Obama Rallies for Voting Rights After Trump's Plots

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0:53Go to stute.ai. That's S-T-U-U-T dot A-I today. I'm Ari Melber. Our top story is my special report tonight on accountability for the MAGA enabler, Senator Susan Collins. Later, I want you to know we have those new Obama comments going at Trump advance, plus the New York Times fighting back, taking the DOJ to court for what it calls abusive illegal subpoenas for journalists. But we begin with this major midterm news. Democrats replacing their Senate nominee in Maine after Graham Plattner dropped out over serious sexual assault allegations, which he denies. Now, Democrats need just four seats to take back the Senate.

1:33Maine is a top prospect because it's a Democratic state. Voters there backed Harris by seven points just last election. It went blue, if you check, in the last nine presidential races in a row. And yet this blue state has a Republican senator in Susan Collins. And she's won five elections there, largely by making the case that this is what she claims. She tells voters she's a centrist, that she believes in compromise and bipartisanship, that she's a proponent of women's health, often claiming, as I'll show you, that she will be a defender of abortion rights in the Senate. and, as you see, she says to this year, she is an independent voice.

2:15But these claims have been falling apart over time. So tonight, after the understandable attention on the Democratic ticket in that state, right now we turn to a special report on why Maine is such a focus in the first place. It's because of its vulnerable, embattled, and sometimes misleading incumbent senator. And the choice facing Maine voters is, as I just showed you with just a handful of states that matter, a place where their choice, if you're watching in Maine, your choice, could determine the control of the entire United States Senate in just a few short months. So for Maine voters, one of the key hurdles for electing any Republican senator has been Roe v.

3:01Wade, abortions rights, women's rights. Most voters there are pro-choice. But as we all know, you're watching the news, so you know Republicans have long demanded as a litmus test requirement, no negotiation, they will only put pro-life judges on the Supreme Court. And so Collins has spent years trying to tamp down what is a volcanic issue for her at home by vowing to oppose judges who are against Roe. She campaigned as a pro-choice candidate since her 1996 election. She said she supported Roe and she accepted donations from pro-abortion rights groups. Open Secrets has documented that. She also told voters that she was vowing to oppose any Supreme Court nominee who would overturn Roe v.

3:52Wade. That goes years back and she said it over and over. That was the main thing her constituents saw as the problem with having a Republican senator. I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions. She wouldn't do that. Wasn't going to do that. Said that over and over. Now, you might recall Trump's nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, was clearly a conservative activist with a conservative judicial record. He was likely to overturn Roe. Experts and activists loudly noted that in real time before his confirmation vote.

4:45And just to be crystal clear, Donald Trump himself said he would only pick among a list of pro-life judges suggested by pro-life or anti-abortion legal groups. So this whole thing was organized as, hey, we're only looking at that kind of judge. And Kavanaugh, as you may recall, faced skepticism for many reasons. He lost the vote of another Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski. They needed Collins' vote to get to 50. and she'd made a big show of sharing her concerns, raising Roe and these issues in her meeting with him, which drove headlines about what she would do. In the end, after everything I just showed you, everything she told Maine voters for years, she then came out casting the 50th vote for Justice Kavanaugh, breaking the thrust of her promise, which she memorably tried to explain, casting this key anti-abortion vote, this pro-life vote, this anti-Roe vote.

5:42She tried to explain it in a long and winding floor speech the day of that vote. Aint pledged to nominate only judges who would overturn Roe. There has also been considerable focus on the future of abortion rights based on the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. protecting this right is important to me. The judge asserted to me a long-established precedent. It's not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded, or overlooked. Mr. President, I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. The ayes are 50. The nays are 48. There you have it. One of the most significant votes of Collins' career.

6:38A vote that was crucial to putting Kavanaugh on the court. He was selected and announced from that list of pro-life judges. And at the first judicial opportunity they got within about four years, Kavanaugh was crucial to that new MAGA majority, thanks to Susan Collins, gutting Roe v. Wade. Breaking news from the Supreme Court at this hour, the justices handing down the highly anticipated ruling on abortion. Roe was a 50-year-old precedent that had been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court itself multiple times. That did not matter to them at all. People here talking about that feeling of moving backwards.

