universal understanding of what america is, but that understanding has to be based in the fact that we are a nation that practiced u.s. chattel slavery for centuries and it ha single aspect of policy that we see today. >> christina greer, as always, great to have you on. >> thank you. great to see you. >> "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thank you, my friend. much appreciated. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. let's just jump right in, shall we? i mean, usually in the last 40ish hours of a presidency, everything has already turned into a big bye-bye, right? ceremonial stuff starting up, in terms of the old president leaving and the new one coming in, last-minute announcements about, like which bible's going to be used and who's doing the benediction at the inaugural and what about the poet, right? planning the polite meeting/midmorning tea between

the outgoing first lady and the new first lady, and they'll be having a tour and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? we're usually by now pretty well into the predictable and ceremonial part of the inaugural hoopla. but this year, with this outgoing president, that is not our fate. so, things right now are much more nutty than they usually are, and let's just jump right into the nuttiness. all right. you will recall, on friday night, we got late word that the president had received an unusual visitor at the white house. it was the fervently pro-trump guy who runs the pillow company that advertises 24 hours a day on the fox newschannel. he was photographed entering the white house, where it was later reported he met with the president, also with the national security adviser, and also with the white house counsel. yes, the pillow guy. and part of the reason this made waves late on friday was because the pillow guy was photographed

carrying into the white house a folded piece of paper that appeared to be his notes for those meetings. and those notes included reference to implementing the insurrection act and something about martial law? and so, that got a lot of attention. a lot of people zooming in on that photo on friday night and talking about how strange it was that this guy in particular was there to meet with the president about something like that. here's the thing, though. in addition to the play army nonsense about martial law and the insurrection act, you know, this idea that the president's going to somehow use the military to seize power and not let joe biden become president and the military's going to go along with that -- in addition to that nonsense, what this guy was also bringing in to see the president about -- and the national security adviser and the white house counsel -- was also, in addition to the military stuff, what appeared to be a whole bunch of weird demands about intelligence, about the intelligence agencies. again, based on these notes

caught on a telephoto lens, he appears to want to talk to the president about installing a new acting head of the national security agency, the nsa. that's there along with reference you see there to ft. meade. that's where the nsa is located, although that's not how you spell meade. he also wants the cia to be removed, to be replaced in an acting capacity by trump loyalist kash patel, who trump just installed a few weeks ago as pentagon chief of staff. now, again, to be clear, these are the notes of the pillow guy. why, with less than a week in office, is anyone meeting with the pillow guy, let alone him meeting with the white house counsel and the national security adviser and the president? like i said, this is not a normal end of any presidency. but what i'm curious about is, what if these guys think they're actually going to do, if they

somehow wrest control of the nsa and the cia and put it firmly in the hands of loyal trump lieutenants who will do whatever they're told? right? i mean, at least the other part of it, at least the declaring martial law insurrection act fantasy is like something you could write a bad movie about. you know, ousted president commands military junta to seize power and a military dictatorship, rule by force, right? it would be a terrible movie, but you could imagine what the plot would be, right? it would be like a good video game plot, maybe. but in addition to that ridiculous fantasy, the same guys around the president who are pushing that ridiculous fantasy, they're also really prioritizing the nsa and the cia. they want at the very last minute, as their last-ditch effort to wrest control of the nation and prevent the election from having chosen the next president, they want trump people put in right at the last minute at the top of the intelligence agencies, right at the end. for what?

what do they think they're going to do there? what do they think the nsa and the cia can do, if they were suddenly commandeered by truck lackeys? this weekend, the "washington post" was first to report that the president met with the new defense secretary, christopher miller. you'll recall that christopher miller was suddenly installed as defense secretary right after biden won the election. it was this kind of weird reaction to losing the election, right? immediately, fire the defense secretary and install a new guy. the president installed this sort of junior-level guy named christopher miller to become the new acting defense secretary right after he lost the election. he fired mark esper and installed this new guy. well, the president, apparently, according to "the new york times," met with the acting defense secretary, who he recently installed -- christopher miller -- he met with him at the white house on friday. and then, apparently, very soon thereafter, miller -- the acting defense secretary -- called over to the nsa -- the national security agency, the one at ft. meade with an "e" on the end.

