trump campaign hopes will improve their standing in the media and lead to less negative stories being published but we will see if the media holds the line or not. you write about tiktok and what's going to happen there, give me a sense of when that's going to happen, and when that happens, we will bring you back to talk about it.

>> they are doing the bidding of their billionaire friends. you are talking about cuts for billionaires, slashing social security, slashing medicare, slashing headstart. congressional republicans did what they did because of what the president-elect said, and what elon musk said. biden's press secretary there saying musk has rattled house republicans. we almost got that shutdown. musk did not get the big thing he was asking for, the debt ceiling increase. now i can tell you, tonight, mike johnson, the current speaker of the house, has said he just spoke to president- elect trump and elon musk. he also noted that musk agreed the speaker of the house is a hard job, while musk is getting on the job training for whatever his made up, nongovernment job is. it is musk and musk alone who had initially upended earlier in the week what republicans

and presumably the incoming trump administration were fine with, a compromised deal. we can show you he posted over 150 times on his platform, x, with many inaccurate claims. there was a lot of talk about a kind of president musk in the waiting. a democratic congresswoman posted something that i want to be clear is one of these a.i. images, but it referred to trump as a kind of puppet, and musk holding it. i want to be clear, this is like a political cartoon. you can think of it as that. we don't have the real world reality of musk doing that. but it speaks to the type of cartoons that people are making. some republicans suggest that musk should get even more influence. they have talked about him becoming speaker. whether that is music to donald trump's ears during what was supposed to be his honeymoon period, is a whole different question to have a big impact. and online, a lot of people are discussing the fact that none of this is what people voted

for or makes a lot of sense. >> we did not elect elon musk. >> elon at the people in congress in an uproar. >> did any of you vote for elon musk? >> elon musk just stood in the way of billions of dollars of help for farmers and ranchers in america. >> crazy how they're giving him all this power. i don't know if it's because he's a righteous man alive. >> nobody voted for elon musk, now the entire republican party is obeying his every command. >> there you see, people are asking very fair questions about why someone who is unelected and has never held any government job seems to be calling the shots for the government, at least when republicans and donald trump are in charge. this raises questions that are both foundational and possibly petty. on the foundational and important side, it is do we have a democracy or some kind of emerging oligarchy, where the richest man in the world publicly, latently says he is using his money to buy things? speech platforms like twitter,

pieces of the u.s. congress, it may be part of the trump administration. and how long will that stand? is that something people except? on the petty side is whether donald trump can live being overshadowed by someone and what is supposed to be his honeymoon period, and someone who is not even getting things done. >> we are joined by obama campaign veteran jay, and dori. jay, we have the benefit of joining tonight with this ineffectual, failed battle over. it could've ended by 6:00, could've ended by 8:00, could've ended later this weekend. that allows you to give us your narrative summary of why elon musk failed in his main request this week, that he come out of this less powerful, is he overshadowing trump? what you make of it? >> i think he comes out of this exposed. he comes out exposed to someone who does not understand government, and who really thinks this is going to be so easy.

and it turns out it is going to be very hard. in sports there is a term that happens when an owner of a team kind of metals unnecessarily in the team's affairs. you saw this with george steinberger, you see this with jerry jones. the owner of the cowboys. detroit columnist mitch alban many years ago said that these owners think sports is so easy. george steinbrenner made millions of dollars in business, ordering around a bunch of jocks, that's easy. anybody could do it. he certainly felt he should be able to do it. and i think you are saying the same thing with elon musk. after all, his net worth is well beyond all these members of congress. it might actually be higher than all the members of this combined. you know, ordering them around and having them do what he bid them to do should have been very easy. it turned out to be extremely hard. this turned out to be a total fiasco. we will have more fiascoes to

come, because trump 2.0 is going to be musk 1.0. >> really thoughtfully put. i know you mentioned that this reminded you of something from the great show, the simpsons. let's take a look at monty burns. >> in addition to working for me, you may now praise me as your almighty. >> ayman, sir. >> why did you call in this scene? why did this remind you of this week likely >> because it is a case where the gop beheld their new god, musk, and the lax edifice melted away immediately. it took no time whatsoever for that to occur. there was a lot of reasons for them to sort of take their orders from musk. unlike trump, trump is a 78-

