nothing there left. >> and i think that on the left the reaction has been cry me a river. >> and also, i learned it from watching you. thanks for joining us. i appreciate it. that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening. thanks to you, my friend. thanks to you at home for joining us for the next hour. he had pet ostriches. it turned out, he had ostriches and he didn't have one or two, he had a whole bunch of pet ostriches. in fact, he had a whole zoo, like a private zoo. but a secret private zoo that nobody knew about that he kept just for himself. apparently the ostriches were the real stars but he had a full zoo with all kinds of exotic animals and a replica of a spanish -- he built it for himself. it's not like they filmed a spanish galleon and then they transported it. they built it from scratch for him.

i don't know if it actually sailed around the manmade lake that he had handmade for himself but either way, he used this replica spanish galleon as a floating restaurant for himself and when they finally chased him out of power, when he fled and reportedly left the gates open behind him in his haste to get out, the people of his country poured in to see how he had been living, to see what he had been doing with their money, their country's money since he had been in power. that's how they found the zoo, the ostriches, the spanish galleon/restaurant on the lake that he made for himself. they found his gold-plated golf clubs. they took pictures in his bathrooms.

i mean, part of what's funny is looking at the incongruity of people in this setting which is opulent to the point of stupid. look at the bathroom. look at the gold feet. is that even a toilet? i don't even know. i don't know. it turns out, the dictator left so fast, he left behind personal stuff. he left behind his family photos. he also left behind his antique car museum. he apparently left behind lots of copies of his book. there it is. "art of the deal." sorry. it's called "road to success." when he fled and left all of that junk behind and the people of his country finally got in there to see what was behind the gates, how he had been living and what he had been doing with their money, first of all, interestingly, they did not loot his stuff. they started collecting the files that they could salvage.

that looks like fish. it's shreds of the burned documents that he tried to destroy by tearing them up and setting them on fire. they tried to salvage those and put them back together. when they noticed stray papers floating around in the lake, they started an organized effort to dive for those papers and salvage all of the stuff, including reams and reams of documents that this fleeing dictator apparently dumped into his private manmade lake before he fled the country. in his party's headquarter office, they found a room on the third floor that held two saves. when they got the saves opened, they found that they were filled with $100 bills and there was handwritten ledgers, off the books payments in and out of the hands of this cleptic dictator.

these were not campaign finance filings of legit payments. this was a handwritten dossier which is how they kept track of the untraceable cash payments. and that's how we learned in our country, this past august, that the campaign manager for the donald trump for president campaign was listed in that handwritten ledger. he was on the books for 12.7 million. $12.7 million in otherwise undisclosed cash payments from the private ostrich zoo gold toilet corrupt pro-russian dictator of ukraine. paul manafort at the time was outraged by that reporting. he denied ever receiving any of

those millions of dollars. he says he has no idea why this ledger apparently showed him to be the recipient of $12 million plus in otherwise untraceable cash. but that said, less than a week after "the new york times" published whole handwritten pages of that ledger, paul manafort was gone. he quit on august 19th as donald trump's campaign manager. but now we know that that's not actually where things sort of ended. that's where it started really getting juicy. because paul manafort had worked for this pro-russian political party in ukraine. specifically, he was the political machine behind the dictator, behind this pro-putin, pro-russian corrupt, tacky gold toilet loving dictator. and then get this, viktor yanakovych ran off back to moscow to be sheltered by russia three weeks after that. three weeks after he got run out

of ukraine. there was a follow-up arrest of somebody very close to him. and it was an arrest made at the request of the american fbi. hmm. russian-speaking oligarch and billionaire who formed a partnership with vladimir putin in a natural gas deal. was not only very rich, he was very politically influential in ukraine, very well connected among his high-profile connections in ukraine was pal manafort. in 2008, this oligarch and paul manafort went in together on a $900 million new york real estate deal. they were going to turn this hotel, which used to be the drake hotel on park avenue, into some big new luxury building that they were going to call the

bolgari tower. apparently the deal never happened and ultimately became part of the controversy around paul manafort in the trump campaign when the whole reason for that deal was to give this oligarch a safe and ostensibly legal place to place his billions that he siphoned out of ukraine with the dictator who paul manafort not only worked for but installed in office. the guy on the left is the pro-putin dictator guy. three weeks after he was run out of the country, the oligarch, was arrested. he was in austria when he got arrested. a federal grand jury from the united states. involving a titanium deal in india.

