Summary
"The Divider" book provides an inside look at Trump presidency from
key players in his administration. Ukraine prosecutor says 34,000 war
crimes documented, including genocide.
Transcript
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": That is all in on this Monday night.
Hey, it`s an Alex Wagner bonus show tonight, starts right now.
Good evening, Alex.
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC HOST: It is. I`m like, oh, right. I`m here.
HAYES: Yeah.
WAGNER: I`m going to pivot back to what you were just talking about which
is much more serious and so the central question of what we are facing in
the nation today.
HAYES: Yeah.
WAGNER: Who are Americans? What does it mean to be American? Who belongs
here? Who belongs here who doesn`t? I mean, it just echoes of our past and
yet the questions remain so unresolved or so fraught especially at this
hour, Chris.
HAYES: It is pretty striking when you run the footage through the news
reel filter how morally clear it is, right? Like, well, should we have
taken one more boat of Jews fleeing Europe? Like, obviously, right? But
when you put it in the contemporary context -- like, well, tough call, you
know? It`s definitely food for thought.
WAGNER: Yeah. That is an understatement. Thank you, Chris. Great show.
And thanks to you for joining us this hour. As Chris said Rachel is off
tonight but she will be back again next Monday.
So, he is back at the scene of the crime. Yesterday, former President
Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago where FBI agents retrieved more than
100 classified documents last month. Trump announced on his social media
platform that he went to the scene of the unwarranted, unjust, and illegal
raid and break-in so he could, quote, see for himself the results of the
unnecessary ransacking of rooms and other areas of the house. So sad.
Of course, the FBI searched the property last month because records
remained missing even after two of Trump`s lawyers wrote and signed a
statement certifying all of the missing documents had already been
returned.
As a result, two of Trump`s lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, they
are now in need of their own legal representation. As the "New York Times"
reported last week, the lawyers, quote, have subjected themselves to
scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials.
Investigators are seeking information from Bobb about why she signed a
statement attesting to full compliance with the subpoena and they have
signaled they have not ruled out pursuing a criminal inquiry into the
actions of either Ms. Bobb or Mr. Corcoran.
As Trump`s lawyers are in court fighting the Justice Department over those
documents, the former president is now directing his rage not just at the
feds but also at the state`s Republican governor and potential 2024
contender Ron DeSantis.
"Rolling Stone" reports Trump is upset about DeSantis`s decision to fly
nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha`s vineyard last week, not because
he thinks it was irresponsible and inhumane to target asylum seekers, a
practice that local Texas officials are now criminally investigating
DeSantis for.
No, Trump is angry because, well, it was his idea first. Quote, Trump is
telling allies and confidantes that he`s outraged that DeSantis seems to
think he is allowed to steal the ex-president`s mantle as both media star
and as undocumented immigrant basher-in-chief. Trump has pointedly
complained to some of his closest associates that DeSantis is attempting to
take the national news cycle away from him.
The plan to use Black and Brown people as pawns, that was his idea. Give
him credit, Governor DeSantis. You only got to it first because you`re
still in office. Mistreating immigrants is Trump`s thing.
Of course, Trump did implement a lot of awful, cruel, and legally
problematic immigration policies during his four years in office. Of all of
them, the most morally bankrupt was his family separation policy.
In their new book "The Divider: Trump and the White House, 2017 to 2021,"
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser detail how the Trump administration decided
to rip thousands of children and infants out of their parents` arms as an
immigration deterrent in 2018. They document how it was decided that would
be official Trump administration policy.
And they also explore why the White House walked it back. You might
remember this infamous White House press briefing, where Trump`s second
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen stood at the podium trying to
defend that policy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Are the children being used as pawns against the -- for a wall,
yes or no? Can you say yes or no to that?
KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, THEN DHS SECRETARY: The children are not being used as a
pawn. We are trying to protect the children.
REPORTER: How is this not specifically child abuse for these innocent
children who are indeed being separated from their parents?
NIELSEN: So I want to be couple -- clear on a couple other things. The
vast majority, vast, vast majority of children who are in the care of HHS
right now, 10,000 of the 12,000, were sent here alone by their parents.
That`s when they were separated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: According to Baker and Glasser, behind the scenes, Secretary
Nielsen was ready to pack her bags and resign over that policy, which she
opposed when Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller first began floating
it in 2017.
