← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: The bill comes due for Trump's bad decisions
00:43:00
Rachel Maddow looks at decisions Donald Trump has made so far in his second term, from staffing his administration to policy choices and wars of choice, and points out that while the American people are the first to have to pay for Trump doing a bad job, ultimately the consequences fall on him as his political popularity plummets.
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- [00:00]
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Rachel Maddow
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Rachel Maddow
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. You know, you live long enough, you realize that there are some days, there are some times when the bill comes due. You know, you've done things in the past, perhaps ill advised, things you kind of knew at the time weren't a good idea and sometimes you are able to skate by for a little while. You get away with that stuff for a little while, but eventually you learn in this life that the bill comes due. We're having one of those times in the news right now. So for example, when we as a country elected this president, he decided in his infinite wisdom that he would immediately allow his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, to cut whole swaths of US Government capacity based on nothing but Elon Musk's own say so and his gut feelings. So things that took decades if not generations to build up. Some of these things, the gold standard government capacity for the whole world. President Donald Trump just said, hey, you're my top campaign donor. As far as I'm concerned, that gives you the right to sledgehammer the US Government to your heart's content. I don't care. You enjoy yourself. And that is how thousands of subject matter experts and you know, forest rangers and specialist lawyers and prosecutors and scientists. Aunt, aunt. And it's how all these people lost their jobs and their careers in the US Government, but it's also has how we as a country lost things like say a project that had been funded that was shovel ready, expertly planned, much needed, ready to go. A project to build firebreaks in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. Elon Musk and Donald Trump did not care enough or were not bright enough to understand what a project like that might conceivably be for. And so they ixnate it, you know, even as Trump blames wildfires anywhere on earth on people not cleaning up the forest so there would be less to burn. Trump, in his wisdom literally stopped funding last year for the shovel ready project to build firebreaks in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota so there would be less to burn. So it would be easier to fight any fire that did break out. He and Elon Musk stopped the funding of that project. And so now the bill has come due. The Superior National Forest in Minnesota as we speak, is on fire. Thank you, Doge. Thank you, Donald Trump. That was the Washington Post reporters doing good work this weekend tracing the line between those fires burning right now in Minnesota after Trump last year stopped the funding that would have made that forest less likely to burn. That is the bill coming due. Similarly, cyclospora this time last year, NBC News reporting that Donald Trump and his infinite wisdom had inexplicably decided to attack and degrade the government's ability to investigate and combat foodborne illness. For 30 years, there had been a joint surveillance system involving the CDC, the FDA, the U.S. department of Agriculture, the EPA and state health departments, a joint project to actively surveil for dangerous foodborne illnesses like cyclospora. Kind of an unfamiliar word, right? Cyclospora. You never really heard it much until recently. Now you hear it all the time. You never really had to know the word cyclospora to cover the national news before this year. Not because it wasn't around, it was. But it was never a crisis like this. That's in part because for the past generation, the US Government had a world class active surveillance program going and actively looking for signs of it in the food supply, identifying it early, stopping it from spreading as food is distributed all over the country to make sure we don't have widespread outbreaks of cyclospora in the US Food supply nationwide. Trump got rid of that program for cyclospora last year. Yeah, because who needs that? And now this year we've got thousands of people sick from cyclospora in 41 states and no sign whatsoever that the wellness influencers and anti vaccine conspiracy theorists who now populate the federal government's health agencies have any idea of how to even monitor it, let alone stop it. Right. That is another bill that is now coming due. I mean, two of the USDA labs that play a key role in investigating cyclospora contamination are located at the Beltsville Agricultural Research center, just north of Washington, D.C. tRUMP Right now is in the process of closing down that whole facility in the midst of this massive cyclospora outbreak. He's in the midst of closing that facility, including those specialty labs, because, yeah, who needs it? The CDC under Trump has lost a quarter of its staff because, yeah, who needs the cdc? We can all obviously do our own research and investigate foodborne parasitic infections. We just use the TikTok or crystals, right? Or maybe, maybe building a new White House ballroom will help. The bill is coming due on this stuff. The bill is also coming due on vaccination quackery. When you put a quack anti vaccine conspiracy theorist