they indicted him. fbi asked austrian authorities to arrest him. austrian authorities did. he's a big guy in ukraine, right, three weeks after the dictator gets ousted, prosecutors went over to austria to pick him up to arrange for austrian authorities to extradite him back to the united states so he can face charges on this bribery charge. the wrench in the works is that the austrians who had him in custody, who had arrested him at our fbi's request, the austrians said, no, they would not let the extradition go ahead. at least not yet. and so, okay, now this guy is like paul manafort's loose thread. still dangling out there. paul manafort lost his client

dictator in ukraine, the guy on the left, but the zillionaire paid $174 million cash for his bond. open checkbook, swivel wrist. if he leaches austria and goes to some other country, presumably the u.s. authorities would try to arrange to have him arrested in that other country and then put pressure on that other country to extradite him

to the u.s. as well. he sort of can't leave austria. he's stuck. three years he's been stuck and stranded in austria. super rich. wanted on federal bribery charges in the united states, unable to travel and presumably sitting on a whole pile of dirt about what went down in ukraine. what went down in russia. what went down specifically in his former business partner paul manafort's circles. did i mention that he has a multibillion dollar gas partnership with putin? he's a weird, awkward loose thread out there and over these past three years, got arrested in 2014 -- over the past three years, u.s. prosecutors have used these repeated efforts to persuade the austrians that they've got to let us have him, extradite him back to the u.s. to face trial. and now here's the test. because the next hearing on whether or not this guy's going to be extradited to the u.s. to face trial is tomorrow. federal prosecutors have been trying to get this guy sent back to the u.s. since 2014. but for the first time, federal prosecutors won't be answering

to someone like eric holder or loretta lynch. prosecutors who answer ultimately to this guy, with his hand in the air. now the head of the justice department, the attorney general and fresh off the trump campaign, which used to be run by paul manafort. that oligarch's business partner and putin's, too. are federal prosecutors going to continue to go after this guy that they've been going after for years now or does that slide? and as the justice department is making that decision, paul manafort is sort of back in the news with this lurid story that broke in "the new york times" and then in "the washington post" over the weekend. paul manafort before he ever ran donald trump's presidential campaign, he ran the political campaign for the pro putin dictator. he built up this pro putin, pro russia political party even though the dictator is gone and has been chased back to moscow. last month, apparently a member of that pro putin party in

ukraine, he came to new york and took a meeting with donald trump's personal lawyer, a man by the name of michael cohen. they met in a hotel lobby in new york city. the result of that meeting was, reportedly, a plan to give vladimir putin everything he could ever want from a birthday president, short of rex tillerson popping out of a birthday cake shirtless. the plan had three parts. they would oust the new president of the ukraine so they get rid of the new guy who replaced the pro putin guy. number two, russia would get to keep crimea. russia would get to keep the parts of ukraine that they took when russia invaded parts of ukraine, took over their territory and started calling it russia. this new plan, part two of this

new plan would legitimatize that. okay, those parts of ukraine that you took, they are now russia. and then part three of the plan would be for the united states to drop our sanctions against russia that we leveed against them for taking over part of that country. so obviously this is a very fair deal. right? this is a great deal. putin gets what he wants in ukraine. he gets to keep the parts of ukraine that he took and we stop being mad at him about it. it's a great deal. it's a win, win, win for putin, putin, putin. the details of this awesome deal were reportedly written up and put into a sealed envelope which president trump's personal lawyer then delivered by hand to the white house. quoting from "the new york times" here. "a week before michael flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office outlining a way for president trump to lift sanctions against russia." and then later in the article, "when mr. cohen met with mr. trump, he said he left the proposal in a sealed envelope in general flynn's office." mr. cohen said he was waiting

