Transcript: The ReidOut, 1/25/22 – MSNBC

Summary

The other plot against American democracy; Trump allies plead the Fifth before January 6 committee; Alex Jones pleaded the Fifth almost 100 times; Trump administration policies favored the wealthy

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:00:00]

ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Thanks for spending with me tonight. As we learned, if they tell you, don`t look up, consider looking up.

That does it for us. THE REIDOUT with Joy Reid though starts right now. Hi, Joy?

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: How are you doing, Ari? Wise words indeed, thank you very much. Have a fantastic evening. Cheers.

Good evening, everyone. Okay. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with a history lesson starring Major General Smedley Butler. Now he may be a little known name outside of military circles, but don`t let that fool you. This is a marine with a big military resume, starting with the war against Spain in 1898. He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, Hollywood loved him, so did Theodore Roosevelt who called him the ideal American soldier.

But the story we`re going to tell didn`t happen in a conflict overseas but rather in Pennsylvania, where, one day, a bond salesman approached butler with a pitch. Imagine, half a million veterans marching on Washington, a move financed by some of the most powerful corporations in America. The purpose, to stop President Franklin D. Roosevelt`s new deal opposed, which was opposed by wealthy business leaders as a socialist doctrine. This army of veterans would pressure the president to hand over executive powers of government, and if the president refused, he will be forced to resign.

The bond salesman after, you know, casually pitching the violent overthrow of the U.S. government then asked butler if he would be interested in heading this march, to which General Butler replied, my one hobby is maintaining a democracy. If you get these 5,000 soldiers advocating anything of smelling of fascism, I am going to get 5,000 more and lick the hell out of you and we will have a real war right at home.

The general then reported this exchange to the government and here he is revealing the so-called business plot before a panel of the special House committee on unAmerican activities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Before the professional committee, the highest representation of the American people under subpoena to tell what I knew of activities, which I believe might lead to an attempt to set up a fascist dictatorship. The plan that`s outlined to me was to form an organization of veterans to use as a bluff or as a club at least to intimidate the government and break down our democratic institution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: The panel, the media, the American public did not take this exchange as seriously as Butler did. No one was ever prosecuted or even punished. The allegations turned into one big joke, an elaborate scheme by the super rich to topple the U.S. government for their own financial interest, impossible, right?

What Major General Butler did for American democracy was certainly heroic, whether people at the time believed him or not. He was also far from the perfect hero. He would even call himself a racketeer for capitalism. Jonathan Katz, who wrote about Butler in his new book, outlines how butler blazed a path for the U.S. empire, helping seize the Philippines and land for the Panama Canal, invading and helping plunder Honduras and Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and more. Meaning he played a heavy hand in all that yucky stuff that isn`t taught in schools or in museums or in movies. America as empire tends to sell fewer tickets.

But perhaps it was those layers and contradictions that allowed Butler to see what this pitch was about, an alleged political conspiracy to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and install a fascist government in his place.

Fast forward almost nine decades and we`ve now witnessed another attempted coup led by a man who simply couldn`t admit that he lost an election and whose movement of Trumpism was created and funded and sustained by big business. That populist bit, that was just a sham and just like in 1934, we`re seeing a similar pattern of denialism and deflection when it comes to what we`re up against. Dozens of witnesses and participants in the January 6th insurrection have stonewalled the select committee and several who have testified still refuse to answer questions.

Most recently, the right-wing fake news host Alex Jones revealed that he pleaded his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nearly 100 times during an interview on Monday. John Eastman, the notorious Trump lawyer who literally put the plan for a coup in writing also claimed his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as a response to nearly 150 questions and to document and to his document subpoena, according to a lawyer, for the House who spoke to CNN.

But in contrast, with the alleged fascist plot of 1934, we are seeing modicum of accountability when it comes to the MAGA mob who served as Trump`s boots on the ground on January 6th. Just today, Stewart Rhodes and nine of his Oath Keepers cohorts pleaded not guilty to charges of seditious conspiracy.

[19:05:05]

They are among more than 700 who have been charged in connection with this current insurrection.

