Summary
One week until crucial Virginia governor`s election. Democrats make final push ahead of midterm elections. Debate over banning Beloved rocks Virginia governor`s race. Washington Post Editorial Board says Youngkin`s support for Trump`s big lie makes him unfit for office.
Transcript
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: And artists may be in touch with their flaws. That`s something we can all learn from them. So, shout-out to the boss and the other boss, Michelle Obama.
That does it for us. THE REIDOUT with Joy Reid starts right now. Hi, Joy.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: How are you doing? Wouldn`t you have loved just to be in the room just for the whole side and background conversation? I mean, come on, that is amazing. Thank you very much.
MELBER: Yes. My answer is yes.
REDIT: Yes, all right. Well, thank you very much, Ari, have a great evening.
All right, everybody, good evening. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with Beloved. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Nobel Lauriat Toni Morrison, that tells the story of a runaway enslaved woman named Seth who kills her baby daughter to spare the child from a traumatic life in bondage, widely regarded as Morrison`s masterpiece. It`s impossible to imagine the literarily landscape or even high school English class without it.
The book set both in the reconstruction era and in pre-emancipation flashbacks recounts the horrors of slavery and its impact on the black psyche. But, apparently, for some white parents, the real pain isn`t about black people, no, no. The pain is actually about them, their feelings. Back in 2013 one white parent advocated banning Beloved from Virginia schools because it gave her son, then a high school senior, nightmares.
That parent, appeared in a new ad Monday by the Republican running for governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, who has vowed ban teaching critical race theory, which is not taught in public schools, only in law schools. But no matter, he wants to ban Beloved too.
Such tactics are one of the many reasons that this is the political race to pay close attention to. It tells you everything you need to know about the Republican playbook leading into next week and next year. Glenn Trumpkin -- I`m sorry, I mean, Glenn Youngkin, is locked in a dead heat with Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Just moments from now, President Biden is scheduled to stump for McAuliffe in Arlington. Meanwhile, Youngkin is endorsed by Mango Mussolini himself, but acting just moderate enough to try to snag those suburban swing voters that he needs to prevail.
The fight for the white suburban vote is happening there but also throughout the country, even in states like New Jersey, with Republicans trying to seize control based on playing on the delicate feelings of conservative-ish white suburbanintes.
The tactic is nothing new. The Republicans have simply followed Trump`s lead, pouring high octane gasoline on cultural anxiety over jobs and societal change and weapon anything that makes white Christians feel icky; which apparently is a lot, like losing a fair election and not getting to have the president that they wanted, like having to engage in our actual history, because let`s face it, this isn`t a war against critical race theory, it`s a war against facts and knowledge. Which is why they want Beloved out along with children`s book about Martin Luther King Junior, Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks.
Dido on the masks and vaccines because their personal liberty trusts your right to live, this is why we see Kay Ivey of Alabama do a 180 on vaccines once blaming the unvaccinated on the rise of COVID in her state only to later order state agencies to fight federal vaccine mandates. And it`s why Texas abortion bounty hunter Greg Abbott is now going after trans youth playing sports in schools, triggering cyst (ph) here as about trans girls kicking a soccer ball in elementary school despite zero evidence of that being a problem in Texas or, frankly, anywhere.
In the end, it`s about throwing that let`s go brand and anti-Biden red meat to the base, which brings us back to those fragile white feelings being used to win purple states and suburbs. Remember, Donald Trump lost the election in the suburbs. It`s voters, especially women fled from Trump in his party as their lives were upended by COVID. The Republicans may not want Trump back but they definitely want his voters. And they know the only thing scarier than Trump in the White House tormenting him and the rest of us is having to feel badly about anything.
Joining me now is Errin Haines, Editor at Large for The 19th, Stuart Stevens, and Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project, and Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times Columnist.
I suspect, Errin Haines, my friend, that you have feelings about this idea of banning the book, Beloved, because it makes not the black people who have to go through and relive the drama of enslavement and post-enslavement and the fact that Seth would rather die -- have her child die than be a slave. No, no, no. it`s the feelings of the white parents that we must ban this book. Your thoughts?
ERRIN HAINES, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE 19TH: Joy, Beloved, it is an American classic, right? And think about the trauma that many black students may have felt reading to Kill a Mockingbird, for example, another American classic.
[19:05:02]
It`s one of my favorite books. But the reality is there was a full blown murder in that book and near lynching. That happened in that book and yet, we certainly regard that as a cherished American classic, not to be challenged in anyway.
