Summary
MSNBC's continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Interview with Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Vice President Biden talked about how the Trump administration's anti-immigrant policies have also led to the unprecedented number of families forced to wait in basically refugee camps across the U.S. border to wait for a chance to apply for asylum here in the United States.
Transcript
CHARLOTTE SWAYZE, POLLSTER: And also talk about the fact that this will reduce pollution, help people have clean air and give people jobs, which we believe what voters care about at a base level.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": Yes. Really striking to me that Biden used the term pollution last night when talking about oil, which -- that's been a long time in coming, in talking about carbon pollution.
Charlotte Swayze, thank you so much for sharing your insight. Appreciate it.
SWAYZE: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: That is "ALL IN" for this evening.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now.
Good evening, Rachel. Happy Friday.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Happy Friday. Is it Friday? It is.
Thank you, my friend.
HAYES: It sure -- it sure A-F is.
MADDOW: I know exactly what you mean. But I'm still at work and you're still watching the news because there is a lot going on.
It is 11 days out right now. It does feel like the news is coming through a fire hose, but we have all got to pace ourselves and this is no time to check out and this is getting close enough to the election that we are starting to realize that whatever it is that the candidates, each of them, might want to focus on in terms of making their best case, whatever they feel like is their strongest ground to stand on, events are overtaking them. What this election is going to be about is actually what's going on in the country right now. Not what either of the candidates might do or say.
To that end, I would like to introduce you to Kyle Dosan. Kyle Dosan is an ICU nurse. He works in Duluth, Minnesota.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KYLE DOSAN, ESSENTIAL HEALTH-ST. MARY'S MEDICAL CENTER NURSE: It's just after midnight. I am just getting off a really busy shift in the COVID-19 ICU. Tonight, I was taking care of a couple of COVID patients. Man, there seems to be no end in sight with this pandemic right now.
There is no end in sight for this virus. There is no vaccine. There is no true therapeutic that destroys this virus like we'd hoped for. We just have a lot of ancillary care.
And I need to warn everybody, yes, everybody, anyone can get sick from COVID-19. We've seen people in their 40s to people in their 80s that end up in our ICU. I'm exhausted. You know, I'm exhausted. My co-workers are exhausted. I think I speak for the majority of health care workers right now.
We're tired. You know, we're sick of COVID-19. We really are. There is no end in sight. And that's one of the most disheartening things. And we keep seeing increasing trends of COVID-19 cases across America right now. It's sad. It really is. I haven't seen my friends since March. I haven't seen my grandparents in over a year.
But, like I said, there is really no end in sight. This is just kind of going to be how life is for the time being, which really stinks.
EMILY CAPPS, GOVE COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER CNA: Hi, I'm Emily Capps, I am a CNA at Gove County Medical Center. And COVID has struck this place pretty hard for us. And it has been very hard for us CNAs and nurses and everyone that works there because we see your family members that are getting sick and dying and we are holding their hands and hugging them and comforting them.
And we try to make days a little brighter while we're working. We just want to see them smile. And it's hard to do with this pandemic. Because we have lost a few people, and it's been hard because we have cared for them for so long and we truly do love them and we miss them.
And when family can't come in, it really -- it breaks our hearts. It breaks our heart that they can't come in and see their family that is sick, but we do everything we can to connect them. We'll make phone calls for them. FaceTime Them. It's just hard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That's Emily Capps, a CNA who works in rural Kansas, in Quinter, Kansas.
Today, we have had what is the largest number of new COVID infections in this country on any single day since the pandemic hit. We just hit a new record. This is the screaming headline right now at "The Washington Post." America hits highest daily number of coronavirus cases since pandemic began. The nation is poised to enter the worst stretch yet of the pandemic with hospitalizations rising in 38 states.
I wanted to show you those statements tonight from Kyle Dosan, the ICU nurse, and Emily Capps, the CNA, in part because of where they're from. Mr. Dosan is an ICU nurse. He's working in what is now converted in a full COVID unit in Duluth, Minnesota. But Emily Capps, the CAN, she is, as I said, a town called Quinter, Kansas.
Quinter, Kansas, population 1,000. That's where Quinter, Kansas, is. It's four hours drive northwest of Wichita, if you are trying to find it on the map. It is as rural as rural America gets. But that's what's happening now. That's what's driving this in the country.
