Summary
The man who chaired Donald Trump`s 2017 Inaugural Committee, Tom Barrack, was arrested today and charged with violating federal lobbying laws. GOP Rep. Steve Scalise got his first dose of the COVID vaccine. Systemic racism creates life expectancy gap. Election objector Jim Jordan was named as a member of the January 6 Committee.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: We can eke it out to make you smile or laugh. Because what`s a little democracy Armageddon without a laugh or two? So, thank you all for rolling with us, readers. And we love you guys. And here`s to year two and beyond. We are officially toddlers.
And that is tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.
TOM BARRACK, CHAIRMAN, TRUMP`S INAUGURAL COMMITTEE: I`m here because Donald Trump is one of my closest friends for 40 years.
HAYES: Another one of Trump`s top advisors arrested, accused of illegally lobbying Trump for years as a secret agent for the UAE.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: UAE is big stuff. UAE is very powerful, very strong.
HAYES: Tonight, the wild charges against the ex-president`s inaugural chairman and the rampant pattern of illegality on Team Trump. Then --
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: If the vaccine is so great, wouldn`t it sell itself?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 99 percent of the people who are dying from COVID are unvaccinated.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s their choice.
HAYES: how the anti-vax message made it into the mainstream through social media and right-wing repetition.
Plus, what the death of Biz Markie says about structural racism in America.
And why is the Speaker of the House considering letting this guy investigate the insurrection?
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Well, I mean, we know what this is about. This is - - this is impeachment round three for the Democrats.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. We have big breaking news tonight of yet another close Trump associate arrested and charged with crimes of corruption. His name is Tom Barrack. He is a billionaire businessman. He is accused of illegally lobbying Donald Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York today unsealing a huge seven count 46-page indictment. We`re going to go through it. We`ve got a reporter who`s reporting on this. But this is a very important development for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which because when we last met here at this desk last night, we were talking about the fate of the rule of law in the era of Donald Trump and particularly in the period where the Justice Department changed hands from Attorney General William Barr, and then the final days of the Trump administration, the lackey Jeff Rosen, to Joe Biden`s new Attorney General Merrick Garland.
And last night, here on this program, we were critical of the fact that Justice Department had, according to reporting, declined to prosecute Trump`s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. That was according to reporting from both the Associated Press and government executive. Now, that decision not to prosecute came after the Commerce Department`s own inspector general found that Ross had lied to Congress about a citizenship question that he wanted to add to the 2020 census.
We have an important update to that story. The AP and government executive have both issued corrections clarifying that in fact, it was the Trump Justice Department that made the decision not to prosecute Ross, not the Biden administration, which is, of course, a very, very big difference.
But it`s also right in line with the themes that we were talking about generally last night about the rule of law in the Trump era and what is to be done about the criminal enterprise that was the Trump administration, because keep in mind, this is an astounding fact, but it`s true. Wilbur Ross is the fifth member of Donald Trump`s cabinet who is referred to Justice Department prosecutors, the fifth. And in all cases, all five, the DOJ decided not to prosecute.
The first was former Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke who was involved in multiple scandals, including chartering expensive jets and getting involved in the land deal in his home state of Montana. There was former Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta who infamously gave sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart plea deal when he was U.S. Attorney in Florida.
There was former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, remember him. Remember how he questioned the credibility of a veteran who reported being sexually assaulted at a VA hospital. And then, who could forget Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell`s spouse, also the former Transportation Secretary who allegedly directed staff to do personal work for her and her father.
The Trump Department of Justice declined to prosecute all of those people, which brings us to today`s news. Astonishingly, yet another high-level Trump associate, a key figure from the Trump campaign was arrested and charged with serious crimes. As I mentioned earlier, his name is Tom Barrack. You may remember him from his utterly cringe-worthy bad wedding toast speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention when he was a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign.
He helped convince Donald Trump to hire his old friend, a chap by the name of Paul Manafort as campaign manager. And after Trump won the election, Barrack became Chair of the Inaugural Committee. You may also remember that because that committee of course was later investigated and charged with misusing funds to enrich Trump`s family business. Barrack was also a frequent promoter of the then-President-Elect going on TV to praise his brilliance.
[20:05:07]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARRACK: The man is brilliant. So, what he did last night, the foreign community had no idea who this man is. I can tell you for sure last night the cables were flying, saying this president-elect is so much better, so much more thoughtful, so much more culturally adapt than anybody thought.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I`m sorry. I hadn`t actually seen the clip. I just read the transcript. It`s even better when he delivers it. That was two days before the inauguration, after Trump ruffles some feathers for calling NATO obsolete. But Tom Barrack`s background isn`t actually in politics or public relations, it`s in private equity, in real estate investment around the world. And Barrack has extensive business and personal links to the Middle East.