But lest anybody be confused here, the racial playbook is not limited to the big lie of a rigged election or voter fraud, race-based appeals to white voters are an increasingly perennial aspect of GOP politics and it`s one, you know, not that the former president -- he latched on to that. This was not something that Republicans were following the former president and it`s something that he recognized was an effective tool. It`s one that he capitalized on in his elections, won to his success and to the other not so much. But even if it didn`t work in the presidential level in 2020, it has worked in the past down ballot, which is why it continues to be very much part of the playbook now.
Race stokes fear among white voters, which can be very motivating. It also either works to galvanize or suppress marginalized voters, like black and brown and other minority voters, women, for sure. So this is exactly why you`re seeing Democrats using surrogates to directly appeal to black voters and the party`s biggest star power, from President Biden to Vice President Harris, former President Barack Obama, voting rights champion Stacey Abrams, they`ve both been in Virginia and New Jersey trying to shore up black voters, even as Glenn Youngkin, mysteriously, even as he is kind of denouncing Beloved and getting on that bandwagon, is simultaneously kind of trying to tell black voters that Terry McAuliffe is not the candidate for them because he doesn`t support HBCUs in the state and saying that he would, in fact, do this.
So, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia is really trying to have it both ways in a race that is going to be super tight, where we`ve already seen early voting off the charts in that state with just a few days to go until the election.
REID: Yes, indeed. And, Stuart, talk a little bit about this because this is -- let me actually play a little bit of the Lincoln Project ad, as we have you here. Here is a little bit of the ad that Lincoln Project is running about this race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The choice is stark. Glenn Youngkin is Donald Trump`s candidate, anti-Semitism, racism, deny gay couple the right to marry, that ugly Charlottesville hate. Terry McAuliffe believes in a different Virginia, working together, rejecting hate. Which Virginia do you believe in? Don`t let Donald Trump win.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And The Washington Post Editorial Board went in on him, saying Youngkin has ran what amounts to, in some ways, to a conventional Republican campaign, seeking at once to court white conservatives in swing vote suburban moderates, but he also has indulged and encouraged Republicans who have swallowed former President Trump`s lie that last year`s presidential election was stolen and the American election are not to be in trusted in a moment when democracy itself is under assault, Youngkin chose to dignify fundamental fiction that is subverting our system rather than stand up squarely for the truth.
So, everyone sort of sussed him out as sort of a closet Trumpkin. But what do you make of the way that he`s running and the way that Republicans are trying to steal back suburbs essentially by saying to white parents you have got to fear books about black people or about white people ever having done anything that wasn`t amazing?
STUART STEVENS, SENIOR ADVISER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT: Yes. Ultimately, this is all about race. And I wrote a book about this called, It Was All a Lie, Racist, The Original Sin and the Modern Republican Party. And we used to, as Republicans, admit this and try to change, at least. I mean, Ken Melvin went before the NAACP in 2005, chairman of the party, and apologized for the strategy. All that is out their window now.
This is really a pretty straight up simple race. Donald Trump lost Virginia by ten points on November 3rd, 2020. If you didn`t vote for Donald Trump on November 3rd, 2020, why would you vote for him on November 2nd, 2021? He`s Trump`s candidate. And this whole issue over the only African-American woman to win the Nobel Piece Literature Prize, it`s just embodies all of these things. It`s about denying a history, as you were saying. It`s about race.
And, look, what is this about cancel culture? They`re trying to cancel our only African-American Nobel Lauriat Literature? It just shows the complete fraudulent nature of the entire Republican ethos now.
REID: The question, Michelle, I guess, is will it succeed. Is there enough anxiety in white suburban moms that they will say Beloved is a bridge too far, I can`t have my child reading about things that makes slavery look like it wasn`t wonderful like they want it? I mean, anyway, go on.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: My guess is that actually this Beloved gambit is going to backfire. Because I think part of the campaign against critical race theory works by sort of obfuscating what it is they`re talking about.
[19:10:05]
You know, they will make it out as if there is this kind of Maoist reeducation sessions going on in elementary schools.
I think that Glenn Youngkin, in some sense, has done us a favor by telling us this is what they`re talking about. They`re talking about banning Toni Morrison. They`re talking -- they`ve been talking about banning all sorts of, you know, sort of historical -- the legitimate teaching of history. This isn`t about, you know, kind of browbeating your kids about white privilege. This is about giving them a well-rounded education.
You know, similarly, Glenn Youngkin and his surrogates have been running and have been demagoguing about trans kids in schools and trans bathrooms. And there was a horrible rape of a high school girl in Virginia that they`ve been using and sort of exploiting to act as if trans people are predators. And we now know today that actually it had sort of nothing to do with, you know, gender fluidity or people using the wrong bathrooms, that it was a date rape situation, that it was sort of a dating violence situation. And I think it`s good that it`s coming out before the election.
