transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence.

Speaker 2:
[00:04] Hey, Jen. It was great to hear former Secretary John Kerry on Stephen Colbert talking about the situation in Iran. We're going to play some of that tonight. And we're also going to be joined by Ernest Moniz, one of his negotiating partners. As you know, Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration, a nuclear physicist, exactly the kind of person you need in these kinds of negotiations that of course the Trump team does not include.

Speaker 1:
[00:35] That is such a key part of it that doesn't get nearly enough attention aside from, of course, people like you, which is that the Obama team, which I was a part of, brought hundreds of experts. People have been working on these issues for decades. And Ernest Moniz, who was the Secretary of Energy, was one of those key people, what an interesting person to talk to.

Speaker 2:
[00:54] We're going to get right to it. Thanks, Jen.

Speaker 1:
[00:56] Thanks, Lawrence.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] Well, it was another day of nothing happening in Donald Trump's failed attempts to negotiate with Iran the day after he ignored his own self-imposed deadline on those negotiations. Of course, no one violates Trump deadlines more than Donald Trump. And so he simply made his deadline disappear yesterday in a public statement claiming that Iran negotiators were just begging him to extend the deadline so that they could come up with a reasonable proposal for Donald Trump to consider, to which the Iranian government said, the Islamic Republic of Iran has welcomed dialogue and agreement and continues to do so. Breach of commitments, blockade and threats are main obstacles to genuine negotiations. World sees your endless hypocritical rhetoric and contradiction between claims and actions. And so, as of day 53 of Donald Trump's war, all of the explosions and death that Donald Trump has caused in Iran, including the Tomahawk Missile Strike on a girls' school that killed hundreds of people, and all of that, Donald Trump has accomplished nothing for the American people in his war, and nothing for the world. But he has delivered higher fuel prices, and therefore, higher prices on everything else that moves on trucks in this country. And instead of trying to come up with ways to help Americans survive, what he insists is only a temporary increase in the price of gas and other prices, Donald Trump spent the day on social media complaining about the United States Supreme Court siding with the Constitution against him, when it decided that Donald Trump illegally and unconstitutionally imposed tariffs, which is a power that the Constitution very clearly grants to Congress. And in his attack on the Supreme Court, Donald Trump threw his usual racist reference at Judge Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, but it was nothing compared to the racism on display once again today in Robert Kennedy Jr.'s testimony to Congress, this time to Senator Angela Alsobrooks, whose exchange with Robert Kennedy Jr. she will show you later in this hour, when Senator Alsobrooks joins us. In Donald Trump's attack on the Supreme Court, he said, Handing over $159 billion in tariff refunds to people who have been ripping off our country for years is unexplainable. Of course, it is impossible to explain to Donald Trump what's wrong with illegally taking money from people. It's impossible to explain to Donald Trump what's wrong with illegally overcharging people. It's impossible to explain to Donald Trump why anyone or any business would ever refund money to anyone they illegally took money from. But when the government of the United States or a company or anyone you're dealing with illegally takes your money, the elementary and most basic legal requirement is that that money be paid back to you. And every penny of the $160 billion plus interest in Donald Trump's illegal tariff money that has to be refunded will be refunded only to Americans who have paid tariffs on goods that we have purchased from other countries and American companies that paid those American tariffs right here in America when the goods arrived imported into this country. Donald Trump calls every one of those American businesses the enemy. Donald Trump has implicitly threatened businesses that apply for those refunds. And the biggest refunds of billions and billions of dollars are owned to companies like Walmart and Apple and Amazon. And yesterday Donald Trump said that he would be very happy if they did not apply for refunds. His words were that he would remember, he'd remember if those big companies do not ask for their refunds. That can be taken by executives at those companies as a presidential threat that Donald Trump will do something to harm them. He will find a way to harm them and their companies if they apply for those refunds. If Apple doesn't apply for the billions of dollars of refunds that they are owed, as Stephanie Rule correctly and quickly pointed out last night, shareholders of that company will sue the company for not applying for those refunds and getting the shareholders' money back. Because not applying for those refunds is a violation of the legal fiduciary duty that the executives of those companies have in protecting the assets of their shareholders. And of course, Donald Trump doesn't know that. A few days ago, Donald Trump actually thought incorrectly that his vice president was in the air, flying halfway around the world to Pakistan to negotiate with the Iranians. Donald Trump thought his son-in-law was also on his way to Pakistan to join the negotiations. They still haven't left the United States. At least today, Donald Trump seems to know where they are. At least today, the president of the United States apparently knows that his vice president is not in Pakistan negotiating with Iranians. At 1:34 p.m. today, while accomplishing nothing in the non-negotiations with Iran, Donald Trump announced the results of his investigation into last night's election in Virginia, making it clear to the world and to the Iranian leadership what's really on his mind, what he's really concentrating on. Quote, A rigged election took place last night in the great Commonwealth of Virginia! Who needs an investigation? When Detective Trump is on the case, he just has to know who won the election. Then he knows if it was rigged. Donald Trump said, All day long, Republicans were winning. There is no such thing as winning an election all day long. And there never has been. No votes are counted during the day on election day. There is no way of knowing who is winning on election day. No one's keeping score until the polls close. And in an indicator that the social media post was written by someone other than Donald Trump, it uses a word that Donald Trump is unlikely to know. When it says the language on the referendum was purposely unintelligible and deceptive. Unintelligible, it just doesn't sound like a Trump word. But what is believable about his next statement is that Donald Trump wouldn't be able to figure out what the ballot meant if he actually tried to read it, which he surely didn't. Donald Trump said, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the referendum. Virginia voters, as we reported to you last night, voted for a redistricting plan endorsed by Governor Abigail Spanberger, who joined us here last night, that will likely add four more Democrats to the House of Representatives from the state of Virginia. Virginia Democrats put this plan up for a vote by every voter in the state, unlike the Texas redistricting plan that began as a conspiratorial suggestion from Donald Trump to Texas Republicans to try to add more Republicans to the House of Representatives from the state of Texas. Texas voters did not get a chance to vote on that redistricting plan, which was the plan that provoked California Democrats and now Virginia Democrats to ask the voters in those states to approve redistricting plans that will very likely deliver more Democrats to the House of Representatives and fight against Donald Trump's attempt to change the tilt in favor of Republicans in the House of Representatives. Very likely, we will that this redistricting will now create a majority of Democrats in the House who will then have the full power to investigate Trump world corruption that was on display in a Senate hearing today.