year-old lame-duck. musk is going to be around for very long time. he said he is going to do primary challenges against republicans who did not obey his orders. it is almost certain that in 2028 he will be funding a republican nominee of his choosing again in that primary contest. so, his power is going to continue for many more years. that is why you are seeing marjorie taylor greene and mike johnson and so many others be so deferential to him. the problem is he does not understand what he's doing. he simply does not understand politics. it reminded me a lot also of hans gruber in diehard being foiled by this guy wandering around the vents of the building. he is this master criminal, and here is this guy with basically no equipment or anything at all who is basically turning the whole plan arrive. that is going to happen repeatedly over the course of these four years. and we should remember that trump came into his first term

thinking it was going to be so easy. guess what. the pandemic had, his ratings collapsed, and he lost his re- election. that is exactly what happened. that kind of fiasco can happen again, unfortunately. again, unfortunately.

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there are people, you may have heard some of them who said this is campaign rhetoric or you can't always believe trump, or wait and see. well, tonight i can tell you the time for that kind of talk and waiting is over. house republicans are using their government power to go after a conservative official who investigated the january 6 insurrection. before i get to what they are doing, i want to begin with the facts. imagine that. fax number one. all members of congress, regardless of party, have wide legal protection from prosecution for the work they do inside congress, or what they say on the house floor, or how they carry out their duties on a committee. is a very high for less you really find something, like evidence, say, of agreed to sell government activity. we have seen members of both parties get in that kind of trouble. it relates to their government work, but it is a high bar. back not number two. there is no such public

evidence right now against any of the members of the january 6th committee. fax number three. commerce woman liz cheney spent her career as a republican. most people who follow politics are aware of that. she even rose to gop leadership in the trump era. she backed donald trump in 2020. but as you may have heard, he has been vowing revenge against her over her actual work in congress. what i just told you about, that is usually protected material, protected activity. liz cheney, today, i can tell you, is saying that january 6th revealed donald trump to be a cool and vindictive man. and that his republican allies in congress are now fabricating lies and, quote, defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what trump did. that reference to defamation suggests one way that cheney could potentially push back against the tax on her that she views as defamatory and wants to go to civil court to get justice on that. now, to why we are talking

about this right now. tonight, liz cheney is responding to efforts to go after her in this period before trump even takes office as house republicans, her former colleagues demand that she be criminally investigated by the fbi for her work, which they know all about. it is work they also do. it is work she did in congress. alongside them, whether they disagree on certain matters, the congressional work, a coequal branch of government investigating the attack on their work list. the attack on january 6th, when trump fans turn it into a crime scene. and in the hours after those now convicted attackers, so than seditionist, were finally removed and ejected, remember, many top republicans flatly condemned that violence. >> we will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs, or threats. >> chaos, anarchy.

the violence today was wrong and un-american. all i can say is count me out. enough is enough. >> those were just some of the republicans condemning that attack that night. again, they were condemning the thing that donald trump helped foment, and that liz cheney and others later investigated inside of congress. they were speaking when the threat and their fear was fresh. now many of those republican voices are not only joining these plots to minimize the attack, to will it to be something different than it was . some are accepting donald trump's valves, publicly stated plans to part in the very convicts who attacked the capital. what you just heard them condemned, who attacked the police. who made it a very personal, real way, their workplace, their lives, their jobs, and potentially their families were visiting that day all the more dangerous. and some republicans going further, pushing new calls to investigate cheney.