he called the nsa and reportedly gave the head of the nsa an ultimatum, that by saturday at 6:00 p.m., the nsa had to install another trump guy at the top of the nsa, as the nsa's general counsel, their top lawyer. that ultimatum was issued after the friday meeting between miller and the president. the trump guy had to be installed as the top lawyer at the nsa by 6:00 p.m. on saturday. and the nsa, apparently, aseeded to that. the head of the nsa apparently didn't want this young trump guy installed at the role at the nsa, had been sort of slow-rolling it and pushing back, but they got an ultimatum, you have to do it immediately, and they apparently went along with it. so now, with literally one day left in trump's presidency, on the last full day that trump will be president, unless he quits, that trump guy's name is ellis, michael ellis, is due to be sworn in tomorrow.

as the top legal counsel at the national security agency. why? why do they want to force this? on literally the last day that trump is president. why do the crazy -- forgive me -- why do the wingnuts who are telling the president he can still stop biden from being sworn in, he can still keep power by force somehow -- why do the wingnuts who are talking to the president about this stuff think that putting trump people in at the top of the nsa and the cia at the last minute will somehow advance that cause? i don't know, but they are, in fact, going ahead with doing it, at least to the extent they can. and we now know tonight that house speaker nancy pelosi is trying to stop it. pelosi releasing this letter to the acting defense secretary today. it says, dear acting secretary miller, i am writing to follow up on my phone conversation with you earlier today, during which i expressed my deep concern about the irregularities involved in the selection of the general counsel of the national

security administration. i ask that you immediately cease plans to improperly install michael ellis as the new nsa general counsel. additionally, with a copy of this letter to the inspector general, i am also requesting an investigation into the circumstances of the nsa general counsel selection process. i have serious concerns about your statement that this process was free from political interference. the circumstances and timing of the selection of mr. ellis, this 11th-hour effort to push this placement in the last three days of this administration, pelosi says, are highly suspect. further, the efforts to install him or burrow him into a highly sensitive intelligence position 72 hours prior to the beginning of a new administration manifests a disturbing disregard for our national security. therefore, this placement should not move forward. thank you for your attention to this matter. best regards, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house. and the letter is, in fact, cc'd to the inspector general, who she is asking to, basically,

investigate miller for whatever it is he is trying to do here, apparently at trump's insistence. pelosi is trying to stop it. the question is why they are trying to do it, at the very, very, very last moment. literally, they're trying to swear this guy in at the top of nsa 24 hours before biden is inaugurated. and, you know, yes, at a surface level, that will stick biden with the annoying job of having to find a way to fire that guy or, you know, reassigning him to some very important job in antarctic watching paint dry outside, you know, or something else that they could do with that guy. but think about where the impetus of this is coming from. what do the trump folks think they can do with the military and the intelligence agencies in just these last few days? why bother installing all these new ones right at the end before biden gets in there? we will see.

with d.c. locked down now in red zones and green zones, and with troops marching in the streets of downtown d.c., as 20,000-something armed national guard troops are on site for the inaugural, no one knows what weirdness the president might try from his last hours atop the federal government. we don't know what weirdness he will try from within the white house in his last 40ish hours or what weirdness his supporters might try outside. the state capitols were quieter than expected this weekend, but i guess that's sort of a matter of perspective now. we still had trump supporters show up in body armor with loaded semiautomatic rifles at several state capitols, but at least they didn't mount an organized attack on those state capitols the way they did on the u.s. capitol and congress a week and a half ago, so we see that now as progress. the arrests of trump's supporters who participated in the violent attack on the capitol have continued every day since the attack, including through this weekend and into

today. i'm sorry to have to tell you that the bomber is still at large, though. whoever placed operational pipe bombs at the headquarters of the republican and democratic parties during the capitol siege, as far as we know, that person has not yet been apprehended, so we can say the bomber is still at large, as is, apparently, a woman who is wanted in conjunction with what may have been the theft of a laptop from the office of house speaker nancy pelosi. in a truly bizarre turn, the fbi affidavit filed in support of federal charges against this young woman from pennsylvania says this about the woman's purported plans for pelosi's laptop -- quote, witness one claimed to have spoken to friends of the suspect who showed witness one a video of the suspect taking a laptop computer or hard drive from speaker pelosi's office during the capitol attack. witness one stated that the suspect intended to send the computer device to a friend in russia, who then planned to sell