So, to take them together these two incidents, I think should reveal, you know, maybe not the big lie but some of the big lies behind the Glenn Youngkin campaign.
REID: Yes. I mean, Errin, and I wonder, there has been challenge that Terry McAuliffe has had in sort of energizing base voters, black voters. And I wonder if this stuff starts to bleed over. In your reporting, is there a sense that this is starting waking up that electorate?
HAINES: Well, again, I mean, I think that`s why you`re seeing Democrats pull out the heavy hitters, you know, in the home stretch of this election, President Obama being there, President Biden going there, Vice President Harris going there, Stacey Abrams going there, and on and on. And at least if the early voting totals are to be believed, that is helping to kind of shore up black voters because we know that these are the voters that are getting disillusioned with the governing that they`ve seen in the wake of the record turnout that they helped to propel to get Democrats elected in November.
I was just reading a hit strategies focus group report that showed that black voters are wanting Democrats to fight harder for the issues that they care about and they`re disappointed that that`s not happening. And so to offset that, kind of trying to remind -- using these types of people to remind voters what the stakes are in a race that is going to be very tight and that has already probably exhausted a lot of Virginia voters. Only a few more days of those ads --
REID: And start voting -- the ads are relentless if you live anywhere near Virginia.
I mean, Stuart, let`s put up a map of the 36 gubernatorial races that are coming up in 2022. I mean, Republicans are playing everywhere. They are playing hard. They went for California. They tried for it. How success -- I mean, if they succeed in taking back states that tend to vote Democratic in presidential years, states like Virginia, states like New Jersey, is there any doubt in your mind that those governors, I don`t care what they`re pretending to be now, are going to use their positions to try to take the election for Trump if he runs in 2024, including Youngkin?
STEVENS: Yes, sadly, I think not. This is why Donald Trump, who couldn`t name a governor in America a few years ago, is so interested in governors. It`s because they know that they can pass laws, they`re going to try to pass laws that if the states are close in 2024, they`re going to try to overturn the election with these Republican legislatures.
There is not really any secret about this. They`ve made it clear this is all part of a sort of concentrated strategy. And, again, it`s mostly about race. What was the effort to deny certification? It was based upon those areas that were so mysterious, that were mostly black and supposedly illegal voting. It`s because the country is changing and Republicans had a basic choice. They could either adapt and try to appeal to the non-white voters or they could try to make it harder for non-white voters to vote. And, tragically, they have taken that path.
REID: And, Michelle, I wonder what it means for the way that the Democratic Party behaves if the other parties has made it very clear that they want to be a white interest party and that they`re not hiding that anymore. They`re a white interest party. Have the democrats responded to that in a strong way to be more of a defense of everyone else party? Have they done that in a strong enough way, in your view?
GOLDBERG: I think they haven`t done it in a strong enough way but they are somewhat hamstrung but the incredible narrowness of their majority, right?
[19:15:05]
I mean, I certainly understand white voters who mobilized in such large numbers to get rid of Trump and put Biden in the White House, why they would be disappointed at all the legislation we haven`t seen so far, including voting rights legislation.
At the same time, this is less about the failures of the Democratic Party and more about the stubbornness and kind of bipartisan nihilism, as I`ve called it in the past, of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have sort of made it clear, including Joe Manchin`s case that it`s not clear he`ll fight for his own voting rights legislation, never mind sort of a broader voting rights package.
And so, you know, look, it`s very difficult thing when you have to be in a democratic system, when you have a Democratic Party and an anti-Democratic Party to uphold Democratic norms single handedly.
REID: Yes, indeed, indeed. Errin Haines, Stuart Stevens, Michelle Goldberg, thank you-all very, very much. Toni Morrison was the greatest novelist in American history, period. And I`ll just leave that there.
Up next on THE REIDOUT, getting the very richest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes and the powerful forces who do not want that to happen.
Also, Mo Brooks says it wasn`t me but maybe it was my staff. Classic Washington butt covering as more becomes known about his actions leading up to the Capitol insurrection.
Plus, a stunning report on sexual assault at Liberty University and how administrators threaten to punish students who reported being raped.
And tonight`s absolute worst, knowingly allowing dangerous misinformation to be spread just to pacify the orange baby in the White House.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:20:57]
REID: For the first time in the months that Democrats have been negotiating, Kyrsten Sinema has come out in support of a way to fund the Build Back Better plan, after Democrats announced their corporate minimum tax plan today, which would require companies that report more than $1 billion in profits to pay at least a 15 percent tax rate.
Sinema said in a statement -- quote -- "This proposal represents a commonsense step toward ensuring that highly profitable corporations, which sometimes can avoid the current corporate tax rate, pay a reasonable minimum corporate tax on their profits, just as everyday Arizonans and Arizona`s small businesses do."
