a public phase of the committee and president biden don't let anyone erase that day. plus, new confusion around the latest cdc guidance as omicron and delta surge. we have just the guy to help us sort it out and america 2021. you thought the person of the year was an odd pick. wait until you see who america's most trusted is. "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. once again, a member of donald trump's inner circle is telling on themselves confessing to their role in the ex-president's attempted coup. a few weeks ago it was former chief of staff mark meadows. he published a memoir and turned over documents revealing among other things that he was involved in discussions about a scheme to stop the certification of electors for joe biden. now the confessions are coming from peter navarro, a former trade adviser to then president donald trump. in an interview with "the daily beast" e he provides details about not keeping him in power. he worked closely with steve bannon and they plotted with many members of congress. navarro tells the daily beast, quote, we spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen including senators. at 1:00 p.m. gosar and cruz did exactly what was expected of them and that is the counting of votes. the plan would not overturn the election on its own, but their hope was to run the clock as long as possible to increase public pressure then vice president mike pence, to send the electoral votes back to six contested states and republican-led legislatures could try to overturn the results. quote, my role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases who could rely on the body of evidence that i collected to lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken. that's kind of funny. first of all, the body of evidence was bunk, but what an amazing thing to say, the legal predicate, a remarkably forthright confession. of course, things played out differently than navarro had schemed of, violence ensued and we all know what happened next although you've got to say as the crowd was violently beating comps and con cussing them and people were dying, they were delaying the vote which was the plan of navarro, bannon and all the rest. just like the scam that peter navarro and steve banion were playing and everything leading up to january 6th was based on the quote, legal predicate on the big lie that the election was stolen and the receipts that navarro was providing. the thing about that lie is that it is so broad it covers a wide spectrum. it turns out unifying all these people is useful when you're attempting to overturn lengz by having this thing called the big lie that people can put their own details into. there's the most outrageous and fringeiest wing pushing conspiracy theories and we ridicule them because they're preposterous, that range from italian satellites to switching votes and maybe george soros was involved and many of these lies as preposterous and ludicrous as they are as cringy and funny they are, they were promoted by dts's own attorney, the people who represented him including sydney powell and lynwood. >> there was and is still massive voter fraud across this country. it took all forms. it was not just the dominion machines. we have experts and a witness who have explained to us that these fraud exists in the dna of all of the software that was run by any voting system in the country. >> i challenge governor kemp to step up in front of the people and put his hand on this bible ask tell us that he did not take money from china. he did! so did brian raffensperger. >> we've already traced a lot of the money that did this back to china. we have internet white hat hackers, i think they call them who saw back doors open in the system and saw people in iran and china and hong kong and serbia and -- i don't know how many countries having influence in our election system. >> we're going to send that message to george soros. get out of our country, george soros! >> okay. i should say, just to be clear to the extent that there are fact checkable claims there, it's all bunk. lies, delusion, ridiculous. none of it is true. none of it, okay? i should tell you the companies that make the voting machines called dominion machines are suing her for defamation. the wild conspiracy theories did not catch on and they were getting laughed out of court left and right. donald trump turned to the poll workers and they were the ones stealing the election and the most prominent cases involves a woman ruby freeman and her daughter who both worked in the election office last year. freeman and moss became the targets of a slew of false accusations from president supporters who claim that they manipulated votes. another one of donald trump's lawyers rudy giuliani broad them up in testimony, he delivered to georgia state lawmakers last year. >> how can they say there's no fraud. look at that woman. look at the ballots, and nobody in the room hiding around. they look like they're passing out dope not just ballots. it is quite clear they're stealing votes. >> okay. again, totally untrue, all right? the video was deceptively edited to make it look like there was something sketchy, but there was no vote stealing going on whatsoever. there was an oddity and they were recounted and recounted and it didn't stop there. donald trump himself brought up ruby freeman no less than 18 times during his now infamous phone call to georgia's secretary of state demanding they find enough votes to overturn the election results. trump referred to freeman as a professional vote scammer, a hustler. are you sensing a theme here in the way they talk about her? a known political operative who stuffed the ballot boxes. >> ruby freeman and her daughter are suing rudy giuliani, a right-wing cable channel and a far-right conspiracy website