Speaker 3:
[10:00] President Trump and his family have done a very brisk business with the UAE over the last few years. There was the $500 million that Sheik Tannoun, the UAE's National Security Advisor and brother of the president, invested in World Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family crypto venture, right before the president's inauguration. There was the $2 billion in World Liberty stablecoin that Sheik Tannoun used to invest in Binance, a deal that effectively handed World Liberty $2 billion in cash, at the same time that the United States government relaxed our export controls on high-end AI and ships to UAE companies. And now, I understand that the UAE is looking for a swat line. The war in Iran has already cost us dearly. In my view, it's been a huge mistake, made us less safe and a lot worse off. In addition to lives lost, we're talking about over a billion dollars a day in taxpayer money. We're talking about higher gas prices, higher prices overall. And now we understand that the UAE is asking you to provide them a swap line through the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

Speaker 2:
[11:34] And last night, former Secretary of State John Kerry, who successfully negotiated an agreement with Iran, in which Iran pledged to never develop nuclear weapons, said this, I've never been asked, but my advice to the administration is, you know, take time to set up your agenda.

Speaker 4:
[11:53] Take time to be reasonable in ways that will not encourage them to say, oh, you just, you know, you just took a ship over. And we, on the other hand, said we're going to open the Straits of Hormuz, which by the way, have never been shut in any conflict that we've had or difference we've had with Iran. So today, Donald Trump, by ripping up the agreement and pulling out, has actually put us in a worse place than we were previously.

