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Trump now openly embracing Project 2025 despite campaign denials
In this episode, Chris Hayes discusses Donald Trump's recent embrace of Project 2025, a controversial plan that aims to reshape the federal government under a potential second Trump administratio...
Trump now openly embracing Project 2025 despite campaign denials
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Saturday, October 11th from New York City, it's MSNBC Live 25.
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Join your favorite MSNBC hosts, Rachel Maddo, Joe Scarborough,
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Mika Brisinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melberg, Alicia Menendez,
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Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steable, Chris Hayes,
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Jen Sottie, Lauren Soudonnell, Stephanie Rule, and more.
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Visit msnbc.com slash live 25 to buy your tickets today.
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Tonight on All End, we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible,
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that are bad for them and irreversible by them.
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The President posts an AI Grim Reaper fantasy as Democrats ask for negotiations.
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Donald Trump is in the presidential witness protection program.
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No one can find them.
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Tonight the shutdown project 2025 and the biggest lie of the 2024 campaign.
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Did he just learn about Project 2025 in the last year?
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Or did he know about it all along?
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Then has the Epstein statue returns and the White House struggles to stay on message.
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And what happened to that massage room?
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I assume it's on video.
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Skyward's the greatest blackmailer ever.
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Blackmail people, that's how we had money.
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My exclusive interview with the Congresswoman-elect, whose vote could unlock the Epstein files
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and meet the mega billionaire taking over TikTok and CBS News.
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And that's the way it is.
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But All End starts right now.
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Good evening from New York.
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I'm Chris Hayes.
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The government is still shut down and the President is MIA.
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Maybe we'll see him in the golf course this weekend.
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But wherever Donald Trump is, he has been spending a lot of time on his phone,
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posting long monologues and social media that sound like they come from a bond villain,
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promising the American people lots of pain and privation from his shutdown.
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He's already slashed the jobs of 300,000 federal workers.
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He's now threatening he can quote,
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do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them,
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and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out of the government workforce
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and shutting down popular programs.
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To be really clear, we've had lots of shutdowns before.
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I've covered a bunch of them myself.
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There's no precedent for that.
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This is not what happens in shutdown.
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As one White House reporter mentioned today, Trump has presided over government shutdowns before
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and never reacted with such an extreme agenda.
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You know when the shutdown was shut down for 35 days in Trump's first term,
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you've never had to lay off thousands of workers to keep essential services up and running.
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So why are layoffs now necessary in this shutdown?
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Because we have an administration and we have a president who are wholeheartedly focused on restoring fiscal sanity.
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That doesn't answer the question.
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And Donald Trump suddenly got more focus on fiscal sanity.
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What's different now is that after the considerable failures of the first Trump administration,
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a group of conservatives got together and wrote up a literal playbook
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or how to dominate in a second Trump administration.
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And yesterday, Trump openly admitted he was going by that book.
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Quote, I have a meeting today with Russell Vote,
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he of the project 2025 fame, to determine which of the many Democrat agencies, most of which are political scam.
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He recommends to be cut.
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I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.
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Now you may remember Project 2025.
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Remember that?
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Yeah. The right-wing Heritage Foundations 920-page blueprint for how a Trump administration could seize control
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of the apolitical levers of daily government purge non-magas from civil service,
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impose a kind of far-right authoritarian dystopia on Americans from above.
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Well, Trump is now embracing that plan.
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Something we all knew would be the case, but he was a very effective campaign in just lying about it.
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Number one, I have nothing to do.
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As you know, and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025.
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That's out there.
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I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it.
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This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas.
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I guess some good, some bad, but it makes no difference.
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I have nothing to do.
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Everybody knows I'm an open book.
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Everybody knows what I'm going to do.
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Now, nothing to do. That was a lie. That was a lie.
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But for Trump, it was a very necessary one, a crucial one, because thanks to social media and word of mouth and coverage by journalist,
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Project 2025 was widely known by American voters and widely rejected even among self-identified independence and Republicans.
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It was completely authoritarian, completely toxic to Trump's election chances.
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And public sentiment got worse every time architects of Project 2025, like Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts,
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went on TV to talk about the Republic they envisioned.
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In spite of all this nonsense from the left, we are going to win.
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We're in the process of taking this country back.
