"all in" with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on "all in" -- >> i think the conversation that happened this week with the president of taiwan was a courtesy call. >> first it was a courtesy call. today, reports trump was intentionally provoking the world power. >> china has created the greatest theft in the history of the united states. >> the high stakes of donald trump's first global feud as president-elect. plus, what was al gore doing at trump tower today? tonight, my exclusive interview with the former vice president on his talks with ld trump and calls to ditch the electoral college. then, senator sherrod brown on why he's troubled by the ben carson pick for h.u.d. the massive victory for activists against the dakota

pipeline when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. 46 days until he's sworn in as president of the united states, donald trump is back to one of his signature moves from the campaign trail, engaging in a public feud. during the campaign, trump feuded with everyone from an ex-beauty queen to a judge to the elder statesman of his own party. feuds have been part of his reality persona going back years. think about his long-time beef with rosie o'donnell. never back down, never surrender. in this case, however, this is not a private individual or political opponent. it's the nation of china. nuclear armed power with a population of almost 1.4 billion, the world's second largest economy after the u.s. and our number one trading partner and largest owner of u.s. debt. in fighting this battle, trump may be rewriting delicate

foreign policy on china whether he means to or not. president-elect had taken a congratulatory phone call from the president of the taiwan. no american president or president-elect has had contact with taiwan's leader since 1979 when the u.s. formally established diplomatic relations with the people's republic of china, adopting what is known as the one china policy. "the united states of america recognizes the government of the people's republic of china as the sole government of china." china views taiwan as a threat and could destabilize an already fraught relationship. trump had a choice, downplay the call or declare he's taking u.s./china relations in a different direction and he seemed to indicate the former. "the president of taiwan called me today to wish me congratulations on winning the presidency. thank you."

>> so this was an intentional sort of challenge to the foreign policy establishment, to the u.s./chinese diplomatic establishment? >> no, chuck. this was a courtesy call. they called to congratulate the president-elect. >> so courtesy call, not a change in policy? >> exactly. >> the chinese government took a similar approach. its foreign minister saying, "this is only a little trick put up by taiwan. i don't think the u.s. government will change the one china policy." but negative coverage of the call seems to have gotten under trump's skin as it so often seems to and yesterday he followed up with a couple of tweets striking a very different tone. "did china ask us if it was okay to devalue their currency, heavily tax our products going into their country? the u.s. doesn't tax them. i don't think so." meanwhile, "the washington post" reports that trump's taiwan call

wasn't just a courtesy. it was a result of long-term planning by his advisers, part of a new strategy for engagement with taiwan. this is not the first evidence we've seen of such strategy. two of trump's advisers called for a more confrontational stance towards the people's republic of china and more support for the democratically elected government. those are bedrock neoconservative principles by some of the same people who insisted toppling saddam hussein would bring peace to the middle east and slammed george bush and advisers and claiming falsely that he had opposed the war from the start. one of those was john bolton and met with the president-elect at the trump tower on friday. the following day, he shared his thoughts in an interview on fox news. >> my view has been for some time that we should be upgrading our relations with taiwan. i know that's going to cause

heartburn in beijing, but it's a reality. this is a nation of over 20 million people. they have a democratic government, a free press, a free market. honestly, i think we should shake this relationship up. >> today, china's communist party government advised its response publishing a front page in "the people's daily" calling it nothing but a despicable and petty move and warned, i'm quoting again, "trump and his transition team should realize that making trouble for china/u.s. ties is making trouble for themselves." i'm joined by a member of the presidential transition team executive committee. anthony, it seems to be two ways to interpret this. one is that it wasn't a big deal, it was a courtesy call, the president-elect took it. others say it's a marker for a different direction, a new tact towards this very difficult fraught relationship. it can't be both. so which is it?

