Summary
In a major escalation, the Department of Justice has now sent 40 subpoenas to Trump allies in just the past week as part of its investigation into the attempted coup and the insurrection. Former Trump lawyers possibility of legal peril. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel announced on Twitter that the party has helped recruit 45,000 poll watchers and workers around the country. Midterm polling is trending towards the Democrats as Dems capitalize on post-Roe voter enthusiasm. Ukraine recaptures more territory from Russian forces.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: He made the announcement after getting hired to do P.R. for the Saudis` golf venture. Voila. Fleischer is denying any link between the two, but we know for certain what the leader of his party is capable of when there is money to be made, even when it`s blood money.
And that`s tonight`s "REIDOUT". ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
MAJOR GARRETT, HOST, THE TAKEOUT: What do you think the possibilities are of an indictment of former President Trump?
TY COBB, FORMER LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: I think they`re very high.
HAYES: New alarms from the ex-president`s ex-lawyers as a New York Times reports a major escalation in the Department of Justice Grand Jury probe of Trump`s inner circle.
Then, Marc Elias on the party of the big lie and their claim they have 45,000 new poll watchers for election day. Plus, 57 days out, new caution over what looked like great numbers for Democrats, and why even the pundits on Russian cable news are openly and loudly disagreeing with their favorite pundit on American cable news.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Vladimir Putin is not losing the war on Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. In a major escalation, the Department of Justice has now sent 40 subpoenas to Trump allies in just the past week as part of its investigation into the attempted coup and the insurrection. The New York Times reports the DOJ also seized cell phones from two of Trump`s coup plotting aides, Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman.
Now, Mike Roman might feel a little remote in your memory. There`s a lot of characters here. He was actually the director of Trump`s 2020 Election Day operations. And crucially, according to reporting we have, he reportedly hand-delivered slates of fake elect -- fake electors to Congress as part of Trump`s attempted coup.
In addition to his own role in the fake electoral scheme, Boris Epshteyn was also a point person between the White House and John Eastman. John Eastman, of course, the Trump lawyer who wrote the coup memo, which essentially called for then Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the results of the 2020 election. Eastman also has had his phone seized by the feds.
We`re also learning that former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, a guy who promoted a number of ludicrous false election fraud claims. He was there at the infamous landscaping press event. He was subpoenaed today, along with Trump`s social media director and advisor Dan Scavino.
Now, when reports of a new series of DOJ subpoenas first broke last week, it appeared as though we reported on this program, they were largely related to Shady fundraising tactics by the Trump campaign, right? Trump campaign sets a super PAC, raises a quarter of a billion dollars for legal challenges, for a fund that never even existed. But now we`ve got the sort of full picture of all of the subpoenas that has been sent out, at least the ones we can track.
The latest revelations revealed the investigation maybe more closely linked to the larger investigation into the attempted coup itself, into January 6 than we first thought. And while all this is happening, Trump apparently himself is lounging around his golf course today. This is just the latest example of the ex-President avoiding accountability while those around him face legal consequences.
We are seeing this play out with former Trump attorneys. We`re basically left with two options both of which we see unfold in real time. So the first is to do a kind of desperate public dance where now that you`re no longer employed by Trump, you try to distance yourself from his obvious misdeeds. We`ve seen this with Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who remember, we first met publicly, right, first public-facing role, public prominence as the face of Trump`s defense during his first impeachment trial. How dare you impeach this guy? Leave it to the people.
He has now publicly debunked Trump`s big lie of a stolen election as part of his eight hours of testimony to the January 6 Committee.
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PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: There was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you know, particularly after the Attorney General had reached the conclusion that there wasn`t sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election, when other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is what is it. And at some point, you have to put up or shut up. That was my view.
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HAYES: Pretty chesty, talk there from Pat Cipollone and the relative quiet of the deposition room. Now, another Trump White House lawyer, you remember this guy? He`s got -- his name is Ty Cobb. He was brought on around the time during the Mueller stuff. Now, he recently told CBS News he thinks Trump will be indicted, and get this, that Trump should be disqualified from running again.
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GARRETT: What do you think the possibilities are of an indictment of former President Trump?
