OLBERMANN: My next guest has been rallying against Wall Street and big finance for most of his public life. He’s also rallied protesters in Zuccotti Park. Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore has made several trips to protest central. His film,”Capitalism, a Love Story” is a devastating indictment of the financial system that made Occupy Wall Street necessary, and his final peroration in that film could have served as its inspiration.
(Excerpt from video clip) MICHAEL MOORE: Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it, and replace it with something that is good for all people. And that something is called democracy. . . Crimes have been committed in this building. I am here to make a citizen’s arrest. Please come down and step away from the building. Do not be afraid. Federal prison is a nice place. . . You know, I can’t really do this any more, unless those of you who are watching this in the theater want to join me. I hope you will. And please, speed it up.
OLBERMANN: And with me now, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore. Good to see you, sir.
MOORE: Oh, thank you for having me.
OLBERMANN: Let me start there — never mind what it’s done for the country, what has Occupy Wall Street done for you, Michael Moore?
MOORE: I was watching the end of my last film there. Right now, I was thinking, “This has created the end of the film that I wanted.”
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
MOORE: That my appeal at the end of the movie was — that it wasn’t — I was no longer going to be, you know, one of the few people out there. I have been saying this for over 20 years, since my first film — about corporate America, about Wall Street — and that, I’ll join in if everybody else will get up off of the sofa, but I am not going to be the poster boy on Fox News any more and let them go after me every day, alone. There is going to have to be a million of me — or I’ll be a million, or we will all be part of millions — and so they’ve written the, sort of, the end of the film. And, now a new thing has begun. So, this is all, I am very — I am very happy these days, because I think this is all positive motion in the right direction.
OLBERMANN: Yeah, when the polls come out and it says it’s 57 percent of the country supports their point of view — that’s not just a million people or people watching your film or whatever other number — that’s 57 percent of the country saying, “No, you were right all along,” or, at least, “We finally, figured out you were right all along.”
MOORE: Right, and this is a movement that’s just barely a month old.
OLBERMANN: Exactly.
MOORE: And 57 percent of the public is already — and as the Congressman said before me here, it has changed the conversation.
OLBERMANN: It certainly has.
MOORE: I can’t even — when he said that — “We are not talking about the debt ceiling any more” — that’s right. Boy, that’s like — that seems like years ago. That is so off the map. They tried to make that the real top agenda item. But the real agenda item is what everyone is going through — the lack of jobs, the reduced income, reduced sick days, no health insurance, on and on and on.
These are all, now, going to be the issues for the next year, in the upcoming presidential election, and I am not worried about whether there is an organization or any of this, because — this is going to happen so organically, it already is, in hundreds of cities around the country — people are just going to rise up, and people who are watching us right now should really — don’t wait around for, you know, Occupy Dubuque to come to you. You are Occupy Dubuque.
OLBERMANN: Exactly. You don’t have to write in for membership. You don’t have to collect box tops. You don’t have to get a stamp. You don’t have to get a permit. You don’t have to get a license.
MOORE: No, there’s no meetings you have to go to in the basement of the Unitarian church. There’s no — there’s nothing you have to do except — you’re a citizen, and just get out of the house and be with other citizens, and we are going to — we are going to change the direction of this country, and it’s going to happen fast.
OLBERMANN: By the way, you just flashed me back to my childhood in the basements of Unitarian churches. They are, though, trying — they are discussing if they need to have a super-structure for this thing. Is there a danger in it being any more formalized than it is right now?
MOORE: Yes. I don’t think it should. I encouraged them. I just came from there.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
MOORE: Ten minutes ago. I’m down there a lot. I put my two cents in. I have encouraged them that, don’t fall for the trap that the mainstream media wants because they are demanding, “Who is the spokesperson here?” I tell them, “You are all the spokespeople.” “Who is the leader here?” You’re all — we’re all — we, all of us, are the leaders.
And don’t let this be a single-issue thing. Like, “Let’s increase taxes on the rich.” Well, yes, that’s a good idea, and we should do that. Or, “Let’s bring back Glass-Steagall.” Yes, that’s a good idea. But don’t — don’t let the framework of this movement be determined by what the media needs. Let it be what the people want. And there’s all kinds of people down there wanting all kinds of things. And that’s great. That’s what it should be. And it should not lock on to any single issue.