in charge of the part of the federal government that oversees vaccination policy, literally, RFK Jr. Is someone who said Covid may have been ethnically targeted to favor Chinese people and the Jews, right? That's who you. When Donald Trump put someone like that in charge of health and human services for the United States of America, well, guess what happens in the United States of America. The bill is now coming due. And now we've got the largest measles crisis in this country in decades. Quote, more measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 to 2024 combined. Children have borne the brunt of the infections, making up more than 70% of confirmed cases. More than 80 children and adolescents have been hospitalized this year for complications like pneumonia, which leaves patients gasping for air and brain swelling, which can cause lasting damage including blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities. There are no treatments for measles. Reversing course on measles nationwide would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts say seems unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The bill is coming due there. The bill is also coming due for Trump's decision to put a troubled and totally inexperienced Fox News host in charge of the Department of Defense. This weekend, the Pentagon, under Pete Hegsest's leadership, posted this online Winning. But then look at the caption they posted at the top of it. It's not an option. Winning. It's not an option. That's literally what it says. What are you doing? They eventually took it down. But you know what? The American people agree with that sentiment before they took it down. Winning does not seem to be an option here. Not with these guys. In the new CBS YouGov poll, Trump overall is 22 points underwater in his overall approval rating, minus 22 in terms of whether people approve or disapprove of him. But on his handling of the Iran war in particular, he's not 22 points underwater. He's 30 points underwater. Amid that massive public disapproval of how well these guys are doing managing this inexplicable war, they started with Iran, Pete Hegseth's Pentagon this weekend was caught apparently trying to conceal the number of American service members who have been killed or wounded in that war. Playing games with the numbers, like taking down off the casualty list four service members who were killed recently, supposedly because Trump's worthless ceasefire was technically in effect when they were killed. So that means they were killed during peacetime. I guess they shouldn't be counted as war dead. Trump and Hegseth's Pentagon got caught for that and for just not disclosing the number of Americans wounded in the war so far. Facing just white hot rage from military families over those revelations, they have since started posting more numbers. So we know that even by their new and improved counting, it's over 620Americans who have been wounded so far in Trump's inexplicable Iran war and 18Americans who've been killed. As the war expands into its sixth month now, and as it expands from the Persian Gulf into the Red Sea and as of this weekend, even into the Caspian Sea, bringing in more and more countries and more and more casualties and more and more economic damage all the time. The Pentagon under, under Pete Hegsoth, what are they working on? They say they're going to shoot up troops with testosterone. That's their plan to get around to all the winning.
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Commercial Announcer
Right?
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Rachel Maddow
Because sure, that's really the problem here. The bill is starting to come due for this stuff. Maybe if you had a really extraordinarily capable commander in chief, you might be okay with somebody at the Pentagon who had no idea what he was doing. But in this case, it's the pair of them. I mean, you've got Trump as commander in chief and then Hegseth at the Pentagon. These are the guys, right, playing with the US Military like it's a cross between GI Joe and beer pong. And so, yes, we are in another inexplicable and apparently inextricable Middle east war that is wildly unpopular, that appears to have no end, that appears to have no point, and that we clearly are losing. The bill comes due for bad decisions on important matters like this, the bill even comes due politically in that same CBS poll today, the one that shows Trump minus 30 on the Iran war. It also shows him minus 30 on his handling of the economy, on his handling of inflation. He's not 30 points underwater, he's 42 points underwater. He's got 71% disapproval on his handling of inflation, as he is right now imposing new tariffs and basically restarting the Iran war. And not for nothing, shutting down energy generation projects all over the country, all of which are going to make inflation and the cost of living even worse. And so with an electorate where people say that the economy and inflation are the number one thing on their mind when it comes to casting their vote, Trump and Republicans know that voters just champing at the bit to throw them out, to vote against them, to vote for Democrats instead. And so what do we get from Trump today? We get Trump demanding that the U.S. supreme Court allow him to monkey wrench the elections this fall. Trump today asked the United States Supreme Court to cast aside lower court rulings to let him go ahead with his bizarre executive order that would, among other things, allow him to use the U.S. post Office, the U.S. postal Service, to block people from mailing in their ballots in this