Summary
Former President Donald Trump panders to QAnon movement at Ohio rally. A criminal probe is opened into Ron DeSantis flying migrants to Martha`s Vineyard. Tomorrow afternoon, lawyers for the Department of Justice and Donald Trump`s legal team will be in the Brooklyn courtroom for their first appearance before the newly appointed special master. Puerto Rico`s power grid fails again after Hurricane Fiona hits the island. Co- directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick join Hayes to discuss their new docu- series and the American failures in response to the Holocaust.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Gabe Gutierrez, thank you very much. Stay safe, my friend. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Excellent reporting. We need to be thinking about that place, that island, and making sure their infrastructure is ready for the next hurricane. It`s shameful that a year later they still were not prepared. That is tonight`s "REIDOUT". ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I understand they liked me very much which I appreciate.
HAYES: The disgraced ex-President of the United States embraces his new role as leader of the delusional and dangerous QAnon cult.
TRUMP: We will make America strong again.
HAYES: Scenes from The Ohio Trump rally, which became something far more disturbing. Then, why the supposed alternative to Trump is turning into a real problem for Republicans?
Plus, the latest on the special master investigating Trump`s stash of secret documents. And Ken Burns on why this moment is one of the most difficult in the history of America when ALL IN starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Over the weekend Donald Trump held a bizarre rally in Youngstown, Ohio. It was in support of the Republican Senate candidate there, J.D. Vance. And Trump has given hundreds of rallies, this one was a bit different. You might have already seen this footage already. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country. We will stand up to the radical left lunatics and RINOs and we will fight for America like no one has ever fought before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Hybrid of absolute, altar call, kind of. Obviously, the video is creepy, weird, unnerving. It is worth taking some time to explain why though. Right before our eyes, the de facto leader of one of two major political parties -- we`ve got two parties. One of them is led by that man right now. And he is embracing fully a violent authoritarian cult mythology. It`s one that explicitly imagines its political foes being killed.
You see the song playing in the background of that rally is not mere mood music, it sounds identical to a song that has been adopted as something of an anthem by supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory. If you go online the song is known by an acronym which is also very common in the Q Anon world which stands for "where we go one, we go all." That`s a slogan that comes up a lot in QAnon world.
The folks holding up a single finger in a kind of salute have been interpreted by some is referencing the one in that title, the signaling their support for QAnon. And this is the most explicit Trump has been embraced -- his embrace of QAnon. I mean, of course, he`s winked, bedded supporters for years, he praised QAnon believers during a press conference back in fall of 2020.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: During the pandemic, the QAnon movement has been -- appears to be gaining a lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think about that and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now?
TRUMP: Well, I don`t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much which I appreciate. But I don`t know much about the movement. I have heard that it is gaining in popularity. I`ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don`t like seeing it. So, I don`t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The cost of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind?
TRUMP: Well, I haven`t -- I haven`t heard that. But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? I mean, you know, if I can help save the world from problems, I`m willing to do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, that was the sort of standard, having it both ways, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, it doesn`t sound so bad. And you know, this was kind of part of a pattern. He very deliberately refused to condemn QAnon during an NBC News townhall just weeks before the 2020 election.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: Let me ask you about QAnon it is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Now, can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and disavow about QAnon in its entirety?
TRUMP: I know nothing about QAnon. I know very little --
GUTHRIE: I just told you.
TRUMP: You told me but what you tell me doesn`t necessarily make it fact, I hate to say that. I know nothing about it. I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They find it very hard but I know nothing about it.
GUTHRIE: They believe it as a satanic cult run by the states.
TRUMP: If you like me to study the subject, I`ll tell you what I do know about. I know about Antifa and I know about the radical left.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:18]
HAYES: Now, you can see how that went, right? So, at the time, some folks chalk that up to Trump`s refusal to denounce anyone who supported his presidency, which makes sense, right? If someone says to Donald Trump, like, there`s this cult of people that believe you`re the Savior of all mankind, like, what`s he going to say, I don`t like that?
OK, that was the past, but something is changed in the last few weeks, really changed. His embrace of this movement, of this cult has become much more deliberate, much more explicit. Trump frequently uses his off friend, Twitter platform, sort of knockoff Twitter platform to repost memes and other posts that are just explicitly QAnon, including that slogan I referenced above.
