he says he used to be able to afford to live on a military salary but says now taxes are too high and spending has to be reined in. does anyone doubt his ability to get stuff done? we didn't think so. congratulations to the mayor elect. that's our broadcast for tonight. that you answered for being here with us and good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. it has been an unexpectedly difficult year for the republican party since they won complete control of congress and the white house one year ago today on election day last year. we're a year on from that triumph from the republican party, one year on from election day republicans in washington have passed zero major legislation, nothing, despite controlling both houses of congress and the white house.

one year on, the president's campaign chairman is out on $10 million bond and wearing an ankle bracelet as is another trump campaign official out on $5 million bond wearing ankle bracelet, not counting the campaign adviser who has pled guilty and cooperating with the ongoing criminal investigation of this president and his campaign and potentially his administration. one year on, republican party is on the hook for at least hundreds of thousands and many millions of dollars in legal fees for the president and his family. but it's not just them. criminal defense lawyers have been hired by everybody from the vice president to the white house communications director to even the white house counsel. even their lawyers have had to get lawyers this past year. but unlike the president and the president's son, everybody else in the trump administration is having to pay for their lawyers themselves. just one year on from that big victory, the white house has

already lost two communications directors, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, national security adviser, deputy national security adviser. press secretary, deputy press secretary. chief white house strategist, a confirmed cabinet secretary, and also an fbi director which may be most consequential loss of them all. but while the administration is flinging off people like hairy dog after a swim, phenomenon not limited to republicans in the trump white house. on capitol hill at least 20 serving republican members of congress have resigned or declared they will leave office, including a number of committee chairs in congress. one year on from the big republican victory, this president is viewed more unfavorably by the american public than any president in the last 70 years. and the one great hope for republican accomplishment in

this first year of theirs, one great hope, tax reform, it is already hemorrhaging even republican support amid the reports that the bill they're advertising as tax cut bill will actually raise taxes on nearly half of america's middle-class families. latest reports are republicans in the senate may not even want to try on this taxes anything anymore, at least not anytime soon. so that's been the year they've had in power. 365 days, one year since they won. that's what happened since they won. the biggest parliamentary wonder in washington is who else is going to get arrested. they've accomplished nothing in terms of holding the reins of power in government. given those prevailing winds, you can understand why republicans generally might have felt disconcerted about the fact that yesterday in states all over the country it was time for americans to go to the polls again.

you can understand why republicans might have been a little apprehensive about yesterday being election day. but their worst fears really did come true last night. they lost the republican supermajority in georgia, they lost legislative seats they gerrymandered to be so republican democrats hadn't tried to contest them as recently as last year. this year democrats decided heck, why not, let's contest them anyway, and democrats won the seats. republicans lost control of the last legislative toehold they had over in new york state, lost his seat in westchester county to a democrat. the last republican candidate for going to have in new york state lost his seat.

five times they voted for it and the republican governor vetoed it. last night it was the people of maine who voted to do that by a huge margin. the governor is saying he's going to vetoed the people's vote for that too, but he is going to lose that fight and 70 to 80,000 people in maine who currently do not have health insurance are going to get it despite the best efforts of maine republicans. democrats unseated republican mayors in new hampshire and fayetteville, north carolina. in brook park, ohio, endorsed trump and lost his seat to union auto worker in uaw. republicans also lost the governorship last night in new jersey. chris christie will leave office as the least popular governor not just in new jersey but in history of polling approval

ratings of governors in any state. christie's lieutenant governor was trounced last night, democrats returned to control in new jersey and just for good measure, trump supporting city councillor who posted this online, it says will it women's protest be over in time for them to kick -- cook dinner? he lost his seat last night to a democratic woman, ashley bennett. 32 years old, never run for office before, but found something inspiring in the way this year has gone in america and presumably something inspiring in the character of her local officials, one of whom she's retired and hopefully he may learn to feed himself. poor soul. biggest loss of the night for