Well, today, he was arrested on federal charges, a seven-count indictment accusing him of acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates. Prosecutors say that Barrack inserted language into a draft speech for then-Candidate Trump that praised an Emirate official, also allegedly repeatedly promoted UAE and its foreign policy interests during media appearances after soliciting direction from officials.
Barrack and his two co-defendants, according to the indictment, acted to aid the UAE in his dealings with the executive branch of the U.S. government, agreeing to advocate for the appointment of individuals favored by the UAE in the new administration. These charges are a result of a nearly three-year investigation by federal prosecutors and the FBI. They are especially notable because they appear to be an example the Department of Justice doing the right thing, which is to say going over the facts and law lead them and bring the case against a high, very powerful and high profile person just as we were advocating for last night.
It is also amazing to just take a step back and marvel at the growing rap sheet of Trump world, right? The law and order guy, remember him? Yes. In addition to Tom Barrack, there`s his friend Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, convicted of tax and bank fraud, and then pardoned by Trump. There`s Steve Bannon, former chief strategist and senior counselor to the president who was arrested on the yacht of a Chinese billionaire accused of swindling Trump supporters and never had to stand trial because he was also pardoned.
There is Roger Stone, fixer and advisor of Trump, convicted by a jury of his peers of lying to Congress and then pardoned. There`s Michael Cohen, Trump`s lawyer and fixer who pleaded guilty to charges of tax fraud and campaign finance violations. There`s Michael Flynn, Trump`s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and was also pardoned by Trump. Rick gates, former Trump campaign deputy chairman and an inaugural official who pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements.
There is of course, Donald Trump himself whose business is now facing tax evasion charges that are brought by the Manhattan District Attorney and whose former CFO is facing those charges as well. Truly remarkable situation when you add it all up.
Rebecca Davis O`Brien is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal where she covers white-collar law enforcement, and she joins me now. Rebecca, first, just sort of talk us through what is alleged in this indictment. What law did Barack violate?
REBECCA DAVIS O`BRIEN, REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Sure, thanks for having me. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Tom Barrack working -- of working -- I guess there`s two main groups of charges. The first is that he worked alongside a former employee and an Emirati businessman to violate the law requiring foreign agents to register with the attorney general. So, basically acting as a sort of conduit for promoting Emirati United Arab Emirates political wishes to the Trump campaign and then to the administration.
But second -- secondly, Mr. Barrack himself faces five additional charges that are sort of broadly considered obstruction charges. There`s an obstruction of justice count, and then four counts of lying to the FBI in a June 2019 interview with them about the -- about his dealings with the Emiratis.
HAYES: So, there`s some fascinating stuff in the indictment. And again, this is these are -- these are allegations that are brought by the government. He`s innocent till proven guilty. They appear to show like tight coordination between Barrack and Emiratis even on who`s going to be appointed the U.S. ambassador, and even at one point floating the idea that like, you`ll be the U.S. ambassador, and then that`ll be great for us.
Here`s the thing I couldn`t quite get. Like, what`s the motive here, right? Is it just that he has so much business investment in that region coming into the UAE and the Saudis that this is his way of kind of greasing the wheels for that business?
O`BRIEN: Well, I mean, certainly a lot of unanswered questions here. And I can`t pretend to know all the answers. But what did strike me about the indictment is there isn`t a suggestion of -- explicit suggestion of money changing hands. And Mr. Barrack, you know, has a lot of money himself. He is a successful businessman. You know, I was sort of struck by two things. One is the depth and extent of the correspondence between these three men as they, you know, go about like allegedly alleged editing op-eds and speeches and policy platforms.
But also, I think what -- when you say it`s just -- it`s not quite clear what he stood to gain from this yet. And I`m sure that prosecutors will lay that out as we go forward. But, you know, I think as with a lot of these investigations into the Trump administration and allegations of foreign interference, there`s sort of an undertone of power, an access to power. And I think that that is -- you know, that`s sort of alleged to be, broadly speaking, a motivating factor.
[20:10:43]
HAYES: Yes. You know, during the Cold War, they would always say, right, that spies would be turned, you know, for money or if ideological reasons. There were some people that, you know, had an ideological predilection towards the Soviet Union. So, I`m reading through the indictment thinking like, I don`t know, this Barrack is just like a real UAE lover. I`ve never encountered second person in the wild, like someone who just like, man, I really want to see that the United Arab Emirates, like interests are represented in the U.S. government. And it`s never quite spelled out, but I imagine that we`ll learn a lot more. What is his status right now? He was denied bail. Is that correct? He`s in custody?
