that will do it for me. thanks for watching. tune in tomorrow for the sunday show where jasmine crockett joins us to discuss the chaotic scramble on capitol hill. keep it here, ayman mohyeldin is next. >> good evening, tonight on ayman, the week's government shutdown drama offers an early glimpse of how much power elon

musk could wield in washington. the house ethics committee prepares to release its report any moment on the behavior of matt gaetz. and the u.s. lifts a $10 million bounty on a syrian rebel group's leader. i'm ayman mohyeldin. let's do it. shut down avert. this morning after the house and senate finally overcame republican chaos to pass a government spending bill, president biden signed it. all government agencies may now continue their normal operations. the continuing resolution that congressmannaged to pass will keep the government funded through march 14th of next year and includes $100 billion in disaster relief and $10 billion aid for farmers and the farm bill. one issue the bill does not address is the debt ceiling. a big part of trump's 11th hour demand that sent congress

members scrambling earlier this wear. house republicans say that they have agreed to a plan to deal with it early next year. what is notable here is not that the house and senate passed a government spending bill. that should be standard operating procedure. which notable here is actually how we got to this moment. leaders lined up tuesday to approve a spending bill but a five word social media post by an unelected south african native turned washington upside down for four days. this bill should not pass declared the world's richest man elon musk on the social media platform he owns. well, he seems to also own congress and the incoming trump administration at this point because that post began a process that brought the u.s. government to the very brink of a shutdown in the 12 hours after that post, he made more than 60 new posts, many filled with misinformation that forced the bill to be scrapped and he

included a threat. any member of the house or senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years. this incident has raised a serious question about the republican party. who is actually in charge here? donald trump or his top donor in the world's richest man? this is what republican house speaker mike johnson had so say yesterday. >> i was in constant contact with president trump throughout this process. spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. he knew exactly what we were doing and why and this is a good outcome for the country. i think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well. elon musk and i talked within about an hour ago. and, we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job and i said hey, you want to be speaker of the house? i don't know. >> let's stop for a moment here. have we ever seen anything like

this? an unelected billionaire this publicly central to the passage of a bill in congress? and second of all, why would musk want to be the house speaker? it seems that would be a demotion for him at this point. the events of the past week have led some democrats to poke fun at trump for seeming to play second fiddle to the real man in charge. look at these ai generated images. i think they capture the sentiment pretty accurately. but is this really a joke in people are already going above his head and dealing we listen musk with this. he is the oldest man ever elected president. he already failed to get his party to support his first attorney general nominee matt gaetz. after threatening primary challenges against any republican who voted to fund the government without dealing with the debt limit, 170 house republicans just defied him. so i think it is fair to ask at

this moment, is donald trump really in charge? or has he already become a lame duck president before he is sworn into office? joining us now is congressman john from california. have you in all of your time in politics, sir, ever seen an unelected figure and a top political donor play such an overt role in such a detailed degree in legislation that elon musk has done now? >> never. never have i ever seen it. there are always people out there in contact with the elected officials. a governors, presidents and the like. but i have never seen one that is so as you said overt public and out in front and threatening members of congress. frankly, it raises very, very

serious concerns about who actually is going to be running this government. an hour ago i talked to musk. that's what's happening here. it is the richest man in the world who has taken the front position on the very initial issues issues. >> republicans have an extremely thin majority. it appear to have been really weakened by this mess. does he have any chance of winning the vote for house speaker in january? >> he may have to reply upon

the democrats. the democrats have put forth all of the legislation of the last two years. we did it again friday with the passage of the final compromise continuing resolution, we will continue to do that in the new congress. even more dependent on the democrats. it will be the trump administration. and it is possible, at least up to now and next year for the speaker to rally the necessary republican votes. >> if this past week congressman was any indication, it is safe to assume next year it is going to get messy with republicans in control of the house with different factions