The last time we had case numbers anywhere near this high literally most of the cases in the country at that time were from a handful of large population states, Florida, California and Texas and Arizona. Now, it's not a handful of states. It's everywhere.
And there is something else I want to point out about where we are right now. Could we put the national graph back up for a second? Look at -- look at where we have been. Not just where we are right now, but where we have been.
That first peak that we got in early April, that was terrible, right? Went up to like 30,000 cases a day. Just atrocious. Thousands of Americans died.
We had 100,000 people dead by the end of may because of that peak in new cases that we saw it had early April. But look how we got to that peak. We got to that peak from here on the graph. Look at the baseline we built up from in that case, right?
When we got to the first peak we were starting at zero. It was a new virus, the novel coronavirus. We started with basically zero cases in the country in January, February, and we went in that first peak from zero cases up to 30,000 cases a day.
But then after that first peak, and we started to come back down, we didn't come all the way back down. We didn't go all the way to zero. We never got below an average of 20,000 cases every day. So, that meant when we started to surge again, we were surging from a higher point. There was tons more virus circulating in the country at a baseline level.
And so because we were building on a bigger baseline, when we had a second surge while there was higher amounts of virus circulating out there every day, our second peak ended up being that much higher, right? Our second peak ended up being twice as high in terms of the peak rate of new infections because our baseline started higher, right?
And in that second peak tens of thousands of people died. That's when we hit the second peak in the high summer. We ended up with 200,000 Americans dead by the third weak of September after we saw that huge peak in cases in the high summer.
But now, here is our problem right now, because after that second scary second peak in the high summer when we dropped back down again not only did we not go to zero. We didn't go back to where our baseline had previously been. When we dropped down after that second peak, our new baseline didn't spend much time below 40,000 new cases a day.
And now that huge, high baseline number is where we are climbing up from. So how high are we going to get this time? I mean, our peak number of infections keeps getting higher with each subsequent surge because with each subsequent surge we are building on an increasingly large baseline, an increasingly large baseline of virus circulating in the country. And that is happening over time.
As time moves from left to right on this graph, you can see our country increasingly failing over time. And getting worse and worse and worse at stopping the spread of the virus, which is why our peaks keep going up. If we can't get our baseline down ever, if each new baseline between these surges is higher, then each peak is going to be higher, too, and that many more Americans are going to die with each surge.
So right now we never got low, right. Right now this new surge that we've got right now is coming out of a baseline of 40,000 cases a day with a ton of virus circulating in the country. And where we are right now heading back up to a new peak, who knows how high it's going to be. We have a 40 percent rise in hospitalizations in this country in the past month.
In the past week, at least 14 states have set hospitalization records. And we are just getting worse and worse and worse at even trying to contain it in some places.
Yesterday in one county in Idaho, regional health board had a meeting. They heard from their regional epidemiologist that the hospitals in that region of northern Idaho were hitting capacity, their major local hospital had the previous day hit 99 percent capacity even after doubling up patients in rooms and buying more physical hospital beds to try to put patients in them.
The local health board responded to the news from their epidemiologist by voting at that meeting to repeal the local mask mandate. They got told their hospitals are at capacity, there is nowhere to put patients anymore than and their response was to get rid of local mask mandate. That's northern Idaho.
One county over from where President Trump recently tweeted in support of a local anti-mask rally. Yes, take off the masks, open everything up.
And now here is what you get -- soaring COVID-19 infection rates in Coeur d'Alene and the surrounding communities of northern Idaho has pushed Kootenai Health Hospital to declare it has reached capacity for all medical and surgical patients. New patients in the region could be sent to Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, Washington, for treatment. Hospitals in nearby Spokane, Washington, are in the same situation. All regional hospitals are experiencing the same situation.
I love that the president at the debate last night tried to spin the idea that COVID-19 is a blue state problem, right. The president in the last week has told us that COVID is caused by masks and he tried to sell us last night it's caused by blue state governors.
Meanwhile, North Dakota has the worst COVID-19 outbreak on Earth, and north Idaho has nowhere to put their patients anymore. But the president is cheering on the anti-mask folks there and the local officials are listening.
This was President Trump's visit today to the largest retirement village in America. It's a retirement village. That means it's all older Americans in this crowd.