>> well, listen, it's the former and i think what's very necessary to say right now is that there's no deviation in the united states' policy as it relates to china. however, okay, we are a free country and when you have a democratically elected leader in taiwan calling in to the president-elect and he accepts the call and they have a gracious conversation, we really shouldn't read much more into it than that. he took 50 calls like that while he's traveling around the country saving jobs at carrier and doing other things, chris. so for me, i think we're sort of all blowing it out of proportion in the media. he's kbas basically saying into his tweets since 1979 we have sort of followed suit and followed protocol, yet the chinese sort of haven't. they went out into the south china sea, saw the name china, they think it's their sea and they are building military

facilities out there. so the president-elect is just letting people know that he's paying attention to this sort of stuff and there should be symmetry and peace and prosperity in this relationship but both sides have to recognize that, not just the united states. and i think that's the message of the president-elect's tweets. >> let me ask you this, i want to be clear on this. if you say, look, this was a courtesy call and he accepted, that's one thing. there is reporting that said there was staff around the president-elect that arranged the call and they have a long-standing believe that the trajectory of american policy towards taiwan and china should be altered. are those reports incorrect? >> okay. so listen, i don't know who those people from "the washington post" are talking to but the people i talked to today would say that that stuff is incorrect. was a call incoming and then was the president-elect prepared for that call in that intermediate few minutes? absolutely. i don't think it was planned out

like "the washington post" has suggested. again, let me just finish. to me, i think that you guys are trying to focus on something by saying he's thin-skinned and all of this sort of stuff by going back to the campaign. let's focus on what the president-elect is doing for the american people over the last three or four weeks. he's have a wonderfully dignified process of interviewing some of the best people in the united states and most talented people in the united states for all of these different jobs he has to fill. but calls are coming in. he's a pretty polite, very gracious, charming guy and he took the call. and so what vice president pence was saying over the weekend and what i'm saying live right now on your show is that is the sign of a diplomat and someone that's very gracious. it's not a deviation in china policy. but let's -- there's symmetry to this policy. that's what we're seeing from the transition team. >> here's my point.

you're saying we're trying to gin up that this is a fit of peak and i'm happy to be told that's not the case. i'm actually honestly trying to get my head around what is happening here, right, because there's a few different ways. what you just said when you were interpreting president-elect's tweets was more diplomatic than the tweets themselves. he could have said, look, this is an important relationship that has gotten out of balance and needs to be restored to some symmetry. he didn't say that. he went on a broad side against china. >> but chris, that's -- first of all, that's not the president-elect's personality or his style. at the likes tweeting for dramatic effect and i also think he likes to set some people's hair on fire like you by tweeting. don't let your hair go on fire. there's no deviation in china policy from president-elect trump nor from the incoming administration. >> respectfully, though, that's part of my point. so my hair is not on fire now. i'm fine.

i guess the worry or the concern at least is that he does clearly sort of enjoy kind of violating taboos that he thinks are not worthwhile, right, and the kind of gasp that can elicit from folks and he's probably right, those taboos shouldn't be there. i guess the worry is, that's read differently by, say, nuclear armed china with 1.4 billion people and there is some real diplomatic fallout that might come from it. >> we've had meetings from china also sovereign wealth fund people. we're going to have a great relationship with china. >> okay. >> all the president-elect is saying is we've got to create fairness in that relationship and i said something recently to one of the sovereign well fund people that came in. at the end of the day, the last hope for globalism is we fix the problem in the middle class and working class of the united states. >> yep.

>> and you and i have talked about that. we fix that problem and we create a redo on that burgeoning market of consumption, that's going to be phenomenal for china and for the rest of the world. and so we want to have a great relationship with china as we do with all of the other nations but what we don't want to do is blow something out of proportion which was a congratulatory phone call that the incoming president who is a very gracious guy took from the president of taiwan. >> all right. anthony scaramucci, come back any time. >> appreciate it. >> joining me now is john harwood, correspondent for msnbc. mr. scaramucci is quite diplomatic and trying to say the pence byline. >> by the way, i have some water for your hair if you need it. >> well, again, it is true -- i was talking to a friend of mine who worked at the state department. they were saying -- just imagining the freakout that is happening at foggy bottom.