One significant one was this one recently. This included this mean caption "The storm is coming." That maybe seemingly innocuous phrase, it`s actually a real dog whistle for something very dark. Although, again, to explain all this requires get a little context to QAnon. Now, we have of course, referencing covered this conspiracy on the show in the past. You can`t cover politics without bumping into it, the folks who are January 6. We tend to not go into the specifics quite deliberately, because it`s delusional stuff. But QAnon is not a harmless conspiracy theory. There`s all sorts of people who believe all sorts of stuff. It`s not like people think the earth is flat, or we fake the moon landing.
It`s an explicitly violent mythos, very kind of religion like its sort of main tenets. It lacks one coherent ideology, but it`s based on a number of posts that originated -- based on a number of posts have been anonymous message board online, in the early days of the Trump administration. And this anonymous poster on this forum was pretending to be a high-level government official with Q-level top secret clearance. That`s hence the name.
And the adherence of this conspiracy theory generally believes some variation of the following. The government and media are secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, who run an underground world-wild child sex trafficking ring. They may or may not harvest the blood from children during secret rituals. The so-called Deep State is covering up for that cabal, and you know -- this is all familiar stuff, right? Like the Rothschilds and that kind of Masons and all that stuff.
And in this mythos, Donald Trump is the only one who could stop them. And there`s this kind of eschatology, if you will to this, a Judgment Day, right? The Judgment Day, the moment of reckoning is called the storm. And it`s on that day when Trump will round up his enemies to try them for their supposed crimes and then publicly execute them.
So that`s what they`re all waiting for, hoping for. That`s deliverance. A deliberate explicit call for the murder of Trump`s perceived enemies. I mean, I guess they get a show trial first. And this kind of dark delusion has already led to some really dark stuff, criminal and sometimes violent behavior. In 2018, an Arizona man blocked the Hoover Dam with an armored truck full of weapons in order to bring attention to QAnon claims.
Last year, California man who according the FBI claimed to be "enlightened by QAnon murdered his two young children after coming to believe they were tied to the conspiracy. Just last week, a Michigan man fatally shot his wife and injured his own daughter after, according to his family, becoming enthralled by QAnon, going down the rabbit hole so to speak.
That alone should be enough to say the conspiracy is dangerous and the beliefs are vile. They`re not the kind of thing you want to flirt with publicly. But Donald Trump is not the only prominent conservative to promote QAnon`s believes. And when you see the people at that rally, you understand that like, there`s a lot of people out there who believe this.
Here`s one that sticks with me. According to text messages sent to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni, a prominent conservative activist, believe believed that Joe Biden, his associates, and members of the media "are being arrested and detained for ballot fraud" right now. And over the coming days, will be living in barges of Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals for sedition.
Now, that`s a deeply disturbing delusion, and also what? But it only makes sense in the context of the QAnon vision of MAGA judgment day. That`s what it would look like. And again, this wasn`t just some rando on the internet, the wife of a sitting Supreme Court Justice who was in text contact with the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States in the days following the election, and before he led a coup against our government.
Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia explicitly praised QAnon before winning elected office. Last year, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut made this point in a hearing with FBI director Christopher Wray that public figures embracing this violent conspiracy theory pose a real threat to the country.
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SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): I would like to ask you whether the threat posed by QAnon, and as you well know, adherence of QAnon were among the rioters very prominently, who stormed the Capitol, whether the continuing threat is worsened when prominent elected officials, including members of Congress endorse the QAnon theory.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, DIRECTOR, FBI: Well, certainly we are concerned about the QAnon phenomenon, which we view as a sort of loose -- sort of set of conspiracy theories, and we`ve certainly seen domestic violent extremists of the sort that you`re describing, who cite that as part of their motivation. Obviously, the folks who engage in this kind of violence, draw inspiration from a variety of sources, and we`re concerned about any source that stimulates or motivates violent extremism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Ben Collins is a senior reporter for NBC News where he covers disinformation and extremism on the internet. And he joins me now. Ben, it`s good to have you here. So, it really does seem in the last few weeks, there has been a real turn in Trump`s sort of active promotion engagement with it. What -- how would you characterize it?
BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, so on Truth Social, his little fake Twitter knockoff that we just talked about, he has been retruthing, which is the word for retweeting a bunch of QAnon posts. Now, he`s done this in the past with Twitter stuff, but he -- you know, he had it closer to a line of plausible deniability in this.