trump's political vendetta is now being, as i mentioned, pursued by house republicans. they are laying the groundwork. it is precisely the kind of quote l'affaire that republicans have claimed to be against. they use that word as a reference to what they view as politically targeted prosecutions. and that is quite clearly notwithstanding the potential hypocrisy, what some of them are now arguing for against liz cheney, because donald trump is matter. i don't mean to minimize the seriousness of this, but that is what it boils down to. except he wants people to abuse power on his behalf next year. so republicans, this is the update i mentioned at the top of the hour. i gave you the context and the facts for why it is hard to go after lawmakers this way under law. but republicans are calling for an fbi investigation. they have issued a new report. one member, loudermilk, going as far as to claim the

committees work with witnesses was some kind of possible federal crime. the language is that federal laws were quote likely broken by liz cheney. that is the allegation. and this is a playbook that predates trump. republicans have long used congress to try to push or launder pressure in separate parts of the government. the executive branch, fbi, doj, some of the efforts seem to get traction. remember, whatever went thinks of james comey, and he has critics across the spectrum. it was republican pressure against him and demands that he brief them on the things that they said it needed even more investigation relating to hillary clinton's emails and other matters, and demanding those probes that led komi to be writing letters back. some of those you may remember were a big issue in 2016. the history of that was republicans pushing the fbi. just as they demanded investigations of even sometimes mid and low level officials who worked for president bill clinton.

if you go back that far. other times these efforts flounder. there were many claims made about possible or hypothetical ukrainian corruption deals. those boomeranged so much, were found to be so baseless, that the feds ended up indicting a source of informants for lying about those apparently politicized claims that were designed to go after biden even if the evidence was not there. now the playbook runs right alongside trump. and he repeats the calls i just mentioned against liz cheney coming from the house with his own post. he is here saying the fbi must investigate. this is new. that quote, he posted that online. one thing legally, if our system and the guardrails and the court hold, is that kind of demand could boomerang on donald trump. and i can tell you exactly how. if there is such a probe later, and judges view that as evidence of a demand for selective political prosecution, to go after the opponents, well, that could end those whole

cases. to get things tossed. if trump's incoming fbi picks, if confirmed, is seen as following what is essentially an order from the president- elect, issued in public, online, and broad daylight, if that is the reason the probe was started or other potential misconduct occurs, judges tend to view that very negatively. now, no one is above being investigated in a system of rule of law. but those investigations are always supposed to begin with evidence of a crime and never with a target of just some person that the president or the governor or whoever wants to go after. trump's seeming confession on this point is that he wants the fbi to abuse power. and as i am reminding you, this is a new one. he is saying that after the campaign, not something that is easily dismissed as campaign rhetoric.

he wants the fbi to become his personal political police force. there are a lot of ways and a lot of parts of the government that last longer than the next four years that are designed to prevent exactly that. now, you cannot talk up that new post i showed you as campaign rhetoric, which is not something that i think some judges have entertained. to give you one example, in the litigation over the travel ban, previously sold on the campaign trail as a quote muslim ban by donald trump, there were judges. not just judges looking to help them, but judges who rhetoric about the travel ban and treated as the same as what he said after the election when he is actually starting to govern. well, here we are now, after the election. as for the past attacks on say liz cheney and others, you have probably seen them. those also definitely crossed lines, legal or otherwise, it is for judges to decide. but some of them were quite severe, with trump saying about cheney things like this.

>> let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. >> everybody on that committee, for what they did, honestly, they should go to jail. >> what they did on a bipartisan basis, remember. there was a lot of effort to make it a bipartisan investigative committee. talk to witnesses. many of the key witnesses worked for donald trump and were, like cheney just was, pretty lifelong republicans. people who agreed with many of donald trump's policies. that is what the committee did. and liz cheney had an impact. not just on the committee, but really in american life, precisely because her family has this republican history. and she has this career as an arch concerted of it. for many people that simply

prove that her opposition to donald trump's january 6th two attempt, and later assorted efforts to hide it, that it was based on principle. precisely because it was liz cheney. it was not some political or ideological disagreement that morphed into something larger. she backed donald trump for office in the campaign. she was in republican leadership. she clearly backed most of his conservative domestic policies. she only broke over the january 6th insurrection. >> the former president, who is attempting to unravel the foundation of our constitutional republic. we have to choose, because republicans cannot both be loyal to donald trump and loyal to the constitution. >> liz cheney chose. the republican party and donald trump choosing on this constitutional question?