[21:05:10]
Baker and Glasser write that once the public began sounding the alarm,
quote, suddenly Trump officials who had pushed to take away children were
denying that was their intent. Attorney General Jeff Sessions who had
privately told prosecutors weeks earlier that we need to take away children
and comments that were only discovered by investigators long afterwards,
Sessions now told the public the opposite saying we do not want to separate
parents from their children. Nielsen was apoplectic. This is exactly what I
f`ing said would happen, she told colleagues. Someone needs to get Jeff
Sessions on the f`ing phone and tell him to halt.
Even after Trump rescinded the family separation policy that summer,
Nielsen`s relationship with the president continued to deteriorate because
the president continued to ask her to enact illegal immigration policy. As
Baker and Glasser report, in 2018, Nielsen was already part of a group of
Trump officials including John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Joe Dunford, Betsy DeVos,
Ryan Zinke, were on the verge of resigning en masse, all of them were
worried that Trump was off the rails.
By 2019, Nielsen formed a figurative mutual suicide pact with Health and
Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. From their new book, quote: From the
minute he signed the executive order reversing course on family separations
amid a national uproar, Trump basically regretted it and routinely
threatened to consider turning it back on. As the president privately
agitated to resume the practice, Azar and Nielsen agreed they would not go
along again and formed a mutual suicide pact. If Trump did turn it back on,
they would both resign together. Both knew a fight was coming. Stephen
Miller would make sure of it.
Nielsen called her aide Miles Taylor, now serving as her chief of staff, to
let him know. It looks like Stephen is going to be the border czar she
said. This is f`ing bleep. We need to get ready.
Taylor then called Stephen Miller and found the White House aide
exceedingly excited to put on the crown as he put it. Miller said he was
going to go full Napoleon once in charge. I want to make sure you recognize
that this moment was my coronation, Miller said. My coronation.
That anecdote is just one of several new insights into an administration
dead-set on breaking laws, harming those with the least agency, and staying
in power at all costs. Baker and Glasser also detail moments when Trump
asked Nielsen to cancel, literally cancel the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals to, quote, get rid of the f`ing judges and when Trump asked John
Kelly why his generals couldn`t be more like Hitler`s Nazi officers, they
described how close Trump actually was to pulling the U.S. out of NATO and
how the director of national intelligence, Dan Coates, was so disturbed by
Trump`s interaction with Vladimir Putin he wondered what the Russian leader
had on Trump.
Baker and Glasser paint a full picture of a former leader who is still
front page news on a daily basis who might at any moment put his hat back
in into the ring to return to the White House in 2024 and who is still
fighting multiple legal wars on multiple fronts, one tomorrow, happening at
a courthouse in Brooklyn over Mar-a-Lago documents. Another investigation
happening in Georgia. Two ongoing with the Justice Department. Another with
the New York attorney general`s office. And the list goes on and on.
Joining us now is Peter Baker, "New York Times" chief White House
correspondent and co-author of the new book out tomorrow with his wife,
"The New Yorker" journalist Susan Glasser. It is called "The Divider: Trump
in the White House 2017-2021."
Peter, congratulations on this book. It is urgent in these times when Trump
is no longer just in the rear view but potentially on the horizon and thank
you for joining me tonight.
PETER BAKER, CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Thanks
for having me, Alex. Really appreciate it.
WAGNER: So, you -- the book is called "The Divider" for a very specific
reason and you guys go in the introduction and sort of set the stage as to
why you are calling this book "The Divider" and sort of contrast the Trump
administration to previous administrations. You make note of the fact that
George H.W. Bush called for a kinder, gentler America, a kinder, gentler
America. Bill Clinton vowed to be a repairer of the breach. George W. Bush
presented himself as a uniter and not a divider. Barack Obama famously
declares there is not a blue America and a red America but the United
States of America.
Now, obviously much of this never came to fruition despite the lofty
ambitions of all these administrations, but Trump very specifically came
into office preaching about American carnage and living life on the divide
-- living his administration`s life if you will on the dividing line that
split America down the middle.
Talk to me a little bit about what you learned in the course of writing
this book about how deep-seated that desire to divide truly was within this
man who was our president.
[21:10:05]
BAKER: Yeah, I think, Alex, you put your finger on it. Obviously, other
presidents didn`t live up to the ambitions as you rightly said. But at
least they voiced them. They believed there was a role for a president in
leading the country as a whole. They didn`t always, you know, live up to
their greatest aspirations but they understood that that was something that
in the American nature, that the leader of the country is supposed to
represent all of us.
For President Trump, it was always a strategy to divide. It wasn`t just,
you know, at a campaign event where you need to attack the opponent.
