All In With Chris Hayes, Monday, February 23rd, 2015

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES
Date: February 23, 2015
Guest: Amy Klobuchar, Rebecca Traister, Rembert Browne, Jason Bailey,
Glenn Greenwald


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN.

GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: I think the president and the mayor
can speak for themselves.

HAYES: Taking a page from Sarah Palin, Scott Walker refusing to
answer easy questions from the lamestream media.

Tonight, Michael Steele and Howard Dean on the first media fire storm
of 2016.

Then, al Shabaab joins the propaganda arms race, threatening mall
attacks in America. But should anyone take the bait?

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar joins me live.

Plus, the story of a climate denying scientist who forgot to let
everyone know he was funded by fossil fuel interest.

And, the politics of Oscar.

DONALD TRUMP, BUSINESSMAN: It was a great night for Mexico, as usual.

HAYES: An ALL IN Oscar wrap-up you just have to see.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don`t have to say it.

HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.

Wisconsin governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott
Walker, who is facing major blowback for his unwillingness to say whether
he believes President Obama is Christian or loves his country, today met
with the president himself at the White House. A sit down that Walker
described as, quote, "a good meeting."

Walker was at the White House in conjunction with the annual winter
gathering of the National Governors Association in Washington, and on
Saturday, he was asked once again if he wanted to repudiate Rudy Giuliani`s
comment made at a close door dinner last week with Walker, that the
president does not love America.

Once again, he punted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: I think the president and the mayor can speak for themselves.
I know I know America and I know there`s people all across the political
spectrum, from Republican to Democrats, who certainly do, but that`s
something that the mayor and president have to talk about. They certainly
can comment on themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Though, the 2016 campaign is still in its infancy, it has
already been a roller coaster for Walker who has rocketed up the standings
after a wildly praised speech in Iowa last month, before falling back to
earth after a series of what appeared to be embarrassing gaffes in which he
failed to answer what seemed to be simple, non-controversial questions. Do
you accept the theory of evolution? Does the president love his country?
And is the president a Christian?

If Walker had just answered yes, yes and yes, you know, those aren`t
very hard. There is no story.

Instead, he has punted over and over. As this weekend, if the
president is Christian, Walker responded, I don`t know, telling reporters,
quote, "You`ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven`t had
a conversation with about that."

Essentially, Scott Walker appears to be claiming he can`t comment on
somebody`s religion unless he had discussed it with them first, which
presumably means if you would have asked him, say, is the pope Catholic, he
had to take a pass. Walker has embraced punting so unapologetically, he
even acknowledged he was punting when he declined to discussion evolution
earlier this month in London.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: For me, I`m going to punt -- I`m going to punt on that one as
well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, really?

WALKER: That`s a question a politician should not be involved one way
or the other by that. So, I`m going to leave that up to you and --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any British politician right or left would laugh
and say of course evolution is true.

WALKER: To me, I said, it`s just one of those where I`m here to talk
about trade, not to pontificate on other issues.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: There is another possibility here, that Scott Walker`s punting
isn`t a gaffe at all, but actually part of the strategy designed to endear
him to the Rush Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party. Evidence for that
theory comes in the form of a fundraising letter Walker sent out Sunday,
attacking the small, petty and pale ideas that the gotcha headline writers
for the liberal media, L and M both capitalized, want to talk about.

He is also reportedly planning to bring up his media detractors and
their gotcha questions in remarks tonight to a Christian media convention
in Nashville, Tennessee.

Walker seems to be positioning himself as the only potential GOP
presidential candidate who can bring together the Republican establishment
and his base, while his punt early, punt often strategy maybe satiating the
far right, it won`t win over an establishment that wants a candidate who
can at the very least offer simple answers to simple questions.

Joining me now, MSNBC political analyst Michael Steele, former
chairman of the Republican National Committee, and MSNBC contributor Howard
Dean, former Vermont governor and former chairman of the Democratic
National Committee.

Good evening, gentlemen. Good to have you both.

MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey.

HAYES: Michael, let me start with you.

STEELE: Sure.

HAYES: What is going on here? The two theories, he`s doing this on
purpose. The other is, he`s kind of bumbled his way into it and he is
reverse-engineering a strategy around it after he did it.

STEELE: I think it`s a little bit of both. I think it is -- this is
a reflection of what happens when you have early handlers around you that
are trying to isolate and insulate and protect a candidate who`s not even
announced for office. And so, you sort of get into this vortex and you
wind up sort of spinning out of control a little bit. And I think that`s
what`s happened here.

Look, Marco Rubio says it should have been a lay up. Just answer the
question and move on. So, at the end of the day, that`s what should have
happened.

Look, I can take exception. Why are you asking me questions about
evolution and all of this, you know, I`m a governor of a state doing X, Y,
and Z? But that`s because the conversation largely in certain circles
within the party has denigrated to that. So, now, every candidate on some
point to ask that.

You know, I would love to hear Democrats and maybe Hillary can talk
about how Joe Biden puts his hands on the secretary of defense`s wife`s
shoulders a little icky, but that`s not where we are.

