racism. maybe they didn't learn about it in school, which is why it's important to teach about institutional racism. for that, cruz, desantis and the ignorant folk who are trying to erase the past, you are tonight's absolute worst. see you back tomorrow night with jordan klepper. don't miss it. "all in with chris hayes" starts now. tonight, on "all in" -- >> i didn't want to kill anybody. >> why are you shooting at someone with an ar-15 at close range? >> kyle rittenhouse takes the stand. >> you didn't pick out the ar-15 for any other reason? >> i thought it looked cool. but no. >> tonight, from columbine to sandy hook to kenosha, the radical gun culture that brought us to this moment. countdown to document

production. what we know about the trump appeal to stop the january 6 committee. the fight to stop republicans from literally mapping their way back into power. as prices of goods and services creep up, some needed perspective on today's inflation number. "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. kyle rittenhouse shot and killed two men. he wounded another. this happened in the summer of 2020 in the middle of protests in kenosha of police violence. a black man had been shot by a police officer. he traveled 20 miles from his home to wade into the protests and the unrest and property

damage and violence. he used that gun to end the lives of two people. which is what landed him on trial. rittenhouse was 17 when he killed those two men. not old enough to smoke a cigarette, have a beer. in many ways, including in the eyes of the law, he was still a child. a minor. he is being tried as an adult due to the severity of the crimes he is charged with. to most sensible people, the image of a child, high schooler, carrying a deadly weapon designed for war doesn't inspire confidence about the wise, judicious use of that weapon, about good decisions being made. listen to rittenhouse today admit he liked the way the gun looked. >> you didn't pick out the ar-15 for any other reason? >> i thought it looked cool but

no. >> you didn't pick it out because you wanted to go hunting with it, did you? >> no. >> you didn't pick it out because you were going to use it to protect your house, correct? >> correct. >> you picked it up because it looked cool? >> i thought it looked cool. >> looked cool. that cool thing ended the lives of two people. teenagers do a lot of things because they look cool. a lot aren't good. hearing that it is difficult not to be reminded of one of the greatest tragedies in american history when 22 years ago two high schoolers the same age, 17, one 18, who thought guns were cool, murdered 12 students and one teacher and wounded dozens more at columbine high school in littleton, colorado. at the time, that was the deadliest school shooting in u.s. history. a record that has, well, sadly been broken multiple times. since these mass shootings have become part of american life,

they are an unfortunate but apparently acceptable cost of living in a free society. it's hard to remember how seismic that felt, how pivotal that was at the time, how shocking the heinousness of the crime was. because it was so piercing to the american consciousness, it presented something of a pr problem for the forces pushing gun ownership in american life. thanks to some truly excellent new reporting by tim mak, we now know how the national rifle association, the lobby for gun owners and manufacturers reacted in real time to the unfolding crisis. i'm going to play you some audio obtained by mak who is going to jane us in a moment. these are secret recordings of an nra crisis response conference call, literally the day after the columbine shooting. you can hear how the members of the executive board of the organization debate how to

respond to this unfathomable tragedy, what to tell the public that watched the guns the association celebrated be used to slaughter children. >> we feel respectful. maybe we can throw a million dollars at the families of the dead kids. openly pondering whether or not providing compensation to victims would be interpreted as

the gun lobby taking responsibility. for the record, this is how they responded to columbine, by holding its previously scheduled annual meeting in nearby denver. a short drive away from the site of the shooting less than two weeks later, two weeks before these children had massacred their classmates and two weeks later, there's the nra in denver, hey, everybody, guns, guns, guns, despite the public outcry from families, then nra president charlton heston delivered a speech in which he argued the association cannot let the tragedy, fresh in public memory, be used to limit gun ownership. >> we cannot, we must not let tragedy lay waste to the most rare and hard-won human right in history. we will not be silenced or be told, do not come here, you are unwelcome in your own land. >> that's right, we are here. we love guns.

