Summary
The other plot against American democracy; Trump allies plead the Fifth before January 6 committee; Alex Jones pleaded the Fifth almost 100 times; Trump administration policies favored the wealthy
Transcript
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ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Thanks for spending with me tonight. As we learned, if they tell you, don`t look up, consider looking up.
That does it for us. THE REIDOUT with Joy Reid though starts right now. Hi, Joy?
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: How are you doing, Ari? Wise words indeed, thank you very much. Have a fantastic evening. Cheers.
Good evening, everyone. Okay. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with a history lesson starring Major General Smedley Butler. Now he may be a little known name outside of military circles, but don`t let that fool you. This is a marine with a big military resume, starting with the war against Spain in 1898. He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, Hollywood loved him, so did Theodore Roosevelt who called him the ideal American soldier.
But the story we`re going to tell didn`t happen in a conflict overseas but rather in Pennsylvania, where, one day, a bond salesman approached butler with a pitch. Imagine, half a million veterans marching on Washington, a move financed by some of the most powerful corporations in America. The purpose, to stop President Franklin D. Roosevelt`s new deal opposed, which was opposed by wealthy business leaders as a socialist doctrine. This army of veterans would pressure the president to hand over executive powers of government, and if the president refused, he will be forced to resign.
The bond salesman after, you know, casually pitching the violent overthrow of the U.S. government then asked butler if he would be interested in heading this march, to which General Butler replied, my one hobby is maintaining a democracy. If you get these 5,000 soldiers advocating anything of smelling of fascism, I am going to get 5,000 more and lick the hell out of you and we will have a real war right at home.
The general then reported this exchange to the government and here he is revealing the so-called business plot before a panel of the special House committee on unAmerican activities.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Before the professional committee, the highest representation of the American people under subpoena to tell what I knew of activities, which I believe might lead to an attempt to set up a fascist dictatorship. The plan that`s outlined to me was to form an organization of veterans to use as a bluff or as a club at least to intimidate the government and break down our democratic institution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: The panel, the media, the American public did not take this exchange as seriously as Butler did. No one was ever prosecuted or even punished. The allegations turned into one big joke, an elaborate scheme by the super rich to topple the U.S. government for their own financial interest, impossible, right?
What Major General Butler did for American democracy was certainly heroic, whether people at the time believed him or not. He was also far from the perfect hero. He would even call himself a racketeer for capitalism. Jonathan Katz, who wrote about Butler in his new book, outlines how butler blazed a path for the U.S. empire, helping seize the Philippines and land for the Panama Canal, invading and helping plunder Honduras and Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and more. Meaning he played a heavy hand in all that yucky stuff that isn`t taught in schools or in museums or in movies. America as empire tends to sell fewer tickets.
But perhaps it was those layers and contradictions that allowed Butler to see what this pitch was about, an alleged political conspiracy to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and install a fascist government in his place.
Fast forward almost nine decades and we`ve now witnessed another attempted coup led by a man who simply couldn`t admit that he lost an election and whose movement of Trumpism was created and funded and sustained by big business. That populist bit, that was just a sham and just like in 1934, we`re seeing a similar pattern of denialism and deflection when it comes to what we`re up against. Dozens of witnesses and participants in the January 6th insurrection have stonewalled the select committee and several who have testified still refuse to answer questions.
Most recently, the right-wing fake news host Alex Jones revealed that he pleaded his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nearly 100 times during an interview on Monday. John Eastman, the notorious Trump lawyer who literally put the plan for a coup in writing also claimed his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as a response to nearly 150 questions and to document and to his document subpoena, according to a lawyer, for the House who spoke to CNN.
But in contrast, with the alleged fascist plot of 1934, we are seeing modicum of accountability when it comes to the MAGA mob who served as Trump`s boots on the ground on January 6th. Just today, Stewart Rhodes and nine of his Oath Keepers cohorts pleaded not guilty to charges of seditious conspiracy.
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They are among more than 700 who have been charged in connection with this current insurrection.
Joining me now is Malcolm Nance, MSNBC Counterterrorism and Intelligence Analyst, and the author of the upcoming book, They Want to Kill Americans, the Militias, Terrorists and the Deranged Ideology of the Trump insurgency, and Jonathan Katz, aforementioned author of the Racket Newsletter and of the new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, the Marines, the Making and Breaking of America`s Empire.