Dividing was part and parcel of his presidency from the beginning, dividing
the country, dividing his own staff, dividing his party, dividing
Washington, dividing even at times his own family.
And it`s just -- it`s the nature of who he is. Now, he wasn`t the one who
caused the polarization in America that we see today. He in some ways was a
symptom of it, but he also, of course, took advantage of it. He recognized
what was already happening in our society, how much we were fragmenting and
pulling ourselves apart and into different tribes. And that, in fact,
became the launching pad for him to get to the presidency in the first
place.
WAGNER: The reason we focus a lot in the intro on immigration is because
it`s sort of the perfect capsule for Trump`s desire to divide, right? This
literal border wall, this notion of us versus them. Who belongs here? Who
didn`t?
And you note in the book that Trump believes he won the 2016 election
because of immigration. I found that really interesting. I think there are
a lot of issues that he stoked fear around but none as forcefully and as
effectively as immigration.
Can you talk more about his remorse that he had to reverse some of the
policies like child family separations at the border and his reluctance to
actually embrace that reversal? He wanted to go back to the period where
agents were tearing children away from their parents.
BAKER: He believed that there was almost nothing that could be done that
was too tough when it comes to stopping people coming over the border and
targeting immigrants in this country, particularly illegal immigrants but
also legal immigrants at times. Some of the legislation he endorsed would
have cut legal immigration to this country as well.
So, it`s not just about whether people have broken the law coming in or
not. There was a visceral feeling inside the party and he started talking
about building the wall at these rallies. He`d love the response he was
getting. It encouraged him to go further. He understood he was
crystallizing a policy down to these three words, build the wall. Build the
wall.
And it was a powerful message to him that galvanized supporters to get
people to come to these rallies and get them to vote for him. He needed to
be as tough as he possibly could and that meant unleashing people like
Stephen Miller, hard liners on immigration who would be relentless in
looking for every possible policy way to attack immigration -- reducing the
refugee cap, you know, getting rid of asylum claims to the extent you
possibly could.
Time and time again, President Trump would tell Kirstjen Nielsen, for
instance, just shut the border, shut it down, even though there is no legal
authority to do that. And when Nielsen would tell him that, he would just
pound on her and pound on her, really bullying her to the point where she
finally told colleagues if she ever wrote a memoir she would call it
"honey, just do it" because that was Trump`s attitude. He didn`t care if
people thought it was illegal. He didn`t have the power. He wanted it done
and he kept pushing and pushing and pushing until he found people who would
do what he wanted them to do
WAGNER: Well, and I -- I found it staggering. You quote Stephen Miller at
the moment he consolidates sort of power vis-a-vis immigration saying, this
is my coronation.
The sense of entitlement and impunity is breathtaking, Peter. Can you talk
more about the role that Stephen Miller played in being the architect of
this and the sort of monarch if you will when it came to this draconian
practice of child separation, family separation?
BAKER: Well, Stephen Miller cared about this issue more than anybody else.
And as a result, he became sort of the one person within the White House
who made sure it was on the agenda every possible way it could be. He
convened meetings of people from across the administration, sometimes even
without cabinet secretaries knowing about it. You know, Kirstjen Nielsen
and John Kelly, they would discover it only afterwards that Miller was
pushing some policy with officials who didn`t even tell them what was going
on.
He was a very smart, savvy, bureaucratic player. He figured out how to
enact policy to accomplish the goals he wanted to, sometimes even if the
president himself wasn`t fully on board. And he was relentless in pushing
back against people he thought were weak like Kirsten Nielsen, like John
Kelly, like anybody else who told him, wait a second. Let`s follow the law
here. There`s rules. There`s also tradition.
He didn`t like when people told him he can`t do it. His idea of this being
his coronation when he felt President Trump had given him the power, the
authority, the mandate to finally enact some of these policies he wanted
to, particularly family separation, it was a victory for him.
[21:15:01]
And he was the one person if you look back on these four years, the one
aide who stays on President Trump`s good side basically the entire time,
never finds himself on the outs because he figured out how to manage the
president, how to accomplish the things he wanted to accomplish as best
they could within the power they had, and to stay on his good side.
[21:15:17]
WAGNER: I mean, and there are plenty of cabinet secretaries and the
revolving door at the Trump White House is something that`s been written
about a lot. Eventually, Nielsen leaves, and many other people with their
reservations leave. But to make a point that when the people who sort of
understood institutional integrity, who cared about the law, when they
leave, a vacuum opens up, and that -- enter stage right, Rudy Giuliani and
Sidney Powell.