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that is how some of the convicted attackers on january 6 viewed their role in data by an outgoing president and possibly to be pardoned by him. we are joined by a former federal prosecutor, whose specialized in financial fraud and also now writes about the justice department and many legal issues for political meddling. welcome. great to have you. we will start deposition style. something in all about. short question short answer is due lawmakers have a pretty wide birth to do their investigative duties, is there anything valid on the public evidence of against the january 6 committee here? >> answer the first question is yes. the answer to the second

question is no. i thought the loudermilk report, yes, you are right, obviously, about the speech and debate protections that apply to legislators and how that would make it significantly harder to bring this sort of criminal prosecution against them. and the allegations that remain yesterday in this report that was prepared by house republicans, very loudermilk in particular, you know, you read through them, as i'm sure that you did, they are quite far- fetched. and i do think liz cheney's assessment of them as allegations that really no credible judge would take seriously, i do think that is actually accurate. because as i was reading through it, it's a lot of speculation. it is a lot of bad motives to her when they have no real evidence. and it is just a lot of assertions that seem to be based on speculation. >> right, so it is this big reach in the context of really a case against potentially donald trump or is fbi

director, whoever would potentially carry out these orders, if they would, for selective prosecution and other things for the government in trouble. i want to play for you how liz cheney sounded when we spoke to her. take a listen. >> what the lesson of donald trump, of the last several years, has taught us, is you have to taken seriously. and we have to taken literally. he has shown us what he is willing to do. >> that is what she told us on the beat about a year ago. do you see this effort, including donald trump demanding an fbi probe of her here in public, as part of that illicit effort, and should the fbi at the top or the middle resist it? >> yeah, i do see it as part of that illicit effort. as you noted, trump is been talking for years and throughout the campaign was talking about prosecuting his political opponents. and it was unclear at various points, like you said, how seriously do we take this. but we are beyond the election

now, as you observed. and i think that this is a troubling sign, obviously, the people were concerned about this sort of thing. i do think i would be surprised on the merits if it were taken seriously by the fbi and doj. but we don't know what pam bondi is going to do if she is confirmed and what kash patel is going to do if he is confirmed. he is wildly answered, he should not be confirmed, but he may be. i think that will actually be the very first significant test of how this administration is going to approach this issue. whether or not doj actually picks up these allegations and tries to convert them into some sort of investigation. >> we also are going to follow some new data that it suggests that a narrow election may not be amended for anybody and an obama angle. one bank that puts you in control. chase. make more of what's yours. hi. i use febreze fade defy plug. and i use this. febreze has a microchip to control scent release

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donald trump left office in shambles and faced a lot of criticism. and he had quite a political comeback in winning this election. all those things happen. but life goes on, and right now we are seeing that he still enters a second term in a weak position, according to the data, and any measurement across modern history. he won the election by about a point and a half, approaching 50% of the vote. not quite reaching an overall. a couple weeks later, 41% of americans view him favorably. which speaks to this trump paradox. just compare that to history. the last republican president

entering a second term after a re-election, consecutive, george w. bush had a 49% approval rating. so, eight points higher, which fits, given that he had just won a close race with about half of the country. obama, though, lead a more decisive re-election with 57% at the same point preparing for his second term. so, this is something on the minds of politicians in both parties as they make sense of somebody who won the 1.5 and is telling you it is the biggest thing ever. democrats are also trying to figure out how to both approach that and not be overly rattled by trump's lead and talk of his edge. but also being open to improving what was still a performance that led to a loss. take, for example, congressman richie torres. >> the far left is a gift to donald trump. it is a gift that will keep on giving until there is a serious reckoning with the result of the election any serious