Last week, he posted that thing we had the Q pin on and the where we go one, we go all stuff. And then at this rally on Saturday, he -- over this very ominous music -- I don`t know if you heard that at the end. It wasn`t just the people pointing, but it was the swelling, ominous music. And that music was called Where We Go One, We Go All and it was by a hopefully synonymous person named Richard Feelgood, by the way. So, the fact that they found this at all --
HAYES: Right. Someone has got to do a little work to get that music and play it.
COLLINS: That`s exactly right. It wasn`t the first time he`s used this, but it`s the first time he`s used it as this like grand finale kind of thing. And that`s where it gets -- starts to get a little bit spookier. The fact that he`s not just leaning into this, but saying, hey, you know, we need you back. These people were going away, like the prophecy didn`t make sense anymore. He wasn`t in power. He wasn`t showing any signs of power to these people. He was luring them back in over the last few weeks because in part, I think, you know, his supporters are -- if you go to his -- if you go to the forums dedicated to him, they are no longer talking about voting, they`re talking about building an army.
HAYES: There`s a kind of doomsday cult aspect to this which had been part of the problem it had, right? When the doom -- when -- you know, when the leader of the cult says the world will end on, you know, this date and the date comes and then maybe you get like once or twice where you get to be like, well, we got that wrong, but actually it`s going to happen. And then what tends to happen is people are like, they walk away from it.
There was something like that happening with QAnon, right, insofar as this prophecy of his, you know, omniscience, right? Like, his omnipotence never came true. And at a certain point, you got to think like, oh, well, this is all just bum.
COLLINS: Yes. And I want to say it`s based on nonsense. Like, the very first QAnon post, unfortunately, by Q predicts that within 48 hours, Hillary Clinton would be arrested and the government will be taken over by the National Guard and all this stuff. It was this elaborate thing. That didn`t matter. So, you know, he needed something to show in the last few weeks that he still needs you guys basically back in these forums. And they have -- they have filtered back into those spaces.
And -- but look, I want to say this too. QAnon didn`t just pop up. A guy didn`t come up with a bunch of ideas that Hillary Clinton should be arrested in that there should be this government takeover on these forums, before QAnon came through, all of those ideas were out there.
HAYES: Right.
COLLINS: These people have wanted, effectively, like a martial law style thing to take in all the democratic enemies to them. But Q and by extension, Donald Trump, who took that mantle became the person who could follow through with it. Now, they`re on your sixth or seventh waiting for this and they`re running out of time.
HAYES: Yes, I want to read from your reporting here. Users of QAnon forums rejoice at Trump`s apparent endorsement of the conspiracy theory and its mythology. The top response the most visited QAnon forms one of Trumps posts about the conspiracy theory read simply, wipe them out, sir. Others pleaded with Trump to nuke them from orbit, to sir, please finish them off, referring to QAnon enemies such as Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden.
There`s -- you know, there`s something like not really -- to your point about like, not talking about voting, there`s not really recognizably politics in the way that we I think we think of politics and like a liberal, democratic pluralistic society. It`s something -- it`s something else. I don`t know what the right word for it is.
COLLINS: Yeah, it`s revanchism probably is the word right? They`re trying to get something back. And what they -- if you talk to these people, if you look at these forums, what they really want is they want the world to be fundamentally different and they don`t know how to get there anymore.
HAYES: Right.
COLLINS: That`s what`s happening. They want the world to be either 20 years ago or 50 years ago or like, even worse, like maybe 100 years ago. And they want to return to that place. But they don`t -- they don`t see that they are in the minority in this space. So, their only path forward that they can see now is violence and intimidation.
Like, I really do believe this. The only vote that they think that they can get now, in these pro-Trump forums that makes sense to them, are ones they can see with a hand count. So, they go to -- that`s why they`re going to school boards. That`s why they`re going to, you know, even like library boards now, because you can intimidate somebody into changing their vote. But you can`t do that at this much larger level. And that`s the problem.