(LAUGHTER)

STEELE: This is the space we`re in now and Republicans have got to
give pass this and move to the substance of the argument against this
administration and potentially Hillary.

HAYES: Michael, I like that response, and even the parenthetical that
was ably put in there about Joe Biden and Secretary Carter`s wife. I mean,
hey, look, that is a legit question to ask Hillary Clinton, right?

STEELE: Yes.

HAYES: I mean, the problem for Republicans right now is unlike
Hillary Clinton who I think is making the calculation that she has the
field to herself and doesn`t have to do all these public events, they all
have to talk to the press all of the time because they`re competing for
oxygen. So, they`re getting asked things.

And, Howard, I sort of wonder if you have any sympathy as a former
candidate yourself, as a person on the receiving end of the so-called
gotcha questions for the idea this is essentially a game of gotcha.

HOWARD DEAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it is a game of gotcha. And my
view after I went through it is, look, this is the most important office in
the world. If you can`t survive a little gotcha from the press which I
grant is very unattractive and makes you mad as a candidate, what are going
to do when Vladimir Putin demands Alaska back? So, this is all just part
of the deal, right? We`ve got to put up with it. I mean, you better be
tough enough to figure out.

You know, I always thought that Scott Walker was a rookie and he was
in over his head as governor and I can`t imagine him at president. I hope
I don`t ever have to. This is an example of that.

He doesn`t have an inner compass. What he`s doing is catering. And I
agree with Michael. This is some of both. Some of it, he`s been gotcha`d
and some of it, he`s catering to the right wing.

The trouble with that is he`s going to have the same problem that Mitt
Romney did. He`s going to say some things that are hard to live down
because the average American voter wants to know they want to know that he
thinks he respects the presidency and you can`t respect the presidency if
you think he is not a Christian, and he was born in Kenya, and all of this
other crazy crap. He is now catering to the crazy wing in the Republican
Party. That`s great in the primary but it`s going to come back and bite
him in the general election.

HAYES: Yes, I mean, we should note that he hasn`t been asked --

DEAN: It`s also going to make him -- if he`s not careful, he`s going
to be unavailable for vice president. Now, I think he could beat Jeb Bush,
but I also think he doesn`t want, he doesn`t want to go too far out there.
He`s not going to be accepted on the ticket at all.

HAYES: Well, I should note, A, you mention the Kenya thing, he has
not been asked that, but, Michael, my sort of dream of this is a thought
experiment in which you ask him increasingly ludicrously obvious questions
so that you get to the point you`re like, Governor Walker does the earth
revolve around the sun?

STEELE: Right.

HAYES: Right. And ask the non-political ones. Come on, give a yes -
-

(CROSSTALK)

STEELE: Exactly, Chris, that is the unfortunate part of where we are
right now. I would like to see us move beyond that because I think the
substance of what these governors have done in their states is worthy of
the debate and that`s what they need to get to.

HAYES: OK. Let`s talk about the man that kicked all of this off,
Rudy Giuliani, and again, this is no ones -- I`m sympathetic to -- I`m
really genuinely sympathetic from the right and the left, gotcha questions,
et cetera. But let`s be clear, this did all start really with Giuliani
saying something that he himself said was horrible and then going around
and essentially doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling down on it.

Here he is again, he has an op-ed saying, I cannot read President
Obama`s mind or heart, and to the extent that my words suggested otherwise,
it was not my intention. This is in "The Wall Street Journal".

Come on, Michael, what do you think of that?

STEELE: You know, look, again, he is trying to pull back after going
very, very far out on a limb on this, and it`s unfortunate because I think
a lot of us, no matter what your stripes are in the GOP, have such
admiration for the mayor, that it really was surprising to hear him go
there, because he was the guy who always criticized other Republicans who
went there. And so, that was very disappointing in many respects and I
think he is trying to recover a little bit from it. And it`s going to be
hard for him to do. And now, you got another talking point or rather a
sticking point that candidates for the office of the presidency over the
course of the next few months are going to have to answer because he opened
that Pandora`s Box.

HAYES: That`s right, Howard. We made a handy dandy chart on the
"does the president love America?" So, we got America Obama hearts USA,
Obama does not heart USA, and who the heck knows. Imagine the shrug
emoticon there. That is comprehension chart.

So for on the record, in what has emerged amazingly, Howard, is kind
of an early dividing issue among the Republican field.

DEAN: Well, I mean, Rudy is getting a little like Ed Koch did after
he was out of office for a while. They both always said whatever came into
their mind when they were in office that made them very popular. After
awhile, you start to say things that you probably shouldn`t say and I think
that`s where they`re all -- you know, I think that`s where we are now, and
I think, you know, Rudy realized it and he tried to reel it back in. But
he`s not a guy who wants to back on anything, that is not in his nature.
So, we are where we are.