I want to start with you, Jonathan Katz. I so enjoyed this incredible long read about Smedley Butler, what a name, first of all. Talk a little bit about this plot that we`ve sort outlined going in here, as you`ve researched this, how real was this attempt? How serious were they? And who were some of the sort of big business and corporate interests behind it?
JONATHAN KATZ, AUTHOR, GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM: So, what we know is basically what Butler testified in front of Congress in November 1934, and that is that a representative of a prominent Wall Street financial institution came to him and tried to enlist him in this plot. We can be pretty sure that the guy who approached him thought that there was a fascist coup behind him that he was trying to foment.
In my research, I can tell you that his boss, a guy named Grayson M. P. Murphy, had a long intelligence background. He had been involved in over throwing governments overseas. He was certainly the kind of person who might have been involved in this.
Beyond that, all we have is the idea that the representative of this brokerage, a guy named Gerald C. MacGuire told Butler that there were going to be big names coming to support it from behind the scenes and that those names would include people like the Duponts, Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors, the McCann Eric Ad Agency, Phillips Oil, Sun Oil, places like that. What we don`t know is how involved they were and to what extent the planning went forward before Butler was approached and then came forward --
REID: And we know something called the Liberty League was ultimately formed. And it was the same industrialists and wealthy people that didn`t like the idea of having a new deal because they tagged it as socialism, right? They`re saying it`s socialism and we`d rather have fascism than that.
KATZ: Yes. In 1934, much as in 2022, a lot of people thought that liberal democracy was on the way out and that the only ways forward were either fascism or communism. And to the business elite in America, fascism seemed like the more attractive of those two options. So, we don`t know again whether any of the big names that Jerry MacGuire said were going to be coming behind this were actually behind it to what degree they were.
But we do know a number of people who were members of the Liberty League, including the head of JPMorgan was a big fan of Mussolini, he said that he considered himself somewhat of a missionary for the Italian fascist. We know that the Hugh Johnson, who was part of the new deal administration, who was also mooted as somebody who was going to be involved in the business plot, he also was a committed admirer of Mussolini and European fascism.
And we know that the guy who approached Smedley Butler, Jerr MacGuire, he had been on a tour of the fascist hot spots of Europe and met with members of one of the real antecedents to January 6th in February of 1934, there was a fascist and far-right riot in Paris to storm the parliament to prevent the handover of power to a center left prime minister, which there are a lot of ties between that and January 6th. And we know MacGuire met with members of the (INAUDIBLE), which were maybe sort of the Oath Keepers of Paris, 1934.
So, there was a lot to say that there would have been support for a coup like this if it had pushed forward, at least in terms of the people that MacGuire was saying we`re behind it. We just don`t know the extent to which this planning had gone forward in large part because Congress cut the investigation short.
REID: Yes. There`s a lot of lessons to be learned here, Malcolm, one of which is that big industrial interests will sometimes mesh with our military`s missions. And I think it`s something we don`t like to talk about, right, because we want to portray America and American military as always the good guys, and I actually am a great admirer of the American military.
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I happen to be.
But, I mean, in a lot of ways, our history is a history of empire and it`s something we don`t talk about a lot. Do you think it`s something we need to start to face because, I don`t know, there are risks there, and right now, we`re seeing sort of paramilitary, military people participating in another attempted coup, at least a small number of them?
MALCOLM NANCE, MSNBC COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: : I seem to recall this guy who was supreme allies commander of all forces in Europe in World War II who successfully landed in Europe and on a crusade took the entire place book as a rapid anti-fascist named Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he became president of the United States. And if I`m not mistaken, he warned of this very thing, that war was a racket and that corporations by the mid-1950s were now using the United States government as their way of surviving.
And so I think that for someone with as much experience in the greatest period of economic development and reengineering, don`t forget, we`ve changed refrigerators into tanks, right, refrigerator companies were doing pistols, Remington Ranch started making rifles, that we should pay attention to that.
Now, are we ever going to stop this? That`s not going to happen any time soon. We have far greater problems going on right now in the engineering of our democracy. And interesting thing, I`m a fan of Smedley Butler. I actually have Smedley Butler memorabilia in my man cave because his statement about the plot of 1932 was almost precisely what in better, more rough terms, what General Milley said last year about the Armed Forces of the United States not getting involved in politics.