[20:15:39]
HAYES: Well, and I think there`s a kind of interesting disjuncture here, which is that for so long, these folks told themselves, they represent a true majority of Americans. And that`s been the sort of abiding lie here and it keeps getting disproved. At some level, I think it starts to creep in, that you`re not that, right? So, then you turn from what you might call like, majoritarian democratic politics, like let`s go out and convince people to like, something darker, which is like this sort of like, violent vanguard that`s going to like, you know, win the day through non-normal political means.
COLLINS: Right. The big thing in these spaces right now is to talk about how they can take over boards of election, how to take over secretaries of state, so they can sort of get the results they want despite whatever the vote is. And you know, they want -- they want poll watchers, they want people watching ballot boxes in the middle of the night because this 2000 mules movie they`re obsessed with, this conspiracy theory movie, to effectively shoo away people who are not white from putting ballots and drop boxes.
That`s the kind of thing they think they can win because you don`t need numbers. You just need power and strength and guns.
HAYES: This is the top post on T~he Donald today, which is a forum a lot of people frequent -- several users used to plan the January 6 insurrection, calling for Trump`s supporters to act as poll watchers which again, is unnerving. I mean, the one thing I think is like, again, when you look at that rally, right, like, I don`t think that scans great like in the public at large, right?
COLLINS: Yes.
HAYES: Like, you know, he`s polling at 34% for a reason. But the whole commitment here is that you don`t need a majority to get your way.
COLLINS: Even in the party.
HAYES: Yes, that`s right.
COLLINS: Like his number of third party basically static, maybe going up. And his numbers in the general populace are deeply declining.
HAYES: Yes.
COLLINS: And that`s what you see here. You see a relatively empty arena, by the way, and the people on the ground doing a salute to him. So, that`s -- there`s no better picture of what the Trump movement is than that right now.
HAYES: Ben Collins, always a pleasure. Thanks.
Coming up, what successful Republican Party looks like, politics look like, and why Trump and his top replacement on the 2020 for ticket meant. That`s next.
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[20:20:00]
HAYES: In the wake of that gross stunt in which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis essentially human-trafficked about 50 migrants to an island off the coast of Massachusetts last week, Texas authorities have now opened a criminal investigation into how DeSantis lured the unsuspecting migrants to be flown across the country and stranded.
That and according to Rolling Stone, Donald Trump is fuming, reportedly telling allies and confidence he`s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he`s allowed to steal the ex-president`s mantle as both media star and as undocumented immigrant basher in chief. Makes sense that Trump is feeling threatened by DeSantis because the Republican establishment is obviously desperate to find a way to sustain Trumpism without Trump himself. And a lot of them think that Ron DeSantis is the man for that job.
That is partially because the Florida Governor is willing to do things as despicable as paying someone -- we still don`t know who -- to lie to migrants and drop them off on a tiny Massachusetts island where they are removed from any possible family, court dates, or social networks. And the smarter members of the Republican establishment also understand that Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. Just 34 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of him right now, according to a recent NBC News poll. Of course, the ex-president is also facing multiple possible indictments, which again, doesn`t add up to an ideal nominee for a major party in 2024.
Now, in comparison, DeSantis does look like the better bet. But I got to say, I don`t think DeSantis has yet proven himself to be some kind of like once-in-a-generation political talent. He`s won one statewide election, currently leading the polls for reelection in Florida, a state that has not elected a Democratic governor in 30 years. I`m not quite convinced that this kind of constant cultural war trolling is as broadly popular with voters writ large, non-Fox viewers, as lots of people in the professional political class seem to believe.
Fernand Amandi is a veteran Democratic strategist and pollster based in Miami and he joins me now. Fernand, first, I`m curious how this is all filtering through Florida medium, Florida politics, particularly given the state has so many folks, you know, from Cuba and Venezuela, who have made their own treacherous journeys away from regimes they viewed as tyrannical, which is what these Venezuelans, you know, flown to Martha`s Vineyard we`re doing and how that`s played out there.
FERNAND AMANDI, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, Chris, first off, this conversation we`re having tonight is possible because a Florida governor 60 years ago allowed my parents and grandparents to come into this country seeking asylum from a socialist totalitarian regime as lawful exiles seeking political asylum. So, the fact that this becomes for the first time in 60 years really a disruption of what has been the constant Republican policy in Florida, if you come from Cuba, if you come from Venezuela, if you come from Nicaragua, and you`re seeking relief from the socialist totalitarian regimes, you can live the American dream and experience that in free Florida, that I think has caused shockwaves here in the state.
