← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
We the People America 250: Country at a Crossroads - Part 1
00:41:30
A special celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, and Ali Velshi from MS NOW’s live community event in Philadelphia. In this hour Ali Velshi presents his acclaimed retracing of 250 years of American history. And Jen Psaki interviews Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
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Commercial Narrator
Join me Cyndi Lauper with chef Michelle
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Rachel Maddow
Bernstein and Dr. Panico to talk about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage.
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Rachel Maddow
He said no Kings.
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Audience Member / Crowd
Philly is the city where we first said no kings 250 years ago. By the third no kings day, Americans managed to pull off the largest single day protest in American history.
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Ro Advertisement Voice (Hannah)
He said no Kings.
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Ali Velshi
We're in a moment right now. A moment that will be written about, argued about.
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Audience Member / Crowd
Pushback doesn't always work.
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Rachel Maddow
Tonight we sent a message and sometimes
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Audience Member / Crowd
when you do fight, you win.
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Josh Shapiro
I don't view patriotism as something that belongs to one person. It belongs to we the people. Wow.
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Audience Member / Crowd
Oh, knuckles.
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All Free Clear Advertisement Voice
Wow.
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Audience Member / Crowd
Oh my goodness.
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Josh Shapiro
Oh,
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Audience Member / Crowd
wow. Wow. Hello, Philadelphia. Oh my goodness. There are so many of you here, it's unnerving. Ah. Wow. Well, it is great to see you all here. We're so grateful that you've come out to be here in real life, in the flesh, in person. I fully believe that is magic. And we are hoping to make magic with you guys here tonight. Let me start by wishing you happy Birthday. All year long, you get to wish every American you know happy birthday. Since this is our country's 250th you get to do that all over the country with everyone, but particularly you get to do that here in Philly, since this is where our country was born. This beautiful Philadelphia Academy of Music is of course the grand old lady of Locust street, the oldest opera house in continuous use in the United States. And Jen Psaki doesn't know this yet, but we're going to make her sing opera. In order to keep the continuously operating thing going, one of us has to. We've nominated her. We have a great program for you here tonight. The great Ali Velshi is here. He has brought his big board with him and his vest, which I know you have a thing for. Our beloved colleague Jen Psaki will be sitting down with the governor of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro will be here. And I'm going to be talking with one of my heroes, the legendary civil rights lawyer, one of America's greatest public intellectuals, Sherrilyn Ifill is here. And then Ally and Jen and I will also be up together taking questions from you guys. I'm really supposed to be looking forward to that, but it's a more complicated set of feelings, if I'm honest. I get nervous. And without further ado, please welcome the incomparable, the irrepressible, the man who never sleeps, the man with the most resilient hairdo in the entire news business, our dear friend, Ali Velshi.
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Commercial Narrator
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Ali Velshi
I am going to tell you about the last 250 years of this country through the stories of people who fought for it, who bled for it, who wrote letters for it, who stood in the bitter cold for it, who even just held up a phone for it. People who changed the course of history not through power or privilege or position, but through a small act of courage. People whose names you may not know. And it all started here. Right here. Literally less than a mile from where you're sitting right now. And not just here, but now. On this night, June 25, 1776, 250 years ago today, at the corner of 7th and Market, Thomas Jefferson was in the final days of writing the most consequential sentence in the history of human governance. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. He wasn't alone in that room. 14 year old Robert Hemings was there on call 24 hours a day, helping Jefferson dress, bringing him tea, making sure that he was not disturbed. Hemmings was Jefferson's enslaved servant. He could not read the words that Jefferson wrote. He would never possess the rights that were promised by those words. He was in the legal sense of the word, property. And yet there he was in the room less than a mile from where you sit on this very night, 250 years ago. All men are created equal. When Jefferson finished writing, he walked the documents two blocks south to Independence hall, where it was debated and it was signed and it was celebrated. Robert Hemings was present at its creation, but he was not present for the celebration. That contradiction, a man writing the promise of a universal equality while a 14 year old boy, legally his property, stands in the same room. That is not a footnote to American history because sometimes democracy does not unfold the way you hope it does. That is American history. There is interestingly, no image of Robert Hemings. We know a lot about Thomas Jefferson. We know in fact that he was about 6 foot 2, which was unusually tall for the day. He's about the same size as George Washington. But we know very little about Robert Hemings. We do not know his height, we do not know his build and we do not know the sound of his voice. But back in 2024, an artist named Sonya Clark placed video images of the eyes of his descendants in the windows of Declaration House. Each one was about 5ft high, black and white, blinking, looking out onto Market Street. It was not until 1794, 18 years later, that Robert Hemings would gain his freedom. Because he found a doctor who was willing to advance him the purchase price. Jefferson signed Hemings deed of manumission on Christmas Eve 1794. Jefferson was not happy about it. A boy he considered to be his property had found a way to be free. Robert Hemings built a life. He had a family. He had a wife and children. For Robert Hemings, the American experiment had just begun. December 1860. America was 85 years into the experiment and it was failing. Could this attempt at democracy survive itself? Could a nation built on the promise of equality survive the fact that it had not delivered it? Seven states, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas decided that the answer to that question was no. They formed the Confederacy and their army fired a shot at the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Four more states, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina seceded. At least 620,000 people, some say three quarter of a million people, died in the Civil War, killed by FELLOW Americans. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment established birthright, citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race. Three amendments, five years. The most radical expansion of American democracy since the Declaration of Independence itself. And then within a decade, the south began systematically dismantling every one of those promises. Black officeholders driven out. Black voters terrorized. Black communities burned. The federal government looked away. It was called redemption. They were redeeming white supremacy. The promise of Reconstruction would not be kept for 100 more years. And even then, not fully. By 1920, America was 144 years into the experiment, yet half of its population could not vote. The 19th Amendment needed one more state. Tennessee. The legislature in Tennessee was deadlocked. A young Republican named Harry Byrne was 24 years old and he was expected to vote no. But that morning he had a letter in his pocket from his mother. Her name was Feb. Byrne. Hurrah and vote for suffrage. Don't keep them in doubt. Be a good boy and help. Harry Byrne listened to his mother. He voted yes. The 19th Amendment passed by one vote. Because a mother wrote a letter to her son. A small act of courage carried in his pocket. Ida B. Wells had been fighting for the 19th Amendment for longer than almost anyone. When the suffrage march arrived In Washington in 1933, seven years earlier, she was told she couldn't march with the white women. She'd have to march at the back. She refused that indignity. She waited on the sidewalk while the march passed and then she slipped out and joined her Illinois delegation in the middle of the March. Anyway. The 19th Amendment was a victory, but it was also a betrayal. One important door opened, but inside that door, a different one was still closed. That is the American pattern, the advance that isn't complete, the victory that leaves someone behind. The promise that has to be made again and again and again. America was 189 years into the experiment and black Americans could still not reliably vote on paper. The Constitution now prohibited racial and sex based denial of the vote. But in the south, the paper meant nothing. Black voters faced illiteracy, literacy tests that were designed to be failed. They had poll taxes, grandfather clauses, registration offices that were open only on days that nobody could get there. And underneath it all, perhaps most important, the quiet but ever present threat of violence. In Selma, Alabama, there was a woman named Amelia Boynton Robinson. For 30 years, she'd been trying to register black voters. The year before, she had become the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. She lost, but she kept going. On March 7, 1965, she walked onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge with 600 marchers. State troopers, as expected, met them on the other side on horseback with clubs and tear gas. Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten unconscious. She was left lying on the bridge. A photographer took her picture. This photograph moved Lyndon Johnson to go to Congress and demand the voting rights act. One photograph, one woman, beaten but undefeated 50 years later. Amelia Boynton Robinson, then 104 years old. Fifty years later, she went across that bridge again. Pushed across the bridge by Barack Hussein Obama. She just wanted to be able to walk across the bridge. She was pushed across the bridge by the first black President of the United States. She died three months after that photo was taken. She just wanted black Americans to be able to vote. But she lived long enough to see a black man in the White House push her across the bridge upon which they had tried to break her.