But this is the kind of stuff that`s going to bug the Republicans.
This is the hard part. There is a whole wing of the Republican Party, most
of whom are going to support Jeb Bush, who would like to put all this nutty
stuff behind them. Does Obama love America? The antigay stuff, the anti-
immigration stuff. You know, the women have a class of wine and get
fertile and all of that crazy stuff, rape, whatever.

They just don`t want to talk about that any more. But this is the
kind of stuff that raises that and the media is going to pounce on it and
blow it up.

HAYES: Yes. Well, you know firsthand how crazy they are, the media,
I mean.

Howard Dean and Michael Steele, thank you both.

STEELE: You got it, Chris.

HAYES: How is a video made by a group that has only attacked targets
in East Africa saturate U.S. news media?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEH JOHNSON, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: I`m not telling people to
not go to the mall. I think there needs to be an awareness, there needs to
be vigilance, and, you know, be careful, obviously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The threatoric versus the reality of threats, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: In the depths of February, with terrorism and war dominating
the news, the world can seem so crushingly bleak. But every so often,
something happened out of the blue to restore your faith in humanity. On
Saturday, that`s something happened in Oslo, Norway, where over 1,000
people gathered around the main synagogue to form a human shield, to what
participants called a ring of peace.

The event was organized by young Norwegian Muslims and was meant as a
response for the attacks against Jews in Paris and Copenhagen. One of the
organizers told the crowd, quote, "We want to demonstrate that Jews and
Muslims do not hate each other. We do not want individuals to define what
Islam is for the rest of us."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Modern terrorism has been defined as a kind of asymmetric
warfare, where one guy with a suicide vest has the power to do
extraordinary, disproportionate damage. And now, thanks in large part to
the sophistication and brutality of ISIS propaganda videos and the
willingness of American media to amplify the threats they contained, we
appear to be engaged in what you might call an asymmetric war.

Witness the video attributed to the Somali militant group al Shabaab
that appeared online this weekend, calling for attacks on Western shopping
centers, including the Mall of America in Minnesota. Now, unlike many ISIS
videos, this one did not show hostages being brutalized or killed. All it
apparently took to produce was a decent enough camera, the cost of a katia
(ph) and a camouflage jacket, some archival footage and a few minutes of
someone`s times to shoot and edit the thing together and put a few graphics
on it.

And with that, presto, this one video by a group that`s unfamiliar to
most Americans and has never carried an attack outside East Africa has
managed to completely dominate the news cycle for the past 48 hours. It`s
caused law enforcement to step security at the Mall of America and other
public places and it`s even led the secretary of homeland security to sound
the alarm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: Anytime a terrorist organization calls for an attack on a
specific place, we`ve got to take that seriously. I would say that if
anyone is planning to go to the Mall of America today, they`ve got to be
particularly careful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Regardless of the heightened rhetoric, the U.S. government
says there is no evidence of a specific credible plot against the Mall of
America or any other commercial sites.

Today, a State Department spokesperson called out the video for what
it really is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, STATE DEPT. SPOKESPERSON: Our view is it`s propaganda. Of
course, we need to remain vigilant, as is always the case, but the point of
this video was to instill fear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Joining me now, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from
Minnesota, where the Mall of America happens to be located.

Senator, what do you -- how am I supposed to understand, how is anyone
in Minnesota, anyone else to suppose to understand Jeh Johnson saying, if
you go to the mall be careful? What do I do with that?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: Well, I think first, Chris, I
think you`ve heard, not just Jeh Johnson, but other homeland security
secretaries always talk about being vigilant in public spaces, airports,
malls, you`ve heard that before. I think what`s key here is that the FBI
had issued a statement saying that people should go on with their lives.
You heard the State Department.

And Jeh Johnson himself had said people should feel free to go to the
mall and feel secure going to the mall and our security has been up there.

But I will say this -- for us, you may think it`s some obscure group.
We`ve had 20 indictments in Minnesota for people that have aided al
Shabaab. We are very proud of our Somali population. We have half of the
Somalis in the country in Minnesota, and they have worked incredibly well
with law enforcement.

But I want you to know, al Shabaab is not an unknown name in
Minnesota, because they have tried with other videos -- numerous videos to
recruit Somalis in Minnesota to go fight with their terrorist group.

HAYES: That`s right. I`m not saying that al Shabaab is obscure in
any way. In fact, they`ve been dominant force in the failed state of
Somalia for a long time. They`re obviously behind the mall bombing in
Kenya, which was brutal and horrific.

What I am saying is, they put out this video and there is no, as far
as I can tell, public or classified demonstrated capacity to do anything to
carry it out. And you have an endless loop of 48 hours of people running
around, as if we should take this incredibly.

KLOBUCHAR: I think that`s always a good point about things can get
exaggerated. But for the people in our state, the workers that worked
there, I just spoke to them last night in an event with 500 of them there,
they want to snow that our government is behind them. And I was able to
tell them what the FBI said. I was able to tell them what Homeland
Security says.

But do remember that this is coinciding with the debate about funding
for homeland security, where we have what we call a clean bill, a bill to
fund our first responders, a bill to fund Homeland Security, and we have
been dealing with extraneous amendments, and poison pills, and things about
immigration that don`t belong on there.