COBB: I think they`re very high. It was popular early on, but the fact that it`s been delayed and delayed when we could, you know, easily modify the conversation by disqualifying him now whether he gets prosecuted or not I find sad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:08]
HAYES: And there`s Trump Attorney General Bill Barr who misled the public on the Mueller report and enabled many of Trump`s worst impulses. Barr clearly sees which way the wind is blowing. He is now attempting to rebrand himself as something of a prominent Trump critic appearing on Fox News multiple times a week to declare that the ex-President broke the law.
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WILLIAM BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think that the fundamental dynamics of the case are said which is the government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether charges are appropriate, which is government documents were taken, classified information was taken and not handled appropriately, and they are looking into and there`s some evidence to suggest that they were deceived.
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HAYES: So, that is one strategy former Trump players can take, the other is just lawyer up themselves. That`s particularly relevant if you`re currently advising or representing the ex-President. As a New York Times put it this weekend, "A dark joke has begun circulating among lawyers following the many legal travails of former President Trump. MAGA actually stands for Making Attorneys Get Attorneys."
One of Trump`s most recent attorneys a woman named Christina Bob who he apparently hired because he admired her work as a TV pundit, has now retained to legal counsel of her own per the New York Times. You see, Bob reportedly signed a letter back in June, claiming that she and other lawyers had conducted a thorough search at Mar-a-Lago and that no classified documents remained on the premises to the best of their knowledge. Something the FBI would later determine was not true when they executed that search warrant on Trump`s property last month and seized 100 more classified documents, including some marked top secret and at least one reportedly related to nuclear secrets.
Trump`s coup-plotting lawyers are also in some hot water. Trump`s leading lawyer in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani, is now the target of the Fulton County, Georgia district attorney`s investigation into election interference. He has been notified that he`s a target of that criminal probe by the district attorney`s office. That investigation of Fulton County may also be widening to include another Trump coup lawyer, Sidney Powell, who is now facing scrutiny for her role in an alleged scheme to steal election data. Remember, she hired that firm that went into one County`s election offices and apparently took a bunch of data.
The Department of Justice has also seized cell phones from John Eastman, that`s the cool lawyer I mentioned a moment ago, and Jeffrey Clark, former Trump DOJ official, as part of its investigation into the attempted coup and the insurrection that followed. That DOJ investigation is running parallel to the House committee investigating January 6, which is now set to resume its public hearings later this month.
The committee reportedly considering whether to request testimony from Mike Pence or even from Trump himself. While the committee cannot bring criminal charges itself, it can make referrals to and share information with the DOJ, which has already demonstrated it is following the committee`s findings closely.
David Rohde is the executive editor for news at NewYorker.com. Danya Perry served as New York Deputy Attorney General and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And they join me now. First, let`s start with the news reported by the New York Times. Again, this has been an incremental and moving story but we now have, I think, the best sense of the scope here, David. 40 subpoenas, two cell phones taken from individuals close to Trump, Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman, a subpoena being served to Bernie Kerik. This seems bigger than just to focus on the super PAC. This seems like a big case that the federal government is making. What do you make of it?
DAVID ROHDE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR FOR NEWS, NEWYORKER.COM. I think they`re, you know, systematically collecting evidence. They`re being aggressive as they can be. And I think they are pressuring these various Trump associates to become cooperating witnesses. You see that in all these different investigations, you know, the subpoenas, they want them to come turn over records. They maybe want some of them to testify before a grand jury.
You mentioned the case of Christina Bob who signed that letter saying there weren`t any classified documents in Mar-a-Lago, she is now in legal jeopardy. And I think investigators, in that case, are eager to get her under oath, because she has a choice to she sort of explained that President Trump had her say this that implicates Trump and wrongdoing, or does she, you know, lie to a grand jury. And this is a kind of classic, you know, prosecution tactic for a wide-ranging investigation where you again, go with these lower level people and pressure them to flip.
HAYES: Danya, what do you think about the legal trouble of Trump`s attorneys here? I mean, it does strike me as look, if you`re a criminal defense lawyer, right, you`re going to be adjacent to people accused of doing illegal things as a matter of what your job is. But it does seem striking when you look at Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani and now his current attorneys who have retained legal counsel. I don`t think I`ve ever encountered someone who has seemed to put his own lawyer is in as much legal jeopardy as Donald Trump has.