the device to svr, russia's foreign intelligence service. according to witness one, the transfer of the computer device to russia fell through for unknown reasons, and the suspect still has the computer device or has destroyed it. this matter remains under investigation. get me rewrite! this can't actually be anything that we try to pass off as a real plot. i mean, this is ridiculous! but this is -- this is how the trump presidency is careening into its final wall. we still don't know what the timing will be on the senate impeachment trial for president trump. the senate comes back into session tomorrow. if speaker pelosi decides that she's going to deliver the article of impeachment against trump that passed the house, if she decides to deliver that over to the senate as early as tomorrow when the senate comes back, that will start a clock ticking, where basically, the senate has 24 hours to start

trump's impeachment trial. they've only got 24 hours to start it, once the article has been formally conveyed to them. now, neither speaker pelosi, nor the democratic leader in the senate, chuck schumer, nor the republican leader in the senate, mitch mcconnell, nor anyone else is talking about when that might happen, so we really, really, do not know when to expect the president's impeachment trial to begin. similarly, we do not know what to expect in terms of the president's defense in that trial, or, honestly, if there will be one at all. on saturday, the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani, told abc news that he would be the president's defense counsel in the president's impeachment trial in the senate. that was on saturday. then saturday night, giuliani went to the white house and spent saturday night there. and however much fun that might have been, the following day on sunday, mr. giuliani had changed his mind and said, actually, he wouldn't be serving as the president's defense counsel after all. the thing is, apparently, nobody else is serving in that role,

either. no one has come forward to say they're doing that job. the lawyer, jenna ellis, who paired up with giuliani for their comically failed legal efforts to contest the election in multiple states, she tweeted a statement today saying she would not be representing the president's campaign going forward either. the statement sort of made it seem like she wouldn't be representing trump in any capacity moving forward. i guess there had been some supposition that maybe she'd be the president's defense lawyer for his impeachment trial? i don't know. won't be her, either. won't be giuliani. not going to be pat cipollone. he won't be white house counsel on sunday. no word that any of the other lawyers who participated in the first impeachment defense will be doing it a second time. honestly, there is no one at this hour who is apparently lined up to be the president's defense counsel, which does raise the weird possibility that maybe he won't even mount a defense, i guess?

i mean, did i mention that the trial might start as soon as the day after tomorrow? you don't have a lawyer yet? you can't even get giuliani? we are still on pardon watch. multiple news organizations now reporting that tomorrow and wednesday morning we should expect a gigantic tide of dozens of pardons from trump, possibly more than 100. "the new york times" reporting that there's a brisk market now in people selling access to the president so people can get one of those pardons. that's a nice way to go out. if the president does decide he's going to write a whole new chapter of constitutional contests, by trying to issue a pardon to himself, a lot of legal observers are warning, that might very well raise the chances that trump could face federal criminal charges after he leaves office. i mean, the only way to determine the constitutionality of a self-pardon by a president

would be to actually charge that president with a federal crime, and, thereby, test the pardon by seeing if the courts uphold it. if a president tries to pardon himself, that's never happened before in u.s. history. if that were laying around untested and nobody knew if that self-pardon from trump was effective or just an assertion by him, but it wasn't a constitutional thing, that's like in a play leaving around like a proverbial loaded gun, right? you just wouldn't do that constitutionally. if the president is going to try to pardon himself, dollars to doughnuts say that that pardon, that self-pardon, is going to be tested in the courts, because nobody can leave that laying around, not knowing whether or not the president has been able to effectuate that sort of self-immunity, right? and so, if he self-pardons, he is probably increasing the chances that he will face federal criminal charges. and i imagine that that is not a position this president wants to put himself in. i would be, therefore, surprised

if he tries to pardon himself, but what do i know? it still seems to me that the cleanest way out for president trump, in terms of his federal criminal exposure remains for him to resign sometime before noon on wednesday, in exchange for a promise from mike pence that he will give trump a pardon in the short time that he holds the presidency before biden is sworn in. that's the cleanest way out of this. but the president, apparently, can't bring himself to do that? there's no reporting that he is heading toward that decision. abc news is actually reporting now that president trump doesn't trust vice president mike pence that he would actually follow through with a pardon, even if he promised it to him, which is amazing in its own way. but what we are heading into over these next two days is weird! it's unsettled. it's unpredictable in all sorts of bad ways. there is a certain comfort to the fact that this is supposed to be a predictable, kind of boring time, a ceremonial time,