O`BRIEN: Yes, he`s in custody right now. There was a hearing -- he was arrested in California, where he lives. And today -- this afternoon, a magistrate judge in federal court in California ordered him detained pending -- temporary detainment pending a hearing next Monday. And then eventually, he`ll make his way to New York to Brooklyn federal court to enter a plea and deal with the next steps of the investigation.
HAYES: I should note, my understanding is one of the co-defendant is an Emirati businessmen fled the country back in 2018 after being questioned by the FBI, and has never been seen since. Is that right? Am I having it right?
O`BRIEN: I`m sure -- I`m sure somebody has seen him, but the federal prosecutors consider him at large, yes.
HAYES: Yes, yes, someone has seen him. Rebecca Davis O`Brien who`s been reporting on this story, thanks so much for joining us tonight.
O`BRIEN: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Matt Miller`s the former chief spokesperson for Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder. Paul Butler is a former federal prosecutor in the DOJ`s Public Integrity section, now, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. They both join me.
You know, Matt, last night, we were talking about the sort of the many decisions that has to have to be made by the Department of Justice. In this case, I think this is a frontline Eastern District investigation and prosecution. But what does it say to you that this has come to fruition?
MATT MILLER, MSNBC JUSTICE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it does seem to me that that, you know, Bill Barr for all of his flaws as an Attorney General, and I think there are many, you know, we saw him interviewing a number of times in cases brought by line prosecutors to stop them from going forward to overturn their recommendations. There were some cases that maybe just because they were so strong, he didn`t intervene in or wasn`t able to intervene in or maybe he just made the choice that they were righteous cases not ought to go forward.
This case, clearly, you know, if you look at the evidence in this indictment today, the evidence is pretty strong. And I don`t know if, you know, the Attorney General didn`t stop it because it would have been too politically costly for him to do so. You`d have had resignations as he had in other cases he intervened in, or they just thought it was a case that went forward but -- or that that ought to go forward because it was a good case.
But I think it is -- it is, you know, somewhat interesting that, you know, for all of the flaws of Bill Barr, the Justice Department did under his watch produce some outcomes that Donald Trump didn`t love.
HAYES: Yes. And Paul, just talked a little bit of this public integrity unit which is -- well, you worked in a public integrity unit I think main Justice, which my understanding there`s field office ones or in the U.S. Attorney`s offices, and then the main justice. You know, how a case like this goes through those offices where I imagine there`s a lot of, you know, very close eyes if you`re going to do something like this.
PAUL BUTLER, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. And the question goes to motive because all Barrack had to do was to register, and then everything that he did would have been legal. And you literally just go online, you fill out some forms, and pay $305. This registration requirement is about national security and transparency. If you`re talking to the U.S. government on behalf of another country, you have to disclose it. This law has been around since the 1930s. There have been about 50 criminal prosecutions, including a Paul Manafort who pled guilty to violating this law.
One of the interesting things about this indictment though, Chris, is it actually presents President Trump as a victim. It says that he was one of the people who was betrayed by Barrack`s allegiance to a foreign government.
[20:15:03]
HAYES: You know, you mentioned FARA, and of course this is a law from the 30s. The idea is that if someone is advocating for the interests of a foreign government that has to be transparent, has to be registered, that has to be a matter of public record. People know what the angle is of that individual. And yet we`ve seen A, enforcement of that has been lacks for a very long time.
And Matt, I feel like, you know, that lack is enforcement sort of reached this crescendo in the Trump era where it`s very clearly the case that there`s foreign interests crawling all over the White House using all kinds of backchannels all over the place to try to get to this president who is a very easy man to get to in some ways compared to the more institutionalized bureaucracy of a normal president.
MILLER: Yes, look, you`re right. The law was hardly enforced for decades. Usually, if you were found to -- if the Justice Department found that you were violating FARA, they wouldn`t indict you, they`d send you a letter and ask that you go to register. They actually allow you to cure the crime you had committed, which is obviously not something they do in most cases.
And I think what happened is, you know, I suspect the Justice Department was looking at all the activity around the White House and saw that, look, there`s something really nefarious going in here in all kinds of circumstances. Obviously, the Russian investigation took up a lot of attention. There are people indicted for that. But one of the things about the Russia investigation, it captured so much attention that I think there were some other, you know, really ugly scandals, and this is one of them.
