tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC December 23, 2024 9:00pm-10:00pm PST
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profit off our anger. and let's hope that in the next year, in the years ahead, we do the hard and important work that will actually bring us together. and on that very hopeful note, i wish you a very good night. from all of us colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thank you for staying up late with me so, so many nights, and have a beautiful, beautiful holiday. beautiful holiday. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. it is december 23rd. tomorrow is christmas eve. merry christmas to everybody who celebrates. i have two news christmas presents for you. one of them i'll tell you about a little later in this hour,
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something i'm going to give you as a christmas present on christmas day. we will get to that later on this hour, but the other one is a true story i think of as a christmas present, at least i think can maybe be something helpful for understanding today's news and it arrives at an auspicious time. this is a story about this man. his name is joseph e. davies. he was born in wisconsin to immigrant parents. he got involved in democratic party politics. he became democratic party chairman in the state of wisconsin. he then moved to washington, had some government jobs. he ended up getting very, very rich as a corporate lawyer and then in the 1930s two things happened in his life. first he became a diplomat. he became a u.s. ambassador.
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he was ambassador to belgium and ambassador to luxembourg and was america's ambassador to russia, to the soviet union. he was very controversial in that role because he was seen as a real suck-up, a real apologist for the stalin dictatorship in russia, but if you want to know what he was really, really famous for even more than that, it was the other big thing that happened in his life around the same time that he started this very high profile diplomatic career. the other thing that happened to him right around then is that he got married to the richest woman in america and this was a very high profile affair. he got married before he became ambassador to russia. she was his wife and went with him to moscow while he was the ambassador in russia. she had shipped over to moscow
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from the united states 25 refrigerators and 2,000 pints of frozen cream, not to like distribute in russia, but all for her, all for the ambassador's residence. it was a very high profile thing. this was a second marriage for him. it was a third marriage for her. they didn't end up having any kids together, but they did stay married for a long time. they were married for 20 years and a lot of that was in the public eye. one of the lasting marks of this famous marriage is this, this coat of arms. i mentioned joseph davies was the son of immigrants. he was the son of welsh immigrants. his parents were from wales. while he was in the middle of his very high profile diplomatic career in the 1930s, he arranged that the uk would issue his family this coat of
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arms. this was the official davies family crest, their official coat of arms for his ancestral family, for the davies family. while he was married to the richest woman in the country, the couple had his family crest, his family coat of arms, installed at her house like carved into the fireplace and mounted up on the wall. her house, her name was marjorie merriweather post, her house was her pride and joy. it was a mansion that she had built in south florida that was called mar-a-lago and her house was famously later sold in the 1980s at bargain basement price to a man named donald trump where upon trump took the coat of arms that was up on the wall at this house he just bought.,
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see if you can see the difference between these two coat of arms, the coat of arms trump uses on all his stuff now and the original one he found on the wall at mar-a-lago when he bought that house. see if you can spot the difference. we'll put them both up on the screen at the same time. on the left, that's the coat of arms that trump trademarked. on the right that's where he got it from. that's the original. you see on the one on the left, on the trump one, the little scroll on the bottom, it says trump like it is the trump family crest, but on the right side of your screen you can see what word was there originally? the word that trump took off the coat of arms in order to put his own name on it. the word there is integritas,
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integrity. he literally removed the word integrity and put himself there instead on somebody else's real family coat of arms that he stole and appropriated for his own purposes. when joseph davies' grandson died a few years ago during the first trump term actually, his obituary in the "new york times" explained that although the family from whom trump took this crest was not at all happy about trump claiming it as if it were his own, mr. davies' grandson advised the rest of the family to "not bother suing mr. trump because you'll be in court for years and years and years." so they let it go and president- elect donald trump took that other family's coat of arms, took their family crest, and to this day pretends like it is his own, but he literally had to remove the word integrity in
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order to do that. so merry christmas. the news gods got you a metaphor. it maybe has not been a good idea to try to run this presidential transition from mar-a-lago with the bad juju of that family crest stolen from some other family looming over the proceedings minus its integrity. there was the nfl owner with a felony conviction in a famous bribery case involving a riverboat casino license in louisiana. trump gave that nfl owner a pardon in his first term as president. now in the transition to his second term he decided to give that nfl owner's son-in-law a job in the new administration, decided to give that nfl owner's son-in-law the job of running the dea, running the drug enforcement administration. why not? he knows his father-in-law, the
