All In With Chris Hayes, Friday, February 6th, 2015

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES
Date: February 6, 2015
Guest: Robert Reich, Josh Barro, Anthea Butler, Bob Ingle, Andrew Jarecki



CHRIS MATTHEWS, HARDBALL HOST: ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts right now.

CHRIS HAYES, ALL IN HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If this, one of these reports that literally you can
not find bad news in.

HAYES: Actual good news to report as the beast mode economy kicks in to
another gear.

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH AND CURRENT PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICAL: And
now, you`re welcome.

HAYES: Tonight, the changing political landscape for Republicans as they
search for a dark side in the Obama economy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So the headline is unemployment rate takes up to 5.7.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.

HAYES: Then, first it was vaccines, now we area actually debating the
crusades.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re basically saying the Catholic Church was the al-
Qaeda of its day.

HAYES: Brand new investigation that could finally dome Chris Christie 2016
hopes and it is the new HBO series everyone will be talking about.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What could you do with it? If he`s not -- the key is
with them.

HAYES: Tonight, my exclusive interview with the director of The Jinx.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where is he (inaudible)? What did you do with it?

HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: All right, good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. We`ve got
some huge economic news today, it`s being describe as a black buster jobs
report that latest in what now appears to be the strongest run of good
economic news in over a decade. Labor Department announced this morning
American employers added 257,000 jobs in January. All the estimates for
November and December were raised up, significantly, by a combined 147,000,
bringing the total number of jobs created in 2014 to 3.1 million.

That is the strongest annual job growth since 1999. And it`s why you`re
almost seeing almost ex-static headlines about today`s report. It`s
raining jobs. The best economy in 15 years, the job report crushes it.
And while unemployment tickled up or ticked up very slightly, turns out
that`s actually good news too. According to the Labor Department, the
unemployment rate grew a 10th of a point to 5.7 percent, mainly because
people who had given up on looking for work decided to give another shot
into labor force.

So let`s put all these in context. What does it mean for President Obama`s
record on job creation and his legacy as President during the economic
recovery? Now, look at this chart compiled by Steve Benen at MaddowBlog,
of job totaled in the 5th and 6th years of presidency, President Obama is
approaching Clinton territory, which is of course a big deal.

At a town hall today in Indiana, he took what is arguably a pretty well
deserved victory lap.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: All told, over the past 59 months, the private sector has added
about 11.8, so that`s, you know, almost 12 million new jobs, and that`s the
longest streak of private sector job growth in our history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Barack Obama presidency as our economy has slowly but surely
recovered from the financial crisis, there`s been a common refrain on the
right anybody out the quality and kinds of jobs being created.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R), MISSISSIPPI: The Obama economy is a part-time
economy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A part-time economy under President Obama.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The truth about this economy is that it`s essentially
a part-time economy...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A part-time working economy rather than having real
jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is really underscoring a part-time economy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Work rapidly converting to a part-time economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: But this chart in 538, completely disproves that claim, the jobs
added during this recovery have been overwhelmingly fulltime jobs. And
while where are concerns at the labor force participation rate, the share
of working either (inaudible) side or working or actively looking for work
remains low. As you see here, the rate on employment among (inaudible)
workers is now rising steadily, but still hast bounce back to prerecession
levels.

Probably the biggest problem with the recovery, the biggest by far I would
say, is how uneven it`s been. With the majority, in fact, by some
measures, all of the economic gains going to the wealthiest Americans while
middle class incomes from being stagnant or declined.

Today though, there are signs that too may finally be starting to turn
around. In 2014, average weekly earnings grew almost 2.3 percent, well
above the 0.8 percent inflation rate, which means real gains. They`re
still below where they should be, but the trend continue through January
with the best wage growth in six years, an encouraging sign that we`re
headed in the right direction.

I talked with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and ask him for his take
on today`s job report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT REICH, FRM. SECRETARY OF LABOR: Well I would like to think that
something really good is happening, Chris. Obviously we are in the upturn
of an economic cycle. I can`t say it`s very much about the structural
changes in the economy, but clearly we are creating more jobs over the past
year, 3.2 million new jobs. That`s as good as we have seen since the
Clinton Administration. If I do say so myself.

HAYES: And the other thing I think about that that`s key to recognize
here, there`s also strong (inaudible) with me that this could have been
happening back in 2011, had you not had this turn towards austerity partly
brought on by a Tea Party Congress and the White House kind of seeding to
their demands?

REICH: Yes. As long as the obsession was deficit reduction, it was very
difficult to create new jobs because there was not enough demand in the
economy. The other thing that`s notable here is that Republicans were
saying for years before the Affordable Care Act got implemented, "Oh, it`s
going to be a jobs killer."

Well then the Affordable Care Act came along, got implemented, and what
we`ve seen is even more a new jobs.

HAYES: Yeah, and every single part of the attack on the Obama economy,
which is predictions about jobs being killed, predictions about regulatory
burden, you know, strangling domestic energy production when we have, you
know, oil at all time low prices. I mean, if you have this record, if Mitt
Romney had this record right now, if had run in one, could you imagine the
victory laps that would be -- they would be doing about what the Mitt
Romney turnaround of the economy.