Remember that, you know, there are other people involved in the UAE lobbying. Elliott Broidy who ended up being, you know, pleading guilty to a different FARA crime for a different country, even though he was involved in the UAE scheme. George Nader who ended up going to jail for child trafficking -- child sex trafficking and child pornography. He was also involved in this UAE scheme. It was really ugly.
And so, I think the Justice Department looked at it and said, we have to find a way to police this. And what they did is decided to in some senses dust off a law that hadn`t been used and use it very aggressively. And it`s going to have real ramifications going forward, because now they`ve -- you know, they`ve beefed up the FARA Enforcement Unit. And because of this sort of crimes of the Trump era, you`re going to have this law now being policed much more aggressively for, you know, all sorts of actors in Washington.
HAYES: Paul, I was -- I got my start as a reporter in Chicago. And Chicago is of course, a great place to report on political corruption legendarily so. And I have to say, even in -- even in the experience I had there with some really sort of astonishingly corrupt individuals, I don`t think I ever covered any administration at any level that had this many people around them arrested, prosecuted, and then convicted or pardoned, you know, for official corruption.
BUTLER: It`s true. But in defensive my hometown, Chicago, at least I can say that when they`re corrupt there, they get something out of it. Here, we don`t know what this motive was. The law doesn`t require that you receive some kind of profit and the indictment doesn`t say that he got any money from the UAE.
The New York Times has reported that the UAE had interest in one of Barracks businesses, so maybe this was about currying favor with the UAE or maybe it was just about a billionaire who thought that he was above the law.
HAYES: Matt Miller and Paul Butler, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Coronavirus cases are on the rise all across the country. Places with low vaccination rates are getting hit hardest. Those states tend to be conservative states, which is the target audience for Fox News. And yet, every night, Fox continues to peddle conspiracies and misinformation about the vaccine. But what if I told you it`s a different story behind the scenes over at Fox News H.R.?
Next, the disinformation machine and the Fox News vaccine passports coming up right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: As COVID cases continue to grow in all 50 states, there are millions and millions of Americans eligible for vaccine who have not been vaccinated for a whole variety of reasons, probably as many reasons as there are people. And I want to keep making this clear, because I think it`s tempting to sort of reduce this a little bit to a simple political story that millions of folks are not -- it`s not because they love Donald Trump, or Fox News, or have conservative politics. It`s complicated.
That said, it`s also clear and undeniable that a big part of vaccine resistance in the aggregate in the U.S. is being driven by opposition of conservative media. You take a look at this chart. Each of these lines represents the state`s vaccination rate over time, and it`s you know, pretty plain to see. Those blue lines on the top, those are the blue states that are all getting vaccinated at a much higher rate than any state that voted for Trump, although you also see those ones flattening as well.
It is undeniably the case that one of the main issues we are facing in combating this disease 18 months into this is a kind of radicalization of the American right against vaccination. But for all the back and forth between the White House and Facebook this week about how much responsibility that social network bears for America`s failure to have higher vaccination rates, there`s one other very obvious source of vaccine disinformation night in night out that is not Facebook.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The big problem here is what the President is not telling young people.
BRIAN KILMEADE, CONTRIBUTOR, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Maybe, Dan, we got breaking news. It turns out the vaccines might not work if five on the same plane have the COVID-19 virus.
CARLSON: This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is simply untrue. That`s a lie. The advice they`re giving you isn`t designed to help, it`s designed to make you comply. And you shouldn`t comply mindlessly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Every one of those sound bites was from Fox News last night. And to the extent that there are truth claims there, they`re not true. I mean, there are people that are unvaccinated -- that are vaccinated who have gotten breakthrough cases. We know that. But by and large, it is a pandemic of the vaccine --unvaccinated.
In fact, Media Matters found Fox undermine vaccination efforts in nearly 60 percent of all its vaccination segments in a two-week period and it is almost always done in the most cowardly way imaginable. You saw it in those clips there, right? It`s not don`t get vaccinated, it`s we`re just asking questions, we don`t take a position, don`t take medical advice from people on TV. They`re trying to get you to comply so you should not comply. It`s like anti pro-vax.
[20:25:08]
And all while doing everything possible is stoke fears about the vaccine, as they have stoke fears and misgivings about let`s be clear, every single other intervention against COVID that could save lives, whether that was social distancing, whether that was closing bars and nightclubs, whether that was masking indoors, because fundamentally, the dominant perspective of that network from the beginning of the pandemic has been, who cares if all those people die, their old, poor, and sick anyway.
Now, one person who does care about old people dying is News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch, who himself is old, and who was one of the first people in the world to get the vaccine while his network is making tons of money and rating perfectly well pumping the kind of nonsense we just played.
