with-CHRIS-HAY-01
Michelle Goldberg, McKay Coppins, Barbara Boxer>
Hillary Clinton seems to have found what she thinks is an effective tool to
bludgeon Bernie Sanders and hopes of halting his newfound momentum. The
Republican front-runners fight for South Carolina, and today, Donald Trump
threatened to sue Ted Cruz.>
Republican Party; South Carolina; Elections>
BOXER: Yeah, but it falls flat, because you know, Hillary Clinton knew she made a mistake in the Iraq war. I served with her. And I know that she came out on the wrong side of that. And she did something that is very difficult for those of us in politics to do. She said, I made a mistake.
HAYES: Right.
BOXER: And you know what, I want someone with judgment, someone who learns from their mistakes and someone who knows where Fallujah is on the map. I think it`s an important point.
And, you know, this si a tough world. And, you know, we focus in. We want to focus in on domestic issues constantly because it surrounds us with all of our communities. But when something happens and we nope this whether it`s a terrorist attack, some horrific problem, we need a leader who gets it. And Hillary Clinton gets it. And show knows the leaders and so on.
So, I think if that`s the turf, regardless of Henry Kissinger. I mean, that was just a throw away point that he thought she was running the department efficiently, didn`t mean she endorses his philosophy. Let`s look at the facts here. And I think the facts lead to madame president on this one.
HAYES: All right. Senator Barbara Boxer, I really appreciate your time this evening. Thank you.
BOXER: Of course.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Up next, my interview with civil rights icon Harry Belafonte about his endorsement of Bernie Sanders. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERICA GARNER, DAUGHTER OF ERIC GARNER: I`m never giving up. I`m never going to forgive. And I don`t want the world to forget what happened to my dad. Our people died for this. Martin Luther King died for this. Malcolm X died for this. And who were they? They were protesters.
I believe Bernie Sanders is a protester.
SANDERS: When a police officer breaks the law, the officer must be held accountable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As part of a new web ad released for the Bernie Sanders campaign that might be going up on the air sometime soon in which Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died in a police choke hold in 2014, explains why she is supporting Sanders, specifically calling him a protester.
Sanders history of fighting for civil rights beginning with demonstrations in college is something his campaign has tried to emphasize.
And while that record was somewhat brushed aside by the legendary civil rights protester John Lewis, current congressman yesterday, it was affirmed by another historic activist in that fight, Harry Belafonte.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRY BELAFONTE, SINGER: That`s why I`ve endorsed Bernie Sanders. I think he represents opportunity. I think he represents a moral imperative. I think he represents a certain kind of truth that`s not often evidenced in the course of politics.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now artist, performer, civil rights activist, legend, if I can say it, Harry Belafonte. It`s wonderful to have you here, sir.
BELAFONTE: Good to be with you, Chris.
HAYES: Talk to me about this decision you made both to not just vote for Bernie Sanders, but to actively endorse him and cut a video and be a public face advocating for him.
BELAFONTE: In my time -- in this time in life, much of it is spent with young people particularly in incarceration. Here in New York State, I`m up in Sing Sing all the time. And I`m up in California with (inaudible) California in the Latino community, the black community down in L.A., women`s detention center.
And I take the incarceration to be one of the last truly deep wrinkles in the American theme of what we have done to crucify young people not only in the process of putting them in prison, but what happens to them after they come out -- unemployment, can`t vote. It`s a cruel place in which to be.
And when the interest turned to black vote and the emphasis was put on mass incarceration, I got very concerned because I think that there was a previous administration, which had a lot to do with escalating incarceration for black people.
And then I heard this remark being made that there`s this concern for the fact that we have the largest prison population in the world. Let`s do something about that.
Well, how deep does that really go?
HAYES: Can I ask you this just to interject in this moment, because you`re referring to the Clinton administration.
BELAFONTE: Yes.
HAYES: And I want you to respond to what people say about this critique, which is that was Bill Clinton. He signed the crime bill. That was not Hillary Clinton. And also things have changed in 20 years. We`ve recognized the problem. Those were mistakes. We can correct them now.
BELAFONTE: Well, you just hit the nail on the head. If you can correct them now, why not? We will not get into the family affairs if we`re asking you to say something that`s pro-your husband. But what about the grievous mistakes that he made like where`s your courage to speak out against that.
I don`t want to hold her hostage to that either.
The point is that if she says she is for ending mass incarceration but she is for capital punishment, that does not realy tell the deeper truth on what happens with the whole issue of incarceration.
The other thing, of course, is pandering to you in very strange ways to the black vote and taking claim to be very much deeply involved in the civil rights movement of some candidates maintain they were.
And I say, well, give me the demonstration of what that involvement yielded.
There`s been an attack on Bernie Sanders for not being visible in the civil rights movement. Well, there were a lot of people involved in the civil rights movement, millions of them came to the march on Washington, I don`t remember the names of most of them. And I haven`t even met them, wouldn`t know them if I saw them in day of light.
But a close friend of mine talked about Bernie Sanders was not be seen anywhere in the civil rights movement.
