tv MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin MSNBC May 25, 2018 10:00am-11:00am PDT
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toss. we'll try to show that to you in the next edition. that's all for us today. have a very safe and happy memorial day and remember the show online on facebook and twitter at "andrea mitchell reports." craig melvin is up next in new york. >> we'll show the hat toss in a moment, i know you will. >> good afternoon to you. craig melvin at msnbc head headquarters in new york city. harvey, charged with rape and criminal sexual acts from two different women. what happens next as his case moves from the court of public opinion to a court of law? and everybody plays games. that's what the president said today about negotiations with north korea. he also said the summit that he just canceled could actually still happen. we'll pull back the curtain on how the meeting fell apart and where things stand right now. plus -- showdown. congress finally taking up central harassment legislation,
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but the house and the senate passed very different plans. now critics worry a compromise may not go far enough. we'll get to those stories in just a moment, but we start here. over a 40-year period. 95 different women have accused harvey weinstein of doing despicable things, but it could be the claims from two of them that force him to spend his twilight years in a prison somewhere. he is wearing an ankle monitor this afternoon. the disgraced former movie mogul was arrested, handcuffed, arraigned all in new york city this morning on rape and other charges involving two different women, charged with rape in the first degree, rape in the third degree, and criminal sexual act in the first degree. weinstein surrendered just before 7:30 this morning at new york's first precinct. from there taken to court a half mile away to be arraigned. posted the $1 million cash bail, left the courthouse through a back door and continues to deny
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having engaged in any non-consensual sex. nbc's 's rehema ellis is stati there in lower manhattan. i stood a kwucouple feet away f you earlier. a great deal of action in the courtroom this morning. what went down? >> reporter: a lot of us still here out here on the sidewalk reporting on this. as you point out, craig, you were here and witnessed it all. it was quite a spectacle for a man who made a career, quite a wealthy fortune for himself, putting people in front of the camera. never expected himself to be the star of a production like this. where he was walked into this courtroom accompanied by law enforcement authorities in handcuffs and stood in the courtroom where he was arraigned on felony charges and as you point out, he says that he dethys there was any non-consensual sex and outside of the courtroom, his attorney,
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benjamin brafman plans to vehemently defend his client. >> mr. weinstein will enter a plea of not guilty. we intend to move very quickly to dismiss these charges. we believe that they are constitutionally flawed. we believe that they are not factually supported by the eford a -- end of the process mr. weinstein will be exonerated. >> reporter: one of the things mr. brafman said he expect this exoneration to come if they're able to get 12 unbiased jurors to sit in this case. a case that, as you point out, it is -- it caused an avalanche of attention and led to the #metoo movement when upwards of 90 women accused harvey weinstein of inappropriate sexual misconduct against them, and now he's facing these
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charges in criminal court and this would not be the end of it for harvey weinstein. brafman says by next week he'll decide whether weinstein will appear before the grand jury now hearing evidence against harvey weinstein. craig? >> all right, rehema ellis ots the courthouse in manhattan. thank you. msnbc legal analyst katie fang is with me, danny savalas also here, and salita maxwell, programming for sirius xm radio. start with you, danny. run through the charges one more time. in regards to complaint number one. rape in the first degree, one count of rape in the third degree, and in regards to complainant number two, one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree. how serious are the charges? what kind of prison time would he be looking at should he be convicted. >> very serious and both complainants have almost equal punishment under the sentencing
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guidelines. the rape in the first degree carries a minimum sentence of fib years. maximum of 25 years. the criminal sexual act in the first degree is, carry, the exact same sentence of a minimum five years. maximum, 25 years. that charge relates to forcible compulsion and oral sexual contact. they're both very serious crimes with almost identical punishment and even though the defendant in this case is not likely to get the maximum, that's the potential that he could get. >> katie, we also learned today that one of the complainants is a woman that heretofore had not been known to the public. the judge also deciding that he is going to keep her identity a secret. why would he do that? what more do we know about this particular woman? >> well, typically you want to keep the identity of a victim in a sexual abuse or sexual
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misconduct crime, you want to keep those identities confidential. what public service does it do to be able to release her identity is the question that must be answered? tellingly and interestingly, both sides have stipulated to what the judge ordered. it's not like harvey weinstein's lawyer complained about that happening. it doesn't serve a purpose at this point in time. maybe down the road we'll see who she is, but fundamentally, you've got two separate victims, craig. you don't have one with three charges. you have two separate victims. three different charges. three different opportunities for a jury of harvey weinstein's peers to find him guilty, but that's going to be a little ways down the road. there's going to be a motion to dismi dismiss, as we heard from benjamin brafman. filed, and will challenge whether the d.a.'s office in manhattan has filed enough to be able to get it past that motion stage. if they are successful as if the prosecutorsen successful defeating the motion to dismiss we'll seediscovery ensue.