And when those workers looked at me last night, Chris, they said, I
want to make sure the government is behind us and that we`re going to fund
the people that are protecting us at this mall. And so, I do think it is
relative in that way, and we want to make sure we`re giving people the
protection they need.

So, a threat, we don`t know how serious these threats can be at times.
It`s very hard to judge. I trust our law enforcement on this. I know when
they say they want to up security, they want to up security. And if we`re
not giving them the funding to do that, that`s a major problem.

HAYES: Is that -- explain to me what the tangible difference between
a funded DHS and a non-funded DHS is in the context of the Mall of America.

KLOBUCHAR: A number of the workers would have to be furloughed and
would have to work without pay, and some of them would actually not be able
to work. So, you have people on homeland security workers, you have
security people, you have all kinds of workers, and there`s a list that you
can probably put up on the air tomorrow night if you like showing who would
be furloughed, who wouldn`t be furloughed.

But why are we sending that message? However obscured this video is,
why are we sending this message to the rest of the world with what we saw
in Paris, what we saw with the computer cyber attack in North Korea, why
would my colleagues on the Republican side want to send that message to the
rest of the world?

I don`t think they do. I`m hopeful we will be able to resolve it this
week. But all I know is that we`re five days away from shutting down
Homeland Security, and that is not the message our country wants to send to
whoever produce this video.

HAYES: Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

HAYES: Up next, some breaking news out of Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Do you think you`re going to get a stay?

RODNEY REED, GRANTED STAY OF EXECUTION: I`m optimistic. I mean the
evidence is there, it is just if the courts are willing to acknowledge
this, you know what I`m saying? I really, I`m optimistic, and I have faith
that it is possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Rodney Reed`s optimism is rewarded. Ten days before he faced
execution for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Stacey Stites. What he
told me about his appeal from death row, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Just hours ago, the Texas court criminal appeals granted a
stay of execution to death row inmate Rodney Reed just less than two weeks
before he was scheduled to be put to death. Reed was convicted from the
1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Stites was found
strangled to death off the side of a rural country road in Central Texas.

Investigators cleared dozens of suspects, including Stite`s then-
fiance, a rookie police officer, and the person who is last believed to
have seen her alive. Then after the case almost went cold for a year, they
got a break. Authorities matched DNA found inside Stites at a time for
death to DNA from a local resident named Rodney Reed.

It took a jury just hours to convict Reed to rape and murder of Stacey
Stites. To this day, Reed maintains his innocence. And tonight,
responding to a filing from Reed`s lawyers at the Innocence Project for a
new look at the forensic evidence, the Texas court has halted his
execution.

Just earlier this month, I spoke with Rodney Reed on death row in
Levenson, Texas, about his experience there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Were you scared? I mean you are told you`re being sent to go
live with the worst monsters in Texas. The people who have done the most
heinous acts and you`re going to be around them.

REED: No. I can`t say that I was scared. I can`t say that I was
scared. I didn`t want to come here, but I -- I used to fight. I used to
be a boxer. And you know a man is a man. A man is going to defend
himself.

So I was curling up and balling up, and I`m going to defend myself,
you know what I`m saying? I was prepared to do that because you know what
I`m saying, I was coming here.

But once I got here, I mean, some of these guys are like looking at
the big picture. Some of these guys were someone else`s neighbor, they`re
someone else`s brother, someone`s cousin, someone`s father. You know what
I`m saying? You don`t know what may have happened in their lives that
brought them here, you know what I`m saying?

And just like my situation, I had nothing to do with this case, but
I`m here. But as me being on death row, I see there are some guys that
have strong innocence claims, and I can`t look at them as the worst of the
worst. I just can`t.

HAYES: Do you think you`re going to get a stay?

REED: I`m optimistic, I mean, the evidence is there. If the courts
are willing to acknowledge this, you know what I`m saying?

I really, I`m optimistic and I have faith. That it is possible. I
don`t entertain the thought of being executed. I don`t, you know? If it
happens, it happens, you know?

But I`m not looking for that to happen. I mean the evidence speaks
for itself. The state knows, they know, this evidence has always been out
there. It should not have taken this long. When you have a prosecutor
with unlimited resources and the county, your law enforcement agencies, the
Texas Rangers, all of these people involved in this investigation and you
tell me this evidence wasn`t compiled in the right fashion to where you
would know the truth. It`s not right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: Well much more of my interview with Rodney Reed on death row
and an in-depth look at his case on "All in America" special report next
month, asking the question a Texas court will now be looking at. Is the
state of Texas trying to execute a man for a crime he did not commit? You
do not want to miss it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: The 87th Academy Awards hit on equal pay, civil rights,
privacy rights, prison reform, immigration reform, suicide, Alzheimer`s
disease and ALS, as well as giving us an awful rendition of Everything is
Awesome.

Before we get to the Oscars, my favorite moment last night, and I
really mean this, actually happened on the red carpet.

For me it turned out to be the most real interaction I have seen on
television in a very long time.

