the proof is in the pudding. life is better for folks in kenosha and wisconsin and across the greater industrial midwest and u.s., is that going to be the test, ultimately, of the political success of this person that we've just elected president of the united states? i want to thank our audience, our panel, our participants and, of course, thank you to senator bernie sanders. that does it for us here in kenosha, wisconsin. the rachel maddow show starts next. happy monday night. thank you for joining us this hour. very happy to have you here. we've got a big show tonight. we've got a bunch of exclusive stuff. first of all, tonight in just a couple of minutes, we're going to have the first interview since the election with jen palmieri. she was a senior player, key player in that campaign, very

close to the candidate herself. i should tell you that jen palmieri worked herself so hard during the campaign, she ended up in the hospital with exhaustion. it is just over one month since the election happened. tonight general palmieri is here to do her first interview since the election. she'll be here with me live in washington, d.c., and i've been working hard to make this happen. given what is going on in the news right now, it turns out this conversation i'm about to have with jen palmierie can't just be a look back at trump versus clinton because there are a bunch of things cooking in the news right now tonight that put the clinton folks in a very different position than they were in even just a few days ago. the clinton campaign basically resurfaced today for the first time since november 8th because they are now making some demands in conjunction with this newly

reported interference by russia into the presidential election. that story is red hot right now. the former acting director of the cia is saying that foreign interference in an american presidential election, this russia story, is saying that it's the political equivalent to 9/11. including our interview with jen palmieri from the clinton campaign. before we get to that, we need to start tonight with some news that we alone can break right now, right here. kurt ikenwald has struck again. we're reporting this exclusively. this is going to be out tomorrow but we've got an advanced peek and what newsweek is about to publish. this is not an nbc or msnbc work product. what i can show you tonight is

what "newsweek" is going to break what they are going to break as of tomorrow morning. do we have a picture of the cover that we can put up there? yes. you can see that better. this is the cover. it's going to press tonight and the cover of "newsweek" tomorrow morning. it says "how trump's business ties have put america in a mind." now, kirk eichenwald is a veteran investigative report and has done work on business scandals, including enron. and with that skill set as a reporter, he has gone hammer and tongs as the intersection of the president-elect as a politician and what the president-elect is dragging into the political field from his business life. including his active business ties with foreign governments and his alleged breaking of the cuba embargo through his business and more.

kurt eichenwald has been on a terror. there are new allegations that at least in one case a foreign government may have already taken action to threaten the private business interests of the president-elect as a way of trying to get something that that foreign country wants from the u.s. government. again, this is "newsweek" reporting. it's not out yet. we have an advanced preview. this is exclusive to us. it's a serious allegation but it's not a complicated one. it starts with something called the trump towers, towers, plural, a twin building complex in turkey that the president-elect didn't build himself but he's being paid a lot of money to allow his name to be put on the building, trump towers. the company that built the towers is being called dogan. this is the dogan family.

the guy next to trump, he's the pataki tree yark and founder of the company and is described as a figure head. he's basically passed the business onto his family. the other guy in the other picture is the son-in-law of the founder. he's married to the founder's daughter. he has a key operational role in the company now, since the p patriarch has moved into retirement. and now we get to the nut of it. because the day after our presidential election in this country, one of the world leaders who called up trump tower and spoke with the president-elect was the president of turkey. and one of the perk up your ears strange things reported about that call is that while donald trump was on the phone taking that congratulatory phone call

from the president of turkey, in that same call, mr. trump brought up to the president of turkey by name that executive from the dogan company, the guy who was the key guy on trump's big twin towers in istanbul. trump named that executive and specifically praised this guy at the dogan company, he praised him by name to the president of turkey while taking this political congratulations call. now "newsweek" reports that turkey has figured out how to turn that to their advantage and how to put the president of the united states over a barrel in the process. on december 1st, the top representative of the dogan country, in turkey's capital city, got arrested by the turkish police. again, trump as president-elect had taken an official call from the turkish president and used