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i don't think harvey weinstein would testify in his own trial let alone in front of the grand jury, but perhaps he will. >> motion to dismiss. how high a bar? >> whether or not the prosecutors at this stage have actually alleged the elements of the cause of action for each of the counts, or each of the three counts in the case. it's actually not that high of a bar. remember, this is also criminal court. not civil court. in any proceeding, at any stage, in criminal court it's actually a decent challenge for the prosecution to be able to overcome whatever arguments are made. we heard benjamin brafman say there are constitutional infirmities, problems legally with the indictment and so we're going to see what those are and that will just be for the judge to decide. a jury would not decide whether or not that motion to dismiss should be granted or denies. >> and his attorney, weinstein's
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attorney. benjamin brafman outside the courthouse right after this hearing talking to reporters. this was his response to rehema ellis' question about harvey weinstein's pattern of behavior, take a listen. >> my job is not to defend behavior. my job is to defend something that is criminal behavior. bad behavior, mr. weinstein did not invent the casting couch in hollywood and to the extent there is bad behavior in that industry, that is not what this is about. bad behave sir nior in not on t this case. >> seems like a hint of the defense. bad behavior. >> whether or not he had consent to engage in sexual contact with these particular victims. that's what every rape case really is about. regardless whether or not the behavior itself is bad or good, certainly that will be his nargt a trianargt
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-- argument in a trial. what we're learning in this particular moment, post-#metoo, less than year since the story first broke in the "new york times," in the court of public opinion, we don't acknowledge, or don't accept bad behavior any more. we have a different bar of what we are accepting in terms of how we behave in the workplace, how people engage in think profession, whether in hollywood or a restaurant. at this moment, women and men learn two different lessons from this #metoo movement. women learned they are not alone and we saw with harvey weinstein when one mom came forward, many came forward. gwyneth paltrow and others said i could come forward with my story because i'm not the only one who went through this and often times feel isolated from the other victims. men also learned from the #metoo conversation that these instances are very pervasive in our society. it's not something you can say, i'm far wremoved from this.
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someone i know has been a victim of sexual assault and harassment. i think in this moment, harvey's going to make his case in court, but in the court of public opinion in terms of the culture of conversation, this is a new moment. >> danny, one of these complainants, 2010, this was a woman who was a rising senior in college who claims that harvey weinstein tried to get her to perform a next act in his new york office. another woman claims that harvey weinstein raped her twice. once in 2014, one from 2010. are those not outside of statute of limitations in new york? >> a couple exceptions. continuously lived out the state can toll the limitations. >> what does that mean? toll the statute? >> you use the word "toll" essentially hits the pause
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button on the statute. the defendant disappeared, hard to find on purpose, then he shouldn't get the benefit of the statute of limitations running. one example. in some -- not all, some sex crimes in new york allow for tolls of the statute of limitations for various reasons. so just because the case happened, the incident happened outside the statute in new york doesn't necessarily mean that the statute of limitations won't apply, and there are many crimes -- the modern trend is do away with the statute of limitations altogether in rape cases. this is traditionally an area that has been reserved, not exclusively, but for the most part to crimes like murder. so the modern trend is clearly to abolish the statute of limit aces for the most serious of sex crimes. >> rose mcgowan, one of the actresses, and he should know, spent a fair amount of time talking about the uma thurmans, rose mcgowan, lupita and women
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with famous named reportedly abused by mr. weinstein, but the reality is, majority of the women, the 95, aren't names that you and i would know. but this is rose mcgowan. she was on msnbc a short time ago talking with my colleague stephanie ruhle about her emotions, what she felt as she saw weinstein in handcuffs, take a listen. >> i think he deserves this and more. it's okay to have one day of exaltation, one day of this, because it's going to get really ugly and going to get hard. it's going to get even harder, but right now for today it's okay in this battle to have a moment of just, like, yeah. yeah. >> how hard is it going to be for the women who have accused weinstein and what's the likelihood that should this go to trial, a number of these women will be called to demonstrate this -- this so-called pattern of bad behavior? >> so for the victim of any