But that won`t affect the actual policymakers at Fox who are forced into the same conundrum that basically everyone has, which is, you know, how do institutions from school systems, to offices deal with keeping their population safe in a world where there`s a Delta variant that is clearly very transmissible, and also a safe, free and effective vaccine available? What to do?
Well, one answer is just make sure people are vaccinated. That`s precisely the kind of policy that Fox News has been rallying against, the idea of heavy hand from above telling you what to do, vaccine passports. So, you might be surprised to learn it`s exactly what the bosses at Fox are doing with their own building because they do understand the dangers of the situation, the nihilistic cynicism and preening idiocy of its host notwithstanding.
The Intercept`s Ryan Grim reports Fox News workers have their own corporate vaccine passport sharing guidance from the company stating fully vaccinated individuals would enter their vaccine -- vaccination information, will be provided a Fox Clear Pass. That sounds like a good idea. That`s a smart idea. While unvaccinated employees must continue to comply with all of Fox`s COVID-19 prevention guidelines. That also makes sense, different categories, let`s distinguish between folks who are vaccinated and not vaccinated and what they can do and what they have to do, what hoops they have to jump through. Sensible, sensible.
These solutions suggests that strongly encouraging vaccinations might be, I don`t know, interesting path for a lot of other places. Maybe we should book the head of Fox HR here and talk about it. There`s been a lot of back and forth about what to do about people have not gotten vaccinated. But if you were looking for one of the most obvious places to start, it would be nice for the most influential mouthpiece for the entire conservative movement in the U.S. to stop actively undermining the health of its viewers.
Now, Renee Diresta is a technical research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory. And her job there is to investigate the spread of malign narratives across social networks. The other day, she had a great Twitter thread explaining the evolution of the anti-vax narrative. It`s the biggest spreaders at the moment. And she joins me now.
Renee, thanks for joining us. I liked what you had to say there. And it synched up with the sort of intuition I had about the sort of relative roles of social networks and these big megaphones in the case of Fox. You know, what is your research suggests about how these sort of messages of vaccine skepticism or vaccine opposition are spreading and where they`re originating?
RENEE DIRESTA, TECHNICAL RESEARCH MANAGER, STANFORD INTERNET OBSERVATORY: So, it`s really difficult to differentiate between media and social media at this point. And that`s because almost every major media property on every major media channel has a social media component as well. They reach their audiences on social media. Clips are put on social media and go viral. And what you start to see is this -- you know, we`re kind of perpetuating this idea that the two ecosystems are wholly different. That`s not exactly right.
What is different though is who is on them. And so what we see from social media is people communicating with their friends, or people who don`t have mainstream mouthpieces, who aren`t, you know, anchors on major platforms, create their own content and put it out there. That`s the kind of value of social media these, you know, kind of from the bottom upper or grassroots messaging that begins to come out.
There are a lot of true anti-vaccine activists on social media, but their reach is much, much smaller, their audiences are generally much smaller as well. So, it`s not so much an either or as understanding how the two work together.
HAYES: What are the -- what are the sort of main -- here`s my question. You know, social media is everywhere across the world, and you know, people have skepticism or just trust in authorities and all kinds of places and all kinds of cultures. I wonder how much -- I keep coming back this question of like, are we dealing with a platform problem here or are we dealing with like a culture or sociological problem? And as someone who studies the sort of platform aspects of this, I wonder what your answer to that is?
DIRESTA: My answer is that social media reflects society as well as shaping it, which is possibly a very circular argument that you`re not going to want to hear, but I believe that that`s where we are. You know, the tools that we`re all given as individuals to create and shape messages, we use those tools to share the kinds of things that resonate with us. And in turn, we see things that our friends are sharing. We incorporate their -- you know, their opinions, their content, we go on to share it on.
And so, it`s not so much a -- we are only taking inputs from social media and we`re all blank slates receiving these messages, it`s that we in turn are also putting our own content out there. So, it`s really both.
[20:30:22]
HAYES: I guess finally, the question is, are there --- are there things that you`ve encountered in your research about how to deal with the virality and the spread of stuff that`s just wrong, that`s just sort of frankly wrong about vaccines?
DIRESTA: Yes, I think that`s where we start to get questions of what should the intervention be? And there are a lot of really three kind of complicated questions that go along with that. A lot of the earliest platform interventions related to vaccine misinformation were not related to COVID.
COVID is new. We don`t have -- you know, we all saw in real time scientists develop an understanding of how it moves, how it was transmitted, what the vaccines were going to be able to do, how efficacious the vaccines would be. But the early crackdowns against vaccine misinformation on the part of the platforms were actually against misinformation spread about very routine, long-established deeply successful vaccination interventions like the measles vaccine.
