good evening and welcome to "politics nation." tonight's lead a clear and present danger. it would be easy for me, a black civil rights activist born into

segregation to call upon a dozen condemnations that i could hurl at a nation that allowed donald trump's presidency not just to happen but to exhaust every option it could to stay in power. but as no stranger to the dangei take nopleasure that that danger now threatens us all. the entire country is on high alert right now. >> and the pandemic that has infected more than 24 million americans, nearly every state and statehouse in our union is girding itself for a scene to two weeks ago in washington or four weeks ago in oregon or less

than a year ago in michigan. that is not just donald trump, the republican party has normalized the idea that grievance is license to do whatever conservative and right wingers feel they must do to exert their will. and now the second impeachment of trump waiting with maybe a couple dozen congressional republicans on board. investigators tighten the national dragnet to find the capitol insurrectionists. also yesterday the world's just p justice and freedom movements

mocked what would have been the 97th birthday of martin luther king jr. i talked to an expert about the nation and what we saw two weeks ago in our capitol. first is jim clyburn, democrat of south carolina, who is also the marriages whip and was a civil rights activist on the ground himself, during the turbulent first phase of the civil rights movement in the half century. congressman, this is essentially go week for you and what went wrong two weeks ago but the chatter for the two weeks, how

are you feeling about safety and security this wednesday? >> thank you very much, reverend, for having me. i do feel a little bit of apprehension about next week. i am concerned the more i see of the videos from last wednesday, from the 6th of january, the more i feel apprehension. however, i do feel that the inauguration of joseph -- joe biden and kamala harris will be an act of renewal. i watched his speech two nights ago and i felt so renewed that it seems that the presidency of this country is giving back to what this country is all about,

bringing people together, staying focused on the future of our children and grandchildren and doing the things that are necessary to restore -- i mean to restore dignity to the presidency. >> now, i've got to go back to earlier this week. you told axios that the attack on the u.s. capitol was triggering for black americans, harkening back to the civil rights era and raising the question, quote, are we getting ready to repeat some history that we thought we'd successfully got behind us, end of quote. you also tweeted this week about your push to make "lift every voice and sing" known to us as the black anthem into a national him saying the gesture itself would be an act of healing. but some of your republican colleagues in congress and the senate are ambivalent or

uncommitted to impeaching president donald trump or still talking about both sides. now how do you and mr. biden begin to heal the nation when some of our elected officials either still refuse to fully acknowledge what happened or uphold it as some kind of statement? >> well, you know, that's a fair question but i think we have to keep in mind that our country hasn't just become divided over this issue of race. 401 years ago, 1619, black people were brought to the soil of this country and they came here to till the soil, if i might say. so that division was established then. what we have to do as a nation now that we are beyond that, we have to every day work on doing those things that are necessary

to put that further and further behind us. we stayed, black people, in slavery for 244 years. we had jim crowe, which is nothing but apartheid for another hundred years and we've been working ever since to better our pursuit of a more perfect union, to give liberty and justice for all. so, yes, millions of people voted for donald trump but 81 or 82 million people voted for joe biden. would i hope on behalf of those 82 million people we will continue to work with each other, work hard to get the other 74 million to understand that this country is a country worth saving and is a country that is worth renewing its

pursuit. >> and it's that hope that those are us that have been fighting, keep fighting because you do see breakthroughs. you and your beloved wife spent nights in jail fighting for civil rights in the south and all the way through and have seen breakthroughs. i grew up in the north and spent nights in jail. but it is an irony, congressman, that donald trump will be sandwiched in history between the first black president and the first black woman vice president. that will be his sandwich in history. so i guess if we look at the big picture, we make incremental steps toward progress. >> i didn't hear all of your question but you're back now. let me thank you for having me on. we are celebrating what you just said, not a second birthday with martin luther king jr. martin luther king jr. said to us in his letter from the