Joining me now is Malcolm Nance, MSNBC Counterterrorism and Intelligence Analyst, and the author of the upcoming book, They Want to Kill Americans, the Militias, Terrorists and the Deranged Ideology of the Trump insurgency, and Jonathan Katz, aforementioned author of the Racket Newsletter and of the new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, the Marines, the Making and Breaking of America`s Empire.

I want to start with you, Jonathan Katz. I so enjoyed this incredible long read about Smedley Butler, what a name, first of all. Talk a little bit about this plot that we`ve sort outlined going in here, as you`ve researched this, how real was this attempt? How serious were they? And who were some of the sort of big business and corporate interests behind it?

JONATHAN KATZ, AUTHOR, GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM: So, what we know is basically what Butler testified in front of Congress in November 1934, and that is that a representative of a prominent Wall Street financial institution came to him and tried to enlist him in this plot. We can be pretty sure that the guy who approached him thought that there was a fascist coup behind him that he was trying to foment.

In my research, I can tell you that his boss, a guy named Grayson M. P. Murphy, had a long intelligence background. He had been involved in over throwing governments overseas. He was certainly the kind of person who might have been involved in this.

Beyond that, all we have is the idea that the representative of this brokerage, a guy named Gerald C. MacGuire told Butler that there were going to be big names coming to support it from behind the scenes and that those names would include people like the Duponts, Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors, the McCann Eric Ad Agency, Phillips Oil, Sun Oil, places like that. What we don`t know is how involved they were and to what extent the planning went forward before Butler was approached and then came forward --

REID: And we know something called the Liberty League was ultimately formed. And it was the same industrialists and wealthy people that didn`t like the idea of having a new deal because they tagged it as socialism, right? They`re saying it`s socialism and we`d rather have fascism than that.

KATZ: Yes. In 1934, much as in 2022, a lot of people thought that liberal democracy was on the way out and that the only ways forward were either fascism or communism. And to the business elite in America, fascism seemed like the more attractive of those two options. So, we don`t know again whether any of the big names that Jerry MacGuire said were going to be coming behind this were actually behind it to what degree they were.

But we do know a number of people who were members of the Liberty League, including the head of JPMorgan was a big fan of Mussolini, he said that he considered himself somewhat of a missionary for the Italian fascist. We know that the Hugh Johnson, who was part of the new deal administration, who was also mooted as somebody who was going to be involved in the business plot, he also was a committed admirer of Mussolini and European fascism.

And we know that the guy who approached Smedley Butler, Jerr MacGuire, he had been on a tour of the fascist hot spots of Europe and met with members of one of the real antecedents to January 6th in February of 1934, there was a fascist and far-right riot in Paris to storm the parliament to prevent the handover of power to a center left prime minister, which there are a lot of ties between that and January 6th. And we know MacGuire met with members of the (INAUDIBLE), which were maybe sort of the Oath Keepers of Paris, 1934.

So, there was a lot to say that there would have been support for a coup like this if it had pushed forward, at least in terms of the people that MacGuire was saying we`re behind it. We just don`t know the extent to which this planning had gone forward in large part because Congress cut the investigation short.

REID: Yes. There`s a lot of lessons to be learned here, Malcolm, one of which is that big industrial interests will sometimes mesh with our military`s missions. And I think it`s something we don`t like to talk about, right, because we want to portray America and American military as always the good guys, and I actually am a great admirer of the American military.

[19:10:02]

I happen to be.

But, I mean, in a lot of ways, our history is a history of empire and it`s something we don`t talk about a lot. Do you think it`s something we need to start to face because, I don`t know, there are risks there, and right now, we`re seeing sort of paramilitary, military people participating in another attempted coup, at least a small number of them?

MALCOLM NANCE, MSNBC COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: : I seem to recall this guy who was supreme allies commander of all forces in Europe in World War II who successfully landed in Europe and on a crusade took the entire place book as a rapid anti-fascist named Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he became president of the United States. And if I`m not mistaken, he warned of this very thing, that war was a racket and that corporations by the mid-1950s were now using the United States government as their way of surviving.

And so I think that for someone with as much experience in the greatest period of economic development and reengineering, don`t forget, we`ve changed refrigerators into tanks, right, refrigerator companies were doing pistols, Remington Ranch started making rifles, that we should pay attention to that.