OLBERMANN: Before we go to a break, and then continue on a couple of other topics, you said you weren’t really going to do any more of this unless you were somehow inspired by other people. Does that mean there is a new film coming?
MOORE: I — I, um — honestly, I didn’t think this would happen this soon. So, I was going to take a few years off, and I just wrote a book and was going to do a couple of other things. So yes, I am true to my word, and, yes, there is going to be another film — not on — not on Occupy Wall Street, but on the next thing that I want to do, to put out there, things that are not being covered. Is that broad enough?
OLBERMANN: Yes, that leaves you many different options in case the decision has not been made. Besides which, the makers of the next “Batman” movie have already decided to incorporate Occupy Wall Street, so you would be replicating the Batman people.
The stuff behind Occupy Wall Street obviously continues, uninterrupted. The Republicans attacking the millionaires’ surcharge and the vice president doing a wonderful job of defending it. The president is now ahead of all Republicans combined in fundraising on Wall Street. Let’s pick this up there after we have the quick break. We’ll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OLBERMANN: Turns out President Obama isn’t trailing Mitt Romney in money raised from the financial sector. He leads all Republican contenders combined. The problem that poses for Occupy Wall Street and democracy, when we continue with Michael Moore.
Moammar Gadhafi is still dead. And Senator Marco Rubio is crediting France, rather than the president, making Rubio, I guess, a fan of those French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”
Herman Cain’s self-destruction tour continues, with the claim that gay is a choice. So, when he says that, he’s not bashing gays. Plus, the word that the “9-9-9″ plan has a secret fourth digit, a bonus number that he hasn’t told anybody about yet.
And — not only going after abortion rights, but trying to make it illegal to talk about abortion over the Internet — the Senator from the 15th century makes it back to “Worst Persons,” ahead on “Countdown.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OLBERMANN: One of our stories last night focused on one of Wall Street’s responses to Occupy Wall Street — threaten Democrats who supported the movement with having their financial-sector donations cut off. We gave you the latest data — that while then-candidate Barack Obama got more dough from Wall Street than John McCain did in 2008, this year he’s trailing Mitt Romney.
In our fourth story — new numbers from The Washington Post blowing that meme right out of the cash tub, and invoking fears that the President might listen way too much to the financiers. As we told you yesterday, the president has collected $3.9 million from the financial sector, which is a little over half of what Mitt Romney has collected from the financial sector. However — when you include the money from the financial sector raised by Obama for the Democratic National Committee — his total haul jumps to $15.6 million. Not just more than Romney, more than all of the GOP candidates combined. Back with Michael Moore. Does that statistic mean that Occupy Wall Street and those who support them should not rely on the president for anything?
MOORE: I don’t think we do rely on him for this. In fact, at the General Assembly meeting last night, or the night before, this was discussed. And I think the general feeling that was voted on by the people there is that — we hold both the Democrats and Republicans responsible for this, and that — well, many people — we expect the Democrats to be better, we expect them to be a party of working people and traditionally, that’s — you know, I see Franklin Roosevelt on your wall behind you there — that’s, I think a lot of us maybe wish that he had come into office like Franklin Roosevelt. He didn’t.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
MOORE: And so they all feed at the same trough, and all this money has to be taken out — has to be taken out of the politics, has to be taken out of this — these politicians, by and large, are bought and paid for by the same people. And we’re kidding ourselves to think that some are, you know, slightly better than others simply because — well, they do nicer things. And they do do nicer things, but ultimately — we’re not going to fix the problem until we fix this particular part of the problem.
And, you know, I was thinking, it’s like, well — what could President Obama do to, you know — and I am not, you know — look, the first month he came into office, he announced he was putting Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in charge. That was not only just a red flag, that was like telling everyone, “Sorry, sorry chumps.”
OLBERMANN: A white flag was what it was.
MOORE: A white flag and “We are business as usual here.” But you know what? If I were running for Congress next year — and by the way, I am not making an announcement –
OLBERMANN: Pitter-pat over here, yes.
MOORE: Although I do have fantasies of joining Al Franken some day. Just, I don’t know — if not in the Senate, at least for a comedy routine. But if I were running for Congress next year — to get elected right now in this climate, to go out there and say, “I will not accept a single dime from Wall Street.”
OLBERMANN: Yeah, Good luck.
MOORE: You know, but –
OLBERMANN: But how would you –
MOORE: How would you run your campaign?
OLBERMANN: Right.