Specifically you talk at the end of the presidency. Ivanka and Jared are
basically done, washing their hands of this presidency and who is left but
people who enable him. And it`s a kind of delicate calculation. I mean,
that`s -- maybe not that delicate because people left in the end, but it`s
-- there is a down side, right? You`re an enabler on one hand if you`re --
if you`re in the White House, and you have, and you`re sentient being who
cares about the law, but you`re also the last gate keeper to an
increasingly reckless president.
Did you sense that there was -- there was concern after the fact when these
officials left, that they had effectively left no one minding the shop once
they were gone?
BAKER: Yeah, this is an enduring theme we came up with time and time again
as we were researching this book. And I should say, by the way, we did the
research on this book after President Trump left office. This is the work
of 300 interviews we did in the last 18 months trying to learn what we
didn`t know at the time because people were freer to talk, willing to talk,
told us things they didn`t tell us at the time.
So that`s the value of doing a book like this, as sort of an after-action
report. But as you point out, it is sort of a live action situation because
it may not be over. But you`re right, time and time again, people who work
there told us of this struggle that they had within themselves. Do they
work for a president and administration that they found to be sometimes
reckless, you know, sometimes dangerous, pushing the edge of the law, or do
they leave? In some cases be replaced by somebody they consider to be
worse, somebody who would be more deferential to the president, more
willing to do the things they felt were unwise or reckless or illegal?
And so, that was the struggle I think a lot of them had. And you can see
that in some cases, that is self-justifying, a way of rationalizing a
decision because they liked being in power. They liked having top jobs.
They had ambitions of their own.
And sometimes, it really was I think, you know, a very painful struggle
they had over what their responsibility to the country was. And you could
see there is a difference, right? John Kelly ends up at war in effect with
President Trump inside the White House over all these things he thinks are
wrong, also that he gets fired.
If he had been there in the last days and last months of the
administration, what would he have done? Would he have allowed people
talking about martial law into the Oval Office or would he have thrown
himself into the doorway to try to stop them?
He might not have stopped what happened over all, but certainly would have
been less willing to go along with it than his successor at that time Mark
Meadows, who, in fact, did seem to open up the door to almost anybody who
wanted in, no matter how fringy or conspiratorial they might have been.
So, there is this argument that, in fact, it did make a difference when
people were there who weren`t willing to go along with some of the more
extreme versions of policy that the president wanted to go along, that --
but at a cost to themselves and to others.
WAGNER: Guard rails. The last remaining guard rails. It is critical
reading right now, Peter, especially as we enter a midterm cycle and
another presidential election cycle.
Peter Baker, "New York Times" chief White House correspondent and co-author
of "The divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021", which comes out
tomorrow. Peter, thanks for joining us tonight.
BAKER: Thanks for having me.
WAGNER: We have much more ahead this hour. Following a particularly
questionable moment during a Trump rally this past weekend, we will take a
look at how Donald Trump may be subtly or not so subtly courting followers
of the extremist fringe QAnon conspiracy.
But next, Samantha Power, one of America`s top diplomats joins me live on
set as world leaders convene for the first in-person U.N. General Assembly
in three years. That is next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:24:00]
WAGNER: This evening the U.S. Senate received a classified briefing from
senior Biden officials on the situation in Ukraine. The House will receive
a similar briefing tomorrow morning. This is a complex and pivotal moment
in the Ukraine war. On the one hand, there`s been this stunning
counteroffensive from Ukrainian forces in the country`s east. They`ve
reclaimed territory from Russia and sent Russian troops fleeing.
That shift has prompted observers for the first time in months to talk
cautiously about Ukraine maybe winning the war outright, something that was
previously sort of unthinkable. But this was the scene today in one of
those newly liberated towns, one that was liberated from Russian
occupation. More bodies were exhumed from a mass grave in Izium.
Ukrainian officials say they have recovered 146 bodies so far, including
many civilians and including children. Some bodies show evidence of torture
and execution. And this one site may contain more than 400 victims.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov today called the whole thing a lie.
Now, Ukraine is painstakingly gathering evidence from Izyum and other
cities in the hopes they can one day prove in court the atrocities
committed by the Russians are very much real.
Meanwhile, the downstream collateral effects of the war across Europe and
the globe are only deepening. They don`t look to be going anywhere soon
particularly the de stabilization of food and energy supplies.
