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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  March 27, 2024 1:00am-2:00am PDT

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sort of figure in republican policy circles and legal circles. the project 2025 lays out a whole bunch of ways they can try to not even just use but the fda. >> we're talking about contraception. the concept act was passed to prevent the sale of contraception. >> and he crusaded against it because it would make them have too much sex, and he didn't want that to happen. >> he was creepy. >> he was an interesting guy and had a chronic maserbation problem that led him to -- that's true. i didn't just make that up i hope. thank you. that is "all in" this tuesday night. >> zombie laws preventing women from having a lot of sex. that's where your modern day republican party is at.
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thank you, my friend. and thanks to you at home for joining me this hour. in 1993 time magazine called it the pill that changes everything, the new abortion pill called ru46 was part of a two drug protocol for medication abortion and it really changed the american health care landscape and landscape across the globe. pregnant people in china, the united kingdom, sweden and france where the drug had already been approved had the ability to end pregnancies without undergoing surgery and even in some cases from the inside the four walls of their own homes. according to time 486 made it a. in the 1980s it sparked protests. the company behind the pill
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decided to temporary pull it from the market. in the u.s. it was considered a banned substance. it was forbidden during the reagan and bush years. in 2000 after four years and three rounds of fda testing during the clinton administration ru-486 was approval in the u.s., but the war had just begun. >> abortion opponents say they're outraged over the government's decision approving the use of abortion pill ru 486. it's a drug that fundamentally changes a way a woman can end a pregnancy. nbc's hillary lane reports. >> no bigger than an aspirin mifepristone may be the most controversial drug the fda ever has approved. >> medical advances should go through a rigorous scientific process, but they shouldn't have to go through the kind of
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political process that mifepristone has had to deal with. >> protesters lined the streets across the country for months in the years 2000 and 2001 calling for the fda to rescind its approval. these were relatively small groups of protesters, but they were loud and they were persistent. today nearly 24 years later they were back petitioning the highest court in the land to restrict access to ru 486 now known as mifepristone. led by erin holley today pushed the court's conservative justice to ban the use of mifepristone after seven weeks of pregnancy and revoke the fda's 2021
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decision to allow mifepristone to be mailed after a telehealth appointment. she and her group were some of the same lawyers who helped argue the dobbs case that overturned roe v. wade. and that is no coincidence. there's a reason why the group behind dobbs is now targeting mifepristone. that's because the patch of states that banned abortion after 2022, the number of abortions in the u.s. actually increased the follow year in 2023 according to data. now, the reason for that is largely telehealth. it has allowed women who live in states where abortion has been banned to still access abortion medication through the mail. pills were used in two-thirds of abortions last year when we saw that increase. and the anti-abortion movement knows this and does not like this, and so they want to do everything they can to stop it. which is why they are now targeting mifepristone and targeting telehealth
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appointments, and targeting the mailing of pills. and they are hoping that this supreme court, the one that overturned roe and invited more legal challenges to all sorts of established freedoms, they are hoping this supreme court will help them do it. today ms. hawley tried to convince the justices that mifepristone is somehow dangerous for women and its use causes emotional harm to emergency room doctors who might someday hypothetically have to treat a woman who took mifepristone for a medication abortion. >> according to guttmacher nearly 650,000 women take mifepristone every single year. outsourcing of abortion drug harm to respondent doctors forces them to choose between helping a woman with a life
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threatening condition and violating their conscience. when they are called from their labor and delivery floor down to the operating room to treat a woman suffering from abortion and drug harm, that is diametrically opposed to why they entered the health care profession. >> but justices today even neil gorsuch and clarence thomas, even them seemed more than a little skeptical of the group of doctors hawley represents which includes physicians and dentists. they seem less than convinced these seven doctors have anything more than a really long shot risk of treating a patient with a very rare complication from mifepristone. and that's in part because 6 million patients have taken mifepristone since the year 2000, and the risk of fatal adverse effects is 0.0027%. so it's a really, really small chance anyone has severe
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complications from taking this drug. and even more to the point doctors who have conscience objections to treating patients with mifepristone complications are allowed under federal law to refuse to treat those patients. all of that notwithstanding, justice elena kagen asked ms. hawley for one example of a doctor with a conscience obligation who was forced to treat these patients. justice kagen essentially begged hawley for anything that would give her plaintiffs any reason to file this lawsuit in the first place, something known as standing. >> you need a person. you need a person to be able to come in and meet the court's regular standing requirements. so you agree with that, yes? >> i think that's correct, your honor, yes. >> okay. so who's your person? >> there is no person.
