The Rachel Maddow Show - Sept. 8 | Audio Only

Thanks to you at home for joining us here this hour. Really happy to have you here.

Um, in the late 1970s, the state legislature in New York, um, passed a new law because of something really gross that they were worried about.

Uh, there had been a serial killer terrorizing New York City in the mid-1970s. He killed a whole bunch of people in New York in 1975, 1976, and 1977 before he was finally arrested in 1977.

And over the course of that sort of reign of terror, there was not only a huge amount of news interests in news interest in the killings, for obvious reasons, because of how terrible and terrorizing those killings were,

there was also this other dynamic at work in which the killer himself really seemed to enjoy and kind of get off on the media attention that was being paid to his case.

He wrote letters, um, taunting the cops. He wrote to a famous newspaper columnist. The press was already turned up to 11 on this guy because of his crimes, but he ended up before they arrested him, really courting that attention.

And even after he was arrested, he continued to court the attention and communicate with the press.

So, we had this situation in which the appetite for news and information about this terrible killer was limitless.

The killer seemed to know that and want that.

And the combination of those two things in the late 1970s caused New York State legislators to pass a law.

To pass a law specifically to try to prevent that guy from selling his story.

Prevent him from selling the story of his crimes for his own profit.

Um, the killer was named David Berkowitz.

He was known as the Son of Sam killer.

And the law that New York passed to try to stop him from telling the story of his crimes for personal gain.

That became known as the Son of Sam law, and it was the first of many such laws all around the country.

And and that law had a bit of a meandering journey through the courts over the years.

It became an interesting First Amendment case.

Uh, the Son of Sam law, the original one in New York ended up being challenged and changed over time.

But there's still a Son of Sam law in effect.

And the principle of the thing broadly has become both part of our legal system now and part of our culture.

Um, you'll see Son of Sam law type um uh clauses in plea deals sometimes in high-profile cases about high-profile crimes.

A lot of states in addition to New York have explicit Son of Sam laws on the books.

But even in states where you the law isn't there, the law is different than that original idea.

That bottom line has become part of how we think about crime and justice.

Right?

The the bottom line is, the uncontroversial bottom line is that if you are convicted in conjunction with a notorious crime,

you should not be allowed to obtain personal benefit from telling stories about those crimes.

Right?

And and sometimes that is a legal stricture, like with the New York Son of Sam laws and all its successors.

But sometimes it's just a principle that I think Americans instinctively get.

If you participated in a horrible crime, you will never be rewarded for telling tales about that crime.

I think basically every American would agree with that.

So, imagine that there's some terribly notorious criminal case.

Something that's like the worst of the worst.

Something related to like child sex abuse.

And there is a person convicted in connection with that crime, and they are in prison because of it.

Say a news organization or or any other entity contacts that person in prison.

Arranges to do a prison interview with that person about his or her crimes.

And then that entity releases the interview to the public.

And apparently, as a reward to the prisoner for doing that interview, this news organization or this entity that arranged the interview,

they then pull strings to get that criminal moved to a cushier prison, a minimum security place, with lots more freedom and lots more privileges than they would they would ever otherwise have.

What would happen?

Right?

When that interview got published, when people learned about what had happened to that prisoner,

as a consequence of doing this interview, right?

Instinctively, the American people would go nuts at that news organization.

Or that entity that did such a thing, right?

There would be over the top outrage.

Because for decades, this has been a widely agreed upon principle.

From from Son of Sam on down, no criminal, certainly no one convicted in conjunction with a horrific crime like child sex abuse.

No criminal should be given a reward for doing interviews about their crimes.

But of course, that is what Donald Trump's Justice Department appears to have just done in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of crimes related to mass child sex abuse in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Trump's Justice Department said Trump's former personal defense lawyer, who now has the number two job in the US Justice Department, he sent that man to go meet with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison.

Do an interview, and then she immediately got a big, very important material benefit.

She got bumped down to a minimum security prison where a sex offender like her is not allowed to be.

Unless they get some special dispensation from on high, which apparently she got just after doing this interview with the President's former personal defense lawyer.