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felon that he gave the pardon to. trump awarded this dea choice apparently without googling the son-in-law. the announcement that the son- in-law would get the dea job that was made by trump on a saturday, by the following tuesday the guy himself had announced that he was pulling himself out of consideration for the job whereupon trump announced the guy didn't "pull himself out. i pulled him out." trump had only named this guy to the job three days earlier. i pulled him out. well, then why did you name him three days ago? there was trump's announce hadment trump 's announcement of new white house counsel that was unannounced that the guy who was pressed for that particular white house counsel had reportedly been demanding white house bribes if you wanted to put your name in contention for
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top jobs in the white house. white house counsel announcement? not white house counsel announcement. amid a lot of chest pounding how they weren't going to let anybody else like say the fbi do any background checks and vetting on their nominees, that they could handle all the vetting themselves and not need anybody else meddling in it, around all the chest pounding in that the trump team proclaimed themselves blindsided by all the skeletons in the closets they didn't know about from disastrous picks like the fox news weekend host they picked to be defense secretary. shockingly, when you don't vet someone, turns out you don't find out the things that a vetting might turn up about them. after picking a serving u.s. senator from florida for the secretary of state job, trump then let it be known he was personally lobbying florida's governor to install his son's wife in the newly vacated senate seat from florida and
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that in itself is a humiliating nepotistic farce, but it's something else when the president commits to the humiliating farce of that and then it doesn't work. daughter-in-law lara trump now publicly removing herself from consideration for that senate seat after reports out of florida that after all that, after that humiliating farce, she wasn't going to get the tap, after all. then, of course, there was trump's choice of this man to be attorney general, attorney general of the united states. "in sum, the committee found substantial evidence of the following, from at least 2017 to 2020 representative gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him. in 2017 representative gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl.
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during the period 2017 to 2019 representative gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions. representative gaetz accepted gaetz with transportation and lodging including a trip to the bahamas in excess of permissible amounts. in 2018 representative gaetz allowed chief of staff attaining a passport. representative gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discrediting upon the house of representatives. based on the above, the committee concludes there was substantial evidence that representative gaetz violated house rules and state and federal laws and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, permission of special favors and privileges and for
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good measure, obstruction of congress, violated house rules and state and federal laws prohibiting prostitution, illicit drug use, statutory rape. titution, illicit drug use, statutory rape. the house ethics report on republican congressman matt gaetz that was released today which immediately raised some questions like given all the evidence that the ethics investigation turned up, how did he avoid getting criminally indicted? also, given roughly 330 million people to choose from in this country, what does it say about a person's judgment if they survey the 330 million people of this country and decide this guy is the best one, this is the best pick in the country to be attorney general of the united states? tates? state and federal laws prohibiting prostitution, illicit drug use, and statutory
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rape. now while congressman gaetz denies all wrongdoing, i think it's beyond inarguable that he has sort of a special place in the trump transition and will for all history. donald trump's transition to his second term in office has been a series of humiliations and failures, but none worse than choosing this particular person to be attorney general. it's a prospect that lasted eight days and then collapsed and during that time the president-elect himself reportedly called u.s. senators and lobbied them to approve this choice, vouching for the guy, putting his own political capital into the game. the vice president-elect physically brought this guy in and out of senators' offices
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putting his own credibility on the line to vouch for this guy and get this guy approved. multiple republican senators went on the record indicating oh, yes, absolutely, i'll vote for this guy for attorney general. sure. why not? that's my best judgment. hi, lindsey graham. hi, tommy tuberville. just days later he dropped out and now we've got the ethics committee accusing him officially of statutory rape, prostitution and lots and lots of drug use, including him allegedly setting up a fake email address in his congressional office that he specifically used to score pot. was that worth it for you? do you want to do it again? don't forget all the congressional republicans who went on the record and voted to make sure that this information would be kept secret so matt gaetz could have a chance of becoming attorney general of the united states without the