where we know what's going to happen, and it's not fraught, and it's not dangerous. in this case, though, nothing that we're doing is something that we have done before. for example, we do not expect the president and first lady, mr. and mrs. trump, to welcome the new president and new first lady, mr. and mrs. biden, to the white house. presidents have done that for generations. the trumps will not. we do not expect that polite meeting/midmorning tea between the first ladies, nor do we expect the outgoing first lady to give the incoming first lady a tour. nor do we expect the outgoing or incoming president to share a ride to the capitol for the swearing-in, let alone have any sort of substantive meeting. what we do expect, for what it's worth, is for president trump and the first lady to bug out of the white house early wednesday morning before the bidens arrive. we learned today they have been sending out invitations to what they want to be a send-off party for president trump at, like, 8:00 in the morning at andrews air base on wednesday.

so, i think the idea is that he would leave the white house really early and chopper or drive over to andrews, and at andrews, ultimately, he'll get on air force one to fly him to his house in florida because he will still be president because this will all happen before biden is sworn in at noon. but before they actually put him on the airplane for him to fly away to florida, the white house has now started sending out invitations to people to try to get them to come cheer trump bye-bye at the air base. and it is not clear the effort has been going well. do you remember the mooch? remember anthony scaramucci? he is a former trump friend who served for like five minutes as white house press secretary, who has since become a scathing and occasionally profane critic of president trump. today, mr. scaramucci marvelled publicly that he was sent an invitation to the send-off at andrews air base, which is hilarious. i mean, are they going to invite

steve schmidt and mary trump and michael cohen and mitt romney, too? like, have you googled what scaramucci's been saying about the president recently? you're inviting him to the send-off? scaramucci said today, quote, trust me, that had to be a mass email, if one of them got sent to me. we don't know how many people they've invited to go to this send-off at the air base. i don't know where they got the invite list for people they've asked to come cheer out president trump, but each invitee is told that they should bring five guests in addition to themselves, which is kind of asking a lot and which does suggest they are having trouble generating a crowd. one administration source telling cnn tonight, quote, there haven't been a lot of rsvps. today, vice president-elect kamala harris resigned from the united states senate in preparation of her inauguration as vice president. california's new u.s. senator was sworn in to take her seat, former california secretary of state alex padilla.

california is nearly 40% latino. the state of california has never had a latino u.s. senator before today, and now they do. we also learned today that supreme court justice sonia sotomayor will be swearing in vice president harris on wednesday. justice sotomayor swore in joe biden for his second term as vice president in 2013. she will also do the honors for ms. harris the day after tomorrow. incoming white house chief of staff ron klain has outlined in a memo some of what will be president biden's first actions after he's sworn in. and it's a lot. day one, we're told he will rescind trump's muslim ban, his travel ban on muslim-majority countries. biden will also, day one, have the united states rejoin the paris climate accord. he will also extend the moratorium against evictions and foreclosures that went into effect because of the covid pandemic. he will extend the pause on the requirement to pay back federal student loans. again, a pause put into effect

because of the covid disaster. biden will instate a mask requirement on federal property and in interstate travel. he will order federal agencies to figure out how to reunite the families that the trump administration tore apart at the border. it's apparently going to be an executive order to federal agencies that they need to figure out how to find kids who were taken from their parents by the trump administration, and they need to find ways to get those kids and those parents back together. there's also reporting tonight that president biden will stop the permits for the keystone tar sands oil pipeline, either on his first day in office or shortly thereafter. and we're told there are going to be two major pushes for legislation. all those things i previously described i think will be things that they can do just out of the oval office, without the involvement of congress, at least for the most part. but there's two big legislative pushes that they want to put in congress' hands day one. one of them, of course, is the covid relief and recovery bill that biden outlined last week.