Special treatment and a reward for an interview about her crimes.

Not from some some craven tabloid or some, you know, soulless exploitative publisher like New York State legislators were worried about in the 1970s.

No, this is from the President's administration.

This is from the federal government.

And in that interview, it's not like the President's lawyer was pressing her real hard on what she was telling him.

At one point, Ghislaine Maxwell volunteered in this interview that there were multiple members of President Trump's cabinet.

Who had been involved with child sex abuse or Jeffrey Epstein.

Now, in the interview, the President's lawyer, we can hear.

They it's on the tape.

The President's lawyer hears her say that about multiple members of President Trump's cabinet.

And he responds to her saying that by not asking anything about it.

You can listen to it.

She she volunteered.

Members of Trump's cabinet, people who the President's lawyer would value as colleagues, she says.

She says they were among the people who she knows socialized with Jeff Jeffrey Epstein.

She says that bluntly.

And then listen to how Donald Trump's lawyer responds to that.

Listen to the long pause he greets that information with.

And then he just leaves it sitting right where it is and moves on to a different topic.

Did I like think these guys were coming for that?

I really don't.

If you met Epstein, there is no way that this cast of characters of which it's extraordinary.

And some of you in your cabinet who you value as your co-workers and you know,

would be with him if he was a creep or because they wanted sexual favors.

A man wants sexual favors, he will find that.

They didn't have to come to Epstein for that.

Now,

did some

Okay, I don't know.

I wasn't there.

I didn't see it.

Um,

so

When's the last time you think you were with Mr. Epstein when he got got a massage?

So this woman who's in prison, a 20-year sentence because of her crimes that she committed with Jeffrey Epstein.

She says, you know, hey, members of Donald Trump's cabinet were involved with this thing that I was part of.

Were involved with Epstein.

She said plural.

Right? Some are in your cabinet.

Some are in your cabinet who you value as your co-workers.

Multiple members of the President's cabinet were involved with Jeffrey Epstein.

And the response to her volunteering this in this interview is not, uh, who?

Which members of the cabinet say what now?

The response is, um, long pause, let's move on.

So, the President's name, it's been reported, appears multiple times in the Justice Department's documents about the Jeffrey Epstein child sex abuse case.

The FBI reportedly assigned agents to redact Donald Trump's name from the files in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The Justice Department is refusing to release all of its files and documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case.

They are coddling and rewarding and doing favors for the one living person currently in prison for crimes related to Epstein's case.

Even as she is volunteering to them that there are more high-ranking Trump officials who were involved with Epstein.

In that context, today, the New York Times reported on thousands of documents about Epstein's finances that were submitted to the US government by his long-time banker, JP Morgan Chase.

Records of more than 4,000 Epstein financial transactions totaling more than 1.1 billion, which JP Morgan reported to the federal government as possible evidence of his child sex trafficking.

Reported to the federal government.

So therefore, in the hands of the federal government.

It has been nearly a week since Democratic Senator Ron Wyden formally demanded last week that Trump's Treasury Department release its thousands and thousands of files on Epstein's financial records.

On top of that, NBC News reports as of this weekend that Trump's Justice Department is now specifically opposing the news organization's request to unseal the names of two people who Jeffrey Epstein paid in 2018.

He paid one of them $100,000 and another a quarter million dollars.

Federal prosecutors described these people as potential co-conspirators of Epstein, who were paid off by him.

Federal prosecutors described those payments as potential witness tampering.

And NBC News reports that Trump's Justice Department has formally asked a federal judge to keep those names secret.

As NBC seeks to have them unredacted.

And now today we get this.

Which President Trump said did not exist.

Donald Trump, in fact, sued the Wall Street Journal when they reported this summer that Trump had signed a birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein.

With some sort of a crude doodle of a naked woman and an enigmatic note from Trump to Epstein that seemed to suggest some kind of shared secret between them.

Trump denied he had done any such thing and brought a big splashy lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the claim that he had done such a thing.

That such a letter with a doodle on it like that did exist.