within the republican movement at odds with one another. how do you think democrats balance like the spending bill versus sitting back what we have seen most of this week? >> i knew exactly what hakeem jeffries and the democrats did. they need our votes in order to keep the government open to solve any important problem. and you sat to make sure that the democratic priorities which are very straightforward, families in america are benefiting from every piece of legislation. if you are a teacher, a nurse, a truck driver or equipment operator or a farmer, you will find the democrats using the

very slim majority the republicans have the ability to get their act together. put forth policies to help the working men and women of america. we have no interest whatsoever in helping the plutocrats, the billionaire class. they have quite enough already. and it will come down to a very significant brawl in the early months next year when trump tries to put forth his 2 trillion-dollar tax cut. 80 to 90% of which will go to folks like elon musk. the super wealthy. we are not going to support that. we are going to, if there is a tax cut, it is going to be for the working men and women, the wage earns of america. >> this may be somewhat speculative, but what do you think musk's motivation is in this? why do you think he wanted to play this role the way he did

with this specific piece of legislation and threatening people that, who voted for it, that they could be voted out of office in two years and he is somebody who certainly has the means to field primaries against candidates he does not like. >> well certainly, he threatened every 435 members of congress. about 430 of us now. he threatens for all of this. he will have to spend a lot of money and a lot of his time to do that. but the fact of the matter is what is his motivation? clearly he can spend money and put it into campaigns and he has proven that already. it is also an eagle issue. we have two of the most monumental egos contending for the front of the stage. elon musk and donald trump. it will be interesting to see

how this works out. my guess is there's going to be a conflict. there will be a clash. at some point, the real president, i guess, excuse me, that's not musk, the real president trump is going to say wait a minute. i'm the one that got elected. and elon is going to say yeah, with my $270 million you got elected. so, it is going to be an interesting clash between the two of them. but there is also more. and i think in depth to this. the ranking member of the appropriation committee put out a letter about elon musk's close and financial ties to the u.s. government. it is a very important piece of information that i'm sure will be out in the public even more. and basically, elon musk has over $20 billion of contracts with the federal government. and also, one of the things that he was able to kill,

killing the initial deal that was put together, was a clause that would prohibit american companies from investing in certain industries in china. including factories that produce batteries. >> interesting. >> guess who has underway one of the largest factories for the production of batteries in china? elon musk. so we'll see. there is going to be an enormous conflict of interest here. >> congressman, sir, it's always a pleasure, thank you so much. joining the the conversation now is rick wilson, and amisha cross, democratic strategist and former obama campaign adviser. great to have both of you with us. so rick, early in trump's first term, steve bannon started getting a lot of attention an he was portrayed as a trump

puppet master. when he made the cover of time magazine it was only a matter of time before trump couldn't stand being overshadowed. with how thin skinned and big of an ego he has. now you have musk, a huge difference. steve bannon was not the richest man on the planet. he doesn't have that kind of power or unlimited resources to weigh in on every single race in the country if he wanted to. how do you think trump will handle this new perception he is subservient to elon musk? >> well you know, vice president trump is not a role he wanted. and right now, he is essentially the vice president. he is essentially running in elon's wake, running in elon's shadow. operating under the rules and the terms elon musk wants him to operate under. and elon musk makes steve bannon look like a picture of modesty and goodwill. the thing about musk i think that is interesting is that he is capricious.

he has a short attention span. he is given to long running benders on his social media platform in the middle of the night about whatever strikes his mind. at that moment. he will draw trump in with more and more radical things. elon endorsing the german neo- nazi party. even trump is not going to come out and hug a neo-nazi party in germany one hopes. but we have one with so much power over trump and the ai images of trump wearing a gimp suit and bending the knee. serving elon dinner. those will get to trump in a way that i think the policy will not affect trump as emotionally as those things will. >> it seems that you can kind of look across the board on so many issues that republicans have to get done or have done