Let the record show, let history note that this is what the president of the United States did today on the day the country had more new COVID infections than any other day thus far in the entire pandemic. That's how he gathered his fellow Americans together today. So close. Get closer. Anybody wearing a mask in that picture? I see one? Maybe?
Here was "Bloomberg News" this afternoon. President Donald Trump is forging ahead with break necessary pace of rallies in battleground states during the final days of his re-election campaign, defying public health guidelines as a wave of new coronavirus cases smacks the United States.
Trump will stage six rallies over the next three days in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and New Hampshire as he rushes to make up ground on Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The president is expected to draw thousands of unmasked supporters to each of these rallies, running the risk of seeding new outbreaks as virus cases hit levels unseen since the summer. And now we know surpassing even the worst of the summer. That's "Bloomberg News" today.
Here is "USA Today" tonight. Quote: As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies the past two months, he didn't just defy state orders and federal health guidance. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake. When U.S. cases started climbing in mid-September, Trump did not alter his campaign schedule but continued holding an average of four rallies a week.
He stopped, first, in Minnesota where Blue Earth County's coronavirus growth rate was 15 percent before Trump's rally. It grew to 25 percent afterwards.
Three days later, the president was in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, where the coronavirus growth rate jumped from less than 3 percent before his visit to more than 7 percent after his visit.
Even in states where cases were already rising, the spikes in at least four counties that hosted Trump rallies far surpassed their state's overall growth rates. In two of those counties, the growth rate was more than double after the president's visit.
In Beltrami County, Minnesota, where the president held his rally in Bemidji, the case rate swelled by 35 percent compared to the state's 14 percent. In Marathon County, Wisconsin, the case count surged by 67 percent after the president's visit. Even though the overall growth rate in the state was less than 30 percent at the time.
You know, it is one thing to be mad at this president for presiding over the worst botched COVID response of any nation on earth, and 220,000 of our fellow Americans paying with their lives because of it. It's one thing to be mad about him botching the response in terms of governance, including the news tonight that it turns out he disbanded the federal vaccine safety office last year.
Yes, we'll never need that. When will we need a federal office to oversee vaccine safety issues? We don't need that. Let's throw that out and not mention it to anybody.
You'll recall he also disbanded the Global Health Security Office at the White House in 2018 because that's something Obama made, so it must be terrible. So he got rid of it and then we got the coronavirus and then we got to worse than anywhere else on Earth.
It's one thing to be mad at this president for presiding over what really is the worst botched COVID response of any major nation on Earth, one that keeps getting worse over time, right? An epidemic that keeps getting larger and larger and larger while the president is the one person in the country doing more than anyone else to undermine the things we need to do to get it under control, right? Liberate Michigan, tear off your masks, Idaho.
It's one thing to be mad at how terrible he has run the -- how terribly he has run the federal government when it comes to this disaster. But it is another thing to come to the realization that he really is Johnny Appleseeding this thing all over the country.
I mean, he is like a universal donor for this thing. His actual campaign, his personal ego-feeding desire to do large in-person unmasked events, even specifically at events reserved just for old people, even in places where the virus is running rampant and the hospitals are full to bursting, that isn't just, you know, callous or tone deaf. That is one of the things that is driving this epidemic into the stratosphere right now right as we head into the election.
He is an epidemiological menace. I mean, in office, sure. But actually in person is what I mean.
We are 11 days out. While President Trump held his super-spreader elderly people event today in Florida, Vice President Biden today gave a speech on COVID and how he would handle the coronavirus differently.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Look, you all know this. The American people have always given their best to this country in times of crisis. This time isn't any different. I am not joking when I say this. I think every day about the brave doctors and nurses and hospital workers, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, other first responders who not figuratively but literally are putting their lives on the line day in and day out to care for people.
I think of the essential workers who carry the rest of us on their shoulders through these many months, the grocery store clerks, the delivery clerks, the drivers, the folks on the assembly line, the meatpackers and so many more. People too often overlooked, too often overlooked, undercompensated. They have given the best to their country when we needed them the most.
There is no challenge. There is no challenge we cannot meet. No enemy we are unable to face. No threat we can't conquer.
We stand together united, bound by our common resolve, determination, and values. Folks, together we can harness the unlimited potential of the American people. Not just to give back where we are before the virus hit us, but to get back better.