and the other, at last, a proposed reform of the nation's decrepit and dysfunctional immigration laws. and it is not that long ago that republicans said they would support something like that. but that will be introduced day one. day one, as in inauguration day, as in the day after tomorrow. in just a moment, we're going to talk with jeh johnson, former homeland security secretary, about the security concerns around inauguration day this year. he was in charge of inaugural security in 2016 -- or i guess 2017, after the 2016 election. he was the designated survivor from the cabinet that day as homeland security secretary. jeh johnson is going to join us live in just a moment to talk about what he is expecting in terms of threat and security on wednesday this week. but vice president-elect harris and president-elect biden will arrive in white house tomorrow, on tuesday, ahead of wednesday's solemn and, this year, kind of

worrying ceremony that is the transfer of power. and this is interesting, and i think important, what they are going to do tomorrow in washington, their last day as private citizens, their last day before inauguration, their first act together in washington as a new soon-to-be governing team, what they're going to do tomorrow is they're going to lead a national memorial service, a national memorial to honor the 400,000 americans who have been killed by the coronavirus already. imagine the outgoing president even trying to muster the courage and the decency to even try to do that, to even think of it, to even gesture in that direction. but that's what biden and harris will do tomorrow. they will help light 400 lights at the reflecting pool at the lincoln memorial, one light for every 1,000 americans killed. the archbishop of washington, d.c., will give an invocation. all around the country, landmarks like the empire state building in new york and the

space needle in seattle, all other landmarks around the country will light up at 5:30 p.m. eastern time for a national commemoration to remember the dead. that is what they will do tomorrow. and then the next day, we'll see how it goes. it's a day and a half from now, less than two days, but boy, does it still feel like a long while yet. boy, does it still feel like a lot can go wrong. hang on. lots to get to tonight. hang on. lots to get to tonight on't have go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the services of the post office plus ups only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. hey, i just got a text from my sister.

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in texas, they showed up wearing off-the-shelf tactical gear and carrying ar-15s. in oregon, it was ski masks and body armor and upside down american flags and signs saying "disarm the government." same thing in ohio, where about two dozen armed men gathered at the statehouse in columbus on sunday. at least one guy dressed up in sort of revolutionary war garb, except that's definitely not a musket. in lansing, michigan, as recently as october, you'll recall, a domestic terror plot there to kidnap and perhaps assassinate michigan's governor, gretchen whitmer. armed protesters showed up at the michigan state capitol as well. this weekend could have been scary. it was billed as potentially round two of the violence from trump supporters that we saw at the u.s. capitol on january 6th. the fbi, you will recall, issued a bulletin warning of armed

protests, armed shows of force at all 50 state capitols. and yes, there were armed, sometimes very almost comically heavily armed protesters at state capitols across the country, but mostly what we saw on sunday were very, very small numbers of them, and they were wildly outnumbered by both law enforcement and, in some cases, members of the press, and in some cases, peaceful counterprotesters. meanwhile, the show of force actually is overwhelming in washington, d.c. roughly 25,000 u.s. national guard forces deployed on the streets of the nation's capital in advance of the inauguration less than 40 hours from now. that's at least 2 1/2 times the number of national guard forces that have been on hand for previous inaugurations. this year, with stakes this high, threats this real, making sure the transfer of power goes off without more violence is a different and daunting task. are we ready? joining us now is jeh johnson.

he was homeland security secretary and pentagon general counsel under president obama. as homeland security secretary, he was the man, effectively, in charge of inauguration security when donald trump and mike pence were sworn in, in 2017. mr. secretary, it's really nice to see you tonight. thanks for your time. >> rachel, i've got to begin with this. your lead-in was truly stunning. why does the pillow guy, who apparently can't even get his act together to tuck in his shirt tails before he goes into the oval office, even know that there is such a person who is the general counsel of nsa? i hired two of them. it is an apolitical appointment in collaboration with the director of the nsa. that is -- that really troubles me. among a number of things, obviously. >> let me just press you on that little bit. we saw right after biden won the election, we saw the president in one of his first acts fire the defense secretary, install

young, political trump loyalist guys as chief of staff of the pentagon, as other senior pentagon jobs. we've now seen this move at the nsa to get this young man installed as the general counsel of nsa. those kinds of jobs that the president filled in with these, forgive me, seemingly very quite unqualified people, right after the election -- are those the kinds of jobs from which significant mischief could be made? >> i would say that the senior legal official of the national security agency is a very significant and relevant position, and it should be and always has been an apolitical appointment. you note the last-minute appointments and the vacancies? i think part of the reason we saw the disaster week before last is because we had an acting secretary of homeland security -- we've had six of them in the life of this