When it comes to the human toll of those ripple effects from the war, the
person at the forefront of the U.S. government`s response is Samantha
Power. As the head of USAID, the country`s agency for international
development, in recent weeks, Administrator Power has been traveling from
crisis point to crisis point around the world, to places where a
combination of natural and political disasters have wrecked infrastructure
and caused dangerous food insecurity. And all of it is aggravated by
Russia`s invasion of Ukraine, not to mention climate change.
And Samantha Power brings to this role a very particular history. She
served in the Obama administration on the National Security Council and
then as Obama`s ambassador to the United Nations. But even before that, she
was widely recognized as one of the world`s experts on war crimes and
genocide, and bringing the perpetrators of those kinds of atrocities to
justice.
At this precarious moment for Ukraine and the world, Samantha Power is here
in New York where world leaders are gathering for the U.N. general
assembly. And I am very pleased to say, she joins me in studio now.
Samantha Power, USAID administrator, Madam Administrator Samantha Power, my
friend, it`s great to see you.
SAMANTHA POWER, USAID ADMINISTRATOR: Great to see you.
WAGNER: Great to come on set.
It is a -- I`m going to say, it`s sort of a terrifying time in the world.
And I want to first start with Ukraine and those images of the exhu -- you
know, digging up of graves in Izium, of the atrocities that look to have
been committed there. Do you think -- and this is as someone who has
written the book on this and who understands this issue in a deeply
emotional, granular way -- do you think there is a chance that Putin will
be held accountable for this or anybody will be held accountable I should
say?
POWER: It is a great question, and certainly those images, those lives cry
out for accountability now from the grave. I`d say that this was the
biggest worry all along with this conflict, is that you would combine a
capacity for atrocities if Putin had already shown himself capable of, in
places like Aleppo, teaming up with the Assad regime or backing Assad as he
gassed people to death, with the military prowess of a super power.
WAGNER: Yeah.
POWER: And when you see the lines being pushed back and every time, they
are pushed back, what is unearthed, no pun intended, you see the stakes of
this conflict. And in terms of the accountability question, all I can speak
to is from my own experience being in Bosnia where again, you had similar
atrocities, mass graves, targeted attacks, use of sexual violence, killing
of children, along with elderly men and women, and the perpetrators just
strutted around with that sense of impunity that you see in the territories
that Russian forces have occupied and you`ve seen in Crimea and in Donbas
since 2014.
And it was Milosevic, these names now, you know, became kind of iconic
associated with war crimes.
WAGNER: Yeah.
POWER: Mladic, Karadzic, and they were so smug and they were so sure. And
all of the international community could do and did, led by the U.S., is
document the war crimes, painstakingly interview the survivors. Those
scenes that we see in Izyum today and in Bucha not long ago, those are the
same scenes we saw play out.
And people wondered, will it ever go to any constructive use? But even in
recent weeks when you hear grumblings of discontent in Moscow, you start to
imagine a scenario where at some point, there will be different leadership
in Russia. I mean, just by definition, the actuarial tables are such that
it will happen at some point no matter what.
And so, life is long. Certainly the sanctions, the export controls, all of
those other punishments that have been put in place, accountability becomes
part and parcel to any scenario even after a peace agreement, you know,
where those things get re-examined or loosened.
And so the incentive structure changes over time and it`s up to the United
States and other countries to stick together and to continue to not only
document and put yourself in a position to hold people accountable but see
the International Criminal Court process through, see the U.N. Human Rights
Council process through, support the OSC, support -- we at USAID support
Ukrainian NGOs on the ground who are now, they`ve set up 22 offices across
the country, just painstakingly documenting case after case.
[21:30:01]
And there are 15,000 incidents of war crimes that have been documented so
far.
WAGNER: Yeah. I think Ukraine`s top prosecutor said they have identified
34,000 potential war crimes, which is just a staggering number. And I think
that -- I mean, that number alone can I think cause some people to be
defeatist.
I know you`re hopeful that you will -- you`re pragmatic as well. Time
marches forward. Regimes change.
But I wonder how much you think disinformation and the current Russian
posture is a different calculation than, you know, the sort of posture of
genocidal leaders in the late `90s right? We have -- we are living in a
time where the Russians can literally take the stance that none of this is
happening. All of this -- all of this talk about whether it`s war crimes or
food insecurity, grain shortages caused by Putin`s war in Ukraine, that is
a confection of the west. That`s not real.
That ability to do and say that and have people believe them seems like a
new development -- or do you think the practice of misinformation may be a
different, through different channels but ultimately the same as it was?