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And we are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.
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Okay, buddy. Now, everybody knew about this plan. Everybody hated it.
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It even came up at the BET Awards last year.
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It's not a secret. Look it up. They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens.
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The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up.
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That was a key moment. And because it permeated pop culture and regular people were talking about it,
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and it was all over TikTok. Democrats made publicizing Project 2025 a quarter piece of last year's DNC.
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You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?
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Here it is.
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You know how when you download an app and there are hundreds of pages there that you don't read,
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it's just the terms and conditions, and you just click agree, right?
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Well, these are the terms and conditions of a second Trump presidency.
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You vote for him. You vote for all of this.
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Trump was evidently so frustrated that his own disavowals of Project 2025 weren't working.
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This proxy started reaching out to non-maga audiences to set the record straight.
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Stephen Miller even went on MSNBC.
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And I say this with sincerity. It's not intended to be a trollish comment.
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I suspect that a lot of people who watch your show, who watch other shows on this network,
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had been bombarded with a lot of propaganda about Project 2025.
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So it's actually a great opportunity for me to say.
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Project 2025 has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Trump campaign.
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If you're Trump's position, if you're Trump administration.
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Miller with sincerity denied the Trump campaign to any connection to Project 2025.
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Even though the playbook literally lists the nonprofit Miller leads America First Legal as a member of the Project 2025 Advisory Board.
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Miller was being just as disingenuous as Trump, who through the campaign kept posting things like,
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I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who's behind it. I have nothing to do with them.
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Of course, Trump knew with behind Project 2025, he hired them.
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Like, well, Russell Vote, the director of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump's First Administration.
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The office responsible for carrying out presidential policy across the executive branch.
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Vote, a self-identified Christian nationalist, literally wrote the Blueprints chapter on how to wield power
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with the executive office of the president. And even as a Trump campaign was distancing itself from his work,
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Vote was telling potential donors that Project 2025 would be the law of the land.
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If the battle plan is out there that will do what he wants, there are people like me that have this trust that will be able to get it to him in whatever position we're at.
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I expect you to hear ten more times from the rally the president distancing himself from the left's boogie me in that Project 2025.
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And you're not worried about that.
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Now that man, Russell Vote is once again Trump's own B-director.
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He's been illegally impounding funds at Congress allocated, posing as Trump's grim reaper, and he's not alone.
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Do you remember Brendan Carr, that's Trump's FCC chairman, who threatened Disney and got Jimmy Kimmel briefly suspended from the airways?
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Well, Carr literally wrote the chapter in Project 2025 on how to weaponize the FCC on behalf of MAGA.
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He is now attempting to put that plan into action.
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They have already used the Project 2025 playbook to shut down USAID, which might kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
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They've used it to defund PBS, to purge the civil service, especially if non-white non-men.
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Now Trump is openly emitting the playbook he disavoweth through others campaign is not only the blue planet for his administration,
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it's the key to using this shutdown for a MAGA makeover of the American Republic.
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Donald Trump stood before the entire nation for an entire year and just lied his ass off to them, to us just to get elected.
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And now he's emitting what a lot of us already knew paid attention.
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It's not just about the hypocrisy, it's about the brutality of an agenda that has never sat well with the American people and could be about to get much worse.
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Senator Tim Cain is Democrat of Virginia and he joins me now.
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Senator, you know, the president hasn't done public appearances the last few days, which is sort of rare for him.
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He really likes to be in front of the cameras.
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He has been sort of obsessively posting from his phone.
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There's this like AI generated thing of Russ Vogue as the grim reaper.
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They all seem to be kind of taking like a lot of joy out of this.
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Like their site that you screwed up so the people are going to get hurt.
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Now I wonder just your reaction to that.
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Well, you know, President Trump and Russ Vogue and the others seem to relish the gratuitous cruelty.
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But I think they are really misreading the American public.
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And I think we're going to see in Virginia in about five weeks a massive repudiation of Trumpism in our Virginia elections.
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We're a battleground state.
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We've got a Republican governor, a lieutenant governor, a.g.
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We've got both the statewide elections and our House of delegates up.
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And so in this very critical battleground state, I think you're going to see a rejection of grim reaper as the new role model for who our president should be.