that occasion to tell the turkish president how much this one particular company meant to him, going so far as to name specific executives and then the turkish president had one of the top executives arrested on the basis of threadbare allegations, claiming that the executive from that company who they arrested and the founder of the company as well, the turkish president says they are both tied to the attempted military coup that happened in turkey this summer. turkey desperately wants the u.s. government to extradite an imam. they have said that they are not extra dieding him. but if that's what you wanted, what if you could squeeze the

personal financial interests of the american president as a way to get what you want from the american government? i mean, the trump family and the president-elect themselves, they stand to make millions of dollars from their relationship with the dogan group in turkey. that will stop if they get locked up. so they started locking them up. nice leverage, right? it would be one thing if it was business leverage but it's leverage against all of us as americans. quoting from this "newsweek" article out tomorrow, "revenue flowing from istanbul could be cut off. that means the president has leverage with trump, who will soon have the power to get the turkish imam back to turkey."

the turkish president has something he believes trump wants, mainly money, and trump has someone the turkish president desperately wants. so it's kind of what we've been expecting to roll out, right? as "newsweek" tells it, the president-elect has business interests in istanbul. it appears to be getting skoesed by the turkish government to try to make the united states of america do what turkey wants. that is the explosive claim, among several, actually, that "newsweek" is due to public tomorrow morning in this cover story that we got a sneak peek at. donald trump is postponing his long-planned announcement about what he plans to do with all of his business interests while is he president. that announcement had been schedule for thursday. it was billed as a press conference, which would have

been his first press conference since i believe july, the last press conference was the one where he invited russia to please hack hillary clinton's e-mails. he hasn't given one since the summer. if he was going to give one this thursday, that would have been the first one since the president-elect and a long time before but bloomberg news first reported tonight and nbc news has now confirmed that the announcement about what he's doing with his business ties, that's being pushed back. it's being pushed way back. it's being pushed back to sometime next month. trump transition officials say the president-elect has been occupied filling out his cabinet. so no time to work on this stuff. no plan yet on how our next president may try to keep foreign governments from leveraging his private business interests in order to get the united states government to do stuff it might not otherwise do. i can wait until next month. there's news tonight as well that a secretary of state

announcement will come tomorrow morning from the transition. jennifer jacobs reported tonight that it's not mitt romney. that mitt romney got a call from the president-elect tonight telling him that he's not getting it. we'll have more on that later on in the show tonight. we're also tonight still learning about sort of coming to grips with this big story that broke while we were on the air friday night. "the washington post" reporting that the cia has concluded that russia intervened in the 2016 election, specifically with the intention of helping make donald trump the next president. the cia believes the russians weren't just trying to create chaos and undermine faith and democratic institutions. the cia believes that the russians were actively trying to get trump elected by hacking the democratic party, hacking the clinton campaign, releasing those documents through wick y wikileaks. the story has not gotten anything since then because they reported on the russian intent. that was only half the story.

the other jaw-dropping report is that the white house, the administration, presented evidence about the russian hacking to a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers and they did it before the election. they wanted to make a public bipartisan stand against this foreign government intervening to affect our election. and democrats were all for it but republicans, mitch mcconnell, said no. according to the reporting from "the post." mitch mcconnell told the white house if they publicly challenged the russians on them hacking into our election, he would consider it partisan politics designed to help hillary clinton. he wouldn't sign off of it and so nobody said anything. it's a legit like mind-blowing scandal. i mentioned at the top we got a very dramatic pronouncement from the former acting director of cia, mike morell. his quote on it is this.