administration -- an acting secretary of defense and an acting attorney general. and this president seems to feel that he can just cycle people in and out like this with no continuity whatsoever. so, yes, it is extremely troubling, and i hope and expect that the incoming biden administration will clean this up and fix it. >> are you worried about wednesday and about the security threats? obviously, we are seeing an overwhelming, a very intimidating show of force with all those national guard troops now setting up on cots inside the capitol building. and i know that you know as well as anybody what it means to deploy that much force, but for an event like this -- >> yes. >> -- do you feel like it's the right approach? >> i believe it has to be. wednesday's event will be what we refer to as an nsse, a national special security event. the secret service will have overall responsibility for the security of the event, in coordination with a whole lot of

other law enforcement agencies -- d.c. metro, fbi, marshals, tsa, the coast guard, fema -- i could go on and on. and they will make the event virtually impenetrable from land, sea, and air. this will be an nsse, i suspect, on steroids. and i also suspect that the ratio of attendees to gun carriers with badges will be about one to one. that's unfortunate, but given the threat environment, it is probably necessary. >> in terms of the threat environment more broadly and as it pertains to the president, himself, there's one other thing in the news that i really wanted to just get your take on. a woman who served as the deputy director of national intelligence to donald trump, sue gordon, respected intelligence professional, has made a provocative call, saying that as an ex-president,

president trump shouldn't receive intelligence briefings the way that other ex-presidents do, that he's too much, essentially, too much of a risk to american national security to be given any ongoing access to sensitive information. do you think that's worth considering? it seems like the incoming biden administration is at least not dismissing that possibility out of hand. >> i think there is something to that, quite frankly. this is not going to be like, you know, kennedy's need to consult eisenhower during the cuban missile crisis or even bush 43's occasional consultation of bush 41 during the iraq war. i cannot imagine a legitimate, worthwhile circumstance under which any of donald trump's successors will need to consult him on any classified matter. so you know, classified materials, security clearances are a need-know basis. and historically, former presidents do have a need to know for purposes of

consultation and the like, but it's difficult to imagine that here, given some of the things that we know this outgoing president has done with classified information to which he's been entrusted. >> jeh johnson, former secretary of homeland security under president obama. sir, it's a huge week. there's a lot going on. thanks for taking time to talk to us tonight. >> good to see you, rachel. >> we've got much more to get to tonight. rachel. >> we've got much more to get to tonight.

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my hands are everything to me. but i was diagnosed with dupuytren's contracture. and it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. thought surgery was my only option. turns out i was wrong. so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. with less than two days left in office, tonight donald trump issued a new executive order that aims to end the coronavirus travel restrictions imposed on people coming into the united states. the president last year blocked some foreign travelers from entering the country as a protection against covid. the president repeatedly touted that policy as if it were a major victory, even though we very quickly grew to have the largest coronavirus epidemic on earth all by ourselves. president trump, of course,

didn't do much else in terms of policy on covid, besides that initial travel ban. but now tonight, he's undone even that. and this is interesting. per the executive order signed by the president tonight, the travel restrictions will officially expire next tuesday, january 26th. and i think the idea must have been that they wanted to dump an awkward decision into the lap of the incoming biden/harris administration. let the travel restrictions lapse because of this executive order at the last minute from president trump or undo the executive order and leave the travel restrictions in place. i think maybe the president thought this would be a huge conundrum for biden and harris. he'd show them! turns out, it's not that hard. the incoming press secretary for the biden administration, jen psaki, says tonight that biden and harris will reverse trump's attempt to lift the covid travel restrictions and they'll leave them in place. biden press secretary jen psaki saying tonight, quote, with the pandemic worsening and more

contagious variants emerging around the world, this is not the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel. on the advice of our medical team, the administration doesn't intend to lift these restrictions on january 26th. we are on day subzero of the biden administration, and right out of the gate, these are the kind of own-goal, would-be policy quagmires that trump is trying to leave behind to mess them up. here's another good one. over the weekend, vladimir putin's main opposition in russia, his top critic, the charismatic and very effective russian politician alexei navalny, returned to russia. he, of course, has been in germany since this summer after he was poisoned with a russian-made chemical weapon. he believes vladimir putin gave the direct order for him to be poisoned and killed by the russian state, but navalny survived the assassination attempt. he flew back to russia yesterday after this months-long recovery. before he even made it back on the ground, things went wonky. his flight was originally set to