birmingham county jail something that i think is worth repeating at this moment and is that we are coming to the point that the people of goodwill must begin to use time a little better than the people of ill will and that we would repent, not just for the words and deeds of bad people but for the appalling silence of good people. what this wednesday means to us is to break our silence and for good people to gather around this new administration to start this country moving as it's moved before and that is toward perfection. now, let me ask you this, i'm out of time. very briefly, today it became official your good friend and protege and fellow south carolinian jamie harrison is chair of the national democratic national committee, majorities in the house and the senate, the

latter coming from that double senate win in georgia. what do you think his priorities and the democratic party's priorities need to be looking at the next two years and beyond? >> well, jamie harrison is a great choice and i'm glad that the president-elect has seen in jamie what i saw in him when he was an 11th grader. he worked hard all his life, overcame poverty, was raised by his grandparents. he with his great success demonstrates that everybody in this country can succeed if provided with the opportunity. so vice president biden, president-elect biden soon to be president biden has given him an

opportunity. i feel certain that he will succeed in helping to bring this country together politically. jamie is a great choice, a great young man and i see nothing but great things in his future. >> all right. thank you, south carolina congressman jim clyburn, the whip. thank you for being with us. joining me now is my panel, ayesha mills, and republican and senior adviser to the lincoln project, susan, let me go to first. security measures for the inauguration day are tighter than ever, the national mall closed to spectator, airbnb cancelling all d.c.

reservations, checking firearms in flights to d.c. or the d.c. area. is this really who we are as a country ahead of what is usually a celebration of democracy? >> it's who we are right now, rev. we have to be responsible. it has to show as a deterrent to prevent violence from coming to our capitol again, which brings me to the issue of while i believe that the vice president or president-elect biden and vice president-elect will be safe and i believe the event can be kept secure. i do wonder if this is the best visual we should be putting up as they get sworn in. of i think it will be a stark difference from what we're traditionally used to be seeing and is a visual that will be played up a lot. we've been seeing in the news how the city is basically shut down. so i do hope that they reconsider moving the venue, only because i just don't think

it's a great visual for our nation. i think it represents the division by seeing those fences up. but i do think once joe biden is sworn in, we begin to start a different chapter and that there is a different future ahead of us. >> ayesha, the president-elect has announced an ambitious covid rescue plan that includes direct money to america, money for vaccinations and much more. do you expect this to set the tone for his first 100 days? >> absolutely. this is, rev, you know this, this is the greatest crisis, health, economic and otherwise that we have faced surely in a generation. this absolutely should set the tone of his first 100 days, that he's looking to work directly with the american public as opposed to letting politics

deter us from getting solutions to the people who need them. also i hope his first 100 days will be focused on how he's going to create all the commissions necessary to stomp out white supremacist terrorisms in this country. we're talking so much about the inauguration, but as someone who lives in quote unquo trump company, i am fearful about the fact that we've got domestic terrorists who literally were able to go back home and hang back in their community and may be plotting and planning and nobody is pro texting the person walking down the street. >> having said that, section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution says that no one who has engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the unt.

>> could those members be expelled from congress and how can their colleagues feel safe in the meantime? >> you know, i was hoping that one of the first things congress did was to hold those accountable who on that day, even after they came pack after the insurrection continued to push propaganda and lies, tried to thwart the will of the american people and essentially overthrow the government in its functioning. i would have hoped the members would have smacked them at least on the wrist before they actually sen sewered them and embassy peld them. i believe they ought to dp. i can't imagine being pelosi or aoc or any of the people in donald trump's cross-are.

i can't imagine how these members would feel safe, that there was some kind of reconnaissance being offered by republican members. there was some kind of inside job. so they can't even be safe with their colleagues up let alone an attack in the public. i feel so much for all the members who who are dealing with this. coming up, my final memo to trump. and this might be fitting as we look back at the tragedy of this president. but first, my colleague richard louis. >> miss they say he presented ununauthorized inauguration

credentials at a d.c. check point yesterday. according to documents, police found a gun and hundreds of round of ammunition in his vehicle. the coronavirus death total now reaching 2 million this week, the u.s. close to 20% of that total despite having less than 5% of the world's population. and inmate dustin higgs died by lethal infection at a prison in indiana. he was the last of four black men to be executed. and montgomery was the first woman to be killed by the death penalty. >> the nra says it will move operations from new york to

texas. new york lawmakers have been pushing a legal battle seeking for the nra to be dissolved and claim they misused the funds. more with reverend al sharpton right after the break. h reverenn right after the break. essure before taking it. do not take trelegy more than prescribed. trelegy may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. take a stand and start a new day with trelegy.