republicans was when they lost governor's race in virginia, ralph northam beating republican ed gillespie easily. yeah, it means a democrat is succeeding a democrat as governor of virginia, but when terry mccall won in virginia, he won places like loudoun county and prince william county by single digits. ralph northam won them by more than 20 points. nine points overall, more than any democratic governor has won in a generation. polls said it was toss-up. last night was anybody's guess. when the polls are that wrong, when they say it's going to be a tie and democrat wins by nine points, the way polls are usually wrong is that they miss turnout because they miss enthusiasm. i don't know if democratic enthusiasm was motivated by northam being at top of the ticket or not. but democrats nearly/maybe taking the state legislature

last night in virginia, that is something that really nobody thought was possibleful virginia has state senate and house. senate wasn't up but this is part in balance, the house. the house of delegates, 66 republicans and 44 democrats. that means republicans would have to lose 16 seats they currently hold to their democratic opponents for the democrats to take control. last time -- 16 seats? come on, that's ridiculous. last time democrats picked up more than one seat in house of delegates in single election was a decade ago and that one swung four seats. democrats as recently as last week in virginia saying picked up six or eight seats would see it as huge victory and validation of their strategy, the most optimistic activists were aiming at ten seats. dream pick-up.

they took at least 15 seats last night. claiming 16 but 15 is safe call, with probably four seats going to a runoff. this is just unimaginably good night for democrats in the sense that nobody predicted it was possible that democrats could take that legislature. it was an unimaginably good night for democrats and kind of bad night that the republican party might have most feared after the kind of year that they've had since their big election day one year ago today in 2016. i think though that it's worth seeing this as more than just a pendulum swinging back sort of thing. if you look at specifics of what happened last night, something important to see about the difference between the parties but also in what each of the parties is trying to do right now with trump in the white house. we have a major party system, two major parties, you would think they would be approaching

same thing from different angles. no, totally different agendas right now and totally different animals as parties. one way to see the difference. i said there are 15 seats in virginia where incumbent office holder or in the case of an open seat, the previous was republican, 15 of those seats in virginia where the republican lost his seat to a democrat. this is half of those seats. and we organized them in numerical order by district number. these are all republicans who were turfed out last night. here are the democrats who did the turfing out. as you can see, kind of a different looking bunch. this giant swing to the democrats last night is going to make the virginia legislature a very different place. other half of the republicans who lost their seats last night, republican incumbents or in the case of open seats, guy with the asterisk, last to hold the seat,

all republican dudes who lost seats last night, saw them flipped to these democratic candidates. right? even before the recounts are factored in, democrats took 15 seats held by republican men and last night and now 11 will be held by democratic women. virginia democrats have put the first latina candidate in their state legislature, seating first openly transgender state legislator anywhere in the country. that type of diversity, those firsts, none of that diversity is a gimmick or effort on democrat's behalf. that's what happens when lots of different kinds of people decide to up and change their lives and run for office. that's really new. that's really important in what happened last night. this is not just not same old republicans against same old democrats. it was republican, pendulum goes to democrats. that's not what happened. that's what it looks like if you squint and don't pay attention

to who ran and who won. this is was not that. this was a whole new crop of people. in the last legislative election in 2015, democrats didn't contest enough elections in legislature to try to win back the house. two years ago same 100 seats up, 100 seats available in the legis layture. last night ran 90 and despite nobody expecting it, may have won whole legislature because of it. democratic leader told the dispatch, quote, the day after the trump election it began raining candidates for us in virginia. they didn't just have all the same old people run. they had a whole new prop of candidates, regular people, people who didn't previously think of themselves at

politicians until this remarkable year we had. tons of people who ran for first time last night because they for some reason have been moved why what has happened in this country in the past year. in a lot of cases they were people who ran even when it turned out to be really hard personally for them to run. >> i had a brother who struggled with alcoholism and ptsd for decades. i lost him in march, two weeks after i announced for this. it was devastating. and hard to go on. but there are others like him. and i intend to make sure that they have more chances than he had. in virginia we're paying medicaid taxes that go out of state. we are turning away $6 million a day, we need it badly.

that money could so help the people in our state who need it. but only if backed by a government who believes that people like my brother are worth saving and worth helping. and that's why i'm here. my name is wendy gooditis, i'm democratic nominee for delegate in virginia house district 10. >> she won last night. up against a republican incumbent won three times already, not perceived to be in danger. won last time by 25 points but last night wendy gooditis beat him. first-time candidate. just for reference, here she is as women's march last year and here's jennifer carol foy.