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public ever finding out all the evidence that congress collected about again statutory rape, prostitution, drug use, et cetera. that includes the very, very, very pious bible-driven speaker of the house who argued that the american public should not be allowed to know the evidence that the house had collected about matt gaetz and the american public should not be allowed to see that evidence so matt gaetz could become attorney general without anybody knowing about what we now know is the ethics committee's conclusions that there is substantial evidence that matt gaetz broke all these laws, including, you know, the ones about grown men not having sex with children. the deeply pious house speaker insists that that information must be kept secret from the american people so that matt gaetz can become attorney
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general of the united states. house speaker mike johnson, how do you feel about putting your reputation in this particular dumpster? would you do it again? because you'll be asked to do it again. how do you feel about being asked to put your reputation in this particular dumpster given that the gaetz nomination was withdrawn just days later? so you did it for nothing. the trump transition has been a 20-car pileup of errors and humiliations that reflect poorly on trump as the decisionmaker at the top, but then have also inflicted political harm and humiliation on lots of other republicans who his his errors have messed with, all this after an election in which
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democrats gained a couple seats and republicans lost ground in the house, which means republicans' margin for getting anything passed in the house is now smaller than anytime in the past century and now on top of all that as what we expect to be his last act presumably before christmas, we just had transition trump run the republican-controlled house right up to the precipice of another government shutdown, the closest we have been to a government shutdown since the last time trump was president. trump has made a lot of errors and unforced humiliating-owned goals in this transition and i think the media should cover it more that way. the idea that this is a normal transition, that this hasn't just been gaffe after gaffe and own goal after own goal and reputational harm after reputational harm, trump not only tanking his own political capital, but just sideswiping every other powerful republican in washington while he is doing it as he mishandles all of
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these nominations, it has been a terrible shambolic transition, but on top of everything else that he has done with all of these nominations and the way he has mishandled them, the brush with a government shutdown this weekend made trump look not just error prone and easily confused, but also weak. the whole drama over whether or not to shut down the government you'll remember was not started by trump. it was started by eccentric right wing billionaire elon musk who posted online over 150 times about the funding bill to keep the government running, stating lots of things about it that were definitely not true, insisting in increasingly vociferous terms that republicans needed to tank that bill and shut everything down. it was only after musk had gotten the ball rolling that trump eventually joined in. once trump got involved he did start making demands from the
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republican-controlled congress, telling them what he wanted from them as he was pushing them toward a shutdown. what did he want them to give them? he wanted a very specific thing he asked for explicitly. he wanted the republican- controlled congress to abolish the debt ceiling. don't worry, though. you don't have to bother reminding yourself what the debt ceiling is because they didn't do it. trump wanted it. he demanded it, but he didn't get it. they didn't make any change around the debt ceiling even though that's what trump was demanding which makes him look again error prone, easily confused, and weak. it particularly makes him look weak compared to elon musk because what did result from the standoff that nearly shut down the government this weekend, what actually did change is not what would have benefited trump, is not what trump asked for, not the debt ceiling thing. instead it's what would have benefited elon musk because what they did remove from the government funding bill was a provision that would have screened and regulated u.s. investments in china and those
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new rules could have interfered with musk's reported plans to build yet another massive manufacturing plant in china right down the street from the largest tesla factory on earth which he has already built in shanghai because usa, usa, usa. as david dane put it at the american prospect this weekend, "this is the first scandal of the second trump term and take a long like because it's going to look like all the other scandals. this is going to be a constant theme of the next four years, personal business interests are going to constantly take precedence over governance in the trump-musk white house. the word for this is oligarchy and oligarchs do not think about the country first." luckily, they've already taken integrity off the coat of arms, sand blasted it right off of there. so we don't have to do it
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ourselves. we are starting the holidays in the midst of a presidential transition that really has been a shambolic mess and it should be covered as such, but on top of all of those mistakes we are now seeing the first signs that the errors and the owned goals and the self-inflicted humiliations of this nascent presidency, they may reflect a new president who is not just incompetent, who is not just bad at the basics of what it takes to appoint people to jobs and run a transition, we may be seeing the first signs of a new president who is weak enough not just to fail, but to be taken advantage of by some of the brighter bulbs on the tree. more ahead. stay with us.