HAYES: You`re referring to -- I just want -- folks that did not follow John Lewis, who himself, of course, a civil rights legend, work with SNCC the famous -- Pettis Bridge, and said something about Sanders the other day to the extent of, I never saw him.
BELAFONTE: Well, he never saw most of the people in the civil rights movement that were engaged. And in particular, Bernie Sanders had no platform back in 19 -- he didn`t become mayor until 1981. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. By 1980, the civil rights movement was blending into a host of other issues. It was for all intents and purposes considered to be the end of the era.
Well, if Bernie Sanders wasn`t -- didn`t have a platform, why would you know him in face of thousands and millions of people out there?
So, I thought it was a little unfair to suggest that there may be some duplicitous game being played here with Bernie Sanders by saying he was for and involved in the civil rights movement.
He was. I`ve met with him. I`ve talked with him. He`s not misleading. He didn`t claim to be leader of the civil rights movement. He said he was touched by it and involved in it. And that is part of what energized him to become a candidate for the presidency.
I just felt on that issue, incarceration, the black vote, civil rights was a place for me to step in and let my voice be heard for whatever good it will do.
HAYES: The past record is of any evidence, it will do a lot of good. Mr. Belafonte, it`s always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much.
BELAFONTE: I enjoyed being with you, Chris. Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, an emotional scene this week serves as a reminder that what can sometimes maybe feel like a throw away line in a stump speech is very much lived reality for thousands of Americans. That footage ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Remember, this is what we have to do with China, Japan, Vietnam which is the new one that`s killing us, Mexico where everyone is moving into Mexico. I just heard Carrier air-conditioning is moving in now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was Donald Trump speaking moments ago in Tampa.
The company he was just referencing, Carrier, is the subject of a viral video that shows the exact moment when hundreds of employees found out their jobs were moving to Mexico. We`ll show that to you, next.
(COMMERCIAL)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Mexico, I respect the country, they`re taking our jobs. They`re taking our manufacturing.
Mexico is taking our jobs.
Mexico has our jobs.
The country of Mexico is taking our jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That phrase, sending jobs to Mexico. Mexico is taking our jobs has become such a fixture in Trump`s speeches and his interviews. There`s a tendency to think about it as a cliche, or some phrase used to stroke economic fear and paranoia.
But as the pro-labor think tank Economic Policy Institute has pointed out, between 1993, before NAFTA took effect, and 2013, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased displacing more than 850,000 U.S. jobs.
In other words, what Trump is talking about is actual reality for thousands of Americans.
And this week, two Indiana manufacturers announced they are shifting operations to Mexico and in doing so eliminating 2,100 local jobs.
Carrier, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning manufacturer is eliminating 1,400 jobs while United Technologies Electronic Controls, maker of microprocessor controls for HVAC equipment, announced it was moving its operations and eliminating 700 jobs.
The incredible moment when Carrier employees found out their jobs was moving to Mexico was captured on video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It became clear the best way to stay competitive and protect the business for long term is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico.
Throughout the transition, we must remain committed to manufacturing the same high quality products.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There goes the changes.
UNIDENTIIFED MALE: Yeah, (EXPLETIVE DELETED) you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The effects of decades of globalization has real consequences for the American working class.
It`s something that both Trump and Bernie Sanders talk about on the campaign trail.
But other candidates struggle to articulate an alternate vision. A great example of how that is and why that is after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Senator Ted Cruz has come out against the Transpacific Partnership trade deal, calling it, according to Politico, a corrupt back door deal between Republican leaders and the White House.
But before Cruz was against the deal, he was in favor of granting President Obama full authority to negotiate it with an up or down vote, the so-called trade promotion authority.
He only changed his mind on that on the eve of a key Senate vote on the matter. But an interview this week, his wife, in what appeared to be an accidental moment of candor, came out boasting that her husband has always been in favor of free trade.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your husband`s position on trade and the importance of preserving American sovereignty and American jobs.
HEIDI CRUZ, TED CRUZ`S WIFE: Ted is a free trader. He`s always been a free trade. And the reason he is for free trade is because it creates American jobs. We`ve done a study on the campaign as to how many jobs free trade has created for various states in the country and the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands depending on the size of the state.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now Reihan Salam, executive editor National Review and a columnist for Slate. And Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief of the Progressive magazine.
And Reihan, since you are sitting right in front of me, let me start with you. You wrote a really interesting piece about Trump voters which I think relates to the video we just saw, right.
You wrote a book a while ago basically saying the Republican Party has to speak to the economic anxieties of folks that are like the folks who were assembled in that room in Carrier being told your jobs are going away. It has to address them both concretely and rhetorically, or there will be a vacuum created.
Fast forward, Trump comes along. You write a piece being like, I blame the people that did not create -- right, I mean that`s the sort of thesis.
REIHAN SALAM, NATIONAL REVIEW; Yes, that`s very fair to say.
I guess when you`re looking at trade, you can look at it purely as an abstraction and just think, oh, people will experience dislocation. Then we can pull these technocratic levers and all will be fixed and people will move here. And the problem is that in the scale of someone`s life, that can be really devastating and very hard.
