Rachel
Maddow
.
[CHEERING]
[FUNK MUSIC]
Thank you.
Welcome.
Wow.
Thanks for having me.
How are you?
There is an excitement.
There is a feeling of hope.
How did you experience--
I know you were working, rarely on a Tuesday.
I know. You know me.
Mondays baby.
I thought we were Monday buddies.
-
Exactly. -
And by the way.
Mondays are the best day.
What's with writing the books?
I thought it was, we work on Monday,
and then the rest of the week, we feed chipmunks.
I wrote it only on Mondays.
All right.
That makes me feel better.
How did you experience the night?
During the day, were you trepidatious?
When was it that you thought, oh, this
is going the way that I would like it to go, and in a way
that is even grander than what I might have imagined?
I think that--
I didn't have any insider knowledge
about how it was going to go.
I didn't have any like better look at the polls than anybody.
But I realized I was in trouble when my cheat stopped working.
The way you cheat for preparing for midterm election nights,
when there's like hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of people on the ballot,
is you don't study everybody.
You only study the few dozen races that are going to flip.
And that's what everybody does.
Everybody has the same cheat.
You don't think you're going to need
to know the name of the cute, gay guy in Indiana,
in the Trump double digit district, who loves cats.
But that guy won in Indiana.
And so you have to learn his name.
[CHEERING]
Like, in Wisconsin, I didn't think
I was going to need to learn about the awesome waitress and
the ER nurse, who were going to flip Republican districts.
But all of a sudden, we're all cramming and studying
in real time, while we're not taking commercial breaks,
trying to learn how to pronounce
the names of these people we haven't studied.
So they're just throwing you races that no one saw coming,
and you're trying to, on-the-fly,
pick all that stuff up-- -
Yes.
And grab it.
So there's almost no time to soak
in any kind of exhilaration.
You really are still working.
Yes.
I'm trying to keep my brain and my mouth connected and legal
because I've got.
And my ears, too, because I also
have to hear from the control room,
like when we've got a call.
And is it a big enough call that I
need to interrupt the person talking and jump in there
and say?
And you have to make sure that you say the right thing.
And you have to pronounce stuff right.
And you have to remember if you have anything salient
to say about the person.
It's just a lot.
I think it really wasn't until I
got off the air that I realized like, oh, holy flip,
Texas is blue.
[CHEERING]
You know, and Ohio, and are Democrats going to Congress
from Montana, and from Utah.
And the cat guy won in Indiana.
I mean, it's amazing.
You can say [BLEEP] here.
I'll turn into just toast instantly, lightning bolt.
You cannot let that go, because then
you'll go back to work in your real place and go, oh no.
I guess I'll have to do that.
It's true.
It is the kind of thing-- what
time did you get out of there?
I was supposed to be on until 2:00,
but at 1:19, my brain and my mouth disconnected,
and Chris took over.
And then you were like, you were done.
I was [CLICKS TONGUE]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that.
Now, what was the most consequential for you?
Was it the Senate races?
Because as much as the cute guy from Indiana,
when the Senate flipped, that really
was the night that Democrats could only have dreamed of.
For me, I think a lot of the whole state
governments being taken over by Democrats is really
important too.
I'm really, really hung up on the fact
that people are losing their healthcare, their health
insurance, by the millions. JON STEWART: Yes.
And it's going to make a really big difference
to have Democratic full control in places like Pennsylvania,
and to have a Democratic governor in someplace
like Ohio, and to have Democrats taking over state
government in so many places.
It's going to have a huge difference,
going to make a huge difference, in terms of people
just not losing their health insurance.
And I think that's really important, substantively.
Politically, though, I think it was
not when Democrats got to 51 in the Senate,
it was when they got to 52.
Because when they got to 52, John Fetterman
ceased to matter.
JON STEWART: Yes.
[CHEERING]
Everybody was waiting to have a Fetterman-proof Senate.
But tell me about this.
The state house thing is so interesting to me
because, is it that the federal government, by abdicating
their responsibility for people who are struggling,
does that get shifted?
Is that about the block grants that come in there?
How can Democratic state houses make up that difference,
without really going into the red for themselves,
just economically?
Or is it that they can put more pressure on federal government
for block grants?
Like, how does that work?
It'll matter, in terms of what states are doing
and where it's working in states
now, to put pressure upward.