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Rachel Maddow
Still ahead, more from Ali Velshi. Plus Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro joins us. And Rachel Maddow sits down with the constitutional law expert, Sherrilyn Ifill. You're watching America 250 country at a crossroads.
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Ali Velshi
This is a theater where a lot of Broadway stuff happens and they always tell you to put off your phones and don't make noise and all that stuff. So I want you to do something that's a little counterintuitive. I want you to reach into your pocket or your bag or wherever you keep them and take out your keys. Take a moment look at your keys. They're the most ordinary objects in your life. You use them every day without thinking. To get into your home, to start your car, to open the things that belong to you. Just hold on to your keys for a moment. I'm going to come back to them. America was 213 years into the experiment. For 40 years, the United States and the Soviet Union had faced each other across an ideological divide. Democracy on the one side, communism on the other side. Which idea would prevail? In the autumn of 1989, the question was answered not by Washington, not by a general or a president or a weapons system. It came from the streets. In city after city across Eastern Europe, people who had lived their entire lives under communism simply stopped. They stopped complying, they stopped pretending. They walked into the streets and they said, no more. In Prague In November of 1989, hundreds of thousands of people gathered night after night. Students, mostly young people who had never known anything but communism. They simply didn't believe it anymore. So they took out their keys here. One of them was Tomas Havlicek. He was a 19 year old student. He stood in the square in the freezing cold. He reached into his pocket, he took out his keys. He held them about his head and he shook them and the person next to him shook them and the person next to her shook hers and the person next to him until hundreds of thousands of keys to filled the square in the freezing dark. There were no guns, there were no bombs, there was no violence. There was just this times hundreds of thousands. What Tomas held in Prague that night, you're holding in your hands right now. On December 29, 1989, Vaclav Havel, a playwright, imprisoned by his own government for the crime of writing words that the government did not like. Sound familiar? Became the first freely elected president of Czechoslovakia. Because enough people believe that human beings deserve to govern themselves. That freedom is not a gift from the powerful, that freedom belongs to everyone. That is what the American experiment at its best said to the world. Not be like us, but you deserve what we are still trying to become. So now do with me what hundreds of thousands of people did in Prague 36 years ago. Do it with me. This is the sound of the idea winning. This is what it Sounds like this is you telling everybody around you what power you have. Because when enough of you do it, the sound is deafening. Hang on to your keys. The story's not over. On May 25, 2020, America was 244 years into the experiment. And a 17 year old girl was walking to a corner store with her nine year old cousin. Her name was Darnella Frazier. You can see her there on the left of the screen. Yeah, she deserves your applause. Seventeen year old girl on the way to the store, she saw a police officer with his knee on a man's neck. She took out her phone. She held it up. She hit record for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. She recorded as onlookers begged the police officer, Derek Chauvin, to stop. Officer Chauvin did not stop. Darnella Frazier did not stop either. A teenager used the only weapon she had against an armed, violent agent of the state. George Floyd died on that sidewalk. But 26 million Americans took to the streets in all 50 states, in countries that had nothing to do with American policing. The largest protest movement in americ. In those 9 minutes and 29 seconds before he died, George Floyd did something no argument or protest sign had been able to do. He called out for his mother, a man who was dying and wanted his mother. And every parent who saw that video, every mother, every father of every color in every city in every state recognized that same sound because it is the oldest sound in the world. A child calling for the person who was supposed to keep them safe. George Floyd was somebody's child. And Darnella Frazier and her phone had made it impossible to dehumanize him after the fact. We knew him as a man and as a son. Before anyone could make him into something easier to dismiss, she had done what the Declaration of Independence promised and had so rarely delivered. She made him fully human in the eyes of the people who needed to see it. And officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of second degree unintentional murder, third degree murder and manslaughter. Darnella Fraser later said she stayed up at night apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more. She had done everything. A small act of courage on a sidewalk with a phone. America was 245 years into the experiment when one man and his disciples decided the experiment was over. On January 6th of 2021, Congress had gathered to do what it had done after every presidential election since 1797. Just count the votes, certify the results, confirm the transfer of power. It had happened without incident or interruption. Since 1797, every four years, like clockwork, a mob attacked the United States Capitol. Not a foreign army. Americans carrying American flags, claiming to believe, maybe even believing, that they were saving democracy while