tv The Last Word With Lawrence O Donnell MSNBC January 6, 2015 10:00pm-11:01pm PST
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n tomorrow's show. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> talk about a cliffhanger. go ahead, take five minutes. tell us about the mall. i can't wait. >> i could unfortunately, that's the thing that's worrying about me. i could. >> thank you, rachel. john boehner was re-elected as speaker today and some of the republicans who dared to vote against him have already been punished. >> let's talk about this new congress. >> today is a festive day. >> opening day, swearing in is always a festive, celebratory day. >> the new congress completely controlled by republicans. >> or as republicans put it, aloha. a. >> john boehner now officially re-elected. >> new congress, same speaker. >> boehner looks lamer. >> the honorable john a. boehner. >> i want to thank my family.
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>> i wish them well. >> obama recently said his new year's resolution is to cooperate more with republicans. >> more cooperation. this time. >> areas of common ground. >> big battleground is going to be the united states senate. >> there are going to be areas where we disagree. >> president is going to see the keystone xl pipeline on his desk. >> obama runs out on stage and says are you ready for some stuff that's never going to apologize? >> a lot have announced their new year's resolutions. rand paul vowed to stop asking his barber for the ramen noodle cut. >> i just swore in your grandson. >> he said it's great to be here in the amazon. always want to see where the books came from. glad i'm here. >> for the first time in eight
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years, republicans now control both chambers of congress, and tonight, john boehner has managed to retain the title of speaker of the house of representatives. >> this house will continue to be led by a proud son of ohio and a happy fan of the ohio state football team. >> yes! >> a man of abiding faith, great heart and deep dedication. john boehner is truly a gentleman from ohio. >> 25 republicans mounted a symbolic revolt against the gentleman from ohio. >> madam clerk, i present for election for the office for speaker of the house of representatives for the 114th congress, the name of the honorable ted yoho. >> i present for the election of office of speaker of the house of representatives for the 114th congress the name of judge louie gohmert, a representative from
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the great state of texas. >> i place into nomination the name of daniel webster. >> no, not that daniel webster. probably just because of name recognition, florida congressman daniel webster received the most republican votes after john boehner with 12 votes. louie gohmert received three. ted yoho got two. and rand paul, a senator actually won one vote. and no, technically you do not have to be a member of the house of representatives to be elected speaker of the house of representatives. so rand paul can hang in there for some other year. here was rush limbaugh's prediction earlier today. >> i tell you, folks, you have to respect those that manned up for that vote against boehner. that took a lot of guts to vote against him because they know there's going to be a price to pay. courage, remember that courage is never wasted. >> this evening, speaker boehner removed congressman webster and
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congressman rich nugent from the house rules committee. nugent supported webster and voted against boehner today. 4 congressman steve king who nominated webster tweeted, speaker boehner kicked webster and nugent off rules committee for voting against boehner. no room for intimidation tactics. i stand with them. joining me now, msnbc political reporter casey hunt and mother jones washington bureau chief david corn. casey, why were there not more punishments issued today. there were more votes cast against the speaker. >> it's certainly possible, lawrence, that you could see more punishments to come but at the same time the house speaker's ability to punish people this way is a little bit limited. and this revolt was so scattered, right? and that's why we didn't see it succeed to a greater degree than it did. you had this sort of collection of candidates. i had one republican privately call it the coalition of the aggrieved in a conversation. and they weren't able to unite
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around one single potential alternative to speaker boehner. this was a protest vote. and yes, it was a louder protest than we've heard in decades, but at the same time, they weren't able to keep it together. i think that's kind of the preview you're going to have of the next two years of congress. where leaders are struggling to keep the sort of right flank together, but the right flank doesn't totally know how to hang together. >> david corn, let's just dwell for a moment on how abboaral this is in the house of representatives. most speakers of the house have never been voted against by anyone in their party, not one vote, not one person has ever dared to stand and say vote for me. and it isn't even a matter of daring sometimes. it doesn't even cross their minds to do this most of the time. >> well, that's right. it shows the degree of aggrievement, if that's a word, that some two dozen or so tea party types feel in the house.