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There's polling out about this central issue the Democrats have identified as basically the central ask, right?
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Which is to extend federal subsidies for people on the affordable care act exchanges to stop premiums from doubling in some cases.
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People paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars more a month out of pocket.
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It's been sort of the clear ask like we want to do this.
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It's crazy to not do it in this in this bill.
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Yeah, the polling from I just want to read the polling from Kaiser Family Foundation, which shows.
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Majorities across the board 92% of Democrats, eight and 10 independents, six and 10 Republicans who support extending the subsidies.
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Are you surprised at all by that poll?
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Not at all Chris.
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I mean, here's the way to describe it when the Republicans did Trump's bidding and push through his reconciliation until at the end of June.
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They extended tax cuts for the wealthiest and they cut off health care support for everyday folks.
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And there's a five layer cascade of bad consequences.
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People lose insurance.
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Those who don't lose it and have it see their premium spike.
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Providers are closing three have already announced in Virginia that they're closing because of the Trump bill.
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When providers close, people lose jobs.
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And when providers close and people lose jobs, communities that are trying to attract economic development have to look prospects in the I and say,
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sorry, our health clinic has closed, our hospital has closed.
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And then they see the light go off in the eyes of their prospect.
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So it is a cascade of bad consequences just since June.
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And all Democrats are saying to Republicans is fix this mess you made.
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We will help you fix this mess you made thus far.
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They would rather keep government shut and not fix the mess they made.
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The last time I had you on the program was to react to the indictment of former FBI director James Comey in the Eastern District of Virginia in your state.
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We've got some news that just I don't know if you've seen this.
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I'm going to read you into it.
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It just crossed about 15 minutes ago.
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It's an MSMBC report confirming that an FBI agent has been relieved of duty over refusing purplocking James Comey.
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Refusing the duty for decline to arrange a purplock of the bureau's former director and from news media cameras after Comey was federally charged last month for people briefed on the matter.
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So on Friday, of course, those purplocks are in contravention.
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I think of DOJ policy. What do you think of that?
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Well, I mean, Donald Trump is spending precious time and energy going after political enemies in Virginia firing US attorneys and firing subordinates and firing people who won't stage the spectacle.
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Meanwhile, prices are going up.
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Building supplies, clothes, energy, health care costs.
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His tariff policy is hurting the economy all over the United States deeply in Virginia.
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And he seems to be fixated on his political enemies instead of doing what the American public thought he would do, which is bring inflation down.
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That's why we're going to have votes in the next 10 days to go after Trump's idiotic tariff policy and try to help everyday folks out.
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Final question for you because you do sit on the Senate for a relations committee and we've got some breaking news today out of the Middle East.
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Tomas has issued a statement saying they agree basically imprincible to the basic framework of a peace deal that would mean releasing all hostages, living hostages as well as the remains of those who have deceased in exchange for permanent ceasefire.
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There's other stuff left to negotiate.
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The president is celebrating saying, hey, let's get it done.
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The Israeli government looks like maybe they're not quite there yet.
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Do you think we could finally as we approach the second anniversary of this horrible brutal war or be actually near the end?
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I'm very heartened by this news, you know, trust but verify, but it's a good thing if I'm going to be tough on Trump for jacking up everyday people's prices, laying off everyone and wrecking the economy.
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I got to be praiseworthy too when something is going well.
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This hamasic acceptance of some of the deal that Donald Trump put on the table as we near the two year anniversary of October 7 could be a real positive.
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So let's release hostages, let's end the war and let's have the discussion that's 80 years delayed from the 1947 UN resolution that says there should be an Israel and a power.
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Palestine, Jews and Arabs living side by side peacefully in the Middle East and let's do what we can to make it happen.
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All right, Senator Tim Cain, thank you so much for coming through tonight.
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Thank you, Chris.
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Coming up, no government means no jobs data. So what does that mean for the US economy? That's next.
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Today is October 3rd, the first Friday of the month, which can only mean one thing. It's jobs day.
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But the government's monthly report on unemployment and job creation was never published today because the government is shut down.
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We do have some less reliable jobs data from other entities. Those reports are not very good.
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Excuse me, over at Fox News, there's a sort of embarrassing tradition on jobs day where they have to try to explain away any new numbers that could make Republicans and Donald Trump look bad.