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justice ketanji brown jackson was not having any of it. especially given the highly unlikely and totally hypothetical harm that could be done to this group of seven physicians and dentists. >> counsel, can i ask you about the remedy and sort of the way i was talking with the sg. i mean it makes perfect sense for the individual doctors to seek an exemption, but as i understand it, they already have that. and so what they're asking for here is that in order to prevent them from possibly ever having to do these kinds of procedures, everyone else should be prevented from getting access to this medication. so why isn't that plainly overbroad scope of the remedy the end of this case? >> from that question we finally, finally got ms. hawley's central argument to why
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national restrictions must be imposed to shield these seven doctors. >> these are emergency situations. respondent doctors don't necessarily know until they scrub into this operating room whether or not it may be abortion drug harm. because these are abortion emergency situations they can't waist precious time scrubbing in -- >> i'm saying assuming they have a world in which they can actually lodge the objections that you say that they have, my question is isn't that enough to remedy their issue. do we have to also entertain your argument that no one else in the world can have this drug or no one else in america should have this drug in order to protect your clients? >> so, again, your honor, it's not possible given the emergency nature of these situations -- >> counsel, let me interrupt there, i'm sorry. >> that was a real argument before the supreme court today. that mifepristone has to be banned for everyone after seven
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weeks of pregnancy because emergency room doctors don't have time to wash their hands repeatedly. we will have to wait until june to know what the court thinks of that. joining me now jessica valenti, author of abortion every day, and dahlia lithwalk, slate senior editor and host of the great amicus podcast. ladies, there are no better people to be talking to in this crisis moment. jessica. >> yeah. >> scrubbing in and scrubbing out, it's just too much for doctors therefore no mifepristone for anybody. i found it appalling but also shocking that could be possible. >>, you know, i almost didn't find it shocking or surprising because the group of doctors that they brought forth with this case are such an egregious radical group of anti-abortion extremists, this is very much
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who they are. they don't care about patients. they don't care about women's health. this is a group, one of the doctors they have involved in this case, this is group that wants doctors to be forced to give women life threatening pregnancies c-sections instead of abortions. that's how radical they are. these doctors, they're not run of the mill, this is not one good faith side of a political debate. >> i wonder, when you listened to i'll call it skepticism in this case, but do you feel like josh hawley, erin hawley's's husband is making a case. >> the standing is so weak but not just the standing. the facts are weak, the science,
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the law is weak. this case is weak across the board. it's absurd it's even before the supreme court. mifepristone as you said is so safe, safer than tylenol, it should be over-the-counter. it's been highly restrictive simply was the anti-abortion movement has been pushing from the very beginning to restrict access to prevent people from being able to access the drug. so, you know, i'm hoping that the court will dismiss it, but the anti-abortion movement will not give up. they will come back. the project 2025 has promised that if a republican president gets into office that he will direct the fda to pull mifepristone from the market or at least restrict telemedicine abortion, which has been a key way that more people have accessed abortion. so they're not going to give up even if the court does dismiss this case. >> dahlia, why did the court take this case up? is this damage control
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post-dobbs? i mean what was the point of this? was it to give clarence thomas what he wants which is absurd hearings on any manner of social issues? >> not exactly. the court has a structural problem. and the structural problem is anybody who wanted to file this case could go down to amarillo, texas, where judge matthew kazmierczak, the only judge you were going to get in amarillo was judge kazmierczak. and they knew after getting him he's do something incredibly dopey like filing a nationwide injunction, making it impossible for anyone in this country to get this drug. we have a drug shopping problem in this conthat i should note the courts are trying to address now. but for the moment the court has the problem of one rogue judge, a rogue fifth circuit that blessed huge chunks of his irrational, indefensible logic. and the court had no choice but
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to take this case. and so i think as long as we have kind of judges that are way, way, way to the fringes, judges who make samuel alito and clarence thomas look kind of like sentist moderates like they did today, those cases are going to rocket up to the court, and the court is going to be embarrassed. and they were embarrassed today, and they're going have to take them and back them away. so that's just a problem with judge shopping. it's a problem with fake facts, and as carrie said, bad science that makes it into the court's lap. and the court has to muck up the stall. >> we don't know what the courts going to do. they certainly sounded skeptical. before we even get to the dismissal of this case being gobbledy loot nonsense, people
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across the country will be affected, but it is a real, real crisis for these woip in states where they can't have access to basic reproductive choices. >> yeah, there's a reason that we saw the use of abortion medication go up so drastically from 2020, right? it was 53% of abortions in 2020 and now 63%. a lot of that is accounted for women in anti-choice states getting that medication shipped to them. if they don't have that choice and they don't have that ability to leave the state, they're trapped. they're hostages in a state that will not let them get basic health care. >> i do think as we talk about what happens to these women regardless of -- well, not regardless. as the supreme court takes this up dahlia points out and as you point outrightly the fight is not even beginning to be over, right?