for a response from the proposal when flynn was forced out of his post. that was the front page of "the new york times" breaking the story on sunday. after giving that account of the proposed deal and the sealed envelope and hand-delivering it to michael flynn's office at the white house, after giving that very account to "the new york times," the president's lawyer, michael cohen, subsequently spoke to "the washington post" on the same subject. when he spoke to the washington post about it, he denied giving it to michael flynn. "michael flynn speaking to the post on sunday acknowledged he left with the proposal in hand but he says he did not take the envelope to the white house and did not discuss it with anyone.

he called suggestions to the contrary fake news. "i acknowledge that the meeting took place but i deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the white house and general flynn." that's weird in and of itself, right? either you did it or you didn't. you're the one who said you did it. "the times" says it's standing by its story. mr. cohen told "the times" in no uncertain terms that he delivered the proposal to the white house. that said, right after that, he told "the washington post" that he definitely did not deliver the proposal to michael flynn's office at the white house. so he either did or he did not. this isn't he said, she said. he's lying to one of those two papers.

he told "the times" that he gave it to flynn. he told "the washington post" he did not give it to flynn. the question really is what is the president's personal lawyer meeting with a pro putin foreign politician cooking up plans like this to drop sanctions and oust -- all of these things that putin wants? what's the president's personal lawyer doing being involved in that? i should also tell you, there's one other person who's reported to have been at that meeting, hatching that plan, he's a russian-born ex-con who served time in prison for, and i quote, stabbing a man in the face with a stem of a margarita glass. it was also convicted of a $40 million pump and dump stock fraud that he pulled off with the columbo crime families, as in the mafia. in the past, he had office space in the trump tower and had trump organization business cards that listed him by name as, quote, the senior adviser to donald trump. he says his job description was that he was in charge of all trump organization business dealings in russia in the mid-2000s. up until 2015, he was involved in a project trying to build a trump tower in moscow. some of the more spectacular criminal things of this guy's past came up in a legal matter a few years back, trump said he didn't know this guy, despite the fact that the guy had trump

organization business cards that described him as senior adviser to donald trump. senior adviser to who now? senior what? well, now that guy's back. and it was him and the pro putin lawmaker from ukraine and donald trump's personal lawyer who were all in on cooking up this plan to drop sanctions on russia. this plan that may or may not have landed on mike flynn's desk before he was fired because of sanctions he admits to lying about and reportedly also lied about to the fbi. you know, if mike flynn did lie about his contacts with the russian government, when he

spoke to the fbi about those contacts, if he did lie to the fbi, that would be a felony. of course, it's a felony that would have to be prosecuted by the justice department which is run by jeff sessions. cnn is already reporting that there are no plans in jeff sessions' justice department to prosecute mike flynn for lying to the fbi. there are three separate fbi investigations into contacts between the trump campaign and trump administration and the russian government. if any of those three separate fbi inquiries leads to findings of criminal behavior, again, the fbi doesn't prosecute stuff. they refer it to the justice department under jeff sessions who have have to decide whether or not to prosecute. because jeff sessions was part of the trump campaign, under normal circumstances, you would expect that to lead to an attorney general appointing a special counsel so he would not be involved in decisions about bringing charges against a campaign that he was part of. so far, sections is refusing to recuse himself from any of these investigations, from overseeing any of these matters. and so this is a test. we are living through an american test right now. i mean, the press, forgive me, is doing its job. every day we learn more and more from the press about otherwise