[20:25:37]
So, to the extent is it being well received, we`re not necessarily going to know that until empirical data comes out showing that DeSantis is either losing support in the polls or on election day if people are just taking the quiet way of expressing a protest vote. But right now, I think there is a lot of angst, there`s a lot of concern, and a lot of folks candidly, Chris, have been chilled into silence. Because if there`s one thing we know about Ron DeSantis is he does not mind exerting political revenge on anybody who dares to challenge him.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, think about -- you know, the thing about -- DeSantis clearly has this sort of playbook here, pick these sort of big cultural war fights that are kind of in the zeitgeist of Fox News, you know, arresting people who his own state told they could vote lawfully, sending a SWAT team to one of them, you know, sending these migrants to a, you know, island off Massachusetts, passing anti-woke bill.
But all that just feels to me like it`s sort of easy -- it`s easy enough for him to kind of gain currency with the folks in Fox. It`s not like -- it`s not like he`s some political Colossus in Florida, where he`s running up like Charlie Baker or Larry Hogan numbers of 75 percent approval.
AMANDI: He`s really not. But again, we have to understand what is the ultimate motivator here for Ron DeSantis. He has made the calculation, Chris, that his reelection is assured. He thinks it`s a sure thing.
HAYES: Yes, right.
AMANDI: He thinks it`s a slam dunk. And as such, his prize right now that his eyes are laser locked on is the 2024 Republican nomination for president. So, he`s trying to win the MAGA Republican primary and at the same time, in his own twisted, warped, cynical way, imagining that he`s also doing a conversation changer. You and I are now talking about the decision now to overturn Dobbs and the impact that that decision will have on millions of American women across the country because DeSantis doesn`t want to talk about that either.
So, they have deliberately, I think, change the subject to what they think is more fertile ground for them, which is the immigration issue.
HAYES: Yes. And he -- DeSantis literally ran away from a microphone about a week and a half ago when he was asked to follow up about what exactly level of abortion restrictions he supports in Florida. He still is basically keeping that secret for people, although I would tell the voters of Florida, if you think this guy is going to try to get the Republican primary in 2024, one way he`s going to try to do that as maximum abortion restrictions if the incentives align.
So, I mean, I know that he`s been a little cagey about that, but at some point, there`s going to be a decision made, and the folks in Florida are going to have to deal with it.
AMANDI: Well, absolutely. And especially when you consider Chris that his opponent, Charlie Crist, has staked this election out in Florida. He said the first thing he will do as governor is enshrine legislation and veto anything that speaks to an abortion ban in the state of Florida to protect -- to protect reproductive choice. But again, DeSantis also can read the polls. He`s very Machiavellian in that regard.
HAYES: He knows that the abortion issue is kryptonite for him. So, the less he talks about that and the more he can stay on the grievance culture war topics, like immigration and scapegoating people of color, that`s friendly terrain in his judgment.
HAYES: Yes. And this is why -- I mean, this is literally the appeal, right, is that someone who has the sort of instinct for cultural or fights without the same shooting himself in the foot as Trump is what they`re looking for. Again, I think it`s a little early to say that this guy is like some incredible political instincts. We`ll see how this continues to play out.
Fernand Amandi, thank you very much.
AMANDI: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Still ahead, it`s a judicial doubleheader. The Justice Department is scheduled to face off with Team Trump in court twice in the same day over the classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago. We have the former judge, Nancy Gardner, who`s going to tell me what should be happening next.
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[20:30:00]
HAYES: Tomorrow afternoon, lawyers for the Department of Justice and Donald Trump`s legal team will be in the Brooklyn courtroom for their first appearance before the newly appointed special master. His name is Judge Raymond Dearie, a 78-year-old Reagan appointee who will begin the process of sifting through more than 11,000 documents including, most importantly, roughly 100 classified documents containing highly guarded secrets all seized from the ex-president`s Florida retirement home in early August.
What remains unclear is what criteria the Special Master is supposed to use to sort through the documents and if he agrees with any claims of privilege made by the Trump`s lawyers. And the other thing that hangs over this entire process is an appeal filed by the DOJ on Friday asking that the FBI regain access and those classified documents so they can resume investigating potential crimes.