Melanie Griffith was asked whether she would see 50 Shades of Grey"
which, of course, stars her daughter, Dakota Johnson, who is standing right
beside her, having invited her mom to be her plus one at the big ceremony.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELANIE GRIFFITH, ACTRESS: I don`t think I can. I think it would be
strange.

DAKOTA JOHNSON, ACTRESS: No, I don`t think so. I think it`s fine. I
think that one day you can see it.

GRIFFITH: But she`s a really good actress. I don`t need to see that
to know how good she is.

JOHNSON: All right, you don`t have to see it. I`m like, you can see
it, and
you`re just like no --

LARA SPENCER, ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST: She doesn`t, you know, there
is that
red room.

JOHNSON: Yeah, but I think it`s okay, it`s a movie, she knows that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Mom!

As for the Oscars themselves, Race Under pinned the very first joke by
host Neil Patrick Harris and was directly and dramatically addressed by
best song cowinner John Legend in his comments about incarceration.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, ACTOR: Tonight we honor Hollywood`s best and
whitest -- sorry, brightest.

JOHN LEGEND, MUSICIAN: We live in the most incarcerated country in
the world.

There are more black men under correctional control today than were
under slavery in 1850.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That`s true.

Joining me now is Jason Bailey, film editor of Flavorwire.com, author
of The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion. Rebecca Traister, senior editor
of The New Republic, and Rembert Browne, making his triumphant debut
appearance here, staff writer at Grantland. Great to have you here man.

REMBERT BROWNE, GRANTLAND: You too.

HAYES: So, I mean, you could spend hours talking about the racial
dynamics of that entire three-and-a-half hours. Partly because, going in
you have basically the whitest set of nominees in a very long time.

REBECCA TRAISTER, THE NEW REPUBLIC: In a year where there was a great
movie about civil rights.

HAYES: Yeah, so there in this year with Selma, right?

Then you have the joke to start out by Neil Patrick Harris --

JASON BAILEY, FLAVORWIRE.COM: First joke of the night.

HAYES: Okay, how do we feel about that joke? Pro, Con?

BROWNE: I`m pro that joke if it doesn`t turn into a terrible ceremony
after that.

I thought it was going to set up a really biting commentary filled
thing, but what happened after that made that whole joke feel very short
sided.

HAYES: Like we got it out of the way kind of thing. We are
acknowledging --

BROWNE: Checkbox.

HAYES: Yeah.

TRAISTER: The structural planned events did not further address race,
except for Glory, except for the performance of the song.

But the rest of Neil Patrick Harris, all of the commentary about race
then came from people who got on stage and made comments.

BAILEY: And to some degree from the people who were in the audience.

There was a lot of really interesting writing today about the way that
we saw some push back just in the front of the audience in the sheer number
of standing
ovations for Selma related events.

And the idea that we tend to think, Mark Harris, actually, at
Grantland, wrote a wonderful piece today where he said we tend to think of
The Academy as a sort of monolithic entity, when in fact it is a group of
people and there are
clearly some people not happy with how that film was treated.

HAYES: And Jay Smooth, the great Jay Smooth, had a video today about
how is it the case that like, these people who seem so self aware about
race in certain ways are so unself aware in other ways, and part of the
answer is that they are two different sets of people.

Like I`m not sure that John Legend is in The Academy, right?

BAILEY: Absolutely.

BROWNE: The thing that stuck out to me was when that moment happened,
the almost two minute standing ovation for the Selma performance --

HAYES: Which was... Something about it was really magical.

TRAISTER: It was incredible.

BROWNE: It was magical and it almost made the jokes about the
whiteness feel like too real. It was like all right, we`re all admitting
that this Selma thing that people from The Academy said wild things. They
said like it wasn`t art. They said all of these things about it, but when
that reaction happens to a performance like that, it kind of throws salt in
the wound about how it was treated in the
academy awards.

HAYES: And you saw the actor there, David Oyelowo, like sobbing at
the end of it, and it felt like there was a bunch of stuff in those tears.
I mean not to like, try and read his mind. But he didn`t get nominated for
what I thought was a tremendous performance.

And then there`s also like, Oh this is too real, this moment is
sticking out precisely because -- and then, there is also the fact that it
was noticeable how diverse the presenters were, which -- you`re laughing,
it`s like okay, I see you guys, I see what we`re trying to do here. And
like, okay cool, but then also is this trying, is this just packaging?

TRAISTER: And there was failures in the packaging, too. Like using
Octavia Spencer as this prop in this ongoing gag that Neil Patrick Harris
had which fell completely flat and which used Octavia Spencer in an
absolutely -- it was just
terrible.

HAYES: Neil Patrick Harris all but handed her a broom. I mean the
subtext of the skit was like could you be my helper, the way you would to
like, a toddler.

BAILER: But here`s what that entire Neil Patrick Harris element, when
you put that joke, the opening joke that we discussed, up against that bit,
it`s like, that is almost a weird metaphor for how Hollywood thinks, it
thinks about racism. I.E. let`s acknowledge we`re not racist. I`m aware
that there`s a thing but then I`m also going to do the sort of racist bit
and not realize that I`m being sort of racist.