REICH: Well I don`t even want to imagine it. But, you know, the fact of
the matter is that had Mitt Romney been elected president, there would be
still austerity economic, even more deficit reduction, even more tax cuts
on the rich, even more of a burden on the middle class. And at the same
time, there would be probably no Affordable Care Act. So you probably
wouldn`t not get this much job creation.

But having said all of that, let me -- and I don`t want to rain on the
parade, but let me just say that the jobs that are being created are not
all that great. In fact, the jobs that are being created attained to pay
less than the jobs we lost in the great recession.

HAYES: We are though, and let`s just talk about this. Because this is the
key part, right? We had this recovery that wasn`t helping average people,
right? We`ve seen -- we`re stagnating wages, stagnating personal income,
we`re starting maybe to see some upper lift in wages, we`re starting to see
job creations and some sectors that really need it, things like
construction, we`re starting to see.

And the question is, can you get to a place like what we had in the late
90s where the economic boom really is doing quite a bit at the bottom of
the wage scale and creating jobs that can really sustain the kind of
pillars in the middle class life?

REICH: And that`s the big question, can we get back to the late 1990s?
And that was the only time over the past 30 years where inequality started
to actually decline because people at the bottom were in such demand,
unemployment got so low, jobs were in so scares that or people to feel the
jobs were so scares, that employers try to pay more to people in the bottom
20 percent.

Now, are we going to get there? It`s possible, but there are lot of
headwinds, economist love to talk about headwinds, because there`s a lot of
headwinds that are going to slow the economy down. For example, the dollar
is very high, relative on their currencies. It`s hard to export. A lot of
the rest of the world is slowing down. Europe is very close to recession.
Gas tag -- Gas prices are good, but that`s likely to be temporary. When
things pick up again, our gas prices are likely to go up.

So we don`t really know how solid this recovery is, as certainly in terms
of wages.

HAYES: Yeah, this is really the biggest question. It`s the biggest
question, it`s kind of how to define American politics, in the prudential
politics. And what`s huge part of what the Obama Legacy is over the next
few years is, do you see this kind of growth? Can America be a kind of
island of robust growth amidst a whole world full of economic disaster,
possibly catastrophe, possibly, you know, crisis across the world? That is
the big open question.

REICH: That`s a big open question. And let me go back to the Clinton
years for a second, because even though the economy was very, very good,
the best economy we`ve seen in the latter Clinton years, still the long-
terms structural...

HAYES: Yup.

REICH: ... problems of widening and equality and slow down of middle class
growth and stagnant wages, really were not over economy.

HAYES: That`s right.

REICH: That was a business phenomenon, not a structural phenomenon.

HAYES: That is exactly right. The people of the top have too much power
and they continue to have too much power. Until that`s solved, nothing
else get solved. Robert Reich, thank you very much.

REICH: Thanks Chris.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now since the moment he took office, Republicans have been
criticizing President Obama for his economic record. Right of the back,
they oppose a stimulus plan. They accused him of punting on the countries
debt and deficit woes and they blame him for the slow economic recovery.

Now the economy appears to be back on its feet, they`ve been attacking him,
somewhat remarkably from the left, over inequality wage stagnation. Just
this week during an economic address in Detroit, likely 2016 candidate Jeb
Bush, sounded a distinctly populous tone. Today, (inaudible), as the
evidence of a strong recovery became pretty instrumentable, there were
apparently only three accepted responses to the news.

One is Bennett, is Fox`s headline about those jobless numbers we told you
about, no mention there what it actually says about the rise, even though
labor force participation rate. Two, (inaudible), Senator Dan Coats, who`s
home state of Indiana played host to the President`s victory lap, tweeted
earlier, "As President Obama visits Indiana today, long-term unemployment
(inaudible) high at 31.5 percent."

In fact as New York Times contributor Justine Wolfers pointed out, the
actual number is 1.8 percent, slightly different. Senator Coats later
revised he`s tweet to reflect that 31.5 percent is the share of the
unemployed, not of the entire workforce who are long-term unemployed. And
then there`s a third response, which is to just ignore it.

Joining me now, Josh Barro, Domestic Correspondent for the Upshot, New York
Times and MSNBC contributor. This is striking to me, the relative emphasis
in the world of conservative, media, particularly between foreign affairs
and the economy as the economy has gotten better.

JOSH BARRO, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah. Well, I mean, does it surprise you?
It makes a fair amount of sense, Republicans have made a lot of hay (ph)
over the last six years, over the fact that the economy was not very good.
It was talking to the point that served them very well because it was true.
As the economy is improved, what`s left for them to say about, you know,
great job, you know, things look really good.

I mean, they could say someone accurately, well a lot of this is driven by
falling gas prices which is a non-policy phenomenon, that President...

HAYES: Or it is where we are in the business cycle.

BARRO: Right. And that`s actually -- I think the form the President her
is over sold for that reason, which is...

