good. the highly produced ones are good. but like a thousand flowers blooming. you show check out some of the podcasts as well as two dope queens and another round are the two that i really love. thanks for joining us. >> always a pleasure. >> that's "all in" for this evening. the rachel maddow show begins tonight with ari melber. >> two queens. rachel has the night off. she'll be paback monday. this is the american businessman who built the empire state building, overseeing the construction in the early 1930s, but before he made his mark on the new york skyline, he bought a sprawling estate in centerville, maryland, pioneer point farms. and he built a brick manx and a brick house for his 13 children and their friends, which is nice. he had an eye for iconic buildings, but he never would have expected that his prize estate would prove intriguing to the soviet union which bought it

in 1972 turning the grounds that once delighted so many family members into a vacation and meeting retreat for russian diplomats stationed in the u.s. on 50 acres by the corsica and chester rivers, that facility is private and ornate with teak floors, oriental carpets, crystal chandeliers, this is according to "washington life" magazine, plus a full library, lovely staircase, views of the river, a tennis court, if you worked in the kremlin in the 1970s getting assigned to the u.s. was for top diplomats or anyone the soviet union wanted the u.s. to think was a diplomat. it bought a similar facit in long island, 14 acs. both compounds host those russians are assignment until today. because president obama shut down both compounds as part of his new sanctions against russia for interfering in the u.s.

election. and starting at noon tomorrow, the obama administration is physically barring any of those russians from accessing the compounds. the state department saying they were used by, quote, russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes. so maybe something more than diplomacy. now, cyber espionage is by definition a virtual activity. it's hard to pinpoint. it can feel kind of ephemeral. but president obama's actions today are not. they're physical steps, brick and mortar, if you want, starting with the compounds, but not ending there. president obama also ordered the immediate expulsion of 35 suspected russian spies. he imposed sanctions on two leading russian intelligence agencies including four top officers in a russian military intelligence unit. he levied sanction against two suspected hackers who are on that fbi wanted list. the last time the u.s. government took these kind of significant actions against russia was three months into the george w. bush administration.

>> president bush speaking out trying to keep u.s./russian relations on an even keel after kicking out nearly 50 russian diplomats suspected of undercover intelligence activities of some sort. >> and then as now catching russia in the act led the u.s. to act. >> the russian strikeback surprisingly fast, strongly protesting to the american ambassador today and they'll kick out the same number of americans from the u.s. embassy there. retaliation for ordering four employees of the u.s. out of russia in ten days. all of them expected to act as contacts of robert hanson accused of spying for russia. >> now, in that instance, bush gave the russians several months to leave. obama's giving them three days. now, russian president vladimir

putin spokesman is saying they'll develop their response to the sanctions and it will mirror the u.s. response and make the u.s. side feel very uncomfortable as well. the fbi and the department of homeland security also today releasing a 13-page report with documentation on what they call proof on how the russians tried to influence the election with cyber espionage. the report now public. anyone can see it. more covert actions could be coming. these are not the sum total of our response to russia's aggressive activities. now, president obama making this sweeping announcement today striking back at russia for trying to meddle in the election and this is, of course, just 21 days before a new president takes office which is probably kind of awkward since president obama's making a huge foreign policy decision, but what makes it all the more awkward is president-elect trump has basically, as you probably know bhi now, repeatedly denied any russian involvement here.

>> i don't think anybody knows it was russia that broke into the dnc. maybe it was. it could be russia, but it could be china or somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay? you don't know who broke in to dnc. i notice any time anything wrong happens they like to say the russians are -- she doesn't know if it's the russians doing the hacking. maybe there is no hacking. but they always blame russia because they think they're trying to tarnish me with russia. >> she doesn't know who knows. but if you wanted to be charitable you would say that's the campaign talk and campaigns have talk going in both directions. he was running for president. fine. but here's donald trump this month after being elected president. >> the cia has concluded that russia intervened in the election to help you win the presidency. your reaction? >> i think it's ridiculous. i think it's just another excuse. i don't believe it. i don't know why.

