let me set the record straight. are people born wicked? or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? oh! -ah! [ laughter ] no need to respond. that was rhetorical. hm, hmm. good to be with you, i'm

katy tur. we are getting a picture of what a donald trump cabinet will look like this time around. no more nikki haley's or mike pompeo's who have disagreed with donald trump publicly. instead, it will be unquestioning loyalists as mike davis, an ally who says he wants to be donald trump's advice, before asking me for help, i'm going to ask you to provide me specific and concrete evidence of your loyalty to trump. that's anybody trying to get a job in the trump administration. it's exactly what donald trump jr. has been saying for months now, that the cabinet should not be filled with people who think they know better than his dad. who are those people who don't think they know better so far. for ambassador to the united nations, trump announced elise stefanik. she's a member of the house security committee, stefanik does not have a well of foreign policy or diplomacy experience.

for border czar, tom homan, the former acting director of i.c.e., an early supporter of zero tolerance, the policy that resulted in separating children from their parents, a policy, by the way, he has said he would enforce again. >> i'm tired of hearing about the family separation. i'm still being sued over that. i don't give a [ bleep ] bottom line is we enforce the law. i was a cop in new york and arrest a father for domestic violence or dui, i separate that family. when you violate the law with a child, you're going to be separated, but you're right, 250 children have crossed this border since joe biden has been president. they chose to separate themselves. >> they're separating themselves. for deputy chief of staff, under susie wiles, stephen miller will be back. miller, who was the architect of donald trump's most hard line and conservative policies, including immigration, will be in charge of policy.

just a few months ago, miller said he would seek to deport more than 1 million undocumented immigrants a year if they get back into office. and finally two sources tell nbc news that kash patel is under consideration to take over the cia or fbi. agencies he said on steve bannon's war room podcast that should be purged in favor of quote, all american patriots. top to bottom. what does that mean. joining us news correspondent vaughn hillyard in west palm beach, and nbc national security correspondent julia ainsley. tell us about these picks and what the next four years are going to look like? >> it's exactly what donald trump promised, exactly what was in the works for the last four years. the folks that you are looking at here, tom homan, and stephen miller, they have remained close trump allies since 2021, since donald trump's departure from

the white house. so much of the construct and what a second administration would look like. two major administrations, project 2025, the heritage foundation and an american first policy institute that were built out with more than 100 plus staffers, administration officials who built out not only what a personnel could look like through the departments and agencies, and what policies could look like, more than 200 executive orders, and when we're talking about the personnel, you are seeing individuals begin to fill out the dream scenario for trump allies as to what a more efficient administration under donald trump could look like, one that knows what it's doing. elise stefanik, as being a staunch impeachment defender in the u.s. house. has remained a close ally to

his, even through the most difficult political times in 2021, and the immediate aftermath of the january 6th capitol attack. in elise stefanik, he has somebody who's willing to go on the air waves, now on the international stage and be there as a staunch defender of the foreign policy that donald trump and his national security and foreign policy team is eager to implement. and that is why these first three picks are notable ones, it includes somebody who has a domestic focus, international focus, and somebody within the oval office is eager to execute on behalf of donald trump. >> stefanik doesn't have a deep well of foreign policy experience. how has she managed to get where she is, and what would be the expectation as ambassador to the u.n., with the wars in gaza and ukraine?

>> reporter: exactly, i think that's a lot of outstanding questions, and we don't know what the private conversations have looked like between congresswoman stefanik and donald trump. time and again she has shown a willingness to carry out donald trump's wishes but also defend him, again, from 29 impeachments. she objected on january 6th, 2021, to joe biden's election, objected to the certification of the results. last year, after the e. jean carroll defamation trump, which donald trump was found of sexually abusing e. jean carroll on the campaign trail, i asked her 48 hours after the finding whether she believed e. jean carroll and donald trump, and she was explicit that she believed donald, not e. jean carroll, and in the aftermath of the civil fraud trial in new york, she called for investigations into tish james and judge engoron who oversaw that case and the finding that led to a financial penalty of