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: ... when you come out of a recession, you are suppose to have
really fast job growth. This was suppose to happen in 2010, 2011. If you
look back at 1983, 1984, coming out of 1982 recession, we were typically
creating 400,000 jobs a month, even though the population was smaller than
it is now.

When you have -- when you`re on a recession of all these people who are out
of work, you have excess capacity in the economy, you are suppose to be
able to have fast growth. So it`s great that we`re getting it now, it
could be even faster, it would have been better if it happen five years
ago.

HAYES: 100 percent, great, right?

BARRO: So, you know, yes. Enjoy this, but, you know, bragging too much
about is a little much.

HAYES: Yes, but I also do think that there`s kind of a asymmetry in
politics sometimes which is that if it`s bad, it`s the President`s fault
the economy is bad. And then if it`s good, I mean, in both cases often
it`s not attributed to the President, right?

BARRO: Right.

HAYES: Which you get it on the downside, you might as well take it on the
upside, politically, right?

BARRO: Sure. I mean, I...

HAYES: The fact of the matter is, President to legacies often just get
written by the accident of where a president happen to be on the business
cycle.

BARRO: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, if I were President, I would take as
much credit as possible for falling gas prices. And I think, you know,
this happened to Bill Clinton, he sort of wrote this...

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: ... exactly the right time. He was -- He -- You had these
inherited recession.

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: And then we came out of it with good growth and then with really
strong growth in 98, 99, driven in large (inaudible) and asset bubble.

HAYES: That then bust rate.

BARRO: That only started busting right as he was about to leave office.
So people have these wonderful memories of the Clinton administration and
the strong Clinton economy, even though it was partly built on a mirage.
And George Bush gets a lot of blame for that, even though that wasn`t his
fault that that bubble had gotten blown before he was elected president.

HAYES: There is also the case that there are sort of prove -- there are
for predictive claims made about the effects of the certainly policy
choices, like for instance, the deficit or debt as a drag on growth, or
Obamacare is a drag on growth, or Obamacare pushing people in the part-time
work, those are theoretical predictions made by politicians as kind of
ideological attacks on the President that are not being shown false,
empirically.

BARRA: Well, I wouldn`t quite say that, because a lot of those, the
effects they were going to have in late market were always very small.
When we were talking about the effects of...

HAYES: That`s fair enough.

BARRO: ... Obamacare pushing people into part-time work. There`s, you
know, there`s a real phenomenon there when you charge employers...

HAYES: Yup.

BARRO: ... the ample time employees but not part-time employees, it cost
the for part-time employees. But the likely at the margins -- yeah, the
likely effect is on the order of one in every 1,500 workers, it was a
really small effect. And even if that effect is really going on right now,
and I think that effect is very small, it can be swamped by other things,
such as falling gas prices leading to the creation of a lot of jobs and
making the Obamacare effect look like just a tiny bit of noise in the
system.

You see this with a lot of stuff, Republicans now, one talking point I`ve
been hearing is at the end of extended unemployment benefits has driven the
job growth of 2014, the taking away unemployment benefits made people more
energized to look for work...

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: ... and created a lot of jobs. There`s an economic working paper
out there that says that`s a fair amount of play on the right. Again,
unemployment benefits do have really...

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: ... incentive benefit -- incentive effects.

HAYES: Because right now they`re...

BARRO: Some (inaudible) swamped by a lot of other stuff that`s happening.

HAYES: Right, exactly. Yeah. Josh Barro, always a pleasure. Thank you.

BARRO: Thank you.

HAYES: All right, why? Why? You might be asking yourself, are the
crusades suddenly on the news. I will explain ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Tonight, both U.S and Jordanian officials are advising caution
against claims made by ISIS, that an American hostage, a 26-year-old woman
has been killed in Syria following a coalition airstike. Kayla Mueller, a
humanitarian aid volunteer from Arizona was taken hostage by ISIS in August
of 2013, near the Syrian city of Aleppo.

She is believed to be the last American hostage held captive by the group.
And today, ISIS claimed that Mueller was killed in the city of Raqqa,
buried in the rabble of a building hit by Jordanian aircraft. Jordan has
deployed its air force to strike ISIS targets in an effort to avenge the
death of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by ISIS fighters.

But as NBC reports the Pentagon says there were no U.S. or Jordanian combat
missions near that city. Gun camera video released by the Defense
Department, shows the raids take place 140 miles away. U.S. Special Forces
attempt to rescue captives held by ISIS in July, but Mueller and her fellow
American hostages had been moved.

The other Americans held with here, James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Abdul-
Rahman Kassig were all beheaded. Mueller has never been shown by ISIS in
front of a camera, and her family has previously asked news organization
not to identify her by name, that is until today.