they were actively and violently destroying it. They broke through windows. They beat officers with flag poles. They erected a gallows on the lawn. They hunted for the Vice President. They hunted for the speaker of the House. Inside, legislators hid under desks. They called their families, whispered into phones. In darkened rooms. On the first floor of the United States Capitol, a police officer named Eugene Goodman stood alone, facing the mob. On his way to this door, he had passed Senator Mitt Romney in a corridor and directed him to safety. So now he stood alone. He understood what was at stake. The mob advanced. Eugene Goodman went up the stairs, drawing the mob after him, making himself the target, leading them away from the Senate chamber, which was still full of legislators who had not been evacuated, toward a place where the mob could be contained. He bought enough time. One man, one staircase, one decision made. In seconds. 250 years from now, someone's going to stand on a stage somewhere in this country and tell the story of this moment, of this time we are living through right now, of the people who showed up like you when it mattered, of the people who held the line, of the people who did the one thing that was available to them. I don't know whose names will be on that list. None of these people I've told you about had a key that was any bigger or shinier or more powerful than anyone else's. They just used the one they had in the moment they were in. We're in a moment right now, a moment that will be written about, argued about, taught in schools that do not yet exist, by teachers who have not yet been born. The names on the next list, the names that will be recited 250 years from now, are waiting to be written by people who understand that what we hold in our hands, what you hold in your hands right now, is not just a key. It's the power to show up. It is the memory of everyone who came before us. It is the evidence of what ordinary people can do in extraordinary moments. It is the responsibility, the urgent, the unavoidable, deeply personal responsibility to do the one thing that is available to us in the moment in which we are in what will America's next 250 years be? You'll hold the keys to that question in your hands right now. Thank you.
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Rachel Maddow
Coming up, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is here. Why? He believes America may need a new constitutional amendment as we mark our 250th anniversary. Where we both gain hope is in our fellow citizens and the standing up and the fighting back and the not
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Commercial Narrator
Morning Joe, the Briefing with Jen Psaki and more Voices you know and trust. Ms. Now is your source for news,
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Rachel Maddow
opinion and the world.
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Commercial Narrator
Learn more at Ms. Now.
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Rachel Maddow
First of all, it is amazing in here. It is incredible in here. Thank you Philadelphia for having all of us. This is so soul giving for every single one of us and I hope all of you. Thank you. I hope all of you are finding community right now too. I know. I heard Rachel say that I was gonna sing opera or abba.
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Audience Member / Crowd
I heard abba.
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Rachel Maddow
I'm not gonna do that. Nobody wants that. But what I'm betting you do want is for me to introduce and bring on stage the governor of the great state of Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro. It's amazing.
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Josh Shapiro
It's good to have you in Philly.
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Rachel Maddow
It's great to be here.
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Josh Shapiro
Amazing.
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Rachel Maddow
Great to be here. My daughter had her first cheesesteak today, but I'm not going to tell you which one because I don't want to start a war. By the way.
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Josh Shapiro
That's tough politics. If you start picking favorites there, you want to be careful.
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Rachel Maddow
My next question is what is your favorite?
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Josh Shapiro
I'm not picking favorites. Come on.
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Rachel Maddow
That's not what it is. I wanted to start just by I was reflecting on what Ali Velshi was just talking about ordinary people standing up in extraordinary times. And maybe there are people in this audience right now who are going to be a part of that. And as you think about what the history books are going to write about this moment in our history, we're approaching the 250th anniversary. That's why we're all here.
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Josh Shapiro
Yeah.
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Rachel Maddow
What do you think the history books are going to write about this moment we are all living in through?
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Josh Shapiro
Well, let me start with ordinary people doing extraordinary things and then get to that. In many ways, it's tied directly to the 250th anniversary of this great nation. There was a man who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, who was one of my predecessors, a guy named Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin.
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Rachel Maddow
You may have heard of him.