this is the political equivalent of 9/11. that's from the man who was george w. bush's cia briefer on 9/11. he says, a foreign government messing around in our elections is i think an existential threat to our way of life. they say there should be an investigation into the russian hacking but what do you mean by an investigation? democrats are calling for an independent commission, like the one that examined the 9/11 attacks where you've got independent, unimpeachable blue ribbon panelists reported by both republicans and democrats. if you can't have a blue ribbon panel like that, how about at least a bipartisan house and senate panel into this extraordinary allegation against russia? well, mitch mcconnell and house speaker paul ryan said today, as far as they're concerned, they can handle this just fine, thank you. also today, a group of presidential electors, the

members of the electoral college, the people who actually vote to elect the next president of the united states, ten of the 538 of them have now written an open letter to the director of national intelligence asking that the intelligence community give the electors their own intelligence briefing on this russian hacking issue. "we require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether mr. trump is fit to serve as president of the united states." 538 members of the electoral college vote a week from today. ten electors are asking for that intelligence briefing before then. it seems unlikely that ten electors, most of them democrats anyway, are going to be able to do anything. but hey, this is the year of the don't bet on it in politics. and now the clinton campaign itself has taken a remarkable

step. they have broken their silence, specifically to speak out on this issue and they have thrown their support behind this effort by these electors to at least get briefed by the intelligence community by this issue of russia interfering in the presidential election that we just held. john podesta, his twitter account, has been inactive since november 7th, since the day before the election. but today it came alive. his first post-election tweet today. ", very brave issues involving our national security. electors and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed." also, do you remember that, like, mysteriously, spooky, weirdly vague letter, really, really short letter that the democrats from that intelligence committee, the senate intelligence committee, sent to president obama earlier this month?

remember, it was really short. "we believe there is additional information concerning the russian government and the u.s. election that should be declassified and released to the public. we are conveying specifics through classified channels." that was the whole letter. spooky. what were they talking about? well, today, the clinton campaign came out in support of that effort asking the obama administration to declassify the information that they've got around russia's role in the election. just make that available to the public. people ought to know. as i said, this is today. this is the first that we have heard from the clinton campaign on this issue or really on any issue since the election. but tonight, on this show, we're going to hear much more. clinton communications director jen palmieri joins me right after this. i'm very eager to ask her about this and much more. please stay with us. straight ahead tonight. llar cou. that's why i have the spark cash card from capital one. with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on

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really a college, but they meet one week from tonight. election after election after election, the electoral college does what everybody expects with a few surprises. but they do literally elect the president-elect and tonight the clinton campaign has sort of put a new ore in the water on this one and we have a key figure from the clinton campaign here with us exclusively right here, we will ask all about it. i'm very excited about this conversation. we will be right back. when you have a cold, you just want powerful relief.

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get it but the news gods have smiled upon us. joining us is jennifer palmieri, the communications director for hillary clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. thank you for doing here. >> i am happy to be here. >> i know this is your first media interview since the election. >> yes. >> i appreciate you doing it here. how are you? >> i'm glad it's december. november wasn't the best month. so, yeah, glad to be moving on. >> do you know what you're doing next? >> i don't, but i -- i have options, so, you know, i'm grateful for that. but it's been -- yeah, as a -- i definitely would not want to live through that night again, tuesday, november 8th. >> was -- on a scale of 1 to 100, how much of a surprise was the overall result? >> it was definitely a surprise. i would say i probably went into that night thinking there was a

35% chance that we would not win, but i'll tell you, throughout the entire 18 months, there's probably something you saw every day in america that made you understand that it was possible that we were going to lose. so i always had this sense -- you always saw the numbers, everything looked fine, like we were going to win but it's also true throughout the 18 months that i had a sense that it's possible that it just might not -- it just might not be there. it's obviously a very different year. it felt to me, being on the campaign trail, you know, most days, like it was a reckoning. there were these tensions in america just across the board every age group, every demographic that have royaled to the surface and those are the

fissures that laid bear. i think the trump campaign bears some responsibility for empowering some bad voices that assisted that -- >> that explained those fissures? >> yes. but it's happening everywhere and you see it with black lives matter, you see it with hispanic families that aren't willing to live in the shadows, that are demanding that there's some means for their parents to stay here and not be worried about being deported. i saw it with women on a rope line with hillary who are crying because they remembered a sexual assault that they put aside for so long. like it's just all coming to the surface. and i choose to be optimistic about it because i think for each of these groups -- and that also include as lot of people frustrated about the lack of opportunity. >> uh-huh. >> i saw chris hayes' town hall that he did with senator sanders in trump country, which i thought was terrific.

