sy. awesome. hey look, i found the tent! get xfinity home with no term contract required. click or call today. ♪♪ ♪♪ good morning. it's saturday, january 23rd. i'm ali velshi. welcome to our special report

inside the biden agenda. overnight a stunning report in "the new york times" on how top trump justice department officials were nearly forced to resign after the former president and his supporters hatched yet another plot to overturn the election results. we'll have more on that in just a moment. first, this week ushered in a time of change and renewal in this country. the inauguration of joe biden and kamala harris representing the peaceful transition of power that is central to our democracy. it took place at the same site where over two weeks ago there was a violent attack on congress. unlike in years past crowd size at the event of the limited because of covid-19 and security concerns. joseph r. biden was sworn in as the 46th united states president and sounded a note of peace and unity. >> and my whole soul is in this, bringing america together, uniting our people and uniting our nation and i ask every american to join me in this

cause. >> we must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. today, at this time, in this place, let's start afresh. >> while the outgoing president broke with tradition and did not attend, three other former u.s. presidents were on hand to join in that message. >> we've got to not just listen to folks we agree with, but listen to folks we don't. >> think if americans would love their neighbor like they'd like to be loved themselves, a lot of the division in our society would end. >> everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbors. >> over his first three days in office president biden had signed dozens of executive orders, many undoing policies by the previous administration.

they remove the ban muslim countries, halting the border wall and supporting immigration reform and racial equality. others are aimed directly at the battle against the kroef pandemic including imposing a mask mandate at federal properties and requiring international travellers to provide proof of a negative covid-19 test prior to traveling to the united states and speeding up the delivery of stimulus checks to the public and expanding benefits and school meal plans. >> our national strategy is comprehensive. it's based on science, not politics. it's based on truth, not denial and is detailed. our national plan launches a full-scale wartime effort to address the supply shortages by ramping up production and protective equipment, syringes and needles, you name it. >> even as biden enacts new initiatives laying out covid-19 laying out a plan for 100 million in his first 100 days in

office. the death toll could top 500,000 in january. while the covid czar jeff zeinst, and the supply of vaccine which are critically low and information which was not shared readily during the transition period. one guy that found himself at the center of many a covid firestorm is dr. anthony fauci who talked about the change in the administration this week. >> it is very clear that there were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that that really was an uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact. you didn't feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn't be repercussions about it. the idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence and what the science is and know that's it. let the science speak, it is somewhat of a liberating feeling. >> yes.

it's a liberating feeling for the rest of us, too. alongside all of this, we are about to see the second impeachment trial of the former insurrectionist president and chuck schumer of new york announced that house managers will present the article, singular, of impeachment to the senate on monday. on tuesday members will be sworn in for trial and arguments will begin the week of february 8th. also at the top of the shell, a bombshell new york times report uncovering a scheme from the waning days from the former administration that reads like an exxonian saturday night massacre in the making. katie benner, quote, the justice department's top leaders listened in stunned silence this month. one of their peer his devised a plan with the former president to oust jeffrey rosen as acting attorney general and force georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results. because mr. rosen had refused the president's treaties to carry out those plans the former president was about to decide

whether to fire mr. rosen and replace him with mr. clark. the department officials con vened on a conference call and asked each other what will you do if mr. rosen was dismissed. the answer was unanimous, they would resign. >> joining me is carol lenning and msnbc contributor and reporter with "the washington post" and coauthor of the book "a very stable genius, donald trump's testing of america" and she broke that new york times story that i just read you a quote from. good morning to both of you. katie, i was puzzled. i saw this story when it came out last night and i was thinking when the rest of us things were calming down and donald trump was out of ammunition and every stunt he had tried had failed they were not just continuing to try, they were trying at the highest levels. the idea that the trump installed acting attorney general would be thrown out by trump to try to overturn this election is mind-boggling. in yes.