$350 million against donald trump. so every step of the way, she has called for another example, she has called for an investigation into what she says was the weaponization of the doj by the biden administration. on capitol hill, you can make the case, there's been no more loyal staunch defender than elise stefanik. the assumption would be that up on the world stage that she would be able to play that same type of a role to carry out the foreign policy of the trump administration. >> push liz cheney to the side. >> tell us about tim homan, we played a clip from cpac talking about the family separation policy, defending it, and he would love to do it again, love may be a strong word, who is this guy and what do you expect, tom, excuse me, him to be in charge of? >> well, he will have the unique position of border czar. ken cuccinelli had that job. it's unclear how much power that

position would have yielded because that was toward the end of the first trump administration. look, he is larger than life force when it comes to trump doctrine on immigration. he has been working closely with a group called border 911, they hold rallies, town halls, i have seen them speak to small towns of people along the border, telling them there are terrorists and criminals about to come into their backyard. he does not hold back. he's unapologetic, he's brash. he uses many four letter wars. and when it comes to zero tolerance, he was the acting ice director at that point. it was border control that did the separation. he seems to be defending that policy, saying that, look, it's because they broke the law, he should point out as we often do here, these people, the only thing they were in violation of was a misdemeanor for crossing the border illy.

at that point they never would have been separated from their children. very different if homan was arresting someone in new york. he has a long history with dhs. we can expect in the white house he'll have a close ear to miller and trump, and he won't be under the same amount of scrutiny, he doesn't have to get senate confirmed, and there's less transparency on the communications and regulations that we would get as journalists into what's happening in tom homan's world. >> the e-mails early on in jake soboroff's documentary. iyanla plot wrote a fascinating piece. when patel was installed as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense, just after the 2020 election, mark milley,

the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff advised him not to break the law in order to keep president trump in power. life looks really bad word from behind bars milley reportedly told patel. when he named patel deputy director of the fbi, bill barr confronted the white house chief of staff and said over my dead body and when in the final weeks, trump planned to name patel deputy director of the cia, gina threatened to resign. trump relents after an intervention by vice president pence and others. none of these folks are around. no more vice president pence, more no gina haspel, no more mark milley, no more bill barr. the title of that piece is "the man who will do anything for trump. will he, and what could that extend to? >> reporter: i'm told by two sources he's under consideration to take the reins as director of

the cia or fbi. he's not a veteran of either of the agencies he did work for the national security council, before working as a deputy to the acting director of national intelligence before making his way in the after math of the 2020 election for that brief period of time, as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense. and in the interim, kash patel has remained close not only to donald trump but don jr. and other maga key players, including rick grenell, and he is seen as somebody who's highly critical of those intelligence spy agencies and skeptical of the department of justice. it was a year ago on steve bannon's war room, in which he called for investigations of conspiracy against not only members of the biden administration, and members of the press. he is somebody who has been on the front lines of seeking to

use those agencies to undo what he says is nefarious actions by the biden administration and others including members of the press. so exactly what his plans are, if he were to serve in either of those capacities, it is not exactly clear. we know that donald trump, if you were to install him in either of these two positions, he would have somebody who's a hard liner and eager to disrupt, and even potentially lead to the removal of a great number of the federal civil workers in those agencies if he were to be installed in those capacities. >> vaughn hillyard, a busy busy time. thank you very much. julia ainsley, you too. former homeland security and counter terrorism adviser to vice president mike pence, olivia troy. let's start with the mass deportations. donald trump wants to do it, it was part of the republican platform. this were signs of the rnc, mass deportations now. with tim homan and steve miller

in charge of policy on the border and on immigration, what do you expect? >> oh, i absolutely expect that they will go through with their promises. this is, you know, the people that voted for donald trump in this election. this is what they're getting. and i know tom homan, and i know stephen miller having worked with both of them. i do anticipate, you know, i think it will be interesting to see how this power struggle plays out between the border czar as they are going to call him and the department of homeland security and the department of state, which all play a role when it comes to immigration. but what i think they're doing here is this is a clear sign to me that they do intend to go forward with this in the department of homeland security, and this is something that stephen miller, tom homan, and ken cuccinelli wanted. they want to merge customs and border control, they want to merge i.c.e., the office of refugee resettlement at the health and human services office.