And what we have now -- what we have to contend with now is an environment in which more people than ever are paying attention to these questions because the COVID vaccine really directly impacts all of us, our friends, our communities and our loved ones in a way that school vaccines maybe didn`t.
So, the platforms are faced with a much higher volume of content to try to understand how to create limits, how to prevent wrong information from spreading, when it`s not always entirely clear what exactly is wrong or right. So, that`s a pretty significant challenge.
What we`re starting to see is that moderation doesn`t have to be a binary, it doesn`t have to be take up or leave down. You can also do things like introduce friction into sharing, you can put up labels to try to help people get better information, and you can serve as higher caliber, more reputable sources. And those are the areas that platforms are exploring.
HAYES: All right, Renee Diresta, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us tonight. I really appreciate it.
DIRESTA: Thank you.
HAYES: Next up, from vaccine-hesitant to getting his first shot of the vaccine. What it means the number two Republican in the House to take the plunge and what some Republicans are doing to fight the virus in their states, after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:00]
HAYES: So, there`s no inherent reason conceptually that having conservative politics, liking, you know, cuts to the capital gains tax rate or wanting to outlaw abortion should tightly correlate with not wanting to get vaccinated against a deadly respiratory virus. But there has been a kind of correlation in the world, not just in the U.S. but across the world, something I talk about a little bit more at some point.
So, it`s a big deal when prominent members of the American right, conservatives, come out and say, hey, I got vaccinated, you should too. Well, today, Steve Scalise who`s the number two member of the House Republican caucus from Louisiana, he had not gotten vaccinated despite of course having that awful tragedy before where he was shot and spent a long time in the hospital and recovered from that, thank goodness.
Well, there he is, Steve Scalise today saying he was getting vaccinated. Here`s what he had to say about why. He said especially with the Delta variant becoming a lot more aggressive, and seeing another spike, it was good time to do it. When you talk to people who run hospitals in New Orleans or other states, 90 percent of people in hospital with Delta variant have not been vaccinated. That`s another signal vaccine works. It is great to see Steve Scalise doing that. I hope lots more people follow.
He`s not the only one. We should be clear. There`s tons of Republicans across the country carrying this message. Missouri Republican, for example, a state senator from Missouri, Missouri Republican State Senator Lincoln Hough is one of those individuals who`s gotten vaccinated and has been advocating for the vaccine in his portion of Missouri. And he joins me now.
It`s great to have you on, Senator. Tell me a little bit about what things are going -- what things are like in Greene County, Missouri.
LINCOLN HOUGH, REPUBLICAN STATE SENATOR, MISSOURI: Sure. So, we`ve seen -- and Chris, thanks for having me on. We`ve seen -- we`ve seen an abnormal, I would say, spike in this Delta variant in our community. That can be attributed to a lot of things. And Springfield is a hub or hub for tourism, and we`re headed for higher education.
But what we`ve seen with that then is a complication of our health care system. We have two major hospitals in our community. And both of them, as you just mentioned, have a number of cases of this new Delta variant that are essentially clogging up and hamstringing our healthcare systems in a, in my opinion, very preventable way given the fact that in my state, almost every individual that is eligible for a vaccine lives within five miles of a facility or a site where they could have that vaccine administered.
HAYES: Will you tell me about your own vaccination experience? When did you decide? How did you decide to get vaccinated and how did that go?
HOUGH: So, I talked with my health care provider, and I`m actually fortunate enough. I`ve got two brothers in my family that are also doctors that as soon as it was my turn, and I was eligible to receive the vaccine, I actually received it at the Boone County Public Health Center in Missouri because I was actually in the legislature at the time.
So, I went over to our Boone County Public Health Department and they gave me a shot, and then I got my booster shot or the second dose later on three, four weeks later.
HAYES: So, what are you hearing from folks in your community that, you know, that are republicans like yourself, conservatives, share your politics. Are you encountering folks resistance the vaccine? And what are those conversations like when you talk to them?
[20:40:03]
HOUGH: Well, I think -- I think there`s just -- there`s a lot of -- there`s a lot of misinformation being spread around about this vaccine. And I guess the plea that I would make, not just in my community, but across our country and quite frankly, across this world is talk to your trusted healthcare providers. Talk to your family physicians. Talk to the members of the medical community that you do trust and get their opinion. And if you have hesitancies, go to those providers and ask for their medical opinion on that.
I would, I would ask and maybe strongly encourage that we shy away from just looking at social media and things like that and perpetuating information that maybe is baseless.