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for john boehner for all his obstructionism, for all his opposition to obama, that 51 votes against obama care were not enough. they still feel that the party has to move further to the right and have more hostage-taking events when it comes to the budget and, of course, to the debt ceiling. it will remain a problem for speaker boehner, but at the same time, he has a bigger margin, a bigger republican majority this time than he had in the last congress. and it's kind of interesting. how many votes did he get today as speaker from republicans? 216. how many does he need to pass a bill without any democratic votes? 218 in most instances. so he's really kind of on the edge there of being able to tell the tea partiers to take a hike. he may need them a little bit for some votes. but it's not going to be a greatly different dynamic than he's had for the last two years.
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the big difference is going to be what happens in the senate. >> now republican congressman nick mulvaney who voted against john boehner two years ago but voted for him today issued this statement. we walked on to the floor two years ago with signed pledges, handwritten promises for more than enough people to deny boehner his job. but when it came time to vote, almost half of those people changed their minds, including some of those who voted against boehner today. fool me once, shame on you. casey hunt, there's the truth of it. these profiles in courage that rush limbaugh thinks he's watching actually proved themselves last time capable of denying the speaker the outcome of winning, but they actually didn't have the courage to do it. >> right.
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and that illustrates just the kind of power and kind of politician that john boehner is. he's been here a long time. that's the difference between somebody like boehner and even this coalition, loose coalition of tea party people who are so upset. i mean, think about what they've experienced since they' come into the house. most of them showed up here in 2010 with that tea party wave. they've never known what it's like to have a republican in the white house. and that's what congressional leaders here are starting to say about their goals for the next two years. it's to set up -- mitch mcconnell said in an interview, he wants to make sure the way they govern doesn't create the reception that having a republican president and a republican congress would be scary for the american people, his word, not mine. but the republicans that we're talking about, these tea party types, most of them have no idea what it's like to have your party in power and to need to use congress to try to govern. all they know is the opposition. >> today, congressman john lewis who's portrayed in the movie
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"selma" that's out now issued a statement about the house republican whip asking him to publicly apologize for speaking before a white supremacy group that was headed by david duke. congressman lewis said i think somehow and in some way congressman scalise should come clean and say what he did and apologize to members of the congress on both sides, the republican and democratic side of the aisle. david corn, there is no one in the congress in either body who commands the kind of respect that john lewis does on matters such as this. what happens next? >> it's hard to see steve scalise doing anything which he hasn't done already, which is duck and cover and make excuses. and the leadership of the house,
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you know, made a decision to ride that horse and not push him out or force him into making more public apology or show more contrition than he already has. so i, you know, respect representative john lewis a lot. i find it very difficult to believe that his words will move a recalcitrant republican leadership. >> well, the republican leadership is going to have a press conference tomorrow. casey, you're going to be there tomorrow? >> i hope so. >> get a question in for us. >> thank you both for joining me tonight. coming up, an ethics complaint is filed against the st. louis county prosecutors in the darren wilson grand jury. who handled the darren wilson grand jury for a mistake that we first exposed on this program immediately after the grand jury transcripts were revealed. and chris christie's travel accommodation to see his beloved cowboys play football could actually get him into some ethics trouble. and it was a murder that no one
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>> up with person was shot and killed inside a va clinic. several local reports say the victim is a doctor but nbc has not been able to confirm that. according to rueters, the gunman then shot and killed hymn. that el paso va clinic was in the news last year after a federal audit showed it had one of the nation's longest wait times for veterans trying to see a doctor.
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the missouri prosecutors who did not get a grand jury to incite officer darren wilson in the killing of michael brown are now facing an ethics complaint. that's next. in my world, wall isn't a street... return on investment isn't the only return i'm looking forward to. for some every dollar is earned with sweat, sacrifice, courage. which is why usaa is honored to help our members with everything from investing for retirement to saving for college. our commitment to current and former military members and their families is without equal. start investing with as little as fifty dollars.