unexplained pro-russian behavior and the myriad of russian contacts of lots and lots of people who are connected to this president at very high levels. but watch what happens in austria tomorrow. he's still going to be in the crosshairs of american prosecutors or not. with each passing day, we get more of a sense of what is wrong here, right? with each new news story. we get more of a sense of what is going on between this president, this administration and russia. but diagnosing the problem and fixing the problem is not the same thing. and the question about whether it can be fixed and investigated ultimately depends on large part

whether the united states department of justice is still a department of justice and will enforce this as a law enforcement matter. the question is whether this justice department is independent enough to stand up for the rule of law on matters this serious. if it's not, if under jeff sessions the justice department is just another part of this same scheme, the scheme that we're seeing unspool every day with each strange new revelation in the press, if the justice department is just going to be part of it rather than part of fixing it, we are going to need a different kind of remedy to fight back against what russia has already done to our government, to our election system, what russia has done to us and what apparently they are still working on doing. so overall, this is a test of the rule of law in this country. this is a test. this is going to be an ongoing test. but tomorrow in vienna, pop quiz, man.

pop quiz. watch what happens to this low profile story to this oligach tomorrow. watch that story tomorrow. his name is dmitry firtash. this is a test.

this is general raymond t. ordierno. general ordierno is a four-star general and just retired as army chief of staff in 2015. you recognize him, right? you've seen him. prior to being army chief of staff, he was head of joint forces command.

when general david petraeus left iraq, it was general ordierno who replaced him in iraq. general ordierno has served under both democratic and republican administrations. he's served a lot of time in a lot of war. he's one of the most recognizable military leaders of his generation. some of these guys just get famous. petraeus, ordierno. a few of these good top leaders, for good reason, become well known. i'll say it again. his name is general ray ordierno. >> today we have generals that go on television and say, well, you know, isis is very tough, it's very -- believe me, we have the right -- people, we have the right minds, we have the great military. it is seriously -- by the way, it is seriously depleted. general ordierno, when he left, again, he goes on television. people shouldn't do this. he goes on television and he says our military is the most depleted of any time that he's ever seen or heard of and that might be like from the beginning

and honestly, say that once more. >> general ordierno is not a person? that's one. two, we learned this weekend that general ordierno was being vetted to become the president's national security adviser after michael flynn got fired in a giant scandal about russia. general ordierno, o-boy-o was considered for the national security adviser job but apparently said no. general ordierno telling nbc news he was aware that the administration was considering various candidates to be national security adviser but he's very happy with the work that he's doing not being trump's national security adviser. he told nbc he, quote, had no plans to make any significant

changes at this point. so general ordierno said no. same with former cia director general david petraeus. multiple sources saying that general petraeus made it clear he would only take the job if he could pick his own staff. the white house was apparently not okay with that, apparently wanted to keep on the people who started with mike flynn. effectively, that's general petraeus also saying no. in harward's case, he was offered the post and then he overtly declined it amid reports that he was not happy about what he would be inheriting from flynn on the national security council. and interestingly, amid reports that the admiral was not psyched by what he saw at the president's strange first solo press conference last week. so general ordierno, how do you say it, so did admiral harward. but then today, the president finally did talk somebody into

taking the job. while we stick a pin in that for a moment, take a look at what else is not happening or is falling apart in terms of staffing up the new administration. on the verge of withdrawing his name, according to two sources close to the situation, the white house is denying those reports but if those reports prove true, that would mean that trump is losing his nominee to run the army and navy in the space of a week. it's not like the place is filling up around them. according to "the washington post" this morning, out of the 549, 515 of them are still awaiting a nomination. it's not that senate democrats are holding things up in these cases.

it means that 549 people need senate confirmation and trump has only offered names for 34 of them out of the 549. so they have yet to get started on filling 94% of the confirmable jobs that they've got to fill. they just haven't even put forward names. no problemo. i do have a sliver of good news. they have found someone to be reportedly at least ambassador to new england. so i'm going to read you this straight from the new zealand herald, their headline on the subject. quote, man tipped for u.s. ambassador role in new zealand is a former nude model who supports waterboarding. that's how the trump's reporter pick is being reported in that country. scott brown, of course, the former nude model who supports waterboarding, he has been tapped to be ambassador to new england. so there's that. new zealand is super psyched, or the opposite. we've got more on the new national security adviser coming up. stay with us.