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Josh Shapiro
You may have heard of him. By the way, one of only, I think, five people that signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. Constitution. He was instructive of a whole lot of important words on both of those documents. But I think the most important words he uttered was after the Constitutional Convention 240 or so years ago, when he walked out onto the cobblestone streets of Philadelphia, right outside the Pennsylvania State House, the Independence hall as we know it, and a woman walked over to him. Think about this. A woman who didn't have the right to vote at that moment walks over to him and says, Dr. Franklin, what do we have here? A monarchy or a republic? And Franklin then uttered, I think, the most important words in our democracy. He said, a republic if you can keep it. Some of you heard that. A lot of Franklin fans here. Why do I cite that? Because I think what he set in motion, what the other founders set in motion, was the scaffolding of this new nation, but an acknowledgement that the real work would have to be done by successive generations, by ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things, standing up so others could walk forward, sitting down at lunch counters, so the next generation would have more rights. Franklin understood that, and I think the American people inherently understand that, because in every chapter of our American story, it's always ended with more promise, more hope, more justice, more equity. Now, we're in the middle of a chapter right now where it doesn't feel very hopeful, and it doesn't feel like it's going to end with more justice or more hope. But the reason I am hopeful, the reason why I am optimistic is because I think we will channel Franklin's words again. Where folks are going to rise up, they are going to demand justice, they are going to speak out against the corruption of this administration. They're going to show up in record numbers in these midterms, and we will have a national referendum on the chaos, the cruelty and the corruption of Donald Trump. And that is how we will write this next chapter, by turning away from that and instead turning more toward our American values.
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Rachel Maddow
And I want to talk about the elections. I want to talk about where we go from there. I think so many people here are wondering all of those. Let me ask you this. When our founders, because I know you've reflected on that, on this particular question. When our founders, what would surprise our founders about today? What did they not prepare for? A lot of things. Let me phrase it this way, Twitter. What did they not prepare for in terms of this test on our system?
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Josh Shapiro
When our founders gathered at Independence hall and first declared our independence, then wrote our constitution a decade later, the biggest fear they had was that one individual would accumulate too much power, that they would become a tyrant, that they would become what we had already just walked away from, and that is being governed by king. Madison wrote extensively about this. He would talk about how government was not going to be made of angels, otherwise we wouldn't need a government at all. He talked about excesses of power in the hands of an executive. And our founders, our framers, built a system of checks and balances to deny the executive the kind of power that we've seen Trump accumulate. Sadly, a big reason for that is we have a Congress of the United States who is frankly, as a group, profoundly and pathetically weak. They've given up on their check. They've given up on their constitutional obligation. And we have a Supreme Court that has made arguably the most dangerous. They've heard of the Supreme Courts for
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Rachel Maddow
the Supreme Court in Congress.
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Josh Shapiro
By the way, these are birds fans. They know how to boo. They know. But if you think about the Supreme Court decision that gave our executive absolute and total immunity, the guardrails are off. It's one of the reasons why I think we've got to really think about a 28th amendment to our Constitution to actually rein in the corruption that we're seeing from this executive. We need anti corruption laws being passed by Congress and we need to take back our democracy. Think back to the fears that Madison and Washington and Franklin and others had when they were doing this work here in Philly 250 years ago, fearing the excesses of an executive. We got work to do to roll that back, but I'm committed to doing that work.
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Rachel Maddow
The courts, I suspected you might bring up the courts. The courts are as we saw from the this crowd a source of extreme frustration is one way of putting it. And the lower courts, I will say, have been a bulwark in many, at many moments against the excesses and the illegality. But the Supreme Court has been incredibly infuriating at times. There are a number of people in the Democratic Party, including an institutionalist named Joe Biden I once worked for, who he's like a neighbor, as
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Josh Shapiro
he was known as our third senator.
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Rachel Maddow
He was known, he might call himself that, too, who have called for reforms to the Supreme Court, to, you know, expansion of the court to term limits on the court. What do you think about that?