Well, all righty then. While nothing is definitive yet, Democrats are likely to move forward with both this plan, as well as a billionaire tax, that that tax would only affect about 700 taxpayers, applying to people who have at least $1 billion in assets or who make $100 million per year for three years in a row.
And it calls on taxes on the increased value of their assets, rather than just on their income. Now, we don`t know where Sinema stands on that. But we do know that -- surprise -- the ultra-rich are against it.
Space colonizer Elon Musk tweeted that eventually they will run out of other people`s money and then they will come for you. Senator 47 Percenter Mitt Romney joined in to say, oh, no, the billionaires might not invest in the stock market.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): If there`s some people getting around the law somehow or there`s a loophole, fix the loophole.
But don`t create a new tax, which is going to encourage high-income people not to invest in starting businesses, not to invest in the stock market, not to create more jobs here. That is a serious mistake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And then there`s Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell saying the quiet part out loud, that people who don`t have vast sums of money only have themselves to blame and shouldn`t be helped. Did I mention he married into money?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): This harebrained scheme would have the IRS penalized people who`ve invested wisely and compensating people who have invested poorly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: He invested widely in marrying a really rich woman.
With me now is Robert Reich, former labor secretary under President Clinton and professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
I would like to give you the opportunity in a much less snarky way than I did to respond to these very wealthy men in the United States Senate who say that, if you tax wealthy people, they will stop investing, they will stop investing in the stock market, they will take their money, roll it up in a ball, and hide it under their pillows.
Your thoughts?
ROBERT REICH, FORMER U.S. LABOR SECRETARY: In other words, kind of a strike by the wealthy.
REID: Yes.
REICH: Is that`s what we`re talking about strike?
REID: A strike, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
REICH: Well, that they have been threatening that for years every time there is a proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy.
And, by the way, the wealthy, the tax rates keep on going down both on the wealthy and on big corporations, Joy. But every time there has been a proposal to increase them, they talk about strikes, they`re not going to invest, they are going to hold back their money.
Well, the reality is, they have got to put their money somewhere, right? I mean, they could put it on their pillows, but it doesn`t return very much of a return under their pillows. So they are going to go into the stock market. They`re going to go somewhere with their money.
That`s really a red herring.
REID: You tweeted earlier that if you can afford to go to space, you`re like, hear me out. If you can afford to like go into space for like 30 minutes on a space tourism thing, you can probably afford to pay some taxes.
Last year, according to CNBC, the top 1 percent dodged $163 billion in annual tax. That`s an estimate by the Treasury. When that money isn`t collected, somebody still has to pay for the things that we do in this country. Who ends up making up for it?
REICH: Well, that`s a very important point, because you and I and other people who are not billionaires, we are the ones who have to pay the taxes that the top people don`t pay.
I mean, with Elon Musk, for example, who earned, what was it, $36 billion yesterday, yesterday...
REID: Yesterday.
REICH: ... $36 billion in one day, when he says, in response to this plan of taxing billionaires, no, you mustn`t do that because eventually they will run out of money and they will come after you, what he doesn`t address and doesn`t acknowledge is that, if he is not paying his fair share, then we have to make up the difference.
[19:25:18]
REID: Yes.
Let`s talk about some of these ideas. I was going to read what Marjorie Taylor Greene had to say, but I don`t take her seriously enough to read it. So I`m just going to skip that.
This is the potential constitutional challenge. If a billionaires tax actually happens, this tax would almost certainly face legal challenge, given the clear incentive for a taxpayer to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to save billions on taxes. The likely argument, just for you to address, if you could, that taxing capital gains that have not yet been realized falls outside the income tax allowance in the 16th Amendment.
That`s a sort of complicated argument, that it`s unconstitutional to tax gains somebody hasn`t actually cashed it and realized. What do you make of that argument?
REICH: Well, nothing. I mean, there`s nothing to it.
(LAUGHTER)
REICH: Because we have -- Joy, we have an estates tax -- the estate tax. We have a capital gains tax. We have a property tax. I mean, we tax wealth in all sorts of ways.
So for people right now to say, oh, no, you mustn`t talk wealth, it`s unconstitutional, it just negates and overlooks all of the ways in which we`re already taxing wealth. I mean, I can`t predict what this Supreme Court -- this Supreme Court is dominated by Republican appointees.
REID: Yes.
REICH: They could say anything.
REID: Yes.
REICH: But we can`t assume what they`re going to do before they do it and constrain public policy-making enjoy in light of what they could do.
REID: Yes.
I would love for you to talk a little bit.