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so ally bank really has no hidden fees on savings accounts? that's right. it's just that i'm worried about you know "hidden things..." ok, why's that? no hidden fees from the bank where no branches equals great rates. that was on this program after the transcript was released. it was in that moment that we learned on this program that the
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assistant district attorney provided the grand jury with the wrong law on police use of deadly force. it was a version of missouri law that had been ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court before is the assistant district attorney handed it to the grand jury became a lawyer. that's how old it was. that's now one of the items cited in an ethics complaint filed against the prosecutors in the case. robert mccullough, kathy lizade are now facing an ethics complaint filed by the missouri supreme court alleging they violated professional rules of conduct by presenting an outdate daited statute towards the beginning of the grand jury proceedings. the naacp legal defense fund has also used the fact that the prosecutors used the wrong unconstitutional deadly force law to ask a missouri judge to convene a new grand jury and appoint a special prosecutor in the case. joining me now in an exclusive interview is christie griffin, founder of the ethics project. she filed the complaint against
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the prosecutors in the darren wilson case. also joining me is the director of the naacp legal defense fund. christie griffin, what are the essential points of your ethics complaint? >> the essential points of the ethics complaint is that robert mccullough of the st. louis county prosecuting attorney and the assistant prosecuting attorneys engaged in a number of what we consider to be unethical conduct by, adds you just mentioned, by presenting an outdated statute that had been deemed unconstitutional. they engaged in minimally what would be considered gross incompetence by confusing documents, by mislabelling documents which just happen to be the evidence that was related to dorian johnson, who was the key witness with michael brown the day that he was shot and
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killed. and also actually mishandling and losing certain documents, misplacing certain documents. they also just overwhelmed them without giving any kind of direction, overwhelmed them by dump trucking the grand jury with so much of the evidence by presenting them with interviews that had taken place prior to actually becoming before the grand jury, then having them retestify in front of the grand jury, which appeared to be an effort to create issues of credibility, that their testimony might differ from one period to the next, from the interviews with the fbi or with the police or with the prosecutors and then what their actual testimony before the grand jury. so there was a long line. we actually cited at least 15 different instances where we believe after reviewing the transcript that we felt that
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looking at the missouri rules of professional ethics that there were clear issues of misconduct that the chief disciplinary council should investigate and consider. >> and your complaint quotes the transcript in several spots including that passage where they introduce finally the correct law to the grand jury weeks after giving them the wrong law. and i read that transcript on this be program. they never, as you've shown in your complaint, they never explain to the grand jury what the difference is. what is the naacp hoping for in what you're doing? >> the naacp legal defense fund, separate organization to the naacp filed a letter with judge mcshaken, essentially asking her to use her authority, her administrative and supervisory authority to address the issue of the process. and that's really what we focused on. we focused not on the personalities or any of the individuals, we focused on the process of what was presented to the grand jury and how it was
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presented to the grand jury. >> was there a lot of overlap on what christie has just been talking about? >> some of it is. some of the same conduct actually applies to our letter and also to their ethics complaint. and essentially, we really focused on four areas. we focused of course on the incorrect legal standard that you talked about on this show and that has been described and talked about at some length. we talked about the fact that mr. mccullough admits that he presented testimony to the grand jury that he knew to be perjured before he ever presented it to the grand jury. we also talked about the way in which jurors were allowed to engage in their own investigation. in fact, they had been admonished by the judge -- >> what is an example of that. >> one of the prosecutors essentially told the grand jurors if there were particular clip, audio clips or pieces of information presumably from any source that they wanted the other jurors to see that they had found on their own, they could tell the prosecutor, just e-mail her directly and she
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would get that information and present it to the rest of the grand jury. and this is after the grand jurors had been admonished by a judge that they were not to engage in any of their own independent investigation, but they were only to rely on the information that was being presented by the prosecutor. and then, of course, it's the preferential treatment of the witnesses. if you look at the way in which the witnesses were being questioned, at one point, you know, we exhaustively went through these transcripts. few yo covered up the names, you would have thought the prosecutors were darren wilson's defense council. that's the way in which they were questioning him, providing him every opportunity to engage in kind of exculpatory statements. and yet challenging the witnesses who told a different side of the story. and then finally at the end with the final instructions, that have they were giving to the grand jury, it's detailed in our letter and detailed on our website, if you can make sense of it, lawrence, i would appreciate you explaining it to me. the attorney, the two prosecutors are actually talking to each other saying we're not sure what the standard is. we're going to work that out.
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we have to figure that out. we're not sure yet. that's how they're presenting this case to the grand jury. i heard it described as a dump on the grand jury. it was a dump. but it was also done with a love of confusion and the process was so just rife with mistakes and errors that we really think that judge mcshaken has to investigate this and if necessary convene a new grand jury. >> people hear thing, i think they hear things like this discuss r cussed on tv all the time. they don't. this is a truly shocking thing. what we've found in that grand jury, what you found what you found, what i found. it's hard to get shocked by jurisprudence. this is really stunning stuff. we're out of time for tonight. thank you both very much for joining me tonight. thank you. coming up, it's not the high-fiving that chris christie might get in trouble for.