that spread the false accusations about that that resulted in threats and people outside their door and think, that menacing visit from an emissary of the trump campaign. freeman received that visit who happened to be a one-time publicist for kanye west. a message she delivered on january 4th was that freeman was, quote, confessed to trump's voter fraud allegations or people would come to her home in 48 hours and take her to jail. >> i cannot say what specifically will take place. i just know that they will -- [ inaudible ] >> ruby freeman, of course, to her tremendous credit did not give in. she said the devil's a liar. she'd have to think about it. so you've got these crazy conspiracy theories. they're all over the internet and the right-wingers are sharing them and the president is getting them. it's the italian satellite, and it's hugo chavez and the dominions and the ballot stuffers and all of that was ludicrous on its face and also embarrassing for everyone involved. in fact, it's created legal liability for some of the people pushing those claims and then there was the laundered version. all right? it's important to see this. there was a more, let's say gentlemanly arm of the big lie and that was pioneered by josh hawley of missouri and ted cruz of texas. they were sort of wink, wink, nudge, nudge. no, what they claim was that the states were wrong to expand access to voting in the midst of a once in a century pandemic and that measures enacted to keep voters safe from a wildly infectious disease for which there was no vaccine like increased absentee voting and improper and unconstitutional efforts to steal the election from donald trump. that was the pretext. the more sophisticated version they dressed up the big lie on which they hung their objections, electoral vote and their votes for what was effectively a coup. the same goal as peter navarro and lynn wood and sydney powell and donald trump. they just have a different art being lagz. that comes courtesy of kentucky republican senator rand paul. so yesterday he tweeted this endorsement of a piece from the american conservative alleging that left-wing interests unfairly secured the race in wisconsin for joe biden and senator paul cites their argument for how that election was stolen. how to steal an election, and i'll quote how it was stolen. seating an area with heavy with potential boats with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting to complete them in a illegally and harvesting the results. >> convincing them to complete the ballot. to vote for the person you want to vote for, harvesting them and collecting them and having them to go in in a legal way. that's just the mechanism of voting. in other words, completely legal methods of increasing turnout again, amidst a pandemic that has now killed 830,000 americans and a pandemic that at that time was ravaging many areas of what's the phrase they use, heavy with potential democratic votes. of course, heavily democratic is often code for a lot of not white people. and so i've got to tip my cap to rand paul and the american conservative because it gets to the core point of the big lie. here it is all on the page. it's not crazy stories about hugo chavez or the italian satellites or someone stuffing a ballot. no, no, no. whatever the justifications there are, the lies they're to back fill, the fundamental uniting principle of the coup and the supporters of the coup and the collaborators and frankly, most of the republican party, based on well, the way they voted on january 6th in the house and polling. that principle that brings them all together whatever ridiculous factual stipulations they make is that they believe it is illegitimate for large numbers of people to vote in wrong numbers and for the wrong kinds of people to vote in representatives to run the government. everything those wrong people do with the heavily democratic areas are is illegitimate by default and definition and so because they won, they, by definition, stole the election from donald trump. jena griswald is secretary of state of the state of colorado. her job was to oversee the 2020 presidential election and she's been sounding the alarm about future elections and she's also the chair of the democratic associations of the secretaries of state and she joins me now. i want to first get your reaction to a member of the united states senate using the phrase how to steal an election in regards to what was essentially a voter turnout operation of voter education operation, an attempt to get absentee ballots in the hands of people that need it. what does it do if a democracy if someone that powerful and prominent is calling that stealing? >> thanks for having me on, chris. happy holidays. i wish it was on a happier topic, but what senator paul is doing is saying the quiet part loud. they don't want certain people to vote, and that's what extreme elected officials have been laying the groundwork for for the last two years and it's dangerous. having u.s. senators, having former presidents spout lies and gaslight the american people make it easier to pass voter suppression and make it easier to install insiders, people who do not believe in democracy and election administration and frankly could make it easier the next time they try another january 6th. >> we have a polling out today that shows a majority of republicans say they don't believe biden was legitimately elected. it has become a litmus test for folks that are running and i don't know what your possible opponent or opponents might say on this issue and the votes of the voters in colorado, but i guess the question is how do you unwind that now that it has become. they have succeeded in propagandizing this lie. >> well, we have to continue to push back. for the last two years these extreme republicans have been