So we know that there`s a corporate minimum tax that Elizabeth Warren is working on with Ron Wyden and Angus King. Like, they`re working on all these different sort of ways to try to pay for the Build Back Better plan.
But can you just talk about the ways -- you were labor secretary. I feel like no one talks about the taxes ordinary people pay every day. It`s really expensive to be broke, right? And you`re paying for so many things that cost you extra because you don`t have a lot of money.
Can you just talk about the way sort of the tax burden really actually does fall in weird different ways, because of sales taxes and others, on working people, no?
REICH: Absolutely.
Sales taxes are something that people -- every time the income tax is talked about, and wealthy people say, oh, you mustn`t do that, they don`t realize that sales taxes take a much bigger bite out of the incomes of poor and middle-class people than they do out of wealthy people.
I mean, Elon Musk doesn`t -- I mean, his sales taxes are a rounding error in the rounding error of the rounding error. It doesn`t even -- it doesn`t even occur to him. But poor people and middle-class people pay a lot in terms of their typical dollars going to sales taxes or so-called sin taxes or any kind of -- I mean, there`s so many taxes that we pay, we may not even realize it.
I mean, look at the tax your -- on a gallon of gasoline, which is going -- supposedly going to roads.
REID: Yes.
REICH: I mean, that is -- all of it takes a bigger bite out of the middle- and lower-income people than upper-income people.
REID: I would almost -- you could almost argue the lottery too.
Like, we`re -- poor people spend a lot of their disposable income on -- between rent, child care, and there`s not a lot left at the end. As you said, Elon Musk doesn`t have to really need to purchase anything. So, he doesn`t have to ever pay sales tax, because he doesn`t have to buy anything.
Anyway...
REICH: Actually, Joy, this is an interesting thing, because what happens, if you have a huge amount of money like Elon Musk, you don`t even use your money to buy stuff.
REID: That`s right.
REICH: You basically borrow against your fortune.
REID: That`s right.
REICH: And that -- really, that borrowing handles all of your expenses.
I mean, it -- this is why using a very narrow gauge income tax -- I mean, last year, Jeff Bezos, well, how much did he earn?; $81,000, $81,000 in earnings.
(CROSSTALK)
REID: Right, on his W-2, yes.
(CROSSTALK)
REICH: He`s the second richest man in the world right now.
REID: There`s a reason that the only time Donald Trump ever paid taxes was when he worked for the same company that I work for, when he worked for NBC, and they actually paid him with a W-2. That`s the only time he paid taxes.
(LAUGHTER)
REICH: Exactly.
And the lesson there is don`t work for NBC, right?
REID: What did you say?
REICH: I said the lesson there is don`t work for NBC.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
REICH: The lesson there, obviously, is if you are Donald Trump or you`re Elon Musk or you`re Jeff Bezos, basically, don`t register that you have any income at all.
REID: That`s right. That`s right.
REICH: And, by the way, this is the same thing big corporations are doing, because...
REID: Absolutely.
(CROSSTALK)
REICH: The last two years, Amazon has basically said to its shareholders, it`s got $45 billion a year, but it pays a tiny little percentage of that in taxes because it manipulates the tax code.
REID: Exactly. Yes. Yes.
It is a great conversation. I wish we could spend longer, but we are literally out of time. They`re in my ear telling me, stop, stop. It`s time to go. We got to go to commercial, so we can pay for all this.
Robert Reich, thank you very much. Always great talking with you.
Still ahead on THE REIDOUT: A Republican congressman up to his elbows and allegations he was involved in planning the January 6 insurrection throws his own staff under the bus, saying, if they were involved, he`d be really proud of them, but don`t look at me.
[19:30:08]
Thanks a lot, boss.
We will be right back.
(LAUGHTER)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: It is clear from multiple reports that Congressman Mo Brooks figures prominently in the events of January 6.
Most recently, "Rolling Stone" reported that Brooks was among several Republicans or their staffs who spoke with an organizer and a planner of the so-called Stop the Steal rally. And while NBC News has not independently verified that report, Brooks has also been implicated by pro- Trump Organizer Ali Alexander in the planning of another rally at the Capitol that day.
Now Brooks is doing some damage control. He`s denying that he was personally involved in planning the rallies of January 6, but, in the process, he`s throwing his own congressional staff under the bus.
In an interview with Alabama local news, Brooks said he doesn`t know whether his staff interacted with an organizer and a planner or the January 6 rally and other protests because he had not spoken to them about it. In other words, he`s claiming ignorance of what his own staff was up to while he runs for cover.
But Brooks also added this -- quote -- "Quite frankly, I`d be proud of them if they did help organize a First Amendment rally to protest voter fraud and election theft."