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so courtney kube is our eyes and ears at the pentagon when we got word that general h.r. mcmaster was tapped to be the new national security adviser after the dramatic flameout of mike flynn after only 24 days on the job, courtney kubie, nbc's national security producer, was the first person i wanted to call to get her take on this appointment and what we should expect on h.r. mcmaster.

thanks for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> mcmaster's name has been in circulation for a couple of days. the departure of mike flynn was sudden and sort of a surprise and i think nothing that anybody was really planning on. how much of a surprise is this choice and what's his reputation in general? >> i mean, personally, i was very surprised to hear his name out there. his reputation is for a highly decorated leader, someone of tremendous moral courage who believes genuinely in speaking truth to power. he's very well-respected. he's known as a brilliant man.

he's well-respected across the aisle, frankly, both sides of the aisle. in his bio, he served in iraq. he was general petraeus' deputy during the surge. he served in afghanistan under general mcchrystal. he's done about five years in combat just in the last 10 or 15 years. so he's well-respected for that time. he's a counter insurgency guy. he's someone who was -- he was one of the authors of and real proponents during the 2006, 2007 time in iraq and afghanistan. he wrote a book as a young officer, as a captain, that turned into something called "dereliction of duty." when i first started covering the pentagon more than a decade ago, it was known as must-read for young officers and it's a fascinating study about vietnam where he really questions the u.s. military leadership during that time and he's very critical of them, frankly, and hothey were with robert mcnamara, sayinghat they were not forceful enough in their feelings, not honest enough and by extension they were derelict in their duty by making vietnam more political, letting the political cycle determine how many troops were deployed. think about it, this is it a man who came up just after vietnam and he was critical of the very leaders he came up afterwards. what's remarkable about general mcmaster, he still succeeded in

the military and still rose to a three-star general. >> courtney, the one thing i know about him, somebody who has only ever lived a civilian life, i know about that book just from an academic point of view. the thing that seems remarkable to me about his choice, just because of that book, as you say, that book is about military leadership needing to make its views known in a political environment to tell civilian leadership, to tell political leaders abruptly, bruskly what they don't want to hear and that's not the motto that we've seen in trump hires. just this weekend, a director at the national security he was not towing the trump line and had been critical of the trump administration decisions thus far.

is there anything that we can extrapolate from general mcmaster's career thus far in terms of how he'll handle the national security council. it's a big bureaucracy. >> he's actually lived it in his career and taken hits for it. when he was a colonel when i first met him, actually, he was very critical of army modernization efforts and it cost him a star initially. he was passed over for a one-star general and we never really know what causes someone to be passed over because the boards, the promotion boards are all top secret but the rumor at

the time was that part of it was his criticism of the army, part of it, frankly, was his book, where he was critical of u.s. military leadership and some of it was his overreliance of counter insurgency and some of the more wonky things we pay attention to at the pentagon. it hurt his career but despite all of that he's been able to make his way up to a three-star general. so right now he's been serving in u.s. army training and command out in virginia. it was expected that he was going to retire this summer. he's done about 2 1/2 years there and there wasn't a four-star job available for him. it was expected that he would probably retire. what's fascinating about this pick, too, is that now he'll be able to stay in active duty, stay in the army but serve in a civilian suit at the national security council but stay on active duty. >> courtney kube, nbc news national security producer. see, you're the reason why i wanted to hear from you. really appreciate it. >> thank you so much. >> to that last point courtney just made, i've seen a lot of alarm, people worrying about the fact that he's going to stay on active duty. even though it is unusual that this president is relying so much on generals to fill jobs that are often civilian jobs,

including the secretary of the defense, recently retired general, general mcmaster staying on active duty while being national security adviser is not an unprecedented thing and it's not that unusual a thing. colin powell did that and couple others have done that in the past. if you're worried about there being a lot of people in military uniform or just out doing civilian jobs, there are reasons to worry about that but this is not one of those reasons. all right. we'll be back. stay with us. wish your skin could bounce back like... ...it used to? neutrogena® hydro boost water gel.