sorry about what happened over there. that was ultimately the solution for the nra. to lean into, to double down, to never waiver. guns in the hands of people are good. more people should have guns. there should be more guns out there. they should be able to carry guns in wherever they want to, for whatever legal purpose they want. more and more and more guns. that messaging crystallized on december 14, 2012. that was the day a young man walked into sandy hook elementary school with multiple guns, including once again a military-style gun and shot first graders and staff. columbine felt unfathomable. that became the inflection point for the nra which this time didn't pause for self-reflection. rather like after columbine, it committed itself further to the cause of widespread firearm

ownership. then nra executive vice president wayne la pierre held a press event and provided this message. >> the only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. >> that's it. that's iconic now. that's the message. recite it. that's the message the nra wanted to push after sandy hook. more guns. add more guns equals more safety. add more guns to society. there's a bad guy but add a good guy. they will shoot each other. that will be safer. not a message of moderation, control over deadly weapons. rather, return to the state of nature in which problems are solved with interpersonal

violence. this put the nra, which cultivated ties in both sides of the aisle, against gun safety legislation. in 2010, more than a quarter of democratic candidates for congress received an a rating from the organization. they supported gun ownership and second amendment rights. half received f ratings, they supported gun control measures. by 2020, there was one democratic candidate for the house with an a rating. and he lost. democrats horrified by the slaughter of young children firmly entrench the party on the side of gun safety. that was not with the nra. it completed the trajectory of its transformation from what began as a shooting club for union soldier veterans into this hard right extremist organization pushing not just a

narrow argument focused on responsible gun ownership and gun rights, but a broader vision of stoking the right wing fetishization of guns and violence and the use of those guns this violent confrontation. the nra ran wild ads with this scary footage of unrest. left wing protesters were collaborating with the media to destroy the american way of life. >> the only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clench ed fist of truth. >> freedom. that's a message that was being pushed to a 17-year-old kyle rittenhouse, a child.

he took this illegally acquired assault weapon, which he admits not for hunting or home defense, and he throws himself as the fray in kenosha and he kills two people. the boy who killed people, the boy who killed people, is then celebrated by the same pro-gun law and order culture that produced him as a hero and martyr. he is bailed out with the help of right wing activists. he poses for a photo. this boy who killed two people, accused of homicide. there's a legal question before the jury right now of kyle rittenhouse's guilt or innocence. it will be determined. from what i have seen, it's likely he will be acquitted honestly.

there's also the broader question of what kind of society we want to live in. ask yourself that. if you are watching this and you are a gun owner or someone who considers yourself a defender of the second amendment, ask yourself, do we want a society in this political conflict is settled on the streets between people with guns? everyone is armed and can, therefore, view the other people armed as a plausible threat, which appears to be what happened on the streets of kenosha, is that society we want? go ask the families of the two dead men. they are doing it through channels, including through an upcoming supreme court ruling which the conservative majority could broaden its interpretation of the second amendment to one that essentially requires all states to permit adult americans to carry a concealed weapon all the time, for whatever purpose

they want. it's not just an argument. it's happening now. it happened in kenosha and in the chamber of the highest count in the land. tim mak joins me now. i want to go back to this incredible tape awe quir you ac the conference call. take us through the context. i listened to longer stretches of it. it's remarkable to hear them working through their crisis pr. what's the context? what ultimately did they decide? >> just to set the scene -- you have done a great job of doing that -- the nra was planning to hold its convention just a little over a week after what turned out to be the shootings at columbine. they scramble on this conference call, all sorts of executives and officials and lab by istlob.

they propose different approaches. a softer tone. they think about cancelling their convention. maybe there can be a victims' fund. they land on what they ultimately decide after columbine, but also has echos from many, many years to come in mass shootings that are sadly going to become more frequent after columbine, if they concede anything, that's kind of accepting responsibility. if they step back, there is level of complicity. that's what you hear come to over the course of the hours of tapes inside the room. >> i want to play another part of the tape. one of the things the nra would say about people like me or people in the, quote, liberal

media, you look down on god fearing americans. i want to play you, maybe we can do a half measure here, we take down the exhibit hall, we don't do part of the conference, we let the members meet. she makes the point, if you do that, you will have a problem. listen to what she says. >> this is marion hammer. she's the former president of the nra. discussing her own members and saying the problem with taking away the exhibit hall is you will spotlight our members who she describes ashillbillies.