We are revolving around this and the big question is will the American public actually be awake this November to put a stop to this or are we just going to sleepwalk our way into fascism?
REID: Let me play you something. Because I think for a lot of Americans, you hear conservatives throwing around terms like Marxism and socialism a lot, to mean a lot of things, which generally don`t have much to do with actual socialism and Marxism and communism, as they are practiced around the world. They generally just mean policies that help poor people and people of color, and they don`t like them. Let me just play a montage of that going over the years and over the decades.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cold war we face today is the child of the new deal rendezvoused with communism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They established the prerequisites to a socialistic or even later a communistic state.
RONALD REAGAN, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: One of the traditional methods of imposing statism of socialism on our people has been by way of medicine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This group who came by a state and who led these demonstrations and who are present here, many of them belong to the communist organizations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have people in Washington who want to take us into socialism.
FMR. SEN. BOB DOLE (R-KS): Public housing is one of the last bastions of socialism in the world.
FMR. REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI): Switching these programs, and this is where I`m talking about health care as well, from a third party or socialist base system.
FMR. GOV. SARAH PALIN (R-AK): Now is not the time to experiment with socialism.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: The Democrats used to be normal people. Now, they`re socialists, Marxists, communists.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
REID: With the last little bit of time we have left, Malcolm, we have a president, Donald Trump, who sort of styled himself as a populist but whose policies overwhelmingly benefitted the wealthy and high corporate interest. And then we have an attempted coup by people who want him to stay in forever, right? They want the deregulation of oil and gas, who want increased military spending to go on forever, who want more right-wing justices, who are basically corporatists, who side with big business 70 percent of the time.
It`s hard for me to see much difference between that and what Mr. Katz wrote about, that you do have very wealthy interests who have a great interest in having a fake, populous movement that`s willing to go to war to keep their guy in power, doing those things to help the rich forever, no?
NANCE: Would have been -- yes. Well, would have been Benito Mussolini, when he termed the phrase, fascist, defined it as, right, a dictatorship of the corporate right. That is the literal definition of what fascism was. Adolf Hitler was supported by the largest corporations in Germany, right, and right up to the point where the Wannsee Conference had these major corporations sitting there, figuring out what kind of furnaces they could make to burn X number of bodies per day so that they could have a final solution, so the problem of the Jews in Europe, right? And we held them accountable at Nuremberg for the most part. But many of those corporations are in operation today.
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Again, Dwight D. Eisenhower made it clear that when there is money to be made, there is going to be an interest of perpetual, whether it`s warfare or the propping up of fascism. The only difference of what we have today and what all those quotes that you had from Ronald Reagan and all of the rest, I would have thrown in the quote from Major General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick`s famous film about atomic war, you know, where he said -- where he thought there was conspiracy of putting fluoride in there. Well, that`s QAnon in the Republican Party today, with people in the military.
REID: And, by the way, Reagan was talking about Medicare in that rant.
Jonathan Katz, I have to tell you, this thing was an excellent read. I hope everyone goes out and buys your book, man. It was fantastic. I hope everyone reads it. Malcolm Nance, my friend, I appreciate you. Everybody out there, follow the money. Think about who is funding and paying for and profiteering and profiting off of what we`re seeing happening or what happened last January. Think about it. It`s worth doing. Thank you all very much.
Up next on THE REIDOUT, Trump pleaded with Georgia officials to steal the votes that he needed to win the state. We heard the tape. So, what happens next in Fulton County`s grand jury investigation?
Democrats scoring major victories over egregious Republican gerrymandering, but how free and fair will the next election actually be?
Arizona Democrats send a loud and clear message to Kyrsten Sinema, continue to obstruct the Biden agenda at your own peril, political peril. The state party chairwoman joins me.
And tonight`s absolute worst says email me but he doesn`t want to chat, he`s looking for dirt on your kids` teachers.
And, hey, guess what? I`m going to be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight. It is going to be a lot of fun. Please tune in tonight.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
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REID: The January 6 Select Committee is not the only investigation into Donald Trump that is picking up steam.
A panel of judges in Georgia has given the green light to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to seat a special grand jury for her investigation into Trump`s attempts to overturn the election results in that state.
Now, we all remember Trump`s notorious phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a year ago.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
REID: Now, just to be clear, President Biden won Georgia. And that was further verified by not one, but two statewide recounts and a partial forensic audit overseen by Raffensperger.
