the democratic candidate. >> thank you very much. appreciate you guys joining me. that's "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, joy. thank you, much appreciated. >> thank you, have a good show. >> thank you, i will try. i want to thank you at home for joining us, happy monday. this is odd. mike flynn, trump national security advisor currently ocho cooperating with the special counsel investigation into the president and his campaign after he and mike flynn pled guilty, right, to lying to the fbi about his contact with the transition. a month ago, "the new york times" reported when mike flynn had those contacts with the russian government he was not acting on his own. in realtime he was communicating with trump transition officials about the fact that he was talking to the russians, and he was talking with trump transition officials specifically about the fact that he was having conversations with the russians about them taking it easy on the issue of russian

sanctions. now, that's important because the white house has portrayed mike flynn contacting the russians about sanctions as some kind of betrayal, right? remember, their line was that they had to fire mike flynn, they had to obtain his resignation because he lied about his contacts with the russians to vice president mike pence. yeah. who could have known what mike flynn was really up to? it was such a betrayal. he lied. well, that all fell apart last month when "the new york times" published direct quotes from e-mails that had reportedly been sent among top transition staff discussing just exactly what mike flynn was doing with the russians, quote, on december 29th, a transition advisor k.t. mcfarland wrote sanctions announced hours before by the obama administration were aimed at discrediting mr. trump's victory and could make it hard

to ease tengsions with russia that has thrown the u.s. election to him. after learning president barack obama would excel 35 russian diplomats, the team strike that gui -- strategized how to retaliate against russia and keep the spotlight on moscow's meddling that would tarnish the victory and hobble his presidency from the start as part of the out reach ms. mcelderfarland wrote flynn would be speaking with the ambassador. that was reported by "the new york times" last month. the transition, the trump transition knew what mike flynn was up to when he did the thing he later lied to the fbi about, which is now resulted in him pleading guilty to a felony and becoming a co-operating witness. mike flynn despite the contrary from the white house, mike flynn wasn't acting on his own. the trump transition was in on it and we know that in part because of k.t.mcfarland's

e-mail. she is known as a fox personn personali personality. flynn brought on k.t. mcelderfa as his deputy national security advisor. not long thereafter, flynn was forced out in this scandal and k.t. mcfarland stayed on longer but within a few weeks, she was out, as well. that's how these tend to go. you're the deputy brought in by somebody that gets in trouble, that person that got in a lot of trouble gets in a lot of trouble and gets ousted, you follow them out the door. that said, the trump white house soon announced that they had a new gig in mind for k.t. mcelderry ffarland mcfarland, behold she should be sent to singapore. after the security advisor gets forced out in a scandal and you're his deputy, you get an ambassadorsh ambassadorship. weird prize from the start.

seemed weirder when flynn wasn't just ousted, he was criminally charged and pled guilty last month. but then a few days later when the "times" got the e-mails showing k.t. mcfarland was in on the scandal and led to the conviction, yeah, her being sent to singapore as an ambassador no longer seemed like a weird idea, it obviously started to seem impossible. k.t. mcfarland's nomination for the envoy to singapore stalled. republicans were on board that this would not be able to go ahead, not under these circumstances. >> the nomination is frozen for awhile until that gets worked out and, you know, she knows she has to know that herself. >> she has to know. of usually, you can't become an ambassador in the middle of a criminal scandal, her name at

the center of what the white house has been bringing indictments down like thunder bolts on officials from the campaign and administration, yeah, probably in the midst of that you wouldn't expect to be confirmed as the ambassador to singapo singapore, you'd think. tonight, the trump administration has just renominated k.t. mcfarland to be ambassador to singapore. sure, why not? everybody was kind of in agreement that was a crazy idea under these circumstances and her nomination was enacted upon and everybody thought it was over. they are bringing it back. it's been a weird day of news. do we have that piece? we do.