and i think it's just -- you know, they talked about all sorts of things. every week it's another excuse. we had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the electoral college. i guess the final numbers are now at 306 and she's down to a very low number. no, i don't believe that at all. >> you say you don't know why. do you think that the cia is trying to overturn the results of the election? to weaken you in office? >> well, if you look at the story and you take a look at what they said, there's great confusion. nobody really knows. and hacking is very interesting. once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act, you are not going to catch them. they have no idea if it's russia or china or somebody. it could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. >> they have no idea. it could be somebody sitting in a bed. and then, of course, here he is just yesterday at mar-a-lago. >> what do you think enl,le about sanctions against russia? >> i think we ought to get on with our lives. the computers have complicated lives very greatly, the whole

age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on. >> nobody really knows what's going on. now, notice this is a device of donald trump's that we're probably going to hear a lot. because if you can maintain doubt about a problem's existence, you are under less pressure to solve it. it may not even about a problem. that's obviously how climate change denial work. now i think just flagging and understanding this trump trick, call it strategic ignorance, if you want, can actually help inoculate against its spreading. it is true that trump does not need to implement any russia policy unt january 20th. his strategic ignorance, though, may reflect the pickle he's in, caught between the cia's mounting evidence of russian sabotage and his very warm public embrace with putin. but the obama administration's not in that pickle. it released hints, then evidence about russia ap hacks as the evidence accrued it then moved from the evidence to today's consequences.

in other words, instead of, hey, nobody really knows, obama's position is we know. we're sharing some of what we know. and we are acting on what we know. so let's maybe keep this contrast in mind. the choice between we know and who knows, and then keep it in mind as you hear what we have tonight, trump's brand-new and pretty curt reaction to the sanctions. quote, it's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. nevertheless, in the interests of our country and its great people, i will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation. trump says he wants the facts of the situation. facts that are, of course, presumably part of the presidential daily briefs available to any president-elect. joining us now is david sanger, chief washington correspondent for "the new york times." david, thank you for joining us on a busy day. i want to get to -- thank you. i want to get to some of donald trump's posture, but first on

the policy substance, where do the administration's moves today rank in your view on what one can do diplomatically? >> well, they certainly could have done a lot more. and i think one of the big questions is whether they came to this too late, many in the clinton campaign, many of president obama's own aides have said to me privately that they wish that they had taken the same set of actions when they were developing options in augu august, september and october. the president was concerned about election day, trying to affect the actual vote count, that did not happen. but i think there will be a lot people debating whether he waited too long. then the question is -- >> let me ask you that on the timeline. you're driving to the heart of it. were today's measures punishment or deterrence or something else? >> well, i think it was three things, ari. certainly there was an element of punishment and it had a

little bit of this air of the old cold war, we throw out 35, tomorrow they'll throw out roughly the same number. ignore for a minute the persona non grata, the pngs of the diplomats. the interesting question here is will the sanctions make much difference? i think the answer is more psychological than anything else. these are sanctions against individual members of the gru, the military intelligence unit. they don't travel the united states much they don't keep much money here to begin with. but it may have some good symbolic importance, same thing for the companies. and then the next question, which is is the president doing anything that he's not announcing? and as you suggested from reading the statement, he's left open the possibility of some covert action presumably a cyber action. that will make you feel good and it would be known to president

putin and his close aides. whether it would much deterrent effect on the next country that might do something, the chinese, the iranians, north koreans, who knows who would be interested in this come the next election cycle, that's a more open question. this may be one of the cases where the public deterrence does more than the covert. >> and then turning to donald trump's response, what do you make of this, that he wants a factual briefing next week? >> well, that's good. in fact, i'm a little bit surprised if he hasn't had one already either as a candidate or as president-elect. certainly if you go back to the 2008 election cycle when the chinese went into the -- both the obama campaigns and the mccain campaigns both of the