[20:10:09]
DANYA PERRY, FORMER NEW YORK DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: It`s unprecedented in my experience as well. It was remarkable to hear you tick off the laundry list of attorneys who have gotten themselves into legal Jeopardy. And I represented Michael Cohen so I`m well familiar with that. And that was in his bid to be released from federal prison after he was unconstitutionally remanded. And I was one of the people who filed the disciplinary -- the complaint against Rudy Giuliani.
So, you`re kind of aware, but it`s kind of a slow boil. But when you put it all together like that, it really is remarkable. And it really goes to what we`ve been hearing from people like Michael Cohen for a long time that there is a tremendous amount of pressure by the former president on his advisors to, as you say, do his bidding. And we`ve seen that for a long time now. And if anything, it`s only increased -- the pressure has only increased as we -- as we see now with the more recent lawyers who have themselves had to hire lawyers.
And it`s an interesting kind of like a Russian nesting doll where lawyers who have managed to avoid criminal or other investigation are now representing some of the lawyers who are now under investigation, a little incestuous. But from reporting and from common sense, it`s a little hard for obvious reasons for former President Trump to find lawyers these days.
HAYES: Yes. And David, let`s talk about the dynamics at DOJ which is something you`ve been reporting on. I mean, we now have these two seemingly separate inquiries, right? There is an investigation into the, you know, the unlawful retention of classified material, which was found in the ex- president`s Florida home, and the escalating, you know, investigation into that. Then there`s the January 6 grand jury. I mean, those are presumably being run entirely different sections of DOJ, but they have to make similar calculations about investigative timing as we come here to the election. Like, what is your reporting suggests about how the department is looking at all this?
ROHDE: My sense is that they`re -- the investigations are being carried out as they should. These are by sort of lower-level prosecutors. It`s not Merrick Garland himself who`s deciding to issue these subpoenas. But you have teams that are attacking, you know, evidence and trying to find criminality where it exists. They are investigating the heck, I`ll say, out of this is how one person put it to me. That`s what they want to do.
Now, they want to collect more evidence. They want to see if there are cooperating witnesses. One idea I think they could be pursuing in Florida is they want to see if President Trump did -- he sort of show off some of these classified documents that people. They`d want to talk to guests in Mar-a-Lago who maybe he did that too.
There`s no confirmation that he actually did that, but they want to investigate every possible thing they can. And then the classic, the big step here is when they prepare a prosecution memo. Each of these teams will prepare a different memo about these different crimes. And they`ll make a recommendation on whether or not Donald Trump should be indicted. And that`s when the decision goes to Merrick Garland.
So, right now, it`s these low-level groups working, you know, intensively to collect all the evidence and all the witnesses they can. And I don`t think you`ll see anything -- you know, there`s no way I think you`d see a prosecution memo presented to Garland or any kind of decision until after the Midterm Elections.
HAYES: Danya, the -- one of the points in the Times reporting was about the fact that it does appear that the January 6 Committee has unearthed things that have served as very, very fruitful prosecutorial leads, or at least investigative leads for the DOJ. At least some of the new subpoenas, in fact, requested all records that the recipient turned over to the House Committee investigating January 6, according to a person familiar with the matter.
So, there is an interesting relationship here in terms of what the committee has unearthed, and how this D.C.-based grand jury investigation is unfolding.
PERRY: Yes, not surprisingly. One of the things that has mystified me and I haven`t heard a reasonable explanation for it, but why there has been so little sharing of information between the committee and DOJ. But for whatever reasons, they may be political, the DOJ now is sort of circumventing that. And as you pointed out, or as the reporting points out, is now just directly requesting the documents. So, I guess that sidesteps some of those issues.
But the Select Committee has unearthed a tremendous amount of information and they`ve done a remarkable job, I think marshaling it and making a very compelling case. So, it`s not surprising at all that DOJ has been paying attention like the rest of the country and is picking up some of his cues from the results of that investigative work.
[20:15:03]
HAYES: Final question to you, David. I mean, all of this comes down to this -- you know you talked about these -- this is being done by the book you know people down the chain making these decisions writing in the prosecution memo. But of course, there`s sort of existential stakes here, right, about the integrity of the rule of law, the appearance, the legitimacy. You`re right about this.