POWER: Well, I`d say that there`s various countries especially those
involved in conflict have a history of misinformation. What is different is
the hundreds of millions of dollars the Russians are investing in media
penetration around the world and having traveled for example to Kenya, to
Somalia, to Zambia, to Malawi, to Sri Lanka, to Pakistan just in the past
couple months, I`ve seen again the information overload by the Russian
Federation through RT and Sputnik and these other media, but I don`t really
get the sense many people are buying it.
WAGNER: Huh.
POWER: Now, one piece of evidence came early in the conflict. Getting 141
votes to condemn the Russian invasion at the United Nations may not sound
like a lot. There are 193 countries in the U.N., but I know first hand from
working there, most countries want to duck when a hard vote comes up, 141
countries stuck their heads up even though there was coercion and
intimidation, harassment, you know, claims that resources were going to be
cut off they still took that stand and many countries who abstained and did
want to stay on the sidelines and didn`t want to antagonize Putin of all
people, you talk to them privately and they`re horrified, because every
country has an interest in territorial integrity being sacred and in one
country not lopping off part of a neighbor militarily.
And as quaint as that can sound in an era where Putin is seeking to do just
that, I do think it explains even the recent statements by Prime Minister
Modi, President Xi, and others, there is a lot of discomfort even among
those countries that are -- you know, whose publics are imbibing Russian
misinformation as occurring, of course, in China. But, still, the leaders -
-
WAGNER: Right.
POWER: -- have a sense there is something awful and massively
destabilizing that one country has done to another and thus to the
international system.
WAGNER: The fact that Xi and Modi are speaking out in their way about this
is significant.
I have 1,000 other questions to ask you but we don`t have time for them. I
want to know, I want you to come back so we can talk about Pakistan and
climate change and how up to -- up to the job our aid systems are in terms
of the crises we face as a globe. I know you`re in town for the U.N.
General Assembly. We thank you for taking some time out of your very busy
and important schedule to share your thoughts with us. Thanks for your time
as always.
POWER: Great to be with you, Alex.
WAGNER: USAID administrator and former U.S. U.N. ambassador, Samantha
Power, thanks again.
Still ahead this hour, just how cozy is Donald Trump getting with the QAnon
crowd? Scenes from a rally this weekend suggest quite cozy.
And five years since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, hurricane Fiona has
devastated the island with most of the island in the dark tonight.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:38:47]
WAGNER: It is now more than a day since Hurricane Fiona made landfall in
Puerto Rico, but for the island`s inhabitants, the storm is far from over.
Tonight, more than a million people remain without power and about two-
thirds of island lacks access to running water, after the slow moving
hurricane dumped more than 30 inches of rain on the island this weekend.
Hurricane Fiona is expected to continue to dump water across both Puerto
Rico and the Dominican Republic throughout tonight. The National Hurricane
Center is warning these rains could produce life-threatening and
catastrophic flooding along with mudslides and landslides.
Already, one person in the French Caribbean island archipelago of Guadalupe
has been confirmed dead. His house literally swept away by the flood and
more than a thousand people have been rescued from flooding in Puerto Rico
itself.
If you`ve been watching coverage of the hurricane, you have likely already
seen this video of a bridge in the central mountain town being washed away
by the floods. With power out across the island, news outlets still don`t
have that many visuals to show you what`s happening.
But this video is incredibly emblematic of the overall issue. The bridge
here is a temporary bridge that was installed by the National Guard after
Hurricane Maria in 2017. It was meant to be temporary. It was meant to be
replaced by a permanent bridge that could with stand this sort of thing.
[21:40:00]
But five years later, that still hadn`t happened. Efforts to rebuild and
fortify the island`s infrastructure have been plagued by corruption,
mismanagement, political red tape, more storms, and a series of
earthquakes. It took 11 months after Hurricane Maria for all the power to
be restored on the island, 11 months.
You may remember that the first company Puerto Rico hired to fix the grid
after Maria was insanely under qualified for the task. They had a total of
two full-time employees but somehow they got a no bid contract to repair
the entire island`s power lines. That contract was canceled. After that,
the president of a second company was arrested for bribing a FEMA official
to land a similar contract. Both the FEMA official and the president of
that company have since pleaded guilty to offering and accepting gifts
surrounding that deal.
On top of all the contracting scandals, it took three years for the Trump
administration to approve FEMA funding to rebuild Puerto Rico`s power grid.
And a lot of that money has still not been spent. As of last month, the
island`s government had only spent about $5.3 billion of the $28 billion
that FEMA had allocated for post-Maria recovery.