candidates received pretty full fbi briefings about what the chinese were doing. that was different in nation. it was pure espionage. they weren't making this stuff public, the way the russians did here. >> there is another story here. if we haven't learned all of this news on the sanctions today, the big headline would, of course, be the release of more specific evidence of russia's involvement in hacking, the information involved in the election. now here's what kellyanne conway who is soon counsel to president trump had to say just last week. >> mr. trump is still skeptical that the russians are even involved letting aside whether it affected the election or not. you have the cia, the fbi, the director of intelligence, a number of republicans saying it's clear that the russians hacked. that as a basic premise is clear. mr. trump since late september has said that he doesn't think that's the case. he still says that now. what does he know that all those intelligence officers don't know? >> where's the evidence?

let's focus on the issue at hand. if the cia and director brennan and others are serious about turning over evidence to the american people, they should do that and show up when the house intelligence committee invites them to brief them. but that's a closed door meeting so not so exciting and tantalizing because then you can't leak it to the media. they should not be leaking to the media. if there's evidence, let's see it. >> today we got this, a 13-page fbi report on russian malicious cyber activity which fbi and dhs are asserting they do agree with the cia that russia engaged in these attacks and the report provides technical details on the tools, the infrastructure used by russian military to compromise and exploit networks and the end points that were associated with the election. i want the be clear for anyone keeping track at home. this is not the report from the full investigation that president obama has ordered. we don't know the result of that until probably next year, but it is something real. fbi and dhs saying here's some of the actual details of what

showed them that this was russia behind the hack. so david, i wanted to get you back in on this particular piece. what's your reaction to that report? >> well, frankly, ari, i thought the fbi and dhs could have and should have gone considerably further than what they released today. for those of us who have been following this story for most of the year, there was very little in the fbi report that you could not have gotten from the report turned out by crowd strike and by other private companies that do internet security. crowd strike's a group that had been brought in by the dnc after their hack. it confirmed the crowd strike conclusions, but it didn't get you where i think the u.s. government has got to be and let me explain where that is. they're telling us they have many forms of evidence that link

these hackers to the gru and the fsb, the two main russian intelligence services and then take it the next step to show that they are -- this whole operation was done with the knowledge and perhaps the direct orders of the kremlin, which is their code word for saying that this came directly from putin. that document that you're showing on the screen does not take you there. to get there, you would need to see evidence from implants that the nsa has with russian networks, intercepts from conversations, from reports of human spies and all kinds of other technical means that they would have there. that always sets up a fight between those who don't want to reveal the sources and methods and those who believe that you need to go out and make the case. and given the import of this and

a president coming into, as you pointed out, has been highly skeptical of it, my own view is that there's a greater burden for disclosure here. >> what you're saying is this next step here in that report gives you a kind of a summary or a flow chart but not the underlying materials that would actually be the dispositive truth. >> it doesn't tell you more than what "the new york times" had about the recent hack. >> you educate us a lot on, this i appreciate it. the fbi's view is there might be a lot of things out there that are true that people are piecing together. what they're saying matters partly because itses a them, the source that they're willing to confirm what the government view is, but again not until we get a full report and the full accounts in public are we going to know exactly what links it back to russia. david sanger, chief washington correspondent for "the new york times." thank you. >> thank you, ari. great the be with you.

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'tis the soap for people on cable television to make predictions for the future. although i did spend much of my day imploring the magic eight ball in the office for what's ahead, i have only one prediction for you guys. we have a ton more news tonight. that is true. we have great people to talk to, always true on this show and the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee and the woman who is about to run president obama's new effort, first big thing he's doing coming out of the white house, to do recovery, he says, for the democratic party. i predict all of that on tonight's show. stay with us. i will never wash my hair again.