spreading lies and using legal avenues to suppress the right to vote. sinced beginning of this year, we've seen 500 bills to take away americans' freedom to vote. 120 bills to subvert the vote, insider threats, fake audits and death threats to election officials and it's going on and on and on. there are a couple of things that we have to do. number one, demand the 18 is the is there and as you mennoned this is playing out in secretaries of state where they deny the 2020 election and running the stakt. so voters will also have a really big job in 2022 and that's making sure that we elect people to oversee elections who believe in democracy and upholding the will of the people regardless if they like the outcome of elections. >> yeah. that part about liking the outcome of the election. to me, that's also a key part here. there are, i'm sure, lots of people if you give them a lie detector test they believe all of the nonsense that was being flung at them and that ruby freeman and her daughter were stuffing ballots. the complaint about absentee balloting, for instance. the virginia gubernatorial exaction, despite the fact same voting rules were in place as they were in the pandemic and all of the points disappeared and they don't like the person that won is the problem and that's fundamentally what it's about. >> look toward colorado. prior to 2020, more republican voters used a male ballot in two out of three general elections. male ballots don't help one side or the other and they choose their elected officials and that's watt extremists want to take away. so it's incredibly troubling what's happening. elected officials should not lie. senator paul very clearly does not believe in the right to vote for all eligible americans. that goes to the very foundation of our democracy. so we are seeing the worst attack on democracy and recent history and it's incumbent on all of us to really pay attention and demand more from elected officials and make sure we turn all these big liars into big losers in 2022. >> there is legislation that the house has passed and the senate could pass that could create federal structures and structural reforms and guarantee certain forms of access, the colorado secretary of state jena griswold, thank you very much. next year is the anniversary of when the angry trump mob tried to overturn free and fair democratic election. the washington post reports to tell the story of the insurrection from start to finish. crafting an interim report on the findings by the summer. everyone can watch those on tv and learn the depths of planning that went into the coup from the mob to the members of congress and all of the way up to donald trump himself which is a good thing because the right wants nothing more than for everyone to turn the page and move on. recognizing what the violence that day is is the subject of a letter from a democratic congressman jamal bowman of new york to president joe biden in which he calls on biden to use executive authority. in less than a year since the insurrection the republicans have begun to re-write history. a national day of healing no one can erase this traumatic event from resources to help us individually and collectively heal. congressman jamal bowman joins me now. full disclosure, my brother luke works as a senior agent and i want to make that clear for everybody watching. i sat next to you at his wedding. let me ask you this. why were you motivated to write this letter and why a day of healing? >> so, chris, i'm going to bring it home for you because i know you're from this area. a couple of weeks ago we buried a 17-year-old who was murdered outside of his high school in one part of my district and we buried another 17-year-old who died by suicide in another part of my district. that rise in homicide, suicide, children's mental health has been happening across the country and since the school year and i'm bias as a former educator. we have over 13 on,000 people dead from the pandemic and i was not in the capitol. i was in my office, but when i went to the capitol to finish certifying the election i looked into the eyes of my colleagues who were in the capitol, and what i saw was terror. what i saw was horror. so considering the complex traumas of that day, what's happening now, continued covid and four years of donald trump, the big lie, tens of millions radicalized by the big lie, we just need to pause for a moment, take a deep breath and stop being in a rush to re-start the economy and reflect on our collective mental health and well-being so we can figure out how to move forward. >> i wasn't expecting you to phrase that answer the kwa it did, and it's been a recurring theme of minot show and it seems fair to point the most obvious that you can state. obviously people are way messed up in every direction after the left 20 montts, weave seen a rise in homicides and drug overs does. we have 830,000 who passed away and everyone has this urge to normalcy or to get back to something and there seems like there's a lot of unrecognized trauma reverberating around the society ney massively destructive ways and i don't know if a single day of reckoning does anything about that, but at least as a symbolic starting point, there's something really to it about, whoa, hold up! what's going on? >> yeah. >> i ran for office partly the year after trump was elected 34 kids died within the k to 12 system in the bronx and 17 died via suicide and no one was talking about it. no one in congress, and no one in elected office that i saw was really talking about it and if we don't center our mental health as a society, and start governing in that way and thinking of legislation in that way we cannot build back better as a nation if we're only talking about the health of wall street and the health of the stock market. the reason