Speaker 2:
[12:20] Leading off our discussion tonight, one of John Kerry's negotiating partners in that agreement, Ernest Moniz, nuclear physicist who served as Secretary of Energy during the Obama administration. Mr. Secretary, thank you very, very much for joining us tonight. We just heard John Kerry say that no one in the current negotiations has consulted him. Have they consulted you about how to negotiate with Iran?

Speaker 5:
[12:47] Well, I'm afraid not. Lawrence, we're in the same situation. We certainly have made it known that we are open to helping in any way we can our negotiators. But up to now, at least, that has not been approached.

Speaker 2:
[13:05] What was your feeling? What was it like for you that day when Donald Trump ripped up the agreement that in his first presidency that you'd worked on so hard for so many years?

Speaker 5:
[13:19] Well, of course, this was signaled quite substantially, so we were prepared for it. But I think one of the notable observations, I think at that time, was how many of the first Trump administration senior officials were convinced that we should stay in the agreement, despite the fact that they had opposed having the agreement reached in the first place. Because they were straight shooters, frankly, and realized that the deal was working. Iran had by all accounts fully complied with the deal, as had we, as had the international community. It was just plain working. And of course, the core issues in the 2015 deal and in the negotiations today have really not changed. It's nuclear, it's missiles, to which you might add drones, so things that come out of the air, and it involves the regional proxies, so the whole geopolitical construct around the Gulf. We had those as well. The strategic choice made by President Obama was that we really needed to address these sequentially because a clean sweep is a very, very unlikely positive outcome. Well, when President Trump in his first term withdrew from the deal, that obviously eliminated the idea of going back for a second bite at the apple, let's say with missiles, a third bite at the apple, with drones, with, excuse me, with proxies. But the idea was that our agreement put very stringent constraints on Iran's nuclear activity for 15 years, that's until 2031, so still five years to go. And the idea was that after a confidence building period, if there was compliance, then we would be able to go back and negotiate other items. In fact, I might also add, I think it's very important and it's not reflected enough in the discussions today, two issues. One is that while the nuclear constraints were obviously very important, for example, Iran would still be constrained to a small amount of enriched material, enriched to no more than 3.67%. I could explain that if you wanted, but it's a bit technical. Instead, today, they are at 60% enriched uranium. Another point which I believe, and I'll be honest, Lawrence, I think the media should be doing a better job on, is pointing out that you do not need weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear explosive. For example, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was not weapons-grade uranium by today's definition. It's a continuum. You'd like to go to weapons-grade in order to make your bomb as small as possible, to mount it on a missile, for example. But it's not that much more difficult, frankly, to make an explosive with 60% enriched uranium. So secondly, the second point is, they had already crossed the line that they could not even approach if the agreement were in place. And finally, I will emphasize that there is also often a misconception that somehow in 2015, in return for the nuclear limitations and the exceptional verification measures, oh, I should have mentioned, the verification measures in that agreement are unparalleled. They have never existed for any other country in the history of nuclear technology. And that's very important because it's very unlikely that Iran would frankly go to a bomb in the broad daylight. They will do it in a concealed fashion. That's why the verification measures we had had special provisions to allow the international inspectors to go anywhere that they thought there might be an issue. So that was very important. Then finally, the point I was going to make is that in return for all of this, there was not misconception. There was not total relief for Iran from sanctions. There was relief from the nuclear related sanctions, but not from the missile related sanctions, the human rights violations, etc. Iran complained bitterly about that, of course, but that was the deal. We were going sequentially, a nuclear deal, and you got nuclear sanctions relief by accepting very, very tough nuclear conditions.

Speaker 2:
[18:56] The deal had a 15-year framework on it, but on page 3 of the document you negotiated, it says, Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances, will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons. So, that was at the heart of the agreement and you had, as you say, a 15-year framework set up to work on building on that.