It comes as D.C. police officer Michael Fanone urges the Select Committee to identify any members of Congress or their staff who may have participated.
[19:35:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL FANONE, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: I want to know if there were elected leaders and staff members who may have conspired in the activities of that day.
I think that their constituents and the American people deserve to know if there were individuals who participated in sedition against this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: With me now is Congressman Ted Lieu of California. He was an impeachment manager earlier this year.
And, Congressman, starting with Mo Brooks for just a moment, he`s somebody who tried to lie and cover up what happened on January 6. He falsely claimed that there`s growing evidence that Antifa was involved, that it was orchestrated to sort of make Trump people look bad, et cetera. He hasn`t exactly been an honest broker.
What do you make of him throwing his staff under the bus?
REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): Thank you, Joy, for your question.
Let me first say that I`m proud that my staff had nothing to do with the January 6 insurrectionist rally that led to attack on the Capitol.
What I want to know is, did Mo Brooks talked to his staff before the rally, because he wore a bulletproof vest on January 6? What did he know that none of us knew and what caused him to wear that bulletproof vest in advance?
REID: And I wonder if he issued bulletproof vests to his staff? Did he care enough about them to make sure they were protected? Have you heard any news about that?
LIEU: I have not. But since he threw his staff under the bus, I would highly doubt he was trying to protect his staff.
And I also note that we`re about a year from the last presidential election, and Mo Brooks and Republicans still cannot explain who stole the election, nor how it was done. And that`s because the election was not stolen. Trump simply lost.
REID: Well, I mean, the going theory of people like Mo Brooks seems to be that it`s not possible that Donald Trump lost because he -- Joe Biden`s voters, let`s be frank, were people of color, and Donald Trump`s voters were largely white in rural and looked like them.
Here`s Mo Brooks back in 2014 explaining what he thinks is sort of the grand design of Democrats in this country.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
REP. MO BROOKS (R-AL): This is a part of the war on whites that`s being launched by the Democratic Party.
And the way in which they`re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. It`s a part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS: That`s a little -- that characterization is a little out there, don`t you think?
BROOKS: But that has is, in effect, what they`re doing, though.
INGRAHAM: I just think that phraseology might not be the best choice.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
REID: I mean, when Laura Ingraham thinks you have gone too far on a racial topic, you might have gone too far.
I mean, what do you -- I mean, I wonder if you feel that, even if the January 6 Committee is able to give us all the facts of what happened, the fact that you have members of Congress who believe that the Democratic Party is waging a war on white people, and that, if that`s their fundamental belief, I wonder what you think even a very definitive report out of the January 6 Committee, what impact will it even have on Republicans?
LIEU: Joe Biden assembled a large, diverse coalition across America, and he beat Donald Trump by over seven million votes, and that included white people, Asian people, black people, Hispanic people, all sorts of folks across America.
So, Mo Brooks is simply not telling the truth when he`s trying to use a race war in how he characterizes this.
What we`re looking for is anyone who participated in the January 6 insurrection or helped plan it. And if they did, they should be investigated, and they should have no place in Congress.
REID: We know now that the White House has already said no to executive privilege. There is a contempt vote against Steve Bannon. The fight is on for that.
Do you believe that members of Congress should be subpoenaed, people like Mo Brooks should also be subpoenaed by the commission?
LIEU: Absolutely.
Nobody should be above the law, not members of Congress, not former White House staff. And I note that, in the Nixon tapes case, the whole point of the Supreme Court decision is that you cannot use executive privilege to shield information if there are crimes that are involved.
And it`s clear there were hundreds of crimes that were committed on January 6; 140 police officers were injured.
REID: Indeed.
Because you had officers injured, and these are the same officers who protect the staff and protect members such as yourself, do you believe that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, who are still justifying what happened on January 6, do you believe they should be expelled from Congress?
LIEU: Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be in Congress at all.
If you look at her recent statement, she basically is saying that January 6 was -- quote, unquote -- "just a riot." It was more than that. People died. Police officers were brutalized.
[19:40:02]
But she also justified it saying that the Declaration of Independence was about overthrowing tyranny. I simply note that America was founded because we were breaking away from a monarchy. And then we established a constitutional republic, the same one we have had for hundreds of years.
That was the same Electoral College system that the framers used that we use, and Donald Trump simply lost the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Marjorie Taylor Greene should not be in Congress if she is still disputing the results of the election and try and justify the violent attack on our Capitol.
REID: Congressman Ted Lieu, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, sir. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful evening.
All right, coming up next: Conservative Liberty University is being accused of mishandling and dismissing student reports of sexual assault, and, in many cases, punishing those who came forward.
The ProPublica reporter who broke the story and a former administrator at Liberty join me next.