But I don't think Donald Trump is
going to sign anything that's going to be good for healthcare
for the American people.
Had he wanted to do that, he could have done that by now,
and he never has.
But I do think that like in Georgia,
the fact that Georgia has been governed by Republicans
for so many years means that there are hundreds of thousands
of people in Georgia who could be
on Medicaid right now, and Republicans
are making sure they can't.
JON STEWART: Lists had been cold.
Yes. JON STEWART: Right.
Well, and their Medicaid expansion
is something that you can do under state law,
if you want to.
And Republicans stopped them from doing that in Georgia.
And now, Keisha Lance Bottoms is in there.
And it's a huge deal that she's--
[CHEERING]
--the first Black woman to ever be the governor
of a state anywhere.
But it's a really, really, really big deal,
in really short term, that this probably
means that hundreds of thousands
of people who otherwise don't have
health insurance in Georgia are now
going to get it because of her, and because of Democrats.
JON STEWART: Tangible effects that'll be felt down--
Yeah.
What is, for you to-- because I tend to get pessimistic when
I see a certain status quo leadership
group in place that has, in some ways,
disappointed in the past.
And so I wonder, well, what will be different now?
What would you need to see, going forward,
from Democratic leadership in the House
and the Senate, that would make you feel
like, oh, this is different, they're moving
with purpose and with urgency?
I mean, I can give you a list of 30 things.
Give me a list of 5 things.
I mean, I think that they can act not only to investigate
what's been going on with ICE, but to defund
what ICE has been doing. JON STEWART: OK.
[CHEERING APPLAUSE]
I think they can impeach not only
Pete Hegseth, but Todd Blanche at the Department of Justice.
And I think that's important, not just to shame those guys.
But in some cases, it's essentially to, like,
stop a crime wave in progress.
Just like, let them know they can't get away
from with this stuff anymore.
And impeach them.
I think that they could also do things
on health care that would make it really
difficult for the president to keep stepping on people's necks
in terms of having health insurance.
JON STEWART: Right.
If I was triaging, that'd probably be my number one.
That's the thing that I've seen from people, from every strata
of American society.
Health care and health insurance
bills have skyrocketed 30% every year
for the last 30 years. -
It's insane.
Insane.
For people who have health insurance, it's insane.
But there's 4 million kids in America
right now who aren't covered by any health insurance.
We could have a-- essentially Medicare for All Kids.
You know, where, OK, maybe it's not going to be Medicare
for All right off the bat.
Maybe we're not going to go for that first.
But every kid in America should have health insurance.
Andy Kim has a bill that would do that.
I think Democrats would support it, up and down the ballot.
How he would veto something like that,
I think would be an astonishingly
difficult move for him. -
Yes.
I think they can use the power of the purse
to stop the Iran War.
Right.
I mean, I think there's a lot.
I think there's a lot of stuff that they can do.
And I think that-- -
No stock trading.
Yeah.
JON STEWART: That'd go on the floor first day.
Stop members of Congress from stock trading,
stop people who are federal contractors from making
political donations. -
Right.
Just, if you're getting money from the federal government,
you can't then turn that money around and pay it to buy--
use it to buy your politicians.
How much of a problem is the Supreme Court
over the last 20 years?
When you think about the way that they've defined down
corruption, the way that they've insulated
the executive branch, the way that they have made it
so that money is speech and corporations are people,
how difficult is that to do legislatively?
Or is that constitutionally-- is that beyond the scope
of what this group can do?
I think that you need to find where the limits are by pushing
right up against them. JON STEWART: Right.
And so, yeah. JON STEWART: Push the limits.
Push the limits.
Where would they have learned that from?
"Push the limits," I like it.
I mean, for example, on the federal contractors
making political donations, like, think about Elon Musk
getting billions of dollars in SpaceX contracts
from the government, or whatever,
and then turning around and spending billions of dollars
trying to pick his government so they can
keep giving him more money.
It's a nasty circle.
There are federal laws that preclude that, or
are supposed to preclude that, but they're full of loopholes.
Close the loopholes and then make the Supreme Court stand
up for them, if they want to. JON STEWART: Right.
And just push it.
This is the time for people.