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kazmierczak has decided he'll take this case. there's a zombie law, an anti-pornography law that's from the 19th century, but that shouldn't stop the republican party, right? ical you talk more about the way in which you think this court will use this law in the future? >> the com stock law prevented mailing mail in to patients. it wouldn't only impact mifepristone, it would also impact the other medication, which is the second medication you take. by the way, you can use it alone for abortion. it's an ulcer medication and widely available. it could be potentially banned for mailing for anybody. instruments used in abortion steined to use in procedural abortion could also be banned.
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you know, so it's a really extreme approach that they're taking that could limit access to abortion not only for people in states that ban it but states like new york, massachusetts, california. it would make abortion -- they're trying to ban abortion nationwide by using this back door. >> and i've also got to say they could use that law to ban the shipping of emergency contraception which they say is abortion. alliance defending freedom, the ceo and president gave an interview to politico a couple days ago where she admitted they believe emergency contraception is apportion. so once you have these groups redefining what abortion is and you have a law that says you can't mail abortion medication, that could include emergency contraception, they can use this so broadly. and it's so important that we're thinking about all of those impacts. >> they're coming after contraception as well as abortion. >> well, once you say life begins at conception you enter into a whole host of interesting moral quandaries.
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i will say to your point, jessica, you know, jonathan mitchell, who's been the architect of lot of this in legal circles say we don't need any legal judgment from the court. those are the stakes. jessica, the indisensible source, thank you for your time, my friend. carrie and dahlia, stick with us. we have to talk a little bit more about this court especially the legal ramifications of these arguments. also tonight a special report for us, this show from across the southern border where there is a network of underground volunteers distributing abortion medication to women here in america. that is an exclusive we will have later in this hour. plus right-wing commentators have somehow found a way to make a disaster that toppled the bridge in baltimore even worse. that is coming up. that is coming up. if you try vaping to quit smoking, it might feel like progress,
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the statement was made that no court has ever previously second guessed the fda's judgment about access to a drug, right? i mean it's never second guessed that. >> that's correct. >> you think the fda is infallible? >> no, your honor, we don't think that at all, and we don't think that question is teed up in any way in this case. >> do you think the fda is infallible? that was justice samuel alito's question today in the supreme court case that could determine the future of medication abortion and also the future of drug approval in this country. the fda after all is the federal regulatory agencies that approves new drugs in the united states, and this case calls into question whether the courts should believe the fda when it says a drug is safe. justice alito's skepticism there tells us a lot about the court's
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conservatives, and it suggests that they may be thinking about something much bigger than even abortion, mainly whether conservatives are going after the regulatory state on whole. right now right-wing judicial activists have brought a series of cases that threaten to upend 40 years of supreme court precedent and hobble the federal government's basic ability to enforce laws. those lawsuits are trying to limit regulators ability to enforce everything from laws on insider trading to laws that protect the food we eat and the air we breathe. back with me are karen baker and dahlia lithwick. this case is about mifepristone but really about whether the fda as alito says is infallible. do you this can the court is prepared to get into it with big pharma? >> that's the question. it's very clear from justice alito's questions today not only he wants to second guess the
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fda, but he really wants to stake a claim that the maker of these pharmaceuticals is money grubbing and greedy and doesn't want to know how dangerous their product is so they won't do the studies. there's a real kind of sly dig over and over again at big pharma. but big pharma is so profoundly arrayed against judge kazmierczak's big order because you can't test drugs, you can't create drugs, you can't do anything if one person objecting in south dakota can get the entire medication pulled. so this is in some sense an easy case for a big business court that really wants big pharma to win. but i think under your question is this harder question, which is this entire term has been a kind of deregulatory juggernaut where the court keeps usurping to itself the power to decide
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what clean air looks like and decide, you know, how bureaus work and to decide how fishermen have to enforce fishing rules. and, you know, this is of a piece with that, this dripping contempt for federal regulation. and the most interesting moment i thought after justice alito said that question about, you know, are they infallible, justice ketanji brown jackson came back very quickly with are we best suited to make, like, deep dives on science and scientific regulation because this is the pattern that we see in this court. they're here to tell us what the clean water act looks like now. >> yeah, i totally agree with you, dahlia, that moment where it's like, wait, does sam alito know more about ulcer medications than the fda? you know the history of this. this drug has been regulated more than most drugs on the