I promise you and you know in your heart we can do this. We must do this. And we will do it together. You know we can do it. This is the United States of America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: We are 11 days out from the election. We have just hit the highest number of new coronavirus infections we have ever had in this country.
I went to bed last night thinking about the debate and not sleeping. You know, thinking about all of the lies and stuff and did I fact check enough of them when I first came out of the debate coverage and I went through a bunch of what I thought were the most dangerous lies and couldn't I have squeezed more in there. I was thinking about is it going to affect the campaign, the punches that landed, you know, the ones that didn't.
That's how I went to bed thinking about the debate, but I woke up this morning thinking that the single most telling thing in the debate was when the president tried to turn off the questions about COVID because he was done talking about it. He really did at one point in the debate, I am not sure this was widely noticed, but I certainly noticed it, he basically tried to call an end to COVID as a topic of discussion in the debate. He said, just to debate. He said to finish it, trying to make them stop talking about this topic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: When it hit, what happened? What did the president say? He said, don't worry, it's going to go away. Be gone by Easter. Don't worry. Warm weather. Don't worry. Maybe inject bleach. He said he was kidding when he said that, but a lot of people thought it was serious. A whole range of things the president has said -- even today he thinks we are in control. We're about to lose 200,000 more people. WELKER: President Trump? DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, perhaps, just to finish this -- I was kidding on that. But just to finish this --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Perhaps just to finish this. Just to finish this. I don't want to talk about this anymore. Just to finish this, can we just not?
Yes, it turns out you don't get to turn this off. Not when we're search plus months in and it's the worst it's ever been and getting worse in almost every corner of the country now by the minute. Not as we are heading towards what looks like a third peak that is going to dwarf anything we have been through thus far and we've already lose over 200,000 of our fellow Americans.
Thanks in part to your personal actions even beyond the way you screwed up your job as president, you don't get to turn it off. This is what the election is about. Just to finish this? OK.
Eleven days, I don't -- I don't know who is going to win the election and neither do you. I do think that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party think they are going to lose this election. I don't know if they're right, but they are behaving in a way that indicates they think they are going to lose and they are trying to cash in as much with their power now as they can before the election arrives.
They are rushing right to the last hand in the deck already in terms of what they can try to do to the election. I mean, the Trump campaign is risking having its staff jailed in Pennsylvania for intimidating voters by videotaping people as they dropped off their ballots at drop boxes in Philadelphia. That's almost the definition of voter intimidation.
If that's not the definition, how about having armed men show up at a polling place? Armed men who say they were hired by the Trump campaign showed up at a Florida polling place yesterday. They said they were hired by the Trump campaign to be there with their guns. The Trump campaign says, no, we didn't hire them.
This is a little bit wonky. You should know this happened in the last 24 hours. The president signed an executive order that will radically change the civil service rules for the federal work force, for the people who work for the federal government.
And I know that sounds like a wonky thing, but they are doing that as a -- I mean, you wouldn't do this if you thought you were about to get a second term. They are doing this -- I think in part because it will enable them to easily fire non-political career civil servants, people like scientists and engineers, but more specifically they are doing it in a bay that will allow them to stuff Trump appointees into the government in a way that makes it hard to get rid of them after Trump's gone.
Basically to try to saddle the incoming Biden administration with a federal government work force that has been shed of its people with real expertise and stuffed with people who are loyal to Trump, in what are supposed to be non-political, non-partisan jobs, right?
You wouldn't do that if you thought you were going to get a second term. You might do that if you felt like you wanted to try to sabotage what you'd expect to be a new Biden administration that's about to succeed you.
And on this point, I would also say it's not a sign of confidence by the Republicans that they are taking a last-minute flurry of actions related to abortion. As I said, there are 11 days left until this election. Why today did they just sign our country on to an international anti-abortion pledge?
They also today started trying to tee up a Mississippi anti-abortion law for the United States Supreme Court. This is their chosen vehicle to try to overturn Roe versus Wade and outlaw abortion in America. They are trying newly to tee that up for the newly constituted Supreme Court as soon as possible after Amy Coney Barrett gets on to the bench. And of course they are voting to ram through they are nomination to get her on to the bench on Monday, this Monday, a week before the election.
