Don't go anywhere. My interview with two former members of Trump administration who are doing everything they can to make sure Donald Trump loses this election.
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HAYES: At this point, we all know who Donald Trump is. The debate can -- didn't change that. It is what it is. We also know the Republican Party will tolerate pretty much anything as long as Trump puts their judges on the bench and doesn't raise taxes on rich people. And we're also familiar with the names of the most prominent Republicans who have been complicit in facilitating all this, people like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.
But the institutional Republican Party and the conservative movement is staffed by thousands and thousands of people who are essentially anonymous, who are choosing everyday to make this deal with the devil, who are colluding with a man who is actively working against efforts to save people from sickness and death and actively working to burn down American democracy.
And that effort is being aided by say, thousands of attorneys who are participating in lawsuits and prepping arguments designed to undermine the results election. Many of them come from these law firms, according to Politico, Jones Day, Consovoy McCarthy, King and Spalding. So if you're a lawyer drawing a big salary at one of these firms, and you're helping with these efforts, you should know you're participating in something indefensible.
What you're doing is bad and wrong. It's that simple. If you are helping Donald Trump endanger American democracy, you are working against your country. Remember, it's not just the lawyers, it's the political hacks installed the agencies and the White House staffers who corralled all the interns yesterday to wave American flags and cheer as Trump headed off to a debate where he suggested he would reject any election result that doesn't keep them in office.
I mean, some of the people in the White House in the Republican Party are just they're true believers. They're down with the MAGA mission like Stephen Miller, right? But I think a lot of them have stories they tell themselves about why what they're doing is justified. Anyone morally sentient understands that it's wrong. And these people do have a choice.
I mean, Ben Ginsberg, one of those prominent Republican election lawyers in the country, a Bush v. Gore guy, he made clear he wouldn't be a part of this. He called on Republicans to stop calling elections rigged and fraudulent, correctly casting those false claims as harmful to our democracy.
So, Ben Ginsberg made his choice. If you're a Republican who has not done that, if you're still helping Trump with his colossally omni-directionally deadly and destructive project, you have one way to redeem yourself, and that is to quit and come out publicly and tell people what you saw. Use your voice to stop him. Off the record quotes are not enough.
And there are people who have done that. People like Olivia Troye who was an aide to Mike Pence and was on the Coronavirus Task Force as recently as August to release a video explaining how Trump made clear he was more concerned about the election than the virus.
People like Elizabeth Neumann who was a top Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism official who quit and explained that Trump refused to take the rising threat of white nationalist violence seriously even after his rhetoric showed up in the manifesto of the racist murderer who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso.
These are Republicans who refuse to be complicit. The people who had long last decided they needed to stand up and speak out and do something to try to stop him. Elizabeth Troye -- Olivia Troye and Elizabeth Neumann will be my guest here next.
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OLIVIA TROYE, FORMER AIDE TO VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: I'm Olivia Troy. I was Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser to Vice President Pence and served as Vice President Pence as lead staff member on the COVID-19 response.
When we were on a task force meeting, the president said, "Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don't like shaking hands with people. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people." Those disgusting people are the same people that he claims to care about.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Neumann. I served in the Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security and became the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention. I do not think that we can afford four more years that President Trump. We are less safe today because of his leadership. We will continue to be less safe as long as he is in control.
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HAYES: Two former top aides at the Trump ministration are now spending the weeks before the election warning voters about the president. Olivia Troye was Vice President Mike Pence's former Homeland Security Advisor, a top aide on the White House's Coronavirus Task Force, and Elizabeth Neumann was a former top aide at the Department of Homeland Security. And they both join me here tonight.
It's great to have you both. I really, really appreciate it. I thought I'd start maybe, Olivia, with you, and then you, Elizabeth, just your reaction to watching this last night having worked inside the administration, and having seen how that leadership style, if you can call it that, translates into the actual working of government. Olivia, what do you think?
TROYE: Well, I think that the President showed the nation exactly who he really is last night. I'm just glad that he put it on display for everyone to see what I've been watching behind closed doors and briefings. And honestly, I mean, now would be the time to call me disgruntled because I was disgruntled about what I saw last night. It was appalling and just ridiculous.
HAYES: How about you, Elizabeth?
NEUMANN: I had -- for the first half of the debate, I've had PTSD, the chaos of his manner of speaking and interrupting and never quite knowing what he's saying. It reminded me of the first few years of trying to figure out how we were supposed to help him implement his policies, because he's constantly changing from one thing to the next.
But I'll tell you that the moment that really angered me was when he refused to condemn white supremacy and kind of gave an attaboy to the proud boys. That it shifted from a political debate to you've just put the United States at more risk of violence. And so it was -- that was very, very discouraging, and he was dangerous last night. His rhetoric is dangerous.