And there are also funny trade offs. So, for example, there`s this economic at MIT, this guy David Atkin, who has done this fascinating work on (inaudible) in Mexico. So, a lot of people were talking about trade in America right now. But they don`t think about Mexican workers. But one thing that`s really funny is that when you had a (inaudible) open in your city you were actually less likely to get an education, because the opportunity cost of acquiring skills goes up.
So, there are all these funny tradeoffs that people don`t think about when you go from abstraction to reality on the ground.
HAYES: And that`s a great -- Ruth, this something that has been a fight in the Democratic Party for a while, right. Because there has been this real fight internal Democratic Party over trade, over its effects. You`re seeing it play out actually in the Transpacific Partnership, which is being pushed by President Obama and opposed by people like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, and I think Hillary Clinton now has come out against it.
Precisely I think the same terrain Reihan is saying, right. You can say in the aggregate the model says this is good. The real concrete reality for people are in that factory in Carrier are being told you`re out work.
RUTH CONNIFF, PROGRESSIVE MAGAZINE: Yeah, I think it`s not just that in the aggregate it`s good and for individual people it`s bad, it`s who is benefiting? And I think the important thing to look at is even as the result of trade deals you can argue in some cases that gross domestic product increases, well, wealth is accumulating at the top, right. I mean, if you have slave labor, you can make a great profits. And if you own a megacorporation that`s good news economically.
But it`s not good news for American workers to competing against low wage workers. And all these trade deals we have seen roll out, including in the Clinton years when Hillary Clinton was a supporter of NAFTA, have cost jobs and suppressed wages of workers.
And American workers are becoming keenly aware of it. So, when the Democrats had their debate last night here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you know we`re looking at a city where the black middle class has been devastated by the collapse of manufacturing. Where it used to be the top seven employers here in Milwaukee were all manufacturing. And now none of them are. And you see that very specifically in wages collapsing and the middle class collapsing. People can`t send their kids to college.
So, we really have to talk about what`s the real result of these trade deals. And it has been devastating for ordinary American workers.
HAYES: And part of the issue, it strikes me, in the broader sense. So, there`s the specifics of trade, right, then there`s sort of the broader trajectory of the American economy. Trade has been a big part of that, globalization, the trade deals themselves. But even just the opening up these huge labor pools in places like China and Mexico.
What would you like -- if you could conjure an anti-Trump, right, if you can conjure an anti-Trump to speak to that, what would you like to hear from Republican candidates in this in this cycle?
SALAM: Well, the hope is -- and the thing that you`ve heard from so many people -- and Ruth and I have different perspectives kind of regarding the desirability of this kind of competition.
But I`d say that the hope is -- you know, what we`ve always been talking about is training, investing in human capital, and the idea that the next generation will take on the jobs of the future and what have you.
But I guess I think of it a lot of time as leverage. Who has power? So, for example, there are many industries that benefit from these inputs that are a lot cheaper now because it (inaudible), because of outsourcing and what have you. And so those industries might flourish.
And you know, kind of that`s something that you don`t always see because you see the devastation. You don`t see actually kind of like how many people have benefited...
HAYES: But how do you talk about this as a candidate?
The point is that...
SALAM: And by the way, the mere fact that some are benefiting doesn`t mean we ergo we can ignore the devastation or that`s fine we can hand wave it away.
I guess what I`d want is honestly it`s a much bigger picture issue. It`s talking about cohesion. It`s talking about the fact that we want some kind of solidarity and that`s why we want investment and actually, we have a shared fate.
This seems very important to me. And this is actually language that resonates with conservatives.
And so when Trump talks about making a America great again, winning, you know, these are ways that aren`t always very attractive to lots of people who don`t cherish gut instincts. But it is a language of solidarity and shared purpose.
HAYES: Right. I mean, it`s the flip side of the sort of the others is that there is some togetherness in the boat of making America great again.
And Ruth, I think that`s something that also Democrats, I mean, you`re seeing that it play out I think in the Democratic primary a bit about this sort of language of in the old labor, this sort of labor song like which side are you on.
HAYES: Yeah, I mean, I think that the whole DLC approach to trade, the idea that, you know, it`s all going to work out fine has collapsed over time because we`ve seen, just since 2001, 4.7 million jobs have fled this country. We`re seeing 60,000 manufacturing plants gone in that time. I mean, it`s really, it is not possible to argue to people just hang on there, you`re going to do better.
We have home less kids in Madison who have come up from Janesville (ph) where the GM plant is gone, who are in advanced algebra, but their parents`, middle class jobs are gone.
So, we are seeing this huge grass roots pressure to say if you`re going to call labor standards a barrier to trade, environmental regulations a barrier to trade, because an international tribunal dominated by multinational corporations says, you know, we need to suppress wages, we need to make better profits. That`s just not selling to people. And I think that`s why Hillary Clinton has moved to the left on this. And that`s why Bernie Sanders is so popular.
HAYES: All right, Ruth Conniff, Reihan Salam, thank you very much.
That is All in for this evening.
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