MOORE: Whatever you are going to lose, dollars-wise, from that, you’re gonna gain vote-wise. Once your constituents — you can do this on a local level. Harder, maybe, nationally — but on a local level, you can say to the people in your neighborhoods, “I will not take this money. I will not be bought by them. I will not be owned by them. I am going to do what’s best for you.” And mean it by showing it, by not taking a single dime of their money — I think that individual could get elected.
OLBERMANN: But ultimately — and you touched on it — I would suppose that, if either of us had the answer, we were running down to Occupy Wall Street or to Washington and doing it. But how — you raised that point — we have to get the money out of the process. How in the world do we begin to do that, let alone complete it?
MOORE: Well — see — right. The Catch-22 of this is — is that the people who have to pass the laws to take the money out are the people taking the money.
OLBERMANN: Exactly.
MOORE: But let me give you a good example of how this happened almost 100 years ago. Women couldn’t vote. The only way they were going to get to vote is if men — and only men — voted to give it to them. Right? Not a single woman could vote to get women the vote. All right? But it happened, didn’t it?
OLBERMANN: It did.
MOORE: So, this can happen, too. But these politicians, they are going to do — they want to stay in office. So ultimately, no matter how much money they get from X, Y, or Z, they need those votes. And if they get a sense that the people out there are not going to vote for anybody who is in the pocket of Wall Street, they are going to — they will flip the other way. They’ll say, “You know what, we can do without this 10 grand, this 20 grand, you know, whatever we are taking from Citibank or the Citibank employees, because we are got to get a lot more votes by telling people we are not doing Citibank’s bidding.”
OLBERMANN: All right, the short-term stuff. I mentioned the — and obviously you pointed this out, Jerrold Nadler pointed this out — that OWS has put unemployment back in the forefront, where it’s supposed to be. And the president and the vice president are trying to get the Jobs Bill passed one piece at a time. They are working on — and the vice president addressed this yesterday — The Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, which has the surtax on millionaires. And the vice president went out. Here is the tape. I’m gonna want to ask you a question.
(Excerpt from video clip) JOE BIDEN: Are you going to put 400,000 schoolteachers back in classrooms? Are you going to put 18,000 cops back in the street and 7,000 firefighters back in the firehouses? Or, are you going to save people with average incomes of one million dollars a one-half of one percent increase in tax on every dollar they make over a million?
OLBERMANN: I understand, and always have, why Mitt Romney opposes that — because he’s a millionaire. And many millionaires don’t oppose it, but I understand why they do that. I don’t approve of it, but I understand it. But once again, my favorite question — why do people who will never be millionaires in 12 lifetimes oppose that increase of that tax?
MOORE: Oh, you mean the average Americans?
OLBERMANN: Exactly.
MOORE: Oh, I’ll tell you why. Because — you and I grew up in the same country here, and we grew up with the myth of Horatio Alger — that in America, anybody can make it. Anyone can be president, anyone can be a millionaire. And we are fed this, I mean, from the time we are little kids. And there is a certain altruism behind it — that what it wants to say is — is that we’re all equals.
OLBERMANN: Exactly.
MOORE: And we all have an equal shot.
OLBERMANN: The opportunity is there.
MOORE: Yes. The reality though — and especially these days — is something far, far, far different. And I think less and less people are buying that. I don’t think those out-of-work teachers, or nurses, or firemen and women — I don’t think people buy that as much any more. I think you are going to see a shift. This is incredible when you think about it. We are not even 12 months away from last November’s election, where the shift went the other way. I can’t believe that, in less than 12 months time, that shift has gone the opposite — I mean the opposite — way.
And President Obama and the Democrats should get on board the train. Don’t try and co-opt it, it’s not yours. You know, the engine of that train are the people who are at all the Occupy movements, and who believe in — the 57 percent of the American public who believe in this Occupy movement. That’s where the engine is. So, get on board or get out of the way. That’s the message.
OLBERMANN: Michael Moore — look, one time you are going to have to come back and we talk about “Here Comes Trouble,” your new book, actually talk about the book.
MOORE: I know. I’m on a book tour and never talk about my book, which is okay. I know you love to read on Friday nights.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
MOORE: So, yes, I’ll do that with you.
OLBERMANN: All right. Excellent. We’ll see you then. In the interim, Gadhafi is dead, but apparently not dead enough, nor quickly enough, for the Republicans. The “We Can Complain About Anything” crowd does so, ahead.