November's election. Of course, he is asking for that power because if people were just able to vote like they normally do, he and the Republicans know what would happen. They know the kind of shellacking they are in for. They know that bill is going to come due, so they just can't allow it. So they're asking the Supreme Court to please allow them to stop people from voting. We're just having one of those days. We're in one of those moments in the news where we start to see the consequences of our choices, the consequences of our actions. One of the things I want to talk about tonight is that I really do think this same principle cuts both ways. And it's true. In life, you confront the consequences on the bathroom scale. If you've been eating ice cream all summer like I have, and, you know, if you've stopped working out right, you confront the consequences in a negative way when that happens. But you also confront the consequences on that same bathroom on that same bathroom scale. You know, you confront the consequences happily when you start eating better and when you start exercising more. Right, the bill comes due both ways. The bill comes due for constructive decisions, just as it comes due for destructive decisions. And so take for example, something that we have been covering here on this show for a long time. You know, we've covered the administration's efforts to build huge Trump prison camps to hold people without trial. Those warehouse prison conversions they wanted to build all over the country, which would be some of the biggest prison camps on earth. And as we have covered here on this show, they have largely had to pull back from that plan because of the huge public pushback they got against those prison camps. Not a single one of those Trump prison camp warehouse conversions has been able to open. It's possible none of them ever will. That said, even without being able to build the huge NU camps, they have been locking people up in immigrant prisons that generally have terrible conditions. We have covered efforts, for example, to try to get the Trump immigrant prison at Delaney hall in New Jersey shut down. We have covered the efforts to get the Trump immigrant prison for kids and families in Dilley, Texas shut down. We are now watching local residents in Aurora, Colorado pushing there. There has been reportedly been tuberculosis inside the Trump immigrant prison in Aurora, Colorado. An off duty prison employee just shot somebody outside that prison. Within the past week, we've been watching local residents in Aurora try to get their state, try to get the Colorado State Health Department to intervene at that Trump immigrant prison in Aurora to investigate the healthcare and conditions there. We will continue to cover that story as it evolves. In New England this past week, people walked 80 miles from the tip of Cape Cod to the Plymouth County Jail to protest the circumstances in which they are jailing immigrants. At the Plymouth County Jail this weekend, there were protests against ICE in Trump's immigrant prisons in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they mourned people who have been killed by ice, but where they are also trying to stop Trump from reopening a former prison in Winton, North Carolina to use it to hold. There were protests this weekend against ICE and ICE agents killing people in Pasadena and in downtown LA in Southern California. In downtown la, they carried coffins representing people killed by ICE agents. In Houston, Texas, where a father of three was killed just a couple of weeks ago, people marched and protested. All last week and into this weekend, there were anti ICE protests in Boston, in West Monroe, Louisiana, in Mount Kisco, New York, in New Newton, in North Plainfield, New Jersey, in Twin Falls, Idaho this weekend, people protested against their local airport being used for ICE flights as that agency uses charter aircraft to shuttle immigrants from prison to prison all over the country. Twin Falls, Idaho, out this weekend saying not here. Do not use our community, do not use our airport for this. So we've covered all of that here on this show. But you might also remember that in an ongoing way for several months now, we've also had eyes on Citizens Bank. Citizens bank is in the Northeast. It's based in Providence, Rhode Island. And in January this year, the day actually that Alex Preddy was killed by ICE agents or by federal agents in Minneapolis, we watched as these scrappy little groups of protesters in cities all over the Northeast started focusing in on Citizens Banks specifically because Citizens finances the companies that run Trump's immigrant prisons. And we saw these sort of scrappy groups, large and small, demonstrating in the frigid cold in January. That terrible last weekend in January when Minneapolis just exploded in anger and grief. If you looked elsewhere in the country, one of the things we saw was that there were something like 40 different demonstrations in seven different states, all targeting Citizens bank, saying they wanted to deactivate Citizens Bank. And then the following week, there were a few more. And then in March, there was another bigger round of protests at Citizen bank branches. And there were increasingly widespread reports of individual bank customers, just regular people pulling their money out of the bank and closing their accounts, moving their bank accounts elsewhere because of Citizens funding Trump's immigrant prisons. Then in April, the group organizing these protests, the De ICE group, they warned Citizens bank ahead of time that there were going to be a lot of