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but the high flying to that football game. turns out to now be a problem for him. and in the "rewrite" tonight, in new york city today, a politician delivered the greatest speech of his life. and it was a speech he never wanted to give. that's coming up. the world is filled with air. but for people with copd sometimes breathing air can be difficult. if you have copd, ask your doctor about once-daily anoro ellipta. it helps people with copd breathe better for a full 24hours. anoro ellipta is the first fda-approved product containing two long-acting bronchodilators in one inhaler. anoro is not for asthma. anoro contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. it is not known if this risk is increased in copd. anoro won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden copd symptoms and should not be used more than once a day.
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cowboys in new jersey after he was seen hugging their team owner at sunday's game in texas. but it's how he got to the game that's now drawing much more interest. today, "the wall street journal" reported that chris christie accepted a plane ride to dallas and a seat at a cowboys playoff football game in a luxury suite from team owner jerry jones, who has a business relationship with the port authority of new york and new jersey. that business relationship jerry jones has with the port authority comes from his involvement with legends hospitality, a group that won the right to operate the world trade center's observation deck when it opens later this year. under the governor's code of conduct, governor christie is allowed to accept gifts or travel expenses from relatives or personal friends that are paid for with personal funds. joining me now is new jersey democratic assemblyman john
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wisniewski. so this raises interesting questions. does the ethics rule here on gift acceptance define friend? >> well, that's the problem. there really is no bright line definition of friend. it's going to vary from governor to governor, from administration to administration. and to give the governor the benefit of the doubt, the rule says what it says. but the real question is, how real of a friend is this? i mean, does mr. jones know the governor prior to him holding office? i mean, is this really an after-effect of the governor happen to be the governor of the state of new jersey and in control of the port authority? that's the legitimate question here. >> that's what the ethics rule in congo to that. they make it pretty. this has to be a long-standing relationship. it generally speaking has to predate your time in office. that's's how you can kind of prove this person isn't just hanging around with you because of your position. >> right. i think in the court of public
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opinion, that's now going to be the governor's to prove. show us the christmas card, the personal note. the birthday greeting. >> the other rule is his flight and all of that would have to be paid for with personal funds. so the owner of the team would have to show that he used personal funds instead of corporate funds, which is like a zero likelihood of that. >> right. and certainly the dollars are fungible and so for somebody of that, you know, status, it's not going to be hard for them to demonstrate that there's some personal connection to the funds. but it really comes to the optics of this. it just looks horrible. it really shows the governor not really thinking about the implications of accepting this kind of gratuity. >> okay, but -- and i'm going to your exper tease in jersey politics. does new jersey care about the governor going tor a football game no matter how he gets there? >> do they care if he goes to a football game? i don't think they care if he goes to a football game. i don't think they care who he
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roots for. i think the question is whether he should be accepting this kind of enormous difficult. i mean, it's not -- he's not getting car service to giant stadium and tickets in the bleachers. he's flying down in a private jet. that's very expensive. that's not a gift that everybody gets. and i would suffice it to say that it's probably a gift he got because he's governor of the state of new jersey. that's the kind of tone deaf hypocrite call statement on ethics that you would think this governor would be on the other side of. i mean, the man who's preached ethics, who's preached accountability is now doing neither. >> well, he's lucky he's got a rule that doesn't exactly define what a friend is. >> but the rule has to be changed. >> that's the situation. thank you very much for joining us tonight. coming up, a politician who delivered the greatest speech of his life today, and it was a speech he never wanted to give. it happened right here in new york. it was the governor of new york
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>> lawyers for the woman who says she had sex with attorney allen dershowitz when she was underaged are now suing mr. dershowitz themselves for defamation against them, the lawyers. attorneys paul cassell and bradley edwards accuse mr. dershowitz of a public media assault on their reputations and characters in various tv interviews including this one yesterday. >> her lawyers, paul cassell, a former federal judge and brad edwards deliberately and willfully filed this inner fleed pleading wh they knew i had no opportunity to respond to in court without doing any investigation. their lawyers should be disbarred. it's the legal equivalent of scribbling something on a toilet stall and running away. >> alan dershowitz has denied the allegations. she made the same allegations
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against prince andrew. buckingham palace also denied those allegations. "the rewrite" is next. ... i will be out of the office until monday... ... and won't be checking voicemail during this time. i'll reply just as soon as i get back to work. sail with the number one cruise line in alaska. save up to $500 during our 50th anniversary sale. call your travel consultant or 1-800-princess. princess cruises. come back new. moderate to severe crohn's disease is tough but i've managed. except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. and when i finally told my doctor he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. and that in clinical studies the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections
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advil. >> today in the first week of his second term as governor of new york, andrew cuomo gave the greatest speech of his life. it was political, it was funny, humble, intimate, deeply moving. and full of love. it was the speech he never wanted to give. the eulogy for his father, the three-term governor of new york, mario cuomo. the governor who would have been the front-runner for the democratic nomination for president whenever he chose to run. but he never did. you can watch this beautiful and important speech on our website in its entirety at lastword@msnbc.com. here's a wonderful sample.