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before president biden was inaugurated, the previous administration rushed to kill as many american prisoners as possible. he tried to rush through as many executions as he could at the very end, including three people who he had killed just days before the newly elected president biden took over. it was a really extraordinary rush to the death chamber and i mean extraordinary in mathematical terms. from the time the death penalty
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was reestablished in 1980 -- the federal death penalty was reestablished in 1988 through june 2020, there had only been three federal executions total, three in 32 years. then just during trump's last six months in office there were 13. three in 32 years and then 13 in six months. today president biden made sure his successor, of course, the same guy who preceded him can't continue on anything like that same pace. today president biden commuted death sentences for nearly every federal prisoner on death row in the united states. it doesn't mean these guys will be set free, but it does mean they will not be killed by the government. 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners will now instead serve live without parole. the only exceptions were three prisoners convicted for acts of terrorism or for hate crimes. those were the boston marathon
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bomber and the mother emanuel ame church shooter and tree of life synagogue shooter. those three are the only prisoners left on federal death row today after these 37 commutations today just ahead of christmas from president biden. among the people who have been pushing president biden to take this kind of step is brian stevenson. brian stevenson has been the leading antideath penalty advocate in this country for decades. in 1989 he founded equal justice initiative in alabama. it challenges excessive punishment broadly and challenges death sentences in particular across the country. brian stevenson's best selling memoir "just mercy" among other things tells the story of a man who spent six years on death row who was not just spared execution, he was set free when bryan stevenson was able to prove without a shadow of the doubt that man was innocent, that he was wrongly convicted. he freed him before the state had the chance to kill him.
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"just mercy" became an award winning film with the same name. after president biden commuted those 37 federal death sentences today, bryan stevenson said this. he said, "we do not need to kill people to show that killing is wrong in this country. the death penalty is a torturous, flawed, expensive, and error-filled practice that must be abolished. i commend president biden for this historic act and hope that governors and state executives follow the president's lead." joining us now is bryan stevenson, founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative. mr. stevenson, it's a real honor to have you here. >> great to be with you. >> let me start by asking you to explain why you think this action by president biden was important today. >> well, it's historic in a sense that no u.s. president has ever commuted this many death sentences and certainly
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in the modern era it has no precedent, but i think it's also significant because i think it could be a turning point in how we think about the death penalty. support for the death penalty is at a five-decade low. we've seen a real move away from capital punishment in many states that have abolished it, including southern states like virginia. the death sentencing rates are lower than they've been in decades. execution rates are low. the recent poll for the first time established that a majority of americans between 18 and 43 no longer believe in the death penalty. so i think the president's commutations could be a turning point if other executives, if other governors, if other leaders follow his lead. there are 700 people on death row in california that could be commuted and governor newsom has talked about that. there are people on death row in north carolina, in pennsylvania, in ohio, in many other states and i just think
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we have an opportunity to really step back from this punishment that has been so flawed, error prone and troubling over the last 50 years. >> you've made a powerful case that part of what is wrong about the death penalty is because of what it asks of us as a society, what it asks of our government, that people who do terrible things are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives, but those of us who think of ourselves as citizens and people who are responsible to the way that our government behaves also have a responsibility to make sure that one of the things our government ought not to do is make it somebody's job to kill people as part of their paycheck, as part of what they do to earn a paycheck. given that, what do you make of the three exceptions the president made, the three crimes that are associated with those three prisoners,
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obviously some of the most heinous and notorious crimes committed in this country in my lifetime, but still it's notable by making 37 commutations that he carved out those three as exceptions. >> yes. i think that you could characterize those three cases as cases of terrorism, as cases of mass murder. i think what's significant about those three cases is they're relatively early in the process. so that is they will be able to litigate the issues in their case for several years. i think there will be another opportunity to address those cases before any of those people are subjected to an execution, but you're right. i don't think that we should think about the death penalty by asking whether people deserve to die for their crimes they committed. i think we should be asking do we deserve to kill? we have a system that makes so many mistakes. this year we saw the 200th