recalibration. if we swing the pendulum too far to the left on core issues like public safety and immigration, we are going to alienate the majority of the american people. that is a statement of political reality. as a party we have a choice. we can either choose to be ideologically pure, or we can choose to win elections. we can either choose to be ideologically pure or we can choose to govern in a manner that enables us to win elections. >> tiwari, and what happens if we say possibly for the sake of argument that in today's world, among many young people, including black and brown people in urban areas, and other folks, the cool rebel thing is now supposedly the republican party. is that a real concern, and how does that happen? >> i am concerned that there are increasing numbers of men who are gravitating toward the republican party, and we have to outreach to those men. if we have confidence in our messaging as democrats we have to take our message everywhere. we have to take our message in every corner of the media

ecosystem, including alternative media. we have to be careful not to scold or scapegoat or shame anyone. condescension is not only bad morals, its bad politics. it's not going to lose you goodwill, it's going to lose you elections. we have to listen and learn, and be careful to never shame or scapegoat. >> that is what we heard from one democrat postelection. clearly talking about listening and the party being open to criticism or its branding. on the other hand, beyond the politics and all of that discussion, there is structural issues in the way that democracy works today but seems to undercount certain people's votes in power. if you notice that and it feels like it is not an even playing field, our next guest deciduous late documents why that is the case. ari berman, the author of minority rule, the right-wing attack and the will of the people to fight and resist it. and full disclosure, he has

been in erstwhile on-off colleague of mine in political journalism for two decades now. >> and we are, in fact, two different people, as you can see on air right now. >> we are two different aris. and we worked in the same place, hey, tell ari to do whatever. what was it? i say that by way of disclosure. it's great to see you. as you know, we can talk about politics all kinds of ways. one thing that your book and some of your career does is peel back some of these structural, underlying inequities. i'm going to read one example, then you break it down for us. you write in the book, five of the current six conservative justices of the supreme court were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote the first time. so they got fewer votes. and then were confirmed by senators representing a minority of americans. go ahead, explain. >> that's right. so, you look at the 2024 elections, and trump was helped

by a lot of ways that democracy was undermined. one of the keyways was the courts. the fact that his allies on the bench, judges that he nominated, ended up canceling two criminal trials, as you know very well, on classified documents and more importantly on the insurrection . and that change the entire tenor of the campaign. that trump's criminality was not central to the election in the way that it should be, because trump who, at the time, did not win the popular vote, and senators who are not elected by a minority of americans were able to use their power on the bench to basically give trump a massive get out of jail free card. that is just one example of how minority rule played out in the 2024 election. >> which parts of this do you view as changeable? >> well, i would hope that it would all be changeable in the

sense that we could appoint different judges, we could have different people draw political maps, we can reform the system, to some extent, in some ways easier than others. >> when we come back, a very special report we have been preparing about broadening the lens that we use to view politics. that is next. is next. ♪♪ over 600,000 usps employees working in sync to ensure everything sent on its holiday ride ends with a moment of joy. ♪♪ the united states postal service. prilosec knows, for a fire... one fire extinguisher beats 10 buckets of water, and for zero heartburn 1 prilosec a day... beats taking up to 10 antacids a day. it's that simple, for 24 hour heartburn relief...

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now we turn to what i told you is a special report, and it is not about politics as usual. so, get comfortable. we're going to talk about something a little different. take these long-running concerns in america about health insurance practices, discrimination, profiteering by these very wealthy companies as people get sick and sometimes die. this has bubbled over, and there are plenty of people who oppose vigilante violence, but are still reacting to that united healthcare shooting with this long bubbling deep anger

over elite capitalist healthcare and a broken system. so it is a big issue, life and death for many. it is boiling the country. and i bring it up as part of our special report that i'm about to show you something new, because it is fairly clear it is not a quote red or blue issue. it is not a quote left or right issue. even though politics is almost constantly presented through a left versus right lens. we pulled these headlines for many reputable outlets over the years. headlines and rhetoric constantly tell you about the left, gop on the right, this is so automatic. and if you follow the news i bet you are very familiar that it is kind of just how politics is discussed. but does that lens capture everything? and does it capture what is happening right now? well, we are going to turn right now to a wider view on what's happening. it includes that lens but expanded.