>> the nra right now is in a lot of trouble. i'm sure there are a lot of nra members who are hearing these private thoughts about who they are and what they represent. a lot of nra members are really upset with all these reports of millions of dollars worth of corruption in the executive level of the nra led by wayne la pierre and other senior officials. i'm sure they are not happy to hear what's being said about them behind the scenes. >> final point here. you write in the book -- i got a chance to go through part of the book today. it's fantastic. i admire you as a reporter. it's really great work. >> thank you. >> people should pick up the book. the columbine and sandy hook and

you get the trajectory -- the nra was like the ethanol lobby. we don't care your politics. we are cool with you. we are not giving you any vision for american society other than ethanol subsidies are good. the nra used to be focused on specific gun issues. it morphed into a right wing vision of the world. you make the argument in the book that sandy hook was the inflection for that. >> absolutely. after sandy hook, republicans and conservatives are the only target audience for the nra. they dispense with what is for a long time before that been a really important strategic partner, those moderate democrats who would support gun rights and the nra. after sandy hook, the nra rebundled itself as a quote, unquote, freedom organization. one that doubles down on the

culture war. it's not just about guns anymore for the nra. it's about being the organization standing between the government and you and between people who want to take away your freedoms and you. that marks a huge shift for the nra. ultimately, leads them to a place of strategic peril. the nra is an enormous -- it is in financial and legal trouble. it stems from that decision after sandy hook. >> tim mak, the book is "misfire." i recommend it. thank you for taking time with us tonight. >> thank you. in the ten months since the attack there have been over 670 arrests related to january 6. so far, the people responsible for instigating the attack have escaped justice. what happens now that a judge denied trump's attempt to block the committee from obtaining white house records after this? s , plop plop fizz fizz.

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it's been just over ten months since the january 6th insurrection. according to the justice department's figures released today, 675 defendants have been arrested and 10 have pleaded guilty to charges, including four who pleaded guilty to charges related to assault on law enforcement. today, one of the men was sentenced to 41 months in prison. his name is scott fairlamb, a

former new jersey gym owner. he was caught on camera punching a police officer. that's not legal. today, he was sentenced to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison for his actions on january 6. the most severe sentence handed down so far. prosecutors are seeking the maximum sentence for the man who became the face of the insurrection jacob. one of the first to breach the capitol. prosecutors recommended he go to prison for 51 months. last night, the man who urged insurrectionists to go to the capitol, he lost a major legal battle in his attempt to block the january 6 select committee's investigation. a federal district judge rejected trump's attempt to keep white house records secret,

saying, defendants contend discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the attack is a matter of public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public's confidence in them. the court agrees. betsy swan has been covering this. barbara mcquade is the co-host of the sisters-in-law podcast. they join me now. barbara, let me start with you on the order from the federal judge yesterday. basically, the white house waived executive privilege for the documents. they told the national archive to turn them over. trump lawyers sued and said you can't do that. she said, yes, they can. what do you think about her reasoning in the opinion? >> i think her reasoning is very solid, chris. what she says is, it's the current president, the sitting president, who gets to decide

whether something should be disclosed or not under executive privilege. a prior president does have a residual interest. that president can go to the current president and ask for or make a recommendation as to whether executive privilege should be asserted. at the end of the day, the decision belongs to the sitting president. as the judge said in this opinion, the plaintiff is no longer the president. he is not a king. he does not retain this power. the current president has the power. he has said, we should turn this over. the legislative branch wants this turned over. it's really quite clear. i think that decision is on solid ground. there's a possibility of an appeal that could delay things. i think ultimately, the committee is going to get these documents. >> betsy, we know that the trump lawyers are indicating they will file an emergency appeal. they will attempt to stay the order pending an appeal to the circuit court. the deadline is friday. we know they're going to try to

delay. this is in contrast to the long periods of time we saw in the previous years for these kinds of issues to work their way through the courts. >> it does feel like it's moving quicker than these kinds of things have moved in the past. the members of the congressional committee investigating this have made it clear that they hope the court really gets this at a rapid clip, regardless the decisions that are reached. part of the reason of that and what's hanging over the member of the select committee, including the two anti-trump republicans, is the fact that it looks more likely than not that republicans might take control of the house of representatives next year. that means there's pretty much a hard and fast deadline for this committee to get their work done before it's possible that the entire thing could just be instantly shuttered. they are having to move quick. that's part of the reason that the court strategy for trump's team, the benefit is not just

the chance of ultimate victory, which isn't high, but that it can slow things down. it took congress years to get don mcgahn to testify. many of these matters take so much time. by the time the information gets to capitol hill, it feels like it's more something relevant to a history book than to helping length lay t legislators make decisions. >> steve bannon who is engaging in a massive resistance against the lawful subpoenas of a duly convened committee, he is being joined by stephen miller who was subpoenaed. i will play you what stephen miller said last night in which he said he will take the same route. take a listen. >> it's an attempt -- you know this as well as anybody -- to distract from the horrific failures of the biden presidency. president trump left biden the secure border, a successful,

roaring economy, peace in the middle east, low, stable inflation. >> you are not going to show up to testify in this so-called select committee, are you? >> i don't have the documents. >> he left him the worse catastrophe with hundreds of thousands of people dead. that aside, there has to be consequences if people don't know or people will not show up. this is incentives 101. >> yeah. we as citizens of this country want our elected representatives in congress to be able to investigate that over which it has power to legislate. if people say, i'm not coming, they lost an important power. we lost an important power. they are our elected representatives. i think that's why there are all eyes on this bannon referral. when and if the justice department will bring criminal charges.