Well, now today, in response to a congressional subpoena,

What do you know?

There it is.

The text apparently written by Donald Trump to child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, this is what it says.

Voiceover.

There must be more to life than having everything.

Donald.

Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

Jeffrey.

Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald.

A pal is a wonderful thing.

Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

And then it is signed.

You see the typewritten text there, Donald J. Trump with the handwritten signature Donald beneath it.

So it is all written like on the body of a naked woman-ish.

Uh, the President apparently describing a shared secret between him and Jeffrey Epstein.

A bizarre reference to age.

And quote, certain things that the two men have in common.

Yeah, okay.

The White House today decided to claim that this is not really from Donald Trump, that this is clearly, in their words, not his signature.

On this document.

Pretty immediately, other examples were obtained of President Trump signing his first name in various contexts right around that time.

And the signature from those other uncontested signatures of his.

I don't know.

Looks pretty exactly the same.

I mean, just a layman's understanding of these things, but here, look.

This is the birthday book for Epstein.

That has has Trump purportedly signing it, Donald, in 2003.

Here the New York Times publishes an example of a book Trump signed to Jeffrey Epstein in 1997.

Donald.

Here's the Wall Street Journal publishing an example of a letter Trump signed, Donald, in the year 2000.

Here's the Wall Street Journal publishing an example of a letter Trump signed, Donald, in 2006.

Now, I'm no forensic handwriting expert, but if the White House is hinging its whole defense against how ferociously creepy and suspicious this all is on how much these signatures don't all look look alike.

How much these signatures don't look like each other, if that's their defense, that's a terrible defense.

This is the sitting President of the United States.

In addition to the creepy, our shared secret, naked woman, references to never aging document from Epstein's birthday book.

Epstein's estate also today handed over to Congress this photo in which Epstein, you see on the right there, is holding a big novelty check for $22,500.

It is a check that is made to look like it is from Trump to Epstein.

So it's Trump purportedly paying Jeffrey Epstein more than $22,000.

The caption alongside the photo, which the Wall Street Journal says was written by a long-time Mar-a-Lago member.

Uh, indicates that the check is because Epstein, um, sold to Donald Trump a quote, girl, who is described as quote, fully depreciated.

For $22,500. What's that about? This, of course, comes after President Trump said just earlier this summer that the reason he had a falling out with his long-time friend Jeffrey Epstein after 15 years of friendship was because Epstein, in Trump's words, stole a young woman from him.

One of Epstein's sex trafficking victims, who Trump who Trump says Epstein stole from Trump's spa at Mar-a-Lago.

Real normal stuff here, you guys.

Real normal.

I mean, what in presidential history even approximates a scandal this disgusting?

What in the history of the United States of America for anybody in any position of public trust approximates the level of repulsiveness that Donald Trump brings to the presidency with this trailing behind him like a snail trail?

One of the members of the Oversight Committee who obtained these new documents is going to join us live here in just a moment.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, um, Congressman Krishnamoorthi is on the Oversight Committee.

He's also from suburban Chicago.

Where they are also having to gear up to contend with Trump pledging a military invasion of their city.

Trump this weekend threatening literally war against the city of Chicago.

In a online post this week.

Not metaphorical war, but war as in I'm sending the US military to invade and wage war on you.

Where he has already been playing Civil War on the streets of Washington.

There was a huge, really big protest through the streets of Washington this weekend.

I mean, look at this.

I do not mean to um downplay the ongoing protests and resistance that have been happening in Washington ever since Trump sent in the troops there.

People every day have been banging pots and pans on the streets and outside metro stations.

People have just been relentlessly heckling and following and questioning Trump's federal agents in the streets.

There've been graffiti and posters and stickers all over the city that say things like these posters say.

Take off your masks, public servant should face the public.

Even in the court system, there've now been at least seven instances reported in DC in which Trump's federal prosecutors tried to bring felony charges against someone in DC.

And the grand jury refused to bring the charge.

Got a lot of attention when the guy who threw the sandwich ended up not getting charged because the grand jury said that he shouldn't receive a felony charge.