why legislation like voting rights matter and common sense gun reform and women's reproductive health and the george floyd justice and policing act and the reason why those bills matter is because they help rebuild the public trust in government and they help our collective healing and well-being as a nation and that is what our democracy needs and that is what our economy needs regardless if you're republican or democrat. >> yeah. it seems to me, too, that it's going to be important and that will be a fraught day for a lot of reasons and we think the former president might be giving a speech and joe biden will be giving a speech and there will be a lot of emotions on that day having some kind of declaration on the national day of healing strikes me as an attempt to do some unifying. obviously, there are certain divides that can't be stretched across, but an attempt to do that in some way given how fractured things are and it also means like it makes some sense to me. >> reading about tens of millions of people who still believe that, know, biden is not a legitimate president and who are radicalized behind that belief who have said things like i am willing to bear arms to secure our -- to preserve our freedom and hearing those comments from members of congress, like, hold on a second, right? are we talking about a civil war? are we talking about a race war? are we talking about survival of the fittest and are we talking about a virus that's killing double the amount of world war ii. we're not having the right conversations and we're trying to push through this pandemic and it's the right way to go about it in my opinion and to your point about unifying and healing is a unifying concept. and it's what the country needs and it's been dealing with covid and turning on the news and watching conflict happening in congress where it looks like we're not getting anything done because we're at each other's throat. so this is the moment in time to do it and january 6th is perfect. >> congressman jamal bowman of the bronx. thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. we have much more to come, dr. anthony fauci is here and some late news tonight that senator harry reid, the former senate majority leader has died at the age of 82. that and more coming up. ♪ ♪ ♪ "how bizarre" by omc ♪ no annual fee on any discover card. ♪ ♪ ho ho ho! no annual fee on any discover card. not again. oh no. for the gifts you won't forget. the mercedes-benz winter event. get a credit toward your first month's payment on select models. aleve-x. it's fast, powerful long-lasting relief with a revolutionary, rollerball design. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it... and see what's possible. when you have xfinity, you have entertainment built in. which is kind of nice. ah, what is happening. binge-watching is in the bag, when you find all your apps, all in one place. find live sports faster just by using your voice... sports on now. touchdown irish! [cheering] that was awesome. and, the hits won't quit, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. all that entertainment built in. xfinity. a way better way to watch. what does a foster kid need from you? to be brave. to show up. for staying connected. the questions they weren't able to ask. show up for the first day of school, the last day at their current address. for the mornings when everything's wrong. for the manicure that makes everything right, for right now. show up, however you can, for the foster kids who need it most— at helpfosterchildren.com today, the u.s. set a new record high of 250,000 and up in the only marks set last january before vaccines were available and before omicron. this comes a day after the cdc updated its guidance recommending shorter isolation and quarantine time periods. yesterday when that news crossed going down from ten to five days for people who were asymptom at being, i saw reaction both online and commentators and people i knew and people in public health and it was polarized and some people reacting, yes, it's done and other people said no, this is catastrophic. the decision has inspired strong feelings and a little bit of confusion on what the actual guidance is. joining me now is dr. anthony fauci, the director of national institute of allergy and infectious diseases for president joe biden. dr. fauci, let's start with what the actual guidance is. >> okay. >> my understanding is it's five days of isolation if you're asymptomatic, but what does it mean and what if i'm asymptom atec for three? how does that cash out in real life? >> well, let's start with the completely asymptomatic first because we want to make sure that fundamental issue gets understood. the underlying purpose of taking what would normally be if i'm infected and without symptoms normally i would have to be isolated for ten days. right now because of the concern that there are so many people now and likely in the next few weeks bhol be infected by this wave of infections that we're getting with omicron, many of whom will be without symptoms or only mildly symptomatic that that might have a negative impact on our ability to maintain the structure of society, of all of the essential workers that you would need if you keep them all out for a period of ten days so the consideration and the decision on the part of the cdc was let's look and see if we can cut that in half to five days. so what happens is that you're isolated for five days and then if you're still asymptomatic at the end of that five days you can go out and do your job and re-enter society and hopefully getting functions of society normal, but you have to wear a mask. that's the fundamental matrix of the issue. the questions will arise if -- >> go ahead, please ask the question. >> that was a very honest and clarifying answer because you were