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is it keeps the food out. for me before those little pieces would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was uncomfortable. just a few dabs is clinically proven to seal out more food particles. super poligrip is part of my life now. right now we are four hours into a new cease-fire in syria, which somehow could mark a kind of a breakthrough in that nation's bloody six-year civil war. it would be easy to miss this story this week because u.s. news has been full of political sniping over our nation's potential role in negotiating peace between israelis and palestinians some day, a pretty aspirational discussion.

meanwhile, other regional powers are actually at the table hammering out these deals in syria and they did it without any u.s. diplomats. instead the new syrian truce deal was led by turkish and russian diplomats and announced in moscow by vladimir putin. the kremlin saying the russian president broke word of the deal after speaking to syrian president bashar al assad by phone and paves the way to comprehensive talks in russia's state of kazakhstan. while some can argue that local players like turkey should be involved than a more distant superpower like the u.s., you can remember that's an allegation that people in both parties were making while resisting further entanglement in syria, there are political ramifications here. russia announced it will only welcome the u.s. to their talks after donald trump becomes president and that was before the u.s. had this afternoon's big news, the series of sanctions against russia related to the hacking of the election and announcing the suspension of

those 35 intelligence agents which we were just discussing with david sanger. almost immediately russia vowing to retaliate and pledging to cause that, quote, considerable discomfort in the same areas for the u.s. also russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman calls the white house occupants a group of foreign policy losers. ouch. because we live in a world where most grave issues are boiled down to internet snark, get this, russia's embassy london tweeting this attempt at a di t digital smackdown. president obama expels 35 diplomats in cold war deja vu as everybody including the u.s. people will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration, end quote. but picture included, as you can see of a lame duck. ah, it raises the question, are you any good at diplomacy if you find yourself reaching for animal cartoons to pull off your latest russian burn? joining us now for a slightly more serious conversation is a

ranking member of the house intelligence committee, california congressman adam schiff. good evening. >> good evening. >> i will not ask you to comment in any way on the duck tweet. what i will ask you is to pick up on some of what "the new york times'" david sanger was saying, many of these moves today are symbolic. is that your view? >> they're meaningful. it's more than symbolic. it's a serious step to be dispatching 40 russian intelligence agents masquerading as diplomats in facilities of the united states, but nonetheless i would agree that the administration's going to need to do more. i think the congress will need to do more because i don't have that much confidence in the president-elect doing anything at all. if we're serious about deterring the russians, we'll have to make them feel some economic pain. there are steps that the administration is taking that it's not announcing today. those are covert steps to basically shoot across the

russian bow, let them know that two can play at this game and there are things that we can do to make putin's life difficult and that of his cronies and those may have an equally deterrent impact. >> what is your view of what that should look like? understandably, it's covert, so some of it's not going to be discussed. let's be clear about categories. if the idea is a proportionate response, certainly that wouldn't automatically tampering with their election or the information used in their election and in past administrations and american history, efforts by the cia or others to interfere with other countries' elections democratically or otherwise are pretty widely criticized. >> no, you're absolutely right. no, we don't want to have the same response to what they did to the united states. they're doing a pretty good job of dismantling their own democratic institutions. the last thing we would want to do is to help them in any way. rather, we could take steps to expose, for example, the corruption of both putin

personally and a lot of his cronies, the economic theft from the russian people. that's not something, frankly, that the incoming trump administration could easily undo. and that's something that would reflect badly, that would weaken putin. that's one potential step. there are a number of others that i won't discuss, but there's a wide range of things that i think we ought to undertake that the russians would understand exactly who was doing it and why, but they're t no things that we necessarily need to broadcast. >> what is the key evidence that is still left to declassify on this, in your view? >> well, here's where i guess i would part company with david and that is that we can make a clear showing of proof to the american people and we should share as much as we can but we're not going to burn our sources of information. we're not going to alert the russians to what our technologies are. that would certainly be in the russian interest. it's not in our interests. and this is why i think what donald trump is doing right now is so destructive not only to