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market, is that fair to say? >> absolutely. it's heavily restricted. fald has based all their decisions on voluminous science. the idea they're better at assessing the science than the experts at the fda is ridiculous, but that's the role they're trying to take for themselves. >> they're looking at it chevron doctrine, which is the foundational decision that undergirds a lot of regulatory power in the united states. it allows the federal government to basically do its thing if you will in layman's terms. can you talk a little bit about what your expectations are for the ruling in that case because it can have massive effects on american life writ whole just more than one single reproductive issue. >> i mean the chevron doctrine is just a simple sort of rule that says we defer to agencies own interpretations of how their laws work.
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we don't second guess the experts and the scientists and the accumulated years of expertise because we're a bunch of judges and rogues. and as carrie just said, we don't know a lot of stuff. and as you said, that is on the chopping block this year. and in some sense it comes hand in hand with the major questions doctrine, which is another doctrine that isn't a doctrine and has no sort of roots in anything shallower than sand and another role the court has given itself that says if something is a big deal, for instance president biden's loan forgiveness plan last year, then we get to decide on that, too. so we're seeing the court with this utter lack of humility go from agency to agency and pick up as you said the notion that agencies can enforce their own rules in ways that are reasonable. and even in some cases to say, oh, that's just too big a deal, and so we're going to decide on
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that, too. it's a way of both kneecapping the federal government, how government works and also of giving to the justices themselves almost unbounded authority to decide how we live. >> yeah. leonard leo in many ways the architect of this conservative court says the hard-left likes the administrative state because that's how basically they get their social safety net established. and that is who this court is going after in a big way, not even hiding its intentions. dahlia lithwick and carrie baker, thank you both for your time and expertise. really appreciate it. coming up next, the number of women using abortion pill tuesday end pregnancies has surged since the dobbs decision in 2022. we have a special report from mexico city where underground networks are helping women in states with bans get the reproductive care they need elsewhere. that's next.
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according to the guttmacher institute in 2023 more than 60% of all abortion in the u.s. were done using abortion medication. but in reality that number could be much, much higher. a new report shows that most
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women who chose to self-manage their abortions in the six month period after the supreme court overturned roe v. wade obtained their abortion pills outside of the formal health care system, particularly from the networks of volunteers that quickly mobilized and expanded after that 2022 decision overturning roe. some of these networks are here in the u.s. but others are in places like mexico where networks are packing and shipping abortion medications sometimes for free to women in america who are trying to circumvent their state's harsh abortion bans. in the process these networks are also increasingly witnessing a secondary reality, an alarming rise in sexual violence against migrants on the mexico side of the border, one that is leading to unwanted pregnancies here in a post-roe america. this is a special report from msnbc contributor paola ramose. >> we're about to talk to a
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young asylum seeker sexually assaulted in a mexican border town and then found out she was pregnant as soon as she stepped into texas. the only reason she agreed to talk with us today is because we'd not be disclosing her identity or where we are right now. when she left el salvador for the united states many of her friends cautioned her against it and heard about the harrowing experiences of women heading north. at what point after entering texas did you find out that you were pregnant? she found herself in texas,
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pregnant, alone, and planning an abortion. were you aware of the abortion laws that are enforced in texas? >> what did you learn? were you looking for clinical help? what were you on? the pills she's referring to are a combination of the fda approved regimen for medical termination of pregnancy. more than 60% of all abortions performed in the united states are using these pills. 14 states including texas have
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banned the medication. vallen tina found a group able to ship the pills to a friend's house at a nearby state. at 14 months pregnant she found herself packing once more this time to carry out a self-managed abortion. weeks after she returned to texas, val tina managed to obtain more packs of the one of the abortion pills she used. inspired by her own struggle, she decided to break the law to help women in similar situations. were you aware that what you were doing wutz illegal? do you have any left right now? are you still thinking about helping other women?