i mean, this really shows two things, one, it's the kull minh asian of trump's relationship with the justice department in general. we've seen this he spent four years trying to bend law and order to his will. it is very unlikely that he was going to stop just because he had lost the election. we obviously didn't know exactly how much pressure he was willing to put on them. we did see a flash of this when "the washington post" broke on sunday january 3rd the audio with the conversation from the georgia secretary of state. you got a flavor for exactly how far he was going to go and how desperate he was to find a way to stop thor is the if i kagsz of joe biden's win. >> and carol, over to you because you're at "the washington post" and that's true, that we got a sense of it after the election around christmas and the following week about conversations, plural, that the president had had with officials in georgia, implication, what seemed like cajoling and to some people threats that he was not over this. this was the end of december and donald trump was still trying to

overturn this election. >> absolutely. and many of bill barr's former attorney general bill barr's colleagues said that basically his departure just before christmas was because he was sort of tired of the president haranguing him about overturning the election. hats off to katie for breaking this great scoop which, you know, last night my colleagues and i were scurrying to confirm, and i have to say one of the big takeaways from this is not just the president's desperation, but the fact that he is somehow able to always find another person who will enable his nutty scheme and replace the person who is pushing against him. in this case, we learned last night and katie broke most of this, too, but we confirmed that pat sipiloan who tried to help him stay in power and avoid

impeachment and a vote impeachment in the senate that he was telling the president this cannot stand. we are not going to overturn the georgia election and remove your acting attorney general weeks, days before the inauguration of joe biden. >> katie, i guess i'm looking for your interpretation on this a little bit because while carol is right there always seemed to be a bottomless pit of people who would entertain the president's notions, your reporting is that a number of other people who got on the conference call said we will resign if you try to do this. i'm trying to get an interpretation as to whether the system held up or there are enough good people around to stop this kind of thing from happening and what was an attempted coup from happening. >> i think it's a combination of both. the justice department like we've all spoken about for so long was so used to being battered by trump that i think that the strategy for a while had been to appease him or to

ignore him or try to work around his more egregious efforts to get people to potentially break the law and this one was just too much. there was no way they were going to stand by and have jeff rosen be removed because including william barr who worked so hard when rosen got that job when barr left because they felt he would do the right thing and keep the department out of this mess. so, yes, it was a combination of this is the last straw and we are just not going to do this right before the certification. it's ridiculous. >> carol, we have learned in the last few years and certainly in the last year or so, over time people can argue over what the most important cabinet position is and sometimes it's been treasury and sometimes it's been state, but in this administration it has been the attorney general and the willingness of the attorney general to carry the president's water. how does that get remedied under the biden administration? it's more than just putting the

right purpose in the job and it's a sea change for how we see the responsibilities of the department of justice and seeing the people's department and the people's attorney general and not the president's. >> it is such a good question because honestly after 20 years of covering the justice department from afar, writing about lawsuits and attorney across the country, criminal investigations and civil cases, i've never seen the morale in that agency so decimated and so low. there were people who were preparing their resignation papers if donald trump had been re-elected. that's how despondent they were about the lack of independence of this agency. the inability to sort of fend off the president's manipulations, and diminishments, right? this is an objective, blind, justice agency and those public servants were sick to death. sick to the tee. i think the next attorney

general, merrick garland has a very, very large assignment and been of the key ones is making sure everyone remembers what the justice department was and that there will be no broking of manipulation and political interference and no special nighttime calls to interfere in a case and help out somebody important or well heeled. that is over. we are going back to business as usual. >> keeping my fingers crossed on that one. carol lenny, pulitzer prize-winning reporter and co-author of "a very stable genius:'s donald trump's testing of america. thank you to both of you for your excellent reporting this morning. valerie jarrett, former president adviser to barack obama and the auth are on of "finding my voice. when the perfect plan crumble, the adventure begins." valerie, good to see you this is our new outing together under the new administration. i guess this is the third full