>> jennifer karafoi lavas challenge. one of the first african-american women at bmi, first in family to graduate from college and law school. in january this public defender announced her candidacy for house seat that covers part of prince william and stafford, had concerns about policy she viewed as antiwoman. >> i said why not me? if not now, when. >> a few weeks later, a new challenge, she learned she was pregnant with twins. day before the june primary put on bed rest. husband worked the polls for her. >> i am so blessed. i have a wonderful husband who picked up the slack. he was out there on election day for 13 hours in 93 degree heat. >> won the nomination, then a bigger challenge. the babies, identical twin boys, came very early, born at 23 weeks. alex and xander weighed in at 1 1/2 pounds. >> i was very nervous to be honest with you, but i'm a woman of extreme

faith. and so i said what happens will happen. i believe babies will be born and be healthy and miracle will happen here. that's exactly what happened. >> the broiz now three pounds, still in the nicu. that's where carol and her husband spend evenings after campaigning and work. she says she never considered dropping out of the race. she wants more women in the generally assembly. >> i want to help usher in this new phase. women are multifaceted and can do all things we focus and put our minds to. >> she and her husband spent every night in the campaign in nicu with their premature twins who she didn't know she was pregnant with when she signed up to run. she saw con signed to bed rest for primary, and husband took off work to show up for her that day at the polls. last night she won that race. first time candidate.

after hillary clinton lost the presidential election to donald trump last year, young people who had worked on the clinton campaign started a simple group with a simple slogan. it's called run for something to get young progressive people who have never run for anything before to run for something. easy to remember the mission. run for something at local or state level. start as small as you feel you need to. they supported ten candidates last night for the virginia house. six of them won. after trump was elected last year, young democratic congressional staffers started a group or a concept called indivisible to get people to organize locally to pressure locally elected officials to say no to trump agenda and run. over 200 indivisible groups in virginia alone, one started by wendy gooditis and now elected to a seat that may result in

virginia turning legislature blue. bernie sanders supporters started our revolution to promote progressive candidates in races at every level. jennifer carol foy is one of their candidates and elizabeth guzman, one of the pioneering latinas who took an incumbent republican seat last night as well. those three groups who sprung up since the election in remarkable year we've had, mention them because those refute ones off the top of my head, but there are a gazillion of them. whole idea of democratic organizing over the past year hasn't been a theoretical exercise. this is not been political science. the democratic year of organizing we've just had has resulted in a lot of individual americans changing their lives and becoming political actors in ways they never had before. and it turns out it can be a life-upending deal to move not

just from citizen to voter and voter to marcher and marcher to activist but from activist to candidate. and sometimes you find out you're pregnant or you lose your brother, but you're running now and that's your life now. we'll add one last point here in terms of how this last year has changed us as a country and changed us as political animals. on the republican side, the republicans obviously -- i mean don't make bones about it. the republicans -- best way to say this, republicans have the trump issue to deal with. alpha and omega of 2017 problems. we're going to be talking tonight about some of the latest sworn testimony just emerged in scandal that increasingly appears to be subsuming this presidency. we're going to be talking about the

latest member of the trump administration to receive subpoenas from law enforcement. while the republicans are dealing with that very unusual situation, for the democrats, last night is the first manifestation we've seen of how much democrats have been organizing. democrats and progressives have been organizing over the past year to run candidates, recruit, make people think of themselves in our political system differently than they used to. make people think of themselves as political actors, not just observers, to recruit huge new crops of new candidates and activists, build new support for new candidate in myriad grassroots ways and win elections because of it. saw it last night in spades. but last night also showed why it is that the last democratic president, barack obama and his former attorney general eric holder, have decided to spend the last year working on something very different.