all of these agencies played a role when it came to the child separation policy. stephen miller and tom homan are completely aligned. tom homan has been auditioning on fox news and right wing networks for the past four years for this role. i think we should expect right after the inauguration, you will see this plan rolled out. >> let me play a little bit of tom, i keep calling him tim. tom homan talking about trying to carry out those mass deportations in the face of opposition from some blue states or blue cities. >> some of these democratic governors say they're going to stand in the way, they're going to make it hard for us, well, you know, a suggestion, if you're not going to help us get the hell out of the way because we're going to do it. if we can't get assistance from new york city, we may have to double the number of agents we send to new york city because we're going to do the job. >> is there a way to carry out mass deportation without

separating families? >> of course there is. families can be deported together. >> so how much of this, olivia, can you say is just hard line rhetoric to message as if they're going to do these ugly things? and i ask this because when family separation got out, and when the press started reporting on the details of it, when we saw the anguish of families who were looking for their children, parents were looking for their children. when we heard that, there's that audio of kids crying in a warehouse, crying for their parents, toddlers, young kids. when that got out, the backlash around the country was stark, and donald trump started to back off the policy or at least he tried to act as if he was backing off the policy. so i wonder, i wonder what the desire is to actually do some of the uglier things that would be

involved in mass deportation. not just getting out people who have committed crimes, separating families. maybe, in this case, families who have been in this country here for decades upon decades. the parents might have come here illegally, but the kids are citizens? >> like, i think part of this, katy is deterrence. that was why they did these things. it was to create deterrence and the public and migrants trying to come to this country by doing this hoping that it would slow it down. it didn't. it had no impact on that, to be clear. the other thing i think about in this situation, the reason i think they are fully capable of doing the most extreme thing and we will see this again, you have a group of people that are all on the same page. in the past, as someone who was in these meetings on child separation, and let me tell you, they were pretty awful, and when lawyers and others raised issues and said that is unlawful, we are going to get sued, the answer was, we don't care, let

them sue us. when he says the democratic governors won't stand in their way, they truly believe they are above the law, and you have the people who were in the room before saying, hey, you can't do this and standing their ground, and trying to figure out how we navigate some of the more extreme individuals in the meetings, those people are gone. they're no longer there, and so now you have these types of personalities that are very driven by these extremes and how they view a strong immigration agenda. to me, it's unfortunate, the immigration system needs to be fixed. i don't think we're going to get that in donald trump administration. we're going to get the things they have been talking about. >> olivia, you were in the room, as you said, know well what they were wanting to do, and what they were willing to do to get it done. olivia troye, thank you very much. anyone hes interested in the topic and what happened last

time, my colleague jacob soboroff, they have a great and difficult film out on child separation and the policy from the last administration, it's out now, and you should see it going into this next administration. still ahead, what two conservative lawyers are saying to set the stage for potential criminal investigations of jack smith and ag letitia james here in new york state and what the political realignment that will put donald trump back in the white house actually looks like. we're going to dive into the data. plus, what congressional races are still uncalled nearly a week after election day. we are back in 90 secondings. leo! he's there when we wake up, he's there when we leave, he's there whenever we come back home from school,

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giving that's possible through the power of dell ai with intel. so those who receive can find the joy of giving back. the coalition of voters who put donald trump back in office looks nothing like a traditional republican voter said. it is younger and more blue collar. new voters swung toward him as he made gains with both young men and young women. he won voters without a college degree, along with those who make $50,000 or less. he also made historic gains with latinos and black voters, as that demographic in particular, well, the democrats ended up eroding their lead with them by double digits since 2012. look at that right there. news week put it this way, barack obama voters are trump supporters now. joining us before political reporter, dave weigel, kamala

harris did do better than joe biden in key places in key swing states. the issue is that donald trump just outperformed her, and these shifts that the obama electorate went toward donald trump, the trump electorate looks more like the obama electorate now. i think that's a really surprising take away. >> it was something democrats were dreading after 2020 that they thought that joe biden's policies were going to correct. remember, not many people are trying to take ownership of this now, but a lot of progressives who were very happy with who the president staffed in the administration, the choice he made on stimulus spending, which were the opposite of some of the narrow choices democrats made in 2009, they were hopeful this would keep the voters in the party, even while there was a republican-led backlash to the student debt forgiveness, democrats, at the same time, were loosening rules for people without college degrees. this is one of the things that

they're wrestling about in the democratic party. they actually did deliver a lot of what they promised, but in an environment with inflation that voters blamed on joe biden. what is it that gets out there when they're worried about inflation? almost nothing. >> there's a lot of hand wringing for what went wrong. what are the arguments that are out there? >> that was just it, is if we went back in time, democrats, and despite having a narrow majority, there's a thought it wouldn't, you look at countries that do not have a reserve, they had slower recoveries in the last four years, and similar electoral results. leaders modi in india, the governing party in japan, liberal democrats, part of the very different fiscal policies had the same response. on economics, there's a version, we have could have tacked in in