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And today again, Fox tried to help a Trump administration official long, but even Fox felt compelled to fact check their rosy picture of the economy.
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We're seeing consumer confidence up. We're seeing businesses want to reinvest in their workforce. And this is only a real screeching halt for the American people.
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And it's unfortunate that the Democrats don't see that. That they're fighting for the American people and they're going to pay.
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Well, I mean, you know the data, though. You know where we are. I mean, we've had three months of slowing jobs. We know we don't have the numbers for September.
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But is there anything you could tell us about the jobs picture today?
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Yeah, what we're seeing is the investments.
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Jared Bernstein was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Biden administration now, senior policy fellow center for American progress.
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Jared, great to have you on. We don't have jobs data. We have some private payroll companies released data. One of them is ADP.
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But it's, you know, it could be noisy. It could be bounce around, but the latest ADP numbers look pretty bad and seem to be in line with all indicators that there's a real slowing and hiring that's happening that could be looks like we're might be headed towards a recession.
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Well, that's precisely why today's jobs report would have been so important to look at. In fact, as you well know, the monthly jobs number is probably the most important monthly indicator we get.
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And there have been real cracks in the job market. This is a serious concern to so many Americans who depend on their paycheck to get by.
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Now, the overall unemployment rate will, when last seen, which is back in August now, and we would be talking about September, but we don't have that had crept up to 4.3%.
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If you look at the black rate, though, seven and a half percent up from six in just May, you mentioned some other indicators. We did get the hiring rate just before the shutdown. That has been on a downward trend.
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So we look like we're stuck in the midst of a low higher low fire. We haven't seen a lot of layoffs. That's another reason I really wanted to see today's report.
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But the American people know this and if the labor secretary thinks that consumer confidence is up, she's holding the graph upside down.
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One of the things that's really just, you know, permeating the economy are the tariffs. And there's a particular pain point of those tariffs that you've seen more and more discussion of, which is farmers.
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China buys about half, I think, of the soybean crop of the US. It's the largest source of purchases for export of soybean. They're buying zero.
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I have watched video after video of farmers being like, look, here are crops. We have no one to sell it to. We are screwed.
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You're hearing the alarm bells rung by the US Department of Agriculture. They're now talking about another bailout like they did the last time we did this whole thing.
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And the entire thing strikes me is so crazy. You're going to put on tariffs, have people's crops go to seed and then send them welfare checks rather than just letting them sell their produce.
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And the farmers themselves, by the way, are saying we don't want a bailout. I mean, not that they wouldn't take it, but they're explicitly saying we want to sell our crops.
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And you're right. This is just an egregious example of how when you start doing bad policy, you often have to fix it with worse policy.
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You're really seeing a layering here of just the repercussions of tariff policy. And by the way, what we're seeing here from China is retaliation.
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This is retaliation for the Trump's tariffs on China. And you're right.
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The key markets for US soybean producers, which is China, have gone to zero. What's worse for them though, is that China is going to Argentina now to make up for its lost US exports.
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And now Trump, because he wants to help Javier Malay, his libertarian friend down there in Argentina, is talking about a $20 billion bailout for them.
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So the soybean producers, their hair is on fire for very good reasons.
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Yes, by the way, that bailout would the way that it's structured, as it's called, a swap line with like literally finance export sales.
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It would be like direct intervention to help Argentine soybean growers sell to China instead of American farmers.
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Here's another one on the like cascading bad policy.
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Reuters reporting today that Trump is considering significant terror for leave for US auto production.
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That could effectively eliminate much of the costs that major car companies are paying.
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Apparently, it is according to Republican Senator Bernie Morano and auto officials who talk to Reuters.
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Again, I guess good, but why did we need to get here to begin with? This was bad policy from the jump.
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Yeah, well, you're spending all your time trying to take the goal out of the goal after your own goal.
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Exactly. You might want to rethink your game strategy.
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One of the reasons that Trump is so compelled to continue all these negotiations is because that's what he likes to do. That's his happy place.
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He likes to whack all of our trading partners and anybody else who he can meet power over, have them come to the Oval Office and beg him for help.
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Half the time they leave with him having a 10% equity stake in their company.
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We're just seeing the unraveling of just terribly irresponsible policy.