it seems very likely that we will see some sort of action, i think out of the justice department. they have to show a willful violation without any defense. there's a possibility of some executive privilege argument or some advice of counsel argument. but we will see either criminal or civil action coming out of the justice department in short order. >> there's a huge swath of folks that have been subpoenaed. not all will go that road. there are some who may are going to cooperate with hardly a protest. >> the committee said of all people, mark meadows and kash, is working with them. they are very much potentially charting a path for other trump loyalists to have permission structure to at least engage with this committee and not to

totally stiff arm and reject it. the fact that jeff clark showed up in person and hung out for 90 minutes with committee members, he didn't answer questions, he didn't give them what he want, he may face contempt, but the fact that he was there in person with his lawyer and dialogued a little bit, even distinguished him from bannon. that's the thing that doj prosecutors might consider. how much respect are these witnesses showing to the committee? are they having any pretense of taking it seriously? i think there's -- while it's likely there will be other folks who are subpoenaed who do the same thing that bannon does, i think there's going to be a significant number who follow more in the mark meadows route, in the route of other folks whose names aren't public who decide, the juice is not worth the squeeze when it comes to potentially tangling with doj or civil litigation as part of a potentially expensive legal effort to defy a lawful subpoena. >> betsy and barbara, thank you both.

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back in 2018, the voters of the very conservative state of utah were faced with a ballot proposition. it proposed creating an independent redistricting commission. take it out of the hands of partisan lawmakers, put it in a commission. the seven members would be responsible for drafting and recommending congressional and state legislative district maps when they are redrawn every teen years after the census. that won. utah voters liked that. a little over a year later, republicans, who are in control of the state legislature said, no, we don't like that. they overran it. they passed a bill saying, we're going to allow lawmakers to disregard the independent

commission's maps, putting them in control of how the districts are redrawn. now guess what? they are using that producing blatantly gerrymandered maps. the commission proposed these three maps. hard to sort of see what's going on there. salt lake county in the north central part of the state in the pink section in all the maps, this is the map that the utah senate voted overwhelmingly to approve today. what it does is it takes that pink section where there's liberal voters and splits it into four districts. split it up. they don't have any power. they sent this to the republican governor for approval. last night, he dismissed concerns about the maps and redistricting process. >> i understand the frustration that people are feeling right now. the place that that should be

directed is making sure that we elect people that have the same interests that you do and are interested in maybe changing those maps the next time around. >> if you don't like it, vote people out. that's wrong. that's the problem, actually, governor. the people of utah did vote on this. they wanted an independent commission to decide, not the partisan legislature. now that legislature has overruled the people's choice. now they're going to overrule a choice and make the maps to choose their own voters. they are controlling the neck nich -- mechanisms of representation. it's not just utah. this is happening in states. ohio voters approved a bipartisan commission. republicans in control of the commission intentionally blew

through their chance to weigh in, which once it lapsed moved the authority to, the republican controlled legislature. guess what they did. this is what the current map looks like in ohio. not a lot of blue. a few democratic leaning districts around major cities. this is the proposal from the ohio house republicans bringing the balance down to just two democratic leaning districts and 12 republican leaning districts. that's in a state that donald trump won by eight points. we go to north carolina. a democratic governor, republican legislature. they passed a highly gerrymandered map last week. it's on the left with eight republican and five democratic seats. the new one on the right brings us to ten to three with one highly competitive seat. if all the changes stand,

republicans could net several congressional seats next year before they have to do anything, before they have to run a single election, raise money, figure out their message. there's one man fighting against this harder than anyone else, taking these battles to court. he will join me next. he will join me next

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tying our executives' pay to lowering the carbon emissions intensity of our operations. it's tempting to see how far we've come. but it's only human... to know how far we have to go. every ten years, nearly every state in the union goes through the process of redistricting. they redraw the lines of the congressional and state legislative ones. it sparks fights. the party in power tries to draw the most beneficial map for them. sometimes the gerrymandering goes too far, creating unfair and undemocratic situations. that's where the courts come in. like in north carolina where voters are challenging the newly redrawn map giving republicans two more safe seats. they are arguing it's an improper partisan gerrymander.