and it is just a complete chaotic scene. i mean the republicans clearly don't have their act together. trump hasn't even been sworn in yet and they are already making a mess of this very what i would call routine annual procedure. i guess my question to you as a strategist is how should democrats play their hand come january when they won't be in control of either house or congress or the white house? do they just sit back, watch this mess of a show or try to bridge the gap? >> well first thing i would say is grab your popcorn and buckle up because come january, you know, we'll be in a much different position. for democrats specifically, there are some opportunities here. because especially in the house, there is very little, i would probably argue nothing. republicans are going to be able to get past without some democrats coming over as well. and i think that puts them in a very tough position. it is very clear that speaker johnson is hanging on by a thread. he is essentially walking the plank. donald trump has signaled multiple times he is ready for

a new speaker and if a speaker vote was to be held tomorrow, johnson would be up out of this thing. with that being said, for democrats, this also means that they cannot only show themselves the adults in the room, but they can also form a coalition that blocks much of what the trump administration, the incoming trump administration wants to do. but also acknowledging to the everyday american how this is going to affect them. the man, the truth about trump he puts on truth social regularly. as does elon musk when it comes to x, he has said that he wants america to live in its guilded age. and we know from history that the guilded age meant the billionaires, the super wealthy, who were toiling in the fields, toiling in the factories across the country. and quite frankly could not barely feed their families at all. that's not what the american people voted for. whether you were in a red state, a blue state, or a purple state, you are talking about working class people. they want an economy that worked for them so i think what

we are going to see is democrats straighten up on the messaging, tell the truth, showcase exactly how this is affecting the american people because trump has no plan other than to continue to stack the pockets of the ultra wealthy including his family, and elon musk is trying to cut as many deals as he possibly can. he is not interested in being speaker. what he is interested in doing is ensuring he changes the face of the american government so he himself can become more wealthy than he is right now. but also, that republicans will kiss the ring. because running at 700, you know, plus when it comes to the funds he keeps dropping into campaigns, he continues to showcase that trump actually needs him. up next, we will talk about matt gaetz and the ethics report and what it means for the republican party. means for the republican party.

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in moment now, we could see the house ethics committee's highly anticipated report on disgraced former congressman matt gaetz. for three years now t committee has been investigating gaetz on a slew of accusations including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts and using campaign funds for personal use. all charges gaetz has denied.

the panel's decision to put out the report came as a shock. he dropped out in the running for attorney general. now backed into a corner waiting to be exposed, guess what he is doing? lashing out. on x, he falsely claimed he was exonerated from the justice department's investigation into sex trafficking underaged girls. what really happened is the doj chose not to prosecute because they didn't think they had a strong enough case. in part because they were worried about how potential witnesses would have stood up to cross-examination. rick and amisha are back with me. rick, over the past month, we learned a lot about gaetz's sexual misconduct allegations. but this was a bit of a turn from what we thought. gaetz dropped out. no need to continue with the

public humiliation of him. holding him accountable and yet here we are. now the report might be released and the fall-out could be very damaging for him. >> i think it is important, i'm not underestimating how deeply unliked matt gaetz is in the house. they do not like this guy. they know he is a degenerate. he was very in their face about it. and a lot of them had a lot of objections to the kind of things he was doing and saying in the house. and a lot of his behavior was not a secret to his colleagues. now this case in florida with the teenage prostitutes and the venmo payments, they were worried they would have to bring teenage prostitutes to the stand to testify. and that did not work out for them. exonerated not the one one would choose. he dodged a prosecution, but his close friend, his running buddy joel greenberg is in prison now because of their

role. their mutual role in being engaged with teenage prostitutes. i mean, we can't overemphasize this is the kind of thing in maga that were a democrat were involved in this, they would be burning the building down screaming about pedophiles and perversion and dedegeneracy. and yet with matt, it took a real act of bravery here for them to release this because he is threatening to expose other members. et cetera. it is a mess. but they are not going the have matt to kick around much longer. he is off to host his own little web show. >> i want you to read a part of his response here. it is very telling. he says it is embarrassing, not criminal, that i partied, womanized and drank more than i should have earlier in life. i live a different life now.