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crime the criminal process is difficult. especially the victim of a sex crime. as former prosecutor when i had these cases, the ability to guide the victim through the criminal justice process and have them understand that their credibility is on the line. the facts that brafman said it himself during his presser on the steps of the courthouse, that these women didn't go into the police immediately. that's a common theme in the defense of a sex crime, and so their credibility will be on the line, and we all know that harvey weinstein has really perfected that art form of looking into the histories of the victims. remember, he was very keen on the intimidation tactics going after witnesses, victims, employees, reporters, to make sure he had enough dirt on them or thought was dirt to keep them silenced and sometimes bought think silence. he can't do it now. they've come forward, the
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protection of the criminal justice system. it will take time to get there but they'll be deposed during the process and eventually testify and convince a jury they were victims and this happened. key sheer that here is that har weinstein says it happened, just that it was consensual. harvey weinstein has proven part of the case for the prosecution. admitted saying it was consensual a big deal in terms of the criminal prosecution for a sex crime. >> leave it there. thank you all. the big question for the trump administration today -- is this north korea summit happening or not? one day after scrapping the summit with kim jong-un, the president changing his tune, and as has question looms, we're getting a behind-the-scenes look why he called it off to begin with. plus, the president on
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offense. the day after a highly controversial meeting on the hill about the russia investigation, president trump keeping the pressure on. his latest attacks to undermine the fbi. just a few moments ago as promised, here it is. you newest generation of u.s. navy officers following that time honored tradition, tossing their hats in the air upon graduating from the u.s. naval academy in annapolis, maryland a few moments before the midshipmen were congratulated by president trump himself as he gave the commencement address. i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it's been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients
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it was on, then off, now seems maybe, possibly, perhaps -- back on again. 24 hours after president trump called it off, president trump surprising reporters this morning saying that the summit with north korea's leader may, in fact, still happen. >> we'll see what happens. we're talking to them now. it was a very nice statement that they put out. we'll see what happens. >> the [ inaudible ] -- >> no, no. we'll see what happens. it could even be the 12th. we're talking to them now. they very much want to do it. we'd like to do it. we're going to see what happens. >> so those comments there follow north korea's conciliatory response who said in part -- we would like to make known to the u.s. side once again that we
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have the intent to sit with the u.s. side, to solve problems regardless of ways at any time. again that coming from the vice minister of foreign affairs to north korea there. and ned price, msnbc national security analyst and ambassador christopher hill, former u.s. ambassador to south korea currently a professor of practice and diplomacy at the university of denver, also an msnbc diplomacy contributor. ned, nbc news reporting here that president trump feared that the north koreans might just beat him to the punch and he wanted to cancel -- wanted to cancel first to save face. is that a dangerous strategy? >> well, it is a dangerous strategy, craig, if you look at what it means. from the start president trump has overly personalized this conflict. he has made it not about the united states and our allies against a nuclear armed adversary north korea but about
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himself versus kim jong-un. he calmed him little rocket man. hurled insults the way you would expect a north korean leader to hurl insults at presidents and in the way in the past they've done that to u.s. presidents. that was the fatal flaw in all of this. donald trump needs to be able to put aside his ego and diplomacy. this is not, who is going to ask him to the prom. this is about denuclearization and ensuring that north korea does not have the weapons and the delivery systems it can use to threaten allies and potentially the united states. >> ambassador, this is what the senior senator from south carolina said this morning on "today" about a conversation he had with the president yesterday. >> it could be the worst divorce in the history of the world or we can all get back together. talking to the president yesterday he thought they were
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playing him. that china is sort of pulling back north korea. >> was he being played, mr. ambassador? >> oh, i don't know. look, the problem was, june 12th, the date was beginning to look like a train wreck. the president was claiming the north koreans were going to come and, you know, bring their nuclear weapons in a winnebago or something and give them up to them and we weren't going to do anything in response. the north koreans essentially would love to have a meeting with the president of the united states. if you think of a competition between kim jong-un and his deceased father and deceased grandfather, neither of those two leaders ever had a meeting with a sitting president. so they would love to talk to him. the problem is, they're not really ready to give up their nuclear weapons and not on the basis that president trump had been doing, and then to have president trump sort of talk like he was doing an end zone dance on his own 20 yard line, i think kind of made them very