"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" reports that DA Willis is also examining the abrupt resignation of former Atlanta-based U.S. attorney B.J. Pak, a November 2020 call on -- a November 2020 call Senator Lindsey Graham place to Raffensperger, and false claims made by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani during a hearing before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee.
And now, with the power of a special grand jury, Willis has the right to subpoena witnesses and to provide -- to provide documents and testimony, which is key because she has said that many witnesses have refused to fully cooperate, including Secretary of State Raffensperger.
Joining me now is Maya Wiley, former assistant U.S. attorney, and Peter Strzok, former FBI counterintelligence agent and author of "Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump."
Thank you both for being here.
And welcome to the show, Peter.
But I`m going to start with you, Maya.
Here are the potential laws that were broken in this whole scheme. And I`ll just put them up on screen, everything from criminal solicitation to racketeering.
As you look at it, although Raffensperger is trying to dismiss it, how differently will this investigation go now that there`s a grand jury involved? And can they indeed compel, up to including -- and including Raffensperger and Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump to testify?
MAYA WILEY, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the short answer is, the fact that it`s a grand jury means exactly, that they can compel their testimony before the grand jury.
And, as we know, Raffensperger himself has already said, look, I will -- I will go in and talk if I`m subpoenaed.
And I would suspect we`re going to see very few people pulling a Roger Stone and -- or any -- or a Steve Bannon, and calling the bluff of a district attorney with an impaneled grand jury, because that carries its own penalties.
The there thing is, what do they have to gain? I mean, they have already made public statements. There`s so much that`s already in the public record about all the efforts to both privately press and publicly cajole and virtually threaten so many of these Georgia officials who themselves were Republicans, are Republicans, into doing exactly what Donald Trump wanted them to do, and Donald Trump personally calling them.
He personally called many Georgia officials. And that, in and of itself, makes it, I think, very difficult for them to sort of say, I`m not going to talk about what`s been talked about publicly and which I myself have talked about publicly because a grand jury subpoenaed me.
Very hard to imagine.
REID: Yes.
And, Peter, there`s a certain doing the crimes out in the open sort of quality to it, the shamelessness of it, and the fact that Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham were just openly making phone calls, trying to urge the secretary of state to overturn a legitimate election.
Does the shamelessness, the openness of it, let`s say you`re -- you put yourself in an investigator`s role. And you have been the -- you have you have taken the brunt of it. You know how these folks are.
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Does doing it in the open, as an investigator, indicate guilt or just a lack of knowledge that what you`re doing is illegal?
PETER STRZOK, FORMER FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AGENT: Well, I certainly think it indicates a brazenness and probably a lack of sophistication or care about what they were doing.
You can say you`re doing something and have the only intent in the world to do something that`s wrong. What`s really interesting to me is, Georgia is part of a pattern. When you talk about things being in the open, the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, today talked about that DOJ was looking at all these states with these alternate electors that had slates that were sent into the National Archives.
Many of those people said straight open to the media as it was going on: Yes, we`re doing it.
So, again, just because people are talking about it doesn`t mean that they weren`t breaking the law. It just means that they were either dumb and/or they didn`t care, because those two things aren`t exclusive to each other.
REID: Well, and then Lisa Monaco, and you just talked about that. And I did want to get into that with you.
And it is the first time that the Justice Department has actually commented on what they`re doing in a probe that actually is significant to January 6.
And I guess that would be the question. Let`s say that somebody is planning something like this. The fact that they`re talking about it openly, the fact that people put their names down and said, I`m an elector, knowing they`re not an elector, is that fraud? Is it racketeering? Like, how do you even investigate something that people are admitting?
We just had a guy go on Ari Melber`s show. A couple people went on Ari Melber`s show a couple -- this week and said, yes, that`s what we were doing.
STRZOK: Well, I think that`s exactly Lisa Monaco said was going on.
And, I mean, what`s interesting is, I have taken part, and I`m sure Maya has to, in going -- whenever you make a statement to the press about something that`s going on investigatively or prosecutorially those are very carefully crafted statements.
And they are something that should be parsed very, very specifically about what is and isn`t said. And what she said in her statement is, A, these referrals, that prosecutors are looking at them, and that, B, she couldn`t talk any more about ongoing investigations.