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it took me an extra hour to drive to new york from massachusetts this morning. but on this big travel day today at one of the biggest airports in the country, 11 people walked right through a tsa checkpoint without being screened by anyone. 11 people who should have been screened were not screened and 3 of the 11 actually set off the metal detectors when they went through. for whatever reason, the tsa did not notify police until two hours after they discovered the problem. then when the airport police started looking for those 11 passengers, two hours after they had gone through the checkpoint unnoticed, they had already taken off on planes that took them to other places. this happened at 6:00 this

morning at jfk. they said they are confident the incident presents no threat. the three passengers who set off the metal detectors were found. they were searched after they arrived at their destinations. this might be a good time under the obama administration, the head of the tsa, from 2015, he left when the new administration came in and the new administration has yet to replace him. they have yet to even name a nominee to replace him. this white house has hundreds of jobs left to fill, including security jobs. that said, the boss of the boss of the tsa, the chief of homeland security, that person has been hired and confirmed by the senate. he's been super busy and tomorrow he's going to be the biggest news in the country. and that story's next. aaaahh!! ooohh!! uh! holy mackerel. wow.

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the town of yakima is in washington state that may be politely described as nowhere it's in between -- it's in the middle there. it sits in the shadow of mt. raineer. if you've ever raised a glass of good american ipa, you've owed that experience to yakima, washington, which have the hops that make the good ipas in this country. yakima valley grows a ton of grapes and apples. last night, this is what was going on in yakima, washington. this is from "the yakima herald."

"large crowd fearful of deportation files into yakima meeting." we've been covering on this show what it looks like when people put themselves between their neighbors and deportation, when people cram into a meeting at a church on short notice, on a friday night to learn how to be supportive of immigrants in their neighborhood who might get caught up in a raid or an endorsement and they are helping their neighbors who may get targeted by the new administration and that is some of what this is in yakima, washington. "some of these folks are here to learn how to assist those who are undocumented." but also, "a significant number of folks are here because they themselves are undocumented and they are trying to figure out a way to protect themselves."

this is a local man he signed orders concerns immigrants who are already here who may have been here almost their entire lives. over the weekend, new draft memos signed by the new secretary of homeland security started circulating in the press. what you can glimpse in those memos is the vast range of people they say are a priority of deportation and the speed at which they intend to carry out the mass deportation. 5,000 more border patrol agents. more guidelines making more

people a target for expedited removal. parents to try to arrange to have their children brought to them here prosecuting the parents. immigrant advocates describing these draft memos as "dramatically expanding the scope of enforcement operations." if there's been some mystery how the administration would carry out the policies, there's not so much mystery about the origins of these policies, themselves. they come from a very specific place. senator jeff sessions of alabama wrote the president's immigration plan. the plan he campaigned on when he was running for president. last year, senator jeff sessions called on the justice department to start prosecuting parents who arrange for their children to come here to be with them. jeff sessions wrote attorney general loretta lynch a letter last year asking why she wasn't prosecuting parents already.