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worried. and then, of course, john bolton, whom they know well, thought is was useful to start talking about 9 llibya model ext it's updated with what add fhap a few years ago with the death of gadhafi in the streets of tripoli and quite recently vice president pence joined into that. everything going in the wrong direction and i think the president was wise to call it off. and now the question, is it really back on and what's the basis for it being back on? i wish the president would maybe send a few people to talk to them and say, okay. what are you prepared to bring to the summit? we need denuclearization. what are you prepared to do and kind of treat this like it's less of a reality tv show and more of a diplomatic effort. >> mr. ambassador, have you ever gotten the sense -- i ask this question because there's been at least two occasions i can remember off the top of my head where the president has been asked point blank if he has
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spoke ton kim jong-un and he's dodged the question bp this is not a president -- one of those -- strikes me as the kind of guy, if he talked to kim jong-un he would want to tell you they had the conversation and what they talked about. do you get the sense they have, perhaps, had conversations on the telephone? >> beats the heck out of me. i mean, when the president says something, it's not exactly something you can take to the bank. so, you know, it's possible he's had some indirect conversations. it seems there must be more than just the messages he's heard through the south koreans. so i wouldn't rule it out, but with this president, frankly speaking, who knows? i'm not even sure, and i think this is part of the problem of personalizing all of this. this is not going to be about chemistry where the two leaders meet together and kim jong-un says, i really like you, mr. president. we're going to give up our nuclear weapons now. these are deep-seeded issues that neat to be worked through,
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and for the life of me i don't quite understand what secretary of state pompeo did when he was in north korea. one would think he would have asked them. they would have given an elusive answer, said that's a problem for us, because we need to know what you're prepared to do at the summit. this is what we're prepared to do. a i'm not sure those conversations took place but hoping maybe the trump administration learns something from those and that may be behind the president's latest statement to the effect we're "talking to them right now." >> wish we had more time, gentlemen. thank you both so much. enjoin the holiday weekend. when the justice department set up that meeting with lawmakers about the russia investigation, critics were skeptical, fair to say. when the president's lawyer and chief of staff showed up, things got even worse. the outrage growing on capitol hill this friday.
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also blaming democrats in a series of tweets today. democrats are now alluding to the concept that having an informant placed in an oppose be party's campaign is different than having a spy, as illegal as that may be. but what about an informant? he used the quotes, not us. paid a fortune and sets up way earlier than the russian hoax. can anyone imagine spies placed in a competing campaign by the people and party in absolute power for the sole purpose of political advantage and gain? with me now, harry litman, former u.s. attorney, former deputy assistant attorney general during the clin aton administration and just wrote a post in the op-ed and betsy, daily beast politics reporter also just written. wrote about this meeting. ben betsy, democrats insist that the white house chief of staff general john kelly was there. that the president's attorney
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emmet flood were present at the top of those meetings. you wrote in part, flood's presence fueled the perception that the white house was trying to monitor the investigation in to the trump campaign. how did they justify? how do republicans justify having the chief of staff and the president's personal attorney? >> the official line from the white house that john kelly and emmet flood, the president's lawyer, were only there for the beginning of these two meetings. essentially popped in, said hi. told everyone they were glad the meetings were going on and stepped out. they weren't actually involved in the nuts and bolts of the meeting is what the white house is telling us. that said, it hasn't been enough to alleviate concerns even that short appearance according to the white house was appropriate. one thing i can tell you that during the second meeting, a highly classified confidential meeting, i can tell you during the second meeting that happened yesterday on capitol hill, emmet flood was actually confronted by multiple participant telling them they thought it was inappropriate even to stick in