HAYES: You know, I've watched over the last several years and there's been this drumbeat, right. There's some people that that leave the administration, and they'll -- sometimes they come forward and say, you know, I, he was a terrible manager or he was this or that. There's a ton of people who speak off the record or show up in the Bob Woodward book.
And I have to say, like, I admire both of you for what you've done, right? You're not like -- you're not cabinet-level folks. You're not hugely powerful people and you're not doing this off the record. You're coming out with your name and face. And I'm curious what that's meant for you. Like Olivia, and then Elizabeth, like, what is it meant in your life? What is it -- are there other people that you know, saying like, way to go, I wish I could do that, or are you being shunned? Like, what's it like?
TROYE: I think it's a combination of both to be honest. I heard actually from colleagues who were still in the White House who have thanked me for speaking out and telling the truth about what all of us have experienced and lived through, especially most recently during the pandemic crisis and how hard it was for all of us to kind of hang in there and try to do what was best in these challenging circumstances.
Now, I certainly have relationships and, you know, colleagues that I was very close to who were no longer speaking to me. And, you know, we're in a very politically divided country right now, and I know that people have very strong feelings about this. But the truth is, I was getting shunned while working on the white house as well. I mean, I worked under President Trump and people had very strong feelings I was in the role. And so now I'm getting it, you know, now that I'm at it and speaking now.
HAYES: Yes. It's partly a part of the dysfunction that you point to. How about you, Elizabeth?
NEUMANN: It's about the same. I probably have not received as much pushback as Olivia has because she had so many really interesting firsthand encounters to share. And I'm just so thankful that she was willing to do that because the whole reason we're speaking out is both of us are our backgrounds, especially if you're in the security community, you're trying not to talk to the press. You're trying to keep your opinions to yourself and to assess situations and to offer your best advice but not to go out and shout it from the rooftops.
So your whole entire training is to stay kind of humble and quiet. And the only reason to speak out is because we see so much danger in him being elected president for four more years. And I think sadly, many people like us who chose to serve were for many years doing it in a way that we thought was trying to help protect the country.
We saw -- and there are still people inside today that are there that if they were to leave, our country would be less safe if they -- if they left the mantle at this moment. So I'm glad that they're there. I'm glad that they're willing to serve. But the byproduct of that is that the American people have not had an honest picture of what this presidency has been.
There's been a lot of covering for him. There's been a lot of -- clearly we see the spin, but it's time for the American people to know the truth so that they can make the decision when they go to their polling places in November and make the decision based on facts, not based on the cover-up job that that many of the administration have been reading for the last four years.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, there's a through-line to both of what you say, right, that that also comports with what we see publicly. And Olivia, I thought -- I was very struck by the sort of core of the case you made, which is basically he is incapable, at a deep core level, of conceiving of a public interest or interest other than his own personal ones. And because of that, just like actual missing facility, like he just doesn't actually have the ability to do that, he cannot do the work necessary to like, basically administer a response that keeps people alive. Like that's basically the core your case, right?
TROYE: Correct. I mean, it is just very frustrating to be working day and night and serving under a president that just really doesn't care. He really only cares about his personal agenda. And right now, this is the greatest pandemic of our generation. And it is impossible to keep them on message. I've had that conversation with the President own comms team who are frustrated at times because they know that lives are on the line.
And it's just, I can't tell you what it's like as someone who has spent my entire career devoted to protecting Americans, to have the person at the very top personally undermining everything, and saying everything's OK and creating this dangerous dynamic that is just continuing on today. We're nowhere better off today, several months than where we were when this pandemic really started to hit our country.
HAYES: Final question for you Elizabeth about the sort of democracy and the sort of threat to our institutions. I mean, what is your read on this sort of very frontal assault on the legitimacy of the election and the threat to essentially not recognize it?
NEUMANN: Yes, I mean, look, this is -- what makes us an amazing nation is that the government is authorized through the consent of the governed, and we do that through our vote. If there is doubt that the vote is legitimate, that somehow fraud has entered the system or tampering, it undermines or further undermines our trust in government.
We already know that Americans don't really trust government right now. And that's a -- that's a broader problem. So, what you would hope that the President would be doing is paying attention -- we should have been paying attention for four years to things like election security and how we're going to do a better job of absorbing malicious foreign actors from tampering with our elections and spreading misinformation. He should have spent the last four years on that. And then he should be reassuring the American public we are doing everything in our power to protect elections.
We see the opposite from him and that concerns me. We have -- are in a very tense phase. We have very angry people. Some are legitimate grievances, some are made up, but this is a time to call for calm and to call for order. Exercising your vote and trusting that system will work. And he is doing the opposite for us.
HAYES: Olivia Troye and Elizabeth Neumann, I really appreciate both of you speaking with us tonight. Thank you very much.
That is ALL IN on this Wednesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. good evening, Rachel.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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