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Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 9/21/21

Guests: Lauren Groh-Wargo, Katie Porter, Norm Ornstein, Raul Ruiz

Summary

Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against "The Times", three of its reporters, and his niece Mary Trump, claiming they hatched an insidious plot to obtain his private records for a story about his tax history. Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter of California is interviewed. After a summer with farm workers harvesting in the dark, in the middle of the night to avoid the deadly heat of the sun, yesterday the Biden administration launched an effort across federal agencies to protect workers from extreme heat including developing the first ever federal workplace heat standard.

Transcript

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel and I know you reported on this lawsuit that Donald Trump has filed today.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: I just got it.

O`DONNELL: And Mary Trump in the "New York Times," and I`m just looking at Mary Trump`s comment because the article reporting says "The Times" did not immediately respond to a request for comment and right above it is Mary Trump`s comment, and I can`t say it on TV.

MADDOW: Yeah, there`s part of it you can`t say on TV.

O`DONNELL: I don`t think "The Times" is going to have the same comment. This I think he is an f-ing loser. I think "The Times" probably won`t say loser. I don`t know. Won`t be exactly the same words.

MADDOW: Lawrence, can I just tell you -- can I just tell you -- can I read you one line from --

O`DONNELL: Please.

MADDOW: -- I literally was just handed the lawsuit. I saw the daily beast reporting, we reported on that and then I just got the lawsuit during the commercial break.

But on page 1, it says the defendant`s actions were motivated by a personal vendetta and their desire to game fame, notoriety, acclaim and a financial windfall and were further intended to advance their political agenda. Then it says this, the brazenness of the defendant`s actions cannot be understated. Cannot be understated.

Cannot be -- wait a minute. Let me get my -- cannot be understated.

O`DONNELL: Impossible to rewrite. Rachel, do not try to rewrite art, okay? Do not.

(LAUGHTER)

MADDOW: That`s page 1 of the lawsuit, cannot be understated. Okay. How can you not understate brazenness. I`m sorry.

O`DONNELL: He has the lawyers who think the way he does.

MADDOW: Yep. And who apparently, you know -- I don`t know. Never mind. I will not speculate.

O`DONNELL: Donald Trump and his lawyers went to the same word school.

MADDOW: Only the best.

O`DONNELL: Mm-hmm, only the best.

MADDOW: Only the finest. Thank you, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.

Donald Trump is also the subject of a criminal investigation by district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis who has been presenting evidence to a grand jury about possible election fraud committed by Donald Trump and possibly others, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham because of phone calls that both Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham made to Georgia`s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election in Georgia.

Tonight, Chris Hayes asked Brad Raffensperger about that criminal investigation of Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: They`ve already interviewed several staff members and also we sent documents, and so we fully intend to comply with that and I don`t know what her pace is for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: On Friday, Donald Trump sent a letter to Georgia`s secretary of state. The letter reads like Donald Trump`s defense in the criminal investigation that Attorney Fani Willis is conducting of election fraud in Georgia.

The Trump letter includes an attachment of an article in a Trump supporting online website called the Georgia Star News. The article claims there were technical violations of the chain of custody rules for ballots that were collected from drop boxes in Georgia because the signatures of election officials in the chain of custody documents were not signed fast enough by the election officials who delivered and counted those ballots. Donald Trump and his criminal defense lawyers in Georgia clearly want District Attorney Fani Willis to consider how claims about chain of custody of ballots might be enough to establish reasonable doubt with a criminal trial jury about whether Donald Trump was actually engaging in criminal voter fraud in his phone call to Brad Raffensperger when he asked him to find more votes for him.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: So, look, all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Donald Trump`s new letter to Georgia`s secretary of state asks the secretary of state to, quote, start the process of decertifying the election or whatever the correct reference is, and announce the true winner. The letter goes on to call President Joe Biden, quote, an illegitimate president.

[22:05:01]

Leading off our discussion is Lauren Groh-Wargo., CEO of Fair Fight Action. She managed Stacey Abrams campaign for governor in Georgia.