day of this administration. i want to get your take because you were a senior adviser to president barack obama the last time joe biden was in this administration. give me a sense of where we are right now. >> well, good morning, ali. what a difference four days make. i can tell you my blood pressure has gone down, i'm sleeping better at night. we now have a president of the united states who is waking up every day thinking about us and he is following through decisively and swiftly on commitments he made during the course of the campaign. so it feels good. >> let's talk -- >> yeah, sure, go ahead independent i'm sorry to interrupt you, valerie. these delays on the internet, i thought you had finished speaking. i apologize for that. to the point that we were just discussing, katie benner and carol lenig and i, part of it is appointing the right people to be in the right positions and part of it is a rehabilitation to the positions themselves to

make it clear that cabinet secretaries and government officials serve the american people and the constitution and not the president of the united states, an idea that's been perverted for the last four years. >> well, that's exactly right, ali. look, tone starts at the top. you need a president who understands his oath of office, and by selecting merrick garland, the chief judge of the d.c. circuit, somebody who has served with integrity and character and understands the role of the justice department, you stand a far better chance of rehabilitating the department and setting a new tone and the practices and adhering to its independence and when president biden announced his selection of merrick garland he said to the public, what i expect is an independent justice department, and we are not going do the violation of the practices and policies and integrity of the department that we've seen over the last four years. >> there are tensions that some people report on between

different parts of the democratic party. i happen to think that's a good thing, right? a healthy party means want everybody has the same view on anything, any this administration has to straddle those lines when it comes to immigration, climate, and social distancing. >> i agree with you. one of the strengths of the democratic party is we've always had a big tent and voices matter from all perspectives, and i think we can learn from the way that president biden led after the primary where all of his opponents in the primary not only supported him, but worked hard for his election. he established clearly what his priorities were going to be. he has not waivered from those, but he also understands that you can't let perfect be the enemy of the good and he has to work with those arc cross the aisle including those of his own party to tackle this covid-19, re-establish our place in the

world and heal the racial wounds that have torn our country apart and fight for equity and inclusion and those are the values that president biden has had his entire life and he recognizes that that's where the american people are which is why he received more votes than any other president in our history, and i think that that wind at his back is important and also important, as he said, there are 70 million people who did not vote for him, and he is their president, too, the character and coverage tense that he's had, and his time in the senate all give him an enormous leg up to move our country forward. ? i'm glad you made that last point, valerie, that it's a bigger job than threading a needle about the different parts of the democratic party. joe biden has said and we should all encourage the idea that he's the president of all american, democrat or not. valerie, thank you for joining

us. valerie jarrett, former senior adviser to president barack obama. author of the great book "finding my voice, when the perfect plan crumbles the adventure begins." it was down right disgraceful and how is it possible that none of the people involved in the last administration expressed shame about that. coming up at the top of the hour on the cross connection, tiffany cross is joined by congressman eric swalwell and senator mazie hirono to discuss the trial to begin the week of february 8th. stick around. you are watching msnbc. e watchic you're in the right place. my seminars are a great tool to help young homeowners who are turning into their parents. now, remember, they're not programs. they're tv shows. you woke up early. no one cares. yes. so, i was using something called homequote explorer from progressive to easily compare home insurance rates. was i hashtagging? progressive can't help you from becoming your parents, but we can help you compare rates

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i've watched every presidential inauguration that i can remember since i was a little boy and long before i ever imagined that i would live and work in america, but i'd never watched one the way i watched the inauguration of joe biden.

i never considered the details leading up to an inauguration. i watched this one like a nervous parent making sure everything went as planned because for years, thanks to the last four years, at least everything is different. our demons are on full display. our union is certifiably imperfect and our nation is divided, after a year that takes first place for death, destruction, fear and injustice, normalcy is struggling to take its place and one is the death of shame. in addition to the other norms that the former president destroyed he turned lying, deliberate, casual and often with the force of law into an art form and with that contributed to that death of shame. let me give you an example. as you know, i'm a business journalist and for most of my career when i interviewed a ceo and they'd tell me that it wasn't true it would make for an awkward moment. they'd try to explain it away and their people would offer clarification, and maybe even an