A growing concern is that Trump`s false claims about the judiciary is steadily undermining the public`s use of judges as neutral, nonpartisan arbiters. That is -- the cynicism fuels a public cynicism about the fairness of the court system and of American democracy. What`s so pernicious and successful about Trump`s approach is his shamelessness in contriving the worst possible explanation for judges` rulings in way that play on many Americans, long-running distrust of government.
And this all to me seems like there is no way out of the test of the system for either DOJ or the judiciary when all said and done here.
ROHDE: Yes, absolutely. It`s an enormous sort of moment for the DOJ and I think for the judiciary. Judge Cannon`s ruling where she said there should be a special master, you know, has been roundly criticized. It`ll be overturned on appeal. And that`s the kind of, you know, cynical partisan ruling that Donald Trump wants to have happen.
Just tonight, the Justice Department though agreed to one of Trump lawyers suggestions for a judge who could be a special master. His name is Judge Dearie and he`s a great judge. There are good judges, and this investigation can be carried out properly and fairly and I think it definitely will be.
HAYES: All right, David Rohde and Danya Perry, thank you both.
Coming up, with less than two months until Election Day, Republicans are trying to undermine voting from the election from the inside. Election Lawyer Marc Elias explains the latest threat to democracy next.
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[20:20:00]
HAYES: Since November 2020, there have been a number of special elections across the country in different jurisdictions have largely gone pretty smoothly. And there have been a few Republicans who cried fraud when they didn`t win their primary races against other Republicans, or crucially, the three Republican-controlled counties in Pennsylvania who tried to throw out a group of mail-in ballots from the May 2020 primary election, resulting in a legal battle that took months and a judge`s order resolve.
That was a pretty ominous portent, but by and large, our election system have held. And as we head towards the first big Election Day since 2020, the Midterms in November, the Republican Party is fully embracing the big lie of a stolen election. The Head of the Republican National Committee, this is the party`s official arm, Ronna Romney McDaniel said they have recruited 45,000 poll watchers and workers in an effort to uphold what they call election integrity.
One of the people tracking and fighting attempts to undermine election Mark Elias an expert in voting rights litigation, and the founder of Democracy Docket. And he joins me now. I was struck by that tweet by the head of the official arm of the Republican Party. Some of that can be bluster. And of course, election workers and officials and poll watchers are part of American election administration for many, many years. You know, you`ll have one Democrat, one Republican in the polling place or one from each. So, it doesn`t necessarily need to be ominous. But the unprecedented election integrity ground game rang a little ominous to me. How did it rang to?
MARC ELIAS, FOUNDER, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Oh, it`s very ominous. And it`s very clear what she is trying to signal, which is that the Republican Party will be working in concert with the fringe right-wing or what used to be the fringe right-wing to make voting harder, voting in person more difficult, voting by mail substantially harder, and to try to gum up the works to undermine the free and fair elections that we expect, and the accurately certified elections that we rely on.
HAYES: What do you -- how? I mean, I guess there`s the question of like, what does that look like, right, at the at the sort of ground level as you understand it? We`ve got -- you know, there`s been great reporting by Heidi Przybyla she ran in Politico about, you know, the Michigan plan using -- utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll watchers - - workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers. Like, that`s one example. How do you see this? What are you most concerned about?
ELIAS: So, look, I think that`s -- I think the problems start with their efforts to intimidate voters in person who vote at the polls. You know, we saw we have seen this before by the Republican Party. The Republican Party for decades was under a court order not to engage in election activity at all, or election monitoring, poll worker activity at all because of its his history of violating the civil rights of Black and Latino voters.
We have seen the rhetoric that has come out of the Republican Party about the big lie. And probably most ominously, we are seeing across the country a challenge program by Republicans and by their allies, to essentially engage in election vigilantism to challenge the eligibility of voters to be able to vote at the polls, and trying to disenfranchise those voters in their entirety. And we`re seeing tens of thousands of those challenges already taking place even two months out from the election.
[20:25:04]
HAYES: There`s also this -- this struck me from the Washington Post yesterday that lots of public information requests -- now public information requests are generally -- it`s good that we have public information requests as a possibility. And as a journalist, I`ve made use of them my whole career. But these being used as a kind of tool of basically, again, kind of muddying the waters or at least like, gumming up the works, right?