protesters at their annual shareholders meeting in Rhode island, protesters pressing them on this very issue. And at that shareholders meeting, indeed, there were a lot of protesters there at the site of the meeting. And there were dozens of protests at Citizens bank all over the Northeast at the same time. And then we learned that not just individual depositors, not just individual customers were pulling their money out of Citizens bank, but institutions were starting to do so, too. A labor union in Rhode island pulled its money out of Citizens Banks bank because of the bank's support for Trump's immigrant prisons. Then a faith group did the same, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which had a lot of money deposited at Citizens Bank. They said they were willing to pull it, but they wanted to talk. They wanted to talk to the bank. This is a group of clergy in congregations. They wanted to discuss this area of concern with the bank. And at first they thought they were going to get that. But then in May, when they said the CEO of the bank reneged on a pledge to meet with them, the interfaith group from Boston followed through. They pulled a million dollars out of Citizens Bank. It was around then that we saw this billboard go up near Citizens bank headquarters. Hey, Citizens Bank Support communities. Not ICE Prison companies. De ice. Citizens Bank. Then the protests started getting big. We saw more than 100 simultaneous protests at Citizens bank branches in June. Then we saw that interfaith group in Boston follow through on their pledge to keep pulling out more money as long as the bank didn't change its ways or at least agree to talk to them. They pulled out another $2 million out of citizens Bank. Then people started to organize to get their own towns to pull their money out of Citizens Bank City and town accounts. Jersey City, New Jersey, residents there got their city to pull $150 million out of citizens Bank. In Cleveland, Ohio, the Greater Cleveland Congregations, another faith group, pulled their money out of Citizens, too. Then this month, mid July, we saw Montclair, New Jersey, pulled out their town's money, too. And all this time, Citizens bank had been saying, no, no, no, no, no, we can't hear you. We don't care. We're not changing anything. We're not even responding to you. No, no, no, no, no. For all of these months that all of those protests and all of those actions were happening, no, no, no, we're not changing anything. Until finally they did. Citizens bank has now announced that they have, quote, determined that it is now appropriate to exit the credit facilities for these clients. The bank characterized this as a business decision. Definitely nothing to do with the pressure they face. Definitely nothing to do with any, you know, oogie feelings that might have arisen when looking at themselves in the mirror in the morning. I should mention Cheltenham Township in Pennsylvania announced that they're still pulling their money out of Citizens. Despite the announcement from the bank, The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and the De ICE Citizens Bank Coalition, they're still asking Citizens bank to confirm that they're definitely done funding this stuff and that they won't do it again in the future. But Citizens has changed course. And I think it is worth seeing that this is also a bill coming due. Right, for the hard work and risk and discomfort and bravery and stick to itiveness it takes to turn your country around. Sometimes those bills come due, too. I mean, did you ever go to one of those Tesla takedown protests at a Tesla dealership while Doge was, like, you know, destroying the Forest Service? Do you remember thinking at the time, I don't know if this will do anything, but I gotta try something? Well, those Tesla takedown protests ultimately were a big part of pushing the president's top campaign donor out of the government and ending his Doge thing before it could do even more damage. Did you ever go to an Avelo Airlines protest? Do you remember thinking at the time, I don't Know if this will do anything, but I gotta try something. Those Avelo Airlines protests pushed Avelo Airlines out of the business of flying chained and shackled immigrants for Trump. Did you go to one of the protests against the warehouse site, huge Trump prison camps? Do you remember thinking at the time, I don't know if this will do anything, but I gotta try something? Well, those protests made it so not a single one of those mega Trump prison camps has been able to open anywhere in the country. And did you go to a protest against Citizens bank funding Trump's immigrant prisons? Maybe you remember thinking at the time, I don't know if this will do anything, but I gotta try something. Well, now Citizens bank says it is out of the business of funding Trump's immigrant prisons. And no, they do not credit you at all for their decision. But it is what it is. The bill comes due. It comes due for our worst decisions and for our best decisions. Our actions have, have consequences. And that includes when you work hard and you organize and you decide to just never give up. And then the day does come when you win. Sometimes you win. Joining us now is the Reverend John Edgerton. He is the senior minister of Old South Church in Boston. His congregation is part of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. Reverend Edgerton, I told you a few months ago I'd love to have you back to talk about this effort that you and your church were part of. Couldn't be happier to have you back here tonight in these circumstances. Thank you so much for being here.