our own country but to success of his presidency. there will come a time when president trump is going to have to come before the american people and explain why he's going to take action vis-a-vis -- and it could be russian or china and he's not going to want to share that intelligence. so for him to belittle the quality of the work intelligence community does will ultimately belittle his own presidency, his own effectiveness and call it into question. he's already, i think, damaging the country but he's also going to damage his own potential success. >> while i have you, there's another topic that's so significant but rarely discussed, something you have worked on, something rachel maddow wrote a book about. the expansion of the military powers of the united states nt any oversight or control. you have been advocating for some time that there should be a new authorization of force or one that actually condenses or

cabins some of the u.s. footprint there. what do you think of that not having gotten traction with congress or either party? >> it's all the more important now. history will be very kind to the obama administration, but this is one area that it won't. that the administration didn't work hard enough with congress to encrage congress to pass a new authorization to use force. i think the administration took the view, and i can understand it, that they shouldn't want this more than the congress because it's the congress' own institutional authority that's being eroded. and they were exactly right about that. but nonetheless, the administration's broad interpretations of these old authorizations going back to 2001 and 2002 are going to mean that donald trump can come into the oval office and can wage war just about anywhere as long as he claims it's against al qaeda or its successors and point to the obama administration as precedent. so that's a very dangerous thing. i think there may be a great

many republicans now who wish they had been more serious about this issue also because they probably are going to have great concerns about donald trump having free rein to make war without the approval of congress. this is a real problem. i would hope that we'd get back at it again with a renewed determination because this could ultimately be a decision of war and peace. >> as you say, a president trump could point now to bipartisan, democratic and republican, legal precedent for that based on this administration in part. congressman adam schiff, ranking member of house intel. thank you for joining us on a busy day. >> you bet. thank you. >> what are president obama's plans starting at noon january 20th? i think it's actually a pretty interesting question. the person who literally has the job fulfilling the president's top priority after leaving office is here tonight with us straight ahead. ♪

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to pick up a conversational thread from november, you could look at what happened to the democrats in a couple of different ways. one, you could point out what a lot of people have said, democrats actually when you count it all up, won that popular vote by almost 3 million. their loss in the electoral college was a matter of just 70,000 votes in a handful of states. that's true. or you could look at something else that's true, democrats are in terrible shape in all the key states with republicans

controlling most statehouses and governorships across the country, that's wider thatten t -- than the presidential field. and something that president obama has been bearing down on and saying that's what he wants to work on as soon as he exits the white house. >> part of what we have to do to rebuild is to be there, and that means organizing, that means caring about state parties, it means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races and not thinking that somehow just a great set of progressive policies that we present to "the new york times" editorial board will win the day. >> that's a point president obama has repeatedly returned to. rebuilding the democratic party including a focus on red states. well, tonight we have an exclusive interview with the person who has just been hired to do that for president obama. she's my guest next.

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one of the shocking facts that came out of this year's presidential election that remains shocking is that the president-elect who is taking office in 21 days did lose the popular vote by over 2.8 million votes. clinton with the edge in terms of votes by a lot. and that came, by the way, while she was the first female major nominee in american history and she got more votes. but that aside, the fact is everyone who plays this game knows it's not about who puts more points on the board. it's just not. it's about where the points are. secretary clinton lost in the electoral college so she loses the race. proving once again the presidential election is not a true democracy, it is not decided by majority vote. we know that. the founders didn't design it that way. and by the way, neither is the senate. each state gets two senators no matter how many people live in the state, democrat or republican. so when you actually just think

about it. the closest thing we have in our federal government to a democracy is the house of representatives. and then think about this. in recent years voting for your house of representative means voting in districts that actually look like this or this or this. we have republicans in large part to thank for many of the oddly-shaped gerrymandered districts popping up across the country after the 2010 census. to be clear, both parties do this, but the republicans have been doing it very effectively, part of an effort called the redistricts majority problem or they call it red map for short. republicans poured money into local state and governor races so that when republicans won those local races they could then, as a very clear strategy, reshape the congressional districts to make sure democrats could get siphoned off into some wacky looking districts and republicans would then pick up extra wins elsewhere. in 2012 that effort paid off, but it was settle.