what they've been working on is obscure seeming thing, redistricting. why choose that to work on first year of the trump era? just look at virginia, there are 11 congressional seats in virginia. last november, a year ago to want, there were roughly equal numbers of votes cast by virginians for democrats and republicans. in terms of congressional races, this night a year ago, 3.7 million votes cast. in virginia and it was almost even. democrats about 16,000 more votes than republicans did. but despite that even vote that 2016 a vote which actually favored democrats a little bit, even so, of the 11 congressional seats in virginia, republicans took 7 of 11. the votes were even, but republicans got all the seats, and that's because of redistricting, jergerrymandering

tilt the playing field towards republican even when democrats get more votes. that was last year. last night democrats ran the table in virginia beyond their wildest dreams. look at dreams cast for state legislature last night in virginia, our estimates right now, 54% were cast for democrats in legislature versus about 44% for republicans based on the totals so far. even with that democratic advantage, the democratic ten-point advantage in the number of votes cast for legislature, that doesn't necessarily translate to the democrats taking over the legislature because republicans' redistricting. redistricted the legislature, gerrymandered the districts, so even when democrats win in landslide like they did last night, republicans' worst nightmare, democrats did better than they imagined. even on a night like last night, they still maybe hold on to control. we don't know yet, got to see about the recounts.

this is how well they gerrymandered it in virginia. when it's even, republicans win by a lot. when democrats get more votes, republicans still win. when democrats get tons more votes, republicans still win. the only way democrats maybe win is demolish the republicans like they did last night and still it's a maybe as to whether or not democrats are allowed to get control. wait for the recounts. lots of democrats have done lots of things to organize and try to win and results last night were very impressive. president obama and eric holder started working on this boring redistricting thing to try to get democrats to win legislatures, win races and undo republican gerrymandering, and last night for all the democratic victories, that's a perfect example of why that's time well spent.

breaking news in new york. president trump and chinese president trump xi jinping just spoke in beijing on his third stop on his 12-day trip to asia. he's handling his relationship and says the two will work together to solve not only their mutual problems, but also, quote, world problems and problems of great danger and security. he, of course, is talking about north korea and concerns over the trade relationship with china. let's get more from senior national correspondent who is traveling with the president. chris? >> reporter: what a difference a year makes. much of the talk then was about the horrible trade imbalance, the horrible policies and he wanted changes with trade with china. but today he basically said to president xi it's not your fault, bad deals were made by previous administrations and he

pledged moving forward to make changes that will right what he considers to be those embarrassing trade imbalances. but the big story here, of course, is north korea. what is china willing to do with their influence being the biggest trading partner of north korea to address the nuclear situation? just a short time ago, joint statements by the two presidents. take a listen to what president trump had to say on north korea. >> we agreed not to replicate failed approaches of the past, and there were many. we agreed on the need to fully implement all u.n. security council resolutions on north korea and to increase economic pressure until north korea boonies its reckless and dangerous path. responsible nations must join together to stop arming and financing and even trading with

the murderous north korean regime. >> by the end of this trip we'll hear something specific because the white house said president trump will make a decision on whether to officially designate north korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. standing side by side with president xi who rules with authoritarianism, he said both countries would advocate for reform in rule of law. he said to xi, you are a special man. the two have formed a sort of bromance last night when the president arrived with the first lady he said president xi nicely offered to only do a 25-minute dinner and it went on for two hours. so the two men have been in intense conversations. we'll see how many deliverables they are. a lot of pomp and circumstance with the state dinner with the two first couples. >> thank you. i'm in new york.

we return you to the rachel maddow show. here's some news not getting a lot of attention but i think is potentially a huge deal. this summer, same day that white house senior strategist resigned from the white house and took up all the oxygen in the room, on that same day, this guy also resigned from the white house. carl icahn. he had been serving with the president. adviser to the president on regulatory for him since the transition. he was an adviser to the president on regulations and around the time that he got the white house adviser gig, carl icahn starting putting bets in the market on one of the issues he was advising the president on. in august, patrick roger keith reported in the new yorker magazine talking about the kinds of bets he was

making in the markets and how the white house could earn him hundreds of millions of dollars if white house took his advice and the belittle paid off for his businesses. that, obviously, is a crime. there's a first of all statute that makes it illegal to work on any matter in which they have a direct financial interest, which he clearly did. that reporting on his business behavior while serving in the white house, that was a real problem potentially both for him and for the white house. and that friday night, this summer in august, i remember the new yorker posted that piece and at the same moment, minutes before, on the same day that steve bannon was resigning and nobody noticed, carl icahn quit and immediately he and white house started to insist, there was nothing to quit. actually he had never had that job at all. that job he just quit, he never had that.

the white house literally started to say that carl icahn never had formal appointment or title, even though they formally announced his appointment and title. started saying carl icahn was just a public citizen. at the time the public ethics walter shaw started sending emergency flair tweets calling on justice department to investigate this behavior on the part of the president's adviser. later told us the matter was on their radar. that's where we left it in august. seeing carl icahn quit and sensing that law enforcement authorities were following behind him closely out the door. since then we've continued to call the new york attorney general's office to talk about the matter. still on their radar. we called carl icahn's office enough to make me feel rude but had no response.