Mueller is and was or is by all account a remarkable human being, committed
to helping victims of Syria`s civil war, as she explained in this video
posted two years before she was taken hostage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLA MUELLER, ISIS HOSTAGE: I am in solidarity with the Syrian people. I
reject the brutality and the killings that the Syrian authorities are
committing against the Syrian people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: She was a friend to the Syrian people. She put her life on the
line to aid them. Tonight, Mueller`s family and the rest of the world
await news of her fate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: There is an annual even in Washington dating back in 1953 called
the National Prayers Breakfast, sponsored by a politically connected and
secretive ministry called the Fellowship. It attracts political religions
and cultural leads from around the world. Including this year, the Dalai
Lama and former NASCAR Darell Walltrip.

Every President since Dwight Eisenhower has attended the breakfast.
Yesterday, President Obama took the podium and delivered remarks, I though
were pretty unremarkable and uncontroversial. Overall, the speech was a
call for the faithful to be humble before god and rejects the certainty of
violent extremism.

There was one passage that sent the conservative outrage machine into
overdrive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people
committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country,
slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: In response to that passage, potential 2016 Republican presidential
candidate Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal release statements to crying the
President`s comments. And former Virginia GOP Governor, Jim Gilmore call
the President`s remarks, in not joking here, "The most offensive I`ve ever
heard a president make in my lifetime."

At Drudge Report, right-wing bloggers and commentators outside a field day,
but no one got more mileage out of the comments than the talking heads over
at Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the President, 48 hours after we saw that
Jordanian men burned alive, for some reason though it was important to
remind the world about the evils that Christians committed 1,000 years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, it`s inexplicable to me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He wanted to bring Christianity into fight. And I
want...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Christians are evil too. Who launched the
crusades? The Catholic Church. So he`s basically saying the Catholic
Church was the al-Qaeda of it`s day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said, "You know what? Yeah, ISIS is bad. But you
know what? Christians were just as bad as ISIS was a couple of centuries
ago." He`s making excuses it seems for ISIS`s behavior. He`s seem to be
saying, "We started it."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: In fact, the President was not doing any of that, you know, calling
Christianity evil or defending ISIS, which he called a brutal vicious death
cult, which seems about right. He`s message, if you actually listen to the
full speech, it`s pretty clear. Religion has tremendous value, it has too
often, over the years, across many phases been used to justify terrible
acts. And not faith is immune from that tendency. And yes, that includes
what happen in the crusades, as discussed in this 2012 History Channel
Documentary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE LOADES, HISTORIAN: (inaudible) deceived this idea, it`s not a sin if
you kill non-Christians, if you kill non-believers in our faith. And so he
made this deal that if you go and fight in the holy land, you will be
forgiven all your past sins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now, you wouldn`t know this if you just listen to (inaudible) in
Fox News. The President`s speech was not focused on the hordes of
Christianity. Here`s what he said, immediately after, the next, the very
next sentence after that passage that got conservatives (inaudible) about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Michelle and I returned from India, an incredible, beautiful
country, full of this magnificent diversity, but a place where, in past
years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by
other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me now Anthea Butler, she`s Professor of Religious studies
at the University of Pennsylvania. All right, so I don`t think I wan to
litigate the wisdom of the crusades in a short cable news segment. I`m
seeing some contrarian hot cakes online today about how great the crusades
were, so let`s just put those aside.

But the general principle that during -- keep in mind, the President said,
during the crusades and inquisition people did horrible things in the name
of their faith. That is 100 percent true historical claim, right?

ANTHEA BUTLER, RELIGIOUS STUDIES PROF. UNIV. OF PA: Absolutely. I mean,
Chris, this is just history, it`s always mind bugling to me that the people
who were saying these things would make an F in any high school or
university classroom, because this is what people are thought.

You`ve know that the crusades get started because Christian started to go
take back the Holy Land, and everybody is fighting each other, or the
inquisition where you do terrible things to people because you want them to
say things about the catholic faith he want or taking over the Americans by
conquistadores, drowning at a Baptist, you name it.

Christians have done lots of terrible things in the name of religion.

HAYES: It does, so -- I mean, the other thing I would say here is you
don`t have to go back to the crusades, I mean, in the war in Bosnia --
Herzegovina, I mean, people did horrible things to each other because they
were on the wrong side of ethnoreligious divide.

In Northern Ireland, people murdered each other very recently because
they`re (inaudible) on a linguistic and religious divide. This is not an
uncommon think in the history of human beings on the planet, religiously
motivated violence.

BUTLER: No it is not. And I think it`s really disingenuous and -- yeah,
I`m sorry, just rather lame for them to claim that this is the worst thing
ever that a president has ever said. Is the one -- a true thing, it is
just history.

But when you are as invested as some on the right are about rewriting the
history of America, rewriting Christian history, you run into people who
are going to have these really horrible ideas that are changing what has
happen in lots of religious traditions.

And I think in this particular case, you can`t privilege Christianity over
Islam, because all of these religions have violence within them. And the
violence happens either because people believe in (inaudible) that`s
telling them, maybe we should do this or they are using religion for
political and their social needs.

HAYES: And it comes down to this insistence right now, this drum beat
about in having to name the enemy as Islamic terrorism, Islamic
fanaticisms, that the specialness and distinctness of Islam, the
President`s point seemed to be that throughout history, different religious
in different time, in different propensities that are, you know, played to.