Lauren, I wanted to have you on tonight because I knew Brad Raffensperger was going to be on with Chris Hayes at 8:00 as he was, and I wanted to get your reaction to when you heard from the secretary of state earlier tonight.

LAUREN GROH-WARGO, CEO, FAIR FIGHT ACTION: Well, I think it`s quite interesting, Lawrence, that our secretary of state finds himself on MSNBC tonight to sell a book to liberals really looking for an answer in the Republican Party on their authoritarian march, but with we got a larger problem here with Raffensperger, and it goes to the larger problem Republicans have in Georgia and elsewhere is that they have been playing with fomenting and encouraging this voter fraud narrative and disinformation the entire time.

So though I and many others are glad that the secretary of state did the right thing, the election is over. Joe Biden won. We checked the vote multiple times, we had a runoff, Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock won, despite their best efforts, and the problem we`re seeing here in Georgia is that while Fani Willis, our excellent district attorney, goes after this massive crime that was attempted here in Georgia, at the same time, we`re seeing Raffensperger and his Republican allies use anti-Democratic election subversion provisions in the bill they championed earlier this year to try and take over the biggest Democratic, most African-American county in the state. In fact, just last week, Brad Raffensperger, was threatening the Fulton County board of commissioners, this is our largest county in the state, and saying if they did not appoint somebody he liked for the Fulton County Board of Elections, that he would, quote, take them over.

There are 20 bills, Lawrence, that have passed in 13 states around the country, including Georgia, that are meant to take power away from elections officials and move it to gerrymandered Republican state legislatures and other elected political bodies, because they have taken the big lie. They have taken the drop boxes and early vote and vote by mail that everybody used in the pandemic at new levels, and they are weaponizing all those voter fraud lies to restrict all of that access. And shift election power away.

And so, if he thinks integrity counts, he needs to not take over a county that had the best early vote, the most drop boxes in the state and focus on cleaning up his Republican Party that is so disinformation add led that they are appealing to the MAGA nuts at all costs. So, don`t buy his book. Don`t spend your money on Brad Raffensperger`s book. Go to stopjimcrow2.com, and we`ve got to get the Freedom Vote Act passed.

MADDOW: I was struck by one exchange that Chris had with him, where he`s asking him about mail-in voting and why you would make changes to mail-in voting. He absolutely never answered the question. It`s not worth showing the video of it because he just wandered off without ever coming back to and referring in any way to why you would make changes to mail-in voting after mail-in voting was so successful in Georgia.

GROH-WARGO: Well, I think you just nailed it, and I thought Chris did a really great job in that interview. It wasn`t that long ago that Rudy Giuliani and the Republican leadership of the state of Georgia invited Rudy Giuliani down for two different voter fraud, quote, unquote, election integrity hearings in December in the state, weeks before the election, and then their ally to the vote tried to kick 360,000 Georgians off the rolls two weeks before the election.

And what`s a problematic thing here about Raffensperger around integrity, all of the voter fraud lies that Giuliani and the Republicans spewed in these December hearings that caused elections officials to get threatened, that caused state legislators to get threatened, all of those lies got transmitted into this massive bill in Georgia and then copycatted in Arizona, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, Ohio, and it all goes back to the big lie.

So, if Brad Raffensperger and other Republicans want to fight disinformation, they need to fight their own party and not pander to this MAGA faction and tell them the truth.

O`DONNELL: Lauren Groh-Wargo, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight. Really appreciate it.

GROH-WARGO: Thanks for having me, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And joining us now is Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general, and an MSNBC contributor.

Neal, thank you very much for joining us. You know, as I read that Donald Trump letter to the secretary of state, I thought this is interesting, the subject of a criminal election fraud investigation in Georgia, because of his communication with the secretary of state is now communicating with the secretary of state, but he`s doing it publicly in a way that the district attorney can see.

[22:10:08]

And it struck me as a version of a defense tactic letting Fani Willis see, look, we`ve got stuff like this that we can bring in to try to establish that Donald Trump had a legitimate reason to believe in his phone call with Brad Raffensperger that the vote count in Georgia was wrong.

NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: So, Lawrence, I think that gives Donald Trump too much credit that there`s some sort of legal strategy. I don`t think that`s any legal strategy. I think we know what`s going on here. Donald Trump is just demanding that the secretary of state of Georgia announce that he`s president and I didn`t know that was a thing.

This move is about as effective as asking a groundhog to look at its own shadow and declare that the apprentice actually won an Emmy. It`s a dead loser every day of the week. But I do think what this letter shows, it`s a bigger part of a narrative that we really came pretty close back last fall to a coup, to, you know, we now know reporting from yesterday that John Eastman, one of the president`s lawyers had a six-point plan to try and get Pence to hijack what was happening on January 6th. But for a few votes in Congress, He could have succeeded. But for Raffensperger at least then doing the right thing, he could have succeeded. And you know, that is a very worrisome thing to contemplate.

O`DONNELL: Yeah, I think one of the things we discovered in that process, in that election process and its aftermath was that things that we thought, a lot of the things we thought were institutional or were actual, you know, guard rails were actually just people. It was really just -- well, it really depends on what this person decides to do. And Secretary of State Raffensperger is a really interesting case study because he had no doubt about what the correct thing to do was in November, December, and January, absolutely no doubt, and he had no doubt when he and his team were taping that phone call with Donald Trump, which they then made public. They made that phone call public.

But now, he is filled with doubts about the election process that he protected. And you just wonder if that very same person was to be presented with exactly the same circumstances in the next presidential election, what would that person do now, now that he has felt the wrath of Donald Trump and most importantly, Donald Trump`s voters who have been threatening his family and all sorts of other things.

KATYAL: It`s such a beautiful point, Lawrence, because you`re right that we kind of discovered that in the end it`s just people that control -- that prevents apocalypse. You know, that is actually at the heart of our constitutional system.

So, James Madison and the Federalist Papers says, you know, law is just a mere parchment barrier, what makes America America is not the words of law or even the Constitution. Those are all important, but those are just an embodiment of what`s in our hearts, and if you corrupt the heart, you corrupt the entire system of checks and balances, and that`s where Donald Trump is so devastating.

And you know, I know your readers, your viewers are always like why are we talking about this? Why are we coming on late night, staying up and talking about this? It`s not because of politics. People can disagree about tax policy or whatever. It`s because at its core, at his core, Donald Trump is anti-American.

And you know, sometimes I wonder, like how is it that Republicans were so gullible to believe this big lie stuff. Then I remember Louie Gohmert, and I think, yeah, that`s what`s going on.

O`DONNELL: There`s also reporting today, "The New York Times" reporting that the Trump campaign knew, they did the research, they knew that there was absolutely nothing in the claims that there was something going on with Dominion voting machines, and we`ve seen Trump lawyers out there already being sanctioned where they brought these lawsuits and clearly on their way to disbarment, permanent disbarment, Rudy Giuliani already suspended but clearly on his way to permanent disbarment. And you also have this massive libel case, defamation case that Dominion has against these people, and this new information makes a case that was already, it seemed, kind of solidly in Dominion`s favor even more so.

KATYAL: Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump hand picked a bunch of lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Lin Wood who kind of told him what he wanted to hear, but the striking thing is he couldn`t even pick enough lawyers to believe his big lies and that`s what this new story and new reporting indicates that the Trump campaign itself knew that this voting stuff was all cockamamie. And so, you know, I think this will all be introduced in the litigation.

But it`s more than just who wins a lawsuit, Lawrence, at the end of the day. It`s just about the fundamental anti-American despicable lying president that we had before. And you know, again, this is not about politics. This has got to be about just truth, justice, the American way.

O`DONNELL: The -- as that lawsuit goes forward, presumably it will be all sorts of procedural delays that the Trump supporting side can try to -- try to do and in civil litigation, there`s an awful lot of them. It seems like we are constantly going to have through the discovery process of that lawsuit more and more information like that come out.

KATYAL: A hundred percent, drip, drip, drip, it`s going to continue and continue. So far, not a single document that I`m aware of has ever come out in this discovery or in these investigations of the attorneys or anything that exculpates, that says that Donald Trump and his lawyers were actually innocent. Everything so far all points in the same direction.