HAYES: Missouri State Senator Lincoln Hough, thanks so much for your message. Thanks for coming on our program tonight. I really appreciate it.
HOUGH: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Ahead, why would speaker Nancy Pelosi allow members who tried to overturn the election to serve on the committee investigating the January 6 attack? The Jim Jordan problem coming up.
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[20:45:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIZ MARKIE, AMERICAN RAPPER (singing): Then when I asked, do you have a man, she tried to pretend. She said, no I don`t, I only have a friend. Come on, I`m not even going for it. This is what I`m going to sing. You, you got what I need, but you say he`s just a friend, and you say he`s just a friend. Oh baby, you, you got what I need, but you say he`s just a friend, but you say he`s just a friend, oh baby you --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Marcel Theo Hall, known to the world as Biz Markie was most famous for that, his 1989 top 10 hit Just A Friend which is a forever classic. But he was so much more than that. He was a DJ, beatboxer, a bonafide rap legend who worked with everyone from Big Daddy Kane, to the Beastie Boys, Will Smith.
A couple of years ago, he`s actually profiled in the Washington Post Magazine, and he had this incredible thing he said about fame. The weirdest thing about my fame is that when I`m thinking it`s almost over, it just sparks back up. They`re not letting me die. The public, the fans, they like me around.
Biz Markie died last Friday after a decade-long battle with type two diabetes. He was 57. Back in April, hip hop musicians, legends, DMX, Black Rob, and Shock G all died within the span of a few weeks, and they were 50, 52, and 57 respectively. Last October, one of my all-time favorite rappers MF DOOM died at the age of 49.
Now, you can say that well, musicians die too young all the time, and that`s true or that the rapper lifecycle burns out quick. But this is also about disparities that have long been documented. Earlier this year, the American Medical Association noted the country`s pervasive health inequities were evidenced by a tragic tally of more than 74,000 excess deaths on average among Black people compared with white people each year between 2016 and 2018.
It`s even more stark when you look at just Black men as all of these rappers were. The average life expectancy for a white male in this country is about 75 years old. The average life expectancy for a Black male is about 68 years old. That`s seven year difference. When we talk about structural racism, you know, in critical race theory, the big bugaboo right now, that`s what we`re talking about.
It is worth noting that Black men get considerable years on the planet than white men. When you`re asked what structural racism means, that`s what it means. It means a society that takes years off people`s lives, the only thing we have because of a million different things that have built up over hundreds of years, produced a system where Black people are more exposed to violence and more exposed to toxins and more exposed to health risks and face more barriers for health treatment and on and on and on.
This is not some abstraction. It`s not some question of hurt feelings. It is literally life and death. Racism kills. It takes lives too early every damn day. Biz Markie, like so many others of his generation, died at a tragically young age. And like others, left behind a rich legacy that perhaps were largely under-appreciated until it was too late. But Biz and others deserve more. They all deserve more. At its core, that is what the fight for equality and against racism is all about.
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[20:50:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have any indication that Speaker Pelosi will apoprove the members that you`ve chosen?
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Why would she not?
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I`m considering his proposals. I`d like to be clear about how people voted on the president, affirming the election of Joe Biden is not a criterion for service, that doesn`t matter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she`s considering allowing five more Republicans all picked by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to serve on the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Insurrection, even though three of those five voted against seeding electors from Arizona Pennsylvania, meaning they essentially voted against democracy and the people`s choice for president and in favor of the big lie.
One of the picks, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, even got on the floor of the House on January 6 to explicitly question President Biden`s victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JORDAN: President Trump increases vote with African-Americans, increase his vote with Hispanic Americans, 119 of 20 bellwether counties, won Ohio by eight, Iowa by eight, and Florida by three, got 11 million more votes than he did in 2016, and House Republicans won 27 of 27 toss-up races, but somehow the guy who never left his house wins the election?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes, we won 27 out of 27 races, but somehow Donald Trump lost? Well, how could that be? Is he just some sort of anomalous psychopath that the American people rejected even if they were voting and other Republicans? That`s the guy Jim Jordan, who could end up investigating insurrection, the guy who made his name famously haranguing Hillary Clinton over Benghazi and defending Donald Trump from impeachment twice with nary a suit jacket to be found.
And today, we`ve got a preview of what he would be like on the January 6 Select Committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell us about your new assignment on the January 6 Commission, sir?
JORDAN: Well, I mean, we know what this is about. This is -- this is impeachment round three for the Democrats. They, for five years, have been going after President Trump. So, in some ways, you can`t blame them because what -- you know, what else are they going to talk about?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That being said, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she`s not ruling out vetoing McCarthy`s pick for the select committee. We`ll see. Olivia Troye serves as an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, now their director of the Republican Accountability Project. And she joins me now.