Nancy Gertner served as a U.S. District Court Judge of Massachusetts for nearly two decades, currently a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School. And she joins me now. Nancy, I don`t envy Judge Dearie here because it`s just very unclear to me what he`s supposed to do. So, it seems a little unclear to him too because the first thing he`s asked is for the Trump people to say, what Trump may have declassified or says he declassified. And the Trump lawyers respond by saying like, you can`t make us say that, that it will force the plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment. What is he supposed to do here?
[20:35:47]
NANCY GERTNER, FORMER U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: I feel like saying beats me, but I`ll be better than that. It sounds like he wanted Trump`s lawyers to do what they should have been doing for two years, which is identify specific documents that don`t fit with under the Presidential Records Act, that don`t fit within classified documents regime and are -- and are documents as to which he has a proprietary interest.
Bear in mind, it`s so extraordinary. We`re focused on this case, but in fact, Trump had these documents from January of 2021 until this past summer. So, he had an opportunity at any point to say, hey, these are mine and here`s why. And now, when asked for them to say that, they`re saying, well, you know, we`re not about to disclose that, since that would be part of our defense. It`s really ridiculous.
HAYES: Well, this is what`s makes us so mind-boggling to me again as well, as sort of watching from the outside is they`ve kicked the can on making an affirmative case for his, you know, his possession, his rightful ownership of any of these documents by getting Cannon to go along with a special master. But at some point, someone is going to have to make an argument for why you get -- why document A is yours and not the possession of U.S. government. None of this works. Like, I don`t -- someone has got to make that case at some point. GERTNER: OK, so let me -- let me sort of focus on what Judge Dearie could be doing. So, Judge Cannon said to Judge Dearie, look at the 100 classified documents first, the documents that were the subject of the stay. And he -- and I would assume that he`s going to do it and look at the 100 classified documents as to which there is no colorable claim of either executive privilege or personal interest by Trump.
I mean, it seems to be rather straightforward. These are classified documents. You can`t say, hey, I really want this nuclear secret documents, it`s mine, I sort of like it. You know, you can`t say that this belongs to the -- to the defendant -- to Trump because it doesn`t. So, I think you`ll start with that. And then as to the rest, there will be obviously attorney- client privilege documents, which are the government`s already segregated. And then he`ll look at those and you`ll say, oh, yes, that is attorney- client privilege.
And then there would be -- there`s a category that Trump`s lawyers wants him to look at that his personal documents. I don`t know what that could be, except maybe a, you know, a paperweight from North Korea that because presumptively all presidential records belong to the people, classified documents have a level of protection above that, and then there`s attorney- client privilege. So, that suggestion from Judge Dearie, it sounds like he is saying what everyone has been saying here that there is no conceivable personal interest in these documents.
HAYES: Yes. And we`re going to see how this hearing unfolds tomorrow. But again, they`ve gotten further than I think a lot of us thought they`d get, but at some point, someone`s going to have to make an argument as to why the, you know, country A`s nuclear secrets are like you get to have.
GERTNER: Right, to sleep -- put on your pillow at night. I got that.
HAYES: Right.
GERTNER: But I think one of two things could happen here, which is either Judge Dearie looks at the 100 classified documents and says, there`s no conceivable proprietary interest in that, no conceivable executive privilege, and give them back to the government. In which case, the stay that the DOJ is seeking will become moot. They will then have had this.
HAYES: Right.
GERTNER: And then he`ll move on to the other documents. But since there`s no have -- there are no standards for executive privilege for classified information, I don`t know where he goes from there.
HAYES: Yes. It`s so strange. Nancy Gardner, thank you so much.
GERTNER: Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, a timely reminder of American history as the nation confronts its current issues.
[20:40:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are challenged as Americans to think about what we would have done, what we could have done, what we should have done.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In our better moments, we are very good people, but that`s not all there is to this story.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick join me in studio to talk about their new series The U.S. and the Holocaust. The parallels between then and now ahead.
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[20:45:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No power, no water, nothing.
GABE GUTIERREZ, NBC NEWS NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Fabian Moran and his family in Yabucoa are among the more than 1000 people rescued across the island as the floodwaters went through their homes.
Have you ever seen something like this before?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, never.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Puerto Rico has been battered by another major hurricane almost exactly five years after it was hit by Hurricane Maria which killed nearly 3000 people on the island, and eventually led to more than 200,000 to flee for the U.S. mainland. Now, hurricane Fiona has left Puerto Rico once again in blackout conditions and submerged by flooding.