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a story of a young politician talking to the seasoned veteran who happens to be his father about the public game of politics -- speech making. >> he had given a big speech that way and called and asked how he did it. did he do it on notes, did he do it on cards, off the cuff? he said oh, no, no, no a very important speech. he wrote it out and he read every word. and he went on to explain his theory which he had explained before, that you can't possibly deliver a speech extemporaneously that's as well done as a written speech. he then invoked winston churchill as a proponent of the reading word for word theory of speech making. now, you must understand the rules of engagement in debate with mario cuomo. invoking an historical figure as a source in this context was not
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-- was more of a metaphor than a literal interpretation. it really meant winston churchill could have said, or should have said or would have said that reading was best. >> andrew cuomo thanked the dignitaries including president clinton and senator clinton, but he also thanked the team, the people who are never thanked enough, the people who can get a governor in a lot of trouble, as we've seen in new jersey, or who can really make governor work, the governor's staff. i worked with that cuomo team when i was on the team of the senior senator from new york, daniel patrick moynihan. and i was afraid of every member of the cuomo team because, as andrew said today, his father was really, really tough. and let's just say that that toughness got communicated very clearly by everyone on the cuomo team. they were tough like their boss because they cared about what they were doing so much. the work of governing was so
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important to mario cuomo. you won't know the names you're about to hear, but please indulge me in this moment and listening to them being thanked one final time because they so deeply deserve it. >> my father had a really fwik team. they worked 24 hours a day seven days a week, because that's the only way they knew how to work. pam brownan and jerry and tony bergos and john howard and john majori, mare yaen crowdy and my father's third son who i sometimes think he loved the most really did an extraordinary job. they did an extraordinary job with his funeral. and we want to thank them. >> andrew cuomo was the captain of that team, but he wasn't taking credit for that today. andrew ran his father's three successful campaigns for governor. by the time mario cuomo was rung for his fourth term in 1994,
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andrew cuomo was in washington serving as bill clinton's secretary of housing and urban development. mario cuomo looked unbeatable at the beginning of the election year, but in the end it turned out the one gubernatorial campaign that andrew didn't run was the one that mario lost. that was the one note of regret in andrew cuomo's comments today. >> over the years, the press would love to give their dimestore psychoanalysis of our quote, unquote, complex father and son relationship, which all was a lot of hooey. it is this simple. i was devoted to my father from the time i was 15, joining him in every crusade. my dad was my hero. he was my best friend. he was my confidant and my mentor. we spoke almost every day and his wisdom grew as i grew older. when it works, having a working partnership with your father
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adds an entirely new dimension to the father/son relationship. and for us, it worked. politicians is not an easy business. it shouldn't be. but we carried the same banner. i helped him become a success and he helped me become a success, and we enjoyed deeply each other's victories. and we suffered the pain of each other's losses 37. my only regret is that i didn't return from washington to help in his 1994 race. whether or not i could have helped, i should have been there. it was the right thing to do. and i didn't do it. >> andrew cuomo said today his father's speech making was not about what the audience wanted to hear, but what he needed to say. and andrew said that was the essence of mario cuomo. it was also the reason he lost the governorship in that final campaign. he would not tell the audience what they wanted to hear about the death penalty.