BROWNE: Which was kind of the moment, I know there is a lot of back
story about what happened with Sean Penn closing out the night, making a
green card joke --

HAYES: Yeah, I want to talk about that.

BROWNE: There is that kind of, like, I`m going to make a little funny
racist jab but it`s fine because we`re all friends here.

HAYES: Obviously, we`re Hollywood, there`s this kind of idea, and you
saw it in of course that sort of infamous anonymous Hollywood reporter
academy voter who said we`re not cretinous. Cretinous, rednecks? Yeah, the
idea was like we can`t possibly be racist because we are Hollywood.

TRAISTER: And there is a lack of, as you`ve said, there`s a lack of
self
understanding about how it comes off and that was also in the Patricia
Arquette speech.

HAYES: Yeah, I want to talk about the Sean Penn thing and the Patricia
Arquette thing.

Do we have the little bit of the Glory ending? Do we have that song?
Can we
show that and go out on that.
(MUSIC)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: If there has to be a debate about the reality of climate
change, and there doesn`t, then there is only one mathematically fair way
to do it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: In the interest of mathematical balance I`m going to bring
out two people who agree with you, climate skeptic, and, Bill Nye, I`m also
going to bring out ninety six of the scientists. It`s a little unwieldy but
this is the only way we could actually have a representative discussion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: John Oliver would like TV news producers to please stop
staging debates on the reality of global warming that make it seem like an
equal fight, because, in reality, as demonstrated there, the vast, vast
majority of climate scientists agree man made climate change is very real,
caused by carbon emissions. and heating the earth.

You may have seen a pie chart that demonstrates that very large
consensus.

You may have found yourself wondering who makes up the other 3%? Who
are the people in that little sliver there? Who are the actual scientists
publishing academic papers arguing that manmade climate change isn`t real?

Well, I`ll will tell you.

Climate change skeptics, if we`re being generous, or deniers, if we`re
really being honest, are often not all they appear to be.

Take for instance this guy. Doctor Willy Soon of the Harvard
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Washington Post called him the
high priest of climate
change doubters.

He has taken his climate change skepticism to Fox news, as well as to
the state of Kansas, where he told lawmakers that climate is not changing
in a dangerous way. He has been praised by the likes of the U.S. Senate`s
most famous climate change denier, Oklahoma republican, James Inhofe.

Well, the New York Times reported this weekend that "though often
described as a Harvard astrophysicist, Doctor Soon is not an astrophysicist
and has never been employed by Harvard.

Doctor Soon is apparently a part-time employee of the Smithsonian,
which jointly runs the center for astrophysics along with Harvard, and,
according to the Times, he has to bring in his own funding.

Well the folks at Greenpeace had the bring idea of submitting freedom
of information act request where Doctor Soon`s grant correspondence and you
will be shocked, shocked to learn where he`s getting a great deal of money.

Quting the New York Times again, "he has accepting more than $1.2
million in money from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade, all
failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific
papers.

Doctor Soon has in the past denied that funding from the fossil fuel
industry affects his findings, but its all pretty hard to take him
seriously standing as he is against 97% of the scientific community. But
now, there are 1.2 million
more reasons to doubt his work.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PATRICIA ARQUETTE, ACTRESS: We have fought for everybody else`s equal
rights. It`s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal
rights for women in the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Patricia Arquette in her acceptance speech for best actress in
a supporting role for her role in Boyhood, making a passionate call for
equal pay while also setting off a bit of controversy.

Still with me, Jason Bailey, Rebecca Traister and Rembert Brown.

All right, I -- well, what do we think? I`ll shut up. I, should I
mansplain this you, Rebecca? Do you know want you know what you did right
and what you think?

Let me tell you, here`s the thing you`ve got to understand about equal
pay...

You go first. You go first, Rebecca.

TRAISTER: All right, well, first of all I should say that as she was
giving that speech, as it was in process -- or immediately after it ended.
I was with Meryl Strep. I was -- I very profanely tweeted my appreciation
for that speech.

There were some hinky things about it as it was...

HAYES: That one sentence.

TRAISTER: No, there`s more. She said women who give birth, I was
like -- what about women who don`t give birth? There was a weird reference
to taxpayers, and then there was a sentence about we`ve all thought -- but
I chalked a lot of it up to nervous, locutions, accepting an Academy Award,
and I was so happy.

You know, people talk about politics at the Oscars, there has not
often been righteous, passionate feminism at the Oscars, right. And
Hollywood is a profoundly sexist business, and she wasn`t just doing
anodyne, you go girl, she was talking about wage equality. And I was like
-- yeah, right.

Now, I woke up this morning. I saw what she said afterwards, which
made some of those hinky things about the speech, she expanded on them.
And what she did was basically make the argument that women have stepped up
for people of color, and gay and lesbian fights for equality, and that now
has to come to into it. And this was an error in several ways.