>> riveting. >> there's no bad conversation you can have right now. we should all be talking to each other. i've learned a lot by talking to republicans in the last couple of weeks. but i do think that all of this tension, all of this royaling to the surface is happening because people understand we can do better in america. so black lives matter, they want that addressed. because we're america and to live with systemic racism of what we hold true as americans. and there's a lot of people frustrated, the lack of economic opportunity. it's not what they were promised as part of the american dream. you work hard, you should be able to succeed and do better than your parents. so i think that the fact that it's all coming to the surface now means we're strong enough to deal with it but obviously i'm very disappointed and very concerned that it's not hillary

clinton that's going to be president during this difficult time. >> the town hall that we both just watched, the bernie sanders and chris hayes event, a woman spoke towards the end who said that she believes that her -- she can't get paid enough to live on because of undocumented immigrants. she believes that undocumented immigrants don't have to pay their traffic tickets, she believes they don't have to pay their taxes, she believes that there's a conspiracy against her economically and that undocumented immigrants is why she doesn't have an economically viable life in kenosha, wisconsin. she believes it's true, that undocumented immigrants don't have to pay traffic tickets. do you think that the trump campaign essentially sold folks like that that bill and ratified those beliefs and told them that it was true while you guys were trying to correct a perception and they were trying to exploit a perception? >> i do. and they -- and i had -- i've heard the trump campaign say -- you know, mock us, even, mock

the clinton campaign for taking what trump said literally and my reaction is, you don't take trump's words literally? white supremacist, hispanics worried their families are going to be deported, muslim-americans worried they are not going to be welcome in this country. and to perpetuate lies like they do, you know, means you end up with a lot of voters that believe because the republican presidential nominee for president said so. they believe what he said. and i think that, you know, that's why, on all of these matters, from the economy and questions about why that woman -- what's really holding that woman back? what's that barrier? to questions about race. i think that president-elect needs to face up to that.

you need to understand that the words that you used during the campaign mattered and he said on election night he wants to be the president for all of america and i was en -- when i saw that on the next day, i was relieved to see that. but that means understanding what he did say in the campaign had an impact and it -- both people who were repelled by what he said and americans that were energized by what he said. >> took him seriously. >> and that needs to be addressed. >> jen palmieri, i have questions for you about what has surfaced over the last few days about russia. will you sit there and we'll talk about that. jen palmieri, communications director from hillary clinton's campaign election. this is her first media interview since the election. we'll be right back.

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on friday night, washington post broke broke the news that the cia reported that russia interfered in the election and helped donald trump's chances. joining us for her first interview is jen palmieri. thank you again. when that story came out on friday night, you responded by tweet. you said, "soul crushing". >> i don't even remember that. >> it came from the bottom of a

glass. >> soul crushing. can berry stand to read this story. what did you mean by that? >> it's helpful to have it out there that even the cia has resolved that it was not just an effort to interfere in our election but to assist donald trump to become president. it's soul crushing because it's a little late to be learning this and particularly during the month of october, the clinton campaign tried a lot to get more attention paid, particularly during what we were dealing with wikileaks and john podesta's e-mails being released and tried to get more focus that the fact this was happening -- at that point, we already knew -- because on october 7th, the director of national intelligence put out a statement saying russia is interfering in our election. these hacks were done by the russians and these likes are

being done at the direction of the russians. you know what else happened on october 7th? the "access hollywood" tape. so words we never thought would come out of our mouths, the russians were trying to influence our election. we knew that ahead of the election but it never got the attention that i think it should and so it's pretty soul crushing to have that come out now and confirm that they were, in fact, trying to help donald trump and just as an american in the year 2013, 30 years after the cold war, not something i ever imagined we'd have to worry about. >> do you think they succeeded? >> i think that -- yes. i mean, i think -- they certainly succeeded in interfering. >> did they succeed in electing him? >> it's hard to know but i think it's compelling that senators that have been briefed on this information, that have heard from the administration, the members of the senate