talking about a policy judgment in the context of tradeoffs between different consequences. so stopping the spread of a highly communicable infectious disease is one thing that we want to do, allowing as you said society to function and obviously, you don't want everyone at the local water treatment facility to be out in quarantine with two days with none of the skilled technicians running it, for one example. >> correct. >> and i get that and i think it's a very forthright explanation, but is there any science backing up the idea that after five days of asymptoatic isolation that you're not shedding virus and contagious? >> yeah. nothing is 100% and this is when you're dealing with the dealing with the enemy of the good. the fact is that we know when you're infected, early on in infection for the next several days you have more of a likelihood to have a high level of virus and to be capable of spreading it. as you get into the second half of that ten-day period, we know that the virus in general, not for every single 100% of the people, but for most of the time, for most of the people that level of virus diminishes to the point where the cdc feels and i don't disagree with them at all, that wearing a mask is ample protection during that second half of a ten-day period. when you balance that against the importance of trying to get people back functioning in society because the alternative is something that no one wants, and that's to shut down completely, and we know that's not going to be palatable to the american public and that's something that you want to be avoiding. so how do you get people back to function in society not with a zero risk, but with a marketedly diminished risk? that is the basis for that decision on the part of the cdc. >> so two really important follow-up questions. one, i want to ask you this devil's advocate question is basically the delta ceo was asking the cdc to reduce the isolation period from ten days to five days and shortly there after that was the announcement and this notion that, like, basically you want to shove people back to work because that's what bosses want and science and risk be damned and that's who sort of plays the fiddle for america is big employers who want people back at the desk and now you'll go back to work because the cdc says so? >> that's want so at all. that was not the basis of the cdc's decision. they made a decision, i was involved in some of the early discussions about the balance that we are trying to have a good balance of preserving and protecting the public health at the same time that we don't have to have the draconian decision of shutting down the country, and i think if we had decided to shut down the country you would have a lot more devil advocates yelling at you and everybody else, chris, and you know that. >> think that's probably right. i mean, i guess i appreciate the honesty of balancing these different competing interests. let me ask one more question on testing because i think that's really the thing i've heard a lot from people is, okay, if you look at the nhs guidelines in the uk. they say if you get a rapid antigen test which they, of course, make it for free to everyone in the uk, and in the nba they have implemented a system, if six days asymptomatic, negative test you exit. the test to stay approximately see has been announced to public schools which you've played a role in, similar lines. here there is no testing requirement and i have a positive test on day six you're telling me i can go into the office? >> yeah. so the question is i guess i think the question behind that, chris, is why did not the cdc say after five days you have to get a test? and the answer that the cdc gives is that if you look at the predictive capability of a test to say whether or not you are infective is much, much more weighted towards the earlier first five days. once you get into the latter part of that, the predictive value in telling you whether or not you're infective or not, there's no real data to say that. there's very little known about that and that was the basis of the cdc decisions. >> so, wait, let me follow that a little bit because i follow this as i a journalist and not a public health expert. what you're saying is the predictive value of an antigen test, a rapid test, longer into a course of covid, in terms of saying whether you are contagious, whether you're infective diminishes over time and we don't have good data on how predictive and how accurate it is later in the course? >> that is the cdc's basis for saying that you don't necessarily have to have a test at that point. >> okay. that the value of the prediction at that latter five days diminishes such that that's not really a highly predictionive parameter, in pack, if you looked at the fda validated the test for was a prediction to whether or not you would be infactive or not. >> if you actually look at the actual approval of the tests and that wasn't one of the indications forra, proval. >> i would love to have you back soon to keep talking through this. i really appreciate your patience with us tonight. dr. anthony fauci, thank you very much. >> good to be with you. thank you, chris. >> we'll see you soon. we have received word tonight of the death of a true titan of the united states senate and the democratic party, the former majority leader harry reid, his former top adviser will join me next to discuss his legacy and it's a big one. don't go away. un. go for 10 runs! run a marathon. instead, start small. with nicorette. which can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette. aleve-x. it's fast, powerful long-lasting relief with a revolutionary, rollerball design. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it... and see what's possible. - i'm norm. - i'm szasz. [norm] and we live in columbia, missouri. we do consulting, but we also write. [szasz] we take care of ourselves constantly; it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me. i still notice a difference. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. we have some sad breaking news tonight. the former senate majority leader harry reid of nevada has died at the age of 82. reid was a truly fascinating person. he was a boxer and head of the nevada gaming commission, he served in the house all before going to the senate where he served for 30 years. he led the senate democratic caucus from 2005 to 2017, low pressuring president barack obama pass through major legislation like the affordable care act. senator chuck schumer who succeeded reid as leader of the senate democrats released a statement tonight saying, quote, harry reid was one of the most amazing individuals i've ever ed met, strong as nails, strong, but caring and compassionate and always went out of his way to help people and he joins me now. thanks for joining us on short notice. i first met you over a decade ago, i think, when you were working for senator reid, and i know his mentorship in working with him was experience, and maybe you would say what the man was like to work for. >> not just for me, but you could have countless numbers of former reid staff on here tonight who would all tell you the same thing. there was a unique ethic around harry reid. a culture of -- i remember thinking when i joined him, was this a cult? team reid philosophy and you learned almost immediately and he inspired a loyalty. where does that loyalty come from? it is the place of a selflessness that's rare of a public official and he learns and cares and thinks about the people around him and got to know their families and knew what drive them and i often think about individuals and what are their super human rates and qualities and it wasn't like his ability to do his speech and it wasn't very eloquent on the floor. it was around knowing people, knowing what makes them tick and inspiring a sense of getting the most out of them, putting them in positions to succeed and there are so many staff who can tell you regale you with stories of -- like unusual desire on his part to reach out and care for another and it's rare in the public officials these days where obviously you're driven by social media and other stuff to find humans like him who truly believed in the ethic of public service to think about others before himself. >> there's a -- he had a fascinating career and there were a few different evolutions that he under went that are key to understanding the political moment and partly because i look at you and other reid staffers who have gone on to staff other people and bernie sanders among them. you know, reid was sort of an immigration hawk when he started. he was opposed abortion and a devout mormon, from a centrist mold and he was institutionalist. he evolves over the course of his career on his substantive ideological vision and also his view of the nature of the republican party and the nature of the senate as an institution in surprising ways. a little like john paul stephens in some ways in that way where he started and where he ended up in public life is a fascinating trajectory with integrity throughout. i wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. >> in many ways he evolved with the democratic party and he was mindful and stubborn about where he started from, and he said in some sense allow yourself to evolve with the circumstances when he changed the senate rules, right? he fought and said these senate rules don't work anymore. i believe in this institution, however you have president obama's nominees stalemated, and i'll change the rules and i'll go ahead and do it. that instance exemplified harry reid which will carry through forever which was this desire to embrace the fight when the fight needed to be had. there's too often kind of this dire for bipartisanship and of course we want all those things. we want a decent relationship with each other in politics, but the purpose of politics and harry reid understood very well is to get stuff done and you remember he went through, like, grew upon in poverty and was a boxing commissioner and was almost killed in a car bomb planted by the mob. >> the mob literally tried to assassinate him because he was going after them as a gaming commissioner and there was a car bomb discovered right before he got in it, right? >> yes. he lost an eye late in life you remember, from a freak accident that cost him eyesight in one eye. he was diagnosed with cancer late in life, pancreatic cancer and the grit of the man is we just charge through and fight. no obstacles and no barriers and we will care and fight for the things that we need to get done and there's an ethic of the old school politician in him that come from hard things, we know hard things and we do hard things here. i think that's one of the lessons that i hope people take away is here was a person that evolved over time that never forgot where he came from and had principle convicts until the end and politicians should be fighting for, not for himself, but for others and was willing to evolve with the circumstances to get things done and that was his legacy. >> one more question about politics and political organizing. we live in an era where there's fake organizing and fake organizing and they don't have the structures. reid helped build this organization in the state of nevada and it was an organization of the democratic party and of the hotel workers' union, of real rank and file hotel workers fused together and it functions like a machine not corruptly, but as a machine, but there's almost nothing else like it in america, what -- and he was the one who really helped put that together. >> he often told fellow