O`DONNELL: And I just want to get a quick word from you about Donald Trump`s lawsuit against his niece, Mary Trump and the "New York Times" and three reporters at the "New York Times" where he is alleging in this lawsuit that "The New York Times" convinced and somehow, you know, mind controlled Mary Trump into providing Donald Trump`s tax information.

KATYAL: Yeah, I`m going to go out on a limb and say this isn`t going anywhere. You know, for one thing, if you really believe this Donald Trump, why do you wait an entire year before suing? He`s complaining about stuff that happened a year ago? If the harm`s so great you wait until now.

And, you know, the big problem here is something Trump hasn`t read, it`s called the First Amendment, freedom of press. Good luck, Donald Trump, challenging that and suing the "New York Times." This one I think we know the results already.

O`DONNELL: Neal Katyal, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Thank you.

And coming up, the Biden infrastructure bill is now all up to Joe Biden. Congresswoman Katie Porter joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:21:20]

O`DONNELL: Tonight, the House passed a bill that will continue funding federal agencies through December 3rd and avert a government shutdown that would have happened on October 1st. The bill will also suspend the debt ceiling through the end of 2022.

Suspending the debt ceiling is how the Republican Congress managed to avoid raising the debt ceiling during the Trump presidency. The bill also provides $6.3 billion for the resettlement of the Afghan refugees and $28.6 billion in disaster relief in the aftermath of two recent hurricanes.

NBC News is reporting, quote: President Biden is expected to host multiple in-person meetings with groups of House Democrats tomorrow to build consensus around his build back better infrastructure and social spending packages.

Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter of California. She`s a member of the House Oversight Committee.

Congresswoman Porter, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

And what time is your meeting with Joe Biden tomorrow?

REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): Well, I have not yet been invited, but I`m hopeful that the president is going to continue to do the good work that he`s done reminding people that what this is about, it`s not about Democrats or Republicans or progressives or moderates. It`s about the American people, and it`s about the kind of economy that we want to have for years to come.

O`DONNELL: I think as you`ve discovered by now in your experience now working with the president of your own party that the people who get the meetings are the ones who cause the problems. The more problems you create in the movement of the legislation, the more often you will be brought into the White House for discussions, and so that will certainly be part of the focus of what the president`s doing tomorrow in trying to put -- it seems to me what he`s trying to do, correct me if I`m wrong, is hold the Democratic Party together in the House and the Senate on both of these bills.

PORTER: I think that`s right, and I think this is complicated by the fact that it`s not just about the House Democrats. It`s about the Senate Democrats. It`s about the Senate Republicans, and I think where we sit is really that the House has done the work through its committees of putting forward a plan to put the president`s Build Back Better agenda into legislation.

And what we keep hearing is, well, you know, the Senate is not going to support that. The Senate is not going to pass that. The onus is on them to look their constituents in the eye, to tell the American people who they are willing to go without. Should we go without child care support at a time when women`s work force participation is at a 30-year low? Should we go without clean energy initiatives at a time when wildfires are burning throughout California and other states because of climate change? Should we go without free community college, even though college costs are swamping middle class families and holding back a whole generation from achieving an education?

The burden is on the Senate to come up with its package so that the House can then begin to negotiate.

O`DONNELL: You know, I actually expected the kind of discussions we`re having now, the kinds of problems, challenges that the Democrats are having now to have been at the beginning of the process. That`s where they`re supposed to be.

At this end of the process, this is when the agreements are supposed to have already been reached. I mean, I remember the day Joe Biden went up to the United States Senate and went to their policy lunch, and all of the Democratic senators agreed with Joe Biden on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that had just been negotiated, which included some Republican support in the Senate and the reconciliation bill. They all agreed on that that day, and that surprised me because I thought that`s when you`d hear people say I`m not ready and I have to see more, and all those comments that see at the early stage.

At the early stage, it was total agreement. What happened to that?