BUTLER: Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the things that people are
missing here is that, if you play into ISIS`s hand or Diach, like some of
us call it, it`s basically what you want that they want you to do...

HAYES: That`s right.

BUTLER: ... they want you to declare a holy war, they want you to come
after them. Because it`s going to make them martyrs, you know, we just
make more martyrs and then this thing continues at infinitum.

HAYES: Yeah.

BUTLER: So I really think that, you know, the rhetoric needs to be retched
down.

HAYES: It takes two sides to make a proper crusade. Anthea Butler...

BUTLER: Absolutely.

HAYES: ... thanks you very much.

BUTLER: Thank you.

HAYES: The Senator who said Guantanamo detainees could "Root in Hell,"
ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM COTTON, (R) ARKANSAS: In my opinion, the only problem with
Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now.
We should be sending more terrorist there for further interrogation, to
keep this country safe. As far as I`m concern, every last one of them can
root in hell. But as long as they don`t do that and they can root in
Guantanamo Bay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Senator Tom Cotton, Republican for Arkansas, a newly minted member
of the Senate Armed Services Committee laid out his case against closing
Guantanamo Bay yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COTTON: Now, let`s look at the propaganda value, how many detainees are at
Guantanamo Bay on September 11th, 2001?

BRIAN MCKEON, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY:
Zero.

COTTON: How many were there in October 2000 when al-Qaeda bombed the USS
Cole?

MCKEON: Zero.

COTTON: Or that 1998, when they bomb their embassies?

MCKEON: The facility was not open before 2002, Senator.

COTTON: 1993, in the first World Trade Center bombing?

MCKEON: The same answer.

COTTON: 1979 when Iran took over our embassy?

1983 when Hezbollah bombed our embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon? The
answer is zero.

MCKEON: Correct.

COTTON: Islamic terrorists don`t need an excuse to attack the United
States. They don`t attack us for what they do, they attack us for who we
are. It is not a security decision, it is a political decision based on a
promise that the president made on his campaign. To say that it is
security decision based on propaganda value that our enemies get from it is
a pretext to justify a political decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now Senator Cotton is by all accounts pretty smart guy, definitely
well credentialed -- a Harvard law graduate, an Iraq and Afghanistan war
veteran. His arguments seemed to lack fundamental logic. First, the idea
that terrorists were being recruited before Guantanamo Bay, therefore it`s
a pretext to say Guantanamo should be shut down because its existence
recruits more terrorists, it`s a bit like saying that drivers were crashing
cars without being drunk and therefore it`s a pretext to say drunk driving
should be stopped because it causes more crashes.

It doesn`t make sense.

Second, his contention there are too many empty beds in Guantanamo right
now, of the 122 inmates still there, 54 have been cleared for release but
are still stuck in prison. These are, among them, people who very likely
have never done anything wrong, who were misidentified or sold to captors
who we`ve imprisoned for over a decade.

People, Cotton says, we should keep locked away to spare us the risk that
someone in the future might turn against us. And I would note that that,
itself, is a logic of eternal internment. And it is offensive at its roots
to our constitution and our founders` very conception of liberty.

And finally, Senator Cotton`s his final point that when it comes to
terrorists every last one of them can rot in hell, but as long as they
don`t they can rot in Guantanamo Bay, well, a lot of them have tried to get
out of Guantanamo Bay by killing themselves so that they can rot somewhere
other than this planet.

As a lawyer of one of the Guatanamo detainees pointed out today, his client
is subjected to solitary confinement, daily tube feeding through his nose,
and violent cell extractions all without ever having been charged with a
crime.

So for his client, Senator Cotton, Guantanamo is hell.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Remember when people said that Bridgegate was over, old news,
settled in the past -- not so fast. It`s not simply the U.S. attorney`s
office has yet to wrap up its Bridgegate investigation, which could lead to
indictments of former Christie staffers, it`s that once a federal
investigation is up and running other possible issues can get uncovered.

So today we learned new subpoenas have reportedly been issued looking into
the travel records of former Port Authority Chairman David Samson, the man
appointed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has had close ties with
the governor since chairing Christie`s transition team when he was elected
governor in 2009.

Here are the new key points of the new inquiry, according to the
(inaudible) Record, from September 6, 2012 to April 1, United Airlines
operated a flight that went from Newark Liberty Airport to Columbia
Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina. The nonstop flight was available
for 19 months. Now, that alone obviously would be innocuous.

Here is the problem, the airport in South Carolina was, according to the
record, quote, about 50 miles from a home where Samson often spent weekends
with his wife, and United halted the nonstop route on April 1 of last year
just three days after Samson resigned under a cloud.

OK, fine, interesting circumstantial details -- flight from Newark to South
Carolina, exists, then it gets stopped when Samson resigns, could be a
coincidence.

It gets worse. According to the record, quote, "Samson referred to the
twice a week route with a flight leaving Newark on Thursday evenings and
another returning on Monday mornings as the chairman`s flight," one story
said.