[20:55:14]
Olivia, you know, two-thirds I think of the Republican caucus voted not to seat the electors, to object to the seating of the electors. But that leaves plenty of members who did vote to do the right thing, including even conservatives like Chip Roy, for instance, who`s quite conservative. What do you think about Pelosi`s position that that should not be a criterion that single vote?
OLIVIA TROYE, DIRECTOR, REPUBLICAN ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT: No, I think that anybody who voted to not certify the election results should not sit on this committee. I think first and foremost, that should be a disqualifier. I think it`s important to really respect our democratic process. And that, you know, the undermining of the democratic process is what led us to January 6 to begin with.
It was the likes of Jim Jordan`s platform and his rhetoric, and others who led to the inciting of that moment and that mob attack in the U.S. Capitol. And that`s exactly what this committee will get to the bottom of and we`ll investigate. It`s a fact-finding mission first and foremost. This is a national security investigation.
We`ve seen the videos, we`ve seen the footage, we`re seeing the recording coming out on court cases, but we still don`t have a step by step factual account of how this came to be, what led to it, what happened, what were the failures, who was involved. That`s what this committee is going to try to get there. But the last person that needs to be sitting on this committee is Jim Jordan.
HAYES: It seems to me there`s two issues here, one is a conflict issue. So, let`s just talk about that first, which is that to your point, when you`re talking about how we came to this moment, it`s you know, it is the big lie. And we should say that Jordan did the kind of Josh Hawley -- it`s very similar, actually, to what you see on Fox of the vaccine, this sort of like trollingly just asking questions, like, how is it possible, and you know, that kind of thing as opposed to saying, you know, the nuttier ghost of Hugo Chavez was changing the votes in the machines inside Arizona, like the president`s lawyers.
But that conflict just seems unavoidable if you`re actually looking to the run of January 6. You got to talk about the mythology created by the president around this that you were a party to.
TROYE: That`s exactly it. And look, this movement isn`t going away. It remains out there, right? People still believe that the election was stolen. It`s leading to all sorts of endeavors going on across the country right now, guys under the guise of election integrity, we`ve got that going on. We`ve got threats against election officials happening that we`re worried about in upcoming elections. This is ongoing.
And not only that, these domestic terrorism groups that were in bed with all of these situations that happened that day on January 6, this is a movement that`s metastasizing across the country. This is something that we need to get to the bottom of. This is radicalization here on the U.S. soil.
And to me, when you look at this investigation from a national security perspective, I look at Jim Jordan and I think about the 9/11 Commission. Now, would you appoint one of Osama bin Laden`s lieutenants or deputies, really, to serve on the 9/11 commission? Would you have done that to get to a fact-finding mission because that`s how I view this. Because appointing Jim Jordan and letting them serve on this committee is basically obscuring. It`s doing a cover-up.
And it obscures the facts and it gets -- it prevents us from getting to the bottom of this. It gives him a platform to pull his usual shenanigans. Well, he`ll attack career officials, he`ll attack law enforcement. He does this all the time. He`s done it already on January 6 hearings. He`s done this already beforehand where he`s gone off on cancel culture, and he`s attacked Chris Wray and others. This cannot be allowed to happen.
HAYES: Yes. And I should -- I mean, you know this, and I know this, obviously, the scale and scope of 9/11 is extremely different than what we saw here in terms of the death toll and like --
TROYE: Absolutely.
HAYES: But the sort of inherent contradiction, the lack -- yes, right. I just -- I know, you know, that. I just wanted to make that very clear. But there`s also -- you know, to me, there`s also the issue about like, is that vote -- to me my belief, and I think this is a belief that should supersede partisan or ideological differences. If that vote was a fundamental betrayal that kind of places you across some line of taboo and I think that`s true in terms of corporate America and giving -- like, there was something so deeply abhorrent about voting to take away the presidency from the person who won, that that line has to be enforced.
And it seems to me that if you`re not enforcing it from the Speaker`s position, then you don`t actually think that it is that kind of line, which maybe they don`t, but I tend to think it is and I think you do too, right?
TROYE: I think so, absolutely. And look, there`s other people to pick up there. Why not put Adam Kinzinger? Why not have him serve on the committee instead? And she can say no, thanks, but no thanks, but we are going to replace it with a Republican like Adam Kinzinger who will really investigate this and help us get to the bottom of this.
HAYES: All right, Olivia Troye, thank you so much for joining us this evening.
TROYE: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.