PORTER: I think that`s a really great point, Lawrence. We are in agreement. This is the president`s agenda, and Democrats support the president. This is the agenda that he ran on. It`s the agenda that he was elected on, but it`s the agenda that every member of the house, since we`re up every two years, we were all elected with this president, we should be supporting this agenda.

And I think the reason you`re not hearing disagreement at those early stages is that the policies, the actual help that`s coming for the American people are all really good, very well thought out, important policies that will set our economy up for years to come to be strong, to be stable, and to be globally competitive.

So I think you saw that early agreement because of the strength of the kinds of policies that are in this budget reconciliation bill. I think now for people to kind of throw up their hands and say, I don`t know, I don`t know. You do know. You know what your constituents need. They need you to invest in roads and bridges and infrastructure.

They need you to address the cost of child care and the cost of college. This is what`s in this plan, and this is why all the Democrats initially supported it. We just now need to actually deliver for the American people.

O`DONNELL: Is this bill paid for in a way that satisfies you? Do you consider this bill paid for?

PORTER: Well, so I think we have a big chunk of it paid for. I think there is more that we could do to raise revenue, and so I think if that is the concern that`s holding some people back, I think they need to know that a lot of us who, you know, support this bill are also willing to pay for it. And a big chunk of it is paid for. We`ve worked very, very hard in the House to identify ways to raise revenue by eliminating special interest loop holes in our tax code, by coming up with a more fair system of global tax enforcement, that is fair for U.S. companies and foreign companies, so we can pay for as much of this as we want to.

And I stand ready and willing to do that. I think there are some big pieces including lowering the price of prescription drugs, which is not only good policy but will also help us pay for the investment in health care, including providing dental, hearing, and vision for Medicare beneficiaries, lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 60. I think we need to put that piece back in the bill to lower the price of prescription drugs, both because we ran on it, because it`s good policy, because it`s a real problem for the American people and because it would help us pay for the changes and improvements to health care that we want to make.

O`DONNELL: You run and then run for reelection in Orange County. You converted a Republican seat to a Democratic seat. You obviously know how to talk to Republican voters, and you know how to deal with that dynamic in your district, which not all Democrats do. They don`t all have mixed districts the way you do.

So you also strike me as someone who knows how to talk to the people that are being now labeled moderates in the House who feel like they want to go slower on the reconciliation side, go smaller on the reconciliation side. How does your dialogue go with those people?

PORTER: Well, I think what the question to put to these conservative Democrats and I`ve had some of these conversations including tonight, is what do you want to cut? Tell me. Do your constituents not have trouble paying for child care? Are your constituents not worried about climate change? Are you constituents not in need of roads and bridges? Do you constituents not struggle to pay for the price of prescription drugs?

The answer always is, yes, of course. Then the answer is clear. Then you should support these things, which when you ask them, when you really put to these conservative Democrats, do you not think these things are problems? Do you not hear from your constituents that this is the agenda that they want, the president`s agenda?

They often are speechless. They know it`s true. They know it`s what their constituents need. They simply have very vague objections often based on a sense of what is ask isn`t possible.

I want to be clear, Lawrence, the people of this country elected each one of us, Democrat or Republican to make better policy in their lives possible. It`s up to us, what is possible is defined by what we`re willing to do to deliver for the families who sent us to Washington.

O`DONNELL: I just want to go inside this conversation for a moment for the audience because I think the way you just described them sounds kinds of confrontational and, frankly, more confrontational what I was used to when I was working there when I saw people trying to pull people in their direction.

[22:29:48]

How would you describe them in terms of confrontational or cooperative or supportive? Are you trying to support someone to find his way or her way to voting the way you want them to vote?

I don`t -- I don`t think people in the audience really have a feel for how these conversations go?

PORTER: Oh, no. They`re very, very pleasant. I mean I had a terrific conversation tonight with one of the conservative Democrats who signed the letter to the speaker about the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

And I said, you know, I really support the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I cannot wait to vote to deliver infrastructure to the American people, and he said, I`m so happy to hear that. And I said can I count on you to vote to deliver help with health care, with senior care, with child care, with climate change, with, you know, college costs? Can I count on you to help deliver those things to the American people, too? So -- and the answer was uh, uh, uh.