"Federation aviation records show that during the 19 months United offered
the non-stop service, the 50-seat planes that flew the route were, on
average, only about half full."

The spokeswoman for Samson would not comment to the publication, nor would
the office of U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman which is reportedly issuing the
subpoenas, nor would Christie`s office comment.

However United Airlines told the Record, quote, "United has received
subpeonas for information and is cooperating. United has no further
comment."

During David Samson`s tenure as chairman of the Port Authority, United
Airlines was, of course, in regular negotiations with both the Port
Authority and the Christie administration over a variety of issues such as
whether to extend United Airlines service to Atlantic City.

While United Airlines began flights to and from Atlantic City in April last
year, it pulled out last December just eight monts later.

Joining me now syndicated political columnist from Gannett Newspaper, Bob
Ingle, author of "Chris Christie: The Inside Story of his Rise to Power."

The big thing here is that you`ve got a U.S. attorney looking at Samson,
and we have said all along for over a year Samson is the key to all of
this. Do you agree?

BOB INGLE, GANNETT NEWSPAPERS: I do.

There is a theory about that what is going on here is Samson is about 75
years old and he`s had a long and distinguished career. He was, in fact,
attorney general of New Jersey at one time.

The theory is that if they get enough and they can scare him, he may tell
them what they want to know about certain other political types.

HAYES: well, who do you mean by that?

INGLE: Well, we all know we`re talking about Chris Christie.

HAYES: Right. I mean, the idea...

INGLE: And maybe other people.

HAYES: Samson knows a lot of stuff.

INGLE: He does.

HAYES: And we now have concern -- I mean, the reporting is pretty clear,
right? I mean, we`re a year -- you know, 13 months out from the sort of
initial brouhaha over this -- the time for traffic in Fort Lee. There`s a
lot of reports.

I mean, we know there is an active investigation happening in U.S.
attorney`s office in Newark. This is further evidence of that. We know
they`ve got a bunch of people that they`ve been looking at, talking to,
interviewing.

I mean, at some point you`ve got to imagine some shoe is going to drop,
right?

INGLE: Well, I would think so and that is one of the questions people keep
asking. Well, when is the U.S. attorney, Fishman going to do anything?
Well, he`s known for taking his time and dotting his Is and crossing his
Ts. He doesn`t seem to be in a particular hurry. I think he wants to get
it right.

HAYES: This has been a week from hell for Chris Christie. He starts out
he is in England, he`s doing this sort of foreign policy trip. He starts
out with the vaccination thing, which blows up in his face. He`s got to
walk that back. He
has got a new criminal investigation that was reported yesterday having to
do with the possibility of quashing investigations and subpoenas for
politically connected people, that`s just an investigation that`s been
confirmed.

And then you`ve got this news today.

What has this week been like for Christie`s chances as a Republican
presidential candidate?

INGLE: I had a column in Gannett papers today and online that`s saying if
he can take back three days, it would probably be these three days, and
then this United thing came up and I think I should have said if he could
take back this
week.

What is happening, I think, is that the people who had this image of
Christie as this guy who is above all of the corruption, this guy who is a
regular sort of fellow, who`d eat a cheesesteak on the boardwalk, is not
really who they thought he was, that he is more or less politics as usual.
And I think, that is hurting him with his fan base.

HAYES: Bob Ingle, thank you very much.

INGLE: You bet.

HAYES: All right, are you, dear viewer, looking for the next version of
the podcast Serial, a new six part series is set to premiere Sunday night
on HBO. It`s a true crime tale with twists and turns and I`ve seen a few
episodes, it`s amazing. I want to talk to the director ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AKON, RAPPER: Hey, check it out, Kurdistan, how are you doing, man? This
is
your boy Akon. And, yes, I`m so excited to be there to visit that 8,000-
year-old city to perform live at the Hariri Stadium in March. So make sure
you`re all be there, man. I`m telling you, you will not regret it, let`s
go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Hello, Irbil. Hip hop star Akon says he will hold an anti-ISIS
charity concert in the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan next month. As
Newsweek reports, proceeds from the concern will support families of
Kurdistan`s unofficial military, the Peshmerga, who are currently fighting
quite successfully I might add against Islamic state militants.

This is a very cool thing to do, a noble gesture. But, I would say,
consider yourself warned, Kurdistan. As The Washington Post notes, Akon
has been involved in a series of international incidents. He`s been banned
from entering Sri Lanka after offending Buddhists with a video showed a
risque poll party with a Buddha statue in the background, caused a major
uproar after he was accused of simulating sex on stage with a teenaged girl
in Trinidad and Tobago.

So that guy is putting on a concert for the Peshmerga.

But here`s the thing, should any ISIS fighter think they could just show up
Akon`s charity event and taunt him, this is pretty much what they can
expect.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AKON: Now we can start the show. You all with me?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFEID MALE: One thing was very telling that Bob said, he said all
of my life I`ve had more money than I could spend and it didn`t make me
happy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She talked on the telephone with her husband, then she
vanished and no one has seen Kathleen Durst since.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Durst was wanted for murder in Texas, was a suspect for
murders in Los Angeles and Westchester County New York.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He belongs to one of the richest families in New York
City.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Might be a little eccentric.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think Bob is very smart. I mean, he`s managed to
get away with three murders.