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[19:45:05]
REID: Liberty University is one of the largest private evangelical universities in the country, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The school founded by evangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. is now being accused of ignoring years of alleged rape and sexual misconduct. They`re also being accused of punishing the alleged victims for breaking the school`s moral code by reporting their allegations.
More than a dozen women have sued the school, claiming that Liberty University created an atmosphere that increased the likelihood of sexual assault and rape. On Sunday, ProPublica published a detailed investigation into those allegations and the claims that the school did nothing about it.
What they found is deeply troubling. Interviews with more than 50 former Liberty students and staffers, as well as records from more than a dozen cases, show an ethos of sexual purity has led to -- has led to school officials discouraging, dismissing and even blaming female students who have tried to come forward with claims of sexual assault.
Ten additional former students told the reporter that they chose not to report their rapes because they were afraid of being punished. Liberty ignored ProPublica`s request for comment.
But the university senior vice president for communications, Scott Lamb, was so alarmed by the allegations that he urged the school to address the claims. Lamb is now suing Liberty, claiming he was fired for his vocal opposition to a proposed strategy to confront the claims and for refusing to participate in an alleged cover-up.
The university spokesperson told Politico that Lamb`s advice on how to publicly respond to the Jane Doe Title IX lawsuit played no role in his termination.
Joining me now is Hannah Dreyfus, Abrams Reporting Fellow for ProPublica. She wrote the story that I just referenced. And Scott Lamb, the former senior vice president of communications at Liberty University who is currently suing the school.
I want to start with you, Hannah.
This was a harrowing story. Explain to us the punishment that these young women who came forward and reported being raped received and what that was based on.
HANNAH DREYFUS, PROPUBLICA: Sure. Absolutely.
So, at Liberty University, they have a strict student code of conduct, which they refer to as the Liberty Way. And students have to sign this code of conduct when they first come to campus. And it delineates a very strict way of acting and being that is supposed to fall in line with the evangelical Christian expectation for the school.
And among the things that are not allowed are any sort of drinking, partying, but also even consensual sex is against the school code. And students do stand to be punished if they are caught engaging in consensual sex.
The question then stands, what happens if nonconsensual sex happens on college campuses, as it inevitably does? And what we were seeing is that students were punished for different violations of the Liberty Way when they came forward and said that they had been assaulted or otherwise engaged sexually in a nonconsensual context.
So what we`re seeing here is the cultural more of sexual purity and purity culture expanding to an extent that it affects women`s ability to come forward and share what happened to them.
REID: Let me just be clear. Does this purity policy and the Liberty Way apply to male and female students or just female students?
DREYFUS: Good point. It does -- it`s supposed to apply equally to both mail and female students.
However, in most of the cases that we looked at, women were the ones who were threatened with punishment when they came forward with allegations.
REID: Yes.
DREYFUS: I will say that there were as well men students who were threatened for being punished for breaking the Liberty Way when they were involved in the assault. So if somebody came forward and said, I believe I was assaulted by this student, that student would be called in and held -- held accountable for his supposed violation of the Liberty Way.
REID: Right.
DREYFUS: Whether or not he would be accountable for the assault is still a question.
And, in most cases, in all the cases that we saw, the men were not held responsible for the allegations of assault.
REID: Exactly.
And in one case, one of the young men sued the young woman who alleged that he assaulted her, saying that he -- had disparaged him. It is a harrowing story.
And, Scott, you were in the Communications Department there until October 6. Explain why you believe that you were fired. What is it that they wanted you to say about what was happening?
SCOTT LAMB, FORMER LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS: So, I love Liberty University. I`m the best friend I would consider them to actually have in this matter.
[19:50:00]
For the last eight months, from January through August of this year, I have been giving interviews to the what I would call so-called independent investigation team that was set up after our last president resigned. Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned. They brought in an outside auditing firm that we were all told and the world was told, we`re going to get to the bottom of everything it needs to get to the bottom of.
They called me -- and I didn`t have a choice -- in there. They called me in to testify, give testimony about what I`d seen and heard. I have only been there since 2018. I have seen a lot. I never tell a lie. And they asked me honest questions. I told them who was to blame, in addition to Jerry Falwell Jr., for the culture. And those people that were to blame were the people who oversaw Jerry Falwell Jr.
That would be the Board of Trustees, and specifically the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, and specifically the chairman of the Executive Committee, who is -- was my boss, until he fired me three weeks ago.
So I indicted my own boss, as the lawsuit shows, for a failure to actually be transparent in what was going on. I don`t know the reasoning for that, except perhaps to save reputation. So that`s what my lawsuit alleges, is that they were against full transparency, even while they told the world that they were getting to the bottom of everything.