the congress from the stateffai committee. the wife of the chairman of the committee that oversees the state department. now, that's not the end of the world. it's a little weird, right? on a ranking of trump administration norm busting and ethics flouting, this would not be a championship contender. it's weird. the member of congress most responsible for overseeing one of your agencies, you give his wife a plum job at the agency, it's a little weird. for these guys, it's like tuesday. not a big deal. you know. so we have that news a few days ago from "the washington post", then today, just days after we got news of the racist wife getting a job at the state department, we got the surprising news that congressman, ed royce, the one whose wife got the big state department appointment is quitting congress.

now, ed is a long-term california republican congressman whose been there for 25 years and the chairman of the foreign affairs committee and it is a surprise that he is quitting as recently as this fall, he was insisting, he was definitely staying and anybody saying he was going to retire is nuts but all of a sudden, he's going and right after his wife got that plum job at the major agency that he oversees. mr. royce is the eighth republican member of congress who is the chair of a committee, who has announced he or she will not run for reelection. it's one thing to be a run of the mill but when you chair a committee and step down, eight of them is a lot and that's probably good news for democrats chances in the midterms overall. that eight committee chairmen are leaving. but even beyond just the large number of committee chairs who are going, some of these individual ones are strange and this ed royce one today was strange and a surprise.

so like i said, it's kind of a weird news day. i expect it will continue to be a weird news night but i'll see your weirdness thus far today and up the ante. in 2008 there was a good-sized democratic field of candidates that signed on to run for president as the very unpopular era of george w. bush came to a close. the democratic primary in 2008 ended with the fight for the nomination between hillary clinton and barack obama. if you go back to the beginning of that primary, the candidate who was the most surprising and sometimes the most fun to cover right from the beginning was a man named mike gravel. this is him. i know this looks like we're using very unflattering footage of him but i have to tell you, he's the author of this footage. this is his own campaign ad. the ad goes on for three minutes. more than the first minute of it is mike gravel looking into the camera with a run of the mill

look on his face and swallows a few times, smacks his lips. not like he's fixing you. sometimes you hear road noise, somebody walks by. there is action. you fast forward to 1:11 in the ad and the only thing he's done is stair in the camera but turns, walks a few steps, he goes up and picks up a big rock, he carries the big rock over to the edge of the lake and woop, boom. and then the ad keeps going for a long time thereafter. the rock hits the water at 90 seconds in and for a whole minute and a half, it's mike gravel walking away. three-minute ad. he ran for president in 2008. a weird cat. not like he didn't know ads like that were weird. he turned out to be a lot of fun in debates when he could get himself into debates but never really broke through as a presidential candidate. what his candidacy did do is

remind everybody there is a guy in this country named mike gravel who once upon a time had an interesting career in u.s. politics. in 1968, mike gravel was elected as a democratic senator from the state of alaska. sworn in 1969 and when you are a first term senator, being a senator is a prestigious job but don't get prestigious assignments. for mike gravel, the one thing he got to be in charge of in the senate with his party running the senate and so there, is there one thing they put him in charge of is a subcommittee on buildings and grounds within the public works committee. it might not have been much but it was the one thing they let him run. >> the subcommittee buildings and grounds, the only chairmanship i have and i treasure it dearly. [ laughter ] >> that was mike gravel speaking

in 1971 on what turned out to be an extraordinary night. on that night, mike gravel managed to make it one of the most important things in the world that he happened to be the chairman. again, this is june of '71. first "the new york times", then "the washington post" and the "boston globe" and other newspapers published pieces of the pentagon papers. great movie out about this right now called "the post" and their decision about handling the pentagon papers and legal fights around it and everything. but in june of 1971, daniel ellsberg who took these documents from the pentagon was trying everything he could think of to get the documents into the public eye so the american people could read them for themselves what the government really knew about the vietnam war. and part of his strategy was to get these pentagon documents to newspaper newspapers who were publishing

it piece by piece and fighting it out with new each bit of publication in terms of injections and threats from administration but newspapers aren't the only avenue for releasing these documents. under the idea to get the pentagon pipes into the public record by getting them into the congressional record where constitutionally they wouldn't be censored and the american people could therefore read them. lots of higher profile members turned down daniel ellsberg when he came to them with this idea but mike gravel was this young guy, 41 years old freshman senator and tried to stop the draft by filibustering the draft to death and the one guy that took ellsberg up on the offer. they came up with this plan. gravel figured out what to do.