So what that tells me right away is that, one, in fact, yes, you have assistant United States attorneys, possibly U.S. attorneys, who are looking at these allegations, looking at the federal criminal code, and seeing what, if any statutes might be implicated, what the elements of the crime are, whether or not those elements are met, or what more might need to be done investigatively to figure it out.
And then the other part, the last part, she said: I can`t talk anymore about ongoing investigations.
Well, guess what? That means there are right now in the Department of Justice ongoing investigations about these referrals. So it was a very short sentence. It was a very short statement. But I don`t think you can really underestimate just how much meat is beneath that apparently simple statement.
REID: Indeed.
Because it would seem, Maya, that it is hard for most people to get -- wrap their heads around the idea that an open attempt to flip an election, to go from state to state and say, no, I need you to literally change the votes for me, or saying, we`re going to impanel these fake electors, send them in, and then we`re going to push and cajole and maybe even threaten the vice president of the United States to use those electors, instead of the real ones, it`s hard for most people to imagine that`s not a crime.
So, just talk a little bit about the Fani Willis of it, because she does seem to be very methodically doing a job that people would love to see the Justice Department doing. What is the difference here? Because she seems to be able to -- I mean, she`s not giving us information about her investigation, but at least we understand what`s happening there.
Why is that so different in character from what we`re seeing coming out of Washington?
WILEY: Well, I think we have to really remember two things.
She is an elected official. The attorney general is not. It is -- those are a very different roles, when you`re the top law enforcement officer for the country, and your job is to uphold the laws of the country in a nonpartisan way.
You can advance policies of your president, but you can`t execute the criminal laws of the country in a partisan way. That`s very different if you`re an elected district attorney. And, also, she has a very extensive public record of things the president himself has said, that she has Republican elected officials having said...
REID: Yes.
WILEY: ... and also the fact that those officials, since they were refusing to cooperate, caused her to publicly go and ask the judge to give her permission to impanel a grand jury.
So, by very definition, her tools were public tools.
REID: Yes, absolutely.
WILEY: And, to Peter`s point, the investigations of the Department of Justice are not.
REID: I am literally out of time.
Peter Strzok, but, really quickly, if you were investigating this situation, would you be interviewing Lindsey Graham, real quick?
STRZOK: At some point, yes. Eventually, I would, in the investigative chain, work my way up and seek to interview him.
REID: Maya Wiley, Peter Strzok, thank you both very much.
Still ahead: If you were starting to forget what good political news for Democrats sounds like, you`re in luck. We have got some for you, finally, on the other side of this quick break.
Don`t go anywhere.
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REID: It is 2022, and that means it`s another election year in very challenging conditions.
So let`s start with some good news, because it feels like there`s far too much bad news these days. Three judges in Alabama have blocked the Republican-drawn congressional districts map, because it was likely that it violated the Voting Rights Act.
The judges agreed that the map constituted racial gerrymandering by diluting black voters into just literally one majority black district out of the seven that they have. On Monday, the Ohio redistricting commission passed new four-year maps for state legislative districts after the state Supreme Court struck down the previous proposal because it violated partisan gerrymandering prohibitions in the Ohio Constitution.
The Ohio state Supreme Court will have to decide if Republicans did enough with the new maps to provide Democrats with proportional representation.
And the North Carolina state Supreme Court is set to review a case challenging the Republican-drawn map for the statehouse and the state`s 14 congressional districts. That`s all good.
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OK, but here`s the bad news. Republicans are determined to seize power by any means this or anyway. Take, for example, Michigan, where Republicans are circulating a petition that would allow them to bypass Governor Whitmer and impose new restrictive voting laws.
And here`s something far worse. The MAGA cult is now determined to control election results from within, playing the long game with its eyes on 2024 by electing more unscrupulous and anti-democratic secretaries of state, boards of election and other election-related offices.
With me now is Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket and partner at Elias Law Group. He has been a key player in some of these major cases and has become a boogeyman for the Republicans who are trying to do this.
Let`s -- I want to start with the good news, because I feel like we don`t talk about it enough, that, on the ground, in courts, Democrats are actually winning in some of these key attempts to act, even under the kind of muted and hobbled Voting Rights Act.
Talk a little bit about redistricting and how important that is.
MARC ELIAS, FOUNDER, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Sure.
So, look, redistricting is central to democracy, because Republicans, unable to win the popular vote, have turned to the rules of elections to rig the outcomes. And one of the ways they do that is by drawing districts where they choose voters, rather than the other way around.