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well, mr. president, we made it. the final memo to trump of your presidency. though i do reserve the right to bring this segment back if you do something particularly egregious in your retirement. i thought i would make this final memo i kind of retrospective on your administration. i'm calling it four years in hate. as i'm sure you can imagine, mr. president, it would be impossible to fit all your hateful words into the time allotted. my show is only an hour long. so i'm focused on your deeds. we'll start with the very first days of your presidency when without warning you signed an executive order intended to ban

muslims from traveling to the united states. this attempt at upholding a racist campaign promise stranded thousands of people in airports, kept families separated from their dying relatives and spent years being appealed and rewritten. eventually of you succeeded in drafting an executive order hateful enough to bar 7% of the world's population. speaking of hateful and misguided campaign promises, your hatred of immigrants caused you to oversee the longest government shutdown in u.s. vie p history in an extent to extort money for your border wall, a failed initiative because most immigrants come here legallier that -- legally rather than coming illegally over any

borders. probably your most heinous policy was family separation on the southern border. you tore thousands of children, some of them just babies from the arms of their families in a sadistic attempt it punish their parents. hundreds of those children are still separated from their families today, but immigrants weren't the only group that suffered under your hateful agenda. your 2016 campaign targeted millions of black voters, trying to keep us away from the polls on election day. and later when you got into power, you and your party purged black voters from the rolls, closed polling places in majority black districts and sabotaged the u.s. postal service, all in an apparent attempt to stop black people from voting. and recently when it was clear you had lost, your legal team went to court trying to invalidate vote totals from some of the blackest cities in america. let's not forget your most

efficient vehicle for hate. twitter. you fired off tweets of all our to threatened peaceful, racial justice protesters and maligned majority black districts. all this observe old hate crimes surged nearly 20% during your administration, mr. prapt p president, meanwhile a surge of bullies in school with the bullies quoting the words of you, the president, to victimize their targets. one study showed that school bullying increased most in districts won by you, mr. president. given the current climate in this country, i think we can all agree that you failed to make america great again, but did you manage to make america hate dpen. you and your sycophants in the republican party have a skewed

unity for power at every turn and now white house crass you'll be leaving office in shame. but i'm a christian, mr. president, and a preacher by trade. so if you have time in your retirement to crack open, your turn to the bach of john, mr. president, and read with me. "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleans us from all unrighteousness. you have a lot of confessing to do before you can be cleansed of all the unrighteousness, plft. keep in mind that even though god may forgive you for your years of hateful acts, the american people and the criminal but don't worry, mr. president,

i have it on good prt an approved activity in prison. we'll be right back. prison. we'll be right back.

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as a nation braces for more potential violence ahead of and on inauguration day, it would appear that the threat of white nationalist terror is real, even to those who denied it only weeks ago. and as more reports surface of former military personnel and law enforcement officers, active and retired, have participated in the capital insurrection, lawmakers have to contend with not only how to shore up security on wednesday but how to remove racists from positions of authority, especially that over life, over death. joining me now is director of the center foranti-racist

research at boston university. professor, thank you for joining us this evening. i wanted to get to you on this tonight. you wrote about the psychology of the capitol violence in the "atlantic" magazine. writing, quote, to say that this is not part of america, american politics and american history is a bald-faced denile. but the denile is normal, in the aftermath of controversies that have americans commonly admitted who we are? the heartbeat of america is denial." please explain, kendi. >> reverend, as you know, whenever there's a mass shooting, a mass insurrection,

an attempted coup as we saw at the u.s. capitol, both democrats and republicans, the response is often this is not who we are. and to say white sue primmists -- supremacists is not who we are, is not part of our politics and history is not true. you can't really write the tale of america's history without writing the tale of domestic terrorism from white supremacists. what i argued is that instead of saying this is not who we are, we should say this is precisely who we are. and that we're not going to rid people of white supremacists and of racism unless we admit it and face it and seek to eliminate it.