Nearly two dozen states and scores of counties election officials are fielding what many described as an unprecedented wave of public records requests in the final weeks of summer. The avalanche of sometimes identically worded requests for somebody to advocate days to the process of responding even as they scurry to finalize polling locations, mail out absentee ballots, and prepare for early voting in October, officials said. There does seem a concerted effort to try to tax the system as much as possible.
ELIAS: Yes. And this is really, really important, Chris, because I think in that article, it also talked about that many of these requests were seeking information from 2020. So, it`s not like they were seeking information that would be applicable for 2022. It`s simply to divert the resources of constrained resourced election officials and election offices so that they can`t be doing the work that they have to be doing preparing for 2022.
The frivolous challenges that I mentioned, these mass challenges that they`re submitting are, in part, an effort to disenfranchise voters. But it takes enormous resources for election officials have to look up these voters to see if they are in fact, correctly registered. Have they moved, have something happened that they`re not registered? All of these things are aimed at preventing election officials from doing the one thing that they need to be spending their time doing right now, which is registering voters, sending out absentee ballot applications, and beginning to cite polling locations and prepare for high turnout elections in 2022. This is not an accident. This is part of the plan.
HAYES: All right, Mark Elias who is vigilant on this, and is working on some of the responses to it, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
ELIAS: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, Democrats have a reason to be optimistic about the Midterms after recent special election success, but are the promising poll numbers part of another blue mirage? That`s next.
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[20:30:00]
HAYES: With less than two months until the Midterm Election, we`ve entered the post-Labor Day period when people start paying more attention to politics, and crucially, polls generally become more accurate. Right now, the latest data shows an upward trajectory for the Democratic Party heading into November. Democrats hold a small advantage over Republicans in FiveThirtyEight`s polling average but they definitely didn`t earlier this summer. While President Joe Biden`s average approval rating is up five points from the mid-summer low, creeping closer to positive territory.
Voter enthusiasm among Democrats is on an upswing close to matching Republicans who typically have the advantage when Democrats are in control of both houses of Congress and the White House. The CEO of the polling firm TargetSmart found that in the six months before the decision overturning Roe v Wade, "women outnumber men by a three percentage point margin among new registrations. After the decision, that gender graph skyrocketed to 40 points.
Now, of course, all of this will filter down to individual races where all kinds of local issues. Candidate quality really matter. Plus, there`s two months left of events in the world that might change things. There are a number of big Senate races to watch in particular. In Ohio Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan has a slight lead over conservative author JD Vance. In Wisconsin, the latest poll shows Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes leading incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson by two points.
And in Pennsylvania, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor there, John Fetterman, has a comfortable lead in the average over Trump back TV Dr. Mehmet Oz. In Georgia, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is holding on to a small lead over Republican Herschel Walker in a race many Republicans see as one of their best chances to flip the Senate.
And one race it`s not really been on the radar but holds a good chance for Democrats to flip a seat or at least according to the polling now is the North Carolina Senate race where Trump-backed Republican Congressman Ted Budd recently fell on the polling average and now trails Democratic challenger Cheri Beasley as Election Day closes in fast.
But all of this comes with an asterisk, a very, very big one, which is the significant polling messes we have seen since 2016. And in the elections the following years and 2018 and 2020, particularly 2020 underestimating Republican strength particularly in the greater industrial Midwest. Now, Nate Cohn, top pollster at New York Times says those warning signs are flashing again. So, with less than two months until the election, the outlook for Democrats in November, we`ve got good news and bad for us on that front right after this.
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[20:35:00]
HAYES: Things have been looking much better for Democrats this summer. We`re seeing that in special elections as well as polling. But we can all remember the really astonishing polling messes in recent years. Remember back to 2020 when a poll released less than a week before election day, had Democrat Sara Gideon up by four points over Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins of Maine. We never saw Senator Sara Gideon as Collins won by nearly double digits on election night. There was a South Carolina poll a month before the 2020 election that had Democrat Jamie Harrison tied with a Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, only for Graham to win decisively in that reelection bid 54 to 44.
So, it`s pretty obvious for anyone who`s concerned about politics and the fate particularly of the pro-democracy majority here in America having good reliable information is pretty key to assessing where to place resources. And it prompts the question, are we seeing a repeat now of past polling errors.