(BEGIN VIDOE CLIP)

HAYES: Robert Durst, or Bob, is the scion to one of New York City`s most
prominent real estate families. The Durst Organization built the Bank of
America tower, the Conde Nast building and most recently the Freedom Tower,
possibly the most famous skyscraper in the country.

But Robert has always been an outsider in the family. He`s also been
connected to three murder disappearances over the last 30 years. The first
in 1982 when his wife Cathy went missing. She is now presumed dead --
Durst who is a prime suspect at the time was never charged.

Then, almost two decades later, Susan Berman, who police wanted to question
about Cathy`s disappearance turned up dead in Los Angeles, a gunshot to the
back of the head.

Once again, Durst was a suspect and never charged.

A year later, a fisherman in Texas found Durst`s neighbor Morris Black`s
torso floating in the Galveston Bay. Durst was charced with murdering and
dismembering the 71-year-old. He cops to the dismembering, but not the
murder.

Durst said that he killed Black in self-defense and then panicked, chopped
up his body and dumped it into the bay.

After skipping bail, he was arrested in Pennsylvania for shoplifting a
sandwich with $500 in his pocket.

In 2003, he was acquitted of Black`s murder after the jury bought his self-
defense story.

Robert Durst has never spoken public about any of any of that until now. A
fantastic new HBO documentary miniseries titled Jinx: the Life and Deaths
of Robert Durst premieres this Sunday 8:00 p.m. with Robert Durst speaking
out for the first time. And I can say that after watching the first two
episodes, it is going to be a huge hit.

The series aims through interviews with Durst himself, friends and families
to answer one huge question: is Robert Durst a murderer or the most unlucky
man
alive?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was having a late afternoon dinner party for my
family, and Cathy really wasn`t invited, but when Cathy called me that
morning and said I need to get out of here, I`m not going to tell my best
friend no.

Everybody was getting along and everybody was enjoying, you know, it was
just a nice evening.

And I can remember very clearly the telephone calls and Bobby insisting
that Cathy come home. And Cathy being visibly shaken after the phone
calls, she went out and she warmed up her Mercedes. She came back in and
she said I`m leaving now.

So we stood on the front porch and she said to me, Gilberta, promise me if
something happens you`ll check it out. I`m afraid of Bobby. And I just
said, Cathy, of course, you can count on me.

It didn`t even register that she was telling me that for some dreadful
reason, I just didn`t get it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: All right, next, my interview with the series director Andrew
Jarecki who sat down with Robert Durst for more than 20 hours. Stick
around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW JARECKI, DIREDCTOR: If you had him sitting here, what would you say
to him?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What did you do with her? Because the key is with
him. Where is she? What did you do with her?

JARECKI: I didn`t meet him right away. I heard about him, that he was
courting her and she was very swept off of her feet is the way I like to
describe it. You know, he just came on like Prince Charming and she was
basically Cinderella.

ROBERT DURST: She thought I was good looking in my a little way, cute
or whatever it was. And she was very outgoing and social, and got along
with
people real good. It was perfect. Because I don`t get along with people,
most people don`t get along with me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: All right, this weekend, a new weekly documentary series "Jinx: The
Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," debuts on HBO, examines the life of a man
born into one of the most powerful real estate families in the country,
later connected to three murder disappearances. I sat down with director
Andrew Jarecki.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: So, first of all, I`ve watched the first two episodes, they`re
phenomenal. And they`re riveting. So congratulations, it`s really -- it
feels new, it feels like some of new genre.

JARECKI: It`s a new -- it feels that way to me, too.,

HAYES: Yeah, like, something that moves out past the border of true crime
into something else.

JARECKI: Yeah, and even the format of it, you know, we started making this
thing -- we made this other movie first. It was a narrative feature, then
Bob Durst reached out to me, so I thought well, now I`m making an
interview. I don`t know what it`s going to become.

HAYES: Right, so let`s go through that story, right? Because -- so this
is a crazy story that -- of the Durst brothers and Bob Durst and this
family and who he is. You start by making a feature fictional film based
on his story. Tell me about how that came about, why you chose to do that,
what that was like.

JARECKI: Well, about ten years ago, I thought the subject of Bob Durst
would be interesting. He is a very unusual character because he`s
enormously complicated. He started out in this in this very luxurious
life. He was a young man born into tremendous wealth, was sort of the sign
of this giant real estate family in New York. And somehow 70 years later,
we find him in a $300 a rooming house in Galveston, Texas, disguiasd as a
mute woman with his neighbor lying dead on the floor.

This was a trajectory that really fascinated me. And I thought how do yuo
start here and end up there.

So, we started to write a film about him and concentrating a lot on his
relationship with a wife, this beautiful girl named Cathy McCormick, who he
married, who was really she was from a very different world. She was from
a modest family, Irish Catholic background in Long Island. They were
together for about ten
years and then she disappeared. So 1982, this big mystery arises.