12 weeks since he stepped down and haven't heard anything more formal about whether or not law enforcement authorities were chasing him down on this matter. we hadn't heard anything until now. started to get rumblings on wednesday of last week, reuter's reported that carl icahn's oil refining company had significantly unwound a short position in the u.s. biofuel credit market. what they mean is carl icahn dumped out of this bet on the matter he had been betting on while advising the white house. stepped down in august. why did you then dump out of the bets? we learned about that on wednesday. then friday, icahn enterprises filed a quarterly report. with the s.e.c. and way down on page 59 off the quarterly report under item 5, which is headlined other

information, they revealed something else going on here as serious as a heart attack. they revealed that the federal prosecutors and u.s. attorneys office for the seventh district of new york recently contacted icahn enterprises seeking production of information pertaining to our and mr. icahn's activities relating to renewable fuel standard and mr. icahn's role advising the president. the company told regulators that we were cooperating. so that s.e.c. filing, that other information note on page 59 of the quarterly filing went under the radar until today when bloomberg broke the news of federal investigators issuing subpoenas for carl icahn and his company. they want you to know the attorney has not made claims or allegations against us or mr. icahn, so there's that. but subpoenaed the heck out of

carl icahn, trump's adviser on regulatory affairs and what they're demanding information about what he was doing in the markets while advising the president on matters that could affect the price of his behavior in the markets. the carl icahn story is the most banana republic corruption story we have in the trump administration, and now involving subpoenas and federal prosecutor's office. can't say we didn't see it coming. watch this space. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home... even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl's orthotics. clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you're killing it. dr. scholl's. born to move.

accused of obstructing justice to theat the fbinuclear war, and of violating the constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth. if that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? i'm tom steyer, and like you, i'm a citizen who knows it's up to us to do something. it's why i'm funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment.

a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who's mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political and start doing what's right. our country depends on it. fixodent plus adhesives. there's a denture adhesive that holds strong until evening. just one application gives you superior hold even at the end of the day we have in the trump

binney, worked for the national security agency back in the day. left that job 17 years ago. he's contempt very busy, though. here he is on russian state-sponsored tv, less than a year ago, explicating his theory that whole idea that russia hacked anybody's e-mails as part of the 2016 election, he expounds that that is a hoax. he says the hack of the democratic national committee was actually an inside job, dnc hacked itself to make itself lose. hmm. here's bill binney not on russian television but info wars with host alex jones who says sandy hook shooting was a false flag operation with child actors and federal government is turning us gay with juice boxes. bill binney laid out his case

that the dnc didn't just hack itself, actually what happened was that the dnc was hacked by the intelligence community itself to make donald trump look bad. and what? no, that doesn't make sense, but it's a baroque sort of plot if you think about it, or let it wash over you. also the nsa is working to establish a world government. bill binney. last month he was personally interviewed one-on-one for an hour by the director of the cia, because the director apparently felt that bill binney's theories which he expounded on rt and info wars, he felt he merited attention of head of america's premier spy agency for an hour, one-on-one, why would he do that? according to bill binney, mike pompeo called him in for this meeting.

this was first record by the intercept and confirmed by nbc news. mike pompeo called him up, asked him to come in to langley at, quote, the urging of president trump. president trump has asked the cia director to take that meeting with bill binney. if only they had intelligence resources or intelligence community they could call on to gather factual evidence about whether russia hacked the dnc. i guess they don't, instead get the guy from rt and "info wars", why not, he probably knows better than anybody. this is a strange story that's broken over the last couple of days but also potentially a serious story, particularly for the robert mueller special counsel investigation. i'll tell you why that is next.