you write that most people will tell you that but you explained that it is ultimately structural for thely person, that recently woke, so to speak. what does that mean and how can they combat structural racism as individual and citizens? >> sure. let give a recent that those republicans who are saying that tles swaed that they just don't know that there's no evidence of vote are fraud and that we need to teach them, we need to show them that voter fraud of not a problem in the 2020 election. but what is actually the case is that they are instituting voter suppression policies out of

political self-interests. in other words, in order to get elected, they recognize they need to suppress votes and they they justify those votes, those policies, with this idea of voter fraud. or they claim that they lost an election, not because of people voting for another candidate but because somehow there was voters fraud, which can then potentially justify them returning to political office or keeping their office in the case of donald trump trup. the racist policies are leading to racist ideas, which is leading to people believing and then with that ig ig morns. >> as i mentioned before, we've had and in as did have been

turned in by their colleagues, which i don't have to tell you is something we don't see nearly often enough regarding police misconductism. you steady rich how should lawmakers and the federal government proceed to remove racists from our police force and our military, now that it is at least exposed a as problem. well, what's fascinating, i think one of the first ever essays was to start stitchinin or who are chept think think

that is critical to create a culture in which that is not the place. but there were active law enforcement in the round that we know that people like george zimmermann or kyle rittenhouse wanted to be long enforcement. there's this view of all black people who are dangerous, that they want to use it to there and then we don't have mechanisms to prevent those folks from becoming aej. >> well, when police tell on

police -- in other words, for saying that is not just snitching. it called doing your job. that's police work. >> ebran x pinnedy. >> coming up, corporate america's message to trump, you're a faggot. first big business and now more of the country showing him the door. more after the break. showing he door more after the break my dvt blood clot... stayed on my mind... was another around the corner? or could it be a different story?

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welcome back. it's been almost exactly a year since the president's first impeachment, but because mitch mcconnell has refused to call the senate back into session, the second trial won't begin until the first days of the biden administration. how can democrats approach this to hold trump accountable while not scuttling bide yaens first days in office? back with me is democrat and political strategist aeshia mills. there are some saying new details are ea final sendoff would probably include a color guard and military band and a rare carpet and 21 gun salute. what will the rebs lack luke. >> well, i don't spend a lot of

time playing in. >> but here's what i'm w.h.o. and i was hoping on this fairwell to him that it's actually a good riddance and we do have to have him at the center of any political con babe would certainly be the worst thing he could ever hope forit would be the continuation of trump's impeachment. how can the house usher in post

trump while still working to convict him? >> you know, we always tell people we can chew gum and walk at the same time. the senate conformed angd at the same time the house and the senate together can be moving real policy to deal with covid, to deal with our economic issues, to deal with white nationalism, to deal with police reform. we can do all those things. it's not one or the other. and what i would also invite the media to do is to continue to wok kol broader conversations about the things that are impacting many. >> in the broadening conversation and do all the work and start centering him. >> one thing i took note of this

week, republican oklahoma senator james lankford penned a letter apologizing to black constituents for challenging the 2020 election results stating he was, quote, blindsided that he didn't see by challenging the election results he helped cast doubt on the validity of votes coming out of cities with large black populations. your reaction to this. he was blindsided by all that white privilege that he clearly can't see beyond. that's the most ignorant and forced thing i've ever heard in my life. let's remember that he has been pushing this false narrative that somehow the election results weren't valid, okay? he's been pushing that lie he also has like a 97% conservative voting record that gets lots of applause from the very right, right, right side of the right wing.

