MSNBC "All In with Chris Hays" - Transcript: "Equinox, Soulcycle face boycott calls."

Interview

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HAYES: Now that man that you just saw is dead because apparently, he was unable to get insulin in Baghdad to treat his diabetes. So my question is this. How do any of those things help the people Trump said he would help? Who is made better by it? Those kids crying for their parents in Mississippi, the traumatized children, they`re American citizens. The president is hurting those Americans. A dead man on the streets of Baghdad who was lonely, and scared, and sick, whose life did that make better in America? Whose job did that bring back? Whose income rose because of that? Who no longer has to deal with the ravages of opioid addiction in their family because that man is dead on the streets of Baghdad, because those kids are wailing because they don`t know if they`ll ever see their parents again? The answer is no one. And that`s a fundamental calm at the heart of Donald Trump. He says I`m going to hurt these people and I`m going to help you. And he can deliver on the first part but he`s done just about nothing on the second. There are hundreds of people to close mine and Wyoming`s sitting around with nO paycheck. We covered them We`re in the second week of the miners down in Harlan County not letting the coal trains through because their mine is shut down and their pensions were late and their owed back pay, they say. And the people in Morristown, Ohio who told -- who Trump told not sell their own homes, they had their factory shut down. And farmers across the country are struggling with unplanted fields, having to make up on Trump`s welfare handouts. The economic growth that Trump is so happy to tout has disproportionately happened in precisely the same it was already happening before, in large metro areas among people who had already participated from the boom. It has helped those who were already reaping the benefits. In fact, there is one group of people Trump did say he would go after where he has broken that promise, and that is the Titans of corporate America and the globalist elites because the banks are running wild and corporate America got a trillion dollars in tax cut. So for the immigrants, it`s punishment, and misery, and humiliation. And for the owners, well apparently, get this, the people who owned the chicken plants in Mississippi that were raided who had employed all these unauthorized immigrants, they apparently were not arrested. ICE won`t comment. But when you think about it, how could they be arrested? Donald Trump has been doing the same thing in his own businesses for years exploiting immigrant labor. In fact, the 680 people detained in Mississippi was the largest such raid since 389 people arrested in 2008. And the owner of that plant was subsequently convicted of money-laundering. But President Trump commuted his sentence in 2017. That`s the deal. You in Morristown, you`re not going to get to keep your job, but instead, you`re going to get real acts of savage cruelty against some struggling families down in Mississippi while Trump stuffs fat cats full of cash and parties with them in the Hamptons. And meanwhile, all the structural inequalities in America, the great hollowing out of the industrial core and rural America and the declining life expectancies of the first time since World War II, the 70,000 people were losing every year to opioids, all that will go on, because Trump and his party in his donors could not possibly care less about all that. Look over here the people aren`t hurting because that`s all you`re going to get. Joining me now is Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. He`s a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, called out President Trump in a speech yesterday for "weaponizing hate." Senator, why did you feel the need to give that speech? What do you want to do with that speech?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hey, first of all, I`m sorry, this is a little off-script but what you were just saying is one of the best expositions against this president. He`s hurting the people he tried promised to hate. I mean it was -- it was brilliant and I`m grateful for you laying it so plain. And my speech yesterday at Emanuel AME was a really important location to talk about what we`re seeing in America right now which is the fact that since 9/11, the majority of our terrorist attacks have been right-wing extremist groups. The majority of them have been white supremacist groups. And this violent white supremacy has been a part of our culture to the tune of killing thousands and thousands of people, beating folks, burning buildings, burning churches. This is a long history, in fact, Emanuel AME in generations ago was burnt to the ground when blacks were forbidden to gather and congregate. And so I wanted to talk directly to the -- confront the Disneyland history that we often tell where we actually diminished the greatness of this country when we don`t speak to what we had to overcome to get to where we are. And right now we need that spirit more than ever to combat the ills of violence and white supremacy.

HAYES: You know, people -- there`s been this sort of strange to me a little bit in these news cycle about is the president racist or is he a white supremacist, and I`m not sure where you come down on that, and you`re shaking your head. Why you`re shaking your head?