I have to say, what this election showed,
and I think you've actually done an awful lot on this
because you've done it in terms of the way people have pushed
back on the government trying to build--
there was a place in Georgia. It was Social Circle.
Is that-- am I getting that name right?
Social Circle, yeah.
Social Circle, Georgia, super red place.
The Trump administration wanted to build
a huge detention center there.
And they fought it, and they stopped it.
RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah.
This is-- it turns out that the consent of the governed
still-- as little as consent might matter to Donald Trump--
that's a terrible joke. -
Oh.
Yeah.
But the consent of the governed still matters.
Yes.
And it doesn't usually get led by the representatives,
the elected representatives of those people.
Social Circle stood up for itself.
You know, people all over the country,
where Trump wanted to put these megaprisons,
these were huge warehouses to hold people by the thousands,
places that would hold 5,000, 6,000,
7,000, 10,000, 14,000 people, all without trial,
held indefinitely.
For things that are generally considered,
in our society, civil issues.
Yes.
These are not the worst of the worst.
These are people who overstayed a student visa
or are here on a green card but got a parking ticket,
like ticky-tack shit that normally
would be treated civilly. Yes?
Yes.
Or they came in legally under TPS,
Temporary Protected Status, or something.
And then the Trump administration
decided to revoke it and, suddenly, basically illegalized
people who had never done anything illegal in their life,
who were here on legal terms.
And I think we talk to each other
and we say, like, oh, that's how
they want to treat immigrants.
That's what they want to do.
We think about it as a special class of behavior
by the government that's just for immigrants.
And we think, therefore, oh, you either care
about immigrants or you don't.
No, I'm sorry.
With a president like this, if you give him 7 to 10 prisons
around the country that hold 10,000 people each,
where he can hold people without trial,
without access to lawyers, indefinitely,
you think he's only going to leave immigrants in there?
I just don't.
I think that what they first do to immigrants--
You don't trust the process.
--they want to do to the rest of us.
Which brings us to this book, which is sort of charting--
you know, the DOJ, I think we all have kind
of this very high-minded feel.
It's the DOJ.
There's independence.
This is a great study in, well.
Actually actually.
But you've run through some great examples
of-- of where the DOJ has not necessarily
been that ideal that we view.
And I wrote the book mostly, because I
think I was really wrong about something
in Trump's first term.
At the-- by the end of his first term,
when Bill Barr was in there and everything,
he was using the Justice Department
for all sorts of terrible and inappropriate stuff.
Remember, they, like going after Peter Strzok and
Lisa Page. -
Yes.
The FBI.
They, apparently they had a relationship.
I know. And so--
So they had to be arrested.
So they had to be-- so they had to put
their-- their private text messages,
give their private text messages out to reporters
from the Justice Department.
And trying to turn the Russia investigation
about the investigation of what Russia did in 2016 election,
into itself a criminal act.
And going, they pushed out US attorneys who
wouldn't prosecute John Kerry.
Right.
And Barack Obama's White House counsel.
There's all this weird stuff that we've
kind of forgotten now.
But it struck me at that time that if he got back
in for a second term, he would supersize
the Justice Department.
He would turn it into a nuclear weapon.
He would use it for all the worst things he wanted to do.
He'd triple its budget, he'd triple the number of people
there, and it would just become his sword and his shield.
And he did not do that.
Instead, the Department of Justice
has lost thousands of people.
It's never been weaker.
It's totally flaccid and unimpressive every time
that it gets into court.
They get thrown out of court more often than they
get anything through.
I mean, literally thousands of people have left.
They've shut down the National Security Division,
effectively, the Tax Division, the Public Integrity Section.
They've just shut it down.
And there's a lot of folks in there now that refuse,
if the criteria are not met for indictments,
they refuse to indict, and then they're fired.
Yeah.
And like a real estate lawyer from near Mar-a-Lago just
steps in and goes, I'll do it.
Yes exactly.
The judge goes like, this is not actually the Queen's,
like, it's just not English.
In-- in DC, just looking at Washington, DC,
they brought in to be the top federal prosecutor in DC,
the only Fox News host with a less impressive
reputation than Pete Hegseth.
Right?
Like if Pete didn't have a great like workplace behavior
reputation, there's only one person lower than him
on the rank.
They put her in charge in Washington.
And then remember, she had to bring in the dance photographer
to be her main prosecutor on some of these cases?