And I grew up in West Chester, a couple towns away from Scarsdale where Bob
grew up and it always interested me that this young man had gone through
such a strange series of events in his life.

And then 20 years later, the West Chester County district attorney takes
another look at that case, for the first time considering the possibility
that Bob might have killed his wife. And when she starts looking into it,
they discover this witness that nobody had ever spoken to. And they said
we have got to talk to that witness. They go to find that witness, she is
found murdered.

So 20 years after the initial disappearance of the wife, there is a new
person who is murdered.

And then that case goes to sleep for awhile.

A then about a year later a body washes up on the shore in Galveston Texas,
and they trace this dismembered body back to the same person Robert Durst.

So he...

HAYES: Robert Durst, who we just say, is found in a car, connected to the
address that was found washed up with the body, with a bow saw in the back
seat of the car.

JARECKI: That`s right, he had a bow saw in the car with him.

HAYES: And the police have just found a dismembered body, that is not
open/shut but that is pretty bad.

JARECKI: I mean, there`s a sort of sense of entitlement that Bob has, you
know, so that he has this disarming level of honesty. And ultimately, he
will say to you, well, that was the bow saw that I used to dismember my
neighbor. He is very frank about the things that he is frank about.

You know, people concern themselves with things that he says that maybe
turn out not to be true, but he is disarmingly honest about a lot of things
that you or I would never consider to be things that we would give away if
we could imagine being in his situation.

HAYES: Right.

So you make this -- the `82 disappearance of his wife, which is huge --
it`s the cover of tabloids -- it`s a huge story. You make this film,
fictional film. He reaches out to you. This is a guy who is estranged
from his family, his brother is in the New York Times just a week ago
saying -- or two weeks ago saying he is worried that Bob is going to try to
kill him. He is a guy that`s been connected or associated with three
disappearances and two murders.

So what -- how do you understand this relationship?

JARECKI: Well, the story -- I mean, we had made this narrative film. Ryan
Gosling was playing a character based on Robert Durst and Kirsten Dunst,
his wife. And we felt it would be important to reach out to the real Bob
Durst. He`s out there. He`s a living person, we thought it would be
respectful to ask him if he wanted to weigh in in any way.

And so we reached out to his very clever Texas lawyer Dick DeGarin (ph) and
we said we`re making this film would he be interested. And he said, you
know, Bob is a very private guys. He is probably not going to want to
participate. And so they decline politely.

But then a week before the movie came out in movie theaters, I get a phone
call out of the blue from Bob Durst saying I`ve heard good things about the
movie I`d like to see it.

I arrange for him to see the movie. He calls me three or four minutes
after the movie finishes and he says, I want you to know I liked the movie
very much. I cried three times. And I think we should talk. You know
more about Bob Durst than anybody.

HAYES: And you then enter into a relationship that, I don`t know what`s
the best -- like Errol Morris (ph) and Donald Rumsfeld? Or, I mean...

You are a documentarian, but you`re -- this is in some ways an authorized
biography. I mean what is this?

JARECKI: Well, I think it was very clear that it was not going to be Bob`s
story, t was not going to be an evening -- it wasn`t dinner theater with
Bob Durst, you know, it was going to be unique in that Bob Durst was going
to talk to us for the first time ever. But at the same time he knows the
kind of deep dive that we do, you know, the things that we worked on in
Capturing the Friedmans or other things.

We are sort of obsessional about our research.

So, if you wanted to do a kind of puff piece about yourself, you are not
going to call me, you would call somebody else.

So I knew that he was prepared for us to do the kind of work that we were
going to do. So, in the end he is a voice, but there are all the voices in
this story.

HAYES: Is -- what is your takeaway from this story? I mean...

JARECKI: Well, you know, there are so many angles to it, because I -- you
know, still this morning I got an e-mail from Bob Durst because he read
something that his brother planted in the New York Post and he wanted to
respond to it. and he is very funny and very clever. You know, he wrote
me a note saying well obviously Doug -- DD -- he calls his brother Doug
Durst who is the chairman of this giant organization, you know, and this is
not like some local real estate family, these guys built the Bank of
America tower, and the Conde Nast building and they just built the Freedom
Tower on the World Trade Center site, which you have a picture of on your
New York skyline behind you.

You know, this is a unique situation where you have a family like this
exposed in this way, and Bob says -- he says well my brother said this and
he said this -- this is ridiculous. And he says, by the way, it looks like
Doug Durst is not going to be very excited about the series. You should
probably call up HBO and tell them that, you know, maybe they should give
him a refund on his HBO monthly fee.

He has a tremendous sense of humor about it. And he recognizes that he`s
seen as a kind of burlesque figure. And this may be the chance that he has
to really tell a story that`s a much, much deeper story.

HAYES: Well, thank you. And congratulations. It`s really, really
fascinating.

JARECKI: Thanks. I appreciate your watching it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: All right, that is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show
starts now.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.
END

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