senators to care about your state democratic party that delivered democratic wins. if you look at the trajectory of nevada now you have a trifecta in the state with the democratic governor and the recognition and nevada is a blue state as you remember growing up 20 years ago that was not how we would think of nevada. it was harry reid who ushered all of that in and how did he do it? it was the fusion to use your word, fusion of the team reid loyalty and inspiring and understanding the generation of people who were good at politics, who he knew were talented and putting them in positions to succeed and old school politics, get things done, worry about the end. i remember senator read saying, why do i care if 60%, 70% or 8 on% like me? i have to win 50 plus one. all i have to do is win, get across the finish line and we're not here to have these grandiose visions of everybody in the world loving me and although i think they should and to this day i can go out and ask him. there are so many things that i'll ask him as the marker of a great and wonderful man that he was. >> just knowing a lot of people that were on as faz called him team reid. thanks so much for making time. >> thank you for giving him lift at this moment. there are parts in our hearts that will never be filled and hopefully people who serve for public office will inspire to be like the great harry reid. we have a panel here and the ink on substacks and author of wooet winners take all," the elite charade of changing the world." ellie mystal join meese now. ellie, let me start with you on reid and his legacy because you heard faz say that one of the most consequential decisions was to get rid of the filibuster for appointees and that did unblock a ton of nominees and that was wielded by mitch mcconnell and donald trump to stuff the judiciary and we should note has led to a record amount of judicial appointments in biden's first year. so it has sort of done it for both sides. i wonder what you think the legacy of that decision is? >> i think it shows that what he was just talking about is true that sometimes you have to be concerned about the end state. i think reid gets unfairly maligned and changing the filibuster rules for lower court appointees and having mitch mcconnell turn it around on him and change it for supreme court appointees and neil gorsuch, greg kavanaugh and amy coney barrett are there in a 60 votes. so people kind of blamed reid retroactively for his change that allowed mitch mcconnell to change it, which i think is dumb because the universe in which mitch mcconnell does not bend to give neil gorsuch and kavanaugh on the court simply doesn't exist. reid prestruck by changing the filibuster for court appointments. and, as you say, that is why biden and as a first-year president, has appointed more lower court justices in his first year than any other president in american history other than george washington. so, there you go. >> linda, reid obviously had a very, very long career in washington, was really like a creature of the u.s. senate in the way that fewer and fewer politicians are. i don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing. although one thing i have learned about covering the senate is knowing how the senate works confers a lot of power. and actually not a lot of senators do. harry reid and mitch mcconnell, for instance, are two people that really understand how the senate works at a deep and granular level. that really does give you an edge. >> my favorite harry reid quote was something to the effect of, someone asked him how it is he had such great success. and he said, well, i didn't have success because of my good looks or because i was a genius, i had success because i worked harder than anybody else. and i think that's absolutely true. and you're absolutely right about his command of the rules. it's something that mitch mcconnell also who, you know, was his adversary, also had very good command of the rules. but i guess i would disagree on the question of whether changing the vote on filibusters for court appointments was a good thing. i think you have to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. and i do think that it opened the door for mitch mcconnell to be able to do it for donald trump and his three supreme court justice appointments, which all of whom i supported, but i have an idea that not everyone on the panel did. >> well, to that point, to sort of zoom out for a second, i think one of the things about the evolution -- and reid was key of this, of sort of moving towards majority vote in the senate, this idea that, like, well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. that is true. but that's how democracies work. we've got -- there's 50 states in the union that function without -- i mean, i think there's like three or four that have supermajority requirements for some stuff, and most of them function with bicameral systems, majority threshold, and somehow they manage. this idea that this is sacrosanct that it absolutely has to exist in the u.s. senate is largely kind of a creation of the last 60 or 70 years. and i think if you have a commitment of small d democracy, as i know you do, there's really compelling reasons to look to get rid of that. >> yeah. and i think, you know -- >> let me go to anan first, linda, and then i'll get you. >> i think faz spoke movingly of senator reid's evolution and love of the institution. and i think part of loving an institution is having an honest relationship with it, the same way loving a person means having an honest relationship with that person. and at some point as any conscientious person would realize over the last 20, 30, 40 years in america, the senate i think started to go from somewhat quaint to being a principal obstruction in the throat of american democracy. i think