Last year, after declaring bankruptcy, the government-run power company
privatized and effectively leased its infrastructure to a private company
on a 15-year contract. That company was supposed to help repair and fortify
the power system, but residents say outages are still frequent if not
actually worse than before. Large protests against the company, those have
become a regular occurrence.
Just last month, Puerto Rico`s governor whose own administration was behind
the privatization, he denounced the company. So as dangerous as it is that
Puerto Rico tonight is without power and clean water, it is unfortunately
not unexpected. The governor says he expects restoration will take days,
not months like Hurricane Maria. As for water, he also hopes that situation
will improve by the end of the week.
And President Biden assured Puerto Rico`s governor today the number of
federal support personnel on the island would, quote, increase
substantially. FEMA`s administrator Deanne Criswell, she herself is
scheduled to travel there tomorrow. Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of
Hurricane Maria devastating the island and the memories are still fresh.
We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:46:54]
WAGNER: On Saturday, Donald Trump held a rally for Ohio Senate candidate
JD Vance in Youngstown, Ohio. His most fervent followers showed up as they
usually do but also did something they don`t normally do. This is a video
from that rally. See if you notice anything different.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: We are a nation that allowed Russia to
devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and
it will only get worse. It would never have happened with me as your
commander-in-chief.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: You see what the crowd is doing there with their hands? Holding up
a single finger? The reason all of those people in the crowd were
participating in that gesture is likely because that song you heard playing
while Trump spoke, that song sounds just like a song that is associated
with the QAnon conspiracy. The song is called "Where We Go One, We Go All."
Now, Trump officials denied the song they were playing a the rally was the
QAnon song. They claim it was a different royalty free song they use at
rallies but the crowd at the rally clearly believed what they were hearing
was the QAnon conspiracy anthem and they were familiar enough with it to
make that gesture as it played. Four years now we have been watching Trump
communicate with fringe and extremist groups using dog whistles, some none
too subtle. He famously told the proud boys to stand back and stand by
during the 2020 election and just a few weeks later, he refused to disavow
QAnon at an NBC News town hall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MODERATOR: 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 QAnon in its entirety?
TRUMP: I know nothing about QAnon
MODERATOR: I just told you.
TRUMP: I know very little. 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 fight it very hard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: Like I said, we have seen some of this before from Trump. But
after January 6th seeing Trump appear to openly court QAnon feels
dangerous.
After all, QAnon`s beliefs are far stranger and even more fringe than your
run of the mill election denialism. They believe the Democratic Party is
full of secret Satan worshiping pedophiles.
When Donald Trump was tweeting complaints about Mueller`s Russia
investigation, QAnon adherence were promoting wild conspiracies that
Mueller was secretly working with Trump to arrest Hillary Clinton. They not
only believe Trump is still president but also one day, Joe Biden will be
forcibly removed from office and Trump will be reinstated as commander-in-
chief.
It is these kinds of beliefs that often lead people to dismiss the QAnon
movement especially when there are other explicitly violent far right
groups to worry about like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, groups that
helped plot the January 6 attack in the Capitol. But there were plenty of
QAnon followers leading the charge on January 6 as well and their movement
has far more reach than the other groups.
[21:50:03]
Last year, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that
QAnon has become as popular as some major religions, with 15 percent of
Americans saying they believe the U.S. is secretly controlled by a cabal of
Satan worshiping pedophile -- 15 percent of the country.
If Donald Trump is now courting the legions of Q followers openly in public
rallies, how concerned should we all be?
Joining us now is Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of the
Anti-Defamation League.
Jonathan, I find this staggering. As if we`ve all been sleeping and not
realized the sort of poison that has come in with the tide and the degree
to which it has spread all over this country. How has this happened? How
has QAnon gotten this kind of reach?
JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: Well, so, QAnon goes
back to 2017 when it first showed up on 4chan, which is sort of a corner of
the web that was favored by extremists. And Q, this supposed government
insider, who couldn`t reveal his identity, started doing Q drops where he
would share information and again he started to contrive these -- he, she,
it -- started to contrive these wild conspiracies. That as you said there
was a cabal of pedophiles, Satan worshiping pedophiles, manipulating the
deep state in order to change the country.
So this started to gain steam when their followers, anons, hence QAnon
started spreading the stuff from off the 4chan, and to Gab, and to Reddit,
on to YouTube, on to Twitter and Facebook, and really all over social
media.