REID: Right.
I mean, Title IX requires university officials report any accusations of sexual violence to a Title IX coordinator. They`re supposed to give young women an opportunity to go to the police. That wasn`t happening.
It seems to me that the culture -- and this is for you, Scott Lamb -- it seems that the culture was to say to the young women that you were violating these purity rules because you were at this party, and that the males involved were not responsible.
But I don`t see how that`s any different from the way that Jerry Falwell Jr. was treated there, in which -- meaning to say that, if you`re a man, there`s a wide parameter of sexual behavior that you`re allowed to engage in, and that`s not a problem. It`s only a problem for women.
It`s no different from Jerry Falwell`s attitude toward Donald Trump to say, yes, there`s 20-some-odd women who`ve accused him of rape, but it`s them. They`re the problem. Women are the problem.
Isn`t the treatment that these girls got at Liberty literally the Liberty University way and their philosophy from Trump on down?
LAMB: Well, listen, I believe and I allege and lawsuit that things actually happened to these victims. And I don`t know them personally. I don`t know all their stories personally, except for what`s in the lawsuit. I believe them.
And I spoke those words to executive leadership. I`m a senior vice president. I spoke those words. I believe them.
And what I continue to get pushback from was, you believe them? How can you believe them? Their stories are shady, their short stories are shaky. Even after I was fired, I had a vice president call me up and say, what`s your beef? And I said, because the Title IX victims are not having a hearing. They weren`t heard.
And I was -- and he told me, you don`t really believe those stories, do you? And I`m like, yes, this is the whole point. Fellow V.P.s, not all of them, not all of them -- there was a whole handful that are as concerned as I am. They probably don`t want to lose their jobs, now that I have lost mine, for saying so.
We have got to have transparency .I call on Liberty University to hire Rachael Denhollander, who`s very well-known in this field, to come in and form a task force that will set up a true third-party investigation. I also call on them to release all people under NDAs, because when these things have happened in the past, an NDA and a buyout comes.
If they release people from their NDAs, the house of cards is going to fall. That`s what I allege in my lawsuit.
REID: And my last question to you, for Scott, and then I have one more for Hannah, do you believe that the culture at Liberty University is permissive of male promiscuity and sexual violence, and only sort of policing the sexuality of women?
Do you believe that`s just the culture there? It sure seems it.
(CROSSTALK)
LAMB: I would have to say no. I`m -- I would have to say no, from my personal anecdotal experience.
I have four sons in Liberty University. They now are without tuition because dad got fired. But, at any rate, they are in there. They`re mix and mingle. They have got friends. I think probably the policing goes both ways. I don`t perceive from them -- again, anecdotally, just anecdotally speaking -- that, in the current situation, it leans more towards policing the ladies.
What I will say is that, when people have had situations where they have been violated sexually, I don`t think there`s a systemic -- there`s a healthy system put into place. I think that those women and men have situations -- look, my son had a homosexual friend who`s a student who was raped last year, and he didn`t report it. He`s homosexual, so double whammy there.
All right, how is he going to report that? So, he was homosexual and he was raped. No way that`s going to be reported.
But it was off-campus. So I think the university officials would probably say, if it was off-campus, it wasn`t really supposed to be in our records anyway.
And that`s what I have a problem with, the legalism of the law, instead of the spirit.
REID: And, Hannah, I`ll give you the final word on this.
As you looked through this place in the documentary evidence that it`s in this really extensive report, did you see a disparity in the way that the university culture treats the sexuality of women and their, whatever it is they`re doing, and the sexual behavior, including violent sexual behavior, of men?
[19:55:14]
DREYFUS: Well, I mean, what I can say is that I spent the last five months interviewing women and speaking to women about their stories.
And when I was initially researching this story, I -- there was no gender divide. Had there been cases of assault that a male felt had not been dealt with properly, I would have been more than willing to investigate that case as well.
REID: Right.
DREYFUS: I think that, statistically, men are less likely to come forward in the case of sexual assault. So that is something to keep in mind as well.
But the case that I`m seeing, the way the women were treated was that they had definitely put themselves in a situation where they were to blame for what happened to them.
REID: Right.
DREYFUS: Whether or not that would apply equally or differently to men students, I can`t say because I did not speak with them about this specific experience.
REID: It is a harrowing story. I think everyone should read it. It`s in ProPublica.
Hannah Dreyfus, thank you very much. Scott Lamb, thank you very much. We appreciate both of you being here this evening.
And we will be right back.
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REID: You know what`s the absolute worst? Running out of time. But I promise you, we will do the "Absolute Worst" tomorrow night, so be sure to tune in.
That is THE REIDOUT.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.