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Reverend John Edgerton
Thank you for having me back and for the opportunity to speak to your audience again.
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Rachel Maddow
Do you consider this to be a victory? I know from following your work from afar that you expect there's more work perhaps to be done here, but do you consider this to be a win?
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Reverend John Edgerton
Absolutely. This is such an important victory. It is a sign that any business, any part of this government that is participating in that is going along along with these terrible actions that are demonizing and harming our neighbors, that they are going to be in a lousy position. Citizens bank had to give in because they were in an impossible position. There were municipal governments that were pulling their deposits. There were individuals, there were individual depositors who are doing that, whole organizations, hundreds of millions of dollars. The pressure got to be. Be so great that they had no choice but to cut this. And on the other side is the pressure that perhaps there will be retribution from this administration against them. If there is a business leader who's listening, who is considering whether they want to get into business. This dirty Business do not. You will be between a rock and a hard place of an administration that is out of control on the one hand and a country that does not want. Not this at all.
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Rachel Maddow
I was struck when I spoke with you before, early in this campaign that you wanted to talk to the bank, that yes, you wanted them to change course, but you weren't issuing a demand and saying, take it or leave it, we're going to do this unless you meet our imperative. You said that you wanted to have a conversation and then you only first pulled your deposits after you weren't able to get that meeting that you wanted. I just wanted to ask, have you heard anything from the bank, from citizens, since they announced their severing their ties with these private prison companies?
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Reverend John Edgerton
We have not. We have reached out very regularly since our first communications with them and we would value the opportunity to sit down with them. What we have for them is actually some good advice about what it is going to take for them to be able to rebuild trust in the community. You know, said yourself that there are towns that are just going to go ahead and pull their money out anyway. This is not something that they're simply done with this. They need to repair the harm that they have done. And we in the faith community, we don't have any monopoly on learning how to repair and get back onto a right road. But we can give them some good advice about what it's going to take for them to prove to the people of this country that they really do have the interests of ordinary people, of immigrants, of our neighbors in mind. And we would love to sit down with them and help them understand what it's going to take to rebuild that trust.
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Rachel Maddow
Reverend John Edgerton, senior minister of Old South Church in Boston, part of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, thank you so much for your time tonight for keeping us a prize throughout this remarkable campaign. Good luck to you. Thank you.
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Reverend John Edgerton
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
- [27:27]
Rachel Maddow
All right, much more ahead here tonight.
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Attorney Abby Lowell
Stay with us.
- [27:32]
Commercial Announcer
Watch Disclosure day at home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a screenplay by David Koepp, starring Emily Blunt, Josh o', Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo. Find Disclosure day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required. Also in theaters.