But it's happened at least seven times now, not just to the sandwich guy.

Regular citizens on grand juries are refusing federal prosecutors cases in DC.

It's really quite unheard of in terms of the way that grand juries and and prosecutors and indictments usually work.

But the courts in DC are now facing that over and over and over again as Trump's federal prosecutors just blunderbuss their way through the whole thing.

Just failing to be able to put together the legal predicate to bring people through the justice system for any of the reasons they're purporting to bring people before the courts.

This is something we saw happen to Trump's federal prosecutors in Los Angeles when he invaded that city too.

Grand juries in Los Angeles refusing to bring felony indictments against people who prosecutors wanted indicted.

Happened in Los Angeles, it's now happening over and over and over again in Washington DC.

And this is just with these grand juries, it's it's another instance of regular people, regular Americans.

Everyday Americans refusing to be intimidated, refusing to go along with this administration, just saying flat out no.

Even as people in power and people in supposedly proud and powerful institutions keep caving.

Regular people keep saying no.

And so DC's protest and resistance and the whole city's proverbial one-finger salute to this President and his military invasion of the city.

It has been sustained and creative and relentless and fired up and tireless and sometimes surprising.

But on top of all the things they have been doing, DC just pulled another rabbit out of their hat.

With this mass suit protest this week.

Church bells all over the city ringing out in support.

Thousands, tens of thousands of people shutting down blocks and blocks and blocks.

Of big main streets in Washington.

DC just saying with one big, loud, non-violent voice.

No.

And of course, all this comes on the heels of the really big protests we saw all over the country last week, especially on Labor Day.

Um, and further and ongoing protests this weekend in places like Mount Kisco, New York, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Even in rural Georgia, outside that Hyundai plant where they raided the Hyundai factory and took away nearly 500 people, including at least some US citizens.

You may have already heard this, but the organizers of the No Kings rallies.

Remember the No Kings rallies that happened back in June, those huge protests in June that attracted more than 5 million people across the country.

Organizers from the from the No Kings events that happened back then have just now announced the date for the next No Kings demonstrations.

They're going to be October 18th.

So that's going to be no thrones, no crowns, no kings.

Saturday, October 18th, it's about six weeks from now.

They just announced it like yesterday, they've already got hundreds of rallies and demonstrations planned that day.

They say they are expecting more people to show up in October than the 5 million plus people who showed up in June.

Indivisible organizer Ezra Levin did an interview about it with Rolling Stone today.

In which he told Rolling Stone that there isn't a single large, like flagship event they want everybody to travel to on October 18th.

Instead, they just want protests everywhere.

They want people to organize No Kings Day protests wherever they are in the country on October 18th.

As Ezra Levin telling Rolling Stone, quote, I would highly recommend to folks looking to participate in No Kings.

Do not travel more than an hour.

If you're having to travel more than an hour to get to your local No Kings protest.

Then start your own.

Again, that date, October 18th.

This is a President who has no Kings protests against him because he is trying to behave as if he is an indomitable force.

Right? He is trying to behave as if he has monarchical power.

While in reality, this is a weak and unpopular President.

Who bizarrely and implausibly is trying to extricate himself from the Epstein scandal with all the skill of a sea cucumber trying to play the piano.

He has a 15-year association with the country's most notorious child sex abuser and child sex trafficker.

And as the country learns more and more about that disgusting scandal, trying to manage perceptions of the President's own involvement in it.

Is becoming a preoccupying cover-up of his administration.

That is not great.

The latest NBC polling shows that Donald Trump is underwater by 14 points on his overall approval rating.

He is underwater 14 points on his handling of deportations and immigration.

New polling by CBS and YouGov shows that by 14 points, people do not want him sending troops to DC.

By 16 points, they don't want him sending troops anywhere else either.

He's underwater in the NBC poll, 18 points on his handling of trade and tariffs.

He's underwater 22 points on inflation and the cost of living.

His job numbers are the worst job numbers we have seen in this country in 16 years.

And that's that's if you cut out the pandemic to be nice to him.

He started these radical new gambits on redistricting the Congress to try to essentially force Republicans to hold on to power.