that is his response to allegations that he paid an underage girl and other women for sex. >> i mean, this is his pole on the road to damascus moment on twitter. we are talking underaged girls. we are talking about his coconspirator in this case also serving federal time already because of what he did. and for matt gaetz, a lot of this wasn't even in the past in the past. some people in congress were talking about a few months ago he was showing them photos and there were conversations about sexual interactions. there were people coming out making those and talking about this now. in addition to that, there is more than enough evidence to show there was significant im propriety that happened. he assumed that once he walked away, that this investigation would walk away as well. and this just goes to show that the congressional mens, they

really, really have a strong disdain for this man. because they did it in a secret vote but did not want him to get away without the public knowing the extent of what is in the report. and i think that says something about them. because people on the right see him as grotesque. this is somebody who is enaccused in engaging in some level of sexual impropriety with underaged people. and on multiple occasions. i think that matt gaetz should be quaking in his boots because he thought he would sell off into the sunset on one america news. now his past has come back to bite him in ways i don't think he expected from the same direction he shouted from the rooftops was much ado about nothing. >> congresswoman marjorie taylor greene blasted this saying if the the committee releases one report, they should release them all. what kind of impact if any do you think this report will have

on members of congress and gaetz obviously wasn't charminged by the doj but is this some form or another of accountability? >> look, i think one of the things worth mentioning. matt gaetz said he lived a different life earlier in life, you mean earlier in life in what, the third quarter of 2022? when he was a child or a frat boy. this happened when matt was already a member of congress! i mean, marjorietaylor greene, she is a defender of matt and another person who is ostracized in congress. i'm sure as you hear marjorie taylor greene opining on a number of things like this, if she is going to blow people up, she is going to face the same fate as matt eventually. she is, you know, equally problematic in some different ways.

and similar ways and different in others but she is another person who even her maga colleagues really, really wish she could get struck by lightning. >> amisa and rick, thank you so much. coming up, fani willis has been disqualified from overseeing trump's interference case so what happens next? ase so what happens next? i won't let my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis symptoms define me... emerge as you, with clearer skin. with tremfya®, most people saw 100% clear skin... ...that stayed clear, even at 5 years. serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or if you need a vaccine. emerge with clear skin. ask your doctor about tremfya®. ♪♪ i brought in ensure max protein with 30 grams of protein. those who tried me felt more energy in just two weeks! —uh. —here i'll take that. [cheering] ensure max protein, 30 grams protein,

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dropped his two federal cases against trump. but there is a key difference in the georgia case. they are state level convictions meaning donald trump could not erase them with a presidential pardon. now, willis' office has said they will appeal the court's decision but that process could take months if not longer. joining me now is jill winebanks, special prosecutor and copost of the sisters in law podcast. a fulton county judge ruled there was no conflict of interest between willis and wade. the only appeals judge to dissent in that decision made reference to that in his opinion writing in part, quote, we have no authority to reverse the trial court. none. your thoughts? >> i think the dissent is completely correct. it is clearly not georgia law to allow an appearance of impropriety to reach a

disqualification. it takes an actual conflict of interest. there is no conflict of interest here. no actual conflict. and even the majority admits that is the law of georgia. that there is no actual conflict. and they are violating the law and making an exception to the precedent in georgia so i think that unless the all republican supreme court does something that they shouldn't do that this will be reversed by the supreme court. in the meantime, it will go to a panel of the district attorney's association that will appoint a replacement for her and if the past is precedent, then there will be no trial because a case of hers was sent to that committee and as a result, no charges were brought ant it was dismissed. >> in a new op ed for msnbc,

legal analyst prosecutor shawn wu writes the appeals court decision this week is quote nonsensical and says that quote there is no conflict of interest as you just out lined with two lawyers on the same team have a romantic relationship. what do you make of his analysis here? >> i think he is completely correct. that the majority opinion is results oriented. they wanted to disqualify her and so they said we are going to ignore the georgia law and the georgia courts precedent and say this is a special case and that because it is a special case, what they are saying is donald trump is above the law. that is really wrong. it's just not the right thing and i'm really sorry to see that happen. it should be reversed. you're right, this is a case

