Watch the ReidOut with Joy Reid Highlights: Feb. 27

so we begin the readout tonight with the freak Show the weekend was this weekend was the annual conservative political action conference CPAC a Showcase of just how extreme the once grand old party has become how extreme you ask well as NBC News is reporting Nazis mingled openly at CPAC spreading anti-semitic conspiracy theories and finding allies yes you did hear me say Nazis NBC News noted in previous years conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick fentis from CPAC but this year racist conspiracy theorists didn't meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017 CPAC has repeatedly denied it calling NBC's reporting fake news and grossly manipulative and even going so far as to smear the NBC news reporter who was there talking to those very Nazis that CPAC says weren't there saying our reporter was carrying the water for Hamas in his reporting of the recent Middle East conflict really guys well NBC News has the receipts including both photo and video evidence of prominent white supremacists attending the event now unless this was someone other than a Nazi giving a Nazi salute in the lobby of the conference Hotel well there you have it they are letting literal Nazis into their den of idolatrous trump worship I guess it makes sense since CPAC goes beyond just Trump worship by also serving as the coming together of those pushing white replacement Theory and anti-immigrant bigotry and not far from that conference in Washington DC you have almost the entirety of the Republican party in Congress worshiping Trump too you have this guy there's no question none that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day no question about it even Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell who clearly knows better is reportedly in talks to endorse Trump despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly mocked him reportedly calling him A Dunson of a b word not to mention repeatedly mocking his wife and former Trump Cabinet member Elaine Chow McConnell is preparing to Kiss the Ring and today McConnell along with speaker Mike Johnson who just last week made the pilgrimage to Mar Lago for the mandatory thumbs up photo with the man pulling his strings joined Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and house Democratic leader hakeim Jeff at the White House with President Biden to discuss the looming government shutdown now of course if there's any potential to prevent a government shutdown it's not McConnell or Johnson who will decide that they will need to turn to the party's real leader japedo himself Donald Trump and right now Trump's concern has nothing to do with whether the government shuts down he may actually prefer it believing it will somehow help him in the upcoming election remember he wants the economy to crash before November and that is where his concern lies not to become president to provide for the American people no no no it's all to save himself from accountability from the 91 criminal charges that keep him awake at night it's clearly driving him crazy just look to his low-grade Twitter knockoff where he screams and all caps that all these fake political pers prosecutions must be immediately halted and part of that is because he's also really worried about all those legal bills and it's not just the tens of millions of dollars he continues to need to pay for his lawyers there's also the matter of the more than half a billion dollars he owes from his civil judgments including the fact that the meter is still running on his New York civil fraud trial to the tune of $114,000 a day in interest on top of the $355 million principal that explains why he's so desperate to get complete control of the RNC to help cover his legal costs and to make that happen he's pushing for Trump loyalist to run the RNC including his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump and what you're seeing is the entire Republican party rolling over for him even though he is a weakened candidate as we've seen based off his latest primary wins where he has lost about 40% of the vote and faced problems not just with independent voters but also with a large swath of Republican voters who are not willing to drink the magga Kool-Aid and who say they will not vote for him once he is a convicted felon it's a problem that Trump may very well see again tonight in Michigan joining me now is Maria Teresa Kumar president and CEO of Votto Latino and an MSNBC contributor and Rick Wilson co-founder of the Lincoln project and a former Republican strategist thank you both for being here my friend Rick Wilson Nazis really yeah you know look it there's a problem with this my grandmother used to call it the turd and the punch bowl once you have a tur and the punch bowl it's not punch anymore once you have one Nazi in the door M you're not a conservative organization anymore you're a pro-nazi organization and the fact that these people were there on the floor perfectly comfortable the fact that these people are circulating there now because they are all part of a philosophy that Steve Bannon infected the GOP with called No enemies to my right right which is why they were fine with Charlottesville at a certain level which is why they're fine with these people they look at these people as their shock troops as their as their best guys as the people that are going to go out there and metaphorically or literally swing at their enemies and and so you know match slap should be ashamed of himself but he well for a lot of reasons um but he has no possibility of understanding just how corrupt and corrupted this is once you're okay with Nazis there and like they clearly like see the pr damage but the guys were in the in the in the you know in the facility you know giving the hell Hitler I'm sorry it doesn't work that way one is too many yeah and I mean the Nazis have been marching in Tennessee um Maria they've been marching in Florida in some cases carrying signs banners for Dan santis they he says nothing they say nothing let me play for you just a compilation of some of what they were saying about immigration at CPAC because what's driving this the Nazis vote to kind of keep them all in the tent kind of um attitude is that there is this like hysteria about immigration here they are at CPAC talking immigration the immigration issue is extremely simple seal the Border Deport all the illegals who the hell can win when you have 16 million people pouring into our country from places unknown they have diseases nobody's ever even heard about I'm sorry I feel badly for the people but we don't want to have this contagion in our country our leaders are determined to repeat every mistake that led to the collapse of Empire before us here are just a few of the common themes from history Mass immigration and infiltration by foreigners who don't share our values and culture or even our language contagion they get even a Jewish fellow Stephen Miller and Ben Carson an African-American to say it to say the words say the things it's happen I think one of the biggest challenges is for us to remember what was life under Trump when he