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But look, at the end of the day, what this means is bigger, unaffordability problems for Americans because they're facing sticky prices in the grocery store, in housing, in childcare.
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While they're looking at a job market that, as we've said, is best we can tell, is showing some real cracks.
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And that, the price pass that it's been starting to creep in also creates less room for the Fed Act.
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Although the way he's solving that is by attempting to fire people who are Fed-Purge, Governor Shared Bernstein.
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Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Still to come. New frustrations for the White House as the Epstein scandal just will not go away.
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The connection between the guests on the show is the show. All that we do is put together people who are smart, people who are brave, people who are honest, and lots of times people who have never met each other to have a conversation that has never happened before. But on that day, deepens everyone's understanding about the moment in which we gather.
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Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace weekdays from 4 to 6 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
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Start your day with the MSNBC Daily Newsletter. Sharp insights from Voices You Trust. Stand out moments from your favorite shows and fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. Sign up now at msnbc.com.
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Guess what is back on the National Mall right by Capitol Hill? That statue you see there on your screen of Donald Trump, frolicing, I guess, with his longtime friend, the late child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Osteen.
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That's the statue that first went up 10 days ago on September 23rd, a group that commissioned the installation known as the Secret Handshake had an actual permit to display it for the rest of the week. But just 24 hours after its big debut, US Park Police hauled it away with no real explanation.
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Spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told MPR the statue was torn down quote because it was not compliant with the permit issued.
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The Department did not clarify how the statue was not compliant. In a statement at NBC News, a White House spokesperson called the statue a waste of money and reiterated that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep.
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The group commissioned it says the statue had been broken into pieces when they received it back. But after some trial and error, I guess, it has now returned to the National Mall almost no worse for where. And much like that statue, the Epstein story is not going away for long.
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Now that is partly because both Trump friendly podcasters and hardcore maga guys love nothing more than talking about Jeffrey Epstein, which is exactly what happened this week when Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, who just so happens to be Jeffrey Epstein's former neighbor, it's a small world, sat down for an interview with a right-leaning podcast.
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Not going to the door is assistant, like a Saturday says, Mr. Epstein, your neighbor would like to invite you over for coffee. I say to him, massage table in the middle of your house. How often you have a massage?
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And he says, every day. And then he like gets like weirdly close to me. And he says, and the right kind of massage.
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So how come Bill Gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw? Or did they see it and ignore it or they participate?
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Right. That's what his MO was, you know, get a massage, get a massage and what happened in the massage room, I assume was on video. Sky was the greatest blackmailer ever. Blackmail people, that's how we had money.
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So what happened to those videos? Why is there now such a dearth of information when, you know, Donald Trump's people are running the FBI and the DOJ?
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I assume way back when they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18-month sentence.
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Okay. Now for the record, almost all of that, at least the part she's talking about that he didn't have direct witness of his speculation. I mean, Bill Gates says he was only met with Epstein for philanthropic reasons.
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We don't have any confirmation at all or evidence that the videos exist and were traded. But you could understand that the White House is not exactly happy with Lutnik for totally undermining their argument with the Epstein files basically don't exist and are also a big nothingburger.
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The outlet Zatio spoke to one anonymous staffer who called Lutnik an f-ing dumbass, had in quote, I've worked with him and I can tell you he doesn't think he did anything negative. That's not how he thinks he just talks and talks and doesn't care what unhelpful BS comes out.
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Now, I gotta say all Lutnik dig was repeat what Dan Bungino and Cash Patel and even JD Vance either said explicitly or implied for years.
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But now that they are in power under Trump, nothing to see here. In fact, Republicans are so desperate to cover up for Trump and his deceased pet a file friend. They are trying to keep a duly elected representative out of Congress because they're afraid of how she will vote on releasing the Epstein files. And we're going to talk with that Congresswoman elect next.
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10 days ago, Arizona Democrat Adelita Grigalvo won a special election to fill her late father's congressional seat by 40 points. But Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has still not allowed her to be sworn into office. Now, Republicans say that it's because the House has not returned to a normal session.
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But it just so happens that once sworn in, Grigalvo would be the crucial 218th signature on the bipartisan petition to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files.
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Speaking to CBS News yesterday, Speaker Johnson said it was all no big deal and that Grigalvo would be sworn in next week.