And so I think that is a very positive way to say the conversation is we are all in for doing infrastructure. That is what the progressive caucus has said from the very beginning. We support investment in infrastructure.

It`s not the only thing we support. We also support the other needs of the American people. And one way to understand this is those infrastructure jobs, the data tells us that about 90 percent of those infrastructure jobs will go to men.

And yet I was elected by both men and women. I was elected to think about the entire work force, not just one sector or one sex. I was elected to create jobs across our economy.

So that means I need to be thinking about other kinds of investments beyond infrastructure. So it`s yes to infrastructure. It`s yes to child care. It`s yes to senior care. It`s yes to climate change because all of these things will grow our economy. That`s the litmus test.

And so when you ask these members these questions, I think it`s really helpful. They`re very positive conversations, I think, to try to prompt them to really understand why don`t you want to grow our economy?

And when you put it that way I think the answer often is hmm, hmm I`m not sure. And that`s exactly where they should be is thinking about it.

O`DONNELL: Exactly right. I always find that an answer like I`m not sure is an awful lot better than no, which is the thing you don`t want to hear in those conversations. It`s still alive as long as they`re not sure.

Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you very much for joining us once again tonight.

Thank you.

And coming up, the Senate parliamentarian has correctly advised Senate Democrats that including major changes in immigration law would be a violation of the rules of reconciliation legislation. The Senate parliamentarian is completely correct in her interpretation of the Senate rules as she always is. The parliamentarian is not the problem. The rules of the Senate are the problem.

That`s next.

[22:32:40]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Throughout modern history, addressing the debt ceiling has consistently been done on a bipartisan basis. For Republicans to suddenly throw their hands in the air and abscond from their responsibility to pay debt that they proudly supported is nothing short of a dine-and-dash of historic proportions.

Republicans racked trillions of dollars of debt under President Trump and are demanding American families foot the bill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Joining us now, Jonathan Alter, columnist for "The Daily Beast" and an MSNBC political analyst. And Norm Ornstein, congressional historian and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Norm, we`re getting a little lost here. We`ve got a possible government shutdown on October 1st. We got a debt ceiling that needs to be adjusted. and we`ve got the Biden infrastructure bills with meetings you could almost call emergency meetings at the White House tomorrow, the president with Democrats in the House and the Senate who need to be brought together on infrastructure.

Tell us what`s going to happen on all of it. We just need to know. We need to -- the dust needs to clear right here right now.

NORM ORNSTEIN, CONGRESSIONAL HISTORIAN: You know, I`m a little concerned about the debt ceiling, Lawrence. This is not the first time Mitch McConnell has used the debt ceiling as a hostage. He did it during the Obama years. Said it was perfectly all right to do so.

But that`s truly playing with fire, and it`s a reflection of the fact that Republicans are perfectly happy to throw the country into chaos if they can gain any little political advantage.

I`m hoping that we can get past that, that what McConnell will do is to just say we won`t filibuster this. You have to come up with the 50 votes on your own. But if not, we could be at a real crisis.

I`m a little more confident on the infrastructure bills moving along. We are going to have this vote on the 27th that Nancy Pelosi promised to the House contingent that insisted that this was more important than getting everything done together.

But remember that if it passes, she doesn`t have to send it to the president at any time. She can hold onto it until they work out other arrangements.

And I think we`re going to find an agreement ultimately on an amount that will be less than the $3.5 trillion in the reconciliation package, but that can be adjusted by some years and adding a little more revenues to get agreement moving forward.

So the big concern right now is whether we have a shutdown followed by something far more disastrous, a breach in the debt ceiling, and we`re not dealing with a group of rational people here who will do the right thing for the country. So that`s worrisome.

O`DONNELL: Jonathan Alter, how worried are you?

JONATHAN ALTER, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I`m actually not as worried. I mean we`ve seen this game of chicken with the debt ceiling so many times before in the last few years.