With this storm the issue is less the wind but rather than rain which is falling in astronomical record rates. The floodwaters are so fierce they washed away a temporary bridge that was built in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. So far, more than 1000 people have been rescued, although the flooding makes large parts of the island inaccessible for rescuers.
A huge concern in Puerto Rico has long been its power grid. Back in 2017, Hurricane Maria destroyed the grid, leaving residents with electricity for months. And that lack of electricity was a huge part of the elevated mortality. This time around, the grid failed almost immediately plunging 1.5 million households and businesses into darkness.
These repeated power failures along with the repeated failures of the body that governs the grid, which is called PREPA, have led to years of sustained public outrage, political mobilization, and investigations. Puerto Rico`s government has hired a private company to manage electrical distribution. That deal has also sparked protests.
Obviously, in the era of climate change on a tropical island that is part of the United States, the number one priority is a resilient grid, which Puerto Rico demonstrably still does not have. Federal government has allocated $9.5 billion to repair the grid. That project is moving at an extremely slow pace. Now, hurricane Fiona is calling attention again to this crucial need. And the only hope, I suppose, amidst these awful scenes is that this latest disaster will put the necessary pressure on government officials and the grid operator to ensure the Puerto Rico`s more than three million residents finally get power they can depend on.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: We`re living in one of the most precarious times in American history as a nation as a democracy. You don`t have to take my word for it. Last month, President Joe Biden met with a group of historians in the White House where they told him the same, warned him about the dire condition of democracy. And now, that same warning is coming from award-winning filmmaker who spent decades documenting America`s past. A new docu-series from Ken Burns analyzes the flawed U.S. response to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the parallels to the current moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANIEL MENDELSOHN, WRITER: The fragility of civilized behavior is the one thing you really learn because these people who we now see in these photographs, the sepia photographs and they`re receding into time, they`re no different, no different from us. You look at your neighbors, the people at the dry cleaners, the waiters in the restaurant, that`s who these people were. Don`t kid yourself.
GUY STERN, VETERAN, WORLD WAR II: We have seen as a media of human behavior and we have no guarantee that it won`t recur. If we can make that clear and graphic and understandable not is something to imitate but as a warning of what can happen to human beings, then perhaps we have one shield against its recurrence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Two of the Emmy Award-winning co-directors and producers of that new PBS three-part docu-series, The U.S. and the Holocaust, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick join me now. Thank you both for being here.
LYNN NOVICK, CO-DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST: Thank you.
KEN BURNS, CO-DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST: Thank you.
HAYES: I think when I saw it, when I saw the title of this coming out, I thought to myself, OK, what did I learn -- what do you learn about the U.S. and Holocaust? And I think what you learned generally is we went to war against the Nazis, and then liberated the camps, more or less. Why did you want to make a movie on this topic?
BURNS: Because I think we`ve conveniently sort of settled ourselves in that nice, comfortable suburban decided that`s where we`re going to live and raise our kids and our grandkids and it`s just not the case. We knew what was going on from the very beginning 3000 articles in 1933 alone about what Hitler was doing in `33, the first year of his of his reign. The real question is what we did and what we could have done in what we didn`t do. And I think all of that is points to the fact that though we let in more people than any other sovereign nation, 225,000 refugees, we could have let in five or 10 times that amount, and really made a difference when it comes to the people who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
But because we have such -- had such extraordinary anti-Semitism, prevalent anti-Semitism, because we were a country that had enslaved Africans that we had isolated our native populations, that we were xenophobic, and nativist, and all that sort of stuff in the middle of the Depression, and subscribing to eugenics, which saw a hierarchy of race, when of course, there`s only one race, the human race, we were in the perfect position to have everything get clogged up.
It`s not Roosevelt`s fault. It`s not one part of the executives fault. It`s all of our faults, and we have to own it and reckon with it, because in this story are the seeds of what`s going on there.
HAYES: That the point that stuck out to me in the documentary, the 3000 articles in 1933. And it reminded me of when I read -- I think it was Meacham`s Andrew Jackson biography. There`s a -- there`s a part in there about the Trail of Tears. And I remember reading that and realizing that at the time --
Right.