intelligence committee have heard -- gotten this briefing, that they asked the white house to do classified, that's also something we supported happening and they thought it could be done in a manner that doesn't jeopardize national security. i don't know what material they have but i trust that they know that it's worthy for the public to know about and could be done in a responsible way. >> the podesta statement today in response to this note from these electors, it's only 10 of the 538, but they say they want an intel briefing before they cast their votes as electors a week from today and podesta came out and said the clinton campaign supports that. what's your take on it? >> so, i would just note that hillary clinton conceded the election and that has not changed but -- and there are a lot of activities happening around the electoral college, a lot of groups have self-formed to pursue lawsuits and the like and those are all activities

that we have chosen not to be involved with. but -- >> are you opposed to those activities? >> you know, that is up to the electors and we just are -- >> staying out of it? >> we are not taking a view and we have not chosen to get involved but this we felt, particularly since there was new information that we learned on friday night about the intent of russia, we thought this was a worthy -- this was a worthy effort for us to weigh in on. you know, the electoral college -- and i have learned a lot in recent weeks about it, it was intended that the electors deliberate. that's among the reasons why it happens a month later and alexander hamilton, looms so large in our life right now and his federal fas noted it's supposed to be a process and it's to protect from a foreign

government from interfering in our election. so pretty stunning. >> and you raise that because do you think the electors, essentially the way they function right now, they don't take a deliberative role? >> they haven't. and i did not know that and i work in politics. we've had dozens of academics and legal scholars that have come our way, shared a lot of thoughts about this and that's where i first understood what that process was really supposed to be and what the role of the elector was supposed to be and i've seen some who signed this letter on television today and they are very passionate that this is their patriotic duty. part of the theory is they meet a month later so if there's a new development, such as this, they have an opportunity to consider that. so it is -- we have -- as you know, we have not had much of a

public posture in the last month but this is something that we really thought was important. >> jen palmieri, communications director for hillary clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. if you check the bottom of your chair, you'll find that i have secured your ankle to the chair. sorry. i will not let you leave. i have two more questions for you. >> okay. >> jen palmieri, we'll be back with her in a few moments. stay with us. coming up on "look! famous people!" we catch flo, the progressive girl, at the supermarket buying cheese. scandal alert! flo likes dairy?! woman: busted! [ laughter ] right afterwards we caught her riding shotgun with a mystery man.

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in the 2012 presidential election, barack obama spent a record-breaking amount, about 1.1 billion. mitt romney spent about a billion. we've got the final spending numbers in terms of the 2016 race. hillary clinton broke the record, raised and spent 1.2 billion. that's the combined campaign and its super pacs and supporters. we also now know that donald trump came in at almost exactly half that. in political science they tell you that money is power. in this case, it was a two to

one spending. joining me is jen palmieri, clinton's communications director. i promise i'll let you go after this. >> i'm very happy to be here. you guys did outraise and outspend trump 2 to 1. how could you have taken better advantage of your cash? >> there is a -- there's so many -- you know, when you lose three states by less than 70,000 votes, you do spend a lot of time thinking about what you could have done differently that would have made that difference and when there's only 70 votes, there are a lot of things that we could have done that made a lot of difference. michigan, 10,000 votes. wisconsin, 20. so, you know, we made the best decisions that we could based on the data that we had at the time about where we needed to be and, you know, and then we got the result that we did.