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Rachel Maddow
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Rachel Maddow
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Rachel Maddow
So last summer when this happened, it was shocking. I think it's still shocking today, the sight of federal agents shoving a US Senator shoving California Senator Alex Padilla out of a press conference. They shoved him and hauled him down onto the floor. This is a sitting US Senator. Senator Alex Padilla had tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question about the immigration crackdown that was then newly underway in his state. They bodily shoved him out of the press conference, shoved him down face first onto the ground, and handcuffed him. A sitting senator. June last year in Los Angeles. At the time, that use of physical force against a US Senator was hard to watch. It was shocking. I think it became a warning about the way the Trump administration was going to be handling criticism and dissent. But perhaps it should not have been a surprise that that happened last June in Los Angeles, because less than a week before that happened, also in Los Angeles, we saw another shocking encounter with federal agents. Also on video, the man you see being taken down here by Trump's masked federal agents is one of the most important labor leaders in the country. He's David Huerta. He's the California president of one of the largest and most influential unions in the United States, the huge Service Employees International Union, the seiu. He's the California president of seiu. And last June, he was arrested while protesting outside a business that was being raided by ice. And Trump's agents took David Huerta down so violently that he ended up in the hospital with a head injury. The Trump administration then charged him with conspiring to impede an officer, a felony charge that carried up to six years in prison. Months later, they quietly downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor, but they were still charging him with a misdemeanor. And all that time, David Huerta never stopped fighting the case against him. His trial was set to begin actually, just a few days from now. But then this morning, surprise. More than a year after they arrested him, the Trump administration caved. Trump's doj announcing today that they will be dismissing the case against David Huerta next month. The California U.S. attorney's office saying the dismissal of the case against Mr. Huerta is not an admission that he was wrongly arrested. Mr. Huerta, for his part, sees this very differently, saying, quote, the government is finally admitting what we knew from day one and what was obvious to anyone who saw the videos. The charge against me was baseless, was meant to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out, organize or demand justice. There was never a real case, only an attempt to punish and silence me for exercising my constitutional rights. Well, as of today, that case is gone. The government has had to back down. David Huerta is going to join us live here next for his first TV interview since the charges against him were dropped. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is from the court order tonight. Quote, the court has read and considered the government's motion to dismiss the first superseding information and underlying information against defendant David Jose Huerta. David Huerta is the California SEIU union president who has spent over a year defending himself against the Trump administration after he was violently arrested at an anti ice protest last year in la. His arrest and the Trump administration's efforts to prosecute him have led to protests in support of him nationwide. May have seen protests with his protest signs with his face on them with the caption, free David Huerta. This morning, federal prosecutors moved to drop their case against him. And tonight the judge in the case said, basically, good idea. From the judge's order that's just out tonight, it says, quote, the court finds that there is good cause to dismiss the charges in the interests of justice. Joining us now is David Huerta. He's president of the SEIU United Service Workers West. Also with us is Mr. Huerta's attorney, Abby Lowell. Gentlemen, I thank you both for making time to be here tonight. I really appreciate it.
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David Huerta
Thank you for having me, Rachel.
- [33:33]
Rachel Maddow
Mr. Huerta, let me start by congratulating you on the government dropping these charges and ask you how it feels to see the government finally move to drop this case against you after a year of lording this over you.
- [33:48]
David Huerta
Well, it feels like justice was served. Justice has finally been served. This rescinding this or dismissing it is really a, a demonstration of one, a fight against what I feel is defending my First Amendment rights. When I was tackled pepper sprayed and detained for exercising those First Amendments and two, I think it's also a message of what can be accomplished when we stand together, when we fight together, and don't allow ourselves to be intimidated or silenced, regardless of who's trying to do it, in this case, this administration, who has done it to so many across this country. And I feel fortunate that, one, it only ended in my detention and not a murder, as we've seen in Minneapolis, Maine, Houston, Miami and detention centers throughout this country. So I feel a sense of a relief, also a sense of recommitting, repurposing and recommitment to continue the fight for justice anywhere where we find injustice.
- [34:55]
Rachel Maddow
I want to ask. You mentioned being tackled, being pepper sprayed. We just showed a little squib of the video of that day when you were arrested. A lot of people were just concerned about you being hurt in that moment. You were hospitalized for a head injury because of the violence of that arrest. I remember reading about Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass coming and visiting you in the hospital. You were held in federal custody for three days before they agreed to release you on bond. Were you hurt seriously, physically in. In the arrest and in the subsequent treatment of you? Do you have anything to tell us about the circumstances under which they held you?