[22:39:45]

ALTER: And you know, what Mitch McConnell is doing is not surprisingly completely appalling. They ran up all this money on the credit card with this huge tax cut under Trump and now they don`t want to pay the bill.

Even though the Democrats when the shoe was on the other foot, the Democrats helped Trump with the debt ceiling I think three times in the past. So McConnell`s being a complete hypocrite but eventually they`ll work out something.

I think, you know, this kind of brinksmanship on the debt ceiling has taught them lessons over the last 10, 15 years that they can only play this game of chicken for so long before they finally have to deal with it.

I`m a little more worried, actually, unlike Norm who does know a tremendous amount about all this more than any American, but I`m a little more -- I`m a little more worried about what the final details of the reconciliation bill will be and what the amount will be.

It will pass eventually because, you know, Democrats are not going to destroy the president of their party with no bill. I think that`s quite unlikely.

But how it will all end up is still very unclear. Will they cut a trillion from the $3.5 trillion, $1.5 trillion from the 3.5 trillion? You know, as Edward Dirksen said, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you`re talking about real money. And now that applies to trillions of dollars which are on the line.

Huge chunks of American society and the American economy that are on the line and the sausage making that`s going on, which now has a lot of gristle and hair in it.

O`DONNELL: Norm, I was struck that when senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough`s advisory ruling leaked out where she was saying that, of course, you cannot put major new immigration law into a reconciliation package, according to the rules of reconciliation. She wasn`t saying you can`t do it. She was just saying that her interpretation of the rules say you can`t do it.

And there was all this outrage about the very existence of a senate parliamentarian and, you know, get rid of her and put someone in there who`ll rule the right way.

I don`t know about you I`ve never disagreed with the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian. I`ve disagreed with Senate rules a lot, and I`ve come to completely view with derision the 60-vote threshold, which really should just be eliminated.

And because we have the 60-vote threshold for everything that isn`t reconciliation, it puts this enormous pressure on reconciliation to throw in all these things that were never designed to be in reconciliation.

And so it seems to me that the parliamentarian`s ruling on immigration, if you really want to see that kind of legislation passed comes down to the 60-vote rule in the Senate. The 60-vote threshold that has to be overcome and should be eliminated.

ORNSTEIN: You`re exactly right, Lawrence. The parliamentarian looks at what the rules are under reconciliation. And she`s right that this is a major legislative action where the budgetary impact is a more minor element. And it`s only there because they can`t get comprehensive immigration reform done through the normal process.

And they can`t do that, nor can they do voting rights election reform unless the rule changes regarding the filibuster. Everything gets jammed under reconciliation because it`s the only train leaving the station with 50 votes. And that`s got to change, and it`s got to change soon.

O`DONNELL: Norm Ornstein, Jonathan Alter, thank you both very much for joining us tonight.

Coming up, how`s the air-conditioning in your place -- pretty good? How about farm workers who this summer have routinely been working in temperatures over 100 degrees. President Biden took action on the dangers of heat in the workplace this week.

That`s next.

[22:44:10]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: After a summer with farm workers harvesting in the dark, in the middle of the night to avoid the deadly heat of the sun, yesterday the Biden administration launched an effort across federal agencies to protect workers from extreme heat including developing the first ever federal workplace heat standard.

This year the United States had its hottest summer on record, extreme heat is now the leading weather-related killer in the United States. In a statement yesterday, President Biden said, "Rising temperatures pose an imminent threat to millions of American workers exposed to the elements to kids in schools without air-conditioning to seniors in nursing homes without cooling resources and particularly to disadvantaged communities. My administration will not leave Americans to face this threat alone."

California established a workplace heat standard in 2005, which includes providing workers with water, water breaks and shade when temperatures reach 95 degrees or higher. Between 2005 and 2015, heat-related visits to emergency rooms in California increased by 35 percent.

Our next guest represents California`s Riverside County, which includes the desert communities of Palm Desert, Indio, and Coachella and has among the top ten highest rates of heat-related ER visits in California.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Raul Ruiz of California. He is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is also a physician and public health expert.