HAYES: -- there are people at the time during those years being like, this is abhorrent, horrible, you can`t do this. This was enormous point of debate. And what I had learned later on was like, oh, they didn`t realize. And I think this comes through really well in documentary that people realized people were ringing the alarm bell about the fate of European Jewry quite early on here in the U.S.
[20:55:28]
NOVICK: Yes, because, you know, as many people say, when people tell you who they are, believe them. I think it was Maya Angelou who said that, and certainly true for Adolf Hitler. He said, when he felt. He was quite direct, you know, he evolved the plan to actually commit the Holocaust over time. It wasn`t from day one. But nonetheless, there`s no secret that there was just direct persecution, violence, concentration camps, deportations, taking people`s citizenship rights away little by little.
As Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian says in the film, you know, it`s drip, drip, drip, little by little, little by little. There was tremendous coverage as Ken was saying. The American people have access to all this information. And, you know, why were we not more willing to open our doors as the crisis intensified? And it became clear that people were in mortal peril and desperate to get here. And there were waiting lists at consulates. There were, you know, piles and piles and piles of applications, hundreds of thousands of people trying to get into a very small number of slots that were available. And the United States did not see fit to change our policies, and make it easier for people to escape and to get here.
HAYES: I want to play this bit -- a little bit about that, because you guys do a great job of setting up the context of U.S. immigration politics, particularly at that moment. We`ve seen, of course, the enormous influx of immigrants in the late 19th century and early 20th century and there had been this real restrictionist move by the --
BURNS: Right, the backlash.
HAYES: Real backlash. And the backlash hits right at the sort of moment, when we should be opening the doors to take a listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By 1910, New York would be home to more than a million Jews, more than a quarter of the city`s population, far more than any other city on Earth.
PETER HAYES, HISTORIAN: The anxieties about urbanization, about unlettered, untutored, relatively uneducated peoples coming in in large numbers, the sense that disease was a problem. All of these worries were amalgamated into a belief that immigrants caused these problems. And thus immigration should be held down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many white Protestant Americans came to fear they were about to be outnumbered and outbred by the newcomers and their offspring, that they were being replaced.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOVICK: Sounds familiar?
HAYES: Yes, and the continuities is quite strong.
BURNS: So many things, conservatives in Germany who install Hitler are certain that they can control him. Hitler plays down anti-Semitism, steps up street violence in order to convince the country they`re on the verge of a civil war. There`s -- you know, after a while, the rhymes were getting too much for us. And we actually accelerated our production to come out now this year, September, and not comfortably next year, because there were so -- there`s a moment in the film when Deborah Lipstadt again says, the time to stop the genocide is before it happens to which I would humbly add, the time to save a democracy is before it`s lost.
And that`s, you know, an important reason why, as we set the table of all the conditions that set up the perfect storm that is The United States and the Holocaust, it seemed important also not to just conveniently say goodbye in 1965 when the pernicious Johnson read the Immigration Act of 1924 is changed by LBJ at the Statue of Liberty, this symbol, the MacGuffin throughout the film, but to really take us through all sorts of things like Charlottesville and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and Dylan Ruffin, and the things that are sort of around us. The ADL says they`ve never seen the number of anti-Semitic incidents as are taking place now.
HAYES: This point about what a nation is, what its identity is, which is obviously the question that Hitler is posing to Germans, right, but also the Americans are asking themselves about how many people they want to take, right? It`s so striking that the Johnson -- the 1924-65, right? 24 is the big sort of like immigration restrictionist. A bill that really for the first time like creates this sort of --
BURNS: Quota system.
HAYES: Quota system. 65 we get rid of it. That -- well, you look at other networks that will -- they will pinpoint as the pivot point that America starts to go to hell.
NOVICK: Well, that does speak to the question of, you know, from the clip we just played, who is a genuine American, who is a real American. At one point, Calvin Coolidge says we have to keep America for Americans. He doesn`t qualify what does that mean, but there`s an implication there that certain people are worthy of being Americans and other people aren`t and we`re still struggling with that.
HAYES: All three episodes of The U.S. and the Holocaust are now available via PBS. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, it`s fantastic work. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
BURNS: Thank you, Chris.
NOVICK: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Monday night. Hey, it`s an "ALEX WAGNER" bonus show tonight. It starts right now. Good evening, Alex.