And, Joy, you`re exactly right. The fact is, we have seen the courts play an important role, an important backstop to democracy. You mentioned the important victory in Alabama, where the court found that the map that the Republican legislature in Alabama drew likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
I might add, by the way, two of the three judges in that cases were appointed by Donald Trump. The third was a Reagan appointee originally. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court, which leans Republican, I might add, struck down not just the state legislative maps, which you talked about, but also the state`s congressional maps.
And we`re waiting. That process for a redraw continues. And, as you note, on February 2, we will be back in court in North Carolina, where that state Supreme Court will have a chance to take a look at whether the partisan gerrymander there violates the state`s constitution.
REID: You know, and you said North Carolina.
And I think North Carolina is actually an instructive case, because Democrats in that state and activists in that state have actually been really diligent about pursuing state power, about pursuing power at the state level and the local level. So they`re actually -- we don`t hear a lot, as much about North Carolina.
Remember, they were the state that had -- what did they say, that the -- the courts that found that their attempts to violate voting rights were like textbook discrimination. They were like written out of -- if you had a science book that did discrimination, that it was that.
And once they got past that, is there something that they`re doing right and on the ground there that we could learn from in states like Michigan, for instance?
ELIAS: Yes.
So what the Fourth Circuit found, after the North Carolina Republican gerry -- not gerrymander -- in 2013, right after Shelby County, the Republican legislature passed a voter suppression bill, which -- what the Fourth Circuit found was that it targeted African-Americans with -- quote -- "near surgical precision."
REID: That`s it. Right.
ELIAS: Now, just to put that in perspective, what the court found is that the Republican legislature ordered a review of all of the provisions of voting, and whether they have a greater impact on black voters or white voters.
And they chose to make voting harder for black voters, while minimizing the inconvenience for white voters. So, that was that case in 2013. And what happened in North Carolina, was Reverend Barber and Moral Monday.
REID: Yes.
ELIAS: And it is the reason why I always say that -- when people ask me how I got into this and what my inspiration is, I always say it was Reverend Barber.
And if there are people in your audience who don`t know who Reverend Barber is, then they don`t understand how you fight voter suppression in this country, because he brought together a multiracial, multiethnic fusion coalition to focus on voter suppression, not to hide from it, not to say, we don`t want to talk about it, but you raise it up and say, we all need to tackle this, that, when our neighbors can`t vote, whether they are black or they are white, whether they are young or they are old, we all lose.
And so that culture in North Carolina has really transformed the state.
REID: Yes, indeed.
So, where are you -- where do we need to do more Reverend Barber-ing? Where are the states where you`re really concerned? I mean, Michigan seems like a nightmare, Wisconsin. Where are you focused right now? Where should we be taking -- focusing our attention?
ELIAS: Yes, so, obviously, Georgia, Texas, Florida, everyone knows about.
REID: Yes.
ELIAS: But what we need to do is, we need to realize that this is an epidemic throughout the country.
The big lie has spread to all 50 states. Now, they can`t effectuate policy in all 50 states, but we need to be on the lookout in all 50 states. So, I`m worried about Republicans changing the laws for voting in Iowa that disenfranchise and harm Latino voters.
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I worry about what they have done in Arkansas to the black voting population, in Kansas, and, of course, in key battleground states like Wisconsin, like Pennsylvania, like Michigan.
But we really need to embrace this as a national movement. Whether it`s a blue state or a red state or a purple state, we all have an obligation to look out for voting rights for ourselves and for our communities.
REID: Yes.
I mean, and the thing is that, in Virginia right now, where, with expanded voting rights, with the Northam administration having expanded voting rights, Republicans won the governorship.
So, despite the fact that they were successful under expanded voting rights, what they`re doing right now in Virginia is trying to contract voting rights, right? And so it`s like, whether or not they`re successful electorally, they`re still doing it, and which is why we need you everywhere.
I want to just put up for everyone, just so that you guys know where redistricting is right now, where people have -- maps have been overturned, really, only in Ohio so far, right?
How likely is it that -- for instance, New York. New York`s got a fight right now, because even Democrats are actually now trying to do some aggressive things on redistricting in New York.
Where do you think the next battleground on redistricting is going to be?
ELIAS: Yes.
So, first of all, I would add Alabama now to overturned.