7:16The Roe v. Wade reversal, sending thousands of Americans into the streets. This decision is really seen as devastating to so many women across this country. You might remember where you were when a decision at large came down. You certainly can remember what had shifted these Trump justices got on the court. It was the new law of the land. It was actually the first time in the modern era that the Supreme Court reversed its own precedent for an established right. Basically taking a right that the court had recognized back. It was thanks to Trump's new members on that court and Collins' vote to get them there.

7:52And what did she have to say? Well, she continued her political act for Maine, where she deploys her power to gut abortion rights, a power vested in her only by the people of Maine having reelected her, and then claiming a kind of confusion and shock at the consequences of her very foreseeable actions. Collins came out that day. I just showed you what the mood was like in the country and said she criticized the new ruling as ill-considered radical, throwing out a precedent, sowing political chaos, anger, and a further loss of confidence in her government, almost as if she herself were not a part of the government that explicitly put Kavanaugh on the court.

8:33In that statement, she did try to address that and mention that two of the Trump justices she helped put on the court, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, had told her otherwise. And so she said it was inconsistent with what they said in their meetings with me, that they went ahead and did this thing that Trump said was the reason they were being put on the court, gutting Roe v. Wade. It is not a shocker that the president's pro-life judges ruled as pro-life judges after Collins gave them that blank check. Back in Maine, people were angry. The voters, some of whom did believe Collins' politicking, were especially furious.

9:10Her approval had already been crashing. Then there was a flooding of a fund for her opponent that actually also did a different type of crashing. It crashed that website there. And the joke was on Maine voters. More people were waking up to that, just as the SNL impression of Collins captured the kind of the joke after she helped Kavanaugh get confirmed. This was all Susan. Oh, please. The last thing I wanted was to make this about me. That's why I told everyone to tune in at 3 p.m. So I could tell all my female supporters. Psych! Psych! That's SNL boiling down the Susan Collins dance to its essence and what she said there to her female supporters as well as other abortion rights supporters in the blue state of Maine.

10:03Now, today I can tell you Collins has a roughly 58 disapproval rating. That's very negative, very high. And from the nomination hearings to these more recent times, people are getting fed up. He is not hearing Maine women. I'm a Democrat, but I have always voted for Susan Collins until this year. We're going to hear the Chief Callum. She has just, she's just capitulated. She's not listening to what the people of Maine want anymore. Collins has been there way longer than she should have been, and it's time for a change. That's a big dynamic when you listen to some of the voters' calls for change that, of course, predate the recent Maine news, which is the Democrats' search for the right candidate to run against her.

10:49But Collins' concerned dance about judicial nominees extends to a lot of other issues. It's kind of like her main political move at this point. Some view it as a schtick that has become such a kind of recurring, recycled and unreliable nod to a type of fake moderation that the script has become kind of a running joke, at least in the informed or nerdy political circles where people track each individual senator have noticed her doing this. And it's a theme in some campaign ads. For 30 years in Washington, she's been very concerned. I have a number of concerns. I'm also concerned. Collins is always concerned, but never courageous.

11:29Caving to Trump on health care. Concerned. On affordability. Concerned. On ice. Concerned. I am very concerned. She is concerned and she has found this has worked so far. Being concerned without actually doing anything about the issue that affects the voters, the people of this country has kind of become vintage Collins. All public performance, very little action. So if you're watching in Maine or you know people there and you want the actual facts on how her concerns line up with how much she now votes with Trump as a MAGA enabler across the board, I will show you that record, just the facts, when our special report returns in 90 seconds.

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14:21Our special report on Senator Susan Collins continues now with her actual record. This is just election facts as people get ready to make up their own minds in this election, because many main voters say they feel like Collins used to be more moderate or independent, and that later it seems like she just skates on that brand but undercuts it, has become more of a MAGA Trump enabler. So let's look at the actual record, not political opinions, not her political speeches about being concerned, but her actual voting record over time. And the truth is actually nuanced. Some good for her back in the day, and super MAGA now.

15:03Because the truth is, in Colin's first 20 years or so in the Senate, she was basically 60-40 when it came to backing GOP colleagues. And that is actually very independent by congressional standards, meaning most members of both parties are more partisan, voting at a much higher rate than 59 % than she was. And so early on, she did vote more independently. Then in the Trump era, that shot up to over 85 percent. And in the current term, which is what voters are assessing right now, all the way up to 95 percent MAGA, including on all kinds of consequential items and the big ticket items like life tenure for Trump's judicial nominees.