he would get the pentagon papers into the congressional records that couldn't be censored to be released to the public. his plan was to read the pentagon papers on the floor of the senate. terrible plan because mike gravel did not plan it right in terms of the procedure stuff and when he got up there on the floor of the senate june 29th, 1971 he took to the floor to read the pentagon papers but immediately got shut down because of the absence of it. after it wouldn't work on the floor of the senate, he got another genius idea on buildings and grounds. i'll quote from "the new york times." the alaska democrat hoped to read the documents on the senate floor in an all-night session but he was thwarted when 51 senators couldn't be mustered.

senator gravel went across the street to the new senate office building to the hearing room of the buildings and grounds subcommittee of the public works committee and convened a session of which he's the share man and there he began the reading. my favorite detail actually of this whole moment in american history is that mike gravel in order to do this technically had to make the case these pentagon documents he would read about the vietnam war, he had to make the case they were relevant to his committee and had something to do on buildings and grounds. and so, he had a witness come in, a new york congressman come in and had the witness testify that he wanted to have a federal building built in his district and mike gravel said yes, sir, i'd love to put a federal building in the district but i can't because the money has gone to this darn war and i have stuff to say about that war. and thus, he started reading the

pentagon papers out loud and there were journalists on scene who had seen what he was trying to do on the floor and followed him across the street to see what he would do in the subcommittee. nobody knew how this would end up. >> have your legal experts told you you're safe from prosecution or injection as long as you read these as a subcommittee chairman? >> that's a question yet to be decided. >> senator, do you have any hopes -- >> what they have told me is that is a question yet to be decided. >> is there a possibility you could join legally -- >> yes. >> but mike gravel with all that uncertainty nevertheless read. he read for hours. he intended to read a lot longer than he did but about four hours into it, he became so exhausted he got very emotional and sort of couldn't hold it together. still, though, everything he was

able to read became part of the public record. he gave copies of what he read to the journalists present in the room and then even though he was exhausted to the point of sobbing openly weeping in the hearing room, he had the presence of mind at o dark 30 in the morning after these hours with all of that emotion, he had the presence of mind to ask for unanimous consent that more than 4,000 pages of pentagon papers should be entered into the congressional record. he asked for unanimous consent. he was the only member of the subcommittee present in the room. he unanimously approved his own motion and that is part of how we have the public record that we do from that incredible moment in american politics. that put 4,000 pages of the pentagon papers into the public record. and this is newly relevant today because greg sergeant at the washington post reports today

democrats in the senate right now are considering trying to do something like that again. now, this time it is not dozens of volumes and thousands of pages of the pentagon papers, this time it's a transcript from the russia investigation. this weekend, these billboards went up in des moines, iowa. senator grassly released the fusion gps transcripts. in august, the head of the firm gave ten hours of testimony to chuck grassly's judiciary committee about his firm's role producing the so-called dossier, the raw intelligence reports and their relationship with trump and the trump campaign. now, as you know, republicans in congress supposedly leading congressional committee investigations into what russia did and whether they had help from americans, congressional republicans have largely instead focused their efforts on trying to get the real russia

investigation off course. in large part, they have focused efforts on denouncing the dossier with all of their might and denouncing fusion gps, the firm that paid for it. senator gralszly a lgrassly and graham are trying to get them to bring charges against the agent that compiled the dossier and subpoenaed the bank records and congressional republicans forced the fbi to hand over law enforcement materials that will give republicans in congress details how they checked out claims from the dossier doing their own investigation. republicans have been going hammer and tongs against the dossier and if i recafirm that it. the diversion from the central questions of the russia matter. the problem for them is no major thing has been conclusively disproven. a lot of people mentioned in the dossier denied what it says