A, it`s time -- now, wait, there is a valid critique with deep
historical roots about the order in which social progress has taking place.
In fact -- and it goes back hundreds of years. And in back...

HAYES: All the way back to the Hillary, Barack Obama primary.

TRAISTER: All the way back to Hillary and Barack.

HAYES: Which is obviously the source of all of this.

TRAISTER: By the way, in addition to fights over the 14th and 15th
amendment, second wave feminism was born in part out of the frustrations of
women in the other social movements -- the anti-war movement, the student
movement, the civil rights movement, who felt forced to take a seat behind
other struggles and have their own movements for equality put second.

So this -- there is a history of this.

However, when you want to make reference to it -- and I`m not even
sure that she really meant to, or should have, you don`t put people in
groups like that. It`s not women, and people of color, and gay and
lesbian.

HAYES: The line that struck me when she said it -- and I also thought
it was great, but the line about like we`ve been doing it for -- well, what
do you really mean by that. And then the sort of explanation afterwards.

The question to the, though -- so that here is the question, right?
Like, however you feel about how that cashes out, it`s like what is the
right reaction to that is sort of my feeling? Is it like a glass half full
or a glass half empty, right? Are you like hey, awesome, let`s work on the
kind of other stuff or is it like what`s your deal?

BROWNE: My take on it is I think we are so used to now the world that
happens where someone says something that isn`t spot on, and then we`re
like well this is a learning moment and we can all have a dialogue and move
forward...

HAYES: That is a generous way of characterizing about what happens.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNE: I think that is the reality of...

HAYES: I`m going to tweet, this is a learning moment.

BROWNE: But taking a phrase that gets said a lot on the Internet, a
funny phase is when people just got never tweet. It`s one of those things
where it`s like sometimes I need to just bring it back a little bit, maybe
like do a little reading before I get out there and start making...

HAYES: And like -- so you`re saying before we jump into the Patricia
Arquette outrage cycle is part of your feeling?

BROWNE: No, I`m saying...

HAYES: Oh, you`re saying Patricia Arquette never tweet.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWNE: That`s more of what I`m saying.

And I do like the fact that on our biggest stages we want people to
make these statements, but I would rather them be made correctly than not
be made at all.

BAILEY: I feel like any time you can get someone in front of a
worldwide audience that`s that vast, and they`re talking about the pay gap,
it`s ultimately in that win. And it`s also important to note that this is
also an industry where
that gap is a big, huge thing where one of the few sort of I think positive
things that came out of the Sony hack was that we`re hearing stories now
about actresses who are using the information about how they`re not getting
paid the same to get equal pay.

TRAISTER: Except that if you are going to apply this critique to
Hollywood specifically, the wage gap, you`re also not looking at an
industry where even that argument about we`ve been there for people of
color, because there is huge racism in Hollywood, so that doesn`t even...

HAYES: And actually also a wage gap there.

TRAISTER: And a huge wage gap exacerbated by being a person of color
and a woman, right? so it doesn`t track, especially in Hollywood.

HAYES: What were you going to say?

BROWNE: Yeah, I think one thing that it does highlight is this idea
of, you
know, your heart is in the right place, but you haven`t thought about
everyone. It`s like, oh, like I`m passionate, I`m focused, I`m excited to
like make a stance on something, but you only thought about this group, and
this group, and this group and you haven`t really gone around the full
circle before you make that stance.

HAYES: We don`t have time to play the Sean Penn joke where he
basically announcing the best director who said who gave this son of
sonofabitch a green card, the Mexican director Inarritu -- did I get that
right?

BROWNE: No.

HAYES: OK. Adele Azim (ph), I believe, was the winner of that?

BAILEY: Inarritu.

HAYES: Inarritu, there you go.

But I thought that joke -- just for the record, I thought the joke was
funny. I thought the joke was very obviously a send up of anti-immigration
sentiment insofar as he was saying he was parroting the voice of an anti-
immigrant person, being like who gave this guy a green card in the moment
where it was the most manifestly evident that this immigrant had brought
this tremendous talent and value to the country.

BAILEY: But here is the problem, there are few people on the Earth
less humorous than Sean Penn.

HAYES: That`s totally right. That`s why it doesn`t read.

BAILEY: Leading up to the joke, he had the disposition and good cheer
of a man waiting for his colonoscopy. So the problem with the sort of
light-hearted jab at that buddy, the former collaborator, it`s just not
going to go over because he is such an essentially humorless human being.

HAYES: I actually could have done an entire hour on the Oscars, I now
realize.

Jason Bailey, Rebecca Traister and Rembert Browne from Grantland,
thank you all.

All right, up next Glenn Greenwald joins me live to talk about his own
Oscar moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here
tonight for some treason.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA POITRAS, DIRECTOR, CITIZENFOUR: The disclosures that Edward
Snowden revealed don`t only expose the threat to our privacy but to our
democracy itself.

HARRIS: The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here
tonight for some treason.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris`s treason joke right after
Citizenfour won for best documentary fell flat for many people. The film,
of course, centered on whistleblower Edward Snowden`s revelations about
government surveillance.