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Representative Grigalvo, who won a special election last week in Arizona, she's yet to be sworn in. I know you're not in session, but you've sworn in Republicans out of session. Why not her? Does it have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein?
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Well, the House is not on the floor doing business this week, but we will do it immediately early next week as soon as everyone returns to town.
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Except not so fast because this afternoon, Johnson changed his mind and said the House would not reconvene next week after all.
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Congresswoman elect Adali took her Alba of Arizona, joins me now. I'm going to call you Congresswoman. It's very good to have you on. Congratulations on your victory.
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Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I wish I was already sworn in. I was in DC. We had an opportunity to do it during a pro forma session. It would have really been very helpful to be able to be a voice for the people of this community that elected me to work.
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Well, so here's I want to just put this so people get a sense of this. So special elections actually happen fairly frequently. Members retire. Unfortunately, like your father, who my condolences passed away. I knew him pretty well. He's a great guy.
spk_0
These special elections happen fairly often. And you'll see there, like in the last in 2025, you know, they were the two Republicans in Florida were sworn in the next day.
spk_0
The Democrat who replaced Jerry Connolly in Virginia, James Walkenshaw, he was sworn in the next day. Have you received official communication from the Speaker's Office of the House about what the why you are still not yet sworn in?
spk_0
No, there has been no direct communication with the Speaker's Office, which has been very frustrating because most of the time I'm hearing it second hand from reporters who have asked for a statement just like the CBS one. I mean, really it's coming up on a Google alert. And that's how I'm finding out.
spk_0
And so when we heard that it was going to be on the seventh, I have three children, you know, my husband, I they want to be a part of this very special moment.
spk_0
And so I made arrangements. I am not a travel agent. So I made arrangements took me forever. And now I'm like, so what do we do now? And the frustration for me really personally, that is an annoyance.
spk_0
But for the people of this community in the middle of a government shutdown, when we have so many people that are here, we have people that work on base work at the VA, we have, you know, the airport here.
spk_0
There are going to be people who are going to need services from their federally elected like their office. And we don't have the doors are locked enclosed. I can't on board staff can't hire anybody.
spk_0
So, you know, this is a little like what happened after 2020 election where all these sort of all the kind of plumbing of how like an election victory becomes a president got exposed because usually just happens in the background.
spk_0
Like I realize as I talk to you, I don't actually understand the process here. The house has to formally recognize you like who are we are awaiting on the speaker and he has to do something affirmatively.
spk_0
Basically, you have the dean of the in this case, the Democrats, which what used to be my will now be Greg Stanton is going to introduce me and basically say here she is her election results are, you know, very clear.
spk_0
Here she is. And then he says what he did with walking shots like, you know, we accept the unofficial results without question and then hand the time over to the representative in a special to be able to say a few words.
spk_0
And that's it. You're sworn in you get the little button you get to go around everywhere in this case when I was in DC and basically a tourist. And so I couldn't go anywhere without being escorted by leader Jeffrey staff who was very accommodating.
spk_0
And so by the way, other offices were very helpful in trying to, you know, just help me navigate because I don't have any security care clearance.
spk_0
I don't have staff. They're able to get into these areas in the back that are protected for very good reason. And so when I came out with all of the other members of the Democratic caucus, I had to be escorted in there.
spk_0
So I don't mean my name plate is where my dad's used to be. And it is in the long worth building, but all the doors are locked and I can't go into that office until I was born in.
spk_0
Okay. There is we you saw our introduction. I want to confirm one thing first. When you are sworn in do you intend to sign the discharge petition that would force a vote on the release of the Epstein files.
spk_0
Yes, I do. Okay. So I would be to 18. And that seems to, I mean, at first I was trying not to be a conspiracy theory.
spk_0
Yeah, I also have been the same. Like maybe there's something I'm missing here.
spk_0
Right. It's not, it doesn't have anything to do with these files, but that is literally the only thing I can point to.
spk_0
It's not like me getting sworn in is going to change, you know, now the Democrats will be in the majority.
spk_0
I mean, there are certain things that are not going to change, whereas Democrats will still be in the minority.
spk_0
That is literally the only thing that is different in, you know, me getting sworn in versus representative walking shot or patronus or fine, they were literally sworn in less than 24 hours after their election.