about them is true but a bunch of what is in the dossier has been proven out over time and importantly, the company that commissioned it and paid for the research and hired christopher steele to do it, they say and they know more about it than anybody, they say they stand by what is in that report. all this criticism, months of criticism, republicans going after it with everything they have, the firm that commissioned that report says we stand by it. don't you want to know on what basis they stand by it? how can they think with all of these attacks they are still okay with it? why? ultimately, there were three different committees that heard more than 20 hours of testimony about the dossier. the first committee that sat them town for more than ten hours was grassley. in august, chuck grassly seemed to indicate thatty the p we the would get to see the transcript

of the testimony. >> the second thing i'd like to talk on is senate judiciary committee staff members met for ten hours. i'd like to know what they discovered in the meeting and i would like the transcripts released, will you do that? >> the answer is it will take a vote of the committee to do it. >> will you personally vote for the release of the transcripts? >> i don't know why i wouldn't. >> that was in august. since then republicans including chuck grassly have only intensified adocks ttacks on th dossier. that's only intensified the public interest as to what is in those transcripts. richard blumenthal and democrats sent him a letter insisting that chairman grassly make those transcripts public, fusion gps reiterated that they want those transcripts released. democrats on the committee appear to be unified in saying they want the transcripts

released. senators that seen the transcripts because they are on the committee said there wouldn't be harm caused. it wouldn't interfere with anything with on going investigations but for some reason, senator grassly won't do it. despite what he told constituents in august, today he insisted no, he won't allow that transcript to be released. you know when it was the pentagon papers in 1971, those were secret defense department documents that had been spirited out of the pentagon by somebody that wanted the public to see them. that is how the public got that information. administration went crazy trying to keep it secret but it got out. in watergate, it was the white house tapes. those tapes were the property of the white house and nixon didn't want to hand them over to congress. congress insisted the courts ultimately forced it. that is how those tapes finally made their way to the public. in this case, these transcripts, they already belong to congress.

this fight to get the transcripts released is not a fight between branchs of government and not a constitutional question, it's a political question of democrats who know what's on those transcripts wanting them released and republicans who know what's on those transcripts wanting them kept under wraps. if greg sergeant's reporting at the washington post today is right and senators are considering pushing this to the hilt pulling a mike gravel here, they will have a hard time of it. when mike gravel did what he did in 1971, democrats ran the senate. at least he had the subcommittee chairmanship. none of them run even a little subcommittee on public works that can be convened at mitt nig -- midnight. if they say no, the public can't see the transcripts and go to extremes to get this out, to get it into the public record, they

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democratic senator called on chuck grassly to release the transcript of ten hours of testimony given by the founder of the firm that commissioned the trump russia dossier. senator grassly says he has not

moved. his office said there is no plan to release the transcripts any time soon. question newly is how far are democrats willing to go to get the transcripts on the record? greg sergeant of the washington post reports today that democrats are considering pulling a mike gravel pentagon paper stunt and they may think of ways to read these documents, read this transcript into the public record thus making it publicly available even as the committee chooses to not formally release it. could that conceivably work? did it actually work when mike gravel did it in971? joining us is michael. it's warm and sunny and not what you need to do now. thank you for being here. >> i'm on what attorney general sessions refers to as an island on the pacific. >> i know you're not on executive time.

you've been working hard -- >> no, no, indeed. >> unlike certain personalities in the white house. >> exactly. so the pentagon papers' example with mike gravel is dramatic in its own right and i would be interested to hear from you in terms of the significance of that event, what mike gravel did in 1971, how consequence l it w and was a controversial act when he did it. >> right. >> but also, if democrats are looking at that as a potential maller what to do with russia investigation documents, should that actually be seen as a model that could be done now? >> i think it should be. you know, gravel, as you've said so well was the maverick and his point was that the pentagon paper should not be concealed. he knew what the founder said. the founder said they wanted the united states to be different from england where the mistakes and scandals and rulers were

concealed from the people. you don't get access to documents. he said what better example than the pentagon papers which tells of decades of american action toward vietnam, a lot of lies, a lot of mistakes. at the moment that gravel went before his buildings and grounds subcommittee and you're right, it's a really funny story. that was the only way at that moment it seemed as if there might be an official channel for the pentagon papers to become public. as it happened, shortly after he did that, the supreme court ruled 9-3 that the pentagon papers had to be released, nixon administration could not stop them and the other thing that that shows is how important it is to have a supreme court dedicated to civil liberties. that was true in 1971. not so sure that will be true in the future. >> michael, we've been watching this issue about the fusion gps transcript since august, since that original testimony when we