fly into moscow, but they diverted his flight to an entirely different russian city at the last moment. the flight crew said it was for technical reasons, but meanwhile, there were thousands of navalny's supporters waiting at the moscow airport to welcome him home. oh, shame that flight got diverted, huh? before he even made it out of border control at the airport, russian police detained him on one in a long series of bogus, trumped-up charges. he was held overnight at a nearby police station without access to a lawyer. he had a hearing this morning at a police station, instead of a courtroom. his lawyer was told about the hearing minutes before it started. the judge ruled navalny will remain in jail until his trial later this month, where he will be facing years in prison. you can see the police escorting him to jail here. our outgoing president, donald trump, of course, has deferred, totied to vladimir putin for four years. that has upended years, right,

of america's efforts to try to push back on some of russia's worst behavior. during trump's presidency, putin's aggression has remained virtually unchecked by the united states. it's emboldened him to get more and more brazen, like throwing his political opponents in jail in broad daylight. but we're about to have a new president who's going to have to figure out what to do, now that putin has dropped this huge provocation right at joe biden's feet. locked up navalny the week that biden is being sworn in. with the dawn of a new presidency upon us, what should we expect in terms of our country's now terribly fraught and terribly weird relationship with a hyperaggressive russia? michael mcfaul, former u.s. ambassador to russia, joins us next. stay with us. ambassador to russs next stay with us ou are... don't settle for silver 7 moisturizers 3 vitamins 24 hours hydration gold bond champion your skin these folks, they don't have time to go to the post office

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with less than two days before joe biden is inaugurated as president, there's already an international crisis waiting for him, one that -- it's hard to

really know how the u.s. is going to respond to, given what has happened over the past four years between us and the nation of russia. russia's main opposition leader, alexei navalny, freshly recovered from a near-fatal poisoning that's widely believed to have been the work of russian intelligence operatives -- navalny has now been arrested upon his return to russia. it's the kind of behavior by vladimir putin that the united states would previously have led the world in condemning, but now, after four years of bizarre behavior and bowing and scraping from the u.s. president toward an increasingly emboldened russia, what options does the incoming administration have? how much does the new playbook that they have to deal with and they have to work from look anything like the way that america could handle threats and provocations like this from our rivals around the world in the past? joining us now is former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. professor, it's great to see you. thank you so much for being here. >> sure. glad to be here. >> so, alexei navalny is calling

on his supporters to protest in the streets in russia. that's expected to happen as soon as this week. do you think that this is going to turn into a major event, a major source of protest, potentially a major crisis in russia? >> well, it's hard to predict. it's very cold in moscow and in other cities in moscow right now, and there's a lot of uncertainty about his ultimate fate. we don't really know what they're doing with him. they've put him in jail for 30 days. but it won't go away. i want to be clear. maybe it won't happen this weekend. maybe it will happen in months. maybe it will happen in years from now. but i do think this is an inflection point in the struggle between putin's autocracy and the russian democratic movement, personified by their leader, alexei navalny. everybody needs to remember, he was poisoned by this regime, barely survived, went to germany, recovered, and then said, i'm going back, i have no choice but to fight for that.

and the regime looks like they do not know what to do with him. so, i suspect -- i don't know what will happen on saturday, but i'm quite certain this struggle will go on for months and years to come. >> do you have any sense of what playbook the biden administration is going to have to play from when it comes toward russia? obviously, after four years of whatever that bizarre soap opera was between donald trump and vladimir putin, putin clearly feels emboldened, he clearly feels like he has enough room to maneuver to do whatever he wants in terms of dealing with international response to it. but how much has the u.s. capability and orientation towards russia changed? do you have any sense of what the new normal will be like between biden and putin? >> well, there are two important aspects to your question. in terms of our capability of being the leader of the free world, president trump has done