he by every measure has not done much in his career to actually support black people and to connect with black communities. so to issue that apology is fine but it feels a business disingenuous to say he had know idea that it would land where it did. it was pretty much him saying that black people cheated and trump made it about race. >> the thing that is so disingenuous to me is you're purning something that no one ever presented to you or anyone else that there were facts to back up what you were pushing. susan is back with you. social media has turned their

back on trump to, deutsche bank pulling out of deals with them to the pga moving their golf tournament from the club in new jersey. what's next to the soon to be former president? >> we'll see. rev, you know how donald trump felt about it because you would get snubbed time after time. >> i think that susan is right. it's going to be a difficult time. certainly as serious legal questions.

certainly there are people who are no longer doing business with him, have openly said that and it's clear a lot of his businesses are in the red. i think from my having known and fought with him and him trying to be cordial sometimes over the last three decades, the thing that will get him the most is he will be irrelevant. the fact that he will not be the subject of discussion, the fact that he cannot walk in a room and everyone turn their head. that's over. all this that he wanted and he got it and he distorted it because his character and his real impulses came out, which showed us who a lot of us always knew he was, aisha. >> absolutely. and i'm so excited he's going to be irrelevant. good riddance. here's the thing that i think his children, particularly ivanka may not have calculated

around is that they're going to be less relevant, too. and she and jared are in positions where they're going to want to continue to grow their businesses that existed before this administration. they used to be respectful people in at least new york society and that's probably been diminished quite a bit. so what are they going to do with the rest of their time? it's going to be interesting to watch and if they atone for any of the awful things they did. it will be interesting to see how they try to get back in favor with their democratic friends. >> all right. aisha mills and susan del percio, my thanks to both of you. up next, my final thoughts. stay with us. up next, my final thoughts stay with us ♪ because it's time. ♪ ♪ yeah. ♪ ♪ time for grilled cheese. ♪

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as many of us have denounced the insurrection this week and violence, of course, there are the attacks and they try to

offset this by making up stories and making up attacks, some targeted even at me. oh, 30 years ago, they did this, that, and the other, and when you dig into the state reports and the studies, you find none of us were involved in any violence. i've been accused of violence that i didn't even know happened until the day after or days after. there's a difference between having protests that you may not like and being involved in actual violence. but when i watched this insurrection and saw people surprised, i thought about michigan, i thought about oregon, i thought about other things, and i went back 30 years since they liked to do that with activists like me and said, but i've seen people even in law enforcement storm the statehouses and city houses before the violence. let me be exact. 1992. right here in new york, september 15th.

thousands of police marched on the first black mayor, demanding he go. they started jumping on cars, turning cars over in a violent act by any measure. there is video of this. this is not words that people distort. and the speaker at that rally, that violent rally, he was there not a day after, was the president's attorney, rudolph giuliani. it's interesting that when they go back and distort history, they don't talk about the police riot in new york in '92. the new york where rudy giuliani was trying to become mayor the next year, where donald trump, a year before, had taken out ads calling for the execution of five innocent young black and brown boys. people will say, oh, sharpton will go back there, even though they try to go back there with

many of us. i'll tell you a little adage, if you don't tell a liar on me, maybe i won't tell the truth about you. we'll be right back. urce. acetaminophen blocks pain signals. new advil dual action with acetaminophen. want to brain better? unlike ordinary memory supplements— neuriva has clinically proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. try our new gummies for 30 days and see the difference.

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that does it for me. thanks for watching. i'll see you back here tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern. as we get ready to mark what would be the 92nd birthday of

dr. martin luther king jr., i'll speak to his namesake and son, martin luther king iii, about his father's words and warnings about the minefield that american race relations continues to be. my colleague, alicia menendez, picks up our news coverage now. >> thank you, reverend sharpton. what an important conversation that is. we have a big show tonight. senator tina smith, congressman ayanna pressley are going to join us. i'm alicia menendez. tonight, a country on lockdown just four days before the nation's 46th president takes the oath. from capitol hill, where thousands of national guard troops are protecting the peaceful transfer of power, to state capitols facing mountains of threats from extremists. also tonight, joe biden's opening gambit. and as the senate gets ready for yet another trial of donald j. trump, the house announces four committees