mark, before we get to north carolina, which is a particularly egregious case, i want to start with the supreme court which had a landmark case in which it said, you can do whatever you want in partisan gerrymanderring. if you can figure out a way to give it all to one party, you can do that. there's nothing in the constitution stopping you. that really does appear to have opened the floodgates. >> it does. two things happened between 2011 and today. one is the supreme court's decision in the case you referred to where the supreme court opened the floodgates and said, we come up with a lot of tests for a lot of things, but we can't figure out if there's a partisan gerrymander. the other thing is donald trump. with donald trump came the draining of any last ounce of shame that the republican party

had. you now have a shameless party that's not afraid of appearing anti-democratic. engaging in anti-democratic behavior because they are allowed to. >> north carolina, this is -- the ohio one is interesting because ohio was so wildly gerrymandered in 2011. there's not much more to the game. north carolina, you are going from eight-five to ten-three. here is a stat that blew my mind. it would take an absolute blowout for democrats to even get half of the state's congressional delegation. this really is a particularly egregious one. >> it is. hats off to the republicans in north carolina for being both persistent and also completely shameless in gerrymandering. they passed a map after 2011, last round of redistricting, that was a blatant racial gerrymandering. it was a racist map.

we know that. i sued them. we won to the supreme court and won that the map they drew disadvantaged black voters. they came back and they passed a 10-3 map. what the leadership of the north carolina legislature said was that they passed a 10-3 map because they couldn't figure out a way to only create two democratic seats. if they could have, they would have created an 11-2 map. we sued them again and won this time under the state constitution. here we are again. they are back to a 10-3 map. they are insistent on not letting voters choose politicians. i guess they figure that if they left the voters do that, they won't win elections. >> part of what we see -- i should note, there are some states that look to be in democratic control moving aggressively towards maximizing democratic control in those states. we don't know the new york map yet, but that might be a place to look for that. the maryland map might squeeze out the last lone republican. if you look at places that tried

independent commissions, ohio, also in utah, in iowa similar, they seem like they buckle under the pressure of the level of partisan intensity in american politics and shamelessness of the republican party. is that fair? >> the intensity to be anti-democratic is not in american politics, it's in the republican party. otherwise, i agree. this is the rule i have come to live by. never engage in any political process that requires republican politics to act in good faith. the problem with a lot of these commissions is that they assume that republicans legislatures will act in good faith. as you pointed out in utah and elsewhere, that isn't the case. >> i want to talk about a piece you wrote which i liked about five years later in the democracy docket this week. talking about the big lie. the big lie was born in the aftermath of the 2020 election but conceived in 2016.

you take stock of where we are five years after that election day and the state of our democracy. what is your big lesson about where we are? >> i think we're on the verge of losing our democracy unless we change course. we face a crisis in which one of the two political parties have become captive to a cult of personality. he didn't win the popular vote in 2016. narrowly won through the electoral college. lost by more than in 2020 and the electoral college. incited a riot and a coup attempt in the u.s. capitol. rather than the republican party recoiling from that and distancing itself, they are now embracing it. i want to add one way for you to think about this. last tuesday, terry mcauliffe

lost a close election. the margin is 1.9%. he conceded the next morning. in new jersey, the republican candidate for governor lost by nearly 3 percentage points. he has still not conceded. think about that. all of the pressure is on the republican candidates, never concede, never accept results when they lose. that will lead to trouble in 2022 and 2024. >> that's very well said. we are monitoring the situation in new jersey for that reason. you can't have a democracy in which it's only okay and the election is only free and fair if republicans win. right? that is not the way it works. that's precisely what the situation that they have produced. >> that's right. if you look at election night, there were already calls by republicans for terry mcauliffe to concede that night. he was criticized for waiting until the next morning. they are now egging on someone

who has lost the election in new jersey. they are egging him on to not concede. >> mark, thank you very much. >> thank you. this morning, we found out consumer prices have seen the biggest year over year increase in 31 years. next, some very crucial perspective on how today's inflation number fits into the larger picture of the american recovery. plop plop fizz fizz. alka seltzer plus cold relief. dissolves quickly. instantly ready to start working. so you can bounce back fast with alka-seltzer plus. now available for fast sinus relief. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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many people remain unsettled about the economy, and we all know why. they see higher prices. they go to the store, online or they can't -- or they go to the store and go online, and they can't find what they want and when they want it. and we're tracking these issues and trying to figure out how to tackle them head on. >> president joe biden was at the port of baltimore today, and he addressed the eye popping inflation statistics released by the federal government. today the consumer price index