Speaker 5:
[19:27] Correct. And that's why that important statement was in the prologue to the agreement, so that people would see it right up front. And I might say that in 2015, we also had the extraordinary cooperation of our partners, our European partners, China and Russia. And that statement, I raise that now because that statement was particularly pushed for very hard by our European partners and its placement right up front. And then on top of that, this 3.67% maximum enrichment, et cetera, which came in the in the bowels of the agreement in a very detailed agreement, frankly, that would be then in place until 2031. No restrictions on what we could or could not do beyond 2031. But the idea is we had 15 years, at least for compliance, which was working initially and for building enough confidence to address those other very, very difficult issues, missiles and proxies.

Speaker 2:
[20:47] President Obama's Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, thank you very, very much for joining this program tonight at this very important time. Thank you very much.

Speaker 5:
[20:56] Thank you, Lawrence.

Speaker 2:
[20:59] And coming up today, Donald Trump's Director of the FBI said something that no other director of the FBI has ever said, quote, I've never been intoxicated on the job. Congressman Jamie Raskin did not congratulate Kash Patel and has some questions for him about that statement. Congressman Raskin will join us next. Yesterday, the director of the FBI said something that no previous director of the FBI has ever said. Quote, I've never been intoxicated on the job. He did not say how many times he has been intoxicated when he was not on the job, and he did not define what being on the job means. Most previous FBI directors have believed that they were always on the job. They believe the job went home with them. They believe the job went on their rare vacations with them, and they devoted themselves to the job. Today, our next guest, Congressman Jamie Raskin, put some questions in writing to Kashyap Patel. How many drinks containing alcohol do you have on a typical day when you are drinking? How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected from you because of drinking? How often during the last year have you needed a first drink in the morning to get yourself going after a heavy drinking session? And how often during the last year have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because you had been drinking? Congressman Raskin asked Kash Patel to quote fill out and submit to Congress the results of the attached alcohol use disorders identification test along with a sworn statement attesting that your answers are true under the penalty of perjury. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jimmy Raskin of Maryland. He is a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. These were exactly the questions that I was left wondering about after the director insisted he's never been drunk on the job. What was your reaction to that statement?

Speaker 6:
[23:17] Well, I think a lot of my colleagues and I had the same reaction, which is this is a serious national security problem. I mean, it'd be troubling enough if you had one FBI agent exhibiting those symptoms of passing out drunk, behind closed doors, nobody's able to find them, not showing up to work, all those things that were in the Atlantic article, but to have a glimpse of that lifestyle in the FBI director is pretty alarming. And so it's as much for his own personal health and safety as the national security of the country. We gotta get on top of this. It's not an issue between him and the Atlantic magazine. He's suing the Atlantic about their multi-source story, thinking that, okay, we can put this off to another day, deal with it in depositions or withdrawing the lawsuit a few months down the road. He actually lost a similar lawsuit yesterday where he said somebody had defamed him talking about drinking in his nightlife. But in any event, it's a serious issue for the country. And so we sent this audit test, which is used in the public sector, in the private sector, not to detect alcoholism, but simply to detect a drinking problem that's interfering with your work. And that certainly is the inescapable implication of that Atlantic article, which has alarmed millions of people across the country.

Speaker 2:
[24:43] Wouldn't the correct answer for an FBI director to the question of how many times have you been drunk since you were sworn in, be zero?