today, if you had to rank the top, you know, four or five institutional features of this society that might, through a series of consequences, spell the end of the republic, the senate would be very high on this list. and, so, it's refreshing that someone who loved that institution, who was a part of it, an institutionalist, as you said, was also able to recognize that potential asphyxiation by the institution he loved. and it's kind of sad thinking about his colleagues, present senators who are very much still living, who are in that body and who don't realize that they are potentially part of, if they don't support things like changing the filibuster, changing the senate rules on various things, part of suffocating this society at large. >> yeah, it's funny that reid's evolution on that was one of the most remarkable features of him. linda, you wanted to say something. >> i just wanted to say that democracy is about a majority rule, but it is also about protecting minorities in politics, not just minorities racial and ethnic but political minorities. i worry that those who want to change the filibuster rules and get rid of the filibuster all together, particularly those who happen to be democrats going to be very disappointed the next time a republican is a president and republicans control congress, that will leave the democrats very much without any tools to stop the things they don't want from happening. >> i believe in the idea -- go ahead. >> sorry, i just want to say -- >> anon and then ellie. >> but i would love to actually see it happen. >> the filibuster is here to protect segregation. like, that's why it's here. it's here literally to protect white majoritarian rule over the emerging majority of the country. so if we want to move past white majoritarian rule, get rid of the filibuster and let people decide on their government. >> i want to go to the polling of chief justice john roberts. one thing to your point, linda, and i've seen kyrsten sinema and manchin defenders of it. trump republican house, republican senate, and then joe biden. in some ways there have been demonstrations of the fact that it's hard enough to get both houses with the majority of your achievement through. they used reconciliation, which is this weird kind of goldberg machine around the filibuster anyway. and even with a 50-vote majority aca past. it's not like you come into office, you've got a trifecta, people are just passing things. it's hard enough in america to get stuff passed, particularly big stuff that i think that's an interesting data point in the evolution of this conversation. i want to talk about another, a sort of recipient of the power of the revocation of the filibuster, which is john roberts, who's the chief justice of the u.s. court with a majority, as elie pointed out, granted to him by mitch mcconnell getting rid of the filibuster. and there was recent gallup polling that showed john roberts as basically the most trusted federal official, federal leader. he has 60% approval rating. joe biden's 43%. dr. anthony fauci is at 52%. a whole bunch of liberals with favorable opinions. and i thought nothing is more -- than this poll. >> i just, i can't understand where people have been living. john roberts is the chief architect of the assault on democracy. he was the fifth vote in citizens united which unleashed money into our politics. shelby v. holder. and the fifth vote and lead author in rucho, which was the decision that made gerrymandering nonjusticable. those are all things that are thought of by john roberts. and this is your man? this is the man that you trust? like, i honestly do not understand, and it goes to show how little transparency there is in the supreme court, how little people understand how it works and what it does, and how, quite frankly, effective john roberts has been in his own pr campaign. because he takes these votes. when he's always losing on things that he can't win anyway. so he's always, like, showing liberals some love when there's already five conservative votes, you know, against him in any event. so he's got a really good pr campaign of, like, seeming to be moderate. but as we've discussed before, chris, john roberts, his entire ideal is to bend the law towards the republican agenda as far as he can take it without breaking it. that he cares about breaking it is different. but that's his goal. >> quickly, someone called him the most effective reactionary politician of his generation. i think in many ways it's true precisely because he has gotten to do what he's wanted to do and preserved this approval rating. >> i agree with everything elie said and not just we're part this three-member salt and pepper panel, but because this is an extraordinary case of image trumping reality, and for all the reasons elie laid out so eloquently. there is a larger point to mind here about right-wingers. john roberts is the most popular right-winger in this country because he has figured out a particular art, which is how to kick a country in the groin while smiling in its face. and a lot of people on the right right now don't have that, there's a kind of rudeness and a kind of overt aggression. and i think there's something dangerous and scary in thinking about what is a presidential model of a john roberts look like? the smile, the fake institutionalism while eviscerating everything that is good about this country. >> one of the weirdest developments of my life is that the model in republican politics right now is to be a jerk ostentatiously. thank you all. that was great. appreciate it. all right. that is "all in" on this tuesday night. condolences, of course, to harry reid's family. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now with aymon in for rachel maddow. >> rachelas

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