15:48And while many Senate Republicans strongly backed Trump in that Ukraine shakedown impeachment trial saying he was innocent, we got the concern thing from Collins. This was obviously a big topic, and she tried her hand at the moderate type of double talk that has apparently worn thin with some main voters. So go back to the first term and the type of alleged lawlessness, allegedly impeachable offense. It's what people debated and how she was playing it. She gave him the exact same partisan vote of support as other Republicans in his first impeachment, which was about trying to abuse his power over Ukraine to have a fake investigation into an opponent.

16:30Sound familiar? And she gave him an out, gave him an acquittal, gave him full bill of health. But tossed in the classic claim that I would tell you even most Trump supporters wouldn't necessarily agree with. You know, Steve Bannon touts Trump all the time, but he rarely describes Trump as a contrite learner of lessons. I believe that the president has learned from this case. What do you believe the president has learned? The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson. I'm voting to acquit. I hope that the president has learned his lesson, but we'll have to see.

17:18Whew. You could just sort of hear the sighs across the country. She does hope he learned his lesson, but we will have to see. Well, this is an accountability update in our special report. So, for Senator Collins... We saw when Trump fomented a violent insurrection, later pardoning and embracing and even trying to fund the cast of MAGA thugs who literally bum rushed the Capitol, attacked, manhandled and battered police, as you see in this disturbing video. Much of these videos were taken by them because they were proud of being against police. They were proud of being against America. They were documenting it themselves because their president told them to do it and later pardoned them for it.

18:04however delusionally anti-police and anti-American they looked, they were right about one thing. This was what Trump wanted, and he did let them out of prison for it as they rushed the floor of the Senate. Lawless violence to steal an election. Now, later, Collins did vote to convict him of those offenses when he didn't learn his lesson. And I will state, had other Republicans joined her, they might have disqualified Trump legally from ever returning to office. Collins spoke out against Trump's violent mob on the Senate floor during that second impeachment trial. A mob stormed the Capitol determined to stop Congress from carrying out our constitutional duty.

18:50It was the culmination of a steady stream of provocations by President Trump intimidating and threatening the election officials in Georgia. President Trump's falsehoods convinced a large number of Americans that he had one and that they were being cheated. that was Collins rebuking Trump's lies and his role in the insurrection. And that's important because that's where she landed. If you take her to word, that's what she thought about him. And now, with Trump back in office, she is voting with him and his agenda and supporting him more often than any time in her Senate career. So she said that was the problem, but she's 95 % with Trump.

19:44Now, Collins is also vulnerable, like some other incumbents, because of the larger revolt against the out-of-touch, aging incumbent politician population. And that's across both parties. Calls for generational change are rampant as long-serving incumbents cling to power. We've seen that in primaries, Democratic and Republican. And in the case of Collins, she's also outlived her own vows back when she was a younger, newer leader. Way back in the day, decades ago, she was tapping into the actual sentiment that we see today, issuing what would become, I'll just warn you, another broken vow to Maine voters.

20:22I have pledged that if I'm elected, I will only serve two terms, regardless of whether term limits law, a constitutional amendment passes or not. Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution, and then come home and let someone else take your place. That's what she said, and she broke that vow. Had she honored it, she'd actually had to have stepped away from the Senate back in 2009. Now she's breaking that vow again in this election cycle, seeking what would be her sixth term. If she wins, she would complete that term at age 80. Susan Collins is a charter member of the very political class she ran to oppose, breaking her own vows, clinging to office for another term, part of this aging gerontocracy with often sclerotic ideas that insist on trying to rule over what appears to measurably be a majority desperate for new leadership.

21:18Collins is a long ways from the upstart candidate who was advocating sweeping changes and said that was needed over incremental steps. It is very important that we recognize the many successes and the exciting projects and the innovations that are going on every day throughout the state. We can't do with incremental changes. We need sweeping changes. Sweeping changes, term limits, pro-choice leadership. It's almost like every big thing she emphasized she has broken. That was from Collins running for governor in a race she actually lost to Angus King in 1994. Update to our Senate today. King is 82, serving as the junior senator with fewer years in the body than Collins from their same state.