Speaker 6:
[24:56] Well, I would think so. And it's curious that there seems to be this weird tolerance and permissiveness about drinking, at least when it comes to men in the Trump administration. Some people are starting to call it the liquor cabinet on Capitol Hill. You know, Secretary Hegsatz said that he would stop drinking if he were confirmed. And I don't know if anybody's ever followed through on that particular promise that he made. But look, with the director of the FBI, with Kash Patel, there's a whole series of problems. There's abuse of public resources that started immediately in terms of the jets and the planes. There's the cover up of the Epstein files where he was repeatedly denying that Trump had anything to do with it and then when asked directly about this question, said that Trump was not implicated in any way with Epstein, which clearly was not right. We've seen also now Kash Patel firing FBI agents simply for having worked on the January 6th case, which is outrageous. Today, it comes out that he had actually searched FBI databases and query whether the FISA database was in there in order to look for information about a reporter who had reported on the fact that Kash Patel had deployed a SWAT team from the FBI to shepherd his girlfriend around and to offer her protection. So he decided to investigate the reporter. So it's just one scandal after another. And it's hard to imagine compounding that with alcohol use and thinking that he's doing anything productive on the job.

Speaker 2:
[26:48] Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Speaker 6:
[26:52] You bet.

Speaker 2:
[26:54] And coming up, we have new reporting on Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer and what he's doing now in trying to prosecute people Donald Trump wants to see prosecuted. That's next with Senator Adam Schiff. According to MS NOW reporting by Carol Linegan, Lisa Rubin, the Trump Justice Department has withdrawn subpoenas sent to witnesses in an investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan for lying to Congress. When John Brennan testified about the origins of the 2016 investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, FBI agents involved in the investigation told lawyers for witnesses that they believe the investigation will now seek voluntary interviews from the officials instead. The dramatic shift in plans revealed some confusion and disorder in the controversial Justice Department investigation, which career prosecutors have privately criticized as lacking evidence and being politically motivated to please Trump. The Trump Justice Department, now run by Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney Todd Blanch, already removed the lead prosecutor in the investigation after she said there is not enough evidence to bring charges against John Brennan, who is an MS NOW analyst. Wall Street Journal reports that Blanch was in Florida on Monday and met with Joe DeGenova, former Trump campaign lawyer he named to lead the probe, an indication he intends to play a larger role in the sprawling inquiry. Joining us now is Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California. He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Senator, you're a former federal prosecutor. What is wrong with this approach?

Speaker 7:
[28:47] Well, really everything. And it sounds a lot like what we saw in Virginia, where a professional US attorney refused to try to bring charges against James Comey or Letitia James, believing the evidence was insufficient. So they brought in this insurance lawyer who did it instead. And then, of course, the case fell apart. Well, here you have a senior prosecutor essentially fired by Todd Blanch in the Justice Department because she doesn't think there's enough evidence to move forward with this investigation. So now they bring in this lawyer, Joe DiGenova, who was a US attorney back when Reagan was president, another one of the Trump criminal defense lawyers, an election denier lawyer. So they're bringing him in to work with the other criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanch, to try to further some conspiracy theory. One day, they're set to interview witnesses about it. The next day, no, they're going to bring him before the grand jury. The next day, no, they're going to interview them instead of bring him before the grand jury. It's chaos. And this is the problem with trying to bring a case when there really isn't the evidence to support it. No matter how hard you try, no matter who you bring in, you run into a very basic problem. And that is, you can't bring a case with no evidence. And you certainly can't be successful with it, even if you do. And I don't expect that Joseph DeGenova is going to change any of that.

Speaker 2:
[30:14] This looks like Todd Blanch's campaign to get the job of attorney general to move up from acting attorney general.

Speaker 7:
[30:22] Absolutely. And I remember Lawrence interviewing Todd Blanch before his confirmation hearing. And you know how those interviews go. They sit down with the senators that are going to vote on their confirmation and try to make the case. I really asked him one question that was the heart of my concern. And that was, what are you going to do the first time you're asked to do something immoral, unethical or unlawful by the president? And his answer was, I don't think I'll ever be put in that position. Well, he's been put in that position every day he's been in that office. And sadly, we have seen him go from one unethical act to another. The interview he gave recently, where he said the American people should be happy that the president is directing the department to go after his enemies, that he has a right and a duty to do that. No self-respecting prosecutor would ever suggest such a thing, certainly not after Watergate, when we really tried to build a wall between the White House and the Justice Department, because of abuses that frankly were minor compared to what this president is doing. And it's just another illustration, this terrible decline of Todd Balanch from a respected assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, who if he were watching himself today would be appalled, just one day after another, one big breach after another of his ethical code. And this is where we end up.