they tend to be quite rule-bound and quite bureaucratic and there's probably a lot of dos and don'ts that maybe should be reassessed. but this has real big implications, right? >> i think so and it seems to me that anthony was describing it in a way that doesn't seem to fit the emerging reality of the situation. it does appear to be purposeful and republicans with a lot more experience dealing with foreign policy than you, me or anthony have characterized it as a purposeful call. i talked to ari fleischer, for example, george w. bush's press secretary. he said, i welcome this so long as it's on purpose because the status quo needs to be changed in the u.s./china relationship. i don't believe that this was an accident. i don't believe that the president of taiwan was cold

calling the president and then, oh, i just happened to pick up the phone. no. i think it was on purpose. the only question is if it is seen in retrospect as a fast ball or is this something that actually triggers a brawl with consequences. >> well, here's steven moore. tom cotton immediately supporting it. jon huntsman, not viewed as a china hawk. i think he was ambassador to china saying i think that's okay. >> just like bolton did. >> and steve moore on the economic team, here's what he had to say. >> taiwan is our ally, john. that is a country that we have backed because they believe in freedom. and we ought to back our ally and if china doesn't like it, screw them. >> so if china doesn't like it, screw them, it's tough talk. we should also say, there's a long-standing ideological vain

here between neoconservatives in the republican party who feel confrontation with china is needed that we've been too soft on them for a long time and it's sort of amazing to see that ideological string, which is a real developed thing, gain a foothold this early. >> well, sure. and it gained a foot hold in michael flynn. you know, the attitude is, yeah, we're going to break some eggs and they should be broken. and again, i haven't sensed from democratic foreign policy experts any conviction that this is harmful in and of itself. >> right. and does china then go about flexing its muscles militarily around taiwan and is there a provocation and do we respond to the provocation. if it's signaling a new day, may not be that big of a deal. >> john harwood, thank you. al gore's surprise visit to trump tower.

i'll ask him about his meeting with donald trump and why he's still optimistic about his opinion that the electoral college has to go. plus, trump pick as man that he once accused of having a pathological disease to join his incoming cabinet. dr. ben carson's new appointment after this two-minute break. way.

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until someone else scoops your story. switch to comcast business. with high-speed internet up to 10 gigabits per second. you wouldn't pick a slow race car. then why settle for slow internet? comcast business. built for speed. built for business. donald trump today made a long anticipated announcement of his newest cabinet pick tapping dr. ben carson to head housing and urban development. first, he has no real working experience to do the job. second, carson's own adviser essentially said he isn't up to it. just a few weeks ago, carson's confidant armstrong williams told nbc news that carson wouldn't be qualified to run a government agency. he told "the hill" specifically, "dr. carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. the last thing he would want to do was take a position that

could cripple the presidency." that same day, carson himself gave an interview saying he'd only consider a cabinet position in trump absolutely needed him. having me as a federal bureaucrat would be like a fish out of water, quite frankly. he had an amazing accomplishment in the career of medicine, he has zero experience in housing and urban development and could be leading an agency of 8400 employees. some democrats were quick to condemn the appointment, including senator sherrod brown. senator, you put out a pretty critical to skeptical statement about dr. carson. what's your concern? >> well, my concern starts with the boss. donald trump's first interaction with the federal government is when the nixon administration justice department found him guilty and came to an agreement, a settlement on housing discrimination so donald trump

has been, you know, the birther, the one we know the most about how he said barack obama wasn't born here but he actually many, many years ago was found guilty and with housing discrimination and not renting to african-americans and his new h.u.d. appointee seems to share that philosophy. second, i want to see -- i don't know how qualified he will be and how much he knows but i've never heard him talk about how we provide more housing to particularly moderate income people. the neighborhood my wife and i live in in cleveland 44105 had more foreclosures than any zip code in the united states in 2007. there are a whole lot of renters and the price has gone up. they spend 50% of their disposable income in rent. we've got to find a way to provide a moderate price to affordable housing. i'm hopeful that mr. -- dr. carson will come forward with some ideas. i haven't seen them yet.