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person exonerated and released after being convicted and sentenced to death. it's a shocking rate of error. for every eight people we've executed in the united states over the last 50 years, we've identified one innocent person on death row and we would never tolerate that rate of error in most areas of public administration. if somebody told you that there's a toxin on some apples and one out of eight apples if you touch one would kill you, we would stop selling apples. we wouldn't tolerate this in aviation or in public health, but we continue to tolerate it in the administration of the death penalty and i do think there is something cruel about forcing people to participate in something so clearly problematic, so clearly torturous. we don't expect our officials to rape people who are convicted of rape. we would think that's unconscionable. we don't think government officials should torture people convicted of torture, but somehow we've persuaded ourselves that asking state employees to kill people who
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have killed is something that's going to be okay. in one of the letters that was submitted to the president in support of these commutations came from correctional officials, wardens, correctional officers who bear the trauma and weight of having to subject people unnecessarily gratuitously to these systematic and lethal killings and i think that's what's going to push many of us to keep fighting for those three and not just those three on the federal death row, but the over 2,000 that are on state death rows across this country. >> bryan stevenson, founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative, the author of "just mercy" and our nation's leading moral and legal voice on this incredibly important issue, thank you for your time tonight, particularly up against the holidays, really nice to see you and have you here, sir. >> great to see you. more news ahead. stay with us.
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last week we talked about a government rule that requires a car company to report whenever a car gets into a crash while it is in self-driving mode. crashes like this one on thanksgiving day in 2022, when a tesla in san francisco that was in full self-driving mode inexplicably stopped on the highway and caused an eight-car pileup. thanks to this rule that you have to report it when a self- driving car crashes, tesla had to report that crash to the
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government. now that the ceo of tesla is kind of a co-president-elect, reuters is reporting trump team wants to scrap car crash reporting rule that tesla opposes. for the low, low price of financing one presidential election, tesla may have bought itself a u.s. government that among other things no longer requires tesla to report when its self-driving software causes wrecks and hurts and kills people, but tesla's interests aren't just in the united states. arguably, tesla is more a chinese car company than it is an american car company. the biggest tesla factory that makes more of its cars than any other plant, the single factory which makes roughly half the cars it makes globally is a huge one in shanghai and tesla right now is trying to get approval from the chinese government to operate its self-
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driving car technology in that country as well. tesla's ceo elon musk really wants to keep the chinese government happy and he really wants to build yet more factories in china. he's really invested in having chinese workers manufacturing his cars right down the street from his huge shanghai tesla factory that he has up and running, musk building another huge $200 million tesla battery factory to employ chinese workers. while donald trump appears to have not gotten what he wanted out of the near government shutdown this weekend, elon musk does appear to have successfully maneuvered republicans in congress into cutting out of the government funding bill a provision that would have thrown regulatory roadblocks in the way of his continued massive investment in chinese manufacturing for his car company. we reached out for comment. we have not heard back. we'll let you know if we do, but the idea that we have just gone through this near death
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experience with another trump government shutdown potentially happening right before christmas even before trump technically gets back into office and we did it specifically so his billionaire pseudoco-president could protect his relationship with the chinese government and get more of what he wants in terms of chinese manufacturing, it's unsettling enough from a national security perspective, from a national sovereignty perspective, but it's all the more unsettling given reporting in recent days about the ways in which our own government has found elon musk to be a possible national security risk. the "wall street journal," for example, reported that while there are several hundred employees at spacex, musk's company, who have security clearances for what's known as sensitive compartmented information, elon musk is not one of the people who has that level of clearance and that's not normal for companies doing this kind of sensitive work for the government.