And maybe she will be there to vote for Trump in election disputes if he can somehow get the election dragged into the courts. Even if Biden wins and Trump has to go, they are, as of today, making sure that she is in place to try to get abortion outlawed as soon as possible. Even if all of the these guys are about to be voted out less than two weeks from now.
I don't know who is going to win the election. The Republicans and the Trump administration are behaving as if they are at desperate straits and doing everything they can before they lose.
So, eyes open. Lots going on right now. It's getting desperate fast on their part. What they are trying to do to mess with your ability to vote by mail is our next story.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, BIDEN CAMPAIGN VIDEO)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: I thought I would share with you how I'm voting because I have been voting by mail for years. You'll see that it is not as tough as a lot of folks think.
All right. To vote, fill in the oval as shown in the picture to the right. Can't just do a check or an X. That doesn't count. Slide it up in there, right?
I put it in the envelope, I have sealed it. On the front it says you must fill in my name. So that's Barack Obama. Printed it legibly.
And now the last step. Mail your ballot return envelope through the United States Postal Service or deliver your ballot return envelope at one of the Chicago election boards early voting secured drop boxes. I am going to mail it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Former President Obama out with a step-by-step guide to voting by mail. Literally what you do every step. The explosion of mail-in voting is part of the reason we have so many Americans who have already cast their ballots in this election.
Over 47 million Americans have already voted. More than 30 million of those have voted by mail or by drop box. It's a new process for a lot of people and it can be hard and the rules can be arcane. That's even when things go well. So it's nice to have former President Obama showing people how to do it.
But things aren't going well with the Postal Service in a lot of places why places where vote by mail is key. After changes instituted by the Trump donor who was installed at the head of the post office this year, there are persistent delays in mail delivery across the country and, surprise, turns out that is particularly the case in certain battleground states, where mail-in ballots could potentially decide the outcome of the election.
Quote: Parts of the presidential battleground states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio fell short by wide margins as the Postal Service struggles to regain its footing after a tumultuous summer. It wasn't an organically arrived upon tumult. It was the post office getting screwed up by the Trump administration.
Postal Service aimed to have at least 95 percent of first class mail arrived within five days. That target is being missed now almost everywhere in the country.
But it's worse as I said in battleground states right now. And this is a particularly concerning problem in the great state of Michigan. Thanks to Michigan Republican legislators and judges, ballots that aren't received by Election Day are not going to be counted in Michigan this year no matter when they were postmarked which means it really, really matters if the mail is slow.
Well, in the Detroit area last week on-time mail delivery barely cracked 70 percent, which is really bad.
Joining us is Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. He's the top Democratic on homeland security and who himself has been monitoring this and published a report on it today.
Senator Peters, thank you so much for taking time tonight. It's good to have you here.
SEN. GARY PETERS (D-MI): Always great to be with you, Rachel. Thank you.
MADDOW: So the mail on time delivery situation is still bad nationwide. It really does seem like they broke the post office as best they could this summer. But is it your contention, is it your understanding it might actually be worse in Michigan than almost anywhere else in the country?
PETERS: Well, it is. My committee staff has been ongoing an investigation to find out exactly what's happening after the postmaster general decided to put a pause on the changes so that he put forward in July, as we know, had a significant impact on slowing down the mail. I have been working with the inspector general.
In fact, an I.G. report came out that said that the changes that the Postal Service put forward there was no analysis, no data that went into the changes as to anticipate what would happen. We know what happened because mail delivery times dropped dramatically. As you mentioned, 95 percent delivery within the timeframe, one to five days, is the goal. It dropped very low during that time in Detroit, for example, it was in the 60 percent range, and we have been watching it to see is it recovering, and it is recovering in parts of the country, nowhere near the 95.
But in certain parts of the country, to your point, Rachel, it has not recovered. In Detroit, for example, right now, we are at 72 percent delivery on time which means an awful lot of mail is delayed. It has not recovered and you see that in other places. Other places like Pennsylvania. But it's areas. Michigan, we have seen recovery around the state, but the Detroit area, the Detroit district has not seen that recovery.
Pennsylvania has also not seen a recovery, particularly around Philadelphia. Northern Ohio. Colorado. So, there are certain parts of the country this is not recovered and it just so happens a lot of these places, as you know, are key places in terms of the election.
Michigan, we are a key battleground state. I am in a major race for the U.S. Senate here and the presidential race, Michigan is clearly a battleground. So to have this lag in delivery is very concerning.