was president and it was a constant anxiety AC Ross all of America and we seem to forget that those words that they speak of actually have consequences it was the El Paso Massac the person who conducted that Venice crime against Latinos that was inspired by Trump's then president's feed saying that there was a mass Mexican Invasion and 23 people lost their lives those words are going to translate into something else and I what my hope is is that as we are going into the State of the Union from the president of the United States is that he uses that opportunity to remind the American people the contrast between him and Trump and that under his presidency we are a thriving Multicultural America my concern is for that child right now who is of immigrant descent which is the majority of us saying oh my goodness I don't belong and being othered and being bullied there's so many incidences that we are seeing right now of racial profiling amongst ourselves that are not even reported because people feel that they cannot and so what he is actually creating is incredibly dangerous t that is going to Americans against each other and you know the only people who benefit from that he will benefit because you allow grift but then so do foreign actors and foreign yeah absolutely and and the thing is I I'm glad you said we need to remember because there is this mis memory where people are sort of trying to remember the Trump four years as the good old days a million people died of covid uh kids were being screamed at on basketball courts if they were Latino and called illegals and told get out of the country I mean it was an awful time and people were so exhausted they elected Joe Biden but you know what Joe Biden is planning on doing right now now he's going to the border both of them both he and Trump are going to both do trips to the border now the Biden team is saying they're doing it essentially to shame Republicans who refuse to vote for that border deal which is is I guess smart politics but what do you make of the fact that the response on the Biden side just as a strategist is they too are going to The Border look they are going to take away the one thing Trump claims he has which is strength on the border Biden has offered and the Democrats have offered the best and most balanced border security bill that's been out there in 45 5 years and the people that are siding with the cartels and the coyotes and the Smugglers and all the all the catalog of demons the Republicans talk about every day the one guy keeping that border open is Donald Trump yeah demanding that they he's the one and so and Biden has a chance to invert the the the the alleged strength that Trump thinks he has and if if I were Biden I'd go down there and say he built a wall that was a joke that we paid for he never did anything except talk on this and the people the danger part the dangerous parts of of the Border in especially on the on the drugs smuggling side the fental smuggling side those are people who now rely on Donald Trump for their business model yeah and look he's going in the midst of these polls let's just look at this is illegal immigration a very serious problem 91% of Republicans say yes 41% of Democrats too and so it's become a thing where it's increased among every single group from 2015 up to 2024 it's a shared concern well and I think one of the things that we all also have to realize is that the by the time that someone gets to the Border joy that is not our immigration policy right we have to recognize that the reason that we got to this moment was that Trump himself dismantled a lot of the programs where people could go ahead and file for some sort of Visa or work permit in their home countries and in an effort to rebuild that you had covid that really upended Latin America specifically they had close to 16 million middle class Latin Americans that went directly into lower class they went into poverty and there was no response internationally from any of this so as the as the president goes in and talks about how tricky the situation is how it's a western hemispheric issue I hope he also recognizes that there are essential workers that are demanding relief that have been here for 10 20 30 years that have been paying their taxes who have American children who are ready to vote for him if he actually recognizes their contributions what as you have probably noticed things have gotten really out of control in Alabama Missouri Texas Florida and Tennessee just last week neo-nazis marched down the streets of Nashville in broad daylight carrying flags with swastikas while those modern-day Hitler fans were marching in the streets Tennessee House Republicans were passing laws that ban different flags on Monday they approved a bill that would ban ideological Flags in schools including Pride flags and black lives matter Flags it will not surprise you that the bill does not I repeat does not explicitly prohibit the display of the Nazi or the Confederate flag in schools because there's nothing wrong with those Republicans have also Advanced a bill that would make Street protests a felony Democrats pointed out that such a law would have prevented John Lewis and Dr Martin Luther King Jr from marching across the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma Alabama Tennessee governor Bill Lee has also signed a law that allows public officials to refuse to perform same-sex marriages if it goes against their beliefs while Republicans are clearly targeting same-sex couples the law opens the door to people refusing to marry people for a whole host of reasons including race religion and national origin joining me now is Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones representative Jones what in the hell is going on in your state well joy um the former Confederacy continues to be a birthplace of bad ideas clearly and the terrifying thing is is that this is where they're testing out these ideas before they nationalize them but these ideas are are being waged you know the battles are being waged on the front lines of our state houses but they're going to be nationalized that we don't stop them at their route which is in States like Tennessee and Alabama and Texas and Mississippi these are the front lines where we have to fight for democracy I saw your your uh I reposted actually your Instagram because you were actually there when the Nazis were marching through uh Nashville how is it that they're now pushing through a law that would ban marches for black lives matter but not Nazi marches I mean they're showing us who they are you know just yesterday um as I tried to tell them that their policies attacking immigrants attacking the lgbtq community Banning black history are inviting these neonazis to come um I was silenced by the speaker of the house and stopped from speaking um and when we try and raise these concerns that we are welcoming hate at the same time we are Banning Pride flags from our schools I mean it is creating this this this morally insane environment where you you're not even engaging you know there's the saying speak truth to power we're speaking truth to Insanity at least we're trying to