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mario cuomo was opposed to the death penalty on all cases on practical and of course in his cases moral grounds. the death penalty was a purely academic point in the state of new york. after mario cuomo was defeated by a republican running hard on the death penalty, no one was actually executed by the state of new york. all mario cuomo had to do was see the light, as some politicians called it, adjust his position to the current realities. he didn't have to do a full reversal on the death penalty. he could have just come out in favor of the death penalty for criminals who kill cops. by 1994, mario cuomo was one of the last politicians standing against the death penalty in this country. liberals had been rushing to embrace the death penalty since this moment in 1988. >> the first question goes to governor dukakis, you have two minutes to respond. governor, if kitty dukakis were raped and murdered would you
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favor an irrevocable death penalty for the murderer? >> no, i would not. >> mario cuomo had seen elections lost over the death penalty. he knew what was happening to him as a previously unknown republican george pataki was overtaking him in the polls and reporters pressed him on the death penalty every day of that final campaign. >> my position has always been the same. the death penalty is wrong. death penalty degrades. death penalty doesn't deter anybody. it costas lot of money. it's unfair, it's killed innocent people. life in prison without parole is the better solution. i have said it 1,000 times. i lost ed koch in 1977. people said it was the death penalty. people said you couldn't possibly take that position. my mother asked me to give up the position. i'm going to die with the
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position. it could kill me in this election, people say. okay. nobody wants to lose. i want to win. there's a lot i want to do for this state. things like this pier. we can do all sorts of wonderful things. and i'm better equipped than anybody to do it. i know that. but if i were to give away my soul on this issue, no new yorker would want me. no new yorker should want me. the one thing you should get from your politicians and we don't get them from all politicians is the truth. at least let this bum tell me the truth. >> mario cuomo held on to his soul in that final campaign because his opposition to the death penalty wasn't a talking point. it was a point of principle, a moral position. unchangeable. what happen you just saw is something you might not see again for a very, very long time. a highly skilled politician losing a campaign over a point of principle, over an issue that many politicians before and since have flip flopped on to save their political careers. in politicians, and in many
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other areas of life, losing often tells us much more about a person than winning ever can. i never admired mario cuomo more than when i watched him lose that last campaign clinging to principle, clinging to his soul. andrew cuomo let his father speak through him today about the tensions in new york city between police and politicians and the community. >> they say your father never leaves you. if you listen carefully, you will hear his voice. i believe that's true. but one doesn't need to listen that carefully or be his son to know what mario cuomo would say today, that it's time nor city to come together. it's time to stop the negative energy and to move forward, that the intelligent course, the constructive course, the responsible course is to learn the lessons from the past
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tragedies, to identify the necessary reforms, to improve our justice system, to have better safety measures for police officers, and to move this city forward. and that's just what we will do. i promise you that, pop. >> andrew cuomo said today that his father and he argued about which one of them was the fist to endorse bill de blasio's political candidacy. and andrew cuomo talked about his father's last night at a political victory celebration, which was just last november when andrew cuomo won his first re-election campaign. >> i loved winning the governorship more for him than for my myself. it was redemption for my father. cuomo was elected governor. the first name was not all that relevant. it was a gift to have him with us this past election night.
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the doctors didn't want him to go, but i insisted. bringing him on the stage for one more fist pump, holding up his hand, i could feel his energy surge. his face brightened, his eyes shined as he gave us that great satisfied smile one more time. he walked off the stage and said wow, what a crowd that was. it was the best medicine i could provide for mario cuomo. >> mario cuomo's most famous speech was a keynote address at the 1984 democratic convention. today andrew cuomo said, mario cuomo was the keynote speaker for our better angels. a few days ago at his second inauguration as governor, andrew cuomo was hoping that his father would hold the bible when he took that oath of office.
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>> the day of inauguration, i stopped at his apartment. i went to his bed and i said dad, the inauguration is today. do you want to come? you can hold the bible. or you don't have to hold the bible and there was no response. i said, well, let me know because there's a second event in buffalo this afternoon and it starts at 4:00. and if you change your mind, you can come to buffalo. during that afternoon, my sister played my inaugural speech for him. he knew that the buffalo event was at 4:00. my father passed away at with 5:15. he was here. he waited, and then he quietly slipped out of the event and he went home. just like he always did, because his job was done.