WAGNER: And, now, what it feels like we`re seeing is a kind of dovetailing
of the forces right?
GREENBLATT: Oh, yeah.
WAGNER: So the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, QAnon, various elected
representatives in the Republican Party --
GREENBLATT: Yes.
WAGNER: -- are all seeing kind of the same things, about stolen elections,
about Trump being the rightful leader and it feels like that has helped,
like launch this paranoid conspiracy fear mongering into the mainstream of
the Republican Party.
GREENBLATT: Yeah. I mean, I think conspiracy theories have become the coin
of the realm where more people are getting news from TikTok or Twitter than
from television or the times. I mean, we are really in a moment. And QAnon
has preyed on this and as you make the point spread dramatically because
none of the normal filters or barriers that would push out such craziness
are there to mediate it.
So, look, at ADL, we track extremists.
WAGNER: Yes.
GREENBLATT: And I can tell you right now, the extremists are celebrating.
They`re celebrating on Gab, on 4chan, on 8chan, and those -- what remains
of those sites, they`re celebrating on Truth Social. They feel validated
because QAnon after January 6th didn`t come to pass.
WAGNER: Right.
GREENBLATT: After Trump actually wasn`t the president on January 21st,
2021, they were in decline or a kind of recession. But they tried to build
upon the COVID-19 and the anti-vaxxer movement and now they`re trying to --
seeing this as a moment in time where they can come back into the main
stream.
WAGNER: How much does this all conspire to increase their numbers? The
investigations into Trump, the search of Mar-a-Lago, the anti-government
rhetoric that Trump is stoking?
GREENBLATT: Sure.
WAGNER: The -- you know, I`m sure claims of a stolen 2022 midterm
election.
GREENBLATT: Yeah.
WAGNER: How much does that then circulate more juice into the QAnon?
GREENBLATT: This is what is so frightening about conspiracy theories.
Anything sort of validates and proves them, right?
WAGNER: Yeah.
GREENBLATT: And QAnon is almost a cult. They are unwilling to see the
reality even though it is right in front of them. So indeed to your point,
all these different factors, they play into their minds as if, oh, this
validates this shadow conspiracy that`s manipulating things.
Look at ADL, again, we track conspiracies. We fight anti-Semitism and there
is a lot of anti-Semitism in this movement -- the blood libel, theories
about power and manipulation. This is as if it came right out of the
protocols of the Elders of Zion, a shadowy cabal of globalist manipulating
events.
And this is why we should all be scared. This isn`t normal, to have one of
the two major -- heads of one of the major parties of the United States
trafficking in this --
WAGNER: Yeah.
GREENBLATT: -- posting things on his social media that the storm is
coming? I mean, this is an apocalyptic idea, Alec. They feel like there is
some Armageddon coming. It is not just that Joe Biden will not be the
president. He should be tried and executed in public.
WAGNER: Yes.
GREENBLATT: Along with Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer and all these
other perceived enemies.
WAGNER: Yeah, the idea that these enemies should be summarily executed,
hung, whatever is -- all of this should terrify everybody.
GREENBLATT: This isn`t normal and we`re all like frogs in the boiling
water. And you know we think oh, Trump, what harm can he do? But this is
incredibly harmful. It`s like a child playing with explosive chemicals.
Because the reality is that we`ve seen examples of where QAnon has inspired
violence.
WAGNER: Yeah.
[21:55:00]
GREENBLATT: We`ve seen people killed by individuals who are motivated by
these QAnon ideas. So I think this is the moment for Republicans,
responsible Republicans and people in public, you know, public figures to
step up and finally say: stop, enough. This has got to end.
WAGNER: Fifteen percent of the country believes this stuff is real.
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of ADL, Anti-Defamation
League, thank you for your time tonight.
GREENBLATT: Thank you.
WAGNER: We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WAGNER: Before we go, I have some very happy news to share. I and the
whole team want to congratulate our beloved senior producer Jen, the wind
beneath our wings, and her husband Matt on the newest member of their
family, meet Brendan. Brendan was born this morning and clocked in at a
whopping 6 pounds and 13 ounces.
Mom says he is, quote, the chillest little guy ever. You got a good one,
Jen. Mazel tov!
And congratulations, of course, are also in order to big brother Liam who
is now promoted to the official title of big brother. We are sending you
guys all of our love, Jen, Matt, Liam and Brandon. We`ll have an ice cream
party when you come back to work.
Now, that is a way to start the week.
That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow. And Rachel
will be back here next Monday.
Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".
Good evening, Lawrence.