Here with me to help understand the polling landscape, Cornell Belcher, a pollster and Democratic strategist. Cornell, so Nate Cohn had this big piece today, got a lot of attention basically said look, certain places Wisconsin, for one example, we have seen repeated systematic polling errors in which the polls -- public polls have failed to adequately capture Republicans strength. They`ve missed by six or seven points. We`ve seen the same to a lesser extent in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and making the case that a lot of the warning signs there that there`s something similar going on here now. What do you think of that?
[20:40:37]
CORNEL BELCHER, POLLSTER: Well, Chris, I`m a little (INAUDIBLE) bout this entire topic. But that said, let`s dive into a little deeper and hopefully we can -- we can unpack a little bit of it. Let`s start with your opening segment and where you talk -- when you went through several races and this conversation it was a Democrats` lead.
The truth of the matter is, Chris, in all those races that you named, except for Fetterman, none of those candidates actually have a lead.
HAYES: Right.
BELCHER: And so, I just want us to be careful about the narrative that we drive because you see often in newspapers -- you know, and I remember, two months out from the last election, a newspaper ran an article and said, you know, Biden leads Florida and that -- and Biden was up by two points. Now, the layperson or the regular voter will see that and they say, oh, well, Biden is going to win Florida. And that`s not what that means at all.
And until you get the 51 percent, Chris, anything can happen, because these races are not static. If you look at that -- you know, that race, say that`s, you know, 44-43, any -- that`s a toss-up and anything can happen because, you know what, Chris, we`re spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to in fact, move that rate, to sort of move those numbers around, so you still have a large enough share of voters who are fluid and persuadable to change the outcome of that race.
So, you know, I hear the conversation that the polling is wrong and off, but I think we`ve got to be careful about sort of how we`re trying to use polling in the public space. And for one, as you know, as someone who studies history, polling was actually never invented to nail a candidate horse race. It`s not what polling is -- was made for it all. And I always tell my candidates, listen, three or four months out from a race, the least important number on a -- in a poll I give you is, in fact, a horse race because that`s going to continue to change, because we`re going to build a strategy to change it.
HAYES: Right. So, there`s a few things I take away from that one. And this -- I think we`ve been pretty clear on this in the show. Like, these are all essentially dead heats. You know, Georgia, Ohio, right now looks at way. Wisconsin, I would assume. I would assume Pennsylvania. I basically assume any of the top-tier races are pretty close right now. You`re within a few points and so I totally agree with that.
And then I think that other key point and Plouffe and other political practitioners talk about this all the time, right, polling up on someone 44-43 doesn`t mean a whole heck of a lot. Whereas polling at 51 or 52 to 40 -- like, if you`re over 50, 51, 52, that`s saying something a little different than then those numbers where there`s a big group of people that haven`t started to tune in or aren`t paying attention. But I guess a third thing, right?
BELCHER: That`s exactly right.
HAYES: Right. So, the third thing that is interesting to me, and I think it actually corresponds to the question about public opinion polling which is where polling was born, right, not as a predictor for races, but to try to get a sense of what people thought and what their views are, is whether the polarization in American society along high trust-low trust, means that certain sectors of people who are low trust votes are like not going to talk to a pollster also tend to vote a certain way and have certain views and are being missed in some way and whether that`s a concern of you.
BELCHER: Well, yes. Well, there`s a rate of participation that has been dropping off but there`s been a lot of studies that shown -- it does not have -- does that as of yet had a huge impact. But what I tell -- you know, from time to time, I get asked to go on college campuses and talk to people about polling and politics, because I`ve been doing it for a while.
And what I tell these young people is, look, when I was polling in 2004 or 2000 -- 2004, you kids walking around your college campuses, I couldn`t get to you. You know, great news is there are so many ways for me to get to you now. And the bad news is there`s so many ways for me -- for me to get to -- for me to get to you right now.
The biggest problem we have as a predictor in polling, if you ask me, is the volatility. I mean, look, you run it on your show already. The questions about the number of people who are beginning to register is enormous. The changes that you see and intent to vote is enormous. If you go look at 2010 and 2014 versus 2018, there is there is so much difference in those -- in those electorates, so you have so much volatility.