No.
The guy who's like, side hustle was
that he was a dance photographer,
and they brought him in to become
like the ranking federal prosecutor in Washington,
because all the real prosecutors fled
for their professional lives.
And even she can't abide by what
he wants, because even she's like,
but he didn't vandalize the pool.
I can't-- I can't hold the veteran, because he
didn't vandalize the pool.
And Trump was like, grr.
The judge actually makes us prove it.
Right.
It's awful.
So this is, it--
what you thought would happen, didn't, because
of the incompetence, but not for lack
of trying to weaponize it.
The Justice Department, this is
about the history of the Justice Department,
and a lot of the terrible things
that it has done in its 150 years.
When the Justice Department stood
up against the Klan in 1870, when it was first founded--
--it was incredibly effective against the Klan,
and it set the country's course in a way
that was really powerful.
When it cracked down on organized labor just as hard,
it was also just as powerful in terms of setting the course.
And they did.
You write that they suspended habeas corpus--
In going after the Klan in South Carolina.
--to go after the Klan.
And we do think of that as, well, that-- that
was the right move.
But then you think, well, then Roosevelt did that to
in turn, the Japanese, or you know,
that sometimes we use the might of the federal government and
these emergency powers for what we consider to be good,
but we have to be very wary of what that power
will represent ultimately.
The government, and specifically
the Justice Department are, I argue, the most consequential
institution in the country.
They hold the country's fate in their hands.
They have incredible power.
And given that, I think it's really interesting
that Trump decided to essentially
destroy it, instead use it to the max that he could.
And I think the reason that he did
that, is because the core function
of the Justice Department, for all its faults,
for all the terrible things it's done,
the core function of the Justice Department
is to make sure that the Constitution
is in effect in this country.
And if you want the Constitution to not
be in effect in this country, you
do not need that building full of lawyers
telling you otherwise.
And so, I think it's a really ominous sign that he's ess--
essentially gotten rid of it, but
it gives us this great opportunity to refound it,
fully cognizant of how powerful it is, but better this time,
so that we can defend the Constitution better when
the next tyrant comes around.
[CHEERING APPLAUSE]
Well said.
How-- how do we view it in the context?
Because a lot of what you write about reminds me
that presidents often have a real idea of how they want
to use the Justice Department.
Yeah.
And they use those lawyers to justify that,
whether it's John Yoo and the torture memos or
unitary executive power.
It seems almost like doctor shopping
where they'll go in and say, I want to do
this, justify it in a memo.
And if they can't, they go, get me another lawyer who will.
Are the reforms you're talking about,
can it stop that kind of lawyer shopping?
I think so.
I think that when we refound it,
because it is pretty much done, dunzo now, it's like doornail.
When we refound it, I think that it should
be treated as a special case.
I think that you should have to get, for example--
Outside the executive?
It has to stay within the executive, because of the way
the Constitution is set up.
But you can make it so that you need like a supermajority
in the Senate, for example, to confirm any senior officials.
Right.
You can make it so that you need--
you can't have been the president's personal
lawyer if you want to then become the attorney general.
I don't know.
You could-- you could--
-
Little things. -
Little things like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense.
I think there are structural reforms.
You could give the inspector general subpoena power in his
ability to haul in people who even quit the department under
former officials, which is something that
other departments now have that the Justice Department doesn't.
So it's a really, I think, almost
melodramatically consequential thing,
but the fixes are within our power.
You don't need a constitutional amendment in order to do it.
You could do it with Democratic majorities
in the House and Senate and with a Democratic president
in 2028.
Do you believe, given what we've seen over
these last few years, that our government still
has the ability to investigate itself and
bring accountability, that even when you think about--
the case study is always January 6.
And you think about, well, that's the most egregious thing
that-- in our lifetimes, an executive
like-- makes Watergate look like child's play.
And we were unable, other than for some individuals
who faced justice and were then ultimately pardoned--
are the mechanisms of accountability broken?
In the Justice Department right now, I think they are.
But that is not the only mechanism.
Just take one example with Todd Blanche.
Todd Blanche goes and takes a personal meeting with
the woman who is convicted as Jeffrey
Epstein's co-conspirator--
I believe I read about this.
--in this child sex trafficking ring.