spk_0
And they can always do just to perform a session, right? That the fact that being out of session doesn't bar it.
spk_0
They can, they can, they can change the rules however they want. And obviously Democrats would accommodate that. So that doesn't make sense either.
spk_0
And there's no reason they can't do it during a shutdown because Congress is still funded because Congress is a separate branch of government, right?
spk_0
Correct. And I believe it was 219, we were in a shutdown and the entire class was sworn in during a shutdown.
spk_0
So that's not the issue either. They're really, I can't think of anything else.
spk_0
I mean, I mean, the timing is certainly suspicious for sure.
spk_0
But your point too is like, yes, that's that's part of it or that's the reason. But the people in your district deserve a representative in Congress.
spk_0
They, you had a special election. It's been 10 days. There are people like you said, like VA employees, all the folks who are going to be affected by the shutdown who should have some member they can go to and say, hey, what do I do?
spk_0
What, what if I don't know about what's going to happen with our paychecks and they don't have that right now?
spk_0
And here in this community, we have three ports of entry with Mexico with a lot of immigration issues that are coming up and are my dad had a reputation for doing amazing constituent services.
spk_0
We expect to do the same and I can't offer assistance to anyone.
spk_0
Congresswoman, I would love to get further explanation, particularly since Mike Johnson said on camera, don't worry. We're coming back next week.
spk_0
And then today decided they'll be off another week. We'd like to get some follow up there. We're going to try to run that down.
spk_0
Congresswoman elect Adali Tukarhava. Thank you for your time tonight.
spk_0
Thank you for having me.
spk_0
Still ahead. Why is the Trump supporting second richest man in the world buying up major media properties? And what could it mean for how Americans get their information? That's next.
spk_0
We know what it looks like when a country's leader takes over the free and independent press. It's something we've covered here repeatedly.
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Authoritarian governments either seizing control of news outlets or managing to kind of take them over through ostensibly legal means while consolidating power. And we know what to look for.
spk_0
This week we've learned about a change in leadership at one of our country's biggest news outlets, one of its most stored and famous that's raising a lot of eyebrows.
spk_0
The Washington Post now reports the newly merged media giant Paramount Skydance, which was allowed to merge from the FCC, is expected to announce Monday it will pay $150 million in cash and stock for the I'm not publication the free press and name its founder Barry Weiss to CBS news is top editorial job according to a person familiar with the matter.
spk_0
Now, I gotta say Barry Weiss is not the first or second or even 50th person you would consider for role like editor of CBS news.
spk_0
This is someone who's never really even worked in news.
spk_0
She's worked almost exclusively in what you might consider opinion journalism and don't get me wrong. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
spk_0
I'm an opinion journalist. I've made my whole career in it. I like opinion journalism.
spk_0
But you wouldn't hire me to run a news division.
spk_0
The news of her new position comes after we learn that the entire Paramount Skydance deal was closely overseen by FCC chair Brendan Carr.
spk_0
FCC had to approve the merger and with a very obvious set of concessions and agreements made to allow it.
spk_0
And so now David Ellison, whose son of Oracle co-founder and big Trump supporter Larry Ellison is going to run Skydance.
spk_0
Now the parent company CBS put Barry Weiss in front of the news there as Larry Ellison himself prepares to take a huge stake in TikTok, which the government is overseeing a sale of.
spk_0
And announcing Barry Weiss as the new editor in chief of CBS suggests one possibility we face here is that the news division's direction could start to resemble what we have seen concretely in other places.
spk_0
Countries like Hungary or Turkey where you have these tent pole legacy media properties that are purchased by regime allies would then turn them into regime media.
spk_0
Alex Wagner and MSNAC senior political analyst who worked at CBS and Paramount for nearly six years earlier this year she covered protest in Hungary and she talked to media professionals there about how the regime overtook broadcasters for place news propaganda.
spk_0
She joins me now.
spk_0
Alex, you're the first person I talked to because of your reporting in Hungary and before we get to that I want to play a clip like did you have the same reaction I have which is and this is no shade at Barry Weiss at all in terms of what her particular talents or abilities might be.
spk_0
But when I saw I just thought to myself like this is a very weird hire for a place that's just been taken over with these very specific set of.