and it was not that we expected. i'll tell you what we found on election night was basically all the battleground states, we ended up being anywhere from five to two points lower than what we had predicted and in some states, like virginia and colorado, that was okay because our cushion was bigger than that. florida, north carolina, iowa -- ex cue me. pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin, it wasn't enough. so more time in those states. we spent a ton of time in pennsylvania and we spent a lot of money in pennsylvania and we still loss. we lost that state worse than wisconsin and michigan. >> we just got the recount numbers from pennsylvania today. they showed actually with the new total from the recount, which has only changed a little bit, one notable finding in that is that jill stein got more votes than the distance between trump and clinton and that ends

up being true in wisconsin and michigan. those are the states where she tried to get a recount. had her votes gone to clinton -- >> we would have won. maybe our travel schedule had been different, we could have won. but what we think accounts for the big dropoff -- i'm talking about a big dropoff, like five to two points in each of these states, is the comey letter. and that isn't to say that there's not things that our campaign could have done better or differently or in retrospect that we would do differently. i have dreams that i understand we have a problem, we have a week to fix them and then i wake up and it's not true. so there's a lot more that we could have done but we had accounted for all of our challenges and our problems and we were positioned to win and i think that comey letter was just -- it was one thing too many to absorb. >> what is your opinion of why director comey did what he did?

>> i do not know. i really do not know. >> do you think he was skriitryo skew the vote toward trump? >> i don't personally want to believe that and i don't personally -- i do not believe that. but it had that impact. i understand that it's possible. i think that he was probably most likely just trying to cover himself with republicans on capitol hill who had been giving him a lot of pressure if, you know, it -- if after the election he was in a position of having to disclose more. but it was, you know, unprecedented, irresponsible and it had -- regardless of what his intentions were, had a devastating impact. >> mostly when you and i had any contact during the campaign, it was because i was trying to get an interview with your

candidate. can i talk to secretary clinton? >> tonight? probably not. but i'm sure at some point, some day, but i don't know that right now is the -- you know, is the time where we need to be -- you know -- >> here. >> here. december i, wouldn't count on it. >> jen palmieri, i know that, a, you don't have to do any interviews at all and you certainly didn't have to do this one with me. >> it was my pleasure. >> thank you. >> thanks. lots more to come tonight. stay with us.

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just serve classy snacks and bew a gracious host,iday party. no matter who shows up. do you like nuts? it's official, at least as official as mitt romney's facebook page gets. at the very top of the show i told you that there was some new reporting from jennifer jacobs, a very good reporter at bloomberg news. she said mitt romney got a call

tonight from the president-elect telling him that the secretary of state job is going to be announced tomorrow and it's not going to be mitt romney. now governor romney has made it official for facebook. he has posted this on his own facebook page, "it was an honor to have been considered for secretary of state of our great country. my discussions with president-elect trump have been enjoyable and enlightening. i have very high hopes that he will lead the nation to greater strength, prosperity and peace." this brings to a close a remarkable pageant where mitt romney, who had been so strongly opposed to donald trump and had denounced him in such certain terms during the campaign, was nevertheless paraded back and forth through the lobby of trump's apartment building and propped up in front of the cameras and made to say nice things with donald trump about the expectation that if he did so, it would be with him getting secretary of state. in the end, he got an erasure of his stance against donald trump

and no new job. we'll be right back. oh, that's lovely... so graceful. the corkscrew spin, flawless... ...his signature move, the flying dutchman. poetry in motion. and there it is, the "baby bird". breathtaking. a sumo wrestler figure skating? surprising. what's not surprising? how much money heather saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

he wears his army hat, he gets awalks aroundliments. with his army shirt looking all nice. and then people just say, "thank you for serving our country" and i'm like, that's my dad. male vo: no one deserves a warmer welcome home. that's why we're hiring 10,000 members of the military community by the end of 2017. i'm very proud of him. male vo: comcast. news, nbc news has just confirmed within the last few moments, confirmed through multiple sources that the nominee from the trump administration to be the new secretary of state will be the ceo of exxon, rex tillerson. obviously, this is a very controversial choice for a number of reasons. the number one, it's an unorthodox choice, mr. tillerson

not only has no background in government or diplomacy, he literal lay has never held a job as an adult that was not at exxon. he has only worked at exxon for his entire career since the 1 7 1970s. another reason this is so controversial is that rex tillerson is closer to vladimir putin than any other citizen. he's received the highest award that russia gives to non-russian citizens and has brokered deals thought to be as large as a half trillion dollars between exxon, his company, and russia's government-owned oil and gas giant, ross neft. he has repeatedly denied