That is something the public is against 80/20.

He has started this radical new gambit on undoing the nation's access to vaccines.

When the public is basically 80/20 in favor of vaccines.

He is unpopular generally.

He is unpopular even on the things he most wants to be known for, things like this stupid tariff stuff.

And the radical new things he's trying to do to shock the country and change the subject.

This redistricting stuff and the vaccine stuff.

All that stuff is even less popular than the other stuff, which is already radically unpopular.

He's not doing anything the country likes at all.

But sure, his way out of this is to try to convince everyone that.

That's definitely not his signature.

One of those is obviously different, right?

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi is here tonight live.

Plus, we've got one of the people who's trying to clean up the disastrous mess Trump has made on COVID vaccines.

We got a lot to come tonight.

Stay with us.

It's titled, Why Grandparents Must Lead on Vaccines.

Quote, many of today's parents never witnessed the devastating effects of polio or whooping cough.

But we grandparents remember.

We saw children on crutches or struggling to breathe inside iron lungs or deaf from post-measles infections.

This is our lived experience.

As the family's trusted messengers, many of us grandparents are eager and capable of getting the word out to young families.

Preschools and communities.

The message, it is crucial for children to be vaccinated.

Our grandkids are counting on us.

Vaccines are safe and effective.

That op-ed was written by two nurses who also happen to be grandparents.

They say they have been increasingly concerned by the way in which public trust in vaccines has been undermined by Donald Trump and the people he's put in charge of public health.

And so they're doing something about it.

Something simple and direct and therefore also kind of radical.

This weekend, they helped launch a nationwide new grassroots voluntary organization that is called Grandparents for Vaccines.

Can't believe we have to do this, but we do.

They are sharing their first-hand experience as old people of what life was like before vaccines became widely available.

They're going to host events and do panels and run campaigns to just flat out tell younger people what it was like to live in a world with polio and whooping cough and all these other plagues from which we were saved by vaccines.

The Grandparents for Vaccines group is starting this movement as the American Academy of Pediatrics is urging parents to quote, get their youngest children vaccinated for COVID.

Of course, Trump's hand-picked Health Secretary, Trump's hand-picked Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who has no medical experience, he says healthy kids no longer need a COVID vaccine.

But the doctor's group, the American Academy of Pediatrics, is publicly recommending that all kids, all people ages 6 to 23 months, receive a COVID vaccine.

And while the federal government fails and falls apart under Trump's watch when it comes to public health, individual states are now starting to take matters into their own hands as best they can.

They're picking up the slack in terms of the governance on this issue.

In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker's Health Department is reportedly exploring the possibility of bulk purchasing COVID-19 vaccines straight from manufacturers.

The New Republic's Greg Sergeant reports that a coalition of states led by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is planning to coordinate on the purchase and distribution of pediatric vaccines.

Should the federal government restrict access to them?

Massachusetts is also requiring as a state, they're requiring that health insurers cover vaccines recommended by the state.

Regardless of what Kennedy's corrupted CDC recommends.

On the West Coast, Oregon, California, Washington, and now Hawaii have formed a public health alliance on the West Coast to provide vaccine guidance.

Given the Trump administration dismantling the elements of the CDC that responsibly used to do that.

The governors of those states argue that the CDC has, quote, become a political tool that increasingly pedals ideology instead of science.

Ideology that will lead to severe health consequences.

We will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.

A growing number of democratically led states, blue states, are taking action because they need to.

Um, and it's not just the West Coast.

It's not just Illinois and Massachusetts, also New York, also now today, Blue State, uh, Minnesota.

Governor Tim Walls signing an order to help people in his state get the COVID vaccine.

All these actions in all these states will have a tangible effect on the lives of people who live in blue states.

Blue states are forming coalitions, they are each doing what they can to start governing on public health.

As the Trump administration stops.

How much can blue states do on their own and what type of dynamic does this create in the country when we have red state science and blue state science and infectious and communicable diseases in the middle of it?

Hold that thought.

Stay with us.

All right, that's going to do it for me for now.