spk_0
Concessions made to a you know Brendan Carr the same guy who tried to run Jeremy Kimmeloff air this individual who doesn't really have news experience to run one of the most story news organizations in the country.
spk_0
Yeah I mean it's not weird it makes total sense when you're thinking about in the context of a total takeover a partisan takeover of a legacy institution like CBS news as someone who worked there coming from MSNBC I can tell you there is no experience that I can recall that was as much of us sort of there is such a church in state between opinion and news that a place like CBS.
spk_0
And it it prides itself on being a place where you know the filter is strong and tight against opinion and personal views and that's I think the reason people work at CBS it doesn't have the biggest budgets but it has the reputation and this the events of the last year the
spk_0
capitulation of CBS shameful decision on the part of Sherry Redstone to take money over principle and uphold journalistic ethics by doing a deal with effectively the Trump organization the Trump White House and Brendan Carr to get a multi million dollar merger approved the firing of Stephen Colbert the hiring of an ombudsman who's a trunk lackey to mind the store if you will on behalf of Trump.
spk_0
And his agenda and now the appointment of someone who has a very clear agenda no experience and is clearly aligned with the values of the new CBS I mean it's just it is a stunning chain of events Chris as someone who worked there and saw the degree to which they held their non partisanship and their sort of their news history the home of Edward our morrow and Walter Cronkite like that is the CBS brand it's shocking to see.
spk_0
You you interviewed this guy named Martin Carpati when you're in Hungary who talked about again this has been this was both were born and everyone specifically they didn't like they didn't send jack booted thugs into the buildings to shut them down they didn't do anything like that it was sometimes it would be regulatory harassment or to be like.
spk_0
Text cases against someone in the next thing you know it's like they're they're squeezed to sell and the person you know the person who buys is a ally of the regime and so Martin I want to play this closely talked about this kind of insidious way this happened in Hungary take a lesson.
spk_0
We used to work at hand always because inside we were the biggest ones we were independence we didn't let anyone to influence our contents or how we operate with work we do not work with but the people in power always tried to somehow getting involved or take over the company or the side.
spk_0
According to Carpati that is exactly what happened someone in power got involved a pro orban oligarch who is placed on the board of the publishing company.
spk_0
And we were like okay we don't know how to handle this until they it was a very inside but we were like okay they don't close the red lines then we should do fine but they did close the red line.
spk_0
That red line was orbans ally telling index how to operate as a news organization what to put and what not to put in the editorial section.
spk_0
That part that the oligarch it'll be fine as they all cross the red line but they did cross the red line.
spk_0
That's it I mean and that's how I think everybody thinks and you know we're all kind of students of 20th century autocracy where it feels very dramatic and it feels very explicit and what Hungary showed me is that it's all cloaked in business right these are all business decisions and it's allies taking over and it's different standards in the newsroom and it happens in broad daylight in a way that is alarming but not alarming enough.
spk_0
And at the time that I interviewed Martin Kapate my focus was Jeff Bezos because he seems so obviously corrupted by Trump and was the owner of the Washington Post I mean it was really before the paramount skydance merger came to the fore what before the firing of Stephen Colbert and the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel were even sort of glimmers in Trump's eye and it felt like a well we have time.
spk_0
Before something like this actually really happens in America it'll be a little bit longer and what's been so staggering even even back then in Hungary they said wow you guys are slipping further and faster into authoritarianism than we ever imagined possible and now I mean today that's clearly what's happened.
spk_0
Alex Wagner has a new podcast which I'm very excited about.
spk_0
I sure do.
spk_0
Which is the crooked media on October 23rd what's the name of it.
spk_0
Runaway country Chris runaway country are right I'm going to check that out thank you Alex.
spk_0
That does it for all in you can catch us every weeknight at eight o'clock on MSNBC don't forget to like us on Facebook that's Facebook dot com slash all in with Chris.
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Saturday October 11th from New York City it's MSNBC live 25 join your favorite MSNBC hosts Rachel Mato Joe Scarborough Mika Brissinski Nicole Wallace
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Ari Melber Alicia Menendez Simone Sanders Townsend Michael Steve Chris Hayes Jen Sotty Lauren Sodano Stephanie Rule and more visit MSNBC dot com slash live 25 to buy your tickets today.