>> i want to clarify what you said in the first part of that answer when you talked about the finding of the u.s. government, that trump was in violation of federal civil rights, not renting to african-americans. you said his appointee agrees with that. you don't mean not renting to african-americans. you mean you don't see him as a strong voice for enforcement? >> yeah. i've seen him show no interest in enforcement and no real interest in housing. but i'm the ranking member of the banking committee. he'll come in front of my committee. i'm open-minded about what he's going to say and do but i think it does start at the top and there's nothing out of this campaign that says we need to provide more affordable housing. we have to find ways to help people avoid for closure who have been paying their rent and maybe lose their jobs for a period of time. and if you don't -- the economy never comes back strong enough if you don't provide -- if

housing doesn't contribute to it and it's not contributed the way it needs to. >> you had this vote about democratic senators' posture towards appointments. you said, they've been awarded for stealing a supreme court justice. we're going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified? it's not obstruction or partisan. it's just a duty to find out what they do in these jobs." what's your approach here? >> well, my approach is -- take potential secretary carson. i want to know what he's going to do on housing, on housing discrimination, what he's going to do on section 8, what's he going to do with the old hand program and provide moderate income housing to low-income people with the potential sector of health and human services who built his own career on raising the eligibility age for medicare and privatization of medicare. we in no way should just confirm these nominees without any questions. i mean, they have been out of the mainstream in this country

on medicare, on housing discrimination, on civil rights, on voting rights. his nominees have simply not be part of what 70, 80, 90% of americans believe. i'll be damned if we should just step up and say, okay, we'll cooperate. we don't have time to ask him questions. let them get to work. that's not the way. it's advise and consent. i want to know what they are going to do for ohio, for cleveland, for small towns like mansfield and revana and lima. >> sherrod brown, thank you for your time tonight. >> glad to do it, thanks. my interview with al gore and on his surprise visit to trump tower to talk climate with the president-elect. >> it was a very intelligent exchange. it was a search for common ground. i was happy to have the opportunity and happy with the exchange of views.

one of the most spirited and remarkable, sustained acts of civil disobedience in recent memories is still unfolding where standing rock sioux tribe and other protesters are fighting to keep a section of the dakota access pipeline from running beneath a reservoir near a reservation. protesters celebrated yesterday when the assistant secretary of the army announced it would not grant a permit for that portion of the pipeline and that alternate routes needed to be explored. hundreds of veterans recently

from over, a recent decision could be reversed by the incoming president donald trump who has expressed support for the pipeline project. trump also owns stock in energy transfer partners, the company overseeing the pipeline project but has now sold his stake in that company according to a spokeswoman speaking with nbc news. donald trump's beliefs on climate change is and cause some hope today to see this man in the lobby of the trump tower, mr. al gore, will be my guest after this break.

i had a meeting beforehand with ivanka trump. the bulk of the time was with president-elect donald trump. i found it an extremely interesting conversation and to be continued and i'm just going to leave it at that. thank you. >> former vice president al gore was in trump tower earlier today meeting with president-elect and his daughter ivanka trump. joining me now is al gore whose climate reality project is currently live streaming. mr. vice president, let me start with your meeting today. obviously it's not something you're going to give us the blow by blow of. >> it was very interesting. i do think it was productive. i've used some of these words

before and i'm choosing them carefully in order to not give too many details and i hope you understand that, chris. by the way, i really appreciate your personal coverage of the climate coverage. you're one of the few that comes back to it over and over again and my own concern about it led me to this meeting today. i was very grateful to be asked to come by for this 24 hours. i can see 30 rock from where you're sitting right now just across the river from liberty state park. if folks want to see 24 hours of reality, thank you for mentioning, it's on the internet, 24reality.org. the meeting was a good one, i thought. we covered a lot of ground. the reason i'm not going into details may be obvious. i always protected the privacy of my conversations with president clinton during the eight years i was vice president and i think the president-elect