tremendous damage to that. four years of the way he's behaved, particularly at home, as we all have seen most recently, makes it very difficult for us to now say, to reclaim the mantle of the leader of the democratic world. but number two, president biden, president-elect biden -- soon i'll be able to say president biden -- he has a very different view from russia. i actually was in the last meeting he had with prime minister putin back in 2011. 30 minutes after that meeting, he met with democratic opposition leaders, right after that meeting. people like navalny. so, he's going to bring morality back. he's going to bring human rights back to his foreign policy. number two, we're not going to have these divides between the president and his administration, as we did for four years with respect to trump's policy towards russia. biden is not going to try to be putin's friend. and the rest of his administration is not going to have to whisper to people like me to say, hey, that's not what we really meant. this is our real policy. that will change. and third, he's going to try to

bring our allies together so that we have a common front of liberal democracies against putin's russia. all those changes, i think, will be easy and clear in the beginning. the hard part is to get putin to change his ways. that's another matter. that's going to be very difficult even for president biden. >> well, speaking of changing his ways, there's this fbi bulletin within the last few days that says that russia, as well as china and iran -- but they go out of their way to describe what russia has been doing -- has been doing everything they can online to augment the crisis, as represented by the u.s. capitol attack, to augment the divisive claims, to hype more disinformation about the attack. quote, in at least one instance, a russian proxy claimed that antifa members disguised themselves as supporters of president trump and were responsible for storming the capitol building.

the fbi says russia is basically trying to use the capitol attack and whatever is going on with the president's supporters to try to make that wedge even wider and try to fan the flames as much as they can. is that something that we should just expect forever now? >> that is most certainly what putin will try to do in the coming months and years, most certainly. what i hope is that the biden administration will have a much better strategy for repelling that, for deterring that, for greater resilience here at home in containing putin's belligerent behavior abroad. what's been missing in the trump year is no strategy. it's been a bunch of reactions. he says one thing, his national security adviser says another. i think this administration needs to come in -- and i hate to say it, but i think we have to go back to cold war strategies and a strategy of containment of the belligerency of putin's russia. cooperate when we must, stand up for values, but i think it means a multidimensional strategy that

will have to be in place for years, and i suspect, decades to come. >> former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. it's great to see you, sir. thanks very much to are your time tonight. it's a big week. >> sure. thanks for having me. >> all right. we'll be right back, actually, and i should tell you, on the other side of this break, a sort of, a story that's just broken in the "washington post" about what intelligence agencies are recognizing about the threat on wednesday at the inauguration. sort of -- i'll have it for you right after the break. it's just broken. stay with us. right after the br. it's just broken stay with us

new reporting within the last five minutes from the "washington post." i'm just going to read you the headline here. as you can see, i think we put it up on the screen. qanon adherents discussed posing as national guard to try to infiltrate inauguration, according to fbi intelligence briefing. here's the lead of what carol leonnig and matt zapotosky are reporting. the fbi privately warned law enforcement agencies monday that far-right extremists have discussed posing as national guard members in washington and others have reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city, signs of potential efforts to disrupt wednesday's inauguration. the intelligence report obtained by the "washington post" is a summary of threats that the fbi identified today. it warns that both lone wolves and adherents of the qanon extremist ideology, some of whom joined in the siege on the

capitol on january 6th, have indicated they plan to come to washington for the inauguration. the fbi said it has also observed people downloading and sharing maps of sensitive locations in washington and discussing how the facilities could be used to interfere in security during the inauguration. qanon members have discussed posing as national guard soldiers, believing it would be easy for them to infiltrate secure areas, according to the document, which adds that members have been crowd-sourcing images to surveil the security perimeter. one defense official speaking on the condition of aminity acknowledged that national guard members have been warned to watch for anyone in uniform who looks like they are out of place. the fbi has also observed an increase in surveillance of law enforcement security preparations for the inauguration. national guard soldiers, according to the report, have reported seeing several individuals photographing and recording their work. some of those have been uploaded online. the intelligence briefing also noted reports of unknown individuals accessing camera footage of secured areas where

public access is prohibited. again, that news just breaking tonight in the "washington post." about new security warnings from the fbi. not good. all right, that is going to do it for us, for now. i will see you again tomorrow night. "way too early with kasie hunt" is up next. the united states now just 31 hours away from swearing in a new president, as we learn more about joe biden's plans on the way in. the question, what is donald trump planning on the way out? plus, alarming, new information ahead of the biden/harris inauguration. despite security at an all-time high, the question is, are all our bases covered? and capitol police share harrowing stories of being overrun by rioters and abandoned by their leadership during the january 6th attack. the question this morning -- where were their commanders? it's "way too early" for this.