MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Trump to visit El Paso & Dayton tomorrow."

Interview

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HAYES: Yesterday, President Obama issued a statement condemning leaders who use language that normalizes racist sentiments. He didn`t name names. He didn`t have to. Today, Trump retweeted a Trump T.V. host asking, did George Bush ever condemned President Obama after Sandy Hook? Because President Obama and President Trump and the people at Trump T.V. all know that Trump is the guy who demonizes those who don`t look like us, suggests other people including immigrants threaten our way of life, refers to other people as subhuman, implies that America belongs to just one certain type of people. Everyone knows who is being talked about there. There`s this vortex, this sucking moral vacuum at the top of the country. There`s been since the moment Donald Trump took the oath of office. It`s unavoidable that all of us see that, even feel it viscerally particularly in the wake of something like this. Joining me now Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar who represents El Paso. Congresswoman, I want to ask first how people are doing there. Are there folks still in the hospital? Do people have the resources they need to process what happened, to heal medically, financially, how are things?

ESCOBAR: Hi, Chris. Thank you so much for asking. I`ve spent the day with El Paso families in the hospital here at this beautiful memorial, and folks are doing better. I visited with a gentleman in the ICU who is doing a lot better. His caregivers have told us that that he`s strong, he`s on the mend/ I talked to another young woman, Jessica, who I visited on Sunday who it was very painful for her to walk. The -- her legs were shot. And as you know, with these kinds of weapons of war, the bullets don`t just go through your flesh and your bones, it shatters them. That`s the whole point of a weapon of war. And so both her legs were shot through and I was with her when she took her first steps on Sunday, and she was in a lot of emotional and physical pain. Today, I went by and visited her again, and she had this beautiful smile on her face, and she`s been walking a little bit more and she`s full of hope. Her husband is doing better. He`s also in the hospital. She got to see her kids. This community is full of hope, and resilience, and beauty. But the other thing that I heard, Chris, totally unsolicited from victims still in the hospital as they`ve grabbed my arm and tell me, tell him not to come here.

HAYES: That`s intense. You`ve communicated that message. You said that you feel like he painted a target on El Paso`s back. I`ve heard from a lot of folks and read a lot of stories about folks, Latin folks all across the country, folks who were immigrants of different ethnic backgrounds feeling like a targets painted on their back. What -- why don`t you want him to come?

ESCOBAR: You know, Chris, here`s the -- I just talked to another gentleman, Ralph, a veteran, Vietnam veteran who stopped me and he said I am being made to feel like I`m not American. And he feels that under this president. And so as I said to the -- you know, via Twitter and I`ve said before, words are powerful, and words have consequences. And the words that he`s used to dehumanize us, to dehumanize communities like mine, to dehumanize immigrants, they have a consequence and they provide fuel for people who already are bigoted. And when they have a president who`s racist and whips people up into a frenzy at rallies, when people yell "we`ll shoot them" and he doesn`t -- he doesn`t stop to think, oh my God, what am I doing. There`s such a moral crisis. And you know, we got a call from the White House earlier inviting us to be part of the motorcade as the president arrived and to greet him, and you know, my response back was I need a phone call today because I would like to have a conversation with the president about everything I`ve been saying on national T.V. I want to say it to him directly. And I want to see if he would have a dialogue where he accepts responsibility for his words, where he understands the power that they`ve had, the pain they`ve created, and says I`m sorry, and takes them back. Those words are still hanging above us. There are kids who are still afraid this is going to happen again. He has the power to take them back. The response we got was that he was too busy for a phone call so we declined the motorcade.

HAYES: You wrote a letter today. You`re a part of several members of Congress who wrote a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking that she bring everyone back to the U.S. Capitol to take some action legislatively to confront the threat of white supremacy. Why did you sign that letter? What do you want to see happen?

ESCOBAR: So my colleague Tom Malinowski led that letter. And you know, first and foremost, the first line on that letter that you`ll see is that Senator Mitch McConnell already has good common-sense bipartisan gun legislation sitting at his doorstep. Mitch McConnell, we need to make sure that he is held accountable. We need to make sure that that we demand answers from him as to why this tragedy hasn`t been enough. When will enough be enough? We`re all ready to go back to D.C. at any point in time, even me. I don`t want to leave my grieving community but if Senator McConnell is ready to get to work, we will all be ready to get back to work and we`ll keep sending him great legislation. But he is the linchpin here, Chris. I mean, make no mistake about it. And people need to hold him accountable.

HAYES: Congresswoman, I just want to say I`ve been -- I had the great pleasure to be in El Paso twice in just the last eight months or so, and it`s just a truly special place. It`s really one-of-a-kind and everybody is really sending you their love and their strength in that community. It`s a really special place indeed that you represent.

ESCOBAR: Thank you. It really is. Thank you, Chris.

HAYES: All right, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, thanks a lot.

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