found out it was ten hours of testimony and we knew fusion's princip principal's said we stand by the dossier and said they would support releasing the transcript, we realized right away that would be a really interesting transcript to read as people attack this dossier. is there anything that we should understand in terms of presidential history and just modern american history about document releases? that attend to congressional transcripts. the pentagon papers were secret defense department documents spirited out of the pentagon. >> the executive branch. >> the white house tapes from the watergate scandal were obviously created in the oval office with the president's knowledge, the question of whether congress should be able to get them is legitimate constitutional question. what about when it's a fight over releasing something of its own. >> those other things were

executive branch where the majority led by charles grassly and democrats have heard and that's really the heavy-handedness that you didn't see during the nixon period. and i think one reason prevail is he was the democratic majority. encouraged and blumenthal and others it might not end up so well. >> i was looking back at the coverage the day after gravel did this thing. we got the initial coverage, breathless coverage about what they done the day after that was about how his fellow senators were absolutely vexed by his controversial behavior and you

saw that. >> it was an argument for historical judgment. often times thinks will look different in history, decades later and one great example, so glad you mentioned it tonight is the gravel episode. >> yeah, nbc presidential historian, thank you my friend, great to have you. >> be well. it's a strange news night and i'm told things have been getting weirder since we've been on the air. we'll have, well, i think we'll have this for you when we come back. stay with us.

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this is ronnie jackson, admiral jackson is a highly decorated naval officer, more than 22 years of service. he's also the official physician to the president of the united states. one of the refun responfun resp he's responsible for performing the president's annual physical and releasing the results to the public. this means that admiral jackson is about to do president trump's first physical since he's been in office. we're told that it is scheduled for this week, for friday. now usually the presidential physical is a non-event, almost like an interest story. oh, president obama is struggling to stay off the cigarettes. you got little bits and bobs but usually not that important. this year, though, because we're

talking about this administration, people keep asking the white house if the president's physical is going to include a mental exam of sole sort. that's not a thing presidents usually get and the white house is suggesting that we should not extra expect trump to have any mental fitness exam on friday alongside the rest of his physical but this president is the oldest person ever sworn in as president, god bless him. he's also the only presidential candidate in modern times to have not released extensive medical records before he was elected, although it was fun to meet his doctor. remember him? you should know, though, that admiral jackson will be the one who presumably release information after the physical happens but it is the president himself who gets to decide how much of his own medical information to let out. the president does have medical privacy rights like anybody else and presumably can with hold any information he does not want people to know. that said in terms of tests of this president where he actually

has to be there in person, there might be a much more stressful test coming up for him way sooner than the white house was expecting and that tostory is next.

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nbc news was out with talks in mueller russia probe. nbc's kristen welker and hallie jackson reporting anticipating that special counsel robert mueller will ask to interview president trump, the president's

legal team is discussing options for the format including written responses to questions in lou of a formal sit down. trump's legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by mueller and the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the topics and duration. the president's team is seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview all together. so that was nbc news this morning. the trump legal team is expecting special counsel robert mueller to ask to interview the president himself and apparently they are scrambling with ways to avoid that like offering he would write his answers at home like a take home exam. this afternoon "the washington post" followed up with it's on reporting on the same story, "the washington post" reported the trump legal team is not preparing for the possibility the special counsel will ask for an interview but mueller quote has told president trump's legal team that his office is likely

to seek an interview with the president. the post further reported that robert mueller raised the issue of interviewing trump with a meeting with the lawyers. the team could interview trump soon on some limited portion of questions possibly within the next several weeks according to a person close to the president. the person said quote, this is moving faster than anyone real lie realizes. nbc news pete williams reports if robert mueller does ask to interview the president and subpoenas that the president to ask questions, legally the president probably can't say no but he could plead the fifth and invoke the constitutional right not to incriminate himself. no president has done that but we've said no president has ever done that a lot over the last couple years. it's also an open question whether trump's lawyers could force the special counsel's office to acre cement susem acc conditions like only answering