and blamed for less inflation. people were paying lower prices for a lot of goods. i'm thinking of gas here. than this election they were in some places in 2022, and voters are more angered about inflation. it stopped, it slowed, prices weren't going up. for people who had never lived through inflation in the 1970s and '80s. the first experience with inflation made them more skeptical. >> is the argument there isn't a democratic messaging problem, ultimately it was just inflation, the numbers just proved problematic, people didn't like going to the grocery store and paying $2 more for eggs. didn't like looking at their bill, and saying oh, my god, this is twice, three times as high as it was four years ago? >> that's actually a fairly optimistic version of democrats' comeback argument, which would be, if prices are not lower in two years or four years, that you voted for trump to lower the prices and he didn't do it,

that's the reason i think this is a big topic among democrats. doesn't force you to make tough choices with the rest of the coalition. the other arguments are how the party rolled back border restrictions in ways that were unpopular, how it talked about, not candidates but the positions it took on social issues, what schools could and couldn't teach. those are unpopular. the economic argument gets you away from those. this can come back after democrats came back in 2004. >> does that argument mean they're not going to do anything about it? i guess we're going to have to wait and see. there are a lot of lawmakers out there, seth moulton and a couple of others who are winning in redder districts or swing districts or who are outperforming kamala harris, and they have said that the democratic party is a party that has a messaging problem on identity. there's just too much identity in democratic politics that

voters think that the democrats care more about what pronouns people should use, this is their argument, than the fears of the working class, the problems of the working class, prices. >> a building behind me, new progressive democrats elected this cycle were answering questions, some of them about that. if i could sum up their argument, it's that if you don't give people an economic situation they're happy with, it's easier for republicans to divide americans based on cultural issues. the argument for conservatives is democrats have been taking way too many bold positions on -- i'm glad you put it that way, not just on lgbtq results, not on that particularly, but the reluctance to talk to people who don't have those positions, and again, an easier argument, we need to have candidates who can go on conservative podcasts, fox news, saying we don't need those people are over.

and this has been epitomized by this conversation of whether harris could have gone on joe rogan's show. democrat haves voters who might agree on a lot of economic positions but associate them not even with a radical cultural position but on trying to get them fired or punished at work or trying to get them into a sensitivity training for saying something that wasn't offensive ten years ago. that's the conversation. so can the party have the same priorities on rights for everybody, but be a little more tolerant of people who don't agree. that's where they were about abortion and gay marriage, let's say, eight to ten years ago. they have moved into a position where they thought democrats have a demographic lock on the country, and we can get away with moving, not just moving on these positions but telling people to shape up or ship out if you don't agree with the way we talk about them. that's gone. that's one thing democrats are very -- across the party, realize, they can't be sensor

sensorious. >> it's not a particular lawmaker, it's general messaging that you see online with people who identify as democrats, not even necessarily the party, but people who identify as members of the party and what they allow and don't allow. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. coming up, more on what led to democrats losing the working class and control of the house still hangs in the balance. what races are still undecided? (vo) this season, try opendoor's turducken of offers. at the center is our all-cash offer. then comes the option to list for more. all wrapped in the certainty of a simple sale. this holiday, sell your home your way with opendoor.

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well, working class voters broke in big numbers for donald trump, union workers broke for harris. voting blue by a solid 57-39 margin. it was comparable to the union vote joe biden secured in 2020. so what gives? joining us now, the nation national affairs correspondent john nichols. why did union workers support harris while the larger working class support donald trump? >> unions do a lot of internal education. one of the things that i think a lot of the media falls down in when they report on how unions operate in politics is they assume they're like any special interest group. that a union would, you know, give money and, you know, that would be about the end of it. that's not how it works. unions when they make an

endorsement begin to work with their members on the shop floor, in the office, wherever they represent folks, and they provide a lot of education. they say here, this is why we endorse kamala harris, this is why we didn't endorse donald trump. that has a real impact. that moves voters. the problem was that while the unions were doing that work, beyond that union base, there's a lot of evidence that the democratic party wasn't doing it. >> so is that the lesson of the democratic party that they had an education issue, that they were not going out there and explaining themselves well enough? >> that's a big part of it. it's not the whole of it. look, you had inflation. you had, you know, a whole bunch of other factors that are real, but i'll give you a good example of this. on the issue of tariffs, donald trump ran on tariffs, and ran very effectively on it. he made it a big part of what he talked on the campaign trail. you and i have talked about this before, there's a lot of evidence that tariffs done in the wrong way are harmful to the