He sits down with Ghislaine Maxwell,
has this long conversation with her
in which he asks her questions about how
she feels about the president.
And did you ever encounter the president?
He didn't do anything bad, did he?
And she tells him, oh, no, the president
is not only super innocent.
He's also lovely and handsome.
And--
JON STEWART: He's a gentleman.
She just spouts this totally factually
uncorroborated, pseudoexonerating
nonsense about the president.
What happens immediately after?
She mysteriously gets moved to a minimum security facility
where, among other things, she gets a puppy--
not kidding. And that--
She got a puppy?
She got a puppy.
They don't usually let sex offenders train puppies,
but she got one--
Jesus.
--because they moved her to--
Apparently, they don't normally move sex offenders--
-
No, not at all. -
--to nicer places.
She should not--
by the virtue of--
the category of her offense does not qualify
to be in that sort of prison.
But it happened right after Todd Blanche
talked to her about Trump.
And they said, oh, the Bureau of Prisons
just did this on their own. We have no idea.
It's unconnected.
I'm sorry.
Like, the relevant committees and the House and the Senate,
just take that one thing alone, can
investigate how it is that she got moved to Puppyville.
And that alone--
[LAUGHS]
--I'm sorry-- is kind of impeachment-level stuff.
Right.
And that doesn't even get to not investigating
who killed Renee Good.
Right.
Or who killed Alex Pretti.
[APPLAUSE]
That doesn't--
For a while, there was no real investigation
into any of it. -
None of it.
-
There was no investigation. -
No.
They said no.
And the Minneapolis police weren't even
allowed to be a part of it.
Even right now.
This weekend, a senior official from the Department
of Health and Human Services-- think of it what you
will right now, but he's left.
And he said the reason that he left
is because he says Trump's White House chief of staff
was taking money, was essentially demanding
that you pay her family if you wanted
to get Trump administration attention and action.
That's a really serious claim to make, especially
if you've got sort of documents to corroborate
that that's what happened, which they kind of have.
A Justice Department that had a public integrity division
would investigate that.
Todd Blanche says, I'm the president's lawyer,
and I'm not going to investigate that.
Well, Todd Blanche should therefore
be investigated for that refusal
to investigate obvious corruption.
And it's happened to previous attorneys general.
Well, you bring it up, actually.
And you really-- you've got to get it because it
provides you a roadmap to sort of the different variations
that the Department of Justice went through.
But the chapters on the Teapot Dome scandal--
Yeah.
I mean, talk about history rhyming.
It really feels like a very similar just,
we're open for business.
RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah.
And the attorney general at the--
so Teapot Dome-- I know everybody's like--
it's just one of these scandals where effectively all you need
to know is that they stole tens of millions of dollars,
in 1920s dollars, from the American people.
And the attorney general at the time
was this guy, Harry Daugherty.
And the phrase that I use in the book
to describe the Department of Justice under him
is that it was a multistory bribe department store.
JON STEWART: Yes.
Like, you'd just go to different floors
of the Department of Justice to pay
different bribes for different services that you wanted.
But the worst thing that he did was not investigate,
was refused to look into, refused
to bring criminal charges or criminal investigations
against the obvious corruption that was happening
in the White House and in the Cabinet, which
is very much-- very much looks like what's
happening right now.
And letting that stuff go is as bad
an act of any attorney general as taking bribes himself.
And this is a Justice Department
that has seen bribes given in exchange for pardons
and all the rest of it.
But the worst thing they've done
is let Trump and his family pick up
the country by their ankles and shake it till the loose change
came out. JON STEWART: Right.
And the way they are enriching themselves right now
is a crime.
It ought to be prosecuted.
JON STEWART: No question.
And the book, by the way, what's so-- what I really
love about it is it provides you a roadmap of context
for where you go, but it doesn't just diagnose.
I think you put in here some really
interesting and clear-cut remedies, which is unusual.
So I appreciate that.
I don't appreciate you shaming the Monday Night Workers
Club by doing such a work of scholarship.
I will never write another book.
This is it. This is it.
Maybe I would do with, like, a 30-page pamphlet,
but otherwise it's fantastic.
Thank you for being here. -
Thank you, Jon.
Thank you for having me.
Department of Fate, available now.
Rachel Maddow Show, Mondays at 9:00 PM on MS NOW.
Rachel Maddow.
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