REID: OK.
ELIAS: You know, the Republicans are going to go. They have already filed a notice of appeal in federal court.
But let`s understand, there was a victory, and I`m going to put that in the win column for the time being.
REID: Yes.
ELIAS: Where are we looking else? Certainly, North Carolina is right now the next big fight.
Florida.
REID: Always.
ELIAS: The Republicans in Florida proposed a moderate gerrymander.
And DeSantis said, no, no, unless you extremely gerrymander and obliterate black majority districts, we`re -- I`m going to veto the map or I`m not going to support it.
REID: Yes. Yes.
ELIAS: So, I put would Florida on the list.
South Carolina, I would add to that list as well.
REID: Yes.
You`re a very valuable -- you`re an MVP for democracy. We really appreciate you. And we always thank you for giving us some of your time.
Marc Elias, thank you very much.
ELIAS: Thank you.
REID: Appreciate all that you do.
All right, tonight`s "Absolute Worst" is still ahead.
But up next: Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, her chickens, her chickens are coming home to roost, as Democrats in her state start mobilizing to put an end to her obstruction by voting her out of her seat.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:46:27]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-AZ): Well, in the Senate, we no longer have 60 votes. There`s none of this pressure, this false pressure to get to 60.
Eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Kyrsten Sinema`s 180-degree turnabout from progressive Arizona congresswoman to conservative freshman senator doomed Senate Democrats` chances of passing voting protection legislation and garnered her a big rebuke back home.
Arizona Democratic Party voted Saturday to censure Sinema for refusing to support a change to filibuster rules for voting legislation, citing "her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy."
Now, Sinema isn`t up for reelection for another two years, but Democratic groups are making it clear that they`re over her antics.
Voto Latino, one of the nation`s largest Latino grassroots organizations, has launched an Adios Sinema campaign, committing six figures to unseat her in her next primary.
Arizona`s Democratic voters are also increasing -- increasingly fed up with Kyrsten. A poll conducted this month found that 48 percent of Democratic voters there had an unfavorable view of Sinema; 42 had a favorable view. By contrast, only 17 percent had an unfavorable view of Arizona`s junior Democratic senator, Mark Kelly.
I`m joined now by Arizona State Senator Raquel Teran. She`s the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party.
That censure definitely sent sort of sort of shockwaves around the world, Ms. Teran. Is it just that vote on refusing to get on board with doing what it takes to pass voting rights, or is it more than that with Kyrsten Sinema for Democrats in Arizona?
STATE SEN. RAQUEL TERAN (D-AZ): Yes.
Well, our concern is, of course, voting rights, the fact that the filibuster is an outdated rule that is not in our Constitution. And we continue to see attacks at our state legislature level.
And like it was said in the previous statement, all across the country, voting rights are under attack. So this is a very, very important issue, not only to Arizonans, but to everybody in the country, to make sure that democracy prevails and that democracy does not fail.
So, we looked, of course, at the fact that she obstructed the reform of the filibuster to get voting rights done, because, in many ways, the fact that the filibuster is there, all -- many issues that not only Democrats care about, but Arizonans care about, won`t get to the finish line, to the president because of the filibuster.
REID: And let me play...
TERAN: And...
REID: Go on.
TERAN: Yes.
And if people don`t have access to the ballot box...
REID: Yes.
TERAN: ... we can`t advocate for those bills -- for those -- for the legislation that improves people`s lives.
REID: Yes, indeed.
And let me play a couple of your fellow Democrats in the state. This is Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez talking about voting rights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATIE HOBBS (D), ARIZONA SECRETARY OF STATE: Every senator who voted against advancing voting rights in the Senate should be held accountable for that, including our senator.
JONATHAN NEZ, PRESIDENT, NAVAJO NATION: We came out in large numbers for both the senators.
And voting rights, as you know, is very important to indigenous peoples and the Navajo Nation. We should be making laws to make voting easier, not difficult.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:50:00]
REID: You know, it seems to me that the demographics of Arizona, having grown up in Colorado, not too far away, they`re very similar to Colorado, perhaps even more Latino voters there.
It seems that Kyrsten Sinema is taking steps that are not good for her politically long term, if she wants support, at least from Democrats.
Ruben Gallego has put forward -- he`s been put forward as somebody who apparently is meeting with some of Sinema`s donors in New York, who has kind of sort of slightly raised his hand. He hasn`t said that he`s definitely running.
