and my conversation on the enduring legacy of george carlin. good evening. i m mehdi hasan. it s been a full week now. since a mass shooter brutally shot and killed ten people at a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood of buffalo, new york. seven days since we learned that a quote-unquote manifesto linked to the accused gunman embraces the vial great replacement conspiracy theory, which promotes fears that the people of the west, read, white people, are being replaced by so-called white genocide. a week removed from one of the worst racist massacres in modern american history and how is the republican party responded? well, top republicans have doubled down on their support for the horrific conspiracy theory that was used to justify mass murder. let us count some of the ways, shall we? comments resurfaced after the shooting in which conservative congressman matt gaetz expressed his support for replacement theory and gaetz tried to insist he had been speaking i
one day before that election, cruz personally loaned his campaign $260,000. what an oddly specific number to lend. especially one day before an election. well, back in 2002, there was a law which prohibited campaigns from repaying more than $250,000 of personal loans using funds raised after an election. the law influences the special, limits the influence the special interest groups can have on candidates after they won, and that wouldn t apply to cruz s personal loan and from donations before the election, as long as they do so within a 20-day window. following cruz s victory in 2018, he let that 20-day deadline lapse, intentionally laying the ground work for this legal challenge. which brings us to monday. when the conservative court cited with ted cruz, knocking down the $250,000 cap. and the ruling came as no surprise to anyone who follows this court.
can look somebody in the eye, that s central to cruz s bus tour over this next week and it is very different than what we see from somebody like donald trump who has had success here in a very different way with these huge rallies pulling in thousands of people. cruz is out now with a if you ad, a new tv ad that you saw exclusively here on msnbc earlier this morning. take a little listen to what he s talking about here. it focuses on immigration. it s interesting. watch. i understand that when the mainstream media covers immigration, it doesn t often see it as an economic issue. but i can tell you, it is a very personal economic issue. i will say the politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the rio grande. or if a bunch of people are journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages often in his stump speech,
i mean, betsy, he brings up a good point, which was cruz s language on the subject of legalization during that debate where he did seem to leave the door open. yeah. absolutely. cruz said that he was open to the idea of giving legal status but not citizenship to folks living in the united states without papers undocumented. now, what s really interesting and important about this i think is how politically savvy marco rubio is being. the fact is ever since the republican debate the conversation has been dominated by basically hair-splitting about ted cruz s this one amendment ted cruz pushed in 2013 when the reality is that rubio has a way bigger immigration problem at least in this primary than cruz possibly does. but rubio and his team have very effectively shifted the focus to cruz, a valid focus, and it s been quite effective for them and i think it s going to pay dividends for rubio going forward. the other weird dynamic that s playing out here, sam, is if there is one guy
i mean, betsy, he brings up a good point, which was cruz s language on the subject of legalization during that debate where he did seem to leave the door open. yeah. absolutely. cruz said that he was open to the idea of giving legal status but not citizenship to folks living in the united states without papers undocumented. now, what s really interesting and important about this i think is how politically savvy marco rubio is being. the fact is ever since the republican debate the conversation has been dominated by basically hair-splitting about ted cruz s this one amendment ted cruz pushed in 2013 when the reality is that rubio has a way bigger immigration problem at least in this primary than cruz possibly does. but rubio and his team have very effectively shifted the focus to cruz, a valid focus, and it s been quite effective for them and i think it s going to pay dividends for rubio going forward.