look at this like this, president obama won his second term. democrats did keep the senate majority, but then in the house races where democrats won the popular vote -- think about that, 2012 -- more votes for democrats, 1.4 million. and nevertheless it was republicans who held on to the house majority not be a little, not like the electoral college sometimes when it's close but with 33 seats. so while more people voted democratic, redistricting helped republicans hold that big edge in the house. it's a far cry from one man, one vote, a far cry from what we consider to be a democracy. but redistricting takes place every ten years. the next census is coming up in 2010, democrats now gearing up to fight back against what happened 2010. outgoing president obama and eric holder making redistricting reform their priority in the years ahead. holder holding a new democratic redistricting committee and the president's been briefed by that group's progress and how he can

help flip those roll races from red to blue in the midterms to build for that 2020 map redraw. the idea is that republicans have been good at the redistricting game. some liberals have been complaining and they reply by saying don't hate the player, hate the game. now democrats are trying to change the game and this obama/holder group just announced their op to run it. you don't see her doing the pundit laps on television, but she did come out of the network for her first interview since being named for this post. kelly ward. ms. ward, thanks for joining us for the interview. >> thanks, ari. it's great to be with you. >> what is the plan? >> well, as you said, democrats are preparing to fight back. this is the first time that democrats have come together to have a comprehensive strategy focused on redistricting. and how we can make sure

democrats are at the table as decisions are being made and that we have a level playing field on which democrats can compete. it's also the first time that we have had an entity within the democratic party solely focused on redistricting. meaning, we're pulling together all of the different house and senate and legislative leaders of our party, but we, the national democratic redistricting committee, will be solely focused on our redistricting strategy a hundred% of the time from now through the redistricting process. >> and how is president obama involved in this? >> well, as your previous clip showed, he is very committed to rebuilding the party from the ground up and that includes the local races, the legislative races, it also includes making sure that redistricting happens in a fair way. we've seen republicans rig the system with their gerrymandering, often illegal gerrymand

gerrymandering. president obama knows firsthand the impact of that. he's been dealing with a congress where the tea party republicans elected in these very conservative unfair districts have a stranglehold on the process and where they have made obstruction their entire strategy against him. and their gerrymandering is part of why they're doing that and how they're maintaining that control. so he has seen firsthand the impact and now we're thrilled as a democratic party and for our country that in his post-presidency he's focusing on this and making it a priority. >> yet the flip side which people who are in the democratic party sometimes talk about and certainly a lot of progressive reformers talk about is just adding more gerrymandering isn't necessarily good and some democrats have cottoned to that. take a look at, for example, the florida fifth district, this is karim brown drawn in a weird way. that is not contiguous, not a community, nothing you'd draw like that.

but brown fought to keep it that way after the republicans redrew it that way. are you also going to be defending those kind of maps? >> well, our goal is to make sure that the process is fair, that democrats have a seat at the table and that democrats can compete on a fair playing field. and we have not seen that because of the republican gerrymandering. and florida is a perfect example of this. the florida voters passed an initiative giving the legislature boundaries for drawing the maps and the republican legislators completely ignored those regulations put on them by the voters and passed what was then later determined to be an illegal map. and in fact, four of the nine seats that democrats pick pd ed in the house in 2016 were because of redistricting lawsuits that overturned illegal republican maps including in florida. and we know that when that happens, democrats do better, democrats normally pick up more

seats when the process is more fair, democrats do better, and that's really our goal. and that's what we'll stay focused on. >> right. you're almost qugetting a the ft that just a return to a more majority rule system would be beneficial to the democratic party and defensible to those thinking about it ethically if it is democratic and not sort of rigged. kelly ward, interim executive director of the redistricting committee. it's a mouthful. sounds more boring than it is important, you yet i think we've discussed why it is important. thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you for having me. >> much more to come tonight. are ya doll? well, the only place you need go... london's got the best of everything. cornwall's got the best of everything. sport sport nightlife nightlife (both) fashion adventure i'm tellin' ya, britain is the only