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the journal reports the ceos of other similarly situated companies have been able to get this security clearance but not elon musk. if you're wondering why, consider this reporting at "the new york times." "elon musk and his rocket company spacex have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols anticipated at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders," according to people with knowledge of the company and internal documents. "concerns about the reporting practices and particularly about musk himself have triggered at least three federal reviews. the defense department's office of inspector general opened a review into the matter this year, the air force and pentagon's office of undersecretary of defense and intelligence for security separately initiating reviews last month," as in november. "the air force also recently denied musk a high level
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security access citing potential security risks." "in the past three years nine different countries, including europe and the middle east, have raised security questions about musk in meetings with u.s. defense officers." it seems clear from the reporting that some of these security concerns may have to do with reports about elon musk's drug use, but there's also these continuing concerns that he has not disclosed all of his meetings with foreign leaders or what was talked about in those meetings and that is required if you want to maintain a security clearance with the u.s. government. the question for all of us broadly is why would a person refuse to disclose what's happening at meetings with foreign leaders and foreign governments? what are you talking about with foreign leaders that you don't want the u.s. government to know about and what does it mean to have somebody seen as that kind of security risk essentially singlehandedly directing the actions of the
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u.s. government during a presidential transition? joining us now is "new york times" investigative reporter eric lipton. thanks so much for your time tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> help me understand the, i guess, how surprising it is, how unexpected it might be in the abstract for somebody who is the head of a company like spacex, for example, to not have the kind of security clearances that mr. musk has either not been able to obtain or has actively been denied. >> there's something called the special access program that is a higher level of classification that spacex wanted for elon musk that would allow him to participate in some of the most sensitive discussions around, for example, right now spacex is helping the national reconnaissance office build a spy satellite network around the globe in orbit. he's also in charge of national
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security launches, putting some of the most sensitive spy satellites and missile tracking equipment into orbit and so the special access program would have given him the ability to participate in some of the most classified discussions around these programs and that was denied by the air force. he does have top secret clearance, but he does not have special access program. that's unusual for a ceo. it's something that doesn't really happen for a ceo at that level for there to be questions about a special access program ability for someone at that level. so the fact of the matter is that spacex is incredibly involved in the national security and spy system right now. it is not only a launch company. it is helping build a spy satellite network and also helping create the satellites used for missile tracking, for missile defense programs in the united states. it's an incredibly important company in the national security in the united states at the moment. >> an incredibly important
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company for the national security of states whose ceo can't get top level security clearance to be allowed access to some of what his own company is doing. it seems strange. can i ask you about other countries having reported security concerns about mr. musk to u.s. defense officials. do we know anything about the nature of those concerns that they reported? >> i mean the most specific thing is from a colleague that worked on the story with us. that had to do with israel, had some concerns about whether or not musk could be trusted to maintain state secrets and was not communicating with possible adversaries, sharing information that perhaps he had access to and that was one of the number of countries that shared with us that raised the concern about musk and whether or not basically could he be trusted?