Have Democrats started to consolidate around someone like him, around anyone else instead, as a replacement for Sinema?
TERAN: I will tell you something.
Democrats are working really hard to consolidate our support around Senator Mark Kelly. We have our second senator that we need to defend in November of 2022.
So, my ask to everybody, I will say it in Spanish (SPEAKING SPANISH). Time, money and effort needs to go into 2022, so that we can protect Mark Kelly, expand our victories at a statewide level, win majorities.
So that`s our -- that has to be our laser-focus attention.
REID: Yes.
And Arizona feels like it is kind of right in kind of the belly of the beast of election denialism, of the sort of bizarre tack of the Republican Party toward trying to basically uproot democracy from the ground up.
How concerned are you that the 2022 election that you say is so important that Mark Kelly is running in will be impeded by these anti-democratic activities, small D?
TERAN: Well, our concerns are always -- yes.
Our concerns are always for the rights. As you -- I don`t know if you know, but I`m also a sitting state senator.
REID: Yes.
TERAN: So I get to see every single day the attempts from the Republican Party to curtail our democracy, from getting rid of our vote-by-mail system, to outlaw drop boxes, to even let the folks who led the fraudit kick people off our voter rolls.
So, that is absolutely concerning. But we know that we can organize, and that we can build relationships, fight these bad bills. But, again, this is why we need this federal legislation.
REID: Arizona Democratic Party Chair and state Senator -- I`m going to give you your honorific, because you earned it -- Raquel Teran, thank you very much. Really appreciate you being here this evening.
And up next: A relative newcomer is already making quite a name for himself in our "Absolute Worst" logbook. This one`s going to make your head spin, or maybe explode.
Stick around. We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:57:01]
REID: We have said it over and over and over again. Critical Race Theory is not taught in any K-12 schools in America, full stop, period, with a T at the end.
So, since that is not a thing that politicians can actually ban, the laws against it across the country have become a catch-all for any topics that are controversial or divisive, or really just anything that just plain old makes white people uncomfortable.
And that has led to a whole lot of confusion and chaos, since there really is no objective way to decide if something is controversial, like, in Texas, where, after the state passed a law saying that teachers cannot teach controversial issues without providing diverse perspectives, a school official said that, if teachers have a book on the Holocaust, they should also offer students a book from an opposing perspective on the Holocaust.
Or, in Florida, where a lecture for educators on the history of the civil rights movement got canceled at the last minute due to concerns it would have something to do with Critical Race Theory. I mean, he was just going to talk about our country`s history, but, no, not allowed.
This as legislation is moving forward that would ban any lessons, any lessons that would make white students feel discomfort. Additionally, Ron DeSantis, taking a page from the Texas bounty hunter law, is pushing legislation that would allow parents to sue schools if they teach Critical Race Theory.
But the latest foray into CRT madness comes from none other than Glenn Youngkin, who, after banning Critical Race Theory in his very first executive order, has now set up an e-mail tip line, a tip line -- get this, a tip line -- for parents to report any divisive material that`s taught at their schools, citing an example of an exercise that a school used to talk about privilege, which, once again, is not Critical Race Theory.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
GOV. GLENN YOUNGKIN (R-VA): We`re asking for folks to send us reports and observations that they have that will help us be aware of things like privilege bingo. Be aware of their child being denied their rights that parents have in Virginia.
And we`re going to -- we`re going to make sure that we catalogue it all. And it gives us a great insight into what`s happening at the school level. And that gives us further, further ability to make sure that we`re rooting it out.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
REID: Oh, the First Amendment, the government watching what you`re thinking. Ban the books. Ban the witches. Ban them all.
Thankfully for us, Gen Z is already on it, with a call on TikTok to flood that line with fake tips. And while tip lines are actually helpful in some cases to report bad behavior, this one seems pretty dark.
Our country is already moving far too close to authoritarianism. And while we are not quite there yet, the idea of a tip line just seems a little bit too similar to the informers the Soviet Union relied on, or the tip line that China created last year for citizens to report anyone making illegal comments about China`s history.
So, Glenn Youngkin, for creating an atmosphere where teachers not only need to worry about your unsafe ban on mask mandates, but also getting reported on for teaching difficult topics that might cause some discomfort or introspection, you`re tonight`s "Absolute Worst."
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.