Now, are we ever going to stop this? That`s not going to happen any time soon. We have far greater problems going on right now in the engineering of our democracy. And interesting thing, I`m a fan of Smedley Butler. I actually have Smedley Butler memorabilia in my man cave because his statement about the plot of 1932 was almost precisely what in better, more rough terms, what General Milley said last year about the Armed Forces of the United States not getting involved in politics.

We are revolving around this and the big question is will the American public actually be awake this November to put a stop to this or are we just going to sleepwalk our way into fascism?

REID: Let me play you something. Because I think for a lot of Americans, you hear conservatives throwing around terms like Marxism and socialism a lot, to mean a lot of things, which generally don`t have much to do with actual socialism and Marxism and communism, as they are practiced around the world. They generally just mean policies that help poor people and people of color, and they don`t like them. Let me just play a montage of that going over the years and over the decades.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cold war we face today is the child of the new deal rendezvoused with communism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They established the prerequisites to a socialistic or even later a communistic state.

RONALD REAGAN, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: One of the traditional methods of imposing statism of socialism on our people has been by way of medicine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This group who came by a state and who led these demonstrations and who are present here, many of them belong to the communist organizations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have people in Washington who want to take us into socialism.

FMR. SEN. BOB DOLE (R-KS): Public housing is one of the last bastions of socialism in the world.

FMR. REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI): Switching these programs, and this is where I`m talking about health care as well, from a third party or socialist base system.

FMR. GOV. SARAH PALIN (R-AK): Now is not the time to experiment with socialism.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: The Democrats used to be normal people. Now, they`re socialists, Marxists, communists.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

REID: With the last little bit of time we have left, Malcolm, we have a president, Donald Trump, who sort of styled himself as a populist but whose policies overwhelmingly benefitted the wealthy and high corporate interest. And then we have an attempted coup by people who want him to stay in forever, right? They want the deregulation of oil and gas, who want increased military spending to go on forever, who want more right-wing justices, who are basically corporatists, who side with big business 70 percent of the time.

It`s hard for me to see much difference between that and what Mr. Katz wrote about, that you do have very wealthy interests who have a great interest in having a fake, populous movement that`s willing to go to war to keep their guy in power, doing those things to help the rich forever, no?

NANCE: Would have been -- yes. Well, would have been Benito Mussolini, when he termed the phrase, fascist, defined it as, right, a dictatorship of the corporate right. That is the literal definition of what fascism was. Adolf Hitler was supported by the largest corporations in Germany, right, and right up to the point where the Wannsee Conference had these major corporations sitting there, figuring out what kind of furnaces they could make to burn X number of bodies per day so that they could have a final solution, so the problem of the Jews in Europe, right? And we held them accountable at Nuremberg for the most part. But many of those corporations are in operation today.

[19:15:01]

Again, Dwight D. Eisenhower made it clear that when there is money to be made, there is going to be an interest of perpetual, whether it`s warfare or the propping up of fascism. The only difference of what we have today and what all those quotes that you had from Ronald Reagan and all of the rest, I would have thrown in the quote from Major General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick`s famous film about atomic war, you know, where he said -- where he thought there was conspiracy of putting fluoride in there. Well, that`s QAnon in the Republican Party today, with people in the military.

REID: And, by the way, Reagan was talking about Medicare in that rant.

Jonathan Katz, I have to tell you, this thing was an excellent read. I hope everyone goes out and buys your book, man. It was fantastic. I hope everyone reads it. Malcolm Nance, my friend, I appreciate you. Everybody out there, follow the money. Think about who is funding and paying for and profiteering and profiting off of what we`re seeing happening or what happened last January. Think about it. It`s worth doing. Thank you all very much.

Up next on THE REIDOUT, Trump pleaded with Georgia officials to steal the votes that he needed to win the state. We heard the tape. So, what happens next in Fulton County`s grand jury investigation?

Democrats scoring major victories over egregious Republican gerrymandering, but how free and fair will the next election actually be?

Arizona Democrats send a loud and clear message to Kyrsten Sinema, continue to obstruct the Biden agenda at your own peril, political peril. The state party chairwoman joins me.

And tonight`s absolute worst says email me but he doesn`t want to chat, he`s looking for dirt on your kids` teachers.

And, hey, guess what? I`m going to be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight. It is going to be a lot of fun. Please tune in tonight.