donald trump is entitled to that same courtesy. i look forward to having other conversations and that's yet another reason why i want to protect the privacy of it. it was a very intelligent exchange. it was a search for common ground and in answer to your question, i felt good about the meeting. of course, we're in this wait and see period but i was very -- i was happy to have the opportunity and happy with the exchange of views. >> you know, as you do this year's climate reality, 24-hour live stream, it's a real important moment, every moment for the climate has been important but this is a really key one, some real progress has been made, whether it's the bilateral deal with china, the paris accords, the epa ruling which has been upheld in the courts. all of that appears to be undoable or maybe not.

i wonder what you think of how high the risk is of all of that being essentially erased. >> i think the momentum is unstoppable now. we're winning this. we're going to win it. there is a serious question as to how fast we will win it and that's crucial because we're adding another 110 million tons today of manmade global warming pollution and it's building up and i won't give you the parade of horribles. you know them very well. but it's a very serious threat to the future of our civilization. it sounds apocalyptic and people say i don't want to think about that but we have an obligation to our kids, our grandkids, ourselves because we're seeing the severity of these extreme weather events, the sea level rising, et cetera, et cetera. and here's the most exciting

part, chris. the cost of renewable energy and efficiency with the tools in business that all of us have now, it's actually bringing emissions down. we can win this and create jobs and opportunity in the process. and one other thing. you're right, paris was a big deal. but since paris -- paris was designed in part to send a powerful signal to business industry civil society. the good news since then, you saw it in morocco earlier a few weeks ago, you saw it at the c-40, the big cities conference in mexico last week. that signal has been received very powerfully. the mood worldwide is completely changed now. >> is that really true? >> investors are changing. >> is that really true? because i feel like when you're looking at geo politics, between brexit, the rise of the right-wing parties in europe who want to withdraw from the eu or

regain some kind of sovereignty that they feel they have lost, there's a darkness hanging over the assessment of the geopolitical situation. >> yeah, but it's a mistake just to say darkness covering everything. look, we've seen these twin trends, hyper globalization without outsourcing low-wage jobs and the addition of increasingly effective forms of artificial intelligence to automation which is overturning a few centuries of economic theory and leading to the conclusion that maybe intelligent automation is destroying more jobs than it's created. these two things together are hallowing out the middle class in countries around the world and because the returns from the investment of labor and capital and resources is now going much more to the owners of technology at the capital, inequality is rising simultaneously and these

things have all contributed to the end of an era and searching for a new kind of -- a new blueprint, a new path forward. but it's not true that the populist uprising is directed against renewable energy. quite to the contrary. in florida, for example, the same time donald trump was winning, the fossil was losing and did lose a constitutional amendment to try to stop solar. solar installations are just exploding all over the world. probably the wrong metaphor. they are increasing so dramatically and the cost is coming down so rapidly. the latest world record contract, 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, that is just about half of the cost of producing electricity from coal. and it's crossing that grid parity line to become cheaper than coal electricity and gas

electricity in region after jeej and giving businesses and industries and homeowners fantastic new opportunities to decrease consumption without hurting the quality of life, saving on their energy bills at the same time that the emissions are being reduced. so i think the sustainability worldwide is on par with the agricultural revolution but with the speed of digital. it's sweeping the world. we're going to meet the targets regardless of what policies the incoming administration adopts but, as i've said before, i don't think it's pollyanna-ish to more than we fear. i think this uprising of support for energy independence not only at a national level but a homeowner level, give us the chance to put the solar panels

up there. we don't want to be just continually fleeced. we want energy choices. go ahead. >> without sort of betraying confidences from your meeting, i mean, you met with two people today. you met with donald trump and ivanka and there have been some ideas floated what issues there are and she and her husband have donated to the democrats in the past financially. did you get a sense of where she is on kind of basic consensus view on climate? >> well, again, forgive me for protecting the confidence of the conversations but it's no secret that ivanka trump is very