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his head and try to be there, creating a perception that the white house was trying to monitor an investigation that is looking into in some ways the white house itself. >> harry, what about that perception? how is this not a misuse or abuse of power? >> that perception is the reality, and that's exactly what is going on here. in some ways, it's -- it's, what it shows, ow abohow aberrant th meeting itself was. there's no precedent for this kind of revolution, of confidential source material in a pending investigation and pretty much everyone knows once out this far it's going to make its way to trump. who's actually the subject of the investigation here. that's what was so crazy about the meeting in the first place. that flood and kelly would show up and meet and greet seems a little odd. adds a little fuel to the fire. the bake problem is the meeting itself. >> harry, what congressman adam
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schiff, attended one of those briefings, what he said after the meeting. >> today's gang of eight briefing was conducted to secure methods and nothing we heard changed our view that there is no evidence to support any allegation that the fbi or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the trump campaign or otherwise failed to follow appropriate procedures and protocols. >> rod rosenstein's been criticized for caving to the president allowing the confidentconfiden confidential documents. not to be outdone by betsy, share a snippet from your op-ed, harry. you write in part, ultimately, however, rosenstein and christopher wray have one weapon, deployed only once as a very substantial cost. they can resign their offices. is that what you think they should do? just walk away from all of this?
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>> the short answer is, no. it's very hard to be in their shoes and know what they're juggling, how much time they're trying to buy for the mueller investigation, but each of these actions have really crossed a line, and this latest one, this so-called spygate, is about as far a crossing as we've had. it is so far from an embedded spy in the trump camp. he was, professor hallper. crazy we know who he was. no difference from a cop going to, to the street when there's a bank robbery and saying what do you know to the people he works with. predicated on real talks with russians by two people involved in the campaign and, of course, it's what you do. nobody was embedded here. they talked to a pre-existing confidential informant. >> betsy, the president's attorney, rudy giuliani, told politico these two classified
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briefings could help grease the wheels for an interview between president trump and special counsel robert mueller. we want to see how the briefing went today and how much we learned from it. giuliani said in a phone call thursday with politico. if we learned a good deal from it it will shorten that whole process considerably. isn't that -- wouldn't that be further prove that president's trying to use the power of his office to discredit the probe? >> exactly. nobody is supposed to know anything about anything that's said or shared in these meetings, except for the participants. if you talk to, were to ask mitch mcconnell, they would be barred from telling you what they learned. they aren't supposed to share with anything. whats in the meeting is supposed to stay in the mealing. that's why the president's lawyer were not there to hear what was going on. giuliani has a poor grasp the way these meetings work or is expecting to get something out of this meeting that isn't going
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to happen. giuliani's comments fueled concern among democrats that this meeting was just another example of politicization of intelligence and more importantly of the breakdown of the wall between the white house and the justice department. it's become an existential question or problem for the doj under this administration. what is its relationship with the white house? how much of a say does the white house have in what the doj? the president threatens on twitter to try to take a bigger role in influencing the justice department's decisions. it's a really independent institution and key to the public having trust in the way this system works. the erosion and boundary line between the doj and white house, giuliani suggests could have happened faster than we realized is something with a lot former doj officials really concerned. >> thank you to you both. sexual harassment on both the hill. about this the house and senate
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pass a measure to punish those offendsers. the hardest may still lie ahead. look at that. also, president trump has made at least 3,000 false or misleading claims since taking office. at least 3,000. that's according to "the washington post." research shows, it's actually getting worse as time goes on. he's lying more. we're going to talk to a neuroscience professor who says, she might know why. dear foremothers, your society was led by a woman, who governed thousands... commanded armies... yielded to no one. when i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. my name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. now with 5 times more detail than other dna tests. order your kit at ancestrydna.com at fidelity, our online u.s. equity trades are just $4.95.