apology. if the lie or wrongdoing pointed out by the press was significant someone might resign, a red letter of sorts on their chest, a mark of shame, but for some people, some liars there's no shame now. one reason i haven't had trump officials or allies on my show for the last several month is that confronting them with the truth stopped mattering. when caught lying or distorting the facts, they just lied more. to have to red a letter or two red letter, both capital "is" for impeachment means little to him and he calls it partisan, a hoax or a witch hunt, a source of shame somehow morphed into a badge of honor. that thing, the death of shame is the real catastrophe. if we humans do not feel shame in doing something wrong or in getting caught doing something wrong what guardrails exist? when they kaesht be caught with the bad choices they make, people suffer, democracy erodes, justice is strangled and lies

proliferate and this time people died. if we allowed what we witnessed in the past four years to continue, then shame on all of us.

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entirely, and others continued to maintain that it was still developing. a top post on a qanon forum wrote i don't think this is supposed to help. others became immediately dejected that their dreams of a bloody coup would not be realized and there appears to be a spectrum of white supremacists, treeks treatmentists and christian nationalists and some believe that the democrats and elites are baby eating pedophiles that want to take over the world. others don't realize they're pulling conspiracy theories and that's why it's especially concerning, quote, logically a.i. researcher nick bacovich that while it appears that qanon followers are giving up after this last failed prophecy, he's seen them with the the goal of conspiracy theorists. ben collins.

there are people breathing a sigh of relief, trump's gone and he was central to the conspiracy theorists and they don't have the same touchstone that they had. on the other hand, you're reporting that other people are recruiting those who are disaffected by this conspiracy theory which means that the threat might not be neutralized. it might actually be growing. >> yeah. we're kind of in an intermission here while they await a new messiah. that's what's happening with qanon fol loers. none of them will go back to reading regular news. they're can find a way back to their family and they disengage from the news. we talked to people who are going down that path. the scarier part is the people who are still looking for answers because they were told lies for years and they were still anticipating all of the guys that they were told were the bad guys that could be taken out. they still want those people gone, but they are no longer passive about it. that's the difference between white nationalist groups who

organize and militias who organize and qanon. qanon is a passive idea. trust the plan. there you see it right there, and the idea that eventually everything will be sorted out by some figure. a lot of people gave up on that notion this week, and they didn't give up on the idea that something needed to be taken care of and those white nationalist groups are ready to raid those forums and go in there and give people hope, but their hope came with direct action and violence. >> so some of this is law enforcement stuff and the fbi's got to take this seriously and they might be doing that right now, but some of it is not law enforcement stuff. some of it as you said, some people are casual and some are armed and some people believe in the intersection of their faith and donald trump. how do you -- how do we each start to think about how to neutralize this and who even does that work? who neutralizes e whose responsibility is this? >> it's really hard. the most important thing is most of these people, not all of

them, but most of these people don't think they're the bad guys. they think they're the good guys. they think they're saving the world, right? they got sent a text by a family member saying everything's going to be fixed, just wait it out. they thought that on wednesday that the martial law would be declared and then, you know, the pandemic would be over because the pandemic wasn't real in their minds to begin with. so we need to start having some sort of holistic education about this from a medial literacy with this so we give people the ability to engage in this. a lot of people can't come to me this week how do i talk to my family member who is disillusioned this week and i'm not sure. talk to extremism researchers and gotten people out of cults and extremist environments and that's how you do this because it's a long process, and the best way to handle this is to stop people from thinking in this incredibly ridiculous way to begin with.

we have to get people some defense to begin with and from there we can start deradicalizing folks. >> we will have some of that conversation tomorrow with ali who has done that work at the safon center. i was following your tweets in real time during the inauguration there were theories building and bubbling right there about how this isn't really happening. i saw one that said that trump and biden had switched faces and it's really trump getting re-inaugurated again. at some juncture this isn't a disagreement about policy or even a question about inclusion and society, it's just nuts. >> yeah. it's just nuts. and look, there is just going to be people like this who think in these metaphysical, over the top things sometimes. there's nothing you can do about that. the thing you can stop is you can get people who are untethering from reality. you can just bring them back and you can moore them with community and reality.

