Bill Moyers appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night to discuss two topics that have dominated the news in recent weeks: The violent clash between white supremacists and anti-racist activists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.
In talking about Charlottesville, Bill reflected on his own time in the White House serving a Southern president who, despite our country’s toxic racial politics, pushed through key pieces of legislation to improve the lives of African-Americans and immigrants, including the Voting Rights Act and the Immigration Act of 1965. Racism has once again taken a central role in our politics, Bill said. “During the campaign last year, I kept thinking that Donald Trump has given a big bullhorn to some of the most malevolent furies in American life. I’ve now decided he is the malevolent fury.”
Bill continued, “This man does not seem to me to have what we would normally think of as a soul. He has an open sore. He is constantly at war with everyone. Everything antagonizes him, and he degrades everything around him. He is the malevolent fury that is attempting to provide a return to many of the practices and behaviors that we have spent 250 years overcoming.”
In a second segment, host Lawrence O’Donnell brought in lawyer Steven Harper, the author of our Trump-Russia timeline, to describe the process of putting together the 450-plus-entry chronicle of Trump’s relationship with Russia. “I can just thank you right off the top,” O’Donnell told Harper. “It is the greatest tool that we journalists have to work with every day as we stare at this story.”
Watch that segment below and then read our Trump-Russia timeline.