committed to having a climate policy that makes sense for our country and for our world and that was certainly evident in the conversation that i had with her before the conversation with the president-elect and i'm -- you know, i appreciate the fact that she is very concerned about this. and i very much appreciate the opportunity i had to have a meaningful and productive conversation with the president-elect. >> let me ask you this on politics, because sometimes when i think about the trajectory of climate policy in the u.s., there's kyoto in 2000 and george w. bush. we've had seven elections in which democrats have won the majority of the popular vote. six of those seven times and achieved the presidency only four of those seven. you're obviously one of those people that fate be fell when

you won the popular vote by 500,000 votes. hillary clinton has now one it by a somewhat staggering margin, actually. 2 percentage points, 2.6, 2.7 million votes. you think -- you've come to the belief we should get rid of the electoral college. what got you there and do you think it's possible? >> well, first of all, even after the supreme court decision in 2000, i did continue to support the electoral college for some of the same reasons the founders laid out two and a quarter centuries ago. it binds the states together and it's not a simplistic choice all clear one way, all wrong the other way. i think it's a balancing test. >> uh-huh. >> for me personally in the last couple of years i've come to the conclusion that the balance has shifted in my own way of thinking about it partly because i do think that we would have a

chance to really increase participation in our democracy if we went to a popular vote. we should combine it with action to fix this terrible redistricting. >> yep. >> travesty that biases the house of representatives elections. and, of course, even though it's difficult, we need to get big money out of politics. our democracy has been hacked. big money does so often call the shots and that's really destructive to our democracy. i think if we took those three steps, we could actually bring our democracy back to life. at the moment, when we're seeing the invigoration of democratic discourse, fake news and all of the rest, i do think that it still does hold out the promise of reinvigorating the promise of america and allowing us to once

again harvest the wisdom of crowds because we are way smarter together than the smartest people among us and that's what made us the greatest nation on earth, when we were able to make better decisions by using our representative democracy. it has not been serving us well recently because it's been hacked by special interests, big money contributors, the politicians in canada spend all of their money begging rich people and special interests for money. it's a terrible development and we have to fix that. but i do think that shifting to the popular vote would be a way to do it. now, you also asked do i think it will happen. constitutional amendments are very tough but, you know, there is this interesting state compact movement that began in california that is another way to accomplish the same result. i actually think they have a real chance of succeeding. it will take a little time but i'd be surprised if we did not

eventually shift to a popular vote for president over the next decade or so. >> that's national popular vote. look that up online. al gore, thank you for your time tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you, chris. up next, al gore isn't the only high hope person to meet with donald trump and his daughter. why ivanka trump was in the room when the president-elect met with a foreign leader. that's next.

thing 1 tonight, the very first foreign leader to meet face-to-face with the president-elect trump was japanese prime minister shinzo abe. they met at the trump tower and the u.s. press pool was barred from covering the meeting. so it was not until the japanese -- was his first daughter doing in the meeting with the president-elect and japanese

prime minister? tonight, we might have an answer. and that's thing 2 in 60 seconds.

big question after president-elect met with japanese prime minister last month, it wasn't about what issues they discussed or what it meant for japanese/american relations going forward, it was why was ivanka trump in the meeting? could there be a conflict because she's an executive? i quote, miss trump is nearing a licensing deal with the japanese apparel giant sanei international. both parties told "the new york times," the largest shareholder of the parent company is the development bank of japan wholly owned by the japanese government. ivanka trump has reportedly been negotiating with them for two years now. we don't know if that negotiation happened at all when she met last month.

we didn't even know they were meeting because the american press was barred from the room.

today, a judge in south carolina declared a mistrial in the case of the killing of walter scott. after the officer pulled scott over for a broken taillight, a scuffle ensued and then he feared for his life when he shot the 50-year-old scott but cell phone video clearly shows slager killed scott when scott was running away. he posed no threat to the officer when he shot him multiple times in the back and then dropped his taser near scott's body. we're going to show you a portion of the video showing the moment where slager killed scott. it's graphic.