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assessment is that russian interference in the election last year didn't affect the outcome of the election. that is not the u.s. intelligence community's assessment. of what happened last year. the intelligence community, in fact, made no assessment on that point whatsoever. they didn't check. the cia had to rescind director mike pompeo's remarks after he made them that incident fold "the washington post" scoop this summer that mike pompeo reorganized the cia internally so that one part of the agency that didn't used to report to the director now reports directly to him, it's the cia's counterintelligence mission center, the part of the cia who turned up evidence of trump campaign officials making contacts with russian officials. that's the part of the cia that produced intelligence information which led to the russia investigation in the first place. that part of cia now has been

reorganized internally to report directly to mike pompeo. former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade recently made a public argument that wakes me up in the middle of the night. it was titled "mike pompeo could stop robert mueller in his tracks." could potentially deny the investigation access to classified intelligence that the special counsel might need to make his case. as former public prosecutor who worked on terrorism cases, there were a number of times in her career where she would have to go to the cia for permission to use classified intelligence in a case, and cia's call whether or they give it to you. if you can't make the case without that intelligence, you don't have a case. now we have this reporting that in addition to other things that mike pompeo has done, president

recently ordered his cia director mike pompeo to take a one-on-one hour-long meeting with a guy who goes on russian media pedaling conspiracy theories about the russian attack on the election that contradict everything that pompeo's own agency concluded. president directed him to take the meeting. to you know, get the real facts. i know it's as weird as it seems my question is whether this is potentially not just weird, but dangerous. joining us now, ned price, spent a decade at cia. mr. price, thanks for being here. really appreciate it. >> thank you rachel. >> i laid out a lot of things about mike pompeo that appeared in the news in recent months, his misstatements about russia's interference definitely not affecting the outcome of the election. northbound reorganization he made of the cia, in terms of who has to report to him directly, now the meeting he took with bill

binney, a guy who has spun conspiracy theories on russian tv and "info wars", i've seen them in the press and bother me as lay observer. as somebody with cia experience, do those things seem like part of a pattern to you? >> they bother me too. and i can tell you, rachel, i've heard from former colleagues, individuals who are still on the inside that they bother them too. fact of the matter is, ever since the cia was founded in 1947, there's been an understanding that intelligence and politics don't mix. that cia needs space to provide policy makers with unbiased, unvarnished intelligence analysis that they need and deserve. that's why it's been so troubling to see president trump, time and again, put his finger on this scale, on the intelligence scale, whether as the republican nominee casting aside the intelligence community's high confidence

assessment that russia was actually behind this, or in this case, asking mike pompeo to meet with bill binney at cia headquarters. that was an implicit signal that donald trump himself believes in this crazy theory. to me the most proximate analogy is if george w. bush asked george tenet, director of national intelligence, to meet with 9/11 truther about the 9/11 attacks. that's same scale as what we've seen. >> barbara mcquade has made the case about cia leader, pointing in worst possible direction in terms of his politicizing intelligence, it's possible he could interfere with law enforcement looking into justice issues in the russia scandal because he could conceivably block intelligence from being used by prosecutors to make

their various legal cases as more and more people get indicted. does that seem far-fetched or is that something the cia could do if it chose to under leadership that had that inclination? >> not far-fetched at all. it's all too real. at its heart, what mueller is involved in is counterintelligence investigation and cia is the intelligence agency collecting foreign intelligence, some of that flavor. two ways he could impede the investigation. one, when it comes to what's already in cia's holdings. he could deny asks on the part of mueller's team to hand over intelligence that cia has collected ever since the so-called russian active measures have gone into effect. now, the good news is that there was a pretty comprehensive intelligence assessment done at beginning of this year, and in production of this intelligence was analyzed and report was produced, public version released january 6.

to me, the more concerning element of this is this the prospective information that cia could come into contact with if this drags on. now that mike pompeo is the person to whom the head of the counts on intelligence reports directly, there's a concern among current cia officers that mike pompeo could take that information and run to the white house, not in a way to speak truth to power, but to muscle that information , to make sure it never sees light of day and make sure especially it never sees the hands of mueller's prosecutors. >> which means mueller wouldn't even know to ask for it to be declassified for use in a court setting if he didn't know it existed ned price, thanks for being with us tonight. really appreciate it. >> appreciate it. >> we have a lot more to get to this busy night. stay with us.