- [35:32]
David Huerta
Well, I rather not speak about the. The immediate injuries that were. That were. That happened on that day. I will say that those 72 hours within detention were long, difficult. But in all honesty, and I said as I got out of that, out of the detention center, that, you know, the folks that I met inside the detention center gave me hope because those folks have more honor. I always felt that they had more honor than the man that sits, occupies the White House right now. And so I just think, you know, sitting and being in that jail cell, hearing what the city was doing as a means to protest my detention at that time, hearing the bombs, hearing, hearing the people, hearing people fighting back, resistance for me, gave me hope. And it gave a lot of folks on the inside of that detention center hope as well that people were fighting for them and that they would not be ignored and they would not be forgotten. And so I think those 72 hours changed Los Angeles. I think, for a certain part, changed this country and really realized what we were up against immediately as a result of that arrest. And so the arrest in itself was consequential. And for that, I'm happy that in that sense, that consequential moment led to even greater participation and greater resistance across the country.
- [36:59]
Rachel Maddow
Mr. Lowell, I very rarely have people on more than one at a time. The only Exception that I tend to make is when people need to come on with their lawyer. And in this case, You've been representing Mr. Huertra throughout this ordeal. I wanted to ask you specifically, Mr. Lowell, if you have a response as his lawyer to the government asserting today that them dropping these charges is no admission that his arrest was an error, that they're essentially still claiming that this was a rightful arrest and that they. That justice has somehow been served here, even though they're. They're dropping the indictment.
- [37:34]
Attorney Abby Lowell
Thank you for letting us do that, Rachel. And by the way, you could tell that David doesn't need his lawyer on here, because I think there is a part that I could address that's different than David expressing himself so well. So let me respond to your question. Look, what we were able to do in the course of these 16 months, or almost 16 months, because this was the government's third attempt to try to charge David. It started, as you pointed out, with a felony charge for conspiracy. They quietly changed it to a dis. Misdemeanor. We moved to dismiss that on two grounds. One is that the evidence showed that the statute they wanted to use doesn't apply to what David was doing, which was exercising his First Amendment rights to protest the policies and the tactics of these ICE raids. And second, if. If they were going to apply it, that statute's unconstitutional because of its infringement on the First Amendment. I think we showed that in that first attempt. And then they tried again. The judge told them to go back and try it again. They tried it again. We filed our motion yet again this time explaining it yet again. And within, you know, a couple of weeks of trial, the prosecutors basically reached out to us and said, you know, is there a way out of this? And the only way out of this, as David has pointed out, was that he never said he's done anything wrong. In fact, the only thing he's ever said was that he was expressing his rights. He has never admitted to doing anything that violated the statute. And so at the end of the day, when we were exposing the evidence and raising this constitutional issue, I think the government got smart. And look, this is not in a vacuum, right? You've been reporting how these cases are going around the country. They're not doing well in cases in which they are alleging people violating the law. Law for exercising their First Amendment rights. And this is the place where we are able to push back. As David said, we lawyers, we in the courts, and often, hopefully more judges are holding the government accountable for what they did. Today is a Good example.
- [39:26]
Rachel Maddow
Attorney Abby Lowell. David Huerta, the president of SEIU United Service Workers West. I really appreciate you doing your first TV interview here after this news of the government dropping these charges. I know that this has been an ordeal for this year, but your fight has inspired a lot of people around the country. And you prevailing in that fight, I think is inspiring people even more. So thank you for being here.
- [39:49]
David Huerta
Thank you, Rachel, for having us.
- [39:50]
Attorney Abby Lowell
Thank you, Rachel, for having us.
- [39:51]
Rachel Maddow
All right, thanks. We'll be right back. Stay with us.