questions in writing because the client is the president. there isn't a lot of historical president for stuff like this. we've never as a country been in quite this situation before, even though presidents have faced questioning in criminal investigations. my favorite part of this reporting today, though, is what appears to be the brass ring proposal from the president's team, quoting from nbc news, in addition to the possibility of suggesting the president submit written responses in place of an interview, a second person familiar with the president's legal strategy said another possibility being contemplated was, get this, an affidavit signed by the president affirming he is innocent of any wrongdoing and denying any collusion. why don't criminal defendants think about that? why wouldn't that be enough for special counsel? i, donald trump, didn't do nothing, signed donald trump. he can even get it notarized to be official. i'm sure that would set this to

rest, right? needless to say nobody at nbc news thought robert mueller might go for the affidavit idea. joining us is carol lee, a reporter that broke this story today. nice to have you with us tonight. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. thank you. >> we're getting your reports first, we found a couple other news outlets reporting seeming to be focussing in on the timeline, the question of whether or not this is something coming up imminently or something being discussed as a ra hypothetical. what is your understanding now? >> my understanding is it's fluid for the reasons you laid out. but, you know, you could see some sort of interview or some kind of discussion between the president and the special counsel's office in coming weeks but the president trump's legal team still has a lot of questions just in terms of what that would look like, how long it would take, where it would be, what the format would be,

all of those kinds of questions and like you were talking about, they have these different ideas how to get around from having the president actually have to sit down and have face-to-face conversation with either robert mueller or people who are working for him. >> i know that there is always some flexibility around the logistics of these. when george w. bush and dick cheney had to speak with investigators, it was interesting where there wouldn't be a transcript and we remember the video taped deposition of president clinton. now that we're seeing in the press the negotiating gambits from the trump side, it made me wonder how much leverage they have in this particular situation with this special counsel and this type of investigation. is this a situation robert mueller could lay down the law and say yeah, that's fine if that's what you want to do but this is how it will go. >> technically questioyes, he c.

the trump lawyers are putting forward their idea in what they see as negotiations, as the first opening bid and then they will go from there but yes, certainly one of the things trump's legal team wants to avoid is any kind of grand jury subpoena that's just they do not want to go there and so to try to avoid that, you get some sort of negotiation or agreement on an interview or discussion or whatever you want to call it between the president and mueller's team and so if they are able to do that, they can avoid the spectacle that was wound up being what happens with hillary clinton which then led to perjury and impeachment and don't want to go down the road. the strategy is cooperate, cooperate, cooperate and move along quickly in a very speedy manner. that's the kind of game they are playing. >> do we believe that if these

interviews are going to happen or if this interview is going to happen sometime in the foreseeable future that would indicate the end of mueller's investigative work when you look at these from the outside and you're a non-lawyer, you think you saved the biggest fish for last and you realize maybe this is coming to an end? that's my perspective from watching a lot of tv about lawyers. is that how it works in the real world, too? >> that's the line trump's legal team is putting forward, it's wrapping up quickly. we just don't know and, you know, most people that you talk to think this is going to go on for is the and then we've talked to folks who say this could be, you know, they will have an initial discussion with the president and come back for more later, that they will negotiate narrow to be i c narrow topics. we don't know. as you were talking about when we started talking about this, it's uncharted territory. we don't know exactly how this

will play out. it can go any number of ways. >> one last quick question. do you if mike pence is having discussions? >> we hope to find that out. >> i like the way you say that makes me think you're about to figure it out. >> we'll be right back. sionate-- i really want to help. i was on my way out of this life. there are patients out there that don't have a lot of time. finally, it was like the sun rose again and i was going to start fighting back now. when those patients come to me and say, "you saved my life...." my life was saved by a two week old targeted therapy drug. that's what really drives me to- to save lives. with its historical ance records...test ...you could learn you're from ireland... ...donegal, ireland... ...and your ancestor was a fisherman. with blue eyes. just like you.