basically an average of the change in the price of all consumer goods and services rose 6.2%. that is the highest increase in over 30 years since 1990. in a lot of ways, this is one of the central issues for the biden administration and the democratic party because prices are rising and there's not a lot they can do about it. republicans are in turn, not surprisingly, pouncing on this with their messaging and mainstream press outlets are raising the alarm about costs going up and it seems like the sky is falling. there's a case being made that we find ourselves in a situation that is better than what the alternatives could be. bloomberg's joe wisenthal argued that the totality of the labor market has come out ahead of inflation, and editor and bloomberg and co-host of the podcast joins me now. all right, joe, there was a lot of concern today. i think you and i both agree -- >> yeah. >> -- 6% inflation is too high, not sustainable, not good. what's your case for the other

part of the ledger look at when you're looking at the full totality of where we are in this recovery? >> yeah, 6% inflation is hot by any measure, and if you look at food, if you look at gasoline, these are prices that people see every day, and they have a lot of availance for people, we have had the most extraordinary labor market recovery. nearly 20 million people have become reemployed, reentered the work force since the bottom, the pit in the pandemic, and when you sort of factor that in, all of these people, we talk about real wages as a concept of economics so a lot of people's wages have not kept us with the 6% gain inflation. not good. but when you factor in the fact that about a year ago, year and a half ago, many people's real wages were literally zero because they had lost their jobs, when you factor that in, and when you factor the totality of wage income it's actually far

outstripped inflation. this is not sustainable. this should be a source of concern for the white house. there should be an urgency about addressing bottlenecks and other factors that are preventing a sort of equilibrium in prices. that being said, i do think it's really important to look at the extraordinary employment gains that we've seen over the last year, over the last year and a half and not evaluate the economy by a single number. >> such an important point, to the 20 million people whose wages went from no wages to a job, like inflation bites, but you know, the other way we could do this is we could run the economy very cool. we could have a lot more people out of work. there's this thing called the phillips curve which is an old economics idea that there's a tradeoff between, you know, higher inflation and lower unemployment that, like, you got to sort of find the right balance, the kind of goldilocks, and that's sort of the argument you're making here, right? if policymakers aim too high, it's better to aim high and miss

high than aim too low and have millions and millions and millions of people out of work who shouldn't be. >> i mean, the labor market is healing faster, not just than the great financial crisis, which is setting a very low bar because the pace of recovery after the 2008, 2009 crash was dismal. the labor market is healing faster than the 2001 recession, which is considered by many to be a very shallow recession, and there's something else to consider that, okay, not only have total wages outstripped the gain in total wages if we were to imagine a collective national paycheck, not only have those outstripped inflation, but if you add in the transfer payments, if you add in the expanded unemployment insurance, if you add in the multiple rounds of checks, then the take home pay for the american household collectively far outstrips and is consistently beaten inflation, and it's important to do that because many of the critics who when

they save the high inflation, they save those checks. this is what happens when you give people money. this is what happens when you prank people, but those largely went to people who were either lower income or zero income at the time, and as such, they've definitely come out ahead. if you break down wages and one more point on this, the one quartile of income earners that's growing very fast is actually the bottom quartile, which is something that we really i don't think have seen in decades. so again, 6.2 inflation, this concerns everyone, but in a different -- in a sort of broader context of the economy, this looks like a price worth paying for the recovery that we've seen in so many other sort of labor and household wealth metrics. >> yeah, household income, wages, wages at the bottom part of the scale, wages at the bottom part of the scale among young people, which is sort of an amazing quadrant to be sort of getting the most gains here, and i think we're -- you know, i think we're going to see big

action taken, but i am with you on this. aim high and overshoot is better than the opposite. you and i both lived through the aftermath of the great recession, in which trillions of dollars of productive capacity was left on the floor for no reason. joe weisenthal, thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. one last note before we go, we have a really special new episode of my podcast out this week, guest author jay kas pea yan kang, part history, part memoir, grappling with what we mean when we talk about the asian-american experience. i found it persuasive and provocative. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> good evening, chris, thank you, my friend, much appreciate it. thanks at home for joining us this hour. today was sort of an intense news day. i think it was intense in part because so much of what has been driving the news today nationwide are various cases

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