working class, not just to factory workers or warehouse workers but to farmers. remember, a lot of small farmers would be categorized as working class. they may own their farm but they're up before dawn and working after sunset, and sometimes for not very good pay. and so, there needed to be a lot more education about what the impact of tariffs might be. there also frankly needed to be more outreach on the issues. i have watched the campaign in wisconsin where donald trump won wisconsin by about 30,000 votes, and tammy baldwin, the democratic senator also won by about 30,000 volts. what was notable is that baldwin's ads featured teamsters, shipbuilders, all kinds of workers speaking specifically about what she had done for them. and you did not see enough of that in, i would say, the democrats would recognize they didn't see enough of that in ads for kamala harris and tim walz. >> the bernie sanders quote has

been going around like wildfire, talking about how it's no surprise that working class voters left the democratic party because the democrats have left working class voters behind. is he right? >> you know, he's getting a lot of push back on it from individuals, but the democratic party is a big party. and the fact of the matter is that there's been a real gap in their messaging going back, i would say, to the 1990s. it didn't always have the biggest impact. some elections more, some less, but the one thing to remember is that when bill clinton worked with newt gingrich to pass nafta and free trade with china, there was an awful lot of folks who took a hit from that. there are many analysts who tell you at the end of the day free trade is good, but it isn't necessarily good in factory towns in battleground states. at the end of the day, the democratic party did not do enough, you know, to compensate for that. and the way you compensate for that is to say, look, we recognize we made mistakes in

the past, we're going to work hard to do it a different way going forward, and to talk about donald trump's record. at the end of the day, there was not enough of that, and it blew back on the democrats in a number of states. >> there's a lot of arguments among lawmakers l chris murphy that the neo liberal order isn't working and nafta is a big reason for that. that is for another longer conversation where we explain all the jargon involved. john nichols, thank you very much. coming up, what some of donald trump's legal advisers have said to suggest the department of justice could be turned against his adversaries. first, though, what key races are still waiting to be called, and which way control of not the senate but the house could swing. f you have both medicare and medicaid, i have some really encouraging news that you'll definitely want to hear. depending on the plans available in your area, you may be eligible to get extra benefits with a humana medicare advantage dual-eligible

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we got some breaking news for you as that music would suggest. there's another cabinet pick in the new administration, president-elect donald trump has elected lee zeldin to serve as administrator of the environmental protection agency on x, otherwise known as twitter, zeldin says he is honored to be chosen as epa administrator we will restore u.s. dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back american jobs, and make the u.s. the global lead of ai, while protecting access to clean air and water. zeldin served four terms as a republican congressman, repping

long island before losing the 2022 new york governor's race to kathy hochul who is also a staunch supporter of donald trump during all of that time. there are still house races that have yet to be called, and along with it, control of the chamber. republicans only need five more seats to let mike johnson keep the gavel, while dem need 13 seats to make hakeem jeffries the speaker. in the senate, just two races remain uncalled, pennsylvania senator bob casey is slightly trailing republican dave mccormick, and in arizona, democratic ruben gallego, democratic candidate, is up on republican kari lake, but both of those races are still too close to call. joining us now, nbc news senior national political reporter, sahil kapur. let's start with the house. remains uncalled, democrats have a heavier lift than republicans. what is the expectation? what are we watching? >> hey, katy, there's still no party that has clinched the magic number of 218 votes to

have the house majority. republicans are closer. they have won 213 seats. that number is effectively 214. one of those districts in washington's fourth district pits two republicans against each other, so the party will hold that seat. it's just a question of who. there are several races i'm watching to see if democrats will have any shot of pulling out this inside streak, including one in ohio's ninth district, marcy kaptur leads but it's narrow. and jared golden is vastly outperforming his party, he leads right now. there's a couple of districts in arizona, the suburbs, dave schweikerh, and his lead is narrow, about 2,000 votes. iowa's first congressional district, mary anne miller meeks leads by less than a thousand votes. she won her first race in 2020, by six votings. she's no stranger to close races and in california, there are