MADDOW: Yes, and as you know, not only is Michigan a battleground state in terms of the presidency, but you are in an incredibly hard-fought Senate race right now. Whether or not you are re-elected to the Senate may determine whether or not Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate this year. It's a really, really tight race you are in.
I mean, when you campaign around the state and talk to people who are concerned about whether or not their ballot is going to count in Michigan, what are you advising people to do? Obviously, there is real reason to worry about the speed of the Postal Service, particularly in Detroit. What are you advising your supporters and your constituents?
PETERS: Well, you're right, Rachel. And the fact, as you mentioned at the opening here, you have to actually have a clerk -- a clerk has to have possession of that ballot on Election Day. Many states around the country, say if it's postmarked, it still will be counted even if it comes in two or three days late.
Not in Michigan. The Republicans here have prevented that from going forward. We saw ballots that weren't counted in the primary in August because they may have come in a couple days late.
So, right now, the advice that I'm giving to folks is that when you have your ballot, when you have been able to fill it out, take it to the clerk. Take it to the drop boxes.
Most of our clerks all across the state have secure drop boxes. The city of Detroit there are a number of drop boxes across the city, for example. But take the time. Then you know for sure that it actually will be counted.
So right now, I am also concerned about some information I have been getting that people haven't received their ballots as well, even though they have been requesting ballots, sometimes going into late September, they still haven't received it in the mail than adds a further complication. They're going to have to go to the clerk and say I never received this ballot, even though I requested it.
And we followed online, it was mailed somewhere around the end of September, I still don't have it. So we are also -- and I'm really encouraging folks to go right to your clerk. You can vote in person in Michigan. We have same day registration if you are not registered.
You can make an appointment. You can walk in. You can vote and deposit it in the drop box right there to be sure that your vote is counted. But at this point, folks can't take a chance. They need to drop it off at the clerk's office.
MADDOW: Senator Gary Peters, Democrat from Michigan in a tough re-election effort for that Senate race there. Again a Senate race that could absolutely determine which party controls the Senate. Sir, thank you for walking us through this tonight. I know you got a lot on your plate right now.
PETERS: Well, thank you, Rachel. It's a pleasure to be with you. Have a great night.
MADDOW: All right. Much more to get to tonight. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WELKER: But how will you reunite these kids with their families, Mr. President? TRUMP: But let me just tell you -- let me just tell you, they built cages.
WELKER: Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their families? (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: They built cages. Yes, we're working on it very -- we're -- we're trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.
(CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Kristen, I will say this, they went down -- we brought reporters, everything, they are so well taken care of, they're in facilities that were so clean.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: They weren't taken away from cartels and coyotes. They were taken away from their parents. That's the whole point of this policy, they were taken away from their parents and they are so well taken care of? You should see how nice the facilities are.
That was the only moment watching last night's debate where I gasped out loud. It was just bone-chilling.
In response, Vice President Biden talked about how the Trump administration's anti-immigrant policies have also led to the unprecedented plate of families forced to wait in basically refugee camps across the U.S. border to wait for a chance to apply for asylum here in the United States.
Biden said last night, quote: This is the first president in the history of the United States of America that's anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country. You come to the United States and you make your case. That's how you seek asylum based on the following premise, why I deserve it under American law. Under Trump, they're sitting in squalor on the other side of the river.
That was last night at the debate. And then lo and behold today, reporter Caitlin Dickerson of the "New York Times" published a fairly terrifying look at what exactly what Joe Biden was describing last night.
Here is some of Dickerson's reporting. She says, quote: As residents emerged from the zipper holes of their canvas homes that morning in August, some trudged with buckets in hand towards tanks of water for bathing and washes dishes. Others assembled in front of wash basins with arms full of children's underwear and pajamas. They waited for the first warm meal of the day to arrive though it often made them sick.
The members of this displaced community requested refuge in the United States but the United States sent them back into Mexico and told them to wait. They came there after unique tragedies, violent assaults, oppressive extortions, murdered loved ones. They are bound together by the one thing they share in common. They have nowhere else to go.
Joining us is Caitlin Dickerson, national immigration reporter for "The New York Times."
Ms. Dickerson, it's nice to have you back on the show. Thank you for being here tonight to talk about this reporting.
CAITLIN DICKERSON, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you.