that is a state case like the new york case where he is still awaiting sentencing. and we'll see if that happens before or after his next term in office. >> how does the reversal play out? how do you see a path forward in this case? if willis says she wants to appeal this decision. where does it go next? >> i think she has already indicated that she has filed an appeal. that she will file an appeal. the appeal will definitely go forward. as you noted in your opening, by the way, happy holidays to you. i think that is what will happen. she will appeal it. it will take a long time. but in the meantime, there is this committee of the district attorney's association of georgia and they have a committee chair and he makes the decision as to who to

reassign it to. that means you have to have someone else in georgia who is willing to do this case. someone else who has the time to do this because a lot of investigation went into this. a lot of evidence has been gathered. and so it will be a big burden. but it is also a political nightmare for someone else. she was brave enough to bring this case. i hope she gets it back. by the way, in georgia when she is disqualified, the district attorney, her whole office is disqualified so it cannot go back to fulton county unless the supreme court reverses the court of appeals and reaffirms judge mcafee's original decision. and really, he's the one who knows whether or not this affected the evidence or the trial or anything else. because he's the one who has been in charge of the case from the very beginning. >> jill, happy holidays to you. >> thank you. >> thank you for all your insights throughout the course of this past year, i greatly appreciate it as always.

>> thank you. next up, switching gears, headed overseas we are taking a closer look at syria. reflecting on the horrors of the past and the cautiously exploring optimism of the future. and next hour, my panel reacts to democrats handling of aoc's bid to lead the house oversight committee pushing aside growing calls for a generational change in leadership. nge in leadership. ♪♪ well would you look at that? jerry, you've got to see this. i've seen it. trust me, after 15 walks, it gets a little old. ugh. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! unbelievable. stop waiting. start investing. e*trade ® from morgan stanley. e*trade ® sofia vergara: in this family, we don't fight over the bill. we just take care of it. families never receive a bill from st. jude for treatment,

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[audio logo] just a few day ago if you had googled mohammed ajulani, you would find posters calling him a terrorist and the u.s. had a bounty on him for his ties to al qaeda. he is the head of hts, the rebel group that overthrew the dictator assad earlier this month in syria. but if you look him up today, you'll see him referred to

instead as syria's de facto leader. you will also notice that the u.s. website that once labeled him a terrorist and listed the bounty are now nowhere to be found. this comes after u.s. officials had a quote productive and pragmatic visit to syria after meeting with him who propsed to prevent terrorist groups in syria from threatening the u.s. or its allies. we are still not sure how his transitional government will move syria forward but this matters for a few reasons. this is the first official engagement in syria in over ten years. the u.s. has not had a diplomatic presence there since 2012 when it closed its embassy in damascus. this is a fresh start for syria. a big step toward reconciliation after the country spent years cut off from the world. as we end the week with this

news, signaling a turning of the page in syria, we are uncovering the horrors of the assad regime. some of the most horrific evidence of war crimes have been revealed since world war ii. these mass graves could contain hundreds of thousands of bodies. conservatively there could be 100,000 bodies in a single grave outside of damascus. victims in the graves may make up some of the hundreds of thousands of syrians that are believed to still be missing. images have shown the recovering remains from these mass graves. some photos are haunting. piles of bones and skulls wrapped in body bags. satellite images have revealed large burial sites. these graves are a chilling reminder of the violence, the torture, the relentless killing

that took place under assad's regime. here is what they told the news about the graves which were an open secret. >> so this site was ground zero when it comes to the mass graves all around here. so let's start here. how many people do you think are buried underneath this patch of ground? patch of ground? >> the international commission on missing persons has reported

at least 66 mass grave sites across syria. more than 28,000 families have come forward searching for clues about their missing loved ones but finding those answers will not be easy. the assad regime may be gone but it is unclear how anyone will or can be held accountable. human rights watch has called for human urgent action to preserve evidence of these crimes. crucial evidence could be destroyed stopping the families of the victims from learning the truth. the removal of a dictator is a significant chapter in syria's story, but now those responsible for the crimes must be held accountable. and for that to happen, there needs to be action. not only from syria's transitional government, but from the international community especially as countries like the u.s. start opening up to syria once again. how common is it? ?