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Josh Shapiro
I think we need to be open to all of that and more. I think we need to consider more amendments to our Constitution. We've had five constitutional conventions in Pennsylvania alone, understand, and our founders understood this, that they couldn't write down every rule, they couldn't forecast every problem when they passed the Constitution again. It's been updated 27 times since then. I think we've got to have everything on the table. We've got to be bold. We've got to understand that the excesses that maybe people wrote about in books but never imagined a chief executive, a president would engage in, because, of course, we imagined even a president we disagreed with to be grounded in a love for this country, grounded in we the people. Right. And we don't have that now. And I think it calls on us to have real reforms of the court and be open to real reforms of our Constitution and certainly be open to a Congress of the United States passing anti corruption, anti gerrymandering and a new voting rights law here in this country.
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Rachel Maddow
More with Governor Josh Shapiro after the break. You're watching America 250 country at a crossroads. This is an event about the 250th anniversary that's not about one president. It's not about one person. It's not about one leader. It is about the country and everything we have been through and ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I think as we've all watched or maybe you've covered your eyes at times. And if you did, we totally. That's understandable.
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Josh Shapiro
They would never cover their eyes during your show.
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Rachel Maddow
Well, that's okay.
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Josh Shapiro
Their eyes are always open.
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Rachel Maddow
Or an Eagles game.
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Josh Shapiro
Or an Eagles.
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Rachel Maddow
Or an Eagles. Unless they're losing, which I won't say that never happened. But Donald Trump has made it entirely about himself. I mean, he held the UFC fight on his birthday. He has. Yes, I know. That was quite something. He even called the America 250 celebration, the most spectacular Trump rally. That was a quote from him. I didn't even make that up. How are you thinking and sitting with that? I mean, as we've just been discussing. You are a historian of our nation's history. You care about it quite a bit. You ran for office because you wanted to be in public service. How do you digest all that?
- [36:11]
Josh Shapiro
Early this morning, I had the good fortune of being able to be at Independence hall, and I was in the State House where George Washington presided and where our founders met. And I couldn't help but just feel the patriotism that I walk around with every day. Even more so in that moment, I am a proud, patriotic American. I love this country. I believe this is the greatest country on the face of the earth. And I don't view patriotism as something that belongs to one person or one party. It belongs to we the people. It really does. And I think what Donald Trump doesn't understand, maybe it's his narcissism, maybe it's that he's not really all that patriotic, is that the beauty of this country is that it brings people from all different walks of life. The beauty of this country is that its trajectory is defined not necessarily by people with titles next to their names, but by ordinary Americans who put country before self and do big things. Donald Trump doesn't put country before self. His corruption puts self before country and hurts the very people that he is there to, in theory, serve. And so when I think about patriotism, I try and look past this immediate chapter we're in and think about all the different chapters over this last 250 years. And I believe in my heart that we are better than our temporary politics. We are better than what we're seeing now. We got to make some changes to our laws. We got to make some changes to our politics. And we certainly need to vote in order to be able to get through this. But I believe we're better than Donald Trump. We are better than the President of the United States.
- [38:12]
Rachel Maddow
There is a bit of a debate in the Democratic Party. Have you seen this going on lately? I don't know. After some primary elections that happened earlier this week about the future of the Democratic Party, this happens from time to time or on a very regular basis. I would say there were some significant outcomes from that. I mean, it was a very. I should say it was a very diverse group of candidates who won primaries even across the state of New York on. On Tuesday night. But there were two sitting members of Congress who lost their seats in primary elections. That's incredibly rare. 98% of the time, incumbents win reelection in a primary. And three of the candidates who won were endorsed by Mayor Mamdani. I'm raising this because, well, there's some Hamdani events here. I'm raising this because it's a very big coalition. It's a very big umbrella. The Democratic Party, it has long been. And this is going to be a. A group of members that Hakeem Jeffries and others are going to have to govern. But Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator, John Fetterman was asked about this. He was asked about this.
- [39:20]
Audience Member / Crowd
There you go.
- [39:21]
Josh Shapiro
They know him.
- [39:21]
Rachel Maddow
There's a particular view in here that doesn't surprise me. He was asked about this, and I would say he's already testing the coalition is one way to say it, because he described Tuesday's election as the rise of the dirtbag left. And I just wonder what you think about that.