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due to your first accident. switch and you could save $782 on home and auto insurance. call for a free quote today. liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance. right now off the coast of shanghai something extraordinary is happening. extraordinary in a bad way.

three days ago a really big oil tanker collided with another ship about 160 miles off the coast of shanghai. three days ago. it's been on fire ever since. and as you can probably guess just by looking at that plume of black smoke this is a big problem. apparently when that much oil is blazing away there's not much to do but wait for the fire to go out or, gulp, wait for the tanker to explode. it was carrying nearly 1 million barrels of oil. experts say it is more than likely this tanker is going to blow. if the thing blows up, the explosion presumably destroy it entirely and sink it and at a million barrels of oil, three times bigger than the exxon valdez of 1989 and one of the largest environmental disasters in the history of the world. so, for the moment, they're in this nightmare holding pattern watching it burn waiting to see

if they have another, you know, exxon valdez on steroids on our hands. that's exactly the doomsday scenario u.s. government officials had in mind creating the oil spill liability trust fund, an emergency slush fund. it was created in the wake of the exxon valdez as an immediate source of federal funding to respond to oil spills in a timely manner. this oil spill liability trust fund is financed by a 9-cent per barrel tax on companies that sell oil in the united states. all right. i should say it was primarily financed that way. that tax was just killed. that tax was allowed to expire as part of the tax bill republicans passed before christmas. so that tax and that thing it funds were killed off last week. that had generated $500 million a year, it was a main source of revenue for the oil spill liability trust fund. proceeds of that tax put away so when history repeats itself and

there's another exxon valdez. slush fund for oil spill disasters. and the republicans just killed it. and at the same time the trump administration has also just hacksawed the safety regulations that are supposed to provent oil spills in the first place. saying they want to overhaul how federal officials monitor safety procedures on offshore drilling organizations and kibosh the rules and get rid of the rules on the grounds overly burdensome to the industry. these things they just got rid of were the rules that were supposed to prevent another deepwater horizon style blowout. why would we need those rules? but that's how they are approaching their new gigantic policy change which will open up virtually the western and eastern seaboards of the united

states for fair game nor offshore drill leases and trigger a feeding frenzy. nearly all u.s. coastal waters and off the coast of california protected for decades. more than a billion acres in the arctic and along the eastern seaboard. governors of both parties lined up against the proposal literally. look at this map of the governors up and down from border to border who are posed to this drilling. democratic and republican governors. but screw the governors. administration's doing right by the friends in the oil industry. upping the drilling. killing the safety rules and getting rid of the tax that funds the cleanup efforts which means no more emergency funds for the next time disaster strikes and millions of obarrel of oil off the coast of carolina. everything is going your way in the oil industry. let's keep an eye on whether that tanker explodes, though, huh? >> tech: at safelite autoglass

we know that when you're spending time with the grandkids every minute counts. and you don't have time for a cracked windshield. that's why we show you exactly when we'll be there. saving you time, so you can keep saving the world. >> kids: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ friday night we did an update on the peculiar phenomenon in the trump administration with white house stafferers fleeing the white house and quitting in unpress departmented numbers. a lot of people have left and not even at the one-year mark. turns out, though, there's a new person to add that to that long list. looking at the vice president's part of the white house, one of the things to note is not a ton of staff who works for the vice president. each so, mike pence already lost four very senior people.

he's lost the chief of staff, press secretary, last week we learned he lost the domestic policy director and he lost the chief counsel. addition is his wife's second lady karen pence lost her chief of staff, as well. now, i should tell you out of the contemporaneous reporting on mike pence, we can't find anybody that described him or his wife as terrible people to work for. i mean, we don't know but that's not at all how people publicly describe them but even still in this white house a place that's a huge amount of turnover, there is an unusually large amount of tonover specifically on the vice president's side. they can't keep anybody, even in the highest job. why is that? that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> thank you. you know how when we get a kind of big guest we try to do everything we can to let the world know that we have a big