MADDOW: So this is haunting, I mean, you traveled to camps on the U.S./Mexico border three times. I know you were most recently there in August. This is effectively what you are describing as a refugee camp on the doorstep of the United States, and this is not just adults. These are families, these are kids.
What sticks with you the most from this? What do you think the American people need to most understand about this situation?
DICKERSON: I think that the camps like this one are really important for us to look at because they are the physical manifestation of the gutting of the asylum system that has taken place over the last four years. So, Rachel, you know about these policies. Policies that make it harder or impossible to get asylum in the United States if you have experienced gang violence, if you have experienced domestic violence.
If you have traveled through a third country on your way to the United States but you didn't request asylum there first, if you have traveled through a country that has infectious diseases, these are policy changes put into place to block access to asylum. They are abstract concepts, right?
You know, the vast majority of people, for example, who have been put in this remain in Mexico turn back policy, there are 60,000 of them, but they have tucked into the crevices of these other countries while they are waiting out their cases. And so that's why we look to the examples because camps because you see the people whose lives have been very directly impacted by these policy changes because they simply have nowhere else to live. And so they're stuck right on the margin, right on the border of the U.S. just waiting.
MADDOW: And, Caitlin, I imagine it is, for somebody who has been reporting on these issues as you have for all of these months, as somebody who was absolutely key to breaking the story of the U.S. government forcibly separating little kids from their families, it has to be -- I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth -- but it has to be a striking thing to see the presidential campaign come back to that in its closing days to realize that that story of that behavior by the Trump administration might be one of the grounds this election is decided as the two candidates talk about in that in their final debate and as it rings so resonantly with so many Americans.
Do you feel like the way this is being surfaced, this issue is being surfaced right now in the politics is actually true to the reality of what happened to those kids and that family, or do you feel like it's being misdescribed?
DICKERSON: I think what we hear, Rachel, and this is so often the case, it applies to almost any policy that you cover on your show that we have two vastly different stories in the debate last night. We heard President Trump immediately as soon as he is asked about separated family paint this picture of them as criminals and to blame them for what happened. And then you hear Joe Biden talk more about how he sees the welcoming of immigrants as part of the fabric of this country.
To your point, it is striking to me to see just how far this administration has gone to really reshape and, as I said, kind of gut access to protections in the U.S.
At the same time, it's not very surprising though because this is an administration that has built a strategy of deterrence. So what is happening to the people living in the camps just like what happened to the four plus thousand people separated from their kids, as difficult, as horrible as these experiences were for the administration it wasn't really about them, it wasn't really about their experiences, it was about the message that their pain, I guess you could say, is meant to send back to their home countries to discourage other people from coming in.
You know, you could easily let the 600 or so people into the U.S. it would -- to have their cases heard. It wouldn't make an impact on the system. But it's about the message that their experiences are sending home.
MADDOW: They are being deliberately hurt, including those kids in order to send a message in order to communicate something to other people. Yes, I mean, Adam Serwer coined the phrase. The cruelty is the point. In this case, the cruelty is meant to be deterrence.
And, Caitlin, your reporting helps us understand what that means on a human level. Thank you for helping us understand it.
DICKERSON: Thanks for having me.
MADDOW: Caitlin Dickerson, national immigration reporter with "The New York Times", has done seminal reporting from the very beginning on the -- what this administration has done to immigrants.
All right. More ahead. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: A lot of front pages around the country this week dominated by the election or by coronavirus or both. But in states all over the country, these were front pages this week about drugs, about the maker of the highly addicted painkiller OxyContin, arriving with a settlement with the Trump justice department days before the election.
This is company that's been at the absolutely tip of the spear for the opioid epidemic that has ravaged this country and killed over 450,000 Americans. This settlement they arrived at with the justice department says Purdue Pharma will plead to negligence in marketing their super painkiller that killed so many people. Settlement is being crowd about by the justice department as the largest penalties ever levied against a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
But take note, most of the people with a stakes in this fight are sort of furious with what Trump's Justice Department just did here. Purdue Pharma only has to pay $225 million up front, which is a lot of money to people, but not to Purdue because Purdue is in bankruptcy and has scores of creditors and it's unlikely we'll see close to a multibillion-dollar payment that they've been crowing about, and most bankruptcies, creditors get pennies on the dollar.