Speaker 2:
[31:50] Senator Adam Schiff, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Speaker 7:
[31:54] Thanks, Lawrence.

Speaker 2:
[31:55] Thank you. Coming up, today in a Senate hearing, our next guest asked Robert Kennedy Jr. to explain his past remarks about quote, every black kid needing to be reparented. You will see that full exchange when Senator Angela Alsobrooks joins us. That's next. Donald Trump has put a team of federal prosecutors to work trying to prosecute former CIA Director John Brennan for lying to Congress when Donald Trump's own Secretary of Health and Human Services has lied to Congress three times in a row in three different hearings last week and this week about the same thing. Robert Kennedy Jr. has said three times now this falsehood claiming that he did not say and has never believed this.

Speaker 8:
[32:54] Every black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, Bensos, which are known to induce violence and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented.

Speaker 2:
[33:13] The first time Robert Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress was last Thursday when Congressman Terry Sewell read that comment to him and asked, have you ever reparented or parented, should I say, a black child, to which Robert Kennedy Jr. said, I don't even know what that phrase means and I doubt that I said it. Well, of course, he doesn't know what the term reparented means because it's an insane term to use. To say that he doubts that he said it is not perjury, so that one is not lying to Congress. It leaves open the possibility that he said it. But as Congresswoman Sewell pressed him on the point, he told this lie to Congressman Sewell, no, I'm not going to answer something that I didn't say, to which Congresswoman Sewell said, you absolutely said it. She ran out of time in her five minutes to play the recording of Robert Kennedy Jr. saying those exact words that she quoted and proving that he had just lied to Congress. The next day, Congresswoman Summer Lee asked Robert Kennedy Jr. about why, in the hearing the day before, he denied saying that every black kid needs to be reparented, and she asked him, you're going to rehome them, to which Robert Kennedy Jr. replied, no, I never said we should rehome them. Here is the truth of what Robert Kennedy Jr. said about where he would take the black children he would move away from their parents and from their homes.

Speaker 8:
[34:45] MySpace, my B-Score program is going to be wellness farms, rehabilitation facilities that are going to start in rural areas all over the country where people, any American can go for free, any of them who is dependent on drugs, either legal drugs or illegal drugs, psychiatric drugs, which every black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, Bensos, which are known to induce violence. Those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented to live in a community where there'll be no cell phones, no screens, you'll actually have to talk to people. The base is, the model for this is a community that I had direct contact with because a family member of mine went there. And it's called San Padre Donos in Italy.

Speaker 2:
[35:43] So his brilliant idea, which he equates to the space program, would be every black kid going not into space and not to Italy, like his rich Kennedy relative, but to wellness camps in rural areas across America. Those wellness camps would presumably be hundreds of miles away from New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, any urban area in America, from which Robert Kennedy Jr. would move every black kid, if his deeply perverse dream could come true. Does he think mothers would happily hand their children to him? Does he think fathers would just happily stand there and hand their children to him? Is there any parent of any kid anywhere in America who would willingly hand over a child to Robert Kennedy Jr. who, according to his own diary, stopped his car to cut off the penis of a roadkill raccoon while his children were watching, so he could bring that penis home and study it? Robert Kennedy Jr.'s ease and comfort in lying to black women, members of Congress is on display again today. This time, it was Senator Angela Alsobrooks' turn to confront the most deeply racist thing ever said by a cabinet secretary in our lifetimes.

Speaker 5:
[37:04] Angela Alsobrooks is my mom.

Speaker 9:
[37:06] I'm Angela Alsobrooks, and I approve this message.

Speaker 2:
[37:12] No doubt, with her daughter Alexandria in mind, Senator Alsobrooks pushed Robert Kennedy Jr. to the point of lying about not knowing what a wellness farm is, even though it was his invention, and then cornered Robert Kennedy Jr. into telling the lie to Congress today, that he has never believed that every black kid should be reparented on a wellness farm, which we all just heard him say.