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>> vallen tina says she's no longer providing abortion pills, but on the other side of the border activists are working day and night to fill the void. this is evelyn, a young doctor from mexico city who's part of an international network helping women obtain both mifepristone. much of that help is being routed to texas. she asked for her identity to be
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concealed in order to protect the operation. approximately how big is this network? how many people are part of it? wow. and who are they mostly? where are they contacting you from? >> how many packs of pills are you sending each week? >> how do you hide these pills? how do you make sure no one knows what you're hiding? >> i think many people would ask what's in it for you?
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obviously you're not doing it for economic reasons, so why do you do it? >> back in texas valentina feels the same way. you risk your life and your status, why? >> msnbc contributor paola ramos filed that special report from south of the border. but first coming up where there's tragedy there's conspiracy. how the right wing is talking about the baltimore bridge collapse right after the break. e collapse right after the break
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tonight the search and rescue mission in baltimore for the six individuals authorities believe were on the francis scott key bridge when it collapsed late last night tonight that mission switched from a rescue mission to a recovery effort as all six individuals are now presumed dead. thanks to a live streaming of the bridge police dispatch audio we now know just how close this bridge collapse came to being an even bigger disast. this is it live stream of the
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brej last night 2 minutes before it collapsed. you can see a steady stream of cars going over the bridge. and this happened moments later. >> one of you guys on the north side. hold all traffic on the key bridge. there's a ship approaching that just lost their steering. so until they get it under control, we got to stop all traffic. >> i'm in route to the south side. i'm holding traffic now. i was driving but we stopped the cars on the bridge, so i'll have all the outer traffic stopped. >> in less than 20 seconds the police had stopped the flow of traffic on the bridge, and about 30 seconds after they did that, the bridge collapsed. >> yeah, it we can stop traffic, just make sure no one's on the bridge right now. i'm not sure where -- there's a crew up there. see if we can get them off the
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bridge. >> ten four. once the other unit gets here i'll ride up on the bridge. i have all inner traffic stopped at this time. once you get here i'll go grab the workers on the key e bridge. >> the whole bridge just fell down. start -- start whoever, everybody. the whole bridge just collapsed. >> today authorities confirm the six individuals they are still looking for the remains of were all members of that crew that was working on the bridge. they were reportedly fixing potholes. authorities say there are no signs of foul play here. they believe this was an accident. but the right-wing is already pushing conspiracy theories that this was a cyber attack that somehow the obamas were a part of or the real cause were the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs because the shipping
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practiced hiring policies. and despite the fact there are still six individuals now presumed dead, whose bodies have yet to be recovered, individuals we now know were construction workers from guatemala, el salvador, and new mexico, despite that the right wing is using it to fan the flames of swreen amphibolmia. >> the shipping bridge is 940 feet long called the dali, a singaporean flag container. of course you've been talking a lot about the potential for wrongdoing or potential for foul play given the wide open border. >> to my friends in the conservative media sometimes it is okay to report on something bad that happened and not blame it on liberals or liberalism and/or brown people. this was an accident and this was a tragedy. treat it like one. we have one more story for you tonight. spoiler alert, independent presidential candidate robert f.