i will start very simple, you will completely recognize this. the traditional left right spectrum. very clean, straightforward. not filling in the chart yet, just left, progressive, right, conservatives, and you can put things all across through that lens. but some issues don't just fit left and right. especially lately. when you hear broad concern about what i mentioned, the broken parts of our capitalist, profit driven healthcare in america, or opposition to discredited elite institutions from wall street to certain u.s. government foreign policy decisions. well, some of those issues may follow a more up down track. this is a different way to think about it, but you could consider up as norms and order, rules, institutions, those things we hear about, basically that is the top. and you could think of the down part as the opposition to those things up on top. the anger at elites.

the call that sometimes disorder is necessary, and disruption is overdue because those old norms and order have been considered failures or even completely discredited. different actions. and here's the thing. it does not have to replace left right, when you think about it. because ideology still exists, of course. but the up down issues maybe driving a lot of politics. so it makes more sense when you plug-in examples. consider this exercise. a standard left right spectrum goes from say larger government smaller government. and if you trust institutions, you might back expanding government programs. if you look at the upper left, go to the very upper left and i will guide you through this. a says expand medicare for all. because that would be believing in a current system like medicare and doing a liberal thing. if you go to the upper right you see abortion bans, using

government power, the current system to enforce a conservative social priority. and on the normal left right you have larger and smaller government, of course. if you go to the down section of this you might see plans to cut against the existing system. and that is the down part. but the left right part you still have to work out. liberals say defund the police, i'm sure you've heard about that. but not all liberals. these more disruptive liberals would say that, or conservatives say just abolish the whole department of education. break a norm. what i do showed you in capsule form is a way to think about this, a new lens from someone who knows a lot about politics. obama veterans blake seth. he worked in the upper space, if you want to think about his traditional experience. but he said a lot of the energy right now is on the more disruptive side. he writes the politicians can actually be tracked this way. i put this up briefly, but i will give you some time to

absorb it. elites who uphold the system are in that upper hand. so you take pelosi, she was the speaker of the house. however liberal you think she is, she is up there. met romney would be the conservative version of that. conservative republican who still stood for norms, all kinds of attacks on the rule of law. down there on near the left right line could see sharad brown on the left, or a veteran leader like scully's on the right. and if you go all the way down you can see people who, in addition to ideology, are tapping this disruptive energy. in fact, when you think about bernie sanders, you might already kind of know that he is not your traditional political elite. you kind of feel it in your gut. and he is and that more disruptive area of liberalism, just like that other conservative there, abbott, has been very vocal about not just being ideologically conservative, but tapping into what he says is necessary disruptive energy against traditions and norms, sometimes even claiming he will just break laws even though he is in

the government. he won't follow supreme court precedents, he says, although he has not always acted on that. so, the view may capture something real here. something that is missing in the standard language of politics. and what we see matters to reality, but also for anyone who wants to try to face what is happening right now, or channel political solutions. the writer i mentioned says that while left and right can explain a lot, this moment might turn even more on up or down. and effective leaders may channel that. and think about it. we have all these people, apart from harris and trump and the recentpeosople agitated against elite bankers. elite ceos. elite wall street practices. elite bureaucrats. elite orders about covid and how to live your life. elite media. and of course,

elite politicians. that is the kind of attack they can dog anyone, even anywhere on this chart, if you think this populist energy is driving something. so i told you, we try to think a little different tonight. joining us now is a documentarian. you might recall him being on msnbc a lot, providing political analysis. he has been on different programs. and we mentioned his documentary, lone wolf, looked at some of these elite failures and the student debt crisis that airs on msnbc. i have to mention, i was among those that he interviewed out in the new york city streets. i was having a hot dog for that project, and i will be interviewing seth. welcome. >> thanks.