In 2018, you had an electorate that looked like a presidential year electorate were in 2010, you had an electorate that was what 42 percent of eligible voters and Democrats won women by one point. So, from 2020 to 2014, if you look at the last -- two of the last three Midterm elections, you know, Democrats were with one or three, four points for women. 2018, they were what, plus 18. And so, if I look at this electorate that I`m happening right now, just use some common sense. Do I think it`s going to be more one point gap for women or press one for Dems, what they think is going to look more like 2018?
HAYES: Right.
BELCHER: We don`t know for sure. But they`re indicators along the -- along the road to say this is not 2010.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, I think -- right, I mean, the one thing I think you could -- you know, having nothing to do with polling, just fundamentals and specials shows that this is not a 2010 environment right now. I mean, it certainly wasn`t over the summer just having lived through covering 2010 and now. I mean, I think that`s pretty clear. What happens in the next few months though, again, Lord knows what happens in the actual word world to dry things as well.
Cornell Belcher, always a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.
BELCHER: Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, it looks like the Ukrainian military has Russia on its heels for gaining territory at a truly lightning pace. Is this the turning point in Russia`s unprovoked invasion? Next.
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HAYES: We are seeing a stunning turn of events in Ukraine six months after Russia`s unprovoked invasion. The Ukrainian military has succeeded in taking a broad swath of territory in the northeastern part of the country, forcing Russian soldiers to retreat.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the 200th day of war, Ukrainian celebrating a surprising victory. Soldier is breaking Russia`s military stranglehold on parts of the country and reclaiming territory at lightning speed. Ukraine, saying its forces have recaptured more villages. A total of more than 1100 square miles since launching the counter-offensive two weeks ago, liberating more than 30 settlements mostly in the Northeast.
The Russian military`s grip on the northeastern territory of Kharkiv crumbling. Its soldiers retreating, leaving tanks and artillery behind. In a rare admission of a setback, Russia is saying it`s not fleeing, it`s regrouping.
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HAYES: Now, to my mind, this is unexpected good news following months of a discouraging stalemate and shifting attitudes about how this war might come to an end. Back in February, when Russia launched their initial attack, it seemed like there are basically three possible outcomes. The first, at the beginning, perhaps most likely or most anticipated was a swift, outright Russian victory. But within just a couple of weeks, as Ukraine beat back Russian forces, protected their capital Kyiv, it became clear that that wasn`t going to happen. That ship had sailed.
Then, the second possibility was some kind of negotiated peace between the two sides after both sides came to a point where the cost of continuing to fight will be higher than the possibility of a victory. Until recently, that seemed to me the most likely end in some iteration. It would probably require some very painful concessions on Ukraine`s part. For instance, Crimea remaining in Russia`s were a bit, some sort of quasi independence for the southeastern states of Donetsk and Luhansk.
And then the third option, seemed the most remote, just an outright Ukrainian military victory, they just beat the Russians. Even after Ukraine repelled Russia`s first advance, and during the stalemate that followed, conquering territory is always much harder than holding it, and Russia had conquered a fair amount was holding it.
That is exactly what Ukraine has now done. They`ve really taken aback territory in a major successful offensive military operation. That brings new hope to the Ukrainians and their allies. And the news of this utter rout seems to have actually gotten through to the Russian people. Reaction is manifesting in a fascinating way on state TV where a former opposition lawmaker publicly stated the current strategy is not working and argues that Russia needs to make peace.
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We`re now at the point when we have to understand, it`s absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using those resources and colonial war methods with which Russia is trying to wage war, using contract soldiers, mercenaries.
A strong army is opposing the Russian army fully supported by the most powerful countries in the economic and technological sense including European countries.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you suggesting military mobilization?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m suggesting peace talks about stopping the war and moving on to dealing with political issues.
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HAYES: So, the first time in 200 days of war, I think this is a really encouraging situation both in the Russian airways and on the ground in Ukraine. Ben Rhodes served as deputy national security adviser for President Obama, now co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World. And he joins me now.
Ben, it`s been very hard -- I mean, there`s a real fog of war problem with trying to track in real time advances, defeats, obviously a tremendous amount of propaganda, but it does seem quite established in the last four or five days a pretty remarkably successive -- successful counter-offensive by the Ukrainians. What`s the significance here?