Speaker 9:
[37:42] Mr. Secretary, my next question. Now, you've had some trouble with the truth. I've seen it myself during your appearances before Congress. And as we all saw clearly during your exchange last week with Congresswoman Sewell, can you admit today that you said every black kid can get reparented on a wellness farm? Can you admit that you said that?

Speaker 8:
[38:04] Didn't get reparented on a wellness farm?

Speaker 9:
[38:06] Well, let me read exactly what you said. You said every black kid is now just standard. Put on Adderall, on SSRIs, Benzos, which are known to induce violence. And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented. To live in a community where there will be no cell phones, no screens. You know, you claimed, in fact, you went on to say, actually, the whole transcript was even worse. You said that if you could, you would send, quote, every black kid, again, your words, not mine, to go live on farms and work. Is that your...

Speaker 8:
[38:38] I would have to see, hear that recording because...

Speaker 9:
[38:41] Well, I have the recording.

Speaker 8:
[38:42] I have no memory of saying anything like that.

Speaker 9:
[38:44] Yeah, well, I actually have the recording that I can give to you, but it is absolutely what you said. And if you want me to play it, I can play it.

Speaker 8:
[38:52] If you ask me what my opinion is, I do not believe that every black good should be reparented on a wellness farm or whatever. And I have never believed that.

Speaker 9:
[39:03] Well, you said it, sir. I have the video here.

Speaker 8:
[39:05] In fact, I'm telling you, I don't believe it. That's not my vision for our country.

Speaker 9:
[39:09] Well, I'm glad because it's ignorant to say it was dangerous and it was irresponsible.

Speaker 8:
[39:15] If I said it, I apologize, but I'd have to see the transcript.

Speaker 2:
[39:21] Janice Nye was Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. What did it feel like to be in that confrontation with him today?

Speaker 9:
[39:29] Well, I mean, you know, unfortunately, it wasn't the first. And so each encounter that I've had with Secretary Kennedy is probably more disturbing than the one before it. You saw it with your own eyes. It was ignorant. It was deeply racist. It was disturbing. And it is, again, the reason why I was the first person to say back last year that he was wholly unqualified for the position that he's in. But we have people who listen to him. We have mothers who should be able to count on him for advice. And this is what he does. And so it was deeply disturbing to have yet another encounter with him where he had trouble admitting the truth, which we've seen as a pattern with him. I mean, you know, you say a lie enough, then you begin to believe the lie yourself. And I think that is the case with him. He's told so many lies. He's so detached from reality in so many ways. But this is a very disturbing pattern that we've seen. His own uncle in 1976, these farms that he's talking about, he shut down one of those farms himself. And so this has been something and he did so because they were medicating and they were medicating these children in a way that was very dangerous. And so this has been something that was outlawed long ago. And it was just ridiculous for him to raise it today.

Speaker 2:
[40:46] Senator, I know you have to run off to a vote. Your staff has told that. But when he said to you, I have never believed that, that is a lie. We have the recording and you have the recording of him believing that.

Speaker 9:
[40:59] So he's delusional. If he said he never believed it and we have the tape of him saying it, and he didn't say it 10 years ago, you should know he said this in 2024. So a person who says something that he never believed and he said it recently, it's disturbing. Again, it's a pattern. It shows us again why he's unqualified. You think about how horrifying it is that this man is in the cabinet of the United States as a Secretary of Health and Human Services. And it's outrageous and he should be fired or removed from his position. He absolutely has no business in that position.

Speaker 2:
[41:33] Senator, I know you have to run to the floor for votes. Senator Angela Alsobrooks, thank you very, very much for joining us tonight.

Speaker 9:
[41:39] Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:
[41:41] Thank you. We'll be right back. Senator Angela Alsobrooks gets tonight's last word.