I`m joined now by Glenn Greenwald, the cofounding editor of The
Intercept who collaborated with the team behind Citizenfour, and was the
prime journalist dealing with and reporting on Edward Snowden. He was
there at the Oscars last night standing on stage.

So, you had this great account. This is a bit meta, but I think it
actually is important. You had this great account of -- there is a
Buzzfeed article today, Glenn Greenwald blasts Neil Patrick Harris` treason
joke. And I want you to tell the back story behind that.

GLENN GREENWALD, JOURNALIST: Yeah, I hadn`t heard the joke. I
actually went off stage and people told me about it. And I almost tweeted
something light-hearted about it, and decided it was too inconsequential
even to tweet about.

I mean, this is like a sitcom actor who had literally been parading
around in
his underwear moments before. I really didn`t think it was particularly
significant.

A couple of hours later at a post-Oscar event, a Buzzfeed reporter saw
me and
asked me a bunch of questions, one of which was, hey, by the way what did
you think of Neil Patrick Harris`s joke. And I laughed about it. I said
you`re going to get me in trouble, I`m trying not to say anything about it,
but I actually since you asked, even though it was just a joke, I thought
it was pretty irresponsible and stupid since Edward Snowden wasn`t even
charged with treason, let alone convicted of it, and it`s a pretty serious
thing to accuse somebody of that in front of a billion people.

Buzzfeed took that one comment, blasted into the headlines to make it
seem like I was sort of on the warpath. All day people are saying, no
Glenn Greenwald is so humorless. He`s always outraged. And I just thought
it was a really interesting anecdote about how sort of internet age media
that motivates everybody to take out these single quotes that generate
interest and outrage and debate really can distort thing in such a
significant way.

HAYES: I want to talk more about the significance of this award for
Citizenfour, and sort of what it says, but more important than that, what
was your tux situation last night? Did you go the rental? You buy? Was
there some sort of custom situation? What were you wearing?

GREENWALD: Yeah, that is, I think, the most pressing question which
I`m
thrilled that you`ve asked about.

Actually, it was just an emergency -- American Airlines actually lost
our luggage, which had our tuxedos in it. So we had to run to the store
the night before and sort of do emergency tuxedo buying. So that was the
story.

HAYES: Was it a -- you weren`t one of these people who is lent some
kind of garment that you then had to return.

GREENWALD: We were actually lent some and didn`t like any of those,
and so we went out and bought it. And for the record it was Ralph Lauren.

HAYES: Ralph Lauren. Well, thank you. I`ve now gotten it. This --
I`m hoping this will also be a Buzzfeed article about who Glenn Greenwald.

GREENWALD: It will be for sure, no doubt about that.

HAYES: What did you think about the significance of the win? I mean,
last year -- I remember there were sort of some Dirty Wars, Jeremy
Scahill`s, really incredible film sort of about the global war on terror,
was nominated. It did not win. I think 20 Feet from Stardom won, which
was about backup singers, which was also great.

What was your understanding of the significance of this? And what was
that moment like when you get up on stage at the Oscars?

GREENWALD: I mean, I think it is a testament and the tribute to the
film making genius of Laura Poitras, to be honest. I thought it was more
of a cinematic award than a political one.

But at the same time, I mean, I do think it underscores the fact that
people can think a lot of different things about surveillance, the extent
to which we ought to be watched and monitored by our government, but I
think we all should be able to agree that we shouldn`t have government
doing the most significant things in the dark without us knowing and that
the debate that this provoked was one that
everybody can support, regardless of where you fall into it.

I mean, as for being in the Oscars, it`s this disgusting ritual of
extraordinary opulence and extravagance. I mean, it`s...

HAYES: Oh, stop it, Glenn Greenwald.

GREENWALD: No, it is.

HAYES: You humorless scold.

GREENWALD: But at the same time, you know, it was very surreal. You
know, we began the reporting, kind of thinking that our source is going to
prison. We were being threatened by the government. And so to be standing
there in that setting, and to have that be one of the outcomes of what we
did was definitely very bizarre.

HAYES: Yeah, I want to reiterate what you said about the artistry of
the film, which really is an incredible cinematic achievement, just
visually as sort of movie story telling, whatever -- like detach it
completely from the politics, even just a story about a person in truly
extraordinary circumstances, being documented
in real-time, it was, it is incredibly gripping film work.

GREEWALD: Yeah, and I mean, we kind of appreciated from the very
beginning the human drama of the situation: the fact that there was this
29-year-old kid, very ordinary in every way, who whatever else you think of
him, undertook some extraordinary actions that have all kinds of
provocative question about ethical duties as a citizen, what you do when
you confront something that you think is an injustice, the risk that you`re
willing to take as a human being. I think these are all fascinating
questions that Laura`s film really brilliantly explores.

HAYES: Glenn Greenwald, thank you for your time.

If you had Ralph Lauren in the Glenn Greenwald tuxedo bingo, you win.

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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