requests to do business with russia and speakering out against government sanctions against russia because they were bad for exxon's bottom line, but now he'll be america's man in the world. joining us now is kristen welker. i understand we've just confirmed this news in the last few minutes. is this a done deal? >> caller: sounds like a done deal. president-elect donald trump has tapped rex tellerson as you just said, and the official announcement is going to come as early as tomorrow morning. and, of course for all of the reasons that you just laid out, he is a controversial pick, particularly because of his close ties to russia, to vladimir putin, he is someone who the trump transition team spent the weekend defending vigorously, the president-elect himself, defending his record, telling him a deal maker and really touting his relationship with russia, vladimir putin, as

a good thing, as a strength, something that will help the united states move its relationship forward with russia. but you have disagreement and dissension within the republican ranks this weekend, john mccain saying that he wanted to know more about rex tillerson's ties to russia. and senator marco rubio saying that having a friendship with vladimir putin is not exactly a quality he would want to see in the secretary of state. so it is possible. it is likely that you are going to see contentious confirmation hearing, i would add one more moment, also moments ago, our peter alexander reported that mitt romney got a phone call saying it was not going to be him. and he posted on a facebook page, it was an honor to be considered. i have very high hopes that the new administration will lead the nation to greater strength, progs parity and peace. so those are the breaking developments at this hour, and,

again, we are anticipating an official announcement as early as tomorrow morning, rachel. >> let me just ask you. internally, and i don't know if you can say this in terms of sourcing and stuff, but there have been some interesting internal dynamics within the trump transition, the president-elect's own feelings in terms of having favorites for cabinet positions and other jobs, do we know if rex tillerson, such an unorthodox choice, do we know if he had a particular champion among those closest to the president-elect? is this somebody who steve bannon wanted to pick or reince priebus or the president-elect decided on his own? >> caller: it's a great question. i think those three people thought very highly of rex tillerson. the that is my understanding, and that certainly helped the president-elect get to yes on rex tillerson. i do think he was giving mitt romney a very serious look, but

rachel, you'll recall over the past several days so much of our reporting has been about the internal deivide within trump world, could mitt romney be trusted given that he was one of the top republicans to criticize then candidate trump so vigorously, and that was a real concern and a concern for the president-elect. so those people that you just named closest to him, it is my sense that they felt as though this was a good pick and that the president-elect agreed. and you keep hearing this word over and over again, "deal makemake " "makeer." this is something he sees as a virtue, someone who has done deals not only with russia but other countries all over the world including yemen. so i think that's one of the

arguments that you're going to hear from the transition team as they try to defend this pick. >> kristen welker, thank you very much. appreciate you being with us on short notice. again breaking news, donald trump intends to pick the ceo of exxon to be his secretary of state. probl probably the only company large enough to have its own policy. now he'll be in charge of all of ours. we'll be right back

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don't let the food you eat during the day stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. haunt you at night. nexium 24hr... shuts down your stomach's active acid pumps... to stop the burn of frequent heartburn... all day and night. have we seen them before? banish the burn with nexium 24hr. okay. it's live tv. a few things have just happened. number one, nbc news has just confirmed that rex tillerson, the ceo of exxon will be donald trump's choice for his secretary of state. that means if he's confirmed, we'll have a president with no governing and diplomatic experience, a national security the adviser with no diplomatic or governing experience and a secretary of state with no governing or the diplomatic

experience. rex tillerson, we're told may have a bumpy ride. patriotism has been having a fight for a long time, it has not been a fair fight. but that does it for us. tomorrow night i'm going to have an exclusive interview with attorney general loretta lynch, for real, loretta lynch will be here for the interview tomorrow night on this show. i hope you will join us for that. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening. we have a lot of breaking news to be covering here. donald trump has chosen exxon mobil ceo rex tillerson as secretary of state. donald trump tweeted that that announcement the will actually be made tomorrow. mitt romney tweeted tonight that he was glad to have been considered. he made it clear that it would not be mitt romney, and then