when we're not silent I think we have a picture of you with with your hand raised I mean this was and you said it was 2 hours we were talking in the break it was like two hours of you not being recognized not being allowed to speak silence to get on the floor they're now pushing through a law that if you are expelled which you were and uh Justin Pearson and of course Miss Gloria were also expelled you couldn't actually run again that's their new plan do you think they're planning to expel y'all again I mean and that bill passed the house last night without even I wasn't even allowed to speak on that bill and this is just showing us that they are so intent on silencing voices of descent because they're try trying to show us that this is not a multi-racial democracy anymore and so there are threats that we may be expelled but we're not afraid of that because what they're trying to do is intimidate us these are tactics of intimidation these are tactics of trying to reage their lost fight last year when they expelled us and we walked back three days later this is what they're trying to stop but they cannot stop the momentum the movement the light that is shining in Tennessee and across the South there was even an attack on a Grammy winner so there is a there was a proclamation That was supposed to honor Allison Russell who was a black country music artist but allowing a similar measure to pass for a group called Paramore who are white that seems so obvious that you would think they wouldn't try it but they did they did I mean they went after a black queer um immigrant woman who has spoken about a more inclusive State and who who had a song that she wanted to grab me for called evas black and they didn't like the title because they didn't like the title they didn't like the title of the song because um again trying to erase people's identity trying to erase reality in erase history let's talk about these last two things because the one about Pride flags being BL banned what would that mean so you couldn't have a pride flag in your class would that actually mean you'd be fired you can be arrested I mean you can be fired you you can be sued I mean this is just the the madness that we're dealing with is that they were questioned they had actually an amendment to make so you can keep Confederate flags in classrooms because they're considered quote unquote battle Flags but Pride Flags which say you are welcome here which are about inclusivity they feel our threat to their dominant Narrative of white Christian nationalism that's really what this was about last night and rather than address this and answer questions this sponsor and the speaker were cowards and chose to shut down debate and not let us even talk about this and ask the questions that our constituents sent us down there to ask is there any sign that voters in Tennessee are going to start punishing Republicans for this because we could just do all we could do 10 more of these you know I I was telling you I watched the Tennessee holler on social media they do 10 of these a day is there any sign that voters have had enough and are going to start voting these people out I mean we're seeing a movement that is rising up that is multi-racial we're seeing people in rural counties saying we're tired of this because they're getting ready to vote on vouchers which are going to destroy these rural school public school districts and so we already have more rural hospitals closed per capita than any other state and so either they're going to wake up or they're going to find themselves in in a place where you know that they can't get out of and so what is happening is that we we need to continue to to shine light to show that they're hurting their own people when they're attacking public education when they're keeping people in poverty jobs when they're denying them Healthcare this is your rural district and so we need people to say that to put that reality over these tactics of division of of white supremacy because that's their strategy is to divide us and make us not talk about how we are fighting the same system that is a small group of extremists who are controlling our state the the last bill I want to talk about is this marriage bill because it it does appear that it will allow public officials to refuse to marry people based on lgbtq but is there anything that would block somebody who there was a famous Tennessee Pastor who 10 years ago said he wouldn't marry people that were interracial couples could that also be somebody could say I'm not going to marry an interracial couple I mean this is what this is opening the door for and this is what they want to open the door for they're taking us back in time literally joy every day we're in that building um you got to set your clock back 50 years cuz that's what's happening and so this is terrible but really what it should be clarifying for us that we have to take these people seriously we have to fight them this is not a time to try and make friends with these folks these extremists and our legislature like I tell them I'm not here to make friends I'm here to make change for my district and whether that means being silenced or being expelled whatever it means we're going to fight for their people too for their constituents too and I hope that the people of Tennessee the Republicans particularly wake up and say that these folks are not serving their interests because because what is happening is that they are using them as pawns and getting them to come out and say um this is about beating up on a few young black men but really this is about beating up on our system of democracy that is silencing them and serving corporate interests that's what's and allowing the gun lobby to just run rampa because anything to do with guns that will pass anything to do that will make it easier that's the only Bill we passed after the shooting the mass shooting in National was a bill protecting Farms manufacturers from being sued the only gun Bill we've passed in Tennessee since that mass shooting that to that got national attention last year the last time you were here you were moving to have the speaker sanctioned um for his actions uh as speaker and his attacks on yourself uh Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson any movement on that so we have filed our motions they filed a response we filed a response motion to that my attorneys are now we're waiting for the judges to to respond but speaker seon continues to act unconstitutionally he continues to be the George Wallace of the 21st century the bull Conor the 21st century and they're trying to ban history because when history looks down on where he stood in this time his children will be ashamed and that he's he's shaming the South but we represent a new South and we're unafraid um you definitely are unafraid that is for sure uh Tennessee state representative Justin Jones glad you were in DC and able to come on set and talk with us good luck and Godspeed we'll be right back

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 13,904

Keywords: msnbc, MSNBC, Specials

Id: dk49qWBZVzA

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024