over the past year people have been untethered because of the pandemic and they should be. their lives got up ended. man they lost a job or a family member or friend or something, and they wanted answers and the only quick answers you can get in those situations are wrong answers. the ones that say this is all one global plan to ruin your life. that's not what was happening. it was convoluted and answers to a pandemic was multi-pronged and so those people wanted something nice, and we can get those people back to reality. that's doable. the crazy stuff and the face switch, i'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that, ali. >> yeah. yeah, i guess you're right. ben, it's fascinating. i'm fascinated to see how far some of these things go. we'll talk about this more tomorrow and thank you for joining us and thank you for yours and brandy's great reporting on this. ben collins nbc news reporter covering all things weird and

weak. president trump wasted no time taking on the coronavirus, as deadly virus is spreading rapidly around the world. the doctor at the national institutes of health is joining me. i want you to join me on monday as i host a virtual panel discussion on alzheimer's for the world economic forum in davos, switzerland. i'll be joined by experts who are tackling this crisis that have an effect on families and that is work www.forum.world. more ali velshi after this. wwwd more ali velshi after this thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+/her2- metastatic breast cancer,

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>> as i listened and watched i'm thinking of my good friend charles upshir. he died of covid and for a moment, just listening to the words and the song and seeing

the light, president joe biden and vice president harris, we needed a national ritual mourn so that we could think about the morning. ld think about the morning. >> president joe biden getting right it it work showing a drive, determination and professional unseen in the white house over the last four years and that includes a real plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic. between the executive order signed this week creating a national strategy, the american people are getting the federal response to the crisis that they deserve. but one challenge in particular stands out. how does the white house implement its national strategy after a year in which cities and states were left to fend for themselves, many of which never developed or did develop varying degrees of the infrastructure needed to fight the virus and

vaccinate its citizens. this comes as a much more contagious strain starts to pop up across the country. that covid variant which was first reported in the united kingdom is now thought to be more deadly than the common coronavirus. >> i must tell you this afternoon that we've been informed today that in addition to spreading more quickly it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant, the variant that was first identified in london and the southeast may be associated with a higher degree of mortality. >> joining me now is dr. francis collins, he's the director of the national institutes of health. good to see you, thank you for being with us. i want to ask you a question about this because when we first heard that the variant is more contagious, if you do that mathematically it actually ends up with higher mortality because

something that's more contagious will kill a larger number of people. is that what boris johnson is talking about or is he saying getting infected by this new variant can actually result in a higher chance of mortality? >> i'm afraid he's saying the latter is also the case. you're right, when we talk about mortality, are we talking about the number of people who might die of the virus and if it's more contagious, that means mortality will go up or is he talking about for the people who do got infected and this is where -- and let's be clear. this is very preliminary data, it looks as if you looked at a thousand people who got infected with covid-19, generally 1% and 10 would die of it. maybe with this virus it would be 13 instead of 10. that's a small difference and you can't be sure when they're floating those numbers that this might not also be a consequence of the fact that the uk health

system has overwhelmed and that has an effect also on mortality. so let's take this as something to watch closely. i would not say this is proven yet to be the case. >> but we do not have any indication that the virus doesn't work on the variants. >> so there is a paper just published a couple of days ago. it's a pre-print which looks specifically at people who have been immunized with the pfizer or moderna vaccine and check to see would their antibodies neutralize this british variant which is b-117 and the answer is yes. they do neutralize. there is a subtle difference that might make it slightly less effective, but still up in the safety zone as far as what you would expect to be protected. so at the moment we are not alarmed about that. we are more concerned about the south african variant which seems to have a somewhat more significant effect on the

vaccine response although it still looks like it would be protected it is much more of a concern. fortunately, we have not seen that variant in the u.s., but i would not be surprised if it appears. >> obviously, i heard someone say the other day that it's probably here, we just probably haven't seen it yet. you've been a guest on our show in the last year in which you've been forthcoming on the issues and one of the things we discussed is the degree to which people might be resistant to taking the vaccine. one of the things we didn't discuss was the idea that there would be a slowdown or a big difference in terms of what we expected in terms of the vaccine roll out or what has happened and what is your best sense of what's going wrong and how to get it fixed? >> we talked about these issues before, ali and it's amazing how to get the doses out there as opposed to when is the vaccine going to get ready for anybody to get the dose? that is a big shout out to the