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BEN RHODES, FORMER DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think the significance, Chris, is that this undermines what Putin`s political strategy has been, which is since his failure to take Kyiv, he`s clearly tried to wage a war of attrition in which kind of inch by inch, he consolidates control of territory, Eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine, consolidating a swath of land that connects down to Crimea, which the Russians occupied in 2014, and then weaponize energy, gas and oil to punish those countries, particularly European countries that have been supporting Ukraine, and tried to demoralize the Ukrainians through battlefield attrition and demoralize their supporters who are arming them in the West.
And I think with this advance, it completely undermines Putin`s argument that a war of attrition serves his interests. What the Ukrainians are showing to their own people is that they should have their morale up that it`s possible to beat the Russians back and to take that territory. And importantly, the Ukrainians are showing their Western allies, hey, look, if you continue to support us, if you even escalate your support for us, we can take back more territory. So, it really shifts the dynamic on which this war is being fought.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, obviously, there`s been -- there -- you know, the Ukrainian plight, and it captured the U.S. and Europe`s attention, and imagination, tremendous outpouring of solidarity. I think as time have gone by, it`s obviously harder to maintain that attention. We`ve even seen protests against support of Ukraine, in parts of Eastern Europe. And also, they`re now facing energy costs as a massive problem this winter.
But the U.S. support does seem crucial here. I mean, both in terms of the money and the kinds of weapons they`ve been given which are more offensive in nature, and which Ukrainians have been asking for and had not gotten in the beginning, do seem to be playing a pretty significant role. You even heard it from that Russian commentator in these offenses as well.
RHODES: Yes. I mean, at the beginning, it was a lot of defensive weaponry, you know, anti-tank weapons to try to repel Russian invasion. The U.S. shifted over the course of the war into providing the kind of long range artillery that can be used to weaken, softened up Russian positions, and enable an offensive, as well as providing more air defense systems that can allow those advancing Ukrainian forces to operate without as big a risk from Russian airpower.
So, it`s tilted some of the battlefield dynamic in favor of the Ukrainians. At the same time that I think part of what we`ve seen, Chris, and frankly, that Russian mentioned it in his own comments, is when you have the military that is full of conscripts who are poorly paid who weren`t even told why they`re in these regions of Ukraine, and mercenaries who`ve been sent in there for higher, the morale among the Russian units who`ve been worn down by a lot of frontline butting clearly not high.
Those guys hightailed that as soon as they could. Whereas the morale and Ukrainian side, and had will to fight has been very high end very resilient, and I think will be reinforced by the success. Success can beget success. Now, I caution, Russia still occupies a large swath of Ukrainian territory. They still have a lot of manpower and firepower. And the danger, frankly, is if Putin begins to feel like he`s losing, does he resort to even more dramatic actions. And we`ve already seen that with the effort to kind of cut off power and water, kind of punish the Ukrainian people for the success of their military.
So, there`s a long road ahead. But for the Ukrainians, I think they have hope and hope is obviously an incredibly powerful force when you`re dealing with this kind of existential conflict.
HAYES: Well, and there`s -- to me, there`s a deeper question here, which I again, at some point -- at some level, right, like, I`m not a party to this. I think that the invasion was an atrocity and never should have happened, has made the world worse, has led to 10s of 1000s of avoidable deaths, and want to see Russia repelled from Ukraine.
At the same time, the longer the war goes, the higher level of human misery. You know, six months of this has already produced unbelievable amounts of destruction and death, both of the military on both sides and civilians. Two years, three years, four years, we saw what happened in Syria, which is a nine-year battle. And I guess the question is, what is your assessment of the way this ends given this offensive and what it might mean in terms of what a possible outcome could possibly be that would actually end this war?
RHODES: Well, first of all, I think one of the reasons why President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians were reticent to get into a peace negotiation in the previous months is they saw that in the areas that Russia was taking, that Russia was occupying, they were depopulating those areas. They were shipping the Ukrainians into Russia or they were just leveling the places.
And so any negotiation that kind of started with the status quo where Russia is occupying those lands, Ukraine is not going to get those back. And frankly, those people are going to live under serious misery. I think what you couldn`t want is to gain back as much territory as they possibly can so they`re in a much stronger position when they enter into any peace negotiation. And that hopefully is how this can end.
HAYES: All right, Ben Rhodes, thank you so much for your time tonight. That is ALL IN on this Monday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.