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daughter: do you and mom still have money with that broker? dad: yeah, 20 something years now. thinking about what you want to do with your money? daughter: looking at options. what do you guys pay in fees? dad: i don't know exactly. daughter: if you're not happy do they have to pay you back? dad: it doesn't really work that way. daughter: you sure? vo: are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed? wealth management at charles schwab. if you're taking multiple medications does your mouth often feel dry? a dry mouth can be a side effect of many medications. but it can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath. that's why there's biotene available as an oral rinse toothpaste, spray or gel. biotene can provide soothing relief and it helps keep your mouth healthy too. remember, while your medication is doing you good, a dry mouth isn't. biotene, for people who suffer from a dry mouth.
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>> the 114th congress sworn into office today is 80% white. the percentage of white people in the united states is now 63%. 80% of the house and senate are now men, 49% of the american pop is lags is male. coming up, a son is accused of the brutal murder of his very wealthy father over $200. thanks. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] fedex® has solutions to enable global commerce that can help your company grow steadily and quickly. great job. (mandarin) ♪ ♪ cut it out.
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>> the wealthy founder of a hedge fund was murdered on sunday in his home apparently in a dispute over $200. 30-year-old thomas gilbert jr. is charged with homicide and criminal possession of a weapon after allegedly shooting his father thomas gilbert sr. in the head at the father's apartment in a wealthy enclave near the
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united nations on manhattan's east side. according to law enforcement officials, mr. gilbert was angry because his father wanted to cut his son's weekly allowance from $600 a week to $400 a week. joining me now is the chief investigator reporter for wnbc in new york. jonathan, a lot of quickly developing information, and i believe you have late information now about the gun that was used. >> right. we're learning the gun he attained was in ohio. that it was purchased in a gun store there. he himself purchased it or was done through a straw donor. he did not have a license for that gun to own it in new york. >> whatn't a the accused. he's a 30-year-old graduate of princeton. and hasn't worked in a while. did he ever work? >> we're told he did work to at
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some point for his damage's edge fund and periodically had jobs at his father's. he was counting on his rent to be paid for his dad and he was getting $600 a week in payments from his dad and that the dad said it's time to cut back. according to close friends we spoke with, the suspect had a drug history. he had some mental illness issues and they seemed to get worse after he graduated from princeton university. this is a guy who grew up on the upper east side of manhattan, went to the best private school, went to the best beths of universities, had all the -- >> and had to be a very hardworking students in those schools in order to competitively make it into princeton. >> presumably so. and in the circles he traveled in, there were some very elite upper east siders he associated with. but they said over time he became more reclusive and angry. he had past drug abuse.
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some other arrests. some of them were cleared after he performed community service, so they're being erased or sealed from his criminal record. and there's still one outstanding issue from a past assault case where there was a protection order that he allegedly violated. then the family house in the hamptons burned down two weeks after that police complaint was filed. this young man was never named as a suspect in that arson, but a lot of friends and family members have their suspicions and concerns, but police tell us the arson fire remains unsolved. >> anyone around him saying we saw something like this coming? i mean, not necessarily specifically this, killing his father. but you know how people can say this is following a line of decline he was on? >> it seems there was some friends he was losing along the way.
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some people, again, he was becoming according to friends, violent in some instances where he got into fistfights and had arrests. there's one case back to 2007-2008 where he allegedly assaulted some emts who had come to sort of deal with some sort of drug dispute. a lot of papers are sealed or dismissed so we don't know all of the details and he's not convicted in that case, but he had to perform some community service as a result of it. so there was some violence that seemed to be increasing. this is not about $200 and that's why he did it, although police say that's the crux of his rage. a lot of his friends say he was having mental difficulties. >> what led police to the son so quickly? >> mom. the wife was there in the apartment when the son came over and said i want to talk to dad about some of the money issues going on. can you go out and get me a sandwich? she obliged, she came back, found her husband dead on the floor with a gun near him and
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the son had vanished. she reported to police that she feared her own son had committed this act. >> thank you. boehner looks lamer. mcdonnell goes to the slammer, and david duke defends steve scalise. have a nice day, republicans, and let's play "hardball." ♪ ♪ >> good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. put this day, january 6, 2015 down as a bad day for republicans. a top governor who was on mitt romney's short list for vice president is sent to prison today. 25 members of congress, all republicans vote to dump john boehner from the speakership. a stunning rebuke for the history books.
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