scientists who made it. let's look at where we are. right now according to cdc, 40 million doses have been distributed and half of those have been administered. that tells us we're not where we hoped we would be for the manufacturing and the distribution. there's a delay between what's there and what's going into arms. this has been a learning experience and certainly its had difficulties along the way and states have struggled to set up or particular distribution efforts and the president has pointed out other ways that we might optimize this by having the fema involved and pharmacies involved even sooner. i think those are things that we would achieve and the progress that we hope to see happen and it's not as bad as some people are painting it and we are averaging almost a million doses per day going into arms and that's a pretty good trajectory to get to where president biden wants and 100 million doses in 100 days and we might exceed

that, but i think he's being smart and instead of overpromising and underdelivering which is what happened back in december. he is trying to under promise and hope to overdeliver. >> from your lips to everybody's arms, dr. francis collins, we'll continue our conversation. he is director of the national institutes of health and a programming note, today at noon dr. anthony fauci joins msnbc to discuss the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccine rollout under the new biden administration. he will join alex witt on weekends with alex witt at noon eastern. the inauguration was full of firsts. this picture of bernie sanders looking less than enthused at the ceremony has gone viral and the trolls of the internet has turned the senator into a 1,001 means this sums up how most of us feel at work when we're forced to show up in person for something that could have been

handled otherwise. this could have been an email. here you have bernie on the subway system we've all been there in the seat next to him. how about bernie on a beam. this lurn atop a skyscraper featuring senator sanders all of the way on the right. and bernie on the bench. senator sanders making an appearance in the classic scene of forrest gump and i call this one bernie-once. pink has never looked so good. america if you liked it, you should have put a ring on it. more velshi in a moment. more ve. n they need, with the fruit flavors they love. and one gram of sugar. find creative roots in the kids' juice aisle. for some of us, our daily journey is a short one when you drive less, you pay less with pay per mile insurance from allstate you've never been in better hands

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as the nation begins to heal from the divisive last four years, those now representing america are finally starting to look like the multicultural country that america is proud to be. we know kamala harris is not only the first woman vice president. she's the first black and south asian vice president making her husband doug emhoff the first-ever second gentleman. democratic representatives from new york, richie toris and mondeer jones are the first openly gay members of congress. cori bush is now the first single mother in the house of representatives. >> only the 11th history while jon ossoff is the youngest

democrat elected to the senate since joe biden in 1972. ossoff is the first jewish senator to represent georgia. oklahoma represented the first non-binary state legislator. they are the state's first muslim lawmaker, as well. delaware and kansas democrats made history after electing their first transgender legislators and sarah mcbride is the first transgender state senator. we know women run the world or at least new mexico because it became the first slate to elect all women of color to its house delegation any while we know president joe biden is the first person to surpass 80 million votes in the presidential election, his cabinet is filled with historic firsts, as well. retired general lloyd austin became the first black secretary of defense by getting elected by a vote of 93-2. congresswoman deb hollins would

be the first native american cabinet member if confirmed as secretary of the interior. coming up next, mike pompeo, i'll leave you can a poet wise beyond her years and mike pompeo, take notes. >> somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinessed. while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. want to sell the best burger in every zip code? add an employee. or ten... then easily and automatically pay your team and file payroll taxes. that means... world domination! or just the west side. run payroll in less than five minutes with intuit quickbooks. (dad vo) life doesn't give you many second chances.