22:09She's now running to hit 36 years total. If you're counting, that's three times longer than the cap she claimed to set for herself. And yet, as Collins told Maine voters... Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution, and then come home and let someone else take your place. Twelve years is long enough. So she said, many Maine voters now do seem to agree with what has become a discredited claim from their representative, who has become the problem she campaigned against, at least on the issue of incumbency. Collins has added that vow to several others that I showed you she broke in pursuit of this lifetime of power, perhaps regardless of the cost to her state or her own credibility.

22:57Now, to channel the incumbent with that trail of broken promises, a main voter might look at all this, that we just saw, the facts, the records, her own claims and actions and say, you know, this is concerning. You might even say it's very concerning. Or the voters might do something different than their aging incumbent. And they might actually do something about it. Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called literally with Rob Lowe. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

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25:26What do you do with autocracy? Do you cave or do you fight? Sounds like kind of a basic question, and yet we've seen law firms, corporations, and all kinds of groups just pack up and cave, at least in the beginning of Trump's second term. Tonight we turn to how some are fighting, especially on the First Amendment. The New York Times is punching back, filing a motion basically taking the government, Trump, DOJ, to court to try to get these subpoenas of journalists quashed. Trump was growing furious, reportedly, over security problems with his jet gift. The Times lawyer says these new DOJ subpoenas against journalists are abusive, improper, bad faith, the theme we've reported on, and that some judges in different cases have already found to be a problem for the Trump DOJ.

26:11The Times executive editor saying this. I've been a foreign correspondent in China, and I've seen the way an authoritarian government can keep journalists from reporting on a huge amount of news and information that's very clearly in the public interest. It's really essential to American democracy that that kind of erosion of press freedoms not happen here. The Times, of course, has its own news section where it tries to cover these issues fairly, objectively, including even when the government's going after them. And then through their leadership, their lawyers, what you just saw there, just like Jack Smith has been speaking out, they seem to understand that in today's world and media political environment, they also have to go beyond the courtroom and tell the public the value of what they say they do and why they're fighting.

27:00Trump is also trying to hunt leakers. He's talking to people who traveled on the jet. They want some people potentially to have to turn over their phones and figure out who might have talk to the Times. Notice how that fact or reporting hurts Trump and helps the Times. It suggests that they have accurate sources, people who are on the plane telling them true things, eyewitness accounts about what happened. And that undercuts the government argument that they would be able to subpoena these reporters. For example, if there were illegal leaks, that would go to the leakers, people who work for Trump, not whether the journalists have accurate sources.

27:36Meanwhile, Trump's nominee for intelligence was very cagey in discussing these controversial subpoenas. I wanted to ask you, Mr. Clayton, about the subpoenas of the New York Times reporters. I can't get into the specifics of an investigation, an ongoing matter. Did you or anybody at the Southern District of New York have conversations with anybody at the White House or the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., before you issued those subpoenas? I can say it this way without getting into the investigation. The protocols require consultation. Did anybody in Washington, D.C. suggest to you or anybody on your team that you should issue subpoenas in this case?

28:24I'm not going to get into the details. What I can tell you is that we followed those procedures. So you can see the Senate bearing down on multiple nominees about this. It's broader than this recent story. In fact, we hear about the normalizing and sort of way that people get accustomed to this. The fact that Trump's doing it repeatedly doesn't make it any more OK constitutionally. Indeed, they have lost a bunch of rounds in the court. And the Times jet story is one of several. There have been subpoenas attempted for journalists there and the Post. the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. They've indicted journalists like Don Levin and Georgia Fort, and they have tried to abuse government power to retaliate or silence comedians.

29:10I want to bring in Eugene Robinson, a polls-prize-winning writer-reporter, MSNOW analyst, who was with The Post for a long time. Welcome, Gene. I mentioned that they're trying to normalize this, even as some of the cases have floundered. Do you see it as important that the Times is not only fighting this in court, but also vocalizing why this is, in their view, harassment of their First Amendment rights. It's important and necessary that the Times is fighting these subpoenas because, as the Times editor Joe Conn said in that video, these are being issued in bad faith. And this is not contrary to what was said in the hearing.

29:54these are not the procedures that historically have been followed. This is not the first administration to ever subpoena a reporter. It has happened before. There has not been, at least in my career as a journalist, I would say there has not been since Richard Nixon, perhaps, this sort of all-out assault on the press and on the media and on its ability, its right, to tell the public things that the government doesn't want it to know. And that's one of our core functions, right? And that's why we're enshrined in the First Amendment, because the government is not going to tell you everything and everything that you need to know.