and now under this new president, jeff sessions is the attorney general, himself, so he doesn't need to write those letters anymore. joining us now, franco ordonez, a white house correspondent for mcclatchy newspapers. he helped connect the dots about jeff sessions and his role here. thank you for being here. i appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me on. >> so we're told tonight to expect these draft memos will be finalized tomorrow. one of the sort of strange things about this administration. we often get draft policies that are more or less disavowed by the white house before we get a real policy. what are you actually expecting that we're going to hear and on what timeline? >> i mean, i think it is possible that we'll get these tomorrow. i mean, these drafts that i wrote about and that you're mentioning, they were finalized by dhs. they were signed by the dhs secretary john kelly. they do need kind of that white

house checkoff but even the white house told me that these are the dhs' final cut. they just had a couple questions that they were hoping to work out pretty soon. >> how much -- if these are implemented the way that they look in these drafts, how radical a change will this be from immigration enforcement that we've come to understand over the past few years? >> it would be a tremendous, tremendous change. i mean, we're talking about wiping away many of the protections that barack obama put in. you mentioned the parents of unaccompanied minors potentially being prosecuted. they would also be deported. even some of those unaccompanied minors, the white house points out about 60% of the

unaccompanied minors fleeing poverty, fleeing violence in central america, they came to the united states solo but once they got here, they were reunited with their parents. and one of the proposals that jeff sessions recommended six months ago and is now in these draft orders is that once that reunification happens, that these two, or the child and the parent, could be removed and sent back to their home country. >> a lot of the debate around the proposed immigration policies during the campaign was around their feasibility, around whether or not the kind of extreme measures that trump was talking about actually could be enacted realistically. how realistic are these proposals? is this a real blueprint for doing it or is it more threat than promise? >> it's a great question, and i think a lot of us journalists are really trying to figure that out. i mean, many of these proposals, i mean, the wall would be billions of dollars. detaining all of these people -- we're talking about 400,000 people were apprehended just in the past year. the administration is talking about detaining all of them. you can imagine the number of detention centers that would be needed for that. we're talking about doubling if not tripling the billion dollar budget, in addition to the

costs, alone, trump's talked about reducing the deficit in addition to that. you got legal challenges, you got challenges you can only hold children for a certain amount of time. adults can only be held for a certain amount of time. and these are all federal laws, court decisions, supreme court decisions, for example, that make it very hard to pull this off. >> franco ordonez, mcclatchy white house correspondent. thank you for your reporting on this and thanks for helping us understand it tonight. appreciate it. this is very dramatic stuff. >> thanks for having me on. >> we'll be right back.

ready to love south carolina? you ready? you ready? go. >> irregardless -- welcome home, congressman. that's republican congressman mark sanford from south carolina getting a free grammar lesson in his district on saturday. irregardless is not a word. he and his senate colleague, tim scott, held a town hall for a packed room of a few hundred people, then went outside to talk to the hundreds more people who could not get into the room. members of congress are home this week for recess. usually they spend this time spending time with their

constituents. it turns out their constituents this year are particularly eager to catch up. take congressman tom reed from new york, he usually gets a handful of people to show up at his town halls. usually. not anymore. tom reed held four town halls in a row this weekend in a deep red pocket of new york state that went for donald trump by 15 points. nevertheless, big crowds showed up to tell congressman reed they do not support the new president and they said so loudly. same thing happened today to congressman jim jordan from ohio. he held kind of a makeshift town hall outside an event where he really wasn't planning on talking to constituents. tension were running high even before he got there. it didn't get much better once he arrived and started talking. >> now -- now it's time to change it and bring back insurance that actually empowers you. [ crowd chanting "give us your insurance" ] >> "give us your insurance." when congress is home, there are 150 town hall and constituent events like this across the country. for a lot of people, d.c. is inaccessible. the phone lines have been jammed. people are getting a chance for the first time in a while to talk to representatives face to face.

this is day one of something that's going to go on all week. people apparently have a lot to say. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word after trump's national security adviser michael flynn resigned last week, trump offered the position to retired admiral robert harwood widely respected by officials in both parties. but harwood rejected the proposal. harwood was asked to reconsider, which he did, but according to msnbc, he said no a second time after watching the president's press conference on thursday. huh, what about that press conference would make him not want to work for donald trump? >> lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things. >> can you imagine having to brief that guy on national security?