>> we took extra time to kind of really build out what you are saying. anything new is always a little different, you sail, that's not the usual terms. in your own terms, what you mean by this up down popular energy? >> yeah, you can look at this and think about this in a simple way. voters sometimes really care about issues, so you and i notice, we talked about, as you say, left to right. are they too far left? moving the center? going to the right? and that matters. but the point here is that other stuff matters, too. and those other stuff our attitudes. approaches. and we are, right now, at a specific time of anger. i'm sure older viewers can remember when ronald reagan was trying to sell us sunny optimism. he talked about a shining city on a hill. and bill clinton talked about a place called hope. those were hopeful, positive messages they were putting forward. that is not the time we are in now. if it is not enough of a wake up call when donald trump won, running on a campaign of anger and disorder, and as you mentioned, the shooting of united healthcare ceo and the reaction from many that

happened after that shows that we are in a time of anger. and so it is really important if we are going to look at causes, issues, candidates, campaigns, don't just look at the left to right spectrum on the issues. you have to look at also are they in touch with the anger and the feelings and the attitude that people have today? that is what we are trying to do with the up down scale in addition to the left right. >> yeah, it's really interesting. i mentioned your experience. obama, you also worked for hillary clinton. but bernie sanders, at one point you campaigned against, and we will put up on the screen the politicians chart we made. again, this is not science. this is just a way to think about it. but tell us why bernie would be where he is, and what he has tapped into. >> yeah, i think with the down part, a lot of it is attitude. a lot of it is vibes, if you will. if you are someone who seems angry, we talked a lot in politics, as you mentioned, i worked in politics for 25 years. and the best politicians, dopant and talk about i feel

your pain. that changes due to the errors in generations. but if you are a politician who can connect with the authentic feeling the voters are having, that is a good thing. and right now, as i mentioned, anger is a big thing that people are feeling. because, you know, the three richest billionaires in the country have as much money as the bottom 50% of the country. more than two thirds of the countries that the economy is not working for them. 72% say we are on the wrong track. so no matter how positive the larger economic trends like the stock market appear to be, it's not how people are feeling right now. and we end up on that down the scale, he is been able to channel that anger and really rhetorically do that. in terms of helices, it's about upending systems. you mentioned medicare for all as far as being on the left, and maybe that could be up you could also argue that is on the downside, because it is about upending the system we have is healthcare right now. right now we have this private health insurance that everyone has, and so many people are upset about that.

that is what that shooting was about. upending that system, which is something that sanders has called for an something that puts them on that down scale. >> yeah. so, blake, a lot of democrats, i looked over this past year, and beyond being upset with the laws, which is how anybody reacts, there is an extra layer of almost aghast frustration that donald trump and wealthy benefactors are somehow cast as the populist rebels. what is your lens or your spectrum to explain that, and doesn't offer any new paths for democrats? >> yeah, i totally get it. and to be clear, people on the left and the right, those issues are still very valid. those opinions are still valid. but this accounts for the attitudes and the way in which people are communicative. and what you essentially had during that campaign was kamala harris, who, you are right, is

not as wealthy as donald trump. was not born with a silver spoon he was. but she found herself in a position she was talking about protecting the democratic process and the democratic system. and that is about attacking the status quo. norms, order, all that stuff. and trump was trying to bring it down. a man about disorder and disruption. and for a lot of people about the angry might have agreed with harris on the issues. but if you're feeling angry and the system is not delivering for you, and you have someone who is saying the system is bad and i want to upend it, that can be appealing to people. a great example of this is abortion has appeared on the ballot as you know the last several cycles. and almost every time voters say they want to retain and preserve the right to an abortion. at the same time, that happened now, just last month, donald trump won and republicans were handed the house and senate. how does that make sense? the answer is that left to right does not explain everything. how people are feeling. so you have trump and elon musk saying the system is bad, and for a lot of people that's

enough. >> thanks for watching the beat we can. be sure to join us weekdays at 6:00 p.m. eastern for the beat on msnbc. . find a specialized urologist who can diagnose pd and build a treatment plan with you. visit makeapdplan.com today. life, diabetes, there's no slowing down. each day is a unique blend of people to see and things to do. that's why you choose glucerna to help manage blood sugar response. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day.

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good evening and welcome to politics nation. tonight, it was the farce before christmas.