[22:49:53]

O`DONNELL: Congressman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I want to get your perspective on the president finally taking heat into consideration as a public health issue and a workplace issue.

REP. RAUL RUIZ (D-CA): Well, it`s long overdue. As the son of farm workers who grew up in a farm worker trailer park I can tell you that these workers take a lot of risk working in 120 degree weather to feed Americans and taking the (INAUDIBLE) that we all rely to keep healthy.

And taking this first step in terms of starting the rule making process is very important. California has some rules, the Asuncion Bandilla (ph) legislation has a rule that would codify what California does. Let`s add cooling centers and limited exposure to extreme heat as a standard as well.

And I not only speak as the son of a farm worker but as an emergency physician who practiced in the desert taking care of people who come in with (INAUDIBLE), disorientation, dizziness, even vomiting from the extreme heat that they experienced.

O`DONNELL: On that point, as a physician what is your advice to people in workplaces where heat is an issue, your medical advice?

RUIZ: Well, my medical advice is limit your exposure as much as you can. Try to find shade. If you start to feel any symptoms at all like feeling dizzy, nausea or even heat rashes or even more severe symptoms like disorientation and mental status changes then seek cover. Go somewhere where you can find air conditioning even if you have to go to the nearest car and ask somebody to turn it on, turn on your air-conditioning.

And if you start to feel very symptomatic call 911 because these are very serious symptoms that can lead to death as we`ve seen in the past.

I mean farm workers are 20 times more likely to die from heat illness than other occupations. So those are my suggestions. And don`t take any risks.

O`DONNELL: Congressman Raul Ruiz, thank you very much for joining us tonight on this important story. We really appreciate it.

RUIZ: Thank you.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And coming up, the man who gave white America their first real look at how policing works in black America. That`s next in tonight`s LAST WORD.

[22:52:07]

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BRADLEY (D-NJ), FORMER SENATOR: We were not told about Rodney King being hit 56 times in 81 seconds with batons. We saw it with our own eyes. It was on video. So we saw four police beating Rodney King. It was clear- cut. 56 times in 81 seconds.

Something like this -- pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That was New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley in 1992, and I will never forget that day in the senate as we all watched when Bill Bradley made that impromptu decision on the Senate floor to hit his podium 56 times in 81 seconds to drive home to the United States Senate what everyone in America had seen in the video of Rodney King being almost beaten to death by Los Angeles police officers in 1991.

The senate chamber got quieter and quieter with each tap of Bill Bradley`s pencil. He did it 56 times in 81 seconds. And we know about those 56 times in 81 seconds because a 30-year-old plumber named George Holliday reached for his new Sony video camera when he heard police sirens and a helicopter in the middle of the night. He told "The Los Angeles Times", quote, "You know how it is when you have a new piece of technology you film anything and everything."

George Holliday stepped onto his balcony of his apartment and he aimed his camera at what the L.A. Police officers were doing to a black man lying on the pavement. That video soon became the lead story on every newscast in America and then every newscast in the world.

George Holliday`s video gave white America their first real look at how policing works in black America.

Last weekend after being hospitalized with coronavirus for about a month in Simi Valley, California, George Holliday died at age 61.

Last year George Holliday hoped to buy a home by auctioning off the video camera he used to make history. He said he hoped to quote, "inspire people to use their cameras for everything, the bad and the good`.

When they were no bidders for his camera George Holliday told "The Sun", quote, "I`ve been a plumber for 43 years, it looks like I`m going to have to be a plumber for quite a few more years."

In 1993, Reverend Jesse Jackson said this about George Holliday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: What was missed by and large in news commentary was that the only reason we know anything about Rodney King is a white man named George Holliday filmed the beating and took it public. Had George Holliday not had the quickness of thought and the character to take the film public we would have never known of Rodney King.

In other words, George Holliday went beyond color, went beyond race up to the high plateau of courage with character to make America better and true to its commitment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:59:51]

O`DONNELL: Reverend Jesse Jackson gets tonight`s LAST WORD about George Holliday.

"THE 11TH HOUR WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" starts now.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC HOST: Well, good evening once again.