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right now a showdown in congress over how to proceed against sexual harassment. the senate unanimously passed a sexual harassment bill yesterday nearly three months after the house voted on their own bill, but house critics say it doesn't go far enough. they say the bill doesn't do enough to protect victims and still creates too many loopholes to hold lawmakers fully accountable. amber phillips, "washington post" reporter covering all things congress joins me on this friday afternoon. what more do we know about this bill and what are the objections we're hearing specifically about it? >> reporter: what seemed like a slam dunk in the senate yesterday. this bill passed by unanimous consent, meaning none of the 100 senators or 99, their objective is now more of a question today. all that's left from the senate's point is view was the house to sign off on this bill. they pass add versied a verse on
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three months ago in february. a lot were similar. senators weren't expecting a holdup we're seeing now from the house. that is, key lawmakers leading the charge to reform these decades' old rules are saying the senate bill narrows the definition of what is sexual harassment and what is discrimination, which could leave a gray area for lawmakers to get away with, like, commenting on females' clothes, fee family staffers' clothes or or workplace misconduct that really walks that fine line but maybe in the court of law isn't considered technically sexual harassment. >> 100 senators, unanimous consent. virtually unheard of in the modern political era in regards to issues like this. to your point, five sieve's rights groups co-wrote a letter to the leaders and laid out concerns saying this bill among other things falls short of an acceptable compromise and may have unintended negative
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consequences. do we know at this point how congress is expected to proceed on this? >> reporter: no. it's not clear what could happen next. there are already negotiations happening between the senate and the house. what they could do is go behind closed doors and hammer out some of these darchsifferences. what if we include the definition of sexual harassment to include x, y and savmt? it's happ z that's great. does a check and passes it. or take to the floor and have a big debate about this to a lot of house lawmakers is frustrating, because they passed a very similar bill three months ago by an overwhelming majority as well. >> have to leave it there. amber phillips, "washington post," thank you. enjoy the weekend. >> thank you. a new opinion piece on nbc think says that trump's lying seems to be getting worse.
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psychology suggests there's a reason why. i'll talk to the author, cognitive neuroscience professor, about the science of lying. it should be a fascinating conversation, but first, if you plan to travel this memorial day weekend, make a little room in the budget for gas. this weekend, pay $1 billion, with a b, $1 billion more for gas than last year and that's because prices are up 50 cents a gallon in the last year and in part due to a shrinking supply and pending u.s. sanctions against iran and venezuela.
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the edge you need. e*trade. the original place to invest online. for some time there's been a cons effo concertsed effort to change the russia investigation and it appears it's working. a recent cbs poll shows 53%, majority of americans, believe the russia investigation is politically motivated. that's up from 48% in december. why? could very well come down to one thing. president trump's lies. more specifically, the sheer number and frequency of them.
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researchers have taken a look in the "washington post" fact checker from president trump and found the spread now l presiden more often. 4.9 falsehoods per day in his first days in the oval office. now 9 lies per day. the researcher joins me from san francisco, an associate professor of cognitive neurosciences at university college london and the author of "the influential mind" and dana milbank, an influential mind. also is a columnist for the "washington post" and joins ow conversation as well. let me start with the researcher here. you looked into the science of lying. simple question. why might there be weren't uptick? why an uptick in the president's lies? >> all right. we don't know specifically about why there's an escalation in the president's lies. it could be many reasons.