- [39:39]
Josh Shapiro
Look, I wouldn't speak like that. And John should answer for himself. I'll just speak more broadly about this. I mean, I appreciate the passion that we are seeing from voters all across this country. You saw it here in Pennsylvania during our primaries as well. Passion. People showing up in record numbers in these primary. Even in uncontested races like mine, people showed up in record numbers. It is extraordinary. And I appreciate the passion. Here's the other thing. I appreciate and understand the pain that a lot of people are feeling. The pain that people are feeling because their health insurance costs rise or they can't get it at all. The pain that people are feeling because things just cost too damn much in their communities. The pain that people feel because they can't buy a house even though they're working their butts off and they just can't. The pain that people are feeling because they feel like their rights are being ripped away from them. Not here in Pennsylvania, but other places in the country. And they are channeling that pain into purpose. They're channeling that into showing up at the ballot box. They're channeling that into showing enthusiasm. That is a good thing. As for our party, we gotta make sure we've got lots of different voices around the table. And I guess I might, respectfully, with the utmost respect, by all means, go ahead with one thing. You said you were saying, you know, the Democrats, we've got this debate all the time about what we stand for.
- [41:04]
Rachel Maddow
I would argue, oh, I think it's a healthy thing. I didn't mean that.
- [41:07]
Josh Shapiro
No, no, I think it is, too. I think it is, too. But I would make a slightly different argument. I think as a party, we've not really gone through a big debate about what we stand for and what we're all about, maybe since Bill Clinton's election back in 1992. And if you think about it, and that's not to take anything away from Barack Obama, who was such a unique political figure that brought people together and a friend and someone I admire greatly, or Joe Biden, someone we both admire, you work for, who in many ways was a response to four years of Donald Trump. We have an opportunity as a party to have this battle about what we're for. And here's what we need to be for in 2026, defeating the people who are enabling Donald Trump. And then from there, we need to be a party that puts people first and isn't just about platitudes, but it's about purpose and getting real stuff done to make people's lives better. That's what we need to be for. A party that delivers on making people's lives better.
- [42:14]
Audience Member / Crowd
Better.
- [42:22]
Rachel Maddow
Something that I sometimes hear from people, and you may hear it, too, you hear all the things because you're traveling around the state, is that we just have to get through the next two and a half years and everything, the system will go back to normal and things will go back to. There's. There are some skeptics in the room. I'm with you. I'm skeptical with you. It feels like that's not entirely true, or I don't find that to be true. The Republican Party is not the Republican Party of what it was. It is a MAGA party now. Essentially, our institutions have been gutted. The federal government has been gutted. What do you think has changed for good, and what do you think should be the priority to address of the next person who's in the White House?
- [43:10]
Josh Shapiro
Well, first off, I would just say anybody who's thinking around, sitting around thinking, oh, it's just another two and a half years. We'll get through it. I hate that attitude. That's a passive attitude. We need an aggressive attitude. We need to be out front fighting this every day, standing up against the corruption, voting in our elections, elevating candidates who are going to help make our lives better. So I think we've got to be active. And then I think. I think we've got to understand that our sole mission right now is on winning in these midterms and providing a check against Donald Trump at the state and at the federal level. We have a job to do on that. And then as we go forward, I think we have to understand that rebuilding a federal government like it was before Donald Trump showed up cannot be the answer for the Democratic Party. We need to build something. We need to build something that is purposeful, that actually drives down costs, that increases access to healthcare, that repairs our standing in the world while also making sure that our allies pay their fair share and do their fair part. We've got to rein in AI, in the handful of people that actually run this system and put some regulation around it. We've got a lot of work to do. But just thinking that we can go back and do it the way it was always done is not the answer. The final thing I want to say on this point is this. There are a lot of people who believe that you've got to have chaos and noise just to be able to make change. I don't view it that way. I think big change, seismic change, the kind of huge transformational change we need in this country can also come with competence, with calm, with kindness, with treating your neighbor in a loving way. I believe that's what we need going forward in this country.
- [45:06]
Rachel Maddow
All right. Governor Josh Shapiro, thank you for being here with us.
- [45:09]
Josh Shapiro
Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
- [45:15]
Rachel Maddow
Still ahead, Rachel Maddow sits down with constitutional law expert Sherrilyn Eichel.
- [45:27]
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