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it's very unusual to have a ceo of a major defense contractor be so engaged in foreign business operations directly, as you discussed with respect to china and the extent of his operations in china and the business interests that china and the leverage to some extent that china therefore has over him and his company is unusual. i think that that makes folks at the air force uncomfortable. >> "new york times" investigative reporter eric lipton, thank you very much. i know this is a particularly technical area of reporting. it's really hard to report on security clearances and intelligence concerns because of how secret it is all. it's been really illuminating to have you and your colleagues working on this. >> thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. keke, i won again? they make everything more fun. and you can never have enough!
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especially if you take medicines to treat diabetes. call your prescriber about vision changes, if you feel your heart racing while at rest, or if you have mental changes. depression or thoughts of suicide may occur. common side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, flu, or upset, headache, feeling tired, dizzy, or bloated, gas, and heartburn. some side effects lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. with wegovy®, i'm losing weight, i'm keeping it off, and i'm lowering my cv risk. ask your prescriber about wegovy®. as americans, there's one thing we can all agree on. the promise of our constitution and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people. but here's the truth. attacks on our constitutional rights, yours and mine are greater than they've ever been. the right for all to vote. reproductive rights. the rights of immigrant families. the right to equal justice for black, brown and lgbtq+
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folks. the time to act to protect our rights is now. that's why i'm hoping you'll join me today in supporting the american civil liberties union. it's easy to make a difference. just call or go online now and become an aclu guardian of liberty. all it takes is just $19 a month. only $0.63 a day. your monthly support will make you part of the movement to protect the rights of all people, including the fundamental right to vote. states are passing laws that would suppress the right to vote. we are going backwards. but the aclu can't do this important work without the support of people like you. you can help ensure liberty and justice for all and make sure that every vote is counted. so please call the aclu now or go to my aclu.org and join us. when you use your credit card, you'll receive this special we the people t-shirt and much more. to show you're a part of the movement to protect the rights guaranteed to all of us by the us constitution.
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we protect everyone's rights, the freedom of religion, the freedom of expression, racial justice, lgbtq rights, the rights of the disabled. we are here for everyone. it is more important than ever to take a stand. so please join us today. because we the people means all the people, including you. so call now or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty.
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there was an old lady who lived in a shoe. when a pan caught fire, she knew what to do. don't pour water on a burning pot and don't pick it up because it's hot, hot, hot. first turn off the heat. then try and smother the flames with a lid or a cover, but better still, to guard against fire, use a thermally controlled deep fat fryer. the old lady knew just what to do. do you? >> do you? i might be that lady. public service announcements are among my favorite things
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ever in all of broadcasting. i said at the outset this hour that i have one more christmas present for you this hour. this is it. we have started our own version of a public service announcement. with the incoming administration not doing normal vetting or background checks for their nominees, we have started a new series that we are calling public servant announcements to fill in some of the gaps on who is set to get big important government jobs. we just started posting them on youtube. if you go to maddowblog.com, you can get the links for all of them. as your special christmas present, we are going to drop our newest public servant announcement which is about trump's pick of dr. mehmet oz to run medicare. on christmas afternoon you can check out our new public servant announcement series.
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if you have heart failure or chronic kidney disease, farxiga can help you keep living life, because there are places you'd like to be. (♪♪) serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine and bacterial infection between the anus and genitals, both which may be fatal, severe allergic reactions, dehydration, urinary tract or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. stop taking and tell your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, rash, swelling, trouble breathing or swallowing. tell your doctor about lightheadedness, weakness, fever, pain, tenderness, redness or swelling between the anus and genitals. ask your doctor about farxiga today. ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ (♪♪)
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one is admittedly a matter of mild personal embarrassment but to means that this is a problem for me, one for which i have no defense. merry christmas, that will do it for me for now, now it is time for the last word. >> i am busy taking a photograph of this split screen right now. for my year and collection here. rachel i have a serious news our to do here and that is the perfect start. thank you very much for changing the way i think about tesla. it is a chinese car company is it not? i had
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