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there weren't many successes of the trump administration, but one thing it did accomplish was to normalize saying the quiet part out loud. and while donald trump can no longer sound his dog whistles on social media, it's clear mike pompeo determined it was his time to shine. this week the former secretary of state took to twitter saying wokism, all the isms, they're not who america is. our enemy stoked these issues because they know they make us weaker. quite subtle. not only was pompeo's tweet

ignorant, it was a chance to hold onto donald trump. as one slate columnist argued, he's ending his tenure with humiliation after he's said or done nothing that's enhanced or security or values or right or wrong his administration's own policies. in fact, during his tenure, he turned it into a partisan battleground. my next guest talks about this. it said, it has, quote, the history exactly backward. joining me now is the creator of that project, nikole hannah-jones for "the new york times" magazine. i don't know whether to congratulate you that mike pompeo attacked the 619 project. it was a chance to take you and

this project which told people about when enslaved african-americans first came to america. that's kind of what you did. that's the extent of your offense apparently. >> yeah. you know, in some ways it's easy to laugh it off, but it's also dangerous because there are millions of americans who are having their white nationalism stoked. you know, we had this whole 1776 commission that, of course, joe biden has already rescinded, but you're saying, for instance, arkansas introducing legislation to prohibit the project. when you hear a person who's the secretary of state of the united states arguing that multiculturalism is dangerous, that it is not who we are, in a country that is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world since 1619 when english people came on land that was already occupied by indigenous people and then

purchased african people. so this is exactly who we are. so when you have someone with this much power saying that we are not a multi-cultural country, that multi-culturalism is dangerous, that stokes the type of violence we saw at the capitol on january 6th. it's more than rhetoric. >> saying it's multicultural is like saying the sky is blue. i never knew it was a subject for argument. it sounds like a dog whistle. what it soums like he's trying to say is america is a white country with european descent and christians and that's what it has to be. >> he's clearly arguing multiculturalism is not who we are. then he says we're a white persons country and the only history we should learn is one that glorifies white men and downplays the roles and looks at contributions of other

americans. it speaks of white nationalism that we've seen throughout this administration. white nationalism as you know, ali, is very dangerous. it's not coming from external terrorists. they're coming from white national domestic terrorisms. that's how you gear toward fascism. they're speaking of true americans being only those who are white that. is scary to me. now, of course, the report was very typical of so much of what we've seen come out of the trump administration. it wasn't handled by experts in the field. it had no footnotes or endnotes. it was a political piece of propaganda. to think he thinks this messaging could be a successful way back to the white house is something we should be concerned about. >> what -- you know, you and i have discussed this for a long time. i talked with you when 1619

first published. what was the message you were trying to give? i didn't get the impression when i first talked you do that you were trying to be exclusive. i was getting the impression you were trying to be additive, that there's a fuller history than we learn in school, this is what it is. >> absolutely. what the 1619 project is trying to do is offer a corrective, widen the lens in how we think about our country an its founding and the country that we built. it's really arguing for patriotism, but patriotism that was founded on majestic ideals of freedom and liberty, but we have not lived up to them. our goal is to try to perfect this nation, and that's the unprecedent -- unparalleled role that black americans have played. so i've never understood this believe that somehow the 1619 project is teaching children to hate america or is device if. just a fact of history. we were a country founded by a

lot of men who ownedover human beings, who believed in a white country, but there were quite a few americans who didn't believe in that and wanted this country to live up to its ideals. if we truly think america is exceptional, which i don't think that that's a useful way to think about any country, but if you truly think that america is exceptional, it could actually withstand telling the truth of our history and it can withstand scrutiny. >> that's right. that's a right. nikole, thank you as always. she's with the 1619 prince george which if you haven't read yet, you should. that does it for me. catch me back here tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. congressman ted lieu in donald trump's senate impeachment trial. do not miss that.

have yourself a fantastic saturday morning. cross connection with my friend tiffany cross begins right now. the president of the united states committed an act of insurrection. i don't think it's unifying to say let's forget it and move on. that's not unifying. you don't say as president, do whatever you want in the last months of your administration, you're going to get a get-out-of-jail-card for free and we'll make nice nice. people forget people died here on january 6th. >> i'm not ready to make nice. maybe neergt are you. good morning. i'm tiffany cross, and ice been a busy week.

we've got a lot to get to and