- [39:57]
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Rachel Maddow
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- [41:15]
Rachel Maddow
so in Minnesota, you've got Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, running as a Republican candidate for governor with President Donald Trump's endorsement. Turns out Mr. Pillow does not vote in Minnesota and is not registered to vote there. That's awkward. His company lives in Minnesota, though, and that's the same company that that courts have ordered to pay people it stiffed tens of millions of dollars. For his part, Mr. Pillow says he is a victim of lawfare and none of that should be held against him. Despite Trump's endorsement, the Minnesota Republican Party now is practically begging Republican voters in the state to please not nominate Mike Lindell for governor. But they very well may do so anyway. We shall see. That's Minnesota. Then there's Colorado. Colorado, we've got a Republican nominee for governor. He is probably best known for claiming to have killed at least one person, but he's refusing to give any details about it. He has asserted that it doesn't matter how many people he has killed. Why should you even care? Perhaps even more presently relevant in terms of Colorado voters evaluating him and what he might be like as governor is that he also claims to be a self talk exorcist. He will exorcise your demons and crucially it turns out he knows how to do it in a really convenient way. You don't even have to be there in person. He says he can do your exorcism over the phone. And he says he will continue performing these 1-800-dial-exorcist exorcisms after he is elected governor. Which I think will be handy having a governor who can do that that by phone while he's busy otherwise doing governor stuff. Do you think he'll be elected governor in Colorado? We are 99 days out from the midterm elections as of today and the elections this year have got like B plots that would be rejected by even the people who have to field pitches for self published novels. Stuff is absolutely crazy in the midterm elections this year. But I will tell you, a lot of the extra crazy sauce craziness of this year's midterms really is centered on Texas. A little over a year ago, the chair of the Tarrant County Texas Republican Party posted a poll to social media asking his followers to vote on the question and I quote, who is a bigger threat to America? And then you could choose one of two Jews or Muslims. This was so just unavoidably repulsive that even much of the Texas Republican Party establishment called for that Tarrant County Republican Party chairman to resign his post. And he eventually did that. The problem is he eventually resigned that post specifically so he could run for statewide office. His name is Beau French. He is the former Tarrant County Republican Party chairman, the guy who was famous for the who's a bigger threat Jews are Muslims poll. He is now the Republican Party's endorsed nominee for the statewide office that regulates Texas's massive oil and gas industry. And I'm not sure what it has to do with the oil and gas industry, but he has spent his campaign for this position linking his Democratic opponent to the killing of the Russian czar and his family over a century ago in Russia. Okay. He's also calling for Native Americans to be kicked out of the United States. Native Americans whom he calls third World savages. He wants them to be kicked out of this country. Country to what other country? At the top of the statewide Republican ticket in Texas there's of course, Ken Paxton running for U.S. senate. He was impeached by the Republican led Texas House of Representatives for bribery, among other things. On his $150,000 a year state salary, he has somehow accumulated at least 15 homes and properties worth millions of dollars. He is registered to vote at one of those homes, which puts him up one over Mike Lindell, I guess. But the problem for Ken Paxton is that he does not appear to live at the house at which he is registered to vote. Texas Democrats want him investigated for voter fraud for that. Paxton, for his part, says he follows the law. I could tell you about the rest of Ken Paxton's scandals, but we'd be here all night. But I have tonight two other things to let you know about Texas. Number one, in September, right before the midterms, more than a dozen of us from Ms. Now are going to be going to Texas for a live event and you can come. Tickets start at just over 30 bucks. You can buy tickets to our Texas event. You can buy them right now if you scan that QR code on your screen. Or you can go to Ms. Now together. We're going to be in Arlington, just outside Dallas. It's going to happen September 26th. We would love to see you there again. Tickets start at just over 30 bucks September 26th. Second thing to tell you is that James Talarico, who is the Democrat running against Ken Paxton for US Senate, he's going to be here live on set with me next Monday, a week from tonight. I'm very, very much looking forward to that conversation. I have never interviewed James Talarico before and I'm looking forward to sitting down with him in person. All right, that's your update. More to come. Stay with. All right, that's gonna do it for me tonight. Thanks very much for being here.
- [46:48]
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