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kennedy jr. has just made a very big decision that could inject chaos into the presidential race this november. more on that ahead. ce this november. more on that ahead
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i'm so proud to introduce to you an ex-vice president of the united states, my fellow lawyer, a brilliant scientist, technologist, a fierce warrior mom, nicole shanahan. >> not aaron rogers, not jesse ventura. today independent presidential candidate robert f. kennedy jr. revealed his pick for vice president in oakland, california, her name is nicole shanahan. she's a silicon valley lawyer and entrepreneur, and she's the ex-wife of google co-founder sergei brin. shanahan has never held office but she has plenty of money. she donated $4 million to kennedy's super pac to help pay for his very questionable super
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bowl ad. in addition to the cash prize here, kennedy is selecting his vp now because many states require independent candidates to pick a running mate before they can apply for ballot access. axios reports the biden campaign already has a team in place to fight kennedy's candidacy. joining me from oakland is michelle goldberg, opinion columnist for "the new york times" who covered the campaign announcement. thank you for diving in from the west coast here. my first question is how was the speech? >> her speech? well, first of all she's obviously not a practiced politician, and it really shows. i think there's a bit of bafflement among -- not necessarily among political professionals who assume that kennedy chose her so that she can self-fund their ballot access campaign, but i think among quite a few kennedy supporters -- i mean there were
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certainly people in the crowd excited about this pick, but you could just -- it came after a -- the rally had already been going on for i think a couple of hour by the time she came out, and her speech was a little bit meandering and digressive, and you could just see the auditorium which wasn't that crowded to begin with kind of emptying out, and so it was -- there was a big difference between when she start asked when she finished. >> nicole shanahan is someone who has supported democratic causes before. i believe she gave to the biden campaign in 2020. there is a narrative out there that kennedy's candidacy hurts biden more than it hurts trump. can you talk a bit more who was in the audience today? >> i know that's the narrative, and that may well be true. i think we don't know. and when i've spoken to, you know, pollsters and people at the dnc, kind of everybody agrees kennedy is somewhat of a wild card. i will say coming to ekelund which is obviously in the middlef oprogressive part of the
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country, i think i expected to meet more disaffected democrats, instead what i mostly met, i met some very far left people, you know, one guy who had to ask when i had a 9/11 button on who described himself as a socialist. but a lot of people i met either voted for trump in 2020 or said that if kennedy wasn't on the ballot, they would vote for him in 2024. it was a more right leaning than left leaning crowd for sure. >> what of rfk jr. himself. the polling shows in a three way match up biden at 38%, kennedy at 22%, which is a formidably high number in a close election. how was he as a candidate as you saw him on the stump today? >> i would say on the one hand he certainly speaks to -- he mixes kind of grains of truth or, you know, kind of genuine
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concerns. he speaks to people who genuinely feel somewhat despairing about the level of division and rancor in our politics and wish we could go back to a time of more unity and inspiration. and that's all well and good, but then he interweaves that with a lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation. and i think that ultimately you know there's obviously kind of democrats who might be attracted to him because of the kennedy mystique and the kennedy name. but, you know, i think -- you know, when he's talking about things like border security and social media censorship and vaccine mandates and lockdowns, it's not really democrats that he's appealing to. >> yeah, and it's a matter of moments before the entire kennedy clan excepting rfk jr. is on the campaign trail with joe biden. so we'll see how that works out for him. michelle goldberg, my friend,
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opinionmnist for "the new york times" heading up our oakland bureau, thank you for making time tonight. before we go, i do have an update on a story some of you may have been following in recent days. nbc news announced tonight it has dropped former rnc chair ronna mcdaniel as a paid contributor. that decision comes less than a week after this company announced ms. mcdaniel's hiring and due in no small part to the efforts here both in front of it camera and behind it to make clear her hiring was a very serious mistake. a lot of my colleagues in prime time here, actually all of them have weighed in on this, so i'm not going to belabor the point except to say election denialismests do not belong on a payroll of a news organization. people who seek to m.d. mine democracy should not be employed at institution that seeks to
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preserve it. in a note to the staff he said no organization particularly a newsroom can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. over the last few days it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal. for the last few days we have been given license to say what we felt was wrong with this call, and so i also think it's important to speak up when we feel like the right thing was done. companies make mistakes, sometimes very big ones, sometimes very publicly. what matters especially in the end is how they correct them. and from what we can see right now at this hour it looks like our company listened to us, to you, and did what was right. that is our show for tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. we're incredibly grateful for the brave rescuers who immediately rushed to the scene and to the people of baltim

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