BOOKER: Well, I said in my speech yesterday this impotent simplicity of asking who`s racist or whose white supremacist, it is distracting from what the deep question is which is does racism and white supremacy exist. And if it does exist, then the question -- the most important question is are you doing something about it or are you not. Because King said so eloquently that when we have to repent for in this day and age it`s not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. If racism exists in our society, it doesn`t -- it`s not enough to say I`m not a racist, you must be anti-racist. You`ve got to get off the sidelines because if there`s injustice in this country is a threat to all of us, then you must be an activist against it. And that`s a much more constructive question. If this is an ill that exists in our society as an act of patriotism, what are you doing actively to deal with this crisis?

HAYES: This -- the moral urgency here seem very clear and it`s been channeled by you and others I think in the face of what we see in the last week. I don`t ask a political question that I don`t want to seem glibly amoral, but because you are running for president, it`s I think an important one. Do you worry that these sorts of questions about the sort of existential nature of America as a multiracial democracy and who is American, the debate on those fundamentally end up playing on Trump`s terms or putting the emphasis where he wants to put them and not on say the coal miners out of a job in Harlan, Kentucky etcetera.

BOOKER: Yes, look, I am getting tired of political positioning and analysis because it distracts from what America`s are upset about, that there`s no larger sense of moral urgency. Let`s worry less as a party about the politics and start talking to the people, talking to the hurt, addressing the challenges that we have. Trump is brilliant at trying to distract us to make it all about him, what he said, what he`s doing. Yes, that`s important. But let`s not -- let us distract from I think the urgencies of coal miners, of people out in farm country, of people in inner cities who are just looking for leaders that will speak with plain moral clarity about the challenges and the issues they`re going on the larger systemic problems. It`s why I criticize folks all the time to making this all about Donald Trump. And I know the number one polling issue in our party is who can beat Donald Trump. But I`m like God, can`t we have bigger aspirations than that? Beating Donald Trump should be the floor but it`s not the ceiling. It should -- it should be -- gets us out of the valley but it doesn`t get us the mountaintop which is dealing with these trends, as you and I have talked about before that have now been going on is for a generation that we have to address with more of a sense of moral urgency, moral clarity, and the kind of leaders that can inspire us to come together across the lines that often divide us to create real American change. And you`ll find that we have a lot more when it comes to that. We have a lot more that we agree upon than we disagree upon.

HAYES: Yes, do you think that -- I mean, there`s sort of two schools of thought I think on the country, right. There`s one that it`s deeply structurally polarized and you have to sort of understand that and see that in a clear-eyed sense. And we`ve seen that you know, in the -- in the last midterms where Dems picked up 40 seats in the -- in the House and they losta bunch of Senate seats in conservative states. And there`s others I think who see that structural polarization is essentially a little bit of misleading. It sounds like you`re in the second camp.

BOOKER: I definitely am in the second camp. You know, you and I both know if you talk through that political lens, a Republican, do you support ObamaCare, heck no. Well, do you support making sure people have insurance even if they have a pre-existing condition? Yes, well, I support that. Do you support people staying on your health insurance till your 20? When you start breaking it down, they support all the constituent parts. And that`s because we see a Republican Party that`s trying to hold on to power by doing everything from voter suppression to trying to tell these tired tropes to scare people away from what`s in their best interest. And so the best leaders I`ve seen through our history are those who are able to cut through that to sort of spark a larger moral imagination amongst people that are outside of these lines. And that`s why I keep telling people that we as Democrats shouldn`t be just simply saying OK, the end we want to is to beat Republicans. No. I think the bigger end we should talk to is about uniting Americans in the larger urgencies of justice in our country. And I think that that kind of leader that can inspire that or those kinds of leaders because this is not a one-person game, those kind of leaders are going to help us get back on track and deal with these issues.

HAYES: All right, Senator Cory Booker, thank you very much for making time tonight.

BOOKER: Thank you very much.

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