nine races left to call. california is counting votes very slowly, and this entire battle for the majority could come down to california. i'm watching a couple of races in orange county, michelle steele in the 41st district and in the 47th district, vacated by katie porter, dave min, the democrat scott baugh. if their lead in pennsylvania holds, one senate republican aide i talked to made a remarkable point, they could end up with a bigger senate majority than a house majority. >> that is remarkable. if you're looking at orange county for the senate, traditionally in california, has been republican. traditionally more of a red county in that state. let me ask you about the senate. there's a bit of a fight for who's going to be majority leader in the senate, between these three guys, john thune, john cornyn and rick scott. i thought it was going to be thune or cornyn but rick scott

is making a late game play. what's going on here? >> it's unusual. the first time in 18 years that that position is seriously being contested. mitch mcconnell has held that position for so long, and now there's a real fight for who will succeed him. the leading two candidates for the longest time have been his current deputy, john thune of south dakota, his previous former deputy before he was term limited out, john cornyn of texas, but rick scott is making a play as an underdog candidate, the more maga aligned issue trump aligned candidate, at least that's how he's pitching himself. he has the help of an online maga army trying to boost him over the other two, that have been somewhat critical of trump in the past. they endorsed him after he clinched the nomination in 2024. they are aligning with him, and promising to promote his agenda. that online maga army is tucker carlson, the right wing commentator, elon musk, the billionaire trump benefactor. also trying to push rick scott over the line. it's an interesting test to see

how influential these online maga jokes will be in trying to essentially break one of the oldest traditions of the senate, which is that seniority wins out in these cases. this is a secret ballot. these online folks can say what they want, and these republican senators will get in a secret room behind closed doors and nobody will know how they voted. >> it's also going to tell us about where the republican party in the senate is leaning, and whether they want to go full donald trump if they decide to back rick scott, am i wrong to make that assumption? >> if rick scott wins, it would certainly be an indication of that influence of the maga army. what's notable here, katy, donald trump has not weighed in. he seems to understand that the dynamics are difficult. this is one aspect, you know, senate leadership was one aspect of washington that donald trump could never crack in his first term as president. they have six-year terms, and they are pressured by populist

fervor. this is a tougher nut for trump to crack. if he doesn't weigh in then the expectation is that rick scott will continue to be an underdog at best. he does not have the relationships or the popularity that the other two have. >> one of the issues at play here is recess appointments. donald trump wants to push through a lot of his cabinet picks, picks that need senate confirmation without much headway. or without many head winds, excuse me, what's this argument over allowing him to make recess appointments? >> the supreme court dealt with this question, actually, in the obama era, when then president obama tried to use recess appointments. they say the senate has to cut a deal with the house to be on recess, in order to make these appointments, there are certain rules, time elements for how long the senate is supposed to be out for when the president will have the opportunity to do

recess appointments. it's something that the next senate republican leader might have to consider, but trump is trying to say that he does not want the senate's time constraints, you know, how long it takes to confirm nominations or potentially democratic opposition, trying to gum things up. stopping him from putting whoever he wants into these cabinet positions and these personnel roles. it's something that the candidates to be the next senate majority leader are going to have to deal with on some level. how it shakes out, not really clear. the supreme court has said there are clear rules on how this could work. >> it would certainly in theory make it easier to push through somebody like rfk for health and human services if he does receive pushback on a nominee like that. sahil kapur, thank you very much. still ahead, the threats coming from conservative lawyers around what the doj could do to target donald trump's adversaries. that revenge list. don't go anywhere. help make trading feel effortless.

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outside of the appointment of attorney general the u.s. department of justice typically maintains independence from the president but some allies of the president-elect are hinting that could change in a second trump presidency. joining us now nbc news justice and national security correspondent ken dilanian. donald trump has said that he wants to go after the people who have been prosecuting him, going after him unfairly in the witch hunts against him as he's called them.