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maybe certain lies covered up with more and more lies. maybe falsehoods repeated so many times they are considered to be true, which makes them repeated more. our research suggests that there might be another explanation, explanation which is quite intriguing. research done in our lab, not on the president, suggests that the emotional response that people have to their own lies is reduced every time they lie. now they don't have that negative arousal that comes with lying so there is nothing carving their dishonesty. dishonesty just escalates over time. i was going to tell you exactly what we did. we brought people into our lab and we gave them an opportunity to lie again and again in a financial task in order to gain money at the expense of another person. what we found was at the beginning they lied by only a few cents. but over time, the amount that they lied became bigger and bigger. and while they were doing this, we scanned their brains in a
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brain imaging scanner and we looked at the response of the emotional system in the brain, especially part of the brain called the amygdala went down. the greater the response dropped, the more likely the person was to lie a bigger lie the next time they had an opportunity. i think the way to think about it is a bit like perfume. you buy a new perfume, you put it on. it smells quite strongly. over time you put it again and again and after a while you can't smell it anymore because you have adapted. you really need to apply it more liberally in order to smell. so your own dishonesty, repeated dishonesty, is a bit like perfume that you just adjust to over time and you can't adjust to it anymore. >> there you have it. that's probably the best explanation i've heard so far. we've heard so many, we become desensitized. >> i'm no brain scientist but it
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certainly makes sense to me. i've interviewed people about it along the way. one influence here is the president's been saying so many untrue things, it is like he is building up his repertoire, his body of work. it is like esop's fables so they build upon each other each time he says another one. another piece that i think is consistent with what the professor is talking about, it is not entirely clear to me that the president is lying in that he doesn't necessarily know the difference between truth and fiction, that when he says something he has an ability to believe that what he is saying either is true or ought to be true. so that may be why he's not feeling that sort of negative feeling when he says something untrue. he is able to convince himself that whatever he wishes to believe is true is in fact true. so i think that's consistent with what the professor's talking about. >> when we look at the president's past, through the lens of this truth stretching, as well, folks who followed
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donald trump for a long time have talked about this somewhatedsomewhat ed ad nauseam. this is a guy who's been stretching the truth for a long time. politico noting new york tabloid writers who followed trump on the rise as a mogul found him categorically difference in just how often and pointlessly he would lie to them. in his own autobiography, trump used the phrase "truthful hyperbole" to help close sales. what's more, this is something i've talked about somewhat ad nauseam here on his broadcast, the president has masked the art of repetition. he repeats words and phrases over and over. witch hunt most recently. no collusion. deep state. does that repetition -- does it make it more effective? does it make -- does it make it more true in the eyes of his supporters? >> absolutely. i think the alarming
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possibility -- and there's research to suggest that -- that people don't only adapt to their own lying, they also adapt to dishonesty of other people. so there's research coming from harvard that shows that when people see someone else lying, but gradually becoming dishonest gradually, they're less likely to respond to that. they're more likely to just get used to it. so there is this danger that everyone is adapting. right. to this culture of dishonesty because it is happening over time quite gradually. we actually got the data from the "washington post" and according to our calculations, if the rate of dishonesty, the escalation, remains steady, it is likely that by the end of the term, the president will be saying 90 false statements a day, on average. if the escalation continues. >> why do we say false statement. why don't we just say lie. we dance around "misleading." they're lies, aren't they? >> i think you made the point,
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as well as dana. it is unclear what he believes. right? so it's unclear -- >> that was dana's point. >> last word. >> right. to tell a lie you have to be premeditated. you have to know what the truth is. but the weird thing is, we've heard trump lie, say -- or tell an untruth about the weather. say that it was sunny when it was raining. so something very easily disprovable, yet he seems very comfortable in saying it. at one point he was asked about his net worth and he said it varies depending on how i feel. which of course it doesn't. it is actually a number on a piece of paper. but in his head there's something that's very malleable about it and the truth really seems to be what he wants it to be. >> dana milbank, we'll leave it there. a fascinating read, tali. thank you so much for coming on to walk us through it. have a good weekend. since it is friday, let me leave you with a little something to smile about.
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i want to introduce you to 18-year-old richard jenkins. he is a philadelphia teenager who had to sleep in homeless shelters as a kid. bullies at school, they used to taunt him. they used to call him "harvard." just because he liked to read. well, today richard, living up to that nickname. after overcoming the odds, is he graduating this year as valedictorian and guess where he is going to school. that's right. harvard university's class of 2022 on a full scholarship. he plans to study computer science and his goal -- to create a more intuitive virtual assistant. congratulations, young man. we'll be right back. your brainy begins to change which may cause trouble with recall. - learning from him is great... when i can keep up! - anncr: thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. - dad's got all the answers. - anncr: prevagen is now the number-one-selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide.
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it's a drone! i know. find your phone easily with the xfinity voice remote. one more way comcast is working to fit into your life, not the other way around. it is 11:00 a.m. out west, 2:00 p.m. here in new york where harvey weinstein, a man who spent decades walking the red carpet found himself doing a perp walk. the disgraced movie mogul arrested and charged with rape and criminal sexual act. weinstein flashed a smile while leaving the police station in handcuffs, but in court he appeared much more somber. >> that investigation revealed that this defendant used his position, money and power to lure young women in to situations where he was able to
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