Members of the Sackler family behind the Purdue Company with state, cities and individual plaintiffs were instrumental in the crimes. The Sackler family and Purdue Pharma executives themselves aren't going to face criminal charges as humans. Nobody from the Sackler family even had to admit to any wrongdoing as part of this deal.
They've agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar civil fine, but, again, that's not much when you consider that the family has siphoned over $10 billion out of the company in the years leading up to its convenient bankruptcy filing. However, this settlement doesn't settle or dismiss the suits pending against them even if the Trump Justice Department decided they were going to end it.
The Sacklers aren't protected against any future state, or even federal criminal charges. By the looks of it, this federal settlement as much as the Trump administration has tried to make this seem like a victory, seems like it has only energized state attorneys general even more in their fight for justice against the opioid epidemic villains.
Joining us now is one of those state attorneys general, Maura Healey. She's attorney general for Massachusetts. She's pursued her own case against Purdue and the Sacklers. She was the first AG to serve individual members of the Sackler family and I should tell you, her office is set to depose members of that family next month.
Madam Attorney General, thank you so much for taking time tonight. It's an honor to have you here.
MAURA HEALEY, MASSACHUSETTS ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, it's great to be with you, Rachel.
MADDOW: I was struck by your immediate statement in reaction to the settlement. You said, quote, I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers.
What do you wish the Justice Department had done as part of this settlement, or was a settlement at this point of any kind inappropriate?
HEALEY: Well, you know, here's what's so devastating about this settlement. Back in 2006, the Justice Department went after Purdue, and ultimately after hearing testimony from families devastated by this epidemic, they had to deal with Purdue and allowed Purdue to basically get off the hook.
And here we are so many years later when the Justice Department has a second chance to do it right, and once again they left them off the hook. The way you describe this settlement, this deal, is entirely accurate. There's no one going to jail, there's no justice, the Sacklers face no admissions of guilt, let alone wrongdoing or liability.
They're paying $225 million, which is probably 2 percent of the billions and billions of dollars estimated between $10 billion and $13 billion they took from this company, and Purdue, you got a guilty plea against a company that's already in bankruptcy. So, this is not accountability, Rachel.
And the good news is state A.G.s, we're going to continue to press our state claims in court, and we owe that to our families. I talked tonight with Emily Walden (ph) who is from Kentucky. I sat with a group of Massachusetts families the other day who were outraged by this deal.
And I called (INAUDIBLE) because she's one of the organizers of a group that just in August begged the Justice Department to be heard on this. As recently as last week, they hand-delivered a letter to Bill Barr's office saying don't do this deal.
And you know what? The Justice Department never even responded to them. As a prosecutor, that's no way to treat a victim. There are 450 opioid deaths and that number grows every day, Rachel. And I just can't for the life of me understand why the Justice Department cut this deal.
I'll tell you another thing. My prosecutors are ready to take depositions of the Sackler family, (AUDIO GAP) Mortimer, and Kathy, next month, you would think if the Justice Department was truly interested in justice and getting to the bottom of what happened in holding them accountable, they would have sat in for those depositions. We're going to go forward with those depositions.
But I think it's a shame, Rachel, that our own United States Department of Justice didn't do its job in this case. It's a shame on behalf of the families.
MADDOW: Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts, I'm going to ask you to come back on the show after the depositions happen as this state lawsuit continues.
Madam Attorney General, thank you for helping us understand tonight. Thanks for being here.
HEALEY: Thank you very much, Rachel. Good to be with you.
MADDOW: All right. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: It's going to be a very busy weekend. President Trump voting early in Florida tomorrow before going to Ohio for a rally. In both Florida and Ohio, Biden and Trump are within the margin of error in polling averages right now.
Former President Barack Obama holding on a drive-in rally for Biden in Miami, Florida, tomorrow. Biden himself tomorrow was going to hold an afternoon drive-in rally in Pennsylvania with Jon Bon Jovi.
Mike Pence is going to be in Florida tomorrow and then in North Carolina on Sunday. Kamala Harris is going to be in Cleveland tomorrow and Detroit on Sunday.
Lots of rallies, not a lot of time left. If you haven't voted yet, just, please, just do it.
That does it for us tonight. I'll see you again on Monday night.
Now, it's time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O'DONNELL."
Good evening, Lawrence.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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