THE REIDOUT continues after this.

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[19:21:10]

REID: The January 6 Select Committee is not the only investigation into Donald Trump that is picking up steam.

A panel of judges in Georgia has given the green light to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to seat a special grand jury for her investigation into Trump`s attempts to overturn the election results in that state.

Now, we all remember Trump`s notorious phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a year ago.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

REID: Now, just to be clear, President Biden won Georgia. And that was further verified by not one, but two statewide recounts and a partial forensic audit overseen by Raffensperger.

"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" reports that DA Willis is also examining the abrupt resignation of former Atlanta-based U.S. attorney B.J. Pak, a November 2020 call on -- a November 2020 call Senator Lindsey Graham place to Raffensperger, and false claims made by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani during a hearing before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee.

And now, with the power of a special grand jury, Willis has the right to subpoena witnesses and to provide -- to provide documents and testimony, which is key because she has said that many witnesses have refused to fully cooperate, including Secretary of State Raffensperger.

Joining me now is Maya Wiley, former assistant U.S. attorney, and Peter Strzok, former FBI counterintelligence agent and author of "Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump."

Thank you both for being here.

And welcome to the show, Peter.

But I`m going to start with you, Maya.

Here are the potential laws that were broken in this whole scheme. And I`ll just put them up on screen, everything from criminal solicitation to racketeering.

As you look at it, although Raffensperger is trying to dismiss it, how differently will this investigation go now that there`s a grand jury involved? And can they indeed compel, up to including -- and including Raffensperger and Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump to testify?

MAYA WILEY, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the short answer is, the fact that it`s a grand jury means exactly, that they can compel their testimony before the grand jury.

And, as we know, Raffensperger himself has already said, look, I will -- I will go in and talk if I`m subpoenaed.

And I would suspect we`re going to see very few people pulling a Roger Stone and -- or any -- or a Steve Bannon, and calling the bluff of a district attorney with an impaneled grand jury, because that carries its own penalties.

The there thing is, what do they have to gain? I mean, they have already made public statements. There`s so much that`s already in the public record about all the efforts to both privately press and publicly cajole and virtually threaten so many of these Georgia officials who themselves were Republicans, are Republicans, into doing exactly what Donald Trump wanted them to do, and Donald Trump personally calling them.

He personally called many Georgia officials. And that, in and of itself, makes it, I think, very difficult for them to sort of say, I`m not going to talk about what`s been talked about publicly and which I myself have talked about publicly because a grand jury subpoenaed me.

Very hard to imagine.

REID: Yes.

And, Peter, there`s a certain doing the crimes out in the open sort of quality to it, the shamelessness of it, and the fact that Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham were just openly making phone calls, trying to urge the secretary of state to overturn a legitimate election.

Does the shamelessness, the openness of it, let`s say you`re -- you put yourself in an investigator`s role. And you have been the -- you have you have taken the brunt of it. You know how these folks are.

[19:25:04]

Does doing it in the open, as an investigator, indicate guilt or just a lack of knowledge that what you`re doing is illegal?

PETER STRZOK, FORMER FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AGENT: Well, I certainly think it indicates a brazenness and probably a lack of sophistication or care about what they were doing.

You can say you`re doing something and have the only intent in the world to do something that`s wrong. What`s really interesting to me is, Georgia is part of a pattern. When you talk about things being in the open, the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, today talked about that DOJ was looking at all these states with these alternate electors that had slates that were sent into the National Archives.

Many of those people said straight open to the media as it was going on: Yes, we`re doing it.

So, again, just because people are talking about it doesn`t mean that they weren`t breaking the law. It just means that they were either dumb and/or they didn`t care, because those two things aren`t exclusive to each other.

REID: Well, and then Lisa Monaco, and you just talked about that. And I did want to get into that with you.

And it is the first time that the Justice Department has actually commented on what they`re doing in a probe that actually is significant to January 6.

And I guess that would be the question. Let`s say that somebody is planning something like this. The fact that they`re talking about it openly, the fact that people put their names down and said, I`m an elector, knowing they`re not an elector, is that fraud? Is it racketeering? Like, how do you even investigate something that people are admitting?

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Transcript: The ReidOut, 1/25/22 - MSNBC