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before the break, i discussed the discovery of mass graves in syria believed to contain more than 100,000 body. joining me now is somebody who visited these sites and called the killings by the assad regime some of the worse abuses since the nazis. steven rapp is an ambassador at large for war crimes, global and criminal justice. it is great to have you on the show. you led prosecutions at both rwanda and sierra leone war crimes. what about the grave sites made you equate the assad regime with nazi germany? >> this was a machinery of death. tens of thousands. more than 150,000 people that were disappeared off the streets.

individuals, some politically active. some simply with birth certificates from the wrong part of the country were sent into these dungeons where thousands of them were tortured to death. we saw their bodies emaciated, eyes gouged out. cuts in the skin. we met people who would come out of the country involved in digging those trenches you are showing there including one individual that did it at the initial cemetery and this larger one. they described really thousands of bodies arriving there almost every month over the period of year after year after year. now with prisons being the

prisoners being freed and syrians having overthrown this cruel dictatorship, only a few thousand have come out. so we clearly know that more than 100,000 people are missing and sadly we have to conclude they are in these mass graves. >> before i get to the issue of accountability and holding officials accountable, let me ask you about what you saw on the ground in terms of the evidence gathering right now, how robust is it right now that there is a very good competent capable gathering of evidence that can be used in a free and fair trial if it gets to that pint from our area of expertise, ambassador? >> it is certainly in damascus where major mass graves exist. one of the ngos which i'm

involved in has been moving in other liberated areas of the country to work with authorities to secure the documents and put them in safe places to be digitized. keep in mind, identifying victims and determining who died and when they died and how they died, the documents will tell us a great deal. and this regime had many working in this process communicating back and forth as we discovered. so we think that will show us a great deal of information about when and how they did it. and we need a process that hasn't begun of getting dna samples from the survivors and excavating the mass graves. >> i'm not sure if you have

seen, but in some of the initial announcements from the transitional government, there was a call on syrian soldiers of the previous army to basically be granted amnesty. how when you begin to prosecute or someone begins to prosecute these charges, how high does it go up the chain of the command and the move announced by hts undercut the idea of having accountable. it was probably the rank and file soldiers who carried them out. >> i approve of their decision to amnesty the draftees. frankly, in this country, if you didn't follow direction, if you so much as hinted at any kind of dissent, you or members

of your family would end up in these mass graves having gone through dungeons an horrendous torture beforehand. so justice needs to proceed two ways to establish the total of what happened for the benefits of the survivors and the second is to hold the leaders responsible for what happened. i met with the acting foreign minister on thursday and discussed really the four-step process to do that. and he certainly thought those approaches were good. on the other hand, we'll have to work together to accomplish those. it is important to have the lined of listing that has begun because international groups includeing the u.n. investigative mechanism, ngo, a need to be able to go in and know by assisting in this process of establishing justice and the truth, they are not going to get into trouble under

sanctions. >> very quickly ambassador, do you think it is better for this accountability, this pursuit of justice to happen inside syria or to happen in an international court of sorts to for the sake of transparency and fairness and justice? >> my preference is that it always happens near the scene of the crime in a process led by syrians, by and for them. obviously, when it comes to these serious cases, when it comes to extraditing people, it will have to meet international standards or it will not be cooperation. and i think the new leadership understands that. >> all right, former ambassador, steven rapp, thank you for your time and insight. >> good to be with you. a new hour of ayman starts after a quick break. n starts after a quick break.

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on this new our of ayman, trump and his boss elon musk bring chaos to washington. plus the absurdity of portraying mitch mcconnell as the new face of the anti-trump movement. and he is an internet sensation above and below new york city streets. subway takes creator is here to answer all of the pressing questions. i'm ayman mohyeldin.

let's do it.