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here in midtown new york, at least from a confetti perspective. just to be safe tune in at midnight on saturday to see if it goes as planned. what about tonight, though? we do have something just as good. tonight on this network we'll do a special reair of rachel's one on one interview with kellyanne conway talking about everything from nuclear policy under trump to his relationship with the press or a relationship that includes the first lady suing a news outlet based on their coverage. >> every president, not only in the modern era, every president back to the beginning of newsprint has believed that the president has lied about them and has hated the press and against the press. i've never seen a first family, a president or his family members trying to put newspapers out of business through -- >> he's not trying to do that. that is not her lawsuit. her lawsuit is suing someone,

suing a publication that lied about her. >> are they going to do -- >> are people going to stop lying about them? she didn't file the lawsuit as the first lady. she has a right -- are people going to continue to loy about her? >> presumably the first family will continue to believe that people are lying about them. all presidents do. if somebody lies about the first family, you see it as a lie, would you want that news enterprise to be gone in punishment? >> no, of course not, no. >> this conversation that we just had will be taught in journalism classes. >> in journalism classes and in law schools. so who needs confetti when you have that admit night tonight. midnight tune in or set your dvr. either waydo notiss .it when it's time to move to underwear toddlers see things a bit differently thanks to pampers easy-ups while they see their first underwear you see the best way to potty train pampers easy-ups our first and only training underwear

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the third agency of government i would do away with education, the uh, commerce. and let's see. i can't. the third one, i can't. sorry. oops. >> i can't. i can't. energy. it was department of energy. rick perry later clarified that was a department he wanted to eliminate. and you could feel bad for him. he was so committed to the goal, maybe he'd already yoe limbed it from his mind. but folks, it could be the eighth sign of the plolitical

apocalypse, he may have forgotten the name of the department of energy because it sounds sort of vague and forgettable. would he have forgotten the name, though, if it was the department of nukes? we're not just asking. it very well could be named that. half of the energy department's budget, it turns out, is devoted to the u.s. nuclear weapons program, collecting data, inspecting the actual warheads, ensuring the safety of the weapons and promoting federal non-proliferation around the world as a u.s. government goal. in fact, since 1998, no country except forhas conducted a test. but now, president-elect trump talking about expanding our nuclear capability and there is a question whether we would start testing again, under the guidance of someone with, to be

accurate, very little scientific background and no experience with the nuclear issues that make up about of ha of thhalf o department. one was a nobel prize in physics in 1997 and has been telling the "new york times" about that, that being a physicist does help manage the job of nuclear secretary. if people are talking to a non-scientist, people might be of tempted to b.s. him. he hopes he succeeds in the job, but asked when he could recall a science background was used in a decision, he didn't hesitate. all the time he said, maybe not the best news for mr. perry, but yes, we are rooting for him too. we will be right back.

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for a holiday week, we've had a lot of news, president obama announcing those sanctions against russia, the new report from fbi and dhs on why they think russia was behind it all. a lot of news for what was supposed to be a sleepy thursday before new year's. after we finish, our colleague, lawrence o'donnell will have stories on this, including nicolas kristoff from the "new

york times." you may say, how many people does it take to put on a show. you see rachel, guest hosts l me come in sometimes, mostly, though, it is a fact, this show depends on a lot of people who usually go unnamed except for once a year when we roll the credits here as a way of saying "thank you." ♪

i have had the privilege of working with all of those great people. thank you for making this show and msnbc's work possible every night in 2016. and for viewers, rachel will be back on monday for the start of 2017. thats s tdoes it for our show, can always e-mail me at ari @msnbc.com. >> wait, i'm sending you an e-mail right now. >> you love it that e-mail is available. >> 10,000 e-mails in the last ten minutes. i can't believe you do that. >> it feels good, lawrence. >> thank you, ari. the russian response to president obama's new sanctions was to threaten the united states today, but donald trump says that's no big deal, it's time to just move on. just forget about it, i guess. we don't know who's been