[ gunfire ] the jury in the trial made up of 11 people and one black man had the option of convicting slager of either murder or involuntary manslaughter. they will retry the officer who also face as separate federal trial next year. >> long five weeks and a missed opportunity for justice. missed opportunity to heal a lot of wounds in this country. a missed opportunity to remind the good officers that put on that badge that they aren't michael slager. when we come back, before the mistrial was declared that provides a key insight into why police officers are so rarely convicted in the killing of

unarmed black men. that's next.

before the trial of michael slager and the killing of walter scott ended in a mistrial, one of the questions the jury asked was, is the idea of self-defense applied the same to a police officer as to an ordinary person? joining me now is director of the naacp educational fund.

i thought that question was so illuminating. >> uh-huh. >> because the answer is, yes, it's the same standard but what we see is that in practice it is an extremely different standard that juries come to. >> there's so many ways in which the verdict shows precisely what the problem is where police officers are involved in these kinds of shootings. you heard michael slager's testimony. he knew what to say. i kept firing until i thought the danger was over. it's kind of the same story as darryl wilson. what you see are jurors really being unwilling to second-guess police officers, even with a video like this, that once the officer uses a word like threat or fear or danger and slager used all of those words, it's going to be very, very hard to get the jury to overcome what seems to be an instinct, certainly among white jurors, to believe police officers. >> we should be clear, it appears to be the case that

there is one holdout here. >> i don't know that that's actually true. last week that appeared to be true. >> on friday. >> yes. but today, what the jurors suggested was that a majority of them could not come to the conclusion. so we don't know anymore whether it was 11-1, whether that was in fact accurate last week, whether they went back and deliberated. it's clear that there were 11 white people on this jury and one african-american man and that's a systemic problem that needs to be dealt with for the retrial. >> which struck me as somewhat odd because i was in north charleston. it's an interesting place. a little like ferguson, actually, a suburb of charleston that has become majority black. i think it's 60 to 40%. it's odd that that's the jury composition. >> it's not odd and the defense actually did strike i think seven of the nine jurors struck

by the defense were minorities. five of them were african-american. two were latino. the prosecution did raise a challenge, challenging the striking of the jurors based on race and after hearing the explanations offered by the defense dropped it. so we don't know -- >> just to be clear, that is named for the plaintiff in a supreme court case in which the supreme court ruled it's unconstitutional to use race solely as the means of getting rid of a juror. after batson, lawyers are able to give a nonreasonable reasoning for their strike. >> people get around it all the time, both defense and prosecutor. it sounds nonracial, not explicitly racial so judges allow it. in the retrial, this needs to be looked at. the population is 47% african-american in charleston and 35% african-american. there shouldn't have been only one african-american on that

jury but more important, chris, is the way in which race is row moved from these cases because when we talk about this idea of threat. >> and fear. >> and fear and danger, to not have anyplace within the context of the prosecution -- and this is one of the things we're working on in the legal defense fund, not to have anyplace in which we can explore whether or not that feeling of threat, fear or that that one is imminent danger, even if one felt that, might be created by either implicit or explicit bias means we never get to the heart of this. >> we have a subjective experience of fear as a tran sen dentally powerful tool to exculpate. i wanted to offer my condolences to your amazing cousin gwen ifell. ari melber is in for rachel.

>> the tipping point is 18 months ago when there was an 18-week training exercise in the american southwest. the idea was for green beres and special operations troops to train in different kinds of terrain, that they might find themselves in overseas. that was the official stated purpose of jade helm. but on conspiracy theorist websites, it was a martial law takeover of texas and maybe other states. jade helm was the military setting up prison camps for american citizens and also something to do with aliens hiding underground. jade helm was all about a network of underground tunnels with mysteriously closed down