what could he do and what are the people around him advocating? >> there is a post watergate norm that says presidents don't tell the justice department specifically which cases or which people to investigate and that is what the people around donald trump are saying should go away. so there's a lawyer named mark paoletta and he has written and been arguing in recent days that the law does not say anything about whether the president can and does, in fact, allow the president to order the justice department to investigate specific people and he is right about that. this post watergate tradition is just that, a tradition, a norm, it's not enshrined in law. he is setting the stage, laying the groundwork for this kind of move. then you have another conservative lawyer named mike davis who is actually advising the trump transition and he is a bomb thrower, but he has been publicly calling for investigations into tish james, the new york attorney general,

into jack smith. he's talking about throwing these people in jail, he's talking about dragging their political bodies through the streets, using all kinds of inflammatory rhetoric and delighting in it. but the bottom line is that you've got a lot of people advising donald trump who are saying you need to use the justice department to go after enemies just as you said you would in the campaign. whether that happens, of course, remains to the seen. it's easy to throw this rhetoric around during a transition period. we will have to see if he goes through with it but it seems like a real possibility. >> i want to put the mike davis post back up on the screen. he said here is my current mood, this is from november 6. i want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. legally, politically and financially, of course. followed up that tweet with, dear, jack smith, lawyer up. who is mike davis? he calls himself -- he wants to be donald trump's advisory.

>> mike davis is a conservative lawyer who has been running a nonprofit helping to install conservative judges. he is absolutely calling for the prosecution of all these people. and he is setting the stage for special counsel, for example, to go over every email and every text and every memo that jack smith and his team ever wrote looking for things that are embarrassing, assuming they didn't break the law, which is kind of hard to believe, it still could cause a lot of pain for jack smith, for anybody who opposed donald trump and it will cause people to have to spend money on legal fees. that's exactly what happened when ondurham did the same thing about the mueller investigation and that's certainly the least of what to happen now, katie. >> ken dilanian, i know you lost audio but you did answer the question if you can hear me now about who mike davis is. thank you very much. he did lose audio. on this veterans day six days after the election veteran candidates saw success in races across the country especially among independents.

travis endicott was elected mayor. craig evanson became the dual county state's attorney and in jeh dan osbourne gave republican deb fisher a run for her money for the senate seat, falling short by just a few percentage points. joining us now host of the independent americans podcast and founder of iraq and afghanistan veterans of america paul rieckhoff. thank you for your service on this veterans day especially. what do you make of veterans doing better among independents. >> veterans resonate and people are dramatically starved for leadership. most americans are sick of both matters, they want people who can transcend party, who can show integrity, who can lead strongly and that's what independents have shown. we had a 36% win rate, two races that are left to be decided, in ne and california. this is the first wave. if people want an alt any not

just to the republicans but also to the democratic party, there are folks who want to run with no party. they want to answer this moment and lead. >> i'm thinking about that race against deb fisher with osbourne, he was running not in the democratic or republican party. is there something you think he could have done, a little something to put him over the edge. >> yes. >> because it clearly resonated. >> stayed farther away from the democratic party. his numbers started to drop when more liberal groups got involved. when deb fisher called him dan the democrat it damaged him. he was very strong and i think an example for what the democrats need to understand their brand is many places is trash and dan osbourne revealed that, especially in a stated that been really, really red. he can win where democrats can't. >> why is the brand trash? >> i think that's decades of compounded problems with sketchy leadership, bad messaging, failure to focus on what american people really want. but i don't think it's just the democrats, i think the

republicans are out of touch, too, and that's why 51% and probably a couple percentages more after this week are independent and unaffiliated. there is a need for no party and that's what people are looking for is leadership. >> there are so many americans out there and i talked to a lot of them, especially younger americans who feel disillusioned, don't want to vote at all, veterans, actually, when i was in wisconsin, a veteran who told me that she doesn't trust republicans because they sent her to war, she doesn't trust democrats because of the terrible withdrawal from afghanistan and that, no, she would not note and nothing could be done to convince her to vote. is that your -- is that your diagnosis that this is a party problem, that the country definitely needs a third party alternative? >> it's a national party that the two parties are broken and our system is broken. 60% of young people are registering as unaffiliated and politically independent, that is the future. if the parties come to them they will win but if you try to keep

dragging them over to you you're going to lose. >> what are you thinking about on this veterans day. >> there's hundreds and thousands of people outside right now, i had to navigate the traffic to get in here. there's one day when people can come together as americans and honor the values we hold dear and those veterans and values will be more important in the next couple of months more than ever before. >> that is for another time. paul, thank you so much and thank you for your service, especially today. so happy you made it in. >> thank you. >> it was a close call getting in here with that parade outside. that is going to do it for me today on this monday, veterans day, "deadline: white house" starts right now. ♪♪ ♪♪ hi, everyone. happy monday. 4:00 in new york. the scale of donald trump's victory in the 2024 election is coming into fuller