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i have a new idea for you. on the one-year anniversary of last year's presidential election after a night last night when the democrats ran the table in off-year elections in virginia and across the country, if you are looking for a little steadiness, if you're looking for a little -- hmm -- measure of perspective, if you're looking for inspiration coming to your beloved country in this era, i commend to you dan

rather's short new book which has just come out. fls it's called "what united states us, reflections on patriotism." a great dan rather joins us now so i can congratulate him on the book. very nice to see you. thank you for being here. >> always a pleasure to be with you, rachel. thank you very much. >> dan, i want to ask you what you thought -- we thought we were going to have you on the air last night, the first night your book launched and then things went crazy in terms of breaking news. what were you thinking with that split screen of the president in south korea and watching the democrats roll things up at home here in terms of last night's elections? what do you make of this moment we're in right now? >> well, obviously, there are two of the biggest headlines of the week so far. the president's language for the most part in this south korea and moving on to china has been more muted than the language before. he said some terrible things of north korea, accurate things

but, you know, he's handled himself well. i noted and i think i mentioned to you, rachel, he delivered a speech after getting off to a shaky start well in south korea but it's hard to make out what the policy is, you know, from time to time he makes these threats to north korea but i think if you look at the south korean visit an then moving on to china, the following things are pretty obvious. number one, we've said it before and bears repeating that china is the key. if there's going to be any real progress toward getting the north koreans to at least slow their nuclear development, the chinese have got to be a major player and i think that's one thing that's clear of this. the president has been at least in his rhetoric zigzagging some on north korean policy but having said all that it would be a mistake not to recognize because if so, that we're probably closer to an outright

war with north korea than we have been in a very, very long time. now, as for domestic policies and politics and the vote last night, clearly a sweep of nearly a sweep of the -- for the democrats. their best night since when obama's election i guess in 2012. however, what i noticed that the democrats were celebrating, and naturally because in some ways they were surprised by the margin that they won in some races and the message was a repudiation of the tone, if not indeed the actual substance of the trump presidency. and a point of what i'm trying the write in the book, we need to light the embers of hope and have some optimism and i find at least some bit of that in these election returns. it's a reminder that votes count and in the end you can march, you can protest, you can say you're part of the resistance

but the biggest thing you can do is organize and get out the vote. the democrats did that very well this time. and there's no other analysis available other than the one to make many republicans up for re-election next year make the fingernails sweat, these returns from last night, but it's a little early for the democrats to be moon walking in the end zone. they've made a start but it's going to take a while to reverse the trend that started with trump's election. >> dan rather's new book is called "what unites us: reflections on patriotism." i want to thank you for the reflections on the idea of steadiness. that's helpful to me in thinking of politics right now. not just a pendulum but steady as a country. you're an inspiration. congratulations on this good book. thank you for being with us tonight. >> thank you very much, rachel. >> nice to see you. all right. we'll be right back. stay with us.

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...you might be missing to stasomething... ♪ ...your eyes. that's why there's ocuvite. it helps replenish nutrients your eyes can lose as you age. nourish your eyes to help keep them healthy. ocuvite. be good to your eyes. hey, at the top of the show i talked about the new jersey count counselor who posted this degree response to the big women's march in january. this is what he posted. will the woman's protest be over in time for them to cook dinner? the new jersey politician last night lost the seat to a rookie democratic woman, 32-year-old woman, ashley bennett, never ran for anything before and found inspiration in her local public officials. tonight, on "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" he is

going to be speaking with, among other people, that woman, ashley bennett. i'm telling you, for real. he's got her. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now it's time for you to watch "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. i just rushed over here from barnes & noble on the upper west good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. i just rushed over here from barnes & noble on the upper west side where i was signing books tonight for my new book. >> oh good. >> guess who was sitting in the front row. >> i don't know. >> the famous judy who you have made famous -- >> the lady from the diner? >> judy from your diner. there she is. there she is. there's the picture. there's the full screen picture of judy from the diner. at barnes & noble tonight. she told you this wild idea she has about maybe i should run for president. i told her that i would very, very happily accept the vice presidential nomination on the maddow/o'donnell tick. >> i thought you were going to say judy. >> i like that vice presidential job.